Opening Remarks
The realms that climb beyond the human mind are also arranged hierarchically in a series of three. They are notably the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind. Beyond is the Overmind region which is the borderline between the lower and the higher hemisphere.
Immense ascent
A triple realm of ordered thought came first,
A small beginning of immense ascent:
Above were bright ethereal skies of mind,
A packed and endless soar as if sky pressed sky
Buttressed against the Void on bastioned light;
The highest strove to neighbour eternity,
The largest widened into the infinite.
An immense ascent starts here climbing through bright and luminous ethereal skies of mind. These are realms of ordered thought expressed with clarity of sight. Its highest peaks strive to reach eternity. Its widest thought stretches into the infinite.
The first realms
But though immortal, mighty and divine,
The first realms were close and kin to human mind;
Their deities shape our greater thinking’s roads,
A fragment of their puissance can be ours:
These breadths were not too broad for our souls to range,
These heights were not too high for human hope.
These steps of ascension take us to the doors of the Divine. Already one can feel here something of the Divine atmosphere and light. The gods of these worlds are luminous immortals and mighty ones that shape our thoughts. The first steps of this great ascension is close to human thought and it is relatively easier to share something of their puissance. Our souls can scale these heights and their width and scope without much difficulty. .
Triple flight
A triple flight led to this triple world.
Three major steps lead to this triple world.
On a slant not too steep
Although abrupt for common strengths to tread,
Its upward slope looks down on our earth-poise:
On a slant not too precipitously steep
One could turn back travelling deep descending lines
To commune with the mortal’s universe.
The first steps of this ascending slope are abrupt for human strength to tread and yet they are not too steep to lose all links with the human world.
Thought’s immensities
The mighty wardens of the ascending stair
Who intercede with the all-creating Word,
There waited for the pilgrim heaven-bound soul;
Holding the thousand keys of the Beyond
They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind
And filled the life with Thought’s immensities.
The mighty guardians of the ascending stair serve as intermediaries between the human mind and the Creatrix Consciousness. They wait for the pilgrim soul and offer to it keys to one of the thousand doors to the Beyond. Offering their knowledge to the climbing mind they fill our life with vast thoughts.
Closing Remarks
We have here a fist glimpse into this great ascension through which Sri Aurobindo will take us to the doors of the Highest Knowledge.
