Aurobindo-7-Savitri-Book -1 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book I The Book of Beginnings-canto-3-
The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul's Release
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

Yoga of king Aswapati(Father of Savitri) and
his yogic experiences

And wisdom 'sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,
All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone'
His centre was no more in earthly mind; '
A power of seeing silence filled his limbs:
'The voice that only by speech can move the mind
Became a silent knowledge in the soul; '
'His soul stood free, a witness and a king.'
'He abode at rest in indivisible Time.'

'Only awhile at first these heavenlier states,
These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.
'The high and luminous tension breaks too soon,
The body's stone stillness and the life's hushed trance,
The breathless might and calm of silent mind;
Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day.'
'Even his godlike strength to rise must fall:
His greater consciousness withdrew behind; '

'Dim and eclipsed, his human outside strove
To feel again the old sublimities' '
'Always the power poured back like sudden rain,
Or slowly in his breast a presence grew; '
'In this oscillation between earth and heaven,
In this ineffable communion's climb
There grew in him as grows a waxing moon
The glory of the integer of his soul.'

'Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.'
'The intense creatrix in his stillness wrought; '
'A Power worked, but none knew whence it came.'

............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 linesfrom
Book-1 canto-3

page 32

The boundless with the boundless there consorts;

Caught by a voiceless white epiphany
Into a vision that surpasses forms,
Into a living that surpasses life,
He neared the still consciousness sustaining all.

A leisure in the labour of the worlds,
A pause in the joy and anguish of the search
Restored the stress of Nature to God's calm.

page32 &33

The war of thoughts that fathers the universe,
The clash of forces struggling to prevail
In the tremendous shock that lights a star
As in the building of a grain of dust,

The grooves that turn their dumb ellipse in space
Ploughed by the seeking of the world's desire,

The long regurgitations of Time's flood,
The torment edging the dire force of lust
That wakes kinetic in earth's dullard slime
And carves a personality out of mud,

The sorrow by which Nature's hunger is fed,

The oestrus which creates with fire of pain,

The fate that punishes virtue with defeat,
The tragedy that destroys long happiness,
The weeping of Love, the quarrel of the Gods,
Ceased in a truth which lives in its own light.

page33

As if a story long written but acted now,
In his present he held his future and his past,
Felt in the seconds the uncounted years
And saw the hours like dots upon a page.

page34

The need to rest in a natural pose of fall,
As a child who learns to walk can walk not long,
Replace the titan will for ever to climb,
On the heart's altar dim the sacred fire.

page36
As a sculptor chisels a deity out of stone
He slowly chipped off the dark envelope,

page37

God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God.

Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought,
Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses,

Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience.
A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;

An inspired Knowledge sat enthroned within
Whose seconds illumined more than reason's years:
An ictus of revealing lustre fell
As if a pointing accent upon Truth,
And like a sky-flare showing all the ground
A swift intuitive discernment shone.

page38

As if from a golden phial of the All-Bliss,
A joy of light, a joy of sudden sight,
A rapture of the thrilled undying Word
Poured into his heart as into an empty cup,
A repetition of God's first delight
Creating in a young and virgin Time.

page39

The high black wall hiding superconscience,
She broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And plundered the Unknowable's vast estate.

A reporter and scribe of hidden wisdom talk,
Her shining minutes of celestial speech,
Passed through the masked office of the occult mind,

Above the reason's brilliant slender curve,
Released like radiant air dimming a moon,
Broad spaces of a vision without line
Or limit swam into his spirit's ken.

page40

The letters stood out of the unmoving Word:

page40&41

The immobile lips, the great surreal wings,
The visage masked by superconscient Sleep,
The eyes with their closed lids that see all things,
Appeared of the Architect who builds in trance.

page41

Even were caught as through a cunning veil
The smile of love that sanctions the long game,
The calm indulgence and maternal breasts
Of Wisdom suckling the child-laughter of Chance,
Silence, the nurse of the Almighty's power,
The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word,
And of the Timeless the still brooding face,
And the creative eye of Eternity.

End of Book 1-Canto 3