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9 DECEMBER 1939
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 NIRODBARAN: He may also say that Russia has dared invade because Congress has withdrawn support to the British Government.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. Page-298 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.
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? Page-299 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 Page-300 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!"
SRI AUROBINDO (hearing laughter): What is the matter? NIRODBARAN: Purani and Champaklal are laughing together. SRI AUROBINDO:: That is their usual business. CHAMPAKLAL: Purani has hurt his big toe again. PURANI: A plank fell on it.
SRI AUROBINDO: You are always knocking or pushing it over. (Laughter) At this moment, Nirodbaran, by inattention,, happened to spill some water from a bowl. SRI AUROBINDO (laughing): What's the matter now? You are doing the same thing as Purani along your line. NIRODBARAN (as Sri Aurobindo started reclining): In the New Statesman a reviewer quotes a line of Turner's poetry as an example of "careless and lazy inversion". The line is: When the last tune is played and void the hall. SRI AUROBINDO: The inversion is rather deliberate. It's there for the sake of emphasis. NIRODBARAN: I don't understand why the reviewer calls it "careless". SRI AUROBINDO: It's certainly not careless. If he doesn't like it, he can say so, but he can't attribute it to carelessness. Who is the reviewer? NIRODBARAN: He is another poet, Richard Church. SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, these are all fads of different poets! NIRODBARAN: In the review Church says that Yeats was very enthusiastic over Turner's poetry. In his adventure through modern poetry he has made a discovery, Yeats says. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, in rhymed verse Turner writes very well at times. But his prose-poetry comes to nothing. NIRODBARAN: Turner seems to be a worshipper of "silence". SRI AUROBINDO: Not quite, because he is a music critic! SATYENDRA: Meher Baba says that Sai Baba and others were moulding the events of the last war. But if so many spiritual figures work at the same job like that, I wonder what the result will be. Each will try in his own way and cut across the work of the others. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they may make a muddle of it. PURANI : They can't make a "worse muddle than the politicians.
NIRODBARAN: But why a muddle at all if they work from intuitive insight?
SATYENDRA: Even so, up to Overmind everything is a play of possibilities. And one will counteract another. SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. Dayanand had the idea of establishing world peace by bringing all the nations together. He could have said he established the League and some other Yogi disestablished it. SATYENDRA: Did you meet Dayanand? SRI AUROBINDO: No, I met one of his disciples, a scientist in Calcutta National College. When I wrote about the future Avatar, he said Avatar was already there, meaning Dayanand. NIRODBARAN: Weren't there two Dayanands? SATYENDRA: Yes, the one Sri Aurobindo has written about was an Arya Samajist, while there was another, a Bengali, who used to keep nothing for the next day because he believed in never planning for the future. SRI AUROBINDO: He is the man who started Sannyasi marriages. I don't know whether they were real marriages or spiritual ones. He had something genuine in him. Barin used to be in ecstasies over him. SATYENDRA: Another Avatar is coming out from Poona. He will declare himself in 1941. SRI AUROBINDO: Who is that? SATYENDRA: He is claimed by those people who dissociated from the Theosophists. SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, one more of their romances! SATYENDRA: Didn't Madame Blavatsky have something real in her, something mystic? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but the romance was also there. When one deals with mysticism one has to be very careful. There is any amount of truth and there is any amount of imagination. Nivedita spoke of the Theosophists as "woolly-headed people." SATYENDRA: The Rosicrucians too believe in the reality of mystic experiences. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Arjava (John Chadwick) belonged to one of their groups at Cambridge, and this created a lot of difficulty for him at the beginning of his sadhana here. The Rosicrucians posit two principles in man- good and evil personas. The evil person has to be raised up in order to be got rid of. There are already enough bad things in our nature to deal with without raising up other evil things. Europeans have no knowledge of these matters. Even the Christian mysticks seem to have no clear idea. Page-305 SATYENDRA: I suppose it is because the Europeans don't want to get rid of their individuality. SRI AUROBINDO: They mix up the Self and the ego. Even when they are identified with the Self, they think it is the ego that has become that. Even Blake who had some idea of identity with the Self appears to have made this mistake. PURANI (after a lull in the talk): Anilbaran says that according to Kant if one follows Reason one is free but if one follows Sense one is bound. There is also the question: Is Buddhi or Intellect an instrument of Prakriti and can a man, so long as he follows Buddhi, be free in the Gita's sense —that is, free from Nature? SRI AUROBINDO: Does the Gita say that he can't be free? PURANI: Well, there is a sloka which says that Sattwa, the mental Guna, binds by happiness. SRI AUROBINDO: That is quite a different thing. You are mixing up two different things. The question is whether Buddhi can help you to detach yourself from your nature and lead to the perception of the Purusha, the free Witness. PURANI : The text of the Gita will support this role of Buddhi. SRI AUROBINDO: I should think so. Otherwise what is the meaning of the Gita laying so much stress on Buddhi? NIRODBARAN: Then does it mean that Buddhi is not an instrument of Nature? SRI AUROBINDO: It is an instrument that helps one to rise to the higher nature. You have to use the lower instruments to rise to the higher. PURANI: Anilbaran does not want to admit Sisir Malta's contention that Kant's idea of following Reason is the same as the Gita's Buddhi-Yoga. SRI AUROBINDO : He is quite a controversialist. (Laughter) But in a controversy one has to see whatever truth there is in others' points of view. PURANI: Kant, it seems, changed his mind in later life and admitted the necessity of Faith, which he deals with in his critique of Practical Reason. SRI AUROBINDO: I haven't read European philosophy carefully. PURANI: Besides, it doesn't interest us, as it has no practical bearing.
SRI AUROBINDO: That was Arjava's great complaint, that here people always want something practical. They don't want to think for the sake of thinking. (Laughter) PURANI: Kant's notion of freedom is not the same as our Indian notion of Mukti. SRI AUROBINDO: The European idea is to arrive at the Truth. SATYENDRA: They also have some idea of applying the Truth. PURANI: Yes, a sort of idealism but not spirituality. In his Practical Reason Kant maintains that Pure Reason is an abstract faulty hardly to be found unmixed in men. SRI AUROBINDO: What is it for then? PURANI: It is just an ideal hardly attainable. So Practical Reason is necessary. Kant's opponents say that everybody follows Reason and so everybody is free. Everybody justifies his action by some reasoning. But, in that case even a thief can justify his stealing by some reasoning. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, and a very practical reasoning too. (Laughter) PURANI: Even the thief is free because he acts freely. SRI AUROBINDO: How? PURANI: He decides out of his own free will. SRI AUROBINDO: But merely by reasoning he can't be free. If we apply the Gita, one is not free merely because one reasons about stealing, but if one can steal disinterestedly and with detachment one can be free. SATYENDRA: Wouldn't it be difficult for Europeans to grasp such ideas -for instance, that of killing people with detachment? NIRODBARAN: In the New Statesman, the French author Gide speaks of disinterested action, even criminal or any other kind of action.
EVENING
DR. BECHARLAL: Are trust and faith the same? Sri Aurobindo kept silent, not giving an answer. DR. BECHARLAL: In the Words of the Mother, it is said that trust in the Divine brings the Grace. So isn't trust the key to having the Grace? Page-307 SRI AUROBINDO: There is more than one key. DR. BECHARLAL: Doesn't trust lead to surrender? SRI AUROBINDO: Not necessarily. If you trust a friend, it does not mean that you surrender to him. DR. BECHARLAL: But as the trust increases you surrender more and more. SRI AUROBINDO: If you trust a friend in a particular matter, it doesn't mean that you surrender to him in everything else. The Mother told Sri Aurobindo that the prices of things have gone up. Vegetables are getting scarce and costly. When the soldiers come, it will be still more difficult to get them. Champaklal remarked that the price of one house- paint has gone up from two rupees to a thousand. SRI AUROBINDO: That means that it is not available for purchase. But I don't know why vegetables should be scarce. The rise in price one can understand, because of the general rise in the standard of living. But why scarce? They are neither growing less, nor are they being exported. SATYENDRA: Luckily not. Neither is the British Army large enough in India to consume more. Somebody said that Russia had been threatened with expulsion from the League of Nations. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Uruguay made the threat. Now Paraguay should bring in a resolution to expel England and France. I wonder why the League exists at all. PURANI: Herbert was very enthusiastic about the League. SRI AUROBINDO: Naturally. He was directly affected by the League and we were indirectly affected through him because he translated our books. (Laughter) PURANI: He said the League had done a lot of good work; for example it has established an International Labour Department. SRI AUROBINDO: Labouring over nothing! PURANI: It has gathered a good deal of information.
SRI AUROBINDO: Then it may be called, instead of the League is, the League of Informations.
EVENING
As usual Purani entered with a strong military step and took a few deep looking at Sri Aurobindo. Champaklal and Nirodbaran were stealing a smile at each other over him when suddenly Champaklal burst out laughing and Purani looked at him. Sri Aurobindo also looked and, raising his right hand, made a gesture as if to say, "Don't know what to make of it all." PURANI: My presence seems to act as a catalytic agent without one's knowledge. SRI AUROBINDO: That is how the subliminal self acts - without knowledge. Sri Aurobindo started taking his short walk in the room. When the walk was finished, Purani took up the thread of a past conversation. PURANI:: Between Hegel and Kant, poor Nirodbaran's question was lost. SRI AUROBINDO: What was it? PURANI: Nirodbaran says that, just like reasonings, experiences differ and come to different conclusions. How then can experience be a criterion any more than reason? SRI AUROBINDO: Experience is not a criterion. It is a means of arriving at the Truth. But experience is one thing and its expression is another. You are again putting reason up as the true judge over experience which is above reason. When people differ over experience they differ in laying stress on or having a mental preference for this or that side of the experience. It doesn't mean that the experience itself is invalid. It is only when you try to put it in mental language that the differences arise, because such language is too poor to express it. As soon as you bring in mental terms, you limit it. Truth is infinite and there are innumerable sides to it. Each conclusion of reason expresses something of that Infinite. Only when reason claims that it contains the whole truth in a conclusion, it is wrong. If you find that experiences differ, you have to go on
adding experience after experience till you come to the reconciling experience in which all others find their place. When you want to describe a spiritual experience, you are obliged to use mental terms which are quite inadequate. That is why the Vedantins say that mind and speech can never express the Truth. Still you can somehow manage to express something as long as you have not gone beyond the level of the Overmind. When you enter the Supermind, then (Sri Aurobindo began to shake his head, and resumed after a pause) it is extremely difficult. And if you go still further towards the Absolute, it is almost impossible. Reason takes up one standpoint and declares the others to be false, For instance, if it speaks of the Truth as impersonal, the Truth for it is solely impersonal and can never be personal; or vice versa. Really, both the personal and the impersonal are true; wherever there is the personal there is also the impersonal, and this holds too the other way round. When you transcend both you arrive at the Absolute. SATYENDRA: Of which the two are aspects. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but it doesn't mean that they are less true for being aspects or that the Absolute excludes them. "When you throw aside reason you reach the all-inclusive Absolute. One reasoner looks at a thing in one aspect and declares that that alone is right, another in some other aspect and swears by that. Reason to be really reasonable must have various points of view. It can't be right if its accounts don't differ. As I said, there are various sides to Reality. If the descriptions of several countries of the world were the same, they wouldn't be true. SATYENDRA: How? PURANI: If you describe Switzerland and the U.S.A. in the same manner, how would you be correct? SRI AUROBINDO: And yet the earth is one and mankind is one! SATYENDRA: It is good to have all these experiences. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but if you can't have all, it is enough to have one — because each is an approach and can lead to the Absolute. After this, Purani brought up the subject of the quotations from the Vedas and Upanishads for Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine. He had been searching suitable quotations for the opening of each chapter. PURANI : About the quotation for the chapter, "Knowledge by identity", there is a sloka which says, "One must become like an arrow piercing its mark." I wonder if that will suit.
SRI AUROBINDO: It won't quite fit, because knowledge by identity is more than that. When they speak of knowledge by identity the Upanishads mean knowledge of the Self which is all, but that is one part of such knowledge. If you can't find a quotation here, there may be something for direct knowledge or knowledge by direct awareness. You can try and see if by some luck you find any. PURANI: In Rajayoga, they speak of direct knowledge by Samyama which perhaps means concentration. SRI AUROBINDO: That is a different thing. That comes by putting the pressure of consciousness on an object. But direct knowledge may not require concentration on one's part. The consciousness simply comes into contact with a thing and knows about it. PURANI: Rajayoga speaks of Siddhis, special powers, like control over Matter, knowledge of Suryaloka (the Sun-world) and Chandraraloka (the Moon-world), conquest of death, etc. SRI AUROBINDO: Knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka, yes, but conquest of death is a very different matter. About Siddhis, it is said that they flow into one when one enters a certain state of consciousness. PURANI: The Upanishad also speaks of Yogis conquering disease and death and having less stool and urine. SRI AUROBINDO: In that case, I was going in that direction regarding urine. Satyendra drew Nirodbaran 's attention to a single thin thread hung by a spider from the ceiling. Nirodbaran was reminded of a story in the New Statesman and Nation of a spider listening to Paderewsky's music. Sri Aurobindo was asked whether he had read it. SRI AUROBINDO:. No, what is it? NIRODBARAN: Paderewsky says that while he was playing a particular tune a spider came down from the ceiling and sat on the piano-board. But when he began playing another tune the spider at once went up to the ceiling. This struck him as rather curious and to see if the spider was really appreciating a particular tune he played
again the previous one. To his surprise, down came the spider and it listened right to the end. SRI AUROBINDO: Did Paderewsky play the other tune again or anything else to see whether the spider climbed back up once more? NIRODBARAN: No. SRI AUROBINDO: Then Paderewsky is not a scientist. SATYENDRA: In India they say snakes are attracted by the flute. But scientists say snakes have no ears. SRI AUROBINDO: Scientists say all sorts of things. NIRODBARAN: The Greeks also used to say that animals are attracted by music. SRI AUROBINDO: That is a universal belief. SATYENDRA: Snake-charmers in India have a particular kind of instrument common among them and it produces a uniform tune which seems to appeal to snakes. They catch the snakes by playing that tune. SRI AUROBINDO: If that story of the spider is true, it means that different animals are sensitive to different kinds of music. To snakes, perhaps Beethoven's sonatas would have no appeal, while this music of the snake-charmers appeals to them, perhaps because of its being current in Nagaloka! There was a reference to the naval battle between the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee and some British cruisers. Reinforcements to both sides had been reported. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, now the British Ark Royal, which has been sunk several times by the Germans according to their own reports, is going there from Cape Town. This fight shows that at sea the English are superior to the Germans. They fought with six-inch guns against the Germans' eleven-inch guns. The Germans ought to have sunk at least two cruisers. PURANI: Especially when they say these pocket-battleships are very light, more powerful and technically perfect. SRI AUROBINDO: It means then that the training is deficient and that the fighters couldn't make use of the superior power of their ship. The Germans were outmanoeuvred. SATYENDRA: The English are in their element at sea. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is in their blood. That means that, besides training, there is something in heredity which one can't acquire by training.
NIRODBARAN: Naval warfare is very thrilling. SATYENDRA: Yes, from a distance. SRI AUROBINDO: Much more thrilling when one reads of it in newspapers! Purani was busy helping Sri Aurobindo with quotations from the Veda, etc. for The Life Divine chapter-epigraphs. He came with big volumes of Sayana and others. SRI AUROBINDO: Sayana, in spite of his many mistakes, is very useful-though it is like going to ignorance for knowledge. NIRODBARAN : Purani, with his glasses hanging on the tip of his nose and fat volumes under his arm, looks like Sayana, doesn't he? SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, Sayana come back to undo his misdeeds? (Laughter )
EVENING NIRODBARAN: Russia seems to have given no reply to Finland's peace offer. SRI AUROBINDO: Molotov says he has not heard it and is not going to hear it. NIRODBARAN: The poor Finns are fighting all alone. Nobody gives military help. How long can they resist? PURANI: Everybody is busy with his own interests and safety. SRI AUROBINDO: Except Russia and Germany who are trying to save others! But the Russians don't seem to have advanced much. It doesn't much credit on their army. Of course, in the long run, Finland doesn't have any chance. Russia will throw in its huge mass. The Finns have destroyed nearly two hundred of their tanks. SATYENDRA: Premanand was showing me a picture of the tanks. These can cross wide ditches, it seems. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but they are not so formidable now. many weapons have been devised to destroy them and the Germans claim that the iron of the tanks can be melted. NIRODBARAN: How could the German, pocket-battleship escape from the strong British squadron?
SATYENDRA: British cruisers were not near her. They had to keep far away. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, about three miles from the coast, which is the limit of the territorial waters. The ship was scuttled five miles from the coast. NIRODBARAN: It is surprising that they could hit accurately from twelve miles distance, while German hits were all wide. SRI AUROBINDO: The German ships were out manoeuvred. The cruisers, being light and small, could easily change direction while battleships take more time. It is a foolish thing to scuttle such a ship. It could have remained interned during the war. Then the talk turned to democracy and war aims. NIRODBARAN: The Bengal Home Minister says the war is not fought for democracy but for the protection of small nations. SRI AUROBINDO: When the Muslim League thinks democracy is not suitable for India, how can he say otherwise? NIRODBARAN: When some member asked whether it was the Government opinion or his personal one, he said it was his personal opinion. (Laughter) Sisir Maitra had presented a copy of The Life Divine to Tagore and asked him to read it. Tagore told him that his eyesight was bad. But Maitra forced the issue saying, "You said you were waiting to hear his word. This book is his word." Then Tagore replied that he would try. SRI AUROBINDO: Tan Sen¹ has written to Dilip praising him, saying, "You have put stamps upon my heart." (Laughter} There were some other queer phrases. He didn't tell you? NIRODBARAN: No. SATYENDRA: It is not that people don't understand The Life Divine but that they find it difficult to apply to life. SRI AUROBINDO: Somebody has said - I don't know who - ideals are to be held but not to be applied. ¹A Chinese professor at Viswa Bharati. His real name is Tan-un-Sang.
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