The various bonds of companionship that are represnted in this poem reveal an intimacy that is lacking in the more impersonal metaphors for God. As these bonds are tightened even further God becomes the Father who answers the cravings of man’s heart with His immortal assurance:
A SEEKER’S ACHING HEART
As a child’s streaming tears
Are dried by his earthly mother,
Even so a seeker’s aching heart
Is soothed by his Heavenly Father. (4589)
When the love between man and God is at its most intense, God appears as the Beloved and the course of man’s life is pictured as a growth in love:
SWEET IS MY LORD
Sweet is my Lord
Because He is knowable.
Sweeter is my Lord,
Because He is known.
Sweetest is my Lord
Because He invites me
To play hide-and-seek with Him
Every day.
(1948)
To the God-lover the world is an eternal play, a never-ending seeking and finding. Rabindranath Tagore writes in the same vein:
“The great pageant of thee and me has overspread the sky. With the tune of thee and me all the air is vibrant, and all ages pass with the hiding and seeking of thee and me.”
The experience of God so fills the consciousness of the seeker that he is oblivious to all else. His surface personality is annihilated and he becomes immersed in God. The final goal of man’s inner, mystic journey is a complete and inseparable oneness with God:
I TRY
I try to visualise
God the Beautiful One.
I try to seek
God the Powerful One.
I try to merge into
God the Bountiful One.
(3919)
One of the greatest single contributions that Ten Thousand Flower-Flames makes to the thought and life of our times is to reaffirm the possibility not merely of envisioning God but of knowing Him through direct experience. In Sri Chinmoy’s own life this oneness with God is a state of being that irradiates all his thoughts and actions. Since Ten Thousand Flower-Flames is not written in the autobiographical mode, however, Sri Chinmoy does not dwell among these faraway heights. His greater concern is to prepare the seeker for God-realisation by specifying the eternal principles of truth and law. Thus the major role of the poems is educative: they direct man to God, they find him when he is lost and encourage him when he is doubtful; they echo the joy of the inner life and the pain of its absence. Finally, they speak to God – questioning Him, thanking Him, praising Him.
In the main, Sri Chinmoy uses a language for God that has been defined by spiritual poets before him. It is inevitable that mystics should turn to relationships from everyday life to exemplify their transcendent experiences. They adapt the most traditional material to their own use, they pour their nectar into many and varied vessels, in order to share the secrets of the inner life with others. Sri Chinmoy has gathered the entire range of names for God into his vast work and made them function not as ornaments but as fundamental perceptions of the seeker’s evolving consciousness.