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Foreword Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Paul’s School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Sri Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England in February, 1893. When he had left India, he was a boy of seven; when he returned, he was a young man of twenty-one, burning to realise his dreams and visions. Even when he was eleven years old, he had a sort of premonition that great revolutions were going to take place in the future and that he had a part to play in some of them. Not a mental idea, but a kind of inner feeling was growing within him that he had some great work to do, a mission to fulfil. It was thus that although his mind was nourished and developed by the classical spirit in Western culture, his soul remained untouched, his heart’s love flowed towards India and his will flamed to fight and suffer for her freedom. Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Settlement and Revenue Department and in secretariate work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, as Vice- principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self- culture, of literary activity for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time – and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his father’s express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modem Indian languages, especially Marathi and Gujarati, the two official languages of the Baroda State. He learnt Bengali very quickly and for the most part all by himself. An exceptional mastery of Sanskrit at once opened to him the immense treasure-house of the Indian heritage. He read the Upanishads, the Gita, the Puranas, the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, the dramas of Kalidasa, etc. Ancient India, the ageless India of spiritual culture and unwearied creative vitality, revealed herself to his wondering vision, and he discovered the secret of her unparalleled greatness. In discovering the greatness of India, he discovered himself, the greatness of his own soul, and the work it had come down to accomplish. Thus his stay at Baroda was a transforming revelation whereby ancient India furnished him with the clue to the building of the greater India of the future. In order to get an insight into the life of Sri Aurobindo in Baroda which had many different and perhaps apparently conflicting aspects, it has been categorised into various chapters given in this book. However, it is to be constantly remembered that his vision was never confined to any personal gain or the political, economic, cultural and moral freedom of his country only; it embraced all mankind. Seen in this perspective, his whole life appears to be of one piece, a gradual, though at times sudden, unfolding of a single aim and purpose-the steady pursuit and accomplishment of a single mission. All this is revealed in the chapter on his personal life, particularly his letters to his wife Mrinalini Devi. The chapter on his life as a teacher throws light through xii the reminiscences of some of his students, testifying to his unique style of teaching, his personal qualities and his views on many subjects including the education given by the British system with which he was quite disgusted. This chapter also briefly touches upon his early literary and political writings. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity for he was barred from public action by his official position at Baroda. The out- break of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda service and join openly the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College. The chapter on his Political Life deals with these developments in great detail. Reading this chapter will clearly show that the patriotism which fired his being was not mere love of the country of his birth and a yearning for its freedom and greatness. It will be seen that it was the worship of India, as the living embodiment of the highest spiritual knowledge and the repository of the sublimest spiritual achievements of the human race. The last chapter deals with his spiritual life. It is stressed once again that in order to fully understand the significance of his political activities and create a continuum between the first and the last parts of his life, it would be necessary to take special note of the spiritual side of his nationalism. In his The Yoga and Its Objects he has said, "The whole heart and action and mind of man must be changed but from within and not from without, not by political and social institutions, not even by creeds and philosophies, but by realisation of God in ourselves and the world and a re-moulding of life by that realisation." He did not consider it a sacrifice at all to throw away his brilliant prospects at Baroda in order to be able to serve his country as a politician; he gave them up because he believed and knew that it was really God and His approaching xiii manifestation that he was serving. Thus, politics offered him the first means to rouse an ancient nation into a compelling sense of its inherent spiritual potentiality and a sustained endeavour to recover its rightful place in the world. He also knew that India is the land of the most virile and dynamic spirituality, the land where every action of life was sought to be done as a sacrament and a living sacrifice to the Supreme. The Postscript written after the last chapter is a brief life- sketch of Sri Aurobindo starting from his stay and early sadhana at Baroda and various spiritual experiences leading to two of the four great realisations on which his yoga and spiritual philosophy are founded. Further, the Postscript includes an interesting account of his sudden departure to Pondicherry and a brief unfoldment of the steps that directed his sadhana to its goal. This goal was the work of world-transformation to which he had dedicated himself. The Postscript ends with a summary of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching and the dynamic aim of his Integral Yoga to realise that goal. xiv |