Rose of God by Sri Aurobindo

 ROSE OF GOD

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,

Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!

Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,

Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being,

Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing!

Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower,

Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might,

Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night!

Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan,

Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire,

Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour’s lyre!

Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme;

Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face,

Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!

Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s abyss:

Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude’s kiss.

Rose of God by Sri Aurobindo : A Critical Summary and Analysis

'Rose of God’by Sri Aurobindo unfolds before us in the succession of vibrant images the whole mystical metaphysics and psychology-many-sided system exploring the secrets of the Divine Rose. In the poem, Rose of God, There are two main concepts rounds which the words are woven the descending super mind and the ascending sun. 

 

The Rose of God which is equated with the rising sun and the descending super mind is characterized in the opening stanza by two attributes, bliss and passion. The vermillion sun on the blue sky appears like a Kumkumam mark on the forehead of a beautiful woman. The redness is the symbol of passion and the sapphire of blue heaven stands for the limitless infinity. Therefore the Sun is called the Passion Flower of the Nameless. God, the Absolute, cannot be comprehended through qualities. So, man attributes qualities to Him for the purpose of realization or it can be said that the absolute itself manifests to man through assumed qualities. This is the passion of God, who is really beyond all naming. 

 

Man has to use symbols to express the indefinable. So the poet calls the Sun’bud of the mystical name’, that is, the Prijakshara OM, which stands for all the Mantras. ‘OM’ or pravana is taken to be the truest symbol of God head. The poet invoices this passion flower to rise up in the human heart, like an upward streaming flame. This is an allusion to the Kundalini which rises from the Muladhara and passing through four more plexes goes up to the Sahasrara. The consequence of the up going flame is bliss. The poet calls it fire-sweet, that is, as flaming as the fire and as sweet as nectar. He says the rising of the sun in the sky at the dawn produces the seven – coloured spectrum which is the symbol for the seven levels of ecstasy defined in Yoga tents like ‘Yoga – Vasishta’. Thus in the first stanza, the eagerness of God to come to man is powerfully underlined by the symbol of the sun eagerly  rising in the Eastern sky.

 

In the second stanza, the attributes dealt with are those of Light and time. In the first stanza, the miracle was said to happen in the heart of man. In this stanza the transformation is in the mind of man. Light stands for unclouded knowledge. The Sun is obviously the symbol of the grandest light. In the Gita we find that the splendor of the Lord’s Visvarupa or cosmic from has been hesitatingly described as a splendors of a thousand suns rising simultaneously. The sun drives away all darkness and takes us to the summit of wisdom. n terms of the kumkumam the summit stands for the thousand – petal led Lotus, reeling which the Yogi has nothing more to achieve. It is theultimate seeing , and it is immaculate in the sense that the Sahasra is represented as pure white. So , he calls the sun a golden flower of mystery.

 

The sun is the maker of time and as such represents the God head which is beyond all time, but comes down to man in time as an incarnation. And this incarnation, the poet calls the guest of the marvelous hour. A quest is called an atithi, that is, one who comes without previous appointment. The descent of the super mind depends on the Grace of God and cannot be scheduled according to any time – table. But once the super mind arrives time itself becomes a marvel, because hence forth the shackling effect if time is lost living in time the aspirant becomes timeless. This is the result of the divine quest arriving unexpectedly. So, he is called the quest of marvelous hour. 

 

In the third stanza, the attribute dealt with are power and Immortality. The poet calls the sun the source of all power. This is scientifically true because all the sources of energy with which we run our industries can be traced ultimately to the sun. Science tells us that the four fuels. firewood, coal, water power and petroleum, all originate from solar light and heat. Hence it is extremely appropriate that the sun is worshiped as the grants of power. So, the poet calls the sun the granter of right. Icon means image. He calls it also the damask force of infinity. Damask is defined as blush red. So, it brings to our mind the scene of an infinite power that is also infinitely tenders. The sun not only gives us power but tenderly. Nourishes the smallest life. 

 

The power of sun shatters the darkness of ignorance. This is composed to a diamond drill breaking up rocks and releasing the life – giving waters. The power resides in the will and therefore the poet entreats the sun to set ablaze the will of man,and make him relies the pattern of the lord’s creation. When we know the design our own lines into great elegance and fulfillment, drawing power from the source of all power. There fore, for poet calls the sun the Image of Immortality. An image is finite, but what it represents is Infinite. Man lives only for a brief period. But within the period if the life is divinized, it can have eternal significance. He calls it an outbreak because the power of the Divine Shatters all limitations.

It is the desire of God that is the source of creation. We cannot know why God choose of creation. We cannot know why God choose to have a desire. But we cannot, with out human understanding, explain creation as anything but the sport of God undertaken in cutler freedom. Man are driven by desire to do things but God uses desire as the instrument for his creation. So the poet says that the blooming of life on creation is simulations with the rising of the sun,. and in the redness of the sun, he sees God’s purple desire. Life is multifaceted and comparable to a flower with multi – layered petals. The colours run the whole gamut even as a lyre spans all the octaves of music. The poet has in mind the sahasrara or the thou – sand petal lotus which overtops the sin charkas of the koundolini and where siva and parvathi, the parents of the universe are said to sport. From that sport does the divinity of tile issue.

According to Tantric lore, the Kundalini that has risen up to the sahasrara returns down words by the Grace of God. The result is the physical body of man is transformed into finest expression of divinity. The poet calls it a sweet rhyme. When the super mind descents, earth heaven get inter – mingled and mortal man becomes immortal. Life becomes eternal. So he calls it ‘The Rose of Life’.

In the concluding stanza, the poet invokes “God’s grace as the Rose of Love” In shakthi worship, the composition of the Divine Mother is called Aruna or Pink. The poet calls it the blush of rapture on the face to the Eternal. It is ruby – red in colour signifying the blood relationship between the victory and the deity. He points out that nature by itself is Tamasic. It is like a deep abyss or pit completely dark. Man who finds himself cast into that bottomless pit cries out in despair. The poet asks the Grace of God to descend to this pit and raise up the suffering mortal. So, that earth itself turns into heaven and life is thrilled as it kissed by the eternal bliss.
It should be noted that the suprarenal is expected to device every accepted to to divinize every aspect of human life. That is why he refers to its symbol, the sun, as the Rose of Life, Rose of Power, Rose of life, Rose of  Love and of Bliss. The change takes place in man’s body, wil, mind and heard. The Rose Stands for Bright hope and so the poem is a testament of the poet’s faith that sooner or later the super mind will descend and divinize life on earth at all levels. Considered merely as a poet and critic of poetry, Sri Aurobindo would still rank among the supreme masters of our time. His poetical output represents the creative effort of about sixty years and, on a modest estimate, may run to some three thousand pages.

K. D. Sethna remarks about the poem, “The most famous of mystical symbols he has steeped in the.intensest inner light and lifted it on a material base of pure stress into an atmosphere of rhythmic ecstasy.”3 The ‘Rose’ is here the supreme symbol of the essence and efflorescence of God. Bliss, Light,Power, Life and Love are the five essences that fuse as the integral perfection of God. In every stanza, the first half names a power above and the second half invokes that Power to inhabit, inform and recreate the corresponding instrument below—Bliss for the human heart. Light for the human mind, Power for the human will, Life for the body terrestrial, and Love to ‘make earth the home of the wonderful and life Beatitude’s Kiss’. Everywhere in ‘Rose of God’ we have a profound and life-packed language as a natural vehicle attempting the revelation of spiritual reality.

Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face, Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace! Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s abyss: Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude’s kiss.