About Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo ((born Aurobindo Ghose, in kolkata 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an freedom fighter,Indian nationalist,Yogi,Philosopher and poet. The central theme of Sri Aurobindo's vision is the evolution of life into a "life divine": The principal writings of Sri Aurobindo include The Life Divine, considered his greatest work of metaphysics and the Synthesis of Yoga.

                                            Biography

Early life

Sri Aurobindo was born in Kolkata on 15 August 1872.His father's name is Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose & mother's name is  Swarnalata Devi. Dr. Ghose chose the middle name Akroyd to honour his friend Annette Akroyd.

Aurobindo spent his first five years at Rangapur, where his father had been posted since October 1871. Dr. Ghose, who had previously lived in Britain and studied medicine at King's Collge ,Aberdeen, was determined that his children should have an English education and upbringing free of any Indian influences. In 1877, he therefore sent the young Aurobindo and two elder siblings - Manmohan and Benoybhusan - to the Loreto Convert school in Darjeeling.

England

Aurobindo spent two years at Loreto convent. In 1879, Aurobindo and his two elder brothers were taken to Manchester, England for a European education. The brothers were placed in the care of a Rev. and Mrs. Drewett. Rev. Drewett was an Anglican clergyman whom Dr. Ghose knew through his British friends at Rangapur. The Drewetts tutored the Ghose brothers privately. The Drewitts had been asked to keep the tuitions completely secular and to make no mention of India or its culture.

In 1884, Aurobindo joined St Paul's School. Here he learned Greek and Latin, spending the last three years reading literature, especially English poetry. Dr. K.D. Ghose had aspired that his sons should pass the prestigious Indian Civil Service, but in 1889 it appeared that of the three brothers, only young Aurobindo had the chance of fulfilling his father's aspirations, his brothers having already decided their future careers. To become an ICS official, students were required to pass the difficult competitive examination, as well as study at an English university for two years under probation. With his limited financial resources, the only option Aurobindo had was to secure a scholarship at an English university, which he did by passing the scholarship examinations of King's college,Cambridge University. He stood first at the examination. He also passed the written examination of ICS after a few months, where he was ranked 11th out of 250 competitors. He spent the next two years at the King's College.

By the end of two years of probation, Aurobindo became convinced that he did not want to serve the British, he therefore failed to present himself at the horse riding examination for ICS, and was disqualified for the Service. At this time, the Maharaja of Baroda,Sayajirao Gaekwad III was travelling England. James Cotton, brother of Sir Henry Cotton, for some time Lt. Governor of Bengal and Secretary of the South Kensington Liberal Club, who knew Sri Aurobindo and his father secured for him a service in Baroda State Service and arranged a meeting between him and the prince. He left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893. In India Aurobindo's father who was waiting to receive his son was misinformed by his agents from Mumbai (Bombay) that the ship on which Aurobindo had been travelling had sunk off the coast of Portugal. Dr. Ghose who was by this time frail due to ill-health could not bear this shock and died.

Baroda

In Baroda, Aurobindo joined the state service, working first in the Survey and Settlements department, later moving to the Department of Revenue and then to the Secretariat, writing speeches for the Gaekwad . At Baroda, Aurobindo engaged in a deep study of Indian culture, teaching himself Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali, all things that his education in England had withheld from him. Because of the lack of punctuality at work resulting from his preoccupation with these other pursuits, Aurobindo was transferred to the Baroda College as a teacher of French, where he became popular because of his unconventional teaching style. He was later promoted to the post of Vice-Principal. He published the first of his collections of poetry, The Rishi from Baroda.He also started taking active interest in the politics of India's freedom struggle against British rule, working behind the scenes as his position at the Baroda State barred him from overt political activity. He linked up with resistance groups in Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, while travelling to these states.  

Kolkata

Aurobindo used to take many excursions to Bengal, at first in a bid to re-establish links with his parents' families and his other Bengali relatives, including his cousin Sarojini and brother Barin, and later increasingly in a bid to establish resistance groups across Bengal. But he formally shifted to Kolkata only in 1906 after the announcement of Partition of Bengal. During his visit to Calcutta in 1901 he married Mrinalini, daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, a senior official in Government service. Sri Aurobindo was then 28; the bride Mrinalini, 14. Marrying off daughters at a very young age was very common in 19th century Bengali families.

In Bengal with Barin's help he established contacts with revolutionaries, inspiring radicals like Bagha Jatin, Jatin Banerjee, Surendranath Tagore. He helped establish a series of youth clubs with the aim of imparting a martial and spiritual training to the youth of Bengal. He helped found the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902. When the Partition of Bengal was announced, there was a public outpouring against the British rule in India. Aurobindo attended the Benares session of Congress in December 1905 as an observer, and witnessing the intensity of people's feelings decided to throw himself into the thick of politics. He joined the National Council of Education and met Subodh Chandra Mullick who quickly became a supporter of Aurobindo's views. Mullick donated a large sum to found a National College and stipulated that Aurobindo should become its first principal. Aurobindo also started writing for Bande Mataram, as a consequence of which, his popularity as a leading voice of the hardline group soared. His arrest and acquittal for printing seditious material in Bande Mataram consolidated his position as the leader of aggressive nationalists. His call for complete political independence was considered extremely radical at the time and frequently caused friction in Congress. The British persecution continued because of his writings in his new journals and in April 1910 Aurobindo signalling his retirement from politics, moved to Pondicherry.

Messages of Sri Aurobindo

"Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism"

"I say, of the Congress, then, this, - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.  \ 

Books 

Book 1: Omnipresent Reality and the Universe  

1 - The Human Aspiration
2 - The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial
3 - The Two Negations: The Refusal of the Ascetic
4 - Reality Omnipresent
5 - The Destiny of the Individual
6 - Man in the Universe
7 - The Ego and the Dualities
8 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge
9 - The Pure Existent
10 - Conscious Force
11 - Delight of Existence: The Problem
12 - Delight of Existence: The Solution
13 - The Divine Maya
14 - The Supermind as Creator
15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness
16 - The Triple Status of the Supermind
17 - The Divine Soul
18 - Mind and Supermind
19 - Life
20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity
21 - The Ascent of Life
22 - The Problem of Life
23 - The Double Soul in Man
24 - Matter
25 - The Knot of Matter
26 - The Ascending Series of Substance
27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being
28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya


Book 2: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution
Part 1: The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance
1 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable
2 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakritit, Shakti
3 - The Eternal and the Individual
4 - The Divine and the Undivine
5 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination
6 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion
7 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance
8 - Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance
9 - Memory, Ego and Self-Experience
10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance
12 - The Origin of the Ignorance
13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and Ignorance
14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil
Book 2: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution
Part 2: The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution
15 - Reality and the Integral Knoweldge
16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence
17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature
18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration
19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance Towards the Sevenfold Knowledge
20 - The Philosophy of Rebirth
21 - The Order of the Worlds
22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality
23 - Man and the Evolution
24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man
25 - The Triple Transformation
26 - The Ascent Towards Supermind
27 - The Gnostic Being
28 - The Divine Life

Photo's of Sri Aurobindo