Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7625
In his reply to Suresh Chakravarty’s article1, my old friend Ramachandra Majumdar congratulates himself on the strength of his memory in old age. His memory is indeed so strong that he not only recollects, very inaccurately, what actually happened, but recalls also and gives body to what never happened at all. His account is so heavily crammed with blunders and accretions that it may provide rich material for an imaginative and romantic biography of Sri Aurobindo in the modern manner but has no other value. It is a pity to have to trample on this fine garden of flowers, but historical and biographical truth has its claim. I shall correct some of the most flagrant errors in this narrative.
First of all, Suresh Chakravarty’s article about the journey to Chandernagore confined itself to inaccurate statements of the facts and denied the story of a visit to Sri Sarada Devi in the course of that journey. This point has now been practically conceded for we see that the alleged visit has been transferred to another date a few days earlier. I may say that Suresh’s narrative of the facts was brought to the notice of Sri Aurobindo who certified that it was true both as a whole and in detail.
But now another story has been brought up which is full of confusions and unrealities and is a good example of how myth can be established in place of the truth. Sri Aurobindo never spoke with Sister Nivedita about any case intended to be brought against him by the Government in connection with the murder of Shamsul Alam, for the good reason that no such intention was ever reported to him by anybody. Sister Nivedita never directed or advised him to go into hiding. What actually happened had nothing to do with the departure to Chandernagore. What happened was this: Sister Nivedita on a much earlier occasion informed Sri Aurobindo that the Government intended to deport him and advised him “not to hide”, but leave British India and work from outside; Sri Aurobindo did not accept the advice. He said that he would write an “Open Letter” which he thought would make the Government give up its idea; this appeared in the Karmayogin under the title “My Last Will and Testament”. Afterwards Sister Nivedita told him that it had had the desired effect and there was no more question of deportation.
Sri Aurobindo did not see Sister Nivedita on his way to Chandernagore; this is only a relic of the now abandoned story of his visit to the Math at Baranagar on that occasion in which it was related that she had seen him off at the Ghat. She knew nothing whatever of his departure to Chandernagore until afterwards when he sent her a message asking her to take up the editing of the Karmayogin in his absence. Everything happened very suddenly. Sri Aurobindo, as he has himself related, while at the Karmayogin Office, heard of an approaching search and his intended arrest; he suddenly received an ādeśa to go to Chandernagore and carried it out immediately without informing or consulting anybody – even his colleagues and co-workers. Everything was done in fifteen minutes or so and in the utmost secrecy and silence. He followed Ram Majumdar to the Ghat, Suresh Chakravarty and Biren Ghosh following at a little distance; a boat was hailed and the three got in and went off immediately. His stay in Chandernagore also was secret and known only to a few like his later departure to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo never asked Ram Majumdar to arrange for a hiding place; there was no time for any such arrangement. He went unannounced, relying on some friends in Chandernagore to arrange for his stay. Motilal Roy received him first in his own house, then arranged in other places, allowing only a few to know. This is the true account of what happened according to Sri Aurobindo’s own statement.
The new story now told that Devabrata Bose and Sri Aurobindo both asked to be admitted into the Ramakrishna Mission and Devabrata was accepted but Swami Brahmananda refused to accept Sri Aurobindo, is another myth. Sri Aurobindo never even dreamed of taking Sannyasa or of entering into any established order of Sannyasis. It ought to be well-known to everybody that Sannyasa was never accepted by him as part of his Yoga; he has founded an Ashram in Pondicherry but its members are not Sannyasis, do not wear the ochre garb or practise complete asceticism but are sadhaks of a Yoga of life based on spiritual realisation. This has always been Sri Aurobindo’s idea and it was never otherwise. He saw Swami Brahmananda only once when he went on a boat trip to visit the Belur Math; he had then about fifteen minutes’ conversation with Swami Brahmananda but there was no talk about spiritual things. The Swami was preoccupied with a communication from the Government and consulted Sri Aurobindo as to whether there was any need of an answer. Sri Aurobindo said no, and the Swami agreed. After seeing the Math Sri Aurobindo came away and nothing else happened. He never by letter or otherwise communicated with Swami Brahmananda before or afterwards and never directly or indirectly asked for admission or for Sannyasa.
There have been hints or statements about Sri Aurobindo taking or asking for initiation from certain quarters about this time. Those who spread these legends seem to be ignorant that at this time he was not a spiritual novice or in need of any initiation or spiritual direction by anybody. Sri Aurobindo had already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first he had gained while meditating with the Maharashtrian Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele at Baroda in January 1908; it was the realisation of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realisation which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is, which happened in the Alipore jail and of which he has spoken in his speech at Uttarpara. To the other two realisations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind he was already on his way in his meditations in the Alipore jail. Moreover, he had accepted from Lele as the principle of his sadhana to rely wholly on the Divine and his guidance alone both for his sadhana and for his outward actions. After that it was impossible for him to put himself under any other guidance and unnecessary to seek help from anyone. In fact Sri Aurobindo never took any formal initiation from anyone; he started his sadhana on his own account by the practice of prāṇāyāma and never asked for help except from Lele.
One or two less important points have to be mentioned to show how little reliance can be placed on the details of Ramchandra’s narrative. His statement about the automatic writing is only an imaginative inference and in fact quite groundless. Sri Aurobindo totally denies that he used the automatic writing for any kind of moral or other edification of those around him; that would have meant that it was spurious and a sort of a trick, for no writing can be automatic if it is dictated or guided by the writer’s conscious mind. The writing was done as an experiment as well as an amusement and nothing else. I may mention here the circumstances under which it was first taken up. Barin had done some very extraordinary automatic writing at Baroda in a very brilliant and beautiful English style and remarkable for certain predictions which came true and statements of fact which also proved to be true although unknown to the persons concerned or anyone else present: there was notably a symbolic anticipation of Lord Curzon’s subsequent unexpected departure from India and, again, of the first suppression of the national movement and the greatness of Tilak’s attitude amidst the storm; this prediction was given in Tilak’s own presence when he visited Sri Aurobindo at Baroda and happened to enter first when the writing was in progress. Sri Aurobindo was very much struck and interested and he decided to find out by practising this kind of writing himself what there was behind it. This is what he was doing in Calcutta. But the results did not satisfy him and after a few further attempts at Pondicherry he dropped these experiments altogether. He did not give the same high value to his efforts as Ramchandra seems to have done, for they had none of those remarkable features of Barin’s writings. His final conclusion was that though there are sometimes phenomena which point to the intervention of beings of another plane, not always or often of a high order, the mass of such writings comes from a dramatising element in the subconscious mind; sometimes a brilliant vein in the subliminal is struck and then predictions of the future and statements of things known in the present and past come up, but otherwise these writings have not a great value. I may add that Ramchandra’s details are incorrect and there was no guide named Theresa, in fact no guide at all, though someone calling himself Theramenes broke in from time to time. The writings came haphazard without any spirit mentor such as some mediums claim to have.
A smaller but more amazing myth presents Sri Aurobindo as a poet in Tamil – and this apparently after only a few days of study. Far from writing Tamil poetry Sri Aurobindo never wrote a single sentence even of Tamil prose and never spoke a single phrase in the Tamil language. He listened for a few days to a Nair from Malabar who read and explained to him articles in a Tamil newspaper; this was a short time before he left Bengal. At Pondicherry he took up the study of Tamil, but he did not go very far and his studies were finally interrupted by his complete retirement.
1 Suresh Chandra Chakravarty, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, wrote an article on Sri Aurobindo in the Bengali journal, Prabasi (issue of Baisakh 1352 B.S. April, 1945). Ramachandra Majumdar who was on the staff of the Karmayogin wrote a reply to this article contradicting what seemed to him to be the wrong statements in S. Chakravarty’s article. Majumdar’s reply was not only based on wrong memory but also included a number of entirely fictitious statements. This note was dictated by Sri Aurobindo to correct Majumdar’s wrong and fictitious statements; it was translated into Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta who also wrote an article in Bengali (published in Prabasi and Bartika) which was practically a translation of this note.