Opening Remarks
The Titan’s path is now described and its dangers and eventual end.
The Titan’s heart
The Titan’s heart is a sea of fire and force;
He exults in the death of things and ruin and fall,
He feeds his strength with his own and others’ pain;
In the world’s pathos and passion he takes delight,
His pride, his might call for the struggle and pang.
The Titan is full of force and the fire of desire and ambition that drives his heart. He is elated and jubilant in the dance of death and ruin and fall. He draws his strength from other’s misery and pain. It makes him vicariously insensitive to his pain as well from which he draws joy. He rejoices in the pathos and passion of the world. His pride and might enjoy the struggle and the pang.
Sufferings of the flesh
He glories in the sufferings of the flesh
And covers the stigmata with the Stoic’s name.
The Titan glories in the suffering and torture of the body and justifies it as a Stoic’s indifference.
Dark infinite
His eyes blinded and visionless stare at the sun,
The seeker’s Sight receding from his heart
Can find no more the light of eternity;
He sees the beyond as an emptiness void of soul
And takes his night for a dark infinite.
The eyes of the Titan are blinded and visionless as they stare at the sun. He has not the seeker’s sight in the heart and hence cannot find the light of eternity anymore. He sees the Beyond as a huge empty soulless Nothingness and imagines his Night to be the dark infinite.
Unreal’s blank
His nature magnifies the unreal’s blank
And sees in Nought the sole reality:
He would stamp his single figure on the world,
Obsess the world’s rumours with his single name.
His nature magnifies the unreal and sees in death and nothingness the sole reality. He would stamp the world with his single figure and obsess the world with rumours of his name.
His moments
His moments centre the vast universe.
He ignorantly and arrogantly believes himself to be the centre of the vast universe.
Little self as God
He sees his little self as very God.
He sees his little ego-self as God.
Little ‘I’
His little ‘I’ has swallowed the whole world,
His ego has stretched into infinity.
His little self of the ego tries to swallow the world stretching itself into infinity.
His mind
His mind, a beat in original Nothingness,
Ciphers his thought on a slate of hourless Time.
His mind voices the gospel of Nothingness and his thoughts are circled by a Nought on the slate of Time.
Vacancy of soul
He builds on a mighty vacancy of soul
A huge philosophy of Nothingness.
His huge philosophy of Nothingness is built around a gigantic hollow instead of the true soul.
In him Nirvana lives
In him Nirvana lives and speaks and acts
Impossibly creating a universe.
He knows not the Divine Being, rather believes that Nothingness creates this universe (a paradox) and speaks and lives and acts in him.
Eternal zero
An eternal zero is his formless self,
His spirit the void impersonal absolute.
His sense of formless self is an eternal zero and he believes his spirit to be the void impersonal absolute.
Closing Remarks
After showing us the roads that humanity can possibly take towards the future, Sri Aurobindo cautions us not to take the Titan’s road that leads to peril and perdition. He reveals to us the way of the Titan and his attitude and approach towards life.
