[cover: Paul Brunton.]

(Paul Brunton, The Spiritual Crisis of Man, 1952 — Chapter 8.)

"A glance at the historical scene might tempt us to deny that human morality has ever made any advance and to affirm that human evil remains utterly incurable. Does humanity grow better or worse in character? Has it become purified mentally and emotionally by the war? What has it learned from unprecedented national calamity and personal sorrow? Is there evidence anywhere that goodness is displacing wickedness? Is it harder in the post-war world to maintain moral integrity than it was in the pre-war days? Has the flow of experience worked no changes in the heart of man, stimulated no lasting goodwill between man and man? Has the most horrible era in history taught nothing of life's spiritual significance? As the parade of contemporary life passes before thoughtful eyes, these questions insistently rise. They can be answered only at the cost of stirring up several equally difficult questions.

Man does not evolve by passing smoothly in a direct upward line from a lower to a higher point. He evolves by trudging along a winding spiral path which rises and falls and circles about itself. The course which his spiritual, mental and moral advance takes is seldom direct but mostly zigzag. There is no straight-line progress in history. Development is effected through an ultimately ascending spiral of rises and falls. It is historically like a tide whose waters advance only to recede later. But it differs from all actual tides inasmuch as with each forward flow, it touches a point beyond the previous one and, with each recession, it does not fall so far back as the previous one. The cycle seems to return on itself but is really a rising spiral.

When this conception of picturesque advance from cellular life to celestial being is first given welcome admittance into the mind, we are likely to limit our understanding to only this part of life's course, for every such phase of development is eventually succeeded by its complementary phase of disintegration and collapse. In short, progress exists in a general way but it is intermittent and is the total result of a long series of triumphs and setbacks. There is a moment when it reaches a turning point and then the glorious goal which lures its creatures on turns out to be an abyss into which they finally fall. Despite this periodic retrogression, the spiritual journey of mankind is essentially progressive. Every rise of evolution's cyclic arc is higher than the one before.

All its future developments lie concealed in the original cell. All its physical and spiritual growth through the ages is really an unfoldment rather than an evolution. Yet this is true only of the major features of its life-course. For the rest, there is a kind of uncertainty and therefore a kind of freedom.

The animal unhesitatingly obeys its bodily instincts partly because it is untroubled by the doubts and questionings of reason, and partly because it is still intellectually unindividualized. Nature guides its instincts, and they are usually correct. But man is in a different situation. He is developing the faculty of reason and also becoming individualized. To the extent that this happens he loses the guidance of Nature and has to depend upon himself. So he moves through misty uncertainties and acts upon half-blind promptings, with consequences which are sometimes favourable but quite often not. So he walks through life with faltering steps; not able for periods of time to see clearly whither he is going.

If our thinking upon this subject is to be right, it must clear up the significance to be assigned to such a term as "progress". For too long it has been rendered foolish or contradictory by our misconceived and easy acceptance of traditional nonsense. The setback given to human society by the war and its aftermath destroyed foolish notions of continuous progress which so many smug people used to harbour. They were bitterly punished for a delusive shallow optimism. As a materialistic civilization moved on apparently indefinitely towards increasing triumph, men began to doubt all the spiritual truths they had learnt. But as all observers now know, it moved towards disaster instead. For it is not enough to be moving; you must know where you are moving to! Do we not somewhere read, "They that walk blindly shall perish?" We can now sit up ruefully and confess that we were fools to travel so far and find so little.

The escape from post-war troubles will not be achieved by finding middle positions between extreme ones, but by seeking new positions in preference to old ones. Modern society has to make the final and irrevocable decisions as to which direction it will take. It has to choose whether it will cling as hard as before to the materialistic and animalistic ego or loosen the hold on it. On this choice depends its fate. Its spiritual adolescence must come to an end as its technological adolescence has already, and so dramatically, come to an end.

Darwin and Spencer set the ball of evolutionary theory rolling with such gusto that a few departments of thought escaped contact with the doctrine. Later, even religious leaders or thinkers became jubilant at times over the law of inevitable progress. They did not even stop at making the Absolute Power progress unendingly together with its creation! With extravagant, almost inebriated optimism which alienated the more deeply thoughtful, they declared that God, man and the universe all moved onward to perfection! The Darwinian struggle for existence is true of the animal and primitive-human kingdoms but it is only half-true. The spiritual purpose which informs this struggle and guides its course is the complementary half-truth which must be added by the human mind if it is not to deceive itself into a hopeless materialism. For the grand evolution of consciousness which is ultimately behind all this evolution of forms, ennobles the world-view where the other merely degrades it. The concept of evolution must be enlarged, elaborated and defined.

We are not to confuse evolution with progress. The first is a permanent fact in Nature, the second a temporary phenomenon in human history.

Science, with all its wondrous machines and chemicals, has yet to solve the ancient riddles of light and life. It has discovered much about their operations and mechanisms but little about their nature and essence. The Darwinian materialists, for instance, might well be asked how it was ever possible for live entities to appear on this planet when their own science says it commenced with such fiery beginnings, such temperature as would sterilize every potential cell and germ of life upon it. Philosophy always proclaimed the fact that there is no dead matter anywhere in this cosmos. There is only living radiance, throbbing energy, informed and controlled by inherent mind and everywhere expressing the cycle of evolving life, of movement from an inferior form to a superior one and by spiral-like circuits, from a lesser degree of consciousness, intelligence and character to a greater one.

If it be asked why the spiral-path principle of evolution should have been laid down by the infinite wisdom behind the universe, the answer is that in no other way could such a rich variety of experience have been attained by the experiencing entities. As they trace their circular course they move from one direction to its very opposite, passing through all the different regions that lie in between. They move from contrast to contrast, from gain to loss, from summer to winter, from day to night, and so on, by the compulsion of an eternal law, which exists both outside and inside themselves. The yearning after change begins to arise within them even when their experience is blissful, if this experience is prolonged so far as to become monotonous. This also explains why the experiencing entities recapitulate earlier forms of their experience, albeit briefly and tersely. For in returning upon itself the spiral-path has to repeat itself. And this repetition is not only physical, as in the embryo developing in the mother's womb, but also mental, as in the first twenty-eight years of each reincarnation.

The desire for happiness is a universal one but the conception of happiness is not. All creatures share the first, so why do they differ about the other? Why does not the same meaning arise spontaneously in their minds when they hear this word? The answer is supplied by the doctrine of psychical evolution through repeated embodiments. They themselves differ in length of experience and innate capacities (and hence in their conceptions and attitudes) because they stand on different levels of evolutionary life. The grossly materialistic are on a lower level and can find their transient satisfactions only in grossly tangible things. The more refined are on a higher one and have included purely intellectual or aesthetically emotional things within their conception of happiness. There is a loftier level still, where a smaller number of men and women recognize spiritual attainments as the most precious, the most desirable and the most durable of all forms of satisfaction.

If we look only at the past thirty years of humanity's history, we may well ask ourselves whether evolution applies only to its intellectual and physical life; whether, in respect of its moral and spiritual life, the doctrine is nothing more than a wish-fulfilment. Unless we express our meaning of the term more exactly, it is self-deceptive to assert that the world has or has not shown progress. Macaulay's essays show a thorough-going optimism about the millennium which science was supposed to bring to our civilization. But Matthew Arnold, looking at the development of this same civilization in the same period, wrote about it with a disquieted heart. Both were more or less right from their respective standpoints, for each had a different kind of progress in mind. The first saw and cared for physical and logically-intellectual improvement whereas the second had moral and intuitively-intellectual improvement in his mind.

It is hard to recognize the slow ennoblement of man if we look only to a limited period. Indeed, in certain cases we have seen the very contrary process—his swift brutalization—in our own time. We may therefore ask ourselves if we are so sure as we once were that we have progressed. The answer is everywhere evident. Our machines and chemicals have progressed, but our morals and manners have not. Our technical skills have outstripped our character. We grow worse with each generation in faith, spirituality and reverence for the higher power, but better in reasoning capacity and mental information.

If so many outward signs show a drift not towards peace and spirituality, but towards new clashes over material possessions or outward power, it is precisely through such clashes and their ensuing educative results that we shall ultimately pass to understanding, peace and spirituality. But the process must necessarily be a slow one. The mistakes made by a carpenter are quickly shown up by his finished work either in its appearance or in its use. But the mistakes made in the conduct of life may be attended not only with much slower results but also be much harder to recognize. This is because the truthful work of the carpenter is judged by the senses whereas the truthful understanding of the human being is judged by the intelligence. And in the evolution of man, his senses have arrived at a more developed state than his intelligence. Hence, experience alone does not bring immediate wisdom as its fruit. Only after it is well and honestly thought over, well reasoned upon, or deeply intuited in an impersonal manner, does the fruit appear. This takes time, yet it both implies and elicits growth.

Here is the answer to those who deplore the fact that men seem to learn nothing from history, whether it be their own or others', or worse still, learn entirely false lessons from it. Time brings ripeness to some fruits, decay to others, more wisdom to some men but more foolishness to others. Deceived by egoism and blinded by passion, there are those who get from experience the very opposite meaning to the one it is intended to yield, and so fall into wicked ways. But the Overself is supremely patient. It knows the hour will come when further experience itself with its errors and consequent retribution, its sufferings and consequent despairs, will confront every man with the insistent demand that he understand it. If the divine order of the universe provides him with the time and events he needs for growth, this does not mean he is left to rely on them alone; that would be too long, too tortuous and too uncertain a road. To help him shorten the road and make it both safer and pleasanter, he is led to add to them the right use of his reasoning, the humble following of spiritual teachers, and the proper attendance on intuition.

The earthly journey supplies part of the requisite conditions for unfolding his latent attributes and capacities. He passes by degrees from ignorance through experience to knowledge, from desire through suffering to peace. The immersions in evil and darkness provide the opposition whereby he may exercise his will to the good and aspire towards his consciousness of the true. There is a power inherent in him and also played upon him by Nature, which makes both for his mental growth and for the moral improvement of his species. Life is an ordered if broken progression from the infinitesimal up to the infinite, not only in the struggle for physical existence but also in the development of creative talent, the unfoldment of mental capacity and of conscience, and the awareness of inner being.

Those who wish to anticipate this evolutionary advance should make the effort involved and discipline entailed in a cheerful and willing spirit. For the same truth which earlier punishes us when disdained and rejected, later blesses us when welcomed and received. The same evil which first tempts us, later tests us. Its revelation of what we are, when linked with its consequences, finally brings us to seek the good. It works by examining our right to Life's supreme treasure, the divinely-rooted consciousness of the Overself, by tempting character and faith or testing motive and goodness; it enables us in this way to establish such a right. Thus, in the end, it is an instrument of the cosmic purpose for us and not, as we often suppose, only the enemy of that purpose, and nothing more. Our human perception of the life around us is limited and narrow, our conception of it imperfect and prejudiced. We see it as we see the underside of a rug in the course of being made, when it is a shapeless mass with a fragmentary pattern, which is itself hardly discernible because reversed.

Whatever catastrophe injures the bodily life of contemporary man, the advance of his spiritual life is fore-ordained and inevitable. If we have only to survey the bloody and greedy course of history to realize that the evil in man is as innate as the good in man, it is nevertheless true that whereas the one will grow ever upwards, the other will shrink and wither to the ground. During the war, the philosophically minded were able to hold on hopefully, knowing that the rope of karma was running out and that the evil incarnate would destroy itself in the end. The mind can support itself more firmly during contemporary upheavals, and even keep itself unharmed by them, only if it seeks and makes its own by constant contemplation, a knowledge of the divine Idea behind things. This will give it the faith that the moral law must always prevail because evolution is divinely ordered. Amid the widespread darkness and tumult of the war, there was still the assurance for it that those forces which work only for evil, work in the end for their own destruction and that evil's success is always transient. In their metaphysical ignorance, the evil leaders did not comprehend the forces of evolution and destiny which were also at work, did not know that they would become the suffering heirs to their own deeds. The calamities which they brought to other people became curses which fell upon their own heads. They did not realize that every form of wrong-doing contains in itself the germ of its retributive reaction.

We live in an epoch when the powers of evil have been making their strongest bid for world domination. We have also lived to see the colossal failure of the first phase of that bid. The hour of punishment can only be postponed; it can neither be evaded nor avoided. "Not in the heavens, not in the midst of the sea, not if thou hidest thyself away in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a place on earth where thou canst escape the fruits of thy evil action." Thus spoke Buddha and history does always verify these words. We may see in the outcome of the first phase not only a striking demonstration of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, but also a contemporary confirmation of the statement made in The Wisdom of the Overself that there are definite limits set to the activity of evil.

The atheist says that even if God exists, He is either powerless to prevent the rising of evil or merciless to permit its continuance. The philosopher says that God does exist, does possess power and even display mercy, but that these things are channelled through a cosmos, that is an orderly regulated universe. He says, too, that the permission under which the dark forces operate has a string of limited length tied to it and that at the end of their cycle, they are either destroyed by retribution or destroy themselves."

The book  The Spiritual Crisis of Man  is available to read on the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation's website: