Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)

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"Compassion" for us cannot mean the same thing as what is talked about by good-natured worldly people. When I think of it I see Buddha before me. "Nirvana" and "Compassion" are his two characteristics at its highest and they interpenetrate. Budddhist compassion is the envelopment of the poor suffering non-Buddhas with the "peace, stupendous, featureless, still" of the "illimitable Permanent" which Sri Aurobindo's sonnet about his own experience suggests to us. It is to be able to free people from their suffering with the help of one's mighty inner liberation. One doesn't oneself suffer: one merely reflects the sufferer's state in a clear unmoved mirror of true perception - but here is not the cold perception of the distant mind: here is the warm yet undisturbed perception of a close-beating heart, giving the sufferer a feeling of intimacy with the healer. No doubt, none of us is in the Nirvanic category yet, but some faint image of "the mute Alone" can be in our being and along with it some echo of the compassionate response accompanying it. The sweet serenity of the deep heart's sense of human suffering can be in us to a certain degree - in preference to the merely considerate calm of the inner mind's knowledge of it. In any case there should not be in us the contagion of the sorrowful condition we want to relieve: such contagion is not necessary for genuine compassion of the spiritual kind. In fact, it may even prevent the authentic soul-help.

(4.4.1986)

Here are my answers to your questions.

(1) The experience of a presence silently radiating love from the heart is surely of what Sri Aurobindo calls the "psychic being", the true soul. But the psychic being itself is Something of the Divine flowing out to Everything of the Divine beyond ourselves from the same Everything within

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us. In order to be authentically psychic, the radiation you speak of has to be of a deep quiet intensity that gives and gives and never feels wasted if there is no response from the human recipient, for it really goes forth to the Divine who has worn the face and form of this or that person. Actually it streams out not only to persons but also to non-human living creatures and even to objects, that is, to all manifestation. I may add that it creates in one a happy constant sense of self-dedication and self-consecration to the Supreme.

(2) In the course of individual evolution it is the psychic being that "grows" through the various experiences from life to life. The apparent movement is towards the True, the Good, the Beautiful, but inwardly the movement is towards the Divine and when this inward fact is recognised the genuine spiritual life has begun and one is aware of one's soul directly and not only of the reflection or rather emanation of it in the mental-vital-physical complex. I may add that no matter how much the psychic being grows, it still remains a child - simple, straight, trusting, humble. But this child is at the same time an extremely wise one, with the experience of ages enriching it and a spontaneous truth-feeling derived from its transcendent origin. Nor is it a weakling: its inherent immortality gives it a natural strength - strength to endure, to help, to conquer circumstances - strength born from the unfailing intuition of an omnipotent Loveliness accompanying it at all rimes.

(11.4.1986)

What is happening in you is the drawing together of all the strands of your life into the central personality who is for ever a child of Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother. Once the commonly diffused being finds itself unified, there takes place by force of the psychic concentration an opening into a new dimension so that the future going forth of one's consciousness into the time-and-space experience, which we know as our life from day to day in the midst of changing

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circumstance and shifting company, is no longer a diffusion as before but a laser beam moving uniformly towards the Supreme under all conditions. A flow of endless warmth, which is felt as gleaming as well, goes on from the deepmost heart, seeking the Divine, carrying upon itself the whole sense of one's being and carrying in a movement of offering the sense of all events, persons, interrelations, problems. I said "seeking the Divine" but actually what is a seeking at one end is a finding at the other. The reality of the Divine's existence and presence is felt at all moments, and no matter where the eyes are cast there is never the least forgetting of it and everything is spontaneously surrendered to that existence, confided to that presence. A softness and sweetness in the being, that is at the same time a subtle strength - a profound peace within that manifests as a secret power without - an all-enfolding love which, instead of grabbing its objects to one's own little breast, bears it towards some ever-receptive infinitude: these states, these experiences grow more and more a part of one's life. With their growth, problems cease to be pressures and are either surprisingly solved or pleasantly postponed or borne with a smiling discomfort like a child in a petulant mood in one's arms.

(27.3.1987)

It is interesting that when you remember me you always see me smiling. I have used the word "remember" as if you had met me and were carrying a memory of me. It is certain that your inner being has established a concrete contact with me -no wonder it has the impression of a smile playing perpetually on my mouth, for indeed, as with many in this Ashram, there is a quiet happiness all the time deep within - yes, all the time precisely because it comes from something that does not begin with one life or finish with it but runs like a gleaming thread on which life after life of various shades is hung. I am sure you also feel in yourself the smile of the immortal in the mortal, which the seers call the Soul. All of

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us who have been touched by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have wakened to it but the whole travail of Yoga lies in keeping alive the sense of that touch of theirs by which the inner is brought close to the outer.

The soul's smile is also the best weapon against difficulties which the hostile forces raise in our path. To smile at their doings instead of raging at them or feeling depressed is to make them realise how little importance we give them. Failing in their attempt to upset us, they themselves are disappointed and get exhausted. The smile is, in addition, a secret message from us to what stands behind the apparent hostile forces. For behind them and under the mask of the Devil is the Divine, paradoxically helping us through the trials and troubles which bring up our weaknesses and challenge us to be strong. Of course this does not mean that we should look for difficulties. But when they come we must feel Sri Aurobindo manipulating what the hostile forces believe to be their own working. The Lord takes advantage of every crisis to create for us a short cut towards our own fulfilment. And when we have the vision of the Supreme hidden within His seeming opposite we at once lose the sense of infirmity and hopelessness at being hard hit. Nothing in Yoga happens without the Mother's mysterious hand somewhere in it. And our smile speaks of our recognition of it and immediately draws the Grace towards us across the darkness. The moment we feel its presence at the back of everything, our hearts begin to sing in answer to trumpets of victory sounding from afar. The assurance comes to us that there is no abyss so deep that the Grace cannot lift us out of it sky-high.

So, dear friend, keep a smile wreathing your lips in all circumstances. It will also help you, among other things, not to be upset if you don't hear from me for long. I have a lot of work - reading, writing, editing - and I may not be able to answer your sweet letters very frequently. But have the smiling certainty that 1 have not forgotten you and that I appreciate fully your deep feeling for me.

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I was sorry to learn of your headaches and tiredness, but I am sure they are passing things, and the hands of our Gurus are always holding you and leading you onward and inward and upward to your own true self which is eternally their child, "the Purusha no bigger than the thumb of a man, who is like a fire without smoke and who was there in the past and will be there in the future".

(7.10.1987)

You wrote your letter in the evening, the time to close the day with the books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In that holy time your thoughts come to my place. I am happy to learn of this association. I am writing.the present letter to you in the early morning when my own thoughts rise like the birds whose throats are touched by the golden rays to a skyward melody. You are also like a bird, belonging at once to earth and sky, but as yet for me a migrating bird between India and Europe and therefore in two senses a rara avis -"rare" because you are not always in sight of Amal's opening eyes but more because you are a special species, one with eyes extraordinarily open to the secret Sun of Truth and Beauty.

The Uttarpara Speech of Sri Aurobindo which you have just finished reading before writing to me is particularly an eye-opener in the spiritual sense. The basic experience at the back of it is even more significant than the one that came to Sri Aurobindo in that upper room at Baroda in three days' time - the experience of Nirvana. For Nirvana drew his eyes inward to the infinite silent Brahman clear of all cosmic limitation, a necessary farness and freedom for the soul. But it made the cosmos appear a colossal illusion. On the other hand, the experience of which we hear in the Uttarpara Speech was an inner illumination which yet drew the eyes outward to the cosmos to reveal there the creative and transformative presence of the plenary Person who is birth-less and deathless and still has chosen not only to put forth

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the ever-moving scene within which our souls and bodies play their manifold part but also to enter with His own self the play of up and down and light and shade. He has chosen to be a companion and a leader to us with a mysterious call and magic lure and guiding love which Sri Aurobindo suggests in that enchanting line:

Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go

before us....

The very title of the document from which we learn of Sri Krishna Vasudeva appearing to Sri Aurobindo in Alipore Jail and taking charge of his life is symbolic of the new expe-rience: it is a Speech - delivered at Uttarpara. The Nirvanic realisation was, as I have said, of a Supreme Silence. The realisation figured now was of a Supreme Speech: the Transcendent self-expressed and become not only the universe and its in-dwelling resident but also manifested in it as the Avatar, meeting our humanity on its own level and uplifting it towards its ultimate destiny, the incarnate Divine. And from what Sri Krishna did for Sri Aurobindo we can have the assurance that Avatar Sri Aurobindo will do likewise for you and me if we give ourselves to his warm protective clasp.

(19.2.1988)

I have not replied to you for eight days. The delay has changed the formula I mentioned in my last letter: "You are frequently in my thoughts" to "You are constantly in my thoughts", for all the time I was thinking, amidst my thousand and three occupations, of writing an answer to your deeply felt affectionate note.

It makes me happy and proud to read that while you were aspiring to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in the middle of the night I suddenly appeared on the scene, I hope it means that 1 am with them in reality over and above being asso-

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dated with them in your friendly consciousness.

The question of being with them brings in your cry "Oh Divine! How far art Thou!" for a bit of comment. I know that the way your soul has expressed itself must cause what you call "a tint of pain" in your aspiration. But I should like to point out that it is not the Divine who is far: the Divine is always with us. His very attribute of "Omnipresence" assures this: it is we who keep far from Him, mostly due to incapacity and not perversity. But the fact of our being far must not blind us to the truth of His perennial proximity. And the Divine who is always near us is quite aware how much we the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga need Him and how painful to us is our own incapacity to feel close to Him. Knowing the sad situation. He is unremittingly at work to remove the incapacity and make the relationship of "He-we" a glowing mutuality. Please remember that He is as eager as we are that He should be a blaze of beauty in our being. If we have sought Him from day to day, it is because He has secretly beckoned to us night after night. The whole mystery behind our misery is summed up by St. Augustine when he addressed God at the beginning of the famous Confessions: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,"

(20.2.1988)

Once I gave five definitions of poetry and illustrated the last of them - "Magic leading into mystery" - by quoting that line of Sri Aurobindo's, which is a favourite with me:

Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go

before us,...¹

Now I should like to say a few things about the first and the most general of my definitions: "Not only sight but also insight." And I shall take up a line from Sri Aurobindo which

1. See Mother India, October 1987, pp. 636-37.

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initially seems nothing save a vivid seeing. It will be a good opportunity to elucidate genuine poetry's invitation to the reader in diverse ways to its "great riches in a little room".

The true poet looks out over the" world of men and nature and while his eyes disengage certain curves, colours, forms, scenes he gazes into things, as it were, trying to seize their significance to his mind, their suggestions to his heart. A simple instance of what happens is that snatch from the very first poem, "Songs to Myrtilla", which gives the title to Sri Aurobindo's earliest published volume of verse;

Sweet water hurrying from reluctant rocks.

The poet responds to the freshness of a mountain stream and to its swift movement down the hill-side. But he goes further than the mere observation. To him the water appears as if eager to get away and get along. It is "hurrying." Here is a subtle psychological shade, which would be absent from expressions like "speeding" and "rushing", even though the former would alliterate with "sweet" and the latter with the last two words of the line. "Hurrying" immediately makes us ask "Why?"

Before answering this question, let me dwell a little on what we may call the immobile activity of the rocks. They are said to be "reluctant". Again a psychological shade is introduced. By their rigid poise they offer resistance and seem to want to hold back the variously adaptive freshness flowing around them. Simultaneously they show a kind of forceful hindrance and a sort of desire to keep to themselves the crystalline fluidity. The poet has hinted at a living presence in what strikes one ordinarily as inanimate. And the aptness of the insight is brought home to us by the play of recurrent sounds - the r-sound which comes five times, weaving the line into a unity and, in one place - "hurrying" - it even conveys by the urge slightly to roll the r the impression of water quickly running. The alliteration of "reluctant" with "rocks" serves to make reluctance the very nature of rocky

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entities, something intrinsic to them and not something added to their existence, as would be by, say, the adjective "impeding". Another epithet, "obstructive" has a better effect because of the cluster of the consonants - b,s,f,r -which tend to hold back the voice, but the meaning is primarily physical. "Reluctant", over and above having ct and nt in close succession, bears a subjective shade, an emotional attitude lurking in it, in tune with the poefs entering into a hidden life of natural phenomena.

We asked why the water was in a hurry. One answer is that it did not enjoy being made captive by ruffians like rocks. Another is that it felt the call of a far sea across the sloping miles and it was intent on keeping its own liberty to reach the great expanse of its own substance in as short a time as possible.

A final point needing to be touched upon is the very first word in the line: "Sweet". It has an easily-found air and may even be charged with sentimentality or sugariness in the mode of Tennyson at his most Victorian. We have more than once referred to the freshness of mountain water, but the adjective "fresh" would be flat and prosaic as a line-opener here. "Cool" would be appropriate to the lack of response of the water to the clasping by the rocks, a virgin purity averse to their seizure, but it would not show the water to be worth clasping, attractive enough for them to try to hold it back. To imply its allure as well as its pleasure-giving contact, "sweet" with its suggestion of both an unsullied charm and a nectarous quality is, for all its sentimental or sugary surface, the mot juste.

All this comment may be dubbed fanciful. But actually it is an echo of the reader's sensitive imagination to the lively imagination of the poet who at his best achieves intuitive felicities of uncommon experience even in the most simple phrase about common happenings.

(12.10.1986)

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