Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects

Sri Aurobindo's Message for To-day

Before we deal with the present subject of discussion—Sri Aurobindo's Message for Today—it is as well to consider briefly the life and work of Sri Aurobindo, the mystic, philosopher, poet, patriot, prophet and lover of humanity as that will give us a right perspective and help in the proper understanding of his Message in today's context.

Born in Calcutta on the 15th August, 1872 of Bengali parents, he was educated in England from his early childhood and became an all-round and accomplished scholar in the sciences, humanities and classics of several European languages at the age of 21 when he came back to India and joined the Baroda State Service. Here he became extremely popular with the rising generation of students not only for. his vast erudition but also for his burning patriotism, simple and unassuming manners and above all the matchless integrity of his personal character. Later on he had to divert his teaching .and study of Indian philosophy and yoga to the political field on

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of his people from the age-long inertia into which they had sunk by his soul-stirring speeches and writings in English and Bengali journals which he edited. As a result of his political activities, he was, as anticipated, arrested and detained in jail for more than a year in connection with what is now famous as the Alipor Bomb Case. His jail life in the solitary cell was productive of deep and far-reaching experiences of mystic and spiritual character which completely changed him from being at one time an agnostic to a total and confirmed believer in God whose knowledge, power, bliss and oneness we can all share by uniting with Him in our enlarged highest consciousness as much in static as in dynamic life experiences. He was, however, honorably acquitted of all the charges of conspiracy against him and had to retire at first to Chandannagar and then to Pondicherry, both former French possessions in India, by a divine command from above. He sailed from Chandannagar incognito in a French ship and arrived at Pondicherry on the 4th April 1910 with a few disciples and settled here permanently in the Ashram which he founded in 1926, till his demise in December 5, 1950. 'From November 24, 1926, he went into complete seclusion leaving the Ashram in charge of the Mother, his collaborator in the divine work.

It will be wrong to assume that because Sri Aurobindo retired from active public and political life, he had cut off all connection with the outside world on account of his pre-occupation with the inner spiritual life which became more and more of absorbing interest to him not only for his own but also for the life of the whole humanity for his life had by now become one with the life of the world.

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A fourth dimension of the aesthetic sense

Where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all

To the cosmic wideness re-aligns our souls. (Savitri)

He took as deep and wide an interest in the affairs of the world as was possible from this seclusion and devoted himself to the task of finding solutions to all the problems that have perplexed and vexed humanity since its very birth and inception. His life-long researches in these fields found expression one by one in the articles written by himself alone in the philosophical journal ARYA which he started in 1914 during the First World War and which continued to pour out for 7 long years in inspired and luminous language such spiritual solutions to social and political problems of our times as are now to be found in various book forms, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, War and Self-determination etc. His other major works on philosophy, yoga, culture, art and literature such as the Life Divine, Essays on the Gita, Synthesis of Yoga, Foundations of Indian Culture, Future Poetry, Savitri, Collected Poems and other classic works in drama, criticisms, essay and a collection of letters to his disciples appeared one after another covering practically every possible field and aspect of human life and activity.

Sri Aurobindo's title to immortality rests on his success in bringing down the Supermind or the Supreme Truth-consciousness which the ancient Vedic seers had only glimpsed and visited but not brought down to the earth consciousness for the transformation of earthly life. This initiates a new principle in the earth life like the mental principle and will be generalised in humanity in those sections that are ready for the new transformation. He himself was the pioneer

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and set the example for all mankind to follow. Sri Aurobindo probed the problems of life to their utmost depths and was not .content to deal with them superficially from the standpoint of mere intellect or even of the ordinary spiritual consciousness which found a solution for all the malaise of earth life in a spiritual liberation of the soul alone while its instruments, the body, mind and life remained unchanged and tied to an ignorant separative consciousness which constitutes the individual ego, the root cause of all the ills and sufferings of earthly life.

He found the inconscience or the nescience at the base of existence pervaded by a supreme but involved Consciousness that strove through various successive mediums or forms of expression like matter, life and mind to emerge fully into its own sovereign and independent Reality. This Consciousness has taken millions of years and myriads of physical forms—insentient matter, plants, insects, birds and animal life—to come to the human mental stage of evolution but there also it is still enveloped by its inconscient beginnings and is even in the highest and widest reach of the mind only a dim and pale reflection of the original Truth-consciousness, truth-power and truth-light. Its ultimate emergence "is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of earth-consciousness for the mind is not its last summit and its upward ascent has not ended". Mind at its best is only a half light and an insecure, untrustworthy and and unreliable guide to life. That is why all efforts to solve human problems on mental basis have always failed throughout the ages. It is only with the full and complete emergence of the Supermind or the supreme Truth-consciousness out of its involution in the inconscience

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that a change of earth life is not only possible but inevitable for then the basis of the ignorance will have completely disappeared and the supreme Truth consciousness or the Divine gnosis as Sri Aurobindo calls it will work unhampered in the light and power of truth and bring about a total and radical change of human life, transforming even the material body,—no longer a travesty of the divine inhabitant within it—into its immortal divine substance. Here is Sri Aurobindo's prophecy of the future quoted at random from Savitri :

In matter shall be lit the spirit's glow.

In body and body kindled the sacred birth;

Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,

The days become a happy pilgrim march,

Our will a force of the Eternal's power,

And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.

A few shall see what none yet understands;

God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;

For man shall not know the coming till its hour

And belief shall be not till the work is done. Sri Aurobindo's writings are voluminous and they cover an immense variety of subjects ranging from the most ordinary to the most serious and sublime quests of human life. Practically hardly any aspect of life is left out of his vast and extensive field of research and finding. But the central theme and the core of all his teaching is Spiritual and it is a spiritual and supramental solution that he always advocates as the only conclusion of his most intimate study of all human problems. For the Spirit underlies everything; it is at the base of life,

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its centre as well as circumference. Go where we will and do what we on, there is no escape from its all-pervasive presence if we are to look life straight in the face and not evade its hurdles and difficulties by a mere superficial tinkering on the surface.

Everything in this world is to be covered with the Lord, says the Upanishad and renunciation is recommended as the best means of enjoyment of all the world's riches and pleasures. If peace and happiness be the goal of human life along with knowledge and power, then there also it stands to reason that we find the Spirit first and foremost to make ourselves worthy and deserving of all the blessed things of life.

There is no joy in passing, finite and limited things. Therefore we must seek that which is unlimited, eternal and infinite. As the world is constituted to-day and with our present narrow and limited perspective, no perfection can anywhere be found except in relation to the Spirit because it is the only unborn, undying, eternal and infinite power and principle of our being. But at the same time, these limited worldly things and actions are not to be despised or discarded because they too are a manifestation of the spirit. All our outlook can change, says Sri Aurobindo, if the God-touch is there. If once mankind consents to be spiritualised, all human problems will be automatically solved because in the Spirit which is nothing but Love, Knowledge, Power, Beauty and Bliss there is no problem. Where is there any room for strife, discord, sorrow and suffering where there is nothing but One ? But this One need not be one white monotony of colour less existence. It can and does deploy itself in an Infinite multiplicity. The Spirit is One but its

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manifestations are many. But these manifestations are at present only a travesty of the truth of the spirit because of a heavy pall of ignorance that covers our limited intelligence. Once this mist of the ignorance is dispelled by the light of the sun of knowledge (the Supermind), we know the world as it truly is a creation of the spirit by the spirit in itself for the manifold enjoyment of its own diversity. This then is the core of Sri Aurobindo's message—that the true truth of existence is to be found only in the Spirit, Soul, the Divine Reality or whatever one chooses to call it and once That is discovered, everything will automatically find its light place in the .creation. The creator, created and the creation are one in essence. For the purpose of the play (Lila), it is diverse in manifestation. This is the central truth of Sri Aurobindo's teachings and it has a value as much for to-day as for to-morrow and the future for he deals with eternal Verities which are not subject to fluctuations caused by time, space and causation.

Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future

"The Iron age is ended. Only now

The last fierce spasm of the dying past

Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed,.

Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow."

— Sri Aurobindo

END

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