Light and Laughter

Some Talks at Pondicherry

— Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran

cover

Price: Rs 90

Pages: 142
Dimensions (in cms): 14x21
ISBN: 978-81-87916-04-8
Soft Cover
   
Publisher: Clear Ray Trust, Pondicherry

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About Light and Laughter

These talks are replete with reminiscences told with abundant splashes of wit and humour of the highest order. From the introduction, "some most abstruse aspects of the Integral Yoga have been explained in an astonishingly simple manner" and "the essence of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has been brought out in a homely and charming way."
(This book was out of print for several years.)

REVIEW



Light and Laughter: Some Talks at Pondicherry is an enjoyable book which at once enlightens and entertains the reader. Though there are abundant splashes of wit and humour `of the highest order' it is not a `light' book and is lit up everywhere with a deep understanding of the spiritual journey of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The book is a collection of talks by Shri K. D. Sethna and Shri Nirodbaran, the former's talks constituting the bulk of the book.

The first talk, after the introduction by Nirodbaran, reveals a lot of autobiographical glimpses of Sethna's life in Bombay before he came to the Ashram and the reader gets to know more and more about the scholar Sethna's transformation into sadhak `Amal'. This blossoming is not without its `teething troubles' and Sethna, in all his talks, misses no opportunity to make fun of himself with candidness, sincerity and childlike simplicity. That he had an excellent rapport with the audience, mostly students, is borne out by the laughter he evoked and we see `laughter' in parentheses making its appearance with telling regularity page after page. One can almost relive the scene, the audience rapt with attention listening to Sethna rambling away in his inimitable style about the incredible events in the spiritual calendar of the Ashram in its early days, when the bottled-up imp of fun and frolic of the limping lecturer pops out and regales the audience with exquisite witticisms. It leaves one with a sigh of envy at the good fortune of the audience which lapped it up all with exuberant mirth.

In these talks we come across many vignettes of the then Ashramites with whom Sethna was on friendly terms. In Talk Two Sethna speaks about his own psychic opening which happened by the grace of the Mother. About the psychic realization he says `... something like the breaking down of a wall took place and I felt that I was very free, I mean not shut up and cramped in a narrow ego or individuality.' He continues, `To be there, keep within, to feel oneself there is to be perennially, and I might even say unbearably, happy. The light also is present, because some kind of natural truth-feeling is experienced, which guides you all the time.' Wonderful words indeed to be cherished. He sums up his experience jocularly, `when you are psychic you neither sigh nor kick.' One can go on citing many such examples of Sethna's humour par excellence.

One of the most interesting things we come to know and value is Sethna's portrayal of the Mother as the Mother of Love, how She carried all around Her in Her consciousness, nurturing them, protecting them from the constant attacks of hostile forces, for the intensity of Yoga inevitably raises the intensity of the attacks of these hostile forces whose object is to prevent sadhaks from progressing in the path of Yoga. Sethna relates in Talk Six how the Mother answered the eternal question people ask about the presence and power of these forces. Her illuminating answer to this vexed question is one of the gems I find in this book. I venture to give some more of them to the readers.

After the Supramental Manifestation of February 29, 1956, the Mother most emphatically declared:

Lord, Thou hast willed and I execute,
A new light breaks upon the earth,
A new world is born.
The things that were promised are fulfilled.


This gives us all the hope that the world will not be forever the same and there is a golden future awaiting humanity.

The words `Supermind' and `Overmind' and their connotations are matters of eternal discussion amongst Aurobindonian scholars. Sethna explains, `The Overmind is only the divine aspect of the mind... The Supermind is the Divine self-experienced in its creative movement—directly, immediately.' Clarifying further Sethna explains, `Yet we are always impressed by its proximity to the Supermind and forget the radical, the colossal difference between the two' (emphasis added). The Mother `threw this difference into memorable relief' when she declared, in Sethna's words, `that the gap we feel between our mind and Overmind is less than the gap existing between Overmind and Supermind.' `There is a night between the Overmind and the Supramental Truth-world, and so vast, so deep is it that the Supermind appears above the Overmind as no more than a tiny star at the farthest end of the darkness.' As to the query why one should try to understand these abstruse definitions and explanations Sethna asserts, `I believe that it is necessary not only to attempt doing Yoga but also to attempt understanding Yoga.' That settles the matter and in my opinion, Talk Six is crucial and central to all the other talks, and it is the longest in the series too. We also come to know about the marvellous realization Sethna had of sarvam khalu idam brahma (all this is verily the Brahman). I leave it to the reader to go through these passages carefully and profit from his reading. One can definitely say that a major landmark in the journey of Sethna from a sadhak to a Yogi has been reached.

The two talks of Nirodbaran at the end are full more of humour of the subtle kind and less of serious matter though they reveal that side of Sri Aurobindo's personality that usually one does not associate with a Mahayogi. The book nevertheless ends on a serious note when Sri Aurobindo poses the question which is relevant even today, `The question is what is India going to do with her independence? ... Bolshevism? Goonda-raj? Things look ominous.' Do we have an answer?

In conclusion, this book is doubly welcome for it contains talks on serious spirituality punctuated with uproarious laughter of the audience, a book both informative and illuminating.

— K. Balasubramaniam

"Bala-bhai" teaches English, Mathematics and Numerical Analysis at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education since 1972.

May 2005