The Experiential Basis of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga

Author(s): Robert A. McDermott

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 15-23
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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RobertA. McDermott The experiential basis of Sri Aurobindo's
integral yoga

Interpreting the life of a great spiritual personality is always a treacherous

enterprise, and the life of Sri Aurobindo is peculiarly inscrutable. As he
more than once warns: "No one can write my life because it is not on the
surface for men to see."1 While this article is not an attempt to write about
Sri Aurobindo's life, it does try to show the relation between his personal
experience and the philosophical system which he later articulated.
Because of the prominence of personal experience in the formation of his
thought, Sri Aurobindo begs comparison with mystics such as Plotinus and
Eckhart, or existentialists like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, rather than with
Hegel, Bradley, Bergson, or Whitehead, the philosophers whose systems his
most closely resembles. For the same reason, he more closely resembles Gandhi,
about whom biographies continue to proliferate, than Rabindranath Tagore,
his fellow Bengali poet-artist with whom he felt a deep mutuality, or with
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the philosopher-statesman with whom he is fre-
quently compared as one of the two major interpreters of the Indian religious,
philosophical, and cultural traditions.
Somewhere between the tendency of disciples to create a personality cult
and the tendency of philosophers to treat philosophical ideas apart from their
personal and cultural moorings, lies the proper relationship between intel-
lectual biography and systematic exposition. This brief article attempts such
a balance by recounting some of the significant experiences, events, and in-
fluences which helped to fashion three of Sri Aurobindo's major theories-
the three theories developed in the accompanying article by Haridas Chau-
dhuri. Sri Aurobindo's solution to these three problems-the paradox of the
national life of India, the supposed conflict between spirituality and action,
and the evolution of man-are related to the unique and creative tension in
his own experience between spirituality and politics, both during his years
of political activity and during his four decades of sadhana (spiritual dis-
cipline) at Pondicherry.
The relationship between socio-political and spiritual concerns needs to
be analyzed at every stage of Sri Aurobindo's formation if his total vision
and significance are to be rendered intelligible. The crucial stage in this process
was Sri Aurobindo's year in the Alipore Jail, May 1908-May 1909. More
obviously than "The Event" (the Ahmedabad Strike of 1918) in Erik Erik-
son's study of Gandhi,2 Sri Aurobindo's year in prison marks a decisive
transition in his life, work, and vision. While all of the ingredients for this
transition were manifest before he spent a year in prison, the months of

Robert A. McDermott is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, The City

University of New York.
A. B. Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
1964), v.
2 Gandhi's Truth (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), Part Three.

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16 McDermott

solitary confinement led to the reordering and crystalization of these ele-

ments. He entered prison as a highly mystical revolutionary; he emerged as
a mystic concerned with spiritual and social evolution. In retrospect, the
change in Sri Aurobindo had been a gradual process over several years, but
the implications of this change for himself and for others were radical indeed.
The spiritual experiences during his year in prison, his attitude toward politi-
cal action, and his subsequent withdrawal to Pondicherry may be seen retro-
spectively to follow from the previous two decades of spiritual and intellectual
preparation. Thus, the spiritual and intellectual achievements of his years
at Pondicherry-for example, the three achievements which Haridas Chau-
dhuri has outlined in this issue-are best understood as an extension of ex-
periences, insights, and aspirations manifest in his early years.
The three problems and solutions discussed in Chaudhuri's article roughly
correspond to the stages of Sri Aurobindo's evolution from a nationalist to
a political karmayogin to a mystic visionary. The stages are certainly not
fixed, and the emphases not exclusive, but Sri Aurobindo's evolution as a
spiritual and intellectual force can perhaps be rendered more intelligible by
this ordering.

I. NATIONALISM

Despite the remarkable and thoroughly Indian spiritual experience which

he enjoyed upon landing at the Bombay Gate in 1893, Sri Aurobindo's famili-
arity with Indian life and thought was minimal. While a student at Cam-
bridge, he had joined the Lotus and Dagger and the Majlis, secret societies
committed to Indian nationalism, but apparently had no elaborate plan of
renationalization for his return to India after fourteen years in England.3
At Baroda, where he was professor of English and French, and subsequently
vice-principal, Sri Aurobindo sunk his roots deep into the Indian cultural
soil. From the beginning of his study, he closely identified with Indian spiri-
tual and political concerns. After nearly ten years of intellectual work his
commitments began to take a more aggressive form. In 1902, his spiritual
preparation was hastened by the beginning of his friendship with Sister
Nivedita, the disciple of Swami Vivekananda who was a political revolutionary
and author of Kali, the Mother; and in 1903, while working with his brother,
Barindra, he wrote Bhavani Mandir, a call for the youth of India to build

3 In reply to the claim that he had been unhappy because of his years in England and
was eager to renationalize himself, Sri Aurobindo explained: "There was no unhappiness
for that reason, nor at that time any deliberate will for renationalization-which came,
after reaching India, by natural attraction to Indian culture and ways of life and a
temperamental feeling and preference for all that was Indian" Sri Aurobindo on Himself
and the Mother (Plondicherry:Sri AurobindoAshram Press, 1953), pp. 17-18.

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17

a temple to the Mother at a "mountain retreat where youth could be trained

in spirituality and revolution."4 This was the first of Sri Aurobindo's many
attempts to enlist the youth of India in the cause of spiritual and political
regeneration through the Mother as Sakti.
In 1904, two years before moving to Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo took several
steps further into radical politics and spirituality: He began working with
revolutionaries in Maharasthra and began prdnayama practices and yoga.
The extent of his commitment to the spiritual regeneration of India may be
seen in his famous letter to his young wife, Mrilani. Writing in 1905, Sri
Aurobindo explained his inner life in terms of "three madnesses":

Firstly, it is my firm faith that whatever virtue, talent, the higher education
and knowledge, and the wealth which God has given me belong to Him....

The second folly has recently taken hold of me; it is this: by whatever
means I must get the direct realization of the Lord. The religion of today
consists in repeating the name of God every now and then, in praying to him
in the presence of everybody and in showing to people how religious one is;
I do not want it. If the Divine is there, then there must be a way of ex-
plaining His existence, of realizing His presence. However hard the path, I
have taken a firm resolution to follow it....

The third folly is this: whereas others regard the country as an inert ob-
ject, and know it as the plains, the fields, the forests, the mountains, and
rivers I look upon my country as the mother, I worship her and adore her
as the mother.... I know I have the strength to up-lift this fallen race....
This is not a new feeling within me, it is not of a recent origin, I was born
with it, it is in my very marrow, God sent me to the earth to accomplish this
great mission.5

As this letter indicates, the spiritual approach to Indian nationalism which

Sri Aurobindo adopted after his year in prison was essentially a development
of commitments which were manifest several years earlier.
Sri Aurobindo's withdrawal from political life in 1910, then, should not
be seen as "an escape from the struggle for freedom; it was, on the contrary,
a step which should lead to that realization to which an external, political
freedom owes its very possibility."6 Sri Aurobindo offers a full and valid
explanation of his withdrawal which also sheds light on the practical im-
plications of his four decades of sadhana. Writing of himself in the third
person, he explains:

4 R. R. Diwakar,MahayogiSri Aurobindo(Bombay:BharatiyaVidya Bhavan,1967),

p. 54. For the completetext of BhavaniMandir,see Keshavmurti,
Sri Aurobindo:The
Hope of Man (Pondicherry:Sri AurobindoAshramPress, 1970),pp. 64-69.
5 Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo,pp. 88-89.
6 Kees Bolle, The Persistence of Religion: An Essay on Tantrism and Sri Aurobindo's
Philosophy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), p. 86.

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18 McDermott

His retirement from political activity was complete, just as was his personal
retirement into solitude in 1910.
But his did not mean, as most people supposed, that he had retired into
some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world
or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his
Yoga was not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual
consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of
this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give
it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch
on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened
whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual ac-
tion... .7

Sri Aurobindo's spiritual consciousness, which was heightened during his

year in prison and reached extraordinary heights during his years in Pondi-
cherry, was clearly based on the Gita. In his writings immediately after be-
ing released from prison, namely, the "Uttapara Speech" and Kara Kahini
[Tales from Prison Life], Sri Aurobindo explains the importance of the
Gita for his sadhand. He explains that while in prison, God placed the Gita
in his hands:

His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita.
I was not only to understand intellectually but to realize what Sri Krishna
demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His
work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the de-
mand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instru-
ment in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and
opponent, success and failure, yet not to do His work negligently.8
In his fascinating article, "Prison and Freedom," appended to Kara Kahini,
Sri Aurobindo reiterates the lesson of the GIta on which he meditated while
in prison:

The central ethical injunction in the Gita-"Fixed in yoga do thy actions"

(II,48)-this freedom is that yoga of the Gita. When the interior joys and
sorrows, instead of depending on external good and evil, well-being and
danger, become self-generated, self-propelled, self-bound, then the normal
human condition is reversed, and the outer life can be modelled on the inner,
the bondage of action slackens.9

Sri Aurobindo's retirement and life of yoga was concerned with this process
of reversing the normal condition for India. His concern was less for India's

on HimselfandtheMother,p. 68.
7 Sri Aurobindo
8 "UttarparaSpeech,"Speeches (Pondicherry:Sri AurobindoAshram Press, 1969),
p. 49.
9 "Prisonand Freedom,"in Kara Kahini,trans. SisirkumarGhosh (Pondicherry:Sri
Aurobindo AshramPress), 1969,p. 158.

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19

independence-since that was "all arranged for" and would "evolve itself all
right"-than with the quality and direction of India once independent: "It's
what she will do with her independence that is not arranged for-and so it is
that about which I have to bother."10
Sri Aurobindo's commitment to India's regeneration, from his days in
Baroda and Calcutta until his famous speech on Independence Day, August
15, 1947, emphasizes the need to offset the tamasic or lethargic character
of Indian social and political life by an injection of rajas or creative energy.
As he wrote just prior to his withdrawal from active political life: "The cause
of the downfall of this country is not an excess of sattva but want of rajas
and a preponderance of tamas."ll Again basing his argument on the Gita,
Sri Aurobindo tried to show his countrymen the "great need for rajas-force
in national life":

That is why the attention of the nation has again been drawn to the Gita.
The teaching of the Gita, though based on the ancient Aryan wisdom, goes
beyond it. Its practical teaching is not afraid of the rajas quality, there is in
it the way to press rajas into the service of sattva and also the means of
spiritual liberation even through the path of works.12

Thus, Sri Aurobindo's attempt to stimulate India's political consciousness

in effect reveals as well his response to the second problem with which we
are concerned, the problem of action in relation to spirituality or mysticism.

II. KARMAYOGA

The karmayoga of the Gita, especially as expounded by Ramakrishna and

Vivekananda, served as the basis of Sri Aurobindo's theory of action, from
his days at Baroda, through his political career, and throughout his years
of sidhand. His nationalism was a specific instance of the larger insight
concerning the indissolubility of the material and spiritual. Writing in Bande
Mataram (1907) and Karmayoga (1908), Sri Aurobindo argued for the
continuity of spirit and matter by following interpretations of the Upanisads
and the Gitd as developed by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. While acknowl-
edging the importance of Sarhkara's Advaita Vedanta, he contends that the
basic Hindu scriptures have been interpreted in a way which more effectively
meets the needs of India's future: "It is such a synthesis embracing all life
and action in its scope that the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda

10Nirodbaran, with Sri Aurobindo(Pondicherry:Sri AurobindoAshram

Correspondence
Press), 1969,p. 18.
11Sri Aurobindo, "TheAryanIdealandthe ThreeGunas,"in KaraKahini,p. 165.
12Ibid., p. 168.

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20 McDermott

have been preparing."13Sri Aurobindo's own commentaries on the scriptures

also emphasize the ideal of karmayoga or selfless action. Commenting on
the Isa Upanisad, verse 2,14 Sri Aurobindo rejects Sarhkara's rendering of
karman as "evil action," which is a concession to the ignorant, and contends
that "the way of freedom is not inaction, but to cease from identifying oneself
with the movement and recover instead our true identity in the Self of things
who is their Lord."15The most explicit statement of this teaching, and the one
which Sri Aurobindo has consistently emphasized in his integral yoga system,
is that contained in the Gita:

But for the Yoga of the Gita, as for the Vedantic Yoga of works, action is not
only a preparation but itself the means of liberation .... Renunciation is indis-
pensable, but the true renunciation is the inner rejection of desire and egoism;
without that the outer physical abandoning of works is a thing unreal and
ineffective, with it it ceases even to be necessary, although it is not forbidden.
... By the union of knowledge, devotion and works the soul is taken up into
the highest status of the Ishwara to dwell there in the Purushottama who is
master at once of the eternal spiritual calm and the eternal cosmic activity. This
is the synthesis of the Gita.16

In his Synthesis of Yoga, the three yogas of the Gita-karman, bhakti and
jiina--are systematically integrated, and then extended by a fourth yoga, self-
perfection. According to this synthetic or integral yoga, the great task of man
is to "reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected life.'"7 In contrast
to the ideal developed in Patafijali's Yoga-Sutras, Sri Aurobindo's integral
yoga emphasizes socio-historical perfection in addition to personal liberation.
Partly because of his own intensely political experience and partly because the
concept of evolution was a significant ingredient in his intellectual development,
Sri Aurobindo's yoga is as concerned with evolution as it is with involution.
Consistent with the ideal of karmayoga that he espoused during his revolu-
tionary period, he contends that integral yoga:

Is not limited to the realization of the Transcendent beyond all world by the
individual soul; it embraces also the realization of the Universal, 'the sum-total
of all souls,' and cannot therefore be confined to the movement of a personal

13 Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of the Karmayogin (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Press, 1966), p. 11.
14"Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundredyears. Thus it is
in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man."
15 Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1965),
p. 23.
16AnilbaranRoy, ed., The Message of the Gita as Interpretedby Sri Aurobindo (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1946), pp. 4748.
17 Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga I: The Synthesis of Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Press, 1965), p. 4.

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21

salvation and escape. Even in his transcendence of cosmic limitations he is

still one with all in God; a divine work remains for him in the universe.l8

The fullest concrete expression of the historical implications of integral yoga

has been the myriad activities of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and their disciples
at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram; the most ambitious expression is the creation
of the universal city, Auroville. Characteristically, these projects have signifi-
cance in relation to the entire spiritual and cultural evolution of man. Increas-
ingly, the full significance of Sri Aurobindo's life and thought depends on the
vision, discipline, and projects developed at the Ashram with a view toward
human evolution and unification.

III. SUPERHUMANITY

Sri Aurobindo's warning to the biographer concerning the inaccessability of

his life bears doubly on this hazardous discussion of the Supermind. His vision
for the future evolution of man depends upon man's ascent to and calling down
of the Supermind, but the Supermind is at present a totally ineffable level of
reality. When one of his disciples asked him to write something about the
Supermind, which less spiritually accomplished people could understand, Sri
Aurobindo offered the following:

What's the use: How much would anybody understand? Besides the present
business is to bring down and establish the Supermind, not to explain it. If it
establishes itself, it will explain itself-if it does not, there is no use in explain-
ing it. I have said some things about it in past writings, but without success in
enlightening anybody. So why repeat the endeavour?19

Other disciples, before and since, however, have come to know something of
the Supermind through the psychic effects of Sri Aurobindo's sidhana. Ac-
cording to his account, it was on November 24, 1926 that the "Overmind"
descended on earth, and the descent of the Supermind was by that fact as-
sured.20This event is decisive not only for Sri Aurobindo's yoga and for his
disciples, but presumably for the future evolution of human consciousness.
As he explains in The Life Divine, the Overmind is "the occult link" that
he was looking for; it is "the Power that at once connects and divides the
supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance."21
Obviously drawing on personal experience, Sri Aurobindo explains that

18 Ibid., p. 248.
19Nirodbaran,Correspondence
with Sri Aurobindo,p. 86.
20 Diwakar, Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo,pp. 193-194.
21 Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (New York: Indian Library Society, 1965), p. 255
(hereafter cited as The Life Divine).

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22 McDermott

the next ascending step after Intuition (or Intuitive Mind) is Overmind;
the great difficulty, however, is for the sadhaka to open his consciousness to
a global or cosmic scope and to completely subordinate the ego-sense.22 Thus,
when the Overmind descends, as it did through Sri Aurobindo in 1926,
the ego is replaced by "a wide cosmic perception and feeling of a boundless
universal self and movement."23 As Sri Aurobindo consistently explained,
however, it is a monumental step from Overmind to Supermind.4 While
Overmind can unite the individual mind with cosmic or universal mind, only
Supermind can transform the mental. His account of this last stage of evolu-
tion, which combines the deeply mystical elements of Plotinus with the
dynamism of a process metaphysics, is not based on his actual realization but
on his proximity to that realization.25According to this extraordinary vision,
Supermind will descend into the terrestrial sphere and will illumine and
transform the mental level. Finally:

This would continue until the point was reached at which overmind would
begin itself to be transformed into supermind; the supramental consciousness
and force would take up the transformation directly into its own hands, re-
veal to the terrestrial mind, life, bodily being their own spiritual truth and
divinity and, finally, pour into the whole nature the perfect knowledge, power,
significance of the supramental existence. The soul would pass beyond the
borders of the Ignorance and cross its original line of departure from the
supreme Knowledge: it would enter into the integrality of the supramental
gnosis; the descent of the gnostic Light would effectuate a complete trans-
formation of the Ignorance.2

Such is the extent of Sri Aurobindo's vision as formulated after decades of

intense sadhan.27 The systematic account of this vision is based on his
deeply personal experience, and its full significance can only be evaluated in
relation to the discipline by which others can achieve the same level of realiza-
tion and the projects by which Sri Aurobindo's and related experiences are
being translated into historical reality. Indeed, large-scale spiritual and socio-
historical transformations were an essential ingredient in his yoga from the
outset: he directed his dtmasiddhi (self-realization), achieved while in jail,
toward the transformation of Indian consciousness, and his experience of the

22Ibid.,p. 844.
23Ibid.
24 See, for example, the characteristicallyhumorous,yet profound,replies to his disciples
on the meaning of the Overmind descent on 24 November 1926 in Nirodbaran, Corre-
spondencewith Sri Aurobindo,pp. 61-63.
25Ibid.
26 The Life Divine, p. 848.
27 The Life Divine was first publishedin Arya, 1914-1921,but was revised after the descent
of the Overmindin 1926.

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23

Overmind on November 24, 1926 served to bring historical evolution within

the direct force of the Supermind.
Irrespective of the claims for and against the validity of Sri Aurobindo's
theory of evolution, this theory will be taken seriously because it has been
fashioned out of practical experience in politics and yoga, and ever since has
profoundly affected the discipline by which it was attained and the programs
by which it has been implemented. If the three aspects of Sri Aurobindo's
legacy-vision, discipline, and programs-continue to interpenetrate produc-
tively, increasingly observers will be led from one of these areas into contact
with the entire scheme. The organic or evolutionary process by which Sri
Aurobindo experienced and then explained and institutionalized his experience
remains the pattern not only for his disciples, but for anyone who would
understand and evaluate his teaching and significance.

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