Opening Remarks
Man’s being is complex with many opposing contradictory tendencies within him. His is a house where enemies meet, the bright and dark energies dwell together in different rooms of his being.
God’s opposites
But all is there, even God’s opposites;
He is a little front of Nature’s works,
A thinking outline of a cryptic Force.
All forces are there in the bodily house of man including those that oppose the Divine Plan. Man’s outer personality is only a little front of Nature, an outline sketched by a cryptic Force.
Glories and darknesses
All she reveals in him that is in her,
Her glories walk in him and her darknesses.
All that Nature has is there in man. Her glories, her darknesses, her mysteries all lie within him.
Occult shadows
Man’s house of life holds not the gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants of life’s ominous nether rooms,
A shadowy world’s stupendous denizens.
Man’s house of life holds not only the gods but also occult forces that are like his shadows opposing his advance and pulling him backwards. There are obscure and dangerous powers, huge titanic beings of a shadowy world that inhabit his life’s dark spaces below.
Careless guardian
A careless guardian of his nature’s powers,
Man harbours dangerous forces in his house.
Man, a careless guardian of the powers given to him by Nature harbours dangerous forces within his being.
Subconscient pit
The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn
Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit
And the Beast grovels in his antre den:
Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.
The Titan, the Fury, the Djinn and all the dark forces of nether worlds lie hidden in his dark subconscient pit. The Beast grovels in man’s subconscient caves and dens. These beings send their dire messages from time to time murmuring in our half asleep state.
Adversary Kings
Insurgent sometimes raises its huge head
A monstrous mystery lurking in life’s deeps,
The mystery of dark and fallen worlds,
The dread visages of the adversary Kings.
Man contains within him the mystery of the dark fallen worlds as well and the dread masks of the Adversary forces and Titan kings. These sometimes raise their giant head.
Dreadful powers
The dreadful powers held down within his depths
Become his masters or his ministers;
Enormous they invade his bodily house,
Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life.
These dreadful powers held within his depths become sometimes his masters and ministers. Enormous in power they invade his bodily house and act in his acts and infest his thoughts and life with darkness and obscurity.
Perverting breath
Inferno surges into the human air
And touches all with a perverting breath.
Infernal energies surge into the human life and mind and corrupts all with its breath and perverting touch.
Thin miasma
Grey forces like a thin miasma creep,
Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,
Discolouring the walls of upper mind
In which he lives his fair and specious life,
And leave behind a stench of sin and death:
Not only rise in him perverse drifts of thought
And formidable formless influences,
But there come presences and awful shapes:
Tremendous forms and faces mount dim steps
And stare at times into his living-rooms,
Or called up for a moment’s passionate work
Lay a dire custom’s claim upon his heart:
Aroused from sleep, they can be bound no more.
Grey forces creep like a miasma, stealing into man’s house through chinks and gaps in the doors of his house discolouring the spaces of his mind in which he lives his life with a fair facade leaving behind a stench of sin and death. Perverse drifts of thought and formidable formless influences and presences and awful forms rise in him. Tremendous forces and forms mount from the dark nether rooms into his outer life and stare at him. Or else called up in a moment of passion lay a dire claim upon his heart seeking the tax of Night. Once aroused from their sleep, they can be bound no more.
Closing Remarks
Sri Aurobindo takes us through the occult realms within man. He reveals to us the truth of the Shadow that we all carry in our subconscient parts.
