Part I — Kennedy: The Universal Heart

Unique

Kennedy is unique.
Why?
God kindled him with His Dream.
On him God showered
His Blessings divine,
Thickly,
Lavishly,
Significantly.

Kennedy is unique.
Why?
God threw on him
The burden of the world at large,
Smilingly,
Consciously,
Inevitably.

Kennedy is unique.
Why?
His soul visioned Tomorrow's Dawn,
Far beyond the flight of imagination,
Far above the strongest investigation,
Deep within the core of transformation.

Kennedy is unique.
Why?
He pined with his bleeding heart
To free the world
From the spiked wounds of life.
This eyeless earth of ours
Will burst into glorious bloom:
He saw this diamond truth,
While dreaming,
Struggling,
Daring.

Never was he alone

Never was he alone.
Tragedy and sovereignty,
Catastrophe and victory,
Freely in him were grown.

Never was he alone.
God's bright Promise and Bliss,
Earth's wild ignorance and her kiss,
Lavishly in him were grown.

Alone he stood

Alone he stood
Above all storms of life.
He stood alone
To challenge pain and strife.
Alone he stood
To feed a blooming race.
He stood alone
To change earth's tearful face.

The father: Joseph Kennedy

Hard is it to dream.
He did it.
More so to dream great dreams.
He did it.

Bright was the sun in him,
Brighter the flames.
One flame became
The brightest
To frighten the age-long
Darkness of ignorance,
To devour the pride of Night.

A giant dream,
A vision that broke through God's own Eye.
A hope that God lives for:
A promise cherished by God Himself.

The mother: Rose Kennedy

God gave her a boon.
She deserved it significantly.
In her Rose-petals,
Through her fragrance,
She reveals it: Love,
The prize of Tomorrow.

No pound, no dollar,
Can conquer her love's priceless treasure:
The bond of oneness divine.
Love knows no fear.
Death dare not clasp
Its all-fulfilling strength,
Its immortality.

She offered her Jack
To be brother and son
Of all mankind.
From a humane heart sprang
The heart adored
By the four corners
Of the world.

Joe and Jack

Joe and Jack, Supremacy and Ambition, fought,
Though two hearts thicker than oneness.

Triumph smiled at Supremacy;
To poor Ambition, the face of Victory denied.

Morning shows the day, but not every day:
Fate played its unfathomable part.
It commanded Supremacy a wonder-heroic death.
It threw Ambition up to touch the pinnacle.
Ambition won the ultimate race.

The entire world saw and felt the truth.
But Ambition's loving admiration for Supremacy
And his oneness with his childhood "Supreme,"
No one fully knows, Save God.

Senator Robert Kennedy

November 3, 1964

The battle is done.
Robert has won.
The battle is done.
Jack's hope has won.
The battle is done.
God's Smile is won.

Yours is the mind creative in thought,
Yours is the heart rich in experience,
Yours is the soul that braves
The storm-tossed life of the world.

Although you have not seen many summers
    on the earthly stage,
Far have you travelled in the adventure of life.
Yet farther have you to travel.
No halt, no end to your journey's life.

You are Senator.
Consciously, even inevitably,
Thrust upon you is a stupendous measure
of burden.
Through you President Kennedy's voice
Rings with the clearest extremes
Of emotion divine: Freedom and Peace.
To silence the age-long dirge of poverty,
Jack's heart in his brother cries like a child.

Victory you have won: a victory significant,
A victory of paramount importance,
One brilliant with the light of countless stars.
Your dream, no chimera's mist, but reality itself:
The Man of the Eternal Dawn in you
Shall far transcend the Senator in you,
On the frontiers of West and East,
South and North.

Senator Edward Kennedy

Bright was his star,
Faster has he run,
Deepest is his sight.

Four Smiles of God:
Joe, Jack, Bobby, Teddy.
Two Smiles of God we now see
With the inner eye,
Two with the outer.

God's fourth Smile
Is never alone.
His burden, the state;
His burden, the country.
Day in, day out
He braves the storms
And bitter odds.

The Future will clasp him
With destined glory.

The fateful link

Amagiri destroyed the boat,
But failed to touch
The pride of the boatman.
No, not as a destroyer does the world know Amagiri,
But through its fateful link with a unique soul.
The Solomon isles suffered with the boatman;
Also with him triumphed.

The swimmer in Kennedy saved his master,
the individual:
An individual whose bosom ached to save the world
From the fetters of ignorance,
From the hunger of poverty,
From the dance of utter ruin;
An individual who visioned the Hour of God,
Tomorrow's Dawn in the very breast of
Today's roaring Gloom.

Marriage: John and Jacqueline

September 12, 1953

Lotus and Rose,
Rose and Lotus.
One by one
The petals of wonder awake.
Withered are the frowns of quivering nights,
Lingering, worrying days.

Their oneness:
Sweeter than
The children of Dawn,
Stronger than
The cloud of ignorance,
Closer than
The throbs of their hearts.

Rose in Lotus finds herself fulfilled,
Lotus discovers himself
In the dance of mounting Oneness.

President

35th President, January 20, 1961

The One comes down
With His descending Grace.
Men come to Kennedy,
To hope's dynamic face.

Mother Earth offers
Her endless yoke of bondage.
Kennedy reveals
Heaven's all-transforming Message.

The creator and his creations

(On seeing the soul-stirring picture of President Kennedy in his office, clapping, Caroline and John-John dancing.)

Who says doleful is God's Creation vast?
Kennedy and his snow-white creations find
Ecstasy within, ecstasy without, to outlast
The world's tenebrous throes naked and blind.

Behold, the face of all the world is changed,
The sky of hopes within her core arranged.

Kennedy and Caesar

Caesar's lofty message:
Veni, Vidi, Vici:
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Pharnaces, king of Pontus,
To Caesar lost the Race.

The sovereign of the Space Age
In dire silence uttered:
Veni, Vidi, Vici:
Before Kennedy's light,
Ignorance, the prince of Doom,
The frown of eyeless Night,
Covered in shame his face.

Kennedy — Nehru

/Nehru's entrance into the world:
November 14, 1889/
/Kennedy's departure from the world:
November 22, 1963/

Slowly, steadily, unerringly,
Nehru fought.
He won the fight.
Youthfully, speedily, dynamically,
Kennedy ran.
He won the race.

Kennedy-Nehru, Nehru-Kennedy:
Two are the hearts
That ached to fling wide
The windows of slumbering faith
In the house of humanity.

God's Fragrance of Peace,
God's Bliss of Freedom,
In measureless measure
They knew how to inhale,
They knew.

Never were they parched
In the deserts of false hopes.
Desires they had for the world;
God slaked their thirst
In His own mystic way.

Nehru-Kennedy, Kennedy-Nehru:
They are one, indivisible.
They are one, invincible.
They are one, a tornado
Of God's stupendous Smile
Toppling the towers of sorrow,
Fear and defeat.

One two three

One
Two
Three
Bullets free.

One
Two
Three
Kennedy:
Eternally,
Mystically,
A sky-kissing Tree,
A fathomless Sea.

Name

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, President Kennedy:
A mystic name that floats in the ether,
A giant name that swims in the sea of souls,
A dynamic name that stabs through human fears.

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, President Kennedy:
A name that drinks God's Nectar of Love,
A name that dances on man's hallowed thoughts,
A name of kindled hope below, above.

Kennedy and the world

Kennedy's hope was the world.
Its hope was Kennedy.
Kennedy's life was the world.
Its promise was Kennedy.
Together they breathe through Eternity.

Part II — To the Kennedys:

John-John

You were your father's wonder-cheers;
Now the core of the world is wet with tears.
Because your heart his only home,
All world-thoughts of Truth within you roam.
Because you are the John-John of John,
In you is the light of his promised dawn.

Caroline

Your father is he
Who sits above Space and Time.
Your father is he
Who drinks Nectar with the One.
On his vision-tree
Grows God's Rhythm and Rhyme;
In his sacrifice,
The promise of the brightest Sun.

Jacqueline

If dire was the dart,
Stronger was your heart.
If bitter was the frown of the sombre Night,
Sweeter was the smile of your soulful Light.
If unseen, O world, is Kennedy,
More so is God's Fulfilment-Tree.
If realised his vision, giant sacrifice,
Closer are the blessings of the golden skies.

Jacqueline, to the world you offered
your very own.
Bathed in your tears and courage,
today's world is grown.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of America, Prince of high idealism, Freedom incarnate, Helper of humanity.

The inaugural Address of Kennedy on January 20, 1961, is eloquent evidence that the mantric utterance is no longer India's monopoly. There are sentiments in that soul-stirring address that are as deep as the Atlantic in their outlook; ideals as high as the Himalayas and resolutions as powerful as Atomic Power.

"…my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

This ringing call for self-giving to the Motherland is a reminiscent echo of the Seer-Voice of India's soul-Sri Aurobindo, when he was speaking to India's young hopefuls more than half a century ago:

"There are times in a nation's history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else has to be directed to that end … Train yourself, body and mind and soul, for her service … Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice."

President Kennedy does not stop with his fellow Americans. From his head and heart goes forth an all-embracing call to mankind:

"My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Nature seems to have bestowed half of her material power on America and half on Russia. How the Leader of America can take the lead in bringing the world out of its Cold War orbit into a noble scheme of One World and One Law can be seen in the following almost prophetic utterance:

"Today this country is ahead in the science and technology of space, while the Soviet Union is ahead in the capacity to lift large vehicles into orbit. Both nations would help themselves as well as other nations by removing these endeavours from the bitter and wasteful competition of Cold War. The United States would be willing to join with the Soviet Union and the scientists of all nations in a greater effort to make the fruits of this new knowledge available to all, and, beyond that, in an effort to extend farm technology to hungry nations, to wipe out disease, to increase the exchange of scientists and their knowledge, and to make our own laboratories available to technicians of other lands who lack the facilities to pursue their own work. Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relations are possible even with those with whom we most deeply disagree, and this must some day be the basis of world peace and world law."

Hope is strength. Hope is progress. When the sun of hope is eclipsed, the inevitable fear of bondage looms large. Kennedy, with his breadth of outlook and depth of insight, can help immensely to restore this hope to man.

"The hopes of all mankind rest upon us; not simply upon those of us in this chamber, but upon the peasant in Laos, the fisherman in Nigeria, the exile from Cuba, the spirit that moves every man and nation who shares our hopes for freedom and the future."

If America wants to be friends with all the world, who can be her enemy? Says her mouthpiece, President Kennedy:

"We are not against any man, or any nation, or any system, except as it is hostile to freedom."

It seems that in Kennedy's dictionary there are two complementary words which enrich and fulfil the sense of each other and constitute together the master formula of the language: Freedom and Peace.

"We will make clear that America's enduring concern is for both peace and freedom; that we are anxious to live in harmony with the Russian people; that we seek no conquests, no satellites, no riches; that we seek only the day when 'nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.' "

We may well recollect the momentous words of one of his illustrious predecessors, the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Neither are we to forget the immortal utterance of the sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln:

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defence is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere."

True, poverty and ignorance are man's bitter foes. But to replace poverty by affluence and ignorance by knowledge is not enough. Material success is not all. The quest of the spirit is of vital importance. "For the first time," says Kennedy, "we have the capacity to strike off the remaining bonds of poverty and ignorance, to free our people for the spiritual and intellectual fulfilment which has always been the goal of our civilisation."

President Kennedy is, as it were, the lineal descendant of the American nation's traditional leadership. As George Washington was the Father of the United States, as Abraham Lincoln was its Saviour, as Franklin D. Roosevelt was the Voice of America, even so is John Kennedy the Noble Defender of World Freedom and World Peace.

"Defender of World Freedom and World Peace" is certainly a great and responsible role. But is that enough for a man of Kennedy's calibre? In 'the Hour of God' that has set in, there has appeared a man of high capacity and of unquestioned goodwill for all, a man of a synthetic cast of mind, a man of faith and trust in God's omnipotence, a man who has already caught an image of the One World to be. Unmistakably he will prove a Man of Destiny and launch a world-scale offensive for 'the Hour of God' upon his own country as well as upon the rest of the world; establish over this dark, miserable world a New World Empire of Peace and Power, Truth and Knowledge, Health and Happiness, a world one with its Creator. It is not suggested that Kennedy, the mere man, has that superhuman power. The world must not forget that, despite the extremely poor resources at his disposal, Churchill successfully stemmed the Hitlerian tide upon England and became the instrument of a Higher Power, simply by his faith and determination. Who knows but that, like Arjuna in the Battle of Kurukshetra, like Churchill in the Second World War, Kennedy will be an instrument of God's conquest of His own world for Himself? Not without reason, perhaps, has this young soul been called to the great Chair of the new world.

By sympathy and understanding he has won a high place in the heart of India. Her outlook toward the material aspect of life has now conspired to bring him nearer to her soul. The gulf between Matter and Spirit is going to close. The two Poles will meet.