Then,
even if we suppose the least explicable part of the action to be an
evolutionary development of the immaterial from Matter, still is that
development a creation or a liberation, a birth of what did not exist
before or a slow bringing out of what already existed in suppressed
or in internal potentiality? And the interest of the question becomes
acute, its importance incalculable when we come to the still unexplained
phenomenon of life and mind? Is life a creation out of inanimate substance
or the appearance of a new, suddenly or slowly resultant power out of
the brute material energy, and is conscious mind a creation out inconscient
or subconscient life, or do these powers and godheads appear because
they were always there though in a shrouded and by us unrecognizable
condition of their hidden or suppressed idea and activity, Nomen and
Numen? And what of the soul and of man? Is soul a new result or creation
of our mentalised life, - even so many regard it, because it clearly
appears as a self-conscient, bright, distinguishable power only when
thinking life has reached some high pitch of its intensity, - or is
it not a permanent entity, the original mystery that now unveils its
hidden form, the eternal companion of the energy we call Nature, her
secret inhabitant or her very spirit and reality? And is man a biological
creation of a brute energy which has somehow unexpectedly and quite
inexplicably managed to begin to feel and think, or is he in his real
self that inner Being and Power which is the whole sense of the evolution
and the master of Nature? Is Nature only the force of self-expression,
self-formation, self-creation of a secret spirit, and man however hedged
in his present capacity, the first being in Nature in whom that power
begins to be consciently self-creative in the front of the action, in
this outer chamber of physical being, there set to work and bring out
by an increasingly self-conscious evolution what he can of all its human
significance or its divine possibility? That is the clear conclusion
we must arrive at in the end, if we once admit as the key of the whole
movement, the reality of this whole mounting creation a spiritual evolution.
The
word evolution carries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at
its root the necessity of a previous involution. We must, if a hidden
spiritual being is the secret of all the action of Nature, give its
full power to that latent value of the idea. We are bound then to suppose
that all that evolves already existed involved, passive or otherwise
active, but in either case concealed from us in the shell of material
Nature. The Spirit which manifests itself here in a body, must be involved
from the beginning in the whole of the matter and in every knot, formation
and particle of matter; life, mind and whatever is above mind must be
latent, inactive or concealed active powers in all the operations of
material energy. The only alternative would be to drive in between the
two sides of our being the acute Sankhya scission; but that divides
too much Spirit and Nature. Nature would be an inert and mechanical
thing, but she would set to her work activised by some pressure on her
of the Spirit. Spirit would be Being conscious and free in its own essence
from the natural activity, but would phenomenally modify or appear to
modify its consciousness in response to some reaction of Nature. One
would reflect the movements of the active Power, the other would enlighten
her activities with the consciousness of the self-aware immortal being.
In that case the scientific evolutionary view of Nature as a vast mechanical
energy, life, mind and natural soul action its scale of developing operations
would have a justification. Our consciousness would only be a luminous
translation of the self driven unresting mechanical activity into responsive
notes of experience of the consenting spiritual witness. But the disabling
difficulty in this notion is the quite opposite character of our own
highest seeing; for in the end and as the energy of the universal force
mounts up the gradients of its own possibilities, Nature becomes always
more evidently a power of the Spirit and all her mechanism only figures
of its devising mastery. The power of the Flame cannot be divided from
the Flame; where the Flame is, there is the power, and where the power
is there is the fiery Principle. We have to come back to the idea of
a Spirit present in the universe and, if the process of its works of
power and its appearance is in the steps of an evolution, there imposes
itself the necessity of a previous involution.
This
Spirit in things is not apparent from the beginning, but self-betrayed
in an increasing light of manifestation. We see the compressed powers
of Nature start released from their original involution, disclose in
a passion of work the secrets of their infinite capacity, press upon
themselves and on the supporting inferior principle to subject its lower
movement on which they are forced to depend into a higher working proper
to their own type and feel their proper greatness in the greatness of
their self-revealing effectuation. Life takes hold of matter and breathes
into it the numberless figures of its abundant creative force, its subtle
and variable patterns, its enthusiasm of birth and death and growth
and act and response, its will of more and more complex organisation
of experience, its quivering search and feeling out after a self-consciousness
of its own pleasure and pain and understanding gust of action; mind
seizes on life to make it an instrument for the wonders of will and
intelligence; soul possesses and lifts mind through the attraction of
beauty and good and wisdom and greatness towards the joy of some half-seen
ideal highest existence; and in all this miraculous movement and these
climbing greatness each step sets its foot on a higher rung and opens
to a cleaner, larger and fuller scope and view of the always secret
and always self-manifesting spirit in things. The eye fixed on the physical
evolution has only the sight of a mechanical grandeur and subtlety of
creation; the evolution of life opening to mind, the evolution of mind
opening to the soul of its own light and action, the evolution of soul
out of the limited powers of mind to a resplendent blaze of the infinites
of spiritual being are the more significant things, give us greater
and subtler reaches of the self-disclosing Secrecy. The physical evolution
is only an outward sign, the more and more complex and subtle development
of a supporting structure, the growing exterior metre mould of form
which is devised to sustain in matter the rising intonation of the spiritual
harmony. The spiritual significance finds us as the notes rise; but
not till we get to the summit of the scale can we command the integral
meaning of that for which all these first formal measures were made
the outward lines, the sketch or the crude notation. Life itself is
only a coloured vehicle, physical birth a convenience for the greater
and greater births of the Spirit.
-Sri
Aurobindo
