The sense of paradox so fundamental to Zen is also ever present in Dickinson. The similarities to Dickinson’s insights despite the fact that she had direct access to Eastern wisdom is testimony to the universality of the experience of self realisation. To the Indian Yogi self realisation is the gift of an inner energy known as Kundalini which manifests itself as a cool wind. During yogic states the heat of sympathetic nervous activity subsides and the parasympathetic nervous system comes into play relaxing and refreshing the body, with a breeze or fountain like energy, so that the attention can transcend physical needs and merge with the Atman or Self. According to Dickinson the moments of At–One–ment with Nature/Self happen “when the wind is within” (Thoreau wrote of ” ecstasies begotten of the breezes”) For the yogi or realised soul the sensation of this cool energy becomes his means of being sensitive to manifestations of Truth–Beauty–Love (Keats’ tripartite Unity). Dickinson stated that she had no other means to discriminate these qualities in art.
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know of.”
and in one of her poems:
“Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool
Deals one
imperial thunder bolt
that scalps your
naked soul”
........ from sol.com
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