SOURCE: "Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine," in Perspectives on Indian Prose in English, edited by M. K. Naik, Humanities Press, 1982, pp. 104-23.

In the following essay, Iyengar summarizes Aurobindo's theory of spiritual evolution as it is presented in The Life Divine, at the same time responding to critics who charge that the work is overly long and difficult, repetitious, and written in a lackluster style.

A senior Professor of English—with a rich background of scholastic training at Madras and Oxford—recently came out with the protentious affirmation: "Surely the message of The Life Divine or the beauty of Savitri could have been conveyed and better conveyed in a tenth of their enormous length." Thanks for small mercies: the 'message' of the one and the 'beauty' of the other are grudgingly conceded; the objection is only to the length. But, then, the medium is the message; and the...