Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

Poet and Pioneer in Consciousness Literature

LITERATURE is the most flexible and creative self-expression of a people; for it conveys to us in varied ways the message and import of the inner self in its many manifestations. Its greatness lies in the worthiness of its substance, in the strength and value of its thought and the choice of its proper forms. In its highest form and expression, literature tries to "bring out and raise the soul and life or the living and the ideal mind of a people, an age, a culture, through the genius of some of its greatest or most sensitive representative spirits"¹.

Literature truly can induct us into the inner workings of the author; it can be the first introduction to his inner being and the inner mind. Of course, the inner mind itself has a very wide range that includes both 'reflected' and 'authentic' realisations, visions that arc contemplative and ruminative as well as dynamic and spontaneous. Witness Amal Kiran's poem God's World:

Laughing with sheer love of the limitless,

Wandering for centuries in secret glory,

Then striking home a single light of lights!

Marvellous the pattern of His prodigal power,

But vainly the philosopher will brood

This sable serpent flecked with sudden stars.

Coil after coil of unpredictable dream

Will set his logic whirling till it drops.

Only the poet with wide eyes that feel

Each form a shining gate to depths beyond ,

Knows through the magic measures of his tune

Our world is the overflow of an infinite wine

Self-tasted in the mystery-drunken heart.

The sublimated and intensely spiritual yearning of an age, the

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large interpretative idea and the power of its will and life are richly revealed in its literature. Moreover, such literature can profoundly influence and mould the vision and work of a succeeding age because of its subtle and immortal import. Even a little of its spiritual intensity can initiate posterity on ways that can promote both self-vision and world-vision.  For ultimately it is an ideal and spiritual literature which expresses individual and universal truths, reveals the spirit in itself and in things around, and unveils ranges of existence beyond the physical that gives an adequate and satisfying account of the manifold creative potentialities of godhead in man. It is an inner seeing and feeling of things around us and the vision of the beyond progressively manifesting in the immediate that makes literature inspirational and enduring, imperishable and timeless, as in The Hierarchy of Being:

Abysmal shadow of the summit-soul —

Self-blinding grope toward the Sorrowless -

Trance-core of labyrinthine outwardness —

Visage of gloom with flowering aureole.

Streak on gold streak wounding the illusive night —

Miraculous monarchy of eagled gaze -

Eternal truth's time-measuring sun-blaze -

Lonely omnipotence locked in self-light.

It is the spiritual vision that makes literature inspirational and enduring, imperishable and timeless. It is the spiritual vision that makes literature an expression of vibrant truth and beauty as well as a living mosaic of perennial joy and power. Classical literature is a lasting transcription of the supraphysical and spiritual, and has the power to awaken an individual or a nation by its uplifting and inspiring impulse; nay, it can even sustain an age through the changing vicissitudes of life by its psychic and spiritual character.

It can also be made an effective instrumentation for a life of affirmative spirituality. With the all-seizing effect of its expression it can secure a balance between the thought and life, life and

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Nature. Excessive intellectuality tends to make life mechanised and sterile; the way out does not lie in desistence from the thought-process but in its transcendence to obtain another and more comprehensive view of existence. The seemingly autonomous and autocratic activity of the human mind is only a stage in human evolution; it is a necessary step by which mankind is pulled out of the blind and blinding parameters of the vigorous vital and the crude dictation of the gross physical. There are many more luminous realms beyond other than Reason and more satisfying, those of intuitive aesthesis and of the all-informing Spirit. Literature has not to be exclusively absorbed in the realm of the mind, nor excessively be concerned with that of the vital. It should seek and express their joyous interfusion and oneness, and support, and promote a harmonious immixture of light and love.

Great literature has its source in the heart of one's inner being; it is the creation of the seeing spirit. At the same time it is in intimate association with outer life, and recasts it in the light of an inner truth and beauty. To give a new significance to life and thought through an innate and loving identity with the Spirit is therefore the avowed task of literature. To insist on life and action here upon earth in the light of the self within and to uplift earthly life to a more meaningful perfection is also its province and promise. Literature in reality is transfigured truth; it is the most beautiful and obedient servant of the infinitely creative goddess, Saraswati, as well as her radiant messenger. Its appeal is universal and for all time in the measure of its high aspiration and the radiance of its power and beauty of its expression.

Literature can have a powerful appeal to our sensations as well as satisfy our psychological needs and shape our thoughts in an effective way; it can voice the inner truths of existence and harmonise them all in the language of a real aesthetic vision.  Great literature blends a high intensity of rhythmic expression with an answering immensity of inner vision. The literature of the future must be expressive of the deepest soul of the individual as well as of the universal spirit in all things, and correspondingly evolve a language of its own, - a language that can aesthetically express both soul-experience and self-experience.  It should be

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equally subjective and objective, one that establishes an intimate identity of the inner with the outer. The emergence of such a vision and expression is the sine qua non of any endeavour at attaining a global human future. For this, the creation and promotion of a general spiritual feeling and intelligence is the first condition; obsessive preoccupation with the animal-human kingdom alone can never succeed in bringing down the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. To move out of our materialistic intellectualism toward an intuitive and spiritualised thinking is the primary and paramount necessity.

If literature has to express life, then it should do so, as Sri Aurobindo would put it, "of life broadened, raised and illumined by a strong intellectual intuition of the self of man and the large soul of humanity".² There is already seen a significant change in the creative thinking of our times; a subtle elevation of feeling, a psycho-spiritual touch of an inner dimension, the aroma of a near intuitive intelligence and the amplitude of human sensitivity are the outcome of such inner movement towards Truth. The life-soul of humanity is certainty moving out to reach the sovereign truth of its cosmic existence; slowly but steadily it is seeking expression in the literature of consciousness. Indian languages being more aesthetically and musically structured and comparatively better suited to express the psychic and spiritual insights of creative minds, it all depends on the extent of receptivity and sensitivity of the authors to the manifesting Spirit. Whereas European languages are prone to embody the more questing and active intellect of our times, under conditions of literary and consciousness osmosis there is bound to be a happy and welcome integration of material and spiritual mentalities.  A creative fusion of the spiritual mind and the dynamic energies of the life-plane is what makes literature effective and immortal; an aesthetic blend of a saving vision and an announcing language will undoubtedly be our future milieu.

A great spiritual pressure is making itself felt in all human affairs; old norms and many tried-out forms are fading away, yielding place to new things. A greater breath of the Spirit is manifesting in all life; a new potentiality is coming to the front, a

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compelling, luminous force is gaining hold of human existence. We are on the threshold of a new age - the age of universal consciousness, and language too on its side is rapidly being transformed into a competent instrument of luminous power and inspired intelligence.

Each language has certain signal advantages as well as some structural and potential disadvantages; some have a natural vigour and perspicacity, a perfect readiness and eloquence to express powerfully the nature of externalities, while others have a free spirit of innermost adventure and communicate with ease the truths of invisible continents. The latter are pre-eminently chosen instruments for the literature of the intuitive spirit. But with a revolutionary quantum change in the creative spirit of our times language itself is bound to undergo a corresponding transformation; a power-creative stimulus would always find its suitable utterance. A new and greater truth-vision will certainly find newer and innovative ways of using a language; an integral insight into the human mind and soul, a wider and enlarged understanding of the life and destiny of the race, and of the essential unity of all-existence would inevitably find a larger creative movement and alter the very frontiers of language; it would metamorphose it and use it as its most effective instrument. A fine example at hand of such language-commutation and its subtle transmutation in our own times is the usage of English by Sri Aurobindo. All these factors governing the growth of our creative consciousness are destined to bring about a new birth of language itself making it an effective collaborator of the Muse in its progressive manifestation. As Sri Aurobindo observes: "It is in effect a larger cosmic vision, a realising of the godhead in the world and in man, of his divine possibilities as well of the greatness of the power that manifests in what he is, a spiritualised uplifting of his thought and feeling and sense and action, a more developed psychic mind and heart, a truer and a deeper insight into his nature and the meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the call upon humanity, the prospect offered to it by the slowly unfolding and now more clearly

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disclosed Self of the universe."³

The literature of the next future will most include this cosmic vision, and speak the voice of a widening and deepening and heightening spirit. An inner seeing and feeling of things suggestive of a deeper significance of life and Nature together with the necessary vital poise and stasis sufficiently fused as it were with the light of the soul is what makes literature real for ever. Literature essentially being Art must make us relive within ourselves wholly what it creatively embodies, - the vision and the truth, the inner hearing, inner sight, inner taste and the intense awakened vibration, as in Amal's Himalaya:

The tides of gold and silver sweep the sky

But bring no tremor to my countenance:

How shall sun-rise or moon-ebb lure, when I

Have gripped the Eternal in a rock of trance ?

There is found today in literature more than in the past a marked futurist outlook, a more profound inner vision opening new creative possibilities; it has both an inspiration and a promise for a greater future. Modern literature is remarkably preoccupied by themes that exceed the immediate present, by symbols representing powers that transcend us. Happily it no longer clings to remnants of past persuasions; shedding off its slough of scepticism and casting aside its role of defiant atheism it is now positively entering the domain of philosophic transcendentalism even of intuitive intellectualism. In his World-Poet Amal says:

With song on radiant song I clasp the world,

Weaving its wonder and wideness into my heart -

But ever the music misses some huge star

Or else some flower too small for the minstrel hand.

Freed from all forms of past beliefs it is indeed in the trail of subjective intuition with a new sense of the universal and the infinite entering it. We have already entered daringly an age of the adventure of Consciousness. This is the result of the in-

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creasing influence of the Spirit on the creative mind of our era; it is no longer wrapped by things of external life, and no more obsessed with themes of mere intellect. It now dreams of the inmost essence of things, the innermost truth of Nature and the profoundest verities of life.  The meaning of existence, the beauty of life and the need for a wider consciousness and delight are areas into which the creative élan of the race has now moved. The literature of the future will then be a luminous field of aesthetic adventure and expression - a veritable adventure of aesthetic

truth.

It augurs well that the power of the Spirit on the creative mind of our times is being increasingly felt; this indeed holds out the promise of the advent of a new age. The creative spirit has now turned to its intuitive vision and will, and is well on the road to reveal to the race "the inmost sense of things, the inmost consciousness of Nature, the movement of the deepest soul of man, the truth that reveals the meaning of existence and the universal delight and beauty and the power of a greater life and the infinite potentialities of our experience and self-creation".⁴

The humanity of the future will certainly give utterance to the ever-manifesting Light of the Spirit. There is already seen a pronounced swing in the direction of the Spirit; filled with the virgin inspiration for a new and glorious future the creative élan of the race seems to be persistently pressing forward. It is a widening creative movement, many-sided and universal, all- embracing and deep-rooted in the soul of humanity that now beckons man to fulfil his greater destiny. Human mentality no longer browses through the great shadows of the past; on the contrary, it carouses in the vision of the coming golden possibility. Attracted by this many-splendoured truth, it has rapidly moved through the twilight zone of some form of idealism, positivism, liberalism and such other short-lived empires of intellectual constructions to the lucent task of discovering and rehabilitating the spiritual in man. Inspiration for a new future seems to be the springboard as well as the burden of all creative writing at present. The return to the truly subjective and a fresh and bold adventure into the beyond will sooner rather than later

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turn the balance in favour of greater and significant discoveries, more lambent and more perfect, more integral and universal. It is this quest for the new and more profound experience that will bring about the integration of the East and the West. The opportunity is now for resurgent India to take the initiative.

Great literature can be a part of sadhana when it is taken up by a deep urge to realise and serve the Divine in humanity, for then. it encourages the growth of the inner being. The new age in literature is moving steadily from a fully realised and utilised intellectuality towards the fullness of experience of the intuitive mind. It is in need of the experience of the harmonious integration of man's nature and being. It is imperceptibly closing upon a new birth of humanity, - the birth of a new light and truth upon the earth. It is in search of the inmost truth of man and Nature and God; it seems to be already well set to climb up greater ranges of consciousness and to fathom the depths of the soul yet undiscovered and unknown. It may not succeed all at once, but the first step has been taken in the desired direction and the foundation well laid. The supreme Presence is in us, around us and everywhere; it needs the language of purest joy and infinite freedom, of unrestrained adventure and trust to see It, to experience It and to manifest It through creative expression. For the divinely inspired creative artist Nature wears a transparent robe and God reveals himself in many ways, as in Amal's Prelude:

O Fire divine, make this great marvel pass,

That some pure image of your shadowless will

May float within my song's enchanted glass!

Sweep over my breath of dream your mystic mood,

O Dragon-bird whose golden harmonies fill

With rays of rapture all infinitude!...

Or else by unexplorable magic rouse

The distance of a superhuman drowse,

A paradisal vast of love unknown,

That even through a nakedness of night

My heart may feel the puissance of your light,

The blinding lustre of a measureless sun!

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To dissolve the barriers between God and men, to bring God into life and to unveil the divine godhead, and to reflect man's intimacy with the immanent Infinite is the true purpose of all great literature.

Amal Kiran in our own times is one of those divinely animated poets who not only conjures up the supernatural through his poems but captures the very presence of the Supreme. Thus, in his Agni:

O mystic sun, arise upon our thought

And with your gold omnipotence make each face

The centre of some blue infinitude!

Pre-eminently a spiritual intellectual with a passion for perfect soul-expression in faultless word-music, his wizardry of words is undoubtedly unparallelled. His poetry has a character and style that is ever open to the inrush of poetic force from above - an overhead afflatus of light and power and beauty.  He brings in music hitherto unheard, he gives us verses that lift the soul heavenward; above all, he supplies lines laden with the secret power of a tossing truth and the silver stress of a transforming consciousness. In Truth-Vision he asks

How shall you see

Through a mist of tears

The laughing lips of beauty

The golden heart of years ?

There is an exceptional inner freedom about them, they are "fragrant with eternity" and disclose realms of inner existence hidden beyond the reach of human comprehension. Cast in an empyrean substance, carrying visions of the ancient Fire they sum up in a concentrated way the significance and symbolism much celebrated in Sri Aurobindo's The Future Poetry.

The singer of the Spirit, we often get in him glimpses of a resplendent glory secured in several of his immortal lines. To quote Sri Aurobindo in this context -

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The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face....

Amal-da has to his credit voluminous well-rhythmed verse — a large number of lyrics, sonnets, blank verse and other forms of poesy fully metred in sublime sensitivity. Packed with suggestive images they have a symbolic glow about them; their mystic truth and the luminous essence can only be felt and cannot be adequately explained. Sadhak and poet par excellence, literary critic of great eminence, historian of rare insight and an expanding seeker-soul of sublime felicity, Amal-da is his own best critic and commentator; his poetic genius branches out in many and unexpected directions spreading over highly evolved ranges of consciousness. Essentially an Aurobindonian, he irradiates a feeling that he lives and moves and has his being in an overhead aesthesis that is fully informed of the golden glory of a greater Consciousness. There is something magnificent about his poetic expressionthat allineates itself with a spontaneous actuation from far above that is at once uplifting and transforming. His Gnosis is a good example:

Flickering no longer with the cry of clay,

The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind

Embraces there its own eternal Self-

Truth's burning core poised over the universe!

The bulk of his writings and compositions constitute what may be called in modern terminology "consciousness literature" with a sublime import. A keen and cultivated intellect, nay, an illumined and intuitive intelligence that Amal-da amply possesses is found often kindling into the mystical and sometimes into the Overmental in its grasp as well as in its expression of the Infinite. Ascent and Silver Grace surely belong to this group of his poems:

A memory stirs the locked immensity -

An occult creative Eye now yearns afar,

Dreams upward through a gilded sky of mind,

The hard deceiving door of a false heaven,

To an infinite ether of apocalypt blue.

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A white bliss curving through our blinded deeps

To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile.

The Muse and the Master both have been amply generous in granting him germaine visions of sheer beauty, satyam śivam sundaram, as well as imbued him with the Grace of śabda brahmawith its ananda.:

Rapture that cuts away time-transient shows

Like petals from the odour of a rose:

One breath of luminous all-absorbing hush -

So wide a love that nowhere need it rush:

Calm ether of an infinite embrace -

Beauty unblurred by limbs or longing face.

Laden luminously with the longing of a sun-flower for the Supreme, Amal-da takes us easily and felicitously through the hush and the flush of an inner Journey, and oftentimes reveals his own rare intimacy with the cosmic Person, the Rishi:

A fire whose tongue had tasted paradise.

His majestic collection of poems, The Secret Splendour, is assuredly the greatest splendour of all the poetic splendours that the Muse has manifested in our times in the Aurobindonian world.

V. MADHUSUDAN REDDY

References

1. The Foundations of Indian Culture, Cent. Ed., p. 255.

2. The Future Poetry, Cent. Ed., p. 284.

3. Ibid, p. 288.

4. Ibid., pp. 255-6,

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