Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

5 February 1939

For two or three days there was no long conversation. Either the attendants did not have much to ask or Sri Aurobindo was not in the same mood as before. But one thing was noticed: the Mother came to meditate very early – at about 6.15 p.m. – and both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother concentrated together till 7 or thereabouts. So Nirodbaran was obliged to massage Sri Aurobindo’s leg after 7 which left hardly any time for conversation. This evening Purani began telling Sri Aurobindo about Jean Herbert ’s wife.

Purani: She is collecting Sister Nivedita’s letters in order to publish them. In one of them it seems to be said that you gave Nivedita the charge of editing Bande Mataram after you left Calcutta.

Sri Aurobindo: No. It was the Karmayogin. You can tell her that. There is no harm now in saying it, as it is all a long time ago. I saw Nivedita before I left Calcutta for Chandernagore, and asked her to take charge of the paper, which she did. It was from her that I had got the news of my contemplated arrest. She had many friends in Government circles. On getting that news I wrote the article “My Political Will” which stopped my arrest.

Purani: In one of her letters Nivedita says that Vivekananda tried to dedicate her to Shiva but found her not ready.

Sri Aurobindo: How not ready? Not ready means either unwilling or not fit to fulfil the conditions.

Purani: Perhaps unwilling.

Sri Aurobindo (after a pause): We were talking about Jainism yesterday. Well, don’t the Jains do those violent Tapasyas with the idea of transcending Nature and conquering it and not from the idea of world-illusion?

Purani: That’s right.

Sri Aurobindo: Then the aim is the same as ours in some respects: only the method is different.

Purani: But how does that explain Lajpat Rai’s sense of illusion?

Sri Aurobindo: No, it doesn’t. His sense of illusion may have been from something in his blood or perhaps from the atmosphere of the place. At London, when I was reading Max Müller’s translation of Vedanta I came upon the idea of Atman, the Self, and thought that this was the true thing to be realised in life. Before that, I was an agnostic and even an atheist. How do you explain this? You can’t say it was the atmosphere of the place. It was in the blood or perhaps carried over from a past life. And the curious thing is that as soon as I set my foot on Apollo Bunder in Bombay the experience of the Self began in me – it was a sense of calm and vastness pervading everywhere.

There is a contact with a place that gives you an experience and sometimes the experience is appropriate to the place. For instance, the sense of the Infinite I had on the Sankaracharya Hill in Kashmir or on the Parvati hills at Poona, and the perception of the reality of the Goddess at the Karnali temple.

Purani (After a pause): To return to the Herberts: I asked Herbert why the Jews are so much repressed and persecuted in Germany. He says the same thing as you did – that they are a rich minority and so they are made a scapegoat. The same was done, he tells me, to the French aristocracy during the Revolution. In Spain also at present there is a movement against a certain class.

Sri Aurobindo: The comparison with France and Spain cannot be made. In France it was not against the aristocracy in particular that there was a revolt: the revolt was against the whole history of the past, and in Spain it is against the past repression by the Church.

Purani: I asked Herbert’s wife about the condition of Switzerland. She is Swiss. She says Switzerland is passing through a critical time. She fears that in case of war the Germans may pass through Switzerland. During the War of 1914-1918 the Swiss had to pass some anxious days. When the Germans chose Belgium as their route, the Swiss felt relieved.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, if the dictators decide to take a course of action, it may be through Switzerland.

It is said that Czechoslovakia’s frontier was so strongly fortified that Germany would have found it difficult to pierce it.

Purani: It is a pity the Czechoslovakians gave in without a fight. Hitler is now asking for colonies equivalent to those of other powers.

Sri Aurobindo: But from where will he get them?

Purani: From Belgium, Portugal or Holland.

Sri Aurobindo: Holland has no colonies. Portugal’s colonies in Africa are so small that Hitler will hardly be satisfied. The Belgian Congo is big, but England won’t dare to do anything with it to placate Hitler, for that will make Belgium furious and she may side with Germany. England can’t risk that, for if Germany takes possession of Antwerp it will be a pistol pointed at the heart of England. The same will hold for France.

(Turning to Purani) Roosevelt has backed out. I thought that in his message to the Congress he had taken up the cause of the democracies, but now he says America has nothing to do with European problems.

Purani: It may be that the financial interests are behind this.

Sri Aurobindo: He is not in their hands.