But
it must be observed that this ascent, this successive fixing in higher
and higher principles, does not carry with it the abandonment of the
lower grades, any more than a status of existence in the lower grades
means the entire absence of the higher principles. This heals the objection
against the evolutionary theory created by these sharp lines of difference;
for if the rudiments of the higher are present in the lower creation
and the lower characters are taken up into the higher evolved being,
that of itself constitutes an indubitable evolutionary process. What
is necessary is a working that brings the lower gradation of being to
a point at which the higher can manifest in it; at that point a pressure
from some superior plane where the new power is dominant may assist
towards a more or less rapid and decisive transition by a bound or a
series of bounds,—a slow, creeping, imperceptible or even occult
action is followed by a run and an evolutionary saltus across the border.
It is in some such way that the transition from the lower to higher
grades of consciousness seems to have been made in Nature.
In
fact, life, mind, Supermind are present in the atom, are at work there,
but invisible, occult, latent in a subconscious or apparently unconscious
action of the Energy; there is an informing Spirit, but the outer force
and figure of being, what we might call the formal or form existence
as distinguished from the immanent or secretly governing consciousness,
is lost in the physical action, is so absorbed into it as to be fixed
in a stereotyped self-oblivion unaware of what it is and what it is
doing. The electron and atom are in this view eternal somnambulists;
each material object contains an outer or form consciousness involved,
absorbed in the form, asleep, seeming to be an unconsciousness driven
by an unknown and unfelt inner Existence,—he who is awake in the
sleeper, the universal Inhabitant of the Upanishads,—an outer absorbed
form-consciousness which, unlike that of the human somnambulist, has
never been awake and
is not always or ever on the point of waking. In the plant this outer
form-consciousness is still in the state of sleep, but a sleep full
of nervous dreams, always on the point of waking, but never waking.
Life has appeared; in other words, force of concealed conscious being
has been so much intensified, has raised itself to such a height of
power as to develop or become capable of a new principle of action,
that which we see as vitality, life-force. It has become vitally responsive
to existence, though not mentally aware, and has put forth a new grade
of activities of a higher and subtler value than any purely physical
action. At the same time, it is capable of receiving and turning into
these new life-values, into motions and phenomena of a vibration of
vitality, life-contacts and physical contacts from other forms than
its own and from universal Nature. This is a thing which forms of mere
matter cannot do; they cannot turn contacts into life-values or any
kind of value, partly because their power of reception,—although
it exists, if occult evidence is to be trusted,—is not sufficiently
awake to do anything but dumbly receive and imperceptibly react, partly
because the energies transmitted by the contacts are too subtle to be
utilised by the crude inorganic density of formed Matter. Life in the
tree is determined by its physical body, but it takes up the physical
existence and gives it a new value or system of values,—the life-value.
The
transition to the mind and sense that appear in the animal being, that
which we call conscious life, is operated in the same manner. The force
of being is so much intensified, rises to such a height as to admit
or develop a new principle of
existence,—apparently new at least in the world of Matter,—mentality.
Animal being is mentally aware of existence, its own and others, puts
forth a higher and subtler grade of activities, receives a wider range
of contacts, mental, vital, physical, from forms other than its own,
takes up the physical and vital existence and turns all it can get from
them into sense values and vital-mind values. It senses body, it senses
life, but it senses also mind; for it has not only blind nervous reactions,
but conscious sensations, memories, impulses, volitions, emotions, mental
associations, the stuff of feeling and thought and will. It has even
a practical intelligence, founded on memory, association, stimulating
need, observation, a power of device; it is capable of cunning, strategy,
planning; it can invent, adapt to some extent its inventions, meet in
this or that detail the demand of new circumstance. All is not in it
a half-conscious instinct; the animal prepares human intelligence.
But
when we come to man, we see the whole thing becoming conscious; the
world, which he epitomises, begins in him to reveal to itself its own
nature. The higher animal is not the somnambulist,—as the very
lowest animal forms still mainly or almost are,—but it has only
a limited waking mind, capable of just what is necessary for its vital
existence: in man the conscious mentality enlarges its wakefulness and,
though not at first fully self-conscious, though still conscious only
on the surface, can open more and more to his inner and integral being.
As in the two lower ascents, there is a heightening of the force of
conscious existence to a new power and a new range of subtle activities;
there is a transition from vital mind to reflecting and thinking mind,
there is developed a higher power of observation and invention, taking
up and connecting data, conscious of process and result, a force of
imagination and aesthetic creation, a higher more plastic sensibility,
the co-ordinating and interpreting reason, the values no longer of a
reflex or reactive but of a mastering, understanding, self-detaching
intelligence. As in the lower ascents, so here there is also a widening
of the range of consciousness; man is able to take in more of the world
and of himself as well as to give to this knowledge higher and completer
figures of conscious experience. So, too, there is here also the third
constant element of the ascension; mind takes up the lower grades and
gives to their action and reaction intelligent values. Man has not only
like the animal the sense of his body and life, but an intelligent sense
and idea of life and a conscious and observant perception of body. He
takes up too the mental life of the animal, as well as the material
and bodily; although he loses something in the process, he gives to
what he retains a higher value; he has the intelligent sense and the
idea of his sensations, emotions, volitions, impulses, mental associations;
what was crude stuff of thought
and feeling and will, capable only of gross determinations, he turns
into the finished work and artistry of these things. For the animal
too thinks, but in an automatic way based mainly on a mechanical series
of memories and mental associations, accepting quickly or slowly the
suggestions of Nature and only awakened to a more conscious personal
action when there is need of close observation and device; it has some
first crude stuff of practical reason, but not the formed ideative and
reflective faculty. The awaking consciousness in the animal is the unskilled
primitive artisan of mind, in man it is the skilled craftsman and can
become,—but this he does not attempt sufficiently,—not only
the artist, but master and adept.
-
Sri Aurobindo
