Excerpt from The Cosmic Kaleidoscope
The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) stated that the most adaptive (“fittest”) endure to move on. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the father of modern evolutionary theory, agreed with Spencer. When observing two flies of the same kind, one with eyes who continue the species, and one without who is an exception to the species, Darwinists may conclude that the capability of developing eyes made the seeing fly superiorly equipped to the blind one who could not make it to the next level in the game of evolution.
This is a materialist view, not a spiritual one. A spiritual view of evolutionary reality includes an understanding of both unit driving forces and cosmic forces. The supreme reality is that everything moves on towards final merger in the Supreme, aided by cosmic consciousness, which is both cognition and operative force.
Hereditary Mass
The science of mind and current evolutionary biology agree that there is hereditary mass, but disagree on the content of it. Evolutionary biologists work with materialistic theories about physical threads of DNA consisting of genes in the cells, and transmission of behaviourally acquired information via nervous system functions. The science of mind, for its part, concludes that the accumulated reactive driving forces, samskaras, of the individual mind as well as interventions by the cosmic operative principle determine bio-psychological evolution:
- Two or more similar creatures exposed to the same environment will evolve differently, relative to their inherent reactive driving forces.
- The operative principle may engineer revolutionary development for groups of individual beings provided those developments are supported by cosmic cognition.
New Driving Forces Created
The mind upholds its existence by acting on physical and psychic objects. The nature and style of its actions are decided by its inherent driving forces. It means that you and I will drink our cup of tea in different ways in keeping with our disparate reactive driving forces.
By acting, the mind ordinarily forms fresh actional momentum—reactive driving forces. In this way the mind perpetuates its own existence by pursuing physical and mental action. Without action the mind ceases to exist, as in the case of sleep, fainting or falling unconscious for any reason. As suggested earlier, the ego’s worst nightmare is its own annihilation. In order to avoid it, the mind continuously generates fresh actional forces, the Sanskrit term for which is saḿskára; “renewal”, “change from one form to another”.
Shrii Sarkar summarised it:
The ten organs always convey information to the mind. The mind on receiving the information creates reactions to it in the physical body, and in the process gets reacted to itself.
Perhaps you listen to some music. Unconsciously your mind begins to move your body, a finger drumming against your leg, while you quietly think: “Perhaps I could sing that song for someone?” A thought like that may be connected to one propensity or the other: “socialise”, “make an effort”, “be popular”, “wealthy”, etc. The mind’s lyre has many strings. In this way, the mind upholds continuous activeness in an apparently eternal cycle of one action leading to the next. This is quite a dirty trick to all those who desire instant enlightenment and peace and quiet served on a silver platter. But who can blame the mind as even many people desire to live forever!
Various Causes
If we take the perspective of the visible result of an action, we usually first become aware of the material cause, then the efficient cause, then the psychic stimulus, and at last, if at all, a fundamental cause, the original cause. We may use a painter as an example:
This painter is good at what she does. One customer is in particular impressed by the quality of the paint, while to another it seems that the painter’s steady hand is the main cause of the good work. The paint itself is the material cause and the painter’s hand the efficient cause, the two general types of subsidiary causes of the result of an action.
If we talk to the painter herself, she would let us know that she feels inspired by pleasing customers and that this inspiration is the actual cause of customers’ great satisfaction; it is why she takes the trouble to choose the exactly right kind of paint and why she has developed such a fine hand at it.
However, neither the customers nor the painter points to the root cause of it all, which is a particular deep-seated reactive driving force for delivering and finishing well; deep down this painter aspires to be a most competent crafts person. This is this root cause that provides the painter with the inspiration that results in an eye for selecting the right kind of paint, a fine hand, and taking all care to please the individual customer. The feeling that customers must be pleased is a psychic stimulus, an effect of the original cause, which is to be a great crafts person no matter what.
With reference to the above discussion on genetics, DNA is both an effect and a cause. To some, DNA appears to be the original hereditary mass, while it is really only a subsidiary cause causing bio-psychological unfoldment. The machinery of DNA allows for accumulated reactive driving forces to be transmitted by the operative principle from one life to the other of living entities.
As previously indicated, changes in DNA may also be caused by divine support or intervention; i.e., the operative, manifesting principle may take action on a species as a whole, on individuals, on an entire era, etc., according to the whim of the cognitive principle.