Sri Aurobindo sails to Bombay, India (age 21)

Early 1893, Sri Aurobindo sails to Bombay, India. He is just 21. The moment he sets foot on the land of India in Bombay, a vast Calm descends upon him and remains with him for many months thereafter. He writes: “Since I set foot on the Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, I began to have spiritual experiences. But these were not divorced from this world but had an inner and infinite bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time I found myself entering supraphysical worlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane.”

Sri Aurobindo, at that time an agnostic, arrives in Bombay with the burning urge to deliver his country from the bondage of British rule. In India, his father Krishna Dhun Ghose awaits to receive his son, but is misinformed by his agents from Bombay that the ship on which he is travelling has sunk off the coast of Portugal. His father dies upon hearing this news.