TO THE AURORA BOREALIS

From the heart of the northern horizon,

A dim, palpitating fountain of flame

Spread flickeringly

Through the dark stray clouds and the Milky way,

And across the space o'erhead.

Softly glowing, liquid fleecy lights

Rose, quivered, and flooded the southern land.

Aurora lit the sky,

And played with shadows within the deeps of the limpid lake --

Fluttered scintillating, transparent lights

O'er the stars and the sky o'erhead;

And shone on the rippleless lake beneath--

Then floated like dream waves of light

In my mental sea.*

 

Stilled thoughts, like stars, would glimmer

Through dim mental clouds;

Wisdom's aurora-light would rise from medulla's horizon

And spread, tremblingly, lighting

The dark vapors of mind.

Thou matchless lone imitator of all these --

O Aurora!

Spreader of light and joy o'er cloudy hearts,

Reminder, thou, of bursting, glowing light within my forehead!

 

From the left and right extreme, invisible lamps

Threw sudden iridescent red or blue sky-kissing searchlights,

Sprouting ethereal mystic flames,

Which joyfully bounded and vanished in the Eternal Ray.

Ever-burning radium, thou, Aurora!

 

My inner fountain of strange colors

Flooded my mental sky,

Illumining the opaque darkness

Behind which the Light of all lights hides.

A vision it was, of ever-changing, rolling, molten light,

Coaxing the stars, trees, water, earth, and matter, all

To melt their grossness

And become the Cosmic Light.

 

Aurora, there is hope,

For I shall liquefy in my samadhi's fire

All grossness of my mortal being,

And all creation's dust.

Matter shall change to light;

Darkness will burst into atoms of leaping fire.

My little soul will breathe with the Eternal Breath --

With the birth of each breath, new solar systems will be born;

And as each breath of eternity escapes from me,

Many a universe will cease to breathe.

The feeling bounded by the body will fly free

To feel the universe.

No more shall I clasp but a little clod;

In my bosom I shall bear the burden

Of the twinkling atomic vapors of nebulae,

Shining stars, planets, and all living things.

For I am the Life,

And my body is the universe.

Smaller am I than all little things made --

I can hide behind a speck of electron --

And bigger am I than the sphere in which the cosmos breathes.

I am the Life that shattered its confines of littleness

To become the infinite bigness of all things.

 

I am the most subtle -- the subtlest of forces is gross enough to hide me --

Yet everything speaks of me.

I wake with the dawn,

I exercise my vital muscular rays in the sun;

I sleep in the night,

Or oft peep through the twinkling lights in the darkness.

I smile in the moon,

I heave in the ocean.

I paint and wipe away

The pictures on the canvas of the sky.

I make the dewdrop, and conjure the flowers with my invisible wand.

I whistle in the canaries and sing in the nightingales.

I melt and sigh in human breasts.

I whisper through conscience.

I roar in the thunder.

I work in the noisy wheels of factories.

And I play hide and seek with the sky, stars, clouds, and waters,

As the mystic light of the aurora.

 

While observing the phenomenon of the aurora, Paramahansaji experienced a corresponding inner vision. In this poetic rendering, he makes a comparison between his external perception of the beauty of the aurora and the glory and expansion of his internal state of samadhi, or God-consciousness.