Reflections on Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry: Recent Episodes
Dr. Alok Pandey
This podcast includes two series of talks by Dr. Alok Pandey. The first series SAP - “On Poetry of Sri Aurobindo” is devoted to examination of the poetry of Sri Aurobindo. The second series LP - “Sri Aurobindo’s Life through His Poems” is a glimpse at his life through his poems.
On the day of Mahashivratri celebrated across India this talk provides a glimpse of Shiva along with two of Sri Aurobindo’s Poems, – Shiva and Epiphany.
Dr Alok Pandey shares selected Sri Aurobindo’s poems and his understanding of their poetic beauty and spiritual message.
The blue bird is a symbolic poem that describes the state of the liberated divine soul that connects the earthly life with the Beyond.
In this poem we learn about the first major realisation of Sri Aurobindo, the experience of Nirvana. We read the poem and a letter by Sri Aurobindo
This is the last talk of the series “Sri Aurobindo’s Life through His Poems”. We close with the vision and work of Sri Aurobindo, and a few passages from Savitri. Text of the poems which were recited is below.
Today’s talk touches upon some of Sri Aurobindo’s personal experience of transformation in the body and its impact upon the earth.
Today’s talk touches upon the Divine Sacrifice of Sri Aurobindo into the Inconscient Night to clear the passage.
Today’s talk touches upon the period of World War II. The poems included: I made Danger my Helper, The Children of Wotan, The Dwarf Napoleon, and In the Battle.
Sri Aurobindo’s life through his poems. Today’s talk touches upon the period from 1926 to the 1938 when the Ashram was being consolidated.
Sri Aurobindo’s Life through his Poems. Today’s talk touches upon the coming of disciples around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The subject of the talk is an event of Sri Aurobindo’s identification with Sri Krishna on the 24th November 1926. The texts of quoted poems and aphorisms are below.
Today’s talk touches upon the period from 1914 to 1920 primarily upon Sri Aurobindo’s Writings in the Arya.
Selected poems give a glimpse of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga as it was developing along unique lines after reaching Pondicherry. The poems include the following:
– Ascent (‘The Silence’ and ‘Beyond the Silence’), pp. 581-582
– Descent, p. 578
– O Will of God, p. 520
– Ahana, pp. 477-491
– Light, p. 618
– Bride of the Fire, p. 532
[pages for CWSA 2: Collected Poems]
We take up a few poems to touch upon some of Sri Aurobindo’s experiences around the time he left for Pondicherry. The poems include:
– Transit, Non Periit
– To R. On her Birthday
– A child’s imagination
– The Divine worker
– The Cosmic man
– The blue bird
To touch upon some of Sri Aurobindo’s experiences in the Alipore jail, we take up the following poems:
– Epiphany
– The One Self
– Because Thou art
– Krishna
This talk is centred around one of the major experiences of Sri Aurobindo with Lele Maharaj in Baroda. Today’s poems include Adwaita, Parabrahman, Nirvana and Surrender (their full text is given below).
We read today on the aspect of Sri Aurobindo of a revolutionary and worshipper of Kali from the following poems:
To weep because a glorious sun [CWSA 2:182]
What is this talk [CWSA 2:182]
Invitation [CWSA 2:201]
Baji Prabhou [CWSA 2:293-308]
In the moonlight [CWSA 2:237-244]
Bhavani Bharati [CWSA 9:687-693]
Today we read several poems that mark a transition of Sri Aurobindo from a remarkable and brilliant person into a budding revolutionary and a yogi. The following poems have been read: (1) The Spring Child; (2) A Doubt; (3) Awake Mother (The Mother Awakes); (4) The Vedantin’s Prayer (a full text is given below).
Today in the series “Sri Aurobindo’s Life through His Poems” we read some of the poems that reveal to us a beautiful divinely human side of Sri Aurobindo as the Lover of Humanity.
We read today some poems that reveal Sri Aurobindo’s love and growing identification with the soul of India. The poems include Envoi (p. 37), The Just Man (pp. 43-44), To the Ganges (pp. 256-259) and The Meditations of Mandavya (pp. 509-515), all pages given for Collected Poems, CWSA Vol 2).
Seeds of a Revolutionary Today we read some lines from early poems written by Sri Aurobindo in England, published in 1898 as a part of the book of poems “Songs to Myrtilla” [CWSA 2: 9-37]
We take up today the first published poem of Sri Aurobindo, which was printed in 1883 when the author was 10 years old. This poem in retrospect appears at once prophetic and autobiographical.
This poem reveals to us the coming of the Divine in a human frame. It contains Vedic imagery of the birth of Agni which upholds the Divine Will of the future.
Today we are looking at the poem “At the Hill-Tops of Silence”, which gives us a glimpse into the might and genius of Sri Aurobindo’s personality, and the state of the Divine Being before He is ready to take a human birth.
This is the first of a series of talks as an offering for the 150th Birth Anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. In this series we glimpse his life through his poems. The first talk sets the note through the revelation of Sri Aurobindo and His Work as the work of the Avatar, which is primarily to open a new collective possibility for earth and embodied earthly life.
This talk is woven around Sri Aurobindo’s poem which describes the ideal of the Jivanmukta, taking examples from his own life.
This poem by Sri Aurobindo, based on the famous story of Trishuncou, reveals to us the secret truth of immortality.
This beautiful poem is a promise and a way when all will be fulfilled for which creation has come into existence.
This poem touches upon the relation between life and death and the mystic truth it hides.
This poem is written during the pre-Pondicherry days in the form of a dialogue between the Rishi and Manu the king.
Today’s talk is based on Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Invitation”, which was published in Sri Aurobindo’s weekly newspaper Karmayogin on 6 November 1909, under the inscription: “Composed in the Alipur Jail”
This long narrative poem by Sri Aurobindo is based on the story of King Pururavas and the heavenly nymph Urvasie. Written in Baroda (circa 1898-1902). This tale has been earlier immortalised by Kalidasa in his poem “Vikramorvasie or The Hero and the Nymph”, which has also been translated by Sri Aurobindo.
This poem is about vital love and desire, whose god as per Indian mythology is Kamadeva. The poem is written in Pondicherry around 1913.
This talk is a summary of Sri Aurobindo’s sonnet, written on 11 September, 1939. At the end there is also a brief reading of another poem, To the Hill-tops of Silence (1934).
This poem gives us the results of the supramental transformation in a beautiful poetic vein.
A reflection on an early poem of Sri Aurobindo.
It was written in Baroda in 1898-1902 in a notebook, which was subsequently seized by the British police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in 1908. This made it impossible for him to revise or publish this poem after his release from jail in 1909.
Sri Aurobindo’s poem ‘Life and Death’ opens for us a perspective on life and death not as two opposites but as two different modes of existence.
This Sri Aurobindo’s poem is addressed to the Sea and uses the image to bring out our innate soul strength against the opposition of world forces.
This talk is centred around Sri Aurobindo’s sonnet, written in October, 1939 (CWSA 2: 618). The text of the sonnet is given below.
The second video from the new series “Reflections on Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry”
This early (1900-1906) poem reveals to us about what true love is. A full text is given below.
The first video from a new series “Reflections on Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry”. Today we read two sonnets of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo wrote them in Baroda in 1901-1902 in a notebook, which was seized by the British police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in 1908. This made it impossible for him to revise or publish these poems later, and they were not given titles. Their text is given below.