Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita

The Gita, which is older than the New Testament, is one of the most widely read books in the world, honored by a number of great thinkers in all countries, and the subject of much renewed interest in modern times. The Gita is a treasure house of spiritual knowledge, yogic insight, meditational vision, and profound guidance on life as a whole. It summarizes the deep wisdom of the older and more arcane Vedas and Upanishads and makes it practical and accessible to the modern reader and to daily life. Sri Aurobindo is one of the few translators and commentators on the Gita who has possessed the full yogic realization himself and has looked upon the Gita in its own right as a unified whole. Sri Aurobindo does not interpose himself or his views between us and the Gita, but rather opens the vision of the Gita directly for us in all of its many layers. His approach to the Gita is contemplative, drawing us into our own inner search, with the Gita as a powerful lens to bring clarity to all that we are attempting to do in life. Santosh highlights key relevant points of Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita, explains them and reveals their depth and implications today. Each of his well-chosen selections and lucid comments constitutes a luminous doorway into the heart of the Gita and the consciousness of Krishna, as well as into the mind of Yogi Aurobindo. Santosh shows us how we should approach great teachings like those of Sri Aurobindo and the Gita and make them relevant for our current search, helping to lift humanity into a new era of higher consciousness that is so desperately needed at this moment of our own civilizational Kurukshetra. from the Introduction by David Frawley