Sri Aurobindo: His Life Unique

The question which has occurred .... even to many of Sri Aurobindo’s close and trusted colleagues — is this: Why did Sri Aurobindo engage in insurrectionary and revolutionary politics? He was one of the foremost leaders of the Nationalist or Extremist party....

His spirituality, which germinated in England and developed in India, was an ascent of his soul ... a fully conscious, exploratory, and heuristic ascent from level to level of experience, and from world to world of beings and forces, to the highest peaks of the transcendent Spirit.

His mind was made up. Bengal, he felt, had need of him. It was to be the field of his political work. His path lay clear before him — the path of the adoration of the Mother through suffering and sacrifice.

As many Indians, let alone foreigners, are not fully aware of the causes of the Partition of Bengal and the national forces that sprang up in reaction to it, we propose to pause upon it for a while before proceeding to take up the narrative of Sri Aurobindo’s political activities in the post-Partition period of the history of Bengal and India.

We have based our study of the political life of this “brightest star on the Indian firmament” on the fact, borne out by the unbroken tenor of his whole life and the essential unity of his vision, thought and action, that his politics was the politics of a Yogi, and not that of a mere politician.

“Once more in the land of the saints and sages will burn up the fire of the ancient Yoga....” Here we have at once a prescience and a prophecy of the colossal work ... The integral Yoga was to transform human nature into Divine Nature and human life into Divine Life.

It is an historical fact to which we can no longer turn a blind eye that among the most passionate lovers and devoted servants of Mother India in the modern times, there have been only two who were Yogis, possessing the Yogic vision and intuition — Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo.

We have proposed to ourselves a brief and rapid estimate of the aims, ideals and achievements of the three of the greatest political leaders of contemporary India, who worked with Sri Aurobindo — Lal-Bal-Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bepin Chandra Pal.

The greatest revolutions are hatched in silence by an inscrutable working of the Time-Spirit. The work of the prophet is more powerful, more creative than his words. And it is this intangible spirit with its irresistible force that moulds the destinies of mankind.