Aurobindo 50 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 dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb, '
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
'A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit's grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,
It binds itself by what itself creates.'

A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
And with its dire edge eats at being's heart.
Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire.
A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names: '
'It squandered life's force to achieve the impossible: '

'Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.'
'Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
Adept of clear contrivance and design,
A pensive face and close and peering eyes,
She took her firm and irremovable seat,
The strongest, wisest of the troll-like Three.
She strove to reduce to rules the mystic world.
Nothing she knew but all things hoped to know.

'In dark inconscient realms once void of thought,
'An imperfect light leading an erring mass
By the power of sense and the idea and word,
She ferrets out Nature's process, substance, cause.
All life to harmonise by thought's control,
She with the huge imbroglio struggles still; '

............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 10


Page 245


A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
It sees as Law the habits of the world,
It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.

Page 246

The old sure memories are its capital stock:
Only what sense can grasp seems absolute:

things long known and actions always done
Are to its clinging hold a balustrade
Of safety on the perilous stair of Time.

Page 246&247

In decayed and crumbling offices of Time
It keeps close guard in front of custom's wall,
Or in an ancient Night's dim environs
It dozes on a little courtyard's stones
And barks at every unfamiliar light
As at a foe who would break up its home,
A watch-dog of the spirit's sense-railed house
Against intruders from the Invisible,
Nourished on scraps of life and Matter's bones
In its kennel of objective certitude.

The stars' changeless orbits furrow inert Space,
A million species follow one mute Law.
A huge inertness is the world's defence,
Even in change is treasured changelessness;

Into inertia revolution sinks,
In a new dress the old resumes its role;
The Energy acts, the stable is its seal:
On Shiva's breast is stayed the enormous dance.

Page 247

Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire.
A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names:
A need of multitude and uncertainty
Pricks it for ever to pursue the One
On countless roads across the vasts of Time
Through circuits of unending difference.
It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.

A radiance gleaming on a murky stream,
It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell;
It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire
And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force;

A huge chameleon gold and blue and red
Turning to black and grey and lurid brown,
Hungry it stared from a mottled bough of life
To snap up insect joys, its favourite food,
The dingy sustenance of a sumptuous frame
Nursing the splendid passion of its hues.

Page 247&248

A snake of flame with a dull cloud for tail,
Followed by a dream-brood of glittering thoughts,
A lifted head with many-tinged flickering crests,
It licked at knowledge with a smoky tongue.

Page 248

A whirlpool sucking in an empty air,
It based on vacancy stupendous claims,
In Nothingness born to Nothingness returned,
Yet all the time unwittingly it drove
Towards the hidden Something that is All.

Ardent to find, incapable to retain,
A brilliant instability was its mark,
To err its inborn trend, its native cue.

At once to an unreflecting credence prone,
It thought all true that flattered its own hopes;

It cherished golden nothings born of wish,
It snatched at the unreal for provender.

In darkness it discovered luminous shapes;
Peering into a shadow-hung half-light
It saw hued images scrawled on Fancy's cave;

Or it swept in circles through conjecture's night
And caught in imagination's camera
Bright scenes of promise held by transient flares,
Fixed in life's air the feet of hurrying dreams,
Kept prints of passing Forms and hooded Powers
And flash-images of half-seen verities.


Page 249

One chance made true warranted all the rest.
Attempt, not victory, was the charm of life.

An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes,
Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire,

It saw in the dark and vaguely blinked in the light,
Ignorance was its field, the unknown its prize.

Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.

Page 249&250

In her strong purposeful laborious mind,
Inventing her scheme-lines of reality
And the geometric curves of her time-plan,
She multiplied her slow half-cuts at Truth: