Reflections on the Mystical Experiences in Sri Aurobindo’s Poems

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The first sign of mysticism appears in poems belonging to the period between1875 and 1900. Here the concern with self realization becomes dominant. ‘The Invitation’ heralds the poet’s commitment to hazard alone in search of truth. ‘Who’ is an attempt to interpret the nature of God. ‘A Vision of Science’ says that the ever preceding spirit of God is superior to science and religion, the three being the forces that compete for supremacy. In ‘A Tree’, the tree with roots in the soil and branches high up in the air is seen as the earth bound man’s inability to reach heaven. ‘Rebirth’ justifies the Indian notion of rebirth, explaining how the soul is continuously reborn until it attains its original perfection and merges back into its essence.

It is in the ‘Triumph Song of Trishuncou’ that we see one of the main postulates of Aurobindo’s mysticism, namely the denial of death. The very first line contains such an assertion:

I shall not die.

Although this body, when the spirit tires

Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires,

My house consumes, not I. (‘Triumph Song of Trishuncou’)

Denial of death is a recurring element in Sri Aurobindo’s poetry. It is a clear denial of the identity of the body. The poet asserts the separate existence of the soul and the body. Death is only of the body and thus the individual’s self does not die with the body. Implicit to denial of death is the realization of the reality of the body’s transient nature. Identification of one’s self to the body is a sign of ignorance in the Indian tradition. Enlightenment is the breaking of this illusion the ultimate aim of the self is to attain the absolute. Aurobindo continues to say that the self is older than you think:

I cease not, I remain.

Ere the first seeds were sown on earth,

I was already old,

And when now unborn planets shall grow old,

My history proceeds. (‘Triumph Song of Trishuncou’)

The poet realize the self’s oneness with the Absolute. The self is timeless. It existed in the past and will continue to exist in the future through infinite time. The self is universal:

I am man and maid and boy,

Protean and infinite.

I am a tree

That stands out singly from the infinite blue;

…

I was the eternal thinker at my birth

And shall be, though I die. (‘Triumph Song of Trishuncou’)

Aurobindo says that death is but a change. Life is but a stop in between. The self is eternal and continues to be even after the body ends: life itself is a short death or forgetting, in a greater life tp which one awakens when death of the body happens. A similar sentiment is found in the closing couplet of ‘The Fear of Death’: “Death is but a changing of our robes to wait/ In the wedding garments at the eternal gate.” The symbolism of overcoming death is central to Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and philosophy.

A second feature of Aurobindo’s mystic poetry is the experience of unity of all life. Everything in the universe is one with the Divine. The ultimate aim, like in the previous poem is to be united with the Divine. The soul’s flight to the Absolute is seen in his poem, ‘The Blue Bird’:

I rise like a fire from the mortal’s earth

Into a griefless sky

And drop in the suffering soil of his birth

Fire seeds of ecstasy. (‘The Blue Bird’)

The blue bird is the bird of God. He sings for God and his angels songs of “the sweet and the true”. The bird is a symbol of the divine spirit that resides in everything that exists. The bird “soars beyond time and space”: it is eternal and true. It soars to the Absolute and brings back with it the vision of the mystic experiences of the poet himself, where he says he experiences a sense of unity with the Absolute: “I bring the bliss of the Eternal face/ And the boon of the spirit’s light.” The bird is the epitome of liberty and the embodiment of all wisdom and eternal joy. The birds flight is from the physical realm to the spiritual realm and back, bringing back with it the realization of its unity with the Divine universality:

Nothing is hid from my burning heart;

My mind is shore-less and still;

My song is rapture’s mystic art;

My flight immortal will. (‘The Blue Bird’)

The bird knows everything- he is intimately connected to the Absolute. Everything is contained and related in God. God is the highest form of consciousness, the lowest and everything in between. The bird soars high to bring back with it the fore-seeds of ecstasy- divine experiences that give meaning to the otherwise pointless physical domain of life. Aurobindo’s vision of God is explained well in his short poem titled ‘God’:

Thou who prevadest all the worlds below,

Yet sits above,

Master of all who work and rule and know,

Servant of love!

Thou who disdaintest not the worm to be

Nor even the cloud,

Therefore we know by that humility

Thou art God. (God)

Similarly the poem ‘Epiphany’ about the nature of Shiva explains how the most benign God is also the most terrible, how the God of love and life is also the God of wrath and death. In this poem the duality of love and wrath coincides to find unity in a single entity:

The God of wrath, the God of love are one,

No least He loves when most he smites. Alone

Who rises above fear and plays with grief,