THE TEACHINGS
Basics of Integral Yoga
|
ABOUT SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872, in Calcutta, India. At the age of seven, he went to England for his education, but he returned to India in 1893. For the next fourteen years, he worked in the Princely State of Baroda, in various government departments and as a professor in Baroda College.
From 1905, Sri Aurobindo took to the practice of the spiritual discipline of yoga, initially as a means to enhance his capacity to bring India her independence. Subsequently, in 1910, he withdrew from politics and moved to Pondicherry to devote himself exclusively to the practice of yoga.
After gathering up in himself the essential elements of past spiritual experience, he moved on in search of a more complete realization, one which would unite the two poles of Spirit and Matter. During his forty years in Pondicherry, he worked out a new system of spiritual development which he called Integral Yoga.
The aim of this yoga is a spiritual realization which will not only liberate person’s consciousness, but will transform the basic nature and bring divinity into one’s life.
In 1926, Sri Aurobindo withdrew to the seclusion of his room, but continued to maintain contact with disciples through a large correspondence and by giving darshan four times a year.
Among his many writings of the Pondicherry period, the best known are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays of the Gita and Savitri.
Sri Aurobindo passed into spirit on December 5, 1950, leaving his teachings for those who wish to use them to learn of the path to Divinity manifested in the material world. |
