{"id":115,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=115"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","slug":"28-involution-and-evolution-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/28-involution-and-evolution-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-28_Involution and Evolution.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nInvolution
\nand Evolution<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HE
\nWESTERN idea of evolution is the statement of a process of formation, not an
\nexplanation of our being. Limited to the physical and biological data of Nature,
\nit does not attempt except in a summary or a superficial fashion to discover its
\nown meaning, but is ‘content to announce itself as the general law of a quite
\nmysterious and inexplicable energy. Evolution becomes a problem in motion which
\nis satisfied to work up with an automatic regularity its own puzzle, but not to
\nwork it out, because, since it is only a process, it has no understanding of it-
\nself, and, since it is a blind perpetual automatism of mechanical energy, it has
\nneither an origin nor an issue. It began perhaps or is always beginning; it will
\nstop perhaps in time or is always somewhere stopping and going back to its
\nbeginnings, but there is no. why, only a great turmoil and fuss of a how to its
\nbeginning and its cessation; for there is in its acts no fountain of spiritual.
\nintention, but only the force of an unresting material necessity. The ancient
\nidea of evolution was the fruit of a philosophical intuition, the modern is an
\neffort of scientific observation. Each as enounced misses something, but the
\nancient got at the spirit of the movement where the modem is content with a form
\nand the most external machinery. The Sankhya thinker gave us the psychological
\nelements of the total evolutionary process., analysed mind and sense and the
\nsubtle basis of matter and divined some of the secrets of the executive energy,
\nbut had no eye for the detail of the physical labour of Nature. He saw in it too
\nnot only the covering active evident Force, but the concealed sustaining
\nspiritual entity, though by an excess of the analytic intellect, obsessed with
\nits love of trenchant scissions and symmetrical oppositions, he set between
\nmeeting Soul and Force an original and eternal gulf or line of separation. The
\nmodern scientist strives to make a complete scheme and institution of the
\nphysical method which he has detected in its minute workings, but is blind to
\nthe miracle each step involves or content to lose the sense of it in the
\nsatisfied<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-232<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

observation
\nof a vast ordered phenomenon. But always the marvel of the thing remains, one
\nwith the inexplicable wonder of all existence, – even as it is said in the
\nancient Scripture,<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nāś<\/font>caryavat
\npaś<\/font>yati kaś<\/font>cid enam<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n


\nāś<\/font>caryavad
\nvadati tathaiva cā<\/font>nyah.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n


\nāś<\/font>caryavaccainam
\nanyah ś<\/font>rnoti<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n


\nś<\/font>rutvā<\/font>pyenam
\nveda na caiva kaś<\/font>cit.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

"One
\nlooks on it and sees a miracle, another speaks of it as<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

a
\nmiracle, a miracle another hears of it, but what it is, for all<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

the
\nhearing, none knoweth."<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We
\nknow that an evolution there is, but not what evolution is; that remains still
\none of the initial mysteries of Nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nFor
\nevolution, as is the habit with the human reason’s accounts and solutions of the
\ndeep and unfathomable way of the Spirit in things, raises more questions than it
\nsolves; it does not do away with the problem of creation for all its appearance
\nof solid orderly fact, any more than the religious affirmation of an external
\nomnipotent Creator could do it or the Illusionist’s mystic Maya, aghatana-ghatana-patiyasi,<\/i>
\nvery skilful in bringing about the impossible, some strange existent
\nnon-existent Power with an idea in That which is beyond and without ideas, self-
\nempowered to create an existent non-existent world, existent because it very
\nevidently is, non-existent because it is a patched up consistency of dreamful
\nunreal transiences. The problem is only prolonged, put farther back, given a
\nsubtle and orderly, but all the more challengingly complex appearance. But, even
\nwhen our questioning is confined to the one issue of evolution alone, the
\ndifficulty still arises of the essential significance of the bare outward facts
\nobserved, what is meant by evolution, what is it that evolves, from what and by
\nwhat force of necessity? The scientist is content to affirm an original matter
\nor substance, atomic, electric, etheric or whatever it may finally turn out to
\nbe, which by the very nature of its own inherent energy or of an energy acting
\nin it and on it, – the two things are not the same, and the distinction, though
\nit may seem immaterial in the beginning<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-233<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of
\nthe process, is of a considerable ultimate consequence, – produces owing to some
\nunexplained law, constant system of results or other unalterable principle a
\nnumber of different basic forms and powers of matter or different sensible and
\neffective movements of energy: these come into being, it seems, when the minute
\noriginal particles of matter meet together in variously disposed quantities,
\nmeasures and combinations, and all the rest is a varying, developing, mounting
\nmovement of organised energy and its evolutionary consequences, parinama<\/i>,
\nwhich depend on this crude constituting basis. All that is or may be a correct
\nstatement of phenomenal fact, – but we must not forget that the fundamental
\ntheory of science has been going of late through a considerable commotion of an
\nupsetting and a rapid rearrangement, – but it carries us no step farther towards
\nthe principal, the all-important thing that we want to know. The way in which
\nman sees and experiences the universe, imposes on his reason the necessity of a
\none original eternal substance of which all things are the forms and a one
\neternal original energy of which all movement of action and consequence is the
\nvariation. But the whole question is, what is the reality of this substance and
\nwhat is the essential nature of this energy?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThen,
\neven if we suppose the least explicable part of the’ action to be an
\nevolutionary development of the immaterial from Matter, still is that
\ndevelopment a creation or a liberation, a birth of what did not exist before or
\na slow bringing out of what already existed in suppressed fact or in eternal
\npotentiality? And the interest of the question becomes acute, its importance
\nincalculable when we come to the still unexplained phenomenon of life and mind.
\nIs life a creation out of inanimate substance or the appearance of a new, a
\nsuddenly or slowly resultant power out of the brute material energy, and is
\nconscious mind a creation out of inconscient or subconscient life, or do these
\npowers and godheads appear because they were always there though in a shrouded
\nand by us unrecognizable condition of their hidden or suppressed idea and
\nactivity, Nomen and Numen? And what of the soul and of man? Is soul a new result
\nor creation of our mentalised life, – even so many regard it, because it clearly
\nappears as a self-conscient, bright, distinguishable power only<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font><\/span>age-234<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

when
\nthinking life has reached some high pitch of its intensity, – or is it not a
\npermanent entity, the original mystery that now unveils its hidden form, the
\neternal companion of the energy we call Nature, her secret inhabitant or her
\nvery spirit and reality? And is man a biological creation of a brute energy
\nwhich has somehow unexpectedly and quite inexplicably managed to begin to feel
\nand think, or is he in his real self that inner Being and Power which is the
\nwhole sense of the evolution and the master of Nature? Is Nature only the force
\nof self-expression, self- formation, self-creation of a secret "Spirit, and
\nman however hedged in his present capacity, the first being in Nature in whom
\nthat power begins to be consciently self-creative in the front of the action, in
\nthis outer chamber of physical being, there set to work and bring’ out by an
\nincreasingly self-conscious evolution what he can of all its human significance
\nor its divine possibility? That is the clear conclusion we must arrive at in the
\nend, if we once admit as the key of the whole movement, the reality of this
\nwhole mounting creation a spiritual evolution.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThe
\nword evolution carries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at its root
\nthe necessity of a previous involution. We must, if a hidden spiritual being is
\nthe secret of all the action of Nature, give its full power to that latent value
\nof the idea. We are bound then to suppose that all that evolves already existed
\ninvolved, passive or otherwise active, but in either case concealed from us in
\nthe shell of material Nature. The Spirit which manifests itself here in a body,
\nmust be involved from the beginning in the whole of matter and in every knot,
\nformation and particle of matter; life, mind and whatever is above mind must be
\nlatent, inactive or concealed active powers in all the operations of material
\nenergy. The only alternative would be to drive in between the two sides of our
\nbeing the acute Sankhya scission; but that divides too much Spirit and Nature.
\nNature would be an inert and mechanical thing, but she would set to her work
\nactivised by some pressure on her of the Spirit. Spirit would be Being conscious
\nand free in its own essence from the natural activity, but would phenomenally
\nmodify or appear to modify its consciousness in response to some reaction of
\nNature. One would reflect the movements of the active Power, the other would
\nenlighten<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-235<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

her
\nactivities with the consciousness of the self-aware immortal being. In that case
\nthe scientific evolutionary view of Nature as a vast mechanical energy, life,
\nmind and natural soul action its scale of developing operations would have a
\njustification. Our consciousness would only be a luminous translation of the
\nself- driven unresting mechanical activity into responsive notes of experience
\nof the consenting spiritual witness. But the disabling difficulty in this notion
\nis the quite opposite character of our own highest seeing; for in the end and as
\nthe energy of the universal force mounts up the gradients of its own
\npossibilities, Nature becomes always more evidently a power of the Spirit and
\nall her mechanism only figures of its devising mastery. The power of the Flame
\ncannot be divided from the Flame; where the Flame is, there is the power, and
\nwhere the power is there is the fiery Principle. We have to come back to the
\nidea of a Spirit present in the universe and, if the process of its works of
\npower and its appearance is in the steps of an evolution, there imposes itself
\nthe necessity of a previous involution.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThis
\nSpirit in things is not apparent from the beginning, but self-betrayed in an
\nincreasing light of manifestation. We see the compressed powers of Nature start
\nreleased from their original involution, disclose in a passion of work the
\nsecrets of their in- finite capacity, press upon themselves and on the
\nsupporting inferior principle to subject its lower movement on which they are
\nforced to depend into a higher working proper to their own type and feel their
\nproper greatness in the greatness of their self- revealing effectuations. Life
\ntakes hold of matter and breathes into it the numberless figures of its abundant
\ncreative force, its subtle and variable patterns, its enthusiasm of birth and
\ndeath and growth and act and response, its will of more and more complex
\norganisation of experience, its quivering search and feeling out after a
\nself-consciousness of its own pleasure and pain and understanding gust of
\naction; mind seizes on life to make it an instrument for the wonders of will and
\nintelligence; soul possesses and lifts mind through the attraction of beauty and
\ngood and wisdom and greatness towards the joy of some half-seen ideal highest
\nexistence; and in all this miraculous movement and these climbing greatnesses
\neach step sets its foot on a higher rung<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-236<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and
\nopens to a clearer, larger and fuller scope and view of the always secret and
\nalways self-manifesting spirit in things. The eye fixed on the physical
\nevolution has only the sight of a mechanical grandeur and subtlety of creation;
\nthe evolution of life opening to mind, the evolution of mind opening to the soul
\nof its own light and action, the evolution of soul out of the limited powers of
\nmind to a resplendent blaze of the infinites of spiritual being are the more
\nsignificant things, give us greater and subtler reaches of the self-disclosing
\nSecrecy. The physical evolution is only an outward sign, the more and more
\ncomplex and subtle development of a supporting structure, the growing exterior
\nmetre mould of form which is devised to sustain in matter the rising intonations
\nof the spiritual harmony. The spiritual significance finds us as the notes rise;
\nbut not till we get to the summit of the scale can we command the integral
\nmeaning of that for which all these first formal measures were made the outward
\nlines, the sketch or the crude notation. Life itself is only a coloured vehicle,
\nphysical birth a convenience for the greater and greater births of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThe
\nspiritual process of evolution is then in some sense a creation, but a
\nself-creation, not a making of what never was, but a bringing out of what was
\nimplicit in the Being. The Sanskrit word for creation signifies a loosing forth,
\na letting out into the workings of Nature. The Upanishad in a telling figure
\napplies the image of the spider which brings its web out of itself and creates
\nthe structure in which it takes its station. That is applied in the ancient
\nScripture not to the evolution of things out of Matter, but to an original
\nbringing of temporal becoming out of the eternal infinity; Matter itself and
\nthis material universe are only such a web or indeed no more than a part of it
\nbrought out from the spiritual being of the Infinite. But the same truth, the
\nsame law holds good of all that we see of the emergence of things from
\ninvolution in the material energy. We might almost speak here of a double
\nevolution. A Force inherent in the Infinite’ brings out of it eternally the
\nstructure of its action in a universe of which the last descending scale is
\nbased upon an involution of all the powers of the Spirit into an inconscient-
\nabsorption in her self-oblivious passion of form and structural working. Thence<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-237<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

comes
\nan ascent and progressive liberation of power after power till the Spirit
\nself-disclosed and set free by knowledge and mastery of its works repossesses
\nthe eternal fullness of its being which envelopes then and carries in its grasp
\nthe manifold and unified splendours of its nature. At any rate, the spiritual
\nprocess of which our human birth is a step and our life is a portion, appears as
\nthe bringing out of a greatness, asya mahimanam,<\/i> which is secret,
\ninherent and self-imprisoned, absorbed in the form and working of things. Our
\nworld-action figures an evolution, an outrolling of a manifold Power gathered
\nand coiled up in the crude intricacy of Matter. The upward progress of the
\nsuccessive births of things is a rise into waking and larger and larger light of
\na consciousness shut into the first hermetic cell of sleep of the eternal
\nEnergy.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThere
\nis a parallel in the Yogic experience of the Kundalini, eternal Force coiled up
\nin the body in the bottom root vessel or chamber, muladhara,<\/i> pedestal,
\nearth-centre of the physical nervous system. There she slumbers coiled up like a
\npython and filled full of all that she holds gathered in her being, but when she
\nis struck by the freely coursing breath, by the current of Life which enters
\ninto search for her, she awakes and rises flaming up the ladder of the spinal
\ncord and forces open centre after centre of the involved dynamic secrets of
\nconsciousness till at the summit she finds, joins and becomes one with the
\nSpirit. Thus she passes from an involution in inconscience through a series of
\nopening glories of her powers into the greatest eternal superconscience of the
\nSpirit. This mysterious evolving Nature in the world around us follows even such
\na course. Inconscient being is not so much a matrix as a chamber of materialised
\nenergy in which are gathered up all the powers of the Spirit; they are there,
\nbut work in the conditions of the material energy, involved, we say, and
\ntherefore not apparent as themselves because they have passed into a form of
\nworking subnormal to their own right scale where the characteristics by which we
\nrecognise and think we know them are suppressed into a minor and an undetected
\nforce of working. As Nature rises in the scale, she liberates them into their
\nrecognisable scales of energy, discloses the operations by which they can feel
\nthemselves and their greatness. At the<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-238<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

highest
\nsummit she rises into the self-knowledge of the, Spirit which informed her
\naction, but because of its involution or concealment in the forms of its
\nworkings could not be known in the greatness of its reality. Spirit and Nature
\ndiscovering the secret of her energies become one at the top of the spiritual
\nevolution by a soul in Nature which awakens to the significance of its own being
\nin the liberation of the highest truths it comes to know that its births were
\nthe births, the assumptions of form of an eternal Spirit, to know itself as that
\nand not a creature of Nature and rises to the possession of the revealed, full
\nand highest power of its own real and spiritual nature. That liberation, because
\nliberation is self-possession, comes to us as the crown of a spiritual
\nevolution.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nWe
\nmust consider all the packed significance of this involution. The Spirit
\ninvolved in material energy is there with all its powers; life, mind and a
\ngreater supramental power are involved in Matter. But what do we mean when we
\nsay that they are involved, and do we mean that all these things are quite
\ndifferent energies cut off from each other by an essential separateness, but
\nrolled up together in an interaction, or do we mean that there is only one Being
\nwith its one energy, varying shades of the light of its power differentiated in
\nthe spectrum of Nature? When we say that Life is involved in Matter or in
\nmaterial Force, for of that Force Matter seems after all to be only a various
\nself- spun formation, do we not mean that all this universal working, even in
\nwhat seems to us its inconscient inanimate action, is a life-power of the Spirit
\nbusy with formation, and we do not recognise it because it is there in a lower
\nscale in which the characteristics by which we recognise life are not evident or
\nare only slightly evolved in the dullness of the material covering? Material
\nenergy would be then Life packed into the density of Matter and feeling out in
\nit for its own intenser recognisable power which it finds within itself in the
\nmaterial concealment and liberates into action. Life itself would be an energy
\nof a secret mind, a mind imprisoned in its own forms and quivering out in the
\nnervous seekings of life for its intenser recognisable power of consciousness
\nwhich it discovers within the vital and material suppression and liberates into
\nsensibility. No doubt, practically,<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-239<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

these
\npowers work upon each other as different energies, but in essence they would be
\none energy and their interaction the power of the Spirit working by its higher
\non its lower forces, depending on them at first, but yet turning in the scale of
\nits ascent to over- top and master them. Mind too might only be an inferior
\nscale and formulation derived from a much greater and supramental consciousness,
\nand that consciousness too with its greater light and will a characteristic
\noriginating power of spiritual being, the power which secret in all things, in
\nmind, in life, in matter, in the plant and the metal and the atom, assures
\nconstantly by its inevitable action the idea and harmony of the universe. And
\nwhat is the Spirit itself but infinite existence, eternal, immortal being, but
\nalways a conscious self-aware being, – and that is the difference between the
\nmaterialist’s mechanical monism and the spiritual theory of the universe, –
\nwhich here expresses itself in a world finite to our conceptions whose every
\nmovement yet bears witness to the Infinite? And this world is because the Spirit
\nhas the delight of its own infinite existence and the delight of its own
\ninfinite self-variation; birth is because all consciousness carries with it
\npower of its own being and all power of being is self-creative and must have the
\njoy of its self-creation. For creation means nothing else than a
\nself-expression; and the birth of the soul in the body is nothing but a mode of
\nits own self-expression. Therefore all things here are expression, form, energy,
\naction of the Spirit; matter itself is but form of Spirit, life but power of
\nbeing of the Spirit, mind but working out of consciousness of the Spirit. All
\nNature is a display and a play of God, power and action and self-creation of the
\none spiritual Being. Nature presents to Spirit at once the force, the
\ninstrument, the medium, the obstacle, the result of his powers, and all these
\nthings, obstacles as well as instrument, are the necessary elements for a
\ngradual and developing creation.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nBut
\nif the Spirit has involved its eternal greatness in the material universe and is
\nthere evolving its powers by the virtue of a secret self-knowledge, is
\ndisclosing them in a grandiose succession under the self-imposed difficulties of
\na material form of being, is disengaging them from a first veiling absorbed
\ninconscience of Nature, there is no difficulty in thinking or seeing that<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-240<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

this
\nsoul shaped into humanity is a being of that Being, that this also has risen out
\nof material involution by increasing selfexpression in a series of births of
\nwhich each grade is a new ridge of the ascent opening to higher powers of the
\nSpirit and that it is – still arising and will not be for ever limited by the
\npresent walls of its birth but may, if we will, be born into a divine humanity.
\nOur humanity is the conscious meeting-place of the finite and the infinite and
\nto grow more and more towards that Infinite even in this physical birth is our
\nprivilege. This Infinite, this Spirit who is housed within us but not bound or
\nshut in by mind or body, is our own self and to find and be our self was, as the
\nancient sages knew, always the object of our human striving, for it is the
\nobject of the whole immense working of Nature. But it is by degrees of the
\nself-finding that Nature enlarges to her spiritual reality. Man himself is a
\ndoubly involved being; most of himself in mind and below is involved in a
\nsubliminal conscience or a subconscience; most of himself above mind is involved
\nin a spiritual superconscience. When he becomes conscient in the superconscience,
\nthe heights arid the depths of his being will be illumined by another light of
\nknowledge than the flickering lamp of the reason can now cast into a few
\ncorners; for then the master of the field will enlighten this whole wonderful
\nfield of his being, as the sun illumines the whole system it has created out of
\nits own glories. Then only he can know the reality even of his own mind and life
\nand body. Mind will be changed into a greater consciousness, his life will be a
\ndirect power and action of the Divinity, his very body no longer this first
\ngross lump of breathing clay, but a very image and body of spiritual being. That
\ntransfiguration on the summit of the mountain, divine birth, divya janma,<\/i>
\nis that to which all these births are a long series of laborious steps. An
\ninvolution of spirit in matter is the beginning, but a spiritual assumption of
\ndivine birth is the fullness of the evolution.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

East
\nand West have two ways of looking at life which are opposite sides of one
\nreality. Between the pragmatic truth on which the vital thought of modern Europe
\nenamoured of the vigour of life, all the dance of God in Nature, puts so
\nvehement and exclusive a stress and the eternal immutable Truth to which<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-241<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the
\nIndian mind enamoured of calm and poise loves to turn with an equal passion for
\nan exclusive finding, there is no such divorce and quarrel as is now declared by
\nthe partisan mind, the separating reason, the absorbing passion of an exclusive
\nwill of realisation. The one eternal immutable Truth is the Spirit and without
\nthe Spirit the pragmatic truth of a self-creating universe would have no origin
\nor foundation; it would be barren of significance, empty of inner guidance, lost
\nin its end, a firework display shooting up into the void only to fall away and
\nperish in mid-air. But neither is the pragmatic truth a dream of the
\nnon-existent, an illusion or a long lapse into some futile delirium of creative
\nimagination; that would be to make the eternal Spirit a drunkard or a dreamer,
\nthe fool of his own gigantic self-hallucinations. The truths of universal
\nexistence are of two kinds, truths of the Spirit which are themselves eternal
\nand immutable, – and these are the great things that cast themselves out into
\nbecoming and there constantly realise their powers and significances, and the
\nplay of the consciousness with them, the discords, the musical variations,
\nsoundings of possibility, progressive notations, reversions, perversions,
\nmounting conversions into a greater figure of harmony; and of all these things
\nthe Spirit has made, makes always his universe. But it is himself that he makes
\nin it, himself that is the creator and the energy of creation and the cause and
\nthe method and the result of the working, the mechanist and the machine, the
\nmusic and the musician, the poet and the poem, supermind, mind and life and
\nmatter, the soul and Nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nAn
\noriginal error pursues us in our solutions of our problem. We are perplexed by
\nthe appearance of an antinomy; we set soul against Nature, the spirit against
\nhis creative energy. But Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, are two eternal
\nlovers who possess their perpetual unity and enjoy their constant difference,
\nand in the unity abound in the passion of the multitudinous play of their
\ndifference, and in every step of the difference abound in the secret sense or
\nthe overt consciousness of unity. Nature takes the Soul into herself so that he
\nfalls asleep in a trance of union with her absorbed passion of creation and she
\ntoo seems then to be asleep in the whirl of her own creative energy; and that is
\nthe involution in Matter. Above, it may be, the Soul takes<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-242<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Nature
\ninto himself so that she falls asleep in a trance of oneness with the absorbed
\nself-possession of the Spirit and he too seems to be asleep in the deep of his
\nown self-locked immobile being. But still above and below and around and within
\nall this beat and rhythm is the eternity of the Spirit who has thus figured
\nhimself in soul and Nature and enjoys with a perfect awareness all that he
\ncreates in himself by this involution and evolution. The soul fulfils itself in
\nNature when it possesses in her the consciousness of that eternity and its power
\nand joy and transfigures the natural becoming with the fullness of the spiritual
\nbeing. The constant self-creation which we call birth finds there the perfect
\nevolution of all that it held in its own nature and reveals its own utmost
\nsignificance. The complete soul possesses all its self and all Nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nTherefore
\nall this evolution is a growing of the Self in material Nature to the conscious
\npossession of its own spiritual being. It begins with form – apparently a form
\nof Force -in which a Spirit is housed and hidden; it ends in a Spirit which
\nconsciously directs its own force and creates or assumes its own forms for the
\nfree joy of its being in Nature. Nature holding her own Self and Spirit involved
\nand suppressed within herself, an imprisoned master of existence subjected to
\nher ways of birth and action, – yet are these ways his and this Spirit the
\ncondition of her being and the law of her workings, – commences the evolution:
\nthe Spirit holding Nature conscious in himself, complete by his completeness,
\nliberated by his liberation, perfected in his perfection, crowns the evolution.
\nAll our births are the births of this Spirit and self which has become or put
\nforth a soul in Nature. To be is the object of our existence, – there is no
\nother end or object, for the consciousness and bliss of being is the whole
\nbeginning and middle and end, as it is that which is without beginning or end.
\nBut this means in the steps of the evolution to grow more and more until we grow
\ninto our own fullness of self; all birth is a progressive self-finding, a means
\nof self-realisation. To grow in knowledge, in power, in delight, love and
\noneness, towards the infinite light, capacity and bliss of spiritual existence,
\nto universalise ourselves till we are one with all being, and to exceed
\nconstantly our present limited self till it opens fully to the<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-243<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

transcendence
\nin which the universal lives’ and’ to base upon it all our becoming, that is the
\nfull evolution of what now lies darkly wrapped or works half-evolved in Nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-244<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Involution and Evolution                           THE WESTERN idea of evolution is the statement of a process of formation, not an explanation of our being. Limited…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","wpcat-5-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}