The Unexpected Comeback of the Conscious Universe - Pt. VI

Evolution, involution and spiritual emergentism

In the previous part, we extended the idealist worldview from a coarse-grained mind-body dichotomy to a multi-modal cosmology with different ‘planes of consciousness,’ ranging from matter to the superconscious—and that, from now on, I will call an ‘integral cosmology’. In this paradigm, the universe is not just a Mind, but mind, matter, life, the subconscient, and the superconscient, are different ‘modes,’ ‘concretizations,’ or ‘planes’ of the very same thing—namely consciousness. A cosmology that, in a certain sense, is reminiscent of Spinoza’s pantheistic monism that also envisages Nature and God as being one and the same thing, with mind and matter being only two ‘modes’ of the very same ‘substance.’ However, the decisive difference, is that the integral cosmology discussed here is not pantheistic (Nature is God), but rather panentheistic (Nature is in God, but God is more than Nature), and extends its vision beyond a God-Nature duality.

Traditional forms of idealism conceive of a universal Mind, or a Mind at Large, or to take again the Spinozian view, just a universal ‘Substance’ that, however, remains essentially a quasi-mechanistic universal consciousness or, at best, a blind and instinctive Mind that isn’t self-aware, has no free will, self-knowledge, and comprehension, neither of its transcendent nor of its immanent aspects and processes. This Spinozian idea of a not self-aware universal consciousness was also taken up by Schopenhauer who saw the ‘World as Will and Representation,’ and is defended also by contemporary idealists, like Bernardo Kastrup.

What stands behind the reason for this ‘cosmic downgrade’ from the religious almighty God to the mute and indifferent divinity of the philosopher? It has to be found in the coarse-grained metaphysical standpoint of philosophy, and science that weren’t able to go much beyond a mind-body dualism or, worse, a one-dimensional material monism. Given the mechanistic and seemingly deterministic aspect of Nature, if we accept the identity between Nature and God without any ‘planes of consciousness’ in-between, it must inevitably appear as a mechanistic God. Because, if Nature, with all its phenomena, is supposed to be the conscious universe itself, or an appearance of it, with not much standing beyond or behind that appearance, then it is difficult to avoid the logical conclusion that the creator can’t be much more than its creation. If Nature acts like a mechanical, automatic, and unfeeling entity, and is supposed to reflect the properties and character of a higher Self, then that Self can’t be a superconscious and omniscient being but must be a rather disappointing dumb and subconscious divinity. This also raises the question, as I have examined in my critical review of some of the present theories of consciousness, how this almost somnambulist universal consciousness could have created this universe with such fantastic complexity through an evolutionary process, other than falling back to some form of mechanistic materialism?

The issue does not arise if we allow ourselves to go beyond a black-or-white conception of the universe and beyond a pantheistic frame. There is not only the physical universal plane of Nature and a semi-conscious universal mind, but a spectrum of planes of consciousness where Nature is only the lowest step of the ladder of the superconscious. A panentheistic vision where the seemingly automatic, unconscious, and insentient aspect of the physical plane we call ‘Nature,’ is only the last appearance of a process of self-forgetfulness of a supremely creative, superconscious, all-aware, and almighty Godhead. If we look upon Nature as an ostensibly unaware and ignorant lower plane or mode of consciousness which is the projection of other more aware and less ignorant planes of existence, such as the life and mental planes, which are themselves the self-expression of the highest totally self-aware, and all-knowing superconscious plane that transcends them but also contains them all, then the contradictions begin to reconcile. The fact that Nature and evolution seem to be not much more than a machine with its creator having opposite attributes, begins to make sense. What from the coarse-grained dualistic and pantheistic perspective looks as an irreconcilable contradiction and forces the philosopher to drag down God to Nature, in the panentheistic perspective of the multifold planes of consciousness that descend from the superconscient planes down to unconscious matter, things reveal itself the other way around: It sees in an unconscious Darwinian evolution the workings of a veiled superconscious gnosis. Or, to put it in other words: Ignorance is one of the many masks of the Omniscient.

Can this perspective help us understand evolution better?

The word ‘evolution’ comes from the Latin’ evolvere’, which means to ‘unroll’ or ‘open out’ or ‘uncover’ (the prefix ‘e’ means ‘out’ and ‘volvere’ stands for ‘rolling’). Interestingly, contrary to the current understanding of ‘descent with modification’, which is the modern Darwinian accepted notion of biological evolution, the term ‘evolution’ betrays lost wisdom. It is an emergent process that unfolds something inherently already contained in what unrolls. Also, the word ‘development’ implies that something develops by coming out of an envelope. It seems to suggest that there is something already fully developed but concealed or hidden that evolution unveils. But it is not merely something material, molecular, or genetic. Instead, we can think of evolution as the manifestation of the universal Spirit in, out of, and through matter in the form of an individual spirit. It is not matter that manifests consciousness but a universal Consciousness that emerges in and through matter, taking the semblances of an individuated conscious entity.

On the other hand, this implies that before the beginnings of the evolutionary process that evolves the individual spirit out of matter, there must have been the opposite process. The emergence of consciousness, mind, will, and agency in the physical Nature reflects powers that were previously veiled by an opposite process of evolution, namely, an ‘involution’. The spirit had first ‘plungeed’ itself in matter by a movement of self-forgetfulness becoming matter—that is, it ‘involved’ itself in matter. If we think of the physical manifestation as an involution of the Godhead in matter, things appear in a totally new light. It is a divine super-consciousness that subjected itself to oblivion, by projecting itself into shadows of its own that we call ‘matter,’ ‘life,’ and ‘mind,’ and thereby hiding itself from itself into a sort of ‘self-concealed’ and ‘masked,’ still divine consciousness but latent and asleep in the inconscient matter.

The real significance of this process is beyond the reach of intellectual knowledge, but we might gain an intuitive understanding of its meaning through analogies, metaphors, or images. Such as saying that the One without a second wanted to become the many and acquire a self-awareness in multiplicity. The supreme consciousness fell into its opposite casting out of itself the many, which led to the creation of a space where the original Consciousness is no longer aware of itself, but only individually in the many. By doing so, it lost its original bliss of unity which it is now struggling to get back by the opposite evolutionary movement.

Thereby, matter, which is a projection, a formulation, a ‘shadow’ of the same Consciousness in the manifestation, is, however, inherently still an expression of an original divinity. Nevertheless, it behaves as a mechanical and inconscient substance, in a gross material universe—that is, in and as ‘cosmic ignorance’—and from which it is re-emerging (‘unrolling’) by an evolutionary principle.

This is the origin of the planes of consciousness itself. Matter is a form of veiled life, and life is a form of veiled mind, and mind is a form of veiled superconsciousness. It is the One that has self-involved itself in the depth of a descending ladder of consciousness.

Though this is not what science regards evolution to be, note, however, that this spiritual perspective, and that we could call ‘spiritual emergentism,’ does not contradict any scientific finding.  The integral vision does not deny the orthodox Darwinian conception but complements it with a polar process of emergence. On one side, after an involution of a super-conscient spirit descending from the higher planes into the planes below, it now grows by a bottom-up process as an inconscient spirit in matter, which unfolds itself from an almost unconscious state to progressively higher states of consciousness. This is what the analytic physical mind interprets as Darwinian evolution. On the other side, it is also immanently guided by the action of a top-down process of the same superconscient spirit from above.

What this view has in common with the modern scientific understanding of evolution is that there is a will and an urge in matter to roll something out of the inconscient. It is initially slow, ignorant, and subjected to trial and error, natural selection, random mutations, etc., but, sooner or later, it must inevitably reveal itself. However, while the evolutionary biologist tries without success to explain these primordial impulses of agency, goal-directedness, will, and intent that appear in various forms already in the first single-celled creatures, with complex physical processes, in the frame of this spiritual emergentism these behavioral and psychological aspects are not explained as emerging traits from matter or properties of mechanical processes, but rather are posited as fundamental aspects of consciousness. The life impulses are a superficial appearance of a deeper original non-physical impulse that isn’t realized only by mere biophysical blind and mechanical processes but, rather, acts from below, and behind the veil of the material forces. As long as the concealment of the Spirit is almost complete, the consciousness dwelling in matter is forgetful of itself and subjected almost completely to mechanical forces. It emerges by a bottom-up process, slowly and painfully, by an eonic process of Darwinian evolution based on the laws of natural selection, mutations, and habitual automatisms. However, once consciousness begins to manifest (‘unroll’) itself out of matter, it progressively takes the lead. Despite everything, there is a pressure from above also. Because, at the same time, the superconscient plane, which does not intervene directly, nevertheless orders, controls, and acts in the evolutionary drama indirectly, behind a veil by a top-down influence. The morphological development of the species on the physical plane is only a superficial aspect of the workings of a Spirit acting from above—that is, from the superconscient planes—and from below contained in the form of a ‘seed-power’ in the physical and subconscient planes as well. Thus, there is no contradiction or irreconcilable viewpoint between, matter and spirit, science and spirituality, or this spiritual emergentism and mechanistic materialism of Darwinian evolution. The latter is just one aspect of the former that does not exhaust itself in biological evolution.

‘Spiritual emergentism’ according to Dall-E 3. :)

Once one becomes aware of this trans-physical-spiritual polar mechanism in Creation, contradictions dissolve. There is no irreconcilable duality separating the apparently unconscious matter from the omniscient spirit or the mechanistic conception of evolution from teleological ones that conceive of final causes. Both are the two aspects of the very same process that we can reconcile in this integral vision. For instance, the instinctive God of Spinoza that couldn’t do otherwise, or Schopenhauer’s undirected ‘World as Will’ that also inspired Kastrup’s Mind at Large, is the cosmic life plane. They captured a particular aspect of an all-knowing and all-powerful divinity that, however, on that plane, appears to be an involved instinctive universal will, that can’t do otherwise than repeating almost completely mechanically the same habitual behaviors. However, this cosmic life plane is only a small interval of a large cosmic spectrum of the planes of being—that is, the layers of involved consciousness we already discussed.

Thus, the mind is also not a creation resulting in an epiphenomenon of an aggregate of matter. Rather, it is already involved in it and re-emerges—that is, it evolves—out of matter during the evolutionary process once the physical aggregate is ready to hold it. Mind is a universal plane already existent and pervasive in all of the cosmos before any evolutionary process started. However, the mind is a derivative and subordinate power of the levels of consciousness above. This means the universe resulted from a process of creation in which matter was the last appearance, not the first basis of existence. Evolution is a process and progress of the emergence of the Spirit in matter, with matter being a ‘densification’, ‘condensation’, or ‘precipitation’ of the very same self-involved and self-limited Spirit. From this perspective, a universal Consciousness shrinks and confines itself in a seed that we call ‘matter’. Matter is a ‘self-demarcation’ or an ‘exclusive self-concentration’ by differentiation of the One. Just as a seed, a cell, or an egg already contain in potentiality the full organism they will manifest in time by development and growth, matter also already contains all the potentialities of the Spirit. But, at this stage of evolution, matter’s conscious aspect is still involved, inert, and only subconsciously active, except for its almost entirely mechanical and deterministic character.

The forces that drive this evolutionary process come from below, in the form of a material process that conditions it from the outside by the laws of physics and by the known Darwinian evolutionary principles of natural selection, genetic drifts by (apparently) ‘random’ mutations, environmental factors, adaptation, survival, and reproduction of the fittest, etc. But, at the same time, other types of forces come from above and guide the process from within by an inherent consciousness—that is, more or less directly or indirectly according to the plane of existence, in contact with an original superconscience.

In the stone—that is, a concretization on the physical plane—the planes of life, mind, and the superconscious are involved and latent but remain unexpressed. In the plant, the universal life plane emerges in a first living individualized expression, but the mind remains largely somnambulant, even though it begins to trickle through in the form of a ‘basal cognition.’ In the non-human animal a brain with a more or less developed cognitive and sensorial apparatus manifests allows to develop further both the life and the mental plane in the individuated organism. In the human being, the fully developed analytic reason—that is, an inherent power of the cosmic mind—reveals itself in the physical plane, while the first intimations of a transrational intuition of the superconscious plane begins to shine through. And, it isn’t unreasonable to predict that the next evolutionary step of humankind will be that of transcending itself towards a superconscious life that fully integrates and harmonizes all the universal planes in its individual form.

Thus, the aim and purpose of evolution as a progressive self-finding of the universal superconscient spirit through a virtually infinite variation of material forms that are increasingly capable of containing its powers, qualities, and knowledge, is no longer an enigma, but an almost self-explanatory fact. It is an evolutionary epic where every event, manifestation, and creature is a ‘Thought,’ an ‘Image,’ or a ‘Projection’ of an all-powerful ‘Idea’ inside a manifestation of an undifferentiated unity in infinite diversity.

In a certain sense, the Christian idea of humans as being made in God’s own image, contrasted with the concept of the fall of mankind from a state of perfection under the grace of God and obedience to Him to a state of disobedience and corruption, as described in the biblical Genesis, makes sense. It is a sort of distant subliminal remembrance in the collective of a partial truth. From this integral perspective, there is the bottom-up emergence of the individualized spirit in the manifestation that has ‘fallen’ into an involved condition, yet complemented by the top-down action from above of the very same universal Spirit.

At this point, what does this integral cosmology tell us about ourselves? What is our inmost nature? Are we only lost ‘fragments’ or ‘dissociated alters’ of this universal Spirit? What is our true identity? This is the topic I will discuss in the next part.

Or…

Thank you for reading my work!

Got to part VII