Annie Besant
(Sri Aurobindo, 1908:) “Mrs. Besant has recently begun a campaign in favour of national education and in a recent speech has outlined her idea of a National University. We have every respect for this great orator and organiser, but we are bound to point out that an university organised by Mrs. Besant will not be a National University. In the first place the future University must be one built up by the brain and organising power of India’s own sons. It shall never be said that the first National University in India was the creation of a foreigner and that the children of the Mother were content to follow and imitate but could not lead and originate. Such a charge would be fatal to the very object of the University. Secondly, Mrs. Besant has forgotten that the basis of a National University has already been laid. The National Council of Education in Bengal has already commenced the great work on lines which have only to be filled in, and their work has received the blessing of God and increases. But Mrs. Besant has omitted to make any mention of their work and speaks as if she intended to have the Benares College as the basis of the National University.”[1]
(Sri Aurobindo, 1912) “I admit the truths that Theosophy seeks to unveil; but I do not think they can be reached if we fall into bondage even to the most inspiring table talk of Mahatmas or to the confused anathemas and vaticinations hurled from their platform tripods by modern Pythonesses of the type of Mrs. Annie Besant, that great, capacious but bewildered and darkened intellect, now stumbling with a loud and confident blindness through those worlds of twilight and glamour, of distorted inspirations, perverted communications and misunderstood or half-understood perceptions which are so painfully familiar to the student and seeker.”[2]
(Automatic writing by Sri Aurobindo, name noted in margin by the Mother, c.1920:)
“(Mme Besant)
An Asuric being of great force busy divinising herself, but not yet successful because of the very force of her power which creates a great force of ego.
No, not a Rakshasa. There is a Rakshasa force associated with her, but it does not affect the centre of her being.”[3]
- ↑ Bande Mataram, p.894, “A National University”
- ↑ Essays Divine and Human, p.61, “Hinduism and the Mission of India”
- ↑ Record of Yoga, p.1427
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