Talks with Sri Aurobindo

12 DECEMBER 1940

The talk started with the release of Mrs. Naidu from prison.

SRI AUROBINDO: As I remarked, the Government has not given her the chance of a rest cure in jail. The Government refuses to take up responsibility for her.

DR. MANILAL: Instead of getting a rest cure she would rather feel restless in jail after some time. She is a brilliant speaker. She can do more valuable work outside the Congress.

SRI AUROBINDO: Much more! She has done nothing in the Congress.

DR. MANILAL: I heard her in Baroda. She has a fine voice too.

The talk proceeded to B.L. Gupta, also a good speaker, a former Dewan of the late Gaekwar. Then the Gaekwar himself came into the talk, how he had been humiliated at the Durbar due to the foolishness of B.L. Gupta. It was reported that after this humiliation the Gaekwar had begun to go downhill.

DR. MANILAL: Before this he was really great. A speech he made at the Industrial Exhibition was marvellous.

SRI AUROBINDO: Which Industrial Exhibition?

DR. MANILAL: At Ahmedabad.

SRI AUROBINDO: That was the speech I prepared for him. (Roar of laughter)

MULSHANKAR: I heard your lecture at Bombay after the Surat Congress. You had some paper in your hand.

SRI AUROBINDO: That was the speech I made from an entire silence of the mind. It was my first experience of the kind. You didn't hear me at Baroda?

DR. MANILAL: Yes, Sir, once only. I was in the Matric class then. I remember only one sentence of that speech. Dr. Mullick had come to Baroda. The meeting was held in his honour. Professor Saha proposed you to the chair saying, "Dr. Mullick is a Bengali and Mr. Ghose is a Bengali. So I propose him to the chair." You replied, "I consent to take the chair not because Dr. Mullick is a Bengali and I am a Bengali, but because I am an Indian and Dr. Mullick is an Indian."

When did you conceive of doing the Yoga, Sir?

SRI AUROBINDO: Conceive of it? You mean when I started it?

DR. MANILAL: All right, Sir. (Laughter)

SRI AUROBINDO: It was Deshpande who wanted me to do Yoga. But when I came to know it would mean withdrawal from the world I didn't want to do it as I wanted to do political work. Then I took to Pranayama. But it didn't carry me far and I came to a point beyond which I couldn't proceed further. I gave it up and fell dangerously ill! I was on the point of death. I asked Barin if he knew anyone who could help me in Yoga. This was in Surat where I had attended the Surat Congress. Barin knew of Lele who was in Gwalior. He wired to him and asked him to meet us at Baroda. Pranayama had given me good health, a lot of poetry and various experiences. Now Lele took me to a quiet room upstairs in Khaserao Jadhav's house. I told him that I wanted Yoga to help me in my political work, for inspiration and power and capacity. I didn't want to give up my activities for the sake of Yoga. He said, "You are a poet; it will be very easy for you." Then he said, "Sit still and try to make your mind quiet and empty of thoughts. You will see that all your thoughts come from outside. As you perceive them, simply throw them away before they can enter into you." I tried and did it. In three days my mind became entirely quiet and vacant, without any thoughts at all, and it was in that condition of Nirvanic silence that I went first to Poona and then to Bombay. Everything seemed to me unreal; I was absorbed in the One Reality.

In that state of mind I told Lele, "I have been asked to deliver a lecture. How am I going to speak? Not a single thought is coming to me. I cannot make a speech." He held a day of prayer with other disciples for me and at the end he said, "Make a pranam to Narayana in the audience before you start, with your mind completely vacant. Then you will see that everything will come down and some power speak through you." I did as he had said and found that the whole speech came down from above; not a single thought or expression was mine. It got hold of my organ of speech and expressed itself through it from beginning to end. In my tour from Bombay to Calcutta all the speeches I made were from that condition of silence.

While I was parting from Lele I asked him what I should do, how I should be guided. He said, "Surrender yourself to the Divine and be guided by Him. If you can do that, you needn't do anything else." I replied, "I can easily do that." And when I did that, everything came from above and I was guided by that. After some time when Lele came to Calcutta, he asked me how I was getting on, whether I was meditating or not according to his advice. He had asked me to meditate twice a day and to be guided by the voice within. When I told him that I had given up medication—in fact the meditation was going on all the time—he said, "Ah, the devil has got hold of you."

(Laughter) He did not wait for me to explain anything to him. Since then we began to follow our own ways. Evidently he had something in him and it was he who opened up and gave me the silence experience after my failure to advance further. Only, he wanted me to follow his path. He didn't want me to have the Nirvanic experience.

EVENING

DR. MANILAL: What is the reason for your failure in the riding test in the I.C.S., Sir?

SRI AUROBINDO: I appeared late for the test.

DR. MANILAL: Why? Was it under any inspiration?

SRI AUROBINDO: No, (laughing) it was intentional. I wasn't dealing in inspiration then. I didn't want to be in the British Government Service. I had a strong dislike for the British.

DR. MANILAL: But then why did you appear for the I.C.S. exam at all?

SRI AUROBINDO: I had no intention to do it. It was my father who wanted me to be a civilian. I had to play this trick; otherwise my father and everybody would have howled. My poet brother was horrified to see me, along with my elder brother, smoking and playing cards at the Liberal Club after avoiding the riding test.

DR. MANILAL: Was your father alive at that time?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he was arranging with Sir Henry Cotton a post for me in Bihar under Sir Henry. But he died of shock soon after.

DR. MANILAL: What shock?

SRI AUROBINDO: He asked me to return to India by a particular ship. I don't know why on that ship. The ship was wrecked off the Portuguese coast. He thought I was on it. But I hadn't sailed on it at all.

DR. MANILAL: Why?

SRI AUROBINDO: I didn't intend to.

NIRODBARAN: Did your father know of your failure in the test?

SRI AUROBINDO: No.

DR. MANILAL: Then he would have been shocked in any case.

SRI AUROBINDO: When they came to know, they all asked me to try again. But I didn't want to and I knew too that the British Government wouldn't give me another chance.

DR. MANILAL: Why?

SRI AUROBINDO: My record was too bad.

DR. MANILAL: How?

SRI AUROBINDO: They thought that I was a revolutionary, giving seditious speeches in the Indian Majlis. There was a man named Mehedi Hussain, an Indian deputy magistrate—I don't know why he went to England—who used to come to the Majlis and was supposed to be a spy. He may have reported me to the Government.

DR. MANILAL: How did you get the job in Baroda?

SRI AUROBINDO: I think I applied for it when the Gaekwar was in England. Sir Henry Cotton's brother asked me to do it and through his influence I came in contact with the Gaekwar.

DR. MANILAL: I thought that your political career began with the Bengal Partition.

SRI AUROBINDO: Oh no! It began long before in Baroda. It was our men who got hold of the movement in Bengal and gave it a revolutionary character. Otherwise it would have been a moderate movement. We were training people in our secret society started by Tilak.

DR. MANILAL: Servants of India Society? (Laughter)

SRI AUROBINDO: No, no, a secret society which I and some others joined along with some Rajput Thakurs. While in Bengal the revolutionary party was started by Okakura and joined by Nandy, Suren Tagore and others. The Swadeshi movement started before the Bengal Partition. I was coming and going between Bengal and Gujarat. Gujarat was very moderate at that time. With Pherozeshah Mehta it was just beginning to be revolutionary.

DR. MANILAL: What about Dadabhai Nowroji? He was an extremist.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, Moderate, ardent Moderate. Ardent of the non-ardent type. Moderate of the middle kind, like Gokhale.