Preparing for the Miraculous

sri aurobindo and the big bang 193theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were the orderof the day. Many statements in his writings show howmuch he appreciated the efforts of the scientists to understandNature and to advance a step further towards theTruth. Yet he was also in possession of a spiritual insightand knowledge which made the limitations of positivistscience – a science of process, not of essentials or Reality– crystal clear.About the theory of evolution, for instance, he wrote:“A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientifictheory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution; itmust stand on its own inherent justification: it may acceptthe scientific account of physical evolution as a support orelement, but the support is not indispensable. The scientifictheory is concerned only with the outward and visible machineryand process, with the detail of Nature’s execution,with the physical development of things in Matter and thelaw of development of Life and Mind in Matter; its accountof the process may have to be considerably changed ormay be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery,but that will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritualevolution, an evolution of Consciousness, a progression ofthe soul’s manifestation in material existence.” 4What was to Sri Aurobindo self-evident fact of spiritualknowledge, here brought to bear on the biological theoryof evolution, may be equally well applied to other branchesof science. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo’s writings are strewnwith direct or indirect reflections on science and spirituality,and with comparisons between them. As these remarksare often made in passing, they may escape the attention ofthe reader. In this talk we will consider one such passage inSavitri, a few lines which contain a wealth of meaning.4 Id., p. 868.