Works of Sri Aurobindo

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Book-6-Study-Canto-2

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Book Six. The Book of Fate

Canto I    Canto II           


 

Book Six: Canto II

The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain


Summary
After an initial silence following the terrible message of Fate from Narad, the queen questions in anguish:

O seer, what is the truth of this mystery of grief and pain? Why is it necessary? Why did God have to make this cruel law? Or is it that some disastrous Power has interfered with his work and he is helpless? Our life itself is born in pain and cry. Lethal forces are found within ourselves. We are like a besieged fort. Some curse is laid on man. The dualities are imposed on him from the very start. Every step is a snare, and errors and miseries multiply.

Man turns out to be his own worst foe. His science builds up his doom. He learns nothing from Time and history. What is the purpose of his existence here? What made the immortal spirit, his soul, come down to this scene of sorrow and pain from its home of bliss? Is there no Being watching and helping this movement of life on earth? Or is it only some hard Necessity that enforces its rule on everything here? Is this all a giant illusion?

Narad replies after a silence:

Is the sun a dream because there is night? Hidden in the secret chamber of thy soul there dwells the Eternal. Thy thought hides him from thee. It is because earth’s joys shut thee from the Immortal’s bliss that the need of Pain and suffering arose. Without undergoing pain there cannot be joy in this world of Ignorance. Pain is the hammer of the gods to break the resistance in the mortal’s heart. Without this pressure his soul would remain content, at ease. Till man is freed, pain is inevitable. He who would save the world must share its pain. That is the law for the incarnate God, The Cross and the stake are his lot.

A concealed dark hostility is lodged in the depths of earthly existence and that opposes the world’s march at every step. This is the Adversary that has to be fought in a hundred ways in as many places. He misleads, deforms and defeats. Man must overcome this hidden foe.

The task of the world redeemer is hard; the world he comes to save, itself becomes his adversary. Man refuses to accept him; only a few are saved. Tilt the Evil is slain, the labour must go on. One who will accomplish this high task may yet come. He will invade the last posts of Ignorance and Inconscience with the undying Light of God and conquer Matter’s sleep. Then only shall his task be done.

Till then man must bear the law of pain. He must lean for support on Heaven’s strength. Man should not attempt to storm the gates of heaven by the violence of the titan. The titan’s way leads to destruction. Suffering is not the end; bliss is the crown. Bliss is the stuff underlying all that lives. It is the soul itself that has chosen this adventure of the Abyss and Ignorance. Out of its blissful felicity it has come to taste the marvel and the infinite possibility of the Unknown. This vast disguise conceals a Play of the Eternal’s Bliss.

Then asks Aswapathy:

Is fate all? Is the spirit ruled by the outward world? Has no Power come with Savitri which is as potent as Fate?

Narad replies ambiguously:

The ways of mortals may look like random movements, but their least stumblings are foreseen above. All the curves of life are pre-drawn. Heaven’s love oversees all the strife and struggle below. Man thinks in fragments and misses the whole Truth. He mistakes Possibility far Chance; misreads the results of an all-wise Force for the links in a chain of Necessity. The Will of God working in Time appears to him as Fate. Man can really know the truth and be free only if his will could be made one with God’s, if his thought could be in tune with the thoughts of God. Even now man’s mind can receive God’s light and his force be driven by God’s force. Only by so doing, can man rise to be Nature’s king.

It is decreed that Satyavan must die; the hour is fixed and also the fatal stroke. What else is to happen is written in the soul of Savitri. Fate is Truth working itself out in Ignorance. Man can accept his fate or he can refuse. Ultimately Fate is what the spirit of man chooses.

The fate of man is to battle and march Gadward against the invisible host of the Adversary. He has got to advance relentlessly whatever the disasters on the way. At last he shall cross the last borders of Ignorance and arrive on the splendid peaks of God.

Do not mourn that Satyavan must die. His death really commences a greater life for man. All conspires to fulfil God’s secret Plan. The world is not built with random bricks of Chance. Many are the masons obeying the Unseen that have built it. And of these master-builders Savitri is one.

O queen, do not strive any longer to change the secret Will of God. Intervene not between the charged life that is Savitri’s and the mighty Fate that she is facing. She does not need thy help nor any god’s. A day may come when she has to stand alone and fight to save herself and save the world. Do not seek to deflect her from her single will. Leave her to her mighty self and Fate.

Thus Narad speaks and leaves the earthly scene. His luminous body soars and disappears like a receding star in the light of the Unseen.

But still a cry is heard in the Infinite Vasts chanting the anthem of eternal love.


Irrevocable Decree

A silence sealed the irrevocable decree,
The word of Fate that fell from the heavenly lips
Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse
Unless heaven’s will itself could change its course.

The silence that follows seems to seal, as it were, the irreversible word of Fate uttered by the heavenly lips of Narad fixing a doom which no power can change except the will of heaven.

Fate can be changed only by the Higher Will because fate is nothing but the working of that Will.


Questioning Voice

Or so it seemed; yet from the silence rose
One voice that questioned changeless destiny.

A will that strove against the immutable Will,
A mother’s heart had heard the fateful speech
That rang like a sanction to the call of death
And came like a chill close to life and hope.

It looks as if all are silenced by the pronounced doom. But soon out of that silence rises the voice of the queen questioning the fixity of fate. Hers is a will that battles against the unchanging Will behind destiny. The heart of a mother has heard the fateful words, words that sounded as if they sanctioned the demand of death, bringing to a chilly end all life and hope ahead.


Hope Sinks Down

Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire.

She felt the leaden inevitable hand
Invade the secrecy of her guarded soul
And smite with sudden pain its still content
And the empire of her hard-won quietude.

All hope now dies down like a fire that is put out. The queen feels the inescapable iron hand of Fate entering the chamber of her soul and smiting with sudden pain its pervading calm and the quietude she has attained after long labour.


She Falls to Common Level

Awhile she fell to the level of human mind,
A field of mortal grief and Nature’s law
She shared, she bore the common lot of men
And felt what common hearts endure in Time.

For a while the queen is pulled down to the level of the human mind from the state of quietude to which she had arrived. She finds herself in the field of human grief and the law of Nature, she bears the lot of ordinary men and undergoes the struggle and pain that common hearts have to endure in this world subject to the mutations of Time.


Voices Earth’s Question

Voicing earth’s question to the inscrutable power
The queen now turned to the still immobile seer:
Assailed by the discontent in Nature’s depths,
Partner in the agony of dumb driven things
And all the misery, all the ignorant cry,
Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven she spoke.
[1]

Putting earth’s question to the inscrutable Fate, the queen turns to the calm, unmoved seer, Farad.

Agitated by the discontent seething in the depths of Nature, sharing in the agony of the mute, helplessly driven things, their misery and ignorant wail, she speaks as if she personifies all the passion of earth’s sorrow confronting heaven.


[1]Alternative to the passage starting with “Awhile”:

Awhile she lost her spirit’s tranquil poise,
Awhile she shared the lot of common souls
And bore the heavy hand of Death and Time
And felt the anguish in life’s stricken deeps.

Lending her speech to the surface soul on earth
She uttered the suffering in the world’s dumb heart
And man’s revolt against his ignorant fate.

For a while the queen loses the usual calm poise of her spirit and comes down to the level of common men. She bears their load of Death and Time and suffers the anguish in the depths of life under pain. She lends her speech to the surface soul—not the deeper soul—on earth and voices the suffering in the dumb heart of the world and the revolt of man against his ignorant fate.


Why Grief and Pain?

O seer, in the earth’s strange twi-natured life,
By what pitiless adverse Necessity
Or what cold freak of a Creator’s will,
By what random accident or governed Chance
That shaped a rule out of fortuitous steps,
Made destiny from an hour’s emotion, came
The direr mystery of grief and pain?

O seer, how did this dreadful mystery of grief and pain arise in this earth-life of dualities? What caused it to be? Some relentless Necessity? Some callous freak of God’s will? Some accident? Or some regulated chance that has constructed a rule out of casual steps, shaped a destiny from some brief passing emotions?


Who made this Cruel Law?

Is it thy God who made this cruel law?

Or some disastrous Power has marred his work
And he stands helpless to defend or save?

A fatal seed was sown in life’s false start
When evil twinned with good on earthly soil.

Who made this cruel law of grief and pain? Is it thy God who has done so? Or is it some calamitous Power that has intervened and spoilt God’s work and God has been helpless against it? Indeed it was a fatal seed that was sown at the very start of life—a false start—when evil was allowed to join with good on this soil of earth.


Malady of Mind

Then first appeared the malady of mind,
Its pang of thought, its quest for the aim of life.

It twisted into forms of good and ill
The frank simplicity of the animal’s acts;

The first result of this fatal seed was the emergence of the disease of mind with its pang of thought and its searching for the goal of life. Before this human mind appeared. there was a direct simplicity in the actions of the animal creation. It was this mind that gave a twist to that simplicity by bringing into being the dualities of good and evil.


Straight Path Turned into Zigzag

It turned the straight path hewn by the body’s gods,
Followed the zigzag of the uncertain course
Of life that wanders seeking for its aim
In the pale starlight falling from thought’s skies;
It guides the unsure idea, the wavering will.

The material body had its direct way of fulfilling its needs before this mind interfered and turned that straight path into a zigzag and unsure course of life which wanders searching for its objective in the dim wavering light thrown by the mind’s thought. It is the mind that guides the uncertain idea and the will that is unsteady.


Instinct Lost

Lost was the instinct’s safe identity
With the arrow-point of being’s inmost sight,
Marred the sure steps of Nature’s simple walk
And truth and freedom in the growing soul.

Before the mind appeared and introduced its uncertainty into life, there was the safety of instinct; this instinct was always one with the direct intuitive perception in the depths of the being. But all this was lost with the interference of the mind. Marred also was the sure course of primitive Nature and the truth and freedom that had reigned in the growing soul. The mind brought in uncertainty, falsehood and constriction.


Life born in Pain

Out of some ageless innocence and peace,
Privilege of souls not yet betrayed to birth,
Cast down to suffer on this hard dangerous earth

Our life was born in pain and with a cry. ‘ From some eternal innocence and peace, a state that is natural to souls not yet condemned to birth in this world, our life was cast down on this hard, dangerous earth to suffer. We come to birth with a cry of pain.


A Thousand Ills Assail

Although earth-nature welcomes heaven’s breath
Inspiring Matter with the will to live,
A thousand ills assail the mortal’s hours
And wear away the natural joy of life;

Although this earth-nature welcomes the creative breath of heaven which activises Matter with the will to live, countless ills invade mortal life and break down the joy that is natural to it.


Ransom of our high Estate

Our bodies are an engine cunningly made,
But for all its parts as cunningly are planned,
Contrived ingeniously with demon skill
Its apt inevitable heritage
Of mortal danger and peculiar pain,
Its payment of the tax of Time and Fate,
Its way to suffer and its way to die.

This is the ransom of our high estate,
The sign and stamp of our humanity.

Our body is an engine skillfully made, but with equal skill and demoniacal ingenuity the heritage of death and special pain are imposed upon it. It has to pay its due to Time and Fate, undergo suffering and ultimately die.

This is the price we have to pay for the high soul-destiny which we carry. This is the badge of our humanity.


Maladies

A grisly company of maladies
Come, licensed lodgers, into man’s bodily house,
Purveyors of death and torturers of life.

A fearsome host of maladies approach—all authorised to make their home in the body of man. They inflict untold tortures on life and bring death in their wake.


Waiting for their Hour

In the malignant hollows of the world,
In its subconscient cavern-passages
Ambushed they lie waiting their hour to leap,
Surrounding with danger the sieged city of life:
Admitted into the citadel of man’s days
They mine his force and maim or suddenly kill.

These ills hide themselves in the evil hideouts and ill-lit passages of the world waiting for their hour to strike; they lay siege to our life surrounding it with danger on all sides. Once they get in or are somehow admitted into the fortress of man’s life, they undermine his force, weaken or mutilate him or kill him suddenly.


Lethal Forces within us

Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse;
We make of our own enemies our guests:
Out of their holes like beasts they creep and gnaw
The chords of the divine musician’s lyre
Till frayed and thin the music dies away
Or crashing snaps with a last tragic note.

We nurse deathly forces within ourselves we admit and cherish as our guests what are really our enemies. Like beasts out of their holes these dangerous elements move surreptitiously and gnaw at the strings of the soul’s harp till the chords are worn out and the music fades away or with a loud crash they snap on a final note that is truly tragic.


Like a Fort Beset

All that we are is like a fort beset:
All that we strive to be alters like a dream
In the grey sleep of Matter’s ignorance.

Mind suffers lamed by the world’s disharmony
And the unloveliness of human things.

We are like a fort under siege. Whatever we try to become changes like a dream in the dull sleep of Matter in ignorance; we do not succeed, subjected as we are to the constant pulls of the sub-conscient and the inconscient in Matter.

The disharmony in the world and the sordid nature of human circumstances tell upon the mind; it gets weakened and suffers.


Life (I)

A treasure misspent or cheaply, fruitlessly sold
In the bazar of a blind destiny,
A gift of priceless values from Time’s gods
Lost or mislaid in an uncaring world,

Life is a priceless gift from the Gods; but it is either little used or ill-spent; it is wasted in the mart of blind destiny; it is either last or mislaid in a world that cares nothing about what happens to it. Life is indeed a wonder that is missed, a fine art that has got twisted.


Life (II)

A seeker in a dark and obscure place,
An ill-armed warrior facing dreadful odds,
An imperfect worker given a baffling task,
An ignorant judge of problems Ignorance made,
Its heavenward flights reach closed and keyless gates,
Its glorious outbursts peter out in mire.

Life is an indefatigable seeker in this dark and obscure place that is our world; an ill-equipped warrior ranged against fearful odds; an imperfect worker assigned a difficult task; an ignorant judge called upon to deal with problems thrown up by Ignorance. All the upward soarings of life are baffled by doors that remain shut; all its glorious break-outs peter out in mud, end in nothing.


Curse on Nature’s Gifts

On Nature’s gifts to man a curse was laid.

All walks inarmed by its own opposites,
Error is the comrade of our mortal thought,
And falsehood lurks in the deep bosom of truth,
Sin poisons with its vivid flowers of joy
Or leaves a red scar burnt across the soul;
Virtue is a grey bondage and a gaol.

Man is indeed given many gifts by Mother-Nature, but on all of them there is a curse. Everything is paired with its opposite. Human thought is accompanied by error, truth carries falsehood in its formation, joy bears the seed of sin which poisons or burns and leaves its red scar on the soul. Even virtue turns out to be a dull slavery and a prison house; it does not allow progress beyond itself.


Our roots in Nescience

At every step is laid for us a snare.

Alien to reason and the spirit’s light,
Our fount of action from a darkness wells;
In ignorance and nescience are our roots.

A trap is laid for us at every step in our journey. The source of our impulsion to action lies in a darkness which is foreign and contrary to the mind’s reason and the spirit’s light. Our roots are found in ignorance and nescience.


Register of Calamities

A growing register of calamities
Is the past’s account, the future’s book of Fate:
The centuries pile man’s follies and man’s crimes
Upon the countless crowd of Nature’s ills;

The past is nothing but an unending, list of calamities; they constitute as well our book of Fate in the future to come. Nature’s contribution of ills is huge enough; to that is added, down the centuries, the pile of man’s unconscious follies and conscious crimes.


Tragic Harvest

As if the world’s stone load was not enough,
A crop of miseries obstinately is sown
By his own hand in the furrows of the gods,
The vast increasing tragic harvest reaped
From old misdeeds buried by oblivious Time.

As though the oppressive load of the world’s ills were not enough, man deliberately sows in the field readied by the gods for him, a veritable crop of miseries. His own wrongs are seeds from which in due time, when he has forgotten his old misdeeds, he reaps the large tragic harvest he himself has sown.


His own worst Foe

He walks by his own choice into hell’s trap;
This mortal creature is his own worst foe.

His science is an artificer of doom;
He ransacks earth for means to harm his kind;
He slays his happiness and others’ good.

Man walks into the trap of hell by his own choice; he does not need to be enticed into it. In truth the human creature is his own enemy, more than any other. His science prepares for doom. He looks everywhere l/J find weapons to harm his fellows. He kills his own happiness and deNtroys the good of others.


Old forms of Evil Cling

Nothing has he learnt from time and its history;
Even as of old in the raw youth of Time,
When earth ignorant ran on the highways of Fate,
Old forms of evil cling to the world’s soul:

Man has indeed learnt nothing from history. Things are very much the same now as they were of old when earth Life was still ignorant and feeling its way on the roads of Time. The same old forms of evil still cling to the world’s soul even today.


Idiot hour Destroys

War making nought the sweet smiling calm of life,
Battle and rapine, ruin and massacre
Are still the fierce pastimes of man’s warring tribes;
An idiot hour destroys what centuries made,
His wanton rage or frenzied hate lays low
The beauty and greatness by his genius wrought
And the mighty output of a nation’s toil.

War shatters the sweet calm of life. Men still enjoy and indulge in battle and plunder, ruin and killings. One hour of such idiocy destroys what it has taken centuries to build. Man’s wild rage or violent hate brings down the beauty and greatness created by his genius, and the mighty result of the nation’s labour.


Self-made Misery

All he has achieved he drags to the precipice.

His grandeur he turns to an epic of doom and fall;
His littleness crawls content through squalor and mud,
He calls heaven’s retribution on his head,
And wallows in his self-made misery.

Man drags to the brink of ruin whatever he has achieved. He turns his glory to a saga of and fall. His small nature is content to crawl and grovel in a degraded life of squalor and dirt. His actions evoke retribution from the Gods. He wallows in the misery he has himself created.


Part author of Cosmic Tragedy

A part author of the cosmic tragedy,
His will conspires with death and time and fate.

His brief appearance on the enigmaed earth
Ever recurs, but brings no high result
To this wanderer through the aeon-rings of God
That shut his life in their vast longevity.

Man is partly responsible for this cosmic tragedy; his will joins the elements of death, time and fate in effecting this tragedy. He is born again and again to live for short periods on this mysterious earth, but with no great result. He wanders in the aeonic rounds of God whichhold his life in their vast duration.


All an Episode

His soul’s wide search and ever returning hopes
Pursue the useless orbit of their course
In a vain repetition of lost toils
Across a track of soon forgotten lives.

All is an episode in a meaningless tale.

His soul’s quest is wide and unending; his disappointed hopes constantly revive. But his labour is a waste of futile repetition. His lives fade into quick oblivion.All his efforts turn out to be just an episode in a tale without issue.


Whence this Sterile Interlude

Why is it all and wherefore are we here?

If to some being of eternal bliss
It is our spirit’s destiny to return
Or some still impersonal height of endless calm,
Since That we are and out of That we came,
Whence rose the strange and sterile interlude
Lasting in vain through interminable Time?

Why does all this happen, for what purpose are we here? If it is the destiny of our soul to return to some being of eternal bliss or to some impersonal, eternal Peace above,—since ultimately we are That and have come from That—from where has arisen this strange and barren interlude [1] which lasts endlessly in time ?


[1]Between the felicities of our Source and End.


What need had the Soul?

Or if these beings must be and their brief lives,
What need had the soul of ignorance and tears?

Whence rose the call for sorrow and for pain?

Or all came helplessly without a cause?

What power forced the immortal spirit to birth?

Even if man must live through transient lives here on earth, where is the need of all this ignorance and sorrow for the immortal soul? Whence this call for misery and pain? Is it that all souls were simply precipitated here without any cause as such? What is the Power that compelled the immortal spirit to take mortal birth?


Deathless Sojourner

The eternal witness once of eternity,
A deathless sojourner mid transient scenes
He camps in life’s half-lit obscurity
Amid the debris of his thoughts and dreams.

This immortal spirit was once the timeless witness of eternity. Deathless, he stays for a while in these transient scenes, pitches his camp in the obscurity of life in the midst of the fallen debris of his once high thoughts and glorious dreams.


Who Persuaded it to Fall?

Or who persuaded it to fall from bliss
And forfeit its immortal privilege?

Who laid on it the ceaseless will to live
A wanderer in this beautiful, sorrowful world,
And bear its load of joy and grief and love?

Who persuaded the soul to fail from its innate bliss and give up its high privilege of immortality? Who forced on it the incessant will to live here as a wanderer in this sorrowful—yet beautiful—world and carry its burden of joy, grief and love?


A Great Illusion

Or if no being watches the works of Time,
What hard impersonal Necessity
Compels the vain toil of brief living things?

A great Illusion then has built the stars.

But where then is the soul’s security,
Its poise in this circling of unreal suns?

If there is no God watching the career of this earth-life, there must be some impersonal Law which compels all this vain toil on these transient creatures. What Law of Necessity is that ?

Perhaps a grand Illusion has built this universe. Where, in that case, is there tiny security for the soul which is cast in this circling movement of suns that are themselves unreal ?


Soul Only a Dream ?

Or else it is a wanderer from its home
Who strayed into a blind alley of Time and chance
And finds no issue from a meaningless world.

Or where begins and ends Illusion’s reign?

Perhaps the soul we feel is only a dream,
Eternal self a fiction sensed in trance.”

Or maybe the soul has strayed away from its home in the Eternal and finds itself in this world of Time and chance which has no outlet but ends in an impasse. It sees no meaning in it whatever.Where begins the domain of Illusion and where does it end ? Could it be that what we feel as the soul is only a dream and what we perceive as the eternal self is only a myth thrown up in trance?


Narad Replies

Then after a silence Narad made reply:
Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,
And something now of the deep sense of fate
Weighted the fragile hints of mortal speech.

A silence follows after which Narad replies. His lips which are normally accustomed to celestial sound have first to he tuned to earthly sound before he proceeds to speak. And as he speaks, something of the profound feeling of Fate is expressed in the frail hints of human speech.


His Revealing Look

His forehead shone with vision solemnised,
Turned to a tablet of supernal thoughts
As if characters of an unwritten tongue
Had left in its breadth the inscriptions of the gods.

Bare in that Light Time toiled, his unseen works
Detected, the broad-flung far-seeing schemes
Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls
Were mapped already in that world-wide look:

Ilis forehead glows with a shining vision. It becomes a veritable tablet of heavenly thoughts which appear like the strange hieroglyphs of the gods inscribed on its broad surface. In that luminous world-embracing book of Narad the unseen toils of Time are caught sight of; mapped out are the broad-based and far-sighted schemes of Time still unfinished and yet to be worked out.


Marvellous Guest

Was then the sun a dream because there is night?

Hidden in the mortal’s heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,
A light shines there nor pain nor grief can cross.

A darkness stands between thyself and him,
Thou canst not hear or feel the marvellous Guest,
Thou canst not see the beatific sun.

Would you deny the existence of the sun simply because there comes the night when the sun is not ? The sun is there, only you do not see him then.

In the heart of the mortal, the Eternal dwells but is hidden to sight; he is there concealed in the inner chambers of thy soul. In that chamber shines a light that cannot be dimmed by pain or grief. But a darkness intervenes between thee and the divine Inhabitant within, as a result of which thou canst not hear or feel that marvelous Guest—the Guest immortal in the mortals, thou canst not see that sun of felicity.


Thy Thought Tides

O queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,
Its brilliant curtain hides from thee God’s face.

It illumines a world born from the Inconscience,
But hides the Immortal’s meaning in the world.

Thy mind’s light hides from thee the Eternal’s thought,
Thy heart’s hopes hide from thee the Eternal’s will,
Earth’s joys shut from thee the Immortal’s bliss.

O queen, thy thought is but a radiation of thy Ignorance, it only acts as a brilliant curtain that serves to hide God’s face from thee.

Thy thought throws light on this world which has emerged from Inconscience but conceals the purpose planted in it by the Immortal Creator.

Thy mind sheds some light through its thought, but that very thought by its activity veils from thee the Eternal’s thought which alone knows. Thy heart’s h4-pes and emotions, by their agitation, hide from thee the Eternal’s Will which alone fulfils itself. So too the petty transient joys of the earth, by their frothy excitement, keep away from thee the underlying bliss of the Immortal which alone is undying.


Pain, Dread Teacher

Thence rose the need of a dark intruding god,
The world’s dread teacher, the creator, pain.

Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come;
Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;

It is because of this separation from the Immortal’s Bliss, from the Eternal’s Thought and Will, that pain had to be born to force man to awake and to compel him to strive for the higher truths, Where there is Ignorance, suffering has to come to work it out, otherwise man tends to stay put, stagnate in it without trying to get over it. Pain forces him to take steps to tackle the roots of suffering—Ignorance. Pain is thus a dread teacher, initiator of a new movement. What thou callest grief is really a plaintive call of darkness to the Light above.


Pain Born of Inconscience

Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience
Which was thy body’s dumb original base;
Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:
A shadow in a shadowy tenebrous womb,
Till life shall move, it waits to wake and be.

From the Inconscience, which is the mute first base of thy body, is born pain. The source of pain is absence of consciousness. For it is only in unconsciousness that there is division from the truth and this division causes pain.

In that obscure dark womb of the Inconscience, pain is already there, dormant, a shadow which waits for the movement of life in order to stir and become active. With the outbreak of life and sensation, the vibration of pain becomes tangible.


Joy, Twin of Pain

In one caul with joy came forth the dreadful Power.

In life’s breast it was born hiding its twin;
But pain came first, then only joy could be.

This dreadful Power of pain emerges along with its companion, joy; when it appears in the heart of life it hides its twin, joy. Pain comes first and makes possible the coming of joy in its wake.


Pain Ploughs

Pain ploughed the first hard ground of the world-drowse.

By pain a spirit started from the clod,
By pain Life stirred in the subliminal deep.

It is pain that first breaks up the hard ground of the Inconscience, disturbs the heavy sleep of the material world. Pain awakes the spirit dormant in the soil of Matter and sets astir Life in the subtler depths of this existence.


Mind

Interned, submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance
Awoke to itself the dreamer, sleeping Mind;
It made a visible realm out of its dreams,
It drew its shapes from the subconscient depths,
Then turned to look upon the world it had made.

Mind, the dreamer, dormant and imprisoned in the depths of tranced Matter, awakes (after the stir of life). It weaves an apparent dominion out of its own dreams, drawing patterns from the subconscient depths and then poises itself to regard its creation as original.


The Inanimate Perceives its Soul

By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,
The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,
Else had the Inconscient never suffered change.

Without the presence and interaction of pain and joy the Inconscient would never have undergone all this change. It is due to these inseparable twins—dark and bright — of pain and joy, that this inanimate world has become aware of its conscious soul.


Pain is the Hammer

Pain is the hammer of the gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone.

If the heart were not forced to want and weep,
His soul would have lain down content, at ease,
And never thought to exceed the human start
And never learned to climb towards the Sun.

There is a hard, unyielding resistance to movement and change in the heart of man, a dull inertia as if he were a living stone. The gods—the Powers f Formation—use pain as their hammer to break this resistance.

If man’s heart were not thus forced to feel its need and suffer, his soul would have been content to remain passive, quiescent; it would never have thought of striving to go beyond the human starting point and learning to ascend towards the Sun of the Spirit,


Earth in Labour

This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;
Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;
The centuries end, the ages vainly pass
And yet the godhead in her is not born.

This earth is in continuous labour, suffering pangs of birth without break across the centuries and ages; the godhead of which it would be delivered is still not born.


Labour of the Gods

The ancient Mother faces all with joy,
Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;
For with pain and labour all creation comes.

This earth is full of the anguish of the gods;
Ever they travail driven by Time’s goad,
And strive to work out the eternal will
And shape the life divine in mortal forms.

The ancient Mother-Earth faces all tribulations with joy; she even welcomes the pangs of birth which give her a mighty thrill. For on the heels of pain and labour, new creation follows and Earth is avid of new and newer formations.

The earth is full of the struggle and pain of the Powers that build; these are the gods who work incessantly under the irresistible impulsion of Time. They labour in order to work out and fulfil the Will of the Divine; and that Will is to achieve the immortal, divine life in the mortal forms that people this Earth.


Spirit Doomed to Pain

His will must be worked out in human breasts
Against the Evil that rises from the gulfs,
Against man’s ignorance and his obstinate strength,
Against the deep folly of his human mind,
Against the blind reluctance of his human heart.

The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free.

The Divine’s will must be worked out in man. But it is faced with the opposition of the Cosmic Evil rising from the depths of the universal Ignorance and Inconscience. It is opposed also by the individual ignorance of man, the unyielding strength of persistence in his vital, the endless folly of his mind, the blind unwillingness of his heart to change.

This struggle of the spirit and its attendant pain has to continue till man is liberated from these lower bondages which keep him tied to mortality.


Men Die that Man may Live

There is a clamour of battle, a tramp, a march:
A cry arises like a moaning sea,
A desperate laughter under the blows of death,
A doom of blood and sweat and toil and tears.

Men die that man may live and God be born.

An awful Silence watches tragic Time.

This struggle takes the form of clash and battle between the hosts of Ignorance and Darkness and those of Knowledge and Light. There is bloodshed, misery and death. But the strife continues. Men sacrifice themselves and die so that mankind may live on and progress towards godhood.All these tragic events in time are watched by a profound Silence which is of the Spirit.


Pain Hand of Nature

Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.

Thus pain is really the hand of Nature shaping men into greater beings. The human is an unwilling material upon which Nature works with skill; the process is indeed painful and may appear cruel, but it is a deliberate cruelty with a lofty motive.


Demiurges Work

Implacable in the passion of their will,
Lifting the hammers of titanic toil
The demiurges of the universe work;
They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons
Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.

The creative Powers of the universe are at their titanic toil with an .undiminishing intensity of will; they build with their characteristic giant strokes of hammer humanity is marked with this huge fiery stamp.


Fiery Spirit Grows

Although the shaping god’s tremendous touch
Is torture unbearable to mortal nerves,
The fiery spirit grows in strength within
And feels a joy in every titan pang.

The mighty action of the shaping god is indeed a painful torture that mortal nerves find unbearable. But the ardent spirit within man—the soul grows stronger with every such stroke and thrills with joy to every mighty pang caused by it.


Saviour must Share the Pain

He who would save himself lives bare and calm;
He who would save the race must share its pain:

This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge. . He who strives for his individual liberation may live alone by himself and in calm. But he who seeks to free the whole human race from bondage has got to share the pains of all. Whoever is moved by this great, noble urge to save humanity shall realise this compulsive truth.


Must Bear Man’s Burden

The great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time’s shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain:
They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,
On their shoulders they must bear man’s load of fate.

All great beings who come on earth to save this world in distress and free it from thraldom to the yoke of Time and Necessity, must undergo the grief and pain of the world. They are caught by the very Wheel of life and death they had hoped to break; they are obliged to bear personally man’s burden of Fate which they have come to lighten.


Son of God (I)

Heaven’s riches they bring, their sufferings count the price
Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.

The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead’s debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind
His will has bound to death and struggling life
That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.

They bring to earth the treasures of Heaven and pay for them with their own sufferings; they bring the gift of Knowledge and they pay for it with their lives.

Christ, the Son of God, took birth as the Son of Man to save the world. Ile had to drink the bitter cup of earthly suffering. As the Son of God, he took upon himself to pay the debt that God owes to the human kind for having bound it with his will to death and struggle, to a life that thirsts in vain for rest and eternal peace.


Son of God (II)

Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.

The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.

That debt of God has now been paid and the original account squared. With the Eternal taking on suffering in his human form, salvation to all has been assured under his signature in blood. He has opened to man the doors of his eternal peace.


Son of God (III)

The Deity compensates the creature’s claim,
The Creator bears the law of pain and death;
A retribution smites the incarnate God.

His love has paved the mortal’s road to Heaven:
He has given his life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance.

God makes good the claims of the suffering creature. He who has created all this undergoes the law of pain and death to which his creatures are subjected. Retribution comes to the embodied God in the form of suffering and death.

With his love he has laid the mortal’s path to Heaven. With the sacrifice of his life and light he has balanced the dark account of the ignorance that is imposed upon the mortals.


Son of God (IV)

It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God’s martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man’s soul is nailed;
His escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right’s acknowledgment;
Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.

God has offered his body in utter sacrifice on behalf of the world; that sacred martyrdom is over. He himself had to carry the heavy cross on which his body was nailed, the cross of suffering to which the soul of man is tied. Gethsemane (the rock agony) and Golgotha (site of the crucifixion) were his share. He was accompanied by the curses of the ignorant crowd; all that his truth and right evoked were the insults and jeers from those around. His great death was deliberately mocked at by the killing of two common thieves alongside of him.


Son of God (V)

He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour’s way.

He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light.

His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.

He walked the Saviours road with bleeding brow. That was the penalty for choosing the path of the Saviour of the world. He realised his oneness with God; and for this vast light gained by his soul, he paid with the death of his body. His immortal Knowledge triumphed but he had to die in the process.


Son of God (VI)

Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls
His crucified voice proclaims, “I, I am God;”
“Yes, all is God,” peals back Heaven’s deathless call.

As he fell from the cross, his body was cut up into four, and his crucified voice declared that he was none else than God Himself. But another voice, the eternal voice of Heaven answered: Yes, thou art God, but all else also is God. See God in all and bear.


God’s Messenger (I)

The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,
The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:
All shall discover God in self and things,
But when God’s messenger comes to help the world
And lead the soul of earth to higher things,
He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;
He too must bear the pang that he would heal:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate,
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?

The seed that is to blossom into Godhead is there dormant in mortal hearts; the flower of Godhead grows steadily on the tree that is the world. All are on the way to discover God in themselves and in the things around. And yet despite the potentiality of godhead being there everywhere—when a messenger of God comes to the earth to help the world and lead the evolving soul of earth upwards, he has to pay a terrible price. He must come under the yoke of the Nature he has come to lift: he must suffer the pain he would remove. If he were not to share and suffer the fate of the earth, how could he hope to cure the ills that he himself has not experienced ? Unless experienced the ills are not real to him and to that extent his cure also is ineffective. Both the disease and the cure are first to be worked out in his own being.


God’s Messenger (II)

He covers the world’s agony with his calm;
But though to the outward eye no sign appears
And peace is given to our torn human hearts,
The struggle is there and paid the unseen price;
The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within.

The messenger of God contains the agony of the world with his innate calm. Outwardly he does not appear to suffer, peace flows from him to the stricken humanity; but behind the veil of appearance there goes on the struggle, he pays the pt-ice. Within him are the burning heat, the strife and the combat.


God’s Messenger (III)

He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his:
Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul;
Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps,
The titan adversary’s clutch he bears;
His march is a battle and a pilgrimage.

He holds and carries the suffering world in his own breast. Its ills press upon his thoughts, its grief becomes his own. The ages-long burden of the earth sits heavy upon his being. His slow and wary steps are besieged by the Darkness and its powers that engulf the world. He has to bear the grip of the titan enemy who is in revolt against God and His Law.

The march of God’s messenger on earth is at once a battle with the elements that oppose and a pilgrimage onwards.


God’s Messenger (IV)

Life’s evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain:
A million wounds gape in his secret heart.

He journeys sleepless through an unending night;
Antagonist forces crowd across his path;
A siege, a combat is his inner life.

The prevailing evil in the world smites him and the pain of the world afflicts him. In his secret heart countless wounds are raw and open. He has to walk through a never ending darkness with unwinking vigilance, for hostile forces gather in their multitude across his path. His inner life is a continuous battle it is always under the siege of the Enemy.


God’s Messenger (V)

Even worse may be the cost, direr the pain:
His large identity and all-harbouring love
Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths,
The sorrow of all living things shall come
And knock at his doors and live within his house;
A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie
All suffering into his single grief and make
All agony in all the worlds his own.

The messenger of God suffers for his daring not only because of the opposition faced by him as an individual, but much more because of the universal aspect of his work. His identification with the whole of humanity and his love encompassing all act as a channel for the anguish of the cosmos to enter into his being. The sorrow of all living creatures knocks at his door and lodges itself in his inner being.

This sympathy with all becomes a fearful cord tying up the suffering of all into a single grief in his heart. It can even compress the agony in all the worlds—not merely in this physical world—into his agony.


God’s Messenger (VI)

He meets an ancient adversary Force,
He is lashed with the whips that tear the world’s worn heart;
The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes:
He wears the blood-glued fiery Centaur’s shirt,
The poison of the world has stained his throat.

The Adversary who has been there from the ancient times confronts him his whip-lashes that tear the tired heart of the world land on him. The grief of the entire past rushes into his eyes, even the bloody sufferings undergone by the brave pre-human species stick to him. The poison that has been generated in the churning of the world leaves a stain on his throat as he drinks it down.


God’s Messenger (VII)

In the market-place of Matter’s capital
Amidst the chafferings of the affair called life
He is tied to the stake of a perennial Fire,
He burns on an unseen original verge
That Matter may be turned to spirit stuff:
He is the victim in his own sacrifice.

Amidst the petty dealings of transient life on earth—the field of Matter — he is tied to the burning stake of perpetual suffering. He burns on a level of being that is unseen and close to the Spirit in order that this Matter may change into Spirit. His coming down and acting here in this world is a veritable sacrifice; it ends by his becoming the victim the oblation of that sacrifice.


God’s Messenger (VIII)

The Immortal bound to earth’s mortality
Appearing and perishing on the roads of Time
Creates God’s moment by eternity’s beats.

The Immortal chooses to get bound to the mortality of the earth in the person of his messenger. And in thus appearing and dying in the passages of Time, he prepares the pregnant moment for the fulfilment of God to the accompaniment of the rhythms of the Eternal.


God’s Messenger (IX)

He dies that the world may be new-born and live.

Even if he escapes the fiercest fires,
Even if the world breaks not in, a drowning sea,
Only by hard sacrifice is high heaven earned:
He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.

He suffers and gives up his life in order that by the consequences of his action the world may get a new birth and live on.

Even if he is spared the worst ordeals, even if the Karma of the whole world does not overwhelm him, still he must make the hard sacrifice of his life; for only so can his high aim be attained.

Anyone who seeks to conquer the hell ()f evil and pain has got to face a combat with the adversary, suffer the pangs of his blows.


Dark Hostility

A dark concealed hostility is lodged
In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time
That claims the right to change and mar God’s work.

There is a dark hostility lying hidden in the depths of the human beings, in the unseen heart of Time. This hostility always claims and asserts a right to interfere with the work of God in this creation, change it and, if possible, ruin it.


**It Stamps Stain

A secret enmity ambushes the world’s march;
It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act:
It stamps stain and defect on all things done;
Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth.

This secret hostility swoops upon the world on its march, leaves its scar on thought, speech and act. It stains and renders defective whatever is done in the world.

This element that opposes and deforms must be destroyed. Till that is done, there can be no real peace on earth.


Unseen Foe

There is no visible foe, but the unseen
Is round us, forces intangible besiege,
Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own
Overtake us and compel the erring heart;
Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net.

Indeed there is no enemy visible to our eyes. But the hostility is all around us: intangible forces are incessantly active waning us in; influences and impacts come on earth from planes other than ours alien thought-movements invade us and well nigh compel our hearts to err. In a word, our lives are enmeshed in an unpredictable uncertainty.


Adversary Force

An adversary Force was born of old:
Invader of the life of mortal man,
It hides from him the straight immortal path.

In the very beginnings was born a Force that is antagonistic to the Divine Intention in this Creation. That Force has invaded the life of mortal man. It veils from him the direct path to the Immortal and leads him astray in many a crooked pathway.


Contrary Power

A power came in to veil the eternal Light,
A power opposed to the eternal will
Diverts the messages of the infallible Word,
Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan:
A whisper lures to evil the human heart,
It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard,
It is the origin of our suffering here,
It binds earth to calamity and pain.

A power intervened in order to hide the Light eternal. This power is opposed to the eternal Will of God and interferes at every step: it gives a wrong direction to the intimations of Truth, the infallible Word; it twists the patterns of the cosmic plan of the Divine Builder; with a whisper it misleads the heart to evil; it blocks the sight of the soul, the eyes of the inner wis


Hidden Foe

This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.

This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.

This is the inner war without escape.

All who hope to bring down the Peace of God into this world of unrest and strife must first conquer this deforming power. Man must subdue this enemy living concealed in his own. being, otherwise he misses his higher destiny. There is no escape from this ,inner war with the hidden foe.


World-Redeemer’s Task

Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
The world itself becomes his adversary,
His enemies are the beings he came to save.

Those he would save are his antagonists:
This world is in love with its own ignorance,
Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,
It gives the cross in payment for the crown.

The heavy task of the world-saviour is hard indeed. The world he comes to redeem, itself opposes him. Those he comes to help turn into his foes, Tie has to suffer the opposition of those he seeks to save.

This world is truly attached to its own ignorance; it will not let it go. The darkness of this world turns its back on the light that comes to help and save. For the crown Of fulfilment that the saviour brings to it, this world returns only bitter suffering.


A Sun has Passed

His work is a trickle of splendour in a long night;
He sees the long march of Time, the little won;
A few are saved, the rest strive on and fail:
A Sun has passed, on earth Night’s shadow falls.

In the enormous long stretch of darkness that covers this world-life, the work of the world-redeemer is but a streak of light. lie covers, indeed, a little of the long march of Time, but what stretches ahead is endless. As a result of his efforts a few are saved, others struggle on but fail.

with his departure. a Sun has passed and Darkness again settles upon the earth.


Sunlit Path

Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun;
But few are they who tread the sunlit path;
Only the pure in soul can walk in light.

An exit is shown, a road of hard escape
From the sorrow and the darkness and the chain;
But how shall a few escaped release the world?

The human mass lingers beneath the yoke.

No doubt there are easier and happier paths that are near to God’s luminous Sun. But those who walk the happy, sunlit paths are few, for one has to be very pure in soul in order to be able to walk in light. And the truly pure are rare.

Of course, there is a way of escaping from the whole round of sorrow, darkness and the chainof ignorance; it is hard, nevertheless it is shown to be possible. But even if a few do manage to escape by this doer of exit, how does it help the world to be free ? The rest of humanity whose number is legion, continues to groan under the yoke.


Escape Cannot Uplift

Escape, however high, redeems not life,
Life that is left behind on a fallen earth.

Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race
Or bring to it victory and the reign of God.

A greater power must come, a larger light.

However lofty the individual escape, it does not deliver the life that is left behind on the earth which has fallen into a state suffering and darkness. The entire race is left abandoned. Escape cannot uplift it in any way, nor can it bring to it victory and the Kingdom of God. For that to be possible. a greater Power, a larger Light than any active so far, has to come.


Work Half-Done

Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes,
Yet till the evil is slain in its own home
And Light invades the world’s inconscient base
And perished has the adversary Force,
He still must labour on, his work half done.

Even though as a result of the Saviour’s labours and the action from Above, the Light extends and the Night recedes on earth, yet there is much to be done. Till that supernal Light invades and strikes the Inconscient from which this world arises and slays the evil rooted there, and destroys the opposing Force, the Saviour has got to strive on: otherwise his task is only half fulfilled


One may yet Come

One yet may come armoured, invincible;
His will immobile meets the mobile hour;
The world’s blows cannot bend that victor head;
Calm and sure are his steps in the growing Night;
The goal recedes, he hurries not his pace,
He turns not to high voices in the Night.

He asks no aid from the inferior gods;
His eyes are fixed on the immutable aim.

Still, some special manifestation of God may come one day, well-armed, unconquerable. His unshakable will shalt confront the mutations of Time. All the blows of the world will not be able to bend that victor’s head. The Night may extend and grow. but his steps will be calm and certain; the goal may recede as he advances, but he will not be impatient and quicken his pace. He will not be decoyed by powerful unknown Voices in the Night: he will not seek the help of inferior deities.

His eyes will always be fixed on the immovable aim before him.


Heaven and Earth his Instruments

Man turns aside or chooses easier paths;
He keeps to the one high and difficult road
That sole can climb to the eternal’s peaks;
The ineffable planes already have felt his tread;
He has made heaven and earth his instruments,
But the limits fall from him of earth and heaven;
Their law he transcends but uses as his means.

The ordinary man turns away from the difficult terrain and takes to easier paths. But the chosen one does not deflect from his high road however difficult; for that alone can lead to the peaks of the Eternal. The occult planes between the earth below and the peaks above have already felt his steps. He has turned both heaven and earth into his handmaids; the limits of earth and heaven do not obtain for him. He transcends their law in himself but uses it as his instrument for the effectuation of his purpose.


Inflexible

He has seized life’s hands, he has mastered his own heart.

The feints of Nature mislead not his sight,
Inflexible his look towards Truth’s far end;
Fate’s deaf resistance cannot break his will.

He has secured control of life; he has assumed mastery over the emotions of his heart. His eye cannot be misled by Nature; his look is always fixed on the goal, the distant Truth. His will cannot be broken by the implacable opposition of Fate.


Invulnerable

In the dreadful passages, the fatal paths,
Invulnerable his soul, his heart unslain,
He lives through the opposition of earth’s Powers
And Nature’s ambushes and the world’s attacks.

His soul is unconquerable, his heart is unslain as he crosses the dangerous passages and paths of sure death. He resists the opposition of powers well-established on earth. survives the sudden blows of hostile Nature and meets the attacks of the ignorant world.


Grapple with Sphinx

His spirit’s stature transcending pain and bliss
He fronts evil and good with calm and equal eyes.

He too must grapple with the riddling Sphinx
And plunge into her long obscurity.

His developed spit-it stands above the touches of pain and joy and hence he is able to face evil and good with calm and equality.

Even he has to come to grips with the mystery of life, meet her unsolved question and delve into the depths of her obscurity.


Into the Inconscient’s Depths

He has broken into the Inconscient’s depths
That veil themselves even from their own regard:
He has seen God’s slumber shape these magic worlds.

He has watched the dumb God fashioning Matter’s frame,
Dreaming the dreams of its unknowing sleep,
And watched the unconscious Force that built the stars.

He has broken into the sealed and unseeing depths of the Inconscient. There he has seen in the tranced sleep of God the shaping of all these worlds that look as if sprung from magic. He has observed how God in his mute spell fashions the Form of Matter. dreams the reveries of the Inconscient’s sleep. He has watched, there the mechanical, somnambulist Force at work building the stars.


Inconscient (I)

He has learnt the Inconscient’s workings and its law,
Its incoherent thoughts and rigid acts,
Its hazard wastes of impulse and idea,
The chaos of its mechanic frequencies,
Its random calls, its whispers falsely true,
Misleaders of the hooded listening soul.

He has studied and known the workings and the law of the Inconscient its thoughts without sequence, its acts that are always unchanging and mechanical, its unsure and meaningless upheavings of impulses and ideas, the chaos of its mechanical repetition, its aimless calls, its promptings that are false but effective enough to mislead the soul that hears from behind its veil.


Inconscient (II)

All things come to its ear but nothing abides;
All rose from the silence, all goes back to its hush.

Its somnolence founded the universe,
Its obscure waking makes the world seem vain.

The Inconscient registers all that happens, but retains nothing for long. From its inarticulate silence all arises and into its hush all sinks back. In the half-sleep of the Inconscient lie the foundations of the universe; its dull and semi-wakeful action makes the world appear purposeless.


Inconscient (III)

Arisen from Nothingness and towards Nothingness turned
Its dark and potent nescience was earth’s start;
It is the waste stuff from which all was made;
Into its deeps creation can collapse.

Its opposition clogs the march of the soul,
It is the mother of our ignorance.

Its nescience arises from Nothingness and towards Nothingness it pulls back. From this dark but potent nescience the earth has begun its career.

The Inconscient is the waste material from which all has been formed, and what has thus been created can sink back into its depths. It is the opposition of this Inconscient that obstructs and slows down the march of the soul. From it is born all Ignorance.


Call Light into Abysms

He must call light into its dark abysms,
Else never can Truth conquer Matter’s sleep
And all earth look into the eyes of God.

All things obscure his knowledge must relume,
All things perverse his power must unknot:
He must pass to the other shore of falsehood’s sea,
He must enter the world’s dark to bring there light.

The Redeemer must bring the Light into the dark abysms of the Inconscient. Otherwise the Divine Truth cannot overcome the !-obscure. sleep of Matter and the earth cannot hope to come face to face with God; Matter and Spirit cannot meet. His knowledge must rekindle all that has become obscure; his power must untie and resolve all perversities. He must reach the nether shore of this expanse of falsehood, enter into the darkest caverns of world-nature in order to bring light there.


Evil must be Bared

The heart of evil must be bared to his eyes,
He must learn its cosmic dark Necessity,
Its right and its dire roots in Nature’s soil.

He must know the thought that moves the demon act
And justifies the Titan’s erring pride
And the falsehood lurking in earth’s crooked dreams:
He must enter the eternity of Night
And know God’s darkness as he knows his Sun.

For this he must go down into the pit,
For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.

He must see evil at its bare core, know its purpose and its dark Necessity in the cosmos, realise its justification to plant its ominous roots in the very soil of Nature. He must know also the thought that is responsible for demoniac movements and justifies the Titan’s pride that errs for ever. He must recognise the falsehood that hides in the crooked dreams of earth.

He must enter the endless Night of obscurity and know intimately the Darkness in Creation even as he knows the light-giving sun. For this purpose he must deliberately plunge into the pit of Inconscience and invade the empire of pain and sorrow.


Light Beyond Darkness of Hell

Imperishable and wise and infinite,
He still must travel Hell the world to save.

Into the eternal Light he shall emerge
On borders of the meeting of all worlds;
There on the verge of Nature’s summit steps
The secret Law of each thing is fulfilled,
All contraries heal their long dissidence.

Though he is immortal. wise and limitless in his consciousness, if he wants to save the world, he must descend into and pass through Hell. He will emerge into the eternal Light that shines on the other side of the Darkness, where all worlds meet. Beyond the nadir of Darkness there are open vistas of Light bordering on the summits of Nature; there is fulfilled the inner law of each and in the process, all opposites find their gulfs healed.


Opposites Meet

There meet and clasp the eternal opposites,
There pain becomes a violent fiery joy;
Evil turns back to its original good,
And sorrow lies upon the breasts of Bliss:
She has learnt to weep glad tears of happiness;
Her gaze is charged with a wistful ecstasy.

There come together and mingle the eternal opposites. Pain is realised to be only a violent intensity of joy. Evil resolves itself into the Good from which it originally issued. Sorrow finds herself on the bosom of Bliss. She sheds happy tears of felicity; in her gaze there is a certain wistful ecstasy—wistful because of all that she has passed through.


End of Pain

Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain.

Earth shall be made a home of Heaven’s light,
A seer heaven-born shall lodge in human breasts;
The superconscient beam shall touch men’s eyes
And the truth-conscious world come down to earth
Invading Matter with the Spirit’s ray
Awaking its silence to immortal thoughts,
Awaking the dumb heart to the living Word.

Then will the Law of Pain cease to exist here on the earth turned into a home of Heaven’s light, while in man shall live the seer heaven-born. The ray of the superconscience shall light up men’s eyes. The truth-conscious world shall descend on earth and invade Matter with the light of the Spirit. striking its dumb silence into awareness of immortal thoughts, awaking its mute heart to the vibrant Word of God.


Bliss and Immortality

This mortal life shall house Eternity’s bliss,
The body’s self taste immortality.

Then shall the world-redeemer’s task be done.

Then will this mortal life be able to hold the bliss of the Eternal—and not before.

Then will the physical share in the divine immortality—and not before.

Only when all this is achieved, will the task of the world-redeemer be completed.


Bear the Law of Pain

Till then must life carry its seed of death
And sorrow’s plaint be heard in the slow Night.

O mortal, bear this great world’s law of pain,
In thy hard passage through a suffering world
Lean for thy soul’s support on Heaven’s strength,
Turn towards high Truth, aspire to love and peace.

Till the world-redeemer brings about this transforming change, life will continue to be pursued by death and the cry of sorrow heard in the Night of darkness that passes so slowly.

O man, till then thou bast to bear the mighty law of pain that governs this world. In thy difficult journey through this world of suffering.


Life a Pilgrimage

A little bliss is lent thee from above,
A touch divine upon thy human days:
Make of thy daily way a pilgrimage,
For through small joys and griefs thou mov’st towards God.

A little of bliss is given to thee from an high; that is a divine touch upon thy human days—the touch that soothes and sustains. Convert thy mechanical daily life into a conscious pilgrimage to God, For through all thy petty joys and griefs thou art surely moving—known or unknown to thee—towards God.


Titan’s Road

Haste not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,
Open not thy doorways to a nameless Power,
Climb not to Godhead by the Titan’s road.

Against the Law he pits his single will,
Across its way he throws his pride of might.

But do not in thy haste to reach God, take the wrong and dangerous road of the Asura, the Titan. Do not open thyself to the hostile undefined Power. The Asura is in revolt against the Divine Law. He challenges it with the pride of his own strength and seeks to interfere with its workings.


He Storm

Heavenward he clambers on a stair of storms
Aspiring to live near the deathless Sun.

He strives with a giant strength to wrest by force
From life and Nature the immortals’ right;
He takes by storm the world and fate and heaven.

The Titan climbs up his stormy path towards heaven hoping to live near the immortal Light_ He labours with his inordinate strength to seize by force from life and Nature the right that belongs to the Gods alone. He assaults forcibly the world, fate and heaven to conquer them for himself.


Stretches his Small Self

He comes not to the high world-maker’s seat,
He waits not for the outstretched hand of God
To raise him out of his mortality.

All he would make his own, leave nothing free,
Stretching his small self to cope with the infinite.

He does not come before the throne of the All-Creator in humility_ He does not wait upon the Grace of God to uplift him from his mortal state. He would like to claim everything for himself, leaving nothing aside; he attempts to contain the vast infinite in his small embrace.


Monopolist

Obstructing the gods’ open ways he makes
His own estate of the earth’s air and light;
A monopolist of the world-energy,
He dominates the life of common men.

His pain and others’ pain he makes his means:
On death and suffering he builds his throne.

Obstructing the free passage of the gods, he claims for himself the air and light of the earth which is meant for all; he seeks to monopolise the world energy, lie spreads his rule over the lives of common men. As a means to his end he utilises pain—be it his own or others’. He erects his empire on the suffering and death caused by his ambition.


Against the Eternal’s Calm

In the hurry and clangour of his acts of might,
In a riot and excess of fame and shame,
By his magnitudes of hate and violence,
By the quaking of the world beneath his tread
He matches himself against the Eternal’s calm
And feels in himself the greatness of a god:
Power is his image of celestial self.

His acts .a might are always hurried and loud: fame and shame vie with each other in their abundance; his life is characterised by inordinate hate and violence; the earth shakes beneath his furious march. In all these ways he sets himself up against the calm of the Eternal and fancies himself to be as great as a god. His conception of godliziod is possession of power.


Sea of Fire and Force

The Titan’s heart is a sea of fire and force;
He exults in the death of things and ruin and fall,
He feeds his strength with his own and others’ pain;
In the world’s pathos and passion he takes delight,
His pride, his might call for the struggle and pang.

He glories in the sufferings of the flesh
And covers the stigmata with the Stoic’s name.

His being is full of burning intensity and force. He rejoices in the destruction and ruin of things. His strength thrives on pain—his own and that of others. He delights in the pathetic tragedies and the fierce passions of the world. His vainglory and might always invite struggle and suffering. He flaunts his physical sufferings and bears pain with a stoic fortitude.


Eves Blinded

His eyes blinded and visionless stare at the sun,
The seeker’s sight receding from his heart
Can find no more the light of eternity;
He sees the beyond as an emptiness void of soul
And takes his night for a dark infinite.

The vision of the seeker withdraws from his heart and the light of Gad is no more for him. With blinded eyes, without vision, he stares blankly at the sun of the Spirit. To him the Beyond is a mere lifeless, soulless Void. He mistakes his own obscure state for a kind of dark infinite.


Little Self as God

His nature magnifies the unreal’s blank
And sees in Nought the sole reality:
He would stamp his single figure on the world,
Obsess the world’s rumours with his single name.

His moments centre the vast universe.

He sees his little self as very God. He exaggerates the vacancy of the unreal and looks upon Nil as the sole reality. He hopes to dominate the whole world and stamp his figure upon it, to fill the world with the sound of his name alone. He makes himself and his life the centre of the vast universe and regards his own small self as the one God.


I’’ Swallows the World

His little “I” has swallowed the whole world,
His ego has stretched into infinity.

His mind, a beat in original Nothingness,
Ciphers his thought on a slate of hourless Time.

His petty ego stretches itself to cover the infinity, as it were, and his ‘ I’ swallows the whole world in its self-importance. His mind, a wave in a primal Nothingness, etches his thought on the surface of some unmoving Time.


His Philosophy of Nothingness

He builds on a mighty vacancy of soul
A huge philosophy of Nothingness.

In him Nirvana lives and speaks and acts
Impossibly creating a universe.

On a foundation void of soul, he constructs a philosophy with Nothingness as the sole Reality. Fie is an embodiment of Nirvana, Negation, which performs the impossible feat of fathering a universe.


Take not the Titan’s Stride

An eternal zero is his formless self,
His spirit the void impersonal absolute.

Take not that stride, O growing soul of man;
Cast not thy self into that night of God.

He conceives of his formless self as an eternal zero—not as the womb of All: he takes his spirit to be a void, an impersonal absolute—not an all-containing Being. O soul of man wir,) art constantly growing, do not copy him. Do nat. throw thyself into the dark state of rejecting {;ed. an attitude the titan chooses.


Suffering not the Key

The soul suffering is not eternity’s key,
Or ransom by sorrow, heaven’s demand on life.

O mortal, bear, but ask not for the stroke,
Too soon will grief and anguish find thee out.

The soul cannot reach the Eternal by mere suffering. Heaven’s demands must be fulfilled. They cannot be substituted by the bearing of sorrow.

O mortal man, bear the stroke of lain when it comes, but do not seek for it. Grief and suffering will soon find thee out without thy having to look for them.


Bliss behind Face of Tears

Too enormous is that venture for thy will;
Only in limits can man’s strength be safe;
Yet is infinity thy spirit’s goal;
Its bliss is there behind the world’s face of tears.

To seek to attain the Eternal by taking on the load of suffering is too great a venture for thy soul. Human strength is safe only as long as it stays within its limits; if it goes beyond, it breaks. Indeed, infinity is the true goal of thy soul; but the way to it is difficult, The bliss of infinity is always there but veiled by the world’s front of pain and tears.


Seal of pain

A power is in thee that thou knowest not;
Thou art a vessel of the imprisoned spark.

It seeks relief from Time’s envelopment,
And while thou shutst it in, the seal is pain:
Bliss is the Godhead’s crown, eternal, free,
Unburdened by life’s blind mystery of pain:

Iii thee there dwells a power. but thou knowest it not: thou holdst within thee a spark that is imprisoned there: it seeks to get free from this containment in ‘rime. As long as thou keepest this spark shut in, thou sufferest pain. Pain is the feature of life. Bliss is natural only for a Godhead that is free, uninvolved in time, freed from the load of pain in the heart of life.


Signature of Ignorance

Pain is the signature of the Ignorance
Attesting the secret god denied by life:
Until life finds him pain can never end.

Pain is the seal and proclamation of Ignorance testifying to the denial of the concealed Godhead by life. As long as life does not discover God there is bound to be pain.


Bliss the Secret Stuff

Calm is self’s victory overcoming fate.

Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.

Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives,
Even pain and grief are garbs of world-delight,
It hides behind thy sorrow and thy cry.

Calm is the unmistakable sign of the self’s conquest of fate. Bear thy pain in calm. Thou shalt surely find thy path to bliss which is truly the secret stuff of which all life is made, There is a Delight underlying this world; pain and grief are its masks. Behind thy sorrow, behind thy cry of pain, there lurks this pervading Delight of God.


World’s Tremendous Touch

Because thy strength is a part and not God’s whole,
Because afflicted by the little self
Thy consciousness forgets to be divine
As it walks in the vague penumbra of the flesh
And cannot bear the world’s tremendous touch,
Thou criest out and sayst that there is pain.

Thou complainest of pain because thy strength is partial, unlike God’s which is whole and unbroken; and because thy consciousness, under the spell of division of thy little self, forgets its divine nature and becomes human in its embodiment in living matter, it is unable to bear the mighty impact of the world outside.

If thy consciousness were whole, unbroken by division of thy separate, little self, then it could meet the tremendous touch of the world without going under. There would be no pain.


Body of God’s Bliss

Indifference, pain and joy, a triple disguise,
Attire of the rapturous Dancer in the ways,
Withhold from thee the body of God’s bliss.

The Divine Player who sports in incessant delight in this manifestation of the universe wears this triple mask of indifference, pain and joy. And this outer appearance conceals from thee the sheer bliss of God running through all life.


Agony into Ecstasy

Thy spirit’s strength shall make thee one with God,
Thy agony shall change to ecstasy,
Indifference deepen into infinity’s calm
And joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute.

It is only when thou summonest the innate strength of thy spirit that thou shalt become one with God. Then will thy pain turn into rapture. indifference into the Calm of the infinite and joy into an uncaused, sheer bliss. All these three perverted and limited expressions will recover their original truth.


Thy Pain

O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;
This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.

O mortal, thou dost complain of death and fate. But why accuse anyone of the harms that thou hast thyself called? Thou hast thyself chosen this afflicted world as thy home. Thou art thyself responsible for thy pain.


Soul Looked Out

Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
The soul looked out from its felicity.

It felt the Spirit’s interminable bliss,
It knew itself deathless, timeless, spaceless, one,
It saw the Eternal, lived in the Infinite.

This is how it has all come to be.

Once the soul in the immortal infinity of the Self, the Vastitudes of Truth, Consciousness and Light, looked out from its felicity. It felt the endless bliss of the Spirit: it knew itself as immortal, eternal, infinite and one: it saw the Eternal and lived in the Infinite.


Truth’s Shadow

Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.

Then it perceived a kind of shadow thrown up by the Truth. And it strained towards that which seemed to be something other than the self; it was attracted to a strange Appearance looking through that shadowy night.


Negative Infinity

It sensed a negative infinity,
A void supernal whose immense excess
Imitating God and everlasting Time
Offered a ground for Nature’s adverse birth
And Matter’s rigid hard unconsciousness
Harbouring the brilliance of a transient soul
That lights up birth and death and ignorant life.

It became aware of an infinity that was negative—unlike the positive infinity of ‘,ts own. This was a Void that looked similar to G id and to eternity and gave room for a contrary birth of Nature and the formation 7f the hard, rigid unconsciousness of Matter in which is lodged the splendour of a fleeting soul that lights up the phenomena of all this birth, death and ignorant life.


Contrary of what Is

A Mind arose that stared at Nothingness
Till figures formed of what could never be;
It housed the contrary of all that is.

There arose a Mind which looked at the confronting Nothingness till out of it were formed shapes of what was not and never could be. It contained all the contraries of whatever is.


A Nought

A Nought appeared as Being’s huge sealed cause,
Its dumb support in a blank infinite,
In whose abysm spirit must disappear:
A darkened Nature lived and held the seed
Of Spirit hidden and feigning not to be.

A Nothing, a zero appeared to be the hidden Cause of the Being, its mute, ultimate base in an infinite Void. a Nought in the depths of which the spirit must dissolve.

A Nature that had become dark. lived and held in itself the seed of Spirit which hid in it and appeared as if it did not exist.


Almighty Inconscient

The eternal Consciousness became the home
Of some unsouled almighty Inconscient;
One breathed no more the spirit’s native air.

Thus in the original eternal Consciousness there formed a huge, formidable Inconseient without a soul. One no more breathed the native air of the Conreious Spirit. There was no Spirit, no Consciousness; it was all an Inconscience.


Attraction to the Abyss

A stranger in the insentient universe,
Bliss was the incident of a mortal hour.

As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:

In this universe of Inconscience, Bliss %vas a stranger—unlike in the eternal Consciousness where it is inalienable—or at best it was a transient phenomenon.

Like one drawn to the majesty of a huge Void, the soul felt an attraction lo the Abyss and leaned to it.


Adventure of Ignorance

It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
And the endless possibility that lurked
In the womb of Chaos and in Nothing’s gulf
Or looked from the unfathomed eyes of Chance.

The soul longed to adventure into the gaping Ignorance and experience the wonder and surprise of the Unknown, the limitless possibilities that hide in the depth of Chaos and in the Chasm of Nothing or showed in the ungauged working of Chance.


Tired of Happiness

It tired of its unchanging happiness,
It turned away from immortality:
It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,
It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain,
Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,
The music of ruin and its glamour and crash,
The savour of pity and the gamble of love
And passion and the ambiguous face of Fate.

The soul bored and tired of the monotony of its unchanging happiness turned away from its state of immortality and was attracted to the Call of Chance and the charm of danger. It longed to enjoy the appealing notes of grief, the drama of pain, the peril of fall and destruction. the thrill of hair-breadth escapes, the sound of ruin and its glittering crash, the taste .of pity, the dice-throw of love and passion and the uncertain turns of Fate.


Call of Adventure

A world of hard endeavour and difficult toil
And battle on extinction’s perilous verge,
A clash of forces, a vast incertitude,
The joy of creation out of Nothingness,
Strange meetings on the roads of Ignorance
And the companionship of half-known souls
Or the solitary greatness and lonely force
Of a separate being conquering its world,
Called it from its too safe eternity.

The soul was moved to leave its safety in eternity – - a safety that was uninteresting—by the thrill of a world of exertion and toil, struggle, battle and danger, a perpetual clash of forces, a held of uncertainty. It was attracted to a world affording the joy of creation out of an apparent Nothingness, providing for unexpected meetings and the temporary companionship, in circumstances of Ignorance, of souls that do not know each other on the surface though they know each other in their depths a world of division where one can live in one’s own separate glory and exercise power to conquer the rest.


Huge Descent

A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
And what the soul imagines is made a world.

With this attraction iind tile response of the soul to this world of pain and suffering there commenced a precipitous descent, a great fall as it were, from its august state. What was perceived as a possibility turned into actuality. For that is what happens when the spirit sees; what is seen becomes a fact. What the soul imagines develops into a world. The visions of the spirit, the broodings of the soul translate themselves into actual truths of existence.


A Thought from the Timeless

A Thought that leaped from the Timeless can become,
Indicator of cosmic consequence
And the itinerary of the gods,
A cyclic movement in eternal Time.

An Idea, a Thought that issues from the Eternal can well form the index of a cosmic unrolling included by the gods in their rounds. This cosmic unrolling seems to be a cyclic movement in a time of uncndin duration


Origin of this World

Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,
This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire’s tents, grief’s headquarters.

A vast disguise conceals the Eternal’s bliss.”

This is the origin of this great, confused and restless world; it is the result of a choice. blind and tremendous, of the Eternal. This is how this world has come to be, this field of Ignorance, this abode of Pain, this camp of desire, this permanent quarters of grief.

But all is a mask, an appearance, a disguise covering the underlying Bliss of the Eternal. Pain and grief are no more than deformations of this Bliss.


What is Fate?

Then Aswapathy answered to the seer:
“Is then the spirit ruled by an outward world?

O seer, is there no remedy within?

But what is fate if not the spirit’s will
After long time fulfilled by cosmic Force?

I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;
Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate?”

Aswapathy asks in reply:

D seer, does then the outer world determine the movements of the inner soul ? Can no remedy for the world’s malady be found within ? Thou speakest of fate; but what is fate if it is not the will of the spirit that is executed by the cosmic force in due time ? What the spirit’s will is above, appears as fate here below.

I think that a mighty Power came down along with Sayitri. And is not that, Power the high companion of Fate? Is it not equally powerful?


Least Stumblings Foreseen

But Narad answered covering truth with truth:
“O Aswapathy, random seem the ways
Along whose banks your footsteps stray or run
In casual hours and moments of the gods,
Yet your least stumblings are foreseen above.

Infallibly the curves of life are drawn
Following the stream of Time through the unknown;
They are led by a clue the calm immortals keep.

Narad replies hi. riddles—the surface meaning concealing the deeper import:

O Aswapathy, aimless seem the paths of life along which thou walkest during ordinary times or exceptional moments of revelation. But in truth, thy least stumbles are provisioned above. Things are planned to the last detail. The lines along which life flows in the passage of Time through the great Unknown, have been drawn without error. The clue to theft design is in the keeping of the immortal gods who are ever calm and unperturbed.


Meaning in Symbols

This blazoned hieroglyph of prophet moons
A meaning more sublime in symbols writes
Than sealed Thought wakes to, but of this high script
How shall my voice convince the mind of earth?

The movements of the planets are an index to profounder things: but the closed thought of man cannot grasp this import. How then can my words make the mind of earth understand !


Heaven’s Wiser Love

Heaven’s wiser love rejects the mortal’s prayer;
Unblinded by the breath of his desire,
Unclouded by the mists of fear and hope,
It bends above the strife of love with death;
It keeps for her her privilege of pain.

Man in his ignorance prays for many things. He is bUnded by desire, surrounded by fears and hopes and is ever involved in the struggle of love with death—a mnstant feature of his life. He does not know what is truly good for him and goes on asking for this and that. But Providence is wiser, and in its true concern for him, it often rejects prayers that, if granted, would confirm him in his ignorance and delay his progress. It stands above his desire, his fears and hopes, his involvements in the strife of love with death. It bends in compass on and preserves for love its cherished sting of pain.

In this world of ignorance, wherever there is love, there is suffering; love seems to thrive upon it.


Must Share Human Grief

A greatness in thy daughter’s soul resides
That can transform herself and all around,
But must cross on stones of suffering to its goal.

Although designed like a nectar cup of heaven,
Of heavenly ether made she sought this air,
She too must share the human need of grief
And all her cause of joy transmute to pain.

In thy daughter, there is a greatness of soul that can completely change both herself and all around her. But she has to pass through hard suffering to reach her goal.

Although she has been designed like a heavenly cup of nectar, and is made of heaven’s ether, she has chosen this air of earth and therefore she has to undergo grief which is a necessary spur for progress to man she needs must turn her innate springs of joy into pain.


Half-Opened Doors

The mind of mortal man is led by words,
His sight retires behind the walls of Thought
And looks out only through half-opened doors.

He cuts the boundless Truth into sky-strips
And every strip he takes for all the heavens.

The mind ci man [ti led by words and not by truth. His perception is veiled by the activity of his thought. He looks out on the world through doors that are only partially open. The result is that he catches sight of only a part of the Truth; he fragments the Truth that is infinite and every fragment he mistakes for the entire Truth.


Chance or Necessity

He stares at infinite Possibility
And gives to the plastic Vast the name of Chance.

He sees the long results of an all-wise Force
Planning a sequence of steps in endless Time,
But in its links imagines a senseless chain
Or the dead hand of cold Necessity;

Man looks at the boundless Possibility opening out before him and mistakes this large variable factor to be Chance. There is at work in this universe an all-wise Force planning a whole line of sequences in unending Time; man sees only the far ends of this operation and mistakes its links for a chain of mechanical cause and effect or simply the routine working of a law of Necessity.


Mystic Mother’s Heart

He answers not to the mystic Mother’s heart,
Misses the ardent heavings of her breast
And feels cold rigid limbs of lifeless Law.

He does not feel the intense love of the universal Mother and fails to respond to her pronaptings, What he feels are only the cold and rigid workings of a mechanical Law of things.


Will of the Timeless

The will of the Timeless working out in Time
In the free absolute steps of cosmic Truth
Appears a hard machine or meaningless Fate.

What in fact is the Will of the Eternal determining itself in the processes of Time and in the large unfettered freedom of the manifesting Truth in the Cosmos, appears to him as a relentless machinery or blind Fate.


Spirits Consent

A Magician’s formulas have made Matter’s laws
And while they last, all things by them are bound:
But the Spirit’s consent is needed for each act
And freedom walks in the same pace with Law.

All here can change if the Magician choose.

The rigid laws of Matter have been made by the skill of a supreme Magician and as long as they remain, they are binding. And yet the sanction of the presiding Spirit is necessary for every movement; along with these rigid laws, there exists a freedom of the Spirit. If the Magician wills it, all here on earth can change despite the laws.


Nature’s King

If human will could be made one with God’s,
If human thought could echo the thoughts of God,
Man might be all-knowing and omnipotent;
But now he walks in Nature’s doubtful ray.

Yet can the mind of man receive God’s light,
The force of man can be driven by God’s force,
Then is he a miracle doing miracles.

For only so can he be Nature’s King. . If only man tunes his will to the Will of God, if only his thought could reflect and vibrate to the thought of God, he might become as all-knowing and as all-powerful as God Himself. But man, as at present, lives under the dubious regime of Nature.

Still he can open his mind to receive the light of God, he can link his force to the driving force of God. And if he does so, he turns himself into a standing miracle performing miracles. Nature’s laws are set aside and he becomes the King of Nature.


Satyavan’s Death Decreed

It is decreed and Satyavan must die;
The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.

What else shall be is written in her soul.

But till the hour reveals the fateful script
The writing waits illegible and mute.

It has been so ordained and Satyavan must surely die. Even the fatal hour is fixed: the stroke of death is also decided.

What more is to happen is written in the soul of Savitri. But that writing shall remain undecipherable and ineffective till the chosen hour reveals the script loaded with destiny.


Fate is a Transaction

Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.

O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.

Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book.

Fate is only a name for the process of truth fulfilling itself in conditions of Ignarance.

O King, know that thy fate is a transaction, the result of a constant interchange between Nature and thy soul, under the presiding eye of God who foresees all. Fate is the balance drawn in the accounts book of Destiny which records all the credit and debit transactions in the life of man.


Accept or Refuse Fate

Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.

Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.

Man is free to accept his fate or to refuse to accept it. Even though God keeps the decree that is not seen by man, he adds the fact of man’s refusal to his credit, thus enabling the account to grow in his favour.

Doom is not the end, the final seal of God. It is only a part of the transaction


Mightier by Defeat

Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.

Its splendid failures sum to victory.

Defeat is not the finale. From the debris of defeat the spirit rises again. And when thy soul arises from the bitter crash of life, arises from the long torture and death of the body, it emerges stronger. Its god-like capacities increase with each fall. All its great failures lead to a final victory.


Events are not Fate

O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate; they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.

O man, many are the events that happen on thy path; they strike thee, in thy body and soul, now with joy, now with grief, but they are not thy abiding fate. They are transitory circumstances which stay for a time and then pass. Even death cannot snap the life-line of thy soul.Thy fate is thy choice. The goal and the path thou choosest, these are thy fate.


Long Sacrifice

On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God.

Thou art forging thy fate every moment. And this fate is the long, continuous sacrifice to the gods, the Cosmic powers, to which thou offerest all thy thoughts, thy works, thy heart-emotions on the altar of thy [laming Will, till the gods reveal to thee thy inner self and make thee one with the God that dwells within thee.It is by the Higher Grace that man realises the Divine seated within himself. And self-consecration and self-sacrifice are the means to move this Grace into action.


Battle and Journey

O soul, intruder in Nature’s ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit’s fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless Self.

O soul, thou does not belong to this realm of Ignorance; thou art here a foreigner m transit. Thou art travelling to the unseen heights of the Spirit, well equipped to meet the combat of the invisible adverse Powers who are opposed to thy journey. It is destined that thou must fight them and continue thy march uninterrupted in thy journey from inconscient Matter to the Eternal Self.


Adventure

Adventurer through blind unforeseeing Time,
A forced advance through a long line of lives,
It pushes its spearhead through the centuries.

Thy spirit adventures through Time which sees not what lies ahead: it advances without respite through a long series of lives, pushing its assault forward through the centuries.


Slow March (I)

Across the dust and mire of the earthly plain,
On many-guarded lines and dangerous fronts,
In dire assaults, in wounded slow retreats,
Or holding the ideal’s battered fort
Or fighting against odds in lonely posts,
Or camped in night around the bivouac’s fires,
Awaiting the tardy trumpets of the dawn

This journey and battle of the soul proceeds through the dust and mire of the lowly plains of earth, across dangerous points and fortified routes, punctuated with terrific onslaughts, wounded fall-backs, Defending the battered citadels of Ideals, lighting against odds in secluded posts, camping during nights around fires in the open hopefully awaiting the trumpet-note of the dawns which are slow to come, all this is also part of the journey.


Slow March (II)

In hunger and in plenty and in pain,
Through peril and through triumph and through fall,
Through life’s green lanes and over her desert sands,
Up the bald moor, along the sunlit ridge
In serried columns with a straggling rear
Led by its nomad vanguard’s signal fires,
Marches the army of the waylost god.

In conditions of hunger and of plenty of pain and of peril, through victory and through defeat, through green fertile tracts of life and through her desert lands, climbing up the wastelands, passing over the sunny ridges, the army of this god who has lost his way marches along in regular columns with a rear that often strays from the line while following the signal flares lighted by its ever moving advancing host.


Forgotten Self

Then late the joy ineffable is felt,
Then he remembers his forgotten self;
He has refound the skies from which he fell.

Quite late in the journey, the striving spirit begins to experience a joy that cannot be expressed in words. It is then that man remembers his own self which he had forgotten so far. He re-discovers the heights of the being from which he had apparently fallen.

This causeless spiritual joy reawakens with the memory of the forgotten inner self; awareness of this self leads to the discovery of his Origin.


Splendour-peaks of God

At length his front’s indomitable line
Forces the last passes of the Ignorance:
Advancing beyond Nature’s last known bounds,
Reconnoitring the formidable unknown,
Beyond the landmarks of things visible,
It mounts through a miraculous upper air
Till climbing the mute summit of the world
He stands upon the splendour-peaks of God.

At last his untiring advance host breaks through the last strongholds of Ignorance. Passing beyond the last known frontiers of Nature, beyond the boundaries of the seen, it climbs upward through the strange, new upper air till ascending to the silent summits of the world, he is able to stand upon the peaks of the splendour of God.


Death Spirit’s Opportunity

In vain thou mournst that Satyavan must die;
His death is a beginning of greater life,
Death is the spirit’s opportunity.

A vast intention has brought the souls close
And love and death conspire towards one great end.

Do not mourn for the destined death of Satyavan. Know that his death is not the end but will signalise the start of a newer and greater life.

Death is a means fur the spirit to renew itself. It casts away the old and worn-out embodiment and goes on to take a new and fresh one.

A great intention—which thou dost not perceive now—has brought these two souls. Savitri and Satyavan, together. The love that brings them close and the death that would part them, both secretly work for one great objective.


God’s Secret Plan

For out of danger and pain heaven-bliss shall come,
Time’s unforeseeing event, God’s secret plan.

For out of all danger and pain there shall issue the bliss of heaven. That unexpected event shall take place, for that is the hidden plan of God.


Not a World of Chance

This world was not built with random bricks of chance,
A blind god is not destiny’s architect;
A conscious power has drawn the plan of life,
There is a meaning in each curve and line.

It is an architecture high and grand
By many named and nameless masons built
In which unseeing hands obey the Unseen,
And of its master-builders she is one.

This world is not a product of Chance. It has not been built by stray bricks of chance., nor is destiny the construction of a blind god. A purposive, conscious Power has drawn the plan of life in advance. That is why every movement has a meaning, every line and curve a significance.

This world is truly a high and magnificent edifice built by many masons, many agents—some known, some unknown. In it many unseen hands are at work obeying the great Master Architect.And of such master-builders of the world, Savitri is one.


Secret Will

Queen, strive no more to change the secret will;
Time’s accidents are steps in its vast scheme.

Bring not thy brief and helpless human tears
Across the fathomless moments of a heart
That knows its single will and God’s as one:
It can embrace its hostile destiny;
It sits apart with grief and facing death,
Affronting adverse fate armed and alone.

O queen, do not struggle any further to change the secret will that is at work; what appear to be accidents in life are well-determined steps in the scheme of this secret will.Thy human tears are transient and helpless do not vainly use them to disturb the profound beatings of Savitri’s heart that is conscious that its sole will is one with the will of God and therefore cannot but be effective. Her heart can take on this hostile destiny, It sits by itself with grief, facing death. Armed with a will of steel, alone, it confronts adverse fate.


Her Will Affronting Fate

In this enormous world standing apart
In the mightiness of her silent spirit’s will,
In the passion of her soul of sacrifice
Her lonely strength facing the universe,
Affronting fate, asks not man’s help nor god’s:
Sometimes one life is charged with earth’s destiny,
It cries not for succour from the time-bound powers.

She stands apart in this huge world. The silent will of her soul is mighty; its ardour to sacrifice itself is intense. Her lone strength facing the whole universe, opposing fate. does not supplicate for help from man or god.

At times a single life is missioned with the destiny of the earth; what it does has consequences for the entire earth. Such a life does not plead for assistance from powers that are limited by time.


Alone she is Equal

Alone she is equal to her mighty task.

Intervene not in a strife too great for thee,
A struggle too deep for mortal thought to sound,
Its question to this Nature’s rigid bounds
When the soul fronts nude of garbs the infinite,
Its too vast theme of a lonely mortal will
Pacing the silence of eternity.

Savitri is equal to her task by herself alone. That task of strife with Death is too great for thee; do not attempt to intervene in it. Mortal thought cannot fathom that struggle which is too deep for it; nor can it grasp that challenge flung to the rigid bounds of this Nature when the bare soul faces the infinite, when a single mortal will waits in the silence of eternity.


Alone

As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven
Unastonished by the immensities of space,
Travelling infinity by its own light,
The great are strongest when they stand alone.

A God-given might of being is their force,
A ray from self’s solitude of light the guide;
The soul that can live alone with itself meets God;
Its lonely universe is their rendezvous.

Like a star moving alone in the skies, without being overcome by the vastnesses of space, journeying in the infinity by its own self-light, the great go along alone; and when they do so they are strongest, they are not weakened by the failings of others. Their force is an innate strength of being given by God, their guide is a ray that proceeds from the light of the soul in solitude. The soul that has or develops the capacity to live by itself, content in its solitude, meets God, Its lone world becomes their trysting place.


Conquer or Fail

A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers.

Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge;

It may be that a day will come when Savitri will have to stand, uncompanioned, un helped, on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom—also her own threatened doom-, bearing the destiny of the world on her one self, carrying all human hope in her heart left sole, to win or lose on a final desperate venture.


Last dire Scene

Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge,
Her single greatness in that last dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.

In that last dread scene. alone with death and on the verge of extinction, she in her solitary greatness will have to cross a dangerous bridge in earthly Time and reach the summit of the Fate of the world where everything is won or everything is lost for man.The future of man will depend upon hei• unaided, ultimate, perilous adventure,


Deciding Hour

In that tremendous silence lone and lost
Of a deciding hour in the world’s fate,
In her soul’s climbing beyond mortal time
When she stands sole with Death or sole with God
Apart upon a silent desperate brink
Alone with her self and death and destiny
As on some verge between Time and Timelessness
When being must end or life rebuild its base,
Alone she must conquer or alone must fall.

In that mighty silence, solitary and well-nigh lost, in the decisive hour in the fate of the world, when her soul ascending beyond human time stands face to face alone with Death or alone with God, apart from all, upon a silent desperate edge, atone with her self, death and destiny, on the borderline between Time and Timelessness where the being must either die or its life reshape its base and renew itself. Savitri must either conquer all by herself alone. or fall alone.


Cry not to Heaven

No human aid can reach her in that hour,
No armoured God stand shining at her side.

Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.

For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world.

In that decisive hour no human aid can reach her nor will there be any battling God by her side to help her.Do not plead to the heavens, they cannot save she alone can. For this very purpose has the silent Power of God descended. in Savitri the conscious Will of God has taken human shape. It is she alone who Can save herself and save the world too.


An Hour of Fate

O queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,
Come not between her and her hour of Fate.

Her hour must come and none can intervene:
Think not to turn her from her heaven-sent task,
Strive not to save her from her own high will.

Thou hast no place in that tremendous strife;
Thy love and longing are not arbiters there,
Leave the world’s fate and her to God’s sole guard.

O queen, hold thyself back from that great scene. Come not between her and her decisive hour of Fate. That hour of hers has to come and none can intervene between her and her Fate. Do not seek to draw her away from the task with which she is charged by Heaven. Do not vainly try to save her from the workings of her own high will.

Surely, thou hast no place in that tremendous conflict to be, Thy motherly love and human longings are not going to be the arbiters there. Leave her—and the fate of the world that is involved in her—to the sole care of God.


Leave her to Her Self

Even if he seems to leave her to her lone strength,
Even though all falters and falls and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are death and night,
God-given her strength can battle against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone seems close
And no human strength can hinder or can help.

Think not to intercede with the hidden Will,
Intrude not twixt her spirit and its force
But leave her to her mighty self and Fate.”

Even if God seems to leave her to her own resources, her lone strength, even though everything staggers and falls and the end is seen, even though the heart fails and only night and death remain, even on that brink where Death alone seems to be close, her God-given strength can fight against the threatening doom. No human strength can deter or help in that situation.

A secret Will is at work; think not to intercede with it in thy favour. Stand not between her (Savitri’s) spirit and the effectuating force of that spirit. Leave her alone to her own great self and the contending Fate.


Narad Leaves

He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.

Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,
He turned towards his far-off blissful home.

A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,
The luminous body of the eternal seer
Assailed the purple glory of the noon
And disappeared like a receding star
Vanishing into the light of the Unseen;

Thus spoke Narad and left the earthly scene.From this our globe of strife and suffering he turned away towards his distant home of bliss. The luminous body of the eternal seer looked. like a brilliant arrow heading straight to heaven. It pierced through the brilliant skies of the and fast disappeared like a receding star vanishing into the light of the Unseen beyond.


Anthem of Eternal Love

But still a cry was heard in the infinite,
And still to the listening soul on mortal earth
A high and far imperishable voice
Chanted the anthem of eternal love.

And vet a tote was heard in the bosom of the Infinite. The listening soul on mortal earth below still caught the chant of the anthem of eternal love by a high, distant and undying voice.