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753. Summary of The Life Divine

It is 85 years since the book The Life Divine was completed as a serial in the monthly Arya. It is taught in the Ashram school as a text optionally. For someone who has finished reading it, perhaps a few times, it is possible to summarise its ideas in his mind or on paper. It will be considered a formidable task by those who have attempted it. The subtle intelligence of the Indian spiritual mind has several ways of achieving it, even to the satisfaction of an ordinary reader. It is a great aim worth attempting. Not all devotees evince keen interest in this Book. Finding one's keen interest in the other concepts of His yoga, such a project was attempted by a few around him.

One way of doing it is to take the central idea of each chapter and string them together around His basic theme of the evolving Spirit. The first part of it is academic, while the second is spiritual. There are those who conceive of Infinity fairly well from their background of mathematics. They can extend their mathematical conception by imagination to life and see Infinity as a practical concept. Should that succeed, they will enter the thought of The Life Divine. It is man's seeing endless scope all around for Joy, Peace, Wealth and Success. For such a man, the book will unfold its Supramental wealth. If you were in a big crowd on which police fired, you would remember the fashion in which the crowd scattered in minutes. Presently human life, in its urge for achievement, scrambles in that fashion. A military drill organised over a big area responding to bugle and trumpet, organised as a music drill is a Marvel of human orderliness as against the chaos of a scattering crowd. The Force descending on chaos organises it into a Marvel. One who is able to see such an organisation of God behind the apparent chaos, cruelty, disorder, etc., can fully understand The Life Divine. In our tradition, they gave this idea as a formula, "Everything is for Good".

The stringing of the central ideas of the chapters is an academic exercise which will surely succeed. The appreciation of the Practical Concept of Infinity is a mental effort that can be more beneficial for this purpose. To be able to assume an orderly MARVEL behind the utter disorder we see is a spiritual effort to qualify one to know the summary of The Life Divine. One more way of getting to know that summary is to take one chapter and patiently grasp every idea in the sequence given. After that, discover the central ideas of other chapters before and after in this chapter written explicitly or implicitly. It will reveal the entire book to the reader. Each chapter of this book contains the entire book in one form or another. One has to explore and emerge out of the treasure. In the Indian tradition, the whole knowledge of the world is buried. One thing is not there. The tradition does not know that the Spirit evolves. If you have a consummate knowledge of the sacred tradition of Indian spirituality, and are willing to explore it in the context of the evolving Spirit, the FORCE will enter you, expand the mind to Infinity and charge life with a limitless energy. Thereafter, The Life Divine can be read as an interesting novel, as they call it a page-turner.



story | by Dr. Radut