Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana in Pondicherry
The Realisation of 24 November 1926

The Significance of the 24th November [1]

Today I shall request you to “stand and deliver” on a different subject. What is exactly the significance of the 24th of November? Different people have different ideas about it. Some say that the Avatar of the Supramental plane descended in you.

Rubbish! whose imagination was that?

Others say that you were through and through overmentalised.

Well, it is not quite the truth, but nearer to the mark.

I myself understood that on that day you achieved the Supermind.

There was never any mention of that from our side.

If you did not achieve the Supermind at that time, how is it possible for you to talk about it or know anything about it?

Well, I’m hanged. You can’t know anything about a thing before you have “achieved” it?

Because I have seen it and am in contact with it, O logical baby that you are! But achieving it is another business.

But didn’t you say that some things were getting supramentalised in parts?

Getting supramentalised is one thing and the achieved supramental is another.

You have unnerved a lot of people by that statement that you haven’t achieved the supermind.

Good Lord! And what do these people think I meant when I was saying persistently that I was trying to get the supermind down into the material? If I had achieved it on Nov. 24. 1926, it would have been there already for the last nine years, isn’t it?

X seems to have declared on that day that you had conquered sleep, food, disease and death. On what authority did she proclaim it then?

I am not aware of this gorgeous proclamation. What was said was that the Divine (Krishna or the Divine Presence or whatever you like) had come down into the material. It was also proclaimed that I was retiring — obviously to work things out. If all that was achieved on the 24th [November] 1926, what on earth remained to work out, and if the Supramental was there, for what blazing purpose did I need to retire? Besides are these things achieved in a single day? If X said anything like that she must have been in a prophetic mood and seen the future in the present!

I have stood, but I have not delivered. I had time for standing a moment, but none for a delivery — however pregnant my mind or my overmind may be. But really what a logic! One must become thoroughly supramental first (achieve supermind) and then only one can begin to know something about supermind? Well! However if I have time one day, I will deliver — for evidently with such ideas about, an éclaircissement is highly advisable.

29 August 1935