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<div class=Section1>

<h1 align=right style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span style='font-weight:700'><font size="4">An Aspect of Emergent Evolution</font><o:p></o:p></span></h1>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;tab-stops:387.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>T<span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>HE</span> theory of Emergent Evolution should be
considered no longer as a theory, but as a statement of fact. The fact, at its
barest, stripped of all assumptions and even <span lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:
EN-GB'>generalisations</span>, is the fact observed and implicit in all
evolution, which can be denied only by the perverse and purblind. It is this,
that at each crucial step Nature undergoes a sudden and total change, brings
forth a new element which was not there before and which could not be foreseen
or foretold by any process of deduction from the actual factors in play. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>At the very
outset of the evolutionary march, when material Nature meant only a mass or
masses of incandescent gaseous elements, the first miracle that happened was
the formation, the advent of water. There was Hydrogen and there was Oxygen
existing and moving side by side, for millions of years perhaps, but only at a
given moment did an electric current happen to pass through a certain mixture
of the two elements somewhere, and behold, a liquid drop was the product, an
absolutely new, unforeseen, unpredictable and wonderful object! Examples can be
multiplied.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The fact is
admitted, on the whole, unless one is a Fundamentalist and prefers still to
live in the consciousness of a bygone century. Difference comes in when the
question of explanations and of viewpoints regarding them is raised. A
materialist like Professor Broad would consider Mind and Life as fundamentally
formations of Matter, however different they might seem from each other and
from the latter. Water, the so-called miracle product of Oxygen and Hydrogen,
according to him, is as material as these two; even so Life and Mind, however
miraculously produced, being born of Matter, are nothing but the same single
reality, only in different</p>

<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:13.5pt;
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mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-55<o:p></o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>forms. Others, who are more or
less idealists, Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, for example (some of them call
themselves neo-realists, however), would not view the phenomenon in the same
way. Alexander says that Matter and Life and Mind are very different from each
other; they are truly <span lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>emergents</span>,
that is to say, novelties; but how the thing has been possible, one need not
inquire; one should accept the fact with &quot;natural piety.&quot;</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Morgan proffers
an explanation. He says that whatever there is, exists in God who is the all-continent.
In fact, everything that is or was or shall be is in Him. And the evolutionary
gradation expresses or puts in front, one by one, all the principles or types
of existence that God holds in Himself. The explanation hardly explains. It
simply posits the existence of Matter and Life and Mind and whatever is to come
hereafter in the infinity of God, but the passage from one to another, the
connecting link between two succeeding terms, and the necessity of the link,
are left as obscure as before. Life is tagged on to Matter and Mind is tagged
on to Life in the name of the Lord God.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Bertrand
Russell made a move in the right direction with a happy suggestion which
unhappily he had not the courage to follow up. Mind (and Life), he says, are
certainly emergents out of Matter; that is because the reality is neither, it
is a neutral stuff out of which all emergents issue. The conclusion is logical
and sensible. But as he was initially bound to his position of scientific
scepticism, he could not further question or probe the &quot;neutral&quot; and
stopped on the fence.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:22.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The problem in
reality, however, is simple enough, if we allow the facts to speak for
themselves and do not hesitate to accept the conclusions to which they
inevitably lead. After Matter came Life; that is to say, out of Matter came
Life, and that can only be because Life was involved in Matter. And if such a
conclusion makes of Matter a potentially living thing, we shall have to accept
the position. In the same way, Mind that followed Life came out of Life,
because Mind was involved in Life; and if that means endowing Life with a
secret mentality, well, there is no help for it. And if, as a natural
consequence of the two premises we have to admit the existence of some kind of
mind or consciousness secreted in Matter<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:22.5pt;
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mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-56</span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>­- a minimal psychic life,
according to McDougall – that would be but what the Upanishads always declared:
Creation -is a vibration of consciousness, and all things and all kinds of
.existence are only forms and modalities of consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:22.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>However, we
thus arrive at Mind in following the evolutionary process. Now after Mind there
emerges another principle which has been termed Deity. By Deity the emergent
evolutionists mean the embodiment of the religious feeling – piety, charity,
worship, love of God or of God's creatures. Indeed, saints and prophets are
visible deities, embodiments of the Deity in the making. These represent
another element in the evolutionary process – a new evolute.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:22.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Does this
point to the emergence of a new type of superhuman beings forming a class or a
species by themselves? The possibility has been envisaged by some of the
protagonists of emergent evolution, but has not been sufficiently examined - or
considered. . Philosophers seem to walk in this region with caution and
incertitude, as if on quicksand and quagmire. :But in this connection we are
faced with a problem which Morgan had the happy intuition to seize and to bring
forward. It is our purpose to draw attention to this matter.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:22.5pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Professor
Alexander spoke of the emergence of deities who would embody emergent
properties other than those manifest in the Mind of man. Morgan asks whether
there is not also a Deity – or <i>the</i> Deity – in the making. He establishes
the 1ogical necessity of such a consummation in this way: the evolutionary urge
(or <i>nisus</i>, as it has been called) in its upward drive creates and throws
up on all sides, at each stage, forms of the new property or principle of
existence that has come into evidence. These multiple forms may appear anywhere
and everywhere; they are strewn about on the entire surface of Nature. These
are, however, the branchings of the evolutionary nisus which has a central line
of advance running through the .entire gradation of emergents; it is, as it
were, the central pillar round which is erected a many-storeyed edifice. The
interesting point is this, that at the present stage of emergence, what the
central line touches and arrives at is the Deity. Or, again, the thing can be
viewed in another way. At the bottom the evolutionary movement is broad-based
on Matter but as it proceeds upward its extent is gradually narrowed down;<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;mso-border-bottom-alt:
solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;border:medium none;
mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-57<o:p></o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Life is less extensive than
Matter and Mind is still less extensive than Life. Thus the scheme of the movement
can be figured as a pyramid-the base of the pyramid represents Matter, but the
apex where the narrowing sides converge is what is called the Deity.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>What
is the implication of such a conclusion? It comes. perilously near the Indian
conception of Avatarhood! The central line of evolutionary nisus is the line of
Avatarhood. At each point of the line, on the level of the newly emerged
principle, there is a divine embodiment of that principle. The esoteric
significance of the graded scale of Avatarhood, as illustrated in Vishnu's ten
Forms, has long ago been pointed out, by some thinkers, in this light.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The principle
of Avatarhood stands justified in this scheme as a necessary and inevitable
element in the terrestrial evolutionary movement. An Avatar embodies a new
emergent property: he incarnates a new principle of being and consciousness, he
manifests-unfolds from below or brings down from above upon earth--a higher and
deeper principle of organisation. He is the nucleus round which the new
organisation crystallises. A Rama comes and human society attains a new status:
against a mainly vitalistic and egoistic organisation whose defender and
protagonist is Ravana, is set up an ideal of sattwic humanity. A <st1:place>Krishna</st1:place>
appears and human consciousness is lifted, potentially at least, to a still
higher level of spiritual possibility. The Avatar following, rather tracing,.
in his upward movement the central line of the evolutionary nisus, cuts a path,
as it were, in the virgin forest of a realm of consciousness still unknown and
foreign to human steps. As the Avatar presses and passes on, the way is cleared
for other, ordinary human beings to come up and naturalise themselves in a new
country promising a higher destiny which He discovers and conquers-for them.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Now at this
point we reach the crux of the problem, the supreme secret – <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>rahasyam</i> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>uttamam </i>– as the Gita would say. For the apex of the pyramid, the
crown of evolution, the consummation of the central line of emergence would
then be nothing less than the manifestation, the terrestrial incarnation of the
Supreme Divine. The Deity thus fully emerged would embody the truth and play of
creation in its widest scope and<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;mso-border-bottom-alt:
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;border:medium none;
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-58</span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>highest elevation; it would mean
the utter fulfilment of human destiny and terrestrial Purpose.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>In Indian
terminology, it would be the advent of the Purna Bhagavan in the human body <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>– m<span
style='font-family:"Lucida Console"'>a</span>nus</i><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'><span style='font-family:"Lucida Console"'>i</span>m tanu</i><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:"Lucida Console"'>a</span>sritam</i>.
All previous Avatars are only a preparation for the coming of this Supreme
Divine. It is said also that the present epoch marks a crucial turn and
transition. We await the Kalki Avatar who will wipe off the past, the Iron Age,
and bring in the Golden Age, Satya Youga.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>A question
inevitably arises here – what next? Once the evolutionary movement has reached
the apex, does it stop there? After the apex, the Void? I t need not be so. The
completion of the pyramid would mean simply the end of a particular order of
creation, the creation in Ignorance. This is, indeed, what Sri Aurobindo
envisages in his conception of the creation in supramental Gnosis. The
evolutionary nisus, on its arrival at the apex, according to him crosses a
borderland, leaps into another order of the world, of infinite
Truth-Consciousness. Thereafter another new creation starts the building
perhaps of another pyramid (if we want to continue the metaphor). The
progression &quot;Of the evolutionary course is naturally expected to be an
unending series. The pyramids rise tier upon tier <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>ad infinitum</i>. Only it is to be noted that in the basic pyramid the
evolution starts from inconscience and moves from more ignorance to less
ignorance through a gradually lessening density of darkness until the apex is
reached where all shade of darkness is eliminated for ever. Beyond there is no
mixture, however thin and diluted: it is a movement from light to light, from
one expression of it to another, perhaps richer, but of the same quality. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>This, however,
is an aspect of the problem with which we are not immediately concerned. There
is one question with which we have omitted to deal but which is nearer to us
and touches present actualities. We spoke of the emergence of the Deity -<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>and of the Supreme Deity <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>– after</i> Mind. The question is, how long
after? I do not refer to the duration of time needed, but to the steps or the
stages that have to be passed. For between Mind and Deity, certainly between
Mind and the Supreme Deity (Purushottama, as we would say), there may
presumably still lie a course of graded emergence. In fact, Sri<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>Aurobindo </p>

<div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;mso-border-bottom-alt:
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;border:medium none;
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-59<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>speaks of the Overmind
and the Supermind, as farther steps of the evolutionary progress coming after
Mind. He says that Mind closes the interior hemisphere of man's nature and
consciousness; with Overmind man enters into the higher sphere of the Spirit.
In this view, the religious feeling or perception or conduct would be but an
intermediary stage between Mind and Overmind. They are not really emergent
properties, but reflections, faint echoes and promises of what is to come,
mixed up with attributes of the present mentality. The Overmind brings in a
true emergence.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Still
Overmind – whose characteristic is a cosmic consciousness and a transcendence
of all ego-sense – is not the firm basis on which a new terrestrial
organisation can stand and endure. It is still a basis of unstable equilibrium.
For it is not the supernal light and, although it transcends all ignorance, yet
does not possess that absolute synthetic unity, that transcendent power of
consciousness which is at once the cosmic and the individual. That is the
domain of the Supermind.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The whole urge
of evolutionary Nature today is to bring out first the Overmental principle and
then through it the Supramental which will establish and fix upon earth the
principle of Deity and the Supreme Divine.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-60<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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