A Brief explanation is required about this book and might be summed up by another critique from amazon:

Sri Aurobindos sentences are built of triple dependent clauses (without commas, hes an Oxford grad)

Sri Aurobindos sentences are built of triple dependent clauses (without commas, hes an Oxford grad),but if you stay with him, follow the thread, youre a different person by the time you reach the period. He is pure genius. A gift from the Gods. His long sentences are a kind of meditation really; their gentle coaxing detail draws the inflated reactionary mind down to a still point.

In that vain it must be stated that this is one of the most intellectually difficult books to read and incredibly difficult to narrate because of the sentence structure and the inability to find a rhythm for the work. We have recorded approximately 1/3 of the 900 page book ( 17 hours ) and unless there is significant demand for the rest we will not complete the work for fear of not doing justice to the work. I believe this is one of those books that must be read, slowly, to attain the message. We added the incomplete audio to the site to give readers a taste of Sri Aurobindos erudition.

We apologize for the mispronunciation of any words or sentences, the fault was ours and not the authors. We submit the work with the hope it will be taken in the spirit in which it was intended, and we apologize if we fell short.

We recorded 31 chapters with a total recording length of 17hrs

The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo

Book One

Omnipresent Reality and the UniverseChapter IThe Human Aspiration 3Chapter IIThe Two Negations1. The Materialist Denial 8Chapter IIIThe Two Negations2. The Refusal of the Ascetic 20Chapter IVReality Omnipresent 29Chapter VThe Destiny of the Individual 38Chapter VIMan in the Universe 47Chapter VIIThe Ego and the Dualities 56Chapter VIIIThe Methods of Vedantic Knowledge 66Chapter IXThe Pure Existent 78Chapter XConscious Force 87Chapter XIDelight of Existence: The Problem 98Chapter XIIDelight of Existence: The Solution 108Chapter XIIIThe Divine Maya 120Chapter XIVThe Supermind as Creator 130Chapter XVThe Supreme Truth-Consciousness 141Chapter XVIThe Triple Status of Supermind 152Chapter XVIIThe Divine Soul 161Chapter XVIIIMind and Supermind 170Chapter XIXLife 185Chapter XXDeath, Desire and Incapacity 200Chapter XXIThe Ascent of Life 210Chapter XXIIThe Problem of Life 220Chapter XXIIIThe Double Soul in Man 231Chapter XXIVMatter 245Chapter XXVThe Knot of Matter 254Chapter XXVIThe Ascending Series of Substance 266Chapter XXVIIThe Sevenfold Chord of Being 276Chapter XXVIIISupermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya 285Book TwoThe Knowledge and the IgnoranceThe Spiritual EvolutionPart IThe Infinite Consciousness and the IgnoranceChapter IIndeterminates, Cosmic Determinations andthe Indeterminable 309Chapter IIBrahman, Purusha, IshwaraMaya, Prakriti, Shakti 336Chapter IIIThe Eternal and the Individual 380

Chapter IThe Human AspirationShe follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond,she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that arecoming,Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakeningsomeone who was dead. . . . What is her scope whenshe harmonises with the dawns that shone out before andthose that now must shine? She desires the ancient morningsand fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination sheenters into communion with the rest that are to come.Kutsa AngirasaRig Veda.1Threefold are those supreme births of this divine force that isin the world, they are true, they are desirable; he moves therewide-overt within the Infinite and shines pure, luminous andfulfilling. . . . That which is immortal in mortals and possessedof the truth, is a god and established inwardly as an energyworking out in our divine powers. . . . Become high-uplifted,O Strength, pierce all veils, manifest in us the things of theGodhead. VamadevaRig Veda.2THE EARLIEST preoccupation of man in his awakenedthoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimatepreoccupation,for it survives the longest periods ofscepticism and returns after every banishment,is also thehighest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself inthe divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, thesearch after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secretimmortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge haveleft us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we seea humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis ofthe externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primevallongings. The earliest formula ofWisdom promises to be its last,God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.These persistent ideals of the race are at once the contradictionof its normal experience and the affirmation of higherand deeper experiences which are abnormal to humanity andonly to be attained, in their organised entirety, by a revolutionaryindividual effort or an evolutionary general progression. Toknow, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoisticconsciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentalityinto the plenary supramental illumination, to build peaceand a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitorysatisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering,to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itselfas a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realisethe immortal life in a body subjected to death and constantmutation,this is offered to us as the manifestation of God inMatter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution. Tothe ordinary material intellect which takes its present organisationof consciousness for the limit of its possibilities, the directcontradiction of the unrealised ideals with the realised fact isa final argument against their validity. But if we take a moredeliberate view of the worlds workings, that direct oppositionappears rather as part of Natures profoundest method and theseal of her completest sanction.For all problems of existence are essentially problems ofharmony. They arise from the perception of an unsolved discordand the instinct of an undiscovered agreement or unity. To restcontent with an unsolved discord is possible for the practical andmore animal part of man, but impossible for his fully awakenedmind, and usually even his practical parts only escape fromthe general necessity either by shutting out the problem or byaccepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined compromise. Foressentially, all Nature seeks a harmony, life and matter in theirown sphere as much as mind in the arrangement of its perceptions.The greater the apparent disorder of the materials offeredor the apparent disparateness, even to irreconcilable opposition,of the elements that have to be utilised, the stronger is the spur,and it drives towards a more subtle and puissant order thancan normally be the result of a less difficult endeavour. Theaccordance of active Life with a material of form in which thecondition of activity itself seems to be inertia, is one problem ofopposites that Nature has solved and seeks always to solve betterwith greater complexities; for its perfect solution would be thematerial immortality of a fully organised mind-supporting animalbody. The accordance of conscious mind and conscious willwith a form and a life in themselves not overtly self-consciousand capable at best of a mechanical or subconscious will isanother problem of opposites in which she has produced astonishingresults and aims always at higher marvels; for there herultimate miracle would be an animal consciousness no longerseeking but possessed of Truth and Light, with the practicalomnipotence which would result from the possession of a directand perfected knowledge. Not only, then, is the upward impulseof man towards the accordance of yet higher opposites rationalin itself, but it is the only logical completion of a rule and aneffort that seem to be a fundamental method of Nature and thevery sense of her universal strivings.We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolutionof Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely statesthe phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be noreason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mindout of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution thatLife is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because inessenceMatter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness.And then there seems to be little objection to a fartherstep in the series and the admission that mental consciousnessmay itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which arebeyond Mind. In that case, the unconquerable impulse of mantowards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itselfin its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulseby which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appearsto be as natural, true and just as the impulse towards Lifewhich she has planted in certain forms of Matter or the impulsetowardsMind which she has planted in certain forms of Life. Asthere, so here, the impulse exists more or less obscurely in herdifferent vessels with an ever-ascending series in the power of itswill-to-be; as there, so here, it is gradually evolving and boundfully to evolve the necessary organs and faculties. As the impulsetowards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Lifein the metal and the plant up to its full organisation in man, so inman himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation,if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a livinglaboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Manhimself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whomand with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work outthe superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifestGod? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Natureof that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overtrealisation of that which she secretly is.We cannot, then, bid herpause at a given stage of her evolution, nor have we the right tocondemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous orwith the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intentionshe may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it betrue that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature issecret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself andthe realisation of God within and without are the highest andmost legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine lifein an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabitinga mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representingitself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent,indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders timeand space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truthrealisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberatereason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition ofmankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finallywith questionings which have so often been declared insolubleby logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mentalactivities to the practical and immediate problems of theirmaterial existence in the universe; but such evasions are neverpermanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with amore vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger foran immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits andnew religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyedor stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself couldnot satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it wasunwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle atruth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and toooften represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith,is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmicnecessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediatetangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn outeventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature buta revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It isbetter and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as arace to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscureintuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and aninstructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is anyhigher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth whichis now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works withintermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasionaldisplays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then therealso we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is thenext higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a formand veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie thepath of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever higheststate is humanitys ultimate resting-place.

View original post here:
The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo ( Audio Book )