Aurobindo 144 Savitri Book 10 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Ten:The Book of the Double Twilight
Canto Three - The Debate of Love and Death
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'All stumbled on behind a stumbling Guide,
Yet every stumble is a needed pace
On unknown routes to an unknowable goal'
'All blundered and straggled towards the One Divine.'
'Even wisdom, hewer of the roads of God,
Is a partner in the deep disastrous game: '
Satanic is wisdom of mortals and dark
Stumbled to be corrected only by godly thoughts

'Our knowledge walks leaning on Error's staff, '
'A darkness wallows in the paths of Time'
'It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind
And intercepts the oracles of the Sun.
Yet Light is there; it stands at Nature's doors:
It holds a torch to lead the traveller in.
It waits to be kindled in our secret cells; '
To look into ourselves is our duty

'It is a star lighting an ignorant sea,
A lamp upon our poop piercing the night.
As knowledge grows Light flames up from within:
It is a shining warrior in the mind,
An eagle of dreams in the divining heart,
An armour in the fight, a bow of God.'
Then larger dawns arrive and Wisdom's pomps
Cross through the being's dim half-lighted fields; '

'Philosophy climbs up Thought's cloud-bank peaks
And Science tears out Nature's occult powers,
Enormous djinns who serve a dwarf's small needs,
Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art
And conquers her by her own captive force.....

............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 10 Canto 3


Page 625

Idols of an oblique divinity,
They wore the heads of animal or troll,
Assumed ears of the faun, the satyr's hoof,
Or harboured the demoniac in their gaze:

A crooked maze they made of thinking mind,
They suffered a metamorphosis of the heart,
Admitting bacchant revellers from the Night
Into its sanctuary of delights,
As in a Dionysian masquerade.

On the highways, in the gardens of the world
They wallowed oblivious of their divine parts,
As drunkards of a dire Circean wine
Or a child who sprawls and sports in Nature's mire.

Page 626

On the ocean surface of vast Consciousness
Small thoughts in shoals are fished up into a net

Page 627

On heights unreached by mind's most daring soar,
Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time
The soul draws back into its deathless Self;
Man's knowledge becomes God's supernal Ray.

There is the mystic realm whence leaps the power
Whose fire burns in the eyes of seer and sage;
A lightning flash of visionary sight,
It plays upon an inward verge of mind:

Above the planes that climb from nescient earth,
A hand is lifted towards the Invisible's realm,
Beyond the superconscient's blinding line
And plucks away the screens of the Unknown;
A spirit within looks into the Eternal's eyes.

Thus all was plunged into the riddling Night,
Thus all is raised to meet a dazzling Sun.