Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on the Current State of the Sadhana, 1931 – 1947

1935 [30]

When you wrote “as far as the bracket goes”, did you not notice that you cut off the last part of X’s statement?

Yes, of course. What is being done is meant to prepare the manifestation of the supermind in the earth consciousness down to Matter itself, so it can’t be for the physical of myself or the Mother alone.

Most of us know that the Supermind will be brought down into “the physical”. But what X means is that the present preparation is going on to bring down the Supermind not into our physical but into yours and the Mother’s.

If it comes down into our physical it would mean that it has come down into matter and so there is no reason why it should not manifest in the sadhaks.

X says further: “The Supermind will not descend into any of the sadhaks. I have read in the Arya about the nature of the Supermind. It is so great that no human being can bear it in itself.”

I do not know to what passage of the Arya the reference is. It is certain that the Supermind is far above the human mind and cannot be grasped by the human mind. That is the reason why this Yoga has to be undertaken — so as to make man grow out of the human mind and prepare him for supermind.

For myself all I have to say is that if you were not already supramentalised you would never have called yourself a superman.

I don’t know that I have “called” myself a superman. But certainly I have risen above the ordinary human mind, otherwise I would not think of trying to bring down the supermind into the physical.

I refuse to accept what you wrote yesterday:“The things to be brought down were in us no doubt” [p. 348]. Those things were not only in you but were created by you. If you put it like that it can only be because of the conditions of the earth-nature. From the point of view of the supramental truth, you are the creator of the supramental plane.

That is another matter. The supermind plane is a plane above, its nature is not yet manifested in the material world, which has manifested matter, life and mind, and something of what is between mind and supermind, but not supermind itself.

15 September 1935