Evolution: Yogic, Scientific and Religious

In the 21st century, science and religion are again forming battle lines. They seem to by two fundamentally different types of knowing.

As we hear it, science discovers ‘truth’ inductively and first-hand through manifest data. Religion derives ‘truth’ deductively and second-hand through revealed information sources.

Yoga enters this discussion in a strange situation. It is scientific in that it relies on direct observation of manifest information as a guide towards truth. It is also scientific in that its primary tool is repeated, controlled experimentation. By the same token, it is religious in that it derives from the ancient hymns of the Indian Vedas. Like its past, yoga’s goal is religious: to achieve liberation from unconsciously repeating patterns of action by learning the art of meditative fusion, samadhi.

Yoga and science share something else important: a concern with the process of evolution. To be sure, the two processes are differently conceived. The evolutionary biologist focuses on the process of macrocosmic natural evolution: the natural selection of species. The Yoga focuses on ‘evolving’ the capacities latent in the human organism: purifying the mind and generating meditative states.

In science, evolution is the insentient process whereby maximally adaptive forms of life manifest in consensus reality. In yoga, evolution is the sentient process whereby increasingly adaptive forms of awareness manifest in consciousness. Under these conditions, they might seem to be mirror images, the objective processes of natural evolution on the one hand, and the subjective processes of awareness expansion on the other.

Yoga and evolution as metaphorical mirror-images of one another

Here, there is an even more subtle and telling commonality: each ‘evolutionary’ process has as its foundation spiral dynamic. In the natural scientific theory of evolution, the vehicle that propels the process through time is the DNA molecule. Its double-helix encodes all information necessary for the construction of an organism.

Spiral forms abound throughout nature; the ‘golden mean’ is a mathematical formula (1.618… or φ) that governs the development of conchs, aeonia, Mayan temples (!), etc etc

In yogic evolution, the vehicle that unfolds the capacities of awareness is the nadi-chakra system. Here, the subtle nerves or nadi-s spiral in and out of the centers of consciousness called chakras. Their structure encodes all information necessary for the construction of experience.

Each system has a common, high-minded objective: to discover the actual state of things through sustained investigation. The only difference: one examines manifest surfaces with discursive thought, while the other examines implicit depths of awareness through internal concentration.

All of this is to evolve, to unwind coiled forces, from their unmanifest (unconscious) state to a manifest (conscious) state. In what Vivekananda calls ‘the symbolical language of the yogis,’ this is to awaken the white-hot light-power sleeping at the base of the spine and cause her to rise, spirally-snaky wise, right and left up the spinal column and through the chakras. When she reaches the top, she unites with Shiva – it is the UNION of purusha and prakrti, their FUSION, not their dissociation as it is in the ancient Samkhya of Patanjali.

We do know that the pace of physical evolution is proceeding dramatically, and that it may one day be possible to accelerate evolution so that it takes place – perhaps in certain limited ways – within a given lifetime. Can yoga help us ‘evolve’ our awareness in ways that would take eons without conscious practice? It is certainly an intriguing possibility – one that deserves our closest attention.