Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian yogi, maharishi, and Indian nationalist. He also edited the newspaper Bande Mataram.
Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, in Cambridge, England. After returning to India, he took up various civil service works under the Maharaja of the princely state of Baroda State. He became increasingly involved in nationalist politics in the Indian National Congress and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal with the Anushilan Samiti. He was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bombings linked to his organization in a public trial where he faced charges of treason for Alipore Conspiracy and then released, after which he moved to Pondicherry and developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. He wrote The Life Divine, which deals with the philosophical aspect of Integral Yoga
and Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with the principles and methods of Integral Yoga. In 1926, he and Mira Alfassa founded Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Aurobindo spoke English but used Hindustani to communicate with servants. Although his family was Bengali people, his father believed British culture to be superior. He and his two elder siblings were sent to the English-speaking Loreto House boarding school in Darjeeling, in part to improve their language skills and in part to distance them from their mother, who had developed a mental illness soon after the birth of her first child. Darjeeling was a centre of Anglo-Indians in India, and the school was run by Irish , through which the boys would have been exposed to Christianity religious teachings and symbolism.
The boys were taught Latin by Drewett and his wife. This was a prerequisite for admission to good English schools, and after two years, in 1881, the elder two siblings were enrolled at Manchester Grammar School. Aurobindo was considered too young for enrollment, and he continued his studies with the Drewetts, learning history, Latin, French language, geography, and arithmetic. Although the Drewetts were told not to teach religion, the boys inevitably were exposed to Christian teachings and events, which generally bored Aurobindo and sometimes repulsed him. There was little contact with his father, who wrote only a few letters to his sons while they were in England, but what communication there was indicated that he was becoming less endeared to the British in India than he had been, on one occasion describing the British colonial government as "heartless".
Drewett emigrated to Australia in 1884, causing the boys to be uprooted as they went to live with Drewett's mother in London. In September of that year, Aurobindo and Manmohan joined St Paul's School there. He learned Greek and spent the last three years reading literature and English poetry, while he also acquired some familiarity with the German and Italian languages; Peter Heehs summarized his linguistic abilities by stating that at "the turn of the century he knew at least twelve languages: English, French, and Bengali to speak, read, and write; Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit to read and write; Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi to speak and read; and Italian, German, and Spanish to read."Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Columbia University Press (2008), p. 43 Being exposed to the evangelical strictures of Drewett's mother developed in him a distaste for religion, and he considered himself at one point to be an Atheism but later determined that he was Agnosticism. A blue plaque unveiled in 2007 commemorates Aurobindo's residence at 49 St Stephen's Avenue in Shepherd's Bush, London, from 1884 to 1887. The three brothers began living in spartan circumstances at the Liberal Club in South Kensington during 1887, their father having experienced some financial difficulties. The club's secretary was James Cotton, brother of their father's friend in the Bengal ICS, Henry John Stedman Cotton.
By 1889, Manmohan had determined to pursue a literary career, and Benoybhusan had proved himself unequal to the standards necessary for ICS entrance. This meant that only Aurobindo might fulfill his father's aspirations, but to do so when his father lacked money required that he study hard for a scholarship. To become an ICS official, students were required to pass the competitive examination and study at an English university for two years under probation. Aurobindo secured a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, under the recommendation of Oscar Browning. He passed the written ICS examination after a few months and ranked 11th out of 250 competitors. He spent the next two years at King's College. Aurobindo had no interest in the ICS and came to the horse-riding practical exam purposefully to disqualify him for the service.In 1891, Sri Aurobindo also felt that a period of great upheaval for his motherland was coming in which he was destined to play an important role. He began to learn Bengali and joined a secret society, romantically named 'Lotus and Dagger', where the members took an oath to work for India's freedom.
The Maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III, was travelling in England. Cotton secured him a place in Baroda State Service and arranged for him to meet the prince. He left England for India, arriving there in February 1893. In India, Krishna Dhun Ghose, who was waiting to receive his son, was misinformed by his agents from Bombay (now Mumbai) that the ship on which Aurobindo had been travelling had sunk off the coast of Portugal. His father died upon hearing this news.
Aurobindo often travelled between Baroda and Bengal, initially in a bid to re-establish links with his parents' families and other Bengali relatives, including his sister Sarojini and brother Barin, and later increased to establish resistance groups across the Presidency. He formally moved to Calcutta in 1906 after the announcement of the Partition of Bengal. In 1901, on a visit to Calcutta, he married 14-year-old Mrinalini, the daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, a senior official in government service. Aurobindo was 28 at that time. Mrinalini died seventeen years later in December 1918 during the influenza pandemic.
In 1906, Aurobindo was appointed the first principal of the National College in Calcutta and started to impart national education to Indian youth.
Aurobindo was influenced by studies on rebellion and revolutions against England in medieval France and the revolts in America and Italy. In his public activities, he favored non-cooperation and nonviolent resistance; in private, he took up secret revolutionary activity to prepare for open revolt in case the passive uprising failed.
In Bengal, with Barin's help, he established contacts and inspired revolutionaries such as Bagha Jatin or Jatin Mukherjee and Surendranath Tagore. He helped establish a series of youth clubs, including the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.
Aurobindo attended the 1906 Congress meeting headed by Dadabhai Naoroji and participated as a councilor in forming the fourfold objectives of "Swaraj, Swadesh, Boycott, and national education". In 1907, at the Surat Split of Congress, where moderates and extremists had a major showdown, he led along with extremists and along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Congress split after this session. In 1907–1908, Aurobindo traveled extensively to Pune, Bombay, and Baroda to firm up support for the nationalist cause, giving speeches and meeting with groups. He was arrested again in May 1908 in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case. He was acquitted in the ensuing trial following the murder of chief prosecution witness Naren Goswami within jail premises, which subsequently led to the case against him collapsing. Aurobindo was subsequently released after a year of isolated incarceration.
Once out of prison, he started two new publications, Karmayogin in English and Dharma in Bengali. He also delivered the , hinting at the transformation of his focus to spiritual matters. Repression from the British colonial government against him continued because of his writings in his new journals, and in April 1910, Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry, where the British colonial secret police monitored his activities.
During this period in the Jail, his view of life was radically changed due to spiritual experiences and realizations. Consequently, his aim went far beyond the service and liberation of the country.
Aurobindo said he was "visited" by Vivekananda in the Alipore Jail: "It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence."
In his autobiographical notes, Aurobindo said he felt a vast calm when returning to India. He could not explain this and continued to have various such experiences occasionally. He knew nothing of yoga at that time and started his practice of it without a teacher, except for some rules that he learned from Mr. Devadhar, a friend who was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Ganga Math, Chandod.K.R.S. Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo – a biography and a history, Pondicherry, 1972, p. 62. In 1907, Barin introduced Aurobindo to Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi. Aurobindo was influenced by guidance from the yogi, who instructed Aurobindo to depend on an inner guide, and any external guru or guidance would not be required.
In 1910, Aurobindo withdrew himself from all political activities and went into hiding at Chandannagar in the house of Motilal Roy while the British colonial government was attempting to prosecute him for sedition based on a signed article titled "To My Countrymen", published in Karmayogin. As Aurobindo disappeared from view, the warrant was held back, and the prosecution postponed. Aurobindo maneuvered the police into open action, and a warrant was issued on 4 April 1910, but the warrant could not be executed because, on that date, he had reached Pondicherry, then a French colony. The warrant against Aurobindo was withdrawn.
At the beginning of his stay at Pondicherry, there were few followers, but with time, their numbers grew, resulting in the formation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926. From 1926 he started to sign himself as Sri Aurobindo, Sri being commonly used as an honorific. For some time afterwards, his main literary output was his voluminous correspondence with his disciples. His letters, most of which were written in the 1930s, numbered several thousand. Many were brief comments made in the margins of his disciples' notebooks in answer to their questions and reports of their spiritual practice—others extended to several pages of carefully composed explanations of practical aspects of his teachings. These were later collected and published in book form in three volumes of Letters on Yoga. In the late 1930s, he resumed work on a poem he had started earlier—he continued to expand and revise this poem for the rest of his life. It became perhaps his most outstanding literary achievement, Savitri, an epic spiritual poem in blank verse of approximately 24,000 lines.
On 15 August 1947, Sri Aurobindo strongly opposed the partition of India, stating that he hoped "the Nation will not accept the settled fact as forever settled, or as anything more than a temporary expedient."
Sri Aurobindo was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize without being awarded, in 1943 for the Nobel Prize in Literature and in 1950 for the Nobel Prize in Peace.
Sri Aurobindo died on 5 December 1950 of uremia. Around 60,000 people attended to see his body resting peacefully. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and the President Rajendra Prasad praised him for his contribution to Yogic philosophy and the independence movement. National and international newspapers commemorated his death.
Levels of Being | Development | ||||
Overall | Outer Being | Inner Being | Psychic Being | ||
Supermind | Supermind | Gnostic Man | |||
Supra-mentalisation | |||||
Mind | Overmind | Psychisation and Spiritualisation | |||
Intuition | |||||
Illuminated Mind | |||||
Higher Mind | |||||
Subconscient mind | Mind proper | Subliminal (inner) mind | Evolution | ||
Vital | Subconsc. Vital | Vital | Subl. (inner) Vital | ||
Physical | Subconsc. Physical | Physical | Subl. (inner) Physical | ||
Inconscient | Inconscient |
Sri Aurobindo argues that divine Brahman manifests as empirical reality through līlā, or divine play. Instead of positing that the world we experience is an illusion ( māyā) , Aurobindo argues that the world can evolve and become a new world with new species, far above the human species just as human species have evolved after the animal species. As such, he argued that the end goal of spiritual practice could not merely be a liberation from the world into Samadhi but would also be that of descent of the Divine into the world in order to transform it into a Divine existence. Thus, this constituted the purpose of Integral Yoga.Aurobindo, Sri. The Synthesis of Yoga. Lotus Press, 1996. P. 7-8 Regarding the involution of consciousness in matter, he wrote that: "This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance."Aurobindo, Sri. The Synthesis of Yoga. Lotus Press, 1996. p. 106.
Sri Aurobindo believed that Darwinism merely describes a phenomenon of the evolution of matter into life, but does not explain the reason behind it, while he finds life to be already present in matter, because all of existence is a manifestation of Brahman. He argues that nature (which he interpreted as divine) has evolved life out of matter and the mind out of life. All of existence, he argues, is attempting to manifest to the level of the supermind – that evolution teleology. He stated that he found the task of understanding the Metaphysics arduous and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results.
Several scholars have discovered significant similarities in the thought of Sri Aurobindo and Hegel. Steve Odin has discussed this subject comprehensively in a comparative study. Sri Aurobindo and Hegel on the Involution-Evolution of Absolute Spirit. Philosophy East and West, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Apr. 1981), pp. 179–191 Odin writes that Sri Aurobindo "has appropriated Hegel’s notion of an Absolute Spirit and employed it to radically restructure the architectonic framework of the ancient Hindu Vedanta system in contemporary terms."Odin, p.179. (Sri Aurobindo himself denied to be influenced by Hegel. See A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram 2001, p. 106) In his analysis Odin arrives at the conclusion that "both philosophers similarly envision world creation as the progressive self-manifestation and evolutionary ascent of a universal consciousness in its journey toward Self-realization."Odin, p. 186 He points out that in contrast to the deterministic and continuous dialectal unfolding of Absolute Reason by the mechanism of thesis-antithesis-synthesis or affirmation-negation-integration, "Sri Aurobindo argues for a creative, emergent mode of evolution." In his résumé Odin states that Sri Aurobindo has overcome the ahistorical world-vision of traditional Hinduism and presented a concept which allows for a genuine advance and novelty.Odin, p. 190
He assumes that the seers of the Upanishads had basically the same approach and gives some details of his vision of the past in a long passage in The Renaissance of India. "The Upanishads have been the acknowledged source of numerous profound philosophies and religions", he writes. Even Buddhism with all its developments was only a "restatement" from a new standpoint and with fresh terms. And, furthermore, the ideas of the Upanishads "can be rediscovered in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profound part of Neo-platonism and Gnosticism ..." Finally, the larger part of German metaphysics "is little more in substance than an intellectual development of great realities more spiritually seen in this ancient teaching."CWSA, vol. 20, p. 330 When once he was asked by a disciple whether Plato got some of his ideas from Indian books, he responded that though something of the philosophy of India got through "by means of Pythagoras and others", he assumed that Plato got most of his ideas from intuition.CWSA vol. 27, Letters on Poetry and Art, p. 520.
Sri Aurobindo's indebtedness to the Indian tradition also becomes obvious through his placing a large number of quotations from the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita at the beginning of the chapters in The Life Divine, showing the connection of his own thought to Veda and Vedanta.
The Isha Upanishad is considered to be one of the most important and more accessible writings of Sri Aurobindo. Before he published his final translation and analysis, he wrote ten incomplete commentaries.CWSA vol. 17, Publisher’s Note In a key passage he points out that the Brahman or Absolute is both the Stable and the Moving. "We must see it in eternal and immutable Spirit and in all the changing manifestations of universe and relativity."CWSA 17:30 Sri Aurobindo's biographer K.R.S. Iyengar quotes R.S. Mugali as stating that Sri Aurobindo might have obtained in this Upanishad the thought-seed which later grew into The Life Divine.K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1972) Sri Aurobindo – A Biography and a history. Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. p. 441.
R. Puligandla supports this viewpoint in his book Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. He describes Sri Aurobindo's philosophy as "an original synthesis of the Indian and Western traditions." "He integrates in a unique fashion the great social, political and scientific achievements of the modern West with the ancient and profound spiritual insights of Hinduism. The vision that powers the life divine of Aurobindo is none other than the Upanishadic vision of the unity of all existence."
Puligandla also discusses Sri Aurobindo's critical position vis-à-vis Adi ShankaraFor Sri Aurobindo’s critique, see, for instance, CWSA vol. 17, Isha Upanishad, pp. 498–99. There he says that Shankara’s world-negative approach "has overshadowed for centuries the lives and souls of hundreds of millions of human beings." However, he also recognized him as "one of the mightiest of metaphysical intellects." ( Isha Upanishad, p. 497) and his thesis that the latter's Vedanta is a world-negating philosophy, as it teaches that the world is unreal and illusory. From Puligandla's standpoint this is a misrepresentation of Shankara's position, which may have been caused by Sri Aurobindo's endeavour to synthesize Hindu and Western modes of thought, identifying Shankara's Mayavada with the subjective idealism of George Berkeley.
However, Sri Aurobindo's critique of Shankara is supported by U. C. Dubey in his paper titled Integralism: The Distinctive Feature of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy. He points out that Sri Aurobindo's system presents an integral view of Reality where there is no opposition between the Absolute and its creative force, as they are actually one. Furthermore, he refers to Sri Aurobindo's conception of the supermind as the mediatory principle between the Absolute and the finite world and quotes S.K. Maitra stating that this conception "is the pivot round which the whole of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy moves."U. C. Dubey (2007) "Integralism the distinctive feature of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy", pp. 25–27, Ch. 2 in Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo. Indrani Sanyal and Krishna Roy (eds.). D K Printworld. New Delhi.
Dubey proceeds to analyse the approach of the Shankarites and believes that they follow an inadequate kind of logic that does not do justice to the challenge of tackling the problem of the Absolute, which cannot be known by finite reason. With the help of the finite reason, he says, "we are bound to determine the nature of reality as one or many, being or becoming. But Sri Aurobindo's Integral Advaitism reconciles all apparently different aspects of Existence in an all-embracing unity of the Absolute." Next, Dubey explains that for Sri Aurobindo there is a higher reason, the "logic of the infinite" in which his integralism is rooted.
Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic SpiegelbergHaridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg (1960) The integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: a commemorative symposium, Allen & Unwin. were among those who were inspired by Aurobindo, who worked on the newly formed American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Soon after, Chaudhuri and his wife Bina established the Cultural Integration Fellowship, from which later emerged the California Institute of Integral Studies."From the American Academy of Asian Studies to the California Institute of Integral Studies" [1]
Sri Aurobindo influenced Subhash Chandra Bose to take an initiative of dedicating to Indian National Movement full-time. Bose writes, "The illustrious example of Arabindo Ghosh looms large before my vision. I feel that I am ready to make the sacrifice which that example demands of me."
Karlheinz Stockhausen was heavily inspired by Satprem's writings about Sri Aurobindo during a week in May 1968, a time at which the composer was undergoing a personal crisis and had found Sri Aurobindo's philosophies were relevant to his feelings. After this experience, Stockhausen's music took a completely different turn, focusing on mysticism, that was to continue until the end of his career.
Jean Gebser acknowledged Sri Aurobindo's influence on his work and referred to him several times in his writings. Thus, in The Invisible Origin he quotes a long passage from The Synthesis of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo and European Philosophy, pp. 155–56 Gebser believes that he was "in some way brought into the extremely powerful spiritual field of force radiating through Sri Aurobindo." Der unsichtbare Ursprung, Olten 1970, p. 96. In his title Asia Smiles Differently he reports about his visit to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and meeting with the Mother whom he calls an "exceptionally gifted person." Asien lächelt anders, Frankfurt 1968, p. 112
After meeting Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in 1915, the Danish author and artist Johannes Hohlenberg published one of the first Yoga titles in Europe and later on wrote two essays on Sri Aurobindo. He also published extracts from The Life Divine in Danish translation.Bracker, Klaus J. (2018). Veda and Living Logos. Anthroposophy and Integral Yoga. Lindisfarne Books. pp. 227–232.
The Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral called Sri Aurobindo "a unique synthesis of a scholar, a theologian and one who is enlightened." "The gift of Civil Leadership, the gift of Spiritual Guidance, the gift of Beautiful Expression: this is the trinity, the three lances of light with which Sri Aurobindo has reached the great number of Indians..." Mother India, Puducherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, June 2023, p. 66
William Irwin Thompson travelled to Auroville in 1972, where he met "The Mother". Thompson has called Sri Aurobindo's teaching on spirituality a "radical anarchism" and a "post-religious approach" and regards their work as having "... reached back into the Goddess culture of prehistory, and, in Marshall McLuhan's terms, 'culturally retrieved' the archetypes of the shaman and la sage femme... " Thompson also writes that he experienced Shakti, or psychic power coming from The Mother on the night of her death in 1973.
Sri Aurobindo's ideas about the further evolution of human capabilities influenced the thinking of Michael Murphy – and indirectly, the human potential movement, through Murphy's writings.
The American philosopher Ken Wilber has called Sri Aurobindo "India's greatest modern philosopher sage"Ken Wilber, Foreword to A. S. Dalal (ed.), A Greater Psychology – An Introduction to the Psychological Thought of Sri Aurobindo, Tarcher/Putnam, 2000. and has integrated some of his ideas into his philosophical vision. Wilber's interpretation of Aurobindo has been criticised by Rod Hemsell.Rod Hemsell (January 2002). " Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective ". New Age writer Andrew Harvey also looks to Sri Aurobindo as a major inspiration.
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