Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

8 January 1940

Purani: Have you read C.V. Raman’s address?

Sri Aurobindo: I believe so.

Purani: He says they have discovered two new elements – I don’t know how.

Sri Aurobindo: Not discovered, but created, by changing the position of the particles in the atom and making new combinations. But what are they going to do with them?

Purani: The cost of making anything will be prohibitive, though the method of breaking the atom by means of cyclotrons is very easy. Raman has supported Einstein’s theory about the unity of matter and energy.

Sri Aurobindo: Has anybody cast doubt on it?

Purani: No.

Sri Aurobindo: But what is energy?

Purani: Modern scientists have stopped asking that question. They only answer how, not why or what. But their own discoveries will make the question more pointed.

Sri Aurobindo: Quite so, because the problem is why a different combination of particles within the atom should make a new element.

Purani: Energy was once said to be lines of force.

Sri Aurobindo: That means force in movement and when force is in motion we come to know energy. But what is force?

Purani: They don’t answer that question, either.

Sri Aurobindo: Unless you accept a Being who applies the force and becomes matter, there can be no real explanation. But when this answer is given, people say, “What’s this nonsense about Somebody behind?” They say that it is only the force of Nature. They, however, don’t know what Nature is. Nature stands for a magic formula. Everything is supposed to be explained by that formula!

Purani: They once held rigorously to the law of causation. But now they find it difficult to apply in the new investigations.

Sri Aurobindo: The law of causation only means that certain conditions follow certain other conditions.

Nirodbaran: How can one prove the existence of the Somebody you have spoken of?

Sri Aurobindo: The proof is that there is no other explanation.

Satyendra: There is no “body”, but only Being.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. I have said in The Life Divine that you can’t explain the appearance of consciousness out of matter unless you accept a Being behind. That Being may either be unmanifest and involved in matter or it may become manifest.

Satyendra: It is Brahman playing in Brahman or with it.

Sri Aurobindo: They will accept a playing within Brahman but not outside it.

Nirodbaran: They want to catch Brahman with their scientific instruments.

Purani: Even of that they have despaired now. They are now moving towards mathematics and speak of tensor equations!