Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

10 June 1940

Satyendra: Will there be any hierarchy among the supramental beings?

Sri Aurobindo: Supramental beings? In the Overhead, there is a hierarchy: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and so on.

Purani: That includes the Overmind.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, among the supramental beings too there is a hierarchy, in the sense of a gradation of consciousness towards the Sachchidananda.

Nirodbaran: Sisir was saying you have written in the last volume of The Life Divine that the supramental beings will retire into islets.

Sri Aurobindo (laughing): I meant by islets, living in collective groups.

Nirodbaran: I also said the same thing to him.

Satyendra: Like individual isolation, it will be a collective isolation. That is still my difficulty – why should there be any collective group? One can exercise one’s influence individually as well.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but collective influence will be of a different kind – so that it may exercise its influence on the whole world. Individual isolation is for those who want Mukti. But this will be an ideal collective group along with the change of the outer mould to serve as an ideal life to others.

Nirodbaran: Will there be missions to other countries?

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord, missions for preaching? No! Groups will develop and will have different expressions according to different conditions. Whatever is necessary, and in whichever way needed, will grow up of itself.

Satyendra: I do not know how Pondicherry could have been selected.

Sri Aurobindo (laughing): When I came it was very quiet, there was no life. Of course there was a lot of beating and fighting, if you mean by that life.

Then the talk changed to the topic of war.

Nirodbaran: Germany has thrown in a huge army.

Sri Aurobindo: A tremendous number. They have lost about half a million, and as many in Belgium, and still they are putting in fresh numbers. Can France stand against it all?

Nirodbaran: Why does not England send her Expeditionary Force?

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! You must give them at least seven days’ rest.

Nirodbaran: But she is supposed to have a big army.

Satyendra: It is under training now and it will take some time. The English have no conscription and so are as raw as ourselves.

Nirodbaran: What about America? There is a big army there.

Sri Aurobindo: Not so big – only fifty thousand, and they want to make it a million. They are also not properly trained. Of course they can call up their volunteers. Even they will have to be trained till August. The question is whether France will be able to stand so long.

Nirodbaran: If Paris falls, will the French be able to continue the fight?

Sri Aurobindo: They can, but it will mean a decentralisation of their whole life. And, besides, a great moral shock. It is not like India shifting the capital to several places.

Purani: In the last war they shifted the Government to Bordeaux.

Sri Aurobindo: Besides, north France is the most important part because of the industries and commerce there. If Paris goes, Normandy also will go, that is, France virtually will go. In the south, Bordeaux and Rhone are the few important places. That has always been the difficulty of France – that Paris is too near the frontier. If Paris is taken, Hitler will have some breathing time before he attacks other countries.

Satyendra: England will continue to fight, Churchill says, even after England is gone.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is something new. The English people are very tough, they will go on till they are directly touched. (After a while) These huge migrations are quite unprecedented in history. Two million Belgians have gone to Paris.

Nirodbaran: They can be put in the army.

Sri Aurobindo: That is what is being done.

Nirodbaran: If the British Government had started training in India, India would have played a great part at present. The commander-in-chief speaks of one hundred thousand soldiers.

Sri Aurobindo: That is nothing.

Satyendra: Now everybody is speaking of India’s defence. The Statesman of Calcutta is pleading for a compromise and settlement and starting the defence preparation. The European Association in Calcutta is also urging it.

Sri Aurobindo: Because they have seen things with their own eyes and know and are practical people. The Statesman has always been for some self-government for India. Englishmen have got a correct vital instinct. They know that it is a time of necessity, while the ruling class is shut up in its traditions and runs in grooves. The Labour Party can now exert its pressure on the Government.

Satyendra: When they are out of the Government they can press, but when in the Government practical difficulties come in the way.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but necessity now demands self-government. Of course if the Congress had been conciliatory it would have been easy for the British Government. They can’t accept whatever the Constituent Assembly decides.

Satyendra: Englishmen here have their own vital interest at stake.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but that interest is also connected with England and if England goes, they also go.