Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

9 March 1940

Satyendra: Do ascent and descent of consciousness take place only through the head?

Sri Aurobindo: No, they can take place through the lower centres also.

Satyendra: Nirod had the idea that they happen only through the head. I was thinking of Sahana’s experience of ascent and descent.

Sri Aurobindo: Did she have that experience?

Nirodbaran: The one we told you about.

Sri Aurobindo: Oh that? Her usual ascent-descent?

Nirodbaran: Yes.

Sri Aurobindo: That is different. That is common among most people who have an opening. That is the ascent and descent of one’s own consciousness, while what I am speaking of is the whole being going up to the Divine Consciousness and coming down with it.

Nirodbaran: The distinction is still not very clear.

Sri Aurobindo: In the usual experience, it is one’s habitual consciousness that rises: it may be any part of the being, the mental, vital or physical, that goes up to the higher planes above the mind and stays there for a time; some organisation takes place and then the consciousness comes down with some result. In the ascent and descent about which I have written in The Life Divine, the whole being – you may call it the Self – goes up, say, to the Overmind, settles there and meets the Divine and then the descent of the Divine takes place. Obviously this is more difficult.

Satyendra: Is descent easier than ascent?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

Nirodbaran: I thought it was through the head alone that both happen.

Sri Aurobindo: It is usually through the mind, when the mental consciousness goes up, but it can happen otherwise also, the vital or physical consciousness directly going up without passing through the mental.

Nirodbaran: Sahana’s experience of ascent and her feeling of nothingness and then her return with the sense of a flame in the heart – is it an experience of an ascent through the heart?

Sri Aurobindo: I don’t remember well. In her case it wouldn’t be through the mind. But all the same it is a major ascent into the spiritual consciousness.

Satyendra: I had also the experience of ascent through the Muladhara Chakra before doing any Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo: That is the physical consciousness ascending.

Nirodbaran: It would be nice to have this experience of ascent and descent.

Sri Aurobindo: Remove that “cornice”!

Purani: One Pradhan, an M.L.C. of Bombay, has written a letter asking for darshan and wanting to meet you. He says he had the privilege of translating your speech at the Surat Congress and that you may know him.

Sri Aurobindo: How can I know him? Anyone could stand up and translate my speech. You can tell him that I give only silent darshan three times a year. It won’t be true to say that I don’t talk with my disciples. (Laughter)

Evening

Satyendra: If the Supermind is involved in matter, why should the divine intervention and descent be necessary? It can evolve by itself.

Sri Aurobindo: There was intervention in the evolution of the mind too and so will there be for the Supermind. The forces of the Inconscience are too strong. That is why the intervention is needed. Otherwise in the ordinary course of evolution it would take a very long time. The forces of the Inconscience are there to prevent any premature evolution and they exert a strong downward pull. There is also an upward pull. Mind and Supermind are involved in matter just as they are in the Superconscience. It is by waking up their corresponding forces below by the upward pull and the corresponding force mounting up and meeting those from above that the evolution can be complete.

Purani: Is spiritual experience possible without the awakening of the psychic?

Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by the awakening? The psychic may be simply awake or it may take command of the being. But spiritual experience is not possible without the psychic awakening – occult experience can occur without it.

Nirodbaran: Then, when the experiences stop, it means that the psychic has gone to sleep.

Sri Aurobindo: It may be the overactivity of the other parts that stops them.

Nirodbaran: In our own case I don’t see any overactivity due to which they could have stopped.

Sri Aurobindo: In your case it may be underactivity. (Laughter) But you had the experience of the “cornice”!

Nirodbaran: Is there some decision by the Higher Force to stop experiences in this or that fellow because they may be bad for him? (Laughter)

Purani: He thinks his experiences have been intentionally stopped.

Nirodbaran: But can’t it be true that when work goes on in some plane, for example, the subconscient, experiences may get suspended?

Sri Aurobindo: Of course. Not only the subconscient but also the physical. It all depends on how far one has gone.