The Subjective Evolution of Consciousness

Without exaggeration, this book has radically changed the lives of many, many readers. Following the traditions of Indian philosophy, it sets out a paradigm of layered reality. Our physical world is only the lowest, most crude layer of existence. Above it—and far more diverse—there is the subtle world; and even higher, richer and more varied still, is the transcendent, spiritual, eternal realm. And whoever has felt the higher world experiences such bliss that attachment to its pale physical reflection disappears.

Not only yogis and hermits, but all ancient Indian culture was soaked in this feeling of the cosmos—limitless and vast. Up to our time, this feeling has survived only in a few ancient traditions and in selected teachers and thinkers. To them we can with full right refer Srila Sridhara Maharaj.

Mention of evolution in the title is no accident. But here evolutionary teaching receives a much broader interpretation—not merely as development of certain forms of material objects, but as a principle of being itself. This great twentieth-century Indian thinker asserts that true evolution is the transformation of consciousness—which by its nature is subjective. By considering and comparing various philosophical teachings about evolution, Sridhara Maharaj shows that consciousness is the primary reality, and that the subjective world is more real than the objective one. He leads the reader through different stages of subjective evolution of consciousness, drawing on not only extensive knowledge, but also profound spiritual experience.