Involution, Evolution and the Pressure from Domains of Life and Mind

We tend to take the development of life, and mind, for granted. We do not actually reflect on what it takes for them to emerge from Matter. Many believe that somehow various chemical elements in the material world are impacted by the radiation from the sun and through the heat of the core of the planet to modify material substance, recombine chemicals and ‘voila’ life and then mind will emerge!

Scientists are now finding various essential elements found in biological entities on meteorites and they have discovered the presence of water on mars, both of which indicating that there are other potential causes to the emergence of life here; possibly it was brought here from elsewhere, just as seeds of various plants are carried across vast expanses of oceans to bring about trees and other plant life on remote islands in our world.

However far we try to stretch the influence of Matter as the cause of life and mind, however, we always run up against the issue of causality and the need for a force ‘other than’ material force to create life and mental activity. It is telling that no one who has asserted that ‘given enough time, random mixing of the chemical elements of the world will develop Shakespeare, in fact, no one has succeeded in creating life out of bare matter.

When we look at every living form, we see that the information required to build it and energize it is contained in ‘seed’ form, an ‘encoded dataset’, if you will. We can now map and analyze the entire genome of certain species, but have still been unable to find a way to turn ‘matter’ into ‘life’, even with this understanding.

Charles Darwin, in describing the evolution of species, skips over this initial issue and starts with life forms and how they develop and are modified, mutated and adjusted over time due to the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’, essentially that those that are better adapted to their circumstances tend to survive and thrive, and those that are not, tend to die off and not be perpetuated. The definition of the “fittest’ is thus directly tied to circumstances. In today’s world, that definition would be vastly different than in the world of the Neanderthal, for instance! The qualities are transmitted through the genetic code.

Researchers in genetics have found that certain characteristics perpetuate as ‘dominant’ and others as ‘recessive’. Over time both ‘natural selection’ takes place which combines genetic material from the parents into a new variation, and which tends to favor those that are the “fittest” in that environment to reproduce, and ‘mutation’ play a role in bringing about change. Mutation can be caused by external factors such as radiation, as well as other causes. Mutation can be beneficial to the survival of the species or detrimental, depending on what it takes for its actual form.

The question still arises, as to how this all occurs. Sri Aurobindo has noted that nothing can ‘evolve’ that has not been previously ‘involved’ in Matter. This is akin to the encoding of a dataset within certain forms of Matter such that it can express life, and under the right circumstances in the corrected developed forms, the powers of mind.

In order to be ‘involved’ however, they must come from elsewhere, and for this, we then have to appreciate the existence of independent worlds or domains of life and mind that act within their own sphere and which then imprint impacts into the material world. There then comes about both the possibility and the necessity of a dual action in order to create the world as we know it. There needs to be the internal pressure from within to manifest the encoded data, and there must be a pressure from the native planes which are the source of that encoding to support and further that action when the time and circumstances are favourable.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action … is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence. Evolution comes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver out of itself their principles and powers which might conceivably otherwise have slept imprisoned in the rigidity of the material formula. This would even so have been improbable, since their presence there implies a purpose of deliverance; but still this necessity from below is actually very much aided by a kindred superior pressure.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.146-147