SUBRAMANIA BHARATI’S WORD OF POWER

 

Monday, September 11th, is Bharati Day. So here is a tribute to the Poet-Preceptor:

 

If you study and sing

   the poems of Bharati,

you would experience instant

   freedom from Fear;

your inhereing potential

   will multiply manifold;

and the woes of the world-process

   would become insignificant.

Surely you would attain to

   a state of supreme valour

and your Intellect would turn subtle

   to measure the dimensions

of the ethereal particle even ….

 

                                       --- Sage TGN

 

  

Subramanaia Bharati (1882-1921) was the Poet Militant of the Indian National Struggle for Freedom from foreign yoke and he was a social revolutionary far ahead of his times who tirelessly campaigned for the cause of Egalitarianism and Women’s Liberation. Above all, he was an Enlightened Sage who could communicate his spiritual experience to those who established communion with him.

 

            The energy-field of Bharati is operating in the Universal space even today and it has the immediate effect of expelling Fear from the mind. This finding of mine was confirmed conclusively in a number of instances.  I shall relate just two cases :

 

            Early one morning, a girl whom I had not met before, turned up at my residence, with an air-letter from her husband in her hand. I recollected having seen him at a few of my Talks and he was an earnest listener. They had been married for two years, but it took that long for him to make arrangements for her travel to the United States where he was employed. The girl had assumed that the air-journey would be a simple affair, with her getting into a plane in Chennai, which would transport her direct to the destination where her husband would receive her. Actually however, she would have to break journey at Singapore for nine hours before catching the connecting flight. This prospect filled her with dread and she had grim forebodings of being left behind in a strange place with no source of help to turn to. In panic she had written to her husband that she was not equal to the travails of the trip and he would have to come to India to collect her in person. Shocked not a little by her misgivings, he had replied, “You do not know my position here. I cannot afford to come to Chennai for another four years. On reading your letter, I am as perturbed as you are”. And then he had instructed her to go to a certain Meditation-organisation, obtain my address and seek me out for advice. “Only Bharati-Sakthi can come to our rescue in this the crisis of our lives”, he had said in conclusion in the letter she displayed.

 

            The girl then proceeded to relate to me how there was stiff opposition to her marriage from both families and how she had suffered as a result. It took full two hours for her to pour out her woes and I gave her a patient hearing. When the clock struck ten she got up and said, “I will take leave, Sir, thank you ever so much”. In some surprise I enquired, “But what about the problem you came with?” And she replied cheerfully, “Oh, the fear left me within five minutes of my coming here. Bharati-Sakthi has worked, Sir!” It was a happy moment.

 

            In another instance, a woman in her twenties had had a mortal dread of the dark right from her childhood. Neither her parents nor the other elders in the family could do anything to cure her of this phobia and they had all become reconciled to it. This lady attended a programme conducted in her town where I spoke at length on Bharati’s Kannan songs as mellifluous records of deep spiritual experiences. The lady came to see me on the next day and told me in wonderment that the decades-old fear of the dark had vaporised as it were; and she actually felt the phobia leaving her as she listened to Bharati’s delineation of the ordeals of the soul trapped in the dense forest of the world-process coming to end when the soul called out to Kannan for redemption. This lady has found fulfilment in devoting herself to spiritual service ever since.

 

            When such occurrences coming to my notice started multiplying, it struck me that there could have been many similar demonstrations in Bharati’s time, when those who came into contact with his personality were instantly inspired with courage. And sure enough, it was so. Poet Bharatidasan (1891-1964) was eyewitness to one event and he has recorded it in graphic detail in a simple and spontaneous poem of his, the English rendering of which I am giving below : 

 

BHARATIYAR AND THE BOY

            

              A lad of tender years,

                                                    he was weighed down with misery,   

                                                as he trudged along the street

                                                  in the gait of an aged man

                                                infirm and hunch-backed. 

                                                  Iyer accosted him

                                                and he hurried to us and stood

                                                  paying obeisance ;

                                                Iyer now told him straight :

                                                   “Walk with straightened chest.

                                                Look at the rooster there

   going in front of you!”

                                     

The spoken word lit a flame

                                         in the boy’s mind

                                      and his earlier hunched posture

                                         dropped off him totally.

                                      With his head held high

                                         and sporting a flowering smile,

                                      he marched on his way

                                         like a trained soldier!

 

            Bharatidasan had the highest reverence for Bharati and he used to refer to his Preceptor as “Iyer”, which word in Tamil means “Chieftain”. From the scene described by him, we are able to deduce two aspects : (i) Bharati’s spoken word lifted the burden off the boy’s mind, and (ii) it induced happiness in him. Such was the Power of the Sage. Has not Swami Vivekananda said : “Out of Purity and Peace comes the Word of Power”? May we be worthy of Bharati’s Grace which would sustain us through life and enable and equip us to realise the Goal of Birth …..

 

- Excerpt from Sage TGN’s Talk on ‘Bharati the Philosopher’ 

 

(Bharatidasan’s Poem in Tamil rendered into English by Sage TGN)

       

 



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