Handbook of The Life Divine
"Seeking to embrace all life in itself, it is in the position not of a pilgrim following the highroad to his destination, but, to that extent at least, of a path-finder hewing his way through a virgin forest."
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-57
“This path has neither the same aim nor the same method as the ordinary Yoga, it aims at a realisation of which their results are only component parts; it may be said to begin its capital experiences where these end and its object is one that they would consider impossible. Much of it is virgin ground in which the paths have yet to be cut and built."
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-529
“If the spirit could from the first dwell securely in the superior heights and deal with a blank and virgin stuff of mind and matter, a complete spiritual transformation might be rapid, even facile...”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-948
“It is very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with it—it is spontaneous and natural for me… but Supramental transformation is another thing altogether, oh!… No one has ever followed that path; Sri Aurobindo was the first, and He left before telling us what He was doing, I am literally carving out a trail through the virgin forest—worse than a virgin forest…I am given the awareness of how huge this thing is one drop at a time…so I won’t be crushed (or ‘Light conquered now even by that feeble beam:’ Savitri-601). It has reached a point where all Spiritual life, all those people and races that have tried since the beginning of the earth, all that seems like nothing, like child’s play in comparison. And it is a work without glory: you have no results, no experiences filling you with ecstasy or joy—none of that, it is a hideous labour.”
The Mother
The Mother’s Agenda, July 15, 1961
The Life Divine is a book in which the highest hinted truth of The Synthesis of Yoga is further developed or this is a book in which hierarchies of Consciousness are explored which is necessary for the fullness and perfection of Being, Nature and Life.
In The Life Divine, the knowledge hinted but not sufficiently developed in The Synthesis of Yoga is restated again, with greater intensity, finer precision, a larger universal approach, and clearly spelled intermediate hierarchies between the Matter and the Spirit, seven-fold Ignorance and seven-fold Integral Knowledge, Exclusive Concentration and Integral Concentration, Separative Knowledge by indirect contact and Knowledge by Identity, Higher Mind and Supermind, Inconscient self and Bliss self; gives us ample opportunity to go beyond Buddha, Shankara and the Gita; defines Religion and Occultism in their evolutionary context and the possible emergence of Divine community, for the wider and total benefit of the humanity.
The First Condition of Divine Life:
This world is real precisely because it consists of an observing consciousness and an objective reality and the world action cannot proceed without the witness because the universe exists only in or for the Consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. The individual can be a centre of the whole universal Consciousness and world transcending Consciousness superior to all cosmic existence and the form of the universe is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Ineffable. So to exist and an out-flowering of life by expansion and elevation of Consciousness is a first condition of the Divine life.
The Second Condition of Divine Life:
The second condition of the Divine life is to possess and govern the dynamic condition of becoming from an inner eternity of Being and its outcome is the Spiritual self-possession, self-mastery and the manifestation of Divine miracle.
The Third Condition of Divine Life:
Out of this living a third condition evolves which insists to withdraw from the absorption of material preoccupation, not by rejecting or neglecting life in the body but by a constant living on the inner and higher planes of Consciousness by an ascent and stepping back inward; both these movements are necessary in order to elevate life from the transient life from moment to moment into the eternal life of our immortal Consciousness.
The Fourth Condition of Divine Life:
The fourth condition of Divine life is the widening of our range of Consciousness, field of action in time and a taking up and transcending of the existing state of our mental, vital and corporeal consciousness and consider them as the instrument and minor outward formation of the Self. Thus in reality the world lives in us, thinks in us, formulates itself in us; but we imagine and misunderstand that it is we who live, think, formulate separately by ourselves and for ourselves and we claim the universal forces that act in us as our own.
The Fifth Condition of Divine Life:
In the last condition of Divine living, the Consciousness is at once aware of the Law, Right and Truth of the Individual and All and the two become consciously harmonised in a mutual unity, One knowing itself as the Many and the Many knowing themselves as the One, life obeys the law of Unity and yet fulfils each thing in the diversity according to its proper rule and function; in this Divine Life all the individuals live at once as one conscious Being in many living Souls, one power of Consciousness in many minds, one joy of force in many lives, one reality of Delight fulfilling itself in many hearts and bodies. An integral evolution of Consciousness in Matter in a constantly developing self-formation till the form reveals and manifests the indwelling Spirit is then the central significant motive of our terrestrial existence.
“In this Yoga, the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. If the soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then the Yoga can be done; otherwise (by the mere power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-161
“And finally, Sri Aurobindo has told us somewhere in The Life Divine that to follow the path of spiritual experience, one must have within oneself a “spiritual being”, one must be “twice born” as it is said, for if one doesn’t have a spiritual being within, which is at least on the point of becoming self-aware, one may try to imitate these experiences but it will only be crude imitation or hypocrisy, it won’t be a reality.”
The Mother
TMCW-9/Questions and Answers-1957/p-344-345
“But it is possible to go farther; for the spiritual being, once inwardly liberated, can develop in mind the higher states of being that are its own natural atmosphere and bring down a supramental energy and action which are proper to the Truth-consciousness; the ordinary mental instrumentation, life-instrumentation, physical instrumentation even, could then be entirely transformed and become parts no longer of an ignorance however much illumined, but of a supramental creation which would be the true action of a spiritual truth-consciousness and knowledge.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-888,
“A perfected community also can exist only by the perfection of its individuals, and perfection can come only by the discovery and affirmation in life by each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity and a resultant life unity.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1087-1088
“If then life has to become a manifestation of the Spirit, it is the manifestation of a spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a Supramental or Gnostic power of spiritual being that must be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Nature.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1054
“As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it, so the first spiritual change has to call in the supramental transformation to complete it.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-951,
“A purified mind and heart and a strong and fine psychical intuition may do much to protect from perversion and error, but even the most highly developed psychical consciousness cannot be absolutely safe unless the psychical is illumined and uplifted by a higher force than itself and touched and strengthened by the luminous intuitive mind and that again raised towards the supramental energy of the spirit.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-896