THE EVOLUTION TOWARDS SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION IN

SIRPI BALASUBRAMANIAM’S

THE CHAIN OF ABSOLUTES - (POOJIYANGALIN SANGILI)

DR. JAYANTHASRI BALAKRISHNAN, PH.D (ENGLISH). PH.D

(TAMIL).

Introduction:

The Chain of Absolutes (Poojiyangalin Sangili) is undoubtedly

the magnum opus of Sirpi’s laudable literary contribution

to modern Tamil poetry, and it is unlike any other poem

ever written in contemporary Tamil verse. Its very

freshness of thought and diction make it specifically

singular from the other works of the poet.

The sources which have influenced Sirpi’s treatment of

cosmic love are manifold. The poet’s knowledge of the

Hindu Holy Scriptures, particularly the Upanishads may

have taught him that the Supreme Reality of the universe

manifests itself through every form of creation, and

whatever subsists is the manifestation of the Absolute.

Sirpi, being a Romantic in his poetic values, believes

firmly that the natural world is a vast analogue to the

spiritual world. Like the American Transcendentalists,

Sirpi trusts in the eternal inner search for the cosmic

consciousness which, is realized through conflicts and

contradictions. His unrelenting spiritual view of reality

bears a semblance to Emerson’s endeavour to see the

universal soul in an individual soul. Sirpi’s search for

the Self is intuitive and is totally devoid of ritualistic

intermediaries. Zen Buddhism holds that all sentient

beings have Buddha nature, the universal nature of

transcendent wisdom. The ultimate goal of this is to

become completely enlightened. Sirpi’s profound knowledge

of the doctrines of Zen Buddhism and Sufism has added to

the poetic dimensions visible in the The Chain of

Absolutes. As a poet of reason, Sirpi gives appropriate

weightage to the scientific perception of creation and

Einstein’s concept of Time.

Under the influence of these diverse, philosophic,

scientific and spiritualistic theories Sirpi has evolved

his own philosophic convictions regarding universal love.

This seamless perpetual love is the organic force that

operates at the basis of all life. Whitman would call it,

“a keelson of the creation”, a reinforcement to bear the

burden of creation. This cosmic kindred spirit knows not

age, gender, race or language. It is a mysterious magnetic

force that sews together all differences, embalms all

bruises, enlightens all hearts and emancipates all

desiring souls. Every atom of this organic energy is a

panacea for all maladies, and The Chain of Absolutes

addresses the possibilities of a conscious spiritual

evolution through love.

The process of depersonalization:

Sirpi acknowledges in his foreword that he was

‘possessed’ indeed while going through the creative

process of The Chain of Absolutes. He was in a conscious

trance in which he found himself to be an echo and a

voice, both at once – an echo of the past and a voice for

the future. A part of him took the legitimate credit for

being a successor of the great literary lineage with

Mahakavi Bharathi for its high priest. The other part of

Sirpi’s poetic self gathered endearingly Ananda

Coomarasamy, Pudumai Pitthan, Jayakanthan and Sundara

Ramaswamy as his fraternal siblings. This unique state of

creative trance made him let go his individual self and

accept the cosmic self. His voice no longer belonged to

him but to a chorus of sages and teachers, men of letters

and wisdom, who have been chanting the mantra of self

liberation. Sirpi evolves from a poet to the poet. His

historic inheritance of poetry makes him realize the

timelessness of his poetry. This realization makes The

Chain of Absolutes represent not “the pastness of the past

but its presence”, rather the perennial presence of the

past.

Depersonalization of this kind is crucial for a poet,

who is after his cosmic self. In this detachment, Sirpi

finds his new heights. He beholds cosmic love from without

and within. He becomes a seer and the seen as well. He

surrenders and by surrendering he conquers. “The progress

of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual

extinction of personality” says T.S. Eliot in his

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’. Through

depersonalization, the poet emerges perfectly tuned to

pronounce with Vallalar that the viewer, his vision and

the viewed are all but one. Depersonalization enables

Sirpi view the universe with historical sense, “which is a

sense of timeless as well as the temporal and of the

timeless and of the temporal together” and this makes

Sirpi bridge the void between mental time and mechanical

time. Hence he declares,

“I break open the shell

Of the egg of Time, and

I hop out as its fledgling”

From BEING to BECOMING:

Being is static and Becoming is dynamic. Hence Nature

preserves an uninterrupted continuity in the process of

evolution. Every being has its intrinsic value not only

because of what it is, but also by the virtue of its being

a part of an evolutionary process. Nature propagates its

success through sustenance of life. A true philosopher -

bard would marvel at the unfailing regularity with which

Nature replicates herself and his wonder would manifest as

love, the original energy.

The Chain of Absolutes promises that liberation is

possible only through cognizant fruition.

This promise, like the Delphic oracle, resonates through

every sentence of the long dialogues that take place

between a progressive teacher and his probing disciple.

Both the Teacher and the Disciple are in a trance of self-

realization, the only difference being their levels of

maturity. The Teacher is at the exit and the Student at

the entrance. The reader now becomes an imperceptible

participant in this journey of emancipation, at the

emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels. The

transmittable trance of the teacher and the taught catches

the reader too. The brain teasing and the soul searching

responses of the enlightened, compassionate, and

cerebrally provoking Guru well matched by the intellectual

and discerning queries of the disciple hypnotize the

reader and transport him to a world of continuous,

conscious learning. This rare kind of learning includes

the vital component of alert unlearning too.

Dialogue as the Poetic Diction:

Sirpi uses Dialogues, the method used by the

Upanishads, by the Greek philosophers and the Zen

Buddhists as his poetic diction in The Chain of Absolutes .

This method of teaching – learning process as advocated by

the Upanishads, (even Bhagavat Gita -Gitopanishad being no

exception), the Greeks and the Zen has with stood the test

of oblivion. This is the only method where the teacher and

the taught together search for emancipation from

ignorance. Sirpi’s poetic mastermind and his experience as

a teacher have urged him to endow on dialogue as a poetic

diction. The dividends are rich indeed. Through out

Sirpi’s The Chain of Absolutes, the reader is enticed and

engaged in listening to the witty, stimulating, insightful

and probing discussions between the Guru and the student.

As attaining spiritual freedom is an autonomous activity,

the reader finds the Guru allowing his disciple to evolve

at a natural and logical pace. The guru facilitates his

student to progress steadily towards self discovery; the

transcendent wisdom

The Upanishads is collectively considered by the

British poet Martin Seymour- Smith amongst the 100 Most

Influential Books ever written. Transcendental scholars

like Emerson and Thoreau were tremendously influenced by

these ageless, collectively authored, holy scripts. All

Upanishads have been passed down in oral tradition.

Through dialogues the Guru would escort his wards towards

illumination. The Sankrit term Upanishad is derived from

Upa meaning near by, ni meaning at the proper place and

shad meaning to sit. Upanishad thus implies “sitting near a

teacher to receive instruction” or, “alternatively sitting

at the foot of the teacher”, or “laying siege” to the

teacher. Monier Williams’ late 19th century dictionary adds

that, “according to native authorities, Upanishad means,

“setting to rest ignorance by revealing the knowledge of

the supreme spirit”.

The Socratic Method, named after the Classical Greek

philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate

between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on

asking and answering questions to stimulate critical

thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectal

method, time and again involving an oppositional

discussion in which the defence of one point of view is

pitted against the defence of another. The rediscovery of the self is identified by Zen

Buddhism as “introspection”, “a backward step”, “turning

about” and “turning the eye inward”. The Zen is non-

reliant on written words or texts but emphasizes on

debates, discussions and dialogues for self-realization.

Zen gurus usually practice Koan inquiry during sitting

meditation, walking meditation and throughout the daily

activities of daily life. A Koan is a story or a dialogue.

They often appear to be paradoxical or linguistically

meaningless questions. Koans and their study developed in

China within the context of the open questions and answers

of the teaching sessions conducted by the Zen masters.

Thus meditation is a wordless dialogue and a prayer is a

“soliloquy of a jubilant soul”.

Sirpi uses this ancient method to enlighten his

contemporary society.

Three Steps to Enlightenment

Sirpi has segmented this long narrative poem of

Dialogues, The Chain of Absolutes in to three sections

namely, 1. The Aerial prop Root 2. The Root and 3. The

Seed. This classification is noteworthy because much of

intellectual insight has gone into it. The natural process

of evolution is deliberately reversed by the poet. A tree

emerges from a seed that stays in hibernation until it

gets the appropriate ambiance for optimum growth. It

firmly gets rooted and in this process stands as a symbol

of paradox. On one side the roots go deeper searching in

darkness and on the other side branches reach out for the

sky combing the clouds. No other living organism while

growing offers this luxury of moving at opposite

directions. The growth of a tree is analogues to the

spiritual rediscovery of the self.

The inward journey is a conscious reversal of nature.

The dialogues between the teacher and the taught in The

Chain of Absolutes begin on a simple plane of thought. The

topics for discussion are drawn from the seemingly

insignificant objects. Gradually, the conversations grow

heavy and deep, consuming and liberating. The flow of

diction is smooth and spontaneous that the transition from

the outside world to the inside world happens

effortlessly. The Aerial prop roots of a Banyan tree offer

visible support in holding the mother tree’s heavy

branches intact. The Roots of the tree do the same in

fastening the tree to the soil, but it is always the Seed,

a speck of life which promises immense growth of

immeasurable magnitude, that leaves us awe struck. The

poem travels from the known, seen and concrete (The Prop

Root) to the unknown, unseen abstract (The Root) and from

thence forth to the absolute atom of life (The Seed).

Poet Sirpi has made it clear that the spiritual

progression is a graded process in which each stage is

important, perfect and complete in it self. None the less

each juncture is a spring board to reach out to the other.

Going through each phase is mandatory because it is an

encounter with the Absolute. Thus a travel in search of

the self becomes a chain of complete changes – the chain

of Absolutes.

The Aerial Prop Root: The Banyan tree was bantering with its leafy tongues.

The wind listened attentively. The Teacher seated under the shade asked: “I will rise – what tense is this?”

The Student answered: “The Present”. “I am rising – what tense is this?” “The Present” “I have risen – this one?”“The Present”. The jubilant Teacher raised his hands and blessed.

“Arise, You have attained enlightenment”.

A sound of some one’s fall – the Grammar! The banter of leaves continued. The Chain of Absolutes ( Poojyangalin Sangili ) pp. 16-17.

Thus unwraps the first section of The Chain of

Absolutes, ( Poojyangalin Sangili ). The Aerial Prop Root’.

Sirpi in a capsule form presents the presence of the over

soul, the Brahman, as envisaged by the Upanishads. The

Brahman represents is, was and will be. The Absolute

remains undeniably a paradox, and hence the dialogues

between the Teacher and the taught abound with the

seemingly paradoxical use of language.

Interestingly the Zen dialogues are also known for

their specialized use of paradoxes. But the insight that

the Zen dialogue seeks to offer is not at the common sense

level of ordinary linguistic usage. And it is precisely

the first step toward enlightenment to realize that the

paradox is valid only as long as one remains at the common

sense level of understanding. Zen gurus take the Koans,

the questions of the students very seriously, as matter of

life and death. The question is “the place and the time

and the event where truth reveals it self” unobstructed by

the oppositions and differentiations of language. The

answer of a Koan, makes a student to let go conceptual

thinking and like creativity in art the appropriate

insight and response arise naturally and spontaneously in

his mind.

Sirpi’s master craftsmanship, dexterous use of word

pun, and astonishingly economical use of words, create

quick and shrewd contexts that bring out the brilliance of

the teacher and the taught. The poetic work abounds with

ample Koans, outwardly contradictory statements, which

“start in delight and end in wisdom”. Some of the examples

are as follows:

“That is… the raindrop sprinkled by the stork… This is the droppings of the cloud…”

The Chain of Absolutes ( Poojyangalin Sangili ) p. 19.

“I beseech renunciation, O teacher, make me an ascetic!” Upon the lips of the sage a bird of ridicule spread its wings. He said:“you have started loving from now on” p. 22

“What are you musing over, my son?” “A question … is eating me, O teacher” “What is it?” “My mind is perplexed as to what does mind mean?” “Fine. listen, Mind is a vessel But a strange vessel” “A strange vessel !” The student looked puzzled The teacher gave the answer “Mind is a vessel If you were to put desires in it Its bottom would get unfastened It would never ever be full “If you were to put inside Sorrows…?” “Unable to hold the vessel may break” “If you were to put inside love…?” “The vessel would grow wings and start flying” “What would happen if you were to put inside compassion, teacher?” “It would then glow as untainted gold” “If jealousy is put inside?”

“The vessel in rage would lose its lid “ “What should I do to keep it full?” The student asked resignedly with merciful eyes the teacher said “Keep it empty” pp.23-25.

The first phase of spiritual evolution has multiple

roles to play. This phase is longer, more intricate and

more excruciating than the succeeding two because it is

here that the student is initiated, conditioned and

nurtured to be the right fit for the metamorphosis. This

preparatory ground warrants daring, resolve and

unfaltering faith. The student is put to test by fire, the

fire of wisdom. The guru introduces him to Nature, the

only book of eternal knowledge. At length, the Guru

discourses on what trees are to us. Each tree is a symbol

of sacrifice. All faiths of mankind have articulated their

indebtedness to the trees. Trees have been held sacred,

worthy of worship and as objects of veneration

Whitman would record his transition from a boy to a

bard in his,’Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ‘and

Sirpi traces the evolution of the disciple in a similar

fashion. The disciple is emotionally stirred on seeing a

deer being hunted down by a tiger. He laments over the

death of a wild peacock. This kind of emotional immaturity

is central for total autonomy. Valmiki’s empathy for a

pair of Krounch birds poured forth from his heart as

melodious slokas. Siddhartha’s compassion transcended him

to become the Buddha. Whitman’s anxiety for the birds from

Alabama transformed him to ‘the Bard of America’. Similarly

the student in The Chain of Absolutes finds himself in a

chaotic, poignant mind set and thus realizes that

detachment or objectivity could be accomplished only

through attachment.

The forest has now become the school for the disciple.

Every where, every thing has valuable lessons for him to

learn. The flora and fauna tutor him with the diverse

aspects of life. The bees proclaim “gather, stay filled

and expend”. The disciple’s readiness to learn has made

him always alert and mentally agile. The more he knows the

more he is confused. The last poem of the first phase ends

with a promise made by the Guru.

“Confusion harasses you, son. Once you know the Origin you would discard grief” pp. 50-51

The Root

The second phase commences with the search for the Origin with Mahakavi Bharathi’s words

supplying the appropriate lead:

“Need I tell the Origin or not?” said I. She showed her countenance benign, cured I was of my desires.

The forest is under the monsoon showers and it bears

testimony to nature’s bounty. The disciple is haunted by

his deep desire to fathom the transient Origin. Abandoned

temples provoke him into a series of serious thoughts. He

wonders whether the various faiths would identify for him

the fountain head. He is mystified when the realization

dawns that the search for Self is essentially a private,

autonomous endeavour.

“Have found out the origin of the river, son?” asked the Guru in jubilance. The disciple raised slowly his bent head and said, “no, O teacher”. The origin of the waterfall is a rivulet.

Once you reach the peak, it is damp every where. I could not find the origin……

What is the origin of a cloud? If it is the sea, then what is the origin of the sea? If it is the river, what is the origin of a river?” the Sage catalogued the questions……

The student stood asking himself, “the more and more I listen to my lessons, and the greater grow my doubts instead of clarity”. pp. 66-67

Their conversations take serious and poignant tone. The

answers given by the Guru take a longer time to permeate

into the student’s mind. The guru deliberately takes his

ward for a tour into the diverse and profound philosophies

propounded by various religious sects of the world. They

appear contradictory and complimentary to each other. Be

it Buddhism or Jainism, Christianity or Islam, message

from the Upanishads or ideas advocated by the rationalist

EVR Periar, all boil down to the well being of an

individual and the en mass. The well wisher of mankind is

the real worshipper of the divine. This intellectual

excursion activates the intuition of the student. He

realizes every thing that subsists in nature is

worshipful, venerable and awesome.

“O Teacher, today every thing appears to be one and the same. I worshipped the trees, worshipped I the Earth, offering flowers I worshipped you. In this process, I felt I was worshipping myself” said the disciple… pp. 96-97

The guru was visibly jubilant at his student’s growth.

He felt that his ward was both matured and mellowed and

ready enough to receive the deep and difficult concepts of

cause and effect. Descartes and Einstein are quoted by the

Guru. The baffled disciple pleaded him to simplify these

concepts as they appear contradictory. For the first time,

the Guru called his ward endearingly, “brother” and

continued, “this is my last counsel to you. So long, you

were my shadow. From now on, you will be you”.

Who is a Yogi? The one who reduces and reduces

the duration of every breath and dissolves it until it stays putin the atom of a moment called the present.

Physical atoms need space to stay. But the atoms of time, the moments need no space.

The past, the present and the future shrink withina moment. The present is a moment and the moment is an atom of time.

Time does not spin, time does not pass. Time stays still as the immeasurable nucleus of the atom of time, the moment.

The Universe and its Galaxies and lives dear all roll past in the presence of this prevailing present.

Time is a chain of the moments of the present.

The present in its nucleicform is an Absolute.

Time is a chain of Absolutes.

Brother! Time is the nuclei of the present, incalculable by physical atoms. pp. 122-125

The speech of the Guru is like the Sermon on the Mount.

It almost becomes a chanting that allows the student to

experience a non- dual reality. In this communion with the

over-soul, duality is transcended, and the conceptions of

the self and the other dissolve to enable the disciple to

experience total emptiness- Sunyata. According to the Guru,

The atom causes one to be born in birth and to disintegrate indeath.

This Galaxy shrinks and swells. Birth and death creation and destruction are atom’s sports.

Atom is the origin. It is the Fountain head. The profound faith advocated by the atom is to love, both the living and thenon-living.

Atom is the origin. Nucleus is its origin and a nucleic particle is the origin of a nucleus. Sans Atom life comes to a stand still. pp. 99 -100

When one is filled with the Emptiness, a paradoxical

predicament, the one is undoubtedly at the threshold of

enlightenment. It is a dynamic state of perennial bliss,

the prevailing present. The ‘Enlightened’ becomes the

Infinite Spirit Source, the biggest, the greatest and the

ALL.

The Seed

The third phase of The Chain of Absolutes ( Poojyangalin

Sangili) begins with a stanza from William Blake’s poem ‘To

see a world in a grain of sand’ which is suggestive of the

forth coming discourses between the Guru and the disciple.

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour

Knowledge of the ultimate Origin is incomplete if it is

not understood in the frame of reference of time. How does

one interpret time? Is it a second, or a minute or an hour

or a day or a month or a year? As Whitman in his ‘Crossing

Brooklyn Ferry’ observes, when the bridge between the past

and the future laid perfectly through the present with

empathy and love, “It avails not, time nor place--distance

avails not”. In the words of the Guru, the calculations as

the seasons of a year and of a day are made by being

within Time. Is it possible to calculate Time from

without? Time is a complexity that appears easy. It is a

mystery that appears comprehensible, a graspable illusion,

dynamism appearing static and a racing inertia.

The Guru’s dialogues, which teem with paradoxical

propositions, intentionally perplex the disciple. He

orients the disciple about the time and distance traveled

by light to present itself as a twinkling star. The

disciple is further baffled when the Guru states the

obvious and quotes Heraclitus, the great Greek philosopher

(540 BC-480 BC): “One cannot step twice in to the same

river, for other waters are ever flowing on to you”. The

Guru also provided his ward with a time table as framed

and calculated by the ancestors of Hinduism. The

calculations were made with thousands of millenniums as

the minimal unit of Time. Obviously the derivations were

mind boggling. Men of letters have called Time by various

terms and phrases like the revolving wheel of Time, the

river of Time and the like. Sages like Buddha and Sankara

have attempted to decipher Time as “to dawn, to mature and

to wither” and “aeons, years and seasons are mere

illusions that hide the truth” respectively.

Sirpi concludes The Chain of Absolutes (Poojyangalin

Sangili) by evoking mixed emotions in the mind of the

disciple and the readers as well. The tone of the last

poem is plaintive and philosophic. The reader too like the

disciple has accepted the Guru as a spiritual counselor.

It was a day when Nature went mute with a heavy silence

and an ominous quietude that hung like a shroud upon the

other wise mirthful forest. The Guru signaled his disciple

to fill the cask of bottle guard with water. As it started

overflowing, he suggested for more and more water to be

poured. Slowly his eyes closed and his body gradually

leaned like a dry leaf withering. Though his presence

filled the ambiance, his brother the disciple continued to

sob. Time which sprang as a rival to the Source pretended

innocence and winked at sitting within the Absolute.

Sirpi like Emily Dickinson, who made Death lively,

yokes the sublime with the ridiculous. Miss. Dickinson

would hear a fly buzz when she died. The arrival of the

ultimate king, Death, would be deliberately juxtaposed

with a trivial happening of a fly buzzing. Situational

irony used as a literary tool would never fail to

intensify the pathos of the context.

The roaring aeons fell face down and spread-eagle like the chameleon drunk with the cactus milk. p – 128.

Sirpi’s empathetic self is not satisfied with merely

mocking at the cruel conquest of Time. The last stanza

stands willfully aloof and picturises a mundane scene on

the streets of Chennai. This technique provides the well

deserved comic relief, by including a comic episode or

interlude to relieve tension and heighten the tragic

element by contrast. The humor involved is wry and

sardonic.

There is another imbecile, insensitive world

legitimately co-existing along with the world of souls

that seek spiritual emancipation. This world is more

powerful, more focused and more successful in leading

‘fulfilled lives’. This world is stagnant, rotting and by

choice spiritually sterile. It suffers not from the pains

of guilty conscience. Betrayal, fraudulence, hypocrisy,

and degenerative morality have become the salient features

of this de-humanized society. Hence its indifference is

its virtue.

Amidst this pandemonium, on the rear of an Auto that ploughed through the crowded street of Chennai were the words engraved:

‘Must have penny till one reaches the Grave’. p.128.

The Chain of Absolutes (Poojyangalin Sangili) is

undeniably Sirpi’s masterpiece. The thought structure

of this particular creation is very complex. Through

out the poet sustains the emotional quality by the

sheer power of gathering logically inconsistent

arguments into a synthesis. He questions the

traditional orthodox definitions of Time and eternity.

By negating them, he confirms a cosmic philosophy that

is personal and universal. Sirpi insists on the

immediate and urgent want for a spiritual renaissance.

Many of the prophetic expressions found in The Chain of

Absolutes shed ample light on the need for re-

humanizing the society. Through out Sirpi relates the

ephemeral to the ever lasting there by compelling the

reader to take his stand and make a choice. Irritation

and impatience do surface during the conversation

between the Guru and the disciple. But it is the

righteous indignation of a bruised sensitive soul.

To William Wordsworth, a poet is “a man speaking

to men; a man endowed with more lively sensibility,

more enthusiasm and tenderness; who has a greater

knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive

soul.” To Walt Whitman the greatest poet “hardly knows

pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing

that was before thought small, it dilates with grandeur

and life of the universe… The known universe has one

complete lover and that is the greatest poet. His love

above all has leisure and expanse… He is a seer, he is

an individual, he is complete in himself… He is not one

of chorus; he does not stop for any regulation, he is

the president of regulation”. Sirpi is befitting of the

aforesaid definitions of a romantic and a bard of the

mass. Celebrating Nature is akin to celebrating

mankind. Though the originality of diction and content

of The Chain of Absolutes make it the most difficult

poem of Sirpi, it establishes him as a mystical poet

and an altruist with an insight into the realms of

Self, Life, Time, Death and Eternity.