Book-2-Study-Canto-9

Book Two: Canto IX

The Paradise of the Life-Gods

Summary
Around Aswapathy shines a bright felicity. There is a perpetual joy untouched by grief or fear, free and wide. He traverses scenes of beauty and bliss, calm and luminous, hears notes of celestial music chanting the glory of Love.

The glowing heights of this realm climb towards a greatness beyond life. In these shining Edens of the vital gods, harmony, beauty, perfection are the rule. Peace, Love, Strength reach their acme. Pain is transmuted by the divine alchemic touch into potent joy. The gulf between heaven and hell stands healed.

All the high visionings of life are embodied here—her hopes, her thoughts, her willings. The course of life is smooth and certain. Divinising music and profound creative thoughts sail towards Aswapathy. The senses acquire a new range. His very body glows with light and power and shrinks no more from the demand of the Spirit to lose itself in identity with it. Earth stands reborn, companion of heaven.

Aswapathy rises to the stature of the gods and divine felicities pour into him transporting him into unknown ecstasies. A touch of the supreme comes over his eager heart. Eternity draws near in the form of Love and claims the body of Time.

A giant drop of Bliss overwhelms him and all around spreads a fiery ocean of felicity. He is drowned in its honeyed waves. He is able to bear this sheer delight without his body breaking down. This rapture purifies him and turns his mortal strength to undying power.

Immortality captures Time and claims Life.

Great Felicity

Around him shone a great felicitous Day.

A lustre of some rapturous Infinite,
It held in the splendour of its golden laugh
Regions of the heart’s happiness set free,
Intoxicated with the wine of God,
Immersed in light, perpetually divine.

There is a bright felicity all around Aswapathy. There is a glow of endless rapture. The happiness of the heart is no longer constricted, it is free to soar in its divine ecstasy bathed in light.

Command to Joy

A favourite and intimate of the Gods
Obeying the divine command to joy,
It was the sovereign of its own delight
And master of the kingdoms of its force.

This lustrous formation is the favoured of the Gods, close to them, divinely commanded to feast in joy. It is the master of its self-delight, supreme ruler of the territories of its force.

Secure Ease

Assured of the bliss for which all forms were made,
Unmoved by fear and grief and the shocks of Fate
And unalarmed by the breath of fleeting Time
And unbesieged by adverse circumstance,
It breathed in a sweet secure unguarded ease
Free from our body’s frailty inviting death,
Far from our danger zone of stumbling Will.

There is here a secure bliss for the enjoyment of which all forms are manifested in creation. There is no threat of interruption or cessation of the joy by the blows of Fate or the transitoriness of Time or the pressure of adverse conditions. There is an air of relaxed ease without any anxiety of a possible failure of the body leading to death; nor is there the danger of a faltering of Will common to mortals.

On the Breast of Universal Love

It needed not to curb its passionate beats;
Thrilled by the clasp of the warm satisfied sense
And the swift wonder-rush and flame and cry
Of the life-impulse’s red magnificent race,
It lived in a jewel-rhythm of the laughter of God
And lay on the breast of universal love.

There is no need here to curb the intensities of life. The senses have a full sway and their bubbling joy is a thrill. The forces of life have an unbridled run in their full vigour. Everywhere there is a joyous flow of happiness. Supporting all is a Love as wide as the universe.

Sob of Rapture

Immune the unfettered Spirit of Delight
Pastured his gleaming sun-herds and moon-flocks
Along the lyric speed of griefless streams
In fragrance of the unearthly asphodel.

A silence of felicity wrapped the heavens,
A ceaseless radiance smiled upon the heights;
A murmur of inarticulate ravishment
Trembled in the winds and touched the enchanted soil;
Incessant in the arms of ecstasy
Repeating its sweet involuntary note
A sob of rapture flowed along the hours.

Out of reach of grief, the Spirit of Delight thrives and prospers here abundantly in light and joy. A profound felicity covers the heavens and an uninterrupted radiance shines above. The whole air and ground hum with a melting rapture.

Abysses of Beauty and Bliss

Advancing under an arch of glory and peace,
Traveller on plateau and on musing ridge,
As one who sees in the World-Magician’s glass
A miracled imagery of soul-scapes flee
He traversed scenes of an immortal joy
And gazed into abysms of beauty and bliss.

Through these regions of glory and peace Aswapathy advances, climbing the heights, pausing on dreaming peaks, looking at the rapid course of subtle life-flowings. He crosses belts of undying joy and views the profounds of beauty and bliss on his way.

Brilliant Calm and Joy

Around him was a light of conscious suns
And a brooding gladness of great symbol things;
To meet him crowded plains of brilliant calm,
Mountains and violet valleys of the Blest,
Deep glens of joy and crooning waterfalls
And woods of quivering purple solitude;
Below him lay like gleaming jewelled thoughts
Rapt dreaming cities of Gandharva kings.

The whole region is Iit up with a live consciousness. There is a meditative serenity about things carrying great significance in them. Aswapathy traverses realms of bright, calm, blessedness, joy, intimacy. Below he sees set patterns of shining harmonies, gleaming cities of Gandharva kings.

Heavenly Music

Across the vibrant secrecies of Space
A dim and happy music sweetly stole,
Smitten by unseen hands he heard heart-close
The harp’s cry of the heavenly minstrels pass,
And voices of unearthly melody
Chanted the glory of eternal love
In the white-blue moonbeam air of Paradise.

Aswapathy catches notes of heavenly music as he passes. In that air, full of the pure delight of the Spirit, he hears unearthly melodies singing the glory of Divine Love.

Towards a Greatness beyond Life

A summit and core of all that marvellous world,
Apart stood high Elysian nameless hills,
Burning like sunsets in a trance of eve.

As if to some new unsearched profundity,
Into a joyful stillness plunged their base;
Their slopes through a hurry of laughter and voices sank,
Crossed by a throng of singing rivulets,
Adoring blue heaven with their happy hymn,
Down into woods of shadowy secrecy:
Lifted into wide voiceless mystery
Their peaks climbed towards a greatness beyond life.

Glowing luminous at the summit of this wonderful world indefinable, supernal mountains rise. Their basal are lost in the still, mysterious, profounds below. Song and laughter pervade their slopes. Their peaks rise into an ineffable mystery above and point to a greatness beyond the life-empire.

Shining Edens

The shining Edens of the vital gods
Received him in their deathless harmonies.

All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation’s native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.

Verily, these are the bright worlds—Edens—of the gods of the life-planes. Aswapathy enters into this realm of immortal harmonies. They are worlds of perfection of a kind manifested in Time. Beauty is natural; creation flows spontaneously in forms of beauty. Peace is not anything placid and neutral; it is a vibrant, joyous purity.

Common Things Turn into Miracles

There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highway of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles:
Overtaken by the spirit’s sudden spell,
Smitten by a divine passion’s alchemy,
Pain’s self compelled transformed to potent joy
Curing the antithesis between heaven and hell.

Here Love and Strength fulfil themselves without deviation and arrestation. Desire effectuates itself in the fullness of its Will. Pleasure is a veritable god holding sway without check. Common movements in life take on a miraculous character. Even Pain—overtaken by the shock of the Spirit’s impact and undergoing the alchemic touch of the divine passion—is transmuted into a dynamic joy. The gulf between heaven and hell is healed.

Life’s Visions Embodied here

All life’s high visions are embodied there,
Her wandering hopes achieved, her aureate combs
Caught by the honey-eater’s darting tongue,
Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,
Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calm
And liberated her immense desires.

All that life seeks to realise is achieved here. Her varying hopes are fulfilled, her cherished enjoyments fully seized, her passionate ideas turned into a still, satisfied calm and her huge desires, freed from the struggle for fulfilment, reach full satisfaction here.

Paradise of Perfect Heart and Sense

In that Paradise of perfect heart and sense
No lower note could break the endless charm
Of her sweetness ardent and immaculate;
Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.

No note of disharmony or discord breaks the perfect rhythm of life-movements in this paradise. The charm and sweetness of life are unmixed. The gait and course of life are sure and certain in their intuitive impulsion.

Wounded Limbs Healed

After the anguish of the soul’s long strife
At length were found calm and celestial rest
And, lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,
Healed were his warrior nature’s wounded limbs
In the encircling arms of Energies
That brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.

The being of Aswapathy at last finds calm and invigorating rest after its long travail in the nether regions of its journey. The ease and uninterrupted security now found in the embrace of the mighty Energies of this world—stainless and blissful heal the wounds he has suffered.

Beyond the Pallid Sense

In scenes forbidden to our pallid sense
Amid miraculous scents and wonder-hues
He met the forms that divinise the sight,
To music that can immortalise the mind
And make the heart wide as infinity
Listened, and captured the inaudible
Cadences that awake the occult ear:
Out of the ineffable hush it hears them come
Trembling with the beauty of a wordless speech,
And thoughts too great and deep to find a voice,
Thoughts whose desire new-makes the universe.

Amidst sights, fragrance and colours beyond the range of the normal limited human senses, Aswapathy has new experiences. He comes across forms that capture the sight with their beauty. He hears a celestial music that can lift up the mind into a state of immortality and open the heart to infinity. From unheard expanses he catches rhythms that awaken his inner hearing. These appealing sound-rhythms vibrate out of a profound Silence. He opens also to ineffable Thoughts—thoughts too great and too deep to be expressed in speech—potent enough to re-create the universe.

Recast in Joy-Glow

A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feet
To heights of unimagined happiness,
Recast his being’s aura in joy-glow,
His body glimmered like a skyey shell;
His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.

A higher range of the senses opens extending to heights of inconceivable happiness and fills his presence with a new light of joy; his very body begins to glisten like a transparent shell; and all his doors of perception are flooded with waves of light.

Celestial Competence

His earth, dowered with celestial competence,
Harboured a power that needed now no more
To cross the closed customs-line of mind and flesh
And smuggle godhead into humanity.

Aswapathy’s physical mould is now directly open to the innate Power of the Spirit which no longer needs to act through the diluting and deflecting instrumentation of mind and life. The Spirit is now able to get direct access to and dwell in his physical body on its own; it no more needs to live and act from behind the veil in his earth-nature.

Quarrel Annulled

It shrank no more from the supreme demand
Of an untired capacity for bliss,
A might that could explore its own infinite
And beauty and passion and the depth’s reply
Nor feared the swoon of glad identity
Where spirit and flesh in inner ecstasy join
Annulling the quarrel between self and shape.

So activated and charged, his body is now able to meet the demands made on it by the manifesting Spirit to support and embody all its intensities of bliss, power and passion. The body also shrinks no more from the act of ecstatic identity in which it completely loses itself in the Spirit thereby healing the gulf between the soul and the form.

The sense of division and the consequent urge to safeguard its separate identity by resistance and shrinking from union are no longer there.

Earth Comrade of Heaven

It drew from sight and sound spiritual power,
Made sense a road to reach the intangible:
It thrilled with the supernal influences
That build the substance of life’s deeper soul.

Earth-nature stood reborn, comrade of heaven.

His earth-nature is now able to use its sense-faculties,—normally restricting their field to the limits of their physical range—to contact and draw from higher and subtler sources of spiritual Power. It is vibrant with the higher touches of the Spirit, its influences that build the inner soul of life.

Earth-nature transcends its lower formulation and attains equality with the Spirit.

Companion of Timeless Kings

A fit companion of the timeless Kings,
Equalled with the godheads of the living Suns,
He mixed in the radiant pastimes of the Unborn,
Heard whispers of the Player never seen
And listened to his voice that steals the heart
And draws it to the breast of God’s desire,
And felt its honey of felicity
Flow through his veins like the rivers of Paradise,
Made body a nectar-cup of the Absolute.

As a result of this transmutation, Aswapathy acquires the status of the luminous and deathless gods. He participates in the play of the Eternal, heeds the promptings of the Cosmic Player, though he cannot see him—listens to his voice that draws him close to the breast of God’s longing and feels its sweet. felicity flow through his veins making his body a cup of divine nectar.

Rim of Ecstasies

In sudden moments of revealing flame,
In passionate responses half-unveiled
He reached the rim of ecstasies unknown;
A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart,
The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful,
And hints leaped down of white beatitudes.

A high flame of revelation breaks out suddenly and on the wings of rapturous responses of his whole being, Aswapathy reaches the border of unknown ecstasies. Unexpectedly his eager heart comes under a divine touch; he is reminded of the hold of the Wonderful Supreme over his being. Signals of pure blissful vasts descend upon him.

Eternity as Love

Eternity drew close disguised as Love
And laid its hand upon the body of Time.

The Timeless Reality draws close to him in the form of Love and seizes his existence in Time.Love is the bridge between Time and Eternity, the hook by which each seizes the other.

Gift from the Immensitudes

A little gift comes from the Immensitudes,
But measureless to life its gain of joy;
All the untold Beyond is mirrored there.

It happens at times that a small gift of Grace is handed down to the Earth by the Spirit Infinite. But even that apparently little gift means so much to the Earth; the joy it brings to life here is incalculable. In that happy bequest is epitomised all that is the ineffable Beyond.

Immortality Carries Life

A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable
Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became
A fiery ocean of felicity:
He foundered drowned in sweet and burning vasts:
The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.

Immortal pleasure cleansed him in its waves
And turned his strength into undying power.

Immortality captured Time and carried Life.

Aswapathy is overwhelmed by a single drop of Bliss from the Infinite. An ocean of consuming felicity spreads around him and he is enveloped in its honeyed waves. He endures the sheer, unmixed delight that would shatter an unprepared, unpurified body-receptacle,’ the rapture that the gods alone can hold. This ceaseless divine bliss and joy purifies him entirely and transmutes his human strength into an unfailing luminous power.

Immortality lays hold on Time and uplifts Life into its arms. Life in Time is turned into Life immortal.