I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

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It may be noted that Nishikanto’s poetry doesn’t owe its status to the spiritual alone. His output was of a diverse character, and had many technical qualities. There are ornamentation, aestheticism and symbolism. He is known for his penchant for symbolist poetry. We find that thought, image and dream elements are reflected through symbols in the light of his vision. His poetry achieved quality not only because of these experiences as a spiritual seeker, but also because they are combined with his subtle sensibility proper to an artist and his literary technique. This imagist has seen the world and life through the eyes of a mystic, a visionary.

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The discovery of the atomic nucleus was a momentous event in the history of science. It also turned out to be more momentous in the history of the world. Nuclear fission and the possibility of using its secret for war purposes were a very definite eventuality. Hitler’s Germany had already initiated a programme to tap this power for producing a weapon that could prove to be the most decisive. France as early as 1940 had succumbed and the future of the human race and human civilisation were at stake. Winston Churchill in his House of Commons speech on 18 June 1940 said: “What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ” Could that be the voice of man speaking in the darkness of the civilisational night?

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That was the time the Luftwaffe bombs rained down, five minutes before the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire at a Polish garrison in Danzig (modern-day Gdansk), triggering six years of warfare around the world.

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Young Sudhir Sarkar Photo from the Police File
The above photo of young Sudhir-da was taken by the police on the eve of the deportation to Andaman Jail, 1909. Sudhir-da by a clever ruse saved Nolini-da from the same fate but he and Barin-da were taken for life to Kala-pani, the Black Waters. The freedom of India was obtained by the sacrifice of these people! Shall we forget that? Sudhir Sarkar was Sri Aurobindo’s body-guard during the Bande Mataram period. It is interesting to note that Sri Aurobindo’s father Dr KD Ghosh and Sudhir-da’s father Dr Prasanna Kumar Sarkar were class-friends.

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Sophie met her doppel-gänger, bold and fair,
Who at once was everywhere;
She even saw in the crawling little ant
A huge star glowing as in heaven;
Its numinous brow had majesty
That overflowed in heart and belly and feet;
Presently in a moment of perfect entirety
Sophie walked through the door marked “seven”
When in a big hall the holy wraith of Kant
Gave her the things in themselves to eat.

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This is the fifth in the series of the last set of eight articles Sri Aurobindo wrote during 1949-50 and it had appeared first in the 21 February 1950 issue of the Bulletin d' Education Physique. Sri Aurobindo has been all along yogically maintaining that the supramental Light and Force must depend upon earth. But what would be the consequences of this descent for humanity? In what way will the lot of this race born of ignorance and inconsciennce change? But if Supermind is a supreme creative Force its coming here is not going to be merely an addition of another element in the working of the earth nature. There will be a possibility of developing higher means and instrumentalities to pass over the last borders of Ignorance into a higher knowledge. There would be, to begin with, “a new mental being not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it, training life and body to reflect and hold something of the supramental light, power and bliss, aspiring to release the secret divinity into self-finding and self-fulfilment and self-poise, aspiring towards the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to receive and bear the descent of the divine light and power, fitting itself to be a vessel of the divine Life.”

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A large number of Indians have a made a mark in foreign countries, have proved highly successful in their fields of specializations as well as in business enterprises. The question is: can their success be called an Indian success? It could be the success of Indians but it cannot be called an Indian success. It is here, in India the country of one’s birth and upbringing, that we expect authentic Indian contribution to come in a unique way. But it is often said that for doing science, for instance, in India conditions are not very favourable. But then what about those Indians who are favourably placed in the western milieu? They have made a mark in the American society, but then can their success be called Indian success? The frank and plain answer is: in the least; at the best debatable, perhaps. We do not see distinctive Indian-ness in their approach. The faculty of rational mind and its application in solving professional problems has to be developed no doubt, but there has to be also an intuitive perception which brings understanding and knowledge of another kind that cannot be provided by reason alone. If the individuality of an individual lies in the uniqueness of the sense of his perception, the same applies to the nation having its own national soul and national character, national swabhāva. If there is the German-ness of a German, English-ness of an Englishman, Japanese-ness of a Japanese, Russian-ness of a Russian, American-ness of an American, there has to be Indian-ness of an Indian whether he is in India or elsewhere. In the absence of this ‘-ness’ we can only say that there no awakening of the individual’s soul has taken place. It would only indicate one is abroad to make one’s living and not to live in the sense of life’s nation-born character.

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I can’t forget the time I outbid Sotheby’s for a collection of Cosway bindings signed by CB Currie, and the day I acquired a magnificent jewelled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe of Wordsworth poems, adorned with l40 precious stones. What I’ve enjoyed most is putting whole libraries together. It’s been a privilege to be surrounded by such fine books, and to commune with them on a daily basis. I’ve been lucky, but also feel a sense of destiny that I was meant to do this.

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Here is an example from Savitri about the efficacy of Yajna. It pertains to the life-and-death dialogue between incarnate Savitri and the immortal Death. Death has snatched the soul of Satyavan and is on the way to his abode in dark and deep South. Savitri is following him and demanding back the soul to do the divine work upon the earth, something which she cannot do without it. But Death is unyielding and the occult clash of force against force goes on interminably. Savitri is at the last turn which can be negotiated only when the might of the Divine becomes operative in her.

She was standing alone on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers, tells us Narad who has vision of all the three parts of time, past-present-future, trīkāladŗiśtī. She, carrying the world’s future with her, must conquer or fail. On a last desperate verge, close to extinction’s edge, alone with Death, she must fight. In that fight all is lost or all is won for Man. In that tremendous silence, in that dire ultimate hour in which the entire fate of the world was hanging, alone she must conquer or alone she must suffer defeat. The human Divine is poised for a mighty Divine leap.

Physical transformation is victory and crown of the earthly evolution coming in the wake of a bitter fight against the archetypal Force of Darkness. Savitri has to prepare herself for it.

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I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

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The Lives of Sri Aurobindo published last year by the Columbia University Press dismisses Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri as a possible source for getting some idea about the yoga-sadhana of Sri Aurobindo. Here is what we have on p. 398: “Because his talks entirely ceased and his correspondence virtually so, there are no first-hand accounts of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana after 1941. One is tempted to mine Savitri to make up for the lack. Sri Aurobindo’s accounts of Aswapathy’s voyage through the worlds of matter, life, and mind before reaching 'the kingdoms of the greater knowledge,' and Savitri’s transit through the 'inner countries' until she reaches the inmost soul certainly are based on his life and the Mother’s experiences; but the poem is a fictional creation, and Sri Aurobindo said explicitly that 'the circumstances of this life have nothing to do with' its plot. [ref: 144, Letters on Poetry and Art, p. 276] …” Let us examine this in some details.

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During the course of his travels, Nishikanto came to Katwa where he took refuge under a Vaishnava sage in his Ashram. The sage developed an instant liking for the young man and Nishikanto too was impressed by his radiant personality. He told Nishikanto that he could stay in the Ashram as long as he wanted but at the same time he warned him of the physical sufferings his body would be subjected to. Nishikanto’s recurring fever got completely cured in the Ashram and out of gratitude he began to do errands for the sage whom he began to look upon as his Guru. The more he got the Guru’s company the more attracted he began to get. One day Nishikanto beseeched the sage to give him initiation, but the Guru replied: “No, I can’t give you the initiation you seek. Do you know whom I’m seeing behind you? There is Rabindranth Tagore and there is a Mighty Person and a Mighty Mother. They are your destination. My initiation is not for you.”

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This is the fourth in the series of the last set of eight articles Sri Aurobindo wrote during 1949-50 and it had appeared first in the 24 November 1949 issue of the Bulletin d' Education Physique (Bulletin of Physical Education). Even as the endeavour of the evolutionary unfoldment is towards the higher gnostic life, there has to first also come about a radical or fundamental spiritual change of our being; there has to be a spiritual change preparing the way for supramental manifestation which in fact is in the very nature of things inevitable. Those who are open to this change,—for no change is forced on anyone,—the difficulties of their nature will be removed by this higher consciousness; the life of the mental being, for instance, could lend itself increasingly to the working of the supramental or the truth-force. The so-called human concept of human potential will have a sense only when it recognizes the trend and meaning that is embodied in the principle of manifestation of the higher powers of the spirit in this world of material ignorance and material imperfection. To be more and more receptive to that working is the best beginning, and that is the expectation from the ready humanity.

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"I have been blessed to be part of a wonderful family. Both of my parents, particularly my mother, kept our Catholic faith at the center of our lives. That gift of faith has sustained and nurtured, and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. ..."

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Thus spoke the statues that were made of wax;
And one said, “This is fundamentalism,
Enemy of Enlightenment.” The next,
“We must script biographies, fill up racks
With the lives of yogis.” And so on. But Prism
Of Mind—can it break open the sealed text?

The sonnet was prompted by four interviews related with the controversial The Lives of Sri Aurobindo; these interviews were published elsewhere and, in the context of the composition, it is not necessary to know the source.

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