Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

23 January 1939

The previous day’s discussion about destiny, fate and the Cosmic Spirit had bewildered Nirodbaran. He wanted to get out of his bewilderment by asking a few more questions. But he was hesitant and expressed his feeling to Purani.

Purani: Nirodbaran intends to ask you a question but he hesitates. It is the contradiction in what you said yesterday that he is unable to understand.

Nirodbaran: Once you said that the Cosmic Spirit might be leading Hitler on the way he is going and then you said that the Cosmic Spirit is not responsible for Hitler’s actions. These two statements seem contradictory to me.

Sri Aurobindo: That is generally the case when one states some truth: one has to express it in contradictory terms.

Purani: Nirodbaran expected intellectual consistency in your views.

Sri Aurobindo: Truth is not always consistent. But contradiction here does not mean that there is no responsibility or no morality, no right and wrong. The individual is responsible because he accepts the action of the Gunas, the qualities of Nature.

Nirodbaran: But is it not the Cosmic Spirit that makes him accept them?

Sri Aurobindo: No, the Cosmic Spirit doesn’t act directly. It acts through the individual, not the true individual but the individual in Nature, what may be called the individual personality. The personality, of course, is not the Person: it is something formed in the mental, vital and physical nature.

Nirodbaran: Well, if the Cosmic Spirit doesn’t act through the Person, it acts through the personality or nature. If it is acting through my nature, where is my responsibility?

Sri Aurobindo: But the individual in Nature has the freedom to accept Nature or to refuse. Arjuna refused to fight and eighteen chapters of the Gita followed to make him fight. It is the Purusha in the individual that can withdraw its sanction from Prakriti and then Prakriti cannot act according to its own movement. Real liberation comes when the Purusha awakes and feels itself free and lord.

Nirodbaran: But generally the Purusha is bound.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, usually the Purusha consents to Prakriti. But it can refuse consent and stand apart. It can be free only by getting out of the evolution – that is, by being free from the working of the ego and nature-personality.

The Cosmic Spirit is not in the evolution whereas the individual is. It contains in itself both good and evil.

Nirodbaran: Then it is responsible for evil.

Sri Aurobindo: First of all, it does not have a human standard of good and evil. You can’t say that it is responsible for the one and not the other. Through good and evil, light and darkness, the Cosmic Spirit works out its purpose.

Nirodbaran: Why is Hitler made to pursue this path of violence, repression, etc.?

Sri Aurobindo: Because he has to evolve through his own nature.

Purani: When the freedom of the Purusha is won, then does it become possible for the individual to look beyond the Cosmic Spirit to the Transcendent?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes; that is to say, instead of being an instrument of ignorant Nature, you become the instrument of the Divine.

Purani: Do you mean by the Cosmic Spirit the Impersonal Consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo: No, the Cosmic Spirit is a personality but not in our narrow sense. It is both dynamic and static, Saguna and Nirguna, the Nirguna supporting the Saguna.

Purani: You have said that the psychic being is also a personality.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, there is the psychic Purusha.

Purani: Does the psychic being develop from birth to birth?

Sri Aurobindo: It is not the psychic being itself that develops. But it guides the evolution of the individual by increasing the psychic element in the nature of the individual.

Purani: If the psychic being is a spark of the Divine, then its function is the same as that of the Vedic Agni as “the leader of the journey”.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Agni is the god of the psychic and leads the journey upward.

Purani: How does the psychic carry the personality formed in this life into another?

Sri Aurobindo: After death it gathers its elements and carries them onwards to another birth. But it is not the same personality that is born. People easily misunderstand these things, especially when put in terms of the mind, because the process is very subtle. The past personality is taken only as the basis and a new personality is formed according to its own requirements in future evolution. If it were the same personality, then it would act exactly in the same manner and there would be no meaning in that.

Purani: Does the experience of the Cosmic Spirit correspond to the experience of the Overmind?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes; but you can have the experience of the Cosmic Consciousness on any level. Generally you have it on the level of the Higher Mind where you feel the two aspects – the dynamic and the static – as separate. But as you go above, you find the Overmind arching over all other levels and the two aspects are gathered together in it and combined in the same consciousness.

(Turning to Nirodbaran) To come back to Hitler: Hitler is responsible so long as he feels he is Hitler. In his youth, he was considered an amusing crank and nobody took any notice of him. It is the vital possession that gives him his size and greatness. Without this vital power he would be a crudely amiable fellow with some hobbies and eccentricities. It is in this kind of person whose psychic is undeveloped and weak that a possession is possible. There is nothing in the being that can resist the Power. In his latest photographs I find he is becoming more and more criminal and going down very fast. In two photographs there was the psychic element a little in front. One showed him weeping before his mother’s grave – but that was more fictitious than real. The other showing his visit to his old village was genuine; he felt something there.

Nirodbaran: Has he what you once called the “London-cabman’s psychic”?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Mussolini has comparatively a better developed psychic and a strong vital. In his latest photograph he seems to have weakened. Either he is unwell or he is aging or perhaps he has misused his powers and hence the change.

Nirodbaran: Does Hitler feel responsible for his actions?

Sri Aurobindo: He feels responsible not only for himself but for the whole of Germany!

Purani: And for all the “Aryans”!

Sri Aurobindo: Of course, all Aryans are Germans.

To get rid of responsibility you must get rid of ego, that is to say, of the mental, vital and other personalities.

Nirodbaran: If one could act without responsibility one would be free.

Sri Aurobindo: It is not easy. You can try and see. You may say you are not responsible but internally you will feel that you are.

In order to be free from this responsibility you must become free first in consciousness. There are three ways of attaining that freedom: first, by separating the Purusha from Prakriti and realising its freedom from it; second, by realising the Self, Atman or Spirit free from the universe, the cosmic nature; third, by identifying with the Transcendent above – realising the Paramatman. You can also have freedom by merging with the Shunyam, the Void, of the Buddhists.

Satyendra: In the second and third ways, does the Purusha remain the witness?

Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. It may in the first realisation because the Purusha separates itself from Prakriti and is then the witness. In the second realisation, that of the Self, you need not be the witness of the universe or its movement. The Self may remain ingathered without witnessing anything. There are many conditions into which the Spirit may pass.

A certain kind of Nirvana experience is necessary even for this Yoga. That is, the world must become in a way nothing to you because, as it is constituted, it is a work of ignorance. Then only can you enter the true creation and bring into existence here the world of Truth and Light.

Satyendra: When Krishna in the Gita says, “You will find the Self in all and all in the Self and then in me”, what Self is meant?

Sri Aurobindo: It is the Brahmic Consciousness. You see the one Consciousness in all and you see all contained in the one Self and then you rise above to the realisation of the One that is both personal and impersonal and beyond either.

Dr. Becharlal: Is it true that men with a spiritual bent are born with Adhikara, fitness?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

Dr. Becharlal: Can one acquire Adhikara?

Sri Aurobindo: Certainly. When we say a man is not ready, we mean he has not got the Adhikara but he can acquire it by preparing himself.

Satyendra: When one thinks of this problem of manifestation, one gets tired of it.

Sri Aurobindo: Being tired is not enough. One must have the power to be free either by moving out of the evolution or by attaining to something that would not bind one to the evolution. Many Yogis, when they go beyond into the Spirit of cosmic consciousness, allow the cosmic nature to act through them without any sense of individual responsibility. They remain concentrated in or identified with the higher consciousness and their nature sometimes moves in an uncontrolled way; then you find them using the foul language of which Dilip complains. The Yogis are not bound by manners or the rules of decency. They act like Jada, Bala, Unmatta or Pishacha, because their consciousness is linked up with something above while their nature is allowed to act freely.¹ When one attains that higher consciousness, one doesn’t regret, saying, “I didn’t do that which was good, I did that which was evil.”

Another difficulty – most of the Yogis are very bad philosophers and can’t put their experience into mental terms. But that doesn’t mean they have no real experience. They get what they want and are satisfied with it and don’t care for intellectual developments. When you look for things in a Yogi which he never cared to have, you get disappointed like Lady Batesman who objects to Maharshi’s spitting on the floor. Such actions have no bearing on one’s spirituality.

Satyendra: Can you say that in the aspect of Sat (Pure Being) Chit (Consciousness) is absent?

Sri Aurobindo: No – even in what you call Pure Being, Consciousness is there: only, it is held back or inactive, so to speak, while the Sat aspect is in front.

Purani: You have so often said that Sachchidananda is a triune reality and no part of it can be thought of as separate.

Satyendra: The difficulty arises when one has seen many experiments of different systems. One finds great difficulty in choosing among them.

Purani: Does one always choose by the mind?

Satyendra: There is no other go. Cannot the study of different systems lead one to knowledge?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it can help in making an approach to the path of knowledge. Philosophy is an attempt to explain to the human mind what is really beyond it. But to the Western mind thought is the highest thing. If you can think out an explanation of the universe, you have reached the goal of mental activity. The Westerners use the mind for the sake of using the mind. That leads nowhere. (To Nirodbaran) So you see, the universe is not a question of logic but of consciousness.

Nirodbaran: But is the study of philosophy indispensable? One can know only by experience.

Sri Aurobindo: You can know by experience all that philosophy has to teach and something more which it cannot give.

Satyendra: The Sankhya division between Purusha and Prakriti is in one sense sharp and helps one to get away from bondage to Prakriti.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is categorical. They believe in two realities, Purusha and Prakriti, as the final elements. Sankhya and Buddhism were first appreciated by Europe because of their sharp distinction between Purusha, who is consciousness, and Prakriti, which they believe to be Jada, inconscient. According to Sankhya, Prakriti is Jada and it is the light of the consciousness of the Purusha that makes it appear conscious; they believe that even Buddhi, intellect, is Jada. We in this Yoga need not accept it. The Westerners liked Buddhism for its strong rationalism. Its logic led up to Shunyam, the void: the non-being state is the aim and there is a strong note of agnosticism in Buddhism, which appeals to the Europeans. In Buddhism, the universe is something that hangs in the air, so to speak. You don’t know on what basis it stands.

There is a certain similarity also between Sankhya and Science, for in Science they believe that evolution begins with the Jada, the Inconscient, and goes up the scale of consciousness.

Satyendra: We have so much darkness in us that we can’t empty it out by our little efforts. It seems even a little light will do.

Sri Aurobindo: No, a little light, a mere candle-light like mental illumination will not do. There must be the full sunlight. It is a slow process. If you have an opening, more and more light can come.

Nirodbaran: How shall one accept the light if one doesn’t know what it is?

Sri Aurobindo: That means something in you doesn’t want it. Otherwise there is hardly any difficulty. So far as the world is concerned, it has always refused to accept the light when it came. The test for knowing whether the world is ready or not for the Divine is its acceptance or refusal of the light. For example, when Christ was sentenced, Pilate had the right to pardon one of the four condemned. He asked the Jews whom they wanted to be freed. They wanted the robber Barabbas to be released and not Christ. Nowadays scholars say that Barabbas was not a robber but a national hero, or, if a robber, one like Robin Hood, I suppose, or else a political opponent. At any rate, a romantic robber was preferred to the Son of God, or a political opponent to the teacher of Truth.

Nirodbaran: You said experience brings knowledge. But sometimes when I feel a pressure in the head I don’t know if it is a working of the higher consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo: You will know it slowly. Till then you have to accept it from the Guru. First Shravana (hearing) and then Manana (remembering), as they say.

¹ “ … the outer nature may become the field of an apparent incoherence, although all within is luminous with the Self. Thus we become outwardly inert and inactive, moved by circumstance or forces but not self-mobile (jadavat), even though the consciousness is enlightened within, or as a child (balavat) though within is a plenary self-knowledge, or as one inconsequent in thought and impulse (unmattavat) though within is an utter calm and serenity, or as the wild and disordered soul (pishachavat) though inwardly there is the purity and poise of the Spirit.” – Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine.

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