The Son of God
THE REDEEMER has come. The whispers of hope are heard and the message of Light is carried by the winds. But the bringer of Light must first walk into the pit of the Night. The world watches with dismay and doubt as his efforts seem to be in vain rejected by man and refused by the earth-nature. Yet has He paved the way by his death and fall. O ignorant heart of man, be full of faith and gratitude, for the King is here, the King of kings is here.
He who would save himself lives bare and calm;
He who would save the race must share its pain:
This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge.
The Great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time’s shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain;
They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,
On their shoulders they must bear man’s load of fate.
Heaven’s riches they bring, their sufferings count the price
Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.
The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead’s debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind
His will has bound to death and struggling life
That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.
The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
The Deity compensates the creature’s claim,
The Creator bears the law of pain and death;
A retribution smites the incarnate God.
His love has paved the mortal’s road to Heaven:
He has given his life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance. [444-445]
The world belongs to the Lord and it is the Lord alone who can redeem it. Yet when the Lord comes as the World-redeemer He is met with mockery and ridicule, doubt and poison. He too must pass under the yoke of ignorance that He has come to loosen. He too must face the brutal assault of death and drink the poison that is the lot of common men.
God’s Messengers
THE LORD sends his messengers from time to time. But how do we receive them? — with distrust and doubt. What do we give them in return? — suffering and the cross. Yet He labours on, his heart enduring forever, bearing all on his vast untroubled brow.
But when God’s messenger comes to help the world
And lead the soul of earth to higher things,
He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;
He too must bear the pang that he would heal:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate,
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
He covers the world’s agony with his calm;
But though to the outward eye no sign appears
And peace is given to our torn human hearts,
The struggle is there and paid the unseen price;
The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within.
He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his:
Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul;
Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps,
The Titan adversary’s clutch he bears;
His march is a battle and a pilgrimage.
Life’s evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain:
A million wounds gape in his secret heart.
He journeys sleepless through an unending night;
Antagonist forces crowd across his path;
A siege, a combat is his inner life.
Even worse may be the cost, direr the pain:
His large identity and all-harbouring love
Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths,
The sorrow of all living things shall come
And knock at his doors and live within his house;
A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie
All suffering into his single grief and make
All agony in all the worlds his own.
He meets an ancient adversary Force,
He is lashed with the whips that tear the world’s worn heart;
The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes:
He wears the blood-glued fiery Centaur shirt,
The poison of the world has stained his throat.
In the market-place of Matter’s capital
Amidst the chafferings of the affair called life
He is tied to the stake of a perennial Fire;
He burns on an unseen original verge
That Matter may be turned to spirit stuff:
He is the victim in his own sacrifice. [446-447]
Revealed here is the secret of the Avatar who comes to save men who are caught up in the whiplash of the forces that He must conquer for earth and men. God becoming human is not a sham but is done in real earnest. He must veil his Glory and slowly manifest the secret divinity within, struggling with and conquering the forces that resist.
God’s Labour
THE LORD is ever at rest and the Lord is ever at work. In him alone we find our true rest. In him alone we find the force of work. He is the eternal labourer who is ever engaged in his vast labour of love. He labours through day and He labours through night until He floods our base and heights. For those who seek an escape out of the fierce labour of the worlds, He opens the door of escape. But for himself and for his loved ones He has chosen to labour until Light invades the abyss and all becomes his Peace and Glory and his Power and his Love.
“Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
The world itself becomes his adversary,
Those he would save are his antagonists:
This world is in love with its own ignorance,
Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,
It gives the cross in payment for the crown.
His work is a trickle of splendour in a long night;
He sees the long march of Time, the little won;
A few are saved, the rest strive on and fail:
A Sun has passed, on earth Night’s shadow falls.
Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun;
But few are they who tread the sunlit path;
Only the pure in soul can walk in light.
An exit is shown, a road of hard escape
From the sorrow and the darkness and the chain;
But how shall a few escaped release the world?
The human mass lingers beneath the yoke.
Escape, however high, redeems not life,
Life that is left behind on a fallen earth.
Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race
Or bring to it victory and the reign of God.
A greater power must come, a larger light.
Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes,
Yet till the evil is slain in its own home
And Light invades the world’s inconscient base
And perished has the adversary Force,
He still must labour on, his work half done. [448-449]
The law of suffering and pain afflicts even God’s messengers and the Redeemer of the world. Unaffected by the pains and suffering of common men, He cannot show them the way. The difference however is that while we go through this pain and suffering ignorantly, the Avatar takes it upon himself consciously.
One yet to Come
A NUMBER OF AVATARS are needed to complete and fulfill the work. They form an ascending series, a hierarchy of divine becoming in matter that opens the way and lays down the bridge and the steps for man to cross. The Lord comes down again and again and will do so until all his work in human time is done.
One yet may come armoured, invincible;
His will immobile meets the mobile hour;
The world’s blows cannot bend that victor head;
Calm and sure are his steps in the growing Night;
The goal recedes, he hurries not his pace,
He turns not to high voices in the night;
He asks no aid from the inferior gods;
His eyes are fixed on his immutable aim.
Man turns aside or chooses easier paths;
He keeps to the one high and difficult road
That sole can climb to the Eternal’s peaks;
The ineffable planes already have felt his tread;
He has made heaven and earth his instruments,
But the limits fall from him of earth and heaven;
Their law he transcends but uses as his means.
He has seized life’s hands, he has mastered his own heart.
The feints of Nature mislead not his sight,
Inflexible his look towards Truth’s far end;
Fate’s deaf resistance cannot break his will.
In the dreadful passages, the fatal paths,
Invulnerable his soul, his heart unslain,
He lives through the opposition of earth’s Powers
And Nature’s ambushes and the world’s attacks.
His spirit’s stature transcending pain and bliss,
He fronts evil and good with calm and equal eyes. [449]
He must call light into its dark abysms,
Else never can Truth conquer Matter’s sleep
And all earth look into the eyes of God.
All things obscure his knowledge must relume,
All things perverse his power must unknot:
He must pass to the other shore of falsehood’s sea,
He must enter the world’s dark to bring there light.
The heart of evil must be bared to his eyes,
He must learn its cosmic dark necessity,
Its right and its dire roots in Nature’s soil.
He must know the thought that moves the demon act
And justifies the Titan’s erring pride
And the falsehood lurking in earth’s crooked dreams:
He must enter the eternity of Night
And know God’s darkness as he knows his Sun.
For this he must go down into the pit,
For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.
Imperishable and wise and infinite,
He still must travel Hell the world to save. [450]
All traditions speak of the second coming. What it means is that the Avatar forms a series of successive descents of the Divine in matter. Through each of these successive descents the world goes one step further. Thus is slowly annulled the law of pain. Thus is slowly annulled the darkness of hell and all grows into Beauty and Harmony and divine Light.