Sri Aurobindo and the Question of the Age
Title: The Age of Sri Aurobindo
Author: Pariksith Singh
MRP: Rs 699
Publisher: BluOne Ink
The book revisits the visionary sage’s call for a higher consciousness and an integral transformation — within individuals and societies alike
As we look around us, we see a humanity hurtling towards a denouement it can neither foresee nor control. It seems mankind is preparing its own extinction-heedless, unconscious, compelled by forces it barely understands.
Artificial Intelligence may offer a temporary solution to our errant ways, but then humanity risks losing its role in its own evolution. Or else we face the specter of the end of life as we know it, with dangers to our survival-nuclear, ecological, and technological-growing ever more real. Every age brings its own challenge and with it a new opportunity. As humanity evolves, so too does the spirit of the age. Each epoch confronts us with fresh crises that demand not just answers, but deeper insight and new ways of seeing.
Yet every age also requires its own solutions. Many thinkers have given us partial or superficial responses. A few visionaries have gone deeper, leaving something more enduring. Rare indeed are those who offer an integral solution-one that does not merely resolve the crisis but redefines the problem itself.
Today, we face not one but a confluence of crises. We are not merely challenged; we are threatened. The emergency is no longer distant-it is upon us. The patient, so to speak, is ready to be intubated. But before we rush to cure, we must pause to ask: What is the right question?
Without the right question, investigation remains shallow. Without a comprehensive view, solutions will be fragmented. Only through samashti buddhi-a collective and integral intelligence-can we hope to arrive at an answer that is whole and transformative.
This is why it is vital to revisit the challenge and invitation Sri Aurobindo laid before us more than a century ago: Can humanity evolve into a higher intelligence, a wider consciousness, a more integral existence? Can we ascend to new heights of inner and outer perfection?
Can we become a new species-a true Homo sapiens, even Homo spiritualis or Homo gnosticus?
The Age of Sri Aurobindo by Pariksith Singh explores this very question. Sri Aurobindo-the sage and visionary of modern India-is increasingly being recognized as a sage and visionary of the new world now struggling to be born. His contribution was not only to India's independence but to a rediscovery of dharma-the essence of its existence. He reconciled fierce nationalism with a broad and generous internationalism, paving a path for humanity at large. When we look at experiments such as Auroville, we begin to glimpse how his vision can take form-even if tentatively, imperfectly-through the flawed instruments of our age.
For in each of us there is an unmistakable aspiration-to grow, to become more than we are, to transform ourselves into something greater, more beautiful, truer, filled with light, joy, and wisdom. Only such a radical transformation can heal a desperate and disintegrating world. Only inner change can birth outer change.
If the individual does not change, society cannot change. What is needed is a metamorphosis-spiritual at its root, but universal in its reach.
Social ecologists like Murray Bookchin have argued that capitalism's ravages cannot be cured without a shift in our psychology and our ways of relating. He envisioned non-hierarchical communities of free association as a corrective to the unconscious tyranny of techno-feudalism. But even this, though valuable, is not enough.
Something deeper is needed-a fundamental alchemy in our psychology, a transformation beyond the dualities of subject and object, self and other, mind and body, spirit and matter. This is where Sri Aurobindo's vision offers a seismic solution.
He gives us a radical perception that reaches to the root of the problem-whether individual or collective, material or spiritual. More than that, he lived it. No other figure of the age embodied the solution so fully.
This vision transcends mere intellect. It is supple, growing, lived. It refuses to isolate itself either in pure materialism or in abstract spirituality. It is concrete yet vast, practical yet transcendent. How will the change come? Not through formulas, nor rigid codes of life, nor anthropocentric notions of God, nor abstract philosophy.
It will come through a mutation of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo gave us not theories but a path he
himself walked-tested, validated, and applied. He opened a doorway to new possibilities for humankind. Every age must find its own solution. Sri Aurobindo gave us one. The question is-do we recognize its validity? Do we see its relevance? Do we dare to live its possibility?
He left the choice to us.
The book, published by BluOne Ink, is impressively professional in its layout, a standard we expect from this up-and-coming publisher. I recommend it highly to anyone who wishes to learn about one of our greatest yogis of modern India and the greatest visionary of modern world.
