Savitri-study-Book-2-Canto-11

Book Two: Canto XI

The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

Summary
Aswapathy crosses beyond the limits of the human mind into the regions of a vaster transcending Thought. This higher Thought is allied to a Vision facing the Spirit Eternal. On these peaks are seen the glories of the Ideal Mind.

This Ideal Mind is the source and inspirer of all the great hopes and movements on earth. It is the bridge between man and God. In this world dwell the Gods who are the forms taken by the truths of the Spirit. Here are the Truth-Ideas that prefigure creation below. Their light and influence touches the human world and moves it to greater effort. The source of human faith in progress and perfection lies here.

Man is not an alien to these regions; he belongs to them on his heights. In his condition of Ignorance he is exiled from there but his thought carries memories of this origin and, in moments of rare communion, is enlivened by its light and force. Yet human will and sense act as barriers to this flow of greatness from above. The soul of man, however, can climb to these luminous planes.

Aswapathy enters into this realm and sees the pure worlds of Thought where Knowledge is the leader and thought the substance, where feeling responds readily to the Call of Truth, where form is a self-shaping of the creative Ray, will, a conscious vehicle of the Gods. Here life is brimming with scintillations of Consciousness. Joy and Bliss are natural here.

Farther off on the higher levels of Thought he espies newer heights where Time touches the horizons of Eternity and Nature communes with the Spirit.

The ascent is through a triple realm of Thought.

The first levels are close and similar to human mind—they are neither too high nor too broad for human effort. The guardians of this world intercede with the creative Puissance above and cast the immensities of Thought into life. They are the interpreters between man's mind and God's. They are masters of World-Tune, enjoyers of World-Bliss; they form Matter by the hidden stress of Mind; they measure out World-Space. They give finite shape to infinite things, Form to the Formless. But they impose a law on every movement and turn every step into a link of the chain of Necessity. They deprive Idea of its plastic infinity and make it fit in into a worked-out design. The knowledge they erect is bounded and perishable. They seek to tie down the fire and spontaneous movement of the One into determined time, space and law.

Above this belt opens another range. The beings here have a wider sight and shine with the light of a liberating Knowledge within. Their forte is vision, not conception. They penetrate into the occult mind of the creative Power and formulate their discoveries in terms of symbol, design of line and number and cosmic Law. But they try to structure the free rhythms of the infinite Consciousness into the logic of the finite thought. And in doing so, they construct a calculus of Destiny to measure the immeasurable. As a result they are lost in detail and miss the Whole. The Unknowable retains its secrecy from them.

Still higher are the kings of Thought whose all-seeing gaze embraces Time and Space. They hold and transmit to earth and heaven the imperative of the creator Self. Theirs is an all-ruling Consciousness.

The cosmos is indeed no accident in Time. It is guided and led by a Truth-Wisdom. The seed of creation sprouts from the Being of the Eternal and shaped into birth and growth by the creative gaze of the Absolute. There is a secret power in things compelling the concealed Godhead to emerge. Even Nature's ignorance is Truth's instrument. The supreme Will works in the guise of destiny and the mortal grows towards the Immortal. The truth of the Spirit, however, is hidden and it reveals itself only to the inner eye bereft of ego.

This fact escapes human thinking which seeks for a rule where a free Wisdom works, which alternates between Chance and Law as the truth of life.

The Kings of Thought attempt to grasp with thought the Truth absolute, to capture Reality in the abstractions of the conceptual Mind. They eliminate sense, form, sound and make a vacuum to hold the One. They arrive at an austere negation as the meaning of all, a zero as the finis.

Such is the play of the gods of Thought trying to snare Truth into concept and phrase for the delectation of the thinker. Truth is sought to be imprisoned in the cabin of the human mind and made an instrument for man's domination of the world.

However, in response to all these seekings from below, the Truth-Goddess appears to yield herself somewhat and consents to dwell on earth and instal her presence in the human breast. Man gives her a shape according to his own mind and self, clothes her in the Idea. Each one thinks his is the sole truth.

The fact remains that the eternal Truth cannot be seized by thought or by word. The world itself lives in the ray of this Truth-Sun which cannot be imprisoned within the walls of the thought of man. However high the thought, it is still inadequate. Thought has to yield to Vision and surrender to the supreme Truth. Only then will the Unmanifest reflect himself in the living glass of the still mind.

Transcending Thought

There ceased the limits of the labouring Power.

But being and creation cease not there.

For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
It is greater than its earthly instrument:
The godhead crammed into mind’s narrow space
Escapes on every side into some vast
That is a passage to infinity.

Aswapathy conies to a region where the labouring mind is no more. But on that account, being and creation do not cease to be. They are not creations of that mind and hence even when that mind is not there their existence continues. Thought, pure Thought, is greater than the mortal mind which is only its instrument and it is not confined to the rounds of that mind. Even when this Thought-Power compresses itself in the mould of the limited mind, it overflows on all sides into some vaster expanse which is a pathway to Infinity.

Child of Spirit's Force

It moves eternal in the spirit’s field,
A runner towards the far spiritual light,
A child and servant of the spirit’s force.

This Thought is close to the spirit and it ranges in the spirit's own domains. It always hastens towards the distant light of the spirit. In fact it is a product and an instrument of the force of the spirit.

Spirit beyond Thought

But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.

His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.

For the spirit is eternal and unmade
And not by thinking was its greatness born,
And not by thinking can its knowledge come.

Even the Thought-Mind, however, cannot rise above a certain height. It collapses in the higher altitudes of the Spirit. Neither speech nor mind, says the Scripture, attains there; they fall back without reaching.

Aswapathy's being crosses beyond the farthest borders of Thought and steps into the realm of the Spirit. The Spirit exists even where Thought is not, because it is not made by Thought, it does not exist by Thought and its knowledge is not a result of Thought.

Spirit Self-Existent

It knows itself and in itself it lives,
It moves where no thought is nor any form.

Its feet are steadied upon finite things,
Its wings can dare to cross the Infinite.

The Spirit does not need the instrumentation of thought to be self-aware. It is supremely conscient by itself and exists in itself. It lives and moves even where no thought is nor form. But in its manifestation it bases itself upon the finite; Earth is His footing, says the Upanishad. But its range is infinite and it reaches where it chooses.

Thought leans on Vision

Arriving into his ken a wonder space
Of great and marvellous meetings called his steps,
Where Thought leaned on a Vision beyond thought
And shaped a world from the Unthinkable.

Aswapathy espies a new region of wonder beckoning to him. Here Thought is no more a Power acting on its own. It has come to the end of its capacity and it now needs to support itself on a Vision that exists beyond its sphere. Supported and moved by this Illumination, Thought proceeds to form a world from out of the Unknowable that stretches beyond.

Splendours of Ideal Mind

On peaks imagination cannot tread,
In the horizons of a tireless sight,
Under a blue veil of eternity
The splendours of ideal Mind were seen
Outstretched across the boundaries of things known.

Beyond the reaches of imagination, in the stretches of endless Vision, well beyond the spaces trodden and known by Thought, are the glories of the ideal Mind. Presiding over the kingdoms of the ideal Mind are the skies of eternity.

Creator of Hopes

Origin of the little that we are,
Instinct with the endless more that we must be,
A prop of all that human strength enacts,
Creator of hopes by earth unrealised,
It spreads beyond the expanding universe;
It wings beyond the boundaries of Dream,
It overtops the ceiling of life’s soar.

This world of the Ideal Mind is really the source of this as yet small creation that we are and it also holds in embryo all the possibilities we are to actualise. The support for all actions by human strength is here. All the hopes still unrealised on earth are emanated from here. However much our universe might expand, this ideal world always outspreads it; it exceeds the farthest bounds of dream even as it is beyond the highest flight of life.

Casts Crowned Influences

Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
Exposed to omniscient immensities,
It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
Its speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,
Its force that strides invincibly through Time,
Its mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,
Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death.

It is not circumscribed by the boundaries of Thought. It is awake in an illumined region and open to the vasts of Knowledge. From its heights, it casts its towering influences on earth. Its movement is faster than human time, its force is irresistible. Its strengths link up the finite and the Infinite, man and God; its radiances push back the darknesses of Ignorance and Death.

Beauty and Mightiness Walk Hand in Hand

In its vast ambit of ideal Space
Where beauty and mightiness walk hand in hand,
The Spirit’s truths take form as living Gods
And each can build a world in its own right.

The Space in this realm of the Ideal Mind is vast by nature and provides an unlimited field to power and beauty which play happily together. They are not separated from each other as they are on many other planes in creation. The truths emanating from the manifesting Spirit become each a creative Godhead capable of building a world in its own right. Each truth here can father a world.

Doubt and Error are Not

In an air which doubt and error cannot mark
With the stigmata of their deformity,
In communion with the musing privacy
Of a truth that sees in an unerring light
Where the sight falters not nor wanders thought,
Exempt from our world’s exorbitant tax of tears,
Dreaming its luminous creations gaze
On the Ideas that people eternity.

Doubt and error—so characteristic of our world of ignorance do not pervade and deform here. Neither do sight nor thought go astray or fail. Suffering and pain which are the hallmark of the limping human world are not here. In this domain all creations are bright, unbroken in contact with their truths, gazing happily on the Ideas that move in plenty around.

Masters of the Ideal

In a sun-blaze of joy and absolute power
Above the Masters of the Ideal throne
In sessions of secure felicity,
In regions of illumined certitude.

On the heights of these planes of Ideal Mind, in regions of bright certitude, the presiding Powers reign in all their brilliance of joy and irresistible strength, assured in their dominion of felicity. No contrary elements of doubt, uncertainty, limitation, unease or pain have entry here.

Remote from Mortal Life

Far are those realms from our labour and yearning and call,
Perfection’s reign and hallowed sanctuary
Closed to the uncertain thoughts of human mind,
Remote from the turbid tread of mortal life.

These regions are beyond the reach of the tribulations, struggles and pantings of the human world in ignorance. They are far from the gropings of the human mind and its makeshift arrangements. They are patterns of perfection and security.

Our Secret Selves next of Kin

But since our secret selves are next of kin,
A breath of unattained divinity
Visits the imperfect earth on which we toil;

All the same, they are not completely separate and foreign to us. We have parts in us that are in relation with these realms. These parts are concealed behind our exterior selves and in touch with the movements of the regions above. Influences from these diviner altitudes act upon the mortal world through hidden channels of communication and help us in our labour to rise above our state of imperfection.

A Light Falls, a Thought Comes Down

Across a gleaming ether’s golden laugh
A light falls on our vexed unsatisfied lives,
A thought comes down from the ideal worlds
And moves us to new-model even here
Some image of their greatness and appeal
And wonder beyond the ken of mortal hope.

This higher impact takes place in many forms. From these regions of felicity a light descends on our troubled, striving lives and gives a fresh direction and fillip to our efforts. Or a thought from the Ideal Worlds floats down and inspires men to work to fashion a new creation in the mould of a great, new Idea. That is how men come to exceed their human norms time and again.

A Faith in Things that must be

Amid the heavy sameness of the days
And contradicted by the human law,
A faith in things that are not and must be
Lives comrade of this world’s delight and pain,
The child of the secret soul’s forbidden desire
Born of its amour with eternity.

Along with the joys and pains of the mortal world, there is also in man a faith in greater things that can be made possible even though they may not exist at present. This faith may be denied by the prevailing order of circumstances, but it persists and grows because at its origin is the aspiration of the inner soul to break out beyond the limits imposed by the imperfection of nature into the larger dimensions of the Eternal—with which it is, indeed, in constant relation at its deepest level.

Spirit Breaks Free

Our spirits break free from their environment;
The future brings its face of miracle near,
Its godhead looks at us with present eyes;
Acts deemed impossible grow natural;
We feel the hero’s immortality,
The courage and the strength death cannot touch
Awake in limbs that are mortal, hearts that fail;
We move by the rapid impulse of a will
That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal Time.

The spirit within breaks out of the limits imposed upon it by the environment and what appeared an impossible miracle before comes close to a realisation now. The distant probability of the future nears actuality in the present. A heroic courage and strength undaunted by the oppositions flow in mortal limbs and an irresistible will begins to effectuate itself with a momentum and speed that far exceed the slow rhythm of earthly Time.

Citizens of Mother State

These promptings come not from an alien sphere:
Ourselves are citizens of that mother State,
Adventurers, we have colonised Matter’s night.

These impulsions from the Ideal worlds do not really come from a foreign plane. In our deeper parts we too belong to that source realm. In fact we have come from those worlds of light to settle in and colonise, as it were, the darker regions of Matter so that these too may be developed and transformed into a kingdom of Light.

Thought Servant of Ignorance

But now our rights are barred, our passports void;
We live self-exiled from our heavenlier home.

An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth’s blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.

However, in our present state of division in consciousness and ignorance, we live exiled from that original home of ours. And it will be so till we rise out of our disabling imperfections.

Our thought is at its source a ray from the immortal Mind-Sun which in its career has come under the spell of the darkness of material earth and turned into an agent of Ignorance instead of being the emissary of the Light of Knowledge.

Labourer on Unsure Globe

An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
Captured and driven in Life’s nescient grasp,
Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,
It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,
The natural privilege of unfallen gods
Recalling still its old lost sovereignty.

Labouring in this uncertain field of Ignorance, handicapped by the noose of nescience in its embodied life, checkmated by the obscurity and unsteadiness of its physiological instruments, this thought ekes out its existence as an exile. But it has not altogether forgotten its happier origins, states of power and dominion; it recalls them time and again.

A Memory Steals from the Lost Heaven

Amidst earth’s mist and fog and mud and stone
It still remembers its exalted sphere
And the high city of its splendid birth.

A memory steals from a lost heaven of Truth,
A wide release comes near, a Glory calls,
A might looks out, an estranged felicity.

Though engrossed in the materiality of this down-to-earth existence and its obscurities and grossnesses, Thought retains the memory of its nobler heights, its brighter origins. Living flashes of these memories float down with touches of the Truth from above; a Call sounds from the Glory and the Might and the lost Bliss of its heaven.

Uncertain Leader

In glamorous passages of half-veiled light
Wandering, a brilliant shadow of itself,
This quick uncertain leader of blind gods,
This tender of small lamps, this minister serf
Hired by a mind and body for earth-use
Forgets its work mid crude realities;

For all its brilliance, this thought is only a shadow of its original self. It wanders on roads of half-light, an unsure half-seeing leader of the blind host of sense-faculties. Though it is of a higher status than either mind or body, it functions as their slave, catering to their creature needs, forgetting its own rightful role amidst their gross occupations.

Recovers its Imperial Right

It recovers its renounced imperial right,
It wears once more its purple robe of thought
And knows itself the Ideal’s seer and king,
Communicant and prophet of the Unborn,
Heir to delight and immortality.

As a result of flashes from on high, however, it awakes to its own natural right of rulership and comes into its own function as thought-proper, as the seer and realiser of Ideals, as the harbinger of what is still to manifest, as the claimant to the bliss and immortality of the Spirit.

Dreams are Real

All things are real that here are only dreams,
In our unknown depths sleeps their reserve of truth,
On our unreached heights they reign and come to us
In thought and muse trailing their robes of light.

Some things may appear to be unrealisable, as unsubstantial as dreams, to the practical mind of the world as it is today. But this is only an appearance. Even what appears as a dream has some reality. In fact, the dream is only a reflection, a transcription on earth of what is real elsewhere and can be made real on earth also in some way. This element or basis of truth is latent in the depths of our being. It projects itself on the surface through certain thoughts, through the occasional musings of man.

Celestial Visitants Await

But our dwarf will and cold pragmatic sense
Admit not the celestial visitants:
Awaiting us on the Ideal’s peaks
Or guarded in our secret self unseen
Yet flashed sometimes across the awakened soul,
Hide from our lives their greatness, beauty, power.

However, these intimations from the higher planes of Truth have no free entry in us. They are constantly obstructed, checked and rejected by our down-to-earth sense-mind and the small will accustomed to small movements. Larger possibilities, greater truths, lie concealed and await us on the higher planes of the Ideal worlds, in the profounder depths of our being. Occasionally, in our awakened moments they reach their message to us and inspire us to greater endeavour.

Our Souls can Climb

Our present feels sometimes their regal touch,
Our future strives towards their luminous thrones:
Out of spiritual secrecy they gaze,
Immortal footfalls in mind’s corridors sound:
Our souls can climb into the shining planes,
The breadths from which they came can be our home.

Our lives sometimes feel the impact of these brooding truths and our future is being moulded towards their realisation. They are still behind the veil, but from their station they cast a creative gaze on us, their emanations impinge on our minds. Our deepest being can ascend into the luminous regions of these verities and their vaster native planes can be our home.

Thinker Enters Immortal's Air

His privilege regained of shadowless sight
The Thinker entered the immortals’ air
And drank again his pure and mighty source.

Immutable in rhythmic calm and joy
He saw, sovereignly free in limitless light,
The unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds

Aswapathy begins to see clear and bright without any distorting shadow intervening as on the lower planes of Mind; he breathes the fresh air of the gods, pure and strong. He is once again able to draw freely from this fount of nourishment. Fixed in this rhythm of calm and joy, he sees in unhindered illumination, the august worlds of Thought.

Thought-Created Worlds

Where Knowledge is the leader of the act
And Matter is of thinking substance made,
Feeling, a heaven-bird poised on dreaming wings,
Answers Truth’s call as to a parent’s voice,
Form luminous leaps from the all-shaping beam
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour-stream of musing Force,
Carries the voices of the mystic Suns.

In these Thought-worlds Knowledge leads action, that is, all action is guided by right Knowledge; the very material substance of this place is infused with the power to think, it is not inconscient; feeling soars in answer to the call of Truth above, it is not set in motion by lower impulsions; every form is a luminous becoming of truth, it is not an obscuring veil; will is a conscious vehicle of the Divine Power, not a mechanical slave of material life; Life itself is a radiant flow of conscious Force, full of the charge of Truth, not a blind energy.

A Happiness it Brings

A happiness it brings of whispered truth;
There runs in its flow honeying the bosom of Space
A laughter from the immortal heart of Bliss,
And the unfathomed Joy of timelessness,
The sound of Wisdom’s murmur in the Unknown
And the breath of an unseen Infinity.

Life here moves with the gentle happiness of assured truth, it flows in audible waves of bliss immortal; time and space do not limit its movement. Its joy is perennial, its breath is of the infinite. Beating in its heart is a Wisdom that speaks from the unknown.

Spirit of Mind Broods on Idea

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.

Here in the bright, pure air of the Thought-world, the free, supremely powerful Spirit of Mind broods creatively on the Idea preparing to manifest.

Word of Light

A gold supernal sun of timeless Truth
Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray
Through a silence quivering with the word of Light
On an endless ocean of discovery.

There is here a continuous play of a ray of Light from the Truth-Sun above. The silence in the air is athrob with the luminous Word. All is perpetually new.

Meditation's Mounting Edge

Far-off he saw the joining hemispheres.

On meditation’s mounting edge of trance
Great stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights
Where Time’s last ridges touch eternity’s skies
And Nature speaks to the spirit’s absolute.

Along the ascending stairs of thought meditative, Aswapathy arrives at the ineffable summits of trance from where he sees the juncture of the lower and the upper hemispheres of the Creation, where Time touches Eternity and Nature communes with the highest Spirit.

Beginning of Immense Ascent

A triple realm of ordered thought came first,
A small beginning of immense ascent:
Above were bright ethereal skies of mind,
A packed and endless soar as if sky pressed sky
Buttressed against the Void on bastioned light;
The highest strove to neighbour eternity,
The largest widened into the infinite.

First a realm of Thought-world reveals itself in three tiers, commencing an immense range of ascent, disappearing into bright far-ranging ethereal skies above, touching, as it were, a void of massed light. The highest of these reached out to near eternity and the largest extended into the infinite.

First Realms above Human Mind

But though immortal, mighty and divine,
The first realms were close and kin to human mind;
Their deities shape our greater thinking’s roads,
A fragment of their puissance can be ours:
These breadths were not too broad for our souls to range,
These heights were not too high for human hope.

Although this realm is thus mighty, divine and immortal in its nature proper, it is not altogether out of reach of the human mind. Its lower ranges are near to it and have an affinity with it. The Powers of these planes form the higher thought-movements of the mind and, if the mind so aspires, something of their strength and force can be acquired by it. Their breadths and heights are within the extended capacity of the human being.

Its Upward Slope Looks Down

A triple flight led to this triple world.

Although abrupt for common strengths to tread,
Its upward slope looks down on our earth-poise:
On a slant not too precipitously steep
One could turn back travelling deep descending lines
To commune with the mortal’s universe.

The flight to this three-tiered world is also three-phased.

Its ascending heights may be difficult for the ordinary human to climb, but these heights are inclined towards the earth and there are descending paths which make it possible for one on the heights to look back and contact the earth-world below.

Wardens of the Ascending Stair

The mighty wardens of the ascending stair
Who intercede with the all-creating Word,
There waited for the pilgrim heaven-bound soul;
Holding the thousand keys of the Beyond
They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind
And filled the life with Thought’s immensities.

The guardian angels of this high ascending region, capable of linking the human soul with the creative Dynamis above, wait here for the aspiring seeker to arrive. They have it in their power to open the multiple gates on the Reality beyond the human mind and they offer their knowledge to the seeking mind that adventures to climb these heights. They it is who flood the mind that reaches here with the vastnesses proper to Thought at this level.

They Bring Immortal Fire

The prophet hierophants of the occult Law,
The flame-bright hierarchs of the divine Truth,
Interpreters between man’s mind and God’s,
They bring the immortal fire to mortal men.

These custodians are in the know of the occult Law of the processes as well as of the spiritual Truth of manifestation. They interpret the gnostic Mind of the creative Reality to the human mind and they plant in the mortal creature that is here the flaming and undying aspiration for divinity.

Guardian of Bright Degrees

Iridescent, bodying the invisible,
The guardians of the Eternal’s bright degrees
Fronted the sun in radiant phalanxes.

Afar they seemed a symbol imagery,
Illumined originals of the shadowy script
In which our sight transcribes the ideal Ray,
Or icons figuring a mystic Truth,
But, nearer, Gods and living Presences.

These guardians of the shining domains are radiant. They embody what is invisible to the human eye and face the Eternal Splendour in their gathered strengths. From a distance they look like a symbolic pattern, the bright originals of the illuminations of the ideal world that are interpreted so obscurely by human sight. Seen afar they appear as symbols of a mystic Truth; seen nearer they appear as Gods and living Presences.

March of Friezes

A march of friezes marked the lowest steps;
Fantastically ornate and richly small,
They had room for the whole meaning of a world,
Symbols minute of its perfection’s joy,
Strange beasts that were Nature’s forces made alive
And, wakened to the wonder of his role,
Man grown an image undefaced of God
And objects the fine coin of Beauty’s reign;
But wide the terrains were those levels serve.

The lower levels of this realm are like graded steps marked by a series of figures that are ornamental in appearance but really symbolise the entire truth of a world, expressive of its joy of perfection. It looks as if the Forces of Nature have assumed meaningful forms of strange beasts and man has awakened to the glory of his role and faithfully images God without deformation. All objects are forms of beauty. These levels lead to wide expanses above.

The Creative Powers

In front of the ascending epiphany
World-Time’s enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss,
The Masters of things actual, lords of the hours,
Playmates of youthful Nature and child God,
Creators of Matter by hid stress of Mind
Whose subtle thoughts support unconscious Life
And guide the fantasy of brute events,
Stood there, a race of young keen-visioned Gods,
King-children born on Wisdom’s early plane,
Taught in her school world-making’s mystic play.

In the vanguard of these hosts of Light are the great creative Powers, fresh, masters supreme, enjoyers of Bliss and rulers of Time, sporting with both Nature and God. They create Matter by the concealed pressure of the Mind, guide and sustain unconscious Life and its movements with their veiled intelligence. They are the regal Powers put forth by the Creative Spirit on the primal planes of Knowledge and charged with the dynamis of the Manifestation.

Arch-Masons

Arch-masons of the eternal Thaumaturge,
Moulders and measurers of fragmented space,
They have made their plan of the concealed and known
A dwelling-house for the invisible King.

They are the chief constructing assistants of the great miracle Worker—the Divine Creator. They use up finite space for creation. What they build is partly patent and partly concealed but the whole of it is in-dwelt by their Master who remains invisible to the outer eye.

This World-Kindergarten

Obeying the Eternal’s deep command
They have built in the material front of things
This wide world-kindergarten of young souls
Where the infant spirit learns through mind and sense
To read the letters of the cosmic script
And study the body of the cosmic self
And search for the secret meaning of the whole.

In execution of the order of the Eternal Spirit they have built this material world of ours. This world is not all. It is only a physical front of an immense creation. It is a first school where child-souls who have been launched into their course of evolution learn through the faculties of sense and mind to take in and follow the design of the cosmic creation, to study this embodiment of the cosmic self and understand the hidden purpose and significance of the whole creation.

Finite Shape to Things Infinite

To all that Spirit conceives they give a mould;
Persuading Nature into visible moods
They lend a finite shape to infinite things.

All things arise out of an original conceiving in the bosom of the Spirit. What is conceived there is given shape by these Powers. They move executive Nature into operation and provide embodiment to the truths seeking manifestation, give a finite form to things that are in themselves infinite.

They Seize each Power

Each power that leaps from the Unmanifest
Leaving the largeness of the Eternal’s peace
They seized and held by their precisian eye
And made a figurante in the cosmic dance:
Its free caprice they bound by rhythmic laws
And compelled to accept its posture and its line
In the wizardry of an ordered universe.

Each impulsion, each creative vibration that emanates from the unmanifested silent Being of the Infinite is seized by these arch-masons, appraised and pressed into service in the Cosmic Play of manifestation. They subject its innate freedom of movement and expression to the laws of the manifestation and compel it to conform to the regulated order of the wondrous cosmos and participate in it.

Formless Cast into Form

The All-containing was contained in form,
Oneness was carved into units measurable,
The limitless built into a cosmic sum:
Unending Space was beaten into a curve,
Indivisible Time into small minutes cut,
The infinitesimal massed to keep secure
The mystery of the Formless cast into form.

By these formateurs the Infinite that contains All is enclosed in form, the One is shaped into Many, the Illimitable is formed into the cosmic totality, boundless Space is pressed into practical bounds, and the minutest fragments of atoms are massed close as if to guard the secret of the Formless assuming Form—no further probe is possible.

Their Craft

Invincibly their craft devised for use
The magic of sequent number and sign’s spell,
Design’s miraculous potency was caught
Laden with beauty and significance
And by the determining mandate of their gaze
Figure and quality equating joined
In an inextricable identity.

Their skill in formation makes capital use of the science of numbers and symbols, captures the power and beauty of the intended design and by the creative force of their gaze harmonises the stress of consciousness in things with their shape and forges them together.

They Stamp Curves of Law

On each event they stamped its curves of law
And its trust and charge of burdened circumstance;
A free and divine incident no more
At each moment willed or adventure of the soul,
A line foreseen of an immutable plan,
It lengthened a fate-bound mysterious chain,
One step more in Necessity’s long march.

They impose upon the free movement of the spirit the determination of the laws of the processes of manifestation. Every movement is governed by a host of others. There is no more the free and independent exercise of the soul's choice. All proceeds according to a conceived plan and every event is an inevitable link in the long chain of Necessity.

A Term Set for every Power

A term was set for every eager Power
Restraining its will to monopolise the world,
A groove of bronze prescribed for force and act
And shown to each moment its appointed place
Forewilled inalterably in the spiral
Huge Time-loop fugitive from eternity.

Each power of possibility that is released from the Being of the Infinite naturally seeks to affirm itself as the sole truth; restriction is imposed upon this will by these Agents. They cast and fix moulds in which the creative energies shall move, they even determine the role of each moment in the unrolling of Time that shies from Eternity.

Cause and Consequence

Inevitable their thoughts like links of Fate
Imposed on the leap and lightning race of mind
And on the frail fortuitous flux of life
And on the liberty of atomic things
Immutable cause and adamant consequence.

The impelling thoughts of this conscious will firmly impose the stone law of cause and effect on the mind and its rapidities, on life and its erratic flowings, on the infinitesimal forms of matter and their indeterminability.

Idea gives up Plastic Infinity

Idea gave up the plastic infinity
To which it was born and now traced out instead
Small separate steps of chain-work in a plot:
Immortal once, now tied to birth and end,
Torn from its immediacy of errorless sight,
Knowledge was rebuilt from cells of inference
Into a fixed body flasque and perishable;
Thus bound it grew, but could not last and broke
And to a new thinking’s body left its place.

Idea which is boundless and freely variable by nature on its own plane undergoes a change: its movement is arrested and it can only work step by step as part of a given situation. Knowledge ceases to be spontaneous, constant and true in its vision; it is to be constructed from elements like inference; its form is brittle and in the very nature of things it cannot be lasting; it breaks down soon and a new knowledge has to be built to replace the old.

A Cage for Infinite's Thoughts

A cage for the Infinite’s great-eyed seraphim Thoughts
Was closed with a criss-cross of world-laws for bars
And hedged into a curt horizon’s arc
The irised vision of the Ineffable.

The high and far ranging Thoughts of the Infinite Mind are shut up in a cage barred with the laws of logic, reasoning etc. The vast and variegated vision of the Ineffable Reality is circumscribed into a narrow and small horizon.

Cast into Time and Space

A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;
The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth
To make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.

What is beyond Time, the Eternal, is turned by these Powers into subjection to the process of Time; what is unlimited, free from bounds, the Infinite, is cast by them into bounded form. So have they created a world, limited by Time and Space, which the limited Mind can grasp and manage.

They Tied the Movement

On an earth which looked towards a thousand suns,
That the created might grow Nature’s lord
And Matter’s depths be illumined with a soul
They tied to date and norm and finite scope
The million-mysteried movement of the One.

Thus have they circumscribed the movement of the manifestation of the Many out of the One into Time, Space and Law in order that on this earth, which aspires to the multifaceted Light of the Spirit above, what is apparently a creature of Nature may grow and evolve into her Master and in the heart of Matter the soul of Light may be formed. A direction is given and a scope set for the creative Movement with a view to a definite end.

A Subtle Archangel Race

Above stood ranked a subtle archangel race
With larger lids and looks that searched the unseen.

A light of liberating Knowledge shone
Across the gulfs of silence in their eyes;
They lived in the mind and knew truth from within;
A sight withdrawn in the concentrated heart
Could pierce behind the screen of Time’s results
And the rigid cast and shape of visible things.

Above these arch-masons stand other, higher and subtler type of beings with a larger sight probing into realms unseen. Their eyes are calm and silent but they shine with the light of a liberating Knowledge.

These beings do not have to search for truth outside, they are aware of it from within. Their sight is not directed and spread outward, but held and concentrated within the heart; so in-gathered it is capable of piercing through the external crust of form, circumstance and event and perceiving the inner truth of things.

Their Vision and Seeing Thoughts

All that escaped conception’s narrow noose
Vision descried and gripped; their seeing thoughts
Filled in the blanks left by the seeking sense.

The mind's faculty of conceiving is narrow, it is not large enough to grasp all that is to be known. The vision of these beings takes in all that escapes mental conception and holds it. Similarly, the human senses cannot grasp everything; there are gaps. These gaps are filled by the thoughts of these high beings—thoughts that do not merely see but bridge the gaps.

Engineers of the Impossible

High architects of possibility
And engineers of the impossible,
Mathematicians of the infinitudes
And theoricians of unknowable truths,
They formulate enigma’s postulates
And join the unknown to the apparent worlds.

It is these beings who take up the teeming possibilities to work them into actualities, make possible what appears to be impossible. They measure out the Immeasurable; of truths that cannot be known by the mind they form theoretical bases; of the enigma of the world they formulate the fundamentals. Thus do they bridge the gulf between the known and the unknown, the worlds that are seen and those that are unseen.

Acolytes of Timeless Power

Acolytes they wait upon the timeless Power,
The cycle of her works investigate;
Passing her fence of wordless privacy
Their mind could penetrate her occult mind
And draw the diagram of her secret thoughts;
They read the codes and ciphers she had sealed,
Copies they made of all her guarded plans,
For every turn of her mysterious course
Assigned a reason and unchanging rule.

They are, as it were, understudies of the creative Power at work. They explore and study her cyclical movements; they enter into the secrecies of her mind to know the lay-out and direction of her plans; they purport to find a reason for every turn of her course—which is really mysterious and not explicable by the laws of reasoning—and seek to apply some fixed rule to her varying movements.

Audacious Claims

The Unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient’s scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube.

Thus do they presume to decipher and explain what is Unseen and Unknown. The scheme of the huge Inconscient is explained to their own satisfaction, the ineffable Void patterned, the boundless Infinite measured in symbol-form.

They Frame the Law

Arranging symbol and significance,
Tracing the curve of a transcendent Power,
They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law,
The balancing line discovered of Life’s technique
And structured her magic and her mystery.

They organise a system of their own symbols and significances and formulate a Law and occult science by which to interpret the movement of the creative Power. They discover the norm and lever of the operations of Life and erect a frame for grasping her mysterious workings.

Schemes of Knowledge

Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature’s dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and number a key to all that is:

They seek to capture the Vast Reality in their laboured scheme of Knowledge, to fix the free play of the infinite Consciousness into the grooves of finite thinking processes, to subject the secret, live, rhythmic movements of Nature to the dry mechanical steps of accurate logic, to forthwith analyse and evaluate the still unfolding plot of the drama of the cosmos, to make symbols the sole sufficing means to explain everything.

Psycho-Analysis of the Self

The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.

The Self of the universe is scrutinised through an examination of its mind-formulations; even the phenomenon of pain and suffering in the Being of the Sole Reality is studied.

System and Scheme

Assessed was the system of the probable,
The hazard of fleeing possibilities,
To account for the Actual’s unaccountable sum,
Necessity’s logarithmic tables drawn,
Cast into a scheme the triple act of the One.

They also evolve a kind of statistical science to explain how out of the innumerable possibilities at large, through a sifting of probabilities, the actuals have come to be in their totality. They work out the processes of the law of Necessity in detail and seek to impose the mould of a scheme on the free, multiple, manifesting action of the One Reality which proceeds by the working out of the possibles through the pro-babies into the unaccountable sum of the actuals.

Chance and Imperative

Unveiled, the abrupt invisible multitude
Of forces whirling from the hands of Chance
Seemed to obey some vast imperative:
Their tangled motives worked out unity.

In their unveiling, the veiled operations look as if a host of invisible forces are released by some Chance, but, in reality, they are compelled to obey a gigantic Will; and in the process, whatever their varying and confusing impulsions, they work out a Unity.

Calculus of Destiny

A wisdom read their mind to themselves unknown,
Their anarchy rammed into a formula
And from their giant randomness of Force,
Following the habit of their million paths,
Distinguishing each faintest line and stroke
Of a concealed unalterable design,
Out of the chaos of the Invisible’s moods
Derived the calculus of Destiny.

These beings read into the apparently anarchic movements of the million forces—each following its course to the extreme—some hidden, fixed design and draw up a method of their own to read the chart of Destiny that governs the whole Movement.

Mind's Knowledge Overtops

In its bright pride of universal lore
Mind’s knowledge overtopped the Omniscient’s power:
The Eternal’s winging eagle puissances
Surprised in their untracked empyrean
Stooped from their gyres to obey the beck of Thought:

Their wide and proud mental knowledge seems to go beyond the workings of the great cosmic powers, the Eternal seizes them from above and compels them to follow the dictates of its Thought.

Each God Assigned his Moves

Each mysteried God forced to revealing form,
Assigned his settled moves in Nature’s game,
Zigzagged at the gesture of a chess-player Will
Across the chequer-board of cosmic Fate.

In their scheme it looks as if there is no more mystery left; each veiled power is forced out of the veil, allotted its role in the play of Nature and reduced to a mere automaton moving at the direction of a cosmic Will.

Aspect of Miracle Lost

In the wide sequence of Necessity’s steps
Predicted, every act and thought of God,
Its values weighed by the accountant Mind,
Checked in his mathematised omnipotence,
Lost its divine aspect of miracle
And was a figure in a cosmic sum.

There is no more any miracle of God as such. The Mind presumes to seize, check and exactly place every movement of God in the inevitable steps of Necessity, a precise number in the cosmic sum being worked out by itself.

Chain of Cause and Aim

The mighty Mother’s whims and lightning moods
Arisen from her all-wise unruled delight
In the freedom of her sweet and passionate breast,
Robbed of their wonder were chained to a cause and aim;

The spontaneous and irresistible movements of the creative Puissance arising from her pervadingly conscious ebullitions of self-delight, are shorn of their natural Wonder and reduced, in this scheme, to mere operations of cause and end.

Idol of Bronze

An idol of bronze replaced her mystic shape
That captures the movements of the cosmic vasts,
In the sketch precise of an ideal face
Forgotten was her eyelashes’ dream-print
Carrying on their curve infinity’s dreams,
Lost the alluring marvel of her eyes;

The free and fluid shape of the rapturous face of the mighty Mother reflecting the infinitude of her movements—actual and potential—is lost to sight in the fixed and rigid form substituted in this mental transcription.

Bound to a Theorem

The surging wave-throbs of her vast sea-heart
They bound to a theorem of ordered beats:
Her deep designs which from herself she had veiled
Bowed self-revealed in their confessional.

So too the large and impetuous movements of the mighty Mother's heart are reduced to a precise operation, orderly, predictable. It even looks as if all her secret plans are brought out into the open.

All Seemed Known

For the birth and death of the worlds they fixed a date,
The diameter of Infinity was drawn,
Measured the distant arc of the unseen heights
And visualised the plumbless viewless depths
Till all seemed known that in all time could be.

They presume to calculate and fix the life-span of the worlds, measure even the Immeasurable, draw the boundaries of heights that are beyond the ken of the eye, plumb the profoundest depths, until it seems they are capable of knowing all that will come into existence in all future.

Wisdom Circled with Nought

All was coerced by number, name and form;
Nothing was left untold, incalculable.

Yet was their wisdom circled with a nought:
Truths they could find and hold but not the one Truth:
The Highest was to them unknowable.

They seek to capture everything in the conceptual net of number, name and form and leave nothing at all unexplained.

With all this exercise, however, their knowledge ultimately comes to nought. They may have found many varying forms and formulations of Truth, but not the one Truth that is unique. The Highest Reality is beyond their grasp; their Thought cannot know it.

They Miss the Whole

By knowing too much they missed the Whole to be known:
The fathomless heart of the world was left unguessed
And the Transcendent kept its secrecy.

In their mathematical preoccupation with innumerable details, they miss the total perspective. The profounds of the heart of Creation are left unplumbed, and the Reality that exceeds this manifest Creation continues to be unknown.

Sovereign Kings of Thought

In a sublimer and more daring soar
To the wide summit of the triple stairs
Bare steps climbed up like glowing rocks of gold
Burning their way to a pure absolute sky.

August and few the sovereign Kings of Thought
Have made of Space their wide all-seeing gaze
Surveying the enormous work of Time:
A breadth of all-containing consciousness
Supported Being in a still embrace.

Still higher is the third realm, wider and sublimer. Here are the imperious lords of Thought, few in number. Their gaze is all-comprehending; it takes in the manifestation that is going on in Time in all its immensity. Here is an expansive all-inclusive Consciousness upbearing the Being in a moveless clasp.

Partners in Control

Intercessors with a luminous Unseen,
They capt in the long passage to the world
The imperatives of the creator Self
Obeyed by unknowing earth, by conscious heaven;
Their thoughts are partners in its vast control.

These Kings of Thought are the intermediaries, the agents that link the manifest Creation with the unseen creative Reality. They get hold of the directions of the creator Self and transmit its imperatives that are obeyed by the earth unknowingly and by heaven knowingly. The mighty thoughts of these unique agents thus share in the vast government of the cosmos.

Mind a Channel

A great all-ruling consciousness is there
And Mind unwitting serves a higher Power;
It is a channel, not the source of all.

Here reigns an active and all-governing Consciousness. The Mind is only an agent of this Power, which it serves without being aware of it. It is not the origin, but only an instrumental passage for a higher Power in the hierarchy of creation.

Cosmos no Accident

The cosmos is no accident in Time;
There is a meaning in each play of Chance,
There is a freedom in each face of Fate.

There is always a Higher Power, a supreme Wisdom governing the Universe. This Cosmos is no sudden unforeseen product of some accident. It is a meaningful creation. Each appearance to the contrary only conceals this truth. What appears to be mere chance is really a willed movement with a purpose. What strikes as an inescapable determinism of fate holds behind its surface veil an inherent freedom of choice.

A Wisdom Guides

A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world;
A Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events;

The world appears to be full of mystery. But within its movement and presiding over it there is a Consciousness that knows and governs it. Prajnanetro lokah, Wisdom is the eye of the world, says the ancient scripture. All forms, all movements are cast into shape by the dynamic gaze of this creative Truth at the origin.

Seed Sown

A Word self-born upon creation’s heights,
Voice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres,
Prophet of the seeings of the Absolute,
Sows the Idea’s significance in Form
And from that seed the growths of Time arise.

into action. It holds in itself the Vision of the creation to be and releases its potency to take shape; thus the seed of creation is sown.

Secret Power Awakes

On peaks beyond our ken the All-Wisdom sits:
A single and infallible look comes down,
A silent touch from the supernal’s air
Awakes to ignorant knowledge in its acts
The secret power in the inconscient depths,
Compelling the blinded Godhead to emerge,

The ruling All-Wisdom is above, beyond the human range. A single look of its truth-vision, a touch of its Ray awakens the concealed power of consciousness in the depths of the Inconscient, stirs it into first movements of preparatory, imperfect, ignorant knowledge. The dormant Godhead is thus compelled to awake and emerge out of the Veil of nescience.

Determines Necessity's Dance

Determining Necessity’s rude dance
As she passes through the circuit of the hours
And vanishes from the chase of finite eyes
Down circling vistas of aeonic Time.

This impulsion is also at the back of what is called Necessity, inexorable movements of Nature in the flow of Time, movements that are indefinable by the human mind.

Cosmic Whirl and Fate

The unseizable forces of the cosmic whirl
Bear in their bacchant limbs the fixity
Of an original foresight that is Fate. |

The entire cosmic movement may appear to be a whirl of unregulated forces. But behind that riotous appearance there is a governing frame determined by the seeing Will at the source. Fate, which is another name for the determining Will, works itself out through the play of possibilities.

Ignorance Truth's Instrument

Even Nature’s ignorance is Truth’s instrument;
Our struggling ego cannot change her course:
Yet is it a conscious power that moves in us
And destiny the unrecognised child of Will.

Even the ignorance that characterises the operations of Nature on earth is used by the governing Truth as her instrument; movements of ignorance are utilised by Truth for her fulfilment. The restless self-willed ego of man cannot divert the course of the Truth in evolution. What moves man is not an unconscious, mechanical Force but a conscious Power of the Spirit and the destiny to which he appears to be helplessly subject is in fact nothing else than the result of the governing Truth-Will above.

Godhead Climbs

Infallibly by Truth’s directing gaze
All creatures here their secret self disclose,
Forced to become what in themselves they hide.

For He who is grows manifest in the years
And the slow Godhead shut within the cell
Climbs from the plasm to immortality.

The powerful gaze of the directing Truth compels all creatures involved in evolution to progressively reveal the truth of their being, to become what they hold in potency. The divinity that is embedded in forms manifests itself over the years; even in the tiniest cell there lies concealed the Godhead that slowly evolves and builds up step by step from a speck of life in the cell to full immortality.

Hidden is the Spirit's Truth

But hidden, but denied to mortal grasp,
Mystic, ineffable is the Spirit’s truth,
Unspoken, caught only by the spirit’s eye.

When naked of ego and mind it hears the Voice;
It looks through light to ever greater light
And sees Eternity ensphering Life.

For all this effective action, however, the Truth is not patent to the outer sense, it is beyond the grasp of the human mind. It cannot be expressed by human speech, but it is perceivable by the inner eye. The being can hear the Voice of the Truth only when it is not covered by the thick crust of ego and the veil of the interfering mind; only then can it see the light of truth and through that light see yet greater light and behold Eternity encircling Life.

Greater Truth

This greater Truth is foreign to our thoughts;
Where a free Wisdom works, they seek for a rule;
Or we only see a tripping game of Chance
Or a labour in chains forced by bound Nature’s law,
An absolutism of dumb unthinking Power.

This vaster Truth is alien to the normal nature of human thoughts. The mind looks for a settled and fixed rule in the workings of free Wisdom; it cannot conceive that those workings are possible on a basis other than that of fixed regulations. Or everything appears to it as a free rhythmic game of Chance, or all is looked upon as a bounded determination, an automatically regulated movement of an unthinking, mute Power.

Dare to Grasp Truth's Absolute

Audacious in their sense of God-born strength
These dared to grasp with their thought Truth’s absolute;
By an abstract purity of godless sight,
By a percept nude, intolerant of forms,
They brought to Mind what Mind could never reach
And hope to conquer Truth’s supernal base.

The Kings of Thought in this realm, inspired by the God-Consciousness close to them, strive boldly to capture Truth in its absoluteness in the net of their thought—thought reduced to its utmost abstract, free from form, purified of every other element—and do succeed in bringing within the range of the mind what the normal mental faculties by themselves could never attain, much less hope to conquer.

Conceptual Phrase Translates

A stripped imperative of conceptual phrase
Architectonic and inevitable
Translated the Unthinkable into thought:
A silver-winged fire of naked subtle sense,
An ear of mind withdrawn from the outward’s rhymes
Discovered the seed-sounds of the eternal Word,
The rhythm and music heard that built the worlds,
And seized in things the bodiless Will to be.

The Absolute Reality is indeed unthinkable. But these Kings of Thought render it in terms of thought by capturing something of it in their finely designed conceptual net; their subtle far-ranging sense, their mental listening withdrawn from external objects hears the sounds of the eternal Word, catches the creative rhythms of the Spirit that have produced the worlds and seizes in things the unseen Will-to-be that keeps them in existence.

They Measure the Illimitable

The Illimitable they measured with number’s rods
And traced the last formula of limited things,
In transparent systems bodied termless truths,
The Timeless made accountable to Time
And valued the incommensurable Supreme.

They try to measure in terms of numbers the Reality that is Infinite, to find the ultimate formula of things that are finite, to bind boundless truths in fine systems of their own, to subserve the Eternal to the conditions of Time and to determine the value of the Supreme that is truly invaluable.

Vacuum to Hold the One

To park and hedge the ungrasped infinitudes
They erected absolute walls of thought and speech
And made a vacuum to hold the One.

They seek to confine the infinitudes that are not yet grasped by the mind within the limiting walls of thought and speech and erect a conceptual abstraction to contain the Unique Reality.

Towards Empty Peak

In their sight they drove towards an empty peak,
A mighty space of cold and sunlit air.

Their sight travels towards a summit which seems to be empty, an expanse that is bright but chill—bereft as it appears of the warmth of life.

Cipher of a Multitude

To unify their task, excluding life
Which cannot bear the nakedness of the Vast,
They made a cipher of a multitude,
In negation found the meaning of the All
And in nothingness the absolute positive.

In order to achieve unity they eliminate pulsating life which cannot be squared with their abstract infinity and thus reduce the multiplicity of creation to an absolute single zero. They seek to trace the significance of the All in a total negation and of the absolute positive in a Nothing. The Affirmation of the Spirit in All is cancelled by them into a negating Void.

A Single Law Simplessed

A single law simplessed the cosmic theme,
Compressing Nature into a formula;
Their titan labour made all knowledge one,
A mental algebra of the Spirit’s ways,
An abstract of the living Divinity.

They try to reduce the vast cosmic perspective and pattern to one single law and compress the manifold workings of Nature into a formula of their own. They strive to unify all Knowledge into one formulation, to render the infinite ways of the Spirit into a mental symbology, to convert the dynamic processes of the manifesting Divinity into a mental abstraction.

Mind's Wisdom Stops

Here the mind’s wisdom stopped; it felt complete;
For nothing more was left to think or know;
In a spiritual zero it sat throned
And took its vast silence for the Ineffable.

With this the mind feels it has completed its task and there is nothing more to be thought out or known. This is the sum of its wisdom. It has reduced all to an abstract vacancy in which it stations itself as in its highest seat, and takes its own silent existence on these heights as the ineffable Reality.

Play of Gods of Thought

This was the play of the bright gods of Thought.

Attracting into time the timeless Light,
Imprisoning eternity in the hours,
This they have planned, to snare the feet of Truth
In an aureate net of concept and of phrase
And keep her captive for the thinker’s joy
In his little world built of immortal dreams:

Such is the play of the bright Thought-Gods. They seek to draw the Light that is timeless into the bounds of time, capture the eternal into time-duration and thus catch hold of the feet of Truth in the brilliant net of concept and speech for the delectation of the thinking mind in its own world of endless dreams.

Empress Prisoner

There must she dwell mured in the human mind,
An empress prisoner in her subject’s house,
Adored and pure and still on his heart’s throne,
His splendid property cherished and apart
In the wall of silence of his secret muse,
Immaculate in white virginity,
The same for ever and for ever one,
His worshipped changeless Goddess through all time.

Thus do the Thought Gods seek to hold captive in the mind the Truth which is in fact the creator of mind. This Truth is given pride of place and cherished as a priceless possession, unique, unchanging through all time.

Faithful Consort of Mind

Or else, a faithful consort of his mind
Assenting to his nature and his will,
She sanctions and inspires his words and acts
Prolonging their resonance through the listening ears,
Companion and recorder of his march
Crossing a brilliant tract of thought and life
Carved out of the eternity of Time.

Or, the Truth is made a close companion of the mind, following the nature and will of man the thinker, moving his speech and action, conserving their vibrations, gliding along and recording his journey across the shining tract of thought and life apportioned from the eternity of Time.

Servitor to Crowned Idea

A witness of his high triumphant star,
Her godhead servitor to a crowned Idea,
He shall dominate by her a prostrate world;
A warrant for his deeds and his beliefs,
She attests his right divine to lead and rule.

He would want her the Truth so held—to be a witness to his own glory, a servant to the Idea chosen and enthroned by him, an accomplice in his attempt to dominate the world, a justifying authority for his beliefs and actions, a witness supporting his supposed divine right to rule.

Icon of Heart's Idolatry

Or as her lover clasps his one beloved,
Godhead of his life’s worship and desire,
Icon of his heart’s sole idolatry,
She now is his and must live for him alone:
She has invaded him with her sudden bliss,
An exhaustless marvel in his happy grasp,
An allurement, a caught ravishing miracle.

Or, he makes of this Truth a sole sufficing Godhead around which he organises his whole life. He wants her to be completely identified with him, fit in entirely within his mould. He is full of the bliss of this Truth that has yielded to him and he lives in her ecstasy.

Inescapable Appeal

Her now he claims after long rapt pursuit,
The one joy of his body and his soul:
Inescapable is her divine appeal,
Her immense possession an undying thrill,
An intoxication and an ecstasy:

The Truth which he has found after an arduous pursuit, becomes the sole joy of his being; he is lost in her divine appeal, her vastness gives him endless thrill, an intoxicating delight.

Ever New

The passion of her self-revealing moods,
A heavenly glory and variety,
Makes ever new her body to his eyes,
Or else repeats the first enchantment’s touch,
The luminous rapture of her mystic breasts
And beautiful vibrant limbs a living field
Of throbbing new discovery without end.

He never gets tired of this Truth: she reveals herself in many poises and he finds her ever fresh. Or she repeats her first revelation of herself again and again throwing him into raptures of newer and newer insights.

New Beginning Flowers

A new beginning flowers in word and laugh,
A new charm brings back the old extreme delight:
He is lost in her, she is his heaven here.

With the advent of this Truth in the higher horizons of the mind, there is a change in the life of man, his disposition, his expression. Life thrills to a new note of charm. He is completely lost in the Truth he has found, she becomes his enthralling heaven.

Truth Smiles

Truth smiled upon the gracious golden game.

Out of her hushed eternal spaces leaned
The great and boundless Goddess feigned to yield
The sunlit sweetness of her secrecies.

In response to this stir and call, the mighty Truth-Power does indeed turn her gracious smile and leans down from her peaks of silence as if to yield the Light and bliss of her ungrasped secrecies.

She Makes Earth her Home

Incarnating her beauty in his clasp
She gave for a brief kiss her immortal lips
And drew to her bosom one glorified mortal head:
She made earth her home, for whom heaven was too small.

The Immortal Goddess descends and allows herself to come under the grasp of the blessed mortal. She, for whose infinite spread even the heavens are too small, consents to abide in the earthly tenement.

In Human Breast her Presence

In a human breast her occult presence lived;
He carved from his own self his figure of her:
She shaped her body to a mind’s embrace.

Thus does her unseen presence live in the human breast. Man gives to her a form according to his own self it is not her own intrinsic form. She takes the form suited to the mind that encloses her.

Into Thought's Narrow Limits

Into thought’s narrow limits she has come;
Her greatness she has suffered to be pressed
Into the little cabin of the Idea,
The closed room of a lonely thinker’s grasp:
She has lowered her heights to the stature of our souls
And dazzled our lids with her celestial gaze.

The vast Truth accommodates herself to the narrow confines of mental thought; she allows herself to be composed into the limited mould of the Idea which is the highest imprisoning chamber of man the solitary thinker. She lowers her stature to the reach of the humans whose eyes are dazzled by her heavenly look.

Each is Satisfied

Thus each is satisfied with his high gain
And thinks himself beyond mortality blest,
A king of truth upon his separate throne.

To her possessor in the field of Time
A single splendour caught from her glory seems
The one true light, her beauty’s glowing whole.

And each one who thus has the Truth-Idea in him thinks himself to be in sole possession of Truth and is self-content. He does not know that what he has got is only a ray of the shining Truth and not the entire Truth-Light as he imagines.

Eternal Truth Unseized

But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.

Neither human thought nor speech can ever hope to seize the Truth eternal; they always fall back from it. What is received is only one ray of the Truth-Sun and that is potent enough to sustain this entire world here.

Play with Brilliant Bonds

In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.

The human mind shut in its narrow, dim-lit chamber, imagines that the Truth has been captured and held by the chains of its thought; but in fact it is the mind that binds itself down in the bright cords of its own making, the Truth escapes.

Small Figure Held

In our hypnosis by one luminous point
We see not what small figure of her we hold;
We feel not her inspiring boundlessness,
We share not her immortal liberty.

that it has come to possess only a tiny representation of the Truth. Truth's inspiring infinity is missed, so also her immortal freedom.

The Human limits the Divine

Thus is it even with the seer and sage;
For still the human limits the divine:
Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight,
Breathe her divine illimitable air,
Her simple vast supremacy confess,
Dare to surrender to her absolute.

This is so even with those who have reached the purer and more serene heights of thought; the human elements of imperfection and ignorance cast their shadow and blur the light divine shining on the skies of the mind. Man must pass beyond the boundaries of thought and open to a direct revelation of the Truth. He must breathe the natural infinite air of the Truth; his limited being must yield to the vaster Truth and surrender to her in absoluteness.

Unmanifest Reflects his Form

Then the Unmanifest reflects his form
In the still mind as in a living glass;
The timeless Ray descends into our hearts
And we are rapt into eternity.

When the mind thus transcends its thought-barriers and lies still in receptive silence, the Truth that is unmanifest reflects itself in that mind. The eternal Ray of the Divine Truth descends into the heart of the mortal and he is overcome by the Eternal.

Truth Greater than her Forms

For Truth is wider, greater than her forms.

A thousand icons they have made of her
And find her in the idols they adore;
But she remains herself and infinite.

The human mind takes figures of Truth to be the Truth itself which in fact is vaster and greater than all her forms. Men have erected innumerable forms and images of the Truth, they worship and find her in the figures of their choice; but Truth herself refuses to be so confined and remains infinite.