Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

My Bird Flew Away by RY Deshpande

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:34:00 -0700

My Bird Flew Away (Click for RY Deshpande's and Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

My bird flew away
Like a song leaping from dreams;
I could have learnt
From the dazzle of his wings
The mystery of the flight,
The joy of the upsoaring art;
I could have seen
With his two little eyes
The colours that lie beyond sight.
Like a rainbow that needs no cloud,
Like a harp that needs no strings,
I could have dreamt
Of stars that need no night;
I could have been,
O thou love so proud,
The lover that needs no heart.
Like a song leaping from dreams
My bird flew away
To a land of sunrise
Glimpsed at times across the day.

I Ran along the River by RY Deshpande

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:35:00 -0700

I Ran along the River (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

I ran along the river
Gathering songs of many streams—
Sometimes in haste of their moods,
Sometimes looking back at the hill
Where awoke the first dreams
That called the birds of the bright valley
To give wings to bodiless trance,
Under the calm of the moon’s silver,
Or in meadows where no thought intrudes,
They seemed with hourlessness my joys to fill.

I ran along the river
Until my shadows I could no more see;
South-eastward rushing through the day,
And even by the thickening night
When no star poured his delight
Bringing from the name of the sky
To me a blue of the far away,
I reached the Invisible’s sea.

Blue Silence by Tehmi

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:36:00 -0700

Blue Silence by Tehmi (Click for RY Deshpande's and Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Now all is over and done,

No vagrant dreams arise,

The magic of moon and sun

Is lost within the skies.

Now all is gathered peace

Within the heart’s wide cave,

The calm of shining seas

Uncreased by wind or wave.

Within these solitudes

No drunk earth-voices come,

Only blue silence broods

In caverns lone and dumb.

Adwaita by Tehmi

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:37:00 -0700

Adwaita by Tehmi (Click for RY Deshpande's and Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Who touched me? Shapes of music whisper
Of lonely memories which pass
Across the spirit’s stillness, murmuring
“All flesh is grass.”

Who touched me? Shapes of music answer,
“A wandering world-lost melody
Passed out into the wild night, saying,
‘My soul is free.’ “

Where music spun its strange, fine soul-webs,
Turning each though to song of dew,
Who touched me in the darkness, saying,
“But who are you?”

Nirodbaran's Goldfish

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:37:00 -0700

Nirodbaran's Goldfish (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

My life is veiled in a sleep of light,
A hush that nothing breaks;
The world before my inward sight
Into pure beauty wakes.

Life that is deep and wonder-vast,
Lost in a breath of sound;
The bubbling shadows have been cast
From its heart’s timeless round.

In its lulled silver stream now shines
A lustrous smile of God
Whose brilliantly curved outlines,
Flashing on the memory-trod

Caverns of slumbering earth, there bring
A glow of the Infinite,
While my soul’s diamond voices wing
Into a heaven of light.

Nirodbaran’s Fingers of Light

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:38:00 -0700

Nirodbaran’s Fingers of Light (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

On this dark corner of my cell
Fingers of Light fall—slow and white—
From the invisible crescent moon;
Ethereal seems the prisoned night!

The beams pale, slowly move away;
Through the iron bars my dream-eyes cast
A final glance: the silver trails
Wing to some unknown region’s Vast.

Sethna's Lammergeyer

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:38:00 -0700

Sethna's Lammergeyer (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Preach pity to the lammergeyer’s breast,
Make its brute claws grasp intellectual truth—
Vain strife! Yet only the subhuman nest
Bears the untrammelled vigour that can strain
To skies like some vast super-rose of ruth,
Seer suns beyond the gold of Plato’s brain.
The exquisite heart, the delicate reverie gain
Miracled escape, but never the God-life’s zest.
Blind hungers alone draw down transcending things,
And we must scour the Infinite with wild wings
Spread by the giant vulture of the West!

Sethna's Pharphar

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:39:00 -0700

Sethna's Pharphar (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Where is the glassy gold of Pharphar
Or its echoing silver-grey
When the magic ethers of evening
Wash one the various way?

I have travelled the whole earth over
Yet never found
The beautiful body of Pharphar
Or its soul of secret sound.

But all my dreams are an answer
To Pharphar’s blind career;
And the songs that I sing are an image
Of quiets I long to hear.

For, only this unreached beauty
No time shall mar—
This river of infinite distance,
Pharphar.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya's Revolt

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:40:00 -0700

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya's Revolt (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

I will revolt against the lies
That these my lips and these my eyes
Are taught from hour to hour.
I will revolt, even as a seed
Filled with a longing to be filled
Revolts into a flower!

I will revolt against the curse
Of cramping creed and holy verse
Which fill the heart with night.
I will revolt against all things
That tend to rob my restless wings
Of undictated flight.

I will revolt against the sham,
The huge hypocrisy I am,
I will revolt, and rise
Out of the habits of a slave,
Each habit that is but a grave
Inscribed with subtle lies.

I will revolt against the fraud,
The dirty trick that men call god
And play on one another!
I will revolt as best as I can…
I will not rest till every man
On earth becomes my brother.

31 December 1930

Harin's Consciousness

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:40:00 -0700

Harin's Consciousness (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Sometimes I grow so big with consciousness
That the vast ocean changes to a mere drop…
Then I know that it is more or less
Time’s very lonely teardrop!

It is in such a state of consciousness
I do begin to know that I am no worm…
For the whole sky before me more or less
Becomes a little glow-worm.

3 January 1931

Romen's Thy Word

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:41:00 -0700

Romen's Thy Word (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

From the crags of the sun descends the bird
With a distant word
Breaking the din of time with its sweep
Sublime, unheard.

Like a flash of gnostic ray its leap
Is the flood from the sleep
Unreachable horizons of delight
Breaking earth’s sleep.

With quick voiceless passion of might
The cascade of light
Resealing secrecies far unfound
From god’s pure height.

Thy word becomes the hidden sound
Echo unbound
From the sovereign infinite
Midday crowned.

12 October 1958

Romen's All are Veils

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:41:00 -0700

Romen's All are Veils (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

A seed is a veil to a seed,
A joy to a far delight;
A thirst has screened a need
To be thy miraculous height.

A ray has covered a ray,
A sun a wonder sun;
The sapphire heart of a day
Has veiled thy dominion.

Beyond the bliss and force,
Beyond the gate, of the moon,
There is a diamond source,
There is a looming Noon.

To tear all veils of light
To rend the veils of the bliss
That ours may grow deep and bright
In an unexhausted release

And the sun of God may grip
The night, and life and soul,
And time and space may slip
To become the dateless whole.

2 September 1958

Nishikanto's Dance on Deep Stillness

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:41:00 -0700

Nishikanto's Dance on Deep Stillness (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

A red sea swings
On the crystal deep,
The rainbow sings
On a white wide sleep;
The greenwood bowl
To horizon-goal
Flows with a wine of golden streams.

The flame-lives dance
On a still life-fire,
And soul-songs glance
On a mute sapphire;
Births are all dews
Of human hues—
Bubbles of wine with desire-streams.

But who is the deep
And white wide sleep?
The giant hushed with intoxication
Is drinking the dreams of his bubbling creation.

Nishikanto's Green Darkness

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:42:00 -0700

Nishikanto's Green Darkness (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

The vast green darkness rolls and heaves
To the black-smeared horizon’s bound,
And with a mournful clamour cleaves
The silence of the worlds around.
It soars and rocks and breaks in vain
In a restless night of starless pain.
O ocean of bewildered force,
Surrendered pray to the firmament light
And learn to gain thy peaceful source
In motionless depths of might.

Arjava's Moon-Script

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:42:00 -0700

Arjava's Moon-Script (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Now all nearer things are vanished;
Wonted shapes leave empty air:
Thankfully I find me banished
From the worldly thoroughfare.

Garishness the moon-thrill plunders:
Hosting billows glide to shore—
Waves that break in phantom thunders,
Sands which feel no footprint-score.

Drowsy pinions whitely winging
Smoulder dimly past the strand,
Visionary trance-light bringing
From some strange remote land.

Past the “me” and past the “other”
Let the questant farer speed,
Wilder grow the foamway smother,
More weird the moon-script he must read.

8 March 1936

Arjava's Twilight Hush

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:43:00 -0700

Arjava's Twilight Hush (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

A forest of shadows gliding fast,
Magnetwise, as drawn on by the sun
For westerly waning sunset-goal—
Zenith past, how eerily they run!

On paths that meander cross the sky,
Gleam and bend cloud centaurs from afar
Moon-bow that is aiming silver-taut,
Arrows made of silence at a star.

19 October 1933

Dilip Kumar Roy's Dream Tree

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:43:00 -0700

Dilip Kumar Roy's Dream Tree (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

My Tree of Dreams stands still, its boughs all point
To the sky they cannot reach, and yet I know
That benisons of the far daily anoint
Its fruits and flowers with ambient glow
Which, born of clay, yet radiantly lends
To our mortal seeds of life thy starry space.
There the vast’s own store of light’s delight expends
Its tenderness which no clouds shall efface:
There marvels overwhelm no more but reign,
Rich native rhythms of thy Love’s domain!

25 February 1941

Dilip Kumar Roy's Certitude

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:44:00 -0700

Dilip Kumar Roy's Certitude (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

In the ache of my night…
My waylost night…
Still gleams a lonely spark of memory
Of thy far delight:
An infant glow untamed by the dark sea
Nor quenched by the black wind’s might.

In the heart of my pain,
My muted pain,
Still floats a cadence: “Thou wilt come again…
No yearning is in vain.”
And on that day of thy Dawn’s wonder
Self-will’s legions shall surrender
To thy sun-laurelled Love for long denied…
By their fool pride.
Then they will sing: “No frail
Glimmers ever fail
When Light will prevail.”

16 December 1947

DilipRoy

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:44:00 -0700

Nolini Kanta Gupta's Silence

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:44:00 -0700

Nolini Kanta Gupta's Silence (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

In silence move the stars,
In silence mounts the sap within the plant,
The secret energies of Nature work and create in the deeps of silence.

Out of the utmost stillness the whirling universe was born—
All the turmoil and the tumult, the roar and fry that meet the eye
Flourish upon an unfathomed quiet below.

In the tranquillity of death a new birth prepares itself,
The guarded calm of Night’s ending ushers in the rejuvenated Sun…
And were my wild senses to turn back, they would face the abysmal silence of the soul.

The cry of the heart shoots up like a column of silence—
That voice alone reaches straight to the High throne and moves it to grace.
The gods descend along the path of luminous silence spread in the farthest spaces of our inmost being.

Nolini Kanta Gupta's Downrush of the Cataract

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:45:00 -0700

Nolini Kanta Gupta's Downrush of the Cataract (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Calm, calm, my soul! Sink down and deep:
Fashion the crystal bowl of thy heart
With all the serene profundity of the unknown spaces—
And drop by drop will gather there
A bliss immortals only can taste,
And ray by ray will dawn the Light supernal!...
Or—be prepared for this too, soul, my soul—
The downrush of a myriad undyked cataracts,
The sudden bursting of a whole stellar conflagration.

17 March 1935

Margaret Forbes's Mountains

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:45:00 -0700

Margaret Forbes's Mountains (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

My thoughts are full of blue mountains,
Of splintered peaks like frozen flames
That leap toward the light. I know
The secret of their happiness,
That they, so tall, will be the first
To see it come, will cry aloud,
Melt into little streams and laughing run
Before the face of that stupendous Dawn.

Margaret Forbes's Cock-Crow

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:46:00 -0700

Margaret Forbes's Cock-Crow (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

A cock cries shrill in the dark
again and yet again.
What has he seen that I in my
lethargy have not seen?
What Sound heard urgent along
the ridges of the world?
Sun-anticipations, filaments unfurled
Of a New Day?... Tongue of God
in a bird,
Dagger of Dawn, again and yet again
Pierce, till all men have heard!

1951

Syed Mehdi Imam's Kundalini (Lightning)

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:46:00 -0700

Syed Mehdi Imam's Kundalini (Lightning) (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

(Awakening of the Kundalini, the subtle Life-Force, written in the dactylic-spondee tetrametre)

I am the blue fork shot from the cloud-clap…
Out of a rift I sprung into light.
Red with the anger of storm-winds I grew
A hiss of the zigzag veins of the sky-fire.
I shone as a star on the brow of the night,
Quenched as a beam in the eye of the sun-god.
’ware of me, transient mood of the high Lord…
Birth is my death. Death is my birth.
I am the voice of the vault rumbling with light.

Syed Mehdi Imam--Prithvi (Dust), Excalibur1

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:47:00 -0700

Syed Mehdi Imam--Prithvi (Dust) (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

(Call to fight the powers of the dark, written in the dactylic-paeonic pentametre)

Flesh-fed fires of the dust, assemble in the broad plain.
Lift the lance of the Spirit ’gainst the spearheads of the Night.
Tatter the banner of Death. Reel the phalanxes of Light?
Legionaries, clothed with the Ray, leap the ramparts of the dark!
Follow the steps of the shadows retreating to the hollow of Hell.
Follow them with flashes of Levin hot from the blade of Excalibur.
Slay them with the brimstone and sulphur. Singe them with fire.
Dust of the sweet body dieth not saved by the soul.
Benumbed by thy fears. Blare from the throat the sounds of the life
Immortal. Dare the denizens of the dark, O spark of the fine dust!

Syed Mehdi Imam--Prithvi (Dust), Excalibur2

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:47:00 -0700

Lal Kamal's Invocation

ronjon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:47:00 -0700

Lal Kamal's Invocation (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Come in this tranquil hour,
When sweet is the breath of night,
When the darkness is deep and heavy
And the stars are bright.

Come to this heart that is waiting
For thee so long in calm.
Come with thy smiling eyes,
Thy blessing palm.

Life without thee is empty,
Leave me no more alone,
In my yearning heart now enter,
Make it thy home.

February 1942

Lal Kamal's Bird with Silver Wings

ronjon — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:15:00 -0700

Lal Kamal's Bird with Silver Wings (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

In the hidden garden of my heart
A bird with silver wings,
Perched on the bough of a golden tree,
Forever sings.

In tunes of heavenly rapture
When the sun is bright,
I hear notes of magic melody
In the calm of night.

All day and night in the deeps of my life
Its music rings.
What is this bird in the core of my heart
With silver wings?

12 February 1947

Minnie Canteenwalla's Supplication

ronjon — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:34:00 -0700

Minnie Canteenwalla's Supplication (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Will you not pour into me
The ancient peace that lights your face?
I do not want it all for me
But just a drop—a tiny trace.

It is in the vast and silent valleys,
In the purple shades of the aged hills;
It is in the tremble of a dying leaf
And in the murmur of low-toned rills.

On a calm and moonlit night
Through tree-traceries the stars are soft-cool.
Give me a little of that perfect coolness
To dip my eyes in its healing pool.

When the day is perfumed with its earthy scent,
And my face caressed by the far sea-breeze,
My heart stops beating and turns truant
To mingle with the quiet of cloud-kissed trees.

It wants to embrace the wet sweet earth
And lie on the dampness, cheek to cheek;
It yearns to shout from the highest hill-tops,
For ever roaming your heaven to seek.

I need no touch to feel your arms;
I need no eyes to see your face;
I gather your light in the cup of my heart,
And drink deep draughts from its secret place.

Let me but enter into your presence,
And the incense of your breath absorb;
Let me be drenched in its utter sweetness,
And feel in my blood its glowing throb.

My only gesture is to give you all,
Whatever I cherish I place in your hand,
For I know that your touch is boundless safety
And my fears shall vanish like script on sand.

11 March 1936

Minnie Canteenwalla's Purple Valley

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:00:00 -0700

Purple Valley (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Purple valley,
My valley of beautiful sleep—
Where ridges
After green-shadowed ridges sweep

Down to the depths—
Where the wilderness-poppy thrives
And saturates the distance—
Where violet oblivion thrives

To outpace
The roaring wild wind’s tread—
Where red-gold sunset
And twilight orchid-shady wed.

27 May 1956

Chubb's Psychic Will

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:05:00 -0700

The Psychic Will (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Friend of the Self and yet self’s enemy!
Thyself the antagonist in the civil strife,
Two-faced God, courting mortality
To plant death’s terror in the breast of life.

He grieves who sees thy mask but not thy play:
Our will that shams the surge of clashing wills,
Our light, self-veiled reversing night and day,
Our saviour grace uplifting as it kills.

Now stirs my parts with thy integral force,
An impulse leaps down in the warring breast
Bearing the strength and joy of its high source.
Dark shapes go scurrying past the shining Guest.

My will now surges from its fountainhead,
All passions lie confounded, still and dead.

Chhub's I toss to you my secret pain

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:13:00 -0700

I toss to you my secret pain (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Daring, I toss to you my secret pain
Held from men’s judgement and their mocking eyes
Beneath your gaze all ancient wrongs lie slain
The avenging angels at your bidding arise.
Seer of secret worlds, encircling all
Tranced in the heart of God’s Immensities
Your ranging spirit to the earth recall
Bring down the Flame impotent in the skies,
And in your soul’s wide sweep of searing light
Burn the karmic seeds in leaping fire,
Pluck with your hands that learned the thunder’s might
The troubled, tangled growth of wild desire
And Heart compassionate, in your close embrace
Reveal anew the miracle of Grace.

Sri Aurobindo's Ocean Oneness

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:20:00 -0700

Sri Aurobindo

Ocean Oneness (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever.

1942

Sri Aurobindo's Blue Bird

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:23:00 -0700

The Blue Bird (Click for RY Deshpande's & Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

I am the bird of God in His blue;
Divinely high and clear
I sing the notes of the sweet and the true
For the god’s and the seraph’s ear.

I rise like a fire from the mortal’s earth
Into a griefless sky
And drop in the suffering soil of his birth
Fire-seeds of ecstasy.

My pinions soar beyond Time and Space
Into unfading Light;
I bring the bliss of the Eternal’s face
And the boon of the Spirit’s sight.

I measure the worlds with my ruby eyes;
I have perched on Wisdom’s tree
Thronged with blossoms of Paradise
By the streams of Eternity.

Nothing is hid from my burning heart;
My mind is shoreless and still;
My song is rapture’s mystic art,
My flight immortal will.

11 November 1935

Sri Aurobindo's The Golden Light

ronjon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:49:00 -0700

The Golden Light (Click for RY Deshpande's and Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Thy golden Light came down into my brain
And the grey worms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
A calm illumination and aflame.

Thy golden Light came down into my throat,
And all my speech is now a tune divine,
A paean-song of thee my single note ;
My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.

Thy golden Light came down into my heart
Smiting my life with Thy eternity;
Now has it grown a temple where Thou art
And all its passions point towards only Thee.

Thy golden Light came down into my feet
My earth is now thy playfield and thy seat.

8 August 1938
22 March 1944

Miscellanea: Early poets of the Aurobinodinan School

ronjon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:41:00 -0700

Miscellanea (Click for RY Deshpande's and Sri Aurobindo's comments.)

Taking Prof Goutam Ghosal’s Indo-Anglian Mystic Poetry as the starting point, I picked up first the poets mentioned by him in it and then extended it to others belonging to Sri Aurobindo’s Department of Poetry. I might conclude this present set of postings with a few more assorted representations from those early poets of the Aurobinodinan School, mostly those who wrote directly under the guidance of the Master-Poet himself. This short anthology, covering some fifty poems, should perhaps give us a quick idea about the direction in which Sri Aurobindo saw poetry moving as a creative means of expression of the possibilities of the spirit. Not only did he see such future possibilities; he shaped them in a definitive way, that they became attainable when something inner or higher in us can open out to the distant but eager Goddess of Inspiration. If the mystico-lyrical-symbolistic is more prominent in this compilation, it must be admitted that there are several other genres also which have remained unrepresented. Perhaps these could be taken up as independent attempts to assess, and to indicate, another vigour and vision that the poetry of the spirit is capable of offering to us. The Overhead realms of poetry constitute world after gleaming world and to move in them is to fulfil our authentic creative urge in the truth and beauty and delight of the supreme Speech herself. If something genuine and felicitous should happen in that direction, then the purpose of the anthology could be said to have been well served. The sciy forum is wide open to such great attempts and it will be wonderful if we have contributions from its members with this objective, it driving our soul and our spirit, contributions original or compilational to promote such perceptions. In the sense of that active participation the sciy will have paved a pioneering path to take the ‘Integral’ itself forward to its meaningful utility and occupation. I believe this is possible and let’s expect that this will happen.

~RYD