Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on the World Situation (1933 – 1949)

Intellectual Idealists, World Events and the New Creation

I cannot persuade myself that all the things that are happening — including the triumph of the British policy and deterioration of Gandhi’s intellect — are meant for the best.... Bengal is now benighted and there is no sign of light anywhere. Tagore too has just written an article of despair in which he forebodes gloomily an end of the world, pralaya-kalpānta, as perhaps the quickest and most satisfactory solution to the mess we are in. Add to this my own lack of devotion and faith.... I do sometimes even feel that in the end you will give up this wicked world and wish with Tagore for the pralaya and retire into extracosmic samadhi.

I have no intention of doing so — even if all smashed; I would look beyond the smash to the new creation. As for what is happening in the world, it does not upset me because I knew all along that things would happen in that fashion. I never had any illusions about Gandhi’s satyagraha — it has only fulfilled my prediction that it would end in a great confusion or a great fiasco and my only mistake was that I put an “or” where there should have been an “and” — and as for the hopes of the intellectual idealists I have not shared them, so I am not disappointed.

10 August 1933