Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

27 January 1939

This evening a letter written by Vivekananda on April 18, 1900, from Alameda, California, to Miss Josephine Macleod was read out to Sri Aurobindo. It was a very moving letter containing the following passages:

“I am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more than that of the body. The battles are lost and won. I have bundled my things and am waiting for the great deliverer.

«“Siva, O Siva, carry my boat to the other shore.»

“After all, Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the Banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my true nature; works and activities, doing good and so forth are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice; the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking – love dying, work becoming tasteless – the glamour is off life. Now only the voice of the master calling. ‘I come, Lord, I come.’ – ‘Let the dead bury the dead, follow thou Me.’ ‘I come, my beloved Lord, I come.’

“Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times, the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.”

“I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no bonds. Whether this body will fall and release me or I enter into freedom in the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever, never to come back again!

“The guide, the Guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.

“ … Who am I to meddle with any, Joe? I have long given up my place as a leader, – I have no right to raise my voice. Since the beginning of this year I have not dictated anything in India. You know that. … The sweetest memories of my life have been when I was drifting; I am drifting again – with the bright warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation around – and in the heat everything is so still, so calm – and I am drifting, languidly – in the warm heart of the river. I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet – for fear of breaking the wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it is an illusion!

“Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst of power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come, Mother, I come in Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in the voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come – a spectator, no more an actor.

“Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great, great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like faint, distant whispers, and peace is upon everything, sweet, sweet peace – like that one feels for a few moments just before falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows – without fear, without love, without emotion. – Peace that one feels alone, surrounded with statues and pictures. …”

Satyendra: It must have been a passing mood in Vivekananda to see ambition, personality, fear and thirst for power in himself. Besides, since he died two years later, these things could not have been there always, for by that time he must have realised some higher consciousness setting him free from them.

Nirodbaran: It may not have been merely a passing mood. These things he must have noticed in himself, and he wrote about them because he perceived or saw them.

Purani: Simultaneously with a higher consciousness, one can see these things in one’s nature.

Nirodbaran: He had a double strain in his being – the turn inward and the urge towards work. Moreover, he admitted that he was doing things driven blindly by some unseen Force.

Sri Aurobindo (after some time): It is not easy to get rid of these things. Even when the higher consciousness comes, they can go on in the lower nature. And if Vivekananda found himself driven blindly by some unseen Force, as you say, then it is quite possible for them to remain in the nature and get mixed up in the working out of that driving Power.

Satyendra: It is curious that he speaks of “freedom in the body” as something in the future. How is it that he says this so late in life – only a short time before his death and long after he had had the experience of Nirvana? I thought he had become liberated much earlier.

Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of liberation. The usual conception of liberation is that it comes after the death of the body. That is to say, you may have attained liberation in consciousness and yet something in the nature continues in the old bondage and this ignorance is usually supported by the body-consciousness. When the body drops off, the man becomes entirely free or liberated.

The other kind of liberation is Jivanmukti: one realises liberation while remaining in the body and in life and action, and that is supposed to be more difficult.

Satyendra: But I suppose there is a distinction between Videhamukti and Jivanmukti. Videhamukti answers to your definition. Janaka is called a Videhamukta and that is considered more difficult than being a Jivanmukta.

Sri Aurobindo: I thought it is the reverse.

Satyendra: Then there might be a confusion of terms. Souls like Vivekananda are said to come down from a higher plane for a specific work in the world. Is that possible?

Nirodbaran: Ramakrishna called him an Ishwarakoti.

Sri Aurobindo: There is a plane of liberation from which beings can come down and perhaps that is what Ramakrishna meant by souls that are Ishwarakoti or Nityamukta – those that are eternally liberated and can go up and down the ladder of the planes.

Satyendra: Is there any evolution in these planes – I mean evolution of the sort we have on earth?

Sri Aurobindo: No; there are only types there. If the typal beings want to evolve they have to take birth here. Even the Gods are compelled to take human birth for the purpose of evolving.

Nirodbaran: But why should the Gods want to evolve? They are quite happy in their own state.

Sri Aurobindo: They may get tired of their own kind of happiness and want another kind: for instance, Nirvana.

Nirodbaran: But then one may get tired of Nirvana too!

Sri Aurobindo: There is no “one” in Nirvana. So who will get tired? That was the difficulty I had with Amal at one time. He could not get it into his head that the personality does not exist in the experience of Nirvana. He would ask, “Who has the experience of Nirvana if there is no being in that state?” The answer is, “Nobody has it; something in you drops off and Nirvana takes its place.” In fact, there is no “getting” but a “dropping off”. Amal was probably thinking that he would be sitting with his mental personality somewhere, looking at Nirvana and saying, “Ah, this is Nirvana!” But so long as “you” are there, you haven’t got Nirvana. One has to get rid of all attachments and personalities before Nirvana can come and that is extremely difficult for one who is attached to his mental personality like Amal.

Satyendra: If Nirvana is such a negative state, what is the difference between one who has it and one who hasn’t?

Purani: From the point of view of Nirvana there is no difference.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. You find the difference because it is “you” who gets blotted out in Nirvana and not somebody else.

(After a pause) In this letter of Vivekananda, there is at least one thing precise about his spiritual experience: he speaks of the calm and stillness of Nirvana and before it everything seems an illusion.

Purani: The division of consciousness into two parts – one being fundamentally free and the other imperfect or impure – is a very common experience.

Sri Aurobindo: It is not only common, it is the inevitable experience unless one is able to take all action with equanimity. In order that one may be able to act without ambition, one should not be perturbed whether the action is done or not. There should be something like the Gita’s “inaction in action” – and yet, as the Gita says, one must go on acting. The test is that even if the work is taken away or destroyed, it must make no difference to the condition of your consciousness.

Satyendra: Isn’t Nirvana a fundamental spiritual experience?

Sri Aurobindo: Nirvana, as I know it, is an experience in which the separative personality is blotted out and one acts according to what is necessary to be done. It is only a passage for reaching a state in which the true individuality can be attained. That individuality is vast, infinite, and can contain the whole world within itself. It is not the small narrow limited individual self in Nature. When you attain that true individuality you can remain in the world and yet be above it. You can act and still be not bound by your action. For getting rid of the separative personality Nirvana is a powerful experience. After Nirvana you can go on to realise yourself as both the One in all and the One who is Many – and yet that One is also He.

Satyendra: What you have called “multiple unity”?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

Satyendra: The trouble is that we are so much attached to our body and bound up with our ego and passions that it seems hardly possible to get out of a life filled with them. Such a life alone appears real then.

Sri Aurobindo: You have to give it its place in Reality. And to come out of it or get beyond it there are conditions laid down: for example, rejection and surrender. You have to get rid of desires and passions to arrive at the higher consciousness.

Satyendra: And when in addition to our own burdens and difficulties and egoism we are asked to work for the Divine, for you and the Mother, the trouble increases!

Sri Aurobindo: There again the same conditions are applicable. You have to work with the right attitude, without personal ambition, without ego. Necessarily, that can’t be done in a day.

There are people here whose egos take a new turn – what may be called “egoism for the Divine”; thus, instead of saying “I” and “mine”, they say “our work”, “our Ashram” etc. But this form of ego too must go.

Purani: I think Satyendra was not talking of that.

Satyendra: I was referring to our difficulty.

Sri Aurobindo: And I was referring to mine. (Laughter) Several people here make it their main business to get hold of people and make them do Yoga. Their enthusiasm is something enormous. However much you may check them, they can’t help propagandising.

Purani: Shouldn’t something be done to stop Veerabhadra doing that?

Sri Aurobindo: Do you think you can stop him? I have threatened him with expulsion and even that seems to make no difference! (Laughter)

Champaklal: I hear he is holding classes in the town and giving lectures on Yoga.

Purani: He is explaining everything on a blackboard.

Sri Aurobindo: What? Explaining the Brahman on a blackboard? As for his lecturing, he used to inflict letters on me of never less than thirty pages!

Purani: That means he had some consideration for you. To Reddy, the Minister of Madras, he wrote a letter of eighty pages just to tell him to release a prisoner!

Sri Aurobindo: I wonder how the Minister found time to go through his letter.

Purani: The Minister wrote back regretting he had no time to read it. His secretary may have given him the gist.

Sri Aurobindo: Poor secretary! I sympathise with him.

Purani: One day Amrita told X that Mother had instructed all gate-keepers not to sit on the chairs or read or write when on duty.

Sri Aurobindo: That’s true. Y and others used to reply to visitors, sitting on an easy chair. There were many complaints from outsiders about the gate-keepers.

Purani: When Amrita asked X why he was not carrying out Mother’s instructions, X replied, “That is just my difficulty.”

Sri Aurobindo: I have heard that he has become a Guru. If you tell these people to go somewhere else and start an Ashram of their own they won’t do it. They must remain here and become Gurus.

Satyendra: Some people try to impose their ideas on others.

Nirodbaran: Not only impose but beat if you don’t accept them. I heard that A gave a good beating to B for not accepting you as an Avatar.

Sri Aurobindo: And after the beating did B feel like accepting me?

Satyendra: I don’t understand how that sort of acceptance can help. If, without experiencing anything, one says about anybody, “He is an Avatar,” it hasn’t much value.

Sri Aurobindo: Experience is not always necessary in order to believe a thing. One may have faith. But the trouble comes when you force your faith on others. You can say, “I believe so and so is an Avatar.” But you can’t say, “If you don’t believe, I will thrash you.”

As I said, some people have the habit of forcing themselves on others and propagandising.

Nirodbaran: I am afraid Y is one of them.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. When R was here, he was going on quite well, having experiences and progressing in his own way, though he didn’t know much about the nature of this Yoga. Y caught hold of him one day and gave a long lecture. R was extremely surprised and said, “What is all this now?” And everything stopped.

Nirodbaran: This sort of thing comes in the way of your work, I fear.

Sri Aurobindo: Oh, tremendously! If instead of allowing a man to proceed on his own lines, one forces him to accept one’s viewpoints for which he is not prepared, it interferes with the work.

Satyendra: Most probably the man turns against you.

Sri Aurobindo: Either he shuts himself up or he gets false ideas.

There are people who want to bring their whole families into Yoga. I don’t see the logic of it. And there are husbands who get angry with their wives because they can’t take to Yoga together with them. They want to make it a family affair.

Satyendra: They want to go to heaven with their families like Yudhisthira.

Sri Aurobindo: That may be all right for going to heaven, but not for attaining salvation.

Satyendra: I suppose they have got the idea from the fact that a family follows one religion. If all follow it, the atmosphere becomes harmonious.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but such harmony is suitable only for the religious life. As for the family, even if there are religious differences, they don’t matter, as D.L. Roy shows in his song, “Buro, budi doojanate”¹.

Then there are people like X who, when the Mother refuses admission to somebody, go on saying, “Stick on, stick on! You see, I was refused but I have got in.”

Purani: Yes, it is a case of testing the faith.

Satyendra: Or perhaps he has the old idea that Yogis generally test their disciples and so the rejected ones have to pass the test.

Sri Aurobindo: In that way some people are wonderful. There are a few from outside who write and write even if we don’t give any answer. If we ask them to go and seek another Guru, they won’t.

Satyendra: Then why not accept them?

Sri Aurobindo: Theirs is not a real call. In some it is only a surface movement, and they are just obstinate. Others are sheer eccentrics or even lunatics.

After this, there was a pause in the talk. Some left the room at 8.30 p.m.

Purani: That letter of Vivekananda is very sincere. One can’t have freedom from ambition and other weaknesses unless one has the dynamic presence of the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, I find that most people have difficulty in understanding this. Those weaknesses are very hard to get rid of. They may not always manifest in the surface consciousness but that doesn’t mean they are not there. They can be there even if you live in a higher consciousness; the dynamic presence of the Divine is needed. Or else, if without the dynamic realisation you can establish, as I have already said, equanimity and calm right down to your body-consciousness so that nothing stirs whatever happens, then also you can be free from them.

After I had the Nirvanic experience at Baroda and came to Calcutta for work, I thought I had no ambition – I mean personal ambition. But the Voice which I used to hear within would point out to me at every step how personal ambition was there in my movements. These things can hide for a long time without being detected.

It is like the contest for the Congress Presidentship. Everyone says, “It is not out of ambition but from sense of duty, call of the country, demand of principles!” (Laughter)

¹ “Old man, old woman, the two together.”

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