The Hour of God (Selections from His Writings)

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Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), a pioneer of India's freedom movement, poet, seer and the exponent of Integral Yoga, visualises the possibility of humanity fulfilling its evolutionary destiny through a process of transformation. His remarkable works like The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity present an analysis of history, both spiritual and chronological, and trace the process of the unfolding of this gnostic mystery, while his epic, Savitri, reveals to us the manifold occult realities beneath and above the life as we know it.

In compiling these pieces from the 30 volumes of Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, the principle that has guided the compiler is the need to present the Master's futuristic, spiritual and social vision. Although it is not an anthology of passages representing all the works of Sri Aurobindo, his reflections on aspects of culture and education have been included, along with a few poems, and the first Canto of Savitri. This selection from his writings is primarily intended to introduce his profound vision to the reader.

One of the foremost creative writers of modern India who writes with equal felicity in Oriya as well as in English, Manoj Das (1934) is a recipient of a number of awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award, Saraswati Samman, Padma Award as well as Honorary D.Litt. from several universities. He has also been bestowed with the country's higest honour for creative writing, the Fellowship of the Sahitya Akademi. He lives in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, and teaches at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.

Every life-sketch is an account of external events in which the subject participated or which were caused by the subject. If the subject lived a meaningful and conscious inner life, it might or might not be reflected on the recorded events of his life.

But there could be some who lived an inner life too profound to be entirely reflected on the events that centered on them or even on their own deeds. That is why there is nothing surprising in what Sri Aurobindo told a scholar who proposed to write his biography- that no one could write about his life because it had not been on the surface for men to see.

Yet an absorbing volume could be written (in fact volumes have since been written) on the first forty-seven years of his life, strictly on the basis of external events, without going into the later phase of his life, his life as the Mahayogi.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on the 15th of August 1872, the third child of Dr. K.D. Ghose and Swarnalata Devi. Dr. Ghose had received from the West not only a post-graduate medical degree, but also an uncompromising faith in the Western - and the English in particular - values of life. Swarnalata Devi's father, Rajnarayan Bose, referred to as a Rishi and described by some as "the Grandfather of Indian Nationalism", had no chance to create any impact on this grandson of his, later to be hailed as "the Prophet of Indian Nationalism", for the child, at the age of five, was sent to Loretto Convent at Darjeeling designed for European children.

Two years later, in 1879, Sri Aurobindo's parents led him and his two elder brothers to England and left them at Manchester, under the care of a Latin scholar, Mr. Drewett.

In 1884 the brothers were shifted to London and Sri Aurobindo entered St. Paul's School. In 1890 he was admitted as a Probationer for the Indian Civil Service and also, on a scholarship, to the King's College, Cambridge. In 1892 he passed the first part of the classical Tripos in the first class as well as the I.C.S. Examinations. But he did not present himself for the riding test even after he was given a second opportunity and thereby became disqualified for the Service.

Sri Aurobindo's well-wishers, who did not know that Sri Aurobindo himself had manoeuvred his own disqualification, were naturally aghast. G.W. Prothero, a senior Fellow of King's College, wrote to James Cotton (brother of Sir Henry Cotton):

"He performed his part of the bargain as regards the college most honourably and took a high place in the first class of the classical Tripos, part one, at the end of the second year of his residence. He also obtained certain college prizes, showing command of English and literary ability. That a man should have been able to do this (which alone is quite enough for most under-graduates) and at the same time to keep up his I.C.S. work, proves very unusual industry and capacity. Besides his classical scholarship he possessed a knowledge of English literature far beyond the average of under-graduates, and wrote much better English than most young Englishmen." (20 November 1892)

Their efforts at getting Aurobindo into the service in spite of his disqualification would have succeeded but for the intelligence reports about the young Aurobindo's participation in forming a secret society, "Lotus and Dagger", in London, with India's independence as its goal and speaking at the Indian Majlis at Cambridge against the British rule in India.

James Cotton introduced Sri Aurobindo to the Gaekwad of Baroda, Maharaja Sayaji Rao, who was on a visit to London. The Maharaja recruited Sri Aurobindo to his government.

Sri Aurobindo reached Bombay in February 1893. It was a quiet home-coming, preceded by a tragedy unknown to him. The ship he was to sail by sank off the coast of Lisbon. His father, Dr. Ghose, had no knowledge of his son having changed his plan and boarding another ship. The news of the mishap resulted in Dr. Ghose getting a heart-attack and dying a few days later.

For Sri Aurobindo, however, touching India after an absence of fourteen years marked the beginning of a new phase of life.

Since he set foot on the Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, he began to have spiritual experiences, but these were not divorced from this world but had an inner and infinite bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material Space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time he found himself entering Supraphysical worlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane.

At Baroda, Sri Aurobindo's life began to flow in at least three different streams simultaneously. While serving in a few departments of the secretariat and as Professor of English and French at the Maharaja's College, he began delving deep into the ancient Indian lore, mastering Sanskrit and Bengali and learning several other Indian languages. He translated Kalidasa and Bhartrihari into English and continued with his creative-writing which had begun in England.

But very few in those days knew that he had become the source of inspiration for some dedicated groups of patriots spread over different parts of India. Through his trusted lieutenants including his younger brother Barindra, he tried to channelise their zeal along a distinct programme. He observed that the Indian National Congress of those days was too passive to lead the country forward in any remarkable way. He wrote, under a pseudonym, in the Indu Prakash of Bombay:

"I say of the Congress, then, this, - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts not the right sort of men to be leaders - in brief we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed."

In 1901, on a visit to Calcutta, he married Mrinalini Devi, daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose. Except for a short stay at Baroda and another at Calcutta, she had had no opportunity to live with him. (She expired while plans were afoot for her coming over to Pondicherry in 1918.) One of Sri Aurobindo's letters to her which became famous because the prosecution presented it in the court to substantiate its case against him during the Alipore trial, gives us unerring glimpses of his mind at this period (1905):

" .... You have, perhaps, by now discovered that the one with whose fate yours is linked is a very strange kind of person. Mine is not the mental outlook, the aim of life, and the domain of action which the generality of people in this country have at present. It is quite different in all respects, it is uncommon. Perhaps, you know by what name the generality of people call extraordinary ideas, uncommon actions, extraordinary high aspirations. They level all these things as madness, but if the mad man succeeds in the field of action then instead of calling him a lunatic they call him a great man, a man of genius. But how many succeed in their efforts? Out of a thousand persons only ten are extraordinary, and out of these ten one succeeds. In my field of action success is out of the question; I have not been able to enter into it fully; so people will consider me a mad man; it is very unfortunate for a woman to be married to a mad man; for, all the hopes of women are confined to happiness and sorrow of the family. A mad man would not bring happiness to his wife - he would only inflict suffering....

I have three mad nesses. Firstly, it is my firm faith that whatever virtue, talent, higher education and knowledge and wealth which God has given me belongs to Him. I have the right to spend only as much as is needed for the maintenance of the family and on what is absolutely necessary. Whatever remains should be returned to the Divine. If I spend all of it on myself, for personal comfort, for enjoyment, then I am a thief. According to Hindu Scriptures one who accepts money from the Divine and does not return it to Him is a thief. Till now I have been giving only a small fraction of my money to God and have been spending nine-tenths of it for my personal happiness - thus have I settled the account and have remained immersed in worldly happiness. Half of the life has already been wasted; even an animal feels gratified in feeding itself and its family....

I have no regrets for the money that I gave to Sarojini or to Usha, because assisting others is Dharma, to protect those who depend on you is a great Dharma, but the account is not settled if one gives only to one's brothers and sisters. In these hard days, the whole country is like a dependant at our doors, I have thirty crores of brothers and sisters in this country - many of them die of starvation, most of them are weakened by suffering and troubles and are somehow dragging on their existence. They must be helped. What do you say, will you be my wife sharing this Dharma with me? We will eat and dress like ordinary people and buy what is really essential, and give the rest to the Divine. That is what I would do. If you agree to it, and accept the principle of sacrifice then my resolution can be fulfilled. You were complaining that you have made no progress. This is a path to progress that I point out to you. Would you like to take that path?

The second folly has recently taken hold of me. It is this: by whatever means, I must get the direct realisation of the Lord. The religion of today consists in repeating the name of God every now and then, in praying to Him in the presence of everybody and in showing to people how religious one is; I do not want it. If the Divine is there, then there must be a way of experiencing His existence, of realising His presence; however hard the path, I have taken a firm resolution to follow it. Hindu Dharma asserts that the path is to be found in one's own self, in one's mind. The rule that enables one to follow the path is also given to me; I have begun to observe all the rules and within a month I have been able to ascertain that the words of the Hindu Dharma are not false, I have had the experience of all the signs that have been mentioned by it. I would like to take you also along that path; you would not be able to keep up with me as you have not yet had the knowledge, but there is nothing to prevent your following me. Anybody can reach perfection by following the path. But it depends upon one's choice to enter the path. Nobody can force you to enter it. If you are willing, I will write more about this subject.

The third folly is this: whereas others regard the country as an inert object, and know it as the plains, the fields, the forests, the mountains and rivers, I look upon my country as the mother, I worship her and adore her as the mother. What would a son do when a demon sitting on the breast of his mother is drinking her blood? Would he sit down content to take his meals, and go on enjoying himself in the company of his wife and children, or would he, rather, run to the rescue of his mother? I know I have the strength to uplift this fallen race; it is not physical strength, I am not going to fight with the sword or with the gun, but with the power of knowledge. The power of the warrior is not the only kind of force, there is also the power of the Brahman which is founded on knowledge. This is not a new feeling within me, it is not of a recent origin, I was born with it, it is in my very marrow, God sent me to the earth to accomplish this great mission. At the age of fourteen the seed of it had begun to sprout and at eighteen it had been firmly rooted and become unshakable." (Translated from Bengali by an early biographer.)

That was the time when Curzon's move to partition Bengal inspired a determined protest from all nationalists. "Never had India seen such popular demonstration," wrote Valentine Chirol, the correspondent of The Times of London.

At the request of friends who founded the National Council of Education in Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo came over to Calcutta in 1906 to head a college that would be a bold alternative to the system of clerk-making education imposed on India by its colonial masters. Almost simultaneously Bipin Chandra Pal, a leading public figure of the time, launched a newspaper, Bande Mataram, and invited Sri Aurobindo to edit it. Sri Aurobindo acceded to the request and in no time the newspaper, "full of leading and special articles written in English with brilliance and pungency not hitherto attained in the 'Indian Press", as S. K. Ratcliffe, then the editor of The Statesman, recollected later, became "the most effective voice of what we then called nationalist extremism".