Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1933-34

Fragment ID: 16763

1933-36

Why cannot the Supramental be brought down stage by stage – that is, first into the mind and the vital till the physical is ready?

It cannot be brought down to the mind and vital without being brought down into the physical,– also one can feel its influence or get something of it but bringing down means much more than that.

The Supermind is a luminous whole – it is not a mixture of light and ignorance. If the physical mind is not supramentalised, then there will be in mind a mixture of ignorance, but then it will not be Supermind there, but something else,– so also with the vital. All that can manifest in the mind separately is a partly supramentalised Overmind.

If the supramental can stand in the mind and vital, then it must stand in the physical also. If it does not stand in the physical, it cannot stand in the mind and vital also; it will be something else, not the supramental.

A touch or influence of the supramental is not the same thing as the supramentalisation. To suppose that the physical can be supramentalised before the mental and vital is an absolute absurdity. What I said was that the mind and vital could not be supramentalised so long as the physical was left as it was, untouched by the supramental descent.