God’s Glance and God’s Grace

God's Glance and God's Grace

```

God’s Glance is the arrow

Of brightest flame.

It is the birth of love

In human frame.

And ever largest in Him

Is His Sea of Grace

For souls to be the waves

Upon His Face. ```

My life and my soul

```

My life, a tragic record of pride,

My life, a doll for ego’s smile,

My breath is lost in the howling Night.

My hope is orphan, my cry futile.

Lo, my soul, a mounting flame of Will.

It brushes quick the tears from my eyes.

My soul’s victory over my life

Is the only triumph that never dies. ```

My fear

```

I tremble in every limb, with fear I dine.

My soul becomes a rending surge of pain

The moment human eyes are locked with mine.

Pangs shoot through me, but all in vain.

Too fast my giant hopes are thinning out.

My heart, a stranger to God’s ivory Look.

To free myself from my dingy past I cry out.

That’ll be the twelfth of Never; the hell I brook. ```

Never I accept myself

```

Never I accept myself,

My limitations I resent.

I want to be the ‘That’.

I want to be God’s true descent.

I pine for another chance.

I know self-pity gets man nowhere.

I take full charge of my life.

I hurl my hope ahead all-where.

Ever I picture myself

As an eternal winning soul.

I know not how to drift.

Within my ken my lofty Goal. ```

God's Grace

```

The One-in-All and All-in-One —

This truth imparts the Spark of Life.

And what is His swift-bending Grace?

The Vision of Unity face-to-face. ```

Secrets

```

I love the secrets of Wisdom-Sun;

They lead my blossoming soul to the One.

I love the secrets of ignorance-night;

Through them the Face of Dream I sight. ```

Money

```

Money is no bondage stark.

Neither is man’s name or fame.

The son of God is far

Beyond the ken of blame.

Behold!

Money, name and fame

Become his faithful slaves

The moment the rain of blows

From his wild senses he braves.

```

Life

```

What truly is life?

A golden chance

With Truth to dance,

Killing fear and strife.

Fulfilment belongs

To God alone.

Man is no stone.

He offers, he longs. ```

Man and his love

```

He who has shown his love has been fed.

He who has amassed his love has failed

In his role to be the Smile of God.

He who has fulfilled love has been hailed. ```

My life

```

I try a smile —

It comes off never.

My life is my soul’s

Fatal fever. ```

God's wealth versus man's wealth

```

One God or two —

It matters not.

Does He exist?

This has to be sought.

If He has life,

Where does He live?

When will He learn

Just take-and-give?

What has poor God?

Man has desire,

Man has failure,

Man has death dire.

God has silver Grace,

Compassion pure.

He is His Heart,

Forgiveness sure. ```

Immortality

```

You can prevent anything

In the land of Reality,

But never, never the birth

Of Immortality.

What is unreal?

Nothingness.

And what is Reality?

The embrace of God’s Thought-Waves

With His Eternity.

```

My soul's victory

```

Before my fantasies were all vague.

Slowly they have now taken shape.

My golden tomorrows are dawning fast.

No more I’ll be a human ape.

I snatched my Goal out of death’s embrace.

Ecstasy unbarred shoots through my life.

My glance has pinned falsehood to ground.

God’s own Breath now beats against my face. ```

God and man

```

God’s Grace is man’s divinity.

Man’s failure is His humanity.

God tells, always a perfect balance

Is the key to His Omnipresence.

Man tells, his life is the soul of God —

All day and night he can sleep and fraud. ```

The date

```

When I behold the face of temptation wild,

My tongue dries up, clings to the roof of my mouth,

Falsehood’s colourful eyes hold me hypnotized;

Abandoned, no west, no east, no north, no south.

The One has beaten into my soul a deep

Feeling of shame for my acceptance of fate.

One day I’ll enjoy God’s Grace to the hilt,

But impatience tortures me to know the date. ```

Who is the chooser

```

It is not we who choose

The Lord Supreme, our Goal.

He Himself within us dawns

To pierce our age-long dole. ```

How to change humanity

```

To change humanity

First your own erring shape of soul recast.

Anon your eyes shall find

Nothing around remains unchanged at last. ```

All triumphs yours only then

```

Be you a flood of sincerity.

No triumph will be denied to you.

Your heart shall own Eternity,

Your life shall wear God’s golden Hue. ```

Our death and immortality

```

Stark death was born with us, following our feet

When we beheld the light of day.

But our actions’ blue-gold fruit the earth will eat

Even when death our bodies does slay. ```

My birth is sleep, my life is night

```

Unknown my life shall die, unknown.

I breathe unseen my ceaseless moan.

My birth is sleep, my life is night.

I drink an empty hope’s delight.

Silence-sea and dancing waves of Grace

Long lost have I in my backward race.

And now my escaping breath I see

Captured by strangling Eternity. ```

I am my haven's king

```

I cry

Because I know not when to try.

I fear

Because I see temptation’s spear.

I doubt

Because I am lost within, without.

I hate

Because I‘ve closed my beauty’s gate.

I love

Because I breathe below, above.

I dance

Because my Goal no more a chance.

I sing

Because I am my haven’s King. ```

I prayed

```

I prayed without feeling.

My Father slept.

I prayed without crying.

My Father left.

I prayed without loving.

My Father died.

I prayed without ceasing.

My Father cried. ```

I declare

```

I declare ever what is true —

My heart is God’s revealing Light.

My soul is God’s fulfilling Might.

My life is God’s transforming Hue.

I declare ever what is pure —

This world of ours has much to say.

Our climbing earth God’s promised Day.

Our glowing Goal—eternal, sure. ```

To my Mahapurush

```

I cry beneath my fount of orphan tears.

Your Spirit’s Eye shall salve my sighing years.

In me shall breathe your Love, your Sacrifice-Soul,

O my Mahapurush, to the end of my journey’s Goal. ```

Editor's note

“Mahapurush” means a “Great Soul.” Jyotish Chandra Chaudhury of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India, breathed his last on 10 March 1966, at 9:20 a.m.

Devotion

```

Devotion

Is the cry

That compels God

To seize the aspirant

With the very madness of Love.

A piece of candy,

Lo, the child is won.

An iota of devotion,

God, the true and real God,

Is captured.

Sweeter than honey,

Purer than flowers,

Deeper than love:

The flame-waves of devotion-light. ```

Attachment and detachment

```

Attachment is my teacher:

“God lives in a cave.”

I learn.

Detachment is my teacher:

“God lives in a Palace.”

I learn.

Attachment demands my body’s breath,

The life of the howling finite.

Detachment offers my soul’s promise,

The Light of the beckoning Beyond. ```

As and so

```

As the prayer, so the Grace,

As the weeping heart, so the bending Face.

As the sacrifice,

So the price.

As the birth of knowledge-rain,

So the death of ignorance-chain. ```

The human soul and the soul divine

```

The human soul is the kiss of night;

The soul divine is the bliss of day.

Like eye and sight, like nose and smell,

Inseparable and one are they.

The one feels God a tearing sigh,

And life empty of truth, futile.

To the other, God is undying Hope,

And life is Truth’s all-loving Smile. ```

The Guru

```

I

The human teacher shows you how to read.

The teacher divine sleeplessly reads for you.

The one leads your mind to wisdom’s portal,

The other opens your soul to the sky-vast blue.

II

The Guru is he who shows the Way;

His heart is Love, his mind is Light,

His body is Grace in the realm of night.

Silence and Power sustain his Play. ```

Earth-bound hearts

```

Vain are the ways

Of human cries.

Strange are the moulds

Of earthly hopes.

Queer is the dream

Of climbing skies.

In earth-bound hearts

Divinity gropes. ```

Destruction's rod

```

O north, O south!

O east, O west!

I have no cry,

I have no nest.

O ceaseless fall,

An unfed hope,

A fearful sigh,

A tightened rope.

A living hush,

My imagined God,

Without, within,

Destruction’s rod. ```

Because it must

```

I sit beneath

The fountain of tears.

My heart is heavy

With growing fears.

My life is dyed

With sighing years.

I take my food—

Venom or dust.

My life will live

Because it must. ```

Man and God

```

Man’s dream is God;

God’s Fulfilment, man.

Man’s solace is God;

God’s Hope is man.

Man is God crying;

God is man struggling.

Man’s strength is his ignorance;

God’s Strength is His Grace. ```

Life and death

```

What men call life

I call ambition’s fight

Against the strife

Of blind ignorance-night.

What men call death

I call the soul’s repose

In God’s secret Breath

At the long journey’s close. ```

Delight you need

```

Delight you need?

Sacrifice you feed.

Precious is love

Below, above.

And precious more

Surrender’s door.

Breathe in the One —

Won Golden Sun. ```

How to conquer

```

Lo, how to conquer evil thoughts?

Easy!

One thing just try —

Imagine you are the ocean vast,

You are the boundless sky.

Your evil thoughts are fish and birds,

Their lords are ocean and sky.

Fear not!

The slaves are only slaves;

Their revolt a fruitless cry.

```

Ignorance vast we hug

```

Our life abides within;

Our outer sheath is a cloak

Ignorant of Truth sublime.

Outside the more we block,

The deeper within we go.

We all are nature’s slaves,

Ignorance vast we hug.

Even death our Spirit braves

Alas!

in vain for us.

We cry to live in chains

With blind personality.

Before us the sombre main.

```

Thou and I

```

Thy Rapture shines unchanging

Through my heart never still.

I see with my drowsy eyes,

Thou with Thy mighty Will.

I pine for fame unknown,

Thou for my freedom vast.

O mind!

now cease, now cease.

Nought save the One shall last.

```

My foe

```

My foe is none but I.

All future I reap from deeds of mine.

If I receive not aid

From me, no soul will make me shine.

The evil forces lie

Within, around my symbol sheath.

They seize my knowledge-sun,

And tear my mind with dragon teeth. ```

No eyes have we

```

Thou art the All and beyond the All,

This truth we fail to believe.

Our ego never sees Thy Will;

To ignorance vast we cleave.

Revolts of ours defy Thy Smile

That leads all souls without

Within to Thy Sea of rapture-fire

Where drowns our clay’s blind shout. ```

All-presence am I

```

Although I dwell in poverty,

Matchless all joy of mine remains.

Upon my heart His Bounty rains

From His flame-white Eternity.

To none I sell my teeming thoughts;

By me my trance is seen alone.

My heart shall never tremble or moan,

All-presence am I, in me no noughts. ```

The flame of aspiration

```

The wings of my longings are undone,

All my desires are hushed.

The flame of aspiration shines—

Smiles now my heart abashed

To feel the Formless in Form divine,

To see nought save the One

That, neither male nor female, yet

Broods ever, our Parent-sun. ```

Dream

```

The sky with sun and moon and stars

Leans down today to clasp my soul.

Their boundless love and peace sublime

Lead me to Freedom, snow-capped goal.

I hear the hymn that bars decay

And makes my bosom ever green

With faith and ardent inmost call,

I have become the Freedom-Sheen.

My bird of dawn is on the wing,

Its wonder-goal within its ken.

The sombre death now weeps in awe

Alone in his secret, eyeless den. ```

I and my name

```

I sing and sing,

And play and play

To see the Face

Of Eternal Day.

My friend is Hope,

My friend is Light.

If night there be,

My days are bright.

God’s Grace is my name.

Through ages long

My soulful breath

Shall flame His Song. ```

Hope

```

Time and distance

Are caught by hope.

Hope is the glance

That burns the rope

Of howling night.

Hope lost, gloom grows,

Dark poison-blight:

Destruction flows. ```

My dying soul

```

Two running ears,

One howling tongue,

Two trembling knees,

One bleeding heart,

Two weeping eyes,

One struggling breath,

Two surrendering arms,

One dying soul. ```

When I am gone away

```

When I am gone away,

Remember me, O children sweet,

No, not because I failed,

No, not because I cried,

No, not because I tried,

No, not because I saw my Lord in you,

No, not because I served my Lord in you,

No, not because I fulfilled my Lord in you,

No, not because I was your Pilot true,

No, not because I was your ‘Infinite’ blue,

O, but because my life was all gratitude,

Gratitude, gratitude

To you, to you, my children sweet, to you.

```

Editor's notes to the first edition

The nineteen poems GDGL 1 to GDGL 19 first appeared in a pamphlet entitled God’s Absence and God’s Presence, Agni Press, 1971. The twenty-seven poems GDGL 20 to GDGL 47 first appeared in a pamphlet entitled My Flute, Agni Press, 1972.

From:Sri Chinmoy,God’s Glance and God’s Grace, Agni Press, 2006
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/ggg