Buddhism
The concept of spiritual evolution has been taught in Buddhism. William Sturgis Bigelow a physician and Buddhist attempted to merge biology with spirituality, he accepted the existence of both material and spiritual realms, many of his ideas were discussed in his book Buddhism and Immortality (1908). Bigelow used the concept of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. According to Bigelow spiritual evolution is when an individual emerges from "unconditioned consciousness" and "moves up the scale of evolution guided by natural selection". Next the individual moves to a level of celestial experience, and finally is able to "return to the unconditioned consciousness from which all things emerge." Bigelow accepted both material and spiritual evolution, he believed Buddhism and science were compatible.
Albert Low a Zen master and author of The Origin of Human Nature: A Zen Buddhist Looks at Evolution (2008) opposes neo-Darwinism and the selfish gene as he claims they are materialistic, he also opposes creationism for being dogmatic, instead he advocates spiritual evolution.
Read more about this topic: Spiritual Evolution
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“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)