On Savitri
THEME/S
XIII
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?
Page 115
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