The Nearness of the Goal

To listen with the trance-like inner ear

And catch the subtle rhythms as they fall,

Alert to sounds beyond this human sphere

And footsteps down the corridors of time,

To see beyond this narrow vision's arc

The splendour still denied to outward sight

And watch the trailing raiment of the Gods

As they pass through burning day and star-cast night,

To harvest the honeyed fruit of Paradise

And taste delight in simple, common things,

To sip a nectar few have drunk before

And know the joy that consecration brings.

To breathe the fragrance of the asphodel

And the blossoms of the stephanotis vine

A sweetness neither pain nor grief can quell

All life experience as one divine;

To hear the mystic music of the wind

Sighing through the pine trees as it moves

And the secret Word creator and source of all,

See Krishna fluting through the hidden groves,

Feel the Infinite in mortal veins

Pulsing through the currents of our lives,

When knowledge by identity regains

Beyond the narrow precincts of the mind,

The Immortal's touch in our mortality.

In the unexplored dimensions of the soul

Plumb the occult caves of destiny

And realize the nearness of the goal.