Sri Aurobindo: 'Man is a transitional being, he is not final'

From Man to Superman

‘Man is a transitional being, he is not final. He is too imperfect for that, too imperfect in capacity for knowledge, too imperfect in will and action, too imperfect in his turn towards joy and beauty, too imperfect in his will for freedom and his instinct for order. Even if he could perfect himself in his own type, his type is too low and small to satisfy the need of the universe. Something larger, higher, more capable of a rich all-embracing universality is needed, a greater being, a greater consciousness summing up in itself all that the world set out to be. He has . . . to exceed himself; man must evolve out of himself the divine superman; he was born for transcendence. Humanity is not enough, it is only a stepping-stone; the need of the world is a superhuman perfection of what the world can be, the goal of consciousness is divinity. The inmost need of man is not to perfect his humanity, but to be greater than himself, to be more than man, to be divine, even to be the Divine.’ [bold emphasis added]

– Sri Aurobindo,
Essays Divine and Human

 Related Links:
* More quotes from Sri Aurobindo on Man's evolution 
* 'Evolution and the Genesis Bind' - a 1987 discussion with Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet on evolution and the difficulties encountered by the standard interpretation of Genesis of the Old Testament, published in The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 2, Issue 4, October 1987 on Puranic Cosmology Updated.