Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950)

[Nicholas]

A remarkable yogi and Sage! Here is part of his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 16, which was revised from 1920 until his death:

http://searchforlight.org/Gita/Deva%20and%20Asura.htm

[Nicholas]

His commentary on chapter 16 begins:

The practical difficulty of the change from the ignorant and shackled normal nature of man to the dynamic freedom of a divine and spiritual being will be apparent if we ask ourselves, more narrowly, how the transition can be effected from the fettered embarrassed functioning of the three qualities to the infinite action of the liberated man who is no longer subject to the gunas. The transition is indispensable; for it is clearly laid down that he must be above or else without the three gunas. On the other hand it is no less clearly, no less emphatically laid down that in every natural existence here on earth the three gunas are there in their inextricable working and it is even said that all action of man or creature or force is merely the action of these three modes upon each other, a functioning in which one or other predominates and the rest modify its operation and results.

[Nicholas]

The recent popular fascination with Identity being our ordinary nature is a great blunder, as Aurobindo points out:

“I am my life and body”: there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula.

[Nicholas]

Aurobindo was not indifferent to world affairs. Here are some of his remarks about the two forces warring throughout the 20th century:

It is in fact a clash between two world-forces which are contending for the control of the whole future of humanity. One force seeks to destroy the past civilisation and substitute a new one; but this new civilisation is in substance a reversion to the old principles of dominant Force and a rigid external order and denies the established values, social, political, ethical, spiritual, altogether. Among these values are those which were hitherto held to be the most precious, the liberty of the individual, the right to national liberty, freedom of thought; even religious liberty is to be crushed and replaced by the subjection of religion to State control.

That war is still afoot today.

[Nicholas]

He was also an Indian patriot, active is working for freedom from British rule. Here is a bit from a letter to New India, published 8 April 1918:

This is an hour in which, for India as for all the world, its future destiny and the turn of its steps for a century are being powerfully decided, and for no ordinary century, but one which is itself a great turning-point, an immense turn-over in
the inner and outer history of mankind. As we act now, so shall the reward of our karma be meted out to us, and each call of this kind at such an hour is at once an opportunity, a choice, and a test offered to the spirit of our people. Let it be said that it rose in each to the full height of its being and deserved the visible intervention of the Master of Destiny in its favour.