Synthesizing evolutionary theory with Eastern involutionary theory

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was born in India, and educated in England where he was exposed to Western ideas and became a writer. After his return to India, he became a newspaper editor and leader of a nationalist movement. After a year in jail, he was introduced to yoga and meditation. Profoundly changed, he went on to found an ashram and dedicate the rest of his life to the study and practice of Advaita (nondual) Vedanta. Though his works are mainly philosophical and metaphysical, he is credited with synthesizing evolutionary theory with Eastern involutionary theory. Thus, his work does not include the detailed scientific references, seen for example, in Teilhard’s or Wilber’s work. Still, Aurobindo outlined a postmodern way to understand how Causal Consciousness creates, one that had a big influence on Wilber’s early work.

Aurobindo wrote The Life Divine (1940) over a period of years from 1914-1920. His version of the “Great Chain of Being” can be simplified into five major aspects nested within the three great fields of All-That-Is: Matter (physical), Life (physical), Mind (physical), Overmind (subtle), and Supermind (causal). “The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital [Life], the mental, the ideal [Overmind], and the spiritual or beatific [Supermind] and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language.

A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle, and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although there and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to come conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical [low subtle], and ideal [high subtle] personalities which is the cause of those ‘psychic’ and ‘occult’ phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined....” (31)

Further, notice that Matter is equivalent to the physiosphere, Life the biosphere, and Mind the noosphere, the three major stages of evolution to date. Also, Aurobindo’s Vedic ontology of physical, subtle, and causal sheaths or bodies are ontologically equivalent to our use of fields. In his cosmology, Supermind (All-That-Is) functions as the Primal Cause that fuels evolution through involution. “Supermind ... possesses the power of development, of evolution, of making explicit, and that power carries with it the other power of involution, of envelopment, of making implicit. In a sense, the whole of creation may be said to be a movement between two involutions, [Causal] Spirit in which all is involved and out of which all evolves downward to the other pole of Matter, Matter in which also all is involved and out of which all evolves upwards to the other pole of Spirit.” (32)

So what does this great sage see coming next in evolutionary terms? In the closing chapter, The Divine Life, Aurobindo explored probable futures. He wrestled with how the next great phase he called gnostic consciousness might manifest. Possibly in small enclaves and communities, but that has not worked to date in terms of the premodern religions. Though there was no clear path he could discern, he sensed that this next great stage of evolution, gnostic consciousness, would include a profound shift in consciousness and enhanced capacities. “An entirely new consciousness in many individuals transforming their whole being, transforming their mental, vital, and physical nature-self, is needed for the new life to appear; only such a transformation of the general mind, life, body nature can bring into being a new worthwhile collective existence.

The evolutionary [striving] must tend not merely to create a new type of mental beings but another order of beings who have raised their whole existence from our present mentalised animality to a greater spiritual level of the earth-nature. “Any such complete transformation of the earth-life in a number of human beings could not establish itself altogether at once; even when the turning-point has been reached, the decisive line crossed, the new life in its beginnings would have to pass through a period of ordeal and arduous development.” (33) Thus, Aurobindo points to the continued birth pangs as Consciousness attempts to manifest ever more fully in the physical field. « Free Personal Art main Universal & Spiritual Laws ... » .Seth Speaks Newsletter - Volume XXIII Fri, August 4, 2006