THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

Yoga and Human EvolutionTHE whole burden of our human progresshas been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the bodyand the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the humanbeing began as the animal, developed through the savage andconsummated in the modern civilized man. The Indian theory isdifferent. God created the world by developing the many out ofthe One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning,the objects which compose the physical world were arrangedby Him in their causes, developed under the law of theirbeing in the subtle or psychical world and then manifested inthe gross or material world. From kÀraÍa to sÓkØma, from sÓkØmato sthÓla, and back again, that is the formula. Once manifestedin matter, the world proceeds by laws which do not change fromage to age, by a regular succession, until it is all withdrawn backagain into the source from which it came. The material goes backto the psychical and the psychical is involved in the cause orseed. It is again put out when the period of expansion recursand runs its course on similar lines but with different details tillthe period of contraction is due. Hinduism regards the world asa recurrent series of phenomena of which the terms vary butthe general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptableif we recognise the truth of the conception formulated in theVishnu Purana of the world as vijÜÀnavijÐmbhitÀni, developed ofideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all materialphenomena and by its indwelling force shapes the growth of thetree and the evolution of the clod as well as the development ofliving creatures and the progress of mankind. Whichever theorywe take, the laws of the material world are not affected. Fromaeon to aeon, from kalpa to kalpa Narayan manifests himself inan ever-evolving humanity which grows in experience by a seriesof expansions and contractions towards its destined self-realisationin God. That evolution is not denied by the Hindu theoryof yugas. Each age in the Hindu system has its own line