Sri Aurobindo's thought successfully overarches cultural as well as religious chasms

Sri Aurobindo's influence
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Sri Aurobindo lived at a key moment in the history of thought when Marxist materialism, Nietzschean individualism and Freudian vitalism were popular and fashionable. Phenomenology and existentialism developed alongside him. On the whole, along with modern science and Theosophy, these new philosophical formulations fermented among the elite. In a way, the disparate positions arrived at in Western thought find their synthesis in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. By aligning them with the ancient Indian wisdom, he comes up with an integral vision that breathes universality as well as contemporaneity.

S. K. Maitra and Haridas Chaudhuri were among the first academicians or intellectuals, to discern the import of Sri Aurobindo's integral philosophy. Later, D. P. Chattopadhyaya wrote a seminal treatise juxtaposing Sri Aurobindo and Marx to examine their utopian prophecies. Thus, say the scholars, Kant's sublime, Hegel's absolute, Schopenhauer's will, Kierkegaard's passion, Marx's matter, Darwin's evolution, Nietzsche's overman, Bergson's élan vital, all find their due representation in Sri Aurobindo's grand exposition. His thought, in this view, successfully overarches cultural as well as religious chasms.