Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

15 December 1939

The Mother told Sri Aurobindo that the prices of things have gone up. Vegetables are getting scarce and costly. When the soldiers come, it will be still more difficult to get them. Champaklal remarked that the price of one house-paint has gone up from two rupees to a thousand.

Sri Aurobindo: That means that it is not available for purchase. But I don’t know why vegetables should be scarce. The rise in price one can understand, because of the general rise in the standard of living. But why scarce? They are neither growing less, nor are they being exported.

Satyendra: Luckily not. Neither is the British Army large enough in India to consume more.

Somebody said that Russia had been threatened with expulsion from the League of Nations.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Uruguay made the threat. Now Paraguay should bring in a resolution to expel England and France. I wonder why the League exists at all.

Purani: Herbert was very enthusiastic about the League.

Sri Aurobindo: Naturally. He was directly affected by the League and we were indirectly affected through him because he translated our books. (Laughter)

Purani: He said the League had done a lot of good work; for example it has established an International Labour Department.

Sri Aurobindo: Labouring over nothing!

Purani: It has gathered a good deal of information.

Sri Aurobindo: Then it may be called, instead of the League of Nations, the League of Informations.

Evening

As usual, Purani entered with a strong military step and took a few deep breaths, looking at Sri Aurobindo. Champaklal and Nirodbaran were stealing a smile at each other over him when suddenly Champaklal burst out laughing and Purani looked at him. Sri Aurobindo also looked and, raising his right hand, made a gesture as if to say, “Don’t know what to make of it all.”

Purani: My presence seems to act as a catalytic agent without my knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo: That is how the subliminal self acts – without one’s knowledge.

Then Sri Aurobindo started taking his short walk in the room. When the walk was finished, Purani took up the thread of a past conversation.

Purani: Between Hegel and Kant, poor Nirodbaran’s question was lost.

Sri Aurobindo: What was it?

Purani: Nirodbaran says that, just like reasonings, experiences differ and come to different conclusions. How then can experience be a criterion any more than reason?

Sri Aurobindo: Experience is not a criterion. It is a means of arriving at the Truth. But experience is one thing and its expression is another. You are again putting reason up as the true judge over experience which is above reason. When people differ over experience, they differ in laying stress on or having a mental preference for this or that side of the experience. It doesn’t mean that the experience itself is invalid. It is only when you try to put it in mental language that the differences arise, because such language is too poor to express it. As soon as you bring in mental terms, you limit it.

Truth is infinite and there are innumerable sides to it. Each conclusion of reason expresses something of that Infinite. Only when reason claims that it contains the whole truth in a conclusion, it is wrong. If you find that experiences differ, you have to go on adding experience after experience till you come to the reconciling experience in which all others find their place.

When you want to describe a spiritual experience, you are obliged to use mental terms which are quite inadequate. That is why the Vedantins say that mind and speech can never express the Truth. Still you can somehow manage to express something as long as you have not gone beyond the level of the Overmind. When you enter the Supermind, then (Sri Aurobindo began to shake his head, and resumed after a pause) it is extremely difficult. And if you go still further towards the Absolute, it is almost impossible.

Reason takes up one standpoint and declares the others to be false. For instance, if it speaks of the Truth as impersonal, the Truth for it is solely impersonal and can never be personal; or vice versa. Really, both the personal and the impersonal are true; wherever there is the personal there is also the impersonal, and this holds too the other way round. When you transcend both you arrive at the Absolute.

Satyendra: Of which the two are aspects.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but it doesn’t mean that they are less true for being aspects or that the Absolute excludes them. When you throw aside reason you reach the all-inclusive Absolute.

One reasoner looks at a thing in one aspect and declares that that alone is right, another in some other aspect and swears by that. Reason to be really reasonable must have various points of view. It can’t be right if its accounts don’t differ. As I said, there are various sides to Reality. If the descriptions of several countries of the world were the same, they wouldn’t be true.

Satyendra: How?

Purani: If you describe Switzerland and the U.S.A. in the same manner, how would you be correct?

Sri Aurobindo: And yet the earth is one and mankind is one!

Satyendra: It is good to have all these experiences.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but if you can’t have all, it is enough to have one – because each is an approach and can lead to the Absolute.

After this, Purani brought up the subject of the quotations from the Vedas and Upanishads for Sri Aurobindo’s Life Divine. He had been searching for suitable quotations for the opening of each chapter.

Purani: About the quotation for the chapter, “Knowledge by Identity”, there is a sloka which says, “One must become like an arrow piercing its mark.” I wonder if that will suit.

Sri Aurobindo: It won’t quite fit, because knowledge by identity is more than that. When they speak of knowledge by identity the Upanishads mean knowledge of the Self which is all, but that is one part of such knowledge. If you can’t find a quotation here, perhaps there may be something for direct knowledge or knowledge by direct awareness. You can try and see if by some luck you find any.

Purani: In Rajayoga, they speak of direct knowledge by Samyama which perhaps means concentration.

Sri Aurobindo: That is a different thing. That comes by putting the pressure of consciousness on an object. But direct knowledge may not require concentration on one’s part. The consciousness simply comes into contact with a thing and knows about it.

Purani: Rajayoga speaks of Siddhis, special powers, like control over Matter, knowledge of Suryaloka (the Sun-world) and Chandraloka (the Moon-world), conquest of death, etc.

Sri Aurobindo: Knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka, yes, but conquest of death is a very different matter. About Siddhis, it is said that they flow into one when one enters a certain state of consciousness.

Purani: The Upanishad also speaks of Yogis conquering disease and death and having less stool and urine.

Sri Aurobindo: In that case, I was going in that direction regarding urine.