Opening Remarks
Evolution is a two-way process. On the one hand there is an outpouring of higher forces and powers from Above, on the other hand there must be an increasing openness and receptivity below.
Unresponsiveness of gross matter
But soon the inert flesh responds no more,
Then sinks the sacred orgy of delight,
The blaze of passion and the tide of power
Are taken from us and, though a glowing form
Abides astonishing earth, imagined supreme,
Too little of what was meant has left a trace.
But the main difficulty lies with matter. It takes long to respond and is unable to keep the pressure of higher forces and visitations from realms of power and delight. Its mould is too rigid and tends to break down under the pressure. Therefore the Higher power has to withdraw and wait until this gross outer matter is ready.
Earthly creations
Earth’s eyes half-see, her forces half-create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven’s art.
The earthly matter is like a thick screen of ignorance hanging over our eyes. Due to this thick and heavy shield we are unable to come in direct contact with the Higher Truth. Whatever we receive is too little and too brief, snatches and glimpses here and there and yet this brief contact is enough to give us the creative impetus that drives the genius.
The unseized miracle
A radiance of a golden artifice,
A masterpiece of inspired device and rule,
Her forms hide what they house and only mime
The unseized miracle of self-born shapes
That live for ever in the Eternal’s gaze.
Within the form there exists the marvellous Divine Presence. It is this wonderful Presence that secretly determines the shape and quality that the form will manifest by seeding within it the Real Idea that the object tries to vaguely and remotely represent. This Real Idea within all things, is a radiance of the Supramental Truth that is hidden in the deepest depths of creation and influences it from within.
Half-finished world
Here in a difficult half-finished world
Is a slow toiling of unconscious Powers;
Here is man’s ignorant divining mind,
His genius born from an inconscient soil.
But this radiance gets mingled with the various layers that have evolved out of the Inconscience. It is covered up with mud so to say and therefore we can hardly notice it, even distort its workings. But Sri Aurobindo gives us hope and reveals that what we see today is an unfinished world. Humanity itself is a transitional step in the evolutionary journey upon earth. When even a little touch of this deeper influx can create the genius, what shall it be when the fullness of the Divine truth emerges from within? He assures us that the last Scene and the last Act is not yet over and there is much more to come after Man, a beautiful diviner race.
Closing Remarks
This is the evolutionary struggle that is going on within the depths of the earth, a struggle for the full emergence of the highest forces hidden in its bosom that are now veiled and have only a limited action.
