Sri Aurobindo

Born on 15 August 1872 in Kolkata, Sri Aurobindo, after studying in the Loretto Convent School, Darjeeling, was taken by his parents to England at the age of seven. He spent the next fourteen years in Manchester London and Cambridge, shining as a scholar, passing high in the 1st Tripos at Cambridge and ICS examination, but got himself disqualified from the Civil Service by deliberately absenting himself from the horse riding test.

He returned to India in 1893 and worked as a professor at the Maharaja's college in Vadodara. In 1901 he married Mrinalini Devi, in Kolkata.

During his thirteen-year stay in Vadodara his life flowed quietly but intensely in several streams. On the one hand he delved deep into the mystic heritage of India and took up the practice of Yoga; on the other he began to give a bold new direction to the politics of the time, writing a series of newspaper articles and, with the help of some trusted lieutenants, inspiring secret revolutionary societies at several places across the country.

In 1906 Sri Aurobindo moved to Kolkata. After briefly serving as the first Principal of the newly founded National College, he took over the editorship of the newspaper Bande Mataram, the herald of Indian Nationalism. It was he who, along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak, gave a radical turn to the policies of the Indian National Congress at its Surat session in 1907. He was the first political leader to publicly demand complete independence for India.

Failing to prove two charges of sedition against his paper, the colonial authorities arrested him in May 1908 in connection with the now famous Alipore Conspiracy Case. The celebrated Deshbandhu C.R. Das defended him, making his historic prophecy: " 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." Acquitted in 1909, Sri Aurobindo emerged from his year-long confinement enriched by momentous spiritual experiences He continued his political work for one year more. Then, in compliance with an inner command, he sailed for Pondicherry, a French enclave in South India, which he reached in April 1910. It was time for him to explore the way for mankind's liberation from its bondage to ignorance through

spiritual means.

During his forty years in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo devoted himself to the practice of Yoga. He worked out a new system of spiritual development, which he called the Integral Yoga, and revealed what he deemed to be the next step in evolution - the emergence of a supramental being out of the present mental man, to be effected through a transformation of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950.