Treatment of Mysticism in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry

Abstract

Mysticism is an important element in mankind’s experience of God. Throughout history, there have been many mystics whose experiences fascinate us and open the door to a higher realm of experience. Many great mystics have lived both in the Orient and the Occident. Meister Eckhart, St Teresa of Avila, Jacob Boehme, Andal, Shankara, Meerabai, Sri Ramakrishna, and Ramana Maharshi are some of them. India has a rich mystic tradition and Sri Aurobindo is one of the greatest intellectual mystics of the modern period. His concept of mysticism is unique; it is more of a continuum, ever-changing and evolving, that he is constantly trying to pin down in words, to define, to concretize, to categorize, but which seems never to yield itself entirely to language. As a result, in his poetry, the mind gets more and more subtle, rarer, and refined. His mysticism is tirelessly reaching for perfection, apparently finding it, not stopping there but inventing new looks for itself; it is a mysticism that seems to stress becoming more than being. Aurobindo’s genius is unparalleled in the world of the mystics. The works of many great mystics are part of the human heritage. Many of them were men of God who spent their lives in convents and monasteries. This paper investigates the poetic works of the great intellectual mystic Aurobindo who teaches that all beings are united in One Self and Spirit, but divided by a certain separate consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life, and body. For him, the mystical experience is an ongoing phenomenon, varying and changing rather than a final or all-transforming experience as it is with the other mystics. He tries to blend the Western and Eastern philosophies and follows an array that is both intellectual and in harmony with the patterns of scientific thought.