The Dire Antagonist Energy, p. 223-224

Opening Remarks
Embedded in creation is the force that opposes our evolutionary advance. It keeps pulling the soul back towards the dark Inconscient out of which it rises towards Freedom, Unity, Peace, Light and Bliss.

The mime
Thus was the dire antagonist Energy born
Who mimes the eternal Mother’s mighty shape
And mocks her luminous infinity
With a grey distorted silhouette in the Night.

This antagonist Energy tries to imitate the Power it denies. She mimics the Divine Mother knowing fully well that one day her mask will wear off. Wherever there is darkness and obscurity and unconsciousness there does she act throwing her shadow to mock at Her luminous infinity.

Arresting the climbing soul
Arresting the passion of the climbing soul,
She forced on life a slow and faltering pace;
Her hand’s deflecting and retarding weight
Is laid on the mystic evolution’s curve:
The tortuous line of her deceiving mind
The Gods see not and man is impotent;
Oppressing the God-spark within the soul
She forces back to the beast the human fall.

Drawing a fence of darkness around the soul, she forces a slow pace on the soul’s passion to climb. She deflects the straight journey into devious lanes and bye lanes and makes evolution a heavy and difficult process. Even the gods are often deceived by her crooked ways what to speak of man who is impotent before her force. Thus she engineers our fall from the human to a beastly state thereby oppressing the God-light within our soul.

She feels the One
Yet in her formidable instinctive mind
She feels the One grow in the heart of Time
And sees the Immortal shine through the human mould.

In the process of attacking the caravan of Light and opposing the Divine, she begins to grow out of her state of extreme darkness and division. She feels the One growing in creation and sees the soul shine with the light of Truth in mortal forms.

She prowls alarmed
Alarmed for her rule and full of fear and rage
She prowls around each light that gleams through the dark
Casting its ray from the spirit’s lonely tent,
Hoping to enter with fierce stealthy tread
And in the cradle slay the divine Child.

Yet she continues to oppose even more fiercely since she knows that the end of her rule is near. Filled with fear and rage she prowls through the Night looking for any spark of hope and light. Her aim is to enter stealthily and slay the soul in the cradle itself.

Incalculable are her strength
Incalculable are her strength and ruse;
Her touch is a fascination and a death;
She kills her victim with his own delight;
Even Good she makes a hook to drag to Hell.

Her strength and power of deception cannot be underestimated. She attracts her victim through pleasure before slaying him on the altar of darkness. Such is her deception that the victim often does not even realise that he is being slain and becomes a willing captive to her. She can use even virtues and all that we generally value as good to drag her victim towards the abysses of darkness and death.

The world runs to its agony
For her the world runs to its agony.

It is because of her net of deception that humanity runs blindly towards hell thinking it to be heaven and chooses darkness over light and its consequent agony and pain.

Closing Remarks
As always Sri Aurobindo emphasises on the need of vigilance and discrimination lest the aspirant is trapped by her deceptive and cunning ways.