Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history

Preface to The Fourth Edition

The first edition appeared in February 1945, the second in February 1950 and both had been read by Sri Aurobindo and generally approved. The third edition took due note of the immense mass of valuable new material that had come to light in the meantime, grew to about three times the bulk of the second edition, and was published in two volumes in Sri Aurobindo's Birth Centenary year (1972). Some more material became available during the next few years (1972-78), and whatever was relevant was incorporated in my book On the Mother: The Chronicle of a Manifestation and Ministry (1978). Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's were really one story, a single saga of the conquest of New Consciousness and the inauguration of the Supramental Age.

In the present fourth edition of the biography of Sri Aurobindo, the text is substantially the same as in the third edition. Nevertheless several minor or verbal alterations have been made so as to rectify errors or conform to recent findings of the Archives and Research Library of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. But the basic structure, ordering and amplitude, the unfolding narrative and argument, and the sustained fullness of detail remain unaffected.

Now that the Sri Aurobindo Centenary Library in thirty volumes and the Collected Works of the Mother (Centenary Edition) in fifteen volumes have been published in their entirety, the citations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have been checked and corrected where necessary, and the page-references too have been given to the definitive editions. Likewise, references are now made to the fourth edition (1978) of The Life of Sri Aurobindo by A. B. Purani, and not to the earlier editions. This arduous work of checking and updating has been done as a labour of love by a sadhak who wishes to remain unknown, and it is my pleasure to record my gratitude to him.

Again, my debt to Sri K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran), whom I have known since 1943, is incommensurable. His critical insights are as uncanny as his expository spirit is an unflagging flame, and both have been an inspiration to me during the last forty years. He has ungrudgingly spared his time on which there are so many calls and his unique expertise as an Aurobindonian to help to make this edition as nearly flawless as a Homage to the Master as possible. I thank him heartily for the priceless gift of his friendship and fellowship in the service of the Mother.

I owe a load of debt to young Sri Sunjoy Bhatt who has, in addition to his usual work in the Press, with a sadhak's utter dedication and infinite patience, seen the edition through the press unmindful of all discouragement and inconveniences. To Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, of course, who with their eye for perfection have Produced this new edition as a companion volume in format and style to On the Mother, I am grateful beyond measure.

I am happy that this edition too, like its predecessor, is sponsored by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. 

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 I extend my special thanks to its Registrar, Parubai, whom I have known since her childhood days in Belgaum. And it was her noble father, the late Shankargauda B. Patil, who providentially first led me to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother forty years ago.

I realise that, in the proper sense of the word, Sri Aurobindo's biography cannot be written, for his real life had not been lived on the outside. But with humility and faith, successive approaches can be made, and I would fain prayerfully hope, taking my cue from Sri Aurobindo's lines in Savitri:

World after coloured and ecstatic world

Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.

K. R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR

'Matri Bhavan', Madras