In News
- The Prime Minister of India will participate in a programme commemorating Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary.
About Sri Aurobindo
- Born: in Calcutta on 15th August 1872
- Early Life:
- Primary education from England – St. Paul’s School, London, and at King’s College, Cambridge.
- Returned to India in 1893 and worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda and as a professor in Baroda College.
- Contributions to India’s Freedom Struggle:
- He also joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.
- In 1906, soon after the Partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he soon became one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement.
- He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward, in his newspaper Bande Mataram, the idea of complete independence for the country.
- Prosecuted twice for sedition and once for conspiracy, he was released each time for lack of evidence.
- Yogic Life:
- Sri Aurobindo had begun the practice of Yoga in 1905 in Baroda.
- In 1908 he had the first of several fundamental spiritual realizations.
- In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work.
- During his forty years in Pondicherry he evolved a new method of spiritual practice, which he called the Integral Yoga.
- Its aim is a spiritual realization that not only liberates man’s consciousness but also transforms his nature.
- In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
- Teachings:
- Propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.
- Literary Works:
- The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri.
- wrote a series on Bankim Chandra’s Vande Mataram
- Achievements:
- In 1943, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature and in 1950, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Died on: 5 December 1950
Source: PIB
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