Aswapati had the experience of the golden Light invading his brain and throat and heart, it invading even his feet, a thing which never happened in the spiritual history; it happened first, in an overwhelming way, on 8 August 1938. But there were difficulties, and there were assaults, a “darkness grim and cold oppressed his flesh”; his body was lapped by a “tenebrous tongue”. There were from the enemy souls born of evil and falsehood attacks to annihilate his soul and his spirit. Aswapati was witnessing “the pride of abysmal absolute” in all its fury; he had to bear the pain of the wounding inflictions. Not too long before that, before the golden Light invaded even his physical, just two weeks earlier, on 26 July in 1938, he had an assignation with the Night, a night with an “evil face of perilous beauty and charm”. He reports:

 

I made an assignation with the Night;

In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:

In my breast carrying God's deathless light

I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo.

I left the glory of the illumined Mind

And the calm rapture of the divinised soul

And travelled through a vastness dim and blind

To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll.

I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime

And still that weary journeying knows no end;

Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,

There comes no voice of the celestial Friend,

And yet I know my footprints' track shall be

A pathway towards Immortality.

How lonely he must have felt, abandoned in the slaying depth of the night! No voice of the celestial Friend was there to console him, none to give him cheering relief and comfort. In a slow suffering time and in the crookedness of tortured space, he was in a state of anguished and sorrowful nothingness, “immortal still but with its godhead lost”. Nevertheless, he endured; he bore the “smothering coils of agony and affright.” And yet what did he witness around?

 

The darkness was the Omnipotent's abode,

Hood of omniscience, a blind mask of God.

Though God might have put on the hood or the blind mask with a purpose, it has to be removed, dissolved. Darkness ought to become the dwelling house for the divine deity—so that it can do its work in that meaningful Darkness. Aswapati’s concern was this, and he was looking for the means by which this could be done. But, long before he would attend to it, the meaning and contents of this darkness, its pregnant mystery must be probed, its purpose in the scheme of things found. Why, rather how, has this happened? how could it be so? And is there a remedy? But the “thinker and the toiler” must also become the labourer of God: [1935, 1936]

 

Coercing my godhead I have come down

Here on the sordid earth,

Ignorant, labouring, human grown

Twixt the gates of death and birth.

 

I have been digging deep and long

Mid a horror of filth and mire

A bed for the golden river’s song,

A home for the deathless fire. ...

 

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one

And the Titan kings assail,

But I cannot rest till my task is done

And wrought the eternal will. ...

 

A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!

Dig deeper, deeper yet

Till thou reach the grim foundation stone

And knock at the keyless gate."

 

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep

At the very root of things

Where the grey Sphinx guards God’s riddle sleep

On the Dragon’s outspread wings. ...

 

He who I am was with me still;

All veils are breaking now.

I have heard His voice and borne His will

On my vast untroubled brow.

 

A little more and the new life’s doors

Shall be carved in silver light

With its aureate roof and mosaic floors

In a great world bare and bright.

Aswapati went where none had gone. He went to woo the dark and dangerous heart of the ancient terrifying Night. The poet of Savitri is sufficiently expressive to reveal to us what had transpired when he entered into this primordial darkness that prevails in the Non-being’s Void. Much more might have happened than what is just indicated, disclosed in this communiqué; but even that little which has been disclosed goes only to show the enormity of the “terrible Inane” denying the Spirit’s interminable Truth. Even as he descends into the Night he marks a few action steps: (Savitri, pp. 202-19)

 

He turned to find that wide world-failure’s cause.

He sent his gaze into the Infinity asleep behind things.

He saw the fount of the world’s lasting pain.

He saw the body and visage of the dark Unseen.

He followed the dim steps returning to the night.

He passed the no-man’s-land without debate.

He came into an armoured fierce domain.

He witnessed the shadow depths of Life.

His vision discovered Hell’s trade-mark.

He wrestled with powers that snatched from mind its light.

He entered a gaunt spiritual blank.

He strove to shield his spirit from despair.

His spirit became an empty listening gulf.

His being from its own vision disappeared.

His body was lapped by a tenebrous tongue.

He must bear all, with hope of heaven estranged.

He endured all, stilled the vain terror.

He mastered the tides of Nature with a look.

He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.

Such is the power of the dark reality, and unless that is transformed, unless its authentic sense is recovered, unless the truth of the spirit is established there, there cannot be God’s delight in God’s own world. Aswapati is in search of the power who can accomplish this. Presently, by his intense yogic tapasya of eighteen years he has arrived at the point when he can get answer to his questing pursuit. Behind the cosmic mask he sees the presence of the divine Shakti, the unborn Savitri. Yes, it is she, Savitri, who must take the mortal birth and vanquish the eternal Antagonist.