The Evolution of Consciousness Across Multiple Lifetimes Organised Around the Development of the Psychic Being

The human lifetime is extremely short in the context of Nature’s evolutionary development. This leads us to several possible explanations or conclusions. We can posit that life is just random chance and there is no real significance or meaning to our lives, or the fact that we have developed self-awareness and can question the meaning of our own existence. We can choose to accept that there is a meaning to the evolutionary cycle, but that it relates to forms in a collective sense, but not necessarily to an individual, who, while self-aware, will not see the developments within his own lifetime. This implies that the species advances while the individuals are essentially short-term cogs in the process. Or we can acknowledge that not only the species, the collectivity, is important and can make progress, but the individual also can both make progress and is important.

It becomes obvious when we see that the mass of humanity does not advance separate from the advancements introduced by specific individuals and then broadly implemented across the species. This points to a critical role played by the individual. When we add to this factor the experience individuals have had that show them the reality of the soul, the reality of the evolution of consciousness and the reality of rebirth, we can see that such a mechanism as rebirth and the progress of the soul through multiple lifetimes is in reality the only explanation that makes any sense whatsoever. True scientists will examine the facts and circumstances, draw reasonable inferences, challenge the results with alternative options, and then maintain the best solution until and unless some better solution presents itself that answers all the factors. To date, nothing has arisen to create any doubt about the rebirth-solution to the role of the individual in the process of consciousness in the universal manifestation and its evolution through forms of ever-increasing complexity and detailed organisation.

The Mother notes: ”Sri Aurobindo told us last week that this Nature was following an ascending progression in order to manifest more and more the divine consciousness contained in all forms. So, with each new form that it produces, Nature makes a form capable of expressing more completely the spirit which this form contains. But if it were like this, a form comes, develops, reaches its highest point and is followed by another form; the others do not disappear, but the individual does not progress. The individual dog or monkey, for instance, belongs to a species which has its own peculiar characteristics; when the monkey or the man arrives at the height of its possibilities, that is, when a human individual becomes the best type of humanity, it will be finished; the individual will not be able to progress any farther. He belongs to the human species, he will continue to belong to it. So, from the point of view of terrestrial history there is a progress, for each species represents a progress compared with the preceding species; but from the point of view of the individual, there is no progress: he is born, he follows his development, dies and disappears. Therefore, to ensure the progress of the individual, it was necessary to find another means; this one was not adequate. But within the individual, contained in each form, there is an organisation of consciousness which is closer to and more directly under the influence of the inner divine Presence, and the form which is under this influence — this kind of inner concentration of energy — has a life independent of the physical form — this is what we generally call the ‘soul’ or the ‘psychic being’ — and since it is organised around the divine centre it partakes of the divine nature which is immortal, eternal. The outer body falls away, and this remains throughout every experience that it has in each life, and there is a progress from life to life, and it is the progress of the same individual. And this movement complements the other, in the sense that instead of a species which progresses relative to other species, it is an individual who passes through all the stages of progress of these species and can continue to progress even when the species have reached the limit of their possibilities and… stay there or disappear — it depends on the case — but they cannot go any farther, whereas the individual, having a life independent of the purely material form, can pass from one form to another and continue his progress indefinitely. That makes a double movement which completes itself. And that is why each individual has the possibility of reaching the utmost realisation, independent of the form to which he momentarily belongs.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 217-218