Book-2-Study-Canto-13

Book Two: Canto XIII

In the Self of Mind

Summary
Aswapathy arrives at an abrupt Silence where the climbing stair of the worlds pauses. He stands alone with an immense Self of Mind which is omnipotent but aloof from the world that has sprung from it. It does not participate in all the movements in this world but bears them equally. Aswapathy reflects this vast quietism.

This witness Silence is the real base of the Thinker and the origin of the Word. Here meet the seeing Self and the potent Energy and creation ensues. Aswapathy watches the world from this height and seems to grasp the meaning of its thoughts and forces. He feels that this Silence, this Peace is the ultimate.

Suddenly a Ray of Light falls on the scene and shows to him that nothing is really known. The Truth, by knowing which all is known, is yet to be reached. It is above thought and sense. All Knowledge built by the mind appears unsound, unreal, all experience in life is converted into fixed mental forms that are more dead than alive. The entire mental edifice collapses.

Man’s mind is like a house haunted by the dead past and petrified ideas. It is a force for the misuse of soul and life and the waste of higher gifts. It is a stage for the comedy of Ignorance.

Struck by this Ray of Light, Reason loses confidence in its powers; its wisdom turns out to be a brilliant guess, its science fumbling on the surfaces of things. What has been done is little more than a plan, a figure of reality. The self of existence itself appears to be but a fragile leaf afloat on the ocean of Nothingness. The Mind is seen to hang as a veil between the soul and the Light. Even the witness Self looks to be a pale shadow of the Unknowable. Peace is there but not the potent, creative Power, the mighty Mother who gathers to her bosom the worlds of her making in the Bliss of God.

A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind must be found if Aswapathy’s seeking soul is to be satisfied. Aswapathy looks above, but all is blank and still; he looks down below, all is dark and mute. In between is the great stir of life in the realms of Ignorance. The soul wanders between these two firmaments of darkness and light, the Inconscient and the Superconscient.

A Deep Cessation

At last there came a bare indifferent sky
Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice,
But answered nothing to a million calls;
The soul’s endless question met with no response.

An abrupt conclusion ended eager hopes,
A deep cessation in a mighty calm,
A finis-line on the last page of thought
And a margin and a blank of wordless peace.

Aswapathy arrives at a region where all is still. There is a complete Silence which, indeed, takes in all that happens in the cosmos but does not respond in any manner. The pressing question of the Goal, ever put by the soul, finds no answer; all the eager hopes are suddenly terminated. In the great stillness that prevails all ceases; no more are thought and word.

Self of Mind

There paused the climbing hierarchy of worlds.

He stood on a wide arc of summit Space
Alone with an enormous Self of Mind
Which held all life in a corner of its vasts.

Here pauses the stair of the order of the worlds that Aswapathy has climbed. He now stands on a wide summit, and finds himself alone with the immense Self of Mind. This Self is so vast that all life seems to occupy just a corner in it.

Aloof and Indifferent

Omnipotent, immobile and aloof,
In the world which sprang from it, it took no part:
It gave no heed to the paeans of victory,
It was indifferent to its own defeats,
It heard the cry of grief and made no sign,
Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good,
It saw destruction come and did not move.

This Self of the mind is omnipotent, but it does not move; it stands aloof, not taking part in the movement of the world that has issued from itself. Neither victory nor defeat touch it; the cry of grief from the world reaches it but evokes no response. It is equal in its witness-gaze to good and evil. Even an approaching destruction fails to move it into action.

Witness Lord

An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer
And Master of its multitude of forms,
It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,
The witness Lord of Nature’s myriad acts
Consenting to the movements of her Force.

This Self is the same Cause of all: overseer of all movements, Master of the multiplicity of forms, up-bearer of all thoughts and actions but not their doer. It is the witnessing Lord of the many acts of Nature, sanctioner of the movements of her Force.

Silence, the Mystic Birthplace

His mind reflected this vast quietism.

This witness hush is the Thinker’s secret base:
Hidden in silent depths the word is formed,
From hidden silences the act is born
Into the voiceful mind, the labouring world;
In secrecy wraps the seed the Eternal sows
Silence, the mystic birthplace of the soul.

Aswapathy’s mind is suffused with this vast Quiet. This regarding Silence is the real base of the Thinker in man; from here takes birth all his expression, all action, that moves into manifestation. Here, in the mystic birthplace of the soul, in this Silence, lies the seed sown by the Eternal Divine, enfolded in secrecy.

Creation from Dual Power

In God’s supreme withdrawn and timeless hush
A seeing Self and potent Energy met;
The Silence knew itself and thought took form:
Self-made from the dual power creation rose.

The witness Self and the active Energy meet in the Eternal, supreme Silence that is aloof from all. Here the Silence is fully self-aware and Thought assumes forms. From this duality of the silent Self and dynamic Energy, all creation has issued.

In the Still Self he Lives

In the still self he lived and it in him;
Its mute immemorable listening depths,
Its vastness and its stillness were his own;
One being with it he grew wide, powerful, free.

Aswapathy becomes one with this still self, he lives in it and it in him. He experiences its silent, attentive profounds, its vastness and its stillness in his own being. As he and the self become one, he gets enlarged, full of power and free.

He Watches the World

As one who builds his own imagined scenes
And loses not himself in what he sees,
Spectator of a drama self-conceived,
He looked on the world and watched its motive thoughts
With the burden of luminous prophecy in their eyes,
Its forces with their feet of wind and fire
Arisen from the dumbness in his soul.

Aswapathy looks on the world and watches arising from the stillness of his soul world-shaping thoughts brightly significant and world-moving forces in their rapidity and consuming power.

His Soul has Peace

All now he seemed to understand and know;
Desire came not nor any gust of will,
The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;
Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.

There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.

It looks as though he has come to understand and know everything. No more is desire; no more is any willing; no more is the restless seeking thought, its objective having ceased. Nothing is sought nor Wanted. Aswapathy feels he has at last arrived, he has won the Self and the Silence, his soul has peace, it now knows the universe.

Yet Nothing Known

Then suddenly a luminous finger fell
On all things seen or touched or heard or felt
And showed his mind that nothing could be known;
That must be reached from which all knowledge comes.

Then, all of a sudden, a revealing touch is felt and Aswapathy realises that in spite of all that he has seen, touched, heard and felt, he has not really known anything. He has still to reach that Truth which is the source of all Knowledge, that which being known, all is known.

Sceptic Ray Disrupts

The sceptic Ray disrupted all that seems
And smote at the very roots of thought and sense.

In a universe of Nescience they have grown,
Aspiring towards a superconscient Sun,
Playing in shine and rain from heavenlier skies
They never can win however high their reach
Or overpass however keen their probe.

This Truth-Ray breaks up all the seeming formations and strikes at the very roots of thought and sense which have slowly developed, in the world based upon Nescience, as instruments of experience and growth seeking the supreme Light of Truth-Knowledge. These faculties have severe constitutional limitations which bar them from venturing beyond a certain range, however much they may try.

Doubt Corrodes

A doubt corroded even the means to think,
Distrust was thrown upon Mind’s instruments;
All that it takes for reality’s shining coin,
Proved fact, fixed inference, deduction clear,
Firm theory, assured significance,
Appeared as frauds upon Time’s credit bank
Or assets valueless in Truth’s treasury.

A doubt starts eating into his very thinking faculty; the mind begins to distrust its own powers and functionings. All that it had taken as genuine and proved as fact; the inference that is established, the deduction that is obvious, the theory that is unshakable, the significance that is confirmed—all begin to lose their glow and appear counterfeit.

Ignorance on uneasy Throne

An Ignorance on an uneasy throne
Travestied with a fortuitous sovereignty
A figure of knowledge garbed in dubious words
And tinsel thought-forms brightly inadequate.

What appeared to be knowledge reveals itself to be but an ignorance ruling uneasily, a temporary figure of knowledge clothed in words of doubtful import and flimsy thought-forms glittering in their inadequacy.

Labourer in the Dark

A labourer in the dark dazzled by half-light,
What it knew was an image in a broken glass,
What it saw was real but its sight untrue.

He sees that the mind in ignorance seeking to know is like a labourer in darkness who is dazzled by even a half-light. What it thinks it knows is only a fragmented reflection, like an image in a broken glass; the object that is seen is indeed real, but its actual registration in the mind is not it does not correspond to the fact.

Ideas Leave no Trace

All the ideas in its vast repertory
Were like the mutterings of a transient cloud
That spent itself in sound and left no trace.

Ideas crowd in the arena of this mind and make a big bustle. But soon their noise dies away and leaves no trace, very much like the loud sounds of a passing cloud.

Fragile House

A frail house hanging in uncertain air,
The thin ingenious web round which it moves,
Put out awhile on the tree of the universe,
And gathered up into itself again,
Was only a trap to catch life’s insect food,
Winged thoughts that flutter fragile in brief light
But dead, once captured in fixed forms of mind,
Aims puny but looming large in man’s small scale,
Flickers, of imagination’s brilliant gauze
And cobweb-wrapped beliefs alive no more.

He sees that the whole fabric constructed by this mind is frail, without a firm base; it is only an ingenious device to capture as much of life as possible. The thought-perceptions that are so caught become lifeless once they are caged in the fixed forms of the mind. Small aims loom large on the limited canvas of this mind. Even bright flashes of imagination fade away and beliefs cease to be living as they get entangled in mental cobwebs of creeds and dogmas.

Magic Hut Collapses

The magic hut of built-up certitudes
Made out of glittering dust and bright moonshine
In which it shrines its image of the Real,
Collapsed into the Nescience whence it rose.

The whole edifice of seeming certitudes built up by this mind out of attractive material, enshrining not the Reality but some distant image of it, collapses before the eyes of Aswapathy. Constructed on the base of Nescience it sinks back into it.

Symbol Facts and Falsehoods

Only a gleam was there of symbol facts
That shroud the mystery lurking in their glow,
And falsehoods based on hidden realities
By which they live until they fall from Time.

What remains before Aswapathy is only a gleam of facts symbolic in character, covering up the secret truth in their vague lustre. There are also falsehoods which derive their existence from hidden realities; in fact they are perversions of truths and they last till they are exposed and shed in the march of Time.

Our Mind

Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths,
God’s spontaneities tied with formal strings
And packed into drawers of reason’s trim bureau,
A grave of great lost opportunities,
Or an office for misuse of soul and life
And all the waste man makes of heaven’s gifts
And all his squanderings of Nature’s store,
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.

Man’s mind is pursued by memories, impressions and habits of the dead past. Past ideas continue in lifeless forms, old truths cast their ghost-like shadows, natural and spontaneous movements are reduced to a system and cabined into formulas devised by reason. The mind is the scene of great opportunities dying unutilised. It directs the general misuse of the powers and possibilities of soul and life by forcing them to subserve its own notions, presides over the colossal waste of the gifts of the spirit and the bequests of Mother-Nature. The mind is a veritable stage on which the comedy of life in Ignorance is enacted.

Reason Loses Confidence

The world seemed a long aeonic failure’s scene:
All sterile grew, no base was left secure.

Assailed by the edge of the convicting beam
The builder Reason lost her confidence
In the successful sleight and turn of thought
That makes the soul the prisoner of a phrase.

Aswapathy watches all becoming sterile, nothing remaining secure; the world seems to be the scene of a sorry failure of an adverse aeonic labour. As the Ray of Light strikes, Reason the artisan of the mind loses confidence in its familiar trick-technique of imprisoning the soul in a mere phrase, a verbal form of thought, and thus preventing the realisation of the truth in life.

Passing Light

Its highest wisdom was a brilliant guess,
Its mighty structured science of the worlds
A passing light on being’s surfaces.

The highest wisdom arrived at by Reason turns out to be only a guess, however brilliant; its laboured systems of the science of the worlds no more than a brief wavering light on the surface level of the being.

A Scrawl Figure of Reality

There was nothing there but a schema drawn by sense,
A substitute for eternal mysteries,
A scrawl figure of reality, a plan
And elevation by the architect Word
Imposed upon the semblances of Time.

All that passes for knowledge is seen to be merely a scheme etched out by the sense, a poor substitute for the truth that continues to be a mystery, a hastily drawn figure doing duty for the reality, a formulation of mere words floating on appearances.

Existence’ Self Doubtful

Existence’ self was shadowed by a doubt Almost it seemed a lotus-leaf afloat
On a nude pool of cosmic Nothingness.

The very self, crux of existence looks doubtful. It seems as if it were a precariously floating lotus-leaf on the bare waters of a vast Nothing.

Half-Seeing Delegate

This great spectator and creator Mind
Was only some half-seeing’s delegate,
A veil that hung between the soul and Light,
An idol, not the living body of God.

The Mind that creates and witnesses is seen to be little more than a half-blind agent. It acts as a veil between the evolving soul and the Supreme Light above. It is like a mere image representing poorly the real living form of God.

A Shadow seems the Self

Even the still spirit that looks upon its works
Was some pale front of the Unknowable;
A shadow seemed the wide and witness Self,
Its liberation and immobile calm
A void recoil of being from Time-made things,
Not the self-vision of Eternity.

The spirit that is un-involved and looks upon its works ceases to be the self-aware and all-aware reality that it has always been and appears to be something pale and unknowable. The Self that is wide and witnesses all loses its evident reality and seems to be a shadow; its state of freedom and immutable calm—which is really the self-regard of the Eternal Spirit—appears to be nothing more than an empty recoil from manifestation in Time.

Sweet and Mighty Mother not There

Deep peace was there, but not the nameless Force:
Our sweet and mighty Mother was not there
Who gathers to her bosom her children’s lives,
Her clasp that takes the world into her arms
In the fathomless rapture of the Infinite,
The Bliss that is creation’s splendid grain
Or the white passion of God-ecstasy
That laughs in the blaze of the boundless heart of Love.

There is profound peace but the great vibrant Force that dominates is not there. The mighty and sweet Mother of All is not there, the Creatrix who gathers to her bosom the innumerable lives of her children, who holds in her arms the whole world in the deep rapture of the Infinite Being. She is not there from whose unlimited heart of Love flows the Bliss and the divine ecstasy that underlies all creation.

A Greater Spirit must Answer

A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind
Must answer to the questioning of his soul.

For here was no firm clue and no sure road;
High-climbing pathways closed in the unknown;
An artist sight constructed the Beyond
In contrary patterns and conflicting hues;
A part-experience fragmented the Whole.

It is clear that this Self of Mind at which Aswapathy has arrived cannot satisfy his soul. The questionings of his soul can be answered only by a still greater Spirit. The mind can offer no definite clue to the mystery, show no certain road; its climbing pathways lose themselves in the unknown. The eye catches only some bewildering lines and hues of the Beyond, only some fragmented experiences of the Reality that cannot be divided.

Blank Above

He looked above, but all was blank and still;
A sapphire firmament of abstract Thought
Escaped into a formless Vacancy.

He looked below, but all was dark and mute.

Aswapathy looks above, all is blank, still. The skies of abstract thought fade off into a formless emptiness. He looks down. Below, all is dark, mute. Either way, it is a mystery.

Noise and Strife Between

A noise was heard, between, of thought and prayer,
A strife, a labour without end or pause;
A vain and ignorant seeking raised its voice.

A rumour and a movement and a call,
A foaming mass, a cry innumerable
Rolled ever upon the ocean surge of Life
Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance.

In between there is a stir, a noisy movement of thought, and an ignorant seeking, a strife and labour, a varied call and cry from the expanse of Life within the boundaries of mortal Ignorance.

Beings and Forces Jostle

On its unstable and enormous breast
Beings and forces, forms, ideas like waves
Jostled for figure and supremacy,
And rose and sank and rose again in Time,

On the bosom of this immense, surging sea of Life there is a continuous strife among beings, forces, forms, ideas for formation and supremacy. They rise and fall and rise again to battle and win.

Dim Inconscient

And at the bottom of the sleepless stir,
A Nothingness parent of the struggling worlds,
A huge creator Death, a mystic Void,
For ever sustaining the irrational cry,
For ever excluding the supernal Word,
Motionless, refusing question and response,
Reposed beneath the voices and the march
The dim Inconscient’s dumb incertitude.

And at the base of all this stir is a Nothingness, a great Death that consumes as it creates, an inexplicable Void, upbearing the whole meaningless movement, keeping out the saving Word of Power from above. It is inert, unresponsive, the dumb denial of the obscure Inconscient.

Between two Firmaments

Two firmaments of darkness and of light
Opposed their limits to the spirit’s walk;
It moved veiled in from Self’s infinity
In a world of beings and momentary events
Where all must die to live and live to die.

Thus does the spirit in evolution march as between the two great horizons—one of light above and the other of darkness below. Sectioned off from the infinity of the Self, this movement goes on in a world of beings and passing circumstances where if death passes into life, life inevitably leads to death.

To be is a Prison

Immortal by renewed mortality,
It wandered in the spiral of its acts
Or ran around the cycles of its thought,
Yet was no more than its original self
And knew no more than when it first began.

To be was a prison, extinction the escape.

Even though through this process of constant life and death, the embodied spirit, the soul, moves in the upward circles of its activity or turns round and round in the cycles of its thought, yet with all this movement it appears to be where it was in the beginning, the same self as then.

To live seems to be an imprisonment and annihilation the only way out.