Spiritual Evolution

Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve, extending from the established cosmological pattern or ascent, or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials. It is synonymous with "higher evolution", a term used to differentiate psychological, mental, or spiritual evolution from the "lower" or biological evolution of physical form.

The concept of spiritual evolution is also complemented by the idea of a creative impulse in human beings, known as epigenesis.

Within this broad definition, theories of spiritual evolution are very diverse. They may be cosmological (describing existence at large), personal (describing the development of the individual), or both. They can be holistic (holding that higher realities emerge from and are not reducible to the lower), idealist (holding that reality is primarily mental or spiritual) or nondual (holding that there is no ultimate distinction between mental and physical reality). All of them can be considered to be teleological to a greater or lesser degree.

Philosophers, scientists, and educators that have proposed theories of spiritual evolution include Schelling, Hegel, Max Théon, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Henri Bergson, Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Owen Barfield, Arthur M. Young, Edward Haskell, E. F. Schumacher, Erich Jantsch, Clare W. Graves, Alfred North Whitehead, Terence McKenna, P.R. Sarkar and contemporaries William Irwin Thompson, Brian Swimme, and Ken Wilber.