Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

4 January 1940

Purani: X has replied to the review by the Vedanta Kesari of his new book. The editor has also put in some footnotes.

Sri Aurobindo: What does X say?

Purani: He seems to say that the physical light and the inner light of the Yogi are the same light.

Sri Aurobindo: Is he speaking from his own experience?

Purani: He says so, and he quotes from the Veda and the Upanishads to support him in saying that God is light. The editor says that all light is from the Divine, of course, but the inner light of the Yogi is different from the physical light: it has not the same wave-length, as it were.

Then about his recent change of views, X argues that if the spiritual journey entails a change of landscape as one climbs higher, he is not ashamed to admit his change due to the fight of knowledge and experience.

Sri Aurobindo: That is also what Krishnaprem says. As one advances in consciousness from one stage to another, one has to change his former views in the light of his present knowledge.

Nirodbaran: X is just like Y. He also says one thing and then contradicts it; so X isn’t justified in calling him a humbug.

Sri Aurobindo: Does he call Y a humbug for that? I thought it was because his prophecies don’t come true.

Nirodbaran: If one makes sweeping assertions and calls them the light of knowledge, that light can’t very well be trusted.

Sri Aurobindo: Why not? (Firmly) When one experiences the personal God, one thinks that only the personal God exists. When one goes beyond that, one comes to the Impersonal realisation. When one transcends both, one comes to the Absolute, of which the Personal and the Impersonal are aspects.

Nirodbaran: But then X will go on contradicting himself all the time. Today he praises Yoga and monasticism; tomorrow he damns Yoga and finds no truth in Sannyasa.

Sri Aurobindo: He is not speaking from experience. It is a matter of opinion. (After a pause) If he had a wider mind he would not say things like that and lay stress only on the faults and mistakes of monasticism, losing sight of its virtues.

Nirodbaran (After a while): Jyotin explains the symbolism of your poem “Trance” by saying that the star is the individual soul and the moon the universal. The storm is doubt. And when the doubt is cleared from the mental sky, the individual soul stands face to face with the universal.

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! I didn’t know that I had put all that philosophy into the poem. Jyotin has built a big superstructure on a small poem.

Satyendra: That is the commentator’s job.

Purani: Tagore also says that critics give meanings to his poems which he never intended. He tells them, “They are simply poems. Why don’t you take them like that?”

Sri Aurobindo: What I have described is a condition of inner experience.

Nirodbaran: Yes, but the symbols do stand for something.

Sri Aurobindo: I can’t remember the poem, so I can’t say anything.

Nirodbaran: You speak of a single-pointed star.

Sri Aurobindo: Telling me that is of no use. I must see the poem. What does Jyotin say about “The Bird of Fire?”

Nirodbaran: He says that it is also symbolic but that this one is an example of perfect symbolism.

Sri Aurobindo: Why?

Nirodbaran: I don’t know.

Sri Aurobindo: People read their own minds into a poem. It’s like what they make of the Rigveda’s anasah – the “flat noses” of the European commentators. All sorts of meanings are made out of it.

Nirodbaran (when Sri Aurobindo was about to lie down): Reviewers seem to be a funny race. One praises a book and another condemns it.

Sri Aurobindo: I find nothing extraordinary in that.

Nirodbaran: In the New Statesman and Nation Anthony West runs down Priestley’s new book while the Manchester Guardian praises it. So also with Huxley’s After Many a Summer. Anthony West calls it a spiritual failure.

Sri Aurobindo: West is a rationalist. He won’t hear of mysticism. Anything that does not savour of rationalism is damned by him.

Nirodbaran: Huxley is already being called a Western Yogi …

Sri Aurobindo: And a spiritual failure!

Purani: What does Huxley know of Yoga?

Nirodbaran: D says he had practised some Yoga and this is quite evident from his writings.

Sri Aurobindo: His book is here, you said. Well, you can read it and see for yourself.

Evening

Nirodbaran handed Sri Aurobindo the book in which the poem “Trance” had been printed. “What’s this?” he asked. Then, on seeing the title Six Poems of Sri Aurobindo, he laughed out.

Sri Aurobindo (after reading the poem): I have explained everything in the poem itself. I speak of the star of creation, the moon of ecstasy and the storm-breath of the soul-change – that is, the upheaval before the change. The trance brings in a change of the outer consciousness and nature. There is no philosophy anywhere. (Shortly after returning the book) Let me have the book again. (Looking at the poem once more) There is a big printing mistake here. A hyphen has been put between “Self” and “enraptured”. It makes neither poetry nor sense.

Nirodbaran: I remember Amal told me the same thing when the book was out.