The following passage from The Life Divine pretty aptly sums up the distinction between the relative and the divine consciousness:
We, human beings, are phenomenally a particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation, one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge; all the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has disappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true, because it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the Divine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so limited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one enduring poise even for all time.
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, ch.16, “The Treiple Status of Supermind” p.145ÂÂ
How then can the relative mind and the surface consciousness, which sees and can be only one thing at a time, arrive at an understanding of the Absolute, which is all things at all times?
Thus the three schools of Vedanta – Nondualism, Qualified Dualism, and Dualism, can be seen as equally true, but also equally partial and limited, because each is based on a mental interpretation of only one particular spiritual experience:
It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our alldividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises.  Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But the position that we have now firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present statement with these discussions or undertake the vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite.
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(ibid p.149)
Similarily, I would assert that Buddhist shunyavada (if this is indeed distinct from Shankaran Advaita) is another partial perspective, and so on again with any philosophy and any spiritual experience that human consciousness can conceive or attain.
Nor should we just follow Sri Aurobindo in a literalist sense, saying atht every word and punctuation mark is true for all time. To me, that is bad as following a religion. Rather, the above words – or any other that is inspirational – can be used as the impetus for gnosis, which means going beyond the limited mental perspective to direct appreciation of the Supreme.
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Hi Tusar,
I discovered that also a professor on comparative religion in California has written some chapters in two books comparing Dante and Aurobindo and stating that Aurobindo was inspired by Dante. If I remember well, Satprem writes in “the Adventure of Consciousness” that Aurobindo wanted to learn Italian to be able to read the Divine Comedy in its original, so she is probably right.
The professor’s name is Brenda Deen Schildgen and her books where she included these chapters on this subject are “Other Renaissances” and “Dante in India; Sri Aurobindo and Savriti”. It would be interesting to see if she shares your judgement. I have not read them and could not find the books on Amazon but if you are interested I include some links here:
http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=1403974462
http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/interdepartmental/italian/dante/adb2002.htm
“professor on comparative religion” in the above should be “professor in comparative literature”
I would wish that let the rest of your life be an endless series of discoveries along the footsteps of Sri Aurobindo, the poet. Here is a letter he wrote to one of his close disciples:
[There is probably a defect in your solar plexus which makes it refuse to thrill unless it receives a strong punch from poetry  an ornamental, romantic or pathetic punch. But there is also a poetry which expresses things with an absolute truth but without effort, simply and easily, without a word in excess or any laying on. of colour, only just the necessary. That kind of achievement is considered as among the greatest things poetry can do.
A phrase, word or line may be quite simple and ordinary and yet taken with another phrase, line or word become the perfect thing.
A line like "Life that is deep arid wonder-vast" has what I have called the inevitable quality; with a perfect simplicity and straightforwardness it expresses something in a definite and perÂÂfect way that cannot be surpassed; so does "lost in a breath of sound" with less simplicity but with the same inevitability. I do not mean that highly coloured poetry cannot be absolutely inÂÂevitable, it can, e.g. Shakespeare's "In cradle of the rude impeÂÂrious surge" and many others. But most often highly coloured poetry attracts too much attention to the colour and its brilliance so that the thing in itself is less felt than the magnificence of its dress. All kinds are legitimate in poetry; poetry can be great or perfect even if it uses simple or ordinary expressions, e.g. Dante simply says "In His will is our peace" and in writing that in Italian produces one of the greatest lines in all poetic literature. 1.4.1938]
Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Future Poetry Volume-09 > The Process, Form And Substance Of Poetry
“Dante simply says “In His will is our peace†and in writing that in Italian produces one of the greatest lines in all poetic literature”
This above line comes from Paradiso Canto 3:
Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse
tenersi dentro a la divina voglia,
per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse;
sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia
per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace
com’a lo re che ‘n suo voler ne ‘nvoglia.
E ‘n la sua volontade è nostra pace:
ell’è quel mare al qual tutto si move
ciò ch’ella cria o che natura face
Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove
in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia
del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove.
The essence of this blessed life consists
in keeping to the boundaries of God’s will,
through which our wills become one single will;
so that, as we are ranged from step to step
throughout this kingdom, all this kingdom wills
that which will please the King whose will is rule.
And in His will there is our peace: that sea
to which all beings move-the beings He
creates or nature makes-such is His will.”
Then it was clear to me how every place
in Heaven is in Paradise, though grace
does not rain equally from the High Good.
[...] Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: May 7th, 2007 at 5:36 am Sri Aurobindo’s ontology as delineated in his magnum opus, “The Life Divine†was spurred by the conception of Overman enunciated by Nietzsche. No wonder, he was involved in fighting Hitler from his retreat in Puducherry through his inner forces subsequently. Sri Aurobindo foresees a race of supermen endowed with divine potencies rather than vitalistic beings as speculated by Nietzsche. [...]