Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

Supramentalisation and the Conquest of Death

I find that there is a change of views on your part about the Supermind's descent and the work of conquering death for humanity. Formerly I thought everything depended on your own success; now it seems a lot depends on us in this vital matter. But the outlook for us does not seem very bright; even physically it does not appear encouraging: one or two people have actually died.

In what does this change of views consist? Did I say that nobody could die in the Ashram? If so, I must have been intoxicated or passing through a temporary aberration.

As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentahsation – and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supra-mental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open up to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it could not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs and worms would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Ashram or of Yoga.

Why vital? What is vital is the supramental change of consciousness – conquest of death is something minor and, as I have always said, the last physical result of it, not the first result of all or the most important – a thing to be added to complete the whole, not the one thing needed and essential. To put it first is to reverse all spiritual values – it would mean that the seeker was actuated, not by any high spiritual aim but by a vital clinging to life or a selfish and timid seeking for the security of the body – such a spirit could not bring the supramental change.

Certainly, everything depends on my success.... But did you imagine that would mean the cessation of death on the planet and that sadhana would cease to be necessary for anybody?

09.10.1936