Opening Remarks
The supreme Divine Reality is also described as the supreme Nothingness since nothing can define or describe it. Nothing corresponds to That supreme Nothingness in our consciousness. Death being a Shadow of this supreme Reality, it has a false semblance to That.
Mute Alone
All here emerges born from Nothingness;
Encircled it lasts by the emptiness of Space,
Awhile upheld by an unknowing Force,
Then crumbles back into its parent Nought:
Only the mute Alone can for ever be.
Death sees the Truth from the other pole of Nothingness It sees things emerge from a fathomless Zero and takes that to be the ultimate origin and the final end of creation collapsing into its parent Nought leaving the mute Alone. They last only for a while in the cold empty Space upheld by an unknowing Force.
No room for love
In the Alone there is no room for love.
Since the origin of creation is the mute Alone, there is no room for love since the Alone can love none as none other exists.
Borrowed loom
In vain to clothe love’s perishable mud
Thou hast woven on the Immortals’ borrowed loom
The ideal’s gorgeous and unfading robe.
Death tells Savitri that it is vain to clothe this body made of perishable clay. It wears the ideal’s gorgeous and unfading robe woven from the Immortal’s loom.
Never made real
The ideal never yet was real made.
The ideal however remains only in the mind and never is realised upon earth in a human body.
Breathes no more
Imprisoned in form that glory cannot live;
Into a body shut it breathes no more.
The ideal cannot live imprisoned in form. Shut into a body it gets stiffed.
Rejected by his life
Intangible, remote, for ever pure,
A sovereign of its own brilliant void,
Unwillingly it descends to earthly air
To inhabit a white temple in man’s heart:
In his heart it shines rejected by his life.
The ideal is intangible and forever pure, untouched, a sovereign of its own brilliant void. If it descends upon the earth it is unwillingly to inhabit a pure white temple in human heart where it shines rejected by life.
Dumb it receives
Immutable, bodiless, beautiful, grand and dumb,
Immobile on its shining throne it sits;
Dumb it receives his offering and his prayer.
The Ideal is immutable, bodiless, beautiful, grand and dumb. Dumb, it receives our offering and prayers indifferently sitting immobile on its throne.
No voice to answer
It has no voice to answer to his call,
No feet that move, no hands to take his gifts:
Aerial statue of the nude Idea,
Virgin conception of a bodiless god,
Its light stirs man the thinker to create
An earthly semblance of diviner things.
The Ideal has no voice to answer, no foot that move, no hands to receive gifts. It is a statue of the nude Idea hung in vacant skies of the mind. The Ideal is like the virgin conception of a bodiless god which is a paradox by itself. Its light stirs the thinking man to create an earthly copy and replica of heavenly things.
Hued reflections
Its hued reflection falls upon man’s acts;
His institutions are its cenotaphs,
He signs his dead conventions with its name;
His virtues don the Ideal’s skiey robe
And a nimbus of the outline of its face:
He hides their littleness with the divine Name.
The hued reflection of the Ideal falls upon man’s actions. His institutions are merely a repetition of something dead and buried. Man erects institutions around dead conventions that are signed off under the name of the Ideal. His virtues are garbs made out of the Ideal’s imaginary robe and a nimbus creating the vague outline of its face. He hides the littleness of his imagined Ideals behind the divine Name.
Closing Remarks
The Shadow imitates and negates the Ideal.
