Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Sri Aurobindo goes beyond the Gita

Sri Aurobindo stressed that the Mahabharata and the Gita contain large scale interpolations. Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita is more famous for his response to other philosophical paths than a literal interpretation of the text. Moreover, care should be taken not to treat it as representative of Sri Aurobindo’s overall philosophy. [TNM55]

Essays on the Gita is, in fact, among the bulk of Arya writings that Sri Aurobindo undertook after the arrival of The Mother in India on March 29, 1914. But his writings took a decisive turn after the second and final arrival of The Mother on April 24, 1920. His philosophy of Yoga from 1926 onwards became surrender-to-The-Mother-centric oriented to the imperative of Supramental Evolution. They insisted on leaving behind the past dawns in order to be ready for the noons of the future. Yoga of the Cells for perfection of the body also forms their most ambitious project for future humanity and they desist from enforcing any universal standard of ethics. These, in nutshell, can be said the divergences introduced by Sri Aurobindo into the Indian tradition. [TNM55]

The elevating Vedic connotations Sri Aurobindo attributes to the term Arya is perhaps more appropriate here than what Rasika denotes especially when the task of philosophy is not merely an aesthetic immersion but prodding on the path of innovation and evolution. [TNM55]

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