Opening Remarks
As the worlds of Life draw near to his soul, Aswapati takes a close and comprehensive look at them.
The heights and nether deeps
At once caught in an eternal vision’s sweep
He saw her pride and splendour of highborn zones
And her regions crouching in the nether deeps.
In a single sweep of eternal vision that sees all things from their origin right up to their culmination, Aswapati sees the high worlds of Life with royalty and splendor as also the nether fallen worlds where Life becomes an instrument of Death.
The Monarchy of Life
Above was a monarchy of unfallen self,
Beneath was the gloomy trance of the abyss,
An opposite pole or dim antipodes.
Above, in the higher realms were the great Gods of Life wearing the stamp of divine royalty. They were still in conscious contact with the Oneness of Self. But below they revealed the picture of a gloom and unconsciousness at the opposite pole of Existence.
Vasts of Glory
There were vasts of the glory of life’s absolutes:
All laughed in a safe immortality
And an eternal childhood of the soul
Before darkness came and pain and grief were born
Where all could dare to be themselves and one
And Wisdom played in sinless innocence
With naked Freedom in Truth’s happy sun.
There were worlds where grief and pain and darkness were not. There were worlds where Wisdom dwelt undistorted by mind’s dualities and oneness played with difference. There were worlds where truth and Freedom lived together in a happy and harmonious embrace and nothing had to be hid or covered from the soul-sight. All was happy and free and conscious of its immortality.
Taste of toil and tears
There were worlds of her laughter and dreadful irony,
There were fields of her taste of toil and strife and tears;
Her head lay on the breast of amorous Death,
Sleep imitated awhile extinction’s peace.
Yet were there also worlds where laughter was a dreadful irony and strife and pain was the way of life. Here Life walked hand in hand with Death as a bosom friend and sleep and unconsciousness were regarded as Peace imitating the extinction of the will-to-be.
The savour of opposites
The light of God she has parted from his dark
To test the savour of bare opposites.
What was and is originally One has been parted into the play of dualities by the force of Life to taste the joy of opposites.
Cosmos-chaos of personality
Here mingling in man’s heart their tones and hues
Have woven his being’s mutable design,
His life a forward-rippling stream in Time,
His nature’s constant fixed mobility,
His soul a moving picture’s changeful film,
His cosmos-chaos of personality.
A vast range of possibilities and experiences opens in the human heart as the force of life pours into it. Ever changing and yet ever seemingly the same it creates in us the illusion of a personality with many contradictory sides, a disorderly-order so to say.
The passion-play of Life
The grand creatrix with her cryptic touch
Has turned to pathos and power being’s self-dream,
Made a passion-play of its fathomless mystery.
Thus has been woven the texture of our lives with the savour of opposites, of light and shade, of pathos and joy, giving us the sense of a unfathomable mystery.
Closing Remarks
A mutual contradiction seems to be the way of life here due to the mingling of opposites. But in her highest worlds there is perfect harmony and freedom in her rhythms.
