Aswapati saw this empire of little life as an "unhappy comer in eternity". And as he wanted to see this region more clearly,

 

...he plunged his gaze into the siege of mist

That held this ill-lit straitened continent

...safe from Truth and Self and Light.

 

To his vision of knowledge this misty world of lower life became very clear

 

As when a search-light stabs the Night's blind breast,

And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear

As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,

All lurking things were torn out of their veils

And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze.

 

He saw in that light motley creatures, innumerable in their multitudes, spirits, imps, goblins, genii, all kinds of lower vital beings who were

 

Ignorant and dangerous wills but armed with power,

Half-animal, half-god their mood, their shape.

 

It is these beings who were seen by him to act upon the inner beings of man and to turn them round and round in the inescapable circle of ignorance. For

 

To sport with good and evil is their law;

Luring to failure and meaningless success,

All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,

Make knowledge a poison, virtue a patten dull

And lead the endless cycles of desire

Through semblances of sad or happy chance

To an inescapable fatality.

 

Everything here on earth is enacted under their influence

 

Here too these godlings drive our human hearts.

 

The twilight of human nature is the place they lurk in and they speak to the human being "with the voices of the Night". It is thus that these forces utilise human beings for their purpose and build up structures or constructions which they force upon men leading in the end to blind ignorance. This happens because "reason is used by an irrational Force". Even though man is born on the earth and is of the earth, still, "this earth alone is not our teacher and nurse" because, "the powers of all the" worlds have entrance here". Man is thus very powerfully influenced and moulded not only by the earth and its forces but by life and vital forces that are subtle and by mental forces and even by forces beyond mind. But it does not mean that all the higher planes are very near and easily available to man's ordinary consciousness and the very highest plane of Light, as the poet says, "but now, the Light supreme is far away" and generally "our conscious life obeys the inconscience's law". This fate lasts so long as man's soul does not attain its freedom. When man awakes to his free Self, then, "Nature steps into the eternal Light", "then only ends this dream of nether life."

 

At the outset, he saw that in the Eternal consciousness there appeared something which can be called an infinite vacancy or the miraculous Inconscient. This Inconscient seemed to work with an uncanny intelligence but through mechanical processes in which neither the idea nor the knowledge nor the delight were visible, "Being was an inert substance driven by Force." Out of this state of inconscience, etheric space arose and gave rise to tremendous vibrations. These vibrations seemed to be maintained by "a supreme original Breath". The process of expansion and contraction that went on in this etheric space created "touch and friction", "clash and clasp".

 

On the hearth of Space it kindled a viewless Fire

That, scattering worlds as one might scatter seeds,

Whirled out the luminous order of the stars.

 

The world, rather the cosmos, appeared to be a vast electric ocean full of strange wave-particles, "constructing by their dance this solid scheme". Man was the witness of this material cosmos who saw "his personal vision as impersonal fact". He saw that gradually in the midst of this great multiplicity of material objects, the original force changed its pose,—the spirit's sleep was stirred and "the Force concealed broke dumbly, slowly out". He found that "a life was born that followed Matter's law". It did not know its aim, its purpose, its fulfilment. Sense and thought make their appearance very slowly. There was in this manifestation of life-force not only an unseen will but a drive towards a new becoming and even there was the feeling of the presence of a secret Self.

 

An animal creation crept and ran,

And flew and called between the earth and sky.

 

It was a short-lived existence, which these creatures had but they were quite happy to live even though only for a while. From this animal consciousness the human consciousness was moulded and it gave rise to a thinking brain in addition to the apparatus of sensation and feeling. Through man Nature looked at herself and a feeling of wonder seized her in man. Even though man is "moulded a being out of a driven force", still Nature is not satisfied in him. For, "to be what she was not inflamed her hope." And, as a result, in man  

 

An opening looked up to spheres above

And coloured shadows limned on mortal ground

The passing figures of immortal things.

 

So, from the higher regions, influences were invited and felt. Man, the mental being, found that he was capable of establishing a contact with the higher than mental level of consciousness. Though these visitations from the greater world were rare, they gave to the human being some idea of his spiritual possibilities. The ordinary life of man was humdrum, occupied with very ordinary needs of physical life and the satisfaction of little desires.

 

Man laboured on his little patch of earth

For means to last, to enjoy, to suffer and die.

 

But yet there was in the midst of all this passing activity, a mighty Witness who lived behind this consciousness, whose glory was hidden and whose wisdom governed from behind this world, who in silence listened to the cry of life and seemed to be waiting for some unrealised greatness of a distant hour.

 

This great cosmos made of the material world and the world of life seems at first unintelligible, meaningless and enigmatic, mechanical. It is, as if, an exact machine was seen without its use being known. It is, as the poet says, the "first view of mind, an art and ingenuity without sense". It all looks purposeless. This vast play of transient creatures seems an unfathomable mystery. And yet there is a meaning, a significance, a purpose in Nature. But

 

Inapt to feel the pulse and core of things,

Our reason cannot sound life's mighty sea

And only counts its waves and scans its foam.

Due to this inherent incapacity and imperfection in its very constitution human reason tries to turn this vast cosmos and its course to human ends. But in this endeavour man never succeeds, nor can he ever succeed because his own consciousness is only a little trickle of the vast cosmic current, his mind, his life and even his body, all derive their sustenance from an infinitesimal flow of current from the vast cosmic mind, cosmic life and cosmic matter. In fact, it is these mighty cosmic forces from the subliminal and dark unknown but powerful forces from the subconscient that govern man's life:

 

Our lives translate these subtle intimacies;

All is the commerce of a secret Power.

 

The vital mind of man, though it may seem its own master, is yet in a very great measure the plaything of vital forces that govern it from behind.

 

For none can see the masked ironic troupe

To whom our figure-selves are marionettes.

 

 These forces with their actions and reactions on human life contribute to the total working of the evolutionary movement. The chief function which they fulfil is to keep man occupied with inconsequential acts, to make him restless and pass from stage to stage, and to rebel against all higher truth. In this action they very often succeed because

 

Inordinate their hold on human hearts,

In all our nature's turns they intervene.

 

They create in man the conditions of crude earthiness, self-will, pettiness, his little wraths and lusts. Usually these impulses press upon man in his ignorant condition, and man succumbs to them and becomes their mere tool

 

Until the piece is done and we pass off

Into a brighter Time and subtler Space.

 

The action of these forces is to hamper and retard the progress of man towards the higher state to which he has the possibility of reaching.

 

So long as man is subject to the animality within him and so long as his mental gaze is turned outwards, so long will man's life be subject to "incurable littleness". This action of the life-force is common to the insect, ape and man. The only difference is in the designs and details of the expression of life-force. Even if man succeeds in attaining the small aims of his life, his successes are in fact "failures of the soul". He remains tied to his animal needs, busy with his little desires and "his little hour is spent in little things". He can have at the most some passing glimpse of his possible greatness, knowledge and joy. Some little art, some music, real friendship, delight of Nature, enjoyment of her beauty, these are some of his avenues of touching the higher spheres of life. Even when a greater life dawns on him and wide vistas open out before him, still, he is unable to keep up the tension and even the very best things get reduced to "convention and routine".

 

He is satisfied with his common average kind,

Tomorrow's hopes and his old rounds of thought.

 

And yet it is to be admitted that man is a crown of realised evolution in Nature. But, he is not the final culmination of the whole process. Even now he is marching towards a higher state of consciousness and if man were not a passing condition

 

On our road from Matter to eternal Self,

To the Light that made the worlds, the Cause of things,

 

then mind would be justified in concluding that Life is merely an accident, an illusion, or a freak and that it is a strange "Inconscience monstrously engendering soul". The existence of the human I being in such a world is much more inexplicable and the mind would only see it as "a pointillage minute of little self". This would be the view of a purely materialistic approach to the cosmos bound up within the limits of human reason, "within the circle of sense". The only hope which the philosophic mind or religion can offer to man in this state is the hope of perfection, liberation and bliss in some other higher world after death, but not herein life on earth.

 

But man's entire knowledge is not contained within the formula of his rational knowledge. There is a deeper self capable of a greater and higher vision. There is also in him the witness-soul that awakens and is capable of attaining "truths unseen", of scanning the Unknown. It is then that life loses its appearance as an accident or a freak and a purpose begins to emerge in the confused play of life. Then the transient experiences of life get connected with "a wordless inscrutable Power". It becomes conscious of a Light which is the source of all, it searches for One who is a real doer of all works, it seeks for

 

The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

The unknown Self above who is the goal.

 

Nature's labour in the cosmos becomes significant and full of purpose and we see that "a mystic motive drives the stars and suns". The purpose of human life gradually reveals itself and the whole vista of cosmic evolution shows that

 

In this passage from a deaf unknowing Force

To struggling consciousness and transient breath

A mighty supernature waits on Time.

 

The whole world afterwards appears quite different to the view of this Witness; because then he sees it as a movement of man racing towards God and the human souls are seen as "deputed selves of the Supreme". And through all the littleness of the human life, he sees the currents of sweetness, joy, unity, laughter, happiness, exaltation "a heart of bliss within a world of pain". When the human being awakens to the call of this secret divinity within him then "a door is cut in the mud wall of self" and across the threshold higher powers from beyond the human plane, makers of the divine image here, come down into mankind. Pity and sacrifice, sympathy and tenderness manifest themselves in man. Then, man is not satisfied with what he attains, because each part of him desires its absolute—

 

Our thoughts covet the everlasting Light,

Our strength derives from an omnipotent Force, ...

Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.

 

When man has aspired with sufficient force and persistence, then, the Higher Self from above begins to come down like a sea "to fill this image of our transience". Wave after wave of the Higher Consciousness descends upon our mind, our life, and senses and even "The body's tissues thrill apotheosised". When that transformation starts

 

This little being of Time, this shadow-soul,

This living dwarf figure-head of darkened spirit

Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.

 

The human play will be moulded into the image of God and even that which is called the Inconscient shall "quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy". But, in order to achieve this great transformation, the human spirit must first achieve the ascent.

 

The soul must soar sovereign above the form

And climb to summits beyond mind's half-sleep.

 

Then, only, shall we be able to

 

Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray

And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.

 

Aswapati made his way through the astral chaos, not knowing whether he was treading on firm soil or shifting sands. He was surrounded on all sides by the huge obstruction of this unlit lower vital world. He felt as if he was travelling in a cave and only light which he had was the flame of his own spirit.