SRI AUROBINDO–THE PROPHET OF A NEW AGE

JIBENDRA

Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

15th August, the day of India’s Independence, is also the birth anniversary of one of her greatest sons, Sri Aurobindo, the mystic philosopher, poet, prophet, patriot and lover of humanity. And it is only right, just and proper that his birth centenary this year should be widely celebrated not only in the land of his birth but also by numerous other countries including England, France, Germany, Canada and America where spiritual values are cherished and true greatness is appreciated and worshipped by the elite of the land. Like his own epic Savitri, his name has become a legend and symbol in less than a quarter century of his demise.

Born in Calcutta in 1872 of Bengali parents, he was educated in England from his early childhood and became an all-round, 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 in the course of his teachings in the Baroda College not only for his vast erudition but also for his burning patriotism, unassuming manners and above all the matchless integrity of his personal character. Later on he had to divert his activities to the political field on account of the partition of Bengal in 1905. This partition intended to create a rift in the life of the Bengali people and cripple them for their intellectual superiority, unquestioned spirit of patriotism and fearless advocacy of freedom, only drew them together and united them as never before into a solid opposition to the then existing, British Government. Although young in years, Sri Aurobindo took a leading part in rousing the political consciousness 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 Alipur Conspiracy 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 for a time a rationalist and 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 not only in static but also in dynamic life experience. He was, however, honourably acquitted of all the charges of conspiracy to overthrow the British raj by force and had to retire at first to Chandernagore and then to Pondicherry, both former French possessions in India, by a Divine command from above. He sailed from Chandernagore 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 found in 1926t till his demise on 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. 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 finding of solutions to all the problems that have 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 years in inspired and luminous prose such spiritual solutions to social and political problems as are to be found now in variaous 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 The Life Divine, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Foundations of Indian Culture, Future Poetry, Savitri, Collected Poems and other classic works in drama, criticisms, essays and collection of letters to his disciples appeared one after another covering 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 the Supermind like the previous mental principle in the operation of earth-consciousness and will be active in that section of humanity which is ready for the new transformation. 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 to 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 selfishness and an ignorant separative consciousness which constitutes the individual ego, the root cause of all the troubles and disorders of earthly life.

He found the inconscience or the nescience at the base of existence permeated 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, and animal life–to come to the human mental stage of evolution but there also it is still enveloped by the inconscient beginning and is even in the highest and widest reaches 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 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 supreme Truth-consciousness from its involution in the inconscience that a change of earth life is possible 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 can work unhampered in the truth-light and truth-power and bring about a radical change of human life, transforming even the material body–no longer a travesty of the divinity inherent in it–into its immortal divine substance.

Here is Sri Aurobindo’s prophecy of the future quoted at from his epic “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.

“Equality and vision of unity once perfectly gained, a supreme bhakti, an all-embracing devotion to the Divine, becomes the whole and the sole law of the being.”

–SRI AUROBINDO

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