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
PURANI: America has agreed to supply three thousand planes per month.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. In that case England will very soon match Germany in air-strength.
NIRODBARAN: Amery says the Indian situation is not serious.
SRI AUROBINDO: Because there is no chance of civil disobedience, perhaps. And Gandhi is now preparing the world for non-violence.
PURANI: But nobody accepts it.
NIRODBARAN: De Gaulle has advised passive resistance to the French people. C. R. says England may be thinking that if we were independent we wouldn't help her.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they have a fear that we may do just as Ireland is doing.
PURANI: They say there is a difference of opinion among Hitler's generals regarding invasion.
SRI AUROBINDO: May be only a story. He may be trying to settle the Balkan problem first. But if it is true, it is remarkable that Keitel is against invasion. He has always been for attacking England. He is a general in name only; he knows nothing about war, he is only Hitler's mouthpiece.
EVENING
PURANI: Nolini was saying that he found this book of modern poetry very difficult to understand. How many people will read it?
SRI AUROBINDO(smiling): Not worth reading. I have read Eliot's Hippopotamus; it is amusing. Nowadays one reads poetry not to enjoy oneself or for pleasure, but as a duty or a task. All that these Moderns are doing is to take the most commonplace ideas and try to express them in poetry. Whatever is beautiful is to them romantic and whatever is grand is rhetoric. You should take only commonplace, mean things, express them in mean, dirty language, with very little or no rhythm—that is the recipe for modem poetry.
PURANI: The same thing is happening in art.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is an age of decadence like Roman decadence, only in a different way. That took a thousand years to start. Now also it may take a thousand years. Hitler's threatened millennium of the New Order will be like this, probably.
Home
Disciples
Nirodbaran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.