Yesterday two poems by the Indian mystic Akka Mahadevi were posted here, and in response a very reasonable question came about the imagery used in one of them.  The poem begins with a description of the author’s state of bewilderment; she feels the presence of her divine Beloved everywhere, ‘like milk in water,’ and no longer knows what is what.  Then she puts before us a surprising thought, of an ant growing to have the powers of a demon if it should love and praise the Lord.  What, we might ask, does the ant have to do with the love of the Lord?  And how could ‘demon powers’ be the consequence of love?

Of course a good poem, even in translation, is a living thing, and its subtlety can never be fully explained.  Nevertheless, it might perhaps help to point out a few connections.  In the first verse, Mahadevi is speaking of the loss of borders: milk in water cannot be separated; the author no longer knows who is the slave, who is the master, nor has she any way to assign sizes, for to say something is big or small depends upon a comparison, and she has no fixed point any more. What makes her condition special, or one could say ‘sacred,’ is that she has lost her borders through love of God, the Lord White as Jasmine, Whom she now encounters everywhere.

To speak of the ant is, in a way, to speak of the small self of the worshiper.  As mystic realisation begins to dawn, one  sees more and more clearly how insignificant one is before the Immanence of God—and what could be more insignificant than an ant?  But an ant in love with God would lose all limitations, as Mahadevi can testify from her own experience, and then its little strength might be magnified to that of a powerful demon. Whether it would be as perilous as a demon is another question; presumably an ant-devotee would obediently serve the love of God.

In the same way, if we could lose ourselves in the Lord as Mahadevi has, we could expand beyond the scurrying ants of ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ and discover His infinite power and beauty everywhere.