Page 15 - All India Magazine Apr-2024

beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling
magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws
and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them
to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the
veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the power
of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more
attractive to the heart of embodied beings. Maheshwari can appear
too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature
to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for
its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalak-
shmi. For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the
Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her
within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel; grace
and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun
and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness
of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into
the depths of an unfathomable bliss. Magnetic is the touch of her
hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life
and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams
of an entrancing Ananda.
And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting
Power or to keep her presence. Harmony and beauty of the mind
and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmo-
ny and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and
beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahal-
akshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-
bliss and response to the call of the All-Beautiful and concord and
unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine,
in that atmosphere she consents to abide. But all that is ugly and
mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is
brutal and coarse repels her advent. Where love and beauty are
not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are
mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart

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