Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

Understanding the Supermind

Your Supermind business baffles our understanding and some of us are sceptic about it and some think it not worth while at present to bother about it.

Well, it may not be necessary to understand it but it is advisable not to misunderstand it. The scepticism is stupid, because how can one pronounce for or against about something one does not know or understand at all?

Certainly it is better not to bother about it and to do what is immediately necessary. The attempt to understand has led many to take for the Supermind something that was not even spiritual and to suppose themselves supermen when all they were doing was to go headlong into the ultra-vital.

Does one need to understand your Yoga in order to practise it?

If one has faith and openness that is enough. Besides there are two kinds of understanding – understanding by the intellect and understanding in the consciousness. It is good to have the former if it is accurate, but it is not indispensable. Understanding by the consciousness comes if there is faith and openness, though it may come only gradually and through steps of experience. But I have seen people without education or intellectuality understand in this way perfectly well the course of the Yoga in themselves, while intellectual men make big mistakes e.g. take a neutral mental quietude for the spiritual peace and refuse to come out of it in order to go farther.

26.06.1938