Sri Aurobindo
The Mother

to Prithwi Singh

Correspondence (1933-1967)

29 December 1936

Prithwi Singh — Sri Aurobindo

(This letter refers to Sri Aurobindo's poem “Thought the Paraclete.”)

Mother,

In the Master's poem “Thought the Paraclete” I should like to know why thought is conceived as mediator, or rather the elucidation of these two lines:

Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete

Disappeared slow-singing a flame-word rune

And also these lines:

Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind

Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod

Space and Time's mute vanishing ends.

With deep devotion

Prithwisingh

Thought¹ is not the giver of knowledge but the “mediator” between the Inconscient and the Superconscient. It compels the world born from the Inconscient to seek for a Knowledge other than the instinctive vital or merely empirical, for the Knowledge that itself exceeds thought; it calls for that superconscient knowledge and prepares the consciousness here to receive it. It rises itself into the higher realms and even in disappearing into the supramental and Ananda levels is transformed into something that will bring down their powers into the silent Self which its cessation leaves behind it.

Gold-red is the colour of the supramental in the physical — the poem describes Thought in the stage when it is undergoing transformation and about to ascend into the Infinite above and disappear into it. The flame-word rune is the Word of the Inspiration, Intuition, Revelation which is the highest attainment of Thought.

Sri Aurobindo
29 December 1936

¹ This letter was published at Vol.24 (No 2505) of SABCL

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