When we gaze into the atomic structure of the physical world, we marvel at both the power and organization we witness. As we expand our view to the physical world, then to the galaxies and universes, we see the same organized intelligence operating a system of what we call “laws” of physics, “laws” of thermodynamics, “laws” of the conservation of energy. Everything operates automatically and precisely and humanity has studied and applied these laws in the development of the technologies that have driven human civilization and progress in the material world. We harness the electro-magnetic spectrum, we employ the principles of aerodynamics, we rely on the action of gravity, the conversion of matter into energy and the regularity of all these processes. The physical body of each living being follows its own rules of birth, growth, decay and death, and hidden within the cells of the body we find and employ the “laws” of genetics and the secret encoding that turns the acorn infallibly into the oak tree.
These are all signs of the intelligence involved in Matter and, while not overtly self-conscious, it clearly acts with a precision and attention to detail that far exceeds the best that we can contrive with our mental powers.
Sri Aurobindo observes: “It should be noted, however, that even at the bottom of the involutionary descent, in the blind eclipse of consciousness in Matter, in the very field of the working of the Inconscient there are signs of the labour of an infallible force, the drive of a secret consciousness and its promptings, as if the Inconscient itself were secretly informed or impelled by a Power with a direct and absolute knowledge; its acts of creation are infinitely surer than the workings of our human consciousness at its best or the normal workings of the Life-power. Matter, or rather the Energy in Matter seems to have a more certain knowledge, a more infallible operation of its own and its mechanism once set going can be trusted for the most part to do its work accurately and well. It is so that man is able, taking hold of a material energy, to mechanise it for his own ends and trust it under proper conditions to do for him his work. The self-creating life-power, amazingly abundant in its invention and fantasy, yet seems to be more capable of flaw, aberration and failure; it is as if its greater consciousness carried in it a greater capacity for error. Yet it is sure enough ordinarily in its workings: but as consciousness increases in the forms and operations of life, and most when mind enters in, disturbances also increase as if the increase of consciousness brought with it not only richer possibilities but more possibilities of stumbling, error, flaw and failure. In mind, in man, we seem to reach the height of this antinomy, the greatest, highest, widest reach and achievements of consciousness, the greatest amount of uncertainty, defect, failure and error. This, we may conjecture, may be because in inconscient Nature there is a truth of energy at work which follows infallibly its own law, an energy which can walk blindfold without stumbling because the automatic law of the truth is within it, operating surely without swerving or mistaken when there is no external intervention or interference. But in all normally automatic processes of existence there is this law: even the body has an unexpressed knowledge of its own, a just instinct in its action within certain limits and this when not interfered with by life’s desires and mind’s errors can work with a certain accuracy and sureness.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, Supermind and Humanity, pp. 80-81
Sri Aurobindo Studies 