On an Article by Ramchandra
MajumdarSri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part One. Autobiographical Notes
2. Sri Aurobindo’s corrections of statements in a proposed biography
The Departure from Calcutta, 1910
On an Article by Ramchandra
Majumdar
In his reply to Suresh Chakravarty’s article my old friend Ramchandra Majumdar congratulates himself on the strength of his memory in old age.1 His memory is indeed so strong that he not only recollects, very inaccurately, what actually happened, but recalls also and gives body to what never happened at all. His account is so heavily crammed with blunders and accretions that it may provide rich material for an imaginative and romantic biography of Sri Aurobindo in the modern manner but has no other value. It is a pity to have to trample on this fine garden of flowers but historical and biographical truth has its claim. I shall correct some of the most flagrant errors in this narrative.
First of all, Suresh Chakravarty’s article about the journey to Chandernagore confined itself to inaccurate statements of the facts and denied the story of a visit to Sri Sarada Devi in the course of that journey. This point has now been practically conceded for we see that the alleged visit has been transferred to another date a few days earlier. I may say that Suresh’s narrative of the facts was brought to the notice of Sri Aurobindo who certified that it was true both as a whole and in detail.
But now another story has been brought up which is full
of confusions and unrealities and is a good example of how a myth can be
established in place of the truth. Sri Aurobindo never spoke with Sister
Nivedita about any case intended to be brought against him by the Government in
connection with the murder of Shamsul Alam, for the good reason that no such
intention was ever reported to him by anybody. Sister Nivedita never directed or
advised him to go into hiding. What actually happened had nothing to do with the
departure to Chandernagore. What happened was this: Sister Nivedita on a much
earlier occasion informed Sri Aurobindo that the Government intended to deport
him and advised him “not to hide” but to leave British India and work from
outside; Sri Aurobindo did not accept the advice. He 
said that he would write an “Open Letter” which he thought would make the
Government give up its idea; this appeared in the Karmayogin under the title “My
Last Will and Testament”. Afterwards Sister Nivedita told him that it had had
the desired effect and there was no more question of deportation.
Sri Aurobindo did not see Sister Nivedita on his way to Chandernagore; this is only a relic of the now abandoned story of his visit to the Math at Baranagar on that occasion in which it was related that she had seen him off at the Ghat. She knew nothing whatever of his departure for Chandernagore until afterwards when he sent her a message asking her to take up the editing of the Karmayogin in his absence. Everything happened very suddenly. Sri Aurobindo, as he has himself related, while at the Karmayogin Office, heard of an approaching search and his intended arrest: he suddenly received an adesh to go to Chandernagore and carried it out immediately without informing or consulting anybody – even his colleagues and co-workers. Everything was done in fifteen minutes or so and in the utmost secrecy and silence. He followed Ram Majumdar to the Ghat, Suresh Chakravarty and Biren Ghose following at a little distance; a boat was hailed and the three got in and went off immediately. His stay in Chandernagore also was secret and known only to a few like his later departure to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo never asked Ram Majumdar to arrange for a hiding place; there was no time for any such arrangement. He went unannounced, relying on some friends in Chandernagore to arrange for his stay. Motilal Roy received him first in his own house, then arranged in other places, allowing only a few to know. This is the true account of what happened according to Sri Aurobindo’s own statement.
The new story now told that Devabrata Bose and Sri
Aurobindo both asked to be admitted into the Ramakrishna Mission and Devabrata
was accepted but Swami Brahmananda refused to accept Sri Aurobindo is another
myth. Sri Aurobindo never even dreamed of taking Sannyas or of entering into any
established order of Sannyasis. It ought to be well known to everybody that
Sannyas was never accepted by him as part of his 
yoga; he has founded an Asram in Pondicherry but its members are not Sannyasis,
do not wear the ochre garb or practise complete asceticism but are sadhaks of a
yoga of life based on spiritual realisation. This has always been Sri
Aurobindo’s idea and it was never otherwise. He saw Swami Brahmananda only once
when he went on a boat trip to visit the Belur math; he had then about fifteen
minutes’ conversation with Swami Brahmananda but there was no talk about
spiritual things. The Swami was preoccupied with a communication from the
Government and consulted Sri Aurobindo as to whether there was any need of an
answer. Sri Aurobindo said no and the Swami agreed. After seeing the math Sri
Aurobindo came away and nothing else happened. He never by letter or otherwise
communicated with Swami Brahmananda before or afterwards and never directly or
indirectly asked for admission or for Sannyas.
There have been hints or statements about Sri Aurobindo
taking or asking for initiation from certain quarters about this time. Those who
spread these legends seem to be ignorant that at this time he was not a
spiritual novice or in need of any initiation or spiritual direction by anybody.
Sri Aurobindo had already realised in full two of the four great realisations on
which his yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first he had gained
while meditating with the Maharashtrian Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, at Baroda in
January 1908; it was the realisation of the silent spaceless and timeless
Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness
and attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total
unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second
realisation which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all
beings and all that is, which happened in the Alipore jail and of which he has
spoken in his speech at Uttarpara. To the other two realisations, that of the
supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that
of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind, he was already
on his way in his meditations in Alipore jail. Moreover, he had accepted from
Lele as the principle of his sadhana to rely wholly on the Divine and his
guidance 
alone both for his sadhana and for his
outward actions. After that it was impossible for him to put himself under any
other guidance and unnecessary to seek help from anyone. In fact Sri Aurobindo
never took any formal initiation from anyone; he started his Sadhana on his own
account by the practice of pranayama and never asked for help except from Lele.
One or two less important points have to be mentioned
to show how little reliance can be placed on the details of Ramchandra’s
narrative. His statement about the automatic writing is only an imaginative
inference and in fact quite groundless. Sri Aurobindo totally denies that he
used the automatic writing for any kind of moral or other edification of those
around him; that would have meant that it was spurious and a sort of trick, for
no writing can be automatic if it is dictated or guided by the writer’s
conscious mind. The writing was done as an experiment as well as an amusement
and nothing else. I may mention here the circumstances under which it was first
taken up. Barin had done some very extraordinary automatic writing at Baroda in
a very brilliant and beautiful English style and remarkable for certain
predictions which came true and statements of fact which also proved to be true
although unknown to the persons concerned or anyone else present: there was
notably a symbolic anticipation of Lord Curzon’s subsequent unexpected departure
from India and, again, of the first suppression of the national movement and the
greatness of Tilak’s attitude amidst the storm; this prediction was given in
Tilak’s own presence when he visited Sri Aurobindo at Baroda and happened to
enter just when the writing was in progress. Sri Aurobindo was very much struck
and interested and he decided to find out by practising this kind of writing
himself what there was behind it. This is what he was doing in Calcutta. But the
results did not satisfy him and after a few further attempts at Pondicherry he
dropped these experiments altogether. He did not give the same high value to his
efforts as Ramchandra seems to have done, for they had none of the remarkable
features of Barin’s writings. His final conclusion was that though there are
sometimes phenomena which point to the intervention of beings of another plane
not always or often of a 
high order the mass of
such writings comes from a dramatising element in the subconscious mind;
sometimes a brilliant vein in the subliminal is struck and then predictions of
the future and statements of things [unknown]2 in the present and past come up, but otherwise these writings have not a
great value. I may add that Ramchandra’s details are incorrect and there was no
guide named Theresa, in fact no guide at all, though someone calling himself
Theramenes broke in from time to time. The writings came haphazard without any
spirit mentor such as some mediums claim to have.
A smaller but more amazing myth presents Sri Aurobindo as a poet in Tamil – and this apparently after only a few days of study. Far from writing Tamil poetry Sri Aurobindo never wrote a single sentence even of Tamil prose and never spoke a single phrase in the Tamil language. He listened for a few days to a Nair from Malabar who read and explained to him articles in a Tamil newspaper; this was a short time before he left Bengal. At Pondicherry he took up the study of Tamil, but he did not go very far and his studies were finally interrupted by his complete retirement.
R’s whole account is crammed with reckless inaccuracies and unreal details. Srish Goswami has pointed out in a letter that the astrological writings of Sri Aurobindo of which R speaks were only some elementary notes and had no importance. Sri Aurobindo drew them up at Baroda to refresh his memory when he was studying the subject with the idea of finding out for himself what truth there might be in astrology. He had never any intention of figuring as an astrologer or a writer on astrology. These notes did not form a book and no book of Sri Aurobindo’s on this subject appeared from the A. P. [Arya Publishing] House.
It is not a fact that Sri Aurobindo’s wife Mrinalini
Devi was residing at Sj. K. K. Mitra’s house in College Square; Sri Aurobindo
himself lived there constantly between the Alipore trial and his departure to
French India. But she lived always with the family of Girish Bose, principal of
Bangabasi College. 
One is unable to understand
the meaning of the saying attributed to Sri Aurobindo that he was a man rising
to humanity unless we suppose that he was only the animal man rising towards the
status of a thinking being; certainly Sri Aurobindo never composed such a
resonant and meaningless epigram. If it had been to a Divine Humanity it might
have had some meaning but the whole thing sounds unlike what Sri Aurobindo could
have said. In fact all that Ramchandra puts into Sri Aurobindo’s mouth is of a
character foreign to his habits of speech e.g. his alleged Shakespearean and
Polonius-like recommendation to Ramchandra himself while departing to
Chandernagore. He may have enjoined silence on Ramchandra but not in that
flowery language.
This should be enough; it is unnecessary to deal with all the inaccuracies and imaginations. But I think I have said enough to show that anyone wanting the truth about Sri Aurobindo would do well to avoid any reliance on Ramchandra’s narrative. It can be described in the phrase of Goethe “Poetic fictions and truths” for the element of truth is small and that of poetic fiction stupendous. It is like the mass of ale to the modicum of bread in Falstaff’s tavern bill. In fact it is almost the whole.
1945
1 This statement, dictated by Sri Aurobindo in response to an article written in Bengali by Ramchandra Majumdar and published in Prabasi in 1945, was used by Nolini Kanta Gupta as the basis of a rejoinder published in the same journal. – Ed.
2 MS (dictated) are known