It
is evident that if we can live thus deeper within and put out steadily
the inner forces into the outer instrumentation or raise ourselves to
dwell on higher and wider levels and bring their powers to bear on physical
existence, not merely receive influences descending from them, which
is all we can now do, there could begin a heightening of our force of
conscious being so as to create a new principle of consciousness, a
new range of activities, new values for all things, a widening of our
consciousness and life, a taking up and transformation of the lower
grades of our existence,—in brief, the whole evolutionary process
by which the Spirit in Nature creates a higher type of being. Each step
could mean a pace, however distant from the goal, or a close approach
leading to a larger and more divine being, a larger and more divine
force and consciousness, knowledge and will, sense of existence and
delight in existence; there could be an initial unfolding towards the
divine life. All religion, all occult knowledge, all supernormal (as
opposed to abnormal) psychological experience, all Yoga, all psychic
experience and discipline are signposts and directions pointing us upon
that road of progress of the occult self-unfolding spirit.
But
the human race is still weighted by a certain gravitation towards the
physical, it obeys still the pull of our yet unconquered earth-matter;
it is dominated by the brain-mind, the physical intelligence: thus held
back by many ties, it hesitates before the indication or falls back
before the too tense demand of the spiritual effort. It has, too, still
a great capacity for sceptical folly, an immense indolence, an enormous
intellectual and spiritual timidity and conservatism when called out
of the grooves of habit: even the constant evidence of life itself that
where it chooses to conquer it can conquer,—witness the miracles
of that quite inferior power, physical Science,—does not prevent
it from doubting; it repels the new call and leaves the response to
a few individuals. But that is not enough if the step forward is to
be for humanity; for it is only if the race advances that, for it, the
victories of the Spirit can be secure. For then, even if there is a
lapse of Nature, a fall in her effort, the Spirit within, employing
a secret memory,—sometimes represented on the lower side, that
of downward gravitation, as an atavistic force in the race, but really
the force of a persistent memory in Nature which can pull us either
upward or downward,—will call it upward again and the next ascent
will be both easier and more lasting, because of the past endeavour;
for that endeavour and its impulse and its result cannot but remain
stored in the subconscious mind of humanity. Who can say what victories
of the kind may have been achieved in our past cycles and how near may
be the next ascension? It is not indeed necessary or possible that the
whole race should transform itself from mental into spiritual beings,
but a general admission of the ideal, a widespread endeavour, a conscious
concentration are needed to carry the stream of tendency to its definitive
achievement. Otherwise what will be ultimately accomplished is an achievement
by the few initiating a new order of beings, while humanity will have
passed sentence of unfitness on itself and may fall back into an evolutionary
decline or a stationary immobility; for it is the constant upward effort
that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it its place in the
front of creation.
The
principle of the process of evolution is a foundation, from that foundation
an ascent, in that ascent a reversal of consciousness and, from the
greater height and wideness gained, an action of change and new integration
of the whole nature. The first foundation is Matter; the ascent is that
of Nature; the integration is an at first unconscious or half-conscious
automatic change of Nature by Nature. But as soon as a more completely
conscious participation of the being has begun in these workings of
Nature, a change in the functioning of the process is inevitable. The
physical foundation of Matter remains, but Matter can no longer be the
foundation of the consciousness; consciousness itself will be no longer
in its origin a welling up from the Inconscient or a concealed flow
from an occult inner subliminal force under the pressure of contacts
from the universe. The foundation of the developing existence will be
the new spiritual status above or the unveiled soul-status within us;
it is a flow of light and knowledge and will from above and a reception
from within that will determine the reactions of the being to cosmic
experience. The whole concentration of the being will be shifted from
below upwards and from without inwards; our higher and inner being now
unknown to us will become ourselves, and the outer or surface being
which we now take for ourselves will be only an open front or an annexe
through which the true
being meets the universe. The outer world itself will become inward
to the spiritual awareness, a part of itself, intimately embraced in
a knowledge and feeling of unity and identity, penetrated by an intuitive
regard of the mind, responded to by the direct contact of consciousness
with consciousness, taken into an achieved integrality. The old inconscient
foundation itself will be made conscious in us by the inflow of light
and awareness from above and its depths annexed to the heights of the
spirit. An integral consciousness will become the basis of an entire
harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification,
integration of the being and the nature.
-
Sri Aurobindo
