Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on Spiritual Figures in India

Swami Ramatirtha [2]

Ramatirtha used to say that all beings were himself in different forms and to address others as “myself in the form of ...”. This sounds a little fantastic!

It is fantastic.

Can this not be called an example of the transformed mind and vital, for he seems to have been engrossed in the Self in the waking life as well as in meditation.

I think Ramatirtha’s realisations were more mental than anything else. He had opening of the higher mind and a realisation there of the cosmic Self, but I find no evidence of a transformed mind and vital; that transformation is not a result of or object of the Yoga of Knowledge. The realisation of the Yoga of Knowledge is when one feels that one lives in the wideness of something silent, featureless and universal (called the Self) and all else is seen as only forms and names; the Self is real, nothing else. The realisation of “my self in other forms” is a part of this or a step towards it, but in the full realisation the “my” should drop so that there is only the one Self or rather only the Brahman. For the Self is merely a subjective aspect of the Brahman, just as the Ishwara is its objective aspect. That is the Vedantic “Knowledge”. Its result is peace, silence, liberation. As for the active Prakriti, (mind, vital, body), the Yoga of Knowledge does not make it its aim to transform them — that would be no use as the idea is that if the liberation has come, it will all drop off at death. The only change wanted is to get rid of the idea of ego and realise as true only the supreme Self, the Brahman.

25 June 1934