Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
16 March 1940
Nirodbaran: Sahana has given me two letters of yours to her explaining her experience of ascent and descent. She wants to know if the ascent and descent spoken of is the usual one or the major ascent and descent we heard about from you the other day.
Sri Aurobindo (after reading both the letters): The first one is the usual ascent and descent. The consciousness has not got fixed above in the higher planes. It is the mental opening through the head and going up. The second one is the major ascent, rather the beginning. It has to become fixed above and the descent of the higher consciousness has to take place and transform the nature. Her later experiences are a continuation of this, I suppose.
Nirodbaran: The first letter is dated 1931, the second 1936.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes; in between she had a lot of troubles and disturbances.
Nirodbaran: Can’t one have experiences during such troubles and disturbances?
Sri Aurobindo: One can but they may not be of the higher ascent and descent because when such movements take place there comes a turn in the sadhana and these troubles and disturbances do not occur.
Nirodbaran: She says that now she doesn’t get disturbed.
Sri Aurobindo: Then she has taken a decisive turn perhaps. In the struggle between the vital and the psychic, the vital may have submitted and the psychic may have triumphed. Unless the psychic is not only in front but also strongly established to take control of the other parts, the decisive descent does not occur. There are cases in which even without the psychic opening there may be the ascent. Then the course is a more chequered one. If the psychic is strong, the mind and the vital submit; but it doesn’t mean that one has no more difficulties. There will still be difficulties but they are superficial, they don’t disturb one so much, and there are no major difficulties in which one is on the point of giving up Yoga. The mind and vital then yield. That is what I call a decisive turn. When the psychic is strongly established the Divine Consciousness can descend and do the work.
Satyendra: Her first experience of this kind was in 1931. Nine years have passed. She still speaks of egoism.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, egoism! Even spiritual people have some sort of egoism. Egoism goes only after absolute Siddhi. Do you think nine years too long?
Satyendra: Life is too short. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: A period of nine years is not too long for sadhana.
Satyendra (addressing Nirodbaran): What was Sahana’s method?
Nirodbaran: I don’t know.
Sri Aurobindo: Like everybody else she was making an effort and falling down.
Nirodbaran: She was having experiences in meditation before she came here.
Satyendra: I can’t meditate.
Sri Aurobindo: Meditation is a great help because you can get into the inner being and work on the other parts. Not that the work can’t be done from the surface, but it is more difficult. That is why people lay stress on meditation.
Satyendra: I also had a few experiences. One of ascent, as I have told you. Another of death. I knew that my breathing was going to stop and I felt that I was going to die, while my consciousness was above the head in a sort of an egg-shell.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not death. It is the rise of consciousness from the body.
Satyendra: I had also the experience of Light above the head.
Sri Aurobindo: The Light has to come down. Then the vital troubles will disappear.
Satyendra: The difficulty is that I am still not settled here. Others have accepted this path as their own. I have a great desire for Moksha.
Sri Aurobindo: In spite of her experiences Sahana was also on the point of going away about two years ago.
Satyendra: Of course I didn’t have such acute crises.
Evening
Sri Aurobindo: About Indumati I may say that Purna “God-meeting” is possible by Purna devotion, full self-giving, so that nothing else matters to her, although she can get guidance from and communication with Krishna without that.
Satyendra: She seems to be a Vaishnavite.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Satyendra: She speaks of Goloka darshan.
Sri Aurobindo: How does one get it?
Satyendra: I don’t know.
Sri Aurobindo: By intensity of devotion, isn’t that so?
Satyendra: She may be holding Mirabai before her as an example.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Mirabai had the intensity of love.
Champaklal: Is there anything like Goloka? Is it real?
Sri Aurobindo: It is real but it depends on how one sees it.
Purani (showing a book by Laurence Binyon): Binyon praises Chinese art and says about Indian art that its subject matter appeals indirectly, not through the lines and moods of the painting itself, while Chinese art is synthetic.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not true. I don’t agree. Western critics call Indian subject matter conceptual, by which they mean intellectual. Take for instance these two Javanese figures1. Javanese art is practically Indian. They express very clearly the attitude of devotion and prayer through the lines and moods of the figures. No doubt, if one paints a man in an attitude of prayer without conveying any such feeling, it is different. Europeans like Chinese art the best among the Eastern arts.
Purani: He says that in Chinese art there is the expression of the Spirit in Nature.
Sri Aurobindo: Europeans have no clear idea of the Spirit and the spiritual. What Binyon mentions is the expression of the Spirit of universal Nature and nothing truly spiritual. As I have said, Far Eastern art expresses the Spirit as Nature, as Prakriti, while Indian art expresses the Spirit as Self, the spiritual being, Purusha. That is too subtle for the European mind to understand.
1 Wood-carvings which stood on a table in Sri Aurobindo’s room.