Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

23 October 1940

Purani: Gandhi hasn’t appointed any successor to Vinoba. He says that this time there won’t be a continuous stream of resisters.

Sri Aurobindo: If he appoints one every month so that they may be spread over the whole period of the war, it will be all right.

Satyendra: He wants to proceed very carefully this time as he doesn’t want to precipitate any mass movement and thus give the Government cause for provocation.

Sri Aurobindo: Especially as now is the best chance! (Laughter) But surely by a few arrests he doesn’t expect to change the hearts of people like Churchill and Amery.

Purani: He says any number of people are volunteering. But he will select only those who believe in complete non-violence and in Khadi, etc. Even these may not all be expected to be called. He evidently has some plan or is waiting for inspiration!

Satyendra: He may wait indefinitely but I fear the Working Committee won’t.

Sri Aurobindo (laughing): No! They will be wild.

Purani: Churchill’s speech is again magnificent. He has a wonderful quality of rising to the occasion. He has made a very stirring appeal to the French not to succumb to Hitler’s perfidious cunning. It is mostly due to his personality that America has turned her sympathies towards Britain.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but also helped by the misdeeds of Japan and Hitler. (Laughter) Churchill is the second great man given by his family to England at times of crises.

Purani: Some American correspondent has said that though destruction from bombing is going on in London, people are as firm as before and taking it all coolly.

Sri Aurobindo: It seems for the first few days they were very perturbed. That’s what Mona’s mother has written to her. Then they accustomed themselves to the bombing.

Satyendra: In such circumstances, people become fatalists.

Sri Aurobindo: It is like the Japanese. In Japan there is a fire every week, a typhoon each fortnight and an earthquake every month. Mother said that they go to bed quite dressed and as soon as any of these things take place, they jump out of bed and rush out. (Laughter)

(after some time) Laval is at his game trying to make a pact with Hitler. I hope people understand him and won’t believe in him. Those who understand Hitler ought to know that Hitler will agree to anything that suits him at the moment and afterwards swallow everything.

Purani (handing Sri Aurobindo Dean Inge’s book on Plotinus): It seems Krishnaprem has said that Plotinus’s Nous is the same as Supermind. Somebody from outside has asked if that is true.

Sri Aurobindo (after looking at a few pages): Inge takes Nous as Spirit. As far as I can make out, Nous is spiritual consciousness, not Supermind, but I will see about it again.