Skip to main content

From the Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Life to Greater Life

Travelling  from the kingdoms and godheads of the little life to the Kingdoms and godheads of the greater life.


 Adventuring once more in the natal mist

Across the dangerous haze, the pregnant stir,

He through the astral chaos shore a way

Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,

The watching opacity multiplied as he moved

Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;

The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.

Around him an extinguished phantom glare

Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes

The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.

His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.


Now in the last section before he moves on to a greater life, Aswapati is once again for the last time experiencing the fog and the dangerous haze of vital dark emotions that are stirring. Sri Aurobindo says as Aswapati cut a way through the astral chaos that moves the little life, the grey faces of demons and the ambiguous dead staring eyes multiplied. The darkness flickered like a dying torch, like an extinguished imaginary glare of shadows and misleading shapes of people in that vague, inconscient’s dark and measureless cave. In that cave of dark little life, “His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame." But as he moves on in the gloom towards the kingdoms and the godheads of the greater life, he will follow life's evolution out of matter, ending this canto.

Huta paints Aswapati, and his only sunlight is his spirit’s flame. In the Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave, amid its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes, Aswapati is cutting a way through the astral chaos that moves the little life. 


Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace

And feels approach a breath of wider air,

So he escaped from that grey anarchy.

...

Into an ineffectual world he came,

A purposeless region of arrested birth

Where being from non-being fled and dared

To live but had no strength long to abide.

Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky

Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze

Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds

And crying for a direction in the void

Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost

And wandering through unfamiliar worlds;

Wings of vague questioning met the query of Space.

...

After denial dawned a dubious hope,

A hope of self and form and leave to live

And the birth of that which never yet could be,

...

And a touch of sure delight in unsure things:

To a strange uncertain tract his journey came

Where consciousness played with unconscious self

And birth was an attempt or episode.

...

Life laboured in a strange and mythic air

Denuded of her sweet magnificent suns.

In worlds imagined, never yet made true,

A lingering glimmer on creation’s verge,

One strayed and dreamed and never stopped to achieve:

To achieve would have destroyed that magic Space.

...

The marvels of a twilight wonderland

Full of a beauty strangely, vainly made,

A surge of fanciful realities,

Dim tokens of a Splendour sealed above,

Awoke the passion of the eyes’ desire,

Compelled belief on the enamoured thought

And drew the heart but led it to no goal.

...

A magic flowed as if of moving scenes

That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy

Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art

In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush

On a silver background of incertitude.

An infant glow of heavens near to morn,

A fire intense conceived but never lit,

Caressed the air with ardent hints of day.

...

Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky

Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze

A magic flowed as if of moving scenes

That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy

Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art

In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush

On a silver background of incertitude.

Aswapati has escaped from that grey anarchy of the little life, which is beset by forces from the lower vital planes. He walks now with a freer pace and feels approaching a breath of wider air, arriving at the very first world of the greater life. Sri Aurobindo pens it as an ineffectual world, where one is drifting, dreaming, and crying for a direction in the void. Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost and wandering through unfamiliar worlds. Above there is a pondering peak of sky. A region of dubious hope. There are marvels of twilight wonderland, a magic flowing as if of delicate moving scenes. Sparing lines described by an abstract art. Like a faint dreambrush on a silver background of doubt. In that wonderland, Aswapati is experiencing the beginnings—the first subtle vibrations—of the greater life to come. Now begins a new canto: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life.


Huta paints the magic of abstract art with a faint dreambrush on a silver background of incertitude. The beginnings—the first subtle vibrations—of the greater life to come.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More on Synthesis

 Again we shall contemplate on a few more words on the wisdom of synthesis (navigating the "narrow razor-edged Path" between duality or the "noble middle path" of Buddha) from our beloved DK. However I wish to emphasize that Djwal Khul and Alice Bailey demonstrated practical (not just theoretically) synthesis. For instance Alice Bailey being born in the west was open enough to acknowledge and bring forth teachings from a far wiser eastern/oriental master Djwal Khul. She could both surrender herself (a difficult quality to develop for the western concrete mind with its overemphasis on freedom) and at the same time was careful enough to guard herself against foolish blind devotion (a vice of oriental masses). Another disciple who demonstrated practical synthesis was Blavatsky (synthesis of religions). She established Theosophical society headquarters in the west and soon shifted it to the east although she worked and died for the cause of theosophy in the west. One mo...

Third Initiation : Disciple and Mental Body

 We studied initiations until the second in our ealier posts. Today let us look at the third especially from the perspective of a disciple (rather than the ray as well as the external ceremonial aspect conferred during the wesak full moon which we will cover later). The third initiation marks the culmination of complete mastery of the mental (in the same way that the earlier two initiations resulted into the control of physical and astral planes). It is a distinct initiation, which marks a definite transition out of the form consciousness (lower personality of mental, emotional(astral) and physical planes), and the initiate can function at will on the plane of the intuition though soul (ego). Between the second and third initiation work is struggling with and mastering the energies of the mental world. What kind of work ? DK sums that for us (details found in TWM book) as -  "A. Work on the mental plane produces realisation of duality. The disciple seeks to blend and merge the...

Aphorisms as seed-thoughts

 Subsequent to our discussion on seed-thoughts, another great example of seed-thouht I think is an aphorism. The complete agni-yoga series of books by Roerichs are aphorisms of Ethical living (and give Ray 1 flavour of fiery will to the yoga of synthesis). Similarly the temple aphorisms of Francia A. La Due give a Ray 5 flavour of occult science to the works of H.P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge. We quote those aphorims (as seed-thoughts) from temple teachings of Master H. (with his image):  "Days come and days go, but if thou watchest thou shalt see: THE LOAD thou hast laid on the heart of a friend will God transfer to thine own heart; heavy as it presses on the heart of thy friend, heavier will it press on thine own heart in the days to come. THE STONE thou hast cast from the path of the blind will smite the adder lying in wait for thee. THE WEIGHT thou hast clamped on the feet of another will drag thine own feet into Hadean desolation. THE SHELTER thou hast given the wayfa...