object:24.05 - Vision of Dante
book class:Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
III An Italian Stanza
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Vision of Dante
Vision of Dante
Dante is known as a great poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo mentions also Valmiki of India. However I shall speak of Dante not so much as a poet but as a seer: as such he was a Traveller of the Worlds in the path of the life Divine in his own way; His poem is his autobiography. He speaks of his long journey, even like King Aswapathy in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri,as a traveller of the worlds. Dante describes his journey through the three worlds well-known in Christian theology. He begins in this way his great poem:
I was in the middle of my life's journey, suddenly one day unexpectedly I found myself in the very heart of a mighty forest. It is a wild, grim, frightful placeselva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
Some of you may remember the description of the Dandaka forest in the Mahabharata,quoted so often by Sri Aurobindo, picturing the vast horror of the forest: vanam pratibhayam sunyam jhillikagananinaditam.1
"I proceeded on my way but I did not know what to do and where to go. I did not know anything why I was here, still I proceeded through masses of boulders and rocks, up and down a rough and, difficult path. Suddenly I saw standing before me a figure, a human figure very beautiful and luminous and noble." But who was this person? Dante approached him and asked: "Who are you? And what is this place I am in?" The person answered in a quiet and solemn voice, "You have surely heard of me. I am Virgil from Mantua of Italy." "Oh, the great Virgil, the divine Virgil!" I exclaimed. "Yes," he answered, "the same." - Virgil who sang of the glory of Roman civilisation, of Roman greatness and also it was he, wonderful to say, mirabile dictu,who spoke of the advent of the new age and the birth of the Divine Child. It was just before the birth of Christ when Virgil made this prophecy. Dante answered, "I am very fortunate and grateful to you, but how is that you have come here to see me and speak to me?" Virgil replied, "I will tell you presently. You are more fortunate than I am and I envy you. You will know gradually. I have been sent to you by a person whom you know. She is a divine person, you will recognise when I name her. She is Beatrice." Dante was thunderstruck, almost stunned hearing the name. You must have heard the story, it is a well-known legend. When he was young he met a girl and immediately fell deep in love over head and ears. It was a most casual meeting but it left its mark on his whole life and even the life after. The girl died young and he had no occasion to get acquainted with her. Still he continued to love her, her image in his heart was as vivid and living as ever. So, after years when he had passed half of his lifetime, as he says, he slipped over miraculously into the other world and had now these experiences he is narrating. Virgil continued: "So I am sent by Beatrice to be your guide through this journey you have to undertake to reach her and to meet her in another sphere. These are dangerous places and ugly and frightful, a guide is needed. You have to climb three worlds and pass through them to reach your destination. The first world is Hell, Inferno; then there is Purgatory and then Heaven, and finally the Beyond Heaven. All these domains, some dangerous, some complicated and confusing, and someincomprehensible, but all contributing to the growth of your knowledge and consciousness, purifying and heightening your nature - you will know and go through them with my help and the grace of divine Beatrice. Now, come, we begin our journey. There is a river in front, we have to cross it, enter the first zone or domain. It marks the end of earth and earthly life. It is Acheron." - We in India call it Vaitarani - "This water gives you a bath, a wash that removes your earthly tenement, your skin as it were, and leaves you bare with your inner body." We know however that the physical body, although an impediment in a way, is a sort of protection also to the human being in earthly life and blocks the way against any attacks from outside. It is a protective fort, so to say. After death when this material sheath is not there, the subtle body is helpless against such attacks, is exposed as it were to impacts from elsewhere. So both of them now crossed the river, resumed their journey. All on a sudden just in front of them rose a huge wall and in it a mighty door. Virgil said: "We have to go through this door. It is the door to Hell." They approached and saw inscribed there on the top of the door these terrible words like burning tongues of fire:
"Through me you go into the city of sorrows,
Through me you go into eternal grief,
Through me you go among people lost for ever.
Justice moved my supreme Creator,
I was fashioned by the Divine Power,
The Summit Knowledge, the First Love.
Before me nothing created was there
Unless it was also eternal, and I eternally am.
Abandon all hope, you who enter here."!2
This is Hell, Inferno. There is no hope, no cheer, no ray of light, all dark, dismal, all lurid glare. Virgil tells Dante:
"Be brave, be courageous. You will see here the most terrible things, most agonising, most heart-rending, you cannot imagine what sort of sufferings are here."
Then Dante was taken down to different regions, to the numberless sinners of the earth who had committed all kinds of sins for which they were now being punished. In how many ways they were tortured, how they suffered - some burning in leaping fire, some freezing in most unbearable cold, some torn to pieces by hideous demons and goblins - the sight was unbearable. As if a thousand concentration camps of Hitler's day were concentrated here, or even more frightful than that. For every sin there is the cruellest retribution and these people have no protection which, as I have said, their body gave them upon earth, as a buffer. Even the poisons they nourished within them, now burst out being no more pressed and contained within. Dante was overwhelmed, he could not bear to look at the scene, man has to suffer so much: but how long? Virgil shook his head and said, "Much more he has to suffer, it is man's own guilt. Long they will have to suffer." "Long? How long?" "That is Divine Justice."
There is atonement for many sins - various degrees and kinds of atonement, some mild, some severe, some very difficult but still in the end you get through them and can become free after a time from the effects of your own Karma, but it seems there are lapses and transgressions that are so formidable that no atonement can remedy them, there is no redemption for these. Baudelaire, the great French poet (of the underworld) speaks of the "Irrmdiable". He says, when Satan does a thing, if he means it, he does it well. One remembers the frightful picture of Lady Macbeth trying to rub out the damned spot on her hand: she found it impossible and "all the perfumes of Arabia" would not sweeten the hand that bore it; the spot corrodes, eats into the being carrying with it infinite pain and weird misery and madness all through eternity - "the murky hell."
Dante then turned his face, he could not see all this fearful ugliness. He said, "Let us move from this place." So they moved on. They now approached the next world, the Purgatory. Here also there is a river dividing the two, Hell and Purgatory. The river is named "Lethe". It means forgetfulness. You forget what you have suffered and enter into a quieter and clearer region. You cannot say you are happy there, but only more quiet and more calm. The people who come here have washed themselves in the waters of Lethe, they forget everything else, they remember only that they committed a blunder and they repent for that. This repentance, this recognition of their error has purified them, to that extent they are given a certain gladness. Dante speaks of an interesting case. It was that of a man who was there now: at the last moment of his life he recognised his guilt, his error, and was thinking of repentance - thinking only - but he died just at that moment. He said now in sadness, "If I had repented fully as I had intended, probably I would have gone beyond this Purgatory, to Paradise, but then I am here thinking of the chance I missed."
So the two arrived at the end of their journey through Purgatory. Here the people were pursuing the process of cleansing and correcting themselves, becoming more and more conscious and shuffling off the past as much as possible. Virgil now looked at Dante and said: "Dante, my task is done. I am not allowed to go beyond this region of Purgatory and have to turn back. You see the river beyond, that marks the beginning of Heaven. You have to cross it. Another person will now come and take charge of you, do not grieve. Beatrice herself will come." Dante was elated hearing the name of Beatrice but then to leave Virgil was a great grief. He exclaimed: "But why, why my sweet guide, why are you not allowed to enter?" Virgil answered: "That is my secret. But I keep nothing hidden from you. If you want to hear I will tell you. Intellectual knowledge I had enough, I had also a kind of mental image of the supreme realisation in spiritual life,. I had even a luminous understanding, but what I lacked in was faith, true faith, the simple trust that surpasseth all understanding. This I yearned for but I could not arrive at. Perhaps it is a thing not to be acquired or attained through any effort, it comes to you, it is given to you or you do not have it. So I am stuck up here and awaiting the Lord's final decree. I am given a place which is called 'Limbo'." So Virgil stopped and remained silent for a while. Do you know what is a limbo? Limbo seems to be a region for silent meditation, quiet musing on God and Heaven, forgetting all else. It was even a kind of passive happiness and man can continue to be in it eternally. However in this matter of recording Virgil's somewhat sad fate, the poet Dante was not responsible, he could not do otherwise: he had to conform to the prevalent orthodox Christian doctrine that only Christians, the humanity who came after Christ, had the privilege and opportunity to enter Heaven, naturally the Christian Heaven. The rest of mankind, the pagan world could aspire to reach, the best of them, only the top of the Purgatory and there pass their days, their life in purifying themselves till the doomsday decide finally their destiny.
Virgil now asked leave of Dante. Dante was very sad to part from his friend but then Virgil waved his hand and slowly retired. While Virgil was retiring, Dante noticed that Virgil did not cast a shadow and was surprised to see that he himself had a shadow. He now remembered that he had come all the way up to this region with his physical earthly body itself. In fact he did not die, he simply disappeared or was transported into an unearthly region from the earth. Commentators say that only one person in the Christian tradition went to Heaven in the physical body, it was Mary, mother of Christ: nobody else was given this special privilege except Dante. In Indian tradition too there were some fortunate people who could go to Heaven in their physical body - Yudhishthira with his dog (who was not really a dog but Dharma metamorphosed) was one; Narada, Bibhishana, Ashwatthama and Hanuman - these went up only in their subtle physical body, they had to give up the gross material form (immortal, cirajivi).
Then thinking of Virgil he moved along the bank of the river that separates now Purgatory from Heaven. The river is known significantly as "Ennce" - it is a word of Greek origin - the root means mind, thinking, intelligence; here I take it to mean mindedness, that is true mind, right consciousness. When you bathe in. its waters you wash away your old mind; a fresh luminous divine mind gives you a clear and complete vision of the Truth.
However as Dante was walking along the bank he heard a beautiful music, heavenly sweet, coming floating as it were from the other shore. He looked and saw two beautiful damsels there who made a sign to him to follow them. They were moving in a contrary direction to the current of the river. After a while he found himself on the other shore and as he looked up he saw at a distance a figure divinely beautiful and imposing. Oh! it was Beatrice herself! Directly he saw her he was sooverwhelmed that he forgot himself - Dante says, all his old passion rose with renewed intensity, all that was suppressed in him. Was the love, the passion earthly, was it heavenly? he was confused. Beatrice with a tone of severity spoke and reprimanded him: "Dante, do not yield to the pulls of your past, do not yearn for the things that you have left behind. I noticed your attachment to Virgil also. That too is an obstacle, that too you must leave behind; look to your future, look to what is ahead. You have to be strong, even severe, perhaps merciless at times." Indeed Beatrice herself was at times severe, even stern towards Dante; whenever he was about to stumble or slip into the past, into the mind he was to cast aside, she corrected him, pulled him back as on the present occasion. Now they walked on and moved upward towards the final destination.
The Heaven is composed of many circles or regions, tier upon tier, a hierarchy of worlds. They are inhabited by saints and holy persons of various degrees of merit; the greater the merit the higher the status of their dwelling. Dante describes the first Heaven, it is the moon; and then follow one by one many of the planets. He saw the habitat of saints and holy persons each busy with his own occupation, some studying, some meditating, some assembled in a group engaged in conversation and so on. We too, we have in India many heavenly lokas,Brahmaloka, Shivaloka, Vishnuloka, Janaloka, Goloka, inhabited by various types of gods and spiritual siddhas. We have Hell too in India, an underworld Patala or Rasatala - they are supposed to be seven in number! Our Heavens too are seven. Dante became very curious to know more of the mind of the holy persons - their thoughts and experiences. When they reached one of these worlds, he told Beatrice: "I would like to talk to one of these saints." "Yes, you can." Then he approached one and asked him: "You are happy here?" - "Yes" - "You do not feel monotonous and bored?" The answer was, "No, not at all." "You do not long to rise higher and higher upward in your ascent to greater heavens? You have no impulse to progress in this way?" Answer: "No, I am content with what I have and where I am. I rely on God's will, whatever He has decided I accept without question. As long as 'He wishes me to be in a particular place or in a particular condition I obey unquestioningly. All things and happenings are equal to me. This is what I have learnt. In His will lies our peace. E'n la sua volontade nostra pace.3
Apart from the saints and sages and wise men (theologians) of Christendom, the higher Heavens sheltered also non-human, that is to say, godly or divine beings - angels and archangels, cherubs and seraphs - powers of Love, powers of Knowledge - Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Principalities, as Dante names them - various grades and modes of the divine force and energy - or, as we say, Personalities and Emanations.
Indeed Dante's mind was full of questions and doubts and Beatrice herself had noticed it and given warnings to him. As she was purifying his heart movements lifting his human love to the divine level, so she sought to cleanse his mind too and as they moved on she was disclosing to him with her love and with her consciousness the nature of true mind and consciousness. At one place she said almost echoing an Upanishadic utterance: "Truth is not attained by debate and discussion, not by the normal intelligence and reason, but through a suspension of these faculties." In the higher Heavens Truth reveals itself spontaneously, whole and entire. Beatrice was lifting up both the mind and the heart of Dante into her knowledge and consciousness, into her own love. Indeed through her words, Dante says, Truth is visible, clear like a star in the sky.
They now moved on further and arrived at the last lap, the highest Heaven. Saint Bernard now took charge of him. The saint said: "Henceforth I will be the guide, the last guide. Beatrice now leaves you and goes to her place, beyond the Heaven, God's own home, Perfection and Bliss - the Empyrean."
Dante stopped, stood still and was asked to look ahead. Oh, what a bewitching scene! Epiphany - a world of dazzling light - circles and waves of bright gold and diamond!
And those entrancing forms and figures! The Supreme Lord, the Supreme Trinity and the Virgin Mother - and Beatrice beside!
The moving circles and the glorious figures wove a beautiful faultless pattern - a perfect geometrical kaleidoscope, gleaming and glittering. Dante tries to give an accurate comprehensive description: he says, his mathematical mind sought to arrange all that he saw in a seizable sizeable pattern. The complexity and the enormousness of the content escaped all measures and counts. His brain reeled and got confused. In the end he seems to have lapsed into a blank unconsciousness and forgetfulness. When he woke up what a refreshing calmness and clarity was there! What once was complex and incomprehensible has now become crystal clear and beautiful. What was a baffling mystery revealed a simple fact, a self-evident Truth and in ecstasy he chanted his hymn of thanksgiving to his divine beloved:
O donna in cui la mia speranza vige,
E che soffristi per la mia salute
In inferno lasciar Ie tue vestige,
Di tante case, quant'i' ho vedute,
Dal tuo podere e dalla tua bontate
Riconosco la grazia virtute.
Tu m' hai di servo tratto a libertate4
Madonna, all my hope reposes in thee;
For my redemption thou didst leave
The traces of thy footsteps through Hell.
In all things that I saw
I recognise thy power and solicitude;
I t was ever thy grace and thy force.
From bondage thou hast pulled me out into freedom.
It was her grace that led him to the miraculous vision and. realisation which he describes in his hymn to the supreme Lord:
O luee ettema, ehe sola in te sidi
Sola t'intendi, e da te intelletta
E intendente te ami ed arridi!
Quella eireulazion ehe si eoneetta
Pareva in te come lume rejlesso,
Dalli oeehi miei alquanto eireunspetta,
Dentro da s, del suo colore stesso,
Mi parve pinta delta nostra effige;
Per ehe ' l mio visa in lei tutto era messo.5
O Light Eternal, alone thou dwellest in thyself,
Alone thou understandest thyself, and known to thyself
And knowing thyself, thou lovest thyself and smilest to thyself alone.
That wheeling was self-conceived,
It appeared in thee as a reflected gleam,
As I was dwelling upon it for a while.
Within itself, in its own hue
It appeared to me as a painted image of me;
So immersed I was in it whole and entire.
Dante calls his vision the vision of the "Divine Comedy". That is the name of his great poem. Comedy means a play that ends in happiness and union - here it is the supreme happiness, the bliss of union with God and the Divine Mother. It is the culmination and denouement of an unrolling of God's play of creation and world manifestation. Dante ends his vision of the play in a single line of summation - indeed in a single word - the last line of the "Divina Commedia":
"Love moved me...
Love that moves the sun and all the stars."
"A void and dreadful forest ringing with the cricket's cry." (Sri Aurobindo) Likewise Dante also says that even now when he remembers the scene his heart is full of fear and shivering. However he continues his narration:
*Inferno,*Canto III, 11. 1-9.
*Paradiso,*Canto III, 85.It was he who thus uttered the famous mantraso well known to all. Dante wondered and felt illumined hearing the reply of the saint.
*Paradiso,*Canto XXXI, n. 79-85.
*Paradiso,*Canto XXXII, 11. 124-132.
***
III An Italian Stanza
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