Talks by Nirodbaran

22 October 1969

Well, a rainy day, ladies and gentlemen! On such days, we used to play football instead of listening to a lecture, or sometimes we used to purposely get wet in the rain, so that we might get a holiday. I don't feel very warm today - my inspiration has got all drenched in the rain; I hope that you can pass me some enthusiasm, some warmth from your young hearts!

I have been asked to tell you, in these two closing talks of this session, something of my association, or rather, our association with Sri Aurobindo. I suddenly thought of doing it now - I had fixed it in my mental calendar to do it in due order of time, but young people like sweet disorder, like our poet Herrick who likes sweet disorder in the dress! And then, they live always in the present. And I too am not

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quite sure of the future, therefore I thought, perhaps I may as well bow down to the call of the children and to the wisdom of the young people. But the subject is rather difficult. The association here is not an equal one between ordinary men; it is an association between common human beings, on the one side, and the Divine, on the other. Though the Divine has taken a human habitation and a name, it is no mere human figure there about whose anatomy, physiology and psychology you can pronounce an expert medical judgment and find at last that there is no mystery. As our Dr. Sanyal says: "Where is your psychic being? Where are all the centres you speak of: your Anahata, Nabbipadma,²⁶² etc.? Where are all these? I have dissected so many bodies, I've found none, and I'm a renowned surgeon!"

So there you are! But I suppose that, about the semblance, the mask that we know as 'Sri Aurobindo', I could mumble a few words. Our association with Him is something unique, something unparalleled, rarely to be found in spiritual history. Perhaps you have some idea of Arjuna's association with Sri Krishna, Ananda's with Buddha, St. Paul's with Jesus Christ, and similar ones of others; in our modern days, associations of Vivekananda, particularly, and of his friends with Ramakrishna, and lastly, in our present time, here, of Pranab-da and Vasudha-ben²⁶³ with the Mother. Our association too belongs to that class, that category, but I won't say that it is of the same stature. However, it is an association worth dying for a thousand times and double those times living for, and yet perhaps you won't be able to solve the mystery, even by serving Him. So there lies my difficulty. What to speak of the Ineffable? What have we seen of the Master, the Lord that we can speak of? Even what we have seen - the very superficial crust, we have no power to express. However, I shall try to give you some glimpse of whatever little we have seen of that great ocean-depth and the vast sky-space that is Sri Aurobindo. But my fear is that it will be too personal as well as a little sentimental. You will excuse me if it is so. That is why I always avoid speaking much about

262Two subtle centres (of the seven) in the human body.

263'ben is a name suffix meaning 'sister'.

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these too-personal experiences.

Well, memories surge up, as it were, from the backward abysm of time, one after another: that fateful night,²⁶⁴ when Sri Aurobindo was lying helplessly on the floor of His room, the doctors rushing in, the Mothers grave concern, the consternation in the whole Ashram, the gloom, the frustration overwhelming everybody who had come for the Darshan. Then the decision was taken to send for specialists from Madras, waiting anxiously; and in the midst of all this, the Master, the Lord, lying in his bed, quietly, calmly, most unperturbed, most unconcerned. That is the first picture. Then the doctors arrived. The accident had taken place at about 2 o'clock or 2:30 a.m. - making us wait impatiently, they came at 7 or 8 in the evening: a specialist and a radiologist. Their examination, their diagnosis, their great verdict came, and Sri Aurobindo was confined to bed for a number of months. Complication after complication, then His recovery, His learning once again to walk, leaning on human crutches (Laughter), then our witnessing His life: His eating, His sleeping, His writing poems - The Life Divine, Savitri - autographing hundreds of books. Then our touching His sacred body, touching His hair, giving Him a bath. Then His exercises in bed, according to the prescription of Dr. Manilal. Now and then, the Mother coming into the room, with a sweet smile, sometimes with a glass of coconut water in Her hand, casting a very quick glance at us mischievous fellows, and many other memories come. Then the memory of the famous 'talks' when the impersonal aspect of the Purusha became personal, very intimate, like that of a human being, talking with us on various subjects: politics, religion, philosophy and what not; cracking jokes with us on very trivial matters like Nirod's snoring, P's kicking (Laughter), so on and so forth; and the last, fatal touch - His passing away and the grand spectacle that He made us see: His whole body becoming golden for several days.

All these are memories that surge up when you ask me about my

264 Reference is being made to the night when Sri Aurobindo tripped over a mat and broke his thigh bone.

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association with Him. Where shall I begin and how shall I express all these things? Would you like me to cram all these within two concluding lectures? I forgot to mention also His hearing the War news, His dictation of Savitri. These are things that we have seen, but what we have not seen, what we have not heard from Him, that is a region which has been unexplored and will never be explored by us. That is why He has said that His life has never been on the surface for men to see. How shall we be able to know that sitting there in that room ... [A visitor enters] Well, I suppose you know this gentleman - a distinguished visitor from our great poet's Home of Peace - Shantiniketan, who has come with a party to our home of rain! [Addressing the visitor] I am speaking of our association with Sri Aurobindo. Our students want to know something about Him, so I was telling them that the subject is too personal, and besides, very little can be said about Him because, as Sri Aurobindo has said, very little of His life has been on the surface, for men to see. And these superficial aspects which have been noticed by us, the children are curious to know, firstly, because they are children, secondly, because they have no idea of what these aspects are like, so I am trying to give them some idea.

I have given you a rough panoramic survey of our association with Him. Now we shall start from the beginning. How was this physical contact established? You know very well from our previous talks about my psychic and intellectual contact with Him before I met Him on the physical plane. That was all perhaps a sort of preparation for this physical meeting. You know what happened in the year 1938 - just on the eve of the November Darshan. That was the fateful year. People from many parts of India had come for the Darshan. I don't know if some of you were here in 1938. Perhaps you were dreaming in some higher sphere, of coming down and taking birth! One of the distinguished visitors that year was Miss Wilson, the daughter of President Wilson of America. She had come all the way from America to have her first Darshan of Sri Aurobindo.

Darshan then was something of which you have no idea today. You

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have heard about it, to a certain extent, you have made some mental figure of it, but that cannot be as vivid as what was seen with one's own eyes. You have seen the sofa where Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to sit side by side - Mother on the right side of Sri Aurobindo, not on the left side. Sri Aurobindo, would sit there with just a chuddar thrown across His chest in the Bengali fashion, his imposing figure right in front of us. His dhoti was an immaculate white - what we call 'phorash danga' in Bengali - creased, crinkled, pressed, all done under the Mother's direction; and folded and nicely put on, and the pleats or 'kancha' as we say in Bengali, reached almost to His feet, as you've seen in the picture. His hair was beautifully parted in the middle -long flowing hair, very thin, silken - and His beard flowing down and covering His chest. That's all about His dress and outer bearing - the outer bearing only. There was the Mother, sitting by His side, and presenting quite a different picture: all rosy, beautifully dressed, all colourful and gorgeous, with rings on Her fingers. She was wearing a crown, in our eyes, with an enchanting smile - Mahalakshmi's smile - really bewitching; calling us, as it were, not to adore Shiva but to adore Her! (Laughter) In fact, Sri Aurobindo was grand, aloof, austere, Shiva-like. If you have read His poem "Shiva", it was something of that sort. Settled somewhere on the peaks of Silence, with a faint ray of a smile which could be more imagined than perceived (Laughter), which would give us the touch of that something happening in this clay world of ours. Many of us have had, then, the experience of seeing Shiva and Parvati sitting side by side!

This is, in a few words, our impression of the Darshan. From the inner point of view, even a single Darshan has radically changed the lives of many people. One single look, one single smile saved so many people from their material, physical troubles, and seekers were lifted into another sphere. One single Darshan has often proved to be a veritable turning point in their lives. Sri Aurobindo said: "To everyone I give a pointed look." Every Darshan had always an air of mystery, an air of sublimity, which could not be expressed in words, seeing which, Rabindranath said: "You have the Word, and we are waiting

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to accept it from you." After a Darshan, one of our doctors, trying to be poetic, said, "Sir, you looked grand at the Darshan" Doctors can't have a better expression, you must remember, unless the doctor is a poet! (Laughter) So that was the Darshan experience people looked forward to, and when, that year, the Darshan was interrupted by this stroke of Fate - I don't know what to call it - we can imagine the disappointment, the frustration, the despair, the gloom of all these people. And particularly when they learned about the accident that had befallen their beloved Master, you can imagine! One prayer, one silent prayer that rose unanimously from the heart of the devotees was for the well-being of their Lord and Master, not perhaps regretting so much the Darshan that they had missed. Even Miss Wilson, who had come all the way from America, accepted it with submission. From that single gesture, you can see what a great soul she was. She didn't rage, cry, lament, or regret. Her reaction was a calm, quiet submission and a prayer for the Lord, to the Lord. The accident had happened so unexpectedly. To quote Savitri:

Across the path of the divine Event

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone

In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.²⁶⁵

Well, two incidents come to mind which are full of significance, I should say, of cosmic significance; which have shaken the world to its very roots, and changed the course of world events without our least knowledge. One is the accident, the second is Sri Aurobindo's passing away. The accident was a great victory on the part of adverse forces. Nolini-da gave an explanation of it, saying that, at that time, in 1938, there was a war-cloud threatening the world. Sri Aurobindo told us later that, for some reason, Mother and He did not want a war then. So very probably He took upon Himself that catastrophe and avoided it or postponed it for a year. That is what Nolini-da said and he must surely know what he was talking about because he must have had some perception of it. That does not contradict my view when I say

265 Book I, Canto I, 1.

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that the hostile forces had gained a great victory. Dr. Manilal asked in his somewhat childlike manner, "Sir, why did it happen to you?" And Sri Aurobindo shot back, in a similar tone, "Why shouldn't it happen to me ?" (Laughter) But the surface explanation He gave was that He had not believed or thought that these adverse, hostile forces would dare to touch Him, so He had not been on His guard. Moreover, He had been guarding the Mother, He had been busy guarding Her all the while. He didn't take any cover, any protection for Himself.

So these are all mystic, occult events, very difficult to understand, and very difficult to talk about. But these are things that have been heard from His own mouth. Had not the accident taken place, I believe things would have taken a different course, and perhaps we would have had Him today in our midst and the realisation the Mother is waiting for, working for, day and night, would have been accomplished long ago. But things happen at their own appointed time. And though He has left His body, you know very well the phenomenon that took place on that day. Authentic record is there that His whole body was suffused with a golden colour and it remained so for many days. It is a phenomenon not recorded in history before. What exactly was behind this phenomenon? The Mother said that, whenever She used to visit Him, She used to notice always the Supramental Light that Sri Aurobindo was bringing down upon earth. Unfortunately, though we have lived beside Him for twelve years, day and night, like His shadows, we didn't see even a single hair of the tail of the Supramental! (Laughter) He didn't give us that vision. I was fortunate in having this vision only after He passed away. He thought perhaps that it would be too unfair to disappoint this poor fellow! (Laughter) So He gave me that vision, which I took to be very real, material. However, that was what He was doing and the meaning of it is, as we know today, that He fixed in the earth consciousness forever the Light that He and the Mother had been trying to bring down. Before that, as They have said, the Light was coming down and going away; they could not fix it, but this time it was fixed. How ? By Him sacrificing His own body. There are verses in Savitri that refer to this phenomenon:

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It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,

Offered by God's martyred body for the world.

Mark each word: 'sacrifice', 'God's martyred body', 'for the world'.

And I still remember these lines because they were some of the last lines that He changed in Savitri, while He was dictating. They were not in this form at the beginning; they were changed to the present version during the last days, just before He passed away - when He decided to leave His body. You can see the purpose and you can see the reason, in the word 'martyr'. Therefore I say that the purposes behind these two incidents, which may not be evident to our level of understanding, are very clearly evident to the Mother and others who have the right perception, the right intuition. Now, sometime around 2:30 a.m., when the whole world had gone to sleep, when the Mother also had retired: "It was the hour before the Gods awake", Sri Aurobindo alone was awake. A light was burning in the corner room (facing Pavita's house).²⁶⁶

On many an occasion, my friend Nishikanto and I passed by that corner, after our midnight promenade (which we used to have very often), on our way back, to the Dispensary, for me, and to his house, for my friend. We would see that light burning, and sometimes I used to hear, from the Dispensary, the tinkling of the tea cup (Laughter) - no imagination! And I used to feel so happy. I used to listen to the musical sound. Champaklal told me later that a flask of tea used to be placed before Him and some biscuits and a cup and a saucer and sugar and everything. So it's not all imagination that He used to take tea, and the tinkling of the tea cup was unmistakable, my friends. So we passed by, sometimes at one o'clock, sometimes at two o'clock - we were at that time like owls (Laughter) - and enjoyed the sight of the light very much. Sri Aurobindo quietly sitting down to work when all the world had gone to sleep, at midnight, that reminds me, in a small way, of the lines from Milton's poem "Il Penseroso":

Or let my lamp at midnight hour be seen in some high lonely tow'r.

266 Presently, the north-western corner of the Ashram Dispensary.

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And that night too, He was perhaps busy with the writing of Savitri. It was the only period of the whole day when He could devote His time to His great work. The rest of the correspondence He used to finish at another time. So perhaps He was in His poetic mood, incanting some verse that He had found by inspiration, all of a sudden, coming down from above, and He might have been muttering and incanting it; He used to mutter, I'll tell you all about that later on. He was human in that respect. But, as I said, guarding the Mother at the same time, He was passing from that room to His bedroom, or to the bathroom on the other side, and somehow He tripped on a tiger skin that was on the floor and His knee struck very hard upon the head of the tiger. He was Divine, but He had a human body. He fell down, and there He lay. He lay down there quietly, not calling out to anybody; there was nobody there, except the Mother in the other room. So He was perhaps waiting for Her to come at some time or the other. He would never disturb anybody even normally, never call anybody, unless absolutely necessary. He would accept no service from anybody, unless compelled to do so. So the Divine compelled Him to accept this. However, it seems the Mother received a strong vibration in Her sleep or in Her trance, as I should say, and felt at once that something had happened to Sri Aurobindo. This is, my friends, what I had referred to long ago, the unity of consciousness between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo; and She came and found Sri Aurobindo lying on the floor. At once, she rang the emergency bell, and Purani rushed up; he was awake, preparing hot water for the Mother and Sri Aurobindo at 2 o'clock. The Master used to take His bath around that time, and that too with boiling water, my friends, no mixture, no dilution. (Laughter) Pure, boiling water, and at that time of the night! The Mother told Purani, "Sri Aurobindo has had an accident, go and call the doctor." Fortunately, Dr. Manilal was here at that time; he had come for the Darshan. If he had not been here, my poor shoulders would have had to bear the burden of the Avatar! Well, he turned up and we followed. To see what? To see Him lying like a child there in His room by the door. There He was, with His upper body bare. He

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had a sort of embarrassed smile on His face, for giving us unnecessary trouble. It seemed as if, in the twinkle of an eye, I saw something. I don't know whether it was due to the reflection of the light or a hallucination or vision - call it whatever you like. It seemed as if I had the glimpse of what the Vedas and the Upanishads call 'the golden beauty of a God' - the whole body bathed in golden light - golden Purusha. Yeats says in one of his poems: "World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras." However, that was only a moment's vision.

Then we were busy trying to find out what had happened. Dr. Manilal set about it: each movement of the limb followed by a soft "ah!" not more than that, a little twitching of the face and one or two answers, a few words. So Dr. Manilal, an expert medical man, came to the decision that it was a fracture. The Mother was all the time beside Sri Aurobindo, fanning Him; there was no electric fan at that time. Sometimes, She was going out and coming back, and asking Him, sweetly, "Is it hurting you? Is it hurting you?" Then we doctors set about medical treatment, putting the leg in plaster provisionally, then we laid Him in his bed.

The bell has rung. It is a long story and my tempo is rather slow, but these things cannot be done at a fast and furious pace. (Laughter)