The Meeting Ground, p. 310

Opening Remarks
The Divine Mother is on all the planes of existence and in each and every atom Her Presence and Force is working. We can discover Her Presence we have lifted the veils of the world or else gone within behind the play of nature. It is in either on the supreme unreachable transcendent heights or the still and silent depths of the soul that one can find the Divine Mother. Aswapati stands in the nudity of his soul stripped bare of all coverings and coatings of the mind and body and life.

A stillness absolute
A stillness absolute, incommunicable,
Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul;
A wall of stillness shuts it from the world,
A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense
And makes unreal all that mind has known,
All that the labouring senses still would weave
Prolonging an imaged unreality.

All that the senses and the mind would weave are undone. All has vanished as if it were an unreal reality prolonged by the deceiving play of mind and senses. What is left in its place is a vast and empty stillness, empty of all except the soul that is as if walled apart in stillness away from the world. This is the experience that Aswapati has had, an experience powerful enough to annul the whole world as if it is an unreal image.

The ego is dead
Self’s vast spiritual silence occupies Space;
Only the Inconceivable is left,
Only the Nameless without space and time:
Abolished is the burdening need of life:
Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;
The ego is dead; we are freed from being and care,
We have done with birth and death and work and fate.

The ego-self is dead and in its place there is the Inconceivable, the Nameless beyond space and time. Al is occupied by Self’s vast spiritual silence. The burdening need of life, the incessant whirling of thoughts, the sting of joy and grief all cease leaving a vast freedom. One is freed from the cycles of birth and death and fate and works. This is the effect and the impact of transcending the cosmos whereby one receives the liberating touch of the Transcendent Being, the One without a Second.

Too early to rejoice
O soul, it is too early to rejoice!

But something within cautions Aswapati not to extinguish his soul in that Silence and Stillness ineffable. He must go further with his soul’s aspiration to redeem the earth.

Self’s mission and power
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self’s mission and Self’s power?

But there is a work to do, a mission to fulfil. This cannot be the end, the last stop of the tremendous adventure called life. Something is missing here. There is the Light that blinds, the Peace that drowns but where is the Power that would transform earthly life which is what Aswapati has come down for, embodying the aspiration for transforming earthly life.

Dead bank on the Eternal’s road
On what dead bank on the Eternal’s road?

Is this the end, the sea from which none returns? Is this the final answer to all our hopes and aspirations?

His purpose in the stars
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?

His soul cautions him reminding that he has not come down for personal mukti but for fulfilling God’s work in the world.

Escape brings not the crown
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!

It is easy for him now to escape the cosmic struggle and merge forever into the Supreme Mystery. But this is not the victory or the crowning realisation for which he has come so far.

Closing Remarks
The seeking for nirvana and personal extinction celebrated as mukti cannot be the last word of all our search and endeavour and aspiration and hope. It is the last illusion born out of the separative ego that must be overcome to discover the great secret behind creation.