Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

4 February 1939

Purani: I have here a letter of Lala Lajpat Rai to Birla, written a few days before his death. In it he lays bare his inmost thoughts about life, action, God, etc. He has lost his old standard of values of life and action and finds himself an advocate of the theory of Illusionism against which he, a prominent leader of the Arya Samaj and a monotheist, had preached all his life. His relatives and friends have all become unreal, impermanent, and he asks in effect: “What are these worldly relations based on? How can an all-powerful and all-merciful God create this world of misery, suffering and poverty? Is there any use praying to God? Are not prayers only for consoling ourselves? And do I not act because I can’t remain without doing something and because mere enjoyments don’t give me peace? I feel for my countrymen and I work for them – but don’t I work more for myself than for them?”

Sri Aurobindo: I see. So if God were omnipotent and all-merciful, he would not create this world!

But I wonder why people in India at the end of their lives come to the same conclusion as Lajpat Rai. Almost all come to regard life and the world as an illusion. Is it the ancestral Indian blood or is it the atmosphere of the place or something personal, a psychological change? I suppose there may be a strain running in the blood.

But the Christians also have nearly the same idea when they say, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity and vexation of the spirit.”

Purani: Lajpat Rai was a Jain by birth. That might account for his turning away from the world.

After this there was some talk about Jainism, Illusionism, liberation, multiplicity of souls and Vedantic unity.