The Life Divine

The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo, is one of those books which you feel blessed to have come across. You never stop appreciating the literary beauty of his geniality. A poet at heart and Yogi by nature, he eases through very difficult concepts with poetic, but logical excellence. It’s a voluminous work spanning across 2 sections, 58 chapters and over 1100 pages. Sri Aurobindo had written series of articles in Arya magazine during 1914-1919. The essays from those articles were collected, rearranged and rewritten by Sri Aurobindo himself for this book. It has a massive scope, covering entire compass of Indian philosophical thought. The language of the book is tough with rich vocabulary and many of the sentences taking a whole paragraph. At times, you get overwhelmed by the number of new concepts introduced and some other time, you get mesmerized by the beauty of an excellent prose. Sri Aurobindo directly uses his concepts in evolved form and reader needs to continue reading until he explains those concepts very later in the book. It took me over six months to finish this read.

First part entitled, The Omnipresent Reality and The Universe, deals with nature of the ultimate reality and the universe in general. He also explains the origin of creation and the nature of truth consciousness. In the second part entitled,The Knowledge and The Ignorance: The Spiritual Evolution, Sri Aurobindo, takes us on a journey from in-consciousness in matter towards the divine life. Culminating chapters of this second part describes the final stages of evolution, resulting in divine life on earth. Every chapter is preceded with excellent related verses from ancient scriptures like, Vedas and Upanishads. Re-reading those verses after finishing the chapter makes their meaning more perspicuous. Like every other philosopher, Sri Aurobindo develops his own conceptual language and getting used to it takes time and complete immersion. Unlike other contemporary philosophers, he bases his work on very ancient scriptures like, Upanishads, Vedas, and occasionally Gita, avoiding semantic ambiguities of later schools of thought. He does mention The Buddha, Shankara, and Vedantawhile comparing the distinctive logical streams on the same subject. He categorically rejects the illusion-ism of Shankara and describes void of the Buddha, as one of the aspects of reality which is still incomplete. He considers West and Greek philosopher’s approaches and synthesizes those with the Indian thought. Indirectly, he reviews MarxDarwin, Hegel, Kant, and many others and accepts their explanation of reality to a certain degree, but holds Vedic seers understanding as much more accomplished. He agrees with Darwin’s theory of evolution in physical plane and extends it in spiritual plane. In his view, though reason and science based approches are extremely helpful in physical plane, they become obsolete as we move to a spiritual plane.

The central theme throughout the book revolves around his theory of involution followed by evolution. Sri Aurobindo begins his thesis with discussion of disparate approaches taken by materialist and ascetic, and noting the usability and important contributions of the two, he discards both. The great descent, he calls, starts from the Conscious Force, which is like an ocean of energy, with its power of truth consciousness (Supermind) becomes the universal forms. Mind – the lower form of Supermind – moves through a dynamic current called Life. This current has its own gradation which eventually culminates in matter, where the Conscious Force is in veiled form. But It has a great potential for manifestation. The evolution starts from this very point and begins its ascent. The manifested life starts with the matter, giving its way to vital life and eventually to its highest natural formation which is The Mind. This is a gateway to the Supermind from down below. When mind reaches its Supermind status, the whole existence changes, and it finally achieves the status of Gnostic Being or The Divine Life. The evolution is nothing but life’s journey towards the mind followed by humans spiritual journey towards the divine life. The involution of conscious force into matter and evolution of matter into conscious force are inevitable processes.

Sri Aurobindo, essentially affirms different planes of consciousness and consequently various grades of reality, where our current consciousness is not necessarily the highest. The highly evolved further plane is what he calls a Supermind. Man must ascend himself from Mind to Supermind and achieve the status of Gnostic Being, or live The Divine Life. For this ascent, he has to go through psychic, spiritual, and supramental transformation. This transformation will break the shackles of ignorance and will lead to sevenfold knowledge. Along with this theory, he also explains ego, duality, intuition, materialistic attitudes, and nature of desire. When he considers ego, he starts from the matter, and calls atom’s attempt to separate itself from rest as its ego. From matter he moves to the spiritual plane and shows how ego is one the most difficult hurdles to overcome. In his theory, ego is an inherent part of the nature. His explanation goes deep into the subject and becomes a necessary building block of his theory. He carefully clears out notions about ignorance, rebirth, death, life, and other worldly planes and perfectly fits those into his framework. At times, it is difficult to believe in his explanation and stated possibilities. And like every other great Indian thinker, Sri Aurobindo does not merely want you to accept it. He believes in realizing and living the ultimate truth than just to know it. The divine life is the inner and outer existential transformation. For this, he has developed certain yogic practices, which he calls ‘Integral Yoga’. They are designed to help man in his spiritual journey. The book does not explain those, but these can be found in his other works

Sri Aurobindo sets exacting standards for his reader and does not allow passive reading of this material. You have to allow yourself to permeate and then flow with it. There is repetition of certain concepts at some places and occasionally verbose sentences makes you lose grip over the main subject. But a second visit to the paragraph makes things more comprehensible. My understanding of this book is not great, but still it changed my whole perspective of looking towards life. His insights into the common problems of life and his analysis of nature of mind, helped me organize as a better person. His detailed explanation of many of the Indian philosophical concepts assisted me in understanding other great books like Gita and . Essentially this book details the spiritual journey and makes a very valuable resource for someone embarking on one. As I said, it is not an easy read and definitely not a one-time read. But if you do put in your efforts, this will be your life changing experience.

— Sujit Bhosale