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Don’t talk to us about science and spirituality;
That subject is the eggheads’ and egglets’ partiality.
Our concern is with hunger and love, bread and bed—two vast
Caverns in one small body through which we chase and are chased.
We are iron mouths munching sand and foam and bones
Of sea creatures; our ribs are wrecked spars through which the wind moans.
Hunger is love; and love is nothing but unending hungers…
Don’t come near us you science-spirituality mongers!
Go on climbing your mountains till your little hearts freeze—
Leave us before our Beloved on our naked knees.
Go on defining areas of domestic space—
We pull in our belts and rely on the Master’s grace.
We know we must die. Let it be through hunger and in love…
You must live miserably on, God’s existence to prove.
The deep intuitive response to our creaturehood in the previous poem are a complete contrast to the sort of thinking attacked here. The mind of the eggheads love to abstract and set up opposites like science and religion. ‘Egglets’ are those who have never reached maturity. These are unreal compared to the great reciprocal relationships which are our lives. Our hunger for bread and love is elemental and real to our humanity.
True seekers welcome death as progress to the final death in union with love. Those who try to control life instead of giving themselves are caught on the wheel of recurrence. As Baba stressed, truth is to be lived, not known or proved.
The great starkness of the vision in stanza 3 contrasts magnificently with the planning and controlling by the heart frozen ones.
Poems like this are trying to clear away the clutter from the modern world to make way for the Master.
At the core of human reality is not abstractions of mind but driving hunger. Baba spoke of the love that the lion feels for its prey, and saw the driving force of the entire universe as the energy of, and need for, love.