The Warrior Soul, p. 227

Opening Remarks
The journey of yoga requires one to be a warrior soul since one has to meet enormous inner and outer challenges. This is true of all authentic yoga but much more so of the yoga of transformation where the old forces, the beings of darkness that reign over earth and men resist much more.

The traveller must dare
This too the traveller of the worlds must dare.

The traveller of the upwards path must dare and resist the attacks of lower nature and the subconscient forces that support them.

Dateless duel’s strife
A warrior in the dateless duel’s strife,
He entered into dumb despairing Night
Challenging the darkness with his luminous soul.

As a warrior Aswapati must enter the realms of utter despair and darkness. He must participate in the ageless battle between forces of Light and Darkness. He must challenge the darkness and meet it with the radiance of his soul.

Fierce and dolorous realm
Alarming with his steps the threshold gloom
He came into a fierce and dolorous realm
Peopled by souls who never had tasted bliss;
Ignorant like men born blind who know not light,
They could equate worst ill with highest good,
Virtue was to their eyes a face of sin
And evil and misery were their natural state.

His steps alarmed the beings of this realm who lived in perpetual gloom and misery. Evil was their daily food and pain their constant state. Virtue was scorned in that realm and lacking in the light of discrimination they took evil for good and good for evil. It was an inversion of values so to say. The beings of this realm knew not the joy of God that runs in creation as a sap of life.

Dire administration
A dire administration’s penal code
Making of grief and pain the common law,
Decreeing universal joylessness
Had changed life into a stoic sacrament
And torture into a daily festival.

It was a strange land peopled with beings who were one in harshness, cruelty and a common experience of grief and pain. Thus they had made a universal rule of joylessness and readily inflicted harsh punishments on those who violated the law. Torture was their means for festivity and a stoic poise their civic behaviour.

Laughter and pleasure were banned
An act was passed to chastise happiness;
Laughter and pleasure were banned as deadly sins:
A questionless mind was ranked as wise content,
A dull heart’s silent apathy as peace:
Sleep was not there, torpor was the sole rest,
Death came but neither respite gave nor end;
Always the soul lived on and suffered more.

The strict and dire penal code of this domain forbade any kind of happiness. To laugh and enjoy was a sin and a questionless mind that blindly obeyed these dark dictates was regarded as wise and content. Peace was replaced by a silent apathy that cared not and had no sympathy or compassion. The sleep was a torpor rather than rest. A state of constant suffering was there from which even Death could not give respite.

Terror and agony
Ever he deeper probed that kingdom of pain;
Around him grew the terror of a world
Of agony followed by worse agony,
And in the terror a great wicked joy
Glad of one’s own and others’ calamity.

The more he probed this realm of pain the more he encountered the terror and agony followed by worse agony. This state of terror gave these beings a wicked joy, a perverse savour in their own and other’s calamity.

Closing Remarks
All the high and great values were reversed in this world and given a dark and perverse form. Such was the magic of an evil change that one encountered in this realm.