A VERY GOOD EVENING !! A CONVERSATION – MY POETRY, MUSIC AND ART -

Namrata – Good Evening Sir !! You are too much into poetry, music and art.

Sudhanshu – Yes I am !!

Namrata – Is it a fetish of your hometown Lucknow – the city is known for art, music and culture.

Sudhanshu – Yes Lucknow for couple of centuries – especially during Mughal and Sultanate period was centre of Art, Music and Culture …….. Lucknow is Lucknow …… !!!! Sometimes I feel the city is still in those times ……… but its changing also ……… I would say it is ageing and growing in an ageless way ……… !!!!

But my love for poetry, music and art is not much of a gift from Lucknow …… it is a product of multifaceted growth and maturity of my life.

Namrata – Then from where did this flair for poetry, music and art come from ….

Sudhanshu – Poetry, music and art has been the gift of developing Spiritual Sudhanshu over the years.

Namrata – Is it for sense enjoyment that you are stuck to these things …………… but I don’t think so ……….. the type of music you listen ……….. and the poetry you compose ……… are not for sense gratification………….

Sudhanshu – Poetry , music and art for me are methods for CONTEMPLATION and not SENSE GRATIFICATION.

Poetry, music and art for me is contemplative experience. Contemplation is beyond aesthetic intuition, beyond art, beyond poetry. Indeed, it is also beyond philosophy, beyond speculative theology. It resumes, transcends and fulfills them all, and yet at the same time it seems, in a certain way, to supersede and to deny them all.

Contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, beyond our own self.

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.

Namrata – I did not know that Poetry , music and art for contemplation.

Sudhanshu – That is what these passions and art form are for …… Contemplation is the real objective …….. CONTEMPLATION …..

Namrata – You go in deep trance when you are in Music and Poetry ……. Why – How ..??? !!!

Sudhanshu – I gave you the answer – Because I am in contemplative mood - when I am a poet or when in music appreciation as music lover ……

Yes listening to music or composing poetry when you look at me - it would seem that I go in a state of trance. I become fully alive with aliveness - It is that life itself becomes - fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes both beyond reason and beyond simple faith. For contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision in which you transcend reason and faith – a state to which both reason and faith aspire, by their very nature, because without it they must always remain incomplete. Yet contemplation is not vision because it sees "without seeing" and knows "without knowing." It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words or even in clear concepts. It can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said, and denies what it has affirmed For in contemplation we know by "unknowing." Or, better, we know beyond all knowing or "unknowing." In good music and poetry I transcend and go beyond ……… limitations of life ….. I am no more - I realize and become the Infinite Divine – THE SUPREME CONSCIOUSNESS !!

Namrata – So poetry, music and art are for you the medium of SELF REALIZATION through contemplation and not the pleasure …………..

Sudhanshu – Contemplation is a beautiful method of SELF REALIZATION !! And a state of Self Realization – a blissful state to be in ……. !!!

In this deep meditative state – in fact in the process of reaching that state LOT OF QUESTIONS ARISE IN MY MIND – and when I reach THE STATE – I GET ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS .

POETRY MUSIC AND ART HELP ME GET ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS THROUGH THE PROCESS OF CONTEMPLATION WHICH I WOULD NOT HAVE GOT OTHERWISE !!

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him.

Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One. He answers Himself in us and this answer is divine life, divine creativity, making all things new. We ourselves become His echo and His answer. It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

Namrata – A bit lost – can you elaborate a little more - ….

Sudhanshu - To elaborate further I will use the quote of Merton - An American Spiritualist -

"The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awareness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in one awareness- not a proposition, but an experience: "I AM.""

THE BLISSFUL STATE – where my music poetry and art has brought me.

Yeh meri masti muhje kahan le aayee jahan mere siva aur kuch bhi nahin. Na koi sawaal na koi jawab !!

Where has my bliss and joy brought me – there is nothing but ‘I AM’. There are no questions and no answers !!

Namrata – No questions no answers – All questions resolved and solved ……. !!!

Sudhanshu – No not resolved or solved – BUT ALL QUESTIONS DISSOLVED !! There is a difference between resolved and dissolved –

Namrata – What is the difference …… ???

Sudhanshu - I leave it to you for your contemplation …… contemplate and you will yourself get the answer …. !!!

Namrata – I WANT TO ASK – A PERTINENT QUESTION !! HOW AM I GOING TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS TO PEOPLE ??

Sudhanshu –YOU ARE STILL EXPLAINING YOURSELF TO PEOPLE !!

Namrata – THAT’S A GOOD ONE !! YES I HAVE BEEN ……… I am foolish ….. !!!

Sudhanshu – You know better … !!! Just Joking !!

GOD BLESS !!

WITH MUCH LOVE AND APPRECIATION !!

SUDHANSHU