Home > Hindu Saints and Philosophers
NAME+
Sri Aurobindo 
About

Sri Aurobindo Ghose, also known as Sri Aurobindo, was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was born on August 15, 1872, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bengal Presidency, India, to a Bengali family associated with the village of Konnagar in the Hooghly district of present-day West Bengal.

His father, Krishna Dhun Ghose, was a former member of the Brahmo Samaj religious reform movement and a doctor who had studied in Edinburgh, where he became interested in the then-new idea of evolution. Aurobindo's mother, Swarnalata Devi, came from a family with a prominent figure in the Samaj. Aurobindo had two older siblings, Benoybhusan and Manmohan, a younger sister, Sarojini, and a younger brother, Barindra Kumar (also referred to as Barin).

Aurobindo went to England to study for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge. After returning to India, he worked various civil service jobs under the Maharaja of the Princely state of Baroda and 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 the Alipore Conspiracy. However, Sri Aurobindo could only be convicted and imprisoned for writing articles against British colonial rule in India. He was released when no evidence could be provided, following the murder of a prosecution witness, Narendranath Goswami, during the trial. It was during his stay in jail that he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work.

Aurobindo Ghose, born in Calcutta in 1872, was raised speaking English and communicating with servants in Hindustani. His father, Krishna Dhun Ghose, believed in British culture's superiority and wanted his sons to join the Indian Civil Service, an elite organization with around 1,000 members. To achieve this, the family moved to England in 1879, where the three brothers were placed under the care of the Reverend W.H. Drewett in Manchester. Drewett, a minister of the Congregational Church, taught the boys Latin, which was a requirement for admission to good English schools. After two years, the two elder siblings were enrolled at Manchester Grammar School, while Aurobindo continued his studies with the Drewetts.

Although the Drewetts were instructed not to teach religion, the boys inevitably were exposed to Christian teachings, which Aurobindo found uninteresting and sometimes repulsive. Aurobindo's father, who had few communications with his sons while they were in England, became less enamored of the British colonial government in India, describing it as "heartless" on one occasion.

In 1884, Drewett emigrated to Australia, and the boys went to live with his mother in London. Aurobindo and his brother Manmohan joined St. Paul's School in September of that year. At St. Paul's, Aurobindo learned Greek and spent his last three years reading literature and English poetry. He also gained some familiarity with German and Italian languages. By the turn of the century, he knew at least twelve languages, including Bengali, French, and Sanskrit.

Living with Drewett's mother exposed Aurobindo to the evangelical structures of Christianity, which developed in him a distaste for religion. He considered himself an atheist at one point but later identified as agnostic. A blue plaque at 49 St. Stephen's Avenue in Shepherd's Bush, London, commemorates Aurobindo's residence there from 1884 to 1887. The three brothers lived in Spartan circumstances at the Liberal Club in South Kensington during 1887 after their father faced financial difficulties. The club's secretary was James Cotton, the brother of their father's friend in the Bengal ICS, Henry Cotton.

In 1889, Aurobindo's elder brothers had abandoned their plans for the Indian Civil Service (ICS), leaving him as the only hope for his father's aspirations. However, lacking money, Aurobindo had to work hard to secure a scholarship to study at King's College, Cambridge, where he passed the ICS examination and spent the next two years.

Despite his success, Aurobindo had no interest in the ICS and purposely got himself disqualified from the practical horse-riding exam. Instead, he accepted a position in the Baroda State Service arranged by his mentor, S.K. Cotton, and left for India in 1893. Unfortunately, Aurobindo's father, who was waiting to receive him, was misinformed that the ship had sunk off the coast of Portugal and died upon hearing this news.

In Baroda, Aurobindo worked in various departments and became a part-time French teacher at Baroda College, eventually becoming vice-principal. He also self-studied Sanskrit and Bengali and contributed articles to Indu Prakash while becoming increasingly involved in the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule. Despite his position in the Baroda state administration, he linked up with resistance groups in Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, established contact with Lokmanya Tilak and Sister Nivedita, and traveled between Baroda and Bengal to re-establish links with his family and other relatives.

Aurobindo formally moved to Calcutta in 1906 after the announcement of the Partition of Bengal and married Mrinalini, the daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, during a visit in 1901. He continued to establish resistance groups across the Presidency, but tragedy struck when Mrinalini died in December 1918 during the influenza pandemic.

The text describes the life of Sri Aurobindo, an Indian nationalist leader who later became a spiritual leader. He was appointed the first principal of the National College in Calcutta in 1906 to impart national education to Indian youth, but he resigned from this position in 1907 due to his increased political activity. He was influenced by studies on rebellion and revolutions against England in medieval France and the revolts in America and Italy. He favored non-cooperation and passive resistance in his public activities, but in private, he took up secret revolutionary activity as a preparation for open revolt, in case that the passive revolt failed. He was associated with revolutionaries such as Bagha Jatin and Surendranath Tagore and established youth clubs, including the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902. In 1907, he led the extremists at the Surat session of the Congress along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Congress split after this session. In 1908, he was arrested in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case but was later acquitted. After his release, he moved to Pondicherry in 1910 and started two new publications, Karmayogin in English and Dharma in Bengali. He also delivered the Uttarpara Speech 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. In Pondicherry, he 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. 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.

Sri Aurobindo's philosophy revolves around the concept of divine Brahman manifesting in empirical reality through līlā, or divine play. He argues that the world we experience is not an illusion (māyā) but rather can evolve into a new world with new species that transcend humanity, just as humanity has evolved from the animal kingdom. For Aurobindo, the ultimate goal of spiritual practice is not just liberation from the world into Samadhi but also the descent of the Divine into the world to transform it into a divine existence, which is the purpose of Integral Yoga.

Aurobindo believed that Darwinism only describes the phenomenon of the evolution of matter into life but does not explain the reason behind it. He saw life as already present in matter, and all of existence as a manifestation of Brahman. Aurobindo argues that nature, which he interpreted as divine, evolved life out of matter and mind out of life. He believed that all of existence is striving to manifest to the level of the supermind and that evolution has a purpose.

Aurobindo found the task of understanding the nature of reality to be challenging and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results. However, he believed that the descent of the Divine into the world would ultimately redeem the world of its ignorance and conscience. He saw this descent and sacrifice of the Divine Soul as the seed of redemption for the world.

Work Done

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga system is based on the concept of the supermind, which he describes as an intermediary power between the unmanifested Brahman and the manifested world. Aurobindo claims that the supermind is not completely alien to us and can be realized within ourselves as it is always present within mind since the latter is in reality identical with the former and contains it as a potentiality within itself. He believes that the Vedic Gods represent powers of the supermind and that it is a bridge between Sachchidananda and the lower manifestation.

In his writings, talks, and letters, Sri Aurobindo has referred to several European philosophers with whose basic concepts he was familiar. He wrote a long essay on the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and mentioned especially Plato, Plotinus, Nietzsche, and Bergson as thinkers in whom he was interested because of their more intuitive approach. However, he felt little attraction for the philosophy of Kant or Hegel. Several studies have shown a remarkable closeness to the evolutionary thought of Teilhard de Chardin, whom he did not know, whereas the latter came to know of Sri Aurobindo at a late stage. 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, stating 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."