the next step in the evolution

If you haven't read the previous section,
you might like to read that first:

Involution and evolution revisited

As we have seen, in Sri Aurobindo's vision,h everything in the universe, however inconscient it may appear on the surface, is an expression of consciousness and remains forever permeated with consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo says, consciousness is part of the very stuff of existence. What is more, this conscious universe is evolving, and if Sri Aurobindo's essentially Vedic hypothesis is right, there must have been an occult involution of consciousness before the manifest evolution which science studies, as well as a determining influence of consciousness during the evolution.

If we add the main points of what we discussed so far to the diagram of involution and evolution we saw earlier, a slightly more detailed picture might look something like Figure 07d-1.

Figure 07d-1. The process of involution and evolution till now
 

Ascent and Integration

Figure 07d-1 depicts vertically a series of different types of consciousness, for which I've given Sanskrit names on the left, and their English translations on the right. There is on the left, in the subtle worlds, an involution, a descent, a gradual diminution of consciousness from the absolute perfection of saccidānanda, via the perfect but not yet manifest supramental world, to the lesser and lesser forms of consciousness we have called mind, life (or vital) and physical, till we have, at the bottom of the picture, the near total darkness of an apparent Nescience.1 In the account given by science, it is here, at the bottom, that the "Big Bang" takes place. Everything to the right of this point is visible in the manifest, "gross-physical" world.

An interesting aspect of the scientific account is that all the laws of physics must have been operative right from that first moment. In the consciousness-centred Indian conception, that same lawfulness is called Brahman, the consciousness of the Divine, a divine consciousness which is absolutely everywhere, even hidden deep within the darkness. We leave it to the reader to what extent this difference is substantial or just a matter of language, but where both sides agree is that from this apparent darkness, the universe begins to evolve. According to the Indian version, it does this partly pushed by the hidden Divinity within, partly pulled and moulded by the higher types of consciousness that are already present in the typal worlds which were created during the involution. Both are part of the omniscience of the Divine, and it is this that creates the fabulous harmony and beauty one sees in the inanimate material universe. As Sri Aurobindo says (2005, p. 359),

the force [acts] automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Indian description of this evolutionary process is that it is not just a re-ascent back up the same ladder of consciousness it assumes we came down from. There is also an integration of the new with the old, of the higher with the lower: when life arises out of matter, there are not just wafts of vital energy but flowers and tigers; when mind arises from life, there are not just free-floating ideas but intelligent people who hold those ideas. In short, there is not just an ascent but an "ascent and integration".2 And it is this ascent and integration that allows us humans to live in the freedom of the mind's creativity, while still being pushed by the adventurous spirit of our vital energy and supported by the sturdiness of our physical embodiment.

Figure 07d-2. Involution and evolution: two options for the future

The aim of life: going back or going forward

At present, most of humanity is still focused on the development of what in Figure 07d-2 is called the "Embodied Mind". We have become amazingly good at physical engineering, but we haven't reached the same levels of perfection in the management of our social and psychological life.

Those with a spiritual aspiration seem to stand at the crossroads where they, as individuals, can follow a path that aims at a merger back into the featureless Transcendent from which it all started (or some other specific form of the Divine), or struggle forwards to complete the evolution of which we are a part. In other words, we seem to have two very different options for our further spiritual development. We can, as some high and lofty schools of Indian spirituality recommend, forget about the world and strive for individual or collective liberation from our suffering through mokṣa, kaivalya or nirvāṇa, or, if Sri Aurobindo is right, we can go bravely forward to the next stage in the world's evolution.

It is true that this choice need not be as starkly binary as the diagram suggests. On the one hand, a certain purification of one's nature is needed before one can hope to find the Transcendent, and on the other hand, it may be necessary to have at least some sense of the Transcendent before one can successfully attempt the road towards transformation. Accordingly, as we already discussed in the chapter on concepts of consciousness, most modern schools of spirituality are somewhere on the continuum between exclusive and integral spirituality. Unfortunately this means in practice, that many of them are satisfied with the kind of compromise that used to be called the householder's path: a pursuit of spirituality that doesn't go at the cost of one's other interests and that is satisfied with making the ordinary life a bit more bearable. For most individuals this is enough, but for the future of our collective life this is not sufficient.

Given the challenges humanity is facing, our very survival may depend on our willingness to go beyond our present understanding, and on our willingness to take both paths, the scientific and the spiritual, further till they meet, not by a half-hearted compromise to their core-principles, but by a self-exceeding, a willingness to go beyond their respective traditions. What they will find if they do so is likely to be far beyond what we can presently even imagine.

One reason to be optimistic is that it is becoming increasingly clear that the different cultures and religions we have at present are nowhere as solid and eternal as we would like to believe. Each tradition has its own scriptures and gives its love to its own chosen forms of the Divine. To those who follow the tradition, it appears complete, but our increasingly global civilization confronts everyone with the harsh fact that different groups have different ideas. So, whether we like it or not, sooner or later, we have to accept that even the tradition in which we grew up and which we love with our whole heart, still has its limitations. Many of those who approach the Divine through a self-chosen tradition, and especially those who aim at a transcendent absolute, whether negative as in Buddha's sunya and Patanjali's kaivalya, or positive as in the Advaitin's all-inclusive paramātman, feel superior, as they think they are beyond all this, but they are mistaken, as in the end even the Transcendence is only one form of the Divine. The Divine is not only transcendent, but also a Presence, and in the end everything.

What humanity still needs to develop is a truly integral harmony with the Divine, allowing its transforming presence in every aspect of our nature, and this requires a consciousness that is radically different from our present dualistic, imitative, constructing mind. We need a consciousness that is fully one with the dynamic Divine from which this cosmos originates, and we need that not only in trance or peaceful meditation, but while active here in this physical world. In terms of Figure 2 and 3, this is only possible by a descent and integration of a consciousness way beyond our present one: the consciousness which is proper to what Sri Aurobindo called the Supramental plane, the vijñānamaya kośa.3

Exploring this Supramental link plane experientially is far more difficult than realising even the highest "non-dual mind" below it, and after many years of inner work, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that the later Indian sages failed to discern clearly how much the two types of consciousness differed from each other. According to Sri Aurobindo this was the main reason why the Indian tradition gave up on the possibility of a genuinely divine life on earth. He writes in a letter to one of his disciples:

The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call Overmind [the highest level of what in Figure 3 is indicated as the Mental plane] and the other the true Supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got confused about Maya (Overmind-Force or Vidya-Avidya) and took it for the supreme creative power. In so stopping short at what was still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation — even though the Vaishnava and Tantra Yogas groped to find it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest, this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it felt the Overmind lustres descending, that this was the true illumination, the gnosis, — with the result that they either stopped short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some immovable and inactive Silence of the Supreme.

— Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga — I, pp. 82–854

According to Sri Aurobindo, it is only by the ascent and integration of this radically different type of consciousness that we can permanently overcome the "indignity of mortal life" (Savitri, p. 313").

Conclusion

It appears then that the tremendous creative power behind the evolution will not allow humanity to be satisfied till it has a complete understanding of all of reality, and if that is to happen, science cannot afford to leave the highest ranges of consciousness out of its purview, and spirituality cannot limit itself to the seemingly incompatible ways in which different traditions describe their chosen aspects of the Divine. What logically should come instead, and how we can collectively work most efficiently in that direction, is what this text is about.5

In Figure 3, the path to the left depicts what we described in an earlier chapter as the path leading to the immersion of the drop back into the ocean from where it came, while the path to the right represents the attempt at transforming the drop into a dynamic centre of the Light, Truth and Power of the infinite ocean. It is this path to the right which is "the adventure of consciousness and joy"[ref] that forms the central theme of Infinity in a Drop and the raison d'être of its integral approach to psychology.6

With this, we have come to the end of our discussion of the philosophical foundation we consider necessary to turn psychology into a more quickly progressive science of the inner domain.

It is now time to see how entirely new areas of psychological knowledge can be discovered by turning our own human nature into a more sensitive, reliable and precise "inner instrument of knowledge".

Endnotes