Opening Remarks
Life has descended from its own true Home into the darkness, ignorance and unconscious inertia of earth nature. She has laboured long to find the key of her redemption and of matter along with it. All her labour is to discover the Power that is hidden in her own deepest core.
Tireless search
These are her deeds in this huge world-ignorance:
Till the veil is lifted, till the night is dead,
In light or dark she keeps her tireless search;
Time is her road of endless pilgrimage.
Life labours tirelessly in a world besieged with darkness searching for the Light she has lost. She will labour on through passages of Time until all veils are lifted and night is gone forever.
One mighty passion
One mighty passion motives all her works.
Behind all her manifold works there is but one mighty passion that is moving her.
Her action’s cause
Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;
For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts
To move here in a stark unconscious world.
Deep within she is moved by the passion for her eternal Lover, the Divine, whom she seeks through all her works and actions. It is for Him, out of her love for Him that she has left her high home and chosen to work in this dark unconscious field.
Her hidden Guest
Its acts are her commerce with her hidden Guest,
His moods she takes for her heart’s passionate moulds;
In beauty she treasures the sunlight of his smile.
All her works are in fact a secret transaction with her Lord whom she tries to please and express. His smile is the cause of beauty that she seeks to capture and treasures through her creations.
Million-impulsed Force
Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty,
She cajoles with her small gifts his mightiness,
Holds with her scenes his look’s fidelity
And woos his large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell
In figures of her million-impulsed Force.
Even though rich in her million-impulsed creative impulsion, she is still poor until she is able to create some look or touch of the Divine Beloved whom she seeks and hopes to find in and through her creations. Yet she offers as a gift whatever little she can create to draw even a moment’s attention of her Lord.
Her heart’s business
Only to attract her veiled companion
And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak
Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,
Is her heart’s business and her clinging care.
Behind all our emotional seeking, behind all our ‘love’ and attachments, affections and affiliations, there is the cry for the One Beloved who alone can satisfy the heart of life. Through these imperfect forms life seeks to hold Him in her arms, close to her bosom, tied to her heart.
Most near and yet afar
Yet when he is most near, she feels him far.
She seeks Him through the forms she has built for Him. What she is unable to see and feel is that the Divine is nearer than the nearest, closest than the closest, most intimate, the very stuff of our beings. He is hid within the depths of our own heart while we turn our feelings outwards to find Him.
Nature’s law
For contradiction is her nature’s law.
The very law of life seems to be self-contradiction. She seems to move and progress by process of finding and losing, not knowing what she wants and where to find it she moves from one illusion to another.
Cherished prisoner
Although she is ever in him and he in her,
As if unaware of the eternal tie,
Her will is to shut God into her works
And keep him as her cherished prisoner
That never they may part again in Time.
Though the Divine is always with us, holding us close to His heart our heart knows it not. We look for Him in forms that cannot last and ties that are transient and ephemeral. Trying to capture Him in temporary resting homes of the Spirit, we lose Him soon, only to resume our ignorant efforts.
