Opening Remarks
Sri Aurobindo now reveals the contrast that one experiences when one looks at this world from the perfect supramental world. It is as if two parallel worlds existed together without a connecting link between the two.
Two vast negations
Against this glory of spiritual states,
Their parallels and yet their opposites,
Floated and swayed, eclipsed and shadowlike
As if a doubt made substance, flickering, pale,
This other scheme two vast negations found.
These two worlds, the world of Truth that Aswapati has just glimpsed and our present world in which we live, are like two hemispheres of existence that gaze at each other as if only to negate. Our world as it is today seems unreal when viewed from that glorious spiritual state. On the other hand that world appears illusory when conceived from here.
Divergent lines
A world that knows not its inhabiting Self
Labours to find its cause and need to be;
A spirit ignorant of the world it made,
Obscured by Matter, travestied by Life,
Struggles to emerge, to be free, to know and reign;
These were close-tied in one disharmony,
Yet the divergent lines met not at all.
The world we presently inhabit knows not its own secret Self. It labours to find its cause and the why of its existence. Yet there is within it a Spirit obscured by matter and covered by life struggling to emerge and to free itself and reign over earth. The two, Spirit and world seem to be as if tied in perpetual disharmony like two divergent lines that never meet.
Three powers
Three Powers governed its irrational course,
In the beginning an unknowing Force,
In the middle an embodied striving soul,
In its end a silent spirit denying life.
It starts with an unknowing Force. In the middle we become aware of an embodied striving soul. In the end we discover a silent spirit denying life thereby turning everything into an irrational journey that ends abruptly denying what it made use of and which it now transcends. Of course this is not the final view of things but one that seems when we look at things from the standpoint of our world as it exists today.
Marriage of necessity and chance
A dull and infelicitous interlude
Unrolls its dubious truth to a questioning Mind
Compelled by the ignorant Power to play its part
And to record her inconclusive tale,
The mystery of her inconscient plan
And the riddle of a being born from Night
By a marriage of Necessity with Chance.
A dull and infelicitous interlude unfolds its dubious truth to the questioning Mind which still must play its part and record the inconclusive tale. It must somehow discover the mystery of her inconscient plan and the riddle of being born from Night by a marriage of Necessity with Chance. This is how it seems when we look at creation with ignorant eyes. All seems a riddle and a mystery emerging out of the darkness under the pressure of Necessity and Chance.
Closing Remarks
Sri Aurobindo brings out in clear relief the contrast between the material world governed by an ignorant mind and the self-conscious spiritual life.
