Aurobindo 28-Savitri-Book -2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri
Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto V The Godheads of the Little Life
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'Luring to failure and meaningless success,
All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,
Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull
And lead the endless cycles of desire
Through semblances of sad or happy chance
To an inescapable fatality.'...
Whole gist of present life sparkles here
And the concealed betterment still awaited

'A structure of unseeing thoughts is built
And reason used by an irrational Force.
This earth is not alone our teacher and nurse;
The powers of all the worlds have entrance here'..
'Into a creative chaos they are cast
Where all asks order but is driven by Chance; '
'But never can we know and truly live
Till all have found their divine harmony.'

'But now the Light supreme is far away: '
'This is our doom until our souls are free.
A mighty Hand then rolls mind's firmaments back,
Infinity takes up the finite's acts
And Nature steps into the eternal Light.
Then only ends this dream of nether life.'
'...God sits impassive everywhere'
'Yet is all here his action and his will.'

'In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy
The Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,
A body sleeping without sense or soul.'
'There was none there to see and none to feel;
Only the miraculous Inconscient,
A subtle wizard skilled, was at its task.

............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

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Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and
informative lines from Book 2 Canto 5

Page 153

Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives
And in a small body self is all that counts,
Wherever love and light and largeness lack,
These crooked fashioners take up their task.
To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.

Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,
Our nature's twilight is their lurking-place:

Page 153&154

Our life's uncertain way winds circling on,
Our mind's unquiet search asks always light,
Till they have learned their secret in their source,
In the light of the Timeless and its spaceless home,
In the joy of the Eternal sole and one.

Page 154

Even our mind's conquests wear a battered crown.
A slowly changing order binds our will.

At the outset of this enigmatic world
Which seems at once an enormous brute machine
And a slow unmasking of the spirit in things,
In this revolving chamber without walls
In which God sits impassive everywhere
As if unknown to himself and by us unseen
In a miracle of inconscient secrecy,
Yet is all here his action and his will.

Page 155

Being was an inert substance driven by Force.