What is Aurobindo?
It is not a pithy cliche to say that Sri Aurobindo needs no introduction. The question of “who” is Aurobindo scarcely arises. But what does it mean to ask “what” is Aurobindo? Is that not syntactically incorrect?
It would be, but what is being suggested is that Aurobindo was not merely a person, not just a Bhāratīya, and not even only a ṛṣi.
Aurobindo is an Artefact, and we say this in the present tense because Aurobindo is not in history, not behind us on the arrow of time. Aurobindo is in the future, awaiting us.
He sits at the head of a distant era, his work and his teachings in anticipation of the day when at a species-level we will be ready to imbibe the full implication of his revelations.
This is not to say that the light he cast is not available to us now, or that we cannot hope to attain it in the current epoch. The truths he spoke were not new, the message in them no different to what sits at the core of the Veda. But to bring them alive in a completely different epoch, one where mantra and magic no longer existed, was to snatch something outside of spacetime and give it form in the here and now.
It was shaman magic in the purest sense of the term.
When we say that Aurobindo awaits us in the future, we speak of the vision in his teachings and the future-readiness they contained, of the long journey needed for complete realization of the super-human, the Bhārata-Soul, and the Humanity-Ascendance he laid runway for. His contributions range to the nation, the nation-soul, the civilization itself and indeed- to the individual. If we are to describe the individual contribution in a word, it would be adhyātma. But the full import needs contextualization of a few realities facing the Bhārata of 2022:
More than seven decades after independence, the degree of deracination of modern Indians only increases. The generations we raise today are more colonized than were those during the actual centuries of colonization.
Though many traditions continue strong, the presence of sanātana dharma among the pulsating mass of India grows diluted, attack vectors veiled under seemingly innocuous garbs of secularism, liberalism, globalism, free-speech.
As the cocoon of technology pervades ever-more, the future looks inevitably one of increasing individuation. Family and community will breakdown further as populations urbanize and the haunting solitude of metropolis life swallows new entrants. The real and organic life of people will be replaced by the digital, corporatized life of metaverses. Digital avatars will be more of both- what we attach to and what is deceptively illusory.
In other words, the testimony of a true seeker like Aurobindo, one who did indeed find the light, will become more and more relevant- even needed. Mokṣa in the coming epochs will be accessible only to the self-initiated, the ones who seek on their own, the svataḥ siddha, who put their ātma at head or in lead- adhi kṛt ātma, adhyātma.
Asato mā sadgamaya, tamaso mā jyotirgamaya. From untruth to truth, from darkness to light. This civilizational imperative will always be salient. But increasingly would bear an addendum- will one have to find a path oneself. The worldly truism has been around for a while- one can take the horse to the pond, one cannot force it to drink. In the new world, the horse must find the pond itself too, there is none to take it there. This is not to bring despair, or to speak with dismay.
Nor is it to say that it ought to replace or supersede that which has given continuity to our civilization- the guru śiśya paramparā. It is to argue that the future world will contain more the idle leaves strewn away from the dharma vṛkṣa than the fortunate acolytes of a gurukula. Their life experience having no conception of what a Ramakrishna-Vivekananda were, those idle leaves will at least have Aurobindo’s true torch to blinker some light home.
They will have his vision of yoga- the great union that operates at multiple levels. Like agni, as rodāsi the great connector, rises from bhūmi and joins with dyaus above, so is the Veda’s secret the kindling of an inner agni- the lamp of consciousness that rises from our moral planes and joins with the brahman beyond. This we know through Aurobindo.
They will have the great Veda of his unveiling, not an inheritance ‘superior/inferior’ to Sāyaṇācārya’s model but of greater contemporary utility. Containing within it a template for interpretation that initiates the adhi kṛt ātma into a manual for personal psychology and transcendence. Ramps to guide idle leaves drifting back home. This we have through Aurobindo.
They will continue to have demonstrated examples of how to approach the ancestral code, Sanskrit, and how to understand the mantras weaved with it into the Veda. A living reassurance that each can do it too, each can feel the shine even if not enter the light as the Master did. Reassurances of the soul will be needed more and more, and these we will have through Aurobindo.
They will have an ultimate affirmation through Aurobindo’s personal journey. Son to a father determined to make him an Englishman, with double the force was he pulled back to dharma, emerging as one of its greatest sons on his own merit. This shouts like a war cry- dharma is true. It whispers like a mother- dharma is true. It affirms. The leaves are not in random motion as they are pulled back, and this is true because we know of Aurobindo.
They will have, in effect, a guru who lives with them. Who exists still and awaits their awakening. A sage mind a śiṣya can surrender to and through this be led to enlightenment.