In these poems, as in many mystical writings, the path that leads to the soul’s awakening is seen in terms of a great journey, fraught with difficulties and pitfalls. It may be a journey by sea or by road, a climbing upwards or a mysterious flight, aimed always at an inexpressible “Beyond”:
BEYOND THE SUNRISE-SKY
Sail
Beyond the sunrise-sky.
Reach
The Pinnacle-Goal
Before the sunset-cry.
(516)
The distant goal of the other shore seems to lie just beyond the edge of the horizon in this poem The poet urges us to set forth on a voyage of discovery, like the seafarers of earlier centuries who sailed the oceans of the world in the faith that they would discover new lands.
In other poems, Sri Chinmoy assures the pilgrim seeker that he shall attain his ultimate goal:
ECSTASY’S UNPLUMBED SKIES
If you have an aspiration-flight,
In the long run
You are bound to reach
Ecstasy’s unplumbed skies.
(358)
In addition to poems where the speaking voice is broad and expansive are those pure lyrics in which the poet dramatises a particular state of consciousness. It might be a passing mood of sorrow, or of frustration or yet again of rapture. Such poems are not embedded in specific external details of time and place. They are solely interior dramas, projected out of time:
SOMEHOW I HAVE LOST MY WAY
Somehow I have lost my way.
Alas, I now see the road ahead
Constantly lengthening,
Bewildering and frightening me.
(6603)
Here the poet is enacting a single phase of the journey: a moment of doubt and confusion. Note the tremulous effect of the last two lines with their careful variation on a dactylic metrical scheme. The accumulation of feminine endings reinforces this impression with their suggestion of a half-suppressed cry. The overall effect is to create the unmistakable impression of a lost child whimpering to itself. We need no further details of outer circumstances in order to be wholly absorbed by the poet’s representation. Indeed, these few words seem to open up a vast unexpressed region of sorrow deep inside us. The pressure of the realisation that we, too, may be lost is almost unbearable.
Although these poems revolve around a stable idea – the journey towards God – they illustrate the many-hued beauty of Ten Thousand Flower-Flames. These slanted or partial truths capture all the countless life experiences that compose a general or abstract truth. Sri Chinmoy explains:
“It is said that a poet has no character of his own. Now I wish to say, why should a poet have a character of his own? A poet identifies with truth. If he has to express anger through his poem, then naturally he will identify himself with the anger-consciousness. If he has to express love, then he will have to identify himself with the love-consciousness. On the strength of his identification with the reality he has envisioned, he reveals to the world his inspiration and aspiration.
A poet sees the truth from various angles. He is not obligated to see the truth always from one angle. A poet can speak of one particular subject in various ways. This moment he may praise and invoke death and the next moment he may criticise death. That does not mean that the poet is a man of no principles. Far from it! When he stays in a particular plane of consciousness, according to the capacity and receptivity that he has at that time, he sees death in one form. When he stays in another plane of consciousness, he may see death in a different way, with a different aspect.”
The poet’s manifold energies seek out the fluctuating moods and states of the spiritual seeker and mirror each one in essence. This imparts to the design of the poems as a whole a fluid and amorphous quality. Although the underlying themes and ideas are constant, nothing appears static or fixed. There is a continual air of freshness, of having heard something expressed in just this manner for the first time. The truths contained in these poems may be eternal but what strikes us is that the poet has realised them anew – he has, in a sense, remade them. Within his own consciousness he recognises the perpetual interaction of the personal and the impersonal, the immanent and the transcendent, the knower and the known. The poet’s lofty seer-vision is the resolution of all opposites. In it, they become melted and merged into a single unity.
As we become acquainted with the universality of the poet’s vision, it becomes increasingly clear that Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, vast almost beyond human capacity, is exactly proportioned to Sri Chinmoy’s powers. The poet’s plenary insight into the soul of man and his self-delighting spirit have yielded an expression which is inexhaustible in its power to nourish the countless readers who will partake of the bounty of this epic work. I believe that Ten Thousand Flower-Flames amply fulfils the promise of the “future poetry” which Sri Chinmoy describes in a poem from the series:
THE SONG OF BEAUTY
The future poets
Shall sing only one song:
The song of beauty
Inside the simplicity-heart
Of a profundity-soul.
(4622)
Our world has thirsted for its poet. Men love not the muse of poetry as before, the suggestive power of many words has been exhausted and the greatest themes all but forgotten. But the rarest combination of high intuitive spiritual vision and a powerful expressiveness has appeared in our times to offer man a new vision of himself. Thus it is with the joy of a herald that I proclaim Sri Chinmoy the master poer of our age.cc