The Sleep of Creation, pp. 154-155

Opening remarks
Sri Aurobindo now takes us to the very origin of creation when it is still asleep under the drowse of the Inconscience.

An enormous brute machine
At the outset of this enigmatic world
Which seems at once an enormous brute machine
And a slow unmasking of the spirit in things,
In this revolving chamber without walls
In which God sits impassive everywhere
As if unknown to himself and by us unseen
In a miracle of inconscient secrecy,
Yet is all here his action and his will.

This world seen from the outside gives the appearance of brute machine but seen from another vision it is a slow emergence of the spirit hidden in its depths. The Divine Presence is the eternal witness hidden in this dark Inconscient slowly putting a pressure from within for creation to emerge out of its depths.

The Spirit became Matter
In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy
The Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,
A body sleeping without sense or soul.

It is the Spirit that has become this seemingly inconscient world. It is the Spirit that sleeps in the depths of creation using matter as a tool for its expression. It is the Spirit that slowly emerges through a million processes of the universe.

An outward and insensible world
A mass phenomenon of visible shapes
Supported by the silence of the Void
Appeared in the eternal Consciousness
And seemed an outward and insensible world.

The universe is the Divine’s outward robe, all objects that have emerged in Space and Time are the outward expressions of the Eternal who is hidden within. He is the All-Conscious within the Inconscient, the All-Knowing, All-Loving within the silent Void. .

A subtle wizard skilled
There was none there to see and none to feel;
Only the miraculous Inconscient,
A subtle wizard skilled, was at its task.

This is the state of the world before life began to emerge. There is only this material world and its objects and shapes driven by a blind inconscient energy.

Creation’s marvellous device
Inventing ways for magical results,
Managing creation’s marvellous device,
Marking mechanically dumb wisdom’s points,
Using the unthought inevitable Idea,
It did the works of God’s intelligence
Or wrought the will of some supreme Unknown.

This seemingly blind energy yet acts as if magically, intelligently, devising one thing after another as if one who is adapting means to a prefigured end. The inconscient itself becomes an instrument for God’s grand design laying down the foundations and setting the stage for His works in Time.

Nature’s womb
Still consciousness was hidden in Nature’s womb,
Unfelt was the Bliss whose rapture dreamed the worlds.
Being was an inert substance driven by Force.

Though one can surmise the presence of consciousness and intelligence when we se the works and patterns of material energy and the forms it has built with the atomic technique, yet it has not yet emerged. It is not yet visible on the surface and its material creations are as if inert unconsciousness driven without a will and simply by a blind mechanical force. Even sense and feeling have not emerged. All is blind and inert, unconscious, without a seeming will.

Closing Remarks
This is the state of the material world before the great adventure of life begins.