Ideal’s Kingdom, p. 281

Opening remarks
Aswapati moves through this plane of the Gods. It is powerful and mighty yet not the complete Truth that he is seeking. This plane great and high though it is, has not the power to transform earthly life.

Glories of the wonder fields
He through the Ideal’s kingdoms moved at will,
Accepted their beauty and their greatness bore,
Partook of the glories of their wonder fields,
But passed nor stayed beneath their splendour’s rule.

Aswapati now holds within him the strength and wisdom of the gods. He has earned their greatness through arduous tapasya. He shares their glories but stays not here. His quest must lead him further into the still greater Beyond.

Intense but partial light
All there was an intense but partial light.
In each a seraph-winged high-browed Idea
United all knowledge by one master thought,
Persuaded all action to one golden sense,
All powers subjected to a single power
And made a world where it could reign alone,
An absolute ideal’s perfect home.

The light there was intense but partial. It is not yet the highest Truth that alone can reconcile world and God. Each god there felt himself absolute and built a world with the power of the Idea that he represented. It united the world with this one Idea while leaving aside other equally formidable truths. Thus it could build perfection by excluding all other ideas.

High kingdom’s privilege
Insignia of their victory and their faith,
They offered to the Traveller at their gates
A quenchless flame or an unfading flower,
Emblem of a high kingdom’s privilege.

The traveller entering their realms was offered a quenchless flame and a flower as a symbol to rule the world on their behalf.

Passport to Paradise
A glorious shining Angel of the Way
Presented to the seeking of the soul
The sweetness and the might of an idea,
Each deemed Truth’s intimate fount and summit force,
The heart of the meaning of the universe,
Perfection’s key, passport to Paradise.

One could easily mistake this Overmind plane to be the highest and return back and create a great Religion in the name of God. But these are partial lights offered to the seeker as the one true path to the Beyond. Each truth seemed by its sweetness and might as the very highest but the Integral Reality is missing here without which the mystery of creation remains an unsolved puzzle. All that these worlds could give are a limited perfection built around one single Idea or a key to pass through it to the featureless, formless Beyond.

Closing Remarks
This is the plane where most yogis stop, mistaking it for the highest. But Aswapati’s quest is not satisfied here. He must go further.