Opening Remarks
Aswapati has glimpsed this world of Bliss that is behind and beyond our sphere of sorrow. But now he seeks to enter into it and explore the possibility of bringing it down here upon Earth. But there seems to be no entry for this world of matter into this greater and delightful world. No bridge exists between Earth and the Beyond. A rare individual souls can glimpse it in rare moments of Grace but the doors of humanity as a whole are closed to this greater possibility.
No bridge across the gulf
This world of bliss he saw and felt its call,
But found no way to enter into its joy;
Across the conscious gulf there was no bridge.
Aswapati has glimpsed this greater world of Delight from near and afar. But he also discovers that it is not possible to enter these worlds while still in the material body. Man can experience only its degraded and distorted reflections as pleasure and pain and not the pure joy of that divine and beautiful atmosphere that Aswapati has experienced there.
A darker air
A darker air encircled still his soul
Tied to an image of unquiet life.
The psychological atmosphere of earth is too densely packed with darkness. The soul in man is too much bound to the restless agitation and a feverish dissatisfaction to be able to even breath that diviner air.
The shadow of earth-pain
In spite of yearning mind and longing sense,
To a sad Thought by grey experience formed
And a vision dimmed by care and sorrow and sleep
All this seemed only a bright desirable dream
Conceived in a longing distance by the heart
Of one who walks in the shadow of earth-pain.
Though the earth and humanity yearns for this Bliss and longs for the beauty and love it has lost, yet it all but seems a dream denied by the harsh and sad reality of sorrow and suffering which our life experiences here,
Entrances of the Night
Although he once had felt the Eternal’s clasp,
Too near to suffering worlds his nature lived,
And where he stood were entrances of Night.
Aswapati now experiences a double consciousness within himself,- one beautiful and luminous and blissful and free and the other, bound to the darkness of suffering humanity. In profound compassion he leans towards our struggling human race that is surrounded by the thick night of Ignorance and error and pain.
The mould of earthly life
Hardly, too close beset by the world’s care,
Can the dense mould in which we have been made
Return sheer joy to joy, pure light to light.
The psychological and physical mould of earthly life is such that is constantly besieged with care and suffering. It is not yet ready or capable of climbing from joy to greater joy, from light to greater light.
A dire duality
For its tormented will to think and live
First to a mingled pain and pleasure woke
And still it keeps the habit of its birth:
A dire duality is our way to be.
An inner aspiration for Truth and Beauty and Light and Love struggling against the dualities of the world, swinging ever between sorrow and joy, error and knowledge, light and darkness is presently our way to be.
Closing Remarks
Thus we live a divided existence here, upon earth where the harsh external; ‘realities’ constantly contradict the deeper inner ‘truths’ of our being.
