Influential Thinkers: Aurobindo Ghose
Early Life and Education
Aurobindo Ghose was born in 1872 as the third son of Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose near Calcutta. Dr. Ghose was a medical doctor trained in Scotland. When he returned to India, he was an anglicized, denationalized Indian. Aurobindo’s mother was an epileptic and was unable to live with her children. Therefore, it is very doubtful that under these circumstances, whether Aurobindo received any religious training at home. He had no chance to learn his mother tongue Bengali during his childhood. They spoke English and Hindi at home. When he was only 5 years of age, he was sent to attend the Loretto Convent School in Darjeeling. He was there for 2 years.
When he was only 7 years of age, he was sent to England for education, along with two of his older brothers. Their local guardian was Rev. William H. Drewette, pastor of a Congregational Church in Manchester. As devout Christians, the Drewettes encouraged the boys to attend family prayers, read the Bible and attend Christian meetings. Aurobindo got selected to do the studies for the Indian Civil Service and won a scholarship which got him a seat in King’s College, Cambridge. While there, he won all the prizes for Greek and Latin verse, and passed in first class.
His father’s letters and paper-cuttings from Bengali Newspapers, were the first lessons that Aurobindo had on patriotism. They revealed the injustices practices by the British government in India. Before he was hardly 15, he had decided that he must serve his country’s cause. Aurobindo passed his examinations for ICS, but he did not appear for the riding test, and thus purposely managed to get rejected from ICS. His patriotism did not allow him to serve the British government in India. At that time, Aurobindo was dissatisfied with the moderate view of the Indian National Congress (INC).
For 14 years Aurobindo stayed in England without even once visiting his parents. After the Drewettes left England, the Ghose boys were without guardian or close friends. These hardships made Aurobindo a man of iron will. He returned to India at the age of 20, in 1893. Before he came his father had passed away, and his mother could not recognize him.
When Aurobindo returned home, he joined the civil service of the native state of Baroda. In order to orientate himself to Indian life, he began learning Bengali and Sanskrit. He concentrated on the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads and also learned Gujarati and Marathi. Aurobindo published articles in the Indu Prakash journal criticizing the moderate policies of the INC. His articles were entitled, “New lamps for old”. He wrote about those who had worked for the reawakening of slumbering India and looked forward to the achievement of full independence from British rule. Aurobindo got married in 1901, but he did not live with his wife very long, due to his pre-occupation. He was in the Baroda State Service for 13 years.
Political Life and Career
Even before leaving Baroda, he had begun political activities. Vacations were spent in Bengal, organizing a revolutionary party and he made several young people take an oath with a sword in one hand and the Bhagavadgita in the other. The content of the oath was “to secure the freedom of Mother India at any cost and not to declare the secret of the society to anyone outside.”
He wrote a revolutionary booklet, Bhavani Mandir, which was proscribed by the British Government. Another pamphlet under the caption, No Compromise was also published. He also sent Madhav Rao Jadhav, a close friend, to England for military training which included the manufacturing of bombs and revolvers. During the partition of Bengal in 1905, Aurobindo directed the revolutionaries to utilize the situation. He also took part in the “Swadeshi” and other agitations.
In 1906, he left Baroda and accepted the Principalship of the national College of Calcutta and there he greatly instilled the spirit of nationalism in the young people. He used to go out to the districts in Bengal to bring about political awakening in the people. He was not against violence theoretically, if it were for the liberation of India. Through the journal Bande Mataram, he consolidated the Nationalist party. He along with B.G. Tilak played an important role in the Congress Session in Calcutta in 1906, where the fourfold programme of Swaraj, Swadeshi, boycott of foreign goods and national education were adopted. Aurobindo used to do public speeches and wrote articles in the paper Yugantar also.
Aurobindo although innocent, along with many others were arrested in the Alipur bomb-case and was kept in Alipur jail as an under-trial prisoner. Then he was acquitted. After his release in 1909, he started an English weekly called Karma Yogin. He believed that life is dharma, true religion. In 1909, he was able to get all the nationalist resolutions passed in the Hooghly Political Conference. He organized the Bengal Nationalist Association. But an abrupt end came to Aurobindo’s political career of four years.
Religious Life
From the year 1904 onwards, Aurobindo started practicing yoga for “action”. By the time he left Baroda in 1906, he was already well advanced in yoga. It is said that Aurobindo got his first glimpse of spirituality and the great message of India from Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Swami Vivekananda. Aurobindo was very simple in his mode of living. He was fully self-controlled.
Call to a Spiritual Life
Aurobindo passed through an extra-ordinary religious experience while in Alipur jail (1908-09). The jail became an “Ashrama” for him, for he practiced the yoga of the Bhagavadgita there. Often he had the vision of Krishna. He saw nothing but Vasudeva all around him. A voice spoke to him that he is being prepared to undertake different kinds of work after his release from prison. He understood that his future mission was to be on the spiritual plane.
New Mission
In February 1910, Aurobindo left British India and went to Pondicherry in French India. He stayed there till the end of his life in 1950. He opened the Aurobindo Ashram and devoted himself for the rest of his life to the development of his “integral” yoga, which was characterized by its holistic approach and its aim of a fulfilled and spiritually transformed life on earth. He contacted people through letters, books and interviews. He practiced yoga, had disciples from other countries also. His aim was to bring about a spiritual evolution of humankind.
Philosophy of Aurobindo
Western and Christian Influence
It is clear from Aurobindo’s writings that he was acquainted with Bergson’s Creative Evolution, Nietzsche’s philosophy of the Superman and Plotinus’s Double Trinity. He has similarities with S. Alexander and Whitehead also.
As it has been mentioned, Aurobindo spent 2 years in a convent school in Darjeeling and following that he was in England for 14 years. There were the most formative years of his life. Aurobindo does not admit any Christian or biblical views. However, we find much similarity between the New Testament concepts of ‘new life from above’, ‘transformation of humanity through Christ’ and the ‘consummation of creation’ and Aurobindo’s philosophy.
Life Divine
The evolutionary philosophy underlying Aurobindo’s integral yoga is explored in his main prose work, The Life Divine (1939). Rejecting the traditional Indian approach of striving for moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth, or samsara) as a means of reaching happier, transcendental planes of existence , Aurobindo held that terrestrial life itself, in its higher evolutionary stages, is the real goal of creation.
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 the world can evolve and become a new world with new species, far above the human species just as the human species have evolved after the animal species.
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 then mind out of life. All of existence, he argues, is attempting to manifest to the level of the supermind – that evolution had a purpose. He stated that he found the task of understanding the nature of reality arduous and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results.
Social Action from Gita
Aurobindo gave much importance to ‘action’. He taught that both Krishna and Arjuna were men of action; hence, the Bhagavadgita is a gospel of works. The Gita asks one to avoid the great mistake of renunciation of works observed by the quietistic and ascetic philosophies, but to continue in works. The work requires both social and ethical obligations. According to Aurobindo’s teachings, there are 3 important matters with regard to action.
- Niskama Karma: Actions should be performed with no desire for the fruit of action. Actions are the works of nature, which is the power of Purusottama; hence no person has the right to claim the fruits for themselves. The one who works without any desire for fruits has attained freedom of the Spirit. It is desire that has to be put away and not desirable action. There should be neither attachment to pleasant work nor aversion to unpleasant work.
- Svadharma: It is svadharma (one’s own duty) which is determined by one’s own svabhava (nature) that should be performed. Each person fulfills different functions according to the rule of his own circumstances, capacities and character. This is svadharma. There are four kinds of svadharma known as four varnas. The work of each individual corresponds to his type of nature (svabhava). Qualities and works cannot be separated.
- Lokasamgra: The motive of action should be the maintenance of the world. The liberated man must work for the welfare of others on behalf of the Divine. It is more than social service. It is more than doing duty for duty’s sake. It is participating in the divine action as an instrument of the Divine. This cannot be done unless the mind arrives at equality, universality and impersonality. One must have freedom from ego. Divine life is possible through an experience of divine birth. From the divine nature proceeds divine works.
Aurobindo says: “Act for the best good of all; act for the maintenance of the march of the world, for the support or the leading of its people.”
Evaluation
Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist but is best known for his philosophy on human evolution and Integral Yoga. He is called the ‘most notable representative of the Neo-Vedantic Spirit’ by Romain Rolland, the author of Prophet of the New India. Sir Francis Young Husband also considers his book, Life Divine as the “greatest philosophical religious work which has been produced in India for centuries.”
However, Aurobindo’s teachings on varna have to be questioned. What about people who have evil svabhava (nature)? Would they follow criminal activities if one’s svadharma is to be determined by one’s svabhava? Aurobindo in spite of lofty philosophical teachings still held on to the bane of Indian society, i.e. the varna system. As long as the concepts of varna and caste are still in usage, there will be neither national integration nor communal harmony. If we Indians are to be united, then the Indian society must become a casteless society.
What Aurobindo gave to the world was an optimistic philosophy, although he taught and spoke of ‘Supermind’ and ‘Superman’, he himself did not become one, and neither could he make anyone else a Superman. Even within the Ashram he founded there was no perfected beings. In fact, the government had to take over the management of the Ashram due to internal quarrels. Aurobindo was dreaming of an Utopia, which never became reality.
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