Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
21 February 1940
Satyendra: Today is another great day according to astrology. Nothing happened on the 13th.
Dr. Manilal: Why is today a great day?
Purani: You don’t know? Jupiter and Venus have come very close together and that portends great events.
Dr. Manilal: They are always close.
Satyendra: No, this is the first time they are so near each other.
Sri Aurobindo: They are supposed to counteract the influences of Saturn and Mars which foreboded a great event.
Satyendra: Saturn and Mars came close to each other on the 13th, but nothing happened. Girdharlal says that it does not mean that the results will be immediate. They may happen long after.
Sri Aurobindo: Something may have happened already. Some more Finns were probably killed. And this Altmark incident may be due to Saturn and Mars!
Dr. Manilal: The astrologers recommend various ceremonies to propitiate Saturn. This really just means propitiating themselves!
Sri Aurobindo: If you propitiate Saturn now, in ten years Saturn will have forgotten all about it. How then will results come long after?
Dr. Manilal: But do these astrological signs mean anything? What do you think, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: I never think. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: What is your opinion then?
Sri Aurobindo: I have no opinion. (Laughter) The signs may be indicative or effective. One has to find out the explanations according to one’s own light.
Dr. Manilal: There are plenty of people who go about as astrologers just to rob people. They know practically nothing. I remember an astrologer who once came to my place to cast the horoscope of some baby. He was mainly after getting some money by saying he would have to propitiate this graha (asterism) and that graha. But he didn’t know that I was a hard master to deal with.
Sri Aurobindo: He would have to propitiate Saturn before coming to you. (Laughter)
Purani: There was one astrologer of the Gaekwad …
Dr. Manilal: Yes, he was a good man. He is dead.
Sri Aurobindo: And this is a bad man who is alive! (Laughter)
Dr. Rao (who had come for the Darshan after five weeks of absence, a delay due to his usual trouble with the officials): These astrologers, Sir, are quite accurate about the past but they can’t predict the future correctly. Many of my friends have had that experience.
Sri Aurobindo: I also had that experience with the Bhrigu Samhita people.
Dr. Manilal: One Bhrigu Samhita man came to Baroda and swindled a lot of people, and many became insolvent.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Dr. Manilal: People began to speculate heavily, relying on his forecasts and they lost a lot. Even some business people came to grief.
Sri Aurobindo: Then they deserved it. Business people ought to have some sense.
Dr. Manilal: V told me that he began hearing all sorts of ragas after he started Yoga.
Sri Aurobindo: Plenty of musicians hear ragas without doing Yoga.
Nirodbaran: Dr. Manilal can have a shot with this Hanumant Rao who, he says, can cure simply by spreading his hands over the patient, but it will be difficult as he has no faith.
Dr. Manilal: But if he can cure me he will make a name.
Sri Aurobindo: Become immortal. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: People will say he has cured Manilal.
Sri Aurobindo: Even Manilal! (After a while) Mother says Dutt looks very old and looks really like a story-teller. (Laughter)
Evening
Sri Aurobindo (soon after lying down in bed): I have seen at Darshan in the afternoon one remarkable man among the whole crowd: Buddhadev. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: The product of an early marriage!
At this time only Dr. Becharlal, Dr. Manilal, Champaklal and Nirodbaran were present. In the morning we had already indicated to Sri Aurobindo the huge proportions in length and breadth of Buddhadev. That is why he knew his name now. At sponging time Satyendra again raised the topic.
Satyendra: Could you make out Buddhadev, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: I cannot but remember him as the one remarkable man in the whole crowd.
Nirodbaran: Superman!
Sri Aurobindo: Sample of the coming superman. (Laughter)
Somebody brought in the question of astrologers again and said that what Naik had learned about an astrologer regarding the Darshan was not correct. It first seemed some Bombay astrologer had said before the accident to Sri Aurobindo’s right leg that there would be no Darshan in November 1938 – the month of the accident. Now it was disclosed that the astrologer had said it only after the accident. The whole question was about the predictions by astrologers of future events. In most cases they cannot predict the future correctly.
Sri Aurobindo: The Mother told me of a French astrologer whose prediction of the future came true. He predicted that a particular man would die of sea-water. He gave the date, even the time. His family kept him away from the sea, and on the day the accident was to take place they were dining together. Someone remarked ironically, “Where is the astrologer’s prophecy now? The time he gave is passing away and there is no sea here!” Just at that moment the man was eating a sea-fish, got a bone stuck in his throat and at once died. The hour was exactly the one mentioned by the astrologer.
Champaklal: It was fated that he should die.
Sri Aurobindo: In this case it was.
Dr. Manilal: If one is destined to die, one can’t escape.
Sri Aurobindo: There is not always a fixed destiny. Destiny can be changed. And there are many destinies. Astrologers usually go by a rule of thumb. So some cases come out right, most are wrong. In order to be correct, one must have the power of intuition.
Dr. Manilal: Cheiro made prophecies, some of which have come very true. For example, he said that Prince Edward, son of George V, would lose the throne because of a woman. He also said that the Jews would be persecuted and driven out everywhere.
Sri Aurobindo: This prophecy about the Jews is a very old one. According to it, when the Jews will be persecuted and driven out of every country, it will be a sign of the coming of the millennium. Usually, the prophecies that come true are the only ones noticed. Nobody notices most of those that don’t come true.
(After a while) This time Nirod’s intuition is proving to be correct. (To Nirodbaran who, puzzled, had begun looking at him) I mean your intuition about typhoid1. Today’s case, you said, may be typhoid.
Nirodbaran: Oh, I see.
Sri Aurobindo: That kind of intuition is very convenient, as it doesn’t refer to any particular case. It can be applied to any case.
Dr. Manilal: It seems Tagore has advised Gandhi to give up politics.
Sri Aurobindo: Why? Gandhi could as well ask Tagore to give up poetry.
Dr. Manilal: And Gandhi has replied that life is impossible without politics. Perhaps because of the factions in the Congress, Tagore advised him like that.
1 A few days back, in meditation, Nirodbaran had seen that all were puzzled about the diagnosis of an imaginary case. Then he heard Sri Aurobindo say, “Are you sure it is not typhoid?”