Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume II - Part 1
Fragment ID: 10895
I am not sure about the last matter1. After all India with her mentality and method has done a hundred times more in the spiritual field than Europe with her intellectual doubts and questionings.
Even when a European overcomes the doubt and questioning, he does not find it as easy to go as fast and far as an Indian with the same force of personality because the stir of mind is still greater. It is only when he can get beyond that that he arrives, but for him it is not so easy.
On the other hand however your statement is correct. It [the tendency to doubt and question] is “natural considering the times” and the occidental mentality prevalent everywhere. It is also probably necessary that this should be faced and overcome before any supramental realisation is possible in the earth-consciousness – for it is the attitude of the physical mind to spiritual things and as it is in the physical that the resistance has to be overcome before the mind can be overpassed in the way required for this Yoga, the strongest possible representation of its difficulties was indispensable.
1 The correspondent suggested that in this Yoga a disciple with an occidental mentality might be “even better off” than a disciple with a traditional Indian mentality of humility and respect for the Guru. – Ed.