Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

23 December 1938

We assembled again as usual and were eager to start the talk, but nobody dared to begin without any hint or gesture from Sri Aurobindo. He was lying calmly on the bed.

Champaklal slowly approached him, looking by turns at him and at us. We saw a ray of hope in this attempt, but looking at Champaklal’s combination of eagerness and hesitation Nirodbaran could not check his amusement. So he moved away from Sri Aurobindo’s presence and, lying down on the floor, shook and rolled with suppressed laughter. Sri Aurobindo at once noticed that something was going on.

Sri Aurobindo: What’s the matter?

Purani: Nirodbaran is rolling with laughter!

Sri Aurobindo: Descent of Ananda?

Nirodbaran: It is Champaklal.

Sri Aurobindo: Oh, descent of Champaklal?

At this the whole atmosphere changed and Purani, catching the opportunity, shot a question with a beaming face.

Purani: Because hostile forces offer resistance to the divine manifestation in the world and some are even victorious, can it be said with any logic that the Divine lacks omnipotence? It is not my question. I am asking somebody else’s. Personally I don’t think so.

Sri Aurobindo (turning his head towards Purani): It depends on what you mean by omnipotence. If the idea is that God must always succeed, then when He does not we should conclude that He is not omnipotent. But do you mean to say that in spite of resistance He must invariably succeed? People have very queer ideas of omnipotence. Resistance is the very law of evolution. Resistance comes from Ignorance and Ignorance is a part of Inconscience. From the very beginning the opposition between Knowledge and Ignorance existed. The whole thing starts from Inconscience. It is the complete denial of the Divine. His Lila or Play is precisely the manifestation proceeding through resistance and struggle. What sort of Lila would it be in which one side went on winning every time? Divine omnipotence works through the universal law. There are forces of Light and forces of Darkness. To say that the forces of Light shall always succeed is the same as saying that truth and good shall always succeed, though there is no such thing as unmixed truth and good. Divine omnipotence intervenes only at critical or decisive moments.

Every time the Light has tried to descend, it has met with resistance and opposition. Christ was crucified. You may ask why it should be like that when he was innocent. Yet his very crucifixion was the divine dispensation. Buddha was denied. Sons of Light come, the earth denies them, rejects them and afterwards accepts them in name in order to reject them in substance. Only a small minority grows towards a spiritual birth and it is through them that the divine manifestation takes place.

What remains of Buddhism today except a few edicts of Asoka and a few hundred thousand Buddhists?

Nirodbaran: Asoka helped in propagating Buddhism.

Sri Aurobindo: Anybody could have done that.

Nirodbaran: But didn’t it become all-powerful through his aid?

Sri Aurobindo: If kings and emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual, it would have been much better for real Buddhism. That is always the case with spiritual things. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline in its substance. The King of Norway, about whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all the people who were not Christians and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism where it succeeded and the followers of the Prophet became Caliphs. Not kings and emperors but those who are truly spiritual keep spirituality alive.

Nirodbaran: Asoka sacrificed everything for Buddhism.

Sri Aurobindo: But he remained an emperor till the end. When kings and emperors try to spread a religion, they make the whole thing mental and moral and the inner truth is lost. Asoka succeeded in being Asoka: that’s all.

Nirodbaran: Ramana Maharshi was hardly known. It was Brunton who spread his name.

Sri Aurobindo: It is a strange measure of success people adopt in judging a spiritual man by the number of disciples. Who was a greater success – Ramana Maharshi surrounded by all sorts of disciples or Ramana Maharshi doing his sadhana in seclusion for years? Success to be real must be spiritual.

Then the talk turned on Ashrams in general and the mismanagement of some while the Guru remains indifferent. The difficulties of staying in some Ashrams were also cited.

Sri Aurobindo: One Mrs. Kelly went to see Maharshi and was seen fidgeting about due to mosquitoes during meditation. Afterwards she complained to him of mosquito bites. Maharshi told her that if she couldn’t bear mosquito bites she couldn’t do Yoga. Mrs. Kelly couldn’t understand the significance of this statement. She wanted spirituality without mosquitoes.

Trouble also arises because of quarrelling among disciples.

Purani: A certain disciple of Maharshi criticised Brunton, saying he was using Maharshi’s name and making money. He said too that Brunton was taking notes during meditation and that after jotting down what came into his head he would declare it was from Maharshi.

Sri Aurobindo: And yet Brunton is a seeker of the Truth, though he has serious difficulties.

Perhaps you know the famous story about Maharshi. Once, getting disgusted with the Ashram and the disciples, he started to go away to the mountains. He passed along a narrow path flanked by hills. He came upon an old woman sitting with her legs stretched across the path. He requested her to draw aside her legs but she wouldn’t. Then he walked across them. She became very angry and said, “Why are you so restless? Why can’t you sit in one place at Arunachala instead of moving about? Go back to your place and worship Shiva there.” Her remarks struck him and he retraced his steps. After going some distance he looked back. He found that nobody was there. It flashed on him that the Divine Mother herself had spoken and had wanted him to remain at Arunachala.

Of course it was the Divine Mother who had asked him to go back. Maharshi is intended to live that sort of life. He has nothing to do with what happens around him. He remains calm and detached. The man is still what he always was.

By the way, I am glad to hear of Maharshi shouting at some Indian Christians. It means he also can become dynamic.

The only Ashram I have heard of in which there was great unity was Thakur Dayanand’s. Once I wrote an article on the Avatar in the Karmayogin. Mahendra Day, one of Dayanand’s disciples, seeing the article wrote to me: “Here is the Avatar.” He was very enthusiastic about it.

Nirodbaran: Why are Gurus obliged to work with imperfect and defective people like us? In our Ashram the difficulty seems to be more keen.

Sri Aurobindo: What you say about Gurus has been a puzzle to me also. But it is like that. Our case is a little different. Our aim is to change the world, though not universally, of course. Hence everyone here represents human nature with all its difficulties as well as capacities. (Looking at Nirodbaran) That’s how your difficulties are explained!