- Songs of the Soul - book cover - Self-Realization Fellowship
Paramahansa Yogananda’s speaker yearns to find answers to his questions regarding his existence on this material plane; he represents all minds that are hungry for answers to the deep questions over which philosophers have struggled for centuries: Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where do I go when I die?
The drama, of course, cannot answer those questions in six stanzas, but it does offer a clue as to where such an inquiring mind might start his research.
First Stanza: “Burst, inky cloud, do burst”
The speaker commands a dark cloud to “burst” and dissipate the gloom that its dark mystery brings. This metaphorical cloud represents the great mystery that is the universe into which each human being is born.
The speaker further commands the “inky cloud” to “fling open [its] fathomless gloom.” This speaker represents the striving thinker who seeks to unlock the secrets of the universe that baffle all human beings.
This speaker will further demonstrate his passionate desire to find answers to questions about the human condition that most people ignore while seeking sense gratification.
Second Stanza: “Heartless, staring sky!”
The speaker then addresses the sky—calling it “heartless” and “staring.” He commands the sky to answer his “aching query.” He is “straining” his eye to see what the sky is hiding.
Furthermore, this speaker seeks to understand why the sky is hiding its secrets. This speaker is not content to simply look at the blue vault and wonder what might lie beyond its vastness; he demands answers to his questions, and he wants them now.
The sky, as did the cloud in the opening stanza, functions as a metaphor for all physical phenomena—the society of humankind, planets, stars, the world, the universe, the cosmos—all of creation with its many “mysteries.”
Third Stanza: “The ceaseless surging thoughts”
The speaker declares that the many thoughts that enter his brain seem to mock him as they go “dancing by.” They seem to know things that he can only wonder about, and he aches “to know their lot.”
Fourth Stanza: “Someone did throw me free”
The speaker describes how alone and without direction he feels, having been thrown here “to battle . . . in this rough sea.” His metaphor shifts to an ocean on which he drifts “rudderless” and “stranded on shoals.” He feels as if he were in a boat that he “could not shift.”
Fifth Stanza: “I’ll burst the clouds, I’ll clear the shoals”
The speaker then proclaims his intentions, arising from his strong desire to understand his lot, to do everything necessary to alleviate his burden of unknowing. That “inky cloud” that mystified him has motivated him to “burst the clouds.” That “heartless, staring sky” he will “rip” “in twain.” And that rough sea, he will “clear the shoals.”
Further, in his determination to understand, he will “break [his] heart” and “with questions crush [his] brain.” He will “ask and pray,” “beg or steal” to find those “friends long stolen away.” He craves the knowledge of what happens to loved ones who have died.
By identifying the question of what happens after death, the speaker has chosen the most baffling and most heartrending of conundrums that the mystifying universe places before humankind’s mental processes.
Sixth Stanza: “This wondrous day”
The speaker concludes by likening the life of the human being to an actor on a stage. The day may be “wondrous” and even “glorious,” but so many of the actors who have not sensed the “Unseen Hand” remain “actors . . . anon” and “know not why they play.”
This speaker has determined that he will not be such an actor but will “ask and pray” until he receives an answer.
Source
- Paramahansa Yogananda, “Mystery,” Songs of the Soul, Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, 1983.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
