MEETING BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE VISION OF SRI AUROBINDO

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Abstract

Person and perspective Sri Aurobindo, philosopher and mystic, poet and critic, was one of the most outstanding Indian thinkers of the twentieth century. A manysided genius of extensive knowledge and intense mystical experience, Aurobindo was greeted already in 1928 by his fellow Indian Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore with the words: 'India will speak through your voice to the world.' And indeed he did speak, offered a magnificent message and proposed an integrated synthesis of the Eastern and the Western world. Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), born Indian, brought up British, had throughout his life taught man's spiritual growth and eventual transformation leading to the emergence of a Supermind, a thought surprisingly similar to that proposed by the French scientist-mystic, Teilhard de Chardin. By training they were a classicist and a paleontologist respectively, but their thoughts met and merged to a great extent in their emergent mysticism