What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self- pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.

In a word, godhead; to remake ourselves in the divine image.

— Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo with Tilak and other Nationalists. December 1907

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Sri Aurobindo at Baroda in 1908 after the Surat Congress

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Postscript

Sri Aurobindo's stay in Baroda and his involvement in political activities for the freedom of his country described in the preceding chapters should help us to understand his spiritual development after his arrival in Pondicherry.

It is already seen that Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904; but even before this he had a number of preliminary spiritual experiences, such as the mental experience of the Atman or Self, the realisation of the "vacant Infinite" and the awareness of the Godhead active within him and in the world.

Sri Aurobindo met Lele in January 1908, just after the Surat session of the Indian National Congress, remembered as one of the major turning points in the course of India's freedom-struggle. Sri Aurobindo's political influence was then at its height. He was recognised as one of the half- dozen most prominent men in the country. Less than a week later he found himself closeted with Lele. Following his instructions, Sri Aurobindo succeeded in establishing "a complete and abiding stillness of (his) whole consciousness." This led to the realisation of the "silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman," the "inactive" side of the one Reality. This realisation which is otherwise called Nirvana, and which often cannot be achieved even after a lifetime of effort, had come to Sri Aurobindo in less than three days.

Many, after obtaining this realisation, retire from a world now perceived as vain and illusory, to become absorbed in the peace or bliss of the Unmanifest. Such was not the path of Sri Aurobindo. The force that had impelled him into the political arena still drove him to action, and he did not resist it.

Four months after the Surat congress, Sri Aurobindo was arrested as a revolutionary conspirator. While under trial for the capital offence of "waging war against the king", he

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was placed in solitary confinement in the jail at Alipore, a locality of Calcutta. Soon he was plunged in an intensive practice of yoga.

The chief landmark of Sri Aurobindo's Alipore sadhana was his experience of "the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is." This was his second great realisation, and with it disappeared the "overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world" which had accompanied his first realisation, that of the silent Brahman. Sri Aurobindo was now aware that it was the "dynamic side of the Brahman, the Ishwara" (Lord and Master) who had been moving him and continued to move him "in all his sadhana and action."

During the year that he was imprisoned at Alipore, Sri Aurobindo had a number of ancillary experiences, some of an "occult" nature. Among them were various types of subtle vision and hearing, the "first movement" of the powers which lead to "utthapana" or levitation, and a multifarious experience of spiritual bliss.

By this time-early in 1909-Sri Aurobindo had "realised in full two of the four great realisations, on which his yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded"; the silent Brahman or Nirvana, the dynamic Brahman, the Divine as all that is.

These realisations represent the two ends impersonal and personal, nirguna and saguna of traditional spirituality. Each of them, to one who has attained it, is complete in itself. Indeed the two are often considered to be mutually exclusive.

Sri Aurobindo was acquitted and released from jail 'in May 1909. Still absorbed in sadhana, he re-entered the political field, and soon found himself again the object of unfriendly British attention. Early in 1910, one night at the office of the Karmayogin (an English weekly started by Sri Aurobindo), he received information of the Government's intention to search the office and arrest him. While considering what should be his attitude, he received a sudden

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command from above to go to Chandernagore in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance and never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone, but in ten minutes he was at the river ghāt, engaged a boat plying on the Ganges and in a few hours he was at Chandernagore where he went into secret residence. He sent a message to Sister Nivedita asking her to take up the editing of the Karmayogin in his absence. This was the end of his active connection with his journal. At Chandernagore he plunged entirely into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity. Then, there came to him a call to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young revolutionaries of Uttarpara took him to Calcutta; there he boarded the Dupleix and reached Pondicherry on April 4, 1910.

It is interesting to note that before Sri Aurobindo's arrival at Pondicherry, a famous South Indian Yogi had made a prediction which, in Sri Aurobindo's words, was that "thirty years later (agreeing with the time of my arrival) a Yogi from the North would come as a fugitive to the South and practise there an integral Yoga (Poorna Yoga), and this would be one sign of the approaching liberty of India. He gave three utterances as the mark by which this Yogi could be recognised and all these three were found in the letters to my wife..."¹

At Pondicherry, from this time onwards Sri Aurobindo's practice of Yoga became more and more absorbing. Ten years afterwards he wrote to his brother Barin:

"What I started with, what Lele gave me, what I did in jail all that was a searching for the path, a circling around looking here and there, touching, taking up, handling, testing this and that of all the old partial yogas, getting a more or less complete experience of one and then going off in pursuit of another. Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry,

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself and on The Mother.

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 this unsteady condition ceased. The indwelling Guru of the world indicated my path to me completely, its full theory, the ten limbs of the body of the yoga." Thus, it was only after his arrival in Pondicherry that "a certain programme" was laid down that he thereafter followed.

He passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence. Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material Inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermnind or eternal Truth-consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this Supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the Supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

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