Product Description

Sri Aurobindo stands out as one of the most profound and profoundly relevant of contemporary Asian spiritual masters speaking to the West. His vision transcends the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of India and the West, and his discipline brings the yogas of the Gita to the task of world transformation. His collaborator, The Mother, offers a blueprint for the utopian community Auroville and sage advice on the ideal of a spiritually based approach to education.

Robert McDermott’s new afterword recounts the increased significance of Aurobindo’s message for the West, particularly for America, since the book was first published in 1973.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #241654 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
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

About the Author
Robert McDermott, Ph.D., is president emeritus and professor of philosophy and religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco). He was formerly chair of the department of philosophy at Baruch College, CUNY, and secretary of the American Academy of Religion. While a senior Fulbright lecturer at the Open University (UK), he co-produced a film on Sri Aurobindo: Avatar—Concept and Example (1976). His writings include Radhakrishnan (Dutton, 1970), The Essential Steiner (Harper, 1984), The Essential Aurobindo (Lindisfarne, 1987) and the Introduction to The Works of William James: Essays on Psychical Research (Harvard University Press, 1986).

Customer Reviews

Body, mind and spirit evolve.
"The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice," Sri Aurobindo writes. "This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence" (pp. 55-6). Ken Wilber calls Aurobindo (1872-1950) a founder of integral spirituality and practice, and recognizes that "Aurobindo has much to teach us" about the integration of body, mind, soul and Spirit.

This collection of "essential" writings will appeal to anyone interested in integral and evolutionary spirituality. Aurobindo teaches us that all beings are united in a reality of being and consciousness--"a self of all things, one and eternal" (p. 39)--beyond the appearances of the universe. He believes liberation is possible through the evolution of spiritual and supramental consciousness (p. 41). "There is therefore no reason to put a limit to evolutionary possibility by taking our present organisation or status of existence as final," he writes. "The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out superman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature" (p. 54). Aurobindo writes, "man is not a vegetable nor an animal; he is a spiritual and a thinking being who is here to set to shape and use the animal mould for higher purposes, by higher motives, with a divine instrumentation" (p. 176).

Because "the hour of God" is close at hand, Aurobindo recommends cleansing the "soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it" (p. 191). "Make the work you have to do here your means of inner spiritual rebirth, the divine birth, and having become divine, do still divine works as an instrument of the Divine for the leading of the peoples" (p. 124).

For those who enjoy reading Ken Wilber's books, and for those interested in living life with more spirit, this fascinating introduction to Aurobindo should not be missed. And for those readers who want to explore Aurobindo's ideas further, I recommend Dalal's A GREATER PSYCHOLOGY (2000) and Wilber's INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY (2000).

G. Merritt