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What is "Integral"? Who is Sri Aurobindo?
“All Life is Yoga” -- Sri Aurobindo
An integral worldview concerns itself with all phases of human existence, which includes physical, emotional, instinctual, mental, moral, social and spiritual aspects; it looks upon them as equally valid and contributing for human evolution. Integrality helps to appropriately place the vast developments made by science in the field of matter in a much wider, vaster framework of the Spirit.
One such integrative worldview is represented in the work of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) - philosopher-sage, mystic, poet, enlightened Yogi, social-political thinker, and one-time anti-colonialist revolutionary. Drawing on his decades of spiritual sadhana, the wisdom of Indian traditions and texts dealing with metaphysics, ontology and epistemology and his learning in and of the West, Sri Aurobindo developed a philosophy and discipline which had for its goal not merely the fulfillment or self-realization or moksha of a few isolated individuals but the upliftment of the whole collective life of mankind.
M. P. Pandit clarifies that Sri Aurobindo is not a philosopher in the sense in which the term is understood in the West. He calls him a “spiritual pragmatist” (Yoga for the Modern Man, p. 63). For Sri Aurobindo, “every thought is valid in so far as it allows itself to be rendered into practice…What cannot be rendered into terms of life is theory, speculation.
All of the IKS courses based on Sri Aurobindo's Integral framework involve reading his primary works and secondary works by others.
What is Integral Yoga?
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