Paramahansa Yogananda

In wrath I strike, and set the dark ablaze With the immortal spark of thought, By friction-process brought Of concentration And distraction. The darkness burns

Nor doomsday’s thunderous roar, Dismantling earth and stars — The cosmic beauties all to mar — Not Nature’s murderous mutiny, Nor man’s exploding destiny Can touch me here.

Away, the partial love That ‘boldens Nature to sit above Her Maker!

Love is the Heaven Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms, creatures — you and I Are rushing by the straight path of action right, Or winding laboriously on error’s path, All to reach haven there at last.

It is the call of the beauty — robed ones To worship the great Beauty. It is the call of God Through silent intelligences And starburst of feelings.

To gaze with looks of wonderment, And to serve all that lives, still or moving. This is to know what love is. He knows who lives it.

Love is the song of the soul, singing to God.

I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves. The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light, Lift aright. Myself, in everything, Enters the Great Myself. Gone forever,

Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy. From Joy we come, For Joy we live, In the sacred Joy we melt.

Not an unconscious state Or mental chloroform without wilful return, Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness Beyond the limits of my mortal frame To the boundaries of eternity, Where I, the Cosmic Sea,

Thou art I, I am Thou, Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!

I exist without the cosmic shadow, But it could not live bereft of me; As the sea exists without the waves, But they breathe not without the sea. Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep, Present, past, future, no more for me,