Who was Sri Aurobindo?

By Vinanti Sarkar Hinduism Today September 1993

It was in February, 1982, that I was taken to Pondicherry by my Bombay host family who were avid devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Unfortunately, though I grew up in a highly intellectual Bengali family--my aunts were principals of university colleges and my uncles worked as official administrators--strangely, no one ever spoke of Sri Aurobindo during my youth. This was not my first trip to the seaside resort of Pondicherry, home of the momentous "great experiment," Auroville.

Earlier in 1973, I had been there working on a documentary film on "Rural Women of India" for the International Womens' Year 1975. That first visit was incredible. From a distance, I saw the Mother giving "darshan" to her followers. But I was so caught up in the worldly fascination of film-making, that the experience did not have a strong significance on me.

On this second trip, 1982, I became a devotee, fascinated by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and by Auroville itself. It was the most arresting part of my four months' journey in India in search of a spiritual guru. This quest took me to some of the greatest gurus and philosophers in India from Sai Baba to Krishnamurthy. I visited their ashrams, listened to their teachings and talked with their disciples, trying to find humility and peace for the soul.

On the train to Pondicherry, I wondered who was Sri Aurobindo? When I was growing up in Delhi, I remembered overhearing whispers, "Wasn't he the religious Bengali man in Pondicherry living with that French woman?" That's what North Indians thought. My host, Lalbhai Mehta, enlightened me that Sri Aurobindo was a scholar, a poet, a political leader, a journalist, a philosopher, a dramatist, an Indologist, a literary critic, a yogi, a translater and an original interpreter of the Vedas, Upanishads and Gita. Though some even feel he was an avatar of Krishna, everyone at least agrees he was one of India's greatest spiritual geniuses. Lalbhai handed me some books of his to read. I could see his joy in living as a disciple.