The Life Divine

The Life Divine is the central philosophical statement of Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, a vast metaphysics aimed not at escaping the world but at transforming earthly life. Its central claim is that consciousness is the fundamental reality and is evolving, and that a higher principle he called the Supermind can descend to divinize mind, life, and matter.

The book argues that matter, life, and mind are successive emergences of a divine consciousness involved in creation, and that humanity stands at the threshold of a further, deliberate evolution. Human beings, on this view, can consciously cooperate with and accelerate that ascent.

It supplies the mind-power lineage with its most sophisticated philosophical backbone for the idea that inner states reshape outer reality. Transmitted to the West largely through Esalen and later integral thinkers, it gave transpersonal and ascension language a substantial foundation.