Sri Aurobindo: “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.” The Secret of the Veda
bird, white-fire dragon-bird.
Sri Aurobindo: “Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” Letters on Savitri
“All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.”
“The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings’ or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined’? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see’?” Letters on Savitri
The Great Blue Heron
To watch this magnificent bird skimming across the lake it a blessing.
A very poignant story involves the Great Blue Heron in his home on the
lake at Mother's Garden. My neighbor who lives two houses away came
down to the lake one morning and saw the heron choking to death. He
lifted him up and took him in his car to our local veterinarian. The
vet said that the bird had swallowed a fishing lure that had a treble
hook and it could not be pulled out as the hooks would rip its
esophagus and he would die. There was only one possibility and that
was to cut the bird's breast open and then the lure could safely be
removed. My friend said to do it but please be reasonable with your
charges. The lure was removed and the vet stitched up the bird and my
friend carried him back to a soft grassy area by the lake. It was no
more than two days and he saw the heron in flight across the lake and
he is with us today. An added note; the veterinarian would not take
any payment!
The Carolina Chickadee
This small bird is quite a character. He will let you know, in no uncertain way, when the bird feeder is empty and won't quiet down until it is filled.
Adult male
A noisy and humorous fellow who provides a medley of sound in the garden, a colourful and fearless friend, always knocking on dead trees creating a thunderous echo as he searches for and finds insects.
Adult female
The Green Heron
Patrolling the lake morning and
evening he is a shy and quiet though stealthy hunter as he
patrols the shore.
White-breasted Nuthatch
It is quite an experience to see
how the genius of the species works in varying ways. The
bluebirds favour live food or a cake made of peanut butter, lard
and cracked corn, though many birds opt for sunflower seeds.
This fellow is happiest when he is upside down. He will go to
the feeder, take a sunflower seed and then fly to an old oak
tree with furrowed bark, pushing the seed in a crack of the bark
and pecking it open, consuming his tasty meal.
Children in the west are delighted with the cartoons of Woody Woodpecker, a character fashioned after this largest of all woodpeckers. In the fall when the dogwood has formed its red berries the pileated woodpecker flies to the tree with a raucous sound just like the cartoon character. He tries to eat the berries but he is much too big and the branch sags forcing him to hang on, often upside down, to have his meal. He is considered very rare but around Mother's Garden he is seen frequently!
The most beautiful blue clothes this lovely bird.
The Pileated Woodpecker
Children in the west are delighted with the cartoons of Woody Woodpecker, a character fashioned after this largest of all woodpeckers. In the fall when the dogwood has formed its red berries the pileated woodpecker flies to the tree with a raucous sound just like the cartoon character. He tries to eat the berries but he is much too big and the branch sags forcing him to hang on, often upside down, to have his meal. He is considered very rare but around Mother's Garden he is seen frequently!
Bluebirds and Genius of the
species
The most beautiful blue clothes this lovely bird.
And there is also the genius
of the species, which is a consciousness.
And in the genius of the species there is a beginning — quite embryonic, but still — there is a beginning of response to the psychic influence, and certain flowers are clearly the expression of a psychic attitude and aspiration in the plant, not very conscious of itself, but existing like a spontaneous impetus.
The Mother
More Passages from Savitri with the word 'bird'
Oftener in dumb Nature’s stir and peace
A nearness she could feel serenely one;
The Force in her drew earth’s subhuman broods;
And to her spirit’s large and free delight
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree. ||96.5||
Then all went back into mind’s secret caves;
A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird’s wings
Sealed in her senses from external sight
And opened the stupendous depths of sleep. ||98.61||
Fields had she of her solitary mirth,
Plains hushed and happy in the embrace of light,
Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers
And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons
And grey seer-evenings kindling with the stars
And dim movement in the night’s infinitude. ||99.29||
Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night,
Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one. ||99.33||
Some winged like birds out of the cosmic sea
And vanished into a bright and featureless Vast:
Some silent watched the universal dance,
Or helped the world by world-indifference. ||99.47||
Primeval peace was there and in its bosom
Held undisturbed the strife of bird and beast. ||101.13||
It saw the green gold of the slumbrous sward,
The grasses quivering with the slow wind’s tread,
The branches haunted by the wild bird’s call. ||102.20||
Then trembling with the mystic shock her heart
Moved in her breast and cried out like a bird
Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring bough. ||102.32||
In the great quietness where spirits meet,
Led by my hushed desire into my woods
Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean;
One with the breath of things eternal live,
Thy heartbeats near to mine, till there shall leap
Enchanted from the fragrance of the flowers
A moment which all murmurs shall recall
And every bird remember in its cry.” ||103.76||
Then down she came from her high carven car
Descending with a soft and faltering haste;
Her many-hued raiment glistening in the light
Hovered a moment over the wind-stirred grass,
Mixed with a glimmer of her body’s ray
Like lovely plumage of a settling bird. ||104.3||
Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown
Hastening bright-hued through the green-tangled earth,
Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird’s call. ||106.30||
Arisen into an air of flaming dawn
Like a bright bird tired of her lonely branch
To find her own lord, since to her on earth
He came not yet, this sweetness wandered forth
Cleaving her way with the beat of her rapid wings. ||106.67||
For man, below the god, above the brute,
Is given the calm reason as his guide;
He is not driven by an unthinking will
As are the actions of the bird and beast;
He is not moved by stark Necessity
Like the senseless motion of inconscient things. ||106.182||
Nature’s primeval loneliness was here:
Here only was the voice of bird and beast,—
The ascetic’s exile in the dim-souled huge
Inhuman forest far from cheerful sound
Of man’s blithe converse and his crowded days. ||114.12||
I have shared the toil of the yoked animal drudge
Pushed by the goad, encouraged by the whip;
I have shared the fear-filled life of bird and beast,
Its long hunt for the day’s precarious food,
Its covert slink and crouch and hungry prowl,
Its pain and terror seized by beak and claw. ||122.15||
There was a carol of birds and murmur of bees,
And all that is common and natural and sweet,
Yet intimately divine to heart and soul. ||124.3||
But not by showering heaven’s golden rain
Upon the intellect’s hard and rocky soil
Can the tree of Paradise flower on earthly ground
And the Bird of Paradise sit upon life’s boughs
And the winds of Paradise visit mortal air. ||124.69||
Although her kingdom of marvellous change within
Remained unspoken in her secret breast,
All that lived round her felt its magic’s charm:
The trees’ rustling voices told it to the winds,
Flowers spoke in ardent hues an unknown joy,
The birds’ carolling became a canticle,
The beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease. ||128.5||
But now no longer in these great wild woods
In kinship with the days of bird and beast
And levelled to the bareness of earth’s brown breast,
But mid the thinking high-built lives of men
In tapestried chambers and on crystal floors,
In armoured town or gardened pleasure-walks,
Even in distance closer than her thoughts,
Body to body near, soul near to soul,
Moving as if by a common breath and will,
They were tied in the single circling of their days
Together by love’s unseen atmosphere,
Inseparable like the earth and sky. ||128.13||
Now has a strong desire seized all my heart
To go with Satyavan holding his hand
Into the life that he has loved and touch
Herbs he has trod and know the forest flowers
And hear at ease the birds and the scurrying life
That starts and ceases, rich far rustle of boughs
And all the mystic whispering of the woods. ||133.10||
Beside her Satyavan walked full of joy,
Because she moved with him through his green haunts:
He showed her all the forest’s riches, flowers
Innumerable of every odour and hue
And soft thick clinging creepers red and green
And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry
That haunted sweetly distant boughs, replied
With the shrill singer’s name more sweetly called. ||133.15||
An awful hush had fallen upon the place:
There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts. ||133.38||
Still with an amorous crowd of seeking hands
Softly entreated by their old desires
Her senses felt earth’s close and gentle air
Cling round them and in troubled branches knew
Uncertain treadings of a faint-foot wind:
She bore dim fragrances, far callings touched;
The wild bird’s voice and its winged rustle came
As if a sigh from some forgotten world. ||136.6||
A ripple of gleaming wings crossed the far sky;
Birds like pale-bosomed imaginations flew
With low disturbing voices of desire,
And half-heard lowings drew the listening ear,
As if the Sun-god’s brilliant kine were there
Hidden in mist and passing towards the sun. ||139.6||
And thou, go back alone to thy frail world:
Chastise thy heart with knowledge, unhood and see
Thy nature raised into clear living heights,
The heaven-bird’s view from unimagined peaks. ||140.43||
In the vast golden laughter of Truth’s sun
Like a great heaven-bird on a motionless sea
Is poised her winged ardour of creative joy
On the still deep of the Eternal’s peace. ||142.18||
A heaven bird upon jewelled wings of wind
Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,
By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,
On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul. ||142.107||
It is the storm bird of an anarch Power
That would upheave the world and tear from it
The indecipherable scroll of Fate,
Death’s rule and Law and the unknowable Will. ||145.10||
Ecstatic voices smote at hearing’s chords,
Each movement found a music all its own;
Songs thrilled of birds upon unfading boughs,
The colours of whose plumage had been caught
From the rainbow of imagination’s wings. ||148.21||
Into those heights her spirit went floating up
Like an upsoaring bird who mounts unseen
Voicing to the ascent his throbbing heart
Of melody till a pause of closing wings
Comes quivering in his last contented cry
And he is silent with his soul discharged,
Delivered of his heart’s burden of delight. ||148.52||
Heaven’s light visits sometimes the mind of earth;
Its thoughts burn in her sky like lonely stars;
In her heart there move celestial seekings soft
And beautiful like fluttering wings of birds,
Visions of joy that she can never win
Traverse the fading mirror of her dreams. ||152.3||
Amidst the headlong rapture of her fall
Held like a bird in a child’s satisfied hands,
In an enamoured grasp her spirit strove
Admitting no release till Time should end,
And, as the fruit of the mysterious joy,
She kept within her strong embosoming soul
Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring
The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her
Inextricably in that mighty lapse. ||156.9||
Outwingings of a bird from its bright home,
Her earthly morns were radiant flights of joy. ||157.12||
Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged
Our home, this forest, with its thousand cries
And the whisper of the wind among the leaves
And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,
God’s canopy of blue sheltering our lives,
And the birds crying for heart’s happiness,
Winged poets of our solitary reign,
Our friends on earth where we are king and queen. ||157.25||
Our wedded walk through life begins anew,
No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy;
Let us go through this new world that is the same. ||157.44||
For it is given back, but it is known,
A playing ground and dwelling house of God
Who hides himself in bird and beast and man
Sweetly to find himself again by love,
By oneness. His presence leads the rhythms of life
That seek for mutual joy in spite of pain. ||157.45||
Then hand in hand they left that solemn place
Full now of mute unusual memories,
To the green distance of their sylvan home
Returning slowly through the forest’s heart:
Round them the afternoon to evening changed;
Light slipped down to the brightly sleeping verge,
And the birds came back winging to their nests,
And day and night leaned to each other’s arms. ||157.55||
And in the genius of the species there is a beginning — quite embryonic, but still — there is a beginning of response to the psychic influence, and certain flowers are clearly the expression of a psychic attitude and aspiration in the plant, not very conscious of itself, but existing like a spontaneous impetus.
The Mother
More Passages from Savitri with the word 'bird'
Note that Sri Aurobindo
uses the term heaven-bird four times in Savitri
Oftener in dumb Nature’s stir and peace
A nearness she could feel serenely one;
The Force in her drew earth’s subhuman broods;
And to her spirit’s large and free delight
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree. ||96.5||
Then all went back into mind’s secret caves;
A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird’s wings
Sealed in her senses from external sight
And opened the stupendous depths of sleep. ||98.61||
Fields had she of her solitary mirth,
Plains hushed and happy in the embrace of light,
Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers
And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons
And grey seer-evenings kindling with the stars
And dim movement in the night’s infinitude. ||99.29||
Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night,
Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one. ||99.33||
Some winged like birds out of the cosmic sea
And vanished into a bright and featureless Vast:
Some silent watched the universal dance,
Or helped the world by world-indifference. ||99.47||
Primeval peace was there and in its bosom
Held undisturbed the strife of bird and beast. ||101.13||
It saw the green gold of the slumbrous sward,
The grasses quivering with the slow wind’s tread,
The branches haunted by the wild bird’s call. ||102.20||
Then trembling with the mystic shock her heart
Moved in her breast and cried out like a bird
Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring bough. ||102.32||
In the great quietness where spirits meet,
Led by my hushed desire into my woods
Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean;
One with the breath of things eternal live,
Thy heartbeats near to mine, till there shall leap
Enchanted from the fragrance of the flowers
A moment which all murmurs shall recall
And every bird remember in its cry.” ||103.76||
Then down she came from her high carven car
Descending with a soft and faltering haste;
Her many-hued raiment glistening in the light
Hovered a moment over the wind-stirred grass,
Mixed with a glimmer of her body’s ray
Like lovely plumage of a settling bird. ||104.3||
Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown
Hastening bright-hued through the green-tangled earth,
Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird’s call. ||106.30||
Arisen into an air of flaming dawn
Like a bright bird tired of her lonely branch
To find her own lord, since to her on earth
He came not yet, this sweetness wandered forth
Cleaving her way with the beat of her rapid wings. ||106.67||
For man, below the god, above the brute,
Is given the calm reason as his guide;
He is not driven by an unthinking will
As are the actions of the bird and beast;
He is not moved by stark Necessity
Like the senseless motion of inconscient things. ||106.182||
Nature’s primeval loneliness was here:
Here only was the voice of bird and beast,—
The ascetic’s exile in the dim-souled huge
Inhuman forest far from cheerful sound
Of man’s blithe converse and his crowded days. ||114.12||
I have shared the toil of the yoked animal drudge
Pushed by the goad, encouraged by the whip;
I have shared the fear-filled life of bird and beast,
Its long hunt for the day’s precarious food,
Its covert slink and crouch and hungry prowl,
Its pain and terror seized by beak and claw. ||122.15||
There was a carol of birds and murmur of bees,
And all that is common and natural and sweet,
Yet intimately divine to heart and soul. ||124.3||
But not by showering heaven’s golden rain
Upon the intellect’s hard and rocky soil
Can the tree of Paradise flower on earthly ground
And the Bird of Paradise sit upon life’s boughs
And the winds of Paradise visit mortal air. ||124.69||
Although her kingdom of marvellous change within
Remained unspoken in her secret breast,
All that lived round her felt its magic’s charm:
The trees’ rustling voices told it to the winds,
Flowers spoke in ardent hues an unknown joy,
The birds’ carolling became a canticle,
The beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease. ||128.5||
But now no longer in these great wild woods
In kinship with the days of bird and beast
And levelled to the bareness of earth’s brown breast,
But mid the thinking high-built lives of men
In tapestried chambers and on crystal floors,
In armoured town or gardened pleasure-walks,
Even in distance closer than her thoughts,
Body to body near, soul near to soul,
Moving as if by a common breath and will,
They were tied in the single circling of their days
Together by love’s unseen atmosphere,
Inseparable like the earth and sky. ||128.13||
Now has a strong desire seized all my heart
To go with Satyavan holding his hand
Into the life that he has loved and touch
Herbs he has trod and know the forest flowers
And hear at ease the birds and the scurrying life
That starts and ceases, rich far rustle of boughs
And all the mystic whispering of the woods. ||133.10||
Beside her Satyavan walked full of joy,
Because she moved with him through his green haunts:
He showed her all the forest’s riches, flowers
Innumerable of every odour and hue
And soft thick clinging creepers red and green
And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry
That haunted sweetly distant boughs, replied
With the shrill singer’s name more sweetly called. ||133.15||
An awful hush had fallen upon the place:
There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts. ||133.38||
Still with an amorous crowd of seeking hands
Softly entreated by their old desires
Her senses felt earth’s close and gentle air
Cling round them and in troubled branches knew
Uncertain treadings of a faint-foot wind:
She bore dim fragrances, far callings touched;
The wild bird’s voice and its winged rustle came
As if a sigh from some forgotten world. ||136.6||
A ripple of gleaming wings crossed the far sky;
Birds like pale-bosomed imaginations flew
With low disturbing voices of desire,
And half-heard lowings drew the listening ear,
As if the Sun-god’s brilliant kine were there
Hidden in mist and passing towards the sun. ||139.6||
And thou, go back alone to thy frail world:
Chastise thy heart with knowledge, unhood and see
Thy nature raised into clear living heights,
The heaven-bird’s view from unimagined peaks. ||140.43||
In the vast golden laughter of Truth’s sun
Like a great heaven-bird on a motionless sea
Is poised her winged ardour of creative joy
On the still deep of the Eternal’s peace. ||142.18||
A heaven bird upon jewelled wings of wind
Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,
By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,
On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul. ||142.107||
It is the storm bird of an anarch Power
That would upheave the world and tear from it
The indecipherable scroll of Fate,
Death’s rule and Law and the unknowable Will. ||145.10||
Ecstatic voices smote at hearing’s chords,
Each movement found a music all its own;
Songs thrilled of birds upon unfading boughs,
The colours of whose plumage had been caught
From the rainbow of imagination’s wings. ||148.21||
Into those heights her spirit went floating up
Like an upsoaring bird who mounts unseen
Voicing to the ascent his throbbing heart
Of melody till a pause of closing wings
Comes quivering in his last contented cry
And he is silent with his soul discharged,
Delivered of his heart’s burden of delight. ||148.52||
Heaven’s light visits sometimes the mind of earth;
Its thoughts burn in her sky like lonely stars;
In her heart there move celestial seekings soft
And beautiful like fluttering wings of birds,
Visions of joy that she can never win
Traverse the fading mirror of her dreams. ||152.3||
Amidst the headlong rapture of her fall
Held like a bird in a child’s satisfied hands,
In an enamoured grasp her spirit strove
Admitting no release till Time should end,
And, as the fruit of the mysterious joy,
She kept within her strong embosoming soul
Like a flower hidden in the heart of spring
The soul of Satyavan drawn down by her
Inextricably in that mighty lapse. ||156.9||
Outwingings of a bird from its bright home,
Her earthly morns were radiant flights of joy. ||157.12||
Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged
Our home, this forest, with its thousand cries
And the whisper of the wind among the leaves
And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,
God’s canopy of blue sheltering our lives,
And the birds crying for heart’s happiness,
Winged poets of our solitary reign,
Our friends on earth where we are king and queen. ||157.25||
Our wedded walk through life begins anew,
No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy;
Let us go through this new world that is the same. ||157.44||
For it is given back, but it is known,
A playing ground and dwelling house of God
Who hides himself in bird and beast and man
Sweetly to find himself again by love,
By oneness. His presence leads the rhythms of life
That seek for mutual joy in spite of pain. ||157.45||
Then hand in hand they left that solemn place
Full now of mute unusual memories,
To the green distance of their sylvan home
Returning slowly through the forest’s heart:
Round them the afternoon to evening changed;
Light slipped down to the brightly sleeping verge,
And the birds came back winging to their nests,
And day and night leaned to each other’s arms. ||157.55||