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CHAPTER
XVIII
The Evolutionary Process— Ascent and Integration
As
he mounts from peak to peak... Indra makes him conscious
of that goal of his movement.
Rig Veda.¹
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.²
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.³
Yajur Veda.4
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
¹
I. 10. 2. ²
III. 55. 7. ³
The four planes of Matter, Life, pure Mind and Supermind.
4 17. 67.
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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
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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 Nature
even 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
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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.
An original creative or evolutionary Power there must be: but, although Matter is the first substance, the original and
ultimate Power is not an inconscient material Energy; for then life and consciousness would be absent, since Inconscience
cannot evolve consciousness nor an inanimate Force evolve life. There must be, therefore, since Mind and Life also are not
that, a secret Consciousness greater than Life-Consciousness or Mind-Consciousness, an Energy more essential than the
material Energy. Since it is greater than Mind, it must be a supramental Consciousness-Force; since it is a power of
essential substance other than Matter, it must be the power of that which is the supreme essence and substance of all
things, a power of the Spirit. There is a creative energy of Mind and a creative Life-Force, but they are instrumental and
partial, not original and decisive: Mind and Life do indeed modify the material substance they inhabit and its energies and are
not merely determined by them, but the extent and way of this material modification and determination are fixed by the
inhabitant and all-containing Spirit through a secret indwelling light and force of Supermind, an occult gnosis,—an invisible
self-knowledge and all-knowledge. If there is to be an entire transformation, it can only be by the full emergence of the law
of the Spirit; its power of Supermind or gnosis must have entered into Matter and it must evolve in Matter. It must change
the mental into the supramental being, make the inconscient in us conscious, spiritualise our material substance, erect its law
of gnostic consciousness in our whole evolutionary being and nature. This must be the culminating emergence or, at least,
that stage in the emergence which first decisively changes the nature of the evolution by transforming its action of
Ignorance and its basis of Inconscience.
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This movement of evolution,
of a progressive self-manifestation of the Spirit in a material
universe, has to make its
account at every step with the fact of the involution of consciousness
and force in the form and activity of material
substance. For it proceeds by an awakening of the involved
consciousness and force and its ascent from principle to
principle, from grade to grade, from power to power of the secret
Spirit, but this is not a free transference to a higher status.
The law of action, the force of action of each grade or power in its
emergence is determined, not by its own free, full and
pure law of nature or vim of energy, but partly by the material
organisation provided for it and partly by its own status,
achieved degree, accomplished fact of consciousness which it has been
able to impose upon Matter. Its effectivity is in
some sort made up of a balance between the actual extent of this
evolutionary emergence and the countervailing extent to
which the emergent power is still enveloped, penetrated, diminished by
the domination and continuing grip of the
Inconscience. Mind as we see it is not mind pure and free, but mind
clouded and diminished by an enveloping nescience,
mind labouring and struggling to deliver knowledge out of that
nescience. All depends upon the more or less involved or
more or less evolved condition of consciousness,—quite involved in
inconscient matter, hesitating on the verge between
involution and conscious evolution in the first or non-animal forms of
life in matter, consciously evolving but greatly limited
and hampered in mind housed in a living body, destined to be fully
evolved by the awakening of the Supermind in the
embodied mental being and nature.
To each grade in this
series achieved by the evolving Consciousness belongs its appropriate
class of existences,—one
by one there appear material forms and forces, vegetable life, animals
and half-animal man, developed human beings,
imperfectly evolved or more evolved spiritual beings: but because of
the continuity of the evolutionary process there is no
rigid separation between them; each new advance or formation takes up
what was before. The animal takes up into himself
living and inanimate Matter; man takes up both along with the animal
existence. There are furrows left by the transitional
process or
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separating demarcations settled by the fixed habit
of Nature: but these distinguish one series from another, serve perhaps
to
prevent a fall back of what has been evolved, they do not cancel or cut
the continuity of the evolution. The evolving
Consciousness passes from one grade to another or from one series of
steps to another either by an imperceptible process
or by some bound or crisis or, perhaps, by an intervention from
above,—some descent or ensouling or influence from higher
planes of Nature. But, by whatever means, the Consciousness secretly
indwelling in Matter, the occult Inhabitant, is able
thus to make its way upward from the lower to the higher gradations,
taking up what it was into what it is and preparing to
take up both into what it will be. Thus, having first laid down a basis
of material being, material forms, forces, existences in
which it seems to be lying inconscient, though in reality, as we know
now, always subconsciently at work, it is able to
manifest life and living beings, to manifest mind and mental beings in
a material world, and must therefore be able to
manifest there Supermind also and supramental beings. Thus has come
about the present status of the evolution of which
man is the now apparent culmination but not the real ultimate summit;
for he is himself a transitional being and stands at the
turning-point of the whole movement. Evolution, being thus continuous,
must have at any given moment a past with its
fundamental results still in evidence, a present in which the results
it is labouring over are in process of becoming, a future in
which still unevolved powers and forms of being must appear till there
is the full and perfect manifestation. The past has
been the history of a slow and difficult subconscious working with
effects on the surface,—it has been an unconscious
evolution; the present is a middle stage, an uncertain spiral in which
the human intelligence is used by the secret evolutionary
Force of being and participates in its action without being fully taken
into confidence,—it is an evolution slowly becoming
conscious of itself; the future must be a more and more conscious
evolution of the spiritual being until it is fully delivered into
a self-aware action by the emergent gnostic principle.
The first foundation in
this emergence, the creation of forms of Matter, first of inconscient
and inanimate, then of living
and
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thinking Matter, the appearance of more and more
organised bodies adapted to express a greater power of consciousness,
has been studied from the physical side, the side of form-building, by
Science; but very little light has been shed on the inner
side, the side of consciousness, and what little has been observed is
rather of its physical basis and instrumentation than of
the progressive operations of Consciousness in its own nature. In the
evolution, as it has been observed so far, although a
continuity is there,—for Life takes up Matter and Mind takes up
submental Life, the Mind of intelligence takes up the mind
of life and sensation,—the leap from one grade of consciousness in the
series to another grade seems to our eyes immense,
the crossing of the gulf whether by bridge or by leap impossible; we
fail to discover any concrete and satisfactory evidence
of its accomplishment in the past or of the manner in which it was
accomplished. Even in the outward evolution, even in the
development of physical forms where the data are clearly in evidence,
there are missing links that remain always missing;
but in the evolution of consciousness the passage is still more
difficult to account for, for it seems more like a transformation
than a passage. It may be, however, that, by our incapacity to
penetrate the subconscious, to sound the submental or to understand
sufficiently a lower mentality different from ours, we are unable to
observe the minute gradations, not only in each degree of the series,
but on the borders between grade and grade: the scientist who does
observe minutely the physical data, has been driven to believe in the
continuity of evolution in spite of the gaps and missing links; if we
could observe similarly the inner evolution, we could, no doubt,
discover the possibility and the mode of these formidable transitions.
But still there is a real, a radical difference between grade and
grade, so much so that the passage from one to another seems a new
creation, a miracle of metamorphosis rather than a natural predictable
development or quiet passing from one state of being to another with
its well-marked steps arranged in an easy sequence.
These gulfs appear deeper, but
less wide, as we rise higher in the scale of Nature. If there are rudiments of
life-reaction in the metal, as has been recently contended, it may be identical
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with life-reaction in the plant in its essence, but
what might be called the vital-physical difference is so considerable
that one
seems to us inanimate, the other, though not apparently conscious,
might be called a living creature. Between the highest
plant life and lowest animal the gulf is visibly deeper, for it is the
difference between mind and the entire absence of any
apparent or even rudimentary movement of mind: in the one this stuff of
mental consciousness is unawakened though there
is a life of vital reactions, a suppressed or subconscious or perhaps
only submental sense-vibration which seems to be
intensely active; in the other, though the life is at first less
automatic and secure in the subconscious way of living and in its
own new way of overt consciousness imperfectly determined, still mind
is awakened,—there is a conscious life, a profound
transition has been made. But the community of the phenomenon of life
between plant and animal, however different their
organisation, narrows the gulf, even though it does not fill in its
profundity. Between the highest animal and the lowest man
there is a still deeper though narrower gulf to be crossed, the gulf
between sense-mind and the intellect: for however we
may insist on the primitive nature of the savage, we cannot alter the
fact that the most primitive human being has above and
beyond the sense-mind, emotional vitality and primary practical
intelligence which we share with the animals, a human
intellect and is capable,—in whatever limits,—of reflection, ideas,
conscious invention, religious and ethical thought and
feeling, everything fundamental of which man as a race is capable; he
has the same kind of intelligence, it differs only in its
past instruction and formative training and the degree of its developed
capacity, intensity and activity. Still, in spite of these
dividing furrows, we can no longer suppose that God or some Demiurge
has manufactured each genus and species
ready-made in body and in consciousness and left the matter there,
having looked upon his work and seen that it was good.
It has become evident that a secretly conscious or an inconscient
Energy of creation has effected the transition by swift or
slow degrees, by whatever means, devices, biological, physical or
psychological machinery,—perhaps, having made it, did
not care to preserve as distinct forms what were only
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stepping-stones and had no longer any function nor served any purpose in evolutionary Nature. But this explanation of the
gaps is little more than a hypothesis which as yet we cannot sufficiently substantiate. It is probable at any rate that the
reason for these radical differences is to be found in the working of the inner Force and not in the outer process of the
evolutionary transition; if we look at it more deeply from that inner side, the difficulty of understanding ceases and these
transitions become intelligible and indeed inevitable by the very nature of the evolutionary process and its principle.
For if we look, not at the
scientific or physical aspects, but at the psychological side of the
question and inquire in what
precisely the difference lies, we shall see that it consists in the
rise of consciousness to another principle of being. The metal
is fixed in the inconscient and inanimate principle of matter; even if
we can suppose that it has some reactions suggestive of
life in it or at least of rudimentary vibrations that in the plant
developed into life, still it is not at all characteristically a form
of
life; it is characteristically a form of matter. The plant is fixed in
a subconscient action of the principle of life,—not that it is
not subject to matter or devoid of reactions that find their full
meaning only in mind, for it seems to have submental reactions
that in us are the foundation of pleasure and pain or of attraction and
repulsion; but still it is a form of life, not of mere
matter, nor is it, so far as we know, at all a mind-conscious being.
Man and the animal are both mentally conscious beings:
but the animal is fixed in vital mind and mind-sense and cannot exceed
its limitations, while man has received into his
sense-mind the light of another principle, the intellect, which is
really at once a reflection and a degradation of the
Supermind, a ray of gnosis seized by the sense-mentality and
transformed by it into something other than its source: for it is
agnostic like the sense-mind in which and for which it works, not
gnostic; it seeks to lay hold on knowledge, because it does
not possess it, it does not like Supermind hold knowledge in itself as
its natural prerogative. In other words, in each of these
forms of existence the universal being has fixed its action of
consciousness in a different principle or, as between man and
animal, in the modification of a lower by
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a higher though still not a highest-grade principle.
It is this stride from one principle of being to another quite
different
principle of being that creates the transitions, the furrows, the sharp
lines of distance, and makes, not all the difference, but
still a radical characteristic difference between being and being in
their nature.
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
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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
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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 |