Let us quickly run through the opening Canto of Paradiso in Dante’s Divina Commedia:

 

His glory, by whose might all things are mov’d,

Pierces the universe, and in one part

Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less. In heav’n,

That largeliest of his light partakes, was I,

Witness of things…

 

Benign Apollo! this last labour aid,

And make me such a vessel of thy worth,

As thy own laurel claims of me belov’d. …

 

I saw Beatrice turn’d, and on the sun

Gazing, as never eagle fix’d his ken.

As from the first a second beam is wont

To issue, and reflected upwards rise,

E’en as a pilgrim bent on his return,

So of her act, that through the eyesight pass’d

Into my fancy, mine was form’d; and straight,

Beyond our mortal wont, I fix’d mine eyes

Upon the sun. Much is allowed us there,

That here exceeds our pow’r; thanks to the place

Made for the dwelling of the human kind…

 

Her eyes fast fix’d on the eternal wheels,

Beatrice stood unmov’d; and I with ken

Fix’d upon her, from upward gaze remov’d

At her aspect, such inwardly became …

Words may not tell of that transhuman change …

 

Whence she who saw me, clearly as myself,

To calm my troubled mind, before I ask’d,

Open’d her lips, and gracious thus began:

“With false imagination thou thyself

Mak’st dull, so that thou seest not the thing,

Which thou hadst seen, had that been shaken off.

Thou art not on the earth as thou believ’st;

For light’ning scap’d from its own proper place

Ne’er ran, as thou hast hither now return’d.”

 

So said, she turn’d toward the heav’n her face.

 

Dante’s description of Paradiso has extraordinary sublimity, epic as well as lyrical. But it is more psychic-religious than mystico-spiritual. Even in translation we can savour something of it, as in the following:

 

Beyond our mortal wont, I fix’d mine eyes

Upon the sun. Much is allowed us there,

That here exceeds our pow’r; thanks to the place

Made for the dwelling of the human kind…

 

I saw Beatrice turn’d, and on the sun

Gazing, as never eagle fix’d his ken.

This could also be “an interesting way to parse the inner experiences of the poet and a survey of comparative topographies of experiences proper to both psychic-religious and mystico-spiritual” and could be welcome. However, with a tinge of metaphysics in assessing Dante one could say that he was the first in the Occidental literature to bring in the notion of "transhuman" in the presentation. The difference in ancient India and the Greek classics vis-à-vis Dante is this: with Dante the psychic element has come out very prominently in the Western works. That is also perhaps the difference between the classical languages, including Sanskrit, and the vernaculars that came afterwards. Isn't that true also in arts? The psychic, the contribution of Christ,—that's it. Love in life! How wondrous! Coming back to “transhuman”:

 

Her eyes fast fix’d on the eternal wheels,

Beatrice stood unmov’d; and I with ken

Fix’d upon her, from upward gaze remov’d

At her aspect, such inwardly became …

Words may not tell of that transhuman change …

 

Dante uses the term of "transhuman" and to the extent to which Beatrice herself is informed spiritually, informed in relationship to a divine feminine Great. Dante at the vision of Beatrice undergoes an enormous inward change, a “transhuman change” which words fail to convey. He fixed his eyes on the sun, as much is allowed there, that here exceeds our power, and “suddenly arose upon the day a new-risen sun”. Here is the sea-change that has taken place in Dante:

 

If I were only what thou didst create,

Then newly, Love! by whom the heav’n is rul’d,

Thou know’st, who by thy light didst bear me up.

Whenas the wheel which thou dost ever guide,

Desired Spirit! with its harmony

Temper’d of thee and measur’d, charm’d mine ear,

Then seem’d to me so much of heav’n to blaze

With the sun’s flame, that rain or flood ne’er made

A lake so broad. The newness of the sound,

And that great light, inflam’d me with desire,

Keener than e’er was felt, to know their cause.

 

If the Divine Comedy’s “transhuman” is individual and only to the extent what is given to Beatrice by the divine Feminine, Savitri’s “intense delight” comes from supernal beauty, awaking even in earth-stuff a celestial sense. Here is something which can happen, not up there, but here:

 

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.

 

A wide self-giving was her native act;

A magnanimity as of sea or sky

Enveloped with its greatness all that came

And gave a sense as of a greatened world:

Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,

Her high passion a blue heaven's equipoise.

 

Such is the new element not only in poetic creation but also, and simultaneously, in terms of spiritual unravelling in the destiny of not only an individual but also of the vast collective emerging from the earth-stuff.

Paradiso—CANTO I