So was she left alone in the huge wood,
Surrounded by a dim unthinking world,
Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast.
In her vast silent spirit motionless
She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,
Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain:
She rose not yet to face the dreadful god.
Over the body she loved her soul leaned out
In a great stillness without stir or voice,
As if her mind had died with Satyavan.
But still the human heart in her beat on.
Aware still of his being near to hers,
Closely she clasped to her the mute lifeless form
As though to guard the oneness they had been
And keep the spirit still within the frame.
Then suddenly there came on her the change
Which in tremendous moments of our lives
Can overtake sometimes the human soul
And hold it up towards its luminous source…
The voice of life is turned to infinite sounds,
The moments on great wings of lightning come
And godlike thought surprise the mind of earth.   more »

Sri Aurobindo’s Beyond the Silence is essentially free quantitative verse with a predominant dactylic movement. It is being presented here along with a painting by Huta Hindocha which illustrates the following lines of the poem:

One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal. ...   more »

A cosmic mind
Looked out on all from formidable eyes
Contemning all with its unbearable gaze
And with immortal lips and a vast brow
It saw in its immense destroying thought
All things and beings as a pitiful dream,
Rejecting with calm disdain Nature's delight,
The wordless meaning of its deep regard
Voicing the unreality of things
And life that would be for ever but never was
And its brief and vain recurrence without cease,
As if from a Silence without form or name
The Shadow of a remote uncaring god
Doomed to his Nought the illusory universe,
Cancelling its show of idea and act in Time
And its imitation of eternity.
She knew that visible Death was standing there
And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.   more »

When Dr. Nadkarni did me the honour of inviting me to deliver this year’s Guru Pershad Memorial Lecture, I chose a subject I had been thinking about for a fairly long time: Sri Aurobindo’s relationship with and ideas about the Hindu religion. I was unaware when I selected this topic that the theme of our conference was “Spirituality and Life”. As you know, and as the participants in the seminar have brought out, Sri Aurobindo made a distinction between spirituality and religion. Religion, as he wrote in The Human Cycle, could never be an effective “guide and control of human society” because it tends to become confused with “a particular creed, sect, cult, religious society or Church”. The result is intolerance, hatred and persecution. Many of us think of these things as monopolies of the Semitic religions of the West, but Sri Aurobindo reminds us that sectarianism, hatred and occasional persecution have also tarnished the record of “fundamentally tolerant Hinduism”.

If religion plays such a negative role in human life, should it not be rejected altogether? Sri Aurobindo did not think so. The evil, he wrote, “is not in true religion itself, but in its infrarational parts.” True religion or “spirituality” becomes religiosity or, simply, “religion”, under the infrarational pressure of the lower mind and life. If life is to follow the path of evolutionary progression, it has to open itself to the spirit. “It is in spirituality that we must seek for the directing light and the harmonizing law,” he concluded, “and in religion only in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality.”ii The question remains whether religion is really capable of identifying itself with spirituality. In 1918, when he wrote the passages I have quoted, Sri Aurobindo seemed to think that it was possible; but later in his life he became less confident that traditional religion had a significant role to play in the development of integral spirituality. This conclusion came at the end of a long engagement with religion that began in England, took a new turn in Baroda and again in Calcutta, and reached an ambiguous conclusion in Pondicherry. I intend to trace the course of this engagement, but, before I begin, I would like to spell out for you the point of view from which I speak.   more »

The mystic poetry of the Pondicherry school continues to be neglected, partly because of the media betrayal and chiefly of the lack of seriousness with regard to Sri Aurobindo's theory and practice of poetry. About eight decades ago, the theory of mantric poetry was explained first in the Arya, a little known journal to us. The theory was both revivalist and futuristic. To sum up Sri Aurobindo’s arguments: poetry has been deliberately incantatory in the Vedic age; poetry of incantation was returning through kavis like Whitman, Tagore and Carpenter, poetry will be more deliberately mantric in the future. Now some of us have read that, but we have forgotten to check whether the prophecy is turning true or not. Sri Aurobindo himself took the initiative, writing in that line, making poets in that line, correcting and clarifying the deliberate efforts of his poet-disciples like KD Sethna (Amal Kiran), Nirodbaran, JA Chadwick (Arjava), Dilip Kumar Roy, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, and others. He has repeatedly told us that beautiful poetry is beautiful poetry even if it is in the current style and that a new experience needs a new style of expression. I have chosen four living* poets from this school to place them before you, with my observation, and to ask for your opinion about them. The first two, KD Sethna and Nirodbaran, wrote poetry under the direct guidance of Sri Aurobindo. While RY Deshpande and Themis, the mystic poets of the 80s and 90s, have been continuing the tradition under the eyes of Sethna and Nirodbaran.   more »

Beside her Satyavan walked full of joy,
Because she moved with him through his green haunts:
He showed her all the forest's riches, flowers
Innumerable of every odour and hue
And soft thick clinging creepers red and green
And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry
That haunted sweetly distant boughs, replied
With the shrill singer's name more sweetly called.
He spoke of all the things he loved: they were
His boyhood's comrades and his playfellows,
Coevals and companions of his life
Here in this world whose every mood he knew:
Their thoughts which to the common mind are blank
He shared, to every wild emotion felt
An answer. Deeply she listened…   more »

The twin village Hanehalli-Bankikodla in North Kanara, Karnatak, South India, together form a community of people coming from different castes and religions. Literature, folk art, spiritual lore, music and sports keep thriving here. Just to the north of this village, the Gangavali River joins the Arabian Sea. The town of Gokarna, just to the south, is known as Kashi of the South and is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. The surrounding Sahyadri Mountains hug the Arabian sea; the open fields provide lot of recreational opportunities to the locals. It has creeks, and shallow ponds, and bridges vulnerable to rainy season. For religious or spiritual people, there are lots of temples, Churches and Masjids to worship in.

It is a place rich in culture and education. During the British rule in India, the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins built the Anandrashram High School (1943) for their children, but a majority of them eventually moved out to Mumbai. The younger population is now moving out of village, they preparing for the careers of their choices. As the younger generations are moving out, the older generations, especially the retired communities, have started coming back to the village.

Anandashram High School is one of the oldest schools in Karwar, The Jai Hind High School Ankola and the Gibbs High School, Kumta, are other two schools. It has continued to do great work among weaker sections of the society. To keep the lamp of knowledge burning, the then leaders of Chitrapur Saraswats established the Rural Education Society (RES) and took the task of spreading education to the deserved here and in the surrounding villages. From then on, the School has been making steady progress in its curricular and co-curricular activities; in fact, it has given to society innumerable scholars. …   more »

Now it was here in this great golden dawn
By her still sleeping husband lain she gazed
Into her past as one about to die
Looks back upon the sunlit fields of life
Where he too ran and sported with the rest,
Lifting his head above the huge dark stream
Into whose depths he must for ever plunge.
All she had been and done she lived again.
The whole year in a swift and eddying race
Of memories swept through her and fled away
Into the irrecoverable past.
Then silently she rose and, service done,
Bowed down to the great goddess simply carved
By Satyavan upon a forest stone.
What prayer she breathed her soul and Durga knew. ...   more »

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon
Where Shankaracharya's tiny temple stands
Facing Infinity from Time's edge, alone
On the bare ridge ending earth's vain romance.

This is the opening stanza of the sonnet, illustrated by Huta Hindocha in the following painting.

sabda e-news

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Eminent Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola on the status of research on the undeciphered script, the new Dholavira finds, whether the Indus script was a system of writing, the Dravidian-Aryan question, the present state of Sanskrit and Vedic studies in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and the Tirukkural.

Asko Parpola’s field of specialisation is Sanskrit, especially Vedic Sanskrit, and the Indus Valley Civilisation, particularly its script, on which he is one of the world’s leading authorities. This renowned Indologist from Finland has done significant research on the Sama Veda, having studied it under the guidance of a Namboothiri scholar of eminence from Panjal, Kerala. Dr. Parpola is Professor Emeritus of Indology and South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. About 4,000 seals have survived from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which flourished around 2600-1900 BC. The two volumes he co-edited, Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (Helsinki, 1987 & 1991), are considered the standard work in the field. His study concludes that the Indus script encodes a Dravidian language. The Indus script is perhaps the most important among ancient systems of writing that are undeciphered. Excerpts from an interview with Dr. Parpola, who was in Chennai recently to deliver a lecture at the Indus Research Centre at the Roja Muthiah Research Library. …

Indus Script

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… Let me now say just a word or two about India’s Spiritual Destiny: Its Inevitability and Potentiality by Mangesh Nadkarni. Nadkarni had presented with his autograph a copy of this book to me on 19 August 2006. The book had been published a year and a half ago by Sri Aurobindo Society in collaboration with UBS Publishers and Distributors. The book is dedicated to Nirodbaran and Amal Kiran, the two grand centenarians of the Age of Sri Aurobindo, and it carries the frontispiece statement from Sri Aurobindo that, if India is to fulfil her true destiny, there must first be attained inner as well as outer liberation and change. It is on this basis is built Nadkarni’s thesis while examining “the issues currently being debated in the media and seminars and conferences at various places in the country.” Nadkarni’s concern is for us to have faith in our own destiny which in the present commercial age is getting lost, that we are becoming copyists of other modes of life, alien to us, hurting in the process our own psyche. He boldly asserts that “religion is one of the most attractive masks of the collective ego and it may be the last hurdle the human mind has to transcend…” What is necessary is to remain committed to spiritual goals while “discarding the religious packaging in which religion has come to us.” A free and liberated mind, with the intuition to transcend itself is a possibility and it is that which must be nourished assiduously by us. While we have to have a modern India, she should not negate the ancient values that saw her through the difficult ages. This synthesis, this new discovery of her soul, is the only assurance of her destiny in overcoming the difficulties and in making authentic progress. To quote Nadkarni: “Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind. But it is a mistake to think spirituality is only about the supra-sensible... Spirituality must flourish on earth and touch every aspect of human life and transform it with its vast creative possibilities.” That is the Aurobindonian message and Nadkarni carried it wherever he lectured, within India or abroad. On one occasion he perorated: “If the traditional Church and Marxism haven’t delivered, a spirituality which is sufficiently secular may be the answer.” I’ll only add that there are no grades of secularism in true spirituality. The discovery of the truth of the individual and the truth of the cosmic working, of collective life, based on foundational principles of Existence and Awareness and Love and Happiness is the secret urge in us and it’s that which must be promoted. …   more »

I had one of those experiences that mark one's life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna came—a gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances. He was all light, all dancing: 'You see, I will be there this evening during Darshan.' And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, 'I will be there, you see, and there'll be no room for you.' ...   more »

Nirodbaran about Nadkarni’s Savitri talks: “As much as the talks it was the atmosphere created by them that was the magnet. I felt a Presence pervading the room. The reason that struck me for it, if any reason can be given for an occult phenomenon, is that, by the lecturer’s own admission, Savitri was a madness and a passion with him. If that was so, the Aurobindonian ‘God-touch’ was bound to be there. And the passion was felt in every word, each expression of his, either in interpretation or in elucidation or in reading of relevant passages. This made everything living. His fluent, spontaneous delivery with a masterly command over the language combined with his easy and simple manner accounted further for the Presence, and the great success resulting from it came extra graceful because of his handsome appearance.” …   more »

Her being rose into unreachable heights
And found no end of its journey in the Self.
It plunged into the unfathomable deeps
And found no end to the silent mystery
That held all world within one lonely breast,
Yet harboured all creation's multitudes.
She was all vastness and one measureless point,
She was a height beyond heights, a depth beyond depths,
She lived in the everlasting and was all
That harbours death and bears the wheeling hours.
All contraries were true in one huge spirit
Surpassing measure, change and circumstance…
Her spirit saw the world as living God…
From this she rose where Time and Space were not;
The superconscient was her native air,
Infinity was her movement's natural space;
Eternity looked out from her on Time. …   more »