Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
21 March 1940
Nirodbaran: I was having a discussion on Avatarhood.
Sri Aurobindo: With whom?
Nirodbaran: In a trance, with my own inner and outer selves. The only thing I remember is: “How can the Avatar – ?”
Sri Aurobindo: This is the first time you remember something!
Nirodbaran: I met X today.
Sri Aurobindo: Ah! What does he say?
Nirodbaran: He says he still can’t do much physical work. Any strain gives him difficulty in breathing and a feeling of compression in the chest. It seems he was not feeling up to the mark and spoke of “lowered vitality” to a semi-medical friend. The friend gave him a powerful, dangerous drug. He had mistaken the sense of the words “lowered vitality”.
Sri Aurobindo: How? He thought the vitality had been exhausted by numerous erotic actions?
Nirodbaran: Yes – and he gave him yohimbine hydrochloride with incorrect directions. X took a huge quantity of it and hence the drastic consequences. X says, “It was by a special divine intervention that I was saved.”
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Nirodbaran: A letter from Y. This time Y versus Z. Z has written to Y asking some questions and Y has replied.
Sri Aurobindo (after reading the two letters): When you are doing mental work there is of course no silence in the mind, but things can come to you when the mind is silent and then it won’t be mental work. After my meeting with Lele, when I used to give speeches or write articles for the Bande Mataram, my mind was silent and things came from above. The mind didn’t take any part.
Champaklal: You seem to have written to Z that the Essays on the Gita was written in this manner.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Satyendra: In fact, the whole of the Arya was so written.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Y says that the mind can become truly silent by the touch of Supermind. Why does he bring Supermind in? The mind can become silent long before – without its touch.
Nirodbaran: If we have to wait for Supermind in order to get the mind silent, we shall all be gone before any silence comes!
Sri Aurobindo: Quite so. I had the experience long before I knew anything about Supermind. And when the mind becomes silent, things may come from anywhere: from the Cosmic Vital or Cosmic Mind, from above – Intuition – or from within. Some people think that everything comes from the Mother or the Divine. It is a little dangerous to think, as the writer of one of these letters does, that whatever comes to us or passes through us has its source in the Mother.
Nirodbaran: How to differentiate the sources?
Sri Aurobindo: You can only know by experience.
Satyendra: Why does Y bring in Supermind to get silence? One can get it even by going a little within.
Sri Aurobindo: That won’t be silence but quietude. One can get silence even by concentration. When one is concentrated on a subject, the rest of the mind falls silent and it is only one step more to make the whole mind silent. Of course, to keep it permanently silent is a different matter and is very difficult. When the mind is silent one can get spiritual experiences.
Nirodbaran: Whatever comes to the silent mind – is it necessarily correct?
Sri Aurobindo: No. (Then with a little smile) People make two common mistakes. Whatever they hear within themselves, whatever comes to them, they say, is all from the Mother – and whatever they receive, they say, comes from above. If things were like that, it would all be very easy.