Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

26 May 1940

Sri Aurobindo: The British have made another strategic retreat. (Laughter)

Purani: Yes, they got safely away without losing a single man.

Sri Aurobindo: The Germans allowed them to run away, perhaps.

Purani: Fifteen generals have been relieved of their command in France.

Sri Aurobindo: That is quite a big number.

Purani: They were said to be indifferent and negligent.

Sri Aurobindo: That is why Reynaud said that if the French could stand for a month, there would be a better chance. They will have to look for new men to take the place of the old generals.

Nirodbaran: Was there sabotage in the army?

Purani: The generals were just indifferent.

Sri Aurobindo: Not sabotage exactly. Some officer here said that along with the first French refugees some two thousand Germans came in and produced a demoralising effect. And yet the authorities took no action against them. Daladier exhibits himself as a strong man but he is really very weak.

Purani: A French counterpart of Chamberlain?

Sri Aurobindo: Quite so.

Purani: The Germans praise Lord Gort and General Ironside, saying they are quiet and don’t show what they are going to do.

Sri Aurobindo: But they haven’t done anything so far, except make strategic retreats. They do what the Germans want them to and hence the praise. They haven’t shown any very brilliant capacity till now.

Nirodbaran: The British rely much on Weygand.

Sri Aurobindo: They know that they themselves have no capable persons.

Nirodbaran: I wonder if there is any sabotage in the British Army. Or is it the inherent weakness of the army itself? But the situation seems to have improved a little.

Sri Aurobindo: On the French side. The British are always retreating. If they go on in that way, the Germans will reach the ports and the British will have to retreat into their ships. That will be good in one way. The French will have a more easily defensible line – not too long. At present they have four lines along four rivers – the Somme, the Oise, the Meuse and the Scheldt. They can defend themselves without difficulty against mechanised units, but they haven’t yet found anything against dive-bombers.

Nirodbaran: Dilip had a letter from Niren R. Chowdhury. It seems Dilip sent Huxley’s book to Charu Dutt and asked him to forward it to Niren. Niren, after reading it, says, “It is all right, but Marx’s Dialectical Materialism is the last word.”

Purani: Marx’s own followers are now differing among themselves about his Dialectical Materialism. What exactly is it?

Satyendra: Huxley hasn’t developed any philosophy in his book. He has only described his experience. It is neti, neti (“Not this, not that”).

Sri Aurobindo: No, it is not all neti, neti. So far as I have gathered from the extracts I have read, it is not that alone.

Satyendra: But he has not given any philosophy.

Purani: He is a moralist.

Sri Aurobindo: He has said, as I have done, that there is no solution to the problem of the world except by spirituality and the spiritual way.

Satyendra: Can spiritual experience solve the problem?

Sri Aurobindo: It is the basis. What people try to make out of Huxley and Gerald Heard is that theirs is a confession of defeat and that they on their part want to escape from the world. It is not really this, as Isherwood has pointed out in the New Statesman. He says that what he understands from Huxley and Heard is that they want to discover a way to change the present human consciousness by which alone the social and political problems will be solved. Somebody also said that Heard advocates Buddhist fatalism. To which Heard replied that he didn’t advocate fatalism at all. Nor is there any fatalism in Buddhism. All human history has been a question of change of consciousness, and Huxley says that the change can come only by spirituality. Hitherto people have worked on the principle of opposition and indifference. That can only make a patchwork solution. Behind the multiplicity and division one has to see the identity and oneness. Of course, if you say spirituality is not a solution, then you have to fall into Mayavada (World-Illusionism).

Satyendra (after some time): Do you envisage the gnostic being as living and acting in the world in a group formation?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. If the individual has to remain in society, the gnostic being has to do this too and the individual must merge in the group.

Satyendra: In place of individual isolation, it will then be group isolation?

Sri Aurobindo: From the group the gnostic being will act on the world. Since the Supermind wants to change the world, the group will have to take up the outer life of the society and the individual has to throw himself into the outer life. I am not speaking of the inner life. Either the individual has to live secluded and isolated from the life of the society or take up its own outer life in order to change it. Without group action the individual will have to give way to the life of the society and be like one of the group.

Satyendra: There has been plenty of spiritual life lived in the world.

Sri Aurobindo: Is that why it had no effect on the world?

Purani (after Satyendra’s exit): What I understand Satyendra to say is: Why should one be compelled to lead a group life?

Nirodbaran: There is no compulsion and, if at all, it is an inner one.

Sri Aurobindo: Why should there be any compulsion? One can go, if he likes, to the mountains and live there, but if one is impelled from within to lead a group life he can follow the impulsion. If the Supramental Truth commends itself to one, one can live according to it.

Purani: I told Satyendra that the very fact that he talks of compulsion and of keeping one’s individuality, shows that he is talking from his mental imagination. For, if one attains to the Sachchidananda consciousness, one is no longer bound by such ideas, one is led to accord oneself to that higher consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo: And if he wants to keep his individuality, for that he has to accept the Supramental Truth; for in the Supermind alone there is diversity and difference but without division – diversity there is based on unity and difference is a play of the One.

Evening

Purani: That book of astrology is hard on Sir Oswald Mosley, and what the writer has said has come true. Mosley has been imprisoned.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but Mosley may comfort himself by thinking that Hitler too was once imprisoned.

Purani: As regards particulars, the book is not correct at all.

Sri Aurobindo: Only about general influences does he make some right guesses.