Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

22 March 1940

Nirodbaran: Adhar Das has reviewed A’s Songs from the Soul in the Calcutta Review and compared it with Saint Augustine’s Confessions.

Sri Aurobindo: It is not a very great compliment.

Nirodbaran: About the poetry, Das writes that it is too much burdened with mysticism and philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo: Objection to philosophy I can understand but how can one object to mysticism in poetry?

Purani: There are many mystic poets.

Nirodbaran: Das objects to too much of it.

Sri Aurobindo: But the question is whether the writing is poetic or not. Maybe the book is overburdened with mysticism but if the mysticism is expressed poetically, I don’t see how there can be any objection.

Nirodbaran: Y has sent another letter. He says that the distinctions between the quiet mind, the calm mind and the silent mind are not clear.

Sri Aurobindo (after reading the letter): A quiet mind is not necessarily free from thoughts. Thoughts can come but the mind is free from disturbance. The mental activity can go on in a quiet mind without the mind getting disturbed in any way. It is a negative state, you may say. In the silent mind also, thoughts can come but they are on the surface, while the silence remains behind, watching the thoughts without taking part in them.

Nirodbaran: In the quiet mind thoughts can come; they can also come in the silent mind. What is the distinction then?

Sri Aurobindo: In the silent mind, the mind may be completely silent without allowing any thoughts to enter at all or, if they come, they remain on the surface and the activity goes on on the surface while the silence remains intact behind. You can say that what is behind is silent while the surface is quiet. Do you understand? You can call the quiet mind a negative state whereas the silent mind is a positive one. The silent mind is the Purusha and the quiet is the activity of energy or Prakriti in a particular way. My mind is now silent. If I allow thoughts they will come in: they will be just on the surface without touching the silence behind. Of course, if the silence is not strong enough, the activity may disturb the silence.

The calm mind too is a positive state. It is the whole stuff or substance of the mind that is silent in the silent mind. In the calm mind also activity goes on on the surface without disturbing the calmness. It is a sort of fundamental stillness. Peace of the mind is still more positive.

Nirodbaran: All these seem then to be differences in degree.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but very great differences. I have explained all of them somewhere. The silence of the mind is the final stage.

Nirodbaran: And the vacant mind?

Sri Aurobindo: The vacant mind may not be necessarily Yogic. It may be an inert mind, a neutral state and in that condition it may open to anything. Peace and silence in the mind are the result of Yoga.

Nirodbaran: Y says that he has more or less a quiet mind, not a silent one which can only be had by some descent from above.

Sri Aurobindo: Peace and silence in the mind are either a descent from above or a welling up from within. But they do not necessarily come from Supermind. They can come from the spiritual planes.

Nirodbaran: Since he finds silence something very difficult to get, he says it can’t be had by any effort but by a descent.

Sri Aurobindo: That is so, but the descent is not from Supermind.

Purani: One can have the experience of silence by experience of Sachchidananda in the mind.

Sri Aurobindo: Of course. Didn’t he have the experience?

Nirodbaran: I don’t know. He doesn’t understand how the mind in transmitting things, can be passive. He says some activity must be there.

Sri Aurobindo: What activity?

Nirodbaran: Thoughts, for instance; say, in writing. A descent of light or peace can come directly without going through the mind.

Sri Aurobindo: In writing also thoughts may not pass through the mind at all. While I was writing for the Bande Mataram, they didn’t pass through the mind; they either came directly to the pen and I didn’t know beforehand what I was writing or they came just like that (gesture from the head downwards). Sometimes they passed through the mind which was quite passive. If the mind takes part, then the whole thing gets spoiled. In poetry, it is the activity of the mind that meddles.

Nirodbaran: The quiet or silent mind I can make clear to myself, but not the calm mind. Perhaps it is a matter of experience?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, you have to know the stuff of the mind. Calmness has strength in it. It is the strong man who can be calm, a weak man can be quiet. The gods are calm; you can’t say they are quiet.

Nirodbaran: In occupied moments, various loose thoughts come in. They don’t disturb. What is that state?

Sri Aurobindo: That is the quiet mind. Vivekananda says that one should allow the mind to run on like that and ultimately it will by itself get tired. I don’t think it is always successful.

Purani: When I used to be disturbed, I would read The Life Divine and other books of yours. The mind would grow quiet and I would suddenly experience the mental representation of the ideas expressed.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it was the same with me when I was reading the Gita and the Upanishads in jail.

Champaklal: People say that Krishna gave the Gita into your hand.

Sri Aurobindo (after laughing): I think I said or wrote something like that. I didn’t know that they would give a material interpretation to it.

Nirodbaran: Y says he has tried for ten to twelve years to get silence but hasn’t succeeded.

Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know whether one can get it by trying. It is by a descent that one can get it.

Nirodbaran: But a descent will only be occasional.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but its effects go on.