Tag: Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru.

Early Life

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to England for his education. There he studied at St. Paul's School, London, and at King's College, Cambridge.

Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in the state's college.

Political Career

In 1906 Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he became one of the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement. As editor of the newspaper Bande Mataram, he boldly put forward the idea of complete independence from Britain. Arrested three times for sedition or treason, he was released each time for lack of evidence.

During this short political career, he became one of the leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule.

Turning to Spirituality

At some point, in 1905, Sri Aurobindo began the practice of Yoga . Within a few years he achieved several fundamental spiritual realizations.

In 1910 he withdrew from politics completely and went to Pondicherry in French India in order to concentrate on his inner life and spiritual work. During his forty years there, he developed a new spiritual path, the Integral Yoga, whose ultimate aim is the transformation of life by the power of a supramental consciousness.

The Mother

Sri Aurobindo's close spiritual collaborator, Mirra Richard (born Mirra Alfassa), was known as The Mother. She was born in Paris on February 21, 1878, to Turkish and Egyptian Jewish parents. Involved in the cultural and spiritual life of Paris, she counted among her friends Alexandra David-Neel. She went to Pondicherry on March 29, 1914, finally settling there in 1920. Sri Aurobindo considered her his spiritual equal and collaborator.

After November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, he left it to her to plan, run and build the growing Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the community of disciples that had gathered around them.

Death and Aftermath

Sri Aurobindo passed away on 5 December 1950.

After Aurobindo's death, The Mother continued their spiritual work and directed the Ashram and guided their disciples. In the mid 1960s she started Auroville, an international township sponsored by UNESCO to further human unity near the town of Pondicherry, which was to be a place "where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities." It was inaugurated in 1968 in a ceremony in which representatives of 121 nations and all the states of India placed a handful of their soil in an urn near the center of the city.

Auroville continues to develop and currently has approximately 1700 members from 35 countries.

The Mother also played an active role in the merger of the French pockets in India and, according to Sri Aurobindo's wish, helped to make Pondicherry a seat of cultural exchange between India and France. The Mother stayed in Pondicherry until her death on November 17, 1973.

Aurobindo's vision of life is presented in numerous works of prose and poetry, among which the best known are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri.

The Mother was born in Paris, France as Mirra Alfassa on 21 February 1878 to Jewish Turkish and Egyptian parents. From an early age she displayed a remarkable interest in spirituality.

In her own words she said:

Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine.

In 1905 Mirra traveled to Algeria where she studied occult sciences with Max Theon and his wife. On returning to Paris she started a small spiritual group and gave various lectures on spirituality. In 1911 she married Paul Richards who had previously been to India and had a strong wish to return. In 1914 they both returned to India where they met Sri Aurobindo. On meeting Sri Aurobindo, Mira immediately recognized him as one who had been guiding her sadhana (she had seen him many times in visions and dreams and had been up until this point calling the unknown guide Krishna)

With the outbreak of the first world War Paul Richards and Mirra had to leave India. For most of the war Mirra lived in Japan, here she adopted many of the Japanese customs and dress and spent time at Buddhist monastries. It wasn’t until 1920 that Mira was able to return to Pondicherry to renew her spiritual collaboration with Sri Aurobindo. In 1926 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother founded the Sri Aurobindo ashram to accommodate the growing number of people wishing to follow Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga.

It was also in 1926 that Mira Richards became universally known as the Mother. This reflected her spiritual consciousness which was a manifestation of the Divine Mother. Sri Aurobindo also entrusted the whole of the Ashram organisation to the Mother.

Sri Aurobindo on The Mother:

There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here -- it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose. She is in the body, but in her whole consciousness she is also identified with all the other aspects of the Divine.

The Mother took an active interest in the spiritual needs of all sadhaks at the ashram, starting the day with her darshan in the morning. At various times the Mother would also give out various flowers which she felt symbolized various spiritual qualities.

On December 5th, 1950 Sri Aurobindo left the body so as to be able to work for his goal of spiritual evolution from beyond his body. The Mother continued the work from the physical plane working in earnest towards a physical transformation attempting to bring the divine into every cell.

In 1968 the Mother formally inaugurated the new city of Auroville. Auroville is an international township dedicated to realizing human unity through diversity. In 1966 UNESCO passed a resolution giving its support to the idea.

The Mother entered her mahasamadhi in 1973 at the age of 95, three days after her passing her body was placed in the Samadhi alongside Sri Aurobindo.

Born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in the small village of Shakpura in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1931, Sri Chinmoy was the youngest of seven children. In 1944, after both his parents had passed away, 12 year-old Chinmoy entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India. Here he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice - including long hours of meditation, practising athletics, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.

In his early teens, Chinmoy had many profound inner experiences, and in subsequent years achieved very advanced states of meditation. In 1964, he moved to New York City to share his experience with seekers in the West.

He served as a spiritual guide to students in many countries around the world, encouraging a balanced lifestyle that incorporates the inner disciplines of prayer and meditation with the dynamism of contemporary life.

Sri Chinmoy's life was an expression of enormous creativity - he was engaged in music, poetry, painting, literature and sports.

He frequently travelled throughout the world to offer free concerts, lectures and public meditations, to meet with his students, and to meet and discuss spirituality with world and community leaders. He did not charge a fee for his spiritual guidance, concerts, lectures and public meditations.

Sri Chinmoy entered Mahasamadhi (died) on the morning of 11 October 2007.

Anirvan or Sri Anirvan (born Narendra Chandra Dhar (Bengali: শ্রী অনির্বান) was an Indian/Bengali/Hindu monk, writer, Vedic scholar and philosopher.He was widely known as a scholarand his principal works were a Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine and the three volume treatise Veda Mimamsa.

Early Life and Sannyas

Sri Anirvan was born on July 8, 1896 in the town of Mymensingh, then a part of British India and now in Bangladesh. His birth name was Narendrachandra Dhar. He was the son of Rajchandra Dhar, a doctor, and Sushila Devi. He was a spiritually and intellectually-inclined child, who by age 11 had memorized the Astadhyayi of Pāṇini and the Bhagavad Gita.He was named Baroda Brahmachari after going through the sacred thread ceremony. He also won a state scholarship as a teen and completed university IA and BA degrees in Dhaka and an MA from Sanskrit College in Kolkata.

At 16, he joined the Assam Bangiya Saraswata Math ashram, located in the village of Kokilamukh near Jorhat in Assam. He was a disciple of the ashram's founder, Paramahansa Srimat Swami Nigamananda Saraswati Dev, who initiated him into sannyas. Anirvan's new monastic name was Nirvanananda Saraswati. He taught at the ashram school and edited its monthly magazine Aryyadarpan.

Scholar and Writer

Some time after 1930, Nirvanananda changed his name to Anirvan and ceased to wear the ochre swami's robes[1]. He travelled widely in North India, eventually returning to Assam and establishing an ashram in Kamakhya near Guwahati. However, he continued to travel. In the 1940s, he lived in Lohaghat and Almora. Madame Lizelle Reymond documented some of this period in My Life with a Brahmin Family (1958) and To Live Within (1971).During this time, Sri Anirvan translated Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine into Bengali (as Divya Jeevan Prasanga); this book, his first, was published in two volumnes between 1948-51.

In 1953, Sri Anirvan moved to Shillong in Assam. His reputation as a Vedic scholar grew; and he wrote both in Bengali (chiefly) and in English (he was also fluent in French on various aspects of Hindu philosophy (particularly Samkhya, the Upanishads, the Gita and Vedanta) and the parallels between Rigvedic, Puranic, Tantric and Buddhist thought. His magnum opus, Veda Mimamsa, was published in three volumes in 1961, 1965 and 1970. This work won him the Rabindra award.

Though Sri Anirvan was a saint, he studied different subjects such as Marxism, nuclear science and gardening; yet he called himself a simple baul.

Sri Anirvan made his final move, to Kolkata, in 1965. He passed away on May 31, 1978, after a six-year illness.

As A Person

Swamiji or Rishida often came as a silent friend to very hapless people, especially women. Even when he could not offer material support, and when such help was out of the question, he stood quietly by like a pillar of strength. How he managed to turn up exactly at the moment of crisis was a measure of his yogic siddhi, something he never demonstrated. Indeed, he went so far as to mildly reprove the great scholar MM. Gopinath Kaviraj on the showmanship and "Jnanaganj" activities of the latter's guru.

Kavirajji himself was a most unassuming person, who wrote a great deal on subjects he understood very well [Vedanta, grammar] as well on those where his comprehension was uncertain [see his volumes Tantrika Siddhanta]. Rishida was never tired of emphasizing the difference between prajnanam [apprehension] and samjnanam [comprehension]. He taught the Rksamhita as an Agama and wanted and suggested/required those around him to reflect and meditate on the Siva Sutras, and on the works of some of the Kashmir Non-Dual writers. Anyway, going back to his appearing when crises were acute, one is reminded of Rabindranath's song:

Jey raatey more duvar guli bhanglo jhodey Jaani naa to tumi eley aamaro ghorey The night my door was smashed in by the storm I did not realize You had entered my home

It was exactly on such terrible nights, of the outer and inner worlds, that this invisible yogi chose to make his silent appearance besides many. The Bodhisattva Anirvan said and I quote him almost verbatim, although all his books have now passed fom my possession, "Koti jonmo japon kortey aami ulloshito."