Spiritual evolution

Spiritual evolution is a philosophical and esoteric idea that biological evolution is driven by spiritual or metaphysical forces. The view is found in many occult and new age writings. Although it's obvious pseudoscience, at least supporters of spiritual evolution don't reject evolution or the age of the Earth.

History
There have been numerous confused writers who have maintained that evolution operates not only on a physical, but also on some imaginary "spiritual level". They usually describe evolution as a "directed process" and that nature has purposiveness. Those who advocate spiritual evolution are not always theistic, as some do not postulate that a deity is the prime mover of the evolutionary process. Instead, those who advocate spiritual evolution usually speak of "forces" or "purposes" directing the evolutionary process or working the ongoing processes of the universe.

According to Thomas Kuhn, many early scientists were unhappy with Darwin's ideas about natural selection as it removed any element of purpose or teleology in evolution:

For many men the abolition of that teleological kind of evolution was the most significant and least palatable of Darwin's suggestions. The Origin of Species recognized no goal set either by God or nature... The belief that natural selection, resulting from mere competition between organisms for survival, could have produced man together with the higher animals and plants was the most difficult and disturbing aspect of Darwin's theory.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some scientists and philosophers added mechanisms of spiritual or vitalistic forces in evolution to retain an element of purpose and teleology in evolution.

Supporters
Alfred Russel Wallace and the biologist St. George Jackson Mivart were two early scientists to invoke supernatural factors in evolution. Regarding their ideas, Thomas Henry Huxley wrote:

Wallace and Mr. Mivart... are as stout believers in evolution as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace denies that man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that process of natural selection which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to have been sufficient for the evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart, admitting that natural selection has been one of the conditions of the evolution of the animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their case, have been supplemented by "some other cause"–of the nature of which, unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is less of a Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has less faith in the power of natural selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace, because Mr. Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent–a sort of supernatural Sir John Sebright–to produce even the animal frame of man; while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he comes to man's soul.

Later writers, such as (The Phenomenon of Man, 1955) and  (The Life Divine, 1977), describe evolution as progression from inanimate matter to a future state of Divine consciousness. Teilhard de Chardin refers to this as the and Sri Aurobindo as the

Occult evolution
Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), the founder of modern Theosophy; Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy; (1872-1949), the founder of the Fourth Way and  the founder of the modern Gnosis movement, were deeply involved in the study and teachings of the occult. Their works borrowed ideas from Gnosticism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, Neoplatonism and Mysticism and attempted to merge their ideas into the sciences. Most of these occult writers advocated the view that evolution is driven by purposive spiritual forces and rejected the Darwinian view of evolution, which they equated with materialism.

Revival
Modern authors who have advocated occult or spiritual evolution include Carl Johan Calleman, Ole Therkelsen and David Wilcock.

Reception
Most scientists maintain that unguided evolution explains the evolutionary process; thus, the idea that some immaterial force is guiding evolution is a metaphysical viewpoint considered to be pseudoscience by the scientific community.

Christian creationists reject spiritual and occult evolution as being the "neo-pagan ultimate enemy of the Biblical Christian faith".