Pain

“By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,

The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,

His slow inertia as of living stone.

If the heart were not forced to want and weep,

His soul would have lain down content, at ease,

And never thought to exceed the human start

And never learned to climb towards the Sun.

This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;

The centuries end, the ages vainly pass

And yet the Godhead in her is not born.

The ancient Mother faces all with joy,

Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;

For with pain and labour all creation comes.

This earth is full of the anguish of the gods;

Ever they travail driven by Time’s goad,

And strive to work out the eternal Will

And shape the life divine in mortal forms.

His will must be worked out in human breasts

Against the Evil that rises from the gulfs,

Against the world’s Ignorance and its obstinate strength,

Against the stumblings of man’s pervert will,

Against the deep folly of his human mind,

Against the blind reluctance of his heart.

The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free.

The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free.

There is a clamour of battle, a tramp, a march:

A cry arises like a moaning sea,

A desperate laughter under the blows of death,

A doom of blood and sweat and toil and tears.

Men die that man may live and God be born.

An awful Silence watches tragic Time.

Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men

To greatness: an inspired labour chisels

With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.

Implacable in the passion of their will,

Lifting the hammers of titanic toil

The demiurges of the universe work;

They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons

Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.

Although the shaping god’s tremendous touch

Is torture unbearable to mortal nerves,

The fiery spirit grows in strength within

And feels a joy in every titan pang.

He who would save himself lives bare and calm;

He who would save the race must share its pain:

This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge.

The Great who came to save this suffering world

And rescue out of Time’s shadow and the Law,

Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain;

They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,

On their shoulders they must bear man’s load of fate.”

“The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,

The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:

All shall discover God in self and things.

But when God’s messenger comes to help the world

And lead the soul of earth to higher things,

He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;

He too must bear the pang that he would heal:

Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate,

How shall he cure the ills he never felt?”

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See also

• Progress
• Consciousness
• Sorrow and suffering