Sri Aurobindo never wrote a book

Internet solved many things. Ready availability of diverse reference materials as well as critical appraisals enables one to judge many intellectual formulations instantly. Propaganda proliferates, but it isn’t difficult to identify them and stay alert. The kind of sensation that A Brief History of Time or The End of History and the Last Man had generated is no longer possible. Even the giant wave of Ken Wilber succumbed to cyber-scrutiny and survives in a pitiable state. New Atheists bit dust.

The stature of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo, on the contrary, has seen a steady rise and the authenticity of their teachings is being recognized. Their genuine attempt in bridging the East-West divide is also being appreciated in a globalised scenario. The huge corpus of their writings is surely a dampener; their message in various contexts is percolating gradually, nevertheless. If this momentum is maintained, then their philosophy can become mainstream in a matter of a few years.

A major danger is to imagine that various writings of Sri Aurobindo form his firm opinion on the matter instead of studying them as part of intellectual culture and training. The context of his essays and correspondences needs to be kept in mind, otherwise it is very easy to be confused and misled by randomly selected quotations. It is also important to remember that he never wrote a book, and the volumes available today are either compilations or revisions. [TNM55]