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Additional cosmic symbols, such as the moon and the stars, assist in opening out the whole landscape of Sri Chinmoy's poems so that it appears to extend endlessly on every side. We see the speaker of the poems engaged in a dual life: at times, he appears to live as a part of nature, a member of its community, while at other times, it is he who contains nature and everything in it. The spirit of man offers its generous invitation to the whole of the created universe and houses it all in the amplitude of oneness. We come to form an image of a man without finite boundaries, a man who can partake of the infinity, eternity and immortality of the symbols he employs because of their inseparable bond with his inner nature:
A clear, bright sky and a clear, bright air
And a tranquil earth-heart I feel within me.
Alone I am roaming in the cosmos wide
With my eternity's partner-heart.[49]
In sum, the greatest attribute of Sri Chinmoy's symbols from nature is that they speak a universal language. They do not depend on any specialised knowledge in order that the reader may grasp their significance. The focus of the poet is consistently on the perennial features of nature-the creatures, the flora, the colours, the cosmos and all the common forms of rivers, mountains, deserts and so on. They are the age-old symbols which man once worshipped as the forerunners of established religion. That Sri Chinmoy has entrusted them with such a great role in his poetry constitutes a significant departure from the practice of many contemporary poets who have turned to other less "fatigued" symbols in order to convey their visions. To Sri Chinmoy, however, nature's fruitfulness as a symbol can never be exhausted, for he sees it as being integrally connected with the soul's evolution. As a result, when he forges an analogy between the physical and the spiritual worlds, we do not feel that nature is introduced as a mere mirror of the self, but that it has an inherent sanctity of its own which contributes to the poet's composite image of man's inner nature in a most powerful way. Although the poet rarely supplies the reader with more than the most minimal details of natural features, they are able to uphold the deeper signification with which he imbues them. Nature emerges from the poems as a dignified and responsive companion to man in his spiritual journey.
