Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
7 January 1940
A few days ago Nirodbaran showed to Sri Aurobindo Nishikanto’s new poem in matra-vritta blank verse, a new experiment.
Sri Aurobindo: How do you find the rhythm?
Nirodbaran: It seems all right. How do you find it?
Sri Aurobindo: I can’t say as I am not familiar with this chhanda (rhythm and metre).
Nirodbaran: I asked Dilip today what he thought about Nishikanto’s new chhanda. Nishikanto had told me Dilip had found it very successful. Dilip said, “It is a misrepresentation. Please tell Guru about it. (Laughter) I told him that his overflows were very good but here and there there was roughness. I gave him a hint but he didn’t take it.”
Sri Aurobindo: I also had the impression that there was much weightage and crowding of things.
Nirodbaran: I also thought there must be something wrong. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me. (Laughter) Dilip says that when Nishikanto tries to do something consciously he makes mistakes. He is trying many new things.
Sri Aurobindo: He is trying to put force and strength into his poetry. One has to be very careful when trying new things that they don’t become heavy. He has a remarkable gift of rhythm, hasn’t he?
Nirodbaran: Yes. I had again a talk with D about effort and told him about your emphasis on effort. He was very glad. He says Krishnaprem also lays stress on effort and that people, according to Krishnaprem, justify their supine laziness by saying they rely only on the Grace. “What is this idea,” D says, “that Mother and Sri Aurobindo will do everything for us and we have only to look up at their faces?” (Laughter)
Satyendra: But there is no guarantee either that by effort we shall realise the Divine. A sloka in the Upanishad says: “The Self gives realisation to those whom the Self chooses.”
Sri Aurobindo: But it also says later on that one can’t get realisation without effort.
Nirodbaran: Effort alone may not lead to realisation. Grace is necessary. But all the same there is no Grace without effort. A little contradictory!
Satyendra: There are cases where people have got realisation without effort. Suddenly they got brilliant experiences and that opened them to higher planes.
Nirodbaran: Dilip challenges anybody to show a single example.
Satyendra: Why? What about Ramana Maharshi?
Nirodbaran: I thought he had to make a tremendous effort. He himself says he did forty years’ meditation sitting in one fixed place.
Satyendra: That was after the realisation which came suddenly and then the experience itself pulled up his lower consciousness into the higher.
Sri Aurobindo: There are cases where the opening may come suddenly, or there is a certain passage from one consciousness to another.
Nirodbaran: But the opening may close again.
Sri Aurobindo: Not if it is a definitive experience. It remains permanently. If there is only a glimpse it can close up. In my own case, I got a definitive experience in three days quite suddenly. That was not the result of effort.
Nirodbaran: But you must have been making effort before.
Sri Aurobindo: Not for this result. Lele asked me to silence the mind and throw away the thoughts if they came. I did it – in three days – and the result was that the whole being became quiet and in seven days I got the Nirvanic experience which remained with me for a long time. I couldn’t have got out of it even if I had wanted to. Even afterwards, this experience remained in the background in the midst of all my activities.
Nirodbaran: You must have been doing some Yoga.
Sri Aurobindo: All I was doing was Pranayama for two years and the only result of it was good health and a lot of poetry. As that didn’t satisfy me, I went in search of people who could help me.
Champaklal: What does Dilip mean by effort? Effort maybe the result of Grace. Formerly Nirodbaran was unable to meditate, now he can because of the Grace.
Nirodbaran: I don’t deny the Grace but I say that effort is also necessary for the Grace to be effective. From Champaklal’s standpoint the fact of my being alive is the result of Grace. I don’t refute this.
Sri Aurobindo: Kanai may say his Asanas are also the result of Grace, so also Dilip’s mental Asanas!
Nirodbaran: If effort is not necessary, why does Sri Aurobindo bombard me for being lazy, for being leisurely, etc.?
Champaklal: I can give you an opposite answer. The Mother said that one must have complete reliance on the Divine Grace and the Grace will do everything.
Purani: Even that reliance requires effort.
Nirodbaran: In Champaklal’s case it may be complete reliance but in my case Sri Aurobindo will ask me to make effort.
Satyendra: Sri Aurobindo’s answers are contradictory; his legal acumen nobody can question. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: Plenty of people complain about it. They say he says one thing to one man and quite the opposite to another. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: Naturally, what else do they expect?
Satyendra: That, I suppose, regards your answering letters; there are no such contradictions in your philosophy.
Sri Aurobindo: No, there one has to deal with general principles.
Champaklal: There are persons who see visions and have experiences as soon as they start Yoga. Others have to wait and wait.
Sri Aurobindo: Quite true; wait, as Satyendra says, for forty years. You may go on making effort for a long time without any result and when you have given up all effort, suddenly you get the result. But the result is not due to the effort, but to the Grace.
Nirodbaran: Dilip may come to realise that after all effort is not everything. Grace is necessary and without it effort has no value.
Sri Aurobindo: But he believes in Grace. He himself said that it was by the Grace that he was saved in that accident.
Nirodbaran: Yes, he did say that, but at present effort has come to the front.
Sri Aurobindo: One day he will find that his mind has become quiet and he has started getting experiences. Not that he had no experiences before. His body used to be absolutely still at one time and he felt the peace.
Purani: Yes, when he was meditating with the Mother.
Champaklal (when Sri Aurobindo was lying in bed after his sponging): What is then meant by complete reliance on the Divine Grace?
Sri Aurobindo: It means what it says. (Laughter)
Champaklal: No, no, I am asking a question.
Sri Aurobindo: I am also answering. (Laughter) You know what is meant by reliance and what is meant by complete.
Champaklal: Then how does effort come in?
Sri Aurobindo: Even if you make effort, you rely on the Grace for the result. (After a pause) If you have to run a race you ran the race but the result does not depend on the running. You have to rely on the Grace for the result. The same is the case with medicines. One of my cousins (Krishna Kumar Mitra’s daughter) was on the point of death due to typhoid. Nil Ratan and everybody else gave up hope and said, “The only thing is to pray.” They prayed; after the prayer they found that her consciousness had revived and she was all right. I was at Baroda at that time. They wired to me about her hopeless condition. And then there is what happened to Madhavrao’s son. He was dying; the doctors had given up hope. Madhavrao wired to them to stop medicines all and pray to God. They did it and the son was cured. I know this as a fact. Madhavrao himself showed me the telegram.
Purani: In your first quotation on Dawn in The Life Divine, Anilbaran finds a contradiction. He says, how can there be a first dawn if there is an eternal succession of dawns?
I told him that it is the first for those who awaken to it.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): It is like the hen’s egg. It is the first for those who are coming and last for those who are passing. The world also has no beginning and no end. Yet they speak of the world as being created.
Purani: He was also asking about the three births of Agni. First we thought it was Agni born in the physical, vital and mental. After looking it up, I found it was the three supreme births.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is the birth of Agni above in the Infinite.
Purani: He referred to Sayana and found that the three births are Indra, Vayu and Agni.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, if he goes by Sayana, he will be finished.
Purani: He says people won’t accept your interpretation of the Veda.
Satyendra: Everybody has interpreted the Veda according to his own knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo: These are matters of experience; they can’t be understood by the mind.
Purani: In The Life Divine there is a quotation where you have said, “May the restrainers tell us to go to other fields and conquer them.” Anilbaran thought “restrainers” refers only to Yogis and Tapaswis.
Sri Aurobindo: “Restrainers” is perhaps not the right word. “Binders” would have been better. The obstacles bind you down and point out your imperfections. When you have overcome them, they tell you as it were, “Now you have got the right to conquer other fields.”
Evening
It seemed the morning talk on effort didn’t satisfy Champaklal. He was still in favour of Grace. So he raised the subject again; his tone was a little excited. All the while he was asking the question, Sri Aurobindo kept looking at the time because he did not understand what Champaklal was driving at by his analogy.
Champaklal: If a man goes on doing physical exercise every day, and increases the hours of his exercise every day or week, he will improve his health. Can it be said that if a man meditates more and more he will get concrete results?
Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily.
Champaklal: Then where is the place for effort?
Sri Aurobindo: It’s not like that. If a man is able to meditate one hour at first, he will be able to meditate two hours later and then the whole day.
Champaklal: If he simply sits on?
Sri Aurobindo: I said “meditate”. Meditation means getting into a certain state of consciousness. Simply sitting is not meditation; If he can get into that consciousness, then he can remain there or go still further as he increases the time.
Nirodbaran: What do you mean by “simply sitting”? Meditation doesn’t come all of a sudden. One has to try to reject thoughts, concentrate, etc.
Champaklal: There are people who go into meditation suddenly. Some people are quite unaware of themselves in meditation; they become unconscious and go into a state of sleep. What is that state?
Sri Aurobindo: That is the first stage. One has to pass through that to the conscious stage.
Champaklal: How can one do that?
Sri Aurobindo: By aspiration. Aspiration is a great thing. If one is satisfied with that unconsciousness, he will remain there.
Nirodbaran: Champaklal, I find, goes at once within and his body sways this side and that.
Champaklal: Sometimes I am quite unconscious of everything. I forget myself.
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by unconscious? Nothing happens inside?
Purani: Sometimes it does. He gets a nightmare.
Sri Aurobindo: From the tone of his speech, it seems there may be a lot of activity inside. (Laughter)
Champaklal: Sometimes I am quite conscious of my physical posture changing or bending, but I don’t correct it.
Sri Aurobindo: The inner state doesn’t take notice of the change of the body. Rajangam also has no control.
Champaklal: No, but it is better now.
Sri Aurobindo: Some people have to support their neck against something.
Champaklal: Why is it so?
Sri Aurobindo: It is habitual with some people; when they go inside they lose control of the body.
Champaklal: Sometimes, when one is enjoying peace in meditation and somebody pokes him, he comes out of his meditation and gets disturbed, even angry. Does it mean that he had no real peace in meditation?
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): It means that his vital hadn’t the peace and it needs it.
Champaklal: But sometimes I feel an actual shock.
Sri Aurobindo: Then you may have been in deep Samadhi.
Champaklal: I remember once when Rajangam poked Radhananda, the Mother said, “If you poke like that you will send him into another world.”
Nirodbaran: The trouble is not so much about meditation, which I admit is difficult, but about the rest of the day. One doesn’t remember the Divine at all, say, in reading, writing, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: You have to practise Abhyasa Yoga1.
Satyendra: Nirodbaran is very much in earnest. You should give him some help, Sir.
Purani: His friends say that he is completely changed.
Nirodbaran: Yes, yes!
Sri Aurobindo: You are outraging his modesty. He is not making progress in the way he wants perhaps.
The talk then came to art and democracy.
Purani: There is a contradiction in these people who advocate art for the masses.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Purani: If they really want art to be accessible to the masses, why don’t they like cinema and radio?
Nirodbaran: Perhaps they think that they will lower their moral standards.
Sri Aurobindo: Common people are not concerned with morality.
Purani: If all that is going to spoil their morality, then what should art deal with to appeal to the masses?
Sri Aurobindo: Why, Charkha, non-violence, Satyagraha.
1 Yoga of continuous practice.