title: The Essential Aurobindo: Writings of Sri Aurobindo
author: Robert A. McDermott
description: Before Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghose tested the British colony with his courageous writings on independence and his extraordinary energy. A series of mystical experiences, however, turned Ghose into Sri Aurobindo, India's greatest modern writer on spiritualism. <i>The Essential Aurobindo</i> is a collection of this yogi's most important writings. Raised with a British education from the age of 5 and schooled at Cambridge, Aurobindo was thoroughly versed in Western philosophy and strove to integrate the profound ideas of East and West. His "integral yoga" has been influential among writers like Ken Wilber in the American human-potential movement, in which the spiritual side of the human being is considered the most important element of cultivation. According to Aurobindo, after the origin of life from matter, and mind from life, there must be a further, conscious evolution to a spiritual plane. Included in <i>The Essential Aurobindo</i> are writings of the Mother, Aurobindo's successor, who established an ongoing and influential collective based on the thoughts of Aurobindo. Culled from the nearly 30 volumes of Aurobindo's lifetime work, the pieces in <i>The Essential Aurobindo</i> are truly essential to an understanding of this vital and unique thinker. <i>--Brian Bruya</i>
zlib_text: THE ESSENTIAL
  AUROBINDO
  Sii Aurobindo
  • Edited by Robert Mc I)eniiott
  SCHOCKEN BOOKS
  
  THE ESSENTIAL
  AUROBINDO
  
  THE ESSENTIAL
  AUROBINDO
  Edited by
  Robert A. McDermott
  SCHOCKEN BOOKS
  • NEW YORK
  
  Copyright © 1973 by Schocken Books Inc.
  Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 73-81341
  Selections from the works of Sri Aurobindo are reprinted
  by permission of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
  Manufactured in the United States of America
  10987654379 808182
  
  CONTENTS
  Acknowledgments
  vii
  Preface
  IX
  INTRODUCTORY
  Editor's Introduction: Vision of
  a Transformed World
  3
  The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo, by Sri Aurobindo
  29
  Chronology of Sri Aurobindo's Life
  32
  PART ONE: MAN IN EVOLUTION
  Introduction
  37
  The Destiny of Man
  41
  The Human Aspiration
  41
  Man in the Universe
  46
  Man A Transitional Being
  55
  Stages of Evolution
  61
  Involution and Evolution
  61
  The Sevenfold Chord of Being
  74
  Evolution and Rebirth
  83
  The Philosophy of Rebirth
  83
  PART TWO: INTEGRAL YOGA
  Introduction
  109
  OntheGita
  113
  The Gist of the Karmayoga
  11