Canto 34Bliss of Identity

Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947

Sonnets

The Indwelling Universal

I contain the wide world in my soul’s embrace:

In me Arcturus and Belphegor burn.

5To whatsoever living form I turn

I see my own body with another face.

All eyes that look on me are my sole eyes;

The one heart that beats within all breasts is mine.

The world’s happiness flows through me like wine,

10Its million sorrows are my agonies.

Yet all its acts are only waves that pass

Upon my surface; inly for ever still,

Unborn I sit, timeless, intangible:

All things are shadows in my tranquil glass.

15My vast transcendence holds the cosmic whirl;

I am hid in it as in the sea a pearl.

Bliss of Identity

All Nature is taught in radiant ways to move,

All beings are in myself embraced.

20O fiery boundless Heart of joy and love,

How art thou beating in a mortal’s breast!

It is Thy rapture flaming through my nerves

And all my cells and atoms thrill with Thee;

My body Thy vessel is and only serves

25As a living wine-cup of Thy ecstasy.

I am a centre of Thy golden light

And I its vast and vague circumference;

Thou art my soul great, luminous and white

And Thine my mind and will and glowing sense.

30Thy spirit’s infinite breath I feel in me;

My life is a throb of Thy eternity.