Opening Remarks
Out of the vital animal life slowly the mind begins to emerge creating a new layer of animal type.
A third creation
A third creation now revealed its face.
Material forms with the first stir of life are followed by a fuller emergence of the vital force in the animal. The next step of evolution sees the first emergence of an early mind in the animal kind.
A mould of early mind
A mould of body’s early mind was made.
The animal body is used as a stool for an early mind to emerge in material existence.
A small thinking being
A glint of light kindled the obscure World-Force;
It dowered a driven world with the seeing Idea
And armed the act with thought’s dynamic point:
A small thinking being watched the works of Time.
There is the first stir of an early thought watching the world. It brought some early hint of light, an effort to understand the world, a touch of idea defining things in however ignorant and imperfect way.
A difficult evolution
A difficult evolution from below
Called a masked intervention from above;
Else this great, blind inconscient universe
Could never have disclosed its hidden mind,
Or even in blinkers worked in beast and man
The Intelligence that devised the cosmic scheme.
Evolution is not just an effort from below. As the force that is struggling to evolve creates a pressure on the species, there is a gradual drawing down of the corresponding plane of consciousness. It is a double movement so to say. The pressure to evolve below calls in a descent from Above, from what is yet beyond the reach of the species. A greater consciousness than known to earth begins to emerge and occupy the bodily life. Slowly this emergence exerts pressure upon the living organism and eventually ends up creating a new species with a new mode of function and a new earthly possibility. A mere struggle and strain from below is not enough.
Obscure mind-power
At first he saw a dim obscure mind-power
Moving concealed by Matter and dumb life.
In the beginning the newly emergent power is submerged in matter and life, not only fully dependent on the conditions laid down by these earlier powers but also obscured by their action. The mind at this stage of evolution is not yet free enough to act in its own right according to its own native strength.
A thin current
A current thin, it streamed in life’s vast flow
Tossing and drifting under a drifting sky
Amid the surge and glimmering tremulous wash,
Released in splash of sense and feeling’s waves.
The mind energies have not yet descended in their full possibilities. It is like a thin stream flowing more as an undercurrent below the surfaces. It does surface from time to time and one can see its first actions in a vitalised animal consciousness. The senses begin to awaken and arouse feelings. There is a beginning of emotional life, a social existence, in higher animals. All is not driven by instinct alone.
Huddled wave and foam
In the deep midst of an insentient world
Its huddled waves and foam of consciousness ran
Pressing and eddying through a narrow strait,
Carrying experience in its crowded pace.
At this stage the mind is merely recording and gathering experiences of earthly life as received through the senses. There is not yet born the self-reflection that marks our higher humanity, no effort at making sense of one’s life or discovering a meaning to our existence. The newly born mental consciousness is inextricably mixed with the vital and physical consciousness and simply a passive recorder of multiple sensory inputs.
Emergence into upper light
It flowed emerging into upper light
From the deep pool of its subliminal birth
To reach some high existence still unknown.
From time to time there were moments when the mind emerged drawn towards something higher as if vaguely searching for something.
Seekings vague
There was no thinking self, aim there was none:
All was unorganised stress and seekings vague.
Yet there was not yet an organised mental activity with thought as its instrument and a search for direction and purpose. It was more of an inner stress towards something but not yet any clarity of what that something is.
Glimmerings of knowledge
Only to the unstable surface rose
Sensations, stabs and edges of desire
And passion’s leaps and brief emotion’s cries,
A casual colloquy of flesh with flesh,
A murmur of heart to longing wordless heart,
Glimmerings of knowledge with no shape of thought
And jets of subconscious will or hunger’s pulls.
Some kind of a logical mind starts with the higher animals that uses sensations and passions and emotions for nature’s inferior purposes. There is the birth of attachment to one’s own kind, the primitive sense of a ‘family’, a beginning of social life, and various pulls and emotional hungers driven subconsciously.
Foaming top on an inconscient flood
All was dim sparkle on a foaming top:
It whirled around a drifting shadow-self
On an inconscient flood of Force in Time.
This is how mental life begins in its earliest stages. It is like a momentary and vanishing froth and foam formed on the surfaces of the dark inconscient ocean and its forces constantly flooding the earth scene. In this foam there is yet the most rudimentary beginning of the sense of a ‘self’, a crude beginning of the ego.
Closing Remarks
Thus we find here a most remarkable description of the early birth of mind in the animal kind. This description is not only consistent with the deeper spiritual truths but also with the current biological understanding of the evolution of life upon earth.
