Preparing for the Miraculous

134 eleven talksIt is now increasingly recognized that the past of theterrestrial evolution has been a concatenation of huge catastrophesand extinctions, but also that after each of thosecatastrophes life made a step forward, as if the ordeal hadbeen a precondition for its growth. “The evolution of consciousnessand knowledge cannot be accounted for unlessthere is already a concealed consciousness in things with itsinherent and native powers emerging little by little,” wroteSri Aurobindo already in The Life Divine. “Further, the factsof animal life and the operations of the emergent mind inlife impose on us the conclusion that there is in this concealedconsciousness an underlying Knowledge or powerof knowledge which by the necessity of the life-contactswith the environment comes to the surface.” 16 To be able toaccept such a conclusion, however, one must have an open,plastic mind, not a mind brainwashed by authority, professional(de)formation or historical formulation of any kind,even scientific. For if the search for knowledge and truth isineradicable from the human mind, its findings have withoutexception been proven to be partial or provisional.The second law of thermodynamicsA third, less often noted argument in the negative viewpropagated by Scientism is the second law of thermodynamics,the study of the transformations of energy. The firstlaw of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy.Its second law is the law of increase of entropy or moleculardisorder, which states that, over time, closed systems tendtoward greater states of disorder. This increase in entropymust, in the opinion of positivist science, inevitably lead touniversal degradation.“The secrets of evolution,” which are the secrets of life,“are time and death,” wrote Carl Sagan. (Once again we16 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 635.