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AN EXPOSITION OF THIS MYSTICAL MONOLOGUE

Prof. K.B. Sitaramayya

“Where was I wrong� is no mere religious or devotional poem but a Seeker’s mystical monologue with his Maker. The seeker addresses Him as his Master both because He is the Supreme Power and his Guru and Guide. He tells Him how the night he addressed Him he came on his knees to His feet with a heavy heart and weary soul. The words indicate that the Seeker had been struggling for some time to become one with the Lord. His efforts have borne no fruit till the moment, as he believes.

He followed all the paths as indicated by the Lord. But he thinks he has not reached THERE, at his goal. He wants to know where he was wrong, at what point he missed his trail. But, infact at the end we see that he has actually arrived at the object of his seeking but is not intellectually aware of it. He was not wrong at all; if he was, it was in believing he had missed his trail. The movement of the poem is from his sense of failure to his surprise realisation that he has reached his destination. It includes a complete picture of the different paths suggested by the Lord and pursued by the Seeker.

The series of epigraphs to the poem from the Bhagawad Gita serve two purposes. We see that the relationship between the Seeker and the Lord is similar to that between Arjuna and Krishna. Like Arjuna he is face to face with the Lord, his Guru as well as his Goal. He is able to present his problems to Him and get clarifications. And yet he is unable to feel a sense of union with Him. The epigraphs also suggest the paths the Lord places before the Seeker though they are not identical. The first advice given by the Lord to the Seeker was,

Close your eyes and see.

The wide-open eyes see only the outer phenomenal world. The Lord is seated in the region of the heart as Krishna tells Arjuna in a well-known passage in the Gita (xv:xvi). But when the Seeker closed his eyes the inner sky became only dim. There did not dawn for him.

The mystic glow of darkness.

The glow of darkness! obviously, there is a distant echo of the Gita here:

Ya nisa sarva bhutanam......

That what is night (darkness) to all creatures is a state of wakefulness (a luminous state) to the Sage (an inward looking person) II.69.

Such a glow beyond the comprehension of the intellect is mystic. It is the dawning of such a glow that truly begins the true spiritual life leading to the union with the Lord. What he experienced was only a twilight of the dusk:

The light stayed dim, and grey

Normally the state of twilight is momentary; it leads on to night (or day). It is frightening when the state stays, continuous endlessly.

Each path to his goal was barred by the thick spreading evergreen climbing plant called ivy; or he felt separated from his goal by thorny bushes. The Seeker describes the inner realm using terms corresponding to the inner experience.

The Lord to whom the Seeker turns accounts for his experience by telling him that he did not shut out the outer world completely. By not closing his eyes tight enough he allowed the deceiving light creep through his physical weaknesses.

The Seeker mentions what entered his consciousness preventing the dawn of the glow of darkness within him:

Each from far away
Flavours and fragrances of kisses lost
Sweet thrills and tender dreams
And memories ...

It is only when one deliberately seeks to turn inward and tries to keep away all the echoes of sweet sounds, tastes and smells of the tactile thrills we leave behind, we actually see their rushing into us in forms of tender dreams and memories.

The Seeker asked the Lord frankly how it was possible to chase away the memories. They cling to the eyes that close upon the outer world, unreachable to be driven away like the cattle that seek refuge at noon from the scorching sun under a shady tree.

The Lord told the Seeker that if inner light had failed him, he had to tread the arduous tracks of outer life, seeking Him in places of solitude.

The Seeker tells the Lord,

I trod the stony ways
And rocky hills and uphill trails
I plunged into the swamps
And wandered deep
In desert’s thirsty waves of sand
Which roll in ripples
Motionless ... ­

Obviously, he did not arrive at the object of his quest. The Lord pointed out to him that treading lonely paths was easier than

On highways in the valley
Where, throngs the human flock
And stumbles,
Not the striving foot
But the unresting soul...

It is a very different experience

On highways in the valley
where throng the human flock

The poet uses the term “human flock� deliberately. The unthinking people unaware of any inner life or even its need are no better than sheep or goats. A Seeker moving amidst them could easily stumble. It is not the striving foot as on steep rocks or amidst the unstable sands that stumbles but the unresting soul.

When the seeker uses the word soul, here as before, “Weary Soul� (line 3), he obviously does not mean the deepest spiritual centre of one’s life, atman, but heart, the seat of intense feelings and emotions. It is that which is greatly disturbed or weary; it is that which stumbles when the seeker trends the Via mystica.

The Seeker questioned the Lord as to how he could avoid the hidden pitfalls bordering all-round in the midst of the dust raised by the hooves of cattle that tramped their way home in the twilight.

The Lord had given two options to the Seeker. The first was to move in the light of inner darkness. He could not seal it totally from the light of common day. The next was a walk in the midst of the swell of life. To do that he had to remain serene and unperturbed. When neither was possible there was only one way left. The Lord said.

Then ... Love ... Embrace ... Offer yourself....

It is to love the Divine in all creatures; embrace in the wide all including arms of the inner being all creation and offer himself to the Divine in everyone. The Seeker describes ­his endeavour:

Wide open, I strectched forth my arms
I wept with others� tears
I bled from wounds of other bodies....

The Seeker could literally carry out the injunctions of the Lord: He could love and embrace humanity in the truest sense of the terms; he could become others that wept and bled. He achieved even something more difficult; he even shared

A happiness not mine

And yet the Lord found the love too narrow that embraced only humanity leaving out

Flowers, and birds and trees and stars
As if they were not all
Sparks from a single fire
A golden flow of rays
From a single Sun!

The Sun was none other than the Lord Himself. The prayer given by a great Seer was.

In all things may I see the Divine

The Seeker saw Him only in men and women

He himself saw that too narrow was his heart. But as he told his Master, Guru, that he tried his best. If being human he erred he could try again, begin his journey all over again. Little did the Seeker know that all his sincere efforts had cumulatively helped him to arrive at his goal. The limited outer consciousness was not aware that he had actually reached his destination.

The vision of the spiritual quest which stopped not till the goal was reached is brought before us in the form of a lively Monologue. We fell the presence of the Lord all the time before us, counseling, guiding, admonishing the Seeker who himself is untiring, persevering prepared to continue the quest even after his arrival because of his being outwardly unconscious of his triumph.

Dr. Vassillis Vitsaxis, belonging to the great Greek tradition reveals an exceptional power of blending another great tradition with his own. His technical mastery of word and rhythm, form and structure, matches with his sublime vision. If in the English rendering itself he has created a masterpiece, one could easily see what he could have done in his native tongue that Sophocles and Socrates spoke, though in a different form. In all his successful life as a diplomat, he was formerly the Greek Ambassador to India, it appears, he was seeking the one aim to achieve which the whole creation is unconsciously moving. He shows himself to be the Sage of the Gita who is ever awake to the Light Divine within when the whole world is sleeping.