Discussions on Thoughts and Aphorisms 4

4. I am not a Jnani, for I have no knowledge except what God gives me for His work. How am I to know whether what I see be reason or folly? Nay, it is neither; for the thing seen is simply true & neither folly nor reason.

[Thoughts and Aphorisms, Sri Aurobindo]



Sri Aurobindo says here that He is not a Jnani, that He is not a follower of the path of Knowledge. He says that He is here on earth for the Work given to Him by the Divine. He knows what God gives Him to know. And What He knows here is neither the result of reason, nor is it folly or ignorance. He sees only Truth, above reason or ignorance.

The ignorant Mind seeks knowledge, through reason. When you are in Ignorance, you seek Light and Truth, but the first instrument you have with you is reason. You try to use reason to come out of darkness. But does reason lead you to Light and Truth, to Knowledge. Sri Aurobindo tells us that “reason trembles” and it cannot directly lead you to Truth.

The Mother says : “So … the knowledge, as it can be grasped by the human mind, is necessarily knowledge in ignorance, one could almost say a knowledge in ignorance.”

The Seeker of Knowledge will then have to transcend mind and seek direct Knowledge, though Intuition and then Identification.

But Sri Aurobindo was not the One who had to pass from Ignorance to Knowledge, from Darkness to Light. He came with a Divine Work, as an Avatar of the Supreme — to ascend the Supramental Consciousness, a level of consciousness far beyond Mind, a plane of existence and consciousness not realized or manifested till His incarnation, and to bring on earth the Knowledge and Wisdom of the supramental consciousness and force, and then to bring down the Supramental consciousness to the physical level. He was a Person who had the experience of Nirvana only in three days! It generally takes a whole life’s tapasyā to have this experience, even for the blessed few!

Sri Aurobindo was and is here on earth to bring in the Next Evolution — the Supramental Manifestation on earth. And He had all the Knowledge