Evolution and Liberation

by Dr George Arnsby Jones

Aspirants to the Spiritual Path ask:

Why am I doing this ? I am not unhappy with my present situation on earth, why then should I be so concerned with Spiritual Liberation?

Such questions beg the most important question of the necessity (or otherwise) for the human being to strive for jivan mukti, or freedom from the wheel of birth and death. It is certainly true that some Spiritual Aspirants appear to have more favourable worldly circumstances than others; but individual good or bad conditions in the present life-span are not in themselves reasons for Spiritual Aspiration. It is a fact that the ultimate objective of man’s evolution is to return to the True Abode of Grace as a self-conscious and God-conscious entity. The prodigal son must return Home after his aeons of human and subhuman experience. We human beings have passed through countless aeons of evolution; is it not time that we endeavoured to complete the long cycle that was ordained by the Supreme Lord?

The Great Masters speak of the totality of physical life as the Wheel of the Eightyfour as a reference to the fact that the evolving consciousness must pass through eightyfour hundered thousand types of incarnated beings. This is a close approximation of the exact number of living species, which are as follows:

Three million species of plant life. Two million seven hundred thousand species of insects. One million four hundred thousand species of birds. Nine hundred thousand species of water animals. Four hundred thousand species of land animals, including men and other beings related to men.

Thus it takes eight million four hundred thousand types of embodied life to lead to the human peak of physical creation. The individual entity, depending on his own spiritual endeavours, may only have to pass through part of this great evolution. But, in any case, the task of this painful planetary evolution could be completed at the present time by the truly aware human being with the help of a Living Master. If the individual still asks ‘why,’ then, let him visualise the billions of years that Kal has been allowed to evolve humanity to its present status. Think of the fire-mist of the infant earth, moving towards the sun and then eventually cooling, so that the atmospheric steam could eventually become the water of the oceans. Think of the early protoplasm, which responded to the rays of sunlight piercing the depths of the ocean, and evolved into amoebae and algae and cellular life in the seas of this planet. Even the primordial cell responded to the sunlight and drew itself upwards and out of the sea; should not man raise himself from out of the ‘Sea of Matter’? The plant kingdom of this planet evolved, and the great oceanic monsters arrived, evolving in their turn into the amphibians which went ashore; through the mighty reptiles, the saurians, and the dinosaurs, the creative force aspired towards better and higher forms of life. Then, when the minor planetary cycle was completed, the great cataclysms and land-slides began; the continents were created, and the mountains and the plains were etched out.

Then, after the completion of the old planetary cycle, a new cycle commenced. In this chapter of material life the appearance of mammals took place, and also the beginning of the Tertiary period with the development of more animals and plants. The giant animals gradually became extinct, the mammoths died out, and left a few surviving better-moulded strains like elephants and rhinoceri. The forest apes and aurochs appeared, and then emerged the crown of planetary creation: man. From his so-called Stone Age origins man has built and destroyed great civilisations. In his endeavour to see higher levels of knowledge, he created mythologies and the social religions and the many philosophies of life. His conquest of his physical environment proceeded apace, and in the last century he has witnessed the creation of flying machines, the splitting of the atom, the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear power, and he is now making tremendous endeavours to over-come the frontiers of physical outer-space. And with his passion for the creation of space-ships and orbital satellites, man – and Western man particularly – has veered away from the needful exploration of Inner Space.

Thus it can be seen that the motivating Life-Stream, originating from that highest source which is God, informs the entire scheme of planetary evolution, just as it informs the entire cosmos of spirit, mind and matter. Life is multidimensional, for that which appears to have no relationship upon one dimension of consciousness will be seen to possess a definite relationship upon another dimension. Man’s own soul stems from the Supreme Being, but he is also related to many orders of being on the ‘Wheel of the Eightyfour’ and in order to reach human maturity he finds it necessary to understand his relationship to other orders of being.

Conscious knowledge of higher levels of life brings in its train Spiritual Riches and Inner Vision. These things must be consciously apprehended for without such Spiritual Apprehension of his true heritage a man is like the pauper who lived all his life in a hovel without knowing that a vast treasure was hidden under the floorboards. This Inner Wisdom – which could be termed ‘faith-through-knowledge’ – can usher in the Spiritual Adulthood of man, and through such conscious faith he can be reborn into higher levels of being. He will reach the understanding that the life-force is differentiated through man forms, but that life itself can never be divided once it has attained the unified consciousness of Spiritual Reality. All things are related to each other through the kinship of primal, homogeneous being; and all things ultimately relate back to the Supreme Lord. Even Kal, the wielder of the negative, downward-flowing current of creation, is himself truly a servant of the Supreme Lord, for there is really no negation in cosmic creation, only the apparent negations created by the disoriented consciousness of man and his conflicting terminologies.

If man insists on remaining bound in the thraldom of mind and matter, then he defeats the entire process of evolution that preceded him. Even the protoplasm at the bottom of the ocean bed aspired to the sunlight. The primordial cell developed a mobility which was achieved by its own aspiration; it stretched itself to a thin, hair-like structure, and at the extreme point of its elongated extensity it fastened itself by suction to whatever object was available – mineral or vegetable – and pulled itself upwards to a higher position by returning to its original spheroidal form. Thus, it eventually reached the surface of the ocean and bathed in the rays of the sun. But modern man stays still at the ocean-bed of materiality, unheeding any of the lessons of the past. Human sin comes into being when man’s functional behaviour remains fixed in the moulds of past epochs, so he must evolve to ever-higher levels and eventually become freed from the thraldom of the lower worlds. False patterns of behaviour in the present may not have been false patterns of behaviour thousands of years ago, but man’s adherence or return to such patterns means Spiritual Regression and human degradation.

‘Being without sin,’ implies living in the present and constantly aspiring to serve the Master; deneration means a return to a lower state of evolution, causing disease and painful evil conditions, and – in extreme cases – a regression of the human personality into the animal kingdom.

Millions of years ago the primordial cell aspired to sunlight from its first home in the dark depths of the ocean. Consciousness has been evolving through increasingly higher forms ever since. Today, it is time that man, the pinnacle of sentient creation, realise that he cannot mark time in the thraldom of the three worlds forever, enslaved to the inertia of mind and matter. With the loving help of a True Spiritual Preceptor – a Living Master – man can aspire to the supernal Light of his True Home, rising like a soul-borne eagle through the luminous heights of the universe within. And this is the true answer – not the degrees of good or bad fortune in the present life – to all those who ask: ‘Why should I strive for Spiritual Liberation?’

We have been here too long; it is now time to return to the Father’s House.