Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Third Series
Fragment ID: 21108
A mystic is currently supposed to be one who has mystic experience, and a mystic philosopher is one who has such experience and has formed a view of life in harmony with his experience. Merely to have metaphysical notions about the Infinite and Godhead and underlying or overshadowing forces does not make a man a mystic. One would never think of applying such a term to Spinoza, Kant or Hegel: even Plato does not fit into the term, though Pythagoras has a good claim to it. Hegel and other transcendental or idealistic philosophers were great intellects, not mystics. Shaw is a keen and forceful intellect (I cannot call him a great thinker1) but his ideas about the Life-Force certainly do not make him a mystic. And do you really call that a constructive vision of life – a vague notion about a Life-Force pushing towards an evolutionary manifestation and a brilliant jeu d’ esprit about long life and people born out of eggs and certain extraordinary operations of mind and body in these semi-immortals who seem to have been very much at a loss what to do with their immortality? I do not deny that there are keen and brilliant ideas and views everywhere (that is Shaw’s wealthy stock-in-trade), even an occasional profound perception; but that does not make a man either a mystic or a, philosopher or a great thought-creator. Shaw has. a sufficiently high place in his own kind – why try to make him out more than he is? Shakespeare is a great poet and dramatist, but to try to make him. out a great philosopher also would not increase but rather imperil his high repute.
1 An admirable many-sided intelligence and an acute critic discussing penetratingly or discoursing acutely or constructively on many problems or presenting with force or point many aspects of life, he is not a creator or disseminator of the great illuminating ideas that leave their mark on the centuries.