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The Human Power of Discontentedness Helps Open the Door to the Inner Consciousness · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The drive in the human individual to find out who he
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  is, what he is here for, and how he can grow and become what he
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  is intended to be in the creation sets him apart from the
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  animal. Even in the midst of an almost
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  complete immersion in the external life and its lures,
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  somewhere deep inside the person knows that this is not all, that
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  this is not enough. And eventually this brings about
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  a sense of dissatisfaction or discontentedness which pushes
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  him beyond the limits set by the body, life force and mind.
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  Fiora Window begins the Life Divine with the following quote.
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  The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts,
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  and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation, for
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  it survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after
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  every banishment, is also the highest which his thought can
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  envisage. It manifests itself in the
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  divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the
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  search after pure truth and unmixed bliss, the sense of a
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  secret immortality. Ancient dawns of human knowledge
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  have left us their witness to this constant aspiration.
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  Today you see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by
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  victorious analysis of the externalities of nature,
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  preparing to return to its primeval longings.
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  The earliest formula of wisdom promises to be its last God,
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  Light, freedom, immortality. These persistent ideals of the
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  race are at once the contradiction of its normal
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  experience and the affirmation of higher and deeper experiences
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  which are abnormal to humanity and only to be attained in their
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  organized entirety by a revolutionary individual effort
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  or an evolutionary general progression.
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  To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and
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  egoistic consciousness. To convert our twilight or
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  obscure physical mentality into the plenary supermental
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  illumination. To build peace and the self
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  existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory
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  satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional
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  suffering. To establish an infinite freedom
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  in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical
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  necessities. To discover and realize the
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  immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant
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  mutation. This is offered to us as the
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  manifestation of God in matter and the goal of nature in her
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  terrestrial evolution. To the ordinary material
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  intellect, which takes its present organization of
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  consciousness for the limit of its possibilities, the direct
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  contradiction of the unrealized ideals with the realized fact is
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  a final argument against their validity.
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  But if we take a more deliberate view of the world's workings,
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  that direct opposition appears rather as a part of nature's
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  profoundest method and the seal of her completest sanction.
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  For all problems of existence are essentially problems of
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  harmony. They arise from the perception
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  of an unsolved discord and the instinct of an undiscovered
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  agreement or unity to rest. Content with an unsolved discord
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  is possible for the practical and more animal part of man, but
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  impossible for his fully awakened mind.
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  And usually even his practical parts only escape from the
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  general necessity, either by shutting out the problem or by
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  accepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined compromise.
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  For essentially all nature seeks a harmony, life, and matter in
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  their own sphere as much as mind in the arrangement of its
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  perceptions. The greater the apparent
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  disorder of the materials offered, or the apparent
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  disparateness, even to irreconcilable opposition of the
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  elements that have to be utilized, the stronger is the
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  spur, and it drives towards a more subtle and poison order
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  than can normally be the result of a less difficult endeavor.
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  End Quote. Doctor de Lal writes quote.
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  A purely animal existence governed by the vital
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  consciousness represents, in Meninger's terms, the stage of
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  striving popularly described as the animals struggle for
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  existence. Though human beings are endowed
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  with mental consciousness and have therefore learned to some
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  extent to cope with the problems of life, most human beings are
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  still primarily ruled by the vital consciousness and
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  therefore lead a life largely characterized by striving and
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  struggling very similar to that of the animal.
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  But unlike the animal, the human being, as previously stated, is
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  a discontented creature, for he knows in the recesses of his
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  inmost being that he has the power to free himself from the
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  bonds of animal existence and become master of his destiny.
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  As the Mother remarks, quote, the vast majority of men are
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  like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed, so
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  they suffocate, which is quite natural, but they have with them
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  the key that opens the doors and windows, End Quote.
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  This book offers help for using the key, End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within,
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  Introduction by Doctor Delal, pages 12 to 13.