AUROBINDO GHOSE

 Aurobindo was born in the year 1872 at Calcutta. His father was doctor who later went on to become the Civil Surgeon of Khulna. His father was attracted to the Brahmo Samaj movement. His maternal grandfather Rajnarayan Bose was a very influential figure in the Brahmo Samaj.

His father believed the British culuture to be superior and so Aurobindo and his 2 male siblings were sent to Loreto House Boarding School in Darjeeling. The school was run by Irish nuns.

Aurobindo’s father wanted his sons to enter the Civil Service and for this purpose the family moved to England in 1879. The 3 brothers were placed in the care of a minister of the Congregational church. Slowly Aurobindo started disliking the British Government in India.

The minister immigrated to Australia and the boys were placed in care of his mother at London. Aurobindo was great at picking up languages and by the turn of the century(i.e when he was just 28) he knew 12 langauges. English, French and Bengali to speak, read and write. Latin, Greek and Sanskrit to read and write. Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi to speak and read and Italian, Spanish and German to read.

The old lady’s religious structural inculcations has made Aurobindo to dislike religion. Initially, he thought himself to be an atheist but later he became an agnostic.

In 1889 his other brothers were out of the race for the ICS and Aurobindo was left alone. Now Aurobindos father did not have money to finance him so Aurobindo studied hard for a scholarship. Ultimately he got it with a recommendation from an Englishman.

Aurobindo passed the ICS written examination ranked 11^th out of 250 competitors. However, he had no interest in ICS and he purposefully acme late for the horst riding practical to disqualify himself.

At that time the Maharaja of Baroda was travelling in England and James Cotton who was known to Aurobindos father recommended him and got him placed in Baroda state service. He left England and arrived in Feb 1893. Unfortunately his father was misinformed before his arrival that the ship carrying Aurobindo was sunk and he died. His father died upon hearing that news.   

Aurobindo joined the Baroda state service in 1893 and worked there till 1897. He later became Vice Principal of Baroda College.

At Baroda, Aurobindo started taking interest in the Independence struggle clandestinely as he was then employed in the state service. He later established resistance groups in the Presidency. He moved to Calcutta in 1906 and married Mrinalini who was then 14 years old, he himself was 28 then.

He was influenced by study of revolutions in England, France, the US and Italy. In public he favored non cooperation and passive resistance, but he was prepared for armed rebellion if that failed.

In the Congress he sided with Bala Gangadhar Tilak. He was arrested in 1908 in connection with the Alipore bomb case. The arrests were made after the attempt of Khudiram Bose and Praful Chaki on the life of the Magistrate at Muzaffarpur.

In the jail, the approver and crown witness was shot dead by a couple of accused nationalists in the jail. Due to this the proof against Aurobindo disappeared but others were convicted in the case. After undergoing the prison sentence awarded in the trial, Aurobindo journeyed into spirituality and philosophy.

The British ahd another warrant on Aurobindo in 1910, but by the time the police could reach him, he reached Pondicherry which is a French possession. The warrant was therefore cancelled.

At Pondicherry after 4 years of secluded yoga, he started a monthly philosophical magazine called Arya. All his books that came later have their origins in this monthly which was later discontinued in 1921.

Initially, he had no followers, but later their numbers grew and the Aurobindo Ashram was established in 1926.  He died in 1950.

Aurobinodo’s closest collaborator, the French national Mirra Alfassa came to be known as the mother. She managed the Aurobindo Ashram. She studied occultism and went to Pondicherry in 2014. The following aspects of occultism appear to be common to all human societies—divination, magic, witchcraft, and alchemy.

Aurobindo says that Brahman manifests as empirical reality through “LILA” or divine play. He argues that the world can evolve and become new world with new species far above the human species in the same way as humans have evolved from other species to be the pinnacle.

He argued that the end goal of spiritual practice is not liberation from the world into Samadhi alone but would also be that of descent of the Divine into the world in order to transform it into a divine existence. He says, this descent, the descent of the Purusha, the Divine soul submitting itself to force and matter so that it may inform and redeem others.