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... the future, if Page 290 it thus shows itself capable of determining its own future soul evolution in time, it must have had secretly such an independent existence all through and it must have been determining in reality, though no doubt by some other and indirect insistence, its past soul evolution too in time. Possibly it may exist in the All-Soul only during the universal continuity, may... liberation, and the infinitely varying degrees in which in different bodies it has succeeded in dominating the lower nature. A past terrestrial soul evolution sufficiently accounting for these variations and degrees of our mixed being and a future soul evolution that helps us progressively to liberate the godhead of the spirit, seem Page 293 the only just and reasonable explanation of this... The Problem of Rebirth Essays in Philosophy and Yoga Rebirth and Soul Evolution The ideas that men currently form about life and things are for the most part pragmatic constructions. They are forms of a reason which is concerned with giving only such a serviceable account to itself of its surroundings as shall make a sufficient clue to our immediate ...

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... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time The Vedantic Vision, the Historical Christ and Soul-Evolution       Thus the ancient Vedantic vision is inclusive of all possible aspects of divinity and can harmonise the diverse currents of thought running through Teilhard's philosophy. Even the idea of the Incarnation the historical Christ-figure, can be a... development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive and a spiritual issue out of mentality, life and physicality."   A soul-evolution and a qualitative time-gradation in the appearance of species, though not explicitly a change of one species into another, are part of ancient as well as mediaeval thought in India. Both are necessary ...

... predetermined by my own stage of nature and past action, and on this groundwork I build new karma and farther strengthen or subtilise my power of natural being, enlarge experience, go on with my soul evolution. This process is woven in with the universal evolution and all its lines are included in the web of being, but it is not merely a jutting point or moment of it or a brief tag shot into the tissue... persistence of the thread; Karma is the process, a force, a work of energy and consequence in the material world, an inner and an outer will, an action and mental, moral, dynamic consequence in the soul evolution of which the material world is a constant scene. That is the conception; the rest is a question of the general and particular laws, the way in which karma works out and helps the purpose of the ...

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... and knowledge by which he governs and directs his life, determine what he is yet to be from the earliest stages to the last transcendence. Yathā karma yathā śrutam . This belief in a gradual soul evolution with a final perfection or divine transcendence and human life as its first direct means and often repeated opportunity, is the pivot of the Indian conception of existence. This gives to our life ...

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... the higher and higher through an ascending aspiration — till she has to sacrifice everything to the highest call) has been achieved by the Seer-Poet in his epic drama in six movements of her Soul-evolution: First, the human in Savitri seeks the Divine. Second, she weds Satyavan in order to realise through their 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid ...

... concluded that this fourth human principle is a projection and an action of the third divine principle of infinite Bliss, but an action in the terms of our consciousness and under the conditions of soul-evolution in this world. As the existence of the Divine is in its nature an infinite consciousness and the self-power of that consciousness, so the nature of its infinite consciousness is pure and infinite ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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... eighty millions of plant and animal lives as the sum of the preparation for a human birth and, without binding ourselves to the figure, we can appreciate the force of its idea of the difficult soul evolution by which humanity has come or perhaps constantly comes into being. We can only get away from this necessity of an animal past by denying all soul to subhuman nature. But this denial is only ...

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... Page 283 soul on body and life have to be considered. Here too there is the evolutionary idea, but physical and life evolution, even the growth of mind, are held to be only incidental to a soul evolution of which Time is the course and the earth among many other worlds the theatre. In the old Indian version of this theory evolution, heredity and rebirth are three companion processes of the universal ...

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... Arya in November 1915. The Reincarnating Soul . Published in the Arya in December 1915. Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity . Published in the Arya in March 1919. Rebirth and Soul Evolution . Published in the Arya in April 1919. The Significance of Rebirth . Published in the Arya in May 1919. The Ascending Unity . Published in the Arya in June 1919. ...

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... Man is not a body alone—the body is only a small part of his being. One should not attach too much importance to the life of the body. The body is only an incident in the progress of the soul. Evolution of the soul is the objective of Karmic existence. When one has realised the soul, knowledge and enlightenment come and all the problems are solved. But before that, one should try to get peace ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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... matter, but a spirit that uses life and body and that gradually should move to self-discovery. This spirit can become one with God, one with the spirit of the universe. This belief in a gradual soul evolution with a final perfection is at the basis of the Indian conception of existence. So man was allowed to fill in life opulently with colour and beauty and enjoyment. But all activities were seen ...

... many Names and Forms." These words stirred him to the depths and began vibrating in his heart like the words of a potent Mantra. While recounting this event which was of momentous value to his soul-evolution, Prithwi Singh has written: "I meditated day after day on the Mother's words. Then, with a sudden unexpectedness, these words in conjunction with others began to form themselves into lines ...

... Arya, reprinted with minor revisions by the author. Section I: "Rebirth" (November 1915),"The eincarnating Soul" (December 1915), "Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity" (March 1919), "Rebirth and Soul Evolution" (April 1919), "The Significance of Rebirth" (May 1919), "The Ascending Unity" (June 1919), . "Involution and Evolution" (July 1919), "Karma" (August 1919), "Karma and Freedom" (September 1919) ...

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... superior to sensuousness not because he is incapable of experiencing passion & delight, but because he has fathomed their utmost depth and measured their utmost reach, and far passed the stage of soul-evolution where they can satisfy. And yet the work of the philosophic mind incidentally serves sensuous and material life by increasing its resources and the depth of its charm. For the power of the ...

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... its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument ...

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... its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument ...

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... its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument ...

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... turn to higher things. This can happen even in the course of a lifetime, a fortiori in a second life where the old personalities would not be carried over. Page 542 Reincarnation and Soul Evolution You must avoid a common popular blunder about reincarnation. The popular idea is that Titus Balbus is reborn again as John Smith, a man with the same personality, character, attainments as he ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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... gross matter do the sense-organs receive their consummate development and become of supreme importance; for Will in the Waking State acts mainly through them and not directly through the Mind. Soul-evolution precedes physical evolution. This theory directly contradicts those conclusions of modern Science which make soul an evolution of physical life and activities, not an all-important and enduring ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad
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... its machinery,—for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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... its machinery, — for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. As a result, there is a cosmic evolution and there is the process of individual evolution. As a result of cosmic evolution ...

... process, each evolved form of body houses its own evolved power of consciousness, and it is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity. There is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth 1 into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. Indeed the process of rebirth is invisible, and it can be discerned only by a very close observation of the ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Rama
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... carries the progress over from one life to another, by organising its own evolution and development itself. 12 These are succinct accounts of what Sri Aurobindo calls tie "invisible process of soul evolution", the Odyssey of the stages of the Spirit. In the next talk, the Mother mentions the mastery of fire, the power of articulate speech and the faculty of writing as the three marks of man', superiority ...

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... human evolution. Mankind has moved on since, and many a new element has entered into Sri Aurobindo's synthesis which were not needed then, but without which modern man cannot fully satisfy his soul. Evolution is a progression in which to repeat the past is to stop dead on the way, or even to fall back to a lower level. 17.02.65 * * * In your last letter you have referred to the ...

... the soul's ascent. The soul knows infinitely better than our cocksure mind what is good for its evolution and growth. It uses rebirth as the only means of the evolution of its consciousness, and the evolution of consciousness is the primary end of human life. The other things must be considered as secondary or subservient to it, and as instruments of its self-expression. For the evolution of its... is not that the soul is entangled in the meshes of karma and has, in consequence, to pass through a series of births till it is liberated. Maya or karma or samskaras may be the apparent and ancillary cause of the soul's rebirth, but the real reason, the compelling cause and drive is the irrepressible urge in the soul for evolution. Originally a spark of the sempiternal Fire, the soul develops here in... standpoint of the soul's evolutionary purpose is the Mother's Statement that there are different lines of divine Consciousness seeking to manifest from above and upholding various series of formations here below for their diverse self-expression. The statement establishes the teleological significance of the soul's evolution. It makes it clear that the end of the soul's evolution is not flight from ...

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... preserve their experiences and they go to rest in their own planes after which they get dissolved. From these experiences the psychic takes up the essential elements that are necessary for the soul's evolution in the next life. It is the psychic that chooses according to its need from its own inner world. It is not that the psychic takes up an entirely new body, mind, etc. or that it is once again the... In Tibet they have developed this occult science wonderfully well. (Purani gave some instances from Madame David-Neel's book) They call in a Lama during somebody's death to help the passage of the soul through the vital world. SRI AUROBINDO: That is the most dangerous passage. It is this world of which people usually speak when they refer to heaven and hell. PURANI: By some process the Tibetans ...

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... the soul; and, naturally enough, the souls that feel the agony of this shackled existence strive to slough off this Nature and depart into their incorruptible essence. It is a pregnant recovery of the ancient knowledge to insist, as Sri Aurobindo does on the momentous truth of the higher dynamic Nature and the inevitable sublimation and transformation of the lower into it as the end of evolution. In... consciousness. This divine perfection of the human race is the logical outcome of our acceptance of two truths upon which the whole conception of the Life Divine is founded: (1) the truth of the soul's evolution from the in conscience of Matter to the super- conscience of Spirit and (2) the truth of the sublimation and transmutation of the lower Nature into the higher. The unquenchable aspiration in the... valid for the purpose. The Nature of the three gunas would be regarded as the sole Nature responsible for life and creation and the soul's bondage to them, and a withdrawal of the soul from her its final release and salvation. The passive status of the liberated individual soul, as in the Sânkhya, or its traceless merger in the eternal Immutable, as in the later Vedanta, would be the crowning achievement ...

... him out of oneness. No one has ever told him, "Come!" or violated his physical rights. No one has ever told him, "You must!" and violated his psychic rights. He has always been treated as a soul in evolution. The universe is his mother and the future his school. A child to whom you must never say, "Come".... That's not easy in the language if you can't tell him, "Come"! No one ever tells... specialized, it is chiefly through the surface of the skin that the child receives its education.... If one wants it to incarnate really, to be friends with matter, its body to become as intimate as its soul, one must invent for it a yoga of caresses and play." (It is worth noting that an attempt to put these alluring and specious theories into practice was to have catastrophic results, as we shall see ...

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... because there are also so many God-expressive parts in it, but the deepest self in us will always feel discontented, unappeased, impatient and know that not here is the Grand Terminus of the soul's evolution, the scene of its integral fulfilment. And in the long run the countries where this deepest self is most active will yield, in spite of all theories of the world as līlā or God's play,... perfectly in an evolutionary scheme like our earth's: there cannot be an irreducible quantity of the imperfect in man's career through time. Once the quantity is granted in spite of the process of evolution, we automatically make a division in ultimate being: there is the Divine and there is the undivine which cannot wholly express and be transformed into divine values. To fight clear of this dualism... formation of mind, life and body that makes up earth-existence was regarded as never capable of perfection and so always to be dropped after a time. Perfection abided somewhere beyond, whither the soul was bidden to rise, either to stay there for ever or to return after a while for the sake of suffering humanity. Birth was either to be escaped from or accepted in an endless series: in both cases ...

... The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic... behind all these and it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life. If the psychic were only one principle in the rising order of body, life and mind on a par with the others and placed somewhere in the scale on the same footing as the others, it could not be the soul of all the rest, the divine element making the evolution of the others possible and using them as... also can the vital, provided they are organized by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further ...

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... moved intensities of the heart and aspirations and fulfilments of the life that are the aids, the circumstances and the stages of the enlarging of the nature and the stimuli or the steps of the soul's evolution. At the same time it has always to be remembered that we are moving from imperfection and ignorance towards light and perfection, and the faith in us must be free from attachment to the forms... by it or offered to its acceptance, and its central working is a faith of the soul in its own will to be and attain and become and its idea of self and things and its knowledge, of which the belief of the intellect, the heart's consent and the desire of the life mind to possess and realise are the outward figures. This soul faith, in some form of itself, is indispensable to the action of the being and... it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. Our faith must first be abiding in the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it ...

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... these relations of Karma make this freedom great and real by dwelling consciously in the greatness of the Spirit. May not that be the sovereignty we shall find here when we rise to the top of the soul's evolution? One thing we will note that this urge towards control and this impression of freedom are an orientation and an atmosphere which cling about the action of mind, and they grow in Nature as she... of an absolute free Existence which supports, develops and informs a universe of relations, of that Power as the universal Spirit of our existence, of the world as the evolution of these relations, of beings in the universe as souls who work them out with some freedom of the spirit as its basis,—for that they inwardly are,—but with an observation of the law of the relations as their natural condition... magnified shadow thrown by the falsehood of our personality on eternal Non-Existence. But as for the soul, there is no soul, but only a stream of forms, ideas and sensations, and as the idea of a chariot is only a name for the combination of planks and pole and wheels and axles, so is the idea of individual soul or ego only a name for the combination or continuity of these things.Nor is the universe itself ...

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... there is one reality and not two independent realities, one immobile, the other mobile. In the ordinary view of the soul's evolution into the action, pravṛtti , and its involution Page 595 into the passivity, nivṛtti , it is supposed that in the action the individual soul becomes ignorant, nescient of its passive which is supposed to be its true being, and in the passivity it becomes finally... to soul-consciousness, the obstacles to unity lessen and finally cease to exist altogether. The soul can in its consciousness identify itself with other souls, can contain them and enter into and be contained by them, can realise its unity with them; and this can take place, not in a featureless and indistinguishable sleep, not in a Nirvana in which all distinctions and individualities of soul and... hundred. One in himself, he is one in the many and the many are one in him. In other words, Brahman in his unity of spirit is aware of his multiplicity of souls and in the consciousness of his multiple souls is aware of the unity of all souls. In each soul he, the immanent Spirit, the Lord in each heart, is aware of his oneness. The Jivatman illumined by him, aware of its unity with the One, is also aware ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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... divine realisation here.         If 'the self feels always its unity with the Divine', does not the soul too feel the same? Of course the psychic being does not till it attains to a certain consciousness by Yoga.       The soul in evolution is only a power for the evolution, it contains everything in potentiality; but that can only be worked out by the psychic being. It is quite different... What is exactly the difference between an aspect of the Divine known as the self and a portion of the Divine called the soul?       The self feels always its unity with the Divine and is always the same. The soul is a portion of the Divine that comes down into the evolution and evolves a psychic being more and more developed through experiences of successive lives until it is ready for the divine... being is what it develops in the evolution.         When you say that the psychic being puts out a form, do you imply that it has a subtle-physical form so that one can see it as an embodied personality — just like a human body?       Yes, but it is not limited by the form as the physical consciousness.         After death when the soul returns for a new birth, who moulds ...

... psychic is the soul that develops in the evolution—the spirit is the Self that is not affected by the evolution, it is above it—only it is covered or concealed by the activity of mind, vital and body. The removal of this covering is the release of the spirit—and it is removed when there is a full and wide spiritual silence. The soul in evolution is only a power for the evolution, it Page 105... lower movements and a compromise between soul and nature which retard this movement even while it gets its means of advance from that interchange. The psychic being is the soul-form or soul-personality developing through this evolution and passing from life to life till all is ready for the higher evolution beyond the Ignorance. The psychic being is the Soul, the Purusha in the secret heart ... are not identical. When the soul or "spark of the Divine Fire" begins to develop a psychic individuality, that psychic individuality is called the psychic being. The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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... unreal. The dualistic schools affirm the Jiva as an independent category or stand on the triplicity of God, Soul and Nature. * The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains... presides from above over the evolution of its personalities and terrestrial lives here, but is itself an eternal portion of the Divine and prior to the terrestrial manifestation - para prakrtir jivabhūtā. In this lower manifestation, apar ā prakrti, this eternal portion of the Divine appears as the soul, a spark of the Divine Fire, supporting the individual evolution, supporting the mental, vital... ry, not like the Jivatman prior to the evolution. But man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or he is aware of the mental being which controls the life and the body. But more deeply he becomes aware of his soul or psychic being as his true centre, the Purusha in the heart; the psychic is the central being in the evolution, it proceeds from and represents the Jivatman ...

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... argument: 31 "...if there is an evolution of consciousness in an evolutionary body and a soul inhabiting the body, a real and conscious individual, then it is evident that it is the progressive experience of that soul in Nature which takes the form of this evolution of consciousness: rebirth is self-evidently a necessary part, the sole possible machinery of such an evolution." Thirdly, we may probe... fundamentals. He 1 declared that he had been "born with a 'naturally pantheist' soul"; but, brought up a Roman Catholic and trained to be a priest, he had a habitual reaction of vehement anti-pantheism. By profession and mental affinity he was a scientist drawn towards a secular humanist world-view based on the theory of evolution, from which the only religion that could be derived was the sense of an infinite... level of evolution Omega may be expected to communicate with us by means of religious messages and, for full effect, incarnate the divine Super-Person in humanity. Such a special act would give a great push to the work of world-unification, the gathering together of personal centres by a Super-Centre. The incarnate divinity is thus a step and a stage in the progressive history of a universal Soul of Evolution ...

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... diverse experiences, gradually rising higher and higher. If evolution is a fact and if it is to have a spiritual meaning, the spiritual evolution can proceed only through the progress of an individual soul through a series of lives across the ages. Reincarnation in a literal sense is unavoidable in a spiritually evolutionary world-vision. Page 54 Doubtless, there is a host of subtleties... spiritual outlook he can ill afford to get round the individual soul's spiritual evolution. He has accepted many truths of the Spirit from India, which his too conservative co-religionists would be inclined to look askance at. It is best not to jibe at literal reincarnation. Perhaps it should be enough for him to believe that the soul was created out of nothing at the very start of the evolutionary... followers, was never conceived in terms of a crowning evolution. There was no question of an aeonic development of earth-history by an evolutionary process starting with matter, passing through vital and mental stages and culminating in a supramental race. Nor was there any question of a prolonged Yoga, a concentrated and accelerated evolution by a mystical growth over self-dedicated years, moving ...

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... of them, of various kinds - physical, affective, psychological, intellectual - and even some so deeply rooted and so important that they may be called "psychic needs", needs pertaining to the soul in evolution. If the parents and teachers know these needs and give them consideration and satisfaction, the child grows normally and is naturally happy. If they are ignored, two kinds of results may... and remains outside the being, while each stage of growth is not only a means for the soul to get experience and grow, but it is also the creation of the child and a part of his being, in fact it is at that time the whole of his being. It is certainly true that childhood recapitulates the whole human evolution. Every educator knows how at various stages the child is fascinated by different stories... as condition the uncovering or revelation of the soul within may rightly be called psychic needs. They are Page 91 manifestations of the soul's essential tendency towards beauty, nobility, truth, freedom, love and respect, right action and generous justice. It is only in an atmosphere where these qualities are displayed that the soul is able to pierce the outer crust and come to the ...

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... historic Jesus Christ, that we have to understand Teilhard's frequent description of the Cosmic Christ as animating all things and not only being "organically the prime mover and controller, the 'soul' of evolution", 14 but also "exerting a supreme physical influence on every cosmic reality without exception". 15 The Cosmic Christ is both "organic" and "physical" because he is an Omega that is a mystery... created activity ultimately springs. Christ is the end-point of the evolution, even the natural evolution, of all beings; and therefore evolution is holy."   "Christ", we may observe, is the refrain, the leitmotif, of all Teilhardian articulation. The name keeps recurring in the midst of all his pantheism and evolutionism. It demands that, though Roman Catholic orthodoxy cannot really accord... only possible but imperative literally to love evolution".   Thus we may say about Teilhard's religion: "It exceeds in favour of pantheism the orthodox omnipresence of God as   16.Hymn of the Universe, "Pensees", p. 91. 17.ibid., "The Spiritual Power of Matter", p. 68. 18.Christianity and Evolution, p. 184. Page 60 well as the old idea ...

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... diverse experiences, gradually rising higher and higher. If evolution is a fact and if it is to have a spiritual meaning, the spiritual evolution can proceed only through the progress of an individual soul through a series of lives across the ages. Reincarnation in a literal sense is unavoidable in a spiritually evolutionary world-vision. Page 14 Doubtless, there is a host of subtleties... spiritual outlook he can ill afford to get round the individual soul's spiritual evolution. He has accepted many truths of the Spirit from India, which his too conservative co-religionists would be inclined to look askance at. It is best not to jib at literal reincarnation. Perhaps it should be enough for him to believe that the soul was created out of nothing at the very start of the evolutionary... followers, was never conceived in terms of a crowning evolution. There was no question of an aeonic development of earth-history by an evolutionary process starting with matter, passing through vital and mental stages and culminating in a supramental race. Nor was there any question of a prolonged Yoga, a concentrated and accelerated evolution by a mystical growth over self-dedicated years, moving ...

... Arthur Lovejoy: The Great Chain of Being , pp. 101-02. × Len Fisher: Weighing the Soul – The Evolution of Scientific Beliefs , p. 94. × See talk 5, “2012 and 1956: Doomsday?” ... the giant who thought out the theory of evolution and thereby initiated a radical shift in the conception humans had of themselves. This, like so much else in popular science, is a misconception. It might be said that Darwin was the midwife who, in 1859, presented the theory of evolution to the world, or that he was the cause that all of a sudden the evolution theory became the focus of attention and... life forces, and matter. In its urge to regain the divine Origin, the evolution is the slow re-conquest of the original and central Consciousness, ascending the existing scale step by step. The downward movement Sri Aurobindo has called “involution” and the upward movement “evolution.” To accede to a new, higher step in the evolution a double movement is needed: the inner urge on the existing level, obeying ...

... the law or the truth of an individual and so becomes by a progressive growth its soul or psychic being.36 This definition of the psychic being will be sufficient for our purpose. "Psychic" means "belonging to the soul, or psyche”. The psychic being is a conscious form of the Divine growing in the evolution. It is through the psychic presence that the truth of an Page - 71 ... deformed The various parts are instruments, which must be appropriately developed and strengthened. And they must be trained to obey - not the teacher - but the central knowledge and will of the soul in evolution. In fact, if the teacher can discover the true needs and interests (both go always together) of a child at every stage of his growth and offer him an activity in conformity with those... In accordance with this view, the great purpose of education is to help the soul to come forward, to assert its mastery over its instruments, gain experience and grow, and eventually manifest the powers it has to set forth in life. Even in a young child, it is the soul we have to meet a soul meeting a soul - giving to it due consideration and trust without forgetting however that the ...

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... Timeless return to thy immortal existence. What exactly is the soul or psychic being? And what is meant by the evolution of the psychic being? What is its relation to the Supreme?       The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essence is the same.       The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being; it is identical... the divine in man.       The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the terrestrial evolution, until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened, becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed.       And thus identified with the Divine, it becomes His perfect instrument... it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life.       If the psychic were only one principle in the rising order of body, life and mind on a par with the others and placed       Page 36 somewhere in the scale on the same footing as the others, it could not be the soul of all the rest, the divine element making the evolution of the others possible ...

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... convergence which constitutes universal evolution, is not completed by hominization.... But...we twentieth-century humans are indeed, scientifically speaking, nothing but the elements of a soul seeking itself through the cosmos..." 29   If a greater than man the individual thinker is sure to emerge by the very drive of cosmic evolution - if that Soul of souls is the reality of the future and is... through the ages its potentialities of perfection, "The religion of evolution", "a sort of natural religion of the universe", "a powerful mysticism" teaching man " in the first place to recognize, love and serve with passion the universe of which he is a part", "undeniably a part" of "the mighty whole" whose secret "soul", "the Soul of the world", has made itself perceptible to us and made "our whole... acknowledging evolution as a fact of the material cosmos, could not be said to have the same Christ as Teilhard's. Both it and Teilhard take Jesus of Nazareth as their point de depart for use of the title "Christ"; but, unlike Teilhard, the Church fails to see the Cosmic Evolver in him, the Being who is equal in vastness to the universe and organically involved in its evolution as the World-Soul by whom ...

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... life is! It is fun to see the soul in evolution. Everything is interesting. Who feels like this—the mind? Yes, it is the mind, but with a first influence of the flame of Agni. 8 February 1935 How can the human mind say that it is fun to see the soul developing, when the soul is above the mind? When the mind says this, it is referring to the vital soul, because that is what develops... the truth from which it springs". Page 77 The essence of the soul is divine, but the soul (the psychic being) grows through all the forms of evolution; it becomes more and more individualised and increasingly conscious of itself and its origin. 24 January 1935 I think that Your action changes according to my state of consciousness. I see a great difference when I am in a good... Does the soul never come to an end? Must it always take a body? Not necessarily; but the soul needs to have achieved a very high degree of perfection before it has the power to choose whether to return to the physical life or to rest outside the manifestation. 23 January 1935 I thought that the soul was perfect in its nature. I don't understand "the ascension of the soul towards the ...

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... None of the Catholic theologians speak of evolution in the same manner as you do. Even Teilhard does not quite anticipate your manner, though he has much of it. Your manner is Aurobindonian, except that you do not yet see how logical and necessary it is to postulate rebirth if you are to postulate spiritual evolution and if it is in souls that this evolution is carried on. Life being involved in matter... Christian weltanschauung in the context of the fact of Evolution and even in the latest letter you make two points on Sri Aurobindo's contribution to our understanding of the final state of man and the universe. They may be summarised: (1) Man will be divinised, both soul and body, as "the final flower of millions of years of evolution": (2) the divinisation of the body can begin to take place... awareness of an Evolution over millions of years be the Christianity you see through Aurobindonian eyes? Can Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga of total inner-outer transformation by the power and grace of the Supramental Ishwara and Shakti, a process which is a conscious accelerated form of the Evolution that has been going on for millions of years, be equated to a sudden change of soul-body "in the twinkling ...