Sri Aurobindo Ghosh :- A Revolutionary, Poet, Sage, Political Thinker.

Greetings friends,

This blessed land of Bharat has produced innumerable spiritual giants, political giants, artists, etc.  It may seem nothing short of remarkable to reconcile such varying inclinations like poetry, politics, and spirituality but the personality we are going to talk about today exceptionally reflects all these aspects. Today we will meditate on the life of none other than Maharishi Aurobindo Ghosh, who is unfortunately lesser known Mahatma of our nation. Yesterday, besides celebrating 75 years of its independence, India also celebrated Maharishi Aurobindo's 150th birth anniversary.

Sri Aurobindo Ghosh was born in Kolkata in India on the 15th of August, 1872. The third son of an Anglophile Edinburgh-trained civil surgeon in the service of the British Empire in India, he was taught to be steeped in English and conversed with caretakers not in his native Bengali but in Hindustani, as the white men did. Packed off to England at seven years and brought up by a very Christian English family, he developed an adolescent antipathy to religion.

The scrawny young man was sent to the finest college in Cambridge, King’s college and qualified relatively easily for the Indian Civil Service. But by then, after 14 years in England, he had just had enough of the British and their “heartless rule” and was hell bent on not making it to the ICS – a path that his father had decided for him. The dilemma was similar to what Subhas Chandra Bose would suffer, at the same university for the same ICS, some 27 years later. Aurobindo managed to avoid the much-coveted ICS by failing in the compulsory horse-riding test and, at 21, he was free from his father’s dream that he must serve the British in India, as part of its elite corps.

Aurobindo Ghosh had acquired his entire education in England. One can observe multiple cultural influences on young Aurobindo. Aurobindo was taught Greek and Latin, and French as well, while he could also read and write in German and Italian.

He soon found employment under the Gaekwad of Baroda in 1893 and then began his “real discovery of India”. He learnt Sanskrit on his own, and made frequent tips to Bengal to master the language as well as soak in its culture – to make up for the lost years. At Baroda, he took an active interest in academics in addition to his administrative duties and started teaching at Baroda College (now Maharaja Sayajirao University), where he went on to become the vice principal.

Since government service rules, even in princely states, prohibited active involvement in politics, he mastered the art of living two lives – one as a civilian and an academic with his masterly English and French and his enlightened conversations in Indian languages like Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati, and the other as a staunch nationalist. The latter is clear from his writings in Indu Prakash the radical Anglo-Marathi journal.

His trips to Bengal convinced him that brutal British rule could not be overthrown by the three-piece-suited moderate ‘petitioning’ leaders of the Congress but by armed secret societies of young men who were determined to lay down their lives.

Aurobindo helped organise secret societies in Bengal like Anushilan and Jugantar. In one of our past blogs, "How Journalism in Bengal Invigorated National Freedom Struggle - The Power of Press" we had discussed how Aurobindo Ghosh greatly popularise top Indian nationalist journals like Vande Mataram and Jugantar.

In 1906, Aurobindo joined the newly set up dream-college of nationalists, the National Council of Education, the curriculum of which was altogether free from the biassed and racially demeaning history, education and culture of the British. It was sponsored by Raja Subodh Mallik and the nationalist segment of the gentry of Bengal and would blossom later into Jadavpur University.

Like other Congress leaders, his avowed public stance was that of passive resistance and non-violence, but Ghosh contributed quite frequently to radical journals like Karmayogin and Bande Mataram.

This is when he dealt with arms and explosives and planned ‘operations’ against imperial targets. He was the first senior Congress leader to do so, but it was his younger brother Barindranath who carried out the actual operations.

British police soon saw through Aurobindo Ghose’s dual life and started charging him with heinous offences and terrorist attacks. When radicals set explosives to derail the train carrying lieutenant-governor Sir Andrew Fraser in December 1907 and Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki made an the attempt on the life of the tyrannical presidency magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur (killing British citizens instead) in April 1908, Aurobindo was charged as the mastermind – in the epoch-making.

The legendary case was also known as the Alipore Bomb Case, the Muraripukur conspiracy, or the Manicktola bomb conspiracy and its high-profile trial was held at Alipore sessions court, Calcutta, between May 1908 and May 1909.

It was in Alipore prison that Aurobindo passed through an intense process of inner churning, and this led to a major turning point in his life.

Aurobindo who had flashed like a fiery comet on the horizon for five years, inspiring thousands to rise against the unvanquished British colossus, was now a man of god. His scientist father had been a passionate believer in evolution and now his son moved from the political to the spiritual. Aurobindo appeared to be following the footsteps of his grandfather, the iconic litterateur and teacher, Rajnarain Basu, who had forsaken the glamour of Calcutta to teach in a mufassil college in Midnapore – contributing considerably from there – before quitting prematurely for the rustic setting of Deoghar. He was honoured with the title rishi, meaning ‘sage’.

Aurobindo, too, deserted Bengal to settle as a rishi,Sri Aurobindo, in Pondicherry – where British police could not fix him ever again. The ashram he set up gained worldwide fame and followers flocked to hear his talks on the Self, the Gita and Savitri and many other spiritual topics. He kept no contact with the revolutionaries he had inspired nor with the mainstream of India during the difficult decades towards independence. 

From a letter published in "On Himself", Section "Life before Pondicherry", page 68

13 September 1946

Sri Aurobindo writes:

"It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence. The voice spoke only on a special and limited but very important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on that subject."

Aurobindo's Theory of Spiritual Nationalism

Aurobindo Ghosh is called as the prophet of Indian nationalism. Aurobindo’s theory of Spiritual Nationalism, also referred to as Aurobindo’s Spiritual Nationalism, is a great synthesis of philosophies of both east and west integrated into one philosophy.

During the period of 1905-1910, Sri Aurobindo articulated a coherent and powerful theory of political action. The first part of Aurobindo’s message could be called ‘Spiritual Nationalism’ or ‘Cultural Nationalism’ that is based on two or three key concepts.

The first is the concept of the ‘nation.’ For Aurobindo, the nation was only a political construct, it was in fact a divinity. It was “Bhavani Bharati” or Mother India and a divinity into which one had to be prepared to offer everything as a sacrifice so that one could be free from the bondage imposed the colonials. Therefore, his concept of fiery and flaming nationalism was based on the concept of nation as a living goddess. In his writings, he refers to ‘Bhavani Mahishamardini’ (The Great Goddess) and how the power of the people of India is expressed in terms of the almighty goddess.

Aurobindo and the Workers movement

Aurobindo’s concept of nationalism was not merely a political activity but also a great and holy ‘yajnya’ or a holy ritual, as he puts it for national emancipation. Everything that was done during that time was done as an offering to the divine. That is what made a powerful impact upon the younger generations, particularly of that period. He was the first thinker in India, who had a clear appreciation of the role of the masses and the role of the proletariat.

This was in 1893, decades before the Marxist-Leninist revolution in the erstwhile Soviet Union. According to him, the proletariat may appear to be docile and immobile, but whoever succeeds in understanding the proletariat and arousing them will be the master of India’s destiny. This was a very crucial statement, because sometimes the Indian freedom struggle had been labeled as a ‘bhadralok movement’ or an elitist movement.

Among the radical nationalists, Aurobindo was the first person to take the movement out of the drawing room and onto the streets, minds and hearts of the Indian people. As a radical, Aurobindo was the exponent of the ideological concept of ‘poorna swaraj’ or complete independence theme, as rightly said by Lokmanya Tilak, “Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it.”

Lastly, a very important point to remember is that Aurobindo always placed India’s freedom in the larger context of the destiny of the human race. This fact is most remarkable because revolutionaries talk only about their own country. However, Sri Aurobindo always had a deeper vision of what India should do for humanity. In fact, he said that India has to be free in order to play its role in the emancipation of the human race.

Politics for him was an aspect of the broader process of personal, national and international spiritual development. He looked upon Indian independence as an essential turn in the life of this ancient land for playing the role of a spiritual guide of humanity at large. He believed this was India’s predetermined role and that she could rise to that level only through the teachings of the ‘Santan’ religion of India. Nationalism cannot afford to neglect anyone.

Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual Realisations

At Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. Central to Integral yoga is the idea that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involution, meanwhile forgetting its origins. The reverse process of evolution is driven toward a complete manifestation of spirit.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the current status of human evolution is an intermediate stage in the evolution of being, which is on its way to the unfolding of the spirit, and the self-revelation of divinity in all things.[2] Yoga is a rapid and concentrated evolution of being, which can take effect in one life-time, while unassisted natural evolution would take many centuries or many births.

Involution is the extension of Spirit, the Absolute, to create a universe of separate forms. Being manifests itself as a multiplicity of forms, meanwhile becoming lost in the inconscience of matter. The first manifestation of Spirit in the process of involution is as Satchitananda, and then as Supermind, the intermediate link between the higher (Spirit) and lower (matter, life, and mind) nature.

According to Aurobindo the world is a differentiated unity. It is a manifold oneness, that generates an infinite variety of lifeforms and substances. The lifeforms and substances are stretched out on a wide range, from physical matter to a pure form of spiritual being, akin to the five koshas or sheaths, where the subject becomes fully aware of itself as spirit.

Sri Aurobindo argues that divine Brahman manifests as empirical reality through līlā, or divine play. Instead of positing that the world we experience is an illusion (māyā), Aurobindo argues that world can evolve and become a new world with new species, far above the human species just as human species have evolved after the animal species. As such he argued that the end goal of spiritual practice could not merely be a liberation from the world into Samadhi but would also be that of descent of the Divine into the world in order to transform it into a Divine existence. Thus, this constituted the purpose of Integral Yoga. Regarding the involution of consciousness in matter, he wrote that: "This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance."

Sri Aurobindo believed that Darwinism merely describes a phenomenon of the evolution of matter into life, but does not explain the reason behind it, while he finds life to be already present in matter, because all of existence is a manifestation of Brahman. He argues that nature (which he interpreted as divine) has evolved life out of matter and the mind out of life. All of existence, he argues, is attempting to manifest to the level of the supermind – that evolution had a purpose.

Supermind

At the centre of Aurobindo's metaphysical system is the supermind, an intermediary power between the unmanifested Brahman and the manifested world.  Aurobindo claims that the supermind is not completely alien to us and can be realized within ourselves as it is always present within mind since the latter is in reality identical with the former and contains it as a potentiality within itself.  Aurobindo does not portray supermind as an original invention of his own but believes it can be found in the Vedas and that the Vedic Gods represent powers of the supermind. In The Integral Yoga he declares that "By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement." Supermind is a bridge between Sachchidananda and the lower manifestation and it is only through the supramental that mind, life and body can be spiritually transformed as opposed to through Sachchidananda. The descent of supermind will mean the creation of a supramental race.

For the ones who have very deep knowledge about Vedanta and Swami Vivekananda's philosophy of existence, one cannot help but be just awestruck, observing the similarities between Sri Aurobindo and Vivekananda's ideas.

The Great Auroville

At its Annual Conference in 1964 and with Mirra Alfassa as its Executive President, the Sri Aurobindo Society in Pondicherry passed a resolution for the establishment of a city dedicated to the vision of Sri Aurobindo. Alfassa was the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who believed that "man is a transitional being". Alfassa expected that this experimental "universal township" would contribute significantly to the "progress of humanity towards its splendid future by bringing together people of goodwill and aspiration for a better world". Alfassa also believed that such a universal township will contribute decisively to the Indian renaissance.

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity."

— Mirra Alfassa

Just yesterday in his speech, PM Narendra Modi wished Sri Aurobindo Ghosh on his 150th birth anniversary which coincides with our Independence day.

Let us end this blog by some of my favourite quotes of Sri Aurobindo,

"We yearn for freedom but are in love with the chains. This is the paradox."

"Our actual enemy is our own crying, weakness, cowardice, selfishness and hypocrisy."

"The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze,

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face."

Thanks,

Daksh Parekh.