December 18, 1963

(Mother reads a letter by Sri Aurobindo:)

"It is equally ignorant and one thousand miles away from my teaching to find it in your relations with human beings or in the nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of a self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are surrender and union with the Divine and the transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a sadhak is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower nature."

I want to offer it to an American admiral who is here and who needs to know this. Did you meet him?

No. But ALL Westerners! The highest they can conceive of is always social work....

Yes, a kind of social perfection on earth.

It's Schweitzer, Gandhi, Philanthropy, Charity....

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To them, the Supermind would be the reign of a harmonious equality of all classes and all countries - at the most, a union of all countries and all classes. That's the summit of their dream.

I like this letter, because he says, "I have NEVER promised anything of the kind." This is to me the important point.

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