Aurobindo 55 Savitri Book 2

An appreciation on Savitri- Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds Canto Thirteen: In the Self of Mind Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's 'At last there came a bare indifferent sky Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice, But answered nothing to a million calls; The soul's endless question met with no response.' 'There paused the climbing hierarchy of worlds. He stood on a wide arc of summit Space Alone with an enormous Self of Mind Which held all life in a corner of its vasts' 'In God's supreme withdrawn and timeless hush A seeing Self and potent Energy met; ' The Silence knew itself and thought took form: Self-made from the dual power creation rose.' 'In the still self he lived and it in him; ' Its vastness and its stillness were his own; One being with it he grew wide, powerful, free. 'Apart, unbound, he looked on all things done.' 'Then suddenly a luminous finger fell On all things seen or touched or heard or felt And showed his mind that nothing could be known; 'The world seemed a long aeonic failure's scene: ' 'Existence' self was shadowed by a doubt; ' 'This great spectator and creator Mind Was only some half-seeing's delegate, An idol, not the living body of God.' 'Deep peace was there, but not the nameless Force: ' 'A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind Must answer to the questioning of his soul. For here was no firm clue and no sure road; ' 'He looked above, but all was blank and still: ' 'He looked below, but all was dark and mute.' ............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 13 Page 283 This witness hush is the Thinker's secret base: Hidden in silent depths the word is formed, From hidden silences the act is born Into the voiceful mind, the labouring world; In secrecy wraps the seed the Eternal sows Silence, the mystic birthplace of the soul. Page 284&285 All that it takes for reality's shining coin, Proved fact, fixed inference, deduction clear, Firm theory, assured significance, Appeared as frauds upon Time's credit bank Or assets valueless in Truth's treasury. Page 285 A frail house hanging in uncertain air, The thin ingenious web round which it moves, Put out awhile on the tree of the universe, And gathered up into itself again, Was only a trap to catch life's insect food, Winged thoughts that flutter fragile in brief light But dead, once captured in fixed forms of mind, Aims puny but looming large in man's small scale, Flickers of imagination's brilliant gauze And cobweb-wrapped beliefs alive no more. Page 285&286 Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past, Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths, God's spontaneities tied with formal strings And packed into drawers of reason's trim bureau, A grave of great lost opportunities, Or an office for misuse of soul and life And all the waste man makes of heaven's gifts And all his squanderings of Nature's store, A stage for the comedy of Ignorance. Page 286 Existence' self was shadowed by a doubt; Almost it seemed a lotus-leaf afloat On a nude pool of cosmic Nothingness. Page 287 A sapphire firmament of abstract Thought Escaped into a formless Vacancy. A rumour and a movement and a call, A foaming mass, a cry innumerable Rolled ever upon the ocean surge of Life Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance. Beings and forces, forms, ideas like waves Jostled for figure and supremacy, And rose and sank and rose again in Time; Page287&288 Two firmaments of darkness and of light Opposed their limits to the spirit's walk; It moved veiled in from Self's infinity In a world of beings and momentary events Where all must die to live and live to die. End of Book 2-Canto 13