The Life Divine -- A Study Guide compiled by David Hutchinson, fall 2003

The study guide is a point by point summary of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine. After each chapter title there is a one-paragraph summary of the entire chapter. These one-paragraph summaries are available as a separate document. You may also download the entire document in Word format (500 kb) or in a self-extracting (.exe) zipped format. (157 kb).

Book One -- Omnipresent Reality and the Universe

Chapter 1 - The Human Aspiration
Chapter 2 - The Two Negations - I: The Materialist Denial
Chapter 3 - The Two Negations - The Refusal of the Ascetic
Chapter 4 - Reality Omnipresent
Chapter 5 - The Destiny of the Individual
Chapter 6 - Man in the Universe
Chapter 7 - The Ego and the Dualities
Chapter 8 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge
Chapter 9 - The Pure Existent
Chapter 10 - Conscious Force
Chapter 11 - Delight of Existence: The Problem
Chapter 12 - Delight of Existence: The Solution
Chapter 13 - The Divine Maya
Chapter 14 - The Supermind as Creator
Chapter 15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness
Chapter 16 - The Triple Status of Supermind
Chapter 17 - The Divine Soul
Chapter 18 - Mind and Supermind
Chapter 19 - Life
Chapter 20 - Death, Desire, and Incapacity
Chapter 21 - The Ascent of Life
Chapter 22 - The Problem of Life
Chapter 23 - The Double Soul in Man
Chapter 24 - Matter
Chapter 25 - The Knot of Matter
Chapter 26 - The Ascending Series of Substance
Chapter 27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being
Chapter 28 - Supermind, Mind, and the Overmind Maya

Book Two, Part I -- The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance

Chapter 1 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations, and the Indeterminable
Chapter 2 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
Chapter 3 - The Eternal and the Individual
Chapter 4 - The Divine and the Undivine
Chapter 5 - The Cosmic Illusion: Mind, Dream, and Hallucination
Chapter 6 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion
Chapter 7 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance
Chapter 8 - Memory, Self-Consciousness, and the Ignorance
Chapter 9 - Memory, Ego, and Self-Experience
Chapter 10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
Chapter 11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance
Chapter 12 - The Origin of the Ignorance
Chapter 13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance
Chapter 14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil

Book Two, Part II -- The Knowledge and the Ignorance -- The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge
Chapter 16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence
Chapter 17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man, and Nature
Chapter 18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration
Chapter 19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge
Chapter 20 - The Philosophy of Rebirth
Chapter 21 - The Order of the Worlds
Chapter 22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul, and Immortality
Chapter 23 - Man and the Evolution
Chapter 24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man
Chapter 25 - The Triple Transformation
Chapter 26 - The Ascent towards Supermind
Chapter 27 - The Gnostic Being
Chapter 28 - The Divine Life