SRi Aurobindo On Incarnation and the Love of God

dian philosophers and has a considerable following. His background was thoroughly English; brought to England at at early age and educated in the European classics and literature, and undergoing Christian influence in home and school. His many writings are solely in English, and an English of great fluency and delicacy. Yet after his return to the land of his birth, Aurobindo became thoroughly Indian and indeed Hindu, so that there is less open trace of European thought in his writings than in those of many of his Indian contemporaries. It is striking to compare the writings of gri Aurobindo with, for example, those of the eminent philosopher-president of India, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Dr Radhakrishnan is noted for his constant synthesis of Eastern and Western writings. In his well known commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita there are frequent references not only to Plato and Plotinus, but to Spinoza and Wordsworth, to St Paul, St Teresa, Thomas a Kempis, Eckhart, Tauler, Luther, and so on. But, apart from one or two general references to Greek philosophy and a few to the Bible (of which more later), there is none of this in Aurobindo's two long series of Essays on the Gita. And in his masterpiece, The Life Divine, where each one of the 56 chapters is headed with quotations from scriptures, these are always from Hindu and never from any other scriptures. Only once is Christianity mentioned in the footnotes in this book and a few times in the text. Far from importing the West into India, Aurobindo, at least in quotations and open references, seemed to be expounding India to herself, and only secondarily to others who might be interested. Aurobindo has been accused of critizing the West and its philosophy too much, for its apparent materialism. But in fact he often

Art · Christianity · Hinduism · History of religions · Incarnation · Literature · Relation (database) · Theology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Vedanta · Christian Theology and Mission · Classics · Contemporary Christian Leadership and Education · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophy · Religious studies