Martha SG Orton in her recently published book The Quest for Knowledge and Mastery based on her PhD thesis makes a reference to Sri Aurobindo’s arrest and incarceration in Alipore jail. After the one-year trial he was acquitted and released in May 1909: “…but the first month and a half were spent in solitary confinement. In describing his experiences in jail Sri Aurobindo states that the spirit of Swami Vivekananda visited him continuously for three weeks and, during this time, guided him to discover the higher levels of spiritual mind leading up to the supermind. These are the higher levels of consciousness which Sri Aurobindo realized and addressed in his spiritual and philosophical writings.” While this is generally true, she should have given a reference to it. Concluding her preface she states that “Sri Aurobindo’s life is best perceived through his spiritual writings which reveal the true, inner reality of his experiences.” This is an important perception. But we don’t have anything of the sort in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, about the nature of spiritual writings of the Yogi. It will be argued that the Lives is essentially presenting its subject as a man, a common human being, just one like us, with common human frailties. If so, it should answer the question as how a common man can rise to superhumanhood, to such astounding greatness, in knowledge and in power. What is that human potential he tapped to acquire this amazing mastery over himself and over others? It’s natural to raise such a question in the context of its thesis and therefore the expectation is to have answer to it. There’s none in the biography of him. ~ RYD