Aurobindo: Liberations (1 and 2)

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

                     Liberation [1]

 

I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind

And stand now in the spirit’s silence free;

Timeless and deathless beyond creature-kind,

The centre of my own eternity.

I have escaped and the small self is dead;

I am immortal, alone, ineffable;

I have gone out from the universe I made,

And have grown nameless and immeasurable.

My mind is hushed in a wide and endless light,

My heart a solitude of delight and peace,

My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight,

My body a point in white infinities.

I am the one Being’s sole immobile Bliss:

No one I am, I who am all that is.

Liberation [1] is one of those sonnets wherein he speaks of how the poet has thrown from him the whirling dance of mind and now standing in the spirit’s silence free from it all as something so timeless, deathless beyond the reach of the things of the creature-kind, the centre of his own eternity at last. The dance of the mind indicates the fluctuation and fickleness of the sensitive heart.

He has escaped from it all and the small self lies dead making him free from all that binds him and he stands it alone, namelessly immeasurable. He has gone out of the universe almost which he had made.

His mind lies hushed in a wide endless night; his heart the solitude of delight and peace and his sense detached from the touch and smell of the five senses. Now his body is a point of white infinities.

What has he to long and cherish for? What does it remain here to seek for? What to get, what not? If to get, but for what? What will he do with it?

Why to be after I? What is it in this I? If I gets into You, what to cherish? The things are carved out of matter and mass and the baser things return to their base finally.

Liberation as a poem is of course a poem of that type which takes us to dhyana, yoga and sadhna, opening the realms of thought and idea, delving deep in transcendental effects. What is dhyana, what is yoga and how to reach the edge? What is it sadhna? How the recourse of a sadhaka that he takes to? The bindu as the point of deliberation, the point of concentration, the cosmos assimilated and opined within the range, the meditation turning into supra-meditation, this forms the basis of discussion. When to see without the attributes, what will it remain here? What has a yogi to do it here? What can he be for? The bliss of sadhna is it all. Yoga is a reflection of the mind, the supra mind. Thought and thinking, where do they take to? Where to repose in? How to get nirvana, shantih, nirvana from the binding, shantih from tangles? What is substantial, what not? The Divine In-Form, the Divine Formless, how to gauze them? What is meditation? What is metaphysics? The stages and processes of dhyana, yoga, how to take to?

                          Liberation [2]

My mind, my soul grow larger than all Space;

Time founders in that vastness glad and nude:

The body fades, an outline, a dim trace,

A memory in the spirit’s solitude.

This universe is a vanishing circumstance

In the glory of a white infinilty,

Beautiful and bare for the Immortal’s dance,

House-room of my immense felicity.

In the thrilled happy giant void within

Thought lost in light and passion drowned in bliss,

Changing into a stillness hyaline,

Obey the edict of the Eternal’s peace.

Life’s now the Ineffable’s dominion;

Nature is ended and the spirit alone.

Liberation [2] is a poem in which the poet while recomposing in yoga and yogic practices scales the transcendental heights of meditation and silence, forgetting the self, merging with the Force, the mind and the soul rising above, getting lifted to, seemingly to be larger than all Space, time fluctuates it in that great vastness, the body fades it just like an outline seen, with the traces left over, a memory in the spirit’s solitude. This is how the Immortal takes one by surprise and astonishment. An Aurobindonian sonnet, Liberation [2] also echoes the antecedent in thought and idea.

A strange shunyata takes over. The universe appears to be a vanishing circumstance in the glory of a white infinity. Who can about the Creation of the Almighty? The Immortal’s dance, we cannot gauze it. The bare and the beautiful both are the creations of the Almighty.

While feeling the charm and warmth of meditation, the thrilled and happy giant void within, thought gets lost in light and passion drowned in bliss. The still hyaline, the edict of the Eternal’s peace, the giant void within happy and thrilled, what more is known to us barring these and what can we?

Life is but the Ineffable’s dominion. In such a state nature loses its landscape. Only the spirit pervades. Nothing remains here.

Yoga, metaphysics; logic, reasoning; intellect, thought, this is but the periphery of Aurobindo’s poetry and barring it he has nothing  to discuss. Yoga forms the basis of; the evolution of the human mind the core content of his poetry. Through yoga, what can one transcend? The power of sadhna, how to say it? Close the eyes and feel you.

It is really a pleasure to read the poems titled as Liberation, but at the same time we become curious to feel what it was that impelled him to write poems on two different occasions with the same title in hand. Whatever be that we shall like to have a comparative analysis of the two though the theme remains almost the same. In spite of it, the joys and spirits will definitely be slightly different no doubt. Let us see what it is in the poems just like the twins. The poems are the lotus of contemplation and meditation leading to nirvana and moksha, showing the ways as for how to be complacent, peaceful, meditative, contemplative and transcendental, and how to scale the heights of transcendence. From the void the world has been created and to the void lead we unto.

Aurobindo as a poet is George Bernard Shawian as both of them deal with evolutionary theories and charter the course of mankind through the development of thought and idea, propounding the thesis and antithesis. The evolution of thought, the growth of the mind of man, they discuss it in their writings and carry them forward as ideas, the texts and discourses of ideas merely.

Both the sonnets are alike in thought and content toeing the same line. Though the poems draw from yoga and meditation, instead there is something of shunyata, nihilism, existentialism, metaphysics, logic and reasoning. Dhyana-yoga forms the basis of his poetry, not aghora sadhna. What is nirvana? What is moksha? What is it liberation and where to go liberated from?