Book Three. The Book of the Divine Mother
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Book Three: Canto IV The Vision and the Boon
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.
Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.
Amid
the lifeless silence of the Void 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.
An
influence had approached the mortal range,
All
at her contact broke from silence’ seal; 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.
Intoxicated
as with nectarous rain All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon.
A
divinising stream possessed his veins, 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.
Alight,
the dun unplumbed subconscient caves
Even
lost in slumber, mute, inanimate 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 he worshipped was within him now: 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.
A
marble monument of ponderings, shone 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.
A
shape was seen on threshold Mind, a Voice A formation is seen on the threshold of the Mind and a Voice, imperative and wise, from the inner regions of her heart speaks.
“O
Son of Strength who climbst creation’s peaks, 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.
O
Spirit aspiring in an ignorant frame, 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?
I
am the Mystery beyond reach of mind, But too immense my danger and my joy.
Awake
not the immeasurable descent, 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
the all-seeing Power to hew its way: 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.
I
ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame 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.
How
shall thy mighty spirit brook repose
Thy
soul was born to share the laden Force; 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.
The Enigma’s knot is tied in human kind.
A
lightning from the heights that think and plan,
Arrived
from some half-luminous Beyond 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.
Heaven’s
fixed regard beholds him from above, 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.
Against
his spirit all is in dire league,
Around
him hungers the unpitying Void, 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.
An
inert Soul and a somnambulist Force 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.
His
day is a moment in perpetual Time;
Assailed
on earth and unassured of heaven, 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.
He
has forgotten why he has come and whence; 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.
A strange antinomy is his nature’s rule.
A
riddle of opposites is made his field: 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.
All
sides he sees and turns to every call; 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.
Always
he builds, but finds no constant ground, 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.
The
light his soul has brought his mind has lost; 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.
He has hitched his mortal error to Truth’s star.
Wisdom
attracts him with her luminous masks, 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.
Assigned
to meet the cosmic mystery 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.
Awakened
from her lower driven forms 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.
Illumining
breath to think and plasm to feel, 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.
A
mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth 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.
Even
when a glory of wisdom crowns his brow, 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.
A
thaumaturge sceptic of miracles, 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.
Thus has he missed creation’s absolute.
Halfway
he stops his star of destiny: 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.
In
an ill-fitting and voluminous robe 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.
Because
the human instrument has failed, 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.
His
failure is not failure whom God leads; 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?
However
man’s mind may tire or fail his flesh, 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.
It must live on, describe all Time’s huge curve.
An
Influx presses from the closed Beyond 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.
A
Light there is that leads, a Power that aids; 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.
The
high gods look on man and watch and choose
His
transience trembles with the Eternal’s touch, 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.
A
Splendour sullied by the mortal air, 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.
His
mind is crossed by strange discovering fires, 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.
He
lays his hands sometimes on the Unknown;
A
strange and grandiose symbol was his birth 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.
In
him the Earth-Mother sees draw near the change 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.
Adept
of the self-born unfailing line,
A
witness to God’s parley with the Night 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.
Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
Cease
not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast, 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.
Traveller
upon the bare eternal heights, 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.
Let
not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Only
one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand; 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.
Above
blind fate and the antagonist powers 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.
August and sweet sank hushed that mighty Voice.
Nothing
now moved in the vast brooding space:
But
Aswapathy’s heart replied to her, 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 content with mortal days 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?
Hard is the doom to which thou bindst thy sons!
How
long shall our spirits battle with the Night 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?
Or
if it is thy work I do below 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.
A
plan in the occult eternal Mind 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.
Huge
revolutions of life’s fruitless gyre, 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
little the strength that now with us is born,
In
a brute world that knows not its own sense, 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.
A
foiled immortal soul in perishing limbs, 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.
In
anguish we labour that from us may rise 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.
I know that thy creation cannot fail.
For
even through the mists of mortal thought 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.
All
life is fixed in an ascending scale 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.
This
strange irrational product of the mire,
I
know there shall inform the inconscient cells, 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’s cell.
Abandoning
the tardy limp of the hours 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.
Overpassed
were the leaden formulas of the Mind,
A
giant dance of Shiva tore the past, 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.
I
saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers 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.
I
saw them cross the twilight of an age, 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.
Into
the fallen human sphere they came, 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.
High
priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss, 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.
Although
Fate lingers in the high Beyond 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.
Even
as of old man came behind the beast 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.
Inheritor
of the toil of human time 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
unchanged weighs still the imperfect world; 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.
O
Truth defended in thy secret sun, 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.
O
radiant fountain of the world’s delight 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.
One
moment fill with thy eternity,
Immortal,
treading the earth with mortal feet 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.
Omnipotence,
girdle with the power of God
Let
a great word be spoken from the heights 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.
His
prayer sank down in the resisting Night
But
there arose a wide consenting Voice; 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.
“O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One
shall descend and break the iron Law,
A
limitless Mind that can contain the world, 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.
All
mights and greatnesses shall join in her; 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.
A
music of griefless things shall weave her charm; 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.
She
shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom, 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 shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour, 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.
As
a flame disappears in endless Light
An
echo of delight that once was close, 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.
Her
form retreated from the longing earth
Lone,
brilliant, vacant lay the inner fields; 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.
Then
a line moved on the far edge of calm:
Unlocked
was the deep glory of Silence’ heart; 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.
Eternity
Cast down its incommunicable lids 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.
Across
the light of fast-receding planes
A
chariot of the marvels of the heavens 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.
The mortal stir received him in its midst.
Once
more he moved amid material scenes, 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.
The
eternal seeker in the aeonic field
Awake
beneath the ignorant vault of Night, 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.
A
wanderer from the occult invisible suns
The
Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds 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.
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