Sri Aurobindo

The Hour of God

and other writings

II. Evolution — Psychology — The Supermind

Evolution [5]

Evolution is the one eternal dynamic law and hidden process of the earth-nature.

An evolution of the instruments of the spirit in a medium of Matter is the whole fundamental significance of the values of the earth-existence. All its other laws are its values of operation and process; this spiritual evolution is its own pervading secret sense.

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The history of the earth is first an evolution of organised forms by the working of material forces.

There follows on this initial stage an evolution of life in the form and an organisation of a hierarchy of living forms by the working of the liberated life-forces. The next step is an evolution of mind in living bodies and an organisation of more and more conscious lives by the process of developing mind-forces. But this is not the end; for there are higher powers of consciousness beyond mind which await their turn and must have their act in the great play, their part of the creative Lila.

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Matter, the medium of all this evolution, is seemingly inconscient and inanimate; but it appears to us so only because we are unable to sense consciousness outside a certain limited range, a fixed scale or gamut to which we have access. Below us there are lower ranges to which we are insensible and these we call subconscience or inconscience. Above us are higher ranges which are, to our inferior nature, an unseizable superconscience.

The difficulty of Matter is not an absolute inconscience, but an obscured consciousness limited by its own movement — vaguely, dumbly, blindly self-aware, not really responsive to anything outside its own form and forces. At its worst it can be called not so much inconscience as nescience. The awakening of a greater and yet greater consciousness in this Nescience is the miracle of the universe of Matter.

This nescience of Matter is a veiled, an involved or somnambulist consciousness which contains all the latent powers of the Spirit. In every particle, atom, molecule, cell of Matter there lives hidden and works unknown all the omniscience of the Eternal and all the omnipotence of the Infinite.

The evolution of forms and powers by which Matter will become more and more conscious until passing beyond form and life and mind it becomes aware, with the supernal awareness, of the eternal and infinite Spirit in his own highest ranges, this is the meaning of earth-existence. The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila.

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Matter is at once a force and a substance. Matter is original being, Brahman, made concrete in atomic division. Matter is original substance-force, Brahman-Shakti, made active in an obscure involution of the Spirit’s powers in a self-forgetful nescience. Matter-force casts matter-substance, material Shakti casts Matter Brahman into form expressive of its own most characteristic powers. When that has been done, the physical world is ready for the splendid intrusion of conscious Life into the force-driven inertia of material substance.

Matter is not the only force, not the only substance. For Life and Mind and what is beyond Mind are also forces that are substances, but of another kind and degree. Spirit is the original force-substance; all these others are kinds and derivations of the force of Spirit, degrees and modifications of the substance of Spirit. Matter too is nothing but a power and degree of the Spirit; Matter too is substance of the Eternal.

The Matter that we see and sense is only an outermost sheath and crating; behind it are other subtler degrees of physical substance which are less dense with the atomic nescience, and it is easier for life, mind and other powers to enter into them and operate. If the finer invisible physical layers or couches did not exist supporting this gross visible physical world, that world could not abide; for then the fine operations of transmission between Spirit and Matter could not be executed at all and it is these that render the grosser visible operations possible. The evolution would be impossible; life and mind and beyond mind would be unable to manifest in the material universe.

There is not only this material plane of being that we see, there is a physical life-plane proper to the vital physical operation of Nature. There is a physical mind-plane proper to a mental physical operation of Nature. There is a physical supermind plane proper to the supramental physical operation of Nature. There is too a plane of physical spirit-power or infinite physical Being-Consciousness-Force-Blissproper to the spiritual physical operations of Nature. It is only when we have discovered and separated these planes of Nature and of our physical being and analysed the synthesis of their contributions to the whole play that we shall discover how the evolution of vital, mental and spiritual consciousness became possible in inconscient Matter.

But there is more; for beyond these many couches of the physical existence are other supra-physical degrees, many layers of Life, many layers of Mind, planes of Supermind, of Bliss, of Consciousness-Force and of infinite Being on which the physical existence depends for its origination and its continuance. It is the higher planes that constantly unfold unseen energies which have raised its evolution from the obscurity in which it began to the splendour of a light of consciousness to which the highest human mind shall only be the feeble glimmer of a glow-worm fire before the sun in its flaming glories.

This is the stupendous hierarchy of the grades of consciousness between the darkest Matter and the most luminous Spirit. Consciousness in Matter has to go on climbing to the very top of the series and return with all it has to give us before the evolution can utterly fulfil its purpose.

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Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind or Gnosis, and beyond these the quadruple power of a supreme Being-Consciousness-Force- Bliss: these are the grades of the evolutionary ascent from Inconscience to the Superconscience.

Life does not wholly come into the earth from outside it; its principle is there always in material things. But, imprisoned in the apparent inanimate inertia of Matter, it is bound by its movements and unable to manifest its own independent or dominant existence.

Life is there in the earth, rock, metal, gas, atom, electron and the other more subtle yet undiscovered forces and particles that constitute material energy and form. It is in everything, but at first a hardly detectable presence, organised only to support secretly material energies, processes, formations and transformations; it is there as an involved power for the building and expression of form of Matter, not for the expression of Life. It is not in possession of itself, not self-conscious in the form, not pushed towards self-manifestation; a helpless tool and instrument, not a free agent, it is a servant of Matter and a slave of the Form, not the master of the house.

But above the material world there is a plane of dominant Life that presses down upon this material universe and seeks to pour into it whatever it can of its own types, powers, forces, im¬pulsions, manifesting creative godheads. When in the material world form is ready, the Gods and the Life-Daemons of this higher plane are attracted to put their creative touch upon Matter. Then there comes a rapid and sudden efflorescence of Life; the plant, the animalcule, the insect, the animal appear. A life-soul and a life-force with its many and always more complex movements are manifested in what seemed once to be inert and inanimate substance. Life-souls, life-minds, animal exis¬tences are born and evolve; a new world appears that is born and contained in this world of Matter and yet surpasses it in its true dynamic nature.