Amritanubhava : I Didn't Know a Book Could Do That - By Richard Payment

 I Didn’t Know a Book Could Do That - Richard Payment

Reading stories and telling stories are both a form of spiritual seeking.

~~~

This story partly plays out in my imagination. I was not there to witness it. 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, a woman who some call the Holy Mother, spoke of about book. She spoke with wisdom, with a patience that born out of concern, but mostly she spoke with love.

The title was something new to us: Amritanubhava, a mouthful of syllables upon first hearing. It can also be called “the essence of divine bliss.”

We knew of the author, sort of, in a vague and distant kind of way. He is remembered as Jnaneshwara. Or Dnyaneshwar or Dnyandev. Or even Mauli. The spelling is illusive. He was a thirteenth century Indian poet, philosopher, yogi and saint. He lived on this Earth for only twenty-one years.

Some of us might have already been familiar with his magnum work, Jnaneshwari. Others might have seen the 1940 movie, “Sant Dnyaneshwar.”

But the thing is both of his books were written in old Marathi, an ancient language from the Indian state of Maharashtra, a distant tongue for both for modern Indians and for Sanskrit scholars. So you can pardon our ignorance when we heard that word: Amritanubhava.

~~~

“This book,” Shri Mataji said, “is about you.” It is about what to do after the enlightenment of the Spirit.

My ears perked up. My attention stood tall. A seeker is always alert, hungry to know what is next.

“I am thinking,” she said, “of translating it myself, so you can read it.” She repeated: “It is about you and what you should do next.” 

My attention is again sharpened. “What is that title? If I only had a pencil, I would write it down.” 

And then she says it: “It is the last word on spirituality.”

What more need be said? 

I imagine her holding the thin and tattered volume aloft, bidding us to read it, its loose and torn pages moving in the breeze, her finger pointing. But the truth is she did not have the book in hand. In 1991 it had not yet been translated to English. That was yet to happen.

~~~

Years later I hold that book, ink upon paper, bound and glued and in my own hands. It is a fresh and enlightened translation, not difficult to read or to understand. But, to be sure, it is profound in its content.

Amritanubhava gets to the point: the very nature of our being, our oneness with God. 

“Careful now,” I tell myself, “what you hold is a jewel. And it is so much more than a jewel.” Given a choice, take this book. Leave the jewel.

It is an elixir, a nectar, a pure concentrate of knowledge distilled from Jnaneshwara’s own experience. It is the fruit of his yogic seeking.

After completing his first work, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that became known to the world as Jnaneshwari, the author was asked by his guru to now write, in the form of pure knowledge, what he had learned. Thus we have the essence: Amritanubhava.

~~~

“I wish you all could read Amritanubhava in English,” Shri Mataji said. “Understanding how he describes a realized soul, you will find that within yourself it has happened.” She paused. “You will be amazed,” she added, “how you have got such a beautiful description of your Self.”

It was a new idea to me. I am myself — my age, my status, my job, my name. But I am also my Self — fuller, taller, richer and, above all, a truer version of all our individual selves. That capital S makes all the difference.

It is in the middle of his own text that Jnaneshwara stops to tell us that this all may be too “difficult to be understood by the common man.” He rhetorically asks us, “Then who can understand?” 

He answers his own question: “This can only be understood by those who can see themselves without the mirror….

“The face, knowing itself, recognizes that it alone is reflected in the mirror and is itself the original object.”

Stop and reflect on that. Read it again.

With those words, the illusion and the duality both dissolve. 

There is, in that moment, nothing else but the Spirit.

And then I read on. No, I do not read the words. I see them floating somewhere above the page, projected upon Reality:

Although the Master and His disciple appear as two, the Master alone enjoys Himself under the guise of the two.

~~~

There is an awe in my heart. A whisper across the ages. 

I didn’t know a book could do that. It expresses a thing that resonates. It is Truth, but not “your truth” or “my truth.” It is the Universal Truth.

If you do not understand the depth of this, wait a moment. You will.

~~~

And now, wait again. There is an incoming call from Prester John and the poets, Tagore and Gibran. Jnaneshwara has joined the circle. 

Together, they want to tell us a story. They want to tell us about our True Self. It is the only story worth telling. 

That is what we seek. We must admit it.

If they speak of the very thing that we seek, we have no choice but to listen.

~~~

A pure and enlightening translation of Amritanubhava is now available under the title Amritanubhava: The Essence of Divine Bliss. It is also available in French and Italian.

It is a book for our age because it reminds us of who we really are — the thing we always knew.

Marguerite Porete and the Seven States by John Noyce

 Marguerite Porete and the Seven States 

John Noyce

For the mystic, and possible Beguine, Marguerite Porette there was nowhere to hide once her book, the Mirouer des simples ames (Mirror of simple souls), began to circulate. Or perhaps she did not want to hide in a convent. Little is known about her. In the early 1300s she was living in the area around Valencienne, now part of the Hainaut province of Belgium. Sometime before 1306 her book had been condemned by the bishop of Cambrai and publicly burnt. Marguerite then revised and extended her text, and this was approved by three (male) theologians. But there were powerful forces of intolerance at work in French society at that time, and in 1310 extracts from Mirouer were judged to be heretical. This led to Marguerite being burnt at the stake in Paris.  The Mirouer survived as an anonymous work, only being reattributed to Marguerite in the mid-twentieth century.  

The seven states (stages)

The book outlines the seven states through which the Soul reaches God. Chapter 118 begins: 

“I have promised, says this Soul, ever since Love has overpowered me, to say something about the seven stages we call states, for so they are. And these are the degrees by which one ascends from the valley to the height of the mountain, which is so isolated that one sees nothing save God. Each degree of being has its own level.”

In the first state the Soul is touched by Grace and stripped of her power to sin. She feels she has a full time job keeping the commandments to love God with all her heart, and love her neighbor as herself. 

In the second state the Soul “considers that God counsels His special lovers to go beyond what He

commands.” She abandons possessions, mortifies nature, and despises riches, delights and honours, so that she can “accomplish the perfection of the evangelical counsel of which Jesus Christ is the exemplar.”

In the third state the Soul has to conquer her will and love the work of perfection by which “her spirit is sharpened through a boiling desire of Love in multiplying in herself such works.” Thus “it is necessary to be pulverized in breaking and bruising the self in order to enlarge the place where love would want to be.”

In the fourth state the Soul is “drawn by the height of love into the delight of thought through meditation.” Here she believes that there is no higher life, but Marguerite points out that the Soul is deceived and that there are two further stages which are given by God and which are greater and nobler and that these can be obtained by what she calls Fine Love.

The fifth stage is the stage of Nothingness. Here the Soul realizes that apart from God she is nothing: “Now such a Soul is nothing, for she sees her nothingness by means of the abundance of Divine Understanding, which maker her nothing and places her in nothingness. And so she is all things, for she sees by means of the depth of understanding of her own wretchedness, which is so deep and so great that she finds there neither beginning nor middle nor end, only a bottomless abyss. There she finds herself, without finding and without bottom. One does not find oneself who cannot attain this.”

The Mirror of Simple Souls

The sixth stage is one of clarification. The Soul now knows where it stands. Once it reaches the sixth stage it is safe. It can return to the fifth stage,  but is not in danger of falling to the fourth or lower. So now Divine Love and the Soul now work together to put an end to reason, and the Soul becomes a Divine Mirror:  “… God sees Himself in her by His divine majesty, who clarifies this Soul with Himself, so that she sees only that there is nothing except God Himself who is, from who all things are.” And so “The Soul is at the sixth stage, freed and pure and clarified from all things – but not at all glorified.”

The seventh stage is that of glorification. Here “Love keeps within herself in order to give it to us in eternal glory, of which we will have no understanding until our soul has left our body.”

Anonymous circulation and eventual rediscovery

In the decades following Marguerite’s condemnation the Mirouer continued to be regarded as suspect by church authorities. But it was to become widely circulated throughout Europe in Latin and in numerous translations as the work of an anonymous Carthusian monk. Ascribed to an anonymous male member of a conservative religious order, the book was acceptable, even admired; written by a lay woman it was deeply suspect. And so the situation continued until the mid-twentieth century when the Italian historian Romana Guarnieri established Marguerite’s authorship in an article published in 1946.  Guarnieri continued to work on this text, publishing the first critical edition of the Old French text in 1965, and the full critical edition of the Old French and Latin with Middle English notes in 1986. Whilst an English translation had been published in 1927, this was before Marguerite’s authorship had been established. In 1993 an English translation by Ellen Babinsky was published, and since then this text has continued to be critically studied and acknowledged as a masterpiece of women’s spiritual writing.

Several modern scholars have observed similarities between Marguerite’s Mirouer and the writings of Meister Eckhart, with similar phrasing to be found in both. Eckhart arrived in Paris in the year after Marguerite’s death, and he is known to have shared a house at this time with a member of the Inquisition that had tried and condemned her. 

Although there is no direct evidence, it seems likely that Eckhart had access to the text of the Mirouer. Most of his surviving sermons are from the later period of his life, from 1310 to his death, c.1328. Clearly Eckhart was influenced by Marguerite’s ideas, although his own condemnation for heresy was to be posthumous (in 1329). 

Extract from John Noyce, The Inner Ascent (lulu books, 2018)
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/sahajhist/

Vladimir Soloviev and His Visions of Sophia by John Noyce

 Vladimir Soloviev and His Visions of Sophia - John Noyce

In the late nineteenth century the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) developed the notion of Sophia based on his own personal visions and on the earlier theological writings of Boehme and his successors. Later writers in the Russian Sophiological tradition were to be greatly influenced by Soloviev.

Soloviev had three visions of Sophia, which he described in his poem Trisvidaniya (Three meetings), written towards the end of his life in 1898.  

His first vision of Sophia was in 1862 when he was nine years old. During an Orthodox church service he was overwhelmed by the apparition of a beautiful woman:

The altar was open … But where were the 

priest and the deacon?

And where was the throng of people 

offering prayers?

The flood of torments suddenly ran dry, 

not leaving a trace.

There was azure all around, and azure in my soul.

Suffused with the golden azure,

Holding a flower from distant worlds 

in your hand,

You stood with a radiant smile.

Nodded to me, and vanished into the mist.

His second vision was in London in 1875 during a sabbatical leave from his lecturership in religion at Moscow University. In the British Museum Reading Room he actively sought Sophia  whilst ‘mysterious forces’ guided him in his wide-ranging reading in Hindu philosophy, Gnosticism,17 Hermetic writings, and Kabbala.

And eventually, in answer to a fervent prayer, he had his second vision of Sophia:

And then one day – it was toward autumn –

I said to her: O, blossom of a deity!

You’re here, I sense it – why haven’t you revealed

Yourself to my eyes since childhood years?

And no sooner had I thought this prayer

Than everything was filled with a golden azure,

And before me she shine once more –

But only her face – it alone. 

But Soloviev wanted more than just a face, at which point a voice inside him commanded ‘Be in Egypt!’ 

Immediately abandoning his studies he departed via Paris, through France and Italy, travelling by steamship to Cairo. Arriving penniless, he was mysteriously directed to Thebes. Captured and then released by Bedouins, he spent the night in the desert, awakening to the fragrant scent of roses and his third - and final - vision of Sophia:

And in the purple of the heaven’s splendor,

With eyes filled with an azure fire,

You looked like the first radiance

Of a universal and creative day.

What is, what was, and what will always be –

A single motionless look encompassed 

everything here…

The sea and rivers showed dark blue beneath me

As did the distant forest, and the heights of 

snowy mountains.

I saw everything, and everything was 

one thing only –

A single image of female beauty…

The infinite fit within its dimensions:

Before me, in me – were you alone.

O, radiant woman! In you I am not deceived:

In the desert I saw all of you …

Those roses will not wither in my soul,

Wherever life’s wave may speed.

This third vision was to provide the source for his philosophical and poetic inspiration during the remaining twenty-four years of his life, beginning with his lecture series ‘Lectures on Godmanhood’ in 1877-78 on his return to Russia. 

Not only did Soloviev see himself as a devotee of Sophia, he also saw himself as a prophet. The

tradition of the writer as a divinely inspired prophet, responsible for shaping the spiritual and moral destiny of the nation, was of central importance in Russian literature throughout the nineteenth century. 

As Soloviev himself wrote: 

I have been elevated to the prophets by enemies, To make fun of me they gave me this name, 

But a true prophet am I before you, 

And my prediction will soon come true."   

Thus Soloviev can proclaim in one poem:

Let it be known: today the Eternal Feminine

In an incorruptible body is descending to Earth.

In the unfading light of the new Goddess

Heaven has become one with the depths.

Soloviev was to greatly influence later writers in the Russian Sophiological tradition particularly the Symbolist poets Andrei Belyj (1880-1934) and Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921). 

In addition he also influenced other religious mystics such as the exiles, Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) and Dmitrii Merezhkovskii (1865-1941), and the soviet-era dissident, Daniil Andreev (1906-1959).

Extract from John Noyce, Sophia and the Russian mystical tradition (lulu books, 2019)
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/sahajhist/

Tagore's Gitanjali : The Book That Made W.B Yeats Cry - by Richard Payment

 All the chairs faced in one direction. It was a London sitting room, larger than most. The year was 1912.

The speaker was demure, reserved, perhaps disoriented. He felt he had been dropped into a new world, not of his own making. His stature, nonetheless, was tall, imposing to some, even exotic. His white hair and full beard did not create a well-manicured frame. 

Inwardly, this was a man still in recovery. During a long sea voyage of some eleven thousand nautical miles and more than two months, he taken up his pen and upon sheets of loose stationary and a schoolroom lined notebook. He had begun to translate.

He was translating his own words. It was a way of moving back into the world of writing. He was translating from the his native Bengali to the language of empire: English.

This man was Rabindranath Tagore. 

~~~

“Mr. Tagore” they called him, “Rabindranath” being a name with too many syllables. “Mr. Tagore, do you prefer to stand or sit? Mr. Tagore, here is some water, should you need it.”

Rabindranath Tagore did not need the water, but took a small sip and and then a full swallow. He stood so all could see, but mostly so all could hear. His voice was not at its fullest after his illness. With his throat clear and the water sipped, there was no excuse, but to begin.

His words were not addressed to the audience. Rabindranath Tagore spoke to God:

“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.”

His memory returned to India.

“This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.”

The stilled room was fill with gentlemen, as well as a scattering of fine women. This is what many would call men of letters, the intelligentsia, society’s finest. They were of a class that Tagore would come to know as the literati, a circle of writers, publishers, poets, the educated and the educators.

~~~

The invitation to read had come from Tagore’s host in England, William Rothenstein, a portrait painter.

“These scribbles were but a timepass while at sea,” Tagore explained, “a medicine to recovery.” As an Indian and as a guest, he could not say no. He offered the small notebook.

That night Rothenstein read and reread the pages of verse. “As poems, they are grand,” he later wrote. “As hymns of praise and devotion, they are fantastic, without equal in our country. We have lost touch. The writings of saints no longer interest us. It has all become stale. But these words should be sung from the steeples, preached from the pulpits. These poems are inspired.”

He had the notebook copied. Three typed manuscripts were passed on to three men of influence and prestige. The first two were enthusiastic. The third was ecstatic. That man was William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and playwright.

Hastily, Rothenstein arranged a reading in his home. The guests would come to hear Yeats, no doubt, but the words to remember would be those of Tagore.

~~~

“My life,” Tagore read from the concluding lines of his poem, still speaking in humble supplication to God, takes “its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.”

He looked up, now back in the sitting room. 

There was silence.

The reading was concluded. Mr. Tagore was thanked for his attendance and they moved on to the next order of business. 

Rabindranath drank what remained of his water. He sat in his chair, but could not hear. He looked towards Yeats, who sat opposite, and beyond.

“They are insulted,” he thought. “I have mangled their great language. They see me as a colonial imposter, not of their style, their circle, their eloquence.”

What applause there was, was polite, muffled by gloves. There were no comments, no handshakes or smiles.

“They cannot hear the truth because my words are awkward, impolite, ill-mannered. It is my fault, not theirs.”

~~~

But then it came the next day. Slowly. First there were notes delivered in the morning post. Short letters, then discreet visits, warm handshakes, shy sideways compliments, followed by full praise.

“They are English,” Yeats explained. “They were overwhelmed into silence. They are English, you see. As poets, like you, they feel deeply, but they are not the ones who can shout “bravo!” or “encore!” Be assured: in their reserve, your words resonate.”

Yeats later wrote, “We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics — all dull things in the doing — while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilisation itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity.

“When he is speaking of children, so much a part of himself this quality seems, one is not certain that he is not also speaking of the saints: 

“They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.”

~~~

Did Rabindranath Tagore write home, reporting to friend or family in Kolkata? In our imagination we can hear him:

I do not remember ever hearing English for such a long time without interruption. And on top of that, it was my own words.

Mr. Yeats reads well. He is used to public speaking. He commands the stage and has the respect of his audience. But still, it might have been better if they had interrupted, spoken out, stopped it all, or at least smiled or frowned. It was like a wall, the blank faces. Boos and calls would have been better than that silence. But once started, there was no other course.

The evening was entirely Mr. Rothenstein’s doing, but Yeats was instrumental. He drew the audience and carried the weight. Mr. Yeats also read from my Gitanjali, but only selected poems of his choosing, each translated by myself. As I listened, I also edited and retranslated in my head.

“Not that word, another, but there is no English, Bengali knows the nuance, English is so broad.”

I don’t think they knew what to make of me. Even in India, my height sometimes brings some people to a standstill. I am odd in their eyes. In London, my kurta and shawl, my dark skin are added. My beard hides me. My accent bites at their language.

“Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.” Mr. Yeats reading is both commanding and humble. He understands.

“There is none to count thy minutes. Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.”

But do they understand, these men of English, published critics and essayists themselves? Do they know God?

“At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut, but if I find that yet there is time.”

Was there applause? It was slow in coming. It was polite. I have heard more clapping at the worst of my plays. With an Indian audience you know where you stand.

The words were also few and formal. “We wish to thank Mr. Tagore for being with us today, for sharing his poetry and his time.” Do they thank or do they wish to thank? I understand their language, but I do not understand the English.

Mr. Rothenstein walked with me afterwards on the heath. William is a kind and welcoming man. You can see it in his art. He said not to bother. The English are not expressive, he explained. Their hearts are not given full reign. Perhaps they will come around.

And then the next day it started. A letter or two arrived, simple notes and cards really. “I did not know what to say.” “Your words left me speechless.” “It was an honour to be present in the room.”

These English are another sort. To the face they cannot say, but with a pen in hand, they can express the feelings of their hearts. It is also the way of the writer, so I should understand. Sometimes I am the same.

Mr. Yeats says he reads my Gitanjali on the railway platform, upon the omnibus, at any spare moment, but quickly hides the book from view, lest some onlooker should see that he has been moved. Will they think less of him if they see a tear? Should they also not want that world?

Mr. Yeats has said the finest thing. My heart soars with his words. He calls my poetry a gift to English literature. He says Gitanjali is not simply an Indian voice, strange and far, but our voice. By “our voice” he mean the English, the Irish, the English-speaking world. He says I will be a bridge between East and West. What finer gift can I bear? It is all God’s doing.

~~~

In today’s world, it may seem unlikely that Indian devotional poetry would be prized as literature in the West.

Lines that describe homesick cranes flying back to their nest as a metaphor for mankind’s return to God are potent. What more need be said about life? 

But in 1913, the West did have an answer. In one glorious moment of recognition, it awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Rabindranath Tagore.

Guided to nomination by William Butler Yeats, the Nobel committee saw Gitanjali not as a translation from an already published Bengali volume, something that would have made it ineligible for consideration, but as an entirely new work created in English. It was a creative interpretation of their own rules, just as Tagore had reworked his own words for a new medium.

~~~

Tagore’s gift to the West was received. And the answer was a resounding “Thank You.”

Tagore told them of their True Self and of a promised land they all shared. 

It seems that English was indeed a worthy vehicle for such devotion.

~~~

~~~

Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore is available as a paperback and hardcover book here.

The fictional novel For Want of Wonders retells some of the same story of Tagore in London, in the context of a broader story of spiritual seeking. The book is available here.