APPEAL My feet are sore, Beloved, With agelong quest for Thee; Wilt Thou not choose for dwelling This lonesome heart of me? Is it too poor a mansion? But surely it is poor Because Thou never bringest Thy beauty through its door! It lies all bare and darkened, To hold nought save Thy light: The door is shut because, Love, It craves no lesser sight. Though void, a fulness richens The heart I give to Thee— For, what more can I offer Than all my penury? (Anything special in this lyric? Is not the language too commonplace and the rhythm too hackneyed?) "I like it very well. A rhythm or language

STORM-LIGHT The immortal music of her mind Sweeps through the earth a lustrous wind— "Renounce, O man, thy arduous oar And, opening out faith's song-charmed helpless sail, Reach on my breath of love the ecstatic shore! My rush is truth self-beaconed, not thy pale Stranger-surmise: I am a cyclic gale That blows from paradise to paradise!" Sri Aurobindo's Comment "This is now quite perfect. Only, the lines 2-5 are now of the Illumined Mind, with a strong undertone of the effective,1 the first and last four intuitive. This is not a defect. "The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of a play of lights

MOKSHA A giant earth-oblivion numbs the brain, A stroke of trance making each limb fall loose And narrow-hearted hungers crumble down! The soul has broken through the walls of time, The unlustred prison of the dreaming clay, To a palace of imperishable gold— No transient pauper day but shadowless dawn, Eternal Truth's sun-gated infinite. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is mental throughout except the last line which has a touch of Higher Mind; but it is fine all the same. Quite up to the mark." Page-104

GODS They give us life with some high burning breath, Life which but draws a golden road to death. In vain we lift warm hands that quiver and cry Unto the blue salvation of the sky. Above, transparencies divine are spread Of fusing fires—gay purple, eager red; But who there heeds our love? Thwarted, alone, We struggle through an atmosphere of stone. The heaven-coloured distances lie dumb— But all our hush is sleep or clay grown numb: A blinded beauty fills our heart, a sun Lost in gigantic self-oblivion. Those ever-shining quietudes of bliss How shall we know—pale wanderers from kiss to kiss? Sri

-055_A Poet^s Stammer.htm A POET'S STAMMER My dream is spoken, As if by sound Were tremulously broken Some vow profound. A timeless hush Draws ever back The winging music-rush Upon thought's track. Though syllables sweep Like golden birds. Far lonelihoods of sleep Dwindle my words. Beyond life's clamour, A mystery mars Speech-light to a myriad stammer Of nickering stars.— it is certainly the inner mind that has transformed the idea of stammering into a symbol of inner phenomena and into that operation a certain strain of mystic mind enters, but what is prominent is the intuitive inspiration throughout

A DREAM-VISION OF THE MOTHER       Outside Sri Aurobindo's room I was waiting for the Mother to come from the room in the eastern wing where she used to stand and receive people in the course of every morning. Some people were in that room. The Mother entered it, spoke with them and then turned and saw me. Smiling, she put both her arms forward as if to draw me towards her. I went and held her hands and told her "Mother, I am depressed because I've to see you only in my dreams — and that also not every night." She then took me near Sri Aurobindo's room and said a little angrily: "Why can't you open your eyes and see me whenever you want t

A POET IN THE MAKING   A LYRIC WITH SRI AUROBINDO'S CORRECTIONS  AND COMMENTS     In the early days of my stay in the Ashram, I wrote as follows to Sri Aurobindo about a poem by my sister Minnie, now Mrs. NF. Canteenwalla, who was eighteen years old at the time and had come with my mother and brother on a visit: "My sister has off and on been writing poetry. Here is her most recent effort, the first poem she has written in Pondicherry. In a few places I have made some corrections. Substantially the poem stands as she wrote it. Perhaps my most important change was to substitute 'phantom' for 'seductive' in stanza 5. Will you kindly

    THE SUN AND THE RAINBOW   THE SUN AND THE RAINBOW     APPROACHES TO LIFE THROUGH SRI AUROBINDO'S LIGHT Essays, Letters, Poems, Short Stories AMAL KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA)     Clear Ray Trust Puducherry - 605 012, India First Published: 1981 Second Edition: June 2008 (Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino)       Price: Rs. 150/- ISBN: 978-81-87916-08-6       © Clear Ray Trust Published by Clear Ray Trust, Puducherry - 605 012 Printed at: All India Pres

DECEMBER 5       TWO STATEMENTS BY SEHRA IN 1956 AND THE MOTHER'S COMMENT     First Statement   This is my experience during the meditation. I had no sense of body. There was nothing except infinite space. Then I heard a voice which said: "From now on, I will rule the world." I asked "Who is that I?" The answer came: "The Supermind." Then I laughed and asked: "But who is the Supermind?" At the same time I said "Sri Aurobindo" as if addressing him — and then there was a sort of stroke on my mind and I knew that I had uttered the answer. It was all darkness. It was from this darkness that the voice

-032_The Mother Two Phases (Poem).htm THE MOTHER: TWO PHASES   Infinite Bliss at work In self-elected chains, Bearing with a luminous smile Love's load of a myriad pains — The Universal Mother, Eternity seized by Time, Dealing out hourly blessings To earth for a goal sublime. Infinite Bliss at play In a fetter light as flowers, Laughing with radiant motion In the midst of hampering hours — The Transcendental Mother, Triumphant over all, Swinging a care-free racquet As if earth were a tennis ball!     18.8.1954 Page-164