The Ascent towards Supermind, Part II, Chapter XXVI - The Ascent towards Supermind 103

It’s like a magic box, you take out a few things and put them together and suddenly something else comes out, which you never expected. In the theory of Alexander, he said that originally there is only a framework consisting of space and time, like a huge open box, as it were nothing in it. If some kind of force, in space and time and some elements, somehow being produced and then you combine them in different ways and certain new things and further new things come out. At last, man has come out as a result of all these developments. A very curious kind of creature on the earth and considering all that is happening, he even forecast at what people have imagined of God that may also emerge out of this. Man has been able to image a kind of a God, Deity and maybe by some kind of combinations of elements in human being; God may come out of it. He wrote a book called ‘Space, Time and Deity’.

Then there was another, this is the theory of Smutts, there seems to be some kind of pattern in this evolutionary movement and merely to say that physical organs are the only means of development, does not seem to be very correct. There seems to be according to him that there is a holistic force. You will find that everything that comes out in the world has some kind of wholism, wholeness. It is not as if the part of the eye is developed, the whole of the eye is developed. It’s not the piecemeal development; whenever something develops, it may be a small thing but something whole comes out.

If this world were merely a kind of freak, inconsequential, by chance, then only fragments would have come out in the world, but that is not the case; even a small organism is a whole organism. It is a system, it may be a very small system, but it is a whole system. Even a small flower is a whole. It may be a very tiny thing but in the tiny-ness the fullness is there, some kind of wholeness is there. So, he felt that the whole movement of the world is impelled by a force which is holistic, there is something like wholeness.

Then there was another theory, this is the theory put forward by Whitehead, one of the recent philosophers of the world. He felt that this world does not seem to be a mere one tier development. It seems, as if there is a world above this world; whereas this world is a physical world, but there seems to be another world which is not physical, but which is ideative in character. Which has ideas in it and ideas are formations, there may be holistic formations, there may be other kind of formations. There are pattern in these ideas.

As the things develop here in this physical world, there is invasion from this ideative level and they imprint themselves on this matter. And that is how, we find new things immerging, they are new to the world of physical reality but they are not entirely new as if they were not there anywhere at all, they were in an ideative form. These ideative forms are imprinted on the physical and then they go on developing, then again a stage comes and again some new ideas come and imprints themselves. He called this process ‘ingressive evolution’. Evolution which is moving forward by the help of ingression, invasion from above, they enter into this world and imprint themselves. That is why; he says that ultimately human beings have become capable of ideation.

If the whole world were only a matter of unconscious movement or drive, then human beings could not have developed ideation at all because ideas already exist above, they have been able to embody themselves in the physical and they must be conscious, because ideas are conscious and they wait for the surroundings to be favorable and then they ingress into the right field and then evolution takes place.

There are many theories of this kind. These theories are in sharp contrast to those who oppose evolution by itself, those who maintain that this world is not at all a process of evolution. There is a belief that this whole world was created by God in six days time and seventh day was holiday. In six days time the whole world was created and all the creatures that we see on this earth one by one they were each one specially created, not by a process of evolution, which is supposed to have taken millions of years. They have two arguments basically; one is that if there was evolution, supposing for example, there is an ape which is supposed to have been the fore-runner of man. We don’t see apes becoming man today. If there was evolution we could find some apes becoming man today also, we don’t find it to be so. Secondly, if there an evolution then there must have been a general, gradual evolution and all the intermediate steps, there must have been many-many intermediate steps but they are not to be found. Between ape and man there is certainly a great difference or between a frog and an ape, between a frog and a bird, between a fish and a bird there is a lot of difference. You can’t bridge the gulf that is between one species and the other, but if there is evolution then there must not have been this gap at all.

The differences between species would have been very, very minute, so there seem to be lot of gaps between one species and the other and these gaps can be explained only if they are specially created by God. Each species specially created, not one coming out of the other.