Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

7 January 1939

Purani told Nirodbaran to take the lead and said that if Nirodbaran had nothing to ask, he had a question ready. Nirodbaran told him he had one question to ask. So as soon as the Mother left and Sri Aurobindo was ready to talk, Nirodbaran began.

Nirodbaran: Yesterday, did you mean, that by the psychic realisation one can’t get rid of ego? I couldn’t understand it.

Sri Aurobindo: One can get rid of egoism but not of ego. For the psychic depends on the individual nature for its action. The lower nature has its hold on the individual and the psychic works through the individual. The psychic realisation is the realisation of the individual soul which feels itself as one in the many; your individuality is not lost in the realisation. The individual soul works in the mind and heart and other parts and purifies them bringing in the realisation of devotion (Bhakti) and love. But the ego remains – it is the saint ego, the Bhakta ego, the ego of the Sadhu or the virtuous man: as Ramakrishna says, “Bhakta ami, das ami” (“Bhakta I, servant I”) and Ramprasad says, “I want to eat sugar, not be sugar.” The psychic of course opens the way to the realisation of the spiritual Self by which the ego can go. By the realisation of the Spirit, you feel one with the Divine and you see the One everywhere. The individual “I” is replaced by the Divine “I”. The Spirit doesn’t need the individual as the basis of action. Even so, it may be the abolition of the mental ego leaving the other parts to act in their own way. That is what is meant by allowing Prakriti to act in its own way till the death of the body takes place and when the body drops, it also drops. The psychic attitude has to come in to remove the ego from the vital and by the combination of the psychic and the spiritual realisations the ego can go.

I don’t know if you have understood anything.

Nirodbaran: Can both the realisations work together or must they be one after the other?

Sri Aurobindo: In some, it may be the psychic that leads in the beginning, in others the spiritual. If it is the spiritual opening, then after some time it has to stop to bring the psychic element into the sadhana. Of course one can stop with the realisation in the mental plane, the psychic element not being necessary for it. But for complete transformation, both things are needed.

Purani: In case of a weakening of the nervous envelope, can one replenish it by drawing the Force?

Sri Aurobindo: Drawing from where? From the universal vital or from the Higher Force?

Purani: The universal vital.

Sri Aurobindo: Have you felt it?

Purani: I mean drawing from the universal vital. That I felt while I was in the Guest House.

Sri Aurobindo: You mean at the time when the sadhana was in the vital, that brilliant period?

Purani: Yes; but now either due to lack of capacity or lack of will or some fear that drawing from that source may not be safe, I don’t try.

Sri Aurobindo: There is no harm in drawing from the universal vital. One can combine its action with that of the Higher Force.

If one is conscious of the nervous envelope and its weakening, one can put it right, replenish or increase its strength by any or both of the processes. But when you speak of lack of will, you must guard against any inertia of the being. At the time you speak of we were in the vital, the brilliant period of the Ashram. People were having brilliant experiences, a big push, energy, etc. If our Yoga had taken that line, we could have ended by establishing a great religion and bringing about a big creation. But our real work is different, so we had to come down into the physical, and working on the physical is like digging the ground; the physical is absolutely inert, dead like stone. When the work began there, all the former energies disappeared, the experiences stopped; if they came they didn’t last. The progress is exceedingly slow. One rises, falls, rises again and falls again, constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, “You can’t do anything, you are bound to fail.”

You have to go on working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered and it is the crux of the whole problem, hence exceedingly difficult. You know what Vivekananda said about the nature of man? That it is like a dog’s tail. So long as you keep it straight, it is so; then as soon as you release it, it curves back. This point in the subconscient is the seed and it goes on sprouting and sprouting till you have cut out the seed.

Nirodbaran: We must thank the Creator for this gift!

Sri Aurobindo: It is the Ignorance and from this Ignorance the Divine is working things out. If it were not so, what would be the meaning of the play? This Yoga is like a path cut through a jungle and once the path is made, it will be easy for those who come afterwards. But before that it is a long-drawn-out battle. The more you gain in your strength, the greater becomes the resistance of the hostile forces. I myself had suggestion after suggestion that I wouldn’t succeed. But I always remember the vision the Mother had. It was like this. The Mother, Richard and I were going somewhere. We saw Richard going down to a place from which rising was impossible. Then we found ourselves sitting in a carriage. The driver was taking it up and down a hill a number of times; at last he stopped on the highest peak. Its significance was quite clear to us.

Satyendra: Will people who are newcomers have to go slowly too?

Sri Aurobindo: Necessarily. The work being in the subconscient and the pressure on the physical, they will have to share the atmosphere – unless they isolate themselves from the atmosphere. There is a case of someone who made very good progress on the mental plane. He kept himself isolated – I mean inner isolation – from the atmosphere. But as soon as he came to the vital, he couldn’t go further; all his progress stopped.

Satyendra: The newcomers can’t make any rapid progress in that case.

Sri Aurobindo: Why not? But rapid progress is only possible when one keeps the right attitude, keeps himself separate from all vital mixture. He must be able to fulfil the demands made on him.

Nirodbaran: I suppose people who come after will be more lucky, for by your victory over the subconscient things will be easier.

Sri Aurobindo: Maybe, in a way; but the demands may be more exacting. As regards Tapasya you can’t deny that you had an easy time of it in the past.

Satyendra: But when one enters into the subconscient, does one who has had some contact with the Brahman lose that contact entirely?

Sri Aurobindo: No, it is only apparently lost. Everything remains behind. But if he doesn’t want to go further, his Yoga stops there. That’s all. When this subconscient change has to come about, many will find it difficult. There may be some who will drop out because they do not fulfil the demands made on them. For instance Harin. At the beginning he was swimming in poetry and kept some old movements going. But as soon as the Mother decided that that sort of thing couldn’t go on and his vital must change, he could not bear it and he dropped out. At one time, as I hinted to you, the Mother was putting great pressure for a big push, as you know it is her nature to do. But no one could stand it; we thought the whole thing would break. There was a great row in the vital. We had to withdraw. Of course we can do our work quicker, but how many will go through the ordeal?

If the sadhaks had kept the right attitude at the time when the sadhana was in the vital, there would not have been so much difficulty today even in working out the subconscient. For with the force and power gained at that time, the Mother could have come down into the physical and done the work with greater ease.

But the sadhaks resisted the attempt and continued to make demands on the Mother. Instead of allowing the Mother to raise them up, they tried to bring her down to their own level and for a time we had to consent. And that meant a delay in the work. There are also people who have told the Mother that they understand the nature of their difficulty, see their mistakes but haven’t the power to resist. There are others too who have thought that they have been able to get rid of plenty of things, that these things didn’t exist in them any more, and were much surprised to see them again coming up in their nature.

That is all due to the subconscient; you reject a thing from the mind, it goes into the vital, from there to the physical; and when you drive it out from there, it lodges in the subconscient. Anger, sex, jealousy, attachment find refuge there. One has to throw them out of the subconscient – as the Yogis say, cut the seed out. That is why transformation is necessary. Without transformation of the nature, the subconscient seed of these things remains.

Nirodbaran: But I don’t understand how they can rush up or remain after realisation of the Divine or complete union with Him. If you ask me what I mean by complete union, I won’t be able to define it.

Sri Aurobindo: That is precisely what I will ask you.

Nirodbaran: Take, for instance, Ramakrishna’s case. We never heard of any sex impulse rising in him.

Sri Aurobindo: You didn’t hear of his praying to the Mother that the sex impulse must not come to him? He told Her that if it did, he would take his life.

Nirodbaran: But that was at the beginning.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes; but the Mother or Cosmic Force didn’t send the Kama any more.

Nirodbaran: You mean it was in the subconscient.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, of course. If it had come up, he would have rejected it.

Nirodbaran: Then if rejection is possible, why bother so much about transformation and all that?

Sri Aurobindo: Ramakrishna is Ramakrishna. I bother because everybody is not Ramakrishna. Haven’t you heard of many Yogis and Rishis falling from the path owing to these impulses?

I was suffering from some intermittent fever in the North for a long time. It continued here also. In the course of the fever someone above or something within me said, “No more fever.” Something in my being accepted the suggestion and there was no fever! But not everybody can do it.

Human nature is an extremely difficult business. I told you that my experience of calm and Nirvana has never left me but I had to work and work to establish that calm and equanimity in every part of my being. You know what is equanimity? It means that nothing stirs under any condition. Till last August I was successful. This accident was perhaps the last test of my equanimity. In that way one has to go on working things out till one reaches the central point in the subconscient which is the seed one has to cut out.

It is while working in this way that I came to notice many gaps that had not been filled up. It may be due to those gaps that the accident took place. When one has conquered that subconscient seed, a force will be established in the world-action and those who embody it will be able to throw it around them like waves for the change.

Nirodbaran: I hope you are making rapid progress now.

Sri Aurobindo: It looked as if I was, till the moment of the accident. When one comes into contact with a large Force, the progress is very rapid; but it is extremely difficult to get. It is peculiar that in a lying position I can’t draw down the maximum Force, can’t exert the highest Force which never fails. That Force is sure in its action even though temporary. But lying down I can’t use it, perhaps because this is a tamasic position, a position of relaxation or rest, and I am not used to it. I get the highest Force walking or sitting. With this cough, for instance, I felt too lazy to apply any Force. Only when it became annoying did I do it.

Nirodbaran: Is there any truth in the demand for an erect position in meditation? People here assume all sorts of postures.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the erect posture helps in the meditation. Whatever one receives in the subtle body is easy to transmit to the physical through that posture. There are so many Asanas and if one can get the right position, then the body doesn’t move.

Nirodbaran: The Mother’s body also stoops down in meditation.

Sri Aurobindo: Her body is very plastic. It changes according to the nature of the meditation. You know, formerly her appearance used to change.

Nirodbaran: X, we hear, is obliged to get up when the light comes down into his body.

Sri Aurobindo: That means he can’t hold the power when it comes.