In the opening passage of the Book of Fate in Savitri, we have a complete description of the proto-atoms constituting our material world. The beginning of the objective universe starts from the Akash-element viewed as the etheric sea and goes down below to the dense form of the Prithvi-element. In the ether is the first stir, a vibration set into motion, Spandan with an urge towards the physical creation. Akash is the high substratum needed for the objects to come into existence, the subtlest, the finest support, the spiritual ādhāra for matter to exist. Sri Aurobindo writes, “…the nature of the action of cosmic Mind is the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation the infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of the infinite, was needed as the starting-point or basis. Ether may and does exist as an intangible, almost spiritual support of Matter, but as a phenomenon it does not seem, to our present knowledge at least, to be materially detectable. Subdivide the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into the most infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force, phenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents … realities of pure existence, pure substance… are the reality underlying Matter, and not the phenomenon which we call Matter.” A body made from this pure existence, this pure substance accompanied with the truth-conscient dynamism has yet to be created. But presently Narad in the opening passage of the Book of Fate is passing from Mind into material things and therefore he picks up first the Akash-atom...   more »