Rich, I have tried a few times to convince your bodyguard Tony that in the “idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion” quote from the LD, Sri Aurobindo is not presenting his own view; but I had no success and have given up the attempt. Fortunately as it turns out that error does not detract much from the overall thrust of your essay on human progress. You are to be commended for attempting this long and ambitious article on Evolution. Re this section on human progress, it appears your main point is to contrast Sri Aurobindo’s complex characterization of human progress with the simple-minded view of a neat, linear (or at least monotonic increasing) picture of humanity advancing rung after rung in some obviously progressive fashion (i.e. the “spiral” image on integralworld.net you gave the link to). And you also contrast Sri Aurobindo’s characterization of man as a “transitional being”, with a “man is the measure of all things” humanistic ideal. I think you’re quite right in both of those assertions, and thus also in the general trend of your thinking. Re your contrast between “human intention” and “nature’s progress”, Sri Aurobindo tends to characterize human intention as simply one tool Nature has devised and makes use of, where possible, for nature’s progress. This is of course using Nature as a much more encompassing term than is normally used in Science. Re your emphasis on Sri Aurobindo’s use of “if” when describing issues of the future of humanity, it’s not unusual in the LD that he employs a tentative style of expressing even those things we know he definitely held to be the case, e.g. “if Brahman has entered into form and represented Its being in material substance”, or “if the world be an expression of Sachchidananda”, etc. But I agree that in the last chapter of the LD he does seem to stress the possibility-only nature of humanity’s future role in the progressive manifestation of Consciousness. Re his 1909 comment on the “immediate future of the human race” involving some significant harmonization, no doubt he didn’t seem to be expecting the two world wars around the corner, and his writings during and just after those events were obviously influenced by them. But not being the immediate future (in 1909) doesn’t therefore imply not in the future at all. It would certainly be interesting to know his take on subsequent developments like the rather sudden and peaceful ending of the cold war, the growth of institutions such as the European union, etc. Kepler