Sri Aurobindo Archives - Auro e-Books

Early Cultural Writings

Early Cultural Writings is a comprehensive collection of Sri Aurobindo’s early prose works, focusing on literature, art, education, and cultural criticism. This volume brings together seminal essays and writings composed primarily between 1890 and 1910, with additional pieces from 1910-1920.

Key Contents & Featured Essays Include:

The Harmony of Virtue
Critical studies on Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Kalidasa, and the Mahabharata
The National Value of Art
Baroda Speeches and Reports
Bankim – Tilak – Dayananda
Essays from the “Chandernagore Manuscript”
Epistles from Abroad, book reviews, and Conversations of the Dead

About This Edition: The editors have organized the material thematically into nine parts with two appendices. The texts have been meticulously verified against original manuscripts and lifetime publications. Editorial notations and a detailed Note on the Texts clarify revisions and manuscript sources. (Much of this material was previously published under the title The Harmony of Virtue).

India The Mother

This book is a companion volume to India’s Rebirth, a selection from Sri Aurobindo’s writings and talks which presented his vision of India and the way out of her most pressing problems. India’s Rebirth, first published in 1993, has generated much enthusiasm in India and abroad; it has been translated into Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya, as well as French, and translations into other languages are under preparation.

In India the Mother, we have collected excerpts from the writings, messages, letters and talks of Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s companion, who joined him in 1920 and worked tirelessly until 1973 to materialize his vision. As with India’s Rebirth, we have followed a chronological order, which covers almost sixty years. The greater part of the extracts are drawn from Mother’s Agenda (13 volumes), the record of the private conversations which Mother had with her confidant Satprem between 1954 and 1973. (The reader should remember that the extracts presented here have been edited for the purpose of this compilation; the integral text will be found in Mother’s Agenda, 12 volumes of which have now been published in English translation.)

For Mother, as for Sri Aurobindo, India is more than a piece of land, however lovable it may be; it is the Ancient Mother, a form of the Shakti who fashions worlds and ages as well as her recalcitrant children, and pursues her goal through progress, defeat or even destruction. When the world is experiencing the last years of the West’s “long decomposition,” when we are being compelled to understand that Man is not the ultimate product of our Evolution and that this earth is not meant to satisfy our petty destructive greeds, the dormant strengths of India’s civilization are destined to shape the path of our future humanity and give the world the inner impetus and vision that the West’s fast-fading glitter failed io provide.

Book Details

Author: The Mother
Print Length: 307
Publisher: MIRA ADITI, Mysore
Book format: Pdf, ePub, mobi (Kindle)
Language: English
Read more

The Inner Attitude

The Inner Attitude

This is a collection of quotes from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on the inner attitude — everything depends upon it.

Book Details

Author: Editor: K. C. Anand
Print Length: 52
Publisher: All India Magazine
Book format: Pdf
Language: English
Read more

Sri Aurobindo’s Humour by Nirodbaran

Sri Aurobindo’s Humour

This book represents a new and, to the general public, quite an unfamiliar aspect of Sri Aurobindo — his humour. There is a common belief that yogis and saints are grave and reserved by nature. They have no sense of humour. Sri Ramakrishna was probably the first among them who is known to have shattered this false notion. Sri Aurobindo was revered and accepted as a great yogi, philosopher and poet, but was considered to be dry and dreary. His sublime philosophical writings dating from the Arya-period were perhaps responsible for this popular misconception. During his political life too he was branded as ’the man who never smiles’. Even to his disciples who saw him only four times a year, he appeared grave and austere, yet with a quiet compassion which made him so lovable as a Guru.

When I wrote to him complaining that his ”Himalayan austerity and grandeur take my breath away, making my heart palpitate!” he replied: ”O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people ? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least common sense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation-—not imagining wild imaginations—or for that matter, despairing ’I know not why’ despairs.”

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: 105p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Avinash Tiwari
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Kindle
Language: English
Read more

With Sri Aurobindo in Baroda by Dinendra Kumar Roy

With Sri Aurobindo in Baroda

This is the first English translation of Aurobindo Prasanga (literally, “About Aurobindo”), a memoir by Dinendra Kumar Roy (1869-1943). A Bengali writer who was fairly well known during the first half of the last century, Dinendra Kumar lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda from 1898 to 1900 or 1901. The chapters making up this work first appeared in the journal Sahitya in Bengali year 1318 (1911-1912). More than a decade later, in 1923, they were brought out as a book. Some of Dinendra Kumar’s references to historical and literary figures are explained in editorial notes at the end of the translation.

Book Details

Author: Dinendra Kumar Roy

Print Length: 45 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

On Chinese Wisdom

On Chinese Wisdom

This compilation is inspired by and offered to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother who guide us by their Presence and example. It serves as a reference material for people who find it useful to learn and apply the wisdom in life. This is an age where each individual has a unique role to play, and each culture has an opportunity to radiate its full potential, beauty and fragrance in the world garden. May each one blossom like a flower, each in its own time, own way. May humanity aspire for and realise Unity in Diversity by unending education, constant progress and a youth that never ages.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo, the Mother

Compiler: Anandi Zhang

Print Length: 48 pages

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

A Pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo by Amrita

A Pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo

This book is a translation of a memoir written in Tamil by K. Amrita, an early disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Amrita recounts the story of his childhood and student life, but always his central concern is his relationship with Sri Aurobindo and his efforts to come closer to him. Amrita’s tale told with honesty and ardor, has all the poignancy of a sensitive young Tamil Brahmin discovering a new way of life.

The Tamil text of the memoir was translated into English soon after it was written, and this translation (titled Old Long Since) was published in 1969 and 1995 as part of larger works. It is now being published for the first time (2015) as an independent book and has been given a new title, A Pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo. Further details are given in the Note on the Text at the end of the book.

Book Details

Author: Amrita

Print Length: 63 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo by Nagin Doshi

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo

Letters to a young disciple

In this series of selected letters we have Sri Aurobindo’s guidance to a boy in his late teens. The letters, no less illuminating for all their simplicity, cover a fairly large number of subjects. As their recipient grew up more and more, the subjects naturally increased in significance. The correspondence with Sri Aurobindo ran up to 1937.

A brief personal background to the correspondence:

“I came to Pondicherry in 1931 when I was about fourteen years old. In those days the Mother did not admit youngsters into the Ashram. It was only out of her kindness that she made an exception in the case of four children: Bala, Romen, Shanti and myself. We did not have a school here at that time, nor were there regular study classes. Before coming, my mind was occupied with only two things — study and cricket: they were my life and my world. I had almost decided to go to Europe and become a big doctor. I first visited the Ashram during my school vacation just for the sake of making a nice long journey, certainly not for taking up Yoga. I stayed for a month and returned in time for the reopening of my school. During that stay, what the Mother did within my being I could hardly fathom. But the result was that I returned home to stay for only two days, I hurried back here with the full realisation that I could not possibly live, either happily or unhappily, without the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Till 1933 I did not know what this strange thing called Yoga was. Hence the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were to me just like my own human mother and father. When the correspondence with Sri Aurobindo started, he had to teach me everything, not only what was meant by Yoga but also what culture, religion, philosophy and morality were. He used to correct my English, too, for quite a long time. Whatever I have gained in any way is a growth from the seeds he and the Mother sowed in me during those boyhood days.” – Nagin Doshi

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo; Nagin Doshi

Print Length: 689 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Society

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

Lyrical Poems of Sri Aurobindo

Lyrical Poems of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo once wrote that he wanted his short poems published in two separate books, one of sonnets and one of “(mainly) lyrical poems”.

This book contains all of Sri Aurobindo’s short poems, other than sonnets, composed between 1930 and 1950, with the exception of poems written solely as metrical experiments, nonsense poems written as parodies of surrealist verse, and incomplete or fragmentary poems. Most of the poems included are “lyrical” in the technical sense: they are short and express the writer’s personal thoughts and feelings. Unlike most other examples of the genre, however, their lyricism is spiritual and psychic. Along with the later sonnets and the epic Savitri, they represent Sri Aurobindo’s highest achievement in spiritual or yogic poetry.

Twenty-eight of the forty-two poems in this book were published by Sri Aurobindo during his lifetime in the following volumes: Six Poems (1934), Poems (1941), On Quantitative Metre (1942), and Poems Past and Present (1946). The other fourteen poems are taken from his manuscripts from the same period. Most of them were revised more than once, but some exist only in a single handwritten draft.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo

Print Length: 83 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

Thoughts from Sri Aurobindo (Compiled by Kishor Gandhi)

Thoughts from Sri Aurobindo

These passages extracted from Sri Aurobindo’s works are intended to serve as significant pointers to the inestimable value of his views for a true understanding of the important issues in the life and thought of the individual and the society. It is hoped that they will awaken the interest of the intelligent reader and will induce him to seek fuller illumination by drawing him to the original works themselves which contain immeasurably more than these few extracts can offer.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo

Print Length: 47 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more