The Seba library treats Involution in 6 passages, across 3 authors (including Aurobindo, Sri, Levine, Peter A., Freud, Sigmund).
The material universe is the lowest stage of a downward plunge of the manifestation, an involution of the manifested being of this triune Reality into an apparent nescience of itself
Aurobindo defines involution as the foundational cosmic descent of infinite conscious being into nescience, rendering matter the concealed terminus of spirit and making subsequent evolution metaphysically necessary.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
a complete involution would be impossible. If there is such a creation by the Infinite out of itself, it must be the manifestation, in a material disguise, of truths or powers of its own being
Aurobindo argues that total involution into Matter requires a structural device — the apparent inconscience is in truth a veil, with the forms of nature serving as vehicles for involuted divine powers.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
the Spirit that was submerged in the Inconscience has broken out from it and now inhabits, unveiled, the form of things which, veiled, it had created as its dwelling-place and the scene of its emergence
Aurobindo dramatizes the telos of involution: the Spirit’s self-veiling in Matter is retroactively revealed as purposive self-preparation for conscious emergence.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
This ‘turning in’ of anger against the self, and the need to defend against its eruption, leads to debilitating shame, as well as to eventual exhaustion. This involution adds another layer to the complexity and seeming intransigence of the festering traumatic state.
Levine applies involution to the somatic-psychological domain, naming the inward redirection of suppressed rage as a self-compounding layer of traumatic fixation.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
It is not certain, however, what view we should take of this involution that occurs after birth (which has been shown by Halban to apply also to other portions of the genital apparatus).
Freud employs involution in its strictly anatomical sense — the post-natal regression of foetal uterine tissue — as a physiological analogy for the developmental staging of infantile sexuality.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905aside
Schwangerschaftsreaktionen der fötalen Organe und ihre puerperale Involution
A bibliographic citation confirms the clinical-anatomical currency of the term ‘involution’ in the gynecological literature that Freud was drawing upon for his theory of infantile sexuality.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905aside