The early 20th century Indian philosopher and mystic Aurobindo Ghose was one of the leading figures in the movement for Indian independence from the British. As a youth, Aurobindo was sent to England by his father for an education at Cambridge, where he became familiarized with western classical and scientific thought. While there, he observed the tense relations between Ireland and England, and made comparisons to the similar situation in colonial India. Upon returning to his homeland, he immersed himself in the study of Indian religious history, and the synthesis of western thought with Indian spirituality would form the basis of his thinking. During this period, he became a leading figure in Indian nationalism, blending his budding understanding of Indian spirituality with a vision of cultural renewal based on these ancient roots. In service of his political goals, Aurobindo founded a periodical to disseminate his ideas, in which he deliberately blended discourse on spirituality with politics in a way that allowed him to avoid legal censure under the cover of promoting spiritual rather than political aims. He had also begun yogic practices, and encountered a Vaishnava yogi who taught him meditation. Upon meditating, Aurobindo entered into his first genuine mystical experience, which he would identify as the “silent” brahman of Vedanta as well as Buddhist nirvana.
At the same time, revolutionary activity around Aurobindo’s circle took the form of terroristic violence, and Aurobindo’s suspected involvement in or literary support of such actions landed him in jail for a brief period in 1908. He was eventually exonerated from lack of evidence - due to his carefully worded prose as well as to the fact that his judge was an old schoolmate - but while in jail he experienced another vision, this time of the Hindu deity Krishna, who appeared to be all the people in the jail as well as the walls of the prison itself. Also present was the spirit of Swami Vivekananda, whose similar project of Hindu renewal and reform Aurobindo was inspired by. After his release, he resumed his publishing activities, but authorities continued to target him for arrest and deportation, leading him to flee to French-controlled Pondicherry. Although he had argued, against Gandhi, that violent means of resistance were justified in India’s cause against its oppressor, Aurobindo’s own energies would shift during this period away from practical political matters to more concentrated spiritual practice. However, even in this he was never totally divorced from the goal of Indian independence. His struggle simply took a different form.
In Pondicherry, he spent his time engaged in intense spiritual sadhana, meditating and keeping a detailed diary of his yogic experiences. On Aurobindo’s 40th birthday, another realization occurred, which he understood to be the experience of the highest (para)brahman, a creative power capable of divinizing humanity and cosmos. This grand process would characterize Aurobindo’s evolutionary esotericist metaphysics and define the goals of his own yoga.
However, the cause of Indian independence was never absent from Aurobindo’s mind, nor from his yogic practice, which by then had become a kind of experimental procedure or "practical psychology" whereby he would direct his consciousness and attention to effect changes in his environment. He claimed to experience a form of cosmic consciousness where the events and processes taking place around the globe were “naked” to his gaze from his meditative perch in Pondicherry. Thus, he engaged in a kind of spiritual practice “at a distance,” setting his will on certain events and hoping to direct or influence their outcome.
This took the form of psychic warfare against the Axis powers during WWII, in which he and Mirra Alfassa, a French woman who became Aurobindo’s initiatic consort and partner in yoga, attempted to influence the outcome of particular battles and the general tide of the war through yogic means. They saw the war as fundamentally a spiritual conflict between the forces of cosmic evolution represented by the Allies, and forces which sought to retard this process, identifying the latter with the titans (asuras) of Hindu mythology and the Axis powers. His mystical practice was based on the transformation of all material reality and life, and specifically involved psychically supporting “what has to be supported” in terms of the play of ethereal forces which manifested themselves in historical, political and military processes. Aurobindo saw the war as fundamentally a “struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth” in terms of the evolution of consciousness toward divinity, a process that would be aided by the global conditions established by the victory of the Allies and the democratic, humanitarian values espoused by them, or hindered and possibly thwarted by “a reign of falsehood and darkness.” (Nirodbaran, Twelve Years with Aurobindo, p.92)
In Aurobindo’s understanding, India occupied a pivotally important place within his spiritual evolutionary schema. Its special significance pertained to its spiritual legacy, a legacy which Aurobindo worked tirelessly to revive and transform in light of the conditions of global modernity. He saw India’s cultural and spiritual renewal as a crucial element in the cosmic drama, with Indian spiritual traditions representing a great storehouse of knowledge and power that had much to say to the global community. He asserted that Indian independence from British rule was a necessary aspect of this renewal. As in the war, Aurobindo worked in his yoga to support the forces leading to India’s independence. He felt that through his own yogic efforts as well as the play of forces in the world that independence would be assured. Independence finally came on August 15, 1947, on Aurobindo’s 75th birthday, an auspicious date that did not go unnoticed, with Aurobindo referring to the event as “a birthday present” and “the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps.” (Heehs, 2008, p.395)
Aurobindo’s use of mystical, yogic practice in the global struggle against fascism was paralleled by other western occult groups, while his efforts toward Indian independence through spiritual means represented the culmination of a long process of Indian cultural renewal in modernity.
The Cambridge-educated Indian nationalist and mystic Aurobindo Ghose, later Sri Aurobindo, was heavily involved throughout his life in the cause of Indian independence from British colonial rule. Early on, this took the form of impassioned literary argument in the pages of self-published periodicals like Bande Mataram and the Karmayogin, where he couched his political arguments in the language of Indian spiritual and cultural renewal. Following several pivotal mystical experiences, his attention shifted toward his own yogic practice, framed by an evolutionary esotericist metaphysics of cosmic transformation into divinity. He understood Indian independence, and, during WWII, the victory of the Allied forces, as key developments in this process, and focused his own mystical practice on achieving these ends. From his meditative perch in Pondicherry, India, Aurobindo and his partner, Mirra Alfassa, engaged in psychic battle against the Axis forces and worked to influence the “play of forces” supportive of Indian independence.