The Guest
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I have discovered my deep deathless being: Masked by my front of mind, immense, serene It meets the world with an Immortal’s seeing, A god-spectator of the human scene.
No pain and sorrow of the heart and flesh Can tread that pure and voiceless sanctuary. Danger and fear, Fate’s hounds, slipping their leash Rend body and nerve, – the timeless Spirit is free.
Awake, God’s ray and witness in my breast, In the undying substance of my soul Flamelike, inscrutable the almighty Guest. Death nearer comes and Destiny takes her toll;
He hears the blows that shatter Nature’s house: Calm sits he, formidable, luminous.
Now more and more the Epiphany within Affirms on Nature’s soil His sovereign rights. My mind has left its prison-camp of brain; It pours, a luminous sea from spirit heights.
A tranquil splendour, waits my Force of Life Couched in my heart, to do what He shall bid, Poising wide wings like a great hippogriff
On which the gods of the empyrean ride. An ecstasy thrills through touch and sound and sight Flooding the blind material sheath’s dull ease: My darkness answers to His call of light.
Nature in me one day like Him shall sit Victorious, calm, immortal, infinite. Page-144
Because Thou hadst all eternity to amuse, O dramatist of death and life and birth, O sculptor of the living shapes of earth, World-artist revelling in forms and hues,
A mathematician Mind that never errs, Thou hast played with theorems, numbers, measures, cubes, Passed cells, electrons, molecules through Thy tubes, World-forces for Thy Science’s ministers,
And made a universe of Thy theories, Craftsman minute, an architect of might. Protean is Thy Spirit of Delight, An adept of a thousand mysteries.
Or built some deep Necessity, not Thy whim, Fate and Inconscience and the snare of Time?
One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet, drink At the Mermaid, capture immortality ; A committee of hormones on the Aegean’ s brink Composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.
A thyroid , meditating almost nude Under the Bo-tree , saw the eternal Light And rising from its mighty solitude , Spoke of the Wheel and eightfold Path alright
A brain by a disordered stomach driven Thundered through. Europe, conquered, ruled and fell, From St. Helena went, perhaps, to Heaven. Thus wagged on the surreal world, until
A scientist played with atoms and blew out The universe before God had time to shout. Page-145
Often, in the slow1 ages’ long2 retreat On Life’s thin ridge through Time’s enormous sea, I have accepted death and borne defeat To gain some vantage by my fall for Thee.
For Thou hast given the Inconscient the dark right, To oppose the shining passage of my soul And levy at each step the tax of Night: Doom, her august accountant, keeps the roll.
All around me now the Titan forces press; This world is theirs, they hold its3 days in fee; I am full of wounds and the fight merciless. Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?
Even as Thou wilt! What still to Fate Thou owest, O Ancient of the worlds, Thou knowest, Thou knowest.
This puppet ego the World-Mother made, This little profiteer of Nature’s works, Her trust in his life-tenancy betrayed, Makes claim on claim, all debt to her he shirks.
Each movement of our life our ego fills; Inwoven in each thread of being’s weft, When most we vaunt our selflessness, it steals A sordid part; no corner void is left.
One way lies free our heart and soul to give, Our body and mind to Thee and every cell, And steeped in Thy world-infinity to live. Then lost in light, shall fade the ignoble spell.
Nature, of her rebellion quit, shall be A breath of the Spirit’s vast serenity.
1 long 2 slow 3 the Page-146
I saw my soul a traveller through Time; From, life to life the cosmic ways it trod, Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime, Evolving from the worm into the god.
A spark of the eternal Fire, it came To build a house in Matter for the Unborn. The inconscient sunless Night received the flame, In the brute seed of things dumb and forlorn
Life stirred and Thought outlined a gleaming shape Till on the stark inanimate earth could move, Born to somnambulist Nature in her sleep A thinking creature who can hope and love.
Still by slow steps the miracle goes on, The Immortal’s gradual birth mid mire and stone.
If perfect moments on-the peak of things, These tops of knowledge, greatness, ecstasy, Are only moments, this too enough could be. I have assumed the rapid flaming wings Of souls whom the Ignorance black-robed Nature brings And the frail littleness of mortality Can bind not always; a high sovereignty Makes them awhile creation’s radiant kings.
These momentary upliftings of the soul Prepare the spirit’s glorious permanence. The peace of God, a great still transience Is now my being’s boundless atmosphere. All parts are gathered into a timeless whole; All moments last in an eternal Year.
1 a great calm immanence Page-147
I have become a foam-white sea of bliss, I am a curling1 wave of God’s delight, A shapeless flow2 of happy passionate light, A whirlpool of the streams3 of Paradise.
I am a cup of His felicities, A thunderblast of His golden ecstasy’s might, A fire of joy upon creation’s height, I am His rapture’s wonderful abyss.
I am drunken with the glory of the Lord, I am vanquished by the beauty of the Unborn; I have looked, alive, upon the Eternal’s face. My mind is cloven by His radiant sword, My heart by His beatific touch is torn; My life is a meteor-dust of His flaming Grace.
A deep enigma is the soul of man. His conscious life obeys the Inconscient’s rule, His need of joy is learned in sorrow’s school; His heart is a chaos and an empyrean. His subtle ignorance borrows Wisdom’s plan; His mind is the Infinite’s sharp and narrow tool. He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful, And does what Matter must or Spirit can.
All powers in his living’s soil take root Hoping to grow and dominate the earth. This little creature mind that would be great Is Nature’s fool and Godhead’s struggling birth, A demigod and a demon and a brute, The slave and the creator of his fate.
1 curving 2 flux 3 sense Page-148
This body which was once my universe, Is now a pittance carried by the soul, – Its Titan’s motion bears this scanty purse, Pacing through vastness to a vaster goal.
Too small was it to meet the giant need That only infinitude can satisfy: He keeps it still, for in the folds is hid His secret passport to eternity.
In his front an endless Time and Space deploy The landscape of their golden happenings; His heart is filled with sweet and violent joy, His mind is upon great and distant things.
How grown with all the world conterminous Is the little dweller in this narrow house!
My mind, my soul grow larger than all Space;
Time founders in that vastness glad and nude: A memory in the spirit’s solitude.
This universe is a vanishing circumstance In the glory of a white infinity, Beautiful and bare for the Immortal’s dance, House-room of my immense felicity.
In the thrilled happy giant void within Thought lost in light and passion drowned in bliss, Changing into a stillness hyaline, Obey the edict of the Eternal’s peace.
Life’s now the Ineffable’s dominion; Nature is ended and the spirit alone. Page-149
Light, endless Light! darkness has room no more, Life’s ignorant gulfs give up their secrecy: The huge inconscient depths unplumbed before Lie glimmering in vast expectancy.
Light, timeless Light immutable and apart! The holy sealed mysterious doors unclose. Light, burning Light from the Infinite’s diamond heart Quivers in my heart where blooms the deathless rose.
Light in its rapture leaping through the nerves! Light, brooding Light! each smitten passionate cell In a mute blaze of ecstasy preserves A living sense of the Imperishable.
I move in an ocean of stupendous Light Joining my depths to His eternal height.
Arisen to voiceless unattainable peaks I meet no end, for all is boundless He, An absolute joy the wide-winged spirit seeks, A Might, a Presence, an Eternity.
In the inconscient dreadful dumb Abyss Are heard the heart-beats of the Infinite. The insensible midnight veils His trance of bliss, A fathomless sealed astonishment of Light.
In His ray that dazzles our vision everywhere, Our half-closed eyes seek fragments of the One: Only the eyes of Immortality dare To look unblinded on that living Sun.
Yet are our souls the Immortal’s selves within, Comrades and powers and children of the Unseen. Page-150
He said, “I am egoless, spiritual, free,” Then swore because his dinner was not ready. I asked him why. He said, “It is not me, But the belly’s hungry god who gets unsteady.”
I asked him why. He said, “It is his play. I am, unmoved within, desireless, pure. I care not what may happen day by day.” I questioned him, “Are you so very sure?”
He answered, “I can understand your doubt. But to be free is all. It does not matter How you may kick and howl and rage and shout, Making a row over your daily platter.
“To be aware of self is liberty, Self I have got and, having self, am free.”
I am a single Self all Nature fills. Immeasurable, unmoved the Witness sits: He is the silence brooding on her hills, The circling motion of her cosmic mights.
I have broken the limits of embodied mind And am no more the figure of a soul. The burning galaxies are in me outlined; The universe is my stupendous whole.
My life is the life of village and continent, I am earth’s agony and her throbs of bliss; I share all creatures’ sorrow and content And feel the passage of every stab and kiss.
Impassive, I bear each act and thought and mood; Time traverses my hushed infinitude. Page-151 |
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