Sri Aurobindo’s Hindu Philosophy: Spiritual Evolution of Human Consciousness

Abstract

As I understand, Sri Aurobindo’s deep concern was twofold against the backdrop of the existing social, political, and spiritual situations of his time: First, the catastrophic Western socio-political-scientific-cultural factors, the first World War, and the worldwide British imperialistic colonialism and their all-round devastating impact over the Indian nation and its ancient civilizational values, and second, how to rejuvenate India’s degrading ancient tradition of spirituality of man and the world. Nevertheless he found their permanent comprehensive solutions in the Hindu spiritual tradition, particularly in the Vedas, Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavadgītā along with the Sāṃkhya, Buddhism, and the integral Yoga systems. His Advaita Vedānta, which he calls Perfect Integral Absolutism (Pūrṇa-Advaita) a philosophy of non-dualism and a form of the Vedānta/Upaniṣads, was developed by him as an Integral Philosophy, which accepts the reality and the plurality of the world, the Nature, and the Supreme Reality of the common essence and ontological status, whose differences are counted only on the levels of their spiritual development and worldly actions. The great advantage of Sri Aurobindo was his profound understanding of both intellectual traditions, Indian and European/Western, and also their strengths and weaknesses. This essay tries to systematically explain these issues on the basis of the authentic sources.