Book Six. The Book of Fate
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Book Six: Canto II The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain
O seer, what is the truth of this mystery of grief and pain? Why is it necessary? Why did God have to make this cruel law? Or is it that some disastrous Power has interfered with his work and he is helpless? Our life itself is born in pain and cry. Lethal forces are found within ourselves. We are like a besieged fort. Some curse is laid on man. The dualities are imposed on him from the very start. Every step is a snare, and errors and miseries multiply. Man turns out to be his own worst foe. His science builds up his doom. He learns nothing from Time and history. What is the purpose of his existence here? What made the immortal spirit, his soul, come down to this scene of sorrow and pain from its home of bliss? Is there no Being watching and helping this movement of life on earth? Or is it only some hard Necessity that enforces its rule on everything here? Is this all a giant illusion? Narad replies after a silence: Is the sun a dream because there is night? Hidden in the secret chamber of thy soul there dwells the Eternal. Thy thought hides him from thee. It is because earth's joys shut thee from the Immortal's bliss that the need of Pain and suffering arose. Without undergoing pain there cannot be joy in this world of Ignorance. Pain is the hammer of the gods to break the resistance in the mortal's heart. Without this pressure his soul would remain content, at ease. Till man is freed, pain is inevitable. He who would save the world must share its pain. That is the law for the incarnate God, The Cross and the stake are his lot. A concealed dark hostility is lodged in the depths of earthly existence and that opposes the world's march at every step. This is the Adversary that has to be fought in a hundred ways in as many places. He misleads, deforms and defeats. Man must overcome this hidden foe. The task of the world redeemer is hard; the world he comes to save, itself becomes his adversary. Man refuses to accept him; only a few are saved. Tilt the Evil is slain, the labour must go on. One who will accomplish this high task may yet come. He will invade the last posts of Ignorance and Inconscience with the undying Light of God and conquer Matter's sleep. Then only shall his task be done. Till then man must bear the law of pain. He must lean for support on Heaven's strength. Man should not attempt to storm the gates of heaven by the violence of the titan. The titan's way leads to destruction. Suffering is not the end; bliss is the crown. Bliss is the stuff underlying all that lives. It is the soul itself that has chosen this adventure of the Abyss and Ignorance. Out of its blissful felicity it has come to taste the marvel and the infinite possibility of the Unknown. This vast disguise conceals a Play of the Eternal's Bliss. Then asks Aswapathy: Is fate all? Is the spirit ruled by the outward world? Has no Power come with Savitri which is as potent as Fate? Narad replies ambiguously: The ways of mortals may look like random movements, but their least stumblings are foreseen above. All the curves of life are pre-drawn. Heaven's love oversees all the strife and struggle below. Man thinks in fragments and misses the whole Truth. He mistakes Possibility far Chance; misreads the results of an all-wise Force for the links in a chain of Necessity. The Will of God working in Time appears to him as Fate. Man can really know the truth and be free only if his will could be made one with God's, if his thought could be in tune with the thoughts of God. Even now man's mind can receive God's light and his force be driven by God's force. Only by so doing, can man rise to be Nature's king. It is decreed that Satyavan must die; the hour is fixed and also the fatal stroke. What else is to happen is written in the soul of Savitri. Fate is Truth working itself out in Ignorance. Man can accept his fate or he can refuse. Ultimately Fate is what the spirit of man chooses. The fate of man is to battle and march Gadward against the invisible host of the Adversary. He has got to advance relentlessly whatever the disasters on the way. At last he shall cross the last borders of Ignorance and arrive on the splendid peaks of God. Do not mourn that Satyavan must die. His death really commences a greater life for man. All conspires to fulfil God's secret Plan. The world is not built with random bricks of Chance. Many are the masons obeying the Unseen that have built it. And of these master-builders Savitri is one. O queen, do not strive any longer to change the secret Will of God. Intervene not between the charged life that is Savitri's and the mighty Fate that she is facing. She does not need thy help nor any god's. A day may come when she has to stand alone and fight to save herself and save the world. Do not seek to deflect her from her single will. Leave her to her mighty self and Fate. Thus Narad speaks and leaves the earthly scene. His luminous body soars and disappears like a receding star in the light of the Unseen. But still a cry is heard in the Infinite Vasts chanting the anthem of eternal love.
A
silence sealed the irrevocable decree, The silence that follows seems to seal, as it were, the irreversible word of Fate uttered by the heavenly lips of Narad fixing a doom which no power can change except the will of heaven. Fate can be changed only by the Higher Will because fate is nothing but the working of that Will.
Or
so it seemed; yet from the silence rose
A
will that strove against the immutable Will, It looks as if all are silenced by the pronounced doom. But soon out of that silence rises the voice of the queen questioning the fixity of fate. Hers is a will that battles against the unchanging Will behind destiny. The heart of a mother has heard the fateful words, words that sounded as if they sanctioned the demand of death, bringing to a chilly end all life and hope ahead.
Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire.
She
felt the leaden inevitable hand All hope now dies down like a fire that is put out. The queen feels the inescapable iron hand of Fate entering the chamber of her soul and smiting with sudden pain its pervading calm and the quietude she has attained after long labour.
Awhile
she fell to the level of human mind, For a while the queen is pulled down to the level of the human mind from the state of quietude to which she had arrived. She finds herself in the field of human grief and the law of Nature, she bears the lot of ordinary men and undergoes the struggle and pain that common hearts have to endure in this world subject to the mutations of Time.
Voicing
earth’s question to the inscrutable power Putting earth's question to the inscrutable Fate, the queen turns to the calm, unmoved seer, Farad. Agitated by the discontent seething in the depths of Nature, sharing in the agony of the mute, helplessly driven things, their misery and ignorant wail, she speaks as if she personifies all the passion of earth's sorrow confronting heaven.
Awhile
she lost her spirit’s tranquil poise,
Lending
her speech to the surface soul on earth For a while the queen loses the usual calm poise of her spirit and comes down to the level of common men. She bears their load of Death and Time and suffers the anguish in the depths of life under pain. She lends her speech to the surface soul—not the deeper soul—on earth and voices the suffering in the dumb heart of the world and the revolt of man against his ignorant fate.
“O
seer, in the earth’s strange twi-natured life, O seer, how did this dreadful mystery of grief and pain arise in this earth-life of dualities? What caused it to be? Some relentless Necessity? Some callous freak of God’s will? Some accident? Or some regulated chance that has constructed a rule out of casual steps, shaped a destiny from some brief passing emotions?
Is it thy God who made this cruel law?
Or
some disastrous Power has marred his work
A
fatal seed was sown in life’s false start Who made this cruel law of grief and pain? Is it thy God who has done so? Or is it some calamitous Power that has intervened and spoilt God's work and God has been helpless against it? Indeed it was a fatal seed that was sown at the very start of life—a false start—when evil was allowed to join with good on this soil of earth.
Then
first appeared the malady of mind,
It
twisted into forms of good and ill The first result of this fatal seed was the emergence of the disease of mind with its pang of thought and its searching for the goal of life. Before this human mind appeared. there was a direct simplicity in the actions of the animal creation. It was this mind that gave a twist to that simplicity by bringing into being the dualities of good and evil.
It
turned the straight path hewn by the body’s gods, The material body had its direct way of fulfilling its needs before this mind interfered and turned that straight path into a zigzag and unsure course of life which wanders searching for its objective in the dim wavering light thrown by the mind's thought. It is the mind that guides the uncertain idea and the will that is unsteady.
Lost
was the instinct’s safe identity Before the mind appeared and introduced its uncertainty into life, there was the safety of instinct; this instinct was always one with the direct intuitive perception in the depths of the being. But all this was lost with the interference of the mind. Marred also was the sure course of primitive Nature and the truth and freedom that had reigned in the growing soul. The mind brought in uncertainty, falsehood and constriction.
Out
of some ageless innocence and peace,
Although
earth-nature welcomes heaven’s breath Although this earth-nature welcomes the creative breath of heaven which activises Matter with the will to live, countless ills invade mortal life and break down the joy that is natural to it.
Our
bodies are an engine cunningly made,
This
is the ransom of our high estate, Our body is an engine skillfully made, but with equal skill and demoniacal ingenuity the heritage of death and special pain are imposed upon it. It has to pay its due to Time and Fate, undergo suffering and ultimately die. This is the price we have to pay for the high soul-destiny which we carry. This is the badge of our humanity.
A
grisly company of maladies A fearsome host of maladies approach—all authorised to make their home in the body of man. They inflict untold tortures on life and bring death in their wake.
In
the malignant hollows of the world, These ills hide themselves in the evil hideouts and ill-lit passages of the world waiting for their hour to strike; they lay siege to our life surrounding it with danger on all sides. Once they get in or are somehow admitted into the fortress of man's life, they undermine his force, weaken or mutilate him or kill him suddenly.
Ourselves
within us lethal forces nurse; We nurse deathly forces within ourselves we admit and cherish as our guests what are really our enemies. Like beasts out of their holes these dangerous elements move surreptitiously and gnaw at the strings of the soul's harp till the chords are worn out and the music fades away or with a loud crash they snap on a final note that is truly tragic.
All
that we are is like a fort beset:
Mind
suffers lamed by the world’s disharmony We are like a fort under siege. Whatever we try to become changes like a dream in the dull sleep of Matter in ignorance; we do not succeed, subjected as we are to the constant pulls of the sub-conscient and the inconscient in Matter. The disharmony in the world and the sordid nature of human circumstances tell upon the mind; it gets weakened and suffers.
A
treasure misspent or cheaply, fruitlessly sold Life is a priceless gift from the Gods; but it is either little used or ill-spent; it is wasted in the mart of blind destiny; it is either last or mislaid in a world that cares nothing about what happens to it. Life is indeed a wonder that is missed, a fine art that has got twisted.
A
seeker in a dark and obscure place, Life is an indefatigable seeker in this dark and obscure place that is our world; an ill-equipped warrior ranged against fearful odds; an imperfect worker assigned a difficult task; an ignorant judge called upon to deal with problems thrown up by Ignorance. All the upward soarings of life are baffled by doors that remain shut; all its glorious break-outs peter out in mud, end in nothing.
On Nature’s gifts to man a curse was laid.
All
walks inarmed by its own opposites, Man is indeed given many gifts by Mother-Nature, but on all of them there is a curse. Everything is paired with its opposite. Human thought is accompanied by error, truth carries falsehood in its formation, joy bears the seed of sin which poisons or burns and leaves its red scar on the soul. Even virtue turns out to be a dull slavery and a prison house; it does not allow progress beyond itself.
At every step is laid for us a snare.
Alien
to reason and the spirit’s light, A trap is laid for us at every step in our journey. The source of our impulsion to action lies in a darkness which is foreign and contrary to the mind's reason and the spirit's light. Our roots are found in ignorance and nescience.
A
growing register of calamities The past is nothing but an unending, list of calamities; they constitute as well our book of Fate in the future to come. Nature's contribution of ills is huge enough; to that is added, down the centuries, the pile of man's unconscious follies and conscious crimes.
As
if the world’s stone load was not enough, As though the oppressive load of the world's ills were not enough, man deliberately sows in the field readied by the gods for him, a veritable crop of miseries. His own wrongs are seeds from which in due time, when he has forgotten his old misdeeds, he reaps the large tragic harvest he himself has sown.
He
walks by his own choice into hell’s trap;
His
science is an artificer of doom; Man walks into the trap of hell by his own choice; he does not need to be enticed into it. In truth the human creature is his own enemy, more than any other. His science prepares for doom. He looks everywhere l/J find weapons to harm his fellows. He kills his own happiness and deNtroys the good of others.
Nothing
has he learnt from time and its history; Man has indeed learnt nothing from history. Things are very much the same now as they were of old when earth Life was still ignorant and feeling its way on the roads of Time. The same old forms of evil still cling to the world's soul even today.
War
making nought the sweet smiling calm of life, War shatters the sweet calm of life. Men still enjoy and indulge in battle and plunder, ruin and killings. One hour of such idiocy destroys what it has taken centuries to build. Man's wild rage or violent hate brings down the beauty and greatness created by his genius, and the mighty result of the nation's labour.
All he has achieved he drags to the precipice.
His
grandeur he turns to an epic of doom and fall; Man drags to the brink of ruin whatever he has achieved. He turns his glory to a saga of and fall. His small nature is content to crawl and grovel in a degraded life of squalor and dirt. His actions evoke retribution from the Gods. He wallows in the misery he has himself created.
A
part author of the cosmic tragedy,
His
brief appearance on the enigmaed earth Man is partly responsible for this cosmic tragedy; his will joins the elements of death, time and fate in effecting this tragedy. He is born again and again to live for short periods on this mysterious earth, but with no great result. He wanders in the aeonic rounds of God whichhold his life in their vast duration.
His
soul’s wide search and ever returning hopes All is an episode in a meaningless tale. His soul’s quest is wide and unending; his disappointed hopes constantly revive. But his labour is a waste of futile repetition. His lives fade into quick oblivion.All his efforts turn out to be just an episode in a tale without issue.
Why is it all and wherefore are we here?
If
to some being of eternal bliss Why does all this happen, for what purpose are we here? If it is the destiny of our soul to return to some being of eternal bliss or to some impersonal, eternal Peace above,—since ultimately we are That and have come from That—from where has arisen this strange and barren interlude [1] which lasts endlessly in time ?
Or
if these beings must be and their brief lives, Whence rose the call for sorrow and for pain? Or all came helplessly without a cause? What power forced the immortal spirit to birth? Even if man must live through transient lives here on earth, where is the need of all this ignorance and sorrow for the immortal soul? Whence this call for misery and pain? Is it that all souls were simply precipitated here without any cause as such? What is the Power that compelled the immortal spirit to take mortal birth?
The
eternal witness once of eternity, This immortal spirit was once the timeless witness of eternity. Deathless, he stays for a while in these transient scenes, pitches his camp in the obscurity of life in the midst of the fallen debris of his once high thoughts and glorious dreams.
Or
who persuaded it to fall from bliss
Who
laid on it the ceaseless will to live Who persuaded the soul to fail from its innate bliss and give up its high privilege of immortality? Who forced on it the incessant will to live here as a wanderer in this sorrowful—yet beautiful—world and carry its burden of joy, grief and love?
Or
if no being watches the works of Time, A great Illusion then has built the stars.
But
where then is the soul’s security, If there is no God watching the career of this earth-life, there must be some impersonal Law which compels all this vain toil on these transient creatures. What Law of Necessity is that ? Perhaps a grand Illusion has built this universe. Where, in that case, is there tiny security for the soul which is cast in this circling movement of suns that are themselves unreal ?
Or
else it is a wanderer from its home Or where begins and ends Illusion’s reign?
Perhaps
the soul we feel is only a dream, Or maybe the soul has strayed away from its home in the Eternal and finds itself in this world of Time and chance which has no outlet but ends in an impasse. It sees no meaning in it whatever.Where begins the domain of Illusion and where does it end ? Could it be that what we feel as the soul is only a dream and what we perceive as the eternal self is only a myth thrown up in trance?
Then
after a silence Narad made reply: A silence follows after which Narad replies. His lips which are normally accustomed to celestial sound have first to he tuned to earthly sound before he proceeds to speak. And as he speaks, something of the profound feeling of Fate is expressed in the frail hints of human speech.
His
forehead shone with vision solemnised,
Bare
in that Light Time toiled, his unseen works Ilis forehead glows with a shining vision. It becomes a veritable tablet of heavenly thoughts which appear like the strange hieroglyphs of the gods inscribed on its broad surface. In that luminous world-embracing book of Narad the unseen toils of Time are caught sight of; mapped out are the broad-based and far-sighted schemes of Time still unfinished and yet to be worked out.
“Was then the sun a dream because there is night?
Hidden
in the mortal’s heart the Eternal lives:
A
darkness stands between thyself and him, Would you deny the existence of the sun simply because there comes the night when the sun is not ? The sun is there, only you do not see him then. In the heart of the mortal, the Eternal dwells but is hidden to sight; he is there concealed in the inner chambers of thy soul. In that chamber shines a light that cannot be dimmed by pain or grief. But a darkness intervenes between thee and the divine Inhabitant within, as a result of which thou canst not hear or feel that marvelous Guest—the Guest immortal in the mortals, thou canst not see that sun of felicity.
O
queen, thy thought is a light of the Ignorance,
It
illumines a world born from the Inconscience,
Thy
mind’s light hides from thee the Eternal’s thought, O queen, thy thought is but a radiation of thy Ignorance, it only acts as a brilliant curtain that serves to hide God's face from thee. Thy thought throws light on this world which has emerged from Inconscience but conceals the purpose planted in it by the Immortal Creator. Thy mind sheds some light through its thought, but that very thought by its activity veils from thee the Eternal's thought which alone knows. Thy heart's h4-pes and emotions, by their agitation, hide from thee the Eternal’s Will which alone fulfils itself. So too the petty transient joys of the earth, by their frothy excitement, keep away from thee the underlying bliss of the Immortal which alone is undying.
Thence
rose the need of a dark intruding god,
Where
Ignorance is, there suffering too must come; It is because of this separation from the Immortal's Bliss, from the Eternal's Thought and Will, that pain had to be born to force man to awake and to compel him to strive for the higher truths, Where there is Ignorance, suffering has to come to work it out, otherwise man tends to stay put, stagnate in it without trying to get over it. Pain forces him to take steps to tackle the roots of suffering—Ignorance. Pain is thus a dread teacher, initiator of a new movement. What thou callest grief is really a plaintive call of darkness to the Light above.
Pain
was the first-born of the Inconscience From the Inconscience, which is the mute first base of thy body, is born pain. The source of pain is absence of consciousness. For it is only in unconsciousness that there is division from the truth and this division causes pain. In that obscure dark womb of the Inconscience, pain is already there, dormant, a shadow which waits for the movement of life in order to stir and become active. With the outbreak of life and sensation, the vibration of pain becomes tangible.
In one caul with joy came forth the dreadful Power.
In
life’s breast it was born hiding its twin; This dreadful Power of pain emerges along with its companion, joy; when it appears in the heart of life it hides its twin, joy. Pain comes first and makes possible the coming of joy in its wake.
Pain ploughed the first hard ground of the world-drowse.
By
pain a spirit started from the clod, It is pain that first breaks up the hard ground of the Inconscience, disturbs the heavy sleep of the material world. Pain awakes the spirit dormant in the soil of Matter and sets astir Life in the subtler depths of this existence.
Interned,
submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance Mind, the dreamer, dormant and imprisoned in the depths of tranced Matter, awakes (after the stir of life). It weaves an apparent dominion out of its own dreams, drawing patterns from the subconscient depths and then poises itself to regard its creation as original.
By
pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins, Without the presence and interaction of pain and joy the Inconscient would never have undergone all this change. It is due to these inseparable twins—dark and bright -- of pain and joy, that this inanimate world has become aware of its conscious soul.
Pain
is the hammer of the gods to break
If
the heart were not forced to want and weep, There is a hard, unyielding resistance to movement and change in the heart of man, a dull inertia as if he were a living stone. The gods—the Powers f Formation—use pain as their hammer to break this resistance. If man’s heart were not thus forced to feel its need and suffer, his soul would have been content to remain passive, quiescent; it would never have thought of striving to go beyond the human starting point and learning to ascend towards the Sun of the Spirit,
This
earth is full of labour, packed with pain; This earth is in continuous labour, suffering pangs of birth without break across the centuries and ages; the godhead of which it would be delivered is still not born.
The
ancient Mother faces all with joy,
This
earth is full of the anguish of the gods; The ancient Mother-Earth faces all tribulations with joy; she even welcomes the pangs of birth which give her a mighty thrill. For on the heels of pain and labour, new creation follows and Earth is avid of new and newer formations. The earth is full of the struggle and pain of the Powers that build; these are the gods who work incessantly under the irresistible impulsion of Time. They labour in order to work out and fulfil the Will of the Divine; and that Will is to achieve the immortal, divine life in the mortal forms that people this Earth.
His
will must be worked out in human breasts The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free. The Divine's will must be worked out in man. But it is faced with the opposition of the Cosmic Evil rising from the depths of the universal Ignorance and Inconscience. It is opposed also by the individual ignorance of man, the unyielding strength of persistence in his vital, the endless folly of his mind, the blind unwillingness of his heart to change. This struggle of the spirit and its attendant pain has to continue till man is liberated from these lower bondages which keep him tied to mortality.
There
is a clamour of battle, a tramp, a march: Men die that man may live and God be born. An awful Silence watches tragic Time. This struggle takes the form of clash and battle between the hosts of Ignorance and Darkness and those of Knowledge and Light. There is bloodshed, misery and death. But the strife continues. Men sacrifice themselves and die so that mankind may live on and progress towards godhood.All these tragic events in time are watched by a profound Silence which is of the Spirit.
Pain
is the hand of Nature sculpturing men Thus pain is really the hand of Nature shaping men into greater beings. The human is an unwilling material upon which Nature works with skill; the process is indeed painful and may appear cruel, but it is a deliberate cruelty with a lofty motive.
Implacable
in the passion of their will, The creative Powers of the universe are at their titanic toil with an .undiminishing intensity of will; they build with their characteristic giant strokes of hammer humanity is marked with this huge fiery stamp.
Although
the shaping god’s tremendous touch The mighty action of the shaping god is indeed a painful torture that mortal nerves find unbearable. But the ardent spirit within man—the soul grows stronger with every such stroke and thrills with joy to every mighty pang caused by it.
He
who would save himself lives bare and calm;
The
great who came to save this suffering world All great beings who come on earth to save this world in distress and free it from thraldom to the yoke of Time and Necessity, must undergo the grief and pain of the world. They are caught by the very Wheel of life and death they had hoped to break; they are obliged to bear personally man's burden of Fate which they have come to lighten.
Heaven’s
riches they bring, their sufferings count the price
The
Son of God born as the Son of man They bring to earth the treasures of Heaven and pay for them with their own sufferings; they bring the gift of Knowledge and they pay for it with their lives. Christ, the Son of God, took birth as the Son of Man to save the world. Ile had to drink the bitter cup of earthly suffering. As the Son of God, he took upon himself to pay the debt that God owes to the human kind for having bound it with his will to death and struggle, to a life that thirsts in vain for rest and eternal peace.
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.
The
Eternal suffers in a human form, That debt of God has now been paid and the original account squared. With the Eternal taking on suffering in his human form, salvation to all has been assured under his signature in blood. He has opened to man the doors of his eternal peace.
The
Deity compensates the creature’s claim,
His
love has paved the mortal’s road to Heaven: God makes good the claims of the suffering creature. He who has created all this undergoes the law of pain and death to which his creatures are subjected. Retribution comes to the embodied God in the form of suffering and death. With his love he has laid the mortal's path to Heaven. With the sacrifice of his life and light he has balanced the dark account of the ignorance that is imposed upon the mortals.
It
is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice, God has offered his body in utter sacrifice on behalf of the world; that sacred martyrdom is over. He himself had to carry the heavy cross on which his body was nailed, the cross of suffering to which the soul of man is tied. Gethsemane (the rock agony) and Golgotha (site of the crucifixion) were his share. He was accompanied by the curses of the ignorant crowd; all that his truth and right evoked were the insults and jeers from those around. His great death was deliberately mocked at by the killing of two common thieves alongside of him.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour’s way.
He
who has found his identity with God His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death. He walked the Saviours road with bleeding brow. That was the penalty for choosing the path of the Saviour of the world. He realised his oneness with God; and for this vast light gained by his soul, he paid with the death of his body. His immortal Knowledge triumphed but he had to die in the process.
Hewn,
quartered on the scaffold as he falls As he fell from the cross, his body was cut up into four, and his crucified voice declared that he was none else than God Himself. But another voice, the eternal voice of Heaven answered: Yes, thou art God, but all else also is God. See God in all and bear.
The
seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts, The seed that is to blossom into Godhead is there dormant in mortal hearts; the flower of Godhead grows steadily on the tree that is the world. All are on the way to discover God in themselves and in the things around. And yet despite the potentiality of godhead being there everywhere—when a messenger of God comes to the earth to help the world and lead the evolving soul of earth upwards, he has to pay a terrible price. He must come under the yoke of the Nature he has come to lift: he must suffer the pain he would remove. If he were not to share and suffer the fate of the earth, how could he hope to cure the ills that he himself has not experienced ? Unless experienced the ills are not real to him and to that extent his cure also is ineffective. Both the disease and the cure are first to be worked out in his own being.
He
covers the world’s agony with his calm; The messenger of God contains the agony of the world with his innate calm. Outwardly he does not appear to suffer, peace flows from him to the stricken humanity; but behind the veil of appearance there goes on the struggle, he pays the pt-ice. Within him are the burning heat, the strife and the combat.
He
carries the suffering world in his own breast; He holds and carries the suffering world in his own breast. Its ills press upon his thoughts, its grief becomes his own. The ages-long burden of the earth sits heavy upon his being. His slow and wary steps are besieged by the Darkness and its powers that engulf the world. He has to bear the grip of the titan enemy who is in revolt against God and His Law. The march of God's messenger on earth is at once a battle with the elements that oppose and a pilgrimage onwards.
Life’s
evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain:
He
journeys sleepless through an unending night; The prevailing evil in the world smites him and the pain of the world afflicts him. In his secret heart countless wounds are raw and open. He has to walk through a never ending darkness with unwinking vigilance, for hostile forces gather in their multitude across his path. His inner life is a continuous battle it is always under the siege of the Enemy.
Even
worse may be the cost, direr the pain: The messenger of God suffers for his daring not only because of the opposition faced by him as an individual, but much more because of the universal aspect of his work. His identification with the whole of humanity and his love encompassing all act as a channel for the anguish of the cosmos to enter into his being. The sorrow of all living creatures knocks at his door and lodges itself in his inner being. This sympathy with all becomes a fearful cord tying up the suffering of all into a single grief in his heart. It can even compress the agony in all the worlds—not merely in this physical world—into his agony.
He
meets an ancient adversary Force, The Adversary who has been there from the ancient times confronts him his whip-lashes that tear the tired heart of the world land on him. The grief of the entire past rushes into his eyes, even the bloody sufferings undergone by the brave pre-human species stick to him. The poison that has been generated in the churning of the world leaves a stain on his throat as he drinks it down.
In
the market-place of Matter’s capital Amidst the petty dealings of transient life on earth—the field of Matter --- he is tied to the burning stake of perpetual suffering. He burns on a level of being that is unseen and close to the Spirit in order that this Matter may change into Spirit. His coming down and acting here in this world is a veritable sacrifice; it ends by his becoming the victim the oblation of that sacrifice.
The
Immortal bound to earth’s mortality The Immortal chooses to get bound to the mortality of the earth in the person of his messenger. And in thus appearing and dying in the passages of Time, he prepares the pregnant moment for the fulfilment of God to the accompaniment of the rhythms of the Eternal.
He dies that the world may be new-born and live.
Even if he escapes
the fiercest fires, He suffers and gives up his life in order that by the consequences of his action the world may get a new birth and live on. Even if he is spared the worst ordeals, even if the Karma of the whole world does not overwhelm him, still he must make the hard sacrifice of his life; for only so can his high aim be attained. Anyone who seeks to conquer the hell ()f evil and pain has got to face a combat with the adversary, suffer the pangs of his blows.
A
dark concealed hostility is lodged There is a dark hostility lying hidden in the depths of the human beings, in the unseen heart of Time. This hostility always claims and asserts a right to interfere with the work of God in this creation, change it and, if possible, ruin it.
A
secret enmity ambushes the world’s march; This secret hostility swoops upon the world on its march, leaves its scar on thought, speech and act. It stains and renders defective whatever is done in the world. This element that opposes and deforms must be destroyed. Till that is done, there can be no real peace on earth.
There
is no visible foe, but the unseen Indeed there is no enemy visible to our eyes. But the hostility is all around us: intangible forces are incessantly active waning us in; influences and impacts come on earth from planes other than ours alien thought-movements invade us and well nigh compel our hearts to err. In a word, our lives are enmeshed in an unpredictable uncertainty.
An
adversary Force was born of old: In the very beginnings was born a Force that is antagonistic to the Divine Intention in this Creation. That Force has invaded the life of mortal man. It veils from him the direct path to the Immortal and leads him astray in many a crooked pathway.
A
power came in to veil the eternal Light, A power intervened in order to hide the Light eternal. This power is opposed to the eternal Will of God and interferes at every step: it gives a wrong direction to the intimations of Truth, the infallible Word; it twists the patterns of the cosmic plan of the Divine Builder; with a whisper it misleads the heart to evil; it blocks the sight of the soul, the eyes of the inner wis
This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.
This
hidden foe lodged in the human breast This is the inner war without escape. All who hope to bring down the Peace of God into this world of unrest and strife must first conquer this deforming power. Man must subdue this enemy living concealed in his own. being, otherwise he misses his higher destiny. There is no escape from this ,inner war with the hidden foe.
Hard
is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
Those
he would save are his antagonists: The heavy task of the world-saviour is hard indeed. The world he comes to redeem, itself opposes him. Those he comes to help turn into his foes, Tie has to suffer the opposition of those he seeks to save. This world is truly attached to its own ignorance; it will not let it go. The darkness of this world turns its back on the light that comes to help and save. For the crown Of fulfilment that the saviour brings to it, this world returns only bitter suffering.
His
work is a trickle of splendour in a long night; In the enormous long stretch of darkness that covers this world-life, the work of the world-redeemer is but a streak of light. lie covers, indeed, a little of the long march of Time, but what stretches ahead is endless. As a result of his efforts a few are saved, others struggle on but fail. with his departure. a Sun has passed and Darkness again settles upon the earth.
Yes,
there are happy ways near to God’s sun;
An
exit is shown, a road of hard escape The human mass lingers beneath the yoke. No doubt there are easier and happier paths that are near to God's luminous Sun. But those who walk the happy, sunlit paths are few, for one has to be very pure in soul in order to be able to walk in light. And the truly pure are rare. Of course, there is a way of escaping from the whole round of sorrow, darkness and the chainof ignorance; it is hard, nevertheless it is shown to be possible. But even if a few do manage to escape by this doer of exit, how does it help the world to be free ? The rest of humanity whose number is legion, continues to groan under the yoke.
Escape,
however high, redeems not life,
Escape
cannot uplift the abandoned race A greater power must come, a larger light. However lofty the individual escape, it does not deliver the life that is left behind on the earth which has fallen into a state suffering and darkness. The entire race is left abandoned. Escape cannot uplift it in any way, nor can it bring to it victory and the Kingdom of God. For that to be possible. a greater Power, a larger Light than any active so far, has to come.
Although
Light grows on earth and Night recedes, Even though as a result of the Saviour's labours and the action from Above, the Light extends and the Night recedes on earth, yet there is much to be done. Till that supernal Light invades and strikes the Inconscient from which this world arises and slays the evil rooted there, and destroys the opposing Force, the Saviour has got to strive on: otherwise his task is only half fulfilled
One
yet may come armoured, invincible;
He
asks no aid from the inferior gods; Still, some special manifestation of God may come one day, well-armed, unconquerable. His unshakable will shalt confront the mutations of Time. All the blows of the world will not be able to bend that victor's head. The Night may extend and grow. but his steps will be calm and certain; the goal may recede as he advances, but he will not be impatient and quicken his pace. He will not be decoyed by powerful unknown Voices in the Night: he will not seek the help of inferior deities. His eyes will always be fixed on the immovable aim before him.
Man
turns aside or chooses easier paths; The ordinary man turns away from the difficult terrain and takes to easier paths. But the chosen one does not deflect from his high road however difficult; for that alone can lead to the peaks of the Eternal. The occult planes between the earth below and the peaks above have already felt his steps. He has turned both heaven and earth into his handmaids; the limits of earth and heaven do not obtain for him. He transcends their law in himself but uses it as his instrument for the effectuation of his purpose.
He has seized life’s hands, he has mastered his own heart.
The
feints of Nature mislead not his sight, He has secured control of life; he has assumed mastery over the emotions of his heart. His eye cannot be misled by Nature; his look is always fixed on the goal, the distant Truth. His will cannot be broken by the implacable opposition of Fate.
In
the dreadful passages, the fatal paths, His soul is unconquerable, his heart is unslain as he crosses the dangerous passages and paths of sure death. He resists the opposition of powers well-established on earth. survives the sudden blows of hostile Nature and meets the attacks of the ignorant world.
His
spirit’s stature transcending pain and bliss
He
too must grapple with the riddling Sphinx His developed spit-it stands above the touches of pain and joy and hence he is able to face evil and good with calm and equality. Even he has to come to grips with the mystery of life, meet her unsolved question and delve into the depths of her obscurity.
He
has broken into the Inconscient’s depths
He
has watched the dumb God fashioning Matter’s frame, He has broken into the sealed and unseeing depths of the Inconscient. There he has seen in the tranced sleep of God the shaping of all these worlds that look as if sprung from magic. He has observed how God in his mute spell fashions the Form of Matter. dreams the reveries of the Inconscient's sleep. He has watched, there the mechanical, somnambulist Force at work building the stars.
He
has learnt the Inconscient’s workings and its law, He has studied and known the workings and the law of the Inconscient its thoughts without sequence, its acts that are always unchanging and mechanical, its unsure and meaningless upheavings of impulses and ideas, the chaos of its mechanical repetition, its aimless calls, its promptings that are false but effective enough to mislead the soul that hears from behind its veil.
All
things come to its ear but nothing abides;
Its
somnolence founded the universe, The Inconscient registers all that happens, but retains nothing for long. From its inarticulate silence all arises and into its hush all sinks back. In the half-sleep of the Inconscient lie the foundations of the universe; its dull and semi-wakeful action makes the world appear purposeless.
Arisen
from Nothingness and towards Nothingness turned
Its
opposition clogs the march of the soul, Its nescience arises from Nothingness and towards Nothingness it pulls back. From this dark but potent nescience the earth has begun its career. The Inconscient is the waste material from which all has been formed, and what has thus been created can sink back into its depths. It is the opposition of this Inconscient that obstructs and slows down the march of the soul. From it is born all Ignorance.
He
must call light into its dark abysms,
All
things obscure his knowledge must relume, The Redeemer must bring the Light into the dark abysms of the Inconscient. Otherwise the Divine Truth cannot overcome the !-obscure. sleep of Matter and the earth cannot hope to come face to face with God; Matter and Spirit cannot meet. His knowledge must rekindle all that has become obscure; his power must untie and resolve all perversities. He must reach the nether shore of this expanse of falsehood, enter into the darkest caverns of world-nature in order to bring light there.
The
heart of evil must be bared to his eyes,
He
must know the thought that moves the demon act
For
this he must go down into the pit, He must see evil at its bare core, know its purpose and its dark Necessity in the cosmos, realise its justification to plant its ominous roots in the very soil of Nature. He must know also the thought that is responsible for demoniac movements and justifies the Titan's pride that errs for ever. He must recognise the falsehood that hides in the crooked dreams of earth. He must enter the endless Night of obscurity and know intimately the Darkness in Creation even as he knows the light-giving sun. For this purpose he must deliberately plunge into the pit of Inconscience and invade the empire of pain and sorrow.
Imperishable
and wise and infinite,
Into
the eternal Light he shall emerge Though he is immortal. wise and limitless in his consciousness, if he wants to save the world, he must descend into and pass through Hell. He will emerge into the eternal Light that shines on the other side of the Darkness, where all worlds meet. Beyond the nadir of Darkness there are open vistas of Light bordering on the summits of Nature; there is fulfilled the inner law of each and in the process, all opposites find their gulfs healed.
There
meet and clasp the eternal opposites, There come together and mingle the eternal opposites. Pain is realised to be only a violent intensity of joy. Evil resolves itself into the Good from which it originally issued. Sorrow finds herself on the bosom of Bliss. She sheds happy tears of felicity; in her gaze there is a certain wistful ecstasy—wistful because of all that she has passed through.
Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain.
Earth
shall be made a home of Heaven’s light, Then will the Law of Pain cease to exist here on the earth turned into a home of Heaven's light, while in man shall live the seer heaven-born. The ray of the superconscience shall light up men's eyes. The truth-conscious world shall descend on earth and invade Matter with the light of the Spirit. striking its dumb silence into awareness of immortal thoughts, awaking its mute heart to the vibrant Word of God.
This
mortal life shall house Eternity’s bliss, Then shall the world-redeemer’s task be done. Then will this mortal life be able to hold the bliss of the Eternal—and not before. Then will the physical share in the divine immortality—and not before. Only when all this is achieved, will the task of the world-redeemer be completed.
Till
then must life carry its seed of death
O
mortal, bear this great world’s law of pain, Till the world-redeemer brings about this transforming change, life will continue to be pursued by death and the cry of sorrow heard in the Night of darkness that passes so slowly. O man, till then thou bast to bear the mighty law of pain that governs this world. In thy difficult journey through this world of suffering.
A
little bliss is lent thee from above, A little of bliss is given to thee from an high; that is a divine touch upon thy human days—the touch that soothes and sustains. Convert thy mechanical daily life into a conscious pilgrimage to God, For through all thy petty joys and griefs thou art surely moving—known or unknown to thee—towards God.
Haste
not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,
Against
the Law he pits his single will, But do not in thy haste to reach God, take the wrong and dangerous road of the Asura, the Titan. Do not open thyself to the hostile undefined Power. The Asura is in revolt against the Divine Law. He challenges it with the pride of his own strength and seeks to interfere with its workings.
Heavenward
he clambers on a stair of storms
He
strives with a giant strength to wrest by force The Titan climbs up his stormy path towards heaven hoping to live near the immortal Light_ He labours with his inordinate strength to seize by force from life and Nature the right that belongs to the Gods alone. He assaults forcibly the world, fate and heaven to conquer them for himself.
He
comes not to the high world-maker’s seat,
All
he would make his own, leave nothing free, He does not come before the throne of the All-Creator in humility_ He does not wait upon the Grace of God to uplift him from his mortal state. He would like to claim everything for himself, leaving nothing aside; he attempts to contain the vast infinite in his small embrace.
Obstructing
the gods’ open ways he makes
His
pain and others’ pain he makes his means: Obstructing the free passage of the gods, he claims for himself the air and light of the earth which is meant for all; he seeks to monopolise the world energy, lie spreads his rule over the lives of common men. As a means to his end he utilises pain—be it his own or others'. He erects his empire on the suffering and death caused by his ambition.
In
the hurry and clangour of his acts of might, His acts .a might are always hurried and loud: fame and shame vie with each other in their abundance; his life is characterised by inordinate hate and violence; the earth shakes beneath his furious march. In all these ways he sets himself up against the calm of the Eternal and fancies himself to be as great as a god. His conception of godliziod is possession of power.
The
Titan’s heart is a sea of fire and force;
He
glories in the sufferings of the flesh His being is full of burning intensity and force. He rejoices in the destruction and ruin of things. His strength thrives on pain—his own and that of others. He delights in the pathetic tragedies and the fierce passions of the world. His vainglory and might always invite struggle and suffering. He flaunts his physical sufferings and bears pain with a stoic fortitude.
His
eyes blinded and visionless stare at the sun, The vision of the seeker withdraws from his heart and the light of Gad is no more for him. With blinded eyes, without vision, he stares blankly at the sun of the Spirit. To him the Beyond is a mere lifeless, soulless Void. He mistakes his own obscure state for a kind of dark infinite.
His
nature magnifies the unreal’s blank His moments centre the vast universe. He sees his little self as very God. He exaggerates the vacancy of the unreal and looks upon Nil as the sole reality. He hopes to dominate the whole world and stamp his figure upon it, to fill the world with the sound of his name alone. He makes himself and his life the centre of the vast universe and regards his own small self as the one God.
His
little “I” has swallowed the whole world,
His
mind, a beat in original Nothingness, His petty ego stretches itself to cover the infinity, as it were, and his ' I' swallows the whole world in its self-importance. His mind, a wave in a primal Nothingness, etches his thought on the surface of some unmoving Time.
He
builds on a mighty vacancy of soul
In
him Nirvana lives and speaks and acts On a foundation void of soul, he constructs a philosophy with Nothingness as the sole Reality. Fie is an embodiment of Nirvana, Negation, which performs the impossible feat of fathering a universe.
An
eternal zero is his formless self,
Take
not that stride, O growing soul of man; He conceives of his formless self as an eternal zero—not as the womb of All: he takes his spirit to be a void, an impersonal absolute—not an all-containing Being. O soul of man wir,) art constantly growing, do not copy him. Do nat. throw thyself into the dark state of rejecting {;ed. an attitude the titan chooses.
The
soul suffering is not eternity’s key,
O
mortal, bear, but ask not for the stroke, The soul cannot reach the Eternal by mere suffering. Heaven's demands must be fulfilled. They cannot be substituted by the bearing of sorrow. O mortal man, bear the stroke of lain when it comes, but do not seek for it. Grief and suffering will soon find thee out without thy having to look for them.
Too
enormous is that venture for thy will; To seek to attain the Eternal by taking on the load of suffering is too great a venture for thy soul. Human strength is safe only as long as it stays within its limits; if it goes beyond, it breaks. Indeed, infinity is the true goal of thy soul; but the way to it is difficult, The bliss of infinity is always there but veiled by the world's front of pain and tears.
A
power is in thee that thou knowest not;
It
seeks relief from Time’s envelopment, Iii thee there dwells a power. but thou knowest it not: thou holdst within thee a spark that is imprisoned there: it seeks to get free from this containment in 'rime. As long as thou keepest this spark shut in, thou sufferest pain. Pain is the feature of life. Bliss is natural only for a Godhead that is free, uninvolved in time, freed from the load of pain in the heart of life.
Pain
is the signature of the Ignorance Pain is the seal and proclamation of Ignorance testifying to the denial of the concealed Godhead by life. As long as life does not discover God there is bound to be pain.
Calm is self’s victory overcoming fate. Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.
Bliss
is the secret stuff of all that lives, Calm is the unmistakable sign of the self's conquest of fate. Bear thy pain in calm. Thou shalt surely find thy path to bliss which is truly the secret stuff of which all life is made, There is a Delight underlying this world; pain and grief are its masks. Behind thy sorrow, behind thy cry of pain, there lurks this pervading Delight of God.
Because
thy strength is a part and not God’s whole, Thou complainest of pain because thy strength is partial, unlike God's which is whole and unbroken; and because thy consciousness, under the spell of division of thy little self, forgets its divine nature and becomes human in its embodiment in living matter, it is unable to bear the mighty impact of the world outside. If thy consciousness were whole, unbroken by division of thy separate, little self, then it could meet the tremendous touch of the world without going under. There would be no pain.
Indifference,
pain and joy, a triple disguise, The Divine Player who sports in incessant delight in this manifestation of the universe wears this triple mask of indifference, pain and joy. And this outer appearance conceals from thee the sheer bliss of God running through all life.
Thy
spirit’s strength shall make thee one with God, It is only when thou summonest the innate strength of thy spirit that thou shalt become one with God. Then will thy pain turn into rapture. indifference into the Calm of the infinite and joy into an uncaused, sheer bliss. All these three perverted and limited expressions will recover their original truth.
O
mortal who complainst of death and fate, O mortal, thou dost complain of death and fate. But why accuse anyone of the harms that thou hast thyself called? Thou hast thyself chosen this afflicted world as thy home. Thou art thyself responsible for thy pain.
Once
in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
It
felt the Spirit’s interminable bliss, This is how it has all come to be. Once the soul in the immortal infinity of the Self, the Vastitudes of Truth, Consciousness and Light, looked out from its felicity. It felt the endless bliss of the Spirit: it knew itself as immortal, eternal, infinite and one: it saw the Eternal and lived in the Infinite.
Then,
curious of a shadow thrown by Truth, Then it perceived a kind of shadow thrown up by the Truth. And it strained towards that which seemed to be something other than the self; it was attracted to a strange Appearance looking through that shadowy night.
It
sensed a negative infinity, It became aware of an infinity that was negative—unlike the positive infinity of ',ts own. This was a Void that looked similar to G id and to eternity and gave room for a contrary birth of Nature and the formation 7f the hard, rigid unconsciousness of Matter in which is lodged the splendour of a fleeting soul that lights up the phenomena of all this birth, death and ignorant life.
A
Mind arose that stared at Nothingness There arose a Mind which looked at the confronting Nothingness till out of it were formed shapes of what was not and never could be. It contained all the contraries of whatever is.
A
Nought appeared as Being’s huge sealed cause, A Nothing, a zero appeared to be the hidden Cause of the Being, its mute, ultimate base in an infinite Void. a Nought in the depths of which the spirit must dissolve. A Nature that had become dark. lived and held in itself the seed of Spirit which hid in it and appeared as if it did not exist.
The
eternal Consciousness became the home Thus in the original eternal Consciousness there formed a huge, formidable Inconseient without a soul. One no more breathed the native air of the Conreious Spirit. There was no Spirit, no Consciousness; it was all an Inconscience.
A
stranger in the insentient universe,
As
one drawn by the grandeur of the Void In this universe of Inconscience, Bliss %vas a stranger—unlike in the eternal Consciousness where it is inalienable—or at best it was a transient phenomenon. Like one drawn to the majesty of a huge Void, the soul felt an attraction lo the Abyss and leaned to it.
It
longed for the adventure of Ignorance The soul longed to adventure into the gaping Ignorance and experience the wonder and surprise of the Unknown, the limitless possibilities that hide in the depth of Chaos and in the Chasm of Nothing or showed in the ungauged working of Chance.
It
tired of its unchanging happiness, The soul bored and tired of the monotony of its unchanging happiness turned away from its state of immortality and was attracted to the Call of Chance and the charm of danger. It longed to enjoy the appealing notes of grief, the drama of pain, the peril of fall and destruction. the thrill of hair-breadth escapes, the sound of ruin and its glittering crash, the taste .of pity, the dice-throw of love and passion and the uncertain turns of Fate.
A
world of hard endeavour and difficult toil The soul was moved to leave its safety in eternity - - a safety that was uninteresting—by the thrill of a world of exertion and toil, struggle, battle and danger, a perpetual clash of forces, a held of uncertainty. It was attracted to a world affording the joy of creation out of an apparent Nothingness, providing for unexpected meetings and the temporary companionship, in circumstances of Ignorance, of souls that do not know each other on the surface though they know each other in their depths a world of division where one can live in one's own separate glory and exercise power to conquer the rest.
A
huge descent began, a giant fall: With this attraction iind tile response of the soul to this world of pain and suffering there commenced a precipitous descent, a great fall as it were, from its august state. What was perceived as a possibility turned into actuality. For that is what happens when the spirit sees; what is seen becomes a fact. What the soul imagines develops into a world. The visions of the spirit, the broodings of the soul translate themselves into actual truths of existence.
A
Thought that leaped from the Timeless can become, An Idea, a Thought that issues from the Eternal can well form the index of a cosmic unrolling included by the gods in their rounds. This cosmic unrolling seems to be a cyclic movement in a time of uncndin duration
Thus
came, born from a blind tremendous choice, A vast disguise conceals the Eternal’s bliss.” This is the origin of this great, confused and restless world; it is the result of a choice. blind and tremendous, of the Eternal. This is how this world has come to be, this field of Ignorance, this abode of Pain, this camp of desire, this permanent quarters of grief. But all is a mask, an appearance, a disguise covering the underlying Bliss of the Eternal. Pain and grief are no more than deformations of this Bliss.
Then
Aswapathy answered to the seer: O seer, is there no remedy within?
But
what is fate if not the spirit’s will
I
deemed a mighty Power had come with her; Aswapathy asks in reply: D seer, does then the outer world determine the movements of the inner soul ? Can no remedy for the world's malady be found within ? Thou speakest of fate; but what is fate if it is not the will of the spirit that is executed by the cosmic force in due time ? What the spirit's will is above, appears as fate here below. I think that a mighty Power came down along with Sayitri. And is not that, Power the high companion of Fate? Is it not equally powerful?
But
Narad answered covering truth with truth:
Infallibly
the curves of life are drawn Narad replies hi. riddles—the surface meaning concealing the deeper import: O Aswapathy, aimless seem the paths of life along which thou walkest during ordinary times or exceptional moments of revelation. But in truth, thy least stumbles are provisioned above. Things are planned to the last detail. The lines along which life flows in the passage of Time through the great Unknown, have been drawn without error. The clue to theft design is in the keeping of the immortal gods who are ever calm and unperturbed.
This
blazoned hieroglyph of prophet moons The movements of the planets are an index to profounder things: but the closed thought of man cannot grasp this import. How then can my words make the mind of earth understand !
Heaven’s
wiser love rejects the mortal’s prayer; Man in his ignorance prays for many things. He is bUnded by desire, surrounded by fears and hopes and is ever involved in the struggle of love with death—a mnstant feature of his life. He does not know what is truly good for him and goes on asking for this and that. But Providence is wiser, and in its true concern for him, it often rejects prayers that, if granted, would confirm him in his ignorance and delay his progress. It stands above his desire, his fears and hopes, his involvements in the strife of love with death. It bends in compass on and preserves for love its cherished sting of pain. In this world of ignorance, wherever there is love, there is suffering; love seems to thrive upon it.
A
greatness in thy daughter’s soul resides
Although
designed like a nectar cup of heaven, In thy daughter, there is a greatness of soul that can completely change both herself and all around her. But she has to pass through hard suffering to reach her goal. Although she has been designed like a heavenly cup of nectar, and is made of heaven's ether, she has chosen this air of earth and therefore she has to undergo grief which is a necessary spur for progress to man she needs must turn her innate springs of joy into pain.
The
mind of mortal man is led by words,
He
cuts the boundless Truth into sky-strips The mind ci man [ti led by words and not by truth. His perception is veiled by the activity of his thought. He looks out on the world through doors that are only partially open. The result is that he catches sight of only a part of the Truth; he fragments the Truth that is infinite and every fragment he mistakes for the entire Truth.
He
stares at infinite Possibility
He
sees the long results of an all-wise Force Man looks at the boundless Possibility opening out before him and mistakes this large variable factor to be Chance. There is at work in this universe an all-wise Force planning a whole line of sequences in unending Time; man sees only the far ends of this operation and mistakes its links for a chain of mechanical cause and effect or simply the routine working of a law of Necessity.
He
answers not to the mystic Mother’s heart, He does not feel the intense love of the universal Mother and fails to respond to her pronaptings, What he feels are only the cold and rigid workings of a mechanical Law of things.
The
will of the Timeless working out in Time What in fact is the Will of the Eternal determining itself in the processes of Time and in the large unfettered freedom of the manifesting Truth in the Cosmos, appears to him as a relentless machinery or blind Fate.
A
Magician’s formulas have made Matter’s laws All here can change if the Magician choose. The rigid laws of Matter have been made by the skill of a supreme Magician and as long as they remain, they are binding. And yet the sanction of the presiding Spirit is necessary for every movement; along with these rigid laws, there exists a freedom of the Spirit. If the Magician wills it, all here on earth can change despite the laws.
If
human will could be made one with God’s,
Yet
can the mind of man receive God’s light, For only so can he be Nature’s King. . If only man tunes his will to the Will of God, if only his thought could reflect and vibrate to the thought of God, he might become as all-knowing and as all-powerful as God Himself. But man, as at present, lives under the dubious regime of Nature. Still he can open his mind to receive the light of God, he can link his force to the driving force of God. And if he does so, he turns himself into a standing miracle performing miracles. Nature's laws are set aside and he becomes the King of Nature.
It
is decreed and Satyavan must die; What else shall be is written in her soul.
But
till the hour reveals the fateful script It has been so ordained and Satyavan must surely die. Even the fatal hour is fixed: the stroke of death is also decided. What more is to happen is written in the soul of Savitri. But that writing shall remain undecipherable and ineffective till the chosen hour reveals the script loaded with destiny.
Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O
King, thy fate is a transaction done Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book. Fate is only a name for the process of truth fulfilling itself in conditions of Ignarance. O King, know that thy fate is a transaction, the result of a constant interchange between Nature and thy soul, under the presiding eye of God who foresees all. Fate is the balance drawn in the accounts book of Destiny which records all the credit and debit transactions in the life of man.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even
if the One maintains the unseen decree Man is free to accept his fate or to refuse to accept it. Even though God keeps the decree that is not seen by man, he adds the fact of man's refusal to his credit, thus enabling the account to grow in his favour. Doom is not the end, the final seal of God. It is only a part of the transaction
Arisen
from the tragic crash of life, Its splendid failures sum to victory. Defeat is not the finale. From the debris of defeat the spirit rises again. And when thy soul arises from the bitter crash of life, arises from the long torture and death of the body, it emerges stronger. Its god-like capacities increase with each fall. All its great failures lead to a final victory.
O
man, the events that meet thee on thy road, O man, many are the events that happen on thy path; they strike thee, in thy body and soul, now with joy, now with grief, but they are not thy abiding fate. They are transitory circumstances which stay for a time and then pass. Even death cannot snap the life-line of thy soul.Thy fate is thy choice. The goal and the path thou choosest, these are thy fate.
On
the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works, Thou art forging thy fate every moment. And this fate is the long, continuous sacrifice to the gods, the Cosmic powers, to which thou offerest all thy thoughts, thy works, thy heart-emotions on the altar of thy [laming Will, till the gods reveal to thee thy inner self and make thee one with the God that dwells within thee.It is by the Higher Grace that man realises the Divine seated within himself. And self-consecration and self-sacrifice are the means to move this Grace into action.
O
soul, intruder in Nature’s ignorance, O soul, thou does not belong to this realm of Ignorance; thou art here a foreigner m transit. Thou art travelling to the unseen heights of the Spirit, well equipped to meet the combat of the invisible adverse Powers who are opposed to thy journey. It is destined that thou must fight them and continue thy march uninterrupted in thy journey from inconscient Matter to the Eternal Self.
Adventurer
through blind unforeseeing Time, Thy spirit adventures through Time which sees not what lies ahead: it advances without respite through a long series of lives, pushing its assault forward through the centuries.
Across
the dust and mire of the earthly plain, This journey and battle of the soul proceeds through the dust and mire of the lowly plains of earth, across dangerous points and fortified routes, punctuated with terrific onslaughts, wounded fall-backs, Defending the battered citadels of Ideals, lighting against odds in secluded posts, camping during nights around fires in the open hopefully awaiting the trumpet-note of the dawns which are slow to come, all this is also part of the journey.
In
hunger and in plenty and in pain, In conditions of hunger and of plenty of pain and of peril, through victory and through defeat, through green fertile tracts of life and through her desert lands, climbing up the wastelands, passing over the sunny ridges, the army of this god who has lost his way marches along in regular columns with a rear that often strays from the line while following the signal flares lighted by its ever moving advancing host.
Then
late the joy ineffable is felt, Quite late in the journey, the striving spirit begins to experience a joy that cannot be expressed in words. It is then that man remembers his own self which he had forgotten so far. He re-discovers the heights of the being from which he had apparently fallen. This causeless spiritual joy reawakens with the memory of the forgotten inner self; awareness of this self leads to the discovery of his Origin.
At
length his front’s indomitable line At last his untiring advance host breaks through the last strongholds of Ignorance. Passing beyond the last known frontiers of Nature, beyond the boundaries of the seen, it climbs upward through the strange, new upper air till ascending to the silent summits of the world, he is able to stand upon the peaks of the splendour of God.
In
vain thou mournst that Satyavan must die;
A
vast intention has brought the souls close Do not mourn for the destined death of Satyavan. Know that his death is not the end but will signalise the start of a newer and greater life. Death is a means fur the spirit to renew itself. It casts away the old and worn-out embodiment and goes on to take a new and fresh one. A great intention—which thou dost not perceive now—has brought these two souls. Savitri and Satyavan, together. The love that brings them close and the death that would part them, both secretly work for one great objective.
For
out of danger and pain heaven-bliss shall come, For out of all danger and pain there shall issue the bliss of heaven. That unexpected event shall take place, for that is the hidden plan of God.
This
world was not built with random bricks of chance,
It
is an architecture high and grand This world is not a product of Chance. It has not been built by stray bricks of chance., nor is destiny the construction of a blind god. A purposive, conscious Power has drawn the plan of life in advance. That is why every movement has a meaning, every line and curve a significance. This world is truly a high and magnificent edifice built by many masons, many agents—some known, some unknown. In it many unseen hands are at work obeying the great Master Architect.And of such master-builders of the world, Savitri is one.
Queen,
strive no more to change the secret will;
Bring
not thy brief and helpless human tears O queen, do not struggle any further to change the secret will that is at work; what appear to be accidents in life are well-determined steps in the scheme of this secret will.Thy human tears are transient and helpless do not vainly use them to disturb the profound beatings of Savitri's heart that is conscious that its sole will is one with the will of God and therefore cannot but be effective. Her heart can take on this hostile destiny, It sits by itself with grief, facing death. Armed with a will of steel, alone, it confronts adverse fate.
In
this enormous world standing apart She stands apart in this huge world. The silent will of her soul is mighty; its ardour to sacrifice itself is intense. Her lone strength facing the whole universe, opposing fate. does not supplicate for help from man or god. At times a single life is missioned with the destiny of the earth; what it does has consequences for the entire earth. Such a life does not plead for assistance from powers that are limited by time.
Alone she is equal to her mighty task.
Intervene
not in a strife too great for thee, Savitri is equal to her task by herself alone. That task of strife with Death is too great for thee; do not attempt to intervene in it. Mortal thought cannot fathom that struggle which is too deep for it; nor can it grasp that challenge flung to the rigid bounds of this Nature when the bare soul faces the infinite, when a single mortal will waits in the silence of eternity.
As
a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven
A
God-given might of being is their force, “Like a star moving alone in the skies, without being overcome by the vastnesses of space, journeying in the infinity by its own self-light, the great go along alone; and when they do so they are strongest, they are not weakened by the failings of others. Their force is an innate strength of being given by God, their guide is a ray that proceeds from the light of the soul in solitude. The soul that has or develops the capacity to live by itself, content in its solitude, meets God, Its lone world becomes their trysting place.
A
day may come when she must stand unhelped
Carrying
the world’s future on her lonely breast, It may be that a day will come when Savitri will have to stand, uncompanioned, un helped, on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom—also her own threatened doom-, bearing the destiny of the world on her one self, carrying all human hope in her heart left sole, to win or lose on a final desperate venture.
Alone
with death and close to extinction’s edge, In that last dread scene. alone with death and on the verge of extinction, she in her solitary greatness will have to cross a dangerous bridge in earthly Time and reach the summit of the Fate of the world where everything is won or everything is lost for man.The future of man will depend upon hei• unaided, ultimate, perilous adventure,
In
that tremendous silence lone and lost In that mighty silence, solitary and well-nigh lost, in the decisive hour in the fate of the world, when her soul ascending beyond human time stands face to face alone with Death or alone with God, apart from all, upon a silent desperate edge, atone with her self, death and destiny, on the borderline between Time and Timelessness where the being must either die or its life reshape its base and renew itself. Savitri must either conquer all by herself alone. or fall alone.
No
human aid can reach her in that hour, Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.
For
this the silent Force came missioned down; In that decisive hour no human aid can reach her nor will there be any battling God by her side to help her.Do not plead to the heavens, they cannot save she alone can. For this very purpose has the silent Power of God descended. in Savitri the conscious Will of God has taken human shape. It is she alone who Can save herself and save the world too.
O
queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,
Her
hour must come and none can intervene:
Thou
hast no place in that tremendous strife; O queen, hold thyself back from that great scene. Come not between her and her decisive hour of Fate. That hour of hers has to come and none can intervene between her and her Fate. Do not seek to draw her away from the task with which she is charged by Heaven. Do not vainly try to save her from the workings of her own high will. Surely, thou hast no place in that tremendous conflict to be, Thy motherly love and human longings are not going to be the arbiters there. Leave her—and the fate of the world that is involved in her—to the sole care of God.
Even
if he seems to leave her to her lone strength,
Think
not to intercede with the hidden Will, Even if God seems to leave her to her own resources, her lone strength, even though everything staggers and falls and the end is seen, even though the heart fails and only night and death remain, even on that brink where Death alone seems to be close, her God-given strength can fight against the threatening doom. No human strength can deter or help in that situation. A secret Will is at work; think not to intercede with it in thy favour. Stand not between her (Savitri's) spirit and the effectuating force of that spirit. Leave her alone to her own great self and the contending Fate.
He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.
Away
from the strife and suffering on our globe,
A
brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven, Thus spoke Narad and left the earthly scene.From this our globe of strife and suffering he turned away towards his distant home of bliss. The luminous body of the eternal seer looked. like a brilliant arrow heading straight to heaven. It pierced through the brilliant skies of the and fast disappeared like a receding star vanishing into the light of the Unseen beyond.
But
still a cry was heard in the infinite, And vet a tote was heard in the bosom of the Infinite. The listening soul on mortal earth below still caught the chant of the anthem of eternal love by a high, distant and undying voice.
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