Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

15th December, 1939

Disciple X was laughing and Y was present. Sri Aurobindo turned his head inquiringly as to mean: What is the cause of the laughter.

Disciple : My presence acts as a catalytic agent, so I myself do not know the cause nor what is the joke.

Sri Aurobindo : That is how the subliminal self acts, without your knowledge, while your surface consciousness is ignorant about it.

Disciple : But to return to N's question. If one takes the standpoint of reason and wants to decide about the validity of spiritual experience he will find the experiences also differ. So how can experience be a criterion.

Sri Aurobindo : Experience is not a criterion; it is a means of arriving at the Truth. Experience is one thing and the expression is another. You are again putting reason as a judge of experience which is about expression. When men differ in laying stress or in their mental preference for this or that side of the expression, it does not mean that the experience itself is not valid. It is only

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when you try to put it in mental language that the differences arise. That is why the Vedantis say that mind and speech can't express the Truth. As soon as you put it in mental terms you limit it. If you find that experiences differ, then you have to go on having experiences till you come to the reconciling experience in which all find their place.

The Truth, as I said is infinite and there are infinite sides or points of view of it and each conclusion of reason expresses something of that infinite. All of them express some particular view, but they are all wrong when they say that their view is the whole and the entire Truth.

When you want to describe a spiritual experience you are obliged to use mental terms and you can somehow manage it, so long as you deal with levels up to the Overmind. But when you enter the Supermind then it is impossible. And if you proceed still higher towards the Absolute, well, it is still more impossible.

Disciple : It is so perhaps because reason is obliged to consider the infinite.

Sri Aurobindo : It takes up one standpoint and says the others are wrong. If it takes up the Impersonal, it says the personal cannot be true and vice versa. Reason would not be right if it did not differ. It would be as if the descriptions of all the countries were the same – then they won't be true.

Disciple : How?

Sri Aurobindo : If you describe Switzerland and U. S. A. in the same way, how can it be true? (After sometime) And yet the earth is One and mankind is One.

There is the Personal and also the Impersonal. When

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you transcend both of you arrive at the Absolute.

Disciple : So they are aspects of the Absolute.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, but it does not mean that they are less true or that Absolute excludes them. These preferences are mental. It is when you throw aside reason that you arrive at the Absolute.

Disciple : There is a verse in the Upanishad for knowledge by identity – leaving aside the mind. "One must become one with that like an arrow piercing the mark."

Sri Aurobindo : That won't fit exactly, because knowledge by identity is much more than that. Generally they mean by "knowledge by identity" the knowledge of self; while that is one part of the knowledge by identity.

Disciple : In Raja yoga, they speak of direct knowledge by Sanyama. I do not know if they mean by Sanyama concentration of consciousness on the object. That is by putting the pressure of consciousness on the thing to be known. It need not necessarily require concentrating on it when the true consciousness is there and it comes in contact with the object; it knows it directly.

Disciple : Raja Yoga speaks of Siddhis also e. g. control over matter or knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka, conquest of death etc.

Sri Aurobindo : Knowledge of Suryaloka and Chandraloka one may have, but conquest of death is another matter. The Raja Yoga does not acquire Siddhis by wanting them; they speak of Siddhis coming to them. And it is true for those who enter a certain state of consciousness.

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Disciple : The Upanishad speaks of the Yogi's conquering diseases and death.

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