Mihai Eminescu, a sober soul

Today, January 15, 2020 marks the 170th anniversary of the birth of a sober soul.. a man whose vision and thought were deeply spiritual, authentically nondualistic.

Due to the status of “Great National Poet”, we have been told about Eminescu since school… but what is a pity is that we were formally told, and his work, although extensive, has been reduced (for students) to a study chapter of the Romanian language textbook, required at the baccalaureate… and that’s it.

Moreover, it has been repeatedly suggested by some politicians that it should be removed from the curriculum, because it is not “politically correct”!!

His main activity was that of a journalist, but he is known as a romantic poet.
And behind these beautiful words, essential aspects are lost , defining for his soul and his work.

“The purpose of your life is to look for yourself.”
“Equality exists only in mathematics.”
“The opportunity is quick to run away and lazy to return.”
“A man’s work can be paid. His character, his culture, never.”
“For nearly two thousand years we have been preached to love each other, and we are torn apart.”
“Between character and intelligence there should be no choice…”
“If we don’t understand something, let’s say we don’t understand it rather than give it a false explanation.”
“I understood that a man can have everything having nothing and nothing having everything.”

Eminescu loved the Romanian country and people extraordinarily much

“We are confused, we don’t know what we want, what to do, what to receive,
what to reject, who to trust; we no longer understand and hear each other:
we need an idea that clears all our heads and brings us all together at work (…)
Therefore drive away the flock of these worthless ones
who work nothing and have nothing and want to live like the richest people;
They don’t know anything and want to teach your children and they don’t have enough mind to save themselves
and they want to save you all”

Mihai Eminescu

“What do I wish for you, sweet Romania” or “At arms” are just two of the poems with an obviously patriotic theme.

His feeling was not a façade,as sometimes happens in the case of personalities. He was an active activist for the rights of Romanians in Transylvania and for national unity.

The Romanian government sought to conclude a pact with Austria-Hungary, by which it renounced its claims to Transylvania and undertook to eliminate all those classified as “nationalists.” During that time, many gave up their values and principles to be removed from the list of outlaws.
But Eminescu did not accept to make any compromises, keeping the values of his soul unshaken.

Gheorghe Panu tells in “Memories from Junimea” of a piece of advice that Eminescu gave him: “Panule, do you know that in this world there is nothing more interesting than the history of our people, its past… Everything, everything is an almost uninterrupted line of martyrs. ”
Eminescu was one of them.

“They’ll live on your trail in the funeral convoy,
Splendid as an irony with careless glances. . .
And on top of all it will speak a little one,
Not glorifying you . . . polishing on it
Under your shadow name. Here’s everything that awaits you.
You’ll see. . . posterity is even more righteous.
Unable to reach you, do you think they’ll want to admire you?
They will, of course, applaud the slim biography
To try it, it’s not a big deal,
That you were human as they are. . . Magulit is each
That you weren’t more like him. And the prostate nostrils
And anyone inflates them in learned assemblies
When people talk about you. It has been understood beforehand
It’s an ironic grimace to praise you in words.
So icant the hand of anyone, it will fix you,
The evils will say that they are all that they will not understand. . .
But apart from these, they will search for your life
Let him find many stains, wickedness, and little scandals —
These all bring you closer to them. . . No light
What thou hast poured out in the world, but sins and guilt,
Fatigue, weakness, all the evils that are
In a fatal way related to a handful of earth;
All the little filth of a tormented soul
Much more will attract them than anything you’ve ever thought.”

Mihai Eminescu, Letter I, 1881

“Gradually, connections are coming to light that we would have hardly discovered from the official or unofficial information fragments of the time. His voice, unique in the concert of politics of the time, had to be extinguished.
He was very upset by his truth, that of the seeker of the Absolute! For him, there was no conjunctural truth of the parties, but only the truth of the Romanian nation for which he lived and for which he was sacrificed.”

Zoe Dumitrescu Bușulenga

The nondualistic, authentic spirituality reflected in his work

Mihai Eminescu was passionate about yogic spirituality, “being the first Romanian translator in the Sanskrit language”.
He translated into Romanian a Sanskrit grammar manual.

Why?
He needed Sanskrit because Western philosophers did not seem to satisfy him and then he searched in the reservoir of Knowledge of the World for something deeper… something authentic.

In addition to his passion for Sanskrit, the height of his soul was found in his works.
An authentic seeker, when he reads them, can easily recognize that light in his soul… the depth that cannot be manufactured by the human mind, to which Eminescu connected.

“In the beginning, when there was no being, no non-being,
When everything was lifelessness and willpower,
When nothing was hidden, although it was still hidden…
When penetrated by himself, the impenetrable rested.
Was it an abyss? Genus? Was it a flood of water?
There was no clever world, nor a mind to understand it,
For it was a darkness like a sea without a ray,
But there was nothing to see and no eyes to see her.
The shadow of the undone had not begun to unravel,
And in herself reconciled she ruled eternal peace…
But suddenly a dot moves… the first and only. Here it is
As out of chaos he becomes a mummy, and he becomes the Father…
That point of movement, much weaker than a grain of foam,
He is the boundless master over the edges of the world…”

A lot goes ahead,
In our ears it sounds a lot,
Who Keeps All Memories
And he would sit and listen to them?…
You sit aside,
Finding yourself,
When with vain noises
Time passes, time comes.

The future and the past
I’m a two-sided person,
See the beginning at the end
Who knows how to learn them;
Everything that has been or will be
Currently we have it all,
But of their futility
He asks you and reckons.

With a siren song,
The world stretches shiny nets;
To change the actors on stage,
It lures you in whirlwinds;
You slip by your side,
Don’t even notice,
Out of your way out
To urge you, to call you

Sharpen the truth in idols, stones, wood,
For only in this way does the whole unworthy nation understand
Of the people of the day the sublime truth
What you say in parables, and we have it from heaven.

I don’t believe in Jehovah either
Nor in Buddha Sakya – Muni,
Neither in life nor in death,
Nor in extinction like some.

Dreams are both one and the other
And it’s also one for me
To live forever in the world
If you die in eternity.

All these holy mysteries,
For man fragments of language
In vain do you think, for the thought
Nothing in the world changes.

And because in nothingness
I don’t believe it, oh, give me peace
I do as I see fit
And do as you like.

Don’t shroud my thinking
Nor with a clean and antique style,
They’re all right for me
I remain what I was: – romantic.