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The Labour of Life, pp. 177-178

Opening Remarks
The powers of Life having emerged out of the breast of the Eternal’s Luminous Force labour here to bring something of that Glory from where she has come, out of which she is born. It is a long and painstaking labour of love.

Severed from the Spirit’s immortal bliss
Her timeless Power that lay once on the lap
Of a beginningless and endless Calm,
Now severed from the Spirit’s immortal bliss,
Erects the type of all the joys she has lost;
Compelling transient substance into shape,
She hopes by the creative act’s release
To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill,
To heal awhile the wound of severance,
Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness
And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities
In the uncertain time-field portioned here.

Life has emerged as a wave of creative energy out of the Eternal’s Calm. It is here to build, to create forms that can manifest the Eternal. Yet she struggles since it is separated (in experience and not in reality) from the Eternal having entered the dark and obscure material field which is like a prison house of matter. Still she labours and works to rediscover the lost joy and create some semblance of the eternal bliss.

Almost she nears
Almost she nears what never can be attained;
She shuts eternity into an hour
And fills a little soul with the Infinite;
The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;
She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,
Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms
And feels around her infinity’s embrace.

Something she achieves, however momentarily, some touch of eternity, some glimpse of the Infinite through the finite. In this difficult, almost impossible seeming task, she feels assisted by the Infinite who dwells in all things as the formless essence. She calls upon the Eternal and feels him lean down to her call and draw her into His arms. Thus for a moment she is lost to time and transience and filled with the eternal and immortal joy that otherwise eludes us.

Her task no ending knows
Her task no ending knows; she serves no aim
But labours driven by a nameless Will
That came from some unknowable formless Vast.

Driven by the breath of God, by the timeless Will of the Eternal, she labours on. Effort gives her joy rather than achievement. Thus her work goes on endlessly and in countless ways.

Secret impossible task
This is her secret and impossible task
To catch the boundless in a net of birth,
To cast the spirit into physical form,
To lend speech and thought to the Ineffable;
She is pushed to reveal the ever Unmanifest.

The secret charge given to her is to reveal and manifest the formless Divine through myriad forms and to catch the boundless within the finite limits of time and space, to lend speech and thought to the Inexpressible and the Incommunicable..

The impossible has been done
Yet by her skill the impossible has been done:
She follows her sublime irrational plan,
Invents devices of her magic art
To find new bodies for the Infinite
And images of the Unimaginable;
She has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time.

Her skill and device have indeed lured the Eternal to manifest in Time. She has created images and forms for His Glory to manifest. In this vast labour she is guided by intuition inherent within her rather than by reason. That is why her fancies may seem irrational to our limited seeing but the Eternal knows the truth behind each of her seemingly irrational steps. Thus has she achieved what yet could be within the limits and the material offered to her for the work.

Closing Remarks
Essentially all creation is meant to express the Eternal and the Infinite through finite and transient forms. This is the great challenge of life and she labours on without fear of failure or any deterrence.

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.