Moni, as we have said, arrived in Pondicherry on 31 March. He met Srinivasachari and informed him that Sri Aurobindo was expected to arrive on 4 April. But Srinivasachari and others did not trust him. They thought it most improbable that Sri Aurobindo, should select to come to a place as far south as Pondicherry, instead of to another place nearer to Bengal. Moni pressed upon them the need of a house, but they were not keen on it. At last, on the day of arrival, Moni asked them to arrange for a house in advance. They said they would manage to put Sri Aurobindo up – when he came. All along they suspected that Moni was a spy. But, in case Sri Aurobindo actually did come, they said they would give him a public reception. Moni argued with them and, in the end, prevailed upon them to drop such an idea as Sri Aurubindo was coining secretly and wanted to remain in seclusion. Moni, Srinivasachari and Bharati went to the port to receive Sri Aurobindo. The steamer arrived at Pondicherry at four o'clock on 4 April 1910. After tea Sri Aurobindo was taken to the house of Shanker Chelty in Comty Chetly Street. Sri Aurobindo remained there till October as the guest of Shanker Chetty.

Sri Aurobindo's aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Krishna Kumar Mitra, and also his grandmother, Mrs. Rajnaniyan Bose, were very anxious about him and wanted to have authentic news of his safe arrival at Pondichcrry. A week after Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta, a man came to see Krishna Kumar Mitra to inform him that Sir Charles Cleaveland, Director General of Criminal Investigation, who was slaying at the Great Eastern Hotel, had received the news in code that Sri Aurobindo was in Pondicherry. The gentleman had come to give this information assuming that Mitra must be very anxious about his safety. This shows how well the secret was kept: Sukumar Mitra, who had taken a leading part in arranging Sri Aurobindo's departure, had evidently not told his own father about it. In May 1910, Motilal Roy sent a man, Sudarshan, to inquire about Sri Aurobindo's safe arrival at Pondicherry.

Balai Devsharma has written: "After knowing that Sri Aurobindo

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Aurobindo had gone to Pondicherry, Mono Ranjan Guhathakurta and Shyam Sundar Chakravarty wrote a letter requesting him to guide them (and the party) in politics. The letter was answered: its purport was that Sri Krishna had taken the responsibility of freeing India. And so all of us must act from a firm status in yoga. This letter was read at the house of Shyam Sundar Babu, in Vidyasagar Street, Calcutta."

This year Paul Richard came to Pondicherry on behalf of M. Paul Bluyson for election to the French Chamber. Bluyson was elected. Richard came to know that Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry and was doing yoga. An interview was arranged, most probably by Zir Naidu, a friend of Richard's, between Sri Aurobindo and Richard. It was in Shanker Chetty's house that they met two days for two or three hours each day. Richard asked Sri Aurobindo many questions, one of which related to the symbolic character of the lotus. Sri Aurobindo explained that the lotus stands for the opening of the consciousness to the Divine. It can be seen on any of the subtle planes of consciousness. Some years later (probably 1918) Richard gave a speech, published in his book, The Dawn over Asia, in which he spoke of Sri Aurobindo as the future leader of Asia.

At Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo did not want to meet anyone without a special purpose. He gave instructions to Moni and Bijoy to discourage casual visitors. He was thus living in practical solitude though in the middle of the town. He stayed in a room on the top floor of Shanker Chetty's house, corning downstairs only for his bath.

It was here that Sri Aurobindo fasted for twenty-three days. Moni and Bijoy were the only persons who knew about it. During the fast Sri Aurobindo did all his usual work regularly – i.e. walking, meditation, writing, etc. When he broke the fast he took the same quantity of food that he used to take before; he did not begin to take food gradually as people who fast generally do. He suffered no diminution of mental or vital energy, but found that a certain diminution of material substance was taking place. He concluded that physical life would be impossible without food.

Two talks of Sri Aurobindo on the subject of fasting are reproduced below:

Disciple: "Is it possible to do without food?"

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Sri Aurobindo: "Yes, it is. When I did my fast of about twenty-three days in Chetty's house, I very nearly solved the problem. I could walk eight hours a day as usual. I continued my mental work and Sadhana as usual and I found that I was not in the least weak at the end of the twenty-three days. But the flesh began to grow less and I did not find a clue to replacing the very matter reduced in the body. Also, when I broke the fast, I did not observe the rule of people who undergo long fasts – beginning with a little food and so on. I began with the same quantity as I used to take before. ... I tried fasting once in jail but that was for ten days when I used to sleep once in three nights. I lost ten pounds in weight but I felt stronger at the end of the ten days than I had been before I began the fast. I could lift up a weight after the fast, which I could not before."^¹

Sri Aurobindo: "I fasted twice: once in Alipore for ten days and another time in Pondicherry for twenty-three days. At Alipore I was full of Yogic activities, I was not taking my food and was throwing it away in the bucket. Of course, the Superintendent did not know of it; only two warders knew about it and they informed others saying: The gentleman must be ill; he will not live long!' Though my physical strength was diminishing I was able to raise a pail of water above my head which I could not do ordinarily.

"At Pondicherry while fasting I was in full mental and vital vigour. I was even walking eight hours a day and not feeling tired at all. And when I broke the fast I did not begin slowly but with the usual normal amount of food."

Disciple: "How is such fasting possible?"

Sri Aurobindo: "One draws the energy from the vital plane instead of depending upon physical substance. Once in Calcutta I lived for a long time on rice and banana. These make a very good food."^²

During the first three months of the stay at Pondicherry there

^¹Cf. A. B. Purani, Evening Talks, Second Series (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1961), pp. 232-33.

^² Cf. A. B. Purani, Evening Talks, Third Series (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram,. 1966), pp. 88-89.

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used to be séances in the evening in which automatic writing was done. The book Yogic Sadhan was written in this way. At the rate of one chapter per day, the book was finished in a week or eight days. On the last day it seemed to Sri Aurobindo that a figure that looked like Rammohan Roy disappeared into the subtle world near the comer of the ceiling of the room. It was inferred that Rammohan Roy had dictated the book. The Editor's Epilogue added after the last chapter was written by Sri Aurobindo himself. The editor's name is given as "the Uttar Yogi".

K .V. Rangaswamy Iyengar, the zamindar of Kodailam met Sri Aurobindo for the first time in Shanker Chetty's house. Up to 1906 this man represented the landlords in the Legislative Assembly of Delhi. He had come looking for Sri Aurobindo for the following reason. He had known a Yogi named Nagai Japata, who had been the guru of his family. When the time of his death was near this Yogi called his devotees to him. K. V. R. Iyengar asked him about the spiritual guide he must take for his future progress. The Yogi remained quiet for a time and then said that a great Yogi would come from the North whose help he could take. Iyengar then asked him how he would recognise that particular great Yogi, as so many yogis came to the South from the North. Japata replied that the great Yogi would come seeking refuge in the South, and he would make a declaration of three things before his arrival.

When K. V. R. Iyengar came to know that Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry and retired from politics, he had one clue for identifying him as the "Yogi from the North" – Uttar Yogi – about whom Nagai Japata had spoken. Moreover, one of the letters of Sri Aurobindo to Mrinalini Devi that were produced in the Alipore court, contained a statement of "three madnesses" that were a part of Sri Aurobindo's personality. This was understood to be the declaration of the "three things" that had been predicted by the Yogi.

What transpired between the two at the interview is not known. It is known that K. V. R. Iyengar gave Sri Aurobindo a promise of economic help and besides this actually gave some money. Those were days of great danger to anyone who dared to render any kind of help to a revolutionary political leader. That is why nothing was spoken about the details of the interview or about the exact extent of the help rendered. K. V. R. Iyengar came

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twice again to Pondicherry to see Sri Aurobindo. It was he who had the small book Yogic Sadhan printed at the Vani Vilas Press for Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo once spoke of Iyengar in an evening talk: "There was a famous Yogi in the South who while dying said to his disciples that a Puma Yogi from the North would come down to the South and he would be known by three sayings. Those three sayings were the three things I wrote in a letter to my wife. The zamindar disciple of that Yogi found me out and bore the cost of the book Yogic Sadhan."^¹

V. Ramaswamy Iyengar, later known as "Va-Ra" in the Tamil literary world, had come to Pondicherry with K. V. R. Iyengar. He afterwards came and stayed with Sri Aurobindo for some time. A remarkable thing about this was that Sri Aurobindo had seen V. Ramaswamy in the subtle vision before he actually met him. He once mentioned this and another prophetic vision in a letter: "I myself have these visions, only I don't usually try to remember or verify them. But there were two curious instances which were among the first of this kind and which therefore I remember. Once I was trying to see a recently elected deputy here and saw someone quite different from him, someone who afterwards came here as Governor. I ought never to have met him in the ordinary course, but a curious mistake happened and as a result I went and saw him in his bureau and at once recognised him. The other was a certain V. Ramaswamy whom I had to meet, but I saw him not as he was when he actually came, but as he became after a year's residence in my house. He became the very image of that vision, a face close-cropped, rough, rude, energetic, the very opposite of the dreamy smooth-faced enthusiastic Vaishnava who came to me. So that was the vision of a man I had never seen, but as he was to be in the future – a prophetic vision"^²

Life at Pondicherry was hard while Sri Aurobindo and his young companions lived in Comty Chetty Street. Moni or Bijoy, or both, used to make tea for Sri Aurobindo in the morning. The food for the afternoon meal was cooked in the house: usually

^¹ Undated evening talk.

^² Sri Aurobindo On Himself (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), p.360.

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there was rice, vegetables, rasam and sambar. At night Sri Aurobindo took a cup of payas (sweet milk and rice). They all used to sleep on the ground. For Sri Aurobindo there was a thin mattress; Moni and Bijoy used to lie on straw mats. In the later days at Comty Chetty Street, Moni and Bijoy bought eggs and prepared them for Sri Aurobindo.

In October there was a change of lodgings from Shanker Chetty's house; Sri Aurobindo moved to a house on Rue Suffren, in the southern part of the town. This house belonged to one Sunder Chetty. He remained here until April 1911. In late September, just before the removal, Saurin Bose, a cousin of Mrinalini Devi, came to Pondicherry. In November Nolini Kanta Gupta came. There were now four young men in all: Moni, Bijoy, Saurin and Nolini.

On 7 November 1910 Sri Aurobindo wrote to The Hindu, a Madras paper, about his retirement from politics:

"I shall be obliged if you will allow me to inform every one interested in my whereabouts through your journal that I am and will remain in Pondicherry. I left British India over a month before proceedings were taken against me and, as I had purposely retired here in order to pursue my Yogic sadhana undisturbed by political action or pursuit and had already severed connection with my political work, I did not feel called upon to surrender on the warrant for sedition, as might have been incumbent on me if I had remained in the political field. I have since lived here as a religious recluse, visited only by a few friends, French and Indian, but my whereabouts have been an open secret, long known to the agents of the Government and widely rumoured in Madras as well as perfectly well-known to every one in Pondicherry. I find myself now compelled somewhat against my will, to give my presence here a wider publicity. It has suited certain people for an ulterior object to construct a theory that I am not in Pondicherry, but in British India, and I wish to state emphatically that I have not been in British India since March last and shall not set foot on British territory even for a single moment in the future until I can return publicly. Any statement by any person to the contrary made now or in the future, will be false. I wish, at the same time, to make it perfectly clear that I have retired for the time from political activity of any kind and that I will see and correspond with no one in connection with political

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subjects. I defer all explanation or justification of my action in leaving British India until the High Court in Calcutta shall have pronounced on the culpability or innocence of the writing in the Karmayogin on which I am indicted."^¹

On 7 November judgment was delivered at the Calcutta High Court on the Karmayogin and Manmohan Ghose, the printer of the journal, was acquitted. (He had been convicted by the Chief Presidency Magistrate.) The article in question, "To My Countrymen", was considered not seditious.

After the removal to the hired house in Rue Suffren, each of the four members of the household had to cook by turns. In the morning tea, milk, sugar and bread (loaf) were given to all. Lunch, consisting of three pounds of meat divided between the five persons, or else curry, along with some other food, was served between 11.30 and 12.30. Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, a cup of tea was given to Sri Aurobindo. At night, fish, rice and one vegetable or curry dish were prepared. The only furniture was a camp cot for Sri Aurobindo, one table and two chairs. There was no servant.

Sri Aurobindo remained in Sunder Chetty's rented house up to April 1911. From April 1911 to April 1913 he stayed in the house of Raghav Chetty in Rue St. Louis.

During the year 1911 Motilal Roy came to Pondicherry. He stayed for a month and a half. It was arranged that he should meet Sri Aurobindo twice a week. Sri Aurobindo asked Motilal about his sadhana. He had given Motilal a mantra which Motilal was repeating. Motilal asked Sri Aurobindo whether he should continue the Japa. Sri Aurobindo told him to stop it. In order to maintain secrecy Motilal used to come by the back door of the house.

Motilal has described his visit of 1911 in one of his books. The details given there are highly coloured by his imagination. One thing he speaks of is true: the great economic hardship during this period.

In this year (1911) cooking was done by turns. All other members of the household used to finish their baths and wait for lunch in the kitchen, which was also the dining room. Sri Aurobindo used to take his bath last and come directly to the dining room. There were only two lamps in the house – a candle lamp in Sri Aurobindo's

^¹ The Hindu, 13 November 1910.

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room and a small kerosene lamp in the kitchen. When dinner was ready at night the candle lamp was taken to the kitchen.

During the year Sri Aurobindo gave Latin, Greek and French lessons to Moni and Nolini. Books worth ten rupees were ordered every month. Sri Aurobindo went to Srinivasachari's house on the occasion of his daughter's marriage.

It was Sri Aurobindo's intention to return to the field of work after a certain poise of the sadhana was established. In an entry of a sadhak's diary dated 30 March 1924, it is noted: "When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry the idea was that the sadhana might take about six months after which time all those who were here would go back and restart the work. Then one year passed and yet Sri Aurobindo did not go back. Then a period of four years was put down as the limit. In the meantime, the first world war intervened."

K. V. R. Iyengar met Sri Aurobindo in the Rue St. Louis house. He seems to have promised financial help but evidently it was irregular and inadequate. V. Ramaswamy (Va-Ra), who had come from Tanjore to stay with Sri Aurobindo, used to meet Sri Aurobindo daily in the evening. K. Amrita used to visit V. Ramaswamy.

An incident which threatened to happen but did not come about deserves to be mentioned in order to give an idea of the atmosphere and the difficulties of those days. There was one Nand Gopal Chetty whose family, which provided stevedore service to steamers touching not only Pondicherry but also Madras, Nagapattam, etc., was rich and influential. Nand Gopal was taking a prominent part in the politics of French India. He seems to have agreed to participate in a plan of the British government agents to carry Sri Aurobindo out of the limits of French India with the help of goondas, so that Sri Aurobindo might be arrested by the British authorities and held up on some fabricated charge. The information of this intended plan reached Sri Aurobindo through Moni, Bijoy and others. To foil the plan the young men armed themselves with acid bottles to prevent any forcible entry into the house. Fortunately no one turned up. It was known afterwards that a warrant of arrest was issued against Nand Gopal on the same day as the projected abduction by the leaders of the opposite political party (in a matter connected

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with local elections) and he had to flee from Pondicherry to Madras to evade arrest. The plan thus completely miscarried.

When Sri Aurobindo was in the St. Louis house the French police came and searched it. The circumstances were as follows. Many political refugees and revolutionaries from British India had crossed over as refugees to Pondicherry because it was a French territory. Before the First World War, the French generally looked upon the English as rivals and they jealously asserted the right of giving asylum to political workers who were against the British rule in India. V. V. S. Aiyar, the revolutionary, Subramanya Bharati, the patriot-poet, and Srinivasachari were already there in 1910. Then Nagaswamy Aiyar came, and from Bengal Sri Aurobindo and four other persons. V. V. S. Aiyar being implicated in revolutionary activity came in the year 1912. The British government, in consequence, increased the number of its secret agents, C. I. D. men, in Pondicherry.

In July 1912 some secret service men threw a tin containing seditious literature into the well of V. V. S. Aiyar's house. As the British agents could not openly act in French territory, they employed Mayuresan, a French Indian, to complain against Bharati and other patriots, alleging that they were engaged in dangerous activities and that, if a search of their house was made, proof of the complaint would be found. He had not mentioned Sri Aurobindo by name but as Bharati, V. V. S. Aiyar and Srinivasachari were friends of Sri Aurobindo, the French government included his name on a list of those whose houses were to be searched.

But the scheme of the secret agents fell through, because the tin came up from the well when V. V. S. Aiyar's maid-servant drew water. Bharati went to Sri Aurobindo immediately and asked his advice. Sri Aurobindo told him to inform the French police and to ask them to come and see the tin to find what it contained. The French government took charge of the tin and found that it contained seditious pamphlets and journals. On some there was the image of Kali and some writing in Bengali. The suspicion was supposed to be created that all these refugees were carrying on correspondence with Shyamji Krishna Varma, Madame Cama and other leaders of the revolutionary movement in Europe and were trying to hatch an Indian conspiracy with their help.

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The investigating magistrate who came to search Sri Aurobindo's house was one M. Nandot, who arrived with the chief of police and the public prosecutor. He found practically no furniture in the house, only a few trunks, a table and a chair. On opening the drawers of the table he found only books and papers. On some of the papers Greek was written. He was very much surprised and asked if Sri Aurobindo knew Greek. When he came to know that he knew Latin, Greek and other European languages, his suspicion waned, yielding place to a great respect for Sri Aurobindo. He invited Sri Aurobindo to meet him in his chambers later and Sri Aurobindo complied with his request.

Mayuresan, threatened with a charge of making a false complaint, disappeared from Pondicherry and took refuge in British India.

The financial condition was very hard during this year – sometimes for three or four days in the week all the members of the household had to go without fish or meat. A letter written to Motilal Roy on 3 July 1912 gives an idea of the stringent economic situation:

Dear M.

Your money (by letter and wire) and clothes reached safely. The French Post Office here has got into the habit (not yet explained) of not delivering your letters till Friday; that was the reason why we wired to you thinking you had not sent the money that week. I do not know whether this means anything, – formerly we used to get your letters on Tuesday, afterwards it came to Wednesday, then Thursday and finally Friday. It may be a natural evolution of French Republicanism. Or it may be. Something else. I see no signs of the seals having been tampered with, but that is not an absolutely sure indication of security. The postman may be paid by the police. Personally, however, I am inclined to believe in the Republican administration theory, – the Republic always likes to have time on its hands. Still, if you like, you can send Important communications to any other address here you may know of, for the present (of course, by French post and a Madrasi address). All others should come by the old address, – you may be sure, I think, no letter will be actually intercepted, on this side. By the way, please let us know whether Mr. Banomali Pal received a letter by French post from Achari

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enclosing another to Parthasarathi.

I have not written all this time because I was not allowed to put pen to paper for some time, – that is all. I send enclosed a letter to our Marathi friend. If he can give you anything for me, please send it without the least delay. If not, I must ask you to procure for me by will-power or any other power in heaven or on earth Rs.50 at least as a loan. If you cannot get it elsewhere, why not apply to Barid Babu? Also, if Nagen is in Calcutta, ask him whether the Noakhali gentleman can let me have anything. I was told he had Rs.300 put aside for me if I wanted it; but I did not wish to apply to him except in case of necessity. The situation just now is that we have Rs. 1 ½ or so in hand. Srinivasa is also without money. As to Bharati living on nothing means an uncertain quantity. The only other man in Pondicherry whom I could at present ask for help is absent sine die and my messenger to the South not returned. The last time he came, he brought a promise of Rs.1000 in a month and some permanent provision afterwards, but the promise like certain predecessors has not yet been fulfilled and we sent him for cash. But though he should have been here three days ago, he has not returned, and even when he returns, I am not quite sure about the cash and still less sure about the sufficiency of the amount. No doubt, God will provide, but He has contracted a bad habit of waiting till the last moment. I only hope He does not wish us to learn how to live on a minus quantity like Bharati.

Other difficulties are disappearing. The case brought against the Swadeshis (no one in this household was included in it although we had a very charmingly polite visit from the Parquet and Juge d'Instruction) has collapsed into the nether regions and the complainant and his son have fled from Pondicherry and become, like ourselves "political refugees" in Cuddalore. I hear he has been sentenced by default to five years imprisonment on false accusation, but I don't know yet whether the report is true. The police were to have left at the end of Pondicherry^¹ but a young lunatic (one of Bharati's old disciples in patriotism and atheism) got involved in a sedition-search (for the Indian Sociologist of

^¹ The beginning of this sentence, reproduced here as it appears in Sri Aurobindo's manuscript, should probably read: "The police were to have left Pondicherry at the end of the month."

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all rubbish in the world!) and came running here in the nick of time for the police to claim another two months' holiday in Pondi-cherry. However, I think their fangs have been drawn. I may possibly send you the facts of the case for publication in the Nayak or any other paper, but I am not yet certain.

I shall write to you about Sadhana etc. another time.

Kali ¹

It can be seen from the above letter that there had been a search in the Rue St. Louis house. Sri Aurobindo also refers in it to the escape of Mayuresan to Cuddalore.

On 15 August Sri Aurobindo's birthday was celebrated. Some local people – Sada, Pitrus, David and four others – besides the members of the household, took part in the celebration. Sri Aurobindo sat in a chair in the outer verandah of the new house and all those who had come passed one by one in front of him. Some sweets were distributed.

Once it seemed likely that the French government might yield to the pressure of the British government in the matter of handing over the political refugees. This was a very crucial time for all of them. Subramanya Bharati got very excited and disturbed over the news as was usual with him. One day he came all excited and agitated and asked Sri Aurobindo what he proposed to do in case the French government would not shield them. Bharati asked, "Do you not prefer to go out of India in that case? What is your view?" Sri Aurobindo turned his back to him and sat quietly for a few minutes. He then turned to Bharati and said, "Mr. Bharati! I am not going to budge an inch from Pondicherry. I know nothing will happen to me. As for yourself you can do what you like." After that he sat silent in his chair. Bharati and others dropped the idea of going either to Djibuti, or Indochina or Tripoli, which was in their minds.

In April 1913 Sri Aurobindo changed his residence from St. Louis Street to Mission Street. The rent of the house was Rs.15 per month. The reason of the change was economic stress.

15 August was celebrated in the Mission Street house. Sri Aurobindo was not well on that day, he had fever. But he came

.¹ Sri Aurobindo, Supplement, (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), pp. 426-27.

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out and sat in the verandah and all those who had come passed before him. Moni had composed a Bengali poem which he read. Sri Aurobindo liked it and gave him a garland.

During this year, apparently, Sri Aurobindo translated C. R. Das's Sagar Sangit into English verse. For this the latter sent Rs.1000. V. Ramaswamy (Va-Ra) went back to Tanjore during the year.

In October 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to 41 (afterwards 10), Rue Francois Martin. This house was better lighted and ventilated. Up till this point there had been no furniture worth the name: no bedding, only mats with pillows; only two chairs one of which Sri Aurobindo used while writing and another outside which he used while receiving someone or giving an interview. Only one writing table and one camp-cot were there. The canvas of the camp-cot had been torn on one side, so Sri Aurobindo used to lie down carefully on the untom side and sleep! In 1914 this house became the office of the Arya. Sri Aurobindo remained here up to 1922.

An incident which took place in the new house during November-December is worth noting. A cousin of Bijoy Kumar Nag named Nagen Nag, who was suffering from tuberculosis, came to Pondicherry sometime in the month of July. The doctors had advised him to try a change of climate at the seaside as a stay in the hills had done him no good. Bijoy persuaded him to come to Pondicherry so that he might be near the sea and also profit by Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help. Nagen's coming partly eased the economic strain: they left the old house and hired the one at 41, Rue Francois Martin.

With Nagen Nag had come a servant called Birendranath Roy, who was employed as Nagen's cook. After coming to Pondicherry, Biren became the general manager, cook etc., of Sri Aurobindo's house. Being a Bengali, he became, like the others, a member of the household. One day, after they had been living in 41, Rue Francois Martin for some time, Biren had his head shaved completely. Suresh Chakravarty – alias Moni – took a fancy to give himself a similar complete shave. Generally, Moni was known to be very keen on dressing well and keeping up a good apprearance. Biren tried to dissuade him from shaving himself, but Moni was insistent and carried out his resolve.

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This was, or looked, accidental. But its result was very strange. Biren was in fact a secret agent of the Bengal government. As he had joined Nagen Nag at Khulna there was no chance of any suspicion being aroused against him. Biren wanted to return to Bengal as he had passed six to eight months at Pondicherry. He asked the police department to send a substitute and the new man was expected shortly. The arrangement was that the new man should come to the Magry Hotel to meet Biren. As there were four or five Bengalis living with Sri Aurobindo, Biren had identified himself in a letter as the man with the shaven head. If the new man inquired about Biren, the fact of their being secret agents would perhaps become known!

When Moni got his head shaved, Biren felt sure that all the inmates staying with Sri Aurobindo knew him to be a secret agent, because otherwise Moni would not have shaved his head in spite of his attempt to dissuade him. From that day he became frightened and depressed. He sometimes went for a walk along the seaside with Moni and used to ask his advice as to what he should do, as he did not want to continue staying in Pondicherry. Moni used to tell him to return to Bengal and not be anxious about Nagen. Biren used to conclude from this that Moni was pulling his leg and pretending he did not know him to be a secret agent.

In these early years at Pondicherry there used to be wine-sittings when some friend was generous or when finances permitted. One night there was such a party. All were talking and enjoying themselves at about ten or eleven at night when Biren did something extraordinary. He declared that he wanted to say something quite startling to the company. The atmosphere was rather light. Everyone believed that it would be some joke, and asked him to come out with it. Biren said: I am a C. I .D. man"! No one believed him in the whole company; everyone began to laugh. Biren thought that as they knew the facts already they were only fooling him. So he said, "You do not seem to believe, but I am just going to bring the money I have received." He went down and brought Rs.50. He embraced every one who was present and at last sat down at the feet of Sri Aurobindo and offered him the money. He assured Sri Aurobindo that he had not sent any report against him or anyone else. He was much moved and began to weep. The whole atmosphere changed. Everyone became serious. Sri Aurobindo did not say anything.

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This shows how the atmosphere in those days was full of suspicion and also how great was the number of secret agents in Pondicherry. The way in which Biren's confession came out was a miracle. He remained for some time after this, but he was afraid and used to close the doors of his room while he slept. He went to Bengal after about a month. He went to Mesopotamia during the First World War so that the revolutionaries might not take their revenge on him! He finally left the police department in 1921 or 1922. From 1924 even the occasional taking of wine was given up.

Also in November or December Motilal Roy came to Pondicherry incognito. He remained a month and a half at 10, Rue Francois Martin. He went back by steamer as there was some apprehension that he might be arrested at Madras.

Motilal was sending money to Sri Aurobindo from Chandernagore. It was easy for him to do this from there since both Chandernagore and Pondicherry were French possessions. Durgadas Seth, a moneyed man of Chandernagore, is reported to have given large sums of money to Motilal Roy to send to Sri Aurobindo. Motilal was also publishing all Bengali as well as some English books of Sri Aurobindo.

K. Amrita used to stay in Pondicherry during his school vacations. At one point he got into economic difficulties and had to stop his studies. Sri Aurobindo, in spite of his own difficulties, helped him with money and also used his influence with some well-known people in Madras on Amrita's behalf. Amrita was able to take his matriculation. Sri Aurobindo sometimes used to read to him from Browning, Kalidasa, Shakespeare and the Mahabharata. At times he read his own poem Savitri and his drama Eric.

Moni, Nolini and Saurin went to Bengal in February 1914. They returned in September.

On 29 March 1914 at 3.30 p.m., the Mother met Sri Aurobindo at 10, Rue Francois Martin. Her age at that time was 37. She and Paul Richard, her husband, remained in Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo was persuaded to start a philosophical magazine in order to give to the world his grand synthesis of knowledge and yogic experience in terms of a rational exposition. It was decided to start the review, which was called the Arya, on the fifteenth of August, Sri Aurobindo's birthday.

In order to spread the idea in France, a French edition of Arya,

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subtitled Revue de la Grande Synthèse, was published simultaneously. But the First World War intervened and after seven issues the French magazine was discontinued.

Once Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple about the Arya : "It will be the intellectual side of my work for the world.”^¹In another letter to Dilip Kumar Roy he said : "And philosophy! Let me tell you in confidence that I never, never, never was a philosopher – although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little about philosophy before I did the Yoga and came to Pondicherry – I was a poet and a politician, not a philosopher. How I managed to do it and why? First, because Richard proposed to me to co-operate in a philosophical review – and as my theory was that a Yogi ought to be able to turn his hand to anything, I could not very well refuse; and then he had to go to the war and left me in the lurch with sixty-four pages a month of philosophy all to write by my lonely self. Secondly, because I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically. But that is not being a philosopher!"^²

It is clear from his letter quoted above that the Arya was not written from the intellect though it was written for it. The aim of the Arya as declared by Sri Aurobindo was: "... to feel out for the thought of the future, to help in shaping its foundations and to link it to the best and most vital thought of the past. . . .

"The earth is a world of Life and Matter, but man is not a vegetable nor an animal; he is a spiritual and a thinking being who is set here to shape and use the animal mould for higher purposes, by higher motives, with a more divine instrumentation. .

"The problem of thought therefore is to find out the right idea and the right way of harmony; to restate the ancient and eternal spiritual truth of the Self so that it shall reembrace, permeate and dominate the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion

^¹ Sri Aurobindo, Supplement, p. 456.

^² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 374.

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of its own richness, power and complexity; and to seek for the means and motives by which his external life, his society and his institutions may remould themselves progressively in the truth of the spirit and develop towards the utmost possible harmony of individual freedom and social unity.

"This is our ideal and our search in the Arya . ...

"Philosophy is the intellectual search for the fundamental truth of things; religion is the attempt to make the truth dynamic in the soul of man. They are essential to each other. . . .

"Our first preoccupation in the Arya has therefore been with the deepest thought that we could command on the philosophical foundations of the problem; and we have been so profoundly convinced that without this basis nothing we could say would have any real, solid and permanent value that we have perhaps given too great a space to difficult and abstruse thought whether in the shaping of our own ideas or in the study and restatement of the ancient Eastern knowledge."^¹

Sri Aurobindo used to correct the proofs of the Arya and see that they were dispatched regularly on the fifteenth of every month. The review was printed at the Modem Press, Pondicherry. He used to write out the matter himself, at times composing it straight on the typewriter. Sometimes even at night he would go on typing the articles for the press. '

After August Bijoy Nag started from Pondicherry for Calcutta. At Villupuram he was taken in custody under the Defence of India Act. He was taken to Calcutta and kept in "A" class confinement till the end of the war.

As mentioned previously Moni, Nolini, and Saurin returned in September from Bengal. Saurin was given charge of the Arya office; Moni was managing the house and the kitchen. The Arya office was in the house where the Mother was staying. In the beginning Arya had two hundred subscribers.

During this year the Mother used to come to Sri Aurobindo's house every day between 4 and 4.30 p.m. She brought sweets prepared from coconut. Moni and Nolini and others used to

^¹ Sri Aurobindo, "Our Ideal", Arya , Vol. II, No. 1 (15 August 19.1S), pp. 1-9. (Of the portions given here, all except the first and last are published, in a slightly revised form, in Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings [Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971], p. 308 and pp. 313-14.)

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go to play football at five o'clock. The Mother used to prepare cocoa for Sri Aurobindo. Paul Richard used to come up and join them.

Every Sunday there was a standing invitation to Sri Aurobindo and all the members of the house to have dinner at the Mother's house. Sri Aurobindo used to go to the Mother's house (which was very near) at about 4.30 in the afternoon. The other members of the household joined after coming from the football ground. The talk used to be prolonged up to nine or ten at night.

Money from the sale of Murari Pukur Bagan seems to have reached Sri Aurobindo during this year (1914). A letter was written to Motilal Roy asking him to stop all political activities.

Sri Aurobindo's daily routine during this year was: reading The Hindu at nine o'clock and meeting persons who may have come to see him. Meeting outsiders was the only change from the programme of previous years. Lunch was between 12 and 12.30. In the evening at four o'clock, Bharati came, and at five V. V. S. Aiyar and Srinivasachari came and remained till eight o'clock, by which time Nolini would return from the football ground. The evening meal was taken at nine.

Events from 1913 to 1920 are not available in a very connected form. Whatever has been found is presented here. After 1913, Sri Aurobindo very rarely went out to see people or attend functions. The occasions on which he went out between 1913 and 1920 are as follows: (1) to the house of Joseph David (afterwards Mayor of Pondicherry) on the occasion of his marriage (1914 ?); (2) to David's place on the occasion of his daughter's baptism; (3) on the occasion of the marriage of Sada Oudiyar, a Tamil Christian, who was a supervisor of the jail; (4) to meet one Mr. Shastri, a man of letters, two or three times; (5) to attend the opening ceremony of the "Aryan Stores", 1916; (6) to the house at 2, Line Beach, where Motilal Roy stayed (1920?). After 1920, Sri Aurobindo paid no visits to anyone. In fact, he went out of the house only when he changed his residence.

From 1913 to 1920, Sri Aurobindo was staying in 41, Rue Francois Martin, with four or five young men. In those days, there was no separate bathroom. There was one tap in the open courtyard. The inmates took their bath under the tap. Sri Aurobindo used to take his bath last, a few minutes before lunch.

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The one towel used by the inmates of the house served him also!

During these years, it seems, Sri Aurobindo used to lead his daily life according to some ideal. He used to carry out the dominating ideal in every detail of his life. At one time it was freedom of the individual and democracy. At this time he considered everyone else his equal and acted accordingly. Once his foot touched Amrita's inadvertently. Sri Aurobindo sat up in the chair and said, "I beg your pardon."

Sometimes the proofs of the Arya were delayed because the compositor used to drink. When the proofs arrived late Amrita used to scold him for drinking. Once Sri Aurobindo came out of his room on hearing the talk and said: "You have no right to interfere in his personal life. It is meaningless to advise him. He has perfect freedom to drink. What you should tell him is to observe the terms of the contract and give the proofs regularly." At this time democracy was dominant in his mind. In 1915 the Arya was brought out regularly. On 21 February of this year, the Mother's birthday was celebrated for the first time in Pondicherry. On 22 February, the Mother had to go to France on account of the war.

On 1 September 1915, Prabartak began publication with a view to put Sri Aurobindo's ideals before Bengal. After 1920, when Motilal Roy separated from Sri Aurobindo, it became the mouthpiece of the Samgha at Chandernagore of which Motilal was the leader.

In September 1916 the "Aryan Stores" was opened on Rue Dupliex. The shop was in the Bazar. The capital for it was given by the Mother. Saurin Bose looked after the management. Haradhan Baxi of Chandernagore was now in Pondicherry undergoing military training to join the force in France in the First World War. He used to visit the house and meet Sri Aurobindo. Khaserao Jadhav came to Pondicherry and met Sri Aurobindo. He was put up at the Magry Hotel.

+ + +

The following seven letters written in 1915 and 1916 clearly express the mission that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had in common, the trials they had in their work for humanity, and their unshakeable faith in the ultimate victory.

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LETTERS OF SRI AUROBINDO TO THE MOTHER

All is always for the best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best. ...

The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and still see them. As for failure, difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them to be much impressed by their constant self-presentation except for passing moments. ...

One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and look neither to right nor to left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.^¹

6 May 1915

Heaven we have possessed, but not the earth; but the fullness of the Yoga is to make, in the formula of the Veda, "Heaven and Earth equal and one".^²

20 May 1915

Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks. . . . And if there were not the strength and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work; but the eye of knowledge looks beyond and sees that it is only a protracted episode. ^³

28 July 1915

^¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself , p. 424.

^² Ibid., pp. 424-25.

^³ Ibid., p. 425.

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Nothing seems able to disturb the immobility of things and all that is active outside our own selves is a sort of welter of dark and sombre confusion from which nothing formed or luminous can emerge. It is a singular condition of the world, the very definition of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long disintegration or of some early new birth? It is the thing that is being fought out from day to day, but as yet without any approach to a decision.^¹

16 September 1915

LETTER OF THE MOTHER TO SRI AUROBINDO

The entire consciousness immersed in divine contemplation, the whole being enjoyed a supreme and vast felicity.

Then was the physical body seized, first in its lower members and next the whole of it, by a sacred trembling which made all personal limits fall away little by little even in the most material sensation. The being grew in greatness progressively, methodically, breaking down every barrier, shattering every obstacle that, it might contain and manifest a force and a power which increased ceaselessly in immensity and intensity. It was as a progressive dilatation of the cells until there was a complete identification with the earth: the body of the awakened consciousness was the terrestrial globe moving harmoniously in etheral space. And the consciousness knew that its global body was thus moving in the arms of the universal Being, and it gave itself, it abandoned itself to It in an ecstasy of peaceful bliss. Then it felt that its body was absorbed in the body of the universe and one with it; the consciousness became the consciousness of the universe, immobile in its totality, moving infinitely in its internal complexity. The consciousness of the universe sprang towards the Divine in an ardent aspiration, a perfect surrender, and it saw in the splendour of the immaculate Light the radiant Being standing on a many-headed serpent whose body coiled infinitely around the universe. The Being in an eternal gesture of triumph mastered and created at one and the same time the serpent and the universe

^¹ Ibid. p. 425.

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that issued from him; erect on the serpent he dominated it with all his victorious might, and the same gesture that crushed the hydra enveloping the universe gave it eternal birth. Then the consciousness became this Being and perceived that its form was changing once more; it was absorbed into something which was no longer a form and yet contained all forms, something which, immutable, sees, – the Eye, the Witness. And what It sees, is. Then this last vestige of form disappeared and the consciousness itself was absorbed into the Unutterable, the Ineffable.

The return towards the consciousness of the individual body took place very slowly in a constant and invariable splendour of Light and Power and Felicity and Adoration, by successive gradations, but directly, without passing again through the universal and terrestrial forms. And it was as if the modest corporeal form had become the direct and immediate vesture, without any intermediary, of the supreme and eternal Witness.^¹

26 November 1915

LETTER OF SRI AUROBINDO TO THE MOTHER

The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense, though not one which would easily be recognised by the modem systems of Yoga which call themselves Yogic. It is the union of the "Earth" of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which the world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine.^²

31 December 1915

This letter of 1916 also demonstrates the invincible will which enabled Sri Aurobindo to pursue his yogic sadhana:

The difficulties you find in the spiritual progress are common to us all. In this Yoga the progress is always attended with these

^¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), pp. 471-72.

^² Ibid. p. 384.

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relapses into the ordinary mentality until the whole being is so remoulded that it can no longer be affected either by any downward tendency in our own nature or by the impressions from the discordant world outside or even by the mental state of those associated with us most closely in the Yoga. The ordinary Yoga is usually concentrated on a single aim and therefore less exposed to such recoils; ours is so complex and many-sided and embraces such large aims that we cannot expect any smooth progress until we near the completion of an effort, – especially as all the hostile forces in the spiritual world are in a constant state of opposition and beseige our gains; for the complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among them. In fact by our own unaided effort we could not hope to succeed. It is only in proportion as we come into a more and more universal communion with the Highest that we can hope to overcome with any finality. For myself I have had to come back so often from things that seemed to have been securely gained that it is only relatively that I can say of any part of my Yoga, "It is done." Still I have always found that when I recover from one of these recoils, it is always with a new spiritual gain which might have been neglected or missed if I had remained securely in my former state of partial satisfaction. Especially, as I have long had the map of my advance sketched out before me, I am able to measure my progress at each step and the particular losses are compensated for by the clear consciousness of the general advance that has been made. The final goal is far but the progress made in the face of so constant and massive an opposition is the guarantee of its being gained in the end. But the time is in other hands than ours. Therefore I have put impatience and dissatisfaction far away from me.

An absolute equality of the mind and heart and a clear purity and calm strength in all the members of the being have long been the primary condition on which the power working in me has insisted with an inexhaustible patience and an undeviating constancy of will which rejects all the efforts of other powers to hasten forward to the neglect of these first requisites. Wherever they are impaired it returns upon them and works over and again over the weak points like a workman patiently mending the defects of his work. These seem to me to be the foundation and

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condition of all the rest. As they become firmer and more complete the system is more able to hold consistently and vividly the settled perception of the One in all things and beings, in all qualities, forces, happenings, in all this world-consciousness and the play of its workings. That founds the Unity and upon it the deep satisfaction and growing rapture of the Unity. It is this to which our nature is most recalcitrant. It persists in the division, in the dualities, in the sorrow and unsatisfied passion and labour, it finds it difficult to accustom itself to the divine largeness, joy and equipoise – especially the vital and material parts of our nature; it is they that pull down the mind which has accepted and even when it has long lived in the joy and peace and oneness. That, I suppose, is why the religions and philosophies have had so strong a leaning to the condemnation of Life and Matter and aimed at an escape instead of a victory. But the victory has to be won; the rebellious elements have to be redeemed and transformed, not rejected or excised.

When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of our work is done but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power, – Krishna and Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else, the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali. This is the stage I have reached in spite of all set-backs and recoils, imperfectly indeed in the secureness and intensity of the state, but well enough in the general type. When that has been done, then we may hope to found securely the play in us of his divine Knowledge governing the action of his divine Power. The rest is the full opening up of the different planes of his world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth. To these things towards which in my earlier ignorance I used to press forward impatiently before satisfying the first conditions – the effort, however, was necessary and made the necessary preparation of the material instruments – I can now only look forward as a subsequent eventuality in a yet distant vista of things.

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To possess securely the Light and the Force of the supramental being, this is the main object to which the power is now turning. But the remnant of the old habits of intellectual thought and mental will come so obstinate in their determination to remain that the progress is hampered, uncertain and always falls back from the little achievement already effected. They are no longer within me, they are blind, stupid, mechanical, incorrigible even when they perceive their incompetence, but they crowd round the mind and pour in their suggestions whenever it tries to remain open only to the supramental Light and the higher Command, so that the Knowledge and the Will reach the mind in a confused, distorted and often misleading form. It is, however, only a question of time: the siege will diminish in force and be finally dispelled.^¹

26 June 1916

+ + +

During 1917 the Arya continued its publication regularly. The only other information available regarding this year is this account of an interview with B. Shiva Rao:

"The Home-Rule movement was at that time quickly gathering support and vitality mainly as a result of the internments. Some of us who were on the staff of 'New-India' went out on trips to build up a campaign of organisation. One of these trips took me to Pondicherry where Sri Aurobindo had made his home after leaving Bengal in 1910. Even in those early days there was an atmosphere of great peace and serenity about him which left on me a deep, enduring impression. He spoke softly, almost in whispers. He thought Mrs. Besant was absolutely right in preaching home rule for India, as well as in her unqualified support of the Allies in the First World War against Germany. It was a brief meeting of some minutes' duration. I believe I saw him again some months later. For twenty-five years I had no sort of contact with him but he was gracious enough to remember me, during Sir Stafford Cripps, wartime mission to India in 1942. I was surprised one morning when the negotiations were threatening to reach a deadlock (on the transitional arrangements in

^¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 425-28.

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regard to defence) to receive a message from him for Gandhiji and Sri Nehru: the Cripps' offer, it was his deliberate view, should be accepted unconditionally by the Congress leaders. It is futile to speculate now what India's subsequent fate might have been, if the advice of the sage at Pondicherry had been accepted."^¹

The Arya was published regularly during the year 1918. Chandra Shekhar Ayya, an Andhra intellectual, was staying in Pondicherry and meeting the inmates of the house and Sri Aurobindo.

In 1918 the British government declared the Montague Chelmsford Reforms. Mrs. Besant wrote pressing letters to Sri Aurobindo to give out his opinion about the reforms. He sent an article, but as he had retired outwardly from political activity and did not want his name to be published, the article was signed: "An Indian Nationalist". In the article he described the reforms as "a Chinese puzzle" and "a bulky and imposing shadow".^²

On 17 December 1918 Mrinalini Devi died of influenza.

The author met Sri Aurobindo at the end of December. He had been corresponding with Sri Aurobindo since 1914. Amrita and Moni – Suresh Chakravatry – were in the house during the interview, which covered (1) need of monetary help; (2) the question of Indian independence and permission to start revolutionary action (for Sri Aurobindo's advice see Appendix I); (3) spiritual sadhana.

In 1919 Amrita came to Pondicherry to stay with Sri Aurobindo. When Amrita had come during his vacations from Madras, he and Bijoy Nag, who was staying with Sri Aurobindo, usually spent long hours talking to him. But this did not disturb Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. When he was asked about this he said that outer conditions had ceased to have any influence on his sadhana. His sadhana was not interrupted even when he was writing the Arya; in fact, the writing was a part of his yoga.

Saurin Bose who had gone to Bengal did not return – he as well as Nolini Kanta Gupta got married in 1919. The "Aryan Stores", of which Saurin had been in charge, was sold to Partha Sarathy Chetty. (He wound up the business in 1932.)

. ^¹ B. Shiva Rao, "Early Days of Journalism", The Hindu, 10 May 1959.

.^² Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), P. 433. .

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Sometimes during 1919 and 1920 Sri Aurobindo used to get an irritation in the right eye, which became red. Those who stayed with him attributed this trouble to the cigars which he smoked in those days. One day at eight o'clock in the evening the eye was swollen. Sri Aurobindo told the inmates of the house that the swelling would go down after two hours. Then, as was usual with him, he began walking to and fro and meditating. After two hours the eye was normal. He always believed that the swelling had nothing to do with smoking – at least in his case.

Once, some years later, the person who was managing one of the two houses then occupied included cigars on the list of necessary articles. This was brought to Sri Aurobindo's notice. He said that oil, soap and similar articles (besides food) might be considered necessities, but that a cigar was not a necessity. Cigars were taken off the list. In 1926 Sri Aurobindo gave up at one effortless stroke his habit of smoking.

In 1919 Mukul Chandra De, who afterwards became Principal of the Calcutta School of Art, came to Pondicherry and met Sri Aurobindo. He took sittings for four days in order to draw a portrait. The result was not very successful.

On 5 January 1920 Sri Aurobindo replied to a letter of Joseph Baptista. Baptista was a well-known barrister of Bombay and one of the leaders of Tilak's nationalist party. After 1907 the nationalist party had been growing stronger every year and at the end of 1919 it was decided to bring out a paper from Bombay. Following Tilak's advice, the Socialist Democratic Party of Bombay invited Sri Aurobindo, through Baptista, to accept the editorship of the paper. The idea was that this position would afford Sri Aurobindo an opportunity to return to politics, and thus the nationalist party would get his valuable support. It was well known in nationalist circles that Tilak and Sri Aurobindo had the same political ideology so far as the question of Indian freedom was concerned. The reply of Sri Aurobindo is reproduced here in full.

Pondicherry: 1910-1926

Jan. 5, 1920

Dear Baptista,

Your offer is a tempting one, but I regret that I cannot answer it in the affirmative. It is due to you that I should state

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explicitly my reasons. In the first place I am not prepared at present to return to British India. This is quite apart from any political obstacle. I understand that up to last September the Government of Bengal (and probably the government of Madras also) were opposed to my return to British India and that practically this opposition meant that if I went back I should be interned or imprisoned under one or other of the beneficent Acts which are apparently still to subsist as helps in ushering in the new era of trust and cooperation. I do not suppose other Governments would be any more delighted by my appearance in their respective provinces. Perhaps the King's Proclamation may make a difference but that is not certain since, as I read it, it does not mean an amnesty but an act of gracious concession and benevolence limited by the discretion of the Viceroy. Now I have too much work on my hands to waste my time in the leisured ease of an in; voluntary Government guest. But even if I were assured of an entirely free action and movement, I should yet not go just now. I came to Pondicherry in order to have freedom and tranquillity for a fixed object having nothing to do with present politics – in which I have taken no direct part since my coming here, though what I could do for the country in my own way I have constantly done, – and until it is accomplished, it is not possible for me to resume any kind of public activity. But if I were in British India, I should be obliged to plunge at once into action of different kinds. Pondicherry is my place of retreat, my cave of tapasya, not of the ascetic kind, but of a brand of my own invention. I must finish that, I must be internally armed and equipped for my work before I leave it.

Next in the matter of the work itself, I do not at all look down on politics or political action or consider I have got above them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and intention of political activity would differ considerably from anything now current in the field. I entered into political action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for free-

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Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry

The Mother

Sri Aurobindo

-dom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. That is now done and the Amritsar Congress is the seal upon it. The will is not as practical and compact nor by any means as organised and sustained in action as it should be, but there is the will and plenty of strong and able leaders to guide it. I consider that in spite of the inadequacy of the Reforms, the will to self-determination, if the country keeps its present temper, as I have no doubt it will, is bound to prevail before long. What preoccupies me now is the question what it is going to do with its self-determination, how will it use its freedom, on what lines is it going to determine its future?

You may ask why not come out and help, myself, so far as I can, in giving a lead? But my mind has a habit of running inconveniently ahead of the times, – some might say, out of time altogether into the world of the ideal. Your party, you say, is going to be a social democratic party. Now I believe in something which might be called social democracy, but not in any of the forms now current, and I am not altogether in love with the European kind, however great an improvement it may be on the past. I hold that India having a spirit of her own and a governing temperament proper to her own civilisation, should in politics as in everything else strike out her own original path and not stumble in the wake of Europe. But this is precisely what she will be obliged to do, if she has to start on the road in her present chaotic and unprepared condition of mind. No doubt people talk of India developing on her own lines, but nobody seems to have very clear or sufficient ideas as to what those lines are to be. In this matter I have formed ideals and certain definite ideas of my own, in which at present very few are likely to follow me, – since they are governed by an uncompromising Spiritual idealism of an unconventional kind and would be unintelligible to many and an offence and stumbling-block to a great number. But I have not as yet any clear and full idea of the practical lines: I have no formed programme. In a word, I am feeling my way in my mind and am not ready for either propaganda or action. Even if I were, it would mean for some time ploughing my lonely furrow or at least freedom to take my own way. As the editor of your paper, I should be bound to voice the opinion of others and reserve my own, and while I have

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full sympathy with the general ideas of the advanced parties so far as concerns the action of the present moment and, if I were in the field, would do all I could to help them, I am almost incapable by nature of limiting myself in that way, at least to the extent that would be requisite.

Excuse the length of this script. I thought it necessary to explain fully so as to avoid giving you the impression that I declined your request from any affectation or reality of spiritual aloofness or wish to shirk the call of the country or want of sympathy with the work you and others are so admirably doing. I repeat my regret that I am compelled to disappoint you.

Yours sincerely,

Aurobindo Ghose¹

On 7 April Sri Aurobindo wrote, in Bengali, the letter known as Pondicherir Patra to his brother Barin. Barin had been released from the Andamans in 1919, after the armistice, and had written to Sri Aurobindo, asking several questions and stating some of his own views. The reply clarifies many points. Relevant passages from the letter are given in translation below.

April 7, 1920.

Dear Barin,

First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti, whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special way which He has given to me, the way which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in many directions, a touching, taking up, handling, scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas. . . .

Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me the complete directions of my path – its complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. . . .

¹. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 429-31.

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The Brahman, the Self, God are always there. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and in the community, to realise God in life. ...

If we cannot rise above, that is, to the supramental level, it is hardly possible to know the last secret of the world and the problem it raises remains unsolved. . . . The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda – these are the spirit's five levels. The higher we rise on this ascent the nearer to man comes the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.

This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this Siddhi is complete, then I am absolutely certain that God will through me give to others the Siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in God's appointed time. I have no impulse to make any unbalanced haste and rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but God's. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me, then I will move.

I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. Still this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras, extracting their essence and fertilising with it the soil. At first it was the turn of Vedanta – Adwaita, Sannyasa, Shankara's Maya and the rest. What is now in process is the turn of the Vaishnava Dharma – the Lila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure – for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning

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to life; but since it is a partial Bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. It is the nature of the mind to take the part and call it the whole and to exclude all the other parts. The Siddha who brings the Bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying their bundles; let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as there may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning. . . .

What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Sangha, founded in the spirit and an image of its oneness. . . .

You may say, what need is there of a sangha? Let me be free and live in every vessel; let all become one without form and let whatever must be take place in the midst of that vast formlessness. There is a truth here, but only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the formless Spirit only; we have to direct also the motion of life. And there can be no effective movement of life without form. It is the Formless that has taken form and that assumption of name and form is not a caprice of Maya. Form is there because it is indispensable. We do not want to rule out any activity of the world as beyond our province. Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art will all remain, but we must give them a new soul and a new form. . . .

People now talk of spiritualising politics. The result of this will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianised Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms – the water of the causal ocean into raw vessels – either that raw thing will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape

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and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama – so long as that life and that power remains. But what we want in the Temple of India is not Hanuman, but the god, the Avatar Rama himself.

We can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path, keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain everywhere individually, something will be done indeed; but if we remain everywhere as parts of a Sangha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Sangha will be at first in unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places. Afterwards, they will form something like a spiritual commune and make a compact Sangha. They will then give all their work a shape according to the demand of the spirit and the need of the age – not a bound and rigid form, not an acalāvatana,^¹but a free form which will spread out like the sea, mould itself into many waves and surround a thing here, overflood a thing there and finally take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in God's hands; whatever He makes us do, that we shall do. . . .

You write about the Deva Sangha and say, "I am not a God, am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron." . . . No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. ...

I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God. ...

1 am not going back to Bengal now, not because Bengal is not ready, but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes amid the unripe what can he do? ^²

Your Sejdada ^³

.^¹ “The Fossilised House" or "The Home of Conservatism" - name of a play by Rabindranath Tagore.

^² A Letter of Sri Aurobindo, Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No. 3 (August 1962), pp. ii-xxii (slightly edited).

^³ Elder brother

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These two letters written early in 1920 – one to Baptista and one to Barin – serve to clarify Sri Aurobindo's life-mission as it was then taking shape in his consciousness.

During the year 1920 it became customary for the inmates of the house and also a few outsiders to come and sit with Sri Aurobindo between 4.00 and 4.30 in the evening. He used to come out at his convenience. During the sitting general talk took place without any formality, on some public event, an article in the paper or a point concerning sadhana. At times humorous and light topics also came up. Some evenings were full of a natural silence verging on meditation.

On 24 April 1920 the Mother returned to Pondicherry. She stayed at first in the Magry Hotel, then moved to Subbu's hotel on Rue St. Louis near Rue St. Martin, and later to a house at 1, Rue St. Martin.

On 15 August the Standard Bearer, a weekly journal, was started by the Prabartak Samgha of Chandernagore. It was discontinued after a few years of somewhat irregular publication.

Sometime after September Nolini and Moni went to Bengal. Sri Aurobindo went to see them off at the station. There had been an inner upheaval in the house after the Mother's arrival.

On 24 November there was a great tempest with heavy rainfall. Water began to leak through the roof of the house on Rue St. Martin where the Mother was living. The rains did not abate. In the early part of the evening the roof of a godown on Rue d'Orleans collapsed due to heavy percolation of water into the roof. Sri Aurobindo, who had heard about the leakage at the Mother's house, said that she should remove to 41, Rue Francois Martin – the house where he was staying – as a precautionary measure. The removal began at eight in the evening and went on until midnight. A few articles which remained in the old house were taken the next morning. From that time the Mother always stayed in the same house as Sri Aurobindo. It was on the same day – 24 November – six years later that Sri Aurobindo attained siddhi in his sadhana. The day seems to be as significant as his own birthday, the fifteenth of August.

Towards the end of 1920, in response to the request of a Chandernagore journal, the Mother wrote these lines under the title "How I Became Conscious of My Mission":

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"When and how did I become conscious of a mission which I was to fulfil on earth? And when and how I met Sri Aurobindo?

"These two questions you have asked me and I promised a short reply.

"For the knowledge of the mission, it is difficult to say when it came to me. It is as though I were born with it, and following the growth of the mind and brain, the precision and completeness of this consciousness grew also.

"Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment, was given to me during my body's sleep by several teachers some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane.

"Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded, the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and frequent; and although I knew little of the Indian philosophies and religions at that time I was led to call him Krishna, and henceforth I was aware that it was with him (whom I knew I should meet on earth one day) that the divine work was to be done.

"In the year 1910 my husband came alone to Pondicherry where, under very interesting and peculiar circumstances he made the acquaintance of Sri Aurobindo. Since then we both strongly wished to return to India – the country which I had always cherished as my true mother-country. And in 1914 this joy was granted to us.

"As soon as 'I saw Sri Aurobindo I recognised in him the well-known being whom I used to call Krishna. . . . And this is enough to explain why I am fully convinced that my place and my work are near him, in India."^¹

There were a number of notable visitors during 1920 and thereabouts. S. Duraiswami lyer, J. Nambiar and Mrinalini Chattopadhyaya came in 1919 or 1920. Mrinalini introduced the Mother to the sari. From that time the Mother began to wear

^¹ The Mother, "How I Became Conscious of My Mission", Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre a/Education, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 (February 1976), p. 14.

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it regularly. Towards the end of 1920 W. W. Pearson came from Shantiniketan and met the Mother; at about the same time James B. Cousins came and met the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. In 1920 Dr. Munje, the Congress leader, came to Pondicherry and stayed as Sri Aurobindo's guest. He had long talks with Sri Aurobindo on current Indian politics. Barin Ghose came in 1920 and Ullaskar Dutt, who had, like Barin, been sentenced to death by the sessions judge at Alipore, but later given life imprisonment and ultimately released, came in 1920 or 1921. Abinash Bhattacharya, Sri Aurobindo's co-worker during the Bande Mataram days, who also had been convicted at Alipore, came and stayed for a month or more. Finally, Amarendranath Chatterji of Uttarpara, who had been initiated into the revolutionary organisation by Sri Aurobindo, came in the summer of 1920 or 1921.

Amar was now a wanted man. For some time he had been travelling incognito all over India as the leader of a group of sannyasis. His assumed name was Swami Kevalananda. When he came to 41, Rue Francois Martin, Hrishikesh (later known as Vishuddhananda Giri), Motilal Roy, Rameshwar De, Natwardas, Amrita, Barin, Datta (Miss Hodgson) and the Mother, whom Amar did not meet, were staying in the house. Amar had long matted hair and carried iron tongs and a staff. He was unrecognisable. After some time he took Natwardas aside and revealed his identity to him in a low tone. When Motilal learned that it was Amar he rushed up to him, embraced him and took him upstairs where Sri Aurobindo was staying. Precautions had to be taken so that the other sadhus would not find out what was going on.

In the revolutionary days Sri Aurobindo had given Amar the name "Gabriel". Motilal told Sri Aurobindo that Gabriel had come. "Good Heavens!" was Sri Aurobindo's response. All of them sat down to talk. For some time Sri Aurobindo had been receiving reports from Tanjore, Tiruchirapalli and other places that some Panjabi sadhus had been preaching his ideas and philosophy. He had been at a loss to know who these Panjabi sadhus could be. Now the question was solved. The sadhus were put up in a Dharamsala and that night Amar dined in Sri Aurobindo's house. Sri Aurobindo told Amar not to resume his revolutionary activities. He and his companions departed the next morning.

In January 1921 the Arya ceased publication. Only five issues of the seventh volume (including one for both November and

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December 1920) came out.

During the winter of 1921 Vattel, a cook who had been dismissed from service in Sri Aurobindo's house, decided to make the place too hot for Sri Aurobindo to stay in. He enlisted the help of a Mahomedan fakir who, using some process of black magic, caused stones to fall inside the house. The incident is described by Sri Aurobindo himself:

"The stone-throwing began unobtrusively with a few stones thrown at the guest-house kitchen – apparently from the terrace opposite, but there was no one there. The phenomenon began at the fall of dusk and continued at first for half an hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and the size of the stones, and the duration of the attack increased also, sometimes lasting for several hours until, towards the end, in the hour or half hour before midnight, it became a regular bombardment; and now it was no longer at the kitchen only but thrown in other places as well: for example, the outer verandah. At first we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police, but the investigation lasted only for a short time and when one of the constables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his two legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic. We made our own investigations, but the places whence the stones seemed to be or might be coming were void of human stone-throwers, Finally, as if to put us kindly out of doubt, the stones began falling inside closed rooms; one of these – it was a huge one and I saw it immediately after it fell – reposed flat and comfortable on a cane table as if that was its proper resting place. And so it went on till the missiles became murderous. Hitherto the stones had been harmless except for a daily battering of Bijoy's door – during the last days – which I watched the night before the end. They appeared in mid-air, a few feet above the ground, not coming from a distance but suddenly manifesting and, from the direction from which they flew, should have been thrown close in from the compound of the guest-house or the verandah itself, but the whole place was in clear light and I saw that there was no human being there nor could have been. At last the semi-idiot boy servant who was the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bijoy's room under his protection, began to be severely hit and was bleeding from a wound by stones materialising inside the closed room. I went in at Bijoy's call and saw the last

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stone fall on the boy: Bijoy and he were sitting side by side and the stone was thrown at them in front but there was no one visible to throw it – the two were alone in the room. So unless it was Well's Invisible Man !

"So far we had only been watching or scouting around, but this was a little too much, it was becoming dangerous and something had to be done about it. The Mother, from her knowledge of the process of these things, decided that the process here must depend on a nexus between the boy servant and the house, so if the nexus were broken and the servant separated from the house, the stone-throwing would cease. We sent him away to Hrishikesh's place and immediately the whole phenomenon ceased; not a single stone was thrown after that and peace reigned."^¹

The phenomenon was witnessed by Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Bijoy, Amrita, Satyen, Hrishikesh Kanjilal and Upendranath Bannerji. Upen, who did not believe in the existence of occult forces or in the possibility of materialisation, went out on the terrace with a lantern and a lathi looking for the persons responsible for the stone-throwing. He found no one and the stones went on falling without interruption.

In the year 1921 collective meditation was begun. At four in the evening the inmates of the house sat with Sri Aurobindo on the verandah of 41, Rue Francois Martin.

Motilal Roy came to Pondicherry in 1921. He had remained in Chandernagore after taking his spiritual initiation from Sri Aurobindo there in 1910. Between 1910 and 1916 he rendered financial assistance to Sri Aurobindo. People from Calcutta, Uttarpara, Falta and East Bengal who were sympathetic to revolutionary nationalism or who had a regard for Sri .Aurobindo found it easy to render economic help through Motilal. They contacted him and he remitted the sums to Sri Aurobindo. After 1914 a centre of collective life under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo, called the Prabartak Samgha, had taken form around Motilal. All Bengali books and many English books connected with Sri Aurobindo as well as the two journals Prabartak and The Standard Bearer were being published by the Prabartak Samgha.

Motilal and others had been expecting that when Sri Aurobindo

^¹ Dilip Kumar Roy, Among the Great (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1950), pp. 337-39: See Appendix II, pp. 306-08.

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returned to British India to start his work in the external field he would make Bengal his centre of operations. It seemed natural that he would begin his work from the centre at Chandernagore. Sri Aurobindo would be the knowledge-aspect and Motilal the practical or Karma-aspect.

Sri Aurobindo called Motilal to Pondicherry for intense spiritual sadhana in order to bring about the transformation of his nature. Motilal seems to have stayed at 2, Line Beach; Sri Aurobindo made one of his rare visits outside his house to visit Motilal at this place. During his stay in Pondicherry Motilal was apprehensive that the Samgha which he had started would not be able to carry on in his absence. Motilal, it may be said, had great attraction for and attachment to his work. While he was in Pondicherry he received letters from Chandernagore, especially from his disciple Arun Chandra Dutt, urging him to return. The question of whether he should return became acute as 15 August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo, approached. Where should he celebrate the fifteenth, in Pondicherry or in Chandernagore? Motilal asked Sri Aurobindo what he should do. Sri Aurobindo told him to look within himself and get the inner guidance. After a few days Motilal had an experience in which he saw a black form of himself attacking him. When he met Sri Aurobindo he asked him the significance of the experience. Sri Aurobindo told him that the significance was clear.

Motilal and his wife, who had come to Pondicherry with him, were in a fix. They could not decide whether they should go to Chandernagore or not. Then a telegram from Arun Chandra arrived: "Come immediately otherwise eternal separation." Motilal was very disturbed. It was the night of 10 August. There was no possibility of seeing Sri Aurobindo. Motilal wrote a letter to him and left by the night train to Chandernagore.

The author came to Pondicherry in March 1921. At that time he asked Sri Aurobindo about the outer form that his work would take. He told the author, "I have not yet arrived at the final aspect of the external work. But if you want to have some idea, you may see the work that is being done in Chandernagore by some people under my inspiration. I send my help to the leaders from here." Following Sri Aurobindo's suggestion the author visited Chandernagore on 15 August 1921 and met Moti Babu. Sri Aurobindo, in response to a request from Motilal, had sent

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his blessings in the form of a telegram: "Wishing you descent of Truth and Light." During his interview with Moti Babu the author mentioned that he had been asked by Sri Aurobindo to get an idea of the form of his work from the Samgha at Chandernagore. Motilal told the author, "Whenever I concentrate I see three lights like electric bulbs. I work with the help of the inspiration of this Light." He told him also that there had been a spiritual difference between himself and Sri Aurobindo.

Motilal's departure from Pondicherry was not the only cause of difficulties. He was one of those who did not like the changeover of the Mother, a foreigner, to the house at 41, Rue Francois Martin, although it may be that he was not conscious of his dislike at that time. Those were days of great spiritual upheavals.

The inner spiritual connection between the Chandernagore centre and Sri Aurobindo was gradually cut off. In later years Motilal tried three or four times to obtain an interview with him, but Sri Aurobindo, not seeing any real change in Motilal, never granted his request. "Commune, Culture and Commerce" became the motto of the Prabartak Samgha. Whatever spirituality there may be in the organisation owes its origin to Sri Aurobindo, but the present Prabartak Samgha is the creation of Motilal Roy and his associates. This explanation is considered necessary because the Prabartak Samgha is a well-known organisation in Bengal.

In 1926 a sadhak asked Sri Aurobindo apropos of the Sangha, "When you spoke of vital forces coming in the way of the Supramental work, I suppose you had in mind the work at Chandernagore?' Is that true?" Sri Aurobindo replied to him:

"At that time I had some construction in my mind. Of course there was something behind it which I knew to be true. Even then I was not sure that it would work out successfully. Anyway, I wanted to give it a trial and so I gave it to Motilal. He took up the idea and, as you know, he took it up with all his vital being and in an egoistic way and so the vital forces found their chance. They tried to take possession of the work. As I told you it is only after several such lessons that I had to give up the idea of rushing into work. This yoga is not a cut-out system. It is a growth by experience and one has to grow by experience."^¹

.^¹ Cf. A. B. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1959), p. 186.

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In 1921 Arun Chandra Dutt of Chandernagore came to Pondicherry. He stayed for some months at 41, Rue Francois Martin. Sri Aurobindo's sister Sarojini came with Sudhamayi Sen and Pratap Sen the same year. Sri Aurobindo went to the station to receive them. He gave Sarojini publication rights to his book War and Self-Determination in order to help her financially. Another visitor this year was Kumud Bandhu Bagchi of Calcutta. He was a sadhak who later became an advocate. A photograph of Sri Aurobindo, Bagchi and Amrita was taken. Two other sadhaks, Kodanda Ram Aiyya from Andhra and Ramchandran, a Tamilian, came and stayed in Pondicherry at their own expense, keeping in touch with Sri Aurobindo. Other visitors were Mrinalini Chattopadhyaya, Kamala Devi Chatto-padhyaya and Rameshwar De. Sarala Devi Chowdhurani and Colonel Joshua Wedgewood, a member of Parliament, came to Pondicherry and met Sri Aurobindo sometime between 1921 and 1926.

There was once some complaint about the food – especially about its taste. When the matter was taken to Sri Aurobindo he said to the sadhak: "You should have no preference for food of a particular taste. There is no truth in such preferences and demands. You have a body, and you have to keep it in good condition. Lower quality or kind of food would be harmful to the health of the body, therefore you should take good food. But good food means food necessary for the body – not what the tongue likes." Sri Aurobindo himself took whatever food was given to him. He never said anything about its taste. The cooking, in those days, was done by Paria cooks and the food often used to taste terrible. Sometimes one of the inmates would remark after a meal, "Today there was no salt in the curry." Sri Aurobindo would answer, "Yes, today there was no salt." It is not that he was not aware of the taste, but that he had by sadhana cultivated perfect samata, equality, even in his sense ot taste. He used to say that it was possible, to experience equal delight – sama ananda – from all kinds of tastes.

During 1921 the daily routine was as follows: a breakfast of tea, three slices of toast and butter at 7.00; before 11.30 everyone to take his bath, Sri Aurobindo taking his after all the others; lunch between 11.30 and 12.30; afternoon tea, prepared by the inmates of the house in turn, at 3.30; dinner, generally consisting

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of fish curry, rice, curd and bread, at 9.30. On 1 January 1922 the Mother took entire charge of the management of Sri Aurobindo's house, including the kitchen. There was a complete change in the routine. Arrangements were made upstairs for Sri Aurobindo's bath.

During 1922 a visitor from Bhavnagar named Narandas Sangani came to Pondicherry and asked for an appointment to meet Sri Aurobindo. He had brought some fruits as an offering. Sri Aurobindo could not find time to see him. The visitor became very angry. He began mixing with the secret police agents and tried to spread false rumours about Sri Aurobindo and the inmates of the house. He even tried threats, but ultimately departed. He went to Raman Maharshi at Tiruvanamalai and asked him about meat-eating, with particular reference to Sri Aurobindo. The Maharshi rarely replied to questions put to him by casual visitors, but to Narandas he said, "It is only a question of habit and custom."

In July 1922, in a letter sent through Amrita, Sri Aurobindo stated that he would not remain in Pondicherry for more than two years. The idea that he would be going back to British India was still current in the house.

In September or October Sri Aurobindo changed his residence from 41, Rue Francois Martin to 9, Rue de la Marine. After this time 41, Rue Francois Martin was called the "Guest House" On 18 November a letter was written to C. R. Das.

During 1922 the fissure between the Prabartak Samgha and Sri Aurobindo had grown wider. In 1923 there were further differences over the question whether Supennind can be attained by following the movement of Nature. Motilal Roy sent a letter with Arun Chandra Dutt asking for an interview.' There was no tangible result of this.

Sri Aurobindo told the author in 1923: "I myself got the idea of the Supramental after ten years of sadhana. The Supramental does not come in the beginning but at the end of sadhana. It is a progressive Truth."

In April a letter was sent to Barin at the sadhana-centre which he had set up in Bhawanipore. The letter dealt with management of the centre and the sadhana of its members. There were some suggestions for collecting funds. The same month a letter was sent to Rajani Kanta Palit about the illness of his child Rothin and about Palit's own sadhana.

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The informal talks in the evening with Sri Aurobindo, which had begun in the house at 41, Rue Francois Martin, continued in the new house.

"When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to 9, Rue de la Marine in 1922 the same routine of informal evening sittings after meditation continued. The author came to Pondicherry for Sadhana in the beginning of 1923. He kept notes on the important talks he had with the four or five disciples who were already there. Besides, the author used to take detailed notes of the evening talks which we all had with the Master. They were not intended by him to be noted down. The author took them down because of the importance he felt about everything connected with him, no matter how insignificant to the outer view. The author also felt that everything he did would acquire for those who would come to know his mission a very great significance.

"As years passed the evening sittings went on changing their time and often those disciples who came from outside for a temporary stay for sadhana were allowed to join them. And, as the number of sadhaks practising the yoga increased, the evening sittings also became more full, the small verandah upstairs in the main building was found insufficient. Members of the household would gather every day at the fixed time with some sense of expectancy and start chatting in low tones. Sri Aurobindo used to come last and it was after his coming that the session would really commence.

"He came dressed as usual in dhoti, part of which was used by him to cover the upper part of his body. Very rarely he came out with chaddar or shawl and then it was 'in deference to the climate', as he sometimes put it. At times for minutes he would be gazing at the sky from a small opening at the top of the grass-curtains that covered the verandah of the upstairs in 9, Rue de la Marine. How much these sittings were dependent on him may be gathered from the fact that there were days when more than three-fourths of the time passed in complete silence without any outer suggestion from him, or there was only an abrupt Yes or No to all attempts at drawing him out in conversation. And even when he participated in the talk one always felt that his voice was that of one who does not let his whole being flow into his words; there was a reserve and what was left unsaid was perhaps

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more than what was spoken. What was spoken was what he felt necessary to speak:

"Very often some news-item in the daily newspaper, town gossip, or some interesting letter received either by him or by a disciple, or a question from one of the group, occasionally some remark or query from himself would set the ball rolling for the talk. The whole thing was so informal that one could never predict the turn the conversation would take. The whole house therefore was in a mood to enjoy the freshness and the delight of meeting the unexpected. There were peals of laughter and light talk, jokes and criticism which might be called personal – there was seriousness and earnestness in abundance.

"These sittings, in fact, furnished Sri Aurobindo with an occasion to admit and feel the outer atmosphere and that of the group living with him. It brought to him the much-needed direct contact of the mental and vital make-up of the disciples, enabling him to act on the atmosphere in general and on the individual in particular. He could thus help to remould their mental makeup by removing the limitations of their minds and opinions, and correct temperamental tendencies and formations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere amenable to the working of the Higher Consciousness. Far more important than the actual talk and its content was the personal contact, the influence of the Master, and the divine atmosphere he emanated; for through his outer personality it was the Divine Consciousness that he allowed to act. All along behind the outer manifestation that appeared human, there was the influence and presence of the Divine."^¹

1923

9 April. Talk about the political situation and village reconstruction.

11 April. Talk with K. Rajangam about sadhana.

13 April. Talk about Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, about Lele's gurubhai

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, Second Series, pp. 9-11. [Added to this edition of The Life of Sri Aurobindo by the editors]

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(co-disciple) Narayan Swami and about the Duttatraya Yoga. Sri Aurobindo described his own experience at Baroda with Lele.

14 April. Suggestions about sadhana; a letter from Natwarlal Bharatia of Surat; conversation about suggestion, intuition and inspiration: the difference of the three functions. A letter to Barin.

17 April. W. W. Pearson came from Shantiniketan. Talk about Shantiniketan.

19 April. Talk on non-violence and Hindu-Muslim unity.

20 April. Talk with the agents of the Prabartak Publishing House, Chandernagore, and the Arya Publishing House, Calcutta. These two firms were handling the publication of Sri Aurobindo's books.

22 April. Suggestions about sadhana. Talk on the Prabartak Samgha and Motilal Roy.

26 April. A letter from Bepin Chandra Pal to Sri Aurobindo about poetry.

27 April. Remarks on a letter of Lele to Natwarlal Bharatia.

28 April. Talk about the Ramakrishna Mission in America and about spirituality and the external world; suggestions about sadhana.

30 April. A letter from the Arunchala Mission of Bengal.

2 May. Talk on the Prabartak Samgha.

8 May. Talk on the Bardoli programme.

13 May. A letter to Motilal Roy; talk on the letter; a letter from Barin; an article by Upen Bannerji in the Bijoli.

15 May. Talk on communism in Russia.

16 May. Talk about Nevinson's impression of Sri Aurobindo; letter from Robert Bridges to Sri Aurobindo, asking him to recommend the Reforms for acceptance. Talk on K. G. Deshpande's Sadhakashram at Andheri.

18 May. An article by G. V. Subha Rao in the Swaraj of Madras comparing Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo.

20 May. Talk on Theosophy; a letter from Barin: meeting of Barin and Motilal.

26 May. Suggestions about sadhana; reading of the photographs of prospective sadhaks; talk on the conditions for the descent of the supermind; samatā and hold on life; relation between guru and disciple; the grace of the guru:

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Question: "Is there anything like grace – what is called ahaitukī krpā? Can the personal side of the guru dispense Divine Grace?"

Sri Aurobindo: "It depends upon who is the guru. You don't mean to say that the personal side of the guru decides what is to be given to the disciple voluntarily and independently of the Divine? Even when it appears to take that form it is something else that decides the thing. . . . All your idea of patita-pāvana and adhama uddhāra means only this: however bad or seemingly wicked the external life may be, yet the man can be saved if he has something in him which can receive the Truth."^¹

30 May. A dream experience of Sri Aurobindo:

"Some dreams have got meaning down to their very details. . . . "There was a scientist and a magician and they both wanted to rescue a girl from alien enemies. The magician was the psychic and mental man who knows the truth but does not know the concretisation of the same. He has the grasp of the spirit but not the process and details.

"First the magician tried to save the girl. He failed. Then the scientist tried. He found himself baffled by the opponents as they (the Dasyus – powers of the vital plane) were not struck down by the blows of the sword or anything else. They were all going to some King's capital. Then they fled and the girl disappeared. The scientist was a geologist who had made the discovery that the strata of the earth must be measured from the top and not from the bottom.

"When the enemies fled they left their things behind and did not like to go to the capital wounded.

"The scientist then found, among things left, a big book on geology – half as big as the room! – and he found the girl just behind the cover and the pages!

"Thus the secret of earth, the physical nature, was symbolically given.”^²

1 June. Talk about being on the vital plane and about the visit of the Prince of Wales to India. Sri Aurobindo's remarks on Britain's offer to the Congress.

5 June. Visit of C. R. Das. Das had an interview with Sri Aurobindo at 3.30; the Prabartak Samgha, Motilal Roy, the

^¹ Cf. Ibid., pp. 94-96.

² Cf. Ibid., pp. 208-09.

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present political situation and Das's own spiritual life were the main topics of conversation. There was also some talk about the Swarajya Party: Sri Aurobindo gave his support to the formation of the party. Sri Aurobindo was ready to help Das in his spiritual life, if Das was willing to leave politics and devote himself exclusively to sadhana. As Das was not able to take up that course, Sri Aurobindo advised him to continue his political work and attend at the same time to his spiritual life as much as he could.

10 June. Translation of Vedic riks. In the evening talk on the Veda, Sri Aurobindo said: "I wrote The Secret of the Veda in a great hurry and it requires a revision. If I had not written it under the pressure of the Arya I would not have written it at all. I had to work much through my intuition and it was not easy to make it work."

12 June. Talk on the Maruts, the storm-gods of the Veda, and on Agni, the divine Flame. Sri Aurobindo read some riks.

13 June. Talk on the Duttatreya Yoga, a system current in Maharashtra, and on Mahatma Gandhi.

18 and 19 June. Talks on Jain philosophy and the physical sciences.

20 June. Sri Aurobindo spoke about some of his own spiritual experiences and about some of the Mother's experiences.

23 June. Talk on non-violence and on self-purification.

26 June. Talk on Hindu-Muslim unity; non-violence; vegetarian and meat diets.

1 August. Meeting with Arun Chandra Dutt.

2 August. A letter from Motilal Roy was read out. There was talk about it.

5 August. Talk on samatā.

6 August. When asked about celebrating the fifteenth August Sri Aurobindo said: "What is the significance of the fifteenth? I want to make it as ordinary as any other day. What has it to do with the stomach? It has an inner significance, and if there is a way of celebrating it in a fitting manner I have no objection. I do not want any sort of vital manifestation on that day, especially after I have taken a new turn in yoga."

7 August. Ramji Hansraj of Amreli came and met Sri Aurobindo. Talk on true and false intuition.

8 August. Velji Thakersi Shah of Bidada, Cutch, met Sri

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Aurobindo. Talk on non-violence and Ireland.

9 August. Gokuldas of Cutch met Sri Aurobindo. Talk on personal aim in works and spiritual action; comment about celebrating the fifteenth August: "It is by living the Truth that we can celebrate it."

14 August. Motilal Mehta of Bombay met Sri Aurobindo.

15 August. Barada Charan, a yogi of Bengal, had an experience involving Sri Aurobindo. Talk about celebrating the fifteenth August. The food was as usual. Remarks on the difficulty of the supramental descent into the physical. Evening talk on the Supermind.

20 August. Barin arrived from Calcutta. Talk about the Bhawanipore centre, the Bijoli newspaper and collecting money.

12 September. Talk on Islamic culture.

25 September. A telegram from C. R. Das asking for a message for the Forward; a letter from Sri Aurobindo giving three reasons why he would not give the message: (1) he had to keep silent over public questions and did not want to make an exception as it would begin a new line, (2) other papers might make similar requests and (3) there would be a disturbance to the silent help he was giving to the Swarajya Party.

28 September. Talk on true attitude in sadhana.

October. An interview with G. V. Subbarao:

"It was in October, 1923, that I first saw Sri Aurobindo in his Ashram, at Pondicherry. He was seated on a small cushioned chair, in a rather narrow verandah on the first floor of his house in which he lived for over forty years. There were about a dozen chairs in the room and a small table in front, with papers, flowers and a few books on it. There was a small time-piece to indicate the progress of time, because everything here must be done according to precision and order. Sri Aurobindo was dazzling bright in colour – it was said that, in his earlier years, he was more dark than brown and had a long, rather thin beard which was well-dressed with streaks of white strewn here and there. The figure was slender and not much taller than Gandhiji's but a bit more fleshy. The eyes were big and elongated to a point and their looks were keen and piercing like shells. He was dressed in fine cotton – not khaddar evidently. He had only two clothes on, one a dhoti and the other an upper cloth worn in the traditional

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fashion'of an upaveetam, i.e., right arm and shoulder exposed. The lower part of the legs was slender, feminine and the feet were hidden in two small slippers.

"His voice low, but quite audible, quick and musical. He was fast in his flow of speech, clear like a crystal and analytical to a degree. In a fifteen-minute talk, he gave me his philosophy in a nutshell. He was simple and courteous, outspoken and free in his interrogations. It seemed as though he could know a man by a sweep of his eyes, and read men's minds from a survey of their photographs. He appeared as one highly cognizant of the value of time; and at the end of the appointed fifteen minutes, he stood up looking at the clock, as if intimating that I should retire. He was kind throughout, as to a child, but I could discern enough in his demeanour to conclude that he could be stem and imperious when required. To his disciples, he was loving like a Guru, but demanded absolute spiritual surrender before one can be admitted to his heart's domain.

"Sri Aurobindo had long been absorbed in a Sādhanā for Yoga Siddhi, which, he believed, was destined to form a new order of life in the world. He had always seen it, though less clearly and dynamically at first, that a higher spiritual power was necessary to solve the moral, material, social and even political problems of the world. Just as Gandhiji believed in an inner, moral power or soul-force as essential for the redemption of the world, similarly Sri Aurobindo believed that a higher spiritual power was absolutely necessary and must be brought down on earth to help the regeneration of this world.

"This position Sri Aurobindo realised as early as 1907-1908; but necessarily, his realisation was yet vague and incomplete; the nature, conditions and circumstances of that higher power had to be explored; and the basis, knowledge, and methods to bring it down on to this earth had to be determined. For this purpose, a complete withdrawal from all external activity was necessary, at least for a time.

"Sri Aurobindo's letters dealing with Yoga – especially his instructions to his disciples at this early period – reveal him as the master-doctor, diagnosing in an instant, the spiritual nature and conditions of the spiritual disease in men and things even through photographs. This man, he says of one, is a born Yogi. In another case, he says: This man possesses a too keen

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psychic sensitiveness; as such, he ought not to go on with psychic experiments at once. In a case of psychic disorder, he wrote to his brother, Barindra: 'You are inexperienced. You do not know how to deal with him. He needs an absolutely quiet and careful treatment. I am too far off here; but be writing to me often.' When once there was a delay in communication, he fell upon his brother like an avalanche and wrote: 'This sort of evading instructions won't do with me. In my supramental state, everything must be done in order and with precision.' The great care with which he was attending to the distant invalid was quite remarkable. On one occasion, he was recommending an ordinary medical treatment, on another a change of place or cessation of psychic exercises etc. Now he was writing letters, now sending telegrams, now angry with his brother, now suggesting a change of treatment – but ever anxious about the distant invalid, as if he were a very near relative. He sent a telegram to one place; but not being sure that it would reach the addressee properly, he was not satisfied till he sent another to a second address, to make sure of its reaching. Speaking about some visions, he says that these things are of common occurrence. 'Mira had them a hundred times.' This Mira seems to be an extraordinary lady; and even in 1923, she was said to be the best of his disciples and was consulted by Sri Aurobindo on many affairs, including Yoga. No wonder, therefore, that she has been for a long time the acknowledged Mother of the Ashram."^¹

19 October. Manilal, a young man from a place near Patna, came without permission; long talk about Sri Aurobindo's refusal to see him.

6 November. Letter to Ramlal Surati of Bombay.

8 November. Meditation stopped on account of an inflammation of the Mother's knee.

22 November. Jivanlal, an aluminium merchant, came to see Sri Aurobindo.

23 November. Hints about sadhana to a disciple. Talk about the mental, vital and physical consciousness.

20 December. Reply to a letter of Ketkar.

.^¹ G. V Subbarao, from a lecture delivered at the Eswara Library, Kakinada, and published in The Sunday Times (Madras), 6 May 1951.

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23 December. Interview with R. B. Athavale; suggestions about sadhana; remarks on humanity, Mayavada and the conditions for Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

26 December. A letter from Natwarlal Bharatia about Lele, giving facts about an incident in Bombay.

27 December. Suggestions to Athavale about sadhana: how to take spiritual help.

The number of disciples this year varied between eleven and fifteen.

1924

1 January. Raghunath P. Thaker of Virpur near Rajkot saw Sri Aurobindo. He stayed for a few days.

3 January. Amritlal Seth, the editor of Saurashtra, met Sri Aurobindo. He asked Sri Aurobindo about his personal difficulties. The remedy suggested was mental self-control and the strengthening of the will-power.

5 January. Apropos of Raghunath Thaker's idea that siddhi can be attained by trātaka (gazing fixedly at a point without winking), Sri Aurobindo said, "It can give you clarity of vision and help you to open your consciousness to the sight of subtle levels of consciousness. I think there is no more utility to trātaka than that."

6 January. Some men who had attended the Kakinada session of the Congress came to Pondicherry. They had a row with the French police while registering their names. Some members of the group were known to inmates of Sri Aurobindo's house and there was a chance that Sri Aurobindo might become involved in the trouble. He said, "This is an effort of the outside forces to disturb the atmosphere which I have established here with great difficulty,"

22 January. The group meditation and evening sitting were discontinued. When asked about the group meditation, Sri Aurobindo said, "It always requires an individual who can create the necessary spiritual atmosphere. That atmosphere is due to his presence; it cannot be created by effort." One of the reasons for stopping the collective meditation was that "it obliges Sri Aurobindo to descend lower in the consciousness." It was considered better that Sri Aurobindo be allowed to complete the perfection of his physical consciousness; from this all the sadhaks

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would stand to gain. Many sadhaks were disturbed because both the collective activities – the meditation and the evening talks – were discontinued. Tuesdays and Saturdays were set apart for some of them for help with meditation. Others were assigned mornings for personal interviews; either Thursdays and Saturdays or Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

24 January. Interview of Dilip Kumar Roy with Sri Aurobindo.

30 January. The evening sitting was resumed.

31 January. A letter from Kirparam of Agra: reference to the Radhaswami Sampradaya, description of his experiences, request for guidance. A letter to Veiji Thakersi Shah of Bidada, Cutch.

February (beginning). Surajmal Lallubhai Zaveri and Dhurandhar, a sadhaka from Bombay, met Sri Aurobindo and spoke about their spiritual efforts.

Mahatma Gandhi was released from jail. He made a public statement which Sri Aurobindo called "a historic statement".

8 February. A letter to Kesarlal Dixit granting permission to come.

9 February. Talk on non-violence.

15 February. Haribhai Zhaverbhai Amin of Broach came to Pondicherry. He met Sri Aurobindo on the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth. Evening talk on Jacob Boehme's Suprasensual Life.

22 February. Discussion about the reforms granted to India by the Ramsay Macdonald cabinet. 26 February. Talk about the supramental perfection. Hints to a sadhak about taste and about reading. Sri Aurobindo said that if he wanted to read a book he certainly could do so, but not because he could not control his mind. "That is real freedom in action. Yoga means mastery over the lower nature and establishing the action of the Higher Nature in its place. One has to offer his free self to the Divine; afterwards the Divine will chose the action in you."

7 March. Talk on Hindu-Muslim unity and Khilafat. Discussion about the poetry of Tagore and of Harin Chattopadhyaya and about a letter of Mahatma Gandhi to Mahomed Ali.

8 March. A letter from Kesarlal Dixit about coming to the Ashram; another from Rajani Kanta Palit about the illness of his wife.

9 March, Talk on Mahatma Gandhi's ideas on art.

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12 March. In the Delhi Assembly Sir Harisingh Gaur gave his vote against the Nationalist Party! In the evening talk Sri Aurobindo gave this reminiscence about Gaur: "He was one of the students with me in England. I heard him in the Indian Majlis and in the College Union. I wonder if he had anything serious in him? But he was clever and spoke well. Once during a speech he said, 'The Egyptians rose up like a man', refering to their national spirit. This was repeated two or three times, so someone from the audience asked, 'But how many times did they sit down? "

26 March. Talk on the aim and method of the supramental yoga and on the Avatar (incarnation). These talks throw light on the aim current and the state of sadhana of the Supramental Yoga. "This Yoga was not practised before", he said, "all the efforts were like preparatory movements. Besides, if someone ever attempted it, the continuity was not maintained. It has been lost in the lapse of Time."

Question: "Could it be that the Supermind descended in the past at some time and again retired to its own higher plane afterwards?"

Sri Aurobindo: "If an Avatar (incarnation) came, it was a promise. The Truth was not made a fact in Matter. I can say this that it may have been tried but it was never made a dynamic factor in the world. The difficulty in bringing down the Truth is not so much in the upper physical layers as in gross Matter – the most material plane. The Earth-law has to be changed and a new atmosphere has to be created. The question is not merely to have knowledge, power, etc. but to bring them down.

"People have very simple ideas about these things – but it is not so simple as it is thought. It is a very complex movement. There is the Truth above, when you go on increasing in knowledge and power etc., you go on getting above, higher and higher but the thing does not come down at once. It comes down when the whole is ready. If once it could be made the law of the Earth-plane, then it would endure. It is difficult to make it flow down so long as there is a mixed movement."

Question: "Do you believe that this work will be done this time?"

Sri Aurobindo: "I know that it can be done; but I don't want to prophesy. I cannot say 'it will be done'. But I can say that

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something will be done this time. The doubt is there somewhere in the mental – some uncertainty. The whole thing is ready behind. If it were a certainty on the mental plane then the thing would have been achieved. When there is the certainty there is no room for struggle. Till now it was not done, probably because the hostile forces were very strong."^¹

4 April. Talk on the supramental yoga.

5 April. Talk on Bahaism; descent of the Supermind into the physical; powers of disembodied spirits.

9 April. Talk on Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence.

14 April. Haribhai Amin of Broach, accompanied by an Englishman, Mr. Wainscott, came and met Sri Aurobindo.

20 April. Talk on the senses. A certain M. Valiant, an Indian French citizen working at Karikal, met Sri Aurobindo.

24 April. Talk on the book Eyeless Sight by Joules Remain.

8 May. Talk on Gandhism and on Deva and Asura.

20 May. M. Valiant met Sri Aurobindo and asked his guidance in connection with the French elections, which were approaching. Talk on non-violence and on "Sapta-chatushtaya".

7 June. Talk on the resolution of the Congress about compulsory spinning.

12 June. Talk about publishing The Future Poetry. Mr. Thakur Dutt, an Indian settled in America, sent Rs.1000 as a token of his regard. His wife Maud Sharma sent her poems for Sri Aurobindo to see. Talk on Harin Chattopadhyaya's poetry. A letter of G. V. Subbarao to Sri Aurobindo about the visit of Devdas-Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's son, to Pondicherry.

17 June. Talk on passive resistance. Letter from Suren, a sadhaka from Chittagong, asking permission to come to Pondicherry after selling all his lands.

19 June. Talk on the difference between Satyagraha and passive resistance.

22 June. Talk on the success of khadi and on art.

2 July. Talk on Daridra-Narayan and on charkha.

4 July. Talk on a public letter of Mahatma Gandhi, "Defeated and Humbled".

From 6 July the evening sittings began to get late.

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, Second Series, pp. 126-28.

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8 July. Talk, on the question: Is poetry an ideal of Indian culture?

10 July. Discussion of some philosophical points. Talk on Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A letter from Tarak Nath Das; a reply sent explaining his experiences.

A reminiscence of Sri Aurobindo's jail life: "I wanted to get rid of cruelty, violence, etc. following the conventional method of Yoga. . . . For eight or ten days all kinds of cruel and violent things went on happening outside and rising from within. When the mind stopped reacting to them they all ceased."^¹

28 July. Kapali Shastri met Sri Aurobindo. Kapali noticed, as the author had previously, the remarkable change in the colour of Sri Aurobindo's skin. Talk about the transformation of Nature and the necessity of bringing down the divine consciousness into the physical. Sri Aurobindo said that only two powers can give the Supermind: Sri Aurobindo or the Higher Power herself.

2 August. A letter from Motilal Nehru asking Sri Aurobindo to contribute an article to his paper published from Allahabad.

3 August. A telegram from Natwarlal Bharatia of Surat. A letter sent in reply.

15 August. Celebration of Sri Aurobindo's birthday. The verandah where he sat was decorated with jasmine garlands and with lotuses which had been brought from a long distance. He came out at 9.15 in the morning and again at four o'clock in the afternoon. In the afternoon he remained silent for ten or fifteen minutes and then spoke for thirty or thirtyfive minutes. At 6.30 the evening sitting was held as usual. Questions about his life-work were asked. The number of disciples present was between twenty and twenty-two.

The following impressions of the day are reproduced from the records of a disciple.

"Who can describe this day? Nothing can be added by the colours of imagination, poetic similes, and loaded epithets. It is enough to say ‘It was the 15th August.' No other day can come up to it in the depth and intensity of spiritual action, the ascending movement of the flood of emotions, and the way in which each individual here was bathing in the luminous atmosphere.

^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series, p. 148.

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"It is the supreme sign of the Master to assume all possible relations with his disciples, make them real and concrete. Each disciple knows him as his own, and each the Master accepts as his. Each believes the Master loves him most and it is true that he loves each the most. This feeling is not an illusion or delusive self-hypnotism, but quite real. The spontaneous dynamic law of the Supreme Truth which he embodies, is love – divine Love.

"In all the inmates, the delight of Surrender is overflowing – the bliss of surrender, its sparkle pervades all. All is given up, everything is surrendered. How free you feel! How light and unburdened you feel! There is someone to take up the whole of your burden – there is a power of Supreme Love. Him you can trust implicitly. You need only to give up your little self, the rest is his work, you have no worry, no anxiety! No effort – only, the way of loving surrender! How easy!

"Every face is beaming with the joy of surrender, everyone is happy and overflowing with joy. And yet there is no external reason, no outer materials for this intense joy. From where flows this unlimited Delight! They say the Master was not in such a happy mood these two or three years.

"From early morning the Ashram is humming with various activities: decorations, flowers, garlands, food, bath, etc. All are eager to go to the Master, for his Darshan. As the time passes there is a tide in the sea of rising emotion. It is 'Darshan' – we see him everyday, but to-day it is 'Darshan'! To-day each sees him individually, one after another. In the midst of these multiple activities the consciousness gets concentrated. To-day is 'Darshan' – not of a human being but of some Supreme Divinity. To-day is the rare chance of seeing the Divine.

"There he sits – in the royal chair in the verandah – royal and majestic. In the very posture there is divine self-confidence. In the heart of the Supreme Master, the great Yogin – a sea of emotion is heaving – is it a flood that mounts or a flood that is coming down on humanity? Those alone who have experienced it can know something of its divinity. Those who have bathed in it once can never come out of that ocean. He sits there – with pink and white lotus garlands. It is the small flower-token of the offering by the disciples. Hearts throb, prayers, requests, emotions pour forth – and a flood of blessings pours down carrying all of them away in their speed. Lack of faith, all doubts

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get assurance. All human needs the Divine fulfils and, after fulfilling, his grace overflows. Love and grace flow on undiminished. The look! enrapturing and captivating eyes! Who can ever forget Pouring love and grace and ineffable divinity? If the transcendent Divinity is not here, where else can it be?

"He is usually an embodiment of knowledge. But to-day he is different. He is all love. Here is the Great Poet and the Supreme Lover incarnate! It is inquiring, loving and blessing in a glance! Man does wonders with his eyes and looks, but to do so much, divinity is needed.

"The question is what to ask, love or blessings! Or should one pray for love and blessings both and in addition for the acceptance of unworthy ones like us. Standing on the brink of Eternity the soul saw his dreamy and loving eyes, then was it captured for ever. The inexplicable mystery of divine love was here a tangible experience! Who can explain a fact? A fact is a fact and an experience an experience. There is no explanation possible.

"'What should I give him?' is the question of the mind. ‘What should I ask?' is the question of the heart. Both refuse to answer and both are unanswered. The mind feels the insignificance of its offering, and remains mute. The heart is ashamed of its beggar's attitude, or even feels its pride wounded. How to solve this pleasant embarrassment? The beggar heart carries the day. There is even a kind of curiosity to find out how one is accepted, what happens to oneself.

"But all this was before Darshan. As one actually stands in front all curiosity, all pride, all thoughts, all questions, all resolutions are swept away in some terrific divine Niagara. Thou embodiment of Love Supreme! What transparency! In the heart of the Supreme Master also an ocean of emotion is heaving. The heart melts and falls at his feet without knowing, it surrenders itself! Where is here a place for speech! There is only one speech – the language of the body and its flexion, that of the prostration of the body in the act of surrender, the throbbing of the heart and the flow of tears from the eyes! What a peace, pregnant with divinity! What beauty, this experience!

"Everyone is trying to maintain Samata – equality. Everyone is quiet and is trying hard to remain calm. But to-day all the barriers of humanity are swept away by the flood of Divine Love.

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The soul has its Samata – its equality – but the whole nature is in agitation as unknown waters have rushed into it. Knowledge is laid on the shelf – it is all a flood of love. To-day the soul has received the certitude of the Divine's victory as it had never done before.

"In the dining room all are gathered, bathing and bathed in delight. Everyone is happy – supremely happy – in perfect ecstasy. To-day there is an empire of Delight! 0 Artist! what a marvellous art! So much of delight – for everyone! – delight that fills each one and overflows.

"At 4 p.m. all gather at the usual place – the verandah. All sit there full of hope in silence; one or two whisper to each other. The mind of the company is silently repeating: 'When will he come? May he come.' It is 4.15; the old familiar and yet new 'tick' behind the door! Slowly the door opens: The Master steps out first, behind him the Mother in a white creamy sari with a broad red border. He sat in his usual wide Japanese chair. The Mother sat on the right side on a small stool. For a short time, about five minutes, there was complete silence!

"Then he glanced at each one separately. The minutes were melting into the silence. There is again a wave of emotion in all, all bathe again in an ocean of some divine emotion. How wonderful if the whole of Eternity would flow in this experience! Time, poor Time and its flow are blamed by men. But where is the fault in the flow of time? If so much Love and such Divine Delight can have its play, let poor Time flow and have its Eternity! And let the world become divine! Another powerful aspiration that came to the surface was:

'Expression is not needed – let the whole of eternity flow away in this silence!'

"When the Master came for the evening sitting emanating joy he asked with a smile, 'What do you want to-day? – Silence or speech?' As if he had come to confer whatever boon we asked. For a time it was silence that reigned. Then from that silence a flow appeared to start. The hearts of the disciples were tip-toe with expectation, for to-day they were hearing not human speech but words from -the Divine. To hear with human ears the Lord speak! What a fulfilment!"

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The substance of what Sri Aurobindo spoke on 15 August 1924:

"It has become customary to expect some speech from me on this day. I prefer to communicate through the silent consciousness, because speech addresses itself to the mind while through the silent consciousness one can reach something deeper. We are practising together a yoga which is quite different in certain essentials from other methods which go by the same name. According to the old method you have to select the intellect, the emotional being or the will as the starting point or to differentiate between Purusha and Prakriti, the conscious soul and nature. By that we arrive at an Infinite of knowledge, an all-loving and all-beautiful Supreme or an Infinite Impersonal Will, or the Silent Brahman beyond our mind – intellect, emotional being, or will or our individual Purusha.

"Our yoga does not aim at an Impersonal Infinite of Knowledge, Will or Ananda but at the realization of a Supreme Being, an Infinite Knowledge which is beyond the limited infinity of human knowledge, an Infinite Power which is the source of our personal will and an Ananda which cannot be seized by the surface movement of emotions.

"I have said that the Supreme Being that we want to realize is not an impersonal Infinite but a Divine Personality; and in order to realize Him we have to grow conscious of our own true personality. You must know your own inner being. This Personality is not the inner mental, the inner vital and the inner physical being and its consciousness as is many times wrongly described, but it is your true Being which is in direct communication with the Highest. Man grows by gradual growth in nature and each has to realize his own Divine Person which is in the Supermind. Each is one with the Divine in essence but in nature each is a partial manifestation of the Supreme Being.

"This being the aim of our yoga we want to return upon life and transform it. The old yogas failed to transform life because they did not go beyond mind. They used to catch at spiritual experiences with the mind but when they came to apply them to life they reduced them to a mental formula. For

example, the mental experience of the Infinite or the application of the principle of universal Love.

"We have, therefore, to grow conscious on all the planes of

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our being, and to bring down the higher light, power and ananda to govern even the most external details of life. We must detach ourselves and observe all that is going on in the nature; not even the smallest movement, the most external act must remain unnoticed. This process is comparatively easy in the mental and vital planes. But in the physico-vital and the physical the powers of ignorance hold their sway and reign in full force, persisting in what they believe to be eternal laws. They obstruct the passage of the higher light and hold up their flag. It is there that the powers of darkness again and again cover up the being and even when the physico-vital is opened the elements of ignorance come up from the lower levels of the physical being. This is a work of great patience. The physico-vital and the physical being do not accept the higher Law and persist. They justify their persistence and their play by intellectual and other justifications and thus try to deceive the sadhaka under various guises.

"Generally, the vital being is very impatient and wants to get things done quickly, on the physico-vital and physical planes. But this has very violent reactions and therefore the mental and the vital being, instead of seizing upon the higher light and power, should surrender themselves to the higher Power. We have not to rest satisfied with partial transformation. We have to bring down the higher Power to the physical plane and govern the most external details of life by it. This cannot be done by mental power. We have to call down the Higher Light, Power and Ananda to transform our present nature. This requires an essential utter sincerity in every part of the being, which wants only the Truth and nothing but the Truth and can see clearly all that is going on in the being.

"The second condition of the Light coming down and governing even the smallest detail of life is that one must grow conscious of his Divine Personality which is in the Supermind.

"There is sometimes a tendency in the sadhaks to be satisfied with experiences. One should not rest content with mere experiences.

"Another thing is that, here, as we are all of us given to the pursuit of the same truth the whole time we have arrived at some kind of solidarity so that we can mutually help or retard our progress.

"The conditions of transformation of the being are: opening

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ourselves to the higher Light, the absolute surrender. If there is the entire essential sincerity, opening to the Light and surrender and a gradual growth of consciousness on all the planes you can become an ideal sadhaka of this yoga."^¹

+ + +

On another occasion Sri Aurobindo referred to his sadhana as follows: "When I was doing sadhana on the mental plane things came so easily. It was child's play. With the vital being, though it was not easy, yet it was interesting. But this physical is absolutely hard. It has been left untried by the ancient Yogis, it has been neglected. Of course, it is not that no effort was made, – but the physical and the physico-vital were neglected. All the accumulated difficulty is lying there. Any attempt made to conquer them is full of drudgery and labour. It is like the trench-war and no truce. You must either fight and win or collapse."

Question: "But only the body would collapse?"

Sri Aurobindo: "In such a case as ours, if the body collapses, the whole thing collapses. You have to do the whole thing over again. If you have other kinds of collapses, for example, the vital or the mental collapse, it is not so dangerous. But the physical collapse means complete collapse.

"If you don't care for the body then of course it is a different matter. To keep the inner poise in the midst of physical disturbance is quite easy. It is nothing. I am not disturbed by disease or death. They are quite natural to man's present condition. But I care because their acceptance means defeat of the whole effort of Yoga. These lower forces used to thwart and have always been trying to thwart all efforts at spiritual transformation of the physical being."^²

He spoke again about the same problem in December 1938: "It is when the sadhana came down into the physical and the subconscient that things became very difficult. I myself had to struggle for two years, for the subconscient is absolutely inert, like stone. Though my mind was quite awake above, it could not exert any influence down below. It is a Herculean labour, for when one

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talk, First Series, pp. 260-62.

.^² Talk of June 1926.

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enters there, it is a sort of unexplored continent. Previous Yogis came down to the vital. If I had been made to see the difficulty before, probably, I would have been less enthusiastic about the work. There is the instance of blind faith and they were quite right in doing so,¹ but if I left it at that, the real work would have remained undone. And once the physical is conquered, things become easy for people who come after me, which is what is meant by realisation of one in all."^²

October. Hirosawa, a Japanese gentleman known to the Mother, came to Pondicherry.

14 November. A letter from Dilip Kumar Roy to Moni enclosing a letter from Remain Rolland asking for the file of the French edition of the Arya. Dilip asked for advice about marriage.

1925

3 January. Punamchand Shah, a sadhak from Patan, developed nacrosis of a bone which he had injured when young. He had to go to Madras where he was operated on successfully by Dr. Rangachari. The cure took three months.

4 January. One of the Mother's knee joints become inflamed. There was pain. A telegram was sent to Dr. Kanuga at Ahmedabad.

5 January. Interview of Lala Lajpatrai with Sri Aurobindo. Afterwards Sri Aurobindo spoke also with Dr. Nihalchand, Krishnadas and Purushottamdas Tandon, who had accompanied Lajpatrai. There was a free exchange of ideas on current politics for forty-five minutes.

6 January. Sri Aurobindo did not come out for the evening sitting because of the Mother's indisposition. A reply came from Dr. Kanuga.

7 January. Improvement of the Mother's condition. Sri Aurobindo came out for a short time.

8 January. Continued gradual improvement of the Mother's condition.

16 January. Dr. Bannerjee arrived from Mirjapur. He saw the

.¹ This means that by blind faith difficulties of the physical have been removed; but what is needed is to make this a conscious conquest and transformation of the physical nature by the power of the Spirit.

.^² Cf. A.B. Purani, Evening Talks, Third Series, (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1966), p. 4

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Mother for diagnosis. Sri Aurobindo was greatly relieved by his report. Improvement maintained.

17 January. Dr. Bannerjee saw the Mother again.

18 January. Talk with Ratikanta Nag about the Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, and about conditions for the printing of books.

21 January. A letter from Anilbaran Roy in jail.

26 January. Sri Aurobindo resumed the evening sittings.

28 January. Reply to Anilbaran Roy.

5 and 23 March. Letters from Anilbaran Roy.

9 May. A letter from Rajani Kanta Palit about the illness of his wife.

11 May. A letter from Moni Lahiri. Reference to Lele in the evening talk: "I got three things from Lele: the silent Brahman consciousness with its infinite wideness – an experience which was concrete; the power to speak and write without using the mind; and the habit of putting myself under the guidance of a Power higher than the mind."

13 May. A telegram from Motilal Roy asking for an interview.

Reply: "Time not propitious; interview not possible; why not write?" A telegram from Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury of Gauripur about the illness of his wife.

17 May. A letter from Anilbaran Roy.

20 May. A letter from Motilal Roy.

21 May. A letter from Birendra Kishore of Calcutta.

25 May. A reference in a letter to the atmosphere in Pondicherry:

"The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane," in other words, the forces of disease etc.

20 June. At the request of the Bombay Chronicle, Sri Aurobindo sent a message on the death of C. R. Das, which was published in their issue of 22 June: "Chittaranjan's death is a supreme loss. Consummately endowed with political intelligence, constructive imagination, magnetism, a driving force combining a strong will and an uncommon plasticity of mind for vision and tact of the hour, he was the one man after Tilak who could have led India to Swaraj."^¹

1 July. A letter from Swarnaprabha, a sadhika, about her sadhana. A letter to Barin advising him to close the Bhawanipore centre at Calcutta.

.^¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 390.

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CHAPTER IX

Pondicherry: 1910-1926

11 July. Veiji Thakersi Shah came from Cutch.

12 July. Talk on Theon, who knew the Mother before she came to India. During the evening talk Sri Aurobindo said:

"What I find is that it is not necessary to have a full and rich development of the mental and vital being for the descent of the Supermind. It is enough if there is sufficient basis to start the higher working. If you have to wait for the full development of the mental and the vital being then it would require centuries. I do not think it necessary. Rather, too much development is an obstacle sometimes. I find that what the mind attains with great effort is easily attained in the supermind with simplicity and directness. Whatever is necessary is brought down with the Supermind in its descent because the Supermind carries with it its own fullness. In my own case, I found the mental effort a great obstacle. But I had to do it, in order to get the necessary knowledge. Mind is like an infinite snake coiling round and round."

15 August. Sri Aurobindo came out at ten o'clock. The verandah was decorated with jasmine flowers. Twenty-seven people were present including S. Duriaswami, Kapali Shastri, Kesarlal Dixit, Chandrasekar Aiya and Nagaratnam.

23 August. Talk on Shaw's Saint Joan.

31 August. A letter from P. M. Patel.

19 September. A letter from Dhiren. A reply dictated.

21 September. Narmada Shanker Bhatt of Lunawada met Sri Aurobindo; suggestion on the japa of gayatri. A letter from Rajani Kanta Palit.

24 September. A letter from Haradhan Baxi of Chandemagore. A reply dictated. The Bhawanipore centre was closed; Kumudbandhu Bagchi very much annoyed.

29 September. A letter from Bhupal Chandra Bose, Sri Aurobindo's father-in-law, about another son-in-law's illness. A letter from Swarnaprabha.

30 September. A letter from Nolineshwar Bhattacharya of Calcutta.

3 October. Haradhan Baxi and Charurai Dev Sarkar came to Pondicherry bringing a letter from Motilal Roy and a donation of Rs.1000 from Durgadas Seth of Chandemagore.

4 October. A letter from Swarnaprabha's husband. A reply with remarks on the relation of husband and wife from the spiritual point of view.

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7 October. Letters from Nolineshwar and Mano Mohan Dhar, both of whom later joined the Ashram.

13 October. A letter from Rati Palit, brother of Rajani Palit.

14 October. Letter from Pandit Nirmalchand about the illness of Jagat Singh. Talk on Grace.

2 November. Talk on yoga and humanity.

11 November. Talk on the need of samata: equality and common sense in yogic sadhana. Sri Aurobindo said about himself: "A perfect yoga requires perfect balance; that was the thing that saved me – the perfect balance. First of all I believed that nothing was impossible and at the same time I could question everything. If I had believed in everything that came I would have been like Bijoy Goswami."^¹

19 November. Sri Aurobindo was asked to revise his speeches. His answer was: "No. I have nothing to do with the Speeches. They belong to the past democratic Aurobindo. They are only useful for Naren's sale." Then about his biography he said: "To write my biography is impossible. The idea is quite wrong. Who could write it? Not only in my case but in that of poets, philosophers and yogis it is no use attempting a biography, because they do not live in their external life. Their real life is inner and how can anyone else know that life? It is different with men of action like Napoleon or Julius Caesar, men who develop themselves through action, but even in their cases it would be best if they wrote their biographies themselves."

22 November. In the evening Sri Aurobindo said: "I would have to correct The Synthesis of Yoga. A magazine is not the proper form for such works. The yoga of knowledge is too long and needs to be shortened and the yoga of bhakti is too short and summary and needs to be added to." He said in a talk that the Synthesis might be published in the form of small booklets. A reply to a letter of Anilbaran Roy dictated.

26 November. A letter from Kanailal Hazara. A reply.

30 November. A letter from Sri Aurobindo's sister-in-law (Mrinalini Devi's sister), written after her bereavement.

Krishnashashi, a sadhaka from Chittagong who had become unbalanced, suddenly made his appearance in Pondicherry. For three days he created a great disturbance. He tried to force his

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series, p. 198

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entry into the houses. At last it was arranged for him to be sent back.

1 December. Letters from Swamaprabha, her mother and Mohini.

4 December. Talk on Gandhism.

5 December. Talk on Vaishnavism.

9 December. Talk on the Samgha at Chandernagore.

14 December. Manindra Naik, a representative from Chandernagore in the Legislature in Pondicherry, met Sri Aurobindo.

26 December. Phillippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire (later known as Pavitra) arrived from Japan. A letter from Swamaprabha.

1926

1 and 25 January. Talks on Theosophy.

26 January. Talk on art and Vaishnavism.

28 January. Talk on art. Sri Aurobindo said: "Really speaking I got my true taste [for painting] in Alipore Jail. I used to meditate and I saw various pictures with colours and then I found that the critical faculty also arose in me. I did not know the thing intellectually, but I caught the real spirit. But my natural preference is for architecture and sculpture."^¹

29 January. Talk on yoga and morality.

30 January. During the talk in the evening Sri Aurobindo said:

"I used to get fever and sometimes something would come down and reject it successfully, while at other times I had to go on working at the thing again and again. I have seen that, at times, the strongest faith does not succeed. Again, you may have the strongest will and yet the thing does not get done. Not that faith is not necessary or the will not useful. But they both require something – a third element – which when it comes down brings success. Even if there is opposition yet the success comes."^²

4 February. Talk about quinine. Sri Aurobindo said: "The last time I took quinine was in Alipore Jail in 1909. It had no effect. The fever was very high and in that state I somehow staggered to the door of the cell and told the watchman to bring some water. He brought very cold – almost ice cold-water. I drank the whole quantity he had brought. Then feeling very weak I lay

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series, p. 261

.^² Cf. Ibid., p. 229

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down in bed. In ten minutes the fever left me. After that I did not get that kind of fever."

24 February. Tirupati, a sadhaka from Andhra, lost his mental balance and was sent to Vizianagaram. He came from there to Pondicherry without permission. He had been informed by wire not to come: "Inform Tirupati my anger. Prevent coming to Pondicherry. I refuse to receive him." We see here that Sri Aurobindo could become hard when necessary. But whether his "anger" was the ordinary emotion or a yogic reaction is another matter. Once speaking about anger Sri Aurobindo said: "In my case I once felt anger coming up and possessing me. It was absolutely uncontrollable when it came. I was very much surprised to see it in my nature. Anger has always been foreign to me. . . . But by anger I do not mean the Rudra Bhava which I have had a few times."^¹

When asked: "Is Rudra Bhava something like the story of the snake related by Ramakrishna where the snake was asked to raise its hood – an appearance of anger – to keep off harmful people?", Sri Aurobindo replied: "Not at all. It is something genuine – a violent severity against something very wrong, that is, the Rudra Bhava of Shiva. Anger one knows by its feelings and sensations; it rises from below. While Rudra Bhava – the divine manyu – rises from the heart. I will give an instance. Once X became very violent against the Mother and was shouting and showing his fists. As I heard the shouting, a violent severity came down that was absolutely uncontrollable. I went out and said: 'Who is shouting at the Mother? Who is shouting here?' The moment he heard it X became quiet."²

2 March. Talk on personal effort and the divine working.

6 March. Talk on the marriage of a sadhaka at Chandernagore.

12 March. Talk on the place of personal effort in sadhana. Speaking about subtle sight Sri Aurobindo said: "I was at Baroda . . . and my psychic sight was not yet developed. I was trying to develop it by dwelling upon the after-image and also by attending to it in the interval between wakefulness and sleep. Then I saw a circle of light and when I began prānāyāma it became very much more intensified."^³

^¹. Cf: Purani, Evening Talks, Third Series, p. 121

.² Cf. ibid., p. 122

^³ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, Second Series, p. 217

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13 March. Talk on the psychic being.

31 March. Reminiscences of earlier life: "When I joined the Baroda state service as I was not accustomed to getting money I had the tendency of gathering and saving my money. I saved some and then suddenly spent away the whole sum at one time. .¹

"In 1909 I got a yogic fancy for taking only rice, ghee and plantains which I carried out though desire for meat was there in the vital being."

Talk about the paintings of Abanindranath and Rabindranath Tagore.

7 April. Talk on Indian political constitutions and institutions.

14 April. Sri Aurobindo spoke about one of his own experiences: "When I got first the Cosmic Consciousness – I call it the passive Brahman – I did not fall into unconsciousness; I was fully conscious on the physical plane. It also did not go away or last only for a few moments. ... It lasted for months. It came upon me as soon as I could quiet the mind completely. I saw it above the mind and it was that which was reflected in the mind."^²

6 May. Tirupati came again to Pondicherry. A stiff letter telling him to go back was sent by Sri Aurobindo.

12 May. Talk on Gustav Gillet's book Ectoplasme et Clairvoyance.

18 May. Talk on yoga and shakti.

20 May. Talk on Ouspensky and Dr. Bucke and their books.

1 June. Talk on the vital plane and the asuras.

10 June. Talk on the form of working of the Higher Power and on Sri Aurobindo's own sadhana. The talk turned to vegetarianism. Sri Aurobindo said: "I was once as violent a non-vegetarian as C is now a vegetarian. Then I found out it was my own vital being that was demanding meat. Well, I gave it up and for years together I went on taking whatever came. Then I discovered that what people call tasteless and bad food has got its own taste." During this period (1924-1926) Sri Aurobindo used to prepare cooked fish for the cats.

. ¹ Dinendra Kumar Roy speaks of this in his Aurobindo Prasanga; a similar attitude towards money can be seen in Mr. Patkar's statement (p. 62).

.^² Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series, p. 81

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11 June. Talk on the different parts of the being and their relation to each other.

15 June. Talk on immortality and the victory of the Supermind on the physical plane.

18 June. Talk on astrology and prophecy.

25 June. Talk on suffering and spirituality.

26 June. Talk on the Gods.

29 June. Talk on the difference between European and Indian politics.

July (for a few days in the beginning of the month) Talks on Tirupati, the deranged sadhaka.

10 July. Remark in a talk: "Vivekananda came and gave me the knowledge of the intuitive mentality. I had not the least idea about it at that time. He too did not have it when he was in the body. He gave me detailed knowledge illustrating each point. The contact lasted about three weeks and then he withdrew."

11 July. Talk on Kaya Kalpa methods of rejuvenation current in India.

6 August. Talk on the relation between feelings and emotions.

13 August. Talk on psychology.

14 August. Talk on the aesthetic being and the psychic being and their relation.

16 August. There was a report of a memory of a past birth by someone in the Bareilly district; talk in the evening on the subject.

18 August. Explanation of "Opening" in yoga. Talk on the Arya.

22 August. Talk on the form of the Gods.

24 August. Talk on the plane of the Gods.

26 August. Talk on education.

27 August. Talk on art and beauty.

31 August. Talk on science and time and space.

2 September. Three or four sadhikas (lady disciples) began to go to the Mother for meditation. After a few days sadhaks as well were allowed to go to her for meditation.

3 September. Dolatram, a pleader from the Panjab, came for sadhana. He stayed for some time.

4 September. Sri Aurobindo said: "If I had stuck to my job I would have been a principal, perhaps, written some poetry and lived in comfort like a bourgeois. All the energy I have I owe

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to yoga. Even the energy I put forth in politics came from yoga."^¹

7 September. Talk on the characteristics of the different national mentalities.

19 September. A letter from Dhiren. A reply sent explaining dreams.

20 September. Talk on fitness for yoga.

25 September. An amusing reminiscence of Baroda life: "When Mr. Eliot, the Maharaja's tutor, came to Baroda from England, Mr. Parvi, a Parsi officer, could not understand anything he said because of the strangeness of his pronunciation, so Mr. Parvi went on saying Yes to everything. Then Mr. Eliot put him a question to which he should have said No but he said as usual Yes. Eliot got annoyed and said, 'Shall I take you for an ass?' Parvi replied Yes."

12 October. Talk on poetry.

October (third week). Rajani Palit came. He obtained permission to meditate with the Mother.

5 November. Talk: the Gods and the Asuras; the Gods on the different planes and on the supramental plane. The talk had a bearing on the current state of sadhana.

24 November 1926 – the Day of Siddhi

In order to understand the importance of this day it is necessary to go back to Sri Aurobindo's experiences in jail in 1908-1909 and link them up with his experience of 24 November 1926. We must also take into consideration what Sri Aurobindo wrote about his own sadhana to Barin in 1920.

In the letter to Barin of April 1920 Sri Aurobindo described the stage of his yoga before he came to Pondicherry in 1910 as "preliminary or preparatory". That is to say it was a preliminary stage of the supramental yoga. "The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me the complete directions of my path – its complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These ten years [1910-1920] He has been making me develop it in experience, and it is not yet finished. ...

"If we cannot rise above, that is, to the supramental level, it is hardly possible to know the last secret of the world and the

.^¹ Cf. Purani, Evening Talks, Second Series, p. 98

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problem it raises remains unsolved.

"This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this Siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that God will through me give to others the Siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in God's appointed time. I have no impulse to make any unbalanced haste and rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but God's. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.

"I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God.

"If the unripe goes amid the unripe what can he do?"

These quotations clearly demonstrate that when Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry he was not groping for his path; his path was clear before him. After 1910 the charge of his yoga was taken over by the Divine and the path was revealed to him in ten limbs of the sadhana. He was all along conscious of the existence of the Supramental plane above the mind, and by 1920 he had succeeded in ascending to the lowest stratum of that consciousness and also in drawing up all the movements of his nature into it.

He was, besides, not impatient for action. He did not want to act from ignorant human instruments but from a Higher Consciousness. He had the confidence that if the Supramental descent could be established in its perfection, then other people would be able to profit by it with much less effort.

It was when the Tapasya for the Siddhi of the Supramental was going on that, fortunately, as if by a Divine dispensation, the Mother joined Sri Aurobindo intimately in the great spiritual work. From the beginning of 1926 the work of guiding the disciples already began to move towards the Mother. There were women disciples – three or four in number – staying in the Ashram who used to go to the Mother for meditation. From August 1926 the number of disciples going to the Mother increased. It was as if Sri Aurobindo was slowly withdrawing himself and

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the Mother was spontaneously coming out and taking up the great work of direction of the sadhaks' inner sadhana and of the organisation of the outer life of the Ashram. The meditations became more and more concentrated and intense. Sri Aurobindo's coming out for the evening sitting began getting later and later. The wonder of it was that no one felt anything unnatural in all these changes. The part of the disciples in the tremendous task of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was insignificant, still they were the witnesses of the changes in the inner and outer atmosphere of the Ashram.

From the trend of the evening talks just before and after 15 August 1926 it was becoming clear that the importance of a link between the highest Supermind and mind was being emphasized. Sri Aurobindo called this link the Overmind. During the six years since the letter to Barin of 1920 it is evident that he had gone much further not only in the ascent towards and into the Higher Consciousness but also in bringing about its descent into Nature. Several times in the beginning of November 1926, the evening talks turned to the possibility of the descent of the Divine Consciousness and its process. From these evening conversations, therefore, the idea came to several disciples that such a descent might be near. There was the possibility of the descent of the Gods. In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo has given a clear exposition of the overmind plane, overmind consciousness and overmind Gods. I give here some quotations from this chapter which might be of help in the understanding of the descent that took place on 24 November 1926.

"If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in

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the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and many-sided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence."^¹

"[In the Overmind] each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all other forces and their truth and consequences; no delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies or condemns the delight of other existence or other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms. . . ."^²

A feeling that the descent of the Higher Consciousness was about to take place grew in the minds of the many disciples either as a result of some indicative personal experience or owing to the general atmosphere. Many felt that great changes in the outer structure of the Ashram were about to occur. Instead of coming to the evening sitting at half-past four, the usual time,

^¹. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book One (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970), pp. 280-81

.^² Ibid., p. 283

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Sri Aurobindo came at six or seven, or eight o'clock. One day the record was two o'clock in the morning! It was evident that all his great energies were entirely taken up by the mighty task of bringing about the descent of the Higher Consciousness and that he did not want to lose or divert even a second of his time to anything else. Even though the work of maintaining an outer contact with the disciples was found useful it was becoming more and more difficult in view of the growing demand upon his time for the inner work. Those who do not know anything about his great mission can hardly understand how concentrated and sincere was his application for attaining perfection in his Divine task. In fact, people outside had already begun to be sceptical about any "practical" result of his vast efforts. Even those who had built high hopes upon his spiritual effort and were his genuine admirers began to be disappointed. Some even cherished, in their ignorance, the foolish belief that Sri Aurobindo had lost his way in the barren regions of the Absolute, the Para Brahman, or that he was entangled somewhere in the inscrutable coils of the Infinite! They believed that Sri Aurobindo had lost his hold on the earth, and that he had become either indifferent or deaf to the pressing and burning problems of suffering humanity. If it was not so, why did he not rush to the help of humanity that was suffering so much with the saving balm of his Divine help? When was such Divine help more needed than now?

But, in spite of the apparent contradictions, those who were fortunate enough to live in his vicinity knew very well that the Higher Power that he was bringing down was not only capable of but was actually producing practical results. His contact and identification with the Higher Power were so complete that he was able to put other people, whether near to him or far, in contact with it. There were almost daily instances of people being cured of physical illness by his help. Far from losing his way in the Absolute he was seeing his way more and more clearly every day and was feeling more and more the inevitability of the descent as a natural crown of the movement of evolution on earth. His disciples knew that there was no one on earth who had a deeper sympathy and feeling for humanity than the Master. The silent and solid help that was going out from him to humanity was glimpsed by them at times. They felt later, reading the line he wrote in Savitri about Aswapathy, "His spirit's stillness helped

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the toiling world", that it was so true of his own life. What after all is that "practicality" of which people speak so much? Claiming to solve problems, does it not really leave them either unsolved or half-solved while giving to the doer a false sense of satisfaction and self-complacence? In fact, the Supreme Master had such a firm grip over the earth that such illusionary satisfaction could never deceive him. For him karmasu kausalam (skill in action) consisted in acting from a higher Truth-Consciousness. He did not want to begin outer action so long as the Higher Consciousness did not descend into the physical and even into the gross material consciousness. Only so could a new life, a life that manifests integrally the Divine, be embodied. In the fulfillment of the spiritual work that he had begun lies the ultimate solution of all human problems.

Days, months and years passed; but Sri Aurobindo did not seem at all in a hurry to begin his work. He was all along preparing the possibility of the descent of the Higher Power. The resistance of the powers of Ignorance against any such attempt is naturally immense. In one evening talk he said that he was engaged in the tremendous task of opening up the physical cells to the Divine Light and the resistance of the Inconscient was formidable. When one knows that all this Herculean labour was undertaken not for himself but for humanity, for making a new departure for man in the course of his evolution then one feels that the words he later used of Savitri, "The world unknowing, for the world she stood", are so very apposite in his own case. It was therefore natural that when, by the grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the disciples also felt the nearness of the descent, their hearts should be full of expectant and concentrated enthusiasm.

From the beginning of November 1926 the pressure of the Higher Power began to be unbearable. Then at last the great day, the day for which the Mother had been waiting for so many long years, arrived on 24 November. The sun had almost set, and everyone was occupied with his own activity – some had gone out to the seaside for a walk – when the Mother sent round word to all the disciples to assemble as soon as possible in the verandah where the usual meditation was held. It did not take long for the message to go round to all. By six o'clock most of the disciples had gathered. It was becoming dark. In the verandah

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on the wall near Sri Aurobindo's door, just behind his chair, a; black silk curtain with gold lace work representing three Chinese dragons was hung. The three dragons were so represented that the tail of one reached up to the mouth of the other and the three of them covered the curtain from end to end. We came to know afterwards that there is a prophecy in China that the Truth will manifest itself on earth when the three dragons (the dragons of the earth, of the mind region and of the sky) meet. Today on 24 November the Truth was descending and the hanging of the curtain was significant.

There was a deep silence in the atmosphere after the disciples had gathered there. Many saw an oceanic flood of Light rushing down from above. Everyone present felt a kind of pressure above his head. The whole atmosphere was surcharged with some electrical energy. In that silence, in that atmosphere full of concentrated expectation and aspiration, in the electrically charged atmosphere, the usual, yet on this day quite unusual, tick was heard behind the door of the entrance. Expectation rose in a flood. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother could be seen through the half-opened door. The Mother with a gesture of her eyes requested Sri Aurobindo to step out first. Sri Aurobindo with a similar gesture suggested to her to do the same. With a slow dignified step the Mother came out first, followed by Sri Aurobindo with his majestic gait. The small table that used to be in front of Sri Aurobindo's chair was removed this day. The Mother sat on a small stool to his right.

Silence absolute, living silence – not merely living but overflowing with divinity. The meditation lasted about forty-five minutes. After that one by one the disciples bowed to the Mother.

She and Sri Aurobindo gave blessings to them. Whenever a disciple bowed to the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's right hand came forward behind the Mother's as if blessing him through the Mother. After the blessings, in the same silence there was a short meditation.

In the interval of silent meditation and blessings many had distinct experiences. When all was over they felt as if they had awakened from a divine dream. Then they felt the grandeur, the poetry and the absolute beauty of the occasion. It was not as if a handful of disciples were receiving blessings from their Supreme Master and the Mother in one little comer of the earth; the significance of the occasion was far greater than that. It

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was certain that a Higher Consciousness had descended on earth. In that deep silence had burgeoned forth, like the sprout of a banyan tree, the beginning of a mighty spiritual work. This momentous occasion carried its significance to all in the divine dynamism of the silence, in its unearthly dignity and grandeur and in the utter beauty of its every little act. The deep impress of divinity which everyone got was for him a priceless treasure.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother went inside. Immediately Datta was inspired. In that silence she spoke: "The Lord has descended into the physical today."

That 24 November should be given an importance equal to that of the birthdays of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is quite proper because on that day the descent of the Higher Power symbolic of the victory of their mission took place. The Delight consciousness in the Overmind which Sri Krishna incarnated – as Avatar – descended on this day into the physical rendering possible the descent of the Supermind in Matter.

Of this descent Sri Aurobindo wrote on several occasions afterwards. In October 1935 he wrote as follows:

"It [the 24th November 1926] was the descent of Krishna into the physical.

"Krishna is not the supramental Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually bringing, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards his Ananda. "^¹

The names of those disciples who were present on 24 November 1926:

(1) Bijoy Kumar Nag, (2) Nolini Kanta Gupta, (3) K. Amrita, (4) Moni (Suresh Chakravarty), (5) Pavitra (Phillippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire), (6) Barindra Kumar Ghose, (7) Datta (Miss Hodgson), (8) K. Rajangam, (9) Satyen, (10) Purani, (11) Lilavati (Purani's wife), (12) Punamchand, (13) Champa Ben (Punamchand's wife), (14) Rajani Kanta Palit, (15) Dr. Upendra Nath Banerjee, (16) Champaklal, (17) Kanailal Gangulee, (18) Khitish Chandra Dutt, (19) V. Chandra Sekharam, (20) Pujalal, (21) Purushottam Patel, (22) Rati Palit, (23) Rambhai Patel, (24) Nani Bala.

^¹Cf. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 136.

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