Astronauts Of Ether

 

Credit: universal-harmony.com

We often wonder why souls need to incarnate on the physical plane when in their state of eternal bliss this can only be painful and difficult. Yet leave alone souls the Divine Essence itself does so as Avatar or as great beings. In the Gita it is suggested that matter and spirit are attracted to one another, the one in viewing something immensely superior and wonderful, the other to experience the trials and tribulations of earthly life, both to learn something in the process. Matter learns from the spirit, the spirit too is studying something, what we do not know precisely not being spirits ourselves. It is an intriguing thought for which we can only surmise what that may be. There is no compulsion for the spirit to undergo such an experience, yet it does from one lifetime to another (Hindu view). Is it to refine matter? Or is it to learn some physical lessons from the realms of opposites. What can it learn that it does not know already? Intense pain and pleasure and consequences of actions arising from them? Yet they come voluntarily to experience. We too do something similar when we go on a Roller Coaster ride or hand gliding or any adventure. Risking much if not all. What does it do for us? I’m sure it is not just about the thrill, it is a learning process, kind of makes us more whole. Thinking such obtuse thoughts i composed a poem which I wish to share with you:

 

                   A S T R O N AUTS   O F   ETHER

 

In this gymnasium

Dumb-bells and weights of your choosing

Lying in wait, presumption of gravity,

For, if you were conceived

In the vacuum of space

It would be without biseps,

Floating free like a shapeless cloud

Beyond earthly contours,

Beyond the need of a work-out,

Much would surely change

In the way you exert yourself

and suffer pain,

As the astronauts will tell you.

 

But that is only a little way out into space

 

And shapes in ether in another dimension

Do not even have the weight of ego,

That other proud muscle’s force

To grip and stride, a sure compass

Of physical circumstance.

 

Astronauts of ether are yet another tribe,

At home in their timeless state

Of floating free, timelessly,

No implants of organs

To start hunger, thirst,

No procreative affair,

Nothing to stir addiction,

No breath of air,

No gift of gravity to build calves

And keep feet on the floor,

No sure-shot ego to tell

what you want from what you don’t.

 

Is there a hankering for fear

In this fearless state

Is there a wish for kidneys and liver,

Stomach, member,

Which immortality with one felt stroke

Severed,

The bygone biseps and athletic gait?

 

They come from inner space

to the gymnasium of endless weights

Infinite work-outs, experience in pain

And pleasures

To build the spirit’s muscles

with material gains

In another medium, another plane,

Wearing space suits of bodies, organic equipment

And the latest models of evolution

In which to train,

Astronauts of ether

Again and again.