Chapter 3January 8, 1969

No: narrowness of consciousness. He didn’t conceive of anything better than “helping others” – philanthropy That’s why he became a governor. When he came out of Polytechnique, he had a choice between different posts, and he deliberately chose that post in the colonies, because he wanted to “help backward races to progress” – all that nonsense!

Anyway, he did ONE good thing in his life, my brother. He was in the Ministry of Colonies, and the minister was a friend of his, a little older (I don’t know what post my brother held, but anyhow, everything went through his hands). When the war broke out (I was here, it was the first of the World Wars), the British government asked the French to expel Sri Aurobindo and send him to Algeria – they didn’t want Sri Aurobindo to be in Pondicherry, they were afraid. But we came to know of it (Sri Aurobindo came to know of it), and I wrote to my brother, saying, “This must not be passed.” The expulsion order had gone to the Ministry of Colonies to be ratified, and he got the ratification paper in his hands – he put it at the bottom of his drawer.

It disappeared completely, and we never heard of it again.

He redeemed himself!

It makes up for the rest....

And this descent of the superman consciousness...

Did I tell you I had afterwards identified it?

When you spoke last time, you had identified it.

Yes, but I spoke of “supramental consciousness.”

Later, you said, “Maybe the superman?”

Yes, that’s it. It’s the descent of the superman consciousness. I had the assurance of it afterwards.

It was on the Is’ of January after midnight. I woke up at 2 in the morning, surrounded by a consciousness, but so concrete, and NEW, in the sense that I had never experienced that. It lasted, quite concrete and present, for two or three hours, and then it spread out and went to find all those who could receive it. And at the same time I knew it was the consciousness of the superman, that is, the intermediary between man and the supramental being.

It has given the body a sort of assurance, a sort of trust. That experience has made it steady, as it were, and if it keeps the true attitude, all the support is there to help it.