Opening Remarks
Paradise is a plane of consciousness, a world where pleasure and joy have been sublimated to a godlike level. There are all things are beautiful and glad and free unstained by the touch of grief and tears.
Griefless streams
Immune the unfettered Spirit of Delight
Pastured his gleaming sun-herds and moon-flocks
Along the lyric speed of griefless streams
In fragrance of the unearthly asphodel.
Immune from assaults and attacks of hell and pain and grief, the children of the sun and the moon, the godheads and energies born from the higher worlds, roam and play freely in the unearthly garden of asphodel and the griefless streams of a pure life.
Sob of rapture
A silence of felicity wrapped the heavens,
A careless radiance smiled upon the heights;
A murmur of inarticulate ravishment
Trembled in the winds and touched the enchanted soil;
Incessant in the arms of ecstasy
Repeating its sweet involuntary note
A sob of rapture flowed along the hours.
A silence pregnant with joy surrounded this heaven. It was luminous with the radiance from the heights smiling upon their life. The winds ravished the enchanted soil. Each moment was a rapture in the arms of ecstasy sobbing with spontaneous notes of a sweet joy.
Scenes of an immortal joy
Advancing under an arch of glory and peace,
Traveller on plateau and on musing ridge,
As one who sees in the World-Magician’s glass
A miracled imagery of soul-scapes flee
He traversed scenes of an immortal joy
And gazed into abysms of beauty and bliss.
Glory and peace arched over the traveller as he moved on musing ridges and miracled groves projected from the soul in the World-magician’s glass. Scenes and images of immortal joy filled the spaces as he explored this wonderland of beauty and bliss.
Dreaming cities
Around him was a light of conscious suns
And a brooding gladness of great symbol things;
To meet him crowded plains of brilliant calm,
Mountains and violet valleys of the Blest,
Deep glens of joy and crooning waterfalls
And woods of quivering purple solitude;
Below him lay like gleaming jewelled thoughts
Rapt dreaming cities of Gandharva kings.
Calm plains radiant with conscious suns and filled with symbolic things surrounded him as he moved through mountains and valleys blessed by the Lord. There were deep valleys of joy and crooning waterfalls and woods of royal solitude. Below this high realm at the apex of the Vital worlds he saw the mid-world splendours of the dreaming cities of Gandharva kings.
Dim and happy music
Across the vibrant secrecies of Space
A dim and happy music sweetly stole,
Smitten by unseen hands he heard heart-close
The harps’ cry of the heavenly minstrels pass,
And voices of unearthly melody
Chanted the glory of eternal love
In the white-blue-moonbeam air of Paradise.
Across the secrecies of space there sweetly stole a dim and happy music smitten by unseen hands. His heart felt the unearthly melodies intimately close as the harps of heavenly minstrels passed chanting the glory of eternal love in the white-blue moonbeam air of Paradise.
Closing Remarks
We have here a vivid and remarkable description of the heavens of the vital worlds described in a number of religions as some highest state of felicity. But as we shall see it is just one more step in the great ascension of the soul.
