13: The crown city of Aswapati_Part1
#11854 by Alagesan published on Thursday, October 1st 2020, 5:10:00 am
13: The crown city of Aswapati
With the speed of thought, manowegam, as the Mahābhārata would say, Narad has undergone a transition from Mind into material things and he is now in ancient Aswapati’s Madra. The objective of his visit is specific, not just an attraction towards the golden summer earth, terre dorée d’été, trying to catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun that brings him here; it is in the context of Savitri’s marriage with Satyavan that he comes. Therefore, even as he approaches the city, his eyes become rapt and in a moment he is in the palace hall.
There he sings for an hour about what the gods are striving for men on earth, and about the evolutionary travail, and its march. His descent is the descent of Light and his song is the Song of the lotus-heart of Love, Love with a thousand buds of Truth readying now to blossom in the earthly fields. Aswapati’s palace, as gorgeous and flowering up in delicate stone, rises to the winds in joy to receive him.
Madra seems to be a lovely exquisite place, classically jewel-solid yet lyrically beautiful like lapis lazuli with the power of awakening, the waters of the Alacananda washing through day and through night in its magnificences. The palace is carved in delicate stone and must have been a rare artistic creation showing the fine tastes of the king, and the quality of the citizens who lived there, rich in noble things of life, the pride and joy of perfection in in perfection’s living.It was not Maya Sabhā of the later times of the Pandavas, built by Vishwakarma, effulgent ever with some bespelled lights, and bedecked with rare gems brought from the quarries of the Moon, its lotus ponds and the gardens marvelling with the beauty of Indra’s heaven, and its soaring towers piercing the newly formed clouds in the sky.
Nor was it the Palatium of Augustus Caesar in Rome, large and grand and imposing, standing in its imperial majesty on a high rock above all that is low and small and trivial, with its vivid mosaic floors and its walls adorned with paintings of far-away landscapes, displaying the art of a genius “which had travelled far and experienced much, and had learnt to temper affairs with sentiment, sentiment with reason.”
Certainly it was not Damascus of the 3rd millennium BC as a centre of flourishing craft and industry and specialising in swords and lace, a city presently with some 125 monuments from different periods of its history.
Could it be the Periclean Athens with its Acropolis, or busy Agora, or heavenly Parthenon built by the hands of men? Or Priam’s Troy with epic chronicles of triumph and tragedy of the legendary war fought some 3000 years ago? Or the Sumerian Uruk of the strong walls built by Gilgamesh, with “magnificent buildings decorated with reliefs and mosaics, and comprising a great court and an inner sanctuary with a ziggurat behind”?
They all shaped man’s destiny in the joy of history.
But this prehistoric Madra of Aswapati on the banks of Alacananda is like a temple rising from the bedrock of Matter to God’s great heaven, Madra charged with divine happiness, Madra filled with a calm that can hold the luminous plenitudes of the spirit. Its æsthetic sense is the soul’s æsthetic sense and expression, of beauty and perfection. In its outward appearance it must have been a shining sapphire set in the ring of the great and green hills that are there around it. The poet describes it as follows:
Far now behind lay Madra’s spacious halls,
The white carved pillars, the cool dim alcoves,
The tinged mosaic of the crystal floors,
The towered pavilions, the wind-rippled pools
And gardens humming with the murmur of bees,
Forgotten soon or a pale memory
The fountain’s plash in the wide stone-bound pool,
The thoughtful noontide’s brooding solemn trance,
The colonnade’s dream grey in the quiet eve,
The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night. ||114.10||
Surely in the brooding trance that is firmly supported by the white-carved pillars we breathe the noontide’s deep thoughtfulness itself. Here Spirit seems to have found expression in Matter, as much as Matter has opened out to the joyous wonders of the Spirit. That is the kind of lyric-delicate and memory-sweet place Savitri leaves behind her when she joins her husband Satyavan in the Shalwa forest hermitage. Here is a picture of ethereal wonder that has become real on earth.
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12: A few thematic reflections_ part11
#11852 by Alagesan published on Wednesday, September 30th 2020, 5:00:00 am
Glory beneath the triple mystic heaven
A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy’s skies
On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection’s home,
Magical unfoldings of the Eternal’s smile
Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight. ||148.1||
Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven
The seven immortal earths were seen sublime:
Homes of the blest released from death and sleep
Where grief can never come nor any pang
Arriving from self-lost and seeking worlds
Alter Heaven-nature’s changeless quietude
And mighty posture of eternal calm,
Its pose of ecstasy immutable. ||148.10||Plains lay that seemed the expanse of God’s wide sleep,
Thought’s wings climbed up towards heaven’s vast repose
Lost in blue deeps of immortality. ||148.41||A changed earth-nature felt the breath of peace. ||148.2||
Air seemed an ocean of felicity
Or the couch of the unknown spiritual rest,
A vast quiescence swallowing up all sound
Into a voicelessness of utter bliss;
Even Matter brought a close spiritual touch,
All thrilled with the immanence of one divine. ||148.3||
A rhapsody
From across our blue sky we hear the treading of the invisible feet. Sounds come as though the deeps of calm awoke to the surging intensities of some melodious infinity. The waves of delight and truth ride on the wavesRead more | 0 comments
12: A few thematic reflections_ part9
#11849 by Alagesan published on Monday, September 28th 2020, 5:00:00 am
On a dangerous brink
Apropos of the Mother’s last days in her physical body here is a brief account:
This time it will be successful; it will not fail, it will not end in a tragedy. A lot of people are waiting for it; the gods are waiting for it too, for the success.
She was feeling numbness in the feet. She wanted to walk. We made her walk. Her lips turned blue. She fell down. We put her in the bed again.
After a couple of days she again wanted to walk; perhaps she thought that her legs would get paralysed, because of disuse, and that she would not be able to do her work.
But we did not allow her, knowing what had happened on the earlier occasion. She said: raise me up from the bed. We used to lift her up now and then. She was getting bedsores.
She used to sit or remain inclined in one single posture for long times. It was difficult to do massage. We did not allow her to walk.She was convinced about the supramental transformation in her present body; otherwise she would not have done all this.
She was told
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