The Evolution of Consciousness: Introduction

I’m going to be putting up a series of posts on the evolution of consciousness from a yogic perspective.   These are in part excerpts from our book on yoga psychology (inspired primarily by Sri Aurobindo, but taking into account a wide range of spiritual and scientific sources).

There were two major inspirations that led to the final structure of the book.  The first was a comment I read by a very materialist/mainstream neuroscientist, Harvard researcher J. Alan Hobson. About a year or so into researching the book, I came across this statement, which startled me coming from an avowed materialist:

“Consciousness is graded across evolutionary time, over the course of development, and even continuously from moment to moment.”

(interesting side point:  Hobson suggests that this “graded” nature of the unfolding of consciousness may be explained in part by chaos and complexity theory. For an interesting esoteric discussion of the relationship of consciousness, chaos theory and fractal geometry, see physiologist Don DeGracia’s “Beyond the Physical,” which is available for free online)

At the time I came across Hobson’s comment, I was already familiar with the work of neuroscientist and Buddhist practitioner Francisco Varela, who had explored the unfolding of consciousness from moment to moment from a Buddhist perspective. Varela, and later physicist/Buddhist Jeremy Hayward, wrote several very interesting articles for the Journal of Consciousness Studies suggesting a strong resemblance between the unfolding of consciousness as discovered by contemporary neuroscience and the Buddhist “Skandhas.”  In a future posting, I’ll post an excerpt from the yoga psychology book on the way consciousness unfolds in each moment, drawing on the above, as well as on Jeremy Hayward’s Journal of Consciousness Studies article, “A Rdzogs-chen Buddhist Interpretation of the Sense of Self.”[1]

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The second inspiration came from a commentary on the Kena Upanishad by Sri Aurobindo.  He writes, “As our human psychology is constituted, we began with … the sense of an object in its image [this is analogous to the initial unfolding of consciousness in the moment as described by Varela, Hobson and Hayward – the initial moment of sensing], the apprehension of it in knowledge follows [here, he is referring to the moment of perception; the action of the brain to bring together what is sensed into a “percept”]. Afterwards we try to arrive at the comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it in power [here are the more recently evolved aspects of consciousness; the more complex interpretation of the sensory stimuli, the reference to an imagined point or apparently separate “I” and the arising of the desire or intention to act on what is sensed/perceived/comprehended].

The hint comes next: “There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and superconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these are not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we know fo them, OUR WHOLE CONSCIOUS FUNCTIONING WOULD BE CHANGED.”

Interestingly, this was written nearly a century ago, and just in the last 2 or 3 years, a theory of parapsychology has emerged – one that many consider the first viable theory of psi – which points towards at least one aspect of those secret operations. I’m referring to Jim Carpenter’s “First Sight” theory, which suggests that PRIOR to the first moment of simple sensing that neuroscientists describe, there is a paranormal apprehension of the environment, which is independent of our physical senses.  Hayward goes even further, speaking from a Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhist) perspective, saying that there is an initial nondual (without the apparently separate “I”) awareness which is the foundation of all the further moments of consciousness unfolding.

Sri Aurobindo speaks in even greater detail of these “secret operations” in his Upanishad commentary and other writings – that is what we tried to bring out in the later chapters in our yoga psychology book.

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The first post will be about the “story of Sharon.’  “Sharon” is a composite of several military veterans I’ve worked with as a clinical psychologist. We used Sharon’s story in the book as a way to illustrate in very practical, down to earth terms how what Sri Aurobindo calls the “physical consciousness,” “vital” (or life/pranic) consciousness, “mental consciousness”, “inner’ (or “subliminal), “subconscient” and the consciousness of the “psychic being” play out in our every day lives.

After that, I’ll put up a selection on what scientists currently think (well, actually, what they thought about 7 or 8 years ago – it’s changed quite a bit since then) about the possibility of consciousness becoming more complex over the course of evolution.  Next, a look at early childhood development, and then a short section on the unfolding of consciousness from moment to moment.

That will be followed by a more yogic examination of the emergence of physical, vital and mental consciousness over billions of years, then a look at how the mental consciousness evolved over several hundred thousand years.

We’ll see how that goes and I might continue. But that will be several months from now:>))

Let me know what you think. You’re welcome to post comments here or write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com