We will further see that it is this unit that unfolds into the substantial units of space, time, speech, form and chaos-order. [In fact, we are getting close to some of the ideas of Quantum Mechanics].
● We will now look at some western writers who have talked about the ‘point’ in terms of a deeper meaning. Intuitively, they strike a chord with the eastern idea of the bindu going far beyond the conventional, bland geometrical definition of a ‘point’ :-[2]
◊ Firstly, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965), winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize for literature, whose poems have a spiritual undertone. He was well acquainted with Vedic philosophy and used Krishna and Arjun’s dialogue from the Bhagwadgita in his famous metaphysical poem ‘The Waste Land’. In fact, he concludes it with a quotation from the Brihadarārānyaka Upanishad followed by …..shantih shantih shantih.
I am going to present extracts from Eliot’s Four Quartets, which are brilliant, in that, it takes speech to a higher dimension by structuring a poem as a musical symphony. Further, its central theme is “the union of the flux of time with the stillness of eternity” and, this, the poet calls the ‘still point’. A critique explains [3]:-