A wide unquiet mist of seeking Space,
A rayless region swallowed in vague swathes,
That seemed, unnamed, unbodied and unhoused,
A swaddled visionless and formless mind,
Asked for a body to translate its soul.

As Aswapati enters into this first realm of ‘The Little Life’ he perceives ‘A wide unquiet mist of seeking Space’: a wide space which expresses the restless seeking of the fallen Life-Force. It is ‘unquiet’, anxious, troubled; the original harmony of Matter has been disturbed by the invasion of the restless unsatisfied seeking of the Life-Force. That realm is foggy, shrouded in mist so that one cannot see clearly; it is a ‘rayless region’: there is no ray of light. It is ‘swallowed in vague swathes’, hidden by formless veils of cloud and mist. ‘Swathes’ here means ‘coverings’. That Space seems like a consciousness that is searching for something, a ‘swaddled visionless and formless mind’. ‘Swaddled’ means ‘wrapped up in bandages’. Mothers used to do this with newborn babies: to keep its limbs straight they would wrap the baby up tightly with strips of cloth, ‘swaddling bands’, so that it could not move its arms and legs. This ‘formless mind’ is not only ‘swaddled’ and cannot move freely, it is also ‘visionless’ – it cannot see. It is also ‘unnamed, unbodied and unhoused’: it has no name, no body and no home – nothing to contain or shelter it. But it has some consciousness and it seems to be aspiring for a form through which it could express itself: it is asking ‘for a body to translate its soul’. It is a soul, but that soul cannot manifest until it has a body, a form which can express it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

In strange domains where all was living sense
But mastering thought was not nor cause nor rule,
Only a crude child-heart cried for toys of bliss,
Mind flickered, a disordered infant glow,
And random shapeless energies drove towards form
And took each wisp-fire for a guiding sun.

In the ‘strange domains’, the countries and territories of this first Kingdom of the Little Life, ‘all was living sense’: sense- impressions are the only form of consciousness available to Life there. The first living creatures had only senses to guide them, to tell them “This is good for you” or “This is dangerous, better draw back”, “This is something you can eat” or “This is not good for you”: a very primitive sense- consciousness. In those domains there is no ‘mastering thought’ to give guidance, no awareness of ‘cause’ or of ‘rule’: ‘Only a crude child-heart cried for toys of bliss’: this is the only way in which the Life-Force can express itself – in a very simple form of desire and longing. ‘Mind’ there can only show itself as ‘a disordered infant glow’, a first disorganised form of light. There, ‘random shapeless energies drove towards form’: formless energies which have emerged randomly, by chance, without rhyme or reason, are pressing to take form, but they have no discrimination and no guiding principle. They  ‘took each wisp-fire for a guiding sun’. With this phrase ‘wisp- fire’ Sri Aurobindo makes us think of the ‘will-o’-the-wisp’  phenomenon. It is caused by marsh gasses such as methane produced by rotting vegetation in swampy areas. In the dark  these exhalations glow with a kind of phosphorescence or bio- luminescence as they drift above the muddy ground.

At this stage in the development of Life, there is no mastering thought, no possibility of stepping back, observing, understanding and controlling. There does not even seem to be any particular cause; everything is just happening randomly, by chance. No rules or laws have yet been established. There are only experimental attempts – fumblings, gropings, seekings – nothing has yet been fixed and organised. The only direction is given by ‘a crude child- heart’, unformed, without guidance, instinctively crying out for things to play with: ‘toys of bliss’. (Actually, we are all the time crying out for bliss. We think we want this or that, but what our heart really longs for is bliss.) Mind is just beginning to be born. Flickering like a candle flame in the wind, this first light of mind-consciousness is disordered, unreliable. It is just an infant, newly born; it is only a glow, a faint light. The energies there are formless, shapeless, moving at random without any directing mind or will behind. They are pushing towards form: they need forms, bodies to express their souls; but they have no guidance. They take any little light that appears – ‘each wisp-fire’ – ‘for a guiding sun’. 

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

An inconscient Power groped towards consciousness,
Matter smitten by Matter glimmered to sense,
Blind contacts, slow reactions beat out sparks
Of instinct from a cloaked subliminal bed,

Sri Aurobindo is beautifully describing the processes by which   consciousness has emerged from the original inconscience of earth. ‘An inconscient Power’, the Life power imprisoned in Matter, is groping towards consciousness; that movement causes some friction in Matter itself; ‘Matter’ is ‘smitten by Matter’: there is contact between different material forms, so that material substance ‘glimmered to sense’: dimly became aware of the sensation of contact. These first experiences take the form of ‘Blind contacts, slow reactions’, but they ‘beat out sparks / Of instinct …’. When we strike one stone against  another sometimes there will be a spark, a tiny flash of light and energy. Similarly these ‘Blind contacts’ and ‘slow reactions’ stimulated the emergence of small sparks of ‘instinct’ from the bedrock of unconsciousness, for hidden within it, ‘cloaked’, disguised, is a layer of ‘subliminal’ consciousness. ‘Subliminal’ means ‘below the threshold of consciousness’; ‘limen’ means ‘threshold’ in Latin, while ‘sub’ means ‘below’. Below the threshold of waking consciousness lie subliminal layers which may emerge into awareness. In the evolution of Life from Matter, Sri Aurobindo says, some first ‘blind contacts’ between material forms and substances, caused by the pressure of the Life-Force towards consciousness, led to ‘slow reactions’ taking the form of awareness of contact and reaction to it, and striking out sparks of energy and consciousness in the form of ‘instinct’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

The gusts of Nature were the only law,
Force wrestled with force, but no result remained:
Only were achieved a nescient grasp and drive
And feelings and instincts knowing not their source,
Sense-pleasures and sense-pangs soon caught, soon lost,
And the brute motion of unthinking lives.

The only powers influencing this chaotic state were ‘The gusts of Nature. ‘Gust’ is a word with two meanings. It can be a strong blast of wind. In stormy weather, gusts of wind come from different directions and blow things around. The other meaning of the word is ‘enthusiasm’: some people have ‘a gust for life’ and do many things with energy and ‘gusto’; this word is connected with the French word ‘goût’, meaning taste, liking or preference. The tastes and desires and rushing winds of Nature drive those beings and impulses in different directions. Forces wrestle with each other but cancel each other out so that no results remain from those efforts. Then Sri Aurobindo lists the achievements of this state, this stage of evolution: first, ‘a nescient grasp and drive’ – a blind unknowing impulsion and a capacity to seize sensations for a moment; then ‘feelings and instincts knowing not their source’ – instinctive perceptions unaware of their origin; ‘Sense-pleasures and sense-pangs soon caught, soon lost’ – sensations that give either pleasure or pain, which are felt only for a moment and are soon gone; and ‘the brute motion of unthinking lives’. Life-forms are there, capable only of crude movements ruled not by thought and conscious choice but by ‘The gusts of Nature’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

It was a vain unnecessary world
Whose will to be brought poor and sad results
And meaningless suffering and a grey unease.
Nothing seemed worth the labour to become.

This realm seems to be ‘a vain unnecessary world’. A ‘will to be’ is there, but it brings about only ‘poor and sad results’. There is no true joy of Life but only ‘meaningless suffering and a grey unease’, restlessness and discomfort and dissatisfaction. ‘Nothing seemed worth the labour to become’: simply existing seems to demand so much effort, and then that existence does not even seem worthwhile. Why should such a world exist at all?

The very first life-forms, biologists tell us, were single-celled entities, clustering together to form slimes and moulds in colonies called ‘stromatolites’. There are still remnants of them in a few places on earth today. If this was the best that Life could do in the world of Matter, indeed it would hardly seem ‘worth the labour to become’.

[Shraddhavn’s English of Savitri, Book 2]