When Bharati's Intense Creative Expression Foresaw Revolutionary Scientific Ideas

He lived in tumultuous times. His economic condition was not penury but bordered it with uncertainty. He was imprisoned for years but his freedom was heavily shadowed by state surveillance. Posthumously now a pride of his community, while alive he was shunned and considered an eccentric.

Yet, within this man resided a spirit that soared beyond the confines of earthly woes. He danced with the celestial ballet of galaxies, his mind mirroring their cosmic waltz. The boundaries of his self, melted and liberated him to embody the unfettered flight of birds, gliding effortlessly upon currents of air. In tempestuous storms and raging cyclones, he witnessed not destruction, but the choreography of nature divine.

From the crucible of his boundless inner freedom, where his individual consciousness merged with the universal Self as Divine Mother, he emerged as a champion of liberation in all its forms. He thundered for societal emancipation, for the shattering of gender norms, and gave in lucid yet fiery verses, the clarion call for political independence of India.

Subramanya Bharati – the poet who like Brahman was immanent in the throbs and traumas of his time while in his essence transcended all times – his present as well as the future of the species itself.

In this respect Bharati is Vedic.

He is verily a Vedic seer. He is the continuation of the Vedic Aryan legacy in the very true sense of the word. To Bharati, Vedas are not a set of books. To him, Vedas are the constant pursuit of Truth and the expression of Truth untouched as much as possible by human biases and prejudices. He wrote:

To Bharati, true Vedas do not refer to the histories and genealogies. True Vedas do not insist and impose obligatory rules of performance. All the parts of the Vedas that do not speak of the true religion, they are not Vedas, so declared Bharati.

Like the eternal dance of celestial bodies, the Vedic wisdom traverses the vast expanse of space and time within, forever renewing, forever resonating. This profound truth, deeply enshrined within the heart of Hindu culture, was echoed by the visionary Bharati, who daringly declared, "Innovate the Vedas!"

He painted a vivid metaphor to illuminate what is ephemeral and what is eternal: Imagine a cherished pillow, its core filled with the softest, purest cotton. Yet, the passage of time has marred its outer casing, leaving it frayed, torn, and stained with the dust of ages. Though the essence within remains pristine, the outer form, now a barrier to its inherent beauty, must be shed.

Thus, Bharati urged us to discriminate the timeless Vedic wisdom, while casting off the outmoded coverings that obscure its spiritual brilliance.

In his rendition titled, Agni - the God-Will, a translation of his own Tamil ode to the Fire deity, we witness a profound revelation. In the verse itself Bharati addresses Agni as 'All-Will,' a testament to his understanding of the interconnectedness of all things, the inherent divinity that permeates the universe. For Bharati, All is God, All is Brahman – a divinity that connects and makes all the forms of Existence.

The three worlds become for Bharati the inner realms of the human individual. The poem is joy-filled and melodious as it is rapturous. It is as if the Vedic rishi had come back and after seeing all the religious, social and scientific revolution, he sings again his Vedic hymn.

In all bridal mysticism usually the Divine is the Purusha and the individual self is the feminine lover. Nowhere else is this more prominently played out than in Krishna bhakti.

In his poetry on Krishna whom he had envisioned as a mother, a child and even a servant, he also sings of a divine romantic relation. Bharati writes in his note before his translation of this poem titled, In Each Other’s Arms, that ‘in the following verses the Supreme Divinity styled here 'Krishna' is imaged as beloved woman and the human soul as the lover.’

Thou to me the Harp of gold,

And I to thee the finger bold:

Necklace shining thou to me,

New-set Diamond I to thee:

O mighty queen with splendour rife

O Krishna, Love, O well of life,

Thine eyes do shed their light on all,

Wherev'r I turn, their beams do fall.

He continues with a very clear touch of Indic milieu:

Rain that singeth, thou to me,

Peacock dancing, I to thee;

Thou to me the juice of grape,

And I to thee the cup agape:

O Spotless Beauty, Krishna bright,

Perennial fount of deep delight,

O Love, the face hath grace divine,

For there the deathless Truth doth shine.

English or Tamil, it is like the words simply vie with each other to get into Bharati’s poetry. The poetry receives into it both charm and sacredness, lyrical melody and esoteric wisdom intertwine. They can be sung and enjoyed and they can be meditated upon as mantra.

How would the modern understanding of the sciences influence the vision of a Vedic rishi? Go no farther than Bharati.

He could revel in the vast canvas that modern cosmology revealed before him. He could link the movement of the mind and the movement of the stars and galaxies as belonging to the the same material force.

He sensed the Consciousness that illuminates the otherwise material mind as the Goddess Saraswati.

He could envision time as a forest and space as flowing energy – a poetic vision no doubt but it was a premonition of conclusions that some modern cosmologists would suggest 97 years after his death.

He could see the way life nests life within – both in the macroscopic direction outside and microcosmic direction inside.

He might be the first poet to describe entire ecosystems as giant living organisms and individual beings as composed of multiple smaller organisms. That way he sang, yes sang, the Gaia hypothesis long before James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.

One can read here and here on Bharati's poetic premonition of scientific ideas.

It was like that painter who watched the night sky through the eastern window of his asylum in the summer of 1889 and then proceeded to paint it, finishing it in December of the year.

The painter perceived the stars he saw not as twinkling points of light against the dark night. He saw them as swirls of energy, dynamic and not static. In their paper ‘Hidden turbulence in van Gogh's The Starry Night’ published in the journal ‘Physics of Fluid Dynamics’ (September, 2024), authors pointed out that the masterpiece ‘adheres to Kolmogorov's theory of turbulence’ when ‘all and only the whirls/eddies in the painting are taken into account in this work’.  

This is extraordinary. Andrey Kolmogorov was a mathematician who identified how energy move through fluid mediums. The study discovered that 14 of the swirling shapes in the painting aligned with Kolmogorov’s theory. Vincent died thirteen years before the mathematician was born.

Bharati’s poetic visualisation of time and his poetic rendering of Gaia also fall into the same category. Both Bharati and Vincent through their art, intuitively grabbed some very fine dimensions of reality and expressed that in their poetry and painting respectively.

Fortunately, Bharati lived in a culture where his eccentricity could be understood by a significant section of the society as 'spiritual'. Yet Bharati suffered. He suffered alienation and non-appreciation when he lived. Vincent was not even that lucky though he had a few understanding individuals. But now posthumously Vincent van Gogh is world famous.

In the case of Bharati, he is the yet-to-be-discovered Vincent van Gogh of Vedic Vision expressed in poetry. He is a poet who belongs to the cosmos. True he sang for the independence of India, and for social emancipation. But it all were a expressions of a larger universal liberation and non-dualist vision.

That cosmic Bharati awaits discovery yet.