It is of upmost importance for academia to promote interdisciplinary approaches to understand and support biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth as a whole and within smaller ecosystems. As we are now in or entering a crisis of mass extinction, discovering means to communicate what biodiversity is and why preservation is needed, especially when a means included spiritual justification for defending the continued existence of nonhuman forms of life, became the crucial and guiding inquiry for my integral studies in ecology and religion to date. Equipped with that inquiry, I examined the work of Sri Aurobindo, especially his interpretation of and commentary on the Veda, the oldest Indic sacred text, and the philosophical and spiritual ground of Integral Yoga, which arose out of Aurobindo’s work, to determine if that knowledge should be included in a body of interdisciplinary scholarship addressing our present crisis of biodiversity loss.
In my past experience with the philosophy of Yoga, based on texts from post-Vedic periods, I encountered the belief that other forms of life and all of material Nature was illusory and the source of suffering. To release oneself from the suffering, one must break the cycle of manifestation in the physical world by freeing oneself from the illusion. This belief that material Nature was to be transcended by humans seemed to devalue the physical world and did little to inspire concern for nonhuman beings which, for me, excluded the later texts from inclusion in ontologies supporting protection of biodiversity. Aurobindo’s revelation that the Veda described divine involution in matter and his instruction of human spiritual pursuits that celebrated and restored divinity to all forms of life were refreshing exceptions to yogic teachings focused on the illusory nature of the physical world and were evidence of an ecological worldview. When compared to accepted ecological knowing found in the science and philosophy of Gaia theory and deep ecology and the writings of religious and ecological thinker Thomas Berry, Aurobindo’s ecological wisdom became apparent.
This paper makes a case for including the philosophy of Integral Yoga in the body of interdisciplinary scholarship about the biodiversity crisis. To begin, the paper summarizes Aurobindo’s explanation of involution and evolution as found in the Veda, particularly as they related to biodiversity, and how Integral Yoga provided a means to consciously participate in evolution for the benefit of all life. The paper then compares Aurobindo’s philosophy of Integral Yoga with Gaia theory, with emphasis on how Gaia as a self-organizing system can be explained by involution, and the ethical philosophy of deep ecology which, like Aurobindo’s philosophy, infers inherent value of all life. I then examined what Aurobindo saw as human spiritual deficiency and the impact of secular thinking on the current biodiversity crisis. Finally, the paper highlights the reverence for Nature and inspiration for protecting and restoring biodiversity found in Aurobindo’s work, particularly in his epic poem, Savitri, and as is exemplified in the intentional community of Auroville. I concluded that Aurobindo’s work contributed to an integral understanding of the biodiversity crisis and provided a spiritual framework for cultivating ecological awareness and promoting divinity and sacredness in diverse forms of life.