Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
4 January 1939
Sri Aurobindo himself started the talk. After inquiring about X’s health from Satyendra, he related what Amal had written about his health. When, after his heart-trouble, Amal had got back on his feet, he went to watch the international wrestling tournaments going on at that time in Bombay. He got so caught up in the bouts that his heart began beating faster and faster and when the foreign wrestlers started playing foul his excitement was at such a pitch that he felt as if his heart would give way and he would faint. He realised that this kind of excitement was very harmful, but he would not give up going to see the tournaments. He decided that what was to be got rid of was his taking sides and wanting the Indian wrestlers to win. By refraining from any partisanship he felt he would cut out the extreme excitement.
This interesting report set us off on the subject of fainting. Nirodbaran enumerated a few instances of fainting even while slight finger-cuts were being dressed. He said that Dilip too had fainted.
Sri Aurobindo: Even Dilip did it?
Nirodbaran: Yes. He came in boldly, but as soon as we started he went off! Curious!
Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps these people are being Yogicised! Or is it a reaction of the subconscient? Or maybe they are trying to go into the Nirvikalpa Samadhi! It is said that in such Samadhi one is not conscious even of a burning red-hot iron. Well, I remember a Yogi who was tested with a red-hot iron; and when he had no sensation of it the experimenters thought he had really got into the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. But I think that a deep trance is quite sufficient for this kind of unawareness.
Nirodbaran: In hypnotism too one doesn’t feel anything when, for instance, a pin is stuck into the flesh.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. I saw a case of hypnotism in which the raised arm of a patient could not be pulled down even by four or five men.
Nirodbaran: How can this be explained?
Sri Aurobindo: These are things of a supraphysical state, and the ordinary physical laws bringing about the ordinary reactions are not valid then. There are cases in which people under the influence of hypnotism find sugar tasting bitter. Now the question is whether sugar itself is bitter or the subject feels it to be so. In other words, does the quality of a thing depend on the object or on the subject? Take, for instance, beauty. When we call someone or something beautiful, is it because the object itself is beautiful or the subject sees it as such – that is, does beauty depend only on the psychological state of the subject and have nothing to do with the object?
Nirodbaran: In the case of beauty one can say that tastes differ. What one calls beautiful another may not. But sugar is sweet to everybody under normal conditions. Since the sensation of sweetness is a common human reaction, there must be something in the object.
Sri Aurobindo: But is this reaction confined to humanity or is it a common reaction of all living beings?
Satyendra: What is your conclusion, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know.
At this point the Mother came in and asked, “What is the subject of your talk today?” Satyendra reported the conversation and said, “Sri Aurobindo has no opinion. Have you any, Mother?”
The Mother: I don’t approve of hypnotism. I have seen many cases of so-called hypnotism in which the forces remain behind and the subjects lend themselves to be used by the forces. What is hypnotism? Doesn’t it mean that the subject’s will-power is replaced by somebody else’s? I know a case of exteriorisation where the operator was able to exteriorise the vital being of the subject in an almost material form and replace it by another’s and not by the operator’s own. If one replaced it by one’s own, there could be no operation. But these operations are extremely dangerous, for there are so many forces around that may easily take possession of the body, or else death may follow. One shouldn’t do these things except under guidance or in the presence of a Master.
After some more talk the Mother departed for the general meditation.
Sri Aurobindo (resuming): When the subtle body goes out, there is a thin thread that maintains the connection with the physical body. If that thread is snapped somehow, the man dies.
Nirodbaran: I have heard that the Mother had such an accident in Algeria.
Sri Aurobindo (surprised): How do you know that? She went to Algeria to study with Theon who was a great occultist; his wife was still more so. From there once the Mother visited Paris and was among her friends and wrote something on a paper with a pencil. That paper was here even the other day.
Then there began a talk about miracles.
Sri Aurobindo: Bejoy Goswami’s life, written by one of his disciples, is full of miracles. When P. Mitter was asked how Goswami could fly, he said, “He could glide like that!” (Sri Aurobindo showed this by a movement of his hand.) Of course all those things were done in the subtle body.
Satyendra: What about the miracles in the life of Haranath? Once on his way back from Kashmir, it is said, he fell seriously ill and was unconscious for two or three hours. When he regained consciousness, it was found that his body had changed to a golden colour. Is such a change possible, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. If he was unconscious, something must have come down. I know of a case where the stature of a man increased!
Nirodbaran: Your colour also has changed, they say.
Sri Aurobindo (after some silence): H said that the change was due to my remaining in the shade. But even an ordinary man, not a Yogi, can have a change of colour. I know a dark lower-middle-class Bengali named Hesh who returned from Europe after some years. He looked almost like a European. He came to see me at Baroda but I couldn’t recognise him. Then he said, “Don’t you recognise me?”
When I was doing Pranayama I used to feel the breath concentrated in the head. My skin began to be smooth and fair. The women of our family noticed it first, as they have a sharp eye for such things. And it was at that time I began to put on flesh. Formerly I was frail and thin. Then I noticed something unusual in the flow of my saliva. It was that substance perhaps that gave the change of colour and the other things. The Yogis say some sort of Amrita, that is, nectar, flows down from the top of the brain that can make one immortal.
An American at darshan time looked very closely and minutely at me, for he saw some light around me. He wanted to make sure it was not a physical light. When he found that it was not, he began to think I was some kind of Mahatma.
Purani: I know of a Sadhu cutting again and again the membrane under his tongue to enable the tongue to reach inside and get that flow of Amrita. He turned insane afterwards.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, that is Khechari Mudra. He perhaps got the wrong flow. Barin was approached by some of these Sadhus who promised all sorts of things if he performed that practice of cutting the membrane under the tongue. He said, “I am not going to do it.” They coaxed and coaxed him but failed to persuade him. Then they sneered at him, “Bengali coward!” He replied, “Bengali or no Bengali, I am not going to do it!” (Laughter)
Then the conversation turned to Tibetan occultism and how Europeans are taken up by such things and not by spirituality.
Sri Aurobindo: These Europeans either believe everything or nothing. If you tell them there are Yogis in Tibet and Mahabhutan who are two thousand years old and that crores of Mahatmas are living there, they may go to visit the place. You must have heard of wonderful yogic novels written by someone dealing with Tibet and its occult things. I read one of them but found nothing of Yoga there.
Nirodbaran: Yes, I have read two by A. Beck.
Sri Aurobindo: Is that a woman?
Nirodbaran: Yes. She has written a novel about Japan also, where she attributes to Japanese Jiu-jitsu some mystic power and makes it a symbol of it.
Sri Aurobindo: I thought that Japanese spirituality is in the Japanese religion which is called Zen Buddhism. There the disciples have to bear blows from the Guru as a test of discipleship. (Smiling) I suppose many would find that inconvenient here.
Nirodbaran: Have you written any stories?
Sri Aurobindo: I have, but they are all lost. When there was the rumour that our house would be searched by the police, my trunk was sent off to David’s place. After some time when they brought the trunk back, it was found that all my stories had been eaten away by white ants. So my future fame as a story-writer perished. (Laughter)
But it is a pity I lost two translations of poems. One of them was a translation of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta in terza rimas. It was rather well done.
Nirodbaran: Yes, indeed a pity.
Sri Aurobindo: But the stories were nothing to speak of – except one. I can say something of this one because I still have two pages left of it. All my stories were occult.
Have any of you read Jules Romains? He is at once a doctor, an occultist, a novelist and a dramatist. The Mother speaks very highly of him. She says that he doesn’t depict the outer circumstances as they are but goes within and writes from there. He is a Unanimist and believes that there is one soul in all.
In a novel of his, he describes a wife meeting in her subtle body her husband sitting in a chair on a ship. As soon as he saw the impressions left on the chair he got frightened and thought he was going too much against God’s laws. That is the European mentality. It can’t go far.