Scientists have always wondered how a thinking being could develop from what they see as a dead material world, devoid of life and intelligence. Religions in some cases posit an extra-universal being who acts as a creator, fashions finished beings and plants them onto the earth fully formed. Some believe that random chance interactions of material elements, subject to light and heat from the sun, gave rise to life and mind, thus obviating the need for a divine intelligence that shapes and fashions the beings that inhabit the planet. Charles Darwin identified in his book The Origin of Species, an evolution of forms with ever-increasing complexity and powers of life and mind. What he did not identify was how and under what impulsion these forms evolved.
Over the last several hundred years, physicists and astrophysicists have worked to uncover the secrets of Matter and Energy, and thereby to understand the origin of the universe and of life, and the manifestation of intelligence. This research has been accompanied by a similar depth of research on the biological side. The marvel and mystery of the highly organized atomic structure of matter, the mathematical precision of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and the similarly highly organized DNA/RNA structures that underpin living organisms, makes it clear that there is no “random chance” at work here. This is evidence of an “involved” intelligence that takes these forms in Matter, and then evolves into the forms of Life and eventually Mind. Recently, leading edge scientists have been declaring that not only is Matter a concentrated form of Energy, but that Energy is a concentrated form of Consciousness, which pervades the universe. This brings the scientists to the brink of an integration between a divine Intelligence transcending, pervading, containing and constituting all in the universe, and the very existence of Matter, Life and Mind.
Sri Aurobindo writes: “Sri Aurobindo’s teaching states that this one being and consciousness is involved here in matter. Evolution is the process by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop toward a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second. But the evolution does not finish with mind; it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be toward the development of Supermind and spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo, pg. 21
Sri Aurobindo Studies 