The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part One: The Revolutionary Yogi, with Debashish Banerji

Debashish Banerji, PhD, is former Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles as well as an adjunct faculty member at Pasadena City College and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is also the former director of the East West Cultural Center in Los Angeles. 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. Here he describes Aurobindo’s unique role as a spiritual figure during the chaotic years of the early twentieth century. Born to an upper-class Indian family, he studied in England and achieved high marks as a scholar. When he returned to India, he became a leader in the anti-colonial movement. At this time he also began practicing yoga and quickly discovered many extraordinary states of consciousness. Eventually he was imprisoned for his political activities and, while in prison, his yoga and meditative practices accelerated. He began to experience himself as having a personal relationship with god (Brahman), mediated by the avatar Krishna. He came to experience everything and everyone as an embodiment of Krishna. As a result, he came to realize that a political revolution would be incomplete without an accompanying spiritual revolution. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities. (Recorded on December 20, 2015)