Richard Lannoy
Lewis Thompson’s journals allow the reader access to a man of action and a poet deeply committed to his search for the highest realization of Truth in and through Hindu spiritual practice. 2009 marks the centennial of the birth of English poet, Lewis Thompson, and the sixtieth anniversary of his untimely death in India in 1949 at the age of forty. As such, Integral Realist is a commemorative event that will surely place Lewis Thompson in a league with powerful spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and establish him among the great English writers and poets whom he admired. This very private companion to Lewis Thompson, Journals of an Integral Poet, Volume One 1932–1944, reveals a mature Thompson at the height of his commitment to “Absolute Perfection” – an ideal by which every object is completed as symbol in all domains by resolving the antithesis of “Sensuality” and “Intellect” within the context of integral, flexible, incalculable and organic “Poetry”. Poetry, as such, controlled carelessness, frivolity and subtle exploitation of others and allowed for true form, economy of action and expression, true perspective, simplicity, objectivity and natural rights where others were concerned. “One looks towards the Heart, itself prior even to Truth. . . by desiring, worshipping, at every moment, in every occasion, Truth – deeply, with love, humility, fidelity. Chronicling the last four years of Lewis Thompson’s life, Integral Realist openly draws us into an antithesis in his character – classic (Apollo; Shiva) and romantic (Dionysos; Krishna) – that he tried to resolve in the realization of sahaja against a backdrop of the most powerful Indian spiritual figures of the day: Sri Anandamayi Ma, Krishnamurti, Sri Krishna Menon, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramana Maharshi, as well as western figures: Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Dostoievski, Kierkergaard, Christ, Cocteau, Yeats and Blake, among them. Thompson’s nature and personal ethic were those of a spiritual man, a sadhaka whose values become ”Human” only through the fulfillment of “Trans-human” clarity and perfect spontaneity: “He is a sadhu,” said Sri Anandamayi Ma. “You have been doing sadhana since your babyhood,” the Vedantic sage, Sri Krishna Menon, told him. With the exception of his good friend, Deben Bhattacharya, few enjoyed his quality of utsaha—a kind of daring, fiery zeal, zest and recklessness that passive souls mistake for violence or tension—and its more integral, flexible, incalculable, and organic perspective of simplicity and objectivity. Hence his friends Ethel Merston, Earl Brewster (who likened him to D.H. Lawrence) and Blanca Schlamm, who said “You live in another world”, could appear to him barbarous and calculating, and he monstrous to them. “He is a monster,” Ella Maillart confessed. A large part of this volume is devoted to Thompson working out tensions with them and with Sri Krishna Menon and accepting what simple people on the street in Benares saw in him: “Prem Sahib” or “Prem admi”—a loving man. “No simple heart has ever found me ‘impossible’.” Both volumes of Thompson’s journals (1932-1949) are published by Fourth Lloyd Productions, LLC. 3
