Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

26 January 1940

Purani: Anilbaran was asking if you would send your blessings to the centenary celebration of Bejoy Goswami’s birth.

Sri Aurobindo: I don’t send any blessings publicly. Ask him to send his on his own behalf.

Purani: He asks if he can write to them that you have read their letter.

Sri Aurobindo: What is the use?

Nirodbaran: Somebody has written a letter to Anilbaran, in which he has put many metaphysical questions to you. (Nirodbaran read out the letter but nobody could make head or tail of the questions.)

Sri Aurobindo: Let Anilbaran have the pleasure of answering them.

Evening

The radio news said that Germany had built 2,000-pocket battleships. We were cutting jokes on that unbelievable figure.

Sri Aurobindo: The commentator should have said a 2,000-pocket battleship – a battleship with 2,000 pockets, whatever that might mean. One battleship takes one and a half to two years to build. How could Germany have built 2,000?

Nirodbaran (After a while): I understand Dilip sent you some extracts from Huxley’s book After Many a Summer. He wants to know how you found them. Anilkumar says that he doesn’t find anything there to indicate that Huxley has had any spiritual experience or has written from such experience. Dilip maintains that he must have done some sadhana in order to be able to write like that.

Sri Aurobindo (after some silence): All I can say is that he has thought about the problem. And he himself says that experience is necessary. How can you say from his writings whether he has had any experience or not? You know what my uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra said? When The Synthesis of Yoga in the Arya came out, he said that it was all philosophy; there was nothing of Yoga in it.

Nirodbaran: Did he do any Yoga?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, he had some experiences in jail.

Nirodbaran: P wants to know how you found the criticism of his recent book.

Sri Aurobindo: How can I say anything without reading the book? But does the critic know anything about the Veda on which there is an article in P’s book?

Purani: No, and he says that in the criticism. These people hold the socialistic theory in literature. The style and the subject of the book must be approachable by the mass. Kalelkar has developed a racy style. Munshi’s style also is very good.

Nirodbaran: Modern writers are more bent on perfecting style.

Sri Aurobindo: That is because they have nothing to say. And what is queer, especially about the modern poets, is that they talk of writing in a popular style and about popular literature but they take care to see that their own writings may not be understandable to the people. And their popular style makes a muddle when they begin to write about serious things.

Nirodbaran: Basanta Chatterji has left Anilbaran and has now taken up his pen against you. He has written an article, “The Veda and Sri Aurobindo”, in which he says that like Westerners you have not accepted the reality of the gods. You have interpreted Agni as representing Tapa Shakti, etc.

Sri Aurobindo: If I have spoken of Agni as representing Tapa Shakti, it doesn’t mean that he is not a god. If Saraswati is represented as a symbol of learning, does it mean she is not a goddess? Where have I said that the Vedic gods are unreal?

Purani: Sri Aurobindo has nowhere said that; on the contrary, he has spoken of them as personalities. Chatterji hasn’t read anything. In The Life Divine itself there is a passage on this point. (Purani read out the passage.)