Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
4 December 1939
Satyendra: Ancient Yogis always believed that human nature couldn’t be changed. They compared it to a dog’s curved tail and left it alone, although they admitted the spiritual principle to be at work. Only Sri Aurobindo thinks it can be changed.
Nirodbaran: And you don’t?
Satyendra: No.
Sri Aurobindo: What on earth has this spiritual principle been doing if the world has remained just the same?
Satyendra: Meher Baba, the well-known Yogi from Western India, also thinks there can be a change and his mission is to bring it about. But he is himself so changeable that he decides one thing today and changes it tomorrow.
Sri Aurobindo: Then he must be on the Overmind plane! (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: Why Overmind?
Sri Aurobindo: Because it is a plane of infinite possibilities.
Satyendra: There is something curious about Meher Baba’s realisation. Once while he was returning from his college he met a Muslim woman fakir who, as soon as she saw him, embraced him. After that he lost his normal consciousness, his eyes became glassy and his speech incoherent. He behaved like an eccentric. He was in this state for a long time, till some other Yogi brought him back to the normal state. I know of another Yogi who remained in a similar strange state for a considerable number of years. What could such a state have been?
Sri Aurobindo: It is going into a higher consciousness without being able to maintain contact with the instrumental nature.
Satyendra: Is it the Absolute Consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo: If you mean the Supreme Consciousness, no. If it had been that, he would have either gone into it for good or come down and established a harmony and balance in his instrumental nature. But this must have been a higher consciousness in touch with the Absolute.
Satyendra: Meher Baba has been on the verge of breaking his silence so many times, but again and again he has deferred the date.
Sri Aurobindo: Now I can fix his position and everything is clear to me about him. Formerly I couldn’t understand what he was. Yes, I can see him now clearly. He must have gone into that higher consciousness but not established a contact with the instruments, and so long as this contact is not there people behave incoherently; they have this Bala or Unmatta Bhava1 because they allow any Force to take hold of their instrumental nature and their conduct looks like a want of balance to others. It is something like the Paramahamsa Bhava2, only here the higher consciousness remains in the background while they allow their nature to behave like a child or a madman. Europeans, of course, would find it difficult to understand such a phenomenon, and so I suppose Becharlal calls Meher Baba a humbug. As for trying to break his silence so many times, I suppose he thought that the contact was going to be made and he was trying to establish it before he spoke. The whole problem till now has been to express the higher consciousness through the instrumental nature.
Nirodbaran: That means he has something genuine.
Satyendra: Meher Baba has an Ashram especially meant for mad people. I mean such mad people as have lost their normal consciousness by Yoga or by coming in touch with Yogis.
Sri Aurobindo: I see. Yes, these people are trying to do the same thing by bringing down something from above while Westerners like Huxley and Heard are going about it in their own way from below.
Satyendra: Meher Baba’s method is now to impart spirituality by touch. The recipient feels a sensation or emotion of love.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is the vital-physical way.
Satyendra: But he is waiting to break his silence and he writes that when he does speak a great miracle will take place.
Sri Aurobindo: He wants to act by the mind, I suppose. Now he is acting through the vital being, but the mental is more effective and so he is waiting for it. Lele also used to act through the vital. Once I remember somebody wanted to weep and he thought that if he couldn’t weep, he would not get any realisation. So Lele said, “Pretend to weep.” The man pretended and then the emotion became real and he began to weep uncontrollably. It is a kind of auto-suggestion.
Champaklal: Yes, Lele also made my niece weep like that. Another thing he did was to give the mantra Om Dattatreya.
Sri Aurobindo: He never gave me any mantra. He said the mantra would rise from within.
Satyendra: Meher Baba makes a lot of prophecies and they don’t come true. I can’t understand why they fail.
Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps he thinks that if, say, four times out of ten he has been successful the rest of his predictions will also come true. He must have forgotten his failures. He doesn’t seem to have a critical mind.
Purani: Lele also used to prophesy, committing God in advance. Whenever he failed to cure an illness, he said it was God’s defeat!
Sri Aurobindo: But philosophically, it would mean perhaps that the higher consciousness failed to carry out his purpose.
Satyendra: Could these eccentricities and incoherencies be due to egoism still remaining in the being?
Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. In the ordinary life the ego-construction holds things together and when that ego is removed by one’s going into the higher consciousness, one behaves in this way, until a greater principle takes the place of the ego and establishes another balance. If we go by his utterances, Meher Baba seems to have a strong mixture of ego in him. What is his principle of Yoga?
Satyendra: He says the ego is the root of everything wrong: it must disappear.
Sri Aurobindo: What is to replace the ego?
Satyendra: Something like Divine Mind – Divine Mind acting through the individual consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, he recognises the individual consciousness as real?
Satyendra: He has no systematised philosophy. One has to build it out of his utterances.
Sri Aurobindo: No critical mind, as I have said.
Satyendra: At least no philosophic mind.
Sri Aurobindo: Some might say no mind at all to speak of, leave aside the philosophic mind.
Evening
Nirodbaran: I was feeling very sleepy at the time of your walk. Was it mere sleep? Or was it a lucky descent of the Force?
Sri Aurobindo: It may be either.
Nirodbaran: I dreamt or rather saw that Norway was preparing for war.
Purani: Then it can’t be sleep. Nirodbaran must be having an inner opening.
Nirodbaran: What sort of opening is this? What have I to do with Norway? I want the psychic opening.
Sri Aurobindo: Why? Yoga is universal. So Norway is part of you. (Laughter) But was it really Norway and not Sweden?
Nirodbaran: I think it was Norway. Was my sleep a tamasic (inert) condition?
Sri Aurobindo: Maybe; but since you had a dream you may have gone within and not sunk into mere Tamas. In such cases either one goes within, while the surface consciousness falls into the subconscient or one goes down into the subconscient altogether.
Nirodbaran: Champaklal was also sleeping.
Sri Aurobindo: Champaklal can sleep anytime unless he has a toothache. (Laughter. Champaklal was actually suffering from a toothache at this time.)
Nirodbaran: Are there no dreams in tamasic sleep?
Sri Aurobindo: There are – especially when the surface consciousness goes into the subconscient. But then the dreams are incoherent.
Nirodbaran: Doesn’t tamasic sleep leave a heaviness afterwards?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Nirodbaran: But sometimes after meditation one feels a heaviness. What could that be?
Sri Aurobindo: It may not be necessarily due to Tamas. The descent of the Force into the physical gives at times a heaviness or else in meditation one may go into the subconscient. All depends on the kind of heaviness.
Nirodbaran: To go back to dreams; Mrs. Sen told me that once she dreamt that you were taking Khichuri3 and Meghnad Saha and others were sitting around you.
Sri Aurobindo (surprised): Meghnad Saha?
Nirodbaran: Yes. And in the dream Nolini Sen brought Mrs. Sen before you and you said to him, “You know I can see the inside of people. She has something in her.” And then you said to her that the Hindu-Moslem problem was going to be settled very soon. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: From Khichuri to Yoga and then to politics! I hope I spoke the truth when I made that last remark.
Nirodbaran: You also told her the way the problem was going to be settled. But she does not now remember your words.
Sri Aurobindo: This must have been the most interesting part. A pity she has lost it.
Nirodbaran: That brings me to what Sen told me. He asked the Mother if he should do Japa (name-repetition). The Mother said he needn’t and could try to feel the Presence. The curious part is that as soon as the form comes when he tries to feel the Presence, he rejects the form. He says that in the Hindu Shastra Japa goes with form. So if Japa is not to be done, the form too has to go. “Very queer,” I remarked.
Sri Aurobindo: But why does he reject the form? The form is very good – unless, of course, he wants to feel the impersonal Presence. No doubt the Presence which the Mother spoke of is much more than the form; the form is only the expression of the Being. Not that it has no value or reality, but the Presence can be felt as impersonal as well as personal.
Satyendra: I suppose he has the same idea as Ramakrishna once had.
Sri Aurobindo: What was that?
Satyendra: When Ramakrishna wanted to go into the Nirvikalpa Samadhi the form of Kali used to come and intervene. So he took an inner sword, as it were, and clove the form in two, and then he was able to pass into that state of featureless and undifferentiated trance.
Sri Aurobindo: But Sen is not going into the Nirvikalpa! (Laughter)
1 The disposition of a child or a madman.
2 The disposition of a liberated man.
3 An Indian food, a mixture of rice and pulses.