EWS #64 Planes of Consciousness (1)
Jan 18, 2020
Topics:
Narad (0:00:45):
Namaste and welcome to everyone to our evenings with Sraddhalu. Today we begin the most important subject that will be covered at great length, the planes of consciousness. Shall we begin?
Sraddhalu (0:01:13):
There is a significant difference between Sri Aurobindo's description of the cosmos and what normally is taught in the recent spiritual traditions. There are in fact several elements of distinction, as a result of which the nature of the yoga changes and also the potential of yoga changes. So I will briefly describe the current commonly known models and then we will go into the differences that form in Sri Aurobindo's approach. In the Western model of consciousness, you will find the bulk of the focus is on the subconscious. There is consciousness, by whatever means it emerges, whether it is a phenomenon of the biology of the brain or by some other means which is not described, there are various schools, but always there is this band of consciousness and below it, there is this whole subconscious domain. And somehow everything that we cannot explain within the domain of consciousness is shunted off to the subconscious. I am of course putting it in simplistic terms, but the rest is only a question of sophistication of this idea.
So for example, we discover that there is an instinct in birds. When a bird flies a great distance along the earth, there are birds which fly from the northern hemisphere all the way to the southern hemisphere, and they navigate themselves perfectly. An entire collection of birds will go to an exact location of a lake. Independent of the winds, independent of clouds, independent of all kinds of changes in weather patterns. What do you have to navigate? And you cannot say that the birds know where the stars are or that they recognize constellations because that also may not be visible at times. But they end up all exactly at this one little lake where they breed, and go back. Or as certain fish will come to breed in the ocean and then the baby fish will go all the way back up the river and they know how to get there. So there are elements of instinctive knowledge which we cannot explain and this is conveniently relegated to somewhere in the subconscious, in the collective consciousness, in the species and how it works or what makes it is never explained. This whole subconscious becomes like a big black box and it's a term you make to cover up your ignorance. We have used this analogy before whenever someone says it happened by chance. What we mean by chance is, I don't know how it happened. Rather than saying I don't know, I say it happened by chance. It looks like I know chance was the cause. So its subconscious does it and that's the cause.
Narad (0:04:28):
Doesn't Mother call it the genius of the species?
Sraddhalu (0:04:32):
Yes, so there are many other terms we will find which still they describe, they label a process, they label a phenomenon, they never explain. What is the genius of the species?
Audience (0:04:43):
It is also called the iceberg theory. Yes. Like the subconscious is hidden and only a part of it.
Sraddhalu (0:04:48):
Right, so the theory is still drawing an analogy of an iceberg, you see the conscious part and then the subconscious is much bigger, much more powerful and somehow never explained. But consciousness, yes we understand what it is and subconscious is where all the rest happens. But again it's a black box, you're just pushing it out to an unknown. There are other phenomena which take place under hypnosis, which again we cannot explain and they cannot even be explained in terms of biology. For example, under hypnosis you can be made to do things which you could not do physically. Your body can be made, for example, to be rigid. It's one of those astonishing demonstrations where you can be asked to lie down, making your body stiff with one head, with your head on a stool and your feet on another stool with nothing to support you in between. Can you do that? Obviously not. You need very strong stomach muscles. But under hypnosis you can be told, now your body is rigid and then you place the person like this and he can stay. Anybody reasonably healthy, can be made to be so rigid and when they do a stage demonstration, the hypnotist will sit on his stomach, doubling the weight and the pressure and the person takes it. He doesn't flinch. Pulled out of hypnosis, he cannot do it. What under this subconscious influence allows you to do things which you are unable to physically? Or under hypnosis you are made to recall things noticed or apparently did not even know and again what is this subconscious that has access to knowledge or to information which your consciousness doesn't have or even could not have got by any means. Or under hypnosis you can be told that whenever you see the let's say the colour green and the person will behave as if you put a curtain of green he will behave as if it's not there or you can make him switch colours, you'll see green as red and red as blue and the person will as a post hypnotic situation continue to have this very different perception. He will see all the trees having red leaves and it can stay on. He is fully conscious and he can be told you are imagining it and he says, no I can see it. The effect of that one suggestion made casually under hypnosis continues in your waking consciousness. What is this incredible thing that you are accessing which is subconscious that can affect your consciousness to such a degree, literally reshape it in a trice, you didn't have to practise anything, you didn't have to develop a capacity, it just happened with a single command.
Narad (0:07:40):
When a mother will lift a car because her infant is underneath it and it's thousands of pounds. Yes. That's not hypnosis?
[Sraddhalu] No.
[Narad] But she can do it.
Sraddhalu (0:07:50):
She cannot replicate after. In the moment of that anxiety and passion she is lifting a car to free her child. Afterwards you say, can you repeat it and she cannot. So what you see is a whole range of phenomena and since they are not explained you relegate them to subconscious processes or influences or something. Basically what we are saying is there is a whole body of phenomena which we cannot explain. What we can explain is a very tiny part but what we cannot explain we have just labelled, and it explains nothing. In the Indian tradition, we have a more complex model, and again there are variations in the models. In the Yoga tradition, we speak of three bodies, and we speak of an inner consciousness, anta-karana, the inner awareness or inner cause, and then three layers, three sheets around the soul or behind that or beyond that the self. But in the more recent spiritual traditions, especially the ascetic ones, you describe the physical body, the vital body, the mental body, the soul within perhaps or the self and there is nothing between the self and the mind. There's a huge gap. The analogy given is of a mountain peak and then there is the self beyond. And the light of the self at best can reflect on the peak which represents your mind and your mind can be partially illuminated but never really freed from its ignorance. And in that you can live long enough until after death you transition out and lose into the self, so that you never come back.
But then there is this mountain, where did it come from? If self is all, then this either becomes a domain of illusion, that's one way to dismiss, or it is a domain of suffering, we don't know how it came. If it is illusion, then Sri Aurobindo points out, you have to ask where did the illusion come from, who created such an extraordinary illusion so perfectly, precisely and again the tradition does not answer. So we go deeper to the whole question. We discover that, yes there is a truth to each of these. These models are incomplete and when we bring the larger picture we find that, yes there is a mind, there is the life force, there is matter, there is something which we call sub-conscious. But the subconscious, Sri Aurobindo adds to it the inconscient, which is a degree beyond, which is incapable of awareness, which is in the domain of matter, we will see, so-called dead matter. And all of these are one gradation. There is behind it all a whole realm which is enormous, bigger than the universe that we experience in our narrow consciousness. And that he calls subliminal, and in fact it's a term he borrows from the Western psychology. But he says it's not really subliminal the way they describe it. It has its own consciousness. It is perfectly conscious in itself. We are not conscious of it, that is all. And so you have an enormous, infinite, subliminal as if behind or surrounding and then above this all, there is the superconscious. And it is this which makes for the full picture. And all of these are as if expressions of the oneself, representing itself in various degrees or gradations of narrowing of its capacity.
Sraddhalu (0:11:37):
How does that oneself which is infinite become this? Well, there are two powers Sri Aurobindo points out. The ability of the consciousness to as if narrow itself to put a special focus and then to make that focus exclusive. These are two powers. So a consciousness which is infinite can still focus on an aspect or a part and narrow itself down to prioritising that, when it knows itself infinite. But then comes the second power which says, I will forget the infinite and remember only this and it focuses only on this until it seems as if this is all I am. And it is by this dual capacity that the infinite consciousness successively narrows down to become limited, denser gradations of consciousness all the way down to its complete self-loss in the lowest, what we call the inconscient. Of course, the question can be asked, why at all it needs to do this? And we can look at it in several ways. And one simple way is to view all this, all these gradations of consciousness and all that happens as one of the many possibilities in which the Divine consciousness, which is utterly free, can know itself and dwells on itself. And every possible experience that it knows itself and dwells upon is a reality, is an experience in the cosmos. And what happens is, things which are similar tend to sort themselves out, they cluster together because they resonate with each other. So in the Divine consciousness, from the finest to the densest, all possible experiences of consciousness exist, but always as aspects or expressions of its fully revealed oneness.
And then in our experience, things which are similar, cluster together, forming as if these gradations. So for our purpose of understanding, for being able to draw a picture in a book, we draw them as planes in a vertical descent or ascent. But actually everything is everywhere. And just things which are of the same grade of mind will interact with each other more, to create as if the experience of a world of mind. But things which are of matter do not interact with mind so easily so they seem to be apart, they seem to be separate. But where is the world of mind? It is right here. Where is the self? It is right here. It is only a question of tuning in to a different grade, to a different density so we use the analogy of a radio station or a radio receiver, where by tuning in you can pick up any range of frequencies, focus on a station and that's what you listen to or experience. So there's a very interesting experience that is possible, that you see sitting on this chair, your consciousness is largely tuned into the physical world, so you feel the chair, you see the physical things, and now you start shifting your tuning of consciousness and it's as if you rise layer by layer through these gradations and after a while you are more in the subtle physical domain and then the vital domain and the mental and still higher and you are as if tuning across a spectrum of gradations or tuning back and you are right back here into the physical world with the physical forms. And such a thing is possible because within us we have the full range of these gradations which have been developed and evolved.
Sraddhalu (0:15:20):
So the model here is much more complex, much more complete, but there is still something very important which you do not find in any of the current models of consciousness. It is only found in the Vedic tradition, or memories of it remain in some of the old traditions. And this is the idea that in that initial movement, as the Divine manifests to become this multiplicity and develops all these gradations of consciousness, each is a world in itself. And so there is a descending movement of what Sri Aurobindo calls involution. And all the worlds of the cosmos are as if formed in that descending movement all of these as they form are as if pouring into the next. So the freedom of the self pours itself into a narrower consciousness which pours itself into a narrower one and so by degrees each of the higher ones is concealed or bound in the lower ones, until going down all the way to the most inconscient. It seems as if consciousness loses itself, forgets itself and that's the domain which we will call complete material domain of consciousness. That involutionary movement implies all the higher gradations now concealed and hidden into this densest lowest matter matter.
Narad( 0:16:50):
I'd like to go back to the beginning again and ask you, in the West, how did this unconscious aspect begin and through whom?
Sraddhalu (0:17:02):
In fact, what is not documented too well is that a lot of these concepts came from the Eastern traditions. The initial psychologists in Europe and even scientists were students of Eastern philosophies and many of these concepts came from the East, including the concept or the vocabulary even of being and becoming is taken directly from the Upanishads. And some of these were adapted to the then current Western thinking and it had not become so rigidly material as it is understood today. Until the late 1800s, it had not become exaggerated in its exclusive materialism. That was there as a strong tendency, but there was always the recognition that there is this whole domain of subtle phenomena and realities. It is somehow in a later part with the coming of quantum physics and so on that exaggerated materialism became overwhelming. And then it ties in with certain social changes, particularly with the two great wars in Europe, that a kind of a cynicism that came in and the complete denial of a higher spiritual possibility that hardened this position. But otherwise scientists, there were always scientists working in this subtler range and psychology. You see this again in psychology between Freud and Jung, a big difference in their approach. And it shows you that although the exaggerated place given to Freud comes later, that seems to be more a tendency of the age than the acceptance by all in that period.
Still the attempt was somehow to reduce to material, tangible and measurable terms. We discussed once the attempt to weigh the body, the way to weigh the soul by keeping somebody on a balance and watch him die and then see the weight drops, so that you can measure the weight of the soul. The idea that there's something which must be tangible by material means was always prevalent. But it was accepted that it could be beyond the tangibility. So this involutionary process then prepares the way for an evolutionary possibility and that takes place inevitably because, in matter all of the higher grades of consciousness are implied and involved. And if they are involved then they can't stay bound for long because if the consciousness is essentially free and essentially infinite you can bind it as much as you want but somewhere it retains the memory of its freedom and its infinity. And so that memory acts as a gourd and nudge and little by little it starts pushing its way out. Out of what? Out of matter. Out of what appears to be inconscience, incapable of consciousness. So out of dead matter you find the first push spring of consciousness bursting, collapsing, bursting and collapsing. We see this of course in the most obvious phenomena, earliest phenomena in crystalline structures, where crystal seems to grow like plant and follows even a pattern which is exactly the same in its growth pattern.
We had a discussion a few sessions ago of the work of Jagdish Chandra Bose was that? Yes. Where he observed the growth of crystals, short burst pause, short burst pause, growth of plants, let's say one of the fastest growing plants is the bamboo which can grow one of the species up to one foot a day, so that's measurable, burst pause, burst pause, and the same in the tissue of the body. And the graph of all three, when he placed before the scientists, you couldn't distinguish. His point was to prove that the driving component in all three processes is the same and that is life force, prana or whatever name you choose to give to it. But that being inside matter is and the closest to the denseness of matter has the maximum hold on matter, and therefore can push its way out first. Prana itself is a densified form of the mental awareness. It does not have a direct influence on matter, but it has an influence on prana. So once prana begins to emerge, inside prana is the mind awareness, which is nudging its way in prana, guiding it, giving it forms, directions, purpose, intentions. Which again can be seen in a subtle form in the plant and even more obviously in more complex forms. And inside the mind is the next higher plane, which is guiding mind and pushing its way out of mind. So you see the logic of this emergence. You don't see mind popping out of matter first. It cannot, because it cannot influence matter. But it can influence life, which can influence matter. So first it's life emergent, with implied intelligent pattern or behaviour which you see in the crystalline structure with the perfect arrangement of molecules.
Sraddhalu (0:22:36):
Now at first you can say that the perfect structure of molecules is pure physics. But again if you go deeper into the questions of physics, why is the molecule this way? Why does it behave that way. Oh, that's the ionic molecule of this pattern, so it has to behave that way. But why? At some point you are assuming it and at that point you say, well we don't know that's how it is. Why is an atom which has less electrons on the surface shell unstable? Why is it trying to grab an electron from elsewhere? How can it stay without being complete. And there is some logic we can give to it, which goes into the explanation of physics, but the why at that point eventually comes to, well that's how it is. Why is an electron an electron? What makes it such? That's how it is. But when you go to that level of crystalline structures forming, at small levels you can still reduce it to yes, description by formula, but when it becomes large enough, the shape of the crystal is often so perfect. One flat face on one side, another flat face on another side, exactly six sides and then sharp pointing cones, top and bottom and each crystalline structure is different according to the material. You cannot explain what makes it capable of this perfect structure, coordinating one side with another. There would always have been defects if the molecules fell into place by chance, which you don't see. It's not just a bundle like that. It takes on a distinct form. You could still try to explain it in terms of electric fields and so on, but still, at the end of it you come to the recognition that within the electric field or whatever process there is something which knows one side and knows the other and can make this guide the molecules to get a perfect shape. And these are the signs of mind inside life but bound. And because bound, therefore it seems to be mechanical and therefore it seems we have caught it in our formula. As it comes out further, as life comes out further and then as mind comes out from life it gets more and more free and your formulas become less and less rigid. So when you enter the chemistry zone, it's much more fluid than let's say at the atomic level. When you enter into the working of cells then it becomes unpredictable already. You cannot describe, except in a general way. You come to larger organic forms, plants or animals you cannot predict at all, except general tendencies within the species. That's about it. So what you see is increasing freedom as the consciousness emerges but driven by this hidden compulsion of the Divine consciousness concealed, involved. So this idea of an involution which then drives an evolution is something which you find in the Veda, which is largely lost even in the Vedic tradition in India. Sri Aurobindo reawakens that, but gives to it a more elaborate description. You find this in many of the old cultures. In the Hebrew tradition, for example, the idea of a double stairway to God, which is the descending stair and the ascending stair of consciousness. But the true meaning of it is completely lost.
Narad (0:26:09):
Your teacher would often tell us that there can be no evolution without an involution.
[Sraddhalu] Yes.
[Narad] Very clearly.
Sraddhalu (0:26:22):
Yes, when you look at it this way it seems so logical and so obvious that nothing can come out if it was not already somehow inside concealed. The problem of physics is we do not have a reasonably good model of what matter really is. We have made certain constructions of structures, particles and atoms falling together, but where did they come from, what are they made of, or what makes them appear in the first place? Well, there was a big bang, which somehow released energy, which somehow became the particles. So, what made the big bang, what was before it, and it all gets into a very murky space. But what people don't realise is the concept of the big bang itself is the remnant of the earlier phase of religion. It came from the biblical tradition which said God said that there be light and the world was born. So that idea stayed with the science after it had discarded the religion. This still had to be a starting point because the idea was so fixated. So the Big Bang had to be somehow proved or accepted. And at some point this was easily justified when they saw that stars at a great distance appeared to be receding, but this could be explained in many ways and the simplest explanation is that light which comes from far actually loses energy by the time it travels and so its frequency drops a little bit and because the frequency drops you can either say the light has got tired, lost energy, or you could say those stars are moving away from you at a faster pace and so that justified the Big Bang theory and gave it an origin to the universe so it became mainstream. But the other theory which is tired light theory was always there. It made much more sense but it led to a problem, you can't conceive of a start of the universe. When did it begin? There is no beginning. But somehow your mind says it has to begin sometime. And that's where physics gets into trouble. If there is a beginning to the universe, what was before it began? When did time begin? Or what does it mean for time to begin? It gets into a domain which is so metaphysical that either the scientist says that's not our concern or he avoids that problem.
Narad (0:28:55):
And if there's a beginning, where is the end?
Sraddhalu (0:28:58):
Exactly. So the Big Bang conveniently gives you a beginning and then it can end with a big crunch or it can continue to expand. We don't know and we avoid that question. But in the attempt to avoid this question of before Big Bang or before the fact that there is no beginning, what you created as a Big Bang theory inevitably ends up with the same problem. So, let's look at it this way. When matter comes, let's go backward in time, to the point of Big Bang, as matter is coming closer and closer to the point of Big Bang, there is a huge gravitational field, which makes space bend, time slowdown , until at the moment of the Big Bang, space squeezes upon itself into extinction, time slows down until it stops, and so you never reach the Big Bang. So the farther you go back in time, the slower time becomes, until you never reach the Big Bang. So what you have done is actually what was eternal, that is, it has no beginning and no end, you mathematically squeezed into a finite band, but approaching that finite edge you never reach it, it's as if still imitates eternity. So these are all strange ideas, there are very simple solutions to this which is to accept that there is no beginning and end. The nature of the universe is eternal, and the mind baulks at this idea because it cannot conceive of eternity or infinity and that suggests that our mind is not our highest vehicle of knowledge. We can imagine the idea of infinity or eternity but we cannot conceive of infinity and eternity. That we can have an idea of it. Even the term can exist because we have an idea, shows you that there is a higher faculty of mind or beyond mind where that should be conceivable and experienceable. At least that's the suggestion.
So all of this is to just explain the first stage of this evolutionary journey as a consequence of the involution. The implication though is that the evolution is not complete unless it goes all the way back to its origin. So where we are today in the human consciousness is life had organised itself in mind..no..life has organised itself in matter, mind has organised itself in life. What happens next? There is still something inside mind concealed and pushes its way out. Sri Aurobindo has a very interesting description of this emergence in evolution. The nature of the emergence, he says is that at each step what comes out is as if the opposite of what was before and impossible to the previous term. Unless it is impossible, it is not an evolution, it is just a further development of an existing strata, isn't it? So when there was matter, which is so-called dead matter, and I keep saying so-called because you can find tendencies of life force but very concealed and not overt, not free. So in this dead matter, you don't see life. And then somehow life emerges. We can say by chance to cover up our ignorance, but still, it emerges because it is pushing its way out, because it was concealed and that's our solution for that. It is pushing itself out and it in its initial emergence is so dependent on matter that it cannot do much without the support of matter. So it can only emerge in certain conditions where matter is suitably balanced, which allows this free flow of life play. But once it comes into its own sufficiently, it turns upon matter and now begins to dominate matter. It now organises matter by its own power to make itself independent of material conditions. And that's what you see very quickly emergent in the single-celled stable structure of life. The single cell can move around, modify itself or adapt to changing material conditions and then spread and so on. The emergence of life therefore is something radically different from what matter was and as if the very opposite of matter. It is living against what was dead. Out of dead thing comes something living and that's the first, let's say, miraculous leap. Similarly, out of life forms, which now become more and more complex, we don't need to say much because it's only complexity of life, but with the complexity you see first signs of intelligence and even of awareness. Very quickly life organises itself to enter in relation with things, sense its environment, modify its environment, modify itself to adapt to its environment and so on.
Sraddhalu (0:34:05):
There was a recent experiment, 1992 is when I saw the paper published, where they said that in an experiment on bacterial culture they introduced a poison into the Petri dish, bulk of the bacteria died and a few survived by creating within themselves a genetic mutation which made them immune to the poison. Now if it had happened to one bacterium, we could have said yes, random chance. We're still not saying why. Maybe there was a cosmic ray which bumped one of those mutation and it survived. It happened in many of the bacteria and identical mutation in many of them at the same time but no other mutation. And this the researchers concluded suggests that within the bacterium is an intelligence that in response to the poison knew what it needed to do to make a genetic mutation to survive the poison. And it acted up in many of the bacteria of that culture. Very simple experiment, the logic of it of course you cannot deny, but what it shows is at that level there is already a kind of intelligence inside the cell but it's not the intelligence the way we experience it as a human mind, which can think and strategize. It seems to be a more instinctive, lower grade of intelligent working. But then you find that intelligence operates in collective behaviour, which has some extraordinary intelligence also. One of the things we see today is, in a culture of bacteria, there is an exchange not only of information, but also of material. They exchange material with connections. If one has less, the other will give it. What kind of a complex collective behaviour is this, that you are sharing resources and communicating information?
Even in the sea bed, there is a mossy layer of bacteria which forms. It's kind of a slimy layer. And they find there are electrical voltages that build across layers. And then there is a complex communication system and the whole thriving social life, so to say, of the bacteria. All of this shows you some complex intelligence, but working in a very limited power of expression. Okay, so we go through many levels of plants and then comes a radical change. Let's say in the higher ranges of plants, you see a complexity of knowledge or intelligence which is so great. On a hill where there is a forest from one side to the other, on one end of the hill there is an attack by a pest. And information of the attack is transmitted across to the other trees on the other side of the hill, who begin to now emit a gum which is repellent for that particular pest. So the trees here knew of an attack on the other side, they knew what they needed to do to compensate for that attack and immunise themselves in advance, they knew therefore the pest, they knew what was against the pest, what the pest didn't like and they knew how to exude it out of their own tissue. That's intelligence and a very complex intelligence and increasingly today there is documentation of how the roots underground are communicating in complex ways and even transferring material and information and even assisting each other. There's an exchange of genetic material and a lot of epigenetic phenomena also involved. All of this shows you intelligence struggling to emerge, consciousness struggling to emerge, or self-awareness. So out of plant comes this push of consciousness emergent until it comes into its own sufficiently and there you have another breakthrough. What earlier was subconscious life now becomes conscious life, again as if an opposite emerging and that we see most developed in animals. Of course in the higher ranges of animals more obvious, in lower earlier forms less conscious.
Sraddhalu (0:38:40):
In fact you see a very interesting pattern on a macro level. The number of senses are very few initially and they blur into each other. In a worm for example, you have touch, you don't have sight. But the touch is also the taste, is also the smell. They are just variations of each other. With its skin, it doesn't have a specialised organ for a nose or even doesn't have hearing. The same skin acts as hearing. The skin is also lightly photosensitive, it responds to light, so it's your seeing. The same skin is operating on five senses in a way. As it grows more and more complex, the five senses differentiate, create specialised organs, and now come into their own as separate powers. But what you see is the five were already involved as separate powers, but not able to express this distinctiveness and they push their way out. And so you have a very interesting idea in the whole evolutionary process. There is something inside concealed as a potential, as a capacity, which is driving the evolution inside out. And then there might be something externally assisting to draw out or create circumstances which make it easier. And as this inside out is pushing out it has to work through matter always and in matter it is a resistant rigid structure and so small nudges pushes bursts which create the appearance of random changes. So randomness, Sri Aurobindo says is the screen behind which, the deeper powers are hidden and out of some random events somehow things emerge and take form and then come into their own and then turn around on their origin and begin to dominate and master their circumstance. So we come through animal life, consciousness, more and more complex, complex expressions of consciousness in social orders, emotions as one of those forms of expression of consciousness. And then from the animal to the human is like a sub-step, but still, if you had to give it a distinct character, you have self-awareness, as distinct from the animal. And it seems to take another leap. You don't have a link in between, at least not so far found.
And this is one of the interesting points of this whole evolutionary tree. We have now pictures of how it is starting from one single cell, there are these large branches which make for distinctive amphibian or mammalian or avian and such types. And then within those branching out, and then you discover something which appeared on one branch also appears on another branch, as if it seems to come from the same source, but its origin was completely different. As if a single power, the same power, but now emergent from different biological processes or different host. And all of this suggests that the power was always latent and is there latent in all these creatures, but found its opportunity or attempted. But the common thing you see everywhere, that you do not see transition between species or there is no record left of the transition. You have let's say the horse and the zebra and we assume that one of them came out of the other. I don't know what is the official story, whether horse came out of zebra or not or they both came out of something else. But if that is so, that is something else and we may find, lets say fossil evidence of that something else. We do not find in between links. We do not find a continuum of changes which brings you to this new species. And so it is one of the problems of evolution which gives a lot of strength to those who are against the concept of evolution for religious reasons again, not for rational reasons and a lot of this comes from some of the biblical traditions which say that God created everything in one go. So there is no evolution and when you show them evidence of dinosaur bones, they'll say, ‘yeah, God planted those bones’, so that you may think that there was a past but he created the world in 4000 BC, because some Pope said so long ago. Of course that has changed today increasingly, even within that group there are people who recognize, yes there was some change, but it is still part of the God created Big Bang.
Narad (0:43:23):
They still have a creationist museum in Kentucky.
Sraddhalu (0:43:27):
And they pick out all these flaws to the evolutionary theory. And it seems, if you take only that side, it seems to justify the fact that there could not have been intermediate steps because we have no evidence for it. We still don't have evidence for the transition from ape to human. We find many human types and there have now come to nearly a dozen human types, but we still don't see things in between. And so that seems to justify their idea, God designed it and made it happen, that's it. But once we understand this inner impulse of powers of consciousness which are already up in the original consciousness present, more and more concealed through the involution, a power pushing out when it gets a chance will rapidly emerge and it might happen within two or three generations. And once it has formed what it needed to express itself from an inside-out drive, it stabilises because it has come into its own. In the same way as what we discussed earlier, emergent consciousness turning upon matter now pushes back and comes into its own. But this process of initial struggle of emergence may be long, but once it has emerged, it can quickly turn around and seize on the situation. And so the actual transition, if it involved a series of steps, might take place within a few generations. And therefore you don't find enough fossil evidence for these things. If at all there was, it happened in a few species. And then after that the changed form multiplies.
Why is this important? I'm dwelling on this not not for academic interests, because this has huge implications for humanity today. All of this which we are describing, the same process is happening within us. Within our mind, within the power of our intellect, our thinking mind, is involved a still higher power. And that is guiding from inside out, that is pushing to form its new organs. Whether those organs are biological or psychological is not the point. That they are organs through which the powers can express themselves and in the initial push there may be a struggle, once they come into their own, suddenly, within a couple of generations, they will then hold on to their own and push back on that which resists them. All of the past evolution which we are describing was driven inside out by, we will use the general term nature or the intelligence concealed in nature and was a slow and laborious process. In the human being though, we have the capacity to become conscious of this power which is active within me. Oh I have the power for example to get an insight, to get knowledge without going through a process of thought and intuition. And I experience it occasionally in flashes. What happens now? Oh, I noticed it happened when my mind was in such and such a state. And I shape my mind to make it supportive of that state and help it to happen, in which case I don't need to wait even for those few generations of a biological slow process. I accelerate and make it happen consciously, actively with my participation, and I make it happen right now, in my lifetime. So the potential for this transition is that from the human mental consciousness to the next whatever step it is, can happen in a single lifetime.
Narad (0:47:15):
We are seeing it now in many people. A fellow who could see the planets. Yes. Ingo Swann.
Sraddhalu (0:47:28):
The abilities which we associate with siddhis or psychic powers would be part of that emergent process, but in itself not necessarily of a spiritual value. There are still powers of the vital or mental consciousness in its own horizontal expansion of potential, but the grade of consciousness higher, which is not dependent on mind process, as for example intuition, that could be the forward step in evolution. But along with it will come the widening of these powers and the freeing up of the powers still latent in our mental and vital consciousness, including these. So the reason I am going in great detail in this is because it has very important implications. So this is one problem of the evolutionary theory which came from the random chance mutation, which was popularised by the Darwinian school, let's say. And with that came the other problem. If this is happening, then it must be happening extensively all the time. We don't see sign of it. It happens once in a while for no reason, so they say it's random, which means we don't know why, but it happens. And then, suddenly the new species emerges and the old either dies out or cannot survive for some reason, maybe climate change or something has changed. So they had to bring in this idea that the newer species eliminates the old. And so the idea of a domination and a struggle and a fight.
[Narad] survival of the fittest.
[Sraddhalu] Yes, survival of the fittest. And so the concept of evolution was given this very crude and coarse idea that evolution is inherently destructive. The superior will destroy the inferior. And that came from that school. Although Darwin himself was not so strongly in favour of it, the school itself we have to say was the root cause of this idea. Which then justifies human current life values. This is a big problem in the current crisis, whether you call it climate crisis or life crisis or human survival crisis, that all of our current systems of economy, governance or communication etc. are designed on this idea that the fitter one, the stronger one will destroy the weaker one. So if you see all the old cultures, they had lineages, families of business, developing their own specialisation, their own skills, artisans and so on, or trade, for generations. But today, they don't survive, they are eaten up by larger, until there is a monopoly of some kind. And then the government has to step in to break it up, but then the monopoly is only hidden and they are just working together.
If you see airline prices, all of them have the same prices with the difference of a few rupees here and there. And it doesn't happen by chance. It happens because of a coordination, either explicit or implicit. Each is watching each other's prices and tunes in. That's also a kind of collaboration. It's not real competition anymore. But what we see in a more subtle way is the banks own all the corporations. They play games for the buyers, but behind there is no real competition. And all of this is based on the concept of destructive competition, which brings evolution and growth, diversity into a monotone, flattens out diversity and destroys creativity. And the monopoly suffocates the mass and the urge in nature for producing diversity. Very quickly that builds up into a resistance, a reaction, a revolt and then a breakdown of the system and then a reboot. And some of this is celebrated in many of the Western traditions. They say, okay, it's time to fix the whole thing by destroying everything and rebooting. And the people who speak about it openly. But that's not how nature works. In nature, you have the full diversity in the forest. The stronger protects the weaker. The weak assists the stronger. And everyone is working together in collaboration. There is no destructive competition. Can human beings live like this? Yes, of course. We are meant to. That's our deepest instinct. All these destructive forms are falsehood and cannot last inherently because they destroy themselves eventually. They consume themselves.
Sraddhalu (0:57:18):
So again, to understand all this, putting it in the context of evolution, that inside evolution is this impulse rapidly speeding up, not needing too many steps because of the push of the power of consciousness now emerging into its own, but always pushing for a diversity and a variety of possibilities. So higher you go up in the scale of evolution, the more fluid, the more free the behaviour of the life forms. The second problem which you do not, which the Darwinian evolution has, is if all evolution was by random mutation of some kind, then you would equally have loss of capacity in evolution. And you don't see that. You see evolution pushing forward and if it doesn't want to push forward well it stops, but it doesn't regress. In fact one of the associated problems is that it doesn't explain why certain forms remain stuck. You can say they are perfectly adapted to their environment. No, but they could grow further in skill. So the crocodile for example is exactly the same as it was 60 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out. Nothing has changed. So what you see is an impulse pushing until it comes into its own and then it stops. Once the consciousness has found its base and says, ‘okay I'm happy with this expression’, it seems almost each species represents a particular bundle of consciousness expression and having reached it, it stops and then only develops a little bit in skills and capacities but in a narrow band, varying. This is not explained.
The only explanation which comes from the yoga perspective is this. Remember the involutionary process and the worlds which were formed there and within those worlds the powers playing out their play. Every life form that you see on earth, you will find it represented in such beings in those worlds. Every bird, every animal here on earth, you will see in the vital worlds made of life energy, vital substance with certain pattern of behaviour and it's as if those things have manifested into matter and being manifest in matter they have got somehow reduced and bound but the characteristic pattern of their behaviour is actually from that world. If you see them there, you see them here, you say, ah that's the one, it's the same one, you can recognize them. So let's say the zebra and the horse, both exist in the vital world as forms with a particular quality of energy, behaviour, pattern, etc. of which these are embodiments and once this has come into its own in the material form, it doesn't need to grow further because now it's complete as it was there. So the implication here is, again very important for our evolution, while there's a push inside out which is pushing to develop powers, as it comes into its own, there is a pull from outside in from the equivalent power of consciousness in the other worlds and there is a resonance because it is the same energy, the same faculty, the same power of consciousness now emerging from involved condition and the other from its free condition and so that as if assists and draws and helps while from here within it pushes out. So there is, we will use the word a prototype or an idea of horse, of the species consciousness and it lives in the vital world as a species being because in the vital world the affinity of consciousness is free, it is not bound as in the material. And so the horse species will have a group awareness even as there might be individualizations of it and so the species consciousness belongs properly to the vital world of which the materialised embodiment is a representation of a special form.
Sraddhalu (0:56:29):
So this is one of those problems we touched earlier which is not explained. Where is the species consciousness held? And you can't say subconscious. It's not subconscious. It's actually in the vital world. Can you change something there? And this now enters the domain of occult experiences and there are traditions which teach you this. For example, to do with snakes particularly the snake charmer lineages. They will teach you to enter in relation with the species consciousness of the snake which exists in the vital world and it's one of those very low grades of vital, it's a lower vital world, easily accessible and you make friends with the species and when you meet that species consciousness, it appears in snake form obviously, but it has a majesty corresponding to the fact that it is the representative of the whole species. It has an individualization which you don't see in the separate forms of the species. And you make a pact. And the pact may be something say, well you will not kill my species and I will not harm you. Once you have made the pact with that species consciousness, that arrangement is spontaneously present in all the physical snakes. As you approach them, they sense that in their collective consciousness, oh this is a friend, nothing to fear and they don't bite. But if you break the pact, then that consciousness changes and says, no but, now I will bite back. So this may be done explicitly by an occult process or it may develop naturally by repeated contact of the species.
So you develop a friendship with dogs for example, and the domesticated dog is a species now, feels lonely without the human companionship, because we have built up this relationship across many generations and now it's embedded in the species consciousness. The horses which have been domesticated, they need the nourishment of the owner to look at them and appreciate them. Otherwise they go into a depression. I don't know if you are aware of this, it's a standard practice in all horse farms, stud farms or generally horse farms, that the owner sits and every morning the horses are brought one by one and the owner has to look and acknowledge to the horse that he recognizes and cares for him. At that point you will see the horses proudly look like that and when they see you appreciate it they feel good and they go ahead. If you don't do that they begin to lose sense of purpose. They enjoy to be ridden, they want to be ridden, they want to have the sense of that master on their back. So it's a species relationship we have developed between the humans and the horses, which at least for the domesticated horse works quite well and so with many dogs. So what we see here is a whole range of phenomena which earlier could not be explained, begin to acquire not only a rationale, but have implications for what our life means.
We are not here by chance, even the forms of animals are not by chance, they are embodiments of forms in the subtler worlds, and the relationships they reflect here. And as we grow into our higher and diviner capacities, these relationships also will unfold. And the implication also is that we are meant to be, so to say, an assistance to these animals in their own growth. Sri Aurobindo makes this very interesting suggestion that as the human mind came into mental awareness, other animal forms which were close enough experience the pull because now this consciousness is resonating or through interaction with those animals it can grow. But similarly as the human consciousness rises into still higher ranges, these animals also will experience their higher potential as if being drawn up by this general uplift in the human space of a higher range of possibilities. So all of this is giving us a first broad picture of evolution behind that the structure of the cosmos and what we will do in the next session is to view what happens in these higher levels. In the human, between human animals and then between human and the higher ranges. What are the possibilities and what can we do and what's waiting for us?
Narad (1:01:20):
Thank you. Namaste.
[Sraddhalu] Namaste.