CHAPTER XI Delight of Existence: The Problem For who could live or breathe if there were not this delight of existence as the ether in which we dwell? From Delight all these beings are born, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight they return. Taittiriya Upanishad.¹ BUT even if we accept this pure Existence, this Brahman, this Sat as the absolute beginning, end and continent of things and in Brahman an inherent self-consciousness inseparable from its being and throwing itself out as a force of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds, we have yet no answer to the question “Why should Brahman, pe

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE LIFE DIVINE first appeared serially in the Arya from August 1914 to January 1919. Volume I, revised and enlarged, was first published in book from in November 1939; Volume II, recast and enlarged, followed in July 1940, in two parts. These were reprinted in 1943 and 1947. The Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, issued a single volume edition in 1949 and reprinted it in 1951. An edition under the imprint of the Sri Aurobindo international Centre of Education,  also in a single volume, appeared in 1955 and was reprinted in 1960. The India Library Society Edition (New York) came out in 1965. The present edition in two volumes forms part of the Co

CHAPTER XXIV Matter He arrived at the knowledge that Matter is Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad.¹ WE HAVE now the rational assurance that Life is neither an inexplicable dream nor an impossible evil that has yet become a dolorous fact, but a mighty pulsation of the divine All-Existence. We see something of its foundation and its principle, we look upward to its high potentiality and ultimate divine out-flowering. But there is one principle below all the others which we have not yet sufficiently considered, the principle of Matter upon which Life stands as upon a pedestal or out of which it evolves like the form of a many-branching tree out of its encasing seed.

-31_Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara — Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.htm CHAPTER II Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara — Maya, Prakriti, Shakti It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided. Gita.1 Brahman, the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinite. Taittiriya Upanishad.2 Know Purusha and Prakriti to be both eternal without beginning. Gita.3 One must know Maya as Prakriti and the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all. Swetaswatara Upanishad. 4 It is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel of Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords, the supreme Godhead above all godheads. Supreme too is his Shakti and manifold the natural working of h