Conclusion
Aphorism and poetry have hitherto been largely regarded as separate genres. By the sheer force of his thousands of aphoristic creations, Sri Chinmoy has brought the aphorism within the broad spectrum of poetry, as intrinsic to the genre as the lyric, sonnet, ode, elegy and so forth. And he will undoubtedly be recognised as one of its foremost exponents. The inclusion of aphorism completes the sweep of poetry and may well be seen as Sri Chinmoy’s greatest contribution to literature, for it adds to it the dimension of pure wisdom – at once locates it, defines it, exemplifies it and confirms its place among man’s highest creative expressions.
Indeed, Sri Chinmoy is a truly original seer-poet. Lacking the poetic equivalent in English of the Sanskrit slokas of the Vedas and Upanishads, or the ancient Chinese Sayings of Confucius and Lao Tzu, he has made the aphorism his own, setting his unique stamp upon it. What occurred, therefore, as an occasional feature in the works of earlier poets has been isolated by Sri Chinmoy and given its own poetic integrity and dignity. Moreover, he has given us not just a handful of creations, but quite literally thousands.
Collections of aphorisms do not appear in all eras, for this kind of writing must be invoked by a very specific and collective need -- to make some sense of the universe in which we live, to offer illuminations and revelations about our human condition. Nor is it given to any writer to speak in aphorisms. On the literary level, it requires an extraordinary degree of clarity and self-control. On the inner level, it requires much more than the homespun wisdom of a casual philosopher. The seer-poet is not a thinker or a dialectician. He has not come to decipher the world. He does not care to explain the unknown. What then is his role? To receive and communicate a vision of man or God or nature or life. In the words of the great yogi Sri Aurobindo, who was himself a seer-poet, “He sees beyond the sight of the surface mind and finds the revealing word…”
In our age, an age distinguished by the uprise of the soul, that seer-poet is Sri Chinmoy and he has given us a fountain of aphorisms in the light of which the eternal realities stand revealed.
