classes ::: Evening_Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo, A_B_Purani, Integral_Yoga, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

Instances, Classes, See Also, Object in Names
Definitions, . Quotes . - . Chapters .


object:2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939
book class:Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
author class:A B Purani
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter


NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1939
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1939
19 and 20 NOVEMBER 1939

Disciple: Is physical relation responsible for the vitiation of pure and idealistic love?

Sri Aurobindo: It is not only the physical but also the vital that is responsible. Desire, impulse of possession are more responsible for it than the physical relation.

Disciple: There are people who believe that the physical relation is an essential part of the highest relation of love.

Sri Aurobindo: Blake, for instance, says that spiritual love should be sanctified by the physical act.

Disciple: Selincourt criticizes Blake.

Sri Aurobindo: Selincourt writing about Blake is like a sheep trying to understand a lion! Blake has got power, you can say ferocious power; and theories too coherent to be sane.

Disciple: Has physical relation a place in psychic love?

Sri Aurobindo: It depends. It can be the psychic love extended to the body. In the psychic relation physical relation is possible; when it takes place it is for procreation. It is a part of the attitude of a female to the male — the attitude of submission. Surrender is more psychic than that.

Disciple: In the physical relation is there no danger of the higher elements getting lost?

Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the strength of the psychic being. It may be overclouded by the vital and the physical elements. Of course, when it is merely physical then there is no adoration and love in it. Psychic relation is not commonly found.

Disciple: An individual who has not found his companion, and has hankering or need for one, meets a woman whom he loves. Now if he keeps his love free from physical and vital elements, i.e. keeps it pure and psychic, does it mean that such a relation is necessary for him?

Sri Aurobindo: No, that can't be said. It depends on the particular case to say whether it is necessary. The Vaishnavas wanted to sublimate even the lower elements of love by bringing them to the Divine. But we know the results — most of them failed. Not that it cannot be done, it can — but it is not easy.

Disciple: You have written in The Synthesis of Yoga that ordinary human love can act as a preparation and may be a form of aspiration.

Sri Aurobindo: It was not written for Yogis. It acts like that in ordinary men, if there is a psychic element in it, i.e. if it is true love and not vital desire or attachment or impulse for possession. Then it acts as an awakener and uplifter. Blake accepts physical love as part of the divine love. The elements of love are: adoration and desire for union.

Disciple: Is such a love an unconscious seeking for the Divine? It may not bring divine fulfilment but that of love itself.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is.

Disciple: Is it possible to evoke the Divine in oneself to love the other?

Sri Aurobindo: If one has found the Divine in oneself then one adores Him and surrenders oneself to Him. Such a man can love others — but that is a part of the action of universal love.

The spark in human love, even if it is degraded afterwards, tends to awaken the consciousness and evolve the being.
21 NOVEMBER 1939

Disciple: If love is an unconscious seeking for the Divine, why do some people who have turned to the Divine, still seek the human love, especially here?

Sri Aurobindo: Are they conscious of the Divine? If one is conscious of the Divine, one of two things would happen: either one would turn exclusively to the Divine, or, being conscious of the Divine one may keep the human love as an appendage, and try to raise it towards the Divine. I am not speaking of sex relations.

Disciple: Supposing a man is unconscious and seeks the Divine in human love, can it not be a seeking for the Divine?

Sri Aurobindo: These things are hardly pure — they are always mixed up. It may be only a cover for something else. There are people who, as I said, when they turn to the Divine turn away from everything else. But it depends.

For instance, when you turn to the Divine you do not give up your friendship for somebody. Only, if you turn to the Divine the friendship ceases in the old sense, but is taken up so that it does not become an obstacle to the progress of each other.

There may be even individual love apart from the universal love which one gets when one is conscious of the Divine.
14 DECEMBER 1939

The talk was about how the yogis working on the events of the last war, each in his own way, may have cut across each others work, because up to the Overmind everything is a play of possibilities and one may counteract another.

Sri Aurobindo: Quite so. Dayananda [of Bengal] had an idea of establishing world peace by bringing all the nations together. He could have said that he established the League of Nations and somebody else disestablished it.

Disciple: Did you meet him?

Sri Aurobindo: No. Imet Mahindra Dey, one of his disciples who was a scientist in the Bengal National College. When Iwrote about the future Avatar, he said the Avatar was already there. After the shooting affair took place he recanted Dayananda's Avatarhood.

Disciple: He used to keep nothing for the morrow in his organisation — they depended entirely on Divine Grace.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. And he also started, Ibelieve, Sannyasi marriage, but Ican't say if it was real marriage or spiritual. But he had something genuine in him.

Disciple: Another Avatar is coming out from Poona. He is going to declare himself in 1941.

Sri Aurobindo: No objection. But there is a great danger of imagination mixing up in such things.

Disciple: Can such people be mystics?

Sri Aurobindo: No, perhaps romantic. There can also be a mixture of mysticism combined with romance. When one deals with mysticism one has to be very careful, because there are many truths and also many imaginations.

Disciple: The Rosicrucians also believe in the reality of mystic experiences.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Arjava belonged to that group in England. But it created a lot of difficulty in his Sadhana, because Rosicrucians posit two principles in man, good and evil personas. The evil persona has to rise up in order to be got rid of by the good. There are already sufficient evil things in Nature without evoking one's evil persona. Europeans have a very imperfect understanding of these things. Even the Christian mystics have hardly any clear idea about them.

Disciple: Perhaps that is so because they do not want to get rid of their individuality.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. They mix up the self and the ego. Even when they have identification with the Higher Consciousness, they think that it is the ego which has become that.

Even Blake who had some idea of identity with the Self seems to confuse ego with self.

Disciple: A says that the Gita's idea of Moksha demands freedom from Prakriti. Therefore, so long as man follows Buddhi he is not free.

Sri Aurobindo: Does the Gita say that he can't be free?

Disciple: In the verse where it is said Sattwa binds by happiness and knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo: That is quite another thing. The question is whether Buddhi can help you to detach yourself from your nature and lead you to the perception of something higher than itself.

Disciple: I think the text of the Gita supports this role of the Buddhi.

Sri Aurobindo: I should think so. Otherwise what is the meaning of the Gita laying so much stress on Buddhi? Buddhi helps you to detach yourself and prepares you for the higher perception of the Purusha. And even Shankara, I believe, does not say that reason is quite useless. He also admits that reason prepares the human spirit for what is beyond. Even for going beyond Sattwa, it is a stepping stone.

Disciple: Does this mean Buddhi is an instrument of Nature?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is an instrument that helps you to rise to the higher Nature. The Gita, as I said, maintains that Buddhi can perceive that which is beyond it.

Disciple: A does not want to admit M's contention that Kant's idea of following Reason and the Gita's Buddhi Yoga are the same.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, in a controversy one has to see the truth in the other man's point of view.

Disciple: A told me that Kant changed his mind later in life and admitted the necessity of Faith with which he deals in his Critique of Practical Reason.

Sri Aurobindo: Ihave not read European philosophy carefully.

Disciple: Moreover, it does not interest us so much as there is no practical side to their philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo: That was Arjava's great complaint, that people here want always something practical from philosophy. They don't want to think for the sake of thinking.

Disciple: Kant seems to say that he who follows his reason is free, he who follows the senses is bound. This is, in part, an Indian idea.

Sri Aurobindo: But they have no idea of freedom in the Indian sense — of Mukti; their idea is to arrive at the Truth.

Disciple: They have also some idea of applying that Truth to life.

Disciple: Yes, some sort of idealism, but it is not spiritual. In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant maintains that pure reason is an abstract faculty hardly to be found unmixed in man, and so practical reason is necessary.

Sri Aurobindo: What is then this 'pure reason' for?

Disciple: It is only an unattainable ideal. A says that the contention of Kant's opponents is that everybody follows reason, so everybody should be considered free. Everyone justifies his action — even the thief supports his stealing by some reasoning.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is very practical reasoning. (Laughter)

Disciple: And he is free, because he acts freely.

Sri Aurobindo: How?

Disciple: Because he decides freely to steal.

Sri Aurobindo: But that is a reason that is bound. There is a reason that can be detached. According to the Gita, one is not free by merely reasoning about stealing; it is only if he can steal with disinterestedness that he is free.

Disciple: To the Western mind such ideas are difficult to grasp, for instance killing with detachment.

Sri Aurobindo: All European philosophers after the Greeks consider Reason as the faculty by which one arrives at Truth. The question about sense perceptions and their reliability is easily met. We perceive certain things by our senses, and for all men sensations are the same because our senses have a common origination. Even then, different persons perceive the same thing differently.

But if Reason could work in the abstract and be an ideal faculty it might arrive at a perception of the Truth beyond itself. As it is, it deals with different ideas and there it differs in different individuals. What I say is that if Reason was sufficient for arriving at the Truth then all reasonings would arrive at the same conclusions. But we find that different persons using reason arrive at different conclusions even from the same premisses.

Reason can perceive that there is something beyond itself that is the Truth. But it is not right when it asserts that what it perceives is the whole Truth. Truth is infinite and it has infinite sides. What can be known by the mind is Sat, Chit, Ananda. In other words, when the Absolute presents itself to the mind it formulates itself as Sachchidananda. One can know the Absolute through that only.
15 DECEMBER 1939 (Evening)

Pentered and looked at Sri Aurobindo. C and N looked at each other and smiled. C suddenly burst out laughing. Sri Aurobindo raised his right hand in a gesture which meant, "What is the cause of this laughter?"

Disciple: My presence acts as a catalytic agent, so I myself don't know what is the cause or the joke.

Sri Aurobindo: That is how the subliminal self acts — without your knowledge, while your surface consciousness is ignorant about it.

Disciple: Between Hegel and Kant, poor N's question was lost.

Sri Aurobindo: What was it?

Disciple: N says that just like reasonings, experiences differ and come to different conclusions. How then can experience be a criterion?

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 up reason as the true judge over experience, whereas it is beyond reason. Reason is only a judge of expression. When men differ in laying stress on, or in their mental preference for, this or that side of an experience, it does not mean the experience itself is invalid. It is only when you try to put an experience in mental language that differences arise, because as soon as you put it in mental terms you limit it. If you find that experiences also differ, you have to go on adding experience after experience till you come to the reconciling experience in which all find their places.

Truth is infinite and there are innumerable sides to it. Each conclusion of reason has some truth in it and we have to find something that is fundamental behind that particular formulation of the reason. But when reason says that only a particular conclusion it has come to contains the whole Truth, it is wrong. That which is behind experience is the Absolute and the Absolute cannot be known by reason.

When you want to describe a spiritual experience you are obliged to use mental terms which are quite inadequate. That is why the Vedantists say that mind and speech cannot express the Truth. Still you can somehow manage to express something so long as you deal with levels up to the Overmind. But when you enter the Supermind then it is almost impossible. And if you proceed still higher towards the Absolute, well, it is impossible.

Disciple: It is so perhaps because reason is obliged to consider the Infinite.

Sri Aurobindo: Reason takes up one standpoint and declares the others to be false. If it speaks of the Absolute as Impersonal, it says the Personal cannot be true and vice versa.

Disciple: Is it Personal or Impersonal?

Sri Aurobindo: If you transcend both you arrive at the Absolute, and find that wherever there is the Personal there is the Impersonal, and vice versa.

Disciple: So they are aspects of the Absolute.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but it does not mean they are less true or that the Absolute excludes them.

Disciple: How to find that kind of reconciliation?

Sri Aurobindo: Throw aside reason, then you find the reconciliation. In a certain sense reason would not be right if it did not differ. For instance, if the descriptions of all the countries were the same it would not do.

Disciple: How?

Sri Aurobindo: If you describe Switzerland and U.S A. in the same way, how can it be true? And yet the earth is one and so is mankind and human nature. All is one.

Disciple: There is a verse in the Upanishad for knowledge by identity, leaving aside the mind. "One must become one with That like an arrow piercing the mark."

Sri Aurobindo: That wont quite fit, because knowledge by identity is much more than that. Generally by 'knowledge by identity' they mean knowledge of the Self; but that is only one part of it.

Disciple: In Raja Yoga they speak of direct knowledge by Samyama — concentration of the consciousness on one object.

Sri Aurobindo: That is a different thing; that comes by putting the pressure of consciousness on the thing to be known. But direct knowledge need not necessarily require concentrating on the object. When the true consciousness is there and it comes in contact with the object, it knows it directly.

Disciple: Raja Yoga also speaks of Siddhis — control over matter, knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka, conquest of death, etc.

Sri Aurobindo: Knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka one may have, but conquest of death is another matter. The Raja Yogi does not acquire Siddhis by wanting them; they speak of Siddhis coming to them. And it is true for those who enter a certain state of consciousness.

Disciple: The Upanishad also speaks of the yogi's conquering diseases and death.
30 DECEMBER 1939

Disciple: The Hindu Mahasabha this year has got a larger number of delegates from Bengal and Punjab than from the other provinces.

Sri Aurobindo: From the two provinces which are most oppressed under Muslim majority.

Disciple: Do you think that the Hindu Mahasabha, if it is organised, would weaken the Congress?

Sri Aurobindo: Congress should allow the Mahasabha in Punjab and Bengal to settle the question with the Muslims by organising the Hindus instead of quarrelling with it. If Congress could do something effective then it would be all right.

Disciple: Some people object to Vande Mataram as a national song. And some Congressmen support the removal of some parts of the song.

Sri Aurobindo: In that case the Hindus should give up their culture.

Disciple: The objection is that it speaks of the Hindu goddess Durga and that is offensive to the Muslims.

Sri Aurobindo: But it is not a religious song! It is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why shouldn't the Muslims accept it? It is an image used in poetry. If in the conception of Indian nationality the Hindu viewpoint cannot find a place then the Hindus may as well be asked to give up their culture; it comes to this that we all become Mohammedans. They don't say it now but they will say it later on, because they have begun to object to the worship of Hindu Gods in national institutions. Why shouldn't the Hindu worship his Gods? Otherwise, the Hindus must either become Mohammedans or adopt European culture, or become atheists. The Hindus don't object to their "Allah ho Akbar".

Disciple: They will object if that is made a national song.

Disciple: If they call India Allah I don't think the Hindus will object.

Sri Aurobindo: It is not in their nature to object to such things.

Disciple: Why shouldn't the Muslims accept some Hindu ideas, if they want to come to a settlement?

Disciple: The Congress says that the question cannot be solved as long as the third party is there.

Sri Aurobindo: Ihad told Das that this question should be solved before the British go out, otherwise there was a danger of a civil war. He agreed and wanted to solve it.

Disciple: The Congress thinks that if the British go, the Muslims may be forced to come to a settlement.

Sri Aurobindo: The Congress says, "Whatever agreements we come to must be accepted by the British."

Disciple: If the parties come to a settlement the Viceroy cannot oppose it.

Sri Aurobindo: Of course not. He would say, "Come to a settlement and we will accept it." It is only two ways of looking at the same thing. It is better to have it settled before because afterwards any third party may take advantage and come in. It is no use having again somebody else to dominate India.

Disciple: Afghanistan may; Turkey and Egypt do not care.

Sri Aurobindo: Russia also may come.

Disciple: Japan also.

Disciple: But how is this problem to be solved?

Sri Aurobindo: The best solution would be if Congress got the majority of nationalist Muslims on their side. They could have had the Sindh Premier who wanted to be with them and would have retained Sindh. In Punjab they could have come to some understanding with Sikandar Hayat Khan. And if they had not driven out Khaliquzzaman in U.P. there would have been no Muslim League there. If they had joined hands with the Krishak party in Bengal then they would not be so badly off. But they go by some fixed and rigid rules. They have no plasticity. It is a question of political sagacity.

Disciple: Jawaharlal seems to have realised the utility of wooing the Muslims.

Sri Aurobindo: That was the mistake of the Congress. They are instead trying to flirt with Jinnah. And Jinnah simply thinks that he has to obstinately stick to his terms to get them. The more they try the more he becomes intransigent.

Disciple: There was the idea that the Congress should have mass contact with the Muslim masses. Then somebody in U.P. said that the Congress has divided the Muslims.

Sri Aurobindo: And the Congress gave up that movement?

Disciple: I don't know.

Sri Aurobindo: That is foolish. Why should not the Muslims be divided? You might as well say that the English are trying to divide the Germans. Doesn't Jinnah try to call in the Hindu minorities to join him? Nobody objects to his appeal on the ground that he is trying to divide the Hindus.

Disciple: Then the Hindu Mahasabha will do some good after all.

Sri Aurobindo: That is not the best thing. But if the Hindus organised themselves, that would make the rational Muslims think again. And that will give men like Sir Akbar, who want to come to a compromise, a chance to intervene.

Disciple: The Khilafat agitation was a great mistake; it only added to the fanaticism of the Muslims without giving them patriotism or nationalism.
***
FEBRUARY-MAY 1939 1940



questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below
or join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers



--- OBJECT INSTANCES [0]


--- PRIMARY CLASS


chapter

--- SEE ALSO


--- SIMILAR TITLES [0]


2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939
select ::: Being, God, injunctions, media, place, powers, subjects,
favorite ::: cwsa, everyday, grade, mcw, memcards (table), project, project 0001, Savitri, the Temple of Sages, three js, whiteboard,
temp ::: consecration, experiments, knowledge, meditation, psychometrics, remember, responsibility, temp, the Bad, the God object, the Good, the most important, the Ring, the source of inspirations, the Stack, the Tarot, the Word, top priority, whiteboard,

--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



--- QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)


*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***


--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



0

   1 Integral Yoga






change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding": 111221 site hits