Book Three. The Book of the Divine Mother
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Book Three: Canto I The Pursuit of the Unknowable
It is a mysterious mightiness which is at once an unfathomable vast around and a subtle kernel in the soul. A giant doubt overshadows his advance. However, he ascends without pause and reaches a height where no created form can live. He nears an intolerant bare Reality where the mind must either dissolve or change into Light. The whole world and its Ignorance founders here. All is expunged from the silent Being to lapse into Nothingness. There is only a Vastness, an Eternity, a solid Peace. At last he is face to face with a companionless Reality, immutable, inscrutable, alone,—the unborn One, above all change, occult, eternal.
All
is too little that the world can give: Life in this world is a field of experience. The power and the knowledge gained during one’s life-term on earth are considerable, but in the final analysis they are found too inadequate to meet the demands of the evolving spirit. They are circumscribed by conditions of time and fail to satisfy the needs of the immortal soul. Much more than what the world can offer is needed if the spirit is to fulfil its objective of embodying itself on earth.
Although
of One these forms of greatness are
The
Presence was lost by which all things have charm, This Reality is closer to us than anything else, and yet it is far off, a transcendent truth of ourselves. Aswapathy perceives this fact. The Divine Spirit is hidden by its own workings; it is lost to sight, to hearing, and cannot be reached in the obscure conditions of the world. The Divine Presence due to which there is a sweetness and beauty in things is lost to experience. The Divine Glory of which all are symbols, however faint, is lacking.
The
world lived on made empty of its Cause,
The
labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind; He sees how the world goes on eking out its existence bereft of its inspiring Cause, like the dragging on of Love when the loved one is no longer there. In such a state of the world, the attempt to know seems to be a vain effort of the mind, for all knowledge so gained ends on the borders of the Unknowable. Mind has to confess it cannot know. Similarly the effort to control, to rule over the circumstances of life turns out to be a vanity of the will. All power acquired is a trifle and yields ultimately to the Omnipotent.
A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light. But darkness is not all; it is not the ultimate truth. Behind the thick veils of darkness there is Light. There is an eternal Light at the source of things and this Light is, as it were, guarded by a deep cave of thickening darkness. One has to persevere and push through the dark passage and then one is sure to arrive at the ever-burning Light at the end.
A
silence settled on his striving heart;
A
Being intimate and unnameable, Near, it retreated; far, it called him still. An unnameable Being is close to him and he feels a wide pressing bliss and peace in himself and in all, but he cannot grasp it securely. It approaches and recedes as if drawing him further and further with its insistent call.
Nothing
could satisfy but its delight:
When
it was there, the heart’s abyss was filled; Aswapathy finds that nothing except the delight of this Being can satisfy. Without the presence of this uplifting Deity, the greatest action loses its savour; in its presence even the smallest acquires a divine glow. The void of the heart is filled to the full when this Being is felt; when it withdraws, existence loses its aim and all becomes empty of meaning.
The
order of the immemorial planes, But who that mightiness was he knew not yet.
Impalpable,
yet filling all that is, The entire structure of the serried Planes and the amplitude of the manufacturing instruments turn out to be mere props for a scene that is transitory, passing. Only the Being, the unknown Mightiness, fills all, creates all, destroys all, assuming and discarding a multitude of forms and names.
It
wore the guise of an indiscernible Vast, This Mightiness appears to be a Vast that cannot be probed; and yet it is felt as a subtle core of the being within. It appears to be a far, unapproachable Greatness, huge and dim; and yet it is felt as sweetly enveloped in an intimate closeness. At times it seems to be a tiny figment or a covering; at times it seems to him to be his own huge shade.
A giant doubt overshadowed his advance.
Across
a neutral all-supporting Void A huge uncertainty comes over his path. All the same, he ascends without a stop. Across a Void that is neutral and all-supporting, whose emptiness nourishes his lone spirit, he is drawn towards some mysterious Supreme, helped, in fact almost compelled, by undeterminable Powers. He aspires, finds himself going down but is borne upwards again. Thus he ascends unvanquished.
Always
a signless vague Immensity He espies constantly a featureless huge Immensity ahead, brooding, unapproachable, incommunicable. In its presence all finite things lose their reality and he is face to face with the immeasurable, the Infinite.
Then
to the ascent there came a mighty term: Then he arrives at a peak where the ascent ceases. There nothing that is formed can live; all hope and seeking come to a stop. He nears a severe, lone Reality which permits nothing else to exist before it. There is a zero which is potent, holding in itself all possibility.
On
a dizzy verge where all disguises fail
All
he had been and all towards which he grew Aswapathy finds himself on the edge of a peak where all forms fall off, where the human mind must either surrender itself to the Light of Truth or dissolve in its blaze. Here he is faced with a severe choice; he is compelled to choose either to abandon completely all that he has cherished so far or to let it be transformed into the stuff of a Reality that is beyond name and form.
Alone
and fronting an intangible Force Abandoned by the worlds of form he strove. Aswapathy stands alone before an intangible Force which refuses to be grasped by mental thought. He is on the threshold of a Void. The worlds of form fall off but he strives on.
A
fruitful world-wide Ignorance foundered there;
The
symbol modes of being helped no more, The world-pervading fertile Ignorance collapses here; the long range of Thought comes to an end; even the instrumental will stands ineffective. The significant ways of being cease to be meaningful; all that the Nescience erects breaks down; even the spirit that indwells and holds the universe realises its inadequacy and falls into a swoon.
In
an abysmal lapse of all things built In this condition where all created things lapse, the separate self, exceeding all mortal supports and joining its great origin at last, must either dissolve or be reborn into a Truth that is beyond the range of the mind.
All
glory of outline, sweetness of harmony,
The
Demiurges lost their names and forms, All beauty of form, harmony and sweetness is rejected as if it were but a decor with little consequence and shed from the silence of the bare Being; it fades away into a blissful Nothingness. The creators lose their personalities and the world created by them are wiped out one by one.
The
universe removed its coloured veil, The tinted veil over the universe is cast off and at the far-off end of things appears the Godhead of All, his feet firmly planted on the great wings of Life, omnipotent, lone master of Time, turned inward, unfathomable, with a piercing irresistible gaze.
Attracted
by the unfathomable regard
All
from his puissance born was now undone; Pulled by the mysterious gaze of the Godhead, all the unfulfilled movements in the universe return to this their origin to go forth again from their womb. All that had been born from his dynamic Power is now ended. Nothing remains of whatever was conceived by the cosmic Mind.
Eternity
prepared to fade and seemed The very Eternal seems to be fading away leaving behind but a touch of colour and a forced impression on the Void; Space seems to be like the flicker of a dream before the sinking into the deep dreamless sleep of Nothing.
The
spirit that dies not and the Godhead’s self The immortal spirit and the self of the Godhead appear to be, after all, myths emanating from some Unknowable which alone is; from it all comes to be—or appears to do so—and into it all is withdrawn.
But what That was, no thought or sight could tell.
Only
a formless Form of self was left, Neither vision nor thought can grasp this Unknowable. What is left now is only a vague, slender, outline of what existed before; it is an experience akin to the last movements of a wave about to drown into the bosom of the sea from which it came, retaining the bare memory of its origin.
A
Vastness brooded free from sense of Space, There is a musing Vastness free from the limiting sense of Space, an Eternity beyond the bounds of Time; there is a solid, profound, unchanging Peace from which world and soul stand rejected as foreign.
A
stark companionless Reality This is the final answer to Aswapathy’s intense seeking: facing him with its stupendous Calm stands a sheer, sole Reality, mysterious, unmoved, silent, self-absorbed, intangible, inscrutable.
It
had no kinship with the universe: This sole Reality does not show any relationship with the universe. There is in it neither action nor movement; it is static. The problem of life finds no solution here and the whole world-effort stands condemned in a movement of Ignorance with no sanction from the Truth-Light. Here there is neither the mind with its urge for knowledge, nor the heart with its urge for love.
All person perished in its namelessness.
There
was no second, it had no partner or peer;
A
pure existence safe from thought and mood, Personality dissolves here into the Impersonal. This Reality is one and alone with none other beside it. It is its own subject and object. It is a pure existence, unchanging; a consciousness of undivided, undecaying bliss. It dwells aloof in its featureless infinity, peerless, ineffable, sole.
A
Being formless, featureless and mute It is a formless, featureless and silent Being, self-existent, self-aware, without movement. It is the One by whom all creation is made possible and by whom all live, but who lives by none. It is an unfathomable Mystery behind the veils of the Unmanifest, above the changing scenes of the manifestation. It is supreme, immutable, impenetrable, the sole Cause, the infinite, the eternal, the alone.
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