Published by Yoga Journal (USA) in December 2008.

This meticulously reported and scrupulously footnoted account of the Bengali saint Sri Aurobindo leaves no stone unturned. Most know him as the founder of Integral Yoga, a system that synthesizes karma, jnana, and bhakti yogas and focuses on the expansion of consciousness. But many don’t realize that Aurobindo was also a poet, journalist, author, philosopher, scholar, and political leader.

The book is divided into five parts: Son, Scholar, Revolutionary, Yogi and Philosopher, and Guide. The first sections deal with his early family life in the small Himalayan village of Rangpur, India; his years of British schooling; and his work as a civil servant, journalist, and professor. Then, we see his transformation from a relatively unknown citizen to a central figure In India’s nationalism movement, which ultimately landed him in jail in 1908. The last sections focus on Aurobindo’s departure from politics and his life in Pondicherry, where he spent his final years. There, he withdrew from public life and dedicated himself to yoga and writing, developing theories on the evolution of consciousness and becoming the leader of a groundbreaking spiritual community, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which still exists today. In order to follow his spiritual path without distraction, he eventually communicated only through his closest disciple, known as the Mother, until his death in 1950. Heehs makes it clear that this brilliant, mysterious figure lived his truth. And that was, as Aurobindo wrote himself in his most famous book, The Synthesis of Yoga, “All life is Yoga.”

Nora Isaacs