The Malabar Whistling Thrush is a flautist of unbridled creativity but, given the wanton destruction of its habitat, how much longer will we hear its music? Mystical whistles float out of the depths of the dark rainforest, through mercurial mist and morning air. The notes are continuous, almost breathless, yet gracefully slow and pleasing. This is no repetitive tune—it is an entrancing melody of ever-varying notes that rise and fall in an unpredictable series of undulating tones. In this forest—the notes seem to suggest—lives a flautist of the most unbridled creativity.
There is a query about a term that appears in Record of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo has mentioned the term—solarithm: a new mathematical figure. It appears at two places under the heading of Lipi. What is this figure solarithm?
My little world is a flower of knowledge, rose of flame,
Its outward gaze is the universe garbed in a multitude,
Its inward gaze the unique’s play that became
The mystery in the night to rise to its heavenhood.
The more the struggle becomes material the more has to be the calm to face it, calm, nirvātatā of the luminous spiritual. To strive, to fight, to make a great effort and not to disappear in the state of blissfulness is the only way to tackle the difficulty. As far as the physical body is concerned it is not a higher intervention that will change it; it has to be from within. Peace and Calm, śānti and nirvātatā in the physical are the needed support for that to happen. It is the peace which acts in the material vibration. Put the Peace, feel the Peace, live the Peace, know the Peace—the Peace, the Peace. And the work will be done.
“Infosys is synonymous with creating India’s Silicon Plateau,” said Sonia Gandhi on the occasion of the inauguration of Infosys Technologies’ second Global Education Centre at the Mysore Campus founded by Narayana Murthy. It is a convincing demonstration of what Indian talent can accomplish in the modern world, not only in the modern world but in creating the modern world itself. Apart from commerce and economics and wealth-generation, the significant achievement is to be measured in terms of the subtle changes that are coming in the social organizations themselves. Such a transformational process is slow but also has the strength of impacting the very future of the country, and possibly to some extent the wide world around. It is rightly said that Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services and many IT companies have changed the lives of millions of Indians and propelled the Indian economy to record-breaking growth. But this might also give rise to introspective questions, as to why this has happened only in the field of Information Technology and not in other industries which have in fact decades of standing, and will this leadership be sustained in the future that could be harsh and competitive. The rest of the world is not going to sleep, and it would definitely strive to snatch away this IT-pot from our hands. Is it also not true that IT success is quite dependent mainly upon the American markets that it is at present catering to? There is therefore present the politico-economic vulnerability factor too.
Truth, greatness, universal orde, strength. consecration, creative fervour, spiritual exaltation, the sacrifice, support the earth. May this earth, the mistress of that which was and shall be, prepare for us a broad domain! The earth that has heights, and slopes, and great plains, that supports the plants of manifold virtue, free from the pressure that comes from the midst of men, she shall spread out for us, and fit. herself for us! The earth upon which the sea, and the rivers and the waters, upon which food and the tribes of men have arisen, upon which this breathing, moving life exists, shall afford us precedence in drinking! The earth whose are the four regions of space, upon which food and the tribes of men have arisen, which supports the manifold breathing, moving things, shall afford us cattle and other possessions also! The earth upon which of old the first men unfolded themselves, upon which the gods overcame the Asuras, shall procure for us kinds of cattle, horses, and fowls, good fortune, and glory! …
This Hymn should also be the guiding light for the inconvenient truth we are facing about the ecological fate of the earth. The Gaia hypothesis is an ecological hypothesis proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth in a preferred homeostasis.
Keats has found a clue in thought and imagination, but not quite its realization in the spiritual idea, has already its imaginative, sensuous, something of its intellectual suggestion, but not yet what the spirit in him is trying to reveal, its mystically intellectual, mystically sensuous, mystically imaginative vision, form and word. The intimation of it in his work, his growing endeavour to find it and the unfulfilled promise of its discovery and unique fullness of expression are the innermost Keats and by it he belongs in spirit to these prophetic, but half-foiled singers of the dawn. He lives more than any other poet in the very temple of Beauty, traverses its sculptured and frescoed courts with a mind hued and shaped to her forms and colours and prepares, but is never permitted, to enter the innermost sanctuary. The time had not yet come when these spiritual significances could be more than hinted. Therefore Keats and Shelley were taken before their powers could fully expand, Byron led far out of the path, Blake obscured in his own remoteness, Coleridge and Wordsworth drawn away to lose the poet and seer in the mere intellectual mind. All wandered round their centre of inspiration, missed something needed and stopped or were stopped short. Another age had to arrive which worshipped other and lesser godheads.
Once Nandlal-babu asked Krishnalal, “Do you see that tree standing over there?” He then told him to make a painting of it. Krishnalal within a few hours was back with the replica of the painting. Seeing the beautiful painting, Nandlal-babu said, “I asked you to paint the picture of the tree standing over there. Have you observed it in the sun-light and moon-light? seen it standing there in the darkness and in full light? Have you observed it in Vasant and Grishma? in Varsha, Shishir and Hemant? [the sixth season in India is Sharad] Have you felt its mood in sorrow and in happiness, while standing throughout the year? Now, observe these and paint again!”
I was fortunate to play for Bill Skelton’s 85th birthday celebration in October 2008 hosted by Colgate University. A number of his former students, including the president of a dot-com company, Professors of music professors and admirers, came from all over the country to celebrate that day. Wearing his dhoti and kurta he played chakkani raja on the nagaswaram, and showed the videotapes of his days in India to take us all down memory lane.
Daloobhau, last when you visited us
The country-summer was at its fiercest,
But you braved the feral heat
And brought for us a basketful of mangoes,
The proud fruit of your Tanda,
As if warm urging hearts
Ripened in life to superior wisdom
And gave to it a sturdier wholesomeness.
The Mother spoke of two aspects of her work: Ascent and Descent. The first consisted of realising the highest possible transcendental states, akin to the Vedic climbing up of the ascending slopes of heaven, ranges and ranges rising above the worlds of Ignorance. She says that it was a much easier task and she accomplished it at a very early stage of her spiritual life. In fact already by 1911 she had discovered the Mantra and spoke of making a resolution to raise ourselves “towards the Supreme Light… so that it may pervade us entirely and illumine with its great brilliance our minds and hearts, all our thoughts and our actions.” The path of Descent was a much tougher one and she took it up after meeting Sri Aurobindo in 1914. But the real decisive work on it began after 1956. This is the work related to the manifestation of the Supreme Light even in this world of Ignorance.
The Redwood Owl They can grow to be the tallest trees on Earth. Redwoods can produce lumber, support jobs, safeguard clear waters, and provide refuge for countless forest species. If we let them.
… There were among others such penances as were never heard of or about which nothing was read anywhere. Some of them were beyond imagination. What was seen in the beginning is even beyond the scope of writing. Some were sitting on the ground, some on water, some even in the air were meditating in Padmasana. Some were doing all sorts of Asanas. Some were meditating on slabs of ice; some were lying on beds of nails. Some were simply sitting in Padmasana. Some were standing only on one leg. Some were dancing with song and music, while some were silently doing the same. Some were hanging with tree-branches clasped between their legs, with fire blazing below them. Some were naked, moving about, some standing still on one leg. They had big tridents in their hands.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. …
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
At last the “day of destiny dawned”. On 24 April 1956 in the morning, Nishikanto was given a sponge-bath. Volunteers came with a stretcher to take him to the Meditation Hall for the Mother’s Darshan. The Mother too had sent word that she would come down in the Meditation Hall after the Darshan and at that time no one should be present near about. At 10:30 in the morning Nishikanto was taken to the Meditation Hall by the volunteers. The Mother came downstairs. The stretcher was raised knee-high so that the Mother could bless him. He stretched out his feeble hands which the Mother “clutched and drew them into her own and silently smiled into his wide open supplicating eyes”. Suddenly Nishikanto, pointing to his chest, said: “Mother, your foot here.” The stretcher was put down and the Mother placed her right foot over his heart and Nishikanto pressed it with his eager hands. In the evening when Nirodbaran went to see Nishikanto, he could notice that the feverish restlessness was no longer present in him; on being asked how he felt, Nishikanto replied: “The hell-fire within has subsided.” When asked how he felt when the Mother had placed her foot on his chest, he said: “Ah, the relief! the body seemed to have become ice-cold. Every cell was soothed with peace and peace.”
There is talent; there is plenty; there are financial, intellectual, emotional resources. There is also the call to go forth and embrace the beckoning future with open arms. But it has to be accompanied with the inventive and creative spirit. Something of one’s own has to emerge and put into it, into that future. Unfortunately, not much of that is happening. We are by and large still imitative. We are, even now after decades of Independence, working with the colonial mindset. Perhaps Macaulay did not imagine that the impact of his ‘education’ would be so far reaching. The most glaring lacunae we witness in our individual and national life are of discipline and perfection in work, lack of attention to details. We are great inventors of software, but our bank accounts come with faulty entries. Perhaps the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull should give us a lesson or two—that there is no heaven but a better world is found through perfection which lies in quality that can be felt and cognized by some kind of a perception of the refined and subtle, bringing out a thing that it really is. There is a beyond to all we do; to strive for it is the ceaseless pursuit of perfection. The satisfaction of the bird is not in the sky in which it flies or with what speed it flies, but in the wonder of flight itself. The joy of a student is not in how many subjects he studies or what rank he gets in an examination; it is in the study itself. Therein the belief is also that he will get the reward in life in one way or the other, and there need not be any doubt about it. That is the ultimate for every kind of our occupation and the real satisfaction, the real feat, the triumph lies in realising it. Such could be the most idealistic approach and the chances are that the practical world will simply pooh-pooh it, if not call it naïve to dismiss it. But such are the few who can give character to a society, who help it in many direct and indirect ways to grow and prosper. If they are absent perhaps nothing might be availing to it.
