Opening Remarks
There is an inner divining sense that felt the presence of a Being who is the ultimate Source, the supreme Mystery. Aswapati is about to enter this secret sanctuary.
Ineffable’s timeless call
A silence settled on his striving heart;
Absolved from the voices of the world’s desire,
He turned to the Ineffable’s timeless call.
The heart and the desire-self of Aswapati have fallen into a state of complete silence. He is now ready to hear and heed the call of the Unknown Ineffable.
A Being intimate and unnameable
A Being intimate and unnameable,
A wide compelling ecstasy and peace
Felt in himself and all and yet ungrasped,
Approached and faded from his soul’s pursuit
As if for ever luring him beyond.
Aswapati feels the presence of the supreme Being who exceeds all names and forms and yet is intimate to him. His Presence is experienced as an ungrasped and wide ecstasy and peace that he feels within. It drew close and then faded again as if calling him forever further and further into the beyond.
Near and far
Near, it retreated; far, it called him still.
Nothing could satisfy but its delight:
Its absence left the greatest actions dull,
Its presence made the smallest seem divine.
It was near and yet far calling him further and further. Once felt nothing else could satisfy but its delight. Its absence made the greatest actions dull and meaningless. Its presence made even the smallest of things seem divine. What is being revealed to us is that it is the Divine Presence that gives value to life and to everything else. Without this wonderful Presence all would be dull and insipid if at all anything would be! It is only as we become conscious of this Presence that life grows beautiful and everything, even the most trivial of all, begins to assume a truer and diviner significance.
Lost Aim
When it was there, the heart’s abyss was filled;
But when the uplifting Deity withdrew,
Existence lost its aim in the Inane.
Without It existence itself lost its aim, yet when it was there the deepest empty spaces of the heart, the abysses of creation were filled. It is this Presence that gives life its aim and purpose which is to find and to manifest IT in and through all we do.
Props for an impermanent scene
The order of the immemorial planes,
The godlike fullness of the instruments
Were turned to props for an impermanent scene.
All things great and wonderful, the entire ladder of creation and the godlike fullness of instruments seemed like props supporting an impermanent scene. They are merely rungs of a ladder that climbed towards THAT Glory and Wonder.
Unknown mightiness
But who that mightiness was he knew not yet.
Yet that mightiness remained unknown.
Impalpable yet filling
Impalpable, yet filling all that is,
It made and blotted out a million worlds
And took and lost a thousand shapes and names.
Though impalpable, it filled all things. It made and unmade a million worlds and took and lost a thousand names. It filled all things and thereby seemed to be conditioned by His own Creation. It became all things though in Itself It was without Name and Form as the secret essence of all.
Indiscernible vast
It wore the guise of an indiscernible Vast,
Or was a subtle kernel in the soul:
A distant greatness left it huge and dim,
A mystic closeness shut it sweetly in:
It seemed sometimes a figment or a robe
And seemed sometimes his own colossal shade.
It hid in the guise of an indiscernible Vast or a subtle core and essence in the soul. It was a distant greatness, huge and beyond perception. Yet it was also a mystic closeness shut within each element of creation. It seemed a robe that was ever expanding beyond limits or sometimes as if his own colossal shade. In other words it is the Divine Presence that has become all things, from the distant to the near, from the vast fields to the smallest atoms, from the brightest luminous worlds to the worlds of shadow and darkness, it is He who has become all. It is He who dwells in the soul of man and it is He who hides in the ignorant fields of nature.
Closing Remarks
This is how Aswapati at first felt and experienced the Supreme Being that is behind and within and near and afar, beyond all percept and concept and yet intimate to all things as their very essence and core.
