Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

11 March 1940

Satyendra: Jayantilal was asking if a glossary was going to be prepared for The Life Divine.

Sri Aurobindo: Glossary for what? Sanskrit terms?

Satyendra: He didn’t tell me exactly. It may be for the new Yogic terms also. Perhaps he wants it more for himself than for others. He finds it difficult, for instance, to catch the distinction between extraterrestrial and extra-cosmic.

Sri Aurobindo: If it is for Sanskrit terms I can understand. You can’t write of Yoga without using Sanskrit terms.

There followed a short talk on R. Purani showed Sri Aurobindo a poem of R’s in answer to Yeats’ poem “The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart”.

Sri Aurobindo (after reading the poem): These people write now and then very fine lines. Here’s an example: “Embrace the malice in the dragon’s fold.” It is a really fine line.

Purani: Here are four lines of J’s, as if in answer to R.

Sri Aurobindo (on reading them): There is a poetic competition between Yeats, R and J! When R was sending me his poems, I found some fine lines amidst a mass of nonsense. With his wonderful vital energy he could have succeeded in any line he took up, but his vital being was rather undisciplined.

Purani: When he showed me his poems I told him to try to improve his form and advised him to see Amal’s poems. He saw them and said, “That chip of a boy – what does he know of poetry?”

Sri Aurobindo: That chip of a boy knows how to write and R doesn’t.

After this, Nirodbaran read out two letters. One was from Buddhadev Bhattacharya. Buddhadev had written that he had talked about Sri Aurobindo in his class.

Sri Aurobindo: How do I come into a class of botany?

Satyendra: Perhaps as an example of evolution?

Sri Aurobindo: From the red lotus known as “aurobindo”? (Laughter)

Then everybody enjoyed Charu Dutt’s letter in which he said that he would very soon let loose a flood of stories about Pondicherry. This was just what Satyendra had predicted before Dutt’s departure.

Evening

Satyendra: I hear that the glossary to The Life Divine is going to be prepared by Sisir Mitra. I don’t know what precisely he intends doing. Perhaps he will give a definition of every term.

Purani: It can’t be a definition. For the meaning of a term will vary in different contexts.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the meaning has to be taken with reference to the context. A definition ties down the meaning.

Satyendra: Other philosophers have well-defined terms of their own.

Sri Aurobindo: That is why their philosophies are so rigid. One can give only an indication. In spiritual subjects, one can’t give anything more.

Satyendra: There will be so many commentaries on The Life Divine in the future.

Purani: There won’t be much room for them. There is a sufficient body of mental reasoning in the book for everyone to be able to understand it. If the book had been like the Sutras, there would have been more room.

Sri Aurobindo: Even so, I suppose different interpretations will be made, just as there are Hegelians and Neo-Hegelians. Shankara wrote a brief commentary on the Gita and then there were many commentaries on his commentary. But in The Life Divine some of the chapters run to sixty or seventy pages of exposition.