Opening Remarks
This little life is not limited to its domain. It extends onto other domains and casts a great influence on human lives as well.
An inescapable fatality
To sport with good and evil is their law;
Luring to failure and meaningless success,
All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,
Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull
And lead the endless cycles of desire
Through semblances of sad or happy chance
To an inescapable fatality.
The beings and forces of the lower vital world lure humanity into pathways that gravitate towards the abyss. They lure by pleasure and lead towards perdition. They can make anything, good or evil, failure and success to influence our lives making it a meaningless and aimless existence. Even knowledge and virtue is turned by their touch a poison draught since it gets corrupted by their intrusion. They are the engineers of our dubious fate that keeps us tied endlessly to the vain circling and cycles of desire that eventually lead to our doom.
Their influence
All by their influence is enacted there.
In their native world everything acts according to the pattern they have built for life.
Crooked fashioners
Nor there alone is their empire or their role:
Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives
And in a small body self is all that counts,
Wherever love and light and largeness lack,
These crooked fashioners take up their task.
But their kingdom extends far beyond their domain. Wherever the soul is not born or refuses to be born, wherever there is absence of light and love, wherever human beings are turned only to the small and petty satisfactions of the flesh, there these beings act and fill the world with crookedness and deceit.
Half-conscious worlds
To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.
They act in collusion with the poorly lit and subconscient worlds.
Nature’s twilight
Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,
Our nature’s twilight is their lurking-place:
Here too the darkened primitive heart obeys
The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind
That dogs our knowledge with misleading light
And stands between us and the Truth that saves.
Not only in other-worldly realms but here too, upon earth and in human lives these forces intrude, hiding in corners where light and darkness meet. From there they emerge capturing the heart and mind, casting upon them suggestions that would lead to disaster and ruin. Thus they put a thick veil between our outer nature and the Divine Presence within.
Voices of the Night
It speaks to us with the voices of the Night:
Our darkened lives to greater darkness move;
Our seekings listen to calamitous hopes.
It is the dark and dubious influence of these forces that pushes men towards dangerous things such as suicide and drugs, releasing murderous instincts and the heady wine of lust. They sting and goad man towards the brink giving him a false and dangerous hope.
Irrational Force
A structure of unseeing thoughts is built
And reason used by an irrational Force.
Just as there is a suprarational Force that transcends reason, there is also a world of beings and forces that are infrarational. These beings even use an undeveloped rudimentary reason at their service thereby providing a seeming justification of their evil mischiefs and wicked deeds.
Closing Remarks
Thus we see some of the ways that this dark and fallen world acts upon humanity. By revealing to us its nature and law of action, Sri Aurobindo is abundantly cautioning us so that we do not fall into their snare.
