The theme of evolution was central to Sri Aurobindo’s thought almost throughout his life. We have a set of essays written by him in 1909 which first came out in the weekly review Karmayogin edited by him when he was in Calcutta; this was after his acquittal in the Alipore Bomb Case filed against the revolutionaries, including himself, in 1908. It is quite appropriate that we should read these over again to celebrate the centenary year of their appearance. Along with these three selected pieces, from Harmony of Virtue, must also go the absolutely last set of articles Sri Aurobindo dictated in 1950; this was at the request of the Mother who wished him to contribute to the newly started periodical, the Bulletin of Physical Education. These last writings were later published, in January 1952, in the book entitled The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. The most important thing we become aware of in these revelations is the arrival of what Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light, the mind of the physical receiving the Supramental. It is this Mind of Light which governs the race of beings who provide a link between the Mental and the Gnostic beings,—the Intermediate Race. If we do see a change in the writings of these two periods, separated by forty years, then it is not a change or shift of any kind in his central concepts related to the principles and methods of evolution, evolution which is more a collective change of consciousness, a change pertaining to spiritual evolution than to the evolution of form. The difference is due to the great yogic work that had gone towards the realization of the life divine upon earth, the difficult and untiring yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. To view it in any other manner, other than an occult-yogic work, howsoever appealing it might be to the rational mind, is to miss the entire purport of the evolutionary objective itself. One might please oneself with theories and concepts, but that would avail hardly anything if the day’s job is to make the evolutionary possibility a realised certainty. Precisely in it lies the convincing uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and work, and it is that we must celebrate during the centenary year, celebrate the first appearance of the theme in 1909.

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