Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary:

 

Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary: The sage who foresaw India’s spirituality, eternal vitality and creativity 

 (Compiled for a Discourse by N.R. Srinivasan at Sri Ganesha Temple, Nashville, USA)

In his Independence-eve message to the nation, broadcast on August 14th, 1947 on All India Radio, Tiruchirapalli, Aurobindo observed: “August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition” Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yoga guru, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. Sri Aurobindo was never interested in huge statues, grandiose projects or big institutions in his name; he just wanted a new better world to emerge from the present chaos! 

 

As we are celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo this year, a high-level committee was constituted by the government to commemorate the event. Speaking during the inaugural meeting, the prime minister spoke of the two aspects of Sri Aurobindo: ‘Revolution’ and ‘Evolution’. While the first is relatively well-known, the second is practically unknown, even in India. During the course of his speech, the prime minister fondly recalled his discussions as Gujarat chief minister with Kireet Joshi, an eminent disciple of Sri Aurobindo. Joshi, who had served as chairman of Auroville Foundation, pointed out to him that it was India’s responsibility to offer spirituality to nations across the globe. Like a squirrel served Rama building Ramasethu, I am trying my level best serving the globe through HRF Participants. Evolution may be brought sooner by Hindu Americans than Hindus in India.

JNANAGANJA a.k.a. GYANGANJ ~ Jnanaganja is a temple or small city hidden in the Himalaya Mountains or Tibet - its exact location is not known. A lot of what we are taught as “history” is an intentional lie. Modern humans are descended from a previous worldwide spiritually & technologically advanced civilization. We do not know the name of this past culture - but those who research it have called it Atlantis, Lemuria, Shambhala & Tartaria. In the past, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and all major Religions were One. The forms that the religions exist in today are not the original knowledge. JNANAGANJ is a small city in the mountains that is a surviving outpost of our ancient Spiritual civilization. In Jnanaganj they possess some kind of technology that allows them to remain hidden from modern governments and militaries. Many of the Spiritual Masters like Babaji came from or were educated in Jnanaganj. The highest form of Spiritual knowledge has been preserved in Jnanaganj- All True Seekers on the Spiritual Path will get guidance from Shambhala Jnanaganj at some point. 

 

But who really was Sri Aurobindo? 

 

He has been described as a rishi, a poet, a scholar, a literary critic, a philosopher, a yogi and much more. 

 As mentioned by the prime minister, historically, he was first a revolutionary leader, “The Prophet of Indian Nationalism”, in Karan Singh’s words. 

 

Born as Aurobindo Ghose in Kolkata on 15 August 1872, he left in his childhood to study in England; eventually he prepared for the Indian Civil Service examinations at King's College in Cambridge, but unconvinced that it was his future, he refused to attempt the last horse-riding examination, renouncing a brilliant carrier as a civil servant.

 

After returning to India; Sri Aurobindo started working for the Maharaja of Baroda, but soon jumped into nationalist politics. During these years, his articles in Bande Mataram, Karmayogin and other revolutionary papers fired up the youth of India.

 

In May 1908, he was arrested on a suspicion of preparing bombs and he faced charges of treason in the Alipore Conspiracy Case. 

 

He was acquitted on 6 May 1909 after a brilliant defense by his counsel Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das who prophetically said: “That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands.” 

 

One of his spiritual experiences was the ‘visit’ of Swami Vivekananda: “It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence,” he later wrote. 

 

Let us not forget that at that time, Viceroy Lord Minto said about Sri Aurobindo, the first proponent of Purna Swaraj: “I can only repeat that he is the most dangerous man we have to reckon with.” 

 

Spiritual revolution 

The second phase of the rishi’s spiritual journey is hardly known. To understand, we have to turn to the Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s collaborator, who joined him 1920 and later founded the Ashram in Pondicherry: “What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.” 

 

On 4 April 1910, Sri Aurobindo arrived in the former French Establishment; that day, the Pondicherry pier witnessed a scene which will remain etched in history: A strict orthodox Tamil Brahmin, Srinivasachari, and Suresh Chakravarti, an 18-year-old Bengali revolutionary, shared a small boat to reach Le Dupleix, a steamer which had just arrived from Calcutta carrying the ‘most dangerous man’ on board. 

 

Around 1914, he foresaw: “At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny.... Man has created a system of civilization which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and
manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites.” 

 

He believed that “the burden which is being laid on mankind is too great for the present littleness of the human personality and its petty mind and small life-instincts” and therefore “it cannot operate the needed change” without a change in consciousness. 

 

On 15 August 1947, the day India obtained her independence, coincided with Sri Aurobindo’s 75th birthday. It was a ‘The previous day, Sri Aurobindo had been requested by All India Radio to give justice of history’ for someone who had tirelessly worked for this momentous event, a message to the nation. He spoke about his Five Dreams. The first was that “India be united again”. Will the present division disappear one day? Nobody can answer this question. 

The second dream was to see the “resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia”; it has already happened. 

 

Sri Aurobindo’s third dream was of a “world-union forming the outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind.” Many groupings such as the European Union, the ASEAN, the BRIC, etc.are slowly taking shape, though divisions remain. 

 

The fourth dream was a ‘spiritual gift of India to the world’. One only has to go to a bookshop in the West or look at the number of works on yoga, dharma, etc. to see that something of this has already been achieved. 

 

The final dream, perhaps the most important, was a new “step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solution of the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society”. 

But Sri Aurobindo knew that the journey would not be easy; “dark forces” would again and again try to derail the progress of humanity towards her destiny. The Nazi regime in Germany was one of these obstacles; in 1940, he had observed: “If Britain were defeated, that result would be made permanent and in Asia also all the recent development such as the rise of new or renovated Asiatic peoples would be miserably undone, and India’s hope of liberty would become a dead dream of the past or a struggling dream of a far-off future… Mankind itself as a whole would be flung back into a relapse towards barbarism, a social condition and an ethics which would admit only the brute force of the master and the docile submission of the slave.” 

 

Very few, even in his Ashram, understood his words that the victory of the British Empire during World War II was necessary for the world to evolve towards a more human, if not enlightened condition. The freedom of India would emerge from the Allies’ victory, he foresaw (it did, two years after the end of the War). At that time (1940), Sri Aurobindo saw “a clash between two world-forces which are contending for the control of the whole future of humanity”. 

 

Is the situation different today? The present confrontation, particularly with China, is between two opposite worlds. India, despite having an incredible number of weaknesses and deficiencies and the apparent chaos everywhere, represents an aspiration for freedom, peace and diversity on the planet. China is the opposite. 

 

Sri Aurobindo has shown the path: “Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind.” One hundred years ago, he wrote: “When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness. For three thousand years at least — it is indeed much longer — she has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaustible many sidedness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences and creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces and temples and public works, communities and societies and religious orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, fine crafts, the list is endless and in each item there is almost a plethora of activity.” 

 

Today, more and more the government would like to replace this creativity, by ‘development’; it will hopefully be only a passing phase because India “creates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired,” noted the sage. 

 

Sri Aurobindo belongs to the future; he is the messenger of the future. He still shows us the way to follow in order to hasten the realization of a glorious future fashioned by the Divine Will. All those who want to collaborate for the progress of humanity and for India's luminous destiny must unite in a clairvoyant aspiration and in an illumined work— THE MOTHER

Being devoted to this, eternal vitality and creativity would be the best homage to Sri Aurobindo for his 150^th Birth anniversary.  

My first meeting with Sri Aurobindo - TV Kapali Shastri

I decided to take the trip with this main object of visiting Sri Aurobindo. On arrival in Pondicherry, I called at Poet Bharati’s. He was then living in Iswaran Dharmaraja Kovil Street and when I was announced, his little daughter led me up to the first floor where I found him singing

‘Victory in this life is certain

O Mind, fear there is none.’

Then after a pause he made enquires of one or two friends in Madras. I had met Bharati in Mylapore, the last I saw him was a little before 1907. But what a change! Circumstances had conspired to wreck the physique and handsome and spirited face of the inspired poet, the national poet of Tamilnad; he was shrunken, pale and setting. Suddenly he burst out:

‘In the secret cave, O growing Flame,

Son of the Supreme’

I knew Bharati had some knowledge of Sanskrit which he had studied at Kashi but not that he had acquaintance with the Vedas deep enough to give expression to such an essentially Vedic conception or as the growing Flame in the heart of man. Besides the poet identifies Agni as Guha, Kumara, son of the Supreme. When I asked him how he caught the idea, he gave an interesting explanation in the course of which he said:

“Yes, I have studied 200 hymns (I do not quite recollect whether he said hymns or Riks) under Aurobindo Ghose.”

It was from Bharati himself that I learnt he got the inspiration and general knowledge of the Vedic gods and hymns from Sri Aurobindo. Later he translated into Tamil, some of the Vedic hymns to Agni. So the talk switched on to A. G. (as he used to be known in those days).

“Where is he living?” I asked.

“There,” he pointed out in the direction of the European quarters.

“I want to see him.”

“But now-a-days he is very much disinclined to see people. I myself do not meet him often as I used to do before. Anyway I shall ascertain.”

“Please mention that I have come on a pilgrimage to him.” I pressed, as if on impulse. Indeed the pilgrimage had commenced somewhere long ago.

Bharati wrote out a short note in Tamil- a characteristically humourous one- to Nagaswami who was attending on Sri Aurobindo at that time, and signed himself as Shakti–Kumar, and he sent me with an escort to the house where Sri Aurobindo lived.

It was 3 p.m. when we arrived there. Nagaswami was obliging. He took the note, went up to A.G. and was back within a couple of minutes. “He will see you at 6 p.m. today.” He said.

Dilemma of dilemmas! The hour for which I had looked forward with so much eagerness had arrived. But the timing was embarrassing. For precisely at 6 the meeting was also scheduled to commence at which the lecture was to be delivered. Neither of these could be missed. And yet both could not be fulfilled at the same time. “Was it the proverbial sattva-pariksha?” I wondered. I thought for a while and sent word to the organizers of the function that the meeting could commence a little later than the fixed hour.

At six, I was escorted up the stairs of the house of Sri Aurobindo. It is now known as the Guest House-, which name it acquired after Sri Aurobindo shifted to another building now in the main Ashram block. As I went up the stairs and reached the threshold, there stretched in front of me a long hall with a simple table and two chairs at the center. At the farther end was a room on the threshold of which stood Sri Aurobindo. Like a moving statue- such was his impersonal bearing- he advanced towards the table as I proceeded from my end and we both met at the center. Like Rama, the Aryan model of courtesy and nobility held up by Valmiki, Sri Aurobindo spoke first, purva-bhashi. I carried with me a lemon fruit as a humble expression of my esteem for him and after he sat down, I placed it on the table in his front and said: sudinam asid adya (a happy day today).

Sri Aurobindo leaned over to the youngster who was still there and seemed to ask him if I knew English. He was assured I knew and with what smattering of the language I had, we commenced the conversation. It would be an omission if I fail to tell here what happened the moment I stood face to face with Sri Aurobindo at the table.

The age is past when matters of this kind had to be kept to oneself and concealed from others for fear of scoffing from rationalists and skeptics. Man has come to realize that there are more things on earth and in heaven than are written in books and discovered in laboratories. Well, as soon I saw him, even from a distance, there was set in motion, all of a sudden, a rapid vibratory movement in my body from head to foot. There was a continuous thrill and throb. I seemed to stand on the top of a dynamo working at top speed and it was as powerful as it was new. It lasted for nearly four to five minutes. It did not really stop at all. In fact it continued ever since for long and every time I went to see him later, or for his Darshan after his retirement, the phenomenon tended to repeat itself.

A spiritual personality continually pours out spiritual emanations from within and it would seem that when any one with some secret affinity or even a point of contact somewhere in the being comes within the ambience of these vibrations, there is an attempt by something subtle in us to imbibe as much of these sustaining and strength-giving radiations as possible. But the physique not being so supple cannot support this occult commerce for long; it lacks the necessary nerve-force to keep up the flow and the physical palpitating movement is the result. Of course, I find this explanation now. All that I knew at that time and could not help knowing was that I was in the presence of an unusually mighty personality. Was it the sun-flower turned to the sun, or was it the filings in a tremulous dance before a block of magnet or was he the mystic spider, ever watchful, taking his prey alive to preserve it within his web biding his hour?

Something had been set going which carried me on its wings- this is more than a figure of speech- shuttling me from and back to him with an irresistible intensity till at last I came back to him six years later (1923) in a different role. This time, as a seeker seeking the feet of the Teacher, and exclaimed marveling at the change of his appearance:

“What other proof is required, Sire! Then your complexion was dark-brown, now it is fair; today the hue is a golden hue. Here is the concrete proof of the Yoga that is yours.”

(An extract from “My First Meeting with Sri Aurobindo”, Service Letter, September 1997, Edited and published by Sraddhalu Ranade, for Dipti Trust, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 605002 )