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"...The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity..." -- Sri Aurobindo
S ri Aurobindo (1872-1950) is considered one of the foremost figures, seers and philosophers of the 20th Century, for his philosophy is a vast synthesis of the knowledge of both western and Indian streams of thought combined in one man.... yet he is hardly known in America.
He was also a political activist, who changed the psyche of the Indian people regarding Britain's right to rule, and he set the stage for Ghandi years later. In fact, his birthday is celebrated as Indian Independence Day.
He was a tireless writer and a poet whose masterpiece Savitri ranks on an order with the Divine Comedy; yet Savitri carries with it a transformative power which is why it is still read around all around the world. There is no comparable piece in English which was his main language. He was a scholar who assimilated a vast amount of literature and culture. Once back in Indian after his education in England, he immersed himself in Indian classics, studying Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, the Upanishads, The Gita, the spirit of Indian civilisation. And he was a yogi. After practicing Pranayama, Sri Aurobindo went into prolonged meditation in his jail cell and achieved a Brahmic consciousness. Through his discipline he recognized that The One being, the True Consciousness is involved here in matter. Evolution is the process by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop toward a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step in this release of consciousness; mind is the second. But the evolution does not finish with mind; it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be toward the development of Supermind and spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved divinity in things release itself entirely and it becomes possible for life to manifest perfection. He was joined by his co-worker and fellow Adept Mirra Alfassa in 1920. He soon withdrew into seclusion, to concentrate on the next step of his Yoga, a radical and integral transformation, a triple transformation: first a psychic change, then the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity into the whole being, and last, a supramental transmutation. There was to be the ascent into the Supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature. On November 24, 1926, a decisive step was taken when the Overmind, the highest of the inner planes before the Supermind, descended into the earth consciousness and was realized by Sri Aurobindo. It was a momentous day which brought about many outward changes. Sri Aurobindo installed Mirra as "The Mother" of his spiritual endeavour, his collaborator and equal, and handed over to her the responsibility of the inner and outer life of the small group of sadhaks who had gathered around him. Both he and the Mother he believed that evolution is primarily a process of the manifestation of higher and higher levels of consciousness upon earth. As life descended into inert matter, and mind into unconscious life, so too higher levels are waiting to descend. The highest of these is the Supermind, and it was the constant endeavour of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to bring it down for a radical and permanent transformation of the earth. Different from other yogas, Integral Yoga has as its aim the universal descent of the higher consciousness which will be released in the world, replacing the mind's ignorance or its very limited knowledge replacing it with a supramental Truth-Consciousness.
For the remainder of his life Sri Aurobindo worked tirelessly for the transformation of the world, the yoga of the earth. A prolific writer, he produced a total of twenty-nine volumes, including such classics of spirituality as Savitri, The Life Divine, and the Synthesis of Yoga. He spent many hours each day writing replies to letters from disciples, some of which were later collated and published.
 A Contemporary View
“Sri Aurobindo is as yet the only spiritual visionary to have outlined in detail the nature of a divine consciousness, life, and society to be realized as the result of the descent of the Supermind, and to have developed a Yoga for hastening that descent. The Mother is as yet the only Yogi to have deliberately facilitated that descent and transformation, and focused its creative energy on the establishment of a universal township based on the philosophy of spiritual transformation and its promise of the evolution of a new species. Rod Hemsell: Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective, 2002 "There must take place as the crowning movement the ascent into the Supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature." |