Spiritual evolution, also calledhigher evolution,[1] is the idea that themind or spirit, in analogy tobiological evolution, collectively evolves from a simple form dominated by nature, to a higher form dominated by thespiritual or divine. It is differentiated from the "lower" or biological evolution.[1]
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An alternate term is "Higher Evolution."[1] According to Piyasīlo,
— The term 'Higher' here refers to the mind - the basis of spiritual evolution. In contrast to the Higher Evolution, the biological (or Darwinian) evolution is known as the Lower Evolution.[1]
The concept of spiritual evolution isteleological, in contrast to biological evolution.
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Theories of spiritual evolution are important in manyOccult andEsoteric teachings, which emphasise the progression and development of the individual either after death (spiritualism) or through successivereincarnations (Theosophy,Hermeticism).
The concept of theGreat Chain of Being was developed byPlato andAristotle whose ideas were taken up and synthesised by Plotinus. Plotinus in turn heavily influencedAugustine's theology, and from thereAquinas and the Scholastics. The Great Chain of Being was an important theme inRenaissance andElizabethan thought, had an under-acknowledged influence on the shaping of the ideas of theAge of Enlightenment and played a large part in the worldview of 18th century Europe. And while essentially a static worldview, by the 18th and early 19th century it had been "temporalized" by the concept of thesoul ascending or progressing spiritually through the successive rungs or stages, and thus growing or evolving closer toGod.[2] It also had at this time an impact on theories of biological evolution.
E. F. Schumacher, author ofSmall is Beautiful, has recently proposed a sort of simplified Great Chain of Being, based on the idea of four "kingdoms" (mineral, vegetable, animal, human).[3] Schumacher rejects modernist and scientific themes, his approach recalling the universalist orientation of writers likeHuston Smith,[4] and likely contributing to Ken Wilber's "holonomic" hierarchy or "Great Nest of Being".[5]
Spiritualists reacted with uncertainty to the theories ofevolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. Broadly speaking, the concept of evolution fit the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time, however, a belief in the animal origins of man threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit, for if man had not been created, it was scarcely plausible that he would be specially endowed with a spirit. This led to spiritualists embracing spiritual evolution.[6]
In the 19th century, Anglo-AmericanSpiritualist ideas emphasized the progression of the soul after death to higher states of existence, in contrast toSpiritism which admits to reincarnation.
Spiritualism taught that after death, spirits progressed to new spheres of existence. According to this idea, evolution occurred in thespirit world “at a rate more rapid and under conditions more favorable to growth” than encountered on earth.[7]
Thebiologist and spiritualistAlfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) believed that qualitative novelties could arise through the process of spiritual evolution, in particular, the phenomena of life and mind. Wallace attributed these novelties to asupernatural agency.[8] Later in his life, Wallace was an advocate of spiritualism and believed in animmaterial origin for the higher mental faculties of humans. He believed that evolution suggested the universe had a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms are not explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes. In a 1909 magazine article entitledThe World of Life, which he later expanded into a book of the same name[9] Wallace argued in his 1911 bookWorld of life for a spiritual approach to evolution and described evolution as “creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose”. Wallace believednatural selection could not explainintelligence ormorality in the human being so suggested that non-material spiritual forces accounted for these. Wallace believed the spiritual nature of man could not have come about by natural selection alone, the origins of the spiritual nature must originate “in the unseen universe of spirit”.[10][11]
Robert Broom in his bookThe Coming of Man: Was it Accident or Design? (1933) claimed that "spiritual agencies" had guidedevolution asanimals andplants were too complex to have arisen by chance. According to Broom there were at least two different kinds of spiritual forces, andpsychics are capable of seeing them.[12] Broom claimed there was a plan and purpose in evolution and that the origin ofHomo sapiens is the ultimate purpose behind evolution. According to Broom "Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in.[13]
The Anglo-American position recalls (and is presumably inspired by) 18th century concepts regarding the temporalization of The Great Chain of Being. Spiritual evolution, rather than being a physical (or physico-spiritual) process is based on the idea of realms or stages through which the soul or spirit passes in a non-temporal, qualitative way. This is still an important part of some spiritualist ideas today, and is similar to some mainline (as opposed tofundamentalist)Protestant Christian beliefs, according to which after death the person goes to "summerland" (seeSpirit world)
Theosophy presents a more sophisticated and complex cosmology than Spiritualism, although coming out of the same general milieu.H. P. Blavatsky developed a highly original cosmology, according to which the human race (both collectively and through the succession of individual reincarnation and spiritual evolution) passes through a number ofRoot Races, beginning with the huge ethereal and mindless Polarian or First Root Race, through the Lemurian (3rd), Atlantean (4th) and our present "Aryan" 5th Race. This will give rise to a future, Post-Aryan 6th Root Race of highly spiritual and enlightened beings that will arise inBaja California in the 28th century, and an even more sublime 7th Root Race, before ascending to totally superhuman and cosmic states of existence.
Blavatsky's ideas were further developed by her successors, such asC.W. Leadbeater,Rudolf Steiner,Alice Bailey,Benjamin Creme, andVictor Skumin each of whom went into huge detail in constructing baroque cycles of rounds, races, and sub-races.Skumin elaborated on the theosophical conceptions of spiritual evolution and proposed (1990) a classification ofHomo spiritalis (Latin:spiritual man), the sixth root race, consisting of eight subraces: HS0 Anabiosis spiritalis, HS1 Scientella spiritalis, HS2 Aurora spiritalis, HS3 Ascensus spiritalis, HS4 Vocatus spiritalis, HS5 Illuminatio spiritalis, НS6 Creatio spiritalis, and HS7 Servitus spiritalis. According to Skumin:
Although including elements of the science of her day as well as both eastern and western esoteric thought, Blavatsky rejected theDarwinian idea that man evolved from apes, and most subsequent esotericists followed this lead. Darwinism, with its explanation of evolution through material factors likenatural selection and random mutation, does not sit well with many spiritual evolutionists, for whom evolution is initiated or guided by metaphysical principles or is tending towards afinal spiritual or divine state. It is believed by Theosophists that humans are evolvingspiritually through a series of esoteric initiations and in the future humans will become esotericmasters themselves as theirsouls gradually rise upward through thespiritual hierarchy over the course of eons as they reincarnate.
Despite this, recent Theosophists andAnthroposophists have tried to incorporate the facts of geology and paleontology into their cosmology and spiritual evolution (in AnthroposophyHermann Poppelbaum is a particularly creative thinker in this regard). Some have attempted to equateLemuria withGondwanaland, for example. Today all these ideas have little influence outside their specialised followings, but for a time Theosophical concepts were immensely influential. Theosophy-like teachings also continue today in a group of religions based on Theosophy called theAscended Master Teachings.
Rosicrucians[which?] view the world as a training school, which posits that while mistakes are made in life, humans often learn more from mistakes than successes. Suffering is considered as merely the result of error, and the impact of suffering on theconsciousness causes humans to be active along other lines which are found to begood, inharmony withnature. Humans are seen as spirits attending the school of life for the purpose of unfolding latent spiritual power, developing themselves fromimpotence toomnipotence (related also to development frominnocence intovirtue), reaching the stage of creative gods at the end of mankind's present evolution:Great Day of Manifestation.[15]
In esoteric spirituality epigenesis it is the idea that since themind was given to the human being, it is the original creative impulse which has been the cause of all ofmankind's development. According to this approach, humans build upon that which has already been created, but add new elements because of the activity of the spirit. Humans have the capacity, therefore, to become creative intelligences—creators. For a human to fulfill this promise, his training should allow for the exercise of originality, which distinguishes creation fromimitation. When epigenesis becomes inactive, in the individual or even in a race, evolution ceases anddegeneration commences.
According to Gosling,Swami Vivekananda based most of his cosmological and biological ideas onSamkhya.[16] Influenced by western thought and esotericism,[17] Vivekananda andSri Aurobindo developed a view onreincarnation in which aninvolution of the Divine into matter takes place, and the person has to evolve over multiple lives until the Divine gains recognition of its true nature andliberation is attained.[18][19]
Samkhya is one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy; proto-Samkhya ideas can be found in the Upanishads, Jainism, and Buddhism. Samkhya posits two ontological entities,Purusha (witness-consciousness) andprakriti ('nature'), which includes mind, cognition, and the perceived objects). According to Samkhya, whenpurusha comes into proximity withprakriti it disturbs the equilibrium ofprakriti. As a result, a number of successive essences calledtattvas evolve fromprakriti. The most subtle tattwas emerge first, then progressively grosser ones, each in a particular order, and finally the elements and the organs of sense. Adherents of samkhya-Yoga adhere to the release of purusha fromprakriti, and the return ofprakriti to the unmanifest condition.[20]
Sri Aurobindo andPierre Teilhard de Chardin both describe a progression from inanimate matter to a future state of Divine consciousness. Teilhard de Chardin refers to this as theOmega Point, and Sri Aurobindo as theSupermind.[21][22]
Teilhard, who was aJesuitPaleontologist who played an important role in the discovery ofPeking Man, presented a teleological view of planetary and cosmic evolution, according to which the formation of atoms, molecules and inanimate matter is followed by the development of thebiosphere and organic evolution, then the appearance of man and thenoosphere as the total envelope of human thought. According to Teilhard evolution does not cease here but continues on to its culmination and unification in the Omega Point, which he identifies withChrist.
New Age thought is strongly syncretic. A common theme is the evolution or the transcendence of the human or collective planetary consciousness in a higher state or higher "vibratory" (a metaphor taken fromG. I. Gurdjieff) level.
David Spangler's communications speak of a "New Heaven and a new Earth", whileChristopher Hills refers (perhaps influenced by Sri Aurobindo) tothe divinization of man.[23]
Jonathan Livingston Seagull narrated the idea of evolution in a fascinating fashion.James Redfield in his novelThe Celestine Prophecy suggested that through experiencing a series of personal spiritual insights, humanity is becoming aware of the connection between our evolution and the Divine. More recently in his bookGod and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution (2002) co-written withMichael Murphy, he claims that humanity is on the verge of undergoing a change inconsciousness.
It is also known as the path of Ascension.
The idea of a spiritual evolution finds contemporary expression in a number ofstage theories, inspired by Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, and Piaget, among others. In these models, human development, both individual and collectively, is conceptualized as going through a number of structural stages, from the primitive psychophysical genesis to the full-grown rational, cognitive and moral abilities, and beyond to transpersonal stages in which unconscious drives are fully recognized and integrated, and the sense of a separate identity is loosened or abandoned.
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An interpretation of social and psychological development that could also be considered a theory of spiritual evolution isspiral dynamics, based on the work ofClare W. Graves. Spiral Dynamics posits a series of stages through which human's cultural development progresses – from a survival-based hunter-gatherer stage to a magical-tribal-agrarian stage to a city-building-invading stage to a mythic-religious-empire stage to a rational-scientific-capitalist stage to a green-holistic-inclusive stage and then ascending to a second tier where all the previous stages are contemplated and integrated and a third transpersonal tier where a spiritual unity or Omega point is eventually reached, which all the other stages are struggling to embody. He feels that individuals in each of the meme-plexes/stages can ascend to the peak of consciousness – these being the prophets, visionaries and leaders of any region/age.
More recently the concept of spiritual evolution has been given a sort of respectability it has not had since the early 19th century through the work of theintegral theoristKen Wilber, in whose writings both the cosmological and the personal dimensions are described. In this integral philosophy (inspired in part by the works of Plotinus, Hegel, Sri Aurobindo, Eric Jantsch, and many others) reality is said to consist of several realms or stages, including more than one of the following: the physical, the vital, the psychic, (after the Greekpsyche, "soul"), the causal (referring to "that which causes, or gives rise to, the manifest world"), and the ultimate (or non-dual), through which the individual progressively evolves. Although this schema is derived in large part fromTibetan Buddhism, Wilber argues (and uses many tables of diagrams to show) that these same levels of being are common to all wisdom teachings. Described simplistically, Wilber sees humans developing through several stages, includingmagic,mythic, pluralistic, andholistic mentalities. But he also sees cultures as developing through these stages. And, much like Hegel, he sees this development of individuals and culturesas the evolution of existence itself. Wilber has also teamed up withDon Beck to integrate Spiral Dynamics into his own Integral philosophy, and vice versa.