Tag Archive for: Nirodbaran

An Extraordinary Girl by Nirodbaran

An Extraordinary Girl

Nirodbaran narrated to Sri Aurobindo an incident that had taken place in Calcutta. The Mother was present during the narration. The incident concerned a girl of about ten or twelve. She belonged to a very well-known family and had visited the Ashram with her parents more than once. Now there was a tea-party in their sumptuous house. Many high-ranking people had been invited. The topic of the Ashram came up. Comments and criticisms started flying freely. Even the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were not spared. The child listened quietly. But when somebody seemed to overstep the limit of decency, she could stand it no longer. In a firm tone she said, “Look here, if you speak one more word about my Gurus, I’ll give you such a slap that you’ll tumble down.” Everybody was stunned. The child’s mamma left the room in shame and anger at the insult to her guests. Her uncle started looking at the ceiling in embarrassment, and to change the subject he started calling to the servants, “Hari, Ram, what a lot of dust is here!” Nirodbaran’s story was enjoyed by all immensely. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo looked happy.

Esha, the late Dilip Kumar Roy’s niece, was a little girl visiting the Ashram when I came to know her through my niece Jyotirmoyee with whom she had become very friendly. She wanted to settle in the Ashram, but her mother did not want it as she was still a minor. When after many years she came to the Ashram again and stayed with Sahana Devi, I became more closely acquainted with her. By that time she had already married and obtained her divorce and had decided to settle here. I came to her help and made all possible arrangements for the purpose. Since then I have come to know her well and listened to her narration of the incidents of her life. As I found them interesting I began to note them down and was thinking of publishing them in Mother India when somehow she got wind of it and strongly objected to it. As I felt I had Sri Aurobindo’s sanction for it, I did not listen to her. In spite of my disregarding her objection, luckily she did not stop recounting her saga. Of course she narrated it in Bengali and later I put it down in English as faithfully as I could. When the story began to appear in Mother India, she insisted more than once that I should stop it. My answer was that I believed it could be helpful to many readers and that Sri Aurobindo seemed to support me.

We find that many bhaktas are indeed appreciating the story, particularly because they realise through it that Sri Aurobindo is still very much with us and our faith has been strengthened, helping us through the difficult moments of our life. – NIRODBARAN

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: 125p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Avinash Tiwari
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Kindle
Language: English
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Sri Aurobindo’s Humour by Nirodbaran

Sri Aurobindo’s Humour

This book represents a new and, to the general public, quite an unfamiliar aspect of Sri Aurobindo — his humour. There is a common belief that yogis and saints are grave and reserved by nature. They have no sense of humour. Sri Ramakrishna was probably the first among them who is known to have shattered this false notion. Sri Aurobindo was revered and accepted as a great yogi, philosopher and poet, but was considered to be dry and dreary. His sublime philosophical writings dating from the Arya-period were perhaps responsible for this popular misconception. During his political life too he was branded as ’the man who never smiles’. Even to his disciples who saw him only four times a year, he appeared grave and austere, yet with a quiet compassion which made him so lovable as a Guru.

When I wrote to him complaining that his ”Himalayan austerity and grandeur take my breath away, making my heart palpitate!” he replied: ”O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people ? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least common sense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation-—not imagining wild imaginations—or for that matter, despairing ’I know not why’ despairs.”

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: 105p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Avinash Tiwari
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Kindle
Language: English
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Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran

Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo

Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran is an account of the period of his close personal contact with Sri Aurobindo, the time when he served as Sri Aurobindo’s personal attendant and literary secretary from 1938 to 1950.

Readers of Sri Aurobindo might wonder about the Master’s external personality. The curiosity is perennial in the mind of the seeker; in the Gita, Arjuna cannot refrain from asking Sri Krishna, “How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” Equality has always been held as the hallmark of the liberated soul and while signs of equality are subjective, sensitive souls cannot help perceiving the spiritual atmosphere of evolved beings. The Person in them is larger than the personality, and this inner largeness overflows into and suffuses their external nature as well.

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: 324p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Website Visitor
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Kindle
Language: English
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran (Volume 1 and 2)

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

On the eve of the November Darshan Day in 1938, the hostile forces finally managed to strike a heavy blow against Sri Aurobindo. In the wee, dark, hours of the morning, Sri Aurobindo “stumbled” over a tiger skin rug in his apartment and struck his right knee upon the skull of the tiger, causing a fracture of his right femur. However, as these two volumes of Talks with Sri Aurobindo recorded by Nirodbaran will attest, the attempt by the forces of Darkness to silence Sri Aurobindo actually had the opposite effect, creating an opportunity for a handful of disciples and others to engage in a free flowing, wide-ranging, informal and open inquiry into the Master’s thinking and teaching which would never have happened otherwise. Collected here, we have the reminisces, musings and discussions of that band of men who were fortunate enough to be there at the right time and place to make this intimate atmosphere among seekers of Truth possible. These conversations stretched over a period of nearly twelve years, bringing these men ever closer to each other and closer to the light.

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: Volume 1 – 514p., Volume 2 – 517p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Blindshiva
Book format: Pdf, ePub, mobi (Kindle)
Language: English
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