Here is a quick selection of some of the poems by Sri Aurobindo written during his last ten-fifteen years, they presenting some of his spiritual experiences. These are apart from his rich and wonderful ‘autobiographical’ Savitri. It is sad that The Lives of Sri Aurobindo does not take any serious cognisance of these writings of his; instead it makes indiscreet remarks by saying that Savitri is a “fictional creation”.
Thy golden
Light came down into my brain
And the
grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright
reply to Wisdom’s occult plane,
A calm
illumination and a flame.
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
[This
sonnet describes a major realization in the yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo. Here
is a decisive entry of the supramental Light and Force in his physical. Sri
Aurobindo called the physical’s mind opening to the Supramental as the Mind of
Light. The sonnet originally written on 8 August 1938 was lightly touched up in
1944.]
The Godhead
I sat
behind the dance of Danger’s hooves
In the
shouting street that seemed a futurist’s whim,
And
suddenly felt, exceeding Nature’s grooves,
In me,
enveloping me the body of Him.
Above my
head a mighty head was seen,
A face
with the calm of immortality
And an
omnipotent gaze that held the scene
In the
vast circle of its sovereignty.
His hair
was mingled with the sun and breeze;
The world
was in His heart and He was I:
I housed
in me the Everlasting’s peace,
The
strength of One whose substance cannot die.
The moment
passed and all was as before;
Only that
deathless memory I bore.
13
September 1939
[In the
first year of his stay in
In a town
of gods, housed in a little shrine,
From
sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me,—
A living
Presence deathless and divine,
A Form
that harboured all infinity.
The great
World-Mother and her mighty will
Inhabited
the earth’s abysmal sleep,
Voiceless,
omnipotent, inscrutable,
Mute in
the desert and the sky and deep.
Now veiled
with mind she dwells and speaks no word,
Voiceless,
inscrutable, omniscient,
Hiding
until our soul has seen, has heard
The secret
of her strange embodiment,
One in the worshipper and the immobile shape,
A beauty
and mystery flesh or stone can drape.
13
September 1939
[It is
reported that in the beginning of 1905 Sri Aurobindo with his friends KG
Deshpande and Khaserao Jadhav went to Chandod, a small town on the banks of
Here is a
description of a vision that Sri Aurobindo had during his
Sri
Aurobindo, in one of his letters written much later seems to be referring to
this experience in the following words: “…Or, you stand before a
Brahmananda
a yogi who was living at Ganganath temple on the banks of the
Adwaita
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.
Around me
was a formless solitude:
All had
become one strange Unnamable,
An unborn
sole Reality world-nude,
Topless
and fathomless, for ever still.
A Silence
that was Being’s only word,
The
unknown beginning and the voiceless end
Abolishing
all things moment-seen or heard,
On an
incommunicable summit reigned,
A lonely Calm
and void unchanging Peace
On the
dumb crest of Nature’s mysteries.
19 October
1939
[In April
1903, Sri Aurobindo was on a tour of Kashmir and visited the hill of
Shankaracharya, also known as the Takht-i-Suleman—Seat of Solomon. Here is a
vivid experience of the vacant Infinite described in this sonnet, Adwaita.]
The
After
unnumbered steps of a hill-stair
I saw upon
earth's head brilliant with sun
The
immobile Goddess in her house of stone
In a
loneliness of meditating air.
Wise were
the human hands that set her there
Above the
world and Time's dominion;
The Soul
of all that lives, calm, pure, alone,
Revealed
its boundless self mystic and bare.
Our body
is an epitome of some Vast
That masks
its presence by our humanness.
In us the secret Spirit can indite
A page and summary of the Infinite,
A nodus of
Eternity expressed
Live in an
image and a sculptured face.
21 October 1939
[This sonnet also recollects the experience during the
same visit to
The Inner Fields
There is a brighter ether than this blue
Pretence of an enveloping heavenly vault,
A deeper greenness than this laughing assault1
Of emerald rapture pearled with tears of dew.
Immortal spaces of cerulean hue
Are in our reach and fields without this fault
Of drab brown earth and streams that never halt
In their deep murmur which white flowers strew
Floating like stars upon a strip of sky.
This world behind is made of truer stuff
Than the manufactured tissue of earth’s
grace.
There we can walk and see the gods go by
And sip from Hebe’s cup nectar enough
To make for us heavenly limbs and
deathless face.
13 March 1947
All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema’s vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still,
Replaces all,—what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either .to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
Sri Aurobindo
about Nirvana
It tries to state the experience as precisely and
overtly as possible. He writes:
In the sonnet Nirvana,
I have put exactly what Nirvana is. One is at liberty to use any symbol or
image, but what one says must be very clear through the symbol or the image.
Say, for example, those lines from the Rig Veda:
Condition after condition is born,
Covering after covering becomes
conscious;
In the lap of the Mother he sees.
Here images are used but it is very clear to anyone
knowing the symbols what is meant and that it is a result of genuine experience
or take another example:
The Seers climb Indra like a ladder,
Along with the ascent all that remains to
be done becomes clear.
It is an extraordinary passage, expressing perfectly
the experience. Do you see that? Indra is the Divine Mind and, as one ascends
higher and higher, whatever has still to be done grows visible and distinct.
One who has had that experience can testify how perfectly true it is and that
it must have been written from experience, not from any power of imagination.
[First published in the Calcutta Review in October 1934. The manuscript is not dated, but
it was written sometime in the same year.]