Talks by Nirodbaran

27 August 1969

Let me begin, ladies and gentlemen and friends (I'm being somewhat formal), with a word of apology to those elderly people here who are beginning to show some interest in our leisurely talks. I would like to remind you a bit gently that this class is meant for youngsters. My young teacher-friends¹⁵⁶ have selected me perhaps because I am not a philosopher, not a 'savant', so that I may talk to them in a simple manner, of simple things.

The word 'savant' echoes in my memory of something that happened long, long ago. Once, when I had just learnt French and I had taken up teaching French (I shouldn't say teaching, but rather, learning French by teaching), this young lady was one of my students. I don't know for what reason, she asked, "Monsieur, are you a 'savant'?" I don't know whether she remembers it. As you know, I am not a 'savant' at all, and till this day, I have not become one. A little of 'savoir'¹⁶⁶ I may have, but I am not a savant. So please remember, my older and elder friends, that this class is meant for children and young people. Therefore, it's likely to be below your standard. Please shut your eyes to that and you might take interest in something else that suits you, preferably. You might find sometimes that the subject matter and, particularly, the manner of presentation are somewhat frivolous, trivial and light, but I can't help it.

Already there has been a complaint that my talks are too entertaining -too much entertainment and there is too little instruction! So this dark shadow is hanging over my head and this complaint has come from nowhere else but from my own home. My very dear, dear niece -I leave the name unuttered (Laughter) - my own niece (as Ulysses says, "This is my son, my own son, Telemachus!") (Laughter), so I say, this is my own dear niece who complains. That puts me on my guard, I feel inclined to tell her. I ask my young friends here: please pacify my home front. (Laughter) She is my mental and physical health

165Young fellow-teachers who were the audience for these talks.

166Knowledge, in French.

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inspector, I mean instructor. (Laughter) So if something goes wrong there, you can understand, she will go on a tea-strike and I shall be paralysed, there won't be any further talks - so please tell her, cheer her up and pacify her and tell her that there is a lot of substance in my talks. (Laughter) Whatever she might say, I find great pleasure in talking to you, in meeting you. In fact, God has given me two pleasures, for the moment: one, meeting you, seeing your bright, young faces full of future prospects and promise; and seeing that you take so much interest in the talks about Mother and Sri Aurobindo and a little bit about me. That gives me encouragement, that gives me impetus, and I feel that, whatever my dear niece may say, I had better stick to my own nature and way of doing things.

The second pleasure is on a different plane - it is a poetic plane, a sensuous plane. Every day, when I get up in the morning, when I go up, the first thing that I do is to come out of my room and see from the small terrace the bright, beautiful morning sky. Sometimes, it is very quiet and calm and serene. Everything, as it were, in a sort of trance. No breath, no wind, nothing at all, nothing stirs. The trees -quiet. Even the houses are congealed into a sort of a trance. The nice, tender buds, the young leaves, so quietly beautiful. And I feel what Wordsworth has said in his bright sonnet "Westminster Bridge"¹⁶⁷ - I suppose you remember the last two lines:

Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

You actually feel that stillness. I don't know if you young people have much time to spend over these small, beautiful, natural scenes. Perhaps you enjoy your own scenes - I don't mean 'sins'! [Spelling the word] (Laughter) - that are better than these scenes of nature. So there are these two pleasures; as long as I can have them, I'd like to cling to them.

Then after this frivolous introduction, I'll come to the serious part, otherwise I'll be like the priest saying to another: "You rise by

167 "William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" (published 1807).

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your gravity and I sink by my levity."¹⁶⁸ (Laughter) Well, I am trying to keep a balance between the two. (Laughter) So we come to the serious matter now. The other day, I opened to you a bit of my mind as I have done so often and I hope I will continue to do so, because you are supposed to be nice friends. The serious matter that I wish to talk about today is about my experience on the Darshan day. I could not finish or I did not finish telling you what happened later during that day. That I am going to tell you now. It is a small thing. I told you I was very happy, my dark or black melancholy was wiped away by the fine experience that I'd had, so I was quite happy anyway, had a good dinner and a good sleep.

Again, at that fateful hour - two o'clock - sleep broke, I sat up, and tried to meditate. As soon as, or soon after I had started, something began to speak through me - it was not the Lord's Voice now speaking from nearby or from somewhere else, but the Voice speaking through me, spontaneously, as if I was the instrument. And it came all on a sudden and very quick, but I felt that it could not be anybody else who was speaking. The first few words, because they came all on a sudden, I missed; the last part I remember. Of the first words I remember only "if" or something of that sort. So what I could make out, by putting two and two together, is something like this. "All your troubles will be over." He enumerated the troubles which I suppress, not anything specific but, you understand, general ones, all kinds of troubles: "All your troubles will be over." Then I spoke: "What was the first part? I missed that." Such experiences don't repeat themselves. So what I could make out is this, "It is by realising the divine (because perhaps the word 'divine' was there) that all your troubles can be overcome." So that was the last bit of my experience on this fifteenth August. If He had given me that realisation, I would have been very happy. (Laughter) When you lay down conditions, things become very difficult. However, I was very happy to hear Him speak to me.

168 A saying that is often wrongly attributed to Sydney Smith (1771-1845), English writer and Anglican cleric, or to John Home Tooke (1736-1812), English politician and philologist, but they were merely quoting the original speaker, a witty eighteenth-century Irish barrister by the name of Keller who addressed this line to a judge.

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Although it is difficult, I know the Lord is with us, supporting us. If He wills, nothing can be easier, though He says 'if, etc.; we know very well His 'ifs' and 'buts'!

Then, of course, I had lately been thinking about some of my troubles, some of my difficulties, not big ones - it is these little things that trouble you most, don't they? There is a fine verse in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. We'll see how admirable it is: "The little Mind is tied to little things."¹⁶⁹ So either you have a little mind or a big mind, you can see; and this is in the epic by Sri Aurobindo. Where lies the beauty? The truth is universal, everybody knows it, but the poetic beauty of it I don't need to discuss here. How true it is, how memorable it is, how simple it is, how direct it is - a universal truth: "The little Mind is tied to little things" - so my little mind was tied to these little things. Please don't take me for a perfect man. I am full of imperfections. I hope, in future, if I realise the divine, my imperfections will disappear.

Since I am talking of my experiences, I may as well speak of one which I had, an initial experience, before I had started yoga. That is also in connection with the Mother. It happened long, long ago, as I said, before I had started yoga. Let me remind you again that I was in England (Laughter), and when I was there along with my niece, well, I met Dilip-da.¹⁷⁰ He went on a tour, after seeing the Ashram and having met Mother. So he spoke to us much about the Mother, about Sri Aurobindo and about the Ashram. I didn't feel much interested, particularly because I was a bit prejudiced - don't mind my blasphemy - against Sri Aurobindo because our opinion about Sri Aurobindo at that time was that He had run away from politics, leaving the country rudderless, pilotless, as it were, failing in His mission. So we youngsters and other people who were politically-minded, but immature and unripe, had passed that serious stricture upon Him. What was yoga?

169Book II, Canto X, page 257.

170Dilip Kumar Roy was fairly well known in his time. He was the son of the famous Dinendra Nath, a well-known writer. Dilip Kumar Roy was a singer. Later in life, he established an ashram in Pune, which still exists. He was a close disciple of Sri Aurobindo and was the recipient of a very large number of letters from Sri Aurobindo.

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Sri Aurobindo, a yogi! I had nothing in common with yoga. So I was a bit prejudiced.

All the same, when I finished my medical course, on my way home I thought: let me go and see this Ashram. Of course, the pressure from my niece was great - nieces know the art of applying these pressures very well, and sisters too! I said, all right, let me put my prejudice in my pocket for a while and see what it is like. So I came via Colombo, landed at Pondicherry station - not what it is today, my friends. Infested by flies, just like a cowshed. So I landed somewhere about four o'clock in the morning. Took up my lodging in a hotel; in a third-class, fourth-class, wretched hotel somewhere there. Not your Shankar Lodge and other places of today. Then, next morning, I went to see Dilip-da, he was living in Tresor House. The house was bought specially for him. I went to see him in my European clothes, if you please (Laughter), fully European: trousers, neck-tie, hat, and a stick and boots (Laughter) - a third-class dandy (Laughter), Beau of Goldsmith!

Well, when Dilip-da saw me - I dropped on him like a bolt from the blue! "Eh, tumi? Kokhon? Koththeke? Ki kore?"¹⁷¹ (Laughter) So many questions with a broad grin. He said, "You were the last person I expected here!" (Laughter) Anyhow, he was very pleased and said, "Bosho, bosho, bosho, cha khao".¹⁷² (Laughter) He was very generous. I had tea. Then he said, "Tell me all about you. Why have you come here?" I told him that I had no yogic intentions at all. I'd come to see what the place was like. "Good, how many days are you going to stay?" I said, "Two or three days. My mother is waiting; I can't stay long." "Would you like to see the Mother?" "Well, I would, if possible." He sent a note to the Mother. The reply came, Mother said, "He has not written to me. Does he want to see me ?" Then, somehow, the meeting was arranged for us. The next day or the day after, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, I was in the hotel, I had only one set of European clothes. All my things had been put by the steamer authorities, by

171Eh, you? When? From where? How?

172Sit down, sit down, sit down - have tea.

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mistake, not in my room, but in the cell or hall or somewhere else. So I had only one suitcase with me with my necessary things. So Dilip-da said, "You have no dhoti,¹⁷³ so I shall give you this dhoti, put it on and come. Very well, but come punctually." Then the day came. I took lunch. I didn't take fish or meat, only vegetables (Laughter) - trying to be a little 'bhogadharmic'¹⁷⁴ when going to the Mother.

In our shastras,¹⁷⁵ they say you must go to the temple as pure as possible, so I didn't eat any egg or fish or meat, only vegetables, and didn't take much of even that; I was on an empty stomach or half-full. I was feeling very nervous, though I was a medical man. (Laughter) But what to do, the nerves are not under the control of a medical man or engineer, least of all, under Nirod's! Man is, after all, a man! And I was young. What to do? All the time, there was some fear. Then, I thought I must pray. My mother - I've told you all how she used to make me pray; some vestiges were left in my memory after a lapse of many years in which I had never prayed. So what she had taught me was there in my subconscious. So, I thought, let me pray a little before going.

I sat down, Buddha-like, for prayer or for meditation; but, by Jove! As soon as I sat down, God alone knows what I felt. I saw that this part of my head, no exaggeration at all, this part of my head was hanging here (Laughter) and this part [indicating his body] had vanished. (Laughter) I was conscious of this part [indicating his head] hanging just like Trishanku¹⁷⁶ - neither in heaven nor on Mother's lap - but

173A long piece of cloth, mostly white, worn as a lower garment by many Indian men. It is usually tied round the waist and covers the legs.

174Being pious regarding food.

175Religious scriptures.

176The story is in the 'Bala Kanda' portion of the Valmiki Ramayana: Trishanku, a king of the Solar Dynasty, wished to ascend to heaven in his mortal body. His Guru, Vasishta, refused to perform the needful rites as it would be against the laws of nature. Cursed by Vasishta's sons, forced to leave his country and wander the lands, Trishanku met sage Viswamitra, a rival of Guru Vasishta, who promised to help him instead. The yagnas (rituals) began and by the power of the great sage, King Trishanku started ascending to heaven, greatly to the chagrin of the Devas. Indra, using his divine powers, caused Trishanku to fall back to earth. The furious Vishwamithra would not accept defeat and used his powers to arrest the fall of the king, suspending him mid-air. Trishanku prayed to Vishwamithra for help and the great sage used his powers to create a parallel heaven in a portion of the southern sky, with a parallel Indra to rule it! Upon this, the alarmed Devas appeared before the sage and tried to pacify and convince him to withdraw his support for Trishanku's unnatural act. Vishwamithra was gradually convinced, but could not break his own word to Trishanku about sending him to heaven, so he compromised by asking the Devas to let the King inhabit the new heaven that was created for him, though with the condition that it would not interfere with Indra's authority, to ensure which, the unfortunate Trishanku would reside upside down in his new heaven! And thus Trishanku was suspended in his own heaven as a compromise between the earth that he belonged to and the heaven that he sought. The phrase 'Trishanku's heaven' is still used widely in India to describe such situations faced in real life.

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curiously enough, it was accompanied by a joy and, at the same time, a fear. What is this condition, I wondered. My medical science had never said that such things were possible and yet it had happened, at once, without any preparation or notice. As soon as I sat down, as if the thing was ready to catch me. Now mind you, see how things happen. A conscious force had been sent. That is what surprises one.

Let me allude to many similar things. All of you perhaps know about His experience in Baroda. It came without any preparation, from nowhere. We have been reading His poem "Godhead" and all of you have read it. Sri Aurobindo was going to the bazaar, you know, in a rickety horse-carriage. He couldn't manage, the horse was wild and it started to run amuck. Sri Aurobindo was on the point of being thrown out, and all of a sudden, the Godhead came, from within. See how such things happen. Well, this is philosophy, let's not go into metaphysics.

Here, I can understand it: Mother had given an appointed time, so She must have sent some force in order to test me or to put me into the right frame of mind. She does that. So, as I was saying - for how long I don't know, it appeared to me like an eternal moment - I was hanging. Then the thing passed, and I saw I was Buddha in padmasana.¹¹⁷ And then it was time to start for the interview. I went to Dilip-da's place. He cut a nice, beautiful rose from the terrace garden which did not belong to him. (Laughter) He did not care. Roses, after all, are everybody's property and particularly when they are meant to be given to Mother. So he picked out a very beautiful rose and said: "Take this, let's go." Changing my clothes, becoming a young Bengali

177 Lotus Position used for meditation in Hatha Yoga.

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man again, I went to see Mother.

Mother used to give interviews at that time in what you call Library House - in other words, Rajen's office, the place where Rajen sits at the table there - there Mother used to meet the visitors. Well, I was waiting there and Mother came dressed in a magnificent saree. That beauty was not beauty that I had ever seen. She appeared to me veritably like a goddess, with a crown, jewels, and the saree (I don't remember the colour); and Her manner of walking - majestic. In this way She came, but, unfortunately, attended by some human beings. (Laughter) There was Nolini-da and some others also, and perhaps Amrita-da also. She took her seat, looked at me, and I did pranam at Her feet, offered Her the rose; She blessed me. Then, by Jove, She started looking at me and kept looking at me, it felt as if for eternity, smiling and smiling endlessly, as if She would simply drown me in Her smile; and the others were looking curiously. (Laughter) I felt very much abashed, embarrassed. I didn't know what to do - I looked at Her once. (Laughter) But She poured Her smiles on me, as if She had found a lost soul or what I don't know, or a would-be lost soul. Then, quite a few minutes passed. Now I can understand that Mahalakshmi had descended into Her, and for what purpose. She remarked to Her attendants: "He is very shy!" (Laughter) "He's very shy." It is true, though it is supposedly a feminine quality. I don't know why I have this trait in me. Then She asked me a few routine questions: where do you practise? So on and so forth. Then we parted.

Dilip-da called me home. It was somewhere near four o'clock or so in the evening; we had good tea now, we had omelettes, etc., etc. (Laughter) Then I don't remember whether he accompanied me home. All that I remember is that he gave me some loose sheets of Conversations with Sri Aurobindo. They were typed sheets; at that time, they had not yet come out in book form. So he gave me quite a number of sheets, if not the whole book. He said, "Read them." As I was leaving the next day, I thought I should read them. Either he wanted me to give them back to him or I could, perhaps, keep them with me. So I read them because I had nothing else to do. But many

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of you have read these Conversations and know what the contents are. The first and the second parts were about yoga, and they did not interest me in the least, until I came upon something that spoke about art. I said, "Here is something interesting. What does it say?" One thing that particularly attracted me was that yoga can develop art in you and lead you to perfection. Then I said, "Here is something." So I took interest in yoga, and thought, ah, if yoga can do that, then perhaps it'll be worth the effort. That was my subconscious intuition. So I read it.

The next day I was to leave. Dilip-da came to see me off, put me in - not a rickshaw, at that time, it was pousse-pousse, very queer kind of vehicle. You hold the steering mechanism, and somebody pushes from behind! (Laughter) I sat in the pousse-pousse, he saw me off from there, wishing me bon voyage. I went to the station, bought my ticket, waited for the train to leave, bidding goodbye to Pondicherry. I sat comfortably, looking through the window. Then came something else unexpectedly. As I started looking through the window, what I saw was the face of the Mother. Extremely beautiful, ravishing beauty. Not the beauty that is calm and serene. And mind you, not only on one side: whichever way I turned my head, She was there. She would not leave me. I looked this way, She was there; I looked that way, She was there; I looked another way, She was there. That face, all the time looking at me with a smile beyond all description. Then at last I got tired of seeing Her face! I was thrilled with ecstasy and joy and Ananda, 178 but I could not bear even that for long. I said, "What is this ? Whichever way I turn, I see Her." I got tired; and as soon as I felt tired, the thing vanished.

So you see, even Ananda our frail human mould of clay cannot bear for long. It shatters the vessel. A long preparation is necessary to bear the downpour. There is a line in Savitri: "Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch."¹⁷⁹ It was so true in my case. That is why the Divine pours His bliss by drops, by a trickle, by a thin stream. It is the same

178Divine Bliss, causeless and self-existent.

179SABCL,28:7.

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with His force. These are my experiences. I got tired of it! So that was that. That was the initial experience - before I started yoga, before I had thought even that I would do yoga.

So I told you I started yoga like the Master, by the back door! Here is another parallel with the Master.¹⁸⁰ The other two parallels I forgot to mention the other day: that like Him, I was also a French teacher (Laughter), as well as an English teacher. So, I find so many parallelisms between the Master and His disciple that, I think, these two parallels should meet somewhere one day.

But now I realise that the first meeting in the Library sealed my fate, that She had entered my name in Her permanent list. (Laughter) The rest of the thing, how it developed, perhaps I might tell you another day. So things do happen, my friends, in a most unexpected manner. And as a matter of fact, it is the unexpected that always happens. When you expect much, with eagerness and desire, then nothing happens. You must keep yourself blank, without too much eagerness or expectancy, then it comes; what you have not expected, in the least, suddenly occurs. But in spite of these experiences, in my spiritual history there was a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, a lot of doubts. So, you see, spiritual experience, on one hand, and frailty of human nature, on the other. Now I will finish this talk by reading Nolini-da's text, very apt, appropriate for all of you and particularly for the young people here and elsewhere:

Youth of today, seek your soul, find your soul, follow your soul. That is the one thing needful in this age upon earth. To save yourself, to save mankind, that is the only way. That is the only way towards perfect self-fulfilment, for the individual, for the nation, for mankind. And it is exactly this part of yourself which has been most neglected, overlooked, treated as if non-existent.

True education should be based upon that bedrock, the soul's consciousness, all else is a burden leading to confusion, unless it is linked and coordinated to that single frame of reference. All else can be an enrichment and an asset only as a channel for the expression of the soul's light.

180 Nirod-da is drawing a parallel between this experience of Ananda and the Godhead experience of Sri Aurobindo in Baroda.

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The soul is your true person, the eternal. The person that you know as yourself, the person that thinks, feels, acts in a given manner familiar to you is only an echo, a shadow, often a caricature of the true person behind this mask, that has its own way of thinking and feeling, acting. That person often laughs, often weeps at the ludicrous attempts of the outer person to initiate its movements.

The inner person knows, feels, acts always rightly and beautifully. Whenever you have a gesture which you feel to be fine and beautiful, happy and at ease, that, you must be sure, comes from your soul. Encourage that shy and modest person within you and you will see how the world begins to change and yourself to start with.

That soul of yours, that inner person is not very far from you, for you are still young: it is as you grow old that coat after coat of dark forgetfulness is imposed upon it and you go astray and afar, it becomes more and more difficult to recover. But when one is young it still inspires you secretly even through your apparent aberrations. Your aberrations are ardent attempts to recognize and to come in touch with your hidden person, your soul.

Perhaps you know this much, that nowhere else do educationists speak of the soul. And our politicians speak of a secular country. It is a bug-bear! Mother says that that small voice is very shy, very sensitive.