Canto Two
The Parable of the Search for the Soul
As in
the vigilance of the sleepless night
Through
the slow heavy-footed silent hours,
Repressing
in her bosom its load of grief,
She
sat staring at the dumb tread of Time
And
the approach of ever-nearing Fate,
A
summons from her being’s summit came,
A
sound, a call that broke the seals of Night.
Above
her brows where will and knowledge meet
A
mighty Voice invaded mortal space.
It
seemed to come from inaccessible heights
And
yet was intimate with all the world
And
knew the meaning of the steps of Time
And
saw eternal destiny’s changeless scene
Filling
the far prospect of the cosmic gaze.
As the
Voice touched, her body became a stark
And
rigid golden statue of motionless trance,
A
stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.
Around
her body’s stillness all grew still:
Her
heart listened to its slow measured beats,
Her
mind renouncing thought heard and was mute:
“Why
camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,
This
ignorant life beneath indifferent skies
Tied
like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,
O
spirit, O immortal energy,
If
’twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart
Or
with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?
Arise,
O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.”
But
Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night:
“My
strength is taken from me and given to Death,
Why
should I lift my hands to the shut heavens
Or
struggle with mute inevitable Fate
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Or
hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race
Who
hug their lot and mock the saviour Light
And
see in Mind Wisdom’s sole tabernacle,
In its
harsh peak and its inconscient base
A rock
of safety and an anchor of sleep?
Is
there a God whom any cry can move?
He
sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength
Impotent
against his calm omnipotent Law
And
Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.
What
need have I, what need has Satyavan
To
avoid the black meshed net, the dismal door,
Or
call a mightier Light into life’s closed room,
A
greater Law into man’s little world?
Why
should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws
Or
stave off death’s inevitable hour?
This
surely is best to pactise with my fate
And
follow close behind my lover’s steps
And
pass through night from twilight to the sun
Across
the tenebrous river that divides
The
adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.
Then
could we lie inarmed breast upon breast,
Untroubled
by thought, untroubled by our hearts,
Forgetting
man and life and time and its hours,
Forgetting
eternity’s call, forgetting God.”
The
Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit?
And
what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows
The
work was left undone for which it came?
Or is
this all for thy being born on earth
Charged
with a mandate from eternity,
A
listener to the voices of the years,
A
follower of the footprints of the gods,
To
pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?
Shall
there be no new tables, no new Word,
No
greater light come down upon the earth
Delivering
her from her unconsciousness,
Man’s
spirit from unalterable fate?
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Cam’st
thou not down to open the doors of Fate,
The
iron doors that seemed for ever closed,
And
lead man to truth’s wide and golden road
That
runs through finite things to eternity?
Is
this then the report that I must make,
My
head bowed with shame before the Eternal’s seat,—
His
power he kindled in thy body has failed,
His
labourer returns, her task undone?”
Then
Savitri’s heart fell mute, it spoke no word.
But
holding back her troubled rebel heart,
Abrupt,
erect and strong, calm like a hill,
Surmounting
the seas of mortal ignorance,
Its
peak immutable above mind’s air,
A
Power within her answered the still Voice:
“I am
thy portion here charged with thy work,
As
thou myself seated for ever above,
Speak
to my depths, O great and deathless Voice,
Command,
for I am here to do thy will.”
The
Voice replied: “Remember why thou cam’st:
Find
out thy soul, recover thy hid self,
In
silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths,
Then
mortal nature change to the divine.
Open
God’s door, enter into his trance.
Cast
Thought from thee, that nimble ape of Light:
In his
tremendous hush stilling thy brain
His
vast Truth wake within and know and see.
Cast
from thee sense that veils thy spirit’s sight:
In the
enormous emptiness of thy mind
Thou
shalt see the Eternal’s body in the world,
Know
him in every voice heard by thy soul:
In the
world’s contacts meet his single touch;
All
things shall fold thee into his embrace.
Conquer
thy heart’s throbs, let thy heart beat in God:
Thy
nature shall be the engine of his works,
Thy
voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:
Then
shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.”
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Then
Savitri by her doomed husband sat,
Still
rigid in her golden motionless pose,
A
statue of the fire of the inner sun.
In the
black night the wrath of storm swept by,
The
thunder crashed above her, the rain hissed,
Its
million footsteps pattered on the roof.
Impassive
mid the movement and the cry,
Witness
of the thoughts of mind, the moods of life,
She
looked into herself and sought for her soul.
A
dream disclosed to her the cosmic past,
The
crypt-seed and the mystic origins,
The
shadowy beginnings of world-fate:
A lamp
of symbol lighting hidden truth
Imaged
to her the world’s significance.
In the
indeterminate formlessness of Self
Creation
took its first mysterious steps,
It
made the body’s shape a house of soul
And
Matter learned to think and person grew;
She
saw Space peopled with the seeds of life
And
saw the human creature born in Time.
At
first appeared a dim half-neutral tide
Of
being emerging out of infinite Nought:
A
consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast
And
pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void.
All
was the deed of a blind World-Energy:
Unconscious
of her own exploits she worked,
Shaping
a universe out of the Inane.
In
fragmentary beings she grew aware:
A
chaos of little sensibilities
Gathered
round a small ego’s pinpoint head;
In it
a sentient creature found its poise,
It
moved and lived a breathing, thinking whole.
On a
dim ocean of subconscient life
A
formless surface consciousness awoke:
A
stream of thoughts and feelings came and went,
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A foam
of memories hardened and became
A
bright crust of habitual sense and thought,
A seat
of living personality
And
recurrent habits mimicked permanence.
Mind
nascent laboured out a mutable form,
It
built a mobile house on shifting sands,
A
floating isle upon a bottomless sea.
A
conscious being was by this labour made;
It
looked around it on its difficult field
In the
green wonderful and perilous earth;
It
hoped in a brief body to survive,
Relying
on Matter’s false eternity.
It
felt a godhead in its fragile house;
It saw
blue heavens, dreamed immortality.
A
conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world
Hidden
behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,
An
indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts
Leaves
the vicegerent mind a seeming king.
In his
floating house upon the sea of Time
This
regent sits at work and never rests:
He is
a puppet of the dance of Time;
He is
driven by the hours, the moment’s call
Compels
him with the thronging of life’s need
And
the babel of the voices of the world.
This
mind no silence knows nor dreamless sleep,
In the
incessant circling of its steps
Thoughts
tread for ever through the listening brain;
It
toils like a machine and cannot stop.
Into
the body’s many-storeyed rooms
Endless
crowd down the dream-god’s messages.
All is
a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir,
There
is a tireless running to and fro,
A
haste of movement and a ceaseless cry,
The
hurried servant senses answer apace
To
every knock upon the outer doors,
Bring
in life’s visitors, report each call,
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Admit
the thousand queries and the calls
And
the messages of communicating minds
And
the heavy business of unnumbered lives
And
all the thousandfold commerce of the world.
Even
in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;
He
mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams,
He
strays in a sublime realm of symbol scenes,
His
night with thin-air visions and dim forms
He
packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes
And
only a moment spends in silent self.
Adventuring
into infinite mind-space
He
unfolds his wings of thought in inner air,
Or
travelling in imagination’s car
Crosses
the globe, journeys beneath the stars,
To
subtle worlds takes his ethereal course,
Visits
the gods on life’s miraculous peaks,
Communicates
with Heaven, tampers with Hell.
This
is the little surface of man’s life.
He is
this and he is all the universe;
He
scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;
A
whole mysterious world is locked within.
Unknown
to himself lives a hidden king
Behind
rich tapestries in great secret rooms;
An
epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,
He
lives on the sweet honey of solitude:
A
nameless god in an unapproachable fane,
In the
secret adytum of his inmost soul
He
guards the being’s covered mysteries
Beneath
the threshold behind shadowy gates
Or
shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.
The
immaculate Divine All-Wonderful
Casts
into the argent purity of his soul
His
splendour and his greatness and the light
Of
self-creation in Time’s infinity
As
into a sublimely mirroring glass.
Man in
the world’s life works out the dreams of God.
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But
all is there, even God’s opposites;
He is
a little front of Nature’s works,
A
thinking outline of a cryptic Force.
All
she reveals in him that is in her,
Her
glories walk in him and her darknesses.
Man’s
house of life holds not the gods alone:
There
are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants
of life’s ominous nether rooms,
A
shadowy world’s stupendous denizens.
A
careless guardian of his nature’s powers,
Man
harbours dangerous forces in his house.
The
Titan and the Fury and the Djinn
Lie
bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit
And
the Beast grovels in his antre den:
Dire
mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.
Insurgent
sometimes raises its huge head
A
monstrous mystery lurking in life’s deeps,
The
mystery of dark and fallen worlds,
The
dread visages of the adversary Kings.
The
dreadful powers held down within his depths
Become
his masters or his ministers;
Enormous
they invade his bodily house,
Can
act in his acts, infest his thought and life.
Inferno
surges into the human air
And
touches all with a perverting breath.
Grey
forces like a thin miasma creep
Stealing
through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,
Discolouring
the walls of upper mind
In
which he lives his fair and specious life,
And
leave behind a stench of sin and death:
Not
only rise in him perverse drifts of thought
And
formidable formless influences,
But
there come presences and awful shapes:
Tremendous
forms and faces mount dim steps
And
stare at times into his living-rooms,
Or
called up for a moment’s passionate work
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Lay a
dire custom’s claim upon his heart:
Aroused
from sleep, they can be bound no more.
Afflicting
the daylight and alarming night,
Invading
at will his outer tenement
The
stark gloom’s grisly dire inhabitants
Mounting
into God’s light all light perturb.
All
they have touched or seen they make their own,
In
Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill,
Disrupt
thought’s links and musing sequences,
Break
through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry
Or
they call the inhabitants of the abyss,
Invite
the instincts to forbidden joys,
A
laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth
And
with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor.
Impotent
to quell his terrible prisoners,
Appalled
the householder helpless sits above,
Taken
from him his house is his no more.
He is
bound and forced, a victim of the play,
Or,
allured, joys in the mad and mighty din.
His
nature’s dangerous forces have arisen
And
hold at will a rebel’s holiday.
Aroused
from the darkness where they crouched in the depths,
Prisoned
from the sight, they can be held no more;
His
nature’s impulses are now his lords.
Once
quelled or wearing specious names and vests
Infernal
elements, demon powers are there.
Man’s
lower nature hides these awful guests.
Their
vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.
An
awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.
In
house and house the huge uprising grows;
Hell’s
companies are loosed to do their work,
Into
the earth-ways they break out from all doors,
Invade
with blood-lust and the will to slay
And
fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world.
Death
and his hunters stalk a victim earth;
The
terrible Angel smites at every door:
Page – 481
An
awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And
massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
All is
the prey of the destroying force;
Creation
rocks and tremble top and base.
This
evil Nature housed in human hearts
A
foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The
soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
Expel
the householder, possess the house.
An
opposite potency contradicting God,
A
momentary Evil’s almightiness
Has
straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts.
It
imitates the Godhead it denies,
Puts
on his figure and assumes his face.
A
Manichean creator and destroyer,
This
can abolish man, annul his world.
But
there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
Calm
eyes divine regard the human scene.
All
the world’s possibilities in man
Are
waiting as the tree waits in its seed:
His
past lives in him; it drives his future’s pace;
His
present’s acts fashion his coming fate.
The
unborn gods hide in his house of Life.
The
daemons of the unknown overshadow his mind
Casting
their dreams into live moulds of thought,
The
moulds in which his mind builds out its world.
His
mind creates around him its universe.
All
that has been renews in him its birth,
All
that can be is figured in his soul.
Issuing
in deeds it scores on the roads of the world,
Obscure
to the interpreting reason’s guess,
Lines
of the secret purpose of the gods.
In
strange directions runs the intricate plan;
Held
back from human foresight is their end.
And
the far intention of some ordering Will
Or the
order of life’s arbitrary Chance
Finds
out its settled poise and fated hour.
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Our
surface watched in vain by reason’s gaze,
Invaded
by the impromptus of the unseen,
Helpless
records the accidents of Time,
The
involuntary turns and leaps of life.
Only a
little of us foresees its steps,
Only a
little has will and purposed pace.
A vast
subliminal is man’s measureless part.
The
dim subconscient is his cavern base.
Abolished
vainly in the walks of Time
Our
past lives still in our unconscious selves
And by
the weight of its hidden influences
Is
shaped our future’s self-discovery.
Thus
all is an inevitable chain
And
yet a series seems of accidents.
The
unremembering hours repeat the old acts,
Our
dead past round our future’s ankles clings
And
drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,
Or
from its buried corpse old ghosts arise,
Old
thoughts, old longings, dead passions live again,
Recur
in sleep or move the waking man
To
words that force the barrier of the lips,
To
deeds that suddenly start and o’erleap
His
head of reason and his guardian will.
An old
self lurks in the new self we are;
Hardly
we escape from what we once had been:
In the
dim gleam of habit’s passages,
In the
subconscient’s darkling corridors
All
things are carried by the porter nerves
And
nothing checked by subterranean mind,
Unstudied
by the guardians of the doors
And
passed by a blind instinctive memory,
The
old gang dismissed, old cancelled passports serve,
Nothing
is wholly dead that once has lived.
In dim
tunnels of the world’s being and in ours
The
old rejected nature still survives;
The
corpses of its slain thoughts raise their heads
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And
visit mind’s nocturnal walks in sleep,
Its
stifled impulses breathe and move and rise;
All
keeps a phantom immortality.
Irresistible
are Nature’s sequences:
The
seeds of sins renounced sprout from hid soil;
The
evil cast from our hearts once more we face.
Our
dead selves come to slay our living soul.
A
portion of us lives in present Time,
A
secret mass in dim inconscience gropes;
Out of
the inconscient and subliminal
Arisen,
we live in mind’s uncertain light
And
strive to know and master a dubious world
Whose
purpose and meaning are hidden from our sight.
Above
us dwells a superconscient god
Hidden
in the mystery of his own light:
Around
us is a vast of ignorance
Lit by
the uncertain ray of human mind,
Below
us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute.
But
this is only Matter’s first self-view,
A
scale and series in the Ignorance.
This
is not all we are or all our world.
Our
greater self of knowledge waits for us,
A
supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast:
It
sees from summits beyond thinking mind,
It
moves in a splendid air transcending life.
It
shall descend and make earth’s life divine.
Truth
made the world, not a blind Nature-Force.
For
here are not our large diviner heights;
Our
summits in the superconscient’s blaze
Are
glorious with the very face of God:
There
is our aspect of eternity,
There
is the figure of the god we are,
His
young unaging look on deathless things,
His
joy in our escape from death and Time,
His
immortality and light and bliss.
Our
larger being sits behind cryptic walls:
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There
are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts
That
wait their hour to step into life’s front:
We
feel an aid from deep indwelling Gods:
One
speaks within, Light comes to us from above.
Our
soul from its mysterious chamber acts;
Its
influence pressing on our heart and mind
Pushes
them to exceed their mortal selves.
It
seeks for Good and Beauty and for God;
We see
beyond self’s walls our limitless self,
We
gaze through our world’s glass at half-seen vasts,
We
hunt for the Truth behind apparent things.
Our
inner Mind dwells in a larger light,
Its
brightness looks at us through hidden doors;
Our
members luminous grow and Wisdom’s face
Appears
in the doorway of the mystic ward:
When
she enters into our house of outward sense,
Then
we look up and see, above, her sun.
A
mighty life-self with its inner powers
Supports
the dwarfish modicum we call life;
It can
graft upon our crawl two puissant wings.
Our
body’s subtle self is throned within
In its
viewless palace of veridical dreams
That
are bright shadows of the thoughts of God.
In the
prone obscure beginnings of the race
The
human grew in the bowed apelike man.
He
stood erect, a godlike form and force,
And a
soul’s thoughts looked out from earthborn eyes;
Man
stood erect, he wore the thinker’s brow:
He
looked at heaven and saw his comrade stars;
A
vision came of beauty and greater birth
Slowly
emerging from the heart’s chapel of light
And
moved in a white lucent air of dreams.
He saw
his being’s unrealised vastnesses,
He
aspired and housed the nascent demi-god.
Out of
the dim recesses of the self
The
occult seeker into the open came:
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He
heard the far and touched the intangible,
He
gazed into the future and the unseen;
He
used the powers earth-instruments cannot use,
A
pastime made of the impossible;
He
caught up fragments of the Omniscient’s thought,
He
scattered formulas of omnipotence.
Thus
man in his little house made of earth’s dust
Grew
towards an unseen heaven of thought and dream
Looking
into the vast vistas of his mind
On a
small globe dotting infinity.
At
last climbing a long and narrow stair
He
stood alone on a high roof of things
And
saw the light of a spiritual sun.
Aspiring
he transcends his earthly self;
He
stands in the largeness of his soul new-born
Redeemed
from encirclement by mortal things
And
moves in a pure free spiritual realm
As in
the rare breath of a stratosphere.
A lost
end of far lines of divinity,
He
mounts by a frail thread to his high source;
He
reaches his fount of immortality,
He
calls the Godhead into his mortal life.
All
this the spirit concealed had done in her:
A
portion of the mighty Mother came
Into
her as into its own human part:
Amid
the cosmic workings of the Gods
It
marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,
Dreamed
in the passion of her far-seeing spirit
To
mould humanity into God’s own shape
And
lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a
new world discover or create.
Earth
must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or
Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.
But
for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of
the mystic cavern in man’s heart
The
heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
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And
step into common nature’s crowded rooms
And
stand uncovered in that nature’s front
And
rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.
Obedient
to a high command she sat:
Time,
life and death were passing incidents
Obstructing
with their transient view her sight,
Her
sight that must break through and liberate the god
Imprisoned
in the visionless mortal man.
The
inferior nature born into ignorance
Still
took too large a place, it veiled her self
And
must be pushed aside to find her soul.
End of Canto Two
Page – 487