Page 113 - Wisdom Unfurled

at more refined levels of consciousness which make him godly. In comparison the evolution of animals is painfully slow determined, as in the generally accepted view of Darwin, only by the process of random mutation and adaptation driven by the forces of natural selection emerging from the changing environment. We may say that if a soul is trapped in an animal frame it will be severely limited in the possibilities open to it for further evolution. It will be apt here to consider the view expressed in ‘PAM and Afterlife’, written by Revered. K.C.Narayana (p 7), ‘When we place plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds and beasts into their several classes, we can observe that they resemble the grades in a school. The souls of plants, after dying, gather together in their myriads and form larger psychic units. These innumerable little units go one step up, then as one psychic entity enters the body of an insect after conception. Myriads of insect lives again make one being which, in due course, enters the body of a fish or bird. And so the process continues. Finally the embryonic souls of animals so evolve that many making one psychic entity eventually become one human soul.’ This gives an idea of the Great Chain of Being, the lower forms forming successive steps in the ladder of evolution, the human being forming the top rung in the ladder.
It is possible that the passage can be in both directions depending on the actions and intentions behind the actions, though it is generally held that once the human form is secured it is extremely rare that there is relapse into the lower order in evolution except under extreme circumstances of crude bestial behaviour on the part of man. The Hindu scriptures state that the soul has to be born and suffer in 82 lakhs of yonis or bodies of plant, insect and animal before it is blessed with the human frame. All the saints without exception have stated that it is almost impossible to have the combination of a human birth, the birth occurring in a family of evolved souls, good health and education, being blessed by the company of holy and pious persons, having the keen aspiration and craving for realization and as a crowning blessing to be accepted by a capable Master who has traveled the entire distance for spiritual training. Such indeed is the great fortune of the abhyasis in the Natural Path for which they should remain grateful forever to God the Supreme.
Mind of Man
All this and more is possible for man whose mind has originated from the first Stir and hence it is very wrong on the part of the pseudo Mahatmas to rail it in the worst possible terms blaming it for all the ills of man and not recognizing its real value and merit. The Lord says in the Gita that the mind (denoted in the verse by the ‘self’’ component of it) is verily the friend of oneself and this