... higher planes." To this we may add from a third letter: "The sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the overhead planes... can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it." However, overhead poetry need not be explicitly mystic. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it can deal with quite other things than the Infinite and the One everywhere. Something behind mental... book. The disciple was aspiring to write systematically—with the help of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual influence, critical guidance and sometimes personal example—what the Master has called "Overhead Poetry" and distinguished as the most important element of what he has designated in general "The Future Poetry". The Future Poetry would not be written from the usual sources of the world's... 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 rarest of those levels give birth to overhead poetry: they are "planes" whose afflatus comes as if from an Page 59 infinitude of conscious being above our brain-clamped mentality. Sri Aurobindo labels them Higher Mind, Illumined ...
... upon it. More or less all that we have called Overhead poetry has something of this character whether it be from the Overmind or simply intuitive, illumined or strong with the strength of the higher revealing Thought; even when it is not Page 50 intrinsically Overhead poetry, still some touch can come in. Even Overhead poetry itself does not always deal in what is new or striking... Overhead Poetry Silver Grace A love has sealed us one with paradise— A kiss of crescent moon upon earth's soul By virgin raptures dreaming in the blue That even the pit of hell is a buried sky. No warrior gold can pierce the veil of time; For God's own glory here has sunk asleep, And how shall that abyss of majesty ... and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it; but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I would certainly say that Shakespeare's lines, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh ...
... some stamp of itself upon it. More or less all that we have called overhead poetry has something of this character whether it be from the Overmind or simply intuitive, illumined or strong with the strength of the higher revealing Thought; even when it is not intrinsically overhead poetry, still some touch can come in. Even overhead poetry itself does not always deal in what is new or striking or strange;... The Sources of Poetry Letters on Poetry and Art Overhead Poetry Higher Mind and Poetic Intelligence I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind level although... here or that word there—if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall. 8 May 1937 Rhythms may come from the same source and yet be entirely dissimilar. It would be a very bad ...
... abnormal? R is supposed to be suffering from dysentery. May 16, 1937 You said [9.5.37]: "... For overhead poetry to come with a faultless rush one must be very very", and left the sentence unfinished. Is it "very very Sri Aurobindo-like"? But I am not aware that I write overhead poetry with a rush. Everybody is aspiring to write from the overhead plane, so why not I? Possible? Maybe... features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner life and experience and character of rhythm and expression. But it won't necessarily outshine Shakespeare in poetic excellence. Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper and rarer substance, but would not be necessarily greater in poetic excellence. You say also that for overhead poetry technique, it... here or that word there—if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall. May 8, 1937 Guru, my Bengali poem was not even pleasing this time? Alas! Or did you forget it in ...
... face occurrences we might see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands. It is the combined sense of the closely possessed and the supremely inimitable that is the mark of true overhead poetry. For, the Spiritual is never tenuous or empty: it is dense and rich, containing the essence of all that we regard as substantial: whatever has shape and colour can therefore interpret it, bring... have been commenting upon is word and vibration charged with actual deific states — the highest spiritual plane with its own native accent. Failure to tackle the Mantra, and. in general all overhead poetry, in the right receptive way will lay its contents, more than those of any other type of mystical verse, open to the accusation of being what Yeats called "Asiatic vague immensities". For in it... tried to be logically bound down to systems clear-cut out of one dominant trend, the instinct is to give way to multitudinous incompatibilities harmonising and uniting in a supra-logical vision. Overhead poetry, particularly at its apex, is supra-logical vision embodied without the intellect playing the interpreter. Whatever is seizable by the intellect is an adaptation by the overhead planes of themselves ...
... passage from me like that, as if I have written nothing to explicate what I mean by "a direct poetising of the Divine". All the detailed description of "overhead poetry" that I have given time and again seems overlooked. To explain overhead poetry may not be sufficient for the lecturer's purpose, namely, the bringing home to his students the structure or texture of Savitri in the ordinary senses... essayed to write with Sri Aurobindo's inspiring help and which he had called "overhead" because it seems to come from secret dimensions of consciousness felt high above the brain-mind. My pun was: "Overhead poetry is the poetry that passes over everybody's head." To get its full impact, therefore, calls for some sort of aesthetic yoga, by which one receives impressions in a wide quiet consciousness thrown... planes fused together, sometimes lifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them." Sri Aurobindo has also pointed out that overhead poetry in small quantities had already been written in the past in various languages — and even the rare Overmind accent has come in. Particularly is this kind of verse possible in a language like English ...
... passage from me like that, as if I have written nothing to explicate what I mean by "a direct poetising of the Divine". All the detailed description of "overhead poetry" that I have given time and again seems overlooked. To explain overhead poetry may not be sufficient for the lecturer's purpose, namely, the bringing home to his students the structure or texture of Savitri in the ordinary senses... Aurobindo's Page 199 inspiring help and which he had called "overhead" because it seems to come from secret dimensions of consciousness felt high above the brain-mind. My pun was: "Overhead poetry is the poetry that passes over everybody's head." To get its full impact therefore, calls for some sort of aesthetic yoga, by which one receives impressions in a wide quiet consciousness thrown... planes fused together, sometimes lifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them." Sri Aurobindo has also pointed out that overhead poetry in small quantities had already been written in the past in various languages - and even the rare Overmind accent has come in. Particularly is this kind of verse possible in a language like English ...
... typical of your unresponsiveness to Savitri as a whole. What, as I have said, "passes over your head" is precisely the characteristic sweep of the inspiration which Sri Aurobindo has titled "overhead poetry". This sort of poetry hails from regions of the Spirit above the mind - not only the perceptive, conceptive, imaginative intelligence through which the 'divine afflatus' blows in most of the poetry... gripping of secret significances, Mallarme's complex pursuits of the mysterious Form that no one is, Rilke's sensitive searches for beseeching or commanding presences in the Weltinnen-raum. 'Overhead poetry', while capable of contact with and absorption of all the play of the mental soul, is primarily the voice of 'planes' transcending it and mounting through varied word-revelation towards the Mantra... indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some Page 44 fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater." Overhead poetry in general and the Mantra especially are the speech par excellence for uttering spiritual states in their true and pure essence as well as in the diverse ways they adopt to manifest their powers: ...
... third and again rises rapidly to that in the two last lines of the fourth stanza. This is what I call poetry of the intuitive Mind. 13 May 1937 Bengali Overhead Poetry We are sorry to hear that you can't decide about Bengali overhead poetry. I consider it a defect, Sir, in your poetic supramental make-up, which you should try to mend or remove! Why a defect? In any case all qualities have... The Sources of Poetry Letters on Poetry and Art Examples of Overhead Poetry Examples from Various Poets Evaluations of 1932-1935 Does Wordsworth's ode on immortality contain any trace, however vague, of the Overmind inspiration? I don't remember, but I think not. And what about the rhythm and substance of solitary thinkings; such... the whole, for I am thereby stung to make an intenser effort. I should like, however, to have a formulation from you of the ideal you would like me to follow. What you are writing now is "overhead" poetry—I mean poetry inspired from those planes; before you used to write poems very often from the intuitive mind—these had a beauty and perfection of their own. What I mean by absoluteness here is ...
... higher planes." To this we may add from a third letter: "The sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the overhead planes...can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it." However, overhead poetry need not be explicitly mystic. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it can deal with quite other things than the Infinite and the One everywhere. Something behind mental or... Overhead Poetry Editor's Introduction Here some poems are collected of a particular kind written by a disciple of Sri Aurobindo's, along with detailed appraisals of them by Sri Aurobindo himself. Following the appraisals are relevant excerpts from literary correspondence already published for the most part. This correspondence—barring a few instances—was... book. The disciple was aspiring to write systematically—with the help of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual influence, critical guidance and sometimes personal example—what the Master has called "Overhead Poetry" and distinguished as the most important element of what he has designated in general "The Future Poetry". The Future Poetry would not be written from the usual sources of the world's ...
... resolute manner confirms the revelatory truth that it is proposing to establish here. It becomes the Word of Knowledge and Power wearing a form of Beauty and having the soul of Delight. About this Overhead Poetry with its objective to express some inmost truth of things, the deeper reality which is behind them, Sri 37 Ibid., p. 213. 38 Ibid., p. 255. Aurobindo writes as... art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead poetry, etc., which are now a permanent treasure in English literature." 43 We should indeed be quite thankful to Amal Kiran for these invaluable letters most of which now form the Letters-section... technique are an integral part of the poet's inspiration and one has to go entirely by its force; obviously any critical appreciation has to be fully cognisant of it. We are dealing with Overhead Poetry which Sri Aurobindo explained in great detail in his letters on poetry. It is an utterance that comes from some higher plane carrying with it its rhythm and tonal resonances as much as its substance ...
... and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the Overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by Overhead poetry as no other can express it, but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I would certainly say that Shakespeare's lines Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world... quality and the subtle something that mark the language and rhythm and feeling of these lines and underlie their substance we might attain hazardously to some mental understanding of the nature of Overhead poetry. The Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness — that epithet would more accurately apply to the supramental and to the Sachchidananda consicousness — though it looks up... beauty there, but nothing of the Overhead note. In the other lines I have cited it is really the Overmind language and rhythm that have been to some extent transmitted; but of course all Overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the Higher Thought, the Illumined Mind or the pure Intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in ...
... see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands. It is the Page 11 combined sense of the closely possessed and the supremely illimitable that is the mark of true overhead poetry. For, the Spiritual is never tenuous or empty: it is dense and rich, containing the essence of all that we regard as substantial: whatever has shape and colour can therefore interpret it, bring... been commenting upon is word and vibration charged with actual deific states - the highest spiritual plane with its own native accent. Failure to tackle the Mantra, and in general all overhead poetry, in the right receptive way will lay its contents, more than those of any other type of mystical verse, open to the accusation of being what Yeats called 'Asiatic vague immensities". For in it... tried to be logically bound down to systems clear-cut out of one dominant trend, the instinct is to give way to multitudinous incompatibilities harmonising and uniting in a supra-logical vision. Overhead poetry, particularly at its apex, is supra-logical vision embodied without the intellect playing the interpreter. Whatever is seizable by the intellect is an adaptation by the overhead planes of themselves ...
... Overhead Poetry World-Poet 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. No skill can turn all life my harmony. Perchance a tablet of magic mood will make The truth of the whole universe write... short of their greater possibilities. As for planes, if we may go by Sri Aurobindo's evaluations elsewhere, the cast of vision, word and rhythm in the lines marked by a cross suggests overhead poetry. The remaining lines belong to the mental plane. * (Once the consciousness is aware of a certain vibration and poetic quality, it is possible to reach out towards its source... expression from a higher plane of consciousness, but to do that you must be sure of your poetic gift, that it will not rust by too long a disuse." * Page 141 "I have said that overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry. But perhaps a subtle qualification may be made to this statement. It is true that each kind of poetical writing can ...
... that Sri Aurobindo has drawn freely from the rich storehouse of Vedic symbolism and fused the many derived symbols into a single new blaze of revelation. In 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri, again, I have endeavoured to show that as 'overhead' poetry involves, first 'thematic content', second 'language' or verbal expression, and finally 'rhythm', in Savitri the 'content' is mainly Sri Aurobindo's own... Brough as also the verse renderings of Sir Edwin Arnold, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Torn Dutt useful for one reason or another. Parts of the chapter 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri were presented as a paper before the English Faculty Research Seminar on 12 March 1960. The final chapter on Savitri as a 'Cosmic Epic' took me to other epics, ancient and modern... Soul'), the language is symbolic, often drawing upon the Vedic symbolism, and the rhythm' is iambic blank verse, but with an Upanishadic and Kalidasian force and finish. But 'overhead' poetry is not, after all, a wholly new bag of poetical, tricks, but rather the pushing up of certain possibilities in all great poetry to a further height and consistency of profoundly moving utterance ...
... Savitri V 'Overhead' Poetry While describing Savitri's pilgrimaging in the "inner countries", Sri Aurobindo at one point snaps the scene where she confronts the throng of powers that are really the "messengers, the occult gods" who awake humanity to the beauty and truth of things: Into dim spiritual somnolence they break... hope, Great moon-hued visions gliding through gold air, Aspiration's sun-dream head and star-carved limbs, Emotions making common hearts sublime. 45 The nature of 'overhead' poetry cannot be more vividly brought out; all its immense range is suggested here, and the riot of its imagery Page 305 well illustrates Middleton Murry's remark: "...the... out of one another and to be Mulling an independent life of their own." 46 Dreams, goddesses, gods, visions, aspirations, emotions, all leap to life, and are seen to be the powers behind 'overhead' poetry, powers that invade our ordinary life to possess and change it. Varied though these powers are, their common traits are Light and 'the mystic voice'. Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo ...
... 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. Page 378 ... 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 ... elaborated by the German Romantics. For a detailed study, sec Tzvetan Todorov, Theories du symbole, Paris , 1977, pp.235-260. Page 377 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. Only the poet with wide eyes that feel Each ...
... some stamp of itself upon it. More or less all that we have called Overhead poetry has something of this character whether it be from the Overmind or simply intuitive, illumined or strong with the strength of the higher revealing Thought; even when it is not intrinsically Overhead poetry, still some touch can come in. Even Overhead poetry itself does not always deal in what is new or striking or strange;... come in to replace the somewhat restricted though still keen feeling in a narrower context that is found in Baxter. (K.D.S ) Page 116 line: it can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can express it; but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I would certainly say that Shakespeare's lines, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world... quality and the subtle something that mark the language and rhythm and feeling of these lines and underlie their substance we might attain hazardously to some mental understanding of the nature of overhead poetry.... "The essential character is perhaps that there is something behind of which I have already spoken and which comes not primarily from the mind or the vital emotion or the physical seeing ...
... 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... could be rewarding. And this is what we see in much of the insightful comments, at Page 379 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... 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 ...
... anandamaya, and the sahrdaya? 44 We have so far tried to see the filiations between 'overhead' poetry, mantric poetry, and mystic poetry. All 'overhead' poetry is not mystic poetry, neither is all mystic poetry necessarily mantric. At the top, at the very top, 'overhead' poetry is mantric as well as mystic. It is marked by the highest pitch of flight, the most radiant articulation... Savitri IV Mystic Poetry and the Mantra If overhead poetry is the high-ranging Himalayas, then the mantra is their ultimate peak, Everest itself. Rhythm, verbal form, thought-substance, thought's radiant soul-quality, all fuse in the mantra to produce the effect of an incantation. When a Vedic rishi articulates a mantra, it really surges ...
... greater possibilities. Page 199 As for planes, if we may go by Sri Aurobindo's evaluations elsewhere, the cast of vision, word and rhythm in the lines marked by a cross suggests overhead poetry. The remaining lines belong to the mental plane. * (Once the consciousness is aware of a certain vibration and poetic quality, it is possible to reach out towards its source... except as an expression from a higher plane of consciousness, but to do that you must be sure of your poetic gift, that it will not rust by too long a disuse." * "I have said that overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry. But perhaps a subtle qualification may be made to this statement. It is true that each kind of poetical writing can reach... could surpass the other levels of inspiration, greater even from the purely aesthetic point of view and certainly greater in the power of its substance. "A conscious attempt to write overhead poetry with a mind aware of the planes from which this inspiration comes and seeking always to ascend to those levels or bring down something from them, would probably result in a partial success; at ...
... evidently going to be greater poetry than any other poetry? Nobody ever spoke of supermind plane poetry. Is Savitri all from overhead plane? I don't know. You lay down certain features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner life and experience Page 186 and character of rhythm and expression. But it won't necessarily outshine Shakespeare in poetic... poetic excellence. Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper and rarer substance, but would not be necessarily greater in poetic excellence. You say also that for overhead poetry technique, it must be the right word and no other in the right place, right sounds and no others in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little. Well, is that not what is called sheer inevitability which... fully O.P., while without this sustained inevitability there can be fine mental and vital poetry. But practically that means O.P. comes usually by bits only, not in a mass. You may say that in overhead poetry expression of spiritual vision is more important. True, but why can't it be clothed in as fine poetry as in the case of Shakespeare? The highest source of inspiration will surely bring in all the ...
... sometimes personal example — what the Master has called 'Overhead Poetry' and distinguished as the most important element of what he has designated in general 'The Future Poetry'. K.D.S. has been the author of the following books of verses: (1) The Secret Splendour, (2) The Adventure of the Apocalypse, (3)Altar and Flame and (4) ^Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments. Only recently... the Indian Spirit; 8. The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo; 9. Blake’s Tyger: A Christological Interpretation; 10. Indian Poets and English Poetry; 11. The Beginning of History for Israel; 12. “Overhead Poetry”; 13. KarpasaIt in Prehistoric India; and a host of others. It becomes a little difficult to believe that books as disparate in nature as The Beginning of History for Israel, Blake’s Tyger ...
... 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... Thy love into a human face. 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 ...
... have remained in typescript. However, a number of pieces from the original volume have been omitted in the section bearing this name because they had been included in the later selection called " Overhead Poetry ": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, which now appears in full as the second section. The rest of the books - The Adventure of the Apocalypse and Altar and Flame - have been reproduced... may be called transforming tune with a background presence of the known Eros. Preceding this group come the precious comments made by Sri Aurobindo other than those already a part of "Overhead Poetry" and of the prose section at the end of The Apocalypse. These comments have not been obtruded on the reader in the main body of the book so that he may form his own opinion rather than be influenced... has come forward on her own to propose and sponsor the present volume, making me her most grateful debtor. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust was responsible for the first appearance of " Overhead Poetry " is a research-project of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, and the Sri Aurobindo Circle of Bombay for that of The Adventure. Altar and Flame owes its debut to "Aspiration" ...
... The Secret Splendour SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENTS On a Number of Poems not included in Overhead Poetry At the Foot of Kanchinjanga "Flic poem is a good one, with beauty and distinction both in its thought and in its language." (1930) Revelaition "The poem contains nothing of the highest quality but it is well-conceived... imagery of this sonnet too hackneyed?":] "I don't think so. It is a good sonnet." (6.3.34) Page 683 Sri Aurobindo's Comments (On a Number of poems not included in Overhead Poetry) "It is good." (71934) Wind-swoon "It is a very good poem." (23.8.34) Fulfilment "It is very good." (24.8.34) Tryst "It is a ...
... great wide eyes, deeper than oceans, fell on these poems and accepted them as fit offerings to His divinity? The Lord's look, the Lord's smile - that is what I have lived for." 1 1. Overhead Poetry: Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, Pondicherry: SAICE,1972. Page xiv Thus, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, under the guidance of his Gurus, Sethna found his true self and field... known for its high standards and professionalism. Sethna has pioneered research in areas as diverse as Blake and Shakespeare Studies, Aryan Invasion Theory and Ancient Indian History, Overhead Poetry, Christology, Comparative Mythology, the Study of Hellenic Literature and Culture, Indian systems of Yoga, International Affairs, the question of the English language and the Indian spirit, Philosophy ...
... 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 ...
... The Inspiration of Paradise Lost VIII Poetry of the Thought-Mind and "Overhead Poetry" Milton knew himself to be for "an audience fit, though few." It is impossible for many to address him in their minds as he makes Eve address Adam: O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, My glory, my perfection! 1 But in a poetic... Aurobindo's system of Yogic psychology considers the first "plane" in the hierarchy of "planes" above the mental level whose instrumental centre is in our brain. Sri Aurobindo writes of "overhead poetry" - poetry coming from vastnesses of being and consciousness that are as yet unreached by mental man and whose manifestations in him have been rare and sporadic so far. At the top of the gradation ...
... "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... GOUTAM GHOSAL Page 218 References 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") ...
... years before he started the epic he had dreamt of. Also from the point of view and kind of style in which you want to write it, you will have not only to get the access to the inspiration of the overhead poetry but to be quite open to the flow of that consciousness—otherwise you would only do small poems in it like Amal's, such a vast work would be impossible. At present go on with your development—you... poets wrote "finely"—nobility or power or a clear and great strength of style and substance and spirit is their characteristic. What shall I do in order to get access to the inspiration of overhead poetry? And more especially, "to be quite open to Page 618 the flow of that consciousness" [see letter of 21 May 1937, p. 618 ]? What is this over-consciousness? Will it come to me so early ...
... Overhead Poetry Gnosis 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,... that word there —if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall." Page 43 ...
... Overhead Poetry Mere of Dream The Unknown above is a mute vacancy— But in the mere of dream wide wings are spread. An ageless bird poising a rumour of gold Upon prophetic waters hung asleep. The veils of vastitude are cloven white, The burden of unreachable blue is lost: A ring of hills around a silver hush, The... above-average and this is fine, even very fine, but not as a whole quite as absolute as some that went before. The 2nd and 4th and 5th lines are the finest." "What you are writing now is 'overhead' poetry—I mean poetry inspired from those planes—before you used to write poems very often from the intuitive mind—these had a beauty and perfection of their own. What I mean by absoluteness here is ...
... Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 6 Sheer Spiritual Light "Overhead Poetry " Sonnets, Lyrics, Compositions in New Metres Sri Aurobindo's latest work is the most unique he has done, but its deepest characteristic is not its new metre. This characteristic is equally patent in his recent poetry within the general bounds of traditional technique. To evaluate... to acquire a more and more true reflex of the transcendental that is the truth of things, waiting for manifestation. The rhythm more than anything else is also what makes a gradation in overhead poetry. In Sri Aurobindo's work of this species it is difficult to demarcate the stages, for a general breath of the mantra seems to blow almost everywhere; but we may attempt a rough classification ...
... highly artificial Victorian diction was the received mode of 'poetry' we are a very long way from Milton's welding and wielding of the very texture of language itself. When you come to 'overhead poetry' I do grant you that this is an important element. I agree that there are many levels of poetry from the purely material (Auden who writes like an extremely gifted journalist) to Shelley,... deeply agree - in fact 1 find again and again Aurobindo's comments on the Romantics and other English poets highly perceptive and illuminating). I can but say I grant you all you say about the 'overhead poetry'. It is a very fine defence of that poetry you have written. I do however agree with AE's very interesting letter - he too couldn't take all those superlatives. I feel again and again that Sri ...
... divinisation of human nature, 281-283; on the overhead planes of consciousness, 295-299; Sri Aurobindo's overhead aesthesis, 299-303; Sri Aurobindo on mantric poetry, 303-304; on overhead poetry, 309-310; overhead influence in Sri Aurobindo's poetry, 317-322; Sri Aurobindo's aims in writing Savitri, 323-325; his yogic experiences, 327-328; Sri Aurobindo on mystic poetry & his blank... 274-279; symbolism in, 284-285; symbolism of the characters in, 285-290; difficulties in understanding the poem quickly, 293-294; mystic explorations in, 305; description of overhead poetry in, 308; Sri Aurobindo's aims in the composition of, 323-325; yogic experiences imbedded in, 325; occult fields described in, 330-331; descriptions of spiritual-awakenings in, 334; 'struggle' theme ...
... 76. Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (1931). 77. Savitri, p. 20-1. 78. Collected Poems & Plays, Vol.11, p. 279-80. 79. Savitri, p. 873. 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri 1. Savitri, p. 920. 2. ibid. , p. 831. 3. Common Sense About Poetry, pp. 10-1 4. Cf. Ezra Pound: "It doesn't, in our ... 100. See Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p.108; also fn.l on the same page. 101. ibid., pp.159-60. This experience is also referred to in the first chapter as well as the previous chapter, 'Overhead Poetry and Savitri. 102. Prayers and Meditations of the Mother (Tr. from the original French) pp. 88-9. She has also stated elsewhere: "As soon as I saw Sri Aurobindo, I recognised him as ...
... VI OVERHEAD INFLUENCE IN SRI AUROBINDO'S POETRY We shall now turn to Sri Aurobindo's own 'experiments' in the writing of overhead poetry. Mallarm é is reported to have told Dagas: "Poetry is not written with ideas, it is written with words." 70 But not mere words, not any words; words are variable and tantalising, they have... between English verse and quantitative metres. The relevant point that is to be made here is that, in several of his later poems, Sri Aurobindo audaciously tried a two-fold experiment, namely 'overhead' poetry in quantitative verse. The two poems in hexameters, Ahana in rhyme and Ilion the unfinished epic, are tour-de-forces. In Ahana, a philosophic poem in Page 315 ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 ... which might be called 'mental' and 'gnostic' Overmind respectively—the latter in direct touch with Supermind, the former more like a widened and massive intuition." "...of course all overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the higher thought, the illumined mind or the pure intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in ...
... sobbing and kissing: life which is a sob of Nature becomes a technically, in "free Page 289 quantitative verse with a predominant dactylic movement" and, inspirationally, in "Overhead poetry". We shall leave the technical aspect aside. The poetry is of a type in which both the clear and the mysterious come on the breath of an incantation from a masterful height of realised spiritual... will be to us our internal fulfilment of the Divine in a complete cosmic consciousness." 1 Our approach through spiritual philosophy to Sri Aurobindo's poetic vision is now complete. As "Overhead poetry" is at work here, the canons of the ordinary poetic imagination, no less than those of theoretical physics, are surpassed. There is really no contradiction in terms. 3 We may ...
... Karuna, Vatsalya, Adbhuta, Veera, Bibhatsa, Shanta, etc. Quintessentially, however, it is founded on the Shanta. It is in this great Silence that the Epic was born - Silence the true home of Overhead Poetry. To really appreciate it one has to enter into it. Poetry is not only image and symbol; it is also sound and silence; if there is sight's sound, there is also sound's sight. And when "Le Musicien... orchestra." If one is deaf to these sounds, to these rhythmic accords, to these happinesses rushing from the creative possibilities of the inevitable Word, then what can the creative poet do? In the Overhead Poetry as given to us by Sri Aurobindo what we have are the perfect rhythm and thought-substance and soul-vision fused into one, the supreme Mantra itself. Sri Aurobindo wrote prophetically, ...
... Naturally after those lines, I was goaded on to make more and more inquiries. And in the course of my poetic aspirations I was all agog to get the inspiration which Sri Aurobindo had called Overhead Poetry. Overhead Poetry is poetry which passes over everybody's head! (laughter) But how is one to receive an inspiration entirely new which comes from the planes which Sri Aurobindo has distinguished as Higher ...
... On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri POETRY OF THE THOUGHT-MIND AND "OVERHEAD POETRY" MILTON'S PARADISE LOST AND SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI Milton knew himself to be for "an audience fit, though few." It is impossible for many to address him in their minds as he makes Eve address Adam: O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose... Aurobindo's system of Yogic psychology considers the first "plane" in the hierarchy of "planes" above the mental level whose instrumental centre is in our brain. Sri Aurobindo writes of "overhead poetry" - poetry coming from vastnesses of being and consciousness that are as yet unreached by mental man and whose manifestations in him have been rare and sporadic so far. At the top of the gradation ...
... "Krishna or the Divine Presence or whatever you like." The first term is common to both, the final locution in either has semantically the same ring: there seems no ground ¹. "Overhead Poetry”: Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, edited by K. D. Sethna (Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry 1972), Pp.11..33 Page 27 to differentiate... Light and Delight", you will get the correct perspective in two of the opening pages.² Let me quote from them: "Owing to my sustained aspiration to write what Sri Aurobindo has termed 'overhead poetry', that is, poetic inspiration caught from secret levels of consciousness above the mind, levels of a superhuman light and delight, Sri Aurobindo generously granted the incredible favour of letting ...
... There is one other circumstance, too. In The Future Poetry, which had serially appeared in the Arya from 1917 to 1920, Sri Aurobindo had speculated on the future of the epic in the age of Overhead Poetry: The epic, a great poetic story of man or world or the gods, need not necessarily be a vigorous presentation of external action: the divinely appointed creation of Rome, the struggle... "Grand Style" or the Longinian "Sublime", the Overhead touch or note too "has to be felt and cannot be explained or accounted for." 64 Sri Aurobindo is, however, careful to add that "Overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry." And yet, although perfection is perfection — whether it be perfection of the language, or of the word-music and rhythm ...
... Aurobindo as a Yogi, as well as a luminously swift alert poet, had he not been attentive to the sound perceptions which determine the quality of any spiritual, rather what Sri Aurobindo would call Overhead, poetry. Apart from these aspects of sound and rhythm, sometimes the mantra comes with a decisive command—which could be even ādeśa for a specific purpose—to change the humdrum of the terrestrial life... the conceptive explosion. All these have the astonishing double aspect—of the sound of supernatural experience as well as the experience of the original sound. While explaining the features of Overhead Poetry, poetry coming from the spiritual planes,—the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, and Overmind,—Sri Aurobindo draws our attention towards the fact that its essential character is in the rhythm ...
... lines I have marked seem to have your O.P. touch, don't they? He seems to have struck a new grandeur and beauty, no? It is certainly very powerful and beautiful. By O.P. I presume you mean Overhead Poetry. That I can't say—the substance seems to be from there, but a certain kind of rhythm is also needed which I find more difficult to decide about in Bengali than in English. Didn't you find Vasanti... lines, but remembering how you shouted against my first four lining effort, I curled back the impulse into myself and put three only. We are sorry to hear that you can't decide about Bengali overhead poetry. I consider it a defect, Sir, in your poetic and supramental make-up, which you should try to remove or mend. A defect in the Supramental Avatar is—is—well doesn't fit! Why a defect? In any ...
... aspiration has been strong enough and sustained enough, the descent will yield more fruitful and lasting results. This is particularly exemplified in the arts, and in poetry most of all. Now 'overhead' poetry is simply poetry that has been thus influenced, whether to a greater or a lesser extent, by the spiritual power of the Overmind or by the other overhead powers, Higher Mind, Illumined Mind or... translation in poetical terms; and since poetry involves the idea, the word, and the rhythm, these overhead powers too charge with new or universal significance any or all of them and the result is 'overhead' poetry: ...the Overmind thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep or wide or all these things together...it goes vast on its way to bring the divine riches, and ...
... of the poem. There is one other circumstance, too. In The Future Poetry, which had serially appeared in the Arya, Sri Aurobindo had speculated on the future of the epic in the age of Overhead Poetry: The epic, a great poetic story of man or world or the gods, need not necessarily be a vigorous presentation of external action: the divinely appointed creation of Rome, the struggle of the... 'Grand Style' or the Longinian 'Sublime', the Overhead touch or note too "has to be felt and cannot be explained or accounted for". 71 Sri Aurobindo is, however, careful to add that "Overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry". And yet, although perfection is perfection - whether it be perfection of the language, or of the word-music and rhythm ...
... The Sun and the Rainbow — Approaches to Life through Sri Aurobindo's Light 47. Poems by Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran with Sri Aurobindo's Comments 48. "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments 49. Talks on Poetry 50. Some Talks at Pondicherry — Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran 51. India and the World Scene Page 230 ...
... 45.Altar and Flame (Poems) 46.The Sun and the Rainbow — Approaches to Life through Sri Aurobindo's Light 47.Poems by Amal Kiran and Nirodoaran with Sri Aurobindo's Comments 48."Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments 49.Talks on Poetry 50.Some Talks at Pondicherry — Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran 51.India and the World Scene Page 213 ...
... which might be called 'mental' and 'gnostic' Overmind respectively—the latter in direct touch with Supermind, the former more like a widened and massive intuition." "...of course all overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the higher thought, the illumined mind or the pure intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry ...
... Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, second revised and enlarged edition 1992. 11. 1970 Sri Aurobindo - The Poet, Pondicherry: SAICE, 2nd ed. 1999. 12. 1972 " Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments . Pondicherry: SAICE. Page 489 13. 1972 Some Talks at Pondicherry by Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, compiled by K ...
... canto cannot have been just an episode in the vast epic of Savitri. The Presence in Savitri is no fiction. It is an experienced reality for Sri Aurobindo; for there is verily a shower of overhead poetry that reveals the essence of Tantra, the Yoga that unites the aspirant with the Supreme. The noble accents of Sanskrit hymnology to Lalita Tripurasundari can be heard in this sublime passage: ...
... poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead Page 80 poetry, etc., which is now a permanent treasure in English literature. Sri Aurobindo's quotations from memory from Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and others which he said should be ...
... of Dante's Divina Commedia were missing. At least the very last is absolutely the ne plus ultra of poetry, I have made a translation or rather a transcreation of it. It is included in "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments (pp. 127-131). The loss of it would have been irreparable. The editors were in a quandary. Then a nephew of Dante's had a vivid dream in which the poet ...
... spirit: it adds also in ample measure the typical intonation, at once intense and immense in its rhythmic significance, which the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita bring. Sri Aurobindo calls it "overhead poetry". It is not what the common man may suppose: poetry that passes clean over his head! It is inspired verse with an illuminating power, hailing from secret regions of a more-than-human consciousness ...
... more-than-ordinary proficiency in any sphere it is Sri Aurobindo's creation out of whatever little potential I may have had to start with. For instance, can I ever believe that I could have written "Overhead poetry" in any bulk - tapping at times the plane which Sri Aurobindo has called "Overmind Intuition" and even receiving "an Overmind touch" - without his labouring upon my thick skull for years to bring ...
... above-average and this is fine, even very fine, but not as a whole quite as absolute as some that went before. The 2nd and 4th and 5th lines are the finest." "What you are writing now is 'overhead' poetry—I mean poetry inspired from those planes—before you used to write poems very often from the intuitive mind—these had a beauty and perfection of their own. What I mean by absoluteness here is a ...
... 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 ...
... 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 ...
... Its Inner Significance and Consequence 32. The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it 33. The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems 34.' "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments 35. The Adventure of the Apocalypse (Poems) 36. Altar and Flame (Poems) 37. Poems by Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran with Sri Aurobindo's Comments ...
... thoughts and intuitions received from his Master - Sri Aurobindo - that is the impression he gave me. Speaking of intuitions, well I am not very much off the track. Read his poems from the "Overhead Poetry" Poems ( The Secret Splendour ) and one would be mind-boggled to read Sri Aurobindo's comments. For instance take the poem "Pool of Lonelinesses": I have become a secret pool Of l ...
... Overhead Poetry First Sight of Girnar Strange with half-hewn god-faces that upbear A listening quietude of giant caves, The prisoner eternities of earth Have wakened in this purple loneliness. Each granite block comes cloven to the eye As if the blue voice of the Unknowable Broke through its sleep: like memories left ...
... Overhead Poetry Mystic Mother Seeing you walk our little ways, they wonder That I who scorn the common loves of life Should kneel to You in absolute surrender, Deeming Your visible perfection wife Unto my spirit's immortality. They think I have changed one weakness for another, Because they mark not the new birth of me- ...
... Overhead Poetry The Sannyasi (An old story relates how a princess over-proud of her beauty would not accept any lover unless he could first live like a Sannyasi in the Himalayas, practising austerities to purify himself in order to win her favour as of a divinity. One youth, famous for his handsomeness as well as heroic deeds, took up the difficult ...
... Overhead Poetry Innermost Each form a dancer whose pure naked sheen Mirrors serenity, a moving sleep White-echoed out of some mysterious deep Where fade life's clamouring red and blue and green— The priestesses of virgin reverie Sway through the cavern heart of consciousness. A marble rapture fronting frozenly ...
... Overhead Poetry 3 The Fall Our spirit is a paradise blown down, A sun deflowered, a leprosy of light; But all its crumbling sacrificial sparks Drop from the inviolate ether to arouse An earth-apocalypse slumbering unlit, A brazier of giant mystery Lost like a mouth of dream whose tongue lacks fire! The shredded ...
... Overhead Poetry 2 Prelude O Fire divine, make this great marvel pass, That some pure image of thy shadowless will May float within my song's enchanted glass! Sweep over my breath of dream thy mystic mood, O Dragon-bird whose golden harmonies fill With rays of rapture all infinitude!... Or else by unexplorable ...
... Overhead Poetry Overself All things are lost in Him, all things are found: He rules an infinite hush that hears each sound. But fragmentary quivers blossom there To voice on mingling voice of shadowless air, Bodies of fire and ecstasies of line Where passion's mortal music grows divine— For, in that spacious revel glimmers ...
... Overhead Poetry Deeps Silent I roam by the tumultuous sea That, unreminded of man's mortal noise, My heart may feel the imperishable voice Waken a solitary god in me. Travails of time are sunk: the pure deeps grow, By their miraculous infinite of sound, Measure of some tranquillity profound That never human grief can ...
... Overhead Poetry Agni Jatavedas (In the Rigveda, Agni, called "Jatavedas" or "Knower of births", is the divine Fire visioned in various occult forms as the secret urge of our evolution towards the perfect splendour that is the Spirit.) O smile of heaven locked in a seed of light— O music burning through the heart's dumb rock— O beast ...
... Overhead Poetry Two Moments Dark quietudes in a quiet gleam, The branches woke with not a sough The mere which made them water-souled, Rapt from the rush of severing days. One leaf forsook its hanging bough— Fell through that agelessness of dream. A wrinkle crept on the water's face, And all light suddenly grew old. ...
... Overhead Poetry Green Tiger There is no going to the Gold Save on four feet 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Gods They give us life with some high burning breath, Life which but draws a golden road to death. In vain we lift warm hands that quiver and cry Unto the blue salvation of the sky. Above, transparencies divine are spread Of fusing fires—gay purple, eager red; But who there heeds our love? Thwarted, ...
... Overhead Poetry NIGHT-HILLS Here on night-hills all passion-clamours cease: And to the wonder-spacious lonely mind The word of the incomprehensible wind Bears but a perfume of eternal peace; Until—on highest crags of heaven-surmise— Evoked by a spirit moon from the heart's deep, Plumbless inaudible waves of shining ...
... Overhead Poetry Pleroma Nor first nor last, but in a timeless gyre The globes of Beauty burn—a hush made fire: Their colours self-secluded one by one, Yet sisters in a joyful union— Rhythms of quiet, thrill on gemlike thrill Necklaced around a Throat invisible... When wearily I string word after word, I call your ...
... Overhead Poetry Arch-Image A kiss will break the quiet whole Of your white soul; Shape from the silver of that poise A magic voice, The lustre of a skyward call— No flickering grace, but all Your spirit's gathered virgin light One death-oblivious height Of shadowless body rapture-crowned— A face of reverie ...
... Overhead Poetry Each Night Dream not with gaze hung low By love That earthward calls—but know The silver spaces move Within your eyes when sleep Brings gloom: Then will your hush grow deep As heaven's lofty room And in this chamber strange With blue A love unmarred by change Shall ever tryst ...
... Overhead Poetry No Mortal Breath No mortal breath you bring us: love divine Makes your whole countenance a silver call To meet an unviewed vast of spirit-hush. Far in the mystic vault your home is hung: We turn our faces to your planet soul And all infinity weighs upon our eye Page 98 Its plumbless sleep. O ...
... Overhead Poetry The Sacred Fire O keep the sacred fire A prisoner poise With walls that never wake To earthly voice. So delicate and small This undefiled Epiphany of joy, This golden child, That like a freezing blast The unfruitful power Of stormy mind will quench The burning flower. Page ...
... Overhead Poetry Great Mother Great Mother, grant me this one boon I crave: I will forgo all triumphs of the mind And grandiose honours for which men have pined If in its search for Thee my life be brave. Beyond earth's crowded hours of brief delight, Of passionate anarchy whose eyes are blind, Let me on feet of calm devotion ...
... Overhead Poetry Descent A secret of far sky burns suddenly close, A deep blue wakes to glory from pale blue: Then large and calm and effortless wings of light Swoop crimson through the paradisal air! Talons of eyrie truth—a clutch of gold— Numb every thought to a shining vacancy Merged in the immortal spaciousness around ...
... Overhead Poetry Ojas 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. Mountains of mind are sacred: join your cry Unto their peaceful marriage with the sky. Your children shall be words ...
... Overhead Poetry Disclosure Stoop your calm beauty—let your shining hair Unveil its ages of high secrecy To float upon dull earth the frankincense Your face of love burns to an infinite sky. Fill life with mystic rondures of your breast And all that worship dreamed unknowable Bare through your body's perfect universe ...
... Overhead Poetry White Horse White horse, white horse, Deathlessly wake.... Out of the cavern of our sleep Like laughter break Into the moon's pure flush And the stars' pale sheen! How can thy magic colour mate With grey or green, The grey of drowsing soil And the green of wood-gloom? Thy feet have wings: for ...
... Overhead Poetry Cosmic Rhythms Now cosmic rhythms are a laughter in my pulse, For the heart stands back immense and knows no aim, Cool core of a body of tortuous paths to power. My blood is the singing attar of that Rose Rooted in rest beyond all universe. Seraphs are crossing my brain that is wonder-wide, Smiling to ...
... Overhead Poetry Truth-Vision How shall you see Through a mist of tears The laughing lips of beauty, The golden heart of years? Oh never say That tears had birth In the weeping soul of ages, The gloomy brow of earth! Your eyes alone Carry the blame For giving tearful answers To questionings of flame ...
... Overhead Poetry 6 Time-Telescope "How can thy reverie's molecule of sight Pierce the lone reaches of the starred Obscure? Mix with my largening thought whose deep and pure Quiet brings close the eternal harmonies! Across my length of vigil, nectars move: I am a crystal medium of far light, Through whom the unattainable ...
... Overhead Poetry Night 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Love's Triumph O face of scorn, you winter not my will: This heart grew brighter when your breath's proud chill Flung my diffuse life-blood more richly in! Now mystic reveries halo mortal din: No longer now the outward-burning stress, The eternal Spirit's self-forgetfulness— But through a superhuman ...
... Overhead Poetry Dragon A cry of gold piercing the spine's dark sleep, A dragon fire consuming mortal thought, An aureoled hunger that makes time fall dead, My passion curves from bliss to heavenward bliss. Kindling the rhythm of a myriad smile, This white wave lifted by some virgin deep I Breaks through the embodied ...
... Overhead Poetry Sky-Rims As each gigantic vision of sky-rim Preludes yet stranger spaces of the sea, For those who dare the rapturous wave-whim Of soul's uncharted trance-profundity There is no end to God-horizonry: A wideness ever new awaits behind Each ample sweep of plumbless harmony Circling with vistaed gloriole the mind ...
... Overhead Poetry From Beatrice in Heaven Each time your eyes of longing rose above All transient colour to the Invisible, Their viewless worship mingled with my love. So, like the sun upon a blinded gaze You found a warmth of secret splendour spill And, though unvisioning, felt my rapturous face ... From these unshadowed ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Exile 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. How shall I join the birds' delight of space, Whose eyes have winged the heaven of your face? Or with the rain urge blossoms to be ...
... Overhead Poetry God's World |How shall the witness mind's tranquillity +Catch the extravagant happiness of God's world? |To reach one goal He flings a million paths +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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Sphere-Music Bring not your stars the very same Magic as mine? I give that name Unto a touch of cool far flame Upon my heart When evening yearns beyond the brief Monotonies of joy and grief For some strange rhythmical relief Shining apart— And dim migrations, mindward sent From reveries omnipotent ...
... Overhead Poetry Above All Roses Giant roses, Gods of light, Glory and laugh and mingle On a dreamy height. But, ever and ever Above rose-red Flame and forgetfulness, Vigilling unwed Is a white, immense, Miraculous-blown Lily beyond time's dearth Yet very alone. Omnipotence, ...
... Overhead Poetry Absolute Lustre whose vanishing point we call the sun— Joy whose one drop drowns seas of all desire— Life rendering time's heart a hollow hush— Potence of poise unplumbed by infinite space! Not unto you I strain, O miracled boons, But that most inward marvel, the sheer Self Who bears your beauty; and, devoid ...
... Overhead Poetry EPILOGUE THE OVERHEAD PLANES Sri Aurobindo ... A few have dared the last supreme ascent And break through borders of blinding light above, And feel a breath around of mightier air, Receive a vaster being's messages And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray. On summit Mind are radiant altitudes ...
... others logopoeic. But here too we have no touch of dry intellectuality. All the less because Sri Aurobindo, though couching his expression in terms of thought, is really writing what he has called "Overhead Poetry"—poetry breaking from secret planes of consciousness above the mind. It is Thought with a capital T. Not the vitalistic mind, not the mind proper, but the spiritual mind is vibrant throughout, ...
... Overhead Poetry I Consummation Immortal overhead the gold expanse— An ultimate crown of joy's infinity. But a king-power must grip all passion numb And a gigantic loneliness draw down The large gold throbbing on a silver hush. Nought save an ice-pure peak of trance can bear The benediction of that aureole ...
... mental Miltonic is one of the great stumbling-blocks when one tries to write from 'above'." 10 What Sri Aurobindo here terms writing from "above" is generally spoken of by him as "overhead" poetry and described as an inspiration that is felt in yogic experience to be descending from some ether of self-existent consciousness extended boundlessly beyond the brain-clamped human mind ...
... subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (The Mother). It is a very beautiful poem.” Mānassarovar: “It is certainly very powerful and beautiful. By O.P. I presume you mean Overhead Poetry. That I can’t say—the substance seems to be from there, but a certain kind of rhythm is also needed which I find more difficult to decide about in Bengali than in English.” Abhrayamān: “E ...
... l Manifestation upon Earth, and the epic Savitri. Sri Aurobindo was a supreme poet, and his most famous poetical work, Savitri, presents a new kind of poetry, which has been termed as overhead poetry. This is an epic, the longest in English literature (about 24000 lines), a prophetic vision of the future. Sri Aurobindo has written a number of other short and long poems, among which Ilion ...
... "toffee"? Toffee! Gracious! Bonbon? Yes, too sweety-sweety. June 29, 1937 × "The Sacred Fire", Overhead Poetry , p. 91. × Vertical lines in the margin, denoting the quality of the verses. ...
... began writing poetry and indulged in "eccentric innovations" without knowing anything about English metrical forms. Writing in a mystic-surrealistic vein, his poems gradually progressed towards "overhead poetry". After guiding him continuously in his poetic efforts, Sri Aurobindo declared one day that the poet was born! The genesis of this book came about in this manner: Somewhere around 1968-69 ...
... all time". 175 What is distinctive and new, what is probably unique, in Sri Aurobindo's use of language and rhythm has been discussed towards the end of the previous chapter on 'Overhead' poetry and Savitri, and it is not therefore necessary to cover the entire ground once again. Here is a passage not untypical of Savitri: Distrust was thrown upon Mind's instruments; ...
... written on that day, Sri Aurobindo gave 16 line from the exordium (Book One, canto I) beginning with the memorable It was the hour before the Gods awake. as an example of possible "overhead" poetry. 23 But Savitri was to be a carefully guarded secret for another ten years, and even in the Ashram itself very few knew anything authentic about it. There was some random speculation, of ...
... every line may be of a perfect perfection - but I have hardly any time now for such work. 9 In the meantime, a good deal of correspondence erupted between Sethna and Sri Aurobindo about 'overhead poetry', and particularly poetry from the highest 'overhead' the Overmind whence would come the specifically mantric poetry of the future. As Sethna recollected later: One day ... I made a ...
... 2 (1979) Flame of White Light (1960) Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness (Translated from French by Tehmi. 8th imp. 1990) The Passing of Sri Aurobindo (1951) Overhead Poetry (1972) Altar and Flame (1975) The Mother - Past, Present and Future (1977) Our Light and Delight (1980) The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo (2d ed. 1992) Some Talks ...
... remembered in the literary world by posterity, perhaps next to being connected among my more famous contemporaries with Sri Aurobindo for his gift to me not only of the Integral Yoga but also of "overhead poetry" my name will get linked with yours on the one hand because of the already published correspondence between us as well as the still-to-be-published greater recent bulk of it and on the other hand ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 the swift suns? When ...
... Overhead Poetry 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. If Thou desirest my weak ...
... logopoeic. But here too we have no touch of dry intellectuality. All the less here because Sri Aurobindo, though couching his experience in terms of thought, is really writing what he has called "Overhead Poetry" — poetry breaking from secret planes of consciousness above the mind. It is Thought with a capital T. Not the vital mind, nor the mind proper, but the spiritual mind is vibrant throughout, with ...
... Overhead Poetry Agni Not from the day but from the night he's born, Night with her pang of dream—star on pale star Winging strange rumour through a secret dawn. For all the black uncanopied spaces mirror The brooding distance of our plumbless mind. O depth of gloom, reveal thy unknown light— Awake our body to the alchemic ...
... Overhead Poetry The Triumph of Dante These arms, stretched through ten hollow years, have brought her Back to my heart! A light, a hush immense Falls suddenly upon my voice of tears, Out of a sky whose each blue moment bears The sun-touch of a rapt omnipotence. Ineffable the secrecies supreme Pass and elude my gaze—an ...
... Overhead Poetry Vita Nuova Haloed by some vast blue withheld from us, Her pure face smiles through her cascading hair: Like a strange dawn of rainfall nectarous It comes to amaranth each desert prayer. Beyond themselves her clay-born beauties call: Breathing the rich air round her is to find An ageless God-delight embracing ...
... Overhead Poetry Pool of Lonelinesses I have become a secret pool Of lonelinesses mountain-cool, A dream-poise of unuttered song Lifted above the restless throng Of human moods' dark pitchers wrought Of fragile and of flawful thought. Now never more my tunes shall flow In moulds of common joy and woe; But seraph ...
... Overhead Poetry Through Vesper's Veil A rose of fire like a secret smile Won from the heart of lost eternity Broke suddenly through vesper's virgin veil. A smoulder of strange joy—then time grew dark, And all my vigil's burning cry a swoon As if the soul were drawn into its God Across that dream-curve dimming out of space. ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Invocation to the Fourfold Divine 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! Consume in me the blinded walls of mind: Wing far above dull thought my speech with flame ...
... Overhead Poetry Rishi He brought the calm of a gigantic sleep: Earth's mind—a flicker gathering sudden gold— Merged with unknowable vistas to come back A fire whose tongue had tasted paradise. A plumbless music rolled from his far mouth: Waves of primeval secrecy broke white Along the heart's shores, a rumour of deathless ...
... Overhead Poetry 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. ...
... Overhead Poetry 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. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very beautiful. ...
... Overhead Poetry 4 Out of the Unknown Out of the unknown, like meteor-rain Fell glimmering on my dark despair The syllables of a prophetic tongue: "O heart disconsolate, beauty-wrung, Wanderer unsated, not in vain A voice of unattainable melody Winging in heavenly air, Came Brindavan's immortal memory ...
... Overhead Poetry Yoga "Torment not with intangible fulgences! O master, to my hungry life impart The nectarous truth of yon Sky-Spirit unheard Whose sole revealing word Is a touch of cold far flame upon my heart! Of what avail mute mystic suns of snow?" "Banish from your dream-night The burning blindness of earth-hued ...
... Overhead Poetry The Divine Denier Wanderer of hell's chimerical abyss, Dreaming for ever of star-fragrance blown From the efflorescent heart of the Unknown! They knew thee not who scorned thy madnesses, Nor plumbed the beauty of that terrible mood Which hailed as a supreme apocalypse The all-desiring and all-quenching lips ...
... Overhead Poetry Two Birds 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?" Then suddenly above ...
... Overhead Poetry God-Sculpture "No man to immortal beauty woke But by My music of stroke on stroke Should I disdain to hurt your deep Rigidities of clay-bound sleep, How would you bear a thrilled impress Of My unshadowed loveliness? Pain like a chisel I've brought to trace The death of pain upon your face: ...
... Overhead Poetry Evanescence 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. Sri Aurobindo's ...
... Overhead Poetry Maya A scorching shadow masked as living light, Earth's smile of painted passion withers now! But is there hollow on black ravenous hollow How pass then reveries of angelic wings Revealing the blind heart of all desire? Surely some haloed beauty hides within The mournful spaces of unlustred limbs ...
... Overhead Poetry Gloam-Infinites Gloam-innnites of trance!—but like a wound Of vacancy unto my mortal heart Came that aloof immeasurable peace. The ear—a cavern lonely, echoless— Waited in fear; then suddenly the spell Of unknown firmaments broke to a close Chirrup of some late passing bird, which drew All the void dark and ...
... Overhead Poetry A Diamond is Burning Upward A Diamond is Burning Upward In the roofless chamber walled 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Orison A godless temple is the dome of space: Reveal the sun of thy love-splendoured face, O lustrous flowering of invisible peace, 3 O glory breaking into curves of clay 4 From mute intangible dream-distances, 5 That like a wondrous yet familiar light Eternity may mingle with our day! Leave ...
... Overhead Poetry Unbirthed A grip is broken loose Within my chest— Titan steel jointures part Their deep-grey rest In some blind cosmic plan Solidding night To crypt the fire that is man, To dungeon the height His dreamful mind remembers.... With a shining start, Suddenly rapture-russet, A hammer ...
... Overhead Poetry 5 Harmonies Unfathomed harmonies roll, drowning our sight In purple of their passionate abyss— A superhuman solitude of night Sprung from a deep where all the waves are bliss. O waves divine, dark to our shuddering eyes, You float a fire that glooms each common glow! Sweep over foundering ...
... Overhead Poetry Gulfs of Night From hills inaureoled by a twilight trance, Arms eager with the enchanted cry of love Strain towards a mountain lost in timeless dawn. But how shall arms of reverie clasp that fire When gulfs of nameless night—a dragon's mouth— Have stretched below their blinded centuries?... O paradise-haunted ...
... Overhead Poetry Appeal My feet are sore, Beloved, With agelong quest for Thee; Wilt Thou not choose for dwelling This lonesome heart of me? Is it too poor a mansion? But surely it is poor Because Thou never bringest Thy beauty through its door! It lies all bare and darkened, To hold nought save Thy light: ...
... Overhead Poetry 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 ...
... Overhead Poetry Soul of Song I have been quiet a long while To fill my singing smile With a magic beyond the lips of man And very quiet will I be After the burst of minstrelsy To find at the close The light with which my tune began. Glowing behind The singer's mind, A mystery journeys forth to meet ...
... Overhead Poetry Prayer There is no lack of love in Thee, But, O sweet Splendour, bless My proud heart with a penury Of dedicated emptiness. Thy blue and gold and silver light Can never cease to drop, For Thou hast generously made All heaven a wide inverted cup. 'Tis we are shut in outward self Nor deepen eyes ...
... Overhead Poetry Talisman (Suggested by a refrain from Morris) The hallowing moon-white Obscurity of night— Aroma of a love-hush blown From the inviolate unknown— And then once more time's cleaving cry... But in wide wonder beyond death A trance of beauty grew life-breath Behind a shield of memory, Limned ...
... Overhead Poetry Storm-Light The immortal music of her mind Sweeps through the earth a lustrous wind— "Renounce, O man, thy arduous oar And, opening out faith's song-charmed helpless sail, Reach on my breath of love the ecstatic shore! My rush is truth self-beaconed, not thy pale Stranger-surmise: I am a cyclic ...
... Overhead Poetry In Terram Why this indignity that from the brave Height of soul-lustre into a broken grave Man's yearning flesh should drop and all his drouth Of planet-passion kiss the worm's cold mouth? What treasure yet unknown draws down his mood, Whose heart is fashioned for infinitude? Surely some God-abyss calls ...
... Overhead Poetry Night of Trance Closing your eyes, outstretch vague hands of prayer Beyond the prison-house of mortal air... Then, soul-awakened, watch the universe thrill With secrets drawn from the Invisible— A force of gloom that makes each flicker-stress Bare the full body of its goldenness And yield in that embrace ...
... Overhead Poetry Incarnation Would you conceive her self? A sheer abyss Of reverie existing by its own Grandeur of inexhaustible silences That know all secrets through a light unknown. Nor her divinity the clay ensheathes: Those pure immitigable joys unblind Each human pore and her whole body breathes The large and lustrous ...
... Overhead Poetry Ape on Fire 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— Love that ...
... Overhead Poetry Ascent A nectar-dew falls glimmering from the Unknown To wake the shadowless seed of mystic love Lost in the blind abysses of the brain. A memory stirs the locked immensity— An occult creative Eye now yearns afar. Dreams upward through a gilded sky of mind, The hard deceiving dome of a false heaven, ...
... Overhead Poetry White Murder A quick stiletto's smile of poignancy, The pang of paradise cleaves through the heart, Committing against our human blood's career A lustrous crime of immortality. Truth's lightning stab—and from the core of life Rich reveries flow to some unscrutable deep, While over a precipice of infinitude ...
... Overhead Poetry Apotheosis Spurning the narrow cities of your mind, Climb to the turquoise dome of distances Where Nature's spirit wears a measureless crown— The unwalled glory of some Tartar day, The inscrutable puissance of a Negro night. There every straining mood brims infinite, An all-submerging primal mystery ...
... Overhead Poetry Moksha A giant earth-oblivion numbs the brain, A stroke of trance making each limb fall loose And narrow-hearted hungers crumble down! The soul has broken through the walls of time, The unlustred prison of the dreaming clay, To a palace of imperishable gold— No transient pauper day but shadowless dawn ...
... Overhead Poetry THE CLOSE OF DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA" ("PARADISO", Canto 33) St. Bernard Supplicates on Behalf of Dante "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son! Life's pinnacle of shadowless sanctity, Yet, with the lustre of God-union, Outshining all in chaste humility— Extreme fore-fixed by the supernal Mind, Unto ...
... Overhead Poetry Pharphar ("...Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams" —Milton) Where is the glassy gold of Pharphar Or its echoing silver-grey When the magic ethers of evening Wash one the various day? I have travelled the whole earth over Yet never found The beautiful body of Pharphar Or its soul of secret sound ...
... Overhead Poetry THANK GOD... Thank God for all this wretchedness of love— The close apocalypt fires that only prove The shutting of some golden gate in the face! Not here beside us burning a brief space Of life is ecstasy: immense, above, The shining core of a divine abyss Awaits the earth-unglamoured lonely gaze ...
... Overhead Poetry 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? Here centuries lay down their pilgrim cry, Drowsed with the power in me to press my whole Bulk of unchanging peace upon the eye ...
... Overhead Poetry A Metaphysical Poet to his Mistress Not for the light of limbs But for the peace Folding, when rapture dims, Heart-poignancies— The lull of ardour spent, Which like a wind Of some cool firmament Blows out the mind, Leaving our gaze a night Timelessly deep As if all heaven's height ...
... Overhead Poetry 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— ...
... Overhead Poetry Near and Far I see your limbs aglow With passionate will, But touching their white flesh I know Your love's intangible— As if each fiery line Of yearning clay Brought only a mirror-shine Of beacons far away! Your flames unquenchable dart Yet burn not by their kiss: They flash ...
... Overhead Poetry Your Face Your face unveils the cry, Divinely deep, Heard from the inscrutable core Of mystic sleep— A lure of rapturous tune Where vision fails, Like a nest of heaven-hearted Nightingales. No hush of love could catch That soul of swoon: Dawn's body ever crossed My dream too soon ...
... Overhead Poetry Deluge You fear clay's solid rapture will be gone If once your love dives deep to the Unknown— But how shall body not seem a hollow space When the soul bears eternity's embrace?— Eternity which to the outward glance Is some unmoving painted sea of trance, Lifeless, an artist's dream—but suddenly ...
... 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 ...
... 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 ...
... I would quote: One with night's incommunicable mind and Page 151 A loneliness of superhuman night. But., though here too by Sri Aurobindo's estimation is overhead poetry and at least in the last line a pure Mantra, still there is not such a succession of long vowels mostly driven home by strong stresses as in Sri Aurobindo's picture — a picture supported grandly ...
... dream too soon. But now with a face of dawn Night yearns to me, Kindling the distances Of lost divinity. * Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1993. I: "Overhead Poetry" with Sri Aurobindo's Comments, pp. 182-87. II: "Uncollected Work", pp. 484-91; Sri Aurobindo's Comments on the Poems, pp. 688-91. Page 421 SRI AUROBINDO COMMENT ...
... 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 ...
... excitement of the higher possession, but also some alloy too of our mortality. 2 Not that he is writing about this mixed inspiration for the first time. He had done this in his preface to Overhead Poetry and elsewhere in his early writings. But there had been that rhythmic Aurobindonian efflux everywhere, a touch of the classic Victorian which had once come out through the pen of Ruskin and Newman ...
... with which Sri Aurobindo traced many of their lines to the various spiritual or “overhead” planes from where they originated, is remarkable and a true innovation in literature. See K.D. Sethna’s Overhead Poetry: Poems with Sri Aurobindo’s Comments, and Nirodbaran’s Fifty Poems with Sri Aurobindo’s Comments. × ...
... There is his essay on quantitative hexametres in the English language, his book, The Future Poetry, still undiscovered by the contemporary poets and theorists of poetry, and his writings on ‘overhead poetry’ — on the ‘overmental’ poetical sources. There is his abundant correspondence about poetry with his disciples, for it looked as if he had made his Ashram into a breeding-ground of poets. There ...
... am especially interested in this information, for it touches on an unforgettable phase of my own life in the Ashram. Owing to my sustained aspiration to write what Sri Aurobindo has termed "overhead poetry", that is, poetic inspiration caught from secret levels of consciousness above the mind, levels of a superhuman light and delight, Sri Aurobindo generously granted the incredible favour of letting ...
... verses of one's own I would quote: One with night's incommunicable mind 1 and A loneliness of superhuman night. 2 But, though here too by Sri Aurobindo's estimation is overhead poetry and at least in the last line a pure Mantra, still there is not such a succession of long vowels mostly driven home by strong stresses as in Sri Aurobindo's picture _______________ 1[Amal ...
... Mallarmé 201 Mandukya Upanishad 99 Mantra 51,177,270,341 Sri Aurobindo's letter on 200 Marlowe 216 Milton52,102,132,186,205,219,229, 258,326,336 mind and overhead poetry 229 Higher 235 Illumined 235 in-drawn illuminated 272 insufficiency of 67 Knowledge in 310 labouring or receiving 102 lid formed by 307 luminous thinking ...
... "passeth understanding". Not only symbol at its most living and most intimate but also philosophy at its most far-reaching and most synthetising is the apocalypse of Page 72 "overhead" poetry, especially when the vision and language and rhythm are of the Mantra. We have described the supraliminal and the subliminal as two divisions of the Beyond. They are, however, not cut ...
... heroic style — a thing that never has been equalled in its austerity, power and grandeur by any other English poet. Only Sri Aurobindo, at the other pole of felicity, by his sustained role of Overhead poetry equals him and surpasses him in sheer flights of inspiration, in heights of grandeur, in the sweep of his magnificence and delight. ROMEN Page 353 ...
... vision." Though our present literary fashions obscure such a possibility, is it so small a thing to have established the New Being, complete, harmonious, creative, with the help of poetry, the Overhead poetry of the peak, peaks imagination cannot tread? Breaking the vacancy and voiceless hush, Piercing the limitless Unknowable, 33 — that is its power. The words of the poet are worlds: ...
... 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) ...
... here or that word there—if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things arc quite imperative, it is all or nothing —or at least all or a fall." ________________ instinctive-emotive way rather than intellectually is AE. Housman's terminology ...
... the process, in that joyous expansive mood, least does it suffer distortion. Not only do we have the substance of spiritual philosophy in its trueness; there is throughout the authenticity of overhead poetry with its genuine power of revelation coming from beyond the mental consciousness. Let us have a quick look at this Ashwattha tree depicted by the Yogi-Poet. (The ...
... Lost" from the Overmind! Meher-cule! what's to be done with that fellow? Sri Aurobindo: He ought to be sentenced to penal servitude - let us say, condemned to produce at least 14 lines of overhead poetry without the means to do it and then abused for not doing it. It is the only proper and sufficient inconsequent punishment for such inconsequence. 82 And thus ends the chapter on Sri Aurobindo's ...
... Teachings (Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras, 1948) . Sethna, K.D. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo (Ashram Press, 1947) Sri Aurobindo, The Poet (Ashram Press, 1970) Overhead Poetry (Ashram Press, 1972) Tehmi Sri Aurobindo-The Story of His Life (Ashram Press, 1972) Page 281 Some other works on The Mother Sujata Nahar ...
... withdrew the expletive. Lines 4-6, also to a less degree lines 11-12 have an overhead accent in their substance and turn of expression. If you go on like that, some day you may find yourself writing overhead poetry without knowing it. About yesterday's poem, 241 I dreamt that it was exceedingly fine—only a dream! But who said it wasn't? I am sorry I don't understand where you get "lower and ...
... evocation of the Symbol Dawn Page 209 in the opening canto. The touches are at once physical and supra-physical, and the lines have—if one may say so—the distinct ring of 'overhead' poetry: There is a morning Twilight of the gods; Miraculous from sleep their forms arise And God's long nights are justified by dawn. There breaks a passion ...
... simile, already quoted on an earlier page, that describes the effect on the yogin of the mantra, in the context of Savitri's response to the word from Aswapati, is a remarkable example of the 'overhead' poetry; the Word is the Spirit, it is Power, it is creative joy, it is the aftermath of calm as well. The following simile compares Aswapati the pioneer and leader of the human race to a solitary ...
... poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he been alive, could have discussed with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate expositions on rhythm, overhead poetry, etc., which are now a permanent treasure in English literature. Sri Aurobindo's quotations from memory from Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and others which he said should be verified were, in most ...
... the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. 49 It is also necessary to remember that all overhead poetry is not necessarily mystic poetry, and all mystic poetry is not necessarily mantric poetry. At the overhead heights, of course, mystic poetry born of the utter experience of Reality irresistibly ...
... description of the mysterious inscrutable ways of the Divine, her intimation or communication of the mysterium tremendum behind the facade of Appearance. Such revelations correspond almost to "overhead poetry", and it is not at the level of the mind, but at the deeper Page 607 level of the soul, that these words of the Mother, coming fully charged with hieratic and prophetic power, are ...
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