Editing Sri Aurobindo (section)

=== Synthesis and integration ===
[[Sisir Kumar Maitra]], who was a leading exponent of Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy,{{sfn|Huchzermeyer|2016|p=85}} has referred to the issue of external influences and written that Sri Aurobindo does not mention names, but "as one reads his books one cannot fail to notice how thorough is his grasp of the great Western philosophers of the present age..." Although he is Indian one should not "underrate the influence of Western thought upon him. This influence is there, very clearly visible, but Sri Aurobindo... has not allowed himself to be dominated by it. He has made full use of Western thought, but he has made use of it for the purpose of building up his own system..."<ref>Maitra, S.K. (1988): ''The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy.'' Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. p. 49. {{ISBN|978-8170580782}}</ref> Thus Maitra, like Steve Odin,{{sfn|Huchzermeyer|2016|p=78}} sees Sri Aurobindo not only in the tradition and context of Indian, but also Western philosophy and assumes he may have adopted some elements from the latter for his synthesis.

R. Puligandla supports this viewpoint in his book ''Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy''. He describes Sri Aurobindo's philosophy as "an original synthesis of the Indian and Western traditions." "He integrates in a unique fashion the great social, political and scientific achievements of the modern West with the ancient and profound spiritual insights of [[Hinduism]]. The vision that powers the life divine of Aurobindo is none other than the Upanishadic vision of the unity of all existence."<ref name=Puligandla>{{cite book|author=Ramakrishna Puligandla|title=Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LJ_0OAAACAAJ|year=1997|publisher=D.K. Printworld|isbn=978-81-246-0087-0|pages=267–268|access-date=19 December 2018|archive-date=5 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240205053258/https://books.google.com/books?id=LJ_0OAAACAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

Puligandla also discusses Sri Aurobindo's critical position vis-à-vis [[Adi Shankara|Shankara]]<ref>For Sri Aurobindo’s critique, see, for instance, CWSA vol. 17, ''Isha Upanishad'', pp. 498–99. There he says that Shankara’s world-negative approach "has overshadowed for centuries the lives and souls of hundreds of millions of human beings." However, he also recognized him as "one of the mightiest of metaphysical intellects." (''Isha Upanishad'', p. 497)</ref> and his thesis that the latter's Vedanta is a world-negating philosophy, as it teaches that the world is unreal and illusory. From Puligandla's standpoint this is a misrepresentation of Shankara's position, which may have been caused by Sri Aurobindo's endeavour to synthesise Hindu and Western modes of thought, identifying Shankara's Mayavada with the subjective idealism of [[George Berkeley]].<ref name=Puligandla/>

However, Sri Aurobindo's critique of Shankara is supported by U. C. Dubey in his paper titled ''Integralism: The Distinctive Feature of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy.'' He points out that Sri Aurobindo's system presents an integral view of Reality where there is no opposition between the Absolute and its creative force, as they are actually one. Furthermore, he refers to Sri Aurobindo's conception of the supermind as the mediatory principle between the Absolute and the finite world and quotes S.K. Maitra stating that this conception "is the pivot round which the whole of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy moves."<ref name=Dubey>U. C. Dubey (2007) "Integralism the distinctive feature of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy", pp. 25–27, Ch. 2 in ''Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo''. Indrani Sanyal and Krishna Roy (eds.). D K Printworld. New Delhi. {{ISBN|978-81-246-0402-1}}</ref>

Dubey proceeds to analyse the approach of the Shankarites and believes that they follow an inadequate kind of logic that does not do justice to the challenge of tackling the problem of the Absolute, which cannot be known by finite reason. With the help of the finite reason, he says, "we are bound to determine the nature of reality as one or many, being or becoming. But Sri Aurobindo's Integral Advaitism reconciles all apparently different aspects of Existence in an all-embracing unity of the Absolute." Next, Dubey explains that for Sri Aurobindo there is a higher reason, the "logic of the infinite" in which his integralism is rooted.<ref name=Dubey/>