26 JANUARY 1939
PURANI : Barcelona is going! The French people are waking up at the eleventh hour.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. The democracies are not showing much courage at present at any rate.
SATYENDRA: It seems political ideas are not worth fighting for. Today one fights for democracy, tomorrow for monarchy or, dictatorship.
Page-208
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. All human values are half-values. They are relative. They have no permanence or durability in them.
SATYENDRA: Perhaps if men became more mentalised they would understand better.
SRI AUROBINDO: Mentalised? No! The difficulty is that they don't follow the principles of life.
SATYENDRA: How is that?
SRI AUROBINDO: Life compromises between elements but mind acting on its own doesn't. Mind takes up one thing and makes it absolute, considers it as apart from and opposed to all other things and sets it above all. Hegel boasted that in Europe they had succeeded in separating reason from life—and you see what their philosophy has become. It has nothing to do with life; it is all intellectual gymnastics without forming a part of living reality. On the contrary, in India philosophy has always been a part of life; it had an aim to realise everything. So in the political philosophy of the West you find that if they accept democracy, it is democracy alone; all the rest is set against it. If they take to monarchy, then monarchy is all in all. The same thing happened in ancient Greece. They fought for democracy, aristocracy, monarchy — and in the end they were conquered by the Romans.
SATYENDRA: Then what is the truth in all these attempts at political organisation?
SRI AUROBINDO: If you want to arrive at something true and lasting, you have to look at life and learn from it: that is to say, learn the nature of the oppositions and contradictions and then reconcile them. As regards government, life shows that there is a truth in monarchy whether hereditary or elective. In other words, there is a man at the top who governs. Life also shows that there is a truth in aristocracy whether of strong men or rich men or intellectuals. The fiction is that it is the majority that rules, but the fact that it is the minority, the aristocracy. Life shows again that the rule of the monarch or the aristocrats should be with the consent, silent or vocal, of the people. In addition, life shows that there is a Vaishya class (the merchants and industrialists). This class too has a play in government.
In ancient India the truth of these things was recognised. That is why India has lasted through millenniums—and China also.
English politics is successful because the English have always found one or two men who had the power to lead the minority
Page-209
ruling class. During the Victorian period, it was either Gladstone or Disraeli. And even when one party changes, the one that comes into power does not follow a radically changed policy. It continues the same policy with a slight modification.
In France no government lasts. Sometimes it changes within a few days. The new government becomes a repetition of the one it replaces. Blum is the only man who wanted to do something radical and he was knocked out.
PURANI: Have you seen X's (an Indian political leader) statement?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. He seems to have a queer logic. Because the rightists have a majority, he says that the president should be elected from the leftists! And there is also no sense in his saying, "We will fight the government to the end." When there is a revolution, there can be no compromise. But once you have accepted a compromise, what meaning is there in such a statement? One has to work out things on the basis of what one has gained. Satyamurti's idea of Federation seems all right to me. If the States people are given seats in the Centre and if the Government exercises no veto in the provinces, then it is practically Home Rule.
PURANI: The Viceroy's long stay at Bombay seems significant. I think there is something behind it. He perhaps wants to make Dr. Kher or Rajagopalachari head of the Central Assembly in a Federation.
SRI AUROBINDO: Is that so? Dr. Kher seems to be a very able man. He appears to have escaped the Socialist trap.
PURANI: Vallabhbhai Patel is terribly anti-Socialist. He crushed the Socialists at Baroda.
SRI AUROBINDO: These Socialists don't know what Socialism is.
PURANI: There were very humorous speeches in the Sind Assembly. The Muslim League has been exposed.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. The Sind Premier—I always forget his name—strikes me as a strong man. He stands up for his ideas at the risk of unpopularity. That means some strength. The Sind Muslims were anxious to join the Congress. The Congress should try to do something to make a coalition there. The Congress Ministry is successful almost everywhere. That shows the capacity to govern if the powers are given.
Page-210
NIRODBARAN: Only Bengal and the Punjab remain now under the Muslim League.
SRI AUROBINDO: The Muslim League is not so strong in Bengal, for there is the Praja Party. And in the Punjab, Sikander Hyat Khan looks like an able man. Only in the United Provinces does the Muslim League seem strong. If the Congress could win in Sind, then the Bengal and Punjab Premiers will stand on two sides of India and make faces at each other.
NIRODBARAN: I wonder how Fazlul Hu could become a Premier. Nazimuddin appears to be more capable.
SRI AUROBINDO: Nazimuddin can't make a popular figure.
PURANI: Gandhi has definitely said that any compromise with the Muslim League is impossible now.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't understand why the Congress opened negotiations with the League. The League has been given undue importance. How is it that the Congress is so weak in the Punjab?
PURANI: Because of the Socialists and the Old Group.
The Jaipur affair is starting again. Bajaj is going to offer satyagraha and Gandhi is giving his approval.
SRI AUROBINDO: Since he is a Congressman I suppose the Congress will have to back him. If the States people get power, the Princes will have no work except to sign papers and shoot animals. The Gaekwar will have to stop making buildings.
NIRODBARAN : Where will they shoot animals? The forests are being destroyed nowadays.
SRI AUROBINDO: Forests have to be preserved. Otherwise animals will become extinct. China has lost her forests and there is a flood every year.
NIRODBARAN: There are so many Maharajas, Chiefs, Nawabs and other rulers dotting India everywhere.
SRI AUROBINDO: Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away one half and Hitler the other half—not Hitler exactly but the post-war period. Japan also had the same thing, but the princes voluntarily abdicated their powers and titles for the sake of duty-duty to their country.
NIRODBARAN: How far back in history do the Japanese rulers go?
SRI AUROBINDO: The Mikado claims to be a descendant of the Goddess of the sun. The Mikado named Magi used to
Page-211
believe that and feel that the inspiration above was doing whatever was necessary.
There are two types of men in Japan. One is tall, with a long nose and finely cut aristocratic face. It was they who gave the Samurai culture to Japan. I met at Tagore's place one of this type: he had magnificent features. The second type is the usual Mongol type. They haven't a particularly handsome face.
Purani now brought in the question of the dictator and traced Hitler's genealogy, as it were.
PURANI: The dictator's psychology is centred in the authority-complex. People feel that they are great and Hitler is fighting for them, not that they are fighting for Hitler. The dictators also find a competitor in God and religion.
SRI AUROBINDO: But Mussolini didn't, though Mustafa Kamil did. Mussolini has, on the contrary, given more powers to the Pope and the Vatican. He has recognised the Roman Catholic Church as the State religion.
PURANI: I read somewhere that Kamil in one of his drinking moods slapped an Egyptian because he came to the party with a fez on.
SRI AUROBINDO: You haven't heard the story of the journalist?
PURANI: No.
SRI AUROBINDO: Well, a young journalist criticised the government of Turkey, saying that Turkey was governed by a number of drunkards. Kamil came to know about it and sent him an invitation to dinner. After the dinner was over, Kamil said, "Young man, you have written that Turkey is governed by a number of drunkards. It is not a number of drunkards but just one drunkard.
PURANI: Kamil at one time tried to play off Italy against Russia.
SRI AUROBINDO: But Russia has all along helped Turkey.
PURANI: Stalin, in order to enforce collectivisation starved the the Ukraine to death because the Ukrainians didn't pay their dues. He said, "Once we submit to the peasants, they will catch hold of us."
SRI AUROBINDO: That is what happens when Socialism comes. Communism-the system of communes-is quite a
Page-212
different thing. If they had been successful in carrying out the original idea of the Soviet, it would have been a great success. Mussolini at the beginning tried to form a corporate State but he gave up.
PURANI: In Ahmedabad the Socialists didn't succeed in breaking the trade unions. The Indian agriculturists won't have them.
SRI AUROBINDO: Socialism has no chance with the Indian peasant. He will side with you so long as you promise him land and want to end the landlord system. But once he has got the land, no more of Socialism. Communism is another thing. In Socialism you have the State which intervenes at every step with its officials who rob you of money.
NIRODBARAN: They know the Government machinery and manipulate it as to keep power in their own hands.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is the State bureaucracy that dictates its policy irrespective of the good of the commune; while in communism the land is held as the common property of the whole unit and each one in it is entitled to labour and have his share from the produce.
In our country they had a kind of Communism in the villages. The whole country was like a big family and the lowest had his right as a member of the family. The washerman, the carpenter, the blacksrmith, all got what they wanted.
Each such commune can be independent and many such communes can be scattered all over the country and combine or coordinate their activities for a common purpose.
This evening a letter written by Vivekananda on April 18, 1900, R Alameda, California, to Miss Josephine Macleod was read out to Sri Aurobindo. It was a very moving letter containing the following passages:
" I am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more than that of the body. The battles are lost and won. I have bundled my things and am waiting for the great deliverer.
"' Siva, O Siva, carry my boat to the other shore.'
Page-213
"After all, Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the Banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my true nature; works and activities, doing good and so forth are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice; the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking—love dying, work becoming tasteless-the glamour off life. Now only the voice of the master calling. 'I come, Lord, come.'—'Let the dead bury the dead, follow thou Me.' 'I come, my beloved Lord, I come.'
"Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times, the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath."
"I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no bonds. Whether this body will fall and release me or I enter into freedom in the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever, never to come back again!
"The guide, the Guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.
"... Who am I to meddle with any, Joe? I have long given up my place as a leader, — I have no right to raise my voice. Since the beginning of this year I have not dictated anything in India. You know that.... The sweetest memories of my life have been when I was drifting; I am drifting again—with the bright warm sun aid, and masses of vegetation around—and in the heat everything is so still, so calm—and I am drifting, languidly—in the warm heart of the river. I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet- for fear of breaking the wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it is an illusion!
"Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst of power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come, Mother, I come in Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in the voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come- a spectator, no more an actor.
"Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great, great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like faint, distant whispers, and peace is upon everything, sweet, peace—like that one feels for a few moments just before falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows - without
Page-214
fear, without love, without emotion.-Peace that one feels alone, surrounded with statues and pictures . ..."
SATYENDRA: It must have been a passing mood in Vivekananda to see ambition, personality, fear and thirst for power in himself. Besides, since he died two years later, these things could not have been there always, for by that time he must have realised some higher consciousness setting him free from them.
NIRODBARAN: It may not have been merely a passing mood. These things he must have noticed in himself, and he wrote about them because he perceived or saw them.
PURANI: Simultaneously with a higher consciousness, one can see these things in one's nature.
NIRODBARAN: He had a double strain in his being—the turn inward and the urge towards work. Moreover, he admitted that he was doing things driven blindly by some unseen Force.
SRI AUROBINDO (after some time): It is not easy to get rid of these things. Even when the higher consciousness comes, they can go on in the lower nature. And if Vivekananda found himself driven blindly by some unseen Force, as you say, then it is quite possible for them to remain in the nature and get mixed up in the working out of that driving Power.
SATYENDRA: It is curious that he speaks of "freedom in the body" as something in the future. How is it that he says this so late in life-only a short time before his death and long after he had had the experience of Nirvana? I thought he had become liberated much earlier.
SRI AUROBINDO: There are two kinds of liberation. The usual conception of liberation is that it comes after the death of the body. That is to say, you may have attained liberation in consciousness and yet something in the nature continues in the old bondage and this ignorance is usually supported by the body- consciousness. When the body drops off, the man becomes entirely free or liberated.
The other kind of liberation is Jivanmukti: one realises liberation while remaining in the body and in life and action, and that is supposed to be more difficult.
SATYENDRA: But I suppose there is a distinction between Videhamukti and Jivanmukti. Videhamukti answers to your definition. Janaka is called a Videhamukta and that is considered more difficult than being a Jivanmukta.
Page-215
SRI AUROBINDO: I thought it is the reverse.
SATYENDRA: Then there might be a confusion of terms. Souls like Vivekananda are said to come down from a higher plane for a specific work in the world. Is that possible?
NIRODBARAN: Ramakrishna called him an Ishwarakoti.
SRI AUROBINDO: There is a plane of liberation from which beings can come down and perhaps that is what Ramakrishna meant by souls that are Ishwarakoti or Nityamukta — those that are eternally liberated and can go up and down the ladder of the planes.
SATYENDRA: Is there any evolution in these planes—I mean evolution of the sort we have on earth?
SRI AUROBINDO: No; there are only types there. If the typal beings want to evolve they have to take birth here. Even the Gods are compelled to take human birth for the purpose of evolving.
NIRODBARAN: But why should the Gods want to evolve? They are quite happy in their own state.
SRI AUROBINDO: They may get tired of their own kind of happiness and want another kind: for instance Nirvana.
NIRODBARAN: But then one may get tired of Nirvana too!
SRI AUROBINDO: There is no "one" in Nirvana. So who will get tired? That was the difficulty I had with Amal at one time. He could not get it into his head that the personality does not exist in the experience of Nirvana. He would ask, "Who has the experience of Nirvana if there is no being in that state? The answer is, "Nobody has it; something in you drops off and Nirvana takes its place." In fact, there is no "getting" but a "dropping off'. Amal was probably thinking that he would be sitting with his mental personality somewhere, looking at Nirvana and saying, "Ah, this is Nirvana!" But so long as "you" are there, you haven't got Nirvana. One has to get rid of all attachments and personalities before Nirvana can come and that is extremely difficult for one who is attached to his mental personality like Amal.
SATYENDRA: If Nirvana is such a negative state, what is the difference between one who has it and one who hasn't?
PURANI: From the point of view of Nirvana there is no difference.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. You find the difference because it is "you" who gets blotted out in Nirvana and not somebody else.
Page-216
(After a pause) In this letter of Vivekananda, there is at least one thing precise about his spiritual experience: he speaks of the calm and stillness of Nirvana and before it everything seems an illusion.
PURANI: The division of consciousness into two parts—one being fundamentally free and the other imperfect or impure—is a very common experience.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is not only common, it is the inevitable experience unless one is able to take all action with equanimity. In order that one may be able to act without ambition, one should not be perturbed whether the action is done or not. There should be something like the Gita's "inaction in action"—and yet, as the Gita says, one must go on acting. The test is that even if the work is taken away or destroyed, it must make no difference to the condition of your consciousness.
SATYENDRA : Isn't Nirvana a fundamental spiritual experience?
SRI AUROBINDO: Nirvana, as I know it, is an experience in which the separative personality is blotted out and one acts according to what is necessary to be done. It is only a passage for reaching a state in which the true individuality can be attained. That individuality is vast, infinite, and can contain the whole world within itself. It is not the small narrow limited individual self in Nature. When you attain that true individuality you can remain in the world and yet be above it. You can act and still be not bound by your action. For getting rid of the separative personality Nirvana is a powerful experience. After Nirvana you can go on to realise yourself as both the One in all and the One who is Many-and yet that One is also He.
SATYENDRA: What you have called "multiple unity"?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.
SATYENDRA: The trouble is that we are so much attached to our body and bound up with our ego and passions that it seems hardly possible to get out of a life filled with them. Such a life alone appears real then.
SRI AUROBINDO: You have to give it its place in Reality. And to come out of it or get beyond it there are conditions laid down: for example, rejection and surrender. You have to get rid of desires and passions to arrive at the higher consciousness.
Page-217
SATYENDRA: And when in addition to our own burdens and difficulties and egoism we are asked to work for the Divine, for you and the Mother, the trouble increases!
SRI AUROBINDO: There again the same conditions are applicable. You have to work with the right attitude, without personal ambition, without ego. Necessarily, that can't be done in a day.
There are people here whose egos take a new turn—what may be called "egoism for the Divine"; thus, instead of saying "I" and "mine", they say "our work", "our Ashram" etc. But this form of ego too must go.
PURANI: I think Satyendra was not talking of that.
SATYENDRA: I was referring to our difficulty.
SRI AUROBINDO: And I was referring to mine. (Laughter) Several people here make it their main business to get hold of people and make them do Yoga. Their enthusiasm is something enormous. However much you may check them, they can't help propagandising,
PURANI: Shouldn't something be done to stop Veerabhadra doing that?
SRI AUROBINDO: Do you think you can stop him? I have threatened him with expulsion and even that seems to make no difference! (Laughter)
CHAMPAKLAL: I hear he is holding classes in the town and giving lectures on Yoga.
PURANI: He is explaining everything on a blackboard.
SRI AUROBINDO: What? Explaining the Brahman on a blackboard? As for his lecturing, he used to inflict letters on me never less than thirty pages!
PURANI: That means he had some consideration for you. To Reddy, the Minister of Madras, he wrote a letter of eighty page just to tell him to release a prisoner!
SRI AUROBINDO: I wonder how the Minister found time to go through his letter.
PURANI: The Minister wrote back regretting he had no time to read it. His secretary may have given him the list.
SRI AUROBINDO: Poor secretary! I sympathise with tea.
PURANI: One day Amrita told X that Mother had instructed all gate-keepers not to sit on the chairs or read or write when on duty.
Page-218
SRI AUROBINDO: That's true. Y and others used to reply to visitors, sitting on an easy chair. There were many complaints from outsiders about the gate-keepers.
PURANI: When Amrita asked X why he was not carrying out Mother's instructions, X replied, "That is just my difficulty."
SRI AUROBINDO: I have heard that he has become a Guru. If you tell these people to go somewhere else and start an Ashram of heir own they won't do it. They must remain here and become Gurus.
SATYENDRA : Some people try to impose their ideas on others.
NIRODBARAN: Not only impose but beat if you don't accept them. I heard that A gave a good beating to B for not accepting you as an Avatar.
SRI AUROBINDO: And after the beating did B feel like accepting me?
SATYENDRA: I don't understand how that sort of acceptance can help. If, without experiencing anything, one says about anybody 'He is an Avatar," it hasn't much value.
SRI AUROBINDO: Experience is not always necessary in order to believe a thing. One may have faith. But the trouble comes when you force your faith on others. You can say, "I believe so and so is an Avatar." But you can't say, "If you don't believe, I will thrash you."
As I said, some people have the habit of forcing themselves on others and propagandising.
NIRODBARAN: I am afraid Y is one of them.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. When R was here, he was going on quite well, having experiences and progressing in his own way, though he didn't know much about the nature of this Yoga. Y hold of him one day and gave a long lecture. R was extremely surprised and said, "What is all this now?'' And everything stopped.
NIRODBARAN: This sort of thing comes in the way of your work , I fear.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, tremendously! If instead of allowing a man to proceed on his own lines, one forces him to accept one's viewpoints for which he is not prepared, it interferes with the work.
SATYENDRA: Most probably the man turns against you.
Page-219
SRI AUROBINDO: Either he shuts himself up or he gets false ideas.
There are people who want to bring their whole families into Yoga. I don't see the logic of it. And there are husbands who get angry with their wives because they can't take to Yoga together with them. They want to make it a family affair.
SATYENDRA: They want to go to heaven with their families like Yudhisthira.
SRI AUROBINDO: That may be all right for going to heaven, but not for attaining salvation.
SATYENDRA: I suppose they have got the idea from the fact that a family follows one religion. If all follow it, the atmosphere becomes harmonious.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but such harmony is suitable only for the religious life. As for the family, even if there are religious differences, they don't matter, as D. L. Roy shows in his song, "Buro, budi doojanate".¹
Then there are people like X who, when the Mother refuses admission to somebody, go on saying, "Stick on, stick on! You see, I was refused but I have got in."
PURANI: Yes, it is a case of testing the faith.
SATYENDRA: Or perhaps he has the old idea that Yogis generally test their disciples and so the rejected ones have to pass the test.
SRI AUROBINDO: In that way some people are wonderful. There are a few from outside who write and write even if we do give any answer. If we ask them to go and seek another Guru, they won't.
SATYENDRA: Then why not accept them?
SRI AUROBINDO: Theirs is not a real call. In some it is only surface movement, and they are just obstinate. Others are sheer eccentrics or even lunatics.
After thhis, there was a pause in the talk. Some left the room at 8.30 p.m.
PURANI : That letter of Vivekananda is very sincere. One have freedom from ambition and other weaknesses unless one has the dynamic presence of the Divine.
¹"Old man, old woman, the two together. "
Page-220
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I find that most people have difficulty in understanding this. Those weaknesses are very hard to get rid of. They may not always manifest in the surface consciousness but that doesn't mean they are not there. They can be there even if you live in a higher consciousness; the dynamic presence of the Divine is needed. Or else, if without the dynamic realisation you can establish, as I have already said, equanimity and calm right down to your body-consciousness so that nothing stirs whatever happens, then also you can be free from them.
After I had the Nirvanic experience at Baroda and came to Calcutta for work, I thought I had no ambition — I mean personal ambition. But the Voice which I used to hear within would point out to me at every step how personal ambition was there in my movements. These things can hide for a long time without being detected.
It is like the contest for the Congress Presidentship. Everyone says, "It is not out of ambition but from sense of duty, call of the country, demand of principles!" (Laughter)
In the morning, during the sponging, Champaklal and Purani were engaged in killing flies. They were making a clapping sound. Champaklal burst into laughter. We reported the cause of the laughter to Aurobindo.
SRI AUROBINDO: This is not Ahimsa. Champaklal should be sent to Vinoba at the Gandhi Ashram.
PURANI: Oh, he will be given severe punishment.
SRI AUROBINDO: He should be stopped from laughing for six months.
In the evening, after the Mother had left for the general meditation, we were ready to begin talking. But Sri Aurobindo seemed preoccupied with something, or was thinking, or perhaps just in a mood of silence. Nirodbaran said to Purani, "Come out with your news." Purani kept smiling. After a few minutes Sri Aurobindo looked at us and broke into a spontaneous smile. Then Nirodbaran started speaking.
Page-221
NIRODBARAN: Purani seems to have some news.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then why doesn't he blurt it out?
PURANI: No, nothing today.
SRI AUROBINDO: Well, there is a cure for your cold in Sunday Times. You have to get into an aeroplane, take some rounds, get down—and you are cured.
SATYENDRA: Permanently?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, if the aeroplane comes down with a crash!
NIRODBARAN: V used to put a string up his nose for his cold.
SATYENDRA: That is a Hathayogic process.
SRI AUROBINDO: The Hathayogis also insert a long piece cloth into the stomach, pass it through the intestine and bring it out from the anus to clean the whole system. And there have been authentic cases of their eating poisons like nitric acid, cyanide, etc., and also things like nails and bits of glass.
SATYENDRA: I wonder how the scientists will explain all this. Somewhere they were invited to a demonstration, but they refused to go.
SRI AUROBINDO: They can't go—for fear of getting the present convictions shaken.
NIRODBARAN: The Hathayogins perhaps know some process to prevent absorption of the poisons.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they have the power to stop the action of the poisons and to eliminate them. They have to carry out some secret process immediately after their demonstration.
NIRODBARAN: Probably you have heard that Sir William Crookes invited scientists to his mediumistic seances. But refused to have anything to do with that sort of thing.
SRI AUROBINDO: The same happened in Germany. In some German village there was a horse which could do mathematical calculations. The owner of the horse invited scientists. They not only pooh-poohed the thing and turned down the invitation but also complained to the Government, saying such matters should be stopped because they were scientifically unorthodox.
PURANI: Maurice Maeterlinck went to see the performance and said he had himself not believed before seeing it, but he tested the animal by giving his own figures and the animal answered correctly by signs.
Page-222
SRI AUROBINDO: People say animals can't think or reason. It is not at all true. Their intelligence has evolved to act only within the narrow limits of life, according to their own needs. But they have latent faculties which have not been developed.
Cats have a language of their own. They utter different kinds of mews for different purposes. For instance, when the mother cat mews in a particular tone and rhythm after leaving her kittens behind a box, the little ones understand that they are not to move from that place until she comes back and repeats that mew. It is through the tone and the rhythm through the tone and the rhythm that cats express themselves.
Even donkeys, which are supposed to be very stupid, are sometimes unusually clever. Once some horses and donkeys were confined together, with the gate shut, to see if they could get out. While the horses were helpless, a donkey got out by lifting idle latch and opening the gate.
Why go so far? Even in our Ashram the Mother's cat Chikoo was extraordinarily clever. One day she was confined in a room. It was discovered that she was trying to open the window in exactly same way as the Mother used to do. Evidently Chikoo had watched the Mother carefully.
We had a dog, a bitch left by somebody in the first house we rented. One day she was locked out. Finding it impossible to push the door open, she just sat in front of it and began to think, "How to get in?" The way she sat and the attitude of her head and eyes showed clearly that she was thinking. Then suddenly she got up, as saying to herself, "Ah, there is the bathroom door. Let me try it. And she went in that direction. The door was open and she got in.
It is the Europeans who make a big difference between man and animal. The only difference is that animals can't form concepts and can't read or write or philosophise.
NIRODBARAN: They can't do Yoga, either.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know about that. Once, while the Mother and I were meditating, a cat happened to be present. We found that she was behaving oddly. She passed into a trance and was almost on the point of leaving her body and dying, when suddenly she recovered. Evidently she was trying to receive something.
SATYENDRA: Ramana Maharshi's cow Lakshmi is said to bow down to him.. She is supposed to be someone connected with him in her past life who was attached to the Maharshi. This cow must
Page-223
be an exceptional one in South India. One can't really love Tamil cows: one gets so disgusted with their thin starved look and blank expression. And what a horrible practice it is to set the cow's milk flowing by putting a stuffed dummy calf in front of her, which she can't recognise as a fake one.
You say animals are intelligent, but this doesn't show it.
SRI AUROBINDO: Not all men are intelligent either!
The talk about the dummy calf brought Gandhi into the discussion, as he severely condemned the practice and said, besides, that to drink cow's milk is equivalent to drinking the calf's blood, for it starves the calf. This was thought to be rather an extreme statement. SATYENDRA: Perhaps Vallabhbhai knows that Gandhi is sometimes extremist in his principles and that is why he asked him not to come to Bardoli at all during the Satyagraha campaign there withVallabhbhai in full command. Vallabhbha is very shrewd.
SRI AUROBINDO: Possibly he thought Gandhi would stop the whole movement if it didn't conform strictly to principles.
Purani now brought in his favourite subject: Rajkot affairs. He related the substance of the letters that had passed between Patel and the Thakur and the part played by the Dewan in helping the Thakur retract from the agreed terms. He also recounted the story of the suicide of Ranjit Singh because he was insulted by the Viceroy in the Chamber of Princes. Then the subject of Federation came up.
SRI AUROBINDO: When is the Government going to inaugurate Federation?
PURANI: The early part of 1940. That is why they are trying their best to bring the Congress into a settlement.
SRI AUROBINDO: The early part of 1940 is too soon. They have hardly a little more than a year in hand. Within such a short period they have to rope in the Princes and come to terms with the Congress.
PURANI: Bhulabhai Desai went to England many times ostensibly for his health but really, it would seem, to discuss this Federation problem. He hopes to remain behind the scenes.
Page-224
SRI AUROBINDO: That was my policy too. I sympathise with him. But the Nizam won't give in so easily. If the major States come in, the small ones don't matter.
PURANI: Vallabhbhai is trying to appeal to the Gaekwar.
SRI AUROBINDO: He will think for thirty years before he gives in. But who knows? He may give in. Since he is old he may take the glory and give the legacy of trouble to his successor.
SRI AUROBINDO (to Purani): Have you read the report of Hitler's interview with Colonel Beck in the Sunday Times'?
PURANI: No, what was it about?
SATYENDRA: Shouting at each other?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. It is said that when Hitler begins to shout and his eyes become glassy, it means some disaster. But in this interview when he began shouting and his eyes got the glassy look, Beck began to shout louder. Hitler was much surprised at this unexpected response and toned himself down.
SATYENDRA: He seems to have met his match.
SRI AUROBINDO (turning to Purani): You have seen X's statement, I am sure. He seems to be a mere intellectual, with no grasp of realities. Others too talk impractical nonsense.
NIRODBARAN : But X for one is very sincere and honest.
PURANI: Many leaders are like that.
NIRODBARAN: But if one really believes that the party is going to compromise with the enemy, isn't one justified in fighting about it-especially if one knows that negotiations are going on?
Page-225
SRI AUROBINDO: What is there objectionable in negotiations? Every big party and even every country has to negotiate. The Germans before and during the last war were doing it. Negotiation does not mean acceptance of the enemy's terms. There is no harm in seeing how far the other party or country will go in granting concessions, rights and privileges.
PURANI: When Nehru visited Nahash Pasha in Egypt, the latter said that his Wafd Party had become demoralised after accepting office. And now they are defeated. He wondered how Congress Ministers had remained honest after coming into power. Nehru explained to him about the Parliamentary Board which serves as a check on the Ministers. SRI AUROBINDO: I was surprised to see the dissolution of Wafd Party. I was wondering what it may have been due to. So this is the cause then? They ought to have turned out the king as Kemal did in Turkey. The present king is following the policy of father. And instead of quarrelling among themselves they should have used their newly acquired power to build up their nation: first, by giving the people education and general training, second, by increasing the country's wealth and, third, by building up military machine.
Exactly the same thing should be done in India by the Congress Ministers.
NIRODBARAN: What sort of education? Technical?
SRI AUROBINDO: Technical, agricultural, economic. Without proper knowledge, how will India develop her industries and trade? India is such a vast country; her own people can consume a lot. External trade is not necessary at the beginning. Look at what the U.S.A. did. She first developed her internal trade to meet the necessities of her own people and, when by that means she had increased her wealth, she began to develop her external trade. Our Government should have a plan for an economic survey of provinces to see what products are necessary for consumption in India. But, of course, one must not neglect secondary education. You can't have efficient people today without education. It serves to create a common interest and a basis of common understanding. But I don't mean the present form of education. It is not at all suitable for building up a nation. It has to be radically changed. Indian boys are more intelligent than English boys but three-fourths of their talent and energy are wasted, whereas
Page-226
English boys use their gifts ten times more efficiently than Indian boys do.
PURANI: Y has approached the merchants for donations to the Government. Owing to prohibition, there is a substantial loss of revenue. He told the merchants that if they didn't donate, new taxes would have to be imposed.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is better not to destroy the capitalists as the Socialists want. They are the source of a nation's wealth. They should be encouraged to spend for the nation. Taxing is all right, but you must increase production and start new industries and raise the standard of living. Without that, if you increase the taxes, there will be a state of depression. Other nations can tax enormously because they produce on a grand scale.
PURANI: Y is opening agricultural schools in villages and small industrial schools also—that is to say, carrying out the Wardha Scheme.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is a pity to give up all that work merely to fight the idea of Federation. You can fight it even after it has been established - you can fight the Federal Government. One has first to utilise what one has obtained and on that basis work out the rest.. If the British Government finds that Federation is properly worked out, it may not object to giving more. It expected a crowd of demagogues shouting together in the Assembly, not people capable of governing. But if Socialism came, it might frighten the British.
PURANI: The present British Governor of Bombay seems sympathetic to his Cabinet.
SRI AUROBINDO: The English people, except for a few autocrats like Curzon, have a constitutional temperament. They will violently oppose their being kicked out of the country but they won't object to being slowly shouldered out as in the Dominions. The Dominions are practically independent. The Britiish Government will be quite content if it can get India's help in case of war with other nations, but these declarations of anti -imperialistic policy and "No compromise", etc., etc. will tend to stiffen its attitude. What is the use of declaring your policy from the beginning? Even as regards the States, one must not be too exacting in one's demands. The Government won't tolerate the idea of reducing them to mere figureheads from the very beginning.
Page-227
NIRODBARAN: There is a tempting offer by the Calcutta Statesman. Arthur Moore writes to Dilip that he will pay Rs.100 per article if Sri Aurobindo writes in his paper on world events in the light of Yogic experience.
SRI AUROBINDO (bursting into laughter): In the light of Yogic experience! And what reply is Dilip going to give?
NIRODBARAN: He has asked me to get your reply.
SATYENDRA: S also offered good money to Dilip to write articles for his paper. It is an unscrupulous pro-Government paper, perhaps even financed by the Government.
PURANI: S came for the last Darshan.SRI AUROBINDO: Yes; and his eyes were constantly roving about. Isn't he the same chap who wanted to see me when he was a young man? I refused to see him because I had a feeling that he was a spy. Then when the police took interest in the matter and asked people why I had not seen him, my suspicion was confirmed. In fact, it was more than a feeling, it was a concrete intuition.
Later, I found he had become a notable figure in the Executive Council. I was much surprised.
Arthur Moore is also suspected by some people of being a spy not an ordinary spy but a secret agent of the Government. But spy or not, he knows how to meditate.
PURANI: How can he be a spy when he has supported Congress ministries and given them praise.
SRI AUROBINDO: People will say he has done it to spy better — to get sympathy.
Then there was medical talk about some old patients. One had said he had no substance left in his brain! Another had complained of hernia due to Asanas.
NIRODBARAN: There is a remarkable change in L.
SRI AUROBINDO: At one time she gave up work and that made her worse. Thinking constantly of disease and harbouring fear—these two things stand in the way of cure.
NIRODBARAN: Now L eats and digests anything.
SRI AUROBINDO: She used to write to us, "I am going to eat, You please digest for me." (Laughter)
Page-228
PURANI: The Gaekwar is still in Bombay, he seems to have been suffering for a long time.
SRI AUROBINDO: What is the disease?
DR. BECHARLAL: Thrombus in the brain.
PURANI: He is seventy-six now—rather old.
SRI AUROBINDO: Not very old for a sturdy man like him. In India they consider one old after fifty and fit to die at sixty. In England and China, one is ripe between sixty and seventy, and .only after eighty is one considered old. These things depend upon the atmosphere of the place—I don't mean the external atmosphere..
SATYENDRA: In India, Government servants have to retire at fifty or fifty-five. After that, they have no energy left to do anything new, especially as they are accustomed to an easy way of living.
SRI AUROBINDO: They don't find work and therefore die. One can always do something new at fifty-five.
PURANI: Hindenburg lived actively up to eighty-seven. Chamberlain is seventy-seven and is now Premier of England.
SRI AUROBINDO: The Mother's brother, after retiring from governorship in Africa, has been doing a lot of things—president of this, member of that and so on. He was made to retire. He did a great deal in Africa, but other people got the credit. It is men like him who built up France and also made it possible for the Ashram to continue here. Otherwise I might have had to go to France, or else to America and supramentalise the Americans.
When the Mother came here and I met her, her brother got interested. These things look like accidents but they are not. There is a guidance behind these events.
PURANI: Joswant writes that he is more and more distracted and wants to know how he will be able to come back. He is the secretary of some students' federation.
SRI AUROBINDO: He will have to federate less and consolidate more.
PURANI: He complains of being wrecked.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, the usual old things! That is a kind of neurasthenia that makes one restless and produces a want of balance He wants to show off, appear bigger than he is, do something startling and striking. He has capacity but it has to be organised before it can be useful.
Page-229