Sri Aurobindo summarizes the discussion of this chapter to provide a straightforward and logical presentation of the development of consciousness through ever-ascending forms, providing a rationale and basis for the theory of rebirth. In this summary he has addressed the major facts of our existence and the primary issues that arise as to the significance of life and the reasons why rebirth is an essential element of this development.
“This is a way of seeing things, harmonious at least in its complexity, supple and capable of a certain all-embracing scope, which we can take as a basis for our ideas of rebirth,–an ascending unity, a spirit involved in material existence which scales wonderfully up many gradations through life to organised mind and beyond mind to the evolution of its own complete self-conscience, the individual following that gradation and the power for its self-crowning.”
There are various possibilities for this development which may include any of the major theories of existence that have come to the fore during mankind’s search for meaning. “If human mind is the last word of its possibility on earth, then rebirth must end in man and proceed by some abrupt ceasing either to an existence on other planes or to an annulment of its spiritual circle. But if there are higher powers of the spirit which are attainable by birth, then the ascent is not finished, greater assumptions may lie before the soul which has now reached and is lifted to a perfecting of the high scale of humanity.”
What higher opportunities or heights may reach beyond our human stage of manifestation, remains to be seen and discovered. There is always the “Eternal’s infinite potentiality.”
Sri Aurobindo,
Sri Aurobindo Studies 