K: 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. DB: On the contrary, I believe one of the more revolutionary insights of Sri Aurobindo is that of the distinction and relation between prakriti's ("nature's") yoga and purusha's (tapas/intention) yoga. If there is no human agency, then Sri Aurobindo's yoga would have no utility except perhaps to speed things up a bit. But Sri Aurobindo's own intervention (descent of the supermind) is an act of human intention meant at least to replace nature's determinism by a superior determinism (even if you call it a "higher nature"). However, it cannot end there. If this determinism, however high, is not distinguished from and related to by human intention - ie. culture, civilization - it would be just another astrology, not the life divine. As the Mother says somewhere, the most interesting thing about this evolving creation is its freedom and delight. Human will is an expression of this freedom and delight and the divine is not here to "save us" against ourselves. Nature's yoga will continue to create conditions and vehicles in its cosmic drive but whether any divine posthuman (as against suprahuman) possibility will emerge from these conditions depends not on the witnessing of the purusha (sakshi), not even its consent (anumati) but in the creative exercise of its full willing potential (aishwarya tapas). For this, human intention must develop out of its present comfortable apathy and "passive surrender" to nature's will. DB