Opening Remarks for the Canto Six “The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life”
The evolution of earthly life has been in several steps and stages. Not all of life’s possibilities have been exhausted. There are greater and wider domains whose forces seek to manifest upon earth. From time to time some of these forces have expressed themselves through some exceptional human beings. In this Canto we have a detailed description of this greater domain that exists beyond our little life centred around the bodily needs and small preoccupations. The door to this greater life opens with imaginations and sublime emotions that stir the heart and lift us, even if momentarily towards a higher state. It is the higher vital realm that inspires art and music and lends its wings to speech that soars towards the heights.
The Passage Towards a Greater Life p. 173
Opening Remarks
Aswapati now resumes his journey further. He has crossed the kingdoms of the little life, studied their forces, energies and beings, known its influence and its hard grip upon earthly life. Now he prepares to explore further.
Receding walls
As one who between dim receding walls
Towards the far gleam of a tunnel’s mouth,
Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace
And feels approach a breath of wider air,
So he escaped from that grey anarchy.
The walls of consciousness that seemingly define and separate one domain from another begin to draw further apart as aswapati enters a wider and freer space. Through a narrow tunnel he moves towards a glimmering light. The grey anarchy of little life is left behind as moves with hope of finding a better world.
An ineffectual world
Into an ineffectual world he came,
A purposeless region of arrested birth
Where being from non-being fled and dared
To live but had no strength long to abide.
At first he enters an ineffectual world that seemingly served no purpose, not even the purpose of having a grip upon matter. It is a world where life longs for greater things but has not the strength to realise them.
Crying for direction
Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky
Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze
Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds
And crying for a direction in the void
Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost
And wandering through unfamiliar worlds;
Wings of vague questioning met the query of Space.
There is in this world a hope and a seeking but one does not know which way to turn and how to fulfil the dreams that visit the heart. It is like a world where blind souls were looking for something lost which yet they carried all the time within them but could not see. There is a constant seeking but no lasting answer comes in that world.
A dubious hope
After denial dawned a dubious hope,
A hope of self and form and leave to live
And the birth of that which never yet could be,
And joy of the mind’s hazard, the heart’s choice,
Grace of the unknown and hands of sudden surprise
And a touch of sure delight in unsure things:
To a strange uncertain tract his journey came
Where consciousness played with unconscious self
And birth was an attempt or episode.
The kingdoms of little life are driven unconsciously. But here we find dreams and hopes. But the way to realise and fulfil these dreams is not so sure since its energies are ignorant of the way and are dealing with imperfect matter. It moves through hazard and guess and imagination and hope and is constantly surprised by the unknown that ever surrounds it. Yet even in this state it discovers the joy of sudden disclosures. There is a half-hearted attempt for consciousness to emerge out of a subconscious state in which creation is plunged.
Closing Remarks
Aswapati now resumes his journey. He crosses a world where fantasy and reality, dreams and imaginations mix with truth. This too is a passage through which the evolutionary Energy must pass.
