Integral Yoga Literature – By Sri Aurobindo
Selections from the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library
from Volume 18 and 19, The Life Divine
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Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Four, “Man and the Evolution” (Part 1 of 3)
The one Godhead secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self
of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and
absolute… the One in control over the many who are passive to
Nature, fashions one seed in many ways.Swetaswatara Upanishad VI. 11, 12.
The Godhead moves in this Field modifying each web of things separately in
many ways…. One, he presides over all wombs and natures; himself the womb
of all, he is that which brings to ripeness the nature of the being and he
gives to all who have to be matured their result of development and appoints
all qualities to their workings.Swetaswatara Upanishad V. 3-5.
He fashions one form of things in many ways.Katha Upanishad II. 2. 12.
Who has perceived this truth occult, that the Child gives being to
the Mothers by the workings of his nature? An offspring from the lap
of many Waters, he comes forth from them a seer possessed of his whole
law of nature. Manifested, he grows in the lap of their crookednesses
and becomes high, beautiful and glorious.Rig Veda I. 95. 4, 5.
From the non-being to true being, from the darkness to the Light, from
death to Immortality.Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I. 3. 28.
A SPIRITUAL evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a
constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the
indwelling Spirit, is then the key-note, the central significant
motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at
the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a
dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of
insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which
works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force
of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself
inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence. The
obscure mysterious creatrix ends indeed by delivering the secret
consciousness out of its thick and tenebrous prison; but she delivers
it slowly, little by little, in minute infinitesimal drops, in
thin jets, in small vibrant concretions of energy and substance, of life,
of mind, as if that were all she could get out through the crass obstacle,
the dull reluctant medium of an inconscient stuff of existence. At first she
houses herself in forms of Matter which appear to be altogether unconscious,
then struggles towards mentality in the guise of living Matter and attains
to it imperfectly in the conscious animal. This consciousness is at first
rudimentary, mostly a half subconscious or just conscious instinct; it
develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its
climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who
develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at
his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of
subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original
Inertia and Nescience, the control of an inconscient material Nature over
his conscious evolution, its power for limitation, its law of difficult
development, its immense force for retardation and frustration. This control
by the original Inconscience over the consciousness emerging from it takes
the general shape of a mentality struggling towards knowledge but itself, in
what seems to be its fundamental nature, an Ignorance. Thus hampered and
burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious
being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which
shall be the next product of the evolution. That transition will mark the
passage from the evolution in the Ignorance to a greater evolution in the
Knowledge, founded and proceeding in the light of the Superconscient and no
longer in the darkness of the Ignorance and Inconscience.
This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to
Mind and beyond it has a double process: there is an outward visible
process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery, — for each
evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is
maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same
time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into
ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first
by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would
be a quickly perishing instrument, and the race, a more abiding
collective formulation, would be the real step in the progressive
manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth
is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of
the individual being in the earth-existence. Each grade of cosmic
manifestation, each type of form that can house the indwelling Spirit,
is turned by rebirth into a means for the individual soul, the psychic
entity, to manifest more and more of its concealed consciousness; each
life becomes a step in a victory over Matter by a greater progression
of consciousness in it which shall make eventually Matter itself a
means for the full manifestation of the Spirit.
But this account of the process and meaning of the terrestrial
creation is at every point exposed to challenge in the mind of man
himself, because the evolution is still half-way on its journey, is
still in the Ignorance, is still seeking in the mind of a half-evolved
humanity for its own purpose and significance. It is possible to
challenge the theory of evolution on the ground that it is
insufficiently founded and that it is superfluous as an explanation of
the process of terrestrial existence. It is open to doubt, even if
evolution is granted, whether man has the capacity to develop into a
higher evolutionary being. It is open also to doubt whether the
evolution is likely to go any farther than it has gone already or
whether a supramental evolution, the appearance of a consummated
Truth-Consciousness, a being of Knowledge, is at all probable in the
fundamental Ignorance of the earthly Nature. Another construction
neither teleological nor evolutionary can be put on the workings of
the Spirit in the manifestation here, and it may be as well before
proceeding farther to formulate succinctly the line of thinking which
makes such a construction possible.
Admitting that the creation is a manifestation of the Timeless
Eternal in a Time Eternity, admitting that there are the seven grades
of Consciousness and that the material Inconscience has been laid down
as a basis for the reascent of the Spirit, admitting that rebirth is a
fact, a part of the terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of
the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these
admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take
another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of
terrestrial existence. If each thing created is a form of the manifest
Divine Existence, each is divine in itself by the spiritual presence
within it, whatever its appearance, its figure or character in
Nature. In each form of manifestation the Divine takes the delight of
existence and there is no need of change or progress within it.
Whatever ordered display or hierarchy of actualised possibilities is
necessitated by the nature of the Infinite Being, is sufficiently
provided for by the numberless variation, the teeming multitude of
forms, types of consciousness, natures that we see everywhere around
us. There is no teleological purpose in creation and there cannot be,
for all is there in the Infinite: the Divine has nothing that he needs
to gain or that he has not; if there is creation and manifestation, it
is for the delight of creation, of manifestation, not for any
purpose. There is then no reason for an evolutionary movement with a
culmination to be reached or an aim to be worked out and effectuated
or a drive towards ultimate perfection.
In fact we see that the principles of creation are permanent and
unchanging: each type of being remains itself and does not try nor has
any need to become other than itself; granting that some types of
existence disappear and others come into being, it is because the
Consciousness-Force in the universe withdraws its life-delight from
those that perish and turns to create others for its pleasure. But
each type of life, while it lasts, has its own pattern and remains
faithful with whatever minor variations to that pattern: it is bound
to its own consciousness and cannot get away from it into
other-consciousness; limited by its own nature, it cannot transgress
these boundaries and pass into other-nature. If the
Consciousness-Force of the Infinite has manifested Life after
manifesting Matter and Mind after manifesting Life, it does not follow
that it will proceed to manifest Supermind as the next terrestrial
creation. For Mind and Supermind belong to quite different
hemispheres, Mind to the lower status of the Ignorance, Supermind to
the higher status of the Divine Knowledge. This world is a world of
the Ignorance and intended to be that only; there need be no intention
to bring down the powers of the higher hemisphere into the lower half
of existence or to manifest their concealed presence there; for, if
they are at all existent here, it is in an occult incommunicable
immanence and only to maintain the creation, not to perfect it. Man is
the summit of this ignorant creation; he has reached the utmost
consciousness and knowledge of which it is capable: if he tries to go
farther, he will only revolve in larger cycles of his own
mentality. For that is the curve of his existence here, a finite
circling which carries the Mind in its revolutions and returns always
to the point from which it started; Mind cannot go outside its own
cycle, — all idea of a straight line of movement or of progress
reaching infinitely upward or sidewise into the Infinite is a
delusion. If the soul of man is to go beyond humanity, to reach either
a supramental or a still higher status, it must pass out of this
cosmic existence, either to a plane or world of Bliss and Knowledge or
into the unmanifest Eternal and Infinite.
It is true that Science now affirms an evolutionary terrestrial
existence: but if the facts with which Science deals are reliable, the
generalisations it hazards are short-lived; it holds them for some
decades or some centuries, then passes to another generalisation,
another theory of things. This happens even in physical Science where
the facts are solidly ascertainable and verifiable by experiment: in
psychology, — which is relevant here, for the evolution of
consciousness comes into the picture, — its instability is still
greater; it passes there from one theory to another before the first
is well-founded; indeed, several conflicting theories hold the field
together. No firm metaphysical building can be erected upon these
shifting quicksands. Heredity, upon which Science builds its concept
of life-evolution, is certainly a power, a machinery for keeping a
type of species in unchanged being: the demonstration that it is also
an instrument for persistent and progressive variation is very
questionable; its tendency is conservative rather than evolutionary,
– it seems to accept with difficulty the new character that the
Life-Force attempts to force upon it. All the facts show that a type
can vary within its own specification of nature, but there is nothing
to show that it can go beyond it. It has not yet been really
established that ape-kind developed into man; for it would rather seem
that a type resembling the ape, but always characteristic of itself
and not of apehood, developed within its own tendencies of nature and
became what we know as man, the present human being. It is not even
established that inferior races of man developed out of themselves the
superior races; those of an inferior organisation and capacity
perished, but it has not been shown that they left behind the human
races of today as their descendants: but still such a development
within the type is imaginable. The progress of Nature from Matter to
Life, from Life to Mind, may be conceded: but there is no proof yet
that Matter developed into Life or Life-energy into Mind-energy; all
that can be conceded is that Life has manifested in Matter, Mind in
living Matter. For there is no sufficient proof that any vegetable
species developed into an animal existence or that any organisation of
inanimate Matter developed into a living organism. Even if it be
discovered hereafter that under certain chemical or other conditions
Life makes its appearance, all that will be established by this
coincidence is that in certain physical circumstances Life manifests,
not that certain chemical conditions are constituents of Life, are its
elements or are the evolutionary cause of a transformation of
inanimate into animate Matter. Here as elsewhere each grade of being
exists in itself and by itself, is manifested according to its own
character by its own proper energy, and the gradations above or below
it are not origins and resultant sequences but only degrees in the
continuous scale of earth-nature.
If it be asked, how then did all these various gradations and
types of being come into existence, it can be answered that,
fundamentally, they were manifested in Matter by the
Consciousness-Force in it, by the power of the Real-Idea building its
own significant forms and types for the indwelling Spirit’s cosmic
existence: the practical or physical method might vary considerably in
different grades or stages, although a basic similarity of line may be
visible; the creative Power might use not one but many processes or
set many forces to act together. In Matter the process is a creation
of infinitesimals charged with an immense energy, their association by
design and number, the manifestation of larger infinitesimals on that
primary basis, the grouping and association of these together to found
the appearance of sensible objects, earth, water, minerals, metals,
the whole material kingdom. In Life also the Consciousness-Force
begins with infinitesimal forms of vegetable life and infinitesimal
animalcules; it creates an original plasm and multiplies it, creates
the living cell as a unit, creates other kinds of minute biological
apparatus like the seed or the gene, uses always the same method of
grouping and association so as to build by a various operation various
living organisms. A constant creation of types is visible, but that is
no indubitable proof of evolution. The types are sometimes distant
from each other, sometimes closely similar, sometimes identical in
basis but different in detail; all are patterns, and such a variation
in patterns with an identical rudimentary basis for all is the sign of
a conscious Force playing with its own Idea and developing by it all
kinds of possibilities of creation. Animal species in coming into
birth may begin with a like rudimentary embryonic or fundamental
pattern for all, it may follow out up to a stage certain similarities
of development on some or all of its lines; there may too be species
that are twy-natured, amphibious, intermediate between one type and
another: but all this need not mean that the types developed one from
another in an evolutionary series. Other forces than hereditary
variation have been at work in bringing about the appearance of new
characteristics; there are physical forces such as food, light-rays
and others that we are only beginning to know, there are surely others
which we do not yet know; there are at work invisible life-forces and
obscure psychological forces. For these subtler powers have to be
admitted even in the physical evolutionary theory to account for
natural selection; if the occult or subconscious energy in some types
answers to the need of the environment, in others remains unresponsive
and unable to survive, this is clearly the sign of a varying
life-energy and psychology, of a consciousness and a force other than
the physical at work making for variation in Nature. The problem of
the method of operation is still too full of obscure and unknown
factors for any at present possible structure of theory to be
definitive.
Man is a type among many types so constructed, one pattern among
the multitude of patterns in the manifestation in Matter. He is the
most complex that has been created, the richest in content of
consciousness and the curious ingeniousness of his building; he is the
head of the earthly creation, but he does not exceed it. Even as
others, so he too has his own native law, limits, special kind of
existence, svabhava, svadharma; within those limits he
can extend and develop, but he cannot go outside them. If there is a
perfection to which he has to arrive, it must be a perfection in his
own kind, within his own law of being, — the full play of it, but by
observation of its mode and measure, not by transcendence. To exceed
himself, to grow into the superman, to put on the nature and
capacities of a god would be a contradiction of his self-law,
impracticable and impossible. Each form and way of being has its own
appropriate way of the delight of being; to seek through the mind the
mastery and use and enjoyment of the environment of which he is
capable is rightly man the mental being’s objective: but to look
beyond, to run after an ulterior object or aim of existence, to aspire
to surpass the mental stature is to bring in a teleological element
into existence which is not visible in the cosmic structure. If a
supramental being is to appear in the terrestrial creation, it must be
a new and independent manifestation; just as Life and Mind have
manifested in Matter, so Supermind must manifest there and the secret
Conscious-Energy must create the necessary patterns for this new grade
of its potencies. But there is no sign of any such intention in the
operations of Nature.
But if a superior creation is intended, then, certainly, it is not out
of man that the new grade, type or pattern can develop; for in that
case there would be some race or kind or make of human beings that has
already the material of the superman in it, just as the peculiar
animal being that developed into humanity had the essential elements
of human nature already potential or present in it: there is no such
race, kind or type, at most there are only spiritualised mental beings
who are seeking to escape out of the terrestrial creation. If by any
occult law of Nature such a human development of the supramental being
is intended, it could only be by a few in humanity detaching
themselves from the race so as to become a first foundation for this
new pattern of being. There is no reason to suppose that the whole
race could develop this perfection; it cannot be a possibility
generalised in the human creature.
Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Four, “Man and the Evolution” (Part 2 of 3)
If indeed man has evolved in Nature out of the animal, yet now
we see that no other animal type shows any signs of an evolution
beyond itself; if then there was this evolutionary stress in the
animal kingdom, it must have sunk back into quiescence as soon as the
object was fulfilled by man’s appearance: so too if there is any such
stress for a new step in evolution, for self-exceeding, it is likely
to subside into quiescence as soon as its object is fulfilled by the
supramental being’s appearance. But there is no such stress in
reality: the idea of human progress itself is very probably an
illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal
stage, has radically progressed during his race-history; at most he
has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the
handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian
use of the secret laws of Nature. But otherwise he is what he always
was in the early beginnings of civilisation: he continues to manifest
the same capacities, the same qualities and defects, the same efforts,
blunders, achievements, frustrations. If progress there has been, it
is in a circle, at most perhaps in a widening circle. Man today is not
wiser than the ancient seers and sages and thinkers, not more
spiritual than the great seekers of old, the first mighty mystics, not
superior in arts and crafts to the ancient artists and craftsmen; the
old races that have disappeared showed as potent an intrinsic
originality, invention, capacity of dealing with life and, if modern
man in this respect has gone a little farther, not by any essential
progress but in degree, scope, abundance, it is because he has
inherited the achievements of his forerunners. Nothing warrants the
idea that he will ever hew his way out of the half-knowledge
half-ignorance which is the stamp of his kind, or, even if he develops
a higher knowledge, that he can break out of the utmost boundary of
the mental circle.
It is tempting and not illogical to regard rebirth as the
potential means of a spiritual evolution, the factor that makes it
possible, but still it is not certain, granting rebirth to be a fact,
that this is its significance. All the ancient theories about
reincarnation supposed it to be a constant transmigration of the soul
from animal to human, but also from human to animal bodies: the Indian
idea added the explanation of Karma, of a return for good or evil
done, of a result of past will and effort; but there was no suggestion
of a progressive evolution from type to higher type, still less of
birth into a kind of being that has never yet existed but has still to
evolve in the future. If evolution there is, then man is the last
stage, because through him there can be the rejection of terrestrial
or embodied life and an escape into some heaven or Nirvana. That was
the end envisaged by the ancient theories and, since this is
fundamentally and unchangeably a world of Ignorance, — even if all
cosmic existence is not in its nature a state of Ignorance, — that
escape is likely to be the true end of the cycle.
This is a line of reasoning that has a considerable cogency and
importance, and it was necessary to state it, even if too briefly for
its importance, in order to meet it. For although some of its
propositions are valid, its view of things is not complete and its
cogency is not conclusive. And first we may without much difficulty
get rid of the objection to the teleological element which the idea of
a predetermined evolution from inconscience to superconscience, the
development of a rising order of beings with a culminating transition
from the life of the Ignorance to a life in the Knowledge, brings into
the structure of the terrestrial existence. The objection to a
teleological cosmos can be based on two very different grounds, — a
scientific reasoning proceeding on the assumption that all is the work
of an inconscient Energy which acts automatically by mechanical
processes and can have no element of purpose in it, and a metaphysical
reasoning which proceeds on the perception that the Infinite and
Universal has everything in it already, that it cannot have something
unaccomplished to accomplish, something to add to itself, to work out,
to realise, and there can therefore be in it no element of progress,
no original or emergent purpose.
The scientific or materialist objection cannot maintain its
validity if there is a secret Consciousness in or behind the
apparently inconscient Energy in Matter. Even in the Inconscient there
seems to be at least an urge of inherent necessity producing the
evolution of forms and in the forms a developing Consciousness, and it
may well be held that this urge is the evolutionary will of a secret
Conscious-Being and its push of progressive manifestation the evidence
of an innate intention in the evolution. This is a teleological
element and it is not irrational to admit it: for the conscious or
even the inconscient nisus arises from a truth of conscious-being that
has become dynamic and set out to fulfil itself in an automatic
process of material Nature; the teleology, the element of purpose in
the nisus is the translation of self-operative Truth of Being into
terms of self-effective Will-Power of that Being, and, if
consciousness is there, such a Will-Power must also be there and the
translation is normal and inevitable. Truth of Being inevitably
fulfilling itself would be the fundamental fact of the evolution, but
Will and its purpose must be there as part of the instrumentation, as
an element in the operative principle.
The metaphysical objection is more serious; for it seems
self-evident that the Absolute can have no purpose in manifestation
except the delight of manifestation itself: an evolutionary movement
in Matter as part of the manifestation must fall within this universal
statement; it can be there only for the delight of the unfolding, the
progressive execution, the objectless seried self-revelation. A
universal totality may also be considered as something complete in
itself; as a totality, it has nothing to gain or to add to its
fullness of being. But here the material world is not an integral
totality, it is part of a whole, a grade in a gradation; it may admit
in it, therefore, not only the presence of undeveloped immaterial
principles or powers belonging to the whole that are involved within
its Matter, but also a descent into it of the same powers from the
higher gradations of the system to deliver their kindred movements
here from the strictness of a material limitation. A manifestation of
the greater powers of Existence till the whole being itself is
manifest in the material world in the terms of a higher, a spiritual
creation, may be considered as the teleology of the evolution. This
teleology does not bring in any factor that does not belong to the
totality; it proposes only the realisation of the totality in the
part. There can be no objection to the admission of a teleological
factor in a part movement of the universal totality, if the purpose,
– not a purpose in the human sense, but the urge of an intrinsic
Truth-necessity conscious in the will of the indwelling Spirit, — is
the perfect manifestation there of all the possibilities inherent in
the total movement. 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 fulfilment 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.
A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a
scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; it
must stand on its own inherent justification: it may accept the
scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element,
but the support is not indispensable. The scientific theory is
concerned only with the outward and visible machinery and process,
with the detail of Nature’s execution, with the physical development
of things in Matter and the law of development of Life and Mind in
Matter; its account of the process may have to be considerably changed
or may be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery, but that
will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an
evolution of Consciousness, a progression of the soul’s manifestation
in material existence. In its outward aspects this is what the theory
of evolution comes to, — there is in the scale of terrestrial
existence a development of forms, of bodies, a progressively complex
and competent organisation of Matter, of Life in Matter, of
Consciousness in living Matter; in this scale, the better organised
the form, the more it is capable of housing a better organised, a more
complex and capable, a more developed or evolved Life and
Consciousness. Once the evolutionary hypothesis is put forward and the
facts supporting it are marshalled, this aspect of the terrestrial
existence becomes so striking as to appear indisputable. The precise
machinery by which this is done or the exact genealogy or
chronological succession of types of being is a secondary, though in
itself an interesting and important question; the development of one
form of life out of a precedent less evolved form, natural selection,
the struggle for life, the survival of acquired characteristics may or
may not be accepted, but the fact of a successive creation with a
developing plan in it is the one conclusion which is of primary
consequence. Another self-evident conclusion is that there is a
graduated necessary succession in the evolution, first the evolution
of Matter, next the evolution of Life in Matter, then the evolution of
Mind in living Matter, and in this last stage an animal evolution
followed by a human evolution. The first three terms of the succession
are too evident to be disputable. It may be debated whether there was
a succession of man to animal or a simultaneous initial development,
man outstripping the animal in Mind-evolution; a theory has even been
put forward that man was not the last, but the first and eldest of the
animal species. This priority of man is an ancient conception, but it
was not universal; it is born of the sense of the clear supremacy of
man among earthly creatures, the dignity of this supremacy seeming to
demand a priority of birth: but in evolutionary fact the superior is
not prior but posterior in appearance, the less developed precedes the
more developed and prepares it.
In fact, the idea of the priority of the lower forms of Life is
not altogether absent in ancient thinking. Apart from mythical
accounts of creation, we find already in ancient and mediaeval thought
in India utterances that favour the priority of the animal over man in
the time succession in a sense that agrees with the modern
evolutionary conception. An Upanishad declares that the Self or
Spirit after deciding on life-creation first formed animal kinds like
the cow and horse, but the gods, — who are in the thought of the
Upanishads powers of Consciousness and powers of Nature, — found them
to be insufficient vehicles, and the Spirit finally created the form
of man which the gods saw to be excellently made and sufficient and
they entered into it for their cosmic functions. This is a clear
parable of the creation of more and more developed forms till one was
found that was capable of housing a developed consciousness. In the
Puranas it is stated that the tamasic animal creation was the first in
time. Tamas is the Indian word for the principle of inertia of
consciousness and force: a consciousness dull and sluggish and
incompetent in its play is said to be tamasic; a force, a Life-energy
that is indolent and limited in its capacity, bound to a narrow range
of instinctive impulses, not developing, not seeking farther, not
urged to a greater kinetic action or a more luminously conscious
action, would be assigned to the same category. The animal, in whom
there is this less developed force of consciousness, is prior in
creation; the more developed human consciousness, in which there is a
greater force of kinetic Mind-energy and light of perception, is a
later creation. The Tantra speaks of a soul fallen from its status
passing through many lacs of births in plant and animal forms before
it can reach the human level and be ready for salvation. Here, again,
there is implied the conception of vegetable and animal life-forms as
the lower steps of a ladder, humanity as the last or culminating
development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to
inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive and a spiritual
issue out of mentality, life and physicality.This is indeed the normal
conception, and it recommends itself so strongly both to reason and
intuition that it hardly needs debate, — the conclusion is almost
unescapable.
It is against this background of a developing evolutionary
process that we have to look at man, his origin and first appearance,
his status in the manifestation. There are here two possibilities;
either there was the sudden appearance of a human body and
consciousness in the earth-nature, an abrupt creation or independent
automatic manifestation of reasoning mentality in the material world
intervening upon a previous similar manifestation of subconscious
life-forms and of living conscious bodies in Matter, or else there was
an evolution of humanity out of animal being, slow perhaps in its
preparation and in its stages of development, but with strong leaps of
change at the decisive points of the transition. The latter theory
offers no difficulty: for it is certain that changes of
characteristics in the type, though not of the fundamental type
itself, can be brought about in species or genus, — indeed this has
already been done by man himself and its possibilities are being
strikingly worked out on a small scale by experimental Science, — and
it may fairly be assumed that the secretly conscious Energy in Nature
could effect large-scale operations of the kind and bring about
considerable and decisive developments by means of its own creative
conventions. The necessary condition for the change from the normal
animal to the human character of existence would be a development of
the physical organisation which would capacitate a rapid progression,
a reversal or turnover of the consciousness, a reaching to a new
height and a looking down from it at the lower stages, a heightening
and widening of capacity which would enable the being to take up the
old animal faculties with a larger and more plastic, a human
intelligence, and at the same time or later to develop greater and
subtler powers proper to the new type of being, powers of reason,
reflection, complex observation, organised invention, thought and
discovery. If there is an emergent Consciousness-Force, there would be
no difficulty in the transition, the instrument being provided, except
the difficulty of the obstruction and resistance of the material
Inconscience. The animal has already some of the corresponding
qualities on a limited scale, for action only, in a rudimentary
organisation crude and simple, with a very inferior scope and
plasticity, a narrower and more casual command of the faculty; but
especially the working of these faculties is more mechanical, less
deliberate, marked with the character of an automatism of
Nature-Energy driving an operation of primitive consciousness and not,
as in man, of a conscious Energy observing and to a great extent
directing and governing and deliberately changing or modifying its own
operations. Other animal habits of consciousness are not fundamentally
different from man’s; all he had to do was to develop and enlarge them
on a higher mental level and wherever possible, to mentalise, refine,
subtilise, — in brief, to bring to them the enlightenment of his new
understanding and intellectual capacity and a power of reasoned
control denied to the animal. This change or reversal once effected,
the power of the human mind to work upon itself and things, create,
know, speculate, would develop in the course of his evolution, even
if, as is conceivable, they were at the beginning small in scope,
nearer to the animal, still comparatively simple and crude in their
action. Such a reversal has been made in each radical transition of
Nature: Life-Force emerging turns upon Matter, imposes a vital content
on the operations of material Energy while it develops also its own
new movements and operations; Life-Mind emerges in Life-Force and
Matter and imposes its content of consciousness on their operations
while it develops also its own action and faculties; a new greater
emergence and reversal, the emergence of humanity, is in line with
Nature’s precedents; it would be a new application of the general
principle.
Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Four, “Man and the Evolution” (Part 3 of 3)
This theory is therefore easy to accept: its working is intelligible.
But the other hypothesis presents considerable difficulties. On the side of
consciousness the new manifestation, the human, could be accounted for by an
upsurge of concealed Consciousness from the involution in universal Nature.
But in that case it must have had some material form already existent for
its vehicle of emergence, the vehicle being adapted by the force of the
emergence itself to the needs of a new inner creation; or else a rapid
divergence from previous physical types or patterns may have brought a new
being into existence. But whichever the hypothesis accepted, this means an
evolutionary process, — there is only a difference in the method and
machinery of the divergence or transition. Or there may have been, on the
contrary, not an upsurgence but a descent of mentality from a Mind-plane
above us, perhaps the descent of a soul or mental being into terrestrial
Nature. The difficulty would then be the appearance of the human body, too
complex and difficult an organ to have been suddenly created or manifested;
for such a miraculous speed of process, though quite possible on a
supraphysical plane of being, does not seem to figure among the normal
possibles or potentials of the material Energy. It could only happen there
by an intervention of a supraphysical force or law of Nature or by a
creator Mind acting with full power and directly on Matter. An action of a
supraphysical Force and a creator may be conceded in every new appearance in
Matter; each such appearance is at bottom a miracle operated by a secret
Consciousness supported by a veiled Mind-Energy or Life-Energy: but the
action is nowhere seen to be direct, overt, self-sufficient; it is always
superimposed on an already realised physical basis and acts by an extension
of some established process of Nature. It is more conceivable that there was
an opening of some existing body to a supraphysical influx so that it was
transformed into a new body; but no such event can lightly be assumed to
have taken place in the past history of material Nature: in order to happen
it would seem to need either the conscious intervention of an invisible
mental being to form the body he intended to inhabit or else a previous
development of a mental being in Matter itself who would be already able to
receive a supraphysical power and impose it on the rigid and narrow formulas
of his physical existence. Otherwise we must suppose that there was a
pre-existent body already so much evolved as to be fitted for the reception
of a vast mental influx or capable of a pliable response to the descent into
it of a mental being. But this would suppose a previous evolution of mind in
body to the point at which such a receptivity would be possible. It is quite
conceivable that such an evolution from below and such a descent from above
co-operated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret
psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down
the mental being, the Mind-Purusha, into the realm of living Matter in order
to take up the vital-mental energy already at work and lift it into a higher
mentality. But this would still be a process of evolution, the higher plane
only intervening to assist the appearance and enlargement of its own
principle in terrestrial Nature.
Next, it may be conceded that each type or pattern of consciousness and
being in the body, once established, has to be faithful to the law of being
of that type, to its own design and rule of nature. But it may also very
well be that part of the law of the human type is its impulse towards
self-exceeding, that the means for a conscious transition has been provided
for among the spiritual powers of man; the possession of such a capacity may
be a part of the plan on which the creative Energy has built him. It may be
conceded that what man has up till now principally done is to act within the
circle of his nature, on a spiral of nature-movement, sometimes descending,
sometimes ascending, — there has been no straight line of progress, no
indisputable, fundamental or radical exceeding of his past nature: what he
has done is to sharpen, subtilise, make a more and more complex and plastic
use of his capacities. It cannot truly be said that there has been no such
thing as human progress since man’s appearance or even in his recent
ascertainable history; for however great the ancients, however supreme some
of their achievements and creations, however impressive their powers of
spirituality, of intellect or of character, there has been in later
developments an increasing subtlety, complexity, manifold development of
knowledge and possibility in man’s achievements, in his politics, society,
life, science, metaphysics, knowledge of all kinds, art, literature; even in
his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power
of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing
subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have
been falls from a high type of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a
certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into a
barbaric natural materialism; but these are temporary phenomena, at worst a
downward curve of the spiral of progress. This progress has not indeed
carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of
the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of
evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop
the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and increasing
complexity till it is ready for her bursting of the shell, the ripened
decisive emergence, reversal, turning over of consciousness on itself that
constitutes a new stage in the evolution. If it be supposed that her next
step is the spiritual and supramental being, the stress of spirituality in
the race may be taken as a sign that that is Nature’s intention, the sign
too of the capacity of man to operate in himself or aid her to operate the
transition. If the appearance in animal being of a type similar in some
respects to the ape-kind but already from the beginning endowed with the
elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance
in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but
already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the
obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual
and supramental being.
It is pertinently suggested that if such an evolutionary culmination is
intended and man is to be its medium, it will only be a few especially
evolved human beings who will form the new type and move towards the new
life; that once done, the rest of humanity will sink back from a spiritual
aspiration no longer necessary for Nature’s purpose and remain quiescent in
its normal status. It can equally be reasoned that the human gradation must
be preserved if there is really an ascent of the soul by reincarnation
through the evolutionary degrees towards the spiritual summit; for otherwise
the most necessary of all the intermediate steps will be lacking. It must be
conceded at once that there is not the least probability or possibility of
the whole human race rising in a block to the supramental level; what is
suggested is nothing so revolutionary and astonishing, but only the
capacity in the human mentality, when it has reached a certain level or a
certain point of stress of the evolutionary impetus, to press towards a
higher plane of consciousness and its embodiment in the being. The being will
necessarily undergo by this embodiment a change from the normal constitution
of its nature, a change certainly of its mental and emotional and
sensational constitution and also to a great extent of the
body-consciousness and the physical conditioning of our life and energies;
but the change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial
movement, the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a
consequence. This transmutation of the consciousness will always remain
possible to the human being when the flame of the soul, the psychic kindling,
becomes potent in heart and mind and the nature is ready. The spiritual
aspiration is innate in man; for he is, unlike the animal, aware of
imperfection and limitation and feels that there is something to be attained
beyond what he now is: this urge towards self-exceeding is not likely ever
to die out totally in the race. The human mental status will be always
there, but it will be there not only as a degree in the scale of rebirth,
but as an open step towards the spiritual and supramental status.
It must be observed that the appearance of human mind and body on the
earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of
the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this
advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter evolution had been effected,
not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking of the living
being, but subconsciously or subliminally by the automatic operation of
Nature. This was so because the evolution began from the Inconscience and
the secret Consciousness had not emerged sufficiently from it to operate
through the self-aware participating individual will of its living creature.
But in man the necessary change has been made, — the being has become awake
and aware of himself; there has been made manifest in Mind its will to
develop, to grow in knowledge, to deepen the inner and widen the outer
existence, to increase the capacities of the nature. Man has seen that there
can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary
oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed
himself is delivered and articulate within him: he has become conscious of a
soul, discovered the Self and Spirit. In him, then, the substitution of a
conscious for a subconscious evolution has become conceivable and
practicable, and it may well be concluded that the aspiration, the urge, the
persistent endeavour in him is a sure sign of Nature’s will for a higher way
to fulfilment, the emergence of a greater status.
In the previous stages of the evolution Nature’s first care and effort
had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only
so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by
the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to
effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed
inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation
and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that
the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a
change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always
had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental;
but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two
factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in
importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance
has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the
change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will
necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to
be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in
the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of
its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes
in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature
consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and
transformation. The urge to it is already there and partly effective, though
still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one
day it may understand, go deeper within itself and discover the means, the
secret energy, the intended operation of the Consciousness-Force within
which is the hidden reality of what we call Nature.
All these are conclusions that can be arrived at even from the
observation of the outward phenomena of Nature’s progression, her surface
evolution of being and of consciousness in the physical birth and the body.
But there is the other, the invisible factor; there is rebirth, the progress
of the soul by ascent from grade to grade of the evolving existence, and in
the grades to higher and higher types of bodily and mental instrumentation.
In this progression the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the
conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and body; it is
unable to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can
stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain
determination by the instruments, to a domination of Purusha by Prakriti. But
in man the psychic part of the personality is able to develop with a much
greater rapidity than in the inferior creation, and a time can arrive when
the soul-entity is close to the point at which it will emerge from behind
the veil into the open and become the master of its instrumentation in
Nature. But this will mean that the secret indwelling spirit, the Daemon,
the Godhead within is on the point of emergence; and, when it emerges, it
can hardly be doubted that its demand will be, as indeed it already is in
the Mind itself when it undergoes the inner psychic influence, for a
diviner, a more spiritual existence. In the nature of the earth-life where
the Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance, this can only be effected by a
change of consciousness, a transition from a foundation in Ignorance to a
foundation in Knowledge, from the mental to a supramental consciousness, a
supramental instrumentation of Nature.
There is no conclusive validity in the reasoning that because this is
a world of Ignorance, such a transformation can only be achieved by a
passage to a heaven beyond or cannot be achieved at all and the demand of
the psychic entity is itself ignorant and must be replaced by a merger of
the soul in the Absolute. This conclusion could only be solely valid if
Ignorance were the whole meaning, substance and power of the
world-manifestation or if there were no element in World-Nature itself
through which there could be an exceeding of the ignorant mentality that
still burdens our present status of being. But the Ignorance is only a
portion of this World-Nature; it is not the whole of it, not the original
power or creator: it is in its higher origin a self-limiting Knowledge and
even in its lower origin, its emergence out of the sheer material
Inconscience, it is a suppressed Consciousness labouring to find, to recover
itself, to manifest Knowledge, which is its true character, as the
foundation of existence. In universal Mind itself there are ranges above our
mentality which are instruments of the cosmic truth-cognition, and into
these the mental being can surely rise; for already it rises towards them in
supernormal conditions or receives from them without yet knowing or
possessing them intuitions, spiritual intimations, large influxes of
illumination or spiritual capacity. All these ranges are conscious of what is
beyond them, and the highest of them is directly open to the Supermind,
aware of the Truth-Consciousness which exceeds it. Moreover, in the evolving
being itself, those greater powers of consciousness are here, supporting
Mind-truth, underlying its action which screens them; this Supermind and
those Truth-powers uphold Nature by their secret presence: even, truth of
Mind is their result, a diminished operation, a representation in partial
figures. It is, therefore, not only natural but seems inevitable that these
higher powers of Existence should manifest here in Mind as Mind itself has
manifested in Life and Matter.
Man’s urge towards spirituality is the inner driving of the spirit
within him towards emergence, the insistence of the Consciousness-Force of
the being towards the next step of its manifestation. It is true that the
spiritual urge has been largely other-worldly or turned at its extreme
towards a spiritual negation and self-annihilation of the mental individual;
but this is only one side of its tendency maintained and made dominant by
the necessity of passing out of the kingdom of the fundamental Inconscience,
overcoming the obstacle of the body, casting away the obscure vital, getting
rid of the ignorant mentality, the necessity to attain first and foremost,
by a rejection of all these impediments to spiritual being, to a spiritual
status. The other, the dynamic side of the spiritual urge has not been
absent, — the aspiration to a spiritual mastery and mutation of Nature, to
a spiritual perfection of the being, a divinisation of the mind, the heart
and the very body: there has even been the dream or a psychic prevision of a
fulfilment exceeding the individual transformation, a new earth and heaven, a
city of God, a divine descent upon earth, a reign of the spiritually
perfect, a kingdom of God not only within us but outside, in a collective
human life. However obscure may have been some of the forms taken by this
aspiration, the indication they contain of the urge of the occult spiritual
being within to emergence in earth-nature is unmistakable.
If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth
into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has
been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of
that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the Spirit, Mind itself
a too limited form and instrumentation; Mind is only a middle term of
consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then,
man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and Supermind
and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his
mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why
man himself should not arrive at Supermind and supermanhood or at least lend
his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the
Spirit manifesting in Nature.
Click to continue reading: THE LIFE DIVINE, by Sri Aurobindo: Book Two, Chap. 24, “The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, Part 1 of 5″
Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Four, “Man and the Evolution” (Part 3 of 3)
