The Colours of Beauty

Can a string of quotations make a coherent volume which widens our perceptions of existence in a significant manner? The answer would be in the affirmative if the quotations were culled from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. As a gardener dedicated to his flowering grove, Narad has carefully chosen blooms of varied shades in a particular hue for this inspirational vase. Beauty itself is the chosen color for it is the base of all flowers, of all life, of existence itself.

"Visits of beauty": that is what this book is about. Visits of beauty leading to "storm-sweeps of delight". The night withdraws and there! Gently steps in dawn and suddenly, "beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God." From 'The Symbol Dawn' onwards, the term leads us, constantly re-fixing our gaze to receive the rainbow-tints of creation, its external riches as also the spiraling thought currents within that lead to a divine silence.

Fresh with exhilaration at the welcome accorded to his biography of Sri Aurobindo in 1944, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar published On Beauty (1945) which records several statements on the nature of beauty by the Mahayogi. Iyengar also quotes four lines from the poem, `Jivanmukta': "A Bliss surrounds with ecstasy everlasting, An absolute high-seated immortal rapture Possesses, sealing love to oneness In the grasp of the All-Beautiful, All-beloved!"

This was at a time when the world had not heard of Savitri. Even then, Sri Aurobindo's writings had a way of showing Mahalakshmi's presence that alone makes perfection to become perfect. That is "the miracle of eternal beauty", he says, imaged by Mahalakshmi: "Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda."

This Aurobindonian inspiration to search for beauty in existence to gain supernal Ananda had drawn Narad over hills and dales of sadhana. Made the Guardian of the Service Tree by the Mother, he has plodded on for decades specializing in Plumeria. His sadhana scripture has been Savitri, an epic made up of more than twenty thousand lines. He has authored a book on the Plumeria and is a former President of the Plumeria Society of America. This means, he is no armchair dilettante when he speaks of beauty. He has been a creator of beauty fully knowing, that these images of beauty have not long to stay on earth This, by itself, speaks of a detachment in the creator's forge and that is what beauty is: like the vision of Krishna that floats across the mind of an aspirant engaged in the yoga of divine love raising himself to a plane above the mental consciousness. To appreciate beauty, one has to rise upwards like that. Indeed, it is more than a concept and is not experienced in a vacuum. Beauty is a Plumeria flower that has opened just now, spreading a heady scent; Beauty is the huge, gnarled, Service Tree guarding the Samadhi in Sri Aurobindo Ashram; Beauty is the smile of a little baby, as it sleeps, breathing gently. Indeed this noun always makes one experience pleasure. An association not merely with the external object but also with its concerns, a loving gesture, a kindly word, a movement of help to a friend in need. Indeed, I spent quite sometime just watching enthralled, the gnarled hands of Mother Teresa in a portrait because those hands are associated with bringing comfort to the aged and abandoned in Kolkata's streets. So they are beautiful.

One could read Savitri from many viewpoints. Narad has chosen to highlight the lines where the term 'beauty' occurs as a sign-post to sublimity in the epic. He has also included the lines that deal with associated ideas like charm, grace, marvel, splendour, loveliness and wonder. I have been no stranger to the epic since the time I heard my father read passages from it in the late 'fifties of the last century.

In this volume passages have been selected that contain words about beauty, sweetness, wonder and more. My aspiration since the days of my youth has always been to seek, recognize and occasionally to manifest beauty in music, poetry, landscaping and life. I have found beauty in the laughter and sweetness of children, in the unity of kindred souls, in the ever changing, ever new face of Nature, in poetry and art, music and architecture and in the incomparable eyes of the Mother's look and the calm and potent peace of Sri Aurobindo's presence.

Mother's words have been more than guidance, they have filled my soul with their splendour and their truth. I was once told that sweetness was Sri Aurobindo's favorite word as it was that of Shakespeare. In researching Savitri for the Inspiration volumes I found ninety-four lines containing the word 'sweet' and eighty-two lines with the word 'sweetness!

Sri Aurobindo's passages on charm, grace, marvel, splendour, loveliness and wonder are also included in this volume. It is the heart's treasure and the soul's blessing to read and be moved by the mastery of his touch, bringing the power and plenitude of mantra to man through Savitri.

**Contents and Sample Pages**