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 5 The Finding of the Soul
She moves silently and approaches a wide end. The emptiness breaks, a wave ripples within, and there is a blissful stir. Dawn breaks out followed by Day and in that brilliance Savitri recognises the mystic cavern which is the dwelling of her secret soul. The great rock-doors of the cave appear in an awful dimness. Two golden serpents are coiled round the lintel; above hovers an Eagle. As Savitri enters, she finds great figures of gods carved in stone; the walls are covered with significant shapes portraying the life-scene of man and beast, the role of the gods, the scheme of the planes and worlds and God’s Movement abroad. Savitri passes from room to room, she feels her self one with all that she sees and a sealed identity within her awakes. She realises that she herself is the Beloved of the Supreme. In the last chamber on a golden seat she beholds One who is indescribable but who is obviously the Fount of all. Again all departs into silent self; all becomes formless, pure and bare. She pushes on through a tunnel in the last rock and emerges into the bright light of a deathless sun. There in a house of flame and light Savitri suddenly meets her secret soul. A being stands there, the Eternal and the Infinite turned towards Time and the Finite. She is God’s delegate in humanity come to play ball with Time and circumstance. She has put forth a small portion of herself into the region of the heart to labour, to suffer, to grow towards its own Godhead. Both of these — the secret deity and its human part —, meet here in the chamber of light and flame, look upon each other, know themselves, rush into each other and grow one. The soul of Savitri joins its Oversoul. Once again Savitri finds herself on the human soil. She finds that the half-opened lotus-bud of her heart has bloomed revealing her secret soul. Her being calls the mighty Mother of the worlds to come down and in a flash a Face, a Form comes down into her heart. The moment its feet touch the quivering bloom of her heart-lotus, a mighty movement rocks the inner space and a flaming serpent rises released from sleep in the Night of the Inconscient. It storms its way upwards, striking all the lotuses — Centres of Consciousness — on its route and setting them vibrating in light and bliss, till it reaches the Eternal’s space in the crown of the head. The mighty Mother — an image of the original Power — is seated there, armed, her arm lifted in a saviour gesture, a sacred beast prone below her feet. All in the being of Savitri undergoes a celestial change. The working in each of the Centres, the Lotus-kingdoms, is transformed. Behind all stands her deathless soul casting aside its veil of Ignorance and surrendered in the hands of the World-Mother.
Onward she passed seeking the soul’s mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night of God.
The light was
quenched that helps the labouring world, Savitri goes onward in her search for the secret cave of her soul. At first she finds herself in the supernatural darkness that intervenes before one reaches God. The light that shines and helps the world in travail is extinguished, so too the power that goes on struggling and stumbling in life. The inadequate mind gives up its rounds of futile thought, the tirelessly striving heart gives up at last its vain hopes.
All Knowledge failed
and the Idea’s forms,
An innocent and holy
Ignorance All. Knowledge fails, all forms taken by the Idea fail. Wisdom veils her humble head in awe feeling herselfin the presence of a Truth that is too lofty, beyond the range of thought or speech, formless, inexpressible, immutable. An Ignorance, guileless and pure, adores like one worshipping God without form — a light that is unseen which she can neither claim for herself nor possess.
In a simple purity
of emptiness
All was abolished
save her naked self Her mind is denuded of its contents and in that simple purity of vacancy, it kneels down in worship before the Unknowable. All is abolished except her bare self, except the reverent yearning of her surrendered heart.
There was no
strength in her, no pride of force; No strength of her own is left in her, no pride of her own force. Her high flaming desire sinks down, as if ashamed, realising itself to be nothing more than the vanity of a self that presumes to think itself separate. The hope of attaining spiritual greatness flees away. She asks no more for salvation nor a place in heaven; even her state of humanity now jars convicted of pride.
Her self was
nothing, God alone was all,
A sacred darkness
brooded now within, She feels that her own self is nowhere, nothing; God alone is everywhere, everything. And yet she realises that she does not know anything of God except that he exists. Within her, a holy darkness broods. Without, the whole world is a deep darkness, great and bare.
This Void held more
than all the teeming worlds, But all was formless, voiceless, infinite. This Void, however, is not an empty Void. It holds in its bosom more than all the crowded worlds do. This blank is not insensible. It feels more than all that has been felt in the entire course of Time. This dark is not bereft of awareness. It knows, knows even the Unknown in a way that is mute and vast. But all here is formless, voiceless, boundless.
As might a shadow
walk in a shadowy scene, Savitri moves silently, feeling empty and yet absolute, like a shadow moving in a shadowy setting, like a small nothing passing through a huge Nothing, like an individual night in a silhouette crossing an impersonal, measureless Night.
In endless Time her
soul reached a wide end;
At last a change
approached, the emptiness broke; Her soul reaches a wide end in a Time that is felt to be endless. The spaceless vast becomes a place her spirit inhabits.At long last a change comes over; the emptiness gives way. There is the ripple of a movement withinher being; the world has stirred. Once again Savitri lives within her own inner self.
There was felt a
blissful nearness to the Goal;
A rose of splendour
on a tree of dreams, There is felt a blissful nearness to the goal. The felicity of heaven leans down to touch the sacred hill of her being. Passion and delight thrill the air. A rosy Dawn emerges out of the silvery twilight of the moon.
Day came, priest of
a sacrifice of joy Into this adoring silence of her inner world steps in Day, like the priest of a joyous sacrifice, with lustre for his robe, trailing behind him the glowing sky of Heaven as a purple scarf, with the red sun as his brahmin caste-mark in vermilion on his forehead.a mortal.
As if an old
remembered dream come true, What at first seemed an old remembered dream is now recognised by Savitri as reality; with her prophetic mind she remembers the immortal lustre of that sky, the vibrating sweetness of that felicitous air; and she recognises the mystic cave in the sacred hill of her being, hidden from the grasp of mind and life, as the home of her secret soul.
As if in some
Elysian occult depth, This mystic cave lies beyond the grasp of life’s inner sense; and it retreats from the desire of the entangled heart, just as truth in her last retreat from the defiling touch of thought hides itself in some secret depths of heaven, just as God taking refuge from the worship offered by an ignorant world hides himself in some lonely temple hewn from a rock.
A marvellous
brooding twilight met the eyes
An awful dimness
wrapped the great rock-doors
Two golden serpents
round the lintel curled, A wondrous meditative twilight spreads over the scene; a sacred stillness pervades that silent space. The great rock-doors of the cave are hewn in the massive stone of Matter in trance. Round the lintel of the entrance are two golden serpents — luminous divine energies — enveloping it with their pure and formidable strength, looking out with their eyes of wisdom, deep and lustrous.
An eagle covered it with wide conquering wings.
Flames of self-lost
immobile reverie, Above, an eagle (of omniscience) hovers with its wide, triumphant wings. The atmosphere is charged with flames of self-lost immobile reverie. Doves crowd the grey meditative cornices like sculptured figures of pure white-bosomed peace.
Across the
threshold’s sleep she entered in Savitri crosses the silent threshold and finds herself amidst figures of gods, conscious though in stone, living though without breath. They watch with a steady gaze the soul of man — gods who are the effectuating figures of the self of the cosmos, world-wide symbols of unchanging force.
On the walls covered
with significant shapes The walls are filled with significant designs and from there gaze at her portraits of the life of men and beasts and the high role of the life of the gods. The power and necessity of the innumerable worlds, the faces of the teeming beings and the stretches of world-space, shown there all convey the concise, endless, intercessory role of the rising planes in creation. They are all parts of one tremendous scheme.
In their immensitude
signing infinity It is shown how in their immensitude signifying infinity these planes are really the self-extension of the Being of God, how they contain — receiving all equally, impassively — God’s forms and his acts, both great and small, his passion, his birth, his life and death and his return to his own Immortality.
To the abiding and
eternal is their climb, All these planes — and the world-movements in them — climb to the one Reality that is abiding and eternal, to the pure existence, to the pure consciousness, to the absolute force, to the matchless, ineffable and formless bliss, to the play of Delight in Time and to the mystery beyond Time of the Sat-Chit-Ananda, the triune being who is all and one, and yet who is really no one else but himself alone and apart — transcendent. The mystery is that having created all that exists with a part of himself, he yet remains whole.
There was no step of
breathing men, no sound,
Yet all the worlds
and God himself were there, There is no step of breathing men, no sound of any kind; only a living nearness of the soul is felt. But on that account it is not a vacancy. All the worlds and God himself are there, for every symbol there is living, it throbs with the reality of which it is a representation; it brings the Presence that has made it living.
All this she saw and
inly felt and knew
A light not born of
sun or moon nor fire, Savitri sees all this, feels it from within and knows it all by her self — not by mental thinking. There is an inner light that sees within — not the light of the sun or moon or fire — and that light makes things visible in an inner, intimate way; it makes secrecy that is silent reveal more than the expressive word ever does. Indeed, our physical sight and sense are fallible; the gaze of this sight and the touch of this sense are liable to error. But not so the vision of the spirit: that is always and entirely true.
As thus she passed
in that mysterious place A sealed identity within her woke; As Savitri thus walks into that mysterious realm, crossing door after door hewn out of rock, passing through room after room, she feels herself become one with all that she sees. An identity that was hitherto dormant now wakes in her.
She knew herself the
Beloved of the Supreme: Savitri realises that she is the Spouse, the Beloved of the Supreme Lord; all the Gods and Goddesses are emanations of him or her; she is the mother of all Beauty and Bliss, she is the potent Word of Brahma the all-creator, she is the World-Shakti of Shiva the all powerful; he and she are the Master and the Mother of all, ever watching the worlds that were made by their twin creative gaze; he and she are Krishna, the Lord of Delight and Radha, the embodiment of Love divine, for ever clasped in bliss, the Adored and the Adorer both lost in each other and become one.
In the last chamber
on a golden seat In the last chamber there sits on a golden seat one whose form no sight can determine; Savitri only feels this unreachable Source of the world; she feels it as a Power of which she herself is but a wandering emanation, as an unseen Beauty which is the goal of the world’s desire, as a Sun of which all known knowledge is but a ray, as a Greatness that supports all life
Thence all departed
into silent self,
Then through a
tunnel dug in the last rock
A house was there
all made of flame and light Thereafter all fades away into silent self; all becomes formless, pure, bare. Through a tunnel-passage dug in the last rock Savitri emerges into the open where shines a deathless sun. There, there is a house made entirely of flame • and light. Savitri crosses a wall of living fire without doors and suddenly finds herself face to face with her secret soul.
A being stood
immortal in transience, A being stands, immortal in a general transience; deathless, she plays with mortal things. Through her wide eyes of serene happiness unaffected by pity and sorrow, Infinity turns to look at finite forms.
Observer of the
silent steps of the hours She observes the silent tread of Time and the passing scenes of the everlasting play; she shares in the mystery of the determining Will, participates in the Comedy of the Divine Play; she is a conscious representative of the Spirit, God’s delegate in our humanity, friend and companion of the Universe, ray of the Transcendent; she has come into the small dwelling of the mortal body to play, as it were, with fleeting Time and changing Circumstance.
A joy in the world
her master movement here,
All things she saw
as a masquerade of Truth Her master movement here is to take joy in the world; her eyes are bright with the intensity of this game. For all the bliss and grief of life on earth, she has a smile on her lips; she welcomes both. Her reaction to pleasure and pain is one of laughter. She perceives all things as a show put on by Truth disguised in the garments of Ignorance while she is crossing stretches of Time to Immortality. She is able to face all with the unperturbed peace of the strong spirit.
But since she knows
the toil of mind and life She is aware of the struggle of mind and life in this onward course even as a mother feels and shares her children’s lives, and she puts out a small portion of herself — a being of the size of the thumbs — into the hidden chamber of the heart, in order to face and bear the pangs of life and forgetting her original nature of bliss, to share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds and participate in the incessant labour of the universe.angushthamatram (Katha Upanishad). Man is able to go through all because this small portion of the Divine Spirit, the soul, is within him.
This in us laughs
and weeps, suffers the stroke, This soul in us joys and suffers, exults in victory, strives for the highest. It identifies itself with the mind, life and body and bears all their pangs, anguish and defeat, bleeds with the strokes of fate and hangs upon the Cross of suffering imposed by Ignorance. All the while the soul that thus acts on the stage of the human life is supported by the deeper unscarred, immortal self.
Through this she
sends us her glory and her powers, Through this portion projected in us, the secret Spirit pours into us her glory and her powers and raises us from the gulfs of misery and suffering towards the heights of wisdom; through it she gives us the strength wherewith we can accomplish our daily tasks, the sympathy wherewith we can share the grief of others, the little capacity wherewith we can help our fellow men. And all this we have to do because we have to play our part in this drama in which the puny human form acts the role of the huge universe and we, humans, carry the struggling world on our shoulders.
This is in us the
godhead small and marred; This is our soul, the small and marred godhead in us. In this portion of divinity projected in the human being, the Spirit lodges the greatness of the divine Soul manifesting in Time to uplift the striving human soul from lesser light to greater light, from lesser power to greater power, till it reaches and stands as a king upon a divine peak.
In body weak, in its
heart an invincible might, The human soul is frail in its body but carries an unconquerable strength in its heart. In its struggling climb to the heights, this striving spirit in a mortal, human shape is upheld by the unseen hand of God.
Here in this chamber
of flame and light they met;
Then with a magic
transformation’s speed In this chamber of flame and light meet the divine, presiding Soul — the secret Deity — and the striving human soul of Savitri, one calm and immortal, the other — its human part — struggling. They gaze at each other and both come to know who they are. Then with the speed of a magical transformation, both the divine and the human portion rush into each other and become one.
Once more she was
human upon earthly soil
But now the
half-opened lotus bud of her heart Once more Savitri finds herself back in her normal human state. The subtle world which had opened itself to her in trance has retired within behind the bright curtain of the inner sight. However, the lotus bud of her heart which was normally half-open has now fully bloomed, is visible and in it her secret soul stands revealed.
There was no wall
severing the soul and mind,
In its deep lotus
home her being sat No more is there the wall separating the soul from the mind, no more the inner fence guarding the soul from the calls of life. Her being is seen sitting alone in its deep lotus-home in the heart, concentrated, calling the mighty Mother of the universe to come down and make of this earthly body her home.
As in a flash from a
supernal light, And in response to her call, like a flash from a heavenly light, a living image of the original Power from above, a face, a form comes down into her heart and uses it as its own temple, its own pure home.
But when its feet
had touched the quivering bloom, The moment the feet of this descending Force touch the vibrating lotus bloom, a mighty movement issues and rocks the inner space; it is as if a world is shaken awake and finds its real being, the soul. Aroused from its sleep, a fiery serpent rises up out of the soulless, mindless dark night of the Inconscient.
It rose billowing
its coils and stood erect Unwinding its coils the serpent swiftly rises spreading out its coils and stands erect; then it storms its way upwards. In its climb it touches the various centres (of consciousness) on the way with its flaming mouth. And as if suddenly awakened from their sleep by a fiery kiss, the lotuses of these centres burst into joyous bloom surcharged with light and bliss; then the serpent reaches the centre at the top of the head and enters the abode of the Eternal there. The Kundalini reaches the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled Lotus.
It held together the
mystic stream which joins Our lines of self-expression in its Vast, This serpent-power holds together the entire spread of consciousness which joins the unseen depths of the ubconscience to the heights of the superconscience beyond sight. The course it travels is marked by several centres of concentration, the lotuses, from the base in the lower end of the spine to the top in the crown of the head; these centres are the several knots, gran-this, that regulate the flow of divine energies; they are so many strongholds of power, forts as it were, safeguarding the individual against the constant invasion of the universal Forces, preserving the individual lines of manifestation in the vastitudes of the cosmos.
An image sat of the
original Power
Armed, bearer of the
weapon and the sign Savitri beholds sitting in the heart an image of the Primal Power with the form and face of the mighty Mother. She is armed — she bears the weapon and the symbol whose hidden power cannot be imitated by any magic; she is manifold in her manifestation, yet she is one. There she sits, a Force guarding all. Her arm is uplifted in the celebrated gesture of saving, of protection. Below her feet lies the sacred lion, symbolising some innate cosmic strength, a silent, gathered, flaming mass of living Force.
All underwent a high
celestial change: All undergoes a high, heavenly change. Many Powers and divinities burst forth from their hidden place breaking the blind dumb wall of the dark inconscient, wiping out the enveloping rounds of Ignorance. Each part of her being vibrates with delight, is overwhelmed with waves of happiness, perceives the hand of the mighty Mother in every circumstance, feels her touch in every limb and cell. A glad clear harmony marked their truth’s outline ,Re-set the balance and measures of the world. The limited view, thought and sense of the human mind are replaced by the vaster thoughts and movements of the immortal. Everything acquires a fresh, diviner significance. There is no more the jarring conflict among the many things in the world; all forms are now seen in the truth of their happy harmony; the balance and measures of things in the world are re-set in accord with their truth of harmony.
Each shape showed
its occult design, unveiled Each form reveals the hidden design behind it, shows the meaning, the purpose for which God the creator has brought it into being, unveils the splendour of his creative, artist thought. Form no more conceals the divine Idea that en-souls it.
A channel of the
mighty Mother’s choice, The immortal’s will which is an instrument of the choice of the mighty Mother of All takes into its calm control the human, blind erring, government of life; as a result, what was an unorganised life in which men in ignorance were absorbed in seeking their individual wants and needs, a life which submitted itself to the rule of the sovereign but unsure mind, now ceases to be thus regulated and puts itself under a diviner rule, and every act turns into an act of God.
In the kingdom of
the lotus of the heart Love flowers in its purity in the region of the heart-lotus (anahata of twelve petals); the Centre of emotions, and fills life and the physical body with a sacred, causeless joy. All the emotions turn away from their absorption in the lower ranges of life and flow towards God.
In the navel lotus’s
broad imperial range In the domain of the navel-lotus (nabhipadma or manipura), the Centre of vital ambitions and powerful desires, the disorganised life’s proud ambitions and governing lusts are brought under control and transformed into the instruments of a great, calm rule in order to serve God on earth.
In the narrow nether
centres’ petty parts In the narrow region of the abdominal lotus (svadhisthana of six petals), the Centre of lower vital movements, the little daily round of petty desires is replaced by the lively and happy play of the little gods with life in the field of Time.
In the deep place
where once the Serpent slept, Still deeper in the region of the basal lotus (muladhara of four petals, the Centre of physical energies), where the primal Power, the Kundalini, was coiled up before, a firm control is secured on the giant powers of Matter for ample utilisation in the narrow field of life. A firm base is prepared for the Power descending from Heaven above.
Behind all reigned
her sovereign deathless soul: Behind all these changed movements at the different Centres of Consciousness reigns sovereignly Savitri’s immortal soul. In conjunction with the gods and other cosmic agents, it harmonises the various elements of its human embodiment. Savitri surrenders herself into the hands of the great World-Mother and follows only her supreme Will in the perplexing maze of the Inconscient’s world.
A secret soul behind
supporting all
But once the hidden
doors are flung apart All happy grows towards knowledge and towards bliss. Supporting all our movements is our secret soul that is behind; it is the witness and ultimate master of an ignorant life; it admits the determining regard of the Divine Person in our life and makes it possible for Nature to play its allotted role. This it does from behind, unseen. But once the concealed doors are opened, this veiled king comes out and faces Nature; a Light from above comes down into the prevailing Ignorance and as a result, the hard, painful knot of that Ignorance in nature gets loosened, the unruly mind comes under control and becomes an obedient instrument of the soul. Life acquires the hue and figure of the ruling soul; its character and pattern reflect the soul. Everything turns into a happy, felicitous growth towards increasing knowledge and bliss.
A divine Puissance
then takes Nature’s place In the place of the force of Nature in Ignorance, a divine Shakti, Consciousness-Power, begins to act and impel the movements of our body and mind. She assumes full control of our thoughts and acts, holds our intense hopes and dreams, flows into us with her unlimited force and pours into our mortal limbs the Immortal’s bliss and power.
An inner law of
beauty shapes our lives;
Then sin and virtue
leave the cosmic lists; An inner — not the outer, superficial law of beauty begins to form our lives; our words express the Truth spontaneously and effortlessly. Each thought is a movement of the Light of Knowledge. The struggle of sin and virtue ceases in our hearts and they are left behind. Our acts come into harmony with that simple and natural good that is of God, shivam, they form a part of the workings of a divine Right, ritam.
All moods unlovely,
evil and untrue All moods and movements that are ugly, evil and false flee in confusion and hide themselves in the semi-darknesses of the subconscient parts. Then the mind thinks that the victory is won and it proclaims:
“O soul, my soul,
we have created Heaven,
Our life is
entrenched between two rivers of Light, What more, what more, if more must still be done?” "O soul, together we have created Heaven, realized here within ourselves the Kingdom of God. We have built his impregnable fortress in the very midst of this clamorous ignorant world. Now our life is safe between the two rivers of Light, that of the divine Puissance and that of the delivered soul. All space is filled by us with Peace, the whole body made a temple of Bliss. What more is left? What more can be left?"
In the slow process
of the evolving spirit, Actually what has been achieved is only the first stage in the perfection that is in the making In the slow process of the evolution of the spirit, in the brief interval between birth and death, one phase in perfection is completed. From out of the raw material of Nature, its wood and stone, a veritable temple has been built in which the high gods could now live.
Even if the
struggling world is left outside
There is won a new
proximity to the skies, Even though the rest of the world is still left outside in its struggle, a single man’s perfection can still help to save that world. His perfection has its inevitable beneficial results in the world. A fresh nearness to the summits of the Spirit is won; Earth and Heaven are united for the first time; Truth and Life come to a profound understanding. The camp of the Eternal has been set in human Time. Contraries come to a first harmonisation in the perfection of even a single man.
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