| LIFE is preserved by purpose |
|
| Because of the goal its caravan-bell tinkles. |
| Life Is latent in seeking, |
| Its origin is hidden in desire. |
270 |
| Keep desire alive in thy heart, |
| Lest thy little dust become a tomb. |
| Desire is the soul of this world of hue and scent, |
| The nature of everything is a storehouse of desire. |
| Desire sets the heart dancing in the breast. |
275 |
| And by its glow the breast is made bright as a mirror. |
| It gives to earth the power of soaring. |
| It is a Khizr to the Moses of perception.36 |
| From the flame of desire the heart takes life, |
| And when it takes life, all dies that is not true. |
280 |
| When it refrains from forming desires, |
| Its opinion breaks and it cannot soar. |
| Desire keeps the Self in perpetual uproar. |
| It is a restless wave of the Self's sea. |
| Desire is a noose for hunting ideals, |
285 |
| A binder of the book of deeds. |
| Negation of desire is death to the living, |
| Even as absence of heat extinguishes the flame. |
| What is the source of our wakeful eye? |
| Our delight in seeing hath taken visible shape. |
290 |
| The partridge's leg is derived from the elegance of its gait, |
| The nightingale's beak from its endeavour to sing. |
| Away from the seed-bed, the reed became happy: |
| The music was released from its prison.37 |
| What is the essence of the mind that strives after new discoveries and scales the heavens? |
295 |
| Knowest thou what works this miracle |
| 'Tis desire that enriches Life, |
| And the mind is a child of its womb. |
| What are social organisation, customs and laws? |
| What is the secret of the novelties of science? |
300 |
| A desire which realised itself by its own strength |
| And burst forth from the heart and took shape. |
| Nose, hand, brain, eye, and ear, |
| Though, imagination, feeling, memory, and understanding |
| All these are weapons devised by Life for self-preservation |
305 |
| In its ceasless struggle, |
| The object of science and art is not knowledge, |
| The object of the garden is not the bud and the flower |
| Science is an instrument for the preservation of Life. |
| Science is a means of invigorating the Self. |
310 |
| Science and art are servants of Life, |
| Slaves born and bred in its house. |
| Rise, O thou who art strange to Life 's mystery, |
| Rise intoxicated with the wine of an ideal, |
315 |
| An ideal shining as the dawn, |
| A blazing fire to all that is other than God, |
| An ideal higher than Heaven— |
| Winning, captivating, enchanting men's hearts |
| A destroyer of ancient falsehood, |
| Fraught with turmoil, and embodiment of the Last Day. |
320 |
| We live by forming ideals, |
| We glow with the sunbeams of desire! |
