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Perhaps this poem, more than any other discussed to date, offers us the
clue to Sri Chinmoy's fusion of poetry and thought. At times in this aphoristic
genre, the controlling thought is presented completely formed, as an epiphany
or revelation. We accept it as a sudden intuition and the brief, compacted
form of the aphorism is an apt means of accommodating it. At other times,
the thought process contains a clear and logical development spun out of the
centre of the subject and allied to the philosophical mode of reasoning. The
more the reader becomes familiar with Sri Chinmoy's poems of statement, the
more he comes to realise that aphorism utilises both imaginative and conceptual
language to put forward a total understanding of life.
D.H.Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, T.S.Eliot and other writers earlier
this century identified the prevailing spirit of their times as one of a deep,
underlying spiritual despair. According to these writers, man had been dispossessed
of spiritual certainties, of general truth, and could only fall back on individual
or psychological truth. Sri Chinmoy, however, strongly upholds the existence
of universal truth and strives to transcend the zeitgeist that afflicted
these writers. Writing only of the soul and of the various states pertaining
to it, his words seek out a deep note of concord in the hearts of his readers.
What might be regarded by some as broad generalisation in the poetry is born
of a fundamental confidence or optimism with regard to the spiritual destiny
of mankind as a whole, for where there is harmony between a poet's thought
and that of his reader, it is possible for the poet to speak with utmost
simplicity, using the language of intuition to convey the full measure of
his realisation. If the powerful impact of Sri Chinmoy's poetry is due to
the dimensions of his vision, then the immense simplicity of his utterance
may be seen as the most precious fruit of this peace between the substance
of his vision and the aspiration of his age. The poet has become the harbinger
of truth.
