ABSTRACT
The author argues that the idea of 'transcendence' plays a central role in Aurobindo's ontology in The Life Divine as the mechanism that holds together his ontology of the 'sevenfold being' as 'embodied spirit'. The mechanism in operation in the 'sevenfold' entails three modes of transcendence: (a) transcendence in operation within the self, (b) transcendence between self and the absolute, and (c) transcendence between the self and the world. The religious–secular debate can be seen as being centred on the different positions on 'transcendence'. The two opposing positions of the debate are: first, the secularist position that denies transcendence. Second, the religionist position, equating the study of transcendence with the study of religion, argues for the legitimacy of both the study of transcendence and religion. While these two positions reveal the two opposing poles of the religious–secular debate, both either reject or affirm a particular sense of transcendence, a theological/metaphysical sense, which equates transcendence with a divine being or God.
