Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
4 January 1941
Dr. Manilal: What type of diseases does the Inconscient bring out, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: No type! Any type. It doesn’t select. Each person may have a personal selection. For instance, Nirod has a predilection for a cold.
Dr. Manilal: And I have for shoulder pain, gall-bladder trouble, angina, blood pressure – a walking museum of diseases, Sir.
Sri Aurobindo: Then you must be a big Yogi. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: How?
Sri Aurobindo: Barin used to say that all the big Brahmo preachers used to have a lot of ailments. So they must have been big Yogis.
Nirodbaran: What comes after the Inconscient?
Sri Aurobindo: Nothing. The Inconscient is the basis of matter.
Nirodbaran: I mean, what will be the next phase of the working?
Sri Aurobindo: Development of Supermind or of the higher planes.
Nirodbaran: Will the troubles be less?
Sri Aurobindo: For whom?
Nirodbaran: General.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, open your Inconscient first.
Nirodbaran: I thought it was open.
Sri Aurobindo: Manifest it at any rate.
Dr. Manilal: What really is the Inconscient, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: Absence of consciousness. (Laughter) The world is inconscient. Consciousness grows in it but along with its development the Inconscient also remains, like a crust, so that the development is always limited. This Inconscient has to be broken in order that consciousness may enlarge. Your shoulder, for instance, is conscious of the pain but is unconscious of the Force. (Laughter)
Dr. Manilal: What should the shoulder do, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: The Inconscient in the shoulder or else the shoulder itself can become conscious and open to the Force. The Inconscient is the last obstacle.
Dr. Manilal: Have you heard of Ralph Waldo Trine, Sir?
Sri Aurobindo: No, who is he?
Dr. Manilal: He is an American writer and mystic. His method is like Vedanta.
Sri Aurobindo: In tune with the Infinite – something like that?
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir. He says that one should imagine oneself as the Brahman and try to feel the force running through all the fibres of the body.
Sri Aurobindo: Like Coué. You had any result with it?
Dr. Manilal: For a time.
Sri Aurobindo: It is the same with the descent and action of the Force, only it is an unconscious process, done by the power of the idea of the mind. It may help but I don’t know if it goes the whole way. It may affect the mind, but after the mind, there are the vital, the physical and the Inconscient. The Inconscient has ideas of its own, as it were. If the opposite ideas are strong enough and have power over them, then a cure may result.
Dr. Manilal: You have written in Bases of Yoga that one should say to oneself in any trouble, “I am a child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.”
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is the same power of the idea, a question of fundamental faith not only in the mind but in every part of the being, even in the Inconscient.
Dr. Manilal: Will it take a long time, Sir, to finish the Inconscient?
Sri Aurobindo with such a smile and tone said: “Yes!” that we all roared with laughter.
Evening
Champaklal forgot today to give the wiping cloth to Sri Aurobindo and Nirodbaran did it instead. We laughed over it. Sri Aurobindo asked why we were laughing. When we said that Champaklal had forgotten to give the cloth he said, “The Inconscient?”
Nirodbaran: Is the Inconscient the last?
Sri Aurobindo: I have told you many times that it is the last, but I must remind you that the work is not short and not individual; it is the principle of the Inconscient that is being worked out.
Sri Aurobindo now took up Dara’s radio news. Dara had incorrectly written something like Lord Garlic.
Sri Aurobindo: Lord Garlic and Lady Asafoetida! (Laughter)
Nirodbaran (after the news was over): I don’t quite understand your work in the Inconscient. If it is concerned with the general Inconscient, then we ought also to be benefited by it.
Sri Aurobindo: Indirectly. (After a while) What I want to discourage in you all is the idea that you will get the Supermind or be on the way to it as soon as the work in the Inconscient is over.
Nirodbaran: No, I am not asking with that motive; neither have I that ambition.
Sri Aurobindo: You may not, others have.
Dr. Manilal: They will be at the feet of the Supermind. (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: Not even at the tail.
Dr. Manilal: But one thing is certain, Sir, that when the Supermind is established, there will be a control over diseases.
Sri Aurobindo: All over the world?
Dr. Manilal: Not that way, Sir; I mean mastery over disease.
Sri Aurobindo: Whose disease?
Nirodbaran: In the Ashram.
Dr. Manilal: Among the sadhaks. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: If it is only in the Ashram, he will be left out, so he says sadhaks.
Dr. Manilal: Even among those outside who have faith.
Sri Aurobindo: You bring in the faith condition now.
Champaklal and Purani gave instances in which even without any faith people had been cured by a flower from the Mother.
Sri Aurobindo: So you see (looking at Dr. Manilal), the problem is very complex.
Dr. Manilal: Yes, Sir, but how to explain it? (Laughter)