The Life Divine CHAPTER XXI THE ASCENT OF LIFE Let the path of the soul to the godhead lead up towards the original ocean by the working of the Mind.                                                                                                                                                             Rig- Veda         The great Delight of things conquering the third law of status affirms and governs all by the soul of universality ; then in his winged and wide ascent he manifests the fourth status and adheres firmly to the ocean that is the fountain of these waters.                                            id .       

  The Life Divine. CHAPTER XVIII MIND AND SUPERMIND         He discovered that Mind was the Brahman.                                                                     Taittiriya Upanishad.        Indivisible, but as if divided in beings.                                                                Gita.        The conception which we have so far been striving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental life which the divine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but which the human soul has to manifest in this body of Sachchidananda formed here into the mould of a mental and physical living. But so

  The Life Divine CHAPTER XIX LIFE        Puranic energy is the life of creatures; for that is said to be the universal principle of life.                                                                                                                             Taittiriya Upanishad ARGUMENT        [Mind as a final action of Supermind is a creative and not only a perceptive power; in fact, material force itself being only a Will in things working darkly as the expression of subconscious Mind, Mind is the immediate creator of the material universe. But the real creator is Supermind; for wherever there is Mind conscious or subconscious,

  THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER XIV. THE SUPERMIND AS CREATOR     All things are self expanding of the Idea.     Vishnu Purana.     A principle of active Will and Knowledge superior to Mind and creature of the wilds is then the intermediary power and state of being between that self-possession of the One and this flux of the Many. This principle is not entirely alien to us; it does not belong solely and incommunicably to a Being who is entirely other than ourselves or to a state of existence from which we are mysteriously projected into birth, but also rejected and unable to return. If it seems to us to be seated on heights far above us, yet a

  The Life Divine CHAPTER XXII THE PROBLEM OF LIFE       This it is that is called the universal Life.     Taittiriya Upanishad,     The Lord seated in the heart of all existences turns all as upon a machine by his Maya.     Gita.     Man when he knows the Eternal who is Truth, Knowledge and Infinity shall enjoy, in association with the Eternal who has the all-discerning consciousness, all that he now desires. Taittiriya Upanishad,   ARGUMENT.     [Life being a divided movement of consciousness a though really an undivided force becomes a clash of opposing truths each striving to fulfil itsel

  The Life Divine CHAPTER XVI THE TRIPLE STATUS OF SUPERMIND     My self-existent being is that which supports all existences and that which dwells in them and that which constitutes their existence. Gita     Before we pass to this easier understanding of the world we inhabit from the standpoint of "an apprehending Truth-consciousness which sees things as would an individual soul freed from the limitations of mentality and admitted to participate in the action of the Divine Super-mind, we must pause and resume briefly what we have realised or can yet realise of the consciousness of the Lord, the Ishwara as He develops the world by His Maya out

        Vol. II       August 1915-July 1916.               The philosophical Review Arya was started in August 1914 and after six and half years it ended with the January 1921 issue. It was published under the joint editorship of Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Paul & Mirra Richard. A French edition was also issued but its publication ceased with the February 1915 issue after the first seven numbers appeared. Very few sets of this valued journal are available now and even these are crumbling and cannot be used for reference. They are being reprinted, photographically reproduced, in a limited edition for archival purposes.

  The Life Divine CHAPTER XXIV MATTER        He arrived at the knowledge that Matter is Brahman.                                                                            Taittiriya Upanishad ARGUMENT       [Life and Mind are in the fact of evolution conditioned by the body and therefore by the principle of Matter. The body is the chief difficulty in the way of a spiritual transformation of life ; it has therefore been regarded by spiritual aspiration as an enemy and the escape from the material existence has been made an indispensable condition of the final emancipation.—The quarrel begins with the struggle between Life

  ERRATUM Please read on page 266 Chapter XIII for Chapter XVI The Life Divine. CHAPTER XVII. THE DIVINE SOUL .     He in whom the self has become all existences and he has the knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who' sees everywhere oneness.     Isha Upanishad.     By the conception we have formed of the Supermind, by its opposition to the mentality on which our human existence is based, we are able not only to form a precise instead of a vague idea of divinity and the divine life, expressions which we are otherwise condemned to use with looseness and as expressive of a large but almost impalpable asp

  THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER XV. THE SUPREME TRUTH-CONSCIOUSNESS.     This is the omnipotent, this is the omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all.     Mandukya Upanishad.     We have to regard therefore this all-containing, all-originating, all-consummating Supermind as the nature of the Divine Being, not indeed in its absolute self-existence, but in its action as the Lord and Creator of its own worlds. This is the truth of that which we call God. Obviously this is not the too personal and limited Deity, the magnified and supernatural Man of the ordinary occidental conception; for that conception erects a too human Eidolon of a c