Aurobindo-8-Savitri-Book -1 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book IThe Book of Beginnings-
canto-4-The Secret Knowledge
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's


Beyond, beyond amid the limitless a path lit
The king was so high on his eminent height
'On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights'
Inclined to transience 'a deathbound littleness' we are
'Immortal our forgotten vastnesses
Await discovery in our summit selves'
Aware and beware how many in us of that..
Only 'a shapeless memory lingers' in our looking within

'In the oblivious field of mortal mind,
Revealed to the closed prophet eyes of trance
'The signals of eternity'in silent inward questing
'It is the origin and the master-clue,
A silence overhead, an inner voice,
A living image seated in the heart,
An unwalled wideness and a fathomless point,
'Truth of all these' is the 'secret grandiose meaning'

'Always we bear in us a magic key
Concealed in life's hermetic envelope.'
'It needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn,
It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.'...
Undeniably the way sages exemplified themselves
And so sadly exempted a huge unaware-flock today
'The dark Inconscient's signless mysteries
Stand up unsolved behind Fate's starting-line.'

'Along a path of aeons serpentine
In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.'
'And conscious of the high things not yet won,
Ever she nurses in her sleepless breast
An inward urge that takes from her rest and peace.Wonderful! ! ..

............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 linesfrom
Book-1 canto-4

Page 46

Our early approaches to the Infinite
Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge
While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.

This world is a beginning and a base
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must build reality.

Akin to the ineffable Secrecy,
Mystic, eternal in unrealised Time,
Neighbours of Heaven are Nature's altitudes.

Page 47

Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
Still regions of imperishable Light,
All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
And calm immensities of spirit space.

Sometimes the inexpressible Mystery
Elects a human vessel of descent.
A breath comes down from a supernal air,
A Presence is born, a guiding Light awakes,
A stillness falls upon the instruments:
Fixed, motionless like a marble monument,
Stone-calm, the body is a pedestal
Supporting a figure of eternal Peace.

Page 47&48

In moments when the inner lamps are lit
And the life's cherished guests are left outside,
Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.
A wider consciousness opens then its doors;

Page 48

We meet the ecstasy of the Godhead's touch
In golden privacies of immortal fire.


Ourself and a high stranger whom we feel,
It is and acts unseen as if it were not;
It follows the line of sempiternal birth,
Yet seems to perish with its mortal frame.

Page 49

A treasure of honey in the combs of God,
A Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,
It is our glory of the flame of God,

Page 49&50

In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,
Our very being seems to us questionable,
Our life a vague experiment, the soul
A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,
The earth a brute mechanic accident,
A net of death in which by chance we live.

Page50

Out of the unknown we move to the unknown.
Ever surround our brief existence here
Grey shadows of unanswered questionings;