Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
26 December 1938
At about 5.30 p.m. four of our group – Champaklal, Satyendra, Dr. Becharlal and Nirodbaran – were seated on the carpet behind the head of Sri Aurobindo’s bed and were whispering among themselves. Over some topic Champaklal broke into suppressed laughter and had to run away from the room. Satyendra and Nirodbaran controlled themselves with difficulty. Then at about 6.30 we all assembled by the side of Sri Aurobindo. Purani was still absent.
Sri Aurobindo (looking at us): What Divine Descent was it?
Nirodbaran: It was Champaklal who burst into laughter.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, then it was Vishnu’s Ananda that descended!
As soon as he encouraged us by his voluntary question we flocked near his bed.
Champaklal: It is peculiar how I break into laughter so easily. Formerly I used to weep also at the slightest provocation. It seems to me that because I live more outwardly I laugh like that.
Sri Aurobindo: It is a reaction of the superficial vital which is touched easily by simple outward things: there is a child in the nature that bursts out like that. It is the same as the Balabhava of the Yogis, responding without thought to the slightest touches. The deeper vital does not so easily get touched.
By this time Dr. Becharlal was preparing to ask a question. We noticed the peculiar change of his whole face, particularly the parting of his lips, and we knew that he was about to come out with some problem.
Dr. Becharlal: What is meant by self-offering? How is one to do it?
Sri Aurobindo (with a surprised humorous frown): How? I don’t know how. One simply does it!
Champaklal (interrupting the talk): My eyes always remain watery.
Sri Aurobindo: Virgil had eyes like that, while Horace used to breathe hard. Once Mycaenas, the great patron of literature in the reign of Augustus Caesar, was sitting between the two poets and said, “I am sitting between sighs and tears.” (Laughter)
To get back to Becharlal’s question: one offers one’s vital being, one’s heart and one’s mind to the Divine, rejecting all desires, attachments, passions, and grows into the Divine’s consciousness.
Dr. Becharlal: Are day-hours better than night-hours for meditation? I seem to get more concentrated at night.
Sri Aurobindo: That may be due to the calm and quiet atmosphere at night and also to your being accustomed to meditate at that time. It is because of the quietude of night and of early morning that these periods are supposed to be the best for meditation.
Whether at night or during the day it is good to be regular. We ask people to have a fixed time for meditation; for if they make a habit, from the Abhyasa (habit) the response comes more readily: the response too gets into a habit of fixed time!
But, of course, there are variations with different cases. Lele asked me to meditate twice a day, and when he heard that I didn’t do it he gave me no chance to explain that my meditation was going on all the time. He said I was caught by the Devil.
Nirodbaran: Sometimes meditation is automatic.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, at that time you just have to sit down. Otherwise you feel uneasy. It was like that with Dr. Manilal, as you know.
Dr. Becharlal: The other day I was having a lot of peace and Ananda. I got a vision of you, with a vision of the Sincerity flower following it. But I had to stop the meditation in order to sleep, for I thought that if I kept awake at night I might fall ill. Is there any significance in the vision of that particular flower and no other?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. There was a special purpose in it. It was a call to you to aspire for sincerity. By sincerity is meant the lifting of all our movements towards the Divine.
Nirodbaran: Wasn’t Dr. Becharlal’s fear of illness merely a mental notion? How can one fall ill by sitting a long time in meditation?
Sri Aurobindo: Not just by sitting like that; but if one keeps awake too much at night, there is the chance of a physical disturbance. The physical has its limits. The vital being can go on feeling energy or peace or any other thing, but the physical can’t be taxed beyond its capacity. The overtaxing happened to many sadhaks here. Dr. Manilal once felt such a flow of energy that he thought he could clean the whole Ashram and went on increasing his work till a reaction set in. The Force comes for the work allotted to you, so that it may be done better. It is not meant for increasing the work or for other purposes. If you go on overdoing things, then the natural reaction is bound to come. A certain amount of common sense, of reasonableness, is required even in spirituality.
Champaklal: At one time I also used to feel a lot of energy while working with the Mother and I was never fatigued even when working day and night. Only one or two hours’ sleep were sufficient and I would feel as fresh as ever.
Sri Aurobindo: That is because you opened yourself to the Energy. As for sleep, even ten minutes’ sleep may be sufficient, but then it is not ordinary sleep but a going deep within. If one can draw the Force with equanimity and conserve it, wonderful things can be done. As I said, many sadhaks felt extraordinary energy when we were dealing with the vital being. But afterwards the sadhana came down into the physical, there was not that push any more and people began to get easily fatigued, feel lazy and unwilling to work. They began to complain of ill-health due to overwork, and the doctors encouraged them in their feeling. Do you know H’s idea? He says people have come here not for work but for meditation.
Nirodbaran: He says also that you are increasing his work and Pavitra’s by increasing the number of disciples. He is helping you …
Sri Aurobindo: Only helping? I thought he was doing everything!
I dare say that if we had not come down into the physical but remained in the vital and mental like other Yogis, without trying to transform earth-nature, things would have been rather different.
At this time the Mother came in and we meditated for a while. After she had gone, the talk was resumed. Someone remarked: “Nirodbaran had a good meditation. He didn’t know the Mother had gone.”
Nirodbaran: Good meditation? How do you know?
Sri Aurobindo: By the inclination of your head perhaps.
Nirodbaran: I can’t say. All I can say is that I was having many incoherent dreams and visions – perhaps in the surface consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo: The surface consciousness of the inner vital being. Such experiences are common. Of course, when one goes still deeper, one doesn’t see incoherent dreams and visions. There is a point between the surface consciousness and the deeper vital which is full of these fantasies. They are apparently incoherent, but when one gets the clue one finds that everything is a linked whole. This I have seen many times in my own case. In the physical a mouse turning into an elephant may have no meaning, but it is not so in the vital. These fantasies don’t have the coherence that is found in the physical, but they have their own coherence – that of the vital plane. It is this world from which X’s paintings come – what the Europeans call the goblin world. Anybody who has the least experience of the subtle planes can at once say where his paintings originate.
Nirodbaran: Does X see them before producing them?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think so. Some people see these fantasies but don’t paint them.
Nirodbaran: How is it that some people and he himself call his work great?
Sri Aurobindo: Everybody calls it great and wonderful; so he himself begins to think it so!
Then the talk turned to various experiences.
Nirodbaran: I once felt as if my head were suspended in the air and the other parts of the body did not exist.
Sri Aurobindo: That’s the mental consciousness separating from the rest.
Nirodbaran: Are you able to know what experiences the sadhaks are having – I mean any experiences and not only the decisive ones?
Sri Aurobindo: No, for I am not in contact with the sadhaks. But the Mother knows whenever it is a question of consciousness. She can see in the sadhaks whatever changes are taking place. When she meditates, she can know what line a sadhak is following – the line indicated by her or the sadhak’s own – and afterwards what changes in the consciousness have been brought about.
Nirodbaran: And when the experiences happen, are they all given by you and the Mother?
Sri Aurobindo: What’s the use of giving our own things to the sadhaks? Let them follow their own lines of growth. I may put out a Force for people who are in a habitual bad condition, people who are always going in the wrong direction. And I try to work out the results of the Force so that the condition may improve. If a sadhak cooperates, then it is comparatively easy. Otherwise, if the sadhak is passive, the result may take a long time: it comes, goes, again comes – and ultimately the Force prevails. A case like B’s, for instance. When we put in a strong Force, he became lucid but soon the whole vital being used to rush up and catch hold of him. On the other hand, if a sadhak actively cooperates, the time taken is only one-tenth.