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The Epic of Consciousness by Swami Krishnananda of The Divine Life Society

The Epic of Consciousness by Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India

Contents

Preface

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

That state is Yoga raising soul to Self
Which indwells all and transcends creation.
Here caution high is watchword Yoga's rule,
Heedlessness brings the death of Yoga's aim.
Thou, blessed one, be standard paragon,
Attain the high, the all-encompassing."
   Part Three The worlds which are the planes above, beyond,
Have laws descending, slow to earthly mass.
In Brahmaloka, land of Virat, All,
Light enters light and all is everywhere,
Reacting one with other in the sea
Of God's majesty in creation's core.
No man, no thing, and none exists but All,
Where one is many and many is one.
The one is here and other, too, is here
Yet none is there, as here and there are one.
The one Majesty swells resistlessly
Beholding Itself as this wondrous vast,
Spirit ingressing into great Spirit.
In next descent which's Tapoloka called,
Consciousness is of outward universe
Which's "I am I", yet Self beholding void,
Where fine potentials world's are not designed
As Tanmatras the latent patterns hid
Of future forms as gross elementals
The third descent called Janaloka pure
Is dwelt by austere masters and sages
In world of forces, subtle Tanmatras,
Who in them live and in themselves do see
The whole creation in microcosmos.
These are the three where centres multifold
Are each in all, and all converge in each.
From Mahah down the tale of mind begins;
In Mahah knower stands to known opposed
As 'I am I' and 'thou art thou,' but, heark,
With transparence of self to other selfs,
And one is what the other is in full,
No gulf of sex as male and female forms,
Each is complete and none the other needs.
In Svah, Svarga, mind reacts on mind,
The mental forms of subtle sexes rise,
By mind contacting free from channelled sense.      As senses here in mind are wholly fixed
And shining forms on forms resplendent gaze.
It's here at first that one the other owns
But, strangely, not as men belongings own.
The strangeness is that each can own the all;
While none is other's, each is other's yet.
The social chain by marriage which restrains,
Or ownership of tied-up property,
Is absent here where perfect system reigns
Community's, and free are all with all.
The forms of men and women virgins stand
In midst of contacts though unending they,
Since wear and tear touch not this fiery realm
Of minds alone from body's limits free.
The Loka down, Bhuvah, the astral field
Is grosser still, of rarefied mortals,
The moulds of dwellers who earth populate
As fine ingredients, men's anterior frames.
Here removed are values community's
And hard distinctions cleave persons and things,
Where each is itself and knows it as such.
The worst is yet; it's Bhuh, the plane of earth,
In which the objects are elements gross,--
Ether, air, fire, water, earth they call,--
Which senses five collisioned seem to know.
On earth the senses strike on outward things,
But strike is scarce communion or knowledge.
The content 'out' does not unite as one
With knower's being; so the world is out
As neither known nor possessed really.
The earth-life, thus, is all mortality,
It's death that stalks the earth as human life.
Contraptions made as laws of governments,
Possession, wealth and ev'n marital bonds,
All man-made norms, hence doomed by basic flaw
Perish and vanish, as they exist not.
The life physical, brittle contrivance,
Is not in fact, save vortex destruction's.
The whirligig of waking, dream and sleep
In brain-washed grasp the mortal does harass.
Exhaustion, decay, decomposition
Of concrete bricks which form the body's clay,
Pollution, dirt, dependence head to foot,
Endless restraints for every hair and nail,
By toil varnished the joys of sensations,
Characterise this lowest Loka, earth.
When soul to extreme's breaking point hazards.
And wholly clings to isolated forms,
Turning away attention from the Truth
Which holds together all as Single Life,
Powers above as gushing winds descend
To vacuous fields from concentrated points
The balance Dharma's quickly to restore,
So that distractions, gross earth's heritage,
Go not too far from laws of higher realms.
As Rama human comes normative might,
As Krishna bloom and glory truths divine.
As atoms fine and forces constitute
All things and objects as their core and self,
So realms higher indwell and constitute
The lower realms as substance and their self.
Highest is, thus, immanent as the Self
Of every region ranging down below.
As objects'core is not spatially high
So highest realm is all the realms at once.
This is to learn that God is high and low,
And also everywhere, distanceless whole.      To rise to heights is Yoga's avowed aim,
To know that works are deeds of Highest Self
Which moves the gods of senses and of mind
By themselves naught, sans ego and its pride,
As ancient tale of war which gods did win
By which the Kena-named Upanishad
Highlights the greatness highest Truth's in plain,
That gods are lifeless sans the Absolute,
And nothing is but That-Which-Is, the All.
'Go, burn a blade of grass,' so spoke the Great
To Agni who could turn the world to ash.
'Blow up this blade,' It Vayu bade with smile,
The god of Wind who mountains could uproot.
Who knows that leaves that drop from trees in breeze
Move not unless the High of highs ordains.
Ev'n hairs are counted, breaths are numbered well,
Tiniest movements are seen by winkless eyes
Which scan the earth and all creation's plans.
When two in secret whisper unheard sounds,
The Great One seated in between unseen
Listens as thunder even minute moves.
Public is God and private thought futile,
That One is All; That One alone remains.   As Satyakama, son of Jabala
Learnt secret from Haridrumata sage,
In honest pursuit lofty aim to reach,
May seekers all from simple innocence
To state of Godward aspiration rise.
"Whose born am I, which lineage I come,
Mother dear, whose son, what blood am I,
For learning's sake as student I do wish
To serve a master, deign to tell my name."
When lad in earnest questioned parentage,
Jabala spoke, "As servant did I work
Much occupied, moving in early days;
Hence parentage I know not, what you are,
Go and declare, to Jabala thou born."
The purest mind to sage betook in haste,
Presented himself student Vedic lore's
And fell prostrate at master's holy feet.
"Of what hierarchy parents', lad, thou art,"
So sage queried the supplicating youth.
"I know not, sage. my lineage or blood,
My mother bore while serving much as maid,
Jabala's son am Satyakama known,
With grace do teach, O puissant master sage."
"No, none but purest brahmana thou sure,
This truth no other man would dare to speak.
Come, fetch the fuel, now I do accept
As holy learner secretest wisdom's.
Four hundred cows here lean and unfed lie,
Take them to graze, and come not till they reach
A thousand robust milch-cows' healthy state."
To greens and thicks and wild attractions far
Did Satyakama drive the four hundred,
Who food and water restfulness required
In place secure from threat and toil for long.
Friendless, assistanceless and loveless lived,
In arid continence by force employed,
The boy deprived of sweet affection's dose,
Save love-regard for teacher's strict mandate
And hope for rain of light from high heaven.
To live in freedom from creditor's eye
In early days of borrowed existence
Delicious looks, until the longish days
Release the gates for news credit's to come,
And bitter potion with rejoicing mix,
When life is kind and life is also harsh,
The kindly friend is also raised up brow.
Demands of Nature like creditor's bonds
Fear-fed freedom when resorted grant,
The body's substance and its ploddings slow
Like waters rising seek the bunds to break.      The student, seeker, great disciple trod
The path of hopeful check creative call's.
Did One become the two and then many,
And driving urge to multiply begin
Its dauntless march to find the self in forms?
The light of Sattva, Rajas-driven, goes
To plank itself in Tamas-bodies seen
And gobbles up the bodies as its food
Through eyes, ears, tongue, nose and tactile grasp
To digest body out contending real,
So that the One, the Self, alone is real.
The twigs and shrubs and barks to restrained taste
As manna's flood to Satyakama flowed,
The slightest shade was comfort's canopy,
And self-respect was respect from the world,
The youth derived, or was in compulsion,
And time it takes to know where oneself stands.      Though mind is high the body pulls it down,
For body is the house that mind has built.
As grossness subtle's body is of mind
When thoughts do rule rejecting body's form
As abstractions and airy theories fare.
The inside cut from outside's valid claims
Remains as dream bereft of real's content.
As also is the outside's excess call
Severed from inside's requisitions
Is corpse bereft of life's meaningful balm.
The seeker's sorrow is self sundered twain,
As warring camps of mind's and body's needs.
The hungered person caught the ideal's life
To snatch it off when limit's norm it crossed.
To feed the body, feed the craze for fame
And feed learning's fine appetite, the three
Are equal urges, streams of craving soul's.      So years rolled in Satyakama's quest
By ardent Tapas, but the cosmic forms
Which with the person were not reconciled
Poured down as showers from the formal realms
And down descended fairest fairies' charms,
With dance and music and delightful shapes,
Intoxicants of mind and sense refined.
The more they move as student's proximate
The more he loses consciousness of self
And enters whole the fabric forms present.
As raving bull inebriated gores,
The touch of these emboldened forms of light
Injects the bolt of maddened grip of joy,
And none who's born would once resist such feasts.      But Satyakama, with the strength of self,
Outgrew this dish of nectar served by gods,
And hill-like stood in thunder, storm and rain.
Great glory this, to withstand cosmic tastes,
For who that's man can Indra's magic face.
The tempter's wealth is yet in plenty store's,
The wisest men have yet to pass a test.
"The world is vast, in ignorance and pain,
Thy duty is to pains ameliorate.
Renounce thy cares and care for others' weal.
Thou bold and able well-equipped to serve
Redeem the world of mortals sunk in grief.
Why ask for freedom high heaven's thyself
And selfish seek immortal's seat for thee.
Go forth and serve, for thou hast high attained
The peak of glory Yoga's way bestowed.
Be wise to work in thousand cycled births
Until the last of remnant reaches God."
So struck the master juggler his trump-card
Inflaming ego's name-demanding joys.
Who would resist enthroning oneself king,
Applauded, worshipped deified saviour,
To raise the trodden come as Godsend boon.      Here, Satyakama's prudence weighed heavy
And pointed flaw in glory? name and fame,
For who on earth is sure as friend till doom,
In utter distress who is bosom friend
In world of people who remember wrongs
As truths immortal and the good ignore.
Conditioned friendship rules the human groups,
And unconditioned who on earth has heard.
Brittle as glass is human affection
Bereavement follows unions even strong.
As logs of wood on ocean's surface meet
Do people meet as friends, relations, loves.
As logs depart when winds them cut apart
So loves perish and-dear, near fly.
What greatness, then, is sceptre emperor wields,
To dust he goes, from dust his body formed.
He spurned as worthless mortal power and love,
And sought to seek what further lay beyond.      When seekers cross this hurdle hard to scale,
Fears and cudgels upraised threats discharge,
Dread death that harbours elbow slowly crawls
With widened jaws to strike once and for all.
All austerity and all effort fades,
As dried up leaves they seem to drop on ground.
Disease and weakness thrall the person's frame
Languishing body sinks to nether's depths.
"Is this the all for which I strove so hard,
Tended the cows, obeyed master's behests
And wrung out life of joy of basic needs?
Accursed is life that neither is nor not;
To live or die the same to man becomes."
So quaking spoke the downcast searching soul.
But, lo, the wonder, night's darkest ere morn.   The windows Nature abrupt opened clear,
Faces and tongues ejected from the trees,
Sermons from wind and fire solacing came,
Stones in the forest melted love's caress,
The voice of gods and angels spoke beside,
The frame of earth and vault of sky lifted
Their cloaks of hardness and void's emptiness,
Light flashed forth bright from every atom's pore,
Service and kindness oozed from horizons.
Distances flew and things stood not apart,
Time rose to surge of timeless endurance.
The far off stars roll under one's own feet,
One gets included in things spread out vast,
Is swept from ground to time's eternity,
The person's core disintegrates and flows
With all atmosphere radiant as the sun.
Interconnected web of cosmos breathes,
Interpenetrate planes with denizens,
One sees one's own self simultaneously
In every place and all periods of time,
And sea-like swells the joy of creation,
Riches endless are spread in points of space,
Lo, his is universe, he himself is it.      The student now become a seer sage,
Returned to cottage where the Master dwelt,
In full fulfilment of stipulation
To bring a thousand cows now multiplied.
The Master, looking brightened face before,
Asked, "how thou blazest as if truth knowest."
To which he answered "Master, none human
Ev'r instructed, this is the fact, sire."
"Nothing remains, thou knowest secret's core,
For angels taught thee as the forms they came,
All, then, is well; so be thou happy, free."      "Master, I'm blest, thy grace on me do grant,
In forest life I lived a year hard,
With prayer and sincere obedience,
In concentration's honest peak I reached,
But beauties first and threats I did confront;
Deign, Master, speak, what these visions could be."
The Teacher went in detailed dilation
And pointed out how these phenomena
Present themselves to seeker's seeking heart.
"Creation meant a split in universe
As if a half was torn away from half,
And here begins the mystery of love,
Which loves and hates at once a single form.
For halves are filled with longing for the whole
Which transcends both, but blinded by senses
See not the whole and see the half alone
As object cleaved by space and time between,
Thus love missing the very thing it loves,
With wrongful craving for the other half
Distraught with dislike since the 'other' stands
As cut from 'me' which wrongly fondness shows.
These urges sprung for union with the seen
Which is the half, the 'other' outside there,
Project the feature which is beauty called,
Attracting half to other half through eyes.
The threat thou speakest is the rage of wish
Which stands frustrated when the beauty buds
Receive not response from austerity.
None can resist these beauty's temptations,
Since total whole is cause of halved psyches.
The threats do rise when shunning beauteous forms
Is engendered by force of will applied
Bereft of thought and understanding's light."      "Who are the angels who so tempting come
Or discharge visions fearsome from above?"
So Satyakama 'gain queried the sage,
Who thus explained denizens of heaven.
"Above the earth and internal do live
The joyous spirits in the astral wide.
But further still are gods and angels bright
Who matchless glory and puissance wield,
And shine as stars whose visage thou hast seen,
The worlds above, seven in ranging lights
Are dwelt by wondrous beauties and powers.      The student asked, "Master, do souls that quit
This earth then pass to these heavenly worlds
And live rejoicing endless time in peace?"
"Yes; but not all ascend to these great heights,
Some do by stages, some suddenly rise,
But most return by pull of loves and hates
That beset mortals chained to earthly life.
Those that by gradual steps of ascent rise
Are first ignited by the light of Fire,
Then reach celestial and divine o'erlords
Of Day, Bright Half of month and Solar Half
Of sojourn northwards, then of whole year,
The Sun, the Moonlike Field of Stellar Mass,
Then Lightning which the gods rejoicing flash,
Where resplendent Divinity does face
The soul and leads it further by the hand
To Glory that Creator Lord bestows
For Freedom, Bliss and Living Ultimate.      "Thus stagewise move to soul's liberation;
In Sadyo-mukti, abrupt waking frees
The self from bondage instantaneously.
Not one can reach with wanton senses this,
The goal supreme with restrained mind attained,
With sole awareness total being's tuned
To All-awareness of creation's core.      The rugged way though straight does winding move,
For involvement is one, yet multifold,
The law that is the truth of existence
Which strange eludes the grasp of mind and sense
Wriggles as though from its mighty content
And itself looks at itself as this world.
But all this wonder more than wonder reigns
Beyond the earth and reach of heaven high,
For who can gauge what event took place then,
Since none was there, not even space and time.
Being was not, non-being also not;
Darkness,they say, was all-engulfing then.
Liquid-like stood all universe and life;
A sea of seamless, shoreless abyss yawned
With countless points potential thence to sprout
As myriad stars self-shining in their core,
But encrusted with finitising trends
Which wildly cry for self-limitation
In forms which drive to more and more bondage
Of self-centeredness in gross hardened shapes.   "As 'I-am-I' if all creation feels,
That state can well be first-born God's begot.
But who on earth can enfold such delight
Of all-ness which covers the distant stars
With lowest debris in one fast embrace;
But that was glory which possessed the all
When itself it possessed as loneliness.
The heaven's ranges down they came thereat
As vibration, then space-time impulsion,
And then the sky, the air, the fire's heat,
The water's range, the hard substance,--the earth.
In seven stokes of grand descending steps
The Sovereign came from throne of King of Kings.
The play, the personnel and director
And audience at once That all became
In will's fiat of grandeur's grand command.      "The stars that shot from that ablazing light
The angels, gods of heaven did become,
But stood apart to sea of light behold
By themselves out from that brilliance placed.
This is the stage, the third, in descent's role,
When gods and angels peopled all the skies
And heaven was, but earth was not yet born.
The gods sleep not, nor sweat, nor toil, nor eat,
They age not, but retain the grace of youth,
Fragrance exudes and thrill and throb from frames
Of force and light which gods ensoul above.
They marry not, and possess not, nor own
One another as family or clan,
But all in each as fluids commingle.
Immortal gods, immortal till the end,
When worlds are wound up at the end of time.
The range of gods in power rises slow
As realms ascend in stages sevenfold
Until the reach of power all supreme
Which Creator, the All-in-All, does wield.      "As mind awake suddenly drops to dream
And sees upside down facts of waking life
With seer turned to seen as objects press
And seen get turned to seer's position,
So mortal bodies creatures enter frail
From atom down to plants and animals
And human forms and all who see beside.
The elements, the five, which God adorns
Become the chains, the hard and solid stuff
Which weigh down mind and soul and consciousness,
Till crushed they fall and bend below their knee,
To serve material matter's forces cruel
And cringe before them as their bonded slave
When this befalls, the gods are beyond reach
High up somewhere in regions beyond ken;
And earth is 'there' and worlds are outside reach;
The systems stellar frightful soar in sky;
The winds blow hard, the sun does scorch and clouds
Erratic come and go as they do please
To pour or strike with unkind Nature's wrath.
But, lo, much worse is there awaiting all
The icy hand of death which spares not one
To stifle life as its own hour and will.
These tragic scenes get unfolded at once
When self, the soul, stands outside creation
And looks at it as if it is outside.      "The earth revolves and round rotates with life,
The heavenly orbs do circumambulance
On fixed routes in fixed distances,
The solar centre rules with immense might
The fate of earth and all its satellites,
To give them form and functions determined,
In which regime, which sweeps the skies and earth,
All life we call the breath that creatures breathe,
And all the deeds and men's performances
Stand stupefied in grips of transcendence,
Where hard it is to say if one exists
Or what exists at all in such a rule,
The hairs, the nails, the body cells and limbs,
The form, the movements, even thoughts and trends
Do get impelled from that Centre within,
The Centre of myriad centres high.
Thus One does think, and One does act and rule,
And One is all, which lives and moves as things.
In contemplation earth, then, is busy,
In contemplation sun and stars remain.
The whole is, then, a field of rigid pose,
Which is aware that it alone is all.      "Yet lowly groans the hapless soul in pain,
Which joy it thinks in worlds of icy death
That stalks all realms in giant's striding thuds
Which shake the hearts as volcanoes the peaks.
Mortal thou art! lo, chained thou breathest sighs
In cold welcomes which thou receivest here.
Hunger and thirst, with fangs that strike as pangs
Of cruel Death's messengers sans mercy,
And freezing grips of sunless air with nights
Which hid remain as facts of Nature's core,
Since sun was not when dark, deep origins
Embalmed as mummies all creation's seeds
In that distance when life was fast asleep,
Do story tell of dungeon's agony.      "Can one a drop of honey suck and live
When yawning jaws of life's impending end
Project their teeth in eager appetite?
The sorrow's cause no one has yet unearthed,
As cause of all the causes houses him
Who vain attempts to know the cause of things.
God Almighty, the Truth behind all truths,
In all His glory reigned eternity.
He was, He is and He shall ever be.
The One that passeth all understanding,
The sombre magnificence slowly willed
And this became the plan of theatre
On which the parts to play are well outlined,
Until the wondrous colour, sound and sense
Emerged as cosmos ensouled by the One,
The First Vibration, which was Thought of God,
Condensed as forms in taste and touch and smell.
He sat alone and brooded vast as space,
Time flashed rapids as fierce tides of brine,
Galaxies jumped as babes roll down from wombs,
Solar and stellar blazes filled all sky,
The realms from earth above and below peeped
As fourteen-spiralled cosmic empire;--
On one side solid substance-sensations,
On other sense and mind-born sapience.
Betwixt these two He ranges judge-like force
Linking the two as sea connects the waves.
Then each of centres that beheld the forms
Rejoiced in touch and loss of self in greed
For things which outward organs could contact."
With story of creation sage of old
Did thus regale the heart of seeking soul.
   Part Four   The forms of things are charged with intentions,
No form by itself isolated stands
Since intentions are subtle prehensions
By which, like eddies splashing in the sea,
The farthest with remotest lives as one.
A tender rose in garden gently touched
Disturbs the stars at utmost distance placed.
On space-time ground when all perceptions fall,
As light the shadow makes to move on screen,
The forms of substance get projected out
With thickness seen, though thickness there is none.
The life and soul of things is intention,
Thus, forming network's web as creation.
As spider spits the threads from its essence,
The Central Will spreads all panorama.
The deed is then intention concretised,
Intention is the deed, which judges deed.
God sees not deed but intention hidden,
One's thoughts and feelings deeds evaluate.      Since actions find their roots in life's purpose,
'Tis incumbent on man to regulate
His programmes well fitted with world's design,
Which not performed the house against it sets,--
The house of self and house of social needs.
The people, oneself, Nature, God are four
With whom a conflict every moment breaks.      Alignment lost with people tension breeds,
With one's own layers psychic distress stirs,
With Nature fear from elemental wrath
With God, Almighty, births and deaths result.
With social norms and person's lawful needs,
With contemplation on all Nature's ways,
Union of self with all-pervading Self,
Do sorrows cease, and blessedness is reaped.
The body's food and love's insistent claims
By law restrained in light of world's welfare
Are building bricks to freedom ultimate.
Spirit, management, wealth and labour force
In en rapport do society sustain,

For none is all, and none commands the all.
The person, then, is kept nourished and strong
Through early training learning's lodge provides,
And works and joys that go with household forms
To rise above them, feeding clay with clay,
For taste of distaste things enshrine at heart,
Which rockets up the soul to deathless life.      While pains of life reveal the stuff of things,
The joys are no less blinding dampened smoke.
Since joys and pains attach to mental soul,
Their significance soul in dark accepts.
Whatever's there, be it the right or wrong,
Or joy or grief, when ensouled live awakes,
Assumes a life and stands valid as soul.
It, thus, becomes a need to strip the soul
Of its own forms,--a hard adventure soul's,
For who could peel the soul of its own self,
And all experience soul-filled shines as world.      The thing it knows by sight or touch or sense
The soul enlarges as its realm of love,
The love which's soul's demand for non-self's taste.
How, then, can soul from its own bondage rise
When bondage its created joy remains?
The Yoga way the most subtle they deem,
For Self conquers the Self for Self's release
From bondage Self's, which Self enjoyed as joy;
Bondage binds and for bondage no one seeks;
Delight it is that binds to doom the soul.
Ocean to drink or swallow fire's safe,
The restraint mind's a harder task proclaim.
The gall of life bites not as honey sweet,
The nectar earth's can kill beyond redeem.      Who nothing has can renounce also none,
The king it is that hermit can become;
Who tastes not sting the objects strike on sense
Can scarce be free from unknown impulses
By whose revenge the mind is robbed of sense,
Of memory and clarity and peace
And fickle made to roam as grasshopper,
Destroying health of body and psyche;
Some dream and scream, some haughty proud behave,
Some see defects in everything on earth,
And evil dark, in faces save their own,
Or parade person with authority.
These are the symptoms repressed impulse shows
When holy life is tortured Nature made.
Who tastes renown shall taste it not again
Though sweet it seem in early training days.      Who seeks to know what truth do things enshrine
Would know that Self is dearest all things hold.
All is for Self, and concern for others
Is just the mask of Self's love for itself
In widened fields where itself is others.
The All-Self includes worlds and all others:--
So Master Krishna once revealed Himself
In Kurus' court stunning the eyes of kings.
For peace to make he envoy went alone
To speak in person with Duryodhana.
Yudhishthira, apprehending danger
In single person going unguarded
Did dissuade the Master's bold errand.
"Fear not my life," said Krishna smiling kind,
"Not all the royal hosts can face me roused,
As lives in wild from single lion flee.
If act unlawful they intend to deal
In my own person, thinking me alone,
I wait not war to render justice's claim,
But burn them all relieving earth's burden."
The glorious Lord then marched with retinue
To pompous palace dressed up gay and fine
Which host, the king, Duryodhana, arranged,
In pride of wealth and power haughty crown's,
Which Lord all-seeing saw as vanity
And boast ego's, vainglorious, undivine,
Arrayed to buy the will ambassador's;
And knowing this chose humble hut of poor
Vidura's for his night's rest on the way.      In morn to chagrin king's he rode to hall
And addressed all assembled royal seats
For justice, goodness, commonsense and love
Which ego king's rejected in disdain,
And threat of war discharged to mighty Lord;
Sought, then, to catch and bind, in prison hold,
Undaunted Krishna who majestic stood.
The Lord, then, laughed, which shook the stable earth,
And deep as thunder spoke before the king:
"Seekest thou, fool, to bind Me as a prey,
Thinking alone I stand unbefriended?
Look! All the gods and armies worlds do wield
Are all here, now, in Me enfolded rise."
Then wonderstruck the blessed ones beheld
That Glorious Form which Lord, the Master, showed,
Revealed in Himself as the All-in-All,
The Soul and Self of all creation vast;
All worlds, all gods, and all creation glowed
In that Majesty Krishna's,--All in One.

So also we hear Devi's glorious deeds
In forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,
Indra, Skanda, Nrisimha, Varaha,
Who wrought havoc in army Sumbha sent
In that celestial realm's battle of yore.
But Devi, then, withdrew all forms and shone
As One alone, with none around her seen.
So did Siva as Rudra fearsome stand
Stretching His Form from earth to heaven high
When work nefarious Asvatthama thought
To wreak in camp of forces Pandavas'.
For Lord on high knew all the secrets' core
And poured the worst of dreads on burglar's face,
A Form terrific splitting even mounts
And rocks to splinters with its gruesome mien.
And Krishnas starlike shot up from his frame
And filled all space making non-space the sky.
Narayana and Nara, greatest gods,
Could stun the gorgeous beauty Indra forged
And stultify mightiest powers of war
With single reed or even single sound,
Or even just a thought which shook the earth.
What glory that which Sage Vasishtha wore,
When all the worlds in fear shook and awed
Seeing his rage that outdid all missiles.      To think a vase which all at once contains
Is human feat that mind cannot conceive,
For small is small and large is large extent,
And large and small at one point scarce abide.
But sages sing in Raikva these did meet
The large engulfed and filled the master's frame.
Janasruti, the king, was famed afar
For deeds of gift and goodwill works for men,
And resort firm to world's creative cause
By which he rose from earth's benighted pull
To lofty living free from self-regard.
It chanced one day two hermit flamingoes
Were winging gay across the sky's highway,
Where king reclined on palace-top below,
One summer night for breeze's balming touch
In pleasing moon full blossomed with its rays,
The birds rejoicing in their promenade;
"Look, hark," one warned the one ahead that flew
"Beware, the force of king Janasruti
Here on ground whose glory all does burn,
Take care it scorch not, blinded thou, befooled."
"Scorching the force of king Janasruti"
So back the other kicked a sharp reply.
"Who this on earth thou speakest as a great
As though he were a Raikva with the cart?
Raikva, the master, who does absorb all
The virtues, merits, whoever earned in world.'      Defaming words the king listened with shame,
"O, who this Raikva could be in my realm,
With whom contrasted glory mine does pale;
What good my deeds, what good my prayers here,
When Raikva lives, who all men's virtues owns?"
So wailed the king throughout the night sans sleep
And distress pained his heart and mind and soul.      In morn the bards beat bands and blew trumpets
To wake the royal chief from slumber's pose.
"Hail, monarch, lord, protector and saviour,
King of earth, wake, it's morn the dew drop soothes."
"Why dost thou sing my praise as lord and king
I'm none, for Raikva lives, the king of kings,
With cart as house, his sole belonging's piece.
Go, then, and find where Raikva, Knower, stays,
And bring, beseech, the sage of wisdom's peak,
To whom the host of virtues flow as streams,
Virtues and merits whoever has on earth."      The sergeants rushed in all directions fast,
In towns, cities, they sought the whereabouts
Of Raikva, sage, but found none was so named,
And pleaded none of that name ever lived,
"Do you seek sage in towns, corporations?
Go there where sages may you likely see."
So ordered king and servants went apast
To distant thicks, villages and corners,
To sight a one who with a cart abode.      In far off unknown distance did they find
A queer someone seated under cart
And careless looking mindless who there came.
"Art thou Raikva, couldst thou thy name relate,"
So servants king's with folded hands him prayed.
"Lo, so they say," thus Raikva unconcerned
Remarked at them and silence then maintained.
On hearing news the king with bounteous gifts
Of gold, silver and jewels ran post-haste,
And placing wealth before the mighty sage,
Begged him to teach what he knew and adored.
"Master, this wealth is meagre present brought
With grace accept and bless me with thy science."
"Lo, low-born, quit this place with all thy gold;
Thinkest thou buy with wealth that, wisdom's core ?"
So rude, abrupt, the master king repulsed,
And grieved, the king returned with longing still,
With larger gifts the king with dearest born
In supplication went again humble
To mighty sage who scamplike looked visaged
With scorn on things which mundane wealth they call.      On sight of king with best of earth's present
I The sage beheld the eager heart's yearning,
And spoke Samvarga, Great Absorber Force,
By knowing which one Absorber becomes,
The Self of all, the Atman, Majesty.
Contemplate, then, on Atman's truest form,
Which formless hails as all-pervading Self.
To think the Self is being of the Self
Which omniformed does inwardness absorb.
Absorbs outwardness and locality
Of everything, in every state of life.
To know the Self is non-objective gaze
Of mind's vision in introverted sight,
Which sees not seeing, knows not-knowing things,
And being, is not, void-like plenitude.
The Great Absorber known bestows blessings,
And knower reigns as All-Absorbant God.
Part Five   The soul does try to rise to pristine light
Which light is soul which is the being-all.
But soul that seeks exit for wide domain
Is held in check by chain of restraint's grips
The sight, the sound, the touch and smell and taste
Which order action through the hands and speech
And feet and windows that behold their prey
As well the catch of hunger, thirst and cold
Which hard harass with tightened raging fists;
Lo, even breath that swallows air in gulps,
The mind that loves and reason ego's flame
Do all like hounds threaten to tear the soul
Which ere believed the body as itself.
Much more than house, it was the soul's essence.
So goes the fate of souls that search in vain
For freedom which the body's love abhors.      To tame the wild impulses ego spurts
The pose of friend and goodwill sages teach,
No harshness Nature in its work deserves
For all creation Nature constitutes.
Who can with war the facts of Nature curb
Since all effort enfolded Nature holds
The one who battles with the urging calls
Forgets that these compounded form the man
Who cudgels raises 'gainst his own being.
The wisest way to treat the torment's cause
Is not the crushing deal on one's own skin
But graded feeding for the fast to rise
As satisfaction with the consumed love
To then behold the beauty higher still.
By law-abiding blend of matter-mind
Come home, one's food and love of progeny.
In early years till budding twenty-five
The frame is built by tough austerity.
Then comes the age of forward-pressing youth
Which seeks to run out from its filled-in store
By roaring gush to what it sees outside
As all-gayness and beauty in the world
Of male, female, of beast and plant and stone
To sell itself in loss of itself, which
The dying self as moth in tongues of flame
Feels gain of life and all felicity.
To give wisdom to moth of blinded eyes
Is life prescribed as household discipline.
This grant of lease is for the joy restraint's
And not permit to enter perdition.
The life in house of subject-object tie
Blazes the third which lies between the two
As soul of theirs while both as arms combine
To ignite spark which hidden therein sleeps.      In life ethic's great role intuition plays
As artist brings the scattered pieces whole
To form a living, glorious beauty art's.
Knowledge, perceptual or of concepts
Is meeting ground of subject and object.
The Truth is not the property of one,
Not even of another, or of both,
But transcending both in their union.
Ethics is not mathematics of soul,
Nor love a science of engineering.
The progress soul's is soul-uniting's work,
Not height physical bricks when laid up make.
The greatest souls who live divine morale
May look unwise or unmoral to crowds
Who stand on conventions and frames of steel
Which moral look when unseeing behold.
The inward calls defy outward mandates
When soul within the world of forms enshrines.
The inward truth is not propriety mob's
The soul is not to barter with the shells.
The one that shines surpassing men of earth
Incurs their hatred, for he earth transcends
We honour leaders and our ablest guides
By crucifixion or an unkind cut.
So is the way the world has worshipped saints And paid its debts to service they rendered.
The heroes who are sincere honestly
Make fools of themselves in the eyes of men.
Nonconformists did build this art of life,
Not moral masons who the stones well count.
Man is a soul and not machine or tool
Which do's and don'ts can handle as a spade.
Personal problems are not general terms
Which moral worth decide by plebiscite.
Life, love and suffering are not earth's formals
But rise from deeps that lie afar from time.
Each situation is a unique field
And does not stand comparison with mass.
No lowly work or toilsome drudgery
Or vilest passion can obstruct the soul
When motive Spirit's is its driving spring.
Transcendence stressed to excess Godly life's
Lends disrespect to immanence of God
In austerity harsh to mind and soul
Dwelling in form though wrongly arrested;
While utter sink in what is visible
Destroys Spirit for sake of body's shape.
The profane and religious exist not,
For that which stands fitted to cosmic whole
Is holy and religious adored.
What struts about as independent stuff
Is what is dark and profane, evil called.
Varna and Ashrama, the systems framed,
Collaboration in one's outward life,
And progressive rise from matter to Self,
Sum up the rule of life in all levels.      The budding and the grown virility
In lads and lasses sprung in freshness morn's
While seeking goals for which it does abound

Is anabolic, till its goal it finds.
Marriage is kin with ruling politic,
Since sans a system that restrains the greed
And impulsed passion of the stuff of man
The end-result would be the death of all.
Thus rules arise and laws societies make
For tantrum's sake and local custom's norm
On urges based that strong erupt in climes.
The local rules engendered by the hordes
Relate to stages and degrees of love
Which marks the cultures world-history proves.
Criminal laws that countries frame for them
Do indicate the height of culture reached.
Some kill the killer, some in hate exile;
Some close in bars. some flog the helpless frame,
Or maim the limbs in legal wrath unleashed.
Who on this earth is faultless rid from guilt
That stone can throw on kindred heart's struggles
To freedom gain which soul in all does seek.
There is so much good in the worst of us.
And so much dirt in those the best of us,
That it does ill behove any of us
To cast aspersions on the rest of us.
Which act is there which one day well approved
Was not on other sorely got condemned?   The rise of morals has precarious roots,
When seen with eyes of sharp circumspection.
Time's waves when rise do not as notions float
But hardened rock reveal themselves as earth;
As water, fire and air and solid things,
As persons, beasts and plants and trees awake,
Does time exist as objects senses seek,
Or does it pass as concepts' abstractions?
The secret people call as Nature's ways
Is hidden in the core of thinking's forms.
The ego's substance wild as tempest grown
Is vibration that holds to points in space.
Which are the sources fit for shunning here
If achievement from its opposite starts?
To overthrow one has to exalt first,
To take one has to give and then begin,
To weaken forces first do strengthen them.
It is the king who can renounce the all
For all he sees before he all rejects.
The world is not a prison house to flee,
The field of one's own body is the world.
Who can beyond the body up arise
Can also rise above the world of things.
The whole of earth and heaven woven stand
In this tabernacle where one is lodged.
To heaven grasp the earth is not to fly
For heaven itself grossened is the world.
The world of forms gets rarefied above
In graduated transparency's shades
And shines itself as heaven's glorious bliss.
Who art thou then to have the one on hand
And cast away others as undivine.
The soul and body are as light and shade,
Where one abides the other too resides.
The 'this' is also 'that' and 'that' is 'this',
The 'this' and 'that' are not two opposites
But stand as one with twofold phase perceived,
What is affirmed carries its other too,
No one can bend unless he stood erect,
But standing firm is not to bend below.
The vacant one is also full to brim
And what is full looks as non-existent.
Non-action is not keeping quiet lone,
But total act which holds creation's grip
In total thought wherein the One alone
Does think and act as single being's throb.
Avoiding things is tension's secret heart
For none avoids what clings to what one seeks.
To be a god is not to just be good,
But grapple good with what it hates as foe
To turn the two as strands of spirit's rope
By which to rise to height of perfection,
Hate not, love not, but be spontaneous
As supple child of inborn innocence.
When hungry eat, when tired sleep and rest.
When gay do walk, with friend be loving friend.
To lower oneself is a sign of strength.
To search for Truth indeed is mystery
As riding horse to find where horse has strayed.   Imbalance breeds the wars of history
Which reshuffle the components of life
And put them in their proper positions.
The Veda hymns, the ancient divine lore,
Beheld the One in all the varieties
In sun and moon, in stars and sky above,
In morning's smile and evening's sinking look;
In rain and thunder, lightning and the storm,
In day and night, in wind and earth below,
In fire here which warms the hearth of homes
And blazes hot in noon-meridian.
It was the eye which wholesome saw the soul
As living life in movement and statis.
The Veda's god was not in temples or symbols
But spoke the daily language Nature knows;
The God was all, and everywhere his eyes
With caution see the minutest of grains,
The world ensemble twain divided though.      Truth, then, succeeds, but what is truth to man?
The meting justice is a form of truth,
Which is the due that each one claims as right.
But, what is due except what keeps alive
The frame of web which all environment is,
The two, the all, the world and universe?
And speech and thought and act which correspond
To actual facts as events in the world
Are truth perception's on which conduct rests.      Yet, facts of world are set relatively
To contexts housing individuals.
Truth eternal, then, is not of this world
Though in this world as soul of things abides.
The social good, perception's fact are both
Dependent on the timeless truth of truths,
Which speech defies and thought confounds by awe,
And ranges high as Self of space and time.
The needs of life are Lakshmi, Glory God's,
And needs are neither loathe nor indulgence
But force of balance God inviting in
By life that loves not, hates not things of life,
Which is to live in things, not see them there
As objects senses' or of mind's concepts.      Those not blessed but pressed by fiery loves
Or hatreds reap varying fates at death.
The grossly craving physical realms' delights
On death are born in regions mind directs,
To joy or grief as impulse gravitates.
The thought at death is cream of life's regime
As butter churned from milk of career
Which whole of life's desires constitutes.
The thought at end is fruit of tree of life,
Not one of links in chain of myriad thoughts.
The whole of soul is wrung out from the world
And total mass wrenched out to distance flees.
Here what you thought and what you felt or did
Will blossom forth as future destiny.
Suddenly deaths of even babes from womb
Are forms of action intense earlier done,
For birth and deaths are chains continuous,
With causes endless back of every breath.      To hell the worst do go that tortured lives;
To earth return the greedy longing souls;
To heav'n ascend the good and virtuous ones
But come hither when virtue's forces dry,
To live again the life of drudgery
On plane of earth which Karma's land they call.
On death the henchmen lord of justice sends
Escort the soul to universal judge,
The dread Yama who sans relent decides
The consequence of each one's acts and thoughts.
As flies and gnats or beasts that roam in wild,
As birds and wolves or such subhuman shapes
The wretched lives of brutish souls enter
On death that wrings the last of farthings due;
Lo, man, beware, the sword of law has eyes.
On reaching throne of lord of justice hence
The soul queried does fumble memory lost.
When rod of justice comes on head in court,
The soul remembers, pleads guilty and sobs.
But justice cares not rheum from the eyes
And sentenced goes the soul to reap its deeds.
The works of gift and sacrifices made
In name of discarnated soul that wails
Do great assist in cleansing well its sins;
Else each for oneself left alone with deeds
Is shocked with strictness laws there operate.
When freed of debts by Karma's rigoured tolls
To Rudra's light the soul is lifted high,
From whence to Brahma's realm eternal passed.      The greatest blest to solar brilliance go
By stages led by great divines does reach
The hallowed region Brahmaloka called,
But greater still are those who melt down here
And now in sea of heart of Absolute;
Such blessing rare indeed is gained by souls
Attained when tuned to every atom's core
In all the cosmos; who can reach that state?
Who speak with leaves, with stones who do converse,
Who streams befriend, who sun and moon indwell,
Who touch the stars, who wear the skies as clothes,
Who move with air, whose mind is world's purpose,
Whose soul is centred in the universe,
'Tis they alone, who Brahma's Light attain.      How hard this thought, how toilsome this practice,
Since men, women and things do no more count,
And no one's deed is more than frolic's fun,
In this a dread reverberating field
Of living, throbbing universal sea!
Despondency in this, the path, has none,
Since sincere asking world's abundance brings
And austere thoughts heaven's perfection rain.
Did not the Lord as parent kind assure
That those who love and feel Him as the all
Shall He protect and them provide with means?
All wealth and blessing went with Kuchela,
The ill clad, famished, when the Lord him owned.
Whom Brahma loves the sands and stars embrace
In firmness love's, and all creation melts
To bathe him in immortal nectar sweet.

The Epic of Consciousness by Swami Krishnananda of The Divine Life Society

The Epic of Consciousness by Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India

Contents

Preface

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Preface Who can with eyes and mind fathom
The depths of God who lies within
The hearts of all as Seer sole?
They say that goal of man is God,
But who is God and how is He
Contacted by efforts of men?
If Being Whole is God's essence,
What alignment can then suffice
To be the being which is God?
Do not all things enjoy being,
As they exist which is being?
Since Beingness is everywhere,
How does one enter Being's Self?
Is not restraint of self the way
To reach the Self intriguingly?      The control, then, is self's return
To itself as the lone Knower,
Since knowing what is not oneself
Sunders the self as knower-known,
A contradiction in the Self.
Some say it is sense-abstraction,
Which signifies the wrenching act
Of senses from the object world
This deed of self would keep the world
Apart from itself as other
Than its own being as if things
Have no being, but void they are.      If things are naught, where is the need
To draw the self from their clutches?
The secret, then, is not withdrawal,
But communion of Self with Self
Which uncleaved ranges in and out.
Here is a feat which mind's powers
Do not unwary can perform,
Sharp, subtle as a razor's edge.
As trackless track of birds in sky
Or fish in brine invisible,
Is this the blessed path to God.
Caution, then, seeker, be awake,
And know the Truth by Grace Divine.      Here, in these lines of poetry
From sea of life some pearls are laid
Before the eyes of all seekers
Who long the light to envision
By which to disentangle self
From life's turmoil and tear's vale
And see creation as a play
Of God Almighty, Great and Grand,
To blessed live and aims fulfil,
On earth below and in heaven
And everywhere with freedom's Peace.      The whole gamut of life's journey
With all its grandeur and greatness,
Its ups and downs as seekers see
By inner eye's penetration
May readers read and souls enjoy.
   Part One   The greens and highs and far off twinkling lights,
Blue dome above which beauteous roofs the earth,
The gentle caress breeze of morn bestows,
Blossoms of smile from greeting foliage,
The blush of niggard half-wake flowing streams,
Chuckles of risen plumes ready to fly,
The glorious orb as Eastern monarch robed
Majestic rising from horizon's throne,
Do ruffle life; amazed the world beholds
Horizon's vault and moral law within,
Which twain as marvels reach of mind elude.    The finite's gaze at depths beyond limits
Propels the probe of calculus and science,
Which with the tools of empiric methods
Stretches a world of forces and of thoughts,
A four-dimensioned region, where to see
Would also make it seen in fusion's state.
So goes physic which knowing knows not things
Which thingness shed and rounded firm exist.
But man's attempts as based on sense's needs
Are outward-turned, and so futile remain.
For, what is not can scarce become what is,
And perceived forms are wrenched out abstractions,
Just modes of space and time's beguiling pace,
Substanceless grasps by dizzied consciousness
That moves for norms; in movement loses aim.    Physic, chemic, life's processes when looked
As things of sense and mind's bereaved contents
Lie dead as void, for abstractions are they.
Nor can the mind be known as thing studied,
For, who studies if mind itself which thinks
Becomes the thought as observed flung-out thing?
Studies of mind in webs of space-time maze
Which do commerce with thinker and the thought
Do ill succeed in knowledge aspired for.
With such disabled psychic implements
Does man on earth a paradise engrave
By aesthetic which lulls the mind to tunes,
Or enraptures with beauty's magnet pulls
Of form and shape, symmetry and design.
The stroke and dash of urging tunes and forms
Benumb the mind by chords of sympathy,
Which causes stir and stimulating waves
Breeding reflection of perfection's touch,
But not contacting great perfection's soul,
With promise made but no fulfilment reached.
So all the artifice which longing builds,
Ethic, civic. and social customs bred,
Holding and wealth, or body politic,
The do's and don'ts of moral's irate prongs,
Touch not the fringe of truth's abysmal deeps
Which still gyrating tantalise all life
And keep one hoping ev'n in fatal pangs.    In history the Time-Spirit unrolls
Potentials seed-like bursting into form
As kings and thrones and laws and wars and deaths,-
Endless pageant of risings, acts and falls.
Babylon rose as babe of culture's springs;

And Ormuz dazzled high in gloried pomp;
There Assyria in its rude powers
Strode mighty with its potentates and strifes;
Pharaoh glazed rich Egypt's appetites
And mystic rites of trans-world glorify;
Greekish sinews form Spartan commonwealth,
With deified aim of man's material frame,
And reason's flag Athens does raise to skies;
The Roman arms with thud of feet do rule
With law's rigour and brute's magnificence;
With God Israel's lords strike a covenant;
Christ's apostles spread gospel's peace and love;
The deserts rise with prayers swords do chant;
The Eastern norms do set up monarch's seats,
Who wear the crown and speak to farmer's weeds,
Bring blend of labour, trade and spirit's rule
In one gamut of undivided song.
Virtue and wealth and human love do serve
The goal of freedom that the soul e'r seeks.
Hierarchies roll of rulers, intrigues, griefs,
On earth's own limbs which pride designates states.    The story that is life I now narrate,
Which toil we name for latent call of joy,
The pull of sense in senseless exertions,
Meaning's insistence in meaningless sweat,
And labour's torment, day's relentless whip
Which lashes forth its awesome ruthlessness
on backs that bend with gruelling servitude,
And brains that reel in duty's crushing weight,
As death and breath in contest ev'r engaged
Phenomenon's 'to be' or 'not to be'.    Is this enactment unkind Nature's whim,
Or do the gods in play and fun revel?
How does the fame of kingdoms reach to dust,
How crowns are trampled, princes end in clay,
Empires in melting cauldron Time does cast,
Virtue and vice, friend and foe rolled up lie
On earth's sepulchre, common bed of all,
Perish the loves of cleaving hearts by fate
And rancour lives in masks of holy writs,
In court of Judge the great and small do kneel
And cringing stay as levelled stuff sans pride,
As things of use, not men of dignity?
How come this world which's deaf to human feel,
From where the sun and moon and stars and sky?
Which rule it is that causes birth of life,
And kills the babe ere does it ope its eyes,
Destroys the good, enables evil's thrive,
Enforces yet the norm of righteous deeds,
Proclaims the law of altruistic moods,
And goodness sees through eyes of what one sees?    Hearken the clarion God's mandate which blows,
Benign beckon from High of high's domain.
The Might of mights with Cosmic Eye descries
The charming vast, creation call the wise;
Resplendent realm whose Centre's everywhere,
Where gods do dwell and angels blessed live,
Sages and masters, self-conquered divines,
Who know not self in all-pervading bliss
Of transcendence where Oneness' law does reign
In midst of things, relations and their ways;--
The worlds of life and deathless immortals,
Who live in one another as do waves,
Where one is here as well as there at once,
Where one is each and each is everyone
As lights commingled, gold is poured in gold,
Beatitude of Soul's bottomless sea.    As thunders break and split the skies in twain,
And cyclones rush and scatter broadcast things,
Did one day sound the rampage in heaven,
Dismembered fell the erstwhile Joys above,
Headlong below with topsy-turvy eyes
Which see the right as left and left as right,
The 'in' as 'out' and 'out' as 'in' in daze.
So mortals came as fallen stars bereaved;
Hunger and thirst and heat and cold did blow
As winds rapacious, monstrous mates of man,
When shackled physique caught in greed its grub
Which's tenfold sense's sensate passion's due.
Lo, man, as death's heir what dost thou now crave,-
Thy dish is spread out, take it as this world.    Came grief as sulphur slowly simmers hot
In mount's bowels to spit as darting fume,
From darkness spurt as cloud of unknowing
With cast down sense and faces backward turned.
The crude unconscious downward fallen's root
Erupts as brute which sleeps with raven's glut.
The clutch of fall as hunger seeks its prey
Which all the world in all its forms becomes.
The law of fish and law of jungle roars.
Where eater's eaten, eaten eats relished.
The life of each is life of other sworn,
Thus death does live as life of all that moves.    Grown up the law of give-and-take controls
As tit-for-tat, the selfish gesture's rule,
When man to man as object does become
To harness, swindle, capture and deceive.
Life lost its moorings, dread negation dawned
And beast-like jaws did notes of threat release.
The eye, then, sees the shadows as the light,
By instinct's peep which's intellect christened.
The reason tarnished with its freedom false
Does attribute all change to objects viewed,
Knowing not itself intertwined with things;
All wrong and evil foisted peers 'out there'
On things and persons and the world alike.
Thus matter henpecks its own lord, the mind,
Distorting value, misplaced visions's child,
Seeking contortions labelled as delights.   What dost thou seek? A fill of thrill of soul?
How does it come? From where does rapture rise?
The scattered streams of what the eyes see not
Inundate all the bones, and that is joy!
As glass does shine as light when sun it beams,
So all delights of earth are rains from gods
Who pour the blaze celestial and its mirth
On mortal frames which corpse-like lie below.
And, lo, the dead does wake by nectar's touch,
Whose where and how 'tis not for born to gauge.      O gorgeous Flood! Divine Inebriant!
Do come and bathe the seeker's anguished self
Which writhes and longs for that it can't behold,
Nor touch, nor taste, nor smell, nor e'n hear.
But beauty, sweetness, strength and glory great
Do there abide, and That itself is all.
And how can things reside in what is soul,
For resting needs another than the prop
Which's omni-space and omni-time's content.
When lust for glee and greed for gold do lash
As canine waves of death's billowing brine,
The lustrous gem of death-defying peace
Is pushed below the darkened dungeon's depths
Which wakes as owl that sees its day in night,
Darkness parading as the god of hell,--
For god, indeed, it is as deity praised,--
And tastes the stink as angels' thrice-blessing.      The saga that is man now do listen,
That clay's idol which struts as sovereign born.
When child's begot it grips the mother's breast,
For there beholds the babe its manna hid,
And there, indeed, its all and life condensed.
When grown enthused the budding lad does whirl
As top that loses stand when all busy;
Fantastic deal he cuts across his mind,
That tendril seeking sunlight's direction.
Then flash forth flame and furious surge of youth,
And what do seething tongues of fire consume,
Their fuel kindling, rousing wrath of want,--
The sensuous balm and wanton ego's pride,
The twofold snare and net of Nature's wit,
Which when 'tis cast does make one lose his wits.
And raving goes who reigns deranged in deeds,
In judgments, insights, outlooks and visions.
For, which offence can par a war with self,--
The feed of sense is but the death of soul.      All taste and sweet is baby's 'I' and 'me',
The grope which tattles apish ignorance.
Sweetest the food in hunger's angry clutch,
And sweet melody young blood's vanity
In prank and gaiety,--slumbered carnivore.
It rises strong and grown it wild becomes
And prowls for prey in youthful dalliance,
Whose end and aim and joy and fulfilment
Centres in comely touch and sight and taste,
Ambrosial looks when ichor flows profuse,
When earth with heav'n lives in eternity
And all creation melts in liquid rage
Of all-devouring grasp of mortal's goal,
Which is, and is, and nothing else can be.
So hails the day of promptings full virile,
But age pursues as victim's hunter crawls,
Steady and slow but sure as fall of night.
Impulse recedes and grey hairs speak wisdom
That neighbour's good is one's own good and weal,
That service done is worship God decrees,
Mankind is God, humanity is all.
For country, cause and ideal best adored,
Religion, leader, friend, commune and clan,
For creed and cult the self is immolate.
So goes and frets senile vigour's vision,
Power and pelf till all wither away,
And unsung dotage flings the wonted boast
To limbo rusted unhonoured which lies.      And still the murk of logic's reach prevails:
"Renounce the world, ordains scriptural lore,
The world is nought, and I do forsake all,--
My son and daughter, parent, land and wealth.
Position, name and raiment, sleep and rest,
Work, due and duty, love for dear life,--
Do all get bundled, thrown to those who live,
While I do famish for the distant peace
And joy of freedom found in world beyond.
Lo, thus I trample glory earth can grant
To flee to thence whose contempt is this world."
So, thus, the muse of heaven cut from life
Dries up the flow of force and strength of need
For promised dream which lies in Eden's heart.      Where, then, is truth? In me, in you, elsewhere,
Above, below, within, without, nowhere?
How does it look if truth is nothingness,
For, nothing does become the thing that is.
If nothing is, then call it all-in-all,
And there it is as consciousness of nil,
Establishing the truth of light in dark,
Which God, the Absolute, do sages name,
The That-which-is, the Thou and That and all.
The 'is' and 'is-not' are not truth's locale.
'This do' and 'this do not' are not morale,
The true is in-between, and not'there out',
Nor in the mind nor social plebiscite.
It's not in seer, not in seen, yet both,
And still above the terminals of ken.
'Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall,'
May well become, then, restraint's puissant chord
To haul up law for sake of justice' rule.
All law is just when wholeness keeps it sane;
It wild becomes when chaos rides on horse,
And thumps a rule when soul in sickness groans.
The 'golden mean' does drink the poison dose.      Since like does cure its like and not despise.
What takes the toll to heights does also raise
When mortal meets the mortal for its end.
In surge of health which soul awakened brings
When en rapport with all its contents stands.
To stand abreast with things is soul's delight,
Not look and eye and sense; for things are self;
To see through things, not see them, is wisdom.      The path is conduct's mean, not deal's excess;
Not abstinence, not indulgence; behold,
Beware, brethren, befriend the world and you;
Hate not the world, nor soul's tabernacle.
Offence and sin are not in you or things
But ill-arranged relation 'twixt the two,
Which twain are arms of single vision whole,
The handling which is life's purpose supreme.
Go, then, ahead, and gird your loins, and prey,
May truth triumph, and peace be unto all.
   Part Two   Vajas'ravas, the pious, sacrificed
For freedom's sake in joy of Indra's realm;
In bounty gave belongings all he owned,
Cattle and land and home and what was dear
That he may gain what mortals never taste,--
Eternal youth and beauty, toilless frame
Which's free from sleep and free from decay's rot,
Where actions breed not wearied body's fruit
As age and ennui or destruction's shades,
Where mind and senses always virgins stand
For endless action, endless indulgence
In joy's communions, winkless enraptures
Of freedom's height, abandon's giddy reach,
Where none belongs or clings to other's frame
In social bond or ethic's legal chains,
Where body's form is delight embodied,
And every limb is beauty's total gaze,
Where days are waves of timeless happiness,
One is other's, yet none is other's e'r.
Of honeyed sweetness sights and contacts made,
Immortal faces seedless juice exude,
Whose touch does madden senses losing sense
By loss of self as self merges in bliss
Of fivefold senses' molten union
With what they sought and find in naked fill,--
All light and glory, song and dance of life.      But, how can man possess such great treasure,
Unless he gives, for what he hopes to gain,
His earthly greed for greed of heaven's joy.
With tongue in cheek if gifts are offered feigned,
The gods do know the heart that heart has none,
And far depart from farthest arms of man.
Vajasravas, who gave his soul's dislike,
Tinsels and rusted tools and worn-out wealth,
And coins that died and houses crumbling stood,
Waterless tracts and dried up stony land,
But not himself nor dearest kin his son,
Could scarce expect those carnivals of gods
Who earth as clay and men as flies do deem,
Where sisters, brothers, husbands, wives and friends
Mean all the same, and so all property,
Since light is no one's wealth, and none is wealth
To light which's born to none, and its own law.      The golden age which Krita sages call
Had not the Vedas but engulfing OM,
The Pranava, the Cosmic Vibration;
No social class, no fourfold caste restrained,
The social man was Cosmic Man in work,
None married belonging nor slave became,
The law of Hamsa pure and simple ruled,
Which's law of no law, Dharma's omniform.
To love, obey and own was freedom's form
As Kama, Dharma, Artha, Moksha's ways.
Householder none and none renunciate,
Since none possessed, for all possessed the all.
The downward age is Krita's travesty:
When Treta came, Dvapara and Kali,--
The rod of king, commerce and selfishness,--
As Kshatra, Vaisya, Sudra named by men.
In Hamsa's reign, lo, each is everyone's;
In Kshatra king is owner as his law,
The State does own and all belong to State;
In Vaisya-Dvapara mutual consent
And legal mandate sanctions ownership
Of land and gold and wife and husband's role;
But down with crash does Kali grab in strife,
In theft, dacoity, rumpus and kidnap
Of all for oneself, Sudra come to worst,
Reverse of Hamsa, upside down beheld,
As things do mind produce to crass vision,
Or silence mute's is wisdom's reticence.      Since Hamsa's truth the rest do crack and fall,
Nor State, nor king, nor mandate's agreement,
Not what one owns in seeming possession,
Can live in time which ruthless sweeps to dust
Sceptre and crown and beloved family,
Babe and grown-up, or good and bad alike,
Which weedlike look to Time's rapacious grasp
That hurls to ground what turns against the Truth.
In Nature's purpose as evolution
Of lower forms to higher completions
What life intends is shedding false fossils
Of outgrown aims and contrived arrangements
As social laws or moral's makeshift schemes
Or governments of passing climes and times,
Which for a while as weakness' props survive,
But all are flung as drugs when illness' cured.      Nachiketas, Vajasravas' begot,
As conscience spoke though clouded in the din
Of rites which pined for angels' joy above,
To know the way he goes as charity,
For what is loved remains as object owned
And what is owned is gifted in the rite.
While body's self should also go as gift,
Since self of body's most beloved owned,
And what is seen as 'me' is also 'mine',
The 'me' is object to be sacrificed,
How come the lad, the son, is still retained
And not with objects counted in the deed
Which's Sarvavedas, gifts demanding all.      'To whom I go,' 'to whom you give me, dear,'
'For whom am I the gift of sacrifice?'
So thrice he quoth on sulken father's eyes
Which wrathful stared at dauntless innocence.
'To Death thou goest, give I thee to Hades,
To Mrityu, Yama, sacrificed thou art':
These words the parent spat on piety's face
Which looked as lotus blossomed in the morn.
To Yama, Death, the simple sapling rose,
Three days and nights he waited sans diet,
Sans respect, sans recognition he stood
At gate of lord's abode, the lord was not
To sight of guest who eager-eyed beheld
The mansion Master's, soul in hunger saw
The dazzle god's who reigned as death's overlord.      Does guest go fasting, come uninvited?
As fire he comes which burns the negligent
Who scarce attention on the guest bestows,
For unknown guest is God's messenger come;
To treat him well is hallowed worship done.
The three days' fast in body, mind and soul
Confer the boons of wealth and knowledge vast
And freedom transcendent, eternal life,
As waking is from sleep's nightmarish dream.
"Ask for a boon for every night's rigour
Which thou hast passed in austere self-control;
For here I am to grant what thou seekest
In all abundance, ask then, here it is."
"Lord, thou art kind and blessing embodied,
O Dread which people flee in awesome fear!
Death, where dost soul thou pluckest and dost take
To darkness deep where sunless abyss gapes.
When dost thou come and why dost thou grab all,
Or where thou draggest hapless souls from earth;
This none does know and what can worse be there
Than dungeon-dark is even wisdom here.
Sceptres and crowns, caparisoned gold rides,
The thumb of rule and thud authority's,
Kingdoms and wealth of distant empires,
Beauties of youth and fragrance of roses,
Get rent asunder, powdered sent to dust,
And vale of tears replaces Joys of life,
Beggars and kings shall live on common ground,
Lo, pride of blood, beware thy day is near.
Unrest and pain have ever ruled this world,
The drama life's is but a shifting scene.
As evening flower fades the bloom of youth,
And strength does vanish as a scattered cloud,
The ugly death paints rough the gayful face,
All things are branded with the rod of rule,
What is now seen is not the next moment,
Nothing's certain except that all shall die.
Centres of pleasure mock at human wit,
The dance of death is all this wondrous life.
Thou hast to me these boons in love bequeathed,
Deign, then, to grant that when I reach the world,
Let it receive me as its friend and self,
Not casting me as one among many,
As thing, content and individual."
"Lo, granted, thou hast all the senses held
In perfect order lined with facts of things,
Not contacting but fusing sensation
With all its needs, its wants and objectives.
So thou shalt go with prowess friends do wield,
People and things shall love thee as their own,
Nay, as themselves, for senses bar friendship
And cleave in two where one thing rules supreme.
Powers thou hast over matter's ranging fields
Since sense-forces which rose from matter's heart
Have gone in thee to sources whence they came.
Ask more and then with conferred boon be blessed."
"How great and gracious, Lord, thou art benign,
My request grant, this second of the boons.
I hear the gods do fear and age have none,
In heaven's abode hunger and thirst are not,
Thou Death art not there, hence no ageing fright.
Grant me the wisdom, Cosmic Fire's secret,
By which rejoicing I shall deem fulfilled."
"This mind's majestic cosmic sweep's domain,
Vaishvanara, the Fire Celestial,
Igniting which in concept's sacrifice
In contemplation's comprehensiveness
One gains the world, nay, worlds he does become,
This I shall teach, do learn it from me now,
The guarded knowledge gods zealously keep,
In having which creation's wealth one owns,
Of endless realms one emperor becomes,
Has access into fourteen worlds at once,
With omni-wisdom as the cosmic king,
He rules as all, over all he has the sway.
This science mortals know not till this day,
Which I relate in all its great details,
The Source of worlds, from where creation dawned,
The Fire Supreme of Cosmic Sacrifice,
Whose bricks of altar, framework and lay-out,
Are widespread objects mind does envisage,
The frame is perception's wide tangled field,
In consciousness where worlds are firmly held,
Where each is what it is by other's state,
So that to know any is knowing all,
And knowing all is being everyone,
For Cosmic Fabric is this Mighty Force,
Whose every thread is strung with all others,
Sutratman, great, this's Soul of all the threads,
Impossible for understandings frail,
The fruit of hard Tapas and mind's restraint,
Wherein installed as god of gods one hails.
This glory take as teaching from me, lad,
Good Nachiketas, be thou free of bonds."
So Yama spoke, instructed student come
In thunder's tone reverberating skies.
"But ask the third, the boon I promised, dear;
Virat thou knowest, what else dost thou seek."
"Lord let me know what irks my mind with doubt,
Some say there is a soul and some 'tis not;
What haps the soul when world it quits and goes,
Does it survive or does it cease to be;
When all it loses when it gains the all,
Where does it live, or exist not at all.
This wisdom grant, this is the third of boons,
This greatest blessing graciously bequeath."
"No, ask not thus, this question never raise,
Not all the gods can dare to answer this,
For none of gods is free from doubt, surprise,
Eluding marvel, sense of mystery,
And hopeless feeling in this quest of soul,
Which none has seen and none can ever see;
Subtle is law which concerns soul of man,
With hardship grasped, not easy path is this,
This principle, this way, this truth, which hides
Behind the mind and all the faculties
Which mankind wields by which one knowledge gains,
All which return when baffled by this light
Which darkness all the knowledge world can boast.
How, then, canst thou, whence gods in fright depart,
Persist in quest, whence all recoil despaired;
Ask, therefore, something other than this boon,
Embarrass not and press not this again,
Leave me here free and bind me not this way."
"Dost thou declare that even angels fail,
And are in doubt and know not secret soul's;
Then I am blest for here I am before
The master-teacher who does surely know.
Master, thou knowest, none better than thee
Can I find ever, teach me supplicant.
No other boon can stand compared with this,
Others I ask not, this alone I ask."
"Ask better things, more glorious, meaningful,
Children and friends and wealth and kine and kind,
Who live and last hundreds of years to come,
Royalty over all the widespread earth,
For ages long do rule as mighty king,
Have all the joys and pleasures gods covet,
I grant thee joys which angels not obtain,
Crown and servants and maids and elephant trains,
Army, power and fearless kingdom thine,
Nectar's dishes and nectared bathing streams,
And all the world shall bow in reverence,
Endless durations thou shalt reign the worlds
Of dazzling light, limitless glory thine,
Music and dance and fairest damsels take,
Enchanting maidens mortals ne'er can dream,
Chariots with horses windlike swift-moving,
Silver and gold, what men can hardly find,
Ask more of these, but ask not soul's beyond."
"What good are these that thou offerest, lord,
All things shall pass as transient wisp of breeze,
All joys and pleasures wear the senses' strength,
Senile becomes and dies who pleasures seeks,
All lustre leaves the face of indulgence,
And longest life is short when once it ends,
For end it must though longest it may seem.
Where is the charm in frames made out of clay
Though they be varnished with a daub of gold.
Vibrations' chord of sympathy deceive
The seeker pleasure's into false belief
That joys do stand as bricks are hard to touch,
While joys are phantoms, in fact exist not.
Take back the song and dance and maidens, thine,
Not all the worlds can please a single man,
If thee we see we all the wealth shall gain.
Knowing the worth of colour, taste and touch,
Of sound and smell which tantalise the mind,
Which person sensible would crave their grace
And land his life in sorrow and ruin.
Hence, greatest lord, do condescend to grant
That secret wisdom gods have not yet gained,
The thing of doubt, the destiny of soul,
Its whereabouts when hence it freed departs,
This do I ask, and none other at all."   "Purest of souls, thou seeker best, listen,
In thousand births may one acquire the means
To stand steadfast as thou hast firm behaved,
For even subtler than the subtlest things
Is what thou callest soul in human tongue.
The soul is not an object one can see,
It's not even what mind and reason gauge
With all their might, for reason's light flickers,
And mind is stunned in daring soul to know.
Of all the things is soul the foundation,
Of even mind and intellect's learnings;
Then who can know the soul which knower knows,
Where is the way to know such mystery,
Hence is reluctance in my answers here,
That while it seems the known is still unknown.
Who restrains self alone can know the self,
To plumb the self is abdicating self,
To cast the self is gaining self in full,
To conquer self is fixing one in self,
To all enigma is this pathless path,
Great Nachiketas, thou I fittest find,
For thou hast cast out joys of earth and heav'n,
Those rare delights which melt the hearts of men,
Celestial glory thou hast spurned as dirt.
Who injure not, nor falsify the truth,
Who grab not wealth in pillage or in theft,
Who simple live in barest means of life,
Whom world counts last as they in truth are first,
Who think the thought but not through thought do think.
Who know the frailty earthly glamours pose
And thus abandon tempting sensations,
Are stalwarts bold, who dive the sea of soul.
Thou seeker tested and hast hurdles crossed
Art now prepared and now wisdom receive."      The Lord then spoke the pleasant and the good,
The twain with ways that divergent proceed,
The one to bondage rushing far from self,
In outward pursuits,--outward self has none;
The other healthy growing inwardised
To selfhood blessed, freedom's excellence,
For self is what one is; so Self is all.
"There fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
The realm of soul whose meaning none beholds,
In learning's pride wiseacres feign and fail
To fathom depths of soul's eternal heart.
As blind do lead the blind with eyesight none,
So learned ones vainglorious parade.
None hears this glory, soul thou callest, boy,
Even though heard, its core no one does grasp,
Wonder is this, the teacher wondrous speaks,
The student is another wonder here.
No one that stands outside the self can speak
Of self, since self is all that ever is,
Children do run to objects' outward range
And enter death's menacing catching net.
The senses pouring forceful outwardly
Do carry mind and reason to their doom.      'There is no soul and no beyond this world,
This world is all, and no higher exists,'
So prates the fool who sees not back of mind.
Behind perceptions scaling not the truth,
And caught in snare of values objective,
He goes with objects, death is whose essence.
Mortality is stuff of sense-contents,
Transiency is the core of all things made,
The body forms indwell is constant change,
The heart of change do senses feel as things,--
Thus all the world which's mind's and sense's range
Is such substance as dreams are built upon.
Since consciousness in space is firm entwined,
The world and things appear external;
But heroes draw the self from space and time,
Lo, rare are they, in thousands one may rise.
The crowd of people mostly run around
And sink in objects as if they are soul,
Whose end-result is rampant destruction,
As moths do rush to flames which ashes make
The foolish enter opened jaws of death
Which's widely spread as passions objects rouse.      Awakened student, Nachiketas spake,
"Lord, how does soul manage to lie hidden,
Which is the track that blinded eyes follow,
How things are born and how they die and why?
I see the world as lifeless matter first,
Then plants and trees with incipient life,
There, then, are beasts and birds and creatures wild,
Man stands above as sentience far advanced.
Thou sayest now that gods and angels dwell
Far lifted great beyond the human ken;
Which is the manner things and beings rise
How do behave created entities,
What tangled stages do they traverse, lord,
With grace explain the story that is man."   The lord of death, Yama, then highly pleased,
To Nachiketas, best disciple, speaks
The history of empirical modes
Of human science and logic's measurements
Of man's attempts with equipments of sense
And what is known by transcendental lights.      When sea is churned for deathless nectar's taste
By gods and ungods for their mutual calls,--
For good immortal or immortal hate,
Since deathlessness can either need adorn,--
The first-born sight is poison's fume and rage,
As light eternal's darkness time's destroys,
And so the wrath and roar of violent urge
To stifle effort for eternity.
And who can drink venom which longings pour
But lord of world-destruction, Rudra, fierce,
Who grasps the fierce by fierce Tapas,
The fire upsurged by control over self
To unleash force from All-embracing Self
Which's Siva named though evil's Rudra-flame.
When bitter, killing, threatening foes retreat,
The charm of sight and tasty forms emerge
In multitudes of gems and beauty-queens
That shatter reason, causing distraction,
And strengthen senses' wild marathon dance.
But late emerges from the ocean's depths
The nectar-bearer life's dispensing ills.   "Lo, hard to tread as razor's edge this path
Is seen with pain by service rendered pure
To great and blessed masters who do teach
This way to That which's spread out everywhere,
Whose hands and feet and eyes and ears are all,
Whose faces smile in every atom's core,
The reaching which is end and aim of life.
When thought does feel in prayer heart's release
It shoots up quick and fast succour bestows,
In timeless haste as parents love their child.
It sees with concern though with concern none,
It loves intensely with dispassion's care,
To love it is to draw the love of all,
Of man and beast and all that lives and breathes.
The great protector is this darling might,
The God of gods, immortal freedom's seat.
A single pace when honest seeker takes,
In hundred paces does it rush to save.
Uplifted bolt of thunder is this fear,
By whose fear do sun and moon and wind
And fire and rain do stately do their parts.
The dreaded death meal's condiment it makes
And Kshatra, Brahma,--power, knowledge,--food.      Its incarnations come as Dharma's forms
As Rama's arrow or Krishna's discus,
As timely cure when world in distress sinks,
To found the law of unity and peace,
Destroy the craze for death and harm to life,
And plant on earth the grandeur divinity's.
It burns the foe that as its second vies,
It stands and glories unrivalled, alone.
As space in cups does not belong to cups,
Nor does it stand in relation to them,
So all-encompassing Soul by itself stands
As absolute and unrelated all.
The Soul is all and everything is Soul,
The Soul alone can understand the Soul,
The Soul is Self, the Universal Truth.
Who know the Self are saved from birth's torments
And rebirth's toil and sorrow's cyclic whirls.      "The Self is God, Creator, Sustainer,
And Destroyer of Time's material frames,
For God is Self, the Subjectness in things,
The Being, Root, the "I" in all that moves.
As wind it blows, as fire does it burn,
As earth supports, as rain it inundates,
All strength is its, all-power is this God
Who defies knowledge as the knowing Self,
Subtly pervading knowing's processes,
Not knower, knowledge, known or connection,
But ranging high above relation's realm,
None knows it, for it knows itself alone.      "As flood and ravage, pestilence and death,
Bereavement, pain and strife, battle and war,
As wrath of Nature can this Being work
When consciousness in objects gets immersed,
Defeating purpose Selfhood plants in things.
Or caress, love, culture, enlightenment
And happiness does God, the Self, does rain
When all goes well and consciousness is Self.
To raise the self by Self is Yoga's course,
For Self is friend to Self-like thoughts and deeds,
But Self is foe to not-Self's indulgence.
It is the food and eater food's it is,
As food it eats its eater disbalanced.
The field, energy, mind and intellect
Are four degrees of out-turned soul's vision.
Since darkness is the cause of outwardness,
All learning that man boasts is night's parade.
Inverted gaze is mortal knowing's worth,
As shadow cast by three-dimensioned stuff
Is two-dimensioned feigning truth and light.      "In fourteen realms as Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svah,
Mahah, Jana, Tlapah and Satya high,
As also low as further deep's seven
Does range the glory of proximity
To this pervading all-inclusive Self,
And also distance from this Omni-Self.
Greater the light and wider Self's regime
The higher moves the seeking spirit lone.
But darker, gross and more self-centred, crude,
Is being's reach the downward more it falls.
In seven stages ignorance's grief
Does harass soul before it's born as man
By struggle up through eight million forms
Of species and four hundred thousand more
Before it steps on first of wisdom's rungs.
Then further rise is blessing all divine
Received with all-round self's immense restraint
To wider rise ascending Truth to reach,
Traversing regions light's empires seven.      "The higher worlds above the human range
Revel in light and joy's uprising waves.
The world of blessed, pious earth's above
Is peopled with serene, contented souls.
Beyond are masters fine art's excellence,
Gandharvas with their Apsaras consorts,
Whose music thrills and melts the hardest hearts,
Enthralls the wild and pleases trees and stones.
The angels, Devas, rise above these joys,
Dwellers of fire and lightning, Svarga called.
The Chief of gods and angels, Indra, reigns,
With greater puissance and rejoicing's peak,
The reigning ruler but he wields the rod,
His wisdom lagging pressed by mind's impulse.
Brihaspati, Preceptor even gods'
Rises beyond in wisdom's strength and bliss
Whose might and grandeur all the gods excels,
Then, further, what lies who can dare to speak,
Creator's realm is wonder wonder's great.   "Absolute's rays are thousand thousand volts
Of force released men incarnations call,
Who dauntless face the world's tremendous arms
And work miracles when'er crises surge.
These are the sages, heroes, redeemers
Who down descend to help ascent of man.
Godly is moral and ethic is theirs
Who rend the law to firm establish law.
For God ordains with all-measuring eye,
While human greed can cling to one alone.      "The severed mind from cosmic life-substance
Should get united with its parent whole
By deep communion in its vestures' clouds
In all relations outward and inward.
By harmless, kind, continent, truthful ways
Are snapped relations passions bind with ties.
Restraining pose in body's fixed seat
And thinking deep when breathing calm subsides
The senses loosen knots of object's love
And mind, then, broods on all-expanding space,
The Earth does melt and water dries by fire,
Fire expires in wind that engulfs space.
This is the first profound communion's stage
They call Samadhi, gross, subtle and cause.
Commune with earth, with water, fire and air,
And space which melts the contents called the world,
So that there is the space that draws the thought
Which thinks the space as if it is 'other'.
Thus space alone is, all is naught in space,
The thinker is the space, and space is thought.
Consciousness is the being which remains,
Being is thought, the Great Fullness abounds.
With people's clash, with inner layer's clash,
With Nature's clash, with God's designs the clash,
Are four-edged strifes which Yoga's system ends.      "While love is good, the worst is body's love;
The next is love of kith and kin and near.
Communal love though widened family
Is still restricted, wider Nation hails.
The love of country, culture, language, style,
Is love impassioned, soul is stronger here.
When Nation's pride collides with Nations' pride
The patriot roars and girds his loins to die.
Insight still wider grasps humanity
As single life, sheds vanity of clime.
This world, this earth, a speck in firmament
Is not the home that isolated stands.
The vaster fact, the universe is one,
And life is one,--god, man and beast and plant,
This widest range of perception and life
Towers beyond as perfection's finale.
So gradual rise is theme education's,
With larger, deeper, inclusiveness reached.      "When battlefield of life one enters brave,
The might of things is dim and faint noticed.
The world is large and rich enough to face
The simpleton who poses human pranks.
The clamp of craving human fondness strikes
Has logic, law, the world to justify.
The world of friends, men, women and children
Can scarce be countered in the war of life.
The vast arena, field of perception
Is dearest beauty valued more than self.
Parent, brother, and husband, wife and son,
Much more, teacher, are values immortal.
There is the country, clan and creed and cult,
The custom, rule, tradition, faith of group,
Which drive the soul to sell itself to forms
Which constant die with change of mental frames.
How does one know that neither eyes nor forms
Are facts, for fact is hidden in between.
Neither the lover nor the loved can see
What causes love or why the loves are dear.
The great magician who conjures up minds
Is neither mind nor what the mind believes.
Hence passions great which swear by religion,
Or justice, goodness or morality
Get strengthened by these justifications
And pounce on targets which their hates produce.      "The reason is the absence true insight's
Which bifurcates the world as seer, seen,
While neither seer nor the seen is world
Which stands by itself integratedly.
The oneness at the base of perceptions
Becomes their cause, or else a void and dark
Would fill experience deathlike, lifeless, nil.
The waves of sense collide in sea of life,
Contacting senses heave on their own source,
Which flares as force of objects and their want.
Between the thing and what beholds the thing
There is the third escaping grasp of both.
This third is all, including both the terms;
It sees and is the seen, yet neither is,
The immanent and transcendent at once.      "This third is Witness, God who rules the terms;
In disbalance when one on other hangs
Losing the scale that them equilibrates,
Then quick to action as incarnation
The third, the great, emerges into form
That strikes the balance in levels galore.
As birth of forces harmonising forms
And death of those that segregate the forms,
As history in Nature and in life
The work divine is active winklessly.
As wind and storm, as flood and drought and quake,
Destruction, strife, upsurging social norms,
Inventions, teachings, gospels, discoveries,
And changes massive as well as minute
The Cosmic Hand with parent's care does bless
Through silent moves and wondrous upheavals.   "The death of form is stride for newer birth
Through stages marking endless unions
By risings which herald integrations
Of mind and matter, seer and the seen,
Which widened realms of seeing consciousness
Are worlds of gods, Creator's Seat in end
Which stamps the seal of final attainment,
And beyond which nothing and none abides,
For matter melts in Purusha, All-One,
The God of all, the Absolute supreme.
Mutations in between the mind and world
Are causes endless births and death which bring.
Who loves outsideness of creation's forms
And passes out from one's subjective core
Is caught in net of births' and rebirths' griefs
Since outside Subject objects never breathe,--
The Subject Great which encompasses all.
"Of all the fangs the serpent fatal strikes
The greed of space and lust of time surpass,
The one devouring wealth of all the worlds
To large become as wide as sky's limit,
The other's burst as entrails disgorged drop
With pang of death outrushing out of self
To land in offspring future selfhood's claim,
Eternal longing breaking time's limits.
Power to thrall what lies outside the self
Is greed engendered Space external's need.
The call of future, immortal's shadow,
Goes wild berserk as passion androgyne
To break the gulf the sexes twain maintain
And reign as one and single perfection.
The Infinite and what is Eternal
Here dance as wealth and rumpus sexes make.
Lo, death glories as life's supernal aim,
Indeed, existence laughs as mystery.      "But mystery is also law precise,
Its dues, procedures and demands elude
Procrustean bed of sterile forms and norms,
For while the law rejects the bad as bad
It justice does to even what it casts.
Unless the moral, good or lawful forms
Do justly face and squarely deal in calm
What's dubbed as evil, immoral or bad
Or unlawful in highbrowed pride's pretense
The law that rules all known ordinances
Shall crack down hard on moral's legal clay
And reinforce the bondage of the soul.
The real should its real counterpart
As treatment meet providing dose of cure.
Hunger and thirst and heat and cold and sleep,
The claims of sex and ego's simple feed,
By counterparts their real objects hold
In fine proportions as medicines cure.
The blocks of rule that man perpetuates
With scarce regard to times and conditions
The world knows not, for lifeless life rejects.
The needs of time and circumstance decide
The good or bad, relative states not things.
Each passing moment new demand projects,
Eternal rule the world has none for all
Save integration subject's with objects,
Which marches forth as whole rising from whole,
The 'whole' of concord seer's with the seen
In all levels from insentience to God,
And not by subject's retreat from objects,
Since objects web-like in seer are fused.      "Caution, then, seeker, thou shalt well maintain;
In haste, emotion thou canst not renounce,
For what renounces in renounced does dwell
As member, partner higher family's.
In movements up the partners jointly rise,
The seer-seen is total fabric whole;
Hence none renounces save in form entire
Which both maintain, and both renounced emerge
As higher whole to rise to further wholes.
The world and soul a common harvest reap
From field-experience comrades immortal.
Else, unpaid debts to wholeness' healthy life
Shall come as tempting beauties and fears
That threats discharge, or mind's disordered dreams,
Complexes, crazes, crotchets, reveries,
Illusions, frenzies, violence and harm.      "Caution, other, yet stringent more remains,
For indulgence differs from healthy taste
Of poison's draught which kills or makes one live.
So all this world with multi-pronged dishes
That stand parallel with organs of sense
To feed for life or glut for death the soul
Which cased in body by its aid escapes,
As wiser foe the foolish friend excels.
As surgeons cut is not assassin's stroke,
Though both do what the eyes behold as same.
The world of contact ruins when gone wild
But is physician when contacts are sane.
Let not the healer rise in flood of wrath,
The healer then becomes destroyer's hand.
Penury's core or wealth's limitless mass
Can neither live, for both to death do point.
"As razor's edge no one can see easy,
The way middle is hard to comprehend.
Neither glutton nor abstinent is fit
For Yoga's path which subtle lies between.
It's not enough if Yoga one pursues,
May Yoga pursue its own seeker's grace.
Man runs to God in anguish devotion's,
But does God run to man eager with love,
For great is latter, height of spirit's goal.
A thousand mothers Yoga does surpass,
And that is God, and that is Reality.
The state of Yoga loves not, hates not things,
From thingness things' it rises knowing things,
Whose root is Truth but thingness exists not,
Since thingness is a name for outwardness.      "As tree inverted grows creation's frame
With root above and branches spread below,
Outward-directioned and disabled root to see;
What comes knows not from where it came or how,
Befooled by rush of force that urges sense
To speed for shadows cast by archetypes
Which range above as scintillating norms
Laying the rule of all-absorbing code
Of vision single Universal Soul's
That judges every tiny deed of man
And casts it in all-integrating moulds.
Thus, what is small is also great and all,
As what is all is smallest humble reed.
When intellect and senses and the mind
United stand as focussed jet of flame,
That state is Yoga raising soul to Self
Which indwells all and transcends creation.
Here caution high is watchword Yoga's rule,
Heedlessness brings the death of Yoga's aim.
Thou, blessed one, be standard paragon,
Attain the high, the all-encompassing."
   Part Three The worlds which are the planes above, beyond,
Have laws descending, slow to earthly mass.
In Brahmaloka, land of Virat, All,
Light enters light and all is everywhere,
Reacting one with other in the sea
Of God's majesty in creation's core.
No man, no thing, and none exists but All,
Where one is many and many is one.
The one is here and other, too, is here
Yet none is there, as here and there are one.
The one Majesty swells resistlessly
Beholding Itself as this wondrous vast,
Spirit ingressing into great Spirit.
In next descent which's Tapoloka called,
Consciousness is of outward universe
Which's "I am I", yet Self beholding void,
Where fine potentials world's are not designed
As Tanmatras the latent patterns hid
Of future forms as gross elementals
The third descent called Janaloka pure
Is dwelt by austere masters and sages
In world of forces, subtle Tanmatras,
Who in them live and in themselves do see
The whole creation in microcosmos.
These are the three where centres multifold
Are each in all, and all converge in each.
From Mahah down the tale of mind begins;
In Mahah knower stands to known opposed
As 'I am I' and 'thou art thou,' but, heark,
With transparence of self to other selfs,
And one is what the other is in full,
No gulf of sex as male and female forms,
Each is complete and none the other needs.
In Svah, Svarga, mind reacts on mind,
The mental forms of subtle sexes rise,
By mind contacting free from channelled sense.      As senses here in mind are wholly fixed
And shining forms on forms resplendent gaze.
It's here at first that one the other owns
But, strangely, not as men belongings own.
The strangeness is that each can own the all;
While none is other's, each is other's yet.
The social chain by marriage which restrains,
Or ownership of tied-up property,
Is absent here where perfect system reigns
Community's, and free are all with all.
The forms of men and women virgins stand
In midst of contacts though unending they,
Since wear and tear touch not this fiery realm
Of minds alone from body's limits free.
The Loka down, Bhuvah, the astral field
Is grosser still, of rarefied mortals,
The moulds of dwellers who earth populate
As fine ingredients, men's anterior frames.
Here removed are values community's
And hard distinctions cleave persons and things,
Where each is itself and knows it as such.
The worst is yet; it's Bhuh, the plane of earth,
In which the objects are elements gross,--
Ether, air, fire, water, earth they call,--
Which senses five collisioned seem to know.
On earth the senses strike on outward things,
But strike is scarce communion or knowledge.
The content 'out' does not unite as one
With knower's being; so the world is out
As neither known nor possessed really.
The earth-life, thus, is all mortality,
It's death that stalks the earth as human life.
Contraptions made as laws of governments,
Possession, wealth and ev'n marital bonds,
All man-made norms, hence doomed by basic flaw
Perish and vanish, as they exist not.
The life physical, brittle contrivance,
Is not in fact, save vortex destruction's.
The whirligig of waking, dream and sleep
In brain-washed grasp the mortal does harass.
Exhaustion, decay, decomposition
Of concrete bricks which form the body's clay,
Pollution, dirt, dependence head to foot,
Endless restraints for every hair and nail,
By toil varnished the joys of sensations,
Characterise this lowest Loka, earth.
When soul to extreme's breaking point hazards.
And wholly clings to isolated forms,
Turning away attention from the Truth
Which holds together all as Single Life,
Powers above as gushing winds descend
To vacuous fields from concentrated points
The balance Dharma's quickly to restore,
So that distractions, gross earth's heritage,
Go not too far from laws of higher realms.
As Rama human comes normative might,
As Krishna bloom and glory truths divine.
As atoms fine and forces constitute
All things and objects as their core and self,
So realms higher indwell and constitute
The lower realms as substance and their self.
Highest is, thus, immanent as the Self
Of every region ranging down below.
As objects'core is not spatially high
So highest realm is all the realms at once.
This is to learn that God is high and low,
And also everywhere, distanceless whole.      To rise to heights is Yoga's avowed aim,
To know that works are deeds of Highest Self
Which moves the gods of senses and of mind
By themselves naught, sans ego and its pride,
As ancient tale of war which gods did win
By which the Kena-named Upanishad
Highlights the greatness highest Truth's in plain,
That gods are lifeless sans the Absolute,
And nothing is but That-Which-Is, the All.
'Go, burn a blade of grass,' so spoke the Great
To Agni who could turn the world to ash.
'Blow up this blade,' It Vayu bade with smile,
The god of Wind who mountains could uproot.
Who knows that leaves that drop from trees in breeze
Move not unless the High of highs ordains.
Ev'n hairs are counted, breaths are numbered well,
Tiniest movements are seen by winkless eyes
Which scan the earth and all creation's plans.
When two in secret whisper unheard sounds,
The Great One seated in between unseen
Listens as thunder even minute moves.
Public is God and private thought futile,
That One is All; That One alone remains.   As Satyakama, son of Jabala
Learnt secret from Haridrumata sage,
In honest pursuit lofty aim to reach,
May seekers all from simple innocence
To state of Godward aspiration rise.
"Whose born am I, which lineage I come,
Mother dear, whose son, what blood am I,
For learning's sake as student I do wish
To serve a master, deign to tell my name."
When lad in earnest questioned parentage,
Jabala spoke, "As servant did I work
Much occupied, moving in early days;
Hence parentage I know not, what you are,
Go and declare, to Jabala thou born."
The purest mind to sage betook in haste,
Presented himself student Vedic lore's
And fell prostrate at master's holy feet.
"Of what hierarchy parents', lad, thou art,"
So sage queried the supplicating youth.
"I know not, sage. my lineage or blood,
My mother bore while serving much as maid,
Jabala's son am Satyakama known,
With grace do teach, O puissant master sage."
"No, none but purest brahmana thou sure,
This truth no other man would dare to speak.
Come, fetch the fuel, now I do accept
As holy learner secretest wisdom's.
Four hundred cows here lean and unfed lie,
Take them to graze, and come not till they reach
A thousand robust milch-cows' healthy state."
To greens and thicks and wild attractions far
Did Satyakama drive the four hundred,
Who food and water restfulness required
In place secure from threat and toil for long.
Friendless, assistanceless and loveless lived,
In arid continence by force employed,
The boy deprived of sweet affection's dose,
Save love-regard for teacher's strict mandate
And hope for rain of light from high heaven.
To live in freedom from creditor's eye
In early days of borrowed existence
Delicious looks, until the longish days
Release the gates for news credit's to come,
And bitter potion with rejoicing mix,
When life is kind and life is also harsh,
The kindly friend is also raised up brow.
Demands of Nature like creditor's bonds
Fear-fed freedom when resorted grant,
The body's substance and its ploddings slow
Like waters rising seek the bunds to break.      The student, seeker, great disciple trod
The path of hopeful check creative call's.
Did One become the two and then many,
And driving urge to multiply begin
Its dauntless march to find the self in forms?
The light of Sattva, Rajas-driven, goes
To plank itself in Tamas-bodies seen
And gobbles up the bodies as its food
Through eyes, ears, tongue, nose and tactile grasp
To digest body out contending real,
So that the One, the Self, alone is real.
The twigs and shrubs and barks to restrained taste
As manna's flood to Satyakama flowed,
The slightest shade was comfort's canopy,
And self-respect was respect from the world,
The youth derived, or was in compulsion,
And time it takes to know where oneself stands.      Though mind is high the body pulls it down,
For body is the house that mind has built.
As grossness subtle's body is of mind
When thoughts do rule rejecting body's form
As abstractions and airy theories fare.
The inside cut from outside's valid claims
Remains as dream bereft of real's content.
As also is the outside's excess call
Severed from inside's requisitions
Is corpse bereft of life's meaningful balm.
The seeker's sorrow is self sundered twain,
As warring camps of mind's and body's needs.
The hungered person caught the ideal's life
To snatch it off when limit's norm it crossed.
To feed the body, feed the craze for fame
And feed learning's fine appetite, the three
Are equal urges, streams of craving soul's.      So years rolled in Satyakama's quest
By ardent Tapas, but the cosmic forms
Which with the person were not reconciled
Poured down as showers from the formal realms
And down descended fairest fairies' charms,
With dance and music and delightful shapes,
Intoxicants of mind and sense refined.
The more they move as student's proximate
The more he loses consciousness of self
And enters whole the fabric forms present.
As raving bull inebriated gores,
The touch of these emboldened forms of light
Injects the bolt of maddened grip of joy,
And none who's born would once resist such feasts.      But Satyakama, with the strength of self,
Outgrew this dish of nectar served by gods,
And hill-like stood in thunder, storm and rain.
Great glory this, to withstand cosmic tastes,
For who that's man can Indra's magic face.
The tempter's wealth is yet in plenty store's,
The wisest men have yet to pass a test.
"The world is vast, in ignorance and pain,
Thy duty is to pains ameliorate.
Renounce thy cares and care for others' weal.
Thou bold and able well-equipped to serve
Redeem the world of mortals sunk in grief.
Why ask for freedom high heaven's thyself
And selfish seek immortal's seat for thee.
Go forth and serve, for thou hast high attained
The peak of glory Yoga's way bestowed.
Be wise to work in thousand cycled births
Until the last of remnant reaches God."
So struck the master juggler his trump-card
Inflaming ego's name-demanding joys.
Who would resist enthroning oneself king,
Applauded, worshipped deified saviour,
To raise the trodden come as Godsend boon.      Here, Satyakama's prudence weighed heavy
And pointed flaw in glory? name and fame,
For who on earth is sure as friend till doom,
In utter distress who is bosom friend
In world of people who remember wrongs
As truths immortal and the good ignore.
Conditioned friendship rules the human groups,
And unconditioned who on earth has heard.
Brittle as glass is human affection
Bereavement follows unions even strong.
As logs of wood on ocean's surface meet
Do people meet as friends, relations, loves.
As logs depart when winds them cut apart
So loves perish and-dear, near fly.
What greatness, then, is sceptre emperor wields,
To dust he goes, from dust his body formed.
He spurned as worthless mortal power and love,
And sought to seek what further lay beyond.      When seekers cross this hurdle hard to scale,
Fears and cudgels upraised threats discharge,
Dread death that harbours elbow slowly crawls
With widened jaws to strike once and for all.
All austerity and all effort fades,
As dried up leaves they seem to drop on ground.
Disease and weakness thrall the person's frame
Languishing body sinks to nether's depths.
"Is this the all for which I strove so hard,
Tended the cows, obeyed master's behests
And wrung out life of joy of basic needs?
Accursed is life that neither is nor not;
To live or die the same to man becomes."
So quaking spoke the downcast searching soul.
But, lo, the wonder, night's darkest ere morn.   The windows Nature abrupt opened clear,
Faces and tongues ejected from the trees,
Sermons from wind and fire solacing came,
Stones in the forest melted love's caress,
The voice of gods and angels spoke beside,
The frame of earth and vault of sky lifted
Their cloaks of hardness and void's emptiness,
Light flashed forth bright from every atom's pore,
Service and kindness oozed from horizons.
Distances flew and things stood not apart,
Time rose to surge of timeless endurance.
The far off stars roll under one's own feet,
One gets included in things spread out vast,
Is swept from ground to time's eternity,
The person's core disintegrates and flows
With all atmosphere radiant as the sun.
Interconnected web of cosmos breathes,
Interpenetrate planes with denizens,
One sees one's own self simultaneously
In every place and all periods of time,
And sea-like swells the joy of creation,
Riches endless are spread in points of space,
Lo, his is universe, he himself is it.      The student now become a seer sage,
Returned to cottage where the Master dwelt,
In full fulfilment of stipulation
To bring a thousand cows now multiplied.
The Master, looking brightened face before,
Asked, "how thou blazest as if truth knowest."
To which he answered "Master, none human
Ev'r instructed, this is the fact, sire."
"Nothing remains, thou knowest secret's core,
For angels taught thee as the forms they came,
All, then, is well; so be thou happy, free."      "Master, I'm blest, thy grace on me do grant,
In forest life I lived a year hard,
With prayer and sincere obedience,
In concentration's honest peak I reached,
But beauties first and threats I did confront;
Deign, Master, speak, what these visions could be."
The Teacher went in detailed dilation
And pointed out how these phenomena
Present themselves to seeker's seeking heart.
"Creation meant a split in universe
As if a half was torn away from half,
And here begins the mystery of love,
Which loves and hates at once a single form.
For halves are filled with longing for the whole
Which transcends both, but blinded by senses
See not the whole and see the half alone
As object cleaved by space and time between,
Thus love missing the very thing it loves,
With wrongful craving for the other half
Distraught with dislike since the 'other' stands
As cut from 'me' which wrongly fondness shows.
These urges sprung for union with the seen
Which is the half, the 'other' outside there,
Project the feature which is beauty called,
Attracting half to other half through eyes.
The threat thou speakest is the rage of wish
Which stands frustrated when the beauty buds
Receive not response from austerity.
None can resist these beauty's temptations,
Since total whole is cause of halved psyches.
The threats do rise when shunning beauteous forms
Is engendered by force of will applied
Bereft of thought and understanding's light."      "Who are the angels who so tempting come
Or discharge visions fearsome from above?"
So Satyakama 'gain queried the sage,
Who thus explained denizens of heaven.
"Above the earth and internal do live
The joyous spirits in the astral wide.
But further still are gods and angels bright
Who matchless glory and puissance wield,
And shine as stars whose visage thou hast seen,
The worlds above, seven in ranging lights
Are dwelt by wondrous beauties and powers.      The student asked, "Master, do souls that quit
This earth then pass to these heavenly worlds
And live rejoicing endless time in peace?"
"Yes; but not all ascend to these great heights,
Some do by stages, some suddenly rise,
But most return by pull of loves and hates
That beset mortals chained to earthly life.
Those that by gradual steps of ascent rise
Are first ignited by the light of Fire,
Then reach celestial and divine o'erlords
Of Day, Bright Half of month and Solar Half
Of sojourn northwards, then of whole year,
The Sun, the Moonlike Field of Stellar Mass,
Then Lightning which the gods rejoicing flash,
Where resplendent Divinity does face
The soul and leads it further by the hand
To Glory that Creator Lord bestows
For Freedom, Bliss and Living Ultimate.      "Thus stagewise move to soul's liberation;
In Sadyo-mukti, abrupt waking frees
The self from bondage instantaneously.
Not one can reach with wanton senses this,
The goal supreme with restrained mind attained,
With sole awareness total being's tuned
To All-awareness of creation's core.      The rugged way though straight does winding move,
For involvement is one, yet multifold,
The law that is the truth of existence
Which strange eludes the grasp of mind and sense
Wriggles as though from its mighty content
And itself looks at itself as this world.
But all this wonder more than wonder reigns
Beyond the earth and reach of heaven high,
For who can gauge what event took place then,
Since none was there, not even space and time.
Being was not, non-being also not;
Darkness,they say, was all-engulfing then.
Liquid-like stood all universe and life;
A sea of seamless, shoreless abyss yawned
With countless points potential thence to sprout
As myriad stars self-shining in their core,
But encrusted with finitising trends
Which wildly cry for self-limitation
In forms which drive to more and more bondage
Of self-centeredness in gross hardened shapes.   "As 'I-am-I' if all creation feels,
That state can well be first-born God's begot.
But who on earth can enfold such delight
Of all-ness which covers the distant stars
With lowest debris in one fast embrace;
But that was glory which possessed the all
When itself it possessed as loneliness.
The heaven's ranges down they came thereat
As vibration, then space-time impulsion,
And then the sky, the air, the fire's heat,
The water's range, the hard substance,--the earth.
In seven stokes of grand descending steps
The Sovereign came from throne of King of Kings.
The play, the personnel and director
And audience at once That all became
In will's fiat of grandeur's grand command.      "The stars that shot from that ablazing light
The angels, gods of heaven did become,
But stood apart to sea of light behold
By themselves out from that brilliance placed.
This is the stage, the third, in descent's role,
When gods and angels peopled all the skies
And heaven was, but earth was not yet born.
The gods sleep not, nor sweat, nor toil, nor eat,
They age not, but retain the grace of youth,
Fragrance exudes and thrill and throb from frames
Of force and light which gods ensoul above.
They marry not, and possess not, nor own
One another as family or clan,
But all in each as fluids commingle.
Immortal gods, immortal till the end,
When worlds are wound up at the end of time.
The range of gods in power rises slow
As realms ascend in stages sevenfold
Until the reach of power all supreme
Which Creator, the All-in-All, does wield.      "As mind awake suddenly drops to dream
And sees upside down facts of waking life
With seer turned to seen as objects press
And seen get turned to seer's position,
So mortal bodies creatures enter frail
From atom down to plants and animals
And human forms and all who see beside.
The elements, the five, which God adorns
Become the chains, the hard and solid stuff
Which weigh down mind and soul and consciousness,
Till crushed they fall and bend below their knee,
To serve material matter's forces cruel
And cringe before them as their bonded slave
When this befalls, the gods are beyond reach
High up somewhere in regions beyond ken;
And earth is 'there' and worlds are outside reach;
The systems stellar frightful soar in sky;
The winds blow hard, the sun does scorch and clouds
Erratic come and go as they do please
To pour or strike with unkind Nature's wrath.
But, lo, much worse is there awaiting all
The icy hand of death which spares not one
To stifle life as its own hour and will.
These tragic scenes get unfolded at once
When self, the soul, stands outside creation
And looks at it as if it is outside.      "The earth revolves and round rotates with life,
The heavenly orbs do circumambulance
On fixed routes in fixed distances,
The solar centre rules with immense might
The fate of earth and all its satellites,
To give them form and functions determined,
In which regime, which sweeps the skies and earth,
All life we call the breath that creatures breathe,
And all the deeds and men's performances
Stand stupefied in grips of transcendence,
Where hard it is to say if one exists
Or what exists at all in such a rule,
The hairs, the nails, the body cells and limbs,
The form, the movements, even thoughts and trends
Do get impelled from that Centre within,
The Centre of myriad centres high.
Thus One does think, and One does act and rule,
And One is all, which lives and moves as things.
In contemplation earth, then, is busy,
In contemplation sun and stars remain.
The whole is, then, a field of rigid pose,
Which is aware that it alone is all.      "Yet lowly groans the hapless soul in pain,
Which joy it thinks in worlds of icy death
That stalks all realms in giant's striding thuds
Which shake the hearts as volcanoes the peaks.
Mortal thou art! lo, chained thou breathest sighs
In cold welcomes which thou receivest here.
Hunger and thirst, with fangs that strike as pangs
Of cruel Death's messengers sans mercy,
And freezing grips of sunless air with nights
Which hid remain as facts of Nature's core,
Since sun was not when dark, deep origins
Embalmed as mummies all creation's seeds
In that distance when life was fast asleep,
Do story tell of dungeon's agony.      "Can one a drop of honey suck and live
When yawning jaws of life's impending end
Project their teeth in eager appetite?
The sorrow's cause no one has yet unearthed,
As cause of all the causes houses him
Who vain attempts to know the cause of things.
God Almighty, the Truth behind all truths,
In all His glory reigned eternity.
He was, He is and He shall ever be.
The One that passeth all understanding,
The sombre magnificence slowly willed
And this became the plan of theatre
On which the parts to play are well outlined,
Until the wondrous colour, sound and sense
Emerged as cosmos ensouled by the One,
The First Vibration, which was Thought of God,
Condensed as forms in taste and touch and smell.
He sat alone and brooded vast as space,
Time flashed rapids as fierce tides of brine,
Galaxies jumped as babes roll down from wombs,
Solar and stellar blazes filled all sky,
The realms from earth above and below peeped
As fourteen-spiralled cosmic empire;--
On one side solid substance-sensations,
On other sense and mind-born sapience.
Betwixt these two He ranges judge-like force
Linking the two as sea connects the waves.
Then each of centres that beheld the forms
Rejoiced in touch and loss of self in greed
For things which outward organs could contact."
With story of creation sage of old
Did thus regale the heart of seeking soul.
   Part Four   The forms of things are charged with intentions,
No form by itself isolated stands
Since intentions are subtle prehensions
By which, like eddies splashing in the sea,
The farthest with remotest lives as one.
A tender rose in garden gently touched
Disturbs the stars at utmost distance placed.
On space-time ground when all perceptions fall,
As light the shadow makes to move on screen,
The forms of substance get projected out
With thickness seen, though thickness there is none.
The life and soul of things is intention,
Thus, forming network's web as creation.
As spider spits the threads from its essence,
The Central Will spreads all panorama.
The deed is then intention concretised,
Intention is the deed, which judges deed.
God sees not deed but intention hidden,
One's thoughts and feelings deeds evaluate.      Since actions find their roots in life's purpose,
'Tis incumbent on man to regulate
His programmes well fitted with world's design,
Which not performed the house against it sets,--
The house of self and house of social needs.
The people, oneself, Nature, God are four
With whom a conflict every moment breaks.      Alignment lost with people tension breeds,
With one's own layers psychic distress stirs,
With Nature fear from elemental wrath
With God, Almighty, births and deaths result.
With social norms and person's lawful needs,
With contemplation on all Nature's ways,
Union of self with all-pervading Self,
Do sorrows cease, and blessedness is reaped.
The body's food and love's insistent claims
By law restrained in light of world's welfare
Are building bricks to freedom ultimate.
Spirit, management, wealth and labour force
In en rapport do society sustain,

For none is all, and none commands the all.
The person, then, is kept nourished and strong
Through early training learning's lodge provides,
And works and joys that go with household forms
To rise above them, feeding clay with clay,
For taste of distaste things enshrine at heart,
Which rockets up the soul to deathless life.      While pains of life reveal the stuff of things,
The joys are no less blinding dampened smoke.
Since joys and pains attach to mental soul,
Their significance soul in dark accepts.
Whatever's there, be it the right or wrong,
Or joy or grief, when ensouled live awakes,
Assumes a life and stands valid as soul.
It, thus, becomes a need to strip the soul
Of its own forms,--a hard adventure soul's,
For who could peel the soul of its own self,
And all experience soul-filled shines as world.      The thing it knows by sight or touch or sense
The soul enlarges as its realm of love,
The love which's soul's demand for non-self's taste.
How, then, can soul from its own bondage rise
When bondage its created joy remains?
The Yoga way the most subtle they deem,
For Self conquers the Self for Self's release
From bondage Self's, which Self enjoyed as joy;
Bondage binds and for bondage no one seeks;
Delight it is that binds to doom the soul.
Ocean to drink or swallow fire's safe,
The restraint mind's a harder task proclaim.
The gall of life bites not as honey sweet,
The nectar earth's can kill beyond redeem.      Who nothing has can renounce also none,
The king it is that hermit can become;
Who tastes not sting the objects strike on sense
Can scarce be free from unknown impulses
By whose revenge the mind is robbed of sense,
Of memory and clarity and peace
And fickle made to roam as grasshopper,
Destroying health of body and psyche;
Some dream and scream, some haughty proud behave,
Some see defects in everything on earth,
And evil dark, in faces save their own,
Or parade person with authority.
These are the symptoms repressed impulse shows
When holy life is tortured Nature made.
Who tastes renown shall taste it not again
Though sweet it seem in early training days.      Who seeks to know what truth do things enshrine
Would know that Self is dearest all things hold.
All is for Self, and concern for others
Is just the mask of Self's love for itself
In widened fields where itself is others.
The All-Self includes worlds and all others:--
So Master Krishna once revealed Himself
In Kurus' court stunning the eyes of kings.
For peace to make he envoy went alone
To speak in person with Duryodhana.
Yudhishthira, apprehending danger
In single person going unguarded
Did dissuade the Master's bold errand.
"Fear not my life," said Krishna smiling kind,
"Not all the royal hosts can face me roused,
As lives in wild from single lion flee.
If act unlawful they intend to deal
In my own person, thinking me alone,
I wait not war to render justice's claim,
But burn them all relieving earth's burden."
The glorious Lord then marched with retinue
To pompous palace dressed up gay and fine
Which host, the king, Duryodhana, arranged,
In pride of wealth and power haughty crown's,
Which Lord all-seeing saw as vanity
And boast ego's, vainglorious, undivine,
Arrayed to buy the will ambassador's;
And knowing this chose humble hut of poor
Vidura's for his night's rest on the way.      In morn to chagrin king's he rode to hall
And addressed all assembled royal seats
For justice, goodness, commonsense and love
Which ego king's rejected in disdain,
And threat of war discharged to mighty Lord;
Sought, then, to catch and bind, in prison hold,
Undaunted Krishna who majestic stood.
The Lord, then, laughed, which shook the stable earth,
And deep as thunder spoke before the king:
"Seekest thou, fool, to bind Me as a prey,
Thinking alone I stand unbefriended?
Look! All the gods and armies worlds do wield
Are all here, now, in Me enfolded rise."
Then wonderstruck the blessed ones beheld
That Glorious Form which Lord, the Master, showed,
Revealed in Himself as the All-in-All,
The Soul and Self of all creation vast;
All worlds, all gods, and all creation glowed
In that Majesty Krishna's,--All in One.

So also we hear Devi's glorious deeds
In forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,
Indra, Skanda, Nrisimha, Varaha,
Who wrought havoc in army Sumbha sent
In that celestial realm's battle of yore.
But Devi, then, withdrew all forms and shone
As One alone, with none around her seen.
So did Siva as Rudra fearsome stand
Stretching His Form from earth to heaven high
When work nefarious Asvatthama thought
To wreak in camp of forces Pandavas'.
For Lord on high knew all the secrets' core
And poured the worst of dreads on burglar's face,
A Form terrific splitting even mounts
And rocks to splinters with its gruesome mien.
And Krishnas starlike shot up from his frame
And filled all space making non-space the sky.
Narayana and Nara, greatest gods,
Could stun the gorgeous beauty Indra forged
And stultify mightiest powers of war
With single reed or even single sound,
Or even just a thought which shook the earth.
What glory that which Sage Vasishtha wore,
When all the worlds in fear shook and awed
Seeing his rage that outdid all missiles.      To think a vase which all at once contains
Is human feat that mind cannot conceive,
For small is small and large is large extent,
And large and small at one point scarce abide.
But sages sing in Raikva these did meet
The large engulfed and filled the master's frame.
Janasruti, the king, was famed afar
For deeds of gift and goodwill works for men,
And resort firm to world's creative cause
By which he rose from earth's benighted pull
To lofty living free from self-regard.
It chanced one day two hermit flamingoes
Were winging gay across the sky's highway,
Where king reclined on palace-top below,
One summer night for breeze's balming touch
In pleasing moon full blossomed with its rays,
The birds rejoicing in their promenade;
"Look, hark," one warned the one ahead that flew
"Beware, the force of king Janasruti
Here on ground whose glory all does burn,
Take care it scorch not, blinded thou, befooled."
"Scorching the force of king Janasruti"
So back the other kicked a sharp reply.
"Who this on earth thou speakest as a great
As though he were a Raikva with the cart?
Raikva, the master, who does absorb all
The virtues, merits, whoever earned in world.'      Defaming words the king listened with shame,
"O, who this Raikva could be in my realm,
With whom contrasted glory mine does pale;
What good my deeds, what good my prayers here,
When Raikva lives, who all men's virtues owns?"
So wailed the king throughout the night sans sleep
And distress pained his heart and mind and soul.      In morn the bards beat bands and blew trumpets
To wake the royal chief from slumber's pose.
"Hail, monarch, lord, protector and saviour,
King of earth, wake, it's morn the dew drop soothes."
"Why dost thou sing my praise as lord and king
I'm none, for Raikva lives, the king of kings,
With cart as house, his sole belonging's piece.
Go, then, and find where Raikva, Knower, stays,
And bring, beseech, the sage of wisdom's peak,
To whom the host of virtues flow as streams,
Virtues and merits whoever has on earth."      The sergeants rushed in all directions fast,
In towns, cities, they sought the whereabouts
Of Raikva, sage, but found none was so named,
And pleaded none of that name ever lived,
"Do you seek sage in towns, corporations?
Go there where sages may you likely see."
So ordered king and servants went apast
To distant thicks, villages and corners,
To sight a one who with a cart abode.      In far off unknown distance did they find
A queer someone seated under cart
And careless looking mindless who there came.
"Art thou Raikva, couldst thou thy name relate,"
So servants king's with folded hands him prayed.
"Lo, so they say," thus Raikva unconcerned
Remarked at them and silence then maintained.
On hearing news the king with bounteous gifts
Of gold, silver and jewels ran post-haste,
And placing wealth before the mighty sage,
Begged him to teach what he knew and adored.
"Master, this wealth is meagre present brought
With grace accept and bless me with thy science."
"Lo, low-born, quit this place with all thy gold;
Thinkest thou buy with wealth that, wisdom's core ?"
So rude, abrupt, the master king repulsed,
And grieved, the king returned with longing still,
With larger gifts the king with dearest born
In supplication went again humble
To mighty sage who scamplike looked visaged
With scorn on things which mundane wealth they call.      On sight of king with best of earth's present
I The sage beheld the eager heart's yearning,
And spoke Samvarga, Great Absorber Force,
By knowing which one Absorber becomes,
The Self of all, the Atman, Majesty.
Contemplate, then, on Atman's truest form,
Which formless hails as all-pervading Self.
To think the Self is being of the Self
Which omniformed does inwardness absorb.
Absorbs outwardness and locality
Of everything, in every state of life.
To know the Self is non-objective gaze
Of mind's vision in introverted sight,
Which sees not seeing, knows not-knowing things,
And being, is not, void-like plenitude.
The Great Absorber known bestows blessings,
And knower reigns as All-Absorbant God.
Part Five   The soul does try to rise to pristine light
Which light is soul which is the being-all.
But soul that seeks exit for wide domain
Is held in check by chain of restraint's grips
The sight, the sound, the touch and smell and taste
Which order action through the hands and speech
And feet and windows that behold their prey
As well the catch of hunger, thirst and cold
Which hard harass with tightened raging fists;
Lo, even breath that swallows air in gulps,
The mind that loves and reason ego's flame
Do all like hounds threaten to tear the soul
Which ere believed the body as itself.
Much more than house, it was the soul's essence.
So goes the fate of souls that search in vain
For freedom which the body's love abhors.      To tame the wild impulses ego spurts
The pose of friend and goodwill sages teach,
No harshness Nature in its work deserves
For all creation Nature constitutes.
Who can with war the facts of Nature curb
Since all effort enfolded Nature holds
The one who battles with the urging calls
Forgets that these compounded form the man
Who cudgels raises 'gainst his own being.
The wisest way to treat the torment's cause
Is not the crushing deal on one's own skin
But graded feeding for the fast to rise
As satisfaction with the consumed love
To then behold the beauty higher still.
By law-abiding blend of matter-mind
Come home, one's food and love of progeny.
In early years till budding twenty-five
The frame is built by tough austerity.
Then comes the age of forward-pressing youth
Which seeks to run out from its filled-in store
By roaring gush to what it sees outside
As all-gayness and beauty in the world
Of male, female, of beast and plant and stone
To sell itself in loss of itself, which
The dying self as moth in tongues of flame
Feels gain of life and all felicity.
To give wisdom to moth of blinded eyes
Is life prescribed as household discipline.
This grant of lease is for the joy restraint's
And not permit to enter perdition.
The life in house of subject-object tie
Blazes the third which lies between the two
As soul of theirs while both as arms combine
To ignite spark which hidden therein sleeps.      In life ethic's great role intuition plays
As artist brings the scattered pieces whole
To form a living, glorious beauty art's.
Knowledge, perceptual or of concepts
Is meeting ground of subject and object.
The Truth is not the property of one,
Not even of another, or of both,
But transcending both in their union.
Ethics is not mathematics of soul,
Nor love a science of engineering.
The progress soul's is soul-uniting's work,
Not height physical bricks when laid up make.
The greatest souls who live divine morale
May look unwise or unmoral to crowds
Who stand on conventions and frames of steel
Which moral look when unseeing behold.
The inward calls defy outward mandates
When soul within the world of forms enshrines.
The inward truth is not propriety mob's
The soul is not to barter with the shells.
The one that shines surpassing men of earth
Incurs their hatred, for he earth transcends
We honour leaders and our ablest guides
By crucifixion or an unkind cut.
So is the way the world has worshipped saints And paid its debts to service they rendered.
The heroes who are sincere honestly
Make fools of themselves in the eyes of men.
Nonconformists did build this art of life,
Not moral masons who the stones well count.
Man is a soul and not machine or tool
Which do's and don'ts can handle as a spade.
Personal problems are not general terms
Which moral worth decide by plebiscite.
Life, love and suffering are not earth's formals
But rise from deeps that lie afar from time.
Each situation is a unique field
And does not stand comparison with mass.
No lowly work or toilsome drudgery
Or vilest passion can obstruct the soul
When motive Spirit's is its driving spring.
Transcendence stressed to excess Godly life's
Lends disrespect to immanence of God
In austerity harsh to mind and soul
Dwelling in form though wrongly arrested;
While utter sink in what is visible
Destroys Spirit for sake of body's shape.
The profane and religious exist not,
For that which stands fitted to cosmic whole
Is holy and religious adored.
What struts about as independent stuff
Is what is dark and profane, evil called.
Varna and Ashrama, the systems framed,
Collaboration in one's outward life,
And progressive rise from matter to Self,
Sum up the rule of life in all levels.      The budding and the grown virility
In lads and lasses sprung in freshness morn's
While seeking goals for which it does abound

Is anabolic, till its goal it finds.
Marriage is kin with ruling politic,
Since sans a system that restrains the greed
And impulsed passion of the stuff of man
The end-result would be the death of all.
Thus rules arise and laws societies make
For tantrum's sake and local custom's norm
On urges based that strong erupt in climes.
The local rules engendered by the hordes
Relate to stages and degrees of love
Which marks the cultures world-history proves.
Criminal laws that countries frame for them
Do indicate the height of culture reached.
Some kill the killer, some in hate exile;
Some close in bars. some flog the helpless frame,
Or maim the limbs in legal wrath unleashed.
Who on this earth is faultless rid from guilt
That stone can throw on kindred heart's struggles
To freedom gain which soul in all does seek.
There is so much good in the worst of us.
And so much dirt in those the best of us,
That it does ill behove any of us
To cast aspersions on the rest of us.
Which act is there which one day well approved
Was not on other sorely got condemned?   The rise of morals has precarious roots,
When seen with eyes of sharp circumspection.
Time's waves when rise do not as notions float
But hardened rock reveal themselves as earth;
As water, fire and air and solid things,
As persons, beasts and plants and trees awake,
Does time exist as objects senses seek,
Or does it pass as concepts' abstractions?
The secret people call as Nature's ways
Is hidden in the core of thinking's forms.
The ego's substance wild as tempest grown
Is vibration that holds to points in space.
Which are the sources fit for shunning here
If achievement from its opposite starts?
To overthrow one has to exalt first,
To take one has to give and then begin,
To weaken forces first do strengthen them.
It is the king who can renounce the all
For all he sees before he all rejects.
The world is not a prison house to flee,
The field of one's own body is the world.
Who can beyond the body up arise
Can also rise above the world of things.
The whole of earth and heaven woven stand
In this tabernacle where one is lodged.
To heaven grasp the earth is not to fly
For heaven itself grossened is the world.
The world of forms gets rarefied above
In graduated transparency's shades
And shines itself as heaven's glorious bliss.
Who art thou then to have the one on hand
And cast away others as undivine.
The soul and body are as light and shade,
Where one abides the other too resides.
The 'this' is also 'that' and 'that' is 'this',
The 'this' and 'that' are not two opposites
But stand as one with twofold phase perceived,
What is affirmed carries its other too,
No one can bend unless he stood erect,
But standing firm is not to bend below.
The vacant one is also full to brim
And what is full looks as non-existent.
Non-action is not keeping quiet lone,
But total act which holds creation's grip
In total thought wherein the One alone
Does think and act as single being's throb.
Avoiding things is tension's secret heart
For none avoids what clings to what one seeks.
To be a god is not to just be good,
But grapple good with what it hates as foe
To turn the two as strands of spirit's rope
By which to rise to height of perfection,
Hate not, love not, but be spontaneous
As supple child of inborn innocence.
When hungry eat, when tired sleep and rest.
When gay do walk, with friend be loving friend.
To lower oneself is a sign of strength.
To search for Truth indeed is mystery
As riding horse to find where horse has strayed.   Imbalance breeds the wars of history
Which reshuffle the components of life
And put them in their proper positions.
The Veda hymns, the ancient divine lore,
Beheld the One in all the varieties
In sun and moon, in stars and sky above,
In morning's smile and evening's sinking look;
In rain and thunder, lightning and the storm,
In day and night, in wind and earth below,
In fire here which warms the hearth of homes
And blazes hot in noon-meridian.
It was the eye which wholesome saw the soul
As living life in movement and statis.
The Veda's god was not in temples or symbols
But spoke the daily language Nature knows;
The God was all, and everywhere his eyes
With caution see the minutest of grains,
The world ensemble twain divided though.      Truth, then, succeeds, but what is truth to man?
The meting justice is a form of truth,
Which is the due that each one claims as right.
But, what is due except what keeps alive
The frame of web which all environment is,
The two, the all, the world and universe?
And speech and thought and act which correspond
To actual facts as events in the world
Are truth perception's on which conduct rests.      Yet, facts of world are set relatively
To contexts housing individuals.
Truth eternal, then, is not of this world
Though in this world as soul of things abides.
The social good, perception's fact are both
Dependent on the timeless truth of truths,
Which speech defies and thought confounds by awe,
And ranges high as Self of space and time.
The needs of life are Lakshmi, Glory God's,
And needs are neither loathe nor indulgence
But force of balance God inviting in
By life that loves not, hates not things of life,
Which is to live in things, not see them there
As objects senses' or of mind's concepts.      Those not blessed but pressed by fiery loves
Or hatreds reap varying fates at death.
The grossly craving physical realms' delights
On death are born in regions mind directs,
To joy or grief as impulse gravitates.
The thought at death is cream of life's regime
As butter churned from milk of career
Which whole of life's desires constitutes.
The thought at end is fruit of tree of life,
Not one of links in chain of myriad thoughts.
The whole of soul is wrung out from the world
And total mass wrenched out to distance flees.
Here what you thought and what you felt or did
Will blossom forth as future destiny.
Suddenly deaths of even babes from womb
Are forms of action intense earlier done,
For birth and deaths are chains continuous,
With causes endless back of every breath.      To hell the worst do go that tortured lives;
To earth return the greedy longing souls;
To heav'n ascend the good and virtuous ones
But come hither when virtue's forces dry,
To live again the life of drudgery
On plane of earth which Karma's land they call.
On death the henchmen lord of justice sends
Escort the soul to universal judge,
The dread Yama who sans relent decides
The consequence of each one's acts and thoughts.
As flies and gnats or beasts that roam in wild,
As birds and wolves or such subhuman shapes
The wretched lives of brutish souls enter
On death that wrings the last of farthings due;
Lo, man, beware, the sword of law has eyes.
On reaching throne of lord of justice hence
The soul queried does fumble memory lost.
When rod of justice comes on head in court,
The soul remembers, pleads guilty and sobs.
But justice cares not rheum from the eyes
And sentenced goes the soul to reap its deeds.
The works of gift and sacrifices made
In name of discarnated soul that wails
Do great assist in cleansing well its sins;
Else each for oneself left alone with deeds
Is shocked with strictness laws there operate.
When freed of debts by Karma's rigoured tolls
To Rudra's light the soul is lifted high,
From whence to Brahma's realm eternal passed.      The greatest blest to solar brilliance go
By stages led by great divines does reach
The hallowed region Brahmaloka called,
But greater still are those who melt down here
And now in sea of heart of Absolute;
Such blessing rare indeed is gained by souls
Attained when tuned to every atom's core
In all the cosmos; who can reach that state?
Who speak with leaves, with stones who do converse,
Who streams befriend, who sun and moon indwell,
Who touch the stars, who wear the skies as clothes,
Who move with air, whose mind is world's purpose,
Whose soul is centred in the universe,
'Tis they alone, who Brahma's Light attain.      How hard this thought, how toilsome this practice,
Since men, women and things do no more count,
And no one's deed is more than frolic's fun,
In this a dread reverberating field
Of living, throbbing universal sea!
Despondency in this, the path, has none,
Since sincere asking world's abundance brings
And austere thoughts heaven's perfection rain.
Did not the Lord as parent kind assure
That those who love and feel Him as the all
Shall He protect and them provide with means?
All wealth and blessing went with Kuchela,
The ill clad, famished, when the Lord him owned.
Whom Brahma loves the sands and stars embrace
In firmness love's, and all creation melts
To bathe him in immortal nectar sweet.