Book-2-Study-Canto-15

Book Two: Canto XV

The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge

Summary
From the soul-state Aswapathy returns again to the surface. He stands in a realm of Silence, alone and still. He has gone beyond the reign of Nature, beyond the sphere of Mind. It is a plane of undetermined Spirit beyond Thought. Here is a voice that the human ear cannot hear, a Knowledge that is gained by identity, a Love that unifies. Here is the original massed plenitude of Power prior to creation. This is the place of the spiritual birth of things.

Aswapathy sees the splendour of the Spirit’s kingdoms—the glory of the One as All. All forms are shapes of the Spirit, all forms are outbursts of the Spirit’s truth. He passes on and sees the Powers that preside over the world. Knowledge calls him to her peaks. An all-revealing Light leads him to the regions of transcendent Truth where Time and Space are seen in their true nature as self-extensions and self-durations of the Spirit. The Beauty and Harmony of Creation unveil themselves to his vision. He beholds the play of Inspiration, Revelation and Intuition.

Freed from the hold of sleep and death he crosses seas of the Cosmic Mind and nears the rim of eternity, the borders of the Ineffable. Above him are the Hierarchies of Planes, Powers and Gods, presiding over the whole Creation. He has reached the top of all that can be known and only the last Mystery is left. All the multiplicity flows into the One and he becomes a portion of that Glory.

No untruth can come here. Each is unique and yet all are one the Impersonal and the Personal, movement and quiescence, exist side by side.

A symbol of the self, the body is an immortal point of power in the surge of cosmic life. Consciousness is one single weft. Space does not divide, Time is one. Idea embodies Vision and Vision proceeds from Identity.

Aswapathy is new-born in this Kingdom of the Spirit’s power and light. His Knowledge grasps the Unfathomable, embraces all without segmentation. He thinks and feels in all. He is in communion with the Incommunicable. He moves and converses with greater Beings and Gods. The primal Energy enters into him, an overwhelming Light envelops his brain. He studies the secrets of the Overwind region. He is in tune with the supernal harmonies and links up in his consciousness the creation and the Eternal’s sphere. He wields the Cosmic Force.

Return to Surface Fields

After a measureless moment of the soul
Again returning to these surface fields
Out of the timeless depths where he had sunk,
He heard once more the slow tread of the hours.

After an eternal moment in this state of the soul, Aswapathy comes out of these timeless profounds back to the surface region and is once again in the field of Time.

Awaits the Voice

All once perceived and lived was far away;
Himself was to himself his only scene.

Above the Witness and his universe
He stood in a realm of boundless silences
Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds.

All that was experienced before recedes far away. He is absolutely alone. He is poised above both his subjective and his objective self and stands in a realm of infinite silences, awaiting the creative Word that builds the universe as it breaks forth.

Sheer Existence

A light was round him wide and absolute,
A diamond purity of eternal sight;
A consciousness lay still, devoid of forms,
Free, wordless, uncoerced by sign or rule,
For ever content with only being and bliss;
A sheer existence lived in its own peace
On the single spirit’s bare and infinite ground.

There is around Aswapathy a wide, pure and powerful light. It is a still Consciousness, free of forms or sound, unformulated, content in its own being and bliss. It is a pure existence living in its own peace on the soundless bosom of the sole Spirit.

Undetermined Spirit

Out of the sphere of Mind he had arisen,
He had left the reign of Nature’s hues and shades;
He dwelt in his self’s colourless purity.

It was a plane of undetermined spirit
That could be a zero or round sum of things,
A state in which all ceased and all began.

Aswapathy has arisen above the range of Mind, beyond the variegations of Nature’s hues, and now dwells in the neutral purity of his self. Here nothing is formulated, all is one Spirit. It strikes as a zero, a void or a rounded totality. It is a state which is at once the end of things and their beginning.

High Vast Peak

All it became that figures the absolute,
A high vast peak whence spirit could see the worlds,
Calm’s wide epiphany, wisdom’s mute home,
A lonely station of Omniscience,
A diving-board of the Eternal’s power,
A white floor in the house of All-Delight.

It is a vast figure of the Absolute, a high peak commanding a view of all the worlds for the Spirit. It is the birthplace of Calm, the home of Wisdom, the self-station of Omniscience, the springboard of the Eternal’s Power, the pure foundation of the house of universal Bliss.

Thought that Passes beyond Thought

Here came the thought that passes beyond Thought,
Here the still Voice which our listening cannot hear,
The Knowledge by which the Knower is the Known,
The Love in which Beloved and Lover are one.

Here is the thought that goes beyond thinking, the still Voice which the human ear cannot hear, the Knowledge in which the distinction between the Knower and the Known ceases and there is an identity between the subject and the object, the Love which unites in itself the lover and the loved.

Spiritual Birth

All stood in an original plenitude,
Hushed and fulfilled before they could create
The glorious dream of their universal acts;
Here was engendered the spiritual birth,
Here closed the finite’s crawl to the Infinite.

All the creative Powers stand here in their native abundance. Even before they throw themselves out into the splendid activity of the universe, they are content and fulfilled. Here takes place the spiritual birth of things before they pass into the successive steps of manifestation; here also ends the slow return journey of the finite to the Infinite.

At the Doors of the Unknowable

A thousand roads leaped into Eternity
Or singing ran to meet God’s veilless face.

The known released him from its limiting chain,
He knocked at the doors of the Unknowable.

All the multitude of paths of the ascent through Time soar here into Eternity or rush in delight to meet the unveiled Divine.

Aswapathy is freed from the Knowledge that binds one to its limits and he now approaches the Unknowable.

Splendour of the Spirit’s Realms (I)

Thence gazing with an immeasurable outlook
One with self’s inlook into its own pure vasts,
He saw the splendour of the spirit’s realms,
The greatness and wonder of its boundless works,
The power and passion leaping from its calm,
The rapture of its movement and its rest,

Aswapathy gazes out with a look which is at one with the inner gaze of the self into its own profounds and sees the glory of the realms of the Spirit. He sees the might and marvel of the workings of the Spirit, its calm supporting all its intensity and the power issuing from it, the Spirit in the rapture of its movements and of its rest.

Splendour of the Spirit’s Realms (II)

And its fire-sweet miracle of transcendent life,
The million-pointing undivided grasp
Of its vision of one same stupendous All,
Its inexhaustible acts in a timeless Time,
A space that is its own infinity.

He sees also the flaming miracle of its transcendent life, its vision of the one embracing the vast multiplicity, its timeless pouring out in Time and the self-extension of its infinity into Space.

Multiple of our Self

A glorious multiple of one radiant Self,
Answering to joy with joy, to love with love,
All there were moving mansions of God-bliss;
Eternal and unique they lived the One.

Here all are conscious, luminous projections of the One Self—embodiments of Divine Bliss in manifestation, one being in many forms responding to itself in joy and in love. Each is eternal and unique but at the same time all live in the One.

Spirit is no more Hid

There forces are great outbursts of God’s truth
And objects are its pure spiritual shapes;
Spirit no more is hid from its own view,
All sentience is a sea of happiness
And all creation is an act of light.

Here forces are powerful radiations of the Truth of the Spirit in manifestation; objects are the self-shapings of the Spirit. Unlike in the material universe, here the spirit is not veiled in its form; it is evident in all its poises. All sensation is replete with happiness. And all creation is a direct, unobstructed, undeformed act of life.

Out of the neutral silence of his soul
He passed to its fields of puissance and of calm
And saw the Powers that stand above the world,
Traversed the realms of the supreme Idea
And sought the summit of created things
And the almighty source of cosmic change.

Aswapathy witnesses all from the untouched silence of his soul and passes into realms of Power and Calm. He beholds the mighty Powers that stand above the world and oversee it. He journeys through the region of the Truth-Idea that prefigures the universe and seeks the highest height of creation and the dynamic source of all change in the cosmos.

Mystic Peaks of Knowledge

There knowledge called him to her mystic peaks
Where thought is held in a vast internal sense
And feeling swims across a sea of peace
And vision climbs beyond the reach of Time.

Knowledge beckons to him from her mystic summits where thought does not have to be laboured out but is there ready, a part of a vast inner sense, where feeling is not agitated or restless but moves on the bosom of peace, where vision is not confined to the immediate but extends beyond the range of Time.

An Equal of the First Creator Seers

An equal of the first creator seers,
Accompanied by an all-revealing light
He moved through regions of transcendent Truth
Inward, immense, innumerably one.

Aswapathy feels his consciousness on par with the original creating seers. He is guided by a light that reveals all to his vision. He traverses vast inner realms of the transcendent Truth and grasps the One in its totality.

Time and Space

There distance was his own huge spirit’s extent;
Delivered from the fictions of the mind
Time’s triple dividing step baffled no more;
Its inevitable and continuous stream,
The long flow of its manifesting course,
Was held in spirit’s single wide regard.

Here Aswapathy experiences Space as the self-extension of his own Spirit. He also clearly sees Tune, freedfrom the mind-imposed divisions of past, present and future, as one continual stream of the duration of the Consciousness in manifestation.

Universal Beauty

A universal beauty showed its face;
The invisible deep-fraught significances,
Here sheltered behind form’s insensible screen,
Uncovered to him their deathless harmony
And the key to the wonder-book of common things.

A pervading, universal Beauty reveals itself. Significances of things are no more hidden behind the exterior of forms; they become patent to his eye and show their unbroken harmony and the secret of the wonder that beckons in the commonest things.

Measures and Lines Revealed

In their uniting law stood up revealed
The multiple measures of the uplifting force,
The lines of the World-Geometer’s technique,
The enchantments that uphold the cosmic web
And the magic underlying simple shapes.

He sees the multiple movements of the Force at work in the universe in contact with their one governing law, the patterns of the intricate creative process, the fascinating supports of the web of the cosmos and the unique skill that unlerlies the formulation of shapes apparently simple.

Triple Fire

On peaks where Silence listens with still heart
To the rhythmic metres of the rolling worlds,
He served the sessions of the triple fire.

On the rim of two continents of slumber and trance
He heard the ever unspoken Reality’s voice
Awaken revelation’s mystic cry,
The birth-place found of the sudden infallible Word
And lived in the rays of an intuitive Sun.

On heights where Silence listens to the rhythmic measures of the movements of the worlds, Aswapathy participates in the luminous manifestation of Inspiration, Revelation and Intuition, on the borders between the states of sleep and trance, he hears the voice of the secret Reality ushering in Revelation, finds the source of Inspiration and lives in the rays of Intuition.

Near the Verges of Eternity

Absolved from the ligaments of death and sleep
He rode the lightning seas of cosmic Mind
And crossed the ocean of original sound;
On the last step to the supernal birth
He trod along extinction’s narrow edge
Near the high verges of eternity,
And mounted the gold ridge of the World-dream
Between the slayer and the saviour fires;

Freed from the bonds of sleep and death, Aswapathy freely traverses the regions of the cosmic Mind and crosses vast expanses of the primal Sound. He is on the final lap of his journey to supernal existence; warily he walks along the narrow edges of nirvanic extinction on the high borders of Eternity; he climbs the shining ridge of the world-stair between the powers that slay and the powers that save.

Presence of the Ineffable

The belt he reached of the unchanging Truth,
Met borders of the inexpressible Light
And thrilled with the presence of the Ineffable.

He reaches the realm of the permanent, unvarying Truth, touches the region of ineffable Light and thrills to the presence of the Reality beyond speech.

Flaming Hierarchies

Above him he saw the flaming Hierarchies,
The wings that fold around created space,
The sun-eyed Guardians and the golden Sphinx
And the tiered planes and the immutable Lords.

Above him Aswapathy sees the luminous orders of the Planes and their firmly poised Lords. He sees the wings of the Spirit that loom over the Creation, the lustrous Guardian-Powers and the embodied Mystery of Truth.

Wisdom Waiting

A wisdom waiting on Omniscience
Sat voiceless in a vast passivity;
It judged not, measured not, nor strove to know,
But listened for the all-seeing Thought
And the burden of a calm transcendent Voice.

He sees a Wisdom at the portals of Omniscience, sitting mute, vast, passive; it waits without the action of either judging or measuring or knowing. It stays still, listening for the whole-visioned Thought and the calm Voice from above.

Top of what can be Known

He had reached the top of all that can be known:
His sight surpassed creation’s head and base;
Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns,
The obscure Abyss exposed its monstrous rule.

Aswapathy has indeed reached the zenith of all that can be known. His vision extends beyond the summit and the base of creation. The triple heavens of Truth above shine in their glory and the nether Abyss of Nescience stands exposed in its horrid sway.

Eternities Call Eternities

All but the ultimate Mystery was his field,
Almost the Unknowable disclosed its rim.

His self’s infinities began to emerge,
The hidden universes cried to him;
Eternities called to eternities
Sending their speechless message still remote.

All except the ultimate Mystery comes within his consciousness. It looks as if the Unknowable almost reveals a rim of itself. The veiled infinities of his self begin to emerge; the hidden worlds without call the hidden worlds within.

Million Energies Join

Arisen from the marvel of the depths
And burning from the superconscious heights
And sweeping in great horizontal gyres
A million energies joined and were the One.

All flowed immeasurably to one sea:
All living forms became its atom homes.

All the innumerable energies arising from the mysterious depths of inconscience, flaming on the heights of superconscience, inundating all in their vast extension around, come together and are seen to be but One Energy. They are revealed to be the self-formulations of One Force. It is one sea of Consciousness-Force and all the living forms are its billion, concentrated embodiments.

A Panergy Harmonises

A Panergy that harmonised all life
Held now existence in its vast control;
A portion of that majesty he was made.

At will he lived in the unoblivious Ray.

All existence comes under the harmony and control of one pervasive Energy. Aswapathy becomes a part of this glory and effortlessly lives in its conscious illumination.

No Untruth can Come

In that high realm where no untruth can come,
Where all are different and all is one,
In the Impersonal’s ocean without shore
The Person in the World-Spirit anchored rode;
It thrilled with the mighty marchings of World-Force,
Its acts were the comrades of God’s infinite peace.

No untruth can creep in into this realm. Each is unique and yet all are One. There is the vast spread of the Impersonal Spirit, but there is here also the Spirit as the Person. Mighty movements of the World-Force exist side by side with the infinite Peace of God.

Body a Symbol Self

An adjunct glory and a symbol self,
The body was delivered to the soul,
An immortal point of power, a block of poise
In a cosmicity’s wide formless surge,
A conscious edge of the Transcendent’s might
Carving perfection from a bright world-stuff,
It figured in it a universe’s sense.

Here the body is not divorced from the soul. It is the extended glory and the symbol of the self. It is an immortal condensation of power, a firm station in the ceaseless flow of the cosmos, a conscious instrument of the Transcendent Spirit for creating perfection from the bright world-substance. It reveals in its form the inner meaning of the universe.

Consciousness Single Weft

There consciousness was a close and single weft;
The far and near were one in spirit-space,
The moments there were pregnant with all time.

Here there are no breaks or divisions in consciousness; it is woven into a single compact whole. There are no fars and nears in the Spirit’s extension. as Space; all is here at once. Time is not foreign to Eternity; each moment of Time contains in itself Eternity.

Life a Journey of the Spirit

The superconscient’s screen was ripped by thought,
Idea rotated symphonies of sight,
Sight was a flame-throw from identity;
Life was a marvellous journey of the spirit,
Feeling a wave from the universal Bliss.

Thought impinges upon the superconscient and forces an opening. Idea expresses dynamically and repeatedly the harmonies of Truth-Vision and this Vision is born of Identity. Life is a wonderful voyage of the Spirit and all feeling is a wave thrown up by the sea of the universal Bliss.

New-Born

In the kingdom of the Spirit’s power and light,
As if one who arrived out of infinity’s womb
He came new-born, infant and limitless
And grew in the wisdom of the timeless Child;
He was a vast that soon became a Sun.

As he enters this luminous and dynamic Kingdom of the Spirit, Aswapathy feels a new birth in himself, as if he has just emerged from the womb of infinity. He arrives as an infant without limits, grows in the wisdom of the child of the eternal and extending vast, soon becomes a veritable Sun of blazing Light.

His Thought and Feeling in all

A great luminous silence whispered to his heart;
His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,
An outview by no brief horizons cut:
He thought and felt in all, his gaze had power.

His heart is in communion with a great luminous Silence. His knowledge turning inwards grasps what is unfathomable by mental knowings, turning outwards it extends wide in an unending vista. In his thinking and feeling he is identified with all. His gaze is charged with power.

Communes with the Incommunicable

He communed with the Incommunicable;
Beings of a wider consciousness were his friends,
Forms of a larger subtler make drew near;
The Gods conversed with him behind Life’s veil.

He communes with what is normally Incommunicable. Beings of a consciousness larger than his become his friends. Subtler and larger forms draw close to him. From behind the veil of Life, even the Gods begin to talk to him.

Scans the Secret of Overmind

Neighbour his being grew to Nature’s crests.

The primal Energy took him in its arms;
His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,
An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:
Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,
Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:
He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.

His being grows to reach the peaks of Nature.

The great original Energy takes hold of him; his brain is invaded and covered with an overpowering Light; his heart is pervaded by an all-embracing Knowledge. Thoughts beyond the range of the human mind arise in him; intensities that could never be borne by human nerves begin to course in him.

Aswapathy is in the regions of the overmind and scans its mysteries. He bears the bliss of the Soul which presides over All.

He Links Creation to Eternal’s Sphere

A borderer of the empire of the Sun,
Attuned to the supernal harmonies,
He linked creation to the Eternal’s sphere,
His finite parts approached their absolutes,
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.

Aswapathy is on the borders of the kingdom of the Supramental Truth-Sun. He is in tune with celestial harmonies and hence is able to link the creation in Time with the realm of the Eternal. His own finite parts near the zenith of their growth. His actions embody the movements of the Gods. His will assumes control of the cosmic Force.