Sri Aurobindo : conversations
Talks with Sri Aurobindo is a thousand-page record of Sri Aurobindo's conversations with the disciples who attended to him during the last twelve years of his life. The talks are informal and open-ended, for the attendants were free to ask whatever questions came to mind. Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own life and work, of the Mother and the Ashram, of his path of Yoga and other paths, of India's social, cultural and spiritual life, of the country's struggle for political independence, of Hitler and the Second World War, of modern science, art and poetry, and of many other things that arose in the course of conversation. Serious discussion is balanced with light-hearted banter and humour. By recording these human touches, Nirodbaran has brought out the warm and intimate atmosphere of the talks.
THEME/S
NIRODBARAN: Nishikanto asks why at times he is seized with a repugnance for writing poetry. He burned a lot of his works at Santiniketan during such seizures. Here also attacks come occasionally and he questions himself, "What is the use of writing after all?" And this hampers his work, he says.
SRI AUROBINDO: These moods come to many people. They are a kind of Tamas (inertia) which should not be indulged in.
NIRODBARAN: Nishikanto says that it would be useful not to write if he could meditate or think of the Divine instead. This he can't do. "Then why not write?" he argues, but the feeling of repugnance comes all the same.
SRI AUROBINDO: It has to be rejected.
PURANI: Somebody from Gujarat has written that after you took your first few lessons in Sanskrit your teacher found that you were progressing with extreme rapidity and there was no need of a teacher any more.
SRI AUROBINDO: I don't remember having any teacher in Sanskrit. I think I learnt it by myself. Many languages, in fact, I learnt by myself—German and Italian, for instance. For Bengali, however, I had a teacher.
CHAMPAKLAL: Did you learn Gujarati in Pondicherry?
SRI AUROBINDO: No. I picked it up in Baroda, as I had to read the Maharajah's files.
NIRODBARAN: Nishikanto was asking if you would write an appreciation of his book.
SRI AUROBINDO: For publication?
NIRODBARAN: Yes. I replied that you would never do it. He argued that you had done it for Dilip. I asked: "Where?" And I added, "Sri Aurobindo has only given his opinion poem by poem as he has also done in your case. If Dilip published the opinions, it was his own doing."
SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. I cannot write a public appreciation for a member of my own Ashram. Tagore has given his appreciation. That should be enough.
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