Opening Remarks
The Titan has his own understanding of life. He too has what he calls as knowledge.
World is a trick of the senses
Perhaps the world is an error of our sight,
A trick repeated in each flash of sense,
An unreal mind hallucinates the soul
With a stress-vision of false reality,
Or a dance of Maya veils the void Unborn.
The Titan believes that the world is possibly an error of perception. It is a trick of the senses where an unreal mind hallucinates about a soul stressing on false reality. Or perhaps it is a dance of Maya that veils the Void that is the sole unborn reality.
What profit
Even if a greater consciousness I could reach,
What profit is it then for Thought to win
A Real which is for ever ineffable
Or hunt to its lair the bodiless Self or make
The Unknowable the target of the soul?
Even if the Asura in man admits the possibility of a higher consciousness he wants to know how will it profit him to know a Real that is beyond all the we can conceive. For his image of the Divine is a Self that can never assume a body or form and is forever Unknowable. What then is the use of making such a Reality cut off completely from our world a target worth pursuing.
Within my mortal bounds
Nay, let me work within my mortal bounds,
Not live beyond life nor think beyond the mind;
Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.
He believes that it is best to work within the limits imposed by nature and the boundaries drawn by life rather than try to go beyond life and mind. He believes that it is better to remain limited rather than seek the Infinite. It is afraid of losing the ego-self which is to it the sole real individuality.
Call me not to die
In a frozen grandeur lone and desolate
Call me not to die the great eternal death,
Left naked of my own humanity
In the chill vast of the spirit’s boundlessness.
He is afraid of dying forever to itself in the eternal desolate grandeur, leaving behind his humanity in the chill vast of the spirit’s boundlessness. This is the Asura’s impression of the Eternal as someone or something cold and aloof and impersonal. Thus he creates an unbridgeable gulf between World and God.
Nature’s limits
Each creature by its nature’s limits lives,
And how can one evade his native fate?
Each creature lives within the limits of his nature and how can one evade his native fate.
Human I am
Human I am, human let me remain
Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.
The average human being moved by this thought prefers to stay within human limits until he dies and falls and sleeps forever in the Inconscient.
High insanity
A high insanity, a chimaera is this,
To think that God lives hidden in the clay
And that eternal Truth can dwell in Time,
And call to her to save our self and world.
He believes that it is an insanity and a chimera to think that God lives within man and that eternal Truth can dwell within limits and can be called to save our self and world.
How can man grow
How can man grow immortal and divine
Transmuting the very stuff of which he is made?
It is impossible that man can grow immortal and divine transmuting the very stuff of which he is made.
Wizard gods may dream
This wizard gods may dream, not thinking men.”
This possibility only gods with their wizardry can dream, not rational thinking human beings.
Closing Remarks
According to the mind influenced by the Asura, God either does not exist or else It is some kind of a cold impersonal bare Reality cut off from the World. Seeking Him is meaningless and even dangerous since one may lose one’s individuality and sanity. It is much better to live within the safe limits of human reason than try to probe beyond the limits of our material universe.
About Savitri | B1C1-11 A Sacred Yearning (p.5)