Sri Aurobindo: First Revolutionary, then Mahayogi

Our ideal is not that spirituality which withdraws from life, but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit – Sri Aurobindo

 Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872 at Calcutta(as the city was then called), the third of the four sons of Dr K D Ghose who was a Civil Surgeon trained at Aberdeen in Scotland and his wife Swarnalata. Dr Ghose gave his newborn the name Aravinda, meaning lotus in Sanskrit and signifying divine consciousness spiritually. He rose to become one of India’s foremost revolutionary thinkers, and his life and work can be considered in three phases:

Phase I: Intellectual preparation 

Phase II: Initiation to Yogic experience Revolutionary work

Phase III: Consolidation of Yogic experience Expansion of literary activity

Phase I (1872-1893)- He was sent to England with his brothers at age 7 to become a pucca ‘brown sahib’ but turned out to be the exact opposite. Starting school in Manchester, he was an exceptionally brilliant student. He acquired a mastery of English, French, Greek, German, Latin, and was able to study their thinkers in the original. Going on with scholarships to St Paul’s School in London and then to the University of Cambridge, he wrote brilliant compositions and bagged prizes in classics, literature and history, and started to write poems. Later he said that his years in England were for him tamas, spiritual darkness.

Phase II (I893-1910)-  Initiation to Yogic experience- This began the moment he touched Indian soil at Apollo Bunder in Bombay on returning from England: a vast calm descended upon and surrounded him, and stayed for months afterwards. ‘Since I set foot on the Indian soil … I began to have spiritual experiences; these were not divorced from from this world but had an inner and infinite bearing 03 Adi Shankaracharya, first teacher to spread the messages of Hinduism to the world. Photo credit : Auroville on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies.’ He underwent further such experiences on his own, and later with his brother Barin and with Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele with whom he trained. These continued in Alipore jail during the year he was there.

Revolutionary work His father had wanted him to join the prestigious Indian Civil Service. He didn’t want to and deliberately abstained from taking the mandatory riding test for ICS in London. Instead, after meeting the Maharajah of Baroda in London he took up the latter’s offer of a job in the Baroda State Service. He soon tired and moved on to become Professor of English and French at Baroda College until 1906, when he moved to Calcutta as Principal of National College. He was convinced that liberation of India from British rule was an indispensable part of a new world order, and was perhaps the first among Indian leaders to declare a call for the complete Independence of India. For this he had already started behind the scenes preparations in Baroda. These gathered momentum when he moved to Calcutta after the partition of Bengal in 1905. He chalked out a plan of Passive Resistance, Boycott and Swadeshi which was later adopted as the policy of the struggle for freedom.

He wrote electrifying articles in journals he had founded, Karma Yogin and Bande Mataram. In 1910 he was acquitted after being jailed for a year in Alipore jail for sedition. But the British authorities issued warrant for his arrest. He got an adesh and with the help of his brother he withdrew via Chandernagore to Pondicherry in April 1910, which was under French jurisdiction.

Phase III (1910-1950)- Consolidation of Yogic experience -He went about setting up an ashram where he continued his yoga practices and studied the Vedas. He gained more mystical experiences that confirmed the Vedic postulate of Spirit as being the substratum of matter. ‘There is a Truth deeper and higher than the truth of outward existence, a light greater and higher than the light of human understanding which comes by revelation and inspiration.’ He attained that Truth by a progressive ascent from: Matter to Life – Mind – Supermind – Truth – Existence – Bliss, by the fine tuning of Vedantic buddhi. In doing so he went beyond material wants to rational consciousness; Supermind was the intuitive self-consciousness that lifts up towards and connects with Sat-chit-ananda or Truth – Existence – Bliss.

Expansion of literary activity- He wrote prolifically to explain the nature of his work, nature of Supermind, and its dynamic consequences for the future of mankind. He had a constant concern about the exact interpretation of Sanskrit terms and concepts, such as not translating the Sanskrit punarjanma for rebirth as the Greek metempsychosis or the English transmigration. Most of us live our lives at the level of the material needs of the body and the questionings of the reasoning mind. Through his experiences, he established that our physical and mental existences were but limited expressions of a Higher Truth, the Consciousness-Force which manifests as different planes of existence from the lower material to the highest spiritual. Every human being has the potential to ascend to this highest level and in the process enrich his earthly existence and that of others. The method that Sri Aurobindo perfected for this attainment was ‘Integral Yoga’, which entailed going beyond the mind to the Supermind which was the link to the higher planes.

The Mother of Pondicherry, Mirra Richard -As he became more and more involved in his studies and sadhana, in March 1914 karma brought to the doors of the Pondicherry Ashram, amongst other distinguished visitors, Paul and Mirra Richard. As soon as Mirra saw him she ‘instantly recognized him as the “Krishna” she had met so often in her visions.

In due course, Paul left and Mirra, who became known as The Mother, stayed back to continue her spiritual journey with Sri Aurobindo. The number of disciples grew, with many visitors coming from abroad too. As Sri Aurobindo spent more and more time on his sadhana, the running of the ashram was taken over gradually by The Mother. Not only she had organizational skills, she also acted as a link between the disciples and Sri Aurobindo. He left his physical body on 5th December 1950 at 1.26 a.m. The Mother announced that ‘His body is charged with such a concentration of supramental light that there is no sign of decomposition’, and in fact it was not until five days later that the light started to fade.

 The anniversary of his death is a blessed opportunity for us to reflect upon the deeper meanings and karmic links of life: it took a perfect stranger born and brought up in a foreign land and an alien culture to the feet of her master, whom she had recognized in planes of consciousness years before she actually came face to face with him. Indeed, come to think of it, were they indeed strangers to each other? Sri Aurobindo did say that other than his own, the language and culture he felt closest to was French, although he had never been to France. All this may appear very odd and inexplicable to us. But happily this is not so – Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s experiences and visions of planes accessible through Integral Yoga provide the intuitive rationale that underlies their deep connect. If we search, we will surely find also.