Aswapati crosses beyond
the limits of the human mind into the regions of a vaster transcending Thought.
This higher Thought is
allied to a Vision facing the Spirit Eternal. On these peaks are seen the
glories of the Ideal Mind.
This Ideal Mind is the
source and inspirer of all the great hopes and movements on earth. It is the bridge
between man and God. In this world dwell the Gods who are the forms taken by
the truths of the Spirit. Here are the Truth-Ideas that prefigure creation below.
Their light and influence touches the human world and moves it to greater
effort. The source of human faith in progress and perfection lies here.
Man is not an alien to
these regions; he belongs to them on his heights. In his condition of Ignorance
he is exiled from there but his thought carries memories of this origin and, in
moments if rare communion, is enlivened by its light and force. Yet human will
and sense act as barriers to this flow of greatness from above. The soul of
man, however, can climb to these luminous planes.
Aswapati enters into
this realm and sees the pure worlds of Thought where Knowledge is the leader
and thought the substance, where feeling responds readily to the Call of Truth,
where form is a self-shaping of the creative Ray, will, a conscious vehicle of
the Gods.
Here life is brimming
with scintillations of Consciousness.
Joy and Bliss are
natural here.
Farther off on the
higher levels of Thought he espies newer heights where Time touches the
horizons of Eternity and Nature communes with the Spirit.
The ascent is through a
triple realm of Thought.
The first levels are
close and similar to human mind—they are neither too high nor too broad for human
effort. The guardians of this world intercede with the creative Puissance above
and cast the immensities of Thought into life. They are the interpreters between
man's mind and God's. They are masters of World-Time, enjoyers of World-Bliss;
they form Matter by the hidden stress of Mind; they measure out World-Space.
They give finite shape to infinite things, Form to the Formless. But they
impose a law on every movement and turn every step into a link of the chain of
Necessity. They deprive Idea of its plastic infinity and make it fit in into a
worked out design. The knowledge they erect is bounded and perishable. They seek
to tie down the fire and spontaneous movement of the One into determined time,
space and law.
Above this belt opens
another range. The beings here have a wider sight and shine with the light of a
liberating Knowledge within. Their forte is vision, not conception. They
penetrate into the occult mind of the creative Power and formulate their
discoveries in terms of symbol, design of line and number and cosmic Law. But
they try to structure the free rhythms of the infinite Consciousness into the
logic of the finite thought. And in doing so, they construct a calculus of Destiny
to measure the immeasurable. As a result they are lost in detail and miss the
Whole. The Unknowable retains its secrecy from them.
Still higher are the
kings of Thought whose all seeing gaze embraces Time and Space. They hold and transmit
to earth and heaven the imperative of the creator Self. Theirs is an all-ruling
Consciousness.
The cosmos is indeed no
accident in Time. It is guided and led by a Truth-Wisdom. The seed of creation sprouts
from the Being of the Eternal and is shaped into birth and growth by the
creative gaze of the Absolute. There is a secret power in things compelling the
concealed Godhead to emerge. Even Nature's ignorance is Truth's instrument. The
Supreme Will works in the guise of destiny and the mortal grows towards the
Immortal. The truth of the Spirit, however, is hidden and it reveals itself
only to the inner eye bereft of ego.
This fact escapes human
thinking which seeks for a rule where a free Wisdom works, which alternates between
Chance and Law as the truth of life.
The Kings of Thought
attempt to grasp with thought the Truth absolute, to capture Reality in the abstractions
of the conceptual Mind. They eliminate sense, form, sound and make a vacuum to
hold the One. They arrive at an austere negation as the meaning of all, a zero
as the finis.
Such is the play of the
gods of Thought trying to snare Truth into concept and phrase for the
delectation of the thinker. Truth is sought to be imprisoned in the cabin of
the human mind and made an instrument for man's domination of the world.
However, in response to
all these seekings from below, the Truth-Goddess appears to yield herself somewhat
and consents to dwell on earth and install her presence in the human breast.
Man gives her a shape according to his own mind and self, clothes her in the
Idea. Each one thinks his is the sole truth. .
The fact remains that
the eternal Truth cannot be seized by thought or by word. The world itself
lives in the ray of this Truth-Sun which cannot be imprisoned within the walls
of the thought of man. However high the thought, it is still inadequate.
Thought has to yield to Vision and surrender to the supreme Truth. Only then
will the Unmanifest reflect himself in the living glass of the still mind.