26 MAY 1940 SRI AUROBINDO: The British have made another strategic retreat. (Laughter) PURANI: Yes, they got safely away without losing a single man. SRI AUROBINDO: The Germans allowed them to run away, perhaps. PURANI: Fifteen generals have been relieved of their command in France. SRI AUROBINDO: That is quite a big number. PURANI: They were said to be indifferent and negligent. SRI AUROBINDO: That is why Reynaud said that if the French could stand for a month, there would be a better chance. They will have to look for new men to take the place of the old generals. NIRODBARAN: Was there sabotage in the army? PURANI: The general

6 DECEMBER 1940 DR . MANILAL : When the Gita says "I shall deliver you from all papa", does papa mean sin, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: No, from all evils. Sin is a religious conception, an offence against God. Arjuna's refusal to fight can't be called an offence against God; it is an offence against morality, you can say. Virtue and vice are moral conceptions. MULSHANKAR: What type of Yogi is Gandhi, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: Yogi? He is not a Yogi; he is an ethical man. MULSHANKAR: He is guided by voices. SRI AUROBINDO: Then everybody who is guided by voices would be a Yogi. Then all Quakers are Yogis. Those who are possessed by strong vital forc

25 DECEMBER 1940 EVENING Dr. Manilal had a warm cloth wrapped around his head and was sitting leaning against the small book case. When Sri Aurobindo sat up on the edge of the bed, he looked at him. SRI AUROBINDO: You are looking like one of the pictures of Ajanta, thinking the world to be a burden and being cold and miserable. (Laughter) NIRODBARAN: Today he has put on one more vest. DR. MANILAL : That can be easily taken off. I was not feeling cold but to prevent any draught I put it on. SRI AUROBINDO: I was speaking of your expression; you were looking like an incarnation of suffering. DR. MANILAL : But I am supposed t

26 JUNE 1940 PURANI: Hitler has presented a plan for the federation of continental Europe from which England and Russia will be barred. This man is full of ideas. SRI AUROBINDO: His New World Order? PURANI: Yes, Europe will be divided into three blocks: they will have no armies. SRI AUROBINDO: Wait a minute. How will the blocks be formed? PURANI: One block in the Balkans, one in Belgium, Holland, France, etc., and another in Spain, Portugal and other countries, I suppose. They won't have any armies. Hitler alone will have an army. SRI AUROBINDO: Of course, small nations won't be able to resist, except Franco's Spain, and she can have some weig

24 MARCH 1940 PURANI: Jinnah speaks of two Indian States-one Hindu and one Muslim. SRI AUROBINDO: Why two and not several? PURANI: Armando Menezes, the Goan poet, has come. He is publishing another book called Chaos and a Dancing Star. SRI AUROBINDO: The dancing star will be taken for a cinema star. (Laughter) PURANI: Yes, he himself fears so. NIRODBARAN: One criticism of Nishikanto's book is out. SRI AUROBINDO: I was wondering why no criticism had been made by anybody. What does it say? NIRODBARAN: It is by Buddhadev. He says that Nishikanto, by using fine images and rhythms, gives us pictures as well as sound-patterns so that both ey

10 JUNE 1940 SATYENDRA: Will there be any hierarchy among the supramental beings? SRI AUROBINDO: Supramental beings? In the Overhead, there is a hierarchy: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and so on. PURANI: That includes the Overmind. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, among the supramental beings too there is a hierarchy, in the sense of a gradation of consciousness towards the Sachchidananda. NIRODBARAN: Sisir was saying you have written in the last volume of The Life Divine that the supramental beings will retire into islets. SRI AUROBINDO (laughing): I meant by islets, living in collective groups. NIRODBARAN: I also said the same thing to him.

l JANUARY 1941 The radio news said that Hitler has prayed to the Almighty to protect him against his enemies, as he is a single power surrounded by enemies. SRI AUROBINDO: Since when has he become pious? DR. MANILAL : God must be in a fix, Sir. (Laughter) Page -1000 SRI AUROBINDO: He is always in a fix. DR. MANILAL : And Hitler prays to the Almighty, not just to God. SRI AUROBINDO: He thinks himself a mighty man; God, being almighty, will be on his side, he thinks. DR. MANILAL : On which side would Krishna be, Sir, in this war? On the British? SRI AUROBINDO: But his army might be on the other side as in the Mahabharata. S

17 JUNE 1940 Reynaud has resigned, Pétain has become the Premier and other members of the Cabinet have been picked from the military. NIRODBARAN: Was there any difference in policy among the members of the Cabinet? SRI AUROBINDO: Probably. Reynaud is unpopular. Now it is practically a military dictatorship. PURANI: Even after the war it may remain. Most of them seem to be Catholics and from the right wing. NIRODBARAN: Weygand hasn't shown any remarkable qualities till now. SATYENDRA: Pétain has no time, and besides the supplies and equipment are too poor. What can he do? At present what is most necessary is men; equipment doesn't matter so much.

PART II TOWARDS A NEW SOCIETY THE IDEALS OF HUMAN UNITY The unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and forces that work out that consummation. Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities and lives as a member among others with whom he is related and connected in various ways. These groupings are the units round which man's life crystallises and develops, the nuclei of a growing, an increasingly complex and unified organism. The earliest and the most persistent unit is the family: it may be called

APPENDIX SRI AUROBINDO'S VIEWS ON THE SECOND WORLD WAR* You have said that you have begun to doubt whether it was the Mother's War and ask me to make you feel again that it is. I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's War. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India. It is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and false-hood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial ci