Within the depth-psychology and philosophical corpus assembled under the Seba library, ‘Becoming’ operates as one of the most contested and generative ontological categories, traversing metaphysics, process theology, individuation theory, and contemplative philosophy. Sri Aurobindo frames the tension most sharply: Being is the fundamental reality while Becoming is its ‘effectual reality,’ a creative energy that cannot be dismissed as mere illusion without forfeiting half the truth of existence. Against monisms that exile change from essence—Simondon’s critique targets Leibniz and Spinoza equally—Simondon argues that Becoming is not opposed to Being but is rather ‘the constitutive relation of being qua individual,’ the very engine of ontogenesis. McGilchrist, drawing on Whitehead, Schelling, and Meister Eckhart, elevates Becoming to a theological register, proposing that ‘God is Becoming’ situates the divine not in sequential time but in an eternal Now of perpetual creation. Plato’s Timaeus supplies the classical problematic: how can Becoming occur at all given that its parents—Form and Space—are both eternal and unchanging? Across these positions runs a recurring tension between the primacy of process over substance, the inadequacy of hylomorphic and atomistic doctrines to account for genuine transformation, and the question of whether an eternal ground underlies, encompasses, or simply is the flux of temporal existence.
The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being
Aurobindo posits Being and Becoming as complementary dual manifestations of the Absolute, rejecting any doctrine that renders Becoming self-sufficient or ultimately illusory.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
becoming is not opposed to being; it is the constitutive relation of being qua individual. Consequently, we can say that the physicochemical individual constituted by a crystal is in becoming, qua individual.
Simondon redefines Becoming as the relational constitution of individuality itself, not a deviation from or supplement to Being but its very structural principle.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
The theory of individuation must therefore be considered as a theory of the phases of being, a theory of the being’s becoming insofar as the latter is essential.
Simondon insists that ontogenesis—the study of how beings come to be—must be prior to both logic and ontology, making Becoming essential rather than accidental to any adequate theory of Being.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
If God is Becoming, at least as known from within creation – which is all we can know – this has important consequences… a God that is endlessly Becoming is already situated in an eternal Now; and we are back to the true meaning of the first cause
McGilchrist argues that conceiving God as Becoming dissolves the problem of temporal first causation, locating the divine in an ever-present ground rather than a sequential initiating act.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
If God is Becoming, at least as known from within creation – which is all we can know – this has important consequences. Oddly (since it might seem to do the opposite) it has the effect of removing God from time
Parallel passage reinforcing McGilchrist’s process-theological claim that an endlessly Becoming God transcends sequential temporality while remaining immanent as an ongoing creative ground.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The act is neither matter nor form, it is becoming in the process of becoming, it is being to the extent that this being is, by becoming. The relation between acts does not pass through the abstract level of norms
Simondon extends his ontology of Becoming into an ethics, arguing that acts participate in the real not through formal norms but through their dynamic integration into the network that constitutes the being’s Becoming.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
what according to the right hemisphere is always evolving, ever both self-differentiating and self-unifying, and involved with the process of creation and what it creates
McGilchrist maps the primacy of process, flux, and Becoming onto right-hemisphere cognition, contrasting it with the left hemisphere’s reductive preference for stasis and finished abstraction.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the primacy of motion over stasis, a… what the left hemisphere sees as finished, perfect, single, abstract, detached, motionless, beyond space and time, is virtual only
McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere’s static picture of reality is a derivative abstraction, while Becoming as ongoing process is the primary ontological datum apprehended by the right hemisphere.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The two parents of Becoming—the Form and Space—are alike eternal and unchanging. How can an image cast by an unchanging object on an unchanging mirror be itself inconstant and fleeting?
Plato’s Timaeus commentary identifies the central aporia of Becoming: the difficulty of explaining how inconstant temporal existence can arise from two eternal, unchanging principles.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
it belongs to the realm of ‘things that become and can be generated’. It is not eternal, but has a beginning or source of becoming.
The Timaeus commentary situates the visible world within the order of Becoming—generated, temporal, and perceptible—as distinct from the eternal, intelligible realm of Being.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
there may be an eternal Becoming, which manifests itself in a cosmic Life-force with the appearance of Matter as one objective end of its operations and the appearance of Mind as the other subjective end
Aurobindo surveys the hypothesis of an eternal Becoming as cosmic Life-force, one of several metaphysical alternatives he considers before resolving toward his own integral account.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
the atom can enter into a relation with other atoms via the clinamen, thereby constituting an individual (be it viable or not) through the infinite void and endless becoming
Simondon traces atomism’s attempt to ground individuation in the clinamen, showing how even classical materialism must invoke a principle of endless Becoming to explain the genesis of composite individuals.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
there is a repetition of the mental phenomenon, of that wave of becoming in the mind-substance of which the mind-sense is immediately aware
Aurobindo describes psychological continuity and ego-formation as arising from repetitive waves of Becoming within mind-substance, linking the metaphysical concept directly to the structure of personal identity.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
the one, since it partakes of being, partakes of time… Then the one is always becoming older than itself, since it moves forward in time
Plato’s Parmenides demonstrates that participation in Being entails participation in time and therefore in Becoming, as the One’s temporal existence necessarily involves perpetual self-alteration.
, Parmenides, -370supporting
To reconcile therefore is truly the work of the Inspired!… reconcile the struggles of the infinitely various Finite with the Permanent.
McGilchrist, via Coleridge and Schelling, frames the philosophical task as reconciling the flux of Becoming with the permanence of Being, a tension that process theology and right-hemisphere cognition are uniquely positioned to hold.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Ultimately we have to reconcile the tendency to flux with a tendency to stasis, change with (some degree of) permanence.
McGilchrist identifies the reconciliation of flux and stasis—Becoming and Being—as the central philosophical and creative challenge, requiring the conjunction of both hemispheric and metaphysical perspectives.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Psychically, the individual continues its individuation by means of memory and imagination, the function of the past and the function of the future
Simondon extends the ontology of Becoming into psychic life, where memory and imagination serve as temporal operators through which the individual perpetuates its own ongoing individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
an interpretation of individuation based on the phenomena of structural change would aim to consider becoming as essentially linked to the
Simondon anchors Becoming in microphysical structural change, proposing that even at the quantum level individuation and Becoming are inseparable phenomena.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
these apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form and the Formless, Finite and Infinite, are not so much opposites as complements of each other… double and concurrent values
Aurobindo refuses the opposition between static Being and dynamic Becoming, recasting the apparent duality as complementary values of a single integral Reality.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
‘Are you becoming an angel… or a spirit?’ persisted the brahmin. Again, the answer was ‘No.’… He had become something else.
Armstrong’s portrait of the Buddha illustrates Becoming as existential transformation beyond category: the Buddha’s enlightenment represents a mode of Becoming that exceeds all prior classifications of being.
, Buddha, 2000aside
individuation does not exhaust from the start the potential resources of the being in an initial operation of individuation… individuation takes place in a quantum manner through abrupt leaps
Simondon describes Becoming as discontinuous and quantum-like, with each plateau of individuation constituting a new pre-individual state capable of further transformation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside