Aswapati beholds the
hidden core of Night. It is a spiritless blank Infinity, a Nature denying
Truth, wanting to abolish God. There is no Light, no divine Soul here; Evil and
Pain are busy erecting their own world.
Titans, Demons and the
rest of the nether hosts come into their own and a veritable Hell appears to
exist.
Aswapati's gaze pierces
through this heavy gloom and observes this realm of dark contraries—Non-Being,
Inconscience. Here suffering is the daily food of Nature, torture yields
delight, Good produces Evil.
An illimitable and vague
Something basing itself on an all-swallowing Death dominates everything.
Time was when there was
nothing else except a soulless Matter. Then came Life into that Void striving to
create a way for the Spirit to be. But the response of the Night was different:
a vast Non-Being, a Nescience came to life and occupied the Earth with its huge
body of Doom. Death, Pain, Falsehood emerged vitiating and deforming the
original design of creation. The Truth-Light was put behind and an antagonist
Energy usurped the place of the eternal Mother.
This antagonist pushes
backwards the human aspiration and will to advance and grow and tries to keep
man ever at the animal level. All the same the divine Spirit grows in man
though the Enemy is ever on the prowl wanting to smother the new-birth. She uses
all means of fascination and joy for her nefarious purpose of turning man away
from God and Light.
She infects life,
misguides the mind, uses doubt to slay faith and brings about the virtual
banishment of God.
Thus is brought the
inner death by the expulsion of the divine element.
The creative Spirit
allows these agencies full scope to play out their possibilities. Under the
cover of Ignorance these Powers act against Light, Peace and Truth. They shut
out the Divine Grace by their own formations. They interfere with the workings
of God everywhere. And always these dark Adventurers seem to win. They have
occupied all positions of vantage and claim to be the sole rulers of the minds
and hearts of men. They are allowed their play because by their very resistance
and opposition they serve the Cosmic Purpose. Their home is the Black Night from
where they scheme and work out their inescapable dominion on earth.
Aswapati decides to
sound the depths of this Hell and enters into this dark and terrible realm,
where evil and misery are the natural climate and bliss is unknown. Happiness
is tabooed, torture a festival.
Tranquillity is a bore;
suffering adds spice to life. Pitiless Power is worshipped and Hate is the
archangel of this Kingdom. Even inanimate objects exude these evil passions and
afflict their users.
The anguish of this
environment opens out in the breast of Aswapati. His ears are filled with the clamours
of pain. He traverses the passages of Doom across the many dangers of
misguidance, treachery and death. He bears the tremendous assaults of Hell and
drinks her poison to its dregs. All the while he keeps alive the flame of his
spirit. Even when thought, sense, all fails, his soul sees and knows. Thus
sounding the mystery of the Infinitesimal and the Inconscient, he arrives
ultimately at the very heart of the Dark Gulfs from where the creation has
emerged. Here he discovers by sheer identity, the presence of a Wisdom and Will
that works behind all the veils of Nature.
Here he sees the key to
all change. In his luminous vision he sees an invisible Hand of the Spirit laid
upon error and pain which turn into ecstasy at that touch.
He sees clearly that
Night is only a veil of the Eternal, death a process of Life, destruction a
rapid step of Creation, hell a short cut to the gates of Heaven.
The Illusion of the
Nether Absolute is dissipated.
All on Earth reveals its
divine significance. Life comes into its own pure action in the physical
embodiment.
Hell collapses. Division
ceases to be, God is present.
The soul lights up the
conscious body and Matter and Spirit become one.