Opening Remarks
As the consciousness begins to get liberated from the strong grip of matter, it opens to domains of reality hitherto hidden from our experience. Each ascension opens the doors to a new perception and a new understanding.
The New and the Unknown
Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh
He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,
And peered into gleaming endless corridors,
Silent and listening in the silent heart
For the coming of the new and the unknown.
Aswapati stands on the threshold summits of the evolutionary manifestation. But there is much that is hidden and exists as a latent possibility, awaiting its hour to manifest. It is this towards which the Seer and Yogi Aswapati, the pioneer and high forerunner of the human race, now turns his gaze to.
Far avenues of the Beyond
He gazed across the empty stillnesses
And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea
In the far avenues of the Beyond.
All is still and in this enormous stillness he casts his vision and tunes his hearing for the new Idea that is yet to manifest upon Earth.
The secret Voice and the word that knows
He heard the secret Voice, the Word that knows,
And saw the secret face that is our own.
A new vision and hearing, known to the early seers as truth-vision and truth-audition, begin to awaken in him and reveal him truths hidden behind appearances, the voice of Truth, the face of the Spirit hidden behind forms.
The inner planes
The inner planes uncovered their crystal doors;
Strange powers and influences touched his life.
A system of hierarchically arranged worlds, with corresponding beings, energies, powers and influences, lurks behind the wall of this material world. Aswapati now begins to enter into and experience these hidden worlds and their occult energies and the beings, native to these realms, who yet influence our earth and humanity.
Higher realms and brighter fields
A vision came of higher realms than ours,
A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,
Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men
And subtler bodies than these passing frames,
Objects too fine for our material grasp,
Acts vibrant with a superhuman light
And movements pushed by a superconscient force,
And joys that never flowed through mortal limbs,
And lovelier scenes than earth’s and happier lives.
These are the various gods whose consciousness and field of action is wide and is driven by a luminous force. A Light, Wideness, Joy and Peace are the native atmosphere of these higher realms.
A consciousness of beauty and of bliss
A consciousness of beauty and of bliss,
A knowledge which became what it perceived,
Replaced the separated sense and heart
And drew all Nature into its embrace.
There all is beauty and bliss. There one has the joy of identity and oneness. A new and integral Knowledge begins to awaken and operate in Aswapati’s mind.
The senses undergo a corresponding change
The mind leaned out to meet the hidden worlds:
Air glowed and teemed with marvellous shapes and hues, (p 29 begins)
In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,
On the tongue lingered the honey of paradise.
There are corresponding subtle senses that are equivalent to the gross ones here. They awaken as the soul is freed and ascends to higher world. It is through these subtle senses that the spiritual mind connects and relates with the celestial beings and their energies. It is here that one tastes the rejuvenating nectar that invigorates the body and mind.
Occult Sounds
A channel of universal harmony,
Hearing was a stream of magic audience,
A bed for occult sounds earth cannot hear.
There are secret rhythms and harmonies of Truth that one cannot hear with our earthly ears. Only a limited range is our present capacity. The ascent of consciousness attunes us to these subtle sounds and rhythms that vibrate in the higher world.
The voice of Truth
Out of a covert tract of slumber self
The voice came of a truth submerged, unknown
That flows beneath the cosmic surfaces,
Only mid an omniscient silence heard,
Held by intuitive heart and secret sense.
There is a Silence behind life, a realm of Superconscient Truth where the Mind goes off to sleep. This Truth is hidden in our own depths behind the deeper heart, and reveals Itself to those who are attuned to It.
Revelation of the Vedas
It caught the burden of secrecies sealed and dumb,
It voiced the unfulfilled demand of earth
And the song of promise of unrealised heavens
And all that hides in an omnipotent Sleep.
This is how the hymns and mantras of the Vedas were composed. It is through an inner hearing that the Truth was reveled and its harmonic strains and the supreme vibration were given an appropriate body of word and sound.
The Delight that is the secret root of all
In the unceasing drama carried by Time
On its long listening flood that bears the world’s
Insoluble doubt on a pilgrimage without goal,
A laughter of sleepless pleasure foamed and spumed
And murmurings of desire that cannot die:
A cry came of the world’s delight to be,
Behind the surface seeking for pleasure and the incessant cry of Desire, there stands hidden in its depths the Delight of Existence and its will to be. It is this that prompted the soul to plunge into this adventure of Time and space. It is Delight and not Desire which is the original cause of creation. Desire and pleasure are simply surface strains caught up in the fields of Ignorance of a secret Delight and will to be.
The will to live
The grandeur and greatness of its will to live,
Recall of the soul’s adventure into space,
A traveller through the magic centuries
And being’s labour in Matter’s universe,
Its search for the mystic meaning of its birth
And joy of high spiritual response,
Its throb of satisfaction and content
In all the sweetness of the gifts of life,
Its large breath and pulse and thrill of hope and fear,
Its taste of pangs and tears and ecstasy,
Its rapture’s poignant beat of sudden bliss,
The sob of its passion and unending pain.
The drama of life staged on Matter’s ground, though full of the passion of pleasure and pain, is inwardly an epic of the soul’s adventure. It is this that gives hope and meaning and the incessant will to live amidst and despite the danger and the pain.
The murmur and whisper of the unheard sounds
The murmur and whisper of the unheard sounds
Which crowd around our hearts but find no window
To enter, swelled into a canticle
Of all that suffers to be still unknown
And all that labours vainly to be born
And all the sweetness none will ever taste
And all the beauty that will never be.
The vibrations of Truth, the harmonious rhythms of the higher worlds began to grow in intensity and frequency, bringing with it the sweetness and delight of the Divine.
Tuning the finite to infinity
Inaudible to our deaf mortal ears
The wide world-rhythms wove their stupendous chant
To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here,
Melting our limits in the illimitable,
Tuning the finite to infinity.
The whole creation can be resolved into vibrations and rhythms that build, sustain and dissolve the countless worlds. Our own life itself is simply one note of this stupendous orchestra. Our limits are simply the limits of a note that blends with the grand Music. Our seemingly finite life is simply a wave or even a drop in the ocean of infinity.
The meeting of the Subconscient and the Superconscient
A low muttering rose from the subconscient caves,
The stammer of the primal ignorance;
Answer to that inarticulate questioning,
There stooped with lightning neck and thunder’s wings
A radiant hymn to the Inexpressible
And the anthem of the superconscient light.
The harmonious vibrations and rhythms of Truth-Light meet the chaotic ill-formed notes of the Subconscient realms and the Subliminal being of man. It is here that the change first takes place before precipitating in the outermost fields.
Closing remarks
With the release of consciousness from the strong grip of Matter, we discover new faculties and begin to experience the realms hidden behind the physical world.
