To scientifically prove that within everyone lies the ability to awaken Cybergod CYBERGOD.COM
Cybergod Is The Ultimate Being!
To Bring Understanding The Evolutionary Process Within Everyone
Since the kundalini mechanism is a biological mechanism, given a properly conducted research program based on a serious scientific study of a group of suitable candidates, it should be possible to measure the biological and intellectual changes using suitable tests and equipment.
"Gopi Krishna (1903–1984) was a pioneer in the land of spirituality." - Deepak Chopra, M.D.
"Worked with this man in the late 1970's. There's no doubt that he was of the most important human beings of the last century. Atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins are important in that they oblige religion to account for itself: but it is only through the avenues that Gopi Krishna proposed, that actual progress will be made. If science was more interested in the brain and less in sending toy tractors to Mars, all this would happen a lot quicker" - iain399
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Monday, February 26, 2007
THE ENERGY BEHIND ENLIGHTENMENT
Most people use ten percent or less of the Brain. Through the awakening of Kundalina energy the brain can organically evolve to a higher performance. No time has been spent investigating perhaps the most powerful energy of nature. Religious experience and its root.
Kundalini is the evolutionary potency in all humans. A fundamental bioenergy. It comes from an Indian word meaning "to join the soul with the cosmic soul," In the ancient Indian language Sanskrit it is a term referring to a coiled force or energy originating at the base of the spine, and seated near the sex organs a coiled up sleeping snake. Implies latent energy or potential to expand. Serpent Power when activated travels up the seven chakras which are the nerve centers along the spinal cord and enlightens the mind. Expanding consciousness the nirvana of Buddha. It is responsible for human evolution and all-psychic abilities genius and spiritual illumination. Kundalini is the biological way to expand the mind.
Kundalini is the "secret" behind yoga and all other esoteric psychology's and genuine occult mysteries. A scientifically measurable biochemical essence Kundalini is the substance that is the nourishment of consciousness. It penetrates the nervous system and influences the nerves to become the instrument of higher consciousness. This subtle substance is a snake-like force that fuels the mind in order to sustain a more active state, producing an awakened Kundalini individual, Note: snakes have two hemi penises and the power to hypnotize.
Such inner power is represented by the two snakes on King Tut's headdress and the feathered serpent of Mexico and South America, The serpent in the Garden of Eden. The upward flow of Kundalini nectar (prana force, bioplasmic stream) is concentrated in the reproductive fluids of both men and women. When Kundalini is activated a reverse action takes place, feeding the center of the brain. "cavity of Brahma" in the brain's ventricular cavity. Kundalini is the power that controls it. All great saints'' mystics' poets and people of genius, as well as the insane were influenced in this way.
If an experiment were performed it would prove the existence of the Kundalini force and show its physiological effects on the body. It could bridge the gap between science and mysticism and show the essential truth of religious experience and tradition. Religion has always been a companion of humanity. Religion came to guide humanity. No scientist could doubt the reality of this phenomenon once it has been observed and measured.. Such an experiment would uncover the vale of darkness and delusion under which humanity has been living. This evolutionary force needs publicity and actual proof would provide it. The results will speak for themselves. It will be a discovery more important than anything that has preceded it.
It is only from an awakened perspective that such observation can be made and this potential lies within everyone. As humanity evolved from cave men to the United Nations it becomes inevitable that this discovery will come to light and that there is indeed a purpose. A planned creation to our being. God protects our blue-green planet earth from the inferno of intergalactic space. Why? Because humanity has to attain to other states of consciousness for which all these recourses are needed to do this. We have been granted an intelligence to make the best use of it.
Life's purpose and evolution's power lead to cosmic laws, which must be obeyed for nature's divine grace within us all to come to light. These laws as spoken of in all religions occult and mystical beliefs describe a path to enlightenment. As great empires have come and gone, so too must humanity's faiths change.
My teacher, the late Pundit Gopi Krishna, an Indian Yogi-scientist and world renowned expert of Kundalini who has written over twenty books on the subject states, "We all know what happened whenever a political system became despotic and oppressive, a social system exacting and corrupt, and a religious system excessively authoritarian and dogmatic. There arose a demand for revision and reform. Political revolutionaries, reformers and prophets appeared on the scene, The old system was overthrown often with dreadful bloodshed, suffering and pain and a new one installed in its place. We have to cooperate with inner evolution."
What is needed for a more positive harmonic peaceful and prosperous existence is a fuller understanding of humanity's need for god. As society accelerates the brain must work increasingly beyond the point of balance. We are giants of intellect and dwarfs of the spiritual. We give no time to the spirit. Bringing on grave consequences. Gopi Krishna says. " We have given too much emphasis to the material side of life at the cost of the spiritual side." Time must be set aside for prayer, meditation, yoga or some other spiritual act in order to keep life's evolutionary needs in balance and maintain inner sanity. Yoga meditation provides a channel for the opening of a powerful energy (inspiration) which can enable anyone to blossom into a genius, an artist, a poet, a mystic.
If this force awakens in an impure or out of balance form it can result in evil genius fanaticism delusions of grandeur, or mental illness (like manic depression and schizophrenia). There is a lot that is not understood that kundalini research will explain.
The brain is subject to the influence of countless factors connected with the life environment and the family history of an individual. When even slightly tainted or stained do to the pressure of reality or various causes such as wrong mode of life, unhealthy environment, faulty heredity, shock, frustration, repression, tension and numerous other factors. If the mind is abnormal the brain too must be a shareholder in the abnormality. There are subtle changes in some neuronic structures in the cranium. The real root of the abnormality is an impure or toxic condition of the prana. If you do not live a disciplined life then the awakening of this center can be unhealthy. A distorted vision of the same power. It means that the system is not pure and that the energy is not working in a healthy way.
There is a positive spiritual energy force within us all. Which has a physical counterpart in the human body that feeds a certain portion of the brain cavity of Brahma. This is a living electricity or intelligent energy that is needed to open the brain. The macrobiological changes and its effect can be observable and scientifically verified. Elevations of consciousness can only occur through the transformation brought by kundalini and by no other agency.
Nature shows compassion to humanity in order to help guide us safely through transgressions. God to me is a universal god that is not tied to any one organized religion. It gives us chance after chance. But when we digress off the path unhealthy results occur. We can not blame nature but ourselves. We have intelligence, we have reason, and we have learning. But if by having everything we ignore it then of course nature has no alternative except to teach us by suffering. Heaven is always merciful and all compassionate.
Great prophets, mystics, inventors, sages and people of genius have come to guide our race towards evolution's goal. The study of the past will show the common thread within these great men and woman. Study is needed in order to educate us about how life should be led to be more in harmony with the forces of nature, which govern our life. A life of humility – love – purity - truth - moderation and compassion.
But how can we prove kundalini's effect on the body? We can perform an experiment in a controlled environment. This experiment would take on hundred individuals with a healthy average intellect - normal typical people all with a great urge to awaken with a deep passion for spiritual matters and who are prepared to mold their lives in consort with the spiritual laws. Men and women aged twenty to thirty five. They would be put in a peaceful environment and subjected to various tests over a period of five years or more.
Scientists can observe them as the subjects try to awaken their kundalini. They will awaken to differing degrees. Tests will document the physiological changes that occur and will provide the empirical proof of what happens to the body as the kundalini force is awakened. I hypothesis that there are definitive biological differences in the blood, the cerebrospinal fluid and the composition of the brain matter in its subtle layers. Research on brain mapping. EEG ceg ces and the electricity in the body may show the kundalini force. The brain activity will be increased and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes, which can be measured. There will be physiological changes, which can be measured. This will convince the biologist that this change of the mind of the brain has physiological counter part. The result will start humanity towards a greater understanding of this evolutionary mechanism.
Once it is proved that the potential to awaken lies within everyone and is the most valuable asset we have, people will strive for it. The result on humanity will be comparable to the splitting of the spiritual atom. Instead of releasing a nuclear holocaust it will unleash the beginning of a utopian age, our cosmic destiny that can transform a mortal into an immortal and eternal source of happiness.
The awakening of these energies produces genius in mortal man or woman. Creativity, love and compassion emerge and pathways are opened to a future, awakened humanity. We will become the trailblazers of our own inevitable destiny. A utopian age of peace and harmony will follow. All political and spiritual processes will be developed for the highest good. Individuals will develop their "inner Sun" to the fullest during their lifetime. Kundalini research is part of an evolutionary force that compels us to look for enlightenment as an experience accessible to all. To awaken is the goal nature has set for us.
The time is right for we can use state of the art technology to study the phenomenon. We can study the common thread that lies at the root of all religion mysticism which is to guide humankind's understanding of evolutionary change The understanding of kundalini is now becoming provable for the first time.
Sigmund Freud in fact understood that the libido is directly responsible for mental imbalances. At some point in time we will discover that all we know can be reduced to the bio-chemical. This center of the brain cavity of Brahma is still undiscovered but could be called the "third eye" or the "philosopher's stone". Kundalini will for the first time reveal how energy is supplied to the brain and that it is superintelligent. Freud's concept about libido is of a psychic energy drawn from the libidinous tendencies in human beings. Which is to say the reproductive energy but only from a psychic point of view. He does not say that it has organic roots. This is what famed psychologist Wilhelm Reich emphasizes that this libido must have roots deep in the biochemical structure of the body.
The sex organs in a state of awakened kundalini produces a vast amount of fluid to feed the newly activated part of the brain. Sexual energy may well be directly connected to a mechanism that is affected by evolutionary advancement. Kundalini is the fundamental bioenergy stored primarily in the sex organs. This basic life force is normally associated with the genitals for simple continuance of the species by providing a sex drive. The tie in to the human sex drive and higher consciousness must be explored. Why do men have ejaculation while asleep or wake up with erect penises. There is a force of nature that needs physical release to be sane.
It is called the "goddess Kundalini" or "Mother Nature" because a mother's love is similar to the bliss of higher consciousness. Woman have more feelings! Life is part of them - menstruation each month reminds them of that. Soulmates, man-woman have intercourse to prolong the race (children). Plus experience the love, kundalini evolutionary force of completion, happiness and bliss that keeps growing.
Sexual or relaxation exercises may release inner pressure of an over-taxed libido. An evolutionary super-nectar, extraordinary life force feeds the mind, a kissing food of unlimited bliss. The sublimation raising up of sex energy is the basic lever of all spiritual disciplines. But the all-inclusive nature of sex energy is a misnomer. Reproduction is but one of the aspects of the life energy of which the other theater of activity is the brain.
Humanity's basic needs are for sex, god and a need for prayer to control our environment i.e.. hope within everyone lies the ability to awaken. Humanity needs love to balance our own unbalanced state and give us time to meditate, to control our over-taxed brain. Humanity's sex drive may well be the only time some people relax from their hectic lifestyles. There is a need to just kick back and enjoy. Sex could be a form of deep meditation and experience between two soul mates. Loves deep blissful passion, kundalini's purest expression an active prayer one of the most powerful forces in the universe. A positive experience that ends in an explosion of uncontrollable bliss. However for the average person, sex is not a deep meditation but is merely a physical release, a small slice of love's true potential.
What is needed is that deep magnetism of love - a yin/yang of a universal constant. First came the big bang theory for the creation of the universe, now the love theory of creation states that the universe is a constant - always was here. That pure love magnetism, that yin/yang. Example. Trees love earth. Earth love the sky the sky loves the stars space… Love is consciousness … The universe is male and female and in love with both forces.
Suppression of sexuality out of contempt or hatred of our lower nature is an act of ignorance leading only to atrophy of the sexual system. Celibacy is contrary to nature. Since enlightenment is an evolutionary process with heredity playing an important role stamping the genera of the enlightened so that their biological gains through spiritual disciplines can be passed to their progeny. DNA research will eventually discover the consciousness gene.
Sexual energy has been represented in ancient art and statues by an erect organ. Showing the upward streaming of the reproductive essence that effects the transformation of consciousness.
In order to discover the factual evidence behind consciousness, one must first study kundalini energy and its effects. Scientific proof will free humanity to accept the fact that within everyone lies the temple of god leading to a clear realization of our own divine nature. Man's incomprehensible inner bliss and oneness with divinity and a way of life that overpowers doing wrong or any other action that goes against this cosmic evolutionary force. The misunderstanding of kundalini has led to environmental decline that seems rooted to ultimate destruction of Planet Earth i.e. ozone layer, burning of rain forests, religious wars and terrorism, rape and murder….
It is one relationship not just to their own kundalini but also towards each other. It is the combination of the two that will lead not only to harmony but also to sharing and ultimately to progress. The appeal especially in these times is kundalini which offers hope promise. There is negative energy (i.e. ours) that can be transformed into positive communal conscience which will try to eradicate feelings of helplessness, negativity, pain and the burden of feeling isolated.
Why are people so selfish? Due to not having an understanding of kundalini. Just desperation, helplessness and power struggles which lead to hurting others and ourselves or apathy both of which have a profound effect on our history and the mood of the energy.
Our goal and objective is to create a paradise on earth. A peaceful co-existence, long lives, greater achievements and more freedom. A utopian society living by the laws uncovered by the experiment. A union with the divine is a sum total of the physical laws of the universe. We are in the process of taking the next evolutionary leap. The new century is here.
The study of what lifestyle would be best to advance ones inner potential is a task that may take eons to complete. With the help of divine grace may we free the veil that covers the eyes of the blind masses. We who have been chosen for this colossal task are the humble instruments of this evolutionary force. We will do our part to understand this unfathomable awareness of our eternal souls. The universe is ruled by an intelligent power! Consciousness does not change in birth or death it is bigger than our individual soul. Consciousness is an eternal om...
Kundalini is the evolutionary potency in all humans. A fundamental bioenergy. It comes from an Indian word meaning "to join the soul with the cosmic soul," In the ancient Indian language Sanskrit it is a term referring to a coiled force or energy originating at the base of the spine, and seated near the sex organs a coiled up sleeping snake. Implies latent energy or potential to expand. Serpent Power when activated travels up the seven chakras which are the nerve centers along the spinal cord and enlightens the mind. Expanding consciousness the nirvana of Buddha. It is responsible for human evolution and all-psychic abilities genius and spiritual illumination. Kundalini is the biological way to expand the mind.
Kundalini is the "secret" behind yoga and all other esoteric psychology's and genuine occult mysteries. A scientifically measurable biochemical essence Kundalini is the substance that is the nourishment of consciousness. It penetrates the nervous system and influences the nerves to become the instrument of higher consciousness. This subtle substance is a snake-like force that fuels the mind in order to sustain a more active state, producing an awakened Kundalini individual, Note: snakes have two hemi penises and the power to hypnotize.
Such inner power is represented by the two snakes on King Tut's headdress and the feathered serpent of Mexico and South America, The serpent in the Garden of Eden. The upward flow of Kundalini nectar (prana force, bioplasmic stream) is concentrated in the reproductive fluids of both men and women. When Kundalini is activated a reverse action takes place, feeding the center of the brain. "cavity of Brahma" in the brain's ventricular cavity. Kundalini is the power that controls it. All great saints'' mystics' poets and people of genius, as well as the insane were influenced in this way.
If an experiment were performed it would prove the existence of the Kundalini force and show its physiological effects on the body. It could bridge the gap between science and mysticism and show the essential truth of religious experience and tradition. Religion has always been a companion of humanity. Religion came to guide humanity. No scientist could doubt the reality of this phenomenon once it has been observed and measured.. Such an experiment would uncover the vale of darkness and delusion under which humanity has been living. This evolutionary force needs publicity and actual proof would provide it. The results will speak for themselves. It will be a discovery more important than anything that has preceded it.
It is only from an awakened perspective that such observation can be made and this potential lies within everyone. As humanity evolved from cave men to the United Nations it becomes inevitable that this discovery will come to light and that there is indeed a purpose. A planned creation to our being. God protects our blue-green planet earth from the inferno of intergalactic space. Why? Because humanity has to attain to other states of consciousness for which all these recourses are needed to do this. We have been granted an intelligence to make the best use of it.
Life's purpose and evolution's power lead to cosmic laws, which must be obeyed for nature's divine grace within us all to come to light. These laws as spoken of in all religions occult and mystical beliefs describe a path to enlightenment. As great empires have come and gone, so too must humanity's faiths change.
My teacher, the late Pundit Gopi Krishna, an Indian Yogi-scientist and world renowned expert of Kundalini who has written over twenty books on the subject states, "We all know what happened whenever a political system became despotic and oppressive, a social system exacting and corrupt, and a religious system excessively authoritarian and dogmatic. There arose a demand for revision and reform. Political revolutionaries, reformers and prophets appeared on the scene, The old system was overthrown often with dreadful bloodshed, suffering and pain and a new one installed in its place. We have to cooperate with inner evolution."
What is needed for a more positive harmonic peaceful and prosperous existence is a fuller understanding of humanity's need for god. As society accelerates the brain must work increasingly beyond the point of balance. We are giants of intellect and dwarfs of the spiritual. We give no time to the spirit. Bringing on grave consequences. Gopi Krishna says. " We have given too much emphasis to the material side of life at the cost of the spiritual side." Time must be set aside for prayer, meditation, yoga or some other spiritual act in order to keep life's evolutionary needs in balance and maintain inner sanity. Yoga meditation provides a channel for the opening of a powerful energy (inspiration) which can enable anyone to blossom into a genius, an artist, a poet, a mystic.
If this force awakens in an impure or out of balance form it can result in evil genius fanaticism delusions of grandeur, or mental illness (like manic depression and schizophrenia). There is a lot that is not understood that kundalini research will explain.
The brain is subject to the influence of countless factors connected with the life environment and the family history of an individual. When even slightly tainted or stained do to the pressure of reality or various causes such as wrong mode of life, unhealthy environment, faulty heredity, shock, frustration, repression, tension and numerous other factors. If the mind is abnormal the brain too must be a shareholder in the abnormality. There are subtle changes in some neuronic structures in the cranium. The real root of the abnormality is an impure or toxic condition of the prana. If you do not live a disciplined life then the awakening of this center can be unhealthy. A distorted vision of the same power. It means that the system is not pure and that the energy is not working in a healthy way.
There is a positive spiritual energy force within us all. Which has a physical counterpart in the human body that feeds a certain portion of the brain cavity of Brahma. This is a living electricity or intelligent energy that is needed to open the brain. The macrobiological changes and its effect can be observable and scientifically verified. Elevations of consciousness can only occur through the transformation brought by kundalini and by no other agency.
Nature shows compassion to humanity in order to help guide us safely through transgressions. God to me is a universal god that is not tied to any one organized religion. It gives us chance after chance. But when we digress off the path unhealthy results occur. We can not blame nature but ourselves. We have intelligence, we have reason, and we have learning. But if by having everything we ignore it then of course nature has no alternative except to teach us by suffering. Heaven is always merciful and all compassionate.
Great prophets, mystics, inventors, sages and people of genius have come to guide our race towards evolution's goal. The study of the past will show the common thread within these great men and woman. Study is needed in order to educate us about how life should be led to be more in harmony with the forces of nature, which govern our life. A life of humility – love – purity - truth - moderation and compassion.
But how can we prove kundalini's effect on the body? We can perform an experiment in a controlled environment. This experiment would take on hundred individuals with a healthy average intellect - normal typical people all with a great urge to awaken with a deep passion for spiritual matters and who are prepared to mold their lives in consort with the spiritual laws. Men and women aged twenty to thirty five. They would be put in a peaceful environment and subjected to various tests over a period of five years or more.
Scientists can observe them as the subjects try to awaken their kundalini. They will awaken to differing degrees. Tests will document the physiological changes that occur and will provide the empirical proof of what happens to the body as the kundalini force is awakened. I hypothesis that there are definitive biological differences in the blood, the cerebrospinal fluid and the composition of the brain matter in its subtle layers. Research on brain mapping. EEG ceg ces and the electricity in the body may show the kundalini force. The brain activity will be increased and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes, which can be measured. There will be physiological changes, which can be measured. This will convince the biologist that this change of the mind of the brain has physiological counter part. The result will start humanity towards a greater understanding of this evolutionary mechanism.
Once it is proved that the potential to awaken lies within everyone and is the most valuable asset we have, people will strive for it. The result on humanity will be comparable to the splitting of the spiritual atom. Instead of releasing a nuclear holocaust it will unleash the beginning of a utopian age, our cosmic destiny that can transform a mortal into an immortal and eternal source of happiness.
The awakening of these energies produces genius in mortal man or woman. Creativity, love and compassion emerge and pathways are opened to a future, awakened humanity. We will become the trailblazers of our own inevitable destiny. A utopian age of peace and harmony will follow. All political and spiritual processes will be developed for the highest good. Individuals will develop their "inner Sun" to the fullest during their lifetime. Kundalini research is part of an evolutionary force that compels us to look for enlightenment as an experience accessible to all. To awaken is the goal nature has set for us.
The time is right for we can use state of the art technology to study the phenomenon. We can study the common thread that lies at the root of all religion mysticism which is to guide humankind's understanding of evolutionary change The understanding of kundalini is now becoming provable for the first time.
Sigmund Freud in fact understood that the libido is directly responsible for mental imbalances. At some point in time we will discover that all we know can be reduced to the bio-chemical. This center of the brain cavity of Brahma is still undiscovered but could be called the "third eye" or the "philosopher's stone". Kundalini will for the first time reveal how energy is supplied to the brain and that it is superintelligent. Freud's concept about libido is of a psychic energy drawn from the libidinous tendencies in human beings. Which is to say the reproductive energy but only from a psychic point of view. He does not say that it has organic roots. This is what famed psychologist Wilhelm Reich emphasizes that this libido must have roots deep in the biochemical structure of the body.
The sex organs in a state of awakened kundalini produces a vast amount of fluid to feed the newly activated part of the brain. Sexual energy may well be directly connected to a mechanism that is affected by evolutionary advancement. Kundalini is the fundamental bioenergy stored primarily in the sex organs. This basic life force is normally associated with the genitals for simple continuance of the species by providing a sex drive. The tie in to the human sex drive and higher consciousness must be explored. Why do men have ejaculation while asleep or wake up with erect penises. There is a force of nature that needs physical release to be sane.
It is called the "goddess Kundalini" or "Mother Nature" because a mother's love is similar to the bliss of higher consciousness. Woman have more feelings! Life is part of them - menstruation each month reminds them of that. Soulmates, man-woman have intercourse to prolong the race (children). Plus experience the love, kundalini evolutionary force of completion, happiness and bliss that keeps growing.
Sexual or relaxation exercises may release inner pressure of an over-taxed libido. An evolutionary super-nectar, extraordinary life force feeds the mind, a kissing food of unlimited bliss. The sublimation raising up of sex energy is the basic lever of all spiritual disciplines. But the all-inclusive nature of sex energy is a misnomer. Reproduction is but one of the aspects of the life energy of which the other theater of activity is the brain.
Humanity's basic needs are for sex, god and a need for prayer to control our environment i.e.. hope within everyone lies the ability to awaken. Humanity needs love to balance our own unbalanced state and give us time to meditate, to control our over-taxed brain. Humanity's sex drive may well be the only time some people relax from their hectic lifestyles. There is a need to just kick back and enjoy. Sex could be a form of deep meditation and experience between two soul mates. Loves deep blissful passion, kundalini's purest expression an active prayer one of the most powerful forces in the universe. A positive experience that ends in an explosion of uncontrollable bliss. However for the average person, sex is not a deep meditation but is merely a physical release, a small slice of love's true potential.
What is needed is that deep magnetism of love - a yin/yang of a universal constant. First came the big bang theory for the creation of the universe, now the love theory of creation states that the universe is a constant - always was here. That pure love magnetism, that yin/yang. Example. Trees love earth. Earth love the sky the sky loves the stars space… Love is consciousness … The universe is male and female and in love with both forces.
Suppression of sexuality out of contempt or hatred of our lower nature is an act of ignorance leading only to atrophy of the sexual system. Celibacy is contrary to nature. Since enlightenment is an evolutionary process with heredity playing an important role stamping the genera of the enlightened so that their biological gains through spiritual disciplines can be passed to their progeny. DNA research will eventually discover the consciousness gene.
Sexual energy has been represented in ancient art and statues by an erect organ. Showing the upward streaming of the reproductive essence that effects the transformation of consciousness.
In order to discover the factual evidence behind consciousness, one must first study kundalini energy and its effects. Scientific proof will free humanity to accept the fact that within everyone lies the temple of god leading to a clear realization of our own divine nature. Man's incomprehensible inner bliss and oneness with divinity and a way of life that overpowers doing wrong or any other action that goes against this cosmic evolutionary force. The misunderstanding of kundalini has led to environmental decline that seems rooted to ultimate destruction of Planet Earth i.e. ozone layer, burning of rain forests, religious wars and terrorism, rape and murder….
It is one relationship not just to their own kundalini but also towards each other. It is the combination of the two that will lead not only to harmony but also to sharing and ultimately to progress. The appeal especially in these times is kundalini which offers hope promise. There is negative energy (i.e. ours) that can be transformed into positive communal conscience which will try to eradicate feelings of helplessness, negativity, pain and the burden of feeling isolated.
Why are people so selfish? Due to not having an understanding of kundalini. Just desperation, helplessness and power struggles which lead to hurting others and ourselves or apathy both of which have a profound effect on our history and the mood of the energy.
Our goal and objective is to create a paradise on earth. A peaceful co-existence, long lives, greater achievements and more freedom. A utopian society living by the laws uncovered by the experiment. A union with the divine is a sum total of the physical laws of the universe. We are in the process of taking the next evolutionary leap. The new century is here.
The study of what lifestyle would be best to advance ones inner potential is a task that may take eons to complete. With the help of divine grace may we free the veil that covers the eyes of the blind masses. We who have been chosen for this colossal task are the humble instruments of this evolutionary force. We will do our part to understand this unfathomable awareness of our eternal souls. The universe is ruled by an intelligent power! Consciousness does not change in birth or death it is bigger than our individual soul. Consciousness is an eternal om...
Monday, January 1, 2007
The Kundalini Research Foundation
"Gopi Krishna was a pioneer in the land of spirituality." - Deepak Chopra, M.D.
The Kundalini Research Foundation, Ltd., established as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization at the request of Gopi Krishna in 1970, Contributions are tax-deductible. Send your check to the K. R. F., Ltd., P. O. Box 2234, Darien, CT 06902.
E-mail kundalini@ecomall.com - Polaris@cshore.com
O people of the world unite, and pave the way to peace sublime, Divided you yourself invite Disastrous wars, unrest and crime. 7-3-1952, Gopi Krishna From the Unseen,
“Gopi Krishna was a psychenaut into the realms of human possibility, an Odysseus of inner space. The publication of his autobiography should be a major event in the documentation of who and what we really are. - Jean Houston, Ph.D., Director, Foundation for Mind Research
Gopi Krishna's description of the changes —psychological, phsyical, perceptual, and biochemical— which can happen to a person who is in the process of an accelerated spiritual emergence process was the first definitive work written for the Western world about kundalini awakening. This new book should be a great comfort to those trying to understand the process. - Emma Bragon, Ph.D., Editor of the Spiritual Emergence Network Newsletter
Gopi Krishna was born in 1903 to parents of Kashmiri Brahmin extraction. His birthplace was a small village about twenty miles from the city of Srinagar, the summer capital of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India. He spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in this beautiful Himalayan valley. In 1914, his family moved to the city of Lahore in the Punjab which, at that time, was a part of British India. Gopi Krishna passed the next nine years completing his public school education. Illness forced him to leave the torrid planes of the Punjab and he returned to the cooler climate of the Kashmir Valley. During the succeeding years, he secured a post in the Department of Public Works of the State, married and raised a family. In 1946 he founded a social organization and, with the help of a few dedicated friends, tried to bring about reforms in some of the outmoded customs of his people. Their goals included the abolition of the dowry system, which subjected the families of brides to severe and even ruinous financial obligations, and the strictures against the remarriage of widows. After a few years, Gopi Krishna was granted premature retirement from his position in the government and devoted himself almost exclusively to service work in the community.
In 1967 he published his first major book in India, Kundalini--The Evolutionary Energy in Man (currently available under the title Living With Kundalini). Shortly thereafter it was published in Great Britain and the United States and has since appeared in eleven major languages. The book presented to the Western world for the first time a clear and concise autobiographical account of the phenomenon of the forceful awakening of Kundalini, which he had experienced in 1937, and the long process by which he eventually attained the perennially transformed or sahaja state of consciousness. This book, and the sixteen other published works by Gopi Krishna have generated a steadily growing interest in the subjects of consciousness and the evolution of the brain. He also traveled extensively in Europe and North America, during the last seventeen years of his life, energetically presenting his theories to scientists, scholars, researchers and others. Gopi Krishna's experiences led him to hypothesize that there is a biological mechanism in the human body, known from ancient times in India as Kundalini, which is responsible for creativity, genius, psychic abilities, religious and mystical experiences, as well as some types of aberrant mental states. He asserted that ignorance of the workings of this evolutionary mechanism was the main reason for the present dangerous state of world. Gopi Krishna passed away in July, 1984 of a severe lung infection and is survived by his wife, three children and grandchildren. The work that he began is currently being carried forward through the efforts of a number of affiliated foundations, organizations and individuals around the world.
http://www.ecomall.com/gopikrishna/
The Kundalini Research Foundation, Ltd., established as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization at the request of Gopi Krishna in 1970, Contributions are tax-deductible. Send your check to the K. R. F., Ltd., P. O. Box 2234, Darien, CT 06902.
E-mail kundalini@ecomall.com - Polaris@cshore.com
O people of the world unite, and pave the way to peace sublime, Divided you yourself invite Disastrous wars, unrest and crime. 7-3-1952, Gopi Krishna From the Unseen,
“Gopi Krishna was a psychenaut into the realms of human possibility, an Odysseus of inner space. The publication of his autobiography should be a major event in the documentation of who and what we really are. - Jean Houston, Ph.D., Director, Foundation for Mind Research
Gopi Krishna's description of the changes —psychological, phsyical, perceptual, and biochemical— which can happen to a person who is in the process of an accelerated spiritual emergence process was the first definitive work written for the Western world about kundalini awakening. This new book should be a great comfort to those trying to understand the process. - Emma Bragon, Ph.D., Editor of the Spiritual Emergence Network Newsletter
Gopi Krishna was born in 1903 to parents of Kashmiri Brahmin extraction. His birthplace was a small village about twenty miles from the city of Srinagar, the summer capital of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India. He spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in this beautiful Himalayan valley. In 1914, his family moved to the city of Lahore in the Punjab which, at that time, was a part of British India. Gopi Krishna passed the next nine years completing his public school education. Illness forced him to leave the torrid planes of the Punjab and he returned to the cooler climate of the Kashmir Valley. During the succeeding years, he secured a post in the Department of Public Works of the State, married and raised a family. In 1946 he founded a social organization and, with the help of a few dedicated friends, tried to bring about reforms in some of the outmoded customs of his people. Their goals included the abolition of the dowry system, which subjected the families of brides to severe and even ruinous financial obligations, and the strictures against the remarriage of widows. After a few years, Gopi Krishna was granted premature retirement from his position in the government and devoted himself almost exclusively to service work in the community.
In 1967 he published his first major book in India, Kundalini--The Evolutionary Energy in Man (currently available under the title Living With Kundalini). Shortly thereafter it was published in Great Britain and the United States and has since appeared in eleven major languages. The book presented to the Western world for the first time a clear and concise autobiographical account of the phenomenon of the forceful awakening of Kundalini, which he had experienced in 1937, and the long process by which he eventually attained the perennially transformed or sahaja state of consciousness. This book, and the sixteen other published works by Gopi Krishna have generated a steadily growing interest in the subjects of consciousness and the evolution of the brain. He also traveled extensively in Europe and North America, during the last seventeen years of his life, energetically presenting his theories to scientists, scholars, researchers and others. Gopi Krishna's experiences led him to hypothesize that there is a biological mechanism in the human body, known from ancient times in India as Kundalini, which is responsible for creativity, genius, psychic abilities, religious and mystical experiences, as well as some types of aberrant mental states. He asserted that ignorance of the workings of this evolutionary mechanism was the main reason for the present dangerous state of world. Gopi Krishna passed away in July, 1984 of a severe lung infection and is survived by his wife, three children and grandchildren. The work that he began is currently being carried forward through the efforts of a number of affiliated foundations, organizations and individuals around the world.
http://www.ecomall.com/gopikrishna/
WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR MANKIND'S PROGRESS?
Scientists in general, and biologists in particular, prefer to shut their eyes to the obvious explanation for the progress made by humankind thus far, because the implications of continued biological evolution of the human brain are too terrific to contemplate. In the first place, it shatters one of the fundamental concepts of biology--that evolution is not predetermined and has occurred by random mutation of the genes.
The second issue raised is, what is the target of this evolution? If the target is a more elevated state of consciousness, the conclusion becomes irresistible that there is a plan in creation, which shatters the materialistic concepts of modern science. The third issue which arises is, if there is a biological evolution of the brain, how does it influence our social, political or religious life, and what steps are necessary to take to conform to this irresistible change in the structure of the brain.
The host of social, political, economic, spiritual, and philosophical problems, which the acceptance of this single idea involves, is so vast that the average intelligent mind is incapable of dealing with it. Once the idea is accepted, there will occur an upheaval in every sphere of human activity and thought. The world will not then be what it is now, and mankind will not continue to live in the same way.
From A Kundalini Catechism, by Gopi Krishna.
Gopi Krishna's Revised Theory of Evolution
1. Evolution is directed by a super-intelligent force which operates through a biological mechanism in the human body known to yoga theory as ‘kundalini’, and by many other names in a wide variety of ancient and esoteric texts.
2. Evolution, including human evolution, is therefore not ‘random’, but a deliberate act on the part of an invisible cosmic intelligence or organizing power and has a ‘target.’
3. The target of evolution is to produce a virtual superman or woman who will live in a permanent state of bliss, possess a genius level of intelligence, and various other attributes seldom seen in the population at large such as psychic powers.
4. Since the kundalini mechanism is a biological mechanism, given a properly conducted research program based on a serious scientific study of a group of suitable candidates, it should be possible to measure the biological and intellectual changes using suitable tests and equipment.
5. The existence of the kundalini mechanism explains the origin of the religious impulse in man, and therefore heals the schism between science and religion.
The Lasting Significance of Gopi Krishna's Works
Gopi Krishna's discovery was without doubt the most important discovery in scientific history. Why? Because it revealed the source and destiny of man.
Put In one sentence, Gopi Krishna discovered a biological mechanism in his body, known to yoga theory as ‘kundalini’, which over a period of years entirely transformed his consciousness, raised him mentally to the level of a genius, and took him to a permanent state of ecstasy.
But in a world of doubting scientists, who lacked his inner experience, of what significance could this have to the rest of us?
Gopi Krishna's answer was in over 15 books and many talks world wide, to groups of scientists and laymen alike, with the intent of permanently raising our global consciousness to the next stage of human evolution.
Anybody who studies his works seriously and with an open mind, will see a genuine vision of man's future, only clearly visible to a man in such a higher state. Yet enough will filter down to the average reader which will enable him to see the meaningless and illusory rift between science and religion, which has been at the core of social and political unrest throughout the last millennium.
"I am in particular trying to draw the attention of the world to a very important fact, that at the present moment, our scientists, our learned educators, leaders, and politicians, are only aware of natural laws, and even those are not known completely or perfectly.
In addition to material laws, there are also spiritual or psychic laws in the universe. We have absolutely no awareness of these laws. Time and again, a glimpse of these laws has been given to mankind by the great prophets and Messiahs who appeared in different parts of the world. We have rejected their teachings as pure myth or superstition. But actually those teachings contain germs of truth that are essential for the safety and survival of the race.
The tragedy is that we have rejected the evidence of religion or of the teachings of great sages about the spiritual world and the soul which dwells in the human body. Since spirit, mind or soul is not perceptible to any of our senses, or to any of our scientific instruments, we presume that they have no independent existence apart from the body or the organic organ, the brain, and therefore we need not worry about what happens to them. But actually they do have an independent existence. They have a universe of their own, and they have profound influences on all that we do, on all that we think, on all that we create.
But this influence is conditioned by certain laws which are totally a sealed book to us. These laws are operating at present and driving mankind to a catastrophic war to end the present order, which is against the evolution of the human brain".
"I say,on the basis of my experience that the human brain is still in a state of organic evolution.I say this in contradiction of the views held by most leading biologists at this moment. I say that this biological evolution is carring all the race towards a higher state of consciousness I do not say that the human mind is evolving toward an undefined summit. What I firmly assert is that human consciousness is evolving toward a Predetermined Target, which I have experienced. What I further affirm is that the human brain is evolving toward that state of transhuman perception through the activit of an organic mechanism named Kundalini by the ancients.
The fact is that there is a biological mechanism in every human being and this mechanism is known as Kundalini. It can be accelerated though the discipline of Yoga or through other religous exercises. The human cerebrospinal system is capable of a new amazing activity that is still unknown to science. The practice of meditation, carried on in the proper way regularly for a sufficient duration of time, tends to force a normaly silant region in the brain to an astonishing activity. The idea that under the direct influence of the Cosmic Life Energy the human brain is still in a state of organic evolution is a fact so important that, compared to it, all other discoveries of modern science pale into insignificance.
What I am revealing is not knowledge picket up by study or gained through reflection but gathered from my day-to-day experience for years on end".
"In no other period in history have the learned been so mistrustful of the divine possibilities in man as they are now, and in no other age has the need for spiritual geniuses been so urgent as it is at this time. The human mind is so constituted that no luxury and no treasure of the earth can assuage its burning fever seeking an explanation for its own existence. All the heavy weight of this inscrutable mystery, all the questions posed by intellect, all the suffering of the harrowing ascent of evolution, all the pain felt at the injustice and misery prevailing in the world, all the disappointment of shattered dreams and broken hopes, all the anguish of eternal partings from near and dear ones, and all the fear of ill health, decay and death vanish like vapor at the rise of the inner Sun, at the recognition of the inmost Self, beyond thought, beyond doubt, beyond pain, beyond mortality which, once perceived, illumines the darkness of the mind as a flash of strong lightning cleaves the darkness of the night, leaving man transformed with but one glimpse of the inexpressible splendor and glory of the spiritual world. May this sublime knowledge become accessible to all. May there come enlightenment and peace to the minds of all.”
http://www.ecomall.com/gopikrishna/
The Kundalini Research Foundation, Ltd.
Post Office Box 2248
Darien, CT 06820
The second issue raised is, what is the target of this evolution? If the target is a more elevated state of consciousness, the conclusion becomes irresistible that there is a plan in creation, which shatters the materialistic concepts of modern science. The third issue which arises is, if there is a biological evolution of the brain, how does it influence our social, political or religious life, and what steps are necessary to take to conform to this irresistible change in the structure of the brain.
The host of social, political, economic, spiritual, and philosophical problems, which the acceptance of this single idea involves, is so vast that the average intelligent mind is incapable of dealing with it. Once the idea is accepted, there will occur an upheaval in every sphere of human activity and thought. The world will not then be what it is now, and mankind will not continue to live in the same way.
From A Kundalini Catechism, by Gopi Krishna.
Gopi Krishna's Revised Theory of Evolution
1. Evolution is directed by a super-intelligent force which operates through a biological mechanism in the human body known to yoga theory as ‘kundalini’, and by many other names in a wide variety of ancient and esoteric texts.
2. Evolution, including human evolution, is therefore not ‘random’, but a deliberate act on the part of an invisible cosmic intelligence or organizing power and has a ‘target.’
3. The target of evolution is to produce a virtual superman or woman who will live in a permanent state of bliss, possess a genius level of intelligence, and various other attributes seldom seen in the population at large such as psychic powers.
4. Since the kundalini mechanism is a biological mechanism, given a properly conducted research program based on a serious scientific study of a group of suitable candidates, it should be possible to measure the biological and intellectual changes using suitable tests and equipment.
5. The existence of the kundalini mechanism explains the origin of the religious impulse in man, and therefore heals the schism between science and religion.
The Lasting Significance of Gopi Krishna's Works
Gopi Krishna's discovery was without doubt the most important discovery in scientific history. Why? Because it revealed the source and destiny of man.
Put In one sentence, Gopi Krishna discovered a biological mechanism in his body, known to yoga theory as ‘kundalini’, which over a period of years entirely transformed his consciousness, raised him mentally to the level of a genius, and took him to a permanent state of ecstasy.
But in a world of doubting scientists, who lacked his inner experience, of what significance could this have to the rest of us?
Gopi Krishna's answer was in over 15 books and many talks world wide, to groups of scientists and laymen alike, with the intent of permanently raising our global consciousness to the next stage of human evolution.
Anybody who studies his works seriously and with an open mind, will see a genuine vision of man's future, only clearly visible to a man in such a higher state. Yet enough will filter down to the average reader which will enable him to see the meaningless and illusory rift between science and religion, which has been at the core of social and political unrest throughout the last millennium.
"I am in particular trying to draw the attention of the world to a very important fact, that at the present moment, our scientists, our learned educators, leaders, and politicians, are only aware of natural laws, and even those are not known completely or perfectly.
In addition to material laws, there are also spiritual or psychic laws in the universe. We have absolutely no awareness of these laws. Time and again, a glimpse of these laws has been given to mankind by the great prophets and Messiahs who appeared in different parts of the world. We have rejected their teachings as pure myth or superstition. But actually those teachings contain germs of truth that are essential for the safety and survival of the race.
The tragedy is that we have rejected the evidence of religion or of the teachings of great sages about the spiritual world and the soul which dwells in the human body. Since spirit, mind or soul is not perceptible to any of our senses, or to any of our scientific instruments, we presume that they have no independent existence apart from the body or the organic organ, the brain, and therefore we need not worry about what happens to them. But actually they do have an independent existence. They have a universe of their own, and they have profound influences on all that we do, on all that we think, on all that we create.
But this influence is conditioned by certain laws which are totally a sealed book to us. These laws are operating at present and driving mankind to a catastrophic war to end the present order, which is against the evolution of the human brain".
"I say,on the basis of my experience that the human brain is still in a state of organic evolution.I say this in contradiction of the views held by most leading biologists at this moment. I say that this biological evolution is carring all the race towards a higher state of consciousness I do not say that the human mind is evolving toward an undefined summit. What I firmly assert is that human consciousness is evolving toward a Predetermined Target, which I have experienced. What I further affirm is that the human brain is evolving toward that state of transhuman perception through the activit of an organic mechanism named Kundalini by the ancients.
The fact is that there is a biological mechanism in every human being and this mechanism is known as Kundalini. It can be accelerated though the discipline of Yoga or through other religous exercises. The human cerebrospinal system is capable of a new amazing activity that is still unknown to science. The practice of meditation, carried on in the proper way regularly for a sufficient duration of time, tends to force a normaly silant region in the brain to an astonishing activity. The idea that under the direct influence of the Cosmic Life Energy the human brain is still in a state of organic evolution is a fact so important that, compared to it, all other discoveries of modern science pale into insignificance.
What I am revealing is not knowledge picket up by study or gained through reflection but gathered from my day-to-day experience for years on end".
"In no other period in history have the learned been so mistrustful of the divine possibilities in man as they are now, and in no other age has the need for spiritual geniuses been so urgent as it is at this time. The human mind is so constituted that no luxury and no treasure of the earth can assuage its burning fever seeking an explanation for its own existence. All the heavy weight of this inscrutable mystery, all the questions posed by intellect, all the suffering of the harrowing ascent of evolution, all the pain felt at the injustice and misery prevailing in the world, all the disappointment of shattered dreams and broken hopes, all the anguish of eternal partings from near and dear ones, and all the fear of ill health, decay and death vanish like vapor at the rise of the inner Sun, at the recognition of the inmost Self, beyond thought, beyond doubt, beyond pain, beyond mortality which, once perceived, illumines the darkness of the mind as a flash of strong lightning cleaves the darkness of the night, leaving man transformed with but one glimpse of the inexpressible splendor and glory of the spiritual world. May this sublime knowledge become accessible to all. May there come enlightenment and peace to the minds of all.”
http://www.ecomall.com/gopikrishna/
The Kundalini Research Foundation, Ltd.
Post Office Box 2248
Darien, CT 06820
The Wonder of the Brain
Consciousness and Super-Consciousness:
In the preceding chapters I have tried to show, firstly, that the number of the mystics that had the genuine experience, throughout the course of history, has been extremely small, and that all those who claim knowledge of the spirit are not really enlightened. Secondly, that the present world is woefully deficient in the knowledge of the brain and that the learned, in dealing with mind or the origin and nature of the universe, usually leave the encephalon out of count, as if human intelligence exists incorporeally and independently, and does not depend for its manifestation, quality and performance on the activity of an organic instrument, beyond our scrutiny at present. The result is that much of our knowledge, at the moment, is unilateral and speculative, nescient of the nature of the 'Knower' itself. An intelligent species with a brain that shows an altered perception of time, an easy possibility, would frame an entirely different picture of the universe.
The aim of this writing is to draw attention to this serious lacunae which keeps us in ignorance about our own selves. The position that I am taking up is that the human mind, as we know it at present, is not a constant, unalterable entity. It can change and with it the whole picture of the universe, which we perceive with our senses. This is a bold statement to make, and is not likely to be accepted for the simple reason that it undermines the very foundation on which science is built, namely, the reality of the objective world and the validity of the empirical observation conducted by the mind.
The issue boils down to this: if it is admitted that the human mind is variable and that this variation can affect the very image of the universe, and all the phenomena observed, it would clearly imply that the cosmos is not, in reality, as we perceive, assess and measure it with our intelligence, but only a creation of our mind liable to change in other dimensions of the perceptive faculty. From this it would follow that the temporal knowledge gathered by us is relative also and that what is accumulated in one dimension of consciousness can prove incomplete, deceptive or erroneous in the other.
"Our conception of the structure of the universe," says William de Sitter, "bears all the marks of a transitory structure. Our theories are decidedly in a state of continuous, and just now very rapid evolution. It is not possible to predict how long our present views and interpretations will remain unaltered and how soon they will have to be replaced by perhaps very different ones, based on new observational data and new critical insight in their connection with other data." Where from is this new critical insight to come except from a more evolved mind and brain?
An affirmation of the same position comes from no less than an authority than Max Planck. He says: "How do we discover the individual laws of Physics, and what is their nature? It should be remarked, to begin with, that we have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future. It is perfectly conceivable that one fine day Nature should cause an unexpected event to occur which would baffle us all; and if this were to happen we would be powerless to make any objection, even if the result would be that, in spite of our endeavors, we should fail to introduce order into the resulting confusion. In such an event, the only course open to science would be to declare itself bankrupt. For this reason, science is compelled to begin by the general assumption that a general rule of law dominates throughout Nature."
Once the position is accepted, the conclusion becomes unavoidable that all the contexts of our day-to-day experience of the world--the events which befall and the sights we see, the good and evil, noble and base, beautiful and ugly we meet, or the ideas of God, Soul and the Hereafter we entertain, all emerge from the unfathomable depths of our consciousness. This means that all we come across during the pilgrimage of life is not an objective reality, but a stupendous, realistic drama, presented by our own mind, and another enigmatic stuff, we call material energy. The latter is becoming more and more of a paradox and the more we try to reach its bottom the more paradoxical and unpredictable it becomes. For all we know, it might be a twin brother of our mind, both off-shoots of the same tree or a projected image of mind itself. The corollary that follows this view of creation, forced on us by the latest concepts in physics, is that since our brain is the junction-point, where this incredible exchange between the mind and his brother takes place, it is to the brain that we must look for a solution of the mystery.
The matter does not end there. What should now become obvious, beyond doubt, is the fact that when contemplating a grand spectacle of nature, during the day, or the shimmering firmament at night, the sense of admiration, awe or wonder felt does not come from the magnificence, loveliness or the vast extent of these external objects, inherent or dwelling in them, but from the grandeur, beauty and the immensity residing in our own consciousness. In other words, it is we who lend grandiosity, charm and vastness to an object, also horror, cheerfulness, humor or sadness to what appears to us as a dreadful, merry, ludicrous or tragic scene. What the world will look like to a mind, dead to emotions and bereft of the sense of beauty and color, I leave it to the reader to imagine.
This still does not complete the picture. The other conclusion that follows is that all the over four billion human creatures on the earth, the multi-millionaire and the pauper, the king and the beggar, the strongman and the cripple, the philanthropist and the thief, the beauty-queen and the leper, as long as they live, share the same incredible wonder in their interior, as they share the sun, the moon, the stars, the air and water, the precious bounties of nature that make life possible on earth.
It is a staggering position. But there is nothing incongruous in what I say. The scriptures of all the current faiths point to the same conclusion. Since the Soul is held to be immortal, incorporeal and divine, it must always stay immaculate, above the corporeality and the blemishes of the mortal frame. It would be blasphemous to say that there could be a sightless, lecherous, leprous or penniless Soul. It is because of an impure frame of mind that attaches more importance to the externals of religion than to its beatific interior that we are denied access to the Glory that dwells in all of us, irrespective of our station in life.
The main task of religion is to bring awareness of the divinity within to every human being. In this unique treasure of heaven no one is richer, stronger, superior or better than the other. This divine Splendor all share alike, irrespective of their position, wealth, learning intelligence, strength or looks. Like the brilliant orb of the day, it shines alike on the rich and the poor, the wise and the fool. The glaring differences and discrepancies, elegance and squalor, virtue and vice or excess and want we see around, belong to the stage and the dress of clay and not to the divine actor, ever undefiled, like a dancing beam of light. The aim of human life is to explore this 'wonder' in every one of us whose pleasure-ground is the universe.
This is the Message which for the last over three thousand years the exalted class of true mystics has brought to the world. This is the Message which juvenile science, at first, cared not to heed like an impetuous youngster refusing to listen to his more seasoned elders, ultimately in his declining age to regret the rebellious thoughts of his early years. There are myriads who, in their closing days, review with sorrow their reckless youth. Were there no surprises and no innovations in the province of thought in store for the human wit in the ages to come, she would die of boredom in a few centuries. It is change that keeps her alive. The pendulum is now swinging in the other direction to usher in a new era of thought in which the spirit and not matter, the mystic and not the skeptic will dominate.
An indication of this change is provided by the thoughts expressed by many eminent scientists of recent times. This is a sample of one of them: "Yet I repeat once more," declares William James, "the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states merely add a super-sensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness. They are excitements, like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which facts, already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for there can never be a state of facts to which new meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascends to a more enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world.">
The present-day concepts of physics no longer contradict the experience of the mystic but, on the other hand, find it more consistent with the new insights into the nature of the physical world. This view has been expressed by many of the leading physicists of our time. "A rainbow described in the symbolism of physics," writes Eddington, "is a band of ethereal vibrations arranged in systemic order to wave-lengths from about .00004 centimeters to .000072 centimeters. From one point of view, we are paltering with the truth whenever we admire the gorgeous bow of color, and should strive to reduce our minds to such a state that we receive the same impression from the rainbow as from a table of wave-lengths. But although that is how the rainbow impresses itself on an impersonal spectroscope, we are not giving the whole truth and significance of experience--if we suppress the factors wherein we ourselves differ from the spectroscope. We cannot say that the rainbow, as part of the world, was meant to convey the vivid effects of color; but we can perhaps say that the human mind, as part of the world, was meant to perceive it that way."
Another eminent physicist, James Jeans write, "In more recent times, Bertrand Russell has expressed what is essentially the same argument in the words: 'So long as we adhere to the conventional notions of mind and matter, we are condemned to a view of perception which is miraculous. We suppose that a physical process starts from a visible object, travels to the eye, there changes into another physical process, causes yet another physical process in the optic nerve, and finally produces some effect in the brain, simultaneously with which we see the object from which the process started, the seeing being something "mental," totally different in character from the physical processes which precede and accompany it.' This view is so queer that metaphysicians have invented all sorts of theories designed to substitute something less incredible...
"Everything that we can directly observe from the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of mental events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The stuff of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither as we please; in fact the words serve no purpose."
"Even if the two entities which we have hitherto described," continues Jeans, "as mind and matter are of the same general nature, there remains the question as to which is the more fundamental of the two. Is mind only a by-product of matter, as the materialists claimed? Or is it, as Berkeley claimed, the creator and controller of matter?
"Before the latter alternative can be seriously considered, some answer must be found to the problem of how objects can continue to exist when they are not being perceived in any human mind. There must, as Berkeley says, be 'some other mind in which they exist.' Some still wish to describe this, with Berkeley, as the mind of God; others with Hegel as a universal or Absolute mind in which all our individual minds are comprised. The new quantum mechanics may perhaps give a hint, although nothing more than a hint, as to how this can be."
"It seems, at least, conceivable," Jeans adds, "That what is true of perceived objects may also be true of perceiving minds; just as there are wave-pictures for light and electricity, so there may be a corresponding picture for consciousness. When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousness is obviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form ingredients of a single continuous stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel."
I know it will be hard for me to make myself understood, as I tread on unmapped territory in the effort to bring into focus in the province of religion and science both, a vital element that has been ignored so far, namely, the center of life in the body, that is the brain. Since the organ is indispensable for all our activity and even existence in the human form, it is inconceivable that our consciousness can take a leap beyond its normal periphery without affecting its substance in any way. There is no historical precedent of a higher animal, say a horse, ever attaining the mental stature of a human being, and co-mingling with other humans on a basis of equality. How can it then be possible for a human being to consort with gods without some kind of change in the brain? Those who long for self-awareness, clairvoyant gifts, miraculous powers, communication with the spirit world, encounters with masters, or adventures in the occult realm would do well to give second thoughts to their cherished dream. The world did not produce another Christ or Buddha, Vyasa or Socrates, Plato or Mohammed, Rumi or Shankaracharya, Francis of Assisi or any other great mystic or master of the occult, because the mystery of the part played by the brain in these accomplishments remains unsolved so far. The aim of this writing is to make this hidden knowledge accessible to humanity.
I am confident of my stand, as a psychological cathartic is necessary to crown the revolution caused by science, and its off-spring, technology, in human life and thought. Without this psychological climax, mankind will continue to move in the accustomed groove and utilize the resources of the earth and also of her fertile intellect only to enhance and satisfy her physical needs as she is virtually doing now. Her most pressing need at the moment is to become aware of the spiritual goal planned for her by nature and the methods to attain it. Once this knowledge is gained and the unmatched splendor of the crown destined for her realized, no efforts of pharisees or saddusees, who thrive on the credulity and nativity of human beings, can make the race deviate from the course.
A tidal wave of skepticism, doubt and disbelief, symbolized by the materialist ideology, is sweeping over the earth, not because Satan and the Anti-Christ have become dominant nor because it is Kali-Yuga of the Indian mythology, but because the time for a further elaboration and enrichment of the religious creeds and spiritual ideals of mankind has come. Like a cocoon, man weaves a tough sheet of dogma around himself to lie inert and passive until nature tears it open with a revolution to allow him freedom. But he soon starts to weave it afresh in the newly introduced pattern of life or thought to entomb himself once again. This is true not only of religion but also of political orders, social customs, educational systems, even scientific institutions and other long-standing ideas and beliefs. It is easier, sometimes, to bore a tunnel through a mountain than to break open the shell which the conservative element in human nature builds around itself.
To believe that the universe consists of only those elements and forces that are perceptible to our senses or detected by our instruments is to belie the latest assessments of science. The very size and the extent of the Universe, the new formations discovered in the sky and the problems created by them, the marvels of the ultra-microscopic world and the possibility of even superior types of life in other parts of the Cosmos provide more than sufficient material to make it clear that the creation round us is too complex, too vast and too full of unsolved riddles to make us complacent about the fact that what our senses perceive or minds apprehend is all that exists in it. Such an attitude of mind at this stage of our knowledge can only emanate from one not in touch with the progress of today.
The first impact of genuine mystical experience on the mind of the experiencer is something like this that the world he was perceiving and his own individuality, as he was conscious of it so far, were not true realities but only the figures of, say, a relatively speaking, dream state from which he has just awakened to the full bloom of another sun shining on a splendrous world, entirely unlike the one which his senses were revealing to him before. It should be remembered that for this state of cognition, it is not necessary that the percipient should be insensible to the sensory world. Not at all. What makes mystical ecstasy an increasing wonder is the incredible fact that both the sensory and supersensory worlds can be perceived simultaneously. But how? Like the radiant sky showing a mirage on it, both visible side by side.
The real status of the 'mystic' has not been correctly adjudged. He is not a dreamy idealist prone to visions, conjured up by his subconscious or to epileptic seizures or to hysterical swoons or to ecstatic trances, brought about by a suppressed libido, or his own obsessive occupation with the supernatural or by a pathological condition of the brain. In those cases, where these symptoms have been exhibited by true mystics, the abnormalities were the concomitant features of the extrasensory mental state, as in the case of genius, and not the causative factors responsible for it. These are mere conjectures of the learned made in absence of an accurate knowledge of the phenomenon. Nor is he a special protege of the Almighty, sent to the earth to preach His glory among mortals and to exhort them to surrender their all for His sake and, himself intoxicated with His love, to infuse this intoxication in others also. The human intellect has since outgrown the anthropomorphic picture of the Creator and it is time she outgrows the current picture of the mystic too.
Every mystic born has been a specimen of the man to come. His self-imposed penances and his religious beliefs were the creation of his culture, faith and the environment around him. But his vivid descriptions of the new visions gained, the new worlds unfolded and the basic teachings about the way to be followed to reach the same state of perception were the outcome of knowledge gained in the new dimension of consciousness to which he had attained. The descriptions are diversely colored and at times contradictory and conflicting because they are, as it were, the first reports of a few space travelers, separated by long stretches of time and distance, viewing the gigantic planet, Jupiter, at a distance of hundreds of thousands of miles from different angles through glasses of varied magnifying power.
Nature repeatedly produced the prototype of the future man to awaken humanity to her destiny. But the multitudes, including the scholars and the divines, misinterpreting the hint, erected for themselves the four walls of ritualistic religions to confine themselves within, with a fanatical zeal which led to some of the greatest horrors in history, still repeated at times in some parts of the earth. That the followers of every faith arrogate to their own creed the highest station among all the religions, to their founder or founders the highest stature among all the prophets and to themselves the most favored position with the Almighty, makes it obvious that the human ego has been as strongly at work in this holy territory, where humility is the law, as in the other spheres of life. This shows that self-worshiping man does not even spare his Maker in the fulfillment of his selfish ends and makes of Him, too, a tool to bolster his own vanity.
I have purposely introduced the prosaic figure of the human brain in this discourse to serve as an anchor to the otherwise highly mobile vessel of thought, prone to be carried away here and there by the wind of prejudice, dogma, idiosyncrasy, stubbornness and the rest, especially when sailing on the waters of religion, philosophy or metaphysics. It is only experiments on the brain that can call a dead halt to these arbitrary flights of human thought when dealing with the phenomena of mind. In order to explain why this need has arisen, I can do no better than refer the reader to the views expressed by some of the writers on mysticism in recent times. For instance, Evelyn Underhill, in answering for her self-formulated question, "What then is the nature of this special sense--this transcendental consciousness--and how does contemplation liberate it," proceeds to explain:
"Any attempt to answer this question brings upon the scene another aspect of man's psychic life: an aspect of paramount importance to the student of the mystic type. We have reviewed the ways in which our surface consciousness reacts upon experience: a surface consciousness which has been trained through long ages to deal with the universe of sense. We know, however, that the personality of man is a far deeper and more mysterious thing than the sum of his conscious feeling, thought and will: that this superficial self--this Ego of which each of us is aware--hardly counts in comparison with the deeps of being which it hides. 'There is a root or depth in Thee,' says Law, from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a center, or branches from the body of a tree. This depth is called the center, the fund, or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost said the infinity of the soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it any rest, but the infinity of God."
"Since normal man is utterly unable to set up relations with spiritual reality by means of his feeling, thought and will, continues Underhill, "it is clearly in this depth of being--in these unplumbed levels of personality--that we must search if we would find the organ, the power, by which he is to achieve the mystic quest. The alteration of consciousness which takes place in contemplation can only mean the emergence from this 'fund or bottom of the soul' of some faculty which diurnal life keeps hidden 'in the deeps.'"
To draw a parallel for her own conclusion, Underhill turns to the widely used concept of the 'unconscious mind,' a handy device of modern psychology to explain whatever is unexplainable or unintelligible in the area of mind. "Modern psychology," she continues, "in its doctrine of the unconscious or subliminal personality, has acknowledged this fact of a range of psychic life, lying below and beyond the conscious field. Indeed, it has so dwelt upon and defined this shadowy region--which is really less a 'region' than a useful name--that it sometimes seems to know more about the unconscious than about the conscious life of man. There it finds, side by side, the sources of his most animal instincts, his least explicable powers, his most spiritual intuitions: the 'ape and tiger.' and the 'soul.' Genius and prophecy, insomnia and infatuation, clairvoyance, hypnotism, hysteria and 'Christian' science--all are explained by the 'unconscious mind.' In his destructive moods, the psychologist has little apparent difficulty in reducing the chief phenomena of religious and mystical experience to activities of the 'unconscious,' seeking an oblique satisfaction of repressed desires. Where he undertakes the more dangerous duties of apologetic, he explains the same phenomena by saying that 'God speaks to man in the subconscious,' by which he can only mean that our apprehension of the eternal has the character of intuition rather than of thought. Yet the 'unconscious' after all is merely a convenient name for the aggregate of those powers, parts or qualities of the whole self which at any given moment are not conscious or that the Ego is not conscious of."
I have reproduced these passages at some length for two reasons. Firstly, to show the similarity between my ideas and the view expressed that mystical vision is the herald of a 'new birth,' the symbol of a profound transformation in the personality of an individual which reaches down to the roots of his being, making him perceptive of spiritual realities denied to the average human folk. Secondly, to bring into focus the usual tendency among modern writers on religion, metaphysics or psychology to keep out the brain in their discussion as if it does not come into the picture at all. This habit allows too loose a rein to fancy. We know very well that even a slight alteration in the chemistry of the brain, brought about by a drug, a shock, or loss of sleep can cause an explosive change in consciousness or the personality of the subject for the time being. Hence to suppose that such a signal event as the experience of God or the entry into supersensory planes of creation can be possible without involving the cranial matter in any way is but to confess the fault, now common among scholars, of dissociating thought from the brain, both inseparable chums from birth to death.
The answer to Underhill comes very near to the commonly accepted explanations for the extraordinary experience of mystics and saints. The notion is that there are submerged capacities and potentialities in the human soul which can make these enrapturing flights to the holy precincts of divine consciousness possible for those who apply themselves heart and soul to the task. Linked inextricably to the idea that mystical ecstasy represents a union with or, at least, a vision of God, and that the human soul is a particle of the divine essence, an explanation of this kind has every semblance of plausibility and usually puts the doubts of the inquirer to rest.
Every human being is aware of himself as a self-contained independent unit of consciousness. The brain does not protrude into the personality at all. For this reason, we do not think of it any more than of other parts of the body and at times, even less. On account of the fact that a serious injury to the head can easily prove fatal, all that the people exposed to accident risk do is to take greater precautions to protect it. But even so, it does not figure more in their thought, and the idea is usually absent that the brain is our workshop and all that we observe, think or imagine happens inside its bony frame.
There are glaring discrepancies in the conventional argument adduced by Underhill. The lyrical mystical ecstasy which attracts and inspires us is comparatively of recent origin, dating at the earliest from a period of not more than three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Before that the picture of religion and the ecstatic trance is more ugly than beautiful. We should not forget the trance of the Shaman, the medicine-man, the witch-doctor and the magi which, too, among their contemporaries betokened ascent to the spirit-world or intercourse with supernatural beings. But often there was hardly any element of the divine or the sublime as we understand it today, in those states of entrancement. The rapture, the clearly marked expansion of self and the sense of identity with all creation, which marked the later expressions of the ecstatic state, are not noticeable in the earlier types, or at least in the remnants of them which survived during historical times. It is a moot issue whether the subjects of those ecstasies were mentally advanced enough even to entertain those feelings as the later mystics did.
There were many gods and goddesses, human, divine or demonic even in the form of animals, birds, reptiles and fish, that demanded bizarre types of worship and ritual, including human sacrifice, cannibalism, self-mutilation, infanticide, obnoxious ceremonies, revolting sexual orgies and the like. It is not wise to overlook, in our zeal to find a supernatural explanation for mystical ecstasy, the dark side of religion or religious experience in the primitive phases of human culture nor the barbarous features that attended the birth and growth of current faiths--forced conversion, ruthless persecution, bloody wars and massacres, pillage and rape, the curse of untouchability, the revolting custom of sati, self emasculation, the horrors of the Inquisition and the rest.
The mystics, whose writings or recorded histories are before us, do not even form one billionth of the population that lived on earth and passed away during this period. Why they alone were gifted that way we do not know. Why even now hardly one out of myriads reports success in the same endeavor is still an enigma. Millions of aspirants to Samadhi in India abandon their homes, dwell in solitude, practise every form of austerity, penance and self-discipline, meditate and pray day and night without coming anywhere near this state of indescribable beatitude. Were the 'sense' of Timeless Being an integral part of man's spiritual consciousness, as argued by Underhill, then the Vision of Reality would be equally accessible to all, of course, with variations in the degree of success gained, as happens when a class of students attends a university course to widen their knowledge or a group of athletes works in a gymnasium to streamline their bodies. If this view were correct, the 'Vision' would have been the same for the cave dwellers of the neolithic age as it is for the cultured products of this day. But we know this is not the case and the two are poles apart. Why in our religious beliefs do we overlook the past?
The extreme rarity of success in this enterprise has been clearly recognized in India. "Among thousands of men," says the Bhagavad-Gita, "scarce one striveth for perfection, and of the successful strivers, scarce one knoweth me in essence." But even this rare one who achieves the blessed union has, according to the Indian tradition, behind him an accumulated store of meritorious actions done in previous lives, which form the seeds of success in his present one. Explaining this, the Gita says: "But a Yogi, laboring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected through manifold births, he reacheth the supreme goal." This is emphasized again at another place: "At the close of many births, the man full of wisdom cometh unto Me; 'Vasudeva is all; saith he, the Mahatma very difficult to find."
It is obvious that the glorious consummation of human life, of which the Gita sings, and of which a glowing picture is presented in the writings of all great mystics of the past, cannot be the work of a day or even of a lifetime, unless there are constitutional factors favorable to the climax, of which we have no knowledge yet. In this respect, the great mystics can be classed with the great secular geniuses of the earth. The mystical consciousness of an Eckhart, or Al-Ghazali or a Chaitanya, is not possible for even one out of hundreds of thousands of earnest practicers of yoga or other spiritual disciplines, in the same way as the intellectual achievement of a Shankara, or Einstein is not possible for every scholar or university professor. What these constitutional factors are, it will be my endeavor to explain.
I have briefly touched on the views expressed by Evelyn Underhill, as representative of a religious bent of mind, which believes in God and the divine nature of the Soul. For the views representative of modern psychology, I shall turn to William James and quote him at some length to show the wide divergence in the two points of view. The trouble starts when the Freudian psychologists on the one side, behaviorists on the other, transpersonal on the third, anthropologists on the fourth, physicists on the fifth, philosophers on the sixth, theologians on the seventh, the laity on the eighth, the Vedantists on the ninth, the occultists on the tenth and, to crown it all, the mystics themselves on the eleventh, express highly divergent views on the same phenomenon, using all the embellishments of language and the resources of intellect to make their point, without even one calling in for evidence the one single witness of all the happenings in this historically ageless scene. Not one of them even mentions the brain.
"The last aspect of religious life which remains for me to touch upon," writes James, "is the fact that its manifestations so frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. You may remember what I said in my opening lecture about the presence of the psychopathic temperament in religious biography. You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. I speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter. The whole array of Christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Bernards, the Loyolas, the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding impressions and 'openings.' They had these things because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. In such liability there lie, however, consequences for theology. Beliefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. The inchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or hear their Savior reach the acme of assurance. Motor automatism though rarer is, if possible, even more convincing than sensations. The subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the very organs of their body."
"When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration," adds William James, we take religious mysticism into account, when we recall the striking and sudden unification of a discordant self which we saw in conversion, and when we review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity and self-severity met with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that in religion we have a department of human nature with unusually close relations to the transmarginal or subliminal region. If the word 'subliminal' is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical research or other aberrations, call it by any other name, to distinguish it from the level of full sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of personality, if you care to, and call the other the B-region. The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motive passions, impulses, likes, dislikes and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general, all our non-rational operations, come from it. It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may return to it. In it arise whatever mystical experiences we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor; our life in hypnotic and 'hypnoid' conditions, if we are subjects of such conditions; our delusions, fixed ideas, and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects; our supra-normal cognitions, if such there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. It is also the fountainhead of such that feeds our religion. In persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen--and this is my conclusion--the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history."
This is where we land at the end--the bottomless hollow of the unconscious, the sub-conscious, below-the-surface, transmarginal and subliminal mind. This is the hidden region of our personality which, they say, stalks on the stage in dreams, hypnotic and somnambulistic conditions, in hysteria and insanity, in genius and inspiration, in mediumistic displays and extrasensory perception, in possession, obsession and fixations, in cracks, twists and kinks in the brain; in fact, in all the abnormal, paranormal, extraordinary or inexplicable conditions of the mind.
But has anyone explained why in some it leads to nightmares, in some to happy dreams, in some to a mixture of the two and in some to dreamless sleep? Why some are somnambulists, others not; why some are suggestible and more intractable; why, in some, it leads to the highest purity and nobility of character, as in mystics and, in some, to revolting compulsions or horrible perversions; which make them act more like brutes than human beings; why in some it leads to the horrors of insanity and in some to the joy of creation? What rational solution is this that leaves everything unexplained? To say religion and religious experience come from the unconscious is to shift the venue to another compartment of the same mind. But, whether from this compartment or that, mind is the bastion from which these incursions and invasions, insidious or sudden, come. This we know, but how?
Were we to believe implicitly the saga of the 'unconscious,' the suggestion would be irresistible that we harbor in our interior the arch-fiend himself, and fall victim to his machinations every moment of our lives. He turns into psychopaths the rare few who have the Vision of God, into lunatics the handful who create or discover new treasures for the race, shocks the pure and innocent in dreams or maddens the good and gentle with appalling fear in wakefulness! Where is the man who can truthfully declare that he has subdued this invincible giant? Who has taken a census yet or alleviated the anguish of myriads who watch daily with horror, grief or shock the unpredictable obliquities of their own mind? Does all this cart-load of fears, sorrows and sins rumble out of the cavernous 'unconscious' or does it symbolize a slice of the torment reserved for rebellious man for partaking of the forbidden fruit?
Written by: Gopi Krishna
In the preceding chapters I have tried to show, firstly, that the number of the mystics that had the genuine experience, throughout the course of history, has been extremely small, and that all those who claim knowledge of the spirit are not really enlightened. Secondly, that the present world is woefully deficient in the knowledge of the brain and that the learned, in dealing with mind or the origin and nature of the universe, usually leave the encephalon out of count, as if human intelligence exists incorporeally and independently, and does not depend for its manifestation, quality and performance on the activity of an organic instrument, beyond our scrutiny at present. The result is that much of our knowledge, at the moment, is unilateral and speculative, nescient of the nature of the 'Knower' itself. An intelligent species with a brain that shows an altered perception of time, an easy possibility, would frame an entirely different picture of the universe.
The aim of this writing is to draw attention to this serious lacunae which keeps us in ignorance about our own selves. The position that I am taking up is that the human mind, as we know it at present, is not a constant, unalterable entity. It can change and with it the whole picture of the universe, which we perceive with our senses. This is a bold statement to make, and is not likely to be accepted for the simple reason that it undermines the very foundation on which science is built, namely, the reality of the objective world and the validity of the empirical observation conducted by the mind.
The issue boils down to this: if it is admitted that the human mind is variable and that this variation can affect the very image of the universe, and all the phenomena observed, it would clearly imply that the cosmos is not, in reality, as we perceive, assess and measure it with our intelligence, but only a creation of our mind liable to change in other dimensions of the perceptive faculty. From this it would follow that the temporal knowledge gathered by us is relative also and that what is accumulated in one dimension of consciousness can prove incomplete, deceptive or erroneous in the other.
"Our conception of the structure of the universe," says William de Sitter, "bears all the marks of a transitory structure. Our theories are decidedly in a state of continuous, and just now very rapid evolution. It is not possible to predict how long our present views and interpretations will remain unaltered and how soon they will have to be replaced by perhaps very different ones, based on new observational data and new critical insight in their connection with other data." Where from is this new critical insight to come except from a more evolved mind and brain?
An affirmation of the same position comes from no less than an authority than Max Planck. He says: "How do we discover the individual laws of Physics, and what is their nature? It should be remarked, to begin with, that we have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future. It is perfectly conceivable that one fine day Nature should cause an unexpected event to occur which would baffle us all; and if this were to happen we would be powerless to make any objection, even if the result would be that, in spite of our endeavors, we should fail to introduce order into the resulting confusion. In such an event, the only course open to science would be to declare itself bankrupt. For this reason, science is compelled to begin by the general assumption that a general rule of law dominates throughout Nature."
Once the position is accepted, the conclusion becomes unavoidable that all the contexts of our day-to-day experience of the world--the events which befall and the sights we see, the good and evil, noble and base, beautiful and ugly we meet, or the ideas of God, Soul and the Hereafter we entertain, all emerge from the unfathomable depths of our consciousness. This means that all we come across during the pilgrimage of life is not an objective reality, but a stupendous, realistic drama, presented by our own mind, and another enigmatic stuff, we call material energy. The latter is becoming more and more of a paradox and the more we try to reach its bottom the more paradoxical and unpredictable it becomes. For all we know, it might be a twin brother of our mind, both off-shoots of the same tree or a projected image of mind itself. The corollary that follows this view of creation, forced on us by the latest concepts in physics, is that since our brain is the junction-point, where this incredible exchange between the mind and his brother takes place, it is to the brain that we must look for a solution of the mystery.
The matter does not end there. What should now become obvious, beyond doubt, is the fact that when contemplating a grand spectacle of nature, during the day, or the shimmering firmament at night, the sense of admiration, awe or wonder felt does not come from the magnificence, loveliness or the vast extent of these external objects, inherent or dwelling in them, but from the grandeur, beauty and the immensity residing in our own consciousness. In other words, it is we who lend grandiosity, charm and vastness to an object, also horror, cheerfulness, humor or sadness to what appears to us as a dreadful, merry, ludicrous or tragic scene. What the world will look like to a mind, dead to emotions and bereft of the sense of beauty and color, I leave it to the reader to imagine.
This still does not complete the picture. The other conclusion that follows is that all the over four billion human creatures on the earth, the multi-millionaire and the pauper, the king and the beggar, the strongman and the cripple, the philanthropist and the thief, the beauty-queen and the leper, as long as they live, share the same incredible wonder in their interior, as they share the sun, the moon, the stars, the air and water, the precious bounties of nature that make life possible on earth.
It is a staggering position. But there is nothing incongruous in what I say. The scriptures of all the current faiths point to the same conclusion. Since the Soul is held to be immortal, incorporeal and divine, it must always stay immaculate, above the corporeality and the blemishes of the mortal frame. It would be blasphemous to say that there could be a sightless, lecherous, leprous or penniless Soul. It is because of an impure frame of mind that attaches more importance to the externals of religion than to its beatific interior that we are denied access to the Glory that dwells in all of us, irrespective of our station in life.
The main task of religion is to bring awareness of the divinity within to every human being. In this unique treasure of heaven no one is richer, stronger, superior or better than the other. This divine Splendor all share alike, irrespective of their position, wealth, learning intelligence, strength or looks. Like the brilliant orb of the day, it shines alike on the rich and the poor, the wise and the fool. The glaring differences and discrepancies, elegance and squalor, virtue and vice or excess and want we see around, belong to the stage and the dress of clay and not to the divine actor, ever undefiled, like a dancing beam of light. The aim of human life is to explore this 'wonder' in every one of us whose pleasure-ground is the universe.
This is the Message which for the last over three thousand years the exalted class of true mystics has brought to the world. This is the Message which juvenile science, at first, cared not to heed like an impetuous youngster refusing to listen to his more seasoned elders, ultimately in his declining age to regret the rebellious thoughts of his early years. There are myriads who, in their closing days, review with sorrow their reckless youth. Were there no surprises and no innovations in the province of thought in store for the human wit in the ages to come, she would die of boredom in a few centuries. It is change that keeps her alive. The pendulum is now swinging in the other direction to usher in a new era of thought in which the spirit and not matter, the mystic and not the skeptic will dominate.
An indication of this change is provided by the thoughts expressed by many eminent scientists of recent times. This is a sample of one of them: "Yet I repeat once more," declares William James, "the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states merely add a super-sensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness. They are excitements, like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which facts, already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for there can never be a state of facts to which new meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascends to a more enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world.">
The present-day concepts of physics no longer contradict the experience of the mystic but, on the other hand, find it more consistent with the new insights into the nature of the physical world. This view has been expressed by many of the leading physicists of our time. "A rainbow described in the symbolism of physics," writes Eddington, "is a band of ethereal vibrations arranged in systemic order to wave-lengths from about .00004 centimeters to .000072 centimeters. From one point of view, we are paltering with the truth whenever we admire the gorgeous bow of color, and should strive to reduce our minds to such a state that we receive the same impression from the rainbow as from a table of wave-lengths. But although that is how the rainbow impresses itself on an impersonal spectroscope, we are not giving the whole truth and significance of experience--if we suppress the factors wherein we ourselves differ from the spectroscope. We cannot say that the rainbow, as part of the world, was meant to convey the vivid effects of color; but we can perhaps say that the human mind, as part of the world, was meant to perceive it that way."
Another eminent physicist, James Jeans write, "In more recent times, Bertrand Russell has expressed what is essentially the same argument in the words: 'So long as we adhere to the conventional notions of mind and matter, we are condemned to a view of perception which is miraculous. We suppose that a physical process starts from a visible object, travels to the eye, there changes into another physical process, causes yet another physical process in the optic nerve, and finally produces some effect in the brain, simultaneously with which we see the object from which the process started, the seeing being something "mental," totally different in character from the physical processes which precede and accompany it.' This view is so queer that metaphysicians have invented all sorts of theories designed to substitute something less incredible...
"Everything that we can directly observe from the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of mental events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The stuff of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither as we please; in fact the words serve no purpose."
"Even if the two entities which we have hitherto described," continues Jeans, "as mind and matter are of the same general nature, there remains the question as to which is the more fundamental of the two. Is mind only a by-product of matter, as the materialists claimed? Or is it, as Berkeley claimed, the creator and controller of matter?
"Before the latter alternative can be seriously considered, some answer must be found to the problem of how objects can continue to exist when they are not being perceived in any human mind. There must, as Berkeley says, be 'some other mind in which they exist.' Some still wish to describe this, with Berkeley, as the mind of God; others with Hegel as a universal or Absolute mind in which all our individual minds are comprised. The new quantum mechanics may perhaps give a hint, although nothing more than a hint, as to how this can be."
"It seems, at least, conceivable," Jeans adds, "That what is true of perceived objects may also be true of perceiving minds; just as there are wave-pictures for light and electricity, so there may be a corresponding picture for consciousness. When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousness is obviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form ingredients of a single continuous stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel."
I know it will be hard for me to make myself understood, as I tread on unmapped territory in the effort to bring into focus in the province of religion and science both, a vital element that has been ignored so far, namely, the center of life in the body, that is the brain. Since the organ is indispensable for all our activity and even existence in the human form, it is inconceivable that our consciousness can take a leap beyond its normal periphery without affecting its substance in any way. There is no historical precedent of a higher animal, say a horse, ever attaining the mental stature of a human being, and co-mingling with other humans on a basis of equality. How can it then be possible for a human being to consort with gods without some kind of change in the brain? Those who long for self-awareness, clairvoyant gifts, miraculous powers, communication with the spirit world, encounters with masters, or adventures in the occult realm would do well to give second thoughts to their cherished dream. The world did not produce another Christ or Buddha, Vyasa or Socrates, Plato or Mohammed, Rumi or Shankaracharya, Francis of Assisi or any other great mystic or master of the occult, because the mystery of the part played by the brain in these accomplishments remains unsolved so far. The aim of this writing is to make this hidden knowledge accessible to humanity.
I am confident of my stand, as a psychological cathartic is necessary to crown the revolution caused by science, and its off-spring, technology, in human life and thought. Without this psychological climax, mankind will continue to move in the accustomed groove and utilize the resources of the earth and also of her fertile intellect only to enhance and satisfy her physical needs as she is virtually doing now. Her most pressing need at the moment is to become aware of the spiritual goal planned for her by nature and the methods to attain it. Once this knowledge is gained and the unmatched splendor of the crown destined for her realized, no efforts of pharisees or saddusees, who thrive on the credulity and nativity of human beings, can make the race deviate from the course.
A tidal wave of skepticism, doubt and disbelief, symbolized by the materialist ideology, is sweeping over the earth, not because Satan and the Anti-Christ have become dominant nor because it is Kali-Yuga of the Indian mythology, but because the time for a further elaboration and enrichment of the religious creeds and spiritual ideals of mankind has come. Like a cocoon, man weaves a tough sheet of dogma around himself to lie inert and passive until nature tears it open with a revolution to allow him freedom. But he soon starts to weave it afresh in the newly introduced pattern of life or thought to entomb himself once again. This is true not only of religion but also of political orders, social customs, educational systems, even scientific institutions and other long-standing ideas and beliefs. It is easier, sometimes, to bore a tunnel through a mountain than to break open the shell which the conservative element in human nature builds around itself.
To believe that the universe consists of only those elements and forces that are perceptible to our senses or detected by our instruments is to belie the latest assessments of science. The very size and the extent of the Universe, the new formations discovered in the sky and the problems created by them, the marvels of the ultra-microscopic world and the possibility of even superior types of life in other parts of the Cosmos provide more than sufficient material to make it clear that the creation round us is too complex, too vast and too full of unsolved riddles to make us complacent about the fact that what our senses perceive or minds apprehend is all that exists in it. Such an attitude of mind at this stage of our knowledge can only emanate from one not in touch with the progress of today.
The first impact of genuine mystical experience on the mind of the experiencer is something like this that the world he was perceiving and his own individuality, as he was conscious of it so far, were not true realities but only the figures of, say, a relatively speaking, dream state from which he has just awakened to the full bloom of another sun shining on a splendrous world, entirely unlike the one which his senses were revealing to him before. It should be remembered that for this state of cognition, it is not necessary that the percipient should be insensible to the sensory world. Not at all. What makes mystical ecstasy an increasing wonder is the incredible fact that both the sensory and supersensory worlds can be perceived simultaneously. But how? Like the radiant sky showing a mirage on it, both visible side by side.
The real status of the 'mystic' has not been correctly adjudged. He is not a dreamy idealist prone to visions, conjured up by his subconscious or to epileptic seizures or to hysterical swoons or to ecstatic trances, brought about by a suppressed libido, or his own obsessive occupation with the supernatural or by a pathological condition of the brain. In those cases, where these symptoms have been exhibited by true mystics, the abnormalities were the concomitant features of the extrasensory mental state, as in the case of genius, and not the causative factors responsible for it. These are mere conjectures of the learned made in absence of an accurate knowledge of the phenomenon. Nor is he a special protege of the Almighty, sent to the earth to preach His glory among mortals and to exhort them to surrender their all for His sake and, himself intoxicated with His love, to infuse this intoxication in others also. The human intellect has since outgrown the anthropomorphic picture of the Creator and it is time she outgrows the current picture of the mystic too.
Every mystic born has been a specimen of the man to come. His self-imposed penances and his religious beliefs were the creation of his culture, faith and the environment around him. But his vivid descriptions of the new visions gained, the new worlds unfolded and the basic teachings about the way to be followed to reach the same state of perception were the outcome of knowledge gained in the new dimension of consciousness to which he had attained. The descriptions are diversely colored and at times contradictory and conflicting because they are, as it were, the first reports of a few space travelers, separated by long stretches of time and distance, viewing the gigantic planet, Jupiter, at a distance of hundreds of thousands of miles from different angles through glasses of varied magnifying power.
Nature repeatedly produced the prototype of the future man to awaken humanity to her destiny. But the multitudes, including the scholars and the divines, misinterpreting the hint, erected for themselves the four walls of ritualistic religions to confine themselves within, with a fanatical zeal which led to some of the greatest horrors in history, still repeated at times in some parts of the earth. That the followers of every faith arrogate to their own creed the highest station among all the religions, to their founder or founders the highest stature among all the prophets and to themselves the most favored position with the Almighty, makes it obvious that the human ego has been as strongly at work in this holy territory, where humility is the law, as in the other spheres of life. This shows that self-worshiping man does not even spare his Maker in the fulfillment of his selfish ends and makes of Him, too, a tool to bolster his own vanity.
I have purposely introduced the prosaic figure of the human brain in this discourse to serve as an anchor to the otherwise highly mobile vessel of thought, prone to be carried away here and there by the wind of prejudice, dogma, idiosyncrasy, stubbornness and the rest, especially when sailing on the waters of religion, philosophy or metaphysics. It is only experiments on the brain that can call a dead halt to these arbitrary flights of human thought when dealing with the phenomena of mind. In order to explain why this need has arisen, I can do no better than refer the reader to the views expressed by some of the writers on mysticism in recent times. For instance, Evelyn Underhill, in answering for her self-formulated question, "What then is the nature of this special sense--this transcendental consciousness--and how does contemplation liberate it," proceeds to explain:
"Any attempt to answer this question brings upon the scene another aspect of man's psychic life: an aspect of paramount importance to the student of the mystic type. We have reviewed the ways in which our surface consciousness reacts upon experience: a surface consciousness which has been trained through long ages to deal with the universe of sense. We know, however, that the personality of man is a far deeper and more mysterious thing than the sum of his conscious feeling, thought and will: that this superficial self--this Ego of which each of us is aware--hardly counts in comparison with the deeps of being which it hides. 'There is a root or depth in Thee,' says Law, from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a center, or branches from the body of a tree. This depth is called the center, the fund, or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost said the infinity of the soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it any rest, but the infinity of God."
"Since normal man is utterly unable to set up relations with spiritual reality by means of his feeling, thought and will, continues Underhill, "it is clearly in this depth of being--in these unplumbed levels of personality--that we must search if we would find the organ, the power, by which he is to achieve the mystic quest. The alteration of consciousness which takes place in contemplation can only mean the emergence from this 'fund or bottom of the soul' of some faculty which diurnal life keeps hidden 'in the deeps.'"
To draw a parallel for her own conclusion, Underhill turns to the widely used concept of the 'unconscious mind,' a handy device of modern psychology to explain whatever is unexplainable or unintelligible in the area of mind. "Modern psychology," she continues, "in its doctrine of the unconscious or subliminal personality, has acknowledged this fact of a range of psychic life, lying below and beyond the conscious field. Indeed, it has so dwelt upon and defined this shadowy region--which is really less a 'region' than a useful name--that it sometimes seems to know more about the unconscious than about the conscious life of man. There it finds, side by side, the sources of his most animal instincts, his least explicable powers, his most spiritual intuitions: the 'ape and tiger.' and the 'soul.' Genius and prophecy, insomnia and infatuation, clairvoyance, hypnotism, hysteria and 'Christian' science--all are explained by the 'unconscious mind.' In his destructive moods, the psychologist has little apparent difficulty in reducing the chief phenomena of religious and mystical experience to activities of the 'unconscious,' seeking an oblique satisfaction of repressed desires. Where he undertakes the more dangerous duties of apologetic, he explains the same phenomena by saying that 'God speaks to man in the subconscious,' by which he can only mean that our apprehension of the eternal has the character of intuition rather than of thought. Yet the 'unconscious' after all is merely a convenient name for the aggregate of those powers, parts or qualities of the whole self which at any given moment are not conscious or that the Ego is not conscious of."
I have reproduced these passages at some length for two reasons. Firstly, to show the similarity between my ideas and the view expressed that mystical vision is the herald of a 'new birth,' the symbol of a profound transformation in the personality of an individual which reaches down to the roots of his being, making him perceptive of spiritual realities denied to the average human folk. Secondly, to bring into focus the usual tendency among modern writers on religion, metaphysics or psychology to keep out the brain in their discussion as if it does not come into the picture at all. This habit allows too loose a rein to fancy. We know very well that even a slight alteration in the chemistry of the brain, brought about by a drug, a shock, or loss of sleep can cause an explosive change in consciousness or the personality of the subject for the time being. Hence to suppose that such a signal event as the experience of God or the entry into supersensory planes of creation can be possible without involving the cranial matter in any way is but to confess the fault, now common among scholars, of dissociating thought from the brain, both inseparable chums from birth to death.
The answer to Underhill comes very near to the commonly accepted explanations for the extraordinary experience of mystics and saints. The notion is that there are submerged capacities and potentialities in the human soul which can make these enrapturing flights to the holy precincts of divine consciousness possible for those who apply themselves heart and soul to the task. Linked inextricably to the idea that mystical ecstasy represents a union with or, at least, a vision of God, and that the human soul is a particle of the divine essence, an explanation of this kind has every semblance of plausibility and usually puts the doubts of the inquirer to rest.
Every human being is aware of himself as a self-contained independent unit of consciousness. The brain does not protrude into the personality at all. For this reason, we do not think of it any more than of other parts of the body and at times, even less. On account of the fact that a serious injury to the head can easily prove fatal, all that the people exposed to accident risk do is to take greater precautions to protect it. But even so, it does not figure more in their thought, and the idea is usually absent that the brain is our workshop and all that we observe, think or imagine happens inside its bony frame.
There are glaring discrepancies in the conventional argument adduced by Underhill. The lyrical mystical ecstasy which attracts and inspires us is comparatively of recent origin, dating at the earliest from a period of not more than three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Before that the picture of religion and the ecstatic trance is more ugly than beautiful. We should not forget the trance of the Shaman, the medicine-man, the witch-doctor and the magi which, too, among their contemporaries betokened ascent to the spirit-world or intercourse with supernatural beings. But often there was hardly any element of the divine or the sublime as we understand it today, in those states of entrancement. The rapture, the clearly marked expansion of self and the sense of identity with all creation, which marked the later expressions of the ecstatic state, are not noticeable in the earlier types, or at least in the remnants of them which survived during historical times. It is a moot issue whether the subjects of those ecstasies were mentally advanced enough even to entertain those feelings as the later mystics did.
There were many gods and goddesses, human, divine or demonic even in the form of animals, birds, reptiles and fish, that demanded bizarre types of worship and ritual, including human sacrifice, cannibalism, self-mutilation, infanticide, obnoxious ceremonies, revolting sexual orgies and the like. It is not wise to overlook, in our zeal to find a supernatural explanation for mystical ecstasy, the dark side of religion or religious experience in the primitive phases of human culture nor the barbarous features that attended the birth and growth of current faiths--forced conversion, ruthless persecution, bloody wars and massacres, pillage and rape, the curse of untouchability, the revolting custom of sati, self emasculation, the horrors of the Inquisition and the rest.
The mystics, whose writings or recorded histories are before us, do not even form one billionth of the population that lived on earth and passed away during this period. Why they alone were gifted that way we do not know. Why even now hardly one out of myriads reports success in the same endeavor is still an enigma. Millions of aspirants to Samadhi in India abandon their homes, dwell in solitude, practise every form of austerity, penance and self-discipline, meditate and pray day and night without coming anywhere near this state of indescribable beatitude. Were the 'sense' of Timeless Being an integral part of man's spiritual consciousness, as argued by Underhill, then the Vision of Reality would be equally accessible to all, of course, with variations in the degree of success gained, as happens when a class of students attends a university course to widen their knowledge or a group of athletes works in a gymnasium to streamline their bodies. If this view were correct, the 'Vision' would have been the same for the cave dwellers of the neolithic age as it is for the cultured products of this day. But we know this is not the case and the two are poles apart. Why in our religious beliefs do we overlook the past?
The extreme rarity of success in this enterprise has been clearly recognized in India. "Among thousands of men," says the Bhagavad-Gita, "scarce one striveth for perfection, and of the successful strivers, scarce one knoweth me in essence." But even this rare one who achieves the blessed union has, according to the Indian tradition, behind him an accumulated store of meritorious actions done in previous lives, which form the seeds of success in his present one. Explaining this, the Gita says: "But a Yogi, laboring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected through manifold births, he reacheth the supreme goal." This is emphasized again at another place: "At the close of many births, the man full of wisdom cometh unto Me; 'Vasudeva is all; saith he, the Mahatma very difficult to find."
It is obvious that the glorious consummation of human life, of which the Gita sings, and of which a glowing picture is presented in the writings of all great mystics of the past, cannot be the work of a day or even of a lifetime, unless there are constitutional factors favorable to the climax, of which we have no knowledge yet. In this respect, the great mystics can be classed with the great secular geniuses of the earth. The mystical consciousness of an Eckhart, or Al-Ghazali or a Chaitanya, is not possible for even one out of hundreds of thousands of earnest practicers of yoga or other spiritual disciplines, in the same way as the intellectual achievement of a Shankara, or Einstein is not possible for every scholar or university professor. What these constitutional factors are, it will be my endeavor to explain.
I have briefly touched on the views expressed by Evelyn Underhill, as representative of a religious bent of mind, which believes in God and the divine nature of the Soul. For the views representative of modern psychology, I shall turn to William James and quote him at some length to show the wide divergence in the two points of view. The trouble starts when the Freudian psychologists on the one side, behaviorists on the other, transpersonal on the third, anthropologists on the fourth, physicists on the fifth, philosophers on the sixth, theologians on the seventh, the laity on the eighth, the Vedantists on the ninth, the occultists on the tenth and, to crown it all, the mystics themselves on the eleventh, express highly divergent views on the same phenomenon, using all the embellishments of language and the resources of intellect to make their point, without even one calling in for evidence the one single witness of all the happenings in this historically ageless scene. Not one of them even mentions the brain.
"The last aspect of religious life which remains for me to touch upon," writes James, "is the fact that its manifestations so frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. You may remember what I said in my opening lecture about the presence of the psychopathic temperament in religious biography. You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. I speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter. The whole array of Christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Bernards, the Loyolas, the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding impressions and 'openings.' They had these things because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. In such liability there lie, however, consequences for theology. Beliefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. The inchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or hear their Savior reach the acme of assurance. Motor automatism though rarer is, if possible, even more convincing than sensations. The subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the very organs of their body."
"When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration," adds William James, we take religious mysticism into account, when we recall the striking and sudden unification of a discordant self which we saw in conversion, and when we review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity and self-severity met with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that in religion we have a department of human nature with unusually close relations to the transmarginal or subliminal region. If the word 'subliminal' is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical research or other aberrations, call it by any other name, to distinguish it from the level of full sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of personality, if you care to, and call the other the B-region. The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motive passions, impulses, likes, dislikes and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general, all our non-rational operations, come from it. It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may return to it. In it arise whatever mystical experiences we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor; our life in hypnotic and 'hypnoid' conditions, if we are subjects of such conditions; our delusions, fixed ideas, and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects; our supra-normal cognitions, if such there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. It is also the fountainhead of such that feeds our religion. In persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen--and this is my conclusion--the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history."
This is where we land at the end--the bottomless hollow of the unconscious, the sub-conscious, below-the-surface, transmarginal and subliminal mind. This is the hidden region of our personality which, they say, stalks on the stage in dreams, hypnotic and somnambulistic conditions, in hysteria and insanity, in genius and inspiration, in mediumistic displays and extrasensory perception, in possession, obsession and fixations, in cracks, twists and kinks in the brain; in fact, in all the abnormal, paranormal, extraordinary or inexplicable conditions of the mind.
But has anyone explained why in some it leads to nightmares, in some to happy dreams, in some to a mixture of the two and in some to dreamless sleep? Why some are somnambulists, others not; why some are suggestible and more intractable; why, in some, it leads to the highest purity and nobility of character, as in mystics and, in some, to revolting compulsions or horrible perversions; which make them act more like brutes than human beings; why in some it leads to the horrors of insanity and in some to the joy of creation? What rational solution is this that leaves everything unexplained? To say religion and religious experience come from the unconscious is to shift the venue to another compartment of the same mind. But, whether from this compartment or that, mind is the bastion from which these incursions and invasions, insidious or sudden, come. This we know, but how?
Were we to believe implicitly the saga of the 'unconscious,' the suggestion would be irresistible that we harbor in our interior the arch-fiend himself, and fall victim to his machinations every moment of our lives. He turns into psychopaths the rare few who have the Vision of God, into lunatics the handful who create or discover new treasures for the race, shocks the pure and innocent in dreams or maddens the good and gentle with appalling fear in wakefulness! Where is the man who can truthfully declare that he has subdued this invincible giant? Who has taken a census yet or alleviated the anguish of myriads who watch daily with horror, grief or shock the unpredictable obliquities of their own mind? Does all this cart-load of fears, sorrows and sins rumble out of the cavernous 'unconscious' or does it symbolize a slice of the torment reserved for rebellious man for partaking of the forbidden fruit?
Written by: Gopi Krishna
The Shape of Events to Come
The 1968 Edition was a 44 page boklet in three chapters. In 1979, Gopi Krishna added more verses (chapters 4-6), and at the end, an 11 page chapter entitled "Conclusion" (pages 105-115). The stanza on page 110, reproduced below, is of special significance as we enter the new millenium:
Next two eventful decades will unfold,
An awe-inspiring Drama, staged by Fate,
To end the present order, as foretold,
With fires of war lit by greed, power-lust, hate
PREFACE
(i)
The future happenings, already a part
Of one Eternal Present, with no end,
No ceaseless movement of time and no start,
On those the illusive veil of thought can rend,
Cast their reflection, when the shadows part,
As each succeeding lightning flash reveals
The changed position of a moving cart,
But not the regular motion of its wheels.
And these projections from a subtle plane
Of life, an unconditioned Realm Sublime,
Upon the time-conditioned mortal brain
Become a picture clothed in space and time.
So utterly amazing and unique
Is this experience of immersion in
The Void of Future that when at the peak,
The mortal, cut off from the noise and din
Of earth, is lost in wonder at the sight,
Which now unfolds before his inward eye,
A world of mystery aglow with light,
Impenetrating both the earth and sky;
Across which, shadowed on a glowing screen,
Ethereal portraits in a luminous dress,
With all the context of a future scene,
In rapid flashes whole events express.
But only to the extent as is allowed,
To him to see and hear by Grace Divine,
For Laws Celestial ev'n in those endowed
With this rare gift, prescribe the boundary line.
What is vouchsafed to me whenev'r I brood
On destiny, in a devotional mood,
I honestly and faithfully record,
Treating it as a Mandate from the Lord.
But in these fleeting glimpses of the scenes
Of future, when those who now in their teens
Will have grown mature, I see filled with awe
The operation of a Mighty Law,
Which we are flouting now to purchase ease
And comfort for the flesh, that has to cease.
For man, evolving slowly to reach God,
Cannot make flesh his only measuring rod,
And leave the Soul to take care of itself
The while he runs mad after power and pelf.
I but repeat what all religious creeds
Had once enjoined to regulate the deeds
Of mortals, who averse to leave their hold
On pleasures of the flesh, on power and gold,
Commit the same mistakes time and again,
Not knowing that they harm the evolving brain,
Thus forcing nature, to avert decay,
To use coercive measures in some way.
What I see sometimes in the lucid mood
Provides for my digestion heavy food,
For I see pain and suffering, deaths and loss,
Soul-harrowing scenes of woe before I cross
The boundary of the present century,
And there an all united mankind see,
Trying to steer clear of our vices, firm
On virtues, building for a glorious term
Of peace and happiness with faith devout
In Godhead, cured of disbelief and doubt.
These are the visions, which from time to time
I see in wakefulness and write in rhyme,
For both the vision and what I record
Come synchronously by the Grace of God.*
Unbidden nothing happens, not a leaf
Can stir, nor man act nor taste joy and grief.
So what I see when bidden by the Lord
With what is now to happen shall accord.
Gopi Krishna
Srinagar, Kashmir
India
May 1968
Chapter 1
World Wars
A Sign of Obstructed Evolution
(i)
The earth rotating round her axis brings
Our days and nights, the summers and the springs,
The falls and winters, verdure, flowers and fruits,
The mating seasons of the birds and brutes.
And all that makes us happy, dull and sad
Or angry, all that we call good or bad,
As from the earth's revolution streams
The light that gives us life, our hopes and dreams.
It also brings for mortals peace or war,
By spreading love or hatred near and far,
By causing, as in beasts it causes rut,
In men, when their unholy actions shut
The gate of mercy, cravings and desires
That spread from mind to mind like forest fires,
Until enveloped by the sparkling blaze
They fail to see what is before their gaze,
The human caravan, all in a heap,
Into the abyss of war about to leap.
But why, when everything comes from the change
In earth's position, should we think it strange
That our collective steps for peace or war
Are not of our choice, but come from afar;
From cosmic-conscious forces all around
The earth, unseen, mysterious and profound,
Which on our minds a dark reflection cast,
When we transgress or move too slow or fast?
As sun eclipses fill the world with gloom
At intervals, and to the moment last
When, of obstruction free, the sun has room
Again his radiance on the earth to cast,
Collective violations of the law
Of life, by nations, groups or all mankind
Create periodic spells when fear and awe,
Like shadows, settle on the human mind.
They mirror brewing storms upon the plane
Of Cosmic Being heralded by signs,
Which, though unnoticed by a normal brain,
A superconscious sage at once divines.
There are some questions which can well arise
In what I argue, more so from the wise;
For why should nature be so callous, when
Celestial laws are hid from common men,
As to apply the rod or use the knout
For e'en such faults we know nothing about?
Has e'en Almighty God a morbid thirst
For causing pain, when shackled mortals burst
Their bonds to have full liberty to taste
The pleasures He devised, lest they go to waste?
Why was not man cast in a nobler mold,
That lust would not have on him such a hold
As to neglect the duty owed to God,
And so obliging Him to use the rod?
These questions are the outcome of a lack
Of knowledge of the evolutionary track,
Of ignorance about the patent fact
That universe is not a lawless tract,
That ev'n the earth herself is strictly bound
By laws, complaisant turning round and round,
And so how can her dust, from which man springs,
Be unsubmissive to the King of Kings?
The very texture of the earth, her air
Or water and the sun, which mankind rear,
Are so imbued with law that questions such
As these the bottom of unwisdom touch.
The commonly accepted modern view
Of science, that man grew up from the beast,
Nor wholly Western nor entirely new,
Has long been in existence in the East,
More so in India where it forms the ground
For karmic doctrines and the ceaseless round
Of births and deaths for the embodied soul
Until it merges with the cosmic whole.
According to this view, it is the soul
And not the gross, corporeal appendage
In man which, to achieve a higher goal,
Through epochs worked its way up stage by stage,
Attaining, after changing many shapes
Of lowly creatures, reasonless and mute,
A form akin to that of man-like apes
And then of man, intelligent and astute.
Now this progressive growth of humankind,
Be it on Eastern or on Western lines,
It should be patent to the simplest mind
Cannot but act within some set confines,
And not unlawfully in a law-bound whole,
Where every atom plays a given part
And every sun performs a chosen role,
Not once attempting nature's will to thwart.
What vanity or lack of wisdom drives
The guiding spirits of this age to doubt
The fact that laws celestial rule the lives
Of men and cannot be infringed without
Incurring penalties that must be paid
For individual or collective breach,
In strict accordance with the canons laid
For our collective crimes or sins of each?
Unseen devices in the brain record
And judge the thoughts and acts of mortal men,
And every single act brings its reward
In time, without revealing where and when.
It is presumptuous on our part to think
That our self-conscious being is not bound,
When physical bonds intricately link
Our flesh to all the natural forces round.
Our mind and flesh connected from the day
When first the pulse of life stirs in the womb,
Without the slightest hitch obey the sway
Of one another almost to the tomb.
How in this body-mind compound can one
Only, out of the two, be bound by laws,
And the other with unchartered freedom run
Wherev'r it some alluring object draws?
The fact is, baffled by the mystery
Of life and not allowed to look behind
The veil of senses, mortals fail to see
That no less rigid laws control the mind;
That mankind destined for a lofty height,
A god-like stature, still out of her sight,
Must learn to obey the signs which nature makes
And follow them in what she undertakes;
As does a child, till it grows up to learn
Much more about itself, to work and earn.
(ii)
Is it not strange in this progressive age
That nor the empiricist nor learned sage
Can break the seal of silence and disclose
The object of man's earthly pilgrimage?
What wonder then if hungry millions look
For it in some antique religious book,
And trust implicitly the word of those
Themselves to this uplifting quest betook?
The testaments of these immortal men,
Which neither sword could brush aside nor pen,
Show that the wrath of Heaven descends to check
Defiance of Law by mortals now and then.
The chances are that either they were wrong
Or that material cravings are too strong
For man to overcome, hence it befalls
That punishment awaits the rebel throng.
Undoubtedly impartial jurists sift
The actions which debase us or uplift,
And after judging the ancestral pool
Decree a just reward, delayed or swift.
When deathless laws, we clearly understand,
Rule mighty suns and planets, sea and land,
Could not the wise Creator find one which
Would keep this moving lump of clay in hand?
In all the stormy epochs left behind
Had e'er man such a morbid state of mind
As now, when he has built to win in war
Atrocious weapons that can end his kind?
A ghastly streak no lower form of life
Exhibits e'en when prone to deadly strife,
A clear-cut symptom of perversion which
Remains unnoticed, as it is so rife.
A direct challenge to the Almighty Lord
That if things do not with our wish accord
We shall destroy those He created but
Now sadly lacks the ability to guard!
(iii)
As it is only when impartial time
Before us brings the errors of our prime,
That hoary age develops seasoned views
And gains a knowledge which no learning gives.
There is yet so much for our race to learn,
So much to experience, such a crown to earn,
That all of our philosophies combined
Betoken but an infant's growing mind,
For she is born to reach a godly size
With ups and downs designed to make her wise.
The rising generations of our race,
However young in years to those who grace
The chairs of learning and position now,
When grown gray will know better why and how
Their parents chose, as if compelled by fate,
A deadly path of such malignant hate,
That like a pestilence its fury spread
On earth, to cause such agony and dread
And such appalling damage to mankind
As will for centuries live in her mind.
The world condition has come to a pass
Where greatest danger to the human mass
Comes not from natural causes or disease,
But from the leading men who hold the keys
Of power in their weak but ambitious hands,
And can employ the might of powerful lands
To cause death and destruction on a scale
Before which all the powers of language fail.
One of the ways to meet this deadly threat
To safety is for masses not to abet
The men in power in their ambitious aims,
Which would be hard since they propose their names.
Moreover the rulers do not act alone
For many a wealthy and ambitious drone,
Surrounding them, like kites, plans and conspires
To plunge a nation in the awful fires
Of war, which in this era has become
Pure homicidal mass-delirium.
Another way, which is as nature wants
Mankind to do now, like industrious ants,
To have Superior Beings at the head
As rulers, who inspire respect not dread,
Who more in harmony with nature's plan
Foresee the future of evolving man,
And skilled in state-craft who the two combine
To elevate the mass-mind and refine,
And not, as rulers do now, brutalize
The crowd for but a brief temporal rise,
Heedless of what the next world-war will teach
That man has yet a loftier height to reach.
This is the only way to pull the world
Out of the mess in which it has been hurled
By scholars, priests and rulers all combined,
Lost in the unfathomed mystery of mind,
Not heeding that the evolving human brain
Can ne'er sit idle, but must e'er remain
Alert on ripe occasions to revise
The faulty social orders they devise.
The only cure now for the current ills
Is that the brilliant galaxy which fills
The chairs of power should be required to gain
Transcendence with attunement of the brain,
Which is not as hard as we might suppose,
With exercise and discipline, for those
Who rank as intellectuals in our time,
And are now ripe for their enlightened prime.
A dire necessity shall soon arise,
When we the existing systems must revise,
As strength of arm which once subdued the crowd,
Would cause more damage than we can afford,
Making it imperative for the race
To build with speed a firm irenic base,
Whereof the architects shall be, in main,
The mental athletes who remold the brain.
Only such prodigies can now control
The masses by appealing to the soul,
As intellect now almost near her end
The clever mind to her will cannot bend,
And hence instinctively the crowd now seeks,
Not one who with insane ambition reeks,
But he who by his own unruffled calm
Proves for the weary world a soothing balm.
Nor learned skepticism nor other trash,
Now ranked as wisdom, shall survive the crash,
Which soon will come to teach our wiseacres
That godless reason can become a curse,
And breed Satanic minds, if left alone,
With matchless intellect but hearts of stone:
A crop which is inevitable if
The attitude of scholars, hard and stiff
Towards sublime belief and faith, does not
To Revelation its true place allot.
Can we determine, when we ponder deep
On it that heaven has framed no laws to keep
Mankind upon the Path to reach the goal
It has appointed for the human soul;
And men are free to act as they decide,
To wallow in sin or to drown in pride,
And there is no Almighty Power to deal
With them, the fever of the mind to heal?
Most men believe that lust and passion bind
With no way of escape the human mind,
And as a slave to many an evil trait
We have no power to change our native state:
A most misleading notion often due
To this, that modern scholars have no clue
About the Power behind the ascent of man,
Which tries to lift him as high as it can,
Against the manifold obstructions which
He puts in its way by his lustful itch.
The outcome is that the existing mode
Of life, since long become a cumbrous load,
Colliding with the soul's uplifting force
Creates a mind intelligent but too coarse
For man's exalted stature at this time,
When at the portals of the Life Sublime,
The leading intellects could have attained
The State Divine and Cosmic Vision gained,
Had their ascent been more in accord
With Laws which human evolution guard.
And hence the strangely inconsistent phase
In man's development in our own days,
Control and mastery of every force
Of nature, full command of foreign shores;
But utter ignorance about his home,
About the interior of his cranial dome,
About his nervous system and the way
In which subconscious trends his thinking sway.
He knows now everything except himself,
Except the "Knower" in the fleshy shelf,
Immune to death, decay and every kind
Of sorrow and distress known to the mind.
He knows no more about him than was known
To ancient seers of Greece and Babylon,
A gap of thousands of long years between
His knowledge of the seer and objects seen.
We have no inkling man is changing fast
Towards a glorious form and godly cast
Of countenance, we often attribute
To angels, free entirely of the brute,
Encrowned with thoughts sublime and noble traits
Of character, above the alluring baits
Of wealth and power, blest with a longer span
Of life, to be the Enlightened cosmic man.
This unawareness of a vital fact
Of life does in a dangerous way react,
And all the fears and tensions which surround
The present world grow from this breeding ground.
Because the evolving human systems need
A way of life and social frame which heed
The signs and gestures that convey to us
Mandates from our collective consciousness.
(iv)
The Unexpected is the potent cause
That keeps forgetful humankind alert,
And when it happens with too long a pause
The evil trends in man their sway assert.
It often is the Unforeseen Event
Which brings depravity to sudden halt,
Ambition's crafty plans can circumvent,
And forces Arrogance to mend her fault.
Old orders often yielded place to new,
By strange unthought-of turns in world affairs;
And chance events drove out, before they knew
That their day had come, tyrants from their lairs.
Dynastic kingdoms, built with blood to last
For generations, but one sudden gust
Of stormy civil war or but one blast
Of whirlwind-like invasion brought to dust.
In many a dreary spot, where dust-winds howl
And savage beasts send out blood-curdling calls,
To which at night responds the hooting owl,
But lately grandeur dwelt in marble halls.
Has not the unforeseen in the recent past
Put the earth's mightiest empire into shade,
And war the state of countless men recast,
The beggar king and king a beggar made?
What veil before our eyes obstructs the light
That nature social stagnancy abhors,
And when we fail to climb the appointed height
Creates upheavals, revolutions, wars?
Hence, I do not predict but just inform
The world about a mighty Cosmic Law,
Which soon may raise a hideous global storm,
Out of the present groove mankind to draw.
Existence of this Force may soon be felt
When steel and cement walls like wax will melt,
And fuse to rise in clouds of fiery dust;
The Wrath of Heav'n on man's unbridled lust,
Against which every prophet raised his voice,
But often failed to sway the fatal choice.
Those who treat nature as a lifeless rock,
Insensible to virtue, vice and crime,
And fancy that its motion, like a clock,
They can adjust at will from time to time,
One awful day must see it come to life
Confronting them with fierce, aggressive swarms,
And then with loss, distress and slaughter rife
The whole of nature will seem up in arms.
We cannot follow with our puny brains
The play of millions of subconscious threads,
Which cognizant of what the Law ordains
Control the thought content of ruling heads.
Amid the medley of unnumbered trends
In human nature, which our minds unfold,
These hidden strings to gain the chosen ends
In all contingencies the Law uphold.
Hence when disastrous situations rise,
Producing consternation and dismay,
A wise man can with confidence surmise:
The Law has been infringed in some way.
Destructive wars that cause the world concern
Present no riddle to the enlightened mind,
Which in the raging tempest can discern
The attempt of nature safety-vents to find.
Behold the time has come when once again
The auguries of prophets shall come true,
And man, a rebel grown too proud and vain,
With tears for heaven's clemency shall sue.
The pride of great achievement, knowledge, wit,
As much to effort as to fortune due,
Which blind to its mistakes does not submit
To timely counsel, one day has to rue,
When fortune, prompt to take back what she grants,
Decides the arrogant career to close;
A swift debacle and the passage slants
Towards the inglorious depths from which it rose.
(v)
Once we acknowledge that the human brain
Is mounting slowly step by step to gain
A broader vision of the Cosmic Scene,
Both of the visible world and realms unseen,
We must then cede that, when man wanders far
From his route, something must occur to bar
His movement in the wrong direction bound
To block his progress till the Path is found.
The modern intellect compelled to grow
In wrong environment, with passions low
For wealth or fame or power, entirely raw
In heavenly knowledge and Celestial Law,
Is oft distorted, like a stunted plant,
That grows precariously on a slant,
And twisted out of shape appears so weird
And strange, compared to those in orchards reared.
Such are some minds in this enlightened age,
That had they rightly grown would, at this stage,
Excel the greatest sages of the past
In fresh adventures on the ocean vast
Of life, and with the knowledge gathered, led
Not to destruction but a rosy bed,
The bloated modern world at heart so sick
That for explosion it needs but a prick.
But barred from Vision their lopsided brain
Prepares explosives for temporal gain,
By which soon into chaos may be hurled
The present gay but maladjusted world.
Full many thinkers, whose own mind refused
Belief in God's existence, when they mused
On Life's mysterious drama, good and bad,
Delightful and revolting, gay and sad,
Denied true insight into human hearts,
Despite their erudition and their arts,
Clever with pen, their faulty doctrines spread
All ov'r the earth to wean the simple head
From faith in God, and let him loose to drift,
Alone unable right from wrong to sift.
Now watching helplessly, with deep alarm,
The growing stockpile of the nuclear arm,
Some try in vain to stem the rising flood
Their own imprudence o'er the planet spread,
Which gave unbridled license to the strong,
With full impunity to do a wrong,
Mistaught there is no God to judge their deeds,
And no Celestial Court to award the meeds.
No other single factor ever did
Such harm to mankind as was done, amid
The glamorous progress of the present age,
By scholars who condemned the illumined sage,
Deceived by reason, like an impish wraith,
Who cut unwisely at the roots of faith.
It is not reason but a second sight,
A higher faculty that can throw light
On this recondite subject, at this time
Of such a moment and importance prime,
That every other major problem fades
Into unimportance, as if lost in shades,
For at this critical juncture human life
Is balanced on the thin edge of a knife,
Is in the gravest jeopardy because
We lack in knowledge of Celestial Laws.
Chapter 2
Nuclear Weapons: A Symptom of Abnormality
(i)
Can you surmise the reason why the mass
Of men their life now complacently pass,
And ne'er allow the slightest sign escape
That warfare has assumed an ugly shape,
Due to the deadly challenge daily hurled
By growing nuclear build-ups of the world?
How, as if charmed, the busy crowds forget
Or are resigned towards the dreadful threat,
Towards a prospect that can quickly turn
The earth into one vast, rotating urn;
Towards a mortal danger from which none
Can be safe whether war is lost or won;
A threat attended by the ghastly fear
Of mass destruction slowly drawing near?
Is it not strange that we now calmly sit
And wait until the Infernal Fire is lit,
When ev'n the whisper of some pestilence
Into hysterics drives and makes us tense,
On thorns to flee the place or find some way
The foul, contagious plague to keep at bay,
With reason for the safety of our life?
But this atrocious menace now so rife
And so immediate we quite disregard,
In this one case completely off our guard,
As if it is so small and so remote
That 'tis not worth the effort ev'n to note.
With such a monster hovering overhead,
Waiting to strike unwary myriads dead,
What surety there is in this reckless age
That one will not succumb to nuclear rage,
Will not be one of countless victims hurt
Dreadfully or struck down lifeless and inert,
Will not with ghastly sores or sightless eyes
Bewail this deadly lightning from the skies?
What have our leading figures done about
This horror lurking near without a doubt,
Which always at our elbow but one jolt
Can bring down roaring like a thunderbolt,
And from a distance of ev'n scores of miles
Can eat deep into flesh and heap in piles
Eroded bodies stripped off to the bone,
For long to bear the racking pain alone,
With not a soul around the wounds to dress
To soothe the torment or relieve distress.
Confronted by this menace who knows why
Against this hellish engine so few cry?
Why but few take it in a serious way
While most men unconcernedly pass their day
About this danger so untroubled that
It worries them less than a thieving cat,
Alert to every small unpleasant thing
That can the least harm or disquiet bring?
How can they tolerate this deadly shaft,
Designed with such a diabolic craft,
That round the blasted area it can drop
A genetic poison for a grisly crop
Of grinning monsters and grimacing freaks,
Whose language is a blend of horrid shrieks,
Fouling the outraged earth for many a year
With such abortions none their sight can bear.
And who can say with what revolting shape
It will the future stock of mankind drape?
When we attach such value to our health,
To looks, deportment, property and wealth,
Attend to all of them with deep concern,
And for their betterment new methods learn,
What makes us callous to the atomic threat
Which o'erhangs all we have or can beget,
A danger from which we cannot be free
Till death, nor our heirs, nor their progeny;
Which is a thousand times more lethal than
The deadliest plague that e'er afflicted man?
Can you assign a reason for the fact
Why we do not against this threat react
With such ebullience as it should provoke,
And why such efforts always end in smoke,
As if a spell descends on earth to lull
To slumber those this blood bath would annul?
Look for a while into your mind again
And try to find the reason which, in main,
Prevents our acting as we would, no doubt,
Do at once, when there is a fire without;
Or we are warned of cholera in the town
Or of a flood that threatens us to drown,
Or of some passing evil that can be
Disastrous for my household or for me,
And mark that in a crisis we do not
Sit calmly, well contented with our lot,
But act without delay to set things right,
Though we may have to battle day and night.
But can you say why we are not disturbed
When nuclear stockpiles grow apace uncurbed?
For some the problem is how they can stop
A vicious trend descending from the top,
How can they when the ruling groups decide
To have it, their decision override?
They argue how they can avert the threat
When rival, hard-competing lands are set
On deadliest weapons science can devise,
For their defense or ev'n aggressive rise,
In this inventive age, when all are free
To make whate'er improvement there can be?
Who can technological progress stop
Of which it is the inevitable crop?
From other symptoms also one can find
That people now are more or less resigned
Towards a catastrophic nuclear war,
As they are often towards an evil star,
Which, they think, bodes misfortune and can change
The tenor of their life beyond their range,
And they bide patiently the fateful day,
Knowing they cannot change it or delay.
(ii)
Let us sincerely for a moment ask
Ourselves, when resting from the daily task,
Does not existence at this or that place
Of nuclear engines jeopardize the race?
Is not the threat so imminent and grave
That we may one day find it hard to save
Not just ourselves and all we love and own,
But all the art and culture that has grown
With man's unceasing, patient labor done
By countless generations one by one?
Is not the danger, from what we are told
By scores of experts, many hundredfold
More than that posed by all the plagues combined?
For it can cause extinction of mankind;
Or, at the least, kill millions or distort
In such a ghastly way that nothing short
Of death can end their frightful suffering more
Intense than that of any cancer sore.
What stupor then prevents from crying out,
The myriads doomed without a shade of doubt,
Millions condemned to lifelong agony
So terrible one cannot bear to see?
What destiny creates this nonchalance
Towards a fast approaching Kali's* dance;
Which, if not warded off, will leave behind
Millions dead, millions wounded, millions blind,
Millions disfigured, millions maimed and crazed;
Their assets blown up or to the ground razed?
No one to ease their pain or mourn the loss,
For all the dazed survivors too will cross
Into a horrid world e'en worse than hell,
To face grim famines and diseases fell.
Why are our scholars loath to use their pen
To tell the naked truth to common men?
Do they believe the danger is not so
Immediate or so serious as I show?
Do they suppose the piles of nuclear arms
Will vanish as does snow when sunshine warms
Or that a thousand billion worth of stocks
Will lie unused like subterranean rocks
Or that the havoc of a nuclear war
Will not be so great or extend so far
As I depict, and mankind might survive
The blow, without much loss, to live and thrive?
Our failure to respond to such a threat
Reveals a symptom for the first time met
In human history, for at no time
Have masses acted such a pantomime;
Remained so passive with no word or sign
To show they are not dumb and stupid kine,
But have the common sense at once to grasp
That they are threatened by a deadly asp,
About to bury deep its deadly fangs
In them, and that their life by a thread hangs.
What widely met oblivion tightly holds
The rich and poor in its confining folds?
Or what hypnotic influence sends to sleep
Distinguished scholars that, like docile sheep,
They nimbly trot towards a slaughter house
Obediently, as quiet as a mouse?
The few debates and protest meetings held
By some enthusiasts, who tried to weld
Into one powerful global forum those
On principle who nuclear war oppose,
After some stir expressive of dissent
Against the use of nuclear armament,
And sundry comments in the press, became
Too feeble to defeat the deadly aim
Of those behind the game, and then expired,
As if the whole adventure had misfired.
And in the wake of these outpourings comes
The Silence managed with colossal sums,
Which ne'er allows conscientious folk to gain
A hearing and their labor goes in vain.
Somewhat by this, but primarily because
The strange callosity now never thaws,
The human race accepts the nuclear arm
With no explosive symptom of alarm;
Accepts the presence of a Demon that
Will slaughter millions, as one kills a rat;
Accepts a dread contrivance that may loom
Before rebellious mortals as their doom.
(iii)
Much as I should desire to write about
A theme that could put fear and gloom to rout,
And fill a ruffled mind with peace and joy;
But knowing well that it would but decoy
The reader into a false sense of repose,
While grim disaster lies extremely close,
I treat it as a duty laid on me
By Heaven that does my every action see,
To keep the world reminded of this threat,
Which by some Trick of Fate we soon forget.
The strange indifference which we now display
Towards the greatest problem of our day,
Towards an issue that now holds the scales
Between our life and death, and grief entails,
Call it inertia or, whate'er it be,
A keen observer cannot fail to see
And think it foolish of us, if not worse,
That we should grow so mentally perverse
As ev'n grim prospects of extinction stir
No feeling in us that may be we err,
And ought to ponder on this point to find
The reason for this numbness in our mind?
Let us not be misled by outer gloss,
Nor at the simple truth get sour or cross,
But face reality, as we now see,
Not what we think or figure it to be.
For probing this point, as well as we can,
We cannot but mark that in modern man
A strange departure from a healthy mode
Of thought has come about, as if a load
Sits heavy on his brain, that he has grown
Indifferent to his death e'en when foreknown.
This apathy is not a healthy sign,
Nor would it be in creatures, sheep or swine,
If of a likely risk that loomed in front
They took no heed ev'n by a bleat or grunt.
Towards a mortal threat inertness means
Fault in the pillar on which mankind leans,
Fault in the instinct by which she survives,
Preserves her life from danger, lives and thrives;
It means a fault so terrible and grave
As cannot be compared to any, save
Perhaps, the tendency to suicide found
Often in people mentally unsound.
Insentience towards a deadly risk
Through which we gaily pass now, sport and frisk,
While each addition to the infernal store
Is adding to the hazard more and more,
Denotes a morbid symptom so acute
It has no parallel in any brute,
Or other form of life nor ever had
Except in those that run amuck or mad.
For heaven has set the urge to live so deep
In earthly creatures that no furious sweep
Of passion or adversity can shake
The firm foundation, or remotely make
Them when confronted by a mortal threat,
The urgent need for self-defense forget.
No one would dare impute so grave a fault
To those that soar beyond the azure vault,
And say that in the highly cultured brain
A morbid streak is just becoming plain;
A streak which seldom is with horror filled
When it imagines millions maimed or killed,
Which, with the hideous scenes of two world wars
Still fresh in memory, now behind the farce
Of peace, prepares for yet another one
To put to shame the carnage earlier done.
We are now reconciled, as if decreed
By Fate, as lazy farmers are to weed;
To this diabolic instrument of death,
Like those the young read of with bated breath
In stories, weapons Satan would devise
With gloating looks God's earth to pulverize;
A challenge to the Lord from puny man
To save the earth from ruin if He can.
An arm so devilish that, to be blunt,
There surely cannot be a worse affront
To intellect, no worse slap on the face
Of every moral fiber in the race,
Which save inhuman minds, akin to those
Of homicidal kings who slaughter chose,
No normal man, who is not mad with hate,
Can make, employ, invent or tolerate.
What great effect on one, who calmly chews
His breakfast, have the most alarming news
Of riots, revolts and slaughters, now so rife,
They have become a part of daily life:
Or what emotion does a picture formed
Of nuclear warfare or a city stormed,
And blown out of existence, rouse in us,
When with our friends we nuclear war discuss?
This lack of feeling is a dangerous sign,
A grave impairment of the mental shrine;
A warning that incipient freeze has set
To cause indifference to a mortal threat.
Let us discuss a while this curious trait:
The dark Forerunner of an evil fate,
That death, destruction, slaughter, riot, war,
On our accustomed ears now no more jar,
Nor cause the horror that they should evoke
Nor grieve the heart, nor with emotion choke,
As they did but a hundred years before,
When such disasters shocked the people more,
As history attests, for every case
Of carnage filled with horror all the race.
I know the earth was ne'er a chaste abode
Of human angels with a purer code
Of conduct in the past, and I concede
That there was greater poverty and need,
Still greater cruelty upon the weak,
The slave and bondman, servant, thief and freak,
There were religious wars and torture done
To heretics or forced conversions won.
But people were alert and feared a war,
Decamped in panic while it was yet far,
And seldom waited for the monster's jaws
To swallow them, as we do now because
We have so callous and unfeeling grown,
That though we know whole nations can be blown
To bits with nuclear blasts we ne'er regard
The threat as serious and are not on guard,
Against this source of all-devouring war,
Which from no nation and no man is far,
And like a baneful comet points towards
The earth, about to engulf men, beasts and birds.
Compare this with what happened fifty years
Ago, when wakened by instinctive fears,
A strong electric shock went through the mass
Of men to ban the use of poison gas;
Mere caustic as compared to megatons
That can incinerate millions all at once.
There is no doubt that something deep inside
Our minds has changed, and our emotions slide
Towards a callous disregard of death
And slaughter that made people hold their breath.
So war and massacre have now become
A matter of routine, not just to some,
But to the teeming multitudes who treat
Such grim occurrences like cold and heat:
A subject for some comment and no more,
No surge of deep emotion as before,
No scenes of woe afloat before the eye,
Time and again to make one weep and sigh,
Forgotten ere the morning to make room
For fresh news, as if swept off with a broom,
A most abnormal trait by which we are
Careering fast towards a nuclear war.
Perhaps I have explained now in detail,
Enough to show that I would grossly fail
In duty that I owe to God and man,
If, with as much submission as I can,
I do not emphasize the fact again
That we are blunting our evolving brain,
By our transgressions with the grave result
That Cosmic Forces, neither seen nor felt,
To avoid incurable damage to the brain,
Before it is too late, might cause again
A dreadful global war, that may extend
To many lands, rebellious man to mend.
It is not superstition nor a myth
Nor dogma nor mere theory with no pith,
Nor yet delusion nor a sorry game
To cause sensation for some gain or fame,
But it is something, which extremely rare,
Has on occasions fallen to the share
Of men, without their striving, with the Grace
Of Heaven to voice a warning to the race,
As I do now in this spontaneous rhyme,
That brooks no barrier of creed or clime,
From that Immortal Source to which alone
The whole of future and the past are known.
But for this I could never dare pronounce
A judgment on the world, or know an ounce
Of what I have revealed about the stain
Now forming on the evolving human brain,
A morbid blemish, which too soon will spread,
If not removed or changed to love instead,
And cause a horror no pen can portray
No language can express, no words convey.
What profit would accrue if mankind wanes
In spiritual endowments, though she gains
Untold possessions, only to unbar
Destructive frenzy in a nuclear war,
Of which the authors, now completely lost
To sense, with their extinction pay the cost?
It sounds blasphemous, but I must confess
That, though we boast of it, the polished dress
Of modern intellect, beneath its folds
Conceals a faulty twist, which firmly holds
A part of mankind in its vicious grip,
And ne'er allows the busy crowd to slip
The noose; a twist that keeps God out of count,
Has no need for the Sermon on the Mount,
Nor Vedas nor Quran nor what was taught
By Buddha to ennoble human thought,
To chase the shadows which confuse the mind
Of e'en great leaders and their vision blind,
Unless both morn and eve they sue for grace,
When only they can rightly guide the race.
(v)
Were there not something in our actions wrong,
The Evil Forces could not grow so strong,
Could not create in us the fatal trends
To slaughter millions for our selfish ends,
Could not have brought the masses down so low
To be the dumb spectators of a show,
Which now keeps mankind in a state of dread
With clouds of mass destruction o'er her head.
Nor does the horror of approaching war
Nor of misfortunes which our hopes may mar,
Create in me the urge to pen this rhyme,
For nothing can occur before its time,
But it is something which as humans we
To do or not to do are often free,
Something as humans which we ought to know
If we desire to live in peace, and grow
To that intensely blissful state sublime,
Attained by holy sages in their time.
I write of something which without mistake
We can discern if we completely shake
Ourselves free from the hold of self-conceit
And by the Altar of Truth take our seat,
And it is this, that since we have digressed,
From light and more towards the shadow pressed
Than is consistent with our inner growth,
With our intelligence and morals both,
We have, due to the action of a Law,
Developed in ourselves a serious flaw
Which warps our judgment and denies us Light,
When with atomic arms we choose to fight.
Had there not been a numbness in our thought
The use of nuclear arms from the first ought
To have been cried down and condemned by all,
Further use of this dread device to stall,
As there was time enough, since their first use
A less disastrous type of war to choose.
To assess their dread capacity for harm
And put a total ban upon the arm.
For nuclear power confers resistless might
Against which 'have-nots' cannot hope to fight.
But they desisted from obstructive steps,
And protests came but seldom to their lips,
As if bewitched, they left the 'haves' to do
The worst, and keep on adding to that too.
But for the apathy that seized their mind
They could have made a clamor all combined,
Making it hard for nuclear states to escape,
Without to some adjustment lending shape.
With more than half the world all on one side
These states could not against their will decide
Without exposing their ignoble aim,
And earning condemnation for the same.
As if there was a charm to make them numb
They all remained too long inert and dumb;
But some awakening to the stunning truth,
Reminded of it by outspoken youth,
That nuclear arms bestow invincible might,
They are now keen to have the fiery blight,
As if possession of this pest bestows
A rare distinction, like contentious crows,
Which, when they see one light on carrion, haste
To reach the spot, the putrid dish to taste.
There must be, after all, some cogent cause
For this unhealthy lull and sickly pause
In our instinctive, forceful urge to live,
When deadly hazards cause for action give,
For this unnoticed grave, abnormal tinge
Of slackness in an impulse on which hinge
Our life and all, making us so obtuse,
That monstrous weapons which can mountains fuse
And lakes desiccate, we take lying down,
As if engrossed deep in a study brown.
Survey the world for one effective stir,
And you will come to know I do not err,
That there is no concerted effort done,
And no opposing dissidents, as one,
Demand the banning of this dread device,
That can wipe off whole nations in a trice;
Of this Satanic world-destroying bane,
Because a palsy has come o'er our brain,
Such as has ne'er been on the earth before,
A serious warning from the Eternal Shore
Of Cosmic Life to make mankind alert
That her intelligent mind is weighed with dirt.
Look at the people passing unconcerned,
Absorbed deep in what they have lost or earned,
And mark there is no serious talk about
What should, indeed, fill them with fear and doubt:
About the alarming state the world is in
Where our existence hangs upon the spin
Of change to cause the initial clash that can,
In but a day effect the wreck of man,
And then no one can tell what will befall
Or who will suffer-others or us all.
There must be some defect beyond our ken
Which, yet unnoticed by the world of men,
Has caused a partial torpor of the sense
Of safety, made this instinct slack and dense,
Has in some way eclipsed the Orb of Light,
The Source of all our sense of wrong and right,
Has somehow caused obstruction in the Ray,
Which keeps the evil threatening us at bay,
And like the commonly met morbid streak,
In those towards drink or vice who are weak,
Is not perceptive of the nuclear threat,
Although to other hazards most alert.
Is there not something morbid in this calm,
This sense of safety, this pretense and sham,
That keeps us tongue-tied and somehow contrives
To make us dead to a danger to our lives?
Which having now become a usual trait
Keeps us from knowing our abnormal state?
Keeps us from knowing e'en that there is ground
For worry, for which some cure must be found?
While some deceived by hope that Heaven will save
The world somehow, ignore the yawning grave,
Again forgetting that Celestial Laws
Are always just in the events they cause.
Chapter 3
Modern War Is Inferno Actualized
(i)
Call it coincidence or call it fate,
Call it the fruit of lust for power or hate,
Or call it by whatever name you like
The unmistakable fact cannot but strike
A keen mind that in some mysterious way,
Whate'er the reasons for the grim display,
Mankind at certain intervals is gripped
By grave distemper of the mind, and whipped
Until blood oozes from the livid frame,
And she collapses broken, wounded, lame.
This happened, as if willed by destiny,
Twice in the first half of this century.
The start entailed such heavy sacrifice
And end exacted such a dreadful price
In millions crippled for life, millions killed,
Millions with lasting grief and anguish filled,
That, as one terribly burnt once by fire
Retains the memory for his life entire,
This should have caused a feeling e'er so strong
And so intense, persisting for so long,
That no compelling pressure should have led
Nations again the same dread path to tread.
By some inscrutable Law, we still ignore,
Forgetfulness of what has gone before,
Affects the victims to such grave extent
They lose all memory of the punishment
Or, if recalled, it is so dim and vague
That far from fleeing from the deadly plague,
More lethal than the foul bubonic sore,
They soon invite its ravages once more.
Once more to hear the cries of dreadful pain,
And see the gruesome corpses of the slain,
Once more to experience all the horror borne
That had made millions wretched and forlorn;
Once more the same colossal loss of lives
And lamentations of grief-stricken wives;
Once more to pass the same distracting round
Of rush for work or shelter underground:
A mania, now become a common trait,
Such that it would not be amiss to state
That people in this age amass and hoard
One day to put it all to fire and sword.
This is the story of a rebel world
Which every now and then into hell is hurled,
Whose teeming populations, as if struck
By manic frenzy, at times run amuck,
And long before the awful headlong dive
Straight into Hades, kicking and alive.
Prepare the instruments of torture meant
To cause a torment till the heart is rent,
To shriek and groan, to writhe and twist in pain,
With awful anguish to be maimed and slain,
To bear the dread, excruciating smart
Of frightful wounds that make the stoutest heart
Weep like a woman, blubber like a child,
When not in stupor or delirium wild.
What poetic imagination sought
To paint of hell is literally now wrought
In every trench and every battleground,
Where screaming, moaning wretches sprawling round,
Lie in such twisted and contorted shapes
And bear such torment till the breath escapes,
As e'en the most imaginative men
Could ne'er envision, much less put to pen.
The incurably wounded, burnt or maimed
Present a sight that should make us ashamed;
So dreadfully battered, mangled, filled with scars,
As if crushed to a pulp with iron bars,
Unfit to attend to any vital need,
To rise unaided, ease themselves or feed;
Acutely conscious minds in fleshy tombs,
Or monstrous freaks born of inhuman wombs;
Their life one long-drawn night of agony,
Allowed to feel but not to hear or see,
The face a shapeless lump devoid of eyes,
And mouth a hole through which the spirit cries;
The types of human wretches who alive
Although dead to the world, in pain, survive
Out of the victims of a modern war,
Maintained in strict seclusion from us far.
This is the mockery to which, with thought
And care, civilization has been brought,
Setting for many years a hell ablaze
On earth to live in, shudder at, and gaze
On ghastly suffering and appalling wrecks,
As if a vampirish seductress becks
The gaudy caravan by devious means,
To taste the horror of infernal scenes.
What is amazing is the curious fact
That, as if some abnormal forces act
To sway their minds, soon after each such spell
Of dreadful torment in this raging hell,
The victims 'gain forget the torture borne,
Or countless dead whom still their kinsfolk mourn,
And with the scars still showing on the flesh
Make haste to invite the agony afresh.
(ii)
It is not courage nor brave disregard
Of death that we are not now on our guard
Against the fast increasing nuclear arms;
Nor are we rendered dumb by spells and charms,
So that we do not raise our voice to stop
The growth of this pest for the human crop;
Nor is it mere distaste towards a role
Which is beyond our province and control;
Nor apathy towards a problem, most
Concerning statesmen and the ruling host;
But it is something deeper and acute
Which in a serious crisis keeps us mute,
Makes us oblivious to a deadly threat,
While at mere trifles we soon fume and fret.
Perhaps, our attitude is partly due
To this, that we have not a picture true
Of what will happen in a nuclear bout,
And, may be, some of us regard with doubt
The claims made for the hideous nuclear blast,
And think the damage cannot be so vast,
Or that the neutral countries will remain
Unharmed and suffer no distress or pain.
But such a stand is yet again a sign
That we are acting like unthinking kine,
For e'en young children know well what befell
When two small nuclear bombs created hell
In Japan, forcing that brave land to sue
For peace, to avoid more such bolts from the blue.
What havoc would result when nuclear darts
A thousand times more powerful, strike the hearts
Of densely peopled towns and countrysides
To spread a vapor in which death resides,
To emit a radiation that can kill
At scores of miles or burn to ash or grill?
What would befall when dozens, if not more,
Of latest nuclear shafts bombard a shore?
And what would happen when to win in war,
The two belligerents, from each other far,
In hundreds use their most destructive darts,
All aimed at densely populated parts
Of hostile lands to spread, where'er they fall,
For many hundred miles a lethal pall
Of deadly fallout long to hang on earth,
Causing outrageous weather, famine, dearth,
And forming soon into a biting cloud
Enwrap mankind in a corrosive shroud.
We should remember that a missile war,
Whether the combatants are near or far,
Will not be fought out on a foreign shore,
But in our country, at our very door,
And to our chambers will be wafted fast
The flesh-consuming poison of the blast,
Creating dreadful havoc far and near,
Such scenes of devastation, death and fear
That can the dazed survivors rob of will,
Their minds unhinge or with sheer horror kill.
Too soon the whole disrupted human world
Into the depths of chaos will be hurled,
The scene of panic-stricken, frantic crowds,
Unnerved completely by the mushroom clouds,
And stunned, when they entirely shattered find
The interlinked economy of mankind,
Their bank, industrial center, shopping site
Looking like silent graveyards during night,
Of all the glitter, pomp and show bereft,
With not a single living creature left.
The earth enveloped in despair and gloom
For ev'n a moment's joy will have no room.
Like shipwrecked sailors on an island cast
To live in utter want and often fast,
Millions will wilderness make their abode
To live in travail with a crushing load
Of sorrow, suffering and remitless toil
To build the world anew right from the soil.
I am not writing this to fling a scare,
But if it be an error to lay bare
Alarming truths of vital moment for
The whole of mankind at this crucial hour,
Of such importance on them does depend
Whether the race will live or come to end,
I must plead guilty now, and press the plea
That judgment should rest with the progeny,
Which will be better able to decide
How exigent it was to stop the tide,
That sweeping o'er the earth had washed away
Resistance to this Evil of the day.
A child can see the race for massive loads
Of these infernal engines clear forebodes,
In more horrific form and shape, perhaps,
All that I have conveyed with many gaps,
About the grim disaster threatening all
The nations, whom now their pride and the wall
Of self-delusion ne'er allow to gauge
The fury of the storm that soon may rage
To snatch their every comfort, blessing, gift,
If they complacently still choose to drift.
And all their schemes and plans, their hopes and dreams
May be extinguished, like the mellow beams
Of garden candles blown out by the gust
Of an approaching storm, seen by its dust.
If after all the experience gained by us,
And all our knowledge we do not discuss,
And take more seriously the aftermath
Of such a pitfall, looming in our path,
Which shall not only shatter all our bones,
But turn our homesteads into sand and stones,
It means that either we are gripped by sloth,
And would burn rather than turn, like a moth,
From bright ambitious dreams that hold us fast
And draw us headfirst to a holocaust;
Or, like birds fascinated by a snake,
We lie immobile leaving things to take
Their course, until the Bomb makes us its prey,
While we wait hypnotized the fatal day.
Or we are not convinced that such war can
Come to destroy the whole dream world of man,
And hope that luck or prudence will prevail
To bar the use of this infernal hail,
Or that no one is of sense so bereft
To fight a war in which no one is left.
Suppose there is a fifty-fifty chance
That combatants will use the explosive lance,
Or fearful of the outcome may avoid
The dread device lest mankind is destroyed,
What would transpire towards the dismal end,
When one belligerent is forced to bend
Beneath the crushing pressure of his foe,
While girt with nuclear arms from head to toe?
Do you think he will tamely bend his head
And yield the victor e'en this armor dread?
Or, if of human nature you know aught,
Will not just then a nuclear war be fought?
If still some doubts this sound conclusion bar
Recall what happened in the last world war;
When but one power possessed the hellish arm,
Was not yet near defeat or serious harm,
But to deliver a decisive blow,
Demolished two towns with the atomic glow.
(iii)
The state of silence that has followed close
The secret nuclear policy of those
Who have a stock or now prepare the arm,
Has been adopted not to cause alarm
And panic, sure to spread if people know
The full details of what is hid below
The outer gloss of words in which they boast
Possession of a stuff the earth can roast,
And change inhabited spots for many a year
To ghoulish haunts filled with dementing fear.
But oft to mitigate the horror felt
A lame apology is blandly spelt
That nuclear arms serve as deterrents for
Aggressive nations to keep them from war!
Not even the experts who prepare the darts,
No doubt with sorrow weighing on their hearts,
Who raise their potency with matchless skill
To cause more havoc, millions more to kill,
Know what disaster, O God, will occur
When fallout vitiates the atmosphere,
What monstrous evils will corrupt the earth,
What horrors and abortions fill her girth,
When these atrocious bombs in hundreds fall
To spoil the economy of nature all,
Enwrapping in a radiating robe
The famine-stricken, poison-laden globe.
Effects of e'en a few atomic tests
Create in nearby areas deadly pests,
Enough to cause disorder and disease,
To foul the weather, to torment and tease,
Enough to cause fear and uneasiness,
And loud denunciations from the press
Of nearer lands, affected by the blast,
Compelling them to take precautions fast.
But who can say what irreparable harm
Will follow when this foul, Satanic arm,
Like hundreds of volcanoes, bursts to pour
A vitriolic ash on every shore,
Causing climatic rigors never met,
The harmony of nature to upset.
The havoc caused is sure to take a shape
As awful as the door of hell agape,
Would show to horror-stricken mortal sight,
To freeze the marrow with benumbing fright,
As shrieking, groaning wretches twist and writhe
In dreadful postures, and in thick gasps breathe
Corrosive fumes, laid on a scorching bed,
Under a ceiling of fire overhead,
With cold sweat streaming down the anguished face,
While red-hot pins tear off flesh from its place,
No water to assuage the parching thirst
Or cool the burning fever, growing worse.
For days and weeks to endure infernal pain
Until delirium grips the tortured brain,
And soothing death the torment comes to ease,
When their contortions and convulsions cease,
Beyond the reach of aid, as no one near
Is left alive a helping hand to bear.
This is how men to quench their bestial thirst
For power, when pressed, will make the earth
accurst,
One vast, asphyxiating, lethal spot,
The dread abode of flesh-corroding rot,
A fuming hell, a prickly bed of thorns,
Of stifling eves and suffocating morns,
Polluted and infected to the core,
Abode of phthisis and incurable sore,
For decades making God's creation foul
With actions that would shame a desert ghoul,
Filling with poison both the earth and sky
To their descendants safety to deny.
In this realistic epoch we have seen
Blood spattered thickly o'er the country green
And towns, not once or twice but many times,
Not in one land but over many climes,
Showing us clearly what relentless hold
Destructive war has on the human fold.
It is a serious problem for the wise
To tackle, why despite the amazing rise
In knowledge, in aesthetics and in love,
In this one trait man could not soar above
The beasts, but on the contrary has sunk
To greater depths, as if with hatred drunk
For e'en the most ferocious creature known
To self-destructive trends is never prone.
With such a prospect and two bloody wars
Before our eyes, what mental twist debars
The elite from seeing that a bloodier third,
With nuclear weapons, plunging all the world
Into a blazing hell-fire, to our shame,
Might be fought leaving mankind broke and lame,
So dreadfully mangled that it would take an age
To patch the damage done by nuclear rage?
Why do we disbelieve or disregard
The words of those who put us on our guard
Against a possibility that can be
A stark reality for you and me,
Or all of us, demanding from our part
Preventive efforts done with all our heart?
There was a time when courage, skill and arms
Decided battles whose account still warms
The heart and stirs the blood whene'er one reads
Of bold encounters and heroic deeds.
Despite ferociousness and savagery
We still in old wars human features see,
Which marked the fight between two groups of men
From that of beasts in forest and the glen.
But now all that has changed, and war denotes
The slitting open of a million throats
Of sleeping women, men and children small,
One swift, grim massacre of one and all,
With nuclear weapons, deadly germs or gas
To mow down from a distance one whole mass
Of human beings, all left cold in death,
Swimming in blood or gasping hard for breath.
This frame of mind, against all laws of life,
Dictates of conscience, scales and values rife,
And every code of morals ever framed,
We brazenly display now unashamed,
Because irreverent ideas dead
To our divine descent possess our head.
Higher the rise the greater is the fall,
But our elite, forgetful of it all,
Despite enormous rise in knowledge still
Adhere to social patterns matching ill
With our advanced position, which provokes
Of racial consciousness the crushing strokes,
Designed to teach the rebels that the hour
Has come to abjure to dreams of wealth and power,
And find some other way to live in peace,
Not building on the ash of Rome and Greece.
There might come heavier blows that will not spare
Anyone but will be for all to share;
For those who tamely follow a wrong lead
Cannot escape the guilt of evil deed.
The more our weapons gain in power and range
The more the urgency that we should change.
When heaven intends, to suit the Cosmic Plan,
To change unhealthy habits formed by man,
To humble and deflate his bloated head,
Or cleanse the poison skeptic thought has spread;
In short, when there occurs a need for change,
A tangled thread of life to rearrange,
Then ere the evil grows beyond repair
To cure it, as a vacuum in the air,
When it exceeds a certain point, entails
From denser regions furious storms and gales;
Terrestrial life creates a mental storm
A faulty social order to reform.
See how a raging tempest sweeps away
The dust and dirt and throws in disarray
One whole affected region, bringing down,
Like match-sticks, giant trees in many a town
And country, smashing doors and window panes,
And hurling down the roofs in streets and lanes,
Causing a pandemonium while men dash
For shelter, midst the deafening din and crash
Of falling debris and the thundering roar
Of wind, in fury rising more and more,
Until with fitful gusts its rage abates,
When men and things resume their normal states.
Does not the same befall when dreadful storms
Of riot and revolution change the forms
Of governments and social systems which
In man's progressive movement cause some hitch?
Did not the same befall whene'er the rage
Of great historic wars in any age
Hit kingdoms and world empires, like a blast,
Their sovereignty and boundaries to recast?
Did not then millions with their precious lives
Remove impediments which, with the gyves
Of wealth and power, enchained a massive part
Of mankind, ruling it with as much art
As is displayed now by some nations which
In man's advancement cause again a hitch,
And so, as has befallen oft before,
The same dread process may recur once more;
This time with more destructive weapons than
Those used before by power-besotten man?
Alas, our lust for power or wealth untold
Should so befool us and our thinking mold
That, with our brilliant intellectual rise,
We should think that the measures we devise
Or contemplate, untrue to man and God,
As diplomatic trick, pretense or fraud,
Can e'er succeed against the Almighty Plan
Of Heaven aimed at the unity of man.
Can we arrest the movement of the earth,
Or shorten by an inch its mighty girth,
Prevent the sun from rising in the east,
Or cool its fiery ardor in the least,
Or hold a while an atom from its course
Without encountering its explosive force?
If not, what lack of sense in us denies
The knowledge that when nought under the skies
Can flout the laws of nature or its might
Resist, can puny man put up a fight,
By mean resort to sneaking trick and ruse,
Against a measure Heaven decides to use?
Chapter 4
Religion as the Mouthpiece
Of the Evolutionary Impulse
(i)
That we are passing through a crucial phase
Is well reflected in the shining rays
Of sun and pallid luster of the moon,
Perceived by only those who have the boon
Of Supersensory Vision, the most rare
Of all the rich endowments which we share.
Because mankind has made a sudden shift
From ways of life that can bestow the gift;
From rules of conduct which conduce to make
The mind serene, a placid conscious lake,
Whose limpid waters clearly show below
Of Cosmic Consciousness the radiant glow,
The modern world displays a serious dearth
Of men of vision needed on the earth
To feel the pulse of nature and prescribe
The mode of conduct for the human tribe,
Climbing a lofty, unfamiliar height,
Which needs at every step a guiding light.
Does it not look to you as rather odd
That we depend for all we know of God
On books and utterances of some men born
In dim antiquity, when earth was shorn
Of all the glamor that makes modern life
One tense performance of unending strife?
And no one in the intervening span
Of time could say a single word more than
What they had said or press a cubit more
Beyond the line already drawn before?
If you agree that this has been the case
Can you the cause of this stagnation trace?
Why since the time of prophets men became
So void of heavenly grace and are the same
In this amazingly productive span,
As if since then God has forsaken man?
Can you assign a valid cause for this,
Why in this rich, industrial age we miss
The ennobling presence of that lofty class
Of men, whose words inspired the human mass
To righteous deeds with such a soul appeal
That they can, e'en now, moral torpor heal?
Do you believe that was a simpler age
More suited to the anointed seer and sage,
Or more productive for the visionary
Than later periods, when mankind, though free
And more sophisticated, contact lost
With nature, and of this breach paid the cost
In utter absence of such men encrowned
By Heaven with higher knowledge most profound?
Can we ascribe this rather strange surcease
Of great Messiahs to the high increase
In man's material comforts, and the slow
But sure advance of mortals, high and low,
Towards a richer and a healthier life,
Full of amenities so cheap and rife,
That dire necessity does not now force
The more susceptible to have recourse
To rigid penance or the need to heal
Their sorrows with intense religious zeal?
Which means the earlier need for prophets ceased
When science man's temporal hardship eased.
If this is so, why do we then rely
So much on old religious lore and try,
As far as we can, in our thought and deed,
To act upon the tenets of our creed?
The time has come when mankind should decide
If it, in future, can with safety ride
In two dissimilar boats, one out of which
Aspires to God, the other to be rich
And strong to have all that the earth can give,
Believing man has but one life to live.
(ii)
Does it not strike you as extremely strange
That, at this lofty height, the more we change
Towards a more and more luxurious mode
Of life the more we lack a common code
That could all nations bind in harmony,
Each of them self-administered and free?
But far from this we build a vicious load
Of arms, on power and wealth to keep our hold.
And why? Because we fail to understand
That in our progress nature has a hand,
And when we battle hard to have our way
We, sometimes, find in front a grim array
Of forces we cannot resist, designed
To change the wrong direction of our mind,
And hence the urge to increase our nuclear might
But serves the aim of Heaven to set us right.
What can our puny wit and strength avail
Against a Power that rules the stormy gale,
The wind and tide, the sun, the moon and stars,
If it ordains the scourge of bloody wars
To teach the lessons we too oft forget,
Upon which hoary Time his Seal has set,
The lessons binding for the evolving race
Which of all great religions form the base.
This hallowed teaching calls upon mankind
To lead a simple, healthy life to find
Its way to God, the source of human life,
And win perfection with ennobling strife,
To treat all folk as brothers, kith and kin,
And raise the fallen, heavenly grace to win,
To deal with all as one does with oneself,
And not betray them to gain power or pelf,
To have the feeling always that the Lord
Does o'ersee all our actions and record.
If we into our mind's hid sanctum peep
To see how far we these directions keep,
Can we still wonder at a grim reward
For just the contrary endeavor hard,
For our sophistication heedless of
Conscientious scruples, waived off with a laugh?
These golden lessons were not taught to serve
As empty ornaments to adorn the curve
Of lips, or but to swell the memory,
But of our life a vital part to be.
Since most of us have failed to school our heart
To make these rules of life a changeless part,
We lack in peace and make the earth a base
For war, since individuals make the race.
You may discredit this and loudly scoff
At what I say, dismiss it with a laugh,
Or more resistant and rebellious grow,
But that will not avert the awful blow
Which will, as surely as the fire is hot,
Descend to change the tenor of our thought.
For what we do is not consistent with
Revealed commands, so either they are myth
Or we are in for trouble, so let us
See what is right-our faith or cleverness.
I make a firm assertion, no doubt bold
For my most humble station, but of old
This doubt has rankled in full many a heart,
Of which the crop is now the nuclear dart:
A weapon so opposed to common sense
And one's instinctive urge for self-defense,
That any normal man, free of the cloud
Of doubt, with judgment and foresight endowed,
When brooding o'er it cannot but discern
That either it serves as a measure stern
Of Heaven for our correction, since no form
Of life reacts 'gainst its instinctive norm,
Or there is something in Creation wrong
And we but to a godless world belong.
Except these two conclusions, not inapt,
It is a riddle what mist has enwrapt
The mind of man, compelling him to invite
A dreadful end, his cleverness despite
A weird behavior followed by no kind
Of life, save when death makes its instinct blind;
A horribly abnormal trait we fail
To mark as clouds before our vision sail.
If truth and righteousness have real worth
And but to mortal thought owe not their birth,
Can we conceive of something more accurst,
And sacrilegious than this horrid thirst
In man to cause extinction at his will
Of countless forms of life this planet fill?
So either nature is unjust and blind,
Or there is some unfathomed Law behind
Our present fatal choice to act like this,
And has a meaning which today we miss,
But must become apparent at its time
To strengthen mortal faith in Laws Sublime;
And if it be not so, then Faith should cease
And leave men free to frolic as they please.
For if you hold belief in God, can He
Be so impotent or leave men so free
That they kill millions, as one kills a louse,
While He looks timidly on, like a mouse?
An infantile belief that cannot stand
The probe of reason or the keen demand
Of stern morality, for it would mean
That Satan is the master, and we lean
On God, as slaves to false beliefs, and not
Because He is the ruler of our lot.
(iii)
But if our faith is true and there exists
A just Creator hidden in the mists
Of whirling atoms and revolving suns,
Whose will through every grain of matter runs,
Expressed in partly known perennial laws,
Which all phenomena of nature cause,
There must be still some hidden laws behind
What is yet dark and puzzling to our mind;
Behind what is mysterious and obscure,
Or that which keeps us doubting and unsure,
And these unfathomed laws, when they are known,
May clear the doubts to which now we are prone.
These undeciphered laws, to make us gain
Serenity of mind, must make it plain
Whether or not the sphere of life has rules
That make some people wise and others fools,
Create divergence and disparity,
Which so acutely rankles you and me,
Or cause the injustice and unfairness found
In such a soul-tormenting form around,
That 'tis no wonder Faith has ceased to give
The solace by which we in peace can live.
Can we suppose that save our puny mind
The rest of nature is inert and blind?
That man is master of his destiny,
In his own will and choice entirely free?
If this were so could prophet, seer and sage
Have shown a Path, conforming to each age,
For folk to follow to deserve the Prize
Which they all hinted at to make us wise
That we are destined for a higher goal,
And so must act a more becoming role,
That mankind has to reach a State Divine
Where free of chains our souls in glory shine?
This Path or Dharma, call it what you will,
Demands that we should conquer, but not kill
Our passions and desires, tame and subdue
Our nature to be noble, pure and true;
And these instructions were precisely laid
To save from error, rightly guide and aid
Evolving mortals destined for a state
Of deathless glory, reachable soon or late:
A state of Cosmic Knowledge most sublime
Ordained for all mankind in course of time.
But in this age there has occurred a clash
Between our judgments as, mad after cash,
We have forgotten all about the Aim
Of Life, for which the sage and Savior came,
Forgotten that evolving as we are
We should not with improper actions bar
Our path, which means the same as when we try
To stop our heart or lungs, with pain to cry;
Which means to arrest a natural growth decreed
To uplift our mind, ennoble thought and deed;
Which means to disregard all that was taught
By every Founder of religious thought.
This soul-illuminating trend affects
People of all professions, creeds and sects,
Affects decisively all mortals born
To end one day the always rankling thorn
Of death, and joy of deathlessness to taste,
If only they their spare time do not waste,
If only they avail of the golden chance
Of human life to hasten their advance,
And reach the portals of the holy shrine,
Where mortals with immortal luster shine.
The learned scholars on whom we depend
For guidance, have no knowledge of this trend,
Have no suspicion of this hidden urge,
Which like a bright star shining on the verge
Has raised up mankind from a savage shore
To heights of culture, higher still to soar.
No wonder then that scarce a man alive
Has any inkling of this powerful drive
That builds in him a cosmic conscious mind,
Eternal life and peace sublime to find.
Through lack of knowledge of this Plan Divine
We harm and desecrate the evolving Shrine
Of thought, collectively and one by one
And, still unmindful of the damage done,
Expose ourselves to nature's righteous wrath
To stop our wild departure from the Path.
(iv)
When you exhaust all valid reasons for
This morbid state, look through the corridor
Of time, and try to see what fate befell
The ancient empires, which first prospered well,
But later on, contracting faulty traits,
Or morbid thirsts, allured by tempting baits,
And slaves to habits which they could not mend,
Succumbed to them and hastened to their end.
The modern gaudy pageants too await,
By their refusal to change, the same fate.
For mankind has now to a state evolved
Where all schismatic wrangles must be solved,
So that the united race with cautious tread
Along the Cosmic Path may move ahead.
But if a basic change does not occur,
Or out of mutual fear we make no stir
To build a safe, harmonious world with speed,
Embracing every color, class and creed,
The fateful day, clairvoyant spirits fear,
Will come, by force, a global state to rear.
For all adepts, with astral vision blest,
See but one reason for the deep unrest
Seething in men of every faith and class,
As if a current passing through the mass
Demands removal of restrictions which
In man's fraternity create a hitch.
The present restless trend in human minds,
Which in disturbance and commotion finds
A vent, is but a veiled form of this urge
In one united world regime to merge.
At such a lofty intellectual height
It is suicidal for nations to fight,
Since nuclear armaments to mortals give
The choice of whether man shall die or live;
A most decisive factor that should weigh
With those the destinies of nations sway,
And since division is the root of war
They must be more united than they are.
Hence now the choice before the leading minds
Is that their wisdom soon in union binds
The still divided nations of the earth,
To one terrestrial empire to give birth,
Or be prepared for a disastrous war,
With blood the tightly shut doors to unbar.
For Heaven at no compulsive course will stop
To plant the mentally well-seasoned crop
Of humans on the Path to Cosmic Life,
Demanding freedom from contentious strife.
The safety, peace and progress of the race
Can ne'er be built on the explosive base
Of modern armament; this is a sign
To priests and rulers from the Power Divine,
That they must sink their differences to save
Mankind from burial in an atomic grave,
For jarring creeds and sparring nations are
The surest means to invite a nuclear war;
So either nuclear bouts or federal ties,
United mankind lives, divided dies.
I know my these few words will not avail
Against the summoned force of Doom's assault,
But hoping better counsels might prevail
For Heaven's mercy soon to mend our fault;
I, in obedience to an Inner Voice,
Coming from regions deeper than the mind,
Beyond the sphere of mortal will and choice,
Make this submission to alert mankind
That we have passed beyond the safety line
In our immoderate thirst for wealth and might,
Which is against Creation's Grand Design,
And forces Nature too to set us right.
Vibrations in the planet's astral plane
Denote the nearness of the awful Day,
When Hell may rage to make war-mongers sane,
For true, perennial peace to pave the way.
The indications are that time is due
To recreate respect for Heaven's Law,
And that a reign of terror may ensue,
So that the rebel hosts a lesson draw.
Believers in a God cannot condemn,
In their defense, this retributive course,
For if the Almighty Ruler does not stem
The tide of evil, and allows brute force
To flout eternal laws, it would confute
The truth of revelation, leaving man
To follow any self-appointed route
Of life, as well or as ill as he can.
But if religious genius has been right
In its awareness of the moral path,
Then when astray, believing but in might,
Offenders must incur Celestial Wrath.
Alas, the narrowness of human mind
Allowed no conqueror to have a peep
Beforehand at his end, but we can find,
If we employ our mental eye to sweep
Horizons of the ancient empires, built
Upon the sweat and blood of weaker folk,
That they had to disgorge the fruit of guilt,
And soon with their own blood the earth to soak.
Do you not sense now in the atmosphere
Of earth, a turbulence among the youth,
Unrest in elders, though some here and there
Try hard to keep excited tempers smooth?
A clear sign that the Fountain, which supplies
The stream of human thought, reveals a trend
Of disaffection and diversely tries
The factors causing it somehow to end.
The whole terrestrial surface has become
One vast Satanic web of foul intrigue,
With some conspiring on this side and some
On that to form for war a Mighty League.
And from this fiendish web may soon emerge
A strong contingent of determined states,
Which still but dimly seen upon the verge,
For its abruptly launched offensive waits
The destined hour, the predetermined day,
The appointed moment and the fated year,
When some unreckoned cause shall start the fray,
And crowds the sounds of bursting missiles hear.
The best defenses aimed to intercept
And stop a streaking dart, ere it can smite
To vaporize in seconds, as if swept
Clean from the planet, some forechosen site,
Shall prove of no avail against the blasts
Of nature's mightiest Force, employed before
Its time, by power-drunk minds for holocausts,
To wash the stigma of guilt with their gore.
And those who still believe, despite the array
Of facts to show that stern Supernal Laws,
From atoms to sidereal systems, sway
The cosmos, that they can escape because
Inventive man is from their hold immune,
For this fallacious view, itself a crime,
Shall reap, when arrogantly out of tune,
A bitter harvest in due course of time.
Past all defenses, past all ramparts built
At such enormous cost as could suffice
To keep earth's starving millions from the guilt
Of crimes committed for a morsel twice
A day, the infernal engines, as if wrought
By nature for requite through mortal hands,
Shall spread destruction, poison, death and rot
Among the people of contending lands.
And this to such a staggering extent
That future men shall shudder at the thought,
And centuries of time and labor spent
On pomp and vanity shall come to naught.
The awe-struck world shall shiver, numb with fright,
Deprived of feeling, movement, joy and mirth,
As monstrous globes of fire site after site,
Teeming with human crowds, wipe off the earth.
Thus shall be fought, to purge the poisoned world
Of sin, a bloody Mahabharata*,
With hellish arms by human agents hurled,
To re-establish faith in Moral Law.
The only remedies are Holy awe,
A sane apportionment of earthly wealth,
One world confederacy with equal law,
Improved morality and mental health,
Caught in the mesh of passion, pride and lust,
Become confirmed materialists, we trust
No more in faith and God, in heaven and hell,
And live but to amass, our needs to swell;
Alas, awareless that beyond our dreams,
Beyond the moon and stars and lustrous beams
Of sun, a deathless, happy state awaits
Us all, if we resist temporal baits.
See how full many centuries before,
When needs were few and meager was the store
Of goods, the earth produced the noblest men;
Religious geniuses, not met since then,
Whose simple narratives of Realm Divine,
For that sublime experience make us pine.
A state of such surpassing glory filled
With joy celestial that the mind is stilled
In ecstasy, in overwhelming bliss,
For more than that when ravishing Houris kiss
Impassioned men, than highest earthy joy
Which floods the hungry senses but to cloy;
That most intense joy native to the soul,
When free from ego it becomes the Whole.
One with a marvelous pulsating Main
Of deathless Life, beyond the reach of pain,
One with the Eternal Source that gives it birth,
One with the universe, the heaven and earth,
Lost in the Cosmic Deep of Being, past
The thought of life and death, the first and last,
It soars beyond the opposites, serene,
Itself the unified seer and the seen.
This is the future state for which mankind
Is destined, if we let the evolving mind
Have freedom for the inner process which
Is tending to remold it and enrich,
Until the mortal, one with Cosmic Life,
Discerns the meaning of this baffling strife,
To live a glorious life as nature wills,
One which his dreams and high ideals fulfills,
For which, in fact, primordial man was born,
In time as Cosmic Man the earth to adorn.
But now obstructed, as we cannot scan
A day ahead beyond our mortal span,
The soul-uplifting Force, to pass the hitch,
Creates the seething ferment and the itch
For war, a glaring symptom of this age,
Ignored and o'erlooked in the burning rage
For sensuous comforts and luxurious ware,
Exciting pleasures and delicious fare,
And other things, exhausting now on it
The massive armory of all our wit,
Without a single thought towards the soul,
The Spark Divine, of all our search the goal.
Look at the sums on war and pleasure spent,
While millions starve for want of nutriment,
A most revolting feature at a time,
When intellect is basking in her prime,
And needs the human touch to be divine
Or lacking charity to face decline,
Compelling Heaven, as gently as it can,
To clean the dirt, enabling chastened man
To labor for perfection till the race
Attains the heaven-appointed crown with grace.
Chapter 5
A Divided Mankind: Unsafe In the Atomic Age
(i)
The first need of our time is to recast
The current concept, borrowed from the past,
Of what should be the boundaries and the span
For all the homelands of gregarious man,
And whether nations should with hatred seethe,
With every one of them armed to the teeth,
Or they should all unite for earth to be
A haven of peace for our progeny.
There is no reason why man-made confines
Between two nations should have rigid lines,
Why mountains, rivers, deserts, ocean shores
On peoples segregation should enforce;
Why nations should erect forbidding walls
To split themselves and then resort to brawls
On narrow strips of land or right-of-way,
And keep the world in turmoil every day.
Why country, culture or a lingual bond
Or shade of color in black, brown or blond
Or mode of worship or design in dress,
Mankind should into tight compartments press,
And in her union function as a bar;
The primary cause of internecine war,
Of savage bloodshed on some flimsy ground,
Which to our heirs will idiotic sound.
When all our efforts at invention tend
The barriers of time and space to end,
To bring the people of the earth so near
That they can one another's whisper hear,
Or reach the farthest corner of the globe
In less time than it takes a beau to robe,
How can we keep our narrow lines of thought
Against this close interconnection wrought
By our own efforts and desire to span
The gulf of distance keeping man from man?
How can we still house in the narrowed space
Our former prejudice against a race,
Or nation or a foreign creed or caste,
When spatial walls are disappearing fast,
And all the broad earth has become for good
One closely linked, contiguous neighborhood?
How can our faulty notions lead to peace
That though we now converse with France and
Greece
As neighbors, or in but some hours alight,
In them from Malaya by aerial flight,
Yet in our mind their people still regard
As foreigners against them on our guard?
How can this antiquated view, a spawn
Of times when man depended on his brawn
For travel, nourishment and all his needs,
Continue still to sway his thoughts and deeds,
During an era when his lazy crawl
Has gained the swiftness of a cannonball;
When food and fabrics come from all the globe
To feed his hunger and provide his robe,
When every nation near or far away
Relates to him the gossip of the day;
When melody from every land regales
His ears, and their distress his mind assails;
When he for business and material needs
To every corner of the planet speeds;
To buy their products, crops or metal ores,
Supplied by many distant foreign shores,
To have commodities of every type,
Which are a part and parcel of our life?
How can he think in terms of nation, race,
Or color, when the whole terrestrial space
Has grown too narrow for his lightning speed,
Too scanty for his still augmenting need,
And too congested with less room to hold
The rapidly increasing human fold?
When, rather than divide the crowded earth
Into compartments, causing greater dearth
Of space, he can, as one terrestrial whole,
Control of other planets make his goal;
For which already nature must have kept
A good provision, when he grows adept
In setting his domestic problems right,
And, skilled in interplanetary flight,
Can shift to other orbs part of the race
To people new-found territory by Grace.
Before man came was not the earth supplied
With all the needs of life on which he thrived;
What wonder then if there now stands reserved
Some place where his enhanced need will be served?
Apparently the leading intellects
Of our day fail to gauge the full effects
Of new discoveries that have changed the face
Of earth, relaxed the chains of time and space,
Remolding the whole mental frame of men,
More so that of the youth who have begun
To grow rebellious to the older norms
And values-nature's signal for reforms!
But e'en the ablest statesmen fail to scan
The fire aglow now in the heart of man,
Creating in the hid depth of his mind
A sense of unity with all mankind,
A broader outlook, wider mental range,
Although himself unconscious of the change;
A keener urge to share the weal and woe
Of every nation, whether friend or foe;
An ever-growing wish to be on par
With other people, living near and far;
About whose wealth, abundance and high state
He knows as well as of his closest mate;
Proximity creating what before
Remoteness cooled, a yearning more and more
To have harmonious bonds and warmer ties
With all the people as friends and allies.
How with this growing fervor in our mind
Can we a people to one region bind,
When old ideas of a native land
Are changing rapidly towards a grand,
And more progressive concept, full of worth,
That all humanity's homeland is earth?
When intellect with her inventive zeal
Brings distant nations close, and makes them feel
That all the earth is free for them to roam,
To be their country, granary and home,
Their orchard, vegetable garden, field,
Their farm and dairy, ready with their yield,
What madness has the elders seized that they
Still act as Romans once did in their day;
And, all unconscious of the altered trends
Of thought, pursue the same out-dated ends,
Discordant with the higher stature won
By mankind through the fruitful labor done
By genius, which came in a fertile team
To make this age the first part of a dream.
Because the learned still take no account
Of this commotion in the fancy's fount;
This widening ripple on the mental pools
Not only of the wise, but also fools,
The wrong political ideas of old,
Which should have been revised, have the same hold
That they had, when a trip to Java meant
Absence of years from home for one who went.
How can progressive concepts be confined
Inside the prison of a narrow mind?
Or how can notions of the clan and tribe
The thinking of our bright age circumscribe?
And not excite derision or scorn
In people in the present milieu born,
On whom the idea of nation now holds sway,
As that of tribe on tribals did one day?
So, too, the idea of the nation born
In former times, long after the dim morn
Of history, to which we now hold fast
As something which denotes the very last
Advance in our political growth, sure
To stay unchanged, till mankind would endure,
Is but an idle dream, viewed in the light
Of what befell those who once ruled by right:
The tribal chieftain and the feudal lord,
With man's evolving stature to accord.
Can nations stay, when factors that had bred
The concept in Greek times, since long are dead;
Out-dated by our own inventive rage
Which, for a one world-state, has set the stage?
And so our Heads of State whom crowds applaud
May share the fate soon of the feudal lord.
(ii)
Can you believe mankind can long survive,
If scores of nations make a frantic drive,
As they are doing now, to equip their swarms
Of fighting troops with all the latest arms;
With nuclear weapons, in a moment's span
Which can blast countries and kill every man:
All keen to shine in glory, wealth and might,
In power and self-importance at their height,
To be acclaimed the foremost of the race
To have among them all the pride of place?
They are extolling patriotic zeal,
Like serfs and tribesmen who once thought their weal
And woe lay with the chieftain and the lord,
Praised to the sky by minstrel, clown and bard:
A function brilliant penmen still perform,
With this debasing practice to conform,
When, for some favor, they with fawning praise
A king or ruler nigh to godhood raise,
Unmindful that events are taking form,
To drown their panegyrics in the storm
Brewing now many homes to burn and scorch
To force the next step in man's upward march.
And, since to gain these ends each nation tries,
With all her skill, to throw dust in the eyes
Of watchful neighbors, and by hook or crook
To gain a place of vantage or a nook
That can help her attain a forward rank,
Or for a higher leap provide a plank,
To get the better of the rival states,
Or pick the pockets of confiding mates,
What wonder then the whole world has become
An Augean Stable, and the earth's scum
Is hired by leading countries with the aim
To keep ahead in this nefarious game?
How can our rising generations gain
In truth and virtue or grow sound and sane
In this tornado of deceit and wile,
Which does the whole of earth's crust defile,
Whereof the young imbibe a daily dose,
When shrieking headlines in the news disclose
Corruption, scandals and misdeeds of those
In whom whole nations all their trust repose?
Or, when disputing nations lay the blame
On one another for gross acts of shame;
So heinous that no murderer or thief
Has done what many a ruler, statesman, chief
Still does on the plea that the need of time
Or nation's interest called for the crime:
Engineered butcheries, uprisings, riots
And bloody coups, acclaimed as brave exploits,
Of those who pose as models for the rest,
And are, by vote, ranked as a nation's crest.
Observe now what conflicting forces act
On human minds to scatter and distract,
To pour into the psychological pool
Of man a tincture at once warm and cool,
To make his life a contradiction torn
Between the need of times and creeds outworn.
We see what our advancing intellect
Has since created, as the architect
Of our terrestrial life, to fill our hands
With choicest things and gifts from all the lands;
To lay, whene'er required, beneath our feet
The magic carpet by which we can meet,
And talk to all the people on the earth
To take part in their daily grief and mirth.
But still the elders of a State demand
All one's devotion for his native land,
Which makes him blind to what a child can see
That he belongs to all humanity;
That he is free now of the chains that bound
His mind and body to the soil around;
And has attained a global stature which,
To grow, an earth-wide culture must enrich.
Today few are the nations that can trace
Their pedigree to but one stock or race,
To but one blood, descent or but one brood,
To have the pride of flawless nationhood.
Full many factors, nigh in every clime,
Acting diversely through colossal time,
Upheavals, cataclysms, famine, dearth,
Compelled uprooted crowds to roam the earth;
To flee the threat of shortage, foes or drought,
Creating with the intermixture wrought
New groups, new people, nations, tribes and clans
Whose past the anthropologist now scans.
And e'en today, despite the rigid ties
That ban admixture, many a pair defies
Conventional bonds to marry out of caste
Or creed, which conservatives watch aghast,
Resulting in crossbreeding and fresh broods
To meet mysterious nature's changing moods.
Besides this, exodus, migration, war
And other causes that draw people far
To settle in another land or clime,
By intermarriages, in course of time,
May slowly with new ethnic types dilute
The present nations nature's aim to suit.
Viewed in this light what factor still remains
To forge the inelastic mental chains
That keep and have in isolation kept
The people of a country often swept
By fierce, successive waves of foreign hosts
That mated with the natives of the coasts,
Or drove them out in turn to fall a prey
To stronger hordes which with them chose to stay;
And then a natural boundary, common creed,
Language or culture made this mongrel breed
A nation, which the lust for power and rage
Of gain has made an Idol in this age.
The modern nation is a passing phase
In man's yet vaguely grasped instinctive chase
After perennial peace, both in and out,
For which the basic need, without a doubt,
Is the formation of a global state
Entirely free of rivalry and hate;
To mark the consummation of a trend
Which started with Man's first attempt to blend
And mix with other people, groups and tribes:
One of the methods wisdom still prescribes
For peace, abiding happiness and good
Of mankind in one Earth-wide Brotherhood.
(iii)
The modern intellect has been at fault
In bringing mankind to a longer halt
So obstinately at the national bound,
As if it is the last solution found,
Refusing stubbornly to step beyond
The hackneyed orders of which they are fond.
Most of our leading spirits know it well
That war between two nuclear powers would spell
The end of progress and a fiery hell
Would fiercely rage around us all to dwell
For decades, in which awfully mangled, maimed
And mutilated wrecks who once were famed
For beauty, wealth or wit would fill the earth.
But few, indeed, condemn this hopeless dearth
Of deeper insight in those who command
Leading positions of trust in their land.
They are few, as there is a cause behind
The present faulty thinking of mankind;
A kink born of agnostic intellect,
Which holds that man is the sole architect
Of his political and social creeds,
And not that an unseen intelligence leads
The race by steps towards a lofty height,
While blind to it we on mere trifles fight,
And cut each other's throats, fooled by the twist
In thought, that our creations can persist
Against the plan of nature, and this kink
Is more pronounced in the way skeptics think.
Do not today full many nations hold
Diversity of culture in their fold,
Of language, faith, attire and ethnic brands,
That dwell in naturally divided lands?
But still political exigence calls
The lot a nation till the structure falls
Apart, when a war or disruptive trend
This weak admixture does to pieces rend.
The national concept-an exploded myth,
A genealogical tree that has no pith-
Is but a shibboleth of ruling teams
To please the masses with Utopian dreams
Of world supremacy and boundless power,
A most pernicious doctrine at this hour.
Swept off by man-engineered popular tides
On which, for some time, every nation rides,
The wiser heads too, though averse, are loath
To go against the elite and commons both,
And yield to what they would denounce, if free
To choose, as nothing short of lunacy.
But when the destined moment comes to pass,
And war hysteria grips the nation's mass,
The more discerning too are equally hit,
Though knowing the futility of it.
When man's organic frame is strictly bound
By laws that act to keep it safe and sound,
And in distempers, with amazing knack,
Contrive to bring it to its vigor back,
Anent the racial frame can we suppose
That for the whole of mankind nature chose
A loose, capricious course and left the fold
Entirely free its destiny to mold;
And has not bound it with a hid device,
Akin to those which guide the ants and mice,
In the collective frame to be a check
Against propensities the race can wreck.
It must be that the same organic laws
Which make us ill or crazy, also cause
Upheavals, revolutions, riots and wars,
When people pass beyond the safety bars
Towards a way of life disastrous for
The health and welfare of the species or
Discordant with a future aim in view,
And at a crucial time cause in a few
The frenzy and the ferment that soon leads
To dread uprisings and atrocious deeds.
The leader whose fire and infectious zeal,
Resource, flint-heartedness and will of steel,
Master-minds every popular rising aimed
To change political setups earlier framed,
Is not a product of chance but design,
Sent by the racial mind to undermine
Outmoded orders that need instant change
To suit man's e'er extending mental range,
Which vested interests, parochial aims
And conservatism, under various names,
Wish to perpetuate, holding to them fast,
And ne'er allow by choice to be recast,
Until designedly fashioned rebel brains,
Disrupt the order and untie the chains.
Can you explain why turmoil and unrest,
Despite the fact that man now amply blest,
Has all that can make earth a paradise,
Instead of calming down yet higher rise?
They pose a ticklish problem for the shrewd,
If calmly in the right perspective viewed.
For every step to improve and mend the plight
Of people for a smooth and rapid flight
To realms of joy and luxury provokes
The spiteful witch of envy, whose hand stokes
The fire of hatred to such high degree
It threatens to consume humanity?
The richer states, e'en when they freely spend
Out of their coffers with the aim to mend
The sad condition of penurious lands,
Soon find that they had only built on sands,
For not unoft the folk they helped to rise
By their behavior shortly make them wise
That their hearts more with fires of envy glow
Than warmth for the gratitude they owe.
This is because the instinctive urge in man
Is for an equal portion no less than
That of his neighbors, and impelled by greed
He tries his best to make his share exceed
That of the rest, the basic fault which keeps
Mankind in trouble and misfortunes heaps.
The learned of our age are much perplexed
By what is happening now and rightly vexed
At this strange outcome of a grandiose plan,
And unexpected vagaries of man,
Who has a hunger which the more you feed
The more insatiable it grows, indeed.
They are not wise to what they should have known
That nature has antagonistic grown,
That, like a sunspot, on the flaming plane
Of Cosmic Consciousness, which feeds the brain,
A fearsome vortex, signifying wrath,
Proclaims man's wild departure from the path.
(iv)
From ancient records which the earth has kept
Or which the wit and skill of man has left,
Like pyramids of Egypt which now stand
To tell the story of the hoary land,
It is apparent that time after time
Some people of the earth attained a prime,
When with heroic battles they subdued
Their neighbors, not yet with this fire imbued,
And spread their conquest far to distant lands,
To hold colossal empires in their hands.
Our previous history, we cannot fail
To notice, always tells the same old tale;
The same old cycle of unceasing fight
And battle for one with superior might
To annex the conquered regions and enslave
The vanquished nations who, perhaps, as brave,
But, poor in organizing, arms or skill,
Were forced to be submissive to their will.
In many once victorious, wealthy lands,
Now partially engulfed by spreading sands,
The hand of destiny has kept the marks,
Of royal towns and magnificent parks,
Of piles of scattered ruins which bespeak
Wealth, luxury and grandeur at their peak,
On which morosely shines the pallid moon,
Aware how human greatness ends too soon,
That earthly splendor is an empty show-
A meteor's waxing and then waning glow-
Of which the strings are pulled by a mighty Force
That keeps evolving mankind on its course.
Imperial power, high rank and wealth are baits
Which nature uses to tempt both men and states
To strive for higher and still higher peaks,
As once did Romans and before them Greeks,
To gain more power, more treasures and more fame,
Extorted from the gentle, weak and tame,
All this to have more leisure and more time
For what? To meet the ends of quest sublime,
One must pursue with zeal in youth or prime,
To make use of the preparatory stage,
One needs to bloom into a Cosmic Sage.
But oft the leisured folk soon make the means,
Designed to reach a grand end from their teens,
The end itself, and in indulgence drown
Their prime, alas! to lose a glorious crown,
To barter for the pleasure of a day
Eternal blessedness and perennial sway.
Hence nature using time's relentless hand
Too soon destroys the glory of a land,
When those who let their rise to power and wealth
Corrupt their morals and impair their health,
The pillars on which evolution rests
Wherefore their soundness nature keenly tests,
Before admitting to the Holy Shrine
Mortals, on pilgrimage to Life Divine.
Imperial nations and great kings arose
And at the zenith of their glory froze,
As if Fate takes a diabolic joy
In granting greatness only to destroy,
Driving ascendant realms towards decline
When in full glory they begin to shine.
The mammoth edifices the Pharaohs built,
As if ordained by Fate to voice their guilt,
Consumed resources and manpower which bore
Exhausted Egypt down the slippery shore.
The conquests of Napoleon soon bled white
A mighty land, fore'er to lose that height
And victories of Alexander cost
The Greeks their greatness which they shortly lost.
A standing warning to the modern great,
Who fondly think they can escape this fate,
In dark about the Eternal Cosmic Law
Which acts on mortals, as wind does on straw,
And of which scholars, to the grief of man,
Have no awareness nor are prepared to scan.
But which relentlessly will deal again
The same chastisement to the great who, vain
And power-drunk, with imprudent thought and deed
The pace of man's progressive rise impede.
The empires built, while trodden millions wept,
Soon with cyclonic fury off were swept.
Whichever nation domination sought,
Or tooth and nail for vast dominion fought,
Exhausted swiftly by the enormous strain,
And soon depleted by the excessive drain
On manhood and resources fell at last,
To serve as warning lessons from the past
To modern nations which commit again
The same mistake and strive for world domain.
Has not our age, too, witnessed this display
Of lust for power which ended the same way:
Ambitious Hitler's rise to power amidst
The scenes of horror of his iron fist;
And proud Napoleon's dream of world domain,
Built on vast piles of wounded and the slain,
Dreams and ambitions of abnormal minds
Endued with genius of aberrant kinds,
Which, skilled in setting human hearts on fire,
With glowing promises of fulfilled desire,
Of national vanity and cultural pride-
Igniting sparks so easily applied-
And, building strongholds on warm human hearts,
In bloody dramas play conspicuous parts,
To leave soon prostrate, like a fallen tree,
The crowds fooled by their skill in oratory?
Chapter 6
Why Another World War Is Inevitable
(i)
What is the answer to the riddle posed
By our behavior, which is all opposed
To the primordial instinct, rooted deep
In mortals their lives safe from death to keep?
What is the reason for the glaring fact
That threats of nuclear war do not distract
Our minds to that extent as they should do
To worry us and drive to action too?
If our reaction to the menace were
As healthy as it should be, when in fear,
With life on one, death on the other side,
All normal men with lightning speed decide:
How they should act, which way their safety lies
For every animal at danger shies.
Viewed in the right perspective one would think
That people should react with fear and shrink
From e'en the thought of nuclear wars, so grave
It should produce a strong reflex to save
Their life and all, before it comes to pass,
Resulting in destruction of the mass
Of mankind or, at least, those threatened most
Who would, no doubt, make up a mammoth host
Of millions slain and millions in a state
Of torment only Death can palliate.
Bearing in mind that now on several shores
There are concealed or open massive stores
Of nuclear missiles of the latest type,
Ready for use whenever the time is ripe,
Put this one simple question to yourself:
Will all these toys remain locked in a shelf
For ages, and their owners all refrain
From making use of this destructive bane,
And under every provocation hold
To this decision till we all grow old,
And death will spare us the dread scenes we fear
When one day missiles earth will rend and tear?
If you are optimistic, pray excuse
My lapse, if bluntly I contest your views,
If I attempt to show that you are wrong
So much so, that I have no words too strong
To castigate this kind of mental rust;
This intellectual block which takes on trust
Matters of vital import for us all;
Whether the human race shall rise or fall,
Or whether our own world shall stay the same
Or turn into a hell of raging flame.
What are the grounds for your complacent stand,
Trusting that things will not go out of hand,
That all these deadly engines will remain
Unused, and that no unexpected chain
Of chance events will e'er occur to explode
The now precarious state of peace, and goad
Some country, when beyond endurance hit,
To throw all caution to the winds and slit
The slender thread of prudence to unbar
The floodgates of a world-wide nuclear war?
Do you suppose the elite who hold the rein
Of power in your country will e'en remain
(Knowing what devastation can occur,
If they are lax in care or slightly err)
Unmoved, and that no insult, threat or loss
From any side would e'er push them across
The bound of prudence to a state of ire,
Where blind to all the consequences dire,
They rashly use a weapon that would mean
The grim beginning of a Doomsday scene?
If so, you show a woeful ignorance
Of human nature and the role which chance
Can act in forcing men to change their mind,
As happened in the decades left behind,
When chance occurrences, like evil stars,
Drew nations helplessly to bloody wars.
Again what of the many foreign lands
That have the awful weapon in their hands?
Do you suppose that your superior arms,
Or much more larger stock will act like charms
To cow them to inaction or deter?
If so, you still miscalculate and err,
And are committing such a grave mistake
That might cost you your life ere you awake.
You have no knowledge, save from outer signs,
Of their ulterior motives and designs,
And if you measure them with your own yard
That means you previous lessons disregard,
And let yourself be cheated and deceived
By false exteriors to be sorely grieved;
Expose to danger all you value best,
Your life, possessions, household and the rest,
And offer what you love with all your heart
To demolition by the nuclear dart.
(ii)
The view that states will not resort to war
Until in nuclear arms they are on par
Is as fallacious as it is inane,
And everybody wide awake and sane
Can see, and ought to know, that lust for power
Waits not for parity nor mature hour,
But smites when least foreseen and in advance,
The moment it believes there is a chance
To bring a rival down or but to cow
Into submission with a timely blow;
Nor vengeance cares to hold her hand for long
In weighing whether she is weak or strong,
But unexpectedly, more in the rear
Than front, she strikes hard when the foe is near.
Neither your state nor other powers will wait
Your pleasure nor respond to any bait,
Nor stick to any principle nor code
Of law, when mounting pressures spur and goad
Them on to rash decisions and, at once,
The sky may blaze with bursting megatons.
When bent on it no argument at all,
No treaty, agreement or moral wall
Will stop this mad decision any day
To send the fatal weapon on its way.
If still you harbor e'en the slightest doubt
That in the next decisive global bout
The missile will not figure from the start,
Or at the end, to act a ghastly part,
It shows you have not learnt from history,
Or it has clean escaped your memory
That, e'en if they wish it, top statesmen are
Themselves incapable, in peace or war,
Of changing world conditions, at their will,
Whatever be their stature, power or skill;
And all at once on some unlucky day
A single incident may pave the way
Towards a sudden crisis, past their skill;
And nuclear war erupt against their will.
In case you still in them repose some trust
That they can hold firm in a sudden gust
Of adverse wind, when accidents upset
The flimsy balance of peace, you forget
That, clutching with both hands their shaky throne,
Against the oppositions, they are prone
To overact their part to meet the attack
From any hostile country, for if slack
They hear their opponent's derisive cry
That they retreated since they feared to die.
So if we think our clever ruling teams
Can, in the nick of time, hold falling beams,
And keep the roof from crashing on our head,
Then both to sense and prudence we are dead.
Whate'er our diplomats contend or say,
Whatever tricks the foreign statesmen play,
Do not forget that this infernal stock,
This lightning poised above the human flock,
Will not, unto the last, keep circling round,
Just looking for a vacant bit of ground,
Where it can strike without inflicting hurt,
Nor will the owners always stay alert
To keep the Dragon sleeping which but one
Out of ten million men, each with a gun,
Can with a single random shot awake,
And then with its attacks the planet shake.
How long can nations, all armed to the teeth,
Avoid the deadly mine laid underneath,
Avert but one collision that can fire
The dread thing, blowing up the host entire?
How long can statesmen with evasive talk,
The crouching monster of its blind prey balk?
How long can narrow margins and escapes
Avoid the Mouth of Death which widely gapes,
So strong and huge it can in one bite eat
A million living creatures, bone and meat?
We but deceive ourselves or are unwise,
Or still live in a fool's mock paradise,
If, after witnessing the striking change
In war technology and the long range
Of missiles, we ignore these vital facts;
And all surrounded by infernal tracts,
Full many scores in number, which now form
The launching sites for this destructive storm,
We still believe that they will always lie
Intact, and armies battle, kill and die
With normal weapons, and that no reverse
Nor accident nor any mind perverse,
Amongst the warring nations, will ignite,
To wrap the earth in flames, this nuclear blight.
Better it is to keep our mind prepared
More for this: that no effort will be spared
To find some loophole, when the battle starts,
For hurling, lightning-like, these awful darts
To paralyze the foe ere he has time
To take the lead in this Satanic crime.
(iii)
We still will be mistaken if we hope
That statesmanship will find a way to cope
With this alarming problem, if not now,
At least, as soon as changing trends allow.
For how in future can you guarantee,
When less developed countries are now free
To buy new weapons and increase their might,
As much as they desire or think is right,
The safety of less populated lands
That have preponderant portions in their hands
Of earth's resources, fertile tracts and gold,
Secured by force or by adventure bold?
They cannot with the older type of arms
Withstand the onslaught of the mammoth swarms
Which densely peopled countries can deploy
Against the meager number they employ.
Within a few more years the larger ones
Armed with the latest engines, tanks and guns,
Would be more than a match e'en all alone,
But with a coalition stronger grown,
Can prove invincible when they smite
And make the erstwhile great the dust to bite.
Within a few more years the crowded East
Will be a power to reckon with, at least.
The larger countries India, China and
The Arab states brought under one command,
Which singly or combined are sure to prove
A serious threat to those whose minds yet move
In the old rut, who still serenely feed
Their vanity, their power-lust and their greed
On this assurance that their nuclear arm,
In all events, can keep them safe from harm.
Increase in strength of a less developed state
Compels one more advanced to compensate
It by a swift proportionate increase
In its own strength, a race that ne'er can cease
So long as mankind is bound by the chain
Of high temporal power or rage of gain.
Progressive trends in less developed states,
More so the larger ones with high birth rates,
When coupled with enhanced campaigning might,
Cannot but lay bare to the piercing sight
Of heads of forward states the urgent need
Of raising their own strength with greater speed.
As in a war manpower immensely counts,
And as the might of larger countries mounts,
And will keep on augmenting till they are
With mightiest of the forward lands on par,
The latter's efforts then to keep ahead
In this mad race must lead to exhaustion dead,
And in some decades more, if in that span
War is not outlawed by a global ban,
Before exhaustion supervenes, perhaps,
It might have changed the planet's boundary maps.
The hackneyed formula of balanced power
Can prove disastrous for peace at this hour,
Because, when every nation tries to gain
The top position, it can forge a chain
So vicious that continuance of this trend,
Of all attempts at peace can make an end.
Since our advancement on the mental side
Continues upward with a rapid stride,
So every step we gain on this ascent
Effects improvement in our armament,
Entailing greater labor, heavier price,
And day by day increasing sacrifice.
Ambitious nations which strive to excel
In fighting power, with each addition swell
Their budgets for defense to such a load
That can their whole economy explode;
Compelled to host for this barbaric need
A most voracious monster whom, to feed,
They have to sweat and bleed, to stint and save,
Privations, hardships and ill winds to brave.
But try, as they might, they see no way out
From this exhausting and expensive gout,
Except to find new ways to meet the expense
On this distemper caused by lack of sense.
The foremost nations in this hectic race
A hundred handicaps and hurdles face.
They have to guard against the slightest chance
That helps their rivals gain the least advance
In army strength or stocks of latest arms,
Or world opinion which in some way harms
Their prestige, always anxious not to cede
Any loophole for them to gain a lead,
In e'en one of a hundred different things
Out of which interstate contention springs;
Assailed by e'er recurring fear to keep
Their country well protected from the sweep
Of hostile forces, they do not permit
Their vigilance to slacken e'en one bit.
Hard is a diplomat's unholy task
To keep a dagger hid behind the mask
Of smiles and goodwill, with a constant watch
So that a rival does not steal a march,
Nor grow in strength nor wealth nor prosper more
Nor gain in industry nor precious ore,
Nor own more talent nor inventive skill,
Like envious neighbors wishing each other ill:
A hopeless tangle no one cares to solve,
For it does not let human mind evolve,
And waits for nature now to apply the rod
To bring us round to sanity and God.
Why this malignance with hypocrisy,
So that no nation any time is free
Of ill intent against her sister states,
Not their felicity but downfall waits?
How such a morbid frame of mind can lift
Up from the sea of hate on which they drift
Our honored politicians, who win fame
When they kill myriads, countries set aflame,
Or watch in silence millions put to sword
And, if it suits their aim, not say a word?
Now, that two mighty giants in the race,
India and China both grow strong apace,
And other smaller lands whose warlike hosts
Try hard to vie in strength with forward coasts,
The efforts of the leading powers to stay
Supreme, become more taxing every day,
And fresh endeavors made to keep in front
Can drain their life's blood with the effort spent;
And has begun already to create,
Among the youth of many a forward state,
Distaste for actions which the elders prize,
Ill matching now man's intellectual size.
(iv)
The human world, divided into parts,
Riven by envy, hate, malicious hearts,
Dissension, rivalry and deathless feuds,
Antagonistic views and attitudes,
So deep and on such basic principles
That e'en if half of mankind firmly wills
The problem of world peace cannot be solved
Unless the fundamentals are resolved.
In such an atmosphere the imp of war,
With all his dreadful gear, is never far,
So every prudent nation from each dawn
To dusk, at all hours, keeps her armor on.
Too credulous and simple is the man
Who, with the vista of the previous span
Of current century before his eyes,
Still hopes that all these loud, appealing cries
For world peace and disarmament might tend
To ease the tension and the menace end.
These efforts might have borne abundant fruit
Had warfare but in man's own choice its root.
But since it is a symptom of disease,
Which must be rooted out ere it can cease,
The lukewarm efforts made now, like a cry
In wilderness, without an answer die.
In fairness to the leaders, known to fame,
On top in various lands, whom we now blame
For all unpleasant happenings in the world,
It must be said that they themselves are whirled
By international crises, never far,
Which, if not solved with skill, can cause a war.
There is no one ideal for all mankind
That into one great brotherhood can bind
The nations of the earth which meets the needs
Of politics and all religious creeds,
This only evolution can supply
By holding a great prize before the eye
Of all the race, for the goal is one
The way is one, and one the effort done.
Mankind can then push forward as one whole,
A mighty Caravan bound for one Goal,
Compared to which the treasures of the earth
Are less alluring and far less in worth.
In fact, but for our own self-seeking trend
And vanity, this is the aim and end
Of all religions, this faith in one God
One great ideal to worship, love and laud,
Faith that our soul can rise to heights, beyond
Our thought, provide for peace a common bond.
Can you resolve this tangle in your mind,
When you consider all the strings which bind
The wealthier nations, who their utmost try
To keep themselves safe from the evil eye
Of needy ones, whose hungry millions lack,
Sufficient room their ill-fed mass to pack,
And are resolved their boundaries to expand
By snatching every piece of vacant land
From others, as keen to defend their right
And save their own from theft with bloody fight?
How can you curb the native urge to thrive
In Want, and hold back its impulsive drive
To garner plenty at the highest price,
And in a manner that may not be nice;
Or force Abundance to relax her hold
On treasured assets, territory and gold,
To end contention and disastrous fight
Which both the sides have always well in sight?
Since neither Plenty nor can Want relax
Their efforts, we but our own patience tax
By hoping vainly that a day will come,
When peace bells would replace the battle drum.
A most distracting problem in the mind
Of rich and powerful nations is to find
A way to end the e'er existing threat,
Posed by the rise of poorer countries set
On climbing rapidly to the same height
In weapons, army and aggressive might.
The methods now employed by leading states
To muster all their strength for heavy spates
Of war production, using ablest hands
And all resources that the state commands,
To excel, outnumber and outmatch a foe
In armies, armor and the weight of blow,
Are spreading rapidly to poorer realms
That have ambitious rulers at their helms,
Wrapt in alluring dreams of mastery,
And eager on the highest peak to be.
As it is possible for a larger land,
Fivefold in population, to command
Five times the craftsmen to prepare the arms,
Five times the labor and five times the swarms
Of armed assailants at a chosen front,
A total conflict, it is evident,
Confers a clear advantage, if not now,
As soon as their own progress can allow,
On populous lands which must emerge ere long
If not superior to, at least, as strong
As are the mightiest nations of the day,
For e'er as hated rival powers to stay,
Until this constant state of siege incites,
As it does often, both to deadly fights.
As learning, technical know-how and skill
Can never be subservient to the will
Of any favored land or gifted mind,
(For bias does not heaven's bounties bind)
They sadly lack in common sense, indeed,
Who of the recent lessons take no heed,
And still have some illusion on the score
That time will ne'er come for a backward shore
To match them, point by point, if not outpace
In what is now a suicidal race
Towards destruction-nature's last resort
To cut humanity's rebellion short.
Although we may well from the notion shrink
That great men can to such low levels sink
As to engage the finest human brains
To win in world-destroying death campaigns,
Yet this exactly is the main concern
Of those who now the chairs of power adorn,
More so, in super-states, behind the scenes
For man's extinction who devise the means!
Assuming that on some day, not now far,
Some less advanced land will be nigh on par
With forward ones in every foul device,
Which lust for power invents at any price,
What force or measures can we use to bar
The former from resorting then to war,
When but superior numbers can decide
The fight in favor of the larger side?
(v)
The leading nations that are facing now
This threat to their position ne'er allow,
By word or gesture, e'en a hint to escape,
That they are worried but discreetly shape
Their policy to smother and delay
The growth in strength, unto the farthest day,
Of warlike people, who reveal a scope
For prowess, with which it is hard to cope.
Hence diplomatic battles rage around,
And ships of less advanced lands run aground,
Hence dark conspiracies, intrigues and plots
Befoul the face of earth at many spots,
Hence gold, like water, flows through hidden hands
To buy the scum and filth of other lands,
For mutinies, rebellions and revolts,
Which rend and tear their clime, like thunderbolts,
Leading to those horrific bloody deeds
Of which one in the daily papers reads;
Hence states incited against each other fight
To bring down or exhaust their growing might.
This is the elevating spectacle
Which we present, when at the pinnacle
Of progress, science and technology,
When we are cultured to a high degree,
With such amenities and lavish means
Our sires could not imagine in their dreams;
And yet are guilty of a hideous rape
Of morals, such that no one can escape
Its vicious influence, more so the young,
Whose artless minds, exposed to all this dung
And filth, soon learn the tricks their elders play,
To beat them in this wicked game one day;
And, while declaring faith in God, make it
Their choice to act the Devil with their wit.
Since these ignoble methods ne'er ensure
Of Lust-to-Power's unrest a lasting cure,
And countries, long subjected to these tricks,
Soon learn to counter them with similar pricks.
But then the tricksters learn new ways to guard
Themselves and use e'en subtler tricks and fraud,
To put off to the last the dreaded day,
When they are equally matched for a fray,
When their proud armies, erstwhile at the top,
From this commanding height to bottom drop.
That they are wholly helpless needs no proof,
For in this epoch who can stay aloof,
When vengeful opponents can reach his door
In but a few hours from a distant shore?
When avaricious hosts his wealth to share
Would stop at no risk and all hazard dare?
The only way to keep the hordes away,
Or, at least, for a period to delay,
Their onslaught, was to forge a fiendish arm
Which, with the open threat of grievous harm
And devastating loss of life, would keep
A foe from taking such a fatal leap.
That is why oft a stony silence greets
The pacifists, when they parade the streets,
To shout against war and the nuclear arm,
And why the rest who, too, view with alarm
The growing nuclear stockpiles keep so mum,
For they know that the swinging pendulum
Of power makes it essential for their land
To have a frightful weapon in her hand
To save their treasures and their balmy clime
From fierce, rapacious hosts who bide their time;
That is why there are now less chances for
Lovers of peace to end the threat of war.
That is why public figures of today,
At least those to parochial trends a prey,
Renounce their principles to glide at ease
On popular currents the crowd to please.
While for the sake of Truth and Safety both
They should denounce this new malignant growth,
Which grants security but to destroy,
And adds to prestige only to decoy
Into a flaming hell, which soon shall rage,
To mark the birth pangs of a Golden Age.
Against the over-hanging threat innate
In the existence of the sovereign state,
Unsuited now to man's progressive trend,
Which, therefore, nature is resolved to end,
The forward lands, on guard 'gainst envious eyes,
For their assured protection think it wise
To have atomic arms to keep their shores
Safe from a numerically superior force.
They can no more exist without this than
A bank can do without a night watchman.
This mode of thinking, too, has serious faults,
For it takes no account of sudden assaults
Made with the same infernal engines, they
Possess to keep the invading hordes at bay.
But when they too possess the dreaded arm,
And madly bent on doing grievous harm,
What can prevent them from a step designed
To plunge into a maelstrom all mankind?
(vi)
Existence of the nuclear arm, designed
To calm the unrest of a troubled mind,
By its extreme destructiveness, reveals
How its possessor for his safety feels.
This most elaborate, destructive gear
Consuming tons of gold, extremely dear,
Is not the outcome merely of a whim,
But of a purpose most profane and grim,
To gain an end that cannot be fulfilled,
Save with this foul device that would have killed
Full many scores of millions ere mankind
The safest route to lasting peace will find.
What means can you suggest to stop this flood
Of nuclear arms from sucking all the blood
Of mankind, for this costly weapon will
Exhaust poor nations, crowds with hunger kill.
But hate, mistrust or rivalry will force
Full scores of them to this disastrous course;
And those who set the example will repent
The wrong lead taken and the treasures spent.
This crisis, which our thinking must revise,
Is now envisioned clearly by the wise,
And hence to settle interstate disputes
All try their best to use pacific routes,
Knowing full well the storm that will arise,
Should statesmanship once fail to compromise.
Hence shuttle diplomacy, hurried trips,
With problems on the spot to come to grips,
By high dignitaries of premier states
To buy potential foes with tempting baits,
So that a major war may not erupt
Their own ambitious dreams to interrupt.
Except one world regime, there is no way
The fire of hate or thirst for blood to allay.
For who descending from his perch aloft
With love, humility and manner soft,
Would raise the trodden from their lowly plane,
A task that keeps evolving mortals sane,
And in this way combining West and East
Lay the foundation of abiding peace.
Except this certain cure there is no way
To stop the conflict now or any day.
The top-rank statesmen of the premier realms-
The men who sway their fate and hold the helms-
Already have the problem on their mind,
And try their best some remedy to find.
But they have found no means, no certain way
To stop formation of this strong array
Of power against them; they find no way out
To avoid this dread, inevitable bout
With steadily advancing needy swarms,
Save by the atrocious force of nuclear arms.
This throws a flood of light on many things,
So far obscure, on many hidden strings
That daily make a host of puppets act,
Disguised and marshaled with exceeding tact.
This makes it clear why such enormous wealth
Is spent to bring to life a threat to health;
A monstrous weapon with a murderous aim
Of which posterity will take the name
With horror, shrinking at the frame of mind
That could make use of weapons of this kind,
Reducing war to plainest massacre
Without experiencing the slightest stir
Of conscience that it is a heinous crime;
The most abhorrent evil of all time!
It is apparent that the premier states
Want this device to guard their large estates,
Their dominant position and control
On earth's economy, their leading role
Amongst the nations, and to this end need
A strong deterrent for all those to heed,
Who hostile, jealous or ambitious dream
Of e'er replacing them to reign supreme.
Now that they both, the mighty of the day
And their contestants, hunters and their prey,
Have at their elbow this profane device,
And none of them would like to pay the price
Of climbing down from his adopted stand
Towards a compromise or stretch his hand,
There is no hope that mankind will escape
The dreadful outcome of this wanton rape
Of reason, of this hate that has begun
In place of love in all her veins to run.
The leading powers cannot afford to scrap
This millionfold destructive thunderclap,
Which, when discharged, with one earth-shaking roar
Can fill with terror the most distant shore,
Can anywhere with one tremendous leap
Like to a white-hot solar tempest sweep.
They cannot for their safety now discard
This most destructive, diabolic guard
Which, at the least encroachment, with one bound
A whole dominion can to pieces pound,
And, reaching every place on land and sea,
Deter the most audacious enemy
From making any move that would provoke
Retaliation with this thunder-stroke.
They need a hellish engine of this sort
To cover many a distant harbor, port,
Commercial sea route or strategic site,
To guard approaches and augment their might;
Full many a distant palace, castle, fort:
Adornments of a vast, imperial court,
Which, as did Alexander in his day,
They hold to guarantee perennial sway,
Again to meet the same unhappy fate,
And lose the hollow greatness soon or late.
It is not easy for a kingdom spread
All o'er the earth to function at the head
Of fast-competing countries, or to guard
Her distant bastions, built with labor hard,
With e'en the deadliest of the older arms,
For time despoils all weapons of their charms.
Such countries must have, in this giddy age,
A lightning-like device of war to wage
Their battles from a distance to defend
The widely scattered empire at each end.
How can rival powers be true or sincere,
When they each other like the devil fear,
In their professed desire for lasting peace,
Disarmament or e'en a small decrease
In nuclear arms or armies; when each views
The other with extreme distrust and lives
To show him down, out-match him and excel
In power and prestige, built on bomb and shell?
How can this race to death impelled by greed
And lust for power or wealth abate, indeed,
And not grow faster as more decades pass,
Gathering alarmingly in speed and mass,
Till, like an avalanche with thundering roar,
And fierce concussion, never felt before,
It swallows millions more than one can tell,
And makes of millions more their life a hell?
And so disarmament will e'er remain
A dream unrealized, a longing vain
Of sober minds that know the outcome well,
If nuclear weapons multiply and swell
At such a rate, and if still more domains
Act by this latest flash of clever brains.
They know the awful outcome which will be
In part destruction of humanity.
For no man born can hold the hand of chance
Or guard against the now haphazard dance
Of world's disruptive forces, or forebode
Where and when will a hidden mine explode
During the cold war and the struggle hard
Between the rival groups, fought at each yard
Of the earth's surface they claim as their sod,
Entirely mindless of the will of God.
Since all the summit powers are firmly bent
On owning this plutonian engine meant
To guard their grandeur from the greedy paws
Of poorer folk, who can take up the cause
Of peace or raise a finger to denounce
This dread conspiracy, as they will pounce
On them, and clever penmen tear to bits
One who this weak spot in their armor hits.
That is why knowledge, wisdom, skill and wit
Against a deadly challenge calmly sit,
And do not raise their voice in protest bold
Which o'er the earth like thunder should have rolled
Against this mortal threat to morals, life
And health of humankind; against this knife
Which stabbing at a city in the dead
Of night can every townsman kill in bed;
Against this horrible example set
By more enlightened nations, who forget
That those who won their greatness with the sword
Were always emulated, word for word,
By people less advanced who, in the past,
Defeated them at their own game at last.
Conclusion
(i)
Today mankind cannot survive for long,
Divided into fragments, if a strong
Decision-making body at the head
Of one United World, whose rule is spread
To each and every corner of the globe,
Is not appointed soon to look and probe
Into the main affairs of every state,
Drawn from all nations now, and not too late,
Kept on the o'erall task to build and plan
A new world order for progressive man.
It is high time that mankind heeds the signs
Which point to what the racial mind designs,
What is the surest method we can find
To build a war-free world for humankind,
And end the menace of a nuclear war
Which, from all indications, is not far,
To save from horror, death and agony
Millions of guiltless souls who cannot see
How close they are to yawning jaws of death
Or life-long torture borne to the last breath.
Of all this mad race for supremacy
In nuclear power the only end can be
A confrontation on a luckless day,
And this is what my visions, too, portray.
A cry arises from my troubled heart,
A crushing load descends to press me down,
I feel all of my body ache and smart
And in a gloomy sea of sorrow drown,
As with eyes open and the mind awake
I am allowed to watch scene after scene
Of stark, appalling horror that will make
The blooming earth, now lovely and serene,
A foul inferno, glowing red in space,
Where human lust, become the cause of doom,
Millions will kill, and millions clean efface,
Or slowly with dire agony consume.
Whole towns will vanish or in ruins lie,
And deserts burn where crowded cities were,
Millions with hunger, thirst or terror die,
And millions run round shrieking mad with fear.
Millions disfigured, crippled, wounded, maimed,
Tortured at every step, would limp and crawl,
Their faces pale with anguish, eyes inflamed,
With hardship or exhaustion dead to fall.
Men, women, children, sick, infirm and weak
Disheveled, sleepless, hungry, plagued by flies,
Too ill to drive them off, to move or speak,
In vain will look for help till their hope dies.
No horror story e'er conceived so far,
No tale of ghastly murders ever told,
No picture of the havoc done in war
Can match the ghastly scenes that will unfold.
Fiery cyclones racing with lightning speeds,
And flaming hurricanes, extending far,
Will chase escaping crowds to burn, like reeds,
Or roast them coal-black, as if dipped in tar.
This false, deceptive glamor, pomp and show,
In which pretentious vanity delights,
Nemesis will into disorder throw,
And on more sober lines rebuild the sites.
For nature has decreed that every time
Man barters his soul to indulge his lust,
All that he harvests by this heinous crime
Against himself, will be reduced to dust.
This age of boundless wealth, uncounted goods
And endless wonders, which grow day by day,
May end soon, for on it disaster broods,
And scorching hurricanes are on the way
To close an era that has grown too rich
And reckless for man's health and safety both,
And, if not ended at this moment, which
Would seriously distort his inner growth.
Why view the future with a sinking heart,
And try to find retreats to escape the doom,
The Lesson is designed to cause a smart,
For wholesale healthy changes to make room.
The wonder is we readily accept
The world of matter from the tiniest grain,
But when it comes to mind do we suspect
A World of which an Atom runs our brain?
This atom, clothed in flesh, we call the soul,
Ordained by slow ascent to know itself,
But oft in dark about its real goal,
Is lured by tempting pleasure, power and pelf.
For ages alchemists endeavored hard
To find the secret of eternal youth.
But nature does her Treasures so well guard
That few of them could hit upon the Truth,
Which is that hidden in the mortal frame
There is a splendor, blissful, calm and bright,
Not bound by time, devoid of form and name,
Which keeps the flame of life in us alight.
This wonder of creation we cannot
Imagine nor describe nor paint nor draw,
For here we reach the end of human thought,
The point where scholars line up with the raw.
These are the alternatives to choose from:
Either cremation in a nuclear storm,
And for the injured torment to the end,
A bleak and blasted world in which to spend
One's life, all comfort, joy and rest denied;
Or to renounce hate, prejudice and pride,
Excess, immoderation, greed and lust
For power, to foster mutual love and trust,
In tune with Faith's decrees and Laws of God,
To foot the same Path which the Enlightened trod.
Our progress on the path of truth involves
Greater concern for other's woe and weal,
Because the more the human mind evolves
The more it oneness with the rest should feel.
This is the reason why the enlightened mind
Has shown this noble trait throughout the past:
True Love and deep concern for all mankind
With selfless zeal for service to the last.
That is how nature regulates the play
Of life, as she ordains the eves and morns.
Some come, with bleeding hands, to sweep away
What some have sown and scattered-pins and thorns.
Remember, life can be a fairy tale,
A dancing sunbeam when it bathes in light
Some charming landscape, a blooming hill or dale,
And makes all that it touches alive and bright,
If for a fraction of the time we spend
In idle gossip, fun or vain pursuit,
We pray to Heaven a helping hand to lend
To those in pain, distress or want acute,
To see their shrunken hearts expand with joy,
And hope return to light their darkened lives;
To ease their pain and grief or to destroy
Their fear until the ebbing strength revives.
This highly gifted being is not born
To work himself to death for earthly things,
But to irradiate, like the sun at morn,
The light of love which cheer and warmth brings.
What, after all, is thoughtful man here for?
To toil and sweat for wealth or seats of power?
And lose them both at death or in a war,
Living in dread of this to the last hour?
There is enough provision, talent, wealth
To keep the race in plenty and in peace,
If greed and lust for power by trick or stealth
Did not the artless of these treasures fleece.
A warring mankind cannot co-exist
With modern weapons, one of them must cease:
Either complete ban on the Iron Fist
Or One World Order, for which labor pleas.
Contentment, truth, compassion, love and peace
Are more necessary for the health of brain
Than all the fabulous wealth of Rome and Greece,
To keep evolving mankind safe and sane.
Excessive lust, ambition, passion, greed
For earthly goods or power or carnal feasts
Can warp and twist the tender human seed,
And change the angels-to-be into beasts.
Allowed to wallow longer in the mire
Of reckless pleasure, craze for power and gold,
Mankind one day consumed in nuclear fire
Might cease-her story but a legend old.
The tragedy is that our leading minds,
Regardless of the crisis we are in,
Engrossed in their ambitious dreams of kinds,
Know not that we against our future sin.
This is why Revelation came to warn
Mankind, in time, to moderate her lust,
But treating Faith as a fictitious yarn
Science this crisis on the race has thrust.
Next two eventful decades will unfold,
An awe-inspiring Drama, staged by Fate,
To end the present order, as foretold,
With fires of war lit by greed, power-lust, hate.
When dust has settled on the fiery scene,
Then on the ashes of the past would rise
A One-World State built on the Golden Mean
To make man happy, healthy, peaceful, wise.
That air-befouling, earth-polluting ware
Upon which greed's ambitious empire stands,
Replaced by safer types, with thought and care,
Will pass from wasteful into thrifty hands.
In every civilization of the past
The storm came, when to pleasure, rank or gold
The rich and powerful, hungry to the last,
Like children mad for toys, their soul had sold.
The high and mighty of our day, again,
Do what their counterparts did in the past,
And hostile to the still-evolving brain,
Wait for their exit, too, the atomic blast.
(ii)
Unlike the men of learning, I do not
Depend on effort for creative thought,
Or on the opinions of great men to find
Support for the new thought born in my mind.
A formless Presence, infinitely wise,
An ocean of thought from which insights rise,
A grace unbounded and compassion deep,
Permit me many a time to have a peep
At a stupendous Something which no mind
That found access to it has e'er defined.
And born of firm conviction that cannot
Be had from aught conceived by mortal thought,
Or aught observed by eye or heard by ear,
But far more clear and intimately near,
I write these verses, like a pupil taught
By silent whispers coming out of naught.
And having gained this rare estate akin
To that of ancient seers, allowed to win
Approach to higher planes of consciousness,
So marvelous that no words can express
The wonder of it, I, although remiss
In many ways, transported to a bliss
And to abodes of such effulgent light,
Dancing before my vision day and night,
Such a Divine, effulgent silvery sheen,
Which fills with glory all the objects seen,
That in unbounded wonder at this sight,
At this enchanting Eden always bright,
I live in ecstasy day, night and morn,
Into a new world of experience born,
So rich, so full of grandeur, peace, delight,
That mind and senses, ravished by the sight,
Their contact with the external world withdraw
To watch the Inner with amaze and awe.
And Ah! the glorious realm in which I live,
Transporting, elevating, always new,
Beyond the horizon of my hopes and dreams,
All our philosophies and clever streams
Of thought, beyond conception, knowledge, guess,
That cannot be imagined more or less,
As foreign to the normal human mind
As sunlight is to one from birth is blind,
Or sugar to a man devoid of taste,
Or rapture of love to a virgin chaste:
A state of consciousness as far removed
From our conceptions though hard to be proved,
As light from darkness, summit from the base;
The future common asset of the race,
Towards which with slow, halting steps our brains
Are working their way up pulled back by chains
Which, due to ignorance, we often forge,
When we ourselves with earthly dainties gorge.
The difficulty, faced by ancient seers
To bring conviction home to their compeers,
Crops up as people cannot see the way
How this mysterious soul-uplifting ray
Of Cosmic Consciousness can bring about
So marvelous a change, remove all doubt
About Divinity, transform a man
Into a gifted seer, with power to scan
The complex problems which confront mankind,
At times too mixed up for a normal mind;
But clear as crystal to an illumined sage,
Ordained to expose the errors of his age.
The flash of great discoveries, matchless skill,
And gift of poesy, not gained at will,
And inspiration of great authors rise
From depths of consciousness, where genius lies,
Thence come the moods and visions that create
New gems of thought and masterpieces great
Of science, art, and literature which
Have made mankind so cultured, wise and rich.
The fire that has transformed the face of earth
From man's cortical matter ne'er took birth;
But comes, by Grace, from regions far away
Where mortal lusts and passions hold no sway,
Where sovereign Consciousness in state abides,
And in the appointed manner mankind guides
With vision, insight, flash of thought or trance
Which scholars wrongly attribute to chance.
The blooming garden of creative thought
In man, which has such sweeping changes wrought,
That from a helpless, weak, impoverished state
He touched the peak of progress in a spate
Of great discoveries that had lain concealed
In mortal mind for long to be unsealed,
By Chosen Vessels, only at the time
And place ordained before by Laws Sublime,
And who can say what other priceless gems
Still lie uncovered to become the stems
For e'en more precious buds of thought and skill
To raise evolving mankind higher still.
From war to peace, barbarism to the height
Of culture, to ideals and visions bright,
Man is ascending step by step without
The least idea what all this is about,
Why this bewildering life, why peace and war,
Why love and hate and why these problems bar
The understanding of what brought him here
To think and wonder, to run here and there
To meet his pressing needs, to have a weight
Around his neck, tied hard by cruel Fate.
These hard, unanswered Riddles from the dawn
Of reason many vainly brooded on,
To leave as mystified as when they came,
Including wise men of great name and fame,
All working, sleeping, loving, hating in
Their own peculiar way to lose or win,
To pass the round of day, night, eve and morn,
And leave as empty-handed as when born.
The sweating labor done through all their life,
The daily chores, the struggles and the strife,
All fading, like an ended dream at morn,
With the last breath of every mortal born,
A dancing bubble on the ocean's face,
Lost in immensities of time and space.
All this alarm of war and threat of guns,
Of frightful missiles and dread megatons
Is nature's warning of a faulty trend
Which makes material goals the aim and end
Of life, for man comes not to act a farce,
To be a well-led, brightly harnessed horse,
Who makes his round of duties with his eyes
Only half open to the earth and skies,
Oblivious to his glorious destiny,
From what he is now what he has to be.
Man does not know that he has woken up
To earthly life to sip the ambrosial cup
Of Life Sublime, to realize that he,
Free from the earth belongs to Eternity:
The cream of earth, the bright Immortal Spark,
The priceless Gem of Life, lost in the dark
Of ignorance, the Glory of the Sun
And stars, the countless host contained in One.
The fragment and the whole, of all the known,
The knower in his majesty alone;
The ocean, all-surpassing, e'er supreme
Of Cosmic Consciousness a Deathless Beam
That has to know itself to rise above
The lower passions, high in Truth and Love,
And building on this earth a Paradise,
In ecstasy to roam the boundless skies;
And drawn in oneness with all that exists,
Released from mental clouds and sensual mists,
To taste the bliss of rapturous union with
The Fount of Life-the Eternal Ground beneath
The massive Cosmos of effect and cause,
Which melts away, as if it never was!
Written by: Gopi Krishna
Next two eventful decades will unfold,
An awe-inspiring Drama, staged by Fate,
To end the present order, as foretold,
With fires of war lit by greed, power-lust, hate
PREFACE
(i)
The future happenings, already a part
Of one Eternal Present, with no end,
No ceaseless movement of time and no start,
On those the illusive veil of thought can rend,
Cast their reflection, when the shadows part,
As each succeeding lightning flash reveals
The changed position of a moving cart,
But not the regular motion of its wheels.
And these projections from a subtle plane
Of life, an unconditioned Realm Sublime,
Upon the time-conditioned mortal brain
Become a picture clothed in space and time.
So utterly amazing and unique
Is this experience of immersion in
The Void of Future that when at the peak,
The mortal, cut off from the noise and din
Of earth, is lost in wonder at the sight,
Which now unfolds before his inward eye,
A world of mystery aglow with light,
Impenetrating both the earth and sky;
Across which, shadowed on a glowing screen,
Ethereal portraits in a luminous dress,
With all the context of a future scene,
In rapid flashes whole events express.
But only to the extent as is allowed,
To him to see and hear by Grace Divine,
For Laws Celestial ev'n in those endowed
With this rare gift, prescribe the boundary line.
What is vouchsafed to me whenev'r I brood
On destiny, in a devotional mood,
I honestly and faithfully record,
Treating it as a Mandate from the Lord.
But in these fleeting glimpses of the scenes
Of future, when those who now in their teens
Will have grown mature, I see filled with awe
The operation of a Mighty Law,
Which we are flouting now to purchase ease
And comfort for the flesh, that has to cease.
For man, evolving slowly to reach God,
Cannot make flesh his only measuring rod,
And leave the Soul to take care of itself
The while he runs mad after power and pelf.
I but repeat what all religious creeds
Had once enjoined to regulate the deeds
Of mortals, who averse to leave their hold
On pleasures of the flesh, on power and gold,
Commit the same mistakes time and again,
Not knowing that they harm the evolving brain,
Thus forcing nature, to avert decay,
To use coercive measures in some way.
What I see sometimes in the lucid mood
Provides for my digestion heavy food,
For I see pain and suffering, deaths and loss,
Soul-harrowing scenes of woe before I cross
The boundary of the present century,
And there an all united mankind see,
Trying to steer clear of our vices, firm
On virtues, building for a glorious term
Of peace and happiness with faith devout
In Godhead, cured of disbelief and doubt.
These are the visions, which from time to time
I see in wakefulness and write in rhyme,
For both the vision and what I record
Come synchronously by the Grace of God.*
Unbidden nothing happens, not a leaf
Can stir, nor man act nor taste joy and grief.
So what I see when bidden by the Lord
With what is now to happen shall accord.
Gopi Krishna
Srinagar, Kashmir
India
May 1968
Chapter 1
World Wars
A Sign of Obstructed Evolution
(i)
The earth rotating round her axis brings
Our days and nights, the summers and the springs,
The falls and winters, verdure, flowers and fruits,
The mating seasons of the birds and brutes.
And all that makes us happy, dull and sad
Or angry, all that we call good or bad,
As from the earth's revolution streams
The light that gives us life, our hopes and dreams.
It also brings for mortals peace or war,
By spreading love or hatred near and far,
By causing, as in beasts it causes rut,
In men, when their unholy actions shut
The gate of mercy, cravings and desires
That spread from mind to mind like forest fires,
Until enveloped by the sparkling blaze
They fail to see what is before their gaze,
The human caravan, all in a heap,
Into the abyss of war about to leap.
But why, when everything comes from the change
In earth's position, should we think it strange
That our collective steps for peace or war
Are not of our choice, but come from afar;
From cosmic-conscious forces all around
The earth, unseen, mysterious and profound,
Which on our minds a dark reflection cast,
When we transgress or move too slow or fast?
As sun eclipses fill the world with gloom
At intervals, and to the moment last
When, of obstruction free, the sun has room
Again his radiance on the earth to cast,
Collective violations of the law
Of life, by nations, groups or all mankind
Create periodic spells when fear and awe,
Like shadows, settle on the human mind.
They mirror brewing storms upon the plane
Of Cosmic Being heralded by signs,
Which, though unnoticed by a normal brain,
A superconscious sage at once divines.
There are some questions which can well arise
In what I argue, more so from the wise;
For why should nature be so callous, when
Celestial laws are hid from common men,
As to apply the rod or use the knout
For e'en such faults we know nothing about?
Has e'en Almighty God a morbid thirst
For causing pain, when shackled mortals burst
Their bonds to have full liberty to taste
The pleasures He devised, lest they go to waste?
Why was not man cast in a nobler mold,
That lust would not have on him such a hold
As to neglect the duty owed to God,
And so obliging Him to use the rod?
These questions are the outcome of a lack
Of knowledge of the evolutionary track,
Of ignorance about the patent fact
That universe is not a lawless tract,
That ev'n the earth herself is strictly bound
By laws, complaisant turning round and round,
And so how can her dust, from which man springs,
Be unsubmissive to the King of Kings?
The very texture of the earth, her air
Or water and the sun, which mankind rear,
Are so imbued with law that questions such
As these the bottom of unwisdom touch.
The commonly accepted modern view
Of science, that man grew up from the beast,
Nor wholly Western nor entirely new,
Has long been in existence in the East,
More so in India where it forms the ground
For karmic doctrines and the ceaseless round
Of births and deaths for the embodied soul
Until it merges with the cosmic whole.
According to this view, it is the soul
And not the gross, corporeal appendage
In man which, to achieve a higher goal,
Through epochs worked its way up stage by stage,
Attaining, after changing many shapes
Of lowly creatures, reasonless and mute,
A form akin to that of man-like apes
And then of man, intelligent and astute.
Now this progressive growth of humankind,
Be it on Eastern or on Western lines,
It should be patent to the simplest mind
Cannot but act within some set confines,
And not unlawfully in a law-bound whole,
Where every atom plays a given part
And every sun performs a chosen role,
Not once attempting nature's will to thwart.
What vanity or lack of wisdom drives
The guiding spirits of this age to doubt
The fact that laws celestial rule the lives
Of men and cannot be infringed without
Incurring penalties that must be paid
For individual or collective breach,
In strict accordance with the canons laid
For our collective crimes or sins of each?
Unseen devices in the brain record
And judge the thoughts and acts of mortal men,
And every single act brings its reward
In time, without revealing where and when.
It is presumptuous on our part to think
That our self-conscious being is not bound,
When physical bonds intricately link
Our flesh to all the natural forces round.
Our mind and flesh connected from the day
When first the pulse of life stirs in the womb,
Without the slightest hitch obey the sway
Of one another almost to the tomb.
How in this body-mind compound can one
Only, out of the two, be bound by laws,
And the other with unchartered freedom run
Wherev'r it some alluring object draws?
The fact is, baffled by the mystery
Of life and not allowed to look behind
The veil of senses, mortals fail to see
That no less rigid laws control the mind;
That mankind destined for a lofty height,
A god-like stature, still out of her sight,
Must learn to obey the signs which nature makes
And follow them in what she undertakes;
As does a child, till it grows up to learn
Much more about itself, to work and earn.
(ii)
Is it not strange in this progressive age
That nor the empiricist nor learned sage
Can break the seal of silence and disclose
The object of man's earthly pilgrimage?
What wonder then if hungry millions look
For it in some antique religious book,
And trust implicitly the word of those
Themselves to this uplifting quest betook?
The testaments of these immortal men,
Which neither sword could brush aside nor pen,
Show that the wrath of Heaven descends to check
Defiance of Law by mortals now and then.
The chances are that either they were wrong
Or that material cravings are too strong
For man to overcome, hence it befalls
That punishment awaits the rebel throng.
Undoubtedly impartial jurists sift
The actions which debase us or uplift,
And after judging the ancestral pool
Decree a just reward, delayed or swift.
When deathless laws, we clearly understand,
Rule mighty suns and planets, sea and land,
Could not the wise Creator find one which
Would keep this moving lump of clay in hand?
In all the stormy epochs left behind
Had e'er man such a morbid state of mind
As now, when he has built to win in war
Atrocious weapons that can end his kind?
A ghastly streak no lower form of life
Exhibits e'en when prone to deadly strife,
A clear-cut symptom of perversion which
Remains unnoticed, as it is so rife.
A direct challenge to the Almighty Lord
That if things do not with our wish accord
We shall destroy those He created but
Now sadly lacks the ability to guard!
(iii)
As it is only when impartial time
Before us brings the errors of our prime,
That hoary age develops seasoned views
And gains a knowledge which no learning gives.
There is yet so much for our race to learn,
So much to experience, such a crown to earn,
That all of our philosophies combined
Betoken but an infant's growing mind,
For she is born to reach a godly size
With ups and downs designed to make her wise.
The rising generations of our race,
However young in years to those who grace
The chairs of learning and position now,
When grown gray will know better why and how
Their parents chose, as if compelled by fate,
A deadly path of such malignant hate,
That like a pestilence its fury spread
On earth, to cause such agony and dread
And such appalling damage to mankind
As will for centuries live in her mind.
The world condition has come to a pass
Where greatest danger to the human mass
Comes not from natural causes or disease,
But from the leading men who hold the keys
Of power in their weak but ambitious hands,
And can employ the might of powerful lands
To cause death and destruction on a scale
Before which all the powers of language fail.
One of the ways to meet this deadly threat
To safety is for masses not to abet
The men in power in their ambitious aims,
Which would be hard since they propose their names.
Moreover the rulers do not act alone
For many a wealthy and ambitious drone,
Surrounding them, like kites, plans and conspires
To plunge a nation in the awful fires
Of war, which in this era has become
Pure homicidal mass-delirium.
Another way, which is as nature wants
Mankind to do now, like industrious ants,
To have Superior Beings at the head
As rulers, who inspire respect not dread,
Who more in harmony with nature's plan
Foresee the future of evolving man,
And skilled in state-craft who the two combine
To elevate the mass-mind and refine,
And not, as rulers do now, brutalize
The crowd for but a brief temporal rise,
Heedless of what the next world-war will teach
That man has yet a loftier height to reach.
This is the only way to pull the world
Out of the mess in which it has been hurled
By scholars, priests and rulers all combined,
Lost in the unfathomed mystery of mind,
Not heeding that the evolving human brain
Can ne'er sit idle, but must e'er remain
Alert on ripe occasions to revise
The faulty social orders they devise.
The only cure now for the current ills
Is that the brilliant galaxy which fills
The chairs of power should be required to gain
Transcendence with attunement of the brain,
Which is not as hard as we might suppose,
With exercise and discipline, for those
Who rank as intellectuals in our time,
And are now ripe for their enlightened prime.
A dire necessity shall soon arise,
When we the existing systems must revise,
As strength of arm which once subdued the crowd,
Would cause more damage than we can afford,
Making it imperative for the race
To build with speed a firm irenic base,
Whereof the architects shall be, in main,
The mental athletes who remold the brain.
Only such prodigies can now control
The masses by appealing to the soul,
As intellect now almost near her end
The clever mind to her will cannot bend,
And hence instinctively the crowd now seeks,
Not one who with insane ambition reeks,
But he who by his own unruffled calm
Proves for the weary world a soothing balm.
Nor learned skepticism nor other trash,
Now ranked as wisdom, shall survive the crash,
Which soon will come to teach our wiseacres
That godless reason can become a curse,
And breed Satanic minds, if left alone,
With matchless intellect but hearts of stone:
A crop which is inevitable if
The attitude of scholars, hard and stiff
Towards sublime belief and faith, does not
To Revelation its true place allot.
Can we determine, when we ponder deep
On it that heaven has framed no laws to keep
Mankind upon the Path to reach the goal
It has appointed for the human soul;
And men are free to act as they decide,
To wallow in sin or to drown in pride,
And there is no Almighty Power to deal
With them, the fever of the mind to heal?
Most men believe that lust and passion bind
With no way of escape the human mind,
And as a slave to many an evil trait
We have no power to change our native state:
A most misleading notion often due
To this, that modern scholars have no clue
About the Power behind the ascent of man,
Which tries to lift him as high as it can,
Against the manifold obstructions which
He puts in its way by his lustful itch.
The outcome is that the existing mode
Of life, since long become a cumbrous load,
Colliding with the soul's uplifting force
Creates a mind intelligent but too coarse
For man's exalted stature at this time,
When at the portals of the Life Sublime,
The leading intellects could have attained
The State Divine and Cosmic Vision gained,
Had their ascent been more in accord
With Laws which human evolution guard.
And hence the strangely inconsistent phase
In man's development in our own days,
Control and mastery of every force
Of nature, full command of foreign shores;
But utter ignorance about his home,
About the interior of his cranial dome,
About his nervous system and the way
In which subconscious trends his thinking sway.
He knows now everything except himself,
Except the "Knower" in the fleshy shelf,
Immune to death, decay and every kind
Of sorrow and distress known to the mind.
He knows no more about him than was known
To ancient seers of Greece and Babylon,
A gap of thousands of long years between
His knowledge of the seer and objects seen.
We have no inkling man is changing fast
Towards a glorious form and godly cast
Of countenance, we often attribute
To angels, free entirely of the brute,
Encrowned with thoughts sublime and noble traits
Of character, above the alluring baits
Of wealth and power, blest with a longer span
Of life, to be the Enlightened cosmic man.
This unawareness of a vital fact
Of life does in a dangerous way react,
And all the fears and tensions which surround
The present world grow from this breeding ground.
Because the evolving human systems need
A way of life and social frame which heed
The signs and gestures that convey to us
Mandates from our collective consciousness.
(iv)
The Unexpected is the potent cause
That keeps forgetful humankind alert,
And when it happens with too long a pause
The evil trends in man their sway assert.
It often is the Unforeseen Event
Which brings depravity to sudden halt,
Ambition's crafty plans can circumvent,
And forces Arrogance to mend her fault.
Old orders often yielded place to new,
By strange unthought-of turns in world affairs;
And chance events drove out, before they knew
That their day had come, tyrants from their lairs.
Dynastic kingdoms, built with blood to last
For generations, but one sudden gust
Of stormy civil war or but one blast
Of whirlwind-like invasion brought to dust.
In many a dreary spot, where dust-winds howl
And savage beasts send out blood-curdling calls,
To which at night responds the hooting owl,
But lately grandeur dwelt in marble halls.
Has not the unforeseen in the recent past
Put the earth's mightiest empire into shade,
And war the state of countless men recast,
The beggar king and king a beggar made?
What veil before our eyes obstructs the light
That nature social stagnancy abhors,
And when we fail to climb the appointed height
Creates upheavals, revolutions, wars?
Hence, I do not predict but just inform
The world about a mighty Cosmic Law,
Which soon may raise a hideous global storm,
Out of the present groove mankind to draw.
Existence of this Force may soon be felt
When steel and cement walls like wax will melt,
And fuse to rise in clouds of fiery dust;
The Wrath of Heav'n on man's unbridled lust,
Against which every prophet raised his voice,
But often failed to sway the fatal choice.
Those who treat nature as a lifeless rock,
Insensible to virtue, vice and crime,
And fancy that its motion, like a clock,
They can adjust at will from time to time,
One awful day must see it come to life
Confronting them with fierce, aggressive swarms,
And then with loss, distress and slaughter rife
The whole of nature will seem up in arms.
We cannot follow with our puny brains
The play of millions of subconscious threads,
Which cognizant of what the Law ordains
Control the thought content of ruling heads.
Amid the medley of unnumbered trends
In human nature, which our minds unfold,
These hidden strings to gain the chosen ends
In all contingencies the Law uphold.
Hence when disastrous situations rise,
Producing consternation and dismay,
A wise man can with confidence surmise:
The Law has been infringed in some way.
Destructive wars that cause the world concern
Present no riddle to the enlightened mind,
Which in the raging tempest can discern
The attempt of nature safety-vents to find.
Behold the time has come when once again
The auguries of prophets shall come true,
And man, a rebel grown too proud and vain,
With tears for heaven's clemency shall sue.
The pride of great achievement, knowledge, wit,
As much to effort as to fortune due,
Which blind to its mistakes does not submit
To timely counsel, one day has to rue,
When fortune, prompt to take back what she grants,
Decides the arrogant career to close;
A swift debacle and the passage slants
Towards the inglorious depths from which it rose.
(v)
Once we acknowledge that the human brain
Is mounting slowly step by step to gain
A broader vision of the Cosmic Scene,
Both of the visible world and realms unseen,
We must then cede that, when man wanders far
From his route, something must occur to bar
His movement in the wrong direction bound
To block his progress till the Path is found.
The modern intellect compelled to grow
In wrong environment, with passions low
For wealth or fame or power, entirely raw
In heavenly knowledge and Celestial Law,
Is oft distorted, like a stunted plant,
That grows precariously on a slant,
And twisted out of shape appears so weird
And strange, compared to those in orchards reared.
Such are some minds in this enlightened age,
That had they rightly grown would, at this stage,
Excel the greatest sages of the past
In fresh adventures on the ocean vast
Of life, and with the knowledge gathered, led
Not to destruction but a rosy bed,
The bloated modern world at heart so sick
That for explosion it needs but a prick.
But barred from Vision their lopsided brain
Prepares explosives for temporal gain,
By which soon into chaos may be hurled
The present gay but maladjusted world.
Full many thinkers, whose own mind refused
Belief in God's existence, when they mused
On Life's mysterious drama, good and bad,
Delightful and revolting, gay and sad,
Denied true insight into human hearts,
Despite their erudition and their arts,
Clever with pen, their faulty doctrines spread
All ov'r the earth to wean the simple head
From faith in God, and let him loose to drift,
Alone unable right from wrong to sift.
Now watching helplessly, with deep alarm,
The growing stockpile of the nuclear arm,
Some try in vain to stem the rising flood
Their own imprudence o'er the planet spread,
Which gave unbridled license to the strong,
With full impunity to do a wrong,
Mistaught there is no God to judge their deeds,
And no Celestial Court to award the meeds.
No other single factor ever did
Such harm to mankind as was done, amid
The glamorous progress of the present age,
By scholars who condemned the illumined sage,
Deceived by reason, like an impish wraith,
Who cut unwisely at the roots of faith.
It is not reason but a second sight,
A higher faculty that can throw light
On this recondite subject, at this time
Of such a moment and importance prime,
That every other major problem fades
Into unimportance, as if lost in shades,
For at this critical juncture human life
Is balanced on the thin edge of a knife,
Is in the gravest jeopardy because
We lack in knowledge of Celestial Laws.
Chapter 2
Nuclear Weapons: A Symptom of Abnormality
(i)
Can you surmise the reason why the mass
Of men their life now complacently pass,
And ne'er allow the slightest sign escape
That warfare has assumed an ugly shape,
Due to the deadly challenge daily hurled
By growing nuclear build-ups of the world?
How, as if charmed, the busy crowds forget
Or are resigned towards the dreadful threat,
Towards a prospect that can quickly turn
The earth into one vast, rotating urn;
Towards a mortal danger from which none
Can be safe whether war is lost or won;
A threat attended by the ghastly fear
Of mass destruction slowly drawing near?
Is it not strange that we now calmly sit
And wait until the Infernal Fire is lit,
When ev'n the whisper of some pestilence
Into hysterics drives and makes us tense,
On thorns to flee the place or find some way
The foul, contagious plague to keep at bay,
With reason for the safety of our life?
But this atrocious menace now so rife
And so immediate we quite disregard,
In this one case completely off our guard,
As if it is so small and so remote
That 'tis not worth the effort ev'n to note.
With such a monster hovering overhead,
Waiting to strike unwary myriads dead,
What surety there is in this reckless age
That one will not succumb to nuclear rage,
Will not be one of countless victims hurt
Dreadfully or struck down lifeless and inert,
Will not with ghastly sores or sightless eyes
Bewail this deadly lightning from the skies?
What have our leading figures done about
This horror lurking near without a doubt,
Which always at our elbow but one jolt
Can bring down roaring like a thunderbolt,
And from a distance of ev'n scores of miles
Can eat deep into flesh and heap in piles
Eroded bodies stripped off to the bone,
For long to bear the racking pain alone,
With not a soul around the wounds to dress
To soothe the torment or relieve distress.
Confronted by this menace who knows why
Against this hellish engine so few cry?
Why but few take it in a serious way
While most men unconcernedly pass their day
About this danger so untroubled that
It worries them less than a thieving cat,
Alert to every small unpleasant thing
That can the least harm or disquiet bring?
How can they tolerate this deadly shaft,
Designed with such a diabolic craft,
That round the blasted area it can drop
A genetic poison for a grisly crop
Of grinning monsters and grimacing freaks,
Whose language is a blend of horrid shrieks,
Fouling the outraged earth for many a year
With such abortions none their sight can bear.
And who can say with what revolting shape
It will the future stock of mankind drape?
When we attach such value to our health,
To looks, deportment, property and wealth,
Attend to all of them with deep concern,
And for their betterment new methods learn,
What makes us callous to the atomic threat
Which o'erhangs all we have or can beget,
A danger from which we cannot be free
Till death, nor our heirs, nor their progeny;
Which is a thousand times more lethal than
The deadliest plague that e'er afflicted man?
Can you assign a reason for the fact
Why we do not against this threat react
With such ebullience as it should provoke,
And why such efforts always end in smoke,
As if a spell descends on earth to lull
To slumber those this blood bath would annul?
Look for a while into your mind again
And try to find the reason which, in main,
Prevents our acting as we would, no doubt,
Do at once, when there is a fire without;
Or we are warned of cholera in the town
Or of a flood that threatens us to drown,
Or of some passing evil that can be
Disastrous for my household or for me,
And mark that in a crisis we do not
Sit calmly, well contented with our lot,
But act without delay to set things right,
Though we may have to battle day and night.
But can you say why we are not disturbed
When nuclear stockpiles grow apace uncurbed?
For some the problem is how they can stop
A vicious trend descending from the top,
How can they when the ruling groups decide
To have it, their decision override?
They argue how they can avert the threat
When rival, hard-competing lands are set
On deadliest weapons science can devise,
For their defense or ev'n aggressive rise,
In this inventive age, when all are free
To make whate'er improvement there can be?
Who can technological progress stop
Of which it is the inevitable crop?
From other symptoms also one can find
That people now are more or less resigned
Towards a catastrophic nuclear war,
As they are often towards an evil star,
Which, they think, bodes misfortune and can change
The tenor of their life beyond their range,
And they bide patiently the fateful day,
Knowing they cannot change it or delay.
(ii)
Let us sincerely for a moment ask
Ourselves, when resting from the daily task,
Does not existence at this or that place
Of nuclear engines jeopardize the race?
Is not the threat so imminent and grave
That we may one day find it hard to save
Not just ourselves and all we love and own,
But all the art and culture that has grown
With man's unceasing, patient labor done
By countless generations one by one?
Is not the danger, from what we are told
By scores of experts, many hundredfold
More than that posed by all the plagues combined?
For it can cause extinction of mankind;
Or, at the least, kill millions or distort
In such a ghastly way that nothing short
Of death can end their frightful suffering more
Intense than that of any cancer sore.
What stupor then prevents from crying out,
The myriads doomed without a shade of doubt,
Millions condemned to lifelong agony
So terrible one cannot bear to see?
What destiny creates this nonchalance
Towards a fast approaching Kali's* dance;
Which, if not warded off, will leave behind
Millions dead, millions wounded, millions blind,
Millions disfigured, millions maimed and crazed;
Their assets blown up or to the ground razed?
No one to ease their pain or mourn the loss,
For all the dazed survivors too will cross
Into a horrid world e'en worse than hell,
To face grim famines and diseases fell.
Why are our scholars loath to use their pen
To tell the naked truth to common men?
Do they believe the danger is not so
Immediate or so serious as I show?
Do they suppose the piles of nuclear arms
Will vanish as does snow when sunshine warms
Or that a thousand billion worth of stocks
Will lie unused like subterranean rocks
Or that the havoc of a nuclear war
Will not be so great or extend so far
As I depict, and mankind might survive
The blow, without much loss, to live and thrive?
Our failure to respond to such a threat
Reveals a symptom for the first time met
In human history, for at no time
Have masses acted such a pantomime;
Remained so passive with no word or sign
To show they are not dumb and stupid kine,
But have the common sense at once to grasp
That they are threatened by a deadly asp,
About to bury deep its deadly fangs
In them, and that their life by a thread hangs.
What widely met oblivion tightly holds
The rich and poor in its confining folds?
Or what hypnotic influence sends to sleep
Distinguished scholars that, like docile sheep,
They nimbly trot towards a slaughter house
Obediently, as quiet as a mouse?
The few debates and protest meetings held
By some enthusiasts, who tried to weld
Into one powerful global forum those
On principle who nuclear war oppose,
After some stir expressive of dissent
Against the use of nuclear armament,
And sundry comments in the press, became
Too feeble to defeat the deadly aim
Of those behind the game, and then expired,
As if the whole adventure had misfired.
And in the wake of these outpourings comes
The Silence managed with colossal sums,
Which ne'er allows conscientious folk to gain
A hearing and their labor goes in vain.
Somewhat by this, but primarily because
The strange callosity now never thaws,
The human race accepts the nuclear arm
With no explosive symptom of alarm;
Accepts the presence of a Demon that
Will slaughter millions, as one kills a rat;
Accepts a dread contrivance that may loom
Before rebellious mortals as their doom.
(iii)
Much as I should desire to write about
A theme that could put fear and gloom to rout,
And fill a ruffled mind with peace and joy;
But knowing well that it would but decoy
The reader into a false sense of repose,
While grim disaster lies extremely close,
I treat it as a duty laid on me
By Heaven that does my every action see,
To keep the world reminded of this threat,
Which by some Trick of Fate we soon forget.
The strange indifference which we now display
Towards the greatest problem of our day,
Towards an issue that now holds the scales
Between our life and death, and grief entails,
Call it inertia or, whate'er it be,
A keen observer cannot fail to see
And think it foolish of us, if not worse,
That we should grow so mentally perverse
As ev'n grim prospects of extinction stir
No feeling in us that may be we err,
And ought to ponder on this point to find
The reason for this numbness in our mind?
Let us not be misled by outer gloss,
Nor at the simple truth get sour or cross,
But face reality, as we now see,
Not what we think or figure it to be.
For probing this point, as well as we can,
We cannot but mark that in modern man
A strange departure from a healthy mode
Of thought has come about, as if a load
Sits heavy on his brain, that he has grown
Indifferent to his death e'en when foreknown.
This apathy is not a healthy sign,
Nor would it be in creatures, sheep or swine,
If of a likely risk that loomed in front
They took no heed ev'n by a bleat or grunt.
Towards a mortal threat inertness means
Fault in the pillar on which mankind leans,
Fault in the instinct by which she survives,
Preserves her life from danger, lives and thrives;
It means a fault so terrible and grave
As cannot be compared to any, save
Perhaps, the tendency to suicide found
Often in people mentally unsound.
Insentience towards a deadly risk
Through which we gaily pass now, sport and frisk,
While each addition to the infernal store
Is adding to the hazard more and more,
Denotes a morbid symptom so acute
It has no parallel in any brute,
Or other form of life nor ever had
Except in those that run amuck or mad.
For heaven has set the urge to live so deep
In earthly creatures that no furious sweep
Of passion or adversity can shake
The firm foundation, or remotely make
Them when confronted by a mortal threat,
The urgent need for self-defense forget.
No one would dare impute so grave a fault
To those that soar beyond the azure vault,
And say that in the highly cultured brain
A morbid streak is just becoming plain;
A streak which seldom is with horror filled
When it imagines millions maimed or killed,
Which, with the hideous scenes of two world wars
Still fresh in memory, now behind the farce
Of peace, prepares for yet another one
To put to shame the carnage earlier done.
We are now reconciled, as if decreed
By Fate, as lazy farmers are to weed;
To this diabolic instrument of death,
Like those the young read of with bated breath
In stories, weapons Satan would devise
With gloating looks God's earth to pulverize;
A challenge to the Lord from puny man
To save the earth from ruin if He can.
An arm so devilish that, to be blunt,
There surely cannot be a worse affront
To intellect, no worse slap on the face
Of every moral fiber in the race,
Which save inhuman minds, akin to those
Of homicidal kings who slaughter chose,
No normal man, who is not mad with hate,
Can make, employ, invent or tolerate.
What great effect on one, who calmly chews
His breakfast, have the most alarming news
Of riots, revolts and slaughters, now so rife,
They have become a part of daily life:
Or what emotion does a picture formed
Of nuclear warfare or a city stormed,
And blown out of existence, rouse in us,
When with our friends we nuclear war discuss?
This lack of feeling is a dangerous sign,
A grave impairment of the mental shrine;
A warning that incipient freeze has set
To cause indifference to a mortal threat.
Let us discuss a while this curious trait:
The dark Forerunner of an evil fate,
That death, destruction, slaughter, riot, war,
On our accustomed ears now no more jar,
Nor cause the horror that they should evoke
Nor grieve the heart, nor with emotion choke,
As they did but a hundred years before,
When such disasters shocked the people more,
As history attests, for every case
Of carnage filled with horror all the race.
I know the earth was ne'er a chaste abode
Of human angels with a purer code
Of conduct in the past, and I concede
That there was greater poverty and need,
Still greater cruelty upon the weak,
The slave and bondman, servant, thief and freak,
There were religious wars and torture done
To heretics or forced conversions won.
But people were alert and feared a war,
Decamped in panic while it was yet far,
And seldom waited for the monster's jaws
To swallow them, as we do now because
We have so callous and unfeeling grown,
That though we know whole nations can be blown
To bits with nuclear blasts we ne'er regard
The threat as serious and are not on guard,
Against this source of all-devouring war,
Which from no nation and no man is far,
And like a baneful comet points towards
The earth, about to engulf men, beasts and birds.
Compare this with what happened fifty years
Ago, when wakened by instinctive fears,
A strong electric shock went through the mass
Of men to ban the use of poison gas;
Mere caustic as compared to megatons
That can incinerate millions all at once.
There is no doubt that something deep inside
Our minds has changed, and our emotions slide
Towards a callous disregard of death
And slaughter that made people hold their breath.
So war and massacre have now become
A matter of routine, not just to some,
But to the teeming multitudes who treat
Such grim occurrences like cold and heat:
A subject for some comment and no more,
No surge of deep emotion as before,
No scenes of woe afloat before the eye,
Time and again to make one weep and sigh,
Forgotten ere the morning to make room
For fresh news, as if swept off with a broom,
A most abnormal trait by which we are
Careering fast towards a nuclear war.
Perhaps I have explained now in detail,
Enough to show that I would grossly fail
In duty that I owe to God and man,
If, with as much submission as I can,
I do not emphasize the fact again
That we are blunting our evolving brain,
By our transgressions with the grave result
That Cosmic Forces, neither seen nor felt,
To avoid incurable damage to the brain,
Before it is too late, might cause again
A dreadful global war, that may extend
To many lands, rebellious man to mend.
It is not superstition nor a myth
Nor dogma nor mere theory with no pith,
Nor yet delusion nor a sorry game
To cause sensation for some gain or fame,
But it is something, which extremely rare,
Has on occasions fallen to the share
Of men, without their striving, with the Grace
Of Heaven to voice a warning to the race,
As I do now in this spontaneous rhyme,
That brooks no barrier of creed or clime,
From that Immortal Source to which alone
The whole of future and the past are known.
But for this I could never dare pronounce
A judgment on the world, or know an ounce
Of what I have revealed about the stain
Now forming on the evolving human brain,
A morbid blemish, which too soon will spread,
If not removed or changed to love instead,
And cause a horror no pen can portray
No language can express, no words convey.
What profit would accrue if mankind wanes
In spiritual endowments, though she gains
Untold possessions, only to unbar
Destructive frenzy in a nuclear war,
Of which the authors, now completely lost
To sense, with their extinction pay the cost?
It sounds blasphemous, but I must confess
That, though we boast of it, the polished dress
Of modern intellect, beneath its folds
Conceals a faulty twist, which firmly holds
A part of mankind in its vicious grip,
And ne'er allows the busy crowd to slip
The noose; a twist that keeps God out of count,
Has no need for the Sermon on the Mount,
Nor Vedas nor Quran nor what was taught
By Buddha to ennoble human thought,
To chase the shadows which confuse the mind
Of e'en great leaders and their vision blind,
Unless both morn and eve they sue for grace,
When only they can rightly guide the race.
(v)
Were there not something in our actions wrong,
The Evil Forces could not grow so strong,
Could not create in us the fatal trends
To slaughter millions for our selfish ends,
Could not have brought the masses down so low
To be the dumb spectators of a show,
Which now keeps mankind in a state of dread
With clouds of mass destruction o'er her head.
Nor does the horror of approaching war
Nor of misfortunes which our hopes may mar,
Create in me the urge to pen this rhyme,
For nothing can occur before its time,
But it is something which as humans we
To do or not to do are often free,
Something as humans which we ought to know
If we desire to live in peace, and grow
To that intensely blissful state sublime,
Attained by holy sages in their time.
I write of something which without mistake
We can discern if we completely shake
Ourselves free from the hold of self-conceit
And by the Altar of Truth take our seat,
And it is this, that since we have digressed,
From light and more towards the shadow pressed
Than is consistent with our inner growth,
With our intelligence and morals both,
We have, due to the action of a Law,
Developed in ourselves a serious flaw
Which warps our judgment and denies us Light,
When with atomic arms we choose to fight.
Had there not been a numbness in our thought
The use of nuclear arms from the first ought
To have been cried down and condemned by all,
Further use of this dread device to stall,
As there was time enough, since their first use
A less disastrous type of war to choose.
To assess their dread capacity for harm
And put a total ban upon the arm.
For nuclear power confers resistless might
Against which 'have-nots' cannot hope to fight.
But they desisted from obstructive steps,
And protests came but seldom to their lips,
As if bewitched, they left the 'haves' to do
The worst, and keep on adding to that too.
But for the apathy that seized their mind
They could have made a clamor all combined,
Making it hard for nuclear states to escape,
Without to some adjustment lending shape.
With more than half the world all on one side
These states could not against their will decide
Without exposing their ignoble aim,
And earning condemnation for the same.
As if there was a charm to make them numb
They all remained too long inert and dumb;
But some awakening to the stunning truth,
Reminded of it by outspoken youth,
That nuclear arms bestow invincible might,
They are now keen to have the fiery blight,
As if possession of this pest bestows
A rare distinction, like contentious crows,
Which, when they see one light on carrion, haste
To reach the spot, the putrid dish to taste.
There must be, after all, some cogent cause
For this unhealthy lull and sickly pause
In our instinctive, forceful urge to live,
When deadly hazards cause for action give,
For this unnoticed grave, abnormal tinge
Of slackness in an impulse on which hinge
Our life and all, making us so obtuse,
That monstrous weapons which can mountains fuse
And lakes desiccate, we take lying down,
As if engrossed deep in a study brown.
Survey the world for one effective stir,
And you will come to know I do not err,
That there is no concerted effort done,
And no opposing dissidents, as one,
Demand the banning of this dread device,
That can wipe off whole nations in a trice;
Of this Satanic world-destroying bane,
Because a palsy has come o'er our brain,
Such as has ne'er been on the earth before,
A serious warning from the Eternal Shore
Of Cosmic Life to make mankind alert
That her intelligent mind is weighed with dirt.
Look at the people passing unconcerned,
Absorbed deep in what they have lost or earned,
And mark there is no serious talk about
What should, indeed, fill them with fear and doubt:
About the alarming state the world is in
Where our existence hangs upon the spin
Of change to cause the initial clash that can,
In but a day effect the wreck of man,
And then no one can tell what will befall
Or who will suffer-others or us all.
There must be some defect beyond our ken
Which, yet unnoticed by the world of men,
Has caused a partial torpor of the sense
Of safety, made this instinct slack and dense,
Has in some way eclipsed the Orb of Light,
The Source of all our sense of wrong and right,
Has somehow caused obstruction in the Ray,
Which keeps the evil threatening us at bay,
And like the commonly met morbid streak,
In those towards drink or vice who are weak,
Is not perceptive of the nuclear threat,
Although to other hazards most alert.
Is there not something morbid in this calm,
This sense of safety, this pretense and sham,
That keeps us tongue-tied and somehow contrives
To make us dead to a danger to our lives?
Which having now become a usual trait
Keeps us from knowing our abnormal state?
Keeps us from knowing e'en that there is ground
For worry, for which some cure must be found?
While some deceived by hope that Heaven will save
The world somehow, ignore the yawning grave,
Again forgetting that Celestial Laws
Are always just in the events they cause.
Chapter 3
Modern War Is Inferno Actualized
(i)
Call it coincidence or call it fate,
Call it the fruit of lust for power or hate,
Or call it by whatever name you like
The unmistakable fact cannot but strike
A keen mind that in some mysterious way,
Whate'er the reasons for the grim display,
Mankind at certain intervals is gripped
By grave distemper of the mind, and whipped
Until blood oozes from the livid frame,
And she collapses broken, wounded, lame.
This happened, as if willed by destiny,
Twice in the first half of this century.
The start entailed such heavy sacrifice
And end exacted such a dreadful price
In millions crippled for life, millions killed,
Millions with lasting grief and anguish filled,
That, as one terribly burnt once by fire
Retains the memory for his life entire,
This should have caused a feeling e'er so strong
And so intense, persisting for so long,
That no compelling pressure should have led
Nations again the same dread path to tread.
By some inscrutable Law, we still ignore,
Forgetfulness of what has gone before,
Affects the victims to such grave extent
They lose all memory of the punishment
Or, if recalled, it is so dim and vague
That far from fleeing from the deadly plague,
More lethal than the foul bubonic sore,
They soon invite its ravages once more.
Once more to hear the cries of dreadful pain,
And see the gruesome corpses of the slain,
Once more to experience all the horror borne
That had made millions wretched and forlorn;
Once more the same colossal loss of lives
And lamentations of grief-stricken wives;
Once more to pass the same distracting round
Of rush for work or shelter underground:
A mania, now become a common trait,
Such that it would not be amiss to state
That people in this age amass and hoard
One day to put it all to fire and sword.
This is the story of a rebel world
Which every now and then into hell is hurled,
Whose teeming populations, as if struck
By manic frenzy, at times run amuck,
And long before the awful headlong dive
Straight into Hades, kicking and alive.
Prepare the instruments of torture meant
To cause a torment till the heart is rent,
To shriek and groan, to writhe and twist in pain,
With awful anguish to be maimed and slain,
To bear the dread, excruciating smart
Of frightful wounds that make the stoutest heart
Weep like a woman, blubber like a child,
When not in stupor or delirium wild.
What poetic imagination sought
To paint of hell is literally now wrought
In every trench and every battleground,
Where screaming, moaning wretches sprawling round,
Lie in such twisted and contorted shapes
And bear such torment till the breath escapes,
As e'en the most imaginative men
Could ne'er envision, much less put to pen.
The incurably wounded, burnt or maimed
Present a sight that should make us ashamed;
So dreadfully battered, mangled, filled with scars,
As if crushed to a pulp with iron bars,
Unfit to attend to any vital need,
To rise unaided, ease themselves or feed;
Acutely conscious minds in fleshy tombs,
Or monstrous freaks born of inhuman wombs;
Their life one long-drawn night of agony,
Allowed to feel but not to hear or see,
The face a shapeless lump devoid of eyes,
And mouth a hole through which the spirit cries;
The types of human wretches who alive
Although dead to the world, in pain, survive
Out of the victims of a modern war,
Maintained in strict seclusion from us far.
This is the mockery to which, with thought
And care, civilization has been brought,
Setting for many years a hell ablaze
On earth to live in, shudder at, and gaze
On ghastly suffering and appalling wrecks,
As if a vampirish seductress becks
The gaudy caravan by devious means,
To taste the horror of infernal scenes.
What is amazing is the curious fact
That, as if some abnormal forces act
To sway their minds, soon after each such spell
Of dreadful torment in this raging hell,
The victims 'gain forget the torture borne,
Or countless dead whom still their kinsfolk mourn,
And with the scars still showing on the flesh
Make haste to invite the agony afresh.
(ii)
It is not courage nor brave disregard
Of death that we are not now on our guard
Against the fast increasing nuclear arms;
Nor are we rendered dumb by spells and charms,
So that we do not raise our voice to stop
The growth of this pest for the human crop;
Nor is it mere distaste towards a role
Which is beyond our province and control;
Nor apathy towards a problem, most
Concerning statesmen and the ruling host;
But it is something deeper and acute
Which in a serious crisis keeps us mute,
Makes us oblivious to a deadly threat,
While at mere trifles we soon fume and fret.
Perhaps, our attitude is partly due
To this, that we have not a picture true
Of what will happen in a nuclear bout,
And, may be, some of us regard with doubt
The claims made for the hideous nuclear blast,
And think the damage cannot be so vast,
Or that the neutral countries will remain
Unharmed and suffer no distress or pain.
But such a stand is yet again a sign
That we are acting like unthinking kine,
For e'en young children know well what befell
When two small nuclear bombs created hell
In Japan, forcing that brave land to sue
For peace, to avoid more such bolts from the blue.
What havoc would result when nuclear darts
A thousand times more powerful, strike the hearts
Of densely peopled towns and countrysides
To spread a vapor in which death resides,
To emit a radiation that can kill
At scores of miles or burn to ash or grill?
What would befall when dozens, if not more,
Of latest nuclear shafts bombard a shore?
And what would happen when to win in war,
The two belligerents, from each other far,
In hundreds use their most destructive darts,
All aimed at densely populated parts
Of hostile lands to spread, where'er they fall,
For many hundred miles a lethal pall
Of deadly fallout long to hang on earth,
Causing outrageous weather, famine, dearth,
And forming soon into a biting cloud
Enwrap mankind in a corrosive shroud.
We should remember that a missile war,
Whether the combatants are near or far,
Will not be fought out on a foreign shore,
But in our country, at our very door,
And to our chambers will be wafted fast
The flesh-consuming poison of the blast,
Creating dreadful havoc far and near,
Such scenes of devastation, death and fear
That can the dazed survivors rob of will,
Their minds unhinge or with sheer horror kill.
Too soon the whole disrupted human world
Into the depths of chaos will be hurled,
The scene of panic-stricken, frantic crowds,
Unnerved completely by the mushroom clouds,
And stunned, when they entirely shattered find
The interlinked economy of mankind,
Their bank, industrial center, shopping site
Looking like silent graveyards during night,
Of all the glitter, pomp and show bereft,
With not a single living creature left.
The earth enveloped in despair and gloom
For ev'n a moment's joy will have no room.
Like shipwrecked sailors on an island cast
To live in utter want and often fast,
Millions will wilderness make their abode
To live in travail with a crushing load
Of sorrow, suffering and remitless toil
To build the world anew right from the soil.
I am not writing this to fling a scare,
But if it be an error to lay bare
Alarming truths of vital moment for
The whole of mankind at this crucial hour,
Of such importance on them does depend
Whether the race will live or come to end,
I must plead guilty now, and press the plea
That judgment should rest with the progeny,
Which will be better able to decide
How exigent it was to stop the tide,
That sweeping o'er the earth had washed away
Resistance to this Evil of the day.
A child can see the race for massive loads
Of these infernal engines clear forebodes,
In more horrific form and shape, perhaps,
All that I have conveyed with many gaps,
About the grim disaster threatening all
The nations, whom now their pride and the wall
Of self-delusion ne'er allow to gauge
The fury of the storm that soon may rage
To snatch their every comfort, blessing, gift,
If they complacently still choose to drift.
And all their schemes and plans, their hopes and dreams
May be extinguished, like the mellow beams
Of garden candles blown out by the gust
Of an approaching storm, seen by its dust.
If after all the experience gained by us,
And all our knowledge we do not discuss,
And take more seriously the aftermath
Of such a pitfall, looming in our path,
Which shall not only shatter all our bones,
But turn our homesteads into sand and stones,
It means that either we are gripped by sloth,
And would burn rather than turn, like a moth,
From bright ambitious dreams that hold us fast
And draw us headfirst to a holocaust;
Or, like birds fascinated by a snake,
We lie immobile leaving things to take
Their course, until the Bomb makes us its prey,
While we wait hypnotized the fatal day.
Or we are not convinced that such war can
Come to destroy the whole dream world of man,
And hope that luck or prudence will prevail
To bar the use of this infernal hail,
Or that no one is of sense so bereft
To fight a war in which no one is left.
Suppose there is a fifty-fifty chance
That combatants will use the explosive lance,
Or fearful of the outcome may avoid
The dread device lest mankind is destroyed,
What would transpire towards the dismal end,
When one belligerent is forced to bend
Beneath the crushing pressure of his foe,
While girt with nuclear arms from head to toe?
Do you think he will tamely bend his head
And yield the victor e'en this armor dread?
Or, if of human nature you know aught,
Will not just then a nuclear war be fought?
If still some doubts this sound conclusion bar
Recall what happened in the last world war;
When but one power possessed the hellish arm,
Was not yet near defeat or serious harm,
But to deliver a decisive blow,
Demolished two towns with the atomic glow.
(iii)
The state of silence that has followed close
The secret nuclear policy of those
Who have a stock or now prepare the arm,
Has been adopted not to cause alarm
And panic, sure to spread if people know
The full details of what is hid below
The outer gloss of words in which they boast
Possession of a stuff the earth can roast,
And change inhabited spots for many a year
To ghoulish haunts filled with dementing fear.
But oft to mitigate the horror felt
A lame apology is blandly spelt
That nuclear arms serve as deterrents for
Aggressive nations to keep them from war!
Not even the experts who prepare the darts,
No doubt with sorrow weighing on their hearts,
Who raise their potency with matchless skill
To cause more havoc, millions more to kill,
Know what disaster, O God, will occur
When fallout vitiates the atmosphere,
What monstrous evils will corrupt the earth,
What horrors and abortions fill her girth,
When these atrocious bombs in hundreds fall
To spoil the economy of nature all,
Enwrapping in a radiating robe
The famine-stricken, poison-laden globe.
Effects of e'en a few atomic tests
Create in nearby areas deadly pests,
Enough to cause disorder and disease,
To foul the weather, to torment and tease,
Enough to cause fear and uneasiness,
And loud denunciations from the press
Of nearer lands, affected by the blast,
Compelling them to take precautions fast.
But who can say what irreparable harm
Will follow when this foul, Satanic arm,
Like hundreds of volcanoes, bursts to pour
A vitriolic ash on every shore,
Causing climatic rigors never met,
The harmony of nature to upset.
The havoc caused is sure to take a shape
As awful as the door of hell agape,
Would show to horror-stricken mortal sight,
To freeze the marrow with benumbing fright,
As shrieking, groaning wretches twist and writhe
In dreadful postures, and in thick gasps breathe
Corrosive fumes, laid on a scorching bed,
Under a ceiling of fire overhead,
With cold sweat streaming down the anguished face,
While red-hot pins tear off flesh from its place,
No water to assuage the parching thirst
Or cool the burning fever, growing worse.
For days and weeks to endure infernal pain
Until delirium grips the tortured brain,
And soothing death the torment comes to ease,
When their contortions and convulsions cease,
Beyond the reach of aid, as no one near
Is left alive a helping hand to bear.
This is how men to quench their bestial thirst
For power, when pressed, will make the earth
accurst,
One vast, asphyxiating, lethal spot,
The dread abode of flesh-corroding rot,
A fuming hell, a prickly bed of thorns,
Of stifling eves and suffocating morns,
Polluted and infected to the core,
Abode of phthisis and incurable sore,
For decades making God's creation foul
With actions that would shame a desert ghoul,
Filling with poison both the earth and sky
To their descendants safety to deny.
In this realistic epoch we have seen
Blood spattered thickly o'er the country green
And towns, not once or twice but many times,
Not in one land but over many climes,
Showing us clearly what relentless hold
Destructive war has on the human fold.
It is a serious problem for the wise
To tackle, why despite the amazing rise
In knowledge, in aesthetics and in love,
In this one trait man could not soar above
The beasts, but on the contrary has sunk
To greater depths, as if with hatred drunk
For e'en the most ferocious creature known
To self-destructive trends is never prone.
With such a prospect and two bloody wars
Before our eyes, what mental twist debars
The elite from seeing that a bloodier third,
With nuclear weapons, plunging all the world
Into a blazing hell-fire, to our shame,
Might be fought leaving mankind broke and lame,
So dreadfully mangled that it would take an age
To patch the damage done by nuclear rage?
Why do we disbelieve or disregard
The words of those who put us on our guard
Against a possibility that can be
A stark reality for you and me,
Or all of us, demanding from our part
Preventive efforts done with all our heart?
There was a time when courage, skill and arms
Decided battles whose account still warms
The heart and stirs the blood whene'er one reads
Of bold encounters and heroic deeds.
Despite ferociousness and savagery
We still in old wars human features see,
Which marked the fight between two groups of men
From that of beasts in forest and the glen.
But now all that has changed, and war denotes
The slitting open of a million throats
Of sleeping women, men and children small,
One swift, grim massacre of one and all,
With nuclear weapons, deadly germs or gas
To mow down from a distance one whole mass
Of human beings, all left cold in death,
Swimming in blood or gasping hard for breath.
This frame of mind, against all laws of life,
Dictates of conscience, scales and values rife,
And every code of morals ever framed,
We brazenly display now unashamed,
Because irreverent ideas dead
To our divine descent possess our head.
Higher the rise the greater is the fall,
But our elite, forgetful of it all,
Despite enormous rise in knowledge still
Adhere to social patterns matching ill
With our advanced position, which provokes
Of racial consciousness the crushing strokes,
Designed to teach the rebels that the hour
Has come to abjure to dreams of wealth and power,
And find some other way to live in peace,
Not building on the ash of Rome and Greece.
There might come heavier blows that will not spare
Anyone but will be for all to share;
For those who tamely follow a wrong lead
Cannot escape the guilt of evil deed.
The more our weapons gain in power and range
The more the urgency that we should change.
When heaven intends, to suit the Cosmic Plan,
To change unhealthy habits formed by man,
To humble and deflate his bloated head,
Or cleanse the poison skeptic thought has spread;
In short, when there occurs a need for change,
A tangled thread of life to rearrange,
Then ere the evil grows beyond repair
To cure it, as a vacuum in the air,
When it exceeds a certain point, entails
From denser regions furious storms and gales;
Terrestrial life creates a mental storm
A faulty social order to reform.
See how a raging tempest sweeps away
The dust and dirt and throws in disarray
One whole affected region, bringing down,
Like match-sticks, giant trees in many a town
And country, smashing doors and window panes,
And hurling down the roofs in streets and lanes,
Causing a pandemonium while men dash
For shelter, midst the deafening din and crash
Of falling debris and the thundering roar
Of wind, in fury rising more and more,
Until with fitful gusts its rage abates,
When men and things resume their normal states.
Does not the same befall when dreadful storms
Of riot and revolution change the forms
Of governments and social systems which
In man's progressive movement cause some hitch?
Did not the same befall whene'er the rage
Of great historic wars in any age
Hit kingdoms and world empires, like a blast,
Their sovereignty and boundaries to recast?
Did not then millions with their precious lives
Remove impediments which, with the gyves
Of wealth and power, enchained a massive part
Of mankind, ruling it with as much art
As is displayed now by some nations which
In man's advancement cause again a hitch,
And so, as has befallen oft before,
The same dread process may recur once more;
This time with more destructive weapons than
Those used before by power-besotten man?
Alas, our lust for power or wealth untold
Should so befool us and our thinking mold
That, with our brilliant intellectual rise,
We should think that the measures we devise
Or contemplate, untrue to man and God,
As diplomatic trick, pretense or fraud,
Can e'er succeed against the Almighty Plan
Of Heaven aimed at the unity of man.
Can we arrest the movement of the earth,
Or shorten by an inch its mighty girth,
Prevent the sun from rising in the east,
Or cool its fiery ardor in the least,
Or hold a while an atom from its course
Without encountering its explosive force?
If not, what lack of sense in us denies
The knowledge that when nought under the skies
Can flout the laws of nature or its might
Resist, can puny man put up a fight,
By mean resort to sneaking trick and ruse,
Against a measure Heaven decides to use?
Chapter 4
Religion as the Mouthpiece
Of the Evolutionary Impulse
(i)
That we are passing through a crucial phase
Is well reflected in the shining rays
Of sun and pallid luster of the moon,
Perceived by only those who have the boon
Of Supersensory Vision, the most rare
Of all the rich endowments which we share.
Because mankind has made a sudden shift
From ways of life that can bestow the gift;
From rules of conduct which conduce to make
The mind serene, a placid conscious lake,
Whose limpid waters clearly show below
Of Cosmic Consciousness the radiant glow,
The modern world displays a serious dearth
Of men of vision needed on the earth
To feel the pulse of nature and prescribe
The mode of conduct for the human tribe,
Climbing a lofty, unfamiliar height,
Which needs at every step a guiding light.
Does it not look to you as rather odd
That we depend for all we know of God
On books and utterances of some men born
In dim antiquity, when earth was shorn
Of all the glamor that makes modern life
One tense performance of unending strife?
And no one in the intervening span
Of time could say a single word more than
What they had said or press a cubit more
Beyond the line already drawn before?
If you agree that this has been the case
Can you the cause of this stagnation trace?
Why since the time of prophets men became
So void of heavenly grace and are the same
In this amazingly productive span,
As if since then God has forsaken man?
Can you assign a valid cause for this,
Why in this rich, industrial age we miss
The ennobling presence of that lofty class
Of men, whose words inspired the human mass
To righteous deeds with such a soul appeal
That they can, e'en now, moral torpor heal?
Do you believe that was a simpler age
More suited to the anointed seer and sage,
Or more productive for the visionary
Than later periods, when mankind, though free
And more sophisticated, contact lost
With nature, and of this breach paid the cost
In utter absence of such men encrowned
By Heaven with higher knowledge most profound?
Can we ascribe this rather strange surcease
Of great Messiahs to the high increase
In man's material comforts, and the slow
But sure advance of mortals, high and low,
Towards a richer and a healthier life,
Full of amenities so cheap and rife,
That dire necessity does not now force
The more susceptible to have recourse
To rigid penance or the need to heal
Their sorrows with intense religious zeal?
Which means the earlier need for prophets ceased
When science man's temporal hardship eased.
If this is so, why do we then rely
So much on old religious lore and try,
As far as we can, in our thought and deed,
To act upon the tenets of our creed?
The time has come when mankind should decide
If it, in future, can with safety ride
In two dissimilar boats, one out of which
Aspires to God, the other to be rich
And strong to have all that the earth can give,
Believing man has but one life to live.
(ii)
Does it not strike you as extremely strange
That, at this lofty height, the more we change
Towards a more and more luxurious mode
Of life the more we lack a common code
That could all nations bind in harmony,
Each of them self-administered and free?
But far from this we build a vicious load
Of arms, on power and wealth to keep our hold.
And why? Because we fail to understand
That in our progress nature has a hand,
And when we battle hard to have our way
We, sometimes, find in front a grim array
Of forces we cannot resist, designed
To change the wrong direction of our mind,
And hence the urge to increase our nuclear might
But serves the aim of Heaven to set us right.
What can our puny wit and strength avail
Against a Power that rules the stormy gale,
The wind and tide, the sun, the moon and stars,
If it ordains the scourge of bloody wars
To teach the lessons we too oft forget,
Upon which hoary Time his Seal has set,
The lessons binding for the evolving race
Which of all great religions form the base.
This hallowed teaching calls upon mankind
To lead a simple, healthy life to find
Its way to God, the source of human life,
And win perfection with ennobling strife,
To treat all folk as brothers, kith and kin,
And raise the fallen, heavenly grace to win,
To deal with all as one does with oneself,
And not betray them to gain power or pelf,
To have the feeling always that the Lord
Does o'ersee all our actions and record.
If we into our mind's hid sanctum peep
To see how far we these directions keep,
Can we still wonder at a grim reward
For just the contrary endeavor hard,
For our sophistication heedless of
Conscientious scruples, waived off with a laugh?
These golden lessons were not taught to serve
As empty ornaments to adorn the curve
Of lips, or but to swell the memory,
But of our life a vital part to be.
Since most of us have failed to school our heart
To make these rules of life a changeless part,
We lack in peace and make the earth a base
For war, since individuals make the race.
You may discredit this and loudly scoff
At what I say, dismiss it with a laugh,
Or more resistant and rebellious grow,
But that will not avert the awful blow
Which will, as surely as the fire is hot,
Descend to change the tenor of our thought.
For what we do is not consistent with
Revealed commands, so either they are myth
Or we are in for trouble, so let us
See what is right-our faith or cleverness.
I make a firm assertion, no doubt bold
For my most humble station, but of old
This doubt has rankled in full many a heart,
Of which the crop is now the nuclear dart:
A weapon so opposed to common sense
And one's instinctive urge for self-defense,
That any normal man, free of the cloud
Of doubt, with judgment and foresight endowed,
When brooding o'er it cannot but discern
That either it serves as a measure stern
Of Heaven for our correction, since no form
Of life reacts 'gainst its instinctive norm,
Or there is something in Creation wrong
And we but to a godless world belong.
Except these two conclusions, not inapt,
It is a riddle what mist has enwrapt
The mind of man, compelling him to invite
A dreadful end, his cleverness despite
A weird behavior followed by no kind
Of life, save when death makes its instinct blind;
A horribly abnormal trait we fail
To mark as clouds before our vision sail.
If truth and righteousness have real worth
And but to mortal thought owe not their birth,
Can we conceive of something more accurst,
And sacrilegious than this horrid thirst
In man to cause extinction at his will
Of countless forms of life this planet fill?
So either nature is unjust and blind,
Or there is some unfathomed Law behind
Our present fatal choice to act like this,
And has a meaning which today we miss,
But must become apparent at its time
To strengthen mortal faith in Laws Sublime;
And if it be not so, then Faith should cease
And leave men free to frolic as they please.
For if you hold belief in God, can He
Be so impotent or leave men so free
That they kill millions, as one kills a louse,
While He looks timidly on, like a mouse?
An infantile belief that cannot stand
The probe of reason or the keen demand
Of stern morality, for it would mean
That Satan is the master, and we lean
On God, as slaves to false beliefs, and not
Because He is the ruler of our lot.
(iii)
But if our faith is true and there exists
A just Creator hidden in the mists
Of whirling atoms and revolving suns,
Whose will through every grain of matter runs,
Expressed in partly known perennial laws,
Which all phenomena of nature cause,
There must be still some hidden laws behind
What is yet dark and puzzling to our mind;
Behind what is mysterious and obscure,
Or that which keeps us doubting and unsure,
And these unfathomed laws, when they are known,
May clear the doubts to which now we are prone.
These undeciphered laws, to make us gain
Serenity of mind, must make it plain
Whether or not the sphere of life has rules
That make some people wise and others fools,
Create divergence and disparity,
Which so acutely rankles you and me,
Or cause the injustice and unfairness found
In such a soul-tormenting form around,
That 'tis no wonder Faith has ceased to give
The solace by which we in peace can live.
Can we suppose that save our puny mind
The rest of nature is inert and blind?
That man is master of his destiny,
In his own will and choice entirely free?
If this were so could prophet, seer and sage
Have shown a Path, conforming to each age,
For folk to follow to deserve the Prize
Which they all hinted at to make us wise
That we are destined for a higher goal,
And so must act a more becoming role,
That mankind has to reach a State Divine
Where free of chains our souls in glory shine?
This Path or Dharma, call it what you will,
Demands that we should conquer, but not kill
Our passions and desires, tame and subdue
Our nature to be noble, pure and true;
And these instructions were precisely laid
To save from error, rightly guide and aid
Evolving mortals destined for a state
Of deathless glory, reachable soon or late:
A state of Cosmic Knowledge most sublime
Ordained for all mankind in course of time.
But in this age there has occurred a clash
Between our judgments as, mad after cash,
We have forgotten all about the Aim
Of Life, for which the sage and Savior came,
Forgotten that evolving as we are
We should not with improper actions bar
Our path, which means the same as when we try
To stop our heart or lungs, with pain to cry;
Which means to arrest a natural growth decreed
To uplift our mind, ennoble thought and deed;
Which means to disregard all that was taught
By every Founder of religious thought.
This soul-illuminating trend affects
People of all professions, creeds and sects,
Affects decisively all mortals born
To end one day the always rankling thorn
Of death, and joy of deathlessness to taste,
If only they their spare time do not waste,
If only they avail of the golden chance
Of human life to hasten their advance,
And reach the portals of the holy shrine,
Where mortals with immortal luster shine.
The learned scholars on whom we depend
For guidance, have no knowledge of this trend,
Have no suspicion of this hidden urge,
Which like a bright star shining on the verge
Has raised up mankind from a savage shore
To heights of culture, higher still to soar.
No wonder then that scarce a man alive
Has any inkling of this powerful drive
That builds in him a cosmic conscious mind,
Eternal life and peace sublime to find.
Through lack of knowledge of this Plan Divine
We harm and desecrate the evolving Shrine
Of thought, collectively and one by one
And, still unmindful of the damage done,
Expose ourselves to nature's righteous wrath
To stop our wild departure from the Path.
(iv)
When you exhaust all valid reasons for
This morbid state, look through the corridor
Of time, and try to see what fate befell
The ancient empires, which first prospered well,
But later on, contracting faulty traits,
Or morbid thirsts, allured by tempting baits,
And slaves to habits which they could not mend,
Succumbed to them and hastened to their end.
The modern gaudy pageants too await,
By their refusal to change, the same fate.
For mankind has now to a state evolved
Where all schismatic wrangles must be solved,
So that the united race with cautious tread
Along the Cosmic Path may move ahead.
But if a basic change does not occur,
Or out of mutual fear we make no stir
To build a safe, harmonious world with speed,
Embracing every color, class and creed,
The fateful day, clairvoyant spirits fear,
Will come, by force, a global state to rear.
For all adepts, with astral vision blest,
See but one reason for the deep unrest
Seething in men of every faith and class,
As if a current passing through the mass
Demands removal of restrictions which
In man's fraternity create a hitch.
The present restless trend in human minds,
Which in disturbance and commotion finds
A vent, is but a veiled form of this urge
In one united world regime to merge.
At such a lofty intellectual height
It is suicidal for nations to fight,
Since nuclear armaments to mortals give
The choice of whether man shall die or live;
A most decisive factor that should weigh
With those the destinies of nations sway,
And since division is the root of war
They must be more united than they are.
Hence now the choice before the leading minds
Is that their wisdom soon in union binds
The still divided nations of the earth,
To one terrestrial empire to give birth,
Or be prepared for a disastrous war,
With blood the tightly shut doors to unbar.
For Heaven at no compulsive course will stop
To plant the mentally well-seasoned crop
Of humans on the Path to Cosmic Life,
Demanding freedom from contentious strife.
The safety, peace and progress of the race
Can ne'er be built on the explosive base
Of modern armament; this is a sign
To priests and rulers from the Power Divine,
That they must sink their differences to save
Mankind from burial in an atomic grave,
For jarring creeds and sparring nations are
The surest means to invite a nuclear war;
So either nuclear bouts or federal ties,
United mankind lives, divided dies.
I know my these few words will not avail
Against the summoned force of Doom's assault,
But hoping better counsels might prevail
For Heaven's mercy soon to mend our fault;
I, in obedience to an Inner Voice,
Coming from regions deeper than the mind,
Beyond the sphere of mortal will and choice,
Make this submission to alert mankind
That we have passed beyond the safety line
In our immoderate thirst for wealth and might,
Which is against Creation's Grand Design,
And forces Nature too to set us right.
Vibrations in the planet's astral plane
Denote the nearness of the awful Day,
When Hell may rage to make war-mongers sane,
For true, perennial peace to pave the way.
The indications are that time is due
To recreate respect for Heaven's Law,
And that a reign of terror may ensue,
So that the rebel hosts a lesson draw.
Believers in a God cannot condemn,
In their defense, this retributive course,
For if the Almighty Ruler does not stem
The tide of evil, and allows brute force
To flout eternal laws, it would confute
The truth of revelation, leaving man
To follow any self-appointed route
Of life, as well or as ill as he can.
But if religious genius has been right
In its awareness of the moral path,
Then when astray, believing but in might,
Offenders must incur Celestial Wrath.
Alas, the narrowness of human mind
Allowed no conqueror to have a peep
Beforehand at his end, but we can find,
If we employ our mental eye to sweep
Horizons of the ancient empires, built
Upon the sweat and blood of weaker folk,
That they had to disgorge the fruit of guilt,
And soon with their own blood the earth to soak.
Do you not sense now in the atmosphere
Of earth, a turbulence among the youth,
Unrest in elders, though some here and there
Try hard to keep excited tempers smooth?
A clear sign that the Fountain, which supplies
The stream of human thought, reveals a trend
Of disaffection and diversely tries
The factors causing it somehow to end.
The whole terrestrial surface has become
One vast Satanic web of foul intrigue,
With some conspiring on this side and some
On that to form for war a Mighty League.
And from this fiendish web may soon emerge
A strong contingent of determined states,
Which still but dimly seen upon the verge,
For its abruptly launched offensive waits
The destined hour, the predetermined day,
The appointed moment and the fated year,
When some unreckoned cause shall start the fray,
And crowds the sounds of bursting missiles hear.
The best defenses aimed to intercept
And stop a streaking dart, ere it can smite
To vaporize in seconds, as if swept
Clean from the planet, some forechosen site,
Shall prove of no avail against the blasts
Of nature's mightiest Force, employed before
Its time, by power-drunk minds for holocausts,
To wash the stigma of guilt with their gore.
And those who still believe, despite the array
Of facts to show that stern Supernal Laws,
From atoms to sidereal systems, sway
The cosmos, that they can escape because
Inventive man is from their hold immune,
For this fallacious view, itself a crime,
Shall reap, when arrogantly out of tune,
A bitter harvest in due course of time.
Past all defenses, past all ramparts built
At such enormous cost as could suffice
To keep earth's starving millions from the guilt
Of crimes committed for a morsel twice
A day, the infernal engines, as if wrought
By nature for requite through mortal hands,
Shall spread destruction, poison, death and rot
Among the people of contending lands.
And this to such a staggering extent
That future men shall shudder at the thought,
And centuries of time and labor spent
On pomp and vanity shall come to naught.
The awe-struck world shall shiver, numb with fright,
Deprived of feeling, movement, joy and mirth,
As monstrous globes of fire site after site,
Teeming with human crowds, wipe off the earth.
Thus shall be fought, to purge the poisoned world
Of sin, a bloody Mahabharata*,
With hellish arms by human agents hurled,
To re-establish faith in Moral Law.
The only remedies are Holy awe,
A sane apportionment of earthly wealth,
One world confederacy with equal law,
Improved morality and mental health,
Caught in the mesh of passion, pride and lust,
Become confirmed materialists, we trust
No more in faith and God, in heaven and hell,
And live but to amass, our needs to swell;
Alas, awareless that beyond our dreams,
Beyond the moon and stars and lustrous beams
Of sun, a deathless, happy state awaits
Us all, if we resist temporal baits.
See how full many centuries before,
When needs were few and meager was the store
Of goods, the earth produced the noblest men;
Religious geniuses, not met since then,
Whose simple narratives of Realm Divine,
For that sublime experience make us pine.
A state of such surpassing glory filled
With joy celestial that the mind is stilled
In ecstasy, in overwhelming bliss,
For more than that when ravishing Houris kiss
Impassioned men, than highest earthy joy
Which floods the hungry senses but to cloy;
That most intense joy native to the soul,
When free from ego it becomes the Whole.
One with a marvelous pulsating Main
Of deathless Life, beyond the reach of pain,
One with the Eternal Source that gives it birth,
One with the universe, the heaven and earth,
Lost in the Cosmic Deep of Being, past
The thought of life and death, the first and last,
It soars beyond the opposites, serene,
Itself the unified seer and the seen.
This is the future state for which mankind
Is destined, if we let the evolving mind
Have freedom for the inner process which
Is tending to remold it and enrich,
Until the mortal, one with Cosmic Life,
Discerns the meaning of this baffling strife,
To live a glorious life as nature wills,
One which his dreams and high ideals fulfills,
For which, in fact, primordial man was born,
In time as Cosmic Man the earth to adorn.
But now obstructed, as we cannot scan
A day ahead beyond our mortal span,
The soul-uplifting Force, to pass the hitch,
Creates the seething ferment and the itch
For war, a glaring symptom of this age,
Ignored and o'erlooked in the burning rage
For sensuous comforts and luxurious ware,
Exciting pleasures and delicious fare,
And other things, exhausting now on it
The massive armory of all our wit,
Without a single thought towards the soul,
The Spark Divine, of all our search the goal.
Look at the sums on war and pleasure spent,
While millions starve for want of nutriment,
A most revolting feature at a time,
When intellect is basking in her prime,
And needs the human touch to be divine
Or lacking charity to face decline,
Compelling Heaven, as gently as it can,
To clean the dirt, enabling chastened man
To labor for perfection till the race
Attains the heaven-appointed crown with grace.
Chapter 5
A Divided Mankind: Unsafe In the Atomic Age
(i)
The first need of our time is to recast
The current concept, borrowed from the past,
Of what should be the boundaries and the span
For all the homelands of gregarious man,
And whether nations should with hatred seethe,
With every one of them armed to the teeth,
Or they should all unite for earth to be
A haven of peace for our progeny.
There is no reason why man-made confines
Between two nations should have rigid lines,
Why mountains, rivers, deserts, ocean shores
On peoples segregation should enforce;
Why nations should erect forbidding walls
To split themselves and then resort to brawls
On narrow strips of land or right-of-way,
And keep the world in turmoil every day.
Why country, culture or a lingual bond
Or shade of color in black, brown or blond
Or mode of worship or design in dress,
Mankind should into tight compartments press,
And in her union function as a bar;
The primary cause of internecine war,
Of savage bloodshed on some flimsy ground,
Which to our heirs will idiotic sound.
When all our efforts at invention tend
The barriers of time and space to end,
To bring the people of the earth so near
That they can one another's whisper hear,
Or reach the farthest corner of the globe
In less time than it takes a beau to robe,
How can we keep our narrow lines of thought
Against this close interconnection wrought
By our own efforts and desire to span
The gulf of distance keeping man from man?
How can we still house in the narrowed space
Our former prejudice against a race,
Or nation or a foreign creed or caste,
When spatial walls are disappearing fast,
And all the broad earth has become for good
One closely linked, contiguous neighborhood?
How can our faulty notions lead to peace
That though we now converse with France and
Greece
As neighbors, or in but some hours alight,
In them from Malaya by aerial flight,
Yet in our mind their people still regard
As foreigners against them on our guard?
How can this antiquated view, a spawn
Of times when man depended on his brawn
For travel, nourishment and all his needs,
Continue still to sway his thoughts and deeds,
During an era when his lazy crawl
Has gained the swiftness of a cannonball;
When food and fabrics come from all the globe
To feed his hunger and provide his robe,
When every nation near or far away
Relates to him the gossip of the day;
When melody from every land regales
His ears, and their distress his mind assails;
When he for business and material needs
To every corner of the planet speeds;
To buy their products, crops or metal ores,
Supplied by many distant foreign shores,
To have commodities of every type,
Which are a part and parcel of our life?
How can he think in terms of nation, race,
Or color, when the whole terrestrial space
Has grown too narrow for his lightning speed,
Too scanty for his still augmenting need,
And too congested with less room to hold
The rapidly increasing human fold?
When, rather than divide the crowded earth
Into compartments, causing greater dearth
Of space, he can, as one terrestrial whole,
Control of other planets make his goal;
For which already nature must have kept
A good provision, when he grows adept
In setting his domestic problems right,
And, skilled in interplanetary flight,
Can shift to other orbs part of the race
To people new-found territory by Grace.
Before man came was not the earth supplied
With all the needs of life on which he thrived;
What wonder then if there now stands reserved
Some place where his enhanced need will be served?
Apparently the leading intellects
Of our day fail to gauge the full effects
Of new discoveries that have changed the face
Of earth, relaxed the chains of time and space,
Remolding the whole mental frame of men,
More so that of the youth who have begun
To grow rebellious to the older norms
And values-nature's signal for reforms!
But e'en the ablest statesmen fail to scan
The fire aglow now in the heart of man,
Creating in the hid depth of his mind
A sense of unity with all mankind,
A broader outlook, wider mental range,
Although himself unconscious of the change;
A keener urge to share the weal and woe
Of every nation, whether friend or foe;
An ever-growing wish to be on par
With other people, living near and far;
About whose wealth, abundance and high state
He knows as well as of his closest mate;
Proximity creating what before
Remoteness cooled, a yearning more and more
To have harmonious bonds and warmer ties
With all the people as friends and allies.
How with this growing fervor in our mind
Can we a people to one region bind,
When old ideas of a native land
Are changing rapidly towards a grand,
And more progressive concept, full of worth,
That all humanity's homeland is earth?
When intellect with her inventive zeal
Brings distant nations close, and makes them feel
That all the earth is free for them to roam,
To be their country, granary and home,
Their orchard, vegetable garden, field,
Their farm and dairy, ready with their yield,
What madness has the elders seized that they
Still act as Romans once did in their day;
And, all unconscious of the altered trends
Of thought, pursue the same out-dated ends,
Discordant with the higher stature won
By mankind through the fruitful labor done
By genius, which came in a fertile team
To make this age the first part of a dream.
Because the learned still take no account
Of this commotion in the fancy's fount;
This widening ripple on the mental pools
Not only of the wise, but also fools,
The wrong political ideas of old,
Which should have been revised, have the same hold
That they had, when a trip to Java meant
Absence of years from home for one who went.
How can progressive concepts be confined
Inside the prison of a narrow mind?
Or how can notions of the clan and tribe
The thinking of our bright age circumscribe?
And not excite derision or scorn
In people in the present milieu born,
On whom the idea of nation now holds sway,
As that of tribe on tribals did one day?
So, too, the idea of the nation born
In former times, long after the dim morn
Of history, to which we now hold fast
As something which denotes the very last
Advance in our political growth, sure
To stay unchanged, till mankind would endure,
Is but an idle dream, viewed in the light
Of what befell those who once ruled by right:
The tribal chieftain and the feudal lord,
With man's evolving stature to accord.
Can nations stay, when factors that had bred
The concept in Greek times, since long are dead;
Out-dated by our own inventive rage
Which, for a one world-state, has set the stage?
And so our Heads of State whom crowds applaud
May share the fate soon of the feudal lord.
(ii)
Can you believe mankind can long survive,
If scores of nations make a frantic drive,
As they are doing now, to equip their swarms
Of fighting troops with all the latest arms;
With nuclear weapons, in a moment's span
Which can blast countries and kill every man:
All keen to shine in glory, wealth and might,
In power and self-importance at their height,
To be acclaimed the foremost of the race
To have among them all the pride of place?
They are extolling patriotic zeal,
Like serfs and tribesmen who once thought their weal
And woe lay with the chieftain and the lord,
Praised to the sky by minstrel, clown and bard:
A function brilliant penmen still perform,
With this debasing practice to conform,
When, for some favor, they with fawning praise
A king or ruler nigh to godhood raise,
Unmindful that events are taking form,
To drown their panegyrics in the storm
Brewing now many homes to burn and scorch
To force the next step in man's upward march.
And, since to gain these ends each nation tries,
With all her skill, to throw dust in the eyes
Of watchful neighbors, and by hook or crook
To gain a place of vantage or a nook
That can help her attain a forward rank,
Or for a higher leap provide a plank,
To get the better of the rival states,
Or pick the pockets of confiding mates,
What wonder then the whole world has become
An Augean Stable, and the earth's scum
Is hired by leading countries with the aim
To keep ahead in this nefarious game?
How can our rising generations gain
In truth and virtue or grow sound and sane
In this tornado of deceit and wile,
Which does the whole of earth's crust defile,
Whereof the young imbibe a daily dose,
When shrieking headlines in the news disclose
Corruption, scandals and misdeeds of those
In whom whole nations all their trust repose?
Or, when disputing nations lay the blame
On one another for gross acts of shame;
So heinous that no murderer or thief
Has done what many a ruler, statesman, chief
Still does on the plea that the need of time
Or nation's interest called for the crime:
Engineered butcheries, uprisings, riots
And bloody coups, acclaimed as brave exploits,
Of those who pose as models for the rest,
And are, by vote, ranked as a nation's crest.
Observe now what conflicting forces act
On human minds to scatter and distract,
To pour into the psychological pool
Of man a tincture at once warm and cool,
To make his life a contradiction torn
Between the need of times and creeds outworn.
We see what our advancing intellect
Has since created, as the architect
Of our terrestrial life, to fill our hands
With choicest things and gifts from all the lands;
To lay, whene'er required, beneath our feet
The magic carpet by which we can meet,
And talk to all the people on the earth
To take part in their daily grief and mirth.
But still the elders of a State demand
All one's devotion for his native land,
Which makes him blind to what a child can see
That he belongs to all humanity;
That he is free now of the chains that bound
His mind and body to the soil around;
And has attained a global stature which,
To grow, an earth-wide culture must enrich.
Today few are the nations that can trace
Their pedigree to but one stock or race,
To but one blood, descent or but one brood,
To have the pride of flawless nationhood.
Full many factors, nigh in every clime,
Acting diversely through colossal time,
Upheavals, cataclysms, famine, dearth,
Compelled uprooted crowds to roam the earth;
To flee the threat of shortage, foes or drought,
Creating with the intermixture wrought
New groups, new people, nations, tribes and clans
Whose past the anthropologist now scans.
And e'en today, despite the rigid ties
That ban admixture, many a pair defies
Conventional bonds to marry out of caste
Or creed, which conservatives watch aghast,
Resulting in crossbreeding and fresh broods
To meet mysterious nature's changing moods.
Besides this, exodus, migration, war
And other causes that draw people far
To settle in another land or clime,
By intermarriages, in course of time,
May slowly with new ethnic types dilute
The present nations nature's aim to suit.
Viewed in this light what factor still remains
To forge the inelastic mental chains
That keep and have in isolation kept
The people of a country often swept
By fierce, successive waves of foreign hosts
That mated with the natives of the coasts,
Or drove them out in turn to fall a prey
To stronger hordes which with them chose to stay;
And then a natural boundary, common creed,
Language or culture made this mongrel breed
A nation, which the lust for power and rage
Of gain has made an Idol in this age.
The modern nation is a passing phase
In man's yet vaguely grasped instinctive chase
After perennial peace, both in and out,
For which the basic need, without a doubt,
Is the formation of a global state
Entirely free of rivalry and hate;
To mark the consummation of a trend
Which started with Man's first attempt to blend
And mix with other people, groups and tribes:
One of the methods wisdom still prescribes
For peace, abiding happiness and good
Of mankind in one Earth-wide Brotherhood.
(iii)
The modern intellect has been at fault
In bringing mankind to a longer halt
So obstinately at the national bound,
As if it is the last solution found,
Refusing stubbornly to step beyond
The hackneyed orders of which they are fond.
Most of our leading spirits know it well
That war between two nuclear powers would spell
The end of progress and a fiery hell
Would fiercely rage around us all to dwell
For decades, in which awfully mangled, maimed
And mutilated wrecks who once were famed
For beauty, wealth or wit would fill the earth.
But few, indeed, condemn this hopeless dearth
Of deeper insight in those who command
Leading positions of trust in their land.
They are few, as there is a cause behind
The present faulty thinking of mankind;
A kink born of agnostic intellect,
Which holds that man is the sole architect
Of his political and social creeds,
And not that an unseen intelligence leads
The race by steps towards a lofty height,
While blind to it we on mere trifles fight,
And cut each other's throats, fooled by the twist
In thought, that our creations can persist
Against the plan of nature, and this kink
Is more pronounced in the way skeptics think.
Do not today full many nations hold
Diversity of culture in their fold,
Of language, faith, attire and ethnic brands,
That dwell in naturally divided lands?
But still political exigence calls
The lot a nation till the structure falls
Apart, when a war or disruptive trend
This weak admixture does to pieces rend.
The national concept-an exploded myth,
A genealogical tree that has no pith-
Is but a shibboleth of ruling teams
To please the masses with Utopian dreams
Of world supremacy and boundless power,
A most pernicious doctrine at this hour.
Swept off by man-engineered popular tides
On which, for some time, every nation rides,
The wiser heads too, though averse, are loath
To go against the elite and commons both,
And yield to what they would denounce, if free
To choose, as nothing short of lunacy.
But when the destined moment comes to pass,
And war hysteria grips the nation's mass,
The more discerning too are equally hit,
Though knowing the futility of it.
When man's organic frame is strictly bound
By laws that act to keep it safe and sound,
And in distempers, with amazing knack,
Contrive to bring it to its vigor back,
Anent the racial frame can we suppose
That for the whole of mankind nature chose
A loose, capricious course and left the fold
Entirely free its destiny to mold;
And has not bound it with a hid device,
Akin to those which guide the ants and mice,
In the collective frame to be a check
Against propensities the race can wreck.
It must be that the same organic laws
Which make us ill or crazy, also cause
Upheavals, revolutions, riots and wars,
When people pass beyond the safety bars
Towards a way of life disastrous for
The health and welfare of the species or
Discordant with a future aim in view,
And at a crucial time cause in a few
The frenzy and the ferment that soon leads
To dread uprisings and atrocious deeds.
The leader whose fire and infectious zeal,
Resource, flint-heartedness and will of steel,
Master-minds every popular rising aimed
To change political setups earlier framed,
Is not a product of chance but design,
Sent by the racial mind to undermine
Outmoded orders that need instant change
To suit man's e'er extending mental range,
Which vested interests, parochial aims
And conservatism, under various names,
Wish to perpetuate, holding to them fast,
And ne'er allow by choice to be recast,
Until designedly fashioned rebel brains,
Disrupt the order and untie the chains.
Can you explain why turmoil and unrest,
Despite the fact that man now amply blest,
Has all that can make earth a paradise,
Instead of calming down yet higher rise?
They pose a ticklish problem for the shrewd,
If calmly in the right perspective viewed.
For every step to improve and mend the plight
Of people for a smooth and rapid flight
To realms of joy and luxury provokes
The spiteful witch of envy, whose hand stokes
The fire of hatred to such high degree
It threatens to consume humanity?
The richer states, e'en when they freely spend
Out of their coffers with the aim to mend
The sad condition of penurious lands,
Soon find that they had only built on sands,
For not unoft the folk they helped to rise
By their behavior shortly make them wise
That their hearts more with fires of envy glow
Than warmth for the gratitude they owe.
This is because the instinctive urge in man
Is for an equal portion no less than
That of his neighbors, and impelled by greed
He tries his best to make his share exceed
That of the rest, the basic fault which keeps
Mankind in trouble and misfortunes heaps.
The learned of our age are much perplexed
By what is happening now and rightly vexed
At this strange outcome of a grandiose plan,
And unexpected vagaries of man,
Who has a hunger which the more you feed
The more insatiable it grows, indeed.
They are not wise to what they should have known
That nature has antagonistic grown,
That, like a sunspot, on the flaming plane
Of Cosmic Consciousness, which feeds the brain,
A fearsome vortex, signifying wrath,
Proclaims man's wild departure from the path.
(iv)
From ancient records which the earth has kept
Or which the wit and skill of man has left,
Like pyramids of Egypt which now stand
To tell the story of the hoary land,
It is apparent that time after time
Some people of the earth attained a prime,
When with heroic battles they subdued
Their neighbors, not yet with this fire imbued,
And spread their conquest far to distant lands,
To hold colossal empires in their hands.
Our previous history, we cannot fail
To notice, always tells the same old tale;
The same old cycle of unceasing fight
And battle for one with superior might
To annex the conquered regions and enslave
The vanquished nations who, perhaps, as brave,
But, poor in organizing, arms or skill,
Were forced to be submissive to their will.
In many once victorious, wealthy lands,
Now partially engulfed by spreading sands,
The hand of destiny has kept the marks,
Of royal towns and magnificent parks,
Of piles of scattered ruins which bespeak
Wealth, luxury and grandeur at their peak,
On which morosely shines the pallid moon,
Aware how human greatness ends too soon,
That earthly splendor is an empty show-
A meteor's waxing and then waning glow-
Of which the strings are pulled by a mighty Force
That keeps evolving mankind on its course.
Imperial power, high rank and wealth are baits
Which nature uses to tempt both men and states
To strive for higher and still higher peaks,
As once did Romans and before them Greeks,
To gain more power, more treasures and more fame,
Extorted from the gentle, weak and tame,
All this to have more leisure and more time
For what? To meet the ends of quest sublime,
One must pursue with zeal in youth or prime,
To make use of the preparatory stage,
One needs to bloom into a Cosmic Sage.
But oft the leisured folk soon make the means,
Designed to reach a grand end from their teens,
The end itself, and in indulgence drown
Their prime, alas! to lose a glorious crown,
To barter for the pleasure of a day
Eternal blessedness and perennial sway.
Hence nature using time's relentless hand
Too soon destroys the glory of a land,
When those who let their rise to power and wealth
Corrupt their morals and impair their health,
The pillars on which evolution rests
Wherefore their soundness nature keenly tests,
Before admitting to the Holy Shrine
Mortals, on pilgrimage to Life Divine.
Imperial nations and great kings arose
And at the zenith of their glory froze,
As if Fate takes a diabolic joy
In granting greatness only to destroy,
Driving ascendant realms towards decline
When in full glory they begin to shine.
The mammoth edifices the Pharaohs built,
As if ordained by Fate to voice their guilt,
Consumed resources and manpower which bore
Exhausted Egypt down the slippery shore.
The conquests of Napoleon soon bled white
A mighty land, fore'er to lose that height
And victories of Alexander cost
The Greeks their greatness which they shortly lost.
A standing warning to the modern great,
Who fondly think they can escape this fate,
In dark about the Eternal Cosmic Law
Which acts on mortals, as wind does on straw,
And of which scholars, to the grief of man,
Have no awareness nor are prepared to scan.
But which relentlessly will deal again
The same chastisement to the great who, vain
And power-drunk, with imprudent thought and deed
The pace of man's progressive rise impede.
The empires built, while trodden millions wept,
Soon with cyclonic fury off were swept.
Whichever nation domination sought,
Or tooth and nail for vast dominion fought,
Exhausted swiftly by the enormous strain,
And soon depleted by the excessive drain
On manhood and resources fell at last,
To serve as warning lessons from the past
To modern nations which commit again
The same mistake and strive for world domain.
Has not our age, too, witnessed this display
Of lust for power which ended the same way:
Ambitious Hitler's rise to power amidst
The scenes of horror of his iron fist;
And proud Napoleon's dream of world domain,
Built on vast piles of wounded and the slain,
Dreams and ambitions of abnormal minds
Endued with genius of aberrant kinds,
Which, skilled in setting human hearts on fire,
With glowing promises of fulfilled desire,
Of national vanity and cultural pride-
Igniting sparks so easily applied-
And, building strongholds on warm human hearts,
In bloody dramas play conspicuous parts,
To leave soon prostrate, like a fallen tree,
The crowds fooled by their skill in oratory?
Chapter 6
Why Another World War Is Inevitable
(i)
What is the answer to the riddle posed
By our behavior, which is all opposed
To the primordial instinct, rooted deep
In mortals their lives safe from death to keep?
What is the reason for the glaring fact
That threats of nuclear war do not distract
Our minds to that extent as they should do
To worry us and drive to action too?
If our reaction to the menace were
As healthy as it should be, when in fear,
With life on one, death on the other side,
All normal men with lightning speed decide:
How they should act, which way their safety lies
For every animal at danger shies.
Viewed in the right perspective one would think
That people should react with fear and shrink
From e'en the thought of nuclear wars, so grave
It should produce a strong reflex to save
Their life and all, before it comes to pass,
Resulting in destruction of the mass
Of mankind or, at least, those threatened most
Who would, no doubt, make up a mammoth host
Of millions slain and millions in a state
Of torment only Death can palliate.
Bearing in mind that now on several shores
There are concealed or open massive stores
Of nuclear missiles of the latest type,
Ready for use whenever the time is ripe,
Put this one simple question to yourself:
Will all these toys remain locked in a shelf
For ages, and their owners all refrain
From making use of this destructive bane,
And under every provocation hold
To this decision till we all grow old,
And death will spare us the dread scenes we fear
When one day missiles earth will rend and tear?
If you are optimistic, pray excuse
My lapse, if bluntly I contest your views,
If I attempt to show that you are wrong
So much so, that I have no words too strong
To castigate this kind of mental rust;
This intellectual block which takes on trust
Matters of vital import for us all;
Whether the human race shall rise or fall,
Or whether our own world shall stay the same
Or turn into a hell of raging flame.
What are the grounds for your complacent stand,
Trusting that things will not go out of hand,
That all these deadly engines will remain
Unused, and that no unexpected chain
Of chance events will e'er occur to explode
The now precarious state of peace, and goad
Some country, when beyond endurance hit,
To throw all caution to the winds and slit
The slender thread of prudence to unbar
The floodgates of a world-wide nuclear war?
Do you suppose the elite who hold the rein
Of power in your country will e'en remain
(Knowing what devastation can occur,
If they are lax in care or slightly err)
Unmoved, and that no insult, threat or loss
From any side would e'er push them across
The bound of prudence to a state of ire,
Where blind to all the consequences dire,
They rashly use a weapon that would mean
The grim beginning of a Doomsday scene?
If so, you show a woeful ignorance
Of human nature and the role which chance
Can act in forcing men to change their mind,
As happened in the decades left behind,
When chance occurrences, like evil stars,
Drew nations helplessly to bloody wars.
Again what of the many foreign lands
That have the awful weapon in their hands?
Do you suppose that your superior arms,
Or much more larger stock will act like charms
To cow them to inaction or deter?
If so, you still miscalculate and err,
And are committing such a grave mistake
That might cost you your life ere you awake.
You have no knowledge, save from outer signs,
Of their ulterior motives and designs,
And if you measure them with your own yard
That means you previous lessons disregard,
And let yourself be cheated and deceived
By false exteriors to be sorely grieved;
Expose to danger all you value best,
Your life, possessions, household and the rest,
And offer what you love with all your heart
To demolition by the nuclear dart.
(ii)
The view that states will not resort to war
Until in nuclear arms they are on par
Is as fallacious as it is inane,
And everybody wide awake and sane
Can see, and ought to know, that lust for power
Waits not for parity nor mature hour,
But smites when least foreseen and in advance,
The moment it believes there is a chance
To bring a rival down or but to cow
Into submission with a timely blow;
Nor vengeance cares to hold her hand for long
In weighing whether she is weak or strong,
But unexpectedly, more in the rear
Than front, she strikes hard when the foe is near.
Neither your state nor other powers will wait
Your pleasure nor respond to any bait,
Nor stick to any principle nor code
Of law, when mounting pressures spur and goad
Them on to rash decisions and, at once,
The sky may blaze with bursting megatons.
When bent on it no argument at all,
No treaty, agreement or moral wall
Will stop this mad decision any day
To send the fatal weapon on its way.
If still you harbor e'en the slightest doubt
That in the next decisive global bout
The missile will not figure from the start,
Or at the end, to act a ghastly part,
It shows you have not learnt from history,
Or it has clean escaped your memory
That, e'en if they wish it, top statesmen are
Themselves incapable, in peace or war,
Of changing world conditions, at their will,
Whatever be their stature, power or skill;
And all at once on some unlucky day
A single incident may pave the way
Towards a sudden crisis, past their skill;
And nuclear war erupt against their will.
In case you still in them repose some trust
That they can hold firm in a sudden gust
Of adverse wind, when accidents upset
The flimsy balance of peace, you forget
That, clutching with both hands their shaky throne,
Against the oppositions, they are prone
To overact their part to meet the attack
From any hostile country, for if slack
They hear their opponent's derisive cry
That they retreated since they feared to die.
So if we think our clever ruling teams
Can, in the nick of time, hold falling beams,
And keep the roof from crashing on our head,
Then both to sense and prudence we are dead.
Whate'er our diplomats contend or say,
Whatever tricks the foreign statesmen play,
Do not forget that this infernal stock,
This lightning poised above the human flock,
Will not, unto the last, keep circling round,
Just looking for a vacant bit of ground,
Where it can strike without inflicting hurt,
Nor will the owners always stay alert
To keep the Dragon sleeping which but one
Out of ten million men, each with a gun,
Can with a single random shot awake,
And then with its attacks the planet shake.
How long can nations, all armed to the teeth,
Avoid the deadly mine laid underneath,
Avert but one collision that can fire
The dread thing, blowing up the host entire?
How long can statesmen with evasive talk,
The crouching monster of its blind prey balk?
How long can narrow margins and escapes
Avoid the Mouth of Death which widely gapes,
So strong and huge it can in one bite eat
A million living creatures, bone and meat?
We but deceive ourselves or are unwise,
Or still live in a fool's mock paradise,
If, after witnessing the striking change
In war technology and the long range
Of missiles, we ignore these vital facts;
And all surrounded by infernal tracts,
Full many scores in number, which now form
The launching sites for this destructive storm,
We still believe that they will always lie
Intact, and armies battle, kill and die
With normal weapons, and that no reverse
Nor accident nor any mind perverse,
Amongst the warring nations, will ignite,
To wrap the earth in flames, this nuclear blight.
Better it is to keep our mind prepared
More for this: that no effort will be spared
To find some loophole, when the battle starts,
For hurling, lightning-like, these awful darts
To paralyze the foe ere he has time
To take the lead in this Satanic crime.
(iii)
We still will be mistaken if we hope
That statesmanship will find a way to cope
With this alarming problem, if not now,
At least, as soon as changing trends allow.
For how in future can you guarantee,
When less developed countries are now free
To buy new weapons and increase their might,
As much as they desire or think is right,
The safety of less populated lands
That have preponderant portions in their hands
Of earth's resources, fertile tracts and gold,
Secured by force or by adventure bold?
They cannot with the older type of arms
Withstand the onslaught of the mammoth swarms
Which densely peopled countries can deploy
Against the meager number they employ.
Within a few more years the larger ones
Armed with the latest engines, tanks and guns,
Would be more than a match e'en all alone,
But with a coalition stronger grown,
Can prove invincible when they smite
And make the erstwhile great the dust to bite.
Within a few more years the crowded East
Will be a power to reckon with, at least.
The larger countries India, China and
The Arab states brought under one command,
Which singly or combined are sure to prove
A serious threat to those whose minds yet move
In the old rut, who still serenely feed
Their vanity, their power-lust and their greed
On this assurance that their nuclear arm,
In all events, can keep them safe from harm.
Increase in strength of a less developed state
Compels one more advanced to compensate
It by a swift proportionate increase
In its own strength, a race that ne'er can cease
So long as mankind is bound by the chain
Of high temporal power or rage of gain.
Progressive trends in less developed states,
More so the larger ones with high birth rates,
When coupled with enhanced campaigning might,
Cannot but lay bare to the piercing sight
Of heads of forward states the urgent need
Of raising their own strength with greater speed.
As in a war manpower immensely counts,
And as the might of larger countries mounts,
And will keep on augmenting till they are
With mightiest of the forward lands on par,
The latter's efforts then to keep ahead
In this mad race must lead to exhaustion dead,
And in some decades more, if in that span
War is not outlawed by a global ban,
Before exhaustion supervenes, perhaps,
It might have changed the planet's boundary maps.
The hackneyed formula of balanced power
Can prove disastrous for peace at this hour,
Because, when every nation tries to gain
The top position, it can forge a chain
So vicious that continuance of this trend,
Of all attempts at peace can make an end.
Since our advancement on the mental side
Continues upward with a rapid stride,
So every step we gain on this ascent
Effects improvement in our armament,
Entailing greater labor, heavier price,
And day by day increasing sacrifice.
Ambitious nations which strive to excel
In fighting power, with each addition swell
Their budgets for defense to such a load
That can their whole economy explode;
Compelled to host for this barbaric need
A most voracious monster whom, to feed,
They have to sweat and bleed, to stint and save,
Privations, hardships and ill winds to brave.
But try, as they might, they see no way out
From this exhausting and expensive gout,
Except to find new ways to meet the expense
On this distemper caused by lack of sense.
The foremost nations in this hectic race
A hundred handicaps and hurdles face.
They have to guard against the slightest chance
That helps their rivals gain the least advance
In army strength or stocks of latest arms,
Or world opinion which in some way harms
Their prestige, always anxious not to cede
Any loophole for them to gain a lead,
In e'en one of a hundred different things
Out of which interstate contention springs;
Assailed by e'er recurring fear to keep
Their country well protected from the sweep
Of hostile forces, they do not permit
Their vigilance to slacken e'en one bit.
Hard is a diplomat's unholy task
To keep a dagger hid behind the mask
Of smiles and goodwill, with a constant watch
So that a rival does not steal a march,
Nor grow in strength nor wealth nor prosper more
Nor gain in industry nor precious ore,
Nor own more talent nor inventive skill,
Like envious neighbors wishing each other ill:
A hopeless tangle no one cares to solve,
For it does not let human mind evolve,
And waits for nature now to apply the rod
To bring us round to sanity and God.
Why this malignance with hypocrisy,
So that no nation any time is free
Of ill intent against her sister states,
Not their felicity but downfall waits?
How such a morbid frame of mind can lift
Up from the sea of hate on which they drift
Our honored politicians, who win fame
When they kill myriads, countries set aflame,
Or watch in silence millions put to sword
And, if it suits their aim, not say a word?
Now, that two mighty giants in the race,
India and China both grow strong apace,
And other smaller lands whose warlike hosts
Try hard to vie in strength with forward coasts,
The efforts of the leading powers to stay
Supreme, become more taxing every day,
And fresh endeavors made to keep in front
Can drain their life's blood with the effort spent;
And has begun already to create,
Among the youth of many a forward state,
Distaste for actions which the elders prize,
Ill matching now man's intellectual size.
(iv)
The human world, divided into parts,
Riven by envy, hate, malicious hearts,
Dissension, rivalry and deathless feuds,
Antagonistic views and attitudes,
So deep and on such basic principles
That e'en if half of mankind firmly wills
The problem of world peace cannot be solved
Unless the fundamentals are resolved.
In such an atmosphere the imp of war,
With all his dreadful gear, is never far,
So every prudent nation from each dawn
To dusk, at all hours, keeps her armor on.
Too credulous and simple is the man
Who, with the vista of the previous span
Of current century before his eyes,
Still hopes that all these loud, appealing cries
For world peace and disarmament might tend
To ease the tension and the menace end.
These efforts might have borne abundant fruit
Had warfare but in man's own choice its root.
But since it is a symptom of disease,
Which must be rooted out ere it can cease,
The lukewarm efforts made now, like a cry
In wilderness, without an answer die.
In fairness to the leaders, known to fame,
On top in various lands, whom we now blame
For all unpleasant happenings in the world,
It must be said that they themselves are whirled
By international crises, never far,
Which, if not solved with skill, can cause a war.
There is no one ideal for all mankind
That into one great brotherhood can bind
The nations of the earth which meets the needs
Of politics and all religious creeds,
This only evolution can supply
By holding a great prize before the eye
Of all the race, for the goal is one
The way is one, and one the effort done.
Mankind can then push forward as one whole,
A mighty Caravan bound for one Goal,
Compared to which the treasures of the earth
Are less alluring and far less in worth.
In fact, but for our own self-seeking trend
And vanity, this is the aim and end
Of all religions, this faith in one God
One great ideal to worship, love and laud,
Faith that our soul can rise to heights, beyond
Our thought, provide for peace a common bond.
Can you resolve this tangle in your mind,
When you consider all the strings which bind
The wealthier nations, who their utmost try
To keep themselves safe from the evil eye
Of needy ones, whose hungry millions lack,
Sufficient room their ill-fed mass to pack,
And are resolved their boundaries to expand
By snatching every piece of vacant land
From others, as keen to defend their right
And save their own from theft with bloody fight?
How can you curb the native urge to thrive
In Want, and hold back its impulsive drive
To garner plenty at the highest price,
And in a manner that may not be nice;
Or force Abundance to relax her hold
On treasured assets, territory and gold,
To end contention and disastrous fight
Which both the sides have always well in sight?
Since neither Plenty nor can Want relax
Their efforts, we but our own patience tax
By hoping vainly that a day will come,
When peace bells would replace the battle drum.
A most distracting problem in the mind
Of rich and powerful nations is to find
A way to end the e'er existing threat,
Posed by the rise of poorer countries set
On climbing rapidly to the same height
In weapons, army and aggressive might.
The methods now employed by leading states
To muster all their strength for heavy spates
Of war production, using ablest hands
And all resources that the state commands,
To excel, outnumber and outmatch a foe
In armies, armor and the weight of blow,
Are spreading rapidly to poorer realms
That have ambitious rulers at their helms,
Wrapt in alluring dreams of mastery,
And eager on the highest peak to be.
As it is possible for a larger land,
Fivefold in population, to command
Five times the craftsmen to prepare the arms,
Five times the labor and five times the swarms
Of armed assailants at a chosen front,
A total conflict, it is evident,
Confers a clear advantage, if not now,
As soon as their own progress can allow,
On populous lands which must emerge ere long
If not superior to, at least, as strong
As are the mightiest nations of the day,
For e'er as hated rival powers to stay,
Until this constant state of siege incites,
As it does often, both to deadly fights.
As learning, technical know-how and skill
Can never be subservient to the will
Of any favored land or gifted mind,
(For bias does not heaven's bounties bind)
They sadly lack in common sense, indeed,
Who of the recent lessons take no heed,
And still have some illusion on the score
That time will ne'er come for a backward shore
To match them, point by point, if not outpace
In what is now a suicidal race
Towards destruction-nature's last resort
To cut humanity's rebellion short.
Although we may well from the notion shrink
That great men can to such low levels sink
As to engage the finest human brains
To win in world-destroying death campaigns,
Yet this exactly is the main concern
Of those who now the chairs of power adorn,
More so, in super-states, behind the scenes
For man's extinction who devise the means!
Assuming that on some day, not now far,
Some less advanced land will be nigh on par
With forward ones in every foul device,
Which lust for power invents at any price,
What force or measures can we use to bar
The former from resorting then to war,
When but superior numbers can decide
The fight in favor of the larger side?
(v)
The leading nations that are facing now
This threat to their position ne'er allow,
By word or gesture, e'en a hint to escape,
That they are worried but discreetly shape
Their policy to smother and delay
The growth in strength, unto the farthest day,
Of warlike people, who reveal a scope
For prowess, with which it is hard to cope.
Hence diplomatic battles rage around,
And ships of less advanced lands run aground,
Hence dark conspiracies, intrigues and plots
Befoul the face of earth at many spots,
Hence gold, like water, flows through hidden hands
To buy the scum and filth of other lands,
For mutinies, rebellions and revolts,
Which rend and tear their clime, like thunderbolts,
Leading to those horrific bloody deeds
Of which one in the daily papers reads;
Hence states incited against each other fight
To bring down or exhaust their growing might.
This is the elevating spectacle
Which we present, when at the pinnacle
Of progress, science and technology,
When we are cultured to a high degree,
With such amenities and lavish means
Our sires could not imagine in their dreams;
And yet are guilty of a hideous rape
Of morals, such that no one can escape
Its vicious influence, more so the young,
Whose artless minds, exposed to all this dung
And filth, soon learn the tricks their elders play,
To beat them in this wicked game one day;
And, while declaring faith in God, make it
Their choice to act the Devil with their wit.
Since these ignoble methods ne'er ensure
Of Lust-to-Power's unrest a lasting cure,
And countries, long subjected to these tricks,
Soon learn to counter them with similar pricks.
But then the tricksters learn new ways to guard
Themselves and use e'en subtler tricks and fraud,
To put off to the last the dreaded day,
When they are equally matched for a fray,
When their proud armies, erstwhile at the top,
From this commanding height to bottom drop.
That they are wholly helpless needs no proof,
For in this epoch who can stay aloof,
When vengeful opponents can reach his door
In but a few hours from a distant shore?
When avaricious hosts his wealth to share
Would stop at no risk and all hazard dare?
The only way to keep the hordes away,
Or, at least, for a period to delay,
Their onslaught, was to forge a fiendish arm
Which, with the open threat of grievous harm
And devastating loss of life, would keep
A foe from taking such a fatal leap.
That is why oft a stony silence greets
The pacifists, when they parade the streets,
To shout against war and the nuclear arm,
And why the rest who, too, view with alarm
The growing nuclear stockpiles keep so mum,
For they know that the swinging pendulum
Of power makes it essential for their land
To have a frightful weapon in her hand
To save their treasures and their balmy clime
From fierce, rapacious hosts who bide their time;
That is why there are now less chances for
Lovers of peace to end the threat of war.
That is why public figures of today,
At least those to parochial trends a prey,
Renounce their principles to glide at ease
On popular currents the crowd to please.
While for the sake of Truth and Safety both
They should denounce this new malignant growth,
Which grants security but to destroy,
And adds to prestige only to decoy
Into a flaming hell, which soon shall rage,
To mark the birth pangs of a Golden Age.
Against the over-hanging threat innate
In the existence of the sovereign state,
Unsuited now to man's progressive trend,
Which, therefore, nature is resolved to end,
The forward lands, on guard 'gainst envious eyes,
For their assured protection think it wise
To have atomic arms to keep their shores
Safe from a numerically superior force.
They can no more exist without this than
A bank can do without a night watchman.
This mode of thinking, too, has serious faults,
For it takes no account of sudden assaults
Made with the same infernal engines, they
Possess to keep the invading hordes at bay.
But when they too possess the dreaded arm,
And madly bent on doing grievous harm,
What can prevent them from a step designed
To plunge into a maelstrom all mankind?
(vi)
Existence of the nuclear arm, designed
To calm the unrest of a troubled mind,
By its extreme destructiveness, reveals
How its possessor for his safety feels.
This most elaborate, destructive gear
Consuming tons of gold, extremely dear,
Is not the outcome merely of a whim,
But of a purpose most profane and grim,
To gain an end that cannot be fulfilled,
Save with this foul device that would have killed
Full many scores of millions ere mankind
The safest route to lasting peace will find.
What means can you suggest to stop this flood
Of nuclear arms from sucking all the blood
Of mankind, for this costly weapon will
Exhaust poor nations, crowds with hunger kill.
But hate, mistrust or rivalry will force
Full scores of them to this disastrous course;
And those who set the example will repent
The wrong lead taken and the treasures spent.
This crisis, which our thinking must revise,
Is now envisioned clearly by the wise,
And hence to settle interstate disputes
All try their best to use pacific routes,
Knowing full well the storm that will arise,
Should statesmanship once fail to compromise.
Hence shuttle diplomacy, hurried trips,
With problems on the spot to come to grips,
By high dignitaries of premier states
To buy potential foes with tempting baits,
So that a major war may not erupt
Their own ambitious dreams to interrupt.
Except one world regime, there is no way
The fire of hate or thirst for blood to allay.
For who descending from his perch aloft
With love, humility and manner soft,
Would raise the trodden from their lowly plane,
A task that keeps evolving mortals sane,
And in this way combining West and East
Lay the foundation of abiding peace.
Except this certain cure there is no way
To stop the conflict now or any day.
The top-rank statesmen of the premier realms-
The men who sway their fate and hold the helms-
Already have the problem on their mind,
And try their best some remedy to find.
But they have found no means, no certain way
To stop formation of this strong array
Of power against them; they find no way out
To avoid this dread, inevitable bout
With steadily advancing needy swarms,
Save by the atrocious force of nuclear arms.
This throws a flood of light on many things,
So far obscure, on many hidden strings
That daily make a host of puppets act,
Disguised and marshaled with exceeding tact.
This makes it clear why such enormous wealth
Is spent to bring to life a threat to health;
A monstrous weapon with a murderous aim
Of which posterity will take the name
With horror, shrinking at the frame of mind
That could make use of weapons of this kind,
Reducing war to plainest massacre
Without experiencing the slightest stir
Of conscience that it is a heinous crime;
The most abhorrent evil of all time!
It is apparent that the premier states
Want this device to guard their large estates,
Their dominant position and control
On earth's economy, their leading role
Amongst the nations, and to this end need
A strong deterrent for all those to heed,
Who hostile, jealous or ambitious dream
Of e'er replacing them to reign supreme.
Now that they both, the mighty of the day
And their contestants, hunters and their prey,
Have at their elbow this profane device,
And none of them would like to pay the price
Of climbing down from his adopted stand
Towards a compromise or stretch his hand,
There is no hope that mankind will escape
The dreadful outcome of this wanton rape
Of reason, of this hate that has begun
In place of love in all her veins to run.
The leading powers cannot afford to scrap
This millionfold destructive thunderclap,
Which, when discharged, with one earth-shaking roar
Can fill with terror the most distant shore,
Can anywhere with one tremendous leap
Like to a white-hot solar tempest sweep.
They cannot for their safety now discard
This most destructive, diabolic guard
Which, at the least encroachment, with one bound
A whole dominion can to pieces pound,
And, reaching every place on land and sea,
Deter the most audacious enemy
From making any move that would provoke
Retaliation with this thunder-stroke.
They need a hellish engine of this sort
To cover many a distant harbor, port,
Commercial sea route or strategic site,
To guard approaches and augment their might;
Full many a distant palace, castle, fort:
Adornments of a vast, imperial court,
Which, as did Alexander in his day,
They hold to guarantee perennial sway,
Again to meet the same unhappy fate,
And lose the hollow greatness soon or late.
It is not easy for a kingdom spread
All o'er the earth to function at the head
Of fast-competing countries, or to guard
Her distant bastions, built with labor hard,
With e'en the deadliest of the older arms,
For time despoils all weapons of their charms.
Such countries must have, in this giddy age,
A lightning-like device of war to wage
Their battles from a distance to defend
The widely scattered empire at each end.
How can rival powers be true or sincere,
When they each other like the devil fear,
In their professed desire for lasting peace,
Disarmament or e'en a small decrease
In nuclear arms or armies; when each views
The other with extreme distrust and lives
To show him down, out-match him and excel
In power and prestige, built on bomb and shell?
How can this race to death impelled by greed
And lust for power or wealth abate, indeed,
And not grow faster as more decades pass,
Gathering alarmingly in speed and mass,
Till, like an avalanche with thundering roar,
And fierce concussion, never felt before,
It swallows millions more than one can tell,
And makes of millions more their life a hell?
And so disarmament will e'er remain
A dream unrealized, a longing vain
Of sober minds that know the outcome well,
If nuclear weapons multiply and swell
At such a rate, and if still more domains
Act by this latest flash of clever brains.
They know the awful outcome which will be
In part destruction of humanity.
For no man born can hold the hand of chance
Or guard against the now haphazard dance
Of world's disruptive forces, or forebode
Where and when will a hidden mine explode
During the cold war and the struggle hard
Between the rival groups, fought at each yard
Of the earth's surface they claim as their sod,
Entirely mindless of the will of God.
Since all the summit powers are firmly bent
On owning this plutonian engine meant
To guard their grandeur from the greedy paws
Of poorer folk, who can take up the cause
Of peace or raise a finger to denounce
This dread conspiracy, as they will pounce
On them, and clever penmen tear to bits
One who this weak spot in their armor hits.
That is why knowledge, wisdom, skill and wit
Against a deadly challenge calmly sit,
And do not raise their voice in protest bold
Which o'er the earth like thunder should have rolled
Against this mortal threat to morals, life
And health of humankind; against this knife
Which stabbing at a city in the dead
Of night can every townsman kill in bed;
Against this horrible example set
By more enlightened nations, who forget
That those who won their greatness with the sword
Were always emulated, word for word,
By people less advanced who, in the past,
Defeated them at their own game at last.
Conclusion
(i)
Today mankind cannot survive for long,
Divided into fragments, if a strong
Decision-making body at the head
Of one United World, whose rule is spread
To each and every corner of the globe,
Is not appointed soon to look and probe
Into the main affairs of every state,
Drawn from all nations now, and not too late,
Kept on the o'erall task to build and plan
A new world order for progressive man.
It is high time that mankind heeds the signs
Which point to what the racial mind designs,
What is the surest method we can find
To build a war-free world for humankind,
And end the menace of a nuclear war
Which, from all indications, is not far,
To save from horror, death and agony
Millions of guiltless souls who cannot see
How close they are to yawning jaws of death
Or life-long torture borne to the last breath.
Of all this mad race for supremacy
In nuclear power the only end can be
A confrontation on a luckless day,
And this is what my visions, too, portray.
A cry arises from my troubled heart,
A crushing load descends to press me down,
I feel all of my body ache and smart
And in a gloomy sea of sorrow drown,
As with eyes open and the mind awake
I am allowed to watch scene after scene
Of stark, appalling horror that will make
The blooming earth, now lovely and serene,
A foul inferno, glowing red in space,
Where human lust, become the cause of doom,
Millions will kill, and millions clean efface,
Or slowly with dire agony consume.
Whole towns will vanish or in ruins lie,
And deserts burn where crowded cities were,
Millions with hunger, thirst or terror die,
And millions run round shrieking mad with fear.
Millions disfigured, crippled, wounded, maimed,
Tortured at every step, would limp and crawl,
Their faces pale with anguish, eyes inflamed,
With hardship or exhaustion dead to fall.
Men, women, children, sick, infirm and weak
Disheveled, sleepless, hungry, plagued by flies,
Too ill to drive them off, to move or speak,
In vain will look for help till their hope dies.
No horror story e'er conceived so far,
No tale of ghastly murders ever told,
No picture of the havoc done in war
Can match the ghastly scenes that will unfold.
Fiery cyclones racing with lightning speeds,
And flaming hurricanes, extending far,
Will chase escaping crowds to burn, like reeds,
Or roast them coal-black, as if dipped in tar.
This false, deceptive glamor, pomp and show,
In which pretentious vanity delights,
Nemesis will into disorder throw,
And on more sober lines rebuild the sites.
For nature has decreed that every time
Man barters his soul to indulge his lust,
All that he harvests by this heinous crime
Against himself, will be reduced to dust.
This age of boundless wealth, uncounted goods
And endless wonders, which grow day by day,
May end soon, for on it disaster broods,
And scorching hurricanes are on the way
To close an era that has grown too rich
And reckless for man's health and safety both,
And, if not ended at this moment, which
Would seriously distort his inner growth.
Why view the future with a sinking heart,
And try to find retreats to escape the doom,
The Lesson is designed to cause a smart,
For wholesale healthy changes to make room.
The wonder is we readily accept
The world of matter from the tiniest grain,
But when it comes to mind do we suspect
A World of which an Atom runs our brain?
This atom, clothed in flesh, we call the soul,
Ordained by slow ascent to know itself,
But oft in dark about its real goal,
Is lured by tempting pleasure, power and pelf.
For ages alchemists endeavored hard
To find the secret of eternal youth.
But nature does her Treasures so well guard
That few of them could hit upon the Truth,
Which is that hidden in the mortal frame
There is a splendor, blissful, calm and bright,
Not bound by time, devoid of form and name,
Which keeps the flame of life in us alight.
This wonder of creation we cannot
Imagine nor describe nor paint nor draw,
For here we reach the end of human thought,
The point where scholars line up with the raw.
These are the alternatives to choose from:
Either cremation in a nuclear storm,
And for the injured torment to the end,
A bleak and blasted world in which to spend
One's life, all comfort, joy and rest denied;
Or to renounce hate, prejudice and pride,
Excess, immoderation, greed and lust
For power, to foster mutual love and trust,
In tune with Faith's decrees and Laws of God,
To foot the same Path which the Enlightened trod.
Our progress on the path of truth involves
Greater concern for other's woe and weal,
Because the more the human mind evolves
The more it oneness with the rest should feel.
This is the reason why the enlightened mind
Has shown this noble trait throughout the past:
True Love and deep concern for all mankind
With selfless zeal for service to the last.
That is how nature regulates the play
Of life, as she ordains the eves and morns.
Some come, with bleeding hands, to sweep away
What some have sown and scattered-pins and thorns.
Remember, life can be a fairy tale,
A dancing sunbeam when it bathes in light
Some charming landscape, a blooming hill or dale,
And makes all that it touches alive and bright,
If for a fraction of the time we spend
In idle gossip, fun or vain pursuit,
We pray to Heaven a helping hand to lend
To those in pain, distress or want acute,
To see their shrunken hearts expand with joy,
And hope return to light their darkened lives;
To ease their pain and grief or to destroy
Their fear until the ebbing strength revives.
This highly gifted being is not born
To work himself to death for earthly things,
But to irradiate, like the sun at morn,
The light of love which cheer and warmth brings.
What, after all, is thoughtful man here for?
To toil and sweat for wealth or seats of power?
And lose them both at death or in a war,
Living in dread of this to the last hour?
There is enough provision, talent, wealth
To keep the race in plenty and in peace,
If greed and lust for power by trick or stealth
Did not the artless of these treasures fleece.
A warring mankind cannot co-exist
With modern weapons, one of them must cease:
Either complete ban on the Iron Fist
Or One World Order, for which labor pleas.
Contentment, truth, compassion, love and peace
Are more necessary for the health of brain
Than all the fabulous wealth of Rome and Greece,
To keep evolving mankind safe and sane.
Excessive lust, ambition, passion, greed
For earthly goods or power or carnal feasts
Can warp and twist the tender human seed,
And change the angels-to-be into beasts.
Allowed to wallow longer in the mire
Of reckless pleasure, craze for power and gold,
Mankind one day consumed in nuclear fire
Might cease-her story but a legend old.
The tragedy is that our leading minds,
Regardless of the crisis we are in,
Engrossed in their ambitious dreams of kinds,
Know not that we against our future sin.
This is why Revelation came to warn
Mankind, in time, to moderate her lust,
But treating Faith as a fictitious yarn
Science this crisis on the race has thrust.
Next two eventful decades will unfold,
An awe-inspiring Drama, staged by Fate,
To end the present order, as foretold,
With fires of war lit by greed, power-lust, hate.
When dust has settled on the fiery scene,
Then on the ashes of the past would rise
A One-World State built on the Golden Mean
To make man happy, healthy, peaceful, wise.
That air-befouling, earth-polluting ware
Upon which greed's ambitious empire stands,
Replaced by safer types, with thought and care,
Will pass from wasteful into thrifty hands.
In every civilization of the past
The storm came, when to pleasure, rank or gold
The rich and powerful, hungry to the last,
Like children mad for toys, their soul had sold.
The high and mighty of our day, again,
Do what their counterparts did in the past,
And hostile to the still-evolving brain,
Wait for their exit, too, the atomic blast.
(ii)
Unlike the men of learning, I do not
Depend on effort for creative thought,
Or on the opinions of great men to find
Support for the new thought born in my mind.
A formless Presence, infinitely wise,
An ocean of thought from which insights rise,
A grace unbounded and compassion deep,
Permit me many a time to have a peep
At a stupendous Something which no mind
That found access to it has e'er defined.
And born of firm conviction that cannot
Be had from aught conceived by mortal thought,
Or aught observed by eye or heard by ear,
But far more clear and intimately near,
I write these verses, like a pupil taught
By silent whispers coming out of naught.
And having gained this rare estate akin
To that of ancient seers, allowed to win
Approach to higher planes of consciousness,
So marvelous that no words can express
The wonder of it, I, although remiss
In many ways, transported to a bliss
And to abodes of such effulgent light,
Dancing before my vision day and night,
Such a Divine, effulgent silvery sheen,
Which fills with glory all the objects seen,
That in unbounded wonder at this sight,
At this enchanting Eden always bright,
I live in ecstasy day, night and morn,
Into a new world of experience born,
So rich, so full of grandeur, peace, delight,
That mind and senses, ravished by the sight,
Their contact with the external world withdraw
To watch the Inner with amaze and awe.
And Ah! the glorious realm in which I live,
Transporting, elevating, always new,
Beyond the horizon of my hopes and dreams,
All our philosophies and clever streams
Of thought, beyond conception, knowledge, guess,
That cannot be imagined more or less,
As foreign to the normal human mind
As sunlight is to one from birth is blind,
Or sugar to a man devoid of taste,
Or rapture of love to a virgin chaste:
A state of consciousness as far removed
From our conceptions though hard to be proved,
As light from darkness, summit from the base;
The future common asset of the race,
Towards which with slow, halting steps our brains
Are working their way up pulled back by chains
Which, due to ignorance, we often forge,
When we ourselves with earthly dainties gorge.
The difficulty, faced by ancient seers
To bring conviction home to their compeers,
Crops up as people cannot see the way
How this mysterious soul-uplifting ray
Of Cosmic Consciousness can bring about
So marvelous a change, remove all doubt
About Divinity, transform a man
Into a gifted seer, with power to scan
The complex problems which confront mankind,
At times too mixed up for a normal mind;
But clear as crystal to an illumined sage,
Ordained to expose the errors of his age.
The flash of great discoveries, matchless skill,
And gift of poesy, not gained at will,
And inspiration of great authors rise
From depths of consciousness, where genius lies,
Thence come the moods and visions that create
New gems of thought and masterpieces great
Of science, art, and literature which
Have made mankind so cultured, wise and rich.
The fire that has transformed the face of earth
From man's cortical matter ne'er took birth;
But comes, by Grace, from regions far away
Where mortal lusts and passions hold no sway,
Where sovereign Consciousness in state abides,
And in the appointed manner mankind guides
With vision, insight, flash of thought or trance
Which scholars wrongly attribute to chance.
The blooming garden of creative thought
In man, which has such sweeping changes wrought,
That from a helpless, weak, impoverished state
He touched the peak of progress in a spate
Of great discoveries that had lain concealed
In mortal mind for long to be unsealed,
By Chosen Vessels, only at the time
And place ordained before by Laws Sublime,
And who can say what other priceless gems
Still lie uncovered to become the stems
For e'en more precious buds of thought and skill
To raise evolving mankind higher still.
From war to peace, barbarism to the height
Of culture, to ideals and visions bright,
Man is ascending step by step without
The least idea what all this is about,
Why this bewildering life, why peace and war,
Why love and hate and why these problems bar
The understanding of what brought him here
To think and wonder, to run here and there
To meet his pressing needs, to have a weight
Around his neck, tied hard by cruel Fate.
These hard, unanswered Riddles from the dawn
Of reason many vainly brooded on,
To leave as mystified as when they came,
Including wise men of great name and fame,
All working, sleeping, loving, hating in
Their own peculiar way to lose or win,
To pass the round of day, night, eve and morn,
And leave as empty-handed as when born.
The sweating labor done through all their life,
The daily chores, the struggles and the strife,
All fading, like an ended dream at morn,
With the last breath of every mortal born,
A dancing bubble on the ocean's face,
Lost in immensities of time and space.
All this alarm of war and threat of guns,
Of frightful missiles and dread megatons
Is nature's warning of a faulty trend
Which makes material goals the aim and end
Of life, for man comes not to act a farce,
To be a well-led, brightly harnessed horse,
Who makes his round of duties with his eyes
Only half open to the earth and skies,
Oblivious to his glorious destiny,
From what he is now what he has to be.
Man does not know that he has woken up
To earthly life to sip the ambrosial cup
Of Life Sublime, to realize that he,
Free from the earth belongs to Eternity:
The cream of earth, the bright Immortal Spark,
The priceless Gem of Life, lost in the dark
Of ignorance, the Glory of the Sun
And stars, the countless host contained in One.
The fragment and the whole, of all the known,
The knower in his majesty alone;
The ocean, all-surpassing, e'er supreme
Of Cosmic Consciousness a Deathless Beam
That has to know itself to rise above
The lower passions, high in Truth and Love,
And building on this earth a Paradise,
In ecstasy to roam the boundless skies;
And drawn in oneness with all that exists,
Released from mental clouds and sensual mists,
To taste the bliss of rapturous union with
The Fount of Life-the Eternal Ground beneath
The massive Cosmos of effect and cause,
Which melts away, as if it never was!
Written by: Gopi Krishna
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