Towards the Dark Abyss, p. 202

Opening remarks
Aswapati now turns his gaze towards the pit where darkness finds its natural home and evil draws its secret power.

World-failure’s cause
A Mind absolved from life, made calm to know,
A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,
The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,
He turned to find that wide world-failure’s cause.

With a calm mind and an untroubled heart, released from the bonds of Ignorance and grief that clouds our vision, Aswapati now turns to find the cause of failure of all the beautiful and sublime that we conceive and hope for.

The unknown infinity
Away he looked from Nature’s visible face
And sent his gaze into the viewless Vast,
The formidable unknown Infinity,
Asleep behind the endless coil of things,
That carries the universe in its timeless breadths
And the ripples of its being are our lives.

It is the Inconscient, the dark infinite towards which he casts his gaze now. It is this that lies at the back of the worlds pushing it unconsciously as a blind enigmatic machine.

Unconscious Breath
The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath
And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,
Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams.

It seems as if an unconscious power throws out of its dark depths matter and mind as a dream.

The evil at the roots of life
The veil was rent that covers Nature’s depths:
He saw the fount of the world’s lasting pain
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.

Tearing the dark velamen, Aswapati begins to probe the origin of evil and pain that lurks in the shadowy depths of Ignorance. Even as he probed the mouth of the formidable pit, the head of evil emerged and looked into his eyes.

Tenebrous awakened Nescience
On a dim bank where dies subjective Space,
From a stark ridge overlooking all that is,
A tenebrous awakened Nescience,
Her wide blank eyes wondering at Time and Form,
Stared at the inventions of the living Void
And the Abyss whence our beginnings rose.

Aswapati now stares into the stark Abyss, the Inconscient out of which creation seems to emerge as if from a void. What he discovers there is an awakened Nescience, the stir of consciousness that is dense in its darkness and ignorance knowing not what is emerging out of itself. Even space and time seem to die at this dark edge of creation’s nether mystery.

Grey mask of Night
Behind appeared a grey carved mask of Night
Watching the birth of all created things.

This face of darkness is like a mask worn by Night.

A contrary Doom
A hidden Puissance conscious of its force,
A vague and lurking Presence everywhere,
A contrary Doom that threatens all things made,
A Death figuring as the dark seed of life,
Seemed to engender and to slay the world.

Behind the mask was felt a consciousness armed with the power to slay all things, a doom that threatens creation, the vague presence of living Death that became the seed of life.

Closing Remarks
Thus Aswapati begins to go deeper into the dark mystery, the dark pole of creation, the Night that engulfs all things and seems to be the origin of all life.