Vivekananda lectured on the Hindu mind and culture, religion and Vedanta, with all the learning of a university professor and artistry of a seasoned orator, the dignity of an archbishop and the grace and winsomeness of a free and natural child. That is why Professor J.H. Wright says, “Here is the man who is more learned than all our learned professors put together.” His poetic output, though limited, is yet the microcosm to the macrocosm of all the gorgeous volumes of his lectures.
In the moments of great ecstasy, he used to compose poems and hymns which rank with the creation of sublime poetic art. His poems present a splendid blend of immense poetic sensibility and spiritual profundity, intellectual balance and indefatigable energy, unselfconscious universal love and the authentic voice of a prophet. His sense of renunciation, devotion, quest, innate mystic effulgence, self realization, and the consequent philosophic offspring – all are there converged in his poetry inseparably fused. His poems may appear diverse, but there is unity in the diversity: a profound sense of divinity runs latent, like a gold wire, through the scattered pearl like fine poems, binding them into the circular whole.
Vivekananda’s poems are a spontaneous sublimation of his inner working and there are ample clues in his poems exposing the graded development of the saint. Years of intimate association with Sri Ramakrishna, in the secluded exchange between Guru and disciple, cause spiritual growth and transformation in the young intellectual: ‘as from a chrysalis, Narinder Nath has emerged as Vivekananda’. He says:
I surrender myself to my Guru, the Man, the God,
the physician of the melody of this Samsara ……. (A Hymn to Sri Ramkrishna)
He reveals himself as a staunch worshipper of Kali:
Mother Supreme! O may Thy gracious face
Never be turned away from me, Thy child!
There at those blessed feet, I take refuge! (A Hymn to the Divine Mother)
And in the bliss of apocalyptic vision he voices:
Who dare misery love,
And hug the form of Death,
Dance in Destruction’s dance
To him the Mother comes. (Kali, the Mother)
Vivekananda has sung hymns in reverence and praise of Siva also. To him, it seems there is no difference among the three – Sri Ramakrishna, Kali, and Siva: they are three in one and one in three. He says that he has led a very hard life in the quest for perfection:
And how many days have I passed on alms!
Friendless, clad in rags, with no possession,
Feeding from door to door on what chance would bring,
The frame broken under Tapasya’s weight……..
In the quest, “Superstitions” and “Misery” and “Sin”, the “Angels Unawares are the holy trio that propelled his spirit to understanding: “Love, Love,- that’s the one thing, the holy treasure”. Consequent on deep meditation, he reveals his self realization:
From dreams awake, from bonds be free!
Be not afraid, this mystery,
My shadow cannot frighten me!
Know once for all that I am He!
The byproduct of this hard earned spiritual fulfillment is ‘universal love’ that manifests through the three sacred ‘Ss’: Sympathy, Service and Sacrifice. He finds: “every living temple shines Thy face”. So, he disapproves idol worship and passionately advises men to sympathize and to worship the living God:
Ye fool! Who neglect the living God,
And His infinite reflections with which the world is full,
While ye run after imaginary shadows,
That lead alone to fights and quarrels,
Him worship, the only visible!
Break all other idols! (The Living God)
This principle of service to or worship of living God influenced Tagore. He too frequently expressed the idea in his own ingenious way. There is a song in Gitangali which scoffs at blind worship:
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads.
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely corner of a temple with doors all shut?
Open thy eyes and see thy God is not before thee. ….
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path maker is breaking stones….
The theme of spirituality remains present in almost all his poems where the traits of mysticism and deep meditation can easily be glanced and his mysticism is perhaps the finest one of its own kind. Dr. Anupama Bansal observes: In Indian English poetry Swami Vivekananda, was the first poet who compose mystical poetry. His songs, hymns and poems are the artistic expression of his unfathomed spiritual urge.
He is an advocate of self realization like Swami Paramhansa Yogananda. According to him meditation is only remedy to dissolve the mist of illusion. It is none but God who is behind the ever changing phenomenon of the world which is nothing but a figment of creation. God is supreme reality in the world of unreality. This idea is revealed in his poem ‘Misunderstood’:
This world of dream
Though live it seem
And only truth is He the living!
This real me is none but He
And never never Mother changing. ……
India has always welcomed changes. Change is inevitable and is to be welcomed. But the modern day society should have the wisdom to know where to change and where not to change and move cautiously towards the rightful destination. He sings:
Change not thy nature, gentle bloom,
Thou violet, sweet and pure,
But ever pour thy sweet perfume
Unasked, unstinted, sure. …
Vivekananda was perhaps the first monk to openly welcome science. But to add that there has to be a synthesis of science and spirituality, ancient wisdom and modern efficiency. He wanted the modern youth to make use of the Vedic Vision of India to strengthen their moral fabric, acquire the right work culture and go through an internal adjustment to guard themselves against the onslaught of modern material culture.
The word culture is derived from Latin word ‘cultura’ which means ‘to refine’ or ‘to cultivate’. That means civilization is skin–deep whereas culture is much deeper than that. People do mistake civilization for culture. Vivekananda, the great modern seer, tried to uphold culture and devoted his life to establish ancient Vedanta culture of India in the world.
Vivekananda gave the examples of the civilizations like Greek, Roman, etc. but when the civilizations invaded by less cultivated and barbaric hoards of Persia or Mongolia they fell. The civilizations were based on physical strength and power which were easily ruined by the better physicality and barbarism. India survived the attacks because its power lies in its spirituality and culture. Swami Vivekananda tried to demonstrate that it is culture that makes for lasting progress.
Indian culture is based upon Vedanta which believes in the divinity of man- the divine unity of all creation. This culture also advocates the fundamental harmony of all religions. The Vedas say, “Truth is one, sages call it by many names.” This very philosophy needs to be placed before the humanity and Vivekananda did it successfully. He believes that we may able to live like a world fraternity by following the philosophy of Vedanta. He feels that the greatest need of human at present is mutual love, compassion and co-operative action which alone can ensure lasting peace, well being and prosperity to all.
Vivekananda once said, “I have experienced God, I can show Him to you because I know the ‘method’ which can give the experience of the highest and subtlest truth.” This is true significance of Vedanta. It reveals the spiritual truths of the causes of man’s birth, sorrow, misery, evil, death and shows the remedy to go beyond all of them. It destroys all sorrows forever and brings in eternal bliss to the aspirant. It makes us realize that we are immortal, divine beings and not the body and mind in which we dwell temporarily and discard at the time of death.
The poetic utterances of Vivekananda, our first cultural ambassador to the West, are fine fragments of philosophy; they appear like excerpt from the Vedas and Upanishads, and the Gita rendered in exquisite English. The poet in him finds ecstasy in his meditation and realization. Most of his longer poems are symbolic, with their ‘empyrean of pure connotation’, in their constitute - to borrow Yeats’ words - ‘transparent lamp about a spiritual flame’.
His poetry is also strikingly modern. Unpoetic and obtuse words like -‘blood’, ‘gun’, ‘smoke’, ‘battle’, ‘shell’, ‘atom’, ‘flesh’, ‘nothing’, ‘censure’, ‘’venom’, etc. recur and become astonishingly poetic in his rhythm. He has even painted a vived picture of a battlefield:
The martial music bursts, the trumpets blow,
The ground shakes under the warriors’ tread;
The roar of connon, the rattle of guns,
Volumes of smoke, the gruesome battlefield, ….
Vivekananda’s tiny poetic output is thus enough to suggest his poetic genius. It gives an inkling of his evolution and the bliss of his “Spiritual Solitude” enshrined in a complex activity of his mission and selfless devotion to humanity. The tradition of expressing Hindu philosophy in English verse, thus started by Vivekananda as the harbinger of Renaissance in India, has gained momentum, effectively influenced Tagore and reached a climax in the works of Sri Aurobindo.
The dazzling colour of devotional passion apart, there is an atmosphere of universality in the poetry of Vivekananda: to adopt Radhakrishnan’s praise of Tagore, ‘everyone – a Hindu or a Christian, a Mohammeden or a Jew or a Heathen- can find one’s own religion in most of the poems of Vivekananda. Not to exaggerate, his poetry as a whole is an interpretation of God’s way to men.
With its intensity and quality, the poems of Vivekananda indicate that had he courted the Muse, as his mission of life, he would have certainly emerged as one of the greatest poets of the world.
