Towards the New and the Unknown p. 80

Opening remarks
A new journey now begins for Aswapati. He aspires to go further where none has dared to visit while still in the flesh. He now aspires to cross the borderline that separates the two hemispheres and see what Splendours are there in the House of the Spirit. He has glimpsed them from afar but now he wants to come in direct contact with the sun itself and not through the rays.

Godlike rare release
To a few is given that godlike rare release.

Such aspiration and ascension comes only as a gift of Grace. It is Divine Grace that lights up the fire of aspiration, nurtures and protects it, makes it grow until our being is ready for this swift ascension. It is something given to us, not something that we can demand or lay a claim upon.

One among many thousands
One among many thousands never touched,
Engrossed in the external world’s design,
Is chosen by a secret witness Eye
And driven by a pointing hand of Light
Across his soul’s unmapped immensitudes.

As it is said, “many are called, few are chosen.” The Gita too speaks of this that one among many thousands strive towards perfection, and even among these rarest of rare is he who is able to see the Divine everywhere. But once chosen out of the many lost in the world’s outer design, they are driven by the hand of God towards their highest Destiny.

A pilgrim of the everlasting Truth
A pilgrim of the everlasting Truth,
Our measures cannot hold his measureless mind;
He has turned from the voices of the narrow realm
And left the little lane of human Time.

The Grace acts upon the chosen human vessel to make our being progress rapidly. Then the circumstances of life change dramatically, sometimes even drastically as we are led away from the ways of the world to the way of divine. Aswapati, the forerunner has thus left the usual round of life with its narrow aims and entered into a new journey, the journey towards the shadowless Light, the Truth of which all other truths are fragments.

The vestibules of the Unseen
In the hushed precincts of a vaster plan
He treads the vestibules of the Unseen,
Or listens following a bodiless Guide
To a lonely cry in boundless vacancy.

He who is born for yoga, aspires for this greatest of all adventures must be established in quietude and silence. Thus alone, far from the voices of the world, can he hear the first cry that gave birth to these countless systems of worlds. Living in the solitude of higher regions he listens to the Guide and follows Him in the vastness opening towards the Beyond.

The hush before the world was born
All the deep cosmic murmur falling still,
He lives in the hush before the world was born,
His soul left naked to the timeless One.

Thus withdrawing from the surfaces of life, plunging into deeper states of consciousness that climb towards the Origin, his soul turns towards the Divine Source of all things, towards the Eternal and the True. Beyond the cosmic murmur and stir he ascends towards the Transcendent Source and Origin of all.

The ineffable Wideness
Far from compulsion of created things
Thought and its shadowy idols disappear,
The moulds of form and person are undone:
The ineffable Wideness knows him for its own.

There freed from the bondage of thought and the knot of forms, figure and persons that fill our lives, he turns towards the limitless Vast to which he belongs.

Eternal courts of Solitude
A lone forerunner of the Godward earth,
Among the symbols of yet unshaped things
Watched by closed eyes, mute faces of the Unborn,
He journeys to meet the Incommunicable,
Hearing the echo of his single steps
In the eternal courts of Solitude.

This is the realm where formlessness is the stuff of things and the Divine seed of creation is yet to take shape. Alone amidst the Unborn and the Unmanifest he moves in search of that which has never yet been born.

A nameless Marvel
A nameless Marvel fills the motionless hours.

Even as he ascends the future draws near filling his days with wonder and joy.

Eternity and Infinity
His spirit mingles with eternity’s heart
And bears the silence of the Infinite.

More and more he enters into union and communion with the eternal and the Infinite. The silence of the Infinite presses upon him even as the Eternal pours what is yet hidden in His core into Aswapati’s heart.

Closing remarks
Thus we see here Aswapati making a further ascension beyond the boundless universal Being, towards the sheer Transcendent Absolute. In fact he has been chosen for this as part of a vaster plan of which he is not yet a privy.