Talks by Nirodbaran

31 October 1969

Today is our real swansong. It seems some of you were not pleased with the last swansong - the swan didn't sing well! So I thought, since you say we are friends, we shouldn't part in grief; I thought of meeting you again to see if we can part in a happy mood.

I still don't know why you were disappointed - perhaps you expected too much. Perhaps you wanted me to pour out all my treasures, which I refuse to do. If I empty it into your capacious basket, all at one go, what shall I live with? It seems that when Dickens finished writing his Oliver Twist, he began to weep, because that was his most favourite book, and he didn't know what to do after its completion. Similarly, if I empty all my stock, I may start weeping, and to leave me like that would be "the most unkindest cut"²⁹⁶ from friends like you. Therefore, I have to go a little slowly, for if I exhaust my stock, then you will try to seek friendship somewhere else. (Laughter) Well then, today, I don't know whether it has been pre-planned by Fate, but I thought of cheering you up a bit by showing you the lighter side of our Lord -His humour, His fun. Some of it has been published, others have been kept back, so I will reveal to you today some of those tales which have

296 "This was the most unkindest cut of all" - from Mark Antony's famous burial speech in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene ii, line 183.

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been held back.

You know, perhaps, that I worked in many departments of the Ashram before I found my true vocation. As soon as I came here, or soon after, I was assigned to the Building Service, where I had to do some accounts. (Laughter) Well, from there, I was transferred somewhere else - from the frying pan into the fire, perhaps! - to work under Rishabchand²⁹⁷ and keep the paint accounts! Again, I was shifted from there, for I was, as they say, a square peg in a round hole. I don't know how I came to work in the timber godown (Laughter), which was on the ground floor of the building where now your famous science laboratory is installed. It was a real godown - a dark, dingy, windowless place that made you really 'go down' there, psychologically! (Laughter) I was not at all happy with that work either, but what to do? I had to supervise the carpenters. I knew nothing about carpentry at all, so what could I supervise? And I wasn't interested either; I had not developed a yogic attitude at all. So I used to while away my time by reading novels or other books.

At that time, correspondence with Sri Aurobindo was an ongoing feature in the Ashram.²⁹⁸ So I wrote to Sri Aurobindo: "Can I read books in between my work duties?" He gave me a reply which I have never forgotten and which brought a change in my attitude. He said, "I don't know your work." It gave me such a shock because I thought that He knew everything about all the workers - not in the occult way, but because we used to give regular reports to the Mother. I thought: what is this indifference? "I don't know your work": What does it mean? I couldn't understand at once that He was speaking of the way I was going on, my lack of interest in the work. Then, slowly, I started feeling a change inside. I began to take interest - not joy, as yet, but some interest. I began to work - the carpenter's work was a very dry sort of work, dry as sawdust! But still, somehow, something

297Rishabchand, a Marwadi businessman from Kolkata who joined the Ashram in the thirties, was one of the earliest biographers of Sri Aurobindo. His shop, "Indian Silk House" in College Street, is a very well-known establishment.

298Sadhaks used to write to Sri Aurobindo about their problems in sadhana and he would reply with suitable guidance. This was a daily feature.

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happened, and I think, from then on, when He saw perhaps that I was genuinely trying to be a yogi or a sadhak, the tone of His letters changed! What was formal earlier began to take a personal turn. That I remember very well indeed.

This introduction is necessary for what I'm going to read out just now. Some men were commenting on my godown work. They were saying, "He is an England-returned man and he has been given the work of a timber-godown supervisor." So I wrote to Sri Aurobindo about these unsavoury comments. Then He wrote back: "Men are rational idiots. The timber godown made you make a great progress and you made the timber godown make a great progress. I only hope it will be maintained by your successor." And He crowned it by saying that one day I should justify the 'timber throne'. (Laughter)

So from there I was asked to go over to the Dispensary. I think there's a letter here that explains how it happened. All these things have happened in a very queer way. There is no real scientific explanation for these occult happenings. I wrote to Him that, after having spent so many years and so much money on my medical education, now I find that I am uselessly employed in the carpentry department, etc. Then Sri Aurobindo grabbed this opportunity and wrote: "We thought you might not only be not enthusiastic, but the reverse of enthusiastic about again becoming a medical gent. When, however, you spoke lovingly and hungeringly about Rs. 20,000, I rubbed my eyes and thought, 'Well, well! Here's a chance!'" That's all. Mark the humour.

So I was transferred to the Dispensary and now I will read out some 'medical' jokes from my correspondence with Him. I think the ladies here won't mind if some of the jokes refer to women. This occurred in 1936. Some lady complained about me to the Mother, and Sri Aurobindo wrote to me: "She says you spoke wrathfully to Dr. Becharlal. And Dr. Becharlal spoke wrathfully to her and accused her of high crimes and misdemeanours (like irregularity in eating) of which she was not guilty. So she is very wounded and won't go to doctors any more!! Fact? Or liver?" Then I wrote back; I will read out my reply to you, and from the contents you'll also see in what vein I

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dared to address Him:

Spoke wrathfully? Good Lord, how? When? This is an imitation of His style.

I thought I was a very calm and peaceful man ... (Laughter)

... but if Your lips part in a sarcastic grin, I will tell You what happened. Well, Dr. Becharlal and I were breaking our heads over the budget when she entered. The complaints entered my ears before the furrows over the brow were smoothed away. And in that careworn expression, I asked Dr. Becharlal: "What's this complaint about recurring nausea? What do you think?" Then he asked her in Gujarati: "Have you indulged in some indiscretion in your diet?" He was saying this without looking at her, because he was writing the accounts, and I was standing by the side. I suggested, "Can it be worms?" Then he asked some further questions, regarding grinding of the teeth, etc. So I can't see how I spoke wrathfully to Dr. Becharlal, or even supposing I did, what did she understand this from? By my intonation or by the frowns and furrows over my brow? Alas, she doesn't know that the world has many factors to cause those linear agitations ...

(Laughter)

...other than her troubled condition! I suppose she might also have taken umbrage at the suggestion of a suspicion regarding that indiscretion which she rigorously denied!

So that's that. Was it her liver or hypersensitivity by yoga or our wrathful talk - You may decide. Anyhow, henceforth we shall try to keep all furrows and depressions inside, and our expressions sprightly and frolicky as patients would desire.

And now a little personal dig from Him:

Well, I don't know why, but you have the reputation of being a fierce and firebrand kind of doctor who considers it a sin for patients to have an illness.

(Laughter)

You may be right, but tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar, and jolly like jam.

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So! (Laughter) He leaves it there. Anyhow, that's the advice He gave me. I don't know how far I followed it.

Now I will refer to some other medical notes in my letters. I wrote one day: "Do you know what my weight is ? Only 51 kg. 102 lbs. 7st. 4 lbs. I was staggered to find it so low, wondered how I was walking about!" His reply: "Quite a considerable weight. I used to, in the nineteenth century, walk about with less than 100 lbs - found no difficulty."

Well, in another case, a patient had fallen down and sustained an injury of the joint. To find out how serious the injury was, we had to make all sorts of movements of the injured limb to verify mobility, etc., by moving the joint this way, that way, up and down. These movements have special terms in medical science: abduction, aduction, etc. So I wrote to Him: "Abduction is quite all right." Then He noted in the margin, "Abduction of a joint, sir? What's this flagrant immorality? What happens to the joint when it is abducted? And what about the two colliding bones? Part of the abduction? Right, abduct him to X." (Laughter)

Then there was this other patient. This patient, again a lady, came complaining of something, so I sent a report to Sri Aurobindo: "Can't touch her without making her bring out tears. They are always thinking: how heardess, what brutes, what animals these doctors are." His reply: "Much safer than if they think: 'what dears these doctors are, darlings, angels.'" (Laughter)

Then another patient - this was a male patient - suddenly caught some disease after he had taken a sea bath. An elderly sort of a man, he had agonising pain in the chest and fever, and he had a previous history of T.B. So our diagnosis, or what we suspected, was that it could be the beginning of pneumonia, or the old T.B. might be flaring up, but this was a provisional diagnosis. Next day, we went to see him - lo and behold, a miracle! Every symptom had vanished and he was quite all right. So I asked Sri Aurobindo: "In one night, everything gone, Sir! Is it your Force?" Then He writes: "Subhan Allah!²⁹⁹ With your

299 Glory to Allah, in Urdu - the words can also be used to denote the speakers surprise at and appreciation of a marvel.

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diagnosis, one would have expected him to already be in paradise." (Laughter)

So these are some of the jokes that I could, in a short time, gather from my books. Now I have something else. I need not give the context, as it will be quite plain from His answer:

It is certainly naive to think that because a girl is simple, i.e., instinctive and impulsive and non-mental in her movements, she can be relied upon to be an asexual friend. Some women can be, but it is usually those who have a clear mental consciousness and strong will of self-control or else those who are incapable of a passion for more than one person in their life. You are lucky enough not to be that person.

(Laughter) Then let me tell you some more about my correspondence with Him. One day, I did not get my notebook back, so I asked Him what had happened. He wrote:

Sorry, but your luck is not brilliant. Had a whole night - i.e. after 3, no work - was ready to write [to you]. Light went off in my rooms only - tried candle power, no go. The Age of Candles is evidently over.

(Laughter)

So 'requests, beseeches, entreaties' were all in vain. Not my fault. Blame fate. However, I had a delightful time: three hours of undisturbed concentration on my real work - a luxury denied to me for ages.

(Laughter)

Don't tear your hair. Will be done another day, with luck.

(Laughter) Then, on another occasion, I don't remember the context, but I wrote: "Shall I stop this correspondence?" He replied:

Not necessary to stop. Unless you are afraid of word punctures in the skull. My indignations and abjurations are jocular and not meant to burn or bite. I don't mind your correspondence. It is a relief. But when people write two letters a day, in small hand, tunning to some pages without a gap anywhere ...

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(Laughter)

... and one gets twenty letters in the afternoon and forty at night - of course, not all are like that, but still! - it becomes a little too too ...

This is very private, but I think I can speak about it now. Sri Aurobindo once wrote:

I have brought down a verse from heaven [about all] the correspondence, like Bahaullah - which proves that if I am not an Avatar, at least I am a prophet.

(Laughter)

It is, I fear, full of 'chhandapatan and 'bhashapatan'³⁰⁰, but it expresses my feelings:

Shadhokgoner hriditole correspondence korbo bolejodijagto na pipasha Thaktam ami hanshi mukhe magno Supramental shukhe, Hay re hay kothay je she asha?^m

But for heaven's sake, don't show this undivine outbreak to anybody!

(Laughter)

They will think I am trying to rival Dara³⁰² in his higher poetic moods.

(Laughter)

But I was so elated, I couldn't keep it back. I rushed to Dilip da and showed him the poem. He simply enjoyed it: "ha, ha, ha, hi, hi, hi!" And then he said, "You write to Sri Aurobindo that it's perfect. There's no 'bhashapatan, no 'chhandapatan at all." I don't know whether He was pleased when I relayed that message though, because I'd broken His oath. Now I'm doing it again here, but perhaps He'll excuse me because of you!

300Defects in metre and diction, in Sanskrit.

301Bengali verse: If in the hearts of the sadhaks had not risen a craving for correspondence, I would, with a smiling face, stay merged in Supramental bliss. Alas, alas, where is such a hope?

302One of the first Muslim disciples of Sri Aurobindo, who was infamous for the frivolous rhyme words in his so-called poetry, like Almighty' and 'tea'!

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This next note is about literature. As I had a lot of work in the Dispensary, I complained to Him that I had not much time to write poems - only one and a half hours each day. He replied:

Luckyman! Ample time, sir, ample time, both to realise the Brahman and to write another Iliad or Nirodiad.

(Laughter)

Good Lord! What can one write in 1 or l^l/2 hours? If I could only get that [much] time for immortal productions every day! Why, in another three years, Savitri and Ilion³⁰³ and I don't know how much more could be all rewritten, finished, resplendently complete!"

(Laughter) This is something different in another context:

Queer idea all you fellows seem to have of the prestige of the Ashram. The prestige of an institution claiming to be a centre of spirituality lies in its spirituality, not in newspaper columns or famous people. Is it because of this mundane view of life and of the Ashram held by the sadhaks that this Ashram is not yet the centre of spirituality it set out to be ?

Lord, man, it is not for changing or moulding character that this Ashram exists. It is for moulding spirituality and transforming the consciousness. You may say it does not seem to be successful enough in that line, but that is its object.

This is in another vein:

The vital needs something to hook itself on to, but, for a sadhak, women are obviously the wrong things for it to hook itself on to - it must get hold of the right peg.

(Laughter) I had a dream about a meeting somewhere, and I couldn't understand its meaning, so I'd written to Him about it, and He replied:

The place where you were is as much a world of fact and reality as the material world, and its happenings have sometimes a great effect on this world. What an ignorant lot of disciples you are! Too much modernisation and Europeanisation by half!

303 An epic poem by Sri Aurobindo in quantitative hexameter, a very difficult metre to handle, but Sri Aurobindo, an acknowledged master of prosody, thought he had succeeded in this poem.

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(Laughter) Then, in another context, He wrote:

What one fears is usually what happens. Even if there were no other disposition, the fear calls it in. Who knows, if you had not feared, you might have had the waist of a race-runner and the hair of Samson.

(Laughter) I told you this story I think, when I spoke of Pavitra-da. Khitish was an old disciple. One day, Sri Aurobindo told us:

You don't know the story of Pavitra and Khitish and the 'bother'? Pavitra, who had just come here with a rather Frenchified English, said to Khitish: 'I am a brother to you all,' and Khitish cried out, 'Oh, no, no!' Pavitra insisted [again], but Khitish cried out, with pain and politeness in his voice, 'Oh, no! no! no!' It turned out that Khitish had heard, all through, 'I am a bother to you all!' So brothers are bothers, and bothers are brothers to us, insisting on inhabiting the Ashram - or at least visiting it, like the vaccination.

(Laughter) At one time during my tenure of office as a medical practitioner, the government suddenly took it into its head that all our sadhaks and sadhikas must be vaccinated, without any exception. Mother somehow saved one or two. So it was Amrita-da's turn and Sri Aurobindo wrote:

Amrita was to have offered himself as a victim on the altar of vaccination...

(Laughter)

... but he has been kindly bitten by the dog of the Privy Councillor, so although there is no hydrophilic danger, it is better for him to [be] cured before being bitten by the vaccinator.

(Laughter) Again, I don't remember the context for the following note. After giving Him a medical report, I wrote:

Please don't flare up.

He wrote back:

I didn't flare up. I was cold with horror.

(Laughter)

Doctors don't mean it when they do that kind of thing. It is not

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deliberate murder with them, but involuntary or, shall we say, experimental homicide.

(Laughter) Then, on another occasion, I wrote:

Mother told me to practise the intuitive method, I thought.

Sri Aurobindo replied:

She said that you have to stop jumping about from guess to guess and develop the diagnostic insight - seeing what comes from the intuition and then looking at the case to see if it is right. But to take the first thing that comes, and act on it, is guessing, pure and simple. If, after a time, you find that your perceptions turn out to have been automatically right each time, then you can be confident that you have got the thing.

In a similar vein:

Well, there are some who, after killing a few hundreds, learn to kill only a few. But that is not intuition, that is simply learning from experience ... Experience is necessary; book-knowledge is useful for the man who wants to be a perfect doctor; observation and discrimination are also excellent, provided they are correct observation and discrimination, but all these are only helps for the flair to move about, supported by a perfect mental confidence in the flair.

Then I asked Him to show some errors in our scientific diagnosis, and He replied:

No time for showing the glorious science its errors. Too busy trying to get the Supramental Light down to waste time on that. Afterwards, sir, afterwards.

(Laughter) You see, my style used to be a little too brief in the medical reports that I used to send to Him. In one report, I wrote: "Better; pain." So he wrote back:

Is it that he has a better pain? Of that the fact that he has a pain shows that he is better?

(Laughter)

Or that he is better, but still has pain?

(Laughter)

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An appropriate style lends itself to many joyfully various interpretations.

(Laughter) In another context, I wrote:

I find, Sir, that as a result of your Force, 'A' had some vomiting today.

His answer was:

Evidently, my Force is growing, just as my handwriting is improving.

(Laughter) I told you, whenever I saw somebody going away, I used to feel a little bit of a flutter here [pointing to his heart]; so I wrote:

By Jove, your Force is growing strong! See the number of departees!

His reply:

They are not departees yet. 'X' [has] gone on a spree - says he will, one day, come back. 'Y' sent as a missionary by the Mother; don't expect his mission will be very fruitful though.

(Laughter)

'Z' went for her property - property and herself held up by her family, as we told her it would be, etc. So no sufficient proof of Force here. If they had all gone saying 'Phirbo na, kokhono phirbo na'³⁰⁴ as 'X' threatened once, this proof would be conclusive.

(Laughter) He spoke about His handwriting improving. Once He wrote something and there was a word which I read as "message", so He wrote back:

There is nothing about message. Marriage, marriage - two marriages, in fact. Not that he is going to marry two wives, but he is going to see the misfortune of two others consummated and gloat over it.

(Laughter) I told you, perhaps, that I used to have two health problems which were almost chronic: 1) A cold and fever, and 2) A boil in the nose. Very often, I used to cry out to Him for help. So I wrote:

Nose boil boiling down; terrible headache, fever too. Feeling fed up,

304 "Will not return, will never return" - in Bengali.

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Sir!

He wrote back:

Cellular bolshevism probably.

I asked:

What's this cellular bolshevism?

He replied:

Bolshevism of the cells surging up against the Tsar - yourself.

(Laughter)

Also, the Bolsheviks carry on their propaganda by creating communistic cells' everywhere, in the army, industries, etc. You don't seem to be very up to date in contemporary history.

(Laughter) Then the boil burst, and I wrote:

Pus still coming out of the nose!

His reply:

What a bad-tempered 'pussy' cat of a nose!

Then the last one, I should wind up now. I wrote a poem (I had just started writing poetry those days). So I asked Him:

How do you find the poem, Sir ?

Sri Aurobindo replied:

So soft, so soft,

I almost coughed,

then went aloft

to supramental regions,

where rainbow-breasted pigeons

coo in their sacred legions.

(Laughter)

N.B.: This inspired doggerel is perfectly private. It is an effort in abstract or surrealist poetry, but as I had no models to imitate, I may have blundered.

(Laughter) He didn't send back my poem; He kept it back, so I sent a complaint:

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Where is my poem?

Then He wrote a poem representing my attitude:

O must I groan and moan and scarify my poor inspired bones To get my poem back as it were a bill from Smith or Jones! N.B. Abstract poetry, very abstract.

(Laughter) Once I asked Him how I was getting on: "Have I progressed or not?" Then He said:

You are opening, opening, opening

Into a wider wider scopening

That fills me with a sudden hopening

That I may carry you in spite of gropening

Your soul into the supramental ropening

N.B. Surrealist poetry.

(Laughter)