Book Seven. The Book of Yoga
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII
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Book Seven: Canto 3 The Entry Into The Inner Countries
Savitri surges out of the physical body, stands. a little outside of it. looks into the depths of tier subtle being and there in its heart divines her secret soul. She knocks and presses against the door that guards the inner life; there is a loud cry from within asking her to go back to earth lest she be tortured and put to death. A dreadful movement rises up. The guardian Serpent at the threshold rises hissing, hounds of darkness growl, strange little beings of varied shapes scoul and stare, wild animal roarings fill the air with terror. All around is menace. Still. unshaken, she presses on the bars of the gate and the gate opens with a protesting jar. The opposing Powers withdraw. She enters the inner worlds Through the portals of the subconscient that is suffocating, she enters the region of subtle Matter and forces her way through the body to the soul. At first it is all chaos; life is struggling to emerge from Matter into some incipient mind. Nothing is formed, all is drifting, uncertain. After a while, during which she walks into the corridors of inner Time, she breaks out into a realm of forms, of the beginnings -of finiteness, of the world of the senses: but the soul is not there. All is the clamour, of life. Voices, visions, movements abound, but without any directing will. Life’s power attempts to pull down reason from its seat so that it could reign unfettered in its sense-world. Savitri pushes away this threatened state and goes on through this dark dangerous passage fixing her thought on the saviour Name. Then comes a deliverance. All grows still. empty, She moves through a blank tranquillity—a vacuum of nameless peace. Slowly another danger arises on the horizon. A giant head of Life with an uncontrolled Force looms ahead. Like a turbulent sea it breaks into the stillness of her self and floods her being with its lust for power, its cry of hunger. Drunk from the well of the world-libido, it seeks for the primitive joy of Nature. It dreams of the glory of the life gods and cycles of Desire rise in this infinity. This ardour of Life is not blunted by the weight of the earth and as this Force of Life rises upwards, there is the glow of the mind of Life, the vital mind imitating the light of intuition and its infallibility. But it is a borrowed light mingled with falsehood and error. In these nether realms of Life all kinds of contraries are mixed up. Truth and error, Wisdom and Ignorance, Death and Life are all mingled in: this valley of fleeting Gleams. Souls trapped in this region become agents of Life’s desires, not their masters. Some, however, warily pass across and reach a greater life. All this streams past Savitri’s vision; the storm and the roar subside and she breathes once again a free and tranquil air. She journeys on and steps into a brilliant. ordered Space where Life is tamed and under control, her will and fancy curbed. Mind and sense govern the Life-Force. Reason dominates with its rule of symmetrv. The soul is enthroned on a bench of law. Wisdom is reduced to formula, The ample sweep of Idea is cut into a System and fixed to pillars of thought or clamped to the ground of Matter. The soul is lost in its heights. Thought revels in its abstractions. Life’s empire is forced into a scheme of Reason; its course is confined to a safe level path. It no more dares to adventure, to soar too high or set the world afire. Under this dispensation of Reason, thought cannot fly too high or vast: life-movements are severely cabined; they are directed by a careful reason or some calm will towards some chosen objective. Life-activity is not a spontaneous projection of the inner being. The soul is walled in by limited ideas. Meditation, worship, religion—all of these are narrowed and mentalised. Ethics is brought in to rule life and Knowledge covered over by creed. There comes the country of the Thought-Mind, where there is an air of final stability. There she is greeted by a being of imposing self-importance who welcomes her to that land of thought’s finality and urges her to rest there where alone she can find the perfection and certainty she is seeking for. But Savitri perceives that all there is only a limiting, orderly reign of the intellect and declines to stay in that realm of apparent Knowledge. She must proceed to find her soul. Some are astonished to hear such questions; some scoff at her talk of ‘soul’ which they consider to be but a small gland or a freak of secretion. Some pity her ignorance in mistaking the Spirit to be other than a creation of the Mind. One, however, with mystic and unsatisfied eyes, still remembering his old unsuccessful quest, wonders that there is still someone who seeks for a Beyond. Savitri goes on across her silent self. She comes to a road thronged with a luminous company of gods, goddesses and beings rushing towards the world to save it. She asks them the road which she must tread to reach the birthplace of the Mystic Fire, the abode of her secret soul. One of them replies to her that they all come from her own hidden soul, they are the occult gods who help men in their struggles. He asks her to follow the world’s winding highway to its source where she will find in deep, unfrequented Silence the Fire and the silent soul she is searching for. Savitri follows the direction and enters a brooding hush where is felt the silent nearness of the soul.
At first out of the
busy hum of mind By an inward-going process Savitri leaves the busy, humming region of the active mind and enters within—like one withdrawing from a hectic market thoroughfare into a solitary, silent cave. There she finds in a sheer, still emptiness her inner self. Her mind, no longer crossed by the sound of thought, stares at the mute infinity of a profound void.
Her heights receded,
her depths behind her closed;
But when she came
back to her self of thought, Her consciousness rises to greater heights, goes within into deeper depths. Everything disappears, she is left without thought, without feeling—blank. However, when she returns to her thinking self, she is once again a human being of the earth:a form of Matter, a house without windows, a mind compelled to think and move in ignorance, a life-energy directed into a vortex of activity with the material world forming her limited field.
Amazed like one
unknowing she sought her way Then a Voice spoke that dwelt on secret heights: Human ignorance mistakes the surface being for the soul, the real self that is deep within. Savitri leaves that confused web of human heritage and seeks her way within wondering like one who knows not the path. Then from the secret heights of her being a Voice speaks:
“For man thou seekst, not for thyself alone.
Only if God assumes
the human mind Thou art not seeking here for thyself alone, but for all men, for man.To help man grow into God. God himself must assume the human form; he must accept the instrumentation of the human mind, put on the cloak of mortal ignorance and reduce himself to the puny stature of Vamana, the Dwarf-Man Avatar, expanding and covering in his three steps all existence,—the worlds of Physical earth, Life-regions and the Mental-heavens
As man disguised the
cosmic Greatness works Man human follows in God’s human steps.
Accepting his
darkness thou must bring to him light, In Matter’s body find thy heaven-born soul.” “The Divine Greatness specially manifest in the Cosmos, the Avatar, works under the disguise of the human form. It finds the secret gate inaccessible to mortals and opens the golden door of the Immortal. The human being, man, follows in the path laid by the Divine in its human form and gait. Thou must accept the darkness of man before thou canst bring him light, accept his sorrow before thou canst bring him bliss. Thou halt to bear his burden before thou canst relieve man of his heavy lot. Discover thy soul, divinely born, in this body formed of Matter.”
Then Savitri surged
out of her body’s wall Then Savitri breaks out of the physical barriers of her body, stations herself a little above it and gazes into the depths .of her subtle being behind the physical body. And she intuits the seat of her secret and unfathomed soul to be in the centre, in the lotus bud, of the subtle being.
At the dim portal of
the inner life
The living portal
groaned with sullen hinge: There is an obscure door at the entrance of the inner regions of the being which bars the physical mind and all else that is physical e.g. the gross senses from entry into our depths. Savitri knocks and presses against this hard, dark gate and the live doorway groans with its unyielding hinge: it is obstinately reluctant to be disturbed in its inertness and complains against the compulsion to open by the pressure of the spirit that Savitri brings to bear upon it.
A formidable voice
cried from within: A dreadful murmur rose like a dim sea; A mighty and dreadful voice cries from within: “O creature of earth, turn back’ otherwise thou shalt be tortured, torn and left to die.” A fearful murmur as of a dark sea rises up.
The Serpent of the
threshold hissing rose, The guardian Power at the threshold of the interior, the deadly Serpent of unearthly hood and huge coils, rises hissing; the hounds of the nether darkness growl with open mouths; all the little subtler entities and elements that dwell there unseen scowl at this intrusion and stare; the hidden beast in the subconscient roars and spreads alarm; there is an atmosphere of audible menace and danger.
Unshaken her will
pressed on the rigid bars: Savitri is not shaken. Resolutely she pushes the rigid bars of the gate which then swings wide albeit with a loud jar of protest, The opponent Powers withdraw their fierce guard. The passage being opened, Savitri’s being enters the inner worlds.
In a narrow passage,
the subconscient’s gate,
Into a dense of
subtle Matter packed, While passing through the narrow passage of the gate of the subconscient, Savitri has difficulty even in breathing and is full of pain, yet she strives to get at the inner self behind the outer senses. A mass of blind power is stored in the heaviness of subtle Matter; misguiding flashes act in opposition, there is a strong and thick barrier where sight refuses to see. Through all these deformations of power, light and sight in the body she forces her way to the soul.
Across a perilous
border line she passed She crosses a dangerous border line where life enters the obscurity of the subconscient or struggles from Matter into the chaotic low levels of the mind crowded with elemental entities and quivering shapes of half-formed thoughts and the raw beginnings of uncontrolled force.
At first a difficult
narrowness was there,
At times an opening
came, a door was forced; Initially she finds a narrowness difficult to negotiate; there is a pressing of powers that are not sure of themselves, of wills that are not steady but drifting. Indeed all is there around, but nothing is in its right place. All is in chaos. At times there comes an opening and she forces open a door; she crosses through the corridors of a secret self and walks in the passages of a Time that pertains to the inner realms (different from the Time of the outer world).
At last she broke
into a form of things, Soul was not there but only cries of life. A thronged and clamorous air environed her. At last she steps into a realm of forms, where distinct finitising of things begins, a world cognisable by sense. But vet, all is confused, nothing is distinct and standing by itself. There is no soul there; there are only sounds and cries of life. She is surrounded by a crowded and ‘agitated air.
A horde of sounds
defied significance, There is a medley of sounds without meaning, a confused jumble and clash of cries and opposing calls, a crowd of visions, a disorderly scene with neither sense nor sequence. There is a rush of feelings through a crowded and loaded heart, each forcing its own, separate, disconnected way raring for nothing else but its ego-impulse.
A rally without key
of common will, There is a crowd of thoughts with no coordinating will; each thought looks askance at another and pulls at the strained brain as if to drag down the reason from its secure seat, muffle and throw it away into the roadside drain thus would reason—the watchful sentinel of the soul—lie slain and forgotten in Nature’s mire.
So could life’s
power shake from it mind’s rule, Once the reason is overthrown, the life-power could be free from the rule of the mind, Nature break away from the regulation of the Spirit, the raw elemental energies turn sense into an orgy of unbounded joy, a dazzling play of blissful disorder, a reckless and irresistible indulgence of mad ecstasy.
This was the sense’s
instinct void of soul Such is the instinctive turn of the sense when it is not informed by the soul or when the soul lies dormant in its secrecy without dynamism. But there is the vital self within which wakes up and lifts life with the touch of a higher spirit.
But how shall come
the glory and the flame
For body without
mind has not the light, Still, if the mind be not there, if the mind were thrown away, how can there come the glory and the upward flame of enlightened, aspiring life? For without the mind to illumine and guide it, the body will remain without light, without the articulate joy of life, without the ecstasy of the spirit-informed sense.
All then becomes
subconscient, tenebrous, Then all becomes subconscious, dark; Inconscience reigns. A wild disorder racks the brain with a chaos of jostling, disparate impulses rushing through the natural being, shutting out all light, all joy, all peace.
This state now threatened, this she pushed from her.
As if in a long
endless tossing street A large deliverance came, a vast calm space. Such a state now threatens to engulf Savitri, but she pushes it away from her. Like one driven amid a hurrying crowd on a long road she goes on and on, compelling by her strong will the brute hounds to stay at a distance from her; she forces her will into action in spite of all that terrible compression and fixes her thought upon the Divine Name. Then suddenly comes a change. All becomes still and empty. She is free. There is a large freedom, a Nast calm peace.
Awhile she moved
through a blank tranquillity For a while she moves on through tracts of blank tranquillity; there pours down a direct light from a sun that is, however, not visible. It is a void full of vague happiness, a blissful vaccum of an undefinable peace.
But now a mightier
danger’s front drew near:
Approaching loomed a
giant head of Life The pulls and pressures of the physical mind, pointless thought and aimless will—elements issuing from the Inconscient—have fallen away from her. But a more formidable danger approaches. A giant head of Life appears on the scene; it is not controlled by the mind or the soul: it is subconscient, vast.
It tossed all power
into a single drive,
Into the stillness
of her silent self, This life concentrates all its strength into a single blow as powerful as the might of perilous seas. It flings itself with the speed of a torrent to invade the stillness of her silent self, musing in pure white space. It is as furious in its attack as wind-driven waves rising like mountains and crashing on the summer sand.
Enormous was its vast and passionate voice.
It cried to her
listening spirit as it ran,
A deaf force calling
to a status dumb, The voice of Life is all pervading and clamorous in its cry to the spirit of Savitri demanding the surrender of God to its unbound Force. It will not submit to the rule of God. This force is lost in its own movement and works and it cries aloud in an inarticulate vast domain. It clutches at joy and claims the heart’s support for it; it has an innate urge and need to act and it claims the consent of the witnessing soul for it; it lusts for more and more power and seeks the sanction of Savitri’s inner being that is neutral, uninvolved.
Into the wideness of
her watching self This Life-Force brings a mighty gust of the Breath of Life into the wide spaces of Savitri’s witnessing self; its powerful torrent carries with it the hopes and fears of the entire world, the restless hungry cry of all Nature, all Life; its longing is such that all eternity cannot satisfy it.
It called to the
mountain secrecies of the soul The call of this surging Life-Force strives to reach the unseen Lights of the soul and the mystic flame of the undying aspiration. It communicates with the ineffable ecstasy that beats secretly in the creative rhythms of life.
Out of the nether
unseen deeps it tore From out of the nether hidden depths, the torrent of Life pours its alluring contents of chaotic bliss into the earth region: the intoxicating wine of the primitive joy of Nature, the intensities and mysteries of the delights (forbidden by the awakened consciousness.) drunk from the bottomless world-desire, and the outwardly sweet but intrinsically poisonous draught of lust and death. It dreams of and reaches out to the headier wine of the life-gods and feels the extremes of rapture bordering on pain as something celestial.
The cycles of the
infinity of desire The unending cycles of boundless desire and a secret sense of conviction that points to an unrealised world and makes it larger than the world that is known and more intimate than those unknown realms in which the forces of mind and life are ever amuck, draw out a deep dissatisfied urge from within to reach out for what is unfulfilled and far away, to make of life on this limiting earth a climbing towards altitudes that stretch into the Void, an incessant search for the glory of what looks impossible now.
It dreamed of that
which never has been known, This Force of Life dreams of what has not been known and realised, clutches at what has not been secured so far, it pursues the memory of the charms of the short-lived delights of the heart. The memory of such a state pushes it on to try to actualise it.
It dared the force
that slays, the joys that hurt, It takes on the force that could kill, embraces the joys that hurt, tries to formulate things that are still not accomplished, responds to the call of an alluring fast-changing dance of disintegration, participates in the passionate intensities of love and the varied play of the uncontrolled Animal with Beauty and Life.
It brought its cry
and surge of opposite powers, This movement of the vital Force brings with it the clamour and the clang of contrary powers, it touches at times the hem of luminous planes above, it soars high and throws itself wide into the vasts of the skies, it builds flaming dream-towers in its speeding course.
Its sinkings towards
the darkness and the abyss, This mighty life-movement has its plunges into the nether dark regions, its sweetness of tender feeling, its sting of hatred, its rapid turnabouts of brightness and obscurity, of cheer and depression, its endless pits of danger and engulfing vasts, its changing moods of fear and joy, ecstasy and despair, its involved, magical movements as well as its direct, simple acts, its intimacies with greater Verities, its large uplifting actions, its perception and faith in the high felicities of the heavens above, its natural inclination towards and sorties into the hells below.
These powers were
not blunt with the dead weight of earth,
There was an ardour
in the gaze of Life These powers of Life are not blunted with the petrified weight of this physical base, the earth. They carry the exhilaration of the drink of the gods as well as the deadly sting of poison. There is an intensity in the powerful gaze of Life that discovers the splendid blue of heaven in the pervading greyness of Night. It has its godward impulses that soar high on the wings of its irresistible passion.
Mind’s quick-paced
thoughts floated from their high necks Then come the fast-moving thoughts of the vital mind—with a brilliant glow resembling the light of pure intuition. They can imitate the flashing movements of intuition. The voices of this mind try to pass off as inspiration with its stress of infallibility—the right inspiration being always infallible its speed and its godlike. heavenly leap towards the truth.
A trenchant blade
that shore the nets of doubt,
Yet all that
knowledge was a borrowed sun’s; Further this mind displays a keen discerning power that cuts across all maze of doubt and seems to be almost divine. But all this display is not the light of the original Sun of Knowledge; it is an imitative light from a questionable source with forms far from genuine. Its power is strong and dangerous, capable of adding deadly poison to the exhilarating wine of God, cleverly mixing fatal falsehood with the inspiring truth of God.
On these high
shining backs falsehood could ride; Such are the high glittering movements on which falsehood rides. Truth sports with error in delight and slides downwards in attractive formations. Truth allows her light to be surrounded by an imposing falsehood.
Here in Life’s
nether realms all contraries meet;
Those galloping
hooves in their enthusiast speed Here in the nether domains of Life all opposites come together. Truth works blindly as if there were a bandage over her eyes while wisdom exists only under the sufferance of Ignorance. The speeding energies of Life may rush one into a perilous intermediate zone where Death stalks under the guise of immortal Life.
Or they enter the
valley of the wandering Gleam
Agents, not masters,
they serve Life’s desires Or these Life-energies may enter the Valley of the wandering Gleam where souls are misled by a false light and get trapped without escape. These souls are not masters but slaves of Life’s desires and for ever they toil for them in the net of Time.
Their bodies born
out of some Nihil’s womb The bodies of these souls are born of the womb of some Nothing and they entrap the spirit in passing dreams of the moment. Then they die ejecting the immortal soul out of its encasement of Matter into a pit of Nil.
Yet some uncaught,
unslain can warily pass Still, some souls can with care pass through these dangerous regions without being arrested or slain, for they carry some emanation or image of Truth in their guarded heart. They can separate and pluck Knowledge from the covering hold of error, open up paths through the limiting and blind walls of the little self, and then journey further on to reach the domains of a larger, greater Life.
All this streamed
past her and seemed to her vision’s sight All this flows past Savitri and it seems to her inner sight as if around a high mute island a torrent of waters from unknown hills afar overflows its narrow banks with its rushing waves and throws up a hungry world of white wild foam.
Hastening, a dragon
with a million feet, This huge tide throwing up wave after wave of gleaming foam shouts aloud like a drunken giant and tosses up a mane of Darkness, as it were, into the skies above and then ebbs away, its roar receding into a distance.
Then smiled again a
large and tranquil air: Once again smiles a wide and tranquil air. Beauty reigns with her companions of blue heaven and green earth, radiantly happy as before. The world’s heart is full of laughter and the joy of life.
All now was still, the soil shone dry and pure. Through it all she moved not, plunged not in the vain waves.
Out of the vastness
of the silent self All now is still; the terrain is bright, dry and pure. Throughout all this violent disturbance. Savitri has not plunged into the vainly repetitive waves. She has not moved out of the vastitude of her silent self. The loud clang and din of Life dies away. Her spirit continues to be silent and free.
Then journeying
forward through the self’s wide hush
There Life dwelt
parked in an armed tranquillity; Savitri presses forward through the wide stillness of her self and steps into a radiantly bright region where all is set in an ordered manner. Here Life dwells housed in a well guarded quietude; a chain is put, as it were, on her rebellious spirit. The rule of Reason has begun.
Tamed to the modesty
of a measured pace, Life’s wild pace is brought under a measured control; she no more runs about with her usual vehemence and rush. The free sway of her musings and the large grandeur of her royal force are no more there, Her imposing displays, hey splendid wastes are under check; her drunken frolics are sobered down, Her reckless self-spendings in pursuit of desires are reduced. Her imperious will is reined in, so also the play of her fancy. The wild activity of her senses is tied up in a kind of immovable immobility.
Her spirit’s bounds they cast in rigid lines.
A royalty without
freedom was her lot; The spirit of life is bound in rigid limits. She is still sovereign, but she has no real freedom of action; the monarch is obliged to obey the ministers. Even mind and sense—originally her servants—govern her house, guard with their own systems of hard rules and regulations the balanced reign of reason; they keep order and peace in this region.
Her will lived
closed in adamant walls of law, Life’s will is circumscribed by rigid laws, her force kept tinder check by cords seemingly decorative. Imagination which is the favourite indulgence of Life is imprisoned. The status of reality and the symmetrical order of reason are established in their place under the watchful eye of proven facts. The soul is enthroned on the narrow bench of law, with a small world patterned by rule and line for its kingdom. The wisdom of the ages is substituted by a cut and dried system at the hands of the commentator, and reduced to a codified text-book tabulation.
The Spirit’s
almighty freedom was not here: The all-powerful freedom of the Spirit is not here: The small mind addicted to system and petty orderliness has taken possession of the vaster domains of life; though these spaces are large this mind constricts itself in bare and tiny rooms. This it does to fortify itself from the vast universe around so that it may not run the danger of losing its entity in the widenesses of the universe.
Even the Idea’s
ample sweep was cut Even the Idea is forced to limit its natural wide range; it is cut down to fit into a system, tied to fixed formulations of thought or rivetted to the physical bases of Matter. Or the soul is lost in itself on its altitudes. Following the pull of the Ideal towards the abstract, Thought dwells in an unsubstantial air looking down on the concrete earth as something trivial and dull; it shuts itself from reality in order to be free to luxuriate in its own dreams.
Or all stepped into
a systemed universe: Everything is contained in a systematised scheme. The large and free domain of life is placed under firm management; life’s thoughts are serried together in an order and a sequence according to fixed logic enforced by the disciplinarian mind.
Or each stepped into
its station like a star Or each thought takes its position, lone and shining by itself; or it moves through an ordered and organised system; or it holds itself in its special status in the general unchanging set-up of the cosmos.
Or like a highbred
maiden with chaste eyes Life is here obliged to be restrained in her movements. She can no more rush about in her primitive freelance ways. He• movements must not be too obvious, her feelings must stay concealed or flow into cultivated, elegant channels.
Life was consigned
to a safe level path, Life is assigned a well-bid out course without risk. She no more attempts to scale difficult altitudes nor shoots up to companion a lonely star in the skies; nor does she dare the danger of the precipice nor brave the dangerous waves of the sea. Life no more sings the paens of adventure nor experiments with danger. She no longer seeks the companionship of some flaming god. She does not go beyond the safe hounds of the worlds nor seek with passion the Face of the Adorable Lord in the infinite vasts. Neither does she fire the world with the intensity of her inner flame.
A chastened epithet
in the prose of life, Life has now a more subdued, mellowed part to play in a less colourful world. She is allotted a limited space within which alone she can display her characteristic hues. She is confined to the ruling Idea and cannot break out of it; she is not allowed to foray into realms that are considered either too high or too vast for her assigned role.
Even when it soared
into ideal air, Thought itself cannot soar too high; even when it touches the domains of the Ideal, it cannot lose itself in the purity of those heavens. All it can do is to draw a fine picture of elegance and balanced composition on the skies of the abstract.
A temperate vigilant
spirit governed life: A restrained and watchful spirit governs life. Its acts are the result of deliberating thought and hence lack the animation to fire the world. Its movements are the calculated moves of the careful reason experimenting with ways and means to arrive at a chosen goal. Even at their highest, these movements are part of a plan of some calm unseen Will or the strategy of some Ruler within to capture the secret powers of the gods or win for a veiled monarch some world of glory.
Not a reflex of the
spontaneous self, Its movements are not spontaneous like those of the self nor are they an index of the being and its moods; nor are they the soaring of the conscious spirit, nor an act of worship of life in communion with the still calm Supreme; nor are they a natural and pure movement of life on the path of the Eternal.
Or else for the body
of some high Idea Or reason builds here a narrow and rigid construction for some high Idea to live in. Both action and thought work to raise a circumscribing wall of small, petty ideals around the soul.
Even meditation
mused on a narrow seat; Even meditation is not a wide and spontaneous movement it is a contemplation from a small, narrow base. Worship itself is directed to an exclusive—not an all-inclusive—God. Prayers are offered to the Universal Spirit in a chapel, whose doors, however, are closed to the wide universe. Or a mind impervious to the call and pa.ion of love kneels in prayer to a cold, formless Impersonal.
A rational religion dried the heart.
It planned a smooth
life’s acts with ethics’ rule
The sacred Book lay
on its sanctified desk Religion is rationalised, shaped and governed by reason; so done, it dries up all the emotional and psychic movements of the heart. It seeks to govern smoothly all the movements of life with the rule of Ethics. The sacrifice it offers to God is cold and lacks the fire of aspiration. Its Scripture, the Book of Wisdom lies shut in the decorative wrappings of interpretation; its spiritual meaning is hidden and sealed in creed—the truth is covered by beliefs and opinions organised into a system.
Here was a quiet
country of fixed mind,
Soul was not there
nor spirit, but mind alone; Further Savitri enters another space—the quiet realm of the thought-mind. Here life is no longer dominant nor the cry of passion. The clamour of the senses has sunk into a hush. Neither the individual soul nor the spirit is here; only the mind exists. And mind claims to be the sole reality—the soul and the spirit of all.
The spirit saw
itself as form of mind, Here the mind is not seen as a poise of the spirit. Instead the spirit sees itself as a form taken by the mind. The spirit loses itself in the splendour of the thought that reigns supreme in this region. But this thought is a light that obscures and covers the true sun of Knowledge.
Into a firm and
settled space she came Each found what it had sought and knew its aim. All had a final last stability. Savitri has come into a region of settled and ordered space. Everything is still, each keeps to its allotted place. Each has found what it has searched for and knows as its goal, There is an air of achieved stability about the whole region. Alternate version:This narrowed life’s pedestrian thought and will Debauched into la little continent spaceWhere soul was not nor spirit thinking mindLaboured content with small finalities.It seemed to it the lop of being’s areAnd the last circle of the quest of life.It was a paradise for thought’s crowned easeWhere nothing more was left to find or know,A tabernacle of wise contented life. This constricted and dulled life-movement breaks into a small domain where neither soul not spirit is. only the thinking mind is at work satisfied with its small certainties. To this mind, this state appears to be the highest possible status of the being, the final phase of the quest of life. It is a paradise of the felicities of thought, with nothing more left to seek or to know, a writable abode of wise, contented existence.
There one stood
forth who bore authority Here a being with an air of authority and self-importance comes forward and begins to speak. His speech is instinct with the spirit and tone of command it is cast into the mould of the hardened wisdom of tradition. His words have the authority and finality of an oracle.
“Traveller or
pilgrim of the inner world,
O aspirant to the
perfect way of life, Ours is the home of cosmic certainty. O traveller or pilgrim to the inner world, thou art indeed fortunate to arrive into our bright kingdom radiant with the final certitude of thought. O aspirant to the perfect way of life, here is that perfect way. Cease from thy searchings and rest here in peace. This is the home of cosmic certainty where all is finally known.
Here is the truth, God’s harmony is here.
Register thy name in
the book of the elite, The truth is here; God’s harmony is here. Here are the elite of creation, be thou one of these; seek the sanction of the elect and choose thy order of knowledge, thy assignation in this domain of the mind. Take the needed authorisation from life’s bureau here. Thank thy fate for making thee one of us—a rare privilege.
All here, docketed
and tied, the mind can know, This is the end and there is no beyond.
Here is the safety
of the ultimate wall, A favourite of Heaven and Nature live.” Here the mind can easily know everything as all is labelled and arranged. All that is manifest by God in life is here filled into a scheme of law. This is the final station, there is nothing beyond. Here is the safety of the last protecting wall, here the clarity of vision brought about by the bright sword of Light, here the conquest by a single Truth—all others being eliminated. Here shines bright the flawless diamond of bliss. Live thou here, the chosen of both Heaven and Earth-Nature.
But to the too
satisfied and confident sage
For here the heart
spoke not, only clear daylight Replying to this too complacent sage, Savitri casts into his world her liberating sight and the inner voice of her heart questioning everything that is taken for granted. For here the warmth of the heart is not articulate; all is a reign of clear, bright intellect, cold, exact, limited.
“Happy are they
who in this chaos of things, Indeed, they are blessed who in all the chaos of the world, amidst the incessant activities of Time, can find the unique Truth, the unchanging Law. They can live unaffected by doubt or hope or fear of any kind,
Happy are men
anchored on fixed belief Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock. This is a world of uncertainty, of doubtful meaning. Those who can find and attach themselves to a fixed belief are happy; so too are those who have succeeded in planting even a small seed of spiritual certitude in the fertile soil of the heart. And happiest are they who have a faith as unshakable as a rock to stand upon.
But I must pass
leaving the ended search, Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.” But I cannot accept the intellect’s elegant and harmonious construction of the world’s significance as the final answer to the search for Truth. This ordered knowledge relates only to the appearance of things; I cannot be content with it. I am in search of my soul, the core of my being.
None answered in
that bright contented world,
But some murmured,
passers-by from kindred spheres: None answers Savitri in that radiant, contented world. Some just turn for a moment while on their accustomed path, surprised that anyone can question in that air of finality or have thoughts that can still conceive of a Beyond and turn to it. Some, however, coming from similar realms, passing through this kingdom, murmur, each one judging her words according to his system of beliefs.
“Who then is this
who knows not that the soul “Who is this person who does not know that the soul is only a small gland or a freak of secretion, upsetting the orderly rule of the mind, interfering with the normal activity of the brain? Who does not know that it is only a hope and longing in the mortal embodiment of Nature, just a dream-whisper caught in man’s chamber of hollow thought? Who wants to prolong his brief unhappy life-span or to cling to life in this expanse of death?”
But others, “Nay, it is her spirit she seeks.
A splendid shadow of
the name of God, Some, however, remark: She seeks her spirit which is but a splendid shadow of the name of God—so unsubstantial it is an unformed ray from the domains of the Ideal. It is said that the spirit is the Holy Ghost, the divine essence of the mind, but who has seen how far it extends? Who has actually looked into its face?
Each soul is the
great Father’s crucified Son,
All that is here is
part of our own self; True, each soul is the son of the great Father, suffering on the cross of life. But the parent of that soul is the Mind. Mind is the conscious origin of the soul, the base on which quivers a brief passing light that they call the soul. Indeed. Mind is the sole creator of this apparent world, All that is here in the universe is part of our Thought-Being. It is our minds that have created the world in which we dwell.
Another with mystic
and unsatisfied eyes Can still the path be found, opened the gate?” Remarks another passer-by with mystic eyes and unsatisfied look, who still remembers with love his belief in the Soul and Spirit, the belief that has been killed and whose death he mourns:Is there still someone left in the world who seeks for a Beyond! Can the path to it be yet found? Can that gate he opened again?
So she fared on across her silent self.
To a road she came
thronged with an ardent crowd Savitri advances across the spaces of her silent self. She arrives at a road thronged with an eager crowd rushing with brilliant speed, their feet glowing with fire, their eyes bright with sunlight. They are pressing to reach the yet unseen boundary of the world; they pass through veiled doorways into the realm of the outer mind where the inner Light does not come nor the psychic voice reach. They are all the messengers, emanations from our subliminal vasts, guests issuing from the cave of the secret soul. They are coming out from within to enter the outer world.
Into dim spiritual
somnolence they break They break into the spiritual passage between the states of sleep and waking or look on with wide wonder on our waking state of being. They are a mixed assortment: ideas that pursue us with their bright footsteps dreams that are pre-monitary and significant; goddesses with enchanting eyes; hope-giving gods of strength with wind-like hair; grand visions of bliss floating through luminous air; soaring aspiration with the dreamt-of sun for its head and the stars for its limbs—so high is its range, emotions that turn even common hearts sublime by their movements.
And Savitri mingling
in that glorious crowd, Only who save themselves can others save. It is a radiant and glorious company. Savitri is attracted by the spiritual light they carry and mingles with them. She is seized by a longing, like them, to rush out to the world and save it from its pain and suffering. But she holds herself back from this noble impulse; she knows that she has first got to discover her soul and draw strength from it before she is able to achieve anything effective.Only those who have saved themselves are in a position to save others.
In contrary sense
she faced life’s riddling truth; Savitri faces the riddle of the truth of life in a direction that is opposite to the one taken by that host. They are hurrying eagerly to the temporal, outer world carrying with them light and solace to its suffering men. But Savitri’s eyes are turned inwards, towards the eternal Source of all.
Outstretching her
hands to stay the throng she cried: Savitri stretches out her hands to stay the advancing crowd and says to them: “O happy host of luminous gods, reveal to me the road that I must take to find the Source of the unseen Fire that creates All and the deep abode of my secret soul, for surely that luminous realm is your home and you know the path.
One answered
pointing to a silence dim “O Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come.
We are the
messengers, the occult gods One of them speaks, pointing to a dim silence on a far-off edge of sleep in some distant background of the inner world: O Savitri, we come from thy own hidden soul. We are the messengers of the Spirit, the unseen gods; it is we who help men lost in their dry and ignorant rounds of life to awake to beauty and wonder by touching them with glory and divinity; we light the immortal flame of good in the midst of evil and kindle the light of Knowledge on the paths of ignorance. Indeed, we are thy will and the will of all men turned towards the Eternal Light.
O human copy and
disguise of God
There in the silence
few have ever reached, O Savitri who art a human representation and disguise of God, who searches’. for the Deity that thou bearest hidden in thyself, who livest spontaneously by the Truth that thou bast not known with thy mind, follow the long, winding highway of the world to its source. There in the Silence that few have ever reached, thou shalt see the Fire thou seekest, burning on the bare stone, thou shalt find the deep hidden cave of thy secret soul.
Then Savitri
following the great winding road
A few bright forms
emerged from unknown depths
There was no sound
to break the brooding hush; Then Savitri follows that winding road and reaches there where the road peters into a narrow hard path walked upon only by those rare pilgrims who do not care if their feet are hurt on the way. A few luminous forms come up from unknown depths and look at her with calm, immortal eyes. There is here no sound to break the silence that broods all over. Here one feels the silent nearness of the soul.
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