Sri Aurobindo 1872 – 1950

Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, poet, and anti-colonial revolutionary. After studies at Cambridge and early activism in the Bengali nationalist movement, he withdrew in 1910 to Pondicherry, where he developed an elaborate philosophical system known as integral yoga and lived in relative seclusion for the rest of his life. His Life Divine articulates an evolutionary metaphysics in which consciousness is steadily ascending toward what he called the supramental, while The Synthesis of Yoga prescribes the spiritual practice corresponding to that vision. His ashram at Pondicherry is now a site of pilgrimage.