298 The Future Poetry
peculiarly intimate light of knowledge by a spiritual identity the
inmost thought, sight, image, sense, life, feeling of that which
it is missioned to utter. The voice of poetry comes from a re-
gion above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our
personal intelligence, a supermind which sees things in their
innermost and largest truth by a spiritual identity and with
a lustrous effulgency and rapture and its native language is a
revelatory, inspired, intuitive word limpid or subtly vibrant or
densely packed with the glory of this ecstasy and lustre. It is
the possession of the mind by the supramental touch and the
communicated impulse to seize this sight and word that creates
the psychological phenomenon of poetic inspiration and it is
the invasion of it by a superior power to that which it is nor-
mally able to harbour that produces the temporary excitement
of brain and heart and nerve which accompanies the inrush
of the influence. The inspired word comes, as said of old the
Vedic seers, from the home of Truth,sadanad r ̄ .tasya, the high
and native level of a superior self which holds the light of a
reality that is hidden by the lesser truth of the normal sense
and intelligence. It is rarely however that it comes direct and
unaltered, ready embodied and perfect and absolute: ordinarily
there is an influx and a suggestion of its light and speech hidden
in a cloud of formless lustre and we have to receive as best we
can, to find and disengage or to reshape word and substance
with the aid of our mental powers while they are still possessed
and excited and enlightened by the influence. The word comes
secretly from above the mind, but it is plunged first into our intu-
itive depths and emerges imperfectly to be shaped by the poetic
feeling and intelligence,hr.datas ̄ .t.amman ̇ ̄ıs.a ̄. An intuitive self in
the depth of each of our parts of being, hid in sense, life, heart,
mind, is the transmitting agent, a subliminal power concealed
in some secret cavern within of which the curtained and crystal
doors disclose only occasional and partial transparencies or are
sometimes half open or ajar, —nihitamguh ̇ ay ̄ am ̄ ,guhahita ̄ m ̇
gahvares.t.ham. The less we are near and awake to this agent, the
more externally intellectualised and vitalised becomes the tone
and substance of the poetic speech; the more we can bring in