As
he mounts from peak to peak... Indra makes him conscious of that goal
of his movement.
-
Rig Veda.[I. 10. 2.]
A
son of the two Mothers, he attains to kingship in his discoveries of
knowledge, he moves on the summit, he dwells in his high foundation.
-Rig
Veda.[III. 55. 7]
I
have arisen from earth to the mid-world, I have arisen from the mid-world
to heaven, from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to
the Sun-world, the Light.(The four planes of Matter, Life, pure Mind
and Supermind.)
-Yajur
Veda.[17. 67.]
It
is now possible and necessary, since we have formed a sufficiently clear
idea of the significance of the evolutionary manifestation in earth-nature
and the final turn it is taking or destined to take, to direct a more
understanding regard on the principles of the process by which it has
arrived at its present level and by which, presumably, with whatever
modifications, its final development, its passage from our still dominant
mental ignorance to a supramental consciousness and an integral knowledge,
will be governed and made effective. For we find that cosmic Nature
is constant in its general law of action, since that depends on a Truth
of things which is invariable in principle although in detail of application
abundantly variable. At the outset, we can easily see that, since this
is an evolution out of a material Inconscience into spiritual consciousness,
an evolutionary self-building of Spirit on a base of Matter, there must
be in the process a development of a triple character. An evolution
of forms of Matter more and more subtly and intricately organised so
as to admit the action of a growing, a more and more complex and subtle
and capable organisation of consciousness is the indispensable physical
foundation. An upward evolutionary progress of the consciousness itself
from grade to higher grade, an ascent, is the evident spiral line or
emerging curve that, on this foundation, the evolution must describe.
A taking up of what has already been evolved into each higher grade
as it is reached and a transformation more or less complete so as to
admit of a total changed working of the whole being and nature, an integration,
must be also part of the process, if the evolution is to be effective.
The
end of this triple process must be a radical change of the action of
the Ignorance into an action of Knowledge, of our basis of inconscience
into a basis of complete consciousness,—a completeness which exists
at present only in what is to us the superconscience. Each ascent will
bring with it a partial change and modification of the old nature taken
up and subjected to a new fundamental principle; the inconscience will
be turned into a partial consciousness, an ignorance seeking for more
and more knowledge and mastery: but at some point there must be an ascent
which substitutes the principle of knowledge, of a fundamental true
consciousness, the consciousness of the Spirit, for the inconscience
and ignorance. An evolution in the Inconscience is the beginning, an
evolution in the Ignorance is the middle, but the end is the liberation
of the spirit into its true consciousness and an evolution in the Knowledge.
This is actually what we find to be the law and method of the process
which has hitherto been followed and by all signs is likely to be followed
in her future working by evolutionary Nature. A first involutionary
foundation in which originates all that has to evolve, an emergence
and action of the involved powers in or upon that foundation in an ascending
series, and a culminating emergence of the highest power of all as the
agent of a supreme manifestation are the necessary stages of the journey
of evolutionary Nature.
An
evolutionary process must be by the very terms of the problem to be
solved a development, in some first established basic principle of being
or substance, of something that that basic principle holds involved
in itself or else admits from outside itself and modifies by the admission;
for it must necessarily modify by its own law of nature all that enters
into it and is not already part of its own nature. This must be so even
if it is a creative evolution in the sense of manifesting always new
powers of existence that are not native to the first foundation but
introduced into it, accepted into an original substance. If, on the
contrary, there is already there in involution,—present in the
first foundation, but not yet manifested or not yet organised,—the
new principle or power of existence that has to be evolved, then, when
it appears, it will still have to accept modification by the nature
and law of the basic substance: but also it will modify that substance
by its own power, its own law of nature. If, further, it is aided by
a descent of its own principle already established in its own full force
above the field of evolution and pressing down into that field to possess
it, then the new power may even establish itself as a dominant element
and considerably or radically change the consciousness and action of
the world in which it emerges or into which it enters. But its force
to modify or change or to revolutionise the law and working of the original
substance chosen as the evolutionary matrix will depend upon its own
essential potency. It is not likely that it will be able to bring about
an entire transformation if it is not itself the original Principle
of Existence, if it is only derivative, an instrumental power and not
the first puissance.
Here
the evolution takes place in a material universe; the foundation, the
original substance, the first established all-conditioning status of
things is Matter. Mind and Life are evolved in Matter, but they are
limited and modified in their action by the obligation to use its substance
for their instrumentation and by their subjection to the law of material
Naturebeven while they modify what they undergo and use. For they do
transform its substance, first into living substance and then into conscious
substance; they succeed in changing its inertia, immobility and inconscience
into a movement of consciousness, feeling and life. But they do not
succeed in transforming it altogether; they cannot make it altogether
alive or altogether conscious: life-nature evolving is bound to death;
mind evolving is materialised as well as vitalised; it finds itself
rooted in inconscience, limited by ignorance; it is moved by uncontrolled
life-forces which drive and use it, it is mechanised by the physical
forces on which it has to depend for its own self-expression. This is
a sign that neither Mind nor Life is the original creative Power; they,
like Matter, are intermediaries, successive and seried instruments of
the evolutionary process. If a material energy is not that original
Power, then we must seek for it in something above Mind or Life; there
must be a deeper occult Reality which has yet to disclose itself in
Nature.
-Sri
Aurobindo
