Aurobindo 52 Savitri Book 2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto Eleven: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
It is greater than its earthly instrument: '
'Arriving into his ken a wonder space
Of great and marvellous meetings called his steps,
Where Thought leaned on a Vision beyond thought
And shaped a world from the Unthinkable.'
'The splendours of ideal Mind were seen
Outstretched across the boundaries of things known.'

Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
Exposed to omniscient immensities,
It casts on our world its great crowned influences, ...'
'In its vast ambit of ideal Space..'
'The Spirit's truths take form as living Gods
And each can build a world in its own right.'
'Far are those realms from our labour and yearning and call, .....
'Remote from the turbid tread of mortal life.'

'But since our secret selves are next of kin,
A breath of unattained divinity
Visits the imperfect earth on which we toil; '
'Across a gleaming ether's golden laugh
A light falls on our vexed unsatisfied lives '
'The child of the secret soul's forbidden desire
Born of its amour with eternity.'
'Our spirits break free from their environment; '

'But now our rights are barred, our passports void; '
'An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
'Far-off he saw the joining hemispheres.'
'Above were bright ethereal skies of mind'

............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 11

Page 260

The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
Escapes on every side into some vast
That is a passage to infinity.

For the spirit is eternal and unmade
And not by thinking was its greatness born,
And not by thinking can its knowledge come.

It knows itself and in itself it lives,
It moves where no thought is nor any form.
Its feet are steadied upon finite things,
Its wings can dare to cross the Infinite.

Across a gleaming ether's golden laugh
A light falls on our vexed unsatisfied lives,

Page 262

We feel the hero's immortality;
The courage and the strength death cannot touch
Awake in limbs that are mortal, hearts that fail;

We move by the rapid impulse of a will
That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal time.

Page 263&264

The unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds
Where Knowledge is the leader of the act
And Matter is of thinking substance made,
Feeling, a heaven-bird poised on dreaming wings,
Answers Truth's call as to a parent's voice,

Form luminous leaps from the all-shaping beam
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour stream of musing Force,
Carries the voices of the mystic Suns.

Page 264

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.
A gold supernal sun of timeless Truth
Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray
Through a silence quivering with the word of Light
On an endless ocean of discovery.


Above were bright ethereal skies of mind,
A packed and endless soar as if sky pressed sky
Buttressed against the Void on bastioned light;