object:2.22 - 1941-1943
book class:Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
author class:A B Purani
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
1941-1943
1941-1943
4 JANUARY 1941
Sri Aurobindo: The Inconscient, what is the Inconscient? There is nothing below the Inconscient. It is from the Inconscient that Matter takes form. Everything has its basis in the Inconscient. As at present the work is going on in the Inconscient the difficulties arise from there — various diseases, etc.
The Inconscient is the stuff of the material world. It has its own power. It has concrete thoughts and ideas of its own. In order to combat them, one has to bring down a concrete Higher Force.
Disciple: What about "In Tune with the Infinite" in which R. W. Trine says: "I am infinite power. It is pouring and pouring into me."
Sri Aurobindo: What about it? Have you tried it?
Disciple: Yes, but I am as I was!
Sri Aurobindo: It looks very much like Coué's method.
Disciple: Can it work?
Sri Aurobindo: It is one way of opening the consciousness to the Force. I don't know if it can be successful throughout.
Disciple: You said to D that his keeping the attitude "I am the child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo — nothing can oppose me" was quite proper.
Sri Aurobindo: That is the central faith which one is required to have in this Yoga. If one can make that faith living in all the parts of the being then it would be quite all right. But the body says, "I have pain, I am suffering." It gets that power of ignorant ideas from the Inconscient. After completing the work in the Inconscient, the higher ranges of the Supramental consciousness would be brought down.
Disciple: There is a proposal for introducing The Life Divine as part of the course in Indian philosophy at the University level.
Sri Aurobindo: There is no objection to their doing that but it should not be compulsory. It should not be called a course in metaphysics and theology. The Life Divine is not theology!
Religious instructions should not be made compulsory. It does not necessarily develop spirituality; many people come to spiritual life through atheism. Religious instruction makes people narrow and sectarian. My objection to this scheme is that it is academic. It would lose all its life and become dry.
24 JANUARY 1941
The book Life of Blake published with many of his etchings, was shown to Sri Aurobindo. When he had been shown a few of the etchings some days back, he had not liked them very much.
Sri Aurobindo: They are merely dramatic and imaginative, rather than creations of true art. English art, in general, is more a result of mental imagination and therefore less satisfying than a work of art. In the "Death of a White Horse", the man looks like a violent angry old man, and the horse also looks wild and angry. I can't say I am impressed. If you compare Blake's work with the etchings of Rembrandt, you will see the difference between imaginative and true artistic work.
Disciple: Laurence Binyon's remarks in the preface say these works make an impression on the mind and don't so much appeal to the aesthetic senses, this is why you are disappointed when you see them again.
Sri Aurobindo: I am glad that Laurence agrees with me in this respect. I liked some of Blake's paintings, especially his representation called "The Murder". It is a great work. You see that it represents murder. That is art.
In his poetry too, I was rather disappointed, except for the "Book of Thel" and some of his lyrics. But in general his poetry is not satisfying. It is like his etchings — you find them rhetorical. Durer also was a great etcher. The claim is that he used to paint or etch under inspiration. There is a realm of the vital, a romantic stretch, from which you can get these things. That period comes in Yoga also. But these things are not deep.
Disciple: The symbolism which he claims to have evolved for the complete explanation and interpretation of Christianity looked very elaborate to me.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, all that may be true, but it is not poetry. Middleton Murry and some others try to make so much of his poetry. It is the same when you find people trying to indicate that the names of certain countries stand for certain activities and certain contributions, and even the individual names of Gods.
1941 or 1942
Disciple: Does the feminine aspect of the Divine correspond to love, devotion and surrender?
Sri** Aurobindo:** No, not necessarily.
Disciple: Does not Sachchidananda love?
Sri Aurobindo: No, that is Krishnaprem's idea, perhaps.
Disciple: There is no reason to associate these qualities with the feminine aspect because he associates them with it.
Disciple: Receptivity includes these things; it is only a way of representing the inner life of the woman.
Sri Aurobindo: Because the female is passive, dependent (passively active) while the male is active, strong and self-reliant.
Disciple: The Vaishnavas look upon all souls as Gopis and so it seems to them that the feminine aspect in all corresponds to the element of love, devotion, etc. because they take this path.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, if you accept their idea. But that is not the whole idea.
Disciple: It cannot be said that the male aspect is without love, devotion and surrender.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is so. Only, it is of a different nature. A man, for instance, may be devoted to a woman but that is not the same thing as a woman's devotion to a man. And the Vaishnava outlook is not the whole of the feminine aspect. There are other qualities of the woman. Love is not the only attribute of the woman.
Disciple: The feminine aspect will also have to include the Tantric idea of the Shakti.
Sri Aurobindo: Quite so.
Disciple: But Krishnaprem says that both these sides, masculine and feminine, should be equal in all. Is it true?
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by true? If you mean true in fact, then you can say it is not true. He says it "should be" but "should be" is not "what is".
Disciple: Is the idea correct?
Sri Aurobindo: That is his idea that it should be so.
Disciple: Perhaps he means that in an ideal case these two should be equal.
Disciple: Krishnaprem also says that Grace and Tapasya are complementary, neither of them is to be stressed. Girish Ghosh used to say to Ramakrishna that he left everything for Ramakrishna to do for him; and it seems he was very much changed.
Disciple: What I heard is that he found at the end that he had not been able to give his burden over to Ramakrishna.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean he made no effort himself?
Disciple: I suppose so, or he found at the end that somehow or the other he had not left the whole thing to Ramakrishna.
Disciple: That means, if one has that living faith he can dowithout Tapasya. C here also says that he does not believe in Tapasya. He believes in Grace.
Disciple: But I do not mean that one should indulge in the lower nature while depending or believing in Grace. But otherwise I don't believe in Tapasya.
Disciple: Yes, but if we want something then we have to make some effort for that thing. Some effort is inevitable.
Sri Aurobindo (to C) : What do you mean by Tapasya?
Disciple (not C) : It has the sense of effort. For example, if the mind is wandering about then one has to make an effort to concentrate it. This is difficult.
Sri Aurobindo: That Tapas is something difficult is the popular idea — that it most often means sitting on nails, standing on the head, etc. But that is not correct. Tapas can be for something one likes or wants. You gather the energy for achieving the object.
Disciple: When one sits in meditation the mind is wandering about and one has to gather it. This is difficult.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but something in you wants to do it. You want it, is it not so?
Disciple: It is the gathering of force of consciousness for aparticular purpose.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, you gather up all the energy and put it on a particular point.
Disciple: Even for gathering up some effort is necessary.
Sri Aurobindo: If you want to achieve the object some effort will be necessary for achieving it.
Disciple: Some men find it easy to meditate for many hours.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but that requires concentration of energy. All effort is not unpleasant. For instance, a man who plays cricket has to concentrate on the ball, bat, wicket, fielding, etc.
Disciple: That is comparatively easy because he finds interest in it.
Disciple: Another man may find that effort difficult.
Sri Aurobindo: It is said in the Upanishads that God created the world by Tapas. It was not that he found it difficult to create the world, but he had to make the effort.
Disciple: There is an instance given of concentration in which a lady goes about doing all sorts of work with a pitcher on her head. All the time her attention is concentrated on the pitcher.
In the case of the Gopis it was not that they had to make an effort to remember Krishna. They spontaneously fell in love with him and something in them was on fire. So when something in the being is touched like that, then concentration does not require effort or labour. One may concentrate for one thing and quite a different result may come — one may go to quite another line.
Sri Aurobindo: In my own case, Lele wanted me to get devotion and love and hear inner voices. Instead I got into the Silent Brahman Consciousness!
Disciple: And he prayed and tried to pull you into the other condition.
Disciple: I find in my case that with little effort on my part many things have dropped.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is because you, or something in you, wanted to drop these things.
Disciple: But there was no corresponding effort for results.
Sri Aurobindo: It may be so. It is not a question of correspondence: with a little effort something in you wants to drop it sincerely and then the Grace finds it easy to act. But all the same the effort is a contributory element. There are cases in which one goes on making efforts and yet no result comes and even the condition becomes worse. Then suddenly you find, when you have given up the effort, that the thing is done. It may be that the effort keeps up the resistance and when you give it up the resistance says, "This fellow has given up effort, so it is no use persisting."
12 MARCH 1943
Disciple: T was such a nice person; her behaviour was very good.
Sri Aurobindo: It seemed so because you do not know what kind of a person she really was; you saw only the outside.
Disciple: But she was very disciplined.
Sri Aurobindo: No. She was very nice only so long as you did what she wanted. But otherwise she was a person least fitted for Sadhana. The family has a touch of madness. She was hysterical and also there was the dissatisfied sex. She looked very nice, for people generally think it is a sign of great advance when someone stops speaking to others or retires, like N-b and N, and even S. But these are people with small spiritual capacity. B yes, he had a great capacity, but it was his inordinate ego that came in his way.
Disciple: They say Mother is preparing twelve persons — like the apostles of Christ? — and then another twelve will be taken up, and so on.
Sri Aurobindo: I don't know it. Unless you believe that Ihold this as a State secret!
26 MARCH 1943
On Srinivasa Iyengar's book on English poetry.
Sri Aurobindo: His judgments are not always sound and his quotations, though they seem striking at first, don't stand a second reading, so that they can't be taken as the best. For example, he speaks of Oscar Wilde, but he has not referred to the "Ballad of the Reading Gaol" which is one of the best things written in English. Also his estimate of Blunden's descriptions of nature — photographic and true to Nature perhaps — but it is very doubtful if they will survive.
Shakespeare you can go back to for a hundreth time. That is the test. T. S. Eliot will live, but only as a minor poet. The moderns have all got diction but it has no value without rhythm. They have no rhythm.
No one now reads Ben Jonson because people are no longer interested in him.
16 APRIL 1943
General Toczyski, the Polish leader, came here through Umadevi, a Polish sadhika.
17 APRIL 1943
General Toczyski saw the Mother at 3:30 for nearly an hour.
Synthesis of elements of different cultures.
Nearly 3,500 Polish refugees in India.
One or two hours to himself for reading this literature.
Sri Aurobindo: Such men will find great difficulties after the war because peace seems much more difficult — though war is difficult enough.
18 APRIL 1943
In Russia before the war there were 18 million in prison — one tenth of the population! General Toczyski had been to Russia because he was a Socialist. What he saw disillusioned him. He was even imprisoned in Russia.
The spy system in Russia is very extensive. Each man who is somebody is watched by three men.
In the army one who does not fight has to face execution.
The American politicians want to retain their hold over North Africa if they can, to ensure payment of their money. They would even like to have Persia and Iraq.
So, the peace is not likely to be a very easy affair.
Spiritual cure — method described. Blue ray directed to the patient. Washes his own hands. Astral body seen near the patient.
19 APRIL 1943
Spirit communication — desire to continue the family life of earth. There are such spirits who like a reproduction of the life on earth.
Get tired of the same wife or husband. Divorce suit in the other world. The husbands might ask if the wives are Satis!
Letter from Dilip, along with one from Krishnaprem, asking whether every time a Sadhak makes personal effort it can be said that it is to satisfy the ego.
Sri Aurobindo: No, it can be to subordinate the ego to the Divine. If it is to seek power or to satisfy some other impulse, then that personal effort may have an egoistic origin.
Disciple: Could one make a surrender to a Guru whose outer nature is imperfect?
Sri Aurobindo: It has nothing to do with any human standards — moral or mental. Most often it is the ego that says, "This fellow has got this defect, I wont surrender to him."
Disciple: But doesn't the very act of accepting someone as a Guru require some perception or feeling or experience of the Divine in the person?
Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. It may be only a belief in the Divinity of the Guru. That way it can be argued that God is imperfect because the exterior working in this world is full of imperfection, ignorance, suffering, etc. All these things do not count. The question is whether the Divinity in the Guru can awaken the Divine in the disciple.
Vivekananda was conscious of Ramakrishna's shortcomings and his mind was very agnostic. So it took him years and he was fighting with himself before he accepted Ramakrishna.
7 AUGUST 1943
Letter from Siddhartha (Nolini Sen's son)
Faith — blind, in Guru's words.
Religion is superfluous and injurious to India.
What is Sri Aurobindo doing? What has he done or what is he doing for India?
Sri Aurobindo: Why does Siddhartha want to argue about his faith? How can he prove his faith by arguments? He must know that it can't be done. And nowadays it is well known that one argues in favour of what one likes. It is not for arriving at the Truth. One can't arrive at the Truth by arguing.
He can find plenty of proof of people whose faith has succeeded where all outer reason was against them. There are many such things in history. For example, if England had only thought about her position and depended on reason, then she should have made peace with Hitler. She had no chance against Germany. But in spite of that she had faith that she could win and she is beginning to win.
It was after Dunkirk that I openly came out with my declaration supporting the Allies, and gave the contribution to the War Fund openly. If I had believed in appearances I should not have. It is in spite of contrary appearances that you have to act on faith. I had fixed the 15th August and the 15th September as the dates on which Germany would suffer defeat and both days it was defeated. In August, I believe, over London; and in September, the invasion idea and preparation.
Again, I wanted De Gaulle to become the Chief of the Free French armies in North Africa. There were many obstacles and the Americans came in with their pro-Vichy attitude. But I went on pressing and ultimately it has succeeded.
Also about the Tunisian campaign. There was a lot of swaying to and fro. But I persisted. The first time when the Allies attacked, they were only thirty thousand against three lakh Italians. If Wavell had gone to Tripoli at that time he would have succeeded. But they went to help Greece and naturally they had to retreat. But I went on pressing, and at last they took Tunisia.
If you depend upon reason then you cant know what is Truth. Germany fought Russia on her reasoning and won, and now Russia is fighting Germany on her reasoning and is winning. It is apparent that it is not reason which is giving them the success. There is, or must be, something behind that decides these things.
Our people cannot understand why one who has the Divine Consciousness or the Brahmic Consciousness should take up sides in a fight. That is all right if you want to remain in the Static Brahman. Then you can look upon the whole thing as Maya and it may not exist for you. But I believe in Brahman siding against Brahman — that is what the Brahman, I think, has always been doing.
The distinction between the Ishwara Consciousness and Brahmic Consciousness is not clear to many people, and also some of the Monists consider Ishwara to be a lower status than Brahman because it is dissolved in the Pralaya.
Krishna took sides openly in the Mahabharata and Rama also in the Ramayana. But Rama, some people do not consider an Avatar: they say he was not Self-conscious because he was weeping. Why? An Avatar cannot weep?
Sri Aurobindo had sent a message to the Congress regarding the Cripp's proposals.
Disciple: There are some people who even try to maintain that you knew fully well that your message to the Congress would fail and yet you sent it.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Iknew that there was very little chance of its success.
Disciple: But suppose you had known that it would certainly fail, then in that case you might have spared the trouble of going and coming to Duraiswamy.
Sri Aurobindo: No. Even if I had known for a certainty that it would fail, still it had to be done. It is a question of the play of forces and the important thing is that the other force should not be there. We cannot explain these things — this play of forces — to people who ask for a rational explanation, because it is so 'irrational'!
3 OCTOBER 1943
Sri Aurobindo: It seems that in this war the human element is in the background — the whole thing is dominated so much by the machine. It may be my illusion, but the men of the past look so much larger in comparison with the leaders of the present crisis. Look at the generals: in Napoleon and his generals you find their human characteristics dominating, while in this great war, machines seem to dominate; the leaders do not come out very high.
Disciple: Can't machines be used to help men grow?
Sri Aurobindo: They can help to make life more comfortable, they can add to the convenience of life, but how can they aid men in spiritual or inner progress?
4 OCTOBER 1943
C. Rajagopalachari in the Puja issue of the Amrita Bazar Patrika has pleaded for the reconsideration and revival of the Cripps' proposals. Sri Aurobindo found this comment "late" but remarked that C.R. had got back his clarity of mind. As to the actual revival, when Wavell comes the difficulties he will face will be the I.C.S. and the Congress on two sides, and Jinnah on a third.
Anilbaran's article about the Bengal food situation created a great stir in the Ashram. Sri Aurobindo's advice about this was for an organisation by the people themselves. Mere government regulations or work would not do. After all, the Ministry is the peoples and so its dishonesty and want of public spirit — want of a tradition of honest public work — is our own fault. If people had rioted at some places, the Government would have been compelled to act.
The Jivatman descends here — but not geographically. It is a way of saying that it "takes up the consciousness", "organises the nature", etc. Who 'gets' Nirvana? or who passes away into the Absolute? It is the Jivatman.
The article by K. C. Varadachari was in answer to Malkani's. Does the term chit in Ramanuja's philosophy mean the surface consciousness?
Narayana, the Absolute, is indissolubly connected with the manifestation. You can't know him even if he has an existence independent of his manifestation.
Sri Aurobindo: I would agree with Varadachari that the Absolute is not knowable by the Mind. But, it is knowable to Itself. It is sva-prakāśa — self-illuminating.
***
1940 Life Sketch of A. B. Purani
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