Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
CONTENTS
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PART ONE |
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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES |
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Section One |
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Life Sketches and Other Autobiographical Notes |
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Section Two |
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Corrections of Statements Made in Biographies and Other Publications |
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General Note (referring especially to the Alipur Case and Sri Aurobindo’s politics) |
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PART TWO |
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LETTERS OF HISTORICAL INTEREST |
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Section One |
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Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters,1890 – 1926 |
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Letters Written as a Probationer in the Indian Civil Service, 1892 |
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Letters Written While Employed in the Princely State of Baroda, 1895 – 1906 |
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To the Dewan, on the Government’s Reply to the Letter on the Curzon Circular |
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Letters and Telegrams to Political and Professional Associates, 1906 – 1926 |
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Section Two |
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Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life, 1911 – 1928 |
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Section Three |
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Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life, 1921 – 1938 |
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PART THREE |
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PUBLIC STATEMENTS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONSON INDIAN AND WORLD EVENTS, 1940–1950 |
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Section One |
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Public Statements, Messages, Letters and Telegrams on Indian and World Events, 1940 – 1950 |
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On the Integration of the French Settlements in India, 1947 – 1950 |
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Section Two |
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Private Letters to Public Figures and to the Editor of Mother India, 1948 – 1950 |
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Notes and Letters to the Editor of Mother India on Indian and World Events, 1949 – 1950 |
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PART FOUR |
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PUBLIC STATEMENTS AND NOTICES CONCERNINGSRI AUROBINDO’S ASHRAM AND YOGA, 1927 – 1949 |
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Section One |
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Public Statements and Notices concerning the Ashram,1927 – 1937 |
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Section Two |
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Public Statements about Sri Aurobindo’s Path of Yoga, 1934 and 1949 |
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To People in America, 1926 1927
To Mr. and Mrs. Sharman
[c. January 1926]
Dear Mr.. and Mrs Sharman, .. I received a little while ago your Christmas card and greetings and it reminded me of a letter written long ago which I had hoped personally to answer, but could never do it, the time not having come. I have ever since I came to Pondicherry been obliged to withdraw more and more first from public life and then from all outer activities and absorb myself in a long and arduous inner endeavour. I had to discontinue the "Arya" for this purpose and for a long time I wrote nothing, not even any letters. Now although the needed intensity of the inner concentration is not over, it is becoming more possible for me to turn my face towards action on the physical plane. I take the opportunity of your card to do what I then failed to do, even after so long a lapse of time. I understand from your letter that there are around you a number of seekers after the spiritual life who have received some help from my works. I should be glad to hear more of this group and of what they and you are now doing. Perhaps it would now be possible to open a regular correspondence; for, even when I am not able to write myself, my brother and one or two others who are practising Yoga here with me, often now write under my instructions or dictation the necessary answer. If you feel that such a correspondence would be of help to you,1 In a letter of the year 1924 you asked whether I had prepared any more intimate instructions in Yoga (other than my published works) and asked to be allowed to share them with those I am guiding in Pondicherry. The "Yoga and its Objects"
1 Sentence left incomplete. — Ed.
Page – 382 and "Synthesis [of]2 Yoga", although founded on my personal knowledge and experience were not intended for that purpose, but merely meant to indicate the general lines on which Yoga might proceed, the main principles, the broad ways of spiritual progress. I have not written or prepared anything new of the kind. All intimate guidance must necessarily in so inner and ]3 be personal, suited delicate a thing as the spiritual life [ to the recipient and the instruction given can only be effective if it is the channel for a spiritual contact and a guiding or helpful influence. In that way if you need my help, I shall be glad to give it. That indeed is one of the objects which the correspondence I propose could serve.
To the Advance Distributing Company
[1]
Arya Office. Pondicherry 9 March. 1926 Advance Distributing Company Pittsburgh. Pa. Your letter of the 8th January to the Arya Publishing House has just been forwarded to me. The publishing house restricted by the Government is not the A.P.H, but the Prabartak Publishing House which has no longer any connection with my work. My books were originally published by various agencies, but an arrangement has recently been made by which the preference for future editions or new publications will usually be given under fixed conditions to the A.P.H. It is from there that all my books already in print can be most readily secured. This arrangement however applies only to India and I have reserved rights of separate or sole publication in Europe, America and elsewhere.
2 MS on 3 MS must
Page – 383
I have suggested to the A.P.H to supply you with my works as requested by you, but I am told they have rules in the matter which may come in the way of an immediate compliance. The firm is still a small one and it is not likely that it will be able to supply you rapidly or on any large scale. If any pressing or considerable demand is created in America, it will be more convenient to publish there than to rely on India. I am quite willing therefore that you should yourselves publish "parts of this literature" according to your proposal. I may observe that all proceeds of my books are set aside for farthering of the work for which the "Arya" appeared. Vol II. No. 8 is no longer separately available; but a friend is willing to send you his copy of the number temporarily for immediate use. I shall despatch it by this post. Please return it here as soon as it has served your purpose. There is one full set of the "Arya" in Pondicherry, partly bound, which the owner wishes to devote to the work if he can get his price; but as full sets are no longer available in India, he estimates the value at Rs 500. If this offer is acceptable, the set will be sent on remittance of the amount to the Arya Office. I have received recently letters from different parts of the United States which seem to indicate the beginning of a demand for my writings and, for other reasons also, I have been for some time desirous to bring out my works in America including those not yet published in book form. I do not know if it will enter into your views to take up this work. If so, please inform me of the conditions. All communications and remittances in connection with my works (other than for orders for supply of my books from the A.P.H.) should be sent to me to the following address. Sri Aurobindo Ghose Arya Office Pondicherry French India
I shall be well-pleased to enter into touch with the student of my thought mentioned in your letter, if he will write to me personally at the above address.
Page – 384 [2] The ARYA Office Pondicherry French India July 2. 26
To Pittsburgh. Pa.
I am in receipt of your letter dated May 2d 1926 and the sum of Rs 500 and over sent by you for the complete set of the "ARYA". The complete set will be kept here in the office according to your suggestion; if needed at any time, it will be at your disposal. As to the missing numbers of Vol. VII — Nos 3 and 6 — as I understand, — I am writing to the A.P.H. where I have kept all the unsold numbers, and if these two are with them, as is most probable, they will be sent to you. I shall inform you if I find anyone here who needs the two superfluous numbers. Next, as [to] the conditions of publication in America. I shall be glad to entrust the work to you and I leave it to you whether to keep your present name or take that of the Arya Publishing Company, if you so desire. I do not know whether a rigorous self-limitation to the "Arya" material would be the best course; perhaps it would be better to make it the nucleus while other literature could be added which would be supplementary or consonant with the general idea and purpose. I believe you are right in your suggestion regarding standardisation; conditions in India are different and the system here would not be advantageous or suitable, but I can understand that in America this system would be the best. I agree also that a limited edition in first-class style would be the best from the point of view of the financial return. In India we are obliged to suit the form and price of our publications to the purse of the average educated middle class who are the mass of the still very limited reading public. The conditions I have made with the A.P.H. are of a special character and cannot be repeated in your case. I understand from
Page – 385 what you have written that in America any profit from the sale of literature like the "Arya" publications is not at all probable unless and until a larger demand has been created than is likely for some time to come. A percentage on the sales would bring in only small sums while it might hamper the development of the work. Now small returns would be of very little use to me except for financing petty incidents and details of my work which can be otherwise met. The method and scope I have fixed for the future work to be done is of the large-scale kind and would need even from the beginning sums more like those raised by Swami Yogananda as described by you in your letter. I would prefer therefore that you should concentrate at present on the development of the publications and on getting them known as soon as possible and use the proceeds of the sale of the books for that purpose. If at any time a great demand arose and resulted in considerable profits, the question of a percentage of the sales to be remitted to me or any other arrangement in the matter could then be brought up again for consideration. In regard to the order of issue I think you are right in selecting "War and Self-Determination" as a preliminary publication. The "Essays on the Gita" seems to me preeminently fitted to take the lead in a standardised series, but it would be necessary to await the publication of the "Second Series" by the A.P.H. The "First Series" covering the first six chapters of the Gita is being reprinted with only one necessary correction and should be out in a few days. But I have had to make extensive additions, alterations and corrections and to remould to some extent the language of the Second Series now to be published in book form for the first time. I have sent the M.S. to the A.P.H and I hope that it will be out in two or three months at the outside, when it will be sent to you. At present I am preparing a revised edition of the "Ideal of Human Unity", already published in Madras but now out of print, and the "Psychology of Social Development", not yet published in book form, which I propose to bring out under another title, "The Human Cycle". The "Synthesis of Yoga" is too large a work to be included in a single book; I propose to publish it in India in four parts, each devoted to one
Page – 386 of the four Yogas, — Works, Knowledge, Devotion and Self-Perfection, — but this would involve a slight recasting here and there so as to make each volume in itself sufficiently complete. There remain, apart from some uncompleted works, the "Life Divine" and "The Future Poetry" which could be published, subject to the writing of a Preface, almost as they are and the smaller books or booklets already published some of which might be put together as you suggest so as to form part of the standardised volumes. That is the situation as regards the "Arya" writings. I gather that, having view to the conditions in America you propose to print "War and Self-Determination" first as a booklet, to start the standardised series with "Essays on the Gita" and to follow with the "Life Divine". I would have no objection to such an order of issue. I have received the copy of the "East-West" magazine and the gift-book. It is not at all surprising that Swami Yogananda should have been so successful in America. His propaganda is admirably suited to the practical mentality of a western and especially of an American public and his statement of ideas on subjects like Karma to its present capacity of understanding in these matters. I cannot gather from the magazine what is the nature of the practice or discipline which he calls Yogoda. The name "Satsanga" is that of a religious sect with a special kind of Bhakti Yoga which is now achieving considerable success in Bengal, but the practice here if one can judge from the style and manner of its announcement seems to be very different. I do not think it would have much success in India where there is a long tradition and in spite of much imperfection and error the standards of spiritual life are of a subtler kind. The difficulties we experience here are due rather to a wide-spread inability to go freely beyond ancient ideas and forms. Plenty of money can be had in India for orthodox religious purposes and also, although not on the American scale, for Asramas or other spiritual institutions which take the ascetic form or repeat established and well-understood formulas. But the general mind has not yet advanced far enough from the old moorings to form even an inadequate conception of what I am doing here and it is easily disconcerted by the
Page – 387 departure from old forms, a willed absence of the customary paraphernalia and the breaking of traditional barriers and limits. That is one considerable advantage of America; there is evidently a sufficiently widespread eagerness and openness of mind to new things. We have to see whether this will be sufficient to open the mind also to deep and true things. The spiritual future of America is not yet decided; it is in the balance. There is a great possibility before her, but it depends on Americans themselves whether she will make good and realise it. Otherwise she will follow the disastrous curve of other western peoples. India and America stand prominent at the two poles that have to meet and become one, the spiritual and the material life; one has shown a preeminent capacity of realisation on the spiritual, the other on the material plane. America must be able to receive freely India's riches and to give freely in return from her own for the material organisation of a higher life on the physical plane; this is at once a condition and her chance. At present it is only a possibility; let us see whether it can be made an achieved and perfected symbol. The book "Some I.L.O.F. Correspondence" has reached me: I await the promised letter of the writer.
Draft of a Letter to C. E. Lefebvre
[c. July 1926]
I have taken a long time to consider the answer [to] your letter or rather to allow the answer to ripen and take form. It is not easy to reply to the request implied in what you have written; for the distance between India and America is great and, even if it were not so, guidance in Yoga by correspondence and without personal contact is a very hampered and not usually in my experience a satisfactory method. Ideas can be exchanged on paper, but a spiritual influence, a psychic interchange, a vigilant control — and all this is implied in this kind of guidance — are not so easily communicated. However, I will try to comply with your request as best I can under these circumstances. First, let me say, that the absorption of ideas and the remoulding of the mental aims and attitude is one thing and the
Page – 388 remoulding of the inner life and consciousness and eventually also of the outer life, which is the aim of Yoga, is quite another. The first can be done to some extent by the method of dissemination you indicate. But as you rightly see, instructions in Yoga cannot be fruitfully given on the same lines. That can only be given successfully to a few, to each separately as an intimately personal thing which he must assimilate and make living and true in himself according to his own capacity and nature. That is why I am led to believe that the work of Swami Yogananda is not only elementary but can hardly be the true thing — Yoga cannot be taught in schools and classes. It has to be received personally, it has to be lived, the seeker, sadhaka, has to change by a difficult aspiration and endeavour his whole consciousness and nature, his mind, heart, life, every principle of his being and all their movements into a greater Truth than anything the normal life of man can imagine. Those who can do this are not yet many, but some are to be found everywhere, and I see no reason why those in America should be condemned to only an elementary "instruction". The true Truth, the great Path has to be opened to them; how far they will go in it depends on their own personal capacity and the help they receive.
To and about Anna Bogenholm Sloane
[1] The ARYA Office Pondicherry French India August 3, 1926
To Anna Bogenholm Sloane Ashirvada.
I have read your letter with great interest and I have no hesitation after the perusal in acceding to your request and asking you to come over to India and see me; certain of the experiences
Page – 389 you relate seem to me very clear and decisive. I presume that, as you suggest in your letter, you will come prepared to live here for a few years. For, although the first openings to a higher and larger consciousness — the experiences called by you initiations — can be very rapid and luminous and decisive, they have to be followed by a long process of firm and stable foundation, fuller development, progressive transformation of the nature and a complete organisation of the new consciousness which involves years of persistent and vigilant discipline and endeavour. Please write to me before you start and inform me of the date of your arrival.
[2] [August September 1927]
It is not my intention to reply to your questions regarding myself or the Mother.4 They are indeed of a kind that I make it a rule not to answer, but even if it were otherwise, a reply would not be fitting in the present stage of your progress. The important point that comes out in your letter is that you consider that the Mother can be of no help to you, as she does not understand your experiences and has never had anything like them. Under these conditions I can only ask her not to spend farther time in a work that is by your own assertion useless. On the other hand I can give no assent to your demand that I should replace her. If you cannot profit by her help, you would find still less profit in mine. But in any case I have no intention of altering the arrangement I have made for all the disciples without exception that they should receive the light and force from her and not directly from me and be guided by her in their spiritual progress. I have made the arrangement not for any temporary purpose but because it is the one way (considering what she is and her power — provided always the disciple is open and receives) that is true and effective.
4 This and the next two items are draft-letters from Sri Aurobindo's notebooks. There is no indication that any of them was sent as drafted or in any other form. — Ed.
Page – 390 [3]
[August September 1927]
I do not think it necessary to answer the personal question you put me or announce who I am on the spiritual plane. If I am what your question suggests, it is not for me to declare it but for others to discover. I prefer also to make no reply to the question about the Mother, at least in the form in which you put it. All I care to say, and it is all that is needed, is that she is doing the work for which she took birth and has prepared herself uninterruptedly from her childhood. The Power is in her that can bring down a true supramental creation, open the whole nature of the disciple to the supramental Light and Force and guide its transformation into a divine nature. It is because there is this Power in her that she has been entrusted with the work. But all are free in their inner being, free to accept or refuse, free to receive or not to receive, to follow this way or another. What the Mother can do for the disciple depends on his willingness or capacity to open himself to her help and influence and on the completeness of his consent and confidence. If they are complete, the work done will be perfect and true; if they are imperfect, the work will be marred by the distortions brought in by his mind and his vital failings, if they are denied, then nothing can be done. Or, rather, nothing will be done; for the attempt in such circumstances might lead to a breaking rather than a divine building of the nature, or even there might be a reception of hostile forces instead of the true light and power. This is the law of the relation on the spiritual plane: the consent of the disciple must be at every moment free, but his confidence, if given, must be complete and the submission to the guidance absolute. This is the one real issue that your recent development has raised between us. The rising of some doubts would in itself have been of little importance; doubt is the very nature of the ignorant physical mind. But yours have very evidently risen because you have taken a turn away from the path to the
Page – 391 supramental realisation along which the Mother was helping you and admitted another occult influence. This is shown by the nature of your doubts where you question her knowledge of certain common experiences of Yoga and by your conclusion that she can no longer help you. I pass by your pretensions to gauge her knowledge and experience; her dealings with you and others proceed from a consciousness to which the mental understanding and judgment have not the key. But when the doubt and questioning go so far, it is because something in the vital nature begins to be unwilling to accept any longer the guidance; for the guidance is likely to interfere with its going on its own way. I could not accede under any circumstances to your request to me to substitute my instruction and guidance for the Mother's. If you cannot receive help from her any longer, it is evident that you cannot receive it either from me; for the same Power and the same Knowledge act through both of us. I have no intention of taking a step which would bring down the work to the personal human level and would be a direct contradiction of its divine origin and nature.
[4]
[August September 1927]
When you wrote to me from America some of the experiences you narrated in your letter[ ]5 indicated a very clear call to the new supramental life. And we understood also that a Power from the higher planes that had a place in our work was trying to manifest through your personality. But a call is only the beginning; it is after many ordeals that it matures into a definite and irrevocable choice. Moreover whenever a Power of this kind tries to manifest, always in the exterior human personality the opposite movements have a strong place. It is as if for each divine power the conquest of its opposite in its own
5 MS from America
Page – 392 chosen vessel was a condition for its perfect manifestation on the earth plane. When you came here the Mother perceived that you must at first be left alone to your own movement and the discipline imposed on other sadhakas was not laid upon you. All she did was to bring down supramental light and power in you and to open to them the different centres. This was rapidly and on the whole successfully done. But to open the centres is only a beginning, for then comes one of the most difficult periods for the disciple. The consciousness opens not only to the true Light and Power, but to all kinds of experiences and all sorts of influences from all the planes and from all sources and quarters. There is a period of intense and overpowering internal activity of formation, vision and movements of new consciousness and new power. If then ]6 by the brilliance and the disciple is carried away [ splendour and delight of his experiences, he can easily wander far from the highest way. But the Forces and Beings that are behind them are sometimes adverse Forces, sometimes the lesser Gods of the mental and vital planes. In either case they try to occupy and use the instrument, but for their own purpose, for the play of the Ideas and Forces they represent, not the highest Truth. There are only three safeguards for the disciple. One is to call down first the eternal peace, calm and silence of the Divine into the mind and the vital and physical being. In that peace and silence there is a true possibility that the mental and vital formations will fall to rest and the supramental creation can have free space. The second safeguard is to remain entirely detached even from the most absorbing experiences and observe them without being carried away by their brilliance. The power of discernment and discrimination will slowly form from above and he will be able to distinguish between the higher truth and the lower truth as between truth and falsehood. The third safeguard is to follow implicitly the instructions of the spiritual guides who have already trod the path and to follow their guidance.
6 MS during these experiences
Page – 393
This is the ordeal into which you have entered; but unhappily you seem to have departed from the guidance of the Mother in the crucial point. You seem to have deliberately rejected the peace and silence of the vital being in the fear that it would bring stagnation. As a result the strong habit [of] vital formation came into play and you began to call down lights and powers and build things in [yourself]7 in your own way. In this condition, when the disciple is not accustomed to complete trust in his masters the one thing that can be done is to stand aside and let the disciple take his own way, for to insist is likely to raise in him doubt and revolt and decide him in the opposite way. According to whatever may be the supreme decision in his case, he will feel the need of guidance and return to the straight way or he will depart on his own path wherever his inner destiny calls him. If you have not an entire confidence in us, are not prepared to submit absolutely to our guidance, if the supramental Truth is not your one aim, if you are not prepared to go through the slow, difficult and often painful process of self-emptying new creation by which alone it can form in you, putting away all pride, self-will and excessive self-confidence, or if you think that with you is the Truth and not with us, then obviously you can draw no benefit from staying here. It is for you to choose. One thing I would say in ending is that you seem to have formed very erroneous ideas about the work I have undertaken, as for instance when you imagine that I am working by spiritual means to bring about a worldwide conflagration and war between the white and the coloured races. This is a sheer error. The Mother has indeed told you that I do not believe in crude and violent external means for a spiritual work. As for the division of the human race according to their colour, it is in my view the play of an obscure ignorance and I would never dream of admitting it as a basis for my action. If any such world catastrophe happened it would be the result of Karmic forces and far from helping would be a serious hindrance to my work. My work is one of
7 MS yourselves
Page – 394 spiritual creation not of physical destruction. If anything has to disappear or change, it will do so by the turning on it of the supramental light and Force and what has to change must be decided by that omniscient Light and omnipotent Force and not by the human mind and its narrow ideas and false desires.
[5]
[13 October 1927]
Mrs Sloane wrote to me from America asking if she could .. come here to stay and practise Yoga. She was recommended by Mr.. Ralph [deBit]8, her spiritual guide, the head of a movement in America called the School of Sacred Science, who had written one or two letters to me in connection with his work and my books. I wrote giving her permission to come. She delayed her coming because she had quarrelled with Mr.. [deBit]9 and was busy trying to destroy his work and publishing charges against him which on enquiry evidently were not substantiated as the proceedings against him came to nothing. This is the same manoeuvre that she has repeated here. When she arrived, I had already decided to retire into seclusion and could not see her. She has seen me only once on August 15th and has never had any talk with me. She was not at any time admitted as a member of the Asram, is acquainted only with the Mother and one English disciple (Datta) — except for two visits to Madame Potel and knows nothing personally about the Asram. Throughout she has been kept apart on probation. But it was found that she was a woman who took her desires and imaginations and the forms she gave to them for truth and fact and finally she developed such violent delusions that it became necessary to give her up for good. When she realised by my silence that she had been rejected, she entered into an almost insane fury and sent word that she was staying here in order to crush me and destroy my work, that with the help of the
8 MS De Bit 9 MS De Bit
Page – 395 British consul she would get me sent to prison etc. Her present campaign is her way of realising this programme. Her other allegations, mostly sheer inventions or grotesque distortions mixed with her own fancies, hardly need an answer. As to the charge that I am carrying on politics under the cover of Yoga, it seems to be the development of certain visions and imaginations of the future in which she began to indulge some time ago — visions of a world war and troops entraining at Baghdad, prophecies of a war between England and the Islamic peoples, etc; she had even fixed the date for next year. She had been told at the beginning that my work had no connection with politics and that I did not approve of the catastrophic and childish violences to which her mind seemed very ready to turn when it meddled with politics and the future of peoples. At first therefore she took these visions on her own account and did not mix me with them; but after the Mother had ceased to receive her, she suddenly wrote among her other experiences (e.g. of having a God glowing and tingling inside her) that she had seen that I was an incarnation of Shiva and discovered by intuition that I was working by my spiritual forces to bring about a war between the white and the coloured races next spring. This is all the foundation she has for her statement. There is no connection between my spiritual work and politics. Not only so but those like Anilbaran Ray who were political workers or leaders outside, had to give up politics before they were taken into the Asram. There is not a single fact or act of mine, that can support any statement to the contrary. If Sloane or anyone else wants any evidence better than her intuitions to establish her charge, they will first have to invent it. Sri Aurobindo Ghose
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