Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

35

The Training

His upward gaze fixed on what?

Once in' Chandernagore Motilal Roy put the question to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo replied that before his eyes "some writings come floating, I try to decipher their meanings." He called them lipi, which in Sanskrit could mean a letter, or written characters, or the alphabet of a language. He also said that "Gods of the invisible world take form. These forms also are as significant as the lipi—and they want to convey something, which I strive to discover." Sri Aurobindo called these visions or seeing of forms rupa-drishti. Rupa in Sanskrit stands for form as well as beauty; drishti is seeing.

That upwardly fixed gaze of Sri Aurobindo's was not a new phenomenon begun at Chandernagore. It had already drawn the attention of no less a person than the Lt. Governor¹ of Bengal at the time of the Alipore Sedition Case. He asked Charu Dutt, "Have you seen Aurobindo Ghose's eyes?... He

¹ The same Lt. Governor Andrew Fraser (attempt on his life was made on 6 Dec. 1907) who had collected details about the Extremist Party and its "able, cunning, fanatical leader," Arabindo.

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has the eyes of a madman." "No," Dutt disagreed. "No, he has the eyes of a Karma yogi."¹ After Sri Aurobindo's release from prison the drops began coming in trickles, then in streams, and now they threatened to rain down in heavy showers. Other spiritual perceptions were also crowding into his consciousness.

His training had started in earnest.

As he travelled to Barisal, to Khulna, to Jhalakati (now all in Bangladesh) many visions rose before his eyes. A goodly number were scenes from Nature: "River scenes. Thickly wooded bank. Bright stream with islands. Padma wide flowing covered with boats. A terraced green bank with steps in the middle." And so on. Sometimes human figures were part of the scene.

The training was not limited to sight. Hearing too was included. He heard voices and could distinguish from where they came. Some told "prophecies of future; but with appeal to reason."

That year the Bengal Nationalist Party's Provincial Conference was held in Jhalakati on 19 June. The speech Sri Aurobindo delivered there stirred his audience to the depth of its being. He tersely noted down in his diary, "Speech from chitta."²

His lipi reading was improving. "Short sentences deciphered & remembered."

At the same time work was going on in other parts of his being. "All relics of fear, disgust, dislike, hesitation rapidly disappearing. Doubt checked, suspension of judgment."

1 Mother's Chronicles, Book Five, ch. 50.

2 Chitta: the emotive mind.

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All these bizarre experiences were, naturally, having an effect on his body. "All liberty of bodily movement being steadily taken away," he jotted down in the afternoon of the 18^th. The same night, "Bhava of Avesh¹ in steamer shaking body." The next day, after his speech at Jhalakati, he wrote, "Movement of limbs felt always to be alien except in ordinary motions of walking when there is knowledge without upalabdhi.²

In a word, it was a rigorous and a thorough training that Sri Aurobindo was undergoing. Not a single part of his being was unattended. All were in the melting pot. And if we consider that in that state he was bringing out two weeklies, the Karma-yogin and Dharma, apart from all else, which a police report brings into focus, we are left breathless.

The report named "his principal associates, whom he visits and is visited by." Among them were several barristers, including Chitta Ranjan Das, Basanta Kumar Das, Bijoy Chandra Chatterji; there was our R Mitter (Pramatha Nath Mitra); the list also included the names of Ramananda Chatterji, Gispati Kabya-tirtha, Lalit Mohan Das, and some others. The list of names shows us Sri Aurobindo's wide-ranging interests. Those names were, in a way, linked by politics, no doubt, but many of these men were eminent in their own field. All of them were interested in Indian culture, in education, and other aspects of Indian life and society. Gispati Kabyatirtha, for instance, was a founder member of Calcutta's Sanskrit Sahitya Parishad. Ramananda Chatterji was the founder editor of the Bengali magazine

1 Rapture of trance.

2 Upalabdhi = realization.

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Prabasi (1901, from Allahabad), as well as the founder editor of the Modern Review (1907); he too was an educationist. Lalit Mohan Das hailed from Barisal, he had taken active part from 1905 onwards during the Partition and Boycott movements, and was a professor at Calcutta's City College from which post he resigned when the Risley Circular came into effect banning any participation in politics by students and teachers; in 1909 he founded the Barisal Seva Samiti.

Some visitors did not figure in that police report. Rabin-dranath Tagore, a family friend, would drop in now and then. We also know that Ramsay MacDonald and his wife visited 6 College Square. Then there were the students. How they adored Sejdal With reason, of course. When, for instance, at the Hooghly Conference of the Bengal Congress Committee the Moderates conspired to eliminate the student community from participating in the deliberations, 'Aurobindo Babu' it was who, single-handedly, manoeuvred to get the students admitted. Remember? In addition there were family members. There was a constant coming and going. His na-masi would often ask her favourite nephew Auro to accompany her to the Ganges for a bath. He went to his father-in-law's residence also to meet Mrinalini Devi.

How did he manage ? Even for a normal person it is a tremendous task. But Sri Aurobindo in his condition? It simply takes my breath away.

When things reached a crucial stage, God came to the rescue. The Anglo-Indian government decided to take action against him. Sri Aurobindo heard the Voice: "Go to Chandernagore." He went.

At Chandernagore, he would have remained unperturbed

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in the thatched hut in Coolie Lines, or even in the dilapidated shed which was kept locked from outside all day long; only in the evening did Sudarshan Chatterji, a revolutionary, bring him some dried fruit and nuts to keep his body and soul together. Sri Aurobindo would not have minded any of those discomforts.

But during those forty-five days or so in Chandernagore he had to change his location half a dozen times. Detectives, discovery, police, were haunting the revolutionaries who took care of him, while Sri Aurobindo himself remained "plunged into solitary meditation. Though inwardly absorbed, he continued to follow the outward events as they unfolded." The Indo-British government would not so easily give up its quarry. Could he then "pass the better part of my life as an undertrial prisoner ..."? No. God had other plans for him.

Sri Aurobindo again received a Command: "Go to Pondicherry."

"I have heard His voice and borne His will On my vast untroubled brow."

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