Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

47

Lele

"As one who gazes at futurity." Henry Nevinson had perception.

On 31 December Sri Aurobindo left Surat for Baroda. Barin and Sakharia Baba were with him in the reserved compartment of the train. In that biting cold of Gujarat, Sri Aurobindo was going about with one shirt, and cheap canvas shoes.

The Principal of Baroda College had issued orders to students that they were not to meet Sri Aurobindo nor even go to hear his lectures. But students are students, and who can restrain the impetuosity of youth? As soon as the carriage came in front of the College gates, out rushed the students, who unyoked the horses and pulled the carriage themselves, says Barin who was sitting in it, with Sakharia Baba beside him.

The two brothers were guests of Khaserao Jadhav at Dandia Bazar. Sri Aurobindo delivered two lectures at Vankaneer Theatre; and a third one a few days later at Manik Rao's gymnasium. All the three speeches dealt with the political situation. Our A. B. Purani was present at those

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lectures. He reports that during Sri Aurobindo's "stay in Baroda he met Chhotalal Purani in a private interview and explained to him the scheme of the revolutionary work by drawing a pencil sketch on a paper. He then advised him to meet Barin who met C. B. Purani for three consecutive days explaining the details of the revolutionary organisation. It was thus that seeds were sown of that movement in Gujarat which became so well known afterwards. The inspiration for it came from Sri Aurobindo." Chhotalal was A. B. 's elder brother. Purani also says, "Barin had intensity and fire at that time. Once I saw him at Baroda with my brother. They were discussing revolutionary plans. I saw that fire in his eyes."

It was 8A.M. when Sri Aurobindo and Barin had reached Khaserao's house. Within the hour Sri Aurobindo had met Lele. It was only after this that Sri Aurobindo had gone to meet the Maharaja and addressed the two meetings. Then ... vanished into thin air! Where was Aurobindo Babu? People searched for him. They searched high and low. They searched like mad. They searched in vain. Sri Aurobindo remained untraceable for about a week —at least for over three days.

Now, who was Lele? And why did Sri Aurobindo meet him?

When the Government cracked down on the press, and after the Sandhya-Yugantar-Bande Mataram cases, Barin and company decided that mere verbal attacks on the foreigners were not going to lead them anywhere. That pushed, them to start the Maniktola garden where the inmates were to live as in an ashram. The Maniktola garden was a family property of the

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Ghoses. A plot of about two and a half acres comprised a three-roomed single-storey building with a veranda, a good number of trees, a pond, and a tank with well-laid steps. There Upen Banerji taught the Gita to the young recruits, or 'pestilential agitators' as the then rulers dubbed them.

But Barin felt a deep need of spiritual power for their enterprise. He, therefore, set out in search of a guru along with Upen. Barin had heard about Swami Brahmananda when he was in Baroda. But Brahmananda was no more. In his stead was his disciple Swami Keshavananda who ran the ashram. Keshavananda seems to have been a Hatha yogi, at any rate he knew a lot of asanas. But he was as dry as dust. Disappointed, Barin sent Upen back to Calcutta, but he himself persevered a little longer. One day, while he was practising shirshāsana (doing a headstand —he calls it vrikshāsana or the tree posture!), a man suddenly entered the room and began to help him keep the proper posture. When Barin, tired, sat up, he looked at the stranger. He was short and fair, with blue eyes, a great big white turban on his head, and Mahratta shoes on his feet; clean and neat, though not overdressed. An indescribable but very pleasant aroma of purity emanated from his body. The stranger went away. So did Barin. He reached Chandod's station. From there he went to Navasari to the house of a friend from Baroda days. As he entered he found the short, fair stranger sitting there in a chair. Both were astonished. "Then the man asked me, 'A man from Bengal, what are you doing in these parts?'

" 'I seek a Guru.'

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"'Why?'

" 'I have taken a vow to accomplish a difficult task, and I have an idea that without God's help, the task will not be accomplished.'

"'I know everything.'

"He knew all about everything to do with our secret society; he had been a member of the Maharashtra branch of it, but had now left it. Then, out of the blue, he said, 'Do you seek a guru? Come, take your sadhana from me.'

"Taken aback, I asked, 'Do you know the way to God?'

"'A little, certainly. You take it; you will get from me what you want.'

"'When do you want to give initiation?'

" 'Now.'

"'Give, I shall take.'

"He took me to an empty room and closed the door. We sat down face to face in the dark. He told me, 'Close your eyes, don't look, don't think.' After fifteen minutes I opened my eyes at his bidding and saw us sitting as before.

"'Did you feel something?

" 'No. Felt sleepy.'

"'Don't worry, you will achieve'!!"

That was Vishnu Bhaskar Lele.

That unexpected encounter brought unexpected results in its wake.

When Barin asked him for a mantra, he refused to give any. He was not a sannyasin, he said, but a family man, he had no right to give a mantra, but could give only sadhana. Which he did, in the form of a few instructions. Well, the

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upshot of it all was that almost at the first attempt Barin got an experience of Kamananda.¹ "Lele was surprised to hear about it," said Sri Aurobindo, "for he said that this experience comes usually at the end."

Upon his return to Calcutta, Barin spoke to Sejda about this extraordinary man. Sejda expressed a wish to meet this yogi. Soon the opportunity came. Right after the Surat Congress was over Barin sent a wire to Lele. It was in answer to that wire from Barin that Lele had come to Baroda and met Sri Aurobindo at the Jadhavs' house there. From 1923 onwards Sri Aurobindo himself explained in his talks and letters what then transpired.

We have already seen that Sri Aurobindo's pranayama had become irregular when he went to Calcutta and plunged into political activities. As it was, after certain experiences — "not many nor important ones" — already known to the Reader, he had a complete arrest and was at a loss. But pranayama, said Sri Aurobindo, "didn't carry me far and I came to a point beyond which I couldn't proceed further. I gave it up and fell dangerously ill! I was on the point of death." That was in late 1906, when he had the attack of malaria. He had wanted to resume his yoga but did not know how to begin again. That is why he was searching for some guidance —a guru. "I asked Barin if he knew anyone who could help me in Yoga. This was in Surat where I had attended the Surat Congress. Barin knew of Lele who was in Gwalior. He wired to him and asked him to

meet us at Baroda____ Now Lele took me to a quiet room

upstairs in Khaserao Jadhav's house. I told him that I wanted

1. Kamananda: transmutation of sensuous pleasure.

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Yoga to help me in my political work, for inspiration and power and capacity. I didn't want to give up my activities for the sake of Yoga ... but after years of spiritual effort I had failed to find the way and it was for that I had asked to meet him. His first answer was, 'It would be easy for you as you are a poet.'"

Sri Aurobindo wanted neither Sannyasa nor Nirvana, nothing which required him to give up action and life. "I wanted spiritual experience and political action together," he said. "I had to liberate my country. I took it [yoga] up seriously when I learnt that the same Tapasya which one does to get away from the world can be turned to action. I learnt that yoga gives power and I thought: why should I not get power and use it to liberate my country?"

Commented a disciple, "God very cleverly exploited your desire to liberate India."

"It was the time of country first, humanity afterwards and the rest nowhere," replied Sri Aurobindo. "It was something behind that got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side-door entry into the spiritual life."

As leaving completely all political activity was not possible for Sri Aurobindo, Lele asked him to suspend it at least for several days. Sri Aurobindo consented. When Lele left after half an hour, Barin asked his brother how he had found him as a Yogi. Sri Aurobindo replied briefly, "Lele is a wonderful Yogi."

Lele was a follower of Dattareya Yoga, a traditional method of yoga in Maharashtra. He was then without fame, and Sri Aurobindo found him to be a Bhakta with a limited mind but with some experience and evocative power. "In my

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own case," he wrote, "I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help, I gave myself entirely into his hands and followed with an automatic passivity the guidance."

Lele came again the next day and whisked away Sri Aurobindo, "to a lonely old place tucked away in the heart of the city," said Barin. That was the house of Sardar Majumdar. "There, day in and day out, the two of them sat wrapped in deep meditation facing each other. Their simple needs were looked after by Vishnu Bhaskar's wife, a matriculate girl of small stature, of very subdued nature." Morning and evening Barin joined the other two in meditation.

"We went to Sardar Majumdar's place," narrates Sri Aurobindo. "On the top floor in a room we were shut up for three days. He asked me to do nothing but throw away all thoughts that came to my mind. 'Sit down,' I was told, 'look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside. Before they enter, fling them back.' I sat down and looked and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head and was able to push it back concretely before it came inside." Sri Aurobindo had never before heard of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside. But he simply sat down and did it.

"In three days —really in one—my mind became full of an eternal silence —it is still there," wrote Sri Aurobindo. From then on "I began to think from above the brain and have done so ever since." A liberation. As a result "the whole being became

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quiet and in seven days I got the Nirvanic experience...." Nirvana, said Sri Aurobindo, "in my case was the first positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the sadhana."

Lele was astonished with his student. He "said to others that he had never met anyone before who could surrender himself so absolutely and without reserve or question to the guidance of the helper."

And astonished with the result. Lele had "wanted me to get devotion and love and hear inner voices. Instead I got into the silent Brahman Consciousness." In other words, Nirvana.

Since then Sri Aurobindo's mind became the Master in its own house. "From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire." Sri Aurobindo said, "It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this."

Sri Aurobindo describes his experience in his poem, 'Nirvana.'

All is abolished but the mute Alone.

The mind from thought released, the heart from grief

Grow inexistent now beyond belief;

There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.

The city, a shadow picture without tone,

Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief

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Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef

Foundering in shore less gulfs the world is done.

Only the illimitable Permanent

Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still,

Replaces all,—what once was I, in It

A silent unnamed emptiness content

Either to fade in the Unknowable

Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.

"Nirvana," explained Sri Aurobindo, "in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale. It came unasked, unsought for, though quite welcome. I had no least idea about it before, no aspiration towards it, in fact my aspiration was towards just the opposite, spiritual power to help the world and to do my work in it, yet it came —without even a 'May I come in' or a 'By your leave.' It just happened and settled in as if for all eternity or as if it had been really there always. And then it slowly grew into something not less but greater than its first self." For in the months that followed, "realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience."

Sri Aurobindo could have remained in the Brahman Consciousness eternally without caring for anything else, but "I came out as I got the command from above."

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