Sri Aurobindo's - 'The Life Divine' - The Human Aspiration - Chapter I - The Human Aspiration - Track 402

Everything in the world has a meaning and value therefore one should not condemn material intellect, but one must understand its value and also its limitation. The material intellect admits the evidence of the senses, that is its value, its utility, its function. It fixes the consciousness, that is its utility and function. Both are salutary. But then it goes one step farther, it refuses to open to any other evidence, this is a limitation and you must guard against it. So long as you demand a physical proof, the demand is perfectly alright. But therefore to demand it and to say that it is the only proof I accept, there can be no other proof at all - that is arrogance. How do you know there is no other evidence at all?

The materialist very often says: "Show me God", and when he says: "Show me God" he means, show me physically. "I believe God if he is there, physically." So long as he demands there is no problem. Then when you say: "Look my friend God, by its very nature is invisible. If by nature he is invisible there is a problem." Then you say: "My dear friend you have not understood my answer. I would show you physically if he was physical in character, but if by nature he is not visible and then you tell me: show me physically, it only means you don't understand what I mean." Then he says: "I don't accept anything else." That means that he is refusing to admit that there can be invisible but yet real things. Some of the great thinkers fall into this trap because they are so much fixed in physical mentality.

Mother had said for example: People will demand physical transformation in terms of what the physical will look like, but she said that is not the real thing. That will come, but it is the last thing to happen. The physical transformation is the transformation in the subtle physical which is not visible physically, which is real but not physically perceptible. If something happens there; as a consequence something will happen in the pure physical. Now if you refuse to accept it, it means it is because of the tremendous power of the material intellect.

Material intellect should realise. It has to be taught that its demand is accepted, is welcome but it should not be so arrogant as to pronounce that there is no other evidence admissible. There are many evidences in the world, many kind of evidences. I may look grim physically and yet I may be very cheerful in my heart. This is true of every one of us, very often we may seem very grim but in our hearts there is bumping enthusiasm. If this is a fact then it means that physically I may not seem to be very enthusiastic but the fact is that I am really enthusiastic so how is the reality of my enthusiasm to be seen. If you ask that only if I go on laughing aloud that I will agree that you are enthusiastic. If you believe that is the only way of judging whether I am enthusiastic or not it will be wrong because I can be enthusiastic even when my face may seem very grim. This is a fact which everybody knows then the demand that you must be physically manifesting everything that you feel inwardly is a wrong demand. But such is the condition of… in fact I will say of all of us. Because every one of us has got this material intellect and everyone has got this arrogance. Even so called theists those who believed in God tremendously, in their life at a given moment, when the material intellect becomes very powerful, even for a short time, may protest: "Where is that God?" They may be lecturing on God and yet in their own life at a given moment this contradiction appears because all of us are subject to that power of material intellect. Some others are psychologically so tuned that the moment you try to bring any evidence which is not physical in character they simply turn away. Do not see at all.