Chapter VII The Alipore Bomb Case: One Year in Jail 1908-1909 ON FRIDAY night I was sleeping without a worry. At about five the next morning [May 2, 1908] my sister rushed to my room in great agitation and called me out by name. I got up. The next moment the small room was filled with armed policemen! Superintendent Cregan, Mr. dark of 24-Paraganas, the charming and delightful visage of familiar Sriman Benod Gupta, a few inspectors, red-turbaned policemen, spies and search witnesses. They all came running like heroes, pistols in hand, as though they were besieging, with guns and cannons, a well-armed fort. I heard that a whi

-03_Manchester and Sr.Paul^s School, London-1890-1893.htm Chapter II Manchester and St. Paul's School, London 1879-1890 AT MANCHESTER. the boys were readily given shelter by the Drewett family: his wife and his elderly mother. Before he left, Dr. Ghose gave strict instructions that his sons should not be allowed to make the aquaintance of any Indians or to undergo any Indian influence. Sri Aurobindo was to stay in England for the next fourteen years, from 1879 to 1893. The first five years were spent at Manchester, the next six in London and the last three mostly at Cambridge. During his entire stay, he was virtually cut off fro his motherland, the only contact being t

Epilogue WHEN all over the world there was a growing eagerness to know more and more about Sri Aurobindo and the interest in his work was on the increase, he suddenly withdrew from the earth- scene. Superficially, this is a terrible irony of fate. But a study of his life suggests that more than once the utterly unexpected occurred as if by a choice on his own part. One may say that such an occurrence is almost a regular feature at each decisive turn of the upward spiral of his life. We see the rising curve suddenly moving downwards when he threw away a glittering career in the ICS and retired into an unpretentious State job in Baroda. Having risen high in the Baroda Service

Sri Aurobindo, 1918-1920 Chapter I Family Background and Childhood 1872-1879 ON FEBRUARY 6, 1893, a young man, not yet twenty-one years of age stood on the deck of a ship gazing at the far horizon where he could see faintly the shores of his motherland. He was coming back to India after having spent fourteen years in England. As he was returning home, a darkness which had entered his being when he was a small boy in India and had hung on to him alt through his stay in England, fell off him like a cloak. And when the ship touched Apollo Bunder, Bombay, and he stepped at last on Indian soil, he had a strange experience.

Chapter XII The Integral Yoga and the Ashram 1927 - 1938 DURING the weeks and months that followed the Siddhi Day, the Ashram went through a remarkable phase, known as its 'brilliant period'. Nolini Kanta writes in his reminiscences: "The Mother would now sit down daily for her meditations with all of s togather, in the evening after nightfall. She made a special arrangement for our seating. To her right would sit one group and to her left another, both arranged in rows. The right side of the Mother represented Light, and the left was Power. Each of us found a seat to her right or left according to the turn of our nature or the inner

Chapter V. The Nationalist Movement: Bande Mataram 1906-1907 YOU have seen that there were three sides to Sri Aurobindo's politics: planning and spreading secret revolutionary action; establishing the idea of complete independence, and creating a movement for non-cooperation and passive resistance so as to paralyse the Government. Sri Aurobindo was waiting for an opportunity to leave Baroda for good. During his visits to Bengal in 1905 and 1906 he saw that the situation there had undergone a radical transformation and he knew that the time had come for concerted action on the lines he had in mind. What had happen

Chapter XIII The Growth of the Ashram 1939-1950 SRI AUROBINDO made good progress in his recovery from the accident. Although strictly confined to his bed, he remained completely calm and unperturbed as if nothing had happened to him, and he submitted to the doctors' directions without question or complaint. Dr. Rao used to come almost every week from Cuddalore and he often remarked that Sri Aurobindo was an ideal patient. There must have been pain and discomfort because of the unaccustomed posture but Sri Aurobindo would scarcely disturb anybody and seldom call for any assistance. We had therefore to be all the more vigilant in anticipating hi

Chapter III Cambridge: The Call of the Motherland 1890-1893 As a Senior Classical scholar, Sri Aurobindo studied for the Classical Tripos, the B. A. degree examination in Greek and Latin. He was given rooms in the college and, except for vacations, he stayed at Cambridge for the next two years. In addition to his work for the Classical Tripos, Sri Aurobindo had to study other subjects for his ICS probationership. These included Law and Jurisprudence, Political Economy, Indian History and some Sanskrit. He had also to show a knowledge of his mother tongue, Bengali (which he did not know at all), and learn a little Hindustani

Chapter IV Baroda 1893-1906 I SRI AUROBINDO reached Baroda on February 8, 1893, i.e. only two days after his arrival at Bombay. What surprises us is that instead of first visiting his relatives in Bengal, he proceeded straight to Baroda. Could he have come to know the sad news of his parents - his father's death and his mother's illness? Difficult to surmise; perhaps there was urgent need to report for duty and thereafter he had to wait until he could get leave. Sri Aurobindo joined service immediately. He started in the Survey Settlement Department as an attaché for learning the work. Then he was shifted to various departments until towards the end o

Chapter X Coming of the Mother - "Arya" Review - World War I 1914-1920 WITH the Mother's arrival, there was a mighty mingling of two vast streams of sadhana which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were pursuing individually. These now joined forever to mark the beginning of a new era of spiritual creation: 'An hour began, the matrix of new Time.' To help you understand this, a brief sketch giving the background of the Mother's life is perhaps necessary. Like Sri Aurobindo's, the Mother's life was not lived on the surface for men to see and yet its outward events are of absorbing interest, for they do not follow a ste