Integral self-transformation of Man

An Integral Self-Transformation of Man Dr. Ananda Reddy

Lecture given May 19th 2001 in Munich at Schweisfurth-Stiftung

Sri Aurobindo is the Seer-Prophet of a life divine upon earth - of a divinised humanity and a transformed earth. Sri Aurobindo is a Seer who has given us a new vision of Man and Mankind. He is neither a speculative thinker reconstructing the image of Reality in intellectual terms, nor a mystic engrossed in the immediate realisation of a supra-sensuous Reality and one who is incapable of evaluating the profundities of his own experience. Sri Aurobindo is an intellectual giant who presented to the world in intellectual terms a new vision of the many-sided movements and potentialities of the evolving consciousness of Reality. He is a sharp critic of the one-sided tendencies in human culture. He is a Seer Poet who has insisted on the dynamic truth-vision of life as well as a comprehensive and integral transformation of man.

Translating his comprehending spiritual peak-experiences into intellectual terms, Sri Aurobindo says that this Universe is but the self-concealing and self-revealing of the Divine Consciousness. This is what he terms as Involution and Evolution respectively. Involution is the Divine Reality’s plunge into the Inconscient, a movement of the densification of the Spirit into Matter. Evolution is the return to the Superconscient through the process of sublimation and integration.In this march of evolution, the Divine Consciousness, asleep in the Inconscient, awakes to itself in Matter, then it becomes semi-conscious in Life – through plants and animals and then, to self-consciousness in Man. The stage is yet to arrive when the Divine Consciousness will be fully conscious, integrally conscious of itself – and that stage is the next evolutionary step beyond Man – the stage of Superman.The same evolutionary process is noted in the evolution of man – on the collective as well as the individual, says Sri Aurobindo. On the collective level, we see Nature moving through three steps or stages...

It is true. But Integral Yoga has brought all these ideals within the range of possibility – it is no more a probability – because Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have brought down the needed Force and Consciousness – Supermind. It is a thing decreed in the evolutionary endeavour of Nature, and by man’s active participation with her, he can hasten its fuller manifestation.