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<P ALIGN=center style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><b>
<font size="4">Evolution
of the Spiritual Consciousness</font></b></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><BR><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>EVEN the Vedic Rishis used
to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. &quot;The
ancients&quot;, they said, &quot;worshipped Agni, we too the moderns
in our turn worship the same godhead&quot;. Or again, &quot;Thus
spoke our forefathers&quot;; or, &quot;So have we heard from those
who have gone before us&quot; and so on.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.29cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>Indeed,
the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline seems to have
been always to realise once again what has already been realised by
others, to rediscover what has already been discovered, to
re-establish ancient truths. Others have gone before on the Path, we
have only to follow. The teaching, the realisation is handed down
uninterruptedly through millenniums from Master to disciple. In other
words, the idea is that the fundamental spiritual realisation remains
the same always and everywhere: the name and the form only vary
according to the age and the surroundings. The one Reality is called
variously, says the Veda. Who can say when was the first dawn! The
present dawn has followed the track of the infinite series that has
gone by and is the first of the infinite series that is to come. So
sings Rishi Kanwa. For the core of spiritual realisation is to
possess the consciousness, attain the status of the Spirit. This
Spirit may be called God by the theist or Nihil by the Negativist or
Brahman (the One) by the Positivist (spiritual). But the essential
experience, of a cosmic and transcendental reality, does not differ
very much. So it is declared that there is only one goal and aim, and
there are, at the most, certain broad principles, clear pathways
which one has to follow if one is to move in the right direction,
advance smoothly and attain infallibly: but these have been well
marked out, surveyed and charted and do not admit of </FONT><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-top: medium none; border-bottom: 1px solid #000000; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; padding-top: 0cm; padding-bottom: 0.07cm; padding-left: 0cm; padding-right: 0cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 247</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>serious alterations and
deviations. The spiritual aspiration is a very definite and unitary
movement and its fulfilment is also a definite and invariable status
of the consciousness. The spiritual is a type domain, one may say,
there is no room <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">here </FONT>for
sudden unforeseen variation or growth or evolution.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.43cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>Is
it so in fact? For if one admits and accepts &nbsp;the evolutionary
character of human nature and consciousness, the outlook becomes
somewhat different. According to this view, human civilisation is
seen as moving through progressive stages: man at the outset was
centrally lodged in and occupied with his body consciousness, he was
an <I>annamaya purusa; </I>then he raised himself and was centred in
the vital consciousness and so became fundamentally a <I>pr<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Äņ</FONT>amaya
purusa; </I>next he climbed into the mental consciousness and became
the manomaya <I>purusa;</I> from that level again he has been
attempting to go further beyond. On each plane the normal life is
planned' according to the central character, the law - dharma – of
that plane. One can have the religious or spiritual experience on
each of these planes, representing various degrees of grow and
evolution according to the plane to which it is attached. 1 It is
therefore that the Tantra refers to three gradations of spiritual
seekers and accordingly three types or lines of spiritual discipline:
the animal (pa<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ś</FONT>u bh<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>va)
the heroic (V<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ī</FONT>ra bh<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>va)
and the godly or divine (deva bh<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>va)<I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">.
</FONT></I>The classification is not merely typal but also
hierarchical and evolutionary in character.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.43cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>The
Divine or the spiritual consciousness, instead of being a simple
unitary entity, is a vast, complex stratified reality. &quot;There
are many chambers in my Father's mansions&quot;, says the Bible: many
chambers on many storeys, one may add. Also there are different
levels or approaches that serve different seekers, each with his own
starting-point, his <I>point de rep<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&egrave;</FONT>re.
</I>When one speaks of union with the Divine or of entering into the
spiritual consciousness, one does not refer to the same identical
truth or reality as any other. There is a physical Divine, a vital
Divine, a mental Divine; and beyond the mind – from where one may
consider that the region of true spirit begins-there are <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">other
</FONT>innumerable modes, aspects, manifestations of the Divine.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.44cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>As
we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">but
</FONT>there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness
rises tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook,
rhythm</FONT><BR>
			</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="text-indent: 0.44cm; border-top: medium none; border-bottom: 1px solid #000000; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; padding-top: 0cm; padding-bottom: 0.07cm; padding-left: 0cm; padding-right: 0cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 248</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><SPAN LANG="en-US"><FONT SIZE=3>and character. Now,
as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital or
mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his
body and life and even mind lay <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">heavy
</FONT>on him and their gravitational pull was normally very strong,
almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted generally and
fundamentally as a movement of escape, from them into <I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">some
</FONT></I>thing beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and
it was enough to dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and
somehow rise into something which is not that <I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">(neti):
</FONT></I>the question was not important at that stage of. the human
consciousness about a scientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise
constitution and composition.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.33cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>But
once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised, familiar
and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human being has been
mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it inevitable for
him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually, then it
becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one
goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond.
The question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too;
but it was more or less an interesting enquiry, a good part
speculative and theoretical; it had not the reality and insistence of
the need of the hour. We have today chalked out an almost exhaustive
science of the inferior consciousness, of the lower hemisphere – of
course, so far as it is possible for such a science to be exhaustive
moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness. In the
same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science
of the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there
is also a logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too
has to be discovered and laid out.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.35cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>Thus,
the highest and most comprehensive description of the Divine is
perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even so, it is a very
general and, after all, an inadequate description. It has to be
filled in and supplemented by other categories as well, if one may
say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us the Sat Brahman. There is
also the Asat Brahman. And'</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>again we must accept a
reality which is neither Sat nor Asat –<I> n<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>sad<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>s<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ī</FONT>nno
sad<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>s<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ī</FONT>t,
</I>says the Veda. And as for the filling up of the details in an
otherwise almost blank and featureless</FONT><BR>
			</P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-top: medium none; border-bottom: 1px solid #000000; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; padding-top: 0cm; padding-bottom: 0.07cm; padding-left: 0cm; padding-right: 0cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<SPAN LANG="en-US"><FONT SIZE=3>Page – 249</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><SPAN LANG="en-US"><FONT SIZE=3>infinity, Sri
Aurobindo's charting of that vast unknown – with the categories of
the Supermind and its various levels, of the Overmind and its levels
too, all forming the Divine Status and Consciousness – is a new,
almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which
the present <FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">world </FONT>needs
and demands and for which it has been prepared through all the cycles
of evolution.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.42cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>This
means that with the knowledge that is given us today one can
determine more or less definitely the altitudes to which the various
spiritual realisations of the past rose and one can see also the
degrees or graded stages of the evolution of the spiritual
consciousness. A broad landmark can be noted here which concerns us
at the present moment. The spiritual consciousness has been rising to
higher and higher peaks and possessing them one after another. At the
present moment we are at a crisis, at a crucial crossing. The
spiritual consciousness attained till now and securely held in human
possession i</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>(in man's inner nature) is
confined to the highest level of the mind with some infiltration from
the Overmind and through that, as a springing board, a leap into an
indefinite, almost a blank Beyond. Now the time is come and the
conditions are ready for the spiritual consciousness in humanity to
arrive at the status above the Overmind, the Supermind, and make that
a living reality and build in and through that its normal
consciousness.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent: 0.39cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><FONT SIZE=3>A
progressive revelation of higher and higher and more integral states
of the spiritual consciousness in and through the realisations of
mystics and sages and seers – divine men – of all ages, such is
the process of evolution that marks the life of man upon earth. This
spiritual evolution, however, may not be obviously visible in the
external life and character of man: it has been a phenomenon more in
his inner being and consciousness, an occult phenomenon. Hence there
has intervened a veil, a wall of separation between the two. The veil
has not been rent precisely because the very highest spiritual
potential has not been reached and brought into play. The call of the
present age is just to do away with this veil, make of human nature a
unified, a streamlined entity, a complete incarnation of the
spiritual consciousness in the fullness of its own nature at its
source and origin.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="text-indent: 0.39cm; border: medium none; padding: 0cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 250</FONT></P>
<hr> 
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