S´raddha - Sri Aurobindo Ashram PDF Feb 21, 2013 – The
True Voice of Raga - Murali Sivaramakrishnan
It has appeared to me that Sri Aurobindo had experienced all these
four states Salokya, Samipya, Sarupya, Sayujya — poetically, as evidenced through
his short poems over a period of time. His contention was that poetry works as
an index of the evolving human consciousness, and his own poetic experiences
were qualitative evidences of his spiritual states of awareness and becoming…
I have always argued that Sri Aurobindo was essentially a poet who
ceaselessly attempted to capture in many poetic voices the shades of
transformation that his inner self underwent. His poems are the symbolic
markers in these attempts. There is very little deliberation of cerebral
intervention or attempts to craft new words for newer and newer experiences.
What on the other hand appears to happen is that old and used words which would
normally sound frayed and discoloured due to overuse in other situations here
reappear in renewed light and perhaps in their reborn states. States of being
like salokya, sarupya etc. are too subtle to submit themselves to ordinary
expressions and only a genuine poet who is perfectly attuned to the sound of
sense can rephrase them in different linguistic orders.
Sri Aurobindo is such a type of poet who, when all is said, believed
with all his strength in the power of words to reflect profounder levels of
human experiences. For him the mantra was the ultimate solace for the evolving
human mind in the ever widening dimensions of its spiritual journey. In the
mantra, sound and sense merge and emerge in unison. Vision, experience and
expression constituted the graphic trajectory of this journey. Inspiration and expression
had to occur on a similar scale. Inspiration would hasten the vision while the
word made possible the expression. A choice union of vision and the word
comprised the mantra. Its dimensions were aspects of both the experiential and
the existential. This is where what he termed integral yoga or purna yoga came
in. After all, as he succinctly puts it in his The Synthsis of Yoga, all life
is yoga.
Sri Aurobindo has been considered by many negative critics as being
too intellectual and highbrow to be a poet at all. But then in my view he is
essentially a poet who does not deliberately try to be philosophical in his
writings, simply because poetry and the poetic process of godward becoming are
both two sides of the same paper for him: tear one and you tear the other. His
is poetry of the spirit and the four states of intense spiritual experience as
I have tried to show are qualitatively captured in their subtle variations and
shades as only a major poet could. Craft he certainly has, and as for images
and words he is bound by the unique nature of his preoccupations. Now, where
words stagger under the heftiness of the expression music would step in with
ease and élan. In many ways both Sri Aurobindo and Tyagaraja are attempting to
capture the bliss of spiritual experience and unison. The touch of the divine
alters the state of the mortal mind — words seek newer dimension of meaning and
raga newer dimensions of rasa.
The question that has been tormenting me all along is how far the poet
can reach before addressing that stasis of silence where words falter and fail
— where pure music takes over and Laya, that formless quality of the
force-field of the spirit becomes possible. Perhaps all art genuinely aspires
to that condition of music of the alaukika ananda! As the poet has phrased it:
The peace of God, a great calm immanence
Is now my being’s boundless atmosphere.
S´raddha - Sri Aurobindo Ashram PDF Nov 24, 2012 – Involution
And Evolution: Some Conceptual Issues In The Contexts Of Indian Discourses - Murali
Sivaramakrishnan
In a land like India
with its heterogeneous culture and chequered history, the narratives linking
place and humans are innumerable, couched in diverse perceptions and points of
view, and filtered through multiple discourses over a long period of time.
Geographically, historically and geo-psychically, Indian narratives afford
pluralistic and complex readings. Philosophy, religion and poetry have a deep
history in this part of the world, as much as oppression, domination, and
ideologies of resistance and subversions.
In more ways than one, the emergence of ecologically sensitive
critical theorising in the academic world has signalled a resuscitation of the
idea of intrinsic value in nature that has almost come to be buried under the
rubble of a postindustrial consumerist culture which constantly seeks to
obliterate all differences and moves toward the making of the omnivorous
discourse of globalisation and technocracy as monolithic and one-dimensional.
Perhaps this return to nature could even be mocked as mere retrogression toward
the European Romantic tradition of linking the human and the non-human into
some sort of metaphysical essence. Or ecologically sensitive critical
theorising could also be demonised as a debilitating attempt to reinstate the
grand narratives of a misplaced cultural humanism, on the lines of high
modernist elitism.
A third probability is that of a universally developing urban culture
demonising its own predatory roles in the haloed light of a forfeited primitive
human culture! Either way the very suggestion of the notion of sacred or
spiritual at the heart of nature’s being is sure to invite many raised brows in
our present-day world, especially in India today! Nevertheless the
direction that ecologically sensitive critical theory is currently heading
toward – a direction that implies a search to reinforce idea and action in the
material plane (a union of the spirit and matter in different scale), in terms
of environmental justice— is a sure sign of its not having lost its way in the
dreary desert sand of dead habit…
The theory of involution and evolution that Sri Aurobindo envisioned,
of course, is no theory — it is an experiential vision invoked by a yogi who
had rigorously practised austerity and tapasya (askesis) in the Upanishadic
mode. It is an anticipation of possible human evolution toward an inclusive
union of the material and the spiritual. It is a sign of immense possibilities
open for the human mind provided we are sensitive to the spiritual at the heart
of all being. The sacred of course does no bargain!
Toward a Spiritual
Aesthetics of the Environment: Quality, Space ... by M. Sivaramakrishnan - Jun
14, 2011 – Toward a Spiritual
Aesthetics of the Environment: Quality, Space, and Being in Sri
Aurobindo's Savitri
An essay exploring the spiritual aesthetic of nature based on the epic
poem "Savitri," by Sri Aurobindo is presented. Particular focus is
given to the concepts of quality, space and being within the poem. The revival
of the concept of intrinsic value in nature due to the emergence of
ecocriticism is explained. The author contends that the thoughts in
"Savitri" are aligned with those expressed in Vedas and Upanishads
and that it uses nature as a metaphor for a state of being. The idea of
transformation from the material to the spiritual is tackled.
The Holistic Nature of Spiritual Aesthetic
In the context of discussing the interface between nature and human
nature, it is my contention that one needs to move beyond any kind of limiting
categories in terms of culture, outlook, geography, and history, either of any
western philosophy—or its other eastern philosophy—and adopt a
holistic view. Of course, I fully recognize the inordinate nature of this
claim, fundamentally because any claims to a spiritualized awareness (in terms
of the sacred and the holy) is generally regarded solely as the prerogative of
humans, and the nonhuman world is of course deprived of any such possibilities;
furthermore, the discourse of spirituality itself is often marginalized as
inapplicable in the practical world of everyday affairs and
the life of the senses. Moreover, when I argue for the inclusive vision
inspired by the visionary culture of a … [Full
Text of this Article]
