British consul
she would get me sent to prison etc. Her present campaign is her way of
realising this programme.Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest
2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life 1911–1928
To People in America, 1926–1927
About Anna Bogenholm Sloane1
[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]2, 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]3 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 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
1 This is a report written by Sri Aurobindo after Sloane made certain allegations against him, the Mother and the Ashram to the British Consul in Pondicherry. The date appears on a copy of a French translation of the letter, which presumably was sent to the French authorities in Pondicherry.
2 MS De Bit
3 MS De Bit