Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
29 December 1938
Satyendra opened the conversation by asking a question on behalf of Dr. Savoor: “What is the connection between the causal body and the psychic being?” We do not quite remember exactly what Sri Aurobindo answered, but he said something like: “The psychic being is what is called the Chaitya Purusha in the heart; the causal body is part of the Superconscious.” Then the talk turned on the Atman or Self and the psychic being. Sri Aurobindo said they are not the same. Ramana Maharshi was brought in by Satyendra who said that the Maharshi had realised the Self and that Brunton had written of the Maharshi’s hearing of the Voice in the heart. Sri Aurobindo remarked that the Voice in the heart would refer to the psychic being and then it would decidedly not be the Atman realisation. At this point the Mother came in and asked Sri Aurobindo: “What are you speaking about?”
Sri Aurobindo: Satyendra has asked a question which does not hang together.
Purani: Kapali Shastri has given a version of the Maharshi’s experience, which he heard from the Maharshi himself: “One day something opened in the heart and I began to hear ‘I, I, I’ and everywhere I started seeing the ‘I’.”
Satyendra: Different people say different things about spiritual realisation. How are we to know which is the highest? Our own choice is not necessarily the highest.
The Mother: Each goes to the limit of his own consciousness. I have met any number of people in Europe, India and Japan practising Yoga under different masters. Each claimed that his realisation was the highest. He was quite sure about it and quite satisfied with his condition and yet each was standing at a different place in consciousness and saying that he had attained the highest.
Satyendra: But are there no criteria by which to know the truth?
The Mother: What criteria? If you ask them, they say their experience is something wonderful but can’t be described by the mind. I met Tagore in Japan. He claimed to have reached the peace of Nirvana and he was beaming with joy about it. I thought, “Here is a man who claims to have found peace and reached Nirvana. Let us see.” I asked him to meditate with me. I followed him in meditation and saw that he had reached just behind the mind into a sort of voidness. I waited and waited to follow him elsewhere, but he would not go further. I found that he was supremely satisfied, imagining that he had entered Nirvana!
Satyendra: But there must be some fundamental realisation, an ultimate of some kind?
Sri Aurobindo: That is to say, there is a fundamental truth of consciousness. But that is not so easy to reach.
Satyendra: How then should we choose a master? When we choose, we must know.
Purani: How are you going to know with the mind where he has reached?
Satyendra: Our choice is not psychic.
The Mother: That is another question. First you must realise the limits of different states of consciousness and the difference in the places where people stand.
The choice is mostly in answer to your own need; it is governed by your inner necessity. Sometimes it is made by instinct. It is that instinct by which the animals find the right place for food. Only, in human beings it is from within (gesture pointing within). If you allow your mind to discuss and argue, then the instinct will be veiled. When you have chosen a thing, the mind naturally wants to believe that it is the highest you have chosen. But this is subjective.
Satyendra: If the choice is right, one feels happiness and satisfaction.
The Mother: One can’t depend on feelings and sensations, for very often they misguide. But satisfaction is quite a different thing. There are people who are not satisfied in the best of conditions, while in the worst of conditions some are quite satisfied. Look at the people in the world around. Some are very happy with their conditions. And again there are some whose satisfaction depends on their livers – a brutally materialistic state. And also there are people who suffer extremely and yet their inmost being knows that that is the truth for them.
Satyendra: But there are certain signs, lakshanas, in the Shastras by which we can judge.
Sri Aurobindo: What Shastras? One can’t believe all that is said in them.
The Mother: Besides, that may be all right for Indians. What about Europeans? You can’t say they have not realised any Truth. (Turning to Sri Aurobindo) Isn’t that so?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Then the Mother took her leave for the general meditation and there was a pause for some time.
Sri Aurobindo (addressing Satyendra): What are these lakshanas you spoke of?
Satyendra: They are common, Sir, everywhere. They are given in the Gita: for example, equal love for others, equal-mindedness in all circumstances, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: They are rather the conditions for realisation. As for realisation itself, all experiences are true and each has its place. Just because one is true, another is not false. The Truth is infinite. There are so many different ways to come to the Truth. The wider you become, the higher you go, the more you find that there is still more and more. For instance, the Maharshi had his experience of “I”-ness, but when I had the Nirvana experience I couldn’t think of any “I”. However I might try, I could not find it. The word simply got erased. One can’t speak of that experience of mine as “I”. It was either “He” or “That”. I would call it Laya. Realisation of Self is all right – Laya is a part of a realisation much more comprehensive.
When I don’t accept the Self as final, it is not that I have not realised its Truth or that I don’t know the One in All and All in the One. But I have other realisations which are equally strong and which cannot be shut out. The Maharshi is right and everybody else is also right.
When the mind tries to understand these things, it takes up fragments and treats them as the whole and makes unreal distinctions. People speak of Nirguna (Qualitiless) as fundamental and Saguna (Qualified) as a derivation, a secondary reality. But what did the Upanishad mean by Nirguno Guni and Ananta Saguna? They can’t be thought of as different. When you speak of impersonality as the fundamental truth and of personality as something imposed upon it and therefore unreal, you cut across with your mind something which is beyond both. It is not that personality is the chief thing and the impersonal is only one side or one condition of personality. No! Both personality and impersonality are aspects of one thing which is indivisible.
Shankara is right and so also are Madhwa and Nimbarka. Only, when they state their truths in mental terms there is a tremendous confusion. Shankara says, “Duality does not exist and all is one.” Madhwa says, “There is duality.” Nimbarka says, “There is Bheda-bheda, there is duality and division as well as no division.” The Upanishad speaks of Him by knowing whom all is known. What does that mean? This knowledge, this Vijnana, does not mean merely the fundamental realisation of the One. It means the knowledge of the principle of the Divine Being, what Krishna speaks of as Janati tattwata. One cannot know the complete Divine except in what I have called the Supermind. That’s why Krishna said of himself that one who knows him in the true principles of his being is rare. The Upanishads also speak of the Brahman as Chatushpada, having four feet or aspects. They don’t just state that all is Brahman and end there. The realisation of the Self is not all. There are many things beyond that. The Divine Guide within urged me to proceed, adding experience after experience, reaching higher and higher, stopping at none as the final, till I arrived at the Supermind. There I found the Truth indivisible and there everything takes its proper place. There Nirguna and Saguna, impersonality and personality, don’t exist. They are all aspects of one Truth which cannot be divided.
At the Overmind stage, knowledge begins to rush in upon you from all sides and you see objects from all points of view and each thing from every viewpoint. All sides of knowledge tend to get related and there the cosmic consciousness is not merely static but also dynamic. It is the expression of something still higher, the Supermind above.
When you become cosmic, even though you speak of yourself as “I”, it is not “I”. The ordinary “I”-ness disappears, and the mental, vital and physical look like representatives of that new consciousness. Ramakrishna speaks of this state as “the form of ego left for action”. When you reach the Supermind, you become not only cosmic but also what is beyond the universe – the transcendental – and there you have indivisibility and unity, and this transcendental coexists with the universal and the individual.
The same principle works out in science. The scientists at one time reduced all the multiplicity of elements to the ether and described the ether in the most contradictory terms. Now they have found the electron as the basis of Matter. By the difference in position and number of electrons you get the whole multiplicity of objects. Here too you find the one that is the many, and that the one and the many are not two different things. Both are true and through both you have to go to the Truth.
When you come to politics, the truth again is various. Democracy, plutocracy, monarchy, etc. – all have their truth. Even Mussolini and Hitler stand for some truth.
Ours is a very big Yoga. One has to crawl all over (gesture with a movement of the hands). I think Nirodbaran is not prepared to take all that trouble!
Dr. Becharlal: Never, Sir! I have come here because I wanted to avoid trouble.
Sri Aurobindo: You as such are not called upon to take all that trouble. Even for me it would have been impossible if I had to do it all myself. At a certain stage the heavens opened and the thing was done for me.
The topic seemed to end here, but then Purani prolonged it.
Purani: Kapali Shastri asked the Maharshi whether immortality was possible. The Maharshi would not say anything, but as Shastri persisted he said that it was possible by Divine Grace.
Sri Aurobindo: That is hardly an answer. Everything is possible by Grace. There are two things about immortality. One is conquest of death. This doesn’t mean that one would never die. It means the power to leave the body at will. The other thing is change or renewal of the body. There is no sense in keeping the same body for years. That is why death is necessary. Death has its reason in that one can take by it another body and have a fresh growth. You know Dasaratha is said to have lived for sixty thousand years. I don’t know what he did with such a long life-except that at the end he began producing children.
Have you read Shaw’s Back to Methuselah? It shows how silly intellectuals can be. And what a ridiculous farce he has made of Joan of Arc! He speaks of her visions as projections of her own mental ideas and decisions. Shaw is all right when he speaks of England, Ireland and society, but elsewhere he can’t do anything constructive; he fails there miserably.
These intellectuals, when they talk of something beyond their scope, make fools of themselves. See what Russell writes about the “introvert”. Thinkers like him can’t tolerate emptiness or cessation of thought and breaking away from outside interests. You ask them to stop their thoughts; they refuse to accept the result of stopping them and at once come back from the emptiness, and yet it is through emptiness one has to pass to reach the true Fullness.