Sri Aurobindo’s views on Indian Spirituality and Religion

Name: Nikunj Bhatti

Email id: nikunjbhatti332@gimail.com

Roll no: 19

Study: M.A semester-1

Year: 2014

Submitted to: Department of English

Topic: Sri Aurobindo’s view on Indian  

            Spirituality and Religion

Ø Introduction:

          Sri Aurobindo is a versatile spiritual genius, who is not only a Master-Yogi with profound spiritual realization but also a great scholar and thinker who wrote extensively on various topics ranging from politics to Yoga. His writing shine with a penetrating spiritual insight which brings out the deeper, psychological and spiritual dimension of the human life.

Robert Johnson notes about Sri Aurobindo.

“Sri Aurobindo is one of the most important and influential spiritual figures of our time, whose work deserves to be better known.”

Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, scholar, poet, essayist, mystic, philosopher, yogi and guru. After a short political career in which he became one of leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, Sri Aurobindo turned to the development and practice of a new spiritual path. 

Now let’s have see Sri Aurobindo’s work…

·        The Gita

·        Savitri

·        Life Divine

·        The Renaissance in India

·        India’s Rebirth

·        Urvasie

·        Love and Death

·        The Human Cycle

          According to K.R.S. Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo’s a master of prose, art, dramatist and poet of great power and versatility. He is the one uncontestable outstanding figure in Indo-Anglian literature. Let’s have discussed the essay “The Renaissance in India”. 

But before we discuss what is spirituality and religion.

Ø Spirituality

Spirituality refers to a broad set of principal that transcend all religions. Spirituality is about the relationship between us and something larger. That something can be the good of the community or the people who are served by your agency or school or with energies greater than us with all that is. It is a stance of harmlessness toward all living being and an understanding of their mutual interdependence.

Ø Religion

          Religious beliefs “formed within the context of practices and rituals shared by a group to provide a framework for connectedness to God. Now let’s have discuss essay “The Renaissance in India” on Sri Aurobindo’s view on Indian spirituality and religion.

v The Renaissance in India

          In essay “The Renaissance in India” Sri Aurobindo’s view India is one of the greatest of the world's civilizations because of its high spiritual aim and the effective manner in which it has impressed this aim on the forms and rhythms of its life.

This essay can be divided in to four parts

Ø Spirituality

Ø Education

Ø Culture

Ø Religion

          Sri Aurobindo’s view on Indian civilization and culture, Indian spirituality, religion, art, literature, and polity.

v Sri Aurobindo’s view on Spirituality and Religion

          In an essay The Renaissance in India Sri Aurobindo’s presents us with a masterly view of Indian’s culture, Spirituality, Religion. He explains the India’s Spirituality and Religion, that which enabled her to resist so many attempts at crushing India’s culture.

“Spirituality is the master key of the Indian main. The sense of infinity is native to be….”

         

Spirituality is a deference of Indian civilization and culture, with essay on Indian spirituality, religion, art, literature, and polity.

"A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this culture"

He wrote its core of thought, its ruling passion. Not only did it make spirituality the highest aim of life, but it even tried to turn the whole of life towards spirituality.

Indian spirituality saw the power of human being’s capacity much before the western mind could think of. She knew that visible was always surrounded by invisible, finite by infinite. Human can have power that one can ever believe, that is to transcend the human limitation.

The spiritual power of India wasn’t grown out of void but her psychic tendency, her creativeness, her vitality, her yoga, her religion and so on. We see the mountaintops. They aren’t created without base, in the dream under the cloud. The same way there is infinite strength of India builds up the powerful spirituality that enchants the world since the time unknown.

Sri Aurobindo’s held that an aggressive defiance of India culture was necessary to counter the invasion of the predominantly materialistic modern Western culture Western scholars were all gung ho about it and Indians simply imitated them and shouted the same. Indians simply accepted that and expressed the same voice. However, they forgot that in other fields like philosophy, science, technology, logic we also made immense progress. However, we failed to show that side of India. It was not the case that west dominated singlehandedly in such subjects; and India in religion and spirituality.

The greatness of India was such that we made multi-faceted progress that included subjects other than spirituality. But due to misconception of Westerners and our ignorance about our own hidden treasure, the error continued. More than that, India imitated and followed the Westerners blindly in all but religion. As a result, there was no significant contribution by them. Then they came to know about their rich past. Sri Aurobindo here cites an example of Germany.

Ø Spirituality: The power of human being

          Indian spirituality saw the power of human being capacity much before the western mind could think of power that one can ever believe, that is to transcend the human limitation.

          Sri Aurobindo’s to the discussion on the Indian renaissance is, as is often the case with his work, in what is yet to be realized. Sri Aurobindo’s says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself. The Renaissance in India has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity. This fusion will be instrumental in spiritualizing the world and in bringing about called a global transformation.

          Sri Aurobindo’s essay “The Renaissance in India”,

“The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendor, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work….”

The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge is the seemed. An original dealing with modern problem in the light of India spirit and the endeavor to formulate a great synthesis of a spirituality society.

Sri Aurobindo offers an overview of some of the movement and figures of the Renaissance. He stresses that the best course of himself, recovering her native genius which is a reassertion of its ancient spiritual ideal. It only in,

“The Knowledge and conscious application of the ideal.”

Sri Aurobindo says that Indian had the spirituality to reach to the extreme. Whether its spirituality or creativity. India’s spiritual progress was due to its excess in exuberance and energy. The India will captain the world in terms of knowledge of science and literature. It is Indian founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and the eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilization. Whether it is spirituality or intellectual creativity. India has tried to achieve its summit, where the knowledge end and India stands on the peak to observe the whole truth or the spirit. Sri Aurobindo says that,

“When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it followed that to the height of possible vision. When, too, it indulged in materialistic atheism it formulated it straight out, boldly and nakedly, without the least concession to idealism or ethicism.”

Indian spirituality was that it never called the life on earth as illusion Maya and ignored it. For that, only spirituality shouldn’t be given all attention. Other facets of culture demanded equal importance. Says Aurobindo,

“Indian Renaissance means the revival not only of spirituality but also of that past of curiosity, art, literature etc.”

In future also, the spirituality will remain the dominant aspect but there will be progress in literature and poetry, science and art. Renaissance would enter the India and make the revival possible.

v To sum up

          In short we may say that The Renaissance has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian Spirituality, Modernity, and about religion. 

According to one scholar about Sri Aurobindo that,

"Aurobindo treatises are among the most important works of our time in philosophy, ethics and humanities. Sri Aurobindo himself (is) one of the greatest living sages of our time, and a most eminent moral leader.”