The other night I had an interesting dream. I actually have a large record collection, and in my dream I put on a record I have never listened to before. It was of a young man singing in a high falsetto, with utmost soulful feeling:
“I’ve been sailing a long, long way,
I’ve been traveling a long, long way,
I’ve been on a journey a long, long way.”
His voice was so lyrical and so haunting! I was shedding tears, both in my dream and when I woke up from it.
I guess my soul is the reality in me that possesses a singular longing for deeper things. If I could tap into that longing, I would be a superlative seeker. If I could feel the longing of my soul permanently, I would far surpass my present achievements.
It’s interesting how often Beethoven’s music cries, especially in his late string quartets. When I listen to the last movement of opus 131 in C-sharp minor, his fourteenth and penultimate string quartet, in this section there is tremendous dynamism and determination. But then the brio and gusto gives way to this quiet yearning, this tearful plea for God’s Compassion.
When I think of Michelangelo’s David, it is so splendid and so powerful. But then look at his last work, the Rondanini Pieta. Once again, the power surrenders to pathos. You cannot look seriously at this statue and not be moved. It’s interesting how both Jesus and Mary are looking down. One critic, and I am sorry I do not remember the scholar’s name, said that it suggests Christ the Divine and his mother the Divine, looking down from a higher plane and sympathizing with Christ the poor, broken man.
I sometimes mention music that moves me, and, on my recommendation, people go and listen to my musical choices. And often they are not impressed! The music that speaks to me on a psychic level does not necessarily speak in the same way to everyone. But this goes both ways. We all have our tastes in art. Even at the highest level, we see that Sri Aurobindo and Sri Chinmoy, two supremely God-realised souls, had different aesthetic tastes. Is it fair for me to say that Sri Aurobindo was interested in English literature and English poetry in a way that Guru was not? Or that Guru loved Tagore’s Bengali poetry more than Sri Aurobindo did? Even as Guru’s disciple, I see that my own artistic tastes don’t always align with my Master’s. Guru loves art songs. I prefer chamber music. Neither is superior. It’s just a different rasa (taste).
I encountered a song recently that touched me deeply. It’s called “Superman” by Five For Fighting. I think it is exceptionally beautiful.
The official music video is a celebration of young love, but I think the music goes deeper than that. For one thing, Vladimir Ondrasik’s voice is extremely haunting.
Incidentally, I greatly prefer the original video of the song, which has almost vanished from YouTube, but it’s just Ondrasik with his piano:
“It’s not easy to be me,” he sings throughout the song. And in the hands of a less gifted artist, this would sound either self-pitying or preening. But when he sings it, I think of the miserable suffering that Christ and Krishna went through on earth. The “me” becomes the universal “I” embodied by spiritual Masters. Like the young man in my dream, Ondrasik sings in a high, stirring falsetto.
There’s an echo of an echo in this song of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. At certain points, like the last “It’s not easy to be me,” I feel he’s dealing with the same Christ Consciousness that Bach treated in his music. Also, for some reason, when I hear this song, I think of the striking scene in Bach’s Passion setting where Christ lifts up the cup and says, “Trinket alle daraus” (Drink this, all of you).
Also, for some reason, I can’t help but think of the song Jim Henson, the creator of Sesame Street, gave to Kermit the Frog: “It’s not easy being green.”
Here are the lyrics to Superman by Vladimir Ondrasik, also known by his band’s name “Five For Fighting:”
“I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me
I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane
I’m more than some pretty face beside a train
And it’s not easy to be me
I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
‘Bout a home I’ll never see
It may sound absurd, but don’t be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream?
And it’s not easy to be me
Up, up, and away, away from me
Well, it’s all right
You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy
Or anything
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees
I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
Inside of me
Inside of me
Yeah, inside of me
Inside of me
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
I’m only a man looking for a dream
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
And it’s not easy, ooh, ooh, ooh
It’s not easy to be me”
He said that this song took him just forty-five minutes to write, and it came as of a sudden flash of God-given inspiration. But, he had already been working as a struggling song writer for twenty years at that time, and had never been able to release a single album. “Superman” was approximately his one thousandth song, and that was the one that made him famous overnight. I like artists who are so committed to their art, and who value the process more than fame or money.
The lyric “I’m only a man in a silly red sheet” speaks to me. As I walk a celibate path, I will not be a father. My own physical father vanished from my life many years ago. But I think he did the best he could, and I think of him as “only a man in a funny red sheet”. We all want to be special somehow, and it can be painful when we fail. I think a lot of my poems are addressed to my father, this man I don’t know.
I like the line “Looking for special things inside of me.” This has deep meaning. I think it means, “If you want to be special, look inside, dive into your unexplored depths.”
One of my very favorite of Guru’s answers to a question is this one:
Question: How can I get satisfaction right this minute?
Sri Chinmoy: “Go deep within. Satisfaction is there. That is the simplest answer.”
(From Perfection and Transcendence)
In this song, Ondrasik admits that he bleeds, and he daydreams, and puts on silly red capes (a symbol of lust) and has all of these self-destructive habits “digging for kryptonite on a one-way street.” And yet, he can sing about all these things with such composure and grace. There is divine longing in this song. It’s funny how anyone can be an instrument of God. Everyone prays, either consciously or not. One of my favorite of Guru’s poems from “A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile” delves into this very issue:
“A thing I never cared to know:
Who is for God?
The thing I never cared to learn:
To cry for me.
“But I hear an inner voice
Telling me
That all human beings
Consciously or unconsciously,
Directly or indirectly,
Care for God,
And all human beings in their perfect sleep
Cry for me,
Poor me.”
(A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile, Agni Press, 1977)
In my many readings of From the Source to the Source I stumbled upon this magnificent poem:
“My feet have wings.
They fly.
My hands have eyes.
They cry.
My thought has God.
It shines.
With God-Delight
It dines.”
I spoke to a brilliant scholar-disciple about this poem. I told her that I thought the first stanza, “My feet have wings. They fly” may be a reference to Apollo or Mercury, the god of winged feet. She said that if Sri Aurobindo had written the poem, then definitely that would be a quite reasonable interpretation. But she said that she doesn’t very many classical references in Guru’s poems. This doesn’t mean there can’t be such references! But she felt that “my feet have wings…they fly” refers to both Guru’s personal running career, and also to the millions of miles Guru has run through his disciples in the Peace Run and the great ultra-races like the 3100.
My own feeling about this line is that it transports us a little beyond the physical realm. Guru said that when he meditates in front of us that he becomes stock still, like a statue. But at the same time, his inner being is covering the length and breadth of the world. Also, Guru mentioned many times that his feet embody infinite compassion for humanity, divine Compassion. So, Guru’s Feet, God’s Feet, are always available. Krishna’s weak spot was his heel- this is where the archer’s arrow entered. So, the Master’s Feet are speedy, but also vulnerable. They are a symbol, the root, of his human incarnation. He chose to take human form, and to have vulnerable human feet: “Poor me”, “It’s not easy being me”.
I read recently in a disciple’s printed diary how Guru was saying he feels his voice has improved greatly over the years. His feels his younger voice was immature, and lacked resonance. I think Guru’s voice was always beautiful. But I think “My feet have wings…they fly” can refer to the youthful energy Guru had when he came to the West, the hope and joy he brought with him. Also, the idea of winged feet implies a new journey, a new adventure. I remember that From the Source, To The Source and A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile comprise over one thousand poems, dedicated to his brothers Chitta and Mantu, respectively. So, the excitement in this line may refer to the adventure of composing one thousand rhyming poems in English. To be frank, these two books contain some of my very, very favorite of my Guru’s poem-mantras.
The next stanza reads: “My hands have eyes. They cry.” The great Professor-scholar with whom I consulted told me that only very rarely does she find mention of “hands” in Guru’s poetry. It’s very rare.
Off the top of my head I can recall just a few sublime references to “hands” in Guru’s poetry:
“…destroy the dark hands” (The Dance of Life)
“…a man-made umbrella, a God-made hand” (The Dance of Life)
“…the beautiful eyes and powerful hands of the real friends” (My Lord Reads My Letters)
All of these references are very significant. Guru doesn’t treat with hands lightly. The hands of a spiritual Master represent his mission, his action on earth.
She told me also that eyes in the hand is ancient symbol, found across diverse cultures, in both the Old and the New world. This symbol, the hand with the eye in the palm, reminds me of Guru’s talk about Compassion in The Quintessence of Knowledge-Sun:
“But the aspect that is Heaven-free does not touch the earth-bound consciousness. It deals with human incapacity on a higher level — you can say in a theoretical way, not in a practical way. On this higher level, compassion becomes the observer and not the doer.” (This reminds me of Christ and Mary in the Rondanini Pieta, looking down at the suffering Christ, the man.)
So, maybe this is why the eyes in the hands are weeping. The hands are here on earth, the Master is working to relieve the burden of human suffering. But the Vision is not theoretical, but practical, and suffers from the darkness and misunderstanding of this world. This darkness prevents the Master from manifesting his full divinity on earth, and hinders his mission in every way. This is why the hands weep, the practical hands.
“It’s not easy being me.”
The last stanza reads: “My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.”
I find it incredible that a thought, a mere thought can have God. But this is not the ordinary thought, from the ordinary earth-bound mind. Guru writes, in his poem, Immortality: “my mind a core of the One’s unmeasured Thoughts.”
This is “Mind” and “Thought” that has completely transcended all human conceptions of those terms.
The Professor then told me about Sri Aurobindo’s aside that never in his life was he able to shake the feeling that language comes from somewhere beyond the mind. This connects to the ancient Indian concept of mantra, inspired utterances that come from above.
In one of my best poems, entitled For the Monarch Butterfly, I wrote about “pensive thoughts of kings” (hence “monarch” butterfly) and I know that line comes from somewhere, but I have never been able to find the author. And I have come to feel, rightly or wrongly, that this line came to me from some inner world, that once or twice in my life I have got poetry lines that come from some source beyond. If I could draw from that source more often I would become a very famous poet. Alas, I don’t have that kind of access. Maybe one day.
“My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.”
I look at the first stanza and I think of the delicate human feet of the Master, his vulnerable all loving feet. I look at the second stanza, and I see the tears, the bleeding hands, the weeping, the unfulfilled mission and the continuous striving. And here in the last stanza, all fragility has been surmounted in this world of delight.
My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.
So in spite of all of the miseries and limitations of the earth, the Master, on another level is enjoying the thought of God, the bliss and delight of this luminous thought. I wish I could taste the bliss of this illumining, eternal Thought.
It’s not easy to be me.
It’s not easy being green.
But this poem is a feast.
