Opening Remarks
Death creates an illusion, not only of the vanity of life, but regards life itself as an error, a mistake, even a sin to be born upon earth. Thus it creates an urge to escape from earthly life towards some remote Beyond canceling the error and the vanity.
The sin of birth upon earth
This most she must absolve with endless pangs,
Her deep original sin, the will to be
And the sin last, greatest, the spiritual pride,
That, made of dust, equalled itself with heaven,
Its scorn of the worm writhing in the mud,
Condemned ephemeral, born from Nature’s dream,
Refusal of the transient creature’s role,
The claim to be a living fire of God,
The will to be immortal and divine.
Being born upon earth in material existence is regarded as a fall for which one must pay with suffering as a tax levied by the Night. This original sin to which terrestrial life is condemned is further accentuated if being mortal and constituted of dust one aspires for Truth and Light and Freedom and Peace and Bliss and immortality that are supposed to be reserved only for the heavens and the immortal gods. Death and the forces of darkness scorn at man regarding it as an ephemeral creature, even as a worm imagined by Nature and yet claiming to house the heavenly fire seeks to be immortal and divine.
A great Negation
In that tremendous darkness heavy and bare
She atoned for all since the first act whence sprang
The error of the consciousness of Time,
The rending of the Inconscient’s seal of sleep,
The primal and unpardoned revolt that broke
The peace and silence of the Nothingness
Which was before a seeming universe
Appeared in a vanity of imagined Space
And life arose engendering grief and pain:
A great Negation was the Real’s face
Prohibiting the vain process of Time:
And when there is no world, no creature more,
When Time’s intrusion has been blotted out,
It shall last, unbodied, saved from thought, at peace.
Savitri felt the sense of suffering that hangs in the terrestrial atmosphere and even atoned for everybody’s sin. It was as if birth itself was an error in Time. The Inconscient takes the emergence of consciousness as a disturbance of its peace of inertia, of the dark womb of Nihil. It resists the building of the universe in Space imagined by some Being. Under the influence of Death and darkness one feels it as an unreal vanity which brings nothing else but grief and pain. There was no Reality except a grand Negation to the creation unfolding in Time. It is this Nihil that alone shall remain, unbodied, inert, free of the effort of thought, and at peace, when the universe collapses.
Accursed and condemned
Accursed in what had been her godhead source,
Condemned to live for ever empty of bliss,
Her immortality her chastisement,
Her spirit, guilty of being, wandered doomed,
Moving for ever through eternal Night.
It seemed as if her soul and Godhead had been accursed and condemned to live for ever empty of joy. It was as if her immortality itself was a punishment and her spirit guilty of existing, wandered doomed, moving forever through eternal Night.
Closing Remarks
The atmosphere and influence of Death, the darkness of the Inconscient is described with precision.
