Canto 20The Mahatmas

Book 4. Part Four - Calcutta and Chandernagore 1907 – 1910

Delight, go down and give it strength to live!

O Ether, change! O Breath of things, grow full

Of the perpetual whirl! Break out, O Fire,

In seas of magic colour, infinite waves

5Of rainbow light! Thou, liquid element,

Be sap, be taste in all created things

To please the senses. Thou, O solid earth,

Enter into all life, support the worlds.

I send forth Joy to lure the hearts of men,

10I send forth Law to harmonise and rule.

And when these things are done, when men have learned

My beauty, My desirability, My bliss,

I will conceal Myself from their desire

And make this rule of the eternal chase,

15“They who abandon Me, shall to all time

Clasp and possess; they who pursue, shall lose.”

The Mahatmas

Kuthumi

(This poem is purely a play of the imagination, a poetic

20reconstruction of the central idea only of Mahatmahood.)

The seven mountains and the seven seas

Surround me. Over me the eightfold sun

Blazing with various colours — green and blue,

Scarlet and rose, violet and gold and white,

25And the dark disk that rides in the mortal cave —

Looks down on me in flame. Below spread wide

The worlds of the immortals, tier on tier,

Like a great mountain climbing to the skies,

And on their summit Shiva dwells. Of old

30My goings were familiar with the earth,

The mortals over whom I hold control

Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907–1910

Were then my fellows. But I followed not

The usual path, the common thoughts of men.

35A thirst of knowledge and a sense of power,

A passion of divine beneficence

Pursued me through a hundred lives. I rose

From birth to birth, until I reached the peak

Of human knowledge. Then in Bharat born

40I, Kuthumi, the Kshatriya, the adept,

The mighty Yogin of Dwaipayan’s school,

To Vy´asa came, the great original sage.

He looked upon me with the eye that sees

And smiled, august and awful. “Kuthumi,”

45He cried, “now gather back what thou hast learned

In many lives, remember all thy past,

Cease from thy round of human births, resume

The eightfold power that makes a man as God,

Then come again and learn thy grandiose work,

50For thou art of the souls to death denied.”

I went into the mountains by the sea

That thunders pitilessly from night to morn,

And sung to by that rude relentless sound,

Amid the cries of beasts, the howl of winds,

55Surrounded by the gnashing demon hordes,

I did the Hathayoga in three days,

Which men with anguish through ten lives effect, —

Not that now practised by earth’s feebler race,

But that which R´avan knew in Lunca, Dhruv

60Fulfilled, Hiranyakashipu performed,

The Yoga of the old Lemurian Kings.

I felt the strength of Titans in my veins,

The joy of gods, the pride of Siddhas. Tall

And mighty like a striding God I came

65To Vy´asa; but he shook his dense piled locks,

Denying me. “Thou art not pure,” he cried.

I went in anger to Himaloy’s peaks,

And on the highest in the breathless snows

Sat dumb for many years. Then knowledge came

70The Mahatmas

Streaming upon me and the hills around

Shook with the feet of the descending power.

I did the R´ajayoga in three days,

Which men with care and accuracy minute

75Ceaselessly follow for an age in vain —

Not Kali’s R´ajayoga, but the means

Of perfect knowledge, purity and force

Bali the Titan learned and gave to men,

The Yoga of the old Atlantic Kings.

80I came to Vy´asa, shining like a sun.

He smiled and said, “Now seek the world’s great Lord,

Sri Krishna, where he lives on earth concealed;

Give up to him all that thou knowst and art.

For thou art he, elect from mortal men

85To guard the Knowledge, — yet an easy task

While the third Age preserves man’s godlike force, —

But when thou seest the iron Kali come,

And he from Dwarca leaves the earth, know then

The time of trial, help endangered Man,

90Preserve the knowledge that preserves the world,

Until Sri Krishna utterly returns.

Then art thou from thy mighty work released

Into the worlds of bliss for endless years

To rest, until another aeon comes,

95When of the seven Rishis thou art one.”

I sent my knowledge forth across the land;

It found him not in Bharat’s princely halls,

In quiet asrams, nor in temples pure,

Nor where the wealthy traffickers resort;

100Brahmin nor Kshatriya body housed the Lord,

Vaishya nor Sudra nor outcaste. At length

To a bare hut on a wild mountain’s verge

Led by the star I came. A hermit mad

Of the wild Abhirs, who sat dumb or laughed,

105And ran and leaped and danced upon the hills,

But told the reason of his joy to none, —

In him I saw the Lord, behind that mask

Calcutta and Chandernagore, 1907–1910

Perceived the Spirit that contains the worlds.

110I fell before him, but he leaped and ran

And smote me with his foot, and out of me

All knowledge, all desire, all strength was gone

Into its Source. I sat, an infant child.

He laughed aloud and said, “Take back thy gifts,

115O beggar!” and went leaping down the slope.

Then full of light and strength and bliss I soared

Beyond the spheres, above the mighty gods,

And left my human body on the snows;

And others gathered to me, more or less

120In puissance, to assist, but mine the charge

By Vishnu given. I gather knowledge here,

Then to my human frame awhile descend

And walk mid men, choosing my instruments,

Testing, rejecting and confirming souls,

125Vessels of the Spirit; for the golden age

In Kali comes, the iron lined with gold.

The Yoga shall be given back to men,

The sects shall cease, the grim debates die out,

And Atheism perish from the earth

130Blasted with knowledge, love and brotherhood

And wisdom repossess Sri Krishna’s world.