Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo (born August 15, 1872, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died December 5, 1950, Pondicherry [now Puducherry]) was a yogi, seer, philosopher, poet, and Indian nationalist who played a significant role in the Indian Independence Movement and propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.

Early life

Aurobindo’s education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling, India. While a child, he and his brothers moved to England for further schooling. He was enrolled in St. Paul’s School, London, and later entered the University of Cambridge, where he became proficient in two classical and several modern European languages. As an adolescent, Aurobindo developed an interest in the Indian Independence Movement. He was part of the Cambridge Majlis, founded in 1891, which was a forum for debates and discourse on sociopolitical issues related to South Asia. In 1892 Aurobindo met the ruler of the Indian princely state of Baroda (now Vadodara), Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who was visiting England. He offered Aurobindo a job, which the latter accepted the following year.

Return to India and nationalism

Aurobindo returned to India in 1893 and held various administrative and professorial posts in Baroda from 1893 to 1906. During this time he turned to his native Indian culture and began seriously studying Yoga and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit. From 1902 to 1910 Aurobindo partook in the struggle to free India from the British raj (rule). This began covertly since he was not allowed to be involved in politics publicly while employed by the Baroda administration. In 1893 he had begun anonymously writing politically charged articles for the journal Indu Prakash but was asked to temper the content. He later contributed to other publications such as Bande Mataram and Yugantar, advocating for complete independence from colonial rule.

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Philosophy 101

After the partition of the Bengal Presidency (from where Aurobindo’s family hailed) in 1905, Aurobindo left his job in Baroda and moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1906. The partition had led to widespread protests, and Aurobindo wanted to take part in the growing movement. He could now openly participate in the independence movement and was involved with the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) and a revolutionary organization called Anushilan Samiti. He believed in radical nationalistic politics, pushing for direct and armed action against the ruling British rather than the moderate approach of the Congress Party at the time.

In 1908 Aurobindo was imprisoned in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case. The case resulted from the police investigation of a bombing in Muzaffarpur, in present-day Bihar state, which was an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate British official Douglas Kingsford. In Calcutta the police raided a shelter for revolutionaries, including members of the Anushilan Samiti, and uncovered a bomb-making facility along with a stockpile of weapons, ammunition, seditious literature, and more. Aurobindo was charged as one of the key figures behind the bombing.

Spiritualism

During his time in jail, Aurobindo went through a transformation. In solitary confinement he spent his days meditating and reflecting on spirituality. Defended by political activist and lawyer Chittaranjan Das, Aurobindo was released because of a lack of evidence. In 1910 he fled British India and found refuge in the French colony Pondichéry (English: Pondicherry; now Puducherry) in southeastern India, where he devoted the rest of his life to the development of Integral Yoga, which is characterized by its holistic approach and aim of a fulfilled and spiritually transformed life on earth. In Pondichéry he founded a community of spiritual seekers, which took shape as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926. He entrusted the work of guiding the seekers to his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (1878–1973), who was called “the Mother” in the ashram. The ashram eventually attracted seekers from many countries throughout the world.

The evolutionary philosophy underlying Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga is explored in his main prose work, The Life Divine (1939). Rejecting the traditional Indian approach of striving for moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth, or samsara) as a means of reaching happier, transcendental planes of existence, Aurobindo held that terrestrial life itself, in its higher evolutionary stages, is the real goal of creation. He believed that the basic principles of matter, life, and mind would be succeeded through terrestrial evolution by the principle of supermind as an intermediate power between the two spheres of the infinite and the finite. Such a future consciousness would help to create a joyful life in keeping with the highest goal of creation, expressing values such as love, harmony, unity, and knowledge and successfully overcoming the age-old resistance of dark forces against efforts to manifest the divine on earth.

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Writings

Aurobindo’s voluminous literary output comprises philosophical speculation, many treatises on Yoga and Integral Yoga, poetry, plays, and other writings. In addition to The Life Divine, his major works include Essays on the Gita (1922), Collected Poems and Plays (1942), The Synthesis of Yoga (1948), The Human Cycle (1949), The Ideal of Human Unity (1949), Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (1950), and On the Veda (1956).