Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

5 December 1939

Purani: Have you seen the pictures of mad people in Meher Baba’s book? They don’t seem to show Yogic madness; they look like cases of possession.

Sri Aurobindo: I haven’t seen the pictures. Yogic madness is a very rare thing. It is due to some overpowering experience such as Paramahansa bhava disturbing the balance of the lower being.

Nirodbaran: Some people come out of meditation in a mad state. Why?

Sri Aurobindo: They open themselves, while meditating, to vital forces, forces of the occult life plane. In Yoga, madness results from some mistake. In the lower nature there may be an erotic impulse or else ambition which rises up and then one gets possessed by these forces.

Nirodbaran: Isn’t fear also responsible?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, especially when people who are not fit for Yoga do meditation, say, for instance, at a burning ghat or in a cemetery during the Tantric process.

Nirodbaran: I couldn’t quite catch the distinction you make between madness from Paramahansa bhava and the type we see in those pictures in Meher Baba’s book.

Sri Aurobindo: In the one case the realisation is there behind while the Yogi allows the external nature to play about as it likes. In the other the contact has not yet been established between the higher consciousness and the lower, though there may be some influence of the higher consciousness in the being.

Nirodbaran: Regarding the form and the Presence, you said the Presence is greater.

Sri Aurobindo: Not greater but much more than the form.

Nirodbaran: In feeling the personal Presence, is it like feeling the Presence of Krishna everywhere?

Sri Aurobindo: As I said, the Presence may be personal or impersonal. It may be the dynamic Divine with a personal appearance or the still, immutable Brahmic Consciousness which is impersonal and universal. Form is only a certain manifestation of the Presence. You can see Krishna everywhere as a Person and feel His Presence in all, while in the experience of the Impersonal you will perceive the one Self in all or the silent Brahman present everywhere.

Late Evening

While Sri Aurobindo was lying in bed after his walk, there was some conversation.

Purani: Dara has written a poem on The Life Divine to celebrate its publication.

Sri Aurobindo: What sort of poem? “Life Divine, full of wine?” (Laughter)

Purani: Yes, you have caught it. It goes:

Life Divine Mother’s Wine …

The book is out,

Let us shout!

The subject then changed to the war.

Purani: Everybody is indignant about Russia’s attack on Finland.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Uruguay wants to kick her out of the League. (Laughter)

Purani: The Finns seem to be doing well.

Sri Aurobindo: They are good fighters and specially good at guerilla warfare.

Purani: In connection with what you said on Presence and form, Nirodbaran has given the analogy of flower and smell to correspond to form and Presence. It did not seem correct to me. I told him, “Smell is the result of form, while here form itself is a result.”

Sri Aurobindo: Besides, the flower is not conscious. The Presence is that of the Being and the form is the embodiment of the conscious Force of the Being for some particular purpose on a certain level. Physical form is necessary for work to be done on the physical level. And there are subtler forms for work on other planes than the physical.

Purani: May not the Presence felt be that of the Soul in everything?

Sri Aurobindo: The word “soul” brings in the suggestion of something individual. But we can speak also of the World-Soul which is the Cosmic Self.

Purani: Can one perceive the Presence without the form?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

Nirodbaran: In using the flower and smell analogy I meant to ask whether the Presence, when one feels it, is impersonal like smell.

Sri Aurobindo: Personal or impersonal is not the question here. The smell belongs to the flower – that is, to the form, while the Presence may have no form. It may manifest itself as form or it may not. You may not be aware of the form of the Presence and yet feel the joy and power of it. This may be compared to smell if you like.