Sri Aurobindo was born Aurobindo Ghose in Calcutta in 1872 and molded by his anglophile father to be a perfect product of the British Empire, sent to England as a child and forbidden from Indian cultural influence. After excelling at Cambridge, he deliberately disqualified himself from the Indian Civil Service by skipping a horseback riding test, the first of many radical reinventions.

This episode follows his arc from engineered English gentleman to secretive political revolutionary running underground networks in Bengal, and finally to one of the 20th century's most influential spiritual philosophers. A profound awakening during his imprisonment in the Alipore bombing case reoriented his mission from national independence to the evolution of human consciousness.

• How his father's plan backfired, giving him the tools to analyze a ...