Mankind as a Bridge

The Destiny of the Individual (The  Life Divine , Aurobindo, ch5) &

Moral Imagination (Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner, ch12)

In this article I want to explore some important convergences between ideas from Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner. These touch on the man’s place in the universe and the purpose of evolution. As we have seen before and will see in the 2 introductory quote, the language is radically different, yet the conceptual framework underlying these apparent differences is very similar.

Aurobindo

So strongly was this truth perceived in the ancient times that the Vedantic Seers, even after they had arrived at the crowning idea, the convincing experience of Sachchidananda as the highest positive expression of the Reality to our consciousness, erected in their speculations or went on in their perceptions to an Asat, a Non-Being beyond, which is not the ultimate existence, the pure consciousness, the infinite bliss of which all our experiences are the expression or the deformation. If at all an existence, a consciousness, a bliss, it is beyond the highest and purest positive form of these things that here we can possess and other therefore than what here we know by these names. Buddhism, somewhat arbitrarily declared by the theologians to be an un-Vedic doctrine because it rejected the authority of the Scriptures, yet goes back to this essentially Vedantic conception. Only, the positive and synthetic teaching of the Upanishads beheld Sat and Asat not as opposites destructive of each other, but as the last antinomy through which we look up to the Unknowable.

Steiner

This experience can only be the result of an observation, and is so, in the sense that we observe our will on a path of development towards the goal where it becomes possible for an act of will to be sustained by purely ideal intuition. This goal can be reached, because in ideal intuition nothing else is at work but its own self-sustaining essence. When such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it has not been developed out of the processes of the organism, but rather the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity

I want to link what Aurobindo states here to a key idea that is developed in chapter 12 in PoF “Moral Imagination” Some friends and I also look specifically at Steiner in more detail here:

Both with Aurobindo and Steiner we are presented with a picture of the human being as a bridge connecting two worlds. I would like to use the image of a galaxy to clarify this bridge like nature of the human being as this essential nature becomes clearer when we contemplate how a galaxy comes into being and how it dissolves out of being in an eternal cycle[1]. Here I am using the process of galaxy formation as presented by Walter Russell[2]. When we imagine a toroid shape, we see at a galaxy level that all materialization happens in a horizontal plane. Exactly why this is so is still a matter of intense speculation amongst astrophysicists. Over a period of many months, I was fortunate enough to have an accomplished astrophysicist as a language tandem partner. She wanted to improve her English and I wanted to practice Spanish. One of my take-aways from these rewarding conversations was the amazing mental contortions such astrophysicists are capable of performing whilst stubbornly refusing to consider more elegant and parsimonious theories (electric universe) that would relieve them of so many mental acrobatic manoeuvres. But I digress, returning to our galaxies, as the matter moves further and further from the centre of the toroid it becomes more and more rarified so that at the edges of the galaxies all materializing forces cease and dissolution of matter, death of matter becomes the fate of all matter (Sat) (return to non-matter state). This non-matter (Asat) is then pulled back into the toroid, tracing the curves of this apple like structure and as this non-matter reaches the centre of the toroid again it becomes immanent and visible to the senses.

As human beings we are consistently converting non-matter into matter and this matter in turn feeds back into the non-matter. When we make plans to do something, they are born from an invisible realm (habit/memory or inspiration/intuition) and alight in our consciousness. When we realize a given plan or project the fruits of this are then internalized and can in the future inform us about the next stage of the project, the next plan of action. No matter where we look around, we see evidence of the obvious certainty of this truth in every single man made object. Every single one of those objects was preceded by a thought or series of thoughts. Those object were born, in the final analysis, out of non-being and will also return there in the fullness of time, at the time of the big crunch or big bounce as astrophysicists are fond of calling it, Eastern minds will feel comfortable with the word Pralaya.

What is true of material objects is also true of our own inner being. When we look at our moral actions, that is actions good or bad that have intent and are directed towards the outside world. Those moral actions too are also born out of non-being. Leaving to one side for the moment the goodness or non-goodness of these moral actions let us look more deeply into see how Sachchidananda [3] ,“Bliss-Existence-Consciousness”, is similar in essence to the relationship Steiner describes between moral intuition and moral action. With Steiner the I, when suitably strengthened and purified, becomes capable of receiving from the spiritual worlds knowledge and impulses from beings on higher planes of existence. These beings have plans in accordance with the plans of the Godhead/Brahman, yet they must work through human beings if these goals are to be achieved on the material plane. If God’s kingdom is to be created on earth, then human beings must choose to consciously receive and work with those impulses that work towards this goal. If human beings choose other impulses then these will lead earth towards different ends.

If we reflect solely on the above description of this process we soon see that despite the lofty nature of the subject matter, world evolution no less, we are at the same time talking about processes that are as common to everyday thinking as deciding what might be a better course of action with some menial task. Saving the world and planning a meal are from one perspective essentially identical processes, yet obviously radically different in scope and importance. When it comes to planning a meal I don’t tend to think in terms of needing to be inspired by the creative forces of the universe. However, the bigger the task the more I am likely to realize my own limitations and seek for inspiration from ever higher sources of power and insight.

Now, if I have done a sufficient job in explaining the bridge like nature of the human being with regards to representing that which is capable of making the transcendent immanent and understanding the relationship of anything immanent to the transcendent then it will make sense that I place also the human being at the centre of a toroid, where space becomes moral space. My moral deeds, my actions play out into the world and the world will forever bear witness to those actions. If those actions are good then the fruits of those actions will live on in the world and if they are bad then the same will also be true. I as a citizen of that world, through my actions, contribute to creating the world I live in. In religious thinking this idea can be rendered to “you reap what you sow”.

For Aurobindo man’s bridge like nature is expressed so: (ch 5)

We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of  consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing.

In Steiner we find this relationship mirrored in the terms moral imagination, moral technique and moral intuition. (ch12)

Moral imagination and the faculty of having moral ideas can become objects of knowledge only after they have been produced by the individual. By then, however, they no longer regulate life, for they have already regulated it. They must now be regarded as effective causes, like all others (they are purposes only for the subject). We therefore deal with them as with a natural history of moral ideas.

And

This part of effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world of phenomena with which one is concerned. We shall, therefore, look for it in some branch of learning in general. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of having moral ideas (moral intuition) and moral imagination, the ability to transform the world of percepts without violating the natural laws by which these are connected.

Darwinism and Evolution

The remaining part of chapter 12 of Steiner develops what could be called a true theory of evolution for humanity, a Darwinism fully integrated with moral evolution based in the essential spiritual nature of the human being. What is striking about this is that this corresponds closely to an important topic developed by Aurobindo in chapter 7, ”The Ego and the Dualities”. To introduce this idea let us start with Darwinism as it is generally understood. Taking it purely at face value, neither believing nor denying, we are asked to imagine that at some distant point in the past a certain group of monkeys over vast periods of time became capable of doing things that were inconceivable for their ancestors.

It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present  associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive  arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature

Both Steiner and Aurobindo are insistent that humanity is now and going into the future at a similar juncture to Darwin’s monkeys. However, there is a huge difference this time around. When considering those pre-historic times we are not invited to imagine that certain monkeys choose to develop for themselves those inconceivable new abilities. They were not capable of conscious individual choice at that stage. It was a “natural evolution” according to the theory and this was governed by the law of random mutation (ie absence of law). Steiner and Aurobindo both insist that this time round the step forward in evolution will be a conscious step. Humanity is the bridge between monkey thinking and a thinking based in a higher consciousness. Mankind is being invited to consider a relationship to life and the spiritual worlds which is inconceivable for certain parts of humanity, perhaps even currently large parts of humanity. The convincing power of materialism that has seized the world is the supreme obstacle for daring to believe this might be possible. However, some monkey minds will suspend disbelief and gradually initiate themselves into a radically different way of conceptualizing life. With Aurobindo this dynamic is developed in terms of the Mind (current intellectual thinking) becoming aware of its Supermind origins, a child of the Supermind that will, when it’s nature is not denied, attain to the consciousness of the Supermind. From chapter 14 “The Supermind as Creator” we see this expressed in the following way.

And since Mind too is created out of it, Mind must be a development by limitation out of this primal faculty and this mediatory act of the supreme Consciousness and must therefore be capable of resolving itself back into it through a reverse development by expansion. For always Mind must be identical with Supermind in essence and conceal in itself the potentiality of Supermind, however different or even contrary it may have become in its actual forms and settled modes of operation.

Elsewhere in Steiner’s lectures and books we see this topic of the evolution of consciousness developed in multiple directions. Here we will limit ourselves to understanding how Steiner connects Darwinism to a grander vision of an evolution of morality where the human being stands at the heart of earthly evolution as that being which is tasked with realizing its god like nature[4]. In Steiner’s terminology, a person who has achieved a certain level of clarity about the true nature of thinking, feeling and willing and how these faculties can connect him to the highest divine impulses has moved beyond thinking in mere mental pictures. Such a person practises ethical individualism by allowing moral imaginations and intuitions to live and work in his/her consciousness. He/she out of their own forces is capably of passing by lower egotistical impulses, lower moral imperatives of the family, state or religion to be inspired by ever higher benefactors of mankind.

Ethical individualism, then, is not in opposition to a rightly understood theory of evolution, but follows directly from it. Haeckel’s genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being continued without an interruption of natural law and without a break in the uniformity of evolution, up to the individual as a being that is moral in a definite sense. But on no account could the nature of a descendant species be deduced from the nature of an ancestral one. However true it is that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly developed out of those of his ancestors, it is equally true that the individual is morally barren unless he has moral ideas of his own.

This grand vision that Steiner and Aurobindo share of the true nature of the human being as a bridge between two worlds is radically different from Darwinism as interpreted by spiritless minds. Aurobindo and Steiner reconnect us to our true being and I am sure they would also recognize this same truth in the poetry of Wordsworth.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

For more on Wordsworth here is a past post:
https://waywithwords.se/2023/01/23/the-exceptional-state-wordsworth-perceiving-immortality/

[1] I could have also used similar imagery the describes how sub-atomic particles come into being out of the quantum field and to which they also return after their allotted time.

[2] https://the-formula.org/walter-russell-the-man-who-tapped-the-secrets-of-the-universe/

[3] Thus possessed of itself inwardly, it imparts also to its forms and modes the conscious delight of Sachchidananda. This becoming of the infinite Bliss-Existence-Consciousness in mind and life and body, — for independent of them it exists eternally, — is the transfiguration intended and the utility of individual existence. Through the individual it manifests in relation even as of itself it exists in identity.

[4] John 10:34 “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’?