A genius
heightened in his body's cells
That knew the
meaning of his fate-hedged works
Akin to the
march of unaccomplished Powers
Beyond life's
arc in spirit's immensities.
Apart he
lived in his mind's solitude,
A demigod
shaping the lives of men:
One soul's ambition lifted up the race;
A Power
worked, but none knew whence it came.
The universal
strengths were linked with his;
Filling
earth's smallness with their boundless breadths,
He drew the
energies that transmute an age.
Immeasurable
by the common look,
He made great
dreams a mould for coming things
And cast his
deeds like bronze to front the years.
His walk
through Time outstripped the human stride.
Lonely his
days and splendid like the sun's.
One soul's ambition lifted up the race. In the human
reckoning here are a few examples of the soul of man lifting up with his
ambition the lot of the insufferable human. “When Magellan circumnavigated the
earth, he was hunting for the truth about the globe. When Galileo swept the
heavens with his telescope, he was hunting for a larger vision of the universe.
When Pasteur, in spite of his paralysis, sought for the secret of disease, he
was hunting a remedy for human ills. When
The general tendency of ethical even idealistic nature
is to shun away from ambition, even to the extent of repressing it. The monk
and the sannyasi and the evangelist would prefer to live in monasteries or in
the caves or away from civilization. “Oh, to be nothing,” that is their hymn of
triumph. But that leads to the weakening of the life-force and there is
emaciation of the creative spirit. The prayer gets answered, “to be nothing”
and nothing remains.
But here is a story not of a credulous devotee but of a
wise calculating occultist. He was staying in a village and he had faculty or
siddhi to invoke supernatural powers. He was a good-hearted man and he wanted
to use it only for the benefit of the villagers. Seeing their suffering plight
steeped as they were in poverty, he offered his prayers to Goddess Prosperity,
knowing that she would bring bright fortune to the simple folk. Her coming to
the village and staying there would assure it for ever. But she is a
swift-footed goddess and would not remain at one single place permanently. This
good-hearted man knew all about her fleeting nature and so worked out a plan. On
her arrival he told her: “You please wait here until I come back. I have to go
on pilgrimage to holy places of the country and wait here till I return. Your
presence is reassuring and I wish that your gifts flow continuously in this
small simple world of small simple creatures. I’m sure every one here will always
enjoy your riches.” Taking his leave from her he walked away with a pilgrim
staff in his hand—walked away never to return. Helpless Prosperity had but to
stay in the village they later named as “Wait here till I come back”. One man’s
great deed brought prosperity to the poor. But did it lift up the race? What
does that prosperity mean?
Indeed, this difficult world remains all the while a
difficult and helpless world. The global village yet remains oblivious of the
universal energies that can transform the mechanistic plight of its hurrying
dwellers. If there is the miracle of technology in fostering the idea of a
conglomerate yet unified global community, there can be a greater involvement
of communities and countries to promote the global culture. A higher and
refined mode of collective life can open out for us, that which becomes
possible only when there is awareness of global responsibilities. But human
awareness has to go beyond the mental kind; there has to be also the opening of
the vital and the physical, the opening of the soul and the spirit of man to
the possibilities of living and breathing prosperity, not as a static power but
as an agent of expanding wealth and affluence of the manifesting truth in this
creation, truth triumphing ignorance and falsehood and death rooted at the base
of life.
Aswapati’s acquiring global powers, universal strengths
linked with his, his drawing the energies that transmute an age are in the
context of the fundamentals of this world, its foundational realities and the
issues associated with it. He drew energies that transmute an age, but these
are at the best Overmental energies only, and there is no infallibility of
their operation, no ultimate guarantee of their success. He has to seek and
acquire that power by which the objective of a higher life free of ignorance
and death is achieved. His look has widened, and he has made great dreams a
mould for coming things; but the dreams have to become a reality, not just in
his case as an individual but on a cosmic scale, for the aspiring collective. His
soul’s release from the lower bondage is the starting condition, but a larger
and brighter upstream movement must begin. With the soul’s release there is nothing
Aswapati wished to gain for himself. He has achieved everything as an
individual. The siddhi of the individual is complete in him. But this soul’s
release from ignorance remains incomplete. He must live freely and widely in
the spirit’s freedom and greatness. It is the spirit that links him with the
universe and therefore he cannot remain content without attending to the issue
present in it. He must get the secret knowledge working in the cosmic wideness and
in it his own spirit must become free of all ties and bondages of the nature
holding back man from wider universal prospects of life in its beauty and truth
and delight. The first psycho-spiriutal transformation has occurred in him. Next,
he has to make the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the
possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. But
this too is as yet “only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer
for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation.” It is
for the fulfilment of the new creation he invokes the divine Shakti to
incarnate herself here, that by which all opposition is removed and the
prospects for the higher life are opened out. That is the work Aswapati came to
do.