SPIRITUAL VISION

        POEMS  AND  POETS

                       38. SPIRITUAL VISION

A  great poet makes us see ordinary things in extraordinary light. But the greatest is one who can make us see eternity in the passing, universe in a grain of sand. Poets of some periods seem to be seized by some dominant feeling or sense or vision, which they impart to the whole age and society. In India we speak of 'ashtadikgajas' or 'navaratnas' adorning the court of some fortunate king. In English poetry we have periods like Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian when the poets were motivated by some one major idea or theme or force.

The Victorian age was marked by high intellectualism, represented by Tennyson and Browning. But the age preceding was one of  "unaccountable spiritual impulse, insistent but vague in some, strong but limited in one or two, splendid and supreme in its rare moments of vision and clarity" ( Sri Aurobindo). The poets then sought to pierce the veil of appearances and bring before us the spiritual truth behind. Their language attained strange heights, even when talking of common things. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Blake and Byron,  Keats and Shelley represent such a moment. Not all of them attained the same great height or kept it for long but the glimpse they got was sufficient to power them, and to provide us aesthetic pleasure and spiritual stimulation. Some like Wordsworth wrote too much and dissipated their energy, like Browning later; some like  Keats and Shelley died young, before they could ascend their full height, but what they left behind is remarkable.

Let us consider two poems of Shelley.

 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

The fountains mingle with the river,

     And the river with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix for ever,

     With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

     All things by law divine

In one another's being mingle:-

     Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss the heaven,

    And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

     If it disdained ts brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

     And the moonbeams kiss the sea:-

What are these kissings worth,

    If thou kiss not me?

Apparently a love poem, but the images invoked make it sublime. And it brings to us the basic fact of the universe: all things are connected!

Shelley talks of the mountains kissing the heaven. Our own Majrooh Sultanpuri has another image of mountain- of mountain sleeping on the lap of clouds!

Sare haseen nazaare, sapnon mein kho gaye

Sar rakhke  aasman pe, parbat bhi so gaye!

All the beautiful scenes around me, have vanished in my dreams

And the mountain has also gone to sleep,

keeping its head on the sky!

THE CLOUD

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

     From the seas and streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

     In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

     The sweets buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mothers' breast,

     As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the  lasting hail,

     And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

     And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

     And their great pines grew aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white

     While I sleep in the arms of the blast,

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

     Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

    It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

    This pilot is guiding me

Lured by the love of the genii that move

     In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills,and the crags, and the hills,

     Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain, or stream,

     The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

     Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

    And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

     When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

     Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

     In the light of its golden wings,

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

    Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

    From the depths of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest,on my aery nest,

     As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

     Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

     By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

     Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof

     The stars peep behind her and peer;

And i laugh to see them whirl and flee,

     Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my mind-built tent,

     Till calm the rivers,lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

     Are each paved with moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,

     And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim,and the stars reel and swim,

     When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

     Over a torrent sea,

Sun-beam proof, I hang like a roof,

     The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,

     With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

     Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

     Whilst the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

     And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

     I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a strain,

     The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

     Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

     And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

     I arise and unbuild it again.

This is a long poem but as we say, every expression in it is worth  a lakh of rupees- 'akshara laksham'.  Obviously it is about the cloud, but the cloud here stands for something more fundamental. The poem speaks of rain, moisture, hail snow, etc that the cloud causes. But it also shows how everything  in nature is connected, inter-linked and interdependent. But more than this, it shows how nature is an unending cycle, where the form keeps changing but the substance remains.  It is here that he comes close to our own philosophy. According to Hindus, while nature constantly changes, there is no destruction as such, in the sense of something going out of existence, as there is no 'creation' in the sense of something coming out of nothing. What is normally called creation is just'manifestation'- coming out of a hiding, so to say; at the end of the cycle, things again go out of manifestation: involution, preceding evolution. Srishti and pralaya are eternal cycles of manifestation- continuous evolution, change, transformation, involution and so on, again and again. This is what Shelley is conveying here: the continuous metamorphosis or transformation of nature. Our very words-jagat, srishti,  pralaya indicate this unending cycle.

It is also remarkable that Shelley does not regard the phenomena of nature as inanimate, but endows them with personalities. In this, he has recovered the soul of all the ancient religions of the world for whom forces of nature were endowed with divine attributes or personalities."I change, but I cannot die"- what supreme Wisdom is this! "I silently laugh at my own cenotaph- I arise and unbuild it again": how beautifully the self-renewing power or activity of nature is revealed here! Nobody can write "Finis" to Nature, though its forms will keep changing. This is the truth revealed ( or hidden?) by the dancing form of Nataraja!

The figure of cloud is very dear to us. At the conclusion of Sandhya upasana, everyone utters a prayer:

Aakaasaat patitam toyam, yatha gaccahti sagaram,

Sarva deva namaskaraha: Keshavam pratigachchati.

Just as the rain water caused by the cloud  falling anywhere will ultimately have to reach the sea, so do our prayers, to whichever deity  addressed, reach the Supreme. 

The cloud is formed by the sea waters evaporating, and it comes back to the earth and sea as rain, river and water!

This poem by Shelley is one of the truly metaphysical poems in the English language. Sri Aurobindo reserved his high praise for Shelley:

'The spiritual truth which had possession of Shelley's mind was higher than anything opened to the vision of any of his contemporaries, and its power and reality which was the essence of  his inspiration can only be grasped, when it is known and lived, by a changed and future humanity. Light, Love, Liberty are the three godheads in whose presence his pure and radiant spirit lived; but celestial light, a celestial love , a celestial liberty."

                                                       From: The Future Poetry, part I, chap XVIII
                                                        Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2000.

     

     

Mantra As Poetry

                         POEMS  AND POETS

         35. Mantra as Poetry

We Indians are familiar with mantra, or so we fancy. But most of us think of it as  nothing more than some mumbo-jumbo, used in religious rites or on special occasions. All mantras are in Sanskrit, but this language is as good as Greek to us now. We do not know the meaning, nor do we care to learn. The idea that mantra can be poetry, or poetry can be in the form of mantra does not occur to us.

The poetic mind is a medium for interpretation and creation. But what does he create or interpret? It is the vision of  a Truth that hides behind phenomena. Any one can see the sun rise; but only a poet can see our consciousness awakening , in the symbol of the sunrise. And the greatest poet will see that both the sun rising in the sky and the man apprehending it here are pervaded by the same Spirit. "Asavadityo brahma: brahmaiva Ahamasmi",he declares. This is not a mere assertion of a mental conviction, but a truth realised and expressed in a verbal formula. This is mantra. It takes us beyond the merely physical phenomenon.
Says Sri Aurobindo:

"......all art  worth the name must go beyond the visible, must reveal, must show, us something that is hidden, and in its total effect not reproduce but create....... the  artist....throws into significant form a truth he has seen, which may be truth of hell or truth of heaven.....but is never merely the external truth of  earth."

    "the mantra in poetry, that rhythmic speech which, as the Veda puts it, rises at once from the heart of the seer and from the distant home of the Truth,- the discovery of the word, the divine movement, the form of thought proper to the reality"

The more authentic the vision, the grander the expression!
This truth, in the words of  James Cousins,

" lies in the apprehension of a something stable behind the instability of word and deed, something that is the reflection of the fundamental passion of humanity for something beyond itself, something that is a dim shadowing of the divine urge which is prompting all creation to unfold itself and to rise out of its limitations towards its Godlike possibilities."

                            ( All these quotations  are from Sri Aurobindo: The                                Future Poetry. Chap.1; Sri Aurobindo Ashram,2000)

In short, our reach should exceed our grasp, in the words of Browning! Mantra is the highest poetic expression! Our Upanishads are the highest mantras we have!

We perceive the world with our senses, but it is our mind which makes sense of our perception. If our mind is not at attention, the eye may see but it is not registered.What makes the mind 'mind' its object? So wonders a Sage.

In the Katha Upanishad, Yama reveals a basic truth about man's perception:
Paranchi knani vyatrunaath Svayambhu:
Tasmaat paran pasyati.

The Self-Created One has made our sense faculties outgoing; that is why they only see things outside.

Man is always attracted or engaged by the world outside. Even so, unless he pays attention, ie engages his mind on the things for eg  which his eyes look at,, he does not really "see". So the Sage asks:

Keneshitam patati preshitam mana:?
Kena prana prathama praiti? etc

Under whose will, directed by whom does the mind fall on (drawn towards)  its object? By whom willed or ordered does the breath first proceed on its path?


This is a very momentous question that is being raised.
Come to think of it: is it only for man that the senses have this outgoing tendency? It is shared by the entire animal world. But man alone can raise this question. The animals are limited by this tendency; man can question it and so, there is the possibility of conquering it. Animals are limited by their animality; man can exceed his humanness. This possibility of self-exceeding opens up for man the prospect of Immortality.

It is not the purpose or method of the Upanishadic Seer to teach a doctrine or impose a faith. It is to raise a question, and set us up on the quest, each one to follow his own method, at his own pace. They only give hints. For instance, here, the Sage says this quest has to be undertaken here: iha:

Iha chedavedeedatha satyamasti
Na chedihavedeen mahati vinashta:

If one has known That ( the Self, Brahman) in this life, one then knows the supreme truth. Without this knowledge, one is doomed to much suffering.

The Brhadaranyaka is even more explicit. There Yajnavalkya tells Gargi,the Brahmavadidni:

Yo va etad aksharam Gargi  aviditvasmallokat
praiti, sa krupana:

O Gargi, he who departs from this world without knowing this Immutable, is miserable.

The Sage is thus not only raising a basic question, but is also suggesting the importance of finding an answer in this very life. This is not to be postponed for a post-mortem condition.

It is made clear in the Upanishad that the ultimate Truth or Immortality cannot be attained by any amount of yajna or karma whose results are only transient. Yama tells Nachiketas:

Na hyadruvai: prapyate hi druvam tat
                                              Katha, 1.2.10

You cannot attain the Eternal by using  transitory things ( like engaging in external sacrifice). 

But we can take up the quest, by engaging in the Inquiry about Truth, " which begins by a sort of the reflection of the true existence in the awakened mental understanding" (Sri Aurobindo). To know the Truth, we have to get behind the phenomena of the world. And to do that, we have to get back behind our own sense faculties and mind! A deeper Truth lies behind both! Asavadityo brahma: Brahmaiva ahamasmi!

What is proposed as a spiritual quest is made a basic dogma in later theology. For instance the Bhagavatam records:

Esha buddhimatam buddhi:
Manisha cha manishinaam
Yat Satyam anrateneha
martyenaapnoti ma amrutam.            11.29.22

This is the intelligence of the intelligent,
the wisdom of the wise- that a man attains Me,
the Immortal One here ( in this very life)
by means of the unreal and the mortal-
his psycho-physical organisation.

Thus we can study the Upanishads and other 'scriptures' as sheer poetry, for the intellectul stimulation and aesthetic pleasure it provides. If they contain any truth or enlightenment, it will infect us!

The Outward Look

                                 POEMS  AND  POETS

                 34. The Outward Look

Great poets everywhere are moved by lasting themes and lofty thought. This connects them in an invisible way with the basic currents of life, though the expressions are conditioned by the immediate cultural context one is familiar with. Hunger is universal, but 'Gives us this day our daily bread'  pleads the Lord's prayer, while our Rudram seeks 'wajascha me, godhumascha me' etc.

Poetic inspiration comes from many sources. It can be spiritual-intuitional, as in the Upanishads; it can be intellectual, or even a mere verbal exuberance and linguistic felicity. But true poetry must leave a hint  at least of something beyond the words or objects described. Thus when Tennyson makes the brook sing " for men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever", it is the  very Time Spirit which is addressing us in the form of the brook. Man's mortality is set against eternity. The site and sounds associated with the brook are beautiful, but it is not just the physical dimension which matters.

Any true artist has to take us beyond the physical medium. He has to use nature to make us transcend it. A painter makes us forget the canvas, or he is no artist. One who just reproduces nature is a photographer, not painter. Photography is limited by the instrument, painting is not, music is not. When we listen to Kenny G, are we mindful of the instrument, or the music? Does not the music take us beyond the instrument ? " That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound but a star.", as said by Browning. Imitation is not art, but creativity is.

The same holds true with words. In the olden days, poetry was read or recited aloud, where the sound suggested something beyond the sense words conveyed. A poet is not a mere wordsmith. True inspiration brings words in its own train.Sri Aurobindo remarks:

"it is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision and always new and more and more uplifted or inward ranges of experience."

This we see in poets across cultures, ages. Sri Aurobindo, our greatest poet and Rasika writes:

" In spite of a broad gulf of difference we yet find an extraordinary basic kinship between these two very widely separated great ages of poetry, though there was never any possibility of contact between that earlier oriental and this later occidental work,- the dramas of Kalidasa and some of the dramatic romances of Shakespeare, plays like the Sanskrit Seal of Rakshasa and Toy-Cart and Elizabethan historic and melodramatic pieces, the poetry of the Cloud Messenger and erotic Elizabethan poetry, the romantically vivid and descriptive method of Spenser's Faerie Queene and the more intellectually romantic vividness and descriptive elaborateness of the Line of Raghu, the tone and manner of Drayton and that of the much greater work of Bharavi. This kinship arises from the likeness of essential motive and psychological basic type and emerges and asserts itself in spite of the enormous cultural difference."

                                  From: The Future Poetry p.126
                                   Sri Aurobindo Ashram,2000

For the last thousand years or so, India has not expressed its soul in Sanskrit poetry; nor in regional poetry,either, except in the Bhakti movement. In modern times, this spirit briefly raised its head in Bengali, in a Bankim Chandra, or Tagore, and in Tamil in Subramanya Bharati. Alas, it was all too brief.

Providence brought English to India, but the education that became its vehicle made us  revolve "around a lawyer's office and a Government cutcherry, ...far away from the great stream of world's living thought and action"....giving us " the falsest possible education, a knowledge always twenty-five or fifty years behind the time.", in the words of Sri Aurobindo. Even so, the English language and literature remain our only window to the world, painfully small as it is. We have to ensure that this does not fall a victim to cultural chauvinism in the name of narrow patriotism, or linguistic jingoism..

                                                       

Wonders of the world

   
                       POEMS  AND POETS

          31. Wonders of the World!

"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings"

wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. But now this analogy may not hold. For one thing, the modern world has dispensed with most kings, and the remaining ones are sustained by the doles from parliament, one wonders whether they are really happy. Most of us have no idea of kings any way, and authorities tell us their heads lie uneasy! And the number of things that Stevenson probably had in mind have all been replaced by science,technology and commerce.

Where things still are, they are either rendered unseeable,or unapproachable. The simple sun rise or full moon cannot be seen in most cities due to highrises, and the artificial city lights of the night block the vision of the twinkling little stars. Trees that attracted and sheltered birds have made way for metros or widened roads, and lakes have been converted into stadia. Fog and smog envelop the cities and towns, and the hills and vales have become objects of packaged tourism.  

" And it is good to know that overhead
     Blue skies will brighten, and the sun will shine,
And flowers be sweet in many a garden bed,
     And all divine,
   ( For are they not, O Father, thoughts of thine?)
Earth's warmth and fragrance  shall on men be shed.

" And I am glad that Night will always come,
     Hushing all sounds, even the soft-voiced birds,
Putting away all light from her deep dome,
     Until are heard
   In the wide starlight's stillness, unknown words,
That make the heart ache till it finds its home."

                                           Edward Rowland Sill

If you live in an Indian city, and can still recite this, you are fortunate! You are a real optimist!

Science has robbed the mystery of the world, and commerce has conquered every art and sport. Philosophers for their part have rendered the world even more incomprehensible than it already is.

" His wheel of logic whirled and spun all day;
All day he held his system, grinding it
Finer and finer, till 't was fined away"
                       
                                         E.R.Sill

But philosophy need not mean such heavy stuff,always. See this sample:

James W. Riley
My Philosophy

I allus argy that a man
Who does about the best he can
Is plenty good enough to suit
This lower mundane institute-
No matter ef his daily walk
Is subject fer his neighbor's talk,
And critic-minds of every whim
Jest all git up and go fer him!

The signs is bad when folks commence
A findin' fault with Providence,
And balkin' 'cause the earth don't shake
At ev'ry prancin' step they take.
No man is great tel he can see
How less than little he would be
Ef stripped to self, and stark and bare
He hung his sign out anywhare.

My doctern is to lay aside
Contensions, and be satisfied:
Jest do your best, and praise er blame
That follers that,counts jest the same.
I've allus noticed grate success
Is mixed with troubles, more or less,
And its the man who does the best
That gits more kicks than all the rest.

This world indeed is a curious place. We do not know how it will treat us, how our work will turn out, in spite of good intentions. Our poet  Hasrat Jaipuri sang  light-heartedly:

Karein bhalayi hum, bhure bane hardam
Iss jahan ki reet nirali
Pyar ko samjhe haye re haye sitam.

I always do good, but results turn otherwise
The way of the world is quite strange
Just understand the love.

The Gita asks us to do our duty, and leave the result to God. This is echoed by Browning:

" Loving! what claim to love has work of mine?
     Concede my life were emptied of its gains
To furnish forth and fill work's strict confine,
     Who works so for the world's sake- he complains
     With cause when hate, not love, rewards his pains.
I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty:
     Sought, found and did my duty."

                                   From: Ferishtah's Fancies.

However it may be, and in spite of all the 'development', there are still a few spots where we can still commune with nature. There are still a few things , small but wonderful, so that in small measures we may just beauties see!

The stars know a secret 
     They do not tell;
And morn brings a message
     Hidden well.

There is a blush on the apple,
     A tint on the wing,
And the bright wind whistles
     And the pulses sting.

Perish dark memories!
     There is light ahead;
This world's for the living;
     Not for the dead.

In the shining city,
     On the loud pave,
The life-tide is running
     Like a leaping wave.

On mart and meadow,
     Pavement or plain,
On azure mountain,
     Or azure main-

Heaven bends in blessing;
     Lost is but won;
Goes the good rain-cloud,
     Comes the good sun!

Down the great currents
     Let the boat swing;
There was never winter
     But brought the spring.

                 - E.R. Sill

The blue sky bends over all!

The World is Rotten!

                                     POEMS AND POETS

                   26. The World Is A Rotten Place

What do we make of this world?

It depends upon how we ie our minds are made up! If we follow organised religion, we will go by what they teach: the world is the work of God, and we only have to do as they say God has ordained. If we follow science we will say that there was a Big Bang and the world appeared , and everything happened by chance.There are any number of positions in between. The fun is, none of them can give any proof!

There are a special class of people, known as Sages. They have experienced the Truth of the world first hand. They come from all countries, all traditions. They say we cannot know this world objectively.We know it only through our senses, as interpreted by our mind, depending on our level  or state of consciousness. The mind and senses can mislead us, as when we see a mirage, or mistake a rope for a snake in dim light. The question about the truth or nature of the world can be solved by each one of us only when we experience the truth by ourselves. This is done by refining our consciousness. The Sages do not offer elaborate theories, do not run organizations. How can we believe them? By their life .Walk the path and 'know' the truth. They say:

Drishtim Jnanamayim kritva,

Paschyet  Brhmamayam jagat!

If you look with the sight of Wisdom ( pure consciousness), the world will be perceived as the form of the Infinite!

More or less the same words were said by Blake:

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, men would behold everything as it is- Infinite"

(Quoted in Stephen Larsen: The Mythic Imagination, p.107)

The problem in the present day has been compounded by almost anyone writing on religious/spiritual subjects. And we now have access to anything anyone says, anywhere in the world. We get confused.

But through all this confusion, one fact stands out: This Universe is an Organism- that is, it is Alive! It is Intelligence, not just intelligent.That means,it must have a meaning and purpose. We cannot fathom it, yet. The more Science explores, the more it   is confronted by its limitations. No branch of Science has a last word on anything,as yet! All it does is to manipulate certain intermediate processes  for some immediate ends, the long term consequences of which no one knows.

In the meantime, social scientists are dissatisfied with both our natural and social conditions. They attempt to reform things, institutions. But neither pure science, not the social sciences do offer any guidance to people about the conduct of their lives. This is still done by traditional religions. Those who do not follow organised religions, but are nevertheless convinced that the world is not merely mechanical, that there is something here we do not quite know, follow their own eclectic path, calling themselves 'spiritual but not religious'. Their number is growing.

Some of the great poets  do not subscribe to organised theology of any school, but they do believe in the Bible and give their views accordingly. Donne, Blake, Pope, Browning , Tennyson belong to this group. The greatest of them is Milton. The following words of Browning may be taken as typical:

"Life is a probation and the earth  no goal

But starting point of man."

                From: The Ring and the Book,X 1436

This provides a basis for piloting our life here. If we believe the world is the final goal, then death becomes the end; the imperfections of the world strike us- we are struck with the world. But if we believe the world is not the final goal, then we have to make use of the world, such as it is, to seek our true goal. Saiva Siddhanta says that God has created Tanu,Karana, Bhuvana, Bhogam, to enable man to realise God. These are the instruments. As modern saint-scholar-poet Muruganar put it-

Donda nirdondamavai tonre vuyirtokaitam
Banda Muktikkaap padaitton taal potri!

Praise to the holy feet of Him
who since the beginning of time has created
the pairs of opposites and their absence
for the bondage and liberation
of the mass of living beings!

                         ( From: Ramanapuranam,lines189-190.
                          Translation by Robert Butler,                                                             T.V.Venkatasubramanian  and David Godman)

The same Cape of Storms became the Cape of Good Hope! The difference was in the man, not the Cape!

But this involves a deep question: Why should God create both? This is at the very heart of Christianity and the Old Testament story of Genesis, which Milton attempted to tackle in the Paradise Lost.

JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost

One hesitates to take the name of Milton! He is so great! May be ranked after Shakespeare, but Shakespeare looks easy and approachable, but Milton is formidable. Milton's grand style,wrote Arthur Quiller Couch; but his theme also  is grand- grandest in the entire range of Western Literature: the story of Genesis, no less! This is the grandest epic in the English language.

Now you may ask me: Genesis is the Biblical account of the story of Creation. What has a Hindu got to do with it?
While I do not believe that it is the story of the origin of mankind, I concede it could be the story of a tribe of Jews! This is how it is taken by many authorities, including Spinoza. Every tribe in the world has got its own genesis story! Secondly, the fall of man has a deeper-symbolic-meaning for me, than a mere fall from heaven. It is a fall from our original consciousness of Unity! It is our forgetfulness of our divine nature! It is the Ignorance, for which Jnana is the cure! It is this memory which Arjuna recovers when he says " smritir labda"! The idea strikes me, may be not the form it got in the Bible!

Milton began with the avowed aim:

"I may assert  Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men."

 He chose to relate the story-

"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden..."

The subject is the most serious on earth-death and woe in the world, caused by man's own disobedience.
But we face three crucial issues from the beginning:

• choice and freewill
• relationship between man and woman 
• good and evil

The poem does not answer any of these decisively, but that whatever is, is how God intended! This is rather disconcerting.

The poem opens with Satan and his band finding themselves in hell, having already fallen. Does it mean that hell was already there to receive them, even before the fall? Does it mean the fall was fore-ordained? Hell was:

"Such place Eternal Justice HAD prepared

for those rebellious" (1.70-71)

Does it mean that God created the world with rebellion in mind? Was the world built for rebellion?

Then again, God finds that Satan is on his way to tempt man and says:

" ...................And shall pervert,

For Man will hearken to his glozing lies 

And easily transgress the sole command

Sole pledge of his obedience.So WILL fall

He and his faithless progeny . Whose fault?

Whose but his own? Ingrate! He had of Me

All he could have. I made him just and right,

Sufficient to have stood though free to fall."

                                                    (3.92-99)

If these are the words of God, they make disturbing reading.

God made man free to fall! Man will allow himself to be perverted by Satan and "will fall". So, man's free will in the end really means the freedom to fall! Will even a human parent allow his children to run and fall into a pit, saying they are 'free'? So, what kind of parent is God? Does this not suggest a sadistic streak in the merciful God?

For me, there is an even more disturbing question. This is man, God's fresh creation. How  could he even get the idea of disobedience and transgression so soon, while he is still in God's pristine condition?

The relationship between Eve and Adam too creates problems from the first. Eve says she just ran away from Adam on first seeing him, because:

 

"  ................methought less fair,

Less winning soft,less amiably mild

Than that smooth wat'ry image: back I turned."

                                                  (4.478- 480)

So, Eve finds Adam not so agreeable, after all! She runs away, Adam pursues and seizes her by the hand, and she yields! After debating whether they should work together, Eve goes off to work alone, is tempted by the serpent, eats the apple, gives it to Adam, making him her partner in the venture and together they go to Eden. 

We thus see that from the beginning, the story creates more problems that our theology and philosophy have been able to solve all these centuries. It gives enough valid grounds for our psychologists and feminists to argue on many vital issues. So, how does Milton hope to justify the ways of God?

In fact some have even suggested that Milton might be admiring Satan, the rebel, for he was himself one! And it is strange to think that Eve could think she had freedom only when she disobeyed God! Does it mean women could not achieve liberation, except with disobedience?

The only happy outcome of this epic is that in the end Adam and Eve decide to live together! What a conclusion from Milton who advocated divorce for women, before it was made law! Whether the poem succeeds in justifying God's ways, it at least conveys that man has to reconcile to them!

Whatever the philosophical import, Paradise Lost is a grand poem, a mighty epic conceived and executed in grand manner. It abounds in passages of superlative beauty. It is simply overwhelming.  English language might or might not have remained unadorned and plain without it, but we can  never call ourselves literate until we can read it!

Life is a greater mystery than all our philosophies can tackle!

No epic can divine its origins. Let us simply bow! Here is a nice lesson from Arthur Osborne:

Arthur Osborne: The Wind

I am a pipe the wind blows through,

Be still, it is the wind that sings.

The course of my life and the things that I do

And the seeming false and the seeming true

Are the tune of the wind that neither knows

Good and ill,nor joys and woes.

But the ultimate awe is deeper yet

Than song or pipe or storm;

For pipe and tune are the formless wind

That seemed for a while to take form.

And words are good to escape from words

And strife to escape from strife,

But silence drinks in all the waves

Of song and death and life.

                                        From: Be Still,It Is The Wind That Sings.

                            Ramanasramam Publication, 2000.