anani Nava Ratna Manjari (A cluster of nine verses on Mother)

From that unitive mind-stuff, all encompassing,

a thousand tri-basic rays (of knowledge-knower-known) come and;

to and anon, self-consciousness gone,

There awakened love of food and such;

Fallen thus into the ocean of need and lost altogether,

Say when, Oh Mother, shall my inner being regain that path of hope

To be merged within the domain of pure word import, bereft of all tri-basic prejudice

And, within the core of the radiance outspread of reason pure,

Reabsorbed in communion Cool, ever remain.

This variegated display by maya wrought--

Itself nothing is no other than awareness pure;

Air, stone, sea or fire, and the void too,

Are all but prime awareness alone!

The rightness of such a view, if one should praise,

No scriptural confusion can come;

Rival claims of action shall not vie;

Such goodly gain would suffice itself alone;

O Mother of the wisdom that all seek, easy and exalting at once.

Knowledge that comes but to go again

Has come from times of yore; on each vision such

The limbs and the inner self are swayed:

Filled with varied import and darkened by each,

Contracting, all within the Great Unknown is reabsorbed again!

Even seeing thus, again, and again Wisdom comes not:

The learned man of good deeds is but a bee

Fallen into the lotus core, drinking there the nectar

Of the unlimited experience of bliss supreme.

Thought, applied to waves, reduces them to water;

The snake as rope is known; the pot into clay resolved;

Likewise the world. Only when penetrated by thought

Has anything here reality at all.

Your feet are the root for all this, that I adore.

Bestow on me this boon which you alone can grant;

Become as the Real to me: refuge there is none other

Than you, O Mother of the Royal Yoga Way!

Oh Mother! Who within the encirling veil

Of the prime mind on high, ever dwells,

Whose free dance it is that impels here below

This clamorous medley of water, air and fire

As the world manifest--when all is but name alone;

With that delicate yarn of time and so on,

A fancy vesture overcovers your form

So none do know your true appearance,

Oh one that takes your stand where all the Vedas end!

You became the deer, and the fish too,

The snake, and the heavenly bird likewise,

The firm earth, and the river also, woman as well as man,

Even the world on high and inferno, within your name-form couple,

Assuming varied natures, cognizes here,

As the "I", that too is even you!

O, one of word-content alone, all is comedy indeed!

That wisdom's arrow that can smite my sin

In your flowery feet resides

My love, it is the bowstring, and an iron will the bow;

The ego-sense is the victorious one.

While you the Mother it is who victory gives,

My sin-stained self, thereupon, is transformed

In terms of awareness, with the mightily heavy body too,

The world and all else into awareness leaps!

As existing and then as subsisting ever,

And into a pearl combining both, conscious of all the three,

As the heart, whose seed it is, that the sky and wind

With all the ramified expanse of sense-interests

Such as the eye projecting, and even as the eater of food

In glory abides, such are you,

O Mother, most high, unattainable even to psychic powers rare.

The earth and other elements here,

No basis they have, semblance only,

Specific expressions in awareness merely;

Whatever reality they have in this world

Is by you conferred alone!

In that exalted region where tongue or taste

Have no place, is where your glory abides.

Who is there to know your greatness, O Mother?

Words are weak, even for praising you, alas!