Elusive Consciousness

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari, Surendrasingh Pokharana, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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CONCLUSIONS
As the evolutionary and Darwinian biologist Wallace says, with the appearance of Man on evolutionary ladder, the direction of evolution changes from physical to mental. Because, with the advanced cerebral cortex of humans, nature does not control man but the Mind or Intellect controls the Nature through inventions of technology. So with the humans, Challenges would also be mental and Adaptations would also be mental, and only those would survive who have higher mental and moral development as Wallace says.
• “Thus man, (he wrote), by the mere capacity of clothing himself, and making weapons and tools, has taken away from nature that power of changing the external form and structure which she exercises overall other animals... man does this by means of his intellect alone, which enables him with an unchanged body still to keep in harmony with the changing universe. From the time therefore, when the social and sympathetic feelings came into active operation, and the intellectual and moral faculties become fairly developed, man would cease to be influenced by 'natural selection in his physical form and structure But from the moment that his body becomes stationary, his mind would become subject to those very influences from which his body had escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and combine for mutual comfort and protection, would be preserved and accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and successively die out.”
(Quoted from Hardy A (1984). Darwin and the Spirit of Man. London: Collins. P. 75-76)
Thus now with the appearance of man on earth, the direction of evolution has become intellectual, moral and psycho-spiritual. This being so, to meet the Survival of the Fittest criterion, evolution of mankind necessitates evolution of consciousness and for that none other than India would prove to be the best source of information and guidance. Arnold Toyanbee in this context, rightly says that,
"It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only
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