This is not at all true.
A spiritual father is someone who sows the seed of spirituality in a person and nourishes and nurtures it. Sri Aurobindo, never mentions any influence of Sri Ramkrishna in his life though he had a great regard for him. There is no account of his going to Dakhineswar nor did he make any effort to meet Sharda devi or Swami Vivekananda. He hardly quotes anything from their writings except ocassionally here and there.
The seed of spirituality was sown in him through the reading of a poor English translation of the Isha Upanishad and some spiritual experiences that came to him spontaneously. The seeds were nurtured and nourished by Sri Krishna and Kali. Nor did he seek for Moksha as traditional spiritual Masters including Sri Ramkrishna taught, though he had the experience of it spontaneously while meditating with Yogi Lele Maharaj whose help he acknowledges in the first major experience of the Nirvanic Silence.
In fact most of Sri Aurobindo’s experiences came spontaneously without any special effort or help from any outer person.
The only spiritual person from whom Sri Aurobindo received help was Yogi Vishnu Bhasker Lele. But the experience Sri Aurobindo had went far beyond what was conceived or intended. Otherwise in general his Yoga was guided first by Sri Krishna and Kali leading to the first two major realisations of Nirvana and the Vision of the One Divine everywhere and in everything.
Subsequently after Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry, as he himself indicates in a letter to his brother Barin, he reveals that his yoga has been further guided by the ‘indwelling Guru of the Worlds.
‘What I started with, what Lele gave me, what I did in jail—all that was a searching for the path, a circling around looking here and there, touching, taking up, handling, testing this and that of all the old partial yogas, getting a more or less complete experience of one and then going off in pursuit of another. Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition ceased. The indwelling Guru of the world indicated my path to me completely, its full theory, the ten limbs of the body of the yoga. These ten years he has been making me develop it in experience; it is not yet finished.’Of course Sri Aurobindo had a high regard for Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansa. After all Mother Kali had a great role to play in the life of both the great Masters. He received three symbolic inner communication with Sri Ramkrishna and, while in the jail, he had a visitation and by Swami Vivekananda who spoke to him on some important subject and pointed the way towards the Supermind. But Sri Aurobindo had a number of other such inner spiritual communications such as from Raja Rammohan Roy, the gods and goddesses of the Vedas, and of course from Sri Krishna who had been his regular companion and friend. Nor did his yoga follow any line of Sri Ramkrishna. In fact he went beyond all the past yogas, synthesizing their realisations in his vast consciousness and then placing a new goal of divinising our material existence into the Life Divine, things that were never contemplated earlier or even considered plausible by the great traditions including Sri Ramkrishna.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
