Page 6 - NAMAH-Jan-2023

As always, what Sri Aurobindo says can have several levels of meaning — one is more
specific, the other more general. In the most specific sense, the distorted medium is the
mental medium which works in ignorance and which is therefore unable to express truth
in its purity. But since life as a whole is lived in ignorance, the distorted medium is also the
earth-atmosphere which, in its entirety, distorts the truth seeking to express itself through
it.

And here lies the most subtle point of this aphorism. What can the mind arrive at by
groping? We know that it is always groping, seeking to know, erring, returning upon its
previous attempts and trying again... Its progress is very, very halting. But what can it grasp
of the truth? Is it a fragment, a piece, something which is still the truth, but only partially,
incompletely, or is it something which is no longer the truth? That is the interesting point.

We are used to being told — perhaps we have also repeated many times — that one can
only have partial, incomplete, fragmentary knowledge which therefore cannot be true
knowledge. This point of view is rather trite: one need only to have studied a little in life
to be aware of it. However, what Sri Aurobindo means by “the truth seen in a distorted
medium” is far more interesting than that.

Truth itself takes on another aspect; in this medium it is no longer the truth, but a distortion
of the truth. Consequently, what can be seized of it is not a fragment which would be true,
but an aspect, the false appearance of a truth which has itself melted away.

I am going to give you an image to try to make myself understood; it is nothing more than
an image, do not take it literally.

If we compare the essential truth to a sphere of immaculate, dazzling white light, we
can say that in the mental medium, in the mental atmosphere, this integral white light is
transformed into thousands and thousands of shades, each of which has its own distinct
colour, because they are all separated from one another. The medium distorts the white
light and makes it appear as innumerable different colours: red, green, yellow, blue, etc.,
which are sometimes very discordant. And the mind seizes, not a little fragment of the
white light of the white sphere, but a larger or smaller number of little lights of various
colours, with which it cannot even reconstitute the white light. Therefore it cannot reach
the truth. It does not possess fragments of truth, but a truth that is broken up. It is a state
of decomposition.

The truth is a whole and everything is necessary. The distorted medium through which
you see, the mental atmosphere, is unsuited for the manifestation or the expression or even
the perception of all the elements — and one can say that the better part is lost. So it can no
longer be called the truth, but rather something which in essence is true, and yet no longer
so at all in the mental atmosphere — it is an ignorance.

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