The Hawk

Blog #4 - Dec. 7th, 2014

The conditions of a solitary bird are five:

The first that it flies to the highest point;

the second that it does not suffer for company,

the third that it aims its beak to the skies;

the fourth, that it does not have a definite color

the fifth , that it sings very softly.

San Juan de la Cruz, Dichos de Luz y Amor

The title of the poem is, Last Night as I was Sleeping

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNfSKMlNquE

Birds have been close companions in my life, from hummingbirds to hawks and more.

Here are the initial parts of an article about a starving Red-Shouldered Hawk who became my friend.

I have tried to recall, in a series of flashbacks from 2004, the transcendent experience I had with a red-shouldered hawk.. Today, six years later she still greets me from a high tree or circles in the sky and calls her high-pitched greeting. I reply to her whistling softly. She no longer needs food from me although at times I bring something thinking she might be hungry, but she does not take it as she is strong now and, from the sounds I have heard in early Spring, she has raised more than one family.

Let me then tell this extraordinary story and then share another story that was sent to me by a friend to whom I had told of my experience, of a man and the eagle that befriended him.

I returned from the Ashram in 2005 and fell seriously ill with a high fever and severe pain throughout the body. As I was alone I lay in bed and prayed to Mother a prayer of gratitude for the blessing of having knelt at Her Feet. I was very weak and had difficulty getting out of bed.

Suddenly, outside my window I heard the cry of a hawk. It seemed to be in distress. I managed to rise and open the door to the deck outside my room. The moment I came on the deck this great bird swooped down and brushed my head with its wings. Instantly all my pain disappeared along with my fever, chills, headaches and weakness. I felt so strong that I went out into Mother’s Garden to work. As I planted and cleaned I felt that I had been the recipient of a tremendous Grace from the Divine and also spontaneously felt that the hawk was starving.

I went to the store and purchased some raw chicken legs as raptors do not eat anything but raw flesh. I went out on the deck and with my arm extended held out the leg. Then, swoosh and in an instant the hawk took the leg in her talons and flew away. Each morning I would go out and hold out a leg for her and from nowhere she would appear and take the leg. Gradually she became stronger and would come only every other day, but this continued for more than a month and then – she came again the next year when I returned from the Ashram!

Now I must tell you this extraordinary postscript to my experience that I only heard of when I again came to the Ashram in 2005. My good friend, Bharati Reddy, who knew I wasn’t well, was praying to Mother for me. This is what she told me: “I was praying to Mother for you every day and I said to Mother, ‘Mother please heal him but since he may not accept human help please send Your help in whatever form You choose.’”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga

A bird is a very frequent symbol of the soul, and the tree is the standing image of the universe -- The Tree of Life.

The bird is a symbol of the individual soul.

The bird is usually a symbol of some soul power when it is not the soul itself.

Sri Aurobindo – The Secret of the Veda

The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa. Such are the energies that draw the free car of the Lords of Delight, when there dawns on us the Sun of the Truth. These winged movements are full of the honey showered from the overflowing skin, madhumantah. They are unassailable, asridhah, they come to no hurt in their flight; or, the sense may be, they make no false or hurtful movement. And they are golden-winged, hiranyaparnâh. Gold is the symbolic colour of the light of Surya. The wings of these energies are the full, satisfied, attaining movement, parna, of his luminous knowledge. For these are the birds that awake with the Dawn; these are the winged energies that come forth from their nests when the feet of the daughter of Heaven press the levels of our human mentality, divo asya sânavi.

Experience of March 17, 2005

This morning as I was walking down the stairs to begin work I saw the hawk who came yesterday and in less than a minute took the raw chicken leg I put out for her on the railing of the deck.

As I slowed my steps going down the stairs she was not at all frightened and looked calmly at me. She is large but seems to be young and for a moment I cannot tell if she is the same one as the one who befriended me last year. She was in the dogwood tree near the bird feeders hoping to catch a bird unaware. Since she had eaten an entire leg yesterday I didn’t think she would return so soon. I walked quietly upstairs as she preened himself, smoothing her golden-red feathers.

I took another chicken leg from the refrigerator and walked to the ‘Keeping Room’ towards the door to the deck, holding the chicken leg in front of me. The moment I stepped outside she flew up silently from the tree and I believe she would have taken the meat directly from my hand. She was huge with her magnificent wings fully outspread. At the last moment, not more than three or four feet in front of me, she swerved and flew away. I put the leg on the deck and in less than two seconds she was back, carrying it away in her strong talons.

Though she may look menacing with her razor-sharp talons and hooked beak and almost silent approach, I saw only a fierce divine beauty and knew that I was blessed and had no fear whatsoever.

Nothing Apart

Nothing is apart from me,

The snake that glides across my feet

The hawk that watches from a tree

And from my hand takes proffered meat.

I feel the presence of the trees

The great protectors of the soil

Even the rude Canadian geese

Who all the pristine waters roil.

The bee whose sting is poison-laced

The insect hordes with painful bite,

If to the source of all are traced

Are moments for supreme delight.

Above the silence and the sound

In me both heaven and earth are found.

Narad