...that is to say, of the sense-powers, in themselves, in their purely
mental or subtle activity as distinguished from the physical which is
only a selection for the purposes of outward life from their total and
general action, -we are able to take cognition of sense experiences, of
appearances and images of things other than those which belong to the
organisation of our material environment.---SRI AUROBINDO
The day before yesterday when I was in my sleep in the night I dreamt a strange dream-which showed that –everything is saved in the hard drive. All is there without mutilation. I am just drawing the analogy of a computer system to make the point that a system and an organization within us work in the same way except that it far excels in its capability. The hard drive here can never be corrupted and even destroyed even after death.
I went into a vital world-a not so high one and witnessed the creations of lives which had existed somewhere and sometime beyond known and measurable human time. The nature had created more species than we can imagine e
ven in our wild conjectures. But all of them had withered as incomplete experiences. Most of the creatures I saw had been drawn out of water and placed on the open earth. There were some species which were most akin to human beings-but were not exactly them, as for example a matsaknaya (in English-mermaid, a woman who is a fish in her lower portion). There were other animals also, resembling those we see around us, not exactly the same ones. They all suffered being on the surface –and were dying as it was not a place to survive. I also saw some already dead. 
I clearly feel that they were absolutely vital beings without a pinch of mind. All of them had existed before
the advent of mind in its manifestation.
And we all human beings contain the consciousness of all the created beings-whether of this world or the world beyond or prior to this one that had been destroyed by nature.
So when I fathom myself-I become a little depressed as to my task of transformation.
Now let us see what the Mother (of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry) was telling to the Ashram children on November 27, 1957. Perhaps my dream stuff is in someway supportive of her talk on Nature and evolution. She went on telling…. “Supposing you have some plasticine (you know 
plasticine for making models, don’t you? Good.), you make a form, then when you have finished it you don’t like it, so you break it up and make it into a thick paste again and try another form….And you can continue thus indefinitely. It is always the same substance but it is not always the same being, for each of your forms has its particular existence as a form, and the moment you break it, there no longer remains anything….. 
You may try to perfect the same form or may try out other forms; you may try, for instance, to make a dog or a horse, and then if you have not succeeded, you may begin once again another horse or dog, but you may also begin quite another thing……Nature begins with quite inconscient and amorphous matter, then tries out one form and another; only , instead of doing as we would do, one thing at a time, it makes millions of them all at once…”
[© QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-1957-58-Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry] 
