European Influences on Sri Aurobindo’s Thought

By M.G.van Dijk

1.         This study began with methodological comments and considerations. The comments were concerned with the lack of material, the far-reaching uselesness of most of the studies written by disciples and sympathisers of Aurobindo (I.A), and the verbosity of his style of writing. This last question showed itself in relation to ‘automatical writing’ (I.B). It caused sometimes a lack of exactness that was bound to have consequences for the practicability or impracticability of the integral Yoga as a ‘path’ for followers. Integral Yoga is not (yet) a fully developed system. Also, a some­what confusing intercultural choice of words was found without any further explanation of these words being given. Aurobindo has by that overlooked the philosophical problems inherent in those words. He has not seen himself as a philosopher in the usual meaning of that word. He has considered his ‘science’ to be of a higher order and has criticized ‘Western’ philosophy and science as one-sided and too rational (I.C).

Some remarks concerned the cultural background of Aurobindo. He is an unusual phenomenon, being a college-professor, politician, political journalist, social thinker, poet and yogi, and having his roots both in Indian and European culture. This study can hardly cover this whole spectrum (I.D).

This study takes the view that the poetry of Aurobindo and his philosophical/political work represent equal parts, both integrated in the one person who expresses one vision in different ways (I.E.1). The relation between the period before 1910 andafter is seen as a continuing one, the so-called caesura of 1908-1910 cannot be proved to be a deep one (I.E.2).

Aurobindo shows an ambivalent attitude to the ‘West’, which manifests itself in several places in his work. Together with his rather ‘journalistic’ attitude of dealing with ‘Western’ items does this cause that scientifical and philosophical standards cannot be adapted to his work.

Aurobindo had an idealistic conception of philosophy (I.E.6), We shall trace this in his interest in Plato’s theory of ideas and Plotin’s emanation, in his vision on development, aesthetics and poetical inspiration of the romanticists, in the probable influences from Hegelianism  and idealistic personalism, and in some striking resemblances with the intuitionalism of Bergson. Aurobindo has clearly known himself encouraged by ‘signs’ in recent history: the symbolism as found in the history of literature, the revival of the ancient Celtic mysticism in the Irish literary movement, the increasing criticism on “barbarism” and “philistinism” in Great Britain and on the self-sufficient ethics (e.g. Arnold, Nietzsche), and the rise of subjective sensitivity (e.g. Lamprecht’s period of “Reizsamkeit”).

2.         We found that Aurobindo has been influenced intensively by the English language and culture, even so considering the social situation in colonial India of that time. He was not just a bi-lingual Indian, as most of the others of the educated class he belonged to; he had received a thorough English education from nearly his fifth year on. Yet it has to be noted that the very of dealing situation in (auto-)biographical literature up to the present probably shows a – conscious or subconscious – distortion, especially where his early childhood is concerned. This is supposedly due to a (self-)justification in Aurobindo’s later, nationalistic years. A similar explanation can be the background of the contradiction of data concerning the riding test as part of the selection for Indian Civil Service (III.C).

Doubtless Aurobindo’s boyhood has not been very rosy. He has had a severe, extremely anglophil father whom he has known since his eighth year from letters only. His mother was mentally unstable. One can say that he has been without parents since his eighth year. His maternal grandfather, who viewed life as a kind of mixture of Vedanta and Hindu nationalism, made a special impression on him as a child. The ideas of this man formed a foreshadowing of his own later, more enlightened ideas (III.A + B).

In Aurobindo’s biography there is no mention of a strong resentment towards England. He hardly felt at home in the English society, but English culture in the narrow sense of the word, and especially English literature, remained a lifelong part of his identity. His philosophical as well as his poetical works have been written almost exclusively in English.

The ‘brown gentleman’ Aurobindo years in India; he studied Indian culture and entered deeply into parts of it. But his English education and training were like a skin, which h was neither able not liked to simply shed; he has succeeded at best in making it porous in order to breathe a much more universal air. Getting ahead of the conclusion we may say that indeed a big part of his work has been written more or less in Indian terms and that traditional Indian values have been re­thought by him. But it has to be remarked that European starting points can be found for many aspects of his thought, or at least parallels, which he has known and which have interested him. He may have developed his thought much further than European thought, but starting points and parallels, taken as a whole, have laid down largely the structure for his own work. Of course this conclu­sion remains somewhat hypothetical as long as the Indian side has not been looked into on the same intensive scale, both histo­rically and philosophically. During his stay of fourteen years in England Aurobindo had come to know a broad spectrum of European culture, literature and history, and to some degree also philosophy. There he had also been put on the track of the orientalists. This means that also his opinion on Hinduism and on Indian history has partly been influenced by European scholars (V.F).

3.         His English school – and college – education as well as his study for the Indian Civil Service brought him a general knowledge, with a special weight on literature, starting with the Greek and Latin classics. Besides this study, which came to him easily, young Aurobindo had his own interests. These were literature (poetry), history and politics. As far as history was concerned he was most of all interested in revolutionary movements, which supported his budding interest in the liberation of his “motherland”, which was, however, fully strange to him at that time. So culture in the narrower sense played the biggest part in his education as well as in his personal interest. Grown up in a time of increasing interest in aesthetics (praeraphaelism, Oscar Wilde) Aurobindo approved fully of this climate, supported by some friends of his elder brother, who were all budding poets like himself.

Supported by a thorough education in classical literature – he saw the classical thinkers and writers mostly through the eyes of the nineteenth century romanticists (V.A, C + D), – Aurobindo began gradually to build up his own theory of the special role of beauty. In this he knew himself to be following a tradition which had its origin in the Greek ideal of ‘kalos kai agathos’, which was taken up again in the Renaissance and was continued in the English romantic period. Where it was the question to see beautyas a deeper dimension behind all phenomena of daily life, there young Aurobindo knew himself supported by symbolism (VII.B), a literary movement at the end of the nineteenth century, which had shown to his opinion already its first beginnings in the early English romanticists (Shelley).

Beauty had already for the romanticists a vague supernatural aspect and it had also something of a progressive revelation (Keats), which should take shape by means of poetical inspiration. Aurobindo was to assent and go further along those lines. Later on he developed the theory that beauty is of strictly divine origin, that it forms the third element of a trinitarian formula, together with absolute truth and absolute consciousness (V.C). This formula (Sat-Oit-Ananda) is built from the three highest divine attributes and is based philosophically on the principle of oneness-in-diversity. Hence to contribute to the progressive manifestation of beauty was a work pleasing to God and a very important part of true Religion without beauty was something Aurobindo could not imagine, and precisely that annoyed him so in the Christianity as he had experienced it. In England he had predominantly lived in the rather puritan circles of the middle-class and had experienced there a Christianity that showed itself almost as an ethical religion, which threatened to reduce the cultural aspects of human life (“Hebraism” contra “Hellenism”, Arnold, IV.D V.D).

Aurobindo seems not to have met a Christianity that felt itself inspired by the freedom of the Holy Spirit, otherwise he would have mentioned this aspect, so important to him (IV.D). It is also striking that all poets of Aurobindo’s interest have has an aversion, varying in degree, to religion as established in the English Churches. This aversion and sometimes opposition to orthodoxy can traced easily in most of their works (Shelley, Wordsworth,           Arnold, Meredith, Swinburne, Stephen Phillips, III). We also meet the same opposition in Mazzini, Aurobindo’s favourite Italian revolutionary.

4.         Aurobindo thought to have found the ideal of freedom rather in those periods and aspects of European history, which are usually not called explicitly Christian, namely the Greek and partly the Roman culture, their revival in the Renaissance which – as a small example – had returned the freedom of the blanc verse to poetry and also the French Revolution and the Italian struggle for inde­pendence.

With Matthew Arnold (V.D) Aurobindo shared the opinion that Greek culture had given us the example of free inquiry. In the persons of the purified philosophers-politicians of Plato’s Republic he had seen a glimmer of the selflessness and inner free­dom, which he would describe later on as so important in the figure of the rsi. Only he who aspires (eros) like Plato to the world of the pure ideas or like Plotin to the higher spheres of emanation is really on the road to inner freedom (VI.B). There is an important platonic influence on Aurobindo. The inner freedom however asks for being transposed into outer freedom. The inner freedom of a man who averts himself from the world does not con­tribute to the progressive manifestation of the hidden God in his cosmos. Inner and outer freedom are complementary.

Aurobindo had already learned in England that outer freedom, as a concept of liberalism, had to be corrected by the classical virtues of self-control (Arnold’s “the not-ourselves”, Goethe’s “architectonice”, V.D). The outer freedom of the French Revolution, with its ideas of the rights of man, had according to Aurobindo to be completed by the idea of the duties of man; it had to be founded on an inner attitude, that means, it asked for a Mazzini (X).

Real inner freedom is necessary when man will be able not only to claim his rights and by that probably fall into individualism, but also to surrender himself to the Divine in nature, in the family, in the society and also in the nation and in the world-order.

5.         If outer and inner freedom complete each other and if the realization of both is the very aim of real (= true) religion, i.e. a religion which connects self-realization and -manifestation of the Divine in his cosmos with the self-realization of man in his environment, then religion and politics are related to each other. Politics as religion and vice versa was a theme which Aurobindo had already learned from Mazzini (X). He propagated it consistently in his political period; the national liberation of “Mother India” was a religious duty. Later on he was to give this idea an universal dimension, however without altering its original essence.

Young Aurobindo learned from the Irish revolutionary movement that prolongued outer slavery can smother the inner and hidden promise no muoh, that they are in danger of disappearing. Both Ireland and India have had to undergo this experience. There­fore they have as prime duty to free themselves from this outer duress in order to fulfil their great mystical task (IX). That might mean war, at least as a last mean, but war is also an aspect of the mysterious world events, as taught by Heraclitus, when Aurobindo felt rather congenial. Integration of something raw means necessarily desintegration of the old; the cosmos is in permanent movement. Aurobindo was to interpret this movement later on in an evolutionary way, and he was convinced to explain by that the implicit meaning of Heraclitus himself (VI.C).

France and Ireland are two countries which Aurobindo has never visited. But from the subjective point of view they have beenmore important to him than England which he knew so well. France given to the world the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity,
ideals so important to a freedom-fighter, and ideals which it tried to mould, in spite of its failures. That was precisely why the French possessions in Asia exercised such an attractive power on several western-educated Indians like Aurobindo. France was for him also the country of Jeanne d’Arc, the legendary symbol of the reletion between religion and nation (VII.A).

In Aurobindo’s vision Ireland incarnated the mystical heritage of the ancient Celts. To revive this heritage was its special vocation and its contribution to the future world. He held also the view that it was precisely the Celtic element in English literature which enabled the mystical dimension of poetry to emerge in that language and thus laid down the foundation for ‘The Future Poetry’ (IX). This spiritual poetry of the future world would have to give a special expression to and be a vehicle for the new religion, i.e. the true and profound religion. This religion has to be supported by the integral Yoga, which aim it is to include all traditional yoga-systems in a ‘weltbejahende’ vision and experience. This yoga is the medium which can help man in his evolutionary development to reach a stage where he will have grown beyond (= super) the possibilities of the present situation; man is then a “superhuman being’. Growth in this integral Yoga means an increase of inspiration; “overhead poetry” then arises.

6.         The evolution of all human faculties as part of the self-realization of the Absolute, the Divine, in his creation (he means in fact the things emanated) is the fuller dimension which Aurobindo has given to the idea which he had already traced from the French Revolution and its precursors in European thought onward; it is the idea of development in the social, political and humanitarian sense, and of evolution in nature.

Many romantic poets had dreamt of a better humanity, which would know no more suppression after having liberated itself with great sacrifices under the guidance of a promethean hero-figure. This humanity would grow into a new harmony with nature (V.C). The socially and ethically minded heroes of Shelley impressed young Aurobindo and gave him romantic-political motivations (V.A).

Epic poems are a permanent theme in his literary work. He had of course the opportunity to build upon the classical epics and on the ethical changes in the hero-figure, originated by Milton in the epic tradition (V.3). This ethical change may have led Aurobindo to the psychological, to the ‘hero’ in the figurative sense of the term, the man who strives for inner freedom and has to fight against unnatural, conventional opinions and against desires and passions (Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” and in some way also Meredith’s “Modern Love”,V.0 + E).

It was Darwin who had shocked the religious orthodoxy by under­mining the traditional concepts of creation and nature, and thus the concept of God as well. In the decennia after Darwin, poets like Meredith and Swinburne became interested in scientific thinking on evolution. They found great interest in nature as the mother of all living beings, man included. Thus they presented the basic elements for Aurobindo’s later theory of nature as the mother-goddess, as sakti and as aspect of the Divine, which was not to be neglected but on the contrary was to be treated positively and developed, because it is in reality the element carrying the whole of the divine self-manifestation (V.E). In the same direction something had already been done by Wordsworth, although a poet before Darwin and not clearly and evolutionist, who had provided Aurobindo with the view that man has to be in harmony with nature as the ground of his existence.

Aurobindo came to know evolution as a political notion already from the French Revolution, but also and more explicitly from the ltalian Mazzini, who in in turn had built on the German philosopher Herder. Hegelianism formed also a great attraction for many educated Indian and also for some, of Aurobindo’s follow-workers during his political period. In Aurobindo’s time Hegel’s idealism was rising in England. Hegelianism gave him the example of political and social evolution as providence of God, that means evolution as a kind of theodicee (VIII.B). The latter was pre-eminently a theme which he was to give later on a broader and more cosmic dimension in the form of a God, Who develops Himself in history and in the cosmical process. This shows also some analogy with the Indian concept of lila.

That evolution is furthered by ‘men of great historical importance’, being a kind of solicitors of the “World-Spirit”, is a striking point which can be found both in Hegel and Aurobindo. These are persons who know the one thing needful in a certain period, the thing to be done.

7.         At the end of the nineteenth century a clearly psychological aspect was added by the theory of Lamprecht to the teachings of Hegel, which dealt predominantly with political and social evolution. This German historian, Lamprecht, divided history into five periods on a social-psychological basis and paid also great attention to the element of cyclists in evolution. Aurobindo has been clearly interested in this thought and has mentioned so himself openly, against his usual practice (VIII.D). He has followed more or less Lamprecht’s division of history and has appreciated this historian’s attention to evolution as a growth of sensitivity. In his own thought we find clear signs of the cyclical aspect of evolution. And he had to pay attention to it for he wanted already in his political period to revive the great but remote past of his country into a still greater future, just like Mazzini. Later on he was to give this idea a world-wide dimension, but structurally nothing would change (satya-yoga),

The thinking of Nietzsche was cyclical par excellence, who in his turn felt inspired by Heraclitus. The Nietzschean idea of the “Ubermensch” intrigued Aurobindo strongly. His attitude to this aphoristic thinker and his central idea shows a variety, from uncommon approval to stereotypical criticism (VIII.C). Therefore his attitude towards Nietzsche may be called representative for his attitude towards Europes as a whole. This can be characterized as a taking over or as a knowing to be inspired by. The first aspect is followed by criticism; Europe has not been conscious enough of the good starting points it possesses in its thought and cultural history, it has not developed them the right way, it has even reversed them to their – sometimes titanical – opposite. Aurobindo himself thinks that he has understood these implicated and in themselves right intentions better and that he has explicated and developed them consistently. In his synthesis of ‘East’ and ‘West’ the ‘West’ has brought in some good elements, but it is the vocation of the ‘East’ to bring in the better part. Such a scheme can be found in his work several times, with some variations which have to do with gradations in sharpness of criti­cism and with the positive feeling of affinity (I.E.7 + XII).

8.         The “Superman” is the aim of the evolutionary integral Yoga. One normally associates the word evolution with the development of the earth as a whole. Aurobindo, however, was mostly interested in the evolution of man and especially in the question how present-day man could grow into a “Superman”, who is able to see and to realize the Divine in all things without loosing his individual and perso­nal being. Aurobindo has known the scientifical theories of natural evolution in a popularized form; they were one of the dominating themes in the thought of his time. But he criticized them, because they tried to explain man with the help of the lower stages of evo­lution which they knew better, and not from a higher level, as he would prefer it and as he visioned it himself.

Aurobindo’s conception of evolution has to be considered as a part of the philosophical and especially metaphysical or religious reactions against the evolution-theory of natural science, which he has called predominantly materialistic and one-sided. He has accepted the idea of evolution and has not simply denied the theories of natural science. He has taken up and elaborated those aspects of them, which to his opinion should be considered for a deeper explanation and a spiritualization. But by that very fact he has an essentially different interpretation of evolution (XI), which shows itself also in his opinion that evolution is condi­tioned by involution, this being a typical idealistic concept.

Aurobindo’s thought may be described as a now, dynamic idealism, that bases itself on the idea of an evolutionary development into one humanity, united in surrender to and love for God, the Person, Who, Himself the absolute Being, is standing above all opposition between person and impersonality, but Who makes all, who discover Him and His works deep in themselves, grow more and more to persons.

9.         Up to this point the sequence of this study has not been followed exactly, but the parts have been interwoven in order to provide a deeper insight in their mutual dependency. We shall now sum up shortly all grades of influence according to the table of content, as far as not mentioned before in detail.

In Aurobindo’s youth we can suppose a small influence from Stephen Phillips, a minor poet of his time, known to him personally, but this influence cannot be fixed easily. Shelley’s influence on Aurobindo has to be called very significant, both on the poet and the young patriot in him. Shakespeare and Milton have interested him mostly as important examples in the history of English literature.

Keats has had influence on Aurobindo by his identification of beauty and truth, and Wordsworth has surely drawn his attention to the revealing voice of nature, Matthew Arnold has had a considerable influence on Aurobindo, mainly as a prose-writer, Tennyson does not seem to be important for this study. In the case of Meredith we can only suppose an influence, that of Swinburne however is sure. It has provided young Aurobindo with a poetical vision on natural evolution, on nature as the mother of all beings.

Max Miler’s booklet India, What, Can It Teach? must have been the first or at least a very important information to young Aurobindo on the high cultural standard of classical India, as seen by a sympathizing European. An influence of J.S. Mill is not sure. However supposedly known to Aurobindo, his ideas may only influenced the latter indirectly, modified and deepened by B. C. Chatterji.

Aurobindo has clearly been influenced by Plato’s Republic and Symposium. A more or less vague – that means poetical and romantic – Platonism is characteristic for his work. Platino’s influence seems to be there, but in a very general way; it cannot be proved exactly. Aurobindo, has liked Heraclitus very much, but he may have come to know him too late to speak in terms of influence. This relation is a case of feeling supported by a rather congenial thinker.

We face nearly the same question with Mallarmé, the French symbolistic poet, strongly admired by Aurobindo. The influence of Bergson must be seen as probable. There is a striking analogy between his estimation of intuition arc, Aurobindo’s.

Aurobindo has seen Goethe as an all-round person, the usual vision of him in contemporary England. But lacking sufficient knowledge of German Aurobindo cannot have very well known Goethe’s poetry. Although not really a Hegelian, Aurobindo’s thought cannot be imagined without a diffuse influence of Hegelianism. The relation Aurobindo-Nietzsche has been ambivalent. The German thinker must

have inspired the Indian so much that we dare to speak of influence, being in this remarkable case a mixture of strong interest and strong criticism. Lamprecht is the only one, except some English poets, to whom Aurobindo has ascribed openly some influence on him. Surveying all German influences we can say that German idealism has exercised a much greater influence on Aurobindo than he has conceded himself.

The Irish liberation movement has been very important to Aurobindo, especially on the existential level. It was not a history to be studied but an actual and inspiring news from a country sup­posed to have a mystical nature, just like India.

Aurobindo has seen the lesson to be learnt from the Italian liberation movement mainly incorporated in the person and ideals of Mazzini, who has had a strong influence on him.

The use of the important idea of evolution by Aurobindo does not mean a strict influence from Darwinism; there may be only a rather vague influence of evolutionary thought in general. The traces are not clear enough for concluding more.

10.       Surveying the whole a hypothesis becomes very probably; Aurobindo inspired to be ‘a modern rsi’. The Indian rsi has, according to him, always been the natural director of society and the best guide for the religious, moral, cultural, practical and even the political life. But that is exactly the scale of his own biography as well as the scope of his integral Yoga. Studying European influences one is very struck by the fact that Aurobindo has given his opinion on the value of rsi-hood directly after having mentioned the philosophical-politician of Plato. And most of the European influences on or striking parallels with Aurobindo’s thought show more or less important tendencies to or even aspects of his own ideal of rsi-hood: inner freedom, high morality, heroical attitude, social orientation, sense for duty and sacrifice, mutual love, inspiration, intuition, being a seer, thinker, prophet and poet, leadership by personal authority, being called for doing the one thing needful, seeing a deep and harmonizing reality behind all phenomena, relation between politics and religion, growing into oneness of religion and poetry, of religion, culture and aesthetics.

We can even make intelligible many aspects of Aurebindo’s attitude and self-estimation. ‘Automatical Writing’ can be ex­plained at least subjectively by the idea of being inspired from above, just like the rsis of old have been. If philosophy usually has, according to Aurobindo, hardly an aspect on life, then his work is not philosophy; rsis have been practical men. Wise men and seers are not bound to one culture, therefore Aurobindo could feel himself permitted to neglect cultural boundaries and to make a synthesis of ‘East’ and ‘West’.

The rsi-hypotheeis also shows the ambivalence of Aurobindo’s attitude to the ‘West’. The rsi being ordinarily an Italian ideal, Aurobindo wanted to re-incorporate the Vedic rsi on a higher, modern level (cyclical evolution), as an example for the whole world, e.g. Europe. But in fact many aspects of his personal ideal are historically and psychologically of European origin.