The Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle

The Best of
Sri Aurobindo Circle

The Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle

Bi-annual Periodical

Sri Aurobindo Circle was started with the Mother’s blessings from Bombay in 1945. The Mother gave its name and wrote it in her own handwriting which it carried right through. It contained articles on a range of topics from senior members of Sri Aurobindo Ashram as well as other sadhaks, scholars and devotees. Its publication was discontinued in 1998.

To make some of these gems available to the current audience, in August 2025 we launched The Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle, a bi-annual online publication to be released on August 1 and February 1 every year.

LATEST ISSUE

Volume 2, Issue 1: The Evolutionary Crisis and New Creation
August 1, 2026

Editorial Note:

Greetings for this special month of August!

On the upcoming birthday of Sri Aurobindo, the Maharishi, the Mahayogi, the Avatar who is guiding the onward march of Earth-consciousness to its inevitable destiny, we offer at His Lotus Feet Volume 2 of The Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle, our bi-annual periodical which brings for readers in a novel way gems selected from the vast archives of Sri Aurobindo Circle.

The root cause of all major problems we face today as human race can be broadly traced back to two opposing lines of thought and practice. On one side we have an approach to life which looks at the existence only from a materialistic-utilitarian perspective. For such a mindset, what is physically seen is the only reality. Also, this reality can be manipulated for making human life more pleasurable and comfortable by the use of scientific or rational mind. In one of its extreme expressions, this led to the rejection of all religion and religious impulse. And in another way, the same mindset became the driving force for all colonial or imperialistic campaigns of Europe. This is typically considered a practical, future-oriented approach, generally identified with the Western-industrial-rational model of development and progress.

On the other side, we have a conventional and conservative mindset typically stuck in the ways of the past. It is keener on preserving the form rather than the essential spirit of the past. In its extreme forms such a way of thinking may refuse to see value in any outer material progress, especially when an ascetic tendency becomes stronger. Such an approach is also prone to perversion and distortion. And it can very quickly open itself to tendencies of religious obscurantism, fundamentalism, even mindless use of violence for conflict-resolution. The risk is stronger when the religion gets hijacked by lowest impulses of human nature such as greed, lust for power, and ambition.

In their own ways, both such approaches are responsible for the conflicts we see in the world today. Neither can offer a solution from within their narrow ideological cages. Sri Aurobindo could foresee such an impasse as far back as in 1916 when he wrote:

“For the most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge.” (CWSA, 13: 137)

Once the West more or less rejected religion and religious impulse, it almost exclusively turned to fulfilling external desires and impulses. As a result, its life became governed by political and economic ideals and necessities. Even when there has been some reawakening of the religious mind and a growing interest and curiosity regarding spiritual and psychical seeking, the West’s tendency has been to address matters of the world by “mechanical methods and as the thinking political and economic animal, simply because it knows no other standpoint and is accustomed to no other method.” (ibid.)

At the same time, the alternative of going back to a religious mould of life focused more on the outer forms and practices, the outer shell of the religion with not much regard for its inner true kernel, is no longer going to be acceptable to the rational and questioning mind of humanity. The solution is to be found in a spiritual view of life and living.

The evolutionary crisis faced by humanity today expresses itself at all levels, individual, communal, national and global. It can be adequately addressed only by going beyond the mental consciousness which necessitates an inward and upward movement. Sri Aurobindo’s cosmic and comprehensive seer-vision points the way to a new creation. This new creation would necessitate a new world culture which must base itself on Spirit as the centre and build its forms the way a spiritual culture would do. This issue of Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle explores a fundamental question in this regard – will the new creation be preceded by a destruction of the old?

As always, we offer this work at the Lotus Feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Ever in gratitude.

~ Beloo Mehra