Aswapati tried to find the cause of the failure of this higher vital world. He peered into the darkness that was below and tried to locate there the cause, if any. Suddenly, "the veil was rent that covers Nature's depths" and there

 

He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain

And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance,

 

This region was located there "where dies subjective Space". It was the region of the Nescience where everything that is present in life is turned into its opposite with almost an equal imperativeness. For instance, there was a Power, there was a Presence and there was what might be called Doom which was the opposite of Destiny. There was a mind also which, instead of serving truth, corrupted it with her own formula and everything there was consequently "overcast with error, grief and pain". It was this mind of the Nescient that "effaced the signposts of Life's pilgrimage" and instead "erected its bronze pylons of misrule". Under its influence, even the very best became dangerous and harmful. Due to this universal presence of evil and falsehood everything "bore black fruit of suffering, death and bale". Seeds of evil and falsehood seemed to be scattered everywhere. Here even though he saw some brighter side of life, some truth, some love, some friendship and beauty, he also could not help seeing the anguish and "a breath of disillusion and decadence" that was in store for all life. And even the truths that were once living became dead and yet people were cherishing the putrid corpses of those dead truths. There were fear and lust everywhere and the spontaneous good of the soul was "replaced by a manufactured virtue and vice" so that the evil that was present was only "a relief from spurious good". Thus, in this dark region

 

All glory of life dimmed tarnished into a doubt,

All beauty ended in an aging face;

All power was dubbed a tyranny cursed by God

And Truth a fiction needed by the mind;

The chase of joy was now a tired hunt;

All knowledge was left a questioning Ignorance.

 

In this region of darkness he saw many beings embodying dangerous propensities full

of menace. Even Aswapati saw that

 

...ominous beings passed him on the road

Whose very gaze was a calamity.

 

There were also charming and sweet faces but full of dangers, "faces that raised alluring lips and eyes" but their beauty was "like a snare".

 

These beings who were themselves in this dark imprisonment did not even realise they were prisoners. This contact with the dark world gave Aswapati some knowledge of its constitution. But he felt that there was yet something more to be known and so he followed the track of these forces of ignorance "returning to the Night from which they came". It was a region which was "a borderland between the world and hell" where all could enter but none could stay for long. This was the world of pretence and falsehood and yet "nothing would confess its own pretence". It was a world of deception where nothing could be relied upon, for, there

 

Joy nurtured tears and good an evil proved, ... 

Love ended early in hate, delight killed with pain,

Truth into falsity grew and death ruled life.

 

It all seemed to be the work of an evil power which was clothed in light and put on the appearance of a helping angel.

 

He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul

And led to perdition by the heavenward path.

A lavish sense he gave of power and joy.

 

It was such a deceptive power that it used logic to convince man's mind and made the false seem true. Very often, this being spoke in the name of God himself. But all who lived in this atmosphere "lived for themselves alone". Under the garb of outer friendship and good-will, there lay treachery and hate. Behind the apparent safety all round, there lurked fear and danger everywhere. Everyone a/as cautious and yet caution did not pay. There was no place of safety and everybody had to be on the alert the whole time. In spite of so much mutual distrust and animosity, they all combined in their opposition to the mind that "sought some higher good". They would not tolerate any one or any idea that would contradict "The settled anarchy" of their state.

After some time, with a keener gaze, Aswapathy saw that there was a capital but no State. It was a city

 

Founded upon a soil that knew not Light. ...

There Ego was lord upon his peacock seat

And falsehood sat by him, his mate and queen.

 

These two, falsehood and ego, usurped the place of truth and God. Everything here was founded upon force "and licence stalked prating of order and right". There was no true freedom, no harmony, no tolerance anywhere for these beings and "power and utility were their Truth and Right". The weaker went to the wall and the stronger "did what in others they would persecute". Even though they v/ere themselves sinful, they stoned a neighbour caught in sin. They persecuted every faith that did not agree with theirs "and founded unity upon fraud and force". They cherished no ideals and considered spiritual seeking as a self-deception "or mad chimera" or "hypocrite's fake". In this anarchical state, "A lie was there the truth and truth a lie". While passing through this region Aswapati found it necessary to protect himself by uttering the divine Name, for, this region is full of deceptive dangers where the pilgrim of truth might receive a treacherous blow that "might cast him prostrate" and "pin to unholy soil". The power of evil can make the pilgrim of truth fall as a casualty and he might permanently lose his goal. Only those who keep God in their hearts and put on the armour of courage, with the sword of faith in their bands, can hope to come out successful and safe from this dangerous region. Such men would be alert with

 

The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,

Casting a javelin regard in front,

Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.

 

But this was not the deepest depth of the darkness of the Nescience. There was a worse reign below, evil's extreme to which he now turned his gaze. It was a region of such pitchy darkness that the "Eye could not see but only the soul feel". It was, as it were, a region where there were situated the "savage slums of Night". There were squalid huts "neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power". There were "inhuman quarters and demoniac wards". And he saw that here life had fallen into the lowest depth of degradation, obscuration and deformation, while Life tried to attract and allure the Spirit to her degraded state in order to perpetrate "epics of horror and grim majesty". This darkest region was one which

 

In booths of sin and night-repairs of vice ... 

And sordid imaginations etched in flesh,

Turned lust into a decorative art.

 

Everything was twisted out of' its natural form, everything was exaggerated and here life "made vileness great and sublimated filth".

 

All Nature pulled out of her frame and base

Was twisted into an unnatural pose.

 

Agony, hatred and torture tried to work as their opposites. The mental being here turned itself into an animal and entered the pit of mire in order to disport itself,

 

Thence bubbling rose sullying the upper air,

The filth and festering secrets of the Abyss:

This it called positive fact and real life.

 

This was the region which might rightly be called hell.

 

It was not a region without population. The beings of this region took delight in everything perverted and even though they looked y human in appearance they were really subhuman in all their tendencies "lower than the lowest reptile's crawl". They installed in the seat of power insolence capable of an orgy of violence, ruling every- thing by sheer force. It put down free thought and started her own slogans of falsehood as its substitute. Fear and weakness became so rampant that men subjected themselves to them without thought of resistance. It tried to fill the world with

 

...its hard and shameless clamour...

And threatening all who dared to listen to truth

...it tried to keep on its false empire of the abyss.

 

Aswapati like

 

A lone discoverer in these menacing realms

Guarded like termite cities from the sun,

 

passed from the dark abyss to the nethermost region of the Nescience where "he walked between wide banks of failing eve". He was lonely and it was dangerous to be lonely. He felt a possible attack upon his mind and saw that he was face to face with "a sense of death and conscious Void". And yet it was not pure inertia; for he felt that there was a life here but a hostile life. As he went further down into the abyss a

 

...solitude wrapped him in its voiceless folds.

 All vanished suddenly like a thought expunged.

 

And nothing was left now "not even an evil face". Now "he was alone with the grey python Night". This nameless Nothing threatened to annihilate everything "That it might be for ever nude and sole". Aswapati was caught into the jaws of this python, he was almost attracted by the giant's mouth and by the darkness which was grim. He felt then a cold sensation, a chill in his heart and he almost entered me state of death, "life clung to its seat with cords of gasping breath". He felt that his body was being licked up by "a tenebrous tongue". Existence, hope, belief, memory, all disappeared, leaving behind "a nameless and unutterable fear". He felt as if the whole sea of the Inconscient was approaching him to be swallowed as a victim. "A lifeless vacancy was now his breast". But he outlived all these trials and found that that which was Self in him was still there.

 

Then peace returned and the soul's sovereign gaze

To the blank horror a calm Light replied.

 

The godhead in Aswapati was awake "And faced the pain and danger of the world".