Universal Consciousness and Spiritual Emergentism in the Evolutionary Integral Vedanta of Sri Aurobindo

The recent revival of metaphysical frameworks in Western consciousness studies, such as panpsychism, cosmopsychism and its idealistic and monistic versions, is viewed from the standpoint of an extended and more consistent spiritual emergentist evolutionary cosmology in the light of the Indian mystic, poet and philosopher Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950). This integral Vedantic cosmology will be outlined and thus furnish a more coherent metaphysical framework, inside which several of the issues and shortcomings that vitiated the previous ontologies can find their natural accommodation. We will also point out how this this ontology is well in line with modern scientific findings and, in some respects, even anticipated them.