The word ‘Avatar’ appears only twice in The Life Divine. In either case the context is different—it is not vis-à-vis Avatar as an Incarnation of the Divine. This absence of the concept of Divine Incarnation in Sri Aurobindo's very major work cannot be taken as he not recognising the necessity of Avatarhood in the evolutionary process. We have also another interesting situation: the word ‘Grace’ does not appear even once in The Life Divine. But in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga the fruit of realization without the Divine Grace is inconceivable. In this connection, let us first read a couple of passages from his little masterpiece, The Mother:

There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavor,—a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and—a supreme Grace from above that answers.

For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.

The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.


What this situation, of the absence of 'Grace' and 'Avatar' in its deeper occult connotation, means is that, Sri Aurobindo is more than his works, prose or poetry, including perhaps his Savitri. And didn’t he say, apropos of his Arya-writing, that had he continued it, not for seven but seventy years, still his knowledge would not have been exhausted? In The Life Divine he has taken a certain stand to present a certain point of view for a certain type of the soul-need, which does not make it sole or absolute or exclusive in every sense. This is true in other works also. The question is, of one’s perceptions, perceptions which can be different for different individuals and in different contexts. When this is recognised, there should not be any necessity of thrusting one viewpoint on the other, which will be fallacious, fundamentalist, un-Aurobindonian. Eschewing it is broadening, even globalising, one’s consciousness for a greater spiritual progress.