Shyampukur ON coming out of jail, Sri
Aurobindo found shelter in the house of his maternal uncle, Krishna Kumar
Mitra; the place was known as the Sanjivani Office. Bejoy Nag and myself
had got our release along with him, but we could not yet make up our minds as
to what we should do next; we were still wandering about like floating weeds or
moss. But both of us used to go and see him every afternoon. About
this time, he went out on tour for a short while in the
Page – 391 due reward. That was why
he offered this token payment and I should accept it as part of my
pocket-expenses. This was the first time I was going to earn any money. So
we came to stay at Shyampukur, on the Dharma and Karmayogin premises.
There were two flats or sections. In the front part were set up the press and
the office, and at the back, in the inner appartments, so to say, we set up our
household. There were three or four rooms on the first floor and downstairs
there were the kitchen and stores and things. Sri
Aurobindo used to come here every afternoon from his uncle's place. He would
first look to the work in the office and then come to our rooms. Till about ten
in the evening he used to spend his time with us. It
is here that began our true education, and perhaps, nay certainly, our
initiation too. Three of us were permanent residents, Bejoy Nag, Suresh
Chakravarti and myself. But there turned up practically every day Ramchandra
Majumdar, Biren Ghosh and Saurin Bose (a brother-in-law of Sri Aurobindo) who
came with us to By
giving me that work of editing the news he made
Page – 392 me slowly grow into a
journalist. Next there came to me naturally an urge to write articles. Sri
Aurobindo was pleased with the first Bengali article I wrote. Only, he made a
slight change at one place, I remember. I had written, "In the past, Now
we started collecting a few books. At the very outset he suggested two titles:
Carlyle's French Revolution and Green's History of the English
People, perhaps in consideration of our taste for history and revolution.
Arrangements soon came to be made, ail of a sudden and it seemed as if by
accident, for our coaching in Hindi as well. A Marwari gentleman who used to
help Sri Aurobindo in his journalistic work had a Pundit as his protégé to whom
he had to pay 70 or 75 rupees per month as an honorarium. So he asked Sri
Aurobindo if instead of the Pundit being paid for nothing he could not be made
to give some service. It was accordingly agreed that the Pundit would .come
and teach us Hindi for an hour every day. He was a Brahmin of the rigid orthodox
type. But once in the grip of iconoclasts like us, his orthodox habits were
soon broken to bits. For instance, he was made to drink of the water from taps
in place of holy It
was here at Shyampukur itself that Suresh Chandra
Page – 393 had his first inspiration for poetry. One
day, in the midst of all this, Sri Aurobindo asked me all of a sudden if I had
any desire to learn languages – any of the European languages, French for
example. I was a little surprised at the question, for I had not observed in me
any such ambition or inclination. None the less, I replied that I would like
to. That is how I began my French. He said, "At the National College
(National Council of Education, now Sri
Aurobindo himself began about this time his study of the Tamil language, with a
Tamil gentleman who used to come to the Karmayogin office. A rather
amusing incident has been narrated in this connection by Suresh Chakravarti.
You should read Suresh Chakravarti's account along with mine in order to get a
more complete picture of our life at Shyampukur. His Reminiscences (in
Bengali) has been published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. While taking up the
study of Tamil, Sri Aurobindo did not have the faintest suspicion that he
might have to go to Tamil Nadu one day and make that his permanent home. Here in Shyampukur and about the same time, there began for us another kind of education, another type of experience, a rather strange experience I should say. Everybody knows about automatic writing, that is, where the hand of the writer goes on automatically writing without any kind of impulsion, desire or direction on his own part; he remains neutral and lets himself go. It
is said that through this kind of writing are brought down spirits or bodiless
entities. The savants of the West may say that all this is a play of
subconscient mind as the waking
Page – 394 mind then abdicates. But
that is a matter for argument. Let me here describe what actually happened. Sri
Aurobindo showed to us, or rather made us hear, not examples of automatic
writing but of automatic speech. About eight in the evening, we would take our
seats around him. The lights were put out and all was silent. We kept still for
a while. Then slowly there came a voice from Sri Aurobindo. It was clearly not
his own voice, there were many voices each of a different character and tone.
The voice itself would say who it was. Some of them I remember very well. Once
someone came and said many fine things about education, about literature,
about our country. We got eager to know his name. After putting us off for a
while he finally gave out that he was Bankimchandra. The talks were in English.
He had used a word, "obfuscated", and as none of us knew the meaning
of this unusual word we asked him the meaning. His reply was, "In our days
we knew better English than you do." Another day, somebody else appeared
and immediately announced himself in a terrible voice, "I am Danton!
Terror! Red Terror!" He went on discoursing on the need and utility of all
that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself
thus, "I am Theramenes." Theramenes was a political leader of
ancient Who
are these beings? Or, what are they? Do supraphysical beings exist in fact?
And do they come and disclose their identity before men in this manner? It is a
very obscure and complicated affair indeed. Supraphysical beings do exist. But
the supraphysical world is not of a single piece. There are worlds upon worlds
in a regular series, from the most gross to the most subtle; above the physical
is the subtle-physical, above that is life, and above life mind, the
Page – 395 series continues above
mind also; and in each of these there are several layers or planes. Any of the
beings from any of these worlds or planes can manifest himself. But he has to
manifest through the instrumentality of the human medium, through the substance
of the medium's mind, life and body. Therefore he cannot easily manifest his
real nature or true being, he has to gather his materials from the medium's own
substance. Very often it is the make-up of the medium that predominates and the
being that manifests preserves very little of his own. But it may on the other
hand be quite otherwise. All will depend on the capacity of the medium. With an
impure or unfit medium there will be a greater possibility of charlatanism and
falsehood. In many cases it is not the
true soul of a dead person that comes; what comes is some portion of him, some
fragments of his mind, life or subtle body that may have survived in the corresponding
worlds or in some other worlds. By animating these parts and using them as
vehicles some other being or entity or force may come, as if a representative
of the whole man. Or else it might even happen that an entirely different being
presents himself under a false name. There is really no end to the complexities
that may arise in these supraphysical worlds. There may also be a medium who
knows how to keep under his control the action and modality of such appearances,
that is to say, determine in advance the particular beings or types of being
that will come or will not come, the kind of things they will say or will not
be allowed to say. Or he may, if he chooses, open the gates for anyone to
appear, simply in order that he may watch and examine what takes place. Needless
to add that when Sri Aurobindo made himself a medium, something like this used
to happen. As
a record of one of his experiments on this line, Sri Aurobindo himself has said
or rather left in writing something that we all know. The book entitled Yogic
Sadhan was written entirely in this manner through his hand by somebody
else.
Page – 396 And judging by the fact
that at the time of the writing Sri Aurobindo had seen the subtle presence of
Rammohan Roy around, it may be inferred that the book was written or inspired
by Rammohan Roy. Sri Aurobindo has likewise told us that the subtle being of
Vivekananda came to him in Alipore Jail to give him certain instructions. Meanwhile
there came to us running, one afternoon, a young man – Satish Sarkar – to give
Sri Aurobindo the news that Shamsul Alam, the Police Inspector who had been the
mainstay of Government in the Alipore bomb case, had just been shot down, on
the steps of the High Court, by Biren (Birendranath Datta Gupta). He added that
he too had been with Biren, but had managed to escape, although he doubted if
Biren could have escaped. Biren actually got arrested and was hanged. But the
young man absconded. Afterwards he came to us in Our
life in Shyampukur went on in its regular course, when, one evening as we
gathered for our usual séance, our friend Ramchandra suddenly appeared with the
news that the Government had decided to arrest Sri Aurobindo again; everything
was ready, he said, and it might even be that very evening. Sri Aurobindo
listened to him in silence. Then he said, "Come, let us move out just
now." He had received the Divine Command, as he told us later, to leave
immediately for Chandernagore. He came out of the house and made straight for
the river-side, accompained by Ramchandra, Biren Ghosh and Suresh Chakravarti.
Suresh has given an accurate and full account of what happened next, and I
shall not repeat that here. You should read it in his Reminiscences.
Page – 397 The
story of this sudden exit or disappearance Aurobindo has appeared in several
versions, with many distortions and not without a touch of colour. For
instance, I someone has said that it was on Nivedita's advice and at her insistence
or request that Sri Aurobindo took shelter in French territory. Another has
given a vivid cinema-like picture of how Sri Aurobindo had to jump a. wall, how
he lost his way among the narrow lanes and finally landed on somebody's
doorsteps and the dramatic dialogue that ensued, and so on. But all this is
sheer myth and romance. Sri Aurobindo himself has left his record on the point,
and his companions of that evening have also written out the true facts. Those
of us who were left behind continued to run the two papers for some time;
Nivedita was of particular help in regard to the English journal. But
afterwards, we too found it impossible to carryon and our pleasant home had to
be broken up. For news came that the police were after our blood; it became
imperative therefore that we too should disperse and go into hiding. I have
said that there were three permanent residents in that house. Of these three,
Suresh Chakravarti, at Ganen Maharaj's instance, disappeared among the Tagore
family, in the house of Gaganendranath Tagore. Bejoy removed to a friend's in That
expedition of mine was not less romantic than any. Antarctic trip! First I went
by train; next came the ferry steamer that carried me across rivers; then I had
a country-boat that paddled along the little channels of
Page – 398 I spent a couple of months
there, enjoying all kinds of delicious dishes and a, fine hospitality and
lorded it over in the football fields out there. Then I got the news that the
time had come, for starting on my travels again – this time on a far distant
trip, to the verge of
Page – 399
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