Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II

Sri Aurobindo on Barindra

Disciple: How to conquer fear?

Sri Aurobindo: By mental strength, will and spiritual power. In my own case, whenever there was any fear I used to do the very things that I was afraid of even if it entailed a violent death. Barin also had much fear while he was in the terrorist activity. But he would compel himself to do those things. When death sentence was passed on him he took it very cheerfully.

1) Excerpts from Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, recorded by A. B. Purani, 1982 ed., 'pp. 545-46.

Disciple: Is Barin still doing yoga?

Sri Aurobindo : I don't know, he used to do some sort of yoga even before I began. My yoga he took up only after coming to Pondicherry. In the Andamans also he was practising it. You know he was Lele's disciple. Once he took Lele to Calcutta among the young people of the secret society. Lele did not know that they were revolutionaries. One day Barin took him into a garden where they were practising shooting. As soon a Lele saw it he understood the nature of the movement and asked Barin to give it up. If Barin did not listen to him, Lele said, he would fall into aditch and he did fall.

Disciple: Barin, I heard, had a lot of experiences.

Sri Aurobindo: They were merely mental and he gathered some knowledge, much information or understanding out of them. I heard that when he had begun yoga he had an experience of Kamananda. Lele was surprised to hear about it. For he said that experience comes usually at the end. It is a descent like any other experience but unless one's sex centre is sufficiently controlled it may produce bad results such as emission and other disturbances.

Disciple: Yes. He had brilliance.

Sri Aurobindo: But he was narrow and limited. He would not widen himself (Sri Aurobindo showed it by the movement of hands above the head); that is why his thing won't last. For he was a brilliant writer and he also wrote devotional poetry. But nothing of that will last because of the limitation. He was an amazing amateur in many things, e.g. music revolutionary activity. He was also a painter; though it did not come to much in spite of his exhibitions. He did well in all these but nothing more.

Disciple: Barin in his paper "Dawn" began to write your biography.

Sri Aurobindo: I don't know that. Did he publish a paper? I would have been interested to see what he writes about me.

Disciple; It ceased after a short time.

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