The Heroic Gesture, p. 318

Opening Remarks
Aswapati must take now the last bare step before he can enter the kingdom of the Spirit. He must make the last grand sacrifice.

Nature’s recondite spaces
All Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare,
All her dim crypts and corners searched with fire
Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts
Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary
Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.

He must detect all the hidden corners and obscure spaces, the dark unseen crypts to search the last refuge of instincts. He must walk with the spiritual fire into the sanctuary of darkness where these elements lie sheltered, hidden from the eye of the purifying flame. It requires a great sincerity to discover or rather uncover these corners where old instincts and patterns of the old nature continue to reside and haunt us.

A centre lurked of the blind force
All seemed to have perished that was undivine:
Yet some minutest dissident might escape
And still a centre lurk of the blind force.

Though all that was undivine seemed to have perished there still remains the possibility of some darkness however minute that supports the action of blind and ignorant forces of nature. Here undivine is all that resists the action and the growing manifestation of the Truth within us. Ordinarily we live perpetually in a state of darkness and unconsciousness though we believe we are conscious. It is only when we undertake the journey of Yoga as Aswapati that we see how unconsciously we lived and what we called as life was actually a death and what we thought to be as truth was actually a falsehood wearing the mask of truth.

The dark infinite
For the Inconscient too is infinite;
The more its abysses we insist to sound,
The more it stretches, stretches endlessly.

The Inconscient is the shadow of the Superconscient and hence it reflects the infinity above by stretching its resistance endlessly.

Bleeding roots
Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth
He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.

Then with a supremely heroic gesture Aswapati, the king of yogis tore desire from its bleeding roots, removing the last traces of human cry for ignorance, he called in the gods, the powers of the Infinite to occupy the vacant spaces of his being. It hurts and pains to look straight and sincerely within us and a great spiritual strength to lay bare and dislodge these elements right from their roots which is mainly desire, ego and ignorance.

Touch immaculate
Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.

Thus alone could he bear the touch of supreme purity that destroys and redeems.

Closing Remarks
This is the last stage of purification, the cleaning and clearing of the subconscious shadows that pull us down and backwards always.