Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine

[Psyduck]

In this thread I hope to present and discuss the thought of Sri Aurobindo. His magnum opus is called the The Life Divine. The leading motive of the book is expressed very well by the following beautiful quote.

The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence. There is no reason to put a limit to evolutionary possibility by taking our present organization or status of existence as final. The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; Man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out superman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature.

A more elaborate introduction of the book goes as follows:

Sri Aurobindo begins The Life Divine by telling us that the earliest preoccupation of Man is for God, Light, Freedom, and Immortality.

And yet he also tells us that we have failed to realize it, mainly because Life/Nature itself is the very contradiction of those qualities. However, that should not deter us from seeking it. He explains that though Her ways are difficult, She is moving forward toward progress and evolution through these contradictory and conflicting means. Thus, from a higher perspective, Nature and Her ways should be looked upon as a necessary if limited means of bringing about evolution and progress on earth.

Sri Aurobindo also explains that we are capable of seeing the utility of these contradictions in our own individual lives as well. That the contradictions and difficulties we experience are from a higher perspective really complementary forces that enable our forward progress.

Sri Aurobindo then tells us that we not only can see the utility of the contradictions and problems of life, but can (actively rather passively through Nature's difficult course) overcome them. We do that by moving beyond the current contradiction between the two parties in any matter and discover the higher harmony. This approach recalls his famous dictum that "all problems of life are problems of harmony."

Sri Aurobindo then goes on to explain how we can discover the higher harmony. We do that by bringing out the hidden, higher nature behind things, which not only enables us to rise in consciousness, but fulfill the Human Aspiration for God, Light, Freedom, and Immortality. To that end, Sri Aurobindo describes how we can evolve each plane of our being to the higher quality involved in it: i.e. bring out the animus of Life that is involved in Matter; the Mind/Mentality that is embedded in Life; and the spiritual Mind/mentality hidden in ordinary Mind.

Sri Aurobindo concludes that just as the animal was the laboratory that worked out the emergence of Man, so too Man is the laboratory working out the emergence of the Spirit, God in creation. Thus, Man in his evolution of consciousness can know, realize, and become God incarnate.

See here for the rest of this introduction. This page is really great: it presents a 1200 page philosophical book in a very intuitive and clear way.

Wikipedia also provides a good summary of the content of the book.

In 58 chapters and 2 books, Sri Aurobindo covers a vast array of subjects. In general, though, the book can be summarized as follows:

• Man aspires for God, immortality, truth, delight, and perfection.
• That aspiration remains unfulfilled because Man's nature is divided.
• He can come to fulfill his aspiration when he discovers his higher nature, i.e. his higher consciousness.
• The division and dualities in Man's nature -- i.e. his essential Ignorance -- has its origins in the creation of material life in the cosmos.
• The most predominant form of that Ignorance is that Spirit and Matter seem at opposite poles.
• However, when we develop the higher consciousness we see that they, like all other divisions and contradictions are not so, but are complementary and One.
• The reality, Brahman is in fact that Oneness, and includes all planes from spirit to Matter. In fact, all planes are simply different forms of the One Reality, Brahman, the Absolute.
• To see everything, and all planes as One is essence is to have the Vision of Brahman.
• ...
• He then sees beyond duality and contradiction in life, such as pleasure and pain, good and evil, positive and negative, two sides of a dispute, etc., perceiving them as necessary, complementary, and One.
• He also comes to see the Oneness of Spirit and Matter. That matter is a form of spirit, and that spirit expresses itself in creation through matter (and all other planes).
• As a result, he perceives the dual pairs of the Unmanifest and the Manifest, the Creator and Creation, the original Being and the Becomings of life as integrally One. It is the Vision of the Reality, Brahman.
• ...
• Through man's evolution and transformation of consciousness, the Divine Intent is fulfilled. When Man becomes fully spiritual in nature, he completes the circle from whose Source he and the cosmos originally emerged.
• As he develops his consciousness to the full, he becomes the fully transformed Gnostic being; the supramentalized Individual.
• As a certain number of gnostic individuals raise to the fore, a collective Divine Life becomes a real possibility, fulfilling the Divine Intent in enabling a universe of forms, while also fulfilling man's deepest aspirations for Truth, Light, Love, God, and Immortality.

For the full wikipedia outline see here.

Useful Links:
- A good website trying to explain these technical philosophical topics in very clear way. If some topic is of special interest to you: you can read each chapter independently.
- The full book is available here.
- Further Reading (go to bottom of page: there is a list of the main points).


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Topics for discussion:

1. Do you agree with Sri Aurobindo's view on human nature?
2. Do you agree with his claim that the human being in essence is a "transitional being" who aspires for God, immortality, truth, delight, and perfection; whatever the interpretation of those things may be (that is, independently of how these issues are interpreted by status quo religions).
3. Do you agree with his claim that reality is essentially contradictory? Do you think opposites can/should be brought into harmony? Do you think that the reconciliation of all dualities leads to Enlightenment?
4. Does Sri Aurobindo present a more 'believable' picture of the Divine? To summarize: he does not posit an 'ad hoc' God who is invoked to "explain creation" (that is, a God merely introduced to fill an explanatory hole). More generally, he does not present a transcendent God, but a completely immanent one. But this immanence is not reduced to a pantheistic indifferent (Spinozistic kind of) God, but a dynamic self-evolving panenheistic God charged with Eros (i.e. the inner dynamics of the universe is striving for perfection and tries to overcome its imperfect state and contradictions).
5. Do you think Aurobindo is a good meeting point for a dialogue between Eastern & Western Philosophy?

If you want to discuss some other topic: no problem. If you have some questions, feel free to ask them. I will try to answer them. Ok, discuss

 

[-=SS=-]

I purchased the Live Divine as a present for my friends birthday. I had a quick skim through some of it, obviously I can't really comment properly though because I haven't read all of it. While I wouldn't wish to appear cynical of his material my only thought is that the book is huge.. it shouldn't take that long to get to the point. My friend is interested in reading that sort of thing, but for me personally I'm more interested in learning how to get there myself, to have a realization.. I mean Aurobindo might be correct in what he says, that's a possibility I will accept, but I have to know for myself.

Having not read the book my first question would be; does he lay out a method or means for having such a realization of the absolute in the book?

 

[Maya]

SS beat me to posting lol! I haven't read the entire book but here are some of my answers:

1. Yes absolutely, humans IMO has a never ending journey, and through this journey mistakes happen but knowledge is also acquired thus, leading to a path of enlightenment.

2. Yes humans are transitional beings but I think the interpretation is more of reaching divinity rather than the unrealistic meaning of immortality or to be "godlike" in a physical form.

3. Yes I believe that opposites should be brought together to achieve harmony because joining these forces will create a state of balance/equilibrium (eg. Yin Yang)

4. Yes, he presents a more realistic view of how being a God or "god like" is achieved through going into transitions and by understanding opposite forces and combining them that leads to a path of enlightenment or salvation.

5. Yes it is for joining these two opposing philosophies develops a better understanding of the spiritual (Eastern) and logical (Western) aspects of being human.

 

[Psyduck]

I purchased the Live Divine as a present for my friends birthday. I had a quick skim through some of it, obviously I can't really comment properly though because I haven't read all of it. While I wouldn't wish to appear cynical of his material my only thought is that the book is huge.. it shouldn't take that long to get to the point. My friend is interested in reading that sort of thing, but for me personally I'm more interested in learning how to get there myself, to have a realization.. I mean Aurobindo might be correct in what he says, that's a possibility I will accept, but I have to know for myself.

Having not read the book my first question would be; does he lay out a method or means for having such a realization of the absolute in the book?

I haven't read the 1200 pages myself either. Even though I am planning to do it. The Life Divine is a major synthesis of Indian and Western thought. However, it is "merely" a philosophical work. Following a chain of logical thoughts will, obviously, not lead a person (or humanity) to divine consciousness.

His vision is, however, not only based on rational thought, but is also supplemented by his mystical experiences and his thorough engagement with meditation. I guess that some of his other work, like The Synthesis of Yoga, provide more of a practical guide to reach such a divine states of consciousness by meditating, whereas The Life Divine is more of the "rational justification" of such ("supra-rational") mystical experiences. These two works are complementary in a sense (you know, opposites in unity )

Also, Aurobindo doesn't expect that his readers will agree with him 100%. Neither does he expect that every word he said will be true for eternity. His major assumption is that Reality is dynamic and changing. This means, in particular, that thought and ideas are also dynamic. So, if something does not make any sense, or no longer makes any sense, one should try to overcome this inconsistency, i.e. one must transgress the contradiction dialectically to a higher position.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

The dude seems really anthropocentric, and I can't vibe with that (where spirituality is concerned). Or essentialism. Or Teleology.

 

[Psyduck]

The dude seems really anthropocentric, and I can't vibe with that (where spirituality is concerned). Or essentialism. Or Teleology.

^ This doesnt' make any sense.

If you don't want to delve any further into his thought, just read the first quote. Men is not even a necessary outcome of the animal. Just like the emergence of a purely Spiritual (divine) existence out of Men is not a necessary (determined/teleological) process... but more of an experiment. Also, the individual subject is not central for Sri Aurobindo, but the unity and Oneness of all existence is more primordial. I don't see how this is antropocentric and why you can't vibe with that. For the record, is Christianity not the most anthropocentric/essentialistic one can get? Men is created after the image of God and is the main subject of creation.

 

[Foreigner]

The term "ascension" is the illusion of separation talking. There is no higher or lower, or spiritual ladder. Even proposing something evolutionary about spirituality is projecting into the future. Right now is as good at it gets because the now is all there is.