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The
Evolution of Consciousness
This
character of evolution and this mediary position of man are
not at first apparent; for to the outward eye it would seem
as if evolution, the physical evolution at least were finished
long ago leaving man behind as its poor best result and no
new beings or superior creations were to be expected any longer.
But this appears to us only so long as we look at forms and
outsides only and not at the inner significances of the whole
process. Matter, body, life even are the first terms necessary
for the work that had to be done. New living forms may no
longer be appearing freely, but this is because it is not,
or at least it is not primarily, new living forms that the
Force of evolution is now busied with evolving, but new powers
of consciousness. When Nature, the Divine Power, had formed
a body erect and empowered to think, to devise, to inquire
into itself and things and work consciously both on things
and self, she had what she wanted for her secret aim; relegating
all else to the sphere of secondary movements, she turned
toward that long-hidden aim her main highest forces. For all
till then was a long strenuously slow preparation; but throughout
it the development of consciousness in which the appearance
of man was the crucial turning
point had been kept wrapped within her as her ultimate business
and true purpose.
This
slow preparation of Nature covered immense aeons of time and
infinities of space in which they appeared to be her only
business; the real business strikes on our view at least when
we look with the outward eye of reason as if it came only
as a fortuitous accident, in or near the end, for a span of
time and in a speck and hardly noticeable corner of one of
the smallest provinces of a possibly minor universe among
these many boundless finites, these countless universes. If
it were so, we could still reply that time and space matter
not to the Infinite and Eternal; it is not a waste of labour
for That—as it would be for our brief death-driven existences—to
work for trillions of years in order to flower only for a
moment. But that paradox too is only an appearance—for
the history of this single earth is not all the story of evolution—other
earths there are even now elsewhere, and even here many earth-cycles
came before us, and many are those that will come hereafter.
Nature
laboured for innumerable millions of years to create a material
universe of flaming suns and systems; for a lesser but still
interminable series of millions she stooped to make this earth
a habitable planet. For all that incalculable time she was
or seemed busy only with the evolution of Matter; life and
mind were kept secret in an apparent non-existence. But the
time came when life could manifest, a vibration in the metal,
a growing and seeking, a drawing in and a feeling outward
in the plant, an instinctive force and sense, a nexus of joy
and pain and hunger and emotion and fear and struggle in the
animal,—a first organised consciousness, the beginning
of the long-planned miracle. Thenceforward she was busy no
more exclusively with matter for its own sake, but most with
palpitant plasmic matter useful for the expression of life;
the evolution of life was now her one intent purpose. And
slowly too mind manifested in life, an intensely feeling,
a crude thinking and planning vital mind in the animal, but
in man the full organisation and apparatus, the developing
if yet imperfect mental being, the Manu, the thinking, devising,
aspiring, already self-conscient creature. And from that time
onward the growth of mind rather than any radical change of
life became her shining preoccupation, her wonderful wager.
Body appeared to evolve no more; life itself evolved little
or only so much in its cycles as would serve to express Mind
heightening and widening itself in the living body; an unseen
internal evolution was now Nature's great passion and purpose.
And
if Mind were all that consciousness could achieve, if Mind
were the secret Godhead, if there were nothing higher, larger,
[no] more miraculous ranges, man could be left to fulfil mind
and complete his own being and there would or need be nothing
here beyond him, carrying consciousness to its summits, extending
it to its unwalled vastnesses, plunging with it into depths
unfathomable; he would by perfecting himself consummate Nature.
Evolution would end in a Man-God, crown of the earthly cycles.
But
Mind is not all; for beyond mind is a greater consciousness;
there is a supermind and spirit. As Nature laboured in the
animal, the vital being, till she could manifest out of him
man, the Manu, the thinker, so she is labouring in man, the
mental being till she can manifest out of him a spiritual
and supramental godhead, the truth conscious Seer, the knower
by identity, the embodied Transcendental and Universal in
the individual nature.
From
the clod and metal to the plant, from the plant to the animal,
from the animal to man, so much has she completed of her journey;
a huge stretch or a stupendous leap still remains before her.
As from matter to life, from life to mind, so now she must
pass from mind to supermind, from man to superman; this is
the gulf that she has to bridge, the supreme miracle that
she has to perform before she can rest from her struggle and
discontent and stand in the radiance of that supreme consciousness,
glorified, transmuted, satisfied with her labour.
The
subhuman was once here supreme in her, the human replacing
it walks now in the front of Time, but still, aim and goal
of the future there waits the supramental, the superman, an
unborn glory yet unachieved before her.
-
Sri Aurobindo
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