Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

III

NON - VIOLENCE

28-3-1923

Disciple : There are some followers of the school of non- violence in Indian politics who want to prove that the Gita preaches non-violence. They depend on the Mahatma's interpretation of the Gita.

Sri Aurobindo : Non-violence is not in the Gita. If, as some people, including- the Mahatma, say, the Gita signifies a spiritual war or battle only, then what of Apariharyerthe and Hanyamane same – "inevitable circumstance" and "body being killed" ? What of the Shoka – the sorrow – , for those who are dead ? To me such a reading seems the result of a defect in their mental attitude. They have not got the intellectual rectitude which can wait and calmly grasp the truth. Besides, there is no question of crying over dead sins if the Kaurawas only symbolise the "sins" – and these people may be sure ! that the sins killed by Arjuna have not been really dead.

18- 4-1923

Disciple : Sometimes we had discussions about Ahimsa – non-violence and I pointed out the sixth chapter of the Essays on the Gita to my friends of the Sabarmati Ashram

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at Ahmedabad and I found they could not reply to it. 

Sri Aurobindo : I am not sure, but the Mahatma's son – Devadas – who came here sent it to the Mahatma who said he was unable to reply to it intellectually. Perhaps he could not make up his mind to accept the principle that an evil cannot be destroyed unless much that lives by the evil is destroyed.

They could not grasp the argument that the spiritual power of Vashishta was responsible for the destruction. The original story is that the Cow, – Kamdhenu, – did not want to go to Vishwamitra. Vishwamitra wanted to take it by force. But Vashishta refused to resist. So the Cow asked him to allow her to resist Vishwamitra. Vashishta said : "You can do whatever you like." She called upon the psychical powers to resist and the Asuras came on account of the spiritual power of Vashishta. Because one saves himself from the act of killing, his responsibility is not less on that account. The question is whether one resists or not. If one resists it may be by physical force or soul force – that is quite another matter. 

Disciple. : Did you read Malavia's speech about the Multan riots and also what C. Rajgopalachari has said? 

Sri Aurobindo : I am sorry they are making a fetish of this Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the Hindus may have to fight the Muslims and they must prepare for it. Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of the Hindus. Every time the mildness of the Hindu has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organise themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem. Otherwise, we are lulled into a false sense of satisfaction that we have solved a difficult problem, when in fact we have only shelved it.

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Disciple : We had a funny argument about language the other day in course of which Upen Banerji said that Sanskrit was derived from Bengali ! (Laughter)

Disciple . He could not have seriously meant it. He must have meant it as a joke ! Probably he wanted to impress all – particularly the non-Bengalis. But the strange thing is that some one has recently made an effort to prove that Sanskrit is derived from Tamil ! (Laughter) 

Disciple : Everyone can say something absurd because no one is there to put in a word for Sanskrit.

Sri Aurobindo : (turning to a Disciple) Why don't you try to prove that Sanskrit was derived from Gujarati ? 

Disciple : Yes, my friend always puts forth the fact that Krishna lived in Gujarat. 

Sri Aurobindo : Then it proves that Gujarati was spoken by Krishna ! (Laughter)

23-7-1923 

Disciple : The Mahatma believes that non-violence purifies the man who practises it. 

Sri Aurobindo . I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man's nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject them- selves to voluntarily suffering, what happens is that their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer. That suffering is vital and it gives strength. When the man who has thus suffered gets power he becomes a worse oppressor. That is what I have written in the Essays on the Gita that when a nation gets freedom by the suffering of its leaders and other

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men, it oppresses other nations in its turn. It is almost always the case with those who suppress their vital being. It allows the pressure on itself, gets strong and then finds vent in some other direction. The same thing happened to the Puritans in England. Cromwell and his men came to power and became the worst oppressors. In Christianity the principle of non violence is there but it is meant to be practised for religious and spiritual development. It may be partial but it can certainly develop certain types of spiritual temperaments. What one can do is to transform the spirit of violence. But in this practice of Satyagraha it is not transformed. When you insist on such a one-sided principle what happens is that cant, hypocrisy and dishonesty get in and there is no purification at all. Purification can come by the transformation of the impulse of violence, as I said. In that respect the old system in India was much better. The man who had the fighting spirit became the Kshatriya and then the fighting spirit was raised above the ordinary vital influence. The attempt was to spiritualise it. It succeeded in doing what passive resistance cannot and will not achieve. The Kshatriya was the man who would not allow any oppression, who would fight it out and he was the man who would not oppress anybody. That was the ideal. 

Disciple : Those who take to-non-violence-as a religion can not intellectually conceive the possibility of transforming the spirit of violence.

Sri Aurobindo : But you can't get rid of the spirit of fighting like that.

Disciple : There is also the question of Hindu-Muslim unity which the non-violence school is trying to solve on the basis of their theory.

Sri Aurobindo : You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live

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 peacefully with a religion whose principle is "I will not tolerate you" ? How are you going to have unity with these people? Certainly, Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that the Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall not convert any Madan.

Disciple : There was only recently the boycott of a drama in Andhra because some Hindu in the show was represented as marrying a Muslim lady !

Sri Aurobindo : You can't build unity on such a basis. Perhaps, the only way of making the Madans harmless is to make them lose their fanatic faith in their religion.

Disciple : Can that be done by education ?

Sri Aurobindo : Not by the kind of education they receive at Aligarh but by a more liberalising education. The Turks, for instance, are not fanatical because they have more liberal ideas. Even when they fight it is not so much for Islam as or right and liberty.

It was the Madans and the Christians who began the religious wars – i.e., fighting for religion. First the Jews began persecuting and then the Christians when they began to disagree among themselves began to persecute also.

Disciple : The Madan religion was born under such circumstances that the followers never forgot the origin. 

Sri Aurobindo : That was the result of the passive-resistance which they practised. They went on suffering till they got strong enough and, when they got power, they began to persecute others with a vengeance.

 The Roman government persecuted the Christians and the Christians suffered. When the Christians came to power they started inquisitions and they always said that the institutions like the inquisition were very good for the souls of those people. (Laughter)

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Disciple : The Satyagrahi only cares about remaining non-violent himself.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, but when you become non-violent why do you allow another to exercise violence on you ?

Disciple : But his position is that he does not care to remove violence from others; he wants to observe non-violence himself.

Sri Aurobindo : That is one of the violences of the Satyagrahi that he does not care for the pressure which he brings on others. It is not non-violence – it is not 'Ahimsa' True Ahimsa is a state of mind and does not consist in physical or external action or in avoidance of action. Any pressure in the inner being is a breach of Ahimsa.

For instance, when Gandhi fasted in the Ahmedabad mill-hands' strike to settle the question between mill-owners and workers, there was a kind of violence towards others. The mill-owners did not want to be responsible for his death and so they gave way, without, of course, being convinced of his position. It is a kind of violence on them. But as soon as they found the situation normal they reverted to their old ideas. The same thing happened in South Africa. He got some concessions there by passive resistance and when he came back to India it became worse than before.

Disciple : He always calls it soul-force.

Sri Aurobindo : Really speaking it is a kind of moral force or, if you like, will-force that is ethical in its nature. You can say that in a certain sense all force is ultimately soul-force. But real soul-force is something different, 

Disciple : What about Prahlad ? He succeeded because of soul-force.

Sri Aurobindo : I do not know; for that you must ask Prahlad.

Disciple : But the Mahatma says that Prahlad used soul-force and he derives his Satyagraha from him.

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Sri Aurobindo : First of all, Prahlad was young. Then, his father was the king. There was the natural love for the father – very strong at that time in the society. But you must also remember that the whole thing resulted in tearing out the entrails of his father. ( Laughter) 

Disciple : Sri Krishna and Arjuna can serve as examples of men who resorted to what the Mahatma calls "violence".

Disciple : But Mahatma says "I am not Krishna".

Sri Aurobindo : Any man can say, "I am not Prahlad".

23-7-1923

Disciple : I had a long discussion with X on vegetarian and non-vegetarian diet. His argument was that those who take non-vegetarian diet are people devoid of pity. Life is sacred and no one, who has not realized the Spirit in all forms of life, has the right to take meat.

My reply was : Many Madans and Christians who take non-vegetarian diet are not devoid of pity. Christ himself was not a vegetarian ; – diet has little to do with pity or cruelty. Secondly, the Jains who are proverbially vegetarians are not less cruel. Your argument that vegetables being lower forms of life can be eaten but animals being higher forms should not be eaten is based upon an arbitrary assumption about the higher and the lower forms of life. It is a creation of human mind. All life is life.

Disciple : X would have taken fish if it had been a vegetable.

Sri Aurobindo : It is absurd to make food such an important thing in the spiritual life. It is a secondary matter whether one takes vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet, so far as the spiritual life is concerned. The real thing is equality

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or Samata. If that is there then it is immaterial whether one takes fish or vegetarian diet. Philosophically, it is meaningless to say this has more life and that has less.

Disciple : But the animals have more evolved life than the trees.

Sri Aurobindo : Not life but mind. Life is more manifest in the plant, in some respects, than even in man. Only, the mind is not evolved.

Disciple : The question is of vital repulsion. One can say he feels repulsion in killing an animal or he feels the animal nearer to him. But that would not prove that the plant when killed suffers less. It is only because man is not able to see the suffering of the plant that he feels the repulsion less, perhaps. All these things are due to Samskaras – previous, impressions. The plain fact is that one cannot live unless he takes some kind of life. All these arguments are only intellect trying to justify old Samskaras.

Disciple : You spoke of equality, Samata. Why should one establish equality in the Prana, the vital, before one does it in the mind ?

Sri Aurobindo : Why should he not, if he can ? It is not that one has to wait and establish equality on all planes at once, at a time.

Disciple : Is it necessary to wait till the yoga is perfect in order to take fish ?

Sri Aurobindo : I do not understand why one should. Very few people realise the true meaning of Samata, equality. By Samata, equality, is meant a certain attitude of the whole being towards the world and its happenings. This world is full of so many things which are horrible and terrible. Samata means that one should be able to look at them from a certain poise without being perplexed or moved. It does not mean that one will

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go on killing others indiscriminately or out of a personal motive. That would be untruth. But it means that one must be able to look at things without being moved. What X calls "pity" is something quite different from "compassion" and both are different from Samata – equality. Samata is an attitude of the whole being. Pity and sentimentalism are results of nervous repulsion, some movement in the vital being. I myself, when I was young, could not read anything related to cruelty without feeling that repulsion and a feeling of hatred for those who practised it. I could not kill an insect, say, a bug or a mosquito. This was not because I believed in Ahimsa but because I had nervous repulsion. Later, even when I had no mental objection, I could not harm anything because the body rejected the act. When I was in jail I was subjected to all sorts of mental tortures for the first fifteen days. I had to look upon scenes of all kinds of suffering and then the nervous repulsion passed away. 

Compassion is something different. It comes from Above. It is a state of sympathy for the suffering of man and the suffering that is on earth and there is an idea of helping it as far as one can, whenever one can in his own way. It is not like pity. It is like the Gods who look upon human suffering from above, unmoved. That compassion can also destroy and it destroys with compassion, – Daya, – as Durga does the Rakshasas, the hostile beings. There can be no pity there. Many times the Rakshasa may come and ask you to save him, he may even ask you to transform him – as some beings asked the Mother in her vision – by your spiritual power. If you try that, all the power goes to the Rakshasa and you may become powerless. When these vital beings incarnate in men then the compassion would not prevent you from killing them.

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That the vegetable kingdom has got life is not something new to know and it is not necessary to acquire Samata to take fish. I used to take it when I was a child and when I had no Samata. What is required is : one should have no repulsion. As a matter of fact, I cannot take fish nowadays, but that means nothing. I give it to the cats all right.

When there is Samata then there comes Samarasatva – equal enjoyment – from everything – one gets the rasa, essential delight, from every kind of food. Even the food that we call badly cooked has a rasa of its own. But one can agree to a little bit of diplomacy. It is no use casting fish in the face of a Jain or forcing Smoke in the face of an orthodox Tamil Brahmin.

10-5-1924

Disciple : Did you read in the papers that Mahatmaji is thinking of retiring to his Ashram and there playing with children?

Sri Aurobindo : Yes. It may be a correct intuition. But I cannot understand how his argument about Khaddar bringing Swaraj holds. He says that if he can universalize Khaddar he can also make all who use it resort to civil disobedience. I do not quite see how it follows ; for, putting on Khaddar is harmless – except for the inconvenience in summer perhaps – but civil disobedience is not harmless. One who puts on Khaddar may not join civil disobedience.

Disciple : He has advised moderation in Vakyam Satyagraha perhaps because he feels humble.

Sri Aurobindo : But that kind of moderate tinge is not good. Humility in a leader like that is not always a great

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virtue. At any rate humility of this sort. It is one thing to know that you are the instrument of Fate or of some power, or of God. But you must know that you are there to lead and that people must do what you say.

I am afraid, the difficulty with him is that his vital being drags him into all sorts of activities and he begins to say : "You must do this, you must not do that," Then his mind – the mental being – comes in and says : "You may do what you like. I am nothing, you are free to do what you like." This kind of double movement renders the activity ineffective. If he had only worked with his vital drive, he could have achieved many things.

Disciple : If he restricts his work to the Ashram, even then "support of friends" would be necessary, as he says. It was with great difficulty, I learn, that the Wardha Ashram was able to make two ends meet. And the inmates could hardly get time for anything else.

Disciple : Then it is parisrama, and not asram !

Sri Aurobindo : Why not sasrama ! – (with the labour)

Disciple : Roman Rolland has written a book on Mahatmaji.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, I have heard about it and seen it. These European writers and thinkers I have found airy, wandering in their thought. I found another error in his book which is common to all European thinkers : it is about the Indian Spirit.

He traces the influence from Buddha and Mahavira to Gandhi; and for the Europeans that is the whole of the Indian Spirit !

Disciple : I believe Tagore is partly responsible -for that, as it is he who many times has insisted on the gospel of Buddha – whatever that may be, for various people have different ideas about it – as the only way for the salvation of humanity.

Sri Aurobindo : I think partly at least it is Tagore who has

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made the idea current on the continent that Buddha is the beginning and the end of the Indian Spirit. Formerly, Rolland never thought about Asia; he was busy with his European unity and European culture etc.

Remain Rolland does not appear to be such a great intellect as he is reputed to be. He is a very good writer, no doubt. But the ideas are not much above ordinary, average ideas.

17-5-1924

Disciple : Did you see the papers to-day ? Mahatmaji proposes to move a resolution against the boycott of empire goods.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, the line of argument is strangely inconsistent : in one breath it is "impossible and unethical"! and then "useless and against non-cooperation". The argument is : you can't do without British books and medicines and so you can't do without anything British ! He forgets that British trade does not depend on books and medicines only. Then, again, he says that European firms and the Government will go on buying British goods and thus the Boycott is futile. So, if some men go on ordering foreign goods, you must also order foreign goods ! Very strange !

20-5-1924

Elections to the French Chamber of Deputies are going on. Mons. Valiant of Karikal saw Sri Aurobindo in connection with the elections. Certain instructions and advice were given to him.

The Tarakeshwar temple Satyagraha came for discussion. Sri Aurobindo seemed anxious to know the details.

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The report was that Abhayanand was Mahant's man and hirelings had been engaged to beat the volunteers of Swami Satchidananda and Vishwananda. Satchidananda was saved from being killed by the Gurkha, the keeper of a Marwari-Dharamsala.

Sri Aurobindo was not only interested but anxious that the fight must go through to success.

Mahatmaji's silent day and the conclusion of his talk with the Swarajists came up. He wants the Swarajists to take up the constructive programme in the councils – e.g., Khaddar and prohibition; in case of failure in getting them through, to resort to civil disobedience.

Sri Aurobindo : But in that case again there may be another  Chauri Chora !

Disciple : He also spoke at Bombay on the Anniversary of  Gautama Buddha and said Buddhism was not given sufficient trial.

Sri Aurobindo : Christianity and Buddhism, I am afraid,  will ever remain without being given a trial. They make such a demand on human nature that it cannot be fulfilled so long as man is what he is.

Disciple : I get puzzled by Mahatmaji's logic, or shall I say?  by his want of logic. At one time he says : " You must not fast against your enemy because by that you do violence to him. But you can fast when you have a grievance, or a cause, against your father."

Then in the Vakyam Satyagraha when the people began to fast he says : " Why do you fast ? The king is your father, why do you injure his feelings ?"

Sri Aurobindo : I have no quarrel with what he says, so long as he says : "Do this" or "Do that". That is quite all right ; but why does he give reasons ?

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2-6-1924

There was Mahatmaji's pronouncement about Hindu- Muslim Unity, a long one.

Disciple : Did you see Mahatmaji's statement about Hindu- Muslim Unity ?

Sri Aurobindo : I did not go through the whole thing – it was very long – but there is compromise about non- violence which he says one can give ,up in the case of robbers, looters and foreign invasion. He is also wonder- struck that his interpretation of the Gita is seriously questioned by a Shastri. I am rather wonder-struck at his claim to an  infallible interpretation of the Gita.

Disciple : He has criticised the Arya Samaj also.

Sri Aurobindo : Yes, he has criticised Dayananda Saraswati who has, according to him, abolished image-worship and set up the idolatory of the Vedas. He forgets, I am afraid, that he is doing the same in economics by his Charkha and Khaddar, and, if one may add, by his idolatry of non-violence in religion and philosophy.

In that way every one has established idol-worship. He has criticised the Arya Samaj but why not criticise Madanism ? His statement is adulatory of the Koran and of Christianity which is idolatry of the Bible, Christ and the Gross. Man is hardly able to do without externals and only a few will go to the kernel. 

About conversion also you "do not merely change compartments", as he says, but you change the environment. All are not going to practise the central core of spirituality. Very few can do that, but from the externals some can come to the internal.

Disciple : There is also the proposal to meet the Madans with bare breast and with smile on the face !

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