Between 1939 and 1940 Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine appears in the journal Arya's successor edition in Pondicherry: a vast restatement of Vedantic monism in evolutionary terms, in which consciousness descends into matter and ascends beyond mind. Aurobindo, a Cambridge-educated revolutionary turned sage, gives the monist synthesis its most ambitious Indian philosophical voice.
Tagged: Eastern Pantheistic Monism
The Event
- Date
- 1939 (exact)
- Era
- The Theosophical Synthesis; Periodization of the construction and its sources
- Location
- Pondicherry; today Puducherry, India
- Traditions
- Eastern Pantheistic Monism
- Streams
- Eastern Pantheistic Monism
- Key figures
- Sri Aurobindo
- Key texts
- The Life Divine
Primary Sources
- Aurobindo, Sri. The Life Divine. Pondicherry, 1939-1940.
Secondary Sources
- Clarke, J. J. Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought. London: Routledge, 1997.
- Halbfass, Wilhelm. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
- King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'the Mystic East'. London: Routledge, 1999.
Provenance: HIST-1378; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
Annie Besant joins the Theosophical Society
1889
History Event
Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled
1877
History Event
Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy
1945
History Event
Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry at Tiruvannamalai
1901
History Event
Schlegel's On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians
1808
History Event
The Sacred Books of the East begins
1879
History Event
Watts's The Way of Zen
1957
History Event
Wilkins translates the Bhagavad Gita
1785