The Potential for Transformation of the Human Body

We can look at the idea of a transformation of the body from several viewpoints. One viewpoint accepts the basic current structure and function of the body and simply enhances, protects, extends the life and capacity, or removes limitations and failures to which the body is currently prone. Many scientific researchers are following ideas of developing an ideal diet and lifestyle regimen, or working toward increasing the body’s current capacity for regeneration of cells to extend to full-scale organ replacement, or developing microscopic ‘nanobots’ that would correct body biochemistry, and fix anything that goes out of the normal range. This is not so much a program for transformation as one of simply enhancing functionality that we already have.

A somewhat more radical approach is to recognise that evolutionary change, over long periods of time, already undertakes to revise organ systems and functionality. When animals first emerged from the oceans, for instance, they eventually wound up replacing gills with lungs for purpose of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. Webbing on feet and hands was changed into fully independent fingers and toes, and, eventually the development of the opposable thumb. Genetic changes induced by varying environmental conditions led to adjustments of skin color to adapt to more or less intense sunlight. Adaptations in lung capacity, heart function and endurance resulted from other environmental conditions.

There is however another line of development that may incorporate capacities we see in nature, but which are not active, or no longer active, in human beings, or which represent entirely new developments of a truly transformative nature. Plants for instance have the capacity of direct conversion of the energy of the sun into matter and biological energy, taking up elements from the earth and using them as building blocks for the plant structures. We may ask ourselves whether such capacities may be incorporated into some future human species such that we no longer need to eat food and manage all the organ systems related to eating, digesting, and eliminating waste materials in order to build the body and operate it effectively. The human body maintains some amount of regenerative capacity. Some other species however have virtually complete regeneration capabilities. We could envision biochemical or genetic processes that would open up complete regeneration capacity for the human being, ensuring virtual biological immortality!
The system of chakras represents an energetic approach to life that may be a harbinger of such a change. Under such a system, we could foresee the elimination of virtually all organ systems that relate to digestion from a future humanity.

There are many possible directions for the future evolution of the human body, and not all of it needs to be looked at in terms of the time scale of past evolution. With the advent of new powers of consciousness, there is no reason to believe that changes need to occur over timespans of hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
Sri Aurobindo writes in The Mind of Light: “Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Sariram khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.”
A disciple asks: “Mother, how can the functioning of the body ‘attain to a supreme capacity’?
The Mother responds: “Precisely by transformation. This implies a total transformation. Sri Aurobindo speaks about it later in what follows.”
“For the moment, our body is simply a doubtful improvement on the animal body, for if we have gained from a certain point of view, we have lost from another. It is certain that from the point of view of purely physical capacities many animals are superior to us. Unless by a special culture and transformation we succeed in really transforming our capacities, it could be said that from the point of view of strength and muscular power a tiger or a lion is far superior to us. From the point of view of agility a monkey is far superior to us; and, for instance, a bird can travel without needing any exterior mechanism or plane, which is not yet possible for us… and so on. And we are bound by the animal necessities of the functioning of our organs; so long as we depend, for instance, on material food, on absorbing matter in such a crude form, we shall be quite inferior animals.”
“Therefore, I don’t want to anticipate what we are going to read, but all this purely animal functioning of our body, all this part which is exactly the same as in animal life — that we depend for life on the circulation of the blood and to have blood we need to eat, and so on, and all that this implies — these are terrible limitations and bondages! As long as material life depends on that, it is obvious that we won’t be able to divinise our life.”
“So, we must assume that animality in the human being should be replaced by another source of life, and this is quite conceivable — not only conceivable but partially realisable; and this is obviously the aim we ought to set before ourselves if we want to transform matter and make it capable of expressing divine qualities.”
The Potential for Transformation of the Human Body
Posted on December 23, 2024
We can look at the idea of a transformation of the body from several viewpoints. One viewpoint accepts the basic current structure and function of the body and simply enhances, protects, extends the life and capacity, or removes limitations and failures to which the body is currently prone. Many scientific researchers are following ideas of developing an ideal diet and lifestyle regimen, or working toward increasing the body’s current capacity for regeneration of cells to extend to full-scale organ replacement, or developing microscopic ‘nanobots’ that would correct body biochemistry, and fix anything that goes out of the normal range. This is not so much a program for transformation as one of simply enhancing functionality that we already have.

A somewhat more radical approach is to recognise that evolutionary change, over long periods of time, already undertakes to revise organ systems and functionality. When animals first emerged from the oceans, for instance, they eventually wound up replacing gills with lungs for purpose of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. Webbing on feet and hands was changed into fully independent fingers and toes, and, eventually the development of the opposable thumb. Genetic changes induced by varying environmental conditions led to adjustments of skin color to adapt to more or less intense sunlight. Adaptations in lung capacity, heart function and endurance resulted from other environmental conditions.

There is however another line of development that may incorporate capacities we see in nature, but which are not active, or no longer active, in human beings, or which represent entirely new developments of a truly transformative nature. Plants for instance have the capacity of direct conversion of the energy of the sun into matter and biological energy, taking up elements from the earth and using them as building blocks for the plant structures. We may ask ourselves whether such capacities may be incorporated into some future human species such that we no longer need to eat food and manage all the organ systems related to eating, digesting, and eliminating waste materials in order to build the body and operate it effectively. The human body maintains some amount of regenerative capacity. Some other species however have virtually complete regeneration capabilities. We could envision biochemical or genetic processes that would open up complete regeneration capacity for the human being, ensuring virtual biological immortality!

The system of chakras represents an energetic approach to life that may be a harbinger of such a change. Under such a system, we could foresee the elimination of virtually all organ systems that relate to digestion from a future humanity.

There are many possible directions for the future evolution of the human body, and not all of it needs to be looked at in terms of the time scale of past evolution. With the advent of new powers of consciousness, there is no reason to believe that changes need to occur over timespans of hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Sri Aurobindo writes in The Mind of Light: “Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Sariram khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.”

A disciple asks: “Mother, how can the functioning of the body ‘attain to a supreme capacity’?

The Mother responds: “Precisely by transformation. This implies a total transformation. Sri Aurobindo speaks about it later in what follows.”

“For the moment, our body is simply a doubtful improvement on the animal body, for if we have gained from a certain point of view, we have lost from another. It is certain that from the point of view of purely physical capacities many animals are superior to us. Unless by a special culture and transformation we succeed in really transforming our capacities, it could be said that from the point of view of strength and muscular power a tiger or a lion is far superior to us. From the point of view of agility a monkey is far superior to us; and, for instance, a bird can travel without needing any exterior mechanism or plane, which is not yet possible for us… and so on. And we are bound by the animal necessities of the functioning of our organs; so long as we depend, for instance, on material food, on absorbing matter in such a crude form, we shall be quite inferior animals.”

“Therefore, I don’t want to anticipate what we are going to read, but all this purely animal functioning of our body, all this part which is exactly the same as in animal life — that we depend for life on the circulation of the blood and to have blood we need to eat, and so on, and all that this implies — these are terrible limitations and bondages! As long as material life depends on that, it is obvious that we won’t be able to divinise our life.”

“So, we must assume that animality in the human being should be replaced by another source of life, and this is quite conceivable — not only conceivable but partially realisable; and this is obviously the aim we ought to set before ourselves if we want to transform matter and make it capable of expressing divine qualities.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 128-130