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The Great Ascension of the Soul p 31

Opening remarks
The soul of man grows out of its earthly state by steps and stages. There is a progressive change within as we climb each step of the journey.

Mighty unknown things
All now his bright clairaudience could receive;
A contact thrilled of mighty unknown things.

Aswapati is undergoing a progressive change even as he is developing new faculties and powers that are bringing him in contact with high realms that remain hidden and unknown to our human consciousness.

Unearthly closenesses
Awakened to new unearthly closenesses,
The touch replied to subtle infinities,
And with a silver cry of opening gates
Sight’s lightnings leaped into the invisible.

Beings of the higher worlds became his companions and aides. The opening of silver gates suggests that these experiences were taking place in the realms of the spiritual Mind.

Beyond the zone where thoughts replaces life
Ever his consciousness and vision grew;
They took an ampler sweep, a loftier flight;
He passed the border marked for Matter’s rule
And passed the zone where thought replaces life.

Aswapati passes beyond this world of material forms into subtler world of life and mind. He moves beyond the realm of thoughts into the higher mind realms of symbols and signs.

Beyond the world of signs
Out of this world of signs suddenly he came
Into a silent self where world was not
And looked beyond into a nameless vast.

Seer-king Aswapati passes beyond thought and world of signs towards a vast and luminous region of calm impersonality.

Symbol figures lost their right to live
These symbol figures lost their right to live,
All tokens dropped our sense can recognise;
There the heart beat no more at body’s touch,
There the eyes gazed no more on beauty’s shape.

It is the mind and the senses that create figure and form. Going beyond them liberates us from the restrictions imposed by form. Passing beyond appearances we discover the impersonal and universal truth they represent. It is a world of pure idea-truths that have not yet embodied themselves. One is thus freed from the snare and attachment to external shapes and forms.

Light of Identity
In rare and lucent intervals of hush
Into a signless region he could soar
Packed with the deep contents of formlessness
Where world was into a single being rapt
And all was known by the light of identity
And Spirit was its own self-evidence.

The Spirit is formless and cannot be known by normal human instruments. It is only by developing the intuition that It can be known. Such a state is conferred as the result of Grace of the Divine. Aswapati draws nearer and nearer the rare summits where the Spirit abides. He now feels the light and breath of It that carries the whole universe in its sole embrace.

Closing remarks
Thus we see the soul’s progress and freedom that comes through a progressive heightening and widening and of consciousness as it draws near its Origin and Source.

It is the fact that people who are grateful and cheerful and ready to go step by step,... do actually march faster and more surely than those who are impatient and in haste and at each step despair.