Implementing the Spiritual Purpose and Vision in Life

In his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol,  Sri Aurobindo wrote:  “A moment sees, the ages toil to express.”  Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s vision needs to be implemented in detail, over time, within the framework of the existing structures and habitual patterns of the people, the society and the world-environment.    In Indian philosophy, there is a practical distinction between the conscious observer/witness and the force of action.  Sir John Woodroffe, a scholar of the Indian Tantras, defined these as Shakta, the observer/controller of the force, and Shakti, the force of effectuation.  Sri Aurobindo expounded the vision and the direction and turned over to his collaborator, The Mother, the actual day to day implementation for the model being created at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Robert McDermott notes:  “… the Mother’s responsibility of the spiritual and material welfare of the Ashram is cast in a new light.  It helps to explain, for example, why the disciples follow the Mother’s directives with such remarkable confidence and enthusiasm.  The Ashramites accept Sri Aurobindo’s mandate:  ‘The arrangement I have made for all the disciples without exception that they should receive the light and force from her and not directly from me and be guided by her in their spiritual progress.’  The guidance that the Mother has provided during the past four and a half decades (n.b. pre 1973) has extended from the individual sadhana (Yoga practice) of each disciple to the governance of a community of several thousand people and their varied activities.  The physical education program (concerning which Sri Aurobindo wrote The Mind of Light) is typical of the activities organised by the burgeoning Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.  Other activities of the Ashram include housing and food services, workshops, scientific farming, and agriculture, a publication department and printing press, and many other creative endeavours connected with life in this spiritual-industrial, East-West community.”

The Mother provided the dynamic force, the wide scope of activities, and the day to day guidance and direction to begin to address the way forward towards a spiritual community that can act as a model for a more harmonious and balanced future for humanity.  She followed up with a next phase in the initiation and development of the “city of the future, Auroville.”

Any such process must necessarily involve considerable experimentation, close supervision and revision as all the issues that face humanity, both inwardly and outwardly, raise their head and call to be addressed.  The complexity and the embedded nature of long-standing patterns of action make this necessarily a somewhat slow and cumbersome process of preparation, very much still reliant on physical, vital and mental powers of action, guided by the new spiritual vision and force, which eventually must be permitted to take the lead to effectuate real and long-lasting change.

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pg. 17

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A Dream for the Integration of Spiritual Aspiration into the Community and Society

The first step in the endeavour to bring the principles of spirituality into any community or society is to frame the intention and begin to address the organisation and principles of the society to carry out that intention.  Spirituality is not fixated on any one religion or religious orientation, but represents instead the broader understanding of the principle of oneness and unity in the entire creation, and the identification of the consciousness of each individual with the universal and transcendent aspects of the manifestation.

Sri Aurobindo collaborator, The Mother, elucidated her vision for the creation of a spiritual community, and its position as a model for future development across the world.  The Sri Aurobindo Ashram was organized based on these lines, and it differs in a number of significant ways from the traditional Ashram settings based in the Hindu tradition.

The Mother expressed these principles as a “dream” for humanity:  “There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its sole property, a place where all human beings of good will, sincere in their aspirations, could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth, a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the care for progress would get precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the seeking for material pleasures and enjoyment.  In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their soul.  Education would be given not with a view to passing examinations and getting certificates and posts but for enriching the existing facilities and bringing forth new ones.  In this place titles and positions would be supplanted by opportunities to serve and organize.  The needs of the body will be provided for equally in the case of each and everyone.  In the general organisation intellectual, moral, and spiritual superiority will find expression not in the enhancement of the pleasures and powers of life but in the increase of duties and responsibilities.  Artistic beauty in all forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, will be available equally to all, the opportunity to share in the joys they give being limited solely by each one’s capacities and not by social or financial position.  For in this ideal place money would be no more the sovereign lord.  Individual value would have a greater importance than the value due to material wealth and social position.  Work would not be there as the means for gaining one’s livelihood, it would be the means whereby to express oneself, develop one’s capacities and possibilities, while doing at the same time service to the whole group, which on its side, would provide for each one’s subsistence and for the field of his work.  In brief, it would be a place where the relations among human beings, usually based exclusively upon competition and strife, would be replaced by relations of emulation for doing better, for collaboration, relations of real brotherhood.”

“The earth is certainly not ready to realize such an ideal, for mankind does not yet possess the necessary knowledge to understand and accept it or the indispensable conscious force to execute it.  That is why I call it a dream.”

“Yet, this dream is on the way to becoming a reality.  That is exactly what we are seeking to do at the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo on a small scale, in proportion to our modest means.  The achievement is indeed far from being perfect but it is progressive; little by little we advance toward our goal, which, we hope, one day we shall be able to hold before the world as a practical and effective means of coming out of the present chaos in order to be born into a more true, more harmonious new life.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 15-16

Introduction to the Yoga of Self-Perfection

Either explicitly or implicitly, the historical tendency of both yogic disciplines and many religious traditions has been focused on the concept of salvation or liberation, or a reward in some other world after death.  This focus has led to abandonment of any attempt to achieve some kind of perfection here in life, and has led to the split between the “materialist” who believes in the life of the world and its benefits, and the “renunciate” who focuses his attention on salvation at the expense of the life of the world.  It is true that many religious traditions have spoken of the eventual raising up and perfection of the outer life, yet their focus and methods have not found a way to accomplish this and thus, the reward for the religious has been deferred to some other place or circumstance, or, if attempted, it has been done through creation of a uniform religious community following strict guidelines and rules that truncate and suppress various aspects of the human being.

Sri Aurobindo unifies the two extremes in what he calls an omnipresent reality.  The solution lies not in abandonment of life, nor in the immersion in life without concern for spiritual development, but in a spiritual focus that, at the same time, embraces life and works on the perfection and enhancement of the human being and all his instruments of knowledge and action, and thereby the perfection of the society and life of man in the world.

The traditional paths of Yoga can help one attain the liberation and spiritual unity that is a necessary basis for any transformation of the life in the world.  Sri Aurobindo adds the Yoga of self-perfection as the next phase that takes up, for the spiritual being, his human instrument and works to enhance, perfect, and prepare it to receive, hold and express the higher spiritual energies of the next stage of evolution, the supramental force.

Sri Aurobindo writes:  “The divinizing of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralization of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.  Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven without reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without, would be also the true fulfillment of the great dream cherished in different terms by the world’s religions.”

“The widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is the sole effort worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in humanity.”

Robert McDermott concludes:  “The key to Sri Aurobindo’s integral vision, then, is the transformation of the lower by the higher reaches of consciousness.  According to Sri Aurobindo’s vision, this transformation, which is the cooperative work of man and the Supermind, is ‘as great as and greater than the change which we suppose evolutionary Nature to have made in its transition from the vital animal to the fully mentalized human consciousness.’  This great change celebrated by Sri Aurobindo and his followers is at once a visionary and a practical message: man can achieve a higher level of life by increased nonattachment, concentration, and liberation.  Further, this achievement is the ultimate goal and value of human and cosmic existence.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 13-15

Introduction to the Integral Yoga

If intellectual knowledge cannot provide certitude and a clear path forward, then other methods of knowing are required and must thereby be developed.  Knowledge by identity, knowledge through direct experience, is therefore a necessity for the human being striving to understand himself, the world and the significance and meaning of his, and all, existence.  This direct experience can come to anyone under a variety of circumstances.  It is also possible, through the practices that have become known as Yoga, to directly participate and aid the slow evolutionary process of Nature.  When we consider Yoga, we are not primarily looking at what has taken on that meaning in the West, although that may represent a part of the yogic methodology.  Yoga encompasses a wide range of practices and disciplines, engaging each plane of consciousness active in the human being.  Thus, there is a Yoga of knowledge, a Yoga of Love and Devotion, a Yoga of Works and the Will in Action, and various specific psycho-spiritual or physical practices under the names of Raja Yoga, Tantric Yoga and of course Hatha Yoga.  Yogic practices are not restricted to one specific spiritual or religious background, and, under different names and forms, they appear in all the spiritual traditions of the world.

Sri Aurobindo provided an overview of the various paths of Yoga and the need to utilize any of them at various times to uplift the different strands of our being.  His comprehensive, experiential, non-dogmatic approach to developing the spiritual consciousness and expressing it in life and action has been called Integral Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo notes:  “On the whole, for an Integral Yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the process, but are not indispensable.  It is true that their principal aims must be included int he integrality of the Yoga; but they can be brought about by other means.  For the methods of the Integral Yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action.”

“The object of our synthetic Yoga must … be more integral and comprehensive, embrace all these elements or these tendencies of a larger impulse of self-perfection and harmonize them or rather unify, and in order to do that successfully it must seize on a truth that is wider than the ordinary religious and higher than the mundane principle.  All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature toward the discovery and fulfillment of the divine principle hidden in her, which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-conscient and luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world.  Mind, life, body, all the forms of our nature are the means of this growth, but they find their last perfection only by opening out to something beyond them, first, because they are not the whole of what man is, secondly, because that other something which he is, is the key of his completeness and brings a light that discovers to him the whole high and large reality of his being.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 12-13

How to Know and Understand the Evolution of Consciousness

Using the framework of our mental intelligence, we try to observe, categorize, segment and then draw conclusions and make abstract judgments based on the evidence we see from the past.  Such a process may be useful as regards the past, although it may miss the inner meaning or significance if it is not easily identified from the surface facts, but it clearly is not useful with regard to the future, particularly if an inner meaning has been overlooked.  The method of knowing in this case is based on the defined, linear mental analysis.

There are however other forms of knowing, including knowledge by identity, where one actually experiences the reality directly, not through intellectual abstraction.  Sri Aurobindo acknowledges the limitations of the intellectual Reason, and relies heavily for his observations about the future evolution of consciousness on his spiritual experience and realizations.  This process actually is the basis, one way or another, with the great leaps forward by religious founders and great scientific discovers, who had to follow their experience even when it appeared to contradict well-known beliefs held widely during their time.  Copernicus and Galileo, for instance, were considered heretics for what today represents a true understanding of the relation between the sun, the moon, the planets and the earth!

Sri Aurobindo notes:  “This account of the process and meaning of the terrestrial creation is at every point exposed to challenge in the mind of man himself, because the evolution is still halfway on its journey, is still in the Ignorance, is still seeking in the mind of a half-evolved humanity for its own purpose and significance.  It is possible to challenge the theory of evolution on the ground that it is insufficiently founded and that it is superfluous as an explanation of the process of terrestrial existence.  It is open to doubt, even if evolution is granted, whether man has the capacity to develop into a higher evolutionary being.  It is also open to doubt whether the evolution is likely to go any farther than it has gone already or whether a supramental evolution, the appearance of a consummated Truth-Consciousness, a being of Knowledge, is at all probable in the fundamental Ignorance of the earthly Nature.”

Robert McDermott responds:  “In contrast to this lack of certitude on the level of philosophical inquiry, Sri Aurobindo’s own spiritual experience and vision confidently proclaim the inevitability of man’s spiritual evolution.  Indeed, since his entire philosophy issues from a yogic experience, which is both personal and transcendent, his account of spiritual evolution is but a pointer to the experiences that are the source and ultimately the corroboration of that theory.  Thus, Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of Integral Yoga is a vision of personal and cosmic evolution as well as a method for its realization.  Whereas his theory of evolution and integralism begs comparison with many Western philosophies, the essential function of Yoga in this theory is distinctively Indian.  This blending of vision and practice, or speculation and discipline, characterizes Sri Aurobindo’s penchant for Westsern-Indian syntheses.  Further, the method of Yoga operative in this synthesis is itself a synthesis of several schools of Indian Yoga.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 11-12

Overview Summary of Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching, Part 2: the Future Evolution of Consciousness

We can see the progression from Matter to Life, and from Life to Mind in the expansion and development of consciousness in the world.  While scientists have tended to focus on the evolution of forms, they have also noted the increased action of consciousness as those forms developed.  They have been generally at a loss to describe how a change in form can result in an increased level of awareness or an increased power of cognition, reasoning or other signs we attribute to mental development.  Sri Aurobindo has helped to clarify this issue by his analysis that the forms develop due to the pressure of the involved consciousness, and its corresponding external pressure from its native plane of existence, to manifest.

What this does is open up the discussion about whether we have reached the “end” of the evolutionary process, or whether we are in a stage of transition.  There are signs both in terms of the limitations of our mental powers and processes, and the occasional manifestation of powers not native to the mental level, per se, but clearly an extension or expansion of power, that as Sri Aurobindo describes it, “man is a transitional being”.

If we recognize this transitional stage, we can begin to look for and understand the signs of the next stages of the evolution of consciousness, those beyond the mind, which Sri Aurobindo terms “supramental”, and the intermediate steps between our current level of mentality and those ranges of supramental consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo observes:  “These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuition, into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.”

Robert McDermott comments:  “These gradations, furthermore, include the three levels of the lower trilogy or levels of evolution up to the present stage, mind: the mental level evolved from the vital, and the vital from the material.  One of the characteristics of the entire evolutionary process is that ‘at each crossover, there is not only a rise in consciousness but also a reversal of consciousness, that is to say, the level attained turns back upon the preceding levels, influencing and molding them as far as possible in its own mode and law of existence.’  Thus, the mental has transformed the material and the vital, and the supramental, through the mediation of Overmind, is beginning to transform the mental.  The gradations between mental and supramental are in the process of transformation just as the material and vital stages have been taken up by consciousness into its own evolution.  Evolution, then, consists in two processes, both controlled by consciousness: the outward, physical or cosmic evolution from matter to mind, and the higher, more essential and spiritual evolution from mind to Supermind.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 10-11

Overview Summary of Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching, Part 1: an Evolution of Consciousness

The central meaning of evolution is not the development of forms but the expression of ever-higher levels of consciousness which in turn requires the forms to adapt and gain in complexity to handle the needs of that higher consciousness.  The evolution from Matter to incorporate Life, and from Life to incorporate Mind, represent stages that have already manifested on the earth.  The evolution however is not completed and there are future stages that can anticipated and to some degree, described.

Sri Aurobindo writes:  “A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence.  This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility in Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force that works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence. … At first she houses herself in forms of Matter which appear to be altogether unconscious, then struggles toward mentality in the guise of living Matter and attains to it imperfectly in the conscious animal.  This consciousness is at first rudimentary, mostly a half-subconscious or just conscious instinct; it develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at his highest elevation the mold of original animality, the dead weight of subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation toward the original Inertia and Nescience, the control of an inconscient material Nature over his conscious evolution, its power for limitation, its law of difficult development, its immense force for retardation and frustration.  This control by the original Inconscience over the consciousness emerging from it takes the general shape of a mentality struggling toward knowledge but itself, in what seems to be its fundamental nature, an Ignorance.  Thus hampered and burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which shall be the next product of the evolution.  That transition will mark the passage from the evolution in the Ignorance to a greater evolution in the Knowledge, founded and proceeding in the light of the Superconscient and no longer int he darkness of the Ignorance and Inconscience.”

Nolini Kanta Gupta, a long-time disciple of Sri Aurobindo, summarized:  “Sri Aurobindo’s message is very simple, almost self-evident.  The sum and substance of all he says is that man is growing and has to grow in consciousness till he reaches the complete and perfect consciousness, not only in his individual but in his collective, that is to say, social life.  In fact, the growth of consciousness is the supreme secret of life, the master key to earthly existence.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 9-10

Introduction to The Mind of Light

An evolution of consciousness is the hidden inner meaning and purpose of life on earth — this is the foundation for the teaching of Sri Aurobindo.  The secret thread running through all existence is the evolution.  Consciousness is involved within matter, and it successively manifests at higher levels in the course of time.  Thus plants, animals, and human beings have come forward through time on this planet.  Sri Aurobindo points out clearly that this evolutionary process has not been completed.  Within the seeking and aspiration that move through humanity, there is an underlying pressure for the manifestation of a new level of consciousness.  Sri Aurobindo called in the “supramental” consciousness, which is basically a descriptive term for the next level of awareness beyond the human mental capabilities.  This new consciousness will refashion both our physical bodies and our mental capabilities into a new integrated and harmonious structure.

Once we recognise the ongoing evolutionary urge of life, and the nature of the present evolutionary process, it becomes clear that a new being must evolve beyond the human.  This being will have capacities as far beyond the human as the human has capacities beyond the animal.

In The Mind of Light, Sri Aurobindo gives us both the conditions for these changes, and the likely direction these changes will take.  The book is a guide to the future evolution of consciousness and gives all those who aspire for something more luminous and harmonious a clear indication of the value and goal of their efforts.

The primary text of the U.S. edition of The Mind of Light, excluding the Introduction by Robert McDermott and the first chapter The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo, has been published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India under the title The Supramental Manifestation on Earth.

 

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction

The Formation of Sri Aurobindo’s Vision

The world is undergoing tremendous change.  “According to Sri Aurobindo’s vision, this change refers to the advance of human and cosmic evolution.  Sri Aurobindo’s personal life and philosophy of Integral Yoga attest to the fact that this transformation can only come about by man’s cooperation with the Supermind.”

Sri Aurobindo obtained a Western education during his school years, including attendance at King’s College, Cambridge, UK.  He returned to India and took up active studies of the texts, scriptures and languages of India.  He believed ardently that India had a spiritual destiny, to fulfill which, it needed its independence from Great Britain.  He was arrested, at times held in solitary confinement and tried, and he was eventually acquitted by a British judge.   He had already begun to undertake various yogic practices, and this was intensified during his time in jail   He later wrote:  “I began my Yoga in 1904 without a guru; in 1908 I received important help from a Mahratta Yogi and discovered the foundations of my sadhana; but from that time till the Mother came to India I received no spiritual help from anyone else.  My Sadhana before and afterwards was not founded upon books but upon personal experiences that crowded on me from within.  But int he jail I had the Git and the Upanishads with me, practiced the Yoga of the Gita and meditated with the help of the Upanishads, these were the only books from which I found guidance….”

The result of these experiences was that he eventually withdrew from his political activities and took up a life of spiritual practice.  While he lived in withdrawal from outer involvement in the political movements, his retirement was not an abandonment of the world, but a more intensive focus.  He recognised there was a spiritual force and action at work.  “It was this force which, as soon as he had attained to it, he used, at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterward in a constant action upon the world forces.”

Sri Aurobindo wrote about the spiritual experiences that became formational bases for his yogic practices and teaching:  “The first he had gained while meditating with the Maharashtrian Yogi, Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, at Baroda in January, 1908; it was the realization of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by the overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realization, which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is, which happened in the Alipore Jail.  To the other two realizations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading up to the Supermind, he was already on his way in his meditations in Alipore Jail.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Introduction by Robert McDermott, pp. 5-9

The Future Evolution of Man: Summary and Conclusions

It seems wherever we turn nowadays we are confronted with enormous challenges.  Climate change and global pollution are taking a toll on the planet and scientists confirm we are in the midst of the sixth species “die off” event they could document through geologic evidence on the planet.  The earth is under pressure like never before.  When we add to that humanity overrunning the resources of the planet by utilizing resources at a pace that is at least three times that which is sustainable, and that certain resources, such as fresh water, are under tremendous pressure.

All of these things are causes of disruption in human society and represent causes of conflict, migration and mass suffering.  Droughts, pandemics, increased intensity of catastrophic storms and fires, all challenge our way of interacting with the environment, the other species that share the planet with us, and with our fellow human beings.

Based on the habitual manner in which our mind responds to the vital and physical world around us, and the overarching influence of the vital ego on our mental processes, we have not only disrupted the balance of Nature, but we have created endless conflict through our narrow, limited, fragmented “either/or” way of seeing things and responding to issues that arise.  We thus see a proliferation of economic models, political systems, religious approaches to life that all seem to conflict with each other and which each believe to be the only truth, and therefore entitled to set the rules and guidelines for everyone else, either through persuasion or through majority rule, or if that fails, through compulsion and destructive acts.  The principle of desire which permeates the vital stage of evolution controls the application of the mind to achieve egoistic, not universal, objectives.

Meanwhile we continue to invade habitat that provides both the needed oxygen production for us to breathe, as well as restricts the range of other species, and increase the proximity of potential disease vectors, creating more opportunity for global pandemic events to occur.  Climate change also extends the range of disease vectors.

We continue to try to compensate for our depletion of resources through use of artificial fertilizers, and the expanded use of pesticides and herbicides, all of which increase the toxic load on the planet.

If this is not sufficient cause for concern, our economic models tend to result in a small number of individuals controlling the vast bulk of all resources on the planet and preventing equitable access to all of humanity.  Add to this our scourges of genocide, racism, religious bigotry and misogyny and we have created a toxic environment that makes it difficult, if not virtually impossible to resolve issues on a global basis with our current mental approach to affairs.

Clearly a change is needed.

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that the process of Nature in its evolutionary cycle is not solely related to the change of forms, but first and foremost, an evolution of consciousness, from the material, to the vital, to the mental, thus far.  He points out that this process tends to involve an increasing pressure on the existing status quo until such time as the next level of evolution can manifest and add an entirely new perspective and method of action.  It is time, based on the pressure we see in the natural world around us, and the gridlock that humanity has reached in its mental approach, for the next stage of the evolutionary cycle to manifest, the supramental manifestation.

The mind operates on the basis of separation, fragmentation and limited linear approaches to things.  It therefore misses major factors that are affected by its focused approach, leading to massive unintended consequences.  It is therefore not capable of solving the global, all-encompassing issues that threaten the very survival of humanity on the planet.  A new consciousness, based in oneness and recognizing the unity of the entire creation, the divine intention in that creation, and the infinite diversity that exists in the creation, is required to develop insights, solutions and methods that can resolve these conflicting approaches currently wreaking havoc on the planet.

Many believe that the solution to these crises will come about through advanced technology.  Technology certainly must play a role in addressing a number of issues, but it must be technology under the management of a comprehensive, integral vision, not driven by the mind’s limited and fragmented approach which creates problems while it solves specific issues.

A careful review of evolution, and an insightful view of human psychology and the unexplained capacities that sometimes arise, show us that there is a next phase to the evolutionary cycle that is pressuring to manifest more widely.  Humanity can support this needed development through conscious participation and preparation of our human psychology to widen, expand our capacities, perfect our instruments of action, and recognize the need for a wider, more inclusive view in our actions in the world.

The Future Evolution of Man has provided an organized presentation of the basis, necessity and steps towards the manifestation of the supramental consciousness on earth.  For those who want more detail we recommend reading The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and The Human Cycle: the Psychology of Social Development from which the presentation in the current volume has been compiled and presented by P.B. Saint-Hilaire.

Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man,