An evolutionary crisis

The problem is fundamental. In putting it evolutionary Nature is confronting herself with a critical choice which must one day be solved if humanity is to arrive or even to survive.

In the final chapter of The Life Divine, written in 1940, Sri Aurobindo states that “[a]t present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny” [LD 1090].

[T]he destiny of the race seems to be heading dangerously … into a prolonged confusion and perilous crisis and darkness of violent shifting incertitude. Even if this turns out to be a passing phase or appearance and a tolerable structural accommodation is found which will enable mankind to proceed less catastrophically on its uncertain journey, this can only be a respite. For the problem is fundamental and in putting it evolutionary Nature in man is confronting herself with a critical choice which must one day be solved in the true sense if the race is to arrive or even to survive. [LD 1092]

Because what is called for is “a radical change of nature,” Sri Aurobindo concedes that that “might seem to put off all the hope of humanity to a distant evolutionary future.” Unfortunately, even if it were so, “it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition; it is to ask for something unnatural and unreal, an impossible miracle.” (In other words, suck it up.) But fortunately,

what is demanded by this change is not something altogether distant, alien to our existence and radically impossible; for what has to be developed is there in our being and not something outside it: what evolutionary Nature presses for, is an awakening to the knowledge of self, the discovery of self, the manifestation of the self and spirit within us and the release of its self-knowledge, its self-power, its native self-instrumentation. It is, besides, a step for which the whole of evolution has been a preparation and which is brought closer at each crisis of human destiny when the mental and vital evolution of the being touches a point where intellect and vital force reach some acme of tension and there is a need either for them to collapse, to sink back into a torpor of defeat or a repose of unprogressive quiescence or to rend their way through the veil against which they are straining. What is necessary is that there should be a turn in humanity felt by some or many towards the vision of this change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility, the will to make it possible in themselves and to find the way. That trend is not absent and it must increase with the tension of the crisis in human world-destiny; the need of an escape or a solution, the feeling that there is no other solution than the spiritual cannot but grow and become more imperative under the urgency of critical circumstance. [LD 1096‒97]

A common spiritual life … must found and maintain itself on greater values than the mental, vital, physical values of the ordinary human society; if it is not so founded, it will be merely the normal human society with a difference. An entirely new consciousness in many individuals transforming their whole being, transforming their mental, vital and physical nature-self, is needed for the new life to appear; only such a transformation of the general mind, life, body nature can bring into being a new worthwhile collective existence. [LD 1098]

Two things, then, are necessary. At the very least, “there should be a turn in humanity felt by some or many towards the vision of this change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility” if not yet “the will to make it possible in themselves and to find the way.” But eventually an “entirely new consciousness in many individuals transforming their whole being” is needed.

Thus there may arise a situation in which “a life of gnostic beings” is attempting to emerge in or out of “a life of beings in the Ignorance,” a situation in which “the law of the two lives would seem to be contrary and to offend against each other” [LD 1100]. On the other hand, once “the life of the gnostic being becomes as much as that of the mental being an established part of the terrestrial world-order,” the power and knowledge at the disposal of the gnostic consciousness “would be much greater than the power and knowledge of mental man, and the life of a community of gnostic beings … would be as safe against attack as the organised life of man against any attack by a lower species.” What is more,

as this knowledge and the very principle of the gnostic nature would ensure a luminous unity in the common life of gnostic beings, so also it would be sufficient to ensure a dominating harmony and reconciliation between the two types of life. The influence of the supramental principle on earth would fall upon the life of the Ignorance and impose harmony on it within its limits. [LD 1101]

What Sri Aurobindo means by “Ignorance” (avidya) is an essential concept of Indian metaphysics. It denotes the lack or loss, by a multitude of beings like ourselves, of the consciousness of their mutual identity and of all that this entails. What will the influence of the supramental principle on the life of the Ignorance bring about?

[This] the mind cannot determine, for the supramental gnosis will itself bring down its own truth and that truth will take up whatever of itself has been put forth in our ideals and realisations of mind and life and body. The forms it has taken there may not survive, for they are not likely to be suitable without change or replacement in the new existence…. In the light of gnosis the many mental idols, constructed principles and systems, conflicting ideals which man has created in all domains of his mind and life, could command no acceptance or reverence; only the truth, if any, which these specious images conceal, could have a chance of entry as elements of a harmony founded on a much wider basis. It is evident that in a life governed by the gnostic consciousness war with its spirit of antagonism and enmity, its brutality, destruction and ignorant violence, political strife with its perpetual conflict, frequent oppression, dishonesties, turpitudes, selfish interests, its ignorance, ineptitude and muddle could have no ground for existence…. Life and the body would be no longer tyrannous masters demanding nine tenths of existence for their satisfaction, but means and powers for the expression of the spirit. [LD 1103]

A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status … might be described, since it surpasses the mental human level, as a life of spiritual and supramental supermanhood. But this must not be confused with past and present ideas of supermanhood; for supermanhood in the mental idea consists of an overtopping of the normal human level, not in kind but in degree of the same kind, by an enlarged personality, a magnified and exaggerated ego, an increased power of mind, an increased power of vital force, a refined or dense and massive exaggeration of the forces of the human Ignorance; it carries also, commonly implied in it, the idea of a forceful domination over humanity by the superman. That would mean a supermanhood of the Nietzschean type; it might be at its worst the reign of the “blonde beast” or the dark beast or of any and every beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism….

But what has to emerge is something much more difficult and much more simple; it is a self-realised being, a building of the spiritual self, an intensity and urge of the soul and the deliverance and sovereignty of its light and power and beauty — not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving for birth within it. [LD 1104‒05]

This new status would indeed be a reversal of the present law of human consciousness and life, for it would reverse the whole principle of the life of the Ignorance. It is for the taste of the Ignorance, its surprise and adventure, one might say, that the soul has descended into the Inconscience and assumed the disguise of Matter, for the adventure and the joy of creation and discovery, an adventure of the spirit, an adventure of the mind and life and the hazardous surprises of their working in Matter, for the discovery and conquest of the new and the unknown; all this constitutes the enterprise of life and all this, it might seem, would cease with the cessation of the Ignorance.

Man’s life is made up of the light and the darkness, the gains and losses, the difficulties and dangers, the pleasures and pains of the Ignorance, a play of colours moving on a soil of the general neutrality of Matter which has as its basis the nescience and insensibility of the Inconscient. To the normal life-being an existence without the reactions of success and frustration, vital joy and grief, peril and passion, pleasure and pain, the vicissitudes and uncertainties of fate and struggle and battle and endeavour, a joy of novelty and surprise and creation projecting itself into the unknown, might seem to be void of variety and therefore void of vital savour. Any life surpassing these things tends to appear to it as something featureless and empty or cast in the figure of an immutable sameness; the human mind’s picture of heaven is the incessant repetition of an eternal monotone.

But this is a misconception; for an entry into the gnostic consciousness would be an entry into the Infinite. It would be a self-creation bringing out the Infinite infinitely into form of being, and the interest of the Infinite is much greater and multitudinous as well as more imperishably delightful than the interest of the finite. The evolution in the Knowledge would be a more beautiful and glorious manifestation with more vistas ever unfolding themselves and more intensive in all ways than any evolution could be in the Ignorance. The delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty it takes innumerable, its godhead ever young and the taste of delight, rasa, of the Infinite eternal and inexhaustible. The gnostic manifestation of life would be more full and fruitful and its interest more vivid than the creative interest of the Ignorance; it would be a greater and happier constant miracle….

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature. [LD 1106‒07]

This was written at the beginning of Word War II. Here is something Sri Aurobindo wrote ten years later, in 1950:

Mankind has a habit of surviving the worst catastrophes created by its own errors or by the violent turns of Nature and it must be so if there is any meaning in its existence, if its long history and continuous survival is not the accident of a fortuitously self-organising Chance, which it must be in a purely materialistic view of the nature of the world. If man is intended to survive and carry forward the evolution of which he is at present the head and, to some extent, a half-conscious leader of its march, he must come out of his present chaotic international life and arrive at a beginning of organised united action….

The question now put by evolving Nature to mankind is whether its existing international system, if system it can be called, a sort of provisional order maintained with constant evolutionary or revolutionary changes, cannot be replaced by a willed and thought-out fixed arrangement, a true system, eventually a real unity serving all the common interests of the earth’s peoples….

It is for the men of our day and, at the most, of tomorrow to give the answer. For, too long a postponement or too continued a failure will open the way to a series of increasing catastrophes which might create a too prolonged and disastrous confusion and chaos and render a solution too difficult or impossible; it might even end in something like an irremediable crash not only of the present world-civilisation but of all civilisation. A new, a difficult and uncertain beginning might have to be made in the midst of the chaos and ruin after perhaps an extermination on a large scale, and a more successful creation could be predicted only if a way was found to develop a better humanity or perhaps a greater, a superhuman race. [HC 585‒87, emphases added]

There you have it. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

A recommendation

Please watch this outstanding panel event: Europe on Fire — the future of Ukrainian and European defence, moderated by Silicon Curtain’s Jonathan Fink.

Insights (from my recent Substack Notes)

It often goes unnoticed that since Russia launched the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has rebuilt and expanded its defense industry, mobilized and trained a significant portion of its population, become a world-leader in drone innovations and held back the “unstoppable” Russian army with, let’s be honest, only a small amount of support from outside. Although the narrative persists that poor little Ukraine must beg for security guarantees to survive, as time goes by it looks more and more like they are the ones ensuring Europe’s survival, even if we aren’t ensuring theirs. This shift in the balance of power is still underappreciated and not fully understood. So let’s ask ourselves: Do the countries of NATO need Ukraine more than Ukraine needs NATO? — Gabrelius Landsbergis, 14 Apr 2025

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Vladimir Kara-Murza is what those who are critical of present-day Russian society ironically call a “good Russian.” This term designates Russians who are against the war and against Putin and who often have suffered because of their position. They are loved and admired in the West. They receive prizes and scholarships and travel the world; we find their faces in Western newspapers and magazines and see them shaking hands with high-profile politicians, intellectuals, and businesspeople. They are seen as embodying the “other Russia” that must still exist somewhere. There is only one problem: the “good Russian” is also self-centred, more interested in “saving” Russia than in supporting Ukraine, and refuses to accept Russian society’s agency and responsibility for what is happening. For them, evil begins and ends with Putin’s reign, and once he is out of power, the “wonderful Russia of the future” can begin. According to the “good Russian,” this is not Russia’s war but Putin’s war—even though hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are waging a war of aggression and are committing genocide in the occupied territories, and the majority of Russians seem either to accept or support this. The problem is not only that the “good Russian” refuses to recognise Russia’s fundamental problem in the past and present, i.e. its failure to reckon with Russian colonialism, but that s/he themselves cultivate a colonial mindset. — Franziska Davies, 14 Apr 2025

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War is not a tragedy for the Russian mindset. On the contrary, it’s the state in which they rejoice and find purpose in their miserable lives. Because Russia is not just St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Kazan. It’s a huge piece of land where many people are destitute and have to s**t outside because there’s no plumbing. These people need to be given a purpose to exist, and war is a perfect means to do so. This is why when you see things like that happening, don’t be surprised that they do not only find support among ordinary Russians … but that they’re, in fact, praised to the extent that’s quite frankly impossible to grasp fully. — Lesia Dubenko, 14 Apr 2025

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There is an inherent lie in the idea of peace with Moscow. We know perfectly well that Putin does not want peace, or even a truce. He has not abandoned his plan to conquer or subjugate Ukraine and will continue to destroy it and murder its inhabitants until he has achieved this subservience—unless his army is defeated without question. Even if a so-called peace were to come about, not only would it last only a short time, the time for Moscow to strengthen its army and to polish up new weapons. A relinquishment of part of the Ukrainian territories to Russia would demonstrate to the other nations of the world the nullity and vacuity of the commitments of the Western democracies to the principles of law, as well as their indifference to the fate of the Ukrainian populations martyred under the Russian yoke….

“Nothing on Ukraine without Ukraine, nothing on Europe without Europe”. This might seem obvious and a legitimate demand. But on the other hand, the statement itself suggests that Europe and Ukraine should sit down at a negotiating table with Moscow, which not only does not exist, but above all cannot exist. On the contrary, it can be argued that it is in a way fortunate that Europe, i.e. the European Union, the United Kingdom and Norway, and Ukraine were not “invited”. It would have been a trap into which Europe and Ukraine could easily have fallen….

That is exactly what Putin wants: to trap the West in its intrinsic contradictions and expose its incoherence, which is deeply destructive of all thought—and, therefore, of all strategy. He has this coherence, even if it is based on absolute lies and the scuttling of all truth and all principles. He obeys the vertical of evil, while the West is proving incapable of defending truth and justice. Russia is totally straightforward in its organized enterprise of destruction, while the West is tacking back and forth in its defense of the law. To talk about diplomacy with Putin is to delegitimize democracies’ own principles. — Nicolas Tenzer, 7 Apr 2025