-32.chronology.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHRONOLOGY OF SRI AUROBINDO'S LIFE 1872 — August 15 Birth in Calcutta. 1872-1879 At first in Rangpur, East Bengal; later sent to the Loretto Convent School, Darjeeling. 1878 — February 21 Birth of the Mother in Paris. 1879 — Taken to England. 1879-1884 — In Manchester (84, Shakespeare Street) in the charge of the Drewett family. Tutored at home by the Drewetts. 1884 — September Admitted to St. Paul School, London. Takes lodgings at 49, St. Stephen's Avenue, Shepherd's Bush, London. 1886 — August Vacation in Keswick. 1887 — August Vacation in Hastings. After returning from Hastings tak

-05_chapter - 3 baroda.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 Sri Aurobindo — Baroda —1906     CHAPTER 3   BARODA   I Sri Aurobindo's arrival in India early in February 1893 was preceded by his father Dr. Krishnadhan's death in peculiarly tragic circumstances. Even as late as 2 December 1892, as may be inferred from his letter (referred to in the previous chapter) of that date to his brother-in-law Jogendra, Dr. Krishnadhan was feeling almost certain that his son Aurobindo would be entering the Indian Civil Service and making his mark as a brilliant administrator. Sometime later information seems to have reached Krishnadhan of Sri Aurobindo's failure to get into the Se

-06_chapter - 4 translations.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 4   TRANSLATIONS   I     During the Baroda period, Sri Aurobindo engaged in a great deal of literary activity in prose and in verse, in journalistic as also serious creative writing. Journalism embalmed years after its publication in the form of a book could be utterly unreadable. But Sri Aurobindo's contemporary political comment like 'New Lamps for Old' and first forays in literary criticism like the series of articles on Bankim still leap to life as one reads them, and both have been republished in book form.1 Some other political writings of the last years of the Baroda period - notably the 'Bhava

-08_chapter - 6 dramas of conflict and change.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 6   DRAMAS OF CONFLICT AND CHANGE    I   In his early years at Baroda, Sri Aurobindo's creative inspiration flowed easily into the moulds of translations from Sanskrit and Bengali, and lyric and narrative poetry. Urvasie and Love and Death, for example, took the romantic epic as far as it could go - and it was to great heights indeed. The scaling of high heaven in Urvasie, the descent into Hell or Patala in Love and Death, the fight for the mountain pass in the later Baji Prabhou: one would almost think that, between them, are comprehended the essence of Paradise, Inferno and Purgatorial

CHAPTER 27   IDENTITY WITH GOD    I   On the eve of the fourth Darshan Day in 1938 (24 November), there was an accident as related in the previous chapter and Sri Aurobindo's right leg sustained an injury and had to be put in plaster. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who had been staying with some of their disciples in the house in Rue de la Marine (now known as 'Library House') from October 1922, moved to an adjoining house in the same street on 8 February 1927. This was the seventh and last of the houses in Pondicherry which Sri Aurobindo was to occupy. Known as 'Meditation House', this and the 'Library House' (with subsequent alteratio

-03_renascent india and sri aurobindo.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 1   RENASCENT INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO   I   When, by the end of the eighteenth century, the foreigner consolidated his power in India, the country was to all appearance a spiritual "waste land". The Western impact on the Orient had completed the discomfiture of the latter; the old order was seemingly dead, the new one could not be as much as thought of — and only a terrible stupor prevailed, paralysing the secret springs of the nation's high creative endeavour. For nearly three thousand years — or more — India had been in the vanguard of human civilisation. She had, almost continuously

-27_chapter - 25 poet of yoga.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 25 POET OF YOGA I While examining the implications of Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future, we saw how the probable divinisation of man the individual - the emergence of the Gnostic being - will necessarily inspire his immediate environment leading to a better social order and also accelerate the urge towards the realisation of global human unity. But the new Man would also evolve his own theory of poetry and of art in general, and the poetry and art of the Gnostic Age must have their own distinguishing vitality and significance. Here, again, Sri Aurobindo's contributions - as futurist critic no less than as futurist

-04_chapter - 2 childhood, boyhood and youth.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 PART I HUMANIST AND POET   CHAPTER 2   CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH   I   The district of Hooghly in West Bengal — the district that has given to Bengal and to India two such world-famous figures as Raja Rammohan Roy and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa — can almost be called the cradle of the Bengali or even of the Indian renaissance.* Konnagar is a thickly populated area, almost a small town, in the Hooghly district; situated on the west bank of the river Hooghly (otherwise known as the Bhagirathi), it is about eleven miles to the north of Calcutta. Konnagar is apparently a place of con

-26_chapter - 24 the yoga and the ashram.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 24 THE YOGA AND THE ASHRAM I   It is characteristic of man's double nature that he wants both to cultivate the private garden of his personality and to lose himself in a larger collectivity. At one moment he dares to be all alone, but at other times he is eager to mingle and merge his individual identity in his family, his tribe, his caste, his guild, his nation; or he joins a club, or a professional society, or even a political party. And sometimes individual man is athirst for certainty in the realm of ends and means, he is drawn to the Infinite, he is teased by thoughts of Eternity. Everything

-09_chapter - 7 musa spiritus.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 7   MUSA SPIRTTUS   I   During his stay in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of shorter poems, most of which owed their primary inspiration to his growing familiarity with India's philosophical and spiritual heritage, especially the Vedanta. The Upanishads and the Gita had swum into his ken and stimulated in him a spirit of restless philosophical inquiry into the "first and last things" and the realm of "ends and means". Religion, humanism, science: God, man, Nature: Providence, foreknowledge and fate: rebirth, evolution and progress - what did they mean? He would not take things simply on trust. He mus