Thyagaraja on the Mountains of

THYAGARAJA - ON THE MOUNTAINS OF
EFFULGENT GOD - VISION

The true character and destiny­ of life has, through the whole range of world’s history been more correctly perceived, curiously enough, by the seers and mystics than by the materialists and men of mechanic excellence. It is not acquisition and accumulation, but action and adventure, that form the true end and aim of Being. It is a power of Becoming, an achievement of Reality, a transformation into union, an experience of atonement, through the mutual interaction, the ceaseless thrust and effort, of inelastic matter and expansive spirit. Life has an in­stinctive quest for transcendence through ever so many obstructions and entanglements: man himself has been defined as Capacity for the infi­nite.

This longing for the infinite, this hunger for Perfection, this melody of the ideal, has been an invaluable characteristic of life. ‘Thou hast made us for Thyself’ said St. Augustine, in one of his moods of exaltation, addressing himself to the God of his Being, “and our hearts shall know no rest apart from thee”. The urge of the running river for the limitless ocean, the desire of the restless moth for the consuming fire, has therefore been the characteristic movement of life. “our wills are ours, we know not how, our wills are ours to make them thine,” is the modern poet’s mild echo of the perennial cry of the human spirit.

This instinctive urge of life to­wards transcendence has, through the ages, expressed itself in two distinctly different channels. There has been a movement of negative transcendence, that looks upon the vast apparatus of life as a continuous series of obstacles in the Godward movement of the human spirit: there has been also a generous expansion and sublimation of love and will, until matter became infiltrated and impregnated with spirit. There have been instances of ascetic withdrawal with self-inflicted tortures on recalcitrant flesh; there have been lives blessed by an all-sweetening and all-sanctifying love prompting sacrifice and service on behalf of the world’s lowliest and lost.

Some have gone alone to the cloud-topped mountain-peaks to meet God in solitude: there have been enthusiasts whose ardent personal emo­tion of Divine love, has carried them into the midst of humanity’s suffering multitudes to heal and to comfort. While the former type bring no tidings of joy for the race on the plains and in the valleys, the latter have spent them­selves in a self-consuming passion for the redemption of the sorrowing chil­dren of men.

Thyagaraja does not belong to the category of the pseudo-mystics, idly basking in the luxury of God’s presence. One of the practical exem­plars of natural ‘supernaturalism’, he is one of the normal simple sane men who, perennially inebriated with the intoxicating presence of God, was, yet ceaselessly busy, exhorting, remon­strating, revealing, rejoicing, regener­ating his countrymen and contempo­raries with the wine of the song of the glory and the grace of the Lord.

A full-blooded life was his with wife and child, with poverty and suf­fering. He believed as he affirmed, in tones of triumphant faith, with Nanak of Northern India and with Novalis and other mystics of medieval Europe, that the human body is the truly sacred tabernacle, that the devout heart is the real Shekinah, and that God’s Ar­adhana is going on unceasingly in the soul within as also in nature without, he repeatedly proclaims the utter futil­ity and inconsequence of doctrine and ritual, and with the clarion voice of personal experience, emphatically ac­claims the supremacy, for spiritual values, of vision and victory, of per­sonal devotion through song and dance, through praise and prayer, through contemplation and commun­ion. He insists on the infinite superior­ity of the pilgrimages within over the wanderings without, he humbly pro­tests that his faith and his devotions are not for outward parade, but only for inward regeneration. He deprecates the claims of mediators and unhesitat­ingly urges the efficacy of direct ap­proach to the ever-available and all-­pervading presence of the God that both indwells and transcends.

It is not so often recognised that he unequivocally contends that the Rama of his adoration and Aradhana is not a human or even superhuman personality with certain local charac­teristics and attributes, but the Eternal Indwelling Reality that reveals in the heart that adores. He depre­catingly alludes to the minor deities to whom are allotted the comparatively subsidiary functions of Srishti, Pushti, and Nashti – creation, sustenance, and annihilation, while the true God that alone is worthy of worship is the su­preme spirit that indwells and sanctifies and blesses the human heart.

Thyagaraja’s singing of Ramanama is not to be equated with the ordinary man’s worship of Rama, one of the incarnations, perhaps the most popular incarnation, in the traditional Hindu Pantheon. Thyagaraja in his Rama worship, like his compeer and contemporary Sri Ramakrishna in his Kali – worship, had definitely outgrown the limitations of the crude worship of images. It is one of the peculiarities of Indian theistic movements that, while a good many spiritual geniuses that rose and flourished from time to time among Hindus have laid sufficient em­phasis upon the spiritual character of true worship and the fraternity of all men, and even perceived the irrecon­cilability of image - worship with the one and of the traditional framework of caste - organisation with the other, - ­the vein of protestantism in them was not sufficiently pronounced to make them discard the outward forms and moulds as hindrances to the true growth of the spirit.

Their highly developed souls continued to make use of the imagery and the symbolism of the traditional moulds of thought and worship; in fact, their illumined and emancipated spirits put larger and richer content into them. The phenomenon is broadly speaking similar in its essential char­acter of tardy protestantism, if not of prudent conservatism, to the recent spectacle of Mahatma Gandhi, tena­ciously clinging for years, till within a short while before his martyrdom, to the Sanatanist conception of the four varnas, while passionately pleading for the utter elimination of untouchability on the one hand, and for the accep­tance of brotherhood on the other.

What is necessary to point out is that in the upward ascent of his spirit in a life full of Sadhana or spiri­tual discipline Thyagaraja’s soul had long since reached the mountain tops of pure theism. Gandhi’s Ramarajya was the equivalent in Hindu terminol­ogy of the Christian Kingdom of God: both were equivalent variations of the secular statesman’s ideal commonwealth wherein liberty is but the uni­versal license to be good. The Rama of Thyagaraja like the Christ of some Christian mystics is an abstraction, a humanly apprehended version of the Transcendent Divine Reality.

On the mountain tops of efful­gent god vision all the seers and mys­tics meet and shake hands. “The seekers of the Truth are one”, and thus it is that we find in Thyagaraja, moods and sentiments parallel to those of the other famous mystics of the world. He has moods of arid lis­tlessness and world - weariness which recall to us Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us”. A sufi mystic represents God as threatening to re­veal to the world all his secrets - his inner lusts, his tragic transgressions, his innumerable stumblings; and the devotee retorts by threatening to reveal God’s secrets also; his inexhaustible mercy, his gratuitous grace, his uni­versal forgiveness: and then, says the mystic to God,” all temples will be abandoned, all worship will cease, sins will be freely indulged in, and salva­tion will be taken for granted. “And God climbs down and says,” I will keep your secrets, you will keep my secrets.” even thus does Thyagaraja threaten God saying, “I have known all your secrets; your Guttu and mattu.”

Another of his sayings reminds us of Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” when he says that there is none but God to think of ‘ignoble me’. Often he brings to our minds another great Andhra poet and mystic Pothana when he proudly asserts his moral and artistic independence and indignantly says that popular ap­plause and worldly affluence are no compensation for the loss of Divine favour. Sometimes he reminds us of Blake, sometimes of Beethoven and of David. The parallels that are presented are far too many and too varied; but the one cry that keeps uttering itself through the varied notes is the cry of the desolate spirit that is not satisfied with glimpsing the Reality occasionally and in a remote manner, but pours itself out in utter importunity that his humble spirit may become immovably anchored in Infinite Joy. He knew only too well that the deepest secrets of the spirit are not “amenable to” the dissecting knife of the intellect, but give up their significance to the devout intuition of the humble heart.

From the origin of Man’s history, the deepest experiences of the human spirit have been uttered through the medium of art. The wrestlings of the soul cannot always be uttered in the language of the world’s commerce. Visions of the Heavenly Bridegroom and the transports of ecstasy born of such experiences often fail to find adequate expression through common­place words. And the spirit seeks to find expression for these inscrutable experiences of inward life through the more significant medium of art, - of rhythmic song articulating enjoyed emotion, of fascinating dance revealing inner harmony, of animated colours drawing forth perceived beauty. Art therefore performs the function of conveying in suggestive ways what cannot otherwise be conveyed to us. It is thus not a superfluous luxury, but a necessary function of the highest life of the spirit. It communicates to us an attitude to life, that is a reaction to more “subtle and comprehensive contact with Reality” than the one we ordinarily make. It has awareness of aspects of Truth which we normally fail to perceive or atleast but dimly perceive; and thus the artist trans­lates these experiences, in poetry into words, in music into tones, in painting into colours, in other arts into other expressions of the particular medium, more or less pliable to the transform­ing touch of the spirit.    ­

It is the peculiar excellence of music that of all the arts it is the least encumbered by the burden of a recal­citrant medium and it is therefore the purest essence of expressiveness. It occupies the borderland between sense and soul where in the natural kingdom of Beauty they meet. There is in music, no attempt to transfer inspi­ration to a medium or material that is gross or grotesque: and so it effectively expresses and communicates spiritual experiences born of a personal vision of life. Musicians are therefore nearer to mystics than perhaps any other kind of artists. And music is certainly a more luminous revelation than any other kind of knowledge. That is why with an almost divine arrogance, Browning has in exultant tones proclaimed:

“God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and wel­come:
It is we musicians know.”

Thyagaraja at once a skilful craftsman and an inspired artist enjoys undisputed supremacy in the common-wealth of Carnatic Music. In him we find rapturous melody insepa­rably fused with the language of exqui­site poetry, so that we have the rare experience of the double perfection of musical excellence and lyric passion simultaneously presented to one single throb of ecstasy. It is perhaps his greatest achievement in the realm of art that he has rescued the musical form from the double tyranny of rhyth­mic routine on the one hand and of Sahitya exuberance on the other: and his songs have in consequence become vehicles for the transmission of mys­tic joy radiating from a devout soul in enraptured communion with Infinite Beauty. At once a devotee, a composer, and a musician. Thyagaraja has in his Kritis, – concrete embodiments of Raga patterns, effected a unique integration of Bhava, Raga and Thala.A perfect rendering of Thygaraja’s songs is the highest perfection of the art of devout music as the true enjoyment of such a rendering is the final reward of a de­vout and artistic spirit. It necessarily follows that aggressively rhythmic Thala permutations and ugly pseudo­-musical ultra-muscular contortions are poles away from impassioned en­raptured singing with its counterpart of enthralled serene listening. All hon­our to the Tamils that at a time when the Andhras failed to recognise the emergence of this great genius amongst them they could appreciate the greatness of his achievement and keep alive the tradition of his music. And for this inestimable service, the Andhras must, in humility and eternal gratitude bow their heads to them.

To Thyagaraja song is the me­dium for the out-pouring of the heart in almost every mood. There are songs which are pure unconcealed autobiog­raphy. There are songs in which he praises the condescending grace of God for having blessed him with a ­vision of his beatific countenance: there are songs in which he gratefully acknowledges that God is all-in-all to him - the bee to the lotus of his heart, the sun to the darkness of his sin, the companion in an exile amidst strangers, the comforter when sorrows and sufferings crowd on him, the sovereign spirit of Beauty with whom the maid of his soul is charmed beyond all resis­tance, the radiant king eternally seated on the throne of his heart, the untiring servant ministering to the needs of the worshipper, the Indwell­ing Reality that equally pervades the ant and the elephant, the supreme Treasure for whose possession alone his heart hungers day and night. There are songs in which he mourns the loss of vision for his bereaved spirit; there are songs in which, like the man that prayed not for food but for hunger, he prays that God might grant him the boon of a restless and undying aspiration for the grace of God: there are songs in which, with the intrepidity born of love, he taunts God for his callousness, for his tortur­ing separation, for his apparent im­penetrability to all appeals: there are songs in which he pathetically longs that in him may be kindled not merely negative renunciation, not simply the longing for godly company, not even the passion for service, no, not the supreme desire for an occasional glimpse of the beatific vision but the longing of the child for the gracious mother, the spousal love for the em­brace of the Beloved Bridegroom, the Prana Natha; there are songs in which he prays that he may have the invalu­able privilege of being chosen and called by God; there are songs in which he laments the veiling of His Face as the greatest tragedy of his life; there are songs in which he implores that life may be for him one long opportunity for love, for praise, for wor­ship, for communion: there are songs in which he prays to be delivered from the sins of religious intolerance and spiritual pride; there are songs in which he bemoans, his sense of sepa­ration and pathetically prays. “Lift the veil that hides Thy Face, O God!”

(This is reprinted from ‘INTRO­DUCTION TO THYAGARAJA ATRMAVICHARAM’ by Bhamidipati Kameswara Rao – courtesy Sri Adde­pally Nageswara Rao, Addepally Pub­lishers, Rajahmundry).