in my copy of the upanishads the paramahamsa upanishad last three lines are "entering into the unitive state, he attains the goal of evolutoin. Truly he attains the goal of evolution." is this just the translation or has the idea of evolution been around for thousands of years in the east and just recently expanded to the west?
Probably the upanishad is talking about the evolution of the soul, or the consciousness - not the evolution of speices as with Darwin. In recent times, Sri Aurobindo sought in his philosophy to reconcile the idea of evolution of spieces on one hand, and soul evolution on the other.
doesn't soul evolve along with the species? like the soul is incarnated in lower life forms first until karma is worked out then it slowly progresses to animals where the karma is worked out until eventually it takes on a human incarnation where it gets sucked into all the worldly traps until the soul and the mind has evolved enough to be liberated just my interpretation
Consider this: Darwin's theory says that life began with sea creatures, which slowly adapted to living partly on land. Then there came terrestrial animals. These animals gradually evolved to human form, first being short and hunched, then learning to walk erect. Now look at the 10 avatars of Vishnu: First matsya, the fish. Then kurma, the turtle - amphibian. Then varaha the boar - terrestrial animal. Narasimha - man-animal. Vamana - Dwarf man. Parasurama - warrior man. Rama - Man, emperor. Krishna - cowherd man. Buddha - Intellectual man. Kalki - Who knows?! Coincidence? hmmm?
You could read into that some sort of encoded version of evolution, but if we were'nt familiar with the idea from modern biology would you? I doubt that the people who came up with the avatars of Vishnu actually had any concept of evolution in the biological sense.
I don't think the idea of physical evolution of spieces had been around at all before Darwin, at least not in any form that could be recognized as such. The word 'evolution' of course, can be applied to various processes. It means a process of development from simple to complex, from a given state of order to a higher state of order. So - Motzart's music evolved for instance from childhood to maturity. The english language evolved from middle english, through tudor english to modern english. Evolution is happeneing everywhere all the time. But the concept had to wait for Charles Darwin to apply it to biology and the origin of spieces.
I don't know - it's a very old hermetic concept that everything is evolving including life. Darwin described HOW it happens from a scientific point of view but otherwise the idea was not new. Just as a point - I'm not trying to say he was plagerising, it wasn't a very popular concept and I can't see any reason why he would have come in contact with it. Blessings Sebbi
Thanks Bhaskar, your input was beneficial... I wasn't implying the darwins theory was not authentically his I was just wondering if the idea of evolution of the species is something that is an old concept in ancient india. I was just looking for evidence the support my 'evolving' idea that the evolution of the species was done in accrodance with the soul. To me ti seems very clear that upon creation of life the soul kind of got stuck in the lower animals and in order to free itself and realise god we needed to develop a brain that allowed us to think freely and discover god through our surroundings which obviouisly can't be done without our brains and I think our chakra's developed in the same way. LIke the very first single celled organisms cheif concerns where stay aliv and providing food for itself, when it had plentiful food then the energy moved on to reproduction until there were billions of single celled organisms floating around in the water and then came the third chakra which caused a bit of randomness among the cells...and oops what do you know a few of the cells randomness turned out to be beneficial....
Sri Aurobindo's ideas about evolution might interest you. His basic idea about it is that the original superconsciousness, or a portion of it, has become involved in un-conscious matter, and the process of the manifestation of the cosmos is the re-emergence of this consciousness back to it's superconscious origin. The process of the evolution of life on earth seems to be a progressive manifestation of successively higher and more intelligent spieces, leading, at the present time, as far as humans. At the same time, an inner and hidden process of soul evolution is going on. When the human stage is reached, this can become a conscious process. To some extent, our consciousness can become an expression of the Divine Consciousness. Sri A thinks that in the next stage of evolution, this Divine Consciousness will be fully realized - it will become the norm of existence, just as mind is the norm for humans now. And a further evolution may be inevitable. The higher consciousness would become fully manifest here. A new order of being would become manifest on earth, as different from present humanity as we are from animals. That's a very brief sketch I'm afraid, but hope it conveys the general idea.
evolution is cool... now renunciates don't have to come to cities to give darshan to their disciples from their mountain or jungle retreats as they can communicate by cell phone
one world... one love technology is just a metaphor for inner realms we've forgotten... soon to be awakened
