Life
8.1872 born in Calcutta .

1879 taken with his two elder brothers to England for education

1884 joined St. Paul's School in London

1890 went with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge./ In the same year
he passed the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of
probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified

1893 to 1905 hired in the Baroda Service and left England working first in the Revenue Department and in secretariat work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally as Vice-Principal in the Baroda College..
Much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time and his future concepts were developed. In England he had received, according to his father's instructions, an entirely western education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages and assimilated the spirit of Indian past and present civilization, A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda.

1904 Sri Aurobindo begins his practice of Yoga

1905 –1906 The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda and went to Calcutta.

1902 – 1910 The political actions of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with others the beginnings of the Swadeshi movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action

1906 He joined the Congress an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly.
Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging program. He encouraged Tilak, the popular Maratha leader to head the party and to attack the then dominant Moderate Reformist or Liberal oligarchy of veteran politicians and to capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between. Moderates and Nationalists which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.
The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organization of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Govern ment and wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance.

1907 –1908 He created a newspaper, which circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India for good. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for a bold program.
Up till now an organizer and writer, he was obliged by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces.

1908 jailed

1909 After a detention of one year he came out in May 1909 to find the party broken, its leaders scattered and the party itself dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action.
His detention he spent in practice of Yoga. So his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration and thus he withdraw from the political field

1910 Beginning April he sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin.
Due to his new spiritual engagement he cut off connection with politics and refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana.

1914 After four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga.
Other writings referred to the spirit and significance of Indian civilization and culture.

1921 In this year Arya ceased publication.
Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and more arrived to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance. This was the start of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, less created than grown around him as its centre.

5.12.1950 Sri Aurobindo leaves his body

Until 11.1973 The Mother carries on his work

Contribution to Hindu philosophy
One of Aurobindo's main philosophical achievements was to introduce the concept of evolution into Vedantic thought. Samkhya philosophy had already tried it centuries earlier, but Aurobindo rejected the materialistic tendencies of Darwinism and Samkhya, and proposed an evolution of spirit rather than matter.
He solved the longstanding problem of the linkage between the ineffable Brahman and the world of multiplicity by positing a transitional period between the two, which he called The Super mind. The supermind is the active principle present in the transcendent Satchidananda; a unitary mind of which our individual minds and bodies are minuscule subdivisions.
His vision of cosmic and human evolution contains the idea, that mankind is not the last rung in the evolutionary scale, but can evolve spiritually beyond moving out of an essential Ignorance born of creation, to a future state of Supramental existence. This would be a Divine Life on Earth characterised by knowledge, truth, substance and energy of supramental consciousness.
In his cosmology he explains the cosmos as coming through the Absolute dividing into Existence, Consciousness-Force a force conscious of its existence; and Delight in the awareness of Its existence. This extended to a fourth aspect, the Supramental power that enabled the Consciousness Force to divide into an essential energy at rest. This is the plane of Life.
All existence is form of the original Force/Energy.

Teaching
Aurobindo starts from old the teachings, that behind the appearances of the universe lays the Reality of a Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that Spirit, but divided by a separation of consciousness which makes them unable to recognize their true Self. It is possible to remove this veil of separated consciousness and become aware of the true divine Self.

Sri Aurobindo's teaches that this Self of all things is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself. Consciousness appears and once appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards an ever growing perfection.. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second.
But evolution goes further and wants to release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supra mental. From there it goes to the development of Super mind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it becomes possible for life to manifest perfection.

In reaching his ultimate potential, Man not only serves the evolutionary goals of the Individual, but also of the Universe, as well as the Transcendent Reality. The universe is thus seen as evolving through man to Its own spiritual fulfillment.

Evolution by Nature is working without a conscious will in plant and animal life, but in man Nature becomes able to evolve by a conscious will. It can not be done by the mental will in man alone as the mind rises only to a certain point and after that it can only move in a circle. A conversion has to be made by which mind has to change into the higher principle. This method is to be found through the discipline and practice of Yoga.

In the past yoga has been attempted by drawing away from the world and disappearing into the height of the Spirit (bottom up). Sri Aurobindo teaches that the other way is also possible. A descent of the higher principle is possible which will release the spiritual Self into the world and replace the mind's ignorance or very limited knowledge by a supramental Truth Consciousness This will make it possible for the human being to find him self and grow out of his still animal humanity into a divine being. The psychological discipline of Yoga can be used to that end by opening all the parts of the being to a conversion or transformation through the descent and working of the higher still concealed supramental principle.

Many steps have to be taken by the seeker before the supramental descent is possible. Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life and body. But he still has to awake to his inner being with greater possibilities. It is only a very restricted influence from this inner being that he receives now and that pushes him to a constant pursuit of a greater beauty, harmony, power and knowledge.
Life divides into Nature and Soul. Normally life evolves through the slow difficult path of Nature. Life/Nature evolves through contradictory opposites to create ever-greater complexities and higher harmonies. From the perspective of higher consciousness these are seen as complementary, necessary opposites.When man rises in consciousness, he enables life to evolve through Soul, i.e. without division and duality. When man discovers his own soul, Soul evolution is enabled for the earth

Aurobindo also subscribed to the idea that all of life is an adventure of consciousness, and that there are no exact fixed approaches for a particular individual. Each person must start from where he is at, and move upward from there, through the adventure of self-discovery.
Over time the individual moves upward in his consciousness, centering more at the mental and then the spiritually oriented levels of mind, even as he moves inward to the soul. The more he moves inward, the further upward he moves, and the more each of the existing planes in the vertical scale (physical, vital, mental) are perfected.
Eventually Man sheds the instrument of mind, replacing it with supermind. Beyond that is the replacement of our current physical attributes e.g. breathing, digestion, blood circulation, skeletal system, human form, etc.with more subtler forms of substance of the body.
The Mother's preoccupation was with this stage of the supramental evolution of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. A new species of supramentalized being replacing the current human functioning is the ultimate state of the supramental yoga.
As a result of these processes, there emerge supramentalized individuals who are the forerunners of an emerging Divine Life on earth, in which all of life moves to its highest spiritual and supramental status.

On this way an outward asceticism is not essential, but the conquest of desire and attachment as well as the control over the body are indispensable. A combination of work is needed. This includes the way of knowledge (experience) through the mind's discernment between Reality and appearance, the heart's way of devotion, love and surrender and the way of turning the will away from motives of self-interest to the Truth and the service of a greater Reality than the ego.

n that way the inspiration of the Master is as necessary as in the difficult stages his control and presence, for it would be impossible otherwise to go through it without much stumbling and error The Master is one who has risen to a higher consciousness and being. He not only helps by his teaching and by his influence and example but by a power to communicate his own experience to others.

Sri Aurobindo's target is not to develop any one religion or to amalgamate the older religions for any of these would lead away from his central purpose. The one aim of his Yoga is an inner self-development by which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental one, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature.

Philosophical and spiritual writings
In 1914 after four years of concentrated yoga at Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo launched Arya a monthly review. For the next six and a half years his most important writings appeared there in serialised form. These writings included “The Life Divine”, “The Synthesis of Yoga”,”Essays on the Gita” and many others. Sri Aurobindo revised some of these works before they were published in book form.
After this prolific output, Sri Aurobindo's only literary works of importance was his epic poem Savitri, which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. However, following his retirement from public life in 1926, he maintained a voluminous correspondence with his disciples. Some of these letters were later published in three volumes as “Letters on Yoga”.
Although Sri Aurobindo wrote mostly in English, his major works were later translated into various languages, including the Indian languages Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati, Marathi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, and Russian.

The Mother
His closest collaborator in his yoga, Mirra Richard, became known as The Mother. She was born in Paris to Turkish and Egyptian parents and came to Pondicherry in March 1914 finally settling there in 1920. Sri Aurobindo considered her his equal and left it to her to plan, run and build the growing ashram. After November 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she supervised the organization of the ashram and later institutes like Auroville, the international township near the town of Pondicherry. She became the leader of the community after Sri Aurobindo passed away. She is revered by followers of Sri Aurobindo as “The Mother”.

Ashram of the Aurobindo
The Ashram is founded by the Mother. It is situated at . Pondicherry,of India.
The Ashram main building was the abode of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother during most of their stay in Pondicherry. In the inner courtyard is the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Today Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a throbbing centre of more than 1,500 spiritual seekers from every part of the world. All religion of India , and many other countries of Asia , Europe and America are represented there. Everyone can come there , there is no discrimination of sex, creed, nationality, and caste. All are equal.Today in Ashram Members practiced the integral yoga .(Aurobindo's Yoga)
It is centered around the practice of a discipline for the attainment of the goal common to all yogas and religions - Spirit, Self, God, divinity, perfection.
There is not any fixed method of Yoga but is an inner practice conducted under the spiritual guidance and influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Members should follow three rules – no smoking, drinking or drug- taking. no sex, and no politics. These prohibitions, the only regulations the Ashram imposes on its members, are meant to exclude activities contrary to the right practice of yoga by persons who have consecrated their lives to it.
The way of yoga practised at the Ashram is "a living thing, not a mental principle or a set method to be stuck to against all necessary variations".
The sole object of the ashram is liberation from worldly existence (moksha) ,there is a tendency for members to withdraw from outward life - to become sannyasis or ascetics.

According to Aurobindo's teaching , members of the Ashram are not sanyasis; [for] it is not moksha that is the sole aim of the yoga. Liberation is necessary; but it is an inner freedom and equanimity and not an outward renunciation that is required.

Every member is expected to do some work in the Ashram as a part of this spiritual preparation.

Aurobindo's influence
Sri Aurobindo comes at a very crucial moment in the history of thought when Marxist materialism, Nietzschean nihilism and Freudian vitalism were popular and fashionable. Besides, phenomenology and existentialism had their run along-side him. On the whole, along with the new-fangled science and Theosophy, these new philosophical formulations fermented enough confusion 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 contemporarity.
Thus, 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 successfully overarchs cultural as well as religious chasms.
Sri Aurobindo's ideas about the further evolution of human capabilities influenced the thinking of Michael Murphy, who studied at Aurobindo's Ashram in India and indirectly, the human potential movement, through Murphy's writings. The American philosopher Ken Wilber, although deeply influenced by Aurobindo, has tried to reduce the reliance on metaphysics in Aurobindo's thought. Wilber's interpretation has been strongly criticised by Rod Hemsell. New Age writer Andrew Harvey also looks to Aurobindo as a major inspiration. Cultural historian William Irwin Thompson is also heavily influenced by Aurobindo and the Mother.