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Śrī Aurobindo (August 15, 1872 - December 5, 1950) was an Indian nationalist, scholar and Hindu mystic philosopher and guru.
Born Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose, his last name usually pronounced and often written as Ghosh,
in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, his father was
Dr. K. D. Ghose and his mother
Swarnalata Devi. Dr Ghose,
who had lived in England and wanted his children to benefit from Western education
and culture, sent Aurobindo and his siblings to the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling. At the age of seven Aurobindo was sent to St. Paul's school in London, England where he was taught Latin, Greek and all classical
western school subjects. While at St. Paul's he received the Butterworth Prize for literature, the Bedford Prize for history and a
scholarship to Cambridge University. He returned to India
in 1893.
Early nationalist experiences
In his youth he was the editor of a Bengali newspaper Vande Mataram (spelt and pronounced as Bande Mataram in Bengali
language) sympathetic with the Indian nationalism movement. He became involved with the independence movement and in 1907 attended a convention of Indian nationalists where he was seen as the new leader of the
movement. But his life was beginning to take a new direction. In Baroda he met a Maharashtrian yogi called
Vishnu Bhaskar
Lele who convinced him to explore the ancient Hindu practices of yoga.
It was at this point that Rabindranath Tagore paid him a
visit and wrote the now famous lines:
-
-
- Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my country's friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul....The
fiery messenger that with the lamp of God Hath come...Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee.
Final conversion
His final conversion from an angry nationalist into a profound Hindu mystic occurred while incarcerated for a year in the
Alipur jail in Kolkata in the province of Bengal. While incarcerated he was inspired by his meditating on the famed Hindu
scripture of the Bhagavad Gita. He developed the idea of passive
resistance — often attributed to Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi
— and it is from him that Gandhi obtained the inspiration to apply this technique of Satyagraha that helped lead India to independence from the British Empire.
The trial for which he was incarcerated was one of the important trials in Indian nationalism movement. There were 49 accused
and 206 witnesses. 400 documents were filed and 5000 exhibits were produced including bombs, revolvers and acid. The English judge, C.B. Beechcroft, had been a student with Sri
Aurobindo at Cambridge. The Chief Prosecutor Eardley Norton displayed a loaded revolver on his briefcase during the trial. The case for Sri Aurobindo was
taken up by C.R. Das. The trial lasted
for one full year. Aurobindo was acquitted.
Afterwards Aurobindo started two new weeklies: the Karmayogin in English and the Dharma in Bengali. However, it appeared that the British
government would not tolerate his nationalist program as Lord Minto wrote about him: I can only repeat that he is the most
dangerous man we have to reckon with.
Sought again by the Indian police he was guided to the French settlements and on
April 4, 1910 he finally found refuge with
other nationalists in the French colony of Pondicherry. He established his
ashram there and did most of his writing and teaching from Pondicherry until 1950.
The Mother
His closest disciple, Mirra Richard, was known as The Mother (February 21,
1878 - November 17, 1973). She was born in Paris to Turkish and Egyptian parents and came to his ashram on March
29, 1914 visiting Pondicherry several times and finally settling there in 1920. After
November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she supervised the organization of his ashram and institutes. She
became the leader of the community after Sri Aurobindo passed away; she is now revered by followers of Sri Aurobindo as well.
The Mother's attempts to bring the new consciousness into life and her personal effort of physical transformation of her own
body are described in the 13-volume series of books known as The Agenda.
His evolutionary philosophy
Sri Aurobindo's basic tenet is that mankind as an entity is not the last rung in the evolutionary scale — mankind will
evolve beyond its current capacities ushering in a new, evolved human species guided by and filled with the knowledge, truth,
substance and energy of spiritual consciousness.
In his voluminous writings he described, amongst other things, his understanding of the nature, process, and purpose of
creation and life as we know it on earth; the process of transformation of the individual from his current limited status to her
ultimate evolutionary possibility; and the likely course of the future of humanity; i.e., humanity's ultimate purpose and destiny
in the cosmos. These subjects of inquiry were covered in his metaphysical treatise The Life Divine; in his book
on the path of personal evolution, The Synthesis of
Yoga, and in his 20,000 line epic poem "Savitri".
Aurobindo's ideas about the further evolution of human capabilities influenced the thinking of Michael Murphy (who studied at Aurobindo's Ashram in
India) - and indirectly, the Human potential
movement, through Murphy's writings.
Another contemporary thinker heavily influenced by Aurobindo is Ken Wilber.
Wilber has tried to reduce the reliance on metaphysics that he finds in Aurobindo's theory.
Descent of the Supramental
Sri Aurobindo, throughout the later period of his life and until his death dedicated himself to the spiritual transformation
of the human race. It was his sincere wish to take humankind out of duality, division, ignorance, suffering, falsehood, and death
and bring all human beings to a new positive existence that he qualified as "Light, Knowledge, Wisdom, Power, Truth, Peace,
Peace, Beauty, Delight, Infinity, and Oneness of Being." He and his followers believed that he had discovered a new spiritual
power and extension of the "divine consciousness," which he called the "Supramental" or "Truth Consciousness" #&8212; the
study of which he called Integral Yoga.
He believed this new force and power had only recently descended into the earth's atmosphere, and the "Supramental" could
effectuate a new evolutionary status for humanity. If he, along with a handful of followers, through the mastery of Integral
Yoga, could bring this power down into the earthly realm and into the individual consciousnesses of this group of followers
they could be the harbingers of a new dawn for the human race; and thus this community could serve as pioneers for the
establishment of a "Divine life" on earth.
His contribution to Hindu philosophy
One of Aurobindo's main philosophical achievements was to introduce the concept of evolution into Advaitin thought. Samkhya
philosophy had already proposed such a notion centuries earlier, but Aurobindo rejected the materialistic tendencies of both Darwinism and Samkhya, and proposed an evolution of spirit rather than matter.
There is clearly an idealist streak in Aurobindo's interpretation of Vedanta. This
becomes even more clear when we see that he solves the problem of the linkage between the ineffable unitary mind of Brahman and the many ordinary minds here on earth by positing a supermind. The supermind is the active
principle present in the mind of Brahman (or perhaps more accurately, in the mind that is Brahman) of which our
individual minds are minuscule subdivisions.
The birthday of Sri Aurobindo, August 15 — which Aurobindo also pointed
out was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary in the Catholic Christian religion — is celebrated each year by Indians — it is the
Independence Day of India.
Quotation
- " [Fire represents the] forceful heat, flaming will...and burning brightness [of the divine]."
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- — The
Immortal Fire (1974), page 3-4.
- "The one aim of [my] yoga is an inner self-development by which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in
all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and
divinize human nature."
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- — "Aurobindo on Sri Aurobindo"
External links
Indian
philosophers
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