(ii)
Is it not strange in this progressive age
That nor the empiricist nor learned sage
Can break the seal of silence and disclose
The object of man's earthly pilgrimage?
What wonder then if hungry millions look
For it in some antique religious book,
And trust implicitly the word of those
Themselves to this uplifting quest betook?
The testaments of these immortal men,
Which neither sword could brush aside nor pen,
Show that the wrath of Heaven descends to check
Defiance of Law by mortals now and then.
The chances are that either they were wrong
Or that material cravings are too strong
For man to overcome, hence it befalls
That punishment awaits the rebel throng.
Undoubtedly impartial jurists sift
The actions which debase us or uplift,
And after judging the ancestral pool
Decree a just reward, delayed or swift.
When deathless laws, we clearly understand,
Rule mighty suns and planets, sea and land,
Could not the wise Creator find one which
Would keep this moving lump of clay in hand?
In all the stormy epochs left behind
Had e'er man such a morbid state of mind
As now, when he has built to win in war
Atrocious weapons that can end his kind?
A ghastly streak no lower form of life
Exhibits e'en when prone to deadly strife,
A clear-cut symptom of perversion which
Remains unnoticed, as it is so rife.
A direct challenge to the Almighty Lord
That if things do not with our wish accord
We shall destroy those He created but
Now sadly lacks the ability to guard!
(iii)
As it is only when impartial time
Before us brings the errors of our prime,
That hoary age develops seasoned views
And gains a knowledge which no learning gives.
There is yet so much for our race to learn,
So much to experience, such a crown to earn,
That all of our philosophies combined
Betoken but an infant's growing mind,
For she is born to reach a godly size
With ups and downs designed to make her wise.
The rising generations of our race,
However young in years to those who grace
The chairs of learning and position now,
When grown gray will know better why and how
Their parents chose, as if compelled by fate,
A deadly path of such malignant hate,
That like a pestilence its fury spread
On earth, to cause such agony and dread
And such appalling damage to mankind
As will for centuries live in her mind.
The world condition has come to a pass
Where greatest danger to the human mass
Comes not from natural causes or disease,
But from the leading men who hold the keys
Of power in their weak but ambitious hands,
And can employ the might of powerful lands
To cause death and destruction on a scale
Before which all the powers of language fail.
One of the ways to meet this deadly threat
To safety is for masses not to abet
The men in power in their ambitious aims,
Which would be hard since they propose their names.
Moreover the rulers do not act alone
For many a wealthy and ambitious drone,
Surrounding them, like kites, plans and conspires
To plunge a nation in the awful fires
Of war, which in this era has become
Pure homicidal mass-delirium.
Another way, which is as nature wants
Mankind to do now, like industrious ants,
To have Superior Beings at the head
As rulers, who inspire respect not dread,
Who more in harmony with nature's plan
Foresee the future of evolving man,
And skilled in state-craft who the two combine
To elevate the mass-mind and refine,
And not, as rulers do now, brutalize
The crowd for but a brief temporal rise,
Heedless of what the next world-war will teach
That man has yet a loftier height to reach.
This is the only way to pull the world
Out of the mess in which it has been hurled
By scholars, priests and rulers all combined,
Lost in the unfathomed mystery of mind,
Not heeding that the evolving human brain
Can ne'er sit idle, but must e'er remain
Alert on ripe occasions to revise
The faulty social orders they devise.
The only cure now for the current ills
Is that the brilliant galaxy which fills
The chairs of power should be required to gain
Transcendence with attunement of the brain,
Which is not as hard as we might suppose,
With exercise and discipline, for those
Who rank as intellectuals in our time,
And are now ripe for their enlightened prime.
A dire necessity shall soon arise,
When we the existing systems must revise,
As strength of arm which once subdued the crowd,
Would cause more damage than we can afford,
Making it imperative for the race
To build with speed a firm irenic base,
Whereof the architects shall be, in main,
The mental athletes who remold the brain.
Only such prodigies can now control
The masses by appealing to the soul,
As intellect now almost near her end
The clever mind to her will cannot bend,
And hence instinctively the crowd now seeks,
Not one who with insane ambition reeks,
But he who by his own unruffled calm
Proves for the weary world a soothing balm.
Nor learned skepticism nor other trash,
Now ranked as wisdom, shall survive the crash,
Which soon will come to teach our wiseacres
That godless reason can become a curse,
And breed Satanic minds, if left alone,
With matchless intellect but hearts of stone:
A crop which is inevitable if
The attitude of scholars, hard and stiff
Towards sublime belief and faith, does not
To Revelation its true place allot.
Can we determine, when we ponder deep
On it that heaven has framed no laws to keep
Mankind upon the Path to reach the goal
It has appointed for the human soul;
And men are free to act as they decide,
To wallow in sin or to drown in pride,
And there is no Almighty Power to deal
With them, the fever of the mind to heal?
Most men believe that lust and passion bind
With no way of escape the human mind,
And as a slave to many an evil trait
We have no power to change our native state:
A most misleading notion often due
To this, that modern scholars have no clue
About the Power behind the ascent of man,
Which tries to lift him as high as it can,
Against the manifold obstructions which
He puts in its way by his lustful itch.
The outcome is that the existing mode
Of life, since long become a cumbrous load,
Colliding with the soul's uplifting force
Creates a mind intelligent but too coarse
For man's exalted stature at this time,
When at the portals of the Life Sublime,
The leading intellects could have attained
The State Divine and Cosmic Vision gained,
Had their ascent been more in accord
With Laws which human evolution guard.
And hence the strangely inconsistent phase
In man's development in our own days,
Control and mastery of every force
Of nature, full command of foreign shores;
But utter ignorance about his home,
About the interior of his cranial dome,
About his nervous system and the way
In which subconscious trends his thinking sway.
He knows now everything except himself,
Except the "Knower" in the fleshy shelf,
Immune to death, decay and every kind
Of sorrow and distress known to the mind.
He knows no more about him than was known
To ancient seers of Greece and Babylon,
A gap of thousands of long years between
His knowledge of the seer and objects seen.
We have no inkling man is changing fast
Towards a glorious form and godly cast
Of countenance, we often attribute
To angels, free entirely of the brute,
Encrowned with thoughts sublime and noble traits
Of character, above the alluring baits
Of wealth and power, blest with a longer span
Of life, to be the Enlightened cosmic man.
This unawareness of a vital fact
Of life does in a dangerous way react,
And all the fears and tensions which surround
The present world grow from this breeding ground.
Because the evolving human systems need
A way of life and social frame which heed
The signs and gestures that convey to us
Mandates from our collective consciousness.
(iv)
The Unexpected is the potent cause
That keeps forgetful humankind alert,
And when it happens with too long a pause
The evil trends in man their sway assert.
It often is the Unforeseen Event
Which brings depravity to sudden halt,
Ambition's crafty plans can circumvent,
And forces Arrogance to mend her fault.
Old orders often yielded place to new,
By strange unthought-of turns in world affairs;
And chance events drove out, before they knew
That their day had come, tyrants from their lairs.
Dynastic kingdoms, built with blood to last
For generations, but one sudden gust
Of stormy civil war or but one blast
Of whirlwind-like invasion brought to dust.
In many a dreary spot, where dust-winds howl
And savage beasts send out blood-curdling calls,
To which at night responds the hooting owl,
But lately grandeur dwelt in marble halls.
Has not the unforeseen in the recent past
Put the earth's mightiest empire into shade,
And war the state of countless men recast,
The beggar king and king a beggar made?
What veil before our eyes obstructs the light
That nature social stagnancy abhors,
And when we fail to climb the appointed height
Creates upheavals, revolutions, wars?
Hence, I do not predict but just inform
The world about a mighty Cosmic Law,
Which soon may raise a hideous global storm,
Out of the present groove mankind to draw.
Existence of this Force may soon be felt
When steel and cement walls like wax will melt,
And fuse to rise in clouds of fiery dust;
The Wrath of Heav'n on man's unbridled lust,
Against which every prophet raised his voice,
But often failed to sway the fatal choice.
Those who treat nature as a lifeless rock,
Insensible to virtue, vice and crime,
And fancy that its motion, like a clock,
They can adjust at will from time to time,
One awful day must see it come to life
Confronting them with fierce, aggressive swarms,
And then with loss, distress and slaughter rife
The whole of nature will seem up in arms.
We cannot follow with our puny brains
The play of millions of subconscious threads,
Which cognizant of what the Law ordains
Control the thought content of ruling heads.
Amid the medley of unnumbered trends
In human nature, which our minds unfold,
These hidden strings to gain the chosen ends
In all contingencies the Law uphold.
Hence when disastrous situations rise,
Producing consternation and dismay,
A wise man can with confidence surmise:
The Law has been infringed in some way.
Destructive wars that cause the world concern
Present no riddle to the enlightened mind,
Which in the raging tempest can discern
The attempt of nature safety-vents to find.
Behold the time has come when once again
The auguries of prophets shall come true,
And man, a rebel grown too proud and vain,
With tears for heaven's clemency shall sue.
The pride of great achievement, knowledge, wit,
As much to effort as to fortune due,
Which blind to its mistakes does not submit
To timely counsel, one day has to rue,
When fortune, prompt to take back what she grants,
Decides the arrogant career to close;
A swift debacle and the passage slants
Towards the inglorious depths from which it rose.
Written by: Gopi Krishna
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