15 Apr 2013

Professor Manoj Das has Sold his Soul to the Devil ― by Sricharan Singh

Most of us know Christopher Marlowe’s drama “Doctor Faustus”. Doctor Faustus was a very famous Professor in Germany. Within a short time, he surpassed all the other professors in knowledge. But the thought came to him that in spite of his present status he was still a human being. So he wanted to achieve extraordinary powers by learning black magic and go beyond ordinary human beings. When he was thus contemplating, a good angel came and tried to dissuade him from going ahead with his plan. But an evil angel lured him into it and he listened to his advice. Dr. Faustus then met Mephistopheles, the assistant of Lucifer, the Lord of Darkness. Mephistopheles told him that he could achieve miraculous powers with the help of Lucifer on one condition. The condition was that he should forsake the Divine and sell his soul to Lucifer. Then by the power of Lucifer, he would be able to fulfil any ambition and indulge in all the enjoyments of life for 24 years. But after that, he would have to live forever in eternal hell. As instructed by the evil angel, Dr. Faustus signed the pact with his blood. For 24 years he enjoyed power, prestige, wealth and sex to his heart’s content. Then came the time to go to eternal hell.  At this point, the good angel advised him that, even if he had committed an unforgiveable blunder, yet the compassionate Divine would forgive him if he repented for his misdeeds and prayed to Him for His help. Dr. Faustus tried his best, but he could neither repent nor pray to the Divine, and finally had to go to eternal hell.

A similar professor named Manoj Das joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as an inmate. Everybody, especially the people of his home state, were very hopeful to be benefited spiritually by his example and vast knowledge. He managed to remain on the right track, controlling his ambitions, till the Mother was physically there in the Ashram. In the physical absence of the Mother, the suppressed ambitions of this famous professor raised their heads in the same way as they did in the life of Dr Faustus. To fulfil his ambitions, he became the disciple and spokesman of Manoj Das Gupta, the present Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who is the assistant of the Lord of Nations just as Mephistopheles was the assistant of Lucifer. Manoj Das signed the pact offered to him by Manoj Das Gupta, the Mephistopheles of the Ashram, on behalf of the Lord of Nations, who is one of the four Asuras mentioned by the Mother. Thereby Manoj Das sold forever his soul to the Lord of Nations to achieve power, prestige, awards and monetary gain. That he achieved, but, according to the pact, he had to betray Mother and Sri Aurobindo to please his present lord.

Manoj Das Gupta has actually no respect for Manoj Das. He only wants to use the latter’s name and fame in bribing and manipulating officials of high rank in order to protect the Trustees. But this stupid professor (Pranab-da had given him this honorary distinction after which he resigned from the Trust Board) accepts to do all the dirty work as prasad from his lord. Manoj Das Gupta once told everybody in a meeting that he was Gupta Manoj, and then he referred to Manoj Das as the real Manoj. Therefore Manoj Das can be called Byakta Manoj, the public Manoj who speaks on behalf of Gupta Manoj, who directs Byakta Manoj from behind. From now on we will refer to Manoj Das Gupta, the Managing Trustee, as Gupta Manoj and to Manoj Das, the writer, as Byakta Manoj.

Byakta Manoj, who is acting for Gupta Manoj, remained quiet in the Krishna Nagar court when the Trustees’ lawyer said, “Even the Mother did not understand Savitri.” After this incident, the President of an Association sent a pleader’s notice to the Ashram Trust Board to expel this ungrateful person from the Ashram immediately. Even today Byakta Manoj supports the corrections of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri by Peter Heehs, a taxi driver from America staying in the Ashram as a pseudo disciple.

Byakta Manoj has been an imposter throughout his life. His real nature was exposed when the controversy of Peter’s book “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” broke out in August 2008. Byakta Manoj  himself claimed that he was the first person to find 90 serious objectionable points in the book. But when he found his lord Gupta Manoj supporting the book, he shamelessly changed his opinion and wrote a letter in 2010 to mislead the Oriya people stating that there was nothing wrong with Peter, his book and the Ashram Trustees. He said that those who were protesting against the book were possessed of a dark Sri Aurobindo. When his letter was rebutted, his attempt to defend Peter Heehs rebounded back on him, and he got the title “Utkala Kalanka“ – the “Disgrace of Orissa”. The devotees and disciples of Orissa never expected a person of his stature to stoop so low and extend his support to the denigration of Mother and Sri Aurobindo in order to remain in the good books of his lord.

In order to get back his respect from the Oriya people, he with the help of Gupta Manoj removed Niranjan Naik from the editorship of the Oriya monthly “Navaprakash”. Niranjan Naik was editing the magazine since it began in 1970 with the Mother’s blessings. Byakta Manoj became de facto editor and started writing a new Life History of Sri Aurobindo in order to repair the damage done to his public image. But people did not appreciate his face saving attempt due to two reasons: (1) Sri Aurobindo did not encourage or approve anybody to write his biography which is not on the surface for men to see. (2) People expected from him a book challenging Peter’s derogatory comments on Sri Aurobindo. But Byakta Manoj wanted to cheat people without displeasing his lord Gupta Manoj.

A senior and respected Oriya lady of the Ashram wrote a letter to Byakta Manoj requesting him to come out of his illusion and restore the prestige of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. She had written her letter in English but Byakta Manoj, the imposter,  cleverly wrote back in Oriya, because he knew that, if he wrote in English, many people would read his letter, and he will be further exposed. He wrote that it is completely false that he supported Peter Heehs, and only a few misguided elements blamed him for it. In another paragraph of the same letter, he contradicted himself by writing that these misguided elements had brought out some portions of Peter’s book without the proper context, meaning thereby that the book was good, but that the interpretation of the protesters was wrong. In this letter, he condemned outright those who were protesting against the book. In reply, the senior lady wrote back saying that she herself was a staunch protestor against the book. So Byakta Manoj  need not write to her again in this deceptive manner.

People asked Byakta Manoj, “Why are you not protesting against the derogatory book?” He said, “See, we have come here for spiritual sadhana, not to find fault with others.” To some others he said, “Everybody has got freedom of speech and one can write the biography of anybody.” To others he unnerved them by counter questioning, “Have you read the book? Without reading it, how do you know that the book is bad?” But he knew very well that the book was so bad that it had been banned in India.

When about 75 MPs wrote a letter to Gupta Manoj asking him to reply 7 questions, Byakta Manoj immediately flew to Delhi and persuaded some of the MPs not to write such letters to his lord Gupta Manoj.

During the first Dharna from 1.1.2012 to 7.1.2012 in front of the Ashram Trust’s office (nicknamed now as DisGrace Office), Byakta Manoj was passing by that road stealthily, counting the number of protestors. At that time, an Ashram sadhika offered him the protesters’ symbolic wrist band on which was written “Cling to Truth”. He did not accept it and told her, “I am already clinging to Truth.” The sadhika told him, “No, no, sir, you are far away from the Truth.” Byakta Manoj felt very uncomfortable and lost no time to run away from that place.

There was a second Dharna from 26.2.2012 to 28.2.2012 in front of the same DisGrace Office demanding that the present corrupt trustees should step down. On 27.2.2012, Dr. Dilip Datta (a Trustee nicknamed as Dr Death) and his unworthy daughter Shoma insulted the Oriya protesters by shouting at them, “You bloody Oriya Devotees”. This was a blatant racial abuse. A question was raised in the Orissa Assembly regarding this incident and Byakta Manoj immediately rang up the leaders of the political party who had raised the question and asked them how they could believe that the trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram could behave in such a manner. But except for his chamchas, all the others said that they had seen this incident of racial abuse on video.

When the Trustees did not listen to anybody and gave moral, legal and financial support to Peter Heehs, the desperate protestors had no other recourse but to file cases against the Trustees. Byakta Manoj labelled them as Matrudrohis because Mother did not like to go to courts. But this very shameless person filed three false cases against a Tamil person who had occupied the house of his brother-in-law in Pondicherry. That person happened to be a member of the Communist Party of India. The entire party staged a Dharna in front of the Head Post Office near the Ashram Dining Room on 28.7.2011 with a big banner saying, “Manoj Das, Do Not File False Complaints”.

There was a time when the devotees and disciples were collecting signatures to make Columbia University Press withdraw Peter Heehs’s book in America. Byakta Manoj labelled the campaigners as foolish and dark forces. But when Dr. Salila and Meera Gupta threatened the Ashram inmates and collected signatures from them in order to protect the Trustees from the Collector’s enquiry, the same Byakta Manoj anxiously asked people whether they had given their signatures. He said, “Sign the petition, otherwise those “rascals” will do a lot of harm to Gupta Manoj and the Ashram.” But does he not know that those so-called “rascals” are not against the Ashram but against the misdeeds of Gupta Manoj and his supporters?

An ex-student/inmate of the Ashram used to often reproach Byakta Manoj for his double standards. Unable to bear his reproaches, Byakta Manoj once threatened him, “My Guru has given me a mantra and told me that if anybody insults me more than three times, I can recite the mantra which can do serious harm to the person. So be careful.” The ex-student/inmate laughed and said, “If you have such a Guru, why have you come here leaving his discipleship?”

Recently Peter’s advocate in the Orissa case had come to visit the Ashram. He asked an Ashramite, “Will you please tell me where Prof. Manoj Das stays?” The Ashramite replied to him, “Why do you want to meet that ****? The advocate was stupefied, he said, “How can you say such a thing about a renowned person like Manoj Das?” The Ashramite told him, “Go and throw some pieces of bread before him and see how he will follow you.” The advocate somehow managed to find out Byakta Manoj’s house and in the course of his talk   asked him, “Why do Ashram people talk like this about you?” Byakta Manoj replied gravely, “The consciousness has gone down very much.” The advocate asked, “Whose consciousness, sir?” Byakta Manoj replied even more gravely, “The consciousness of the Ashram people. That is why they cannot recognise my personality.”

After receiving a memorandum from the protesters, the Pondicherry Collector started a probe against the misdeeds of the Ashram Trustees. When the Trustees saw that they might be jailed if the enquiry continued, they filed a case against the Collector and managed to get a stay order from the High Court on the Collector’s probe. Byakta Manoj and eight sycophants of Gupta Manoj impleaded themselves in the case saying that the charges against the Trustees are false,  and that the Trustees are as clear as crystal. But if the Trustees are so clean and have nothing to hide, why are they afraid of the probe?

When the people of Orissa were deeply disappointed at Byakta Manoj’s support for Peter Heehs and the Trustees, they thought that he was supporting the anti-Guru group in order to get financial help for his medical treatment and expensive operations. So they very generously and sympathetically wrote a letter to him saying that they will provide all the money he needed for his costly operations. But the letter had no effect.

Because Byakta Manoj has sold his soul to the Lord of Nations through Gupta Manoj, he, like Dr. Faustus, has now lost his capacity to repent and pray. So he will surely have to go to eternal hell! But Nolini-da has said that there is no eternal hell for a soul touched by the Divine. Even now Byakta Manoj can free himself from Gupta Manoj if he realises his folly and prays to the Divine – he can then become Mukta Manoj (liberated Manoj).

I will now end with what Mother told Huta-ben on the three categories of people in Yoga:

1) People who aspire for the Truth but are not sincere enough in their aspiration to discriminate between the Truth and the Falsehood and they fall always into trouble and misery and get out from the path leading to Truth.

2) This category is dangerous. People who can very well discriminate between Truth and Falsehood, who know that Truth is better but have no strength to resist the temptation and fall constantly into falsehood.

3) The last one is the most dangerous of all. People who are aware of the Truth but refuse to recognise the Truth and choose deliberately the falsehood. They have a kind of hate for the Truth and reject it violently. These, on the list of the Eternal can be stamped “Missing Souls” – as it is written in Savitri:

So might one fall on the Eternal’s road
Forfeiting the spirit’s lonely chance in Time
And no news of him reach the waiting gods
Marked “missing” in the register of souls”

(Book Two, Canto Seven, p 239; Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo, Volume 33, p 210)

(Mother You said so, pp 80-81, Mother to Huta Hindocha)

Byakta Manoj and Gupta Manoj certainly belong to the third category!

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