Preparing for the Miraculous

142 eleven talkssupernatural body the manifestation, the macrocosm, continuouslycame forth, as well as the human being in hisstructural complexity, the microcosm. It is because of the existenceof this archetype that life in the evolution has graduallytaken on the shape which, for the time being, culminatesin the human body. Far from being a gratuitous outgrowthsomewhere in the universe, the evolution is a process ofConsciousness and has an aim, directed or projected by thecosmic Purusha. This Sri Aurobindo called the SupramentalBeing. Everything in existence is supported by it, guided byit, and will ultimately be fulfilled by it.According to Sri Aurobindo the human is “the mentalbeing” who appeared on earth at a certain moment inits evolution. In the popular mind man, as Darwin said,is still a descendant of the ape, but today paleoanthropologycould neither tell you which ape nor when the eventtook place. Sri Aurobindo had already written in the Arya:“With regard to man especially there is still an enormousuncertainty as to how he, so like and yet so different fromthe other sons of Nature, came into existence.” 31 One findsthis now confirmed in some of the most recent publicationsby experts in this matter, e.g. Friedemann Schrenk in DieFrühzeit des Menschen [the early times of the human being],and Pascal Picq in Les origines de l’homme [the origins of thehuman being]. Schrenk writes: “The origin of the speciesHomo is one of the most controversial problems in paleoanthropology,despite or because of all the new [fossil]finds.” And Picq: “The human does not descend from thechimpanzee or the bonobo, nor the other way around. Ifwe share that many common characteristics, it is becausethey have been transmitted to us by a common ancestorwho lived in Africa some 7 million years ago.” That ancestorremains unknown.31 Arya, vol. V, p. 506.