The Greater Life
The next rung up from The Little Life — vital existence on a fuller, freer plane than ordinary human life, but still incomplete. The subject of Book 2, Canto 6 ("The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life"), the longest canto in Book 2.
What changes from Little to Greater
The Little Life is driven by ignorant hunger that does not know what it is hungry for. The Greater Life is driven by aspiration — it knows there is something more and reaches for it, even if it cannot reach the goal. The canto opens:
As one who between dim receding walls Towards the far gleam of a tunnel's mouth, Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace And feels approach a breath of wider air, So he escaped from that grey anarchy.
This plane has the felt presence of higher possibilities. Hopes here are not just cravings; they are intuitions of something real that is meant to come.
Then is woken in the dim heart of the world A passion of the heart of God for man.
What its limitation is
Aspiration without arrival. The Greater Life keeps reaching, but the reach exceeds the grasp. "Our life is a march to a victory never won." The canto contains one of the most quoted passages in the poem — a long meditation on the unkept promise of human existence:
Yet still to ourselves we say rekindling faith, 'Oh, surely one day he shall come to our cry...'
The Greater Life is the plane on which that faith lives, but the canto's hard truth is that the answering descent has not yet come on this plane.
Why? Because the Greater Life is still the vital — life-energy, feeling, will. It can yearn but it cannot transform itself by yearning alone. Something must descend to it that it cannot produce by climbing. The whole structure of the poem will turn on this point: ascent prepares the ground but descent does the work.
A scenario
Compare two kinds of unhappiness. The first is the unhappiness of someone who wants more money, more comfort, more recognition — the unhappiness of the Little Life, driven by hungers that ordinary objects might temporarily satisfy. The second is the unhappiness of someone who already has these things and is still unhappy, who senses they were made for something the world cannot offer. That second unhappiness is the Greater Life. It is closer to the truth, but it cannot resolve itself; the resolution must come from somewhere it cannot reach by wanting.
This is why the canto is so long and so beautiful. Sri Aurobindo is describing the noblest level on which ordinary human life can be lived — and showing that even there, the answer the soul needs has to come from outside the level itself.
What Aswapati does there
He passes through it. Like with the other planes, he refuses to settle. The canto ends with the same recognition that ends every Book 2 canto: there is more above. He continues climbing.
But the Greater Life sets up something the poem will return to. The "Hand that never came" the canto speaks of is the one that will come, when Savitri is born. The longing Aswapati witnesses here is the longing his own daughter is the answer to.
Connections
The Greater Life is above The Little Life on The World-Stair and below the dark vital planes (The Descent into Night). Its aspiration is the human form of The Divine Mother's upward call. Aswapati traverses it; Savitri is, in the poem's logic, the eventual answer to its unfulfilled prayer.
Open questions
This canto contains some of the most-quoted passages in Savitri — particularly the "Oh, surely one day he shall come" section. Worth a separate annotated entry on specific famous passages, possibly in a future "key passages" article.