The Adventure of the Apocalypse by K.D. Sethna was written in 1948 which he included in the book of the same title published in 1949. Sethna was an ashramite and an ardent disciple of Sri Aurobindo who was an editor, a critic, an Aurobindonian, a poet and a critic.

The Adventure of the Apocalypse is one of those poems of K.D. Sethna which tell of his Aurobindoean style and grandeur, sublimity of expression and spiritual illumination which we come across into the poems of the master. But Sethna following into the steps of the good master too scales the same height of ascension and he is successful in the delineation of spiritual bliss. The Rose of Bliss, the Illumination of Sadhna, the Lotus of Meditation, are the code words which can focus upon. The metaphysical light and illumination of his poetry is splendid. We generally prescribe Aurobindo, but we should also the poems of Sethna. The mystic layer and the metaphysical splendor are readily available in him, and this adds to his sense of delight and spiritual illumination. Metaphysical light illumines his poetry. Kundalini-awakening, kriya-yoga and yogic ascension form the core-content of his poetry.

His fusions of fires, lights, how to take to? How the rose of bliss lighting the dawn? But to feel the rose within oneself, to see the light within oneself is the main thing. The adventure of the apocalypse is crucial to the understanding of the poem.

Darkness and throe we cannot expel them from our life fraught with and these are quintessential for the cyclic order as one comes in succession of another. After the night of rigorous sadhna light comes beaming in only after your tryst with the Supernatural Divine is complete. The huge night is for to pass the test. While ascending, look you not behind as may fall from. Keep you scaling, ascending the steps, the heights, going up to reach your destination.

We deem the darkness and the throe
True measure of each ecstasy’s glow:
Only the background of huge night
Reveals our drama of delight.
We are enamored of each fall
That high winds of the mountain’s call
May kiss the sweeter.
How shall we Crave sorrowless divinity ?
Wanderer of gleam and gloom, man’s orb
Of vision never can absorb
The adventure of the apocalypse —
Until his passion inward dips
Where hides, behind both dazzle and dark,
Perfection’s pygmy, the soul-spark
Plunged in the abyss to grow by strange
Cry of contraries, chequer and change
Of pain and pleasure, to the bliss
Whose utter sky the utter abyss
Wagered to mirror and manifest.
That flaming finger can attest
The paradox of eternity,
The endless smile that knows no sigh,
Yet in the peace and plenitude
Keeps every sting of the restless mood.
The ethers of Perfection are
No loss of sight that strains afar.
Nothing those glories lack, yet bear
New wonders kindling everywhere.
God is two colors of one light,
A heavenly hermaphrodite —
Calm husband, master of all life,
Radiant incalculable wife —
Magic caprice without a lull,
Joined to a wisdom ever full
With secret of each sudden flash
Yet feeling the bright laughter-lash
As if the Unknown’s epiphany
Gould take the Unknown’s self unaware!
Hush that is infinitely bare
Only to catch an infinite voice —
A love that thrills from here to there
With a hundred hearts of reverie
Though holding by a vast of space
All glimmering goals in one embrace —
A rose-break of dawn after dawn
Despite a sunflower’s zenith poise
Of noon that never is withdrawn —
Burst of vermilion surprise
Even to gold omniscient eyes —
Such is the Godhead whose sublime
Fusion of two fires strokes of time
Have split to joys and miseries —
Such is the Godhead of our fears:
Treasuring short-lived smiles and tears.
We shun the grandeur-smite that hurls
Away small rubies and brief pearls!

God is two colors of one light. He is the maker of the husband as well as the wife. It is He who arranges their wedding; it is He who makes them separate and thus entities keep adding the carnival of joy and sorrow, joy felt in being attached to and sorrow in being dismembered. The dawn, the golden noontime, the sunflower poised towards, how to tell it about the splendor and radiation of light glowing it differently? The fusion of two fires are the strokes of time split into joys and miseries. The spark of the soul is bound to take us by surprise in course of friction or fission. The paradox of Eternity it is difficult to resolve it.