Involution and evolution in Sri Aurobindo's thought

Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective Rod Hemsell January 2002

I have followed out this quotation at some length in order to show the depth and scope of the ideas of involution and evolution in Sri Aurobindo's thought, from which Wilber seems to have drawn only a portion of his understanding. What he has left out, or not grasped, and which is of considerable importance to this Vedantic conception, is the idea of Supermind as the Creatrix, the Mediatrix, or creative Consciousness-Force of the Brahman responsible for each moment of the involutionary/evolutionary cycle. And the stress here is on Conscious Being, and on Existence, which is all inclusive. In Sri Aurobindo's conception, this process of involution and evolution is conscious, harmonious, divine, at every level. It is only Mind which experiences the illusion of fragmentation, and the Ego which experiences the separate-self, and Life which undergoes the struggle of Eros/Thanatos.

But the reality is quite other than the interpretation given to it by Mind focusing on these various levels of experience, until it is able to rise into that which is its container and its real originating substance. It is possible that Wilber could have derived the notion of involution and evolution from this paragraph, but not the complicated process of forgetting and remembering that he has constructed, and not the microgeny which gives rise to the spectrum of consciousness.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the so called "structures of consciousness" or levels of the Great Chain of Being, in Wilber's system, are inherent aspects of Conscious Being, enfolded and unfolded, by the creative Will-Force inherent in them...

The first problem to be addressed, I believe, is that for Wilber, and also for Hegel and Berdyaev, here in our world of subjectivity and illusory separate-self sense, Brahman/Spirit has been lost to itself and forgotten by us. This is undoubtedly the problem "from below" so to speak. But it is an illusion of the ego, not a truth of the Brahman. Just on the other side of this surface, just above this limitation of Mind, and also just below in Life and Matter, is the Brahman as Supermind. It is an underlying unity, as well as a transcendence to be realized, "which expresses itself openly enough in cosmic action and cosmic substance" or in that world of form and matter which to the ego-mind seems other.

The reality, as Wilber mentioned in the beginning, is Wholeness, which always seems to be the point of view and emphasis of Sri Aurobindo when speaking of the involution of that One in all forms of Consciousness. But the point of view of involution and evolution expressed by Wilber always seems to convey the idea of polar opposites and separation from the source. Involution is always only a movement backward and downward, evolution a very halting and painful movement forward and upward.