Mystic Signs

Inseeing

(i)
Come with me, I shall reveal
the secret of divining
our ancestors knew.

I shall take you to the hallowed spots
where stand pyramids and astrofields
to show you the rim of the cosmic orb
where existed an observatory for all space.

These hieroglyphs tell of a lost civilization
of those who could commune through signs,
masters of geometric anagrams and schemes.

No thinking pigmies
like the jet-set, computer-brained, robots,
no automatons sans feeling or emotion,
who worship only the machine.

The aborigines possess to this day
the knowledge of invisible paths;
locked in their secret science
the treasury of ancient wisdom.

No unfeeling savages
but visionary beings
who knew where to build
the great pyramids.
Who knew the unified field
of quadrangles and triangles
that form the invisible grid
encircling the globe.
Who knew well the movements
of prevailing winds,
of cosmo-oceanic currents,
of hidden forces of the cosmos.

knew the spots of magnetic power
to locate the precise spots
for the countless megalithic structures
to predict the rising and setting of the sun;
made the magnetic field retain the sunstones
in the ordained positions.

Who had the ability to commune
with beings from far-off constellations
we are still struggling to find.
Many a mysterious sign on the ground
be it a bridge over the sea
or an airfield
or the markings of Nasca-
tell of the intelligence
behind the perfect architectural plan
of astroports
for visitors from outer space
to land to consummate
an unknown mission.

The mystery of Ande lines too
points to the invisible hand
of the unknown denizens
from far-aff galaxies.

(ii)

Ancient men possessed
the unerring inruition
to locate the spots
for their minarets and pagodas,
their circles and parabolas.
They had the innate ability
to catch supranatural frequencies
a power modern man has lost.
Sensate values have taken a toll
a sure sign of man's fall.
They were also masters
of the art of dream-divination.
Knew that from coarse erotica
to archetypal myths,
from racial memory-roots of aborigines
to the consciousness of superman,
dreams span the legendary lore.

We sleep to dream,
we dream to sleep
till we are shaken
by a knock at the door.

We shuttle from bliss to horror
breaking the sequence of space-time,
hourly undergo a sea change.

We leave the corporeal frame
to travel by the astral pathways.
After a spell of relaxation,
go to sleep again.

Many a time have I dreamt
in a wakeful state,
seen and thought three-dimensionally,
oblivious of my fourth dimension
the basis of all creativity
that guides the artist's insight,
lets him see the hidden beauty
in the darkest night.

Sleep is a relaxation
a state of receptive passivity,
for paranormal communication,
for entering a trance.

I climb the chestnut,
become the tree,
stand with my peers,
proud of my ancestry.

Oblivious of the hallowed past
that gave meaning to my thoughts,
beneath the banyan I lie.
My roots go back in time,
I recollect each one
who stood there.

I become the wood,
bound to every one ,
stretching my arms in every direction.

I understand the heart
of cyclones and storms,
of creativity and creation,
in my soul's calm.

Travel from trunk downards
far away in space-time,
in my crystal costume
I become all that I see.
Breathe the air of new skies
hopping from sphere to sphere.

Buffeted by electromagnetic weves,
I cross
many a sound barrier,
many a starlit dame,
winging from the earthly roof
to my celestial home.

there I meet my father,
my father's father
and onto the Father.

In His lap I rest a while
to take my place with the pole-star
to guide the stranded.

Go back home
to know the source
I strayed from
to live my mortal destiny.
(v)
In my trances,
in mine circles of the moon/
I unrolled the scroll
of my previous lives.

I relived the crucial roles
of my previous births,
having a bearing on my present,
as if I were acting in a film.
Till my thirties I was a witness
to my thirties I was a witness
from disjointed episodes
from my previous lives
reflected on a screen.

Suddenly, in early thirties,
a strange dispassion entered my being.
I started shunning all men
retreating to lonely spots
for meditations deep and long
till I was summoned to shirdi
by a celestial call.

There I met a realized soul
who transferred the yogic powers
to create and uncreate at will,
to see beyond space-time,
to commune with spirits divine,
to hear the first sermons
of ancient saints and divines
in their original tongues.

My precognition in that state
was marked by precision,
my prophecies were fulfilled,
I was the star of the great
I heard Christ's golden sermon
in his own sonorous voice
in a language alien to my ear;
its music haunts

I was roused
from the sleep of ignorance
to tread the seeker's path
played in my previous births.

Golak and shirdi
Gurcharan and Sat Sai,
wrapped in effulgence,
entered my inmost being;
I was filled with translucent light
They awakened me to my mission,
conferred the mystic sight
to bear the godly light,
to carry the cross of human woes.

From the meshes of worldliness freed,
longing to walk by His light
making it burn into a steady slame,
in my dark cavern I dwell.
Hear the call
to join my voice
to the choir of God.

I sing of the faith,
of the earth as one family,
of unity permeating all,
of service as love made visible:
the destination of every man,
of soul's deliverance,
of its merger with the One,
the source supreme.

(vi)
Ecstasy is a gateway to eternal
from the void of oblivion
to eternities of memory.
It is an invitation
to life divine.
The sages of yore
who sing philosophies to redeem,
prophet, poet and philosopher, rolled in one,
to them I look for inspiration.
Science has to be a hymn to the Creator,
no more a preserve of godless men
or it will become a device
heaping untold miseries upon men.

Reason and spirit interacting mould
the force of personality
that ordains the route mankind will take
when the spirit is caught in a fix.
" To be or not be" is not a question
confined to a mythical person
but the haunting obsession of every epoch
in search of a breakthrough.
No forecast is possible in reverse,
neither about the past nor the future.
History is a graveyard of all prophecies,
of all " ifs" and " buts".

Spirituality is the last retreat
for science and religion to meet;
when clash of creeds alarms,
realization has to drawn.

The savage and the scientist share
the same substratum of intelligence,
the same gene,
yet in the chain of natural progression
savage remains the archetypal man.

Psychokinesis and clairvoyance
belong to every man
in psychic reservoir locked.
What you need is the right intelligence
to attune yourself
to the unified field
of human awareness,
encircling the universe,
hissing for recognition.

I travelled to distant lands,
unknown to my physical mind,
in contemplation firm-fixed
yet moving faster than light
A mental falcon following,
retaining the memory of things I see,
of the sights and sounds
that Lapped around me;
reviving the ability or remote -seeing,
natural to every one.

I have experienced levitation,
materialized out of thin air
sultanas and sacred ash.
Also, solid balls out of nothing,
and let them fall to the ground
without bouncing or making a sound.
Twisted metal spans and knives,
made eerie signs.
Pulled out fires from the walls,
saw flowerpots hanging in midair,
automatic writing on a clean slate,
a shadowy presence in the room.

(vii)
What we do in this life
determines what we gain
in the next.
Good or evil we do
forsakes us not
on our journey to the unknown,
neither in the course of flight
nor on reaching the destination.

What we are, we shall be,
all determined by our deeds.
The universe is not a game of dice
but a mathematical paradigm.
but a mathematical paradigm.
Each and every step of the design
squares well with the pattern of the theorem.
Everything depends on our actions.

Karma and reincarnations
monitor the cosmic mechanism.
Cryptompesia explains
the truth of transmigration,
our turning away from the sun,
our striving for salvation,
an integral aspects of total organism
that inheres in the cosmic unconscious:
the extension of microcosmic self.

We cannot explain
the totality of the human person
by physio-neurology alone,
the truth lies in prenatal existence.

Many a time
meeting a person,
passing through a situation,
or reading some piece,
the sensation of " already seen"
haunts us
as if our double had been to the place
and had met the person.

(viii)
Stuck by weithtlessness
I levitate in space in a state of trance.
In my upward glide swil,
turning in air itself,
into the tunnel,
cross the little hill,
to arrive where my father sleeps.
I too shall sleep there
after I shuffle off my worn-out coil,
cut the umbilical cord that joins
the causal to the mental-physical sheath,
all over the globe to fly.

I follow the music,
cross the astral paths,
the sun and the moon,
cross the river of mortality
needling my way through invisible tunnels,
through inaccessible mountain passes
dotted by sunspots and black shadows,
well-marked by ethereal poles.

Out-of-the-body experience is not the same
as the fact of being out of the body
but an altered state of consciousness.

(ix)
The spirit never dies,
in various incarnations it survives
drinking the bliss sip by sip
till we attain nirvana.

I know reincarnation to be a fact
fro sage Bhrigu unfolds the scroll
of my previous births
spanning many aeons.

In one birth I was King Yayati,
the ancestor of the solar race.
I carry with me Brighu's curse
for my infidelity
to Devayani,
daughter of the mighty sage.

She cried
for restoration of her conjugal rights,
for her son's succession to the throne,
brought upon my head
decrepitude too soon
and a straw bed.

Twenty-nine births from the present one
I was the sage Madan
and lived
in the Hemkund mountains
absorbed in Sat Chit Anand.

In my last birth
was I a scholar-saint
honoured by courts and kings.

In this life reborn to the one
who was no God-man
but true man of God,
free from the taint of worldliness.
The Jiwan Mukta, by Brighu proclaimed,
the liberated while living
and not to be born again.

Father bade me stop
the out-of-body journeys
to confine myself
to ordained duties and affections,
to quicken the liberation of man,
to imbibe earth consciousness,
to make earth-citizens,
to relive the religion of man.

Father touched me by chance,
instantly I went into a trance:
neither a sleep nor a dream was it
but the light of bliss.

Through many a secret pathway
I travelled to unreachable realms
shortening distances
of many million light years.

Suddenly I see something flicker
with a pair of eye-glasses
in a far-off gloom,
my sense of discernment returns.

I retrace my steps ;
a black dog,
tucking at my knees,
coaxes me home.

HYMN TO MYSTIC FIRE

HYMN TO JYOTI

Jyoti - Tamas
incestuous pair
all space envelop:
light and darkness.

Jyoti, the formless first
the self-emanating effulgence
wombs in primal time, the Sun,
the source of light and life.


The Sun's first born, Agni
weaves the texture of life,
the warp and woof of creation,
binds the Earth and Heaven.


White milk of celestial cows
dusky, black or crimson
appear in the morning sun
golden hued, resplendent.



Swan-constellations, blue-backed
silhoutted against the black sky
glitter like gold
lit by a million suns.

On night sky's black carpet
Stars play checkers
bursting crackers
in all-enveloping gloom.


Savitur, Varun, Mitra
pave the way
to luminous dawn
in heart of space.

Black bull stokes
reeling dark clouds
making them burst
into hails of light.

In struggling to liberate Itself
from embrace of Tamas
Jyoti unrolls the scroll of time
and brings the universe to life.



O Jyoti, the all-powerful, all-prevading One
descend down on our earth to annul
darkness of Tamas in our being
tear asunder our veil of illusion.

Lamp-post

He was a man with a lantern,
never scared of gloom,
he wore sun in his forehead
to conquer the world.

What remains
is a fragment or his dream,
no flicker of flame,
all under the debris buried.

He still wears the sun,
even thought turned into a post.
You see his ghost
holding the lantern.

My turn

Shadows thicken fast,
something withers in my heart.
I feel a pungent smell,
someone calls with arms outstretched.

I see my shadow shrink
into a dark hole,
am I entering a street
where illusion and reality meet?

How to say goodbye
to my long-time host,
without him I too shall not be;
he has been my holy ghost.

Every night I hear the knell
and count the executions
of my companions.
Is it my turn, now?

Ideas

Ideas hypnotize,
cause explosion,
tear asunder the veil,
illumine the dark caverns.

Ideas let you escape
the ugly human condition ,
create a new world
of golden dreams.

Ideas are a magnet,
draw the splinters
to form a macrocosm.

Ideas revive the dead,
offer a glimpse of life beyond,
bestow the elixir of immortality.

Ideas turn hell into heaven,
light up a vision of paradise.

Ideas create and uncreate,
dematerialize and demystify,
the realm of magic and myth,
of legend and lore.

Death-inspired

Wrapped in relativity,
your position you choose
to play the role.

What calculation,
what precaution,
what rules of the game
to preserve equilibrium !

Play the fool
to the king of time,
make excuses to abuse
the freedom.

Aren't prophets and popes,
gods and goddesses,
lore's and legends,
reasons and revelations,
all death-inspired ?

Silhouetted

Sweeps of sky blue
on silver canvas I paint
with streaks of crimson
mellowed by sunset hues.

Swirling cloud elephants,
springing tigers and dolphins,
across sunlit space
with freak figures swinging.

Rainbow-ribboned sky,
reflected in perfumed crystalline waters,
overflows in pleited golden dome
inset with many a celestial scene.

Moonlit pastures, starlit lakes,
unending rose valleys,
long-forgotten spiked depths of hills,
cloud shadows on the skyline.

All rising at the end of a trial :
weedy clumps, saggy hillocks,
yellow plains dotted by beaks and wing-whirls
and interlocking clusters of trees,
silhouetted against the sky.

A Comparative Study of Madan G. Gandhi’s ashes and embers and Kundalini By:Sarita Mehta

A Comparative study of Madan G. Gandhi’s
ashes and embers and Kundalini




Madan G. Gandhi, an Indian writer in English, has authored 11 volumes of poetry on which study has begun in recent times. The volumes, ashes and embers and Kundalini were published in 1982. Although both the volumes were published in the same year, yet if attention is paid to the contents included in each, ashes and embers precedes Kundalini by almost a decade. This inference regarding the true chronological order is reinforced by the “Prefaces” to these two collections. About the poems in ashes and embers, Gandhi confides: “The poems included in this collection materialized themselves in flashes during the sixties”.1 And in the “Preface” to Kundalini, he mentions: “The poems belong to a phase when in the early 70’s, I was voyaging within the realms of consciousness”.2 Thus, the above remarks of Gandhi settle the time-sequence of these two early collections.
A close examination of the cover designs of these collections reveals that there is use of small letters, both for the name of the poet and for the title o the book in his first collection, ashes and embers. It sets forth the view regarding the poet being a mere receptacle of the knowledge granted to him as the muse was: “notoriously fitful in her favours”.3 But in Kundalini capital letters have been used for the name of the poet as well as for the title of the book. Also, there is deliberate placing of the title on top of the cover design. It affirms the poet’s view that Kundalini is a reservoir of energy. Recognition of “superhuman labours” to communicate the “final experience” is made by the use of capital letters in the name.
The designed cover of Kundalini objectifies the experience of kundalini-awakening. For the purpose, there is central positioning of the serpent-power, embellished with seven lotuses in it. Starting from below, these are names as Muladhara, Svadisdhan, Manipur, Anhata, Visudhi, Ajna and Sahasrara. When kundalini focuses in a lotus, it activates characteristic energy of that centre. Each lotus has its own set o attitudes, motives and mental states that dominate a person’s mind, when kundalini sparks it.
Further, the designed cover of ashes and embers depicts the small patches of ashes interspersed among smouldering red embers. The smouldering of embers indicates the existence of latent spiritual power. Further, the residue, ash, is the result of the encounter of coal with fire. In this process, there is a change of colour, first from black to red and then to white. In Indian Philosophy, black colour is associated with tamas attribute, red with rajas and white with sattva attribute. Thus, the change of colour can be identified with the progression of mind from tamas to sattva, which is essential for making the body a fit vehicle of spiritual expression.
If an analysis of the verse of both the texts is made, it can be easily perceived that poems included in ashes and embers reflect various moods and are mainly concerned with four elements, namely, water, air, fire and ether. These elements are further associated with feeling, mind, psyche and spirit respectively. But the verse of Kundalini, as is evident from the title of the book, is exclusively ether-based. Various domains which go with the elements of water, air and fire are further associated with mortal aspects like love, death, joy and sorrow, but the spirit, which is associated with the ether element, is the immortal aspect. As there is a preponderance of the ether element in Kundalini, the self has been rid of its mundane impurities. Hence, one can suggest that there is a progression from egoistic to transcendental self as the poet moves from ashes and embers to Kundalini.
As mentioned earlier, there are seven chakras in the body and each one of them has its own characteristics. First three chakras embody selfish traits. Most people for most of the time are motivated by mental states in which the first three chakras are active. Kundalini yoga, which has its complete manifestation in the second volume, aims to spark the energy stored in higher chakras. When it activates the three upper chakras, the meditator experiences different transcendental states and when it reaches the seventh chakras and stabilises there, he is in a state of ecstasy. If the subtle body is influenced by the impression of the sense, it can hardly be sensitive to the higher influences of the spirit. The two things, therefore, are necessary for spiritual awakening: “(1) the discrimination of the material from the spiritual and (2) the gradual spiritualization of the organs of the mind and sense.”4
Although passions like love, joy and sorrow find place in ashes and embers, yet they are not merely temporal ones. Rather, they are spiritualised. For instance, love in the poems titled “Nuptials”, “My Love”, “Echo” and “Endless” of the volume is not a mere sentiment: it is truth; it is the white light of pure consciousness that emanates from Brahma.
In “Nuptials”, the poet personifies his beloved and describes that, dressed in the clothes o a bride, she comes in a “palanquin” and unfolds before him all the secrets. In “My Love”, his beloved is prakrti: “the source of evolution of the whole of the animate and inanimate creation”.5 It is evident from the lines:
Myriad fragrant flowers
Envelop her redolent zones
Endless creators simmer
In her inscrutable womb.6

In “Endless”, just like Whitman, he feels His presence everywhere – in “vales”, “craggy rocks”, “mountain tops” and “flowers”. Here his love attains that highest level, at which alone can one say:
What if we are no more
All else remains
Endless is our love
Like the ocean on the move.7

Love-consciousness in the above poems is a form of mysticism as it has also been defined as: “Sympathetic understanding of the concrete tendencies of the soul in love-ecstasies, and in selfless service. These forms may be fitly called devotional and practical mysticism. Devotional mysticism enjoys the touch of love-consciousness, practical mysticism the delight of active-service…Love breathes purity under mystic inspiration. Sympathy becomes cosmic under mystic touch. Both transcend the limit of finite urge and pass into the limitless.”8
Thus, pure love and cosmic sympathy are the traits of mysticism and it was this cosmic sympathy which inspired the poet to write the revolutionary poem, “The Long March”, for the exploited masses of Africa. In this poem, he expresses a feeling of universal love by accepting that million hands are his own hands. It highlights his revolutionary zeal : “I shall write the chronicles/In the pink of my corpuscles.”9 This is practical mysticism. Devotional mysticism is expressed in the very first poem of the volume, “To Mother”. Here, the poet is prepared to behead himself to be the “worthy son” of his “loving mother”: “I will climb the guillotine/To be your worthy son.”10 The poem is dedicatory in tone. Similarly, in the dedication prefixed to Kundalini, the poet deifies his father:
To the One
Who was no God-man
But true man of God
Who made me God-like
In one circle of the moon.11

Capitalisation of “One” shows the devout reverence of the poet for his father. Thus, the two volumes complement each other.
Certain poems of ashes and embers reveal equipoise of the poet. In “Ravished Love”, objectifying himself, he writes: “Fixed in a frame/Statue like I see.”12 The poet is not afraid of pain of life, but regards it to be his companion:
O, Tired traveller!
I am pain, your nurse
I will wear all your curse
Sleep well under my nerves.13

This detached vision of the poet is also a step towards the union of soul and Oversoul.
Whereas the verse of the ashes and embers reflects protean moods, the verse of Kundalini is related primarily with mystical experience, which according to the author is: “admittedly inexpressible and all attempts emanate from and end in silence.”14 Going through the text, one can easily perceive a progression towards transcendence of senses.
The opening poem of the volume, “Wanderer”, sets the tone of the collection. Here, awakening of the kundalini and its upward movement are suggested by the lines: “The reptiles creep/Over the trunk.”15 “Consummation” also poetises this arousal: “In the cobra costume/Lime the bride you come”.16
According to Hindu mythology, one cannot merge into the Oversoul without complete surrender of the soul. The surrender has been presented diagrammatically in “Fusion” through a stretching of the poet’s arms before the Lord:
H H 17
C A C
T T
R
E E
M
R R
T S T

This stretching is “symbolic of self-effacement, humanity and devout faith, but the vertical placing of “ARMS” flanked virtually by “S T R E T C H” on both sides converts it into an image of Christ, His arms outstretched on the scaffold.”18 After complete surrender, there is a reference to God’s intervention and merging of the poet’s soul into the ineffable “Light”. The highest abiding joy is suggested through the chant :
I behold light
Light light light
Till all becomes
L I G H T 19

It is the silent light, first in the order of expression. The state of beholding the light is termed as vindu, a state prior to the nada. Vindu overpowers the meditator by its ocean of light.
In “Union”, the poet describes his capability of hearing the “SYMPHONY” of spheres and “NAD”. Nada originally means: “a sound, a tune, a vibration: It is something that cannot be heard by the ear. It is the sound that reigns in the heart of the cosmos. It is the voiceless voice, the soundless sound of the deep.”20 Nada rises when pranic urge vibrates the ethereal medium and harmony is set up. Thus, it is an experience of the suprasensuous consciousness.
The music of spheres is a reflection of nada. It expresses the rhythm that prevades the universe. This music sends the soul heavenwards. Now the poet transcends “The Ocean of Melody” and those spheres which are not visible ordinarily: the sphere of sun, moon, stars and astral pathways. The journey of the self to the transcendental plane reveals certain more facts, described in “Research”, which leads to “Hiranyagarbha” – the cosmic purusa. It is conscious of the concrete world. But the journey is not limited here. There are still more revelations, which are described in “Kundalini” and ultimately the poet’s soul melts into the Oversoul:
The seer and the seen
Dissolve into one

…….
U N I O N
B L O S S O M S
Root and fruit
Light and Bliss
O N E.21

This state is termed as turiya. Knowledge in it has no dimension, no magnitude. It has a field like a magnetic field, which may range from hell to heaven. It is a unique experience in which the music of nada is displaced by silence. The spirit feels perfect freedom and harmony.
The first volume, ashes and ambers, also deals with the experience of the awakening of kundalini, that is presented in a few poems of the collection. For instance, in “Fulfilment”, the poet writes: “The flaming serpent/Uncoils and leaps”22 and in the title poem, “Ashes and Embers”, it is presented as :
I curl into my crown
Stung by a scorpion
Coronated with pain.

The poet feels as if “Rebirth” has occurred and also feels an ecstatic joy of His Omnipresence.
Although these poems of the first volume are of a transcendental nature, yet nowhere in them are referred those stages of mysticism which find expression in the second volume. One more difference between the transcendental aspects of the two volumes is that of picturisation, present in the second volume only. Further, transcendental states of the second volume, Kundalini, are of a supramental level. Thus, it can be concluded that ashes and embers complements as well as leads onto Kundalini.