Sri Chinmoy Poetry

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This lyric portrays the melting of the individual soul in God. It is, as Martin Buber describes it,[53] a process in which "I" and "Thou," the human and the Divine, are met in a supreme encounter. Where "The Absolute" insisted on the ultimate identity of the human and the Divine, this poem highlights their unification and therefore seems to retain a greater prehension of differentiation. The process is one of the human soul becoming immersed in God rather than of recognising oneself as the only being. In reading of this experience we are thrilled by its profound significance for mankind. Although others have expressed the same theme of God-union, it remains one of those great timeless events whose power to move and inspire us is never lessened.

Since the relationship between man and God, especially in man's moments of ecstasy, is the mystic's natural territory, he intuitively finds his richest ground for analog to be the everyday relations that surround him-relations between substances on the physical or chemical plane, between living things on the biological level and, ultimately, between human beings on the social level.[54] Each of these ordinary relationships-whether it be of the drop to the ocean, or of the soldier to his captain-reveals something of the eternal relationship between man and God. The primary analogy chosen by Sri Chinmoy in "Revelation" is one of singular beauty:


    Above the toil of life my soul
Is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.


Here the poet has fused two traditional analogies. The most obvious is that of the bird and the sky: as a bird is in the sky, so the soul is in God. The bird is an emblem of freedom and something of this joyful release is intimated in the exultant tones of "Winging the Infinite." This analogy is given a still sharper visual edge and a heightened significance by the completed image "Bird of Fire." This refers back to the phrase "God's own Light" and implicitly asserts that the soul is a portion of God even as a spark or flame is a portion of boundless light. There is a reciprocal exchange between these two analogies such that each is endowed with a deeper resonance and with the bounty of traditional mystic appeals to the parallel of such great impersonal forces.

 

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