Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana in Pondicherry
1930s

Sadhana for the Earth Consciousness [7]

Do you seriously want me to swallow this mountainous absurdity that any man can be made a Krishna or a Sri Aurobindo, any woman a Mother, any X a Tyagaraj, any Y a Tansen, any Z a Shakespeare, any A a Raphael, any B a Vyasa or a Valmiki? ...

I have never said any or all of these things. These egoistic terms are not those in which I think any more than these egoistic ambitions are those in which my vital moves. It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and pain and strife. Then even if they are less great than the men of the past, my object will have been achieved. For me mental conceptions cannot be the end of all things. I know that the supermind is a truth.

You really want me to swallow this even if I suffocate? Your logical proposition is “Everything is possible”, but this makes all human experience look so hopeless, so childish and so frightening. It is difficult to believe that any amount of the divine force will turn a C into a Sri Aurobindo or a D into a Sri Mira. I am not joking. I mean it.

You do not seem to have followed the sense of my reasoning very well — perhaps because I clothe my arguments with E in a tone of {{0}}humour.[[See the letters of 9 and 10 February 1935 on pages 402–10. — Ed.]] You have taken my humorous comment about Muthu with a portentous seriousness — if you really are not joking: but I suppose you are in spite of your disclaimer.

It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth consciousness — I see it above and know what it is — I feel it overgleaming my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth-evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth-vision. If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care. There is no question of C or D or anybody else in that. It is a question between the Divine and myself — whether it is the Divine Will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption,— I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others. (This is not to be circulated.)

10 February 1935