“Rhythm is the premier necessity of poetical
expression,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “because it is the sound-movement which
carries on its wave the thought-movement in the word; and it is the musical
sound-image which most helps to fill in, to extend, subtilise and deepen the thought
impression or the emotional or vital impression and to carry the sense beyond
itself into an expression of the intellectually inexpressible,—always the
peculiar power of music.” When that rhythm takes its birth in the golden-white
intensity of truth’s dynamism, in gleaming vastness of the Vedic Ritam, it
carries the power by which the unrealised potentialities become manifest in
manifestation. In its movement world after truth-world comes into existence.
When it descends into our consciousness, upborne by the deep silence of our
being, then it establishes in it the verities of its rich and widening
qualities. We are born to the life of the multifold spirit in the abundances of
its wonders. We have our true birth in it.
Read the following lines again and again, read them aloud but in the depth of
silence—and there is the rush of joyous psychic spontaneity taking us towards
its source, “the luminous heart of the Unknown”. We are not looking in these
lines for thought-and-substance which is also there in its spiritual density,
packed like light in the burning interior of a diamond; we are not visualising
a form of glowing majesty which indeed is there making the formless visible to
us, that which takes us away from all the definitions of form to the sheer
indescribable, nirūp, that even the
formless can be beautiful, that it is beautiful. We hear sound after sound to
live in the original hush in which surges the creative urge: we are breathing
here the life and the spirit, the very delight of the Mantra that has the power
of shooting beyond the power of music, that power which can give to us what it
utters, make real what is unexpressed and ideal:
At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base.
Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;
The spirit's alchemist energy is hers;
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The magnet of our difficult ascent,
The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
The joy that beckons from the impossible,
The Might of all that never yet came down.
Read again the passage, and the magic of the Word comes to us taking every
route, from around, from above and below, and from within and without. Here is
another miracle of the creative expression: “Poetic rhythm begins to reach its
highest levels, the greater poetic movements become possible when, using any of
these powers but rising beyond them, the soul begins to make its direct demand
and yearn for a profounder satisfaction: they awake when the inner ear begins
to listen.”
A Yogin is oftentimes “led by a mysterious sound” when in quest of his high
spiritual home he travels through regions of the World-Soul. It is as if some
unheard music coming from all directions is calling him to the heaven of a
million happinesses. Indeed, by its sweet ravishing cry he is conducted to the
birthplace of the rhythmic Sound itself, deep and subtle nādabrahma which is truly the origin and source, śabdayoni, of this wide-ranging harmony
rushing everywhere in its unimpeded creative urge as well as in its gleamingly
speeding surge. He hears “a cricket’s rash and fiery note”, or “the jingling of
anklet bells”, or “a tinkling pace of a long caravan”, “a forest hymn”, “a
temple gong”, “a bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles”, or “the far anthem of
a pilgrim sea”. In their soft and melodious tunes such innumerable sounds bring
warm and vibrant infinity closer to the expectant heart, a heart responding to
the secret song residing in bosom of the aureate hush. These are the voices
inaudible to us, but there the Yogin is perfectly at home with them. An occult
ear is formed, and great rhythms and movements fill the receptive calm and
silence; Silent Brahman becomes audible.
But the sound that comes from the Home of Truth, ŗtasya sadanam, the Vedic Rishis speak of, goes even beyond these
sounds, the sounds that a Yogin hears with his occult ear, the Ear of ears. In
it is the affirmative voice which gives meaning as well as contents to this
vast and teeming creation in the possibilities of the Infinite; in its chant
spreads conqueringly the creator Fire, in its shout of praise bursts open the
symbolled