In response to his cry Aswapati felt a great presence
"a boundless Heart was near his longing heart," and he felt a great
exaltation and delight overpowering his members. Even the physical being was
thrilled by the influence of the Presence. He saw in that state a face,
flame-pure, with a large forehead and eyelids that indicated wisdom, and lips
that spoke immortal words. It spoke to Aswapati
What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more. ...
My fire and sweetness are the cause of life.
but
Awake not the immeasurable descent,
Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;
Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight.
It asked Aswapati to leave the divine Power to work in
its own way towards the fulfilment of man and his destiny. And it told him
I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame
In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss.
It commanded him not to be "lost in the
Alone." It asked him—
How shall thy mighty spirit brook repose
While Death is still unconquered on the earth
And Time a field of suffering and pain?
It asked him to live for "the slow-paced
omniscient purpose." It urged him to "accept the difficulty and
godlike toil." For, the solution of the riddle lies in the human being.
Though man is a product of the higher consciousness descended on earth still he
has not yet adequate power to change the whole cosmos and nature. Being subject
to darkness, he is
A nomad of the far mysterious Life,
In the wide ways a little spark of God.
In his present state in the world man is subjected to
darkness and opposed by hostile forces. He is subject to the law of division
and duality on which he depends for his working and progress. He cannot at
present attain to knowledge, he can only fabricate "signs of the Real in
Ignorance." He asks for freedom but needs to live in bondage, "he has
need of darkness to perceive some light." In his life, he actually obeys
the Inconscient which he has come to rule. His mind, his life and all his other
natural instruments are not capable of attaining the highest spiritual
knowledge and perfection because of their inherent defects. And, yet, in man's
imperfect state there is a godhead struggling. And the real leader of the
course of human evolution is God himself behind the apparent veil of ignorance.
Therefore, we need not despair of man.
His failure is not failure whom God leads...
And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?
In spite of the resistance of the flesh, the vital and
the mind, the Light ultimately leads man and he is able to look up to, or have
a vision of superhuman peaks.
A borrower of Supernature's gold,
He paves his road to Immortality.
This way to the supreme is to be attained through man's
worship of high ideals in his life, which prepares him for the Highest. There
is the ideal of love, of beauty, of goodness, of intellectual knowledge. There
is also the promising fact of inspiration and intuition coming down into his
consciousness. The higher divine Power told Aswapati
Leave not the light to die the ages bore,
Help still humanity's blind and suffering life...
Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.
Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;
Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.
Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;
To its omnipotence leave thy work's result.
All things shall change in God's transfiguring
hour.
Aswapati replied
How shall I rest content with mortal days...
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?
How long, he said, was the human spirit to suffer the
pangs of ignorance and death,
We who are vessels of a deathless Force
And builders of the godhead of the race?
How long are we to suffer the pangs of human ignorance?
And if I am to do thy work in the world, if I am to work in these conditions of
immensity of darkness, how is it that I do not see thy gleam in the midst of
the darkness? Time passes, changes take place, man thinks he progresses but
still nothing really gets done.
Where in the greyness is thy coming's ray?
Where is the thunder of thy victory's wings?
For, as yet,
All we have done is ever still to do.
The new-born ages perish like the old.
Thus in the midst of darkness our human struggle goes
on and
Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive.
In anguish we labour that from us may rise
A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth.
The pace and the movement of the Infinite is slow. And
All life is fixed in an ascending scale
And adamantine is the evolving Law.
Therefore Aswapati's heart became impatient because he
was also feeling that man as he is today, "this compromise between the
beast and God,—is not the crown of thy miraculous world." In this movement
of intense aspiration he saw from the Timeless the works of Time, even those
that were to come in future. He saw a giant destructive dance of Shiva and
great cataclysm overtaking the world. And the whole earth was full of fire and
death. The battle cry raged over the whole earth and there was alarm and fear
everywhere. And in that great state of destruction, Aswapati said,
I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of the Divine multitude...
The architects of immortality.
Having seen those divine beings come to the fallen
human spheres he felt that they were quite a different race of men from those
that lived before them. In spite of this help that came down in the form of
higher beings that incarnate themselves upon earth, still, the burden is too
heavy
Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world...
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man's soul.
Therefore, in the highest intensity of his aspiration,
he appealed to the divine Mother Savitri thus:
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find...
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
He appealed to her to unlock the doors of Fate by one
great act, and he heard in reply
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power.
She promised the descent of a limitless mind, "a
sweet and violent heart of ardent calms" moved by the passion of the gods,
embodying all mights and greatnesses She said
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth...
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.
Slowly, the splendour vanished. Only the echo of the
message in the form of delight in his heart remained. The music was slowly
hushed and the spirit of Aswapati heard the moan and laugh of the earth which
"came gliding in upon white feet of sound." Then the Absolute's
stillness into which he had risen surrendered itself to the mortal air and he
slowly collapsed into his waking state of human mind. Slowly he regained his
familiarity with the material world and resumed his labours towards the
spiritual perfection of man which he knew was his destiny.
The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds
In the scant field of the ambiguous globe.