Book-2-Study-Canto-14

Book Two: Canto XIV

The World-Soul

Summary
A bright opening appears far in the Mind-Space leading into some depths of God. It beckons him with a quivering ecstasy of Light and Aswapathy enters a tunnel-like passage. He is led by a mysterious sound which is a composite of many sounds, of flute-call, cricket-note, anklet-bells, caravan-tinkle, temple-gong, bee-croon, sea-wave.

He arrives into bodiless realms, the heart of Space, the heart of Time—the home of the Soul of the world. Here is the sole Being, the Person who transmutes Nature’s movements into divine term, who leads the Cosmos to its divine fulfilment through all its vicissitudes. Here is the source of all finite life.

All here is made of soul-stuff. Knowledge proceeds not by thought but by identity. The walls of speech are not here. Neither separative life nor the concrete form of the body is here. The soul is its own form and meets other souls directly. Aswapathy begins to know things by their soul and not their shape; he communes without speech.

There is a strange spiritual scenery with patterns of soul-beauty and joy, celestial fragrance and hue. It is a home of Beauty. Here the world and self are one.

Here too rest all beings after death on earth and before they take the next embodiment. They assimilate their life-experiences and prepare for their future lives.

This is the centre of creation from where things are cast.

Beyond are regions of delight and peace. Aswapathy becomes aware of eternity and passes on to an end which is also a beginning.

He arrives at the source of all things and there he beholds the figure of the immortal Two-in-One whose rapturous trance sustains the mobile world. Behind this Dual Presence he regards the Divine Mother with a veil. She is the Ruler of all, pervading all with Power, effecting all with her Will.

Aswapathy is filled by her force. He outstretches to her his folded hands of prayer. She responds with a sovereign gesture, half-parting her veil. He is spellbound by the mystery of her luminous eyes and sees the mystic outline of her face. He is overwhelmed by her light and bliss. With a cry of adoration, he falls at her feet, unconscious, prone.

A Recluse-Gate

A covert answer to his seeking came.

In a far-shimmering background of Mind-Space
A glowing mouth was seen, a luminous shaft;
A recluse-gate it seemed, musing on joy,
A veiled retreat and escape to mystery.

A veiled answer to Aswapathy’s seeking comes.

Far away in the tracts of Mind-Space appears a bright opening. it looks like a gate to retreat, lost in joy, a door of escape into some mystery.

Away from World

Away from the unsatisfied surface world
It fled into the bosom of the unknown,
A well, a tunnel of the depths of God.

It plunged as if a mystic groove of hope
Through many layers of formless voiceless self
To reach the last profound of the world’s heart,
And from that heart there surged a wordless call
Pleading with some still impenetrable Mind,
Voicing some passionate unseen desire.

This path leads away from the unsatisfied surfaces into the deeps of the unknown, a veritable tunnel into the depths of God. Like an inexplicable groove of hope, it plunges through layer after layer of the formless mute self to arrive at the utmost depth of the heart of the world. And from this heart surges forth a call to some still resisting mind, a call expressing some intense, unseen, want.

Message from World’s Deep Soul

As if a beckoning finger of secrecy
Outstretched into a crystal mood of air,
Pointing at him from some near hidden depth,
As if a message from the world’s deep soul,
An intimation of a lurking joy
That flowed out from a cup of brooding bliss,
There shimmered stealing out into the Mind
A mute and quivering ecstasy of light,
A passion and delicacy of roseate fire.

It looks as if a message from the deep soul of the world is directed to Aswapathy, intimating the existence of a joy still untasted, flowing bright from a cup of concentrated Bliss. Into the vasts of the Mind comes quivering an ecstasy of light, an intensity of soul-flame.

Mysterious Sound Leads

As one drawn to his lost spiritual home
Feels now the closeness of a waiting love,
Into a passage dim and tremulous
That clasped him in from day and night’s pursuit,
He travelled led by a mysterious sound.

A murmur, multitudinous and lone,
All sounds it was in turn, yet still the same.

Aswapathy is drawn into the clasp of a passage beyond the reach of mortal time and is led by a mysterious sound, a single, yet many-toned murmur. It seems to sound in turn all the varied sounds of the world, but all the while is the same.

Hidden Call

A hidden call to unforeseen delight
In the summoning voice of one long-known and loved,
But nameless to the unremembering mind,
It led to rapture back the truant heart.

It is a veiled call to joy and unexpected delight. The voice that calls has a familiar ring though the mind has forgotten its author. It leads back to rapture the heart that has strayed and lost it.

The Flute Call

The immortal cry ravished the captive ear,
Then, lowering its imperious mystery,
It sank to a whisper circling round the soul.

It seemed the yearning of a lonely flute
That roamed along the shores of memory
And filled the eyes with tears of longing joy.

Aswapathy’s ear is held captive by this deathless cry to Bliss. The sound of the Call takes many forms. Now it is just a whisper heard only by the soul. Now it is the solitary notes of a flute recalling past memories and filling the eyes with tears of joy brought by the revived yearning.

Cricket-Note

A cricket’s rash and fiery single note,
It marked with shrill melody night’s moonless hush
And beat upon a nerve of mystic sleep
Its high insistent magical reveille.

Now it is the piercing note of the cricket breaking upon the silent hush, striking repeatedly on the indrawn being, its call to awake.

Anklet Bells

A jingling silver laugh of anklet bells
Travelled the roads of a solitary heart;
Its dance solaced an eternal loneliness:
An old forgotten sweetness sobbing came.

Now it is the sound of anklet bells whose jingle steals into the solitary heart and whose gay movements lighten its loneliness. A sweetness that was long forgotten is remembered.

Other Sounds

Or from a far harmonious distance heard
The tinkling pace of a long caravan
It seemed at times, or a vast forest’s hymn,
The solemn reminder of a temple gong,
A bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles
Ardent with ecstasy in a slumberous noon,
Or the far anthem of a pilgrim sea.

Now it is like the distant tinkling sounds of a long caravan slowly winding its way; now like a whole forest chanting a hymn; now like a temple gong reminding man of the passing of time and the call of the Eternal; now like the hum of the bee honey-intoxicated; now it is the anthem-swell of a distant sea.

Mystic Happiness

An incense floated in the quivering air,
A mystic happiness trembled in the breast
As if the invisible Beloved had come
Assuming the sudden loveliness of a face
And close glad hands could seize his fugitive feet
And the world change with the beauty of a smile.

if the unseen Beloved had suddenly appeared in a lovely form, His elusive presence within reach, transforming the world with the beauty of His smile.

Wonderful Realm

Into a wonderful bodiless realm he came,
The home of a passion without name or voice,
A depth he felt answering to every height,
A nook was found that could embrace all worlds,
A point that was the conscious knot of space,
An hour eternal in the heart of Time.

Aswapathy comes into a marvellous realm without form. He feels here an intensity, unspecified, unformulated, a profundity corresponding to every peak of being. He finds a tiny corner that could contain the whole universe in its embrace, a point that is the conscious heart of space and an eternal moment that is the soul of time.

Silent Soul

The silent soul of all the world was there:
A Being lived, a Presence and a Power,
A single Person who was himself and all
And cherished Nature’s sweet and dangerous throbs
Transfigured into beats divine and pure.

Here is the silent Soul of the whole world. It is at once a Being, a Presence, a Power, the One Person who becomes All without ever ceasing to be himself. He is not turned away from any of Nature’s varied movements, be they sweet or dangerous, but changes them all into movements that are pure and divine.

Power to Reveal Divinity

One who could love without return for love,
Meeting and turning to the best the worst,
It healed the bitter cruelties of earth
Transforming all experience to delight;
Intervening in the sorrowful paths of birth
It rocked the cradle of the cosmic Child
And stilled all weeping with its hand of joy;
It led things evil towards their secret good,
It turned racked falsehood into happy truth;
Its power was to reveal divinity.

This Soul loves spontaneously, without caring for a return of love; it meets Nature in all her activities and turns all of them into its own diviner terms; the worst is changed into the best. In this process of turning all experience into delight, the hard cruelties of earth are healed. It nourishes the growth of the Divine manifestation in the Cosmos, wipes away tears with the joy it brings. It leads evil things to the good that is hidden in them and tries to effectuate itself even through their perverted expressions. Its alchemic touch changes suffering falsehood into its opposite—happy truth.

The power and function of this Soul is to manifest the divinity in everything.

Bears Seed and Flame

Infinite, coeval with the mind of God,
It bore within itself a seed, a flame,
A seed from which the Eternal is new-born,
A flame that cancels death in mortal things.

This Soul is infinite, simultaneously existent with the Divine Mind that projects the Creation. It bears in itself the seed of manifestation from which the Eternal is born anew in the conditions of that manifestation. It bears in itself the flame of immortality which negates the factor of death in the mortal world.

All Grows Kindred

All grew to all kindred and self and near,
The intimacy of God was everywhere,
No veil was felt, no brute barrier inert,
Distance could not divide, Time could not change.

All feel close to all; there is here a feeling of divine intimacy everywhere. Unlike conditions in the human physical world, there is here no separative veil in consciousness between one and another, no hard immovable physical barriers. Distance does not divide one from the other, nor does Time effect a change in their intimacy.

Single Bliss

A fire of passion burned in spirit-depths,
A constant touch of sweetness linked all hearts,
The throb of one adoration’s single bliss
In a rapt ether of undying love.

An intensity is aflame in the depths of the Spirit here. An unceasing current of sweetness flows linking all beings together in the bliss of adoration of the Divine. All breathe the air of immortal love.

Inner Happiness

An inner happiness abode in all,
A sense of universal harmonies,
A measureless secure eternity
Of truth and beauty and good and joy made one.

Here all are aglow with an inner happiness. There is a concrete feeling of the harmony underlying and supporting all form and movement in the universe. Truth, beauty, goodness and joy are not divided from each other or precariously associated, as in the ignorant world of men; they are made one for all time.

Welling Core of Finite Life

There was the welling core of finite life;
A formless spirit became the soul of form.

Here is the origin of finite creation in the bosom of the Infinite. Here the formless Spirit casts itself into the soul of each form and supports it.

All is Soul-Stuff

All there was soul or made of sheer soul-stuff:
A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.

All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
Seized on all things by a moved identity,

The whole region is a vast soul; the very substance is of the soul-stuff. Both the ground and the sky are pure soul in form. Here knowledge is not attained through physical sensation or mental thought process. A spiritual perception directly cognises things by a close, effortless identification with them.

Identity

A sympathy of self with other selves,
The touch of consciousness on consciousness
And being’s look on being with inmost gaze
And heart laid bare to heart without walls of speech
And the unanimity of seeing minds
In myriad forms luminous with the one God.

This identity is effected through sympathy of one self with other selves, the direct touch of one consciousness on another consciousness, the deep gaze of one being on another, the free interchange between heart and heart, the oneness of vision governing all embodied minds, the myriad forms luminous with one Divinity.

Spiritual Power

Life was not there, but an impassioned force,
Finer than fineness, deeper than the deeps
Felt as a subtle and spiritual power,
A quivering out from soul to answering soul,
A mystic movement, a close influence,
A free and happy and intense approach
Of being to being with no screen or check,
Without which life and love could never have been.

Instead of the turbulent flow of life there is here a deep, intense and subtle Force. It is experienced as a covert spiritual Power vibrating between souls, creating a free and joyous intimacy unhampered by restraining barriers. Indeed, without this vibrating power of the spirit neither life nor love would be at all possible.

Body not Needed

Body was not there, for bodies were needed not,
The soul itself was its own deathless form
And met at once the touch of other souls
Close, blissful, concrete, wonderfully true.

In this domain, the soul does not need to cast itself into a body in order to enter into communication and relation with other souls. It is its own immortal form vivid and concrete and its direct interchange with others is close, blissful and uniquely real.

Things Known by their Soul

There where reality was its own dream,
He knew things by their soul and not their shape:

Just as one conscious in dreams is aware that what pass are only figures and also knows the truth that is behind the figures, so here in this self-projection of the Reality, Aswapathy perceives and knows things, not by their external form but by their evident soul.

Communion without Speech

As those who have lived long made one in love
Need word nor sign for heart’s reply to heart,
He met and communed without bar of speech
With beings unveiled by a material frame.

Just as those who have become one in spirit through deep love do not need the help of speech or gesture for their communion, so Aswapathy does not need to use the medium of speech which is more often a bar than a channel—to commune with the beings of this world who are not veiled by the vesture of a physical body.

Spiritual Scenery

There was a strange spiritual scenery,
A loveliness of lakes and streams and hills,
A flow, a fixity in a soul-space,
And plains and valleys, stretches of soul-joy,
And gardens that were flower-tracts of the spirit,
Its meditations of tinged reverie.

There is a wondrous spiritual landscape: flowing waters of soul-movement, motionless hills of soul-station, vast expanses which are concrete projections of soul-joy, colourful gardens of the self-musing spirit.

Fragrance

Air was the breath of a pure infinite.

A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze
As if the scent and hue of all sweet flowers
Had mingled to copy heaven’s atmosphere.

The air here is the breath of pure Infinite. A fragrance is wafted in a hue that is lazy. It looks as if all the sweet scents and colours of the flowers have combined to reproduce the atmosphere of heaven.

Beauty

Appealing to the soul and not the eye
Beauty lived there at home in her own house,
There all was beautiful by its own right
And needed not the splendour of a robe.

Here beauty lives by its own right, it does not need a splendid form to reveal itself. This is the native place of beauty which is seen by the soul directly and eyes are not needed to see it.

World and Self one Reality

All objects were like bodies of the Gods,
A spirit symbol environing a soul,
For world and self were one reality.

Beautiful like the body of a God, each object is a transparent self-form of a soul and symbolically manifests its inner essence in form. The self and world are not two separate or divided entities but a single reality.

Chamber of Spiritual Sleep

Immersed in voiceless internatal trance
The beings that once wore forms on earth sat there
In shining chambers of spiritual sleep.

Passed were the pillar-posts of birth and death,
Passed was their little scene of symbol deeds,
Passed were the heavens and hells of their long road;
They had returned into the world’s deep soul.

This is the world where souls retire for rest after they shed their embodiments on earth and before they incarnate anew. Passing beyond the states of birth and death, leaving behind the scenes of their significant activities, passing through the stages of hell and heaven—of their own making—these beings arrive in the world of psychic sleep where they return into the arms of the inner Soul of the world.

Pregnant Rest

All now was gathered into pregnant rest:
Person and nature suffered a slumber change.

In trance they gathered back their bygone selves,
In a background memory’s foreseeing muse
Prophetic of new personality
Arranged the map of their coming destiny’s course:
Heirs of their past, their future’s discoverers,
Electors of their own self-chosen lot,
They waited for the adventure of new life.

All that has been experienced and lived during the sojourn on earth is now gathered up for assimilation during this period of rest that prepares for the next embodiment. A gradual change is worked out both at the soul level and the nature level. Past experience is drawn upon to provide material for the future course. These beings inherit their past and on that basis formulate the lines of their coming life. Shaping their own destiny,—choosing the necessary conditions most conducive to their further development on earth,—they await here the call for the adventure of a new life.

Persistent Person

A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,
Although the same for ever in many shapes
By the outward mind unrecognisable
Assuming names unknown in unknown climes
Imprints through Time upon the earth’s worn page
A growing figure of its secret self,
And learns by experience what the spirit knew,
Till it can see its truth alive and God.

Across the series of births and deaths, passing through several worlds on its journey, it is the one soul that persists in its evolutionary adventure on earth. For ever the same divine entity at its core, it goes on assuming names and forms birth after birth, puts out different personalities in the field of experience and growth and develops itself. Gradually it discovers through its embodiments the knowledge that is all the while concealed in its own spiritual depths, and is able to realise in manifestation the Divine Truth that is at its origin.

Soul’s Experiment

Once more they must face the problem-game of birth,
The soul’s experiment of joy and grief
And thought and impulse lighting the blind act,
And venture on the roads of circumstance
Through inner movements and external scenes
Travelling to self across the forms of things.

These resting souls in the psychic world are again to go forth and enter into the meaningful round of birth and death and participate in the game of life with its ups and downs. They light up with growing consciousness and power the mechanical activity in nature, traversing the course of circumstances unforeseen, both in subjective and objective experience, they journey to the discovery of the self across the multitude of forms in the universe.

Creation’s Centre

Into creation’s centre he had come.

The spirit wandering from state to state
Finds here the silence of its starting-point
In the formless force and the still fixity
And brooding passion of the world of Soul.

Aswapathy has arrived at the very centre of creation. The adventuring spirit, passing from state to state of consciousness in the formulated creation, finds here, in the formless Force, in the perfect stillness, in the musing intensity of the world of soul, the Silence from which it originally set forth.

All Re-Made

All that is made and once again unmade,
The calm persistent vision of the One
Inevitably re-makes, it lives anew:
Forces and lives and beings and ideas
Are taken into the stillness for a while;
There they remould their purpose and their drift,
Recast their nature and re-form their shape.

In this period of assimilation, rest and preparation for the next birth, things are disentangled, re-arranged and recast in view of the purpose of the new embodiment. Also withdrawn for a while, in this stillness, are forces, lives, beings and ideas at work in the universe. They are there recast in their nature, differently formed in shape, remoulded and re-oriented, before they are launched again in another movement with another purpose.

Process of the Gods

Ever they change and changing ever grow,
And passing through a fruitful stage of death
And after long reconstituting sleep
Resume their place in the process of the Gods
Until their work in cosmic Time is done.

All beings are subject to this process of change and by change they grow. When the growth comes to a standstill for any reason, they cease to live i.e. they die. Death is a helpful stage, for it releases from a state of stagnancy, opens the door to another birth and a fresh opportunity for progress. Between death and the next birth is the state of pregnant sleep of assimilation and preparation following which they return to their field of labours presided over by the Gods. And so it goes on till the object of birth in the cosmos is fulfilled.

Fashioning Chamber

Here was the fashioning chamber of the worlds.

An interval was left twixt act and act,
Twixt birth and birth, twixt dream and waking dream,
A pause that gave new strength to do and be.

Thus this is the place from where things are prepared, planned and projected into the worlds of manifestation. Here is spent the necessary interval between one birth-experience and another, one action and another, one state of consciousness and another. This interval between one birth and another gives time for gathering new strength for the next adventure of birth.

Cradles of Heavenly Rapture

Beyond were regions of delight and peace,
Mute birth-places of light and hope and love,
And cradles of heavenly rapture and repose.

Beyond this world lie domains of joy and peace, silent sources of light and hope and love, nurseries of celestial delight and repose.

Aware of the Eternal Moment

In a slumber of the voices of the world
He of the eternal moment grew aware;
His knowledge stripped bare of the garbs of sense
Knew by identity without thought or word,
His being saw itself without its veils,
Life’s line fell from the spirit’s infinity.

In a hush of all worldly sounds, Aswapathy becomes conscious of Eternity. The instrumentation of the senses drops off and knowledge by identity awakes in him; neither thought nor speech are any more necessary. His being looks at itself without the veils of nature. Life’s limiting demarcation of form falls from him and he perceives his true being as the infinite Spirit.

Source of all

Along a road of pure interior light,
Alone between tremendous Presences,
Under the watching eye of nameless Gods,
His soul passed on, a single conscious power
Towards the end which ever begins again,
Approaching through a stillness dumb and calm
To the source of all things human and divine.

Aswapathy’s soul, a single conscious power, travels on along a path lit from within, alone among mighty Presences, under the watchful regard of Gods without name, towards an end which is also a beginning. Through a passage mute, calm and still, he approaches the very source of things, human and divine.

Two-In-One

There he beheld in their mighty union’s poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.

There Aswapathy beholds the biune Divinity, the Supreme in its creative poise of He and She. Here is seated the Divine Pair whose rapture sustains the whole creation.

Behind Stands She

Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.

Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit;
Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks,
Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,
She guards the austere approach to the Alone.

Behind this Dual Personality stands the Great One, the Divine Mother who has brought out the Two-in-One from the Absolute Reality for Manifestation. It is She who ever awaits, under disguise, the soul that calls; and she who keeps watch from the summits and guides the pilgrim of the Spirit on his difficult journey. She stands at the portals of the Sole Transcendent guarding the narrow and difficult passage.

She Reigns

At the beginning of each far-spread plane
Pervading with her power the cosmic suns
She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works
And thinker of the symbol of its scene.

She, the Divine Mother, pervades all the planes of existence with her luminous Power, reigns over the worlds therein, moves all activity and stamps upon each its significance.

She Supports All

Above them all she stands supporting all,
The sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled
Of whom the world is the inscrutable mask;
The ages are the footfalls of her tread,
Their happenings the figure of her thoughts,
And all creation is her endless act.

She stands above all the planes supporting them in her omnipotence; she is always veiled; the world is her thick mask; the ages of Time are the courses of her walk; all that takes place is prefigured in her thoughts; the whole creation is really her unending act.

His Prayer and her Gesture

His spirit was made a vessel of her force;
Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.

Then in a sovereign answer to his heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,
And from her raiment’s lustrous mystery raised
One arm half-parted the eternal veil.

Aswapathy’s spirit is fired with her Force. In the intensity of his aspiration he outstretches to her his hands in prayer. And in a spontaneous gesture of response, she raises one arm to half part her veil.

Enigma of her Eyes

A light appeared still and imperishable.

Attracted to the large and luminous depths
Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,
He saw the mystic outline of a face.

A still, unending light appears. Aswapathy is attracted to the luminous and captivating mystery in her eyes and sees the heavenly outline of her face.

Aswapathy Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed by her implacable light and bliss,
An atom of her illimitable self
Mastered by the honey and lightning of her power,
Tossed towards the shores of her ocean ecstasy,
Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,
He cast from the rent stillness of his soul
A cry of adoration and desire
And the surrender of his boundless mind
And the self-giving of his silent heart.

He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.

Aswapathy is overpowered by her imperious light and bliss. He feels himself to be but a small fragment of her boundless being. Completely mastered by the sweetness and brilliance of her power, helplessly swung towards her vast ecstasy, intoxicated with the divine spirit, he breaks out of the silence of his soul into a cry of adoration and seeking. And in an utter movement of surrender of his unbounded mind and silent heart, he falls at her feet, losing all awareness, prostrate.