In the previous section we read that this manifestation we live in starts from contradictions and moves towards a higher harmony of all potentialities. Sri Aurobindo showed us the first level of the emergence of life in matter and assured us that however unpromising earth-life may appear to be at present, eventually it will lead to a conscious meeting of Nature and Soul. The first level of evolving life which he showed us seemed to be dominated by the quality of tamas, the unconsciousness and inertia of matter. The next level, explored in this section, is more dynamic:

Then came a fierier breath of waking Life,
And there arose from the dim gulf of things
The strange creations of a thinking sense,
Existences half-real and half-dream.

There is more fire, more energy on this level. While the previous stage of the evolution of life was still under domination of tamas, in this second one rajas dominates with ‘a fierier breath of waking Life’ and as a result Aswapati sees the emergence of new beings out of the ‘dim gulf of things’, the deep inconscient root of evolution.

These new beings are strange, ‘The strange creations of a thinking sense’, which is not fully real, but only ‘half-real and half-dream’. The next sentence casts a little more light on these short-lived creatures.

Q: What is this ‘thinking sense’?

In the previous section we read about a stage in the emergence of life in matter where ‘sense’, physical feeling, was the only form of consciousness available to living creatures. Now Sri Aurobindo will tell us about the appearance of a new kind of beings who are more conscious.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

A life was there that hoped not to survive:
Beings were born who perished without trace,
Events that were a formless drama’s limbs
And actions driven by a blind creature will.

Nowadays scientists are telling us more and more about the evolution of life on earth. Apparently the first living creatures to appear were viruses and bacteria followed by single- celled creatures such as amoebas, and we are told that more complex life forms emerged only more than two hundred and fifty million years later; but then an abundance of different species appeared, most of which have ‘perished without trace’. The poet calls the events which led to the appearance and disappearance of these different life-forms the ‘limbs’ of ‘a formless drama’ – a sequence of happenings without much coherence, and ‘actions’ that were not consciously planned but ‘driven by a blind creature will’: the random or instinctive behaviours of those primitive creatures.

[Shraddavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

The veiled spectator watching from their depths
Fixed not his inward eye upon himself
Nor turned to find the author of the plot,
He saw the drama only and the stage.

None of us would exist if there were not this ‘veiled spectator’ within us, the hidden conscious being ‘watching’ from the ‘depths’. At the stage in evolution which Sri Aurobindo is telling us about here, that veiled spectator does not turn to look ‘inward’ to find out about himself; he does not turn his gaze to discover the author of the drama of life which he is observing. At this stage, the inner witness sees only ‘the drama’ itself. This can happen to us if we are reading a very interesting book or watching a fascinating film: we are fully absorbed in what we are reading or seeing and forget about everything else. Then we do not give a thought to the author who has written it or his reason for doing so: we are only eager to find out what will happen next. Similarly at this level of development the conscious being is completely identified with the outer scenes and events: Purusha is identified with Prakriti and it never occurs to him to step back from his absorption in the outer drama to try to find who or what he is.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

These felt life’s quiver in the outward touch,
They could not feel behind the touch the soul.
To guard their form of self from Nature’s harm,
To enjoy and to survive was all their care.

These beings enjoy feeling the vibrations of life that come to them from ‘the outward touch’, the sensations; but they cannot feel the contact of the soul which lies behind every sensory contact. Their sole preoccupation, ‘their care’ is to protect themselves, their individual ‘form of self’, from any harm, any damage that Nature might inflict upon them: to survive and to enjoy.

This consciousness is still quite strong in us, we can recognise it very well; but we are not only this. We grow dissatisfied with purely physical experiences: something in us is looking for more than that.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

The narrow horizon of their days was filled
With things and creatures that could help and hurt:
The world’s values hung upon their little self.

The lives of these beings have only a very ‘narrow horizon’: a limited range of vision, filled with friends and enemies, food and dangers. For each of them ‘The world’s values hung upon their little self.’ We too generalise our preferences like that and tend to believe that things and people which please and help us are good while people and things that oppose or seem to threaten us are bad, evil and inhuman. It is quite striking to see how limited we are in that way. But the concept of an ideal, of a higher and larger world-view which inspires us, is evolutionarily far ahead of the state Aswapati is exploring and observing here.

[ Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

An animal in the instinctive herd
Pushed by life impulses, forced by common needs,
Each in his own kind saw his ego’s glass;
All served the aim and action of the pack.

The characteristic of these beings is their animal nature. Each of them is an animal in a ‘herd’, in a group that is living by instinct, being pushed and driven ‘by life impulses’, and ‘forced by common needs’. They cannot help following what is dictated by the shared needs of all the animals in the pack. Each of them sees a reflection of himself in all the others who are like him. Here ‘glass’ means ‘a looking glass’, ‘a mirror’. They are banded together and all of them serve ‘the aim and action of the pack’, like wolves who all cooperate in the hunt.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

A master of his life’s environment,
A leader of a huddled human mass
Herding for safety on a dangerous earth,
He gathered them round him as if minor Powers
To make a common front against the world,

He may be the leader of that group, the one who has some mastery, who has some power; or each of them sees himself as ‘A leader of a huddled human mass’. If it is very cold animals will huddle together to keep themselves warm; or if they feel vulnerable or under attack they will huddle together for protection. ‘Herding for safety’: as animals will stay close together if there is a predator around, these groups form for self-protection ‘on a dangerous earth’. Each of them gathers the others as satellite selves around him, as ‘minor Powers’, who are not as powerful as he is, but he needs them ‘To make a common front’, to stand together, ‘against the world’, against the whole universe, which appears so hostile and dangerous.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Instinct was formed; in memory’s crowded sleep
The past lived on as in a bottomless sea:
Inverting into half-thought the quickened sense
She felt around for truth with fumbling hands,
Clutched to her the little she could reach and seize
And put aside in her subconscient cave.

At this level of ‘half-awakened Nescience’ two important powers are established: ‘Instinct’ and ‘memory’. The memory is not yet fully conscious; it is a sleep-state in which things that have been experienced live on ‘as in a bottomless sea’, the sea of subconsciousness, where past impressions are crowded together. That ‘half-awakened Nescience’, in her attempt to know, catches hold of the awakening sense-impressions and turns them into ‘half-thought’. She is groping, feeling blindly around ‘with fumbling hands’ to find ‘truth’, some accurate knowledge. Whatever little truth she can ‘reach and seize’ she clutches, holds onto tightly, and puts it aside, stores it away in ‘her subconscient cave’ of sleeping memory.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

So must the dim being grow in light and force
And rise to his higher destiny at last,
Look up to God and round at the universe,
And learn by failure and progress by fall
And battle with environment and doom,
By suffering discover his deep soul
And by possession grow to his own vasts.

Aswapati sees that this is the way in which ‘the dim being’, the half-conscious individual, begins to ‘grow in light and force’ so that eventually it will become fully conscious, able to rise at last to its ‘higher destiny’ and ‘Look up to God and round at the universe’. Memory enables us to ‘learn by failure and progress by fall’. It teaches us to ‘battle with environment and doom’: the conditions which surround us and the dangers that threaten the growing being. ‘By suffering’ the being can eventually discover his deep soul, learn who and what he truly is, and ‘by possession’, by gaining more and more mastery, ‘grow to his own vasts’: the wideness of his greater self. This is a  of learning and if memory were not there, at least in the subconscient, this growth in knowledge would not be possible. In this way a foundation is established for further progress. These are the evolutionary achievements of this ‘half-awakened Nescience’, the life-force and consciousness at the animal level. This is only a beginning, but it seems that she cannot do more or progress further.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Behind all moved seeking for vessels to hold
A first raw vintage of the grapes of God,
On earth’s mud a spilth of the supernal Bliss,
Intoxicating the stupefied soul and mind
A heady wine of rapture dark and crude,
Dim, uncast yet into spiritual form,
Obscure inhabitant of the world’s blind core,
An unborn godhead’s will, a mute Desire.

Behind all these half-conscious, half-nescient life-movements there is the will of a divine being which has not yet been born, which has not yet found a way to manifest: ‘An unborn godhead’s will’. That godhead is still ‘Dim’, it has not yet been cast into its destined ‘spiritual form’; it is still ‘Obscure’, dwelling in the ‘blind core’ of the world; but it is exerting the silent pressure of its will in the form of ‘a mute Desire’. That Desire, that will is ‘seeking for vessels’, for forms that can hold a crude form of wine: ‘A first raw vintage of the grapes of God’. The Mother has given spiritual significances to flowers and also to some fruits. The significance that she has given for grapes is Ananda, Bliss. The word ‘vintage’ refers to the wine that is made from a particular variety of grapes in a particular year. Some vintages are finer than others. At this stage in the development of life, only a very crude and undeveloped form of bliss is being produced; vessels are needed that can hold that ‘first raw vintage of the grapes of God’. It seems that suitable vessels, suitable living forms, are not yet available, so the wine of delight is being spilt onto the ‘mud’ of matter which is not ready to contain it. But even though it is raw and crude, even though it is being wasted, it is still ‘a spilth’, an overflow, from ‘the supernal Bliss’, the supreme Delight. This ‘first raw vintage’ is ‘A heady wine of rapture dark and crude’: the delight it gives is dark and unrefined; it is not yet the immortalising amrita drunk by the gods. ‘Heady’ means ‘intoxicating’: it intoxicates the soul and mind, which are ‘stupefied’, in a stupor, a drowsy unconscious state. But behind all this is pressing the ‘will’ and the ‘mute Desire’ of an ‘unborn godhead’ which is demanding the formation of ‘vessels’ that will be fit to hold the divine wine of Bliss made from ‘the grapes of God’; surely they must appear eventually.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]