Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

19 November 1939

Nirodbaran: You have said in your Synthesis of Yoga that all love and adoration is good – it is a preparation and aspiration, even a partial realisation.

Sri Aurobindo: Not for a Yogi.

Nirodbaran: No, I mean in ordinary human life how can it be a preparation and aspiration?

Sri Aurobindo: I meant true love, not vital love with desire and possessiveness, or physical love. That of course can’t be – though Blake says the physical act of love is part of divine love or its fulfilment. If it is true love with a psychic or higher element in it, then it helps to awaken the Divine in oneself or bring a high uplifting of one’s nature. I said there “love and adoration”. Love, adoration and desire for union are the three features of that love.

Nirodbaran: Sometimes even when there is a true spark, that gets lost afterwards by vital mixture, sometimes with disastrous consequences to the parties concerned.

Sri Aurobindo: In so far as there is truth in the love, it will have its reward in the evolution of the being.

Nirodbaran: If that love helps to turn one towards the Divine, can it be said it was an unconscious seeking for the Divine?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, or it may be a seeking for love itself and its realisation or fulfilment.

Nirodbaran: I have read a novel where the hero – an artist – has been depicted as unconsciously seeking for the Divine through human love but every fresh contact or relation seems to disillusion him because he finds jealously, pettiness, etc. coming in. Could it be said it was really a seeking or was it merely a vital play?

Sri Aurobindo: Can’t say, it depends on the particular psychological case. Which novel was it?

Nirodbaran: J’s. There the hero has been represented in that light and turned towards the Divine at the end.

Sri Aurobindo: That’s all mental.