Revelation
Someone leaping from the rocks
Past me ran with wind-blown
locks
Like a startled bright surmise
Visible to mortal eyes,–
Just a cheek of frightened rose
That with sudden beauty glows,
Just a footstep like the wind
And a hurried glance behind,
And then nothing,– as a thought
Escapes the mind ere it is
caught.
From behind the veil ran out.
What is he saying it about? Did Aurobindo write it before
his tryst with Narayan darshana or after? But perhaps it is of the latter
period as because the yogi here relates and refers to the story of his mystical
experiences of registering some supernatural footfall going past hurriedly?
Maharshi Aurobindo is not only a yogi, a sadhaka, an ashramite, a poet, a
philosopher, but a nationalist, a patriot, a freedom fighter; an educationist,
a reformer, a pamphleteer; a teacher, a guru and the mind and vision behind the
Pondicherry Ashrama. We cannot think of Aurobindo without the Ashrama and his
ashramites. To discuss him is to discuss his correspondences with his disciples
as the critics of Aurobindoean literature.
Revelation as a poem is one of those poems which can charm
us with their mystical note and flashes, meditative strain and reflection,
spiritual insight and delving, transcendental vision and realization,
supernatural visualization and realization. A small poem it is a marvel of
poetic expression. The poet undergoes strange feelings and emotions while lost
in his thoughts and ideas, while meditating upon or taking to the recourse of
sadhna. The yogi marks someone leaping from the rocks and running him past with
wind-blown locks and matted hair. Who can be it? Who can be as such? Who the
persona? Like a startled bright surmise, visible to mortal eyes? Who can be the
one running him past, who can be as such is a matter of reckoning? Who the
being, a frightened one with blushing cheeks and sudden jerk coming and going
away hurriedly? Just like the wind with the footstep of it and a hurried glance
cast behind, with all this the human or inhuman being passing which is but a
mystical experience. Those who do experimentation with the Divine, those who do
the sadhna undergo such an experience. If to prove, these cannot be proved,
these can just be felt within. Once crossed by gone forever. The experience is
just like the escape of thoughts as they crop up and vanish away before being
caught and put down on paper. Perhaps someone of the heavenly rout from behind
the veil has he run out. When we talk of the Divine Messenger it may be like
that of John Milton, thousands at His work and when we think in terms of escape
from reality, it may be Keatsian and Coleridgean elements as there lie in escape,
fancy and imagination in them. It is not Don Juan or Kubla Khan’s dream, but
the test and ordeal of sadhna.
Revelation as a poem is but a realization of the
semi-divine, the spirit-like force. It is a matter of feeling. Those who are
experimental otherwise may feel, realize it. What it goes into the levels of consciousness,
who can but say it?
Who is it showing the face and running out? Is he a mortal
figure or something as illusory, hallucinatory? This is but a matter of feeling
as when one starts experimenting with, illusions and hallucinations take him
over.
The first two lines start the revelation beautifully:
Someone leaping from the rocks
Past me ran with wind-blown
locks
Generally, the sadhakas select a lonely place for the
sadhna. It may in the midst of Nature or on the crematorium ground or at some
nook and corner. When in the course of sadhna, one passes through several tests
and ordeals felt mystically, supernaturally and psychically. But one needs to
follow the course of action with utter restraint and logical faculty otherwise
blind rites and rituals may sway the feet.
Something is true, but it is difficult to confirm so is the
case here with the mystical figure, the shadowy presence fleeing, striding and
escaping from after showing itself:
Like a startled bright surmise
Visible to mortal eyes,–
While going through the poem, we get reminded of the ghost
scene of Hamlet and the line ‘Life is but a walking shadow’ as used in Macbeth.
The image is like that of a frightened rose glowing with beauty:
Just a cheek of frightened rose
That with sudden beauty glows,
The poet makes it clear rightly at the end of the poem,
whose is it the mighty presence jolting it all, who the shadowy figure going
with a jerk:
Someone of the heavenly rout
From behind the veil ran out.
At that time one should not fear and if one fears, it will
have a negative impact upon. The best way is to feel and realize it without
sharing the tete-e-tete, vis-à-vis with.
After reading the poem, one may ask in different ways. Who is
the persona under discussion? What his purpose? How the feeling? Is it an
illusion, a hallucination? Is it magical? Is there something of hocus-pocus, black
art in it? Is it delirium? How to answer all that?
How to relate to tantra-mantra? Who can say who is what? What
to say about the mystical experience which is purely personal and which cannot be
proved? Who was it the agent, the spiritual creature, the frightful fellow?
Was he a yaksharaj? A spirit? A semi-god? Sometimes people
sight them so. Sometimes reminiscences and remembrances of gone-by people
mesmerize it the memory lines. It is very difficult to say it exactly. Do the
astronauts or the airmen not see the aliens or sight some mysterious things in
the space? Those may be aliens with their hovercrafts alighting, holding
parleys with mystical things of the mystical surface and whispering with the
stars in a strange tale of their own as these are but in also spooky stories of
narration.
The word, ‘someone’ adds suspense and mystery with regard
to the persona under askance. The ‘leaping from the rocks’ and ‘running past’
adds to furthermore to the element mystical and spiritual suspicion,
aggravating the suspense to a heightened state of purview and reflection. The ‘wind-blown
locks’ gives a strange look to the myth already doing the rounds. And we doubt,
who can be it the person? Definitely not a rebel of Shelley, not a
revolutionary of Milton, not an addict recovering of Ginsberg too, maybe it a
transcendental character of Emerson. There may be something of Shelley’s The
Cloud and Ode to the West Wind and something of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey the
secluded domain and the hermits into the hills. It passes in such a way that one
will be frightened to see or feel it going. As a thought comes and slides way
so was the presence of the creature. The words, ‘a startled bright surmise, a
cheek of frightened rose, that with sudden beauty glows’, are of a different
guage as these tell of something of the rosy spectre divine.
The below-referenced two lines speak of the
swift-footedness and the glide of the footsteps hurrying past:
Just a footstep like the wind
And a hurried glance behind,
The spiritual creatures wait it not as their presence so
much proven as well as so much debated:
And then nothing,– as a thought
Escapes the mind ere it is
caught.
To see the things in the version of Charles Lamb, how would
he say in dream Children: A Reverie while visiting his great house in Norfolk where
the great grandmother Mrs.Field used to live as caretaker:
“Then I told how she was used to sleep
by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that
an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the
great staircase near where she slept, but she said “those innocents would do
her no harm”; and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she—and
yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to
look courageous.”
Whatever be the discussion, Revelation as a poem is like
one from the cluster of small poems dealing with the mystical flicker and
flashes experienced by him. Sometimes the people undergo such an experience
which is found beyond explanation as it turns into a matter of the psyche. The
sadhakas and mystics often tell about that experienced or seen by them. Such an
experience gives inner delight. How to bear down, view it awe-struck and in a
breathtaking manner is the thing of deliberation.
Revelation as a poem is all about a mystical experience, a
supernatural feeling when some unexpected presence takes it over with awe and
suspense. The passing of the unexpected persona ruffles it all with a flutter
and review of the strangely-taking scene and that too by surprise and suspense,
but be sure of he will not stop by, he will just pass by hurriedly and forcibly
making his way even if give you or not, but always looking back likely in a
mystical way with his activity nocturnal and suspicious. How to identify the
persona, the mystical figure, the supernatural being, the nature spirit, the
wanderer?
Is he a persona of the secluded place? Is he the nature
spirit wandering? We are not sure of it. But whatever be that, it is a
revelation, a disclosure about the strange meeting, but the guest definitely an
unworldly fellow, a supernatural being, a dark force with consciousness divine
in it coming across by chance and fleeing with the
hurried steps overtaken, so wild, swift and proud.
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