A multifaceted genius, Sri Aurobindo was a political revolutionary, social critic, poet and above all, a great yogi and spiritual teacher. He was not only one of our foremost interpreters of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, but also developed an original philosophy, which, though based on the ancient wisdom of India, has a modern, evolutionary dimension to it-the human being, according to him, is not the end of the evolutionary process; our destiny is to grow to a higher state of consciousness which will fundamentally alter life as we know it.