Sri Aurobindo Ghosh was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872 to Dr KD Ghosh and Srimati Swarnalata Devi. His mother was a very well known beauty yet a graceful Hindu Lady of those days and father an eminent Medical Doctor, educated in England and totally westernized in his outlook. Consequently, the young child, Aurobindo was sent to England in 1879, at the tender age of only seven, along with two of his older brothers for western education. Aurobindo lived there for fourteen years, brought up at first in an English family living in Manchester.

In England he received, according to his father's express instructions, an entirely westernized education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. He first joined St. Paul's School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went to King's College, Cambridge with a senior scholarship, he studied there for two years. In 1890 he passed the open competition for the coveted Indian Civil Service (ICS) placed in the highest of the ranks. However, at the end of two years probation, he decided not to appear for the horse riding test and thus was out of the ICS. At that time the ruler of Baroda, Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad was in London and offered Aurobindo an appointment in the Baroda Service. Aurobindo accepted the offer and left England for Baroda, India, arriving there in February, 1893.

Aurobindo spent thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariat working for the Maharaja, afterwards as a Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity, much of the poetry published afterwards from Pondicherry were written at this time, and of preparation for most of his future work.

My Note
Aurobindo was married to Mrinalini Devi in 1901.

At Baroda he made up the deficiency of his lack of early exposure to Indian culture and traditions. He learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, imbibed the spirit of Sanatan Bharatiya Samskriti (Ancient Indian Culture) and all its forms, the past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

The political activity of Aurobindo covered only eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Nationalist) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress.

In 1906 Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet influential enough, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the "Subjects Committee". Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging program, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between. the Moderates and the Nationalists (labeled by their opponents as Extremists) which in two years changed the entire face of Indian politics.

The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (Independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realized at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform. It proposed as its means of execution a program which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organization of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government.

Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi (home grown) industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts, and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National Colleges and Schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and defense and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the program. Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organized national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won.

He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognized organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram of which he was at the time acting editor. The news paper 'Bande Mataram’ was started in early 1907, circulated almost immediately all over India., its policy from the beginning till its abrupt winding up in 1908 was wholly directed by Aurobindo when he was sent to prison by the British rulers of India.. During its brief but momentous existence, this news paper changed the political thought processes of India which was ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it by Aurobindo. However, the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at that time since the country was still ‘unripe’ for such a bold program.

Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and imprisoned briefly, to be acquitted later. Until then, mostly an organizer and writer, he was forced by this event and the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested again in the Alipore Conspiracy (Bomb) Case, implicated in the acts of the revolutionary group led by his younger brother Barindra; but there was no substantial evidence against him could be established and he was acquitted again.

After a detention of one year as under trial prisoner in the Alipore Central Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to discover his party organization broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself though still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the freedom movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, "The Karmayogin", and a Bengali weekly, "The Dharma".

But at last he was compelled to recognize that the nation was not yet sufficiently ready to carry out his policy and program. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind started by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the time for those movements had not yet come and that he himself was not the destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months' detention in the Alipore Central Jail, which had been spent entirely in practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an intensive meditation. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for some time and devote to the practice of meditation.

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandan Nagar and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this time in absence for an article by him in the Karmayogin. It was also pressed against the printer of the paper who also was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favorable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the President-ship of the Indian National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his Sadhana.

In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilization and culture (The Foundations of Indian Culture), the true meaning of the Vedas (The Secret of the Veda), the progress of human society (The Human Cycle), the nature and evolution of poetry (The Future Poetry), the possibility of the unification of the human race (The Ideal of Human Unity).

At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance.

Aurobindo Ashram
Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of Sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Aurobindo Ashram which had grown around him and Mother, an ascetic devotee (Yogin) of foreign origin who came to India in pursuit of spirituality.

Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realization followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonizing the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to re-descend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the In-conscience at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material in-conscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things.

Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Super mind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this super mind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supra-mental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realize this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. He wrote, commented upon and translated from many old Hindu scriptures into easy to understand every day language for the benefit of all.

Sri Aurobindo wrote prolifically in English, both in prose and poetry the spiritual revelations until his soul left his body on December 5, 1950. The Mother carried on his work until November 17, 1973 and the work they had continues even today.