Saint Mira

Author(s): T L Vaswani
Publisher: Saint Miras English Medium School

Page 52

THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT
A little prince said to some friends :-"Men cultivate thousands of roses in one garden. Yet they do not find what they seek, though they can find all they seek in a single rose or a single drop of water. They seek, but they find not. Their eyes are blind! They truly seek who seek with the heart."
Mira moves out alone on the path of quest, seeking with the heart, crying again and again :“Where art Thou, Beloved ?”
TO UNDERSTAND the true import of Mira's songs, to enter into the depths of their meaning, is to note five stages in the path of Mira's quest :
1. The awakening of the Self marked definitely by her question as a little girl :-“Where is my dulaha (Beloved) ?”
2. Realisation of the transitory nature of the world. Mira says :-“The world is passing: my Beloved is All."
3. In the next stage, Mira passes through a period of “purification”. It is, also, a period of intense mortification,--a period when sometimes she thinks the very heavens are falling. But she stands firm. “Nothing short,” she says, “nothing short of Thee, Beloved! I want not the world. Thou art