The mind of the modern day wants to analyze facts and draw conclusions based on those facts. For centuries, the movement has been away from reliance on belief and faith to a reliance on facts and rational analysis. One need only look at the history of the rise of Western science and the disputes that occurred with the church over the centuries to understand the spirit of the recent age. We see however today a movement away from reliance on science and logic with the rise of belief-driven religious values that in many cases deny the facts in order to confirm the followers in their belief-system.
Neither of these approaches, however, helps us in directly addressing the question of the future of the supramental manifestation. From the side of science, we can interpret the systematic growth of consciousness through Matter, Life and Mind as a sequence that continues to develop and roll out through time, and thereby extrapolate the existence of, need for, and inevitability of the supramental evolutionary cycle. From the side of faith, we can evaluate the ways that Nature has of placing challenges in front of humanity which seem impossible to solve, and yet, eventually get resolved through some major development or leap forward which cannot yet be rationally and logically seen or determined.
Much of the debate about the future revolves around whether someone is inclined to see and understand the progressions of evolution, and how one interprets them, along with the way one interprets the method of Nature through this process.
We are confronted today by an evolutionary crisis and the sixth mass extinction event that scientists have been able to document through examination of the geological record. Nature is under pressure through pollution, climate change, destruction of the “food chain”, overuse and depletion of resources, destruction of habitat, increase of range of disease vectors, unequal distribution of resources and the conflicts and migration events that arise therefrom. We have mountains of waste from our way of living building up everywhere, and we are even filling up the oceans with plastic waste that gets into fish and other species that inhabit the waters, the air and the land. We have weapons of mass destruction that can destroy humanity many times over, and we have the unintended consequences of our approach to living on the earth. Clearly we either are headed towards a mass destruction or to a crisis inflection point that forces us to confront and solve this existential crisis. All our political, religious and economic solutions have reached a point of gridlock. This leaves us with, realistically, the only choice left, a development of a new power of consciousness that can resolve and harmonize these conflicting issues.
Sri Aurobindo observes: “I have already spoken about the bad conditions of the world; the usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are, the more is probable the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know — it has either to believe or disbelieve or wait and see.”
“As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the destiny of it all concealed form human eyes. This is, however, certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of the human intelligence — mystically – rationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You don’t want me to start prophesying, I suppose? As a rationalist, you can’t.” Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, The Supramental Evolution, pp. 69-75
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog post at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com He is author of 16 books and is editor in chief at Lotus Press. Santosh is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.