The natural sequence is used as a type of the spiritual sequence. This concentration on the value of the type frees the poet from the necessity to individuate nature. The poet crystallises his central images into clear and vivid outlines which allow him to pass more easily from a physical to a psychic perception. He never falls prey to a hazy romanticism. Always there is the sense of overriding utility – to make nature’s forms articulate his inner spiritual intuitions.
The symbols that Sri Chinmoy most commonly selects may best be described as cosmic symbols. They are universally intelligible, being drawn directly from the world about us rather than from any realm of fantasy. They are eternally familiar and simple: the forests and mountains, the land, the sky and the sea, together with all their inhabitants. These are not small themes and yet, of themselves they no longer convey the impression of a translucent universe; man no longer sees in them an intimate connection with the Creator. However, Sri Chinmoy returns to such symbols with a new freshness and energy. Used in their generic form, with utmost clarity and consistency, they become for the moment self-sufficing. No further adornment by the poet is needed to secure our response, for the meditative thought of the poem carries us swiftly beyond surfaces to the underlying spiritual reality.
Sri Chinmoy’s use of these cosmic symbols is entirely consistent. He does not aim to excite the emotions of the reader but to impart a calm grandeur and a noble simplicity to various inner experiences and states:
A WHITE BIRD
I am praying
To have a white bird
Flooded with purity
To fly in my heart’s blue sky.
(6401)
The poet’s use of the generic terms “bird” and “sky” has the effect of restoring to them something of their original purity and dignity. He seems to be conscious of an inherent sanctity in the words themselves which enables him to overcome any falling off of meaning due to overuse. These are the basic word-pictures that form the very roots of our language. They are unambiguous, clean and bright. There is a genuine quality of translucence about the cosmic symbols which makes them far more revealing than bare literal statement. Compare, for example, the above poem with a statement such as “I am praying for inner purity.” In essence, this statement contains the poet’s message, but it has none of the powerful emotional cadence of the poem. At best the statement can offer us an abstract approach to purity, whereas the poem pierces directly to the experience of purity: it is a white bird etched against the inner vastness of the heart.
The key to the poet’s use of these cosmic symbols is his great simplicity of vision. In a further poem this outlook is described as “crystal-clear”:
A GLIMPSE OF REALITY
A crystal-clear glimpse of reality
Has shown him that each heart
Is a green plant of hope
And each life
Is a blue tree of promise.
(6481)
As we read the poem, we seem to enter into that same simplicity of vision and behold the world with fresh, uncluttered eyes. Spiritual happenings and physical happenings seem to share a secret life:
FROM TOMORROW ON
From tomorrow on
My morning meditation
Will be as beautiful as the dawn,
My midday meditation,
As powerful as the sun
And my evening meditation,
As peaceful as the sky.
(4189)
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