Purani A. B.
Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
18-6-1926
Disciple: There are two ways of foretelling the future: the astrological calculations which are based upon the general lines of character and happenings indicated by the stars, another is that of clairvoyance in which the image of the future event, correct even to the minutest detail, is brought before the vision. How does this happen?
Sri Aurobindo: These clairvoyants are awake on the physical plane and because they are passive these images which are already there in the subtle impose themselves upon their vision; of course, you .must have this vision in order to know the future.
Disciple: Can the events, thus foreseen, be averted? Generally, there is something always missing in the vision which does not allow men to escape it, e.g., the, place or the time of the event is not indicated etc. But there are some instances in which the foreknowledge of the event has allowed the man to change the result foreseen.
Sri Aurobindo: There is a vital image which is a possibility and it can be prevented; secondly there is the image of the event on the subtle physical plane which, if it is fixed, can't be avoided.
Disciple: Are there events absolutely fixed which cannot be changed?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, there are. If you want to change then you have to go to a plane which is higher than the one where these things are decided and that is not always easy.
There are three kinds of movements which one has to distinguish in seeing the future. First of all there is the result of the actualities: it is a very narrow field and things there are fixed and it is generally the very near future. Secondly, there is a play of potentialities in which certain forces are struggling and you can see the force which is most likely to succeed. But generally it is that force which represents the higher decision on that plane. But you can't be always sure that it will succeed unless you know definitely that it represents the highest decision – the Truth. Thirdly there is a higher plane where important decisions are made. For that movement you have to go very high. It is difficult to distinguish between these three and most of the clairvoyants make a confusion.
Disciple: There are cases where most minute details have been known by clairvoyance.
Sri Aurobindo: One has to be passive and often the decision to be taken, or the happening that is going to take place, forces itself upon one.
Disciple: Is seeing the past the same faculty as seeing the future?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. But it is much easier to see the past. The impression and memory are left on so many things.
Disciple: Is it the same thing that A.E. speaks of as the "earth-memory" in one of his books.
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by the memory of the earth?
Disciple: All things leave their impression in the world and they are all stored up in earth-consciousness. When A.E. was travelling in Egypt he saw much of the history of Egypt in the subtle.
Sri Aurobindo: That is something quite different from earth-memory.
Disciple: There is a being or a Spirit behind every place, I believe; for instance, is there no conscious being behind Pondicherry?
Sri Aurobindo: Do you mean nagar devatā, the presiding deity of the town?
Disciple: Something like that.
Sri Aurobindo: It is true that there are beings behind collective units, like the nations. There is what you may call the national devata or National Shakti.
Disciple: Is there such a being behind India?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Disciple: Is it possible to know it, to come in contact with it?
Disciple: Is it possible to know the future of the nation by coming in contact with this being?
Sri Aurobindo: I think so. But I don't think the future is known that way.
Disciple: Does it shape the future of the nation?
Sri Aurobindo: It has a part to play in it. It controls some of the forces that act.
Disciple: Is this being something more than the aggregate consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo: It has the aggregate consciousness and it has an individualised consciousness of its own. It is not the determining deity or the adhisthāta devatā in the sense that it entirely shapes the future, but it, in a way, represents the racial – the national-soul.
Disciple: Is there any such thing as the evil genius of a nation?
Sri Aurobindo: This idea is akin to the Christian conception of good and evil always counterbalancing each other and it corresponds to the old idea of good and evil Spirits. But there is no such rule that wherever there is a good Spirit there must be the evil Spirit.
28-6-1926
The subject was miracles or acts that appear extra-ordinary in the life of great spiritual persons. Raman Maharshi, the great Yogi of Tiruvannamalai, was once beaten severely by robbers. They thought that he had a lot of money hidden somewhere but as they failed to locate it they caught him and beat him. At last they found only utensils, which they started taking. Raman Maharshi told them, "But why don't you take some food which is ready, and then take the utensils?" They did not listen to him and beat him. He fell into Samadhi and his limbs were swollen with the beating. The police caught the burglars and brought them before Raman Maharshi for identification, but he refused to identify them.
Disciple: There is a story about Tailanga Swami, that once he was beaten by robbers and the marks of the beating were found on the body of the son of a robber.
Disciple: No. That version is not correct. The story is that a prince was coming to take a bath in the Ganges with his two queens and so a portion of the road leading to the bathing-ghat was screened off to conduct the Ranis to the river in purdāh – under veil. When they were bathing, Tailanga Swami, who used to remain in the Ganges submerged for days together, suddenly appeared on the surface of water and the King whipped him mercilessly. When he went he found that marks of the beating on his son's body.
Disciple: Ramakrishna also had a similar experience when the bullock that was being driven by the gardener was whipped in spite Ramakrishna's protest; the marks of the whip were reproduced on Ramakrishna's body
Disciple: The story in the Ramakrishna Kathamrita is different. It refers to two fishermen who were quarrelling. One of them gave a slap to the other on the back and Ramakrishna who was on the bank got the mark of the slap on his body.
Sri Aurobindo: All these stories are there, the question is how many of them are true.
Disciple: But apart from their being true or not, are they possible?
SriAurobindo: I have already told you "anything is possible", because the power of self-suggestion is practically unlimited. There is the instance of St. Francis, of Assisi on whose body the marks of the crucifixion were reproduced merely by the power of auto-suggestion. Well; if you have a stronger power than that, you can immediately feel any marks on your body. Ramakrishna himself seems to have said that when he was doing Hanuman Sadhana, he grew a little tail.
Disciple: He also said that when he was living in sakhi-bhāva, the Radha attitude, he developed feminine characteristics on his body
Disciple: But it is also said that you had the power of raising the body from the ground!
Sri Aurobindo: Who told you?
Disciple: They say that when you were in jail and also at Pondicherry when you used to meditate your body used to be lifted from the ground.
Sri Aurobindo: Nonsense. And in X's writings perhaps I am represented as walking above the ground. So you see how legends gather?
Disciple: But you yourself told me that it is true and not nonsense. I asked you one day whether it was possible to raise the body from the ground. You said it was and so I thought it was true in your case.
Sri Aurobindo: There you are! If I say something is possible does it follow that it is actually done; for example, if I say it is possible to attain physical immortality, does it mean that I have achieved it? Not at all.
Disciple: But then is there no basis at all for this widely held report? I have heard it from reliable men.
Disciple: Those who start legends generally say they heard it from a reliable source.
Disciple: But when you were in jail some part of your body was raised in a peculiar fashion. Is that not true?
Sri Aurobindo: That was once in jail, I was then having a very intense Sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. I had a questioning mood, whether such things as the Siddhi of utthapana – levitation – were possible. Then suddenly I found myself raised up in such a way I could not have done it myself with muscular exertion: only one part of the body was slightly in contact with the ground and the rest was raised up against the wall and I know I could not have held my body like that normally even if I had wanted to. I also found that the body remained suspended like that without any exertion on my part. That is the only thing that happened. In jail there were many such extraordinary and, one may say, abnormal, experiences. As I was doing the Sadhana on the vital plane I think the power might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves.
Disciple: Moti Babu has related that when you were five years old you got a vision of a great light at Darjeeling and you became unconscious.
Sri Aurobindo: And then, what happened further? (After some time) All that is a legend. I told him something because he was constantly asking me about my childhood. I had no such experience of light when I was a child. My uncle told me that I was very bright, but I have no recollection of those days and if you want the truth it was not light but darkness that I saw at Darjeeling. I was lying down one day when I saw suddenly a great darkness rushing into me and enveloping me and the whole of the universe. What I told Moti Babu was that after that I had a great Tamas – darkness – always hanging on to me all along my stay in England. I believe that darkness had something to do with the Tamas that came upon me. It left me only when I was coming back to India.
If people were to know all the truth about my life they would never believe that such a man could come to anything.
Disciple: Moti Babu related to me about your conversion to Christianity – how one day when you did no attend Church the priest asked you about it next day and then you did not make any reply but simply wept.
Sri Aurobindo: What is all this legend? I never became a Christian and never used to go to Church. Who has built up this fantastic story?
Disciple: Moti Babu was telling us.
Sri Aurobindo: I told him something quite different and the manuscript which he sent here did not contain any account of the light I saw when I was five!
The only thing that happened was there was once a meeting of non-Conformist priests at Camberland when we were staying in England. The old lady in whose house we were living took me there. In such meeting after the prayers are over all disperse and devout people generally remain a little longer afterwards and it is at that time that conversions are made.
I was feeling completely bored. Then a priest approached me and put me some questions. I did not give any reply. Then they all shouted out, "He is saved, he is saved," and began to pray for me and offer thanks to God! I did not know anything. Then the priest came to me and asked me to pray. I was never in the habit of praying but somehow I did it in the manner in which children recite their prayers before sleep, in order to keep up an appearance. That was the only thing. But I did not use to attend Church. I was then about ten years. The old lady's son, Mr. Drewett never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of common sense. But he went away to Australia and we came to India.
When we were staying in London this old lady used to have daily family prayers and reading of some passage from the Bible. One day Mano Mohan said something about Moses which made her wild. She said she did not want to live under the same roof with unbelievers, and went to live somewhere else. I felt infinitely relieved and grateful to Mano Mohan. We were then entering upon the agnostic stage in our development.
I was a great coward virtually and I was weak physically and could not do anything. Only my will was bright. Nobody could have imagined that I could face the gallows or carry on a revolutionary movement. In my case it was all human imperfection with which I had to start and feel all the difficulties before embodying the divine Consciousness.
Disciple: Moti Babu told us that you caught the revolutionary spirit from Shelley's Revolt of Islam.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not quite true. The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young and I used to read it again and again – of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being. There was no other effect of reading it except this that I had a thought that I would dedicate my life to a similar World-change and take part in it.
(After a pause)
No, I had no extraordinary spiritual experience in my early life.
I remember only three experiences. One was the Darjeeling experience. And the second came upon me at the age of twelve or thirteen. I was extremely selfish and then something came upon me and I felt I ought to give up selfishness and I tried in my own way – of course, imperfectly – to put it into practice. But that was a sort of turning-point in my inner life. The last came just before I left England. It was the mental rather than the spiritual experience of the Atman. I felt the One only as true; it was an experience absolutely Shankarite in its sense. It lasted only for a short time.
Disciple: Is it a fact that you came away straight to Chandernagore from the Dharma office? And that the C.I.D. by God's grace were not there?
Sri Aurobindo: I was at the Karmayogin office and we came to know about the search that was going to be made evidently with the object of arresting me. There were some people there and Ramchandra Majumdar was there – preparing to give fight to the police – and so many ideas were flying about when suddenly I heard a voice from above saying, "No, go to Chandernagore."
After coming out from Jail I used to hear voices and in those days I used to obey them without questioning. So I told my friends that I would go to French India and then the arrangement was made. The C.I.D., I don't know whether by God's grace or the prostitutes' grace, were not there.
Disciple: Then about coming to Pondicherry also you heard a voice?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. It is quite true.
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