Book-3-Study-Canto-3

Book Three: Canto III

The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

Summary
Aswapathy now turns to the Source of all being. In the utter silence of his soul he aspires for the Strength that is not of the earth, the Light of a Truth still beyond. But he meets with no response. He feels the resistance of the inconscient base; this negation is lurking even in himself. Old claims persist. He spots these elements and tears them from their roots.

Now a great and last transformation comes over him. His soul spreads out like a sea and embraces the universe in one unity; he becomes one with all in soul and nature. There is no more division. The human separative formula is transcended; he now awaits the ascent beyond the world. He also awaits the higher Descent to save the world. His senses fail, life-movements cease, he is swallowed in a trance of Infinity.

Voyaging through the vasts of Light he reaches his sempiternal base where all is still, untouched by any pull of Nature. The world-machinery casts no shadow here. There is only the motionless Power of the Spirit and Peace omnipotent and omniscient. The Guardians of Truth-Law are here. Conscient Nature and Witness Soul are poised here in perpetual Calm. Aswapathy is alone with the One, he joins the sessions of Infinity.

All grows empty; there is a pregnant hush. A universal Force awaits the final decree of the Transcendent.

Aswapathy looks down and becomes aware of an ocean of oneness; there is one Self, and based upon it one Mind, one Life. A new creation arises from this oneness. Each in this creation is unique and yet one with all. Oneness is not a monotone but multi-facetted. Form reveals its inner truth. Struggle is a strife of love. Difference and identity are mutually supporting. Bliss is the undying truth of all, Nature a conscious front of God, Wisdom works securely everywhere, Love and ecstasy are unbroken. In this creation Aswapathy sees himself a portion of the universal gaze, a centre of the pervading light. He feels in himself the life-throb of the millions.

He sees a hierarchy of luminous planes, each unique in its kind, all attuned to one Truth. The One and the Many are in perfect harmony. An all-creating Bliss seeks for forms to manifest the divine truths. A vast Truth-Consciousness takes up these forms and hues and releases them into manifestation in Time.

The Divine Mother moves in the cosmic house sporting with her God-Child.

All Powers that are incomplete and erring on earth are here complete and perfect. Mind, Imagination, Truth-Power, Life, all are at their optimum. Matter is the firm density of the Spirit, substance a harp of the self. Beauty, harmony, light and bliss are perpetual here.

Against this glory there floats below another scheme—its opposite—where the world does not know its Self and Spirit is denied by Matter. Three Powers govern the course of this lower creation: an unknowing Force at the beginning, an emergent soul in the middle, and in the end a spirit withdrawn from life.

But the darkness of this world in Ignorance really hides a glorious truth which shall manifest one day and the Superconscient grow conscious on earth. Aswapathy regards this world as it is, he sees below his own body which seems foreign to him.

That universe seems far and only the Self and Eternity true. But, soon the memory of the striving planes climbs to him and brings their cry. A ray of the Supreme responds. For even there below, it is the Oneness that dwells.

Aswapathy finds that he is two beings at the same time—one free above, the other struggling, bound, below. His heart lies in between in tranced prayer. It lies in mute appeal to the Supreme, refusing the joy others cannot share. All other parts of his being are silent and surrendered to the Higher Will. Only his heart is afire with the Call. No extinction can quench this flame burning higher and higher.

Mightier Task

A mightier task remained than all he had done.

To that he turned from which all being comes,
A sign attending from the Secrecy
Which knows the Truth ungrasped behind our thoughts
And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze.

Aswapathy has, indeed, achieved much. And yet, a still mightier task remains to be accomplished, and that is to bring the Divine Presence, Beauty and Joy down on earth. For this purpose, he now turns to the Source of all, to the beckoning Mystery which holds the Truth that has remained ungrasped by human thought and whose vast look guards this world in its gaze.

Incarnate Hope

In the unapproachable stillness of his soul,
Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.

A Strength he sought that was not yet on earth,
Help from a Power too great for mortal will,
The Light of a Truth now only seen afar,
A sanction from his high omnipotent Source.

Aswapathy withdraws into the remotest silence of his soul and awaits with an intense, exclusive aspiration in prayerful poise. He personifies hope. He seeks for a Strength that has not so far manifested on earth, for a help from a Power that is beyond the capacity of human will to wield, for the Light of a Truth which has been only glimpsed from afar, for a sanction from the high Omnipotent Source of his own self.

Stark Resistance

But from the appalling heights there stooped no voice;
The timeless lids were closed; no opening came.

A neutral helpless void oppressed the years.

In the texture of our bound humanity
He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb
Of our inconscient and unseeing base,
The stubborn mute rejection in Life’s depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things.

But there is no response from above to his appeal. There is no opening anywhere. An impassive vacuity oppresses time that stretches longer and longer. He feels the presence of a mute and huge resistance of the inconscient and blinded foundations in the very structure of bounded humanity. He becomes conscious of the obstinate rejection of higher things in the depths of Life, of the negations of ignorance in the very origin of things.

Collaboration with the Night

A veiled collaboration with the Night
Even in himself survived and hid from his view:
Still something in his earthly being kept
Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came.

A shadowy unity with a vanished past
Treasured in an old world-frame was lurking there,
Secret, unnoted by the illumined mind,
And in subconscious whispers and in dream
Still murmured at the mind’s and spirit’s choice.

He becomes aware of a dangerous situation even in himself. Behind the exterior, hid from his sight, he clearly senses a collaboration between his nature and the Night of darkness which he is seeking to eliminate. There still survives a kinship between his physical being and the Inconscient at its roots. Though the past has receded, there is still in the system a prolongation of its effects, its remnants in the subconscient are still unexposed to the light on the heights of the mind. These obstinate impressions and their articulate formations come up in subconscious movements and dream states and protest against the higher choice of the mind and the soul.

Old Voices Plead

Its treacherous elements spread like slippery grains
Hoping the incoming Truth might stumble and fall,
And old ideal voices wandering moaned
And pleaded for a heavenly leniency
To the gracious imperfections of our earth
And the sweet weaknesses of our mortal state.

These elements in the sub-conscient refusing to be eliminated act treacherously, cunningly in order to sabotage the workings of the higher influx. Old accustomed norms and habits resist their displacement, plead for prolongation of their life and for the continuance of the appealing imperfections and tantalising weaknesses of mortal life on earth.

Nature’s Spaces Stripped Bare

This now he willed to discover and exile,
The element in him betraying God.

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.

Aswapathy resolves to unmask all these still surviving nether elements and banish them for good. He scrutinises all the nooks and corners of his nature, exposes to light all dimlit terrains where the elements that undermine and betray hide from the purifying flame and plot revolt.

Inconscient too is Infinite

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

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

In this process all that was undivine seems to have perished. But none can tell. Some tiny remnant of the old nature may escape attention and remain, some centre of the blind force may be left intact somewhere. It is not the superconscient alone that is infinite; the Inconscient too is endless; its abysses are ever receding.

Tears Desire from its 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.

Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.

Aswapathy knows he cannot take chances, he cannot risk any old human remnant raising up its head and diluting the movement of Truth at the crucial hour. So he mercilessly kills desire at its very roots—for ultimately it is desire that vitiates all. And then he offers his being so cleansed, so denuded of all earthly element, to the higher Powers. Only thus thoroughly purified can he bear the immaculate touch of the Divine. A nature with the least impurity breaks down under this Touch.

Soul Embraces the Universe

A last and mightiest transformation came.

His soul was all in front like a great sea
Flooding the mind and body with its waves;
His being, spread to embrace the universe,
United the within and the without
To make of life a cosmic harmony,
An empire of the immanent Divine.

A great and final transformation takes place. Aswapathy’s soul spreads out. It engulfs his mind and also his body. It extends further and embraces the whole universe in its sweep. There is no more any gulf between the inside of him and the outside; all life turns into universal harmony, a conscious field of the indwelling Spirit.

Universal Sympathy

In this tremendous universality
Not only his soul-nature and mind-sense
Included every soul and mind in his,
But even the life of flesh and nerve was changed
And grew one flesh and nerve with all that lives;
He felt the joy of others as his joy,
He bore the grief of others as his grief;
His universal sympathy upbore,
Immense like ocean, the creation’s load
As earth upbears all beings’ sacrifice,
Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace.

In this vast self-enlargement all souls and all minds are included in his own. Even his flesh and nerve become one with all that lives, with the result that he experiences the joy of others as his own joy, the grief of others as his own grief. His sympathy universalises itself and bears the Cosmic load with the thrill of the joy and peace of the Transcendent coursing through his veins. Because of this inviolable bliss and strength within he is able to upbear the burden.

No more Division

There was no more division’s endless scroll;
One grew the Spirit’s secret unity,
All nature felt again the single bliss;
There was no cleavage between soul and soul,
There was no barrier between world and God.

In Aswapathy’s consciousness there is no more any division in creation. He grows into the consciousness of the hidden unity of all. Nature achieves once again the undivided Bliss that was hers before effective division took place in her formations. There is no more any separation between soul and soul, no more any wall between the world and God.

One Consciousness

Overpowered were form and memory’s limiting line;
The covering mind was seized and torn apart;
It was dissolved and now no more could be,
The one Consciousness that made the world was seen;
All now was luminosity and force.

The apparent lines of distinction between form and form and the limiting reaches of memory are all brushed aside. The mind that holds and confines is dissolved and exists no more. The One Consciousness from which the multitudinous creation has come to be is realised. All is a sea of light and force.

Self Abolished

Abolished in its last thin fainting trace
The circle of the little self was gone;
The separate being could no more be felt;
It disappeared and knew itself no more,
Lost in the Spirit’s wide identity.

The limiting circumference of his undivided self fades away; he is no more a being separate from others. In fact his self as such disappears and exists no more as an individual; it is lost in the vast embrace of the Spirit.

Soul Turns to the Supreme

His nature grew a movement of the All,
Exploring itself to find that all was He,
His soul was a delegation of the All
That turned from itself to join the one Supreme.

His nature becomes a part of the Cosmic movement. In its probe into itself, his soul discovers that all is the Divine and his being is only a delegate of the Divine. And it turns from itself to unite with the one Supreme.

On the World’s Highest Line

Transcended was the human formula;
Man’s heart that had obscured the Inviolable
Assumed the mighty beating of a god’s;
His seeking mind ceased in the Truth that knows;
His life was a flow of the universal life.

He stood fulfilled on the world’s highest line
Awaiting the ascent beyond the world,
Awaiting the Descent the world to save.

Aswapathy transcends his humanity. His heart that had so far covered the true Being now vibrates like a god’s. His mind no more labours for knowledge; it rests in the Truth that is all Knowledge. His life is no more a separate current, but one with the mighty flow of universal life.

Aswapathy has arrived at the farthest limits of the created world and now awaits to soar still higher. He awaits expectantly the Descent of the Supreme Power which alone can uplift the world.

Senseand Thought Fail

A Splendour and a Symbol wrapped the earth,
Serene epiphanies looked and hallowed vasts
Surrounded, wise infinitudes were close
And bright remotenesses leaned near and kin.

Sense failed in that tremendous lucency;
Ephemeral voices from his hearing fell
And Thought potent no more sank large and pale
Like a tired god into mysterious seas.

All earth is covered with a supernal Splendour and significance. New sights and sacred and vast places surround it, far off infinitudes come close. In this powerful luminosity, he loses his consciousness and can no longer hear passing voices; thought becomes weak and ebbs away.

Omnipotent’s Peace

The robes of mortal thinking were cast down
Leaving his knowledge bare to absolute sight;
Fate’s driving ceased and Nature’s sleepless spur:
The athlete heavings of the will were stilled
In the Omnipotent’s unmoving peace.

Human thinking which obscures and obstructs true knowledge is left behind and direct vision is opened. The compulsion of Fate from above and the persistent oestrus of Nature from below press no more. Restless activities of Life-Will are quieted in the immutable peace of the Omnipotent.

Infinity Swallows

Life in his members lay down vast and mute;
Naked, unwalled, unterrified it bore
The immense regard of Immortality.

The last movement died and all at once grew still.

A weight that was the unseen Transcendent’s hand
Laid on his limbs the spirit’s measureless seal,
Infinity swallowed him into shoreless trance.

Life in his limbs falls quiet; bare, unbounded, unagitated, it bears the vast regard of the Immortal. All movement ceases and all becomes still. The hand of the unseen Transcendent lays the stamp of the Spirit on his limbs and he is engulfed in the trance of the Infinite.

Plunges to Hidden Eternities

As one who sets his sail towards mysteried shores
Driven through huge oceans by the breath of God,
The fathomless below, the unknown around,
His soul abandoned the blind star-field, Space.

Afar from all that makes the measured world,
Plunging to hidden eternities it withdrew
Back from mind’s foaming surface to the Vasts
Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.

Aswapathy leaves behind the earth-space shadowed by Ignorance and lets himself be carried through the unplumbed and the unknown. Far away from the bounded world, his soul withdraws from the foam-like surface of the mind into the Vasts within, mute but all-knowing in their trance, and plunges into the secret depths of the Eternal.

Reaches Sempiternal Base

Above the imperfect reach of word and thought,
Beyond the sight, the last support of form,
Lost in deep tracts of superconscient Light,
Or voyaging in blank featureless Nothingness,
Sole in the trackless Incommensurable,
Or past not-self and self and selflessness,
Transgressing the dream-shores of conscious mind
He reached at last his sempiternal base.

Aswapathy soars above the limited range of thought and speech, beyond the last frontier of form testified by vision. Losing himself in the profounds of the Light superconscient, or journeying in the Nothingness yawning around him, alone in the untrodden and unchartable tracts, leaving behind all sense of self and not-self, well across the borders of the dreamlands of conscious mind, he at last reaches his eternal Source.

Spirit’s Heights (I)

On sorrowless heights no winging cry disturbs,
Pure and untouched above the mortal play
Is spread the spirit’s hushed immobile air.

There no beginning is and there no end;
There is the stable force of all that moves;
There the aeonic labourer is at rest.

On the summits beyond the reach of earthly cry, above the realm of mortal life, all is still, mute in the Breath of the Spirit. There is no movement, no start, no end. There is only the stable Force which underlies all that moves and sustains it; all the labour in the worlds below comes to rest here.

Spirit’s Heights (II)

There turns no keyed creation in the void,
No giant mechanism watched by a soul;
There creaks no fate-turned huge machinery;

In this void of the Spirit there is no turning of the Wheel of creation on any original impulsion. There is no operation of the mechanism of Nature witnessed by a soul. The workings of Fate through its giant machinery of circumstance and choice are not here.

Spirit’s Heights (III)

The marriage of evil with good within one breast,
The clash of strife in the very clasp of love,
The dangerous pain of life’s experiment
In the values of Inconsequence and Chance,
The peril of mind’s gamble, throwing our lives
As stake in a wager of indifferent gods

The familiar juxtaposition of good and evil, love and strife, are not here. The pain imposed by the adventure of life in the field of chance and failure and the danger of the reckless wager of the mind in playing with life as the stake with the indifferent gods are not here.

Spirit’s Heights (IV)

And the shifting lights and shadows of the idea
Falling upon the surface consciousness,
And in the dream of a mute witness soul
Creating the error of a half-seen world
Where knowledge is a seeking ignorance,

Not here are the confused workings of the shifting half-lights and half-shadows of the Idea in the surface being and in the dream-weavings of the watching soul, leading to the error of a world that is only partly seen, a world in which Knowledge itself is an ignorance—albeit a seeking ignorance.

Spirit’s Heights (V)

Life’s steps a stumbling series without suit,
Its aspect of fortuitous design,
Its equal measure of the true and false
In that immobile and immutable realm
Find no access, no cause, no right to live:
There only reigns the Spirit’s motionless power
Poised in itself through still eternity
And its omniscient and omnipotent peace.

Nor does life as it is on earth—stumbling through apparent chance with its dualities of truth and falsehood—find entrance here. Here reigns the still Power of the Spirit, timeless; here is only Peace, omniscient and omnipotent.

Spirit’s Heights (VI)

Thought clashes not with thought and truth with truth,
There is no war of right with rival right;
There are no stumbling and half-seeing lives
Passing from chance to unexpected chance,
No suffering of hearts compelled to beat
In bodies of the inert Inconscient’s make.

There is here no conflict between thought and thought, between one truth and another, one right and another; there is none of the blind stumbling of life from one unexpected happening to another, no life compelled to dwell and suffer in a body based on the inert inconscience.

Guardians of Eternity

Armed with the immune occult unsinking Fire
The guardians of Eternity keep its law
For ever fixed upon Truth’s giant base
In her magnificent and termless home.

Here, appointed Powers, armed with Divine Will and Force, keep the Law of the Eternal firmly entrenched in Truth, in the own Home of Truth, sve dame.

Spirit-Nature Assents

There Nature on her dumb spiritual couch
Immutably transcendent knows her source
And to the stir of multitudinous worlds
Assents unmoved in a perpetual calm.

Here Supernature, awake in the bosom of the Spirit, is fully conscious of her Truth and herself poised in eternal calm; unmoved, she gives assent to the multiple movements of the manifestation below.

Witness Eye

All-causing, all-sustaining and aloof,
The Witness looks from his unshaken poise,
An Eye immense regarding all things done.

And the Purusha, the Being who causes all, sustains all and yet remains aloof, regards with his immense witness Eye, the whole movement from his unmoving station.

Above Creation’s Stir

Apart, at peace above creation’s stir,
Immersed in the eternal altitudes,
He abode defended in his shoreless self,
Companioned only by the all-seeing One.

Aswapathy is now high above the stir of the creative movement below; he is separate and lost in the summits. He dwells, guarded, in his boundless self. His only companion is the all-witnessing One.

Joins the Sessions of Infinity

A Mind too mighty to be bound by Thought,
A Life too boundless for the play in space,
A Soul without borders unconvinced of Time,
He felt the extinction of the world’s long pain,
He became the unborn Self that never dies,
He joined the sessions of Infinity.

Aswapathy has become one whose Mind exceeds the bounds of thought, one whose Life cannot be contained in space. He has become a Soul, boundless and eternal. The long-standing pain of the world is gone. He becomes the unborn and the undying Self and joins the play of the Infinite.

Primal Loneliness of Cosmos

On the cosmic murmur primal loneliness fell,
Annulled was the contact formed with time-born things,
Empty grew Nature’s wide community.

The whole cosmic movement appears to be left alone as it was in its primal beginnings. The understanding between the creator and the creation for constant companionship and communion seems to have ended. Nature’s Kingdom is denuded.

World is Silent

All things were brought back to their formless seed,
The world was silent for a cyclic hour.

Although the afflicted Nature he has left
Maintained beneath him her broad numberless fields,
Her enormous act, receding, failed remote
As if a soulless dream at last had ceased.

The formless seed-state of things is back again. The Cosmic movement comes to a standstill for a time.

Even though the Nature he has left behind continues to keep her many ranges, her activity loses its impetus and gradually fails altogether.

A Universal Force Awaits

No voice came down from the high silences,
None answered from her desolate solitudes.

A stillness of cessation reigned, the wide
Immortal hush before the gods were born;
A universal Force awaited, mute,
The veiled Transcendent’s ultimate decree.

All is still; there is neither any Call from above nor response from below. There is a divine hush as in the hour preceding the advent of the Gods. A mute, universal Force awaits the final command of the still veiled Transcendent Spirit.

Oneness Widens

Then suddenly there came a downward look
As if a sea exploring its own depths;
A living Oneness widened at its core
And joined him to unnumbered multitudes.

A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast
And each became the self and space of all.

All of a sudden a look gazes below and the dynamic Oneness at which Aswapathy has arrived expands; Aswapathy is joined to the multitudes that are the expansions of the One. All are held within the one large clasp of a Bliss, a Light, a Power, a pure Love. The whole of existence finds its home in a oneness and because of this oneness supporting and indwelling—each becomes the centre and the circumference of all.

Worlds many but Self one

The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings,
All life a song of many meeting lives;
For worlds were many, but the Self was one.

The rhythm of the many worlds are realised to be the heart-beats of one indwelling Soul; to feel is to discover God everywhere; all mind is one, the individual formation being like the many strings of one harp; all life is a chorus of joy in which individual lives join.

New Creation

This knowledge was now made a cosmos’ seed:
This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,
It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.

Then from the trance of that tremendous clasp
And from the throbbings of that single Heart
And from the naked Spirit’s victory
A new and marvellous creation rose.

This realised Knowledge becomes the seed of a new creation. This seed does not need to be covered in a sheath of Ignorance as on earth but is enclosed in a covering of Light.

And a new and wonderful creation rises from this trance of oneness, from the heavings of one heart, from the assertion of the sheer Spirit.

All Wrapped in all

Incalculable outflowing infinitudes
Laughing out an unmeasured happiness
Lived their innumerable unity;
Worlds where the being is unbound and wide
Bodied unthinkably the egoless Self,
Rapture of beatific energies
Joined Time to the Timeless, poles of a single joy;
White vasts were seen where all is wrapped in all.

In this new creation, infinitudes flow out in endless felicity and live in their multitudinous oneness; worlds embody the egoless Self and the being in them is wide and limitless. Time and the Timeless are joined by the blissful rapture of energies and become but two ends of one Joy; pure vasts lie extended where all live in all.

All Joined to all

There were no contraries, no sundered parts,
All by spiritual links were joined to all
And bound indissolubly to the One:
Each was unique but took all lives as its own,
And, following out these tones of the Infinite,
Recognised in himself the universe.

In this marvellous creation there are no divisions, no oppositions: all are joined together by the Spirit and bound to the One. Each is indeed unique but it takes the whole as its field, follows the rhythms of the Infinite and contains the universe in itself. Each is identified with the universe.

Self-Bliss

A splendid centre of infinity’s whirl
Pushed to its zenith’s height, its last expanse,
Felt the divinity of its own self-bliss
Repeated in its numberless other selves.

Each self feels itself as one Centre of the movement of Infinity raised to its highest summit and pushed to its widest expanse; it feels its own divine bliss repeated in others which are its own selves.

Recurring Decimals of Eternity

It took up tirelessly into its scope
Persons and figures of the Impersonal,
As if prolonging in a celestial count,
In a rapturous multiplication’s sum,
The recurring decimals of eternity.

Each takes all into account, all the persons and forms of the Impersonal Reality in their endless progression are a joyous exercise without termination.

None is Apart

None was apart, none lived for himself alone,
Each lived for God in him and God in all,
Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.

None here is separated from others; none lives for himself alone. Each lives for God in himself and for God in all. Each holds the all because each is one with all in God.

Oneness not Tied to Monotone

There Oneness was not tied to monotone;
It showed a thousand aspects of itself,
Its luminous immutable stability
Upbore on a changeless ground for ever safe,
Compelled to a spontaneous servitude,
The ever-changing incalculable steps,
The seeming-reckless dance’s subtle plan
Of immense world-forces in their perfect play.

In this creation oneness is not a featureless formula. It is a multifacetted Unity. Its unmoving stability supports naturally and firmly on its unchanging base the perfect play of the huge world-forces, ever-changing and incalculable in their movements, seemingly reckless but indeed governed by a subtle plan.

Appearance Looks at Hidden Truth

Appearance looked back to its hidden truth
And made of difference oneness’ smiling play;
It made all persons fractions of the Unique,
Yet all were being’s secret integers.

Appearances constantly remind us of the truth that is behind them; hence all differences are seen to be but a sportive play of an eternal oneness; all individuals are parts of the One and yet each is the whole Being.

Identity Gives Security to Difference

All struggle was turned to a sweet strife of love
In the harmonised circle of a sure embrace.

Identity’s reconciling happiness gave
A rich security to difference.

In this community of harmony of an unfailing hold of oneness, all struggle turns to be but a delightful encounter of love. All difference becomes a happy play due to the bridging felicity of the identity underneath.

Game of Games

On a meeting line of hazardous extremes
The Game of games was played to its breaking point,
Where through self-finding by divine self-loss
There leaps out unity’s supreme delight
Whose blissful undivided sweetness feels
A commonalty of the Absolute.

Here is played the great game of the One deploying itself to its utmost as the Many. The Divine Reality loses itself, so to say, in this play of diversification and this self-loss gives it the opportunity to get the thrill of self-finding in the underlying unity. The bliss of this recovered oneness is the acme of the delight of the game.

No Suffering

There was no sob of suffering anywhere;
Experience ran from point to point of joy:
Bliss was the pure undying truth of things.

Here there is no suffering because there is no division. All experience is a movement from joy to joy and Bliss is realised to be the pure, eternal truth of all things.

Nature a Conscious Front of God

All Nature was a conscious front of God:
A wisdom worked in all, self-moved, self-sure,
A plenitude of illimitable Light,
An authenticity of intuitive Truth,
A glory and passion of creative Force.

Here Nature is not a veil over God, as on earth, but a face, a conscious front of God. There is no meandering in ignorance; on the other hand, there is a dynamic, spontaneous and sure wisdom working in all movements, all forms. There is no darkness, no shade; there is a flooding of boundless Light. Truth does not have to be sought for with the fumbling faculties of the mind; there is certainty of intuitive truth everywhere. The force that builds is not subject to handicaps and dilutions; it works in full intensity and power.

Infallible Thought Inspires Act

Infallible, leaping from eternity,
The moment’s thought inspired the passing act,
A word, a laughter sprang from Silence’ breast,
A rhythm of Beauty in the calm of Space,
A Knowledge in the fathomless heart of Time.

Here all movements are spontaneous and just. Even a passing act is inspired by an immediate thought that is true and right a thought that comes straight from eternity. Out of the bosom of Silence emerges a word, a note of joy; in the calm of Space forms a pattern of Beauty; from the profounds of Time arises Knowledge.

Love a Thrilled Identity

All turned to all without reserve’s recoil:
A single ecstasy without a break,
Love was a close and thrilled identity
In the throbbing heart of all that luminous life.

All turns freely to all without reservation and its reactions. There is one unbroken ecstasy everywhere. In the vibrant Centre of this luminous life, love is an intimate and joyous identity.

Intimacy of Soul With Soul

A universal vision that unites,
A sympathy of nerve replying to nerve,
Hearing that listens to thought’s inner sound
And follows the rhythmic meanings of the heart,
A touch that needs not hands to feel, to clasp,
Were there the native means of consciousness
And heightened the intimacy of soul with soul.

No physical senses are needed here for one to contact another. Consciousness communes with consciousness directly and thereby the intimacy of soul with soul is intensified. There is a wide unity, a universal vision; nerve responds to nerve in spontaneous sympathy; hearing captures the inner sound of thought—not the outer sound alone—and follows the feelings and movements of the heart; contact does not need any physical channel, it is a direct grasp of consciousness.

Diapason of Soul Interchange

A grand orchestra of spiritual powers,
A diapason of soul interchange
Harmonised a oneness deep, immeasurable.

It is a magnificent orchestration of the powers of the Spirit, a splendid melody of the communion of souls, all striking a harmonious note of a multiple Oneness.

A Ripple on Sea of Peace

In these new worlds projected he became
A portion of the universal gaze,
A station of the all-inhabiting light,
A ripple on a single sea of peace.

Aswapathy undergoes a rapid change in this new creation. He becomes a portion of the all-comprehending gaze of the Spirit, a living centre of the all-pervading Light, a ripple on the one ocean of Peace.

His Life a Field of the Cosmic Stir

His mind answered to countless communing minds,
His words were syllables of the cosmos’ speech,
His life a field of the vast cosmic stir.

He felt the footsteps of a million wills
Moving in unison to a single goal.

His mind is in tune with other minds, his speech is a natural part of the speech of the world, his life the stage on which the whole Cosmic Play is enacted. He feels in himself the tread of all wills journeying together to a common goal.

Bears Calm Movements of Delight

A stream ever new-born that never dies,
Caught in its thousandfold current’s ravishing flow,
With its eddies of immortal sweetness thrilled,
He bore coiling through his members as they passed
Calm movements of interminable delight,
The bliss of a myriad myriads who are one.

In him and through him pass the currents of the ever-fresh and never-ending flow of the multifold delight of life, calm movements of endless Bliss of the innumerable One.

Hierarchy of Planes

In this vast outbreak of perfection’s law
Imposing its fixity on the flux of things
He saw a hierarchy of lucent planes
Enfeoffed to this highest kingdom of God-state.

In this manifestation of Perfection firmly governing the fluid movement of forces, Aswapathy sees a graded system of luminous planes of existence geared and subordinated to this highest realm of God-consciousness.

Attuned to one Truth

Attuning to one Truth their own right rule
Each housed the gladness of a bright degree,
Alone in beauty, perfect in self-kind,
An image cast by one deep truth’s absolute,
Married to all in happy difference.

Each plane has its own law, its own right functioning, but all are attuned to one Truth. Each has its luminous felicity, its appropriate perfection in form. All are self-castings of one Truth and their apparent difference is no cause for discord; on the other hand there is the happy sense of union in a community of Truth.

All one in the Joy of Multitude

Each gave its powers to help its neighbours’ parts,
But suffered no diminution by the gift;
Profiteers of a mystic interchange,
They grew by what they took and what they gave,
All others they felt as their own complements,
One in the might and joy of multitude.

Each unit gives its powers to assist its neighbour, but on that account it suffers no loss. There is a constant interchange among all and by that all grow. Each feels the rest as its complements in the common strength and joy of the multiple One.

One and many

Even in the poise where Oneness draws apart
To feel the rapture of its separate selves,
The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All
And the Many turned to look back at the One.

It is a beautiful play of the One and the Many when the compelling and comprehending Oneness takes apoise of stepping back in order to enjoy the distinctness of its many selves. The One constantly seeks the All and the Many look back at the One.

The One poises itself as the Many for the play of multiplicity, but both the One and the Many never forget their basic identity.

Forms to Manifest Truths Divine

An all-revealing all-creating Bliss,
Seeking for forms to manifest truths divine,
Aligned in their significant mystery
The gleams of the symbols of the Ineffable
Blazoned like hues upon a colourless air
On the white purity of the Witness Soul.

This creation proceeds on the ebullition of a creative Bliss which in its fullness seeks to manifest divine truths in forms. This Bliss assembles the rays of the symbols of the Reality that is ineffable, in picturesque but meaningful patterns in varied hues on the pure bosom of the immutable Being, the Witness Soul of all.

Prisms of the Supreme

These hues were the very prism of the Supreme,
His beauty, power, delight creation’s cause.

These hues of the emerging patterns are verily the vibrant colours of the creative Prisms of the Supreme Splendours. This creation has been thrown up out of the Delight of the Supreme, shaped by his Power in the mould of his Beauty.

Truth Consciousness Takes Up

A vast Truth-Consciousness took up these signs
To pass them on to some divine child Heart
That looked on them with laughter and delight
And joyed in these transcendent images
Living and real as the truths they house.

The dynamic and vast Truth-Consciousness, the Gnostic Power, takes up these designs and works them out in the light of the Real-Idea at the source, for the delectation of the Divine Soul at the heart of the manifestation. This Soul takes delight in the forms so projected and regards them as living and as real as the divine truths embodied in those forms.

Marvel House of God

The Spirit’s white neutrality became
A playground of miracles, a rendezvous
For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness:
It made of space a marvel house of God,
It poured through Time its works of ageless might,
Unveiled seen as a luring rapturous face
The wonder and beauty of its Love and Force.

The blank stillness of the Spirit becomes the scene of the Divine Play of creation, lila, in which the hidden Powers of the Eternal go into action, miracles are enacted and all Space is filled with the marvels of God. The might of the Spirit pours itself through Time, its wondrous Love and Force reveal themselves in a Face of Bliss.

Eternal Goddess in Her Cosmic House

The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house
Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:
To him the universe was her bosom of love,
His toys were the immortal verities.

The eternal Creatrix moves in her house that is the cosmos, playing with God as with an infant. And to God the whole universe is the cherished body of the Eternal Mother; his playthings are the truths that are brought out for manifestation.

Powers

All here self-lost had there its divine place.

The Powers that here betray our hearts and err,
Were there sovereign in truth, perfect in joy,
Masters in a creation without flaw,
Possessors of their own infinitude.

All that has lost itself, forgotten its true origin and nature on earth, is found here in full possession, in its right place. The powers that are perverted and mislead and err in the lower creation are here in their full truth, perfect in delight, rulers in a perfect creation, in full exercise of their native infinitudes.

Mind

There Mind, a splendid sun of vision’s rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts
And moved amidst the grandeur of its dreams.

Here in this new creation, mind is no mere seeker of knowledge fumbling in ignorance, as in the lower sphere. It is a concentration of revelatory light, creating by the power of its thoughts, moving freely in the rich land of its dreams.

Imagination

Imagination’s great ensorcelling rod
Summoned the unknown and gave to it a home,
Outspread luxuriantly in golden air
Truth’s iris-coloured wings of fantasy,
Or sang to the intuitive heart of joy
Wonder’s dream-notes that bring the Real close.

Imagination plays a constructive role. It calls out the unknown and provides it with a habitation; spreads out Truth’s many-hued wings of fantasy; chants to joyous intuition its dream-notes of marvel, drawing the Reality nearer.

Ideal

Its Power that makes the unknowable near and true,
In the temple of the ideal shrined the One:

The Power of the Truth-Consciousness draws out what is unknowable and makes it real to experience, establishes the truth of the One Reality in the Ideal it erects.

Bright Aspects

It peopled thought and mind and happy sense
Filled with bright aspects of the might of God
And living persons of the one Supreme,
The speech that voices the ineffable,
The ray revealing unseen Presences,
The virgin forms through which the Formless shines,
The Word that ushers divine experience
And the Ideas that crowd the Infinite.

This Power makes all thought and sense alive with the glow of the dynamis of God, makes all living embodiments of the One. It ensures the speech that expresses what is beyond expression, the light that reveals the unseen Presence, the forms through which the Formless Reality radiates, the potent Word that initiates and releases the experience of the Supernal, the Ideas that people the Infinite Existence.

No Gulf Between Thoughtand Fact

There was no gulf between the thought and fact;
Ever they replied like bird to calling bird;
The will obeyed the thought, the act the will,
There was a harmony woven twixt soul and soul.

A marriage with eternity divinised Time.

Here there is no division, no gulf as in the lower creation, between thought and fact, thinking and actuality; they are always in communion. What the thought conceives, the will executes; what the will attempts, the act fulfils. There is a relation of harmony between soul and soul. Time is joined to Eternity and shares its divinity.

Life Pursues Her Sport

There Life pursued unwearied of her sport,
Joy in her heart and laughter on her lips,
The bright adventure of God’s game of chance.

In her ingenious ardour of caprice,
In her transfiguring mirth she mapped on Time
A fascinating puzzle of events,
Lured at each turn by new vicissitudes
To self-discovery that could never cease.

Here Life is not weighed down by incapacity, limitation and death. Life is at her untiring play, enjoying the apparent game of chance. In her ardour of free choice and fruitful mirth she works out in Time a wonderful pattern of events with new vicissitudes constantly breaking in and leading to endless self-discovery.

All events in life, all circumstances—foreseen and unforeseen—combine to lead to a ceaseless self-discovery.

Life’s Adventure

Ever she framed stark bonds for the will to break,
Brought new creations for the thought’s surprise
And passionate ventures for the heart to dare,
Where Truth recurred with an unexpected face
Or else repeated old familiar joy
Like the return of a delightful rhyme.

This play of Life is a great adventure. She constantly erects bonds that the will learns to break, growing in the exercise; she ever surprises thought with her new creations, tempts the heart with passionate ventures—in all of which Truth reveals herself in new and newer forms or repeats her joyous strains of known rhythms.

Never Extended

At hide and seek on a Mother-Wisdom’s breast,
An artist teeming with her world-idea,
She never could exhaust its numberless thoughts
And vast adventure into thinking shapes
And trial and lure of a new living’s dreams.

In this game of hide and seek under the benign Eye of the Spirit’s wisdom, Life is fired with the Idea of cosmic manifestation and with all her acts, she does not exhaust the contents of that Idea, never comes to an end in her adventures of living forms, never tires of the fascinating experiment of new ways of living.

Mystery Drama of Life

Untired of sameness and untired of change,
Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,
A mystery drama of divine delight,
A living poem of world ecstasy,
A kakemono of significant forms,
A coiled perspective of developing scenes,
A brilliant chase of self-revealing shapes,
An ardent hunt of soul looking for soul,
A seeking and a finding as of gods.

Life goes on unrolling her intriguing drama of delight, never bored either with sameness or change, singing her world-poem of ecstasy, weaving a variegated pattern of meaningful forms presenting an involved perspective of developing scenes, a fast-moving play of revealing forms, a passionate search of soul for soul, a celestial game of hide and seek.

Matter Firm Density of Spirit

There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density,
An artistry of glad outwardness of self,
A treasure-house of lasting images
Where sense can build a world of pure delight:
The home of a perpetual happiness,
It lodged the hours as in a pleasant inn.

In this creation Matter is only a solidity of the Spirit—not a concealing crust as it appears in the lower creation; it is a happy, harmonious outer poise of the self. It is a storing place of permanent images where sense organises a world of unmixed delight, the home of unceasing happiness where time has a happy sojourn.

Senses Outlets of Soul

The senses there were outlets of the soul;
Even the youngest child-thought of the mind
Incarnated some touch of highest things.

Here the senses are channels for the movements of the soul—not powers that veil the soul with their outward activities. Even a passing, undeveloped thought of the mind carries some truth of the highest—it is not a mere bubble without consequence.

Substance a Harp of Self

There substance was a resonant harp of self,
A net for the constant lightnings of the Spirit,
A magnet power of love’s intensity
Whose yearning throb and adoration’s cry
Drew God’s approaches close, sweet, wonderful.

Matter responds spontaneously to the rhythms of the self; it acts as an effective absorber of the constantly passing scintillations of the Spirit; it is a concentration of the attracting power of love which by its intensity draws near the sweet and marvellous Presence of God.

Solidity of Bright Pedestal

Its solidity was a mass of heavenly make;
Its fixity and sweet permanence of charm
Made a bright pedestal for felicity.

The solidity of this substance is of a celestial making, conscious and luminous—not a mass of obscure in-conscience. Its firmness and happy permanence make a glowing pedestal for the felicity that naturally obtains here.

Divine Sense

Its bodies woven by a divine sense
Prolonged the nearness of soul’s clasp with soul;
Its warm play of external sight and touch
Reflected the glow and thrill of the heart’s joy,
Mind’s climbing brilliant thoughts, the spirit’s bliss;
Life’s rapture kept for ever its flame and cry.

The bodies patterned by a divine sense extended the intimacy of soul with soul; the bright play of this sense, through outer sight and touch, mirrors the glow and throb of the joy of the heart within, the soaring brilliant thoughts of the mind and the bliss of the spirit. Life’s intense delight ever vibrates with the fire and call of this divine sense.

Immortal

All that now passes lived immortal there
In the proud beauty and fine harmony
Of Matter plastic to spiritual light.

Its ordered hours proclaimed the eternal Law;
Vision reposed on a safety of deathless forms;
Time was Eternity’s transparent robe.

The disintegration and death that characterise life in the material creation on earth are not to be found here. Because of the plasticity of Matter to the Light of the Spirit, there is harmony in materiality, there is no break in the continuity; things are immortal. The eternal Law of the Spirit works unimpeded in Time, and sight rests on the security of undying forms; Time is only a transparent robe put on by Eternity.

Phenomenon

An architect hewing out self’s living rock,
Phenomenon built Reality’s summer-house
On the beaches of the sea of Infinity.

Phenomenon erects a living formation out of the self, a happy dwelling for the Reality on the outskirts of the ocean of Infinity.

Other Scheme

Against this glory of spiritual states,
Their parallels and yet their opposites
Floated and swayed, eclipsed and shadow-like
As if a doubt made substance, flickering, pale,
This other scheme two vast negations found.

This marvellous creation of the Spirit is not all. Aswapathy sees also formations that seem parallels to these high states, but in fact are their contraries, floating and shadowing, pale and unsteady like a doubt concretised. In this scheme Aswapathy finds two great negations.

Spiritand World in Disharmony

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.

It is a world that is not conscious of the Self that indwells it; it is ignorant and tries to find the cause of its existence and the necessity that keeps it going. This is one negation, the negation of the Spirit by Matter. The Spirit that has made this world is not yet possessed of it in its consciousness; it is obscured by its cloak of Matter, betrayed by its vehicle of Life and struggles to emerge into freedom from its imprisonment, to become fully conscious and rule by its own right. This is the second negation; the negation of Matter by the Spirit. Spirit and the world are thrown together in the disharmony that prevails between them; their respective directions diverge and do not meet at all.

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.

This false creation is governed by three Powers in its course that defies reason. At the outset it is a blind, unconscious Force that dominates and drives; in the middle of the course, it is a soul encased in body that is becoming conscious and struggles to emerge; at the end there is the silent and aloof spirit that rejects life. These are the three stages of its movement.

Dubious Truth

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.

It is an uninteresting, unhappy, temporary creation which reveals its none-too-sure truth to the questioning Mind which is forced by the Nature-Power in Ignorance to labour and seek for truth, to register the incomplete story of her effort, to note the mystery of her inconscient plan of the birth of creation from the Night of Nescience following an encounter between Necessity and Chance.

Darkness Hiding Nobler Destiny

This darkness hides our nobler destiny.

A chrysalis of a great and glorious truth,
It stifles the winged marvel in its sheath
Lest from the prison of Matter it escape
And, wasting its beauty on the formless Vast,
Merged into the Unknowable’s mystery,
Leave unfulfilled the world’s miraculous fate.

However, this darkness is not the whole truth of the matter. Behind it lies concealed a nobler destiny for Earth. It is only a case that holds within itself a great truth that is preparing to form and emerge, that compels the living truth to stay there and not to escape from its material encasement. For if it were to escape, its beauty would be wasted on the formless, featureless Vast to which it would wing back, it would merge into the Unknowable and the miraculous fulfilment intended for the world would remain unachieved.

New Creation shall Arise

As yet thought only some high spirit’s dream
Or a vexed illusion in man’s toiling mind,
A new creation from the old shall rise,
A Knowledge inarticulate find speech,
Beauty suppressed burst into paradise bloom,
Pleasure and pain dive into absolute bliss.

Though it now appears to be only a distant dream of the spirit, a troublesome illusion in the labouring mind of man, it is certain that a new creation is going to arise from the present old one. The Knowledge that is now inarticulate will find ample expression; Beauty that is now suppressed in the general ugliness will gaily blossom forth; pleasure and pain will merge into utter bliss.

Oracle shall Speak

A tongueless oracle shall speak at last,
The Superconscient conscious grow on earth,
The Eternal’s wonders join the dance of Time.

The Revealing Word will be uttered without the aid of physical instrumentation. What is now beyond the earth-consciousness will become natural on earth. The marvels of the Eternal Will be rendered in the rhythms of Time.

But now all Seems Vain

But now all seemed a vainly teeming vast
Upheld by a deluded Energy
To a spectator self-absorbed and mute,
Careless of the unmeaning show he watched,
Regarding the bizarre procession pass
Like one who waits for an expected end.

But at this moment all this seems a mirage. Everything appears to be a vast crowded spectacle upheld by a deluded mechanical Energy for the benefit of a witness Soul that is lost in himself, mute, uncaring for the meaningless show before his eyes, watching the odd procession pass by like one who waits for a sure end.

World that is from a World that would be

He saw a world that is from a world to be.

There he divined rather than saw or felt,
Far off upon the rim of consciousness,
Transient and frail this little whirling globe
And on it left like a lost dream’s vain mould,
A fragile copy of the spirit’s shell,
His body gathered into mystic sleep.

A foreign shape it seemed, a mythic shade.

Aswapathy watches the present world below from the ideal world in which he is standing. From there he perceives this frail and passing globe rotating on the distant rim of the Spirit’s Consciousness, and on it, like a mould-impression of some Dream gone by, or a slender copy of a shell of the Spirit, appears his own physical body tranced into deep sleep, with a shape that looks foreign, an unsubstantial shade of his self, as it were.

Memory Climbs Up

Alien now seemed that dim far universe,
Self and eternity alone were true.

Then memory climbed to him from the striving planes
Bringing a cry from once-loved cherished things,
And to the cry as to its own lost call
A ray replied from the occult Supreme.

That far universe now appears foreign to Aswapathy. To him the Self and the Eternity alone are felt as true.

But soon the memory of the labouring planes below comes up to him and there rings a cry from things which he had cherished and loved before. And to this cry a ray of the Supreme replies as if the cry were its own voice that had been lost.

Oneness Dwells in Matter’s Multitude

For even there the boundless Oneness dwells.

To its own sight unrecognisable,
It lived still sunk in its own tenebrous seas,
Upholding the world’s inconscient unity
Hidden in Matter’s insentient multitude.

That is so because this infinite One is not only here above but also there below in the material world. It lies submerged in its own obscure waters of being, upbearing the inconscient Unity of the world, concealed in the insentient multiplicity of Matter. It is hardly recognisable to its own sight.

Seed Sown in Indeterminate

This seed-self sown in the Indeterminate
Forfeits its glory of divinity,
Concealing the omnipotence of its Force,
Concealing the omniscience of its Soul;

The One Spirit casts itself as a seed in the Indeterminate Creation and in the process its innate glory of divinity is lost to view. Its omni-presence is concealed; so too its Omniscience.

Ransom of Night

An agent of its own transcendent Will,
It merges knowledge in the inconscient deep;
Accepting error, sorrow, death and pain,
It pays the ransom of the ignorant Night,
Redeeming by its substance Nature’s fall.

This delegate of the Supreme Will hides its knowledge in the depths of the inconscient. And to rescue its Nature from its imprisonment in the Night of Nescience, it offers itself—its very substance—in a holocaust and accepts to undergo error, sorrow, pain and death in order to work itself out of that Night of Ignorance.

Errant Power

Himself he knew and why his soul had gone
Into earth’s passionate obscurity
To share the labour of an errant Power
Which by division hopes to find the One.

Now Aswapathy realises what he really is, why his soul had adventured into the earth’s obscurity, howit had chosen to work with an erring Power which had hoped to discover the One through endless division.

Two Beings

Two beings he was, one wide and free above,
One struggling, bound, intense, its portion here.

A tie between them still could bridge two worlds;
There was a dim response, a distant breath;
All had not ceased in the unbounded hush.

Aswapathy clearly sees that he is really two beings at the same time, one wide and free on the heights, the other below struggling, bound, violent, and yet a portion of the former. A conscious joining of the two can serve to bridge the two worlds the bounded and the free. Even as it is, the higher responds—however imperceptibly and distantly to the lower. All is not completely silent in that stillness.

His Heart Turns to Far-Off Fount

His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone
Far down below him like a lamp in night;
Abandoned it lay, alone, imperishable,
Immobile with excess of passionate will,
His living, sacrificed and offered heart
Absorbed in adoration mystical,
Turned to its far-off fount of light and love.

He perceives his heart lying far below him, alone and awake like a lamp in darkness. Abandoned and yet imperishable, unmoving even in its excessive intensity, vibrant in consecration, absorbed in adoration of the Supreme, his heart turns to its distant Source of light and love.

Its Mute Appeal

In the luminous stillness of its mute appeal
It looked up to the heights it could not see;
It yearned from the longing depths it could not leave.

His heart, luminously still in its dumb appeal, looks up to the summits that it is unable to see; it yearns from the dinging depths which it cannot abandon.

Heart Turns to Her

In the centre of its vast and fateful trance
Half way between his free and fallen selves,
Interceding twixt God’s day and the mortal’s night,
Accepting worship as its single law,
Accepting bliss as the sole cause of things,
Refusing the austere joy which none can share,
Refusing the calm that lives for calm alone,
To her it turned for whom it willed to be.

This heart in its momentous trance lies between his two beings—the one free and the other bound; it bridges the night of obscurity in which man is lost and the bright day of the Spirit; its sole law is worship of the Divine; it perceives that Bliss is the origin of things and refuses to partake of the joy that is denied to all; it refuses the calm that exists for itself and cannot be joined to life. It turns to the Divine Mother, the sole object of its will to live.

Rapt in Dream

In the passion of its solitary dream
It lay like a closed soundless oratory
Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor
Lit by a single and untrembling ray
And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer.

His heart is lost in the intensity of its dreaming like an invisible Presence rapt in prayer in some silent chapel.

Fiery Point of Call

On some deep breast of liberating peace
All else was satisfied with quietude;
This only knew there was a truth beyond.

All other parts were dumb in centred sleep
Consenting to the slow deliberate Power
Which tolerates the world’s error and its grief,
Consenting to the cosmic long delay,
Timelessly waiting through the patient years
Her coming they had asked for earth and men;
This was the fiery point that called her now.

On that altitude of liberating Peace all else is content, only his heart knows and seeks for the truth above. All other parts of the being lie quiet in their gathered sleep having yielded themselves to the slow purposive Power of Nature which accepts as a temporary plan the error and grief of the world, and waits patiently for the advent of the Divine Mother for the redemption of earth and men. Only his heart is aflame with its call to the Mother to come here and now.

Fire Grows

Extinction could not quench that lonely fire;
Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will;
Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew.

This solitary fire is unquenchable. Its vision fills both the mind and the will which have become blank. Thought is no more. But the unchanging force of this fire abides and increases.

Perseveres

Armed with the intuition of a bliss
To which some moved tranquillity was the key,
It persevered through life’s huge emptiness
Amid the blank denials of the world.

This flaming call has an unmistakable perception of a bliss attainable by the moving tranquillity of the Spirit and hence, through all the emptiness of life, through all the negations of the world, it persists and pursues its object.

Waits for the Word

It sent its voiceless prayer to the Unknown;
It listened for the footsteps of its hopes
Returning through the void immensities,
It waited for the fiat of the Word
That comes through the still self from the Supreme.

This calling heart sends up its mute prayer to the Unknown. It watches its hopes coming back unfulfilled through the blank vasts, yet it waits for the decree of the Word of the Supreme that arrives from above through the stillness of the self.