Sixty Years of Unbroken Friendship My Acquaintance with Amal I WROTE to Sri Aurobindo in 1937: "Some people look down upon the sadhaks here, saying that they would count for nothing in the world outside." He replied in his usual calm, unruffled manner: "The quality of the sadhaks is so low? I should say there is a considerable amount of ability and capacity in the Ashram. Only the standard demanded is higher than outside even in spiritual matters. There are half a dozen people here perhaps who live in the Brahman Consciousness - outside they would make a big noise and be considered as great yogis; here their condition is n

Yogi of the Modern-Age I AM asked by Mr. Deshpande to write about Amal in this volume to celebrate his coming on the verge of the 9th decade of his wonderful life. I have been fortunately given the freedom to choose the aspect on which to write. Without that I would have been unable to write about such a multifaceted personality. He and Nirod, and some others are for me continuations of my two Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Without Amal I might not have been here at all, and definitely not what I am today, not much but better than what I would have been otherwise.  Amal has nurtured me like a tender plant for nearly 25 years and if

A Poised Serenity WHEN one looks at the stupendous output of this man, sometimes one wonders how can a human brain know so much, contain so much, hold so much and yet not burst at the seams. If one wants to understand the secret of the prolific output of this literary giant K.D. Sethna, who is constantly emptying his brains of its treasures by pouring them out in his writings; who writes with equal ease on the Vedas and the Bible (the Pope may with difficulty find one amongst his cardinals who knows so much about Christianity); who can write a book about the Black Lady on William Shakespeare and who can with credit break lances with Kathle

The Multi-Faceted Seeker of Light ''WE CANNOT be quite the same in metre… The metre of all of you may be said to be spondaic: your feet fall with equal stress on the ground. Mine do not on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress; I am an anapaestic fellow," said K.D. Sethna in his very first lecture on Poetry given to a group of students starting their university career. No reader of these lines could ever miss the Joke the author has cracked on his own infirmity. To call him a fountain of humour will be far from exaggeration. People - his fans, friends, admirers,

Excerpts from Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo We have various guesses about your previous lives. The other day I happened to ask Nolini whether you were Shakespeare. He was diffident. My own belief is that you have somehow amalgamated all that was precious in those forces that manifested as Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Dante, Virgil and Milton: if not all, at least the biggest of the lot. Kindly let us know the truth. Among your other and non-poetic incarnations, some surmise Alexander and Julius Caesar. "Good Heavens, all that! You have forgott

Poet and Pioneer in Consciousness Literature LITERATURE is the most flexible and creative self-expression of a people; for it conveys to us in varied ways the message and import of the inner self in its many manifestations. Its greatness lies in the worthiness of its substance, in the strength and value of its thought and the choice of its proper forms. In its highest form and expression, literature tries to "bring out and raise the soul and life or the living and the ideal mind of a people, an age, a culture, through the genius of some of its greatest or most sensitive representative spirits"1. Literature truly can

-24_Sethna on Mallarme^s Symbolist poetry.htm Sethna on Mallarmé's Symbolist poetry MALLARMÉ, the founder of the Symbolist Movement, presented poetry as different from ordinary reportage. He preferred to clothe his verses in deliberate shadow, never alluding to any object by mere words. It is no wonder that such a poet attracted Sri Aurobindo's comment and appreciation. Sethna's research in Mallarmé's symbolist poetry entitled The Obscure and the Mysterious deserves our attention by his painstaking analyses, commentaries and translations which recommend Mallarmé not only to non-French foreign readers but to Indian readers as well. His interesting in-depth analysis of

Amal Kiran: Sadhak, Poet, Friend I WAS introduced to Amal Kiran in the first days of August 1971.  In the intervening 23 years I have met him more or less weekly... sometimes more, occasionally less often.  23 x 52 = 1196 - say 1200 hours... not counting sleeping time, this amounts to only 100 waking days, just over 3 months. Such a statistic does nothing to convey the immense amount of support, encouragement, inspiration and guidance for which I owe him a still-accumulating debt of gratitude.  How to speak about all I have received from and through him? SADHAK First and foremost Amal has been a living example to me

-42_K D Sethna^s Profession of Poetry.htm K.D. Sethna's Profession of Poetry We reproduce in the following a few excerpts from K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar's writings on some of the works of K.D. Sethna.-Editors AN ACCOMPLISHED craftsman in verse, K.D. Sethna has been following the profession of poetry with a sense of dedication for nearly half a century.  Artist Love (1925) was followed by The Secret Splendour (1941) and The Adventure of the Apocalypse (1949).  Like Nirodbaran, Sethna too has been profoundly influenced by the poetry and spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, and, besides, Sethna has drunk deep in the springs of English and European poetry. Grace could

High Adventure in Historiography: the Historical Vision of K.D. Sethna SRI AUROBINDO, .the seer of modern India, blazed new trails in several worlds of human enterprise and had followers of signal eminence in many of them. Some made their mark in more than one sphere of activity. Integral Yoga and Overhead Poetry arc two such areas in which a number of luminaries have left their mark. No follower of Sri Aurobindo, however, has not only penetrated these areas but also ventured into territories such as science and history. Here is where K.D. Sethna, or Amal Kiran as he was named by his Master, stands distinctly apart. This remarkable mind