(The book throws light on the nature of various inner powe...)
The book throws light on the nature of various inner powers which we already possess and use more or less unconsciously, as well as with latent powers within, which are as yet undeveloped.
The Bhagavad Gita with Text, Translation and Commentary in the Words of Sri Aurobindo
(Sri aurobindos comments on gita are found scattered over ...)
Sri aurobindos comments on gita are found scattered over a number of his works such as the essays on the gita, the synthesis of yoga, the life divine etc this book is an attempt to put together in continuity and with a cerain completeness Sri Aurobindos's commentary on the gita from all the above sources.
(The Life Divine explores for the Modern mind the great st...)
The Life Divine explores for the Modern mind the great streams of Indian metaphysical thought, reconciling the truths behind each and from this synthesis extends in terms of conciousness the concept of evolution.
(The present compilation is an attempt to bring together i...)
The present compilation is an attempt to bring together in one volume the manifold teachings pertaining to the psychic being which are to be found in the numerous works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.
(This book is a compilation from the works of Sri Aurobind...)
This book is a compilation from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the hidden forces and how they influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions and determine the course of events in life.
Sri Aurobindo, born Aurobindo Ghose, was an Indian yogi, seer, philosopher, poet, and Indian nationalist who propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.
Background
Aurobindo Ghose was born on August 15, 1872, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the third of six children. His father—of high-caste background—was a distinguished physician in the employ of the civil service, thoroughly Anglicized and a persuaded atheist. His mother, Swarnalata Devi, was the daughter of Brahmo religious and social reformer, Rajnarayan Basu.
Education
In 1879 Aurobindo was sent to England with his brothers for higher education to prepare for the Indian civil service. Aurobindo then lived for six years with a family in Manchester and was educated in a private school.
At age thirteen, he entered St. Paul’s School in London, from which he won a Senior Classical Scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge. Aurobindo was a brilliant classical scholar and won first-degree honours at the end of his second year. He also excelled in Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian, and later learned Sanskrit and Bengali. While a student at Cambridge, Aurobindo participated in two secret societies dedicated to Indian nationalism.
Aurobindo spent the years from 1893 to 1906 as a civil servant in the state of Baroda, working first as a professor of English, then as vice-principal at Baroda College. In addition to studying works of ancient Hindu philosophy and various systems of yoga, Aurobindo wrote and translated poetry and published articles on literary topics.
In 1906, he left Baroda for Calcutta, where he became the leader of the revolutionary Indian nationalist movement, in part as editor of Bande Mataram, an extremist, English-language newspaper. His goal in politics, as he later said, was “to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it, in place of the futile ambling methods till then in vogue.” In pursuit of complete Indian independence, he advocated a total economic boycott of British goods and armed insurrection. He was arrested by the British in 1907; after acquittal at trial, he found that his paper had ceased publishing. He began two others, one in English and one in Bengali, with a focus that was now more worldly. (Several essays on Indian history and culture from these journals later appeared in book form.) Jailed again in 1908 for alleged complicity in a bombing, his practice of yoga led him to a religious vision—a mystical experience—that changed his outlook entirely and changed his life. Once again, he was acquitted. Though he was by now in great demand for public speeches, he left Calcutta in 1910 for a French settlement at Pondicherry, where he established the ashram (spiritual retreat) that was to be his home for the rest of his life.
Withdrawn from the outside world, Aurobindo nevertheless acted as a spiritual leader to an enormous number of disciples and he wrote prolifically. From 1914 to 1921, he published a monthly journal, the Arya, to disseminate his ideas. Many of his important writings appeared here, (with exception of Savitri, which he had begun in the 1890s and continued working on until his death).
In 1926, Aurobindo had another profound mystical experience which led him into isolation for over a decade. During that time, he kept in contact with his disciples through letters. They queried him about matters involving poetry, world affairs, literature, psychology, sociology, politics, even science; his letters of response amounted to thousands of pages. Many of these letters were later collected and published as guides to his system of yoga. Many of his other works were not published until after his death in 1950, and it wasn’t until the publication of his collected works in the early 1970s that he became widely known to and appreciated by Western scholars.
Ghose's basic spiritual goal was "to make the truth dynamic in the soul of man. "For this he proposed an "integral Yoga" designed not for spiritual withdrawal from the world but for the purpose of transforming earthly human life "here in the individual and the community." Man must be opened to a supramental divine consciousness which can create a spiritual "superman" and a new order of life in the world, transforming moribund human institutions into "free forms" of strength, love, and justice. The emphasis of his teaching was on the spiritualization of the phenomenal world and all human activity through the emergence of a disciplined religious elite, extending widely to touch all mankind.
Politics
Ghose joined an association of fellow Indians, expressing a deep interest in Indian nationalism. Ghose began to associate with radical Indian nationalists and revolutionaries, openly criticizing the Indian National Congress for its moderation, and founding a revolutionary newspaper so skillfully written that no pretext could be found for his arrest. In 1910 he openly abandoned active politics.
Views
Sri Aurobindo calls his yoga as integral yoga, and according to Sri Aurobindo most ways of other yoga are paths to beyond of human existence and towards reaching spirit as a final objective and away from normal life. Sri Aurobindo's philosophy aims at ascending to the spirit and again descending to normal existence to transform it.
According to Sri Aurobindo mind is the highest term reached in the path of evolution till now but has not yet reached its highest potency and calls current mind as an ignorance seeking truth, but he also states that even though the human being is treading in ignorance there is in every human being a possibility of divine manifestation. Sri Aurobindo states that there is a possibility to open oneself to higher divine consciousness which would reveal one's true self, remain in constant union of divine and bring down a higher force (which he names as superamental force) which would transform mind, life and body. To realize the above has been the main objectives of Sri Aurobindo's yoga.
Sri Aurobindo argues that Man is born an ignorant, divided, conflicted being; a product of the original inconscience (i.e. unconsciousness) inherent in Matter that he evolved out of. As a result, he does not know the nature of Reality, including its source and purpose; his own nature, including the parts and integration of his being; what purpose he serves, and what his individual and spiritual potential is, amongst others. In addition, man experiences life through division and conflict, including his relationship with others, and his divided view of spirit and life. To overcome these limitations, Man must embark on a process of self-discovery in which he uncovers his Divine nature.
To that end, he undertakes a three-step process, which he calls the Triple Transformation. Psychic Transformation—The first of the three stages is a movement within, away from the surface of life, to the depths, culminating in the discovery of his psychic being (the evolving soul). From that experience, he sees the oneness and unity of creation, and the harmony of all opposites experienced in life. Spiritual Transformation—As a result of making the psychic change, his mind expands and he experiences knowledge not through the hard churning of thought, but through light, intuition, and revelation of knowledge, culminating in supramental perception. Light enters from the heights and begins to transmute various parts of his being. Supramental transformation—After making the psychic and spiritual change, he makes the supramental and most radical change. It is basically a complete transformation of the mind, the heart, the emotions, and the physical body.
Quotations:
“True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.”
“My God is love and sweetly suffers all.”
“The great are strongest when they stand alone,
A God-given might of being is their force.”
“It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseeen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, - and of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, - is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. .. to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of one's way to invite trouble.”
“Do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of future”
“What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.”
“By your stumbling, the world is perfected.”
Connections
At the age of 28, Aurobindo Ghosee married Mrinalini, daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, a senior government official, in 1901.
Mrinalini died in December 1918 during the influenza pandemic.