Book Four. The Book of Birth and Quest
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Book Four. The Book of Birth and Quest
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
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Canto Four
The Quest
Summary
Some guidance leads her carriage; the godheads move who always act from behind the veil working out the destiny which is but the Spirit’s will. A calm Presence above her chooses each turn on the way. Her journey runs across crowded cities, forts, gardens and temples. During nights she rests in the palaces on the route. Then she comes into the countryside where Nature is fresh, not yet peopled with human cares and joys. She feels the closeness of the Earth and hears her inarticulate voice. Her nature is in communion with her Maker. King-sages come to share in her happy peace after their life of strife and labour. Some retire into the recesses of the soul and realise oneness with the world. Some break through the walls of the mind and soar into the heights of the Spirit from where Truth leans down on them. Ascetics sit in concentration waiting upon the Immutable and the Ineffable. Seers tune themselves to the universal Will and lie content in God. The young disciples around them are fashioned by their touch and greatened in their presence. In this air king-children play and grow in heroic moulds. Sages breathing freedom and joy assist the entry of gods on earth, teach the young to think and live high. Their presence, even their silence is of help to earth. In their environs beasts forget their enmities and join in friendship. Some, who go beyond the confines of thought, bring back to earth Force and Light from Beyond. Some watch as witnesses from their Silence, some disappear into the Vast. Savitri journeys through all these retreats, halts in the hermitages during nights or rests in the open, on the banks of rivers, in solitary tracts, in desert spaces. But still the quest is not accomplished, the destined face is not yet found. In the meanwhile the spring is gone and the burning summer is on.
The world-ways opened before Savitri.
At
first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes
But
as she moved across the changing earth The world-ways open wide before Savitri. At first her mind is full of the strangeness of the bright scenes she is traversing and her eyes are enraptured. But as she proceeds across the changing scenery a deeper Consciousness surges up in her. This Consciousness is universal and feels at home everywhere. It makes her identify herself with every country and people she comes across, till the destiny of entire mankind, becomes her own.
These
unfamiliar spaces on her way All was a part of old forgotten selves. Though the regions she traverses are new, they are familiar to some inner sense in her. All revives some old memories, landscapes, cities, rivers, plains. The stars shine recalling their past friendship with her, the winds whisper to her of ancient happenings. She does not indeed know the names of those she comes across, but she is aware that once before she has loved them as comrades. All is a part of lives past and forgotten.
Vaguely
or with a flash of sudden hints Either in a flash or in some vague way, her acts reveal a power held in the past; even the objective of her journey is not new. To her remembering witness soul it seems that, as a traveller to some predestined event, she is again setting out on a journey that has been often made in the past.
A
guidance turned the dumb revolving wheels The wheels of her swift-moving carriage are guided by veiled godheads, the Powers that are assigned to man by Providence and accompany him from his very birth, knowing the governing laws, inner and outer. They are the transmitters of his spirit’s will, observers and effectuators of what is called his fate, but is really the choice of his soul.
Inexorably
faithful to their task,
Attendants
on his destiny’s measured walk with the deeper will of the soul. It is they who carry the continuing thread forged by and linking up all his past lives. They follow the determined course of his destiny leading to the joys and pains that he has evoked by his actions. They are there to guide even his casual movements.
Nothing
we think or do is void or vain;
The
shadowy keepers of our deathless past Nothing that man thinks or does is without consequence. Every movement releases an energy and it goes forth on its course. These veiled custodians of man’s unbroken past see to it that each act of his will—whether he remembers it or not—produces its own consequence. Thus they make his fate the result of his own acts.
They
seem but parts of a mechanic Force, But this process is not seen by the outer eye. Man lives in the present; the past of which the present is a result, is not known to him. Hence to his mind labouring under the rule of the laws of physical Matter, all happenings, which are really consequences of his own past acts, appear to be the workings of a mechanical Force in Nature. In reality they are all instruments through which a supreme Will effectuates itself under the calm overseeing Eye of the Divine.
A
prescient architect of Fate and Chance The Divine architect who foresees all, who works through the instrumentation of Fate and Chance and shapes the life of man according to a prefigured pattern, knows precisely the significance and the consequence of each step and he watches the action of the lower agencies stumbling towards the fulfilment of his design.
Upon
her silent heights she was aware Savitri is aware of a calm Presence above her head. This Presence sees the goal of the journey and decides which turning to take. It uses the physical body as its pedestal, the seeing eyes as its torchlights, the hands holding the reins as its living instruments. All that is going on is really the working of a plan that has been drawn up of old; the way has been prepared by a faultless Guide.
Across
wide noons and glowing afternoons, On the long journey, she comes across the various aspects of Nature, meets different human beings and listens to the voices of the wide world. She speeds on impelled from within, silent in the luminous depths of her heart.
At
first her path ran far through peopled tracts: At first her path runs through crowded territories—kingdoms, scenes of imposing activity of men, noisy marts, towers and forts, beautiful gardens, magnificent assembly halls. She passes by small temples on the way in which a calm Image regards the rushing activity of man; she also passes by huge temples hewn in the rock, looking as if gods exiled from heaven have erected them as a semblance of the eternity they have lost in their banishment.
Often
from gilded dusk to argent dawn On her way, she often rests during nights in the palaces of kings. Her sleep is half-conscious — it is not of the overpowering type that pulls one down into sub-conscious or unconscious depths.
Hamlet
and village saw the fate-van pass, Savitri’s van, carrying the fate of the earth, passes through hamlets and villages where people are ever engaged in the small rounds of their existence, cultivating lands for the sustenance of their lives that are transient, mechanically moving in the same old grooves under a sky that watches, unchanging, their mortal toil below.
Away
from this thinking creature’s burdened hours
Here
was the childhood of primeval earth, Savitri now leaves behind all scenes of human labours and crosses into vaster spaces of Nature where human joys, fears and griefs have not yet entered and disturbed. Here she is able to see what the earth was like in its infancy—quiet, happy and expansive—wrapt in timeless musings. Men have still not come here filling it with their cares. Here are the royal expanses of God, the eternal sower, acres of grass-lands swaying to the winds, glistening in the bright sun.
Or
mid green musing of woods and rough-browed hills, Like a rapid hope journeying through dreamland, Savitri’s chariot hurries through green forests and rugged hills, through groves filled with the humming of the bees, passing by the frothy waters of rivers in flood.
Out
of the world’s immense unhuman past She passes over tracts which have absorbed memories of the long, dateless past of the earth even before man appeared; domains of light steeped in an ancient calm listen to the unaccustomed sound of Savitri’s horses; the vast silences of the woods engulf her from all sides; the bloonfing creepers and variegated growths mesh the wheels of her chariot.
The
strong importunate feet of Time fell soft
The
inner ear that listens to solitude, The tread of Time has been slow and soft on these lonely spaces; all things are fresh and whole. Unlike the physical ear that hears only the loud sounds of the external world, there is an inner ear that hears the silence of solitude, the silence behind the movement of life in which the Thought beyond word gathers; here in these lonely ways this self-rapt ear hears the inner rhythm without constriction. Here also rises in its inarticulate voice the aspiration of the earth in its intense concentration.
Afar
from the brute noise of clamorous needs Away from the loud clamour of the world of men, freed from the pull of outward will, the quieted, all seeking mind can here feel the ceaseless clasp of the mute, unfired love of Mother-Nature and know her as a living soul.
This
spirit stumbling in the fields of sense, Not yet was a world all occupied by care. Here the emerging spirit fumbling in the domains of the senses, the mortal buffetted on the waves of time, is able to find large spaces of release. Here is a world not yet filled with human cares and anxieties.
The
bosom of our mother kept for us still Here Mother-Nature has still reserved for man her solemn regions and meditative depths, her impersonal, vibrant solitudes and the glories of her rapture-fields.
Muse-lipped
she nursed her symbol mysteries The air is one of contemplation and mystery. It is a veritable place of worship where the joyous valleys serve for pure sacraments, the mountain tops for the altars of the dawn fires, where the beaches are continually invaded by the ocean and the huge forests resound with prophet-chantings.
Fields
had she of her solitary mirth, Fields stretch out in solitary joy, plains are quiet and happy in pouring light; all over are the cry of birds and hue of flowers; wildernesses are transformed to wonder by the moon; meditative evenings kindled by the stars, there are dim stirrings in the vastness of the night.
August,
exulting in her Maker’s eye, Here Nature exults in the sight of her Lord; she feels close to him in this region of the earth. In the stillness obtaining here she is able to converse with a Light that burns behind the veil, commune with the Eternity beyond this manifestation.
A
few and fit inhabitants she called
The
strong king-sages from their labour done, Here Nature calls and admits to her peace a few, fit inhabitants of the region. They feel at home in her wideness, in her height; they have broken out of the walls of their little ego-selves. Strong kings who have completed their tasks and are free from the tensions of their royal assignments, now attend as sages these sessions of peace. The struggle of their lives is left behind; now is the period of rest.
Happy
they lived with birds and beasts and flowers Here the king-sages live in happy communion with the birds, beasts, flowers and plants, the sun, the wind, the stars, the gyrations of time in the morn, the noon and the night.
Some
deeper plunged; from life’s external clasp Some of these sages delve deeper. They withdraw from the hold of outer life, retire into the vibrant, pure secrecies of the soul uninvaded by external impacts, and live there in immortal bliss. There in that ecstasy and silence they hear a profound Voice and behold an all-revealing Light.
All
time-made difference they overcame; They overcome the barriers of time and space. They widen their hearts and become one with the world. With their limitless love they embrace all and find the one Self that dwells in every heart. Expansion of consciousness starts from the heart and love is the door to reach the unity of the Self in all.
Attuned
to Silence and to the world-rhyme, They tune themselves to the Silence looming behind things and in that Silence hear the world-rhythms. They are no longer confined within the walls of the mind. Their sight is no longer limited to and distracted by apparent phenomena; their inner eye opens and sees wide and far, unaffected by what is seen. Their daily ascent reaches the peaks of their being and Truth from her celestial regions leans down to them. Spiritual suns of Eternity shine above them.
Nameless
the austere ascetics without home Here also are self-denuding, austere ascetics, giving up speech, motion, desire, withdrawn from fellow-beings, sitting alone absorbed in themselves on the purer heights of the self, on the silent, luminous peaks of concentration. These hermits who have renounced the world sit immobile like the tranquil hills around them,—hills that look like so many thoughts of some vast poise, waiting only for the Infinite’s flat to end themselves.
The
seers attuned to the universal Will,
About
them like green trees girdling a hill There are seers who are in time with the Universal Will, absorbed in God who ever smiles behind the exterior of earth’s forms, living unaffected by the pressing passage of time. Around these seers are young, earnest disciples shaped by their mere touch, trained to act directly and speak consciously; they are enlarging their consciousness from within and growing towards the heights of their masters.
Far-wandering
seekers on the Eternal’s path To these springs of Quietude, wanderers on the Path of the Eternal come to quench their spiritual thirst; here they spend a rich silent hour, bathing in the reigning purity of the gentle atmosphere of the place oozing peace, and under its influence find the ways of calm.
The
Infants of the monarchy of the worlds, Here too noble children, chosen souls, the coming hero-leaders of the dawning future, are nourished in the free air of the place and grow imbibing half-consciously the greatness of the seers and seekers of God.
Formed
in the type of the high thoughts they sang They are formed in the mould of the high themes they sing about and they learn effortlessly the poise of large vastitude that makes one share the cosmic impulses; no more confined to their little separate selves, moulded easily by the hand of the Divine Shaper, they meet Nature freely, without inhibitions, and serve her executive Power.
One-souled
to all and free from narrowing bonds, Free from the constricting bonds of ego and division, meeting all on the basis of one soul, radiating the warm, impersonal joy of wide equality, these sages live for the natural delight of God in existence.
Assisting
the slow entries of the gods, By means of this inner participation with the Divine, these sages help in the slow entry of the gods into the earth-field; they sow in the young minds under their charge the immortal thoughts which they themselves live; they teach and hold up to all the great Truth to which humanity must rise; they open the doors of liberation to the chosen few; themselves released from the dreary yoke of Time, they impart to the struggling world the Light they have gained; they are both the companions and the channels of the Cosmic Force; they have a natural mastery over things as the radiant sun has. Not their speech alone but even their silence is a help to the earth.
A
magic happiness flowed from their touch; mies among the beasts join in friendship; hatred and strife cease. Through the hearts of the sages flows the one Mother’s Love healing the wounds of the world.
Others
escaped from the confines of thought There are others among the sages who have gone beyond the bounds of thought to the heights of being where the mind lies still, dormant, receptively waiting for the outbreak of the higher Light; when they come back from these summits they are charged with a new Force and their very cells vibrate with flashes of light.
Intuitive
knowledge leaping into speech, Intuitive knowledge flows through their words; their ear is open to the subtle sound, nada, that covers the celestial realms; they bear the glory that lights up the suns in the skies. They hymn the names of Infinity and the Powers Immortal in metres that correspond to the rhythms of the movement of the worlds; the seeing word, pasyanti vak, breaks out from the pro-founds of their Soul.
Some
lost to the person and his strip of thought Some are no more conscious of their personal selves and thought; they are poised in a status of immobile, vast, impersonal Power, seeing with the Light of the Infinite. In tune with the eternal Will, they survey the rollings of Time.
Some
winged like birds out of the cosmic sea Some soar out of the universal expanse and disappear into a shining, indeterminate Vast. Some, steeped in Silence, watch the Cosmic play or stay indifferent and yet by that indifference help the world; even their uninvolved presence acts as a stable support to the world-movement.
Some
watched no more merged in a lonely Self, Some, however, do not watch the universe at all; they are merged in the Self that is aloof from everything; completely absorbed in the trance-state from which none returns to external waking condition, they shut themselves off from the various occult world-systems, freed from the bonds of birth and individuality. Some isolate themselves from everybody and everything and reach the Reality that is inexpressible in speech.
As
floats a sunbeam through a shady place,
Often
in twilight mid returning troops Savitri in her chariot drives past these scenes of meditation. Often she arrives at a peaceful hermitage in the evening as the cattle are returning home after grazing and the busy day has set; she rests there covering herself, as it were, with the spirit of unhurried contemplation and powerful prayer reigning in that place.
Or
near to a lion river’s tawny mane Or it is a domed temple exuding a serenity of repose, amidst solemn trees on the bank of a river, that beckons to her to stay awhile.
In
the solemnity of a space that seemed In the solemnity of that spot redolent with memories of ancient silences, where mighty voices from the past reach the heart and the wide freedom of contemplative seers has left a strong stamp of their soul-action, Savitri—awake in the moonlit night or at the break of dawn—shares tranquilly the pervading stillness and feels close to the eternal Calm.
But
morn broke in reminding her of her quest However, with the coming of the morning Savitri is reminded of her quest. She gets up from the humble couch or mat on which she rested during the night and resumes her journey. She follows the destined curve of her life as she is impelled to, like a strong desire that meets and questions the gods who answer not and without tarrying there proceeds on its way to some radiant Beyond.
Thence
to great solitary tracts she came, She arrives at bare uninhabited tracts where man does not dwell but only passes across to find more habitable regions, or where man struggles to live in the extended vastnesses of Nature and overcome by the immensity of his environment, unconscious of his own veiled infinity, prays to the Gods for help. The Gods are Powers of the Supreme God-head individualised and manifest in subtler forms for purposes of the Manifestation.
The
Earth multiplied to her a changing brow
The
mountains in their anchorite solitude, The Earth presents to Savitri a variegated landscape and beckons her farther and farther. The hermit-like mountains and the forests humming with innumerable sounds reveal to her, as it were, the doors of the Divinity veiled in Earth-Nature.
On
dreaming plains, an indolent expanse, Savitri lies down relaxedly under the open skies on musing plains; she crosses clusters of hills shooting into the skies; she journeys through strange and vacant tracts where barren summits stand like dumb sentinels under a wandering moon;
Or
wandered in some lone tremendous wood She wanders in a solitary thick forest chiming with the crickets’ cry; or she takes a long shining road darting through fields and pastures under a relentless sun; or she arrives at a desert, wildly beautiful, where nothing has ever grown and sleeps there upon the bare, dry sands amidst the night cries of wild and savage beasts.
Still
unaccomplished was the fateful quest; A grandiose silence wrapped the regal day.
The
months had fed the passion of the sun
The
tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth; The spring winds failed; the sky was set like bronze. Still Savitri’s fateful quest is not fulfilled; she has not yet found the decreed person for whom she has
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