Sri Aurobindo writes, "Existence that acts and creates by the power and from the pure delight of its conscious being is the reality that we are, the self of all our modes and moods, the cause, object and goal of all doing, becoming and creating."

Sri Aurobindo likens the poet, artist, musician, thinker, statesman, mechanist, to the Infinite Existence, their inspiration to the Conscious Force or power of the Eternal; and their creation, thought or form to the manifest world. Though ordinarily, there is a sense of distinction between the individual, his inspiration, and his creation, in reality, all is himself, just as, "out of a seed there evolves that which is already in the seed, pre-existent in being, predestined in its will to become, prearranged in the delight of becoming." In order to realize this truth, the individual must transcend his finitude. "..[I]t is his recovery of the truth of himself by self-knowledge and by self-realization, the truth of the Infinite in being, the Infinite in consciousness, the Infinite in delight repossessed in his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and instrument for various expression."

Sri Aurobindo gives the "key of the world-enigma" as a triple movement of 1) involution of the infinite, undivided consciousness into the finite, divided manifestation, 2) its subsequent emergence into material, living and thinking being and 3) finally its liberation by realizing itself to be "the One and the Infinite at play in the world and by the release its recovery of the boundless existence-consciousness-bliss that even now it is secretly, really and eternally".

Knowing that all is Satchidanada is not sufficient. The process by which the One Reality has become this phenomenon, must also be known. Then the Reality and the causality of the universe would be revealed fully.

The infinite original Existence has for its nature, infinite Consciousness. It is by the Force of power of the infinite Consciousness (also known as higher Maya), that the phenomenal existence is born out of the True existence. "..[O]ut of the supreme being in which all is all without barrier of separative consciousness emerges the phenomenal being in which all is in each and each is in all for the play of existence with existence, consciousness with consciousness, force with force, delight with delight." However, this true perception is obscured from mental man by the illusion of Maya, (lower Maya), whereby he sees himself in all separated from all but not all in him, united with all.

Therefore, man must first embrace the lower Maya, realizing that it is the outcome of God's subjection to the Force that issued forth from Him and resulted in His obscuration by the obscurity of the Force. This realized, he must overpass the lower Maya. Next, the higher Maya must be transcended and then embraced. In other words, one must overpass the higher Maya in order to experience the original Infinite, limitless, True One. Then on returning to the higher Maya, the latter is seen as a representation of the One in finitude. This double experience of retaining one's oneness with the Divine and accepting the phenomenal world in its true light, is called a 'Supramental experience' by Sri Aurobindo.

Summarizing the process as Sri Aurobindo describes it, the Divine Maya (a Force or power of the infinite Brahman) concentrates within the illimitable Brahman (primary reality) and selects an idea. This is then put forward into space and time to form the secondary reality which is also real but distorted. The unfoldment of this secondary reality, (a partial representation of the Brahman), into the primary reality constitutes its evolution.

Finally, to conclude with a rare passage of Sri Aurobindo's wherein he writes uncharacteristically in the first person for the first time in the Life Divine, distinguishing his view from other philosophies such as the noumenal (Advaita, Buddhism, Sankhya) and the idealist (Tantra, Vaishnavism, Christianity, etc.):

The view I am presenting goes further in idealism; it sees the creative Idea as Real-Idea,that is to say, a power of Conscious-Force expressive of real being, born out of real being and partaking of its nature and neither a child of the Void nor a weaver of fictions. It is conscious Reality throwing itself into mutable forms of its own imperishable and immutable substance. The world is therefore not a figment of conception in the universal Mind, but a conscious birth of that which is beyond Mind into forms of itself. A Truth of conscious being supports these forms and expresses itself in them, and the knowledge corresponding to the truth thus expressed reigns as a supramental Truth-consciousness. [footnote: I take the phrase from the Rig Veda - 'Rta-chit', which means the consciousness of essential truth of being (Satyam), of ordered truth of active being (Rtam) and the vast self-awareness (Brhat) in which alone this consciousness is possible] organizing real ideas in a prefect harmony before they are cast into the mental-vital-material mould. Mind, Life and Body are an inferior consciousness and a partial expression which strives to arrive in the mould of a various evolution at that superior expression of itself already existent to the Beyond-Mind. That which is the Beyond-Mind is the ideal which in its own condition it is labouring to realize.

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