B1C3 Passage-by-Passage Summary Posting 02
Opening Remarks
Aswapati is the representative of the Divine upon earth. He is the eternal Avatara in man who has come to carry the evolutionary march forward as its leader. He is the soul of humanity lighting the aspiration in man higher and higher. What the Avatara does for humanity, the psychic being does for the individual. It leads man from birth to birth, through the doors of death, in numberless names and forms until man the individual grows into an image true of God. Aswapati himself has traced this journey through many lives until he has become the center of the Divine Descent.
This bodily appearance is not all
This bodily appearance is not all;
The form deceives, the person is a mask;
Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell.
Man is not just a body alone, nor is he just the mental personality. Hidden deep within him is his true self, the soul, that holds within itself the knowledge and power of the Divine as a seed holds within itself a tree.
An incognito of the imperishable
His fragile ship conveys through the sea of years
An incognito of the Imperishable.
Behind the outer personality, covered by figure and form of the external man, there dwells the nameless divine essence that never perishes. The body is the fragile ship that the soul uses for its experience as it moves through spaces of Time.
A fiery portion of the Wonderful
A spirit that is a flame of God abides,
A fiery portion of the Wonderful,
Artist of his own beauty and delight,
Immortal in our mortal poverty.
Rich with divine qualities, the soul is the immortal, imperishable element in us. It is self-luminous, a creator and lover and seeker of Beauty and Truth and Delight.
Sculptor of the forms of the Infinite
This sculptor of the forms of the Infinite,
This screened unrecognised Inhabitant,
Initiate of his own veiled mysteries,
Hides in a small dumb seed his cosmic thought.
In our ignorance we believe the soul to be a by-product of the body and brain. When wisdom dawns we discover that it is the soul that puts forth its energies which the cosmic forces use to create a body and a living personality for the experience needed by the soul for its own growth.
Passenger from life to life
In the mute strength of the occult Idea
Determining predestined shape and act,
Passenger from life to life, from scale to scale,
Changing his imaged self from form to form,
He regards the icon growing by his gaze
And in the worm foresees the coming god.
The soul carries within itself the script of Destiny. It bears the occult Truth that determines the future through pre-determined steps of Nature. Moving from life to life, it gathers strength and grows into that aspect of the Divine it is meant to represent. Its initial worm-like crawl ends in a heavenward flight.
Traveller in the paths of Time
At last the traveller in the paths of Time
Arrives on the frontiers of eternity.
The soul is a portion of the Eternal and as it grows from life to life it reaches a point where it becomes conscious of the Eternal Source from which it has emerged.
Substance of undying self
In the transient symbol of humanity draped,
He feels his substance of undying self
And loses his kinship to mortality.
The substance of the soul is not subject to decay or disintegration. When we discover our soul, we become conscious of our immortality and see our human body and personality as simply a changing robe for the deathless soul.
Closing Remarks
This marks one phase of the soul-development. We become conscious of our soul. Identified with our soul we do not make the mistake of thinking of ourselves as a body or a moment’s personality.
