The stone-throwing incident

(T. Kodandarama Rao:) “As if to convince Upendranath and [other skeptics] of his way of thinking, there occurred in the Master's house the occult phenomenon of stone-throwing, in the mid-winter of 1921, to which I and others living at the time in Sri Aurobindo's house were direct witnesses. Stones began to fall daily at the fall of dusk and continued for some days with increased violence. The duration and the size of stones increased from day to day. The stones covered with moss began to fall in the verandah before our room, in the kitchen and everywhere, downstairs in the closed room were I and V. P. Varma were put up. The stones fell on our table also. The C.I.D. of Police in those days were watching the movements of the inmates and keeping watch over the Master's house as the British feared the Master though he had left politics. The French police were sent for and along with them some C.I.D. also came and saw the occurrence and when one of the constables “got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his two legs,” the police went away saying that it was not a man-made affair. The attack was mostly before and in Bijoy's room where the servant-boy was sheltered and it seemed that the boy was the medium and centre of attack. The servant, who was a semi-idiot boy, got hurt by the stone attacks. And Sri Aurobindo was called by Bijoy into his room. In the Master's presence, another stone fell before the boy who was in the room. Mother was a great occultist and they concluded that it was black magic, and ordered the removal of the boy to the rented house where Hrishikesh and others were staying. Then the whole phenomenon stopped when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother hurled back the force on the black magician. When the dismissed cook Vittal's wife came and prayed for the Master's mercy, as her husband was in a dangerous condition, on account of his black magic performance, Sri Aurobindo forgave him, and the cook recovered after that, his life spared by the generosity of the Master.
         I had no doubts about such phenomena as such things were practiced by black magic experts in our Andhra districts in villages due to local feuds in order to destroy each other. I had also read about such phenomena in Tantrik works and in the books of Sir John Woodroffe. My belief in these phenomena was confirmed when I witnessed this occurrence. After this event, all of us began to develop greater faith in the Divine and the sadhana became more intense.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “The stone-throwing began unobtrusively with a few stones thrown at the Guest House kitchen — apparently from the terrace opposite, but there was no one there. The phenomenon began before the fall of dusk and continued at first for half an hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and the size of the stones and the duration of the attack till it lasted for several hours until it towards the end became in the hour or half hour before midnight a regular bombardment. It was no longer at the kitchen only, but thrown too in other places, e.g. the outer verandah. At first we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police, but the investigation lasted only for a very short time; when one of the constables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic. We made our own investigations, but the places whence the stones seemed to be or might be coming were void of human stone-throwers. Finally, as if to put us kindly out of doubt, the stones began falling in closed rooms; one huge one (I saw it immediately after it fell) reposed flat and comfortable on a cane table as if that was its proper place. To wind up, they became murderous. The stones had hitherto been harmless in result except for a daily battering of Bijoy’s door which (in the last days) I had watched for half an hour the night before the end. They appeared in mid-air a few feet above the ground, not coming from a distance but suddenly manifesting, and from the direction from which they flew, should have been thrown close in from the compound of the Guest House or the verandah itself, but the whole place was in a clear light and I saw that there was no human being there and could not have been. At last the semi-idiot boy-servant who seemed to be the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bijoy’s room under Bijoy’s protection began to be severely hit and was bleeding from a wound by stones thrown from inside the closed room. I went in at Bijoy’s call and saw the last stone fall on the boy; Bijoy and he were sitting side by side and the stone was thrown at them from in front, but there was no one visible to throw it — the two were alone in the room. So unless it was Wells’s invisible man — ! We had been only watching or sometimes scouting around till then, but this was a little too much, it was becoming dangerous, and something had to be done. The Mother from her knowledge of the process of these things decided that the process here must depend on a nexus between the boy-servant and the house and if the nexus were broken, the servant and the house separated, the stone-throwing would cease. We sent him away to Hrishikesh’s place and immediately the whole phenomenon ceased; not a single stone was thrown after that, peace reigned.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “These stone-throwing or stone-producing incidents and similar extraordinary occurrences which go outside the ordinary course of physical Nature happen frequently in India and are not unknown elsewhere; they are akin to what are called poltergeist phenomena in Europe. Scientists don’t say or think anything of such supernormal happenings except to pooh-pooh them or to prove that they are simply the tricks of children simulating supernatural manifestations. It was only three or four stones that fell inside a room, the others were thrown from outside and in the last period banged day after day against the closed door of Bijoy Nag who was sheltering inside the servant boy who became the centre of the phenomena. As the boy got wounded by two of the last stones, we sent him away to another house with the idea that then the phenomena would cease and it so happened. As a rule these things need certain conditions to happen — e.g. a house which becomes the field of the action of these supernormal forces and a person (usually psychologically ill-developed) who is very often their victim as well as their centre. If the person is removed elsewhere, the phenomena often stop but sometimes his aura is so strong for these things that the house aura is not needed — they continue wherever he or she goes. As for the other necessary factor it is supposed to be elemental beings who are the agents. Sometimes they act on their own account, sometimes they are controlled and used by a person with occult powers. It was supposed here that some magic must have been used — such magic is common in the Tamil country and indeed in all South India. The stones were material enough, a huge heap of them were collected and remained at the staircase bottom for two or three days, so they were not thoughts taking a brick form. It was evidently a case of materialisation probably preceded by a previous dematerialisation and ‘transport’ — the bricks became first visible in their flight at a few feet from the place where they fell.
         Scientific laws only give a schematic account of material processes of Nature — as a valid scheme they can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but obviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself. Water for instance is not merely so much oxygen and hydrogen put together — the combination is simply a process or device for enabling the materialisation of a new thing called water; what that new thing really is is quite another matter. In fact there are different planes of substance, gross, subtle and more subtle going back to what is called causal (kāraṇa) substance. What is more gross can be reduced to the subtle state and the subtle brought into the gross state; that accounts for dematerialisation and materialisation and rematerialisation. These are occult processes and are vulgarly regarded as magic. Ordinarily the magician knows nothing of the why and wherefore of what he is doing, he has simply learned the formula or process or else controls elemental beings of the subtler states (planes or worlds) who do the thing for him. The Tibetans indulge widely in occult processes; if you see the books of Madame David-Neel who has lived in Tibet you will get an idea of their expertness in these things. But also the Tibetan Lamas know something of the laws of occult (mental and vital) energy and how it can be made to act on physical things. That is something which goes beyond mere magic. The direct power of mind-force or life-force upon matter can be extended to an almost illimitable degree — but that has nothing to do with the stone-throwing affair which is of a lower and more external order. In your (2) and (3) different operations seem to be confused together, (1) the creation of mere (subtle) images which the one who sees may mistake for real things, (2) the temporary materialisation of subtle substance into forms capable of cognition not only by the sight but by material touch or other sense, (3) the handling of material objects by mind-energy or vital force, e.g. making a pencil move and write on paper. All these things are possible and have been done. It must be remembered that Energy is fundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so there is nothing a priori impossible in mind-energy or life-energy acting directly on material energy and substance; if they do they can make a material object do things or rather can do things with a material object which would be to that object in its ordinary poise or ‘law’ unhabitual and therefore apparently impossible.”

---

See also

• Telekinesis