In the immutable nameless Origin

Was seen emerging as from fathomless seas

The trail of the Ideas that made the world,

And, sown in the black earth of Nature's trance,

The seed of the Spirit's blind and huge desire

From which the tree of cosmos was conceived

And spread its magic arms through a dream of space.

Immense realities took on a shape:

There looked out from the shadow of the Unknown

The bodiless Namelessness that saw God born

And tries to gain from the mortal's mind and soul

A deathless body and a divine name.

The immobile lips, the great surreal wings, 

The visage masked by superconscient Sleep,

The eyes with their closed lids that see all things,

Appeared of the Architect who builds in trance.

The original Desire born in the Void

Peered out; he saw the hope that never sleeps,

The feet that run behind a fleeting fate,

The ineffable meaning of the endless dream.

As if a torch held by a power of God,

The radiant world of the everlasting Truth

Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night

Above the golden Overmind's shimmering ridge.

Even were caught as through a cunning veil

The smile of love that sanctions the long game,

The calm indulgence and maternal breasts

Of Wisdom suckling the child-laughter of Chance,

Silence the nurse of the Almighty's power,

The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word,

And of the Timeless the still brooding face,

And the creative eye of Eternity.

The inspiring goddess entered a mortal's breast,

Made there her study of divining thought

And sanctuary of prophetic speech

And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:

All was made wide above, all lit below.

In darkness' core she dug out wells of light,

On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,

Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts,

And through great shoreless, voiceless, starless breadths

Bore earthward fragments of revealing thought

Hewn from the silence of the Ineffable.

A voice in the heart uttered the unspoken Name,

A dream of seeking thought wandering through space

Entered the invisible and forbidden house:

The treasure was found of a supernal Day.

In the deep subconscient glowed her jewel-lamp;

Lifted, it showed the riches of the Cave 

Where, by the miser traffickers of sense

Unused, guarded beneath Night's dragon paws,

In folds of velvet darkness draped they sleep

Whose priceless value could have saved the world.

A darkness carrying morning in its breast

Looked for the eternal wide returning gleam,

Waiting the advent of a larger ray

And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.

In a splendid extravagance of the waste of God

Dropped carelessly in creation's spendthrift work,

Left in the chantiers of the bottomless world

And stolen by the robbers of the Deep,

The golden shekels of the Eternal lie,

Hoarded from touch and view and thought's desire,

Locked in blind antres of the ignorant flood

Lest men should find them and be even as Gods.

The arrival of Intuition is a significant step in the early yogic achievements of Aswapati. There is concealed knowledge in the caves of Ignorance and that has to be recovered for the onward journey of the spiritual aspirant. The Goddess who helps to do is the Vedic Sarama, the Hound of Heaven sharp in sniffing its presence and making it known to him. The Veda speaks of it being stolen by Vala and the Panis, the enemies keeping the luminous sacred cows hidden in a cave of the mountain, vavra. Sarama the heavenly hound has to find out the cows in the cave of the Panis. To recover this lost wealth the sacrifice has to be performed, the true word, the mantra has to be chanted. Indra strong with the Soma-wine and the Angirasas, the seers, his companions, have to follow the track, enter the cave or violently break open the strong places of the hill, defeat the Panis and drive upward the delivered herds. That is Sarama, the Hound of Heaven, the power of Intuition aiding the Rishi in the discovery. In his quest for immortality, there come to him various gods and goddesses and show him the right directions. Usha the radiant Dawn, for instance, is one of them, she the mother of these herds, the herd of knowledge. "True with the gods who are true, great with the gods who are great, sacrificial godhead with the gods sacrificial, she breaks open the strong places, she gives of the shining herds; the cows low towards the Dawn!" let us quickly paraphrase Chapter XX, The Hound of Heaven as we have in The Secret of the Veda.

Sarama is that power among the truth-finding we at once think of the intuition. She leads in the search for the radiant herds; she discovers both the path and the secret hold in the mountain; she is a forerunner of the dawn of Truth in the human mind.

Sarama is not Saraswati, she is not the inspiration, even though the names are similar. Saraswati gives the full flood of the knowledge; she is or awakens the great stream, maho arṇaḥ, and illumines with plenitude all the thoughts, viśvā dhiyo vi rājati. Saraswati possesses and is the flood of the Truth; Sarama is the traveller and seeker on its path who does not herself possess but rather finds that which is lost. Neither is she the plenary word of the revelation, the Teacher of man like the goddess Ila; for even when what she seeks is found, she does not take possession but only gives the message to the seers and their divine helpers who have still to fight for the possession of the light that has been discovered. …

“These are the two essential characteristics of Sarama; the knowledge comes to her beforehand, before vision, springs up instinctively at the least indication and with that knowledge she guides the rest of the faculties and divine powers that seek. And she leads to that seat, sadanam, the home of the Destroyers, which is at the other pole of existence to the seat of the Truth, sadanam ṛtasya, in the cave or secret place of darkness, guhāyām, just as the home of the gods is in the cave or secrecy of light. In other words, she is a power descended from the superconscient Truth which leads us to the light that is hidden in ourselves, in the subconscient. All these characteristics apply exactly to the intuition. …

The delivery of the pregnant contents of the hill, parvatasya garbhaḥ, the illuminations constituting the seven-headed thought, ṛtasya dhītiḥ, which come forth in answer to the inspired word, leads to the supreme birth of the seven great rivers who constitute the substance of the Truth put into active movement, ṛtasya preṣā.

Through the movement of Sarama going straight to the Truth the seven seers took the path of the Truth, even as they found all the concealed illuminations; by the force of these illuminations they all came together. That is the action of Sarama, precisely that of the Intuition which goes straight to the Truth, goes straight by path of the Truth and not through the crooked paths of doubt and error. It is the confident secure intuition which delivers the Truth out of the veil of darkness and false appearances; it is through the illuminations discovered by her that the Seer-mind can attain to the complete revelation of the Truth. When that happens then is the great birth, ŗtasya prajānan, then begins the great divine movement of the Truth-knowledge.

When Sarama finds the broken place of the hill, she makes continuous the great and supreme goal. She, the fair-footed, leads the Rishi to the front of the imperishable ones. She speeds at once and in front of all towards the voice of the concealed illuminations, towards the place where the hill so firmly formed and impervious in appearance (vīḷu, dṛḷhā) is broken and admit the seekers.

It is by means of the Intuition that this godhead becomes our leader to the rescue of the Light and the conquest of the much wealth hidden within in the rock behind the fortress gates of the Robbers. All the immortals who are not limited by ignorance, desiring, found in us the shining Agni. Then is chanted the hymn of knowledge, of the Truth, of a divine Flame which is hardly distinguishable from the supreme Deity, of immortality, of the ascent of the gods, the divine powers, by the sacrifice to their godhead, to their supreme names, to their proper forms, to the shining glory of the supreme state with its thrice seven seats of the Godhead. Such an ascent means the ascent of the divine powers in man out of their ordinary cosmic appearances to the shining Truth beyond. What is Sarama doing in such a hymn if she is not a power of the Truth, if her cows are not the rays of a divine dawn of illumination?

Sarama brings us to the truth, to the sun-vision which is the way to the bliss. She is a power of the Truth that seeks and discovers, that finds by a divine faculty of insight the hidden Light and the denied Immortality.