Frontispiece: Amal Kiran in his Study (September 1994)
Amal-Kiran
Poet and Critic
Edited by
Nirodbaran and R. Y. Deshpande
Kekoo D. Sethna was born in a Parsi family of Bombay on 25 November 1904 and in the Pondicherry Ashram as Sri Aurobindo's Amal-Kiran on 3 September 1930. By either reckoning we are late in honouring him today. He has seen a thousand Full Moons long ago and, even as Amal-Kiran, has crossed four years back the traditional sixty for jubilation. Still he wanted us to wait for him to complete a hundred Autumns of the Vedic Rishis. Not that this is going to be too far away but, undoubtedly, it will be another grand occasion to celebrate. And therefore it is good not to miss at least the present one when he is becoming a nonagenarian.
Amal-Kiran is a polymath, knowing many arts and sciences, a learning lifted by enlightening intuition and deepened by spiritual insight. Confined to a wheel-chair, like Stephen Hawking, the legendary Cambridge theoretical astrophysicist, though hardly as a near-physical wreck, he can see with his mind's eye (--) or is it with the Upanishadic Eye of the Eye? — bright worlds stretching beyond our visible universe. His literary output in quality and quantity is comparable to that of any outstanding figure in the present age. In fact had he lived in, for instance, Hawking's England he would have received a much wider recognition as a man of letters. His cultural and intellectual achievements would have surely made a mark of their own in that circle of the elite. If his monumental Collected Poems running to something like 800 pages is a work of exceptional merit, his prose writings cannot be contained even in a few dozens of books. And what diverse topics! Poetry criticisms shedding light on Shakes-peare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Mallarme, Sri Aurobindo; scrutiny of scientific thought while grappling with the philosophical questions of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics no less than problems of biological thought; chronological researches in the history of ancient India and the beginnings of history for Israel; Christian traditions and the problems of Christianity; Fate and Free-will; comments and opinions about
national and international issues and events; hundreds of letters to friends and admirers dealing with matters spiritual, yogic, literary, personal; editorship of a monthly review of culture Mother India for more than 45 years; and, above all, interpreting Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in a most luminous way as something coming from his full-fraught spirit — any one of these should be sufficient to place Amal-Kiran in the top rank of the intellectuals. His writings could, as Devan Nair points out, provide excellent material for several PhD theses. Perhaps this suggestion of Devan Nair's should be taken up more seriously and pursued by establishing a suitable foundation.
There are many ways of felicitating such a celebrity. One could organise a series of seminars or have highly specialised talks covering several aspects of the genius, bring out in his honour studies with contributions from renowned writers, or there could be a scheme to publish a set of his selected, if not complete, works; or else one could adopt a critical biographical approach to present him as a poet or a researcher. Alternatively, a volume of personal letters from various correspondents depicting their associations with him could also be a fitting tribute. In the present festschrift we have, however, preferred to follow a somewhat flexible course of action, keeping as far as possible the poet and critic aspect of Amal-Kiran in focus. The overwhelming response in terms of contributions, in every sense, seems to indicate the acceptability of this approach.
Briefly stated, the festschrift consists of four major sections. In the first section we present the facsimiles of some of the letters written by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to Amal-Kiran; there are also a few other important letters received by him. The second section makes a quick selection of the writings of this prolific author. The third section has essentially articles and tributes from various writers, past and present. In the last section there are pencil-sketches made by Amal-Kiran himself and a set of his photographs at various stages of his life; it also contains other miscellaneous matters.
We are extremely happy to offer this collection of essays, howsoever inadequate it may be, as a sincere token of our
appreciation to Amal-Kiran. He has endeared himself to us all in every respect by his sweet and charming manners which have their plenteous source in his soul that is indeed ever full of the Mother. His helping hand and radiant smile are always there for anyone who approaches him for support and guidance.
Our sincere thanks are due to all who have participated whole- heartedly, and especially to the Press, in bringing out this volume in such a short time. An article of an admirer, too long to be incorporated in this collection, is being brought out separately as an accompanying booklet.
Wishing Amal-Kiran again many joyous returns of the day.
THE EDITORS
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
25 November 1994
Section One
A Content of Warm Sunshine
Page 3
Blessing from The Morher
Page 5
(A letter from Sri Aurobindo)
Page 7
N. B: The Letter was written to Amal Kiran on 28. 2. 28 - Editors
Page 8
(Diary record of an interview and two letters)
Page 9
Sri Aurobindo's reply written in pencil:
Your account of the conversation with Mother is quite accurate.
Mother is letting you go now because she thinks it is the best way to cure you of your lingering desire. But beware of any sentimental attachment to a woman which would hinder your destiny — for this is the one real danger to it. The Mother expects you to come back soon.
[Amal went after 21 February 1934 and returned before 15 August the same year.]
[p. 10]
It is an excellent foundation for other Truths that are to come — for they all result from it.
Mother also wrote in pencil:
My blessings are always with you.
Page 10
(The Mother's Blessings)
Page 11
(His spiritual figure and Mother's answer)
Page 12
Page 13
(Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments)
Page 14
1. Very neat and conceited. But perhaps the intellectual ingenuity of the conceit is too pronounced to allow the conversion of the conceit into the enduring poetic image. "Saboteur" ought, I believe, to have its accents on the first and third syllable, you seem to put it on the second;
- a "has" would set the rhythm right.
2. Good; some of the lines are very fine, especially the last line and a half of the second stanza and the whole of the last stanza. But can a sea hang? Well, perhaps in a faintly Donnish style. And "Sat like a taste" has not much force: I would myself have written "Sat, a heaven-taste".
3. In the second stanza the first line is very good, but I don't exactly thrill to "essence" and "sucked"; it may be a prejudice. The first stanza is very good and the third good.
"Fifteen Years After"
Nota Bene
Homie must not expect the rather portentous article or essay he demands from me. You know I have made it a rule not to make any public pronouncement; the Cripps offer was an exception that remains solitary; for the other things on the War were private letters, not written for publication. I do not propose to change the rule in order to set forth a programme for the Supramental energy to act on if and when it comes down now or fifteen years after. Great Powers do not publish beforehand, least of all in a journalistic compilation, their war-plans or even their peace plans; the Supermind is the greatest of all Powers and we can leave it to its own secrecy until the moment of its action.
January 14, 1945
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Page 16
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I don't find these poems very well-inspired or conspicuously successful. You seem to be trying at this to develop a penchant for the bizarre, extravagant, outré; but it has a modernist tendency which has produced nothing or little of any value. There is also in the first poem an indulgence of bibhatsa-rasa; but this rasa comes out well only when the feeling seized is terror or horror. Otherwise the ugly and repulsive remains only ugly and repulsive and does not transform itself into beauty. The image and the phrase in these poems is strained, violent and exaggerated; it fails to please or satisfy the aesthetic sense. Your true poetic capacity does not lie in that direction; when you indulge it, it seems to be in obedience to some intellectual kink not to the central intuition. Some lines are good but not more than good; the rest is energetic without felicity. The last poem is an ingenuity of sentiment and the expression does not ring quite true. Sorry to be damnatory but that is my honest reaction.
Don't wait for any poems for your Annual, I think the Pondicherry poets will have to march out without a captain, unless you take the lead. I have been hunting among a number of poems which I perpetrated at intervals, mostly sonnets, but I am altogether dissatisfied with the inspiration which led me to perpetrate them; none of them is in my present opinion good enough to publish, at any rate in their present form, and I am too busy to recast especially as poetically I am very much taken up with "Savitri" who is attaining giant stature, she has grown enormously since you last saw the baby. I am besides revising and revising without end so as eventually pass which is not upto mark. And I have necessarily much else to do.
March 18, 1945
[This is the last letter written in his own hand by Sri Aurobindo to Amal-Kiran.]
Page 18
(Sri Aurobindo's comment communicated by Nolini)
Page 19
(The call : A letter to The Mother and her answer)
Page 20
(A letter to The Mother to belong entirely to her)
Page 21
(A prayer for perfection and The Mother's blessing)
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We have various guesses about your previous lives. The other
day I happened to ask Nolini whether you were Shakespeare. He
was diffident. My own belief is that you have somehow
amalgamated all that was precious in those forces that
manifested as Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Dante, Virgil
and Milton: if not all, at least the biggest of the lot. Kindly let
us know the truth. Among your other and non-poetic incarnations,
some surmise Alexander and Julius Caesar.
"Good Heavens, all that! You have forgotten that Mrs. Besant claims Julius Caesar. I don't want to be prosecuted by her for misappropriation of personality. Alexander was too much of a torrent for me; I disclaim Milton and Virgil, am unconscious of Dante and Valmiki, diffident like Nolini about the Bard (and money-lender?) of Avon. If, however, you can bring sufficiently cogent evidence, I am ready to take upon my back the offences of all the famous people in the world or any of them; but you must prove your case.
"Seriously, these historical identifications are a perilous game and open a hundred doors to the play of imagination. Some may, in the nature of things must, be true; but once people begin, they don't know where to stop. What is important is the lines, rather than the lives, the incarnation of Forces that explain what one now is — and, as for the particular lives or rather personalities, those alone matter which are very definite in one and have powerfully contributed to what one is developing now. But it is not always possible to put a name upon these; for not one hundred-thousandth part of what has been has still a name preserved by human Time."
1.4.1932
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Certain poets very strongly appeal to me and
their minds and characters seem to have strong affinities with mine in different
ways. Have you any intuition in the matter of my past lives?
Mother once saw Horace (as well as Hector) behind Dilip; but
she has told me nothing about myself except that she is positive I
was an Athenian.
"A strong influence from one or more poets or all of them together is not sufficient to warrant a conclusion that one has been those poets or any of them in former lives. I have myself no intuition on the subject of your past lives, though from general impressions I would be inclined to wager that you were not only in Athens (that is evident) but in England during the Restoration time or thereabouts, in Renaissance Italy etc: these, however, are only impressions."
12.5.37
There is an idea that Harin is a reincarnation of Shelley. It is
supposed to be based on your own intuition or at least a
practical certainty on your part. The character of Harin
poetry seems to add colour to the idea.
"I have never had any practical certainty or any certainty that Harin was Shelley. The question was often raised - I remember to have replied in the negative. No doubt there was a strong Shelleyan vein in Harin's poetry, but if everybody who has that is to be accounted a reincarnation of Shelley, we get into chaotic waters. In that case, Tagore must be a reincarnation of Shelley, and Harin, logically, must be a reincarnation of Tagore — who couldn't wait till Tagore walked off to Paradise or Shelley must have divided himself between the couple. It may be that after- wards I leaned at a time towards a hesitating acceptance, but I am certain that I was never certain about it.
"Besides, I imagine Shelley was not an evolutionary being but a being of a higher plane assisting in the evolution."
19.7.1937
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Is it true that the same consciousness- that took the form of
Leonardo da Vinci had previously manifested as Augustus
Caesar, the first Emperor of Rome? If so, will you please tell me
what exactly Augustus Caesar stood for in the history of Europe
and how Leonardo's work was connected with his?
"Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilization to Europe - he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intel- lectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe."
29.7.1937
What is meant by the light of the Mother's consciousness and is
it the same as that of yours? Does she lead us to the same goal as
you?
"The Mother's consciousness is the Divine Consciousness and the Light that comes from it is the Light of the Divine Truth.
"One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mother's Light will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all that is undivine - the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and unwilling to accept the divine Truth and its Light and Force of the Mother.
"That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and Her Light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of the confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above.
"When we speak of the Mother's Light or my Light in a special sense, we are speaking of a special occult action — we are speaking
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of certain Lights which come from the Supermind. In this action, the Mother's is the White Light that purifies, illumines, brings down the whole essence and power of the truth and makes the transformation possible. But in fact all Light that comes from above, from the highest divine Truth is the Mother's.
"There is no difference between the Mother's path and mine, we have and always had the same path, the path that leads to the Supramental change and the Divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same.
"The attempt to set up a division and opposition putting the Mother on one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side, has always been a trick of the forces of Falsehood when they want to prevent a sadhaka from reaching the Truth.
"Know that the Mother's Light and Force are the Light and Force of the Truth; remain always in contact with the Mother's Light and Force, then only can you grow into the divine Truth."
10.9.1931
Won't you tell me something to which I can always turn for
help and contact during my stay in Bombay?
"Remember the Mother and, though physically far from her, try to feel her with you and act according to what your inner being tells you would be her Will. Then you will be best able to feel her presence and mine and carry our atmosphere around you as a protection and a zone of quietude and light accompanying you everywhere."
12.12.36
I feel divided and disturbed. Above me is the ecstatic light;
below me is a voluptuous darkness: I strain my arms towards
the high splendour but my feet carry me into the frenzied deeps.
The Mother is very dear to my soul, but that does not help me to
make the obscure impulses turn and follow her. You will tell me
that I must do this or do that; but what's the use of "must"s to
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one who feels too exhausted to move an inch in the right
direction. I cannot conceive how possibly I can live without the
Mother and yourself, but neither can I imagine how the mass of
human folly in me is to be controlled and illumined.
"The moral of the condition you describe is not that Yoga should not be done but that you have to go steadily healing the rift between the two parts of the being. The division is very usual, almost universal in human nature, and the following of the lower impulse in spite of the contrary will in the higher parts happens to almost everybody. It is the phenomenon noted by Arjuna in his question to Krishna, 'Why does one do evil though one wishes not to do it, as if compelled to it by force?', and expressed sententiously by Horace: 'video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor' By constant effort and aspiration one can arrive at a turning point when the psychic asserts itself and what seems a very slight psychological change or reversal alters the whole balance of the nature."
2.3.37
Last night - or rather early this morning -1 had a dream in
which I was vividly aware of being near you and touching your
body. But I doubt very much my feeling, because in the dream
you had an acute stomach-ache and were rather upset by it!
Nirod, too, was near and I asked him to give you some
peppermint and then I was helping you to go upstairs some-
where. At the close of the dream I found myself reading a poem,
but I forget now what exactly it was. I am inclined to think
that some disorder in my own stomach must have got transferred
to my dream-figure of you. But please tell me if my
"experience" of being in almost physical touch with you was as
mythical as your gripe.
"Well, it is difficult to say. The vivid awareness seems to indicate
1. "I see the better and approve of it, I follow the worse."
an actual contact - but the stomach-ache etc. seem to be a foreign intrusion. What happens often in these dreams of the vital plane is that the subconscient (which is mainly responsible for ordinary dreams) throws its figures across the transcription of the expe- rience and one gets a very mixed record. As I have no stomach- ache and, if I had, would not be in the least upset by it (for I have reached the stage when even the aches come only as a form of Ananda and, besides, if any non-delightful ache came in the stomach I could at once dismiss it, for that much at least of the semi-supramental force I have developed in me), this item must be put down to a subconscient dream-maker - whether transfer- ring the pain from your stomach to mine or creating it in vacuo is open to debate."
15.12.35
It's come to be a habit now to get out of my body, time and
again. Occasionally I just see with my closed, eyes. At other times
I actually leave the body - and the coming back to it is often due
to some disturbing thrust of impulse from it into the new
condition. I am fully conscious when I leave the body and soon
start testing the concreteness and reality of the things I am
amidst by touching them. Usually I move about in my own
room but now and then I go outside too. The room I move in is
not quite the same as the physical: the furniture is arranged
somewhat differently. My conclusion is that I move in a subtle
body in a subtle plane; but is that always unavoidable? Does
one's subtle body never move in the very physical plane? In my
latest experience I went to the pier, but the street through
which I ran to reach the pier was of a strange kind because I
moved, shortly after, from room to room, as through some
deserted building. At last I glimpsed the sea; many boats were
standing in dirty green water close to the shore. The word
"lagoon" came to my mind. But further on I found myself in
full sight of the sea. And it was an extremely beautiful
spectacle. The water had a violet colour mixed with indigo and
there was an atmosphere of magic as the large waves heaved
and broke with spray and sparkle.
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Two remarks I may make about the world I explore. While running I noticed or rather felt that the defect in my left leg was present there also. I wonder up to what plane my physical disability continues. Secondly, it is not always necessary to move step by step: one has just to wish to touch or reach an object and one is simply there without much sense of passing through the intervening space.
I have asked whether one is forced to explore only some subtle world. But take the following experience. I was meditating in my easy-chair. A book was lying on my left side where I had put it before closing my eyes there was a book-marker inserted at the page where I had stopped reading. Now, I went all numb, as I always do when these phenomena take place - but the eyes are exempted from the general paralysis, so to speak. I keep on opening them and thus swing from the consciousness of one plane to that of the other. This time, however, I opened my eyes and saw not only my own body lying inert, with my both arms dropped paralysed, but also a third arm free at the right shoulder, it was, of course, a subtle arm and could move. Immediately my experimentalist mind thought of a test. So I strained the third arm towards the book by my side, caught hold of the hook-marker and tried to pull it out. I actually did pull it out, but imagine my surprise when I saw that though I was holding a book-marker in my subtle hand the original was still in the book!
"It is evidently in a subtle world, not the physical that you move;
that is evident from the different arrangement of things, but such details as the third arm and the book-marker removed yet there show that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle-physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the change growing freer and more elastic as one gets farther away. Such details as the lameness show the same thing, — the hold of the physical is still there. It is possible to move about in the physical world, but usually that can only be done by drawing on
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the atmosphere of other physical beings for a stronger materialisation of the form — when that happens one moves among them and sees them and all the surroundings exactly as they are at that time in the physical world and one can verify the accuracy of the details if immediately after returning to the body (which is usually done with a clear consciousness of the whole process of getting into it) one can traverse the same scene in the physical body. But this is rare; the subtle wandering is on the contrary a frequent phenomenon, only when it is near to the physical world all seems very material and concrete and the association of physical habits and physical mental movements with the subtle events is closer."
23.8.37
Will the Supermind, when it makes its descent, have the power
to transform us in spite of ourselves?
"I suppose the (vital's) will to resist will disappear."
I am all agog to know whether I should pack up for
Pondicherry. Should I come away with my heart still far below
normal by medical standards? I surely can't expect it to catch
up with normalcy so soon after that mistake of mine with the
tonic stimulant powder given me by a friend. You know that
owing to an error in instructions, instead of taking the normal
dose, I swallowed more than 4 grains, which - if I may believe
the doctors - means about 50 times the normal dose, over 4
times the dose a horse might be given and nearly 25 times the
dose at which the drug begins to be sheer poison for human
beings! I also remained without real medical aid for 45
minutes! In my awful condition I only kept calling to Mother
and you. Of course I am again up and doing, and I can't take
this set-back very seriously, though I have semi-collapses now
and then and the medicos say I need regular attention and
should not exert myself. Mother and you get me out of all
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scrapes; the sweet grace of you both has been unfailing. And I
don't think I am much frightened by theoretical possibilities of
death. Will my undertaking to come away do me any harm?
This is a year in which, I believe, the Truth-Consciousness may
make up its mind, or rather its Supermind, to descend. I was
expecting a wire from Mother in May; it's almost the end of
July now - but the year is not out yet, and August 15 is pretty
close. Won't I be losing something great if I don't throw all
caution to the winds?
"You must on no account return here before your heart has recovered. No doubt, death must not be feared, but neither should death or permanent ill-health be invited. Here, especially now when all the competent doctors have gone away or been sent to a distance from Pondicherry, there would be no proper facilities for the treatment you still need, while you have them all there. You should remember the Mother's warning to you when she said that you would have your realisation in this life provided you did not do something silly so as to shorten your life.2 That 'something silly' you tried your best to do when you swallowed with a cheerful liberality a poison-medicine without taking the least care to ascertain what was the maximum dose. You have escaped by a sort of miracle, but with a shaken heart. To risk making that shaky condition of the heart a permanent disability of the body rendering it incapable of resisting any severe physical attack or shock in the future, would be another 'something silly' of the same quality. So it's on no account to be done.
"You need not be afraid of losing anything great by postponing your return to Pondicherry. A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view, at the moment and, even if it comes, it can very easily catch you up into itself whenever you come if you are in the right openness; and if you are not, then even its descending would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you time to become aware of it or receive it. So there
2. Before he left for Bombay in February 1938, Amal had an interview with the Mother in which she had warned him against any accident happening to him and doing serious damage to his body. - Editors
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is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors."
1.8.38
It is well-known and pretty evident that you realised the Supermind years ago. But is the impression right that you stand on that high level and act directly from there and the solething left is to bring the Supermind down completely into theembodied consciousness here? Or is it that even the outer consciousness of you is acting straight from a supramentalrealisation? Or would it be correct to say that at present this consciousness is functioning from only the top of the Over mind
established in it?
"If I had been standing on the Supermind level and acting on the world by the instrumentation of Supermind, the world would have changed or would be changing much more rapidly and in a different fashion from what is happening now. My present effort is not to stand up on a high and distant Supermind level and change the world from there, but to bring something of it down here and to stand on that and act by that, but at the present stage the progressive supramentalisation of the Overmind is the first immediate preoccupation and a second is the lightening of the heavy resistance of the Inconscient and the support it gives to human ignorance which is always the main obstacle in any attempt to change the world or even to change oneself. I have always said that the spiritual force I have been putting on human affairs such as the War is not the supramental but the Overmind force, and that when it acts in the material world it is so inextricably mixed up in the tangle of the lower world forces that its results, however strong or however adequate to the immediate object, must necessarily be partial. That is why I am getting a birthday present of a free India on August 15, but complicated by its being presented in two packets as two free Indias this is a generosity I could have done without, one free India would have been enough for me if offered as an unbroken whole."
7.8.47
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Am I right in thinking that she [the Mother] as an Individual
embodies all the Divine Powers and brings down the Grace more and more
to the physical plane and that her embodiment is a chance
for the entire physical to change and be transformed?
"Yes. Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible. Afterwards there will be a further transformation by the Supramental, but the whole earth- consciousness will not be supramentalised - there will be first a new race representing the Supermind, as man represents the mind."
(13.8.33)
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( A letter from Albert Einstein)
Page 34
(An Award)
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(A letter from Kathleen Raine)
December 31st, 1993.
Dear Friend,
What a happiness to hear news of you after so long.... I have been reading your poems — what a beautifully produced book, with the Golden Bird (one of Rimbaud's?) on the cover. I at once read your introduction, most of the first section, and then, with great interest, the poems with the comments by Sri Aurobindo, whose insight into the different levels from which poems originate is so true and so valuable. As you know I share AE's view about all those abstract words and superlatives that Sri Aurobindo himself uses, and which he encourages you to use, but the aspiration of your life-work as a poet has been a yoga, as Blake would say a use of one of the three powers of conversing with Paradise' and Blake would surely applaud and delight in that vision you share with him. And there are some lovely poems, I agree with Sri Aurobindo's judgment of This Errant Life and especially of those beautiful lines:
Speak to me heart to heart words intimate
And all Thy formless glory turn to love
And mould Thy love into a human face.
I remember once Sisir Kumar Ghose, whom we must both miss, said to me in a letter about a paper I had written, 'I wish I had written it myself’ and that was the greatest compliment I was ever paid, and I would say the same of those three beautiful lines of your poem.
A life of aspiration to 'the divine vision' cannot but bring its reward, not in the poems only but in other ways — all ways — and setting your heart and mind on 'whatsoever things are lovely' (in St. Paul's words) you must have experienced many times a great joy. I shall not, as you may imagine, read the poems through from beginning to end, but I look forward to dipping in and finding always something that speaks to me from that paradisal vision to which we all — Blake, Sri Aurobindo, yourself and I hope I too, aspire. Those friends who share that 'divine vision' or seek it are very precious, in this dark world....
With very warm regards and remembrances of our busy correspondence.
Very affectionately
Kath Raine
(I am 85—1 believe I am still young by your standard?)
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SECTION TWO
His study of Divining Thought
A SELECTION FROM
THE WRITINGS OF AMAL-KIRAN
According to Horace's Ars Poetica a good poem comes both with spontaneous naturalness and well-cultivated craft, combining a lot of book-learning and inspiration. Amal-Kiran's poetry is not only good, but is something more than that: it breathes the joy of the spirit in its wide-ranging manifestive life-urges and is luminous, even at times profoundly revelatory, carrying delights and splendours of the psychic-lyrical, or of the overhead. It is trans-Horatian. Indeed, to put it more explicitly, it is Aurobindonian, within and without. So too is his literary criticism. While his analyses are scientific and incisive, the insights are always soul-based. In fact it is all these that go to make his varied writings rich and rewarding. If he has carried out this profession for more than sixty years, it only shows that his creative occupations are sustained unflaggingly by an inspiration which of course gushes from some secret depth of an inexhaustible source. His majestic Collected Poems running into eight-hundred pages and his penetrating criticial works comprising of several volumes are a visible witness to the wonder that he is. To attempt any selection out of such a vast body of literature is to do injustice to the genius. Yet this has perhaps got to be done with the expectation that it may kindle interest for a more serious and recognitive appreciation. If there is a motive behind this selection, it is surely to highlight the unique literary pilgrim's progress on the sunlit path that has been made available to him, to bring in focus his endeavour in the aesthetics of the spirit given to us by Sri Aurobindo.
— Editors
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There is so much abundance of beauty in Amal Kiran's early poetry that to make a selection from it is to do great injustice to it. But this is perhaps more than compensated by Sri Aurobindo's superlative comments, which also indicate the new aesthetics, the creative possibilities of the spirit he was trying to establish in this realm of gold. The path of the future poetry was certainly hewn through these pioneering efforts. This is undoubtedly a luminous sample of the kind of work that was being done in what Sri Aurobindo had claimed proudly to be his Poetry Department. - Editors
NE PLUS ULTRA
A madrigal to enchant her — and no more?
With the brief beauty of her face — drunk, blind
To the inexhaustible vastnesses that lure
The song-impetuous mind?
Is the keen voice of tuneful ecstasy
To be denied its winged omnipotence,
Its ancient kinship to immensity
And dazzling suns?
When mystic grandeurs urge him from behind,
When all creation is a rapturous wind
Driving him towards an ever-limitless goal,
Can such pale moments crown the poet's soul?
Shall he — born nomad of the infinite heart!
Time-tamer! star-struck debauchee of light!
Warrior who hurls his spirit like a dart
Across the terrible night
Of death to conquer immortality! —
Content with little loves that seek to bind
His giant feet with perishing joys, shall he
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Remain confined
To languors of a narrow paradise -
He in the mirroring depths of whose far eyes
The gods behold, overawed, the unnamable One
Beyond all gods, the Luminous, the Unknown?
SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT
"This is magnificent. The three passages I have marked reach a high-water mark of poetic force, but the rest also is very fine. This poem can very well take its place by the other early poem [This Errant Life} which I sent you back the other day, though the tone is different — that other was more subtly perfect, this reaches another kind of summit through sustained height and grandeur."
On the plane of inspiration of the lines marked in the second stanza: "Illumined Mind with mental Overmind touch."
MUKTI
What deep dishonour that the soul should have
Its passion moulded by a moon of change
And all its massive purpose be a wave
Ruled by time's gilded glamours that estrange
Being from its true goal of motionless
Eternity ecstatic and alone,
Poised in calm plenitudes of consciousness —
A sea unheard where spume nor spray is blown!
Be still, oceanic heart, withdraw thy sense
From fickle lure of outward fulgencies.
Clasp not in vain the myriad earth to appease
The hunger of thy God-profundities:
Not there but in self-rapturous suspense
Of all desire is thy omnipotence!
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"Congratulations! It is an exceedingly good sonnet - you have got the sonnet movement very well."
Originally, line 7 ran:
Poised in calm vastitude of consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo was asked if "plenitude" would be better in place of "vastitude". He replied:
" 'Vastitude' is better than 'plenitude' - but 'plenitudes' (the plural) would perhaps be best. The singular gives a too abstract and philosophical turn - the plural suggests something concrete and experienceable."
ORISON
A godless temple is the dome of space:
Reveal the sun of thy love-splendoured face,
O lustrous flowering of invisible peace,
O glory breaking into curves of clay
From mute intangible dream-distances,
That like a wondrous yet familiar light
Eternity may mingle with our day!
Leave thou no quiver of this time-born
heart A poor and visionless wanderer apart:
Make even my darkness a divine repose
One with thy nameless root, O mystic rose —
The slumbering seasons of my mortal sight
A portion of the unknowable vast behind
Thy gold apocalypse of shadowless mind!
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"That is extraordinarily fine throughout. But it is too fine for any need of remarks. Lines 3, 4, 5, also 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Illumined Mind with Overmind Intuition touch - the rest Higher Mind suffused with Illumined Mind."
MADONNA MIA
I merge in her rhythm of haloed reverie
By spacious vigil-lonelinesses drawn
From star-birds winging through the vacancy
Of night's incomprehensible spirit-dawn.
My whole heart echoes the enchanted gloom
Where God-love shapes her visionary grace:
The sole truth my lips bear is the perfume
From the ecstatic flower of her face.
"I think it is one of your best. I could not very definitely say from where the inspiration comes. It seems to come from the Illumination through the Higher Mind - but there is an intuitive touch here and there, even some indirect touch of 'mental Overmind' vision hanging about the first stanza.
"There are two ranges of Overmind which might be called 'mental' and 'gnostic' Overmind respectively — the latter in direct touch with Super-mind, the former more like a widened and massive intuition."
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NOCTURNE
My words would bring through atmospheres of calm
The new moon's smile that breathes unto the heart
Secrets of love lost in clay-captured kisses;
The evening star like some great bird whose fury
Dies to a cold miraculous sudden pause —
Wings buoyed by sheer forgetfulness of earth;
And oh that dream-nostalgia in the air,
The sky-remembrance of dew-perfumed dust!
I would disclose the one ethereal beauty
Calling across lone fires and fragrances -
But vain were music, vain all light of rapture
That drew not sense a pathway to strange sleep,
Nor woke a passion billowing through the body
In search of realms no eye-boats ever reached.
"Very fine indeed. This time you have got the blank verse all right, owing to the weight and power you have been able to put into the movement as well as the thought and language. Nothing to criticise. The lines give a quite coherent development and there is a single aspiration throughout. It has almost the full sonnet effect in spite of the absence of the rhyme structure."
Amal's question: This poem seems to have an occult air about it on the whole. But perhaps it is more surrealistic? What would you say of its quality and value ?
GREEN TIGER
There is no going to the Gold
Save on four feet
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Of the Green Tiger in whose heart's hold
Is the ineffable heat.
Raw with a burning body
Ruled by no thought —
Hero of the huge head roaring
Ever to be caught!
Backward and forward he struggles,
Till Sun and Moon tame
By cutting his neck asunder:
Then the heart's flame
Is free and the blind gap brings
A new life's beat —
Red Dragon with eagle-wings
Yet tiger-feet!
Time's blood is sap between
God's flower. God's root —
Infinity waits but to crown
This Super-brute.
"Very powerful and original poem. There may be some doubt as to whether the images have coalesced into a perfect whole. But it may be that if they did, the startling originality of the combination might lose something of its vehement force, and in that case it may be allowed to stand as it is. At any rate it is an extremely original and powerful achievement."
A DIAMOND IS BURNING UPWARD
A diamond is burning upward
In the roofless chamber walled
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By the ivory mind;
An orb entranced glows
Where earth-storm never blows —
But the two wide eyes are blind
To its virgin soar behind
Their ruby and emerald.
The one pure bird finds rest
In the crescent moon of a nest
Which infinite boughs upbear....
Flung out on phantom air
In a colour-to-colour race
Yet never ending their quest,
The two birds dream they fly
Though fixed in the narrow sky
Of a futile human face.
"It sounds very surrealistic. Images and poetry very beautiful, but significance and connections are cryptic. Very attractive, though."
SAVITRI
A rose of dawn, her smile lights every gaze-
Her love is like a nakedness of noon:
No flame but breathes in her the Spirit's calm
And pours the omnipresence of a sun.
Her tongues of fire break from a voiceless deep
Dreaming the taste of some ineffable height —
A cry to clasp the one God-hush in all,
A universal hunger's white embrace
That from the Unknown leaps burning to the Unknown.
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"Exceedingly fine; both the language and rhythm are very powerful and highly inspired. When the inspiration is there, you reach more and more a peculiar fusion of the three influences, higher mental, illumined mental and intuitive, with a touch of the Overmind Intuition coming in. This touch is strongest here in the second and the two closing lines, but it is present in all except two — the third which is yet a very fine line indeed and the seventh where it is not present in the typed version ('A cry to clasp in all the one God-hush') but seems just to touch perhaps in the written one ('A cry to clasp the one God-hush in all'). In the typed version the higher mental is strongest but in the written one which is less emphatic but more harmonious, the rhythm gets in a higher influence. In the other lines the illumined mental influence lifting up the higher mental is strongest, but is itself lifted up to the intuitive - in all but the third just high enough to get the touch of the overmental intuition."
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"The Muse is again away" — complains Amal Kiran to Sri Aurobindo. And to invoke her grace the "method" the Master proposes is to "turn upward and inward". — Editors
The Muse is again away and I am feeling impatient. Can't you give me some due about the direction of consciousness by which I may draw her back to me or reach out to her ? But, of course, I want the highest and I want a thorough perfection. Perhaps I am too careful and self-critical ? But that is my nature as an artist. Has it got something to do with the Muse's flight from me ? In any case, the experience of uncreativeness, the loss of the freedom of flying on the wings of inspiration, the sense of the poetic part of me caught in the mere mind and rendered vague and ineffective - all this is most unpleasant. Sometimes I fear the present lack of fluency may become a permanent defect. What method would you advise to counteract it ? Quieting the mind ? What do you do to get inspiration ?
Poetry seems to have intervals in its visits to you very often. I rather think the malady is fairly common. Dilip and Nishikanta who can write whenever they feel inclined are rare birds. I don't know about 'the direction of consciousness'. My own method is not to quiet the mind, for it is eternally quiet, but to turn upward and inward. You, I suppose, would have to quiet it first, which is not always easy. Have you tried it ?
It is precisely the people who are careful, self-critical, anxious for perfection who have interrupted visits from the Muse. Those who don't mind what they write, trusting to their genius, vigour, fluency to carry it off, are usually the abundant writers. There are exceptions, of course. 'The poetic part caught in the mere mind' is an admirable explanation of the phenomenon of interruption — it was the same with myself in the old days. Fluent poets are those
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who either do not mind if they do not always write their very best or whose minds are sufficiently poetic to make even their 'not best’ verse pass muster well. Sometimes you write things that are good enough but not your best - but both your insistence and mind - for I think it essential for you to write your best always, at least your level best - may have curbed your fluency a good deal.
The diminution of your prose was compensated by the much higher and maturer quality to which it attained afterwards It would be so, I suppose, with the poetry and a new level of consciousness once attained there might well be a new fluency So there is not much justification for the fear.
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Sri Aurobindo's Poetic Psychology and Metaphysics
In his usurpassable critical study Sri Aurobindo — the Poet Amal Kiran has dealt with several aspects of the yogi-Seer's poetic creation, particularly at places touching upon the mantric utterance as the Voice of the Future given to us by him. Savitri is a rich storehouse for an aesthetician of the spirit, a composition not easily accessible even to a trained or 'advanced’ reader. He has not only to be a master of the poetic art; he should also be in living sympathy with the soul's revelatory power of expression. Amal Kiran's labour of love is to help us enter into these esoteric domains in a growing appreciation of its methods and its techniques. The following excerpt is a typical example of this inspired undertaking of his. —Editors
OUR second group of six lines picturing Sri Aurobindo's poetic psychology and metaphysics are part of an account of Savitri's long quest for her soul's mate Satyavan. Savitri encounters various types of spiritual seekers retired from the noisy world into woods and hills. One band of them, pressing with a motionless mind beyond the confines of thought to sheer spiritual Light, comes back from there with the native word of the supreme Consciousness, the mantra such as we find in the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita:
Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,
Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,
Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,
They sang Infinity's names and deathless powers
In metres that reflect the moving worlds,
Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.'
This is a description of the poetic process at its highest spiritual pitch and it is itself a-thrill with the vibrations of what is spoken
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of and compasses in the closing verse the full breath of the mantra while concentrating in one brief expression the ultimate nature of the mantric utterance.
Yes, the whole subject is a special hieratic one, but the treatment of it sheds light on the nature of poetic inspiration in general. For, if the mantra is the ideal poetry, all poetry that is genuine must represent or shadow forth in its own way the mantric essence.
In our first group of six lines we listed as the divine element in all poetry the inner intuitive cast of imaginative and emotional excitement taking shape in the outer rhythmic word-gesture and word-movement and thereby creating a perfect beauty. It is the creative intuition that is now pictured as it operates on the level of a most directly spiritual poetry. In such poetry the original power channelled by the poet comes into its own, getting its fullest scope; for has not Sri Aurobindo2 the defining phrase: "A direct spiritual perception and vision called by us intuition" ?
We begin with the basic act of "intuitive knowledge" and its stirred seizures of truth that get moulded into language: the leap upon the heart of reality's significances is at the same time a leap into words answering to them. The intuitive knowledge has two sides: the revelatory rhythm and the revelatory vision. The former is a subtlety of vibration in tune with the measureless mystery of the absolute Bliss and bringing into manifestation the unknown silences: it is in the form of a "voice" which gives the secret body of the heavenly existence a vesture woven of meaningful sound — sound that follows like a wonderfully responsive clothing the ever-indrawn identity of the Supreme. And this clothing of sound, with its rhythmic ripples, is a "splendour" at the same time that it is a "voice". The simile of a garment for sound is of high import: it shows that what is heard and what is seen are a single reality. Thus our passage's transition from revelatory rhythm to revelatory vision is natural and inevitable. A cloth of gold, as it were, is the theme - and the gold is the Light of lights, the creative fire that goes forth in a million modes and materialises as the suns with which our heavens are bespangled. An elemental incandescence projecting the contents of the Inscru-
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table in symbol-shapes is at work in the ecstatic heat of poetic production. The mantra holds it in a white state, so to speak, but something of it persists everywhere, and each poet has in him the sense of a supra-intellectual illumination no less than a sense of some primal rapture which affines his heartbeat to what the old tradition designated the music of the spheres, the concord of the universal OM. With that illumination he becomes the seer of truth just as with that rapture he becomes the hearer of it — the truth concerned being the sight achieved of any aspect of reality by means of the faculty of intuition, with its thrilled flash into the depths of any part of the world through the depth of some part of one's self.
A gloss on the triple operation sketched by the lines —intuitive knowledge that is a voice, a voice that is a splendour — may be derived from four verses elsewhere in Savitri:
Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone:
Armed they have come with the infallible word
In an investiture of intuitive light
That is a sanction from the eyes of God...3
Even the cloth-symbol is present and it directly serves to merge the elements of our three lines.
With these elements unified in his consciousness, the poet at his highest raises up an art-form of flawless loveliness, a Song, in which Infinity's own self-disclosing articulation is at play: the godheads pronounce each his being's central note, his inherent name-image in which the power of his immortal creative bliss resides. The master-poet, by letting the Illimitable formulate its myriad magic of deific motion through his singing, echoes in the dominant rhythms of his poetry the primal measures of the Supreme's self-expression in the multitudinous cosmos: the metres of the starry revolutions, their set accords of majestic journey through endless space and time, are caught in his designs of long and short sounds, vowel-flows and consonant-curbs, overtones and undertones, stresses and slacks, line-units and verse-paragraphs — the macrocosmic regularities find their reflection Page-51
in a microcosm of poetic cadences, the moving worlds make themselves felt in the harmonious words. As in our first group of verses, we have Infinity's rhythm-beats metricised. Then we have the grand finale — the last line which seems to bear in itself both qualitatively and quantitatively all the rest in quintessence:
Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.
It is a really lengthy line because of eight step-by-step monosyllables and eight intrinsically long vowels and four consecutive stresses at the start and three at the end. The slow weighty stretched movement conveys the sense of a massive flood drawn towards earth from the distance of a divine existence - the profound secrecy of the Soul. Here again, as before, we have the Soul as the source of poetry and this source is not only deep within us but also itself a great depth, holding as it were a vast concealed ocean of experience-movements in which the Divine Consciousness is hidden and in which there is an occult oneness of our individuality with the whole world. Sensation, emotion, idea are here involved or contained in a thrilled awareness focused for poetic purposes in a luminous vision which is at the same time a subtle vibration taking the form of rhythmic words.
"Sight's sound-waves": a marvellous turn condensing all that has been said before and constituting an entire system of poetics. Seeing and hearing are shown as fused faculties — yet each is given its proper role. Poetry brings the soul's vastness into our common life by means of "sound-waves" - it is a super-version of Homer's "many-rumoured ocean". But the mighty billows drive home to us a burden of sight: the ocean is not only many- rumoured, it is a also many-glimmered, many-figured. The poet's work is principally to set himself astir with the shine, the hue, the contour, the posture of things. Significances start within him as vivid pictures, imaginative conjurations, symbolic hints: through them he enjoys the subjective and the objective worlds and by them he traces the beauty and truth of things and attains to a comprehension of details, inter-relations, totalities. However, the
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poet's seeing are of such an intensity and come projected from such an ecstasy-vibrant fount that they burst upon us with a verbal declaration of their intents. Each sight has its own manifesting sound which is not just "transmissive" but "incarnative", embodying with a living intimacy and piercing directness the gleaming stuff and stir of the Soul's revelatory contact with reality.
And this sound is best compared, as by Sri Aurobindo, to waves. For, it is a sustained march with a rise and fall, its rhythms variously modulating on a basic recurrent tone and breaking upon the receptive mind and heart and sensation not only with happy spontaneities like the changing dance of spume and spray but also with powerful profundities like the sweep of unremitting rollers and persisting undercurrents and now and then a mysterious ground-swell.
We may remark how the image of the sea springs up time and again in Sri Aurobindo's poetry about the poetic phenomenon. It is particularly there when he refers to that phenomenon's highest resolution in the mystic and spiritual key. But it has a vital role elsewhere too. In the course of recounting Savitri's girlhood and its inclusion of an experience of all the arts he tells us:
Poems in largeness cast like moving worlds
And metres surging with the ocean's voice
Translated by grandeurs locked in Nature's heart
But thrown now into a crowded glory of speech
The beauty and sublimity of her forms,
The passion of her moments and her moods
Lifting the human word near to the god's.4
The unsealing of grandeurs from subtle dimensions of Nature to cast an interpretative light on the world-pageant through a rich packed poetry could very well be true of ancient epics like Valmiki's Rāmāyana and Vyasa's Mahābhārata or mediaeval ones like Kalidasa's Kumārasambhavam and Raghuvamsam. The last phrase about man's word being upraised to neighbour a divine utterance, rather than itself becoming such, is a pointer to the
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secular character of the poems concerned. This character is recognised all the more when we have a clear description of spiritual poetry, a use of the word in a different fashion and for a
different goal:
Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres
The word was used as a hieratic means
For the release of the imprisoned spirit
Into communion with its comrade gods.
Or it helped to beat out new expressive forms
Of that which labours in the heart of life,
Some immemorial Soul in men and things,
Seeker of the Unknown and the Unborn
Carrying a light from the Ineffable
To rend the veil of the last mysteries.5
Those other poems had their regard on Nature's forms, moments, moods and set free in the visible world deeper meanings, greater dynamisms that are like presences of hidden lords of Nature, living puissances that are secret cosmic agents. Now we are told of an attempt with the help of inspiration from "higher spheres" and not merely inner ones ("Nature's heart"), to liberate the soul of man, the "spirit" encased in the sensing, feeling, thinking body, and enable it to grow one with divine entities, share in the very being of secret cosmic agents. Nature's hidden lords, and even in that of transcendental powers, godheads beyond the universe and not only behind it. Further, side by side with the spirit's linkage with divinity through poetic rhythms brought straight from "above", hieratic or sacred poetry endeavours for a manifestation of divinity "below". It gets into touch with "the heart of life" where a World-Soul toils at evolution within man's physical mould and Nature's matter. Charged with the drive of this evolutionary Dreamer, it aims to infuse his idealistic dynamism into the stuff of outward existence, so that novel modes of thought and desire and perception may be realised, expressing openly through the activities of this stuff the fulfilment of the World-Soul's venture across the ages to reveal
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here and now the arcane Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpieces of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super- Vyasan rarity — the Gita — in the midst of the Mahābhārata. But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their own sound-waves of sight: through their metrical movement "the ocean's voice" is heard in them no less than in the mighty compositions that move from everlasting to everlasting in the worlds of the gods and whose imitations on earth are the Rishis' songs of "Infinity's names and deathless powers" — mighty compositions pictured by Sri Aurobindo in the last Book of Savitri:
The odes that shape the universal thought,
The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face,
The rhythms that bring the sounds of wisdom's sea.6
Large structured chants bearing the formative force of the ideas on which the cosmic plan is founded, intensely lyrical phrases capturing with visionary power the secrets of the Supreme Beauty, patterns of sustained sonorities conveying fathomless suggestions and ultimate significances that escape all defining speech - this progression of poetic elements in the supernal modes concludes deliberately on the image of wide waters. That image makes the right climax. For most in the mantra, even as mainly in every species of poetry, it is the rhythmic vibration which holds the keenest sense of the life-throb, so to speak, of the Infinite and carries the greatest potentiality of re-creating the human existence in the mould of the divine. This vibration serves as the strongest instrument to stir the deepest recesses of our being and awake in them an answer of sympathetic vision to the sight of the Eternal which in one shape or another all poetry fundamentally strives to lay bare.
Keeping "sight" and its "sound-waves" in mind we may sum up in the words of Sri Aurobindo7 our whole exposition: "Sight is the essential poetic gift. The archetypal poet in a world of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately
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this world and all the others and God and Nature and the life of beings and sets flowing from its centre a surge of creative rhythm and word-images which become the expressive body of the vision; and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure
this ideal creation, kavayah satyasrutah, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word."
References
1. Savitri, Centenary Edition, p. 383.
2. The Future Poetry, Centenary Edition, p. 220.
3. Savitri, Centenary Edition, p. 258.
4. Savitri, p. 361.
5. Ibid., p. 360.
6. Centenary Edition, p. 677.
7. The Future Poetry, Centenary Edition, p. 30.
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We reproduce in the following Amal Kiran's letter to Sri Aurobindo on Savitri as it appears in the Sri Aurobindo Circle (Special Fiftieth Number) of 1994. The editor's note, briefly excerpted, introducing the correspondence between them precedes the letter. Sri Aurobindo's reply as originally dictated to Nirodbaran is not reproduced here. — Editors
(Sri Aurobindo used to send by instalments, from 25 October 1936 onward for some time, a handwritten copy of his Savitri as it stood then to Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), and it grew an established, practice that the disciple would raise critical points and the Master consider them and give suitable answers. This practice continued in changing forms even when Amal Kiran was in Bombay in the forties. We are publishing one set of correspondence belonging to the Bombay-period... The disciple says to the editor of Sri Aurobindo Circle that, on re-reading his part of the exchange, he is surprised how Sri Aurobindo could allow him to write not only at great length but also in bold terms as if to an equal, and how the Master had the patience and the graciousness to deal in detail with all the topics proposed. Sri Aurobindo's reply is reproduced here as originally dictated to Nirodbaran and not in its final farm as included in the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Edition of Savitri.)
Hamilton Villa,
Nepean Sea Road,
Bombay.
1.5.1946
Sri Aurobindo,
Your patience with me is admirable and admirable too is the dear controlled force with which you express your views. You
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could have brusquely brushed aside my various reflections. Instead, you have considered them at length. And I have the feeling that you welcomed the points raised by me and the criticisms I had offered. Just as I do my utmost to appreciate and praise the merits of your poetry, I scrupulously mention all that seems to me a shortcoming no matter how slight and negligible in the midst of your abundant excellence. At times I may be helpful, more often I must be merely troublesome, but I hope my speaking my mind serves some purpose, draws your attention to certain things either for removing them or for clearing up issues of importance in relation to the sort of poetry you are writing and many of us are aspiring to write. If, however, you think that my method of subjecting Savitri to the keenest scrutiny in order that it may be wholly perfect is misguided altogether, I shall not submit any further suggestions for improvement but confine myself to what I can whole-heartedly praise - that is, nine- hundred and ninety-nine parts out of every thousand.
My phrase about unpurposive repetition might carry the unacceptable suggestion that a poet must have a conscious deliberate intellectually justifiable purpose in whatever he writes — and so I ought to modify it. I think what I should mean is this: repetitions in a certain kind of poetry do not seem to have a special meaning, a special point and do not even attract special notice, while in another kind they do not pass unnoticed and they strike one as serving some end, some end which the poet may not always be able fully to explain to himself but which he feels or intuits to be there. The reader too may not always be able to give an explanation, yet he is spurred to look for one because he feels or intuits a meaning and a point whereas, in dealing with the other kind of poetry, he is not spurred at all to do so. The latter kind gives the impression either that the repetition docs not stand out or that, if it does, it is right in its own place without needing to be considered in the relation of one part to another. There is no sense created, in the critical observing mind or even in the seeing and regulating instinct, that the successive parts bear the repeated word because of a particular purpose held by the inspiration and running through these parts and relating the first
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occurrence of a word to the second.
Your new version of the bird-passage does away with the slight weakness of the old besides avoiding the repetition of "delight" at the end of a line. It carries now a complex multiform image, perhaps more in tune with the general vision of the rest of the description you have given of Savitri. But there must be a comma after "breast" to make "haven" go with the second portion of the passage. One variant in the body of the new version suggests itself to my mind. I offer it not with the idea that it is definitely an improvement but just for your consideration. You have:
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose.
Here, for what it may be worth, is a closer approximation to your original line:
In a safe haven of splendid and soft repose.
You say you cannot satisfy my demand for rejection and alteration of the lines about the Inconscient and the cloak. Well, I suppose you know your business best, and if after my criticism you still stick to your guns I must conclude that there's not much the matter with them. But I must say the line you have put after the one about the cloak does somewhat change the complexion of the case: you bring in just the suggestive mystical touch which, though not introducing a direct affinity in the image to what goes before and comes after, provides it with the common basis the various other images have and to that extent obviates my objection to it as being an intruder. As for the Inconscient and Ignorance, I am sure that sooner or later the inspired poetical exegesis or symbol will flash through your mind. For Ignorance waking from the Inconscient you have somewhere a splendid phrase - And the blind void struggles to live and see. I don't give up the hope that another such miracle will happen.
(By the way, there seems to be a prepositional mix-up in your sentence: "I take my stand on my own feeling and experience about them as Keats did about his on truth and beauty." Shouldn't "about" and "on" at the close change places? I hope you don't mind my mentioning the slip.)'
In the passage about the "errant marvel", I agree that the line beginning "Orphaned..." cannot be omitted, and I see also that there is not sufficient reason for you to alter anything in deference to the reader's difficulty in getting at the grammar. After all, every passage need not yield its grammatical pattern very easily — and provided suggestions are there to lead him to the right reading of it he should not grumble. Your passage has these suggestions, as you point out. Perhaps passages like this are part of a long poem's attractive features - they give critics occasions for discussion and elucidation. So long as genuine poetry is not missing, there should be no demurring at grammatical or symbolical "toughness" here and there.
Your picture of the Johnsonian critic is both effective and amusing. I suppose most of us who have not gone beyond the intellect into a deeper and higher consciousness have him in some form or other lurking within us. I try my best to keep at bay whatever remnant of him is still in me — and I think my various essays on poetry in general and on your poetry in particular, indicate this trying. That does not mean he never crops up - but I am not unaware of his menace. Besides, I myself have written poetry which would send him howling mad: especially the poem called Agni, which begins:
A smile of heaven locked in a seed of light
and which you once described as "super-Aeschylean" in style, out-vedas the Veda in its reckless association of disparate images to figure supramaterial and occult entities and significances!
The Hamlet-lines you quote from Shakespeare are a good instance of the liberty with images which romantic poetry takes — to the complete flabbergasting of the Johnsonian critic. I believe,
1. In his reply Sri Aurobindo admits the slip. - Editors
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however, that romanticism is not only the cause of Shakespeare's way with images. In romantic poetry itself there are two ways of using imagery — that of poets like Spenser, Milton and Tennyson and that of poets like Shakespeare and Donne. Donne differs from Shakespeare in several respects and is a much inferior and less harmonised poet on the whole and often he falls, as you once remarked, between two stools - the vital afflatus and the mental inspiration — but these two poets have a certain affinity in their treatment of language and metre, their manner of thinking out a theme, their attitude towards images. Imagery is with them functional, it is a means of thinking and feeling, they think and feel in a sensuous fashion. Their imagery is not something added to the thought and the emotion; the adding can be most beautifully and harmoniously done, but it will still remain more a pictorial and artistic value than a direct and native mode of intellectual significance and emotional suggestion. Shakespeare's images often run into one another because he is not always trying to present a coherent pictorial description but rather to give flashes of the aspects of his thought, the turns of his emotion. His similes, and metaphors are less to be realised in their sensory properties than in their meaning and mood. The sensory proper- ties remain a little hazy - not in individual picturisation but in collective effect: hence mixed, fused, changing images. A recent writer, noting some of these points in Shakespeare, quoted the phrase:
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Such a phrase would be impossible to find in Spenser or Tennyson, very rare in Milton for all his compact force.
I am not quite clear as to what conclusion I should draw about the nature of poetry from your paragraph about aesthetics and the Overmind. Of course it is plain that ordinary aesthetics cannot be equated with the Overmind's poetry. But is not the latter what it is because of an extraordinary type of aesthetics and not because it is concerned with spiritual truth? Don't you mean
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the same thing when you say: "In all poetry a poetical aesthesis of some kind there must be in the writer and the recipient; but aesthetics is of many kinds and the ordinary kind is not sufficient for appreciating the Overhead element in poetry." In the sense in which I have understood the term in my last letter, aesthesis is the sine qua non of poetry: there are many other elements but they can exist without necessarily producing poetry, while no poetry at all can there be either of the Overhead or the non-Overhead variety in the absence of aesthesis. If the poetic expressions from the diverse planes are to be brought under a general heading, the common factor in them must be considered their essence and this factor can only be a many-moded aesthesis. It is subtle-physical aesthesis that makes Homeric poetry, vital aesthesis that makes the poetry of Shakespeare, mental aesthesis that makes the poetry which is Miltonic and Overmind aesthesis that makes the Aurobindonian poetry. Knock Overmind aesthesis out of Savitri and we shall have The Life Divine or The Synthesis of Yoga in the guise of a Legend and a Symbol. Truth will still remain, but not poetry proper. As soon as aesthesis functions on the Overmind level, we have the poetry of Truth since, as you say, the Overmind in all its dealings puts Truth first. All the same, the fact that the characteristic dealings of a particular plane cannot help entering into all its expression does not give to the expression which is poetical on this plane any other essence than aesthesis. Neither the mental nor vital nor subtle-physical plane is solely concerned with aesthesis: they have their own typical dealings which enter into their poetry, even as those of the Overmind enter into its — and yet it is not these typical dealings which constitute their poetry. Similarly, the Overmind’s concern first and foremost with truth supplies merely the most important feature by which its poetry is to be distinguished from that of the other levels of consciousness: this concern does not render anything else except aesthesis the essence of the Overmind's poetry. Am I wrong in thinking that, though the Overmind cannot be equated with aesthetics in the ordinary form and it is concerned with many other things than even an extraordinary form of aesthetics, its
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poetry must in essence be equated with what you have called "a greater, wider and deeper aesthesis which can answer to the transcendent and feel too whatever of the transcendent or spiritual enters into the things of life, mind and sense"?
Here a new point arises: when you employ the epithets "greater, wider, deeper" what exactly are we to understand in relation to poetical quality? If poetry's essence is some kind or other of aesthesis, is the Overmind poetry superior, qua poetry, to the creations of the Muse from the mental, vital or subtle- physical planes? The epithets used by you would seem at the first blush to imply superiority for it. But I believe that they refer to the spiritually greater, wider and deeper nature of the plane from which this poetry leaps out. In other words, the Overmind aesthesis functions from the plane of the transcendent or spiritual which is more great, wide and deep than the rest of the planes, yet in thus functioning it produces not superior poetry but poetry from a level of being which has spiritual superiority - a superiority that does not add to the purely poetical quality: You have said somewhere that, in spite of the Mahabharata and Ramayana being greater, wider and deeper creations than the Iliad and Shakespeare's work, Vyasa and Valmiki, though not inferior, are not superior poets. Doesn't this amount to saying that neither the plane nor the scope nor the theme of a poetical creation makes any difference to the purely poetical quality? But what then constitutes greatness from the standpoint of poetry proper? All poetry is an outbreak from within: taking any subject and adopting any view, it comes from the inner being from any plane. But the inner being on each plane has a gradation of temperatures. Poetry can be created from any grade; still, the inner being acting the poet from a lower temperature creates small beauty, brings an aesthesis that is narrow in its thrill - from a higher temperature a beauty that is great, a far-thrilling aesthesis. Though the result in both cases is truly inspired and distinguishable from mere constructed brain-work, there is a degree of difference between the two, which can be perceived if we compare the intensity manifested in lines like these from Nashe,
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Beauty is a flower
Wrinkles will devour,
to that embodied in the following from the same poet,
Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
The former lines are Nashe writing with inspiration from a lower temperature of his inner being, whereas the latter are the inspired outbreak from a higher one. For another example, take Pippa's song by Browning:
The year's at the spring,
The day's at the morn;
The morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's at the thorn;
God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world.
This is flawless in its own way, the inner being has put forth beauty, but that being has not risen to the top-grade of temperature possible to the particular mood it has taken up. The same mood, essentially, of happy faith in the Divine's presence and in his work in the world can be made to yield a far-thrilling intensity: the expressive outcome will then be perfection of great poetry instead of a perfection of small poetry. Compare Browning's
God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world
with Dilip's
It is His will that overarches all,
His sentinel love broods o'er the universe,
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and you will see at once what I mean. It may be said that Dilip is drawing upon a very lofty Overhead plane and is therefore "greater", but I opine that quite apart from this there is a difference in the temperature of imagining and feeling and in the temperature of word and rhythm. A similar difference is also perceived if we consider non-Overhead lines with an analogous drift revealed from another angle — Francis Thompson's
The angels keep their ancient places; —
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
A man does not need to write from his inner being's depth at this temperature in one manner or another in order to be an admirable poet; to be a great one he certainly does.
The subject of poetical greatness is not exhausted by what I have said above. It can be approached in a more complex fashion and several other points brought up. I hope, however, I have put my finger on the heart of the matter. Also I hope I haven't tired you by my digression.
I was much interested by your finding the Overhead touch in the lines:
I spoke as one who ne'er would speak again
And as a dying man to dying men.
What exactly is introduced by the Overhead touch here? Could we hold that somehow a subtle "spirituality" comes in? But how are we to characterise the "spirituality"? If, as you say, the touch gets in through a passionate emotion and sincerity, what nuance of them catches the sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive on the Overhead planes? Is there anything Overhead in the emotion of Wordsworth's
And never lifted up a single stone
or Shakespeare's
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Absent thee from felicity a while
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story
or a modern poet's
Sad eyes watch for feet that never come?
Your observing that when I was typing an earlier draft of the first books of Savitri you were passing through a transition-stage between the habits of an old inspiration and technique and the new that had begun to come removes the puzzlement on my part at seeing you take a laxer view of repetition than at one time.
I have sent Premananda a list of the ten or eleven mistakes that have crept into the generally excellent printing of my huge article. Please ask Nirod to consult that list and enter the corrections in your copy.
With love,
AMAL
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Nirodbaran's Achievement in Mystical Poetry
The following article by Amal Kiran on Nirodbaran's poetry, written years ago, is being published, it is understood, in the author's forthcoming book Inspiration and Effort. We reproduce the same here. As reviewer of a poetry book this is perhaps a unique example of his literary writings. — Editors
DOCTORS have been good novelists: there are enough unusual incidents of human value in their clinical experience to make arresting stories under the selective surgery of a realistic imagination. But rare is the doctor who turns poet. A Dr. Cronin is conceivable, a Dr. Bridges is a wonder indeed. The book Sun-Blossoms which is before me is a radiant curiosity since — as the Foreword to it by K. H. G. tells us — the poems here collected were penned by a doctor. The wonder, however, becomes easier to accept without ceasing to be splendidly out of the way, when we are told also that Dr. Nirodbaran blossomed into a poet under the revelatory sun of that Master of Yoga as well as Poetry, Sri Aurobindo.
Dr. Nirodbaran has followed the old command: "Physician, heal thyself" — but the health and wholeness he aims at are the transformation of the human into the divine:
I will rise yet healed of my mortal wounds
To thy dome of jewelled ecstasy,
A warrior soul invincible,
Chainless, orbed with infinity!
And the book charts the course of his celestial cure. A magical chart it is, the lines of progress being luminous lines of highly inspired poetry. Yes, Nirodbaran's book is highly inspired; but
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perhaps the enthusiastic conclusion of K.H.G.'s interesting and well-written Foreword is too sweeping in one place. When it is said that never does Nirodbaran "lapse into the mere intellectualised or the externally vital or sensational level of speech or seeing," the judgment is perfect. But can we declare that "even at his lowest pitch he never forsakes the intuitive felicity of the genuinely inspired word and vision"? I dare say all poetry to be genuinely inspired must have, in essence and in general, some intuitive felicity — but this felicity is not always of the same kind and to call everything felicitous is to weaken the force of that term just as to use the epithet "intuitive" for each kind of felicity is somewhat to water it down. Take the stanza:
Belated traveller, vainly dost thou mourn
Because the transient night engulfs thy way!
Thou art not on the perilous road alone,
Left to some cruel demon's sovereign sway.
This is not unpoetic, but is it more than passable? Would we not have to wear rose-coloured glasses to discern in it "intuitive felicity"? Even at a keener pitch —
My solitude is filled with thy delight;
I drink thy beauty like a passionate wine.
My flickering mortality grows divine,
A shadowless image of the Infinite —
poetry can leave us hesitant about that characteristic. Even now the speech, in spite of the attractive pair of phrases "passionate wine" and "flickering mortality", seems a little easily found. Except in the broadest and a hardly distinctive sense, the ascribing of "intuitive felicity" to it would be an exaggeration. As such speech is more frequent in Nirodbaran than that of the first quotation, what can be confidently averred is that he always brings us the substance of mystical inwardness and that the expression seldom stops with barely skimming this substance;
but at times, instead of diving deep, the expression goes just
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below the surface. Then the result is good poetry as contrasted to passable, yet not packed with the subtle intense novelty which would make the poetry at least fine, if not superlative. Good poetry is not anything to disparage, but surely its temper and tone we cannot equate to the real "intuitive felicity" of verse like Nirodbaran's own:
My passions one by one turn towards thee
Like stars in midnight's silence; peacefully
They lie on the altar of a silver dream
To be cast into the vision of the Supreme.
These lines may not be superlative poetic articulation: they are, however, truly fine and not merely good.
Nirodbaran has plenty of the truly fine utterance. And often the truly fine is interspersed with things that have a superlative touch. There is no doubt that the two closing lines of the quatrain,
All joy of life is now a shining part
Of the ecstasy of the eternal Heart
Where time is a voyage with wide unfurled wings,
The flame-sails of unknown awakenings,
are magnificent. The vision is a grand suggestion of spiritual movement onward and inward; the language, at once subtle and concrete in its turn, is an illumined embodiment of the sense; the rhythm goes home from some vast beyond to some hidden vast in ourselves. Mark how apt is the fusion of "wide unfurled wings" with "voyage" by means of the word "sails" and also "awakenings" by means of the word "flame" with its implication of golden visibility and bright uplifting as in dawn-break when the eyes too become lit and begin to see with the uplifting of the lids and appear to be like two wings wide and unfurled. The inspiration here is a mighty magical bringing-together of many vivid and far-reaching intuitions into an inevitable unity.
Nirodbaran is successful in achieving such inspiration not only
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in short snatches; there are whole poems that stand out as veritable masterpieces. Naturally they are not a multitude, but in this matter the achievement of even half a dozen poems of all- round perfection is a feat eminently worth noting. To focus all the better the quality of these poems we may distinguish three varieties of poetic performance. Some poems reach their goal more by a total effect than by individual details: the diverse parts in them do not strike us as particularly memorable, but the ensemble makes an unforgettable impact on the mind. Other poems move to their goal by brilliant steps and everywhere there is an impressive play of word and image, but though the total effect is felt the individual details stand out more. Still other poems have an integral harmony in which both the details and the ensemble are equally seizing, neither are the parts subdued to the whole nor is the whole subdued to the parts, but there is a beautiful balance and every part is a perfect whole in itself and the sum of the parts is a perfect super-whole. If we are to label the three varieties, we may stress one shade out of the hundreds seen in the old terms "classical" and "romantic" and say that the first type of poetic performance is classical, the second romantic, while the third is a union of the two. The best works of those usually called classical and romantic poets are such a union. And it is the poems in which Nirodbaran brings about this union that I consider veritable masterpieces. The rest are truly fine creations, but here are the sheer climaxes of poetic genius.
As examples of the three types, we may cite New Life, the very first poem in Sun-Blossoms, as a classical perfection — feeling that is not superficial at all, tone that is authentic throughout, imagery that is organic to the mystical feeling, but the graceful details adding up without drawing special attention to themselves and only the complete poem "clicking" in the deep background of the receptive consciousness. As compared to this, the second poem, Your Face, has many lines leaping out to us, lines that can be culled from the context and exhibited in their own rich right, but the whole piece does not form a sudden cumulative revelation: it has a poetic point but not quite a sharp and shining one, and the total impression, felicitous as it is, is not momentous enough;
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what is gripping are the various significant phrases that catch fire in the course of the movement to that slightly unsurprising total impression. The book's third poem Secret Hand, mingles the classical and the romantic qualities; it is memorable in a step-by-step scrutiny and memorable in a synoptic survey. But perhaps the best examples of the supreme art are the sonnets Creator and Earth-Cry. The former runs:
A giant figure carved from the rock of Night
Chiselled with poignant fires of Sun and Moon,
A body outlined with a measureless might
Where heaven and earth have joined their spirit-rune.
A myriad streams flow from his luminous feet
To elemental spheres of voiceless hush
Where nascent worlds are rhythmed to one heartbeat,
Lit with creation's primal roseate blush.
He stands behind the heaving stress of the hours,
A tower of triumphant Force and Light,
A lonely peak crowned with the Infinite
Hiding within a passionate heart of flowers.
Lightening our shadow blossoms of life his grace
Hews from earth's clay beauty of a white-moon face
.
Every line is a profound surprise - mysticism finding its happiest originality of expression, and the complete work is a "white- moon face" as flawless in unity as are its features in their multiplicity. Of course neither the multiplicity nor the unity yields itself to immediate appreciation by the unprepared non-mystical reading. This is verse of super-normal symbolic insight, and we have to be attuned to its new "wave-length" to get the message correct. Quiet sensitive concentration can alone secure the rich critical response. But even an aesthetic alertness can provide some measure of the double excellence. The same can be said of the other sonnet:
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Bright mystery of earth, O foam-washed shore
On the edge of time, you bring thoughts pale and sweet
Of happiness long lost, memories that bore
In their veiled bosom twilight's starry heartbeat!
These desert-tracts, as they lie lifeless, cold—
Strange melancholies buried in their sand —
Are like dry barren moments deeply scrolled
On endless canvas by an inscrutable hand.
Whence like a cry of fire night and day
Your soul climbs to the topless distant peaks
In the heart of solemn vastness holding sway,
Lined with immutable silence's golden streaks.
Your body's faint murmur-falls slowly heard,
A dying warrior's last half-spoken word.
Splendid is each stanza and equally splendid is the fourteen-lined fusion of the several pictures. And what an achievement is that closing couplet with its deep defunctive music — its echo of a grand ebbing of the body-consciousness, with the soul entering no domain of common death but a realm of trance where the human gets absorbed into the deific.
Nirodbaran's poetry is full of the passing of the outer being into the Unknown that is like a death into a larger and richer life —
a death
Tranquil and luminous-whorled,
as he puts it in Heaven-Ascent. He speaks also of
The tranquil dome of Death
and of
The starry wings of Death.
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Evidently he is visioning some transcendental reality, a sky of the Ineffable, Nirvanically calm yet not empty, a high world of untroubled pure puissances. This transcendental height haunts Nirodbaran and his poetry catches now and again glimmers and vibrations from it, but perhaps the major portion of his work is more an inwardness of the mystic mind exploring occult vistas of its own or mirroring in lovely lakes and torrents the colours and designs and dynamisms of the Overworld. In consequence, there is often a kind of "faery" spirituality, an affinity to something Yeatsian in sight without being Celtic. The inner worlds are not the magic mid-worlds of Yeats that have a certain exquisite self- sufficiency, a certain completeness of the Divine in a restricted fixed formula of creation. Nirodbaran's are planes washed indeed with the glint and gemmy tremulousness of moonlit mysteries but there is everywhere a cry to the Infinite that is overhead. Through many rifts the inspiration glimpses the Eternal who is beyond all formula and capable of all creativeness. Through many apertures are received the urgencies of the earth-soul that has an evolving and not a typal career and that yearns to broaden from its deep dreaming centre of Godward devotion into some Cosmic Consciousness and into some overarching Ultimate brooding with utter fullness of light and love and life upon cosmos and earth. The Yeatsian atmosphere and vibration are felt in:
Candle-vision from haunts of starry caves
Flickers on my path of dreams
Like sinuous smiles of pearl-glistening waves
On the heart of rock-strewn streams,
but there is mixed with Yeatsianism a higher call, a vaster longing, a poignancy more inwardly experienced without losing any enchantment or delicacy. The difference within the similarity to the Irish wizard is more noticeable in:
Birds of Vision, fraught with heavenly treasures,
Brimming with diamond peace,
Fill our yearning vastness with the measures
Of your unhorizoned seas.
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A trait akin to Yeats is also a fluctuant imagery that is not self-consistent on the surface, varies suddenly and sometimes seems even conflicting in its aspects. This is no surrealistic confusion - feverish jerky disconnected oddities of sight. It is also not the complicated obscurity of Donne, a curious and far-fetched and many-meaninged play of thought. Nor is it exactly Blakean, teeming with a private mythology. It is the subtle many-sidedness of occult vision. In Nirodbaran this Yeatsian trait, like all others, goes beyond Yeats by a boldness that is more direct. Yeats makes different symbols follow in succession; Nirodbaran not only does this but also runs two or three symbols into one another, since the proprieties and plausibilities of the occult planes differ from those of ours. Look at the poem First Word. There the same mystical entity is called a star-rising out of the morning-sea and said to be calm and inviolable like a mountain and then described as "first word breaking the womb of agony" and then summed up thus:
A voice it brings and opens the hidden door
Through a narrow fissure of encrusted earth:
A blazing eye of the invisible core
Came down like an eagle into mortal birth.
The lay reader is likely to be puzzled, but it is impossible to miss the drive of a supra-logical harmony, and the drive, paradoxically enough, is most potent in the last two lines where the images, picturing the all-seeing power of the transcendence descending into cosmic manifestation and embodiment, are most a-jostle in a surface view. The language and the rhythm have become so alive to the occult phenomenon here hinted, that somehow the intuitive sense in us is smitten to recognise the significance even though the constructive intellect finds it hard to dovetail the lightning flashes of the several hints.
Fidelity to the inner truth of mystical perception is Nirodbaran's motto. Fidelity, however, can be of several sorts. Nirodbaran at his most alert does not write with the intention just to convey spiritual meaning with the help of a plastic
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imagination: he wants to write of the inner in the inner's own way and he lets the meaning emerge as a sort of oblique effect. Ordinarily, poetry puts its mysterious halo around a centre that is easy to recognise. Nirodbaran likes to make the centre itself a mystery and let the recognisable meaning come as a halo. All true poetry of the Unknown should be like this, though it need not be of one fixed type. The central mystery in Nirodbaran is mostly a many-coloured shimmer. One can also centre a sun of fiery truth- knowledge which is above the mind and whose mystery is caught by us through the intense dazzle it produces, forcing us to shut our eyes, as it were, and feel the immense Inscrutable which has put forth that golden focus of itself. The poetry of Sri Aurobindo is thus sunlike. Nirodbaran gets the sun-apocalypse in rare instances, and more often by reflecting it in a full moon midway between earth and ether. His usual activity, though never without an instinct of the sun-wholeness, is shimmery. But that does not detract from the poetic merit of his work nor from the sincerity and power of his mysticism. Neither does his poetry suffer because most often it is a seizing of brief moods, passing perceptions, touch-and-go gleams, "flickers on the face of Destiny", either directly occult or indirectly so with a kinship to the visionary vein that is at its best in AE. Perhaps the finest instance of the half-visionary half-occult mood is in Fingers of Light:
On this dark corner of my cell
Fingers of Light fall - slow and white —
From the invisible crescent moon;
Ethereal seems the prisoned night!
The beams pale, slowly move away;
Through the iron bars my dream-eyes cast
A final glance; the silver trails
Wing to some unknown region's Vast.
This style has another aspect in which a greater simplicity has play, a limpider tone that is born less from the mystic mind than
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from the psychic being, the infant divinity at the deep heart of us, and then the poetry is capable of moving along a range of beautiful expression in which the simple and the sublime, the childlike and the seerlike, are constantly meeting and parting and meeting again in a delightful game. Thus a poem starts with the utterly ingenuous:
No more I ask of thee
What I have gained or lost,
What shadow-veils wrap me,
What distance I have crossed,
and ends with the high note that is yet the same style:
I feel within my soul
Crowding like gold fires
The hidden immortal scroll,
The word that for thee aspires.
This style gains its most luminous point in Childhood Dream, a poem linking itself with Vaughan and Wordsworth in their phases of recollecting the soul-sight of early childhood. It begins:
My childhood veiled a secrecy
Within its delicate shroud
Like a splendour of celestial light
Under the folds of a cloud.
Often I used to think and feel
That a white dream was laid
Upon my eyes and suns and moons
Out of that dream were made.
The poem runs on, through felicity after felicity of speech, to a perfect conclusion and a faultless general effect. I have mentioned Vaughan and Wordsworth and indeed they come to the mind, but there is in Nirodbaran a clearer recognition of hidden
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realities: he has a sense of universal consciousness that is not prominent at all in Vaughan and more keenly than Wordsworth he feels occult or spiritual presences of an individualised character:
I felt a sudden cry
Within the closed fane of my heart
Reminding of a sky
That hid behind its sapphire veil
Strange faces orbed with light
And beckoning to their splendour-home
Beyond the brink of night.
Wordsworth could sense the universal consciousness sufficiently, but these "strange faces orbed with light" arc rather outside his pantheistic ken. They are allied more to the Gods of Yeats walking the inner worlds in unbearable beauty and the Undying Ones of AE residing in purple lucencies behind the earth: only, they are in Nirodbaran a touch of the transcendental beyond the cosmic, the ultimate archetypes of earth's living creatures, though they are intuited rather through the psychic heart than by a straight ascent to the overhead immensities.
If it is objected by some captious critic that one cannot keep feeding on divine realities and that some contact of common Nature through a fresh sensibility is required, we need not leap to a defence of divine realities, for Nirodbaran has enough of that contact. Of course, he is no lover of Nature for her own sake and there are always inner nuances glancing out. But Nature is present in his work and the dew is upon his poetry both in the sense that his poetry is receptive to the influences of the earth's atmosphere and that it is quite free from the artificial and the hot-housy. Look at this stanza:
The first glimpses of a new-born
Laugh of earth-flames in the green wood,
Birds bringing from the depths of dawn
Music of God-beatitude.
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A more typical way of Nirodbaran's of treating Nature is to see her through a strong mood of the inner consciousness and project that mood through the outer eye rather than receive through that eye a picture to create a mood. A faultless snatch of such Nature-poetry is:
A smothered sigh is the heavy air
And Time a press of pain,
Night trails her sad infinity
Under a sick moon's wane.
As effective in the same mode are the verses:
A star struggling to climb from a black sea,
and
In the cradle of night curtained by nebulous dreams.
Single-lined miracles arc these verses — and such miracles are often accounted the test of a poet's power. They are not infrequent in Nirodbaran. There is that hinting of the inner Yogic process, ardent, harmonising and revealing, in the subtle phrase:
A rhythmic fire that opens a secret door.
There is the finality of supreme spiritual achievement, at once solid and soaring, ecstatic and immutable, in those intensely clear words with a regular rising beat of iambs:
Our heaven built with granite rocks of peace.
There is the insight summing up the whole secret quality of existence in the simple yet infinitely pregnant description:
Life that is deep and wonder-vast.
A rare greatness is Nirodbaran's in these marvels of much in-
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little. But face to face with them one feels it all the more a pity that he should on occasion drop into an echo of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya at his somewhat feeble rather than at his most flaming. Chattopadhyaya at his middle pitch is all over the stanza:
A lonely tramp of Heaven I go
Along the high watermark of time
Where time itself has ceased to flow
In the silence of the vast Sublime;
while Chattopadhyaya almost lashing his Muse in an effort to carry off a weak moment is:
Wipe off the dew from your tortured brow;
The blood-stained soul's lone Godward vow
Must never flicker or become
A shadow of pale martyrdom.
There is also Chattopadhyaya at his "high water-mark" in certain places, but as soon as one recognises him one's rapturous and unique response to Nirodbaran's poetic value diminishes. Luckily the individual strain re-emerges soon and we are happy again with bold things or exquisite things like:
Where flowers of a heavenly hue
In silence born,
or powerful things like:
What mighty crystal hands
Release the music-flood of the sun-bird?
This last quotation can stand side by side with the famous questions in Blake's Tyger, though the whole atmosphere and association are different:
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy dreadful symmetry?...
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In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
Nirodbaran needs no model, Chattopadhyaya or any other: he has a living fount within him and it is best for him to let it spring into our earth's day in the way it wants. And he is not only an original poet but also an original artist. No doubt he would have been a more attractive artist if he had tackled a larger variety of forms and not remained within the cherished charm of just two or three kinds of poem-structure; but the diverse manipulation of his chosen metres is beyond praise. An extreme ease of audacious effect marks his technique, extraordinary variations of beat are freely achieved as if there were no fear of anything going amiss. Scan, for instance:
A moment's touch - what founts of joy arise
Running through dull grains of my life's dead sands.
The first line is almost regular, the second is trochee, iamb with a quantitatively long opening syllable, trochee, iamb and spondee, a remarkable combination fully justified by the rush, the slight slowing, the speeding up again, the smooth flowing, the struggle against the final obstruction, that is the many-tempo'd progress of heavenly delight through earth's dim and coarse stuff. Or analyse:
...Falls off like a leaf torn by a short breath
Of wind.
Outside Donne and Hopkins - and occasionally Milton - it is difficult to meet with such metrical license indulged in so masterfully. The line is a pentameter but composed of a semi-spondee, a semi-pyrrhic, a full spondee, a pyrrhic and again a full spondee! And the result is not chaos but a most telling irregularity charged with the destructive staccato of the very event described. Only once in Nirodbaran the metre seems limping and ill managed in the midst of novelty and freshness of accent.
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A deep glimpse of a memory behind
The veil of time when my soul was with thee
has a flawlessly modulated first line, the suddenness of a glimpse conveyed by that inverted second foot, but the next line is overstrained by the inversion of stress in the fourth foot following a foot that is as good as a pyrrhic. One may plead a profound excitement at the celestial memory and a consequent catch in the voice speaking of it. I do not feel convinced; neither do I find "soul" specially distinguished from something else and therefore occupying that metrical position, nor do I incline to stress that "was" so as to make the foot a spondee balancing the preceding pyrrhic or else to stress "my" and render the latter an iamb. There cannot be on principle a ban upon a trochee coming on the heels of a pyrrhic; what I am asking for is sufficient psychological justification, as can be found in Sri Aurobindo's line:
This truth broke in in a triumph of fire.
A forcible and violent action is here suggested, the first half of the metre is appropriate to the powerful bursting in of the truth, while in the second half the high exultation and exaltation of the inrush is brought out by the quantitatively long and accentually strong vowel in the opening syllable of "triumph" and in "fire", coming contrastingly after a pyrrhic in the one case and after two short syllables in the other.
Nirodbaran's slip, however, does not matter much, just as the slight falls in the poetic level do not, nor the over-use to which he puts the rhyme-pair of "sleep" and "deep", nor his repeating twice or thrice in the book that lovely and profound phrase: "a universe of tranquil prayer". Who cares about small foibles when there is abundance of valuable content no less than expressive skill? Inspiration blows like a well-nigh endless wind through Sun-Blossoms. And I personally enjoy this inspiration the more because it is not always easily appreciable by the lay mind. Mystical poetry should not be too easy, it loses its own truth by becoming clothed altogether in shapes that are denizens of the
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non-mystical world. A certain secrecy and a certain distance are most delightful and fitting when God is the theme. Just what the mystic Muse should be is Nirodbaran's source of song as revealed in that descriptive apostrophe of his:
O radiant minstrel of my heart,
Sing from your shadow-lonely bower,
Where in white plenitudes apart
Your songs are wed to the timeless Hour.
As significant as "white plenitudes" and "timeless Hour" are for me the terms "shadow-lonely" and "apart". Unless the mystic poet is, to some extent, "shadow-lonely" and "apart" without being ascetic or other-worldly he cannot make the supreme soul-discoveries or the supreme soul-disclosures, even as the doctor in Nirodbaran cannot, I am sure, deal very successfully with the complexities of the body unless he keeps his mind a little aloof and employs methods that are somewhat subtle.
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A Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
Here is a brief but bold discussion between Amal Kiran and Sri Aurobindo showing the depth of their scholarship in matters English but, more than that, a very unconventional Guru-Shishya relationship which would have been dubbed arrogant, if not blasphemous, on part of the disciple by the earlier tradition. - Editors
A HUMOROUS discussion with Sri Aurobindo about a Latinised adjective for poetic use may not be out of place here. For it links up ultimately with a poem of his own. I put to him questions and he replied.
In my lines —
This heart grew brighter when your breath's proud chill
Flung my disperse life-blood more richly in -
a terminal d will at once English that Latin fellow "disperse", but is he really objectionable ? At first I had "Drove" instead of "Flung" - so the desire for a less dental rhythm was his raison d'être, but if he seems a trifle weaker than his English avatar, he can easily be dispensed with
now.
"I don't think 'disperse'-as an adjective can pass — the dentals are certainly an objection but do not justify this Latin-English neologism."
(12-6-1937)
Why should that poor "disperse" be inadmissible when English has many such Latinised adjectives - e.g. "consecrate", "delicate", "intoxicate" ? I felt it to be a natural innovation and not against the
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genius of the language: I discover from the Standard Dictionary now that it is not even a neologism -it is only an obsolete word. I have a substitute ready, however:
Flung my diffuse life-blood more richly in.
But is not "disperse" formed on exactly the same principle as "diffuse" ? By the way, does "dispersed" make the line really too dental, now that "Flung" is there and not the original "Drove" ?
"I don't think people use 'consecrate', 'intoxicate' etc. as adjectives nowadays - at any rate it sounds to me too recherché. Of course, if one chose, this kind of thing might be perpetrated -
O wretched man intoxicate,
Let not thy life be consecrate
To wine's red yell (spell, if you want to be 'poetic').
Else will thy soul be dedicate
To Hell -
but it is better not to do it. It makes no difference if there are other words like 'diffuse' taken from French (not Latin) which have this form and are generally used adjectives. Logic is not the sole basis of linguistic use. I thought at first it was an archaism and there might be some such phrase in old poetry as lids' disperse, but as I could not find it even in the Oxford which claims to be exhaustive and omniscient, I concluded it must be a neologism of yours. But archaism or neologism does not matter. 'Dispersed life-blood' brings three d's so near together that they collide a little — if they were farther from each other it would not matter — or if they produced some significant or opportune effect. I think 'diffuse' will do."
(13-6-1937)
What do I find this afternoon ? Just read:
1. Uncertain reading — K.D.S.
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Suddenly
From motionless battalions as outride
A speed disperse of horsemen, from that mass
Of livid menace went a frail light cloud
Rushing through heaven, and behind it streamed
The downpour all in wet and greenish lines.
This is from your own Urvasie, written in the middle nineties of the last century. Of course it is possible that the printer has omitted a terminal d — but is that really the explanation ?
"I dare say I tried to Latinise. But that does not make it a permissible form. If it is obsolete, it must remain obsolete. I thought at first it was an archaism you were trying on, I seemed to remember something of the kind, but as I could find it nowhere I gave up the idea — it was probably my own crime that I
remembered."
(29-6-1937)
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Apropos of a Sneer at the Subject by Auden
Amal Kiran as historical scholar and literary analyst is unmistakably evident in his attempt to solve the enigmas of Shakespeare's sonnets, as presented in his "Two Loves" and "A Worthier Pen" published in 1984 by Amold-Heinemann. Not only does he dismiss W.H. Auden's pronouncement that such an undertaking is a foolish waste of time, but very methodically cuts the obscure ground to get at a possible clue to the problem. The following prefatory note by him is quite illustrative of this sharp researcher's painstaking work which perhaps needs a proper recognition in the respective specialists' field. - Editors
To BE "certain o'er incertainty" is a state for which the Sonnets of Shakespeare, where this phrase for cock- sureness occurs,1 are often considered to have provided the largest occasion and the smallest ground. W.H. Auden,2 in his preamble to an acute literary estimate, sums up rather acidly the situation: "It so happens that we know almost nothing for certain about the historical circumstances in which Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets... This has not prevented many very learned gentlemen from displaying their ingenuity in conjecture."
Auden3 goes on to say: "Anyone who wastes his time trying either to identify the characters, the friend, the rival poet, the dark lady, or to fix the dates seems to me to be a fool."
Perhaps if I had read this piece of downright damning before setting out on the present book the impact of its pronouncement ex cathedra might have deterred me. But I was already in full career and could not help continuing. Now the varied experience of the terrain I have covered and not just the complacence of "what's writ is writ" prompts this Introductory Note in general defence of Auden's foolish time-waster.
Not that I approve of everything done by his "many very
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learned gentlemen". I am most sceptical in particular of what goes by the name of "historical method". Although it could be a good servant it is - as my very first chapter glancing at the "mortal moon" line of Sonnet 107 tries to show — a ridiculously bad master. And veiled preconception can be rampant elsewhere too. Allusions to private no less than public affairs may get a biased colour mimicking common sense. An instance is the phrase "You had a father" in Sonnet 13, on which I touch in my second chapter. But Auden's indiscriminate condemnation is still, in my view, unjustified.
It is on two grounds that he indulges in it. The primary one is what he4 calls the "illusion" - of those who display "ingenuity in conjecture" - that "if they were successful, if it could be proved beyond a shadow of doubt who the friend, or the dark lady, or the rival poet were, the discovery would in any way illumine our understanding of the Sonnets".
Here Auden is right if he means that "the discovery" cannot tell us anything about the stylistic quality of a Sonnet or even about the significant pattern made by the interrelation of its parts. But surely there are knotty points ? H.H. Rollins5 has remarked:
"much disagreement exists about the meaning of various words and phrases, and... a number (like 107, 124, 135, 136) cannot be explained or paraphrased so as to satisfy everyone." May not "the discovery" beam some clarity on those shady places ? Auden6 himself admits: "Now and again the meanings are obscure, as a personal diary can be obscure, in which the writer does not bother to explain what he himself knows but somebody else cannot tell." A sheer outsider as "somebody else" could lend no clue, but the two people with whom the diarist Shakespeare was intimately connected and to whom the Sonnets were addressed were bound to be in the know. If we could see them in a "close- up", as it were, with Shakespeare, we should persumably be the wiser. So Auden's admission implies that "the discovery" might supply the illumining gloss.
Thus his primary ground is itself shaky. In any case, not all researchers into Shakespeare's life make the claim to illumine the understanding of his Sonnets; neither is such a claim necessary
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for the raison d'être of their labour. Even Auden7 says: "One is willing to concede that his biography may be interesting in itself." And his downright damning does not depend altogether on biographical cobblers going beyond their lasts. For, there is a secondary ground for his indulgence in it. And here it is that he is moved by a "misprision" (to use a term from Sonnet 87.11) which is directly relevant to the present book - an error or oversight which is also the immediate precursor of his absolute anathema.
We may introduce it with a side-remark. So far as names are concerned, our choice of Auden as commentator is one which Shakespeare would have found rather piquant. As must have been noticed, the initials preceding "Auden" are "W.H." — just those that figure in the cryptic dedication by the publisher Thorpe to the first edition of the Sonnets: "To the only begetter ... Mr. W.H." And apropos of the commentator's brief - surprisingly "certain o'er incertainty" in the midst of so much controversy - that "begetter" means one who procured the manuscript for the publisher, not one who inspired the poems or engendered them by his influence - apropos of this belief Auden8 frames the statement: "Outside the text that is all we know and all we are ever likely to know...."
Much more than Keat's famous dictum at the end of his Ode ("...that is all/We know on earth and all we need to know") this statement is a non-sequitur in its anticipation, repeating briefly an earlier deliverance" on the Sonnets: "We do not know for certain whom he wrote them to, or exactly when he wrote them, and unless new evidence should turn up, which is unlikely, we never shall." The pessimistic prophecy is unwarranted and hardly excuses this fool's-capping of all historical researchers.
The present book submits that a very momentous fact has somehow been missed both by historical researchers and by literary analysts - a fact discoverable through literary analysis in the interests of historical research. When the language of some of the Sonnets is sharply probed, we see that the poems date themselves by a system of internal chronology - and the key for reading the details of the time-scheme contained is simply, on the
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one hand, the year and month of Shakespeare's birth, April 1564, and, on the other, the three familiar dates which Auden10 lists: 1598 (Meres's general reference to the Sonnets). 1599 (Jaggard's piratical publication of two Sonnets), 1609 (Thorpe's unauthorised edition). To be more specific, the Sonnets can be found to tell us:
1. Shakespeare's idea of the number of years making up the full span of life.
2. The year at which, according to him, old age begins.
3. The year at which, according to him, old age is markedly established.
4. The several stages of advanced age at which he was composing the Sonnets.
5. To what years in his life these stages may be taken to correspond.
6. The total number of years during which he wrote the Sonnets.
7. The year and month of his life in which he started writing them and the ones in which he stopped doing so.
The conclusion we have arrived at is that he wrote the Sonnets over a period broadly of 9 years: he commenced, in the main, shortly before his 34th year and ended, for the most part, a little before his 43rd. As will be explained in the course of the book, this means, in terms of dates, almost certainly from April 9, 1598 to April 9, 1607, with perhaps a few Sonnets preceding the former mark and very probably a few succeeding the latter and one solitary piece with a psychological turning-point some months after them.
Obviously, if we have a clear time-bracket in our hands we can decide who "the friend, the rival poet, the dark lady" are likely to be. Our decision has, of course, to be validated by comparative historical research as well as by a comparative scrutiny of literary texts, Shakespearean and other. But all these aids acquire final value and strength from the "good start" in the Sonnets' self- dating.
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The results of our attempt at identification are:
1. "The Friend" - popularly designated "the Fair Youth" by Shakespeareans but actually calledby the poet "fair friend" (104.1) — is, as many scholars have opined for reasons outside internal chronology and therefore inconclusively, Lord William Herbert who was born in 1580, became Third Earl of Pembroke in 1601 and is known to have been associated with both Shakespeare and his plays.
2. "The dark lady" is none of the candidates so far discussed but a woman most probably of Italian extraction with perhaps two Christian names, the chief and definite one being "Anastasia". She was a citizen of London who once figured characteristically though namelessly in association with Shakespeare in John Manningham's Diary.
3. There were three rival poets and not only one. But two were minor competitors: Francis Davison and Samuel Daniel. The major competitor - contrary to the beliefs of almost all scholars but in consonance with several literary traditions of a general order - was Ben Jonson.
In connection with the third result we may touch once more on the theme of Auden's preamble, the end11 of which runs: "Let... us forget all about Shakespeare as a man and consider the Sonnets themselves."
Well, let us consider Sonnet 86, which is the central one on the chief "rival poet". Is it not rather a riddle with its tutor "spirits" and aiding "compeers by night" and "affable familiar ghost" who "gulls him with intelligence"? Usually, ironic praise has been read here; but Martin Seymour-Smith12 insists on sincerity. Even about the "ghost"-line he13 says that its mention of gulling "is not a criticism, but a poetic tribute of great depth" because all poetic knowledge, "intelligence", tricks the poet into appearing a dupe in the eyes of the world, so that its inspiration is a curse to him in his ordinary life. Again, in a literal sense, supernatural nocturnal
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sources of the rival's influence have commonly been misunderstood. J.W. Lever14 however, speaks of "all the muses as the Rival's aids" and even brings in "the Rival's own clique of versifiers" and "a boon companion". Evidently, much will hang on who the chief 'rival poet" actually was, face to face with "Shakespeare as a man". And, if he was Ben Jonson of all people, the meaning must receive quite an unexpected illumination. The present book endeavours to disclose no less than four layers of Jonsonian significance, each covering the whole main block of the Sonnet.
When a chunk of life is poetised, the poetry, no doubt, is the first concern for us; but we cannot always afford to neglect the temporal reality from which the subject of the poetry is carved out. Some helpful sidelight is frequently thrown by it. On its own, too, this continuum of facts may be worth exploring. And Auden has not only conceded that Shakespeare's biography may be interesting in itself; he15 has also said: "What is astonishing about the matter of the sonnets is the impression they make of naked autobiographical confession, which for their time makes them unique." If what astonishes us in them is something more than their poetry as such, if in addition it is their poetising of the writer's life in a rare nakedness, we should be inconsistent to contemplate with an air of indifference the possible originals of the human images crossing this intense confession in verse.
Neither can we assert that Shakespeare never wanted us to know who they were. The witty "Will-Sonnets (135. 136. 143) seem to disclose the names of both the poet and his Friend to be "William". In Sonnet 81 the poet tells the Friend:
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,16
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,17
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,18
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When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live - such virtue hath my pen -19
Where breath most breathes, — even in the mouths
of men.20
(5-14)
Mark the expression: "your name." And does not the image of a monument imply not only a commemoration but also the recording of a name? Sonnet 151, addressing the Dark Lady, uses the words: "thy name" (9). It is an integral part of Shakespeare's "autobiographical confession" that the two main characters concerned should be namable by us. Shakespeare wished at least the Friend's full identity to be revealed, for else he would be false to the promise he gave again and again, as in Sonnet 18 —
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe or, eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. -
(11-14)
Or in Sonnet 55 —
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents21
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time....
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom. 22
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,23
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
(1-4, 9-14)
How would the Friend be eternised, go on living perpetually, be
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rendered more clear in men's memory than by monuments, continue in spite of all forces working to blot him out, exist until at the world's end he is resurrected in the very form he had before - unless "lovers' eyes" are able to recognise him through Shakespeare's poetry ? The words - "yourself arise" - indicate the Friend's personal entity, his distinct particular identity, which the "powerful rhyme" of Shakespeare cannot possibly show to the world without the poetry not only getting published at some time but assuming too that its readers would know who exactly was the wonderful object of the writer's admiration and devotion.
Indeed, to be true to Shakespeare's mind and heart we must set about exploring the continuum of temporal reality to which the Sonnets are attached. If facts have mostly been elusive in regard to them, it is a misfortune. That is no reason why a book should not strive after them in order to fix dates and solve the enigmas of identities. Shakespeare expects one that does so. All we can justifiably demand is that it be fresh and alert, taking care lest a question from Sonnet 76 prove adaptable to its procedure:
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods... ? (3-4)
Notes and References
1. 115.11.
2. "Shakespeare's Sonnets", The Listener (London), July 2, 1964, p. 7, col. 1.
3. Ibid., pp. 7-8, cols. 2, 1.
4. Ibid., p. 7, col. 1.
5. Shakespeare's Sonnets (New York, 1951), Introduction, p. x.
6. The Listener, July 9, 1964, p. 46, col. 2.
7. Ibid., July 2, p. 7, col. 2;
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., col. 1.
10. Ibid., col. 2.
11. Ibid., p. 8, col. 1.
12. Shakespeare's Sonnets, edited with an Introduction and Commentary (Heinemann, London, 1963), p. 155.
13. Ibid.
14. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (Methuen & Co., London, 1956), pp. 233-4.
15. The Listener, July 9, 1964, p. 46, col. 2.
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16. from hence - henceforth, from these poems
17. gentle - polished, noble
18. rehearse - tell of
19. virtue — power
20. breath - life
21. contents - poems about you
22. wear this world out - last as long as this world
23. judgment that - Judgment Day when
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It is unfortunate that an impartial estimate of the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi, done more than forty years ago by Amal Kiran in his book The Indian Spirit and the World's Future, has not received its due recognition. While an average Indian immediately links up Swaraj with Gandhi, the author of this exegesis wonders if the elements of Indian mysticism in the Mahatma's socio-political approach really draw nourishment from the rich and invigorating traditions of the land. - Editors
THE idealisation of non-violence at all costs serves also to throw into relief the precise meaning of Gandhi's saying: "Politics are to me subservient to religion." If religion primarily signified to him non-violence, then it is doubtful whether he can stand wholly as a representative of what India has historically understood by religion. In the golden age of spirituality, the Vedic times, the arts of war were not taboo. Even in the Ashrams of the Rishis archery was taught - surely not just to hunt animals (though that too would be contrary to non-violence). It was taught essentially in order to fit men for violence in a right cause. The emphasis was always on being right, not on being non- violent. The holiest figures in Indian tradition, Rama and Krishna, were mighty warriors and urged men to battle against the enemies of dharma. To explain away their fights as being allegories of inner struggle between man's higher self and his lower is to forget that in part of mankind the lower self is not only dominant but also aggressive against those in whom the higher self is more active and that the inner struggle must necessarily get projected into an epic of physical combat. Even Buddha who among India's spiritual personalities put the greatest premium on non-violence did not enjoin it on all and sundry: he restricted it to the class of monks and, while conjuring humanity to return love for hatred, never discouraged violence in
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defence of a cause that was just. The absolute adherence to ahimsa was derived by Gandhi from Tolstoy: It does not reflect the flexible and many-sided spiritual wisdom of original Hinduism.
There is also another fact which leads us to question whether Gandhi, for all his veneration of the Gita, embodied vitally the soul of the Hindu religion. It was not only Swaraj that he deemed undesirable without unsleeping agitation and activity to demolish the barrier between the Untouchables and the rest of our population: Even Hinduism itself, the whole grand structure of spiritual aspiration towards the invisible Divine, was a mockery to Gandhi so long as that barrier was not torn down. One of his often-quoted utterances is that he would far rather that Hinduism died than that Untouchability lived! Here is an hysterical rushing to extremes by a conscience hypersensitive to social inequalities. Here is deplorable forgetfulness of the truth that, though social reformism is a fine passion, it cannot be the centre and core of man's upward endeavour. The main purpose of true religion is a change of the merely human consciousness into a divine consciousness by a progressive practice of the presence of God. Only when that presence is inwardly realised can social pestilences like Untouchability be radically removed. Till then, sincere efforts must certainly be made to abolish them by means of brotherly social behaviour, but to believe that a sore like Untouchability renders all Hinduism corrupt and futile and that, without the help of the fundamental transformation of consciousness that is Yoga, the root and not only one or another outward form of social iniquity can be plucked out is to confuse morality with religion and to prove clearly that one lacks the burning essence of not only the Hindu religion but also of all religion - the mystical cry for the Eternal and the Infinite.
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Dilip Kumar Roy's Interviews with
Five World-Figures
The review of Dilip Kumar Roy's Among the Great was first made by Amal Kiran in Mother India edited by him: We present in the following the article fully as it appears in his book The Indian Spirit and the World's Future. The clarity of thought and expression, as well as the grasp of issues involved, is absolutely remarkable; in the process, as the discussion proceeds, the alert commentator throws several sidelights on the eminent personalities concerned. - Editors
Among the Great1 - a book of conversations packed with pleasure and instruction, a book that is in the short compass of 367 pages and at a trifling expense a most fascinating guide to the mind and spirit of our age as manifested in five outstanding personalities! And the fact that it is such a guide is due in so small measure to the author's own personality, the mind and spirit of Dilip Kumar Roy; for it is his own eager search for truth and beauty and goodness that has taken him to the very centre of each great man interviewed, and has done this across various paths so that the word of wisdom when it comes out throws light on a multiplicity of interests, trends, movements, aspects of life. Dilip Kumar Roy himself emerges as an extremely interesting type, many-sided, acutely modern and at the same time steeped in rich traditions, deeply Indian but no less widely international for that. While being a revelation of the core of Romain Rolland, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, his book is also a subtle disclosure of his own being — a kind of indirect mental autobiography written with the aid of five world figures.
1. Revised and enlarged Popular American Edition - Jaico Publishing House (New York, Bombay, Calcutta).
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I said "five", but though that is the number of great ones conversed with, there are in fact six notable personalities represented. For, the author has added to his already glittering treasury by getting Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan to contribute a nine-paged introduction which gives us a general survey of the field of character and thought covered by the book as well as a glimpse of his own attitude and position. Except for two or three phrases in the third paragraph, with a rather exaggerative and indiscriminative ring as if all the individuals here were equally rishis of the ultimate vision, the introduction is balanced and felicitous. To secure it was no mean part of the inspiration which led Roy beyond the interviews to some extra features, the most precious being a substantial sheaf of letters of Sri Aurobindo's, nearly seventy pages of literary criticism, philosophical discussion, mystical knowledge, socio-political analysis, marked by insight, energy and humour.
Romain Rolland
The order in which the interviews are arranged is not without meaning. Born a musician, Roy begins with Romain Rolland the literary artist who made musical experience his special study. And many utterances that go to the heart of music in particular and art in general are here recorded. Several striking judgments are also passed on the methods of Indian and European music. In fact, a few flaws of extremism notwithstanding, a more discerning and far-reaching piece of declaration of faith by a great artist who is also a great humanist and idealist would be hard to find anywhere in literature. This is high praise, yet on the whole deserved. The true Rolland stands here, revealed all the more by Roy's sensitive and accurate descriptions of his look and manner; and there is so much clearness of deep thought in the midst of warmth of deep feeling that these conversations of his and the half a dozen letters supplementing them can be regarded as the best rejoinder to those who try to make him out a mushy and gushy thinker. One does not know what to quote out of the beautiful abundance. I
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particularly liked the discussion about an artist's duty to society and to himself. Rolland says that an artist cannot be impervious to the misery and injustice around him, he should do his bit towards removing them, but never at the sacrifice of his own metier. No job can be done better than what one is fitted for: besides, to help humanity one need not always be social-reformist. "Do you think," asks Rolland, "that the creative endeavours of art can't and don't prove a daily succour in our sorrows? A single symphony of Beethoven is certainly worth half a dozen social reforms... The first and paramount duty of the artist and the intellectual is to be true to his inner call and urge - sleeplessly: he must above all keep the lamp burning in the shrine of inner perceptions — and must create whenever his daemon prompts him. This done, his surplus time and energy he may devote to the betterment of social conditions, as Goethe used to. He served society, but only during lulls in his creative inspiration... A man's duty is not done if he thinks only of his contemporaries - his neighbours: he has to take count of his duties to the Eternal Man who, emerging out of the lowest animality, has climbed obstinately through centuries towards the light. And what constitutes the ransom for the liberation of this Eternal Man in bondage is his conquest of the Spirit. All the efforts of the savant, die thinker and the artist compete for this heroic campaign (campaign in the sense of battling against odds); whoever among them repudiates the obligation - were it even for the sake of altruism - betrays his ultimate mission."
Lest it should be thought that Rolland gives a carte blanche to egoism on the artist's part, we must note that for him the true artist is he who never lies on a bed of roses. Rolland agrees with what Tolstoy wrote in a letter to him: "The vindication of the truly artistic vocation lies in the trials and tribulations cheerfully suffered and nobly accepted." But he does not go the whole way with Tolstoy's theory of art. Here a remark of his is worth citing about a point which Gandhi, the next subject of interview in the book, attempts to drive home. Gandhi wants art to be always universal in appeal, to reach the masses and never to need any specialisation, a certain high level of culture, for its appreciation.
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Rolland is certainly against pretentious high-browism, against punditism putting on airs, but he cannot for all his passionate admiration of Gandhi share Gandhi's Tolstoyan view that art's supremacy lies in its being not above the heads of peasants. Such a criterion is too rigid, for the artist cannot always keep himself tied to the receptivity of peasants - and his being above common heads does not annul his inward touch with humanity and his contribution to progress. "Humanity," says Rolland, "is always on the march. The intellectual elite are its vanguard, its pioneers, paving the way along which the entire humanity shall pass eventually. It would therefore be wrong to represent the elite as separated from the rank and file because the latter lags behind. And he would be an indifferent leader of the people who would constrain its vanguard to march with the bulk of the army."
Gandhi
The interviews with Gandhi (the last in an ominous atmosphere on the eve of the shots that rang round the world) are no whit inferior as a document of personality, though their mental value is not as high. They appropriately follow on the heels of that with Rolland because next to being a natural artist Roy was a lover of India when he set out on his life's odyssey. In the minds of many people during the twenties and thirties Gandhi was a symbol of India, and our author's sympathy with him came all the easier for the latter's keen enjoyment of music. The "Mahatma" is shown as holding that India's music is of her very essence, and it is frequently that he asks Roy to sing to him. About painting, however, he is quite cold - and on all art that strikes him as not the heart's immediate outflow but as going in frequently for complex values he is rather severe. But what constitutes the worth of his presence in the book is not his attitude towards art:
The man of action, the man of ethical askesis — that is the real Gandhi. While speaking even of music he brings us face to face with this basic substance of himself. "How well I remember," he says in one place, "the joy and comfort that music used to give me
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when I was ailing in a South African hospital. I was then recovering from the hurts I had received at the hands of some roughs who had been engaged to cripple me - thanks to the success of my 'Passive Resistance Campaign'. At my request the daughter of a friend of mine used, very often, to sing to me the famous hymn Lead Kindly Light!. And how it acted like a healing balm invariably." The heroic "experiment with truth" stands out here, while the mention of Lead Kindly Light! confirms the trait which his predilection for devotional songs from among the wealth of Indian music puts forward in the interviews time and again: his religious fervour.
But though the religious fervour is considerable and his life shorn of evil hungers by a strong-willed self-discipline, he is as little the mystic as the philosopher. Just as the philosophical intellect's impartial multimooded questing is absent in him, the direct illumination of the ecstatic or the contemplative - leading to Mahatmahood in the original sense of union with the Infinite Being - is also not his. But that scarcely implies that he was not in his own sphere a salutary force in India. He was salutary both because he was straight and strong and because he had a childlike simplicity combined with a twinkling puckish humour. Not to know Gandhi's laughter is not to know him at all. Roy supplies us in four and a half pages with a portrayal of Gandhi's laughter as well as of his agility in political discussion - "the frail athlete", he is called in a priceless phrase - and of his high moral seriousness, a portrayal that is the work of a remarkable artist in character-nuances. A widely human figure steps out of these pages — and that wide humanity tends to make even his prejudice against what Rolland terms the world's vanguard a moving limitation. There will, perhaps, be some to doubt if there is actually a limitation here and for them there will be a convincing sentence pronounced on a part of Rollandian, Tagorean and Aurobindonian aims when Gandhi dogmatically declares: "I maintain that the profoundest utterances of man in every great philosophy or religion as in every great art must appeal equally to all. I cannot for the life of me see much in any specialisation which must mean nothing to the vast multitude. Its only tangible
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effect seems to be that it gives a swelled head to a few and sows aversion and contempt where there should be sympathy and understanding."
Bertrand Russell
I cannot help feeling that to apply this stricture to even a part of Rollandian, Tagorean and Aurobindonian aims is really not to understand their depths - and to take apparent and outward humanitarianism as the only one, the sole true one. A non-understanding no less of a part of these aims and, into the bargain, that of Gandhism itself is Bertrand Russell's "limpid crystalline thought". He is the pure scientific intellect - not standing quite beyond the voice of feeling and whatever is connected with religion but remaining uncoloured by them in its judgments and guiding our nature by its unswerving impersonal regard for demonstrable fact. He is the emblem, in Roy's own life, of the doubting critical outward-shining mentality the latter developed during his tour in Europe. A mentality not to be brushed aside, for there is a lot of stale and cankering superstition, a lot of stifling emotional hot air, which the Russellian open-eyedness can dissipate with profit. For Russell is not merely a destroyer; he has several good things to offer - a sane and frank attitude towards sex, for instance. He is particularly acid about the Roman Catholic Church's ban on birth-control and divorce. He regrets also Gandhi's sympathy with such a ban just as he regrets the belief Gandhi shares, with many great men, in the soul and God. He offers us science as a mighty improver of the human mind by rendering it impervious to religious "irrationalism" and by improving the racial stock through sterilisation of the mentally unfit as well as through judicious birth-control. It is to be supposed that the racial stock might be improved by the means Russell advocates, but his stern censure of religious experience is rather indiscriminate. He can see nothing sound in mysticism: When Roy speaks of mystics preaching lofty principles from their illuminations and ecstasies, he retorts: "I believe in ecstasies as
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data of definite experience, but when they imply vision of the highest reality I cannot accept them; for, the lofty principles you speak of are by no means the results of these mystic illuminations. As a matter of fact such ecstasies render the mystics distinctly self-centered and selfish. Through such transports they become more and more subjective and get more and more loth to lend a healthy life of varied activities and lose interest in things for themselves. Consequently, their joys tend to become more and more similar to the joys of the voluptuary or the drunkard." To redress the apparent lopsidedness a statement of this kind argues in Russell, Roy opines that it is just a conversational emphasis and that Russell does not really leave the boons of mysticism out of the picture. I am afraid they are left out; for to admit, as Russell does, that equal in value to the scientific pursuit of knowledge are the creation and enjoyment of beauty, the joy of life and human affection, is merely to give a place to the non-intellectual sides of us, not to afford a locus standi to religion and mysticism. No true concession is made even by the fine declaration: "The organised life of the community is necessary, but it is necessary as a mechanism, not something to be valued on its own account. What is of most value in human life is more analogous to what all the great religious teachers have spoken of." For, what Russell has in mind, as his book Religion and Science proves, are the equanimity and compassion, the radiance and healing atmosphere which the master-mystics speak of but which, according to him, are attainable without mysticism and should be so attained rather than in conjunction with an erroneous belief and an aberrant psychology. To those who have even an Inkling of true mystical experience of any type it would be absurd to imply that Buddha's supreme equanimity and compassion are possible without his ego-annulling and desire-destroying Nirvana or Ramakrishna's intensely radiant nature and healing atmosphere can be acquired without his rapturous realisation of the omni-present Divine Mother. Qualities of the soul reach their acmes only through the soul's awakening to its cosmic and transcendent source. But Russell's failure to assess rightly the validity and worth of spiritual experience must not blind us to the noble,
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acute, healthy sagacity he is shown by Roy to be commanding in many respects on the outer tangible plane.
Before I pass to the author's fruitful contact with Tagore I must pause a moment to quote from Radhakrishnan's introduction a remark apropos Russell. While appreciating the latter's unmuddled courage and humanitarian concern, Radhakrishnan applies a fine intuitive touchstone to the theory of naturalistic evolution which denies the supra-physical soul, the spark of the Divine Spirit: "Russell does not seem to realise that the human individual who can sit in judgment on the universe, who has the intelligence to know that his life is but a brief episode in the history of this planet, who has developed a conscience which protests against the waste and want of the world is not a mere phenomenon among phenomena, an object among objects." I dare say a sceptical and analytic intellect like Russell could give a riposte to this subtle thrust - but the riposte would be, in any way, effective on the abstract plane, not on the plane of the whole being with its many dimensions, its in-dwelling magnitudes and over brooding mysteries. A semi-poetic logic is here, far more satisfying and convincing than any pronouncement of that merely intellectual argumentation to which there can be no end.
Rabindranath Tagore
This is not to undervalue the intellect - it is to attune it to the integral personality, ponderable and imponderable. The intellect must have a definite play: Else we sink mostly into rank vitalism and uncurbed emotionalism and invite the fanatic and the obscurantist more than the seer. Its importance is implicit in the conversations with Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. The one is a skilful thinker at the same time that he is an intuitive poet and the other a profound philosopher plus an illumined Yogi and an inspired bard. Towards Tagore, Roy is drawn by the seeker in him of the Ideal through love and beauty. That seeker is affined to the artistic aspirant who went to Rolland - but with one difference. What drew him to the great Frenchman was some-
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thing that was in a struggle and trying to break forth and expand, the great Frenchman was himself a fighter, he crusaded for a rare vision that made him lonely, his triumphs and exultations were plucked all the while from a wrestling with dark forces. The wrestling sharpened both his artistic insight and his heart's desire but prevented his full growth. Tagore has a calmer and brighter atmosphere, a less wounded exquisiteness of being, a certain happy poise, some actualised neighbouring of the Ideal - but it is a sort of natural neighbouring and is thus not quite aware of the rigours as distinguished from the graces of art, while it is bathed more than Rolland's edged heroism in sweetness and light. Tagore was a finer artist and his inner self too had a finer fulfilment - though Rolland strikes us as having had possibilities of an inner realisation beyond Tagore's possibilities, which yet fell short of their promise and left him less harmonised. Tagore's talk has not, except in a passage at the end, the burning piercing note - it has a certain degree of assured radiance. Just a faint soupcon of self-complacence too is there in a couple of minor places, as if the consummate artist in him as well as the intuitive depth, finding voice in his art were not always worthily accompanied by the rest of the consciousness. On the whole, however, the talks are indeed attractive - with a half-humorous personal streak running in and out of serious and beautiful reflection. The poet does not dwell exclusively on his semi-mystical pursuit of the Ideal through love and beauty; he introduces a very human element by remembering his own early shy encounters with romance and by discussing love and beauty in the life of man and woman. He points out the difference between the needs in man's nature and those in woman's. He is not anti-feminist, wanting woman to remain shackled and inferior nor is he in favour of old cramping customs; Russell has a good word for Tagore's progressiveness and, as shown by the excerpt from a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy in the Foreword which adorned the original Indian edition of the book but which has unaccountably been dropped from this American one, Havelock Ellis who has done champion service in breaking ancient taboos agrees with Tagore's conception of man's and woman's offices. Not man's competitor
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but his complement: This is Tagore's formula for woman. "Woman's function,” he says with a poet's flair for simile, "works passively, subterraneously, like the roots of a tree, while man's fulfilment consists in spreading himself out like branches, through growth, adventure and activity. But in order that his activity may find fruition in lasting contributions to our civilisation, his roots must be strongly embedded in firm soil, otherwise his growth becomes top-heavy." A still more suggestive remark soon follows:
"Just as in the physical plane the germ of man works in the background while woman carries it within her and nurses it into life, so in the mental plane the inspiration of woman must first implant its seed in man's subconscious in order that his creative impulses may bear fruit.... It is not for nothing that man turns with relief to her in the monotonous round of his activities and is drawn to her as iron to magnet. Her grace and charm and sweetness are necessary to our very existence." Elucidating the dissimilarity of the two sexes, Tagore declares that the personal and the social are more vividly real to the feminine nature, the masculine is inclined more towards impersonality and is in its dealing with the world more utilitarian than humanly intimate and understanding. Another difference, according to Tagore, manifests itself in the deeper spiritual field: Man quests for freedom, a rising above earth and embodiment, a flight to the Absolute, whereas woman does not feel earth to be a bondage and she cannot give up the beautiful significance of form for the bare and the formless.
Much of all this is, in the main, true, so far as the ordinary disposition of life is concerned. But there is something also to be said for the modern tendency, often crude and superficial though it may be, to equalise the sexes; for, behind it is a pressure towards climbing beyond the outward differentiations, since the fundamental human nature is the same and escapes the sex-limits and holds every sort of potentiality and commands the power of a varied function. In essence this pressure is a highly evolutionary factor. We tend overmuch to see man and woman in relation to each other and in the way their natures manifest commonly on the mental, vital, physical levels. What we often forget is that
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either is an expression ultimately of a soul, a spiritual self, and that the destiny of both is not so much in relation to each other as in relation to the single Godhead they have to evolve side by side and co-operatively on earth. Transcendent of the sex-differentiations and of the physical-vital-mental formula is the more-than-human nature they bring as their basis: Considered in the light of that nature, their finest development would appear to lie in a large equality of status and function, with yet a subtle variety of tone and mould and gesture and interaction in that nature's out flowering.
Even as things are in the present stage of our evolution, Tagore seems to slip from the right track when, touching upon the deeper spiritual field to which we have access, he says that the wife of Buddha could not have renounced him for the Infinite as Buddha renounced her. The formless Nirvana may not generally be suited to a woman's aspiration and in that sense she cannot leave her mate and seek the Infinite; yet without violating her swabhava she can surely pass beyond her human attachments and pursue the Eternal as a personal Being who, while infinitely exceeding earth, does not in the least disdain it. In the realm of spirituality there is not only Buddha as a type: There is also Mirabai. And the two types are not strictly distributed between the sexes. Tagore himself of the Gitanjali-lyrics has the bhakta's disposition. As ardent a bhakta as the woman Mirabai was the man Chaitanya, and Buddhism had nuns as well as monks. Incline as it frequently may in one or the other direction exclusively, the psyche in either sex is two-moded.
Sri Aurobindo
This fact gives us a clue to what may be termed the complete spiritual aim for us — inner liberation from earth and from embodiment together with transformation and fulfilment of both, mukti in the impersonal Infinite together with ascension to the personal God and incarnation of His powers and purposes in our total nature. That would imply a consummating of all that is truly valuable and creative in Rolland, Gandhi, Tagore and also
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Russell where his attack on mystical isolation and other-worldliness is concerned, no less than the bringing of a value and creativity beyond any of their achievements or their dreams. And it is just because of discerning such a synthesis of the essential best in them and at the same time an integrality and harmony vastly superior to what they offer that Dilip Kumar Roy reaches his goal at the feet of Sri Aurobindo, the Yogi of the dynamic divinisation of the human, the Yogi who is also a poet, a philosopher, a social thinker, a man of idealistic action. Naturally the interviews with which the book closes become its climax, providing the cream of its significance. Here the profoundest feelings and desires of the author are laid before us, his life's various movements and the curves of his character find their intimate record. He opens his heart and mind to Sri Aurobindo and in return Sri Aurobindo pours the rich stream of his illumination, buoying him up, turning him towards the secrets of the Supreme, sweeping around him and into him the myriad currents of his wisdom born of God-realisation. There is conveyed to us, thanks to the inspired "reportage", both the Master's moving humanness and something of his yogic personality's perfume and aura. Sri Aurobindo's "Everlasting Yea" to the challenge of earth-evolution dispels the misapprehension with which the author approached Yoga. "I was scared," writes Roy, "by what I thought Yoga had in store for its devotees: A life of awful asceticism, desiccating discipline and withering solitude, all of which meant for me an utter stultification of life." Meeting Sri Aurobindo he was convinced that far from stultifying life and, with it, art, the Integral Yoga taught at Pondicherry would heighten and fulfil everything.
It must have been novel indeed to find a Yogi who could write in a book of his that the rationalistic Materialism which characterised nineteenth-century Europe had an indispensable utility both in counteracting the spiritual habit of recoiling from the earth and in training the human intellect to a clear austerity without which in the past a real nucleus of spiritual truth had been encrusted with such an accretion of perverting superstitions and dogmas that all advance in true knowledge was rendered
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impossible. He is as little perturbed by the materialistic mind as he is taken in by it. When Roy puts a certain idea in a rather sceptical manner and adds, "it may be that I have been somewhat Westernised," the Master smiles and, remembering his fourteen years of education in England from the age of seven, remarks: "You may have heard that I too happen to know a thing or two about the West and Westernisation." And he proceeds to flay as forthrightly the defects of the materialists as he has praised their merits: "I know their mentality well with its throw-away-the-baby-too-with-the-bathwater attitude. Since mountebanks use trickery to exploit the supraphysical phenomena, therefore — they will argue — all such phenomena are frauds and stagecraft." Having himself been — as he admits — an agnostic at one time, it is extremely interesting to read what he writes in a letter to our author about the demand for the Divine as a concrete certitude, quite as concrete as any physical phenomenon caught by the senses: "Certainly, the Divine must be such a certitude not only as concrete but more concrete than anything sensed by eye or ear or touch in the world of Matter; but it is a certitude not of mental thought but of essential experience. When the Peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is there within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven like a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when Love flows out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a light which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was dark, sorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when it is all around you felt at once by the spiritual contact, by the inner vision, by the illumined seeing thought, by the vital sensation and even by the very physical sense, when everywhere you see, hear, touch only the Divine, then you can much less doubt it or deny it than you can deny or doubt daylight or air or the sun in heaven — for of all these physical things you cannot be sure that they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete experience of the Divine, doubt is impossible."
It is, of course, by Yoga that this experience arrives at its full intensity: Sri Aurobindo sets no great store by mere religiosity
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and dogmatic belief, though he never discounts faith as a staff until the realisation comes in our very underlying substance and essence. Even while showing the necessity of faith he does not discourage the sincerely questioning mind, nor does he wish to be dictatorial in any way. The main thing is not to bend the mind by force but to render it possible for the true soul, the inmost psychic being, to emerge and bring its spontaneous contact with the Divine as a constant factor in the evolution of the Divine in the earth-formula. The full evolution would mean the descent of what Sri Aurobindo terms the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness from which all perfection, not excluding the physical body's, can result for us but which no one in the past has securely possessed or brought into manifestation and for whose rapid descent for mankind Sri Aurobindo went into so-called "retirement", leaving his co-worker the Mother in direct day-to- day charge of the Yogic development of his disciples. In this connection some of Roy's questions and Sri Aurobindo's answers are of the utmost value at present when the world seems so gloomed over with terrible possibilities and the Asura or Titan is on the march and Sri Aurobindo has withdrawn from his physical body. Apropos a couple of letters in which the Master had written that he was not in the least discouraged by the steady trend from bad to worse in the world-situation since it was temporary and he knew and had experienced hundreds of times that behind the blackest darkness mere lay for one who was a divine instrument the light of God's victory, Roy shoots out the query: "Have you any direct evidence in favour of such a prognosis?" In the author's own words:
"A smile edged his lips. He held my eyes for a few seconds without replying, then said: 'I have'.
" 'Do I understand that your Supramental means business after all—1 mean by coming down at long last for us humans ?'
"His smile now broadened into laughter... 'Do I understand,’ I pursued again after the laughter had subsided, 'that the conquest of the Asuric forces will usher in the Supramental Descent ?'
" 'Not in itself,' he said with a far-away look, 'but it will create conditions for the Descent to become a possibility.'
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"There was something in his tone and look which stirred a chord deep down in me, I hesitated for a little and then hazarded the question, just to have the answer from his lips, was it ? I do not know. All I know is that something irresistible impelled me to it.
" 'Is your real work this invocation of the Supramental ?'
" 'Yes,' he replied, very simply, 'I have come for that.'
"And I was laughing with him, arguing with him, examining his point of view... because he had given me the right by calling me 'a friend and a son', in his infinite compassion! The remorse of Arjuna in the Gita recurred to me, inevitably:
Oft I addressed, thee as a human mate
And laughed with thee -failing to apprehend
Thine infinite greatness, sharing with thee my seat
Or couch - by right of love for thee as friend:
For all such errors of irreverence
Thy forgiveness I implore in penitence."
What are we to think ? An Avatar's presence invades us - and with a wonderful promise. If Sri Aurobindo's mission from on high is to call down the Supermind and establish a radical and revolutionary spiritual change on earth, not only will the prevailing chaos and corruption terminate in the near future but also the termination will be aided by me very event which seems to a superficial view so heart-shattering - his departure from the material scene. That departure cannot have been by any compulsion: It must have been of free choice, a strategic sacrifice of his own body to help in some occult way his work of integral earth-transformation!
Dilip Kumar Roy could not have come to a close with a subtler touch. A uniquely large and far-seeing, just and careful and profound consciousness which is an undefeatable "secret splendour" behind its human face is the Sri Aurobindo that emerges from Roy's delineation. Remark after acute and satisfying remark — with an indefinable authority of ultimate truth — cries out for quotation; but there is no space here to do full justice to the
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interviews and to the letters packed between them. One gets absolutely fascinated by a man who is so much at home in a hundred matters — bringing to each a penetrating word. Among the letters, those treating of poetic values, Frank Harris and Shaw, Anatole France, European philosophy, art and spirituality, the inner meaning of the war with Hitler are perhaps the finest. If not anything else, Among the Great is worth buying for these discourses.
Roy is nothing but generous in his gifts to the reading public. Besides these epistolary masterpieces and the precious documents from Rolland elsewhere, he has included in the book beautiful English renderings of the many Bengali or Hindi songs he had sung to his friends. And the Aurobindonian letters he has interspersed with certain pages of correspondence by an English friend of his, Ronald Nixon, erstwhile professor of philosophy at Lucknow, at present practising Yoga in Almora under the name of Krishna Prem. Those pages are apt not only because Sri Aurobindo comments on Krishna Prem's ideas but also because it was through the pointing finger of this Indianised Westerner that Dilip Kumar Roy the Westernised Indian first turned his eyes towards Sri Aurobindo who is the perfect synthesis of East and West. And they are excellent writing, too! It is impossible to thank enough our wanderer among great men for the opulence he has collected for us. But let us not forget that he is no mere collector: Himself a creative artist with a sensitive style, the greatnesses in whose midst he has moved are - with the exception of Sri Aurobindo who gets clean out of the cadre of merely human greatness — far from quite overshadowing his own presence and stature.
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SECTION THREE
A Name sung by the poet fame
IN THE Ashram who does not know Amal Kiran ? He is not only known to all but much loved by them. Mother India under his editorship is a wonderful magazine one eagerly waits for every month. It is through Mother India that I first met Amal. To be precise, his letters on Life-Poetry-yoga first drew me to his glowing heart and brilliant mind. His, I found, is the heart that "knows strange depths".1
It is indeed a beautiful sight to see Amal coming to the Ashram, to the Samadhi, to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This is his delightful daily pilgrimage. A happiness hovers around him. The young boys of the Ashram who help him go about, do so with utter love and devotion. Saurav is always thinking of new ways of making Amal happy. And Amal who constantly lives in a heaven of happiness, smilingly and graciously accepts all that the boys plan for him. On Sunday evenings I have seen Rasanand bring Amal in his wheel-chair, via the beach road from the Park Guest House. Back home he gives Amal a glass of water to drink, a napkin to wipe his hands with and helps with other sweet little necessities of the body. Finally, before leaving, he takes Amal's hands in his own and, with eyes closed, the two concentrate. Love flows from one to the other. With an expression of fulfilment 'Rasu' leaves to return at the appointed time. Even the simplest of actions with and around Amal becomes a prayer, an offering, an oblation. For Amal constantly lives in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. He is for ever in a "heavenward groping mood".2
Therefore, to merely know Amal is not enough. He has to be experienced. Behind all else that Amal is, he is a poet. And not just a poet, but Sri Aurobindo's Poet. And just as all talk about a poem does not give the joy which the reading of the poem gives, all talk about Amal will never be able to convey the joy which will come to us only when we touch the poet in him. His is "... a
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spirit-wideness sown with spirit-stars".3
Reading his prose writings one gets the sparkle of his clear and pure mind but in order to feel the real Amal one has to reach out to his poetry. It is there that he is truly to be found, hidden in a mesh of silvery stars.
When I read Sri Aurobindo, I try to enter the words, feel their aura, imagine myself to be a poet to whatever degree and slowly and silently sip the nectar from each word, phrase and turn or expression. The same I do while reading Amal's poetry. One then becomes a co-poet and partakes of the poetic creation. In another dimension the time thus spent becomes itself a poem — a poem in time.
This approach bears abundant fruit specially with mystic poetry. And Amal is a mystic poet par excellence - a poet whose visionary intensity has no boundaries.
Mystic poetry can sometimes look rather abstract and difficult to grasp. But if one can once catch the central thread then line after line unfolds layers of meanings and the movement is then like the waves of an ocean, running one after the other.
In Amal's poetry there is everywhere underlying his unlimited thirst for the Divine, his battle with the world, his ultimate triumph and his absolute and ecstatic surrender to Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother. Not only is he an idealist but an extremist. When he feels, he feels all.
"Love's life is precious only if given whole,"4 he says. So is it with everything else: all or nothing. Life around him throbs with an enchantment. Mere sunshine, filtered through the shaking leaves of a young tree near by, gives him a thrill. He watches with joy and spangled beauty of the sunlight falling on his table. "The tree outside my window is twinkling green and gold," he once said to me over the telephone.
The aspiration in him cries out:
...O let each pore of me
Become a mouth of prayer!5
The vast peace within him finds poetic expression:
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An ocean-hearted ecstasy am I,
Where time rolls inward to eternal shores.6
In his poems is found a passionate cry for God. His poems sometimes emerge on the spur of the moment. God's Steep7, a very powerful little poem, he said he had written in a railway compartment on way to Pondicherry. It was scribbled on tissue paper in torch-light. Based on a dream, it is a deep cry for the highest: "How shall I climb God's steep?" Not by reason but
Only some animal hunger for the height
Dreaming not of the path but of the goal,
A cry from the dazzled depth of a child-heart,
Can dare....
No fumbling
But a close clasping of ledge on small keen ledge,
A love that clings in blindness to the light....7
And then
...suddenly the hushed infinitudes
Halo the thought-transcending human head -
While wise men chattering far below
Argue for ever the unattainable!7
While the passion and power remain, not all his poems are born so suddenly. In When Poems are Born he writes:
A light that is nameless and formless
Plucks up the master of life —
Limbs of carved thunder take
An infinite silence for wife.8
In the infinite silence of his heart a lovely little poem took birth in a most interesting manner. Talking about this poem Amal once
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said: "For nine years I lived in the room of the old Guest House where Sri Aurobindo had lived. From the small terrace, I could see the tall silk-cotton tree in the compound across the road. The morning sun lit its one solitary branch that stretched far out on to the road. I waited looking for Nolini who brought me each morning a letter from Sri Aurobindo." The sunlight, the swaying branch of the tall and massive tree, the waiting in the heart for Sri Aurobindo's letter - all three combined into a new alchemy and a beautiful poem was born: Tree of Time.
I am a tree of time, a swaying shadow,
With one sole branch lit by eternity -
All of me dark save this song-fruitful hand.9
In moments when poetry flows through the poet
Fragments of deathless ecstasy outflower
And I but live in these few fingers that trace
On life's uncoloured air a burning cry
From God-abysses to God-pinnacles.9
And when 'the buried vast' shall wake within the poet's breast
...then through each quivering nerve shall course
No feeble brightness self-consumed in joy
Like the brief passions of earth, but nectar-flame -
A Force drunk with its own infinitude.9
There is no sobriety in Amal's poetry. In his own inimitable words he is
Condemned for ever more to be
A drunkard of infinity:10
An unmistakable poetic aura surrounds him. Lines of poetry flow out of his mouth at the slightest turn of things, happenings or even the mere mention of a word: Turn but a stone and start a
wing.
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Amal sees poetry, lives poetry and therefore his world, though outwardly simple and Spartan, is inwardly rich beyond measure.
True poets never age, they only mature endlessly. That Amal is turning ninety is almost impossible to accept. His radiant face, the youthfulness of his hearty laughter, his unbelievable memory, his loving empathy - all these qualities and more have endeared him to all, young and old.
To me Amal is like a golden bridge to Sri Aurobindo. He constantly lives in Sri Aurobindo. To be in touch with him is to be in touch with someone who was very dear to Sri Aurobindo and to whom Sri Aurobindo is everything. After completing the reading of The Life Divine Amal noted: "The author of this book seems to be the author of the Universe."
Providence brought me to Amal just a little before some terrible difficulties began to brew up in my hitherto extremely happy life. The inner support he gave me not only helped me out of the prolonged mental agony but as if laid my heart in the lap of Sri Aurobindo. It is after knowing Amal that Sri Aurobindo has become a living Presence to me: my Friend, Guide and Master. From Amal I have learnt the beautiful, enriching and fulfilling art of reading Sri Aurobindo, not only with reverence but with absolute love.
Amal's words even in ordinary conversation are often very concentrated and carry a great deal of significance. This is perhaps because of the purity and sweet sincerity of his nature. Borrowing from W.B. Yeats I would say about Amal:
...and sweetness flows from head to foot.
His words therefore often linger in my heart and mind and gradually deepen the understanding. To be in touch with his mind is to constantly grow and learn more and more. Once when I spoke to him of the special comfort I felt in reading The Life Divine, he said: "Reading Sri Aurobindo creates an atmosphere around us that protects and nourishes us." I now read Sri Aurobindo in a softly loud voice so that along with the eyes, heart and mind, the speech organs and the hearing also parti-
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cipate in this action of prayer. Reading then is like our soul embracing Sri Aurobindo with all ardour.
Amal has the great capacity to enter the other person's mind and understand even before one has given full expression to one's thoughts. He catches the vibration, identifies and knows. "When I look at a person or a thing I try to look into their depth," he said to me once. His advice I have found to be always not only the wisest but the happiest and the most elevating. "Continue reading Sri Aurobindo," says Amal when troubled thoughts surround me. Three simple words. But how much they contain: And they lead me out of sadness to joy again.
Amal invariably takes his friends nearer Sri Aurobindo, because that is the luminous stuff he is made of. My brother and I feel he is a beautiful Consciousness crystallised around a flame lit by Sri Aurobindo.
ADITI VASISHTHA
1. The Secret Splendour, p. 378.
2. Ibid., p. 6. . 3. Ibid., p. 9.
4. Ibid., p. 388.
5. Ibid., p. 459.
6. Ibid., p. 433.
7. Ibid., p. 370.
8. Ibid., p. 368.
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. Ibid., p. 7.
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FROM the time I came to Pondicherry as a small boy in the year 1946, I had heard the name of Amal Kiran together with that of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, of Dilip Kumar Roy, Arjava and a few others as the poets inspired and moulded by Sri Aurobindo himself. Those were indeed the halcyon days of the Ashram at least as far as the Arts and Culture were concerned, for then it was a case of turn but a corner and start a poet. One could not take a step without brushing against a famous poet or painter or musician or thinker or scholar. Nolinikanto, Nishikanto, Dilip Kumar, Bhismadev, Sahana Devi, Monod-Herzen, Sanjivan, Jayantilal, Krishnalal, Sundaram, Purani, Nirodbaran, Anilbaran, Rishabchand, Indra Sen, Sisir Mitra and many more were all so palpably present.
However, in 1946 Arjava was no more, Harindranath had left the Ashram and Amal Kiran was a star that dwelt apart in faraway Bombay preparing to shed his immaculate rays on the pages of Mother India, and my only contact with these poets was through a few of their poems which we studied later in our English class. The one from Amal Kiran that comes readily to mind is The Signature: Sri Aurobindo1:
Sharp-hewn yet undertoned with mystery,
A brief black sign from the Incommunicable
Making the Eternal's Night mix with our day
To deepen ever the shallow goldenness
We hug to our heart!...
I will remember the tremendous impact this poem had on our imagination, especially when we meticulously compared the lines of this poem with the strokes and loops and curls and curves and the overall majestic sweep of the signature of our Master.
1. The Secret Splendour (Collected Poems), p. 234.
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Then came 1952, a red letter year of my life! Some of us students were told that the celebrated poet-editor of Mother India wanted to see our poems. With much trepidation and harbouring no false hope I submitted a few of my compositions for his comments. What he actually thought of them I do not know to this day, but one fine morning — "O frabjous day!" — I received a copy of Mother India with my poem in PRINT! For the next few months almost each issue carried some brainchild of mine — either a poem or a short story - and finally one day I received the princely sum of fifty-one rupees from the publishers as reward for my efforts. I remember how happily and proudly I offered fifty rupees to the Mother telling her that that was my very first earning, but I must confess quite shamefully that the worldly-wise in me had kept back one rupee to buy the deliciously bitter American chocolate which was so plentiful in Pondicherry in those days. I had convinced myself at that time that the Mother would not mind this tiny bit of skulduggery on my part, and I am sure that she did not. But the inexorable laws of karma "after my just desert" had a good laugh at my subsequent discomfiture. For soon after this, one evening, when the great poet, having returned to Pondicherry, came to the Playground and wanted to meet us little ones - measured by the poetic yardstick, that is - I was literally caught in a state of half undress being busy at the moment lifting weights in the gymnasium. There was no time to change. I had to come as I was. To say the least it was rather embarrassing to approach one graced by Saraswati, with a shining but stinking sweat-drenched body wearing the briefest of briefs. Especially so, since Amal Kiran's keen sense of humour was legendary. I tried my best to make the little intelligence I owned suffuse my face and Amal Kiran too, the gentleman that he was, refrained from making any painful pleasantry beyond remarking, "So now we have weightlifting poets!" But in my heart of hearts I had the sinking feeling that he had formed the opinion that I had only muscles where my brains ought to be.
However, even though I appeared in a bad light before him, he did not fail to produce the right impression on me. What I saw was a very fair, handsome, tallish man with a bright face and
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twinkling eyes, a romantic Byronic limp and an irresistible charisma. Of his kind heart and sympathetic attitude towards fledgling poets (in my case the word poetaster would perhaps be more appropriate) I already had first-hand experience — did he not make it possible for my immature efforts to see the light of day? As for his sense of humour and love of laughter I had heard stories galore. How his chance discovery that Sri Aurobindo enjoyed P.G. Wodehouse had pushed up his admiration for his Guru a farther notch or two. How he had the rare but commendable ability to laugh at himself and make fun of his own physical handicap, one of his most endearing comments being: "My feet do not fall with equal stress on the ground on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress: I am an anapaestic fellow." How in his early years in the Ashram, when he was in charge of the furniture department and had gone to a house to remove a cot, he had been thoroughly mystified by a Sadhak, a native of Chittagong, informing him that "the cot was on Barinda." - "You mean Barinda (Sri Aurobindo's brother) is on the cot," Amal had endeavoured to place the two in their logical position. "No", insisted the Sadhak, "the cot is on Barinda." Utterly baffled but presuming that perhaps Barinda was engaged in some strange yogic practice, Amal had decided to investigate the matter himself only to find that very properly the cot was indeed in the verandah — a word often pronounced as "barinda" in some parts of East Bengal. There were many more of such stories and I used to relish them all.
In a year or so Amal Kiran once again became a familiar figure in the Ashram, especially since he began teaching the First Year Arts Students of our College Course. As I was in the second (or was it the third?) year, my timetable did not permit me to attend lectures which, I heard, combined erudition with hilarity in equal measure. In fact he became so popular in such a short time, that one of the teachers of our school who was something of a dry stick (a mere statement of fact, no offence intended) and taught the dull bits of English grammar, one day cornered Amal Kiran and demanded to know the secret of his popularity.
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"Well, I suppose," hazarded the poet, "they enjoy my class because I tell them jokes and funny anecdotes and endeavour to make the work seem like play."
- "But I know no jokes. Never had any time for them. Could you tell me a few?" Out came his notebook, the painstaking, systematic man that he was, and whatever Amal Kiran recounted, he noted down diligently.
Next day our grammarian went to his class armed with his collection of jokes. The class was conducted as usual but exactly five minutes before the bell he stopped the class, opened his notebook and read out three jokes in a monotonous, lugubrious tone. Then, his duty done, snapped his notebook shut and was gone. The students were so taken aback that they missed the cue to laugh.
A few years passed. I had by now finished my studies and taken up teaching. Amal Kiran, on the other hand, had stopped taking classes but he kept in touch with all of us through his periodic talks on poetry in general and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in particular. I always made it a point to attend his talks not only because of their brilliance and entertaining and edifying value, but also because they helped me in my teaching by giving me new knowledge and new insight into poetry. They strengthened some of my convictions and corrected many of my out-moded notions.
I am not overfond of reading magazines, so I miss much that appears in Mother India. But whenever I have chanced to go through stray copies, I have been amazed by the sheer variety of the subjects on which Amal Kiran writes so authoritatively and thought-provokingly. The vision of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, mysticism, yoga, philosophy - both eastern and western - literature, especially his treatise on Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare and other English poets and authors, sociology, politics, Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin are all subjects in which he is completely at home. Moreover he made his presence strongly felt among the readers of Mother India through his erudite articles on Hinduism, the original home of the Aryans, ancient Indian history, India's rich and hoary civilisation and her stupendous achievements.
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I used to read some of these articles and mutely wonder: how can one man know so much ? But whatever may be his secret, there is no doubt that he is a fit disciple of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The Mantra of his life is contained in Sri Aurobindo's words: "Adore and what you adore attempt to be." He adores Sri Aurobindo, so he faithfully follows in the Master's footsteps.
In spite of reading one of his articles on Einstein I had always thought of him, quite mistakenly I am afraid, as an expert on only the so-called Arts subjects i.e. the humanities. But then came a day which brought home a new revelation to me. It so happened that I travelled to Madras by car with Amal Kiran and Mr. K., a foreign friend of ours. Mr. K. is an engineer and industrialist and consequently very well versed in the latest developments of modern science. I was on the front seat with the driver and following my usual practice let the motion of the car lull me into a pleasant doze. But the interesting conversation that began in the back seat must have penetrated my subconscious, for I was soon wide awake listening intently. Twenty years ago a budding poet- cum-weightlifter might have shocked Amal Kiran, but that day a poet spouting the latest breakthrough in the physical sciences astounded me much more. For nearly four hours Amal Kiran kept us spellbound not only by merely informing us about the most modern scientific discoveries and inventions, but also elaborating on the theories involved in them and their future possibilities. I must confess that, though I fully enjoyed the witty and humorous bits of this dissertation, much of the pure science went over my head. But I quite realised the fact that Mr. K. too was often finding himself out of his depth.
I would have ended my personal glimpses of Amal Kiran at this point, had I not, like the Three Princes of Serendip, made a fortunate and fortuitous discovery. We were seeing some of the most beautiful old designs created by the Ashram artists for the Mother's saris, dresses, headbands and sandals. When I enquired about the authorship of some of them that caught my eye, I was informed that they were the creations of none other than K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran. "Why, didn't you know", my edifier was genuinely surprised, "Amal is an accomplished artist." I might
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have guessed! Poet, painter, writer, scholar, wit, conversationalist, sadhak - all in one! The vast ocean that is Amal Kiran - who knows how many more gems of purest ray serene are not hidden in his unfathomed depths ?
ANIRUDDHA SIRCAR
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AMAL KIRAN is nothing if not versatile. Poet, scholar, literary critic, historian with expert knowledge of its twin discipline archeology, artist, editor, keenly interested in problems of modern Physics, acquainted with basic problems of philosophy and great philosophers' attempted solutions of them, raconteur with a razor-sharp wit, humorist, teacher who in his lectures on poetry makes the Muse come alive, Amal Kiran is a multi-faceted and sparkling personality. Whether it is the problem of the original home of the Aryans, reconstructing Indian chronology, Karpasa in ancient India, the world of Sri Aurobindo's poetry, identifying the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, unravelling the mystery of Blake's brightly burning Tyger or Mallarme's Swan submerged in snow, he brings to bear upon his studies of these subjects his wide knowledge and gives minute attention to their treatment in such a manner that his readers can only marvel at his poetic sensitivity and intellectual rigour. He is a writer who turns into gold all that he touches.
Amal Kiran is nothing if not a virtuoso. He is extremely skilful in gathering his materials and marshalling it in a most systematic way and then arranging his arguments in a very convincing manner. Let me give an example from a recently published article of his. In the July 1994 issue of Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, he has tried to determine Panini's time from his place, i.e. his home.1 While the wealth of scholarship evident in it is mind-boggling, the way in which he has built up his thesis is nothing short of amazing. An instance of him as a critic of poetry will show how responsive he is to poetic excellence and at the same time objective and even-handed in his estimation of different poets. His comparative study of the two Autumns — Hood's and Keats's — is a case in point. While the discussion of the two poems leaves no doubt that our poet-critic considers Keats the better, not to say greater, he grants that in the-line "In
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the hushed mind's mysterious far away". Hood brings "a profound note beyond anything in Keats's picture — a note which may legitimately be called the Romantic age's anticipation of Aurobindonian style."2
Amal Kiran is a master of the poet's craft. His knowledge of the technique of poetry, its language, diction, of prosody, metre and rhythm is truly authoritative. He has very sensitive ears which enable him to appreciate and at the same time he can communicate to the reader the reason for his admiration for a poem, a passage or even a single line. Listen to our poet-critic's analytical estimate of a line in Savitri which he discusses in his masterly work of Sri Aurobindo - the Poet. I will quote the whole paragraph because all of it is devoted to one line which occurs in the following passage of Savitri (p. 255, Cent. Ed.):
Alone a process of events was there
And Nature's plastic and protean change
And, strong by death to slay or to create,
The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force.
Amal Kiran gives a luminous critique of the last line and brings home to the reader the suggestive sound-value of the words employed by Sri Aurobindo in an inspired moment and how its subject-matter takes body as it were and becomes alive. Says he:
"...here too the accent is recognisably Aurobindonian. The Overhead breath blows everywhere and in the last line we have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four "i"s and the four "o"s suggest at once penetration and expansion, the latter as if from an all-round fastness. The "v" in "riven", pronounced as it is with the upper teeth touching the lower lip, aids the sense of cutting that is in the word, while the "v" in "invisible" not only supports and increases the cutting
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suggestion but also hints by occurring in that particular word and in the midst of several syllables successively short in quantity the marvellous carrying of the power of fission into the mystery of the infinitesimal that constitutes the unseen atomic nucleus. Then there are the two "m"s with their movements of lip-closure corresponding to the closed secrecy that is being spoken of and they are preceded and followed by the labials "b" and "p" respectively which correspond to the initial motive of breaking open the closed secrecy and to the final accomplishment of that explosion. The hard strokes of the three "t"s mingle a further nuance of breaking. The "f" of force picks up again the fission-power of the "v"s and completes it with its own acute out-loosening sound accompanied by the somewhat rolled sibilance at the end. The sibilance itself, giving clear body to the softer sound of the pair of "s"s earlier in the line, achieves the idea of a full escape of the power that was so far not sweeping out of the charmed circle, as it were, of the atom's vibrant energy."3
This detailed study of the line under discussion will enable the sympathetic reader, sahrdaya, to understand why it still reverberates in his consciousness even long after he has read it. Amal Kiran's enlightening study, Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, is replete with such examples of his poetic sensitivity and critical acumen. As regards thoughts and ideas - contents of poems - Amal Kiran's observations are illuminating.4
Amal Kiran's books on the problem of the Aryans' original home and ancient Indian history and chronology have broken new ground. It is to be earnestly hoped that academic and professional historians and archeologists will pay serious attention to them with open minds. With wide-based reading, deep contemplation and careful construction of material, they point to a new direction in which the study of and research in Indian history should move. People more competent than I will surely write on Amal Kiran's poetry which of course I appreciate and enjoy immensely. Apart from their poetic excellence, they suggest things behind and beyond the ideas and moods they express - an intangible and yet concrete world of truths embodied in bold and beautiful images which are often symbols representing
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realities of other planes of being and consciousness. Many phrases, even lines stick in the memory of the readers of his poetry. Each one of them subtly conveys aspiration for realising the depths and heights and wideness of his being and consciousness. Many of the poems have the influx of currents from overhead planes of consciousness. The combination of overhead inspiration and its vivid images and moving rhythm and variegated colour in poetry is rare. And this fine blend marks him out as a sadhak-poet. I shall content myself with quoting one of my favourite poems from his vast output of poem after admirable poem — Her Changing Eyes:
Brims there a fathomless blue ?
Then loves' deep-surge has made her ocean-souled!
Shed they a fiery hue ?
Then truth has lit her mind to pure sun-gold!
Are they like purple wine ?
O she is drunk with the Ineffable!
Out beams a dark dew-shine ?
With pity of your gloom her lustres fill.
But when that varied glance
Is fading to a quiet none can see
Behind the snow-lids of trance,
She's waking in you all eternity!5
Amal Kiran is nothing if not a sadhak, - a sadhak with a most intense and ardent aspiration for self-realisation and God-union and eventually, the divine life. This does not mean that he is at the first stage of practice of the integral yoga. For though aspiration is admittedly the first thing, it is also a continuous process. It is my firm conviction that Amal Kiran's diverse aspects radiate from this core — his spiritual longing for the Divine. In his case it is true to say that the things, that is, his many facets do not fall apart, that the Centre can and does hold. Amal Kiran's burning faith in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is an iridescent
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example to all disciples and devotees of the twin Avatars.
Who is Amal Kiran ? Kekoo D. Sethna - a sadhak resident at Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
What is Amal Kiran ? - In his being a spiritual soul whose one preoccupation is its evolution to the integral Divine; in his nature a pure ray serene; an incandescent, receptive intelligence, buddhi;
a quiet resolute determination, samkalpa, a flaming, unifying love, prema.
ARABINDA BASU
1. Pp. 489-498.
2. Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, June 1994, p. 391.
3. Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1970, pp. 163-64.
4. For instance, Ibid., passim, the reader may refer to pp. 227-239 and pp. 240-263.
5. The Secret Splendour, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry, 1993, p. 438.
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In 1945 Prof. V.N. Bhushan brought out an anthology of poems in English by Indian writers, Kiranavali 1: The Peacock Lute. While presenting two of K.D. Sethna's poems the editor, after a quick biographical sketch, made a very perceptive, though brief, assessment of his poetry with its roots in the Aurobindonian spiritual aesthetics. We reproduce the same here, being one of the early evaluations of this genre of poetry which has yet to receive its full acclaim in the critical circles.
-Editors
SILENT, unobtrusive, and ever inward-looking, Mr. Sethna leads the vanguard of poetry in his family, and is undoubtedly a singer of aristocratic distinction. Born on 25 November 1904, he was educated at St. Xavier's School and College, Bombay. In Inter Arts he took both the Selby Scholarship for Logic and the Hughling Prize for English - a combination not achieved by anyone else yet. Passing the B.A. examination of the Bombay University with Honours in Philosophy, he again put up a performance not parallelled so far - namely, that he, a philosophy-student, and not a literature-student won the much-coveted Ellis Prize for English. And before he left college, he made his literary debut with a group of poems marked by a piercing psychical and intellectual passion. Published about the same time, his volume of critical essays entitled Parnassians elided from H. G. Wells the prophetic remark: "This young man will go far." And he has gone far - farther than the celebrated English writer could have meant or expected. He has gone far on the path of spiritual quest - with vision in his eyes and song on his lips. Attracted early in life towards Sri Aurobindo, twenty-four year old Mr. Sethna joined the Ashram and stayed there for nearly ten years. That was the turning point in his career, the spring-tide of his life. Under the Master's influence, Mr. Sethna’s inspiration took a decisive spiritual turn which gave to his
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inherent keenness of thought and sensation a new purpose and point - helping it to penetrate unusual ranges of sight and feeling. This resulted in the writing of poems characterized by an illumined power of consciousness and a striking inwardness of word-suggestion and sound-suggestion that carries a concrete sense of some occult and spiritual Infinite. The volume of poems entitled The Secret Splendour which was published in 1941 has justly earned high praise from men and magazines that count. Keeper of luminous vigils and kin of endless God-horizonry, Mr. Sethna is a poet of profound thought and polished utterance. He is truly a spirit-illumined son of song — of whom Indo-English poetry may feel legitimately proud!
V.N. BHUSHAN
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Are Philosophical Questions Self-Answering?
I am very happy to respond to the invitation to contribute to the festschrift volume in honour of Amal on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. It is a great privilege and I may add that being asked to honour Amal is itself a great honour bestowed on one.
Amal has been my best friend since we met in the early forties. In a way 1 owe it to him that I am still alive, as inthe very grave crisis I passed through many yearsago it was he who used to keep the Mother informed almost daily about my condition. 1 also remember with deep gratitude the many occasions on which he has, at my request, invoked the Mother's help and blessings to solve difficult and critical problems facing my friends and relatives.
Besides the fact that we are co-disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (which, of course, is the most precious bond between us) we have many things in common, the two most notable being Philosophy and a boisterous sense of humour!
We have spent many happy hours together in academic philosophical discussions and though we do not always see eye to eye the dialogue always remains non-polemical and never degenerates into a shouting match. This does not mean that we never raise our voices against each other but when we do the reason for doing so is that we are both hard of hearing! Salutations to my friend Amal, the most gifted and versatile person I have come across - yogi, poet, philosopher, historian, literary critic and the author of many brilliant publications. May he continue for many more years to guide and inspire seekers of knowledge and wisdom and lead them to repose at the feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother! -Author's Note
THIS question - Are Philosophical Questions Self-Answering ? — itself is not self-answering and perhaps also not self-explaining. Even if we hold that some philosophical questions do, in some sense, provide their own answers I do not think that
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this could be said of all philosophical questions. Let me lay down a broad distinction. Questions in philosophy arise at two levels, at the level of what may be called first-order philosophy, or just philosophy, and at the level of meta-philosophy which is philosophy becoming conscious of itself. Now the view which I hold is that questions at the first level are largely, if not all of them, self-answering, through the analysis of the concept of a self-answering question is one of the major problems of meta-philosophy.
In this paper I shall be concerned mainly with the analysis and explanation of the view that questions in philosophy, as distinguished from meta-philosophy, provide their own answers. This will raise the question, what is the nature of reasoning in philosophy, or, what is the role of logic in philosophical reasoning? I do not think this question has been satisfactorily answered, as logic, even when distinguished from formal logic, is usually taken to be devoid of ontology, and, as such, either degenerates into conventionalism or is placed on a pinnacle from where it is expected to legislate for all thought and existence. In the former case, logic becomes verbal or barren. Propositions of logic are regarded as tautologies and arc valid "only in virtue of their lack of factual content''. Philosophy is then absorbed into logic and likewise becomes a set of definition or statements about or resting on linguistic conventions which are either empirical propositions, and so not philosophical propositions at all, or, like the Verification Principle, are arbitrary and beg the question against rival theories. In the latter case, logic is endowed with creative powers whichin reality it does not possess.
I shall try to show that logic has novelty and power but only within prescribed limits. It is not the creator of content but the two kinds; that which is determined by abstract and universal rules and that which takes shape under the pressure of a concrete and individual insight, or point of view. The distinction we have to draw is thus not between formal and non-formal or informal logic, but between formal logic at the abstract and at the concrete level. Even abstract formal logic is not a matter of manipulating conventional rules; it is governed by ineluctable necessities of
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thought. It also exhibits insight but, unlike concrete formal logic, the insight is not directly ontological, though it rests on ontological presuppositions concerning the most general character of things.
The question with which this paper begins is, however, not self-answering, as it is a question in meta-philosophy. Those questions which are concerned with empirical matters of fact are clearly not self-answering, since the answers must necessarily come to us from outside. Philosophy, however, is non-empirical. Its answers must therefore come from within, though it is by no means easy to answer the questions ‘from within what?’. This peculiar situation which we find in philosophy of questions providing their own answers is connected with the aprioristic character of philosophical reasoning. But if philosophical reasoning is a priori throughout it is not so throughout in the same way. Reasoning at the level of first-order philosophy is a priori in the sense that it is the exploration and development of a basic commitment. Reasoning at the level of meta-philosophy is a priori in the sense that it is the exploration and development of an uncommitted insight into the nature of philosophical reasoning. Questions provide their own answers only if they are formulated in a system which is the expression of an alogical act of commitment. Here the question and its answer are parts of the same developing system. The point of view which frames the question itself provides the answer. The meta-philosophical question, however, is a free inquiry and does not presuppose a point of view. But the logic of this enquiry is not free of ontology. A logic without a formulated ontological content is either formal logic or it is, to use the words of Bradley, "a monster and a fiction". Logic always functions within the matrix of ontology. We may say that logic functions within the framework either of an ontological commitment or of a pure ontological insight, i.e. an insight which is not also a commitment. The former is the logic of philosophy or conscious thought, and the latter the logic of meta-philosophy or self-conscious thought. Where there is insight without commitment there is no point of view which is prejudged. The question which is asked is open and not loaded and hence
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the answer is not determined by the question or by a point of view underlying the question.
It should be clear that I am not using the word 'logic' as the name of a science. I have in mind the aspect of philosophical reasoning which we call logical. The logic of an argument is its pattern and the direction that it takes. It is what provides justification for the things that we say in philosophy, though 'justification' in philosophy is not the same thing as proof or demonstration.
The question concerning the role of logic in philosophy is, what is it that carries the argument forward and gives it the form and direction that it takes? And can this logical aspect of reasoning survive if logic is placed outside ontology, or, to put it differently, could we, in philosophy, think logically without any ontological commitment? I believe philosophers have mistakenly thought or taken for granted that we can and should think logically without any kind of commitment. What is perhaps responsible for this error is the view that logical thinking gives necessity and so must be free of any prior adherence to any point of view which is not itself seen to be logically necessary. This reason for regarding logic as ontologically uncommitted commits the error of assimilating philosophical reasoning to mathematical reasoning. The alternative to regarding philosophical conclusions as demonstrably certain is not to hold that they are tentative, for this would be to assimilate philosophical reasoning to the reasoning in the empirical sciences. What is tentative is at the mercy of experience, but since philosophical reasoning is a priori its conclusions cannot be confuted by experience. I believe that philosophers, failing to realise that philosophical reasoning is sui generis, have been betrayed by the recognition that philosophical conclusions cannot be tentative into holding that they must then be demonstrably certain or necessary. I find myself forced to the conclusion that the philosopher's understanding of his subject and of the tools he employs is almost primitive. It is certainly very inadequate and very very naive.
It is the same mistake which leads Ayer to conclude that since the propositions of philosophy are not empirical they must be
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logical and they are logical precisely to the extent that they rescind from facts. "Propositions of philosophy," says Ayer,"express definitions and their formal consequences. Accordingly philosophy is a department oflogic, for the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact." Philosophical propositions must then be treated as analytic and they are analytic in the sense that they are linguistically necessary, i.e. they state necessary truths based upon conventions about the usages of words.
But how, if philosophical reasoning is only the setting up of definitions and drawing formal consequences, can reasoning move forward and construct theories which exhibit a comprehensive grasp of a total situation in which diverse elements are brought into a unity? A survey of the history of philosophy would certainly not bear out the contention that the most fruitful theories in philosophy contain nothing more than so-called 'analytic truths' erected on the basis of linguistic conventions. But this is all that philosophical reasoning can do if it does not leave the field of logic. And if it steps outside the precincts of an ontologically uncommitted logic it ceases, on this theory, to be philosophy and becomes science.
Ayer, however, does not maintain this view consistently. In his contribution to the Symposium "What can Logic do for Philosophy?" he suggests that in the case of the Sense-datum theory we do leave the field of logic and gain an insight into the nature of 'facts'. He suggests that in translating physical object language into the language of sense-data we do not merely "replace one form of description by another". "Our new description may give us," he says, "a clearer insight into the facts." But then if philosophy gives us an insight into facts it cannot be merely a department of logic, as Ayer understands logic. Besides, this attempt to redescribe facts stated in the physical object language by using the language of sense-data cannot, as Ayer himself admits, merely be a matter of “looking up an agreed table of linguistic rules". To assert that the sense-data language is different from and, in whatever way, preferable to the physical
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object language presupposes a philosophical theory. The theory is that the physical object language is fallible, but the sense-data language is infallible, and this again because there indubitably exist such things as sense-data and hence physical objects are to be understood as constructions out of sense-data. This itself is not a logical theory, as it attempts to describe, and I think quite mistakenly, the real nature of things.
On this view of logic it would follow that philosophical questions are self-answering. If philosophical propositions are propositions of logic they are, according to this view, analytic which means that they are necessarily true. If an answer to a philosophical question is a proposition which is necessarily true there can be only one logically self-consistent answer to the question. We have only to understand what the question means to see what its answer is, for it can have only one answer. This is the ontological argument, but it is used to derive answers which are much less momentous than the one given by the traditional ontological argument.
The notion of the analytic proposition is the mainstay of this type of logic. I believe however, that we can give no sense to the term 'analytic' which will enable us to show that an analytic proposition, however defined, is a necessarily true proposition. I shall briefly reproduce the arguments against the notion of analytic propositions which are necessarily true. Mathematical propositions are given as instances of analytic propositions, but the theory fails to give a criterion of the analytic which is distinct from the criterion of the a priori, and until this is done we do not know what the theory means by an analytic proposition. Ayer does propose a criterion which distinguishes the analytic from the a priori. He defines 'analytic' in terms of synonymy of linguistic forms. But this synonymy is a matter of convention and a convention about linguistic usage is not a necessary proposition, nor can a necessary proposition be derived from a convention about linguistic ·usage. Thus this theory describes a full circle. It reduces the non-empirical propositions of philosophy to logic but the account which it gives of logical propositions reduces them to a sub-class of empirical propositions.
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Logic that is ontologically uncommitted may take the high a priori road and may, from within itself, spin out an ontological theory as a spider spins a web of the substance of its body. This may appropriately be called 'philosophy in the grand manner’. The assumption here is that for doing philosophy it is sufficient. If one keeps an open mind and thinks doggedly to the bitter end. The only principle thought relies on- and to deny it is to deny thought itself - is the principle of contradiction. Philosophical questions and problems, it is assumed, arise naturally for the mind alert with intellectual curiosity and seized with the spirit of wonder. They are there and the inquiring mind cannot help taking note of them. They are the challenge to which our philosophical theories are the answer. Questions in philosophy, it should be noted, do not on this view rise within the framework of a theory and are not moulded by its presuppositions. They are regarded as having an objective neutral content. The questions, it is assumed, are the same for all; only the answers differ according as one thinks consistently or not, or, to avoid this too sharp dichotomy of consistency and contradiction, perhaps one should say, according to the degree of coherence with which one thinks. Philosophy, on this view, has no presuppositions and no predilection for any part of reality or any special feature of experience. It can start anywhere and by bringing to bear on its starring point the full power and clarity of consistent thought it can relentlessly develop its starting point dialectically till it grows into the comprehension of the all-embracing and timeless Absolute. In the Absolute thought at last comes to rest and, according to Bradley, also commits suicide.
Is it conceivable that the abstract laws of thought have the potency to generate a comprehensive and coherent system in which the totality of existence is included and accounted for?
Tavlor, however, contends that the principle of freedom from contradiction is not purely negative as "all significant negation is really exclusion resting on a positive basis". Thus we can say that Reality is not self-contradictory" on the ground that Reality "is positively self-consistent... and is at least a systematic whole of some kind".
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Taylor here assumes that the law of contradiction is a basal ontological law, and I for one have no wish to question this assumption. But a law of thought, in my opinion, is ontological only in the sense that it somehow shows, though it cannot state the most general character of things. We can only say that whatever exists or is real has a character such that it cannot harbour contradictory predicates. But what are contradictory? These cannot be illustrated by means of symbols but only in concerto. This means that we know that a pair of terms are in contradictory opposition when, in trying to assert both of them of the same subject at the same time we find that we have said nothing at all. If we take p and not-p as instances of contradictory terms then it is true that we have to deny not-p of that which we assert to be p, but this is not a denial in the same sense in which to deny q of that which we assert to be p is a denial. For to say that what is p is not not-p is not to say anything over and above saying that it is p.
My point is that the principle of significant denial does not apply in this case, for the denial is in a sense not significant. What the proposition 'A that is p is not not-p' presupposes is not a further characteristic of A not already mentioned in the proposition, but simply that A has a nature such that it cannot harbour contradictions, which again simply means that when we say something about A we must not say it in such a way that would result in our saying nothing at all. And this is true not only of A but of anything and everything in the universe as well as of the universe itself. This meagre information about things is all that the principle of freedom from contradiction can provide. It would be illegitimate to extract from it the further assertion that Reality, with a capital R, is "a systematic whole of some kind". The principle of non-contradiction, if not completely negative, is completely barren as far as the constructions of philosophical theories are concerned.
It is not surprising that the Ontological Argument should be the mainstay of the Idealistic logic. It is a heroic attempt to excogitate ontology out of a logic that is ontologically uncommitted. And once the existence is established the sum-total of
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ontological assertions and denials arc seen to be comprehended in this single stupendous assertion. The ontological argument appears to rely solely on the principle of contradiction. God, the Perfect Being, necessarily exists because to deny the existence of the Perfect Being is to be guilty of a self-contradiction. The question 'Does God exist?' is self-answering in the sense that if you understand what the question means you cannot but answer it in the affirmative.
Once this is established all other questions in metaphysics become self-answering, e.g.. Is Time real? If by realwe mean the Ultimate then since God is the Ultimate and, being perfect, is not in time, it follows that Time is not ultimate. No further dialectical and tortuous arguments such as Bradley tries to provide, are required. We do not have to show that thought about Time logically drives us to the Timeless, but only that Reality being timeless, Time is necessarily no more appearance.
I will not here dwell at length on the criticism of the ontological argument. My objection to it rests on grounds wholly different from those that have been urged against it in the history of philosophy, I believe that, considered as a logical argument to prove the conclusion it is circular and its defect is that it expects an uncommitted logic to break the circle. I would admit that it is a contradiction to deny the existence of God, but not a contradiction to deny the intelligibility of the proposition 'God exists'. Further, even if the proposition is admitted to be cognitively significant and its denial to be self-contradictory this would be so because the notion of existence, which, according to me is a criterion notion, is unintelligible in its metaphysical use unless we understand by the term 'existence' precisely what we understand by the expression 'the Perfect Being', e.g. God. 'God exists', if taken as the conclusion of a logical argument, would only give us the tautology 'God is God', which means that we cannot prove the existence of God by an argument as we can prove the existence of a yet undiscovered planet. To the metaphysician the denial of God is unintelligible. 'God' is the unquestioned and unquestionable presupposition of metaphysical thought, but this is not the ontological or any other argument, for I have said that
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God is the presupposition, not of thought as such, but of metaphysical thought, and it is only possible to explain metaphysical thought as thought which operates with the notion of God as its basic or criterion-concept.
If ‘God does not exist' is not an intelligible proposition it does not follow that God necessarily exists. To assume this would still be to move within the sphere of an ontologically uncommitted logic. We have no non-committal way of indicating what we mean by existence.
The proposition 'God exists' expresses neither a necessary nor a contingent truth, I have said that 'God exists' appears to be a tautology, but this statement requires explanation. It is not a tautology in the old and bad sense of the word in which 'a table is a table' would be a tautology. Nor is a tautology in the sense that it records our determination to use the word 'God' in such a way that we must always say 'God exists', or that 'God does not exist' is ruled out by definition. The classification of propositions in a sentence in the indicative mood which is cognitively significant is necessarily a proposition. I believe that like the statements of the laws of thought the expression of our belief in God is only symbolically stated in the propositional form 'God exists'. Since here the subject and predicate coincide in intention, though not by an arbitrary convention, we appear to have the tautology 'God is God'. But in the attitude of belief this tautology is pierced and the truth stated in the symbolic prepositional form is somehow grasped. 'God' is that to which or whom one is unconditionally and absolutely committed. The mind, heart and soul and every cell of the body accepts the Lord, 'whatever is the case', I may mention that in saying this I am not indulging in religious emotion nor forsaking the rigorous path of logic. To understand thought apparently moves very close to the Idealist logic and its mainstay the Ontological Argument, but there is a very important and very subtle difference which for some years I have been trying to clarify to myself. The difference emerges when thought is raised from the merely conscious to the fully self-conscious
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level. The necessity of thought of which the Idealist speaks is the truth that appears at the merely conscious level of thought. It is the first and pre-critical formulation of a deeper truth, and this early formulation is seen as error from the higher point of view. It has to be replaced by the notion of an integral and unconditional belief. There are no abstract necessities of thought. To speak in a Kantian strain, all necessities of thought are those which we ourselves put into thought in the light of our experience which is the matrix within which thought moves.
The relevance of my comments on the Ontological Argument and the idealist logic to my theme will be apparent when I shall explain the two levels at which questions provide their own answers ... at the level of systematic thought and at the higher level of faith where one seeks to convert an insipient understanding of transcendent things into a direct knowledge beyond thought.
I have shown that both these types of logic that claim exemption from any prior commitment to a point of view fail to account for the dynamic and comprehensive or three-dimensional character of logical thought. Each of these two logics claims further, either implicitly or explicitly, that the questions of philosophy are self-answering, but fails to make good its claim.
What then is the nature of the logic of philosophical reasoning? In what sense are philosophical questions self-answering and how can we show that they are so?
I have suggested that the logic of an argument is internal to a point of view and does not underlie it. Logical reasoning does not consist in providing grounds for a theory nor in merely deducing formal consequences from given premises. It cannot also consist in the discovery or recovery of absolute presuppositions which are also self-certifying in the sense that their denial is self-contradictory. There is only one thing that logic can do, and that is to develop, mature, bring to a clearer focus the point of view within the framework of which it operates. As the point of view and its logic are organically connected we may say that logical argument is the point of view struggling to come to a full understanding of itself. It is a dialectical development of an
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intellectual insight which is potentially rich and complex and not, as in the case of the Hegelian dialectic, a passage from the impoverished and empty notion of being to the Absolute Idea.
We shall understand the nature of philosophical reasoning better if we compare it with a process of biological growth or even with artistic creation of significant form from an inchoate idea rather than with the linear process of mathematical reasoning. The tree is potentially in the seed but not implicit in it in the way in which a theorem is implicit in the starting axioms and definitions. Matter grows into form, to use the Aristotelian distinction, but form is not deduced from matter. The process that matures a point of view into a full-fledged theory is the logic of that point of view as well as of the resultant theory. But logic does not claim autonomy or legislative sovereignty on this view. It is necessarily an ontologically committed logic and its freedom is relative. It cannot transcend the limits of the point of view which it serves to explicate.
Now we can understand how and in what sense philosophical questions are self-answering. Since the logic of philosophical discourse is always internal to a point of view there is no thought which is neutral or uncommitted. This statement applies not only to the answering of philosophical questions but also to the very formulation of the questions themselves. A philosophical problem is not merely 'given', it is apperceived. It is from the beginning seen from a particular point of view. Since our thought is committed, the questions we ask, though they may have the appearance of being prompted by an open or free inquiry, are in reality loaded questions, and, in a masked form, spearhead, as it were, the process of thought which, when it assumes the form of a coherent system, is regarded as the answer to the question or the solution to the problem. A foregone conclusion cannot be an answer to an open question, if the question and answer are two parts of a continuous process of thought; and all philosophical conclusions are foregone. The question thus adumbrates the point of view underlying the process of thinking and the answer is the point of view elaborated into a coherent system.
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Thus philosophical questions are self-answering in the sense that our questions are not open but reflect a commitment to a point of view. They contain and provide their own answers similar to the way in which the seed contains and makes possible the development of the tree. Our conclusions are not foregone in the sense that they are the inescapable postulates of a neutral and uncommitted starring point. That is the point of view of Idealist logic. They are foregone in the sense that in the very process of formulating a question we have charted our course and determined, in principle, what answer we shall obtain, though the answer is not formally deduced from the starting point. It is reached by a dialectical process and there is always the possibility that the argument may go awry and fail to develop consistently the potentialities of its own starting point.
What is true of the process of thought in philosophy is also true of a higher movement of consciousness which effects a transition from faith to supra-rational knowledge or direct realization. If fact the higher movement is reflected in the lower and analogically reproduces its structure or fluid pattern within it. As above, so below. There is in us, actually in some and I believe potentially in all, a sense of Immortality. Prom deep within us come intimations of a Presence which is radiant and incorruptible and beyond all nisus. It is our immortal Self. There is an urge towards transcendent freedom - mumuksatva - in which the Self abides in unconditional Bliss or acts with an unfettered and, luminous spontaneity. There glimmers above us the Awful Emptiness - śunya - sucking up the mind into its ineffable silence. The heart feels the promptings of a sweet and sacred love and pours itself out to meet the Divine Beloved. It accepts and clings to the Divine unconditionally, not because it has been intellectually certified that: God exists, but because it is what it is and the Lord is the Lord.
How shall we, as philosophers, understand and explain this sense of the Beyond, these immortal longings and intimations of transcendent freedom? Is it all psychological? Surely it is, but what do we mean by calling these urges psychological? Do we mean merely that they have not been shown to be rationally
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grounded? But if so, everything is psychological, including our vaunted logic, for logic, as I have shown, never steps beyond the limits of a definitive experience to which it owes its very life and movement.
Shall we say all this is a matter of faith? Quite so; but what is our attitude qua philosophers to faith? Shall we disregard it as of no concern to the philosopher? And is this because faith does not have an underpinning of logic? But then neither does a philosophical system have an underpinning of logic. In fact our rational nature is itself sustained in its activity by an act of faith and, in metaphysics at least, its constructions themselves are merely the rational form which one thought gives to the content of faith. The adventure of faith has as much claim on the philosopher's attention as the adventure of ideas. The philosopher's task will be not to provide a logical foundation to the deliverances of faith. Faith does not need the ministration of logic. It is a misunderstanding of the nature of Reason itself to attempt to provide a rational preamble to the act of faith. Our task as philosophers is to understand the movement of faith and to show that it carries its justification within itself. There is a logic of faith which is internal and not anterior to it. There is an analogical resemblance between the logic of philosophical reasoning and the logic of faith. Philosophical questions are self- answering and spiritual faith is self-justifying. But in what sense does faith justify itself? Obviously not by providing any measure of intellectual guarantee or assurance.
Kant attempted to destroy knowledge to make room for faith. Faith, however, is not a rival to knowledge and the latter needs not to be destroyed but understood. Once we remove the underpinning of logic from knowledge itself, faith is seen not to suffer from lack of such a logical support. Faith is self-justifying in the sense that once we receive the glimmering of something new and what to us is a higher possibility in a virgin apprehension there is something in us which compels the pursuit of this apparition though it lead us beyond the utmost bound of human thought and break down all our carefully built fences of security. We seek it because it lures us and we give ourselves gladly to its
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enchantment. Whether the search ends in fulfilment or disillusionment has no bearing whatever on the self-justifying nature of the search. The voice of the sceptic or the so-called rationalist raised in warning or cavil is the voice of the philistine that would seal off all hazards and prevent the soul from venturing out into the vast unknown and unpossessed.
This character of self-justifying faith is, as I have suggested, reflected at the lower level in philosophical reasoning in its character of self-answering questions. There is a hazard in both cases though in the latter far less of a hazard to one's total personality. In both philosophy and faith one takes an excursion into the Unknown.
J.N. CHUBB
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"IN THE Upanishad it is said in a parable that there are two birds sitting, on the same bough, one of which feeds and the other looks on. This is an image of mutual relationship of the infinite being and the finite self. The delight of the bird which looks on is great, for it is pure and free delight. There are both of these birds in man himself, the objective one with its business of life, the subjective one with its disinterested joy of vision." That is how Rabindranath Tagore interprets the two-bird metaphor of Mundaka Upanishad. He seems to tell us that the act of seeing is more imaginative, more creative, more real than the act of knowing. The delight of the bird that looks on is greater than that of the bird that is busy with the facts of life. For a child a tiger in the story narrated by his grandmother is, being a creative imagination, more intimate and concretely living than the one he comes across as a beast of prey in the book of natural history that is just loaded with facts. A kingfisher would then become more unscrupulous a diver than the ferocious buzzard painted on the canvas and hence the latter more beautiful, admirable, and grandly fulfilling, "Reality,” says the poet, "reveals itself in the emotional and imaginative background of our mind." We feel it and therefore we know it. This feeling itself is a feeling of pure delight, making even a tragic drama enjoyable. We see a thing because it belongs to itself and not to a class which we can only know; we see it, we feel it, it becomes vivid. In that sense it is the "emotional and imaginative background of our mind" which would give to the object its true soul of Reality. If we have to push the reasoning farther then we would enter, through the doors of aesthesis, the very domain of Maya itself that is a kind of conceptive creative power of imagination. That would make the imaginative world of an artist more real than the living multitude we witness around, in life. A sort of illusoriness is thus lent to the solidity of this entire objective universe- Is this true ? Does the
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Upanishadic two-bird metaphor imply that ?
The parable of the two birds illustrated in the Mundaka Upanishad is as follows:
"Two birds, beautiful of wings, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow. The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the one common tree; but because he is not lord he is bewildered and has sorrow. But when he sees that other who is the Lord and beloved, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him. When, a seer, he sees the Golden-hued, the maker, the Lord, the Spirit who is the source of Brahman, then he becomes the knower and shake from his wings sin and virtue; pure of all stain he reaches the supreme identity." In this translation Sri Aurobindo has also revealed the esoteric contents of the original verses. The Sanskrit compound brahmayoni admits two alternative meanings to be perfectly valid:
Brahman as the Womb or Source of the Spirit or else the Spirit as the Womb or Source from which comes Brahman. Sri Aurobindo, in contrast to Shankara, fixes the second alternative to be appropriate, the Spirit as the Source of everything, including Brahman. This makes the Purusha, the Lord, the Spirit, more fundamental; from it issues out this entire manifestation. Sri Aurobindo does not have to say then Brahman to be the source of inferior Brahman, rending it eventually illusory. It would also dismiss the Tagorean sense of Reality as revealed in our imaginative and emotional build-up. Although the Upanishad is finally leading us on the Path of Renunciation, Sanyas-Yoga, taking us to the City of Brahma, Brahma-Puri or Brahma-Dham or Brahma-Lok, the sense of all this magnificent universe, viśvam idam
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varistham, as Brahman immortal and naught else is emphatically asserted without any ambiguity; it is this Brahman which "stretches everywhere". It is in its effulgence that all is effulgent. It is in this effulgence that we should see the meaning of the two birds sharing a familiar fig-tree, with its luxurious foliage and sweet fruits.
The two-bird parable is in fact Vedic in its origin, the first Sloka actually belonging to Rig Veda itself (I: 164:20). The complete description as given there is:
"Two Birds with fair wings, knit with bonds of friendship, in the same sheltering tree have found a refuge. One of the twain eats the sweet Fig-tree's fruitage; the other eating not regardeth only. Where those fine Birds hymn ceaselessly their portion of life eternal, and the sacred synods, there is the Universe's mighty Keeper who, wise, hath entered into me the simple. The tree whereon the fine Birds eat the sweetness, where they all rest and procreate their offspring, upon its top they say the fig is luscious: none gaineth it who knoweth not the Father." Griffith adds the following footnotes to his translation: "Sayana says that the two Birds are the vital and the Supreme Spirit, dwelling in one body. The vital spirit enjoys the fruit or rewards of actions while the Supreme Spirit is merely a passive spectator. The fine Birds are perhaps the priests, and the Keeper of the Universe may be Soma. Sayana explains suparnā, well-winged, in this and the preceding stanza as smooth-gliding (rays). Their offspring is, he says, the light, and the Father is the cherishing and protecting Sun. All explanations of these three stanzas can only be conjectural. Ludwig is of opinion that they are originally unconnected fragments and that they have been inserted together in this hymn
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merely because the word suparnā (used apparently in various senses) has a prominent place in each stanza. Suparnā (dual) has been explained by different scholars as two species of souls; day and night; Sun and Moon; (plural) as rays of light; stars; metres; spirits of the dead; priests; and the tree on which they rest as the body; the orb or region of the Sun; the sacrificial post; the world; and the mythical World-Tree. A generally satisfactory explanation is scarcely to be hoped for." Surely it cannot be, when the method of approach towards the esoteric text is either ritualistic or else scholastic. This is particularly so when the "expression, though alien in type to our modern ways of thinking and speaking, becomes, in its own style, just and precise and sins rather by economy of phrase than by excess, by over-pregnancy rather by poverty of sense". The Age of Intuition, to which the Revelation belongs, has receded far behind the Age of Reason which has given rise to all this tentativeness, even misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the text, with "opinion" confusing "opinion" and causing an unprecedented havoc in several respects. Sayana's Ritualistic Method of treating the scripture is as partial as is the clumsy Method of Comparative Study followed by Western scholars. Talking of the two birds as stars and metres and priests is an absurdity of the latter kind. In that respect Rabindranath Tagore is certainly closer to the original when he identifies the relationship of the two birds with each other as that one of the infinite being and the finite self, though putting these two in man himself may not be quite justifiable. The style of a Vedic Rishi-Poet can be "deep and mystic" or can have "melodious lucidity" or be "puissant and energetic" or flow with "even harmonies" and unless it is fully grasped the verses cannot be truly cognised. In fact a Mystic's great poetry is the creative utterance itself, at once expressive and affirmative of the supreme Word, taking him as well as the earnest aspirant to the fountainhead of the Spirit. Poetry then becomes a divine surge of energy rushing upward and downward, and everywhere, in a splendid blaze of a thrilled vision assuming a shape defined by sight and lending itself to the music and chant of sound and seizing the wondrous soul of delight in
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the sheer ineffability of some truth-conscient miracle. It becomes Mantra which is "in its essence of Power the Eternal himself and in its supreme movements a part of his very form and everlasting spiritual body, brahmano rupam". Only one who is familiar with this brahmano rupam, with this divinity of the Word, can have access to the secret of the Vedic verses and can then alone try to bring it revealingly nearer to us. In fact a Vedic Rik boldly declares that one who has no knowledge of the Eternal cannot understand the Veda. Only a Rishi can disclose to us, rather to the Rishi, the dazzling marvel of two birds on the same tree, one eating the fruit and the other looking on, with the possibility of the sorrowing one realising supreme identity with the ever-free Golden-hued.
Amal Kiran's Two Birds belongs to the category of a profound and revelatory disclosure. More than an interpretation of the ancient Vedic-Upanishadic parable, it is a new and inspired recreation in a joyously vibrant form of what is seen by the eye behind the eye, a strange mystery literally caught on the tableau of the inner mind; it is an image winging to the wideness of a luminous vision, and a shape of sound taking the occult body of a rhythmically delightful voice, and a gleaming idea bordering on the real moulded in substance of some fiery ether. The colours are rich, the tunes enchantingly musical, phrasing rapturous and forceful, imagery bold and vivid, technique lending itself to the call of the Muse. It is one of the most lyrical moments of mystic poetry, powerfully evocative in shades and thoughts and contents, bringing the full subtlety of the parable to us:
A small bird crimson-hued
Among great realms of green
Fed on their multitudinous fruit —
But in his dark eye flamed more keen
A hunger as from joy to joy
He moved the poignance of his beak,
And ever in his heart he wailed,
"Where hangs the marvellous fruit I seek ?"
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Then suddenly above his head
A searching gaze of grief he turned:
Lo, there upon topmost bough
A pride of golden plumage burned!
Lost in a dream no hunger broke,
This calm bird - aureoled, immense -
Sat motionless: all fruit he found
Within his own magnificence.
The watchful ravenor below
Felt his time-tortured passion cease,
And flying upward knew himself
One with that bird of golden peace.
Here is the two-bird metaphor depicted not only imaginatively; it is a work done creatively with warmth of emotion and has in it rhythmic fluidity of suggestive sound. It is not a mere pretext, an occasion for the poet to let himself go in the rush of idea or thought or sound or crimson-hued poignance or golden-plumed magnificence. It is a symbol that comes alive with flaming impetuosity of the spirit, possessing its double poise in tortured time and in aureate peace. While it holds such a double poise, it also at once gathers itself and glows in the heart-fused oneness of the two. We do not have then just the imaged birds; instead we see a blazing symbol that is indeed their true most identity beyond the ways of transient joys and small hungering needs of the one for the other. It is the life-breath after the multitudinous fruit that seeks and finds fulfilment in plumaged grandeur of the super life's unstained gold, in its fine some marvel and magnificence. Seen hurriedly, the birds may at first seem merely to belong to the life-breath of tile spirit in its play of lower and higher mutuality; but perhaps they are more than that, the hunger and the ravening more spiritual than vital. If well-winged they are, and merge into each other in golden peace, they must then be the soul and the Over soul in the cosmic scheme of evolution. The bird as a metaphor is always either the soul or some aspect of it and the
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poetry of the Two Birds pretty well sustains it.
About this poetry Sri Aurobindo makes the following comment: "It is very felicitous in expression, and taking. The fourth stanza is from the Intuitive, the rest from the Higher Mind - for there a high uplifted thought is the characteristic but more probably from some realm of the inner Mind where thought and vision are involved in each other — that kind of fusion gives the easy felicity that is found here. All the same there is a touch of the Higher Mind perhaps in the second line of the second and the last stanza." More inner-mental than overhead is therefore the general character of the poem. Speaking about the several levels of mind coming into operation in poetry, Sri Aurobindo writes to Amal Kiran: "The intuitive mind, strictly speaking, stretches from the Intuition proper down to the intuitivised inner mind - it is therefore at once an overhead power and a mental intelligence power. All depends on the amount, intensity, quality of the intuition and how far it is mixed with mind or pure. The inner mind is not necessarily intuitive, though it can easily become so. The mystic mind is turned towards the occult and spiritual, but the inner mind can act without direct reference to the occult and spiritual, it can act in the same field and in the same material as the ordinary mind, only with a larger and deeper power, range and light and in greater unison with the Universal Mind; it can open also more easily to what is within and what is above. Intuitive intelligence, mystic mind, inner mind intelligence are all part of the inner mind operation." The lyrical tone of the Two Birds makes it less occult or spiritual and therefore the role of the mystic mind is correspondingly less here than that of the inner mind; at the same time, because the inner mind has lent itself to Intuition, we may say that there is a general overhead atmosphere throughout. This Intuition brings the triple Truth-dynamism of sight and sound and sense into poetry and makes poetry living and luminous with it, as we see in the fourth stanza which has been pointed out by Sri Aurobindo to be intuitive. It tells whatever it has to tell by a "sort of close intimacy with the Truth, an inward expression of it". The golden bird's aureoled immensity and magnificence seem to belong to the sheer Transcendent
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into which disappear all sorrowing passions and all wailing of the melancholy heart. There is then the "easy felicity" coming with a kind of naturalness, not of the psychic type but mystic-spiritual, when in a harmonious union mix and mingle inalienably sense and sound. The two birds are not a fancy's product; they do not exist far away somewhere, aloof and impersonally in an imagination's sky, but are as if an intimate part of our own secret being, in resonant association with us and with each other; they are we brought into the range of external sight. In this resonant association thought expands luminously in wideness of vision and vision acquires in a moment of intense thought firmness and ingathered coherence. The act of seeing then suddenly becomes the act of knowing, as much as it is the other way round too. The vigour of the Two Birds is sufficiently indicative of such a fusion, making it soully stirring and felicitous. A blazing symbol, when faithfully and at the same time creatively rendered, brings always unto us rapturous verities of its very dynamic and radiant life.
That there is tremendous zest and enthusiasm, āveśa, in Amal Kiran's poetry is well-illustrated again by the poem we are now considering. He is full of zeal always, - even surtout, beaucoup de zèle. A bright and flaming inner vitality at the disposal of the overhead is the thrusting dynamism ever present in his poetic compositions. This meticulous technician has also a knack of waiting for the authentic and giving us something that is soul-charged. A great creative surge caught in an artistic mould of inspired perfection very often comes to us with its happy load of luminous truth and beauty and joy.
If we have to adopt the Sufi terminology in describing Amal Kiran's poetry, then we may say that there is more of urug in it than nazul. When an object of nature offers itself as a symbol to the poet then we have the aspect of nazul in his creation, exhibiting a sort of feminine temperament, the jemal-element, on the other hand, when something from the very depths of the poet rushes out and seizes the object of nature then we witness an audacious symbol of the urug-kind with a masculine temperament in it, the jelal-element. A wholesome balance of the two in kemal is the Sufi's ideal of harmonious and artistic perfection.
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Amal Kiran's poetry is more vigorous than tender, stout than delicate, more colourful and even vivacious in a certain sense than subdued and frail, more provocative than decoratively suggestive; at the same time the shades are never gaudy and the tunes loud or harsh and the sense trivial and merely intellectual - there is always the grace of classical sturdiness and unflawed and mature intuition of proportion and measure. It is another sort of kemal, very desirable in its daring and in its joy of profound creativity. If for Shelley a skylark coming from nature provides an occasion to pour out unpremeditated melodies, his inmost and intense most feelings and thoughts, in the manner of the nazul-aspect, in the case of Amal Kiran the two birds emerging from the emerald deeps of the spirit suddenly take a visible shape and wing past our sight or else perch on a tree in their fiery grandeur and make clear to us that they really belong to the urug-aspect; whereas a nature-bird becomes airy and insubstantial in the romanticist's imagination, a symbol-bird acquires vibrant substantiality in the mystic's vision. What the skylark merely yearns for, it is that which as a "boon of the Spirit's sight" the symbol-bird brings from its native regions beyond time and space, inaccessible to us. We might as well say that the traditional romanticism is jemal-like, in quite good contrast to the dynamic lyricism of a spiritual symbolist possessing a strong jelal-character. In the robustness of this sense we could conclude, to adapt Tagore, that the stronger is the symbolism the less symbolic it is — because then it becomes real with the tangibility of a flaming rock and of a dense bright flame. In comparison, then, T.S. Eliot's criterion of "objective correlative" would also turn out to be somewhat pale and abstract, or else insipidly intellectual-algebraic. Spiritual Word, and spiritual Symbol, carries the Power and Personality it is.
Of this symbolic poetry let us take some examples from the Aurobindonian anthology to notice its inner-mental, overhead intellectual, occult, spiritual or else mystic facets in some brief manner possible in this context. If the present poem of Amal Kiran is essentially inner-mental symbolic with a certain degree of revelatory intensity of the overhead, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
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in the following piece, for instance, is enchanting and felicitously intellectual with an ease of the inner-mental logic handling spiritual substance:
Twilights have gathered in
And the stars come out like words:
Gradually begin
The after-musics of birds;
These after-musics are rife
With a deeper fuller note
Than the little music of life
Born out of harp or throat.
Yea, they are drowsy and deep
And scatter no more abroad:
For after music comes sleep
And sleep is the music of God.
Here we have the poet of the 1930s to whom we may extend Sri Aurobindo's assessment of his early promising youth: he is some "Vedic Marut with golden weapons, golden ornaments, car of gold, throwing in front of him continual lightnings of thought". There are great after-musics of birds and deeper and deeper as they grow they suddenly become the music of God, the twilights turn on, rather turn into, stars and stars into flaming suns of God in his consciousness of sleep that is Prajna. Surely, as usual, in this poem the symbols are very vivid and conceptually apt and significant, very pleasing and colourful in their soft shades; but they do not seem to be quite personal or deeply living in one's own breath, not intimate enough with some innermost reality of soul or spirit, but appear to be somewhat aloof and distant: The poet is as if explaining to us some thematic aspect of stars and birds and music rather than rendering his experience of oneness with what is symbolised; the symbols are external and not quite internal. In that respect Nishikanta moves with another vision through his symbols of the vital world and identifies himself more closely with them.
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If Harindranath was a Vedic Marut we could perhaps say that Nishikanta was the Vedic Varuna with a powerful breath of life blowing through his person. He hardly wrote any poetry in English - he always wrote in Bengali — but we may pick up his Green Darkness illustrative of the occult imagery through which he passes with utmost confidence and which he gives to us with a boldness characteristic of the nature of the bright vital gods:
The vast green darkness rolls and heaves
To the black-besmeared horizon's bound,
And with a mournful clamour cleaves
The silence of the worlds around.
It roars and rocks and breaks in vain
In a restless night of starless pain.
O ocean of bewildered force,
Surrendered pray to the firmament light
And learn to gain thy peaceful source
In motionless depths of might.
The rolling green darkness, that is life's fearsome force, has played havoc here and made the starless night monstrous and tormenting and agonyful. But this bewildered surge must surrender to light and learn to be one with the tranquil strength from which it indeed came. The images are exact and coherent, not only in contents but also in their vital colours, and achieve what they have set to achieve; they successfully push and drive on, by their knitted quality, even the frightening dread, — that it may gain its peace "in motionless depths of might" where the occult joins the overhead.
Not so thick-hued, nor blithesomely enchanting, is the poetry of Arjava (J.A. Chadwick) about whom Sri Aurobindo had said that he "writes poems of inner vision and feeling" and that his "mind is sufficiently subtle and plastic to enter into all kinds of poetic vision and expression". Regarding his The Mother of Time Sri Aurobindo had written to him in very glowing terms: "This is one of the finest things you have written - depth and ease and power combined in a perfect expression." Here is the poem of a crystalline quality, gem-like and serene:
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Out of the infinite ocean
Time arose;
By his shore with a thunderous motion
That Splendour flows.
Here is the one shell of Its bringing,
Cast on the beach;
Hold it and hark to the singing, —
Eternity speech.
Flotsam and jetsam of Onehood
Unbaffled and free, Spurring
Time to remember his sonhood,
His mother — the Sea.
It really requires exceptional spiritual daring to call Time a shell on the beach of the sea; but it is a shell also of an exceptional quality that in its singing is the song of Eternity, that even in a trivial speck of dust there is the shining divinity; in its apparent insignificance resides a whole wideness of ocean out of which it itself arose. It cannot then remain like unclaimed goods of a wrecked ship, like nonentities uncared for and lost as if in the jaws of the unrelenting Non-existence; for, it is an inseparable part of Something great and calm and ever-free. Nonetheless, Time needs to be reminded of this glorious heirship of his. A Latin verse tells us that Time changes and with Time we change. This mystic seer-poet has however another perception, of the dynamism of Eternity in the sequel and operation of Time. This he brings out in a most assuring manner in this little piece that is both masterly and revelatory. One could have been emotional about Time with all the pathos and bathos of the diurnal and the humdrum; one could have been philosophical and detached in a simple and straightforward narrative, or metaphorically violent, or symbolically wild and shocking and unexpected, or imaginatively weird or phantasmagoric. But Arjava has none of these, not that such elements are not existing in it in some subdued degree. But his is a luminous restraint and he is dhira, the steadfast, and
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in his calm collected poise, by becoming almost impersonal, lets the abundances of the spiritual Muse flow through him in their pristine splendours. The splendours of such a restraint are some-what absent in Amal Kiran's Two Birds.
To the thirty-three-year-old Amal Kiran Sri Aurobindo wrote:
"You have three manners: (1) a sort of decorative romantic manner that survives from your early days - this at a lower pitch turns to too much dressing of an ormamental kind, at a higher to post-Victorian Edwardian or Georgian rhetoric with a frequent saving touch of Yeats; (2) a level at which all is fused into a fine intuitive authenticity and beauty, there is seldom anything to change; (3) a higher level of grander movement and language in which you pull down or reach the influences of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind Intuition. The last you have not yet fully mastered so as to write with an absolute certainty and faultlessness except by lines and stanzas or else as a whole in rare moments of total inspiration, but you are moving towards mastery in it.” The Two Birds belongs to this period and has these merits and manners.
According to Shelley there is "an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities". Amal Kiran has graduated well himself by attending the classes conducted by Sri Aurobindo in his Department of Poetry. Not only did he come out with flying colours, but earned the Master's confidence to discuss matters of poetry and criticism in their several shades and intensities. Today there is none who can compete with him in the art of appreciating and discriminating the levels of overhead aesthesis towards which genuine poetry is steadily moving. It is said that Persian poets were poetry itself and we may apply the same to this Parsi poet; Zarathrushtra formed his religion by praising beauty in Nature and Amal Kiran as his descendent has taken liberty, under the wide and luminous wings of Sri Aurobindo, to go one step farther in praising the beauty of the spiritual Muse, and in the process do away with all religion. His poetry and his talks on poetry and his bringing out Sri Aurobindo the poet in our full view are some of his outstanding contributions in the
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field. With that rich super-Shelleyan education he had, Amal Kiran can never be called a stickler in any respect. Yet if we have to attach a standard party-label to his poetry, then it can never be 'classical', 'romantic', 'surrealist', 'symbolist', 'imagist', nor 'modernist'; his poetry is essentially lyric-overhead. His symbols bear stamp of those regions; the music of his words comes from the rhythm-house of the spirit; his perception of spiritual ideas is veridicous; he sees at times the colours of the occult in their vividness. As his heart is true to this enchanting beloved, so too his art flawless and impeccable and supple enough to accommodate the varying demands of her moods. But can we say that he lives in those realms of gold as their natural citizen. His consciousness stationed there and breathing their sun bright truenesses ? Are the two birds of this poem his close companions feasting with him at the breakfast-table or only occasional visitors to the garden of the inner being or soul ? are they his intimate friends or only acquaintances ? Is Two Birds a poetic firework, atishi, or else a lived experience in the fiery splendour of its twofold splendid-most reality ?
Tagore had carried his aestheticism to such an extent of personalisation that for him even the spiritual values started becoming man-centered: "We can make truth ours by actively modulating its interrelations. This is the work of art; for reality is not based in the substance of things but in the principle of relationship. Truth is the infinite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite pursued by science, while reality is the definition of the infinite which relates truth to the person. Reality is human; it is what we are conscious of, by which we are affected, that which we express." That would make the two birds of Amal Kiran a product of his humanness which is certainly in contradiction with the spiritual experience, of their being independent of the observer or perceiver. They are pre-existent and are an aspect of the Infinite and with them we can come in contact in several ways. This living truth of their existence, of their presence independent of us, too could be expressed in varying manners reflecting our intimacy of association with them. In that process even the thrill and ardour of expression could lead us to the
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Upanishadic or Vedic statement. But that would hardly be an assurance of our having realised what is stated or expressed. The subject-matter could easily be scriptural and yet the realisations embodied by the scripture may not be the poet's — as, for instance, Emerson's Brahma:
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
It is very true, but it does not make a Rishi's realised utterance as Mantra. Similarly, Wordsworth's first version of The Prelude had the following passage:
I felt the sentiment of Being spread
O'er all that moves, and all that seemed still,
. ... Wonder not
If such my transports were; for in all things now
I saw one life and felt that it was joy.
The experience of oneness of life is Upanishadic; but the fact that the passage did not appear in subsequent editions of The Prelude only indicates that it was not his all-time living realisation. Sri Aurobindo speaks of Wordsworth's experience in another context that "he had not only the vision of this and the joy and peace and universality which its [Nature's] presence brings, but the very sense of it, mental, aesthetic, vital, physical; not only this sense and vision of it in its own being but in the nearest flower and the simplest man and the immobile rock; and, finally, that he even occasionally attained to that unity'". But still that does not constitute spiritual or Yogic knowledge. It is certainly possible to become en rapport with the spirit of things represented by the symbols and yet these things may remain unknown in their contents of reality.
In that respect Amal Kiran's Two Birds is a double telescope to watch those winged marvels, the inner-mental for the crimson-
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hued and the intuitive for the golden-magnificent. It is not a mere mind's eye that sees them but some visioning faculty of inner and profounder consciousness that perceives them and brings them into view, some Upanishadic eye behind the eye zooming around them and seizing them into our focus. This certainly is then a positive advance over Wordsworth and Emerson, giving a very recognisable shape and character to the ethereally real. Sri Aurobindo himself had taken up the example of the two birds to illustrate the luminous definiteness of symbols in mystic-spiritual poetry: "The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow - that has an illumining spiritual quality and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing." Surely the Two Birds has a certain degree of spiritual solidity, but the question is whether it is fully Vedic-Upanishadic.
Perhaps it is not sufficiently Vedic-Upanishadic; for, that kind of poetry has always an unmistakable character of Overmind inspiration. Its features are "a language that conveys infinitely more than the surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the things uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater". This is what Sri Aurobindo had written to the twenty-seven-year-old Amal Kiran. The fundamental and original consciousness behind a Vedic verse is always one of the Infinite and a Vedic mind is deeply submerged in its radiant yet calm flood and a Vedic heart ever waits in a kind of goldenness of hush for the supreme Word to take shape of sun-luminous and, at the same time, wide-winging delight. We cannot say that these elements in their surest sense are present in Amal Kiran's Two Birds. Poetry of the original Sanskrit is very sublime and profound and very gripping and at once holds us firmly in its
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powerful life-breath; its "voice carries the sound of infinity". The moment we utter the first phrase "dvā suparnā, two birds beautiful of wings", we are transported to their many-splendoured world and they immediately become our companions too. What we would analyse as poetry and art and philosophy drops out suddenly and what we would see in the glow and grandeur of its expression is a miracle of speaking silence and the dynamism of an unfathomable peace. We meet in it the Rishi. Amal Kiran may not exactly be a Rishi in the classical sense; but he is certainly the crimson-hued ravener of his poem flying upward to become one with that magnificence of the golden-plumaged. Where his Master is there he gets the reward of all his straining and striving, there is for him the sweet fruit of the eternal Fig-Tree. The one who belongs to Narakoti approaches confidently the one who is of the Iśwarakoti, the soul of Man in its quest of delight the soul of the Divine. The Two Birds unmistakably demonstrates that the path chosen by Amal Kiran is aesthetic-spiritual rather than that of an austere tapasvin of the bygone days and that it has taken him to the courtyard of the Beautiful who is also the Truthful and the Joyous. That is a great success indeed in the direction of the future poetry as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo.
R.Y. DESHPANDE
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I LOVE and admire Amal Kiran, not only for himself, bur for the entire context of space, time and atmosphere which engendered so variegated a flower. And for the fact that I personally came to know this phenomenon and to partake of some at least of its hues and scents. I deliberately use the plural in this regard, simply because this particular bloom is so multi-hued and multi-scented that one does not know where to begin,
In any case, I am not qualified to speak about the multifarious achievements of a man who can only be described as a polymath. I forget the details, but I recall that even the Mother once had occasion to speak to Sri Aurobindo about her discovery that Amal was so amazingly knowledgeable. Pose a riddle, and he will produce exactly the right rabbit from an inexhaustible hat. He had even remembered, it seems, the title of some western opera, which Mother had forgotten.1
In the circumstances, my contribution on Amal will be entirely personal in orientation. Scholars to come will no doubt qualify for their doctorates in philosophy by researching into the many-sided achievements of this extraordinary life.
To talk about a poet-child of Sri Aurobindo, one needs to begin with the Master himself. So no apologies arc offered for dwelling a little more on the spiritual spark-plug of Amal's creative might than on Amal himself, indubitably, Sri Aurobindo was at once the first prophet and practitioner of the WORD of a new divine dawn of consciousness on our planet. He had seen, like the Vedic rishis, that all our dawns had always been early prefigurements of wider and more brilliant dawns to come.
Following the evening of the great reptiles came the dawn of our feathered cousins, just as the evening of the great apes was followed by the dawn of Homo Sapiens. In his prescience Sri Aurobindo also knew that we already live in the fast-fading
1. "I believe it was Wagner's parsifal”, informs Amal (Editors).
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evening twilight of our own species. Which was certainly why he had placed that premonitory text from the Rig Veda at the very head of the first chapter of his magnum opus, The Life Divine:
She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of me dawns that are coming, - Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead....What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come.
Kutsa Angirasa-Rig Veda
Nothing like Savitri has ever been attempted by anyone else before. For it is the only poem of its kind in world literature, past or present, giving as it does altogether unprecedented expression to the greatest story that can ever to told under the stars - the adventure of consciousness on our planet, and its culmination when
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.
Other tales about gods, demons and men have about them a statuesque luminosity, a sense of completion. They may be likened to movie epics, rewound after screening and neatly stored in film libraries for repeated re-screenings. But Savitri is the tale of an unfinished epic, the chapters of which are even now unfolding in all our tumultuous, somnambulist lives and deaths. Like Draupadi's endlessly unfurling sari, it is an ever-unrolling tale, which does not come to a finis at any point, at least not for the likes of us, unless we come to possess what the Upanishadic seers had spoken of as trikāla drsti - the simultaneous vision of the three times. That would involve a transcendence of Time, which few mortals, as we are at present constituted, are capable of.
Some of us, in particular inspired poets, musicians and artists
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do manage, on rare occasions, to achieve the quark-like evanescence of a timeless epiphany. It may have been after such a leap of vital intuition, which we find so liberally scattered in the works of Shakespeare, that caused him to make the dying Hotspur say (I Henry IV; V.iv):
But thought's the slave of life, and life tune's fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop....
One has the sense of a similar intuition at work, when one looks at some paintings by Huta inspired by the Mother, or listens to Sunil's music. There are other instances too numerous to mention here.
In the very nature of things, an epic like Savitri cannot merely be the product of a lively literary imagination fantasying reality. For it is Reality itself, and to truly appreciate an ever unfolding Reality one has to actually experience it - live it in spirit, mind, heart and body. Yes, right down to the body. For it is an awesomely true story, which men and nations are even now living through, at all levels of consciousness. And there are levels...and levels...and levels - both above and below - all kinds of else- wheres.
We recall Sri Aurobindo. "No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy: I wish it were so", he had written to a disciple. "It is in the Abyss that I have to plunge to build a bridge between the two. But that too is necessary for my work and one has to face it." For the first time in history, the richest spirit of all ages attempted a poetic utterance of his highest realizations and experiences, in all their heights, breadths and depths - something altogether new in world literature.
We need to mark here a crucial distinction between, on the one hand, the mass of beautiful poetry in all languages which is our precious heritage from the richest vital, mental and intuitive expressions of mankind in the past, and, on the other, the poetry of direct spiritual experience — at once a veridical descent from several levels of the heights - and a bone-chilling upsurge from
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the depths. We recall Sri Aurobindo's Pilgrim of the Night:
I made an assignation with the Night;
In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:
In my breast carrying God's deathless light
I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo.
I left the glory of the illumined Mind
And the calm rapture of the divinised soul
And travelled through a vastness dim and blind
To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll.
I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no voice of the celestial Friend,
And yet I know my footprints' track shall be
A pathway towards Immortality.
There are cantos in Savitri which make one cringe in sheer horror of what we house within ourselves. As a traveller of the worlds, and without pulling any punches, Sri Aurobindo tells us:
Here must the traveller of the upward Way -
For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route-
Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,
A prayer upon his lips and the great Name.
A terrifying journey otherwise - without that prayer and the great Name. For Sri Aurobindo journeyed
In menacing tracts, in tortured solitudes
Companionless he roamed through desolate ways
Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream
And Death's black eagles scream to the precipice,
And met the hounds of bale who hunt men's hearts
Baying across the veldts of Destiny,
In footless battlefields of the Abyss
Fought shadowy combats in mute eyeless depths,
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Assaults of Hell endured and Titan strokes
And bore the fierce inner wounds that are slow to heal.
A prisoner of a hooded magic Force,
Captured and trailed in Falsehood's lethal net
And often strangled in the noose of grief,
Or cast in the grim morass of swallowing doubt,
Or shut into pits of error and despair,
He drank her poison draughts till none was left.
Shades of Shiva himself here. And, who knows, perhaps much more. For does not Savitri contain the following lines ?
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,
The forge where the Arch-mason shapes his works.
Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.
What did Sri Aurobindo and the Mother not endure for our sakes? Armoured in soul-strength, they were the first to hew a path through trackless virgin jungle. Their hallowed tracks remain for us to walk on. The only requirement is to first find the truth of our own beings - our psychic beings - and thereby tread the sunlit path. If we attempted our own unaided pilgrimages into the Night, we are more than likely to be reduced to imbecilic terror; to raving, ranting lunatics.
It should come as no surprise that the world at large has failed to appreciate the kind of poetry written by Sri Aurobindo. Mother knew why. She once remarked: Three quarters of humanity is obsolete. And those who are already obsolete or on their way to obsolescence cannot reasonably be expected to resonate to supernal sound values and significances. Similarly, one can imagine the once largely simian world being totally indifferent to the first few human voices of wonder and awe as they looked up at the star-spangled wonder of a cloudless moonless night-sky. Perfectly understandable! After all, here were merely a few aberrant apes uttering sounds abnormal to the 'cultivated'
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gibberish of simian culture. Pshaw! (in gibberish, of course).
Be that as it may, this does not pretend to be an essay to expatiate on what I have called the crucial distinction. For that, probably the most authoritative living source is K.D. Sethna himself, whose 90th birthday this festschrift volume commemorates.
Sri Aurobindo knew perfectly well what he was doing when he named K.D. Sethna Amal Kiran - The Clear Ray. For among those who responded to the rhythmic footfalls of Divinity, Amal is surely the greatest, if one goes by the collection of his poetry so aptly titled: The Secret Splendour.
Of course, even among Mother's fourth of humanity which may not be obsolescent, not everybody needs to accept the new poetic inflatus as a means of spiritual sadhana. The Integral Yoga is not a monopoly of those with a taste for poetry, although that and much more might be added along the way. No justification, therefore, for superiority or inferiority complexes in this regard in any quarter.
Speaking for myself, I am neither a poet nor a literary critic. But I love poetry. As for literary critics, I seldom allow them to play any part in determining my own tastes in the matter. Personally, I find that I am better off without their opinions. Opinions are worthless, as Mother said. It is experience, and experience alone, which is the touchstone of all truths - not opinions - whether mine, yours or anybody else's. We might usefully recall Virginia Woolf’s words about the opinions of literary critics: "Hot as java, discoloured as dishwater."
The test I apply is simple. If I respond with a shock of inner recognition to a mood, perception or experience expressed in a poem, then it registers in my being. If it doesn't, it's not necessarily because the poem is a poor one. On the contrary, it may well be a poverty of reception on my own part.
I know of instances of whole passages in Savitri which were obscure to me when 1 first read them a few decades ago. .A subsequent reading of the same passages much later had a stunning result: a sudden inner recognition accompanied, as it were, by an amused, inaudible voice (murdhanya in Sanskrit
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meaning head sounds) which seemed to ask: "Now do you understand?"
The explanation cannot be that Savitri had grown in stature and significance during the intervening years, but that something in my inner being had undergone an unsuspected metamorphosis in the interval. Thence followed the lightning-flash of recognition. "Only like can recognize like", as the Mother said somewhere. Perhaps, for all we know, what we finally come to recognize had all along been awaiting its hour and occasion to suddenly emerge in luminous streamers, like the aurora borealis in northern latitudes.
With his innate poetic genius, his phenomenal memory of everything he reads, and an extraordinary sensitiveness to ever-so-subtle nuances of shade and significance, Amal proved to be an uncommonly clear conduit for the Truth-burdened word and phrase. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo's comments on several of his poems, as on those of Nirodbaran, Dilip and others constitute, in themselves, a practical education with regard to the shape and thrust of the Future Poetry.
I will quote just two of Amal's poems which appealed to me powerfully. The first, This Errant Life, is the yearning of every Bhakta. We recall the great Sri Ramakrishna saying: "I don't want to be sugar, I want to eat sugar." We stand on human feet, and it is as humans that we seek to know the Divine. Not merely to know Him, but if possible to see Him, touch Him, kiss and embrace Him. All India's vaunted spirituality would amount to little or nothing if not for the divine cowherd with his entrancing flute, who had once inundated the groves of Brindavan in, to use a line from Savitri, "A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire". Yamuna's flowing blue waters themselves had seemed to merge in an immense ocean of incredible rapture.
Sri Aurobindo more than once gave expression to this fundamental need of the human being. The author of The Life Divine, which even erudite scholars find a work of forbidding immensity and scope, wrote a surpassingly moving sonnet tided simply — Krishna:
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At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond Heaven to Krishna's feet-
1 have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,
And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,
And known a deathless ecstasy's surprise
And sorrow in my heart for ever mute.
Nearer and nearer now the music draws,
Life shudders with a strange felicity;
All Nature is a wide enamoured pause
Hoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.
For this one moment lived the ages past;
The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last.
It is not knowledge which fulfills all. It is Love which is the fulfilment of knowledge, and of all else besides.
The disciple recalls the Master. If not, what need of disciples and Masters; The prolific polymath who Amal Kiran is, discoursing learnedly on the principles of modern physics; probing into India's historical past; is at once also a searching literary critic, a formidable debater on a variety of subjects, a devastating critic of literary or metaphysical poseurs and know-alls; and a Bhakta who yearns for the Divine Beloved. Who else but a Bhakta could have written This Errant Life ?:
This errant life is dear although it dies;
And human lips are sweet though they but sing
Of stars estranged from us; and youth's emprise
Is wondrous yet, although an unsure thing.
Sky-lucent Bliss untouched by earthiness!
I fear to soar lest tender bonds decrease.
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If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow
Its mortal longings, lean down from above,
Temper the unborn light no thought can trace,
Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow.
For 'tis with mouth of clay I supplicate:
Speak to me heart to heart words intimate,
If Radha saw divine Love moulded in Krishna's face, why not Amal Kiran who saw it moulded in Sri Aurobindo's ? Anyway, here is Sri Aurobindo's own comment on the poem:
"A very beautiful poem, one of the very best you have written. The last six lines, one may say even the last eight, are absolutely perfect. If you could always write like that, yon would take your place among English poets and no low place either. I consider they can rank - these eight lines - with the very best in English poetry."
No mean praise, coming from so high a source!
One more of Amal's poems, this time on Sri Aurobindo, titled The Master:
Bard rhyming earth to paradise,
Time-conqueror with prophet eyes,
Body of upright flawless fire,
Star-strewing hands that never tire —
In Him at last earth-gropings reach
Omniscient: calm, omnipotent speech,
Love omnipresent without ache!
Does still a stone that cannot wake
Keep hurling through your mortal mind
Its challenge at the epiphany ?
If you would see this blindness break,
Follow the heart's humility -
Question not with your shallow gaze
The Infinite focussed in that face,
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But, when the unshadowed limbs go by,
Touch with your brow the white footfall:
A rhythm profound shall silence all!
When I first read this poem, a profound gratitude welled up in my deepest heart. I, who had greatly regretted not having had Sri Aurobindo's personal darshan, felt that regret almost disappear. It was as if Amal's lines gave me the much-coveted darshan of the Lord, and I was reduced to a trembling bundle of ecstasy. Thank you, dear Amal, thank you!
We can hail Amal the polymath, Amal the poet, or Amal the humorist. But all too often forgotten, so it seems to me, is Amal the Bhakta. For he is a true disciple of the multi-faceted Master whose Synthesis of Yoga includes a stupendous chapter on The Mystery of Love, and who ended His poem Ahana, with ten lines which sends one (at least this one!) reeling in intoxication:
Thou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me lured and forsaken:
I have a snare for his footsteps, I have a chain for him taken. Come then to Brindavan, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master.
Follow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting;
Trample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.
Then shalt thou know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
Hear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to his finger,
Brindavan's rustle shalt understand and Yamuna's laughter, Take thy place in the Ras and thy share of the ecstasy after.
No piece on Amal would be complete without reference to his wit and humour. For if he was formidably cerebral in his prose writings, deeply intuitive in his poetry, in his humour he went unabashedly for the belly, as I came to know personally.
How gently, how wittily, how vividly he had once suggested a
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correction to an atrocious verbal slip on my part in an article I had sent him for Mother India. I had referred to "persons turning their noses down" on things they deemed beneath them. Amal's corrective response caused me to laugh till my belly ached. He wrote: "As far as I know, elephants are the only animals which can turn their noses up and down and sideways." And with what joy I made the necessary correction!
Finally, I will acknowledge what Amal himself might not know. It was largely thanks to his sympathy, and his enlightening words of encouragement, that I was able to recover from what at the time had seemed to me a personal calamity. It turned out to be a vast liberation instead.
One more thing I need very much to say to Amal in this commemorative volume: "Carry on, dear Amal, in our midst. You have given so much, as only you can. You can give more. I would like to be around to contribute to the festschrift volume to observe your hundredth birthday as well. I will only be a more stripling of eighty-one then."
C.V. DEVAK NAIR
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"Kekoo Uncle"
"WHEN we go to Pondicherry we must meet Kekoo Uncle," I told my husband who had heard about him only through me, as my distant relative whom I myself had last seen about thirty years back in Bombay, when I was about ten years old.
As we were getting down from the rickshaw in Pondicherry, I once again reminded my husband and myself that we had to meet Kekoo Uncle. Lo and behold! There he was, just coming down from his own rickshaw. This was in 1969, I leapt down from the rickshaw, shouting, "Kekoo Uncle! Kekoo Uncle!" 'The same old face, the same old face," he said, as he recollected the face of a ten year old girl! So, he could at once recollect the face, only the placing of the relations had to be fixed. I had only to give my father's name and that was enough, his memory could set it all correct. My grandfather and his grandfather were first cousins. I felt so close to him, even though I had met him after so long, that I felt as though I had met my father again,
I used to write to him from Bombay and receive back his much cherished letters in reply. My husband, and my three sons too, are all extremely fond of him - but then, who is not ? I have yet not come across one person having a single word for him which is not of reverence, praise or affection.
About his learning and intellect we need no credentials. Poetry, prose, history, geography, logic, humour and spirituality all get treated safely and beautifully under his delicate-looking fingers; as do the PhD theses sent to him by universities for evaluation. The spiritual values, the sincerity, the peace the Mother speaks of, are all practised by him. When one apologizes for disturbing him by taking a lot of his time, he says: "How can you disturb me ? I am no yogi if I get disturbed!"
After his last fall he remained in bed for five months — two months with one leg stretched up in traction when he could not
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move at all to either side. His attitude then was an eye-opener to people who grumble and complain about illness. He had not one single word of complaint or discomfort. He-said later, "time just stopped" for him and he never felt that he had stayed in that most uncomfortable position for so much time. His face was literally glowing and had a constant smile on it. There was some humorous titbit ever ready for you. You never felt you were meeting a person who really was in such terrible physical discomfort. The doctors were leaving it to him to decide what they should do to his broken thigh! Once I had the good fortune of sitting next to him in the Nursing Home when he happened to be asleep. Such lovely, soothing, divinely beautiful vibrations were coming from him! I just sat and meditated.
Kekoo Uncle makes no show, of course, of anything, not even his colossal intellect, though that can be seen from his works and his articles, but least of all does he show how spiritually advanced he is. That can only be experienced by those who are close to him even though living thousands of miles away. I feel in gratitude bound to mention at least one incident.
I had tremendous pain in the ribs due to a fall in December 1993. It was a fractured-rib pain. Apart from it being excruciating, a rib-fracture pain lasts and lasts for months even when the severity lessens. I had already once before experienced such pain after a car-accident in the U.S. in 1990; and so I knew about it only too well!
This time I wrote to my dear Kekoo Uncle. I jokingly told him that since our ancestors were related, maybe somewhere there was some genetic similarity - and that I could not claim it in scholarship, just only claim it in falling (as he too has had various falls in his life because of one leg having been affected by polio during early boyhood). At this he wrote a humorous letter, asking me not to follow the uncle who keeps falling, for then he would be more a "carbuncle" than an uncle! However, he wrote to me that he would pray to the Mother for the removal of the pain. That same day when he went to the Samadhi he concentrated and made "an intense inner gesture of offering it to the Mother for its removal". After my writing the letter to him and
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before getting his reply, here in Bombay, one day, all of a sudden, I felt as if an arrow which had been constantly piercing me in the chest was removed with a soothing balm put in its place. Poof it went - no pain at all! I kept wondering how... till all was cleared when I received Kekoo Uncle's reply to my letter - his prayer to the Mother had done it - never ever to return, no, not even that less severe pain, not at all! The pain of the 1990 accident still erupts some times!
DHAN PAuanwALA
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With Birthday Greetings
WHEN I first visited the Ashram in 1959, I stayed in a small hostel looked after by Ganapatram. It was on the corner of a street, and on the opposite corner stood a house screened by palms and pale green banana trees. At times there would come, from behind these trees, a vibrant voice raised in recitation. This was the voice of K.D. Sethna reading Paradise Lost or Savitri. Every morning a boy with a neat single-seater rickshaw would transport him to Balcony Darshan. Sometimes he would pass me as I went that way on foot, and sometimes he would tell his boy to slow down, and he would talk to me about poetry as we went along together. My first memory of him, however, is of a passionate unseen voice declaiming great poetry from behind the banana trees.
At that time, Amal Kiran, as Sri Aurobindo named him, — it means ‘The Clear Ray' - was lecturing on Poetry at the Ashram School, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. The substance of his talks was appearing in the monthly Ashram magazine Mother India of which he was, and is, the editor. As an Englishman, I was at once struck by his detailed familiarity not only with English poetry - especially that of Shakespeare, Milton and the Romantics - but also with that of Europe. And he appeared familiar not only with the literature but with the best of Western criticism, too.
As was Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sethna has been encouraged and inspired by the example of Sri Aurobindo's exceptional and truly catholic range of interests. He has been able to develop the wide-ranging intellect and sympathy one may expect from a follower of the Integral Yoga. Thus, among other things, he has written on Shakespeare, Blake, Mallarme, on Indian history and philology, on the philosophy of the new physics, on Teilhard de Chardin and on Christian theology - and most abundantly and helpfully on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, for whose yoga, as editor and
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contributor to Mother India for over 45 years, he has been a major interpreter and apologist.
Personally, I am most grateful to him, as an editor, for publishing poems of mine, and also an article on Sri Aurobindo and the Kingdom of God. To this he later added an illuminating postscript on the meaning of the text from St. Luke's Gospel that is variously translated as ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ or ‘The Kingdom of God is among you’ — the one having mystical and the other purely social overtones. Anyone interested in his solution to the question may find it in the issue of Mother India for September, 1971.
It must not be forgotten that Sethna is a poet. In 1993 his Collected Poems, The Secret Splendour appeared. Especially memorable out of its 750 pages are the surrealist poems published earlier as The Adventure of the Apocalypse and the poems written after the death of his wife, Sehra.
One poem, A Prayer for Ignorance, asks that the Lord will "Drown in huge sleep the ever-dancing hum of knowledge". Then might the Light of the ineffable Truth beyond truths "suddenly find room". Behind all Amal's writing there is perceptible a sense of the far horizon towards which he is moving, and an ingredient of lightness and humour that leavens his multifarious learning, and keeps it from dryness and irrelevance. I remember the title of a book he once published with Nirodbaran: Light and Laughter: Some Talks from Pondicherry. He has, too, a wicked gift for punning.
The Sethna's are a Parsi family, living in Bombay. In another poem, The Parsi, Amal asks, "What country shall I take as mine ?" Not Iran, nor can "Europe's large earth-richness" nor "India's infinite Unknown" totally claims him, but "My country's a future where all dream-lights merge".
It is this pilgrim aspiration that is evident in his book. The Spirituality of the Future. Here, he explicates with sustained thoroughness the thought and vision of Teilhard de Chardin and contrasts them with those of Sri Aurobindo. Familiar with the Jesuit set of mind, since his education at St. Xavier's School and College in Bombay, Amal disentagles Teilhard's real beliefs from
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the gloss put on them by his orthodox colleagues in the order. He shows how Teilhard's loyalty to his church made him formulate his insights ambiguously, and look for support from traditional texts and teachers of the past, whereas, in fact, he was speaking from a present world-view of science and evolution in an hour which was new and unprecedented.
Amal finds Sri Aurobindo also relating to the past - to the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and the Tantra - but, in his case, to corroborate and enrich the profession of his own understanding. Teilhard appears "mentally head and shoulders above every one of his Christian commentators" but is, nevertheless, forced into a procrustean bed of past formulations. Sri Aurobindo, going beyond earlier scripture, and speaking with the magisterial authority of his own experience of Supermind, can open a path to the future without a backward-pulling look.
Another area of Sethna's work may be mentioned: The anonymous help given to the editing of Sri Aurobindo's works for publication. I do not know the full extent of his involvement in the preparation of the Birth Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo, but it must have been considerable.
It is surely good to appreciate people before they leave us, and I trust that Amal will be with us for many years yet. Meanwhile I hope funds will be found, as he said 17 years ago, in a letter to. me, "enough to launch a part of my fleet of unpublished books". "But," he added, "they have to come soon because I have not yet stumbled (which is the right word for me) on the elixir vitae." .Since then a good number of his works have appeared, but there are still many more to which we can look forward. May they come soon, and may Amal find that elixir of life.
DICK BATSTONE
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THE friend who impressed me so deeply in the early years of my Ashram life was K.D. Sethna who has since become famous both as a poet and a priest of high - or shall I say, spiritual - journalism. I can clearly recapture with my mind's eye his delicate sensitive face which first attracted me with its fine crop of Christ-like whiskers which he discarded subsequently, to the universal regret of his friends and admirers. For we did admire it without pressing the 'resemblance' any further. And let me add, with a sigh, that those who have never seen him with his whiskers will never be able to appreciate our sigh over its merciless eradication. And then his eyes: how they radiated a keen though not unkind glint of intelligence. For he was nothing if not sympathetic and enthusiastic. Fortunately, he knew where to draw the line when expressing his sympathy in favour of this or that person.
Which brings me to his alert common sense. I have been told that Sri Aurobindo once said, in joke, that the Divine wanted the aspirants to surrender many things which they guarded jealously but one thing they did surrender with alacrity which was not exacted: common sense. Sethna was not one of these. For his common sense was never an absentee in his talks and adjudications which seemed remarkable to me as he talked and passed verdicts readily enough. I remember once (years later, when he had matured further) how he debated with Krishnaprem in myliving-room. How I envied his dialectical intelligence! And Krishnaprem not only admired his mental robustness in a frail physique but enjoyed to me full breaking a lance with him. But he had to go all out to hold his own against Sethna, which is saying much. Yes, Sethna was nothing if not perspicacious and wide-awake on top of being sensible. It was refreshing to talk with him and stimulating to differ from him, since even when one differed from his point of view one did feel that one was
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made to look at things from a new angle as it were. In a word, his talks were always suggestive. But to come now to something more important....
Those who are not born with an exceptional intelligence are somewhat fortunate as they have no axe to grind in favour of the status quo established and jealously guarded by the intellect. But those who have once tasted of intellectual joys find it not a little hard to relinquish what they have grown to love. That is why I admired Sethna more than I admired many another who claimed being advanced sadhakas, to the deep chagrin of Sri Aurobindo. For when somebody once claimed that he was an advanced sadhaka and men like Sethna were mere poets he wrote: "Why X's claim to be an advanced sadhaka and what is the sense of it ? It resolves itself into an egoistic assertion of superiority over others which is not justified so long as there is egoism and the need of assertion, accompanied as it always is by a weakness and a turbid imperfection which belie the claim of having a superior consciousness to the inadvanced sadhaka. It is time these crudities disappeared from the Ashram atmosphere."
This is not irrelevant. For Sethna impressed me the more because he not only never made such a claim to having reached "a superior consciousness" but also he had the uncommon wisdom of common sense to see that one should accept what the Guru said even if it seemed - as it often enough must, intellectual egoism being what it is - unacceptable to one's mental pre-conceptions. That is why he often helped me by bowing to Sri Aurobindo's verdicts even though he too, like me, wanted first to understand with the mind as far as one could achieve it.
Luckily for him, he had an advantage over many another who came to the Ashram with deep religious samskaras (formulations) and could thus pour his heart's worship, unstintedly, at the altar of the Master. This I say with full knowledge of its implications. For I myself dared not compare Sri Aurobindo with some of his predecessors whom I need not name. But Sethna could - and with an honest conviction. It was this honesty married to an intelligence which drew me to him more and more for I have been sometimes roused to oppose some sadhakas who talked with
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disrespect about past prophets and seers. I myself did not feel any call to compare, because I could not at the time feel quite the same degree of enthusiasm about Sri Aurobindo as Sethna did. Here I have to admit that he scored over me in his gurubhakti. But what I found personally rather charming of him was that he never flaunted the initial advantage he had in coming to Sri Aurobindo with a clean heart-tablet on which no other holy figure had been etched. This was assuredly one of the reasons why he received so much from Gurudev, especially in insight into mystic poetry. I do not know personally of any living critic who has read Sri Aurobindo's poetry so thoroughly and acquired such a deep grasp of both its poetical beauty and technical mastery, insomuch that he may easily be adjudged a specialist in these two capacities. (I say 'living critic' because Chadwick has, alas, departed this life - about whose outstanding poetical gift and sadhana I will have a good deal to say presently.)
Naturally I liked Sethna also because he was, like Chadwick and myself, a poet who continued all along to be a recipient of Sri Aurobindo's letters on poetry. I was fond of his poems too but as my knowledge of English verse was rather poor at the time, I could not sufficiently appreciate his technique. Still I loved some of his poems even in those days - nearly twenty years ago - and translated them, which knit us together into a closer bond. One such poem which was singled out for special praise by Gurudev was entitled This Errant Life which I must quote in full if only to bring out the side of aspiration to his nature:
Temper the unborn tight no thought can trace,
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And ail Thy formless glory turn to love
And mould Thy love into a human face!
When I sent Gurudev my Bengali translation he wrote, commenting:
"Amal's lines are not easily translatable, least of all into Bengali. There is in them a union or rather fusion of high severity of speech with exaltation and both with a pervading incense sweet-ness which it is almost impossible to transfer bodily without loss into another language. There is no word in excess, none that could have been added or changed without spoiling the expression, every word just the right revelatory one - no colour, no ornamentation, but a sort of suppressed burning glow, no similes, but images which have been fused inseparably into the substance of the thought and feeling - the thought perfectly developed, not idea added to idea at the will of the fancy, but perfectly interrelated and linked together like the limbs of an organic body. It is high poetic style in its full perfection and nothing of all that is transferable. You have taken his last line and put in a lotus-face and made divine love bloom in it, - a pretty image, but how far from the glowing impassioned severity of phrase: 'And mould thy love into a human face!'"
I shall pass by me constant and ready help plus encouragement which Sethna has given me all along in my poetic aspirations in English as that will be going beyond me immediate and urgent aim of this humble homage to one under whose aegis we in our little colony endeavoured to follow, as best we could, the ideal that has drawn us together. I will refrain, for the same reason, from enumerating his other rare qualities such as his sheer love of poetry or innate generosity which prompted him to praise many a budding Ashram poet. But I might as well write here of my fruitful contact with the great poet A.E. for which Sethna was
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partly responsible. It happened like this.
Sethna, and later Chadwick, used to give me valuable subsidiary advice about English prosody and verse-making which I was learning under the direct guidance of Sri Aurobindo. I will have more to write in a subsequent chapter on our Master's corrections and counsels and so will confine myself here to Sethna who became the leader of our little cenacle almost as naturally as a courageous man becomes the leader of a party oftimid pilgrims. One day without telling him, I sent A.E. a few of his poems along with some extracts from Sri Aurobindo's Future Poetry which moved us to a deep admiration, extracts such as (I quote these from a then diary of mine):
"All art worth the name must go beyond the visible, must reveal, must show us something that is hidden."
"So poetry arrives at the indication of infinite meanings beyond the finite intellectual meaning the word carries."
"Poetical speech is the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer worlds."
"The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us not on one, but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal." And so on.
Also I asked A.E.'s permission to publish my translations of some of his lovely poems like Warning, Krishna etc.
I enclosed also a poem on silence written by a friend, a poem which I could not sincerely sympathise with; I wrote that I held all wordy eloquence about silence somewhat suspect.
He sent me his kind reply written in his own hand (that is, not a typed letter) in which he signed himself A.E. (his pen-name) and not George Russell.
The letter was from Dublin and was dated 6 January 1932:
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"Dear Dilip Roy,
"Your letter has come at a time when I am too troubled in mind to write, as I would like, about the poems you sent me. Yes, you have my permission to translate the verses or any other poems you may desire.
"I think the extracts from Sri Aurobindo very fine, and the verses you sent of Mr. Sethna have a genuine poetic quality. There are many fine lines like
'The song-impetuous mind.'
‘The Eternal Glory is a wanderer
Hungry for lips of clay.'
"Many such lines show a feeling for rhythm which is remarkable since the poet is not writing in his native but a learned language. I refer to this because the only advice one writer can give another rightly is technical criticism. The craft of any art, painting, music, poetry, sculpture, is continually growing and much can be taught in the schools. But the inspiration cannot be passed on from one to another. So I confine myself to a technical criticism.
"You, like many Indians, are so familiar with your great traditions that it is natural for you to deal with ideas verging on the spiritual more than European writers do. The danger of this when writing poetry is that there is a tendency to use or rather overuse great words like 'immensity', 'omnipotence', 'inexhaustible', 'limitless’ etc. By the very nature of the ideas which inspire you, you are led to use words of that nature because of a kinship with the infinity of the spirit. But in the art of verse if one uses these words overmuch they tend to lose their power just as painting in which only the primary colours would weary the eye.
"I would ask Mr. Sethna to try to reserve the use of such great words, as a painter keeps his high lights, for the sun and moon or radiant water and the rest of his canvas is in low tones. So the light appears radiant by contrast. English is a great language but it has very few words relating to spiritual ideas. For example the word Karma in Sanskrit embodies a philosophy. There is no word in English embodying the same idea. There are many words in Sanskrit charged with meanings which have no counterpart in
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English: Dhyani, Sushupti, Turiya etc., and I am sure the languages which the Hindus speak today must be richer in words fitted for spiritual expression than English, in which there are few luminous words that can be used when there is a spiritual emotion to be expressed. I found this difficulty myself of finding a vocabulary though English is the language I heard from my cradle.
"I hope Mr. Sethna will forgive my saying all this, I do so because I find a talent in the verses you sent me and do not wish him to do without such burnishing as a fellow-craftsman can help to give.
"Will you tell your philosophic friend who praises silence that with the poet the silence cannot be for ever ? He sings and then keeps silent until the cup is filled up again by sacrifice and mediation and then he must give away what he gets, or nothing more will he poured into his cup. The secret of this is that through the free giver the song flows freely and whoever constrains life in himself, in him it is constrained. There is indeed the Divine silence, but we do not come to that being by negation,"
Sethna submitted his comments on this letter to Gurudev who wrote back;
"If you send your poems to five different poets, you are likely to get five absolutely disparate and discordant estimates of them. A poet likes only the poetry that appeals to his own temperament or taste the rest he condemns or ignores. (My own case is different because I have made in criticism a practice of appreciating very thing that can be appreciated as a catholic critic would.) Contemporary poetry, besides, seldom gets its right Judgment from contemporary critics even.
"Nothing can be more futile than for a poet to write in expectation of contemporary fame or praise, however agreeable that may be, if it comes; but it not of much value; for very poor poets have enjoyed a great contemporary fame and very great poets have been neglected in their time. A poet has to go on his
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way, trying to gather hints from what people say for or against, when their criticisms are things he can profit by, but not otherwise moved if he can manage it - seeking mainly to sharpen his own sense of self-criticism by the help of others. Difference of estimate need not surprise him at all."
Sethna asked him next a pointed question (which will be readily inferred from his reply) to which the answer came again:
"Your letter suggested a more critical attitude on A.E.'s part than his actual appreciation warrants. His appreciation is, on the contrary, sufficiently warm: 'a genuine poetic quality' and 'many fine lines' - he could not be expected to say more. The two quotations he makes certainly deserve the praise he gives them and they are moreover of the kind, which A.E. (and Yeats also) would naturally like. But your poem This Errant Life selected for special praise, has no striking expression, like these standing out from the rest, just as in a Greek statue there would be no single feature standing out in a special beauty (eyes, lips, head or hands) but the whole has a harmoniously modelled grace of equal perfection everywhere as, let us say, in the perfect charm of a statue by Praxiteles. This - apart from the idea and feeling which goes psychically and emotionally much deeper than the idea in the lines quoted by A.E. which are poetically striking but have not the same subtle spiritual appeal; they touch the mind and vital strongly but the other goes home into the soul.....
"His remarks about 'immensity' etc, are very interesting to me; for these are the very words, with others like them, that are constantly recurring at short intervals in my poetry when I express not spiritual thought, but spiritual experience. I knew perfectly well that this recurrence would be objected to as bad technique or an inadmissible technique; but this seems to me a reasoning from the conventions of a past order which cannot apply to a new poetry dealing with spiritual things. A new art of words written from a new consciousness demands a new technique. A.E. himself admits that this rule makes a great difficulty because these 'high light' words are few in the English language.
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His solution may do well enough where the realisations which they represent are mental ones or intuitions occurring on the summits of consciousness, rare 'high lights' over the low tones of ordinary natural or occult experience (ordinary, of course, to the poet, not the average man); there his solution would not violate the truth of the vision, would not misrepresent the balance of harmony of its actual tones. But what of one who lives in an atmosphere of these high lights - in a consciousness in which the finite, not only the occult but even the earthly finite, is bathed in the sense of the eternal, the illimitable infinite, the immensities or intimacies of the Timeless ? To follow A.E.' s rule might well mean to falsify this atmosphere, to substitute a merely aesthetic fabrication for a true seeing and experience. Truth first - a technique expressive of the truth in the forms of beauty has to be found, if it does not exist. It is no use arguing from the spiritual inadequacy of the English language; the inadequacy does not exist and even if it did, the language will have to be made adequate. It has been plastic enough in the past to succeed in expressing all that it was asked to express, however new; it must now be urged to a farther new progress. In fact the power is there and has only to be brought out more fully to serve the full occult, mystic, spiritual purpose."
And then he went on in another letter:
"What you say may be correct (that our oriental luxury in poetry makes it unappealing to Westerners), but on the other hand it is possible that the mind of the future will be more international than it is now. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance.
"If our aim is not success and personal fame but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds of poetry, the English tongue is the most wide-spread and is capable of profound turns of mystic expression which makes it admirably fitted for the purpose; if it could be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying."
And then in another letter:
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"The idea that Indians cannot succeed in English poetry is very much in the air just now but it cannot be taken as absolutely valid.... At present many are turning to India for its sources of spirituality, but the eye has been directed only towards Yoga and philosophy, not to the poetical expression of it. When the full day comes, however, it may well be that this too will be discovered, and then an Indian who is at once a mystic and a true poet and able to write in English as if in his mother-tongue (that is essential) would have this full chance. Many barriers are breaking, moreover, both in French and English there are instances of foreigners who have taken their place as prose-writers or poets."
I have been at some pains here to labour this point because I feel it necessary to combat the unhelpful attitude of those who cannot create and yet presume to adjudicate on our highly laudable attempt to express our deepest perceptions in English, as also because I feel sure, among other things, that Sri Aurobindo will be recognised in future not only as a poet but also as a poet-maker. It will take me too much space to bring out what I mean when I say this. So I will confine myself at present to saying that those of us who have seen not one, but many poets flower under his inspiration (some of whom had never before written a single poem) cannot possibly accept the verdicts of those who have no access to such data, for the simple reason that no-experience is incompetent per se to adjudicate on the validity or otherwise of experience.
But before I conclude my account of Sethna I must stress something about his poetic perspicacity and insight, the more because these native gifts, which matured rapidly under Gurudev's fostering, he utilised religiously not only to understand our Master's special contribution to poetry, but - what is more important for the public - to pave the way to a more critical and deeper understanding of his genius by his luminous studies, in different Journals, of Sri Aurobindo's form and message. I am myself definitely persuaded - even from what little I have imbibed with my limited receptivity of the supreme beauty of his
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epic Savitri - that he will be regarded as by far the greatest poet of this age, a new epoch-maker in poetry, or to quote from Sethna's own estimate:
"On the brow of this giant we must place a crown of triple triumph. For, Sri Aurobindo has done three exceedingly rare things. First, he has to his credit a bulk of excellent blank verse - a statement possible about poets we can count on our fingers. At least five thousand lines in the Collected Poems and Plays... are a diversely modulated beauty and power with no appreciable fall below a fine adequacy and with peak after peak of superb frenzy. They put him cheek by jowl with Keats in both essence and amount. The huge epic Savitri... is a marvel which places him at once in the company of the absolute top-rankers by a sustained abundance of first-rate quality. Add to living lengths of blank verse a large number of sublime or delicate shorter pieces, mostly in rhyme, and we have a further testimony of Sri Aurobindo's creativeness. But what is of extraordinary import is that among them we have a body of successful work in a medium that has eluded English poets: quantitative metre. Sri Aurobindo has solved once for all the problem of quantity in English - a feat which gives the language 'a brave new world' of consciousness. Quantitative metre is the second tier in Sri Aurobindo's poetic crown. The third is not merely a revelation of strange rhythm-moulds, but also the laying bare of a rhythmic life beyond the ranges of inspired consciousness to which we have been so far accustomed. To bring the epic surge or the lyric stream of the quantitative metres of Greece and Rome in English is not necessarily to go psychologically beyond the ranges of inspiration we find in the epic or lyric moods of England. It could very well be just an opening up of fresh movements on psychologicalplanes already possessed by those moods. Over and above opening up such movements Sri Aurobindo discloses planes that have been secret hitherto except for stray lines here and there, occurring as if by a luminous accident. Only the ancient Vedas and Upanishads embody with anything like a royal freedom these
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ranges of mystical and spiritual being, hidden beyond the deepest plunge and highest leap of intuition known to the great masters. Sri Aurobindo stands as the creator of a new Vedic and Upanishadic age of poetry."
I do not feel called upon to apologise for giving such a long quotation from Sethna's book, the less because I cannot help a deep regret that we, Indians, who have already flowered, at our loveliest, into no mean creators in English poetry should have elected to cling to a cautious if not timid silence about Sri Aurobindo's epic achievement in poetry (an achievement which has been making history while we remain standing in a non-committal hush) simply because we want to play safe and so dare not give our verdicts lest our highbrow English tutors reverse it later on. I will not go into the cause of the unresponsiveness on the part of the English, but I feel I owe it to truth to speak out my deep conviction: that not to know Sri Aurobindo as a poet will be, in the near future, to argue oneself unknown as a critic and lover of poetry. Fortunately Krishnaprem (formerly Ronald Nixon) has made some atonement at least for the silence of his compatriots, the English, by writing in his tribute to Savitri:
"Such poetry can only be written either in the early days before the rise to power of self-conscious mind or when that particular cycle has run its course and life establishes itself once more in the unity beyond, this time with all the added range and power that has been gained during the reign of mind. It is an omen of the utmost significance and hope that in these years of darkness and despair such a poem as Savitri should have appeared. Let us salute the Dawn."
And one must congratulate him - the more because he is English - on his courage for having anticipated a hackneyed objection thus: "The English language has been given to the world and its usages and limits can now no longer be determined exclusively by the ears of the islanders whose tongue it originally
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was. Those who would remain sole rulers of their language must abjure empire." But to revert to Sethna.
I have felt this about him and a few others, isolated appraisers of Sri Aurobindo's poetry, that when, in the not too-distant future, Sri Aurobindo will have been acknowledged by the whole world as by far the greatest of modern poets to whom the mantric word came as native as soaring to the eagle, this first small band of ardent admirers led by Sethna shall receive the smile of the great Goddess of Poetry, Saraswati, not only for having (in the words of Chesterton)
...watched when all men slept
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
but also for having readily acquitted themselves of their sacred responsibility, the sense of which prompted them to "salute the Dawn" they had seen and announce the high Herald of a new consciousness in poetry, who sang vibrantly of Earth's deepest aspiration and highest fulfilment:
An inarticulate whisper drives her steps
Of which she feels the force but not the sense;
A few rare intimations come as guides,
Immense divining flashes cleave her brain...
Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods
Soliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time
What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
A Will expressive of soul's deity,
A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.
For these she yearns and feels them destined hers:
Heaven's privilege she claims as her own right.
Just is her claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,
Clear in a greater light than reason owns:
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Our intuitions are its tide-deeds;
Our souls accept what our blind thoughts refuse.
Earth's winged chimeras are Truth's steeds in Heaven,
The impossible God's sign of things to be.1
DILIP KUMAR, ROY
Sri Aurobindo Came to me, pp. 85-103 (first published in 1952).
1. Savitri, Cent. Ed, pp. 51-52.
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I AM asked by Mr. Deshpande to write about
Amal in this volume to celebrate his coming on the verge of the 9th decade of his wonderful life. I have been fortunately given the freedom to choose the aspect on which to write. Without that I would have been unable to write about such a multifaceted personality. He and Nirod, and some others are for me continuations of my two Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Without Amal I might not have been here at all, and definitely not what I am today, not much but better than what I would have been otherwise. Amal has nurtured me like a tender plant for nearly 25 years and if that plant has not borne roses it is at least no more full of thorns. So what I am writing in this article is mainly glimpses from my diary of conversations with him in the last three years. He has been changing rapidly, growing more distant and more loving and near at the same time. I see him reluctantly dealing with the mundane, full of concern for everyone who approaches him in person or by writing or telephone. As one of my friends said while leaving him, "Oh, how he radiates peace and love!"
So here are some excerpts from my recorded conversations with him.
About the first two Darshans Amal had
Amal tells me: "My first meeting was without much significance. I was watching Sri Aurobindo's face and He mine. Mother later told me that Sri Aurobindo remarked about me that me that ‘he has a good face'.
But at the second Darshan after six months, He kept on gently nodding His head approvingly and placed both hands on my bent head. Oh that touch! I can still feel it. Later I went into Purani's room and suddenly it was as if a bar of steel was coming down my head! I had to sit quietly to bear it. Later in the evening the Mother used to give us garlands she had got at Darshan time
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in the morning. I sat down at her feet as she took me inside the Darshan room. Then she told me that Sri Aurobindo had said he was very pleased with me and that there had been a great change.
It was true. Between the two Darshans the psychic being had burst ecstatically open and started to permeate the outer self - even the body. The hands used to feel as if whatever they touched would be divinely blessed."
*
All the time Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's hands are around us. Except for our follies, nothing happens without their consent. They are behind everything that happens, including catastrophes. Those are the means to push us towards a new direction.
Yes, they have to 'break' at times - not break bones. When Sri Aurobindo went to jail and asked Sri Krishna why he had to, the reply was that there was no other way to push him in the right direction. It is important to know why an event, an accident, has happened. The knowledge is not mental. It comes from a higher level, from the 'intuition' plane. When you know that, that gives a direction to the opportunity to be taken.
Make me yours, wholly yours. It is not that I belong to anything else, but my being yours is not concretised fully in the entire being.
This is my constant call.
22 October 1991
While in the Nursing Home after the accident, at about 1.15 a.m., Amal had this conversation:
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Amal: "What is my fate? What is the Grace giving me?"
Answer: "A greater calm and a greater self-dedication to the Mother. She will lift you higher beyond everything."
He related this to me in the early morning. I asked him, "Was it a face to face conversation?" He said "Yes". On my further enquiry he confirmed that it was Sri Aurobindo, adding "I suppose."
29/30 October 1992
Quite sometime since there has been a movement that a radical change is going to happen. There has been an independent movement of the physical, puzzling, and at the same time a detachment from the physical. The other day while talking to you, I became conscious of a great stillness of the body, a compactness of consciousness in the physical, a statuesque immobility over which passes a breeze of happiness continuously, the body can't but be happy.
The physical arms are taking to a 'voiceless supreme delight' by themselves, the body has a separate identity of its own. Probably this is happening in the subtle physical. Everything happens there first before manifesting in the external physical. This is not a transformation but a change in the outer nature including the 'gunas'.
You are correct in that the change has occurred earlier in the external mind and vital, but there is no fixed rule about the sequence of the change though generally the change in the physical will be the last. Nature as such is a vast being of which individual natures are consolidations.
This, (holding both hands in front as if holding a ball) I could hold between the hands as it were, just for a moment when it seems to be absolutely immobile. Ananda is its natural state. This subtle physical probably has a shape, some sort of shape, but it is not at all rigid, not at all like the outer physical.
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There is no attempt on my part to be cheerful, no movement of the mind, absolutely no attitude, it just is. So the long years of aspiration arc coming to fruition. Those four lines:
Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,
Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,
An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,
Force one with unimaginable rest.
It was in 1937 that I wrote to Sri Aurobindo, "I aspire to live, as well as echo in quality of inspiration, those four lines of yours which I consider a plenary Mantra. Show me a way to realise my aspiration, I feel very impatient though I must confess to my shame that aspiration of the poet is more frequently in the forefront than that of the Yogi."
Sri Aurobindo's reply started with "Impatience does not help;
intensity of aspiration does..."
At last this aspiration is coming to fruition.
About Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo was a poised stillness and a tremendous power. Cartier Bresson was struck by the stillness when he was going around him taking photographs. There was Sri Aurobindo totally oblivious of everything going around him including the presence of Bresson and others.
Commenting on a Sadhak's vision of Sri Aurobindo in a Shiva Idol:
Sri Aurobindo was a vision of breadth of wideness and power in reclining repose. And comes to mind what you saw - the majesty, the grandeur, the sheer power! Such is Shiva, such is Sri Aurobindo.
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Balcony Darshan
O radiant fountain of the world's delight,
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find.
This was the constant deep feeling within, an intense emotional response on seeing the Mother on the first floor Balcony, as if she was almost within physical reach, to see Her intimate face looking at one person then another, covering all, step by step. Even reciting these lines and reliving that Balcony Darshan makes me emotional and the voice gets strained, choked as I just found the other day reciting these tines to someone.
Refuge in the Mother and aspiration for the Divine life are the two essentials in this Yoga.
Once I asked Amal, referring to a talk of the Mother at the end of which she says: "Let us meditate, I will give you what has descended today." How many would have received what the Mother meant when she said "I will give you"?
Amal answered: "Maybe none. You wouldn't have if you had been there."
Then he added: "This is rather rude of me. How would I have known? I shall only say if you had been like me, you wouldn't have received it."
Leave all worries to Her and plunge in your work unmindful of happenings beyond your control.
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Just be yourself as She wants you to be, just be. That is the best way to help.
Once I asked him: "How long since have you been living within? Living within more often than not?"
Amal said: "A few months after I came here. The 'State of Grace' first came five months after my coming here, but many ups and downs- had to intervene before some stable continuity was possible. Oh, how often I have told the Mother — 'Put your hand on my heart, open me, make an opening.'!"
18 December 1992
"When did you start hearing the cosmic rhythm?" I asked. Amal answered: It happened when I was in Bombay. During my Pondy days a steady rhythmic sound used to come from somewhere near and localised. The sense of a universal sound began to be established when I was in Bombay. What it was like has been indicated in a part of my 'Personal Preface' and poetised in one of the pieces in The Adventure of the Apocalypse.
The utmost vigilance is needed to guard against insidious spiritual pride. Active 'on the guard' ness is essential all the time. Best, of course, is complete surrender to the Mother.
You can always see Amal Kiran at the Samadhi in the late afternoon, usually 4.30 to 5.30. Often I would go with him from the Ashram. Sometimes he would narrate to me some of his experiences soon after they occurred. I give here three of them which reveal some aspects of his spiritual quests and the peaks
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that have been climbed. Following Mother's words that the time to rest is not now, Amal continues unceasingly this great adventure that is the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All these three experiences have probably been published in Mother India.
17 August 1991, about 5 p.m.
Suddenly a great quiet took possession of the body and a sound was heard coming from far away and surrounding the still body. Then the body's borders seemed to thin and become open to permeation by a Vast Outside. I would call that 'transfluent' on the analogy of 'translucent', for now not light but a flow passed right through me - a flow which appeared to be the passage of a whole universe's movement through my form. The form still had its identity but it was not barriered against the rest of the universe. It was essentially continuous with a huge Existence and a wide Presence steadily advancing in time with a steady faintly audible rhythm. What a sense of freedom and serenity!
Automatically all thinking stopped: no ideas, no images. The universal flow was felt most in the region of the chest, although it was perceived as if at a slight distance in the head as well as the abdomen. I had to do nothing except sit in-drawn to this enormous flux which bore my embodied being onward to an unknown but beautifully trusted future.
Along with this open feeling within an unlimited uniform sound, there was a kind of effortless isolation from the immediate environment - except for a calmly sympathetic shadow - the Samadhi. That is why I use the word 'in-drawn'. And yet this very environment was, without its knowing it, part of the universal flux. It is that lack of knowing which my body was guarding itself against with an utter ease born of commingling with the tranquil majesty of the flowing Immense into which I had been taken up.
Heraclitus meant by his panta rhei — everything flows, that there is constant change, nothing stays the same. You can't step into the same river twice. What I sensed was a never-stopping fluency which was the continuity of some ever-identified Whole.
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If you are carried on the flow of the river, one with the flow, it is the same river always in relation to you. Of course this reference to Heraclitus is an after-thought in the terms of philosophy of what happened from 5.15 to 5.30.
When it was time for me to go home there was no concern with any philosophy during the rapt ineffable quarter of an hour. What is really relevant is the tradition of a sound in which the cosmic consciousness exists: the Mantra OM. What I sensed was inseparable from an eternal-seeming rhythm arriving from all sides. Perhaps I would best characterise it as an infinite honeyed hum. Does OM echo this hearing?
2 January 1993
Amal told me the following experience soon after we went back to his home from the Samadhi:
I was sitting quietly facing the joint Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Suddenly a voice within me addressed it, 'All of me belongs to You'. The voice seemed to pervade the whole being and express every part of me. But was every part of me really speaking? I did not feel sure because I knew that much of me remained which could not be considered to have made a total surrender.
When I concentrated on my condition I discovered that the voice had a centre from which it radiated. The centre was the inmost heart. The true soul, the psychic being was spontaneously making the statement. It was its natural joyous cry. The rest of the being was evidently fully conscious of its soul. To put it otherwise: the soul was completely aware of being a child of the Divine and its awareness flowed out and flooded every corner of the complete creature I was. But every corner was essentially a medium for the soul's self-giving gesture, the soul's self-given existence. Something of every corner vibrated in unison while serving as a channel. But it was not saying on its own, as an inherent flow of itself, the simple yet wonderful words with which it was filled.
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I felt somewhat concerned that this should be so — but I soon realised that concern was out of place. I just sat calmly without any thought and felt blessed with the soul's full awakening and allowed its sweetness to keep streaming forth up and down on all sides of the bodily life.
If such a state could go on at all hours in an utter intensity of what I call a serene strength of love, at once soft and irresistible, the future would indeed be an unperishing thousand petalled 'Rose of God'.
28 April 1993
Long ago I read a letter of Sri Aurobindo to the effect that it is the lesson of life that everything fails a man except the Divine if one truly clings to the Divine. I had wondered whether there was any reference here to outer circumstances and events taking a favourable turn by one's adherence to the Divine by means of faith or prayer.
Of course external things could change to some extent, but the non-failure of the Divine in this sense struck me as too superficial and having little bearing on the progress of one's Sadhana.
Yesterday there was an incident as if something important were failing me radically, a solid support abruptly giving way. I kept offering the painful occasion to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All of a sudden, at the Samadhi, I felt a complete opening inwardly to Them. I myself was there in the heart-centre and behind me, sustaining my being was a wide warm Presence perpetually transfusing into me a deep peace, a profound happiness, the sense of a personified eternal smile holding me up and passing the strength of unending sweetness into my inner poise.
All external features at the Samadhi vanished. My eyes kept closing and as if drowning in the vast surge, the embrace of that blissful love which was fully unveiled to my heart because this heart had turned to no support except its mighty mystery. The pain that was in the heart was enveloped by the powerful warmth
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which was tending all the time to erase it with a joy capable of blotting out everything.
I understood most vividly what Sri Aurobindo had meant by those words - the modus operandi of the one unfailing factor possible to realise amidst the vicissitudes of 'this transient and unhappy world' into which we have come yet within which Sri Krishna points to an unchanging support when he gives the call 'Love and worship me'.
A little later an external circumstance came to my help. I received an assurance that the hurtful situation conveyed to me was utterly a mistake.
21 May 1993
How are you?
A (holding hands on the sides and in front of the upper abdomen with a movement towards the abdomen and away);
There is the movement of a force, an energy coming in, filling up, then going out, radiating.
Is it rhythmic ?
A: Yes, and it goes on all the time.
Is it the Cosmic force?
A: Something like that.
25 September 1993
People often forget that apart from Light, Love and Sweetness, there is immense strength in the psychic when it comes forward.
Mother had once told me that one can realise the Divine in the vital plane and remain there only and think 'this is it' and not move, progress any more. And then one becomes a Guru!
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Sri Aurobindo once told me, 'Keep on calling on the Mother. That would build around you a zone of peace.'
That is what I do. Nothing enters through, not even sound, noise, unless I open the door. Sometimes something enters and attacks and then I have to deal with it.
I could go on, and on, and vainly try to elucidate what Amal is in relation to our Gurus. I know that no spiritual personality can be fathomed or measured. I have tried to give a glimpse of what he is in his own words. All the words quoted and the experiences narrated have either been already published or have been seen and confirmed by him.
I have often seen him to be of immense help, spiritually and psychologically, to many Sadhaks and devotees of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. He has carefully nurtured the natural talent of many persons, be it in poetry or painting or music, and has gently and subtly turned that talent in the direction of Sadhana. I am sure that he will continue to be a guide and a light to many more in the years to come.
DINKAR D. PALANDE
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A Master lying like a Hidden Treasure
K.D. SETHNA has been the most important literary figure in the post-Aurobindo Indo-Anglian scene. It is a surprise that he is still quite unknown outside a particular circle. But the few who have probed sensitively into his prolific prose and poetry with a mind trained on all the elevations of English prose and verse, have been moved to speak of his achievement in the same breath with the work of the greats in literature, history, and philosophy.
Sethna's association with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is a myth and a history. What he has done and what remains before us can hardly be mistaken. One look anywhere at his work, at any paragraph or any stanza, is enough to open our eyes to the mind behind the words. There is that touch of class everywhere, that authentic Indian behind the English Idiom, that art of seriousness long lost in the fancy-vapour of a kind of literary exercise that passes in the name of Indian literature and sells like hot cakes across the ocean.
Unlike his poetry, where he uses his brief style with a masterful ease, his prose is usually based on the exhaustive method. There is a fastidious rejection of the touch-and-go. He likes to argue, and yet sometimes within the texture of his logical prose, there are majestic units combining revelation and argument:
The writing of Hamlet would stand for Shakespeare's finest and most far-reaching self-expression - the profound cry of the heart's rosy blood grown strange and baffled by reflection of the brain's grey cells. The drinking at the Mermaid would represent the poetic frenzy arising from intoxication
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with the life-force, from a constant touch on the founts of a vitality stimulated at the same time by what is human, what is elemental and what is mythic, the half woman and half fish and their harmonious whole of fantasy which the sign of the Mermaid connotes. The capturing of immortality would sum up not only an achievement but also the means to it. Shakespeare becomes - in the words of Thorpe in that enigmatic dedication to the Sonnets - "Our ever-living poet" by catching in the language of life and death the thrill of some depth of being, where abide the immortal patterns of things, where knowledge is the perceiver's consciousness directly penetrating the perceived, the inward interchange of a manifold oneness, and where - to adapt slightly a pregnant phrase of Sri Aurobindo's -
Sight is a flame-throw from Identity.
Generalisation is the sign of a perceptive mind or a talent. But what is done above is not just talent. There is an inspired sweep from the start till the end of the passage. Poetry and argument have coalesced together to form a unique structure, which not many can do. Sethna does it frequently and this makes him a genius.
Greater power of seeing and telling may be found elsewhere, even in his Talks on Poetry, which is a mark of supreme inspiration inside the classroom. Here is a portion from his textual commentary on Sri Aurobindo's poem, Rose of God:
What about the Rose of Life ? If we may go by the suggestions in the poem, it is not something unrelated to the Roses of Power, Light and Bliss. It is characterised as Desire that has a smiting drive and comes incarnate: It is also a multiform movement of colourful collectivity and a creator of concordances in a time-existence made deathless. The smiting drive towards deathless incarnation connects up directly with the infinite force and might and the piercing diamond halo spoken of in the preceding stanza,
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about the Rose of Power, as well as with the "image of immortality" there.
Besides, there are his invaluable works on Indology, books where we see insight at every page, and also his letters on the English Language and the Indian Spirit. Year after year, Sethna has renewed himself, updated himself, with a passion to remain young for ever. The result is an incredible bulk of prose writings. With so much of his works published till now, Sethna still remains the most unpublished author in India.
Superlatives are suspect in literary criticism, but there are times when a major truth is contained in a superlative phrase. I have very little hesitation in calling him the greatest living mystic poet- He blends with great effect the cryptograms and the epigrams, the natural and the supernatural, the mundane and the celestial. His poetic style has very little relation with his prose style. Even when Sethna extends his details in a poem, the style bears no relation with the expository technique of his prose. He passes from one dream image to another instead of concentrating on just one slide. Sometimes, the octet of a sonnet contains the present reality exposed by an inward look and the sestet records the memory of the future:
All of me dark save this song-fruitful hand,
There the large splendour tunes my blood and makes
Fragments of deathless ecstasy out flower;
From God-abysses to God-pinnacles.
Some day the buried vast which holds me rooted
In dreamful kinship to the height of heaven
Shall wake: then through each quivering nerve shall
course
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like the brief passions of earth,, but nectar flame —
A Force drunk with its own infinitude.
The sestet might be mistaken for words of hope. But, interpreters who are in touch with the Aurobindonian school of poetry will be quick to see in those six lines the presage of a great realisation.
The mystic love shapes itself in a pleasing form in Sethna's hands:
Take all my shining hours from me,
But hang upon my quiet soul's
Pale brow your dream-kiss like a gem,
Let life fall stricken to its knee,
If unto lone-faced poverty
You give your blesssing's diadem.
Make of these proud eyes beggar-bowls,
But only drop your smile in them.
The Mother has become Sethna's dream lady. This is the
climax of aesthetics which really aims at purification of our emotion. Such poems by Sethna indicate that there is a constant effort in him to discover what Sri Aurobindo calls "the soul of the emotion" and thereby to make bis poetry a means of sadhana. Thus he passionately appeals to the force to come close to him, and in this passionate appeal discovers the real love:
Draw near, O Love, draw very very near,
For I would see your visage full and dear:
A distant adoration cannot ease
My heart's unbearable burning chastities.
Even in his intense dreams of the future, Sethna exhibits his purified emotion in magic utterances:
A mystery journeys forth to meet
Across the rapture of rhyming feet
Its own unplumbed repose.
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Beyond the clamour of surface, beyond the noise of the loud heart, Sethna burns slowly, softly like the self-effacing incense stick. And he gets his reward for that: The smell of the wells of deathless nectar, the eyes like blue lotuses, the aureoled kiss, the real rose, the white embrace and the colour showers in the nights.
During a personal conversation, the great K.R. Srinivasa lyengar once said to me: "Our talk of scholarship and knowledge seems trifle when we go near Sethna." Therefore, it is time we took notice of a Master, lying like a hidden treasure at 21 rue Francois Martin, Pondicherry. Without knowing Sethna, nobody can hope to write honestly on recent Indo-Anglian literature.
2
Altar and Flame*
Most of the poems in Altar and Flame came out after Sri Aurobindo's departure. Unlike the more characteristic work of Sethna, these are closer to us. They are also mystic poems, but the hyphen linking Matter and Spirit is quite charming because of a fine blend of the mundane and the ethereal. The rhetoric is curious and it is a bit unlike the rhetoric Sri Aurobindo uses in his later poetry. There is of course an influence of the Aurobindonian rhetoric, but tradition is so transformed in the context of a middle world that it is hard to trace the memory of Sethna's Master. By and large, this is a new rhetoric discovered in a fresh situation and coloured by an individual consciousness.
Rhetoric for Sethna is a way of "beyonding". One has the impression that the poet is involved in a process of purification, and unlike Tagore and Whitman Sethna is singularly free from the sexual connotations in his quest for the beyond. There is a conscious effort at discovering a purer aesthetics based on Mother-cult. The poet is possibly trying to imagine the beauty of higher planes and this sense of beauty comes only after a great purification. In trying to imagine, Sethna's eyes open to the
*This article appeared first in the March 1992 issue of Mother India. - Editors
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magic worlds of beauty. There is a search for purer images. The Mental poet has an inkling of the supramental weather. As a result there is a strange ecstasy flooding the lyrics. Sometimes there is an inspired sweep of run-on lines, and the wild profusion of metaphors and similes overwhelms us.
Changing the small fire's smile to a maddened blaze
That laughs like a golden wilderness of whips
And slashes the skies of secrecy hung between
Our groping sight and the miracled unseen.
Thus only we drag down the Apocalypse!1
There is an absolute air of spontaneity in his gesture of imaging the exact sight and feeling. This is no Johnsonese, as without this sweep of rhetoric the things cannot be expressed. Sri Aurobindo clarifies the point in a letter: "Truth first - a technique expressive of the truth in the forms of beauty has to be found, if it does not exist."2 Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo says that the technique of mystic poetry cannot be taught.
In Sethna's poetry, especially in Altar and Flame, love is a thing of beauty maturing like the maturing moon:
We love, but scarcely know
What they mean -
The unsated kisses, the deep quiets
Hung between.
Suddenly in our eyes
A full moon glows
And, quick with tears, the mind
Feels that it knows.3
The poet is distinctly aware of the fact that mundane kisses are there only to make us more thirsty for an "aureoled kiss" (a phrase from Psyche). The second stanza of the poem indicates the mystery of sudden revelation in a man's life. Throughout his life, a man talks of love, makes love in Hemingway style, lecturing on
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love, writes on love and is blinded. Then one day a moment sees what ages have toiled to express. The moment of the full moon is the moment of love. The "tears" indicate suffering, the thorns behind which blooms the deathless rose. The word "knows" hints at realization. The inmost being, his soul, is always full of love and it struggles to come to the front through the physical, the mental and the vital layers. When the psyche comes forward the drop of blood becomes a diamond tear. This is the beginning of knowledge. Hence the mind feels that it knows.
With the misconception that Sri Aurobindo is a monk, there has grown up another wrong belief that he is a platonic love-poet. In fact love is a many-branching mood in his poetry. K.D. Sethna, Captain of the Aurobindonian School, starts from the mature Sri Aurobindo. He too depends on the sap of the earth and he too believes like his master that love cannot live by heavenly food alone. But, as we have said, Sethna has for his ideal a later Sri Aurobindo, he has left behind Sri Aurobindo's early reponses to the love of Urvasie and Priyamvada. In Altar and flame - although the poet calls his products "mundane" in an interview with the present writer - there is already a maturer sight into the mystery of love. With the process of purification going on, the concept of love is also growing. The images of tear, love, fire and the moon indicate a growth through inferno and purgatory. The controlled emotion, occasionally breaking into poignant utterances, indicates a quality of endurance achieved. There is "this hand on fire" (Out of My Heart). Because Sethna is preparing to leave the animal behind, he has a foreknowledge of true love. Hence the line:
Foretaste of all-fulfilling peak.4
The poet is sometimes dreaming of a love which is to come, is coming, and his life is already full of the rays, "the prescience of a marvellous birth to come," (in Sri Aurobindo's words). This prescience or, to borrow Sethna's own word, "foretaste" gives a strange colour to the love poems in this collection. The symbol of the moon becomes a key-symbol in Sethna's love poetry of the half-world.
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The tree in the moonlight is dangerously amorous and it tears our heart and creates great music which spreads everywhere. In the poem entitled After a Tuscan Saying, the moon is not just a symbol of love but a symbol of beauty showing us where the Spirit has passed. This moon is the Wordsworthian moon seeking to open the golden doors in silvery quiet.
O trust no tree in the moon —
Great arms will tear
Your heart and make its tiny rune
Spread everywhere.5
It is obvious that Sethna's pantheism has given birth to a poetry which is as poetic in its own way as Wordsworth's poetry of pantheism. Besides, there is an element of supenaturalism suddenly overtaking us with the violent image of "tear" in the above stanza. Nature installs a cosmic violin inside us in a magic hour.
In Altar and Flame the woman is not an outcaste on the way. The woman becomes a co-walker on the path. The double adventure involves the fate of both the man and the woman. Even in mundane love the memory of the supreme love is not forgotten. In Between us two and also in Fragments, the poet speaks of an emptiness and an unquenched thirst in physical love. Unlike Faustus, he is fully aware that there is no immortality in the kiss of Helen. The insatiated thirst irresistibly drives him to the woman at Kailash. But, also, his mundane love is not a waste. In Equality the poet says: "Love's life is precious only if given whole." At the same time Sethna is living with the memory of the future, with the hope of discovering "the shining secret" of a love unknown.
The double adventure is taken in the right spirit and once again it is beauty that lights the desperate roads of the pair.
The day floated for the last time on the sea.
Twilight's blur, washing the horizon's edge,
Made the immense waters loom infinite.
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Two lonelinesses linked by one far love,
We came, earth-empty, but our small eyes sank
In the grey distance flowing evermore.
Our arms stretched toward the eternal shore beyond,
Which seemed divided by time endlessly.
You, with lips quivering on the great Name
Borne by the deep to this side of the unknown,
Murmured of the human heart's poor faltering
strength,
But a faint touch of random spray on my brow
Moved me to breathe suddenly of fathomless Grace
That calls for nought save the surrendering cry
And gives all to the dwarf soul given entire.
"How shall we cross the sea?"... "The sea shall
cross us."6
The "far love" remains an eternal quest and the memory of the man and the woman is replete with "the eternal shore beyond". Prayer is poetry in the expression "with lips quivering on the great Name." One can always rise from every bondage. There is no bondage the moment you seek help from above. There is a consciousness of the Grace with the touch of the "random spray". Grace brings faith and faith is transformed into poetry in the last line of the poem. Sethna is more interested in the mountains than in the sea as we see in the poems in Overhead Poetry. But here his responses to the beauty of the evening sea reveal that like his master he has also an eye on the mystery of the waters. Very rarely, Sethna's concept of beauty is expressed in the idiom of the Savitri poet:
Our very limbs strain for the timeless smile.7
In almost all the poems of Altar and Flame, there is a quest for sacred images: fragrant breath, pink sleep, aureoled kiss, shadow in the moon's white core, hidden honey, aura of unfading day, a foretaste of the all-fulfilling peak, homeless heart, pilgrim in my feet, stainless stars, flawless touch, flame and fragrance, etc.
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Throughout his life Tagore tried to feel and express the Divine in terms of an aesthetics which is not purely based on Indian tradition. In trying to find a purer aesthetics, Tagore sometimes depends too largely on the western romantics like Shelley and Keats, and he seems to have been neglecting a vital point relating to the Tantric cult. Nor that he was unaware of the thrill of Mother-worship. In fact, some of his lines clearly indicate that he was bubbling over with the thrill of Her touch. But he was restricted by his own religious cult which is against idolatry. The same was the problem with a little-known Bengali poet singer, Atulprasad Sen, who belonged to the same religious cult. Both of them were thrilled inside, but the tongues could not utter the name. Aesthetics of the western kind has certain limitations, and yet in some of the western moderns we have clues to the Great Feminine to whom the artist bows his head. There's a strange poem by Stephen Crane in his Black Riders where the Chattertonian is distinctly rejecting Christ and God in favour of Mother Mary who is often seen as a channeling grace.
Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror, limitless night
Nor god, nor man, nor place to Stand
Would be to me essential,
If thou and thy white arms were there.
And the fall to doom a long way.8
This is a clue to the purer aesthetics taking shape at the beginning of the century through a western-educated Indian named Aurobindo Ghose. It is various that Sethna has a similar response to the Great Feminine in his poems in Altar and Flame. In an interview in October 1988 he informed me that he had never read Stephen Crane's poem and that the similarity of imagery is just accidental. But then this is not an accident in view of Sri Aurobindo's claim that even the inanimate objects arc dumbly praying to the Great Mother, The passion for '"white arms" is something like the collective unconscious. All Sethna's poems are characterised by a search for a purer aesthetics and in some of
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them in Altar and Flame, there are lines which are pure Mother- worship and pure poetry rolled into one.
Make me your nothing, my whole life
I would drown in your vastnesses -
A cry to be ruled by your flawless touch,
Your will alone my peace.9
The mystery of being "nothing" in the Mother's hands is the mystery of the ecstasy of surrender. The "flawless touch" initiates a rebirth, as every Aurobindonian believes. This is the climax of aesthetics, a way to the soul of emotion. In order to judge Sethna's poetry, we have to keep in mind this quest for purification. The rhetoric of love and beauty indicates the great process going on inside the poet. Sri Aurobindo was not wrong when he named the young Parsi from Bombay Amal Kiran. Who is Sethna's dream lady? It cannot be an Urvasie or a Priyamvada. It must be the daughter of Savitr (Savitr means the Creator).
A woman, white-veiled, crowned with olive, came —
Under the shade of her green mantle, all
Her body clothed in colour of living flame.10
Finally Sethna's eye is on a woman who is a "living flame". The climax of me Aurobindonian aesthetics is in this spiritual romance between the Mother and the son. Our real being is thrilled by Her memories, Sethna has found what Ramakrishria Paramahansa calls the "post": "Hold the post hard and run circling it." This is the new romance which Sri Aurobindo has revealed in Eric, Perseus the Deliverer and Savitri. Sethna as an Aurobindonian modem recreates the new aesthetics. To imagine is to walk ahead.
GOUTAM GHOSAL
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1. Amal Kiran, Altar and Flame, Aspiration, Chariottesville, Virginia 1975, p. 1.
2. K.D. Sethna, Overhead poetry, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1972, Quoted at p. 16.
3. Amal Kiran, Altar and flame, p. 14 ("Fragments"),
4. Ibid., p. 12 ("God's Sleep").
5. Ibid., p. 15 ("After a Tuscan Saying").
6. Ibid., p. 33 ("The Sea").
7. Ibid., p. 7 (“Life's Extremist").
8. Stephen Crane, Prose- and Poetry. The Library of America, 1984.
9. Amal Kiran, Altar and Flame, p. 40 ("Pranam to the Divine Mother")
10. Ibid., p. 26 ("Dante Meets Beatrice in Purgatory").
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THE MOTHER arranged my reading Savitri with Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) in 1962.
Sri Aurobindo had first introduced Savitri to Amal in private drafts and written to him most of the letters that are now published along with the epic.
For the first time Amal and I met in 1961 upstairs in the passage which connects the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's rooms. I casually asked him about a chessboard, because the Mother and I were doing something on the theme. He drew it and made me understand it.
When we started our reading of Savitri, some interested people warned Amal against me and asked him to discontinue. Amal cut them short by saying: "The Mother has arranged our reading. Besides, I have seen and felt Huta's soul. I cannot back out."
Amal made me understand Savitri intellectually and aesthetically.
It was 7 August 1965 when I finished reading the whole of Savitri with him. I could not check my tears of joy. Amal too was moved. We shook hands over the long harmonious collaboration and absorbing discussions.
That day in the afternoon I went to the Mother to inform her about it. She smiled and heaved a sigh of happiness and said;
"Ah, one great work is done."
As soon as Amal would leave my apartment, I would write down what he had explained to me in detail. I have several cherished notebooks which are of great value to me.
Here are Amal's own words in Mother India, May 1979, p. 276:
...An appreciative treatment of Savitri in terms of its quality
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— an elucidation of its thought-content, its imagery-inspiration, its word-craft and its rhythm-impact: this the Mother did not consider as beyond another interpreter than herself. I can conclude thus because she fully approved Huta's proposal to her that I should go through the whole of the Epic with Huta during the period when the Mother and she were doing the illustrations of the poem, the Mother making outline sketches or suggesting the general description of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand producing the final finished painting.
It was a long-drawn-out pleasure - my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions, with my expository enthusiasm serving as spur, she would come out with ideas that taught a thing or two to the teacher.
I never knew he would write such a thing about me. I always marvelled at his modesty, selflessness and goodwill.
He also wrote without my knowledge in his book Life-Poetry- Yoga:
...Huta -- was indeed a far cry, Huta whom the Mother assiduously taught and inspired to paint Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri belongs to the late fifties, sixties and after, but she happens to be perhaps the single friend in relation to whom the generally forgotten proto-artist of the Ashram has lingered in stray action on private occasion.
Here is Amal's letter to me dated 4.12.74:
Dear Huta,
May 1 make a request to you? You are free to say 'No' without feeling any embarrassment. I remember that in your diary there is a statement by the Mother that before
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she came here she went through all possible occult experiences. She never told them to Sri Aurobindo but later she found them all expressed in Savitri. I should like very much to publish this statement in the February Mother India.
Will you permit me and, if you do, will you please send me as soon as possible the exact words as reported by you. I shall be thankful and, of course, I will mention that they are from you.
Yours affectionately
Amal
Later Amal gave the account of this matter in Mother India's issue of November 1982 and not in that of February 1975.
When the paintings of the whole of Savitri were over they were exhibited in February 1967 along with the Mother's sketches.
The Mother asked me not to attend the exposition. So I wrote my declaration as follows:
"All can be done if the God-touch is there."
This is what Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri.
I feel that the painting of the pictures exhibited here is explained only by this line. For the task which the Mother had given me was so immense, so beyond the capacity of the little instrument she had summoned, that only her Grace working in Sri Aurobindo's Light could have seen me through.
I am deeply grateful to the Mother for her constant personal guidance - outward as well as inward. And what shall I say of the Presence of Sri Aurobindo helping all along ?
I thank the Mother also for making possible a study of the epic with Amal Kiran.
The Mother wrote to me on-.26.1.67:
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My very dear little child Huta
Your declaration is very good indeed and it will look
quite nice where you want to put it.
With all my love for you and blessings for the exhibition.
The Mother's lovely message for the exhibition ran:
The importance of Savitri is immense.
Its subject is universal. Its revelation is prophetic.
The rime spent in its atmosphere is not wasted.
It will be a happy compensation for the feverish haste men
put now in all they do.
Amal gave me all the beautiful books he had written, with his good wishes and affection.
His wife Sehra who loved me and treated me like her own daughter was once attacked severely in her sleep by the invisible beings of the vital world. This incident was not a mere dream but a concrete experience. In relation to it, I was amazed to read in Amal's book Our Light and Delight p. 206:
...I may end by striking a spiritually optimistic note. When I had an occasion to relate the incident to Huta, she suddenly lighted upon an implication I had not guessed. I had seen only the frightful possibility of hostile blows having more and more gross-physical consequences. I had not let my mind appraise all-round the critical point at which the workings behind the scene might have arrived. But she exclaimed: "What has happened shows that the Divine Force also can now have a direct effect upon the body. If the dark powers have this new possibility, the inner Light and the higher Consciousness can just as well emerge into the body with concrete changes in it if we are truly receptive!"
The Mother, while teaching me occultism during our Savitri
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work, disclosed to me the mysteries of the higher as well as the nether worlds.
And yet another book of his, The Mother: Past-Present-Future, pp. 161-2; Amal stated my experiences and Nolini-da' s comments on them. Here is one of them:
A Dream of Reality
In a dream on 15 August 1974, early in the morning, I saw the Mother lying on a bed. Her body was immobile, I questioned myself: "If the Mother's body was put in a casket, how is it that it is here ? Then I saw her hands moving and her eyes open.
Suddenly, while I was wondering, I found her standing near me and I had the same feeling as when she used to embrace me in the old days. I was still in amazement. She then became invisible but I distinctly heard her parting words:
"I am coming."
(A comment by Nolini)
"She showed to you her living presence still continues."
Recently Amal presented to me his book The Secret Splendour - Collected Poems.
Each poem is like a fragrant flower. I was exceedingly charmed by the poem Sri Aurobindo:
All heaven's secrecy lit to one face
Crowning with calm the body's blinded cry —
A soul of upright splendour like the noon.
But only shadowless love can breathe this pure
Sun-blossom fragrant with eternity -
Eagles of rapture lifting flickerless
A golden trance wide-winged on golden air.
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SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT:
It comes from the higher mind except for the third and seventh lines which have illumination and are very fine.
Amal is a genius. His remarkable books are a great revelation to the whole of humanity.
Invariably he has been sending me birthday greetings. Here are two of them:
1
To very dear Huta
On a birthday there is usually the Shelleyan moment:
We look before and after
And pine for what is not.
For us, the birthday should bring no regret, no doubt. The "what is not" of the past is the fading of our small self in the largeness of the Divine Presence. The future's vagueness is the unlimited room the same Presence shows us for merging in the depth beyond depth that is the Mother's Love and in the height over height that is the Truth of Sri Aurobindo.
With a warm heart's wishes,
1.9.1985
From the 'Clear Ray' to ‘The Offered One.'
Dearest Huta
A happy birthday
embodying that vision of Sri Aurobindo -
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"Light, endless Light! darkness has room no more'" --
and ever voicing for earth the invocation:
"O Wisdom-splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride."
In unison with your old friend
1.9.1993
Amal never lost the chance to write me humorous notes;
Here are two masterpieces
It does not matter even if you forget. But once you remember that you have not forgotten, your memory is not yet sufficiently supramentalised like Nirod's. Wish you more progress!
I had misplaced the MS. for the October instalment of my The Story of a Soul. Then eventually I found and sent it to Amal. He wrote:
I am glad that the "Old Lady" has been saved from re-typing the Oct. instalment. Some tonic for the memory is needed - to save it from getting Nirodianly supramentalised at such a young age!
I relished his sense of humour. I like his company, because he has treasures of knowledge; he has a wonderful understanding, consideration, and a broad mind. The adjectives to describe him are not enough.
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I have been always feeling that his consciousness is flourishing in Sri Aurobindo's Light and his psychic is constantly nestled into the Mother's loving arms. That is the reason why I always sec Amal as "The Clear Ray".
May the Supreme Lord and the Supreme Mother fulfil all his highest aspirations. In Their Love
HUTA
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THE world Sri Aurobindo and the Mother tried to create here in Pondicherry under the institutional name of Sri Aurobindo Ashram during their stay of six to seven decades among us is a subject worth studying from various angles, sociological, holistic, and as a new evolutionary model and others. We know that the word 'Ashram' was used by Sri Aurobindo for want of a better word to denote what he visualised to create and found on the earth. In reality the attempt was to create a new centre of life, a centre of Life Divine. We must know mat the emphasis on Life was as great as on the word Divine. My purpose in this short essay is limited to presenting some of the physical and intellectual aspects of this unique attempt.
For our present purpose let us look at the character of this life as it has been developing through the past six or seven decades and all its various manifestations in terms of its material growth, its expanding social structure and character, its handling of material things and their appropriate organisation, its educational and cultural activities, its economic structure and functions and other new emerging trends creative or research-oriented. The very ideal of a spiritual commune demands essential freedom for its members and plasticity in its organisation and relationships in its functioning bodies. How well these factors work out in the actuality of its adventurous life towards the evolutionary goal it has set before itself should attract our keen attention and enlightened curiosity.
Any earthly existence and embodied life must take into account all the elements of existence from the material to the heavenly and find a related whole for this existence. The elements of material composition, the living and expanding factors of growth and bodily health and well-being, the positive elements of life, desires
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and emotive factors and vital and mental exchanges, the mind and its various functions, its higher and ascending reaches and the soul-life and its secret all-sustaining springheads must all find their natural place in any fuller view of life and progressive expansion and integration in a worthwhile existence. To create a field for these elements to express themselves in a free atmosphere of life in a collectivity is not only necessary; but the various contributing factors must come together to work out a rich harmony and a vibrant orchestration. It is to this end that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother undertook this difficult experiment; certainly a worthwhile task for humanity if it has to pull itself out of its present round of blind repetitiveness, devoid of a larger vision and perspective.
It is not necessary here to trace the history of the Ashram, its development and the growth of its activities, since my purpose is to give some salient features and significant results which may be found gratifying or otherwise, as the first results of a futuristic experiment of a collective life and the hazards of its growth and encourage further study.
Any individual capable of taking a broad and comparatively large and sympathetic view of the Ashram-commune and its life is first struck by its organisation, the orderly functioning of its various departments, businesslike and realistic as far as the material life is concerned. It may even appear too materialistic at first sight. The second aspect that would come to be noticed is the freedom in which the people seem to move about, a kind of laissez faire, style of life, an archipelago of separate islands of activities, both practical and spiritual-cultural. But to a sensitive being, even this practical approach will clearly appear to carry a cultural air and individual freedom and, at times, even a fair amount of individual idiosyncrasies. Behind all these variations of engrossing activities, when the evening meditation hour approaches, mere seems to descend an equalizing peace - a commonality of uplifting freedom and a sense of silent liberty from earthly inhibitions indicating the real spiritual ground of the life of the commune.
Of the various activities and services of the Ashram, utilitarian,
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agricultural, industrial, handicraft, artistic, cultural, educational, research-oriented and scientific and intellectual, with all their ramifications, the first that began to formalise and take shape from its early beginning were its literary and intellectual formulations. Practically all the first disciples of Sri Aurobindo began to write, translate and interpret Sri Aurobindo's vision and also express their own feelings, experiences and insight through poetry and prose in their native or chosen language. They all received encouragement from Sri Aurobindo, because he laid great emphasis on the clarity of perception and its right self- expression - not just adequate, but full and as perfect an expression as possible in words and rhythm and content. We need not underrate this early mental and intellectual activity. It is in the mental world that the perception of Truth and its force and light have to clearly establish themselves, preferably before they can percolate to other areas of life.
We know how Nolini and Suresh Chakrabarti, Sri Aurobindo's earliest disciples and companions, became writers of importance in Bengali before the twenties of this century and each one in his own manner and field and style of self-expression. Nolini is seen as a perceptive intellectual child of Sri Aurobindo - brief and compact in thought and diction, sensitive and intuitive in his poetry and critical and perceptive in his literary pieces. Suresh Chakrabarti established himself with a fighting force of speech and rebutting satire. Satyen, a linguist by predilection and training, began to write as if the doors of Truth were opened to him. It was a short brief hour, but brilliant and significant in its own time. In Amrita we see a power beyond him possessing him and making him say what he himself could not even comprehend at the moment. Purani began to translate Sri Aurobindo's works into Gujarati and also write on his own, and became a well-known voice reflecting Sri Aurobindo's thought in Gujarat. He also acquired renown as a proven writer of Gujarati prose. And again we find Pujalal, coming from a meek background, becoming a spontaneous voice of Saraswati, ringing with lucent rhythm and expression in Gujarati and Sanskrit verse and even sometimes in English. His was the work of an accomplished
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prosodist. The work of Kapali Sastri and Jagannath Vedalankar, both Vedic scholars, needs special mention for their expositions in Sanskrit of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas. Later came Sundaram with achievements already to his credit. He attained the highest status as a poet with many works to his credit and won the highest literary laurels. His History of Gujarati Literature and other works in prose made him one of the undisputed voices of Gujarati genius.
With the thirties came Dilip Kumar, Nirodbaran, Nishikanto, Arjava, Amal Kiran, Harindranath, Behari, Jyotin, Jyotirmoyee, Sahana-devi, Tehmi, Madhav Pandit, and others, followed by Jugal Kishore, Kishor Gandhi, A. S. Dalal, Peter, Deshpande and others. It will be difficult to go into their special contributions and the merits of their works in this essay, but they should not be underrated for that reason. However, we must make one exception here. Although many of those mentioned above are no longer with us, Amal Kiran is very much with us with a background of nearly seventy years and merits a special place for his various contributions in so many disciplines of thought and creative research. His editing of Mother India for nearly half a century is an added glory to his intellectual acumen and literary output. As a writer in English, he earned a special mention from Sri Aurobindo - "He knows how to write English", which he could not say about others. Although Amal's first love is poetry, his intellectual mind takes interest in many activities of life and thought. His letters to his friends on life, literature and yoga, his literary criticism, his political comments on the burning questions of the day as the editor of Mother India, his researches into Vedic history, Panini's age and historicity, archaeological pre- history and even Einstein's Theory of Relativity prove beyond doubt his breadth of mind and poise, his creative energy and painstaking research in whatever he deals with. Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), for all his various qualities of mind and heart, his long memories of the life of the Ashram and his vast and varied literary output, has come to occupy a unique place in the world of thought and word, created in the ambience of the Ashram.
I wish I had the competence to analyse and record the work of
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the Ashram not only in the field of cultural and intellectual activities, but also its social and educational work where the inhibiting factors of finance and resources have been kept separated from the essential work, which is how it should be in any understanding and enlightened view of life and its expanding boundaries. Today the active men of the world have neither the time nor the urge to probe into the first principles and think of reorganisation of human society on different and enduring lines. At the present juncture, it seems, Sri Aurobindo's work and initiating light and thought and the discipline he- placed before us will take centuries to be appreciated fully and made the working base on a new creation. This however should not matter if there are at least a few communes which would hold on to the light through the thickest clouds of passing darkness.
JAYANTILAL PAREKH
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Sethna on Mallarmé's Symbolist poetry
MALLARMÉ, the founder of the Symbolist Movement, presented poetry as different from ordinary reportage. He preferred to clothe his verses in deliberate shadow, never alluding to any object by mere words. It is no wonder that such a poet attracted Sri Aurobindo's comment and appreciation.
Sethna's research in Mallarmé's symbolist poetry entitled The Obscure and the Mysterious deserves our attention by his painstaking analyses, commentaries and translations which recommend Mallarmé not only to non-French foreign readers but to Indian readers as well. His interesting in-depth analysis of this obscure and mysterious poet must have certainly encouraged scholars to make a comparative study of Mallarmé's works and Sri Aurobindo in the light of the dhvani technique.
In the first part of his book, Sethna introduces Mallarmé as a man and a poet. Then, he proceeds to translate some of his poems1 and comments on a few of them. These inspiring and enlightening commentaries are based on the observations of Sri Aurobindo. The author also draws parallels from the works of Sri Aurobindo. Mallarmé's ideas are often compared with those of Valèry and others. Such a comparison with different authors helps the reader to better appreciate the poems of Mallarmé. Sethna has succeeded in helping the reader to grasp the essential significance and technique of Mallarmé.
Mallarmé the Man: Sethna portrays Mallarmé as a "man with a disciplined quest of genuine secrecies; for the depths and heights of some Mystery beyond the intellect, by an exquisite or forceful metamorphosing of both the objective world and the subjective as usually known". This objective and subjective really is seen reflected in his career as Professor. That is, two clear-cut worlds
1. It is unfortunate that somehow these got left out from the Collected Poems of Sethna. - Editors
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can be seen in his life: one, as Professor in the Lycèe; the other, as lover of the arts when he reveals himself to his writer friends. Throughout his literary career which began when he was appointed in Tournon, Mallarmé treated the unique theme of ‘poet versus poetry’. His poems reveal his true heart which, as Sethna puts it, proves his serious practice of symbolism. Such a devotion to Symbolism can be left at the Tuesday-Soirèes on the fourth floor of 89 rue de Rome where friends and disciples assembled: Maurice Barrès. Rènè Ghil, Henri de Regnier, Francis Vièlè Griffin, Gustave Kahn, Jules Laforgue, Paul Claudel, Pièrre Louys, Andres Gide, Paul Valèry...etc. No doubt, these friends enjoyed an intense inwardness in which symbolism was lived out by a religious devotion to it. After the burial of his poet-friend Mallarmé, Rodin summed up the feelings of his friends in these words: "How long would it take for nature to develop such a genius!" (Combien de temps faudra-t-il à la nature pour refaire un cerveau pareil!)
Mallarmé the Archetypal poet (le type absolu du poète): Advocating the path of symbolism in poetry, Mallarmé rejects easier means of conception and composition. He opts for writing "only the ultimately quintessential, the ideal utterance of secrecies' ". He is not only a Maitre for his disciples but also a real creative innovator." Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might say, of all modernist poetry) into a new channel, of which his poems were an opening.... The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and turn it this way and that to arrive at a mystic speech," says Sri Aurobindo. And Mallarmé prefers "to give the purest meaning of ordinary words (donner le sens le plus pur aux mots de la tribu)" and never attempted to perpetrate reportage. His poems are, therefore, more than an intellectual rendering of his vision. Maybe it is difficult to follow him with a surface understanding but he opens up like a flower little by little. The fragrance never quits the reader once he succeeds in getting to the core of his symbolism. And the obscurity disappears leaving the place to mysticism as in the case of La Chevelure Vol d'une Flamme
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in which, according to Sethna, "the mysticism is in relation to the beauty of woman and the desire-soul, two problems almost inseparable from the artistic life". In fact a sublimation of life-energy takes the poet from the material world to the realm of Art and Mysticism.
Thus, like a motif on a tapestry the symbolism of Mallarmé suggests his inner mood. Whether it is the exotic nature or a concrete object, Mallarmé’s portrayal of the world is as vivid as an aquarelle.
The Essential Significance of Mallarmé: Mallarmé considers writing poetry as an adventurous mission. It is like a voyage on the seas in rough weather. Les Fleurs (Flowers) voices the wish of every artist. It is a narrative of the poetic creation of the universe. If Mallarmé wants very often to reach the Azure, seduced by exotic nature — if he chooses to enjoy the sea-breeze - it is because of his innate desire to break loose from the momentary handicap of not writing poetry. It is from this voyage that he hopes to regain the lost nerve - un renouveau d'inspiration. But the departure is not definite; no sooner than he expressed his desire to travel over the seas, he indicates his urge to come back to make a Don du Poème. Does he not refer to the mystic birth of his vocation in Hèrodiade ?
Through the fragile smile of a woman, Mallarmé conveys the quintessence of a love imperishable! The au-delà, the 'face', the 'beloved landscape' and even some 'words used in daily life' form the symbolic content of the poems of Mallarmé. He considers everything as figurative of the sublime, but he has no personal God or religion. To him, Art is religion. He hopes to see all men assembled together in the communion of Beauty and Beauty alone. But what does he consider as Beauty? It is again Art.
Sethna has skillfully pointed out through his translation and commentaries the subtle way of expressing the meaning of life. And we can see how Mallarmé excels both as a poet and as a creator of values; for, he is bothered not about Truth but Reality. Poetry is a source of revelation for Mallarmé. It is an eye-opener; it wakes him up from deep slumber. It penetrates and illuminates.
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"Love and luxury are still for the poet a means, not the goal" - it is a means to know and understand the essence of life.
Like many other Symbolist poets, Mallarmé is attracted by exotic nature which compels him to reject all that holds him back from the Azure, (L'Azur). The Azure reminds the poet of his inability to accomplish his mission. This vast stretch of blue creates a sense of resentment in him for not accomplishing the bounden duty of a poet. Nevertheless, the poet is haunted by the Azure - Je suis hanté. L'Azur! L'Azur! L'Azur! L'Azur! The same mood forms the significance of Le Cygne (le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui) which Sri Aurobindo appreciated as "one of the finest sonnets 1 have ever read". The Swan imprisoned in the frozen lake is none other than the poet himself who, incapacitated by the unaccomplished dreams, feels the urge to fulfil his desire to create. The contrast here is not between the whiteness of the Swan and the icicles as in Spenser's Prothalomion; but, it is between the ici-has (the Swan in the frozen lake) and the là-bas (the Azure). These contradictory themes also find expression in L'Après midi d'un Faune and in Hérodiade, respectively.
The Ennui (Boredom - Spleen of Baudelaire) which Mallarmé mentions in most of his poems [Brise Marine, Renouveau, for example) is nothing but momentary inability to write poetry. Mallarmé never succumbs to the feelings of inertia; on the contrary, he wants to take wings and soar up high in the sky. It is this vernal Azure, as pointed out by Sethna, that Mallarmé envies and resents very often. In Sethna's opinion, this incomprehensible anguish forms the ruling motif of the sonnet Renouveau (Springtide). The study of the 'hair-theme’ by Sethna enables the reader to get at the essence of Mallarmé's Symbolism and psychology.
The Essential Technique of Mallarmé: Being the founder of the Symbolist movement Mallarmé uses symbols to convey his thought, to speak out his inner mystery. According to Sethna, Mallarmé takes the reader "beyond the suggestive semi-clarity that on occasion rises out of the keenly explored founts of poetic inspiration".
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The dhvani of the poems of Mallarmé unfolds the binary categories such as the 'self’ and the 'non-self’, the 'individual’ and the 'universe', the 'thought' and the 'action'. Sethna justifies this by pointing out that "Symbolism subdues the inwardly perceived to the outwardly conceived". With ample examples from Valery, Pierre Emmanuel and Wallace Stevens, Sethna beautifully brings out the dhvani technique of Mallarmé. The commentaries of Sethna, apart from drawing out the wheel-within-wheel significance, demonstrate the technique that makes the reader feel the subject-matter through a mere symbol. The technique is prominent in marking the sound-system (as in the case of Le Cygne) where "a tingling, chilling, piercing impression is created, and the various phases and nuances of the poem's mood are driven together and its manifold of pang and poise and profundity is crystallised into oneness'' through the persistence of a single alliteration.
Sethna's translations enhance the merit of Mallarmé for us. Though he admits having taken the help of Roger Fry's almost literal unrhymed version, Sethna takes care to retain the essential Mallarmé; successfully avoids over-interpretation; and renders the inexplicit original in the English language with the same suggestive touch and tone.
In short, Sethna, keeping in view Mallarmé the artist as well as Mallarmé the poet, preserves Mallarmé's mystery-in-obscurite even in the English language.
JEYARAJ DANIEL
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A New Landmark in English Poetry*
A Review-Article
SOME years ago, in a series of illuminating essays, published in the journal Arya under the title "The Future Poetry", Sri Aurobindo discussed the nature and evolution of future poetry. As the most significant poetic trend in recent times in this development he picked out the attempt to cast off the more externalised forms of poetic expression and to seek for a pure and authentic intuitive language, to bring forth the living truths of the inmost spiritual being, to reveal its light and vision, not in the inadequate speech of the surface mind but in the inspired and revelatory accent of Spirit itself. This attempt has not always been successful. In continental and English poetry it has not gone beyond a search for some inner meaning of the sensational and emotional experience and its formulation in a new kind of intuitivised expression. A few Irish and Indian poets have been able to go further and have succeeded in giving utterance to a deeper psychic and spiritual feeling and vision in a more authentically intuitive language. The secret motive-force behind all these attempts, the fundamental endeavour of the Time-Spirit, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, has been to break open the doors of our luminous inner being and to express its truth, beauty and light in its own rhythmic terms. This secret urge, however, finds its full voice in only a few (not always well- known) poets; the rest find it difficult to cast off the old habits of poetic speech and either totally fail to respond to this urge or
* This review-article was original written in 1942, soon after Mr.Sethna's small book of his poems, The Secret Splendour, was published in 1941. It was printed in the quarterly journal Triveni in its issue of March 1943. It is being reprinted in this volume with only a few minor verbal changes. Mr. Sethna has retained the same title, The Secret Splendour, for the complete edition of his Collected Poems published recently in 1993. But this review-article relates only to the earlier small book of the same title.
- Author's Note
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succeed only in making small beginnings.
All those who are acquainted with the recent poetry seeking this inward turn will not take long to find that a small book of poems lately published - The Secret Splendour by K.D. Sethna - marks a more brilliant disclosure of the unfolding spirit and a greater mastery over its native tones than what has been done before. This book is all the more remarkable because the stamp of the pure intuitive word is evident, not in a few lines or a few poems here and there but in every poem: each line of it is pregnant with a subtle, luminous, intense inspiration which seems to come from some hidden depth or height of the being.
There are several ranges of our inner self, each with its characteristic movements, forms and forces which express themselves intuitively through poetry when an opening is made to them. Broadly speaking, we can say that our inner being is composed of three parts: first, a luminous subliminal being behind each aspect of our surface personality - the inner mind, the inner vital and the subtle physical; second, an inmost psychic being or soul behind these inner parts; third, the higher planes of the spiritual consciousness posited in Yogic psychology above the mind-level. Most of the spiritual poetry so far has drawn its inspiration either from the luminous subliminal regions or from the psychic. Except in very rare cases there hardly exists any poetry derived from the spiritual planes above the mind. Poetry drawing its inspiration from these planes has been termed by Sri Aurobindo "Overhead Poetry", and its main characteristics are a language charged with a profound and vast sense of spiritual vision and experience, an intense absoluteness of expression that is sweepingly powerful yet perfectly poised, and an unfathomable rhythmic movement carrying with it overtones and undertones of luminous suggestion. To write "overhead" poetry is an extremely difficult thing, its highest pitch so difficult and rare to reach that any poet successfully bringing or bearing its authentic inspiration would be worthy of a very high status among poets and his work must be hailed as a new and momentous landmark in the history of poetic development. Though all the poems in this book are not derived from the "overhead" source, yet there are a sufficient
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number of them which unmistakably embody the "overhead" inspiration and are surcharged with its intense and unfathomable spiritual feeling, vision and vibration not yet evident in the current poetic literature. This entitles Mr. Sethna to the rare distinction of an innovator in the field of poetry. In his work we confront the splendour of a new age of poetic art.
The poet expresses his inspiration, "overhead" or otherwise, in many veins; sometimes in a strain of subtle suggestive delicacy as in:
Intangible she glimmers
Through solitary night,
A nameless moonday weaving
Her body's deathless white;
sometimes in an air of haunting exquisite mystery:
O halo of hair,
God's benediction on her mortal head,
Across my gloom ray down your tenderness!
O dream-cascade of splendour - to the quiet
Music of your faint filling I would die;
Upon heart-soothing spirit cadences
Carry me over the dread verge of time!
But his power is more characteristically revealed in lines which suggest an atmosphere surcharged with a subtle luminous wideness and intensity and an amplitude of visionary force:
The haunting rapture of the vast dream-wind
That blows, star-fragrant, from eternity,
or
The hours go drunken with a honeyed hum
Of heartbeats round immortal fragrances
In a spirit wideness sown with spirit stars,
or else,
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A light, a hush immense
Falls suddenly upon my voice of tears
Out of a sky whose each blue moment bears
The shining touch of that omnipotence.
This power reaches its height in various poems - in lines like
Your spirit in my spirit, deep in the deep,
Walled by a wizardry of shining sleep...
One with thy nameless root, O mystic rose...
An ageless God-delight embracing all
The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind...
One of the most perfect examples of the "overhead" style sustained on the topmost peaks is Gnosis - an extraordinary poem. which has for its very theme the soar of the mystic consciousness, hushed and entranced, to those supreme heights:
No clamorous wing-waft knew the deeps of gold.
An eagle lost in earth-forgetfulness,
Rising without one stir of dreamy feather,
Life gains the Unmeasured through a flame of sleep -
A love whose heart is white Tranquillity
Upborne by vast surrender to this Sun.
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 compactness and high severity of the poet's speech is clearly noticeable in all his poems. He has a remarkable way of achieving the highest intensity by compressing not only a particular idea in a few words, but also various shades of significance in a single phrase. Mark the force of the following lines taken from different poems:
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A loneliness of superhuman night....
One ample azure brimming every thirst...
A flaming crown of godhead over life...
A force drunk with its own infinitude...
Gigantic rapture rolling from within...
Mr. Sethna seems to be essentially a spiritual seeker. His primary aim is to aspire for a contact with the Divine and not to remain satisfied with being merely a poet. To him his pursuit of poetry is justified only if it leads him further in his Godward Journey. His Ultima expresses this idea beautifully:
If each delightful cadence
Mark not a flight to Thee,
My fancy's airiest radiance
Profanes its own mute core of mystery!
The same idea takes another form in Evils:
With you unseen, what shall my song adore ?
Though waves foam-garland all the saffron shore
My music cannot mingle with their tone,
Because a purer worship I have known,
and also in Grace:
Pale brow your dream-kiss like a gem.
If unto tone-faced poverty
You give your blessing's diadem.
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The poet's approach to the Divine is through love but his love does not express itself in a profuse lyrical outburst. He prefers to express his emotion in a few significant words as he feels the utter futility of mere words:
With skill of mortal tongue how shall I phrase
A mirroring glory for her glorious face ?
Instead of indulging in "ineffectual words" he chooses to shape his love to a quiet consecration:
Needs must the soul express
Its thrilled response to her divinity ?
In silence 'twere more meet
To touch with lips of fervour those earth-sojourning feet!
It is not that the poet lacks keen susceptibility to earth's beauty -
I was a devotee of splendid hush -
Silvery moonglobe's surf-awaking sleep,
Purple precipitous lone-brooding steep
Of massive hills where wind and water rush.
But this outward beauty does not satisfy his soul because in it
Always a rapture
Remains untold,
An infinite vista
No eyes behold.
Dawn, noon, evening, night, all have a strong fascination for the poet and this he sometimes expresses in lines of extreme felicity:
How earth-strange on the ethereal way
Travels the first wing-carillon
A-tremble with the silver dawn
Ere rush of golden day;
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or,
In cloud-suspense the faint breeze died;
A deep glow spread on every side;
The firmamental hush came down,
A mirrored soul of aureate brown
Subduing each form-shade to one
Pervasive ecstasy of sun;
While the vague deepening silence falls immense
On eve's dim echoes of the sunken day
Ere the cold stars emerge.
But here too his enchantment with outward beauty lures him inward to the mystery of divine beauty. Under the spell of the dawn, for example, he feels:
The heart, a hovering consciousness,
Thrills on some paradisal verge
As if awakening to merge
With beauty sorrowless.
He invariably turns the outward facts of Nature into symbols of inward mystery ever present at the heart of things. Night, for which the poet has a peculiar attraction, becomes for him a sanctuary of the Spirit:
Night has a core
Sense never knows
Either through glow-worm wandering white
Or silver-calm tuberose.
It turns into a symbol of the spiritual silence which precedes the fullness of divine revelation:
The darkness is a miracle of death
Into mysterious God-life brimming high
With dewy singlehood of earth and sky.
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To understand Mr. Sethna's poetry we must go beyond mere intellectual judgment. We must receive its impact inwardly, by spiritual feeling. The thing to be appreciated is so subtle and occult at times that it escapes all attempts at analysis. This may create a certain difficulty for the average reader, but no literary innovator makes facile reading. Mr. Sethna calls for a deep brooding attention on our part, no matter how brief his utterance may be.
The smallest poem in the book is about the greatest mystic of our times — Sri Aurobindo. Mr. Sethna has paid the highest possible tribute to this mighty soul in his profound, significant, highly-compressed vision-evoking style:
Crowning with calm the body's blinded cry -
A soul of upright splendour like the noon!
Eagles of rapture lifting, flickerless,
Lines like these are a fit offering to the Master, because they bear out Sri Aurobindo's own prophecy that the future poetry will shape its utterance in the language of a higher illumined and intuitive mind "swallowing up the intellectual tones into the closeness and identities of a supra-intellectual light and Ananda".
KISHOR GANDHI
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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
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:
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
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,
Intellectual Paradigms of our Age
IN HIS centenary tribute to Sri Aurobindo, K.D. Sethna (Mother India, 1972) observed: "This age, seen in its many-sided whole, will show itself secretly Aurobindonian. Sri Aurobindo will stand out as its truth-source and truth-focus, its natural gatherer-up and destined fulfiller." I present in this paper some evidence that will substantiate Sethna's claim about Sri Aurobindo. I shall show briefly what light Sri Aurobindo throws on some of the most influential intellectual paradigms of our age, such as, the liberal conception of man enshrined in the Western democracies, the Marxist conception of an ideal society, and the religious ideal of a transcendental fulfilment of life. Such an exploration will inevitably lead us to an examination of Marx, Freud and Darwin, the dominant intellectual influences of our age. In my opinion, although each one of these thinkers has brought to humanity a great truth, the illumination Sri Aurobindo's writings throw on them reveals their exaggerations and incompleteness and also offers to each of them the corrective needed.
Remain Holland described Sri Aurobindo as "the completest synthesis that has been realised to this day of the genius of Asia and the genius of Europe". The English novelist Dorothy M. Richardson once wrote to K. R. Srinivasa lyengar:1 "Has there ever existed a more synthetic consciousness than that of Sri Aurobindo ? Unifying he is to the limit of the term." S.K. Maitra2 has demonstrated in some detail how Indian and Western thought have met in Sri Aurobindo. He says: "...[that] this meeting is not a mere handshake, but [that] there is a real
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synthesis of these two types of thought in him. There is even something more, a fulfilment of what each aims at but has not been able to realise." Thus one of the most striking features of Sri Aurobindo's intellectual temper is his capacity for finding the core of truth each intellectual perspective contains and to harmonise it with the truths contained in other perspectives which are equally valid but to a superficial view not mutually congruous.
Professor Gabriel Monod-Herzen,3 the well-known French physicist, once explained in what sense Sri Aurobindo embodied for him the quintessence of the scientific spirit. "There are two attitudes in him which I most admire: The first is that he does not reject anything or anyone; there is a place for all opinions, even those which he does not accept, in his work. He has come to find that particle of truth that exists in everything because without it that opinion itself could nor exist. One never feels a prisoner of ideas when one reads him. One never save, 'This is falsehood', or else 'That person is wrong'; one says, 'Here is an incomplete idea.' Being a physicist, I was deeply struck because I had always been greatly impressed by the fact that the long succession of scientists did not contradict one another, as say those who have not studied science themselves. In fact they complement one another."
This is a most remarkable feature of Sri Aurobindo's intellectual temper. The human intellect by nature is incapable of seeing the truth of anything in its integrality. It has to break reality into parts and if it seizes upon one or more parts, it has automatically to reject some other. But Sri Aurobindo is the one thinker I know of who overcomes this inherent limitation of human reason. To cite a couple of examples of this: Although Sri Aurobindo does not accept in its entirety either the philosophy of Buddhism or of the Vedanta as interpreted by Shankara, he is second to none in acknowledging the truth of the spiritual experiences on which these philosophies were based and the great contributions made to spirituality by Buddha and Shankara. Similarly, although he does not favour asceticism, he pays high tribute to asceticism and recognise the value of the spiritual experience supporting it.4
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Among numerous such instances in his writings, I would like to refer here particularly to one which occurs in his brief essay on Materialism.5 In this article he goes on to say that the godheads of Materialism, namely, reason, science, progress and freedom in fact are preparing humanity for a greater religion than it has had in the past.
This brings me to the main point I wish to make here. In the intellectual domain what Sri Aurobindo offers us is not just one more corpus of a logically established theory about some aspect or domain of human life or of Nature but an integral theory of Man, Nature and God which is explanatorily more adequate than any other theory available to us now. In fact it made him far too comprehensive and global for the limited interests and mental horizon of most intellectuals. If anybody offers such a comprehensive theory we are either not interested or too sceptical about the whole enterprise and tend to dismiss it out of hand.
Is his theory verifiable? Sri Aurobindo has explained several times how spiritual truths require verification of a kind other than what is feasible in physical sciences. In A Defence of Indian Culture, he refers to experience, experimental analysis and synthesis, reason and intuition as the tests which are valid for spiritual truths as they are for scientific truths. This is also explained in several of his letters.
Another feature of Sri Aurobindo's writings is that whether it is the exegesis of ancient scriptural texts like the Gita, or the Vedas, or the future of evolution, or of something as specific as English poetry, he always speaks with the supreme assurance of one who knows what he is talking about, of somebody who is merely describing what he has seen. Often the details which he gives of them are so precise that only one who has seen what he is describing could have given them. He is a seer in the real sense of the term. In his writings there is not the tension of a purely speculative philosopher who builds an elaborate logical structure to convince himself that what he is saving is after all plausible but is never sure he has in fact guarded all his flanks. Sri Aurobindo affirms this when he says: "Experience and formulation of experience I consider as the true aim of philosophy. The rest is
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merely intellectual work and may be interesting but nothing more." Monod-Herzen also refers to this quality of Sri Aurobindo's writings when he says: "The impression I had in reading The Life Divine was not at all that of receiving what is ordinarily called a lesson in philosophy, but of listening to a traveller who had discovered a new land."
The sheer brilliance and grandeur of Sri Aurobindo as a seminal and creative thinker is an aspect of him which we often tend to overlook because of his achievements as a yogi and mystic. To give only two examples, it can be said without being guilty of exaggeration or partisanship that nobody has built a metaphysical thought-structure as grand as the one in Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, or sounded the depths of the soul-culture of India as he has in his The Secret of the Veda and The Foundations of Indian Culture. His comprehensive writings on yoga, on the evolution of social and political institutions, on the desirability and possibility of a World Union, on literary criticism, his exegeses of Indian scriptural literature, his scintillating letters on a variety of life-problems, and his literary output which finds its crowning achievement in the cosmic epic Savitri - every one of these is stamped with the force of his intellectual genius.
And yet, none of these seems to have persuaded the academics in Indian universities to take more than a peripheral interest in Sri Aurobindo. Some years ago C.D. Narasimhaiah,6 the well-known literary scholar and critic, observed that in his The Future Poetry Sri Aurobindo had given certain clear guidelines which if followed would have led to the inauguration of an Indian school of literary criticism- Narasimhaiah notes with anguish that this lead was not followed by our academics and even today, nearly seventy years after The Future Poetry, we continue to produce literary criticism which is derivative and imitative of the West.
What Narasimhaiah has pointed out about Sri Aurobindo's literary criticism is true in my view of Sri Aurobindo's writings in general. For most of the intelligentsia in our country, particularly for those in our universities, Sri Aurobindo is no more than a vague and misty figure. At best they have heard of him as a mystic and a Vedantin, and therefore they feel fully justified in dismis-
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sing him as someone whose concern was other-wordly and therefore of no consequence to their scholarly interests. His epochal role in shaping the political consciousness of this country in the early years of this century is probably known only to specialist students of Indian history. His contribution to political and social thought, to psychology, to the discovery of the real meaning of the Vedas, to the philological studies of Indian languages, his luminous interpretations of India's past, his epoch- making contributions to Yoga, and to philosophy which offer the best framework for reconciling most of the antinomies of the East and the West, - none of these has created any enthusiasm among our professional intellectuals in the universities. His work as a literary figure, as the creator of a new kind of poetry, is the one small part of the corpus of his writings that has received some attention, for the most part hostile, from poets, poetasters, and sundry critics most of whom, I dare say, did not have the decency of reading him before pronouncing on him.
This is a sad situation because it has made our country deny to itself the benefit of reviving itself at the fountain of one of the most creative intellectuals of this century. Did the French savant Remain Rolland not describe him as the last of the great Rishis who held in his hand, in firm unrelaxed grip, the bow of creative energy ? The creative energy of Sri Aurobindo's writings, if only we had tapped it, would have by now freed the minds of our countrymen from the stranglehold of Western domination, and shown us the way of building up a country strong, prosperous, confident, united and abundantly creative in all fields of art, science, culture and human endeavour.
The Indian intellectual today is in a most unenviable position. He hesitates to turn for inspiration to his own indigenous tradition or anything based on this tradition because of his superstition that it is obscurantist, anti-intellectual, emasculating, other-worldly and life-negating. His normal mood is one of cynicism, and his role in the life of the country has in effect been more destructive than constructive. Such a stance is hardly conducive to willed action in the diverse fields of national endeavour. If only our countrymen had followed the lead given
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by Sri Aurobindo, India would have by now been well on its way to realise its destiny.
With this we now return to the main objective of this paper, which is to review the intellectual contours of this age in the light of Sri Aurobindo, most aptly described by C.R. Reddy as "the sole sufficing genius of our age".
We begin with Marxism. The recent happenings in the Soviet Union and other East European countries clearly suggest that Marxist communism has swiftly collapsed. It is true that Sri Aurobindo rejected Marxism as an erroneous and fallacious doctrine, but he gave it credit for the role it has played in shaping the progressive movement of humanity, particularly during the fifty years after the end of the first World War. It has dealt a crushing blow to the monster of European capitalist industrialism and humanised it. Capitalism may have survived but it is no more the cruel thing that Marx found it to be in his time, and we have to be grateful to Marxism for this human face it has forced on capitalism.
On the theoretical level, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the characteristic doctrines of Marxism because there are at least three main versions of it. The oldest of these is the social-democratic version; the second is the communist version which acquired widespread influence after the October 1917 Russian Revolution, and the third version is what emerged after the Second World War and which deals primarily with the problem of human alienation and how to overcome it.7 The last of these is the Existentialist theory of Marxism and is based on Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts which remained unpublished until 1932. It has been pointed out by students of Marxism that accepting any one of these versions entails rejecting in large parts the two other versions. The Existentialist view of Marxism is based on the manuscripts of Marx written before he had become a Marxist.
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Marx's theory of alienation arises out of his theory of the nature of man. In the West there is the liberal conception of man competing with the Marxist conception. The liberal conception of man was developed by such classical writers as Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham, and John Stuart Mill and is enshrined in the liberal democracies of the West and is incorporated in the thinking of influential philosophers like Karl Popper. The defenders of Western democracies such as Karl Popper do not deny that, as in all social orders, in Western democratic societies too, there has been injustice and repression, poverty and destitution. But these evils are constantly combated in western societies, and as a result there is less injustice and repression there, less poverty and destitution, than in any other social order we know of. Popper advocates rational argument and democratic process as the best way of bringing about gradually the changes required in these democracies.8 Critics of Western democracies find this assumption of Popper's quite naive, because there is an important difference between the development of scientific theories and the relations between individuals and classes in society, namely the presence of power-dimension in the latter.
Sri Aurobindo of course would have no sympathy with the basically hedonistic concept of man in this ideology, because it regards man as no more than an animal with a mind. He recognises that reason is a powerful tool in the analysis and eradication of the ills in the social, political and economic life of human societies but that does not make reason a sufficient basis for democracy. In practice it is often a dominant class which rules over the ignorant masses. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that the expectation that universal education will strengthen human rationality has also proved to be unfounded.9
Sri Aurobindo is as much a firm believer in the Open Society and democracy as Karl Popper is, except that in his view the true democratic ideal cannot be achieved except on the foundation of spiritual comradeship or brotherhood; human rationality alone is too frail for this task.
For Marx alienation is man's losing himself in the things he makes, man's inability to experience himself as the acting agent in
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his grasp of the world. It is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, receptively, as the subject separated from the object. It is the lack of a sense of meaning, as if one's life has become a pawn that is being manipulated. Lack of self-realization is one of the main forms of alienation. The worst feature of capitalism is that people do not even realise that they are alienated. Capitalism drives people to be mere consumers and curbs their aspiration for self-realization. He defines self-realization as the full and true actualization and externalization of the powers and abilities of the individual. Marx believes that alienation can be overcome only in a society whose end is man, not the production of objects.
This Marx sounds almost like a resident of Auroville or of some such spiritually oriented community because his primary concern for self-realization is, what I would call, basically spiritual. In some places in the Manuscripts he seems to suggest that some primordial act of alienation has taken place in human development which is not to be traced to the economic process, but which in fact generates private property and its attendant evils. What was this act of alienation ? Unfortunately, the Manuscripts breaks off before we have the answer. The answer that Marx was seeking but could not formulate is that alienation in the generalized sense is primarily psychic, not sociological. It is not a proprietary distinction that exists between men of different classes but rather a disease that is rooted inside all men.
But unfortunately Marx himself did not seem to appreciate the implications of his insight, because he goes on to maintain the thesis that it was "not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness".10
There can be no doubt that Marx was wrong in coming to this conclusion. For one thing the typical alienation phenomena are observable in socialist economic systems as well. Secondly, as pointed out by Erich Fromm,11 alienation is not a distinctive characteristic that can be assigned to any social or economic structure, and that change in these structures alone will not eradicate alienation. There must be spiritual liberation as well. Socialisation of the
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means of production, Fromm recognises, is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for overcoming alienation.
One of the most balanced appraisals of communism and socialism can be found in Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle. The following two quotes from his Thoughts and Aphorisms very neatly summarise his critique of Marxist socialism.
1. "The communistic principle of society is intrinsically as superior to the individualistic as is brotherhood to jealousy and mutual slaughter; but all the practical schemes of Socialism invented in Europe are a yoke, a tyranny and a prison."
2. "If communism ever re-establishes itself successfully upon earth, it must be on a foundation of soul's brotherhood and the death of egoism. A forced association and a mechanical comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco."
We need not dwell on this aspect of Marxism here because we are now dealing with the Existentialist, the almost-spiritual Marx. With respect to Marx's struggle to understand the phenomenon of alienation, I have often felt about Marx what Sri Aurobindo once said about D,H. Lawrence12 - that he was a Yogi who had missed his way. If only he had the benefit of an understanding of the spiritual complexities of the being of man, he would not have floundered on the question whether alienation is brought about by the exploitative reality of the social system or by deeper psychic reasons. It is such an understanding of the spiritual complexities of the being of man that is one of the great contributions of Sri Aurobindo. He was emphatic that man must turn inwards and seek a deeper source of guidance than the fallible intellect and that he must live in his soul and make it the leader of the march. If this is not the solution, then, he said, there is no other.
Marx shows some intuitive awareness of the need for such a spiritual foundation to social institutions when he describes his conception of a classless society as one in which the freedom of each person will find in the freedom of every other person "not its limitation but its fulfilment". This is almost reminiscent of the lofty sentiments expressed in the Upanishads and the Gita: "All in the Self, the Self in all, and all as the Self."
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Like Marx, Freud too held that man is the victim of false consciousness from which he must be freed if he is to achieve fulfilment; but their diagnoses are built around entirely different principles, Marx blamed the exploitative reality of the social system for this falsification while Freud blamed it on the hidden content of the subconscious. In his civilization and its Discontent,13 Freud made explicit his assumption that human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and this can lead to a edge. But for him self-knowledge meant "the knowledge of personal causes, not transcendent needs, of organic appetites, not spiritual purpose. Freud's conviction was that the quest for the self must take us down and back - into the juice and tissue of our physical nature, into its infantile fantasies and passions. The way to sanity lay through history of the body and its many thwarted gratifications.”14
Sri Aurobindo in one of his letters refers to the new psychologists and psychiatrists in the West and gives his evaluation of them as follows: "This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground superego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esām. The superconscient is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its mystery is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can know the part and they highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings
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will disappear and come to nothing."15
Indra Sen16 and Charles Maloney17 have written most insightfully about the evolutionary or Integral psychology of Sri Aurobindo, and shown how the movement which Freud began finds its proper direction and fulfilment in Sri Aurobindo. Here it is only necessary to compare briefly the salient features of the psychology of Freud with those of Sri Aurobindo's Integral psychology.
As Maloney has pointed out, Freud gave to the West a whole new concept of mental health and of the therapies needed to combat such cultural ailments as loneliness, boredom, anxiety, alienation from self, others and nature. The basis of these therapies is the analysis of the subconscious and the raising of the suppressed cause of the ailment to the plane of consciousness. In recent years there has been an increase in the range of therapies practised and we have today transactional analysis, Rolfing, primal therapy, psychodrama, Gestalt, hypnotherapy, existential analysis, drug therapy and behavioural therapies. These therapies emphasise as the principle of integration and healing either the truth of our being be sufficiently explained in terms of the mind, the vital and the physical ? Sri Aurobindo has shown that the consciousness and force necessary for the integration of the being resides not in the mental, vital or physical components but in a higher consciousness which both transcends and is immanent in the three aspects of our being, - in the spiritual dimension of our being. The spiritual, according to Sri Aurobindo, is "the true foundation of things ... the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour..."The concept of Yoga developed in India can be an excellent and surer foundation for psychotherapies than anything that Freud or his disciples have come up with. Sri Aurobindo describes Yoga as "nothing but practical psychology" but with a much greater range and depth than the goals and techniques of most Western psychology. Yoga demands as a preparatory requirement that we become conscious fully of ourselves, of our nature, of how and why we do things or feel or think them, of our motives and impulses, of the forces apparent
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and hidden that move us. In this attempt to be conscious of all the parts of our being, we discover our spiritual being as well. This higher consciousness of the spirit is knowledge as well as power and holds the key to a total healing and integration of the being.
He views the problem also from the evolutionary perspective. He looks upon the present organisation of the human consciousness which is an amalgam of mind-formations, life-movements and physical functioning's as transitional. The aim of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga is nor only to bring about the integration of the human being which is the aim of psychotherapy but also to hasten immeasurably the realisation of the supramental consciousness. Sri Aurobindo's challenge to psychologists is that they recognise this fourth or the spiritual dimension in man, because one must know the whole before one can know the part and the highest before one can truly understand die lowest.
Not too long ago when Indra Sen drew the attention of some of our academics in Indian universities to the rich psychological systems implicit in the traditional Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, Tantric Yoga and also in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the responses he got from some of the academics were interesting. "They showed a clear recognition and appreciation of the tradition of psychological knowledge in India and yet do not know how to recover that tradition in the present situation and bring it into an adjustment with the Western approach which is now the established fact with us.”18 Some of these scholars pleaded ignorance of the psychological facts involved in the yogic and religious experience. We still seem to be awaiting a Carlos Castenada to teach us how to go about making a study of the psychology of yoga academically respectable!
4
Lewis Mumbord tells us that every historical era has its dominant themes and emergent themes. While science, secular humanism,
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social revolution, and global industrialism have been the dominant themes of this age, its emergent theme has been developed by those who see man as an unfinished animal, or in Sri Aurobindo's terms, man as a "transitional being" summoned to rise to his unrealised evolutionary possibilities. It is a sure indication of Sri Aurobindo's centrality to our age that this happens to be a cornerstone of his theory of Man, Nature and God.
It is said that The Bible, Newton's Principia Mathematica, Marx's Das Kapital, and Darwin's Origin of the Species rank among the most influential (if least read!) books of all time. The full title of Darwin's book spells out its message unambiguously: The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection; it has also a subtitle which further clarifies its message: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. When the idea of evolution was presented in the middle of the 19th century it is said to have broken like a hurricane on the entire intellectual life of the day. [The Origin of the Species was published on 24 November 1859 and all the copies were sold out the same day.] But Darwin's theory of evolution now looks vulnerable, even from a scientific point of view, and the time seems to be ripe for a concept more profound to come on the stage.
During the last 150 years many theories of evolution have been propounded. In the West, the problem of evolution has been tackled from two points of view - biological and metaphysical. Among the former there are mechanistic theories of Darwin, Spencer, Weisman, and De Vries. According to these theories there is no goal in evolution, and evolution is purely the outcome of chance variation in structure and function. The Lamarckian theory introduces the element of purpose in evolution. Bergson's creative evolution opposes both the mechanistic theory of Darwin and also the ideological theory of Lamarck. Bergson posits a life-force which goes on creating ever new forms. Loyd Morgan and Alexander developed the theory of emergent evolution, which provides for the emergence of a new quality in the process of evolution. Hegel developed the metaphysical theory of evolution and used the dialectic method to show how evolution of thought proceeded.
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It is the uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo that not only does his theory of evolution bring together the best in the Eastern and Western systems, but it also opens up new vistas. He has explained the difference between the scientific theory of form-evolution and his theory of the evolution of consciousness in these words: "A theory of spiritual evolution is not identical with a scientific theory of form evolution and physical-life evolution; it must stand on its own inherent justification: It may accept the scientific account of physical evolution as a support or an element, but the support is not indispensable. The scientific theory is concerned only with the outward and visible machinery and process, with the detail of Nature's execution, with the physical development of things in Matter; its account of the process may have to be considerably changed or may be dropped altogether in the light of new discovery, but that will not affect the self-evident fact of a spiritual evolution, an evolution of Consciousness, a progression of the soul's manifestation in material existence.''19
It is through his theory of evolution that Sri Aurobindo so triumphantly brings together the fundamental truths of materialism and spirituality. According to him what is evolving is consciousness, and evolution is basically spiritual. Evolution is preceded by involution. First, there is the descent of the absolute Reality into the density of the Inconscient from where it again climbs back to the plenary splendour of the Divine consciousness. Mind evolved out of Life because Mind was involved in Life, and Life evolved out of Matter because it was involved in Matter. Evolution is not mechanical; it has a goal and it is upward bound. The higher level of consciousness is always the emergent principle, and it is the Divine who is both the alpha and the omega of evolution. For Sri Aurobindo the Absolute is both being and becoming. He emphasises how with the emergence of a higher principle the lower principle are transformed under its power. And finally for him evolution is individual as well as cosmic.
In the final analysis evolution, for Sri Aurobindo, is "nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of
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material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being". Sri Aurobindo has given to the world his Integral Yoga which is a methodised effort at individual as well as cosmic fulfilment. All life is in fact Nature's yoga undertaken to manifest the Divine involved in Nature. This is in fact the true aim of all religion. However, religions including Hinduism are facing a crisis because they have lost sight of this true aim.
What then is the ideal that humanity or the Time Spirit cherishes today, no matter what religion one belongs to? A divine and terrestrial perfection of the human being, not just the perfection of the soul but the harmonious perfection of the whole being of man. Such an integral perfection is the deepest, ineradicable urge of the human consciousness. We must develop a new yoga which aims not at a departure out of the world and life into Heaven or Nirvana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central objective. It is not enough to have yogas which enable us to rise to the higher levels of consciousness; it is necessary also to have a yoga which enables us to bring down the power of these higher supramental levels of consciousness to transform the lower nature so that there can be a divine fulfilment of life. The objective here is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth consciousness as a whole. No Plato and no Marx ever thought of such a Republic based on a communism of the spirit. The Divine Materialism and Spiritual Communism advocated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is such a revolutionary concept that it is no wonder that the world has yet to grasp its full implications.
I am conscious of the fact that I have not been able to give more than a hurried and very sketchy account of in what sense Sri Aurobindo is, in Sethna's words, "the truth-focus and natural gatherer-up and destined fulfiller of our age". An indication of what he has given us can only be given in his own words from Savitri:
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He sang the Inconscient and its secret self,
Its power omni potent knowing not what it does,
All shaping without will or thought or sense,
Its blind unerring occult mystery,
And darkness yearning towards the eternal Light,
And Love that broods within the dim abyss
And waits the answer of the human heart,
And death that climbs to immortality.
He sang of the Truth that cries from Night's blind deeps,
And the Mother Wisdom hid in Nature's breast
And the Idea that through her dumbness works
And the miracle other transforming hands,
Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun
And mind subliminal in mindless life,
And the consciousness that wakes in beasts and men.
He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born,
Of the Godhead throwing off at last its veil,
Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,
Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,
Heart sensing heart, thought looking straight at thought,
And the delight when every barrier falls,
And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.20
MANGESH V. NADKARNI
1. Sri Aurobindo: a biography and a history(1985)
2. The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy(1968)
3. Reminiscences of Sri Aurobindo in Mother India(1972)
4. The Life Divine, Centenary Edition , p. 24.
5. Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, Centenary Edition, p.245.
6. Aurobindo: Inaugurator of Modern Indian Criticism in the Literary Criterion; Vol. 15. No. 2, 1980.
7. Sydney Hook, Marxism and Beyond, Rowman and Littlefield, 1983.
8. A.T. Ferguson, Revolution or reform, (ed.), New University Press(1956).
9. The Human Cycle.
10. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts(1932).
11. Marx's concept of Man(1961).
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12. The Future Poetry, Centenary edition, p.536.
13. Translated by J.Riviere(1953).
14. Theodore Roszak, The making of Counter Culture(1969).
15. Letters on Yoga, Centenary Edition, pp. 608-1609
16. Integral psychology(1986).
17. Evolutionary psychology: Mother India (1975).
18. Indra Sen, Integral psychology (1986).
19. The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp. 835-36
20. Savitri, Cent. Ed., pp. 416-17.
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Sethna has a sound theory of poetry inasmuch as he views the poem as an organic whole and accepts that poetry is a house of several mansions. Stressing the interdependence of form and content and the need to awake to the presence of the form in every poem, he observes: “You may have always been aware that poetry says wonderful things, but you must realise that the wonderfulness is bound up with the manner of saying: The words are such as draw attention to themselves either by their fineness or by their sensitive combination and the sounds are a direct power and both make a marked pattern exciting the eye and ear.”1
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By form he does not mean the mere technique but what he calls the internal form. Form is not something superadded for decorative purposes. The matter cannot be cut asunder from the manner: "The how of expression originates in the how of experience or, to be more accurate, in the how of vision and emotion." (p. 6) While speaking of the poetic process, he realises the need to choose the via media between the Romantic and the Classicist notions. Poetry is neither total 'dream-work' nor total 'brain-work'; it is not merely the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings nor is it a simple product of intellectual labour: "But mere expression of emotion and imagination is not poetry; shudders and screams, fantasies and nightmares do not immediately make art. The aesthetic instinct and the intuitive sense have to work, at once intensifying and chastening emotion and imagination. Nor can we, who are not primitives, not Australian black fellows, bypass the intellect: We have to be both finer and subtler with its aspirations and acutenesses, even while avoiding its dry breath of abstraction." (p. 11)
What is the nature of poetic truth and how is it distinguished from scientific truth? Again, Sethna seems to have examined the views of I.A. Richards and others on the subject and arrived at a sane conclusion: "Poetry goes beyond the usual knowledge acquired by looking outward or inward. It plunges farther than the objective or subjective surface of being - without really rejecting this surface. It sees the surface as constituting symbols of a hidden reality and, as its intensest, it lays a hand however lightly on the body of that reality itself. In various ways it uses the surface of being, objective or subjective, as pointers, peep-holes, glimmerings of a secret Splendour or a magnificent Mystery." (p 14) The poet may not always fly away from objective facts but he does not stay locked up in them. On the other hand, he uses them as symbols to drive home to our souls his sense of that reality.
Many great critics including Johnson, Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis at times committed ridiculous blunders in their estimates of poets and poems just because they failed to realise that there can be an endless variety of poems. Each of them was particularly fond of one type of poetry -
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romantic or classicist, realistic or transcendental, pure or didactic, atheistic or religious, good or great - and ignored even the best in other types. Sethna is aware of the loss caused by this folly: "Poetry is of an endless diversity and we shall lose much if we are too choosy." (p. 20)
There has been a wide spectrum of responses to the question, Who is a poet? He is a moralist, a reformer, a seer, a man talking to men, an unacknowledged legislator of the world or philosopher, a logician and a metaphysician all rolled into one. Rejecting the present Western concepts, Achebe, an African writer, made bold to claim that an artist has to be primarily a teacher. Sethna's description of the poet's role is unique. He feels that the poet is what Satyavan is called in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: ''A wanderer communing with depth and image." The poet moves among a diversity of things but communes with the beyond and experiences profundities in all with which he establishes a contact of consciousness. While picturing the poet's activity, Shakespeare speaks of the poet's eye which, "in a fine frenzy rolling", glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, as his pen gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Sethna's contention is that though the poet is fundamentally concerned with the activity of the eye, he does not stop with mere sight of the surface of reality as there has to be always something unfathomable about his vision. Combining Shakespeare's conception with Sri Aurobindo's insistence on "the eternity of the vision", Sethna declares "The Eternal Eye is at the back of all poetic perfection, and what this Eye visions is the Divine Presence taking flawless shape in a super-cosmos. To that shape the poet, in one way or another, converts the objects or events he depicts." (p. 25)
Given his eclectic theory of poem and his acquaintance with diverse types of writings in more than one literature, he may be expected to be objective and dispassionate in his estimate of any literary form or poet or period in the history of English literature. Not many critics who have undertaken to compare Shelley and Keats have been absolutely fair to both. Keats easily winning their sympathy and admiration for various reasons, Shelley would have to serve as the foil. In Leavis's uncharitable comparative
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study, for example, Shelley appears to be a minor poetaster by the side of a major poet endowed with all enviable gifts. Sethna, on the other hand, is able to identify the merits and limitations of both with clinical precision: “In Shelley it is the singing impulse that is predominant, in Keats the impulse by which the song is made. Shelley is busy primarily with the soul that is to be embodied, Keats with the body that is to be ensouled. But both of them at their best have equally the soul and the body. The difference of stress brings, of course, a difference in the texture of their work. Shelley's work is not so attention-drawing in details as is Keats's. It has more a general sweep of lustrous language, while Keats's has a specific, a distinct, an individualised sparkle in almost each step of the movement. There is no essential loss of particularity; yet the eye and car of the one are more in love with the parts while those of the other are more enamoured of the ensemble." (p. 348-9)
This is a far cry from Leavis's comparison of Shelley's Ode to a Skylark and Keats's Ode to a Nightingale in which he is all praise for the latter but fails to account for the enduring appeal of the former.
Sethna can be as just and unerring in his condemnation as in his approval. In his witty, penetrating and trenchant study of Hugo and Wordsworth, for example, he underscores their common weakness: "It is interesting to note that the central figures of both English and French Romanticisms were very flawed poets, superb on one side, dreary or windbaggy on the other. And the reason why so much of the dreary remains in Wordsworth and so much of the windbaggy in Hugo is the same: a huge conceit that led them to overwrite themselves. Hugo was a more tempestuous person, hence his conceit is louder in accent. Wordsworth was a more reserved man, hence his conceit is quieter in tone." (p, 72)
Even with regard to literary theories, Sethna is never deceived bythe reputation of any critic into uncritically accepting all his views. Many have spoken of aesthetic experience but I.A. Richards's concept of synaesthesis is a bold attempt at identifying the uniqueness of the experience of beauty inasmuch as it claims
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that this differs from other life-experiences not in kind but in degree. He is of the view that in the presence of an object of beauty many impulses are aroused but that there is a balancing and harmonisation of these leading to a state in which every impulse is allowed a free play and no impulse is suppressed. Aesthetics is not an alien territory to the Indian critics who can be proud of an older and richer tradition of this discipline than the Westerners. The corrective that Sethna provides to Richards's imperfect notion is indicative of the former’s mastery of the complex subject. He observes: "Poetry does not end with causing a happy equilibrium, as Richards contends, between the diverse impulses at play in our nature. Pleasure is there and a happy equilibrium is there; there is also much else. What is basic is our recognition of an irreproachable finality, an utter perfection that confers on every poetic statement a godlike power. Various poets make various statements, they differ among themselves, but each of them seems to bring the compelling touch of the ultimate and the absolute." (p. 343)
Sethna's contribution to Blake criticism is too well-known to demand reiteration. But, unfortunately, it has overshadowed his writings on other romantic poets. Though his observations on Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats are profoundly illuminating, it is Wordsworth who receives the warmest praise and whose poetry is quoted repeatedly with love and admiration. There is no full-length essay*on Wordsworth in Sethna's Talks on Poetry but it is not difficult to reconstruct one from the numerous comments, asides and explications of short passages scattered throughout the work. What is striking about his study of Wordsworth's poetry is that he nowhere slavishly echoes the views expressed by such great Wordsworth critics as Matthew Arnold, A.C. Bradley, Herbert Read, F. R. Leavis and Cleanth Brooks.
To Sethna, Wordsworth is undoubtedly the central figure in the Romantic Movement in England, Even Coleridge's claim to this honour is rejected though the Indian critic concedes that The Ancient Mariner included in Lyrical Ballads is as organic to the new Romantic Movement as the poems of Wordsworth. As poet,
* Sethna's book on the subject concerned is awaiting publication. - Editors
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he is decidedly superior to Coleridge for more than one reason: "But Wordsworth was the more powerful, more comprehensive, was more hannonised poet and he is the more central figure and it was his Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads that constituted the first Manifesto of English Romanticism," (p. 72)
The unevenness of Wordsworth's poetry, which Sethna refers to as "Wordsworth's double poetic character" has been discussed by almost all major critics. Though Arnold expressed his firm belief that Wordsworth's achievement is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly the most considerable in English, he felt that if the romantic poet was to have general recognition
the first necessity was to separate his best from the mass of his inferior work. Undertaking to do this separation, he included in his collection only three extracts from The Prelude. He found the best of Wordsworth in Michael, The Fountain, The Solitary Reaper and ruthlessly dismissed his formal philosophy as it is set forth in The Excursion. There is, in his view, something artificial in Laodamia, and some fanciful and declamatory elements in Intimations of Immortality though the two poems are otherwise admirable. As the four people from whom he learnt habits, methods and ruling ideas, Arnold mentions Goethe, Wordsworth, Sainte Beuve and Newman. In his essay on Wordsworth Arnold gives a leading place to the latter's moral interpretation but is unable to explain the salient features of his style and its characteristic defects. Failing to judge properly Wordsworth's mastery of blank verse, Arnold praises him for the healing power of the poetry in Memorial Verses:
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who will make us feel?
Arnold, in the essay entitled Heinrich Heinriche, finds fault with Wordsworth for having "plunged himself into the inward life," and cut himself off from the modern spirit. It is also to be noted that Arnold chose for his collection sixteen sonnets from "Poems
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Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty" portraying Wordsworth as a patriotic sonneteer.
Stressing the value of Wordsworth's philosophical poetry and the need to restore the visionary Wordsworth, A.C. Bradley in his very illuminating piece on Wordsworth argued that Arnold, in his overenthusiasm to make Wordsworth popular, represented his poetry as much more simple and unambitious than it really was and as much more easily apprehended than it ever could be. Dismissing Arnold's categorical statement that Wordsworth's poetry is the reality, while his philosophy is the illusion, Bradley demonstrated the Wordsworthianness of his philosophical poems in which philosophy comes as felt thought in the proper emotional context.
F.R. Leavis, on the contrary, claimed that any attempt at deriving a system of philosophy from Wordsworth's poem is bound to fail because it was far beyond Wordsworth's powers. Even if he had a philosophy, it is only as a poet he matters. Leavis's contention is Wordsworth had, though not a philosophy, a wisdom to communicate and that this wisdom has nothing to do with his 'nature mysticism' but with his preoccupation "with a distinctively human naturalness, with sanity and spiritual health", (p. 165) Wordsworth's primary interest, Leavis asserts, is in man whereas his interest in mountains is only subsidiary. Wordsworth himself, in the first book of The Recluse, stresses the mind of man as his haunt, and the main region of his song. What is more revolutionary about Leavis's essay on Wordsworth is its claim that Wordsworth's roots were deep in the eighteenth century and that the eighteenth century affinities of his verse are to be seen in his essential sanity and normality.
To one immersed in such criticisms of Wordsworth, Sethna's observations, original and insightful, do not appear to be trite or unsound. They cannot be dismissed as an easy achievement if we keep in mind the formidable stature of his rivals. He accepts that there are two voices in Wordsworth's poetry - one is of the deep, that "now roars, now murmurs with the changeful sea, now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep" and "one is of an old half-witted sheep which blears articulate monotony". Though he subscribes to the common notion that there was a sudden decline
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in Wordsworth's poetic powers a little past his middle age, he rejects the reason given by Herbert Read for this catastrophe. Read's psychoanalytic reading of the phenomenon leads him to conclude that Wordsworth's love-affair with the French girl Annette Vallon created in his personality a split that deprived him of the emotional spontaneity which is essential for poetic health. Read feels that the submerged conflict caused by his desertion of the girl took its revenge by drying up the fountains of poetry. Condemning psychoanalysis itself, Sethna observes: "I believe that it overshoots the mark a great deal and in its preoccupation with the underworld of the subconscious, misses the inworld of the subliminal and the overworld of the superconscious which are the true sources of art and philosophy and religion and mysticism, however crossed here and there these things may be by miasmas of the subconscious." (p. 65)
One is reminded of the warning given to literary historians and critics by Jung himself against the possible abuse of psychology in his essay, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry: "A slight whiff of scandal often lends spice to a biography, but a little more becomes a nasty inquisitiveness - bad taste masquerading as science. Our interest is insidiously deflected from the work of art and gets lost in the labyrinth of psychic determinants, the poet becomes a clinical case and very likely, yet another addition to the curiosa of psychopathia sexualis."
Sethna has his own reasons to offer for the loss of Wordsworth's creative power. In his reading of the situation, Sethna turns Leavis inside out and upside down. If the British critic claims that Wordsworth's interest in nature is only secondary to his concern for man, the Indian feels that the deepest essence of Wordsworth the poet is his intuition of the One Spirit within the physical universe as well as within the mind of man and manifesting its presence through both Nature and life, the intention which finds its grandest expression in the following lines of Tintern Abbey:
...And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
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Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things,
If Leavis is of the view that Wordsworth derived his strength from his eighteenth century roots, Sethna contends that Wordsworth could find his genuine poetic voice only when he broke off from the eighteenth century under the influence of the new ideas that emanated from France and that he lost his Romanticism when he lost his ideal of political liberty as a result of his disillusionment with the French Revolution when it gave rise to a dictator like Napoleon. The visionary poet and Nature-lover in him yielded place to the dry intellectual and prosaic moraliser of the Augustan age; the beautiful blend of Pantheism and Transcendentalism that had grown in him was replaced by a faith in the Orthodox Christian Church. He became obsessed with the role of a teacher and ceased to be a poet.
Sethna's account of the making of a great romantic poet's mind and its degeneration is more convincing than Read's or Leavis's, because it does not indulge in any wild conjectures or approach Wordsworth's poetry with any preconceived notions regarding its ideal role. If Read has been misled by his psychoanalytic approach, Leavis misses the mark as he tries in vain to demonstrate that man and not nature is the central concern of Wordsworth's poetry and grossly underestimates the poet's nature-mysticism. Sethna, on the other hand has been able to pinpoint accurately what is essentially Wordsworthian in Wordsworth's poetry and to give a logical explanation of his later failure taking into consideration all relevant sociological, political and biographical factors.
What is more interesting about Sethna's Wordsworth-criticism in his assertion that the characteristic Wordsworthian speech that brought a new note into English poetry is essentially Indian and
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fundamentally Vedantic. He claims that there are two kinds of English poetry - one that is charged with the sense of England and the other that is independent of the country and that the second kind has two varieties, one filling with a foreign air and the other belonging to the universal mind in some aspect or other. According to him, both the English countryside and foreign scenery in Wordsworth get "washed in the Upanishadic light".2
To drive home his idea Sethna gives a few remarkable illustrative examples. Citing two extracts from the Immortality-Ode, he adds that the old Rishis find voice in the phrases "the fields of sleep" and "thy immortality broods like the day". In the first passage "the fields of Cumberland on a‘sweet May-morning' are still there, but the breath, simultaneously vague and powerful, of Supernature has broken out through them and wakened in the poet the thrill of some ultimate soul-scape".3 In the second passage about the brooding immortality, "a strong life-sense of the same Super consciousness is again felt, now not in its secret inspiration so much as in its lordly and luminous revelation of the inherently Deathless poised on its overhead plane and silently nourishing, protecting, ruling, enlightening the child-soul which is still aware of its divine source and of that source's all-seeing immensity".4
Approving of Sethna's insightful remark that Wordsworth in some of his great poems is the voice of the spirit most potent in the ancient Indian scriptures, Kathleen Raine wrote to him: "Your illustration of the resonance of Vedantic utterance from Wordsworth gave me great delight. Surely that is the very quality in him that is great and I am glad you find in Wordsworth something of the Indian soul."5 In his analyses of individual poems and while estimating their quality, Sethna makes a judicious use of Sri Aurobindo's profound concept of poetic inspiration which, according to him, can hail from one of the following planes: (1) The Subtle Physical, (2) The Vital, (3) The Creative Intelligence, (4) The Inner Mind, (5) The Psychic, (6) The Higher Mind, (7) The Illumined Mind, (8) The Intuitive Mind, (9) The Overmind. For example, quoting the lines
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To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,
he comments: "The idea here is very great, the expression is perfect, though the plane may be not quite Overmind so much as a mixture of Higher Mind and Intuition." (p. 275)
Though he can exemplify the poetic creations of the hierarchy of planes and distinguish each plane's way of creating, he makes it clear that further research has to be done to find out if the levels of style correspond to the levels of inspiration in the sense of planes.
Inspite of his mastery of Western critical approaches and knowledge of great Western critics, Sethna would like to respond to many poems in a refreshingly Indian manner. But wherever there is a need, he does not fight shy of using alien tools. Of these, the one advocated by Ezra Pound seems to have captured his heart. Pound's classification of melopoeia, phanopoeia and logopoeia, by which he means "song-making", "image-making", and "word-making", enables Sethna to discuss the striking features of the works of numerous European poets. A fusion of Pound's concept with Sri Aurobindo's ideas on the nature of poetry yields interesting insights into even the classics that have been exhaustively probed:
"Milton has not only song-music, he has also symphony- music." (p. 133)
"He (Yeats) stands supreme in modern English poetry and is the master par excellence there of incantatory melopoeia." (p-144)
"Phanopoeia rather than logopoeia is the Indian tendency in poetry." (p. 277)
"Among European poets the most successful in chiselled logopoeia after the Greeks was the Italian Dante." (p. 277)
"Shakespeare... is a king of phanopoeia, his very mind moves phanopoeiacally." (p. 282)
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In Sethna's view, Wordsworth achieves phanopoeia of an extremely high order in the phrase he uses to describe the face of Newton in the statue of him at Cambridge:
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.
And he adds praising the image employed here: "The metaphor of 'seas' is too open to let phanopoeia become subdued. If only the word 'voyaging' were there - a word which signifies in general English a travel over water - we should realise that seas were intended, but there would be no clear phanopoeia quality. If a less specific work like "travelling" were employed, the phonopoeia quality would be still less in view; a suggestion of concrete movement would be still unmistakable, but it would not call up any precise picture." (p. 272)
And on more than one occasion Sethna demonstrates that the New Critical Analysis of poetic passages is not far beyond his competence. The word-by-word examination encompasses the sound, the sense and the aura of each word in addition to the interlamination that takes place when the right word is placed in the proper context. While subjecting the passage by Wordsworth:
The heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
to a close study, Sethna writes: "There the sense of an immense burden which baffles the mind is clinched by those three 'w' s of 'weary', 'weight', 'world'....In the midst of the aspirated 'h’ the reiterated ‘y’, the several ‘l’-sounds, especially when combined with other consonants, the long six-syllabled adjective 'unintelligible', the three 'w' s create an extensive massiveness." (p. 415 and p.274)
Knowing as he does the value of comparison as a critical tool, Sethna does not stop with this verbal analysis but goes on to compare the lines with a short utterance by Hamlet:
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Who would fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life?
“Wordsworth is speaking, as it were, from the grey cells. They are changing the urgencies of an oppressed existence to philosophic values. Shakespeare is speaking from his guts: They stir the brain only to render coherent the being's instinctive shout of recoil and rebellion.” (p. 385)
If a single example is to be given to illustrate the distinctive nature of Sethna's approach to poetry in general, and to Wordsworth's in particular, we have to compare the critical comments on Wordsworth's much-discussed poem A Slumber did my Spirit Seal. Leavis, in his Revaluation praises the poem on the ground that Wordsworth by merely juxtaposing two stanzas, which seem to present the facts barely, is able to generate a powerful emotion in the reader's mind. Cleanth Brooks, claiming that irony is subtly present even in Wordsworth's lyrics, observes that though there is a simple juxtaposition with no underscoring of the ironical contrast, it cannot be denied that the contrast has its ironic potential in the poem. Sethna's pithy statement on the poem is that here is a poem in which the English language is charged with and moulded by a non-English and profoundly Indian spirit as Wordsworth here has actually expressed "with a deep intimacy his own spiritual trance of identification with the earth's being".6
Though the three critics employing their characteristic strategies have tried to establish the greatness of the short poem in different ways, no Western critic can contend without being perverse that the Indian's view has not added a new dimension to the poem.
P. MARUDANAYAGAM
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1. K.D. Sethna, Talks on Poetry, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1989), p. 6. This book contains many of the critical essays discussed here and further references to it will be from this edition and pagination will be incorporated into the text.
2. K.D. Sethna, The English Language and the Indian Spirit, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1986), p. 38.
3. Ibid., p. 20.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 29.
6. Ibid., p. 23.
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TO HAVE known Amal Kiran was a grace, an unanticipated and clearly an undeserved benediction. For how is one to anticipate or deserve an encounter destined to alter the entire focus of one's life? That providential meeting occurred for me more than twenty years ago at a critical moment of my life when a great difficulty faced me in publishing my two volumes, Glimpses of the Mother's Life. Amal Kiran opened his heart and poured love and compassion on a budding writer.
I started compiling from 1973 the Mother's autobiographical accounts. I was fortunate enough that I had the privilege to have guidance from the Mother’s son Monsieur André Morisset in the project. But he felt the need of a competent English editor to check the manuscript. He suggested the name of K.D. Sethna whom I knew in several respects, not only as the learned editor of Mother India since its inception in 1949 but also as a gigantic scholar, a true Aurobindo, a genuine poet of Overhead Poetry, the sadhak to whom Sri Aurobindo had written most of the letters on Savitri, and the authentic interpreter of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. A doubt crept into my mind: "How can I venture to approach him to guide me in this project? Has he got time for it?" But nothing is impossible if the "God-touch is there". One evening I sat near the Samadhi. At that time he had come with his wife Sehra and sat outside Dyuman-bhai's room, facing the Samadhi. Without hesitation I went to him and made an appeal in the following words: "Would you give some time to become the editor of my projected compilation Glimpses of the Mother's Life?" I also mentioned: "Andre-da has advised me to come to you for help in editing the book." Amal was very happy and wanted to see my manuscript. After seeing my manuscript he said to me that he would help me. So he became the editor and thus I could bring out the two volumes of compilation under his guidance.
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The Mother's outer life is difficult to seize or narrate in an authoritative manner. She never wrote any comprehensive systematic account of her life. But a fair quantity of genuine biographical material is scattered in her books, talks, and Prayers and Meditations. The biographical account had to be sorted out and arranged in a chronological order, related to the various phases of the Mother's life, and given the form of a well-connected story. This last function has been so admirably performed by the editor, along with Shraddhavan, an English lady from Auroville, that one feels as if one is reading an autobiography. The story moves in a limpid flow. It is a solid work done in record time.
I faced obstacle after obstacle in publishing these two volumes, but generous help came from Jayantilal-bhai. Very heartily he took up the job and brought out two elegant artistic volumes. I thanked also Amal Kiran that he stood firmly on my side and quietly faced all opposition that was encountered in the project. After the publication of the two volumes, praises and recognition came from every corner of the world. There are precious moments in battle when victory glimmers amidst the storm.
Always Amal tells me: "Nilima, take writing as your sadhana. Don't run after praise and publication. Try to bring perfection even in a small detail." Slowly my writing career began under his loving care and guidance. He is really a task master. But when he looks frankly at imperfections, errors, weaknesses in various spheres, there is also the accompanying vibration of love which softens all troubles; it lifts me to a higher plane of seeing that comprehends and harmonises and that keeps everything on the focus of benevolence. Spontaneity, genuineness, and generosity characterize his action. None would ever feel small when with him.
K.D. Sethna distinguishes himself by playing many roles: a political commentator, philosophical thinker, literary critic, insightful poet, a historian, and a researcher. I shall specifically expound in this article his contribution as a journalist and his spiritual interpretation in the essay The Passing of Sri Aurobindo.
He is the veteran editor of the journal Mother India, Monthly
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Review of Culture, whose spiritual creative hands have opened up a new vista, a new exposition of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, vision of Indian culture, political thought, Integral Yoga and the Mother's teachings. He launched the journal, aspiring for a new future, on February 21st, 1949, the Mother's birthday. Mother India drew its inspiration from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and sought to deal with various problems, national and international, in the light of their world-vision, based on the synthesis of spirit and matter in the mind of the world, particularly of free India.
The proposal was really mooted by a young businessman from Bombay, Keshavdeo R. Poddar, named by the Mother Navajata, The New-born One, though he was not an Ashramite at that time. Sethna says, "...he conceived a paper which would busy itself with that world's problems without any narrow business concern". So Poddar put the project before the Mother with Sethna's name as the editor.
The Mother consulted Sri Aurobindo and both approved of it. When both the Gurus approved of the proposal Sethna could not say "No". The magazine was fixed to appear as a fortnightly and the date planned to publish it was 21 February 1949, the Mother's seventy-first birthday.
The title of the journal was appropriately given by the wife of the editor, Sehra. Sethna says; "What she brought up answered at once to the truth behind the publication-date by harmonising with (1) the fact that the base of operations, besides being the motherland of Sri Aurobindo, was the country which the Mother, while hailing from the West, has still made her own Soul's choice, and (2) the vision of the Ashram-Mother as incarnating not only the "Wisdom-Splendour" that is the universe's fount -
Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride...1
but also that particular face and front of the infinite, the Goddess Bharat-Shakti
Who watches over India till the end2 -
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mothering especially the India of the Rishis, the Yogis, the Saints and, above all, the Avatars.
The editor was in a great dilemma: How would a magazine with spiritual background work out in the commercial capital of India? The spirit and commerce seemed two antithetical words. The desperateness of the proposed venture vanished from the editor's mind by the message from Aldous Huxley for the first issue, on 29.1.1949: "I wish you all success in your venture. You will, of course, be a voice crying in the wilderness. But if a few individuals pay attention, something will have been accomplished."
Sethna writes: "The editor was rather worried over that part of his job which was to consist in writing thousands of words on various political themes in a manner that would be clear, cogent, penetrating, widely informed, easily authoritative, enlightened by Sri Aurobindo's thought." In order to be relieved from the burden, he put it to the Mother: "I have to be an expert political thinker and writer. But I have no turn for politics and no touch with it." She smiled a cool sweet smile and answered: "Neither have I." The editor got a start: "Well, then what shall I do?" Again the imperturbable sweetness and then the reply: "There is Sri Aurobindo, He will guide you in everything." A sudden flood of power swept over the hearer. "Oh, yes," he said, "Sri Aurobindo will surely do the impossible." And Sri Aurobindo did it. Once a sadhak expressed a sceptical attitude about the authenticity of the views expressed in the fortnightly. Sri Aurobindo exclaimed: "Doesn't he know that Mother India is my paper?"
The main articles for the first issue were written by the editor and the associate editor S. Albless and sent to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother listened carefully when Nolini-da read them out. Both approved the articles and sent words of appreciation,
The Mother India's Office in Bombay was set up just six or seven weeks before the journal commenced. Veteran journalists from various parts of the city advised that material for the magazine should be collected sufficiently in advance, at least six
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months before the start. The editor had material only for two or three issues. The warning finger suggested: "Better to lie quiet for a few months than go up a rocket and come down a stick!" Bur the editor did not lose courage. He put the problem before the Mother. He sent an urgent letter. "All journalists advise us to postpone publication for some months. They say that we must be well stocked with articles: otherwise we are doomed. My own instinct is that of Marshal Foch at the Battle of the Marne in 1914, He sent the message to the headquarters; 'Mon centre cede, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque. (My centre is giving way, my right wing is in retreat, situation excellent, I am attacking.)’ What do you say?" On 27 January 1949, the editor received the telegram: "Stick to the date. Live on faith. Blessings - Mother." With a whoop the office went into action - and faith in the Mother's Grace has kept Mother India in action up to now.
After Sri Aurobindo's passing the Mother did not like political writings to be published in the magazine. According to her suggestion Mother India was converted wholly into a cultural review; from a fortnightly it became a monthly with a different format. Sometime in 1953, the Mother decided to shift the office from Bombay to Pondicherry. The editor came back to the Ashram in February 1954. Even now he is doing his editorial work as efficiently as ever, age notwithstanding.
On 15 October 1991, Amal met with a serious accident. He fell down in his office room while moving with the help of his Walker' and his right thigh was fractured. He was taken to the Ashram Nursing Home.
It was decided by the doctors that his leg should be kept under traction. I was with him often in the Nursing Home and noticed what an uncomfortable life it was for him. But he was calm, always smiling. The days were spent in meditation, in writing letters, dipping into literary journals or else preparing the future issues of Mother India. I remember that he told me, just two days after his fall, that he had matter ready for the next issue, but that it might not be possible to continue under these circumstances. As the manager of Mother India, without thinking for a moment, I told him: "No, Amal, the Mother's Mother India cannot be
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discontinued. Did you forget the Mother's gracious telegram at the time of your first publication, 'Stick to me date, live on faith, Blessings'." When I reminded him of these words his face lighted up and he said: "Yes, it will be continued." I kept on saying: "Whatever help you need from me for bringing out the magazine I am ready to give." I have found that he was able to bring out subsequent issues very meticulously without any difficulty. What Grace it was!
I shall now briefly talk about Sethna's interpretative essay The Passing of Sri Aurobindo. It is based on his inner observations of "No one can write about my life because it is not on the surface for anyone to see." Besides his brilliant career in England, his fiery political thought and activity and preaching of revolutionary action, there is nothing outwardly to be noticed. His life was too deeply inward. He has compassed all the traditional Yogas with their experiences and realisations. His stupendous endeavour was to bring the hitherto Unmanifest into the human consciousness and to establish it on the earth. So, about his passing, Sethna says: "No Yogi dies in the ordinary meaning of the word: his consciousness always exceeds the formula of the physical body, he is beyond and greater than his material sheath even while he inhabits it, and his action on mankind is essentially through his free and ample spirit to which both life and death are small masks of a fully aware immortality in the limitless being of the Divine and the Eternal."
Sethna showed deep insight and penned a thought-provoking statement on Sri Aurobindo's passing. His inner interpretation runs as in the following passage:
"Sri Aurobindo, the Yogi of the Supermind descending into the outer as well as the inner being and bringing a divine life on earth in addition to the infinite immortality of the Beyond, cannot be looked upon as passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have behind it a significance integral with his highly significant and immeasurably more-than-physical life of spiritual attainment." Furthermore, Sethna explained: “The evolutionary was always
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fused with the revolutionary in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of the Supermind and, just as his life's audacities, like those of his art of poetry and prose, were always felicitous, full of ease and aptness, gloriously adapting nature rather than violating it, so too the adventure of his death would be no utter supernormal but carry for all its profound import and exceptional mode some semblance of the common passage to the stillness and the shadow.'' Whatever the physical sciences described, the physical causes were quite in contradiction to truth that Sri Aurobindo did not pass always as a result of them. Sethna says that this fact is based not only on Sri Aurobindo's special spiritual status but also on a number of remarkable physical facts. "Doctors have declared, on the strength of typical non-response to stimuli, that he entered into deep coma in consequence of an extreme uraemic condition following upon a failure of ail treatment. As every medical tyro knows, such a state of uraemic coma admits of no return to consciousness. Yet to the surprise of the doctors attending on him, Sri Aurobindo opened his eyes at frequent intervals and asked for a drink or inquired what the time was! This repeated occurrence of the scientifically impossible leads one to believe that the deep uraemic coma was intermixed, as it were, with a very conscious Yogic self-withdrawal from an instrument which was too damaged to be kept for common use but with yet could nor quite bar the uncommon will of its master. Here was no brain of mere carbon and iron and phosphorus: here was the subtilised servitor of a mind that had sat on the peaks of God and from there could command response in the midst of all material determinism. Even half an hour before the breathing ceased and the heart stopped beating, Sri Aurobindo looked out from his calm compassionate eyes, spoke the name of the doctor by his side and drank some water. This was the strangest uraemic coma in medical history."
On 5 December 1950 Sri Aurobindo passed away but his body "was found to have retained the beautiful white-gold colour that had distinguished it during his lifetime. There was not the slightest trace of decomposition". The same day the Mother
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announced: 'The funeral of Sri Aurobindo has nor taken place today. His body is charged with such a concentration of Supramental light that there is so sign of decomposition and the body will be kept lying on his bed as long as it remains intact." Later she reported: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he called the Mind of Light got realised in me." The Mother speaks of the Mind of Light as follows: "The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light."
Amal Kiran writes apropos of the full circumstances of Sri Aurobindo's passing: "Whoever has studied the full circumstances knows too that as a result of this grand and dreadful strategic sacrifice the new power which Sri Aurobindo has variously termed Supermind, Gnosis, Truth-Consciousness came down at last into earth's being and established a first centre of action."
About this article the Mother sent a telegram to Amal, through Nolini-da, on 22 December 1950: “Your passing of Sri Aurobindo 'admirable'. Fully approved by the Mother. Nothing to change."
The Mother's message to Yogendra, Associate Manager of Mother India, elaborates this further: "I have read Amal's article. It is excellent, Tell him I am extremely satisfied, I would like to have it printed in booklet form. He can get it printed in Bombay. If not, I will print it here." (28 December 1950). The Mother's comment to Yogendra on this article is: "It is the best thing he has written, I would like to print 15,000 copies." (29 December 1950)
A revelation came on 4 April 1954 to the gifted poet about that extremely significant event, the realisation of the Mind of Light in the Mother:
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The core of a deathless sun is now the brain
And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold.
When the Mother read this poem she said: 'The first two lines are sheer revelation. They catch exactly what took place."
NILIMA DAS
1. Savitri (Centenary Edition, 1972), p. 345.
2. Collected Poems (Centenary Edition, 1972), p. 291.
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My Acquaintance with Amal
I WROTE to Sri Aurobindo in 1937: "Some people look down upon the sadhaks here, saying that they would count for nothing in the world outside." He replied in his usual calm, unruffled manner: "The quality of the sadhaks is so low? I should say there is a considerable amount of ability and capacity in the Ashram. Only the standard demanded is higher than outside even in spiritual matters. There are half a dozen people here perhaps who live in the Brahman Consciousness - outside they would make a big noise and be considered as great yogis; here their condition is not known and in the yoga it is regarded not as Siddhi, but only as a beginning."
Even if we leave aside yogic attainments, the Ashram could easily boast of quite a few people who could be considered in cultural and literary fields equal of any of the greats in those spheres outside.
To name a few: Nolini, Pavitra, Amrita, Anilbaran, Dilip Kumar Roy, Sahana Devi, Amal Kiran, Nishikanto. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have hinted that in their past lives some of these sadhaks had been great historical figures, and now in this life they have been drawn to Yoga to fulfil the ultimate object of human life, viz. the realisation of the Divine, and more. Their cultural achievement is the result of the practice of yoga under the guidance and inspiration of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Except for a few of them, their names are not known outside as yet, because they have not sought worldly recognition as their main purpose in life.
From among these, I shall select one who is celebrating his 90th birthday - Amal Kiran - and whose cultural and intellectual achievements have been outstanding in a number of fields, apart from those of a remarkable spiritual and psychic embodiment.
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A poet of rare height, a man of vast knowledge, intuitive perception, exceptional calm, and a charm hard to resist, he follows in his Master's footsteps.
He has been physically disabled from childhood by infantile paralysis in one leg. But he has no regrets. Rather, he considers this has been God's blessing to him, for it has enabled him to plunge into the oceans of the mind, and thus acquire a vast body of knowledge at an early ageso much so that Sri Aurobindo jokingly remarked: "He has learned too much. He must start unlearning now."
With such an extraordinary man, I find myself an ignoramus by comparison. We came into contact with each other some time in 1934, after which our acquaintance grew into an intimacy nurtured by the Guru's quiet encouragement and inner solicitude. This contact gave me the opportunity to sec Amal in various situations, and what I came to admire in him most was his freedom from vanity, largeness of spirit and an inborn equanimity.
I remember quite clearly our first meeting. I had just settled in the Ashram and, as a doctor, happened to be in charge of the Ashram Dispensary. Amal was already an Ashramite of long standing, I used to see him sitting in what is now the Reading Room, known at that time as the Library, chatting with Premanand, the Librarian. One day I dropped into the Library, Premanand introduced me to Amal. There was hardly any talk except a gracious laugh. Amal and Premanand would be sitting in the Library chatting while Pranam was going on and I would often wonder why he wasn't attending the Pranam. I learnt later that because of his physical defect he could not take part in the meditation, and while waiting for his turn for Pranam, he was utilising his time in teaching Premanand metrical scansion of poetry. Scansion happened to be Premanand's passionate hobby.
When his turn came for Pranam, Amal would slowly walk to the Meditation Hall with the aid of his stick and do his pranam to the Mother who would be waiting for him. Since he and Purani were the last ones for doing pranam they had the privilege of helping the Mother put on her sandals, Purani on one foot and
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Amal on the other. After that the Mother would get up, go up the stairs and disappear from our sight.
Amal was living at that time in the Guest House on the first floor, where the windows opened onto the western and northern sides and gave a good view of the sky. He was given the room precisely because he had asked for one from which he "could see the stars". This, in addition, was the very room used by Sri Aurobindo when he and the Mother lived in the Guest House, Mother in the adjoining room. In those days the floor of Sri Aurobindo's room bore the wear-marks of his constant walking hour upon hour. (The floor has since been redone and the famous floor bricks carefully removed and distributed to various places in the Ashram.) Premanand lived downstairs in the same house.
A word or two on Premanand by way of digression, especially Sri Aurobindo's humour at his expense. He was very regular in his habits, always neat and clean, and kept a smiling face. But he had some peculiar and amusing traits. He was meticulous and fastidious to the nth degree. He would spend a lot of time making his bed after getting up in the morning, folding the bedcover neatly, putting up the mosquito net and smoothing out all folds and creases, tucking in the perfectly white bed sheet tight and smooth, which reminds me of Champaklal's making of Sri Aurobindo's bed. He claimed he had to go through this long routine, otherwise he would not get a good night's sleep. He never lay on his bed during me day. As a librarian, he maintained a strong discipline.
Once I borrowed a book from the Library and sent it to Sri Aurobindo for some comments on a particular author's poetry. Sri Aurobindo kept the book for so long that I had to remind him that Premanand must have the book back on time or else he would lose all his prem and ananda.
Sri Aurobindo wrote back: "He is always doing that and losing his hair into the bargain. If he objects to my keeping the book, I will give him a [word I couldn't decipher] on the head which will help to keep his hair on."
Not being able to read that word, I wrote again, asking:
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"Did you write 'I will give him a club on his head' ?"
Answer: "Clout, clout. A clout is a harmless thing - at most you will have to put a bandage."
Premanand used to boast that even if the Mother kicked him out of the Ashram he wouldn't leave Pondicherry, but remain around and near the Ashram. But, alas! Fate, with its peculiar sense of humour, made him leave on his own volition on account of an illness.
Now to get back to Amal.
One day, he had an attack of cold and fever, and I was asked to treat him. That was my next step in coming closer to him. He had, I discovered, someone else tending him - our common friend, Ambu, a young sadhak. Ambu was helping him in every way from preparing his breakfast to putting him to bed. Now I too became Amal's friend, and soon discovered that he knew much more about medicine than an average educated Indian. This was because he was the son of a highly qualified physician in Bombay and because of his own physical defect which took him to the doctor often.
As our friendship flowered what attracted me the most about him was that he was free from all sense of superiority. On the other hand, what attracted me to his room, I would like to think, was not the occasional toasted and buttered slice or two that he would serve. In those days this was a rare treat and it was prepared by his young friend Ambu. But the real treat I enjoyed beside the delectable toast, was the opportunity I had of enjoying Amal's conversation sprinkled with humour and ranging over a wide spectrum of topics. He surrounded himself with books, particularly of poetry. At times his pretty wife Lalita would visit him. She was known to be of a dedicated spirit and at that time sadhana was her only concern. I was also fortunate to meet his mother, a cultured lady, and his sister, a lovely girl.
After Amal's recovery our meetings became less frequent until I started writing English poetry under Sri Aurobindo's guidance. Meanwhile, Amal had come to know my niece Jyotirmoyee, who had also started writing poetry in Bengali.
Now Amal started dropping in at the Dispensary on his way
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home after the Pranam, and spent some time on my poetic exercises which had been corrected by Sri Aurobindo. He would point out my mistakes in metre and rhythm, language and imagery. Chadwick too, who was an Englishman and also a poet, helped me initially. But he was the harder task-master of the two. Thus, two human gurus prepared my groundwork in poetic composition, and the Divine Guru took full advantage of their contribution, leading me forward till, as the Guru said, the poet in me was born. But before the poet could emerge further, the curtain fell for good on his essays into the realms of English poetic composition. Sri Aurobindo's accident dramatically cut short this development. Instead, I was called upstairs and there I was able to meet the creator of the poet in me himself; Amal had left for Bombay and I had no contact with him except when he used to visit the Ashram.
Literary Association: Twelve Tears with Sri Aurobindo
It was long after Sri Aurobindo left his body that I thought ofwriting the book: Twelve Tears with Sri Aurobindo. For one thing I was not sure that the Mother would approve of my project, for I would have to bring out many features of Sri Aurobindo's private life during those years which might not be judicious for the public to know. Swinging in this hesitation many years passed away. Finally I decided to write it for my own benefit at least. Here I needed Amal's help since I lacked the power of expression for such a momentous work. More particularly when I had to give an authentic account about the composition of Savitri, I found that my memory had failed to a great extent. So many old versions of the Books and Cantos had to be consulted that to put them in proper order and sequence appeared to be a formidable task.
Amal had taken his permanent abode in the Ashram, I sought for his help which he readily spared. He used to come daily to the Ashram to see the Mother and had to wait for quite some time. During this recess or after seeing the Mother we used to sit together, go through all the files and prepare a chronological account of the whole composition which has appeared in the
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book, Twelve Tears with Sri Aurobindo.
Apart from that, when I had prepared the draft of the book Amal agreed to revise it. I used to go to his place on rue Suffren and spend a few hours every week. An American lady, Clair, also took part in the corrections. It took us a couple of months to finish the book. It was a very enjoyable work and very interesting too for me, as I was not a prose writer by any means except for the voluminous correspondence with Sri Aurobindo - a quite different affair indeed.
When the book was finished the Mother granted me the favour to hear it read out though at the beginning she had not favoured the idea. Her generous comment has been added to the book. I have to admit Amal's gladly given help to me in this prose work. The unique popularity of the book both for the theme and the composition owes not a little to this help. The book has received felicitation from the Mother. Also she accorded special Pranam to Amal and Clair.
Let me cite another story of Amal's large-heartedness. A sadhak used to seek his assistance in his study of Savitri. What interested him most to know in Savitri was the grammatical construction of its sentences. Some of the sentences are long and the syntax is rather complicated. Since he had learnt a bit of French grammar, where the syntax is rather simple, he tried to apply this knowledge to Savitri. He approached Amal for help and the latter gave it unstintedly. The sadhak used to copy the sentences on a piece of paper and read them to Amal who with exemplary patience and good humour would teach his pupil his lesson. I used to enjoy the scene for its very amusing aspect. The more the sadhak's head refused to understand the complicated structure, the more was Amal's effort to make him follow it. And this would go on every day for an hour or so: Three of us sitting and waiting for the Mother's coming and Amal wrestling with the sadhak's pate to make him learn the lesson.
But I learnt much and saw much of Amal's inner qualities in this foolish and funny episode — which he apparently enjoyed so much. I think he took it as a test to his equanimity which made him remain always unruffled. Further, since he had to wait long
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for the Mother's coming he could enjoy the atmosphere in front of Sri Aurobindo 's room. It was a great privilege for him to utilise the time in this way and have also the darshan of the Mother from a distance. Even the other day, I saw the sadhak coming with a slip of paper to Amal sitting in front of the Samadhi to seek his help, Amal asked with a smile: "What is the difficulty today?" I remember how in contrast I used to get irritated when the sadhak would come to me for the same kind of help in Amal's absence.
This sadhak's work was to sweep and clean the Darshan room and furniture. Once he had a severe attack of rheumatism due to which he used to squat on the floor and drag himself along to clean the floor. I thought the poor fellow would never be able to stand up. Today I find him doing marching on the Playground. A simple man, candid and sweet and a true devotee indeed!
Amal's characteristic traits are much more evident now. For so many people go to seek help for their articles, compositions, etc. in English - this apart from his work as editor of Mother India. I think he has taken the Master's lesson to heart and is practising it faithfully and yogically. That lesson is, as he said in another context, "Be like me". Of course, Amal has now acquired an intuitive power which helps him after reading a few pages or lines to evaluate the work.
This leads me to my studentship under his guidance in literary works after Sri Aurobindo's passing. Some of us used to hold regular classes in English poetic literature at his place for a number of years. He had changed many houses till he came to occupy the present one. And we frequented each house. His wife Sehra used to be there engaged in her "home work" and we in our business. She used to serve breakfast to me when I was alone.
Our Studentship
Being a medical man I had little chance of reading English poetry and afterwards, though I had composed English poems under Sri Aurobindo's inspiration, I had no time to study poetry.
I have now a very faint memory of our classes in English poetry which we studied (an euphemism rather) with Amal over many
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years after Sri Aurobindo's passing. I thought also that the classes had helped me in teaching English literature. We were just a few in number and hung on for many years. The class was by no means of an academic type. Our emphasis was to have a general knowledge of English poetic literature, English poetry being famous for its variety and special beauty, and to enter into the "heart of poetry".
Amal had a notebook of his own in which he had copied poems of rare poets who were usually omitted in academic studies, for instance, the War-poets, our Indian poets like Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, Manmohan Ghose. He tried to inculcate in us the beauty of form, structure, rhythm. But alas the rhythmic beauty of English poetry was alien to my Bengali ears in spite of my composing lots of English poetry. I am afraid our Indian ears are not accustomed to it. Since I had a genuine love of poetry except for the rhythm, I could enjoy a bit of its rasa. One thing that we could appreciate was his innate love of poetry because of which he could neither tire of reading with us nor with his students. I believe still that the rasa of poetry had passed into my blood because of which I have become more conscious of the subtlety of rhythm and suggestion in the poetic art,
I need not say that the classes were enlivened with humour and many anecdotes in connection with various poets. There again his prodigious memory, - he has fondly called it a poetry-packed memory - which we notice again and again in his various talks, drew our wonder.
Afterwards when he came to occupy the present house some of us studied Savitri with him for a number of years and always looked forward to the next meeting. Some electric current in his voice showed how much he was in love with Savitri and thrilled us with its magic effect.
Letters on Savitri
Amal left for Bombay in February 1938, a few months before the accident to Sri Aurobindo's right leg. He had already established a contact with Sri Aurobindo on Savitri and some correspondence had been going on between them in the middle
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thirties. When in his absence Sri Aurobindo resumed his composition of Savitri, which was suspended because of the accident, he on Amal's request used to send parts of his composition to him in Bombay for his comments. Thus was started the "Letters on Savitri" which have been appended at the end of the book. I used to read Amal's letters to Sri Aurobindo and write down his dictated comments on them.
This was a very interesting period for me and I enjoyed the communications, though the full appreciation of them was beyond my power.
My appreciation of the poetic art was a zero at that time and my eyes and ears were not open to the subtleties of the art though Sri Aurobindo had tried initially to develop it when I had been writing poetry. The seriousness with which Sri Aurobindo considered Amal's points made me admire the high level of his poetic perceptions. At times Sri Aurobindo conceded his points. But quite often he stuck to his own versions and explained at length his justification for them.
During the long stretch of Amal's absence in Bombay, and whenever he visited the Ashram from time to time, Sri Aurobindo would send recently composed parts of Savitri for his comments. Once after meeting his objections, Sri Aurobindo asked me: "Is he satisfied ?"
In this way the correspondence went on till the composition of Savitri came to an end. For the proper enjoyment of the poetic rasa these letters are invaluable and their necessity cannot be denied.
Let me cite a few illustrations so that the reader may appreciate the poetic art concealed in the art.
There is the verse:
Amal objected to it "on account of forced rhythm". Sri Aurobindo replied: "It was very deliberately done and deliberately maintainted.... Obviously, this is not a natural rhythm, but there is no objection to its being forced when it is a forcible and violent
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action that has to be suggested."
Then Sri Aurobindo scanning the line says: "In the first part the rhythm is appropriate to the violent breaking in of the truth while in the second half it expresses a high exultation and exaltation in the inrush."
In another instance about the "baldness" of a line, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "As for baldness, one occasionally bare and straightforward line without any trailing of luminous robes is not an improper element, e.g.
This was the day when Satyavan must die,
which I would not remove from its position even if you were to give me the crown and the income of the kavi samrat for doing it."
Instances are galore which due to my aesthetic dullness I could not appreciate at the time but now I treasure them since they open my inner ear and eye to subtle effects of what is termed - what Amal calls - "The Art and the Heart of Poetry". Later on, Amal in his Talks on Poetry capitalises on what he had learnt from his Guru, I believe.
And then what about the chapter on "Overmind Aesthesis"? Has anything of the kind been said before? We are told that Sanskrit poetic literature is very rich and profound as regards the subject of aesthesis. This chapter on Overmind aesthesis opens a window to a vast new horizon of poetic art and is a sheer creative delight, new to the readers of English poetry, and a pointer to the direction in which future poetry will evolve.
At one time Sri Aurobindo himself thought of writing in some detail on the aesthetic and technical nature of mystic poetry of the future and on Savitri in particular. We think that the Master's illuminating correspondence with Amal partially fulfils that necessity.
Sri Aurobindo had made Amal a political thinker and commentator as well. When Mother India was started in Bombay with Amal as its editor, he used to send his editorials for Sri Aurobindo's perusal and sanction. I used to read them to
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Sri Aurobindo. The Mother found one editorial too strong and brought it to his notice. But he approved of it. He considered Mother India his paper, as did the Mother consider the Bulletin as her paper,
During the twelve years when all correspondence was stopped only Dilip and Amal were made exceptions.
The Revised Edition of Savitri
Though the Supplement to the Revised Edition has explained at great length its necessity and the modus operandi of the revision, I think a short account would be in place about the genesis of this hazardous venture.
In the December 1986 issue of the Archives & Research the editors brought out a long corrigenda for the various "mistakes" they had found in the Centenary Edition of Savitri. When compared with Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts, a sadhak felt distressed that texts read out to Sri Aurobindo and passed by him had been tampered with. Nolini Kanta Gupta, whom he used to consult, had passed away. To whom was he to make an appeal now? He prayed to the Mother to intervene and heard her answer: "Go to Nirod."
I knew nothing of this imbroglio except that I had taken notice of the long list of apparent mistakes published in the Archives Journal. I had taken no further interest. Now as the sadhak drew my attention to it and some other responsible people did the same, I thought something had to be done. Thus a Board was constituted with Amal and myself as the editors and the person concerned as a helper.
At the very outset we had to face a big problem. Since there were so many versions of Savitri culminating in a final version, during Sri Aurobindo's own time and that edition itself found to be faulty, the question was which version we should follow. I was asked to appeal to Sri Aurobindo. I heard the reply: "Follow the text." We could not make out which text he meant. Obviously the one completed during his lifetime, but that text itself abounded with "mistakes" detected by the Archives. This was the dilemma. I should stop there since the rest of the story has been told in the
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Supplement to the Revised Edition.
The sadhak who had objected to the revision had withdrawn from the field of discussion but the work had to continue. His place was filled by another quite competent member and the work proceeded. It took 3-4 years to complete it.
I found the work extremely interesting, often eye-opening, but sometimes hazardous. Occasionally the punctuation created difficulties. We know how important even a comma or a semicolon can be in poetry and when that was indistinct we tried our best to decipher it with the help of the magnifying glass and also consulted other versions. We know the story of Oscar Wilde who appeared to be rather fastidious over trifles and once spent a day inserting a comma and another day deciding to remove it! Sri Aurobindo was no less fastidious. At times the difficulty was of a different nature and when we could not come to an agreement, inspite of Amal's authority, we had to refer to a third party. There had been occasions when our team-work threatened to be ruptured. I dared to challenge Amal’s judgment,, because I was the scribe and though my role has been exposed to be erroneous at times, I had to stick to my convictions. This led once or twice to a very precarious situation threatening to ruffle our long-enduring friendship, but the Supreme Pilot came to the rescue.
There was a pressure on us that the work should be finished in our lifetime since Amal and I, who were closely connected with Savitri, were oldsters. We have done our best and we hope all genuine Savitri-students will back us.
Amal Kiran as a Professor
I don't remember how he was appointed as Professor of English Poetry at our Centre of Education. But he made one condition before he accepted the post. It is mentioned in the book Talks on Poetry which are his own talks collected in book form. There in effect he says: "It would be an open class and not restricted only to the students of the Centre; Ashramites, visitors and others would be allowed to join it," - something like the Sorbonne University of Paris, I believe. He would follow no set method, method should follow him. He should be left free to be
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guided solely by his inner inspiration. He asked the Mother's approval for his conditions. The Mother's characteristic reply was: "Then I shall be with you." The Mother being a Parisian appreciated the method, also because this is the method she herself had followed in her "open class" in the Playground. Finding an echo of her own ways in Amal's utterance she was glad to give her sanction.
About her talks which were primarily meant for our young students, they actually transcended all time and space leaving the Students gaping with wonder at the Mother's face and hearing the rhythmic intonation of her voice as torrents of ideas from above would fertilise our poor indigent earth. Similar was the case with Amal's talks. They were not meant to be understood by the students. The poet, like a bird, got a joyous occasion to disburden himself of the entire weight of the poetic world of the past, present and future and leave a rich heritage for posterity.
Sri Aurobindo's lectures on English poetry in Baroda are reported to have had that magic, with students from other colleges flocking to hear him. Not all students could follow him, it seemed, but he did not care. There have been a few other professors in India who had acquired such a reputation.
Gales of laughter would reverberate in the room during Amal;s talks - tending to disturb the neighbouring classes. One American sadhika asked the Mother whether it was all right for her sadhana to attend Amal's class and laugh so much. In short, Amal was in his element.
It will be a mockery to attempt to give an aperçu of the contents of his Talks. One glance at them makes one appreciate in wonder how much Amal has assimilated Sri Aurobindo's own knowledge and used it creatively. For instance, overtones and undertones in rhythm, various planes from which poetry comes, the French symbolist Mallarmé’s innovative poetry, overhead poetry, the Mantra, etc. All these characteristics baffle our imagination. Only one wonders how far thisgem of a book will appeal to the taste of modern poets, critics and readers who cannot appreciate even Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.
Any true lover of poetry will admit that Amal's Talks on Poetry
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is a unique book. These talks were given for a whole year without consulting any book or even notes. We know of a similar phenomenon when he was invited by the Annamalai University to give talks on Shakespeare in the year of the Bard's quatercentenary. They are not learned dissertations but, combined with free distribution of humour they make poetry indeed a rasa.
Amal Kiran as a Critic
I shall take two famous English poems on which all English critics have given unanimous verdict and their verdict has been accepted to be true. Amal alone, an Indian, proved that their verdict was wrong. One poem is of Wordsworth, the other of Blake. Wordsworth's poem starting with -
A slumber did my spirit seal
is, according to the critics, a member of the Lucy series. Sri Aurobindo was the first critic who in his Synthesis of Yoga refers to the poem as describing a mystic experience of Wordsworth's; but he had left it unanalyzed. Amal accepts Sri Aurobindo's verdict and proves its truth by a serious and extensive study of Wordsworth's poem. The crucial word of the general English judgment is "She", in the poem. She being feminine, the poem cannot but refer to Lucy is their clinching reason. Amal found from his intensive study of Wordsworth's collection of poems that "She" as referring to the spirit had been used by Wordsworth in some lines. Therefore the poem expresses an experience of Wordsworth's own subtle body making a diurnal round in a state of trance, an authentic mystic experience.
The other poem, one of Blake's most powerful lyrics, is The Tyger -
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night...
No critic has opined that the Tyger could have referred to Christ, for Christ has been described by Blake himself elsewhere or even
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known as a meek and mild personality whose love for mankind made him sacrifice his own life on the Cross, How can the Creator make him a Tyger, a blood-thirsty animal ? Here too Amal's intensive research proved the identification.
On this poem a very long controversy went on with Europe's Blake authority Kathleen Raine. The argument and counter-argument that went on between the two are something fascinatingly remarkable. Finally Miss Raine, after studying Amal's book, magnanimously wrote "I concede you the victory" and congratulated him on his power of marshalling the arguments in an invincible manner.
Here I am reminded of his arguing even with the Mother in a very calm and composed manner on some controversial subject and gaining his point against all evidences to the contrary.
We see this critical insightful power abundantly illustrated in his Talks on Poetry. It is not for nothing that Sri Aurobindo invited his opinion on his epic Savitri. The Mother once said to Amal: "If I told you what Sri Aurobindo and I think of your mind, you would get puffed up." Amal never asked what they thought and chose to remain "unpuffed-up". The touch of humour in the last sentence is typically Amalian.
Amal Kiran as a Speaker
Amal gave a few talks to the Ashramites and the visitors in the Hall of Harmony in 1970-1971. These have been published in book-form: Light and Laughter. It is an immensely enjoyable book and, according to the Publisher's Note, "it proved a best seller". It was so popular that it had soon to be translated into several Indian languages. I do not remember under what circumstances the Talks were arranged. The Hall of Harmony used to be packed to the full and Amal was again at his best.
I happened to introduce him to the audience in these words:
"The speaker is our distinguished, renowned, celebrated Amal Kiran, poet, critic, philosopher, journalist, historian whom you have seen hopping about with his stick in the Ashram.... He can talk Relativity with an Einsteinian like Jugal, politics and communism with my colleague Manoj Das, history with Sisir,
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philosophy with Arindam and Kireet; even with Dr.Agarwal* he can hold his own and, with his associate editor Albless of Mother India, swap notes on Supermind. One day my friend Champaklal remarked,‘When these two persons get together they start talking about Supermind as though they have put Supermind in their pockets!' In short, our guest is a versatile genius. Still, he says he feels shy to address you... Geniuses are always a bit shy; only, I wonder how with so much knowledge packed in his brain Supermind will find room in it!
"I wanted him to speak about his association with Sri Aurobindo. Out of the few on whom Sri Aurobindo bestowed special attention in the field of poetry, ( and in yoga) three of us are here today. Amal, myself and Nishikanto. Now the Master has left us. But before leaving, he commanded: "stick on!" My two friends are sticking on literally, and I am sticking on psychologically."
I can do no better than give a few samples from his talks. The reader will see how sublimity and levity jostle with each other so that levity itself is transformed into sublimity and vice-versa.
"Can a talk ofmine be at all designated a discourse? Discourse implies acting the philosopher. In that respectI seem to resemble Dr. Jonathan whom Samuel Johnson once asked: 'Have you tried being a philosopher?' Dr. Jonathan replied: 'Sir, I have tried several times, but always cheerfulness keeps breaking in.' "
"To go back to the old days when I was young, the most important things then were the Pranam and the meeting with the Mother in various ways..... The evening meditation was extremely exalting because everything was dim and the Mother used to come and sit in a trance and all of us would try to do the same. Every day there was one little odd occurrence, a disturbance, due to a South Indian yogi who had become a sadhak here..... Before he came here he had thought he was the Avatar of the age. After he saw Sri Aurobindo he developed some misgiving about himself and was inclined to think that perhaps Sri Aurobindo was the Avatar!"
"In those years after Sri Aurobindo's passing away, some of us used
* Dr. Agarwal was a follower of Bates's system in eye-troubles due to errors of refraction. -Editors
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to gather on the first floor and receive flowers and blessings from Her or be near Her... until Her lunch-hour. Then everybody would go away but by an inexplicable stroke of Grace, I was allowed to remain waiting in the passage outside her bathroom. I would sit there until she finished her lunch and came out to go the bathroom. Occasionally, I would walk into Sri Aurobindo's room, sit there for while and then return to my usual station and meet the Mother. One day I oversat in Sri Aurobindo's room. And what did I see? The Mother had crossed all the way right to the end of the long corridor wondering wherethe waiting fellow had disappeared. When I saw her I got up with a start feeling ashamed that I had made her take all that trouble to come and look for someone utterly unimportant, just to give him the blessing he hardly deserved but keenly desired."
" The manner in which the Mother deals with the children is another eye-opener. I recall how she once handled a little girl who was brought to her as having fever. The Mother put her hand gently over the girl's head, moved it slowly to the back of the head, then slide it right down the spine in the same caressing way, and at end lightly kissed the child on the forehead. The little patient, I am positive, went away as good as cured. The Mother once told me that she used to cure her son Andre, when a boy, of all his illness without ever calling a doctor."
So far about Amal Kiran in his "Light and Laughter".
Amal Kiran's Ordeals
Amal had gone to Bombay in 1938 about four months before Sri Aurobindo's accident.
There he suffered from a serious heart-strain. He writes to Sri Aurobindo after his recovery:
"... you know that owing to error in instruction... I swallowed ... 48 times the normal dose, over 4 times the dose a horse might be given and nearly 25 times the dose at which the drug begins to be sheer poison for human beings.... In my awful condition I kept calling to the Mother and you. Of course, I am again up and doing, and I can't take this setback very seriously, through I have semi-collapses now and then and the medicos say I
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need regular attention and should not exert myself. Mother and you get me out of all scrapes; the sweet grace of you both has been unfailing. And I don't think I am much frightened by theoretical possibilities of death. Will my undertaking to come away do me any harm ? This is a year in which, I believe, the Truth-Consciousness may make up its mind, or rather its Supermind, to descend....Won't I be losing something great if I don't throw all caution to the winds ?"
Sri Aurobindo replied: "You must on no account return here before your heart has recovered. No doubt, death must not be feared, but neither should death or permanent ill-health be invited. Here, especially now when all the competent doctors have gone away... there would be no proper facilities for the treatment you still need, while you have them all there. You should remember the Mother's warning to you when she said that you would have your realisation in this life provided you did not do something silly so as to shorten your life. That ‘something silly’ you tried your best to do when you swallowed with a cheerful liberality a poison-medicine without taking the least care to ascertain what was the maximum dose. You have escaped by a sort of miracle, but with a shaken heart. To risk making that shaky condition of the heart a permanent disability of the body rendering it incapable of resisting any severe physical attack or shock in the future, would be another 'something silly' of the same quality. So it's on no account to be done."
The second ordeal that Amal had to pass through was more serious and at the same time most extraordinary. I wish I could reproduce the strange phenomena in his own language given in The Adventure of the Apocalypse (1949) now collected in his The Secret Splendour. I can provide only the bare gist of it. He begins in his natural way: "Between the heart-strain known as myocardial defect and the heart-strain, the cri du coeur that is poetry, no connection has been noted by either doctor or critic. But the story of the poems collected here has its beginning in a collapse due to overstrain of the poet's heart-muscle."
Nobody has ever heard of a poet composing poems of an unusual quality after a sudden collapse resulting from a combi-
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nation of many factors physical, psychological and intellectual - a severe straining from a close and wide study of the Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory, months of intensive research in the philosophical implications of modern physics. The result of all these was a general tired feeling. Another cause was the receding of whatever poetic faculty he had into the background.
"Then came the sudden collapse... the feeling of a hollow in my chest was growing deeper and deeper. So sucked in and dragged down I felt that I thought I would die. Various home-remedies were tried to keep me up. Yet the terrible sinking increased." It struck him that appealing to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo was the only decisive help that could be drawn. With all his power of faith and aspiration he pulled at the saving and healing Light that is their Yogic Consciousness and when he thought a blue sheen and a gold enveloped his heart he sensed a subtle supporting strength gradually taking outward effect.
"A doctor was summoned. By the time he came I had emerged to a considerable extent from the vacuity in the heart region.... As the evening wore on I found my mind getting extraordinarily quiet and clear, until I seemed to look into new dimension of things. Suddenly the whole universe appeared to be a great living being, a wonderful substance of Spirit, and every piece of matter tingled with a divine presence drawing my worship. I had an intense impulse to read that Canto of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which is named ‘The World-Soul’. It is a thrilled cry of mystical insight...."
Then he describes his wonderful mystical experience. He realised for the first time that the entire Canto was glowing with an absolute perfection. The impression extended to all that had been published so far of Savitri and "I could not help worshipping the Yogic power that was embodied in it".
After a time, he says, a flood of poetry raced through his mind and he began to scribble lines on whatever paper material he could lay his hand on. He was writing in total darkness in semi-trance till 4 o'clock in the morning.
I will cut short the long description that follows: "I was writing to the Mother every day, her reply to one of the letters
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was: ‘My dear child, I quite agree with you that there is a power, other and much more powerful than that of the doctors and the medicines and I am glad to see that you put your trust in it. Surely it will lead you throughout all difficulties and in spite of all catastrophic warnings. Keep your faith intact and all will be all right.’"
Amal used to send these poems to Sri Aurobindo and I used to read them out to him. He would listen with quiet attention without making any comment. I couldn't make any dent into them. At the end he dictated an appraisal of them which is added in Amal's Collected Poems.
Sri Aurobindo says: "Your new poems are very remarkable and original in their power of thought and language and image; but precisely for that reason I have to study and consider carefully every individual poem separately before I can comment on them. ... That will be possible only after some time.... I am afraid you will have to possess your soul in patience till things are quieter and time less crowded." (July 20, 1948)
After we had finished reading the poems in December, Sri Aurobindo continued his remarks: "I have gone through your manuscript of poems and I propose that they should be immediately published without further delay. I had started making comments on each poem as I think you had wanted me to do; but this would have been an interminable process and your poems would have had to wait till after Doomsday...."
In his second letter Sri Aurobindo says, "I had started making comments on each poem...." But Amal writes that no such comments were sent to him.
I am putting the account of Amal's very crucial ordeal of 1991 mostly in his own words.
"I am in the Ashram Nursing Home. On October 15, I had a nasty toss in my own working-room. Suddenly, while moving with the help of my 'Walker' I fell backward, with the 'Walker' falling on top of me. When I touched the floor I found my right leg terribly wrenched by being pressed behind my bottom; it was a position of great pain and, what was worse, one from which it
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was impossible for me to get free. If I had been alone inevitably with my door locked from outside, I don't know what would have happened. Luckily my friend who takes great care of me ... was there. She pulled out my leg and I was appalled to see its state. The half below the knee was in one line and the half above from the knee upward was in another. The sight was most inartistic. I gave the knee a push and the two parts got into some sort of line.
"The Ashram doctor was called.... He suspected a fracture of the thigh bone. I was surprised, for owing to my lame leg I had fallen hundreds of times and most awkwardly on occasions, yet never had a fracture. Now the X-ray revealed a nasty multiple break at the knee-joint..,. Our doctor called an Orthopaedic Surgeon."
I shall give a summary of the long account. Out of three options offered by the surgeon the one adopted was similar to the one adopted in the case of Sri Aurobindo except that a slim steel rod was driven in the shin-bone to help the traction. Otherwise in many other respects he had "walked faithfully in his Guru's steps".
I find that some other factors have been omitted from the description. As I remember them they are: Due to the fracture the two parts of the leg were not in proper alignment, so the patient would not be able to stand on his leg even after the cure had taken place through traction etc. Luckily there was no such trouble in Sri Aurobindo's case. To bring the two parts into proper line a radical surgery was needed in the present case. A famous Orthopaedic Surgeon promised to do that alignment by surgery. It was a very risky operation but the surgeon was confident. Amal also was willing to go through it, for he said that life was not worth living if he could not even stand on his legs. When I heard about Amal's consent to it, I was very disturbed for I felt the great danger involved in it. Amal's nephew who is a surgeon in America also was against it. Finally, after much tension and anxiety, Amal withdrew his consent, for he said that he had heard the Mother's adesh against it. Oh, what a relief it was! The upshot is, though he cannot stand on his legs, and the
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wheel-chair carries him about like a perambulator, he is with us in full vigour of mind and heart.
Now he asks himself an overall inner question: "What do Sri Aurobindo and the Mother expect me to gain by this accident ?... In the middle of one of the early nights I asked Sri Aurobindo what was to be my fate by this fall. A number of phrases came as a reply, the last and most significant of which was; ‘The Mother will lift you up high beyond everything.’ "
Then follows a long description of his experience of a constant bliss in the very body. Those interested can read about it in Mother India, February 1992.
There have been other tragic ordeals that Amal has gone through, but I think these three are enough to show that he has been born to fulfil an extraordinary purpose in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.
Epilogue
We are very fortunate indeed to have two exceptional persons whose intellectual accomplishments are a thing of wonder to us.
Those who have read the essays in this compilation will agree with our assertion that Amal is one of them and the other is Nolini Kanta Gupta. They have written many books on various subjects from A to Z. Amal has many volumes still unpublished.
One wonders how in one single life they could have achieved such a miracle. This question has been uppermost in my mind and seeks for an answer. Can one say that such potentialities were latent in their consciousness and have manifested themselves under favourable conditions ? We know that both of them were intellectually superior to a degree. There are plenty of such geniuses in the world, but not as versatile. We are told that all knowledge lies dormant within each one of us, but we know of very few people who have attained versatility to such a great extent.
We know that Amal has been inspired by the Master's Yogic Force, particularly in poetry, and since he is a sadhak the Master's Force could work with his remarkable mind and unshaken faith as the instruments to achieve such exceptional results. To give an
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example of his strong will power. In the early days people used to go for Pranam to the Mother on the main staircase. One day Amal and X were waiting for Mother to open the door. As soon as she opened the door she looked at X and after admitting her in closed the door. She didn't care even to give a glance to Amal. This made Amal feel a violent jealousy. He looked down and saw a huge abyss which would as if swallow him completely. He realised at once the character of jealousy, what jealousy is. He willed then and there to be completely free from it and he succeeded in it. Nolini's achievements were cut short because of his failing health at the end, though he had attained a rare height in spiritual consciousness. Fortunately Amal's physical health is still sound and we expect from him not only spiritual progress but more many-sided intellectual accomplishments.
Let our unbroken friendship too remain intact.
NIRODBARAN
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"A man speaking to men" — that is Wordsworth's conception of an ideal poet. Amal Kiran's innumerable letters to his friends and admirers in the series Life-Poetry-Yoga more than glowingly fulfil this poetic condition. We present in the following a very small sample of the lively correspondence that went on - and is going on - between PR of the Ashram Press and him. Amal as an expounder of Savitri, a very perceptive critic of poetry, a sharp historian, an alert editor, commentator on things and events spiritual and esoteric as well as scientific, an interpreter of dreams and, very happily, a warm humorist and wit with a rich and robust sense of life and understanding of human nature, stands again in front of us in pure gleaming colours that are deeply satisfying - because they all come from the very quality of his soul that is perfectly Aurobindonian. PR's note itself is good introduction to this little, but precious, selection:
"My dear Deshpande
Regarding Amal's epistolary wonder:
As many of these letters have already been published in Mother India and his book Life-Poetry-Yoga, I cannot object to your compilation. But one important point Amal agreed to: nowhere should there be any mention of my name. I am sure you too won't disagree.
If at all they come out you may supply a short editorial note just befitting the occasion. Of course I am keeping Amal informed as well.
With love, PR (23.8.94)."
The correspondence between the two dear friends runs into four thick volumes and the "scoop" - as Amal says - needs mere space than is possible here. —Editors
PR: Has the author of "Sri Aurobindo on Shakespeare" entered into nirvikalpa samadhi?
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And is it advisable for an integral Yogi ?
And the physical frame! Is that steady and sound?
AK: I had just begun to show on my typewriter that there was no danger of even the savikalpa (is the word right ?) when your note came. After looking at the references I shall continue tapping the keys which will unlock my heart and mind to you.
PR: Is Amal's letter to me still swelling ? When will it reach a desirable size! Amen' (not women!!)
AK: Quite a philosophical question [with an arrow pointing to the bracket]. Yes, it's swelling - but there was a short interval before further swelling. Now the process will continue to the bursting point.
AK: Thank you for your warm note. Yes, I am as I have been and there is no complication. I try to imitate the immobile Brahman but to be as far away as possible from the motionless Brahman!
PR: I can wait for eternity. But that "eternity" is not "eternal". Sri Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) should remember that it is only "temporal"'.
AK: Being a student of Blake, I must for my friend's sake remember how
To hold infinity in the palm of my hand
And eternity in an hour.
PR: A D are reading proofs carefully. Her corrections in the margin are in pencil. Please do not miss them.
AK; I suppose that since there are 2 names - "A" & "D" this plural form is used.
PR: Good heavens! I never knew that I used the plural form! But still something might have worked subconsciously. When the lady was introduced to me, I was told that if necessary, she would compare the proofs with her husband, "D".
AK: What's this again? The concluding phrase would mean that she was permitted to consider the proofs comparable with "D": that is, he would be likened to a heap of galleys!
PR: Have I flooded you with work ? If so hold your secrecy of "Splendour" for some time and attend to M.I. [Mother India}.
AK; I can bear a lot on my back. Actually the burden becomes so much less when I feel my friend's deep concern for me.
PR: "The Secret Splendour" pages. I make a generous gift of all I had in my hand. Now I have to wait for more pages to come
AK: Thanks. Let the Splendour that is still secret take its time. When it comes to you let your generous heart flow out!
PR: We have held-over matter from February. It has not been included in the March issue. Kindly throw some Kiran.
AK: The "Kiran" is not "Amal" enough to be sure at the moment about the fate of the article. If it's no trouble to the Press, store it. Otherwise kill it. The author has wanted to enlarge it after some months.
10.9.91
Friend most dear,
I have brought out from my drawer a regular heap of letters from you calling out for answers. All are vibrant with affectionate warmth and each has its own particular spark of inner light, showing that my friend has really been living with a sense of Sri Aurobindo tingling in his mind and a feeling of the Mother
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athrob in his heart and, along with these divine Ones, a few humans are also at home in his sincere aspiring life. I am sure nobody can say about you what my friend Anil Kumar once told me people were saying about him. His words have stuck in my memory because of both their quaint imagery and their AnilKumarish English: "People think Anil Kumar has no backbone and no legs. He is simply sitting and digesting foods."
Let me try to take up your notes chronologically. I was surprised to find one as early in the year as 31.3.91. It is one of the shortest but packed with sweetness as well as an imaginative thrill. It has also a Biblical ring by a repeated use of the conjuction "And". It runs:
My dear Amal,
And then "Savitri" again!
And a Sunday of rest, relaxation and peace!
And when I come across the lines:
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour-stream of musing Force,
Carries the voices of the mystic Suns...
as a sequel there appears before my mind's eye Sri Aurobindo's "The Clear Ray" - my dear and rare friend "Amal Kiran". My feeling is too evident to elucidate.
I feel deeply moved, nor can I be happier than when I am associated with lines from Savitri. In my whole life in the Ashram I have made only two impassioned dramatic statements to the Mother. The first was a little ridiculous. It couched the very first declaration I made to her. I said with a sort of sweeping gesture:
"I have seen everything in life. Now I want only God." You may remember that the Mother coolly asked me: "How old are you ?" I replied: 'Twenty-three." She gave what I may term a serious smile and remarked: "At twenty-three you have seen everything of life ? Don't be in a hurry to make any decision. Stay here for some time and look around. If the life here suits you, join the Ashram." As I have always commented: The Mother's response was like ice-water dashed on my enthusiasm, but I realised that
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she was a Guru who was not avid to have disciples and this was definitely in her favour in my eyes. I stayed on - for good! And it was many years later that I made my other impassioned pronouncement. I had worked almost single-handed for the Ashram to bring out the first one-volume edition of the complete Savitri along with the copious letters Sri Aurobindo had written to me apropos of his epic - the 1954 "University" publication. While preparing it I had several occasions to talk with the Mother on various points and she was quite aware of my labour of love. Still, it so happened that when the book was out she did not give me any copy. After a few days I drew her attention to the fact and declared what Savitri meant to me. I made the resounding statement: "I would give my heart's blood for Savitri." She at once asked Champaklal for a copy and, writing my name on it and signing, presented it to me.
Yes, I would give my heart's blood because it is as if it were itself given to me by Savitri! Ever since, apropos of a certain spiritual situation suggested by a poem of mine, Sri Aurobindo quoted two lines telling of a Ray from the Transcendent coming through the silent Brahman -
Piercing the limitless unknowable,
Breaking the vacancy and voiceless peace -
ever since he quoted them and, in answer to my question where these profoundly reverberating lines had hailed from, wrote the single word "Savitri" - ever since that mystery-packed moment I have felt my very heart to be a rhythm of life wakened by the grace of the Power which could create such poetry and whose Ray from the Transcendent was the ultimate source of whatever little light was sought to be evoked in me by the Aurobindonian gift of my new name "Amal Kiran" meaning 'The Clear Ray".
You write as though my life were already carrying "the voices of the mystic Suns". I wish that were true. But what is true is that indeed from far-away those golden accents have raised as an echo in my depths the constant prayer:
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Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, —
Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
O living Sun.
Your next "missive" is of 13.4.91. It has many interesting facets of your inner and outer life. I pick out a few. You have conjured up the picture of some of you sitting around Nolini after his dinner and before putting him to bed. The talk turns on past births. Somebody asks Nolini who you were in the Ramayana epoch (Yuga). You write: "He did not answer, kept quiet. When pressed again, he replied very softly: 'He was a friend of mine.'" No wonder you were "overjoyed", thinking "being his friend I was not far away from the Divine, - he being with the Divine." I am glad to mark that for all your devotion to Nolini the topmost concern in you was the Divine and you did not stop short with whatever was noteworthily Nolinian and that to you the most noteworthy part in him was the one turned Divineward. The next point that strikes me is the natural way in which "the Ramayana epoch" figures in the talk. It is taken for granted that it was a genuine historical age and not a mytholegendary one. Sri Aurobindo has affirmed that in the cultural process of the ages the Rama-figure stands for the establishment of the dharmic (ethical) mind over the mental titanism on the one hand and on the other the animal mentality, two trends in the path of human evolution. Sri Aurobindo also declares that in the Rama depicted by Valmiki he can feel the afflatus of Avatarhood, the movements of a consciousness beyond the personal, a consciousness that has a cosmic character. How far back in time Rama may be considered to have existed ? My new chronology dates Krishna at the time of the Bharata War to c. 1482 or 1452 B.C. In the traditional table of royal genealogies, starting with Manu Vaivasvata, Krishna's number is 94 and Rama's 65 - a difference of 30 generations. Taking a generation to be roughly 30 years we get about 900 years. This would carry Rama to around 900 years before the Bharata War, that is, c. 2382 or 2352 B.C.
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Here I may clear a possible misunderstanding. In Chapter X, verse 31 of the Gita, Krishna speaking of his Vibhutis tells us: "I am Rama among warriors." We must remember that Indian tradition knows of two Ramas: Rama Jamadagnya and Rama Dasarathi. The former is also called Parasurama, "Rama of the Axe". This designation distinguishes him as a warrior. It is to him that Krishna refers.
You have quaintly wondered, before Nolini's reply., whether your “evolution” had reached the "human level by that period". According to archaeology, man in some form or other, is about two million years old. The modern form was approached atleast 20,000 years ago. Surely, there has been time enough for each of us to attain the human level by the Ramayana epoch. The Tantra calculates that three lakhs of lives had to be passed through before the soul could have a human embodiment. Earth's long history amply allows time for our pre-human past. You and I are certain to have been real Manu-man (mental being) and not something like Hanuman when Rama flourished and Nolini was in his train. In fact, I believe that most disciples of Sri Aurobindo were with Sri Aurobindo each time he manifested in human history, especially when he must have taken an Avataric form to establish
A prominent feature of your letter is the "vision" you had of Mahakali in the state of a semi-sleep into which you had entered after reading those beautiful words of the Mother to Huta published by Huta in White Roses: "Behind the sorrow and loneliness, behind the emptiness and the feeling of incapacity, there is the golden light of the Divine Presence shining soft and warm." You write about the Mahakali you saw: "She was not terrible-looking; she looked affectionate and soothing...." Your pair of adjectives answers well to the Mother's "soft and warm". Of course. Mahakali too, as Sri Aurobindo has said, "is the Mother..." And her motherliness, her affectionate and soothing aspect is natural for those who invoke her to remove their defects with rapidity, those who are on her side and not stuck in their follies and obscurities. The dreadful aspect is only for those who are enemies of the Divine within and without. "Terrible," writes Sri Aurobindo, "is her face to the Asura."
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Referring to Savitri as "a wide ocean" and your feeling that you "can touch a drop only", you quote a sloka from the Gita; ''Even a little of this dharma delivers from the great fear." The last two words ring a bell in my mind. This mahato bhayāt- this "great fear" - what does it evoke in the spiritual vision ? Somewhere in the Upanishads there is a phrase with some such suggestion as: "Where there is one, there is no fear: fear comes where there are two." The Isha Upanishad asks about the spiritual seeker in whom the one Self has become all creatures: "How shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness ?" Evidently the delusion, the grief from the common human state obsessed by cosmic multiplicity and lacking in the realisation of the unitarian Atman, the single Brahman who, in theIsha's words, "has gone abroad" and manifested the diverse devious phenomena in which we are submerged. The "great fear" of your quotation strikes me as being the unillumined condition of our life, what the post-Upanishadic Vedanta dubs samsara, maya, with their perils and pitfalls, in which the soul is ever in danger of wandering for ages away from its true goal. My idea gets confirmed when I read in the Taittiriya (II.7) that when a man has found "the invisible, bodiless, indefinable and unhoused Eternal" to be his "refulgent firm foundation", then "he has passed beyond the reach of fear". If "fear" characterises or represents the phenomenal existence, the world of meandering multiplicity, surely Atman or Brahman, the ultimate Self of selves, the single supreme Reality would be the very opposite. And actually we have the Brihadaranyaka (IV.4.25) saying:"Brahman is indeed fearless. He who knows it as such certainly becomes the fearless Brahman." Again, the same Upanishad (IV.2.4) figures Yajnavalkya exclaiming: "You have obtained That which is free from fear, O Janaka!'" It is curious that, unlike Shankara and his ilk, the Upanishads rarely allude to moksha or mukti, "freedom, liberation". I can find only one reference anticipating in a general manner the sense of mukti. The Brihadaranyaka (IV.2.8) has the expression: "being freed". Obviously the Upanishads are more psychological than philosophical in rendering their spirituality. In this respect they connect up with the Rigveda rather than the Brahmasutras. In fact, I
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recall from the former some phrases aptly bearing on the theme I am discussing. The Gods are said to bring about, by their fostering, the "fearless light", abhayam jyotih, even in this world of fear and danger, bhaya ā cinmayabhu. Again, we hear about Swar, the divine "solar" plane, in arms of the usual cow-bull symbolism: "The wide and fear-free pastures of the shining cows." (12th hymn to Agni, verse 6)
Perhaps the compound adjective standing for the Rigvedic attitude points to at least a strong strain in the original Indian spirituality which persisted in the Upanishads and differed markedly from the later Shankarite intransigence towards earth-life. Freedom is sought not from earth-life as such but from what in it makes for fear — the fact that our existence does not rest on a sense of oneness and is always aware of a multitudinous otherness which is a cause of fear. A synonym, as it were of the "fear-free" state desired, aspired after, is the epithet "wide'" in the Rigvedic phrase.
Our non-spiritual condition, our delusive ignorance consists essentially in being locked up in oneself, being exclusive of one's true reality which includes everyone and everything, an inner vastness which rules out the feeling of the other, the alien that can oppose and injure one. Do you remember the Chhandogya Upanishad's glorious utterance: 'There is no happiness in the small: immensity alone is felicity" ? The Rigveda always associates brihat (the Vast) with its satyam (the True) as well as its ritam (the Right) in describing the supreme world of the soul's fulfilment. I say "world" because the Rishis use the term loka or its equivalents which do not cut off the Beyond from the Here: it is not into a wordlessness that one enters when one is "fear-free": one enters an ideal world high above, which has no divisiveness and fulfils our multiple earthly existence by providing the basic unit weaving everything together instead of setting one part over against the others as here below. And the correspondence of the higher with the lower in being no void, no wordlessness, leads to the compatibility of the Here and the Beyond so that the Seers, once they have realised the underlying unity of things by constant contact with the Beyond, do not fly away from the Here but remain to work towards a finer and greater life: there is no
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"refusal of the ascetic" as in later ages. The compatibility persists as a vital element in the Upanishads where often there is talk of Brahmaloka and not just Brahman. The context in which Yajnavalkya and Janaka figure with their "That which is free From fear" is, I think, particularly rich in reference to Brahmaloka. Indeed Yajnavalkya is a denizen par excellence of both the Here and the Yonder: with one hand he keeps a hold on the earth and with the other readies out to the empyrean. In a most exalted way he settles for "All this and Heaven too". He seems to have anticipated Sri Aurobindo in a more flamboyant manner than would suit our Master's nature,
Your letter of 23.5.91 relates two dreams, both on a Tuesday. Your dreams of Nolini used to occur mostly on this day ~ but now, in answer to your call to him, a lesser sadhak made his appearance as though he were an envoy from him. What you saw seems to add one more chapter to Amal Kiran’s visits to the Press in the old days to carry out some alterations and corrections. Such a move by him is characteristic. He is a typical case of the ache for perfection in both poetry and prose. Some ideality ever haunts him and he goes on chiselling until the vague vision he has discerned in his depths looks out at him from his literary work in a splendid clarity suddenly emerging from his stroke on shaping stroke on the challenging material before him. If not in anything else, his copious alterations and corrections show him to be a true disciple of the creator of Savitri who made nearly a dozen transcripts of it in order not merely to make it as poetic as possible but also to charge it with the Utmost power of spiritual illumination. Apropos of your dreams I may add that along with typifying the ever-aspiring Amal the writer, what you dreamt typefies the never-tiring helper in you. You have recorded your response to my proposal for alterations and corrections; "My attitude was - these must be done: we must oblige him."...
Affectionately
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High Adventure in Historiography: the Historical Vision of K.D. Sethna
SRI AUROBINDO, .the seer of modern India, blazed new trails in several worlds of human enterprise and had followers of signal eminence in many of them. Some made their mark in more than one sphere of activity. Integral Yoga and Overhead Poetry arc two such areas in which a number of luminaries have left their mark. No follower of Sri Aurobindo, however, has not only penetrated these areas but also ventured into territories such as science and history. Here is where K.D. Sethna, or Amal Kiran as he was named by his Master, stands distinctly apart. This remarkable mind has taken virtually all knowledge for its domain and the clear ray of his piercing insight has probed not only profound issues of philosophy, such as the question of free-will or the spirituality of the future, but has investigated Einsteinian physics, detected Shakespeare's mysterious Dark Lady, Mr. W.H. and the Rival Poet, published 750 pages of poetry and followed the approach of Sri Aurobindo in plumbing the riches of European literature and the practice of Integral Yoga, However, that which is unique is his signal contribution to historiography. Here I shall not go into his remarkable investigations into Jewish history to fix the date of the Exodus, or into the question of the Immaculate Conception which patiently awaits a publisher of vision and courage. My attempt will be to highlight Amal Kiran's deep-delving reconstruction of ancient Indian history.
It is Sethna's characteristic that even in this most intellectual pursuit, the dissection of the vexed questions concerning the Harappa Culture, his inspiration is drawn from Sri Aurobindo. Repeatedly he returns to this fountain-head for sustaining his arguments, building firmly on his faith in the infallibility of the seer-vision of the Avatar of the Supramental.
An implacable honesty is what places Sethna head-and-
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shoulders above scholars setting out to prove a preconceived thesis. Despite having ready to hand so useful an opinion as Pusalkar's that the Sanskrit sindhu occurring in Assurbanipal's library refers to Indian cotton and is the source for the Arabic satin, Greek sindon and Hebrew sadin, which becomes evidence for trade between Harappa and Mesopotamia and of an Aryan clement in the Harappan Culture, Sethna was not satisfied. It struck him as peculiar that where the Sanskrit karpasa, cotton, produced Hebrew and Greek analogues, that same product should be given a different name in Assyrian, Hebrew and Greek. So he wrote to the world's foremost Assyriologist, S.N. Kramer who informed him that the Akkadian word was not sindhu at all but sintu, referring to woollen garments and having no relationship at all with India or the Indus! Kramer also denied that the greek sindon and the Hebrew sadin could be equaled with sintu or sindhu,. Thus, what had seemed to be a sure linguistic proof of Aryanism in Harappan Culture was exposed through Sethna's relentless quest after truth to be a misreading of the Akkadian text by Pusalkar, although thereby Sethna lost a major support for his thesis. In the process, he also corrected a major misconception prevailing among our scholars regarding this word.
When Sethna approached H.D. Sankalia with the first draft of his The Harappa Culture and the Rigveda, that doyen of Indian archaeologists pointed out the single weak point in the thesis:2 The lack of any evidence of Vedic Aryan culture from Sind and Punjab belonging to the 4000-2000 B.C. bracket. That was in 1963. Sethna did not rush into print ignoring this solitary flaw. He waited patiently for well over a decade-and-a-half till the necessary archaeological evidence surfaced from excavations to substantiate his intellectually flawless arguments.
This relentless dedication in the pursuit of truth and the uncompromising sincerity are features intrinsic to Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga which shine forth so radiantly in Amal Kiran.
In Karpāsa in Prehistoric India3 Sethna investigated the use of cotton in prehistoric India for arriving along a different route with additional evidence at the same conclusion that he had put forward in The Problem of Aryan Origins.4 The Rigvedic Culture
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precedes the Harappan; the Indus Valley Civilization contains Aryan elements. A clinching argument is evolved by Sethna from the tact of cotton being first mentioned in the oldest Sutras. If the Rigvedic Aryans flourished in the Indus Valley after the cotton-cultivating Harappans, how is it that all the Vedas, Brahmans, Aranyakas and early Upanishads do not know karpasa? Cotton is even found at sites deeper inland in Gujarat, Maharashtra and near Delhi dated c. 1330-1000 B.C. This is very much after the alleged incursion around 1500 B.C. of Rigvedic Aryans. Such a continuous absence of the mention of a product argues for datingthe Vedas before the cotton-knowing Harappa Culture. Here he also suggested that clues to the Indus script might be found in potters' marks found in pre-Harappan and Aryan sites, proved that Mulukha of Sumerian records is Harappa and that the Biblical Ophir is Sopara. Each of these warrants serious follow-up by historians not only of Indian prehistory, but of Mesopotamian and Jewish history as well.
The second edition of the important work on Aryan Origins5 became necessary because in 1987 there was a recrudescence from within India and from Finland of the pernicious Aryan invasion theory which is at the root of the north-south, Aryan-Dravidian divide that raises its ugly head time and again in India.
The most important examination in this new edition relates to the question of the presence of the horse and the spoked wheel in the Harappa culture. The circle with six radials within seen on several Harappan seals is not found in Sumerian tablets or Egyptian hieroglyphics as a sun-symbol (which is what I. Mahadevan et. al. argue it represents). The damaged seal showing a man standing astraddle on spoked wheels suggests the presence of a spoked-wheel chariot. Moreover, S.R. Rao's finding at Lothal of a drawing on a potsherd of a figure standing on two wheels resembling the paintings of Assyrian charioteers is a clinching piece of evidence. Even more conclusive is the fact that the C-14 date for this damaged seal is 1960 B.C., long before the alleged invasion of Aryan cavalry that supposedly occurred around 1500 B.C.
Sethna shows that Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, is wrong6
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in stating that no evidence of horse-bones is available in the Harappa Culture. At Rana Ghundai's pre-Harappan stratum horse's teeth have been found much before 2000 B.C.. The same Rana Ghundai IIIc Culture exists at low levels of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. From the opposite angle, no evidence of the horse has been discovered in the excavations in Punjab and Harvana in post-Harappan sites — which should have been the case if the Aryans brought the horse and the Rigveda into India around 1500 B.C. - while equine bones have been found of that date from both Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Sethna quotes the 1980 report from G.R. Sharma on excavations in the valley of the Belan and Son revealing evidence at the neolithic sites of the domesticated horse as well as the wild horse dated between 8080 B.C. and 5540 B.C. at Koldihwa and Mahagara. Moreover, there is the 1990 report of K.R. Alur identifying horse bones dated to c. 1800-1500 B.C. in repeated excavation at Hallur in Karnataka, before the supposed Aryan invasion. Alur has pointed out that the metacarpals allegedly of the domestic ass found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa are definitely not of the ass and are possibly of the smaller size horse. Therefore, the Aryans whom Parpola would like to immigrate into India around 1600-1400 B.C. cannot possibly have introduced the horse in the Deccan several centuries before their arrival. Sethna clinches his point by quoting the ardent invasionist, Mortimer Wheeler himself: "It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravans." Thus, lack of representation of the horse, like that of the camel, on the seals does not rule our their being in use in the Indus Civilization, particularly when their bones have been found much before the horse is supposed to have been introduced by the invading Aryans around 2000 B.C. If the horse is a conclusive sign of Aryan presence, then the report from Sharma proves that the Aryan was in India long before even the Harappan Civilization. Actually, even where picturisation is concerned, Sethna cites S.P. Shukla's account of a terracotta horse-like animal figurine with a saddle on its back from Balu in the Harappan urban phase.
Sethna could have rested content here. However, with the
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integrity that is so typical of him, he raises the question of what evidence there is of any trace of chariots in Neolithic limes where remains of the domesticated horse have been found? Pointing out that in the Rigveda the chariot is not invariably horse-drawn, he draws attention to a pot from Susa showing an ox-drawn chariot similar to the Kulli ware of South Baluchistan with which trading existed. The Rigveda seems familiar with Baluchistan, as Parpola notes. Therefore, with the horse already present much before the Rigvedic time, and this illustration of a chariot, the probability of horse-drawn chariots becomes acceptable even in pre-Harappan times.
Sethna also takes on the eminent academician, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, and points out the contradictions in his assigning to Indra the role of the destroyer of the Indus Valley Civilisation.8 Archaeologists have found overwhelming evidence, going back to much before the second millennium B.C., of heavy flooding of Harappan settlements. In Mohenjodaro itself there is evidence for at least five such floods, each lasting for several decades, even up to a century. Evidence has also been found of considerable rise in the coast-line of the Arabian Sea. Hence, there is no need at all to posit a horde of invading Aryans for demolishing imaginary dams where natural forces are found to be responsible. Chattopadhyaya also fails to notice that whatever weapons Indra is mentioned as using are described clearly in the same hymns as being of symbolic nature. Similarly, the material objects demolished are also symbolic. Firstly, the Rigveda gives mighty forts not only to the enemies but also to the Aryans, and these forts surpass anything that has been found in archaeology of that time (ninety-nine or hundred in number, made of stone or metal). Secondly, if the invasion came from the north, how is it that instead of the northern Harappan sites it is the southern Mohenjodaro which shows a noticeable decline in material prosperity? Moreover, even here there is no settlement at all over its ruins, which is peculiar if the Aryans destroyed it.
The coup de grace is administered with evidence from the undersea excavations at Dwaraka, where the submergence has been dated to about 1400 B.C., tallying with what the Maha-
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bharata and the Harivamsa state regarding this event following Krishna's death. If the Kurukshetra war took place around this time, surely the period of the Rigveda will have to be considerably anterior to it and can by no means be around 1500 B.C. as the invasionists would like to have it! Hence, there is no question of invading Aryans destroying the Harappa Culture a mere hundred years before the Kurukshetra war. The Rigveda, therefore, necessarily precedes the Harappa Culture which ended around the middle of the second millennium B.C. Thus, Sethna shows conclusively that all available evidence sets the end of the Indus Civilization quite apart from any violent destruction by Rigvedic Aryans.
In 1988 came another major paper from Asko Parpola on the coming on the Aryans to India and the cultural-ethnic identity of the Dasas. Parpola based his hypothesis of Rigvedic Aryan movement from Swat to Punjab around 1600-1400 B.C. on the Mitanni treaty and the Kikkuli chariot-horse training manual. However, neither document has the word "Arya", nor does the recitation of the names of deities conform to the Rigvedic turn of phrase, as Sethna perceptively notes. Linguistic study shows that there is a large gap between the Rigvedic epoch and the time of the Mitanni document whose language is found to be middle- Indic and not Indo-Iranian or Old Indo-Aryan as supposed initially.
Sethna's eagle eye spots the inner contradiction in Parpola's hypothesis. Parpola feels that the Harappans spoke proto-Dravidian and not Indo-European because the horse is absent from the seats and figurines. Yet, he characterises the chalcolithic cultures of the Banas Valley and Maiawa (Navdatoli) as Aryan although there too the horse is conspicuously absent. Further, when Parpola asserts that Pirak horsemen first brought the horse into use into India he forgets that no horse-bones have been found at Pirak at all! He also makes the mistake of equating a possible Aryan presence in Swat with Rigvedic Aryanism in arguing that there was a horse-knowing culture's incursion from Swat into India which was a Rigvedic invasion. Sethna shows that while the brick-built nature of the fire-altars found in Swat
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equates them with those in Kalibangan and the Harappa Culture, this sets, them apart from the Rigvedic which is innocent of brick. Use of silver is mentioned by Parpola as a feature of the Namazga V culture which he claims to be Aryan and from where Rigvedic Aryanism was brought into India. But, points out Sethna, the Rigvedic period does not know silver at all. He shows that Parpola is wrong in his understanding of what black metal, shyamayas of the Atharvaveda is. It is certainly not iron, but an alloy of copper and tin, while ayas of the Rigveda is copper. Even in the later Shatapatha Brahmana, there is no knowledge of iron, lohayas or red metal being copper, ayas resembling gold being brass. Hence the Rigveda is considerably anterior to the iron age which Parpola fixes for it in Pirak c. 1100 B.C.
Parpola next uses the cultivation of rice for the first time in the Indus Valley as a sign of Rigvedic Aryanism invading India in the post-Harappan period. However, rice is already present in several Harappan sites within and outside the Indus Valley, while it is unknown to both the Rigveda and the Avesta. Therefore, Sethna is quite right in claiming that the Rigveda precedes the Harappa Culture and definitely the post-Harappan Pirak phase of c. 1800 B.C. Even the PGW type of pottery, with its traits of rice cultivation, is absent along the route supposedly taken by immigrating Aryans. The latest excavations (1976-1982) by J.P. Joshi indicate that PGW culture is an indigenous development without any break from the local proto-historic culture and is not associated with invading Aryans from the west.
Sethna marshalls powerfully persuasive arguments in favour of the Rigveda being, for all practical purposes, autochthonous to India, using recent statements from Colin Renfrew pointing out that nothing in the Veda hints at any intrusion. The Rigveda repeatedly alludes to ancient seers of hoary antiquity but never speaks of any immigration nor mentions any previous habitat. Sethna's incisive intellect fastens upon every possible objection that might be raised against the great antiquity proposed for the Rigveda. As a particular verse carries a reference to camels, he points out that there has to be some evidence of adequate antiquity of the domesticated camel for his hypothesis to be
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proven. He locates such archaeological evidence going back to the third millennium B.C. To this he adds the negative argument that silver has been known from 4000 B.C. but is not known to the Rigveda, which, therefore, must precede tills date. Again, the earliest occurrence of cultivated rice is dated to Neolithic Mahagara and Koldihwa c. 6810-5780 B.C. Sethna prefers to deduct 240 - this is the solitary ad hoc clement in his otherwise sound argumentation besides the gratuitous identification of Talmena with tala-mina for proposing the tribe of Minas from Talmena colonizing Sumeria - and come to 5300 which fits in with his proposition that the Rigveda would begin c. 5500 B.C. and be ignorant of rice while knowing the horse well as the neolithic sites have the horse-bones whose C-14 dating is 6700 B.C.
The most important contribution in the midst of all this analysis of archaeological evidence is Sethna's bringing home to the reader how the naturalistic interpretations of western scholars fail to hang together if the Rigveda is studied as a whole and that the only approach which makes total sense is the mystic or spiritual one shown by Sri Aurobindo in The Secret of the Veda. The Rigvedic verse is most telling: "He who knows only the outward sense is one who seeing sees not, hearing hears not. (10.71.4)" The foes of the Rigvedics are neither non-Aryans nor, as Parpola would have it, an earlier band of immigrated Aryans. They are anti-divine forces opposing the spiritual inspiration sought after by the "Aryan", that is, "the striver", the aspirant. The forts are symbols of occult centres of resistance to this quest after the "cows", that is streams of enlightenment flowing from the Sun of Truth and the Dawn of inner revelation. Sethna presents an excellent explication of the famous Battle of Ten Kings passage to demolish Parpola's hypothesis of two waves of Aryans disrupting the Indus Civilization and also shows how utterly wrong Parpola is in setting in opposition the Asura and the Deva, for in the Rigveda the Deva does not cease to be the Asura, except in some very late compositions. Sethna's acute perception points out basic errors in Parpola's data such as Indra never being referred to as Asura except in the late Book Ten.
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Sethna finds such references existing in Books 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8. He also disproves Parpola's idea that Varuna entered the Pantheon at a later date than Indra and is originally foreign to the Rigveda, and demolishes E.W. Hales's thesis that the Asuras were human lords.
Having proved that the Rigveda is indigenous to India, that there is no justification for interpreting it as a war between invading Aryans and autochthonous Dravidians, the former enslaving the latter - a concept fostered by the foreign scholars which has bred so much bitterness in south India - Sethna ventures into what can only be described as high adventure in his radical reconstruction of ancient Indian chronology in Ancient India in a New Light.9 To summarise his findings in brief, Sethna marshalls evidence from the Puranas and archaeology to argue that the Sandrocottus of Megasthenes could not have been the Mauryan king, but was the founder of the Gupta Dynasty. I had pointed out to him after he had completed the first part of the work that unless the Asokan epigraphs could be tackled convincingly, his new chronology would break down. Sethna proceeded to do this also over 300 pages of a closely argued thesis pushing Asoka back to 950 B.C. and allocating to the Gupta Empire the period 315 B.C. - A.D. 320.
Sethna's 606 page tome, with a 15 page bibliography and a 23 page index, is an outstanding instance of ratiocination proceeding inexorably from a chronological absurdity fastened upon unerringly by the clear ray of his perception. Pulakesin II's Aihole inscription of 634 A.D. shows Indian chronology in vogue fixing 3102 B.C. as the date of the start of the Kahvuga, while also referring to the Saka Era of 78 A.D. According to modern historians, this is the time of the Gupta Empire, when this system of chronology was made up by the Puranic writers. Now, according to the Puranas the Guptas come around the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. If the modern dating of the Guptas is accepted, it means that the Puranics, face to face with the Gupta kings, placed them in antiquity six hundred years in the past! It is peculiar that so obvious an absurdity should have escaped our own historians. Can we help concluding that we are
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still unable to rid our minds of the overpowering influence of the dismissal by western scholars of our own ancient records: The Puranas? They believe in the historicity of Homer and excavate Troy, but will not allow that same probability to the Puranas simply because they speak of a civilized antiquity in a colonized country when the western man was living in caves, and that is unacceptable from a subject race. On the grounds of the reductio ad absurdum of the Puranics placing their contemporary monarchs six centuries in the past, Sethna proposes that the Guptas referred to in the Puranas are the descendants of that Chandragupta whom Megasthenes refers to as Sandrocottus, contemporaneous with Alexander. Consequently, the Mauryan Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka needs must recede considerably farther into the past.
The rest of the book is a thrilling venture as Sethna daringly steers his slender craft through uncharted seas crossing one insuperable barrier-reef after another to reach a destination in whose existence he firmly believes. The most important of these is the supposed linking of the Greeks with Asoka. Sethna's penetrating insight reveals that the Asokan "yona raja" Amtiyoka of Rock Edict XIII cannot refer to a Greek king and that the dating of this edict proposed by Bhandarkar is quite mistaken even on the basis of the current chronology. Next the Asokan inscription in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar is analysed and the conclusion arrived at that the two inscriptions are not contemporaneous; that the Greek comes much after the Aramaic and, indeed, explicates it: That the "Yavanani" script referred to by Panini is this Aramaic script going back to the pre-9th century B.C. period. The Kandahar II and Laghlman Aramaic inscriptions are then taken up and proven to be much before the 3rd century B.C. as theorised at present. Finally, examining the evidence for the reigns of the Sungas, Kanvas and Satvahanas, Sethna arrives at 950 B.C. as the date of Asoka's accession.
The next challenge is harmonising this with the wide-spread variety in traditions regarding Buddhist chronology (Ceylonese, Chinese, Tibetan, Arab, Puranic and the Milinda-panha and Rajatarangini). Sethna infallibly locates a sure guiding light to
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steer clear of this welter of confusion: Buddha's death has to be determined in terms of Asoka's accession and not the other way about. Thus, with the latter being fixed in 950 B.C., the nirvana is 218 years before that in 168 B.C. and the death of Mahavira would be in 1165 B.C.
The argument of Ceylon being referred to in Asoka's inscriptions is demolished by Sethna who points out that this identification flouts all the literary and epigraphic data. 'Tambapamni" and "Tambapamniya" are references to the far south in India. Coming to the Asokan monuments, he shows that the affinities are with Mesopotamia not with Achaemenid art, and that they carry on in the tradition of the realistic treatment of the Indus seals, the assembly hall of Mohenjodaro and the high polish of Harappan jewellery. From the other end of the spectrum, Megasthenes is analysed to reveal that references point to the Bhagavata Vaishnavite cult practised by the Gupta Dynasty, certainly not to what is known of the Mauryas.
As in his work on the Aryan Origins, Sethna corrects major historical errors here too. One is regarding Fa-Hien who is widely accepted as having visited India during the reign of Chandragupta II. Sethna bluntly points out how generations of historians have simply assumed Fleet's chronology despite the pilgrim's records mentioning no king at all and the social conditions not tallying with whatever is known of the Gupta regime. Another such major twisting of chronology which has been unquestioningly accepted by modern historians is exposed when Sethna examines Al-beruni's travelogue to show that Fleet misrepresented the Arab visitor's categorical description of the Gupta Era as celebrating the end of a dynasty that had come to be hated and not the beginning of the dynasty! A third misconception is that the earliest Roman dinarius (whence the Gupta dinara is dated) in India is of the last quarter of the first century B.C. Sethna shows that the earliest denarii go back to 268 B.C. and it is around 264 B.C. that Ptolemy II sent an emissary from Egypt to India. Therefore, the reference to dinara in the Gadhwa Stone inscription of the Gupta Era 88 can certainly be in 277 B.C. A fourth error corrected is that of identifying the Malawa Era of the
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Mandasor Inscription with the Vikrama Era. Sethna shows that all epigraphic evidence points to the identity of the Malawa Era with the Krita Era, and that the Vikrama Era has been gratuitously brought in just because it is convenient for the modern chronology of the Guptas. He shows that the Kumaragupta referred to here cannot chronologically be the Gupta monarch even following Fleet's calculations. By bringing in the other Mandasor inscription of Dattabhatta which refers to Chandragupta son Govindagupta as alive in the Malawa year 535, Sethna shows that dating it by the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. creates an impossible situation. He fixes the beginning of the Malawa Era at 711 B.C. This leads to two fascinating discoveries when linked with other Mandasor inscriptions: that the Malawa ruler Yasodharman (Malawa 589, i.e. 122 B.C.) might be the source of the legend of Vikramaditya; and that Mihirakula whom he defeated was a Saka and not, as supposed by historians without adequate evidence, a Huna. Sethna exposes yet another Fleetian conjecture regarding Skandagupta battling the Hunas by contacting the epigraphist D.C. Sircar10 and getting the astonishing admission that there is no such reference in the Junagarh inscription!
Some of the more remarkable findings in this work which need mention are: Devanampiyatissa of Ceylon dealt not with Asoka but with Samudragupta; the Kushana Dynasty imitated features of the Guptas on their coins instead of the other way about as historians argue: Al-beruni testifies to two Saka Eras, one of 57 B.C. probably commemmorating Yasodharman's victory, and the other of 78 A.D. by Salivahana who was possibly of the Satavahana Dynasty; the Mehrauli Iron Pillar inscription is by Sandrocottus-Chandragupta-I whose term for the invading Greeks is shown to be "Vahlika" (outsiders from Bactria) which fills in the puzzling gap in Indian records of mention of the incursions by Alexander and Seleucus. It is the founder of the Guptas and not of the Mauryan Dynasty who stands firmly identified as Megastheness Sandrocottus.
Sethna provides an extremely valuable Supplement11 in which he uses the revised chronology posited by him for fixing the dates of the Kurukshetra War and the beginning of the Kaliyuga,
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traditionally dated to Krishna's death, at 1452/1482 B.C. and 1416/1446 B.C. respectively working back 8 or 9 generations of preceptors from Ashvalayana, a contemporary of Buddha, to Parikshit who was enthroned after Krishna's death. In another discussion,12 Sethna examines the Arthashastra and shows it as not having anything in common with Mauryan times as evidenced from the Asokan inscriptions, and being much closer to the royal titles and functionaries, use of Sanskrit and of terms like pratyanta and Prajjunikas of the Gupta epigraphs and Megasthenes. He assigns to this work the period close ro the pre-Gupta Junagarh Inscription of Rudradaman I in 479 B.C. A farther examination of the religious date shows that Kautilya's work is in the interval between Panini and Patanjali, but closer to the former on account of the reference to the prevalence of worship of the Nasatya and the bracketing of an evil spirit Krishna with Kamsa recalling the asura Krishna of the Veda, which indicates a period prior to that of the Vasudeva cult recorded by Megasthenes. On this basis, the original Arthashastra is assigned by Sethna to c. 500 B.C., having clearly distinguished Kautiiya the author of the work from Chanakya, the preceptor of the Maurya monarch. Here, too, Sethna corrects a widely prevalent mistake among our historians who have blindly followed Jacobi who compared Chanakya to Bismarck as Chancellor of the Empire. Sethna points out the facts: Chankya was instrumental in installing the Prime Minister of the Nandas, Rakshasa, to assume the same post with the Maurya king. Thus, if anyone, it is Rakshasa who is the Chancellor and not Chanakya.
This short survey cannot do justice to the magnitude of the contribution K.D. Sethna has made to the basic approach to Indian Pre-and-Proto-History as well as later historical periods. However, if it succeeds in giving some idea of how remarkable this effort has been in illuminating the dark backward and abysm of a critical portion of our antique time, and motivates those who are interested in our history to think afresh, untrammelled by preconceptions foisted by western scholars and their Indian counterparts over the last hundred years, it will be a consummation devoutly to be wished. That will also be a fitting tribute to
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the master-seer who has inspired such a phenomenal deep- delving, wide-ranging inquiry into the foundations of our past: Sri Aurobindo.
PRADIP BHATTACHARYA
1. Sethna, K.D.: Karpasa in Prehistoric India: a chronological and cultural clue, Biblia Impex, New Delhi, 1984.
2. Sethna, K..D.: The Problem of Aryan Origins: an Indian point of view, second enlarged edition, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992, p. 57.
3. Cf. 1 above.
4. Cf. 2 above, first edition, S & S Enterprises, Calcutta 1980.
5. Cf. 2 above.
6. Ibid., pp. 214-222.
7. Ibid., pp. 419-20.
8. Ibid., pp. 187-93.
9. Sethna, K.D.: Ancient India in a New Light, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1989.
10. Ibid., pp. 513.
11. Ibid.,pp. 543-5.
12. Ibid., pp. 546-589.
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A REVIEWER of The Secret Splendour is handicapped at the beginning. For, interspersed with K.D. Sethna's poems are Sri Aurobindo's own appreciative remarks, and who dare disagree with the Colossus of India's spiritual-literary renaissance? Especially when he uses words like ‘beautiful', 'exceedingly fine' and 'magnificent' quite often ?
Fortunately for us, neither Sethna nor Sri Aurobindo are clique-ridden. Ready to face criticism, yes! For Sethna knows very well that mystic poetry has to survive in a highly critical soil. Besides, this is the ruthless age of science and technology. Sethna has equipped himself with the latest in literature, history, science, sociology. In this obviously externalised world, an internalised art hasn't a big chance. If, inspite of all the negative aspects of contemporary writing (poetry books have no sales value), Sethna has chosen to send forth this splendidly produced volume, it is because of his immense faith in the serenity of man's soul. That depth within which calls out to the deep elsewhere and achieves sterling samatva when true understanding dawns upon man in his hurried quest as on the bird in the Upanishad. An image of cognitive assonance that is a beautiful visual on the frontispiece and the evocative poem Two Birds in the volume:*
Among the great realms of green
Fed on their multitudinous fruit -
'Where hangs the marvellous fruit I seek ?'
* The frontispiece painting illustrating the Two Birds is by Sethna himself; the same has been used for the jacket design of the book also.- Editors.
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searching gaze of grief he turned:
Lo, there upon the topmost bough
This calm bird — aureoled, immense -
The watchful ravener below
The Secret Splendour has to be read at a steady pace, twice. The first time it is to be the poems alone to get the full impact of Sethna's creative ability as an extension of our own experience with literature as well as spiritual strivings. Though the Indianness of the poems is obvious because of the prayerful note in all the poems (you do not get this tone in the English poetry of Great Britain and America except perhaps in the Psalms and the Prelude) and the in-depth references to Indian names like Sakuntala and Parasara as well as concepts like Yoga and Maya, Sethna does take us back repeatedly to English and French poetry. Possessed of enviable scholarship in these areas, it is but natural to come across poems like Lammergeyer:
Preach pity to the Lammergeyer’s breast,
Make its brute claws grasp intellectual truth -
Vain strife! yet only the subhuman nest
Bears the untrammelled vigour that can strain
To skies like some vast super-rose of ruth,
Seer suns beyond the gold of Plato's brain.
The Divine Comedy gets invoked quite often in crystalline poems. Some passages from Dante and Prudhomme have also been transcreated.
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Sethna's is a lyric genius. Even the Sehra group is but a bouquet of lyrics. It is surprising that inspite of being an earnest disciple of Sri Aurobindo and having spent long decades in absorbing each line that Sri Aurobindo wrote, Sethna has never tried his hand at narrative poems or epics. Perhaps the early hold of French symbolists on Sethna's poetic spirit could never be loosened after. Also, it is quite possible that Sethna has understood his path and preferred not to waste time where his heart would not dictate: paradharma bhayavahah!
Yet another reason would be that his sunny genius prefers not to plumb despair, helplessness and tragedy which are indispensable in narrative poetry that call for externalised drama. He has suffered immensely but has always been a happy warrior. Hence none of the poems here is touched by the Shadow. A brush with death is always transformed into an exaltation, for Sethna has intuitively gazed at the Mula Prakriti.. Forget this body, this tiny self! Look, look upon the immensities within and without where "Shiva [sits] throned on an all-supporting void"!
But when the Great self glows
Like a golden cosmic rose,
The petals fanning out from one sweet core,
No strangeness anywhere
Remains for stare and stare
Seeking to itself a door.
The central Eye of eyes
Can shut in all-repose,
For the Great Flower knows
Its perfume of paradise.
Not for Sethna the mole-like burrowing into the darkness's of one's own vital and lower-vital consciousness that is the hallmark of most of the anthologised poets of post-independence Indo-Anglia. Not for him the ironic skepticism of those poets whose daily servility to sex imagery has entombed them in their own excess as in the dramas of Ionesco. There is something imperial about Sethna's stance; yet there is no stand-offishness. Here are
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aspirations, the anxieties of the explorer, the regulated passion of the expert tennis player, the Keatsian joy on looking in Chapman's Homer. In this extended monologue with the Supreme, the aspirant mortal simply rejects sorrow in one clean sweep, for how can be sorrow present in the presence of the All-Beautiful Anandamaya ?
May my whole life in a flame of worship move
Towards the spirit-splendour of Thy limbs
Wherein our lost and fragmentary days
Find a uniting rapture and the unknown
Helpless dream-longing of the earth, star-sown,
Blossoms into undying words of light!
For Sethna writing poetry is yoga and in yoga there can be no place for sadness, hopelessness, death. Life is a seamless spread in the Time-Space continuum and it will be futile to waste one's breathing moments in the baubles of mundane pleasures or in weeping and wailing about the inevitability of ageing and death. You turn page after page of this hefty volume only to be confronted by various shades of a child-like joy. This is truly Ananda Yoga, the creative joy that unites the dancer and the dance. Sethna subscribed to this creed whole-heartedly and said so in his Talks on Poetry:
"No doubt, Arnold has said that great poetry carries a high seriousness with it. But poetry's high seriousness has behind it a creative Ananda. Poetry, says Sri Aurobindo, repeats in its own way and on a small scale the original universal Delight with which the Supreme Soul created all things and set the cosmic rhythms going. Now, it should be very natural for Ananda both to smile and to laugh. Of course there can be a quiet or dumb happiness - a happiness which is ineffable. And poetry, with its burden of unspoken magnitudes, has to do with an ineffable bliss by means of wonderful speech just as the Supreme Soul is believed to have set the World-Word vibrating."
Despite this triumphant tone being heard in all the poems, the experience never palls. This is because the poems are backed by a
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tradition that springs from the fearless incantations of the Vedic Rishis who represent aspiring humans. In the poem The Parsi, Sethna describes this strain as "India's infinite Unknown / (that) Lures up the same fire-cry" that relates to his own ancestral Parsi "Fire-cult that neighbored the Greek world of thought". Confronted by the fury of Nature, the ancients (in Persia, India) invoked the Seer-Will, Agni, and exulted in mantric verses which transmuted the human into the Divine. The mantra's transformative power is boundless. As Sri Aurobindo says:
"By expression then we create and men are even said to create the gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we form, by affirmation we establish."
Firmly established in the Ananda of a divine ambience, and powered by prosodic control, the mantra achieves utterance in an inspirational mood. Sethna's poems do achieve such an incantatory feel often. Song-Sculpture is a fine soliloquy on his art:
Poet, be yours the sculptor's art,
A visionary force of sound
Carving from the white profound
Of the trance-secluded heart
Symbols of fiery repose -
A rapture-resonance
Bright-shaping to disclose
With every song a monumental dream
Of some supreme
Inalterable hushed omnipotence!
As a result, the present tome has scores of lines that rise to a mantric height in the light of the Vedic-Persian-Aurobindonian world-view:
A pang of beauty thrown back from lips and eyes
To a Cave within that knows self-paradise!
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So much for reading Sethna's poems first. Our second reading is to be the poems accompanied by Sri Aurobindo's commentary. Here we enter a regular poetry workshop. Sri Aurobindo is a patient guide, a gentle examiner, a loving friend. Hence Sethna's flaws are ironed out. This process becomes our teacher as well. Thus Sri Aurobindo on Grave of Trance:
"The poem is otherwise successful, but the 'bright worms of eternity' is, I am afraid, bizarre and creates a sense of overstressed effect with no flash of revealing breath in it to justify it. The macabre can be successful altogether only when it deals with what is terrible and repulsive - but here it is more like a violent conceit - gargoyling what is in itself noble."
A poem here lacks spontaneity, another is all conceit, and a sonnet has no outline. But Sri Aurobindo is interested only in fostering Sethna's talent and hence most of the time the comments are made up of ‘good’ and 'fine'. Sri Aurobindo's clarifications of the Overmental aesthesis are welcome additions to this book. Certainly the volume contains "an unusual body of verse and an expert analytic commentary on it", as Sethna had said in his introduction to Overhead Poetry.
As he enters the nineties of his life, Sethna might wonder: has all this meditative aspiration, quill-pushing and spiritual struggle been worth it ? Has he not sacrificed "the long green crests of the seas of life" to float across "the orange skies of the mystic mind" in search of the Divine in the last Beyond ? Pat comes the joyous answer from the title poem like the laughter of early-morning blossoms:
Barren nor drear the exalted sacrifice!
Unquenched I bring the keen revealing flame,
The warm magnificence of love's caress.
Not with sage calm but thrilled vast hands, I claim
The unfathomed dark which round my spirit lies -
And touch immortal rapturous Loveliness!
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That is the affirmatory tone of the Vedic Rishi who hymned Agni Jatavedas, the High-Blazing Flame, King of Immortality in transformative Riks. That is the triumphant call of the victorious secret splendour within us all.
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
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''WE CANNOT be quite the same in metre… The metre of all of you may be said to be spondaic: your feet fall with equal stress on the ground. Mine do not on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress; I am an anapaestic fellow," said K.D. Sethna in his very first lecture on Poetry given to a group of students starting their university career. No reader of these lines could ever miss the Joke the author has cracked on his own infirmity. To call him a fountain of humour will be far from exaggeration. People - his fans, friends, admirers, students and writers, who seek his help in one way or another - invariably say "When is it not a party when we are around Amal ?"
It was Sri Aurobindo, the Yogis' Yogi, who renamed K.D. Sethna Amal Kiran, meaning "The Clear Ray".
A Parsi Bombayite by birth, Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna, was born on November 25, 1904. Son of a well-to-do physician, who spent much of his leisure in his personal library, Sethna has the privilege of having his early education at St. Xavier's School and College, a Roman Catholic institution managed at that time by European Jesuit priests. As a Collegian, he won in his Intermediate Arts examination of Bombay University the Hughling Prize in English and the Selby Scholarship in Logic. He passed his B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and bagged the Ellis Prize in English, which a student not of philosophy but literature should have taken. While still in college, he began his literary career as a book-reviewer to the Bombay-based newspapers and magazines. At this time his father suddenly died. He dedicated to his father his first book titled Parnassians, a critical assessment of the work of H.G. Wells, G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Hardy, whom he considered the four outstanding denizens of Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses. The Parsi author A.S. Wadia sent Wells, whom he personally knew, the article on him. Wells wrote
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back, "Your young man will go far."
"But Wells didn't know," remarked Sethna in his characteristic jovial vein, "that I would go as far as Pondicherry!" In December 1927, when he was still a student of M.A. class, Sethna visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry and decided to stay there and practise the Integral Yoga. He didn't complete his post-graduate course, and he never regretted.
How the guru came to him is an interesting story, good enough raw material to make a novelette.
Sethna had a friend who had done Pranayama. He had told Sethna that Pranayama gave him an abundance of energy, an energy which could be used in any way he liked…And there was no question of strict brahmacharya or spiritual objective. What he said struck the young man as very fascinating and helpful. And so he started reading hooks on Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga in particular. While he was doing that he got interested naturally in the works of Vivekananda. And Vivekananda gave him a greater perspective. Yoga is a means not just to amass energy which one can throw about as one likes but to gather energy to concentrate on a certain aim which would lead one to the true self within one.
In the meantime a girl with whom Sethna had a close relationship in that period talked to him of a Bengali saint whom she had known and who was still alive. She requested him to come and see the saint called Pagal Harnath, meaning "Mad Harnath", mad with love for Krishna. Previous to his interest in Yoga, Sethna had been a scoffer and denier of ail traditional values. And his aim in Yoga too was originally not spiritual. To meet this old man seemed to him just a curious thing to do. But still in order to please his girl friend he consented.
They went to see the saint, who used to come to Bombay and be the guest of some rich Gujarati. There was a big hall in a posh house and the old man was sitting lost in meditation. There was a semi-circle of his disciples, all the time watching him. And when he was in a certain posture and a finger of his seemed to point to somebody, they all looked at that person to find some meaning in his involuntary gesture.
Cheekily Sethna went and sat almost next to the saint. And
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when the latter at last opened his eyes and looked around, he saw a new face there. Everybody prompted Sethna to ask a question. And so he asked him: "Since the Universe is governed by fixed laws, what is the need of a creator or a God to govern it?" The saint at once answered: "If there are laws, there has to be a law-giver." And the answer was rather simplistic.
Ordinarily Sethna would have mustered up an array of arguments to counter it. But somehow he fell silent, impressed by the way the old man spoke. To Sethna, he seemed to speak not from his head by way of an argument but from some depth of actual touch on things beyond our ken, from some sort of realization. So Sethna did not argue back. That was the first time in his student days that somebody could silence him.
Argumentative that he was, he was surprised at himself. He became faintly aware of something within him which was beyond the mere argumentative intellect. It must be this something which had fallen silent, most unusually and to his own surprise. After that, he began to take more and more interest in things beyond human understanding,
In the course of a few more months, Sethna read in a newspaper that a Maharashtrian Yogi had come to town. With his friend he went to meet the Yogi. Seeing Sethna dressed wholly in the English style the old man, who was the Yogi's host, asked him to show his right palm before going into the inner room where the Yogi was to be met. After glancing at the palm, the old man shook his head and said, "You are destined to have three children. Why are you bothering about Yoga?" Sethna pleaded, "I haven't even a single child yet. Let me go in." Rather disgustedly the old man grunted, "All right", as if he meant "Go and be damned!" In the inner room Sethna and his friend sat down with the rest of the people. After a while the Yogi went round touching each one's head. When he touched Sethna's head, Sethna felt a sort of electric current run down his spine. Towards the end of a brief meditation session, Sethna requested the Yogi, "I want to do something which would take me beyond my ordinary consciousness. Give me some practical hint for it." The Yogi advised, "When you are alone, lie in your bed and try as
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it were to pull your consciousness, right up from your feet...- up...up, upto your head and try to feel that you are on the top of your head. When you succeed in doing so, you will see a ring of light above it. Then try with your consciousness to leap into that ring and you will be in what is called Samadhi."
It looked interesting and so night after night Sethna practised this exercise of lifting his consciousness up and up. He never got to the top of his head but one night something startling happened, Sethna found that he was not in his body. He was high up in the air and he was floating in the room pushing against one wall, going to the other wall, pushing against that and coming back where he had started from. He could see his own body lying in the bed. And so he was really surprised that he could be out of his body like that, free from physicality and still perfectly conscious... not dreaming. He could voluntarily do things. And he had a subtle body with all the needed parts. All of a sudden a doubt rose in him. He asked himself how he could ever be like that. It looked impossible.
When he attempted to analyse his condition, Sethna lost it and came back rushing into his reclining body with a sort of warmth near the heart region. And when he came back his usual body was utterly immobile. Only his eyes could see things. Then gradually life seemed to flow back into him. He was normal again, and said to himself: "No materialist can now convince me that I am only my body. I have gone out of it and still lived consciously. So materialism is wiped out." Sethna had been inclined to both materialism and atheism.
After this experience, he started looking out for passing sannyasis or yogis in Bombay. He found one and requested him to impart something spiritual. He said: "Dig a hole in your floor and light a fire there." To Sethna, that was impossible to do. His grandfather would shout and go mad if he did anything of that kind. "You light a fire and then I will give you a mantra to repeat. Then ultimately a Goddess will appear to you. You may ask her for a favour...whatever you want." But Sethna had to rule out this whole practice of invoking supernatural powers. So he just kept quiet.
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It was during that period of his life as a spiritual seeker that he met a theosophist plus art-critic who had paid a visit to Sri Aurobindo. Seeing the bundle of various qualities, even contradictory ones, in Sethna, he said: "A complex person like you will be satisfied only with Sri Aurobindo. I could see that Sri Aurobindo had the cosmic consciousness. He could feel even the grass grow! He could know everything within the universe as if it were within his own consciousness." That interested Sethna. But things rested there.
Then one day he went to Bombay's Crawford Market to buy a pair of shoes. The shoes were put in a box and the box was wrapped in a newspaper sheet, and a string ran around the sheet. He brought his purchase home and as soon as he took off the string, the newspaper sheet fell open in front of him. A headline in very bold type attracted his attention. It read: "A Visit to the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo Ghose." To Sethna it looked like a Divine Call. At once he read the article and felt that Sri Aurobindo's Ashram in Pondicherry was the place for him, because life was not denied there. Everything possible in man was sought to be brought out, enhanced and geared to a divine purpose...By seeking something beyond our senses, the Infinite, the Eternal, life would be transformed- Sethna found that it suited him. He decided to go to Pondicherry.
He and his friend wrote to the Ashram. An answer came from a person named Purani, who was in charge of the Gujarat side of the correspondence. He wrote that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had said they could come and see for themselves the Ashram life.
But how to go there ? For one thing they didn't have enough money. Moreover, in those days an unmarried couple travelling together for several days was not the thing done in polite Parsi society or perhaps in any other society or community. Since they were in love with each other and seeking the same goal they decided to married. By getting married they would be able to collect a fairly good sum of money. It would make them independent and therefore not helpless in case their parents were not in favour of what they wanted to do.
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Now, before going further, a little bit of background in relation to Sethna's grandfather would help. After B.A., Sethna suggested that he should be allowed to go to Oxford for higher studies. Had his father been alive he would have certainly encouraged him and helped him in all possible ways. But the orthodox old man said: "If you go to Oxford, you will bring back an English wife. And that will never do. We don't want an English wife in our Parsi family." When Sethna said that he would not bring back an English wife, the old man remarked, "I can see your plan. You won't bring her back. You will keep her there. And ultimately you will join her and be lost to us." A little later when he found that his grandson was doing some very peculiar things like meditation in a particular pose and was interested in spiritual philosophy he feared that he might lose his grandson completely that way. So, one day he suggested to Sethna: "Why don't you go to Oxford ?" Evidently according to the grandfather an English wife was preferable to the Divine Beloved! Perhaps the old man felt that he could tackle an English wife in some way but the Divine Beloved would be beyond his reach. Sethna simply replied: "I'm not interested."
Two months after his marriage Sethna decided to go to Pondicherry. But it was not openly mentioned. The plan was to go to Calcutta on a sort of belated honeymoon. After a short stay at the Grand Hotel and a meeting with Tagore, he and his wife visited the village of Sunamukhi where Pagal Harnath had been born and had died a few months earlier. They went back to Calcutta and from there started for Puri of the Jagannath temple. From Puri they went to Madras and from Madras Sethna sent a telegram to his grandfather: "Visiting picturesque Pondicherry." The family at Bombay expected a short stay at Pondicherry; for how long could this town prove "picturesque" ? When the stay ran into its sixth month, there was a sharp inquiry from home. Then it proved necessary to say that he was studying spiritual philosophy at the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo.
The work done by the Ashram greatly interested him - Yogic work and other work too. It was not a passive kind of Yoga...in a way it was Karma Yoga...and much more than that. Pondicherry,
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being an abode of peace, gave the spiritual seekers what they wanted. Far from the common turmoil they became sadhaks ready to go into their selves.
While Pondicherry gave the mental peace Sethna wanted, the practice of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo provided him with an abundance of energy.
At 90, but looking at least 20 years younger, Sethna remains vigorous and active with several works either in progress or awaiting his decision on whether they deserve further effort. He can't stop celebrating new experiences. So many things seem to excite him and influence his writing - literature, history, psychology, mysticism, philosophy, scientific thought, the arts and archaeology -- that it is hard to keep up with him.
An attractive man with a handsome face, his years rest lightly upon him. Since 1949 he has edited Mother India, a Review of Culture, first a fortnightly, and after a couple of years a monthly. The list of Sethna's publications is quite substantial and includes five volumes of poetry (now all of them along with his uncollected work are available in his recent volume titled The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems1) seven volumes of critical writings on poets like Sri Aurobindo, Shakespeare, Mallarmé and Blake, six volumes of essays on diverse subjects, three volumes of research on Ancient Indian history, two volumes of correspondence with the British poet and critic Ms Kathleen Raine, besides innumerable articles and scholarly essays,
Sethna is a poet before anything else. "A moved rhythmical expression which is at the same time precise and widely suggestive", is the working definition he gives to poetry. The original impulse behind his poetry writing goes back to his teens. It was competition. His cousin, older than he by some years, used to tell him every day how many lines of poetry he had composed, rather light-hearted romantic verse. And when once he said that he had composed 200 lines, Sethna thought that he could compose
1. Unfortunately Sethna has somehow missed including in this volume the translations of some of Mallarmé’s poems done by him; in this respect his memory has become Nirodianly supramental! - Editors
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more than that and rival him at the game.
"When I started writing poems, I was in the second standard," he related, "and at that time I thought the poems would be correctly metred if I could make each line the same length. So a certain measure on thle page I fixed upon. If any line was a bit lengthy. I wrote in small script. I believed that there ought to be a measure. And after that I wrote more natural poems, which I would like to call love poems. I was greatly moved by the beauty of a certain young woman. And so I had to create a sort of Shelleyan Romantic verse."
Attacked by polio when he was two and half years old, Sethna became crippled. His doctor-father took him to London at the age of six. Two operations, entailing two months' stay in bed in England, made him walk straight though with a slight limp. He reminisced: "My lameness brought a number of disadvantages in active social life. But it brought me some compliments from my literary friends. They used to call me Byron. Byron was club-footed. And I too aspired to write poetry."
But Sethna had to wait for several years to gain recognition as a poet. And that was only when Sri Aurobindo complimented him. Before that he was, like all young men, with a sort of a high conceit of his own powers. Only when Sri Aurobindo brought a critical eye to his poems and admired some of them did Sethna feel that the genuine spark was there!
Though Parsi-Gujarati was the language spoken at his home, he couldn't be very articulate in that; for he had to rely entirely on the English language to communicate with the outside world. At home too, after every three or four words in Parsi-Gujarati, there was an English word. Hence English being practically his mother-tongue, it is no wonder that Sethna writes only in English.
In his school days he had tried his hand at fiction-writing. He wrote nearly 20 little novels and bound them himself. All kinds of stories were there and each had an alliterative title like “The Sign of the Serpent", "The Mayor of Madrid". He has written detective stories too. "The writing of detective stories has a tale hanging thereby," recollected Sethna with both a chuckle and a
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sigh: " I had a Hindu private teacher in mathematics, who used to come to my home, on the fourth floor of our family house in Bombay. He was so interested in my novels that instead of teaching me mathematics, he would read my stories with me. And when anybody came in the room we used to cover up that stuff with the arithmetic book. And once the Story was so intriguing and the criminal was so hidden away that the teacher could not guess who it could be. I told him to keep the problem revolving in his mind. So when he was going down the stairs and revolving the problem in his mind he missed his step and tumbled from the fourth floor to the third. I ran behind him, tried to pick him up. And after that fall he never came to teach me."
Fiction writing didn't appeal to Sethna, though he wrote two short stories after joining the Ashram. Sri Aurobindo liked them a good deal.
Apart from numerous studies on the problems of Indian history, he has very persuasively put the Rig Veda anterior to the Indus-Valley civilization of c. 2500-1500 B.C. in his two major books on History — The Problem of Aryan Origins and Karpasa in Pre-Historic India. It was Sri Aurobindo who was the first to dismiss, in the course of his writings, the theory of an Aryan invasion but did not pause to substantiate the dismissal thoroughly. Sethna's massive work on the subject - Ancient India in a New Light fortifies the new revolutionary outlook. The International Institute of Indian Studies, based in Ottawa, Canada, gave him the Devavrata Bhisma Award for 1994 for his work.
In her letter dated 5 August 1961 Ms Kathleen Raine, after giving general remarks on the poems of K.D. Sethna, concludes thus: "Only one thing troubles me: Why do you write in English?... Have you not, in using English exiled your poetic genius from India, to which it must belong, without making it a native of England, for English learned as a foreign language can never nourish the invisible roots of poetry. I feel this even about Tagore, and so did Yeats. I do not believe that we can - or if we could, that we have the right to - write poetry in a language other than our own."
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Ms Raine's comment sparked off the discussion on whether Indians can write genuine poetry in English. The correspondence on these lines between the two poet-critics continued and led to the publication of two books — The English Language and the Indian Spirit and Indian Poets and English Poetry.2
Sethna argues: "What evidently is necessary for poetic success in English is an intimacy somehow won with the language...If a notable command of the English language and a thorough knowledge of English poetical technique could be at the disposal of Indian inspiration, I see no reason why memorable English poetry should fail to be produced." Raine comments: "I have read no poetry by an Indian that does not seem to an English reader to be written by a foreigner. This I find even with Tagore, certainly with Sri Aurobindo, and also with most of your poems." Sethna refutes this criticism and finally counter-argues:
"If you didn't see an Indian name under a poem would you infallibly know that its English was not by an Englishman ?"
After many arguments and counter-arguments, Kathleen Raine withdraws from the discussion by saying: "Of course if India is determined to adopt the English language nobody can stop you. The blame lies with the English, who as a 'ruling race' for two hundred years impressed India with the power and prestige of our brief moment of material supremacy."
When Sethna was a small boy, his father put two ideals before him: "You will never tell a lie. And you will not have any fear." As for the first one Sethna is afraid he didn't live up to his expectation. But in the matter of courage he compliments himself on having done several things which a person with his polio leg would not have dared to do... Riding horses, for instance. He had ridden horses for nearly 15 years before he joined the Ashram. Once he went on horseback from Dehradun to Mussoorie, a height of 8000 feet by a winding path skirting the precipice. That was his biggest feat of horsemanship so far.
Perhaps the boldness inculcated by his father was responsible in making K.D. Sethna what he is today. It is quite clear from the
2. In the Press. - Editors
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arguments and counter-arguments that we read in the works that it is dangerous to match wits with K.D. Sethna. Boswell’s remark (about Dr Johnson may be true of him if modified a little to show a multiple resource. He can use his pistol not only to fire but also to knock you down with the butt-end of it.
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The Locus of K.D. Sethna's Poetry
IN 1927 a young Indo-Anglian poet drawn by the new spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo came to his Ashram in Pondicherry. The name of the young man was K.D. Sethna. He was twenty-three and two years earlier had published a book of poems. He was not happy with the life he had been leading; he had felt that he "had waited overmuch in the ordinary life".1
In the presence of Sri Aurobindo he found what he aspired to. Sri Aurobindo does not teach a world-shunning life-negating spirituality. "It is an error," he says, "to think that spirituality is a thing divorced from life."2 And Sethna knew that this yoga was the "settled course" for him; and following this he could fully develop "the fine forces of the world's life".3 Poetry would henceforth be an integral part of his spiritual seeking, and he would be, under the guidance of his Master, a "poet of the spiritual life".4
The poet of the spiritual life is not just a 'literary man'. In fact, according to Juan Ramon Jimenez all true poets are to be distinguished from literary man. A literary man is conscious of his writing, he knows what he is up to; whereas a poet is only a mouthpiece of truth. Therefore "literature is a state of culture, poetry a state of grace, before and after culture."5 Sri Aurobindo makes a distinction between the yogic literary man and the ordinary one. The first is what Jimenez calls the poet. "A yogic 'literary man'," says Sri Aurobindo, "is not a literary man at all, but one who writes only what the inner Will and Word wants to express. He is a channel and an instrument of something greater than his own literary personality."6 To be a true poet, a yogic literary man, one has to abandon the notion of oneself as the creator and listen to the "inner Will and Word", that is to say, the Will and Word of the Soul, for as Sri Aurobindo says, the intelligence, the imagination or the ear are only channels and instruments, "the true creator, the true hearer is the soul."7
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One of the main endeavours of Sethna has been to develop his poetic soul, and in this endeavour he has constantly been helped, advised and encouraged by Sri Aurobindo. There is a huge correspondence in which Sri Aurobindo comments on many poems of Sethna, shows him the different sources of poetic inspiration, proposes variations, defines poetry of the kind Sethna wants to write and opens before him new vistas of poetic vision and expression. This correspondence is now available for anyone who is interested in it.
Sethna himself speaks of the "training"8 that he got under Sri Aurobindo. He asks in a letter: "Please tell me how I am to manifest an absolutely genuine and at the same time new exquisiteness in poetry ?”9 In another he writes: "You have made me believe in my poetic destiny. But I want as soon as possible to outgrow the remnants of the decorative and rhetorical level...."10
Sri Aurobindo replies with patience and helps the soul-poet to grow so that he can receive the poetic inspiration from ever-higher regions of the Word. When asked to give some general rules about the writing of poetry Sri Aurobindo replies, "Avoid over-writing; let all your sentences be a vehicle of something worth saying and say it with a vivid precision neither defective nor excessive. Don't let either thought or speed trail or drag or circumvolute. Don't let the language be more abundant than the sense. Don't indulge in mere clever ingenuities without a living truth behind them."11 This can be a guideline for all poets.
Sethna's poetic soul grew in close kinship with Sri Aurobindo's vision and poetic creation. Here we may wonder whether such closeness with a tremendous poetic personality as that of Sri Aurobindo is not detrimental to the free growth of other poetic personalities. The danger of imitating the stronger personality is very real. But Sri Aurobindo has always encouraged free flowering of each individual self. When Sethna wanted to compare his achievement with the achievements of other poet, Sri Aurobindo admonished him: "What have you to do with what others have achieved? If you write poetry, it should be from the standpoint that you have something of your own which has not yet found full expression.... Measure what you do by the standard of your
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own possible perfection...."12 Sethna was thus encouraged to develop what was his own. Imitation in creative arts never fulfils any essential purpose. As in yoga, so in poetry, one must follow the law of his own self, svadharma; to want to follow the law of another's self is dangerous.13 Every soul is unique. Sri Aurobindo has not imposed his own views and methods on Sethna, but has stimulated him to explore and discover his own poetic soul and allow that soul to speak for itself.
Thus, in spite of his intimate association with Sri Aurobindo's poetry Sethna has a voice that is personal, although his poetic personality is formed by his Master. A disciple is not he who apes the ways, speech and thoughts of the master, but he who accepts to be shown his own way, be encouraged to walk on that way independently and firmly. This does not mean chat Sethna is not influenced by Sri Aurobindo. He is. And we shall see, when we try to determine the locus of Sethna's poetry, that the locus lies in the vast world revealed by Sri Aurobindo. Influence is not imitation. In a poem called Sri Aurobindo Sethna writes:
...only shadowless love can breathe this pure
Sun-blossom fragrant with eternity.
Influence is this fragrance of eternity that does not prevent the soul from flying freely. One cannot imitate the fragrance, what one can imitate is the outward form, idiosyncracies of style, of word-usage, of metaphors and other formal aspects of a poetical work. It would be interesting to study how Sethna was influenced by the poetry and philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, but in this article I shall consider Sethna's poetry in itself, as far as possible.
Sethna defines poetry, in an essay on Sri Aurobindo's poetic genius, as "a window opening through Form on the Divine, on a realm of archetypes".14 This description, we can safely assume, also describes his own poetry; or, in any case, the ideal of poetry which he himself strives after. Apparently, form is the essential element in poetry. He seems to agree with Paul Valéry who holds that poetry is an art of language - "un art du langage" - but goes deeper. Valéry had learnt from his master Mallarme that a poem
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is not made with ideas but with words. Sethna too says that the poetic window opens to the Divine "through Form and not Matter". But there is an essential difference between Sethna and Valèry, and that difference is the Divine. The goal of poetry, for Sethna, is the suggestion - more than suggestion — the revelation of the Divine. The Form reveals the hidden Divine in things.
"...by form," continues Sethna, "we must not understand exclusively the turn of phrase and the movement of rhythm: the language-mould is all in all but it comes fused with a cast of consciousness - a form of vision and a form of emotion. Metrical speech without that vivid cast is the ghost of poetry. Neither does mere substance of consciousness, however weighty or profound, make on us the art-impact that is revelation: the consciousness has to take a particular pattern before it can become the poetic word."15
The generally accepted definition of poetry in ancient Indian poetics is that it is the "togetherness" of sound and sense, śab- dārthau sahitau. What Sethna says is something very similar. The language-mould is the product of this togetherness or fusion. He clearly says that form is not "the turn of phrase and the movement of rhythm",16 which belong exclusively to the field of sound, but that it is fused with a cast of consciousness, which belongs to the field of sense. But in poetry it is not possible to think of the one without the other. For Sethna the product of the fusion is the form, but he analyses this form into two kinds, one the "metrical speech", the other "a form of vision and a form of emotion". In our search for the locus of Sethna's poetry we have to bear in mind this fusion but at the same time remember that there are two aspects of the form. By locus I do not mean that about which a poet writes. It is the complex poetic field of vision-and-expression. We can also see it as the intersection of the poet's language-field and the experience-field. Both these fields are vast; and only a part of one field fuses with a part of the other to become poetry. The nature of the fusion and the nature and substance of the parts of the fields determine the kind of poetry one writes. Sethna's is spiritual-mystical poetry. The experience-field in it belongs mainly to the world of the spirit and the
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elements of the language-field are those that are most congenial to the expression of the spiritual experience, such as symbol and rhythm.
The spiritual poet also uses, like other poets, the linguistic devices of alliteration, metaphor, repetition, metrical measure, etc. In the fusion with the substance of consciousness, when the fusion is successful, these devices become fit vehicles of the Spirit.
We shall now try to analyse these two fields of the locus, knowing fully well that this is only an exercise of the intellect and that after the analysis, we will have to return to the fusion.
First, the poetic language. In the short scope of this article it is not possible to investigate all the linguistic factors involved. We shall concentrate our attention mainly on two things, the symbol and the rhythm which are, Sethna tells us, the two great expressions of ananda, "beauty's mirth".
...the art where sight and sound mingle their fates
By symbol and by rhythm sharing one birth
Out of that deepest thrill of beauty's mirth.
(Art of Arts)
The poetic language is not a "transcription" of our thoughts, feelings or perceptions but an "incarnation". It is the essence of the thing seen embodied in a sound-form. Ordinarily the words we use are "minted by mind",17 but for poetry what we need is a different kind of word, we have to "plunge into a language of pure symbols and mystic values of speech".18 The poetry which is not a simple versification, the poetry which tries to reach beyond the world of sense-perceptions and intellect needs a language that is not a menial fabric. “A poetry," writes Sri Aurobindo, "whose task is to render truth of the Spirit by passing behind the appearances of the sense and the intellect to their spiritual reality, is in fact attempting a work for which no characteristic power of language has been discovered, except the symbolic...” 19
What is a symbol ? It is a polyvalent word-sign. It is through this sign that the vision becomes embodied in language. It is not a fixed unequivocal relation as in the allegory,20 nor is it based on
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conventions. The symbol is felt to represent, to make present, the object of experience. The symbol may seem, and often does seem, to the uninformed reader as an enigma, but to the reader with empathy, the sahrdaya of Sanskrit poetics, the enigma does not obstruct the apprehension but stimulates and provokes it. To the seeing eye all finite things can become symbols of the infinite. Let us take Sethna's lyric A Poet's Stammer:
My dream is spoken,
As if by sound
Were tremulously broken
Some vow profound.
A timeless hush
Draws ever back
The winging music-rush
Upon thought's track.
Though syllables sweep
Like golden birds,
Far lonelihoods of sleep
Dwindle my words.
Beyond life's clamour,
A mystery mars
Speech-light to a myriad stammer
Of flickering stars.
Sri Aurobindo's remark on the poem is revealing: "It is certainly the inner mind that has transformed the idea of stammering into a symbol of inner phenomena.... "21
What are the inner phenomena ? Can we interpret the symbol ? The symbol being a polyvalent sign it is impossible to exhaust its meaning and comprehend it, that is to say, seize it completely. It is a “gateway”22 opening to unknown mysteries. We feel that what the poet says lies far beyond the physical stammer. Something that appears as the eternal silence behind the mind, the
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muteness of nirvana perhaps, hinders the rush of music, the joy of Brahman, to express itself. More personally it also suggests that what the poet expresses in words is only a partial, distorted thing compared to the truth that is seen. These interpretations are only mental efforts to grasp the meaning; but the inner phenomena remain ever elusive.
This poem is an excellent illustration of the symbolic method which is as old as the Veda. "Mystics," writes Sri Aurobindo, "were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them."23 Here too a physical thing has become the gateway to something immense.
Sethna resorts very often to symbols. Some of them start as metaphors and allegories and then gradually deepen into symbols.
The forest cathedrals are tolling their loud leaves.
This line is quite clear. The trees of the forest are compared to cathedrals, their leaves are the bells, the rustle of the leaves is the tolling. But the next lines go beyond this comprehension and retrospectively transform also this line into something more suggestive.
A blue wind blows through the green towers of trance,
Waking them to a song of secrecies
Between the dark earth and the dazzling sun.
(Forest Cathedrals)
The symbol can penetrate "either direct or through strong unveiling images" - in the first instance it penetrates directly, in the second through a metaphorical expression — "to the highest truths of self and soul and the largest seeing of the Eternal.”24 It is one of the most potent forces of the language of spiritual poetry. Another is the rhythm. The symbol incarnates the Eternal's truth, the rhythm incarnates the Eternal’s joy. The rhythm is the joyous force, hlādinί sakti of the Divine. It is, says Sethna, "the thrill of
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the consciousness translating itself into sound-vibration".25
To the mind this seems rather vague. Naturally; for, rhythm does not belong to science or reason, only a subtle soul-sensibility can grasp it. Even Aurobindo admits that it cannot be explained. "It is a matter of the ear, not of the intellect. Of course there are the technical elements...But it is not a matter of technique only; the same outer technique can produce successful or unsuccessful rhythms (live or dead rhythms). One has to learn to distinguish by the ear..."26 but "it is more a matter of the inner ear than the outer ear."27 This subtle rhythm is in most cases supported by the metrical rhythm and other sound-effects like alliterations, assonances, rhymes, etc. These sound-effects do not by themselves guarantee the inner rhythm which is the "subtle soul of poetry".28 It is the dhvani as defined by Anandavardhana, kāvyasyātmā dhvanir iti."29 Born of an illumined emotion, rhythm imparts the power of suggestiveness to language. Behind the purely sound-value of words there is a value of vibrating silence heard by the silence of the soul. It is the soul of song.
Glowing behind
The singer's mind,
(Soul of Song)
The mystery journeying to meet its own repose. But we should remember that in poetry it never really reaches the absolute silence, for that would be the end of poetic expression.
Sri Aurobindo regards the metrical form as a support of the soul of poetry, "the right physical basis for the poetic movement".30 Sethna too holds the same view31 and in his poetic practice, he says that his "own penchant is for metre...."32 He uses a variety of metrical forms, as the substratum of "Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deep."39
The true rhythm, the soul of poetry, can only be seized by the trained ear. We can speak of the metrical structures but the subtle
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rhythmical phrases can only be tentatively suggested: every reader must find for himself whether or not there is a "live rhythm". Here I shall quote two passages from Sethna's poetry, on the first Sri Aurobindo has lavished high praises.34 I do not know whether he has said anything about the second.
For ‘tis with mouth of clay I supplicate:
(This Errant Life)
The metrical structure of the lines is iambic with admissible variations. There is an intricate structure of assonances, consonnances, alliterations and rhymes which can fruitfully be analysed in order to determine the substratum of sound-effects. However, the real rhythmical force can only be perceived intuitively. If our ears are prepared we will see that the vibrations of the lines touch the innermost core of our being. The rhythm is subtly subdued, almost muted.
The other passage, written seventeen years later, has a close rhythmic resemblance to the first. The tonal pattern, the metrical movement and the syntax are quite similar. The lines are very beautiful, yet it seems to me - although I may very well be wrong - that the latter passage lacks the depth and the high intensity of psychic suggestion of the former. The rhythm is less haunting, less magical.
I raise to thee my flickering hands of clay,
Lean from thy dome of diamond secrecies,
Quench the pale longing of my dwarf despair,
Blow a great wind of mystery on small eyes,
Drive my diffuse blood-heat to the hidden heart
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For one intensest ache to plunge in thee,
O nectarous night of superhuman trance!
(Nectarous Night)
This is also written in predominantly iambic feet. There are assonances, consonances and alliterations; but the lines are unrhymed. Does only the absence of rhymes make the difference? I leave each reader to decide for himself.
Now I shall quote a few other lines which have a luminous rhythm that vibrates in the soul:
The roots of rapture sucking the infinite sky.
(Beneath, Above)
...rhyming its small throb to the vast thrill.
(Milk in Almighty Breasts)
Full of wide wounds like rubies proud and warm,
Cut from life's immortal core of mystery.
(Gulfs of Night)
Burst of vermillion surprise
Even to gold omniscient eyes -
{The Adventure of the Apocalypse)
I think these few passages illustrate the meaning and importance of rhythm in poetic language, along with the use of symbols.
We shall now broach the question of experience-field which is the other element of the poetic locus. This field consists of the substance of consciousness. Symbol and rhythm express something, they belong to varnana, expression; the experience-field belongs to darsana, sight. It is "where the Meanings are".35
In the spiritual-mystical poetry the experience-field is the world-ground, the eternal Brahman, which it is impossible to
grasp with the mind,
To the mind Eternity is "mythic".36 When the mind's dome that covers the face of truth is trampled down, Eternity reveals
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itself. Both philosophy and myth show only truth's dead image. The dreams of the mind are "gilded". The ancient sages said that "the face of Truth is covered with a golden lid". This lid being the mind, the gold is not real, myth and philosophy are truly glided dreams "arching a false / Heaven for life's sad longing". "Under an unseen dancer’s / Timeless foot", says the poet, the mind gives way, it is the "tearing of thought". And the Real is revealed.
How are we to conceive this Real ? Is it the silent Brahman ? "I believe," says Sethna in a letter to Kathleen Raine, "that, while beyond the earth are the vast liberating Silence and Absolute, there is beyond them the earth again in a supreme sweetness and archetypal glory of the One at play with the Many.”37 In fact the earth beyond the silence is the same earth seen with liberated eyes. He writes in a poem that to gain Infinity, we must
Merge in quiets that are never
Bound by birth,
Then with eyes of dreaming distance
Look on earth.
(Turn Your Back)
In the Vedic tradition as developed by the Upanishads we find that Brahman that is unknowable becomes isvara, the personal God, the divine Beloved- The next manifestation is hiranya-garbha, the Golden Seed, the World-Soul that becomes, by dividing itself into two halves, the heaven and the earth, the eternal parents of all creatures. And finally It becomes virat, the totality of all existence.38
In a poem Sethna invokes this fourfold Brahman:
O Void where deathless power is merged in peace!
O myriad Passion lit to one self-fire!
O Breath like some vast rose that breaks through form!
O Hush of gold by whom all truth is heard!
(Invocation to the Fourfold Divine)
The Void is the silent Brahman, and the next three are respectively virat, hiranya-garbha and isvara.
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The silent Brahman cannot be part of the poetic locus, for it is unmanifest. The other three are, in various degrees, in various measures, the experience-field of poets. In a letter to Kathleen Raine Sethna writes, "...though essentially the theme may be one - 'the Divine Beloved', as you put it - I have tried to include as great a variety as I could of treatment and technique."39 Yes, the locus of all spiritual-mystical poetry is dominated by God, the Divine Beloved, isvara who stands "Behind the myriad marvels- ...the Marvellous One". (Single without a Second)
The poet sings variously this Marvellous One, calls him by many names:
Name after name I give to God:
Sweet or sublime are they -
More magical than birth of stars,
Mightier than death of day.
(Name after Name)
But he also sees 'the myriad marvels' that arc nothing but the becomings of the Marvellous One. The One God, eko devah, as hiranya-garbha, becomes the All. Some say that this All is not marvels at all, it is nothing but illusion, maya. But for Sethna, disciple of Sri Aurobindo,
Behind the false glow dreams the epiphany.
(Maya)
The vast world of God is not unsubstantial, unreal. He writes,
Vain is the immensity of the one God
If all that vast is but intolerance
Of time and life and earth's long cry for love!
(Eternity)
The All, the world is not an illusion; for there is
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The golden smile of the one Self everywhere!
(The Sannyasi)
God, as World-Soul, I have told above, has divided himself into
the heaven and the earth, and into all dualities, - Beneath and Above, Near and Far, Without and Within, - and has thus become virat, the manifoldness of the universe.
In the Katha Upanishad40 virat is imagined as the world-tree whose roots are above and branches below.
Sethna takes up this ancient image:
The tree is an Omniscience at blind play —
Not from beneath but from above it grows,
The murmurous leaves a power of green gloom
Hurled downward for new self-discovery,
The roots a rapture sucking the infinite sky!
Virat divides the One. But the poetic vision sees beyond all divisions the eternal oneness of God: Earth and Heaven that appear to our unregenerate view as separated aspire to join in a blissful hierogamy:
Omnipotence,
Infinitude,
Eternity of splendour -
All are subdued
To a virgin breath
Calling the far
Earth-glooms of pain to marry
Its soul of star.
(Above All Roses)
But the union is yet to come. We are still creatures bound to the lower reality. Even when we know that we are the children of the eternal parents, that everything belongs to "the inviolate ether",
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our existence, as well as that of all things here below, appears as a prison. The poet sees:
All the world's outlines framing prisoner souls:
Each jagged boulder a god who groans to no ear.
(Grace)
This fall of the gods is not the Biblical fall, but sambhuti, the multiple becoming of the One, or "involution". The imprisoned souls are the sparks that are sown in the earthly clay. But in the course of evolution the soul-sparks will grow towards the supreme light and surpass even the heavenly gods. This is what the poet symbolically says in the following lines:
The shredded silver and the shrunken gold,
Caught by this dark divinity of clay,
Shall laugh and blossom brighter than the unmarred
Roses of heaven rooted in sapphire hush.
(The Fall)
This blossoming is not a thing that is to take place in some “heaven of quiet” or fade away in the earth-negating Void. Following Sri Aurobindo's vision of the divine life Sethna says:
...Omnipotence
Would shine through and the finishing touch be given
To make, of earth's light, harmonies of heaven.
(The Missing Touch)
Such is, in brief, the experience-field of the locus of Sethna's poetry. This vast vision has many consequences and many off-shoots which find expression in various poems.
The locus of poetry is one. For the sake of understanding we have broken it into fragments. Before we conclude we must reunite the parts to see poetry as a "togetherness" of sound and sense, of body and spirit. "All great poetry," writes Sethna, "has a body that is divine, but mostly the soul of it is divine with a
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human mask; the mystical poet's work is the unmasking of the divine Spirit in that divine body."41 Great poets like Kalidasa and Shakespeare have given poetry a body that is divine, but the substance of the experience-field is human. However the human is not the negation of the Divine; in the Vedantic vision all is divine, but in the world-existence the divine is mostly masked. What Sethna means is that the mystic poet's task is to remove the human mask and show the divine within. And the poetry that is able to do so is what Sri Aurobindo calls the mantric poetry.43
It is in the mantra that the two fields of the poetic locus are fully unified.
The poetic aspiration of Sethna has been to write mantric poetry. "The target of all mystic and spiritual poetry," he writes in a letter to Sri Aurobindo, "should be, in my opinion, the mantric utterance. At least the target of my own poetry certainly is.”43
It is beyond my capacity to say if Sethna's poetry, or part of it, is mantra as defined by Sri Aurobindo. Mantra, he says, "is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition."44 Sri Aurobindo has assigned to many poems by Sethna the levels of their inspiration.45 I can do nothing better than quote a few lines with the remarks of Sri Aurobindo regarding their source of inspiration:
Waves of primeval secrecy broke white
Along the heart's shores, a rumour of deathless love
Afloat like a vast moon upon the deep.
(Rishi)
(Orison)
About both these passages Sri Aurobindo says that they come
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from the Illumined Mind with the touch of Overmind Intuition.46
Sethna, we conclude, has always tried, under the guidance of his master, to widen the locus of his poetry, pushing its frontiers to regions normally unknown to the thinking mind. When we read his poems with an attitude of spiritual empathy we are amazed to discover that in his best poems:
Words have not come to measure things that are;
They plunge to the unheard, leap to the unseen....
(Words)
RANAJIT SARKAR
1. The English Language and The Indian Spirit. Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K.D. Sethna, Pondicherry, 1986, p. 2,
2. Sri Aurobindo, Karmayoga, Birth Centenary Library, Pondicherry, Vol. 3, p. 346,
3. Raine and Sethna, p. 2.
4. K.D. Sethna (ed.), Overhead Poetry. Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, Pondicherry. 1972, p. iv.
5. See, Michael Hamburger, The Truth of Poetry, Harmondsworth, 1972, p. 105.
6. Nirodbaran, Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry. 1983, p. 61.
7. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Birth Centenary Library, p. 10.
8. K. D. Sethna, 1972, p. 89.
9. Life, Literature, Yoga, Some New Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry, 1952, p. 28.
10. Ibid., p. 42.
11. Ibid., p. 84.
12. Ibid., p. 30.
13. svadharme nidhanam sreyah para-dharmo-bhayavahah, Bhagavadgita, 3.35,
14. K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, Bombay, 1947, p. 86.
15. Ibid., pp. 86-87.
16. Here it seems to me that the word "rhythm" is used in the sense of metrical or prosodic rhythm, which is only the surface structure, something that is technical. We shall see later that rhythm has a deeper psychological sense.
17. G.Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life, London, 1958, p.225
8. Ibid., p. 337.
9. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, p.114
20. The opposition between symbol and allegory was invented and elaborated by the German Romantics. For a detailed study, sec Tzvetan Todorov, Theories du symbole, Paris, 1977, pp.235-260.
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21. K. D Sethna. Overhead Poetry, p. 91.
22. "All that we meet is a symbol and gateway." Sri Aurobindo Ahana, Birth Centenary Library,Vol. 5, p. 531.
Each form a shining gate to depths beyond….
Sethna. (God's World)
23. Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fin, Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 11, p. 12.
24. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, p. 114.
25. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo. 1947, p. 94.
26. Nirodbaran, Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, p. 1153.
27. Ibid., p. 930,
28. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, p. 145.
29. Anandavardhana, Dhvamyaloka, 1.1.
30. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, p. 18.
31. Sethna. Sri Aurobindo- the poet, Pondicherry, 1970, pp. 215-217.
32. Ibid., p. 217.
33. Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 29, p. 383.
34. For Sri Aurobindo's comments see Overhead Poetry, pp. 6-9.
35. Emily Dickinson, "There's a certain slant of light".
36. See for what follows Sethna's Poem Earth's Roof.
37. Raine and Sethna, p. 5.
38. See Ranajit Sarkar, In Search of Kalidasa's Thought-World, A Study of Kumarasambhava, Lucknow, 1985, pp. 23-24.
39. Raine: and Sethna, pp. 11-12.
40. Katha Upanishad, 2.3.1.
41. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, 1947, p.88.
42. Sri Aurobindo, Life, Literature and Yoga, p. 43.
43. Sethna, Overhead Poetry, 1972, p. 12.
44. Ibid., p. 12.
45. For a general view of these levels see Sethna's Introduction to Overhead Poetry.
46. Ibid., pp. 49, 80.
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THE Collected Poems (1993) of Amal Kiran appropriately takes the name of his very first anthology, The Secret Splendour. Over more than four decades, "the secret splendour" of Amal Kiran's poetry has been unveiled in a number of collections, now brought together for the benefit of poetry lovers: The Secret Splendour, Overhead Poetry, The Adventure of the Apocalypse, Altar and Flame, Uncollected Works, Eros/Known and Unknown and a selection from the earlier days named Images from Early Moods. A collection of this nature that spans practically a whole lifetime is bound to display variation in terms of quality. Only two of the sections, namely The Adventure of the Apocalypse and Uncollected Works, we are told, are chronologically arranged. Even these, when chronologically placed, may not quite conform to our stereotypical expectation of the "growth of the poet's mind" from adolescence to maturity, or if you will, different degrees of maturity. As always, here too, chronology may play tricks with the reader: Some relatively early poems or those from the middle period may turn out to be far more successful than the later ones.
But how does one determine the "success" of poetry of this kind in the first place, one may ask? "Elucidating" (T.S. Eliot's phrase) spiritual or mystical poetry is clearly not an easy task. True, all aesthetic judgment remains finally a matter of subjective experience. And trying to read future or futuristic poetry against the grain of current or conventional aesthetic standards and canonical practice is particularly fraught with risk. Old habits, predilections and mind-sets always persist and arc bound to impede a fair and judicious judgment.
On the other hand, reading spiritual poetry of this kind in terms of the sources and planes of poetic inspiration, when handled by a Poet-Guru or a Realized Being, could be rewarding. And this is what we see in much of the insightful comments, at
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tunes keenly critical, offered by Sri Aurobindo while assessing the "overhead” poetry of Amal Kiran. However, implicit in this approach that affirms various levels of inspiration such as the "Higher Mind," "Illumined Mind," "Intuitive Mind," "Overmind" (The Secret Splendour, p. 81) or the one that defines poetic speech in terms of "Adequate," " Effective," "Intuitive,” "Illuminative," "Inspired" or the "Revelatory" (The Future Poetry, p. 395, 1953) is the acceptance of a hieratic tradition and the authority of a Guru as the arbiter for critical discernmeni. This may well be a perfectly valid way of reading poetry. However, the difficulties in this are easy to perceive. As Sri Aurobindo concedes, "the distinction that I am trying to draw here between the various powers of the always intuitive speech of poetry can therefore better be felt than critically stated". (The Future Poetry, p. 381) And again, elsewhere, commenting on Amal's poem Truth-Vision in Overhead Poetry he says: "It is exceedingly beautiful, one of the best things you have done. But don't ask me to analyse it. Things like that cannot be analysed, they can only be felt." (The Secret Splendour, p. 175)
While to the devout, the merit of this approach that relies on feeling cannot be denied, even the votaries will admit that for those without an equal access to heightened spiritual experience and realisation, such terms and standards, even with the help of the Arnoldian "touchstone" method, will remain finally abstract and imprecise notions. They will eventually make a plea to our faith and belief and will not take us far into a community of discourse and mutually shared vocabulary and standards. It will be unwise for futuristic poetry to create an exclusive idiom and lexicon whose sense is not clearly communicated to a large number of sympathetic non-believers. This cautioning is necessary because a number of poets, and movements especially of the occult and the symbolic kind, have unfortunately fallen into this pitfall in the past.
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It seems to me, on balance, therefore, that one good way of reading the poetry of Amal Kiran is to first try and formulate an approach in the light of the aesthetics proposed by Sri Aurobindo who serves as the poetic role model for Amal Kiran. Here, the last eight chapters of The Future Poetry, from "The Ideal Spirit of Poetry" to "Conclusion", will serve our purpose. In these chapters, as well as his letters on Savitri and on Amal's poems, Sri Aurobindo has outlined his poetics of the future. It is hoped that some of these will provide for us useful critical standards to help us judge the poetry of Amal Kiran.
There is merit and justification, Sri Aurobindo tells us, in the rebellion of the modern poet, his bold experiments in verse form, indeed his temporary discarding of this form in favour of vers libre. For sticking too mechanically or blindly to the forms and modes of the past could only be debilitating in the long run. The answer to literary atrophy is not to be a slave to fashion, to be a habitual innovator or a ritualistic iconoclast, merely for the sake of novelty,
Sri Aurobindo firmly believes that rhythm is essential and integral to all poetic speech. This was the major achievement of early poetry in most languages. No period of poetic excellence in the East or the West could therefore eschew rhythm and produce poetry of a long-lasting order. An absence of this all-important element would only turn poetry into insipid prose. The chief goal of poetry, Sri Aurobindo maintains, is to depict Truth through Beauty. The problem of the form, and the content too, is easily resolved. It is the power of poetic inspiration that usually manages to discover its own characteristic form of expression. For indeed "the essential and decisive step of the future art of poetry will perhaps be to discover that it is not the form which either fixes or reveals the spirit which makes out of itself the form and the word". (The Future Poetry, p. 369) Similarly, talking about the subject matter of the future poetry, Sri Aurobindo declares that not just the drama of the outer life but a concern with the many realms, both inner and outer, will constitute the
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legitimate interests of such poetry. As he declares:
What man sees and experiences of God and himself and his race and nature and the spiritual, mental, psychic and material worlds in which he moves, his backlook upon the past, his sweep of vision over the present, his eye of aspiration and prophecy cast towards the future, his passion of self finding and self exceeding, his reach beyond the three times to the eternal and immutable, this is his real life. (The Future Poetry, p. 325)
However, Sri Aurobindo takes care to explain that in this attempt to recapture the wisdom of the past, the poet of the future will not equate spirituality with either morality, ethics, philosophy or religion. For, there will clearly be no point in returning to the grooves of the past and recovering old forms and spirit in a new guise. As he explains succinctly:
The meaning of Spirituality is a new greater inner life of man founded in the consciousness of his true, his inmost, highest and largest Self and Spirit by which he receives the whole of existence as a progressive manifestation of the Self in the universe and his own life as a field of possible transformation in which its divine sense will be found, its potentialities highly evolved, the now imperfect forms changed into an image of the divine perfection, and an effort not only to see but to live out these greater possibilities of his being. (The Future Poetry, p. 354)
A major hurdle that the poetry of the future, especially of the kind Amal Kiran attempts, is how to ensure "a new luminous and joyful fusion and oneness" between thought and life. This is one issue that engages the serious attention of Sri Aurobindo in The Future Poetry and his remarks on this topic are also to be found in The Secret Splendour. The problem simply is that at this turn of our social evolution, the intellect of man, despite all its flaws, has become the governing principle of life, and paradoxically managed to cripple it. Discarding this obsession with the Mind, what D.H. Lawrence called the "Cerebral Consciousness" in
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favour of organic life does not appear to be a viable option. For indeed, we cannot recede into the past. As Sri Aurobindo remarks, "life, action, vital powder arc great indispensable things but to get back to them by thinking less is a way not open to us in this age of time even if it were a desirable remedy for our disease
of over-intellectuality and mechanised existence”. (The Future Poetry, p. 320) Differently put, we might says that the synthesis between philosophy and poetry remains a key requisite for the poetry of the future. In his comment on Amal's poem Orison in Overhead Poetry, for instance, Sri Aurobindo offers the telling example of Keats. "Keats," he tell us, "was the most romantic of poets, but he could ‘write to philosophise I dare not yet’, he did not write 'I am too much of a poet to philosophise'. To philosophise, he regarded evidently as mounting on the admiral's flagship and flying an almost royal banner." (The Secret Splendour, p.146)
This is a very significant viewpoint that finds parallels in radically different artists as well. For instance, talking of the novel of the future, in his provocative essay "Surgery for the Novel or a Bomb", D.H. Lawrence said:
If you wish to look into the past for what next books, you can go back to the Greek Philosophers. Plato's dialogues are queer little novels. It seems to me it was the greatest pity in the world, when philosophy and notion got split. They used to be one, right from the days of myth. Then they went and parted, like a nagging married couple, with Aristorte, Thomas Aquinas and that beastly Kant. So, the novel went sloppy and Philosophy went abstract – dry. The two should come together again - in the novel. (Phoenix, p. 520)
III
Many of these concerns and injunctions of Sri Aurobindo regarding the poetry of the future find a reflection in the searching correspondence Amal Kiran had with Sri Aurobindo,
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as well as in his many attempts at writing the poetry of a new kind. The '"self-introductions" that the many collections in The Secret Splendour carry, bear ample proof that Amal Kiran was a very conscious and conscientious artist of the new mould. His pronounced affinity for the shorter poem clearly exemplifies the Aurobindonian dictum that "It is... in the lyric nearest to the freshness of an original impulse that a new spirit in poetry is likely to become aware of itself and feel out for its right ways of expression and to discover with the most adaptable freedom and variety own essential motives and cadences...." (The Future Poetry, p. 364)
The themes in The Secret Splendour are many and variegated. They illustrate the fact that as a poet of the future. Amal Kiran's sweep embraces a wide spectrum: from the Kingfisher to a close companion like Minnie; from Seascape, Daybreak to literary figures like Helena, Dante, Carlyle and Arnold. But naturally, given his primary interests and preoccupations, it is not surprising that most of the poems that find place in the entire corpus are of a spiritual or- mystical kind. It is difficult to escape mysticism or spirituality, especially when one is writing "Over- head Poetry", As he explains in his Introduction: "Mysticism and spirituality are bound to pervade, openly or by implication, our poetry as in the overhead poems in the present collection. Also perhaps, the overhead will not function poetically on an extensive scale without importing the spiritual note." (The Secret Splendour, p. 61)
Regardless of the themes that Amal Kiran handles, the attempt invariably is to probe beneath the surface of the actualities and to reveal the inner significance of events, personalities and phenomena. As Sri Aurobindo strikingly remarks: "The poetry which voices the oneness and totality of our being and Nature and the worlds and God, will not make the actuality of our earthly life less bur more real and rich and full and wide and living." (The Future Poetry, p. 328) Consider, for instance, a poem of autobiographical significance called The Parsi. The opening stanza, makes multiple allusions to the fact of "homelessness" of the Parsi and offers a rhetorical beginning:
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What country shall I take as mine ? Iran
Is but the perfume of a rose long dead;
While India that has moulded me a man
Whose heart goes throbbing with a sunset-red
And straining towards a mystery beyond eyes
Makes deeper yet the homelessness of me.
Hither and thither, settles on no sea
Guarding and lulling one dear land alone.
(The Secret Splendour, p. 544)
The fact of homelessness does not lead to a sense of despair or disorientation as with much of the modernist poetry. For the experience of rootlessness is amply compensated by the discovery of a larger bond and kinship that binds all people together. This experience comes not in the form of a cerebral matter of fact statement but emerges powerfully, aided by vivid images that capture this feeling of oneness while retaining the uniqueness of each civilisation as well:
Fire-cult that neighboured the Greek world of thought
Burns through my Persian blood to Europe's large
Earth-richness; India's infinite Unknown
Lures up the same fire-cry ~ both stay uncaught.
My country's a future where all dream-lights merge.
In contrast to the earliest experience of emotional and psychological deprivation, the second stanza now conjures up a series of images suggestive of strength and potency. Instead of the earlier sense of loss ("the perfume of a rose long dead") and the feeling of a languorous sadness accentuated by a continuation of words like "throbbing" and "straining" that finally culminates in signalling a pathetic lack of direction ("A stranger whose horizon flies hither and thither, settles on no sea"), we now have in the second stanza, an effective counter-point. The word "neighboured" very vividly captures his dynamic and organic links existing among the
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different cultures of the world. In this sense "neighbouring" is more than an appropriate geographical expression. Linking all the lines of the second stanza is the dominant allusion to the "fire cult". Fire is the emblem of life and aspiration . "Persian blood" is physically most apt (the persona is a Parsi) just as "Europe's earth-richness" and "India's infinite unknown" are the quintessential qualities of these civilisation. The face that "both stay uncaught" adds of course to the elusive character of the personal search. The search is no longer agonizing however, for there is the happy vision of a country "where all dream-lights merge".
Underlying this and similar poems of Amal Kiran is the realization of the power of poetic language and its ability to concretely bring forth aspects of reality before our waking consciousness. A stanza from his poem Words for instance, very vividly portrays the power of this new poetry:
Words are the shadows of enhaloed hawks:
The shadows cling to clay and seem clay-born,
But he who marks their moving mystery
Feels how a strange spontaneous quiver wings
Their passage here and how intangible
They float for all their close and massive shapes.
Alone the poet looks up to the Inane,
Sees the gold wanderers of the boundless blue,
Catches the radiant rhythms each burning heart
Puts forth in every line of the wide form
Spanning the silences with pinion-song.
(The Secret Splendour, p. 276)
A poem that I particularly like is Night. As can be clearly seen, neither the title of the poem nor its content deals with an overtly "spiritual" theme. It does not stand, as elsewhere, for either Ignorance, Inconscience or Falsehood. Night is a simple landscape poem referring to a certain passage in time. And notice how even such a commonplace theme is a able to acquire in Amal Kiran's hands a lasting poetical treatment. The critical comments have been already offered by Sri Aurobindo but the lines are suggestive and worth quoting:
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No more the press and play of light release
Thrilling bird-news between high columned trees.
Upon the earth a blank of slumber drops:
Only cicadas toil in grassy shops -
But all their labours seem to cry "Peace, peace"
Nought travels down the roadway save the breeze;
And though beyond our gloom - throb after throb -
Gathers the great heart of a silver mob,
There is no haste in heaven, no frailty mars
The very quiet business of the stars.
(The Secret Splendour, p. 167)
As Aurobindo aptly explains, images like "thrilling birdnews”, "grassy shops", "silver mob" are "an ingenious discovery'', while "quiet business of the stars" enables inspiration to lift it “beyond itself and out of the conceitedness by the higher tone". (The Secret Splendour, p. 167)
Wherever these poems succeed, they are able to apprehend a given reality and present it in a highly arresting manner. Sri Aurobindo observes in The Future Poetry: "It will do this not merely in a symbol of greatened human magnitude, as the old represented the gods, or in lives of romantic glamour or in far-off light of a mystic remoteness but with me close directness and reality that comes from intimate vision and feeling, net make these things a part of our living experience." (p. 358)
One of my favorites of such poetry of Amal Kiran is a short poem called Ape on fire. The evolutionary account of self-exceeding and the process of transformation of the ape into a higher being is described in the poem in a matchless manner, a perfect fusion between thought and life:
Fuelled with forests I come, an ape on fire,
A brown beast burning towards the unbarred Blue,
Fierce brain that feels suddenly the skull blown off,
Blind belly crying to be an abysm of stars!
Helpless with flame that snatches them from earth,
My terrible arms strain reddening in mid-air -
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Love that has lost the ecstasy it can grasp,
To embrace the bourneless body of the beyond.
(The Secret Splendour, p. 171)
On the other hand, where the force of inspiration is weak, the poems tend to lose their impact. Take for instance, the following early poem Turn Your Back (1948). The poem, in my opinion, does not have the vivid power of sight, nor do the lines carry a sense of inevitability that often comes with a kind of simplicity or bareness of expression. Instead, the poem seems to offer a series of exhortations:
Turn your back on everything
Utterly -
There’s no other way to wing
Infinity.
Spirit's grandeur cannot brook
Compromise —
Once for all you must surrender
To the skies...
(The Secret Splendour, p. 320)
But such poems are exceptions rather than the rule. Elsewhere, for the most part, the poet is quite effective. Consider the short poem Ojas, for instance, that refers to the mastery of sexual energy from its downward flow for procreation to its sublimation for creative and spiritual use. There is a remarkable fusion in the poem between the idea and the image:
Rise upward, stream of passion in the gloom!
Rise where lone pinnacles mate with heaven's womb!
Earth drags you down, but all your shimmers know
The stars' enchanted fire calling you home.
(The Secret Splendour, p. 159)
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IV
It is heartening that while others remain content in "a continual bringing of changes in the spinning of the intellectual circle which leads nowhere," (The Future Poetry, p. 353) Amal Kiran has chosen to compose alone, away from the literary and institutional patronage. In devoting his entire life and poetic career in such an exemplary manner and carving one a path for himself, Amal Kiran has made a lasting contribution to the creation of the poetry of the future.
SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY
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Amal Kiran: Sadhak, Poet, Friend
I WAS introduced to Amal Kiran in the first days of August 1971. In the intervening 23 years I have met him more or less weekly... sometimes more, occasionally less often. 23 x 52 = 1196 - say 1200 hours... not counting sleeping time, this amounts to only 100 waking days, just over 3 months. Such a statistic does nothing to convey the immense amount of support, encouragement, inspiration and guidance for which I owe him a still-accumulating debt of gratitude. How to speak about all I have received from and through him?
SADHAK
First and foremost Amal has been a living example to me of what a follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother could be.
Our last darshan message told us: "In the integral Yoga there is no distinction between the sadhana and the outward life; it is in each and every movement of the daily life that the truth must be found and practised." This is the ideal of which Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of attempted and accomplished. Sannyasa has a formal garb and outer tokens; therefore men think they can easily recognise it; but the freedom of a Janaka does not proclaim itself and it wears the garb of the world; to its presence even Narada was blinded."
This is what I have seen in Amal: All the big and little joys and vicissitudes of life over almost a quarter of a centuryoffered up to the Master and the Mother, sometimes smilingly, sometimes with an intense call for aid and understanding, but always with unfailing confidence in their solicitude and constant guiding presence, and a spontaneous surrender to their will.
Although increasing bodily difficulties have gradually restricted his physical movements, they have not limited the far-ranging integrality I have always found in Amal: mentally, in the vast
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scope of his interests; psychically and emotionally in the wideness of his sympathies; and spiritually, in the subtlety of his intuitive grasp of inner truths and circumstances. Practically, it has always seemed to me, he is ready to take any and every aspect of life into his sadhana, whose keyword has been, as he has often told me, "Remember and offer". I have seen that unobtrusive but persistent remembering and offering at work in big and little things day by day over the years, and I am convinced that it is this everrenewed opening of the Mother and the Master that has shaped his whole nature into such a wide warm flow of sweet strength.
Into this flow I have had occasion to pour various troubles and difficulties; and always felt that they were sympathetically seized and lifted up into the joint sunlight of Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's consciousness. The wideness and depth of Amal's link with our gurus - established and enlarged over so many years for closeness and intense aspiration - enables help from them to flow freely to those who appeal to him for assistance. He has always been scrupulous in insisting that the help comes from them, while readily accepting to intercede on behalf of any troubled questioner. In this way, through his personal influence and example, as well as through his many writings on life and yoga, he has helped to spread their sunlight brightly and broadly.
POET
The mental and vital affinities that attracted me to Amal have much to do with his qualities as a poet. The adventurous intellect which I could not always follow into his explorations of Jewish orEgyptian or Indian history, into theological discussion or literary criticism, I could immediately respond to in his poetry. The recently-published Collected Poems is in my eyes a towering achievement, second only to Sri Aurobindo's own poetic oeuvre... although it seems that a new generation of readers will have to emerge before its true position and value can be widely appreciated.
I have been privileged to glimpse some of the 'juvenilia' Amal had written before he came to the Ashrain in 1927, and I can attest that although he may have been born a poet, it was Sri Aurobindo who made him the great poet he is. Those early
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efforts were poor stuff compared to the masterpieces that started to flow only a few months later under Sri Aurobindo's guidance.
In fact Amal has told me that after coming to the Ashram he wrote only for Sri Aurobindo - no one else's assessment counted a jot for him. But from the Master he wanted to elicit the highest praise: Not satisfied with a "very good", he strove to deserve an "excellent" or "superb", and to reach, the highest possible levels of poetic inspiration.
The remarkable thing is that he has been able to sustain this high level-of poetic achievement over more than 60 years - although of course there have been variations in the rate and intensity of the output. His astonishing volume The Adventure of the Apocalypse, which was written over a few months in 1948 and which Sri Aurobindo immediately arranged to have published without alteration as soon as he had seen it, is a significant milestone towards the future poetry, which remains to be emulated.
It was not only the poems which appealed to me, but the personality of their maker. Qualities such as the spiritual artist's delight in varied forms of beauty, capacity for high intensities of feeling and vision, subtle richness of comprehension, discrimination and expression, which make him such a fine poet, also flow out in Amal's daily dealings, enhancing his response to the people and ideas that enter his orbit. Perhaps the almost reckless adventurousness which he showed in earlier life, now muted to a steady courage which helps him to sustain with cheerfulness the trials of his present restricted life-style, forms part of this poetic persona too.
A photograph in my possession, taken last year, catches his outer features even better than the one on the back cover of The Secret Splendour: The wide brow, dreaming eyes, sweet sensitive smile, and serene presence of the sadhak-poet, who has consistently aimed for
A wide unshaken look on time's unrest.
The innermost state of Amal Kiran as he approaches 90 is evoked
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by Far, dated 1 July 1993, the latest poem1 to be included in The Secret Splendour: (p. 662)
Far from his own heartbeat, his wakeful day
Breathes a huge mountain-air's lucidity
And views a wide earth many-faced yet one.
A calm conspiracy of signalling stars,
An infinite mystery's throb on silvery throb
Of news from nowhere tingling everywhere,
Is now his sleep. Within his fragile form
Gods move with radiant smiles from hush to hush
Of inmost heaven: an immortality
Touches with healing hands the million shards
Left round his stillness by the tramp of time.
FRIEND
While I could not fail to respect such a sadhak, and be attracted by such a fine poet, an equal open-heartedness on his side could not be taken for granted. Yet from our very first meeting he drew me, as he has drawn many others, into his circle of friends.
In our friendship, some of his other qualities have been shown to me: For example, a simple and unassuming companionableness which dissolves formal barriers and allows a spontaneous intimacy; an immense loyalty, ever ready to extend sympathy and understanding, even when, in anyone else's eyes, we would not merit them; a capacity for wordless communication it has sometimes happened that he was occupied with someone else when I came, or that during our talk someone would come in who required his foil attention... then a glance between us would say all that needed to be said, and I could withdraw without disappointment.
His humour is well known.... I have heard (it was before my time, of course) about how, when he was giving his talks on poetry in the Ashram school, the whole building was shaken by gales of laughter from his audience, so that other teachers
1. Missed in the Index. - Editors
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complained of the disturbance. Sometimes this humour takes an unexpectedly playful form. I remember once taking an 8-year old to visit him. Seeing that the child was somewhat overawed at first, Amal, as if absorbing some of the little one's mischievous nature, began to demonstrate the extraordinary capacities of his polio-damaged left leg. Lifting, it high in the air like a ballerina and jiggling it around as if it were not properly connected to his body (I suppose it isn't), he explained to the delighted child, whose shyness had all vanished, that Mother had promised to give him a golden leg one day. He also explained that it is very important to know how to fall without hurting oneself, and proved it by dropping to the floor like a plank!
Of course this happened many years ago, and unfortunately Amal gift for falling and rising again did not prevent the catastrophic breakage of his good right leg a couple of years ago - as a result of which he is now riding a wheelchair, instead of the spirited white horse of his dreams. But this has not banished the smile from his eyes, nor prevented him from tranquilly continuing to fulfil all his many responsibilities as editor of Mother India. Although he is in his 90th year, he has not yet retired from service. Happily too, it did not prevent Amal and Nirodbaran from completing the tremendous labour involved in their detailed consideration of all the pros and cons of every alteration proposed for the definitive edition of Savitri. The Mother has told us that our best friend is one who loves the best in us, and helps us always to live up to our best. This is what Amal Kiran has been to me: a great poet and real friend, because always, first and foremost, a true sadhak, faithful follower of Sri Aurobindo, and the Mother's child.
SHRADDHAVAN
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WHEN one looks at the stupendous output of this man, sometimes one wonders how can a human brain know so much, contain so much, hold so much and yet not burst at the seams.
If one wants to understand the secret of the prolific output of this literary giant K.D. Sethna, who is constantly emptying his brains of its treasures by pouring them out in his writings; who writes with equal ease on the Vedas and the Bible (the Pope may with difficulty find one amongst his cardinals who knows so much about Christianity); who can write a book about the Black Lady on William Shakespeare and who can with credit break lances with Kathleen Raine, the foremost authority of our times on William Blake; and who can write a book which makes an in-depth study of French poet Stephane Mallarmé; and another on the origin of Israel and also write two tomes on the supposed invasion of India by the Aryans; who with astounding mastery proves that the chronology of ancient India is wrong and should be pushed back hundreds of years; who, though a Parsi by birth, is a Hindu to the core; whose political editorials written in Mother India decades ago can become a textbook for Indian diplomats; who has written so exquisitely about Sri Aurobindo's poetry that there might never be another to equal him in this field; whose poetry, highly packed with overhead inspiration, drew high accolades from Sri Aurobindo, is so high as to leave gasping his worthy admirers; who has history and philosophy at his fingertips; from whose every pore oozes literature; who can discuss any subject under the sun and confound those holding contrary views; who can point out people's mistakes with such tact that the person concerned will be ready to eat out of his hands and will remain his ardent admirer forever; who keeps his cool when enraged foes or friends lose their calm and shout at him; who can madden his opponents by his uncanny ability to
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argue successfully any viewpoint he chooses to advocate; who has helped dozens of fledgling poets and authors (myself included) and who can help so constantly without grudging his time and energy even in his 90th year; who was never defeated by his crippling disability; who sits for more than an hour listening to the celestial music floating in the air around the Samadhi, - the secret of all this is to be found in the infinite Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on one hand and on Amal's tremendous receptivity on the other, as well as in his favourite lines of Savitri:
A poised serenity of tranquil strength,
A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest
Faced all experience with unaltered peace.
May he complete his century.
The Warrior
(Written for Amal's birthday 25 November 1992)
Up or down
Though the going be tough,
Though the road be rough,
Never will he frown.
Surely the gods admire
This quenchless fire -
As heavy odds he would fight
Armed with a smile,
And always paint
With hues varied and bright
The twin canvases
Of literature and life,
Girdled with the Mother's Grace
And Sri Aurobindo's Light.
SHYAM KUMARI
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The Significance of K.D. Sethna
In the Context of the Problem of Aryan Origins
“ HERE is the book I was looking for," I had said to myself aloud as I finished the first edition of The Problem of Aryan Origins soon after it was published in early 1980. It was no outburst of passing enthusiasm for what was undoubtedly a brilliant piece of research. I had seen in this book the birth of a new dawn on the horizon of Indian historiography.
Scholars had so far used the modern lore - linguistics, comparative mythology, archaeology, and the rest - for denigrating and dismissing India's indigenous historical traditions. Here was a scholar at last who had employed the same lore for vindicating and sustaining those very traditions. People who had stood by and taken pride in India's indigenous historical traditions had had to rest content with no more than mere patriotic rhetoric. Now they could say that unimpeachable evidence made available by modern research methods and incisive logic was solidly on their side.
Sri Aurobindo was the first in modern times to bridge the gulf between modernity and Indian traditions in many fields, particularly as regards the spiritual vision of Sanatana Dharma, taking modernity as well India's heritage at their highest. India's history could not escape his penetrating eye. Here too he had seen through the "wild conjectures based on wilder conjectures" and passed as "scientific" history. But his was a bird's-eye view, a broad vision, sometimes in the form of a mantra. Meticulous scholarship was needed for working out the details, period by period, on aspect after aspect. Now we had a pioneer who had worked out the details for the earliest period, the very first culture in India's hoary history. Students who were aware of India's indigenous traditions vis-à-vis this period and this culture could see for themselves the difference between what he had uncovered
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and what was being dished out by the established scholars.
What was India's history as presented in the learned tomes and treatises as well as in school and college textbooks ? By and large, it was a history of conquerors coming from the outside and establishing regimes of long or short durations in this country - the Iranians, the Greeks, the Parthians, the Scythians, the Kushans, the Huns, the Arabs, the Turks, the Mughals, the Portuguese, the Persians, the Dutch, the French, and the British. The scenario had been given a finishing touch by converting the authors of India's earliest civilization into Dravidian and Aryan invaders. In the process, India had been converted into an empty space with no society or culture of its own.
It was obvious that this version of India's history was only a mix of various versions floated by imperalist ideologies - Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Marxism - which had flocked to this country in the wake of foreign invasions. The message which this "history" conveyed was also loud and clear, namely, that there was no such thing as India's indigenous society, that there was no such thing as India's indigenous culture, that India at any time belonged to those who could occupy it by means of armed might, and that the independent India that had emerged in 1947 was a cockpit of many races, many religions, many cultures, many languages, and many other things. The most sinister aspect of this version was that Indian heroes who had fought and finally defeated every foreign invader were to be found only in footnotes, if at all. Most of the time, the heroes that India was being asked to cherish, particularly in the post-1947 period, were chosen from among the invaders themselves.
What was India's history according to the indigenous historical traditions, on the other hand ? A connected and coherent version had not been available for a long time. But the broad outlines were not in doubt.
1. Indian civilization was the dominant civilization of the world for a long time before the birth of Jesus Christ, the same as the modern Western civilization has been since the last two-three centuries;
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2. India's presence world-wide could be seen in the language and literature, religion and philosophy, and science and technology of many peoples, east and west, north and south;
3. A long spell of unrivalled power and prosperity made India self-centered and complacent so that she neglected the art of warfare and invited invaders from far and near to flock towards her borders;
4. While the early invaders were beaten back from India's frontiers, the later ones who succeeded in storming in were absorbed rather speedily into the vast complex of India's society and culture so that instead of weakening or dividing India in any manner, they added to her vitality and vigour;
5. The Islamic invaders who had overrun large parts of: Asia, Africa, and Europe and converted whole populations to the new creed in the short span of a hundred years, took five hundred years to reach the heartland of India due to the stiff and persistent resistance they met at every step;
6. Although the armies of Islam which came in wave after wave succeeded in imposing alien rule over large parts of India and converting some sections of the Indian people, they continued to face a war of resistance, which became a war of liberation in due course and broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the eighteenth century;
7. Christian-Western imperialism intervened at the critical juncture when India had just started recovering from the havoc caused by Islamic barbarism, but met the same fate in a much shorter span of time;
8. While India reciprocated readily with the rational and humanist part of the modern West, it rejected its Christian and chauvinist aspects which it fought tooth and nail till it freed itself from their spell.
This indigenous version of India's history had started coming to the surface in the works of Maharshi Dayananda, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and some other stalwarts of the Hindu Renaissance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But it met a vehement
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opposition from the powerful Marxist-Muslim combine which had international support - ideological, political, and financial -, and which had crystallized inside the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. With the coming of Independence in 1947, this combine received state patronage on a grand scale so that it came to control all institutions concerned with researching, writing, and reaching of Indian history. The result was a wide prevalence of the mix of imperialist versions of India's history outlined above, and an almost total eclipse of India's indigenous historical traditions.
Today the entire academia and media in India are under the stranglehold of this state-sponsored version of India's history which is eulogised as the secular version, and is supposed to promote national integration. Voices of dissent are not with solid evidence or straight logic but with a swearology coined by subversive politics. Many scholars have been hounded out. Many others have been silenced.
It was in the midst of this stifling atmosphere that K. D. Sethna's work came like a breath of fresh air. To start with, his was a lonely voice. But now a whole school of historians is coming forward for a scholarly defence of India's indigenous historical traditions. All of them recognize K.D. Sethna as the forerunner in the field. Future generations are bound to hail him as the harbinger of a new dawn.
SITA RAM GOEL
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Little Known Facets of the Immortal Diamond
IF THE term "myriad-minded" could be applied to anybody with justice, Amal richly deserves it. It is not uncommon to find jacks of all trades with a kind of shallow omniscience. To be a first-rate poet uttering overhead notes, a superb critic with a mastery over "the heart and art of poetry", a rare type of historian with imagination and insight, a keen student of scientific thought and for some time even a commentator on the contemporary political scene is to be only in the truest sense of the term an Aurobindonian.
On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday it is good to remember he was barely nineteen when an essay of his on H.G. Wells1 was sent by the brilliant writer of the yesteryears, A.S. Wadia, to Wells himself. Wells wrote to Wadia: "Your young man will go far."
Wells could little imagine, few of us, even his admirers, could realise, how far he has gone, the real magnitude and nature of his achievement and accomplishment.
Not long ago Amal brought out his Collected Poems with a frontispiece - a painting illustrating a poem of his. Not many could have really guessed that the painting was his own. When someone in the Ashram was asked whose painting it was, it was suggested it could be Champaklal or Huta! Amal himself described his interest in drawing and painting from his boyhood in one of his personal letters on Life-Poetry-Yoga:2
I was addicted to pencil and brush since my boyhood.... Indeed at one period of my life I was posed with a choice between developing as an artist and devoting myself to writing.... In the middle teens I got the feeling that I would never do anything absolutely original and first-rate in painting whereas there were possibilities of my growing into a effective writer. So I practically
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gave up the art career which had seemed open to me and yet cherished the dream that towards the end of my life I would have a studio and paint away. One of the projects I had conceived quite early during my stay in the Ashram was to make a painting to each of the poems which had won high praise from Sri Aurobindo. Under the encouragement of a Sadhika, I made two paintings, one of a poem called Creators and the other of a poem entitled Two Birds on an old Upanishadic theme.
When the writer of this note wrote to Amal expressing his wonder at the possibility of one man being capable of developing in so many directions, he replied in a personal letter dated 13 June 1992 (not published):
I didn't know that you were unaware of my dabbling in drawing and painting. Perhaps an even more of a surprise will it be to you to hear that one of my greatest passions was riding. A life on horseback seemed at one time the peak of fulfilment.
The rest of the paragraph gallops into another field but it is delightful:
And an intense favourite of mine among poems was Longfellow's The Leap of Roshan Beg. When I came across it I couldn't help featuring it in Mother India. Did you notice it ? You'll be surprised that the only reference to it I got from readers was from Dyuman! As far as I remember, he remarked that he was like the horse of the poem. I suppose he meant "obediently ready to take even the most hazardous action under the command of the rider". Here the rider would be the Mother, of course.
In another letter written earlier (dated 28 April 1990) he was speaking of his early life:
Some of my happiest days were spent at Matheran. It is there I had my fill of horse-riding. My sister (Minnie Canteenwalla) was a trained horse-rider.
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Amal's personal letters, published or unpublished, reveal a facet which is more precious than the more iridescent ones: His deep humanity. Kathleen Raine, his "pen-friend" who admires him greatly, has written a book called The Human Face of God. The writer of the note has with him numerous letters since he met him on the 29th of March 1955 revealing the Human Face of a supra-human genius.
K.B. SITARAMAYYA
1. Mother India, October 1966, p. 16.
2.Ibid, June 1992, pp. 377-8.
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...Carmina non prius
Audita musarum sacerdos
Virginibus puerisque canto.
[Horace (Odes I)]
THE appearance of a volume of poems of the highest quality is a rare event in any age, and in our own can be considered almost a miracle. Lovers of poetry can throw away their mourning clothes! The muse of poetry is not dead but has been sleeping, her dreams foreshadowing glorious things to come: Not only poems superbly crafted but a new kind of poetry, truly the carmina non prius audita - songs never heard before - for which Horace claimed the tide 'Priest of the Muse' in ancient times.
But Horace was not a real innovator, and if he followed the conventions of the day in paying lip-service to the muse of poetic inspiration he did not follow her to the heart's depths or seek her above where thought gives way to spiritual sight. If any can be called Priest of the Muses in our time it is the author of The Secret Splendour - Amal Kiran.
Yet it will be surprising if this wonderful collection receives the critical acclaim which is its due. Sri Aurobindo put his finger on the dilemma of the true poet when he wrote: "That is the difficulty, the crux of imaged spiritual poetry; it needs not only the fit writer but the fit audience - and that has yet to be made." Meanwhile the splendour is likely to remain secret to all but a few.
Sri Aurobindo's comments, published in the same volume, supply the definitive critical verdict. It is a bold reviewer indeed who would challenge it, to seek to add the pittance of his learned or unlearned opinion to the heaped-up treasure of Sri Aurobindo's praise. Not all the poems were seen or appraised by
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Sri Aurobindo however - notably some early poems, as well as everything written after 1950. Any reader not already familiar with Amal Kiran's work would be well advised to begin with the section entitled Overhead Poetry - he will be rewarded beyond all . expectation.
Overhead poetry is the term used by Sri Aurobindo to describe poetry written "from those rarer levels whose voices have occasionally joined the utterance from the usual sources to make the profoundest moments of past poetry". The source is "an infinitude of conscious being above our brain-damped mentality".1 The result is the sustained perfection of substance and style exemplified in his This Errant Life:
Sky-lucent bliss untouched by earthiness!
It has been said of Sri Aurobindo's yoga that it starts where traditional systems leave off. It may be said with equal truth that the writer of Overhead poetry aims consistently for a level of inspired expression only rarely achieved in the past. This would involve an intense and sustained enquiry, yogic in its dedicated concentration, into the origin and genesis of the revelatory speech or mantra. The poet who succeeds in this high endeavour becomes a yogi; the yogi, a poet.
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"The greatest work," Sri Aurobindo wrote, "will be to express adequately and constantly what is now only occasionally and inadequately some kind of utterance of the things above, the things beyond, the things behind the apparent world and its external or superficial happenings or phenomena. It would not only bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges hut the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If this could be achieved by one possessed, if not of a supreme, still of a sufficiently high and wide poetic genius, something new could be added to the domains of poetry and there would be no danger of the power of poetry beginning to fade, to fall into decadence, to fail us...."2
Here we have the criteria by which Amal Kiran's achievement was measured by Sri Aurobindo. A question immediately arises; What can be the reader's instrument of measurement, since he is not Sri Aurobindo ? What sense or faculty will he use to recognise the authentic image, or the rhythm that carries the ‘inevitable word’ ?
"Have you ever had the sensation of an explosion of light in your head ?" - the Mother asked one day. "It translates as Ah, yes - that's it! Something you knew before perhaps in an intellectual way, but it was dull, lifeless. And suddenly it comes with a formidable power that brings everything else in the consciousness into line - this does not last long."3
The poet needs to catch a little of the light - the light that makes us say “That's it!” When he succeeds, not only is the aesthetic judgment satisfied, but something in us responds at a deeper level. We feel ourselves to be on the brink of a new discovery - it is true. He needs to be quick, because the "Lord goes ever in front, and all that (knowledge by revelation or inspiration)
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is like a trail he leaves behind him.... it is like a rain that falls: and all who are capable of catching it, even if only a drop, receive a revelation..."4
The Overhead poet will try to catch a drop of that rain of truth left behind by the "One who is swifter than thought" at the moment of its maximum power. He will try to feel the rhythm of its moment of manifestation with a silent mind until it has clothed itself symbol and speech. For, as Sri Aurobindo reveals in one of his aphorisms, this knowledge that comes from above is invincible when it is fresh in us, but when it is old it loses its power. It shrinks into expression, to use the Mother's vivid phrase.
No poet has explored the process by which revelation passes into speech with a more passionate dedication than Amal Kiran. His poetry is unique in that the process itself is a major theme running through poem after poem and reaching a peak of intensity in The Adventure of the Apocalypse, where poet and spiritual seeker finally renounce their separate identities. The earth-consciousness seems to speak with their voice and, with this voice, to proclaim a promise and a revelation,
And all the world cries out it is the dawn!
The eighty-nine poems of The Apocalpyse were written between 8th May and 9th August 1948, in a tremendous burst of creative energy that coincides with the poet's recovery from a serious heart attack. "Day after day brought more and more poetry. I was writing with a kind of automatic energy. It was as if I were a mere gate through which the poems strode out. Occasionally I had to pull them out and also to correct on afterthought, but there was little now of the piecemeal writing and long and careful chiselling to which I had been accustomed in the old days of poetic composition."5
Some extraordinary experiences accompanied this period of intense creation: The ability to see through closed eyes; the perception of a living presence in material objects; the impression that words were "living creatures acting on their own".
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(It is interesting to note that all these experiences have been described by the Mother at different times.)
It almost seems as if the cardiac crisis had its parallel in a tearing of the veil behind the heart. The region of the heart is traditionally the seat of revelatory speech. The Mother confirms this: "There is a level here (the Mother's gesture indicates chest- height) where something is at play with words, images, sentences, - like this (her hand indicates a wave-like motion). It makes beautiful images and has a power to put you in touch with the real thing greater than the metaphysical language here (touching her forehead)... images, poetry: That has a more direct access to the inexpressible."6
What a vibration it was, that came through with all the immediacy and impetuous driven force of the subliminal self behind it! We can see this first poem, called Seated Above, as representative of a new voice in poetry, despite its imagery drawn from ancient Indian tradition:
Seated above in a measureless trance of truth -
A thunder wearing the lightning's streak of smile,
A lonely monolith of frozen fire,
Sole pyramid piercing to the vast of the One -
Waits Shiva throned on an all-supporting void.
Wing after wing smites to the cosmic sky.
Gathering flame-speed out of their own wild heart —
That tunnel of dream through the body's swoon of rock —
They find their home in this sweet silent Face
With the terrible brain that bursts to a hammer of heaven
And deluges hell with mercies without end.
The abysmal night opens its secret smile
Shiva is the One who is seated above, but it is the Rudra aspect that first appears. Although he is a child of the Dawn, Rudra is described by Sri Aurobindo as the most terrible of all the Vedic Gods - the Violent One who breaks down all defective formations.
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His powers of light and sound, precursors of creation, appear symbolically in the thunder and lightning. Vibrating within the darkness of the thundercloud (the void) they precipitate the creation as "the monolith of frozen fire", the rock of matter where the power of the Godhead is coerced into form.
The image changes - from mountainous cloud to spear of rock to pyramid, that ancient symbol of the triple lower worlds pointing upwards to the place above where Shiva waits. As in many other poems in this series, symbols are packed "to a shining secrecy" as one image dissolves into another. This is a device which we readily accept from film-makers, unconsciously sup- plying the links as we are drawn more deeply into the experience. Finally, when the magic of the phrase "frozen fire" has done its work of suggesting some tremendous tension in the heart that hungers for release, the pyramid is able to be seen as the triangle-yantra in which the serpent power of evolution is pent up, reminding us that Rudra/Shiva is the one who leads the upward evolution of the conscious being.
Shiva in his "measureless trance of truth" has his counterpart below in one who is locked in "the body's swoon of rock", whence the flames of his aspiration soar upwards like winged birds to smite the cosmic sky. In the poem, no distinction is made between the Self above and the self below. They blend to a single identity, and in their union Rudra the terrible becomes Shiva of the "sweet silent face" who heals all wounds. The brain that bursts to a "hammer of heaven" is Shiva's - and it is also Earth's Roof, that is, the dome of human mind that
Must bear a trampling terror
Before we find
Through a sudden gap the mythic
Eternity alive!
It cannot reach our body
Ere hard heels drive
Deep into gilded dreams....
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Shiva as Nataraja dances the tandava of destruction until under his hard heels the lid of mind bursts asunder. There is a "tearing of thought", an opening to something above and a descent of its power, which pours down and "deluges hell with mercies without end". The threat implicit in "the lighting's streak of smile" is seen in the end, as the "secret smile" of a new dawn that was always there, hidden in the dark.
Seated Above will bear other interpretations than the one attempted above. Because its images and symbols are deeply rooted in human consciousness, all credible interpretations must cohere and coalesce for their mutual enrichment. Poems like Seated Above and Earth's Roof (and many others which cannot be looked at in detail in a short article) are like Amal Kiran's "one word of densest diamond" into which five things can be packed
...to a shining secrecy
That gathers a deep truth missed by them all.
We will never know to what plane of origin Sri Aurobindo would have assigned The Adventure of the Apocalypse. Some of the poems - The Two Crosses, for example - seem to reflect the pure vision of an occult truth from a plane above or beyond mind's reach. Others may not originate from any mental or intuitive plane. Rather it is as if the body itself, freed from the strong grip of the mind-consciousness, at last found a voice of its own and cried out its "naked primal need" for the divine joy, the divine light. In one poem after another this yearning of the physical being identified itself with the poet's quest for a Veilless Word which is itself a symbol of the yogi's longing for the Sole Reality. In fact the yogi and the poet in Amal Kiran are inseparable - despite his confession that the inspiration of the poet was more frequently in the forefront!
There is in many of Amal Kiran's Apocalypse - poems a voice that has not often been heard. A raw power is in it, a swift impetuousity, an impatient brushing aside of the conventional logic of thought. Sri Aurobindo himself remarked on some
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“violent connections and disconnections” and smilingly surmised that they might be a stumbling-block for any would-be critic. Hawk and eagle circle high above the bare slopes and jagged peaks of Shiva's mountain, the unexplored terrain where the Adventure begins with a sudden flight carrying skywards the body's energies set free - Rimbaud's million golden birds, a promise of glory to come. We are a long way from the aureoled "golden bird of peace" depicted on the jacket of The Secret Splendour and so charmingly evoked in the poem Two Birds. For these are birds of prey. In a very striking and original poem, called simply Words, they appear as the "enhaloed hawks", whose moving shadows on the clay alone are visible to earthbound eyes. The hawk-energies wheeling above are powers of the Divine whose
Beauty is but the beginning of terror
We're only just able to bear.7
The spiritual seeker (or the poet) who calls them down must bear the wrenching blissful pain of their descent:
Or, in rare moments quick with dawn and noon
And eve at once, our little human dreams
Love with such far-flung eyes the undying birds
That the large lust comes swooping down for prey
And, where the shadows mystically shone,
Falls - crushing, piercing, ravishing every sense —
The living body and beauty and blaze of God!
Here is an original voice, one that has no real predecessor in the literature of the past. Only rarely echoes of other poets come in. There is a resemblance to Mallarmé in Amal Kiran's sheer delight in the play of language in pun and teasing indirect allusion and the scattering of seemingly unconnected images like clues in a treasure hunt, leaving the reader to discover for himself the trail of meaning. There is a kinship with Rilke in the austere
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restraint and sheer power of his language. But no borrowing.
In his best work he achieves a subtle perfection, beautifully caught by Sri Aurobindo in his comments on Through Vesper's Veil: "The originality consists as in other poems of yours in the expression of a truth or plane of vision and experience not yet expressed and, secondly, in the power of expression which gives it an exact body - a revelatory not an intellectual exactitude."8
Is Amal Kiran's poetry 'difficult' ? The poet himself put the question to Sri Aurobindo. He replied: "It is precisely because what you put in is not intellectualism or a product of mental imagination that your poetry is difficult to those who are accustomed to a predominantly mental strain in poetry. One can grasp fully if one has some clue to what you put in, either the clue of personal experience or the clue of sympathetic insight."9
If here and there, even in our prosaic age, a few readers with such insight or experience can be found, The Secret Splendour with Sri Aurobindo's illuminating comments and his vision of a Future Poetry could become the Ars Poetica of a new era. May it be so.
The last poem in the book (though not, we hope, the last to be written) is an elegant Farewell:
Farewell, sweet earth, but I shall find you sweeter
When I return
With eyes in which all heaven's farnesses
Intimately bum.
Then you will show in all I once held dear
The cause of my keen flame;
The holy hush my poet tongue miscalled
Name on poor mortal name.
Our answer, which we believe will be approved by Amal Kiran's many admirers, is to take some small liberty with a few lines from Robert Bridges:
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We will not let thee go.
We hold thee by too many bands:
Thou sayest farewell, and Lo!
We have thee by the hands,
And will not let thee go-
SONIA DYNE
1. Amal Kiran, The Secret Splendour, p. 60.
2. Ibid., p. 210.
3. Agenda, 6.10.62.
5. The Secret Splendour, p. 223.
6. Agenda, 4.3.66.
7. R.M. Rilke: Duiner Elegien.
8 The Secret Splendour, p. 88.
9. Ibid., p. 91.
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K.D. Sethna's Profession of Poetry
We reproduce in the following a few excerpts from K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar's writings on some of the works of K.D. Sethna.-Editors
AN ACCOMPLISHED craftsman in verse, K.D. Sethna has been following the profession of poetry with a sense of dedication for nearly half a century. Artist Love (1925) was followed by The Secret Splendour (1941) and The Adventure of the Apocalypse (1949). Like Nirodbaran, Sethna too has been profoundly influenced by the poetry and spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, and, besides, Sethna has drunk deep in the springs of English and European poetry. Grace could be cited as an example of his earlier work, fancy-fed and neatly-turned in phrase and light-glancing in its movement:
An even better lyric is This Errant Life, one of Sethna's best:
This errant life is dear although it dies...
If Thou desires my weak self to outgrow
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Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow,
Earth and Heaven are here brought together in one rhythmic wave of utter comprehension. And Creators is another fine poem, self-luminous, firm and delicately balanced;
Rooted in deep on measureless deep of love,
A rapture-rock intense with quietude -
They rise, companion-crests of dream above
A shadowy world, in mystic parenthood.
Their children shall be eyes new-born to climb —
Out of old dark, kissed by a luminous swoon
Of passion-prayer cleaving beyond all time -
Two summits haloed by one perfect moon.
The lyrics in Sethna's third volume, The Adventure of the Adventure, mark a further advance still in the nature of his inspiration and the quality of his poetic utterance. On 8 May 1948 he had a heart attack and he had to remain in bed for two months. As if a spring had been released, he began composing poetry daily almost, and often several times a day: "I was writing with a kind of automatic energy. It was as if I were a mere gate through which poems strode out...I seemed to be plastic in the hands of the inner being." On the very day after the heart attack, Sethna wrote three lyrics, each in a different measure. Here are the opening lines of the first, Seated Above:
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Although confined to bed and submitting to the usual medical treatment, Sethna had a feeling of peace, a sense of the living presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and more and more poems seemed to write themselves out, as if insisting on utterance. A month after the heart attack, he wrote:
A month has flown like some Archangel's form
Dripping a light of God-drunk reverie.
And I have lain aloof and still to see -
The truth-gold pinions of that singing storm.
Men move with days; but I have reached a rest
From where I view days moving wondrously
Out of an east of crimson gaiety
Unto a violet wisdom in the west!
Again, a month later:
Two months of song have swept my soul
Out to the very nerves of sense
And with the body's vehemence
I have taken to myself the whole
Wonder of the timeless Secrecy!
And, finally, on 9 August:
Forsake me not, Sweet Power!
Make my life music with Thy kiss
The 89 lyrics, long and short, are in a variety of metres, and the sequence may be described as a record of the beatings of the poet's heart as it turned more and more in complete surrender to the Divine. What is probably the central insight in the collection is conveyed through these lines:
...man's orb
Of vision can never absorb
The adventure of the apocalypse -
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Until his passion inward dips
Where hides, behind both dazzle and dark,
Perfection's pigmy, the soul-spark
Plunged in the abyss to grow by strange
Cry of contraries...
(Indian Writing in English, 6th Edition 1987, Sterling Publishers, pp. 612-615.)
An intellectual like Chadwick, K.D. Sethna too was early drawn to Yoga. By the merest accident he heard about Sri Aurobindo and read about the Ashram, and now told himself: "I am going there!... I have found my goal — or at least the path to my goal." He was then twenty-three, and he made the trip to Pondicherry without much delay, arriving there in December 1927. His first darshan was on 21 February 1928:
I saw him sitting very grandly, with an aquiline nose and smallish eyes, and moustaches and a beard..,. I was examining him thoroughly. At length I. made my pranam. He put both his hands on my head - that was his way - a most delightful way, with his very soft hands. I took my leave, looking at him again. I observed to myself: "Quite an impressive Guru...!"
The "rebirth" in the Ashram was really the awakening to the "sweetness and light" of the psychic being within. It was actually an "open book" - once one was able to fix one's gaze on it:
...the sweetness in the experience is of a bliss which has no cause; a self-existent bliss is there. It is not dependent on persons, occasions, circumstances, objects. To be there, deep within, to feel oneself there is to be perennially, and I might even say unbearably, happy. The light also is present, because some kind of natural truth-feeling is experienced, which guides
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you all the time. ... On the negative side... one is not depressed, one does not bewail one's lot any more; secondly, one does not rebel, either against the Divine or against human beings.
He now acquired a new name too, 'Amal Kiran' (The Clear Ray) often shortened to 'Amal'; and he promptly started a correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. Innumerable letters passed to and fro covering a variety of subjects, and especially poetry - Sethna's, Sri Aurobindo's and other people's poetry. Ever since his first coining to Pondicherry over sixty years ago, Sethna has been a committed and dedicated and evangelistic Aurobindonian, and he is also the best informed, the most perceptive and the most illuminating of the critics of Sri Aurobindo's poetry.
(Sri Aurobindo: a biography anda history, 4th Revised Edition, 1985.)
3
A graduate in Philosophy of Bombay University, young K.D. Sethna read quite by accident a newspaper article on Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram at Pondicherry where the aim was "a new life not rejecting but transforming the main activities of man". Not long after, Sethna reached Pondicherry, had darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on 21 February 1928, forgot all about the dissertation on ‘The Philosophy of Art’, and stayed on in the Ashram for ten and a half years fully engaging himself in the Aurobindonian integral Yoga of self-change and world-transformation. He acquired a new name 'Amal Kiran' (‘The Clear Ray’), and his sadhana took within its scope the literature of Power as well as Knowledge. Although Sethna returned to Bombay in 1938, he paid periodical visits to the Ashram and was in constant communication with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
When Independence (saddled with the ruinous Partition) came on 15 August 1947 (which was also Sri Aurobindo's 75th birth anniversary), it was felt a new journal taking a spiritual look at
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Indian and world problems was desirable. The young Bombay businessman, Keshavdeo Poddar (later known as Navajata), accordingly helped to launch Mother India as a fortnightly with K.D. Sethna as editor, and he was promised ready guidance from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. A few years later, the journal (along with the editor) was shifted to Pondicherry, and has since been appearing as a monthly Review of Culture.
The political fact of a fissured India made no sense to a nation that had awakened to the consciousness of its identity in unity and strength during the 'Bande Mataram' movement forty years earlier; and in the Ashram at Pondicherry, the Mother unfurled 'The Spiritual Map of India' comprising, not only the undivided India before the partition, but Burma and Sri Lanka as well. This vision of the spiritual reality that is 'Mother India' has been figuring on the cover of the Review all these years. And under Sethna's missionary editorship, Mother India has sustained this robust and spiritually valid "cartographical aggression" for 46 years; and Mother India growing in knowledge, wisdom and benevolence is now grandmotherly in her global sweep of understanding and unfailing good will.
Aside from his learned studies on ancient India like The Problem of Aryan Origin and Karpāsa in Prehistoric India, his critical monographs on Sri Aurobindo's Poetry, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Blake's Tyger and Mallarmé's Symbolist Poetry, and collections of his own poems (for example, The Secret Splendour and the Adventure of the Apocalypse), Sethna's seminal sadhana has been his editorship of Mother India for an unbroken span of 46 years, the journal has never been late “by even a few hours”. A host of contributors have no doubt helped to give Mother India its standing, but it is the Amal-stamp that makes the Review sport its own individuality and power. Earlier Sri Aurobindo and the Mother often spoke through him to the outside world, but now all three merge in the cumulative light - the clear ray - radiating from Mother India.
In 1968, almost 20 years after the launching of Mother India, a selection of 25 essays (including several that had appeared in the journal) came out with the title The Vision and Work of
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Sri Aurobindo and now twenty-five years after, a "second revised and enlarged edition" has come out. The 5 new items include a short poem on 'Mind of Light' with these opening lines.
And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold -
lines that elicited the Mother's comment that they "are sheer revelation", what in fact that preceding 32-page essay on The Supermind's' Descent and the Mind of Light tries to present with a due weight of learning and Yogic experience. Towards the close of his masterly exposition, Sethna writes:
"Yes, the Mind of Light as its supreme and in its absolute orb, is what was realised in the descent into earth's being in December 1950."
And at the time of Sri Aurobindo's passing, the Mind of Light (as admitted by her) got realised in the Mother, and paved the way for the supramental manifestation of 29 February 1956.
While some of the selections are thus addressed specially to close students of Sri Aurobindo, the volume as a whole must appeal to a wider audience. A mere glance at the titles will give an idea of the range and richness of the volume. Normally, no doubt, a bringing together of pieces written over a period of several decades will only make a miscellany, not a book. But it is different with the volume under notice because the three - Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and Amal - confer on it a lively unity of its own.
It would be fascinating to begin with The Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, for it takes us to the heart of the medium, the message and the ministry, and Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Amal become almost a trinitarian phenomenon. One of the essays is on Freewill in Sri Aurobindo's Vision. This is an essay that had received the Master's specific approval. In Milton, freewill is yoked with fixt fate. Satan, Adam and Eve are free to choose, but cannot avoid the relevant consequences, but, then,
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with Grace reigning supreme, even causality loses its sting.
Some of the essays are really reprints of letters to correspondents like Paul Brunton; one is a review-article on M.P. Pandit's Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and another on Path to Perfection comprising selections from the Mother's writings.
Like the essays on Sri Aurobindo (for example, Sri Aurobindo and Human Evolution, Aurobindonian Viewpoints and Sri Aurobindo and the Veda), those on the Mother (especially Some General Truths and Personal Facts) will also be read with gratitude by a widening circle of readers. In barely 13 pages, the personality and ministry of the Mother are evoked with an uncanny sureness of touch. The selected ‘general truths’ and 'personal facts' really build up the Mother's life-history in miniature. The entire essay is a rare birthday tribute to "the saviour love" of the Mother.
Among other illuminating essays are those on Sri Aurobindo as the Poet of Integralism, on the importance of the English language and of French culture to India, and on Essence as viewed by Shankara and Sri Aurobindo. In a word, then, here in this well-produced volume on Sri Aurobindo's Vision and Work, is gathered with a deft hand 'Amal Kiran's Plenty', and the reader cannot ask for more.
(The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo, Second Revised and Enlarged Edition; by K.D. Sethna. Reviewed in The Hindu dated 13 April 1993.)
While Romanticism was the stimulating culture of the French Revolution, French romantic poetry had its efflorescence much later, say with Victor Hugo's Hernani (1830). Almost three decades after, Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (1857) "created a new shudder" in France, but also gave modern poetry the violent renovation it needed. His successors were the Symbolists - Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine - who sought to "bury their meaning in a tissue of images and symbols" (Bernard Weinberg).
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If Verlaine was the purest singer of the group and Rimbaud the 'god-struggler' and the laureate of desires, Mallarmé sought to crystallised the essences of things in symbols, and was an adept at linking chance audacious images to initiate reverberation of meaning.
Written over 25 years ago, the publication of Mr. K.D. Sethna's penetrating research in Mallarmé's symbolist poetry is most welcome. The book divides roughly into two equal parts. The first is a close study in 8 sections of Mallarmé - Man and Poet. The second comprises English translations of 35 of Mallarme's poems, and commentaries on a few of them. Throughout the book, the citations from Mallarmé are in the original French as well as in Sethna's excellent English renderings.
Himself an accomplished poet with a pronounced mystical bent, Sethna's present study, with its expository brilliance as also its estimative sensitivity, is criticism of poem at its seasoned best. The subtlety of the reasoning notwithstanding, the attentive reader cannot miss the unfolding argument. In the movement from the old poetry to the new. Mallarmé has a centrality following Baudelaire and the earlier Symbolists and preceding the latter day Surrealists. Sethna is not lost in the ramifications of the subject, and shows how, for all its obscurity and knotted density, Mallarmé’s is poetry that creates out of the essences of 'nothing' an ideal reality, not the rose in the garden, but - shall we say ? - the Rose of God.
Sethna repeatedly quotes Sri Aurobindo, especially on Mallarmé's poetry, and the spinal column of the argument is that past Mallarmé, past Valery, past Yeats, Eliot and Wallace Stevens, there shines Sri Aurobindo the pole star, the laureate of Overhead Poetry and Savitri.
In the second part, Sethna remarks that Mallarmé "is likely to suffer least by being translated into English". This is hardly surprising, for writing poetry and teaching English to French pupilswere Mallarmé's parallel careers in life. The sonnet Le Cygne (The Swan) figures prominently in both halves of Sethna's book. The 'swan' - the hamsa - What is it ? It signifies the poet who has failed in his vocation, and also the human soul that has
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failed to break away from bondage and rise to the higher plateaus of the Spirit. The sonnet, as Sri Aurobindo reads it, is "a moving and formidable expression of this spiritual frustration, this chilled and sterile greatness" memorably conveyed by the image of the frozen lake and the imprisoned swan. Sethna's own 12-page commentary on the poem is almost the heart of his whole illuminating critical exposition of Mallarmé's symbolist poetry.
K.R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR
(The Obscure and the Mysterious: A research in Mallarmé's Symbolist Poetry, by K.D. Sethna — Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry; paperback - reviewed in The Hindu, dated 2 February 1988.)
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A FEW glimpses of Shri Amal, Amalda, Amalbhai or Amalji ?
Well, considering his imposing personality, I should call Shri Amaldabhaiji! But then, being what he is, he wouldn't like any of these appendages - so Amal, ‘pure’ and simple!
Though I feel that it is a privilege to write on Amal, when asked to do so I hesitated because there are so many big people writing about his colossal knowledge, his generosity in literary help, his wonderful sense of humour, his capacity to laugh at himself, his cheerfulness and last but not the least, his formidable memory.
I was just wondering what to write - not having even whispered it to anyone at home - when suddenly my mother pulled out a letter from the hidden recesses of a drawer. Anybody well-versed in today's Jurassic craze would exclaim: "Ah, a Dinosaur egg has been excavated." And he wouldn't be very wrong, for indeed it is a letter concerning the Dinosaur, written by Amal to my father, 11 years ago. Here it is.:
My dear Doctor,
I don't think you ever wrote a prescription so much appreciated by a patient as the cheque of Rs 501 for Mother India to help set right its recent deficiency in that very important member of the Vitamin B group - namely Vitamin BB (Bank Balance).
We thank you for your thoughtfulness. I look forward to seeing your kind, intelligent, happy face at my flat in the company of Nirod, Sudha, Tulsa and, for some time now, Dr Saryabrata Sen.
I am enclosing the receipt from the Trustees. Please excuse the delay in posting it to you. It has been lying for nearly a week in my drawer. I didn't have your address in
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my address-book. I wanted to get it either from my office or from one of your two daughters. But it was a mistake on my part to keep the receipt safely in my drawer. Not seeing it under my nose I forgot about it. I have developed what I was explaining to our Class ten minutes back: The Dinosaur-memory. The gigantic Dinosaur of prehistoric times would furiously chase an animal. But, if that animal suddenly hid itself behind a tree, the chaser would just look blankly on and not know why it was running. It would turn back as if its prey did not exist at all. My drawer served as a tree to the receipt.
Yours affectionately,
As you see, it illustrates Amal's wonderful sense of humour and his capacity to laugh at himself. But then it disproves his "formidable memory"! Well, I think, if Amal compares his memory to that of a Dinosaur's, then we'd better change our age-old idea of its memory which would then be just terrific — Amalian!
SUDHA UMACHIGI
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The Poetic Genius of K.D. Sethna
AMAL KIRAN is little known outside a particular circle, but his poetry is a new light which is destined to spread. His poetry seeks "a new intensity of vision and emotion, a mystic inwardness" that catches alive "the deepest rhythms of the spirit". It really becomes "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery". What is most interesting is Sethna has his individual style in spite of his being very close to Sri Aurobindo. His companion poet, Nirodbaran, has a different poetic style. Sri Aurobindo insisted on originality and this must have helped them.
One of Sri Aurobindo's favourite poets, Amal Kiran was born K.D. Sethna, a member of the Parsi community in Bombay. He was a brilliant student of literature and philosophy in St. Xavier's College, Bombay. He arrived at the Pondicherry Ashram while studying for his M.A. in philosophy. Joining the Ashram and becoming involved in its life, he discontinued formal study and cultivated the literary life under Sri Aurobindo's inspiration and guidance.
To Sethna, the Divine is surely a being above him, but he often uses the rhetoric of a romantic lover to pray to Him. This is not the Tagorean style we find in the English Gitanjali. Let us listen to the rhythm of the following lines:
This errant life is dear although it dies....
* This article is reproduced from Indian Literature: Points of View, edited by Goutam Ghosal (1986). - Editors
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Sri Aurobindo praises the poem exuberantly detailing its qualities, but any ordinary reader can feel the exquisite beauty of the words and the rhythm. To Sri Aurobindo and his poet disciples Truth is primary, and then a technique expressive of the truth in the form of beauty has to be found.
Sethna is not just a religious poet; he has the mystic mind which has often access to the spiritual planes. Sri Aurobindo has characterised the planes, but we are concerned with the overall beauty of Sethna's poems. Mystic or spiritual, great things come out through his pen and a few examples will speak of the presence of the Muse:
A white shiver of breeze on moonlit water,
Flies the chill thought of death across my dream....
To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile....
Waves of spiritual secrecy broke white
Along the heart's shores a rumour of deathless love
Afloat like a vast moon upon the deep....
A brown beast burning towards the unbarred Blue.
Not to have ever seen such aspects is the world's idea of sanity. But, for the mystic poet, these things are realities. The language is a discovery. Sri Aurobindo tells us that in the past the English language has been plastic enough to succeed in expressing all that it was asked to express, however new; "it must now be urged to a further new progress. In fact, the power is there and has only to be brought out more fully to serve the fall occult, mystic, spiritual purpose."
Sometimes Sethna writes a poetry full of mystic suggestions, as in Evanescence:
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Where lie the past noon-lilies
And vesper-violets gone ?
Into what strange invisible deep
Fall out of time the roses of each dawn ?
They draw for us a dream-way
To ecstasies unhoured,
Where all earth's form-hues flicker and drop,
By some great wind of mystery overpowered.
The first four lines contain the questions in simple diction. The Second stanza answers in a simple but inspired language. The Word "unhoured" is unusual, but surely apt in the context.
Sethna's prayer poems are quite simple and charming, their charm lying in what Sri Aurobindo calls "psychic stamp".
Sometimes Sethna follows the Shelleyan tradition; but the newness is too sure, for the substance is not Shelleyan.
Though void, a fulness richens
The heart I give to Thee —
For, what more can I offer
Than all my penury ?
Some poems can be appreciated by any casual reader of poetry. Crownless King, Fragments and The Sea, are poems which may attract instantly. The wonderful opening of The Sea may be cited:
It would be interesting to read the whole of Fragments.
What they mean —
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A fall moon glows
Feels that it knows.
Aloof, some rounded hush,
A secrecy
Of Oneness, troubles the heart's surge
And breaking cry.
In quite a few poems, Sethna has used the adjective "shadowless". It just shows his passion to see the shadowless face of the Divine. Or does he see such a face frequently ? His art of phrase-making follows the Aurobindonian tradition, as we can feel in "an oceaned eternity of love", "the body's blinded cry", "a rose of fire", "azure height beaconing above the mind", "a spirit washed in whiteness", "a universal hunger's white embrace", "the shadow in the moon's whiteness", etc. But many of these are either new phrases or re-ordered or used in a different context. The Sethna-style is an individual style.
Amal Kiran. That was the name given to him by Sri Aurobindo. In Sanskrit, it means the clear ray. How true was the Master! The modern man is in need of such clear rays. "His heart has grown insensible to the sorrows and struggles of humanity." The poetry of Sethna reminds us of our forgotten identity.
SUNETRA CHATTOPADHYAY
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"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!"
I FIRST came to Pondicherry in 1934 to do business in partnership with Mr. Robert Gaebele. I came from Bombay where one of my friends was Homi Sethna. When he knew that I was going to Pondicherry he told me that his cousin, Kekushru, was there at some Ashram and that I should meet him as he knew that we would become friends. And he was right. I got in touch with Kekushru at once and we became good friends. He then told me something about the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. I had known a little about Ashrams as in my home town there was a sort of Ashram, a Mutt of Arud Swamy which I had visited. What Amal told me was very interesting and I began to have a great respect for both the gurus. The name of Amal Kiran was given to Kekushru by Sri Aurobindo and it means "The Clear Ray" and he is known as Amal to all his friends.
Amal had been stricken with polio at a very young age and his parents tried their best, and even took him abroad for treatment as one of his legs was almost paralysed and he walked with a limp. But he could not be completely cured of it and he bore his affliction with a clear disregard of its limitations. He used to bound about and climb walls and do such things more than others do, out of sheer dare-devilry. The Mother had to curb this exuberance in him as he could have had an accident.
When I came to stay in Pondicherry I lived at what was known as the Pitts Guest House, a fine cottage-type place at the end of rue Dumas, No. 35, almost diagonally opposite to our present Park Guest House on the Boulevard Sud. This cottage had a nice garden in which one could sit and enjoy the evenings. Amal began to visit me regularly and we sat out in the garden and had snacks and drinks and played cards, as was the custom then. We played Bridge and Poker which is a gambling game and we had to play for stakes, small ones, to make the game more meaningful.
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Now Amal had made it a point in his life to tell The Mother of all the things he did and so he told Her of his visits to me and of our drinking and gambling. One day The Mother said: "Who is this person Pinto who tempts my children with drinks and gambling? I must catch him one day!" And, indeed, She did catch me later, not only me but also my wife and child when they later so arrived; my child being a daughter.
Amal's coming to the Ashram is quite a story. It is what I would call "The Danger of Buying Shoes". Amal at Bombay was married to a girl who was later given here the name Lalita. Before his marriage he felt he needed new shoes and so he went to a small shop in the Crawford Market of Bombay where he bought a pair of shoes. The shopkeeper put the shoes in a box and wrapped the box in an old newspaper sheet. When Amal reached back to his house he unwrapped the box and looked at the sheet of newspaper. In that old sheet he read an article on the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which he found to be very interesting. He looked at a map to find out where Pondicherry was as this Ashram was said to be at that place. He saw that it was quite close to Madras and he and his wife decided to visit the Ashram, Here, they were so taken up by what they saw and learned that they decided to stay on. So he and Lalita were caught even as, later, Mona, my newly wed wife and I were caught. This is why I call the story "The Danger of Buying Shoes", because it all started from that act.
Amal is a poet and a very fine poet at that, and with Sri Aurobindo Himself being such a great poet he found a very fine opportunity for his poetic inspiration to have its full scope. Amal wrote a lot of poetry and sent his work to Sri Aurobindo who liked it and commented very favourably, even at times very highly on it. There was a wide exchange of letters between Sri Aurobindo and Amal which makes fine and instructive reading. Much of this exchange has been published in the addenda of Sri Aurobindo's great epic, Savitri. Sri Aurobindo's explanations and comments on Amal's work are truly illumining. But one very long letter from Sri Aurobindo, published in Vol. 26 of His Collected Works and with the title On Himself, and covering about 20 pages, is a
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reply to Amal on certain criticisms which Amal had received from a friend of his on certain lines of Savitri, and is a wonderful example of Sri Aurobindo's noble humility and patience. The criticisms are, to my not very profound view, very poor and only on rule and technique with no sense of appreciation of the poetic content and inspiration. Yet, Sri Aurobindo has spent pages of explanation in such detail that it has become for us a very fine lesson in true poetry. The stupidity of the criticisms have resulted in a great gift to all of us. In His Savitri Sri Aurobindo has, in one line, forcefully answered such pedantic criticisms. He writes: "The Artist's joy shall laugh at reason's rules."
One trait in Amal's character which I admire a great deal is his courage. In spite of his crippling affliction he does not ever bemoan it but carries on as if it were a great opportunity for further adventure and progress. This is something many are apt to forget. When troubles and tribulations fall on us, instead of looking on them as misfortunes we should take them as challenges for our development. Amal exemplified this and continues to do so in all his life. Quite recently he had a very serious accident when his stronger leg was broken and had to be hung in complicated traction for weeks on end. He was not dismayed at all and when I went to see him at our Nursing Home, we had quite a laugh about it. Truly he is a fine example for others to follow when they are faced with so-called misfortunes. For this trait of his character and for his very inspiring poetry and for his joy in life I admire Amal and love him and I ask all to join me in greeting him on the completion of his ninetieth year with as noble cries as possible. First in Latin and German we shout;
"AVE AMAL" and "HEIL AMAL" and then in English with the famous quotation from a fellow-poet "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit."
UDAR
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SECTION FOUR
The Wide Magnificence of Mood
Two Birds: A Painting by Amal Kiran used as a frontispiece as well as a cover-jacket for his collected poems The Secret Splendour, 1993 edition
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A Pencil sketch of Yama by Amal Kiran made in his Savitri-copy in the blank space at the end of Canto Two, Book Nine 1951 edition.
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A Pencil sketch of Arjava by Amal Kiran, kept as a frontispiece in his copy of Poems by Arjava (J. A. Chadwick), 1941 edition
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Amal Kiran with his parents (The picture was taken in 1909 by Naudin, Artist and Photographer, Kensington High St, London.)
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Sailor-boy Amal - A street artist's sketch of his in London, 1909. The original is on a cardboard paper of size 14’’x11’’
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Amal Kiran calls this picture, taken in the Ashram, The Devil and his Disciples. Amal has a devilish grin. The scene is the old library of the Ashram. Dr Rajangam is at the opposite end of the table, the librarian Premanand standing to the left of Amaland Anil Kumar (bearded) behind him. The three others are Udayshankar's company. Uday himself stands near to Rajangam and looks down. Rajangam is reading a typed sonnet of Harindranath Chottopadhyaya. (1930s)
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Harindranath Chottopadhyaya and Amal Kiran at the Guest House staircase (1930s)
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Amal Kiran (1930s)
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The Christ-Amal (1930s)
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Balcony Darshan - Amal is at the bottom left-hand corner, with his hands folded and eyes closed (1950s)
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Amal Kiran in his study 1993
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Amal Kiran (September 1994)
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BOOKS BY AMAL-KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA)
Published Books.
1. The Parnassians (1923)
2. Artist Love (1925)
3. The Secret Splendour (1941)
4. Evolving India: Essays on Cultural Issues (1947)
5. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo (1947,1974)
6. The Adventure of the Apocalypse (1949)
7. The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence (1951)
8. Life-Literature-Yoga: Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (1952, 1967)
9. The Indian Spirit and the World's Future (1953)
10. Sri Aurobindo on Shakespeare (1965, 1991)
11. The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo (1968, 1992)
12. Sri Aurobindo - the Poet (1970)
13. "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments (1972)
14. Light and Laughter: Some Talks at Pondicherry (1974)
15. Altar and Flame (1975)
16. The Mother: Past-Present-Future (1977)
17. The Problem of Aryan Origins: From an Indian Point of View (1980)
18. Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother (1980)
19. The Spirituality of the Future: A Search Apropos of R.C. Zaehner's Study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin (1981)
20. The Sun and the Rainbow (1981)
21. Karpasa in Prehistoric India: A Chronological and Cultural Clue (1981)
22. "Two Loves" and "A Worthier Pen": The Enigmas of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1984)
23. The English Language and the Indian Spirit: Correspondence with Kathleen Raine (1986)
24. Poems of Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran with Sri Aurobindo's Comments (1987)
25. The Obscure and the Mysterious: A Research in Mallarmé's Symbolist Poetry (1987)
26. Ancient India in a New Light (1989)
27. Talks on Poetry (1989)
28. Blake's Tyger: A Christological Interpretation (1989)
29. The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems (1993)
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Books in the Press:
1. Aspects of Sri Aurobindo
2. Life-Poetry-Yoga: Personal Letters, Vols 1 & II
3. The Inspiration of Paradise Lost
4. Inspiration and Effort: Studies in Literary Expression
5. The Beginning of History for Israel
Unpublished Books:
1. Problems of Early Christianity
2. Problems of Ancient India
3. The Greco-Aramaic Inscription of Kandhar: Its Call for a Revolution in Historical Ideas.
4. "Raised from the Dead": An Approach to the Problem of the Resurrection of Jesus from the Descriptions of his "Risen" Body
5. Is Velikousky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes
6. A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Correspondence between Bade Griffiths and K.D. Sethna
7. "Classical" and "Romantic": An Approach through Sri Aurobindo
8. "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal": An Interpretation from India
9. Adventures in Criticism
10. Sri Aurobindo and Greece
11. Science, Materialism, Mysticism: A Scrutiny of Scientific Thought
12. The Thinking Corner
13. The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition
14. The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual Thought and the Mother's Contribution to it
15. The Basic Teilhard de Chardin and the Modern Religious Intuition
16. The Real Religion of Teilhard de Chardin: His Version of Christianity and Sri Aurobindo's Exposé of the Ancient Vedanta
17. Mandukya Upanishad: English Version and Commentary
Edited Books:
Glimpses of the Mother's Life: Compiled by Nilima Das with the help of Shraddhavan, Vols I & II (Third volume under preparation)
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SOME BOOK-REVIEWS AND BLURBS
(1)
Blake's Tyger
This mentality is less severely Puritan, more humanely sensitive, than Milton's. So it feels shaken and dismayed at the same time that it is splendour-struck by the superbly destructive power emanating from one who has usually been regarded as loving, gentle and peaceful. Hence the query addressed to the Tyger apropos of the double role divinity has assumed:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Apart from Milton, comparative aspects are found in various features of the general Christian tradition to elucidate the relationship the poem suggests between God the Father and Christ the Son, as well as the poem's picture of the winged maker of the Tyger, ascending to "seize the fire" with which to create his dreadful instruments. Several nuances of the poem in the perspective of the large body of Blake's other works are studied at considerable length. At the end, light is brought to bear on the poem from another of Blake's celebrated lyrics- "And did those feet in ancient time..."-- whose often-disputed dramatis person are sought to be clarified.
An attempt has been made to render the Christological interpretation of The Tyger complete and convincing by meeting all possible objections squarely, especially those arising from Miss Raine's published treatment and
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from the correspondence she had with the author after reading his thesis in typescript. The author is grateful to her for the interest she has taken in his exposition and for the helpful criticism received from her. Although differing on the whole from his reading she has generously acknowledged in the Notes to her monumental Blake and Tradition the need she felt here and there to modify because of him her own wording. And about the Tyger-Christ identification she wrote to Sir Geoffrey Keynes, well-known editor and bibliographer of Blake, who first read Sethna's original draft and forwarded it to Miss Raine for expert opinion. "Here I think he has found a profound truth not seen by any of us hitherto."
How far Sethna has succeeded in exploring the full pattern of the poem with the aid of this insight is to be judged by the world-wide community of Blake-enthusiasts. it may be of interest that his interpretation gives a semi-mythopoeic semi-Miltonic body to a phrase of T.S. Eliot's, flashed out in another context, in the poem Gerontion: "Christ the tiger."
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"Two Love's" and "A Worthier Pen"
The Enigmas of Shakespeare's Sonnets
For over two centuries Shakespearean scholars have tried to identify the three persons who figure anonymously in the famous Sonnets. A solution of the mystery would provide the most important historical features of the great poet-dramatist's private life.
Who was the youth, apparently of a noble status, he called his "fair friend" and who the brunette the scholars have dubbed the Dark Lady, at once Shakespeare's mistress and the amorous intriguer with his cherished patron, his beau ideal? Again, what participant in the literary scene of the Elizabethan Age was the Rival Poet or rather the chief among the writers of verse seeming to have been personally patronised by the Fair Friend? No identification of the first two enigmas - whom Shakespeare has called his "two loves of comfort and despair" - has carried complete conviction. Neither has any of the poets chosen as his main competitor - whom in humiliated moments he considered "a worthier pen" — stood out incontrovertibly.
The primary difficulty has been to determine the time-bracket for the writing of the Sonnets. If we knew the span of years involved, several candidates would be automatically eliminated — at least a negative gain. Then the positive search can more easily get under way. But all the methods adopted up to now have proved unreliable. Literary studies can be shown to be very subjective, while the so-called "historical method" by which supposed hints in the poems are sought to be matched with contemporary
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English or European events can be extremely "tricky", yielding contradictory results. The new method followed in the present book is of what the author terms "internal chronology".
When the language of some of the Sonnets is sharply probed and the conclusions synthetized, one sees that the poems date themselves bypointing to Shakespeare's idea of the full human life-length, of the time when old age starts and of the signs characterizing the various stages of getting old. From the data thus obtained we can arrive at the period in Shakespeare's life during which the sonneteering went on.
From the candidates who fall within this period the most likely in each instance is picked out with the help of a comparative scrutiny of biographical information as well as of literary texts Shakespearean or other. The chapter on the Fair Friend establishes a claim that has often been made but never entirely vindicated because of the uncertainty of the Sonnets' date. The chapter on the Rival Poet springs quite a surprise which is yet justified by theatrical history and "close" textual reading. The chapter on the Dark Lady discovers her very name by the study of ingenious sexual suggestion vaguely suspected so far but never clearly caught even though Shakespeare has been known to be no poet for babes and sucklings. When the full shock of the unconventional poetry has been felt and understood, the fascinating brunette who made the poet her slave despite his recognition of her shortcomigns gets undeniably named.
The book nor only musters evidence in support of its own case for the enigmas: it also tries to answer all possible objections set up in favour of alternative solutions
As the Shakespeare-industry is world-wide, researchers everywhere should be interested in the light thrown in a novel manner on the Bard's life in particular and on his Sonnets in general.
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From Here to the Beyond
The Secret Splendour collected poems of K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran). Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry - 605 002. Rs. 550.
The Secret Splendour , the title of one of the poems in an earlier collection has been retained as the synoptic title of the 'collected poems' of K.D. Sethna, now approaching his nineties. It is a formidable collection of several hundred poems, mostly lyrical in their provocation and recordation, but carrying also the hallmark of variegated richness and an impressive totality of organisation and achievement.
In the title-poem, an immediate pleasure is contrasted with the everlasting secret splendour, a deathless magnificence of light and love. It is the
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sharp ambrosial contrast between Appearance and Reality, the Seeing and the Being, the Seeming and the Real.
The earlier ancient inhabitant was most dispirited when evening came and night, and the reign of darkness, but presently the starry firmament was a revelation and this led to the overwhelming query:
"If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?"
Sethna's poems include the piece 'Two Birds' harking back to the Upanishadic exploration of Reality. The "small-bird crimson-hued" tastes the overhanging fruit and feels more and more happy and yet the feeling of fulfilment proves elusive. Now the bird sees another bird higher up on the tree, the image of beauty and happiness. The bird now realises that the silent other Bird, all poise and peace, is the realised One, the Bird evocative of the Secret Splendour. Sethna's Collected Poems carries as a jacket illustration and frontispiece a splendid projection of the two Birds, as the lower frustrated Bird catches sight of the silent other Bird higher on the tree, the picture of silence and realisation. everywhere and at all times, this is the contrast between the Here and the Far, the gaudy Appearance and transcendent reality, the Ego with its frustration and the Psychic with its realisation.
A lyric genius whose sesitive responses to English and French poetryhave filled his poems with honeyed delight. Sethna can coerce us into entering the worlds of the spirit with effortless ease. Would you want to know the saranagati tattva which is the central spring of India's religious thought? Sethna can take us straight to that divine being of fraternal love. Bharata the image of total surrender prayerfully paying his daily homage to the sandals of Rama in Nadhigram:
"Here in this kingdom's vigilant heart I place
Twin-lamps - the quiet sandals touched by the heat.
Of God's pure trample on His own wide power!
Rule, while the lord's bleeding and begger steps
Go printing deep His love on forest paths
Tangled with wry desires and shadowed over
By titan cluitchings at the glow of heaven!
Rule without stir and light each soul to peace!"
Itihasic tales; Vedic-Upanishadic stories (the two birds on a tree, for instance); translation from French and Italian poets (including Dante): swings of mystic ardour; metaphysical conceits ("a fourscore sun focussing eternity"); psychological probings; aspirations. All of them linked, however tenuously, to the central idea that existence is a unified, seamless whole. Even the Lord of Severance, Death is truly Hiranyagarbha, Lord of Life as the volume takes its title from Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri where the heroine becomes conscious of this inalienable truth:
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"A secret splendour rose revealed to sight
Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.
Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face."
The title poem takes off from here to exult that beyond the "unfathomed dark" that lays siege to Sethna's spirit lie regions of "immortal rapturous Loveliness". The pain-defying Ananda that marks these poems is a welcome gift of Sethna for a world wallowing in self-pity. Sri Aurobindo's comments add to the value of this lyra mystica and give us a clear idea of how fine poems are shaped on a creative anvil.
(The Hindu, Tuesday, September 27,1994)
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Karpāsa in Prehistoric India
This book is a companion volume to the author's first venture in the historical field: The Problem of Aryan Origins, published in 1980. It converges on the same goal but by different routes and thus adds strength to the central thesis.
What is attempted is a general revision of ancient Indian history. Taking the aid of archaeological discovery, documentary material and linguistic study, the book seeks to bring about a radical change in (1) comparative chronology, (2) the sequence of cultures, and (3) the cultural character of several phases of India's career in antiquity.
By a close investigation of the term karpāsa for cotton in Sanskrit literature and by an alignment of its first occurrence with the first ascertained cultivator of the cotton-plant in our country, the body of Indian writing called Sūtras is shown to be in its early stage contemporary with the Harappa Culture, the Indus Civilization, of c. 2500-1500 B.C. The natural consequences are a new date for the Rigveda which is commonly held to have started in c. 1500 B.C. a thousand years before the Sutras and a new understanding of the Indus Valley Civilization as at once a derivative, a development and a deviation from the Rigveda a millennium after this scripture's beginning in c. 3500 B.C.
However, the argument from karpāsa does not stand alone. Its import is buttressed from several other directions. Pointers from India are rendered sharper by significant suggestions caught from the Mesopotamian region with which the Indus Valley had commercial and cultural contacts. In agreement with several scholars but with an eye to more particulars, a name for this Civilization is discerned in the Sumerian records: Meluhha (pronounced
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Melukhkha). It is then matched - again with a closer scrutiny than given before by like-minded scholars - with a name applied from more inland India to people of the Indus Valley for the first time in the Satapatha Brahmana which just precedes the earliest Sutras and would thus synchronize by the new chronology most appropriately with the initial development of the Harppā Culture. The name is Mlechchha which becomes Melakha or Milakkha in Prākrit.
The riddle of the Indus script is also confronted and fairly long debate is held on the claims of Proto-Tamil and Proto-Prākrit for the language embodied in it. The latter is adjudged more likely to be the base though other elements as part of the superstructure are not brushed aside.
At the end, as a key-insight, the vocable karpāsa itself is disclosed as functioning under a transparent veil in several lists of Sumero-Akkadian words which are connected with the trade between the Harappa Culture and Sumer.
The above resume hints at only a few examples of the manifold research pursued along new lines with a sustained thoroughness. Here is a book opening up vista on novel vista for the Indologist without sacrificing any of the scientific rigour with which honest investigation of the past is to be carried on.
Dr. Sankalia of international repute in archaeology writes, among other matters: "There is no doubt that Shri Sethna has made a very intelligent use of his deep knowledge of archaeology and Sanskrit literature." Apropos of the relationship between the Rigveda and the Harappa Culture, he ends his Introduction: "Shri Sethna's views deserve careful consideration and should stimulate further research in this vexed problem."
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The Problem of Aryan Origins
From an Indian Point of View
Every aspect of the problem has been examined with scholarly tools. All the theories of an Aryan invasion of India in c. 1500 B.C. have been considered in detail, including the latest and most impressive by the Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola. In dating the Rigveda far earlier than the Indus Valley Civilisation, the author avails himself of Sri Aurobindo's insights into Indian history and Indian linguistics. To appreciate the sustained novelty of Sethna's researches on many fronts the reader is requested to set aside all preconception and prepare for a regular adventure in ancient history, covering not only North-Western India but also Baluchistan's recently excavated Mehrgarh as well as old Central-Asian regions.
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K.D. Sethna's book takes up "from an Indian Point of View" a cluster of important historical questions about India's most ancient past and formulates fresh answers to them ingreat detail with the temper of a scrupulous scholar.
At one time modern historians had no doubt that Aryans who were the authors of the Rigveda had invaded the indian subcontinent in the middle of the second millenium B.C. and overrun a primitive Dravidian population. After the highly developed Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappa Culture, was discovered, the assumed in-coming Aryan were thought to have destroyed it around 1500 B.C. and, though the script of this Civlization has not yet been acceptably read, the general tendency is to consider it as couching an old form of the Dravidian language Tamil. Lately several historians have attributed the destruction of the Harappa culture to natural causes, but the belief that in the wake of that even foreigners who were associated with the Rigveda entered India is still very much in the air.
The first edition of Sethna's book dealt at length with this belief and its various corollariesasthey were conceived up to the date of its publication: 1980. Archaeology, linguistics and literature were pressed into service so as to leave no loose ends. In the process a comprehensive framework got built for the insights and researches of contemporary India's greatest seer and thinker: Sri Aurobindo. One of the pet current ideas shows with his help as well as independently to lack any firm basis was the popular antimony of "Aryan" and "Dravidan" which has caused a good deal of bad blood in the country.
The second edition, extensively enlarged with five supplements, demonstrate for the period after 1980 - at still greater length - with the same tools of wide-spread scholarship the validity of the first edition's thesis. Whatever criticism, explicit or indirect has opposed this thesis has been unflinchingly faced. Now, at a number of point the penetrating vision of Sri Aurobindo comes into play again with even a more elaborate presentation of this study of the spiritual and cultural issues connected with the ancient Rigveda. Special attention has been drawn in the longestsupplement to the well- known Finnish linguist and Indologist Asko Parpola who has recently made the most impressive attempt so far to revive the theory of an Aryan invasion in c. 1500 B.C. and to cope with the problem of Aryan origins.
Close study of the diverse arguments brought forward by Parpola has led Sethna to probe deeper into his own general position that the Rigveda is anterior to the Indus Valley Civilization by a broad margin. The result is both a minute scrutiny of several surpassing suggestion arising from the Rigveda and a many-aspected review of events dating back to the sixth millennium B.C. and covering not only India's antiquity but also the earliest formative stages of Baluchistan's Menrgam and of Central Asian regions.
To appreciate the sustained novelty of Sethna's researches under a strict scholarly discipline the reader is requested to set aside all preconceptions and prepare for a regular adventure to ancient history.
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Ancient India in a New light
How can one dare to doubt the present framework of ancient Indian history —especially when it relates to the period of Alexander's invasion of India and the period immediately succeeding it, the time currently allotted to Chandragupta Maurya and to his grandson Asoka with his numerous informative inscriptions? Do we not have to tackle even Greek and Latin annals derived from the Indica of Magasthenes, the ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's military heirs to the court of the Indian king whom these annals called "sandrocottus" which equates to "Chandragupta"?
Yes, but "Sandrocottus" is not necessarily a Maurya of that name. There is also the founder of the Imperial Guptas who had the same designation and ruled from the same city Pataliputra, know as "Palibothra" to the Greeks. When the traditional chronology of India herself is investigated we find in the midst of legendary matter a calculationwhich, while being unreliable in its early figures, is so adjusted that it bring the time of Chandragupta of the Imperial Guptas exactly to the Alexandrine epoch. And Magasthenes, on being closely scrutinised, yields striking evidence of religious conditions in India which make it impossible to consider his age the age preceding that of the great Buddhist emperor Asoka who also has supplied us with information on the same subject. From Megasthenes we gather too a count of kings going hack from "Sandrocottus", to a primal ruler whose reported achievements can be precisely matched with those of as Indian monarch whom tradition honours as ādi-rājā, "first king", and who is reached if wecount through the line of kings of Magadha back from the founder of the Imperial Guptas rather than from the first Maurya. The material for this counting is drawn from authorities on historial tradition, like F.E. Pargiter and others, who subscribe to the current chronology and are no partisans of a revolutionary disimilar one.
What may be regarded as a theoretical knock out of the current chronology is set forth on pp. 14-16. A sharp look at the very circumstances alleged by modern historians to be responsible for the building up of a mythical time-scheme by Purānic pundits can be shown as leading to the absurdity that these pundits, living face to face with Gupta kings of about the fifth century A.D. dated them over 600 years earlier! To make their dating tally with the actual time of these kings the latter should have to be started not in 320 A.D., as now claimed but towards the end of the fourth century B.C., soon after Alexander's Indian adventure.
But, of course, Asoka with his rock edicts seems as solidly established in chronology as they in topography against any theoretical reductio ad absurdum. How, without indulging in fanciful conjectures, does one get round his apparent suggestions of the post Alexandrine period with Greeks
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inside as well as outside his empire? A detailed attack on many fronts has been launched as part of the enormous revaluation undertaken by K.D. Sethna, a Parsi scholar of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry who has already published two studies: The Problem of Aryan Origin: From an Indian Point of View and Karpasa in Prehistoric India: A Chronological and Cultural Clue, both of them convergingalong different and independent routes upon dating the Rigveda farily anterior to the Indus Valley Civilisation of c. 2500-1500 B.C.
However, the need for inversion of epochs argued in these books does not tempt the author of the new volume to be a fanatic of the antiquity-favouring Puranas, even while giving them a good deal of consideration, nor to plead for the traditional fixing of the Kaliyuga and the Bharata War at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. as do the nationalist-minded revisionists of history today.
Mr. Sethna has emphasised in his Introduction that if the chronological scheme of modern historians is to be challenged and changed on a cuefromancient sources, Indian or foreign, the work must be done with the same scientific temper and method - at once sceptical and enquiring, wide-sweeping and attentive to the smallest particulars- as the best of them bring to their field. His adherence to this ideal may be seen amply from the "Contents" of his book with their immense scope side by side with their points to the careful evaluation of every available minutia.
No student of history should have a closed outlook. So the author welcomes criticism and has himself tried to anticipate all that he could of it. What he would he sorry about is indifference on the part of professional scholars. As his Introduction tells us his appeal is the old Themistoclean cry:
"Strike but hear!"
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