Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
13 December 1938
The Mother came to Sri Aurobindo’s room at about 6 p.m. and began to meditate. All of us started meditating with her. After half an hour or so she went away. Sri Aurobindo looked twice at Dr. Manilal who seemed to be struggling to meditate.
Sri Aurobindo (smiling): Meditating?
Dr. Manilal (smiling back): Trying hard, Sir, but without success since last Wednesday when I had a splendid meditation. Many undesirable things come to disturb me.
Sri Aurobindo: What are they?
Dr. Manilal: Some nonsense.
Sri Aurobindo: Some extraordinary nonsense like the thought of perpetual attendance on your Maharaja patron or of the likely successor to Mussolini?
Dr. Manilal: No, Sir. Thoughts of the Maharaja come very rarely. But why doesn’t one succeed in meditation even after so much trying, while on some days it comes very suddenly?
Sri Aurobindo: That happens often to everybody except those Yogis who make meditation their only business. And even they have their blank periods.
Dr. Manilal: I see my friend Nirodbaran goes at once into meditation and starts drooping his head.
Nirodbaran: Yes, in despair. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo (to Nirodbaran): Do you go to sleep?
Dr. Manilal: Can one go to sleep in despair?
Sri Aurobindo: As an escape, yes. There are some people who go to sleep standing. There was, for example, Rajnarayan Bose who would sleep standing, like a horse.
Nirodbaran: Did he use to practise meditation?
Sri Aurobindo: Meditation of some sort. (Turning to Nirodbaran) But you had a look of deep concentration on your face. Are appearances deceptive here?
Dr. Manilal: No, Sir. As he is a poet he lives in higher regions.
Sri Aurobindo: What about Shakespeare’s statement that poetry creates fictions, tells lies?
Dr. Manilal: He is not a poet of that sort.
How is it that some people lose at once their consciousness in meditation, and their body sways this side and that, even falls to the ground?
Sri Aurobindo: That happens with many. And that is why some Yogis bind themselves to a support to prevent falling. The Yogis who practise Asanas remain erect.
Dr. Manilal: How can one succeed in meditation?
Sri Aurobindo: By quietude of mind. There is not only the Infinite in itself, but also an infinite sea of peace, joy, light, power above the head. The golden lid, Hiranmaya patram, intervenes between the mind and what is above the mind. Once you break this lid (making a movement of the hand above the head) they can come down any time at your will. But for that, quietude is essential. Of course, there are people who can get them without first establishing the quietude, but it is very difficult.
Nirodbaran: Is there a veil in the heart also?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, a veil or wall of the vital being with its surface consciousness and emotional disturbances. One has to break through that to what is behind the heart. In some people the Force works behind the veil because it would meet with many obstacles and resistances if it worked in front. It goes on building or breaking whatever is necessary till one day the veil drops off and one finds oneself living in the Infinite.
Nirodbaran: Does the Force work all the time, even when there is no aspiration in the being?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, in those who have an inner urge. The intermittent bouts of aspiration may be due to the action of the Force behind.
Dr. Manilal: We request you to tell us how to get all that peace, joy, light, power.
Sri Aurobindo: The secret is to want it and nothing else. (Smiling) Too difficult, isn’t it? Well then, you have to wait. Yoga demands patience. The old Yogas say that one has to wait for twelve years before one can hope to get any experience. Only after such waiting can one complain. But you once said that you had many experiences. You have no right to complain.
Dr. Manilal: True, Sir. I told you how meditation used to come spontaneously at Baroda at any time and I simply had to sit down to meditate, it used to come with such force! Occasionally it would come when I was just about to go to the hospital, and the experiences of peace and of other things would last for days. And then came the period of lull: nothing happened at all. But surely meditation should visit us once a fortnight? Sometimes I feel a pull on the head upwards.
Sri Aurobindo: Of course, it isn’t the physical head. It is a happening in the subtle body, the mind trying to ascend towards the higher consciousness.
Nirodbaran: One sees things like hills or seas in dreams or visions. What is their significance?
Sri Aurobindo: They are symbols: the sea of energy and the hill of being with its different planes and parts, with the Divine at the summit. They are quite common. When one feels the wideness, a vastness as if one were expanding, that increases the opening. The heart can expand just as the mind can.
(Turning to Dr. Manilal) Have you never felt your inner being?
Dr. Manilal: I have, Sir. I told you how I had found it and then lost it through fear. I felt as if I were going to die.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): Ah, I forgot that tragedy!
Dr. Manilal: At one time I felt as if my head were lying at the Mother’s feet. What does that mean, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: It is the experience of the psychic being. So you had the psychic experience.
Dr. Manilal: But unfortunately I couldn’t recognise it. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: It is this “I” that comes in the way. One must forget it, as if the experiences were happening to somebody else. If one could do this, it would be a great conquest. When I had the experience of Nirvana, I forgot myself completely. I was a sort of nobody. What’s the use of Dr. Manilal So-and-so living with this “I”? If in discovering your inner being, you had even died, it would have been a glorious death.
Dr. Manilal: What happens when the human consciousness is replaced by the divine consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo: One feels a perpetual calm, a perpetual strength, one is aware of Infinity and lives not only in Infinity but also in Eternity. One feels Immortality and does not care about the death of the body. And then one has the consciousness of the One in all. Everything becomes the manifestation of the Brahman. For instance, as I look round this room, I see everything as the Brahman. No, it is not mere thinking, it is a concrete experience. Even the wall, the books are the Brahman. I see you no more as Dr. Manilal but as the Divine living in the Divine. It is a wonderful experience.