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THE REAL WISDOM-LIGHT
What is the real wisdom-light?
The real wisdom-light
Is to help Truth regain
Its lost throne. (no. 862)
The body of Sri Chinmoy's Ten Thousand Flower-Flames in print may be considered against this backdrop of truth-seeking and truth-revelation. In these poems we hear an echo of that lofty Vedic utterance, "Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood."[11]
Reading Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, one is immediately struck by the physical appearance of the poems-often extending to no more than a stanza-by their compact and virile language and by their exalted spiritual vision. Like flames that melt into a vast fire of realisation, or flowers strung into a garland for worship, the poems are powerful in their mass and exceedingly beautiful in each part. It is obvious that Sri Chinmoy experiences his seer-vision as a formative power of great amplitude and this enables him to conceal the lustre of his realisation within the diverse styles and language of poetry, As the movements of an athlete are clean, graceful and full of inner beauty, so these poems strive for a supreme perfection of movement, thought and language. The poet's physical marathon, which provided the catalyst for this major poetic endeavour, demonstrated the self-transcending urge of the spirit, despite the natural limitations of the body. In the inner worlds of poetry, however, the poet runs swiftly and easily-his strides are his poems and they trace the map for the eternal travelling.
The summary features of Ten Thousand Flower-Flames are abundance, wisdom, wholeness and inspiration. Significantly, these are the traditional attributes of greatness according to the Indian literary critics. [12] Contrary to the tenets of Western literary theory, abundance does not denote a predominantly quantitative interest. Rather, the range of an artist's works is held to indicate the depth of his creative genius. Victor Hugo also recognised this largeness of the poetic spirit when he wrote:
Real poetry, the acme of poetical art, is characterised by immensity alone.[13]
