150th Birth Anniversary of Sri Aurobindo

Context

August 15, 2022 marks the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo.

?About Aurobindo Ghose

• On August 15, 1872, Aurobindo Ghose was born in Calcutta. 
• He was a philosopher, poet, yogi, seer, and Indian nationalist who preached a spiritual evolution-based philosophy of divine life on Earth.
• Education
• In Darjeeling, he began his schooling at a Christian convent school.
• He enrolled in the University of Cambridge, where he learned two classical languages and a number of modern European languages.
• In 1892, he worked in Baroda (Vadodara) and Calcutta in various administrative posts (Kolkata).
• He began his yoga and Indian language studies, which included classical Sanskrit.
• In Pondichéry he founded a community of spiritual seekers, which took shape as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926.
• He was much influenced by the American Revolution, revolts in Italy and the medieval French revolts against England.
• He attended Congress sessions and at the same time, helped establish the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.
• He and his brother revolutionary Barin Ghose contributed articles to the magazine Jugantar which inspired many young people to take up revolutionary work.
• He was also a journalist, editing newspapers such as Bande Mataram.
• In May 1908, Aurobindo was arrested in connection with the Alipore Conspiracy Case.
• In 1914, he started publishing a magazine called Arya.
• He wrote copiously and his greatest literary achievement was ‘Savitri’, an epic poem with about 24000 lines.
• He developed a kind of Yoga called Integral Yoga.
• He inspired scores of people both from India and abroad.
• Sri Aurobindo died on 5 December 1950 in Pondicherry aged 78.

About his yoga practices

• He had begun the practice of Yoga in 1905 in Baroda. 
• In 1908 he had the first of several fundamental spiritual realisations. 

• In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work.
• During his forty years in Pondicherry, he evolved a new method of spiritual practice, which he called the Integral Yoga. 
• Its aim is a spiritual realisation that not only liberates man's consciousness but also transforms his nature.
•  In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.