"THE LIGHT"
by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
Blessed
art Thou, O radiant Light, visible splendor of the eternal Luminary, from
whence my thought hath received existence.
If
my thought was not one of Thy sparks, I would not have the power to contemplate
Thee.
I
would not be seized with admiration for Thy grandeur, if Thou hadst not deigned
to sow in me some elements of Thy measure.
Celebrated
men! Say no longer that the light of a torch is transmitted to other torches
without descrease, and it is thus that the spirits are produced by God.
Cease
to dishonor the visible light in speaking to us only of its material mechanism.
The torch paints the life of subsistence, and not the law of generation.
Is not a substance outside this torch necessary
in order to transmit the visible light?
But
our God is Himself the Light; He draws from His own breast the luminous
substance of spirit.
All
is complete in going out from the hands of the Principle of all. He wanted the
sensation of the visible light to arise from the life of my body.
He
wanted the sun to awaken in my eyes this sensation of the visible light.
But
He wished Himself to awaken in my soul the sensation of the invisible light;
For
He Himself has drawn into this light the sacred seed by which the soul of man
is animated.
Do
not the branches extend from the living chandelier, and is not their sap the
holy oil which nourishes the light in me?
Is
it not this oil which always burns and never peters out? May the Life unite
with my life, and may It regenerate in me the life that it has produced there!
May
my immortal and divine increase continue like that of my eternal Source!
It
is by penetrating into the beings that God makes them feel their life; they are
in death as soon as they are no longer in communion with Him.
All
you inhabitants of the earth, leap for joy—you can contribute to the universal
communion! You can, like so many Vestals, tend the sacred fire, and make it
shine in every part of the universe!
Why
do the sages and the prudent ones cherish the light? It is because they know
that the light and soul of man are two torches which can never be extinguished.
And
Thou, Supreme Agent, why canst Thou not cease to penetrate all, to see all and
to carry Thy lucidity everywhere?
It
is because the sacred oil drawn within Thy Source is dissemminated in all
regions, and Thy light finds everywhere a food which is proper to itself!
--Chant 2 from THE MAN OF DESIRE (L'HOMME DE DESIR) (1790),
translated by Seth Edwards, 2016
title by Robert Amadou
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