Aurobindo Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 15 August, 1872. At the age of 7, he went to England and lived there for 14 years. Besides English he mastered Latin and Greek and also learnt French, German, Italian and Spanish. He was a very brilliant student and passed the open competition for I.C.S.
He, however, did not try to qualify in the riding test, perhaps intentionally, as he nourished a feeling of resentment against a foreign rule in India. He returned to India in 1893 and joined Baroda College. He devoted himself to self culture and literary activity, learnt Sanskrit, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali and drank deep in the philosophy and culture of India. He began yoga by himself in 1904. Even before this he had some spiritual experiences.
In 1905, at the time of Anti-partition Agitation he gave up the Baroda service and openly joined in the political movement. There were slides to his political activities-a secret revolutionary propaganda with which he started, then a public propaganda intending to convert the whole nation to the ideas of Independence and lastly, non-co- operation and passive resistance. He started the Journal Bandemataram to propagate revolutionary ideas.
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In 1908, he was arrested and put into Jail where he remained for a year. Shri C. R. Das, the famous lawyer, put aside long practice and devoted himself to the defence of Shri Aurobindo in the famous trial known as ‘Manicktalla Bomb Case’. Being acquitted he came out of Jail after a year. During this period his view of life was radically changed, as in the Jail he had spent almost all his time in reading the Gita, and Upanishads and in intensive meditations and practice of yoga.
In 1910, he left his political activities and went to Pondicherry in search of a more complete experience harmonising the two ends of existence, spirit and matter. It is possible for the mind to rise to a greater divine consciousness and then to re-descend with its spiritual gains of light, power and bliss to transform this life. At Pondicherry more and yet more people began to come to follow his spiritual path and so, there grew up Shri Aurobindo Ashram, its Ideal being the attainment of life divine on this earth and in the earthly existence.