(Nirguna Brahman). Moving to Bengal in 1906 he
plunged into revolutionary political activity, help-
ing to found the journal Bande Mataram (Hail to
the Mother India!) and writing many articles for
it. As a result of these articles he was arrested on
August 16, 1907, on a charge of sedition; he was
arrested again in 1908 and spent a year in Alipore
jail awaiting trial.
Aurobindo Ghose is known in India more for
this political activity on behalf of India’s indepen-
dence (years before Gandhi returned from South
Africa) than for his great spiritual work. It is only
among Bengalis that is he well known and hon-
ored as a sage. The year in Alipore Jail was a turn-
ing point for Aurobindo Ghose. There he read the
BHAGAVAD GITA, practiced yoga, and experienced
a vision of Krishna that was powerful and trans-
formative. Not long after he was released from
jail he headed south to the French protectorate
of Pondicherry, in part to avoid rearrest by the
Indian police. In 1914 a Frenchman by the name
of Paul Richard persuaded Aurobindo to write
philosophy for a monthly journal called Arya.
Aurobindo had begun to develop a reputation as
a yogi and Richard was interested in his philoso-
phy. All of Sri Aurobindo’s major works except
the epic poem Savitri were first published serially
in this magazine. As fate would have it, Richard’s
wife, Mirra Alfassa, was to find in Aurobindo the
fulfillment of her spiritual calling. In 1920 she
left her husband and joined Sri Aurobindo in his
spiritual quest; she would soon be dubbed the
Mother.
In 1920 Ghose began to accept the name Sri
Aurobindo, and he began delving more deeply
into the unique yoga that he had initiated. His
new ashram flourished after the arrival of Mirra
Richard. On November 24, 1926, Sri Aurobindo
announced that he had reached the “Overmind”
in his meditations and retired from active ashram
life. He left the external activities of the ashram
to the care of Mother, who attended to all its
affairs and developments until her death in 1973.
In 1928 Sri Aurobindo released his book, The
Mother, which declared to the doubters that the
consciousness of the Mother and his conscious-
ness were one and the same. In 1939–40 the
ashram released the book Life Divine, one of Sri
Aurobindo’s masterpieces. On December 5, 1950,
Sri Aurobindo left his body.
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s yoga had
unique characteristics. Sri Aurobindo argued
that each of the yogas that had been developed
in India had its own important and positive ele-
ments, but that practicing any one of them solely
would lead to unbalanced spiritual development.
In his book Synthesis of Yoga he outlined how the
yogas of the Bhagavad Gita particularly could be
harmonized into a synthesis that would serve
the whole human being: the physical, emotional,
mental, psychic (soul), and spiritual levels, he
argued, all needed tending. The term for the yoga
that would involve all these levels of the human
being was in Sanskrit Purna Yoga, or “Complete
Yoga.” This term was translated by Sri Aurobindo
as Integral Yoga, which he adopted as the name
of his path.
Sri Aurobindo argued vehemently that the
world was real, rejecting the Indian philosophical
view that it was illusory. Equally importantly, he
believed the world was evolving toward a state of
perfection. He drew from science his belief that
life emerged from matter and consciousness from
life. He argued therefore that superconsciousness
or the “Supramental” stage must develop from
ordinary consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo’s yoga aimed at accelerating
the advance of this evolution toward “Super-
manhood.” His and the Mother’s efforts were
entirely focused on engendering what they
called the “Supramental” manifestation, which
would transform not only all human beings,
but all life and even all matter. Their effort was
effectively to unlock the divine within matter
itself; thus, they referred to their philosophy as
Divine Materialism. This was the vision that was
developed in Sri Aurobindo’s massive book The
Life Divine.Aurobindo, Sri 53 J