Essential Aurobindo [Paperback]

Aurobindo Ghose (Author), Robert A. McDermott (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0940262223 | ISBN-13: 978-0940262225 | Publication Date: September 1988

This is an introduction to Sri Aurobindo, considered by the author to be one of the most profound and relevant contemporary Asian masters speaking to the West. His vision he contends transcends the different strengths and weaknesses of India and the West. His teachings include the yogas of the Hindu spiritua; classic the Bhagavad Gita - knowledge, action, devotion and meditation and applies them to the task of world transformation, rather than just spiritiual liberation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Before Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghose tested the British colony with his courageous writings on independence and his extraordinary energy. A series of mystical experiences, however, turned Ghose into Sri Aurobindo, India's greatest modern writer on spiritualism. The Essential Aurobindo is a collection of this yogi's most important writings. Raised with a British education from the age of 5 and schooled at Cambridge, Aurobindo was thoroughly versed in Western philosophy and strove to integrate the profound ideas of East and West. His "integral yoga" has been influential among writers like Ken Wilber in the American human-potential movement, in which the spiritual side of the human being is considered the most important element of cultivation. According to Aurobindo, after the origin of life from matter, and mind from life, there must be a further, conscious evolution to a spiritual plane. Included in The Essential Aurobindo are writings of the Mother, Aurobindo's successor, who established an ongoing and influential collective based on the thoughts of Aurobindo. Culled from the nearly 30 volumes of Aurobindo's lifetime work, the pieces in The Essential Aurobindo are truly essential to an understanding of this vital and unique thinker. --Brian Bruya --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert McDermott, Ph.D. is President Emeritus and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He was formerly chair of the department of philosophy at Baruch College, City University of New York, and secretary of the American Academy of Religion. While a senior Fulbright lecturer at the Open University, he also co-produced a film on Sri Arubindo: Avatar - Concept and Example (1976). His published works include The Essential Steiner (Floris), and Radhakrishnan. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Pr (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940262223
• ISBN-13: 978-0940262225
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #809,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most profound and poetic confluence of spirtuality and philosophy, February 13, 2009

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David D. Metcalf "David Metcalf" (Centreville, VA,) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Aurobindo: Writings of Sri Aurobindo (Paperback)

In his numerous and enlightening writings, Sri Aurobindo presents one of the most significant metaphysical interpretations concerning the nature of existence, as well as the purpose of matter, life, mind, and spirit. For Aurobindo, existence unfolds by a perpetuating and inevitable evolution towards the complete fulfillment of spirit and soul, whereby the mind of man is an intermediate step by which the all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present bliss that is the universe can eventually recognize itself in spirit.

Aurobindo has a particularly fascinating elucidation on the process of natural evolution. In his estimation, evolution is the instrument by which the infinite oneness (Aurobindo uses many terms - though in vain - to capture what he admits is ineffable) unveils itself. In this sense, the process by which matter became life, life became animals, and animals became man, was a natural process not aimless but inevitable. For if matter manifested life, matter (or the material reality) must have inherently involved life even before its fruition. In this sense, life, mind, and the future states of the supramental and spiritual revelation are not spontaneously created by a blind universe, but instead are consciously liberated over time. In his words matter and life, mind and spirit, are not created anew but are already existent - but merely manifested by the Spirit in a process of "bringing out of what already existed in suppressed fact or in eternal potentiality." (72) There is purpose and direction.

Evolution gradually advances the material reality into recognition of its spiritual bliss, and only by the evolution up to, through, and past the human mind (well, theoretically any 'mental' organism/being will do) will this recognition exist. Accordingly, our lives are fraught with meaning and purpose. Our purpose is to recognize the all-blissful spirit that IS 'us' and 'everything', by advancing our consciousness past (but not by denying entirely) vital and mental concerns towards the spiritual realm. Hence we will facilitate the continual process of evolution towards the descent of the 'supramental' - the stage 'above mind' by which man and the universe can wax ever more conscious of the ineffable bliss and spirit that constitutes "being". Man IS special indeed - Aurobindo even designates him as the Spirit's "highest vehicle" for evolution to date. Having said that, he is merely an instrument of the divine spirit, and he is not more or less important than, nor more and less separate from any other component or material force that precedes and follows his existence. Thus he should not regard his special place as an invitation towards egoism and pride, for he and his mind had always existed and will always exist in 'eternal potentiality,' and his place is hence shared with all, while all shares its omnipresent place with him.

Before reading Aurobindo, I had really only been familiar with University professors and western philosophers. According to the conventional thoughts of this milieu - perhaps best encapsulated in Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus" - existence in the material is not only temporary but also meaningless. Body and mind are but interchangeable and mundane forms of matter, and 'conceiving' the soul is an action of a schizophrenic mind creating an imaginary friend of sorts to console the restlessness of his purposeless existence. Aurobindo's words, however, seek to "thin the wall between soul and matter." (195)

Some eastern belief systems posit reality that isn't much more cheerful - including the Buddhist conception (depending on how one interprets it) that existence in the material realm may be eternal and one may indeed have a soul, but it still lacks purpose in that it is subjected to a perpetual and unwilling participation in an endless cycle of natural processes. While rebirth is hypothetically preferable to a one-shot deal, existence is still meaningless - and therefore the goal is to escape the cycle in itself (Nirvana). From these beliefs and others, Aurobindo provides an alternative answer.

While Aurobindo subscribes to a monistic conceptualization of being, he posits a refined variation on this interpretation. In evaluating the idea of resurrection of the soul in his essay "Philosophy of Rebirth," Aurobindo claims that conventional monisms - e.g. Vedantics and Upanishads - contend the universe is one, and that matter ebbs and flows from this oneness like waves from the sea. But as Aurobindo astutely points out, if this is the case, rebirth of the soul is either temporary, illusory, or unnecessary. There is no reason for it. Why is there matter at all, why can't the eternal oneness just be in itself? Why is there manifestation of its reality at all? The sea does not need waves.

This is where Aurobindo demarcates his spiritual belief about Nature and Spirit most compellingly. Unlike the Vedantics or Buddhists who exalt the spiritual realm while subsequently derogating the material realm that often obscures it, Aurobindo argues that these two domains are one and the same - inevitably interdependent for manifestation and consciousness - hence Integral Yoga. The sea NEEDS waves. The material world is the infinite divine manifesting itself in a perpetual process of unfolding its blissful being, and it strives for consciousness of itself through evolution from matter to life to mind to supramental to ubiquitous consciousness of the SPIRIT. It can not do so in infinity - it trips over its own legs in the endlessness of space and time. Hence it concentrates spirit in the finite of matter, life, mind, and supermind/spirit.

These are some of the many fascinating ideas that Aurobindo introduces in his many essays. He presents many valuable insights on the role of religion in its interpretation of Spirit, as well as the dichotomy of the material world / spiritual world (a dichotomy Aurobindo insists is inaccurate) and how western and eastern thought treat this traditional opposition. Perhaps his most impressive quality is his profound and complete understanding of interpretations other than his own, educed by his discussion on western and eastern philosophical and religious traditions.

While Aurobindo's ideas in themselves are captivating, his articulation of those ideas are equally impressive. As his second (some might even argue his third) language, his command of English and mastery of lingual exposition matches that of Conrad. An exquisite writer, he articulates his sophisticated metaphysics with elegant prose and quite coherent explication. Quite simply, he is an exquisite writer and an absolutely brilliant thinker. I highly recommend this book. I have found it to be the most rewarding collection of words to explain to me the nature of the universe and my place in it as a human.