Shri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872 in Calcutta. From about age five onwards his schooling was done in England. He was a brilliant student throughout school and college years, excelled in Greek and Latin and received many honors and scholarships. He was barely ten when he composed his first poem. His scores were one of the highest in I.A.S. written exams. Still instead of taking his final exam of Horse riding required for I.A.S. he spent whole day wandering alone on the streets of London. Probably in his heart he already had decided to serve not English government of India but to work for service and freedom of his motherland.
After living in England for fourteen years, it is not surprising that when he returned to India he did not have much knowledge of Indian culture or languages let alone the Indian spirituality and Yoga, precisely the work for which destiny had chosen him. Yet very quickly he started mastering many Indian languages along with culture and religion.
Here I want to take you to this little incident that exposed him to Yoga.
After returning to India he started working with the Gaekwad of Baroda. At the same time he was taking a keen interest in India’s freedom movement. His brother Barin while traveling across India for freedom movement work contracted a ‘hill fever’, a violent and almost incurable disease and had to return to his brother’s home at Baroda. It just happened that a Naga Sanyasi visited them and looking at Barin inquired about his condition. Upon learning of his illness he asked for a glass of water then muttering some mantra he cut the water crosswise and asked Barin to drink it. ‘Tomorrow fever will leave you’ he predicted and truly it did. A fever that had persisted for days disappeared as if by magic!
About this striking incident Shree Aurobindo later wrote, “ This was a first hand proof of yoga-power. I thought- if yoga has such power, why not use it for the country’s sake?”
Before taking up yoga he made his prayer to God: “ If you do exist, you know my mind. You know I don’t care for my liberation; what others want has no attraction for me. I want power so that I may raise this country and serve my dear countrymen.”
As one can see from the beginning his yogic sadhana was not for giving up on world but to help and uplift others. There was no conflict in his heart between the world of action and practicing of spiritual life. With each passing day he gained new heights in his spirituality. It enveloped not only his fellow countrymen but also the whole humanity and life of world. Shree Aurobindo himself has stated that the very principle of his Integral Yoga is ‘not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the realm of this spiritual consciousness and to base life on it and give it a spiritual meaning’.
In his quest for spirituality eventually he moved away from politics and worked towards the service for humanity. As he progressed in his realization of cosmic consciousness he gave himself in total surrender to Divine Will. The following incident is a small example of how his guidance came from Supreme and how he trusted it.
This was the year 1910. By this time besides being a nationalist leader Shree Aurobindo had also gained prominence as an inspiring spiritual writer. His articles were printed in various magazines. Some of those magazines like Bandemataram, Dhrama and Karmayogin were launched and edited by him. While the country was inspired by his writings the British government considered them threat to their authority and seditious in nature.
On January 24, 1910, Deputy Superintendent of Police Intelligence Department was shot on the steps of Calcutta High Court. On one evening of February while Shree Aurobindo was at Karmayogin’s office in Calcutta with his associates the news of his arrest warrant came from a trusted source. There was a tense moment of silence all around. Shree Aurobindo felt his calling and said calmly that he will go to Chandranagar.
He was in Chandranagar in hiding for about six weeks while intensive government search was going on for him. Chandranagar was too close to Calcutta and his associates were struggling with various plans to send him somewhere else. All this time he was plunged entirely in solitary meditation. Then one day he heard the voice “ Go to Pondicherry”. So strong was his faith and surrender to divine guidance that without any hesitation he made his decision to go to Pondicherry.
The story of plans leading to his escape is very interesting. Things did not go exactly as were planned. The boats, one that brought Shree Aurobindo from Chandranagar to Agar Para ghat (dock) and the one that started from other ghat to bring him back to Calcutta for the boarding of ship headed for Pondicherry failed to make connection with each other. This created a panic and a grave danger to his safety while he waited in a carriage and his associates of planning tried frantically to straighten the things out. But all this delay turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Instead of getting his health certificate at ship where there were police men, something that planner had overlooked he received it at Doctor’s home and instead of boarding the ship at regular hours he boarded it late at night when policemen on duty had already left. By the time police started making inquiries in to the whereabouts of two people with late boarding record the ship had already reached to Pondicherry.
Going back to those events one feels as if it was the intervention of an unseen hand that corrected all the wrongs in planning and landed him safely at Pondicherry by controlling all the happenings. During that turbulent night of escape when nothing was going right one of his helper later wrote: ‘my mind was restless as I sat with Aurobindo in the carriage worrying about where others were. But he whose safety was causing me so much restlessness and agitation was himself untroubled, unshaken, motionless like a statue- he sat there like a lifeless stone image.’ All this time he was like in a deep trance. This is one of the finest examples of his faith in total surrender.
Shree aurobindo himself later commented on this total surrender to Adesh(command).
“As for Adesh people speak of Adesh with out making necessary distinctions, but these distinctions have to be made. The Divine speaks to us in many ways and it is not always the imperative Adesh that comes. When it dose it is clear and irresistible, the mind has to obey and there is no question possible, even if what comes is contrary to the preconceived ideas of mental intelligence. It was such an Adesh that I had when I came away to Pondicherry’.
He remained in Pondicherry for the rest of his life. It became the cave of his Tapasya from where he gave to the world a part of his spiritual knowledge and illuminations gained through his Yoga. The sheer immensity and creative power of his writings specially the interpretations of The Vedas and the grandeur and spiritual revelations in his epic poem Savitri surpass our highest imagination.
The book contains few of his poems. Below is one (part of a larger poem) that I loved most.
For in the march of all-fulfilling Time
The hour must come of the Transcendent will….
The frontiers of the Ignorance shall recede,
More and more souls shall enter into light,
Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear
And lives blaze with a sudden inner flame
And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight
And human wills tune to the divine will…
A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill…
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit’s ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life becomes the life divine.
