Adventure of the Inane, pp. 306-307

Opening remarks
Aswapati is now ready to enter where none has gone before and returned. It is the realm of the Formless where all forms must shed the layers.

Giant doubt
A giant doubt overshadowed his advance.

It is a state where all our knowledge and systems collapse. All our knowledge collapses into a vast incomprehensible Nothingness. It is this state which is being referred to as a giant doubt wherein all that the mind had woven as concepts and formulas of Truth begin to collapse. The entire mental world appears to be a building without substance.

Neutral all-supporting void
Across a neutral all-supporting Void
Whose blankness nursed his lone immortal spirit,
Allured towards some recondite Supreme,
Aided, coerced by enigmatic Powers,
Aspiring and half-sinking and upborne,
Invincibly he ascended without pause.

Aswapati moves through a neutral all-supporting Void whose blankness nursed his immortal soul. Yet he moved lured by some recondite Supreme Presence. He felt a secret aid from enigmatic Powers. Aspiring and moving and sinking and upborne again he ascended without a pause. The Void state arises after the collapse of all mind made systems and yet this Void is all-powerful and all-knowing that supports our journey. The sense of the Void is not because there is nothing in It but because there is nothing to which the Mind can give form and name. And yet there are within this Void tremendous Powers of the Divine that carry the soul upwards towards some tremendous disclosure.

Signless vague immensity
Always a signless vague Immensity
Brooded, without approach, beyond response,
Condemning finite things to nothingness,
Fronting him with the incommensurable.

He was accompanied by a vague immensity that offered no sign. It brooded without approach and made no response. All finite things were reduced to an incommensurable nothingness. Again we have the sense of an entire failure and collapse of all finite forms and aspects, the entire world of concepts and percept is undone. Even space and direction collapse in that signless emptiness.

Mighty term
Then to the ascent there came a mighty term.

Then suddenly, in that immense featurless formless Void there arose the sense of a tremendous mightiness.

Nothing made could live
A height was reached where nothing made could live,
A line where every hope and search must cease
Neared some intolerant bare Reality,
A zero formed pregnant with boundless change.

To enter this realm one has to discard all the coatings and layers around the soul. Here ends all hope and search. Here is some intolerant bare Reality, a Zero pregnant with boundless possibilities. Aswapati was in front of an immense Unknown where everything must cease in a Reality that could not be defined and yet It was teeming with boundless possibilities. One cannot enter further unless everything formed is left behind or undone.

Dizzy verge
On a dizzy verge where all disguises fail
And human mind must abdicate in Light
Or die like a moth in the naked blaze of Truth,
He stood compelled to a tremendous choice.

Aswapati stood on a verge where everything collapses into a vast Void. Here all coverings drop off. The human mind must abdicate itself to the Light or die away in that blaze as a moth in the sun. He stood on this verge compelled to make that choice. The choice that Aswapati must make or rather is compelled to make is to either be annihilated in that bare Intolerant Hush or else be remade by an utter surrender to the blazing Light.

The choice
All he had been and all towards which he grew
Must now be left behind or else transform
Into a self of That which has no name.

He could either enter never to return into some vast Nothingness beyond Name and Form, beyond comprehension, or else be transformed into a self of That. The choice is between dissolution and transformation. He could choose the complete extinction of the soul into Nirvana beyond any possibility of return. Or else he could be entirely transformed into a perfect Image the Truth, something that has never been manifested here.

Intangible Force
Alone and fronting an intangible Force
Which offered nothing to the grasp of Thought,
His spirit faced the adventure of the Inane.

His soul faced the intangible Force alone. His thought and mind could not grasp or comprehend. He faced the supreme adventure where all concepts and percepts fail. He has to hang with the slender thread of faith since there was nothing that could be grasped by Thought anymore. It was an intangible Force.

Leaving behind the world of forms
Abandoned by the worlds of Form he strove.

His further journey will be into a world without forms.

Closing Remarks
This is the realm where the Adwaitin hopes to enter with the thought of never returning back to creation.