{"id":2534,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:15","slug":"03-overhead-poetry-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/27-letters-on-poetry-and-art\/03-overhead-poetry-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-03_Overhead Poetry.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t Overhead Poetry<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t  Higher Mind and Poetic Intelligence
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t I mean by the Higher Mind a first plane of spiritual [consciousness] where one becomes constantly and closely aware of the
\nSelf, the One everywhere and knows and sees things habitually with that awareness; but it is still very much on the mind
\nlevel although highly spiritual in its essential substance; and its instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and
\ncomprehensive mental sight ―not illumined by any of the intenser upper lights but as if in a large strong and clear daylight.
\nIt acts as an intermediate state between the Truth-Light above and the human mind; communicating the higher knowledge in
\na form that the Mind intensified, broadened, made spiritually supple, can receive without being blinded or dazzled by a Truth
\nbeyond it. The poetic intelligence is not at all part of that clarified spiritual seeing and thinking
\n\t\t\t―it is only a high activity of the
\nmind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination, but still akin to the intellect proper, though exalted above it. The
\nHigher Mind is a spiritual plane, ―this does not answer to that description. But the larger poetic intelligence like the larger
\nphilosophic, though in a different cast of thinking, is nearer to the Higher Mind than the ordinary intellect and can more easily
\nreceive its influence. When Milton starts his poem <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\tOf Man’s first disobedience and the fruit
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tOf that forbidden tree ―<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t he is evidently writing from the poetic intelligence. There is
\nnothing of the Higher Mind knowledge or vision either in the style or the substance. But there is often a largeness of rhythm
\nand sweep of language in Milton which has a certain distant kinship to the manner natural to a higher supra-intellectual vision, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-20<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t and something from the substance of the planes of spiritual seeing can come into this poetry whose medium is the poetic
\nintelligence and uplift it. <\/p>\n

Milton is a classical poet and most classical poetry is fundamentally a poetry of the pure poetic intelligence. But there are other influences which can suffuse and modify the pure poetic
\nintelligence, making it perhaps less clear by limitation but more vivid, colourful, vivid with various lights and hues; it becomes
\nless intellectual, more made of vision and a flame of insight. Very often this comes by an infiltration of the veiled inner Mind
\nwhich is within us and has its own wider and deeper fields and subtler movements,
\n\t―and can bring also the tinge of a higher
\nafflatus to the poetic intelligence, sometimes a direct uplifting towards what is beyond it. It must be understood however that
\nthe greatness of poetry as poetry does not necessarily or always depend on the level from which it is written. Shelley has more
\naccess to the inner Mind and through it to greater things than Milton, but he is not the greater poet.<\/p>\n

\n\t19 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tHigher Mind and Inner Mind
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I say that the inner Mind can get the tinge or reflection of the higher experience I am not speaking here of the “descent”
\nin Yoga by which the higher realisation can come down into the inferior planes and enlighten or transform them. I mean that
\nthe Higher Mind is itself a spiritual plane and one who lives in it has naturally and normally the realisation of the Self, the
\nunity and harmony everywhere, and a vision and activity of knowledge that proceeds from this consciousness but the inner
\nMind has not that naturally and in its own right, yet can open to its influence more easily than the outer intelligence. All the same
\nbetween the reflected realisation in the mind and the automatic and authentic realisation in the spiritual mental planes there is
\na wide difference. <\/p>\n

. . . There is also a plane of dynamic Vision which is a part
\nof the inner Mind and perhaps should be called not a plane but a province. There are many kinds of vision in the inner Mind and<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-21<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

not this dynamic vision alone. So to fix invariable characteristics for the poetry of the inner Mind is not easy or even possible;
\nit is a thing to be felt rather than mentally definable. A certain spontaneous intensity of vision is usually there, but that large or
\nrich sweep or power which belongs to the illumined Mind is not part of its character. Moreover it is subtle and fine and has not
\nthe wideness which is the characteristic of the planes that rise towards the vast universality of the Overmind level. <\/p>\n

. . . That is why the lower planes cannot express the Spirit with its full and native voice as the higher planes do
\n―unless
\nsomething comes down into them from the higher and overrides their limitations for the moment. <\/p>\n

\n\tOctober 1936
\n\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tPoetic Intelligence and Illumined Mind
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Certainly, if you want to achieve a greater poetry, more unique, you will yourself have to change, to alter the poise of your
\nconsciousness. At present you write, as you do other things, too much with the brain, the mere human intelligence. To get back
\nfrom the surface vital into the psychic and psychic vital, to raise the level of your mental from the intellect to the illumined mind
\nis your need both in poetry and in Yoga. I have told you already that your best poetry comes from the illumined mind, but as a
\nrule it either comes from there with too much of the transcription diminished in its passage through the intellect or else is generated
\nonly in the creative poetic intelligence. But so many poets have written from that intelligence. On the other hand if you could
\nalways write direct from the illumined mind ―finding not only the substance, as you often do, but the rhythm and language,
\nthat indeed would be a poetry exquisite, original and unique. The intellect produces the idea, even the poetic idea, too much
\nfor the sake of the idea alone; coming from the illumined mind the idea in a form of light and music is itself but the shining
\nbody of the Light Divine. <\/p>\n

On the other hand to cease writing altogether might be a
\ndoubtful remedy. By your writing here you have at least got rid of most of your former defects, and reached a stage of preparation<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-22<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

in which you may reasonably hope for a greater development hereafter. I myself have more than once abstained for some time
\nfrom writing because I did not wish to produce anything except as an expression from a higher plane of consciousness, but to
\ndo that you must be sure of your poetic gift, that it will not rust by too long a disuse. <\/p>\n

\n\t4  September 1931<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 Poetry of the Illumined Mind
\n\t<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\tand of the Intuition <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The poetry of the illumined mind is usually full of a play of lights
\nand colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid
\n\t―it acts usually by a luminous rush. The
\npoetry of the Intuition may have play of colour and bright lights, but it does not depend on them
\n\t―it may be quite bare; it tells
\nby a sort of close intimacy with the Truth, an inward expression of it. The illumined mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but
\neven then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic.<\/p>\n

\n\t1934 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tOvermind Touch
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What super-excellence?1<\/font><\/sup> As poetry? When I say that a line comes from a higher or overhead plane or has the Overmind touch, I
\ndo not mean that it is superior in pure poetic excellence to others from lower planes
\n\t―that Amal’s lines outshine Shakespeare or
\nHomer for instance. I simply mean that it has some vision, light, etc. from up there and the character of its expression and rhythm
\nare from there. <\/p>\n

You do not appreciate probably because you catch only
\nthe surface mental meaning. The [first<\/i>] line is very fine from the technical point of view, the distribution of consonantal and <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t1<\/font><\/sup> Sri Aurobindo was asked: “You said that these two lines of Amal’s poem:<\/i>
\n\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\tFlickering no longer with the cry of clay,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\tThe distance-haunted fire of mystic mind<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\thave an Overmind touch. . . . Can you show me where their super-excellence lies?”<\/i>
\n \t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-23<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

vowel sounds being perfect. That however is possible on any level of inspiration. <\/p>\n

These [assonance, etc.<\/i>] are technical elements, the Overmind touch does not consist in that, but in the undertones or
\novertones of the rhythmic cry and a language which carries in it a great depth or height or width of spiritual truth or spiritual
\nvision, feeling or experience. But all that has to be felt, it is not analysable. If I say that the second line is a magnificent
\nexpression of an inner reality most intimate and powerful and the first line, with its conception of the fire once “flickering” with
\nthe “cry” of clay, but now no longer, is admirably revelatory ―you would probably reply that it does not convey anything of the
\nkind to you. That is why I do not usually speak of these things in themselves or in their relation to poetry
\n―only with Amal who
\nis trying to get his inspiration into touch with these planes. Either one must have the experience
\n―e.g., here one must have lived
\nin or glimpsed the mystic mind, felt its fire, been aware of the distances that haunt it, heard the cry of clay mixing with it and
\nthe consequent unsteady flickering of its flames and the release into the straight upward burning and so known that this is not
\nmere romantic rhetoric, not mere images or metaphors expressing something imaginative but unreal (that is how many would
\ntake it perhaps) but facts and realities of the self, actual and concrete, or else there must be a conspiracy between the “solar
\nplexus” and the thousand-petalled lotus which makes one feel, if not know, the suggestion of these things through the words
\nand rhythm. As for technique, there is a technique of this higher poetry but it is not analysable and teachable. If for instance Amal
\nhad written “No longer flickering with the cry of clay”, it would no longer have been the same thing though the words and mental
\nmeaning would be just as before ―for the overtone, the rhythm would have been lost in the ordinary staccato clipped movement
\nand with the overtone the rhythmic significance. It would not have given the suggestion of space and wideness full with the cry
\nand the flicker, the intense impact of that cry and the agitation of the fire which is heard through the line as it is. But to realise
\nthat one must have the inner sight and inner ear for these things; <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-24<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

one must be able to hear the sound-meaning, feel the
\n\t\t\tsound-spaces with their vibrations. Again if he had written “Quivering
\nno longer with the touch on clay”, it would have been a good line, but meant much less and something quite different to the
\ninner experience, though to the mind it would have been only the same thing expressed in a different image
\n\t\t\t―not so to the
\nsolar plexus and the thousand-petalled lotus. In this technique it must be the right word and no other, in the right place, and in
\nno other, the right sounds and no others, in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little. You may say that it must be
\nso in all poetry; but in ordinary poetry the mind can play about, chop and change, use one image or another, put this word here
\nor that word there ―if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is
\nvery sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or
\nnothing ―or at least all or a fall. <\/p>\n

\n\t8 May 1937<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t* <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

Rhythms may come from the same source and yet be entirely
\ndissimilar. It would be a very bad job if the overmind touch made all rhythms similar. <\/p>\n

\n\t14 February 1934 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tOvermind Rhythm and Inspiration
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the lines you quote from Wordsworth2<\/font><\/sup> the overmind movement is not there in the first three lines; in the last line there
\nis something of the touch, not direct but through some high intuitive consciousness and, because it is not direct, the fully
\ncharacteristic rhythm is absent or defective. The poetic value or perfection of a line, passage or poem does not depend on
\nthe plane from which it comes; it depends on the purity and authenticity and power with which it transcribes an intense<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 2<\/font> The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\tNo more shall grief of mine the season wrong;<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\tI hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-25<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tvision and inspiration from whatever source. Shakespeare is a poet
\n\t\t\tof the vital inspiration, Homer of the subtle physical, but there
\n\t\t\tare no greater poets in any literature. No doubt, if one could get a
\n\t\t\tcontinuous inspiration from the overmind, that would mean a greater,
\n\t\t\tsustained height of perfection and spiritual quality in poetry than
\n\t\t\thas yet been achieved; but it is only in short passages and lines
\n\t\t\tthat even a touch of it is attainable. One gets nearer the overmind
\n\t\t\trhythm and inspiration in another line of Wordsworth ―<\/p>\n

a mind . . . <\/p>\n

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or in a line like Milton’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those thoughts that wander through eternity. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One has the sense here of a rhythm which does not begin or
\nend with the line, but has for ever been sounding in the eternal planes and began even in Time ages ago and which returns into
\nthe infinite to go sounding on for ages after. In fact, the word-rhythm is only part of what we hear; it is a support for the
\n\u00b4<\/i> rhythm we listen to behind in “the Ear of the ear”,
\n\tś<\/font>rotrasya<\/i> ś<\/font>rotram. <\/i>To a certain extent, that is what all great poetry at
\nits highest tries to have, but it is only the overmind rhythm to which it is altogether native and in which it is not only behind
\nthe word-rhythm but gets into the word-movement itself and finds a kind of fully supporting body there. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

P.S. Lines from the highest intuitive mind-consciousness, as well as those from the overmind, can have a mantric character
\n\t―the
\nrhythm too may have a certain kinship with mantric rhythm, but it may not be the thing itself, only the nearest step towards
\nit.<\/p>\n

\n\t10 July 1931<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Mantra <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The mantra <\/i>as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry<\/i>
\nis a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-26<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the
\nmere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the
\nInfinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or
\nvalues of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these
\nand greater. The passages you mention from the Upanishad and the Gita have certainly the Overmind accent. But ordinarily the
\nOvermind inspiration does not come out pure in human poetry ―it has to come down to an inferior consciousness and touch
\nit or else to lift it by a seizure and surprise from above into some infinite largeness. There is always a mixture of the two
\nelements, not an absolute transformation though the higher may sometimes dominate. You must remember that the Overmind is
\na superhuman consciousness and to be able to write always or purely from an overmind inspiration would mean the elevation
\nof at least a part of the nature beyond the human level. <\/p>\n

But how then do you expect a supramental inspiration to
\ncome down here when the Overmind itself is so rarely in human reach? That is always the error of the impatient aspirant, to think
\nhe can get the Supermind without going through the intervening stages or to imagine that he has got it when in fact he has only
\ngot something from the illumined or intuitive or at the highest some kind
\n<\/i>of mixed overmind consciousness.<\/p>\n

\n\t22 June 1931 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Overmind and Aesthetics
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously, the Overmind and aesthetics cannot be equated together. Aesthetics is concerned mainly with beauty, but more
\ngenerally with rasa<\/i>, the response of the mind, the vital feeling and the sense to a certain “taste” in things which often may be
\nbut is not necessarily a spiritual feeling. Aesthetics belongs to the mental range and all that depends upon it; it may degenerate
\ninto aestheticism or may exaggerate or narrow itself into some version of the theory of “Art for Art’s sake”. The Overmind is<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-27<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It
\nembraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons; it sees a universal and
\nan eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other
\nthan beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we
\ncall knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual
\nrange of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes
\nby the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between
\nthere is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its
\ninfinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient
\nand the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential
\nquality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose. It can take up and uplift any or every style or at least put some
\nstamp of itself upon it. More or less all that we have called overhead poetry has something of this character whether it be
\nfrom the Overmind or simply intuitive, illumined or strong with the strength of the higher revealing Thought; even when it is not
\nintrinsically overhead poetry, still some touch can come in. Even overhead poetry itself does not always deal in what is new or
\nstriking or strange; it can take up the obvious, the common, the bare and even the bald, the old, even that which without it would
\nseem stale and hackneyed and raise it to greatness. Take the lines: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I spoke as one who ne’er would speak again <\/p>\n

And as a dying man to dying men. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The writer is not a poet, not even a conspicuously talented versifier. The statement of the thought is bare and direct and the rhetorical device used is of the simplest, but the overhead touch
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-28<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tsomehow got in through a passionate emotion and sincerity and is
\n\t\t\tunmistakable. In all poetry a poetical aesthesis of some kind there
\n\t\t\tmust be in the writer and the recipient; but aesthesis is of many
\n\t\t\tkinds and the ordinary kind is not sufficient for appreciating the
\n\t\t\toverhead element in poetry. A fundamental and universal aesthesis is
\n\t\t\tneeded, something also more intense that listens, sees and feels
\n\t\t\tfrom deep within and answers to what is far behind the surface. A
\n\t\t\tgreater, wider and deeper aesthesis then which can answer even to
\n\t\t\tthe transcendent and feel too whatever of the transcendent or
\n\t\t\tspiritual enters into the things of life, mind and sense. <\/p>\n

\nThe business of the critical intellect is to appreciate and judge and here too
\nit must judge; but it can judge and appreciate rightly here only if it first
\nlearns to see and sense inwardly and interpret. But it is dangerous for it to
\nlay down its own laws or even laws and rules which it thinks it can deduce from
\nsome observed practice of the overhead inspiration and use that to wall in the
\ninspiration; for it runs the risk of seeing the overhead inspiration step across
\nits wall and pass on leaving it bewildered and at a loss. The mere critical
\nintellect not touched by a rarer sight can do little here. We can take an
\nextreme case, for in extreme cases certain incompatibilities come out more
\nclearly. What might be called the Johnsonian critical method has obviously
\nlittle or no place in this field, ―the method which expects a precise logical
\norder in thoughts and language and pecks at all that departs from a
\nmatter-of-fact or a strict and rational ideative coherence or a sober and
\nrestrained classical taste. Johnson himself is plainly out of his element when
\nhe deals crudely with one of Gray’s delicate trifles and tramples and flounders
\nabout in the poet’s basin of goldfish breaking it with his heavy and vicious
\nkicks. But also this method is useless in dealing with any kind of romantic
\npoetry. What would the Johnsonian critic say to Shakespeare’s famous lines <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Or take up arms against a sea of troubles <\/p>\n

And by opposing end them? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tHe would say, "What a mixture of metaphors and jumble of <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-29<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tideas! Only a lunatic could take up arms against a sea! A sea of
\n\t\t\ttroubles is a too fanciful metaphor and, in any case, one can’t end
\n\t\t\tthe sea by opposing it, it is more likely to end you." Shakespeare
\n\t\t\tknew very well what he was doing; he saw the mixture as well as any
\n\t\t\tcritic could and he accepted it because it brought home, with an
\n\t\t\tinspired force which a neater language could not have had, the exact
\n\t\t\tfeeling and idea that he wanted to bring out. Still more scared
\n\t\t\twould the Johnsonian be by any occult or mystic poetry. The Veda,
\n\t\t\tfor instance, uses with what seems like a deliberate recklessness
\n\t\t\tthe mixture, at least the association of disparate images, of things
\n\t\t\tnot associated together in the material world which in Shakespeare
\n\t\t\tis only an occasional departure. What would the Johnsonian make of
\n\t\t\tthis r<\/font>k <\/i>in the Veda:
\n\t\t\t"That splendour of thee, O Fire, which is in heaven and in the earth
\n\t\t\tand in the plants and in the waters and by which thou hast spread
\n\t\t\tout the wide mid-air, is a vivid ocean of light which sees with a
\n\t\t\tdivine seeing"? He would say, "What is this nonsense? How can there
\n\t\t\tbe a splendour of light in plants and in water and how can an ocean
\n\t\t\tof light see divinely or otherwise? Anyhow, what meaning can there
\n\t\t\tbe in all this, it is a senseless mystical jargon." But, apart from
\n\t\t\tthese extremes, the mere critical intellect is likely to feel a
\n\t\t\tdistaste or an incomprehension with regard to mystical poetry even
\n\t\t\tif that poetry is quite coherent in its ideas and well appointed in
\n\t\t\tits language. It is bound to stumble over all sorts of things that
\n\t\t\tare contrary to its reason and offensive to its taste: association
\n\t\t\tof contraries, excess or abruptness or crowding of images, disregard
\n\t\t\tof intellectual limitations in the thought, concretisation of
\n\t\t\tabstractions, the treating of things and forces as if there were a
\n\t\t\tconsciousness and a personality in them and a hundred other
\n\t\t\taberrations from the straight intellectual line. It is not likely
\n\t\t\teither to tolerate departures in technique which disregard the
\n\t\t\tcanons of an established order. Fortunately here the modernists with
\n\t\t\tall their errors have broken old bounds and the mystic poet may be
\n\t\t\tmore free to invent his own technique. <\/p>\n

\n\tHere is an instance in point. You refer to certain things I wrote and
\n\tconcessions I made when you were typing an earlier draft of the first books
\n\tof
\nSavitri<\/i>. You instance my readiness <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-30<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tto correct or do away with repetitions of words or clashes of sound
\n\t\t\tsuch as "magnificent" in one line and "lucent" in the next. True,
\n\t\t\tbut I may observe that at that time I was passing through a
\n\t\t\ttransition from the habits of an old inspiration and technique to
\n\t\t\twhich I often deferred and the new inspiration that had begun to
\n\t\t\tcome. I would still alter this clash because it was a clash, but I
\n\t\t\twould not as in the old days make a fixed rule of this avoidance. If
\n\t\t\tlines like the following were to come to me now, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tHis forehead was a dome magnificent, <\/p>\n

\nAnd there gazed forth two orbs of lucent truth <\/p>\n

\n\tThat made the human air a world of light, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tI would not reject them but accept "magnificent" and "lucent" as entirely in
\n\ttheir place. But this would not be an undiscriminating acceptance; for if it
\n\thad run <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His forehead was a wide magnificent dome <\/p>\n

And there gazed forth two orbs of lucent truth <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tI would not be so ready to accept it, for the repetition of sound here
\n\toccurring in the same place in the line would lack the just rhythmical
\n\tbalance. I have accepted in the present version of
\nSavitri <\/i>several of the freedoms established by the modernists including
\n\tinternal rhyme, exact assonance of syllable, irregularities introduced into
\n\tthe iambic run of the metre and others which would have been equally painful
\n\tto an earlier taste. But I have not taken this as a mechanical method or a
\n\tmannerism, but only where I thought it rhythmically justified; for all
\n\tfreedom must have a truth in it and an order, either a rational or an
\n\tinstinctive and intuitive order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t26 April 1946 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Overmind Aesthesis
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tSomething more might need to be said in regard to the overhead note in
\n\tpoetry and the overmind aesthesis; but these are exactly the subjects on
\n\twhich it is difficult to write with any precision or satisfy the intellect’s
\n\tdemand for clear and positive statement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-31<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tI do not know that it is possible for me to say why I regard one
\n\t\t\tline or passage as having the overhead touch or the overhead note
\n\t\t\twhile another misses it. When I said that in the lines about the
\n\t\t\tdying man the touch came in through some intense passion and
\n\t\t\tsincerity in the writer, I was simply mentioning the psychological
\n\t\t\tdoor through which the thing came. I did not mean to suggest that
\n\t\t\tsuch passion and sincerity could of itself bring in the touch or
\n\t\t\tthat they constituted the overhead note in the lines. I am afraid I
\n\t\t\thave to say what Arnold said about the grand style; it has to be
\n\t\t\tfelt and cannot be explained or accounted for. One has an intuitive
\n\t\t\tfeeling, a recognition of something familiar to one’s experience or
\n\t\t\tone’s deeper perception in the substance and the rhythm or in one or
\n\t\t\tthe other which rings out and cannot be gainsaid. One might put
\n\t\t\tforward a theory or a description of what the overhead character of
\n\t\t\tthe line consists in, but it is doubtful whether any such mentally
\n\t\t\tconstructed definition could be always applicable. You speak, for
\n\t\t\tinstance, of the sense of the Infinite and the One which is
\n\t\t\tpervasive in the overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there
\n\t\t\tin the overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given
\n\t\t\tline: it can be expressed indeed by overhead poetry as no other can
\n\t\t\texpress it, but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I
\n\t\t\twould certainly say that Shakespeare’s lines <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Absent thee from felicity awhile, <\/p>\n

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\thave the overhead touch in the substance, the rhythm and the feeling; but
\n\tShakespeare is not giving us here the sense of the One and the Infinite. He
\n\tis, as in the other lines of his which have this note, dealing as he always
\n\tdoes with life, with vital emotions and reactions or the thoughts that
\n\tspring out in the life-mind under the pressure of life. It is not any strict
\n\tadhesion to a transcendental view of things that constitutes this kind of
\n\tpoetry, but something behind not belonging to the mind or the vital and
\n\tphysical consciousness and with that a certain quality or power in the
\n\tlanguage and the rhythm which helps to bring out that deeper something. If I
\n\thad to select the line in European <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-32<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tpoetry which most suggests an almost direct descent from the
\n\t\t\tovermind consciousness there might come first Virgil’s line about
\n\t\t\t"the touch of tears in mortal things": <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tAnother might be Shakespeare’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the dark backward and abysm of time <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tor again Milton’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those thoughts that wander through eternity. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tWe might also add Wordsworth’s line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tThere are others less ideative and more emotional or simply descriptive
\n\twhich might be added, such as Marlowe’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, <\/p>\n

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tIf we could extract and describe the quality and the subtle something that
\n\tmark the language and rhythm and feeling of these lines and underlie their
\n\tsubstance we might attain hazardously to some mental understanding of the
\n\tnature of overhead poetry. <\/p>\n

\nThe Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness ―that epithet would
\nmore accurately apply to the supramental and to the Sachchidananda consciousness
\n―though it looks up to the transcendental and may receive something from it and
\nthough it does transcend the ordinary human mind and in its full and native
\nself-power, when it does not lean down and become part of mind, is
\nsuperconscient to us. It is more properly a cosmic consciousness, even the very
\nbase of the cosmic as we perceive, understand or feel it. It stands behind every
\nparticular in the cosmos and is the source of all our mental, vital or physical
\nactualities and possibilities which are diminished and degraded derivations and
\nvariations from it and have not, except in certain formations and activities of
\ngenius and some intense self-exceeding, anything of the native overmind quality
\nand <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-33<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tpower. Nevertheless, because it stands behind as if covered by a
\n\t\t\tveil, something of it can break through or shine through or even
\n\t\t\tonly dimly glimmer through and that brings the overmind touch or
\n\t\t\tnote. We cannot get this touch frequently unless we have torn the
\n\t\t\tveil, made a gap in it or rent it largely away and seen the very
\n\t\t\tface of what is beyond, lived in the light of it or established some
\n\t\t\tkind of constant intercourse. Or we can draw upon it from time to
\n\t\t\ttime without ever ascending into it if we have established a line of
\n\t\t\tcommunication between the higher and the ordinary consciousness.
\n\t\t\tWhat comes down may be very much diminished but it has something of
\n\t\t\tthat. The ordinary reader of poetry who has not that experience will
\n\t\t\tusually not be able to distinguish but would at the most feel that
\n\t\t\there is something extraordinarily fine, profound, sublime or
\n\t\t\tunusual, ―or he might turn away from it as something too
\n\t\t\thigh-pitched and excessive; he might even speak depreciatingly of
\n\t\t\t"purple passages", rhetoric, exaggeration or excess. One who had the
\n\t\t\tline of communication open, could on the other hand feel what is
\n\t\t\tthere and distinguish even if he could not adequately characterise
\n\t\t\tor describe it. The essential character is perhaps that there is
\n\t\t\tsomething behind of which I have already spoken and which comes not
\n\t\t\tprimarily from the mind or the vital emotion or the physical seeing
\n\t\t\tbut from the cosmic self and its consciousness standing behind them
\n\t\t\tall and things then tend to be seen not as the mind or heart or body
\n\t\t\tsees them but as this greater consciousness feels or sees or answers
\n\t\t\tto them. In the direct overmind transmission this something behind
\n\t\t\tis usually forced to the front or close to the front by a
\n\t\t\tcombination of words which carries the suggestion of a deeper
\n\t\t\tmeaning or by the force of an image or, most of all, by an
\n\t\t\tintonation and a rhythm which carry up the depths in their wide wash
\n\t\t\tor long march or mounting surge. Sometimes it is left lurking behind
\n\t\t\tand only suggested so that a subtle feeling of what is not actually
\n\t\t\texpressed is needed if the reader is not to miss it. This is
\n\t\t\toftenest the case when there is just a touch or note pressed upon
\n\t\t\tsomething that would be otherwise only of a mental, vital or
\n\t\t\tphysical poetic value and nothing of the body of the overhead power
\n\t\t\tshows itself through the veil, but at<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-34<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tmost a tremor and vibration, a gleam or a glimpse. In the lines I
\n\t\t\thave chosen there is always an unusual quality in the rhythm, as
\n\t\t\tprominently in Virgil’s line, often in the very building and
\n\t\t\tconstantly in the intonation and the association of the sounds which
\n\t\t\tmeet in the line and find themselves linked together by a sort of
\n\t\t\tinevitable felicity. There is also an inspired selection or an
\n\t\t\tunusual bringing together of words which has the power to force a
\n\t\t\tdeeper sense on the mind as in Virgil’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

sunt lacrimae rerum. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tOne can note that this line if translated straight into English would sound
\n\tawkward and clumsy as would many of the finest lines in Rig Veda; that is
\n\tprecisely because they are new and felicitous turns in the original
\n\tlanguage, discoveries of an unexpected and absolute phrase; they defy
\n\ttranslation. If you note the combination of words and sounds in
\n\tShakespeare’s line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tso arranged as to force on the mind and still more on the subtle nerves and
\n\tsense the utter absoluteness of the difficulty and pain of living for the
\n\tsoul that has awakened to the misery of the world, you can see how this
\n\ttechnique works. Here and elsewhere the very body and soul of the thing seen
\n\tor felt come out into the open. The same dominant characteristic can be
\n\tfound in other lines which I have not cited, ―in Leopardi’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

l’insano indegno mistero delle cose <\/p>\n

"The insane and ignoble mystery of things" <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tor in Wordsworth’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tMilton’s line lives by its choice of the word "wander" to collocate with
\n\t"through eternity"; if he had chosen any other word, it would no longer have
\n\tbeen an overhead line, even if the surface sense had been exactly the same.
\n\tOn the other hand, take Shelley’s stanza ―<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-35<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tWe look before and after, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd pine for what is not: <\/p>\n

\nOur sincerest laughter <\/p>\n

\n\tWith some pain is fraught; <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tThis is perfect poetry with the most exquisite melody and beauty of wording
\n\tand an unsurpassable poignancy of pathos, but there is no touch or note of
\n\tthe overhead inspiration: it is the mind and the heart, the vital emotion,
\n\tworking at their highest pitch under the stress of a psychic inspiration.
\n\tThe rhythm is of the same character, a direct, straightforward, lucid and
\n\tlucent movement welling out limpidly straight from the psychic source. The
\n\tsame characteristics are found in another short lyric of Shelley’s which is
\n\tperhaps the purest example of the psychic inspiration in English poetry: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can give not what men call love, <\/p>\n

\nBut wilt thou accept not <\/p>\n

The worship the heart lifts above <\/p>\n

\nAnd the Heavens reject not, ―<\/p>\n

The desire of the moth for the star, <\/p>\n

\nOf the night for the morrow, <\/p>\n

The devotion to something afar <\/p>\n

\nFrom the sphere of our sorrow? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tWe have again extreme poetic beauty there, but nothing of the overhead note. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn the other lines I have cited it is really the overmind language and
\n\trhythm that have been to some extent transmitted; but of course all overhead
\n\tpoetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the higher
\n\tthought, the illumined mind or the pure intuition. This last is different
\n\tfrom the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry that does not
\n\ttranscend the mental level. The language and rhythm from these other over
\n\thead levels can be very different from that which is proper to the Overmind;
\n\tfor the Overmind thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or
\n\tdeep or wide or all these things together:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-36<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tto use the Vedic expression about fire, the divine messenger, it
\n\t\t\tgoes vast on its way to bring the divine riches, and it has a
\n\t\t\tcorresponding language and rhythm. The higher thought has a strong
\n\t\t\ttread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut
\n\t\t\tlight: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent
\n\t\t\tcharacter. The outflow of the illumined mind comes in a flood
\n\t\t\tbrilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images,
\n\t\t\tsometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with
\n\t\t\ta luminous sweep. The intuition is usually a lightning flash showing
\n\t\t\tup a single spot or plot of ground or scene with an entire and
\n\t\t\tmiraculous completeness of vision to the surprised ecstasy of the
\n\t\t\tinner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound which leaves
\n\t\t\tnothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a single
\n\t\t\tstroke. These however are only general or dominant characters; any
\n\t\t\tnumber of variations is possible. There are besides mingled
\n\t\t\tinspirations, several levels meeting and combining or modifying each
\n\t\t\tother’s notes, and an overmind transmission can contain or bring
\n\t\t\twith it all the rest, but how much of this description will be to
\n\t\t\tthe ordinary reader of poetry at all intelligible or clearly
\n\t\t\tidentifiable? <\/p>\n

\nThere are besides in mental poetry derivations or substitutes for all these
\nstyles. Milton’s "grand style" is such a substitute for the manner of the Higher
\nThought. Take it anywhere at its ordinary level or in its higher elevation,
\nthere is always or almost always that echo there: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit <\/p>\n

Of that forbidden tree <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tor <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tor <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides, <\/p>\n

And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tShakespeare’s poetry coruscates with a play of the hues of imagination which
\n\twe may regard as a mental substitute for the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-37<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tinspiration of the illumined mind and sometimes by aiming at an
\n\t\t\texalted note he links on to the illumined overhead inspiration
\n\t\t\titself as in the lines I have more than once quoted: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast <\/p>\n

Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes and rock his brains <\/p>\n

In cradle of the rude imperious surge. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tBut the rest of that passage falls away in spite of its high-pitched
\n\tlanguage and resonant rhythm far below the overhead strain. So it is easy
\n\tfor the mind to mistake and take the higher for the lower inspiration or
\nvice versa<\/i>. Thus Milton’s lines might at first sight be taken because of
\n\ta certain depth of emotion in their large lingering rhythm as having the
\n\toverhead complexion, but this rhythm loses something of its sovereign right
\n\tbecause there are no depths of sense behind it. It conveys nothing but the
\n\tnoble and dignified pathos of the blindness and old age of a great
\n\tpersonality fallen into evil days. Milton’s architecture of thought and
\n\tverse is high and powerful and massive, but there are usually no subtle
\n\techoes there, no deep chambers: the occult things in man’s being are foreign
\n\tto his intelligence, ―for it is in the light of the poetic intelligence that
\n\the works. He does not stray into "the mystic cavern of the heart", does not
\n\tfollow the inner fire entering like a thief with the Cow of Light into the
\n\tsecrecy of secrecies. Shakespeare does sometimes get in as if by a splendid
\n\tpsychic accident in spite of his preoccupation with the colours and shows of
\n\tlife. <\/p>\n

\n\tI do not know therefore whether I can speak with any certainty about the
\n\tlines you quote; I would perhaps have to read them in their context first,
\n\tbut it seems to me that there is just a touch, as in the lines about the
\n\tdying man. The thing that is described there may have happened often enough
\n\tin times like those of the recent wars and upheavals and in times of violent
\n\tstrife and persecution and catastrophe, but the greatness of the experience
\n\tdoes not come out or not wholly, because men feel with the mind and heart
\n\tand not with the soul; but here there is by some accident of wording and
\n\trhythm a suggestion of something behind, of the greatness of the soul’s
\n\texperience and <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-38<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tits courageous acceptance of the tragic, the final, the fatal ―and
\nits resistance; it is only just a suggestion, but it is enough: the Overhead has touched and passed back to its heights. There is
\nsomething very different but of the same essential calibre in the line you quote:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

While sad eyes watch for feet that never come. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is still more difficult to say anything very tangible about the
\novermind aesthesis. When I wrote about it I was thinking of the static aesthesis that perceives and receives rather than of the
\ndynamic aesthesis which creates; I was not thinking at all of superior or inferior grades of poetic greatness or beauty. If the
\ncomplete Overmind power or even that of the lower overhead plane could come down into the mind and entirely transform its
\naction, then no doubt there might be greater poetry written than any that man has yet achieved, just as a greater superhuman life
\nmight be created if the supermind could come down wholly into life and lift life wholly into itself and transform it. But what
\nhappens at present is that something comes down and accepts to work under the law of the mind and with a mixture of the
\nmind and it must be judged by the laws and standards of the mind. It brings in new tones, new colours, new elements, but it
\ndoes not change radically as yet the stuff of the consciousness with which we labour. <\/p>\n

Whether it produces great poetry or not depends on the extent to which it manifests its power and overrides rather than
\nserves the mentality which it is helping. At present it does not do that sufficiently to raise the work to the full greatness of the
\nworker. <\/p>\n

And then what do you mean exactly by greatness in poetry?
\nOne can say that Virgil is greater than Catullus and that many of Virgil’s lines are greater than anything Catullus ever achieved.
\nBut poetical perfection is not the same thing as poetical greatness. Virgil is perfect at his best, but Catullus too is perfect at his
\nbest: even, each has a certain exquisiteness of perfection, each in his own kind. Virgil’s kind is large and deep, that of Catullus
\nsweet and intense. Virgil’s art reached or had from its beginning <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-39<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

a greater and more constant ripeness than that of Catullus. We can say then that Virgil was a greater poet and artist of word
\nand rhythm but we cannot say that his poetry, at his best, was more perfect poetry and that of Catullus less perfect. That renders futile many of the attempts at comparison like Arnold’s comparison of Wordsworth’s
\nSkylark <\/i>with Shelley’s. You may
\nsay that Milton was a greater poet than Blake, but there can always be people, not aesthetically insensitive, who would prefer Blake’s lyrical work to Milton’s grander achievement, and there are certainly things in Blake which touch deeper chords
\nthan the massive hand of Milton could ever reach. So all poetic superiority is not summed up in the word greatness. Each kind
\nhas its own best which escapes from comparison and stands apart in its own value. <\/p>\n

Let us then leave for the present the question of poetic greatness or superiority aside and come back to the overmind
\naesthesis. By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a
\nvital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and
\nmore fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit’s delight of existence, Ananda. Poetry, like all
\nart, serves the seeking for these things, this aesthesis, this Rasa, Bhoga, Ananda; it brings us a Rasa of word and sound but also
\nof the idea and, through the idea, of the things expressed by the word and sound and thought, a mental or vital or sometimes
\nthe spiritual image of their form, quality, impact upon us or even, if the poet is strong enough, of their world-essence, their
\ncosmic reality, the very soul of them, the spirit that resides in them as it resides in all things. Poetry may do more than this,
\nbut this at least it must do to however small an extent or it is not poetry. Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry,
\nas it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends
\nto everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-40<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that
\naesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things
\nalso. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms,
\nbeauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things. Universal Ananda is the artist and creator
\nof the universe witnessing, experiencing and taking joy in its creation. In the lower consciousness it creates its opposites, the
\nsense of ugliness as well as the sense of beauty, hate and repulsion and dislike as well as love and attraction and liking, grief and
\npain as well as joy and delight; and between these dualities or as a grey tint in the background there is a general tone of neutrality
\nand indifference born from the universal insensibility into which the Ananda sinks in its dark negation in the Inconscient. All this
\nis the sphere of aesthesis, its dullest reaction is indifference, its highest is ecstasy. Ecstasy is a sign of a return towards the
\noriginal or supreme Ananda: that art or poetry is supreme which can bring us something of the supreme tone of ecstasy. For as
\nthe consciousness sinks from the supreme levels through various degrees towards the Inconscience the general sign of this
\ndescent is an always diminishing power of its intensity, intensity of being, intensity of consciousness, intensity of force, intensity
\nof the delight in things and the delight of existence. So too as we ascend towards the supreme level these intensities increase.
\nAs we climb beyond Mind, higher and wider values replace the values of our limited mind, life and bodily consciousness.
\nAesthesis shares in this intensification of capacity. The capacity for pleasure and pain, for liking and disliking is comparatively
\npoor on the level of our mind and life; our capacity for ecstasy is brief and limited; these tones arise from a general ground of
\nneutrality which is always dragging them back towards itself. As it enters the overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a
\npure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is no longer a general neutrality,
\nbut a pure spiritual ease and happiness upon which the special <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-42<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

tones of the aesthetic consciousness come out or from which they arise. This is the first fundamental change. <\/p>\n

Another change in this transition is a turn towards universality in place of the isolations, the conflicting generalities, the
\nmutually opposing dualities of the lower consciousness. In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of
\na universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and vital plane even before those
\nplanes are directly touched or influenced by the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and not
\npermanent or they are limited in their field and do not touch the whole being. They are a glimpse and not a change of vision or a
\nchange of nature. The artist for instance can look at things only plain or shabby or ugly or even repulsive to the ordinary sense
\nand see in them and bring out of them beauty and the delight that goes with beauty. But this is a sort of special grace for the
\nartistic consciousness and is limited within the field of his art. In the overhead consciousness, especially in the Overmind, these
\nthings become more and more the law of the vision and the law of the nature. Wherever the overmind spiritual man turns
\nhe sees a universal beauty touching and uplifting all things, expressing itself through them, moulding them into a field or
\nobjects of its divine aesthesis; a universal love goes out from him to all beings; he feels the Bliss which has created the worlds
\nand upholds them and all that is expresses to him the universal delight, is made of it, is a manifestation of it and moulded into
\nits image. This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions,
\nthe gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness: but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from
\nthem and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga, and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their
\nmeaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface
\nvision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express,
\nthe completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-42<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part
\nof a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. Even in form itself, apart from the significance,
\nthe overmind consciousness sees the object with a totality which changes its effect on the percipient even while it remains the
\nsame thing. It sees lines and masses and an underlying design which the physical eye does not see and which escapes even the
\nkeenest mental vision. Every form becomes beautiful to it in a deeper and larger sense of beauty than that commonly known
\nto us. The Overmind looks also straight at and into the soul of each thing and not only at its form or its significance to the mind
\nor to the life; this brings to it not only the true truth of the thing but the delight of it. It sees also the one spirit in all, the face
\nof the Divine everywhere and there can be no greater Ananda than that; it feels oneness with all, sympathy, love, the bliss of
\nthe Brahman. In a highest, a most integral experience it sees all things as if made of existence, consciousness, power, bliss, every
\natom of them charged with and constituted of Sachchidananda. In all this the overmind aesthesis takes its share and gives its
\nresponse; for these things come not merely as an idea in the mind or a truth-seeing but as an experience of the whole being
\nand a total response is not only possible but above a certain level imperative. <\/p>\n

I have said that aesthesis responds not only to what we call beauty and beautiful things but to all things. We make a distinction between truth and beauty; but there can be an aesthetic response to truth also, a joy in its beauty, a love created by its
\ncharm, a rapture in the finding, a passion in the embrace, an aesthetic joy in its expression, a satisfaction of love in the giving
\nof it to others. Truth is not merely a dry statement of facts or ideas to or by the intellect; it can be a splendid discovery, a
\nrapturous revelation, a thing of beauty that is a joy for ever. The poet also can be a seeker and lover of truth as well as a seeker
\nand lover of beauty. He can feel a poetic and aesthetic joy in the expression of the true as well as in the expression of the
\nbeautiful. He does not make a mere intellectual or philosophical<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-43<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

statement of the truth; it is his vision of its beauty, its power, his thrilled reception of it, his joy in it that he tries to convey by
\nan utmost perfection in word and rhythm. If he has the passion, then even a philosophical statement of it he can surcharge with
\nthis sense of power, force, light, beauty. On certain levels of the Overmind, where the mind element predominates over the
\nelement of gnosis, the distinction between truth and beauty is still valid. It is indeed one of the chief functions of the Overmind
\nto separate the main powers of the consciousness and give to each its full separate development and satisfaction, bring out its
\nutmost potency and meaning, its own soul and significant body and take it on its own way as far as it can go. It can take up
\neach power of man and give it its full potentiality, its highest characteristic development. It can give to intellect its austerest
\nintellectuality and to logic its most sheer unsparing logicality. It can give to beauty its most splendid passion of luminous form
\nand the consciousness that receives it a supreme height and depth of ecstasy. It can create a sheer and pure poetry impossible for
\nthe intellect to sound to its depths or wholly grasp, much less to mentalise and analyse. It is the function of Overmind to give to
\nevery possibility its full potential, its own separate kingdom. But also there is another action of Overmind which sees and thinks
\nand creates in masses, which reunites separated things, which reconciles opposites. On that level truth and beauty not only
\nbecome constant companions but become one, involved in each other, inseparable: on that level the true is always beautiful and
\nthe beautiful is always true. Their highest fusion perhaps only takes place in the Supermind; but Overmind on its summits
\ndraws enough of the supramental light to see what the Supermind sees and do what the Supermind does though in a lower
\nkey and with a less absolute truth and power. On an inferior level Overmind may use the language of the intellect to convey as far as that language can do it its own greater meaning and message but on its summits Overmind uses its own native
\nlanguage and gives to its truths their own supreme utterance, and no intellectual speech, no mentalised poetry can equal or
\neven come near to that power and beauty. Here your intellectual <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-44<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

dictum that poetry lives by its aesthetic quality alone and has no need of truth or that truth must depend upon aesthetics
\nto become poetic at all, has no longer any meaning. For there truth itself is highest poetry and has only to appear to be utterly
\nbeautiful to the vision, the hearing, the sensibility of the soul. There dwells and from there springs the mystery of the inevitable
\nword, the supreme immortal rhythm, the absolute significance and the absolute utterance. <\/p>\n

I hope you do not feel crushed under this avalanche of metaphysical psychology; you have called it upon yourself by your
\nquestioning about the Overmind’s greater, larger and deeper aesthesis. What I have written is indeed very scanty and sketchy,
\nonly some of the few essential things that have to be said; but without it I could not try to give you any glimpse of the meaning of my phrase. This greater aesthesis is inseparable from the greater truth, it is deeper because of the depth of that truth,
\nlarger by all its immense largeness. I do not expect the reader of poetry to come anywhere near to all that, he could not without
\nbeing a Yogi or at least a sadhak: but just as the overhead poetry brings some touch of a deeper power of vision and creation into
\nthe mind without belonging itself wholly to the higher reaches, so also the full appreciation of all its burden needs at least some
\ntouch of a deeper response of the mind and some touch of a deeper aesthesis. Until that becomes general the Overhead or at
\nleast the Overmind is not going to do more than to touch here and there as it did in the past, a few lines, a few passages, or
\nperhaps as things advance, a little more, nor is it likely to pour into our utterance its own complete power and absolute value. <\/p>\n

I have said that overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry. But perhaps a
\nsubtle qualification may be made to this statement. It is true that each kind of poetical writing can reach a highest or perfect
\nperfection in its own line and in its own quality and what can be more perfect than a perfect perfection or can we say that
\none kind of absolute perfection is “greater” than another kind? What can be more absolute than the absolute? But then what do
\nwe mean by the perfection of poetry? There is the perfection of <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-45<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is
\nalso the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves
\nthey evoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art’s sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a
\nlyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of
\nthe elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter,
\nwith most of us at any rate, and is part of the aesthetic reaction even in the most “aesthetic” of critics and readers. From this
\npoint of view the elevation from which the inspiration comes may after all matter, provided the one who receives it is a fit
\nand powerful instrument; for a great poet will do more with a lower level of the origin of inspiration than a smaller poet
\ncan do even when helped from the highest sources. In a certain sense all genius comes from Overhead; for genius is the entry or
\ninrush of a greater consciousness into the mind or a possession of the mind by a greater power. Every operation of genius has
\nat its back or infused within it an intuition, a revelation, an inspiration, an illumination or at the least a hint or touch or
\ninflux from some greater power or level of conscious being than those which men ordinarily possess or use. But this power has
\ntwo ways of acting: in one it touches the ordinary modes of mind and deepens, heightens, intensifies or exquisitely refines
\ntheir action but without changing its modes or transforming its normal character; in the other it brings down into these normal
\nmodes something of itself, something supernormal, something which one at once feels to be extraordinary and suggestive of a
\nsuperhuman level. These two ways of action when working in poetry may produce things equally exquisite and beautiful, but
\nthe word “greater” may perhaps be applied, with the necessary qualifications, to the second way and its too rare poetic creation. <\/p>\n

The great bulk of the highest poetry belongs to the first of these two orders. In the second order there are again two or
\nperhaps three levels; sometimes a felicitous turn or an unusual <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-46<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

force of language or a deeper note of feeling brings in the overhead touch. More often it is the power of the rhythm that lifts
\nup language that is simple and common or a feeling or idea that has often been expressed and awakes something which is
\nnot ordinarily there. If one listens with the mind only or from the vital centre only, one may have a wondering admiration for
\nthe skill and beauty of woven word and sound or be struck by the happy way or the power with which the feeling or idea is
\nexpressed. But there is something more in it than that; it is this that a deeper, more inward strand of the consciousness has seen
\nand is speaking, and if we listen more profoundly we can get something more than the admiration and delight of the mind or
\nHousman’s thrill of the solar plexus. We can feel perhaps the Spirit of the universe lending its own depth to our mortal speech
\nor listening from behind to some expression of itself, listening perhaps to its memories of <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

old, unhappy, far-off things, <\/p>\n

And battles long ago <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Breaking the silence of the seas <\/p>\n

Among the farthest Hebrides <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or it may enter again into Vyasa’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“A void and dreadful forest ringing with the crickets’ cry”
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Vanam pratibhayam
\n\tśūnyam jhillikāgananāditam.<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or remember its call to the soul of man,
\n&<\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Anityam asukham lokam imam
\n\tprāpya bhajasva mām<\/i> <\/p>\n

“Thou who hast come to this transient and unhappy world, <\/p>\n

love and worship Me.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is a second level on which the poetry draws into itself
\na fuller language of intuitive inspiration, illumination or the higher thinking and feeling. A very rich or great poetry may then
\nemerge and many of the most powerful passages in Shakespeare,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-47<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Virgil or Lucretius or the Mahabharata and Ramayana, not to speak of the Gita, the Upanishads or the Rig Veda, have this
\ninspiration. It is a poetry “thick inlaid with patines of bright gold” or welling up in a stream of passion, beauty and force.
\nBut sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the overmind voice and the overmind music and it is to be observed that the
\nlines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore
\ntoo much to say that the overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass the other levels of
\ninspiration, greater even from the purely aesthetic point of view and certainly greater in the power of its substance. <\/p>\n

A conscious attempt to write overhead poetry with a mind aware of the planes from which this inspiration comes and seeking always to ascend to those levels or bring down something from them, would probably result in a partial success; at its
\nlowest it might attain to what I have called the first order, ordinarily it would achieve the two lower levels of the second order
\nand in its supreme moments it might in lines and in sustained passages achieve the supreme level, something of the highest
\nsummit of its potency. But its greatest work will be to express adequately and constantly what is now only occasionally and
\ninadequately some kind of utterance of the things above, the things beyond, the things behind the apparent world and its
\nexternal or superficial happenings and phenomena. It would not only bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the
\ntruths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, the
\ninner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of
\nidentity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If this could be achieved by one possessed,
\nif not of a supreme, still of a sufficiently high and wide poetic genius, something new could be added to the domain of poetry
\nand there would be no danger of the power of poetry beginning to fade, to fall into decadence, to fail us. It might even enter into
\nthe domain of the infinite and inexhaustible, catch some word of<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-48<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe Ineffable, show us revealing images which bring us near to
\nthe Reality that is secret in us and in all, of which the Upanishad speaks, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Anejad ekam manaso
\n\tjavīyo nainad devā āpnuvan pūrvam<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\tarsat. . . .<\/i>
\n.<\/i> <\/p>\n

Tad ejati tan naijati tad
\n\tdūre tad u antike.<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“The One unmoving is swifter than thought, the gods cannot <\/p>\n

overtake It, for It travels ever in front; It moves and It moves <\/p>\n

not, It is far away from us and It is very close.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gods of the overhead planes can do much to bridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot al
\ntogether overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them. <\/p>\n

\n\t29 July 1946
\n   <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-49<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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