Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

Sidelights on The Aurobindonian Truth

A LETTER FROM KRISHNA PREM (RONALD NIXON)

TO MR. KOSKE AND A COMMENT BY K. D. SETHNA

The Letter

September 1946

Dear Mr. Koske,

"Whom should I believe?" You can cut Bradley, Bergson, Hegel, etc., out of the list as admittedly their views are mere speculations. They do not even claim to have reached the other shore. How, then, will they guide us? It is useless to reach one unique and final philosophical system. All such systems are relative. The Buddha described his teachings as like a raft — useful to cross the river but to be left behind on the further bank. Though not admitted by all others, this is true of all systems. Each is useful and helpful to certain types of aspirants. None is absolute or finally true but all contain truths of a relative sort useful to people in a certain position. A great Western Mystic — Eckhart — wrote: "Why dost thou prate of God? Whatever thou sayest of Him is untrue." And another: "Neither God nor Heaven nor Hell nor the World can be otherwise honourable in you or by you except by their own existence and manifestation in you." All pretended knowledge of these things without this self-evident perception of their birth within you is only such knowledge as the blind man has of the light he has never seen. Which one to choose then? Whichever most stirs your heart and clarifies your ideas will be most helpful to you but if you think it is absolutely true you are asking for trouble. All statements are true from one point of view — false from another. Where to get the final Unmistakable Truth? In your heart. Nowhere else. Yes, books are a help — if not taken too seriously. Characteristic signs of such a man? See Gita II verse 53

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onwards and XII verses 13-20. And many other places elsewhere. How to know that a man has these qualities? That is the difficulty and all of us are liable to make mistakes of judgement there. The purer one's heart the freer from desires, the truer becomes our judgement.

"Relative and absolute; Finite and Infinite: where do these meet?" Nowhere; but also in Sri Krishna; and your own heart. These three answers are the same.

"Whose interpretation of symbols shall I take as correct?" Whichever one helps you most — till you find a better one.

"The fully liberated man is beyond all progress and time. He dwells in Eternity. But there are many stages on the road and some of them are so high above us that we often think of them as the End. The actual final transformation is, I believe, sudden but it is certainly prepared for by ways that are gradual — the various Yogas. All that the imagination can imagine and the reason conceive is not and cannot be a proximate (i.e., direct, immediate) means of union with God." But all things can be indirect means, i.e., they can help us to get to that place from which we can see for ourselves which we can do suddenly.

"When this is attained, what next?" There is no next. Do not ask me whether so and so is such a man. How do I know?

"We are free to act either for Krishna or for self. Ii is like a fork in a road; you can go either way freely but, having chosen, what happens is determined." But this fork occurs at each point in the road; we have to choose each moment. Most people act only for self and hence their lives can be largely foretold by palmistry, astrology, etc. It is well known that such sciences fail with Mahatmas, i.e., those who serve Sri Krishna.

As for the foreseeing by "supermind" — if it were intelligible to the mind it would not be supramental.

I don't think I can have said, "Mind, evolution and supermind are not important at all." If I did, it was a slip. I should have said, "Theories and views about mind, etc., are not important." If you surrender to God you will come to

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know about the realities that are referred to by all such descriptions.

Because certain Mahatmas do not use the word "supermind" proves nothing about the thing. All the great seers have taught that there are divine levels of being 'lower' than the Ultimate Transcendent Reality but beyond or above the mind. What does Supermind mean except just that — above the mind? Why worry about the absence of the Latin word "super"? Not all, however, have thought it fit to emphasise these divine levels. That was their business and for them to judge. Some have desired their pupils to fix their thoughts only on the Ultimate Eternal. Times and needs vary.

"If sorrows, etc., are ordained by God, why seek to interfere?" But supposing it is God Himself in your heart who urges you to "interfere" or transmute? After all, the game is His game and He plays it from His Seat in all beings (Gita VIII.61). Especially if a heart is surrendered to Him He uses it to bring about His masterpieces. If your argument was true, then what to say of transmuting? None of the great Teachers and Avatars would have taught it at all but would just have said: "All things are equal to my vision — let others do what they please." The Lila will never be complete as long as there is a spot anywhere that is resistant to the Divine Light. That means transmutation.

Sri Krishna and Buddha had doubtless destroyed their egos (or never had them), and yet they undoubtedly talked and acted "in terms of individual being". Note that I am neither supporting nor attacking Sri Aurobindo's special Yoga. I merely say that the divine levels beyond the mind are certainly a fact. It is said that "earth consciousness" will be transmuted. When, where and how and "by whom" I neither know nor care.

I cannot tell you what Sri Aurobindo means by "central being". There is that within us which is the ray, or image, of Krishna Himself. It is in the very centre of one's being and in our inmost Self. It is untouched by all sorrow, pain, etc. It is divine in origin because it has no origin. If I spoke of "central

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being", that is what I should mean. What others mean by it they must explain.

No, the man who has attained the state does not "take part in worldly activities". But he may easily appear to do so to worldly men.

"Beliefs turning to realities." No. What happens is that the reality which the belief partly referred to and described comes to be seen as it really is. The belief is always partly true partly false. Certainly beliefs lead to experiences. So do maps — but the map cannot become the countryside, can it?

"Is Sri Aurobindo's supramental a reality for him?" I imagine so, but how should I know?

Your question about the terrible sufferings of men. I certainly believe them all to be Karma Phala.

"Two things provoke horror when one contemplates them: (1) the sufferings of men, (2) the evil in men's hearts." These two things are the same things.

"How do you expect me to trust myself in God's hands?" I don't expect. I merely say that if you do you will find peace. The choice is yours and I expect nothing. Yes, the multitude of conflicting views is certainly perplexing — Buddha referred to the saint as "liberated from the jungle of views, the tangle of views, the labyrinth of views". Yet, after all, each man on his own house-top in Bombay would give a different description of what he saw. Ignore everyone who you think has used words unscrupulously for some end of his own. But, if you think him sincere, then try and understand why he has used just those words to describe his vision.

Sri Aurobindo's words have helped many. My own (which you refer to) have perhaps assisted a few. If words help you then use them. If not look elsewhere.

"My second fear is whether I have the complete freedom to choose." No. I don't suppose you (or anyone) has complete freedom. But we have some and anyhow if you give way to all these "fears" you will get nowhere at all.

"There may be a lion round the corner." Yes, there may be — and there may not. Anyhow, get on.

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"How to end this long series of contradictions?" Contradictions are inherent in all finite things. All contradictions are resolved in Him. If you seek the Truth beyond the world you must not fear contradictions and paradoxes.

My principal objection as to the fact that all this so-called "knowledge" is passively received often through an entranced medium and where or who it comes from no one knows. The psychic realm is full of illusions and all such communications are a mixture. I don't say there is never any truth in them but it is hard to sift it from the error, and the practice of such spiritistic communications is harmful to medium, sitter and to the "spirit" of the dead when any such is present which is by no means always so. That is why I think all great Teachers have condemned it. A celebrated Buddhist scholar became a spiritualist towards the end of her life. She re-wrote many of her books in the light of what the spirits told her of Buddha. Unfortunately they also told her some things about contemporary events which proved to be incorrect. Quite apart from that, however, the whole method seems to me harmful.

What you quote from Romain Rolland is excellent. I entirely agree. I, at least, cannot give you the ultimate Secret. I am myself but a wayfarer. My experience is that all the great mystics have said the same thing. Only they have naturally used different words on account of the different types of people they were addressing. If you read Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy (Harper and Co.), you will see from his extensive and wide-spread quotations how great-an agreement there has always been among them. But difference in presentation and emphasis there will always be because of different needs of the different types of men.

Try to give up this craving for the one unique point of view. It was for this reason that the Buddha abstained from all such and merely emphasised the conditions we must develop in ourselves to see the truth for ourselves. But human nature craves a "view" of some kind and so views are forthcoming — but, naturally, they are all relative. The

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absolute Truth must be found and experienced by each seeker for himself. There is no other way. All the seers have said it cannot be expressed.

The fact is that that Reality is already within you. Various impurities (which all reduce to egoism) prevent its shining forth. Nevertheless some degree of shining forth does occur and that is what we term "faith". Therefore follow this light of your faith and you will come to the Reality. The various types of faith are due to various types of impurity. Therefore do not seek one faith for all but follow what you yourself have. Perhaps you will say that your faith goes out to things that seem contradictory. Very likely. In that case do not attempt to deny either but hold both as it were in solution (even in defiance of logic). Sooner or later, as you advance, the position will clear and you will see that what were two contradictory views are merely two aspects of one truth. The North Pole of a magnet is not contradictory of the South. The great thing is to get a move on — any direction is better than none. You will find "the one unwavering voice" you seek in your own heart. It is there always, but we confuse it with the other voices (desire) that are also sounding there. As we learn to turn away from them we hear the one Voice more and more clearly.

Sorry I have to be brief with many of your questions. To answer them properly would require a book not a letter. Good luck to you. We must not hesitate to stake our lives. They are of no real value anyhow unless they are united with Krishna. And everything else goes down the drain even-tually anyhow.

P.S. When I suggested that "Gurus" could make mis-takes it referred to them as general expounders — not as personal teachers of their disciples. For the disciple his Guru's teachings are and must be absolute, so if you seek absolute truth find your Guru and abandon everything at his feet.

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The Comment

January 1947

Dear Mr. Koske,

Krishna Prem's letter has several beautiful and luminous hints. Coming from a heart of true spirituality they cannot but prove of living use to a sincere aspirant. However, a few points he does not seem to touch with sufficient clarity — at least in my view.

When he says that no philosophical system is absolute and finally true, he is not wrong if he means that times and needs change and philosophical expression must keep pace with them and constantly change, so that no absoluteness and finality can be considered possible. He is not wrong either if he means that no intellectual formulation is such as would satisfy every intellect. Some sort of non-conviction every system will carry to some minds. This is because logic is an instrument adaptable to various possibilities: minds are made differently and different lines of argument occur and appeal to them.

Krishna Prem is, again, not wrong if he means that no matter how perfect-seeming and complete-appearing a system of philosophy may be, there is always something that it cannot bring out, a mystery that eludes its statements, a subtlety that transcends its expository terms. The precise stance, so to speak, of the final and absolute truth is not imageable in philosophical language: another kind of speech comes nearer to it — the speech of intuitive and symbolic poetry derived from the highest available range of inspiration. But we may say that even this mantra of poetry will not convey the totum simul of truth's multitudinous stance, because the time-consciousness through which it must come to us and the time-conditions under which it must get embodied by us bring in a succession of revelatory masses and can never directly present the simultaneous whole of the

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divine reality. In any case, philosophical language falls short somewhere.

Still, I feel that so far as a particular period of human evolution is concerned and so far as the nature and scope of philosophical language permit we can speak of absoluteness and finality. At the present moment, for instance, there is a certain stretch of possibility of human evolution into the Divine: with reference to this stretch, that system is final and absolute which reflects, however shadowily, its main implications. These implications will be caught if the right sort of light is behind the philosopher's intellect and if that light is held by it in the right position. Whether everybody will find convincing the system concatenating these implications is a different matter: it need not affect the correctness of the conclusions, the broad conformity of the argument to the disposition of the full spiritual reality today. The correctness and the conformity would be all the less impugnable if Krishna Prem believes not that spiritual possibilities vary with the times but that there is at all times the possibility of our attaining by Yoga the absolute and final truth; for, if an absolute and final truth one and the same for all times is attainable, why should there not be as far as the intellect is illuminable an absolute and final system of philosophy? A system may not give every colour and contour of truth, yet it can be accurate in general outline and general proportion. Of course, as Krishna Prem writes, mere speculators like Bradley, Bergson, Hegel, etc., can never give us the ultimate philosophy. Only those who philosophise through but not with the intellect can be said to be in the running, since they speak out of a light beyond the human.

I should like also to comment on Krishna Prem's words: "Theories and views about mind, evolution, supermind are not important and you should not worry about these things but trust yourself in the hands of God." This is excellent advice for whoever is being obstructed by theories and views from plunging into spiritual practice. But two facts are slurred over. There is a type of mind which requires some

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sort of intellectual support for taking the plunge into Yoga wholly. All are not able to give themselves into the Guru's charge with an all-absorbing heart-movement and with no appeal by the intellect for philosophical guidance. No doubt, we must approach a Yogi primarily as a spiritual Guru if even his philosophy is to mean all it can to us, but the perfect Guru takes into account the intellectual type and does his best to answer its appeal. He would certainly warn against getting caught in theories and views instead of living the mystical life, but he would not deny importance altogether to them. The intellect is a legitimate part of us and, if properly used, has an undeniable importance. That is my first point.

The second is that it is too easily assumed that if one puts oneself into the hands of God under the Guruship of any Yogi one would attain the utter divine truth: in other words, there is no need to bother about what the Guru has to say about things like mind, evolution, supermind, for all his theories and views boil down ultimately to the same thing as those of any other teacher. I think that all Yogis do not realise the identical range of truth and that in choosing one's Guru one cannot easily afford to ignore his views about the goal of life and the destiny of man. These views are an index to his realisation and also a pointer — generally speaking — to what one will be heading for in spiritual attainment. Of course one cannot go on for ever chopping logic and discussing the philosophical expressions of various teachers: one must make up one's mind as soon as possible and take the actual yogic leap — and if one is unable to choose mentally, it is best to follow one's heart and select some Guru or other rather than remain whirling in endless debate. As Krishna Prem says, "the great thing is to get a move on, any direction is better than none"; but provided one does not get into an interminable whirl, the theories and views such as Krishna Prem relegates to the background may well have, if one is inclined to mental reflection, a hand in determining the Guru one throws in one's lot with. For, as I have said, there are Gurus and Gurus and they give us different

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realisations in spite of a certain glorious common factor arising from the One that is differently realised. You are quite right in thinking that what is called the Supermind is Sri Aurobindo's speciality and that it is not compassed by Masters of the Silent Self like Raman Maharshi or even by the more catholic Vivekananda: the synthetic genius of Rama-krishna himself has not embraced its basic implications. Krishna Prem seems to me mistaken in saying that if you surrender to God under any Guru you will come to know the reality that is referred to by the term "Supermind".

"Supermind" does not, as he imagines, mean only "above the mind" and does not coincide simply with what other seers have discovered to be divine levels of being, above the mind yet lower than the "Ultimate Transcendent Reality". The Latin word "super", as used by Sri Aurobindo, has a particular significance which emerges with unique force once we look at his table of what is above the mind. He speaks of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition, the Overmind and then the Supermind. The word "super" does not indiscriminately cover all these levels. It acquires, as distinguished from the word "over", a shade of utter supremacy, and in his expositions the Supermind does not stand for merely the highest level of being below the "Ultimate Transcendent Reality" but for a part and parcel of that very Reality: only, it is the part that is turned towards creation, towards the bringing forth and harmonisation of the truths implicit in the Transcendent for world-play. I agree with you that in the Aurobindonian scheme it points to Yogic obligations which are not present in the schemes of other Masters or Mahatmas.

I am afraid Krishna Prem has somehow missed these obligations in his reading of Sri Aurobindo — and the central obligation is the integral transformation of human nature. All Yogis talk of transformation or, to employ Krishna Prem's version, "transmutation", but they do not mean what Sri Aurobindo means, and to show what he means he has spent the last forty years in doing Yoga and still declares that he

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has not completed his realisation. Could one think that Sri Aurobindo had to spend forty years in nearly attaining what Buddha attained in five years, Ramakrishna in almost as few and Raman Maharshi in about the same or even less? Sri Aurobindo would then be not the greatest Yogi of our day but the greatest dunce of the divine life! Surely it is clear that he is at a mighty unparalleled job and is trying to compass and establish on earth a truth which has not been known so far. If, as Krishna Prem declares, the final unmistakable truth is to be found in the heart and if by surrendering to God one

There is one difficulty of yours which Krishna?rem hasn't dealt with, though he has made some remarks on matters allied to it. You have said, in effect: "If I accept Sri Aurobindo as my Guru and take him to stand for the Divine and to share the Divine's qualities of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, then what about the fact that Sri Aurobindo is sometimes doubtful, vague, uncertain and unable to give his final opinion on certain subjects in authoritative words? How am I to account for sentences like: I am totally unacquainted with McTaggart's thought and his writings; so it is a little difficult for me to answer you with any certainty' or 'I don't quite seize what is his conception of the Absolute'? If Sri Aurobindo represents the Divine, as a Guru must, why should he be unable to say confidently and unmistakably, for instance, what happened a thousand years

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back or what will happen a thousand years hence? Why shouldn't he solve all the problems of science with the help of his cosmic knowledge?"

Well, I fear your idea of God-realisation by a Guru does not take into consideration the terms of the world-play and the terms of individual nature and the terms of true Guru-ship. There are certain limitations of procedure which are part of the world-play: the world-play is carried on under certain rules and conditions and one of these is that a Guru has to be the vital centre of a great and luminous activity but not himself assume every kind of activity. His own particular individual nature has a certain mould and though he may at times change this mould to fit special occasions he keeps on the whole to what its functions are. Thus Sri Aurobindo has a wide and vari-aspected mould, he is a poet, literary critic, philosopher, politician, social thinker besides being a spiritual teacher; but even his mould does not include the functions, say, of a painter, a musician, a scientist. I dare say that if he put himself to the task he could bring out of the cosmic potential the qualities of a painter or a musician or a scientist. But they are not exactly according to the lines, overt or covert, of his own individual nature in this birth. At the same time, the spiritual light that he holds and that he imparts contains the source of all possible activities and he can make a man who has a musician in his nature create grand symphonies, a painter in his nature produce master-pieces of colour, a scientist in his nature become a Niels Bohr or a Jagadish Chandra Bose. He can give illuminating inspiration along any line of individual nature in his disciples, but he does not himself assume the functions of all individual natures. It is not necessary for his work: in fact, it is contrary to his mission, for then the God-realisations of other men who follow him would be superfluous and inutile so far as world-work is concerned.

Even in poetry, literary criticism, philosophy, politics and social thought he does not exhaust all trends: he leaves quite an amount of individuality, originality and uniqueness to be

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achieved by others. Also, he accepts limitations in the domain of brain-knowledge — he does not know in the outer mind's manner all the details of what is written or done: he has to read McTaggart's books to ascertain precisely what that thinker is driving at and he has to read newspapers to get informed of events in the world at large or even in Pondicherry, though he is never misled by false reports and has an intuition as to what is true news and what is mere fabrication. This does not deny his inner acquaintance with the currents of world-forces or the possibility of his getting by inner concentration the essential substance of any trend of thought. What is denied is the necessity of his knowing, automatically and invariably, in the external sense what is written or said or done here, there and everywhere.

At the same time, it is not denied that even knowledge, in an external sense, of small matters may be acquired straight away by Yogic force when the call for it comes with a divine drive. Yes, such a call is required — and the mention of it leads me to stress another thing to be remembered. The one whom we regard as Sri Aurobindo is the manifestation of a divine power and all that the instrumental side of him does is done by that power and in consonance with the vision and the purpose of that power: if that power chooses not to act as you imagine a Guru should, then there can be no questioning its right, and the best you can do is to alter your ideas of Guruship. Every Guru has a particular field and mission and, if he does not do what you think he must, he is not rendered less a Guru. You are attempting to chalk out and determine with the mere mind matters which far exceed it, you are trying to judge actions which are guided by the aim and method of a consciousness beyond the human. Your fashion of arguing should prompt us also to ask: "Why has the Divine to take so many years for making a spiritual Guru out of anybody? The Divine is omnipotent and so He can turn a man a Guru with one all-sufficing illumination: why the long labour of sadhana? Again, why does the Divine who manifests Himself in the Guru fail to give God-realisation to

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the disciples in a single flash? If omnipotence is there, how to explain the slow and devious process of training them up and especially the occasional set-backs if not complete failures? When the disciples are in front 6f

You forget we are in an evolutionary world and a world of evolution along a myriad lines, with numberless differentiations of capacity and personality: God Himself often acts apparently in a non-omniscient, non-omnipotent, non-omnipresent manner and He takes a multitude of shapes and instruments and adopts a large variety of processes and follows a thousand diverse tempos: you should expect some resemblance to this mode of God's behaviour in the behaviour of a Guru who is God's medium. Of course, through the Guru, God manifests Himself more directly, more con-centratedly, more abundantly, but He still observes a set of conditions and, though He does many marvellous things in order to establish His truth and beauty and goodness and force on earth, He does not act the all-round miracle-man, nor does His refrainings from thus acting diminish the Godliness of the Guru or interfere with the spiritual work the Guru has to accomplish.

One further subtlety. What do we mean by the Guru's Godliness? God is indeed "omni" in an infinitude of senses, and yet it would be untrue to declare that He is realised in His total capacity by all the Gurus. When there is God-realisation, there is generally a union with some one aspect or at most some few aspects of the Divine: the Silent Self, for example, is certainly an aspect of the Divine, but it is as certainly not omniscient or omnipotent in itself — it is too absorbed in peaceful bliss and light to have either the dynamic ecstasy or the dynamic knowledge — it is omnipresent, but God's omnipresence is multiple, He is everywhere in all His aspects while the Silent Self is ubiquitous in

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one aspect alone. Similarly those who live only in the Inner Heart-centre have an intense divine sweetness and radiance, yet there is wanting the vast cosmic sweep and the pouring transcendent solar splendour. Even the complete cosmic consciousness will not exhaust the Divine: at least the kinetic as distinguished from the static Self of it is a reduced formulation from above of a perfect and integral truth in which not the slightest discrepancy exists between status and kinesis and the latter is as absolute as the former. That perfect and integral truth is the top-range of what is above — the range of the Supermind. Only the Supermind is the full divinity, it has not only the absoluteness of immutable Existence, Consciousness and Bliss spoken of by those who leap towards the Transcendent without keeping a wholly aware hold on the cosmic and the individual, but also an active and creative absoluteness in the palm of whose heavenly hand, as it were, rests the individual and the cosmic. In the Supermind and nowhere else are all the "omni" 's of the Divine. God when He acts through a Guru has the Supermind, but unless the Guru is supramentalised and not only Inner-Heart-centred or Silent-Selfed or Cosmic-Consciousnessed what will function in him will not be the perfect and integral Divine. I am not saying the supramentalised Guru will act always with a clear indication to the disciples of his omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. Such action is not required by Guruship. But even the possibility of it comes solely with supramentalisation.

It would really be a pity if, because the rigid and superficial yardstick constructed by your doubting brain did not succeed in measuring Sri Aurobindo to your satisfaction, you remained away from so wonderfully many-sided, so immensely far-reaching and so intimately deep-delving a Guru. The feats you expect from him are nothing compared to the actual miracles he does perform — in the soul and heart and mind and even body of his disciples. Get in contact with the divine freedom that is aglow in him and you will see not only the divinity of his undeniable powers but also the divinity of

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his so-called limitations. For then you will not just sit reasoning and arguing about a Guru: you will know a supramentalised Guru's beautiful and beatific being, his comprehensive and creative consciousness, and in the light of this being and consciousness you will understand how and why he even elects at times to fall short of the demand that he should act God in the way we want him to act.

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