The Revolutionary Yoga, Pondicherry 1910 on (age 39)

In November, 1910 Nolini Kanta Gupta joins Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry

Sri Aurobindo is joined in November 1910 by Nolini Kanta Gupta who was associated with him at Calcutta in the revolutionary movement. He becomes, in due course, Secretary to Sri Aurobindo and the General Secretary of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Economic conditions in Pondicherry are stringent, with one bath towel serving everybody, including Sri Aurobindo, who had his bath last and used the same towel as others had. He had only a cot to serve as his bed and the food was meager. Yet, he continues to pursue his own exploration of the spiritual horizons that were opening before him. He does not follow any of the traditional lines of Yoga; he entrusts himself to his inner Guide and implicitly follows the direction from within.

Sri Aurobindo, in a letter dated 12 July 1911 to Barin, his younger brother and revolutionary, written a little after one year of his coming to Pondicherry, reveals the focus of his yoga at that time.

“I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane… What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness… It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work severe and painful. It is only now that the edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.”

August 15th 1912 – A turning point in his Sadhana (age 41)

“15th August is usually a turning point or a notable day for me personally either in Sadhana or life. – indirectly only for others. This time it has been very important for me. My subjective Sadhana may be said to have received its final seal and something like its consummation by a prolonged realisation and dwelling in Parabrahman for many hours. Since then, egoism is dead for all in me except the Annamaya Atma, – the physical self which awaits one farther realisation before it is entirely liberated from occasional visitings or external touches of the old separated existence.| My future Sadhan is for life, practical knowledge and Shakti, not the essential knowledge or Shakti in itself which I have got already, but knowledge and Shakti established in the same physical self and directed to my work in life. I am now getting a clearer idea of that work and I may as well impart something of that idea to you: since you look to me as the centre, you should know what is likely to radiate out of that centre.”

October 1913 – Moves into No. 41 Rue Francois Martin (age 42)

Having received Rs. 1000 from C.R. Das for his translation into English verse of Das’s Sagar Sangeet in Bengali, it bcomes possible for Sri Aurobindo and his household to move into No. 41 Rue Francois Martin, a spacious, well lighted and ventilated house. It comes to be known later as the Guest House. Sri Aurobindo stays here till 1922.