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Sri
Aurobindo
One of the most popular ashrams in India
with westerners is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
founded in 1926 by Sri Aurobindo.
Its spiritual tenants represent a synthesis
of yoga and modern science. The
seventy-year-old Ashram is situated
at Rule de la Marine with the flowerfestooned
Samadhi (tomb) of Aurobindo and the Mother
who was the spiritual authority of the
Ashram after Aurobindos death.
Born in Calcutta on August
15th 1872, Sri Aurobindo at the age of seven went
to England for education, and in 1890 joined
King's College in Cambridge. After
his return to India in 1893, he took up an
administrative career. He served as the
secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda
and after that as a professor at the College
and pursued his foremost passion - poetry.
He became more and more involved in
revolutionary activities against the British
rulers in India during this period.
He accepted to become the Principal of a new
College in Calcutta In 1906. He started a
newspaper "Bande Mataram",
in which he fervently elaborated on the
ideal of complete Independence for India
from the British crown. He became one of the
leaders of the nationalist movement. He was
arrested several times, but acquitted for
lack of evidence.
While all along he pursued his inner life
and the practice of Yoga. In course he
achieved several spiritual realizations and
left British India for Pondicherry in 1910
to concentrate exclusively on his spiritual
practices and to develop his own system of
yoga-the Integral Yoga. He later gave
up politics and in 1926 the Sri Aurobindo
Ashram was founded. His spiritual
accomplice, The Mother, developed the
Ashram from this nucleus of individuals in
the many-faceted community as it is at
present.
During his life in Pondicherry he produced
most of his major works and poetry, the most
noteworthy being the epic "Savitri",
a legend in kind in which he describes the
spiritual evolution of creation. Sri
Aurobindo left for the spiritual abode on 5th
December 1950.
The most important aspect of Aurobindo is
the emphasis to a system of internal yoga,
synthesizing yoga and modern science. His
teaching revolves around the doctrine that
man is only a transitional being
living in a mental consciousness, with the
possibility of acquiring the true
consciousness and capable of living a
harmonious life.
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