{"id":1605,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1605"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:58","slug":"40-involution-and-evolution-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga\/40-involution-and-evolution-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-40_Involution and Evolution.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tInvolution and Evolution <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE WESTERN<\/b> idea of evolution is the statement of a process of
\n\t\t\tformation, not an explanation of our being \t\t\tLimited to the physical and biological data of Nature, it does not
\n\t\t\tattempt except in a summary or a superficial fashion \t\t\tto discover its own meaning, but is content to announce itself as
\n\t\t\tthe general law of a quite mysterious and inexplicable energy \t\t\tEvolution becomes a problem in motion which is satisfied to work up
\n\t\t\twith an automatic regularity its own puzzle, but not to \t\t\twork it out, because, since it is only a process, it has no
\n\t\t\tunderstanding of itself, and, since it is a blind perpetual
\n\t\t\tautomatism \t\t\tof mechanical energy, it has neither an origin nor an issue It
\n\t\t\tbegan perhaps or is always beginning; it will stop perhaps in \t\t\ttime or is always somewhere stopping and going back to its
\n\t\t\tbeginnings, but there is no why, only a great turmoil and fuss \t\t\tof a how to its beginning and its cessation; for there is in its
\n\t\t\tacts no fountain of spiritual intention, but only the force of an \t\t\tunresting material necessity The ancient idea of evolution was the
\n\t\t\tfruit of a philosophical intuition, the modern is an effort of \t\t\tscientific observation Each as enounced misses something, but the
\n\t\t\tancient got at the spirit of the movement where the modern \t\t\tis content with a form and the most external machinery The Sankhya
\n\t\t\tthinker gave us the psychological elements of the total \t\t\tevolutionary process, analysed mind and sense and the subtle basis
\n\t\t\tof matter and divined some of the secrets of the executive \t\t\tenergy, but had no eye for the detail of the physical labour of
\n\t\t\tNature He saw in it too not only the covering active evident \t\t\tForce, but the concealed sustaining spiritual entity, though by an
\n\t\t\texcess of the analytic intellect, obsessed with its love of
\n\t\t\ttrenchant \t\t\tscissions and symmetrical oppositions, he set between meeting Soul
\n\t\t\tand Force an original and eternal gulf or line of separation \t\t\tThe modern scientist strives to make a complete scheme and  
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\n\t\t\tinstitution of the physical method which he has detected in its
\n\t\t\tminute workings, but is blind to the miracle each step involves \t\t\tor content to lose the sense of it in the satisfied observation of a
\n\t\t\tvast ordered phenomenon But always the marvel of the thing \t\t\tremains, one with the inexplicable wonder of all existence,
\n\t\t\t\u2014even as
\n\t\t\tit is said in the ancient Scripture,    <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tāścaryavat paśyati kaścid enam,<\/i>   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tāścaryavad vadati tathaiva cānyah;<\/i>     <\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t āścaryavac cainam anyah śrnoti,<\/i>     <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tśrutvāpyenam veda na caiva kaścit<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t"One looks on it and sees a miracle, another speaks of it as a
\n\t\t\tmiracle, as a miracle another hears of it, but what it is, for all \t\t\tthe hearing, none knoweth" We know that an evolution there is, but
\n\t\t\tnot what evolution is; that remains still one of the initial \t\t\tmysteries of Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor evolution, as is the habit with the human
\n\t\t\treason’s accounts and solutions of the deep and unfathomable way of the spirit
\n\t\t\tin things, raises more questions than it solves; it does not \t\t\tdo away with the problem of creation, for all its appearance of
\n\t\t\tsolid orderly fact, any more than the religious affirmation of \t\t\tan external omnipotent Creator could do it or the illusionist’s
\n\t\t\t  <\/i> \t\t\tmystic Maya,
\n\t\t\taghatana-ghatana-patīyasī<\/i>, very skilful in
\n\t\t\tbringing   about the impossible, some strange existent non-existent Power \t\t\twith an idea in That which is beyond and without ideas,
\n\t\t\tself-empowered to create an existent non-existent world, existent \t\t\tbecause it very evidently is, non-existent because it is a patched
\n\t\t\tup consistency of dreamful unreal transiences The problem is \t\t\tonly prolonged, put farther back, given a subtle and orderly, but
\n\t\t\tall the more challengingly complex appearance But, even when \t\t\tour questioning is confined to the one issue of evolution alone, the
\n\t\t\tdifficulty still arises of the essential significance of the bare \t\t\toutward facts observed, what is meant by evolution, what is it that
\n\t\t\tevolves, from what and by what force of necessity? The \t\t\tscientist is content to affirm an original matter or substance,
\n\t\t\tatomic, electric, etheric or whatever it may finally turn out to \t\t\tbe, which by the very nature of its own inherent energy or of an  
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\n\t\t\tenergy acting in it and on it, \u2014the two things are not the same, and
\n\t\t\tthe distinction, though it may seem immaterial in the beginning of the process, is of a considerable ultimate consequence,
\n\t\t\t\u2014produces owing to some unexplained law, constant system \t\t\tof results or other unalterable principle a number of different
\n\t\t\tbasic forms and powers of matter or different sensible and effective movements of energy: these come into being, it seems, when
\n\t\t\tthe minute original particles of matter meet together in \t\t\tvariously disposed quantities, measures and combinations, and all
\n\t\t\tthe rest is a varying, developing, mounting movement of  organised energy and its evolutionary consequences,
\n\t\t\tparināma<\/i>, \t\t\twhich depends on this crude constituting basis All that is or may
\n\t\t\tbe a correct statement of phenomenal fact, \u2014but we must \t\t\tnot forget that the fundamental theory of science has been going of
\n\t\t\tlate through a considerable commotion of an upsetting and a \t\t\trapid rearrangement,
\n\t\t\t\u2014but it carries us no step farther towards the
\n\t\t\tprincipal, the all-important thing that we want to know The \t\t\tway in which man sees and experiences the universe, imposes on his
\n\t\t\treason the necessity of a one original eternal substance \t\t\tof which all things are the forms and a one eternal original energy
\n\t\t\tof which all movement of action and consequence is the \t\t\tvariation But the whole question is what is the reality of this
\n\t\t\tsubstance and what is the essential nature of this energy?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen, even if we suppose the least explicable part of the action to
\n\t\t\tbe an evolutionary development of the immaterial \t\t\tfrom Matter, still is that development a creation or a liberation, a
\n\t\t\tbirth of what did not exist before or a slow bringing out of \t\t\twhat already existed in suppressed fact or in eternal potentiality?
\n\t\t\tAnd the interest of the question becomes acute, its importance \t\t\tincalculable when we come to the still unexplained phenomenon of
\n\t\t\tlife and mind Is life a creation out of inanimate substance or \t\t\tthe appearance of a new, a suddenly or slowly resultant power out of
\n\t\t\tthe brute material energy, and is conscious mind a creation \t\t\tout of inconscient or subconscient life, or do these powers and
\n\t\t\tgodheads appear because they were always there though in a \t\t\tshrouded and by us unrecognizable condition of their hidden or
\n\t\t\tsuppressed idea and activity, Nomen and Numen? And what  
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\n\t\t\tof the soul and of man? Is soul a new result or creation of our
\n\t\t\tmentalised life, \u2014even so many regard it, because it clearly \t\t\tappears as a self-conscient, bright, distinguishable power only when
\n\t\t\tthinking life has reached some high pitch of its intensity, \u2014or is it not a permanent entity, the original mystery that now
\n\t\t\tunveils its hidden form, the eternal companion of the energy we \t\t\tcall Nature, her secret inhabitant or her very spirit and reality?
\n\t\t\tAnd is man a biological creation of a brute energy which has \t\t\tsomehow unexpectedly and quite inexplicably managed to begin to feel
\n\t\t\tand think, or is he in his real self that inner Being \t\t\tand Power which is the whole sense of the evolution and the master
\n\t\t\tof Nature? Is Nature only the force of self-expression, \t\t\tself-formation, self-creation of a secret spirit, and man however
\n\t\t\thedged in his present capacity, the first being in Nature in whom \t\t\tthat power begins to be consciently self-creative in the front of
\n\t\t\tthe action, in this outer chamber of physical being, there set to \t\t\twork and bring out by an increasingly self-conscious evolution what
\n\t\t\the can of all its human significance or its divine possibility? \t\t\tThat is the clear conclusion we must arrive at in the end, if we
\n\t\t\tonce admit as the key of the whole movement, the reality of this \t\t\twhole mounting creation a spiritual evolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe word evolution
\n\t\t\tcarries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the \t\t\tidea at its root the necessity of a previous involution We must, if
\n\t\t\ta hidden spiritual being is the secret of all the action of Nature, \t\t\tgive its full power to that latent value of the idea We are bound
\n\t\t\tthen to suppose that all that evolves already existed involved, \t\t\tpassive or otherwise active, but in either case concealed from us in
\n\t\t\tthe shell of material Nature The Spirit which manifests itself \t\t\there in a body, must be involved from the beginning in the whole of
\n\t\t\tmatter and in every knot, formation and particle of matter; \t\t\tlife, mind and whatever is above mind must be latent inactive or
\n\t\t\tconcealed active powers in all the operations of material energy \t\t\tThe only alternative would be to drive in between the two sides of
\n\t\t\tour being the acute Sankhya scission; but that divides too \t\t\tmuch spirit and nature
\n\t\t\t. Nature would be an inert and mechanical
\n\t\t\tthing, but she would set to her work activised by some \t\t\tpressure on her of the Spirit
\n\t\t\t. Spirit would be Being conscious   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tand free in its own essence from the natural activity, but would
\n\t\t\tphenomenally modify or appear to modify its consciousness in \t\t\tresponse to some reaction of Nature One would reflect the movements
\n\t\t\tof the active Power, the other would enlighten her \t\t\tactivities with the consciousness of the self-aware immortal being
\n\t\t\tIn that case the scientific evolutionary view of Nature as \t\t\ta vast mechanical energy, life, mind and natural soul action its
\n\t\t\tscale of developing operations would have a justification Our \t\t\tconsciousness would only be a luminous translation of the
\n\t\t\tself-driven
\n\t\t\tunresting mechanical activity into responsive notes of \t\t\texperience of the consenting spiritual witness But the disabling
\n\t\t\tdifficulty in this notion is the quite opposite character of our own \t\t\thighest seeing; for in the end and as the energy of the universal
\n\t\t\tforce mounts up the gradients of its own possibilities, Nature \t\t\tbecomes always more evidently a power of the spirit and all her
\n\t\t\tmechanism only figures of its devising mastery The power of \t\t\tthe Flame cannot be divided from the Flame; where the Flame is,
\n\t\t\tthere is the power, and where the power is there is the fiery \t\t\tPrinciple We have to come back to the idea of a spirit present in
\n\t\t\tthe universe and, if the process of its works of power and its \t\t\tappearance is in the steps of an evolution, there imposes itself the
\n\t\t\tnecessity of a previous involution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis spirit in things is not apparent from the beginning, but
\n\t\t\tself-betrayed in an increasing light of manifestation We see the \t\t\tcompressed powers of Nature start released from their original
\n\t\t\tinvolution, disclose in a passion of work the secrets of their \t\t\tinfinite capacity, press upon themselves and on the supporting
\n\t\t\tinferior principle to subject its lower movement on which they \t\t\tare forced to depend into a higher working proper to their own type
\n\t\t\tand feel their proper greatness in the greatness of their
\n\t\t\tself-revealing effectuations Life takes hold of matter and breathes into
\n\t\t\tit the numberless figures of its abundant creative force, its \t\t\tsubtle and variable patterns, its enthusiasm of birth and death and
\n\t\t\tgrowth and act and response, its will of more and more \t\t\tcomplex organisation of experience, its quivering search and feeling
\n\t\t\tout after a self-consciousness of its own pleasure and pain \t\t\tand understanding gust of action; mind seizes on life to make  
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\n\t\t\tit an instrument for the wonders of will and intelligence; soul
\n\t\t\tpossesses and lifts mind through the attraction of beauty and \t\t\tgood and wisdom and greatness towards the joy of some
\n\t\t\thalf-seen ideal
\n\t\t\thighest existence; and in all this miraculous movement \t\t\tand these climbing greatnesses each step sets its foot on a higher
\n\t\t\trung and opens to a clearer, larger and fuller scope and view \t\t\tof the always secret and always self-manifesting spirit in things
\n\t\t\tThe eye fixed on the physical evolution has only the sight of \t\t\ta mechanical grandeur and subtlety of creation; the evolution of
\n\t\t\tlife opening to mind, the evolution of mind opening to the \t\t\tsoul of its own light and action, the evolution of soul out of the
\n\t\t\tlimited powers of mind to a resplendent blaze of the infinities \t\t\tof spiritual being are the more significant things, give us greater
\n\t\t\tand subtler reaches of the self-disclosing Secrecy The physical \t\t\tevolution is only an outward sign, the more and more complex and
\n\t\t\tsubtle development of a supporting structure, the growing \t\t\texterior metre mould of form which is devised to sustain in matter
\n\t\t\tthe rising intonations of the spiritual harmony The spiritual significance finds us as the notes rise; but not till we get
\n\t\t\tto the summit of the scale can we command the integral meaning \t\t\tof that for which all these first formal measures were made the
\n\t\t\toutward lines, the sketch or the crude notation Life itself is only \t\t\ta coloured vehicle, physical birth a convenience for the greater and
\n\t\t\tgreater births of the Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe spiritual process of evolution is then in some sense a creation,
\n\t\t\tbut a self-creation, not a making of what never was, \t\t\tbut a bringing out of what was implicit in the Being The Sanskrit
\n\t\t\tword for creation signifies a loosing forth, a letting out into the \t\t\tworkings of Nature The Upanishad in a telling figure applies the
\n\t\t\timage of the spider which brings its web out of itself and creates \t\t\tthe structure in which it takes its station That is applied in the
\n\t\t\tancient Scripture not to the evolution of things out of Matter, \t\t\tbut to an original bringing of temporal becoming out of the eternal
\n\t\t\tinfinity; Matter itself and this material universe are only \t\t\tsuch a web or indeed no more than a part of it brought out from the
\n\t\t\tspiritual being of the Infinite But the same truth, the same \t\t\tlaw holds good of all that we see of the emergence of things from  
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\n\t\t\tinvolution in the material energy We might almost speak here of a
\n\t\t\tdouble evolution A Force inherent in the Infinite brings out \t\t\tof it eternally the structure of its action in a universe of which
\n\t\t\tthe last descending scale is based upon an involution of all the \t\t\tpowers of the spirit into an inconscient absorption in her
\n\t\t\tself-oblivious passion of form and structural working Thence comes \t\t\tan ascent and progressive liberation of power after power till the
\n\t\t\tspirit self-disclosed and set free by knowledge and mastery of its \t\t\tworks repossesses the eternal fullness of its being which envelops
\n\t\t\tthen and carries in its grasp the manifold and unified splendours \t\t\tof its nature At any rate the spiritual process of which our human
\n\t\t\tbirth is a step and our life is a portion, appears as the  bringing out of a greatness, asya mahimanam<\/i>, which is secret, \t\t\tinherent and self-imprisoned, absorbed in the form and working of
\n\t\t\tthings Our world-action figures an evolution, an outrolling of \t\t\ta manifold Power gathered and coiled up in the crude intricacy of
\n\t\t\tMatter The upward progress of the successive births of things \t\t\tis a rise into waking and larger and larger light of a consciousness
\n\t\t\tshut into the first hermetic cell of sleep of the eternal Energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a parallel in the Yogic experience of the Kundalini,
\n\t\t\teternal Force coiled up in the body in the bottom root vessel  
\n\t\t\t <\/i> or chamber, mūlādhāra<\/i>, pedestal, earth-centre of the
\n\t\t\tphysical \t\t\tnervous system There she slumbers coiled up like a Python and
\n\t\t\tfilled full of all that she holds gathered in her being, but when \t\t\tshe is struck by the freely coursing breath, by the current of Life
\n\t\t\twhich enters in to search for her, she awakes and rises flaming \t\t\tup the ladder of the spinal chord and forces open centre after
\n\t\t\tcentre of the involved dynamic secrets of consciousness till at the \t\t\tsummit she finds, joins and becomes one with the spirit Thus she
\n\t\t\tpasses from an involution in inconscience through a series \t\t\tof opening glories of her powers into the greatest eternal
\n\t\t\tsuperconscience of the spirit This mysterious evolving Nature in
\n\t\t\tthe \t\t\tworld around us follows even such a course Inconscient being is not
\n\t\t\tso much a matrix as a chamber of materialised energy in \t\t\twhich are gathered up all the powers of the spirit; they are there,
\n\t\t\tbut work in the conditions of the material energy, involved, we \t\t\tsay, and therefore not apparent as themselves because they have  
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\n\t\t\tpassed into a form of working subnormal to their own right scale
\n\t\t\twhere the characteristics by which we recognise and think \t\t\twe know them are suppressed into a minor and an undetected force of
\n\t\t\tworking As Nature rises in the scale, she liberates them \t\t\tinto their recognisable
\n\t\t\tscales of energy, discloses the operations by which they can feel
\n\t\t\tthemselves and their greatness At the highest summit she rises into
\n\t\t\tthe self-knowledge of the spirit which informed her action, but
\n\t\t\tbecause of its involution or concealment in the forms of its workings could not be known in the
\n\t\t\tgreatness of its reality Spirit and Nature discovering the secret \t\t\tof her energies become one at the top of the spiritual evolution by
\n\t\t\ta soul in Nature which awakens to the significance of its own \t\t\tbeing in the liberation of the highest truth: it comes to know that
\n\t\t\tits births were the births, the assumptions of form of an eternal \t\t\tSpirit, to know itself as that and not a creature of Nature and
\n\t\t\trises to the possession of the revealed, full and highest power of \t\t\tits own real and spiritual nature That liberation, because
\n\t\t\tliberation is self-possession, comes to us as the crown of a
\n\t\t\tspiritual \t\t\tevolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe must consider all the packed significance of this
\n\t\t\tinvolution The spirit involved in material energy is there with all its
\n\t\t\tpowers; life, mind and a greater supramental power are involved \t\t\tin Matter But what do we mean when we say that they are involved,
\n\t\t\tand do we mean that all these things are quite different \t\t\tenergies cut off from each other by an essential separateness, but
\n\t\t\trolled up together in an interaction, or do we mean that there is \t\t\tonly one Being with its one energy, varying shades of the light of
\n\t\t\tits power differentiated in the spectrum of Nature? When \t\t\twe say that Life is involved in Matter or in material Force, for of
\n\t\t\tthat Force Matter seems after all to be only a various self-spun formation, do we not mean that all this universal working, even
\n\t\t\tin what seems to us its inconscient inanimate action, is \t\t\ta life-power of the spirit busy with formation, and we do not recognise it because it is there in a lower scale in which the \t\t\tcharacteristics by which we recognise life are not evident or are
\n\t\t\tonly slightly evolved in the dullness of the material covering? \t\t\tMaterial energy would be then Life packed into the density of  
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\n\t\t\tMatter and feeling out in it for its own intenser recognisable power
\n\t\t\twhich it finds within itself in the material concealment \t\t\tand liberates into action Life itself would be an energy of a
\n\t\t\tsecret mind, a mind imprisoned in its own forms and quivering out in \t\t\tthe nervous seekings of life for its intenser recognisable power of
\n\t\t\tconsciousness which it discovers within the vital and material \t\t\tsuppression and liberates into sensibility No doubt, practically,
\n\t\t\tthese powers work upon each other as different energies, but \t\t\tin essence they would be one energy and their interaction the power
\n\t\t\tof the spirit working by its higher on its lower forces, \t\t\tdepending on them at first, but yet turning in the scale of its
\n\t\t\tascent to overtop and master them Mind too might only be \t\t\tan inferior scale and formulation derived from a much greater and
\n\t\t\tsupramental consciousness, and that consciousness too with \t\t\tits greater light and will a characteristic originating power of
\n\t\t\tspiritual being, the power which secret in all things, in mind, in \t\t\tlife, in matter, in the plant and the metal and the atom assures
\n\t\t\tconstantly by its inevitable action the idea and harmony of the \t\t\tuniverse And what is the spirit itself but infinite existence,
\n\t\t\teternal, immortal being, but always a conscious self-aware being, \u2014and that is the difference between the materialist’s mechanical
\n\t\t\tmonism and the spiritual theory of the universe, \u2014which here \t\t\texpresses itself in a world finite to our conceptions whose every
\n\t\t\tmovement yet bears witness to the Infinite? And this world is \t\t\tbecause the spirit has the delight of its own infinite existence and
\n\t\t\tthe delight of its own infinite self-variation; birth is because \t\t\tall consciousness carries with it power of its own being and all
\n\t\t\tpower of being is self-creative and must have the joy of its
\n\t\t\tself-creation For creation means nothing else than a self-expression;
\n\t\t\tand the birth of the soul in the body is nothing but a mode of \t\t\tits own self-expression Therefore all things here are expression,
\n\t\t\tform, energy, action of the Spirit; matter itself is but form of \t\t\tspirit, life but power of being of the spirit, mind but working of
\n\t\t\tconsciousness of the spirit All Nature is a display and a play \t\t\tof God, power and action and self-creation of the one spiritual
\n\t\t\tBeing Nature presents to spirit at once the force, the instrument, \t\t\tthe medium, the obstacle, the result of his powers, and all these  
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\n\t\t\tthings, obstacle as well as instrument, are the necessary elements
\n\t\t\tfor a gradual and developing creation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut if the Spirit has involved its eternal greatness in the material
\n\t\t\tuniverse and is there evolving its powers by the virtue \t\t\tof a secret self-knowledge, is disclosing them in a grandiose
\n\t\t\tsuccession under the self-imposed difficulties of a material form \t\t\tof being, is disengaging them from a first veiling absorbed
\n\t\t\tinconscience of Nature, there is no difficulty in thinking or seeing \t\t\tthat this soul shaped into humanity is a being of that Being, that
\n\t\t\tthis also has risen out of material involution by increasing \t\t\tself-expression in a series of births of which each grade is a new
\n\t\t\tridge of the ascent opening to higher powers of the spirit \t\t\tand that it is still arising and will not be for ever limited by the
\n\t\t\tpresent walls of its birth but may, if we will, be born into a \t\t\tdivine humanity Our humanity is the conscious meeting place of the
\n\t\t\tfinite and the infinite and to grow more and more towards \t\t\tthat Infinite even in this physical birth is our privilege This
\n\t\t\tInfinite, this Spirit who is housed within us but not bound or \t\t\tshut in by mind or body, is our own self and to find and be our self
\n\t\t\twas, as the ancient sages knew, always the object of \t\t\tour human striving, for it is the object of the whole immense
\n\t\t\tworking of Nature But it is by degrees of the self-finding that \t\t\tNature enlarges to her spiritual reality Man himself is a doubly
\n\t\t\tinvolved being; most of himself in mind and below is involved \t\t\tin a subliminal conscience or a subconscience; most of himself above
\n\t\t\tmind is involved in a spiritual superconscience When \t\t\the becomes conscient in the superconscience, the heights and the
\n\t\t\tdepths of his being will be illumined by another light of \t\t\tknowledge than the flickering lamp of the reason can now cast into a
\n\t\t\tfew corners; for then the master of the field will enlighten \t\t\tthis whole wonderful field of his being, as the sun illumines the
\n\t\t\twhole system it has created out of its own glories Then only he \t\t\tcan know the reality even of his own mind and life and body Mind
\n\t\t\twill be changed into a greater consciousness, his life will \t\t\tbe a direct power and action of the Divinity, his very body no
\n\t\t\tlonger this first gross lump of breathing clay, but a very image \t\t\tand body of spiritual being That transfiguration on the summit  
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\n\t\t\tof the mountain, divine birth, divya janma<\/i>, is that to which
\n\t\t\tall these births are a long series of laborious steps An involution \t\t\tof spirit in matter is the beginning, but a spiritual assumption of
\n\t\t\tdivine birth is the fullness of the evolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEast and West have two ways of looking at life which are opposite
\n\t\t\tsides of one reality Between the pragmatic truth on \t\t\twhich the vital thought of modern Europe enamoured of the vigour of
\n\t\t\tlife, all the dance of God in Nature, puts so vehement \t\t\tand exclusive a stress and the eternal immutable Truth to which the
\n\t\t\tIndian mind enamoured of calm and poise loves to turn \t\t\twith an equal passion for an exclusive finding, there is no such
\n\t\t\tdivorce and quarrel as is now declared by the partisan mind, the \t\t\tseparating reason, the absorbing passion of an exclusive will of
\n\t\t\trealisation The one eternal immutable Truth is the Spirit and \t\t\twithout the spirit the pragmatic truth of a self-creating universe
\n\t\t\twould have no origin or foundation; it would be barren of significance, empty of inner guidance, lost in its end, a firework display
\n\t\t\tshooting up into the void only to fall away and perish in mid-air \t\t\tBut neither is the pragmatic truth a dream of the non-existent, an
\n\t\t\tillusion or a long lapse into some futile delirium of creative \t\t\timagination; that would be to make the eternal Spirit a drunkard or
\n\t\t\ta dreamer, the fool of his own gigantic self-hallucinations \t\t\tThe truths of universal existence are of two kinds, truths of the
\n\t\t\tspirit which are themselves eternal and immutable, and these \t\t\tare the great things that cast themselves out into becoming and
\n\t\t\tthere constantly realise their powers and significances, and the \t\t\tplay of the consciousness with them, the discords, the musical
\n\t\t\tvariations, soundings of possibility, progressive notations, reversions, perversions, mounting conversions into a greater figure of
\n\t\t\tharmony; and of all these things the spirit has made, makes \t\t\talways his universe But it is himself that he makes in it, himself
\n\t\t\tthat is the creator and the energy of creation and the cause and \t\t\tthe method and the result of the working, the mechanist and the
\n\t\t\tmachine, the music and the musician, the poet and the poem, \t\t\tsupermind, mind and life and matter, the soul and Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn
\n\t\t\toriginal error pursues us in our solutions of our problem \t\t\tWe are perplexed by the appearance of an antinomy; we set soul  
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\n\t\t\tagainst Nature, the spirit against his creative energy But Soul and
\n\t\t\tNature, Purusha and Prakriti, are two eternal lovers who \t\t\tpossess their perpetual unity and enjoy their constant difference,
\n\t\t\tand in the unity abound in the passion of the multitudinous play \t\t\tof their difference, and in every step of the difference abound in
\n\t\t\tthe secret sense or the overt consciousness of unity Nature takes \t\t\tthe Soul into herself so that he falls asleep in a trance of union
\n\t\t\twith her absorbed passion of creation and she too seems then to \t\t\tbe asleep in the whirl of her own creative energy; and that is the
\n\t\t\tinvolution in Matter Above, it may be, the Soul takes Nature \t\t\tinto himself so that she falls asleep in a trance of oneness with
\n\t\t\tthe absorbed self-possession of the spirit and he too seems to be \t\t\tasleep in the deep of his own self-locked immobile being But still
\n\t\t\tabove and below and around and within all this beat and \t\t\trhythm is the eternity of the spirit who has thus figured himself in
\n\t\t\tsoul and nature and enjoys with a perfect awareness all that \t\t\the creates in himself by this involution and evolution The soul
\n\t\t\tfulfils itself in Nature when it possesses in her the consciousness of that eternity and its power and joy and transfigures the
\n\t\t\tnatural becoming with the fullness of the spiritual being The \t\t\tconstant self-creation which we call birth finds there the perfect
\n\t\t\tevolution of all that it held in its own nature and reveals its own \t\t\tutmost significance The complete soul possesses all its self and
\n\t\t\tall Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore all this evolution is a growing of the Self in material
\n\t\t\tnature to the conscious possession of its own spiritual \t\t\tbeing It begins with form
\n\t\t\t\u2014apparently a form of Force \u2014in which a
\n\t\t\tspirit is housed and hidden; it ends in a spirit which \t\t\tconsciously directs its own force and creates or assumes its own
\n\t\t\tforms for the free joy of its being in Nature . Nature holding her \t\t\town self and spirit involved and suppressed within herself, an
\n\t\t\timprisoned master of existence subjected to her ways of birth \t\t\tand action,
\n\t\t\t\u2014yet are these ways his and this spirit the condition of
\n\t\t\ther being and the law of her workings, \u2014commences the \t\t\tevolution: the spirit holding Nature conscious in himself, complete
\n\t\t\tby his completeness, liberated by his liberation, perfected \t\t\tin his perfection, crowns the evolution All our births are the  
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\n\t\t\tbirths of this spirit and self which has become or put forth a soul
\n\t\t\tin Nature To be is the object of our existence, \u2014there is \t\t\tno other end or object, for the consciousness and bliss of being is
\n\t\t\tthe whole beginning and middle and end, as it is that which \t\t\tis without beginning or end But this means in the steps of the
\n\t\t\tevolution to grow more and more until we grow into our own \t\t\tfullness of self; all birth is a progressive self-finding, a means
\n\t\t\tof self-realisation To grow in knowledge, in power, in delight, \t\t\tlove and oneness, towards the infinite light, capacity and bliss of
\n\t\t\tspiritual existence, to universalise ourselves till we are one with \t\t\tall being, and to exceed constantly our present limited self till it
\n\t\t\topens fully to the transcendence in which the universal lives and \t\t\tto base upon it all our becoming, that is the full evolution of what
\n\t\t\tnow lies darkly wrapped or works half evolved in Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

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