A LONG LETTER TO SUBRATA SENGUPTA

A LONG LETTER TO SUBRATA SENGUPTA 

Really, this is laughably sad. Sri Aurobindo along with his Mrinalini Devi (Bose/post-marriage, Ghosh) had visited Holy Mother Sarada Devi at Baghbazar and took her blessings before making his grand escape to Chandan Nagar en route to Pondicherry. Mother gently touched his chin and exclaimed, "So, is this my brave son ('beerputra' -- in Bengali) who the Government ('Sarkar Bahadur') has employed so many guards to hold?" Mrinalini Devi had received initiation from Sarada Devi and when her husband was apprehended in the Alipore Bomb Case, she had rushed to Mother praying for her husband's safety. Mother had assured her of her husband's well-being and now that her husband was out and free, she had brought him to Mother's feet. Many years later in 1927, if I recall right, Swami Sundarananda who was the Swami in charge of Udbodhan (Mother's House/Mayer Badi) published in the Udbodhan magazine of the Ramakrishna Mission the entire account of Aurobindo Ghosh's visit to Sarada Devi with his wife, prior to his grand departure. Soon, from the Pondicherry Ashram came the rejoinder that Sri Aurobindo had never visited Sarada Devi in his life. This was the official statement of the Ashram and Sri Aurobindo remained mum on the issue, thereby affirming his approval of the statement. Swami Sundarananda was shocked. He was a spiritually advanced monk of unimpeachable character centred in truth. He immediately made a public statement that he was personally present in Mother's room when Aurobindo Ghosh and his wife Mrinalini were with Holy Mother Sarada Devi. There the matter ended.

Earlier, when Mrinalini Devi had received spiritual initiation from Sarada Devi and was paying frequent visits to her Guru, her husband in exile mildly chided her and asked her not to visit hither and thither (read : Holy Mother) but rather to do the meditative practices which he himself had taught her in Kolkata. This was a strange departure from the age-old spiritual practice of sitting at one's spiritual preceptor's feet and that too of such a spiritually exalted one as Sarada Devi. Anyhow, things were resolved in Mrinalini's death after a few years when it was on Aurobindo's insistence she visited Kolkata, contracted the then raging killer influenza and passed away.

This also is Sri Aurobindo, 'Avatar' to his followers, the great sage of supramental pretensions. 

P.S. Regarding Aurobindo's barbed criticism of Subhas Chandra Bose in the years prior to his grand departure to Europe and Aurobindo's denunciation of Netaji for his fascist alliance with Germany and Japan thereafter when he stopped to the dishonourable low of calling Netaji a traitor to the motherland,  citing due reasons to back his open offensive against the premier patriot, perhaps in self-reflection of his own earlier doings, I am not entering into now. That is another aspect of the 'Avatar of Pondicherry'.