"Vedic Evolution" (SB 3.31.41)

San Diego – September, 1993 / (070)

In this presentation, Thompson considers aspects of Darwinian theory as reflecting features of classic Vedic accounts of the creative process. He analyzes a traditional narrative describing the Divine Feminine coupling with the Divine Masculine to produce the faculty for conditional cognition, ahankara. Propelled by material desire, over time new species gradually unfold through sexual reproduction in a process simultaneously controlled by design. Descriptions of this unfolding encompass gradations of form that includes a variety of celestial beings, along with the human, animal and plant forms commonly experienced on earth. The teleology identified with this account appreciates self-realization as the goal of human life, which aims toward experiencing a natural state of devotion that ultimately transcends creative processes bound by time and space.