Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness

Back of the Book THERE is in SRI AUROBINDO a revolutionary, a poet, a philosopher, a visionary of evolution. He is not only the explorer of consciousness, but the builder of a new world. For evolution is not over: "Man is a transitional being," he wrote at the beginning of the last century.

This now classic introduction to Sri Aurobindo not only tells us the story of his life, in itself a remarkable adventure; Satprem also takes us along in a methodical exploration of Sri Aurobindo's "integral yoga," showing how it leads to a "divine rehabilitation of Matter" and gives our painful evolution its meaning and hope.

"We have denied the Divinity in Matter to confine it in our holy places, and now Matter is taking its revenge-we called it crude, and crude it is. As long as we accept this Imbalance, there is no hope for the earth: we will swing from one pole to the other-both equally false -from material enjoyment to spiritual austerity, without ever finding our plenitude. We need both the vigour of Matter and the fresh waters of the Spirit.... Now the time may have come at last to unveil the Mysteries and to recover the complete truth of the two poles within a third position, which is neither that of the materialists nor that of the spiritualists."

Preface THE AGE of adventures is over. Even if we go to the seventh galaxy, we will go there helmeted and mechanised, and we will find ourselves exactly as we are: children in the face of death, living beings who are not too sure how they live or why, nor where they are going. On earth, we well know the times of Cortez and Pizarro are gone: the same Machine hems us in, the trap is closing in on us. But, as always, our darkest adversities turn out to be our best opportunities, and the obscure transition nothing more than a transition leading to a greater light. That is why we are pushed to the wall and faced with the last exploration left to us, the ultimate adventure: ourselves.

The signs abound, they are simple and obvious. The most important happening of the sixties is not the trip to the moon, but the "trips" on drugs, the great hippie migration, and the student unrest throughout the world-but where will they go? There is no more room on the teeming beaches, no more room on the snarled roads, no more room in the ever-growing anthills of our cities. We must find the way out elsewhere.

But there are many kinds of "elsewhere’s." Those of drugs are uncertain and fraught with danger, and above all they depend on outer means-an experience ought to be obtainable at will and anywhere, in the marketplace as in the solitude of our room, or else it is not an experience but an anomaly or enslavement.

Introduction THERE WAS ONCE a wicked Maharaja who could not bear 1 to think that anyone might be superior to him. So he summoned all the pandits of the realm, as was customary on momentous occasions, and put to them this question: "Which of us two is the greater, I or God?" And the pandits shook with fear. Being wise by profession, they asked for time; also, an old habit made them cling to their positions and to their lives. Yet they were worthy pandits who did not want to offend God. They were thus lamenting when the oldest among them reassured them: "Leave it to me, tomorrow I will speak to the Prince." The next day, the whole court was gathered in a solemn durbar when the old pandit arrived, his hands humbly joined together, his forehead smeared with white ashes. He bowed low and spoke these words: "0 Lord, undoubtedly thou art the greater" - the Prince twirled his long moustache thrice, and puffed himself up -"Thou art the greater, Lord, for thou canst banish us from thy kingdom, whilst God cannot: for verily, all is His kingdom and there is nowhere to go outside Him."

This Indian tale, which we heard in Bengal where Sri Aurobindo was born, was not unknown to him who said that all is He-gods, devils, men, and the earth, not merely the heavens-and whose entire experience leads to a divine rehabilitation of Matter. For the last half-century, psychology has been ceaselessly reintegrating the demons in man; the task of the next half-century may be, as Andre Malraux thought, to "reintegrate the gods in man," or rather, as Sri Aurobindo willed, to reintegrate the Spirit in man and in matter - a spiritual preserve - and to create "the life divine on earth": The heavens beyond are great and wonderful, but greater and more wonderful are the heavens within you. It is these Edens that await the divine worker.'

There are many ways to set to Work. Each one of us, in fact, has his own particular opening: for one it may be a well-crafted object or a job well done; for another a beautiful idea, a harmonious philosophical system; for still another a piece of music, a river, a burst of sunlight on the sea-all are ways of breathing in the Infinite. But they are brief moments, while we seek permanence. They are brief moments subject to many elusive conditions, whereas we would have something inalienable, which depends neither on conditions nor on circumstances- a window within us that will never close again. And since these conditions are rather difficult to bring together on earth, we speak of "God," of "spirituality," of Christ, the Buddha, and the whole lineage of the founders of the great religions-all are ways of finding permanence. But perhaps we are not religious or spiritual men, just plain men who believe in the earth, who are wary of high-sounding words and tired of dogmas; perhaps we are weary too of thinking too well-all we want is our own little river flowing into the Infinite.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages