AFTER a measureless moment of the soul

Again returning to these surface fields

Out of the timeless depths where he had sunk,

He heard once more the slow tread of the hours.

All once perceived and lived was far away;

Himself was to himself his only scene.

Above the Witness and his universe

He stood in a realm of boundless silences

Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds.

A light was round him wide and absolute,

A diamond purity of eternal sight;

A consciousness lay still, devoid of forms,

For ever content with only being and bliss;

A sheer existence lived in its own peace

On the single spirit's bare and infinite ground.

Out of the sphere of Mind he had arisen,

He had left the reign of Nature's hues and shades;

He dwelt in his self's colourless purity.

It was a plane of undetermined spirit

That could be a zero or round sum of things,

A state in which all ceased and all began.

All it became that figures the absolute,

A high vast peak whence spirit could see the worlds,

Calm's wide epiphany, wisdom's mute home,

A lonely station of Omniscience,

A diving-board of the Eternal's power,

A white floor in the house of All-Delight.

Here came the thought that passes beyond Thought,

Here the still Voice which our listening cannot hear, 

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The Knowledge by which the Knower is the Known,

And objects are its pure spiritual shapes;

Spirit no more is hid from its own view,

And feeling swims across a sea of peace

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And vision climbs beyond the reach of Time.

An equal of the first creator seers,

Accompanied by an all-revealing light

He moved through regions of transcendent Truth

Inward, immense, innumerably one.

There distance was his own huge spirit's extent;

Delivered from the fictions of the mind

Time's triple dividing step baffled no more;

Its inevitable and continuous stream,

A universal beauty showed its face;

The invisible deep-fraught significances,

On the rim of two continents of slumber and trance

Awaken revelation's mystic cry,

The birth-place found of the sudden infallible Word

And lived in the rays of an intuitive Sun.

Absolved from the ligaments of death and sleep

He rode the lightning seas of cosmic Mind

And crossed the ocean of original sound;

On the last step to the supernal birth

He trod along extinction's narrow edge

Near the high verges of eternity,

And mounted the gold ridge of the World-dream

Between the slayer and the saviour fires;

The belt he reached of the unchanging Truth,

Met borders of the inexpressible Light

And thrilled with the presence of the Ineffable.

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Above him he saw the flaming Hierarchies,

Sat voiceless in a vast passivity;

It judged not, measured not, nor strove to know,

He had reached the top of all that can be known:

His sight surpassed creation's head and base;

Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns,

The hidden universes cried to him;

Eternities called to eternities

All flowed immeasurably to one sea:

All living forms became its atom homes.

Held now existence in its vast control;

A portion of that majesty he was made.

At will he lived in the unoblivious Ray.

     In that high realm where no untruth can come,.

The Person in the World-Spirit anchored rode;

It thrilled with the mighty marchings of World-Force,

Its acts were the comrades of God's infinite peace.

An adjunct glory and a symbol self,

The body was delivered to the soul,

An immortal point of power, a block of poise

In a cosmicity's wide formless surge,

A conscious edge of the Transcendent's might

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Carving perfection from a bright world-stuff,

It figured in it a universe's sense.

There consciousness was a close and single weft;

The far and near were one in spirit-space,

Sight was a flame-throw from identity;

Life was a marvellous journey of the spirit,

Feeling a wave from the universal Bliss.

In the kingdom of the Spirit's power and light,

As if one who arrived out of infinity's womb

He came new-born, infant and limitless

And grew in the wisdom of the timeless Child;

He was a vast that soon became a Sun.

A great luminous silence whispered to his heart;

His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,

An outview by no brief horizons cut:

He thought and felt in all, his gaze had power.

He communed with the Incommunicable;

Beings of a wider consciousness were his friends,

Forms of a larger subtler make drew near;

The Gods conversed with him behind Life's veil.

The primal Energy took him in its arms;

His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,

An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:

Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,

Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:

He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,

His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.

END OF CANTO FIFTEEN

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