Summary on Savitri by Dr. M.P Pandit

Book Two Canto VIII: The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness

Aswapathy beholds the hidden core of Night. It is a spiritless blank Infinity, a Nature denying Truth, wanting to abolish God. There is no Light, no divine Soul here; Evil and Pain are busy erecting their own world. Titans, Demons and the rest of the nether hosts come into their own and a veritable Hell appears to exist.

Aswapathy’s gaze pierces through this heavy gloom and observes this realm of dark contraries—Non-Being, Inconscience. Here suffering is the daily food of Nature, torture yields delight, Good produces Evil. An illimitable and vague Something basing itself on an all-swallowing Death dominates everything.

Time was when there was nothing else except a soulless Matter. Then came Life into that Void striving to create a way for the Spirit to be. But the response of the Night was different: a vast Non-Being, a Nescience came to life and occupied the Earth with its huge body of Doom. Death, Pain, Falsehood emerged vitiating and deforming the original design of creation. The Truth-Light was put behind and an antagonist Energy usurped the place of the eternal Mother.

This antagonist pushes backwards the human aspiration and will to advance and grow and tries to keep man ever at the animal level. All the same the divine Spirit grows in man though the Enemy is ever on the prowl wanting to smother the new-birth. She uses all means of fascination and joy for her nefarious purpose of turning man away from God and Light. She infects life, misguides the mind, uses doubt to slay faith and brings about the virtual banishment of God. Thus is brought the inner death by the expulsion of the divine element.

The creative Spirit allows these agencies full scope to play out their possibilities. Under the cover of Ignorance these Powers act against Light, Peace and Truth. They shut out the Divine Grace by their own formations. They interfere with the workings of God everywhere. And always these dark Adventurers seem to win. They have occupied all positions of vantage and claim to be the sole rulers of the minds and hearts of men. They are allowed their play because by their very resistance and opposition they serve the Cosmic Purpose. Their home is the Black Night from where they scheme and work out their inescapable dominion on earth.

Aswapathy decides to sound the depths of this Hell and enters into this dark and terrible realm, where evil and misery are the natural climate and bliss is unknown. Happiness is tabooed, torture a festival. Tranquillity is a bore; suffering adds spice to life. Pitiless Power is worshipped and Hate is the archangel of this Kingdom. Even inanimate objects exude these evil passions and afflict their users.

The anguish of this environment opens out in the breast of Aswapathy. His ears are filled with the clamours of pain. He traverses the passages of Doom across the many dangers of misguidance, treachery and death. He bears the tremendous assaults of Hell and drinks her poison to its dregs. All the while he keeps alive the flame of his spirit. Even when thought, sense, all fails, his soul sees and knows. Thus sounding the mystery of the Infinitesimal and the Inconscient, he arrives ultimately at the very heart of the Dark Gulfs from where the creation has emerged. Here he discovers by sheer identity, the presence of a Wisdom and Will that works behind all the veils of Nature. Here he sees the key to all change. In his luminous vision he sees an invisible Hand of the Spirit laid upon error and pain which turn into ecstasy at that touch. He sees clearly that Night is only a veil of the Eternal, death a process of Life, destruction a rapid step of Creation, hell a short cut to the gates of Heaven.

The Illusion of the Nether Absolute is dissipated. All on Earth reveals its divine significance. Life comes into its own pure action in the physical embodiment. Hell collapses. Division ceases to be, God is present. The soul lights up the conscious body and Matter and Spirit become one.