At about 5.30 p.m., four of our group— Champaklal, Satyendra, Becharlal and Nirodbaran— were seated on the carpet behind the head of Sri Aurobindo's bed and were whispering among themselves. Over some topic Champaklal broke into suppressed laughter and had to run away from the room. Satyendra and Nirodbaran controlled themselves with difficulty. Then at about 6.30 we all assembled by the side of Sri Aurobindo. Purani was still absent.
SRI AUROBINDO (looking at us): What Divine Descent was it?
NIRODBARAN: It was Champaklal who burst into laughter.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, then it was Vishnu's Ananda that descended!
As soon as he encouraged us by his voluntary question we flocked near his bed.
Champaklal: It is peculiar how I break into laughter so easily. Formerly I used to weep also at the slightest provocation. It seems to me that because I live more outwardly I laugh like that.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is a reaction of the superficial, vital which is touched easily by simple outward things: there is a child in the nature that bursts out like that. It is the same as the Balabhava of the Yogis, responding without thought to the slightest touches. The deeper vital does not so easily get touched.
By this time Dr. Becharlal was preparing to ask a question. We noticed the peculiar change of his whole face, particularly the parting of his lips, and we knew that he was about to come out with some problem.
DR. BECHARLAL: What is meant by self-offering? How is one to do it?
SRI AUROBINDO (with a surprised humorous frown): How? I don't know how. One simply does it!
Champaklal: (interrupting the talk): My eyes always remain watery.
SRI AUROBINDO: Virgil had eyes like that, while Horace used to breathe hard. Once Mycaenas, the great patron of literature in
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To get back to Becharlal's question: one offers one's vital being, one's heart and one's mind to the Divine, rejecting all desires, attachments, passions, and grows into the Divine's consciousness.
DR. BECHARLAL: Are day-hours better than night-hours for meditation? I seem to get more concentrated at night.
SRI AUROBINDO: That may be due to the calm and quiet atmosphere at night and also to your being accustomed to meditate at that time. It is because of the quietude of night and of early morning that these periods are supposed to be the best for meditation.
Whether at night or during the day it is good to be regular. We ask people to have a fixed time for meditation; for if they make a habit, from the Abhyasa (habit) the response comes more readily, the response too gets into a habit of fixed time!
But, of course, there are variations with different cases. Lele asked me to meditate twice a day, and when he heard that I didn't do it he gave me no chance to explain that my meditation was going on all the time. He said I was caught by the Devil.
NIRODBARAN: Sometimes meditation is automatic.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, at that time you just have to sit down. Otherwise you feel uneasy. It was like that with Dr. Manilal, as you know.
DR. BECHARLAL: The other day I was having a lot of peace and Ananda. I got a vision of you, with a vision of the Sincerity flower following it. But I had to stop the meditation in order to sleep, for I thought that if I kept awake at night I might fall ill. Is there any significance in the vision of that particular flower and no other?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. There was a special purpose in it. It was a call to you to aspire for sincerity. By sincerity is meant the lifting of all our movements towards the Divine.
NIRODBARAN: Wasn't Dr. Becharlal's fear of illness merely a mental notion? How can one fall ill by sitting a long time in meditation?
SRI AUROBINDO: Not just by sitting like that; but if one keeps awake too much at night, there is the chance of a physical disturbance. The physical has its limits. The vital being can go on feeling energy or peace or any other thing, but the physical can't be
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Champaklal: At one time I also used to feel a lot of energy while working with the Mother and I was never fatigued even when working day and night. Only one or two hours' sleep were sufficient and I would feel as fresh as ever.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is because you opened yourself to the Energy. As for sleep, even ten minutes' sleep may be sufficient, but then it is not ordinary sleep but a going deep within. If one can draw the Force with equanimity and conserve it, wonderful things can be done. As I said, many sadhaks felt extraordinary energy when we were dealing with the vital being. But afterwards the sadhana came down into the physical, there was not that push any more and people began to get easily fatigued, feel lazy and unwilling to work. They began to complain of ill-health due to overwork, and the doctors encouraged them in their feeling. Do you know H's idea? He says people have come here not for work but for meditation.
NIRODBARAN: He says also that you are increasing his work and Pavitra's by increasing the number of disciples. He is helping you—
SRI AUROBINDO: Only helping? I thought he was doing everything!
I dare say that if we had not come down into the physical but remained in the vital and mental like other Yogis, without trying to transform earth-nature, things would have been rather different.
At this time the Mother came in and we meditated for a while. After she had gone, the talk was resumed. Someone remarked: "Nirodbaran had a good meditation. He didn't know the Mother had gone."
NIRODBARAN: Good meditation? How do you. know?
SRI AUROBINDO: By the inclination of your head perhaps.
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NIRODBARAN: I can't say. All I can say is that I was having many incoherent dreams and visions—perhaps in the surface consciousness. .
SRI AUROBINDO: The surface consciousness of the inner vital being. Such experiences are common. Of course, when one goes still deeper, one doesn't see incoherent dreams and visions. There is a point between the surface consciousness and the deeper vital which is full of these fantasies. They are apparently incoherent, but when one gets the clue one finds that everything is a linked whole. This I have seen many times in my own case. In the physical a mouse turning into an elephant may have no meaning, but it is not so in the vital. These fantasies don't have the coherence that is found in the physical, but they have their own coherence - that of the vital plane. It is this world from which X's paintings come—what the Europeans call the goblin world. Anybody who has the least experience of the subtle planes can at once say where his paintings originate.
NIRODBARAN: Does X see them before producing them?
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think so. Some people see these fantasies but don't paint them.
NIRODBARAN: How is it that some people and he himself call his work great?
SRI AUROBINDO: Everybody calls it great and wonderful; so he himself begins to think it so!
Then the talk turned to various experiences.
NIRODBARAN: I once felt as if my head were suspended in the air and the other parts of the body did not exist.
SRI AUROBINDO: That's the mental consciousness separating from the rest.
NIRODBARAN: Are you able to know what experiences the sadhaks are having I mean any experiences and not only the decisive ones?
SRI AUROBINDO: No, for I am not in contact with the sadhaks. But the Mother knows whenever it is a question of consciousness. She can see in the sadhaks whatever changes are taking place. When she meditates, she can know what line a sadhak is following—the line indicated by her or the sadhak's own—and afterwards what changes in the consciousness have been brought about.
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NIRODBARAN: And when the experiences happen, are they all given by you and the Mother?
SRI AUROBINDO: What's the use of giving our own things to the sadhaks? Let them follow their own lines of growth. I may put out a Force for people who are in a habitual bad condition, people who are always going in the wrong direction. And I try to work out the results of the Force so that the condition may improve. If a sadhak cooperates, then it is comparatively easy. Otherwise, if the sadhak is passive, the result may take a long time: it comes, goes, again comes—and ultimately the Force prevails. A case like B's, for instance. When we put in a strong Force, he became lucid but soon the whole vital being used to rush up and catch hold of him. On the other hand, if a sadhak actively cooperates, the time taken is only one-tenth.
Sri Aurobindo himself opened the talk by addressing Purani: "I hear X is going about in his car with a guard by his side and two policemen on cycles front and back." The talk continued regarding Pondicherry politics, most of it being by us. Then Sri Aurobindo remarked:
SRI AUROBINDO: When I see Pondicherry and the Calcutta Corporation I begin to wonder why I was so eager for Swaraj. They are the two object lessons against self-government and one's enthusiasm for it goes away.
NIRODBARAN: Was the Calcutta Corporation so bad before the Congress came there?
SRI AUROBINDO: No, there was not so much scope for corruption; at least -we didn't know of such scandals. It is the same -with other municipal governments. In New York and Chicago the whole machinery is corrupt. Sometimes the head of the institution is like that. Sometimes one or another mayor comes up with the intention of cleaning out the whole institution but one doesn't know after the cleansing which state was better. The gangster Al Capone of Chicago was a great criminal, but all the judges and police officers were in his pay.
In France also it is the same thing. It is not surprising that people get disgusted with democracy. England is comparatively less corrupt.
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PURANI: It seems then our Indian system was the best. How did it succeed so well?
SRI AUROBINDO: The Indian system grew out of life. It had room for everything and every interest. There were monarchy, aristocracy, democracy. Every interest was represented in the Government, while the Western system grew out of mind. In Europe they are led by reason and want to make everything cut and-dried without any chance of freedom or variation. If it is democracy, then democracy only and no room for anything else. They can't be plastic.
India is now trying to imitate the West. Parliamentary government is not suited to India. Sir Akbar Hydari wanted to try a new sort of government with an impartial authority at the head. In Hyderabad the Hindu majority complains that though the Mohamedans are in a minority they occupy most of the offices in the State. By Sir Akbar's method almost every interest would have been represented in the Government and automatically the Hindu would have come in but because of their cry of responsible government the scheme failed. They have a fixed idea in the mind and want to fit everything to it. They don't think. And we take up what the West is throwing off.
DR. Savoor: It is possible in Hyderabad which has a Nizam, but how to do the same in an all-India constitution? What then is your idea of an ideal government for India?
SRI AUROBINDO: Sir Akbar's is as good as any. My idea is like what Tagore once wrote. There may be one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure a continuity of policy and an assembly representative of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation, united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local problems. Mussolini started with the fundamentals of the Indian system but afterwards began bullying and bluffing other nations for imperialistic reasons. If he had persisted in his original idea, he would have been a great creator.
PURANI: Dr. Bhagawan Das suggested that legislators should be above the age of forty and completely disinterested like the Rishis.
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SRI AUROBINDO: A chamber of Rishis? That would not be very promising, for they would at once begin to quarrel—"Nana munir nana mat,"¹ as they say. The Rishis in ancient times could guide the kings because they lived in various places.
PURANI: His idea is like R's idea of gathering all great men together.
SRI AUROBINDO: (laughing): And let them quarrel like Kilkenny cats, I suppose. The Congress at the present stage has it not the look of a Fascist dictatorial organisation? There is no opportunity for any difference of opinion except for the Socialist members who are allowed to differ provided they don't seriously differ. Whatever resolutions the Congress passes are obligatory on all the provinces, whether the laws suit the provinces or not. There is no room for any other independent opinion. Everything is fixed beforehand and the people are only allowed to talk it over—like Stalin's parliament. When we started the movement, we began with the idea of throwing out the Congress oligarchy and opening the whole organisation to the general mass.
PURANI: Srinivas lyengar retired from Congress because of his differences with Gandhi. He objected to Gandhi's giving the movement a religious turn and bringing religion into politics.
SRI AUROBINDO: He made the Charka a religious article of faith and excluded all people from the Congress membership who could not spin. How many even among his own followers believe in his gospel of Charka? Such a tremendous waste of energy just for the sake of a few annas is most unreasonable.
PURANI: He made that rule perhaps to enforce discipline.
SRI AUROBINDO: Discipline is all right but once you begin to concentrate on a particular thing you tend to go on concentrating on it.
PURANI: The Charka failed in agricultural provinces but seems to have succeeded in other places, especially where people had no occupation.
NIRODBARAN: In Bengal it didn't succeed.
SRI AUROBINDO: In Bengal it didn't. It may be all right as a famine palliative but when it takes the form of an all-India programme it looks absurd. If you form a programme that is suited to the condition of agricultural people, it sounds reasonable. Give
¹"Many sages, many views."
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In what a well-ordered way have Denmark and Ireland organised their agriculture! Only now they are beginning to suffer because other nations are trying to be self-sufficient.
PURANI: What do you think of Hindi being the common language? It seems to me English has occupied so prominent a place that it will be unwise and difficult to displace it.
SRI AUROBINDO: English will be all right and even necessary if India is an international State. In that case English has to be the medium of expression, especially as English is now replacing French as the world-language. But the national spirit won't allow it as it is a foreign language. At the same time Hindi can't replace English in the universities, nor the provincial language. When the national spirit grows it is difficult to say what will happen. In Ireland after the revolution they wanted to abolish English and adopt Gaelic, but as time went on and things settled themselves their enthusiasm waned and English came back.
The discussion then drifted to the question of the Jews. Purani said that he didn't understand why the Jews were being persecuted so much by Hitler.
NIRODBARAN: I understand that the Jews betrayed Germany during the First World War.
SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense! On the contrary they helped Germany a great deal. It is because they are a clever race that others are jealous of them. Or for anything that is wrong you point to the Jews—it is so much easier than finding the real cause. People want something to strike at. So the popular cry, "The Jews, the Jews." Do you remember my telling you about the prophecy regarding the Jews—that when they will be persecuted and driven to Jerusalem the Golden Age shall come?
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But this sort of dislike exists among other nations also: for example, the English don't like the Scotch, because the Scotch have beaten the English in commercial affairs. There was a famous story in Punch. Two people were talking. One said, "Bill, who is that man?" And Bill answered, "Let us strike at him, he is a foreigner."
And then in Bengal the West Bengal people used to call the East Bengal people "Bangal and composed a satire, "Bangal manush noy, oi ek jantu" ¹
Once I used to wear socks at all times of the year. The West Bengalis used to sneer that I was a Bangal. They thought that they were the most civilised people on earth. It is a legacy from the animals, just as dogs of one quarter don't like dogs of another.
DR. Satyeyndra: But things will improve, I hope.
SRI AUROBINDO: If these things go, we may be sure the Golden Age is coming. All my opinions are naturally on the basis of the present conditions. But, of course, the conditions would be quite different if the Supermind came down.
NIRODBARAN: You are tempting us too much with your Supermind. Will it really benefit the whole of mankind?
SRI AUROBINDO: It will exert a certain upward pull but in order that it may bring a considerable change, that it may be effective, two hundred sadhaks of the Ashram can't be enough. There must be thousands whose influence can spread all over the world, who by actual example can prove that the Supermind is something superior to the means hitherto employed.
PURANI: Will it have a power over humanity?
SRI AUROBINDO: Let us leave it to the Supermind to decide.
NIRODBARAN: The materialists and scientists say that Yogis have done nothing for human happiness. Buddhas and Avatars have come and gone, but the sufferings of humanity are just the same.
SRI AUROBINDO: Did Avatars come to relieve the sufferings of humanity? It was only Buddha who showed the way to a release from suffering. But his path was to get away from this world
¹"These Bengalis are not men, they are beasts."
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NIRODBARAN: People say that scientific inventions and medical discoveries have been able to improve the conditions of the world: for instance, by cholera injections and small-pox vaccinations, the death rate has been reduced.
SRI AUROBINDO: And are people happy? Vaccination? Intellectual people say that vaccination has done more harm than good.
NIRODBARAN: But that is the opinion of intellectuals, not of doctors.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why, the intellectuals have surely studied the subject before giving their opinion. Doctors may have reduced cholera, etc., but what about other things that they have brought in? As for suffering, it cannot go so long as ignorance remains. Even after the Supermind's descent, suffering will remain. If you choose to remain in suffering, how can it go?
NIRODBARAN: Doctors can compel people to take injections even against their will and thus benefit them. Can spiritual Force give such benefits? The Yogis have been busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same.
SRI AUROBINDO: Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears, the others don't disappear. The tigers and serpents don't become men. In this upward growth of the human consciousness you can't say that Buddha, Christ and others have played no part.
I consider the Supramental the culmination of the spiritual man. In the supramental evolution one is not required to flee from life. It is something dynamic that changes life and nature. It will open the mental, the vital, even the physical to the intuitive and overmental planes.
You want comfort and happiness. In that case Truth and Knowledge are of no value.
The discoveries of modem science have outrun the human capacity to use them. The scientists don't know what to do with them and the discoveries have been used for the purpose of destruction. Now they are trying to kill by throwing germs from aeroplanes. At least cholera and small-pox end suffering by death, but by bombing you mutilate for life.
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Politics, science, even socialism have not succeeded in finding a way out of suffering. They have rallied people to kill one another and thus they have imperilled the State. Is that an improvement, unless you say that murders and massacres are necessary? From this condition of chaos and suffering, there have been shown ways of escape, but about the people who have shown the way out you say they are not useful. Of course I am assuming you are arguing that everybody has to be useful.
No, no, all that is a superficial view of things. One has to consider the whole civilisation before one can pass an opinion.
It is because Western civilisation is failing that people like Aldous Huxley are drawn to Yoga.
About 5.30 p.m. Champaklal had another fit of laughter. Sri Aurobindo reacted to it by asking, "What's the dynamite explosion?" Then we had to check our merriment. But later on, about 6.30, the joke was repeated and Champaklal complained to Sri Aurobindo that Nirodbaran was making him laugh. Sri Aurobindo replied, "See that he does not make you go off like a firework!" We then assembled by the bedside. The atmosphere grew quiet and in consequence Nirodbaran began to yawn. Champaklal started mocking him. The result was again laughter, but a subdued gurgle of it.
SRI AUROBINDO: What's the joke?
DR. BECHARLAL: Champaklal is mocking at my yawns.
SRI AUROBINDO: Doesn't he know that just as, according to X, yawning is a fatal symptom, mocking at it may also be a symptom that is fatal?
As X came into the talk, questions went round about his condition. Someone asked what medicines had been given to him that day.
DR. Satyeyndra: That is a professional secret.
SRI AUROBINDO: This reminds me of the science of augury in Rome. There used to be government augurs who would be called in to interpret signs and omens, and from that a college of augury came into existence. There the professors delivered lectures with
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By the way, we have got mutilated news on the radio today. They have dropped two important words. Instead of saying that the Italians are planning to march into Djibouti, they have said that the Italians are marching into it. If the Italians actually do so, the French can march into Tripoli as a counter-measure.
PURANI: The French can also organise the Abyssinians against Italy.
SRI AUROBINDO: There won't be time for that.
DR. BECHARLAL: The Italians don't seem to be good soldiers.
SRI AUROBINDO: No. I would be greatly surprised if they could defeat the French — unless Mussolini has changed the Italian character tremendously!
DR. BECHARLAL: They had a hard time in Abyssinia.
SRI AUROBINDO: It was by their superior equipment, air- bombing, mustard gas, etc. that they succeeded.
DR. BECHARLAL: But they will be backed up by the Germans.
SRI AUROBINDO: Italy can't do without Germany.
PURANI: Fischer says that the German army in the last war was the greatest army ever organised in the world.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they were the most organised and the ablest soldiers in the world, except for the Japanese. But the Japanese are numerically fewer and financially poorer. The Germans, even with their great soldierly qualities, could not throw up any remarkable military genius like Foche. If Foche had been placed in command sooner, the war would have ended much earlier.
The Balkan peoples and the Turks are also good fighters. The Austrians are not.
DR. BECHARLAL: What about the Sikhs and the Gurkhas?
SRI AUROBINDO: They are unsurpassed. But a war does not depend only on soldiers: it depends more on generals.
PURANI: Schomberg says that the Chinese are no good as soldiers and the Russians are good only at defensive -warfare. The Germans at present are trying to expand in the Ukraine. After that, Hitler will come to Central Europe.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but that will at once combine Russia, Poland, Roumania and Yugoslavia. The small countries will be afraid about their own safety.
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PURANI: But I don't understand why Germany should join with Italy in attacking France.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why? Hitler himself has said in his Mein Kampf that Germany is not safe without the destruction of France. And France says the same thing about Germany.
DR. BECHARLAL: The way these people are preparing, war seems inevitable.
SRI AUROBINDO: The Mother thinks they will not do anything till early next year. Perhaps they are trying to hit now because they think France has been divided by the general strike. But they lose sight of the fact that an attack will at once bring the whole nation together. In any case, we find the Germans are at present busy enjoying their Christmas.
DR. BECHARLAL: England most probably will have to ally herself with France.
SRI AUROBINDO: You have seen what Chamberlain has said? According to him, England is not obliged to help France in case of war with Italy. But if Italy combines with Germany, one can't say what England will do.
DR. BECHARLAL: In case of a general war, India will have her opportunity for independence.
SRI AUROBINDO: How?
DR. BECHARLAL: She will refuse to cooperate. I think these Congress Ministries were allowed because of the threat of war in Europe.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, in order to conciliate the Indians.
Satyendra opened the conversation by asking a question on behalf of Dr: Savoor. "What is the connection between the causal body and the psychic being?" We do not quite remember exactly what Sri Aurobindo answered, but he said something like: "The psychic being is what is called the Chaitya Pumsha in the heart; the causal body is part of the Superconscious." Then the talk turned on the Atman or Self and the psychic being. Sri Aurobindo said they are not the same. Ramana Maharshi was brought in by Satyendra who said that the Maharshi had realised the Self and that Brunton had written of the Maharshi's hearing of the Voice in the heart. Sri Aurobindo remarked that the Voice in the heart
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SRI AUROBINDO: Satyendra has asked a question which does not hang together.
PURANI: Kapali Shastri has given a version of the Maharshi's experience, which he heard from the Maharshi himself: "One day something opened in the heart and I began to hear 'I, I, I' and everywhere I started seeing the 'I'."
DR. Satyeyndra: Different people say different things about spiritual realisation. How are we to know which is the highest? Our own choice is not necessarily the highest.
The Mother: Each goes to the limit of his own consciousness. I have met any number of people in Europe, India and Japan practising Yoga under different masters. Each claimed that his realisation was the highest. He was quite sure about it and quite satisfied with his condition and yet each was standing at a different place in consciousness and saying that he had attained the highest.
DR. Satyeyndra: But are there no criteria by which to know the truth?
The Mother: What criteria? If you ask them, they say their experience is something wonderful but can't be described by the mind. I met Tagore in Japan. He claimed to have reached the peace of Nirvana and he was beaming with joy about it. I thought, "Here is a man who claims to have found peace and reached Nirvana. Let us see." I asked him to meditate with me. I followed him in meditation and saw that he had reached just behind the mind into a sort of voidness. I waited and waited to follow him else where, but he would not go further. I found that he was supremely satisfied, imagining that he had entered Nirvana!
DR. Satyeyndra: But there must be some fundamental realisation, an ultimate of some kind?
SRI AUROBINDO: That is to say, there is a fundamental truth of consciousness. But that is not so easy to reach.
DR. Satyeyndra:. How then should we choose a master? When we choose, we must know.
PURANI: How are you going to know with the mind where he has reached?
DR. Satyeyndra: Our choice is not psychic.
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The Mother: That is another question. First you must realise the limits of different states of consciousness and the difference in the places where people stand.
The choice is mostly in answer to your own need; it is governed by your inner necessity. Sometimes it is made by instinct. It is that instinct by which the animals find the right place for food. Only, in human beings it is from within (gesture pointing within). If you allow your mind to discuss and argue, then the instinct will be veiled. When you have chosen a thing, the mind naturally wants to believe that it is the highest you have chosen. But this is subjective.
DR. Satyeyndra: If the choice is right, one feels happiness and satisfaction.
The Mother: One can't depend on feelings and sensations, for very often they misguide. But satisfaction is quite a different thing. There are people who are not satisfied in the best of conditions, while in the worst of conditions some are quite satisfied. Look at the people in the world around. Some are very happy with their conditions. And again there are some whose satisfaction depends on their livers-a brutally materialistic state. And also there are people who suffer extremely and yet their inmost being knows that that is the truth for them.
DR. Satyeyndra: But there are certain signs, lakshanas, in the Shastras by which we can judge.
SRI AUROBINDO: What Shastras? One can't believe all that is said in them.
The Mother: Besides, that may be all right for Indians. What about Europeans? You can't say they have not realised any Truth. (Turning to Sri Aurobindo) Isn't that so?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.
Then the Mother took her leave for the general meditation and there was a pause for some time.
SRI AUROBINDO: (addressing Satyendra): What are these lakshanas you spoke of?
DR. Satyeyndra: They are common. Sir, everywhere. They are given in the Gita: for example, equal love for others, equal-mindedness in all circumstances, etc.
SRI AUROBINDO: They are rather the conditions for realisation. As for realisation itself, all experiences are true and each has its
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When I don't accept the Self as final, it is not that I have not realised its Truth or that I don't know the One in All and All in the One. But I have other realisations which are equally strong and which cannot be shut out. The Maharshi is right and everybody else is also right.
When the mind tries to understand these things, it takes up fragments and treats them as the whole and makes unreal distinctions. People speak of Nirguna (Qualityless) as fundamental and Saguna (Qualified) as a derivation, a secondary reality. But what did the Upanishad mean by Nirguno Guni and Ananta Saguna? They can't be thought of as different. When you speak of impersonality as the fundamental truth and of personality as something imposed upon it and therefore unreal, you cut across with your mind something which is beyond both. It is not that personality is the chief thing and the impersonal is only one side or one condition of personality. No! Both personality and impersonality are aspects of one thing which is indivisible.
Shankara is right and so also are Madhwa and Nimbarka. Only, when they state their truths in mental terms there is a tremendous confusion. Shankara says, "Duality does not exist and all is one." Madhwa says, "There is duality." Nimbarka says, "There is Bhedabheda, there is duality and division as well as no division." The Upanishad speaks of Him by knowing whom all is known. What does that mean? This knowledge, this Vijnana, does not mean merely the fundamental realisation of the One. It means the knowledge of the principle of the Divine Being, what Krishna speaks of as Janati tattwata. One cannot know the complete Divine except in what I have called the Supermind. That's why Krishna said of himself that one who knows him in the true principles of his being is rare. The Upanishads also speak of the Brahman as
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At the Overmind stage, knowledge begins to rush in upon you from all sides and you see objects from all points of view and each thing from every viewpoint. All sides of knowledge tend to get related and there the cosmic consciousness is not merely static but also dynamic. It is the expression of something still higher, the Supermind above.
When you become cosmic, even though you speak of yourself as "I", it is not "I". The ordinary "I"-ness disappears, and the mental, vital and physical look like representatives of that new consciousness. Ramakrishna speaks of this state as "the form of ego left for action". When you reach the Supermind, you become not only cosmic but also what is beyond the universe—the transcendental—and there you have indivisibility and unity, and this transcendental coexists with the universal and the individual.
The same principle works out in science. The scientists at one time reduced all the multiplicity of elements to the ether and described the ether in the most contradictory terms. Now they have found the electron as the basis of Matter. By the difference in position and number of electrons you get the whole multiplicity of objects. Here too you find the one that is the many, and that the one and the many are not two different things. Both are true and through both you have to go to the Truth.
When you come to politics, the truth again is various. Democracy, plutocracy, monarchy, etc.—all have their truth. Even Mussolini and Hitler stand for some truth.
Ours is a very big Yoga. One has to crawl all over (gesture with a movement of the hands.) I think Nirodbaran is not prepared to take all that trouble!
DR. BECHARLAL: Never, Sir! I have come here because I wanted to avoid trouble.
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SRI AUROBINDO: You as such are not called upon to take all that trouble. Even for me it would have been impossible if I had to do it all myself. At a certain stage the heavens opened and the thing was done for me.
The topic seemed to end here, but then Purani prolonged it.
PURANI: Kapali Shastri asked the Maharshi -whether immotality was possible. The Maharshi would not say anything, but as Shastri persisted he said that it was possible by Divine Grace.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is hardly an answer. Everything is possible by Grace. There are two things about immortality. One is conquest of death. This doesn't mean that one would never die. It means the power to leave the body at will. The other thing is change or renewal of the body. There is no sense in keeping the same body for years. That is why death is necessary. Death has its reason in that one can take by it another body and have a fresh growth. You know Dasaratha is said to have lived for sixty thousand years. I don't know what he did with such a long life—except that at the end he began producing children.
Have you read Shaw's Back to Methuselah? It shows how silly intellectuals can be. And "what a ridiculous farce he has made of Joan of Arc! He speaks other visions as projections of her own mental ideas and decisions. Shaw is all right when he speaks of England, Ireland and society, but elsewhere he can't do anything constructive; he fails there miserably.
These intellectuals, when they talk of something beyond their scope, make fools of themselves. See what Russell writes about the "introvert". Thinkers like him can't tolerate emptiness or cessation of thought and breaking away from outside interests. You ask them to stop their thoughts; they refuse to accept the result of stopping them and at once come back from the emptiness, and yet it is through emptiness one has to pass to reach the true Fullness.
During the sponging of Sri Aurobindo there was a little talk on homoeopathy. Somebody said he was puzzled how an infinitesinial quantity could act.
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SRI AUROBINDO: That is no puzzle to me. Sometimes the infinitesimal is more powerful than the mass. It approaches more and more the subtle state and from the physical goes into the vital or dynamic and acts vitally.
In the evening the talk began with a reading of S's letter describing vividly his sense of persecution by people.
PURANI: These people get possessed by the idea of persecution.
DR. BECHARLAL: Is it a possession?
SRI AUROBINDO : Yes, a possession of the nervous system and the vital mind, though it is not like insanity. It is, however, very difficult to convince these people that their ideas of persecution are false. There are two types: one imagines all sorts of things — eighty per cent of cases are of this type — and the other twists everything.
My brother had this persecution mania. He was always in fear of something terrible happening to him. For instance, he used to think that the British Government was going to arrest him.
DR. BECHARLAL: He was a very successful professor, I hear. People used to listen to his lectures with rapt attention.
SRI AUROBINDO: He was very painstaking. Most of the professors don't work so hard. I saw his books interleaved and marked and full of notes. (Then looking at Purani) I was not so conscientious as a professor.
PURANI: People who heard you-even those who politically differed from you—speak very highly of your lectures.
SRI AUROBINDO: I never used to look at the notes and sometimes my explanation didn't agree with them. I was professor of English and for some time of French. What was surprising to me was that students used to take down everything verbatim and mug it up. This sort of thing could never have happened in England.
DR. BECHARLAL: But we did it in England.
SRI AUROBINDO: Did what?
DR. BECHARLAL: Take notes.
SRI AUROBINDO: That's different. You can take notes and utilise them in your own way.
DR. BECHARLAL: No, we used to take everything down verbatim. The professors brought in many theories, a lot of recent discoveries. Besides, each professor had his own fad. So we had to do it.
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SRI AUROBINDO: In medicine it may have been so, for there is not much scope for original thinking there. But in the arts it was different. You listened to the lectures, noted down what you liked and then made what you wanted of it. There was always a demand for the student's point of view. In India the students, besides taking down my notes, used to get notes of professors from Bombay, especially if they happened to be examiners.
Once I was giving a lecture on Southey's Life of Nelson. And my lecture was not in agreement with the notes in the book. So the students remarked that it was not at all like what was in the notes. I replied that I hadn't read them. In any case, they are mostly rubbish. I could never go into the minute details. I read and left it to my mind to absorb what it could. That's why I could never become a scholar.
Up to the age of fifteen I was known as a very promising scholar at St. Paul's. After fifteen I Lost this reputation. The teachers used to say that I had become lazy and was deteriorating.
DR. BECHARLAL: How was that?
SRI AUROBINDO: Because I was reading novels and poetry. Only at the examination time I used to prepare a little. But when now and then I wrote Greek and Latin verse my teachers would lament that I was not utilising my remarkable gifts because of laziness.
When I went up with a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, Oscar Browning commented that he had not seen such remarkable papers. As you see, in spite of my laziness I was not deteriorating!
DR. BECHARLAL: Was there any prejudice against Indians at that time?
SRI AUROBINDO: No. There was no distinction between an Englishman and an Indian. Only the lower classes in England used to shout "Blackie, Blackie." But the prejudice was just beginning. It was brought by Anglo-Indians and Englishmen returning from the colonies. It is a result of democracy, I suppose. But among the cultured Englishmen it was unknown and they treated us as equals.
In France one never heard of such prejudices. I don't know if you have read in the papers the story about a Paris hotel. Pressed by a number of Americans, this hotel asked some Negroes to leave. As soon as the news reached the President's ear, he sent an order that if the hotel proprietor did this his licence would be cancelled. The
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DR. BECHARLAL: Liberality?
SRI AUROBINDO: By liberality I don't mean generosity but a freedom of consciousness and a certain fairness. Because of this, along with their public spirit, there is not such corruption in public life as in France or America. They can vehemently criticise one another in the press, even personally, but that does not affect .their private relations. You have seen how Brailsford has attacked Chamberlain, but their friendship and private relations won't be affected.
DR. BECHARLAL: That will only be appearances.
SRI AUROBINDO: No, no. It is quite genuine. And there is a great freedom of speech in England.
DR. BECHARLAL: Vivekananda said that it is difficult to make friends with Englishmen but once it is done it lasts a lifetime.
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite true.
PURANI: The Japanese, Jean Herbert says, are also like that. Generally they are only polite and formal, but once you can make a friendship they are very good friends.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they are very polite in their manner and conduct. But they don't admit you into their private life. They have a wonderful power of self-control. They don't lose their temper or quarrel with you, but if their honour is violated they may kill you afterwards. They can be bitter enemies. They have a sense of honour as well as of dishonour, unfortunately, and in one case they may kill you and in the other kill themselves at your door. If a Japanese killed himself at an Englishman's door, it would be impossible for the Englishman to live there any more. If a robber entered a Japanese house and the householder told him that he required some money, the robber would part with some of his loot; but if the householder said that he had a debt of honour to pay, then the robber would leave the whole sum behind and go away. Imagine such a housebreaker in England or America!
The Japanese have a high sense of chivalry too. In the Russo Japanese War, when the Russians were defeated the Mikado
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When a congregation of fifty or sixty thousand were caught in a fire due to an earthquake, there was not a single cry, not a nutter. All were standing up and chanting Buddhist hymns. That's a heroic people with wonderful self-control.
DR. BECHARLAL: If they have such self-control they would be very good for Yoga.
SRI AUROBINDO: Ah, self-control is not enough for Yoga. The Japanese are more an ethical than a spiritual race. Their ethical rules are extremely difficult to follow.
But these things perhaps belong to the past. It is a great pity that people who have carried such ideals into practice are losing them through contact with European civilisation. That is the great harm which European vulgarisation has done to Japan. Now you find most people mercantile in their outlook: they will do anything for the sake of money.
Naka's mother, when she returned from America to Japan, as is the custom with the Japanese, was so horrified to see the present day Japan that she at once went back.
That the Japanese are not a distinctly spiritual race can be shown from an example. Hirasawa, a friend of Richard's and the Mother's, was a great patriot but he did not like the modern tendencies of Japan; so he used to say, "My soul has become a traitor."
PURANI: Have you read Noguchi's letters to Tagore defending Japan's aggression?
SRI AUROBINDO: No; but there are always two sides to a question. I don't believe in fanatical shouts against imperialism. Conquests of that sort were at one time regarded as the normal activity of political life; now you do it under pretexts and excuses. Almost every nation has been doing it. What about China herself? She took Kashgar in the same way. The very name "Kashgar" shows that China had no business to be there. There is also the question of war. Apart from new fashions of killing, there is nothing wrong in war as such. All depends on circumstances. It is the Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy that cries out against it. The French people don't.
PURANI: It is said the French people don't usually lose their head, but when they lose it, they lose it well.
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SRI AUROBINDO: Yes; India also was considered docile and mild, like an elephant, but once the elephant is off the line you had better keep out of his way!
Now there is a new morality in the air. They talk of pacifism, anti-nationalism, anti-militarism. But the talking is done by those who can't do things. In any case it has to stand the test of time,
PURANI: Jwalanti (Madame Monod-Herzen) used to be wild when England began to shout against Italy's war on Abyssinia. Of course, she does not defend Italy, but England should be the last nation to raise a cry.
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. England was the only country that defended air-bombing because she wanted to kill the Pathans!
DR. BECHARLAL: Has European civilisation today nothing good in it?
SRI AUROBINDO: It has lowered the moral tone of humanity. No doubt, it has brought in hygiene, sanitation, etc. But even the nineteenth century civilisation with its defects was better than what we have now. Europe could not stand the test of the last world war. The ancient peoples tried to keep to their ideals and to raise them still higher while Europe lost all her ideals after the war. People have become cynical, selfish. What you hear of post-war England or post-war Germany is not all wrong. Have you not heard Arjava (J. Chadwick) inveighing against post-war England? I suppose it is all due to commercialism.
We were thinking how to begin the talk. Time was passing and yet none could find any question. Then Purani came forward with a few paintings of Picasso. There were four or five pictures. One was that of a man and woman, another of a human figure with a birdlike face, and the third of a figure with three eyes.
SRI AUROBINDO: There is some power of expression in the picture of a man and woman. The other one looks like a Brahmin pandit with a tiki (tuft of hair) on the head. The face represents the animal origin still left in him and one of the eyes seems the Prajna chakra, another the throat-centre and so on. When these modern artists want to convey something, the spectators find it difficult to
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(Addressing Purani) Have you seen a certain Futurist painting representing a man in different positions? The artist wanted to convey movement in painting—most absurd! You may just as well draw our guest-house "Golconde" walking about.
Each art has its own conditions and limitations and you have to work under those conditions and with those limitations.
PURANI: I hope the aspiration for purification will purify the field of art also. Elie Faure has an idea that France sacrificed her architectural continuity of five hundred years for securing the first place in painting in Europe. There is no all-Europe name in painting in any other country.
SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. France leads in art. What she begins, others follow. But architecture has stopped everywhere.
PURANI: Elie Faure says the machine is also a piece of archtecture.
SRI AUROBINDO: How?
PURANI: Because it is made of parts and fulfils certain functions.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then you also are a piece of architecture. Everything is made of parts. The motor-car too is architecture then..
PURANI: X finds these paintings of Picasso very remarkable.
SRI AUROBINDO: Does he understand anything about them?
PURANI: I suppose the more mysterious a thing, the more remarkable it must be!
SRI AUROBINDO: People are getting to be mystic without their knowing it. You know, Hitler is a sort of mystic. He says he is guided by an inner voice. He goes into silence in his palace
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I think it is in a photograph in L'Illustration, where Hitler, Goebbels and Goering are together, that the characters of the three come out very well. In other photos the disclosure is not so striking: the expressions get hidden. But here Hitler gives the impression of having the face of a Paris street-criminal. Goebbels shows a narrow sharp-cut face with cunning eyes. Goering is marked by disequilibrium: he was actually in a mental hospital for some time. The three are possessed by forces of the Life plane.
In Hitler's case it is successful ruffianism with a diabolical cunning and, behind it, the psychic of a London cabman-crude and undeveloped. That is to say, the psychic character in the man consists of some futile and silly sentimentalism. It is that silly sentimentalism that finds expression in his paintings, I suppose.
In a photograph of the Munich Pact I saw Hitler with Chamberlain. This man with a great diabolical cunning in his eyes was looking at Chamberlain, who looked like a fly before a spider on the point of being caught—and he actually was caught.
Mussolini had a great power. But when I saw the photograph of the two dictators together after Munich, strangely enough I found Mussolini almost weak by contrast, as if Hitler could put him in his pocket. Daladier claims to be the strong man of France but he also is nothing beside Hitler.
NIRODBARAN: What about Stalin?
SRI AUROBINDO: Stalin has the face of an astute and confident ruffian.
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PURANI: I was extremely shocked to hear of Von Schleicher being murdered in a new purge.
SRI AUROBINDO: Hitler killed the lieutenant who had raised him to power on a charge of immorality, and that again is the London cabman mentality. But it is an instance of his diabolical cunning. He had known all the time of that man's homosexuality.
PURANI: Schomberg was telling me, "Mr. Purani, we say but we can't act."
SRI AUROBINDO: Because it is only a mental idea. That is what humanitarianism comes to. It can't act.
It seems strange that the destiny of the whole world should depend on one man and yet it is so-for everybody looks up to him. From one point of view there never was a time when humanity had come down so low as it has now. It looks as if a small number of violent men are the arbiters of humanity and the rest of the world is ready to bow down before one man.
PURANI: It is the lowest depth of Kaliyuga, I suppose.
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