Debashish Banerji, PhD, is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and Chairman of the East West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is author of Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo and also The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, a book about his great grandfather. He edited an anthology about his great uncle, Rabindranath Tagore in the Twenty-First Century. With Robert McDermott, he has coedited an anthology titled Philo-Sophia: Wisdom Goddess Traditions.

In this video from 2016, he describes how Aurobindo retreated to a spiritual life in the city of Pondicherry in south India that was under French control. During this period, he developed (or “received”) a detailed and extensive program of yoga. He also kept a very meticulous yoga diary that combined English and Sanskrit terms. He also began to experience a variety of paranormal abilities, documenting them in his diary and experimenting with them in various ways noting both his successes and failures. He also endeavored to integrate his spiritual and his political inclinations. Ultimately, he developed an approach to yoga that endeavored to achieve integration of all opposites. Integral yoga, therefore, entails a multi-dimensional experience of reality.

(Recorded on December 20, 2015)

Published on December 19, 2022