Book-3-Study-Canto-4

Book Three: Canto IV

The Vision and the Boon

Summary
Suddenly there is a stir. A sound comes quivering, an influence approaches and a mystic Form envelops Aswapathy’s earthly form. The Divine Mother whom he has worshipped is now before him and all of him flows to her. She speaks to him:

O Son of Strength who climbest the peaks of creation, what thou hast won is thine, but ask for no more. Do not pray for my descent in a world that is still inconscient; man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight. Leave the omniscient Power at work to follow its course. Thou shalt live in thy own vast achievement, helping the world. Do not lose thyself in the Immutable, in the Alone. Thou hast a task and thou shalt share the toil on earth with the missioned Force.

Man is an enigma. Arriving from a half-luminous Beyond into an unconscious world, he hopes in vain to change the cosmic dream. But the Inconscience at the base, the titan Darkness, pursues him and defeats his efforts time and again. Man is a link between the beast and the half-god. Contradictions riddle his existence. He is unable to save himself and yet he would save the world. He journeys always but arrives nowhere. He is surrounded by Ignorance in his effort to win and establish Knowledge. After all his struggle and toil, the world is where it was.

But that is, indeed, not the end of things. The Power that has made this world will not be denied and it leads the soul of man on its destined road, slowly but relentlessly. Man cannot pause till he has found himself; there is a Light that leads, a Power that aids. There are Gods who watch and help him with their influences, visits, infusions.

Thou shalt not falter, thou shalt endure and continue thy toil. My light shall be in thee, my strength shall be thy force. Let not impatience goad thee, be not content with a partial prize. The one boon thou shalt ask is to greaten thy spirit, the one joy thou shalt seek is to raise thy kind. Leave the result of thy work to the unchanging Will that stands immutable over all that struggle. All things shall change in the appointed transfiguring hour.

The great Voice ceases. All is still, Aswapathy cries out:

"How can I rest content with the dull mortal life of the earth after seeing thy Face behind the cosmic mask? How long should we mortals struggle with the Night? Why does not a gleam of thy light break on our life? We work but arrive nowhere. Our strength is too little, the light too faint. We strive that out of our labours may arise a greater Man who incarnates the Truth of God. I know thy creation cannot fail. All is fixed in an ascending scale. Man is not the crown.

A power arose from slumber and I saw from above mortal space and time. There was a mighty destruction. I saw the flaming pioneers of the Omnipotent come down to the earth, great creators, architects of immortality, embodying the divine Glory. They shall one day change the face of the suffering earth and justify all the labour of the irrepressible Nature. Man will be followed by his divine successor and heaven shall walk on earth.

But meanwhile the world is weighed down by its imperfections; the seals of bondage are firm. Do not tarry any further. Mission to our earth a living form of Thine and with one great gesture change all future time."

The Divine Mother responds:

"I have heard thy cry. Yes, one shall descend who will break the iron Law and change Nature’s Doom by the Spirit’s Power. A seed shall be sown in some tremendous hour of Death, a branch of heaven transplanted to human soil and Nature shall overleap her mortal step."

Slowly the Form withdraws, the strains of the Voice ebb away and Aswapathy’s soul draws back into the earth-world.

With a new conquering spirit he resumes his labours.

A Sacred Stir

Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.

Amid the lifeless silence of the Void
In a solitude and an immensity
A sound came quivering like a loved footfall
Heard in the listening spaces of the soul;
A touch perturbed his fibres with delight.

All of a sudden there is a stir, a sacred stir. In that empty silence comes an approaching sound; a touch is felt by Aswapathy exciting the very fibres of his being with delight.

She Approaches the Mortal Range

An influence had approached the mortal range,
A boundless Heart was near his longing heart,
A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.

All at her contact broke from silence’ seal;
Spirit and body thrilled identified,
Linked in the grasp of an unspoken joy;
Mind, members, life were merged in ecstasy.

Some new influence nears the human range. Aswapathy finds a vast Heart coming close to his own seeking heart. A spiritual Form covers his own earthly form. At this contact of the Divine Mother, the seal of silence over all his members is broken; his body and spirit are joined in a joyous thrill of identity, his mind, life and other parts are lost in ecstasy.

He Heaves to Her

Intoxicated as with nectarous rain
His nature’s passioning stretches flowed to her
Flashing with lightnings, mad with luminous wine.

All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon.

A divinising stream possessed his veins,
His body’s cells awoke to spirit sense,
Each nerve became a burning thread of joy:
Tissue and flesh partook beatitude.

The whole being of Aswapathy in ecstasy heaves towards the Divine Mother as the vast sea to the moon. A divinising flow streams into his body and his very cells awake to the presence of the Spirit; each nerve tingles with intense joy; even his flesh shares that beatitude.

Body Answers

Alight, the dun unplumbed subconscient caves
Thrilled with the prescience of her longed-for tread
And filled with flickering crests and praying tongues.

Even lost in slumber, mute, inanimate
His very body answered to her power.

The obscure, dim-lit regions of his subconscient are lit up and are thrilled at the prospect of the long-sought and long-awaited arrival of the Divine Mother; they call to Her with yearning. Even his material body, mute and motionless in slumber, responds to Her Power.

The one Appears

The One he worshipped was within him now:
Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed a mighty Face
Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;
Lids, wisdom’s leaves, drooped over rapture’s orbs.

The One whom Aswapathy has been worshipping is now within him. Pure-bright, her beauteous and mighty Face appears before him and her lips move in immortal speech. Her eyes bespeak rapture and their lids, wisdom.

Two Tranquil Eyes

A marble monument of ponderings, shone
A forehead, sight’s crypt, and large like ocean’s gaze
Towards Heaven two tranquil eyes of boundless thought
Looked into man’s and saw the god to come.

Her forehead shines with beauty, like a monument in marble to the ponderings of the mind; her large tranquil eyes full of vast thought gaze into his human eyes and see the emerging god in him.

Voice Speaks

A shape was seen on threshold Mind, a Voice
Absolute and wise in the heart’s chambers spoke:

A formation is seen on the threshold of the Mind and a Voice, imperative and wise, from the inner regions of her heart speaks.

Ask no More

“O Son of Strength who climbst creation’s peaks,
No soul is thy companion in the light;
Alone thou standest at the eternal doors.

What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more.

The Divine Mother speaks to Aswapathy:

Flaming Force of Aspiration that thou art, thou hast climbed the summits of creation; in the light thou hast attained, there is none beside thee; thou art alone in front of the eternal doors of the Spirit. Whatever thou hast conquered is thine; do not demand more.

How Canst Thou Speak?

O Spirit aspiring in an ignorant frame,
O Voice arisen from the Inconscient’s world,
How shalt thou speak for men whose hearts are dumb,
Make purblind earth the soul’s seer-vision’s home
Or lighten the burden of the senseless globe?

Thou art the aspiring Spirit, but thy body is ignorant; thy voice has the stamp of Inconscience from which it arises. How canst thou plead for those whose hearts are mute, how canst thou hope to convert the blinded earth into a realm of the Soul’s luminous vision, how canst thou reduce the burden of the globe which has not even the sense to feel the weight?

Man too Weak

I am the Mystery beyond reach of mind,
I am the goal of the travail of the suns;
My fire and sweetness are the cause of life.

But too immense my danger and my joy.

Awake not the immeasurable descent,
Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;
Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight.

Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth.

Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth. cosmic evolutionary course. My Power and my bliss are at the origin of life. But the intensity of my Bliss and the sweep of my movement are too great and vast for thy kind. Do not call into action the descent of my illimitable Being; utter not my saving Name in the hearing of the hostile host in Time. Man cannot bear the weight of the Infinite in his present state of infirmity. Unless the earth is made ready and capable of bearing the presence of unadulterated Truth, it will break if the Truth were to manifest.

Leave it to the All-Seeing Power

Leave the all-seeing Power to hew its way:
In thy single vast achievement reign apart
Helping the world with thy great lonely days.

There is a divine omniscient Power at work slowly building up the Earth; leave it to that Power to labour in its wisdom. Thou hast achieved much in thyself, now live in thy glory, helping the world with thy solitary attainment.

Merge not in the Alone

I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame
In the Immobile’s wide uncaring bliss,
Turned from the fruitless motion of the years,
Deserting the fierce labour of the worlds,
Aloof from beings, lost in the Alone.

Do not let thy flaming heart of aspiration merge in the vast self-existent Bliss of the Immutable. Do not withdraw from thy fellow-creatures, turning thy back on the apparently fruitless coursings of Time, abandoning thy part in the striving effort of the cosmos, and losing thyself in the Reality that is apart and alone.

Accept the Godlike toil

How shall thy mighty spirit brook repose
While Death is still unconquered on the earth
And Time a field of suffering and pain?

Thy soul was born to share the laden Force;
Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,
For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live.

How can thy great and valiant spirit rest when the earth is still ruled by Death, and pain and suffering still continue in creation? Thy soul was not put forth to rest, but to participate in the workings of the charged Nature-Force. Thou shalt obey this truth of thy nature and fulfil the destiny for which thou hast come. The difficulty and the inspiring toil have to be accepted; there is an All-Wisdom at work, though it moves with slow steps; live in fulfilment of this purpose.

Man (I)

The Enigma’s knot is tied in human kind.

A lightning from the heights that think and plan,
Ploughing the air of life with vanishing trails,
Man, sole awake in an unconscious world,
Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream.

Arrived from some half-luminous Beyond
He is a stranger in the mindless vasts;
A traveller in his oft-shifting home
Amid the tread of many infinitudes,
He has pitched a tent of life in desert Space.

In man lies the key to the cosmic riddle. He brings to earth the power of thought and vision, but he alone is conscious and awake in this world that is unconscious. In this mass of obscurity and unconsciousness his aspiration to change the nature of the cosmic movement is in vain. He comes from a sphere that is half-luminous with the light of consciousness, but here in the vast space where mind is not, he feels a stranger. His body-tenement is constantly changing; in the midst of the many Powers of Infinity that are walking the earth his is a make-shift tent of life pitched in the desert of Space.

Man (II)

Heaven’s fixed regard beholds him from above,
In the house of Nature a perturbing guest,
A voyager twixt Thought’s inconstant shores,
A hunter of unknown and beautiful Powers,
A nomad of the far mysterious Light,
In the wide ways a little spark of God.

Man is constantly watched over by the Supreme above and guided and led from there. Alone of the creatures in Earth-Nature he is capable of thinking, hence he questions everything and disturbs the fixed set-up of material life. He is not a stationery being; he moves from thought to thought and his thoughts are endless. He is ever in search of new and newer, full and fuller Powers than those he has. Belonging to the distant regions of the transcendent Light, he is a wanderer on earth. He is a tiny spark of God developing in the large ways of evolutionary Nature.

Man (III)

Against his spirit all is in dire league,
A Titan influence stops his Godward gaze.

Around him hungers the unpitying Void,
The eternal Darkness seeks him with her hands,
Inscrutable Energies drive him and deceive,
Immense implacable deities oppose.

Everything is ranged against him. His gaze towards God is obstructed and checked by the influence of the Anti-God host; an unfeeling Nescience around him seeks to swallow him up; the perpetual Darkness in the nether creation pursues him; Energies that baffle him push and lead him astray; huge, unrelenting, Powers oppose his advance.

Man (IV)

An inert Soul and a somnambulist Force
Have made a world estranged from life and thought;
The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death;
On his long way through Time and Circumstance
The grey-hued riddling nether shadow-Sphinx,
Her dreadful paws upon the swallowing sands,
Awaits him armed with the soul-slaying word:
Across his path sits the dim camp of Night.

Between the two, the blind, mechanical Force, Prakriti, and the passive, inert Soul, Purusha, the world—the scene of their play—has been relegated outside the pale of consciousness as Life and Thought. The massive base of Nescience below imposes its fixed law of Death and Circumstance. The shadow of In-conscience and Ignorance pursues man in his long journey across Time; the riddle of life posed by them confronts him everywhere and when he seeks an answer, a deadly Negation awaits him. The darkness of Nescience clamps itself on his path.

Man (V)

His day is a moment in perpetual Time;
He is the prey of the minutes and the hours.

Assailed on earth and unassured of heaven,
Descended here unhappy and sublime,
A link between the demigod and the beast,
He knows not his own greatness nor his aim;

His life-span is but a moment in eternal Time; every moment he is swallowed up by the creeping stretch of Time. He is constantly attacked by the opposing hosts on earth; he is not certain of help from the heaven above. He has come down from the higher regions and is unhappy on earth; yet he is sublime in his soul-spirit and functions as the connecting bridge between the animal below and the superhuman angel above. He is not aware of the glory embodied in himself nor has he a clear conception of his goal.

Man (VI)

He has forgotten why he has come and whence;
His spirit and his members are at war;
His heights break off too low to reach the skies,
His mass is buried in the animal mire.

Man has forgotten his own origin and also the purpose for which he has taken birth on earth. There is a continuing conflict between his soul and his nature—mental, vital, physical. His aspiration and upward movements do not go high enough to reach this goal; they fall far short. He is weighed down by the strong animality in his nature.

Man (VII)

A strange antinomy is his nature’s rule.

A riddle of opposites is made his field:
Freedom he asks but needs to live in bonds,
He has need of darkness to perceive some light
And need of grief to feel a little bliss;
He has need of death to find a greater life.

His nature works through a series of contradictions; his field of action and growth is also a scene of paradoxes.

He aspires for and seeks freedom, but he is not yet ready to come out of the seemingly safe walls of his separative ego into the flux of the universal forces. He can perceive light only by distinction from darkness; he can feel some bliss only against a background of grief, therefore something in him holds fast to darkness and grief. He needs to die before he can break out of his limited, shallow, life into the ocean of larger life; death is his means of growth from life to wider life.

Man (VIII)

All sides he sees and turns to every call;
He has no certain light by which to walk;
His life is a blind-man’s-buff, a hide and seek;
He seeks himself and from himself he runs;
Meeting himself, he thinks it other than he.

Man does not know which way to turn; he looks at every side and answers to every Call. He has no definite light, no clear guidance, with which he can light the path of his journey. All his life is a hide and seek with eluding destiny. He seeks for his own truth and yet all his movements lead him away from it. And when he does come face to face with his real self, he regards it as something alien, something different, from himself.

Man (IX)

Always he builds, but finds no constant ground,
Always he journeys, but nowhere arrives;
He would guide the world, himself he cannot guide;
He would save his soul, his life he cannot save.

He is ever engaged in building the edifice of his life, but he fails to find a firm base in the flux of circumstances and forces. He is ever on the move but ultimately finds that he has arrived nowhere. He presumes to guide the world, but he is unable to control and guide his own faculties towards the chosen direction. He wants to save his inner soul from thraldom to Ignorance and Death, but his immediate life he cannot save from decay and disintegration.

Man (X)

The light his soul has brought his mind has lost;
All he has learned is soon again in doubt;
A sun to him seems the shadow of his thoughts,
Then all is shadow again and nothing is true:
Unknowing what he does or whither he tends
He fabricates signs of the Real in Ignorance.

His ignorant mind has managed to lose the light which his soul brought with it; whatever knowledge the labouring mind acquires passes soon under the cloud of doubt. He begins to doubt even the reality of the sun shining in the skies, and wonders if it may not be a projection of his own idea; pursuing this line of thinking, everything loses its reality, all seems to be untrue. He does not really know the sense of what he finds himself doing; nor does he know the direction in which he is moving. He goes on constructing symbols of the Reality in the moulds of Ignorance.

Man (XI)

He has hitched his mortal error to Truth’s star.

Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore.

With all his error man hopes to arrive at Truth. Wisdom which appears to him in so many bright masks exercises a pull over him, and he fails to see the face of truth behind the masks. All his acquired learning and knowledge is surrounded by a huge Ignorance.

Man (XII)

Assigned to meet the cosmic mystery
In the dumb figure of a material world,
His passport of entry false and his personage,
He is compelled to be what he is not;
He obeys the Inconscience he has come to rule
And sinks in Matter to fulfil his soul.

Man is charged with a mission to unveil the mystery of the cosmos in the mute material world to which he is sent. But there he finds himself forced to be quite other than what he really is. The credentials he carries are false. He is intended to master the Inconscience, but he comes under its rule. And in order to fulfil the mission of his soul, he is obliged to plunge into Matter.

Man (XIII)

Awakened from her lower driven forms
The Earth-Mother gave her forces to his hands
And painfully he guards the heavy trust;
His mind is a lost torch-bearer on her roads.

When the Earth-Nature awakes from her swoon in the unconsciousness of the lower stages of existence where a mechanical energy drives all forms, she entrusts her forces to man the self-conscious being. It is a trust he guards with effort and labour; his mind acts as an ineffectual torch-bearer lost on the paths of Nature.

Man (XIV)

Illumining breath to think and plasm to feel,
He labours with his slow and sceptic brain
Helped by the reason’s vacillating fires,
To make his thought and will a magic door
For knowledge to enter the darkness of the world
And love to rule a realm of strife and hate.

He trains his life-awareness to think and the physical matter of his body to feel; With his slow and doubting brain, and the erratic movements of his reason, he works to develop his thought and will to act as an open gateway for knowledge to enter and light up the darkness of his world, for Love to come and rule his world of strife and hate.

Man (XV)

A mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth
And tied to Matter with a thousand bonds,
He lifts himself to be a conscious god.

He is a mind unable to reconcile the claims of the earth below and heaven above; he is involved in the obscurities, inertia and inconscience of Matter in innumerable ways, and yet he strives and rises to become a conscious embodied spirit, a god.

Man (XVI)

Even when a glory of wisdom crowns his brow,
When mind and spirit shed a grandiose ray
To exalt this product of the sperm and gene,
This alchemist’s miracle from plasm and gas,
And he who shared the animal’s run and crawl,
Lifts his thought-stature to the Immortal’s heights,
His life still keeps the human middle way;
His body he resigns to death and pain,
Abandoning Matter, his too heavy charge.

Even when a high glory of wisdom shines in him and his mind and spirit radiate an imposing lustre uplifting this product of sperm and gene, this amazing result of plasm and gas, and even when with an animal past he succeeds in exalting his thought to the levels of the Immortal, even then his life continues to flow in the human middle way—between that of an animal and that of a god and his physical body is left to the rule of pain and death; he abandons Matter which he finds too heavy a load.

Man (XVII)

A thaumaturge sceptic of miracles,
A spirit left sterile of its occult power
By an unbelieving brain and credulous heart
He leaves the world to end where it began:
His work unfinished he claims a heavenly prize.

What with his unbelieving brain and too-readily believing heart, he has no faith in the wonders he can effect, and thus his spirit is no more effective in its innate occult power, and he leaves the world to cease where it began; he does not complete the work with which he is assigned and yet claims the prize of heaven.

Man (XVIII)

Thus has he missed creation’s absolute.

Halfway he stops his star of destiny:
A vast and vain long-tried experiment,
An ill-served high conception doubtfully done,
The world’s life falters on not seeing its goal,—
A zigzag towards unknown dangerous ground
Ever repeating its habitual walk,
Ever retreating after marches long
And hardiest victories without sure result,
Drawn endlessly an inconclusive game.

By thus stopping midway on his course, man fails to reach the ultimate goal of creation. Life in the world turns out to be a vain experiment long pursued, a noble conception badly and half-heartedly executed. The world’s life has been an erratic movement towards some goal unknown and dangerous, mechanically repetitive, repeatedly falling back after substantial advances, denied definite results even when the most difficult victories are registered, an endless game always inconclusive.

Man (XIX)

In an ill-fitting and voluminous robe
A radiant purpose still conceals its face,
A mighty blindness stumbles hoping on
Feeding its strength on gifts of luminous Chance.

However that is only an appearance. Behind all the irregularities and opacities of the movement there is a luminous purpose governing it. Blind Nature-Energy stumblingly rolls forward helped and nourished in its course by interventions of a luminous Power wearing the face of Chance.

Man (XX)

Because the human instrument has failed,
The Godhead frustrate sleeps within its seed,
A spirit entangled in the forms it made.

The human instrument having failed in its appointed task, the Godhead is unable to manifest; it is frustrated and lies shut up in its concentration. The Spirit lies imprisoned in the forms of its own making.

Man (XXI)

His failure is not failure whom God leads;
Through all the slow mysterious march goes on:
An immutable Power has made this mutable world;
A self-fulfilling transcendence treads man’s road;
The driver of the soul upon its path,
It knows its steps, its way is inevitable
And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?

And yet the failure of man is not an unredeemed failure. For man is led by God and when God leads there can be no failure. In spite of all discouraging happenings the march of the world goes ahead, however slow and mysterious it may appear to the human mind. This changing world is after all created by an unchanging Power. Man is led by something that transcends him and his world and ever fulfils its purpose. It drives his soul on its destined course, knowing as it does its steps and its sure way. Indeed when God is the guide how can the journey be in vain?

Man (XXII)

However man’s mind may tire or fail his flesh,
A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice:
The goal recedes, a bourneless vastness calls
Retreating into an immense Unknown;
There is no end to the world’s stupendous march,
There is no rest for the embodied soul.

Man’s mind and body may get exhausted and want to give up the effort, but a higher will prevails cancelling his own preference. The horizon goes on extending farther and farther, an unbounded Vastness extends into an immense Unknown. There is indeed no finish to the course of the world’s journey, no cessation to the labours of the soul that has taken birth.

Man (XXIII)

It must live on, describe all Time’s huge curve.

An Influx presses from the closed Beyond
Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease,
Till he has found himself he cannot pause.

The soul has got to exert itself and cover the long curve of Time. There is a constant descent from above, from regions that are beyond man’s knowing, and that prevents him from relaxing into rest and creature comfort. He is not allowed to cease from his labours till he has discovered his own reality.

Man (XXIV)

A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
Ignorant, he forms the All-conscient in his depths,
Human, looks up to superhuman peaks:
A borrower of Supernature’s gold,
He paves his road to Immortality.

Unknown and unseen by him, there is a higher Light that leads him, a Power that helps and acts in him.

That is how, though ignorant himself, an all-knowing Consciousness grows in his depths; though human, he aspires to scale superhuman heights; though mortal, he draws upon the riches of Supernature and slowly forges his path to Immortality.

Man (XXV)

The high gods look on man and watch and choose
Today’s impossibles for the future’s base.

His transience trembles with the Eternal’s touch,
His barriers cede beneath the Infinite’s tread;
The Immortals have their entries in his life:
The Ambassadors of the Unseen draw near;

Higher Powers superintend his growth and effort, they pose before him what appear to be impossibles today, but turn out later to be springboards for further flights. His brief life vibrates to the breath of the Eternal; his little self-enclosures break down beneath the impact of the Infinite. The immortal Gods enter into his life in various ways and messengers from the unseen worlds approach him.

Man (XXVII)

A Splendour sullied by the mortal air,
Love passes through his heart, a wandering guest,
Beauty surrounds him for a magic hour,
He has visits of a large revealing joy,
Brief widenesses release him from himself,
Enticing towards a glory ever in front
Hopes of a deathless sweetness lure and leave.

Love—a Splendour from above that gets soiled when it enters the human environment—passes through man but he cannot yet hold it. He has moments of beauty, and of a large joy that throws open many a hidden aspect of life. Short spells of expansion release him from his little walls of self-confinement. Hopes of an endless happiness draw him on farther and farther towards a glory that ever beckons in front, but these hopes leave unfulfilled.

Man (XXVIII)

His mind is crossed by strange discovering fires,
Rare intimations lift his stumbling speech >To a moment’s kinship with the eternal Word;
A masque of wisdom circles through his brain
Perturbing him with glimpses half-divine.

New ideas opening fresh vistas cross his mind; occasionally the inspired Word of truth finds expression through his imperfect speech; flashes of wisdom flit through his brain affording glimpses into semi-divine realms, sights that shake his complacency and set him astir.

Man (XXIX)

He lays his hands sometimes on the Unknown;
He communes sometimes with Eternity.

A strange and grandiose symbol was his birth
And immortality and spirit-room
And pure perfection and a shadowless bliss
Are this afflicted creature’s mighty fate.

At times he does succeed in encountering the Unknown, in communing with the Eternal. His birth was a signal and a symbol of a fresh and mighty outbreak in the manifestation of the Spirit on earth. He is afflicted with imperfection and limitations no doubt, but his is the noble destiny to achieve immortality, to embody the Spirit and live in it, to arrive at an untainted perfection and an unadulterated bliss.

Man (XXX)

In him the Earth-Mother sees draw near the change
Foreshadowed in her dumb and fiery depths,
A godhead drawn from her transmuted limbs,
An alchemy of Heaven on Nature’s base.

In man the Earth-Mother sees arriving nearer fulfilment the dream she has nurtured in her mute but blazing deeps. The change long foreseen draws near with his birth: a god-head shaped out of her transformed elements, a miraculous transplantation of Heaven on the ground of Earth-Nature.

Help Humanity

Adept of the self-born unfailing line,
Leave not the light to die the ages bore,
Help still humanity’s blind and suffering life:
Obey thy spirit’s wide omnipotent urge.

A witness to God’s parley with the Night
It leaned compassionate from immortal calm
And housed desire, the troubled seed of things.

Heir to a great tradition of tapasya, O Aswapathy, do not abandon this ages-old light to die, the light that has led aspiring humanity. Thou must continue to help humanity in its blind sufferings. Thy spirit’s natural urge is wide and omnipotent, obey it. Thy spirit has known the encounter of the luminous Consciousness with the dark Nescience, of God with Night, it has stooped in its compassion from its divine calm and lodged in itself the goad of desire which is the root of all that troubles humanity.

Toil Vast

Assent to thy high self, create, endure.

Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast,
No more in earthly limits pen thy force;
Equal thy work with long unending Time’s.

Give thy assent to the noble impulse of thy self, create, bear with all. Exert thyself in the ways of Knowledge, let thy toil be for all. Do not cabin thy force within the limits imposed by earth; rather let thy labour correspond to that of eternal Time, let it be as ceaseless.

Tread the Difficult Paths

Traveller upon the bare eternal heights,
Tread still the difficult and dateless path
Joining the cycles with its austere curve
Measured for man by the initiate Gods.

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force.

In thy journey thou hast arrived and movest on the bare, eternal peaks. Walk still the hard and ancient path that runs through the many cycles of time under the direction of the overseeing Gods. My light shall be thy guide, my strength shall be thy force.

Not the Partial Prize

Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;
Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.

Let not impatience overcome thee. Persevere, do not stop short with a partial prize, an incomplete achievement. Ask of me only one boon and that is to heighten thy stature in spirit. Desire only one joy and that is to uplift the whole of humanity.

Transfiguring Hour

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;
To its omnipotence leave thy work’s result.

All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour.”

Above all the combating powers and the unseeing fate of the world, there stands aloft an immutable Will of the Supreme. It is omnipotent, leave to it the result of thy labour. When the hour of transformation fixed by this Will of God arrives, all things shall change with ease.

Aswapathy Replies

August and sweet sank hushed that mighty Voice.

Nothing now moved in the vast brooding space:
A stillness came upon the listening world,
A mute immensity of the Eternal’s peace.

But Aswapathy’s heart replied to her,
A cry amid the silence of the Vasts:

The mighty Voice of the Divine Mother ceases. All is still again in that vast brooding space. There is only the silent peace of the Eternal. In that silence rises the cry of Aswapathy’s heart.

How Shall I Rest?

“How shall I rest content with mortal days
And the dull measure of terrestrial things,
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?

I have seen that the world as it appears is not the whole truth. It is only a mask behind which I have beheld the glory and the beauty of thy face. Having seen this truth of the Divine Presence, how can I stay content with the ordinary mortality and the dull rhythm and scale of terrestrial life?

How Long the Battle

Hard is the doom to which thou bindst thy sons!

How long shall our spirits battle with the Night
And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,
We who are vessels of a deathless Force
And builders of the godhead of the race?

Hard is the fate to which we, thy sons, are bound by thee. How long shall this battle of our spirits with the Night of Denial go on? How long should we suffer defeat and death, we who carry thy immortal Force and are the architects of the divine humanity to come?

Where is Thy Ray?

Or if it is thy work I do below
Amid the error and waste of human life
In the vague light of man’s half-conscious mind,
Why breaks not in some distant gleam of thee?

Ever the centuries and millenniums pass.

Where in the greyness is thy coming’s ray?

Where is the thunder of thy victory’s wings?

Only we hear the feet of passing gods.

If it be thy work that I do on earth amidst all the confusion and waste of human life, in the obscure light of the half-awake mind, why is it that no ray of thy Light however distant—breaks in upon us? Ages fly past and yet there is no sign of thy advent, no rumour of thy victory. We only hear the lesser powers passing by.

Changeless Round

A plan in the occult eternal Mind
Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight,
The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,
The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.

All we have done is ever still to do.

All breaks and all renews and is the same.

There is some plan conceived in the creative Idea of the Eternal Being in which all that has gone before and all that is yet to come is seen simultaneously. But here in the world the ages turn round and round changing nothing; the cycles aim high and rebuild things that constantly disintegrate. What has been done has got to be done again and again. Everything breaks down, is renewed and all is the same again.

Fruitless Gyre

Huge revolutions of life’s fruitless gyre,
The new-born ages perish like the old,
As if the sad Enigma kept its right
Till all is done for which this scene was made.

Life revolves in fruitless rounds; every new age passes away like the old. It looks as if this depressing riddle will continue to pose itself until the objective of this movement is fulfilled.

Too Utile the Strength

Too little the strength that now with us is born,
Too faint the light that steals through Nature’s lids,
Too scant the joy with which she buys our pain.

In a brute world that knows not its own sense,
Thought-racked upon the wheel of birth we live,
The instruments of an impulse not our own
Moved to achieve with our heart’s blood for price
Half-knowledge, half-creations that soon tire.

The strength we can wield is too inadequate, the light we get is too faint, the joy in life for which we bear with all pain is too sparse. Ours is a mechanical world which does not know its own meaning and purpose; we live in it, life after life, helplessly driven by thought, acted upon by an impulse that is not our own. And all that we succeed in achieving after all our intense efforts is a knowledge that is partial, creations that are incomplete and fail soon.

We Still Survive

A foiled immortal soul in perishing limbs,
Baffled and beaten back we labour still;
Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive.

Ours is a soul that is deathless, a portion of the Immortal; but it is defeated by the body which disintegrates. We are thus constantly baffled and pushed back, and yet we toil. Our effort is again and again cancelled, we are frustrated, drained of our energies, and yet we live on.

A Larger-Seeing Man to Arrive

In anguish we labour that from us may rise
A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
The executor of the divine attempt
Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,
Communicant and prophet and lover and king.

Though we suffer, we still strive on in order that from our labours may arrive another man, wider in vision, nobler of heart, a luminous receptacle of manifest Truth, effectuating the divine intention, ready to house in himself God’s embodiment on earth, messenger of the Spirit, seeing far ahead, exuding love and monarch of all.

Thy Steps are Infallible

I know that thy creation cannot fail.

For even through the mists of mortal thought
Infallible are thy mysterious steps,
And, though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,
Hidden in the blind shifts of Fate she keeps
The slow calm logic of Infinity’s pace
And the inviolate sequence of its will.

steps are infallible; they do not falter or go wrong. Behind the mask of Chance, concealed in the determination of Fate, there works the Necessity of an effectuating inviolable will working in the studied, assured rhythms of the Infinite.

Life in Ascending Scale

All life is fixed in an ascending scale
And adamantine is the evolving Law;
In the beginning is prepared the close.

The whole life-movement is directed upwards in the scale of evolution; the governance of the Law that is slowly shaping itself is firm. There is a direction from the very inception; at the beginning itself the goal is anticipated.

A God Greater By the Fall

This strange irrational product of the mire,
This compromise between the beast and God,
Is not the crown of thy miraculous world.

I know there shall inform the inconscient cells,
At one with Nature and at height with heaven,
A spirit vast as the containing sky
And swept with ecstasy from invisible founts,
A god come down and greater by the fall.

Man as he is, a strange product of matter’s mud—whose movements belie his gross origin , midway between animal and God, is certainly not the summit of this wondrous world. I know that one day he will expand in his awareness as wide as the universe, grow as high as the highest heavens of the mind, even his inconscient cells will be lit with a vast Consciousness of the Spirit, and he will be flooded with Bliss from unseen founts. He will reveal himself to be a god who has come down to earth from his paradisal home above, but a god who is all the richer and fuller for the experience and growth he has garnered here on earth a development that is not attainable in the worlds elsewhere.

A Power Arose Out of My Slumber

A power arose out of my slumber’s cell.

Abandoning the tardy limp of the hours
And the inconstant blink of mortal sight,
There where the Thinker sleeps in too much light
And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye
Hearing the word of Fate from Silence’ heart
In the endless moment of Eternity,
It saw from timelessness the works of Time.

of ignorant Nature, it shot up to the superconscient levels of the being where the thought-mind is dazed into stillness and only a bare witnessing Eye bums; it heard from the bosom of Silence the word of destiny and poised in the Eternal, it regarded the workings of Time.

Roar of Death

Overpassed were the leaden formulas of the Mind,
Overpowered the obstacle of mortal Space:
The unfolding Image showed the things to come.

A giant dance of Shiva tore the past,
There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;
Earth was o’errun with fire and the roar of Death
Clamouring to slay a world his hunger had made;
There was a clangour of Destruction’s wings:
The Titan’s battle-cry was in my ears,
Alarm and rumour shook the armoured Night.

The rigid walls of the Mind were put behind, limitations of physical Space were broken through; things to come revealed themselves in a terrible imagery of destruction of the past, of the thunder of falling worlds, of the roar and fire of Death spreading over Earth wanting to slay the world that was originally created by the Hunger that is Death ^[1] to serve as his food.

^[1] asanaya mrtyuh (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

The ominous sound of approaching Destruction was gathering; the challenging cry of the Adversary filled my ears. Alarm and rumour shook the defensive Night of existence.

Omnipotent’s Pioneers

I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.

There I beheld the first adventuring powers of the Omnipotent on the borders of heaven turning towards earthly life; they came down the glowing stairs of birth the first of the divine host that came out of the paths of the morning star into the petty field of mortal life.

Great Creators

I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.

I saw them crossing the dimlit passage of the beginnings of time, these luminous children of wondrous dawn, great creators in a wide perspective of calm, powerful dynamiters of all obstruction, challengers of Destiny in her determination of Will, workers in the quarries of the gods for building up the Creation, messengers from the realm beyond human communication, architects structuring the Immortal on earth.

Carrying the Mystic Fire

Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the Spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.

They came into the human sphere of fallen state. Their faces still carried the glow of the Immortal’s glory, their voices were still in tune with divine thoughts, their bodies were graceful with the light of the Spirit. Their eyes were those of a man becoming divine, their lips were chanting the glory song of the soul. Their tread echoed in the passages of Time.

Their Tread Shall Change the Earth

High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face.

They are the custodians of wisdom, happiness, power and bliss. They open up the sunlit paths of Beauty for man. They delight in sporting in the flood currents of Love and thrill to divine rapture. Surely one day their toil will go to change this earth whose badge now is suffering and thus justify what now appears to be an unwarranted light on Nature’s face.

All Shall Be Done

Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart’s force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.

Destiny still eludes man; all his toil seems to have been in vain. Yet, it is certain that the purpose for which man has suffered all pain shall be fulfilled.

Divine Successor of Man

Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
Behind man’s inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:
He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,
He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.

Just as in the past the animal was followed by man in the course of evolution, so man shall be followed by a high divine successor. After man’s slothful pace, after his fruitless labour and struggle, this divine being shall come. He shall know what man’s mind can barely dare to think about, he shall achieve what man’s heart can hardly dare to attempt.

Heavenly Light Shall Visit Earth

Inheritor of the toil of human time
He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s height,
Earth’s seeing widened into the infinite.

He will inherit the fruit of human labour and carry the responsibility of the Gods. Then will the mind of earth open to and receive the light of heaven; the heart of earth will be strengthened with the might of heaven; the actions of the earth will reach beyond the human summits and touch the superhuman; the vision of the earth will be enlarged to embrace the Infinite.

Heavy Weighs the Imperfect World

Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;
The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul
And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.

But as of now the imperfection of the world continues, heavy and unchanged. The robust youthful period of its life has ended in failure. Our labour has been long and heavy and yet the bonds that tie the human soul are strong; the heart of Mother-Earth is weary.

Linger not Long

O Truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
As if Time dare not open its heart to God.

O Mother of the Universe, O Truth who art still poised in thy luminous depths, do not linger any further with thy transmuting hand merely resting on a bar of Time—as if it was not possible for Time to open to the Divine influence.

Incarnate Thy Force

O radiant fountain of the world’s delight
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.

Thou art beyond the world and unattainable, yet art thou the luminous source of the delight aflow in the world. Thou art the Bliss which always dwells in the depths of the being within, but which men seek outside of themselves and so naturally fail to find. Thou art the insoluble Mystery, thou art the Muse with the authentic word. Embody thy force in its pure intensity, send to earth a charged form of thyself.

Fill With Thy Eternity

One moment fill with thy eternity,
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.

Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!

With that missioned incarnation of thy force, let thy eternity clothe itself with Time for a brief while; let thy infinity dwell in one body; let thy omniscience flood one mind with its light; let thy vast Love beat in one human heart; let thy Immortality walk the earth with mortal feet; let all the beauty of heaven take shape in an earthly form.

Change Future Time

Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.

Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”

Omnipotent that thou art, impart the power of God to the movements and moments of a will embodied in human form, fill that human body with thy eternal might and then, with a single gesture change the course of future time. Let the Word of power be spoken from the potent heights, let one great act open the closed doors of Earth’s Fate.

Consenting Voice

His prayer sank down in the resisting Night
Oppressed by the thousand forces that deny,
As if too weak to climb to the Supreme.

But there arose a wide consenting Voice;
The spirit of beauty was revealed in sound:
Light floated round the marvellous Vision’s brow
And on her lips the Immortal’s joy took shape.

Aswapathy’s prayer sinks, pulled downwards by the forces of negation, as if it is too weak to reach upto the Supreme. But there rises the response of a consenting Voice. The spirit of beauty reveals itself in sound. Light surrounds the Face of the Divine Mother and the Immortal’s joy sounds in her speech.

One shall Descend (I)

“O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power.

A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.

The Divine Mother answers:

O strong pioneer, I have heard thy anguished prayer. One shall go down and break the hard law of material Nature that rules the earth and change the doom of Nature by the unaided power of the Spirit.

A boundless Mind that can embrace and contain the whole world shall come.

A heart that is at once calm, sweet and violent, with the intensity of the gods shall come.

One shall Descend (II)

All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.

All possible strengths and greatnesses shall contain in her; heavenly beauty shall walk the earth in her form; delight shall stay for ever in her and undying Love shall use her body as his native home.

Might, Beauty, Delight, Love, all shall find their home in her.

One shall Descend (III)

A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.

Hers shall be the charm of the melodies of unmixed happiness; her voice shall ring with the notes of the celestial harp; her laughter shall carry the murmur of the streams of heaven. Her lips shall drip with the honey of God; her limbs shall hold his ecstasy; her breasts shall be the flowers of rapture of Paradise.

One shall Descend (IV)

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.

She shall carry wisdom in her silent breast. Her strength shall be wielded like a victor’s sword. The bliss of the Eternal shall radiate from her eyes.

A Seed in Death’s Hour

A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.”

In the significant moment of Death, she shall sow a seed and transplant to the human soil on earth a branch of heaven i.e. establish on earth a part of heaven. Evolving Nature shall move faster than her usual mortal speed. Fate shall be forced to change by her unchanging will.

Splendour Vanishes

As a flame disappears in endless Light
Immortally extinguished in its source,
Vanished the splendour and was stilled the word.

An echo of delight that once was close,
The harmony journeyed towards some distant hush,
A music failing in the ear of trance,
A cadence called by distant cadences,
A voice that trembled into strains withdrawn.

The Splendour withdraws and the Voice falls silent. The harmony that had come close recedes into some far-off hush, the musical rhythm fades and the vibrant Voice is no more.

Vacant Inner Fields

Her form retreated from the longing earth
Forsaking nearness to the abandoned sense,
Ascending to her unattainable home.

Lone, brilliant, vacant lay the inner fields;
All was unfilled inordinate spirit space,
Indifferent, waste, a desert of bright peace.

The Form of the Divine Mother draws back from the longing earth; it is no longer near the forsaken world; it ascends back to her home beyond the reach of man. The inner fields of consciousness in which Aswapathy is awake are vacant, their spirit space is empty; there is luminous peace, indeed, but it is a blank.

Terrestrial Wave

Then a line moved on the far edge of calm:
The warm-lipped sentient soft terrestrial wave,
A quick and many-murmured moan and laugh,
Came gliding in upon white feet of sound.

Unlocked was the deep glory of Silence’ heart;
The absolute unmoving stillnesses
Surrendered to the breath of mortal air,
Dissolving boundlessly the heavens of trance
Collapsed to waking mind…

Then something moves on the distant border of the calm; a gentle wave of earthly sound of notes of grief and joy glides in. The depths of Silence are opened up and the moveless stillness yields to the incoming mortal breath; the trance breaks as the mind wakes.

Lids Cast Down

Eternity Cast down its incommunicable lids
Over its solitudes remote from ken
Behind the voiceless mystery of sleep.

The grandiose respite failed, the wide release.

A curtain is drawn upon the solitudes beyond the human ken, behind the mute mystery of sleep, the great suspension, the wide release fails.

His Soul Draws Back

Across the light of fast-receding planes
That fled from him as from a falling star
Compelled to fill his human house in Time
His soul drew back into the speed and noise
Of the vast business of created things.

A chariot of the marvels of the heavens
Broad-based to bear the gods on fiery wheels,
Flaming he swept through the spiritual gates.

Forced to return to his earthly habitation, the soul of Aswapathy draws back, across the receding planes of the Higher hemisphere, into the stir of the creation below. A moving miracle, capable of embodying the Gods in himself, he sweeps through the gates of the Spirit.

Amid Material Scenes

The mortal stir received him in its midst.

Once more he moved amid material scenes,
Lifted by intimations from the heights
And twixt the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

Once again Aswapathy moves in the material surroundings, receptive to uplifting intimations from the heights of the Spirit, open to thoughts from the unseen spheres during pauses of the activity of his brain.Higher touches can be felt and are effective only when the lower activity is stilled.

Toils with the Measuring Mind

The eternal seeker in the aeonic field
Besieged by the intolerant press of hours
Again was strong for great swift-footed deeds.

Awake beneath the ignorant vault of Night,
He saw the unnumbered people of the stars
And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood
And toiled with the form-maker, measuring Mind.

Back in the ancient field of Tune, Aswapathy, the eternal seeker, is ready for his customary dynamic action. In this world shadowed by Ignorance, he sees innumerable points of light, listens to the unanswered queries of Nature and works on with the finitising mind.

The Lord of Life Resumes

A wanderer from the occult invisible suns
Accomplishing the fate of transient things,
A god in the figure of the arisen beast,
He raised his brow of conquest to the heavens
Establishing the empire of the soul
On Matter and its bounded universe
As on a solid rock in infinite seas.

The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds
In the scant field of the ambiguous globe.

A traveller from the higher unseen worlds that he is, working out the destiny of the temporal world, a veritable god in human form, Aswapathy raises his will to conquer the unattained realm, establishing the rule of the soul on the firm base of Matter and its finite world amidst the flux of life. The Master of Life resumes his great Task in the little, inadequate field of the uncertain earth.