Life Divine

* Book: The Life Divine.

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Discussion

Robert Kleinman:

"The evolutionary cosmologies just considered are the speculative philosophical theories of individual thinkers who stretched their mental powers as far as they could. We now examine a different kind of evolutionary vision derived from spiritual resources ordinarily unavailable to philosophers. It originates with Sri Aurobindo, whose multifaceted genius makes it impossible to classify him in conventional scholarly terms. He was not a philosopher, yet in The Life Divine he wrote an elaborate philosophical treatise on evolution. Not a scientist, his approach to the yogic life was nonetheless scientific in spirit. He was, though, a poet of extraordinary ability who wrote a magnificent epic poem, Savitri. Cosmology was a fraction of his enormous output, but it provides a broad context for understanding his treatment of evolutionary transformation. Sri Aurobindo saw evolution as a spiritual process having as its goal the transformation of our present existence into a divine life. In his view, earth is a unique scene for the emergence of divinity from its encasement in matter.10 It is important to emphasize at the outset that this was not the result of mere speculation. It was rather the outcome of a lifetime devoted to an intensive investigation of the nature of consciousness. Although his vision of an evolving universe holds its own as a purely philosophical theory, to reduce him to a philosopher would miss Sri Aurobindo’s status as a great seer and fully accomplished yogi. His spiritual collaborator and compeer, the Mother, was instrumental in giving a practical focus to his vision. Following an earlier meeting in Pondicherry, she joined him there permanently in 1920. Subsequently, she organized the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to accommodate a growing number of aspirants from allover the world. Her collected works are a spiritual treasury and present pragmatic insights into the practice of transformative yoga. Sri Aurobindo was born in India in 1872, but was sent to England as a child to be educated in English schools. He studied classical literature at Cambridge University, winning prizes in poetry and passing examinations with high honors. While in England, he familiarized himself with the cultural achievements of Western civilization. After leaving Cambridge, he returned to India and began a serious study of Indian culture. From the moment of his arrival there, a deep peace descended upon him; a great love for India blossomed. Later, Sri Aurobindo became a leader in the nationalist movement for independence from British rule.12 He took up yoga as a means of gaining inner strength for his political work. Under the direction of a teacher named Lele, he quickly realized Nirvana, the experience of the Silent Brahman of Vedanta. This established him in a transcendent consciousness that never left him thereafter. But it was only a beginning, leading ultimately to the working out of a new yoga of human and world transformation. During a year of imprisonment by the British for his revolutionary activities, he had a powerful realization of the Cosmic Divine. This convinced him that the achievement of Indian independence was only part of a larger work to be done. Released from prison, he eventually settled in the French colony of Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal, where he remained for the rest of his life. In Pondicherry, he originated the unique form of yoga that led him to an understanding of spiritual evolution and the writing of his major works.

In 1914, Sri Aurobindo began a monthly journal, Arya, in which the substance of his later books first appeared. Some of this work was concerned with the civilization of ancient India. In Foundations of Indian Culture, he reviewed the whole range of traditional Indian religion, art, literature, and politics from a spiritual point of view. Besides this, he wrote a brilliant exposition of the Bhagavad Gītā (Essays on the Gita), as well as translations and commentaries on several Upanishads. He made a careful study of the Ṛg Veda, the fountainhead of Indian culture, translating many of its hymns into English and offering an illuminative interpretation of their mystical content.14 In addition, he achieved a masterful integration of the traditional yogic disciplines of India in The Synthesis of Yoga.

Yoga was for him the practical basis for integrating spirit and matter on earth, rather than only a means for liberating the soul. Other books, such as The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity, were devoted to an examination of the development of human society and its progress toward world unity. In The Future Poetry, he considered the role of poetry as an effective instrument for the evolution of the soul. Noteworthy among his shorter works are The Mother, describing the four powers and personalities of the Divine Mother, and The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth (published in America as The Mind of Light), a series of articles exploring the possibility of a perfected humanity evolving prior to the manifestation of a supramental being.

The two books that best express his comprehensive approach to the universe are The Life Divine and his epic poem Savitri.

In The Life Divine, he presents a synthesis of the philosophical systems of East and West based upon the idea of spiritual evolution. This he founded on an inspired vision of the divine nature of existence. The culmination of his enormous literary output was Savitri, which infused a sustained intensity and profound spirituality into the traditional form of the epic. The poem runs into nearly 24,000 lines of blank verse. After 1926, Sri Aurobindo gave increasing attention to its composition, revising it over and over whenever possible to match his deepening realizations. He also answered innumerable letters daily, for hours at a stretch, regarding all aspects of spiritual life. Our concern in this chapter is with the vision of evolution that he developed in The Life Divine.

Sri Aurobindo’s magnum opus, The Life Divine, is an involved and complex work with a clear methodology. He presents a series of topics in the context of a developing argument, examines several viewpoints relating to each topic, and always concludes with his own position. Since he summarizes each perspective fairly and convincingly, we must distinguish his view from the others. A favorite ploy of philosophers for solving difficult problems is to offer a solution that logically eliminates possible alternatives. But rather than cut the Gordian Knot in this way, Sri Aurobindo carefully unravels its various strands. He then integrates the partial truths they represent into a more comprehensive synthesis. His purpose was not to add one more theory to those already available but to deepen our understanding of the destiny of the soul (psychic being) and explain how we can continue to evolve. A final statement of his thought comes in the last six chapters, after a long winding development like the course of evolution he describes. In these chapters, Sri Aurobindo emphasizes that a divine life is a life lived in and for the Divine and that spiritual evolution must take place in this world.

The first chapter of The Life Divine sounds the keynote for everything that follows. It merits our careful attention because the general principles introduced are developed more fully later in the book.

Chapter I, “The Human Aspiration,” begins with a reference to the age-old longing of the human spirit for a more perfect life on earth:

- The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation,— for it survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment,— is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality.

Sri Aurobindo points out that, even though these ideals seem to contradict our normal experience, they can be realized by an evolutionary manifestation of Spirit in Matter. Nature’s method is to seek harmony among opposing forces: the greater the apparent discords, the more they act as a spur toward more subtle and powerful harmonies.

But if evolution is the means for achieving this, there must be something deeper that lies behind it:

- We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind."

The reference to higher states beyond Mind is significant, since evolution proceeds in this direction.

The text continues:

- “For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is.”

To seek the greater manifestation of divinity in this world is what Sri Aurobindo considers to be our highest and most legitimate end. Since “the secret will of the Great Mother” will not allow us as a race to reject the evolutionary struggle, it is better to accept our destiny in the clear light of reason than to be driven by blind instinct. The chapter ends with a reference to a supramental status of being, which is identified as the goal toward which we should aspire.

The rest of The Life Divine works out the details of this vision."

(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/1-1-kleinman.pdf)