Savitri

  XIII

'In the Self of Mind'

      It is as though Aswapati has passed the last camp and has finally touched Everest:

      At last there came a bare indifferent sky

      Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice,...

      He stood on a wide arc of summit Space

      Alone with an enormous Self of Mind.¹²³

There are evidently no more heights to conquer, no more worlds to traverse; Aswapati has reached the centre of Silence, "the mystic birthplace of the soul". Is this the end, the very last lap of his quest?

      The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;

      Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.

      There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:

      His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.¹²⁴

 This, however, is no more than a temporary swoon in nirvana; "suddenly a luminous finger" falls on the great variety of terrestrial things, the earth-consciousness returns, and doubt infects everything. Aswapati cannot wholly get away from the memory of the limitations of man's life on earth. He remembers with a sting of shame the failure of man's efforts at thought and certainty:

      The magic hut of built-up certitudes

      Made out of glittering dust and bright moonshine

      In which it shrines its image of the Real,

      Collapsed into the Nescience whence it rose.¹²⁵

The total Silence is no answer to the total burden of human wail and woe. Aswapati therefore feels that,

      A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind

      Must answer to the questioning of his soul.¹²⁶

Yet where is he to look for the answer? Above, all is "blank and still"; around, an immense vacancy and silence; below, deep down below, only "the ocean surge of Life/Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance".¹²⁷ Is this the final Truth? Is the meaning of the cosmos no more than the balance of the opposing hemispheres of silence above, strife below, or of light above, darkness below?

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