“All evolution is in essence a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest, from matter into life, from life into mind, from the mind into the spirit. It is this that must be the method of our growth from a mental into a spiritual and supramental manifestation, out of a still half-animal humanity into a divine being and a divine living. There must be achieved a new spiritual height, wideness, depth, subtlety, intensity of our consciousness, of its substance, its force, its sensibility, an elevation, expansion, plasticity, integral capacity of our being, and an assumption of mind and all that is below mind into that larger existence.”
Thus Sri Aurobindo succinctly defines the consistent thread that runs through the increasing complexity and intensity of evolved beings in the manifested world. This evolutionary process takes place secretly and silently throughout all of Nature, and seems to provide the meaning and purpose of the natural evolution. Nature not only seeks to achieve perfection within the scope of each plane of existence, but to continually exceed itself and develop the next intensity beyond.
“To heighten the force of consciousness until it passes from a mental, vital and physical instrumentation into the essence and power of the spirit is the indispensable thing, but that is not the sole object or all the thing to be done.” The first focus of Nature is to achieve the next capacity of consciousness, but then it is necessary to integrate it with the preceding stages and embed it as a fixed capacity within the framework of the preceding evolution.
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 19, “Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge.”, pp. 726-727
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 17 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.