Trance of Waiting by Sri Aurobindo critical analysis

 

Trance of Waiting

Sri Aurobindo

*         Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) was an Indian, yogi, guru poet and naturalist

*         During his stay in jail, he had mystical and spiritual experineces after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work.

*         Sri Aurobindo developed a spiritual practice, he called Internal Yoga

*         The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into divine life

*          at the center of Aurobindo’s metaphysical system is the supermind, which means an intermediary power between the  unmanifested Brahman and the manifested mind

*         Sri Aurobindo was a prolific writer writing some of the most detailed  and comprehensive discourse on spiritual evolution. He said that his inspiration to write came from his inner pilot, from  a higher score

Works

*         Synthesis of Yoga : Practical guidance of internal yoga

*         Savitri : A legend and a symbol, an epic poem

POEM

 

Lone on my summits of calm I have brooded with voices around me,

Murmurs of silence that steep mind in a luminous sleep,

Whispers from things beyond thought in the Secrecy flame-white for ever,

Unscanned heights that reply seek from the inconscient deep.

Distant below me the ocean of life with its passionate surges

Pales like a pool that is stirred by the wings of a shadowy bird.

Thought has flown back from its wheelings and stoopings, the nerve-beat of living

Stills; my spirit at peace bathes in a mighty release.

Wisdom supernal looks down on me, Knowledge mind cannot measure;

Light that no vision can render garments the silence with splendour.

Filled with a rapturous Presence the crowded spaces of being

Tremble with the Fire that knows, thrill with the might of repose.

Earth is now girdled with trance and Heaven is put round her for vesture.

Wings that are brilliant with fate sleep at Eternity’s gate.

Time waits, vacant, the lightning that kindles, the Word that transfigures:

Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode.

All waits hushed for the fiat to come and the tread of the Eternal;

Passion of a bliss yet to be sweeps from Infinity’s sea.

 

EXPLANATION

*         Trance of Waiting is a mystic poem

*         The poet has shown himself to be in a state of waiting to have a communication with the divine spirit.

*         To have a communication with God (Divine soul) he has kept himself away from the din and bustle of human society and goes to the contact of nature and in  the silence of nature.

*         He broods over the objects of nature and feels like the object of nature also waits for the command from God.