Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

1941 OR 1942

Undated

Disciple : Does the feminine aspect (of the Divine) correspond to love, Devotion and surrender?

Sri Aurobindo : No, not necessarily.

Disciple : Does not Satchidananda love?

Sri Aurobindo : No, that is Krishna Prem's idea, perhaps.

Disciple : There is no reason to associate these with the feminine aspect because he associates these with it.

Disciple : Receptivity includes these things; it is only a way of representing the inner life of the woman.

Sri Aurobindo : Because the female is passive, dependent, (passively active) while the male is active, strong and self-reliant.

Disciple : The Vaishnavas look upon all souls as Gopis and so it seems that the feminine aspect in all corresponds to

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the element of love, devotion, etc. because they take this path.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, if you accept their idea. But that is not the whole idea.

Disciple : It cannot be said that the male aspect is without love, devotion and surrender.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, that is so. Only, it is of a different nature. Man, for instance, may be devoted to a woman but that is not the same thing as a woman's devotion to man. And the Vaishnava outlook is not the whole of the feminine aspect. There are other aspects of the woman. Love is not the only aspect of the woman.

Disciple : It will also have to include the Tantric idea of the Shakti.

Sri Aurobindo : Quite so.

Disciple : But Krishna Prem says that both these should be equal in all men, is it true?

Sri Aurobindo : What do you mean by true? If you mean 'true' in fact then you can say it is not true. He says "it should be" but "should be" is not "what is."

Disciple : Is the idea correct?

Sri Aurobindo : That is his idea that it should be so.

Disciple : Perhaps he means that in an ideal case these two should be equal.

Disciple : Krishna Prem also says that Grace and Tapasya are complimentary. No one of them is to be stressed. Girish Ghosh used to say to Ramkrishna that he left everything for Ramkrishna to do (for him); and it seems he was very much changed.

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Disciple : What I heard is that Girish found at the end that he had not been able to give his burden over to Ramkrishna.

Sri Aurobindo : You mean he made no effort himself?

Disciple : I suppose so, or he found at the end that somehow or other he had not left the whole thing to Ramkrishna.

Disciple : That means, if one has that living faith he can do without Tapasya. C also says that he does not believe in Tapasya. He believes in Grace.

Disciple : I do not mean that one should indulge in lower nature while depending or believing in Grace. But otherwise I don't believe in Tapasya.

Disciple : Yes, but if we want something then we have to make some effort or straining for that thing. Some effort is inevitable.

Sri Aurobindo : (to C) What do you mean by Tapasya?

Disciple : It has the sense of effort. For example, the mind is wandering about : then one has to make an effort to concentrate it. This is difficult.

Sri Aurobindo : That Tapas means something difficult is the popular idea. It means most often sitting on nails, standing on the head etc., But that is not correct. Tapas can be for something one likes or wants. You gather the energy for the object.

Disciple : When one sits in meditation the mind is wandering about and one has to gather it. This is difficult.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, but something in you wants to do it. You want it, is it not?

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Disciple : It is the gathering of force of consciousness for a particular purpose.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, you gather up all the energy and put it on a particular point.

Disciple : Even for gathering up some effort is necessary.

Sri Aurobindo : If you want to achieve the object some effort will be necessary for achieving it.

Disciple : Some men may find it easy to meditate for many hours.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, but that requires concentration of energy. All effort is not unpleasant. For instance, a man who plays cricket hasto concentrate on the ball, on the bat, wicket, fielding etc.

Disciple : That is easy comparatively because the man finds interest in it.

Disciple : Another man may find that effort difficult.

Sri Aurobindo : It is said in the Upanishads that God created the world by Tapas. It was not that he found it difficult to create the world, but he had to make the effort.

Disciple : There is an instance given of concentration as when a lady goes about doing all sorts of works with a pitcher on her head. All the time her attention is concentrated on the pitcher.

In the case of the Gopis it was not that they had not to make an effort to remember Krishna. They spontaneously fell in love with him and some thing in them was on fire. So when something in the being is touched like that, then concentration does not require effort or labour.

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One may concentrate for one thing and quite a different result may come – one may go to quite another line.

Sri Aurobindo : In my own case, Lele wanted me to get devotion and love and hear inner voices. Instead I got into the Silent Brahman Consciousness.

Disciple : And he prayed and tried to pull you into the other condition.

Disciple : I find in my case that with little effort on my part many things have dropped.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, that is because you, or something in you, wanted to drop these things.

Disciple : But there was no corresponding effort for the results.

Sri Aurobindo : It may be so. It is not a question of correspondence : with little effort something in you wants to drop it sincerely and then the Grace finds it easy to act. But all the same the effort is a contributory element. There are cases in which one goes on making effort and yet no result comes and even the condition becomes worse. While suddenly you find when you have given up the effort, that the thing is done. It may be that the effort was keeping up the resistance and when you give up the effort the resistance says "This fellow has given up effort, so it is no use persisting."

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