Oversoul (Redux)

by Sevadeep

Man is a stream

whose source is hidden;

our being descending into us

from we know not whence.

We live in succession, in division,

in parts, in particles.

Meantime, within man,

is the soul of the whole;

the wise silence; the universal beauty,

to which every part and particle

is equally related; the eternal ONE.

We see the world piece by piece,

as the sun, moon, animal, and tree;

but the whole, of which these are shining parts,

is the soul.

The soul circumscribes all things.

It contradicts all experience.

It abolishes time and space.

Things now esteemed fixed shall,

one by one, detach themselves,

like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall.

The wind shall blow them none knows whither.

The landscape, figures, Boston and London,

are facts as fugitive as any institution past,

or any whiff of mist or smoke;

and so is society, and so is the world.

The soul looketh steadily forward,

creating a world before her,

leaving worlds behind.

She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons,

nor specialties, nor men.

The soul knows only the soul;

the web of events is the flowing robe

in which she is clothed.

Those who are capable of humility,

of justice, of love, of aspiration,

stand already on a platform

that commands sciences and arts,

speech and poetry, action and grace.

The soul ascending to worship

the great God is plain and true.

He wants not for admiration.

Rather, he dwells in the hour that is now here,

in the earnest experience of the common day.

Ineffable is the union of man and God

in every act of the soul.

The simplest person,

who in his integrity worships God,

becomes God.

When we break our god of tradition,

and cease our god of rhetoric,

then may God fire the heart

with His Presence.

O, believe, as thou livest, that

every sound spoken over the world,

which thou ought to hear,

will vibrate on thine ear!

Every proverb, book, and byword

that belongs to thee for comfort

shall come home through

open or winding passages.

Every friend whom the great,

tender heart in thee craveth,

shall lock thee in his embrace.

The things for thee gravitate to thee.

You are running to seek your friend.

Let your feet run, but your mind need not.

The heart in thee is the heart of all;

not a valve, nor wall, nor intersection

is there anywhere in nature;

one blood rolls uninterruptedly

in endless circulation through us all;

as the water of the globe is one sea,

and, truly seen, its tide is one.