Shri Aurobindo was the most prolific writer-guru (68 published volumes of densely
brilliant erudition) that India ever produced - until Rajneesh. And yet, curiously
he said and wrote what he had to communicate in just four years - that's right,
four - and then never wrote a word and almost never spoke for the rest of his very
long life. This sort of contradiction was characteristic of the bizarre spiritual
drama that was Aurobindo's life.
To begin with, nobody was less likely to end up as a guru, far less the first Indian
guru with a great western following. When he was born in 1872, his England educated
physician father had totally swallowed the Raj notion that India was a degenerate
nation while Britain was the pinnacle of human glory.
The good doctor then attempted a project that curdles the blood even today to think
about. He decided he was going to deracinate his son - he would make his son English
to the point of caricature. He began with the name, and it was seven year old Ackroyd
Ghose who was sent off England for schooling. The lad had been kept in a weird bubble
of induced Englishness, his only language being English and with no notion that
he was living in India amongst Indians. He sailed with specific instructions from
the doting parent that he was not to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo
any Indian influence". He further added, in what would become on of life's celebrated
ironies, that 'his son learns nothing about any religion whatsoever.'
Dr. Ghose was obviously ignorant of history, for the last time this experiment was
tried in India, Prince Siddhartha ended up by becoming the Buddha! In the minds
of his followers that is what became of Ackroyd too, the heat and pressure exerted
merely becoming a cosmic process to provide the glittering diamond that is Aurobindo.
For a while it seemed that the doctor's project was succeeding. Ackroyd ended up
one of the 20th century's most overeducated young men. He was the supernova of Forsters'
King's College at Cambridge pocketing any academic prize he condescended to contest
for. He relaxed by composing poetry - in English, Latin and Ancient Greek. Dante
and Goethe and Cervantes were read in their original languages as well as any French
writer worth the name. This formidable erudition once saved him from arrest as a
dangerous revolutionary later in life in India. The old-school tie investigating
officer was flabbergasted that this man was reading Homer and Virgil in the original
- and to his mind such people could not be conspiring against British rule.
Young Ackroyd went in for the Indian Civil Service exam, then the height of Indian
aspiration. However he refused to show up for the mandatory horse-riding test, the
customary perch from where the sahibs administered India. It caused unprecedented
consternation, and in later years, was seen for what it was - the first rejection
of the West by an Indian who was still alien to his people.
The experimental parent died of shock on hearing the mistaken news that his son's
returning ship had sunk. Ackroyd landed in India and, free of parental shackles,
set about acquiring Indian ness with the same superb efficiency he displayed in
England. Bengali - his mother's tongue, though never his mother tongue - was first
and then Marathi, Hindi, Gujarathi (the languages of courts he served in as royal
secretaries) followed. Sanskrit gave him the key to all of India's religious, cultural
and spiritual treasures - and it forever changed his ideas too.
Far from being on the bottom of the heap, India was the only hope for a world gone
mad, precisely because India was not like the rest of the world. The British philosopher,
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson would later write in his book On
the civilizations
of the East that "The real antithesis is not between East and West,
but between India and the rest of the world". Ackroyd would accept that conclusion,
but to him that was a mark of distinction, of honour. Meanwhile, the young Ackroyd
had rechristened himself Aurobindo and began a political career that was characteristically
brilliant and short-lived like all his other efforts.
Bande Mataram, Jugantar, his newspapers became colossal headaches
for the Raj as his editorials were subversive to the point of genius, but sedition
could never be proved. Incidentally these editorials served as a sort of blueprint
for India's freedom struggle. Social unity, the cause of the motherland, eradication
of untouchability and discrimination against women, non-cooperation, the boycott
of foreign goods, national schools to instill national values in education, democratic
principles of government - they are all to be found there. His book 'On Nationalism',
a collection of editorials also foreshadows the belief that social action without
spiritual underpinnings is futile - an idea Gandhi used to great effect. Gandhi
even offered Aurobindo the leadership of the Congress party and country if he forsook
seclusion, but Aurobindo refused to meet Gandhi in a sensational snub that still
embarrasses those who know and try to hush it up. Aurobindo's mass popularity was
such any time he so chose, he could have all India follow him in a freedom struggle.
However he was on to bigger game.
India's freedom was assured, or so his spiritual intuition told him. That thus became
a side issue, albeit important. What of the freedom of all human souls? And was
he, Aurobindo, going to turn away from this challenge for the easier task of freeing
India?
The road to this staggering conclusion was paved by the British. Exasperated by
this hornet, they shut him up in Alipur jail for a year to await trial. Aurobindo,
always the demon of action, plunged wholesale into his Yoga practices and honing
up on Indian scripture. In jail he ascended spiritual planes at a rapid clip - and
was soon stuck. He had no data, no guides as to how to go forward. He claimed that
the spirit of
Swami Vivekananda
came forward to help him, as there was nobody living who could guide him at his
level of attainment. Aurobindo was refreshingly free of the display-humility so
prized in India. He knew he was India's genius, and that was that. (He did however
highly esteem
Ramakrishna
and Vivekananda and never spoke disparagingly of anybody unless provoked) The Alipur
jail experience confirmed him in his new vocation, as well as in his new opinion
that he had made a grave error in fighting the West with its own tools, its own
concepts and its own rules of engagement. From now on he would fight at a plane
India was naturally preeminent - the spiritual.
He moved to the French territory of Pondicherry, like Plato unwilling to let the
British sin a second time against philosophy. This was where the torrent of books
was let loose, commentaries on every scripture possible, as well as the longest
epic poem (and spiritual evolutionary handbook) in English, Savitri. He would begin
comparing Valmiki and Vyasa - authors of the two great Indian epics, demonstrate
some of the finest literary criticism possible and abruptly break off the project
because it was all clear in his mind now and he did not need to put it in words.
Aurobindo was what was called an automatic writer in his day and what is called
a channel today. He was in the grip of a higher force that relentlessly drove him
on for up to 10 hours each day, and requiring no revisions at the end. He was demonstrating
what it meant to be a seer once again, he saw rather than thought these things.
Of his writings the only real way to comprehend their range and original brilliance
is to go the texts themselves. They are masterful expositions of the life spiritual
and the quality of English is dazzling in a euphemism loving, Net-contracted Esperanto
world we live in. While in Pondicherry, he picked up the 4 major languages of South
India - and the consequent access to the respective cultures, but this was all par
for the course by then. In his writings he was seeking to synthesize all the spiritual
ways before him; to be exact to find a 'third position" synthesis between the thesis
-antithesis of India-West.
The philosophy was primarily a Vedantic one, with generous dollops of Yogic practices
and the byways of the Tantra, and hanging from a fundamental evolutionary theory
which held that man as he now exists is but an ongoing process towards the attainment
of the Superman with Super consciousness. He named this 'Integral Yoga'.