The Nightmare, pp. 163-164

Opening Remarks
This is the occult truth behind our deviations from the straight and sunlit path through which we may move towards Light and Truth and Vastness and Bliss. It is the influence of these dark and adverse vital entities that hold us back from advance.

The pygmy law
Thus they inflict their little pigmy law
And curb the mounting slow uprise of man,
Then his too scanty walk with death they close.

The law of the lower vital world is the law of the primitive man with a small and narrow consciousness. When our consciousness is narrow and small then we come easily under their influence and often remain so until Death comes in to give us respite and a fresh opportunity to growth.

Ephemeral creature’s daily life
This is the ephemeral creature’s daily life.

Such is the life of an average human being, small and insignificant though full of unfulfilled promise and unrealised possibilities.

An incurable littleness
As long as the human animal is lord
And a dense nether nature screens the soul,
As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight
Serves earthy interest and creature joys,
An incurable littleness pursues his days.

As long as men continue to be driven by vital forces and animal instincts, as long as they live upon the surfaces of life caring for little else than their petty personal interests, small pleasures, their life will continue to be what it presently is, much like an animal with a little more intelligence to manipulate the forces of nature for his small personal gains and selfish interests.

The insect, ape and man
Ever since consciousness was born on earth,
Life is the same in insect, ape and man,
Its stuff unchanged, its way the common route.

Until now humanity has largely continued to remain very much like the beast from which it has emerged. Small and ephemeral it prefers the insect crawl upon the ground rather than climb towards unknown distant horizons. Like the ape it runs restlessly from here to there, its mind never at peace and ease.

A mean and poor plot
If new designs, if richer details grow
And thought is added and more tangled cares,
If little by little it wears a brighter face,
Still even in man the plot is mean and poor.

There are achievements no doubt; elaborate details have been added to the ritual of living and along with it care and anxiety as also some concern and affection for others close to him by blood or kinship. But the basic stuff is still the same. Man has only learnt to expand and extend his selfish motives to include those in whom his ego takes a preferential interest. That is hardly a gain. Inwardly it is still a life of poverty even though outer comforts abound.

Small successes and little pleasures
A gross content prolongs his fallen state;
His small successes are failures of the soul,
His little pleasures punctuate frequent griefs:
Hardship and toil are the heavy price he pays
For the right to live and his last wages death.

Much like the animal man lives content with his smallness. An inertia that seeks only personal comfort zones and not the wide expansion of his soul, a life that strives for transient outer gains and material success is all he seeks. He is satisfied with little pleasures in whose aftermath grief follows because of his attachment to transient things. At the end of this heavy labour he is awarded the sentence of death as a brief respite. Such is the life of man as long as he is unwilling to step out of this animal state.

Inertia and Inconscience
An inertia sunk towards inconscience,
A sleep that imitates death is his repose.

He resists progress and advance towards higher states of being. He prefers the sleep of Inconscience over the repose one can get in the Eternal and the Infinite.

A puny splendour
A puny splendour of creative force
Is made his spur to fragile human works
Which yet outlast their brief creator’s breath.

He is spurred by smallness and is content with his littleness. His creative outbursts are limited to few personal gains and dreams that are brief and easily broken by the advancing tide of time.

Closing Remarks
Such is the figure of human life sketched by Time so long as man labours under the law of Ignorance and is driven by vital forces.