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Nature's forms often invite a comparison based on scale. This method of procedure is used frequently by Sri Chinmoy, as it is with other mystic poets, to convey something of God's vastness and man's relative smallness. A factual observation about the relationship of a drop to the ocean, for example, can act as a point of departure for a series of analogies concerning man and God:

A FEEBLE CRY, A SWEET SMILE

A little ripple
Wakes the sea.

A tiny thought
Shakes the world.

A feeble cry
Brings the Supreme.

A sweet smile
Fulfils the Supreme. [34]

Other poems dilate on this same spatial contrast between man's infinitesimal quantity of self-giving and God's abundant response:

HOW LITTLE I KNOW

How little I know
Of man's gratitude-drop!

How little I know
Of God's Forgiveness-Sea![35]

This play of contrasts springs from Sri Chinmoy's spontaneous patterning of experience. He enjoys combining several selected details from nature into an expressive pattern. These patterns allow him to illustrate single principles and they also afford him the opportunity to convey a larger sense by implication. In the following poem, for instance, the poet employs two striking images from nature to make concrete the role of an ideal man in both his earthly and Heavenly domains:

WHEN HE LIVES ON EARTH

When he lives on earth
He shapes his rainbow-sky
In Heaven.

When he lives in Heaven
He sows his promise-seed
On earth. [36]