On Matter and Evolutionary Transformation

A friend recently passed on and invited inquiry on the following comments made by the Mother on matter and transformation, elaborating on the 6 June 1962 statement she made to Satprem, ‘If matter where changeable, it would have changed LONG ago.’ It reminds me of the gap between what our minds think or imagine constitutes real change and spiritual transformation, and what actually constitutes real change and spiritual transformation. In Sri Aurobindo's vision of evolution towards the 'Life Divine', new stages of evolution are a higher organization of the previous one. Life initiated a new organization and potential of Matter. Mind initiated a new organization and potential of Life and Matter. And in the next phase, Spirit initiates a new 'Supermental' organization and potential of Mind, Life and Matter.

To read the Mother's comment's go to Circumsolatious.

Also In trying to find a category below, I am stumped. There is no category for Yoga, or Spirituality. Spirituality and Religion are not the same thing.

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Permalink Reply by Lori Tompkins on September 1, 2011 at 9:34pm

Hi Mark, I think where the Mother was going with that thought about matter not being the thing that changes, was that it is the relationship ... the inter-relations between things that undergoes some sort of evolution ... like matter, life, and mind are being increasingly coordinated/harmonized to the tune of the soul or spirit (individually and collectively). So order and harmony becomes the norm rather than disorder and disharmony. Regarding the word 'maya'. Am never sure what people mean when they use this word. It means 'measure' (based on Ma, the Sanskrit base of words such as mother, matter, mass, math....) ... and eventually came to mean 'illusion' After studying Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, I am in agreement with them that it is an epic mistake (though common in our modern era) to consider matter and anything that can be measured, an illusion. Sri Aurobindo discusses this as the 'error of the Buddha', and as a 'revolt of Spirit against Matter'. Ideally Matter is known as not something different from Spirit. Perhaps that is what you are getting at as well ... that consciousness and matter ARE intimately related. Here are some links discussing these issues:

The Revolt of Spirit Against Matter: a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Negati...
The Error of the Buddha by Robert E. Wilkinson
Sri Aurobindo and the Secret History of the World

'All forms of spiritual thought and practice that have served to heighten the rift between the two poles of spirit and matter must, at this time, give way to the new creation...'
-- Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, The Gnostic Circle (1975)

***

'Knowledge is not complete if it merely shows us how to get away from relation to that which is beyond relations, from personality to impersonality, from multiplicity to featureless unity. It must give us also that key, that secret of the whole play of relations, the whole variation of multiplicity, the whole clash and interaction of personalities for which cosmic existence is seeking. And knowledge is still incomplete if it gives us only an idea and cannot verify it in experience; we seek the key, the secret order that we may govern the phenomenon by the reality it represents, heal its discords by the hidden principle of concord and unification behind them and arrive from the converging and diverging effort of the world to the harmony of its fulfilment. Not merely peace, but fulfilment is what the heart of the world is seeking and what a perfect and effective self-knowledge must give to it; peace can only be the eternal support, the infinite condition, the natural atmosphere of self-fulfilment.'
- Sri Aurobindo, A Synthesis of Yoga