EVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS

(Based on the Internet article “What Vedanta Teaches: Science, Consciousness & Vivekananda.”)

Much of what happened in the early stages after the “Big Bang” remains theory.  The “Big Bang,” however, went on to produce quarks and antiquarks, protons and neutrons, nuclei of the lighter elements, and finally the first atoms, like hydrogen, helium, and lithium.  Gravitational forces eventually helped form the first stars, and the universe was born.  But what prompted the “Big Bang” in the first place, and where did it come from?  What is the inherent energy within the quarks and the protons and neutrons and atoms that urges it to evolve?

Swami Vivekananda spoke about that energy by giving a simple example of a plant.  We take the seed of a dried-up flower.  We plant it carefully and soon a small plant emerges.  It slowly grows, becoming bigger and bigger, until finally it becomes a full, blooming, plant.  Then it withers and dies, leaving again new seeds.  So it completes a circle.   This circular process of the stages of seed, growth, reproduction, death, and new seeds, is uniform throughout the universe.  It is a cause giving rise to an effect that in turn produces a new cause.

Vivekananda introduced two different concepts.  In the first, he talked about evolution versus involution.  (Involution, philosophically, means “turned in upon itself.”)    As Vivekananda explained it, that which is to be evolved is first in a primary seed stage, or “in-volved.”  The implication of this is that the evolved universe already existed before the “Big Bang,” except in an in-volved state.  When something is in-volved, it goes on to evolve, and then is again in-volved.  The universe, in this way, has no beginning and no end.
 
The second concept connected to this is that all of creation is penetrated by the core substance, consciousness.  If you look at the evolution of elementary particles leading to a human being, it evidences that, from the beginning, consciousness has been trying to express itself progressively.  It is the ever increasing urge of consciousness to express itself, Vivekananda said, that prompts evolution to take place.  This consciousness, as such, is equal in the quark and the human being, but the human being, due to his advanced state of evolution has been able to manifest a higher degree of consciousness.  Vivekananda held that the manifestation of the higher degree of consciousness is what creation has been all about.