CWTVKS Volume 3

SRI AUROBINDO

Sri Aravinda Prakasam, by Swami Shuddhananda Bharati, gives us in brief compass, an account of the life-story of Sri Aurobindo, his many-sided learning, his letters to his wife, his idealism from early life, patriotic activities, Rabindranath’s namaskars to the Master, his last political testament, his spiritual realisations, the means and aims of his yoga, the Ashram, the activities of the ashramites, and short references to the many paths of Yoga, the triple path of Karma, Bhakti and Jnana, the Vedantic and Tantric methods.

In giving this account of Sri Aurobindo’s life, the author says in effect: Turn to any side of his life, a Himalayan loftiness arrests your view. Look at the Indian boy coming out of a foreign university in brilliant colours with a first class classical Tripos; look at the college Professor at the age of 21, winning the love and admiration of his pupils and the public around and the ruler of the State; turn to the linguist, the scholar either of the classical tongues Greek, Latin and Sanskrit or modern ones, European and Indian, French, German, Italian and English, Bengali, Marathi, Gujerati and Hindi; turn to the poet of patriotism with his life at the altar of the Mother, the political leader and journalist putting life and love for the Mother into her sons steeped in a mass of inertia and indolence; open your sealed ears to the famous Uttarapara speech, hearken to the Prophet of Nationalism preaching the true spiritual significance of the Nation’s awakening as revealed to him by Lord Vasudeva himself in Jail --everywhere you find something lofty, something extraordinary. Yet, all this colossal achievement refers but to the outer fringe of this magnificent personality, all this is " but a spray of the waves of this ocean Sri Aurobindo which is too deep, too vast for comprehension.

It is difficult for the reader to remain unmoved as he peruses the letter of Sri Aurobindo (30-8-1905) addressed to his wife. We shall present a portion of it summarised for the benefit of the reader:

I have three passions (madnesses) in my life.

1. Till now, I have kept 14 annas for myself and allowed 2 annas for God, thus I have been a thief commiting fraud upon God and concealing the true account; for whoever retains what is more than necessary for himself and his dependents is a thief of God’s gift. That is what our Shastras say. Henceforth, I have resolved to live a very ordinary life and devote the rest to God (God in the suffering humanity).

2. My second madness is this: If there is a God, there must be a way to discover him. The Hindu Shastras state that we can find him within us and suggest certain means. I am trying some of these methods. Already within the short period of a month since I began the attempt, I find encouraging results, leading me to conclude that Shastras are not untrue...

3. My third madness:

It is untrue to say that your good and artless (Sadhu) husband has been misled by wicked people. ...

This country is not to me a mere land, hills and rivers and valleys and fields. She is my Mother. This passionate love for the Mother was born with me when I came to the world. ...

The Seed was found sown even when I was 14 years old.

In another letter (1907) we find him saying: “I no longer move of my own accord. I am moved like a puppet.. I would go wherever He leads me, do whatever he bids me to do. I am no longer my master. He is the Master. I am the machine, yantra; He is the Mechanic, yantri”.

Then the preparation for a fuller and deeper life of yoga becomes complete and we find him leaving the British Raj for Pondicherry, the place of his Yoga Siddhi. It will be of great interest to know how he came upon the forgotten paths of our Vedic forefathers and recovered the lost light for a divine life. He says in the Arya: “I regarded the Upanishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and religion, the true Veda, the first Book of Knowledge. The Rig Veda in the modern translations which were all I knew of this profound scripture, represented for me an important document of our national history, but seemed of small value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience. My first contact with Vedic thought came indirectly while pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian Yoga, which, without my knowing it, were converging towards the ancient and now forgotten paths followed by our forefathers. At this time there began to arise in my mind an arrangement of symbolic names attached to certain psychological experiences which had begun to regularise themselves, and among them there came the figures of three female energies, Ila, Saraswati, Sarama, representing severally, three out of the four faculties of the intuitive reason-revelation, inspiration, intuition.”

Herein lies the secret of the Arya’s thousands of pages, which were but one expression of the Ideal, the Truth that came to live more and more in this great personality. Living in the Light, he applies it to all the subjects he handles, whether he unlocks the secret of the Veda, or writes upon the Upanishads and the Gita, whether he boldly expounds the divine possibilities of man in his Life Divine or constructs the Synthesis of Yoga. The vast learning of this versatile genius is but a human part and instrument of a higher Light, the true Spirit that expresses itself in the Psychology of Social Development, in the Ideal of Human Unity, in the Future Poetry, in the Defence of Indian Culture, and in many other kindred subjects. And The Mother presents the crowning of the Siddha.

Referring to the Ashram, the author says in part: while Sri Aurobindo has always maintained an attitude of ready help to be given to those who feel called to take up this Yoga, he has never cared nor permitted others to do any kind of propaganda, and therefore did not organise the Ashram. Yet the Ashram is a fact as an organic growth around him, an expression of the Spirit, the Truth, the Ideal of Sri Aurobindo.

With reference to the aims of this yoga, we may quote a few lines from the Master’s Message’ which serves the purpose of foreword to the book:

“The unfolding of the spirit, its light and its joy and oneness in man upon the earth, is an essential plan and the obvious purport of the terrestrial and human creation"..."The condition of immortality and freedom ... is to live not for ourselves in the ego, but for God in ourselves, and for God in man ... It is the possession of Satchidananda in oneself and the expression of him in the universe.”