Some of the great names of modern Indian literature are also great names of modern Indian history. Sri Aurobindo is one of the rare gems that shines through the dark tunnels of history with its eternal presence. He was a multi-faceted personality, shining bright in all the roles he played in his life. He was a genial student, a brilliant teacher, a mystic poet, a prolific writer, a staunch nationalist, a path-breaking literary critic, a convincing philosopher and a committed saint of the ultimate.
Sri Aurobindo has now become a name to conjure with, being a spiritual guide to thousands around the globe. Though Sri Aurobindo is better known to the world as a philosopher, mystic seer and a saint of the ultimate, to realize the multifarious nature of his personality, one has to read his writings running into 35 volumes which deal with subjects as diverse as politics, culture, religion, philosophy, literary criticism and creative writing. Aurobindo Ghosh was born in Calcutta on the 15th of August 1872 and was educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1890 he also passed the open competition for the Indian civil service but at the end of two years of probation did not present himself for the riding examination and was disqualified for the service.
The young Aurobindo landed India in February 1893 and entered the Baroda state service. He began working in the revenue department and also did secretarial work for the Maharaja of Baroda. But he soon lost interest in the bureaucratic drudgery which did not offer any scope for creativity. He served as professor of English at the Baroda College and later rose to the position of Vice Principal of the College. This new job offered him enough opportunity for bringing out his latent creative talents. He proved himself a wonderful poet even at this early part of his life. His sojourn at Baroda college was the time when he made up for all that he had missed of Indian culture during his life in England. He delved deep into Indian culture and heritage, learned many Indian languages and became proficient in Sanskrit and his own mother tongue Bengali.
In 1907 Aurobindo was arrested for his allegedly seditious writings in the Bande Mataram and was later released on bail. Following this incident he resigned his post of the principal of the Bengal National College. The prosecution having no sufficient evidence against him acquitted him a month later. In 1908, Aurobindo was again arrested under the Alipore bomb case and he had to undergo prison life as an under trial prisoner for one year until he was released in 1909. While in prison Sri Aurobindo underwent a spiritual experience. In 1910 in answer to an inner call Sri Aurobindo withdrew from the political field and sailed for Pondicherry to devote himself entirely to his evolving spiritual mission. He knew that India's freedom was certain, but now he had to work for an inner awakening and a change of consciousness in India and the world without which there could be no lasting progress and no solution to the pressing and formidable problems which beset mankind.
Sri Aurobindo was born in an age when European colonialism had attained its highest water-mark in the history of human civilization. At a time when even the Indian National Congress was satisfied with the petty concessions accorded to the Indian natives by the colonial regime, Sri Aurobindo raised the movement for Swaraj, of national self-governance. Sri Aurobindo first rose to national prominence as a writer for his editorials and articles in "Bande Mataram", a Calcutta daily he edited between 1906 and 1908. A large number of other political and cultural pieces appeared in two Calcutta weeklies in 1909 and 1910, the year in which Sri Aurobindo retired from active politics in order to devote himself exclusively to the practice of yoga.
When India attained independence Sri Aurobindo had already reached the summit of his spiritual journey. Significantly, as he himself pointed out and noted with joy, India attained independence on his 75th birthday, on the 15th of August 1947. In a message broadcast through the All India Radio on the 15th of August, 1947, Sri Aurobindo said, "August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the divine force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life; the beginning of its fruition.
The major writings of Sri Aurobindo comprised: in poetry his epic poem "Savitri" and "The Collected Poems" and in prose in a number of highly acclaimed books such as "The Life Divine", "Synthesis of Yoga", "Secret of the Veda", "Essays on the Gita", "The Human Cycle", "The Ideal of Human Unity", "The Future Poetry" and several volumes of his letters. "Savithri: A Legend and a Symbol" is Sri Aurobindo's epicpoem of 12 books about an individual who overcomes the ignorance suffering and death in the world through her spiritual quest setting the stage for the emergence of a new divine life on earth. The tale of Satyavan and Savithri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. This legend is but as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the abyss of death and ignorance. Savithri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, Goddess of the Supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save Aswapathy, the Lord of the horse, a human father was the Lord of tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal tothe immortal planes. Dyumatsena, Lord of The Shining Horse, father of Saytavan, is the divine mind here fallen blind losing its celestial kingdom of a vision and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.
Sri Aurobindo spent 35 years of his life on his masterpiece "Savithri" from 1915 till his death in 1950, but yet it is incomplete. Regarding this he wrote in one of his letters,"In fact, "Savithri" has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness, and how that could be made creative." In Sri Aurobindo's theory of poetry written under the title "The Future Poetry", we can see the importance he attached to art and culture for the significance it has for the spiritual evolution of mankind. Sri Aurobindo considered poetry to be the highest expression of the inner life and which at the moment of delivering the inner truth is a "mantra" that elevates the human mind into the divine realm. He believed that a new deep and intuitive poetry could be a powerful aid to the change of consciousness and the life required to achieve the spiritual destiny of mankind.
Consistent with his spiritual vision and the coherence of the many sidedness of his work, Sri Aurobindo's ideal of poetry is the mantra, an outflow and direct expression of the divine reality.
He suggests that true poetry is a creation of neither the intelligence nor the imagination but rather it is a creation of the soul. At the same time the true recipient and the true target of poetry is neither the intelligence, the emotions nor the vital nature but rather, again, it is the soul of the listener. The intelligence, imagination emotions and vital nature are instruments of the soul and thus shape or colour the poetry. Unlike philosophy or psychology, poetry could reveal the beauty of the spirit. InSri Auorbindo's own poetry, particularly in his epic poem, "Savitri", we find the fullest and most powerful statement of a spiritual thought and vision. Sri Aurobindo was not just a poet who dreamt, but anactivist who tried to bring his dreams into reality. This energy, vigour, and enthusiasm pervades the works of Sri Aurobindo who appropriated many qualities from the English culture along with the English language, while abrogating Western thought processes and notions of existence.
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