Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

10 January 1940

Nirodbaran: There is a letter from Dr. Manilal.

Sri Aurobindo: I see. What does he write?

Nirodbaran: He says: “The Life Divine must now be in the press. So Sri Aurobindo must be having time to do the exercise I have recommended.”

Sri Aurobindo: Which exercise?

Nirodbaran: Hanging the leg from above the knee-joint.

Sri Aurobindo: Oh! But my Life Divine is still hanging. I still have two chapters to labour at.

Nirodbaran: There’s another letter – from Anilbaran – regarding the people of the Gita Prachar Party who are coming to visit the Ashram. Somebody wants you to answer the question, “Is there any effect of repeating a sacred Name and doing Kirtan even unconsciously or unwillingly?” Tulsidas says there is.

Sri Aurobindo: If it had been so easy, it would have been delightful.

Here we all cited stories in support of Tulsidas. Satyendra narrated Ajamil’s story.

Nirodbaran: What is the upshot then?

Sri Aurobindo: It all depends on the psychic being. If the psychic being is touched and wakens and throws its influence on the other parts, then the Name-repeating will have an effect.

Champaklal: Then mechanical repetition has no effect.

Sri Aurobindo: If somehow it touches the psychic being, yes.

Nirodbaran: In Kirtan, people easily go into Dasha [a kind of trance].

Sri Aurobindo: There are other effects too – sometimes undesirable sexual ones. Very often the vital being, instead of the psychic, is roused.

Evening

Purani: Some people conjecture that Hore-Belisha has resigned because of his difference with the generals.

Sri Aurobindo: But isn’t it the War Ministry that directs the war policy?

Purani: Lloyd George in his memoirs has severely criticised the military technicians. He says that in the last war the generals didn’t want to attack Germany from the South because it wasn’t the right technique.

Sri Aurobindo: In the last war the generals didn’t come up to much. Only Foch and Pétain stood out. Napoleon had against him all the technician generals of Europe. That is why he could defeat them.

Nirodbaran: Have you seen the latest New Statesman and Nation? John Mair condemns Huxley’s After Many a Summer as a witty parody thrown into philosophical form.

Sri Aurobindo: Then the criticism is no worse than Anthony West’s. He doesn’t admit even the wit. These people seem to dislike the present famous authors. Forster also, they say, is philosophical.

Nirodbaran: Like Tagore, they don’t seem to like intellectual novels; but Tagore’s own novels are intellectual.

Sri Aurobindo: Do people want stupid rather than intellectual novels to be written?

Purani: Tagore in his novels analyses in detail the various psychologies which common people can’t understand. Sarat Chatterji can be said to be a non-intellectual writer.

Nirodbaran: Yes, except for Shesh Prashna (The Last Question).

Sri Aurobindo: His last novel?

Nirodbaran: Yes; this book is seen differently by the two parties. One condemns it, the other praises it.

Purani: So far as I have read, it doesn’t appear to be very intellectual.

Sri Aurobindo: He is not much of a thinker.

Nirodbaran: He seems to have pleaded the cause of Western civilisation and made the arguments against it very weak. For instance, his heroine doesn’t find anything grand in the conception behind the Taj Mahal.

Sri Aurobindo: What is Western about this attitude of the heroine? If there is one thing the Europeans like in India, it is the Taj.

Nirodbaran: I don’t mean the architectural beauty. What the heroine ridicules is the idea of immortal love.

Sri Aurobindo: Even from that point of view, the Europeans like it. Love has a great place in their life.

Nirodbaran: But love, in the sense of being faithful to one person alone, even if that person is dead – it is this that the heroine can’t bear. Isn’t this a European attitude?

Purani: Sarat Chatterji advocates free marriage or no marriage. He is for free love, as far as I can understand.

Sri Aurobindo: But why is free love European? In Europe no one advocates such an idea except a few intellectuals. If you want to abolish the marriage system, then the Europeans will raise a hue and cry.