Opening remarks
What is now described is the settling of repeated contacts and experiences into a Realisation, – when the experiences arrive at their fullness and get firmly established.
A firm spiritual poise
At last was won a firm spiritual poise,
A constant lodging in the Eternal’s realm,
A safety in the Silence and the Ray,
A settlement in the Immutable.
After a while the state of Peace and Knowledge one has acquired through effort and Grace abides permanently, when it is no more possible to fall. The sadhaka becomes a siddha as the state of Peace is firmly established in him. He has found the safe ground of consciousness. He now dwells in the luminous Silence of the Eternal.
His heights of being lived in the still Self
His heights of being lived in the still Self;
His mind could rest on a supernal ground
And look down on the magic and the play
Where the God-child lies on the lap of Night and Dawn
And the Everlasting puts on Time’s disguise.
With this higher and deeper shift there comes a true detachment that watches God’s play in the world. Then the play of dualities no more deludes us and both night and day, the seeming good and the apparent bad both suckle the divine child.
A wide unshaken look on Time’s unrest
To the still heights and to the troubled depths
His equal spirit gave its vast assent:
A poised serenity of tranquil strength,
A wide unshaken look on Time’s unrest
Faced all experience with unaltered peace.
One result of this state is a wide equanimity that looks upon the world and its mystery with calm and tranquil eyes, meets the world-contacts that shake us, with a luminous strength.
His spirit’s stillness helped the toiling world
Indifferent to the sorrow and delight,
Untempted by the marvel and the call,
Immobile it beheld the flux of things,
Calm and apart supported all that is:
His spirit’s stillness helped the toiling world.
This vast equanimity that comes from an abiding in the Divine, this peace and stillness is a tremendous power. Such a person by the mere fact of his presence draws the forces of Light and Peace in his environment, giving to all the needed succor and strength to face life.
His force could work with a new luminous art
Inspired by silence and the closed eyes’ sight
His force could work with a new luminous art
On the crude material from which all is made
And the refusal of Inertia’s mass
And the grey front of the world’s Ignorance
And nescient Matter and the huge error of life.
The yogin works much more powerfully even as he sits still. He sees with clarity in a new-born Light the play of world-forces, pours the Light and Powers of a higher Consciousness into our troubled and error-prone material existence. He awakens earth and its creatures to a higher consciousness and a greater aspiration. Of all forms of help which can be rendered to man this is the greatest.
He slowly chipped off the dark envelope
As a sculptor chisels a deity out of stone
He slowly chipped off the dark envelope,
Line of defence of Nature’s ignorance,
The illusion and mystery of the Inconscient
In whose black pall the Eternal wraps his head
That he may act unknown in cosmic Time.
This is a beautiful description of the transforming action of the Higher Consciousness on our nature hardened into habits under the influence of the Inconscient. The illusions of the night are torn away and in their place grow luminous letters that were hiding behind the mask of darkness. The Divine hidden behind the ambiguous play of lower nature now steps in the front. Thus the yogin grows into a figure of God in a material physical form.
God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God
A splendour of self-creation from the peaks,
A transfiguration in the mystic depths,
A happier cosmic working could begin
And fashion the world-shape in him anew,
God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God. (p 37 begins)
The transformation spreads from within outwards and from above downward. The changes at first start in the deeper and higher layers that are in contact with the soul and the higher consciousness. Slowly they spread into the outermost fields of Nature thereby invading it with God-touch and fulfilling it with God-Consciousness.
Closing remarks
The discovery of the Divine within is indeed the pivotal point of sadhana, the first thing needful. But instead of making this discovery a means for escape from worldly life, the yogin on the path of Integral Yoga turns this into a greater and diviner living.
