Onwards to a Greater Life, p. 172. End of Canto

Opening Remarks
Having explored this realm, Aswapati now turns his feet towards a greater realm beyond this little life.

The astral chaos
Adventuring once more in the natal mist
Across the dangerous haze, the pregnant stir,
He through the astral chaos shore a way
Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,
Questioned by whispers of its flickering ghosts,
Besieged by sorceries of its fluent force.

This little life is full of elemental energies that drag and pull us down again and again. Aswapati braves them and with his spirit’s strength cuts the way through them, heeding not their deceiving whispers and frightening summons.

A soil that failed
As one who walks unguided through strange fields
Tending he knows not where nor with what hope,
He trod a soil that failed beneath his feet
And journeyed in stone strength to a fugitive end.

The lower vital world is closely connected with and easily influenced by the dark subconscient that keeps it drawing towards the abyss. They steal hope from man and take away direction and purpose from life. It is only a rock-like strength that can carry us through this world full of deceptive and misleading energies.

Wounded gloom
His trail behind him was a vanishing line
Of glimmering points in a vague immensity;
A bodiless murmur travelled at his side
In the wounded gloom complaining against light.

It is a world of gloom that feels wounded by the Light. The whispers of this world engaged in complaining against the Light began to fade as Aswapati moved away.

Darkness glimmered
A huge obstruction its immobile heart,
The watching opacity multiplied as he moved
Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;
The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.

Aswapati moved through the blindness and resistances of this world that lives in darkness as if dying or dead. The beings of this world are hostile towards Light.

Extinguished phantom glow
Around him an extinguished phantom glow
Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes
The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.

The shadowy lights and misleading shapes born from the Inconscient realm began to fade.

Spirit’s flame
His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.

Yet his spirit’s light remained even in this dark realm. It is the Light that nothing can extinguish.

Closing Remarks
Thus Aswapati stepped out of this dark domain and moved towards a greater Life.

Closing Remarks for the Canto Five
Life starts its journey upon earth in a small insignificant way. It struggles to survive as if its existence is only to feed death. It lives surrounded by darkness and shuts itself to Light and all that is greater and high. This is a first infant step that life takes in its stupendous journey, a step that seems to be stuck in the mud and mire of earth nature and yet whose far end is the Life Divine.