Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

DECEMBER, 1939

14th December, 1939

Disciple : Did you meet Swami Dayanand of Bengal?

Sri Aurobindo : No. I met one of his disciples, a scientist, in the Calcutta National College. When I wrote – in those days – about the Avatar, he said the Avatar is already there. Afterwards he himself recanted his avatarhood when the shooting affair took place.

He has an idea of establishing world peace by bringing all nations together. He can say that he established the League of Nations and somebody else has disestablished it.

Disciple : He used to keep nothing for the morrow in his organization – he depended entirely on Divine Grace.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, and he also started, I believe, Sannyasi marriage – I can't say, if it was real marriage or spiritual. But he had something real in him.

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Disciple : Another Avatar is coming out from Poona. He is going to declare himself in 1941.

Sri Aurobindo : No objection. But there is great danger of imagination mixing up in such things.

Disciple : Can such people be suspects?

Sri Aurobindo : No, perhaps romantic. There can also be a mixture of mysticism combined with romance. When one deals with mysticism one has to be very careful, because there are many truths and also many imaginations.

Disciple : The Rosicrusians also believe in the reality of mystic experience of Christianity.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, X belonged to that group in England. But it created a lot of difficulty in his Sadhana because they posit two things in man, good and evil persons. The evil person has to rise up in order to be got rid of by the good. There are already sufficient evil things in the world without evoking the evil person. The Europeans have very imperfect understanding of these things. Even the Christian mystics have hardly any clear idea about them.

Disciple : That is so because, perhaps, they do not want to get rid of their individuality.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes. They mix up the self and the ego even when they have identification with the Higher Consciousness; they think that it is the ego which has become that.

Even Blake who had some idea of identity confuses ego with self.

Disciple : A says, Gita's idea of freedom demands freedom from nature – Prakriti. Therefore, so long as man follows Buddhi he is not free.

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Sri Aurobindo : Does the Gita say that?

Disciple : In the verse where it is said Satwa binds by happiness and knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo : That is quite another thing. The question is whether Buddhi can help you to detach yourself or not and whether, it can lead you to the perception of something higher than itself.

Disciple : I think the text of the Gita will support that view.

Sri Aurobindo : I also think so. Otherwise what is the meaning of Gita laying so much stress on Buddhi? Buddhi helps you to detach yourself and prepares you for the higher perception of the Purusha. And even Shankar, I believe does not say that reason is quite useless. He also admits that reason prepares the human spirit for what is beyond. Even for going beyond Sattwa, it is a stepping stone.

Disciple : It means, Buddhi is an instrument of Nature.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, it is an instrument of Nature that helps you to rise to the higher Nature. Gita, as I said, maintains that Buddhi can perceive that which is beyond it.

Disciple : A does not want to admit O's contention that Kant's idea of following reason and Gita's Buddhi yoga are the same.

Sri Aurobindo : Well, in a controversy one has to see the truth in the other man's point of view.

Disciple : A told me that Kant changed his mind later in life and admitted the necessity of faith with which he deals in his "Critique of practical reason."

Sri Aurobindo : I have not read European philosophy carefully.

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Disciple : Moreover, it does not interest us so much as there is no practical side to their philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo : That was X's great complaint that people here want always something practical from philosophy. They don't want to think for the sake of thinking.

Disciple : Kant seems to say that he who follows his reason is free, who follows the senses is bound. This is, in part, an Indian idea.

Sri Aurobindo : They have no idea of freedom – mukti – in the Indian sense; their idea is to arrive at the Truth.

Disciple : Yes, also some idea of applying the truth to life.

Disciple : Yes, some sort of idealism. It is not spiritualism. In his "critique of practical reason", Kant maintains that "pure reason is an abstract faculty hardly to be found unmixed in man and so practical reason is necessary.

Sri Aurobindo : What is then the 'pure reason' for?

Disciple : It is only an unattainable ideal. A says that the contention of Kant's opponent is that every body follows reason. So, everybody should be considered free. Everyone justifies his action – even the thief supports his stealing by some reasoning.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, it is very practical reasoning (laughter).

Disciple : And he is free, because he acts freely.

Sri Aurobindo : How?

Disciple : Because he decides freely, to steal.

Sri Aurobindo : It is a reason that is bound. There is another reason which is detached, and, according to Gita, the

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man will not be free when he reasons about stealing but if he can steal with disinterestedness then he is free.

Disciple : To the western mind killing with detachment is difficult to grasp.

Sri Aurobindo : All these European philosophers after the Greeks admit that Reason is the faculty by which you arrive at the Truth. The question about the sense perceptions and their reliability is easily met. We perceive certain things by our senses and the sensations, for all men are the same because our senses have a common organizations. Even then different persons perceive the same thing differently.

If Reason could work in the abstract and be an ideal faculty it might arrive at the perception of Truth beyond itself. As it is, Reason practically deals with different ideas and there reason differs in different individuals.

What I say is that if reason was sufficient for arriving at the Truth then all reason would arrive at the same condition. And we find out that different persons using reason arrive at contrary conclusions even from the same premises.

Reason can perceive that there is something beyond itself that is the Truth. But it tries to assert the Truth – it perceives as the whole truth. But reason is not right when it says so. The Truth is infinite and has infinite sides. Each conclusion of reason has some truth in it and we have to find something that is fundamental behind the particular formulation of the reason, and that is a matter of experience. That which is behind is the Absolute and the Absolute cannot be known by reason.

What can be known by the mind is Sat, Chit, Ananda. In other words, when the Absolute presents itself to the mind it formulates itself as Sachchidananda.

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One can know the Absolute through that only.

Disciple : The Upanishads say that the expression of that is not possible.

Sri Aurobindo : All Vedanta asserts that mind and speech cannot express it, because as soon as you put it in mental terms you limit it. Up to the Overmind some how you can manage to express yourself but when you come to Supermind it is impossible. And if you go still higher and approach the Absolute it is still more impossible.

Disciple : Is reason a personal faculty or impersonal?

Sri Aurobindo : If you go beyond you find wherever there is a personal, there is the impersonal and vice versa.

Disciple : How to find that kind of reconciliation?

Sri Aurobindo : Throw reason aside, then you find the reconciliation. You have to go on with experience till you find the reconciling experience in which all find their truth. Each is an approach to the Absolute. In a certain sense one could even say that reason would not be right if it did not differ. For instance, if the descriptions of all the countries were the same it would not perhaps do. And yet the earth is one and so is mankind and human nature. All is One.

Disciple : About the knowledge of identity, is the identity of Sushupti the same as knowledge by identity?

Sri Aurobindo : No, it is not the same as knowledge by identity. They all speak of knowledge of the self by identity. But there can be the knowledge of other things also by identity.

Disciple : What is meant by "direct knowledge?"

Sri Aurobindo : Direct knowledge is the knowledge of the

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truth of things directly; it is not necessarily knowledge of the Self or Spirit.

Disciple : It seems, the ancients had it and it is said that Raja yogis get it by what they call Sanyama.

Sri Aurobindo : I suppose they meant by Sanyama putting the pressure of consciousness upon the thing to be known.

But if one has the true consciousness it does not require concentrating. One has only to put it.

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