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Early Spiritual Development
First Turn towards Spiritual Seeking
Sri Aurobindo’s first turn towards spiritual seeking came in England in the last year of his stay there. He had lived in the family of a Non-conformist clergyman, minister of a chapel belonging to the “Congregational” denomination; though he never became a Christian, this was the only religion and the Bible the only scripture with which he was acquainted in his childhood; but in the form in which it presented itself to him, it repelled rather than attracted him and the hideous story of persecution staining mediaeval Christianity and the narrowness and intolerance even of its later developments disgusted him so strongly that he drew back from religion altogether. After a short period of complete atheism, he accepted the Agnostic attitude. In his studies for the I.C.S, however, he came across a brief and very scanty and bare statement of the “Six philosophies” of India and he was especially struck by the concept of the Atman in the Adwaita. It was borne in upon his mind that here might be [a] true clue to the reality behind life and the world. He made a strong and very crude mental attempt to realise what this Self or Atman might be, to convert the abstract idea into a concrete and living reality in his own consciousness, but conceiving it as something beyond or behind this material world, — not having understood it as something immanent in himself and all and also universal.
Sri Aurobindo was preoccupied, even when he was but a conscientious teacher or an accomplished poet . . . with the problem of service and of sacrifice. . . . From the very first the idea of personal salvation or of individual felicity was utterly repugnant to him.
Page – 106 This is a little too strong. It was rather that it did not seem anything like a supreme aim or worth being pursued for its own sake; a solitary salvation leaving the world to its fate was felt as almost distasteful.
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Sri Aurobindo had acquired a measure of intellectual pre-eminence as a result of his stay in England; but that was not enough, and he was certainly not happy. His deeper perplexities remained; he did not know what exactly he should do to make himself useful to his countrymen or how he should set about doing it. He turned to yoga so that he might be enabled to clarify his own floating ideas and impulses and also, if possible, perfect the hidden instrument within.
There was no unhappiness. “Perplexities” also is too strong: Sri Aurobindo’s habit in action was not to devise beforehand and plan, but to keep a fixed purpose, watch events, prepare forces and act when he felt it to be the right moment. His first organised work in politics (grouping people who accepted the idea of independence and were prepared to take up an appropriate action) was undertaken at an early age, but took a regular shape in or about 1902; two years later he began his practice of Yoga — not to clarify his ideas, but to find the spiritual strength which would support him and enlighten his way.
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Thus it may be said that Aravind Babu started taking interest in Yoga from 1898 99.
No. I did not start Yoga till about 1904.
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Such guidance as he received from his earliest gurus and such partial realisation as he was then able to achieve only reinforced his faith in yoga as the sole cure for his own “rooted sorrow” and for the manifold ills of humanity.
[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark against the word “gurus”, and wrote:] There was no resort to Yoga as a cure for sorrow;
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there was no sorrow to cure. He had always in him a considerable equanimity in his nature in face of the world and its difficulties, and after some inward depression in his adolescence (not due to any outward circumstances, and not amounting to sorrow or melancholy, for it was only a strain in the temperament), this became fairly settled.
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Aravind Babu used to attend the lectures of the Swami [Paramhansa Maharaj Indraswarup] with much interest . . . and personally met him and learnt about asanas and prānāyāma.
Only heard his lecture at the Palace, did not go to see him, did not practise Pranayam till long afterwards.
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He met the saint Madhavadas at Malsar on the banks of the Narmada and learnt about Yoga-asanas.
Visited, probably with Deshpande, one or two places on the banks of the Narmada, but no recollection of Malsar or Madhavadas, certainly no effect of the meeting, if it happened at all.
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Sri Aurobindo met, one by one, Sri Hamsa Swarupa Swami, Sri Sadguru Brahmanand and Sri Madhavadas. . . .
He had momentary contacts with Brahmanand, but as a great Yogin, not as a Guru — only darshan and blessing. There was no contact with the others.
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[He met Brahmananda on the banks of the Narmada for advice on national education activities.]
Sri Aurobindo saw Brahmananda long before there was any question of national education activities. Brahmananda never gave him any counsel or advice nor was there any conversation Page – 108 between them; Sri Aurobindo went to his monastery only for darshan and blessings. Barin had a close connection with Ganganath and his Guru was one of the Sannyasins who surrounded Brahmananda, but the connection with Ganganath was spiritual only.
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As yet, however, Sri Aurobindo was wavering between Yoga and public life. . . . He established some connection with a member of the Governing Body of Naga Sannyasis. . . .
All this was before he left Baroda, some years before he met Lele.
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We do not quite know what exactly happened to Sri Aurobindo during the first four years of his retirement in Pondicherry. This was a period of “silent yoga”. . . . Sri Aurobindo experimented earnestly and incessantly in the delectable laboratory of his soul; he presently outgrew the instructions that had been given to him by Lele and his predecessors.
That was done long before the sojourn in Pondicherry. There were no predecessors. Sri Aurobindo had some connection with a member of the governing body of the Naga Sannyasis who gave him a mantra of Kali (or rather a stotra) and conducted certain Kriyas and a Vedic Yajna, but all this was for political success in his mission and not for Yoga.
Meeting with Vishnu Bhaskar Lele
. . . Lele also advised Sri Aurobindo, in the final resort, to trust only to his own inner spiritual inclinations.
[Last phrase altered to:] to trust only to the guidance of the Divine within him if once he could become aware of that guidance.
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What Lele asked him was whether he could surrender himself entirely to the Inner Guide within him and move as it moved him;
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if so he needed no instructions from Lele or anybody else. This Sri Aurobindo accepted and made that his rule of sadhana and of life. Before he met Lele, Sri Aurobindo had some spiritual experiences, but that [was] before he knew anything about Yoga or even what Yoga was, — e.g. a vast calm which descended upon him at the moment when he stepped first on Indian soil after his long absence, in fact with his first step on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay; (this calm surrounded him and remained for long months afterwards,) the realisation of the vacant Infinite while walking on the ridge of the Takht-i-[Sulaiman]1 in Kashmir, the living presence of Kali in a shrine in Chandod on the banks of the Narmada, the vision of the Godhead surging up from within when in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda in the first year of his stay etc. But these were inner experiences coming of themselves and with a sudden unexpectedness, not part of a sadhana. He started Yoga by himself without a Guru, getting the rule from a friend, a disciple of Brahmananda of [Ganganath]2; it was confined at first to the assiduous practice of Pranayama (at one time for 6 hours or more a day). There was no conflict or wavering between Yoga and politics; when he started Yoga, he carried on both without any idea of opposition between them. He wanted however to find a Guru. He met the Naga Sannyasi in the course of his search, but did not accept him as Guru, though he was confirmed by him in a belief in Yoga-power when he saw him cure Barin in almost a moment of a violent and clinging hill-fever by merely cutting through a glassful of water cross-wise with a knife while he repeated a silent mantra. Barin drank and was cured. He also met Brahmananda and was greatly impressed by him; but he had no helper or Guru in Yoga till he met Lele and that was only for a short time.
Under the auspices of the Bombay National Union, Sri Aurobindo addressed a large gathering on the 19th January 1908.
1 MS Sulemani 2 MS Ganga Math Page – 110 He went to the meeting almost in a mood of inexplicable vacancy. . . .
Not inexplicable certainly; it was the condition of silence of the mind to which he had come by his meditation for 3 days with Lele in Baroda and which he kept for many months and indeed always thereafter, all activity proceeding on the surface; but at that time there was no activity on the surface. Lele told him to make namaskar to the audience and wait and speech would come to him from some other source than the mind. So in fact, the speech came, and ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity have so come to him from the same source above the brain-mind.
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The passage bracketed should be omitted.3 It tends to give an incorrect impression about the nature of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga and of what was happening in him at the time. The Yoga was going on in him all the time even during all his outward action but he was not withdrawn into himself or “dazed” as some of his friends thought. If he did not reply to questions or suggestions it was because he did not wish to and took refuge in silence.
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Sri Aurobindo now [in Alipore jail] started reading the Gita and learning to live its sadhana; he fully apprehended the true inwardness and glory of Sanatana Dharma.
It should rather be said that he had long tried to apprehend the true inwardness and glory of the Indian religious and spiritual tradition, Sanatana Dharma, and to accept it in its entirety.
3 The passage referred to cannot now be identified. — Ed.
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