from Whispers from Eternity
by Paramhansa Yogananda
Written After My Mother’s Death
Whence came
The black-eyed light
Flickering in my life a moment?
Whither did it flit away?
The twilight of many incarnations
Has burned in those eyes;
Many lights of love dreams
Have met in the bower of yonder eyes.
Today, only the Godless altar—
The lifeless eyes—
Remains before me.
Thou Secret Queen,
From what unknown region
Did’st thou in silence come
To bewitch the fortress of those eyes?
The bitter speech
And sadness-driven
Boat of my life
Many a time found safety
In the harbor of those two eyes.
Now the cruel death-quake
Forever has marred
The dream-harboring eyes.
Losing the harbor of those eyes,
In search I sailed my boat
In the sea of the sky.
Threefold-sorrow storm-driven
Life boat of mine
Has become motherless.
That is why in the unknown region,
In the sea of the sky,
My mind’s boat sails on
Directionless
Seeking those two lost eyes.
In the star-eyed lights
All starry eyes
Twinkled black eyes,
But they were not
Those I had lost.
Merely affection-saturated,
Many black eyes
Called — offering to nurse
My motherless sorrow—
This orphan life of mine.
But none matched
The love-call glance
Of those lost two dark eyes.
The love of those two black eyes
Had forever set from the region
Of all black eyes I beheld.
Seeking those two eyes
In birth and death,
In life and dreams
And in all the lands of the unknown,
At last I found the all-pervading
Divine Mother’s
Countless black eyes
In space and heart,
In earth-cores, in stars,
Within and without,
Hungrily staring at me
From everywhere.
Seeking and seeking my dead mother,
I found the Deathless Mother.
The lost love of the earthly mother
I found in my Cosmic Mother.
Seeking and searching,
In Her countless black eyes
I found those lost two black eyes.
I asked Mother Divine—
“With ruthless heart,Why did’st Thou tear awayThe diamond of my mother’s loveFrom the ring of my heart?”
The cloud-voice
Of Mother Divine spoke,
Bursting in my firmament within.
“Many times have I fed thee
The blood of My milk
From the breasts of many mothers.
Your black-eyed mother
Whom you lost awhile
Was none else but I, only I.
When I saw
Thy wisdom and cosmic love
Had lost their way
In the dark jungle of those two eyes,
Then I set fire
To the alluring darkness
Of those two black eyes.
“I stole those
Imprisoning two black eyes
That thou might’st be free
To find those eyes
In My eyes,
And in the soulful eyes
Of all black-eyed mothers,
And that thou might’st behold
In all black eyes,
Only the shadows
Of My eyes.
“I broke the dream-made,
Little finite,
Thy mother-form of Mine,
That thou might’st behold Me,
Thy Divine Mother,
In every form of a soulful woman
And in My Infinite Cosmic Form.”
The Cosmic Mother 