Sri Aurobindo (Ghose), 1872-1950, a mystic in the Indian tradition of yoga, is the formulator of a world view of great originality and breadth, which has now received scholarly attention both in India and the West. Many of the commentators point out that Aurobindo's mysticism motivates his philosophic thought. Clearly the most important of Aurobindo's claims is that he is a mystic, who from his mystical experience has learned of the reality of Brahman (which he also refers to as "the Absolute" and "God"). But none of the commentators, in India or the West, has brought into proper focus the reasoning which leads Aurobindo to make the prediction of "divine life," in honor of which his major philosophical work The Life Divine is named.

In that work, Aurobindo argues that evil viewed by the side of the reality of Brahman indicates that the world must be developing to the wonderful state which he calls divine life. He reasons that" … struggle and discord cannot be eternal and fundamental principles in His [Brahman's] being but by their very existence imply labour towards a perfect solution and a complete victory [in divine life]." In other words, Aurobindo says that he has arrived at an understanding of Brahman based upon his mystical experience and that this understanding, in turn, is such that human evils, pain, and suffering, for example, would appear impossible. Of course, they are not impossible because they are actual, and Aurobindo acknowledges this: " … grief, pain, suffering, error, falsehood, ignorance, weakness, wickedness, incapacity … all that makes up the effective figure of what we call evil, are facts of world-consciousness, not fictions and unrealities." Nevertheless, the nature of Brahman as revealed in mystical experience appears to him to be so much in tension with these aspects of our present human reality as to seem to preclude the possibility of our world. This appearance of preclusion and incompatibility forms the philosophic problem-space in The Life Divine. Aurobindo calls it a problem of "harmony." He then argues that the appearance of incompatibility between the world and Brahman in the present indicates that the world is evolving to a future harmony in divine life, which would be, he says, "a new heaven and a new earth"—echoing the Romantic conception of a world telos.

Now this tension is not all that Aurobindo brings forward in support of his claim that the world is evolving to divine life. Biological evolution and the course of civilization to date are cited as further evidence in support of that prediction. But Aurobindo plainly admits that without mystical experience, by which he claims to know the nature of Brahman, there would be no truly clear indication of an evolution to divine life. Evolutionary theory provides parameters for Aurobindo's theorizing; it may also be counted as a premise in the argument for divine life. The same may be said for Aurobindo's understanding of the course of civilization. He discerns progress along many dimensions, biological, intellectual, moral and spiritual, and claims that the "fact" of progress to the present suggests that there will be further progress and that a "diviner" future will come to be. Thus a number of ideas converge in the prediction of divine life. But the mystical indications of Brahman viewed by the side of evil is where Aurobindo finds the only certain sign of divine life's eventuality. Evolution without those indications might seem "a queer freak in a bit of inanimate Matter." So too human civilization. And without evil, this might be what he calls a "typal" world, whose denizens are content in a fixed world order:

There is a possibility of self-expression … in perfect types fixed and complete in their own nature: that is the principle of becoming in the higher worlds; they are typal and not evolutionary in their life principle; they exist each in its own perfection but within the limits of a stationary world-formula.

Aurobindo views evil as tied to human dissatisfaction and aspiration (as the disease with its symptoms). They are, he says, the clear indication that, assuming the reality of Brahman, ours is not a world having reached the stability and perfection of its type and that there inevitably will be evolution to divine life.

THE ARGUMENT'S PLACE IN AUROBINDO'S PHILOSOPHY

A few words are needed in order to put the argument for divine life into proper perspective within the whole of Aurobindo's philosophical thought. As already indicated, not this argument but rather Aurobindo's "mystic empiricism" is his most crucial claim philosophically, since it is from mystical experience that his concept of Brahman's nature is said to derive. At least half of the force of the argument for divine life depends upon mystical experience—and the controversial half, since we need not dispute the existence of evil. Is Aurobindo's, or anyone's, mystical experience objectively informative? Most commentators have neglected this issue. It is particularly thorny, since Aurobindo, like other famous mystics, declares some of his special experience to be almost unimaginably different from ordinary human experience. The issue of whether mystical experience could provide empirical support for the objective reality of Brahman (or whatever) will not be taken up here, though it is important to keep in mind that Aurobindo claims that his concept of Brahman is an "experience-concept." My intention here is exclusively to lay forth and examine Aurobindo's reasoning from his concept of Brahman, however that concept may have originated, to the prediction of divine life. I aim to elucidate the appearance of "disharmony" between the world and Brahman as it is framed in The Life Divine, and thereby to reveal the structure of Aurobindo's world view. Finally, I shall show that the argument fails, and clarify the cognitive status of the theory of divine life.

BRAHMAN'S ESSENTIAL NATURE

What is Aurobindo's concept of Brahman? More precisely, what is it about Brahman in Aurobindo's view that requires the world to develop divine life? In what respect is Brahman in tension with evil? Roughly speaking, Aurobindo's concept of Brahman is like Western monotheistic concepts of God, except that, unlike God in many Western views, Brahman is considered to be in some way everything. Brahman is thought of as the "stuff" of everything that exists, that is, as comprising matter. But while this is so, some things imaginable or logically possible are thought to be in reality impossible because "Brahmanstuff" could not underlie them. According to Aurobindo, Brahman has an essential nature, which he believes is best captured by the traditional Vedantic term, 'sacciddnanda', "Existence-Consciousness-Bliss." This essential nature of Brahman's is deemed such as to make Brahman incompatible with some logical possibilities. Possible worlds, in his conception, are really possible if and only if they are compatible with Brahman's nature, Sachchidananda (his transliteration). Sachchidananda, he says, is Brahman's essential nature or svarzupa, "self-form," and thus underlies all that Brahman underlies, namely everything.

In order to see how Aurobindo takes divine life to follow from the nature of Brahman, we shall take up separately each of the three terms in the description of Brahman's svarupa which he champions, beginning with 'sat, "being." (Through euphonic combination, 'sat' becomes 'sac' in the compound 'sac-ciddnanda', similarly 'cit' to 'cid'.) That Brahman is sat means for Aurobindo that everything is Brahman, but also that any creation on the part of Brahman has to be "self-manifestation." In his view, Brahman does not create the universe ex nihilo, but rather it transforms itself so as to become the universe. Now we can deduce very little about what sort of universe ours must be according to the supposition that Brahman is sat, since Brahman for all we know so far could comprise the stuff of any state of affairs whatsoever. Further, just that any actual state of affairs has to be a self-manifestation of Brahman tells us nothing about what in general could be a self-manifestation of Brahman. Only logical impossibilities can be ruled out as candidates for Brahman's self-manifestation on the basis of incompatibility with Brahman in its aspect as sat (being). Whatever is imaginable is imaginable as existent (sat) in some world or other: this is what it means to say that something is logically possible. Aurobindo's doctrine of divine sat postulates Brahman's universal immanence. The doctrine makes a general requirement on self-manifestation, namely, that any universe be in harmony with Brahman. But it is uninformative about the nature of immanent Brahman and consequently about what characteristics our world should have, on the assumption of Brahman's immanence.

That Brahman is essentially cit, "Conscious Force" (Aurobindo's preferred translation), means first of all that Brahman is capable of finite self-manifestation. Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedanta for reasoning that since Brahman is intrinsically infinite, it could not become in reality finite. He reads Advaita as holding that while Brahman does indeed underlie finite appearance, finite appearance insofar as it appears finite is illusory. Aurobindo believes to the contrary that finite things are real as finite and that Brahman has become finite in reality. Brahman as essentially cit has the power to limit itself and become really finite, Aurobindo holds. "This power of self-limitation … is precisely one of the powers we should expect … of the Infinite." He supposes that Brahman could have refrained from self-manifesting, too. Below, we shall see that this attribution to Brahman of power to self-manifest or not to do so vitiates the inference to divine life.

So far as world or self-manifestation is concerned, Brahman's being essentially cit means that everything must be comprised of an energy which is conscious. A very large portion of The Life Divine is devoted to elaborating and defending this proposition. One may reasonably object that matter generally does not appear conscious, either in itself or as directly responsive to conscious beings. Aurobindo counters by insisting mystical experience brings occult power over matter and by parading the evidence of evolution. More fundamentally, his rejoinder is The Life Divine's central argument: our world of seemingly inconscient material energy would be impossible were it not in the (evolutionary) process of developing divine life. But while he maintains that a material universe bereft of consciousness could not be Brahman (and thus would not be really possible), he concedes that a very high state of mystical awareness, apparently superseding the powers or siddhis of yoga, indicates that the required consciousness might be just that of a disinterested observer. Brahman's consciousness in regard to the world might be that of a witness self, sdksin, consenting to a play of material forces without anything at stake. Aurobindo's conception here recalls Samkhya's true purusa, "conscious being," who is aloof while beholding prakrti, "nature," as well as Vedanta's nirguna-brahman, Brahman "without qualities," who is kuitastha, "transcendent," while beholding the meaningless cosmic activity of mdyd. That sort of consciousness, Aurobindo says as a kind of admission, might be compatible with almost any world whatsoever, since such a Witness might behold anything whatsoever and ex hypothesi it exerts no influence (except for an aboriginal "consent," according to the classical theories) upon that which it beholds. Although Aurobindo is an Indian theist, interpreting divine cit as not only consciousness but also power or determining force of consciousness, he does not in the end imply very much about the nature of our world from assuming Brahman is cit. Although at least one logical possibility can be ruled out as really impossible from this assumption, namely, an entirely "unwitnessed" universe, not much can be inferred about the nature of our world from the notion that Brahman is cit. The central argument of The Life Divine rests mainly with Brahman's aspect of dnanda.

That Brahman is essentially dnanda, "Bliss," means above all that immanent Brahman is so intrinsically valuable as to be forcing divine life. Yet Aurobindo does not put forth an explicit theory of value. Nor does he spell out the character of the value which he believes is implicit in Brahman as dnanda. It is clear, however, that he believes that a kind of "Ananda" scores high as a hedonic value, as he often repeats traditional claims that mystical experience of Brahman is ecstatic. As will become clear, I read "Ananda" as Aurobindo's ultimate moral and aesthetic value as well, though I do not mean to suggest that he is an ethical or aesthetic hedonist. He explicitly contrasts divine dnanda with just about all that we ordinarily regard as markedly evil. Indeed, it is crucial to his central argument that all prominent forms of evil be repugnant to Brahman's nature. Divine dnanda is presumed incompatible with purposeless enjoyment on Brahman's part of any pain, suffering, or evil in general.

Although Aurobindo has no explicit theory of value, he does embrace a means/ends value distinction. He endorses the view that the positive value of an end may compensate and justify the negative value of its necessary means. Further, he holds that pain, suffering, and evil in general could have only this negative and "instrumental" value, not intrinsic value. They are not to be present in divine life, though he believes there could not be development of divine life without them: " … if that [Divine] Reality is what we have supposed it to be, there must be some necessity for the appearance of these contrary phenomena [of evil], some significance, some function that they had to serve in the economy of the universe." According to Aurobindo, Brahman as dnanda blocks the real possibility of any universe where there would be the slightest evil which was not an indispensable condition for the realization of some great good.

The future good has to be great indeed: not only is future "divine life" conceived as so wonderful that it would match the essential dnanda of Brahman, it is also conceived as more wonderful than what Brahman's "bliss" would have been without this self-manifestation. Otherwise, Aurobindo reasons, earthly pain, suffering, and evil in general would be unredeemed, that is, incompatible with Sachchidananda, since, as he says, Brahman as "Ananda" could not undergo a meaningless depletion: " … nor can they [pain, suffering, and evil in general] be a mere mistake of the Divine Consciousness without any meaning in the divine wisdom, without any purpose of the divine joy … to justify their existence. Justification there must be.…" Thus it is that dnanda is to involve not only "delight" understood hedonically but also the value of a significant process of achievement. Mere delight of play is not Brahman's motive for creation. Brahman wants to accomplish something. There are to be "new riches" from the cosmic adventure as well as a return to awareness of an intrinsic bliss. That Brahman is essentially dnanda means that where there is or has been evil there Brahman is itself moving to greater value, in Aurobindo's view.

MATTER AND THE INSTRUMENTALITY OF EVIL

The central argument of The Life Divine is that two facts, (I) Brahman's being Sachchidananda, particularly Ananda, and (2) the presence of evil, together indicate the inevitable emergence of divine life through the instrumentality of evil. Now it has to be understood that evil in Aurobindo's view is rooted in our material evolutionary inheritance. I have not included his views of matter and evolution in encapsulizing the argument, since the tension which leads to the prediction of divine life centers on (the emergent material phenomena of) human evils, not on matter in general. But in order to understand his account of how precisely evil is necessary to the evolution of divine life, one has to take up his views of the nature of matter and biological evolution. This we cannot do here. My point is that the tension Aurobindo perceives between Brahman and evil is intended to motivate his account of the instrumentality of evil. It is also intended to motivate his account of the root of evil which he identifies as the insentience and other apparently adverse characteristics of matter and of life-forms emergent in matter. The reasoning launched to resolve the tension is that which unites the theological and cosmological portions of his world view.

As I indicated, it is impossible to do justice here to the wealth of detail in Aurobindo's account of the instrumentality of evil for divine life. However the basic point is just this: development of real individuals who would be in part responsible for their own growth and development would not be possible without matter and the evil its insentience entails. Working from this fundamental intuition, Aurobindo tries to make plausible his story of the ways in which such untoward phenomena as aggression, incapacity, and death might be serving indispensably the great good of divine life. This story could prove to be Aurobindo's chief philosophical accomplishment. In general, ends do justify means to an extent, though, as John Dewey insists [in Reconstruction in Philosophy], means may also justify ends, that is, when the ends most desirable would require much less favorable means. Still, in general ends do justify means to an extent, and so I feel that the details of the story of evil's instrumentality for divine life are prime candidates for the focus of future criticism.

Through the remainder of this article the focus will remain more metaphysical. I intend to show that despite Aurobindo's ingenuity his account of evil is not motivated in the way he thinks, because his central argument fails. The argument fails for a reason internal to his thought, to wit, that his doctrine of divine cit undercuts evil's significance. This failure negates the repeated claim of inevitability for divine life. On the other hand, we should give the philosophic mystic his due: although the argument's premises fail to deliver its conclusion—and that precisely within Aurobindo's own terms—his theory of divine life may be viewed as an explanation of one way in which, on an assumption of the reality of Brahman, evil might be intelligible considered from the human perspective as well as from Brahman's. With a revision of the cognitive status of his "prediction" of divine life, Aurobindo's theory, despite the failure of his central argument, will be seen to have merit. We shall review his theory of the significance of the cosmos in concluding.

THE ARGUMENT'S FAILURE: BRAHMAN (GOD) AS TRANSCENDENT

First let us see why his argument fails. As mentioned before, that Brahman is cit means for Aurobindo that Brahman has the power to self-manifest as finite or not to do so. While Brahman is thought to comprise the material of all things finite, Brahman is considered to be Sachchidananda essentially and finite things inessentially. Aurobindo conceives of Brahman as not having to become finite things. Self-manifestation is thought to hinge on Brahman's choice. Brahman is said to have a perspective which is in some way independent of its self-manifestation. It is this independence of perspective attributed to Brahman which vitiates from the inside Aurobindo's argument for the inevitability of divine life.

In order to see this, let us detour through Western theodicy and its problem of "God's justification in the face of evil." The existence of evil is in tension with viewing God as omnibenevolent and omnipotent: God, it would seem, would create only the best of all possible universes and that, it would seem, would be one without evil. Aurobindo insists that evil presents an entirely different problem for his view. He says that his difficulty lies not in what God does but in what God is: noninstrumental evil in the universe would be meaningless evil in God, and that could not be Sachchidananda. He asserts that a view of God as extrascosmic, creating ex nihilo, cannot overcome the difficulty of an apparent divine sadism—God causing others to suffer—a difficulty which is avoided by his view that there are no "others" to Brahman. An extracosmic Creator of our world would be morally inferior to the best of His creatures, Aurobindo says in indictment of the view.

However, despite Aurobindo's insistence that Brahman itself bears all the world's evil, Brahman may be similarly charged with moral inferiority. Brahman may be so charged because of Brahman's independence of perspective. Indeed, sometimes Aurobindo says that essential Brahman does not lose awareness of ananda while it bears suffering and evil. We, on the other hand, do not normally experience "Bliss" when we are in pain, nor are we all aware of pain's presumed cosmic significance. Could not Brahman have borne less evil out of regard for those bits of itself which are not directly aware of dnanda? If it could, then it would be just as much a bully as any extracosmic Creator would be.

Aurobindo's response is of course that Brahman could not have borne evil and still realize the great value of divine life. But that would seem to justify "evil" only from Brahman's perspective. We ourselves have values, at least most of us do, and by them we discern very real evil. So even if we grant that the development of divine life truly requires the evils we perceive (an inherently dubious proposition, but one Aurobindo supports with his long and ingenious theory), the existence of these evils, particularly of the "natural" ones not of our own making, such as diseases and death, prompts us to suspect that Brahman would be achieving an "inhuman" goal in its self-manifestation. If our suffering is to be instrumental to Brahman's goal of "divine life," why should not human existence be similarly instrumental and without intrinsic value? Indeed, why should Brahman be bound by human values? Brahman as cit is supposed to have an independent perspective on things. Why then should human evil count as compatible with Sachchidananda only by being instrumental to a life that is "divine" according to human standards? By conceiving of Brahman as having an independent perspective on things, Aurobindo leaves room for the speculation that our values do not count in Brahman's goals. The existence of evil would provide support for that view, assuming Aurobindo's Brahman to be a reality. Thus evil cannot be viewed—within Aurobindo's own terms—as the decisive indication he takes it to be that the world is developing to "divine life" as he conceives it. Aurobindo's vision of divine life is one in which human values are fulfilled, not only Brahman's.

THE COGNITIVE STATUS OF THE THEORY OF DIVINE LIFE

Aurobindo's argument for divine life fails because evil need not be considered in tension with his Brahman. As the medieval voluntarists insisted, God may choose God's own purposes; so too Aurobindo's Brahman. But though his argument fails, his story of the instrumentality of evil for divine life may still have value. It may be taken as a theory explaining how the cosmic process might have meaning and value, to humanity as well as to Brahman, on the assumption of the reality of Brahman. Evil need not be considered in tension with Aurobindo's Brahman, and so he is wrong to suppose that it is evidence, particularly decisive evidence, for the future emergence of divine life. But though Brahman might not intend to manifest a life that is "divine" from the human perspective, there is no reason to rule out such a possibility altogether. Aurobindo's theory would show one possible way the cosmos, despite evil and indeed by means of it, would have meaning and value to us as well as to Brahman. Evil is deemed instrumental to our own arrival in divine life, not only Brahman's. He claims universally to find" … a cosmic and individual utility in what presents itself to us as adverse and evil" (emphasis mine). Aurobindo's achievement within his own problem-space is a singularly Indian theodicy. He professes that a dual affirmation of the world and Brahman is one of his speculative aims. It is one he may be said to achieve, insofar as the details of his theory of the instrumentality of evil may be judged plausible.

The failure of Aurobindo's central argument means that he should drop his insistence upon the inevitability of divine life. He should claim only that divine life is a plausible eventuality, assuming the reality of Brahman. And at one place he comes very near to such a view:

All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance. A drama without denouement may be an artistic possibility,—existing only for the pleasure of watching the characters and the pleasure in problems posed without a solution or with a forever suspended dubious balance of solution; the drama of the earth evolution might conceivably be of that character, but an intended or inherently predetermined denouement is also and more convincingly possible. Ananda is the secret principle of all being and the support of all activity of being: but Ananda does not exclude a delight in the working out of a Truth inherent in being, immanent in the Force or Will of being, upheld in the hidden self-awareness of its Consciousness-Force which is the dynamic and executive agent of all its activities and the knower of their significance.

In this passage, Aurobindo, waffling on the question of the inevitability of divine life, says (or implies) that the problems posed (by our human suffering, dissatisfaction, and aspiration) would have their solution in divine life, that such a solution is "plausible" (as opposed to "certain, given the reality of Brahman beside that of evil," as before), and that it would be significant. With a revision of the cognitive status of his reasoning from that of an argument for divine life to that of an explanation of the significance of the cosmos, Aurobindo's theory would have merit—for one who accepted Brahman—just in that the significance would obtain equally for Brahman and for humanity. Aurobindo's theory of divine life involves a value-anthropomorphism, although Brahman is not otherwise conceived of anthropomorphically. (If God really intended Aurobindo's "divine life," God would be worthy of worship.)

DIVINE LIFE AS PROVIDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COSMOS

That the problems posed (by our human suffering, dissatisfaction, and aspiration) would be truly resolved, in other words, that life would be significant from our perspectives, we may grant in general, because the picture painted is so terribly rosy. (Is Aurobindo's prose style so inordinately rich and roseate because of an inordinate optimism of his vision?) It would be difficult to imagine any more positive conception of the "destiny of the individual" than Aurobindo's. The real question concerns the plausibility of the conception, not whether life would be significant from our perspectives were the conception valid. He tells us we are souls having developed and still developing manifold personality and material form, both individually as well as collectively, through a process of birth and rebirth which preserves our life histories (in individual memory and not only in the "consequent being of God," as with Whitehead). Aurobindo says that each person will share increasingly in the freedom of will and self-determination that is Brahman's essentially, as he grows to be a "gnostic being" who is aware of the "Bliss" of Brahman while participating in ever better forms of earthly society. "Evil" is in the end only apparent or transitional: death guards our perfectibility (we die in order to make further growth possible, our own as well as societal); pain and suffering spur our (yogic) resolve; and apparent material insentience makes possible a real individuality of distinct souls with distinct bodies and minds. Aurobindo provides a theory about how in general divine life might be possible. The question of its plausibility involves that thorny issue of the veridicality of mystical experience, among other complex considerations, including the facticity of the proposed mechanisms of evil's instrumentality and the acceptability of the account of matter. The conceptual question we have still to take up is how this process could be, as he asserts in the quote above, significant for Brahman.

Aurobindo falters at places in his reflection on this question, though the answer lies available in the terms of his view. His trouble is ambivalence over the nature of Brahman's perfection. Given that all manifestation hinges upon Brahman's choice, "Why should Brahman, perfect, absolute, infinite, needing nothing, desiring nothing, at all throw out force of consciousness to create in itself these worlds of form?" Aurobindo's answer is "Delight," and he explains that this "Delight" involves a process of achievement and accomplishment. But why should Brahman want to accomplish anything? Aurobindo does not really believe that the logic of Brahman's perfection precludes Brahman's accomplishing something ("Ananda does not exclude a delight in the working out of a Truth"), but sometimes it appears he believes that this could be no real accomplishment from Brahman's own perspective, as he lapses into viewing Brahman's perfection as "static." Robert Nozick is the first person, to my knowledge, to have resolved this puzzle within the terms of a Brahman philosophy committed to the "perfection" of Brahman. He proposes [in Philosophical Explanations]:

… a theory that views Brahman as creating the world to overcome its last limitations as Brahman—the existence of the world becomes a component of Brahman's all-inclusiveness and perfection. The world is part of the process whereby Brahman overcomes the final limits of being infinite existence, consciousness, bliss. Brahman is not limited by even that apparently wonderful nature. We would like a theory that gives us both timeless perfection along with a process of transcending and overcoming, a process of accomplishment. Both are supplied by a view of Brahman (and of people's underlying nature) as Satchitananda and (simultaneously at some level) as casting itself forth into another state so as to overcome the limitations inherent in Satchitananda, then slowly evolving back to an awareness of its true perfect nature as Brahman.

According to an old Aristotelian doctrine, will implies want. Thus Brahman would have to be deficient in its willing divine life. But according to Nozick's view of perfection as dynamic, Brahman's manifestation could be seen as part of its perfection. Brahman would manifest because of the peculiar nature of a perfect delight. So the development of divine life would be significant for Brahman as well as for humanity, assuming that Brahman could accomplish something. With Aurobindo, I see no reason why Brahman could not. The question whether Brahman's attempting to do so would entail imperfection is moot. Either Aurobindo's Brahman is imperfect according to traditional notions, or perhaps perfect according to some dynamic standard such as Nozick's. The point is that in either conception the development of divine life would be significant from Brahman's perspective, as well as our own, just in that Brahman itself is conceived as gaining "new riches" from its cosmic adventure.

In sum, Aurobindo's central argument fails, and he is not entitled to claim that "disharmony" means the inevitability of divine life. But his theory of the instrumentality of evil may be viewed as one possible way that the terrible disharmony he doubtless feels—between what he takes to be the objective indications of his mystical experience and earthly evil—might be both in theory and in fact resolved. However the question remains whether a life that is divine from the human perspective is the only way the process could be significant from Brahman's perspective. Could not Brahman fulfill its aim of a perfect delight otherwise than by developing Aurobindo's humanly desirable divine life? Why Brahman would want the cosmic process to be significant from the human perspective is left unclear. Is it to be significant as well for all those species that are or will be extinct?