SATYENDRA: Ancient Yogis always believed that human nature couldn't be changed. They compared it to a dog's curved tail and left it alone, although they admitted the spiritual principle to be at work. Only Sri Aurobindo thinks it can be changed.
NIRODBARAN: And you don't?
SATYENDRA: No.
SRI AUROBINDO: What on earth has this spiritual principle been doing if the world has remained just the same?
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba, the well-known Yogi from Western India, also thinks there can be a change and his mission is to bring it about. But he is himself so changeable that he decides one thing today and changes it tomorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then he must be on the Overmind plane! (Laughter}
NIRODBARAN: Why Overmind?
SRI AUROBINDO: Because it is a plane of infinite possibilities.
SATYENDRA: There is something curious about Meher Baba's realisation. Once while he was returning from his college he met a Muslim woman fakir who, as soon as she saw him, embraced him. After that he lost his normal consciousness, his eyes became glassy and his speech incoherent. He behaved like an eccentric. He was in this state for a long time, till some other Yogi brought him back to the normal state. I know of another Yogi who remained in a similar strange state for a considerable number of years. What could such a state have been?
SRI AUROBINDO: It is going into a higher consciousness without being able to maintain contact with the instrumental nature.
SATYENDRA: Is it the Absolute Consciousness
SRI AUROBINDO: If you mean the Supreme Consciousness, no. If it had been that, he would have either gone into it for good or come down and established a harmony and balance in his instrumental nature. But this must have been a higher consciousness in touch with the Absolute.
SATYENDRA : Meher Baba has been on the verge of breaking his silence so many times, but again and again he has deferred the date.
SRI AUROBINDO: Now I can fix his position and everything is clear to me about him. Formerly I couldn't understand what he was. Yes, I can see him now clearly. He must have gone into that higher
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consciousness but not established a contact with the instruments, and so long as this contact is not there people behave incoherently; they have this Bala or Unmatta Bhava¹ because they allow any Force to take hold of their instrumental nature and their conduct looks like a want of balance to others. It is something like the Paramahamsa Bhava², only here the higher consciousness remains in the background while they allow their nature to behave like a child or a madman. Europeans, of course, would find it difficult to understand such a phenomenon, and so I suppose Becharlal calls Meher Baba a humbug. As for trying to break his silence so many times, I suppose he thought that the contact was going to be made and he was trying to establish it before he spoke. The whole problem till now has been to express the higher consciousness through the instrumental nature.
NIRODBARAN: That means he has something genuine.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba has an Ashram especially meant for mad people. I mean such mad people as have lost their normal consciousness by Yoga or by coming in touch with Yogis.
SRI AUROBINDO: I see. Yes, these people are trying to do the same thing by bringing down something from above while Westerners like Huxley and Heard are going about it in their own way from below.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba's method is now to impart spirituality by touch. The recipient feels a sensation or emotion of love.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is the vital-physical way. .
SATYENDRA: But he is waiting to break his silence and he writes that when he does speak a great miracle will take place.
SRI AUROBINDO: He wants to act by the mind, I suppose. Now he is acting through the vital being, but the mental is more effective and so he is waiting for it. Lele also used to act through the vital. Once I remember somebody wanted to weep and he thought that if he couldn't weep, he would not get any realisation. So Lele said, "Pretend to weep." The man pretended and then the emotion became real and he began to weep uncontrollably. It is a kind of auto-suggestion.
CHAMPAKLAL: Yes, Lele also made my niece weep like that. Another thing he did was to give the mantra Om Dattatreya
¹The disposition of a child or a madman.
² The disposition of a liberated man.
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SRI AUROBINDO: He never gave me any mantra. He said the mantra would rise from within.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba makes a lot of prophecies and they don't come true. I can't understand why they fail.
SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps he thinks that if, say, four times out of ten he has been successful the rest of his predictions will also come true. He must have forgotten his failures. He doesn't seem to have a critical mind.
PURANI: Lele also used to prophesy, committing God in advance. Whenever he failed to cure an illness, he said it was God's defeat!
SRI AUROBINDO: But philosophically, it would mean perhaps that the higher consciousness failed to carry out his purpose.
SATYENDRA: Could these eccentricities and incoherencies be due to egoism still remaining in the being?
SRI AUROBINDO: Not necessarily. In the ordinary life the ego-construction holds things together and when that ego is removed by one's going into the higher consciousness, one behaves in this way, until a greater principle takes the place of the ego and establishes another balance. If we go by his utterances, Meher Baba seems to have a strong mixture of ego in him. What is his principle of Yoga?
SATYENDRA: He says the ego is the root of everything wrong: it must disappear.
SRI AUROBINDO: What is to replace the ego?
SATYENDRA: Something like Divine Mind—Divine Mind acting through the individual consciousness.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, he recognises the individual consciousness as real?
SATYENDRA: He has no systematised philosophy. One has to build it out of his utterances.
SRI AUROBINDO: No critical mind, as I have said.
SATYENDRA : At least no philosophic mind.
SRI AUROBINDO: Some might say no mind at all to speak of, leave aside the philosophic mind.
EVENING
NIRODBARAN: I was feeling very sleepy at the time of your walk. Was it mere sleep? Or was it a lucky descent of the Force?
SRI AUROBINDO: It may be either.
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NIRODBARAN: I dreamt or rather saw that Norway was preparing for war.
PURANI: Then it can't be sleep. Nirodbaran must be having an inner opening.
NIRODBARAN : "What sort of opening is this? "What have I to do with Norway? I want the psychic opening.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why? Yoga is universal. So Norway is part of you. (Laughter) But was it really Norway and not Sweden?
NIRODBARAN: I think it was Norway. Was my sleep a tamasic (inert) condition?
SRI AUROBINDO: Maybe; but since you had a dream you may have gone within and not sunk into mere Tamas. In such cases either one goes within, while the surface consciousness falls into the subconscient or one goes down into the subconscient altogether.
NIRODBARAN: Champaklal was also sleeping.
SRI AUROBINDO: Champaklal can sleep anytime unless he has a toothache. (Laughter. Champaklal was actually suffering from a toothache at this time.)
NIRODBARAN: Are there no dreams in tamasic sleep?
SRI AUROBINDO: There are especially when the surface consciousness goes into the subconscient. But then the dreams are incoherent.
NIRODBARAN: Doesn't tamasic sleep leave a heaviness afterwards?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.
NIRODBARAN: But sometimes after meditation one feels a heaviness. What could that be?
SRI AUROBINDO: It may not be necessarily due to Tamas. The descent of the Force into the physical gives at times a heaviness or else in meditation one may go into the subconscient. All depends on the kind of heaviness.
NIRODBARAN: To go back to dreams; Mrs. Sen told me that once she dreamt that you were taking Khichuri¹ and Meghnad Saha and others were sitting around you.
SRI AUROBINDO (surprised): Meghnad Saha?
NIRODBARAN: Yes. And in the dream Nolini Sen brought Mrs. Sen before you and you said to him, "You know I can see
¹An Indian food, a mixture of rice and pulses.
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the inside of people. She has something in her." And then you said to her that the Hindu-Moslem problem was going to be settled very soon. (Laughter)
SRI AUROBINDO: From Khichuri to Yoga and then to politics! I hope I spoke the truth when I made that last remark.
NIRODBARAN: You also told her the way the problem was going to be settled. But she does not now remember your words.
SRI AUROBINDO: This must have been the most interesting part. A pity she has lost it.
NIRODBARAN: That brings me to what Sen told me. He asked the Mother if he should do Japa (name-repetition). The Mother said he needn't and could try to feel the Presence. The curious part is that as soon as the form comes when he tries to feel the Presence, he rejects the form. He says that in the Hindu Shastra Japa goes with form. So if Japa is not to be done, the form too has to go. "Very queer," I remarked.
SRI AUROBINDO: But why does he reject the form? The form is a very good unless, of course, he wants to feel the impersonal Presence. No doubt the Presence which the Mother spoke of is much more than the form; the form is only the expression of the Being. Not that it has no value or reality, but the Presence can be felt impersonal as well as personal.
SATYENDRA: I suppose he has the same idea as Ramakrishna once had.
SRI AUROBINDO: What was that?
SATYENDRA: When Ramakrishna wanted to go into the Nirvikalpa Samadhi the form of Kali used to come and intervene. So he took an inner sword, as it were, and clove the form in two, and then he was able to pass into that state of featureless and trance.
SRI AUROBINDO: But Sen is not going into the Nirvikalpa! (Laughter)
PURANI: Have you seen the pictures of mad people in Meher Baba's book? They don't seem to show Yogic madness; they look like cases of possession
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SRI AUROBINDO: I haven't seen the pictures. Yogic madness is a very rare thing. It is due to some overpowering experience such as Paramahansa bhava disturbing the balance of the lower being.
NIRODBARAN : Some people come out of meditation in a mad state. Why?
SRI AUROBINDO : They open themselves, while meditating, to vital forces, forces of the occult life plane. In Yoga, madness results from some mistake. In the lower nature there may be an erotic impulse or else ambition which rises up and then one gets possessed by these forces.
NIRODBARAN: Isn't fear also responsible?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, especially when people who are not fit for Yoga do meditation, say, for instance, at a burning ghat or in a cemetery during the Tantric process.
NIRODBARAN: I couldn't quite catch the distinction you make between madness from Paramahansa bhava and the type we see in those pictures in Meher Baba's book.
SRI AUROBINDO :In the one case the realisation is there behind while the Yogi allows the external nature to play about as it likes. In the other the contact has not yet been established between the higher consciousness and the lower, though there may be some influence of the higher consciousness in the being.
NIRODBARAN: Regarding the form and the Presence, you said the Presence is greater.
SRI AUROBINDO: Not greater but much more than the form,
NIRODBARAN: In feeling the personal Presence, is it like feeling the Presence of Krishna everywhere?
SRI AUROBINDO: As I said, the Presence maybe personal or impersonal. It may be the dynamic Divine with a personal appearance or the still, immutable Brahmic Consciousness which is impersonal and universal. Form is only a certain manifestation of the Presence. You can see Krishna everywhere as a Person and feel His Presence in all, while in the experience of the Impersonal you will perceive the one Self in all or the silent Brahman present everywhere.
LATE EVENING
While Sri Aurobindo was lying in bed after his walk, there was some conversation.
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PURANI: Dara has written a poem on The Life Divine to celebrate its publication.
SRI AUROBINDO: What sort of poem? "Life Divine, full of wine?" (Laughter)
PURANI: Yes, you have caught it. It goes:
Life Divine
Mother's Wine -
The book is out,
Let us shout!
The subject then changed to the war.
PURANI: Everybody is indignant about Russia's attack on Finland.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Uruguay wants to kick her out of the League. (Laughter)
PURANI: The Finns seem to be doing well.
SRI AUROBINDO: They are good fighters and specially good at guerilla warfare.
PURANI: In connection with what you said on Presence and form, Nirodbaran has given the analogy of flower and smell to correspond to form and Presence. It did not seem correct to me. I told him, "Smell is the result of form, while here form itself is a result."
SRI AUROBINDO: Besides, the flower is not conscious. The Presence is that of the Being and the form is the embodiment of the conscious Force of the Being for some particular purpose on a certain level. Physical form is necessary for work to be done on the physical level. And there are subtler forms for work on other planes than the physical.
PURANI: May not the Presence felt be that of the Soul in everything?
SRI AUROBINDO: The word "soul" brings in the suggestion of something individual. But we can speak also of the World-Soul which is the Cosmic Self .
PURANI: Can one perceive the Presence without the form?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.
NIRODBARAN: In using the flower and smell analogy I meant whether the Presence, when one feels it, is impersonal like smell.
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SRI AUROBINDO: Personal or impersonal is not the question here. The smell belongs to the flower-that is, to the form, while the Presence may have no form. It may manifest itself as form or it may not. You may not be aware of the form of the Presence and yet feel the joy and power of it. This may be compared to smell if you like.
NIRODBARAN : Dakshina has had no sleep for three nights. SRI AUROBINDO: What's the matter with these people? Why can't Dakshina sleep? Thinking?
NIRODBARAN: No, vital restlessness. He says everything is a chaos.
SRI AUROBINDO: Well, he has to build a cosmos out of it. He has to quiet the vital being.
NIRODBARAN: S told me of an experience. She feels a stillness coming down upon her and she becomes perfectly still, without any vibration. Then the stillness melts and the outline of her body disappears into a void, a nothingness. She becomes unconscious of even her breath. When she comes back to the body-sense, breathing slowly, she has the feeling, "I am in the heart."
SRI AUROBINDO: Is the experience frequent and is she conscious of the nothingness?
NIRODBARAN: She is conscious.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is a kind of Nirvana of the personal being, where the cessation of breath usually occurs. It is not really a cessation but only apparently one.
SATYENDRA: Is that Shunyam (void)? And is it really what we call Nirvana?
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes - (after a pause) a temporary Nirvana of the personal self.
NIRODBARAN: And what is that feeling in the heart?
SRI AUROBINDO: That is the return of the sense of existence felt in the psychic being—what may be called the individual spiritual existence.
SATYENDRA: In exteriorisation a cessation of breath also occurs.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but here she loses the individual existence and is conscious only of nothingness
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SATYENDRA : Does it mean liberation from desire and ego?
SRI AUROBINDO: No, unless the experience is frequent. That is why I wanted to know if she has it frequently. If the experience has become permanent—that is, if it remains all the time or can be called up any time-then one can get rid of desires or at least quiet them down.
In the Nirvanic experience you don't feel yourself as particularly, anybody, nor are you exactly nobody. Either your physical being, the normal body, is felt as a point or spot in Infinity or you feel yourself as part of the Universal. The body is felt inside you and not you inside the body.
SATYENDRA: According to traditional Vedanta, the experience of Shunyam precedes the experience of Self-realisation.
SRI AUROBINDO: Can't say that. It may precede or come after.
EVENING
The talk started again about Meher Baba.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba speaks of a latent state of consciousness which is the origin of everything. After that latent state comes the play of possibilities.
SRI AUROBINDO: If it is a play of possibilities only, how does the cosmos evolve? It would remain a chaos. What decides the actuality?
SATYENDRA: He doesn't say anything definite. He speaks of fourteen Shunyams: Intuition, Superconscious State, Lower Inspiration, Higher Inspiration, Insight, Illumination, etc.
SRI AUROBINDO : How does he classify them? Is Intuition the Intuitive Mind?
SATYENDRA: He has no classification. He doesn't have the critical mind required for that. But he doesn't believe in the Vedantic withdrawal from life. He wants to bring down the realisation into this earth and work here-a sort of heaven on earth.
SRI AUROBINDO: There he agrees with our system. This aim now seems to be followed by others also.
SATYENDRA: In Meher Baba's scheme there is no place for the individual.
SRI AUROBINDO: How?
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SATYENDRA: When you realise the Divine, you act from the Cosmic Consciousness.
SRI AUROBINDO: Who is this "you"?
SATYENDRA: I am putting it in that form.. He means the individual consciousness is identified with the Cosmic Consciousness
SRI AUROBINDO: Then it is all right.
SATYENDRA: But it is the Cosmic Consciousness that acts through the individual.
NIRODBARAN: In Europe, during his travel there, he got a bad reputation. He was called a fraud and a cheat.
SATYENDRA: That is the European mentality. They can't bear anything mystic.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Huxley and others are ridiculed for their mysticism.
SATYENDRA: One thing is queer about Meher Baba. He has never been in want of money. Money has simply flowed in.
CHAMPAKLAL: Then he has reached God?
SRI AUROBINDO (laughing): And he surely must be in the Cosmic Consciousness!
SATYENDRA: He is so erratic in his behaviour. Today he is going to one place, tomorrow another; he brings lady disciples here from England to go to China; then after they have made tour of India he suddenly alters his plan and sends them back to England.
SRI AUROBINDO: That obviously is his cosmic movement.! (Laughter)
As we were sponging Sri Aurobindo, Purani started once more the Meher Baba, the Yogi of Western India, by saying that one of his disciples had sketched some diagrams of Meher Baba's world-scheme
SATYENDRA: There he shows the arrangement of the different planes.
SRI AUROBINDO: It seems by "Intuition" he means the Intuitive Mind which throws its light on the ordinary intelligence. In that plane there are four divisions: discrimination with intuitive suggestion, inspiration which he calls "Higher Inspiration", then
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revelation which is equivalent to his "insight ". and finally the gnosis which could be his "Illumination ". In that way his scheme is more understandable.
SATYENDRA: In his diagram all jivas, individual souls, are held in the Paramatman Consciousness; they are latent and the of purpose evolution is to make them conscious of their unity with the Divine.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is akin to our idea.
At this point we noticed that Champaklal was shaking his head with closed eyes and we began to laugh.
SRI AUROBINDO: What is it?
NIRODBARAN: Champaklal is shaking his head.
SRI AUROBINDO: Because he doesn't understand us?
SATYENDRA: Probably he is shaking to the rhythm of my speech.
CHAMPAKLAL: Both. (Laughter)
SATYENDRA: To go back to Meher Baba: his behaviour, as I have said, is very erratic, saying one thing now, contradicting it the next moment, and prophesying so many things that don't come true.
SRI AUROBINDO:: That means he is living and acting from the Cosmic Consciousness. I don't know what realisation he has reached. Perhaps it is on the vital plane. That is a plane of possibility or idea or suggestion comes to him with some force, he accepts it. The nature of these vital formations is to present themselves with a force. And when another possibility comes with the same force, Meher Baba accepts that too so that his prophecies go wrong, become contradictory and his planning and behaviour erratic. This sort of thing I know by experience. But European mind can't understand it. It calls it all a fraud.
SATYENDRA: He doesn't reject anything. He even goes to cinemas and says that one can act there more easily where people are concentrated on one purpose.
SRI AUROBINDO: That means he works through the mass, which again is a sign of working from the vital plane.
NIRODBARAN: He seems to be an interesting fellow anyhow.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he is interesting.
SATYENDRA: He lays great stress on love.
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SRI AUROBINDO: That means the heart. And that again is a sign of his action working through the vital being. :
SATYENDRA: Some of the people who go to see him are not impressed. Others feel a sense of love towards him. Ramdas also acts through love; he mixes with people and serves them out of love: he has no mission, while Meher Baba claims to have a mission.
PURANI: Nirodbaran was wondering what you meant by saying yesterday that he had got into a higher consciousness.
NIRODBARAN: Isn't the higher consciousness a vast range?
SRI AUROBINDO: The higher consciousness is anything above the mind. Of course, there are different levels of higher consciousness.
NIRODBARAN: That's what I mean by a "vast range".
SRI AUROBINDO: There is no indication of the nature of Meher Baba's first realisation; but to judge from his first experience, or its results, he seems to have got into the Cosmic Consciousness, but for its expression there was no instrumentation for a long time. That explains his long period of seeming madness. Since then he has been trying to establish the contact but there is still no proper organisation of the instrument.
SATYENDRA: But he is quite conscious. He makes his own plans and arrangements even as regards details.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't mean there is no contact but the contact is not sufficiently established and organised. He is trying to establish it by his silence.
SATYENDRA: He doesn't seem to be conscious of other worlds.
SRI AUROBINDO: For that one must have the visionary power and know the workings of these worlds and their influence on you. It is sometimes done by coming in contact with beings of those worlds. Otherwise one is only conscious of the planes within oneself.
SATYENDRA: People who go to him feel a great bustle and activity. One biographer has written about that.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then his life could be written of as a hustle and bustle coming out of the silence.(Laughter)
NIRODBARAN: At any rate he seems to be more interesting than Ramana Maharshi.
SATYENDRA: Maharshi is another type. People say they feel great peace at his Ashram. And he himself looks like a rock of peace.
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SRI AUROBINDO: At any rate Maharshi is much more firmly established in his realisation.
NIRODBARAN: Does he believe in transformation of this life?
SATYENDRA: No. He says he has no such Sankalpa (will). Dilip asked him once what he thought of your idea of ascent, descent, transformation, etc., and whether he wanted to change earth-life. He replied that there was no Sankalpa in him for it.
SRI AUROBINDO:: The Mother also believes in Sankalpa, as you can see from what she said to Paul Brunton when he asked her what he should do. She said, "You have to follow whatever will arises in you. When you have realised the Self, the Self will choose for you what to do." That is another thing European minds can't understand. They think all spiritual personalities must be of the same fixed type.
SATYENDRA: Sometimes Meher Baba makes provocative statements. If asked, "Are you Christ?" he says, "Yes." "Are you God?" Again, "Yes." When a Christian comes, he says, "I can help you. Awaken the Christ within." By that he means the Christ consciousness.
PURANI : Blake and other European mystics have said the same.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is the doctrine of all esoterics.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba wants to create a circle of twelve disciples.
SRI AUROBINDO: Like the twelve apostles? Repetition of an old performance?
NIRODBARAN: Ending in a crucifixion?
SATYENDRA: No, minus that.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then there won't be any Judas? (Laughter)
SATYENDRA : His system of communicating with others is by a board on which the alphabet is arranged. By swift movements he indicates what he has to say.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is like table-tapping.
SATYENDRA: Some of his disciples criticise him and say he is proud-that's because of his wrong prophecies, I think. I wish he would remain silent.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, if it is true silence. And silence would have saved him the inconvenience to which he has been put.
SATYENDRA: Some people Say, "We are convinced he has no Nirvikalpa Samadhi."
SRI AUROBINDO: He doesn't believe in Samadhi. One can't act in samadhi.
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SATYENDRA: And some people are bored by him.
SRI AUROBINDO: Do they think they are in a school?
SATYENDRA: No, not that bad. (Laughter) He puts meditation above concentration — meditation on an idea or scheme or object.
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite correct.
SATYENDRA (after some time): Some people—especially Europeans—at once rush to the press to vent their impressions. The danger is that sometimes they have to contradict their previous statements and impressions, as in Y's case. He was taken up with Yoga at first, then he began to decry it. It is the same with some Europeans connected with Meher Baba. They praise him at first and then say, "He is inconsistent." In Yoga one can't always be consistent. Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes." When one is growing, one can't always have consistency.
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. Emerson and Vivekananda said the same thing. "Consistency", said Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." There are contrary sides to a truth and their expressions may appear contradictory.
EVENING
NIRODBARAN (as Sri Aurobindo was being massaged): It seems that for some time here in the Ashram the response in the physical with regard to illness has been quicker than before. Yesterday J was relieved of an acute asthmatic attack as soon as the news of it reached you.
PURANI: Jwalanti got relief of acute sciatica the moment evening meditation started.
NIRODBARAN: Is all this because the Power has increased or is because of a greater receptivity in us?
SRI AUROBINDO: The Power has increased, and so, receptivity but only in particular cases and not in a general sense.
(To Nirodbaran after a while) I am told Satyendra does meditation while working and has that experience of nothingness, but feels giddy. If she feels giddy she shouldn't allow herself to meditate during work. She may fall down.
NIRODBARAN: She didn't tell me about giddiness. When asked me about meditating during work I told her to ask the Mother.
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SRI AUROBINDO: But does she remain conscious? What is meant by being "conscious of nothingness"?
NIRODBARAN: I'll ask her to write out the experience.
SRI AUROBINDO: (smiling to Satyendra): What about Sh?
SATYENDRA: I was just thinking of him while reviewing in my mind my present patients. Strange coincidence! He is getting on well though he won't admit it. He has asked for his medical reports from Dr. Savoor.
SRI AUROBINDO: What for? Does he want to make a book out of them and publish it? Savoor may have thrown them into the W.P.B.
SATYENDRA: Purani has asked for homeopathic treatment. I advised him to go to Dr. Ramchandra. (After some time) I want to say something more about Meher Baba. At the start of his spiritual life he lost consciousness through an embrace from a Yogini and recovered through a knock from a Yogi.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is allopathic and not homeopathic treatment.
SATYENDRA : While he was rambling in a dazed condition after that embrace he came across a Yogi who as soon as he saw him threw a stone which struck his forehead. Meher Baba was startled and time back to normal consciousness.
SRI AUROBINDO: Startled back into common sense?
SATYENDRA: I have heard of Sadhus curing diseases by flinging things at people and hurting them in various other ways. In general I don't know how to view Sadhus. It is curious to see jealousy and egoism in them even more than in worldly people who are doing sadhana. They are egoistic even about their renunciation!
SRI AUROBINDO: How?
SATYENDRA: One tells another, "I have sacrificed a lot. How much have you sacrificed?" As for worldly people who do sadhana, they are busy all day and at the end of the day when they meet some brother disciples, they become happy.
SRI AUROBINDO: In the world there is more restraint. People know that otherwise they would get into hot water. I have seen many jealousies in Ashrams. I knew a Bengali Sadhu who fought with a fellow Sadhu for the gadi of an Ashram. He was quiet at first but disciples egged him on. When his Guru came to know about quarrel he said, "You have gained what you could in this life. You won't advance any more." In Dayanand's Ashram, however,
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the disciples lived in peace and harmony because he always insists on love among them.
Satyendra broke the silence by saying that he had had an unexpected visit from his patient Sh. We said that it must have been the result of the previous day's talk. We were all amused by the information from Sh that his nerves and stomach, not his mind, were the seats of the trouble: the hostile forces attacked him there. Sri Aurobindo asked: "But why the stomach?" After this, the talk moved on to Meher Baba, the Yogi from Western India.
SATYENDRA: What consciousness corresponds to the Karana Sharira, the Causal Body?
SRI AUROBINDO: What I call the Superconscient. It belongs to the Vijnana or Supermind.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba declares that one has to go beyond the Karana Sharira and he identifies it with the mental plane.
SRI AUROBINDO: What he and others mean is that it belongs to the Higher Mind or Higher Intelligence, not to the Manas or ordinary lower mental consciousness but to the Buddhi.
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba says Karana Sharira is the root of Samskaras which are manifested on the subtle planes. He puts the human consciousness on the gross planes but he believes that it opens to the subtle ones.
SRI AUROBINDO: The human consciousness has what I call the subliminal, which is open to the subtle worlds, but of which one is not aware because the surface awareness is clouded by the ordinary human mental, vital and physical. The inner opening is to the subliminal while the higher is to the Superconscient. There are some people who are open to the latter.
SATYENDRA: Terms like Karana Sharira are of the later Vedanta.
SRI AUROBINDO: I go by the Upanishads where they mention the Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vijnanamaya Koshas, the Kosha being the root. The Upanishads define Vijnana in terms of the Vedas while later it had three senses: the Truth-Consciousness, the Higher Intelligence and even Science.
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SATYENDRA: We use the terms Padartha Vijnana or Padartha Shastra for Science.
SRI AUROBINDO: Shastra is much more appropriate here than Vijnana.
SATYENDRA (addressing Purani): New copies of The Life Divine have come. They seem a little thin. Perhaps thinner paper has been used.
NIRODBARAN: Same price?
PURANI: You thought the price would also be thin? (Laughter) Nolini and I were wondering if they would send us copies.
SATYENDRA : Nolini and Purani get them free.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why?
PURANI: For review.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh! (Laughter)
NIRODBARAN: Premanand has found a new trick for selling copies. He promises your autograph. (Sri Aurobindo laughs.) In that way he is like Gandhi. But now people don't crowd round Gandhi for his autograph.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why?
NIRODBARAN: Because he charges five rupees for each autograph. (Laughter) So they all go to Vallabhbhai, Nehru and others.
SRI AUROBINDO: They should charge one rupee then.
SATYENDRA: Gandhi is very clever. He is never in need of money.
NIRODBARAN: Then, like Meher Baba, he must have reached God! (Laughter)
SATYENDRA: Meher Baba gets much more money. Besides, the cases are different, for Gandhi keeps an account of every item.
SRI AUROBINDO: Gandhi is a trustee of God while Meher Baba is God himself! (Laughter)
SATYENDRA: Once as Meher Baba was passing by a jail he said, "There also I have my agents."
SRI AUROBINDO: Then everybody is his "agent".
SATYENDRA: But these are special agents. The trouble is that he is not at all dependable. The Europeans complain, as I have already said that he changes plans so often.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, European minds can't tolerate that. They want arrangement, method, a fixed system.
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NIRODBARAN: In that case Meher Baba is like Hitler. By the way, this is the fateful month for Hitler,
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but the stars don't seem to be acting perhaps because Russia has come in. Russia now occupies the stage; Hitler has quieted down.
PURANI: Now people are hoping for something in Spring.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is due to Strauss. Hitler began too early, in November. If he had begun in December,, astrology would have proven itself successful. Anyhow, now it is not only the Hitler danger but the Stalin danger.
NIRODBARAN: Hitler is in a difficult position. He has to face the Western front and also provide for Stalinist possibilities.
SATYENDRA: Why? He has nothing to fear from Stalin.
SRI AUROBINDO: If Stalin is successful in the Baltic and the Balkans, Germany will be in danger and Stalin will be all-powerful in Europe.
NIRODBARAN: Besides, there is fear of an internal revolution in Germany and then of the spread of Communism.
SRI AUROBINDO : That is what Stalin hopes for. And after that Communism may spread over the whole of Europe.
SATYENDRA: But Stalin is not making much headway in Finland.
SRI AUROBINDO: No, he's not, except that his men have made some progress at the Isthmus, which is not much, and in the North where they have reached the Finnish defence lines.
PURANI: Finland is now fortifying the Aaland Islands. She hasn't up to now because of objections.
SRI AUROBINDO: Only Russia had objected. The League had given permission.
SATYENDRA: Sweden seems willing to help Finland.
SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps they are already helping with arms
EVENING
There was very little talk. Nobody appeared to be in the mood.
PURANI: Have you seen Jinnah's statement? After this, Congress should have nothing to do with him.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, the more they approach him the more insolent he becomes. Is it true that the Momins, the sect to which
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jinnah belongs, constitute half the number of Muslims in India? That is what is being said.
PURANI: I don't know exactly.
When Sri Aurobindo was lying down, Purani showed him some photos of Meher Baba's "mad disciples". Sri Aurobindo commented, "They don't look like liberated souls!" (Laughter)
PURANI (after the sponging of Sri Aurobindo was over): At least one member of the Muslim League Executive doesn't agree with Jinnah's statement yesterday that December 2 should be observed by all Muslims and even the other minorities as the day of liberation from the Congress regime.
SRI AUROBINDO: Who is that? What's his name?
PURANI: I have forgotten it. The Hindu jokes that now we understand why it is said that people should retire after sixty. Jinnah is more than sixty now.
NIRODBARAN: Congress should combine with these Momins and try to come to some agreement with them.
SATYENDRA: It can't do that now, because Congress is too moral.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is too moral.
PURANI: Kher has asked Jinnah to specify his charges against Congress.
SRI AUROBINDO: Jinnah won't do that; he will only make general statements.
NIRODBARAN: Abul Kalam has also objected to having a Nationalist Muslim Conference at present. He says the time is not favourable.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't see why it is not favourable. Politically the best thing to do is to combine the Nationalist Muslims-not only those belonging to Congress—and then try to carry the Muslim mass with them. That is the only way to check Jinnah. Even in the Muslim League there are some dissatisfied elements.
NIRODBARAN (after some time): In yesterday's paper Russia was said to be designing an attack on India. Is there any truth in it?
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SRI AUROBINDO: India? I think it was Asia. I have also considered it a possibility that Stalinist Russia might attack India. It may begin with Mohammedan Asia and then come to India. If Allies are at war with Russia, this is quite possible. Have you heard the radio news? I don't know why Daladier has made such a fiery speech today against Russia.
NIRODBARAN: It is rather inopportune because it will provoke Russia.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes; Daladier has enough trouble on hands. But he is like that. He is a weak man, and weak men become unnecessarily violent at times.
PURANI: But France can't directly help Finland.
SRI AUROBINDO: No, she can't, unless Sweden joins in and Norway too. Then not only France but also England can help effectively.
NIRODBARAN: I wonder what Jinnah and his Indian Muslim will do when Russia attacks Mohammedan Asia.
SRI AUROBINDO: He will hold meetings and shout or he will blame Congress for it.
PURANI: He will blame Nehru perhaps because of his social tendencies and say that he has invited Russia.
SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps it will be more characteristic of him to say, "I like Nehru but he is wicked in this matter."
NIRODBARAN: He may also say that Russia has dared invade because Congress has withdrawn support to the British Government.
SRI AUROBINDO: That won't be communal enough. He will say Congress has invited Russia in to suppress and oppress the Muslims.
PURANI (after a lull): Saravan has been accepted for military training. He was a reservist.
SRI AUROBINDO: Why training?
PURANI: These people are to be trained for three months and then either sent to Saigon or kept here.
SRI AUROBINDO: There are enough troops in Saigon. Besides, in France they don't give training.
PURANI: The first time he was rejected on grounds of health.
SRI AUROBINDO: Well, he can now go to Y to make him ill (Laughter) But I don't understand why he should be sent to Saigon.
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SATYENDRA: Perhaps he and the others are very anxious to fight.
PURANI: Yes, they themselves wrote to the Ministry that they should be called up.
SATYENDRA: They want to fight for glory.
SRI AUROBINDO: For food! (Laughter )
When Sri Aurobindo was preparing to sit down to write, Champaklal brought three copies of The Life Divine for his autograph. Champaklal read out the names of the buyers, which were written on a slip of paper. When his own name came, he kept silent. Then Nirodbaran said: "Champaklal. " Sri Aurobindo turned and remarked, "You should have said, 'Who is this Champaklal?'" There was laughter again. 11 DECEMBER 1939
Purani was having a discussion with Sri Aurobindo about the appropriate Sanskrit quotations for The Life Divine. At the end Satyendra and Nirodbaran laughed aloud.
SRI AUROBINDO: What is the matter?
SATYENDRA: Nirodbaran is laughing because he doesn't understand a bit of the talk. It is all Greek to him.
NIRODBARAN: Same for you.
CHAMPAKLAL: Nirodbaran was trying for some time to pick up Sanskrit and now has given up.
NIRODBARAN: I was trying to learn the letters. I studied Pali in school, so I don't know Sanskrit.
PURANI: In Bengal they write Sanskrit in Bengali script and their pronunciation of Sanskrit is awful.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. I remember in Barin's school he engaged a Bengali to teach Sanskrit. When the teacher left, he engaged a Hindustani teacher whose pronunciation was quite different from the Bengali way. The students found fault with his Pronunciation. I had to take great pains to convince Barin that it was the Bengali teacher who was wrong. (Sri Aurobindo related the story with much relish and enjoyment.) The Bengali language, I mean the written language, is very easy.
SATYENDRA: How?
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SRI AUROBINDO: It has very little grammar, no complication about gender, number, etc., as in Sanskrit or French.
PURANI: In French, the gender is especially complex. In Sanskrit the word "Dara", meaning "wife", is masculine. I don't know why.
SRI AUROBINDO: Does it mean that several men make a woman? In German, the word for "maiden" is neuter. (Laughter)
At noon Nirodbaran read out a letter to Sri Aurobindo. It was written by Sisir Maitra to Anilbaran in the course of their discussion on Reason, Buddhi, Kant, Hegel, the Gita, etc. Ultimately Sri Aurobindo was referred to. In the evening Purani took up the topic.
PURANI: Anilbaran asks if Buddhi can mean the same thing as Understanding. Professor Maitra says they are the same and so he places Buddhi lower than Reason just as Kant does with Understanding.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Kant seems to place Understanding lower than Reason -while Hegel, it is said, puts Understanding and Reason on the same level. But Buddhi seems to me to be more than Understanding. What does Indian philosophy say?
PURANI: According to it, sadasad viveka shakti (the power of discriminating the true from the false) is called Buddhi.
SRI AUROBINDO: That is not Understanding. Can one discriminate sadasad by Understanding alone or does one require Intellect? It is by what Indian philosophy calls Vijnana that can do it. And Vijnana, in Indian philosophy, is more or less equivalent to Buddhi. Hence Buddhi is Intellect. Understanding only a part of Buddhi.
PURANI: Kant says we are free while we follow Reason, not while we follow our senses.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then Buddhi can't be the same as Kant's Understanding. If anything it should be Higher Reason.
PURANI: Anilbaran asks another question. Kant says that one can arrive at the Truth by Reason. Maitra says the Gita also affirms the same thing, while Anilbaran contends that one can't.
SRI AUROBINDO: Does the Gita say so? Or is it Maitra's own opinion? If it is, it may be all right as a constructive thought, and it may be true in a certain sense. But if the Gita is mentioned, the proper text has to be traced. I think the Gita has advocated Reason as
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one of the means through which one can approach the Truth. Even Shankara, I believe, doesn't say that Reason is useless. He admits that it prepares for what is beyond— even for going beyond Sattwa, etc. It is stepping-stone.
PURANI: Anilbaran wants to know whether Kant and Hegel had a notion of a faculty beyond mind.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think so.
PURANI: They didn't believe in a suprarational consciousness?
SRI AUROBINDO: No, they thought Reason can arrive at the Truth.
PURANI: Kant's Critique begins with the statement that knowledge of a particular thing in itself is not possible with the present human instruments of knowledge. He distinguishes between phenomenon and noumenon and says that men can only know phenomenon. He disputes Berkeley's view of subjectivism—that there is no world outside the perceiving consciousness. According to Berkeley, you project the world out of yourself. Kant does not admit that. He says that the tree you perceive exists or rather something (noumenon) exists which appears to us as the tree. But our knowledge of it may not be quite correct: for instance, we see it standing on its roots. But it may be standing on something else for that matter.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is the story of the Vishnu Purana where we read that it is difficult to say whether the king is on the elephant or the elephant is on the king.
All European philosophers after the Greeks hold that Reason is the faculty by which you arrive at the Truth. The question about sense-perception and its reliability is easily met. We perceive certain things by our senses and the sensations are the same because our senses have a common organisation. Even so, different persons perceive the same thing differently in some respects. And if you had the senses differently organised, you would perceive the same thing differently.
About Reason, what I may say is that if it was sufficient for arriving at the Truth, then all men by reasoning would arrive at the same conclusion. I am not speaking of abstract Reason. If Reason could work in the abstract and be an ideal faculty, it might perceive Truth. As it is, practical Reason deals with different ideas and there it differs in different individuals and they reach different conclusions even from the same data
What I say is that Reason can perceive that there is something
beyond itself and that this something is the Truth. But each reasoner
tries to assert that this Truth is what he takes it to be. He sets up his
own idea as the whole Truth. But the Truth is infinite and has an
infinite number of sides. Each conclusion of Reason has some truth
in it but we have to find something which is fundamental behind all
the particular formulations of Reason, and we can do this only by
experience. That which is beyond is the Absolute, and the Absolute
can't be known by Reason or Mind. What can be formulated by
Reason is Sachchidananda-Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. That is
to say, the Absolute presents itself to the mind as Sachchidananda, You can't go
beyond this concept.
PURANI: Kant's Critique is very difficult to understand and very
dry.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I tried to read it and after reading two
pages I gave it up. Besides, the German language itself is difficult, The subject in a German sentence comes at the top of a page and the
verb at the bottom. So perhaps it is more suitable than other
languages for philosophy?
PURANI: Does Western philosophy believe in Mukti?
SRI AUROBINDO: No.
In the West they believe in heaven or salvation.
PURANI (after a while): Nirodbaran was asking: if Reason comes
to different conclusions, don't spiritual experiences also do the
same?
SRI AUROBINDO: That is quite another field. What Reason
does is to assert one thing as true and the rest as false. For example, if
the Impersonal is true, the Personal is false. But when you go above
the mind you realise that the Truth, being infinite, has many sides
and all of them are true. In the Overmind, all the different truths
converge and are held together.
EVENING
We had great fun when we learnt that Dr. Rao had not reached
Madras as
expected. One of us joked that his personal assistant, who had been wanting to occupy his post, had made him disappear to get his job, and now
the
personal assistant himself would criticise Dr. Rao for failing to present
himself
for duty.
SATYENDRA: Now that the Congress Ministry has resigned, the
government officers may expect trouble. Savoor was telling me the
same thing.
SRI AUROBINDO: What?
SATYENDRA: That they might not be allowed to come here
NIRODBARAN: The
Ministers should not have resigned so soon. Now they are simply doing nothing.
SATYENDRA: What else could they do? Gandhi doesn't want to
embarrass the Government.
SRI AUROBINDO:
Nor embarrass himself.
SATYENDRA: They couldn't remain and sit idly there.
SRI AUROBINDO:
They are idle just the same now. I could understand if they had launched some campaign against the
Government.
By this time Purani had arrived. He didn't yet know the news about
Rao's disappearance. Sri Aurobindo said, "Have you heard the news?" We
all looked at Purani with intriguing smiles.
PURANI: What news?
SRI AUROBINDO: That Rao has disappeared? One of three
things may have happened: The P.A. has made him disappear, he has gone to Karikal, or he was sleeping at Villupuram.
In the end we found out that he had got into the wrong compartment and
gone to Karikal. Some friend had told him at the station that he was sitting in
the carriage. But he paid no heed saying, "No, no, my name is here,
it is alright," When Sri Aurobindo was told about it he remarked, "Just like
him!"
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