SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo was a political radical, revolutionary mystic, and one of the greatest yogic philosophers ever. He wrote prolifically and poetically about yoga and the potential for spiritual evolution.
Aurobindo was born in Kolkata, India on August 15, 1872, but spent his formative years in the United Kingdom immersed in Western ways of living. Returning to India as a young adult, he worked as a government administrator and college professor. In the early stages of the Indian independence movement, Aurobindo was a fierce anti-colonial activist. Aurobindo’s younger brother, Barin, was also an Indian freedom-fighter. Both men were incarcerated in 1908 for sedition and treason against the British government.
While in prison, Aurobindo experienced profound spiritual revelations. Having a felt sense of consciousness pervading all, he experienced himself as part of an indivisible reality. He viscerally perceived his own non-separateness from all and began to feel the divinity in everyone and everything.
His spiritual transformation prompted him to cease his political activism and follow his heart in the exploration of yoga. In 1910, Aurobindo moved to Punducherry, India, to learn, practice, and live yoga in earnest. The same revolutionary impulse that drove his effort to free the Indian people from oppression fueled his desire to free himself from the subjugation of his own humanness. With intense self-discipline Aurobindo began to explore the mystery of human nature through the experiential practice of yoga. He made himself the subject of the experiments and recorded his yoga experiences like a scientist in an effort to understand the process of embodied consciousness.
Aurobindo attracted spiritual seekers who learned and found inspiration from Aurobindo’s yoga practice. One of those seekers was Mirra Alfassa, a French mystic who visited Punducherry in 1914. She became Aurobindo’s greatest collaborator. With great affection he referred to her as “the Mother” and described the two of them as “one soul in two bodies.” Together they established an ashram in 1926 with the view that "All life is Yoga.” The Mother organized the spiritual community while Aurobindo increasingly retreated to practice yoga and write.
For over two decades Aurobindo developed, practiced, and taught a form of integral yoga that synthesized centuries of yoga concepts. He emphasized movement from contracted consciousness that feels separate from everyone and everything to an expansive consciousness that feels connected with all. For Aurobindo, yoga was not a set of prescriptive practices, but instead an existential, experiential, and experimental process unique to each individual that fostered sustained insight of consciousness as one and infinite.
On December 5, 1950, Aurobindo passed on, after physically ailing from kidney disease and uremia. The Mother continued to share the teachings of integral yoga until her death of a heart attack at age 95 on November 17, 1973.