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.