-08_Amal Kiran^s Letter to Sri Aurobindo on Savitri.htm Amal Kiran's Letter to Sri Aurobindo on Savitri We reproduce in the following Amal Kiran's letter to Sri Aurobindo on Savitri as it appears in the Sri Aurobindo Circle (Special Fiftieth Number) of 1994. The editor's note, briefly excerpted, introducing the correspondence between them precedes the letter. Sri Aurobindo's reply as originally dictated to Nirodbaran is not reproduced here. — Editors (Sri Aurobindo used to send by instalments, from 25 October 1936 onward for some time, a handwritten copy of his Savitri as it stood then to Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), and it grew an established, practice that the

A Latinised Adjective in English A Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo Here is a brief but bold discussion between Amal Kiran and Sri Aurobindo showing the depth of their scholarship in matters English but, more than that, a very unconventional Guru-Shishya relationship which would have been dubbed arrogant, if not blasphemous, on part of the disciple by the earlier tradition. - Editors A HUMOROUS discussion with Sri Aurobindo about a Latinised adjective for poetic use may not be out of place here. For it links up ultimately with a poem of his own. I put to him questions and he replied. In my lines — This heart grew brighter w

Approaching the Poetry of Amal Kiran THE Collected Poems (1993) of Amal Kiran appropriately takes the name of his very first anthology, The Secret Splendour. Over more than four decades, "the secret splendour" of Amal Kiran's poetry has been unveiled in a number of collections, now brought together for the benefit of poetry lovers: The Secret Splendour, Overhead Poetry, The Adventure of the Apocalypse, Altar and Flame, Uncollected Works, Eros/Known and Unknown and a selection from the earlier days named Images from Early Moods. A collection of this nature that spans practically a whole lifetime is bound to display variation in ter

A Glimpse of the Pure Ray A FEW glimpses of Shri Amal, Amalda, Amalbhai or Amalji ? Well, considering his imposing personality, I should call Shri Amaldabhaiji! But then, being what he is, he wouldn't like any of these appendages - so Amal, ‘pure’ and simple! Though I feel that it is a privilege to write on Amal, when asked to do so I hesitated because there are so many big people writing about his colossal knowledge, his generosity in literary help, his wonderful sense of humour, his capacity to laugh at himself, his cheerfulness and last but not the least, his formidable memory. I was just wondering what to write - n

The Triple Labour of Association TO HAVE known Amal Kiran was a grace, an unanticipated and clearly an undeserved benediction. For how is one to anticipate or deserve an encounter destined to alter the entire focus of one's life? That providential meeting occurred for me more than twenty years ago at a critical moment of my life when a great difficulty faced me in publishing my two volumes, Glimpses of the Mother's Life. Amal Kiran opened his heart and poured love and compassion on a budding writer. I started compiling from 1973 the Mother's autobiographical accounts. I was fortunate enough that I had the privilege to have guid

SECTION TWO His study of Divining Thought A SELECTION FROM THE WRITINGS OF AMAL-KIRAN According to Horace's Ars Poetica a good poem comes both with spontaneous naturalness and well-cultivated craft, combining a lot of book-learning and inspiration. Amal-Kiran's poetry is not only good, but is something more than that: it breathes the joy of the spirit in its wide-ranging manifestive life-urges and is luminous, even at times profoundly revelatory, carrying delights and splendours of the psychic-lyrical, or of the overhead. It is trans-Horatian. Indeed, to put it more explicitly, it is Aur

-31_Amal^s Epistolary Wonder.htm Amal's Epistolary Wonder "A man speaking to men" — that is Wordsworth's conception of an ideal poet. Amal Kiran's innumerable letters to his friends and admirers in the series Life-Poetry-Yoga more than glowingly fulfil this poetic condition. We present in the following a very small sample of the lively correspondence that went on - and is going on - between PR of the Ashram Press and him. Amal as an expounder of Savitri, a very perceptive critic of poetry, a sharp historian, an alert editor, commentator on things and events spiritual and esoteric as well as scientific, an interpreter of dreams and, very happily, a warm humorist and wit with a ri

The Poetic Genius of K.D. Sethna AMAL KIRAN is little known outside a particular circle, but his poetry is a new light which is destined to spread. His poetry seeks "a new intensity of vision and emotion, a mystic inwardness" that catches alive "the deepest rhythms of the spirit". It really becomes "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery". What is most interesting is Sethna has his individual style in spite of his being very close to Sri Aurobindo. His companion poet, Nirodbaran, has a different poetic style. Sri Aurobindo insisted on originality and this must have helped them. One of Sri Aurobindo's fav

The Parable of Two Birds "IN THE Upanishad it is said in a parable that there are two birds sitting, on the same bough, one of which feeds and the other looks on. This is an image of mutual relationship of the infinite being and the finite self. The delight of the bird which looks on is great, for it is pure and free delight. There are both of these birds in man himself, the objective one with its business of life, the subjective one with its disinterested joy of vision." That is how Rabindranath Tagore interprets the two-bird metaphor of Mundaka Upanishad. He seems to tell us that the act of seeing is more imaginative, more creative, more

PREFACE Kekoo D. Sethna was born in a Parsi family of Bombay on 25 November 1904 and in the Pondicherry Ashram as Sri Aurobindo's Amal-Kiran on 3 September 1930. By either reckoning we are late in honouring him today.   He has seen a thousand Full Moons long ago and, even as Amal-Kiran, has crossed four years back the traditional sixty for jubilation. Still he wanted us to wait for him to complete a hundred Autumns of the Vedic Rishis. Not that this is going to be too far away but, undoubtedly, it will be another grand occasion to celebrate. And therefore it is good not to miss at least the present one when he is becoming a nonagenarian. Amal-Kiran is a