Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo by Neria Harish hebbar, MD

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Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo – 2

Move to Pondicherry

Aurobindo had concluded that independence for India was inevitable, and he then embraced the spiritual evolution of the soul with the same fervor as he had in raising the consciousness of Indians.

In the year 1910, when Aurobindo was 37 years old, he abruptly withdrew from active politics and moved to Pondicherry to continue his spiritual work. There he met Paul Richard, a French diplomat who became an ardent fan of Aurobindo. Mira Richard, ** his wife was a spiritual personality (born Mira Alfassa on February 21, 1878 in Paris), who had mystic and psychic experiences during her adolescence. After hearing about Aurobindo she met him in 1914, an encounter instantly and profoundly spiritual for both. Mira Richard was to become “Mother” later, a symbol of sakti who was to play a central role in the creation of the Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville in Pondicherry. Mira Richard saw Aurobindo as the divine hero of tomorrow and hope for all humanity. The day after her meeting with him she wrote in her diary:

“Little by little the horizon becomes precise, the path becomes clear. And we advance to an even greater certitude. It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth: His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.”

In 1915 Paul and Mira Richard returned to France and later went to live in Japan until 1920. Then Mira sailed to Pondicherry to begin her spiritual mission with the man she saw as an avatar of the Divine. She stayed in Pondicherry in a journey with Aurobindo, where each became integral part of their quest – he as the Divine Yogi and she as the Mother sakti.

After being estranged from him for more than ten years, in 1918, the ill-fated Mrinalini, Aurobindo’s wife, finally decided to go to Pondicherry to join her husband. As fate would have it, they were never meant to see each other again. She was about to embark on her journey to Pondicherry, when she contracted influenza and died.

Sri Aurobindo lived in Pondicherry until his death on December 5, 1950 at the age of seventy-eight. India attained independence that he had dreamed of, on August 15, 1947, coincidentally on his seventy-fifth birthday. The date did not go unnoticed by Sri Aurobindo. He mentioned it in his speech to the nation after attaining independence. He was a satisfied man, to find India finally rid itself of foreign occupation, a task he had worked so ardently during his younger years.

A Personal Journey

While Indian philosophers like Radhakrishnan, Bhattacharya and Dutta have put forward comprehensive systems of Indian philosophy, they pale in comparison to Aurobindo’s richness in detail and range of topics, as evident in his vast array of writings. Moreover, Aurobindo’s system of philosophy is autobiographical, an account of his personal experience and experiment. As he became more and more knowledgeable during his personal journey of his spiritual quest, he did not hesitate to continually revise his earlier writings and teachings. Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo’s 24000 line epic poem about spiritual ascent and transformation of the physical world, was revised and added on to until the last days before his death. He also revised his other writings, notably The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, in order to express his more advanced experiences of his later years. All of his works except Savitri (namely The Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Secret of the Veda, and The Life Divine as well as The Synthesis of Yoga) were serialized in his philosophical publication Arya. Here he put forward comprehensive and systematic philosophical compilations based on his own personal experiences. Unlike Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Sivananda and J. Krishnamurti, who also expressed their experiences in philosophical terms, Sri Aurobindo was successful in developing an original critical and practical philosophical system, including theories of knowledge, existence, the self, natural order and the aim of life.

Integral Yoga and Religion

At least since 1926 his spiritual eminence was well recognized and the suffix ‘Sri’ had been added to his name. It was the same year when he withdrew completely, claiming day of siddhi (day of victory), and left the chores of establishing the Ashram and the management of the disciples to Mother. Through his four decades of practice of yoga (sadhana), Sri Aurobindo had published thirty volumes of systematic writings and correspondence. He consistently distinguished his spiritual discipline from traditional religion. He was worried that his work could some day be mistaken for a new religion and repeatedly asserted that he did not want it to be so. Perhaps he did not want his teachings to be construed in a religious sense akin to what developed from profound spiritual experiences of Gautama (Buddhism) and Jesus (Christianity), much after their passing.

“Our goal is not…. to found a religion or a school of philosophy or a school of yoga, but to create a ground and a way which will bring down a greater truth beyond the mind but not inaccessible to the human soul and consciousness….”

Sri Aurobindo believed in the creation of Divine life, in the existing human life, in its current form. He believed that it was not inaccessible for an ignorant mind, through discipline, to bring down a greater Truth from beyond, to the human consciousness. It is not only possible to rise out of the ignorant world-consciousness, but it is also possible to bring the supramental powers down (a descent) to the ignorant mind. This can only help in the transformation of ignorance of the mind, body and life, in order to manifest the Divine here, while on earth.

Religion to him was an anathema. He however conceded that religion could be used as the first step toward achieving the supramental enlightenment. He made a clear distinction between religion and the spiritual. To Sri Aurobindo it was clear that there were three paths a human could take in his journey through life; A spiritual journey (adhyatma-jivana), a religious journey (dharma-jivana), or a journey of ordinary human life (of which mortality is a part). The laws of ignorance guide the ordinary life of average human consciousness. It is separated from its own true self and from the Divine. The religious life is led by some sect or creed that claims to have found the way out of the bounds of earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life is as ignorant because it often is only mired in rites and rituals, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms, without any attempt at dispelling ignorance. The spiritual life, in contrast, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, wherein one finds one’s true self and comes into direct and living contact and into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.

Aurobindo taught us the possibility of transformation of the world-consciousness through a spiritual journey of discipline and yoga. Though the potential is inherent in all, it is a receptive mind that through discipline can grasp the profound and succeed in attaining Realization. In his series of articles that became increasingly more informative as his consciousness matured, he showed us his way of self discipline through integral yoga. He never discounted the fact that this realization is possible for the ignorant during one’s lifetime. He used Mother to achieve his own personal spiritual journey (and vice versa), and considered Mother as an expression of his own consciousness. But it was the Mother who was truly the chief organizer of the Ashram in Pondicherry.

The Mother: Architect of the Future

In 1951 Mother founded the Sri Aurobindo International University to modernize and expand the scope of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. In this endeavor she also established the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch together with Surendranath Jauhar in 1956. The Mother's International School, which is also located in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Delhi Branch), has since grown into one of the biggest and most important schools of its kind in India.

There was a danger that after his death, his teachings might not have the same appeal. However, Mother and his other disciples successfully ran the Ashram in Pondicherry and then in 1968, at the age of ninety, Mother began the Auroville project (with the architect Roger Anger), in expectation of a new species of enlightened humans, and to accommodate such species. “A new species of higher consciousness will be revealed to us, little by little and Auroville wants to consciously hasten that advent. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Auroville belongs to no one and belongs to humanity as a whole. To live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of Divine Consciousness.”

It is here where Aurobindo’s vision of spiritual discipline and selfless action (Karmayoga) are implemented. In addition, on Mother’s commission, cyber-artist, musician and futurist Michel Montecrossa established Mirapuri center in Italy, which is actively spreading the ideals of Sri Aurobindo in the international scene. A Miravillage, a satellite of Mirapuri is also attracting disciples in Germany.

Then in 1973, the year she died, she also gave her blessings to Michel Montecrossa to establish a cultural center and guest house for the Friends of Mirapuri in Auroville. It is named 'New Community' and is located in the Auroville settlement 'Certitude,' opposite the building called 'Auroson's Home'.

Throughout her life she wanted to create a new type of city for all those who wanted to develop their consciousness for a spiritually inspired evolution. In 1957 ideas for such a township again were in the air but did not materialize. In 1967 plans were made and some land acquired to found a city in the Indian state Gujarat, which she named Ompuri. This project also did not move further. There have been other disappointments. In 1982, an organized attack on Auroville by violent and sectarian movement that halted all progress at Auroville and its promise of becoming a place of peace for world unity as envisaged by the Mother came to an abrupt halt. This led to the creation of Mirapuri, that later opened its branches in Italy and the Miravillage in Germany.

The Mother continued the work of Consciousness Evolution, leaving a stunning legacy of wisdom, knowledge, realization and impulses for making the Integral Yoga physically effective, in a life where Spirit and Matter are one. Mother died in 1973 at the ripe age of ninety-five, twenty three years after the Master had passed on. Sri Aurobindo’s legacy and teachings have survived and are thriving internationally today, thanks to the brilliant planning and forethought of the Mother.

– Neria Harish Hebbar, MD
May 1, 2005

** Mira Alfassa (Richard) studied art and became an accomplished artist and musician. 1897 she married Henri Morisset and gave birth to her son André. In 1905 she began to study parapsychology and occult sciences in Algeria together with Max Theon and his wife. After her divorce from Henri Morisset she founded a group of spiritual seekers, which was named l'Idée Nouvelle.

In 1911 she married Paul Richard and traveled to India with him, where she met Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and started together with Sri Aurobindo and Paul Richard the journal 'Arya', which became the birth place for most of the writings of Sri Aurobindo, which later appeared in book-form.

Till 1920 Mira Alfassa stayed in Japan and then came back to India to live with Sri Aurobindo. They both collaborated to further develop the Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo and Mira Alfassa founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926 to accommodate the growing number of people who became interested in the Integral Yoga. After 1926 Mira Alfassa became known as The Mother, the individual expression of the power of spiritual consciousness.

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