SRI AUROBINDO AND POETRY
Dr. S. Rukmini
The eternal
knowledge concealed in the Vedas is the knowledge of the soul. The Vedas are considered the repository of
all knowledge. According to the Vedas,
it is acquiring the knowledge of the soul that is true education. The education that awakens the soul is true
wisdom. The comprehension of the soul
imparts us the knowledge that enables to take the right attitude towards life.
The ancient
sages have proclaimed this knowledge as the true education bereft of which Man
becomes an animal. Acquiring of this
spiritual knowledge has been gradually sidelined through the ages. The absence of this is taking the individual
in particular and the society in general towards degeneration. Great men endowed with this spiritual
learning appear once in many years and through their life and actions renew the
knowledge and set an example to the society.
The Modern
generation devoid of this knowledge and there being no urge or even an
inclination to acquire this knowledge wallow in mundane existence, the lower
form of living. To exemplify, great men
as Vedavyasa, Yagnavalkya down to the modern seers such as Swami Vivekananda,
Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo through their writings and lives
become a role model to the world. They
acquired this knowledge through the practice of yoga. They had at their disposal the power to witness their own
spiritual evolution. The spiritual
evolution is nothing but the heightening of one’s own consciousness to identify
the soul and the infinite consciousness, the Mother Aditi and thus culminating
in their union. They imparted the true
knowledge to the world through their literature.
Sri Aurobindo, one of the famous of the
modern Indian yogis, attempts to transform the world into that of superhuman
beings through his literature. After
the yogic realization, the spiritual attainment made an illuminative and
transformative impact upon his literary knowledge and insight and gave him both
a universal and transcendental outlook on all significant aspects and problems
of poetry and art. Thus to him,
literature was completely spiritually oriented and the significance and
spiritual function of art and poetry was to liberate man to pure delight, the
Ananda and to bring beauty into his life.
The highest kinds of delight and beauty, according to him, are those
that are one with the highest Truth, the perfection of life and the purest and
fullest joy of the self-revealing spirit.
Probing into the poetry of the modern times
with his yogic insight, he finds that the art form neither offers any universal
vision nor it holds the ancient sacred prestige but it was through poetry, of
the three literary art forms that the transformation of the world into that of superhuman
beings was possible. Thus, in an
attempt to revive the lost prestige and to transform the world into that of
superhuman beings, he uses poetry as an instrument.
To him, poetry is the expression and
movement which comes from us out of a certain spiritual excitement caused by a
vision in the soul of which it is eager to deliver itself and that it comes
into being at the right call of three powers inspiration, beauty and delight
and brings them to us and us to them by the magic charm of inspired rhythmic
word. He names this inspired rhythmic
word as the Mantra of the real. Here
the true creator and the true hearer is the soul; the imagination, the
intelligence are only the channels and instruments.
The poetry,
according to him was more a creation of vision than of intelligence. For he
believes that beyond the intellect there is the spirit and that poetry is the
language of the expression of it. It is
to see the unseen and speak the wordless.
As the poetry
is the language of the Unseen and the wordless the breath of creation according
to Sri Aurobindo, is profound, indefinable and elusive. Any attempt to define poetry would be to
dissect the myriad-stringed harp of Saraswathi into pieces.
Sri Aurobindo
believes that it is the Superconscient nature force that gives the poetic words
the power of speech. This
Superconscient nature force lies above the mental planes. In order to bring it down, one has to
heighten his level of consciousness and it is the soul that recognizes it as
the Mother Aditi, Infinite consciousness and brings down to manifest itself as
the poetic word and thus culminates in the transformation of the individual as
a whole. When the individual transforms
himself he sees the Divine element in him and in others also. Sri Aurobindo calls this ascending and
descending of the soul to bring down the Supermental consciousness as Integral
yoga. An ectasy is felt when the secret
of the mystery is being unveiled and visualized. At the highest stage the poet becomes one with the Divine. Everything looks beautiful. Thus Sri Aurobindo regards the poet as the
Seer and hearer of the inner supreme Truth.
The Vedic
dictum ‘Kavayah satyasruthaha and kavayah satya druthah’ is being enshrined
here. The vision of Truth is the
enlightening power of poetic creation. Here, the poet’s function is to create
but not to re-create. According to Sri
Aurobindo, poetry is constant life music and the poet is a singer of Truth and
the chief function of poetry is to present to us the living beauty and reality,
the simple natural innate spontaneous life-breath, flow and movement of things
and man and the world in their totality.
It is the creation of a living energy that is always new and fresh.
Poetry that is infused with the greater breath of life elevates the earthly
life to Divine life.
From the
above discussion, one discerns that to Sri Aurobindo, poetry is nothing but the
expression of spiritual experience and realization of the infinite
consciousness. Thus, to those that are
uninitiated to the secrets of spiritual life, his poetry wears somewhat an
uncommon complexion.
As a
visionary poet who considers poetry a vehicle to express the effusions of
spiritual vision and spiritual illuminations, he says that the critic has to go
by the judgement of his soul because the spiritual vision of things which he
speaks here is neither a criticism of life nor an intellectual or philosophical
view of things, but a soul-view, a seizing by the inner sense.
Thus his
poetry requires to be read, enjoyed and applauded not according to the
conventional standards of poetry but differently aesthetically, spiritually and
intuitively. He enlarges the field of
poetic creation by making it an expression of the bondless and innumerable riches
that lie concealed and unexplored.
Elevating the meaning of poetry from the conventional norms it holds, he
gives it a new direction i.e. he interprets the same old Vedic concept of
poetry with his own ideas in an innovative way. He urges the future poets not to look into poetry only from a
literary perspective but to look into it with a spirituo-philosophical
perspective also. Thus he condemns the
poets of the medieval times in India who looked into poetry only from a
literary perspective. He regards poetry
that is written from the traditional literary standards as something
lower. He urges the future poets to
compose poetry from a spirituo-philosophical
perspective intending to culminate in the transformation of the human
race to that of superhuman beings. His
magnum opus Savitri is a living example to this.
From the
yogic insight, he presages the probability of his concept of poetry in the
future. As he very well knows that
Sanskrit language lacks catholicity, he expects the English poets to write
poetry from a spirituo-philosophical perspective that culminates in the
transformation of the human race to that of Gnostic being. According to him, the English poets are in
the scale of ascension of his spiritual evolution.
My intention to write about
the visionary poet Sri Aurobindo is to show how he sidelines the poets who
write poetry from the conventional norms and writes poetry based on his own
integral philosophy transcending the confinements and thus restores the ancient
sacred prestige. His definition of
poetry as the mantra of the real shows much of his esoteric approach, wide
reading and catholic taste. To
comprehend his poetry, one needs to probe deeply with a hermetic concentration
and spiritual insight.
“We are human coverings over the
divine”
“Obey the scriptures until you are
strong enough
to do without them’
“Love is higher than work, Yoga and
Knowledge”
-
Swami Vivekananda