Many readers of Sri Aurobindo consider him a theist and many of his writings seem to support this view, but it does not do justice to the complexity of his position. He was a theist who wrote on the value of atheism, a gnostic who understood the utility of agnosticism. As a young man in England, he rejected religion and adopted the agnostic position. He also became interested in the idea of the “Unknowable,” a term popularized by Herbert Spencer and much discussed in philosophical circles at that time. Some linked the idea of the Unknowable to philosophical agnosticism, the view that certain knowledge of things beyond the reach of the senses is impossible. Sri Aurobindo wrote about the Unknowable and agnosticism in some of his exegetic and philosophical works. He discussed the idea of the unknowability of the Brahman in commentaries on the Upanishads. In The Life Divine, he wrote about the Unknowable and about philosophical agnosticism, saying that “a certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge.” The only way to get beyond this was to rise to gnosis or supermind. For those who have not yet reached those levels of consciousness, agnosticism may be the only honest intellectual standpoint.
- 1.
I discuss Aurobindo’s approach to Hinduism at more length in Heehs, 2008.
- 2.
Sri Aurobindo referred to Haeckel 12 times in works of various periods. The earliest reference to The Riddle of the Universe is in The Philosophy of the Upanishads (Aurobindo 2001a: 380). He still had a copy of the Riddle with him on 8 February 1912, when he wrote in his diary that he had consulted it that day (Aurobindo 2001b: 73).
- 3.
Aurobindo, (2001a), 39; Aurobindo 2012: 189; Aurobindo 2005: 217; Aurobindo 1997a, 1997b: 680. Cf., for “will in the atom”, Haeckel, (1901), 225. “Unconscious sensation” occurs six times in Haeckel’s The Wonders of Life (1904).
- 4.
It is interesting that Aurobindo mentioned this word in his final commentary on the Kena Upaniṣad (Aurobindo, 2001a: 74) even though it does not occur in the Kena or any other Upanishad. Aurobindo speaks of “the Unknowable” five times in his final Kena commentary, twice in The Philosophy of the Upanishads, 17 times in his various commentaries on the Īṣā, and often in other books.
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