Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
26 December 1940
We heard from Usha that Sachin’s daughter had improved after receiving the Mother’s flower. She has been brought to Calcutta.
Sri Aurobindo: Have the doctors diagnosed her condition? I haven’t heard anything.
Dr. Manilal: Regarding diagnosis the doctors are at sea …
Sri Aurobindo: They generally are. (Laughter) If only one doctor is concerned, it is not so bad a situation.
Dr. Manilal: Can you not help us with your knowledge?
Sri Aurobindo: That would be too much work for me.
Dr. Manilal: I don’t mean in every case, only in difficult cases.
Sri Aurobindo: It would establish a precedent. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: But you can know the right diagnosis and suitable treatment in a case.
Sri Aurobindo: That is a medical question.
Purani: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother can as well cure a case straight away instead of bothering about all that.
Evening
Dr. Manilal: If Joan of Arc was a saint, how could she be burnt alive, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: She was declared a saint only some years ago! And what did you have in mind? Many saints have been killed, burnt, riddled with arrows.
Nirodbaran: Christ was crucified.
Dr. Manilal: Some say it is not true. (Laughter)
Purani: How? It is written in the books! (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: They hold a procession now in memory of Joan of Arc.
Sri Aurobindo: Now?
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir, when I was in Paris ten years ago I saw it.
Sri Aurobindo: “Now” is not ten years ago. When you said “now”, I was astonished – how could Germany allow it? It is a French national festival.
Dr. Manilal: It is said that Joan of Arc used to have some power or some power used to descend in her by which she defeated the English.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, what about it?
Dr. Manilal: If so, how were they able to catch and burn her? The power couldn’t protect her?
Sri Aurobindo: She had no power at that time. She herself said that she was given that power only for a short time – two years or so – and after her work was finished she wanted to go away, but the king kept her back.
Dr. Manilal: Wasn’t it a sin to burn her? (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: They didn’t care a damn whether it was a sin, not having studied Jainism like Manilal. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: Tolstoy had some realisation, Sir, didn’t he?
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Dr. Manilal: Otherwise how could he write about angels etc? (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: I suppose you know that a writer has imagination.
Dr. Manilal: But he led a moral life.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh! Did he? He never succeeded in living a moral life – as far as I know. He became a mystic, at least tried to but never led a moral life. Are you interested in Tolstoy?
Dr. Manilal: In some principles of his.
Sri Aurobindo: What are they?
Dr. Manilal: I have forgotten, Sir. (Laughter) It was long ago I read him.
Sri Aurobindo: Principles like those of Gandhi?
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir.
Sri Aurobindo: Interested in Gandhi’s principles?
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir, in some of them when they are put into action.
Sri Aurobindo: Which?
Dr. Manilal: Ahimsa, for instance. Of course, not Ahimsa as he preaches it. There is also truthfulness.
Sri Aurobindo: Nothing new. Ahimsa is more than twenty-five hundred years old and truthfulness very ancient too, more than six thousand years.
Dr. Manilal: Millions and millions of years, Sir, according to Jainism. (Dr. Manilal mentioned a book.)
Sri Aurobindo: I am not interested in Jain history.
Purani: Where is the history? It is more a story like the Puranas.
The topic changed. What exactly Sri Aurobindo refers to in the following is not remembered.
Sri Aurobindo: I have sent both the synopsis and the summary down to Nolini. I don’t know how many pages they will be in type. I think there will be about two hundred pages altogether. Manilal might find them easy. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: It may be more difficult to understand than the text, because the argument will be more compact.
Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. One may get only the salient points.
Nirodbaran: I haven’t yet got a clear idea of the Absolute. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): How could you have got a clear idea? If you had, all your troubles and difficulties would have been over.
Nirodbaran: I mean mentally.
Sri Aurobindo: Even mentally one can’t get a clear idea.
Nirodbaran: What I mean is whether the Absolute stands for Sachchidananda, the Supreme, the Transcendent and is also beyond all of them.
Sri Aurobindo: Of course the Absolute is beyond all of them. But that doesn’t mean the Absolute has no Sachchidananda aspect. But it is beyond all expression.
Nirodbaran: Sachchidananda also is beyond expression.
Sri Aurobindo: No, it is Existence, Consciousness and Bliss.
Dr. Manilal: You can’t have any idea or experience of the Absolute.
Sri Aurobindo: No, you can have an idea, even experience it, but you can’t express it. When you try to express it, you limit it because expression comes from the mind and from mental ideas and thoughts.
Dr. Manilal: It is like sweetness, Sir. There are so many kinds of sweetness, but we can’t define it.
Sri Aurobindo: One can define it to a certain extent.
Dr. Manilal: How will you express the sweetness of a pomegranate, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: That is a question of style, but I am not going to do it; I have something more worthwhile. (Laughter)
Purani: Some define the taste by colour.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the modern craze!
Purani: They will say the sweetness of an orange is yellow.
Sri Aurobindo: Pomegranate pink and shades of pink as pink I, pink II.
Dr. Manilal: But one can get the proof and knowledge by eating.
Purani: That is experience.
Dr. Manilal: It is knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo: It is a knowledge of the taste, not a metaphysical knowledge. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: Nolini Sen says they are feeling a more and more intense force, peace, etc. at Calcutta in their meditation. So intense that some people wonder if it isn’t the supramental force that is descending.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): No! It is the spiritual force.
Nirodbaran: Even the children feel it.
Sri Aurobindo: Then it must be supramental. (Laughter) The supramental is independent of conditions and circumstances.
Nirodbaran: It is curious that we don’t feel anything.
Sri Aurobindo: The Supramental must have descended at Calcutta alone. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: In the circumference to start with.
Sri Aurobindo (After a pause): These experiences of force, peace, etc. come easily to those who begin the Yoga in the mind or vital. Those who begin in the physical mind have a tremendous tussle. Experiences don’t take place in them so easily and they come only after a long time.
Nirodbaran: Then I must be in the physical mind. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: But those who open their mind or vital first are not very safe. I have seen many Yogis, not great ones, I mean those who have got some experiences and power in the vital and they are satisfied with that. They think that that is all and there is nothing beyond it. X by his sadhana has got some inert peace in the physical which he thinks to be real peace.
Purani: Professor Indra Sen was asking me about the theory of cause and effect. I told him I had not read the new volume of The Life Divine but, as far as I could remember, there is a sort of a continuous process of things and events going on. You cut off from that continuity any part and say that that must be the cause of this. I don’t know if I am right.
Sri Aurobindo: What I have said in The Life Divine is antecedent and subsequent. What we consider to be the cause of a particular effect may not be the immediate cause. For that effect to be produced, so many forces have come into play; even the opposing forces are necessary. The human mind sees only one factor and thinks that it is the cause. But as a matter of fact, without the combination and opposition of other forces, the result would not have been possible.
The human mind can’t look at anything as a whole, it sees only by parts. It is like switching on a light and thinking that the switching must be the cause of the light. But the one who designs the whole electric system has to consider many factors before light can be produced.