These four aphorisms map the poet’s approach to beauty. He begins with the quality that co-exists with beauty and arrives at the quality which sustains beauty. The famous maxim “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is known to all but in this poem the realisation of its truth comes as a fresh discovery. The extreme abbreviation of the poem has resulted in an ellipsis of all connectives, participles and adjectives. It is sufficient, not decorative. The life of the poem and its nexus of meaning are to be found in the fine distinctions between the verbs. Since the four aphorisms are presented in a way that highlights this verbal substitution, we immediately look to them to unlock the poem’s meaning. Though these verbs are in no way complex, it is at once evident that their application is unusual for they belong ordinarily to the world of human society. By positioning them between various abstract qualities the poet calls on them to perform the subtle task of personifying these qualities. Beauty has its “society,” he infers, wherein each member stands in a different relation to it In this way the whole picture takes on a concrete colour.
The parallel technique is one of Sri Chinmoy’s chief means of highlighting fine gradations of meaning. Through a series of approximations or variations he is able to reveal the inclusiveness of his vision:
MY STEADY MIND
My steady mind sits and dreams
At the foot of my Lord’s Perfection-Tree.
My ready heart climbs up and devours
My Lord’s Satisfaction-Fruits.
(6608)
There is music in this intricate little poem which is a music not of sounds but of ideas. It is a music in which each note finds its answering pair, like two antiphonal voices rising in a song. The first couplet is the voice of the mind, the second that of the heart. The mind-song introduces the rhythm, the heart-song takes it up and fulfils it. In the mind-song, Sri Chinmoy vividly pictures the mind which has grown calm and steady through inward turning as a seeker meditating at the foot of a tree. Since the seeker who is plunged in contemplation withdraws his senses, he becomes in effect pure mind. The reality of the mind overrides everything else. In the second couplet, the poet removes point for point the attributes of the mind and replaces them with those of the ready heart. Though the mind dreams of the highest perfection, it is the heart, he suggests, which shall win it: the mind touches the foot of the tree, then the heart scales the tree; the mind carries us into the presence of God but it is the heart which claims Him; the mind has the vision, the heart has the realisation. Here the supple parallel form enables the poet to present this movement as a continuous growth or expansion.
The parallel technique is used extensively by the poet to join two or more lines of thought. The poem becomes a centre of convergence for a number of perceptions. A further development of this linking technique may be found in Sri Chinmoy’s use of compounds. Where the English language cannot supply names for spiritual experiences, or where these names have become lifeless, Sri Chinmoy draws two nouns together into a compound to form a new name. This is an especially effective method of overcoming the limitations of the language. Although this creative option is recognised within English, writers have not adopted it on a large scale. Indeed, the compounds forged by writers such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson have remained as their own idiosyncratic stamp and, although time may have lessened their air of strangeness, few have passed into the language as acceptable additions.
Sri Chinmoy’s fusion of nouns into compounds, on the other hand, occurs so naturally and frequently that it is more a mode of thought than a conscious device. He seeks no unusual effect but simply a more adequate formulation of truth. In him we see the intently focussed seer-vision impatient of the fewest words by which it must reveal itself. He gathers his handful of key words and welds them together so that they become incandescent through compaction. The looser connectives are left aside and a new, dynamic energy pulsates between the two words thus combined:
YOU ARE INSEPARABLE
O my mind,
You and cloud-clusters ,
Are inseparable.
O my heart,
You and moon-lustre
Are inseparable.
O my soul,
You and sun-rapture
Are inseparable.
(1599)