Aurobindo 51 Savitri Book 2

Aurobindo 51 Savitri Book 2 - Poem by Indira Renganathan An appreciation on Savitri- Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds Canto Ten: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's 'A sovereign worker through the centuries Observing and remoulding all that is, Confident she took up her stupendous charge.' A rigorous stare in her creative eyes Coercing the plastic stuff of cosmic Mind, She sets the hard inventions of her brain In a pattern of eternal fixity: 'For the world seen she weaves a world conceived: ' 'In her high works of pure intelligence, ..' 'There dawns no light of heavenly certitude.' 'A million faces wears her knowledge here And every face is turbaned with a doubt.' 'An inconclusive play is Reason's toil. Each strong idea can use her as its tool; ' 'Absolute her judgments seem but none is sure; ' Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal. 'An aided sense is her seeking's arbiter. This now she uses as the assayer's stone.' 'As if she knew not facts are husks of truth, The husks she keeps, the kernel throws aside.' 'An ancient wisdom fades into the past, ' 'Only she seeks mechanic Nature's keys.' 'A lifeless Energy irresistibly driven, ' 'Then wonders why all was and whence it came.' 'The little Mind is tied to little things: ' 'The Truth is known only when all is seen.' 'A fire shall come out of the infinitudes, A greater Gnosis shall regard the world ' 'A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind, Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close.' ............My consciousness this moment, O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine May there so, let Savitri in my self arise Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune =============================================== Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and informative lines from Book 2 Canto 10 Page 250 She leans to forge her credos and iron codes And metal structures to imprison life And mechanic models of all things that are Page 250&251 She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought, Her segment systems of the Infinite, Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts And myths by which she explains the inexplicable. At will she spaces in thin air of mind Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung, Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme, Her numberless warring strict philosophies; Out of Nature's body of phenomenon She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines, Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run, Her sciences precise and absolute. On the huge bare walls of human nescience Written round Nature's deep dumb hieroglyphs She pens in clear demotic characters The vast encyclopaedia of her thoughts; An algebra of her mathematics' signs, Her numbers and unerring formulas She builds to clinch her summary of things. Page 252 The eternal Advocate seated as judge Armours in logic's invulnerable mail A thousand combatants for Truth's veiled throne And sets on a high horse-back of argument To tilt for ever with a wordy lance In a mock tournament where none can win. A bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact, She drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter's dust To reach utility's immense bazaar. Apprentice she has grown to her old drudge; Page 253 Our thoughts are parts of the immense machine, Our ponderings but a freak of Matter's law, The mystic's lore was a fancy or a blind; Of soul or spirit we have now no need: Matter is the admirable Reality, The patent unescapable miracle, The hard truth of things, simple, eternal, sole. Page 254 Late shall the self-disintegrating Force Contract the immense expansion it has made: Then ends this mighty and unmeaning toil, The Void is left bare, vacant as before. Matter was an incident in being's flow, Law but a clock-work habit of blind force. Page 255 A hard compression held down anarchy And liberty was only a phantom's name: Creation and destruction waltzed inarmed On the bosom of a torn and quaking earth; All reeled into a world of Kali's dance. Thus tumbled, sinking, sprawling in the Void, Clutching for props, a soil on which to stand, She only saw a thin atomic Vast, The rare-point sparse substratum universe On which floats a solid world's phenomenal face. Page 256 But many-visaged is the cosmic Soul; A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate. A sudden turn can come, a road appear. A greater Mind may see a greater Truth, Or we may find when all the rest has failed Hid in ourselves the key of perfect change. Ascending from the soil where creep our days, Earth's consciousness may marry with the Sun, Our mortal life ride on the spirit's wings, Our finite thoughts commune with the Infinite. In the bright kingdoms of the rising Sun All is a birth into a power of light: All here deformed guards there its happy shape, Here all is mixed and marred, there pure and whole; Yet each is a passing step, a moment's phase. Page 257 In this small mould of infant mind and sense Desire is a child-heart's cry crying for bliss, Our reason only a toys' artificer, A rule-maker in a strange stumbling game. The world she has made is an interim report Of a traveller towards the half-found truth in things Moving twixt nescience and nescience. For nothing is known while aught remains concealed; Page 258 Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone: Armed they have come with the infallible word In an investiture of intuitive light That is a sanction from the eyes of God; Announcers of a distant Truth they flame Arriving from the rim of eternity. End of Book 2-Canto 10