For Indian spiritual master Meher Baba

Meher Baba

Meher Baba , , born Merwan Sheriar Irani, was an Indian mystic and spiritual master who declared publicly in 1954 that he was the Avatar of the age....

, involution is the inner path of the human soul to the Self. Charles Haynes, in describing Meher Baba's sense of involution writes, "The old and new impressions, both of which create a veil over consciousness, gradually wear away, revealing an increasingly clearer experience of God; that is, the soul wearies of the world and is ready to begin the third phase of the journey, involution, which may be seen as the 'ascent' back to God."

Overview

Meher Baba states that evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 is the soul's gathering of full consciousness, reincarnation

Reincarnation

Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...

 is the state of ordinary people caught up in karma

Karma

Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....

, and involution is the inner journey of the spiritual pilgrim back to its origin through higher planes

Plane (esotericism)

In esoteric cosmology, a plane, other than the physical plane is conceived as a subtle state of consciousness that transcends the known physical universe....

 of consciousness. According to Meher Baba, there are seven inner planes of consciousness beyond the state of ordinary human experience. Ordinary consciousness he calls "gross consciousness" and is entirely of the gross physical world. Planes one through four are of the subtle world (pran

Prana

Prana is the Sanskrit word for "vital life" .It is one of the five organs of vitality or sensation, viz. prana "breath", vac "speech", chakshus "sight", shrotra "hearing", and manas "thought" Prana is the Sanskrit word for "vital life" (from the root "to fill", cognate to Latin plenus...

, or energy); planes five and six are of the mental world (mana, or mind); and plane seven is of the Self.

Process

According to Meher Baba reincarnation is a necessary part of the process of the advancement of consciousness, but that consciousness more or less comes to a stalemate in the human form due to the impressions acquired during evolution. These, Meher Baba says, must be worked out in human form through the experience of diverse opposites in reincarnation before involution begins. It is due to the fading of these impressions and the awareness that one is in stalemate that one's attention is eventually turned inwards and one begins the path of involution. Meher Baba writes,

This process of involution of consciousness gradually takes place as the gross impressions of the opposites gradually become fainter and less concentrated. At this stage the consciousness of the gross-conscious human soul gradually gets dissociated from the gross world, as the involution of consciousness infolds, and gradually dissociates from experiencing the impressions of the gross world.

Sources

Meher Baba describes his view of the planes of involution in detail in his principal book God Speaks

God Speaks

God Speaks, The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose is the principal book by Meher Baba, and the most significant religious text used by his followers. It covers Meher Baba's view of the process of Creation and its purpose and has been in print continuously since 1955.-Overview:God Speaks is Meher...

.