VI. Evolution of Homo Sapiens a ...the course of nature...seems delighted with transmutations. Newton1 "There are words which some turn in the history of thought suddenly overwhelms with a large special meaning. Such a one is evolution."2 The modern man cannot begin to understand his own position until he knows a good deal about it. Not only is evolution vital to the modern man's search for religion, but much elucidation will be found by following the steps by which the idea found entry into the human imagination. "To the modern man," thinks J.L. Davies, "it is difficult to put himself in a frame of mind in which evolution has no place."3 The idea of ev

XVI. The Integral Weltanschauung The characteristic note of Greek philosophy, when it was at the height of its glory, was knowledge of values, not love of facts. Again, Renaissance saw the pursuit of the knowledge of values. Descartes' Cogito ergo sum is man's discovery of his lost soul. It was Kant who helped to place philosophy on its high pedestal by showing that even facts are facts because there are values working in them. His real mistake lay, not in giving knowledge a lower status, but in not recognising any other knowledge than this. Hegel removed this defect of the Kantian philosophy and gave man unlimited possibilities of knowledge. The whole scheme wa

XXIV. Evolution: Individual and Cosmic Evolution means the reversibility of Nature; for it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. The supreme truth and reality — Sat-Chit-Ananda — multiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and stages of a diminishing power of expression or an increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Super-mind, the Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents — the farthest apparently from the original source — the movement turns round and seeks to go up the ladder through the same gradations it

XIV. The Nisus of Evolution The concept of evolution signifies change of a specified character, change for the higher and the better. It means development, creative advance, continual enrichment of being, progressive manifestation of ever higher and more desirable qualities. The theory of evolution represents the movement of time as an upward curve of development which gradually unfolds unsuspected treasures and brings into existence ever higher values. Time is thus credited with an enormous creative importance; it is indeed regarded as the very principle of creativity. But this conception of time is criticised by Russell on the ground that the apparent importance

TO THE MOTHER "In her the conscious Will took human shape : She only can save herself and save the world..." - Savitri

IX. The Limitations of Science What we need is not a mere concept of evolution struggling to explain a few of the random factors of existence, but it must, in every possibility, in its sweep and scope, be a theory of the universe. If the savage was a sufferer from agoraphobia, frightened of the too vast spaces around him, the picture of the Universe drawn by science in the early twentieth century was the vision of a man suffering from claustrophobia. Our earth and the universe have not always been what they are now. The Universe we now see with our earth stirring in a corner, teeming with living beings of which man is the highest, has been the result of a very l

FIRST THOUGHTS I. Vedic and Puranic Cosmogony In the beginning all this Universe was Non-Existent and Unmanifest, front which this manifest Existence was bom. Itself created itself; none other created it. Therefore they say of it the well and beautifully made. Taittiriya Upanishad1 World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing. The Life Divine1 The heights of heaven were measured into form by the eye of this universal Force, they wer

XIII. The Philosophy of Change Change is the most striking and essential characteristic of the world of manifestation which presents itself to our experience. It is the cosmic interweaving of matter, life, mind and soul that constitutes the cosmic panorama. Some hold that change is ipso facto unreal. Permanence is affirmed to be the very essence of reality. As immutable being, the real is eternal perfection. Change or becoming is a mark of imperfection. Moreover, it is believed to be incomprehensible to thought. According to Zeno, change on critical examination, discloses fatal self-contradictions within it. His destructive criticism of the concept of Becoming

PREFACE Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is a new and creative synthesis which holds together and reconciles many contradictions. The logic of the Infinite and the logic of finitude appear in it side by side. It is difficult to write about a philosophy of this kind without sacrificing its subtlety and its fineness. What little I have been able to do in the matter has been possible only because of the Blessings of the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Of the many persistent problems of philosophy that of 'Evolution and Human Destiny' is a uniquely intriguing one. In relation to the universe around him man has been variously considered as the fore-runner of biological ev

SRI AUROBINDO'S PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION (The Mother's Blessings given for this book) By the Same Author: 1.Avatarhood and Human Evolution 2.Beyond Religion 3.Celebration Future : The Next Millennium 4.Champaklal — Lion of Light 5.Education and Society (Ed.) 6.Eternity is Born (Ed.) 7.Footnotes to the Future 8.Integral Yoga Psychology 9.Meditations on the Mother 10.Meta-History 11.Nolini-da — Arjuna of Our Age 12.Purushottam Yoga 13.Sapphires of Solitude (Poems) 14.Savitri — Epic of the Eternal 15.Seven Studies in Sri Aurobindo 16.