Book Three. The Book of the Divine Mother
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Book Three: Canto III The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
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.
A mightier task remained than all he had done.
To
that he turned from which all being comes, 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.
In
the unapproachable stillness of his soul,
A
Strength he sought that was not yet on earth, 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.
But
from the appalling heights there stooped no voice; A neutral helpless void oppressed the years.
In
the texture of our bound humanity 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.
A
veiled collaboration with the Night
A
shadowy unity with a vanished past 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.
Its
treacherous elements spread like slippery grains 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.
This
now he willed to discover and exile,
All
Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare, 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.
All
seemed to have perished that was undivine:
For
the Inconscient too is infinite; 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.
Then
lest a human cry should spoil the Truth 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.
A last and mightiest transformation came.
His
soul was all in front like a great sea 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.
In
this tremendous universality 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.
There
was no more division’s endless scroll; 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.
Overpowered
were form and memory’s limiting line; 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.
Abolished
in its last thin fainting trace 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.
His
nature grew a movement of the All, 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.
Transcended
was the human formula;
He
stood fulfilled on the world’s highest line 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.
A
Splendour and a Symbol wrapped the earth,
Sense
failed in that tremendous lucency; 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.
The
robes of mortal thinking were cast down 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.
Life
in his members lay down vast and mute; The last movement died and all at once grew still.
A
weight that was the unseen Transcendent’s hand 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.
As
one who sets his sail towards mysteried shores
Afar
from all that makes the measured world, 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.
Above
the imperfect reach of word and thought, 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.
On
sorrowless heights no winging cry disturbs,
There
no beginning is and there no end; 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.
There
turns no keyed creation in the void, 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.
The
marriage of evil with good within one breast, 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.
And
the shifting lights and shadows of the idea 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.
Life’s
steps a stumbling series without suit, 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.
Thought
clashes not with thought and truth with truth, 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.
Armed
with the immune occult unsinking Fire 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.
There
Nature on her dumb spiritual couch 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.
All-causing,
all-sustaining and aloof, 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.
Apart,
at peace above creation’s stir, 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.
A
Mind too mighty to be bound by Thought, 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.
On
the cosmic murmur primal loneliness fell, 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.
All
things were brought back to their formless seed,
Although
the afflicted Nature he has left 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.
No
voice came down from the high silences,
A
stillness of cessation reigned, the wide 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.
Then
suddenly there came a downward look
A
Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love 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.
The
great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul, 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.
This
knowledge was now made a cosmos’ seed:
Then
from the trance of that tremendous clasp 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.
Incalculable
outflowing infinitudes 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.
There
were no contraries, no sundered parts, 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.
A
splendid centre of infinity’s whirl 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.
It
took up tirelessly into its scope 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
was apart, none lived for himself alone, 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.
There
Oneness was not tied to monotone; 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
looked back to its hidden truth 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.
All
struggle was turned to a sweet strife of love
Identity’s
reconciling happiness gave 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.
On
a meeting line of hazardous extremes 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.
There
was no sob of suffering anywhere; 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.
All
Nature was a conscious front of God: 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,
leaping from eternity, 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.
All
turned to all without reserve’s recoil: 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.
A
universal vision that unites, 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.
A
grand orchestra of spiritual powers, 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.
In
these new worlds projected he became 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
mind answered to countless communing minds,
He
felt the footsteps of a million wills 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.
A
stream ever new-born that never dies, 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.
In
this vast outbreak of perfection’s law 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.
Attuning
to one Truth their own right rule 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.
Each
gave its powers to help its neighbours’ parts, 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.
Even
in the poise where Oneness draws apart 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.
An
all-revealing all-creating Bliss, 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.
These
hues were the very prism of the Supreme, 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.
A
vast Truth-Consciousness took up these signs 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.
The
Spirit’s white neutrality became 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.
The
eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house 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.
All here self-lost had there its divine place.
The
Powers that here betray our hearts and err, 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.
There
Mind, a splendid sun of vision’s rays, 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’s
great ensorcelling rod 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.
Its
Power that makes the unknowable near and true, 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.
It
peopled thought and mind and happy sense 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.
There
was no gulf between the thought and fact; 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.
There
Life pursued unwearied of her sport,
In
her ingenious ardour of caprice, 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.
Ever
she framed stark bonds for the will to break, 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.
At
hide and seek on a Mother-Wisdom’s breast, 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.
Untired
of sameness and untired of change, 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.
There
Matter is the Spirit’s firm density, 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.
The
senses there were outlets of the soul; 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.
There
substance was a resonant harp of self, 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.
Its
solidity was a mass of heavenly make; 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.
Its
bodies woven by a divine sense 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.
All
that now passes lived immortal there
Its
ordered hours proclaimed the eternal Law; 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.
An
architect hewing out self’s living rock, Phenomenon erects a living formation out of the self, a happy dwelling for the Reality on the outskirts of the ocean of Infinity.
Against
this glory of spiritual states, 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.
A
world that knows not its inhabiting Self, 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 governed its irrational course, 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.
A
dull and infelicitous interlude 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.
This darkness hides our nobler destiny.
A
chrysalis of a great and glorious truth, 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.
As
yet thought only some high spirit’s dream 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.
A
tongueless oracle shall speak at last, 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 seemed a vainly teeming vast 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.
He saw a world that is from a world to be.
There
he divined rather than saw or felt, 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.
Alien
now seemed that dim far universe,
Then
memory climbed to him from the striving planes 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.
For even there the boundless Oneness dwells.
To
its own sight unrecognisable, 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.
This
seed-self sown in the Indeterminate 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.
An
agent of its own transcendent Will, 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.
Himself
he knew and why his soul had gone 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 he was, one wide and free above,
A
tie between them still could bridge two worlds; 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 lay somewhere conscious and alone 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.
In
the luminous stillness of its mute appeal 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.
In
the centre of its vast and fateful trance 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.
In
the passion of its solitary dream His heart is lost in the intensity of its dreaming like an invisible Presence rapt in prayer in some silent chapel.
On
some deep breast of liberating peace
All
other parts were dumb in centred sleep 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.
Extinction
could not quench that lonely fire; 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.
Armed
with the intuition of a bliss 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.
It
sent its voiceless prayer to the Unknown; 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.
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