Talks with Sri Aurobindo

VIVEKANANDA'S VISITATIONS IN ALIPORE JAIL

The following note throws further light on the subject of Vivekananda's visitations to Sri Aurobindo in Alipore jail: It was written by the editor of Mother India, the journal in which these talks first appeared. See also the talk of 25 January 1939.

Nirodbaran's report of Sri Aurobindo's statement about his discovery of the Supermind after the pointer, given in Alipore by Vivekananda's "spirit", to the Higher Consciousness-planes of divine dynamism above the mind—provides some body of detail to the general indications found in the published writing of Sri Aurobindo on this subject. Thus we read in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother.

"It is a fact that I was hearing constantly .the voice Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence.... The voice spoke only on a special and limited but very important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on the subject." (p. 115)

"[Before coming to Pondicherry] Sri Aurobindo had already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga... is founded. The first he had gained while meditation with the Maharashtrian Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele at Baroda in January 1908; it was the realisation of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman.... His second realisation which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is,... happened in the Alipore Jail.... To the other two realisations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher plain of consciousness leading to the Supermind he was already on his way in his meditations in Alipore Jail." (pp. 107-108)

Further light on Vivekananda's coming to Sri Aurobindo is shed by the report found in the notes kept by Anilbaran of a talk with Sri Aurobindo in July 1926. Like Nirodbaran's report, it also brings us some significant particulars. It runs:

SRI AUROBINDO: Then there is the incident of the personality of Vivekananda visiting me in jail. He explained to me in detail this work of the Supramental—not exactly of the Supramental, but of the intuitivised mind, the mind as it is organised by the Supramental. He did not use the word "Supermind", I gave this name afterwards. That experience lasted for about two weeks.

Q: Was that a vision?

SRI AUROBINDO: No, it was not a vision. I would not have trusted a vision.