The inspiration-bird

In our Indian philosophy, we have a particular goddess named Saraswati. Saraswati is the goddess of learning, the goddess of art and the goddess of inspiration. In the West you use the term “muse”. As we have a human world, where we get all earthly things, even so there is a world of inspiration. If we go deep within, we can enter into that world and find that the poems are already written. If you want to write an article, you can enter into the world of inspiration and actually see the article written. Then all you have to do is copy it down in your notebook. When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I wrote quite a few poems this way. Of course, it was with my third eye that I looked. The lines are written there on the wall, you can say — on the inspiration-wall — and you just copy them down and they become your possession. Our greatest poet, Tagore, did it. He entered into the world of inspiration and from there he got many poems. There is a world of poetry, a world of prose, a world for all literature that exists.

What do we do? We go deep within and jump, as though we were on a springboard. But often we are not aware of what plane we have reached. We get only a vague inner feeling of the reality of that world. So when that reality enters into us, it is like a thief entering into us. And then we become the channel of expression for that reality, according to the power of our receptivity, according to how we have reached the inspiration that has dawned in us.

Right now you are at the mercy of inspiration. If you don’t have any inspiration you cannot write anything. It is like this. The inspiration-bird is flying in the sky and all of a sudden it passes by you. You see the bird of inspiration and you get a few opening lines, but before you complete these lines, the bird flies away. But when you have become a very great spiritual seeker, you have the capacity to encage the bird. The bird is flying past, but with your will-power, with your own aspiration-power or spiritual power or occult power, you can stop the bird’s flight. What happens? You compel the bird to stay inside you until you have completed your poem or your article. Before we have this capacity, we are at the bird’s mercy. It can come right in front of us and stand for a few minutes or a few seconds, and then it will fly away. But if we have become very highly developed seekers, then we acquire the capacity to compel the bird of inspiration to stay with us for as long as we want. Anyone can develop that capacity, provided he prays to God, meditates on God and devotes himself to the inner life.

I started writing poems at the age of twelve. At that time I was at the mercy of the inspiration-bird. If I had no inspiration, I could not write. If I had forced myself to write, it would have been all useless words. But gradually, gradually, on the strength of my aspiration, I developed the capacity to grab the bird of inspiration at will.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy speaks, part 9, Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/scs_9