-46_The Evolutionary Imperative

MAN will grow into superman – in spite of himself, if necessary. Has not the animal grown into man? And did the animal try for it or even wish for it? Just so, the plant grew into the animal, willy-nilly, having had no inkling of its destiny. Out of the plant the animal came: a sensory system, a nervous organisation tore, as it were, into the pulp of the vegetable substance and established itself there. And subsequently, ages after, the animal himself underwent a similar transmutation: a larger amount of brain substance and a more complicated configuration in it was implanted in the brain cavity of the animal. Whence and wherefore came these agents that wrought the miracle?

There can be but one reason. What came out existed already there essentially within what was. It is nothing but the quickening of the seed, the growth of the embryo and the birth out of the womb: Life was imbedded in Matter, Mind was imbedded in Life and therefore in Matter. Thus evolution is merely self-manifestation, the urge to bring out step by step all the degrees of potency involved in the being. The force of evolution is selective and directive, as has been pointed out by Julian Huxley.

Now, the difference that presents itself at the present juncture is that man has acquired knowledge, the knowledge of the future, of his own destiny, unlike the animal or the plant. That is the characteristic mark of the stage of evolution now reached. And that will make a difference also in the manner in which the evolution will be worked out henceforth:

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it will be a conscious process. As man, because of his self-consciousness, has taken up many of nature's contrivances, refined and condensed them to be made immediately and more thoroughly effective without waste of time or material, even so, in the inner life too there has come the possibility of an intenser and quicker change, an evolution that is likely to be a revolution.

With man came also the sense of what is beyond man, the superman, the divine man, the Divine. That is the true meaning of his appearance, that is the characteristic turn of consciousness which he brought with him. This self-consciousness, an inner perception and aspiration that he is to be something else, something other and greater than what he is, means the emergence of a spiritual soul in the world of matter. This prophetic or forward-looking consciousness is absent in the sub-human creation, although, as I have said, a secret blind unknowing forward urge has always been there as the original motive of all functioning in things and creatures upon earth.

The problem is whether man will take advantage of the privilege he has acquired. In one sense he has been trying as best he can since his very appearance, a million years ago perhaps: he has created wonderful cultures and civilisations all over the earth age after age; expressing not merely the human animal in him, nor solely even the human, but something higher and deeper still, the extra-human or superhuman, the Divine. India was particularly the country where the experiment was carried on consistently and more successfully than anywhere else. And yet what has been the net result, the real achievement in view of the supreme purpose and ideal? The achievement has been this that the purpose, the ideal has come to be known, it is now within the range of our, vision; creation has revealed its core of mystery – if not the whole of it, at least the central theme: the key has been found, but in its own home, that is to say, behind and beyond the creation. That, however, is only half 

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the battle or even less; the other half is to bring the truth out of its own home and spread abroad, make the universe its own home. In other words, man has learnt to accept or is capable of accepting the reality in his inner consciousness, but only a very faint shadow of it – if anything at all – he has succeeded in establishing as a concrete or physical reality. Man's life, even the life of the very best, is still that of a mortal creature, still subject to ignorance, incapacity, disease and death – so long at least as he lives in his material frame in a material world.

That is why certain seers and sages have asserted and assert even now that to be ignorant is human: to be born, to live and to decay and die – sasyam iva pacyate sasyam iva jayate punah – that is the inevitable course of earthly life. If you want to be superhuman, you must get beyond the human frame altogether, 'not here, not here, but elsewhere'. That has been the burden more or less of all religions, all spiritual attempts and achievements so far.

We, have said that this does not seen to lead to the right solution of the riddle, for it means merely a by-passing, an escape. The true solution must concern itself with here and now. And we have also said that the earth and human life are inevitably moving towards that solution, for it is that solution which the evolutionary urge is carrying within itself to offer to earth and human life, viz., to establish the Divine in the human frame, to incarnate the spirit-life in the manifest form of the earthly body.

The difficulty is enormous: we admitted that more than half the way – and the most arduous part of it – remains to be negotiated. Man is only half-willing; his will must be whole and entire, pointed towards that single consummation. All other preoccupations that divert, he must eschew – anya vaco vimuñcatha. That is what is expected of him. If that will comes in, all is assured: things will move at a quick and yet smooth tempo. If, on the contrary, that fails or even delays too long, even then the thing will be done, for such 

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is the fate decreed, the fiat of the inmost Divine at Nature's heart. Only, because of the outward resistance the path will be made harder and the travail more painful. A grim toll will be demanded, a violent eruption instead of a happy flowering. That is exactly how revolutions occur in human society and geological cataclysms in physical Nature. The hardening and contraction of the outer crust of earth increases in proportion to the inner heat and pressure. Likewise on the human level, the red seed of the French Revolution was planted the very day when the Valois autocrat declared his divine right of kingship. In Russia, Lenin's antithesis was posited along with Peter the Great's thesis.

A similar fateful crisis – a much greater one – faces humanity today. Shall humanity yield totally and itself become the new being, through a travail more or less safe and happy? Or shall it be foolish and intransigent – incapable, in other words – and not do the right thing, thus inviting the catastrophe that might otherwise have been averted? For the New Being, the Superman, will be born, whether breaking the mould that humanity is or reshaping it into the new pattern. 

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