Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist leader, philosopher, poet and yogi. Educated in England from childhood, he returned to India to become one of the most radical leaders of the early independence movement, calling for complete freedom from British rule; arrested in 1908 in the Alipore Bomb Case, he underwent a spiritual transformation in prison, and after his acquittal withdrew from politics to Pondicherry (then French territory), where he spent the remaining forty years of his life in yoga and writing. His philosophy — set out in The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita and the epic poem Savitri — reinterprets Vedānta as a philosophy of spiritual evolution: the Divine has “involved” itself in matter, and evolution is its gradual re-emergence through life and mind toward a higher “supermind”, which will transform human life into a “life divine” on earth. His integral yoga aims not at escape from the world but at its transformation. With his spiritual collaborator Mirra Alfassa (“the Mother”), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram; the international township of Auroville (1968) was founded in his name.

Life

Aurobindo’s father, a doctor who admired everything English, sent his three sons to England in 1879 with instructions that they should not be exposed to Indian influences. Aurobindo was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and King’s College, Cambridge, mastering Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. He passed the Indian Civil Service examination but deliberately failed the riding test, and in 1893 returned to India to serve the Maharaja of Baroda, where he learned Sanskrit and Bengali and began writing anonymous articles attacking the moderate Congress. From 1906, in Calcutta, he edited the nationalist paper Bande Mataram, demanded pūrṇa swarāj (complete independence) long before Congress did, and was secretly involved with revolutionary groups. Arrested in 1908 for conspiracy after a bomb attack, he spent a year in Alipore jail awaiting trial; there, reading the Gītā and the Upaniṣads, he had a series of mystical experiences. Defended by C. R. Das, he was acquitted in 1909. In 1910, following an “inner command”, he slipped away to Pondicherry, where he lived until his death.

Philosophy

Aurobindo’s thought rejects both the materialist denial of spirit and the ascetic denial of matter — “the refusal of the ascetic”. Against Śaṅkara’s view of the world as illusion, he held that the world is a real manifestation of Saccidānanda (being-consciousness-bliss). Creation is a double movement: involution, in which Spirit descends and hides itself in matter, and evolution, in which it re-emerges, first as life, then as mind, and next — he believed — as supermind (truth-consciousness), which would transform the nature of human beings and create a divine life on earth. His integral yoga combines the paths of knowledge, works and devotion, and requires the surrender of the whole being to the Divine, so that the Divine force can transform body and mind.