Born Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose and later called Aravinda Ghosh

He developed an evolutionary spiritual philosophy, combining Indian Vedantic thought and modern western evolutionary philosphy. Wrote about the nature of creation, matter, life, energy, evolution, the future of humanity, social development, development of nations, literature, and other topics. Spent his life bringing down a Force he called the Supramental Truth Consciounsess, which he believed was the key to the evolution of humanity, and life on earth.

Table of contents

1 Early nationalist experiences 2 Final conversion 3 The Mother 4 His evolutionary philosophy 5 His contribution to Indian philosophy 6 Quote 7 HIS LIFE IN DEPTH 8 External links

Early nationalist experiences

In his youth he was the editor of a Bengali newspaper Vande Mataram (spelt and pronounced as Bande Mataram in Bengali language) sympathetic with the Indian nationalism movement. He became involved with the independence movement and in 1907 attended a convention of Indian nationalists where he was seen as the new leader of the movement. But his life was beginning to take a new direction. In Baroda he met a Maharashtrian yogi called Vishnu Bhaskar Lele who convinced him to explore the ancient practices of yoga.

It was at this point that Rabindranath Tagore paid him a visit and wrote the now famous lines:

Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my country's friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul....The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God Hath come...Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee.

His final conversion from from an angry nationalist into a profound mystic occurred while incarcerated for a year in the Alipur jail in Kolkata in the province of Bengal. While incarcerated was inspired by his meditating on the Bhagavad Gita. He developed the idea of passive resistance — often attributed to Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi — and it is from him that Gandhi obtained the inspiration to apply this technique of Satyagraha that helped lead India to independence from the British Empire.

The trial for which he was incarcerated was one of the important trials in Indian nationalism movement. There were 49 accused and 206 witnesses. 400 documents were filed and 5000 exhibits were produced including bombs, revolvers and acid. The English judge, C.B. Beechcroft, had been a student with Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge. The Chief Prosecutor Eardley Norton displayed a loaded revolver on his briefcase during the trial. The case for Sri Aurobindo was taken up by C.R. Das. The trial lasted for one full year. Aurobindo was acquitted.

Afterwards Aurobindo started two new weeklies: the Karmayogin in English and the Dharma in Bengali. However, it appeared that the British government would not tolerate his nationalist program as Lord Minto wrote about him: I can only repeat that he is the most dangerous man we have to reckon with.

Sought again by the Indian police he was guided to the French settlements and on April 4, 1910 he finally found refuge with other nationalists in the French colony of Pondicherry. He established his ashram there and did most of his writing and teaching from Pondicherry until 1950.

The Mother

His closest disciple, Mirra Richard, was known as The Mother (February 21, 1878 - November 17, 1973). She was born in Paris to Turkish and Egyptian parents and came to his ashram on March 29, 1914 visiting Pondicherry several times and finally settling there in 1920. After November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she supervised the organization of his ashram and institutes. She became the leader of the community after Sri Aurobindo passed away; she is now revered by followers of Sri Aurobindo as well.

The Mother's attempts to bring the new consciousness into life and her personal effort of physical transformation of her own body are described in the 13-volume series of books known as The Agenda.

His evolutionary philosophy

In his voluminous writings Sri Aurobindo described (amongst other things) the nature, process, and purpose of creation, and life as we know it on earth; the process of transformation of the individual from his current limited status to his ultimate evolutionary possibility; and the likely course of the future of humanity; i.e., humanity's ultimate purpose and destiny in the cosmos. These subjects of inquiry were covered in his metaphysical treatise The Life Divine; in his book on the path of personal evolution, The Synthesis of Yoga, and in his 20,000 line epic poem "Savitri".

Sri Aurobindo dedicated himself to the transformation of the human race from out of its current status of duality, division, ignorance, suffering, falsehood, even death itself to a new existence of Light, Knowledge, Wisdom, Power, Truth, Peace, Peace, Beauty, Delight, Infinity, and Oneness of Being. Along the way, he discovered a new spiritual power and extension of the Divine consciousness, which he called the Supramental or Truth Consciousness. He believed this new force and power had only recently descended into the earth's atmosphere, and it could effectuate this new evolutionary status for humanity. He believed that if he along with a handful of followers could bring this power down into the earthly realm, and into their own individual consciousnesses, they could be the harbingers of a new dawn for the human race, and serve as pioneers for a Divine life on earth. In the 1920s, The Mother, born in Algeria and raised in France, joined Sri Aurobindo in this endeavor.

His contribution to Indian philosophy

One of Aurobindo's main philosophical achievements was to introduce the concept of evolution into Advaitin thought. Samkhya philosophy had already proposed such a notion centuries earlier, but Aurobindo rejected the materialistic tendencies of both Darwinism and Samkhya, and proposed an evolution of spirit rather than matter.

There is clearly an idealist streak in Aurobindo's interpretation of Vedanta. This becomes even more clear when we see that he solves the problem of the linkage between the ineffable unitary mind of Brahman and the many ordinary minds here on earth by positing a supermind. The supermind is the active principle present in the mind of Brahman (or perhaps more accurately, in the mind that is Brahman) of which our individual minds are minuscule subdivision.

The birthday of Sri Aurobindo, August 15 — which Aurobindo also pointed out was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary in the Catholic Christian religion — is celebrated each year by Indians — it is the Independence Day of India.

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HIS LIFE IN DEPTH

Early Years

Born in Calcutta in 1872 and educated in England, Sri Aurobindo came back to India with only one aim: liberating India from the foreign yoke of England. His father was a doctor who never wanted his three sons to inherit anything of the Indian culture, including their mother tongue Bengali. He admitted all his sons into an English school in Darjeeling. Darjeeling and its British atmosphere were not a source of pride for Sri Aurobindo. While there he had a vision of a dark force entering him, which remained until he returned to India about 20 years later.

From Darjeeling they were taken to England and put in St. Paul's and later Cambridge. He then returned to India. Back in India he was supposed to enter the Indian Civil Service, but his anti-British feeling did not allow him to serve the British masters. By making himself absent from the compulsory horse-riding test, Sri Aurobindo disqualified himself from the ICS. Thereafter the Maharaja of Baroda was looking for an administrator for his state and spotted in Sri Aurobindo a suitable candidate. And so Sri Aurobindo landed in Baroda, served the state, taught in the college, and returned to Bengal.

India was at the time of great ferment. To that end Sri Aurobindo organised the youth under the Congress party, and voiced radical ideas from the several journals he contributed to. Their nationalist activities led to a journal Vandemataram, the founding of a National College, the worshipping of the god Kali, and experimenting with several ideas, including the procuring of chemicals with which bombs were made. Still Sri Aurobindo did not believe in terrorism, even though he was a radical to the core. The British police arrested him and clapped him in Alipore jail, implicating him in a bomb throwing case.

When his brother came down with a severe fever, Sri Aurobindo watched as a Sanyasi chanted a mantra, crossed a cup of water with a knife, and gave it to his brother. The fever suddenly vanished. Suddenly Sri Aurobindo became interested in acquiring such a power to liberate India from the British domination. In pursuit of this goal, he approached several yogis for help. What he got in return was silence in his mind, the realization of oneness, and the vision of the Cosmic divine.

He sought the help of Vishnu Lele, a yogi. The yogi accepted Sri Aurobindo and offered to initiate him into silence. "Sit down, close your eyes. You will see thoughts entering your mind from outside. Refuse them entry," he said to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo did so and found Lele's words to be true. He could, after considerable effort, reject the thoughts. In three days Sri Aurobindo succeeded in establishing silence in his mind. To Lele this was unbelievable, since success in such an experiment would normally be achieved only after a number of years. However since Sri Aurobindo was an avatar [a being who has come to enable a new stage in human evolution], such a great yogic realization came to him in a few days.

In addition later Sri Aurobindo attained the state of Nirvana, the hallmark of a great avatar.

While in Alipore Jail, Sri Aurobindo used to be visited by the renowned Swami Vivekananda in his meditation. The swami guided Sri Aurobindo's yoga [the discipline to attain union with the Divine] and helped him to scale great heights. It was there Sri Aurobindo saw the convicts, jailers, policemen, the prison bars, the trees, the judge, the lawyer etc., in the experience and realization of Narayana. Sri Aurobindo was even able to see compassion, honesty and charity in the hearts of murderers.

During the trial Sri Aurobindo was prompted to help the lawyer with facts, opinions, etc., but his inner voice advised him to desist from giving advice to the lawyer. "The case is in my hands, do not interfere, keep quiet" was the dictum that was whispering from inside.

After Sri Aurobindo was found innocent in the trial, his inner voice instructed him to go to Chandranagore, a French territory. His heart was burning with one passion, the freedom movement and the release of Mother India. The Divine made contact with him and instructed him that Indian freedom was assured and accomplished in the subtle plane. The Divine had another work in store for Sri Aurobindo. To accomplish that work on earth, Sri Aurobindo was told by that same inner voice to go to Pondicherry located in the South Indian state of Tamilnadu.

Sri Aurobindo arrived in Pondicherry in 1910. Following his arrival a few of his associates also arrived. Sri Aurobindo was examining his Divine mission and was contemplating the best possible course to follow. With the Inner Guide leading silently, Sri Aurobindo mapped out his yogic course and fixed its landmarks.

Bringing Down the Truth Consciousness

Sri Aurobindo had earlier had the experience of spiritual liberation (moksha) but he did not accept that as his final course or goal. The Divine's intention for him lie elsewhere. It intended Sri Aurobindo to become a pure instrument that would hasten the descent of the Divine consciousness into earthly life to enable a divine life on earth.

The yoga of Sri Aurobindo can be summed up as follows:

When the spiritual experience of liberation (moksha) is accepted as the goal, the yogi normally would go within to find the divine spirit, and remain there, no longer relating to or participating in troubles of the world. However if one wants to bring the Divine attributes, its powers and consciousness into one's daily life or to the community or humanity, the yoga cannot be a partial one of just liberation where one retreats through meditation or other technique into the spiritual realm. It has to be an integral realization. In order for it to be integral, the yogi cannot exclude life, or even the body, from his yogic purification and perfection. In other words, it is not the Divine intention for the embodied soul to seek release from the cycle of birth and death; instead the embodied soul should seek total release from falsehood and ego in all parts of its being; and, rising into the higher realms of Spirit, bring down the spiritual force and truth to life on earth, so that death, suffering and disease can be abolished forever. It is the difference between liberation into the spirit, and ascent to the spirit to bring down its properties to enable the transformation of the being and life around one.

In the context of Indian yogic tradition this is quite a departure, quite a different approach. So in order to make his yoga more understandable and bring out its unique qualities, Sri Aurobindo developed new terminology to explain the tenets of his yoga, which he called the Integral Yoga. All of this acquired a special and full significance when The Mother [Mira Alfassa, his future spiritual partner] arrived in the 1920s. She was keen on a plan of action and had her own original ideas for redeeming the earth from falsehood, suffering, and pain. Sri Aurobindo and Mother shared their approaches and finally arrived at the future course of action.

Let's then consider their view of the Divine and the creation. If creation as a whole is considered, the lower part consists body, life, and mind, while the higher part consists of Spirit. In the lower part life begins as matter, evolves to life, and further evolves to mind. Mind itself can rise to spiritual mind, and upward to overmind, the highest state of this lower hemisphere.

Between the lower hemisphere's highest reach, overmind, and the spiritual worlds of the Absolute lies a zone which was known to the ancient rishis (Sanskrit for "seers of truth"), and which Sri Aurobindo calls "Truth Consciousness," or to use his own phraseology, the plane of "Supermind." The Mother was of the opinion that the power of the overmental world would serve the aim of their yoga, namely the abolition of death, falsehood and suffering in the world. Sri Aurobindo explained to her that in the overmental world Truth was not self-existent. Overmind could build a partial world of truth uniting all available truths and excluding ignorance. Should the power of this world descend on earth, a great transformation would occur, but it would still leave a base of ignorance; which means the body would be left untouched. In the Supermind, Truth is self-existent. The Truth of Supermind can penetrate ignorance and reach its basis of truth (nothing on earth can exist without a seed of Truth) and unite all such truths and build upon them. They saw that the body and its inconscient base would not yield to the overmental force, but could not resist the onslaught of the supramental truth. The Mother saw the profundity of Sri Aurobindo's experience and gave up her preference.

In 1926 the overmental force descended into the mind, vital and very physical depths of Sri Aurobindo. After that momentous victory, he retired to make further gains in this yogic adventure; to rise and bring down the supramental consciousness into the earthly realm.

From 1926 to 1950 Sri Aurobindo lived in complete retirement and total silence, constantly raising himself to the level of the Truth Consciousness, i.e. Supermind. Even his experience while in Alipore jail, of Narayana in the hearts of everyone, was a supramental experience according to The Mother. As his yoga is one of ascent and descent, he had to raise himself first to the level of the higher mind and wait for the force of that level to descend into him and reach down to the very physical body, after saturating his nerves and mind.

According to Sri Aurobindo, each level of the ascent is followed by the descent of forces of that level, which integrates the experience of the sadhak i.e., fully illumines all parts of his being, viz. mind, vital (nerves) and physical.

Beyond higher mind lies the realm experienced by the rishi where one is endowed with vision and experiences knowledge as a descent of light, which Sri Aurobindo's describes as illumined mind. The yogi can even go beyond this state and receive the divine intuition directly without the aid of vision, where knowledge just appears in mind complete. The world of the gods is beyond that, a level where the Absolute, the Omnipresent reality divides into its unique aspects so that the creation below can each uniquely experience the spirit of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo calls this world the overmind.

These levels of the physical, the vital, the body, mind, higher mind, illumined mind, and intuitive mind, together with the overmind make up the lower hemisphere; it is essentially what exists in creation. The Truth Consciousness is the bridge and ordering mechanism between this lower hemisphere and the higher hemisphere where lies the Absolute, the Transcendent, the unmanifested Divine, which is beyond creation.

After 1926 Sri Aurobindo was engaged in the yogic adventure of raising his being to the supramental world, and bringing the power of that world into the earth through the instrumentation of his own body. He accomplished this feat fully before 1950. His yoga was realized. The highest aspect and realization of the Divine had been reached. Now the Truth Consciousness, the Supramental Force was ready to move from its origin, descend on earth, abolish death and suffering, transform life on earth, and enable a new divine life on earth. Sri Aurobindo saw at this point that the transformation of the earth presupposed one other condition. When he left the blue light of the overmind, he envisioned the Golden Light of the supramental world. If the Golden Light were to remain on earth forever after the descent, he saw that it would require about ten followers to fully have the Supramental Consciousness. In other words even if power of Supermind descended through the accomplishment of Sri Aurobindo, that light could not remain on earth without other's collaboration. Unfortunately no one was able to help him in his attempt to bring down the Truth consciousness further.

He thus spoke to The Mother and said one of them had to leave the earth and continue the yoga from the subtle plane [the non-material plane] to expedite the Advent of the Supramental Consciousness and Force on earth. The Mother offered to go; i.e. to leave her body. However Sri Aurobindo showed her that the unique constitution of her body could enable her to accomplish the supramental transformation at the physical level. Thereafter he decided to withdraw, and continue his work from the subtle plane.

In 1950, he had offered his own body to the descending supramental light as a fit receptacle. At the time he left his body, the Golden Light invaded it and remained there for three full days. All the other yogic powers he had gathered within, he deposited in The Mother before he withdrew from his body. In six years, Sri Aurobindo's work prepared the Earth Consciousness as a whole to receive the supramental force, power and light.

In 1956, Sri Aurobindo's work from the subtle plane bore fruit. During the meditation in the playground on February 29, 1956, The Mother saw Her subtle body enlarging to the size of the universe and becoming golden. Before her appeared a massive golden door and beside her was an equally massive golden hammer. With one blow The Mother smashed the door, the curtain between earth and the golden supramental realms. Floods of living light of golden color poured down onto earth. Earth had thus realized the Supermind, the Supramental Truth Consciousness.

Instantaneously, the inertia of the earth rose up in equally great floods and swallowed up the descending Force and Grace. Following this great event, Divine Love descended on earth in 1962. The Supramental Force advanced further in 1967 by manifesting itself in the earth consciousness. At that point The Mother saw that the consciousness was now available to any of the governments of the world. Again on January 1st, 1969 the Force further evolved and became an individualized Superman consciousness and appeared before The Mother.

The Mother says that since its advent in 1956, the force is effectively determining the course of earthly events. The diffusion of the Cuban crisis and simultaneous inexplicable withdrawal of the Chinese from the Indian border when invasion was immanent occurred because of the presence of this Force. She also says children born after 1962 have greater receptivity to this Force. After he attained samadhi in 1950 (i.e. he left his body), his body was laid on his bed. It was kept thus for over four days, almost five days. Over 100,000 people had Darshan of the Master. The Golden Light slowly entered his body and stayed there for three full days, then gradually withdrew. On those days, The Mother said she 'saw' him sitting on his bed; though of course the body was lying flat on the bed, fully supramental and golden.

His Writings

Several Nobel laureates have commented on Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus The Life Divine. Some critics have said he was the foremost thinker on earth. The London Times Literary Supplement said that Sri Aurobindo wrote as if he was "planted amid the stars."

His major works are (1) The Life Divine, a philosophical exposition of the nature of creation, his yoga, and his ideal; (2) The Synthesis of Yoga, where he explains his yoga from the point of view of knowledge, works, love and self-perfection; (3) The Ideal of Human Unity, a treatise on the course of the world's historic currents; (4) The Human Cycle, his thoughts on human social evolution; (5) Savitri, an epic poem of 12 books, 20000+ lines containing the story of Satyavan and Savitri, where they poetically move amongst the spiritual realms, overcome death and bring about a new life on earth; (6) The Future Poetry, his explanation of the makeup, formulation, and expression of a new intuitive and spiritual influenced poetry; (7) The Foundations of Indian Culture; and other compositions running into 23 more volumes.

A French writer commented that Sri Aurobindo was the only writer in the history of world literature who had started writing all of his five major works simultaneously and finished them within five years.

His writings embraced a staggering breadth of subjects, from the composition of the atom down to the most mundane subject of cruelty to animals. The Mother said that in his writings she saw intuition pouring down from above into his mind and saturating his thoughts and language.

In his major work The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo describes: how the universe was created out of the Absolute, the Omnipresent reality; how life evolved in the cosmos that was created; what the cause of suffering and falsehood and ignorance is; what the way out of these problems is; what the nature of spirit is, and how it gives us access to infinite potential in life; and, finally, what is the purpose of life, including what is the ultimate destiny of the individual and the human race.

In the book Sri Aurobindo describes how from out of an Omnipresent Reality the universe was created, as inconscient, ignorant, divided forms. He says that the reason that the manifestation emerged from the Absolute is for the purpose of delight. In order to achieve that goal of creation, we as humans must evolve beyond our lower nature rediscover our higher nature, including the hidden spirit in life. In that process of discovering our higher and spirit, we experience the delight of existence, fulfilling the very purpose that the Absolute manifest the universe we dwell in.

Sri Aurobindo calls the process that led to the creation of the universe the "involution." It is an involution because the spirit is hidden in the creation, i.e. it is "involved" as potential in the forms that were created. Once the universe manifests, the "evolution" begins. Whereas the involution is the process by which the Divine manifest a world of divided and ignorant forms; the evolution is the gradual movement of these forms from division and duality to oneness, spirit, and delight of being. Sri Aurobindo describes how the purpose and destiny of the evolution of the universe is to overcome the inherent division and duality that emerged in creation, and to rediscover through our individual, social, and universal growth, development, evolution, and transformation the hidden Spirit that was lost in the creation. This rediscovery of spirit fulfills the very purpose that the Creator, the Absolute manifest our universe -- for the Delight of existence. In fact it is we, who in our own ascent toward our higher nature and spirit, discover and experience that Delight. In that way, we, as humans, fulfill the very purpose of the creation, the very reason that the Divine manifest the universe -- Delight.

After revealing in The Life Divine the nature of the Divine, God, the Absolute, and how the universe was created, unfolded from out of the Absolute, including us, Sri Aurobindo describes something that is unique in the history of consciousness. He describes in essence a new aspect and quality of God; an extension to the Absolute which he called the "Supramental" or "Truth Consciousness." This force or power of the Divine is in fact the ordering mechanism, the spring that enabled the cosmos to manifest from out of the Absolute; that enabled the Many to emerge out of the One. Thus the Supramental (Truth) consciousness is the cause of creation; the instrument that enabled the cosmos, the universe to take form.

Sri Aurobindo believed that if we could make the ascent to overcome our limiting nature, if we could further rediscover the hidden spirit in life, if we could come in contact and open ourselves to this Truth Consciousness (the very same consciousness that was instrumental in the creation of the universe), then we can change life as we know it; change our own lives, change the lives of the community, the society, and life on earth.

If we learn how to open to this Force, we can begin to live in an astounding new way, a way that has no precedence in human history; where every conceivable problem could be solved; where all our life activities and circumstances play out in perfect harmony, in perfect execution; where all of life cooperates; and where we gain access to infinite possibilities for creation, accomplishment, success, and joy.

Things that we perceived as limited in scope -- whether a business transaction, scientific research, a research project, or a great work of art -- are now seen and understood to have infinite scope. Past limitations turn into great multiples and infinities. Our perceptions of quantity and quality change, our perceptions of space and time become different, the nature of cause and effect is altered.

In addition, we experience the spiritual attributers of the Supramental consciousness in our lives -- its Truth, Peace, Knowledge, Oneness, Force, Love, Beauty, Joy -- moving us from our current lives to a divine life on earth.

Integral Yoga for Followers

Sri Aurobindo describes a method of evolution for individuals which he describes in his Integral Yoga. The object of the yoga is to bring down the supramental consciousness and fix it on earth; to create a new race of individuals governed inwardly and outwardly by the supramental consciousness. These individuals would form a nucleus of a supramental race, living a divine life on earth.

By bringing in the supramental consciousness, individuals would have the decisive mechanism and power to complete their transformation. They could use the force in all aspects of life to change one's nature, to effect events and circumstances around one, to enable one to be in greater harmony with the world around one including others, and to be the effecting power that ultimately leads to a universal transformation for the earth.

In the spiritual paths of the past the goal was to connect to the Divine above or within oneself, or to find a release in a Nirvana, or to experience the unreality of the outer world compared to the spiritual world. In Sri Aurobindo's yoga that goal is just the starting point. Once one has made the connection to the Divine, one brings in that consciousness into one's being and into the world so that the individual and the world can be transformed into a higher nature, from out of its inconscience, ignorance, and falsehood to consciousness, knowledge, truth, and joy. It aspires to create a permanent change in human and universal nature.

It is called integral yoga because it includes and integrates much of the spiritual traditions and knowledge of the past, yet seeks to create something new that transcends all of these. It seeks to apply yoga to all aspects of life. It seeks to understand and integrate all parts of the being, all dimensions of life aided by the discovery of a new plane of consciousness, the Truth Consciousness, to enable the transformation for the individual, the society, the world, and the universe itself.

For those who undertake the path of personal transformation (i.e. yoga), Sri Aurobindo describes three successive phases of this transformation -- the psychic, the spiritual, and the supramental. In the first phase of the Triple Transformation one moves from the outer surface consciousness to the inner consciousness; the inner mind, the subliminal within, until one reaches the personal soul, i.e. inner psychic consciousness. At the psychic one has withdrawn from the ego consciousness, one is able to understand and control the limitations of one's physical, vital, and mental being, and one is put in touch with the cosmic, universal forces and truths. This is the Psychic transformation. At a further phase one rises higher in one's being toward higher planes of mind, including Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuitive Mind. It is an opening to the presence above, an elevation of one's lower consciousness to the higher, and the descent of the higher into the lower. This is the Spiritual transformation, beyond the Psychic transformation.

Beyond that still is the Supramental transformation, where one rises to the level of Supermind, for a radical transformation of the being out of the ignorance that is the foundation of our nature, and into a new functioning that transcends beyond the mental, vital, and physical. One can become the Supramental being. The Triple Transformation are these three types that would happen in succession.

The Ashram

When The Mother joined Sri Aurobindo in the 1920s, there were about a dozen or more people around him. Six years later in 1926, around the time he withdrew completely, she founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in his name. From the beginning of the century it was The Mother's dream that there should be a place on earth where humanity could devote all his energies to seek the Divine without having to work for food and shelter. In founding the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, she was trying to create such a place.

The Mother

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have said that they had been on earth since the beginning of creation, and at every critical juncture of the earth's evolution they have intervened and played a crucial role in the earth's development. Addressing the children of the Ashram school, The Mother once said that everyone in the ashram had been with her in previous lives, and in those past lives they had prayed to her that they could be with her at the time of Divine fulfillment of the earth. That was why they were there in the Ashram.

Sri Aurobindo said that this is the "Hour of God" when the awakened soul can accomplish in a short time what would normally take centuries in other periods.

The Ashram was founded in an atmosphere of such beliefs. The Mother also said that if anything new should take place on earth, it should first happen in the ashram.

In short, The Mother conceived of the ashram as a micro-unit of the world. It is her philosophy that earth is a micro unit of the universe. By extension, the Ashram is a representative pioneer of the future world.

If the Ashram represents the future achievements of the earth as a pioneer and as a microcosm, it also represents and embodies all the present difficulties of the universe. If those knots were to be loosened in the Ashram, humanity would be freed in those corresponding aspects.

In the later days after Sri Aurobindo's passing away, and particularly after her own retirement from the public, she did not encourage people to join the ashram. In fact, after 1970, she advised a foreigner to do her yoga from where she was and not join the ashram. She also explained that joining the ashram at that stage might help the inner difficulties surface in an unmanageable way.

There is spiritual peace in the ashram. It is not only there, but every article coming from the ashram carries that peace, be it a book or even a brick. For example, a business executive came to a rest house on one of the ashram farms and was struck by the peace that prevailed there. He could appreciate the peace in the rest house and exclaimed that if peace, which he had not found in the hundreds of temples he had visited, was there in the rest house, how much more pronounced would it be at the main ashram.

The atmosphere of the ashram is very pronounced; it cannot be missed or mistaken. Even walking on the roads adjoining it, one can feel it. Although it is full of peace, in truth the atmosphere also carries silence, joy and delight. One feels a sudden elevation in the atmosphere of the ashram. Someone once said, "Blindfold me and take me to several places in Pondicherry. I shall tell you when I come to the precincts of the ashram."

Auroville

In 1968 The Mother founded Auroville, the international community of peace and spiritual growth. It's purpose is to be an experimental community where individuals can make the effort to evolve beyond their present limitations. Auroville has been established as an experiment in Human Unity where each individual is freed from bondage to moral and social conventions and the necessity of working for material possessions. There is no religion practiced there, nor is there ownership of property. The emphasis is on each person discovering his/her own inner center behind the social, moral, cultural and racial heredity and appearances, and actively living from that center, expressing it in outer work for the community. Auroville is a UN sponsored endeavor that attracts people worldwide because of its openness, new age lifestyle, and dedication to a vision of a new humanity.

One main reason The Mother had in mind in founding Auroville was that the city must be a symbol of human unity and thus prevent the next world war by its very presence on earth. She even declared that as long as Auroville existed, no war would break out.

Human tendencies of pugnacity, competition, spite, jealousy, and rivalry are bound to surface in such a cosmopolitan place where hundreds of men and women gather and live. Their daily lives offer thousands of occasions for human interactions. The Mother wanted those innumerable occasions to become the anvil on which human nature would consent to be beaten into a divine shape. If in Auroville individuals shape themselves anew in the image of the Divine and endeavor to transform their own human nature into Divine nature, life on earth would gently turn to the Divine. This was The Mother’s intention. She even said that Auroville was a field of experimentation, not an exhibition of already accomplished perfection.

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