Thus we are revealed the difficulty and the danger and yet the inevitability of evolution and the Wisdom that uses all, even our resistance, for a greater perfection.
At the Feet of The Mother
Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Life emerges with difficulty in matter. Its evolution has been led by desire which is a construct of ignorance. This must change into a conscious aspiration for the True and the Eternal, for then only can life find the infinite Bliss that it is really seeking for.
The Divine is everywhere and in all things. The appearances of life often deceive us and the meanest elements carries within its core the deep possibility and presence of Light and Love and Hope and Joy.
This small, seemingly insignificant world of early life forms holds a purpose of God. It is the first step that matter takes towards a much greater climb that is its inevitable destiny. God is the secret Truth that Nature hides behind every form.
Sri Aurobindo reveals to us vividly the early beginnings of life, the birth or rather the evolution of sense contacts, instincts, the seemingly unconscious will to live and survive in a beautiful, enigmatic, dangerous world.
The real struggle of life is not the struggle for survival or competing with other forms but rather, the struggle against the Inconscient resistance that deforms and denies. This is also the root of suffering that life experiences in bird and beast and man.
The dark deforming power that opposes the Divine plan takes hold of the force of life in its beginnings upon earth and twists it into something dark and even ugly.
Life emerges out of matter as if out of some dark obscure cave. Thus begins the slow ascension of life towards her divine home. In the process she carries matter transforming it into shapes and forms closer and closer to the divine Idea.
Life starts its journey through many pathways of ignorance, aided by its own instinct towards Truth and Freedom and Bliss. Now helped by the gods, now struggling alone she drives upon the pathways carved for her by Fate.
Now life begins to stir and awaken and emerge from the depths of matter. Matter is filled with the dreams and impulsions of life. Life's first steps towards evolutionary journey are taken in ignorance.
Life has entered here from another plane of consciousness, another domain of existence and buried itself in matter as a seed. Slowly it begins to emerge under conditions of obscurity and darkness imposed by matter.
Man is torn between two very different forces so to say, one that prods and pushes him to advance and progress and another which pulls him to the inertia of his base. We see here the journey of human life being mapped out.
The Force of life entering Matter accepts and assumes the obscurity of the medium through which it has chosen to express itself. It becomes like a bird in a cage that can move about only within certain limits.
But what happens to the wonderful force of Life as it enters into and emerges out of the material frame? As if under a magic spell of some dark sorceress who has maimed her powers and turned her into the very opposite of what she actually is.
We see how life emerged in matter, not through a series of random accidents, but through a dumb call from below and an answer from above. It is a top-down view that reconciles evolution and intelligent design that we find here.
Though Sri Aurobindo describes here how life emerged from matter, He also gives us in a gist the secret of all evolution which is, a call from below and a corresponding answer from Above.
Aswapati has glimpsed this world of Bliss that is behind and beyond our sphere of sorrow. But no bridge exists between Earth and the Beyond. A rare individual souls can glimpse it in rare moments of Grace, but the doors of humanity as a whole are closed to this greater possibility.
Life indeed is a magician builder as Sri Aurobindo puts it later in this passage. There is no end to the varieties of forms and energies and powers it brings forth into creation.