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This poetry springs from a devotional impulse that is clearly unselfconscious, in spite of the modern Western reluctance to accept literature that is prompted by a fundamentally spiritual urge. We hesitate to concede that a poet may be inspired by a greater power than the forces of his own subconsciousness. The great basin of Indian culture, however, and it is this tradition which has nurtured Sri Chinmoy, cares more for wisdom in its universal aspect than for the hidden psychological processes that lead to the realisation of a personal truth. This distinction is further illumined by J.A.B.van Buiteman in The Literatures of India:

Edification is far more agreeable to the Indian, and perhaps always has been, than it is to modern Western man. Wisdom of any kind is, and has been, loved. The Indian has enjoyed hearing endlessly about his God, whether that God is formless and transcendent, or wears a cobra, or plays a flute. Edification, wisdom, moral lessons have a pleasurable quality that an earlier age in the West enjoyed in homiletics. And on the other hand, the Indian has never been pleasurably attracted, as Western man has been, by psychological variety, individualistic introspection, and moral ambiguity. [24]

The importance which Sri Chinmoy attributes to the wisdom aspect of experience also significantly affects the way in which details of nature are incorporated into the poems. This is exemplified by the following poem; again, one that is based on a series of connected aphorisms:

SONG-OFFERINGS

The song of the mountain
Gives me peace.

The song of the sea
Gives me bliss.

The song of my heart
Gives me love.

The song of my soul
Gives me life.

The song of my earth-gratitude
Brings God to me.

The song of God's Heaven-plenitude
Carries me to God.[25]