Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
12 February 1940
Purani: Viswanath has brought a proposal from Arthur Moore. Moore said to him, “Why don’t you bring out a Sri Aurobindo Memorial Volume on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, just as they have done for Tagore and Gandhi?” Viswanath replied, “It needs plenty of money.” To this, Moore said, “All right, I will offer Rs. 500.” (Sri Aurobindo kept silent.) Various people will be asked to contribute. Perhaps Sircar will come in too.
Sri Aurobindo: Isn’t a Memorial meant for those who have gone away? Does Moore want me also to go away? (Laughter)
Purani: Well, we’ll call it then an Anniversary Volume.
Nirodbaran: For Tagore it is all right, because he is on the point of going away.
Sri Aurobindo: He has been going away for the last twenty years. It is like in the theatres: “Today: Last Night Performance.”
Nirodbaran: Gandhi is a well-known figure and there will be many contributors.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, everybody has met him and knows about him. That is not the case with me.
Nirodbaran: Perhaps Nolini, Anilbaran and Purani will have to write in your case. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: And each will understand my philosophy in his own way and produce his own interpretation. Mahendra Sircar will come in too and there will be Veerabhadra after him. (Laughter)
Purani: Veerabhadra will equate you with Shankara or he will say that you have explained what Shankara meant.
Sri Aurobindo: That will be easier. Or it may be like the Theosophists’ idea of Buddha and Shankara. You don’t know what it is?
Purani: No.
Sri Aurobindo: They say that Shankara came as a disguised Buddha in order to correct what he said. Shankara, according to them, was born in the first century b.c. or a.d., I don’t remember which, but in any case not long after Buddha’s death. That means that Buddha realised he had committed some errors in his philosophy and came back soon to rectify them. And now it shall be supposed that I have come back as another Shankara to correct what the first Shankara said and that I am explaining either what he meant but didn’t say or what he said but didn’t mean.
Nirodbaran: Isn’t that what Avatars do? If we accept Ramakrishna as an Avatar, we have his saying that the body is an iron cage and now you as an Avatar are saying that it is a golden temple!
Sri Aurobindo: Not quite. I say that it is an instrument of the Spirit.
Nirodbaran: Yes, an instrument to be transformed for divine service.
Satyendra: But that transformation comes last. Some people want it to be first. The early sages called life in the body unreal because it was too much with them. They had to hammer and hammer away at the idea that it was unreal. But after all, it is a secondary thing. The first thing to achieve is the divine consciousness and not body transformation.
Nirodbaran: Sotuda has offered his pranams and informs you that he is stagnating. But his body doesn’t seem to be doing so.
Sri Aurobindo: Is that why he feels he is stagnating? The flesh is becoming too heavy for the Spirit?
Satyendra: But his face is shining.
Sri Aurobindo: Then his body must be getting transformed!
Satyendra: I hope the transformation won’t stop with the face.
Purani: He says it is a shame that you call him Sotuda. How can a father call a son that?
Sri Aurobindo: Why not? A father calls his daughter “Ma”. Does he want me to drop the “da” and just say “Sotu”?
Champaklal: Why not? There is Bapu here – and the Mother calls him Bapu. It doesn’t mean he is the Mother’s father. Bapu has simply become his name now.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Nirodbaran: So Sotuda is not brother Sotu.
Satyendra: Sotuda said he saw some prophecies in which it was foretold that the war would last till 1941 or 1943.
Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord!
Satyendra: The whole world will be destroyed and Satyayuga will reign at the end of 1943.
Sri Aurobindo: Nobody will be left then to enjoy the Satyayuga.
Champaklal: It doesn’t matter much to Satyendra if the world is destroyed.
Satyendra (smiling): No, what is the use of repeating and repeating the same old thing?
Purani: To go back to the idea of Moore: there is another proposal by Nolini and me to make an anthology out of all your works. People who have read your books will select passages and from these a final selection will be made.
Satyendra: That is something like Raja Rao’s idea.
Purani: Yes, but he seems to have dropped away.
Satyendra: Because he wasn’t encouraged.
Sri Aurobindo: He found it impossible to make a popular edition perhaps. I don’t know how it can be done.
Nirodbaran: Dilip says that an English friend of his writes that Aldous Huxley has lost all his influence with publishers and modern writers since his turning a mystic.
Sri Aurobindo: Except in the New Statesman where his books are still well-reviewed.
Satyendra: He has written only two books of a mystical kind: Ends and Means and After Many a Summer.
Sri Aurobindo: Eyeless in Gaza also.
Satyendra: Is that mystical too?
Nirodbaran: That was the first.
Meher Baba has declared Mysore to be the spiritual capital of the world.
Satyendra: Yes, in the Sunday Times.
Sri Aurobindo: Where?
Satyendra: Yes, Sir, it is there. You haven’t seen it?
Sri Aurobindo: No.
Nirodbaran: It is in that article on birth-control.
Sri Aurobindo: I didn’t see it.
Nirodbaran: It’s at the end.
Sri Aurobindo: He has said that before.
Nirodbaran: He is against birth-control, calls it artificial. He advocates mental control.
Satyendra: He also says that married life can be a great step forward in spirituality.
Nirodbaran: And that we should consider the children as the gifts of God.
Sri Aurobindo: In advocating mental control, he means that people should not have children but that if they do they must be accepted.
Nirodbaran: Yes, as God’s gifts.
Sri Aurobindo: Of course. If anything happens in spite of yourself you must call it God’s gift.
Nirodbaran: I don’t understand how birth-control can prevent incentive to mental control.
Sri Aurobindo: He means that without birth-control there will be a fear of consequences and so one has to exercise mental control.
Nirodbaran: Is that necessarily true?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think so. When one has an erotic impulse, one will satisfy it somehow, in spite of the fear of consequences. That fear won’t stand in the way.
Nirodbaran: One other argument against birth-control is the fear of increased promiscuous illegitimate indulgence.
Sri Aurobindo: There is plenty of it already; a little increase won’t matter.
Nirodbaran: But in India there is not so much. In Europe, maybe. Vivekananda said that there is not a single virgin in Europe.
Satyendra: That is too much to say.
Sri Aurobindo: Did Vivekananda really say that?
Nirodbaran: Yes, I have read it.
Satyendra: But he said that in America many women are pure.
Nirodbaran: That may be in America. He spoke of Europe.
Sri Aurobindo: America is no better or worse than Europe. I don’t know if it was different in his time.
Purani: Anilbaran was saying that in Europe couples are changing their partners. There was a case in the court about it.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean trial marriages?
Purani: No. A member of one couple is exchanged for a member of another couple after having five or six children.
Sri Aurobindo: After having children?
Purani: Yes. The original members don’t agree well, so they want to change.
Sri Aurobindo: Like having a change of air, I suppose. (Laughter)
Satyendra: In Europe there are trial marriages.
Sri Aurobindo: Companionate marriages. The artists in Paris very often have them.
Nirodbaran: What is companionate marriage? Freedom to separate?
Sri Aurobindo: They live together as husband and wife but whenever one wants to separate one can do so. It has been found that these marriages can be as lasting as the usual thing.
Nirodbaran: During their stay together, do they have no freedom?
Sri Aurobindo: They live just as ordinary husbands and wives do. Even in the usual marriage, each sometimes has an independent life by mutual consent.
Nirodbaran: Yes, I have read of it in Romain Rolland.
Sri Aurobindo: Bertrand Russell is an advocate of this kind of companionate marriage, with freedom to do whatever one likes.
Nirodbaran: That is why he has divorced his wife and married his secretary.
Sri Aurobindo: Has he? I didn’t know that. When?
Nirodbaran: Some years ago.
Purani: It came as a great shock to Dilip. Russell had spoken to him of his happy ideal married life.
Sri Aurobindo: I suppose it is like wanting to have vriddasya taruni barya1 though the wife may not be barya. You know Maeterlinck did the same. In his old age he took up a beautiful young girl who was not at all intellectual and he forsook the wife who had inspired all his earlier works. He brought the girl home. The wife didn’t object – but ultimately the girl drove her out of the house.
Evening
Dr. Manilal had advised Sri Aurobindo to hang the injured leg from the edge of the bed. This was meant to increase the flexion of the knee. Sri Aurobindo did it for one day and then stopped. He said, “After finishing The Life Divine I’ll take it up again.” In the meantime Manilal once inquired from Gujarat if Sri Aurobindo had started hanging the leg again. To this Sri Aurobindo replied, “The Life Divine is still hanging.” Now Nirodbaran announced that Manilal was due to arrive on the 19th or the 20th.
Sri Aurobindo: And I am going to start hanging my leg tomorrow. (Laughter) The last two chapters of The Life Divine were sent off today.
Satyendra (laughing): Manilal seems to strike terror into you. (Sri Aurobindo laughed.) When is Dr. Rao coming? Both will meet now.
Nirodbaran: Dr. Rao has got badly entangled in the State.
Sri Aurobindo: He will carry pleasant memories of his State service just before retirement. Now his sympathy for the Congress Government will increase.
Satyendra: He seems to be hanging too.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, and the Personal Assistant is throwing stones at him in an attempt to dislodge him.
Nirodbaran: We thought this promotion of his was a divine gift for his services but he is having plenty of thorns.
Sri Aurobindo: Divine gifts are like that.
Satyendra: It may be a divine gift because whatever desires he may still have will be driven out by it. Tomorrow, by the way, is the 13th, the day of catastrophes.
Sri Aurobindo: After all, nothing may happen.
Nirodbaran: Or perhaps some more patrol activity on the Western front.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the Germans will claim to have brought down 300 planes and England will deny it.
When the others had gone, Purani brought up again the subject of Non-Being.
Purani: Did you say the other day that by following the affirmative way one also arrives at Non-Being? I was not very clear about it.
Sri Aurobindo (with a surprised look): No. Only by the negative path do you arrive at Non-Being, or what the Gita calls the Indeterminate. As I said, it is the same as in Taoism and Buddhism. But it is not really Nothing. What we can say is that no attribute of Being can be posited of it. Taoism says that Non-Being is Everything rather than Nothing. By the affirmative path you come through Supermind to Sachchidananda which is both static and dynamic, while through the negative path you come to Non-Being.
Purani: Then the negative path doesn’t lead to Sachchidananda?
Sri Aurobindo: No.
Nirodbaran: Is Non-Being the final stage of the negative path or does one pass through it to something else?
Sri Aurobindo: Non-Being is only a term of the mind to express the Supreme Existence. It is the Buddhists’ way of expressing the Supreme they contact. In reality it is nothing but an aspect of the Supreme. What is called the Indeterminate is not really indeterminate. It can be called so because it is not limited or confined to any one determination, not because it is incapable of any determination. That is what I have tried to show in The Life Divine.
Purani: In fact, it is the source of infinite determination. How is Non-Being related to the Supermind, etc., of the affirmative way?
Sri Aurobindo: Both are gates to the Absolute. Non-Being is an aspect of the Absolute. When you enter the Absolute you can’t describe it.
Purani: Jayantilal’s friend was asking if the inner mind, inner vital and physical are psychic in their nature.
Sri Aurobindo: No, they are supported by the psychic. These inner parts can have good and bad things, both light and darkness.
Purani: The psychic coming to the front acts through them?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Purani: He was also asking how the six chakras are related to the three parts of the being – the mental, the vital, the physical.
Sri Aurobindo: In fact, there are seven chakras. But you can take eye and throat together, and also heart and navel, and the last two centres as one.
Nirodbaran: If there was a medical chakra, I would try to open it.
Sri Aurobindo: In that case you should call in Dhanwantari or Ashwinikumar.
Purani: R says he is Dhanwantari.
Nirodbaran: If I call him, he will come then.
Sri Aurobindo: He will sit on the top of your head and swear at you. (Laughter)
1 Old man’s young wife.