57 Facts About Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo was a journalist, editing newspapers such as Vande Mataram.

Sri Aurobindo joined the Indian movement for independence from British colonial rule, until 1910 was one of its influential leaders, and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.

Sri Aurobindo was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bombings linked to his organization in a public trial where he faced charges of treason for Alipore Conspiracy.

Sri Aurobindo was released when no evidence could be provided, following the murder of a prosecution witness, Narendranath Goswami, during the trial.

At Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo believed in a spiritual realisation that not only liberated but transformed human nature, enabling a divine life on earth.

In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose was born in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, India on 15 August 1872 in a Bengali Kayastha family that was associated with the village of Konnagar in the Hooghly district of present-day West Bengal.

Sri Aurobindo's mother Swarnalata Devi's father Shri Rajnarayan Bose was a leading figure in the Samaj.

Sri Aurobindo had been sent to the more salubrious surroundings of Calcutta for Aurobindo's birth.

Sri Aurobindo had two elder siblings, Benoybhusan and Manmohan, a younger sister, Sarojini, and a younger brother, Barindra Kumar.

Young Sri Aurobindo was brought up speaking English, but used Hindustani to communicate with servants.

Sri Aurobindo was considered too young for enrollment, and he continued his studies with the Drewetts, learning history, Latin, French, geography and arithmetic.

Sri Aurobindo secured a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, under recommendation of Oscar Browning.

Sri Aurobindo passed the written ICS examination after a few months, being ranked 11th out of 250 competitors.

Sri Aurobindo spent the next two years at King's College.

Sri Aurobindo had no interest in the ICS and came late to the horse-riding practical exam purposefully to get himself disqualified for the service.

Sri Aurobindo left England for India, arriving there in February 1893.

In India, Krishna Dhun Ghose, who was waiting to receive his son, was misinformed by his agents from Bombay that the ship on which Sri Aurobindo had been travelling had sunk off the coast of Portugal.

In Baroda, Sri Aurobindo joined the state service in 1893, working first in the Survey and Settlements department, later moving to the Department of Revenue and then to the Secretariat, and much miscellaneous work like teaching grammar and assisting in writing speeches for the Maharaja of Gaekwad until 1897.

Sri Aurobindo was later promoted to the post of vice-principal.

Sri Aurobindo started taking an active interest in the politics of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule, working behind the scenes as his position in the Baroda state administration barred him from an overt political activity.

Sri Aurobindo linked up with resistance groups in Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, while travelling to these states.

Sri Aurobindo often travelled between Baroda and Bengal, at first in a bid to re-establish links with his parents' families and other Bengali relatives, including his sister Sarojini and brother Barin, and later increased to establish resistance groups across the Presidency.

Sri Aurobindo formally moved to Calcutta in 1906 after the announcement of the Partition of Bengal.

In 1906, Sri Aurobindo was appointed the first principal of the National College in Calcutta, started to impart national education to Indian youth.

Sri Aurobindo resigned from this position in August 1907, due to his increased political activity.

Sri Aurobindo was influenced by studies on rebellion and revolutions against England in medieval France and the revolts in America and Italy.

Sri Aurobindo helped establish a series of youth clubs, including the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.

Sri Aurobindo attended the 1906 Congress meeting headed by Dadabhai Naoroji and participated as a councilor in forming the fourfold objectives of "Swaraj, Swadesh, Boycott, and national education".

Sri Aurobindo was arrested again in May 1908 in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case.

Sri Aurobindo was acquitted in the ensuing trial, following the murder of chief prosecution witness Naren Goswami within jail premises, which subsequently led to the case against him collapsing.

Sri Aurobindo was released after a year of isolated incarceration.

Sri Aurobindo delivered the, Uttarpara Speech hinting at the transformation of his focus to spiritual matters.

Repression from the British colonial government against him continued because of his writings in his new journals and in April 1910 Sri Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry, where the British colonial secret police monitored his activities.

Sri Aurobindo was arrested on charges of planning and overseeing the attack and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail.

Sri Aurobindo knew nothing of yoga at that time and started his practice of it without a teacher, except for some rules that he learned from Mr Devadhar, a friend who was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Ganga Math, Chandod.

Sri Aurobindo was influenced by the guidance he got from the yogi, who had instructed Sri Aurobindo to depend on an inner guide and any kind of external guru or guidance would not be required.

Sri Aurobindo manoeuvred the police into open action and a warrant was issued on 4 April 1910, but the warrant could not be executed because on that date he had reached Pondicherry, then a French colony.

In Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo dedicated himself to his spiritual and philosophical pursuits.

From 1926 he started to sign himself as Sri Aurobindo, Sri being commonly used as an honorific.

Sri Aurobindo was nominated twice for the Nobel prize without it being awarded, in 1943 for the Nobel award in Literature and in 1950 for the Nobel award in Peace.

Sri Aurobindo was a French national, born in Paris on 21 February 1878.

Sri Aurobindo argues that divine Brahman manifests as empirical reality through lila, or divine play.

Sri Aurobindo believed that Darwinism merely describes a phenomenon of the evolution of matter into life, but does not explain the reason behind it, while he finds life to be already present in matter, because all of existence is a manifestation of Brahman.

Sri Aurobindo argues that nature has evolved life out of matter and the mind out of life.

Sri Aurobindo stated that he found the task of understanding the nature of reality arduous and difficult to justify by immediate tangible results.

Sri Aurobindo assumes that the seers of the Upanishads had basically the same approach and gives some details of his vision of the past in a long passage in The Renaissance of India.

Mugali as stating that Sri Aurobindo might have obtained in this Upanishad the thought-seed which later grew into The Life Divine.

Sri Aurobindo has made full use of Western thought, but he has made use of it for the purpose of building up his own system.

The vision that powers the life divine of Sri Aurobindo is none other than the Upanishadic vision of the unity of all existence.

Puligandla discusses Sri Aurobindo's critical position vis-a-vis Shankara and his thesis that the latter's Vedanta is a world-negating philosophy, as it teaches that the world is unreal and illusory.

Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist but is best known for his philosophy on human evolution and Integral Yoga.

Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg were among those who were inspired by Sri Aurobindo, who worked on the newly formed American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco.

Sri Aurobindo influenced Subhash Chandra Bose to take an initiative of dedicating to Indian National Movement full-time.

Sri Aurobindo published extracts from The Life Divine in Danish translation.

Wilber's interpretation of Sri Aurobindo has been criticised by Rod Hemsell.