Spiritual bouquets to a friend

Life of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. At the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education, and he lived there for fourteen years. In 1890 he passed the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but as he had no intention of accepting service under the Government, he failed to appear at the riding examination and was disqualified. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England in January, 1893.

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906 in the Baroda Service,first in the Revenue Department and in Secretariat work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally Vice-principal in the Baroda College. In England he received, according to his father's express instructions an entirely occidental, education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly the political movement He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

Sri Aurobindo persuaded the new-born nationalist party in Bengal to put forward Swaraj (Independence) as its goal as against the far-off moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in

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1908 when Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him. The Bande Mataram circulated almost immediately all over India and during its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future did not last long at that time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a' programme.

In May, 1908, he. was arrested in the Alipur Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and he was.acquitted: After detention of one year as under-trial prisoner in the Alipur Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dump and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. Moreover, as his twelve month's detention in the Alipur Jail was spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. So in April, 1910, he sailed for Pondicherry in French India. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances ; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he took up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement.

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Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobihdo's rises to the Spirit to re-descend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it.

Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material Incbnscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above, it a Supermind or eternal truth consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is in ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of Supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater Divine Consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true Self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

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Extracts from Sri Aurobindo's Message

You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.

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The Divine has to put on humanity in order that the human being may rise to the Divine.

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It is the darkest nights that prepare the greatest dawns.

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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.

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Adore and what you adore attempt to be.

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For through the shocks of difficulty and death Man shall attain his godhead.

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All sincere aspirations has its effect; if you are sincere you will grow into the divine life.

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