The Mind-machine, pp. 541-542 (SH 273)

Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey
Savitri Book Seven: The Book of Yoga, Canto Six: Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute

Thus Savitri beholds the many levels of thought that spring up from unseen founts of our nature. She observes how the mind works incessantly, churning thoughts constantly. She sees that though man’s ego claims everything and believes itself the doer, it is very clearly Nature that does everything. Yet there is something of his own and it is his soul’s consent. He or rather his secret soul is the sanctioner of the works of Nature, so to say.

So she beheld the many births of thought,
If births can be of what eternal is;
For the Eternal’s powers are like himself,
Timeless in the Timeless, in Time ever born.

This too she saw that all in outer mind
Is made, not born, a product perishable,
Forged in the body’s factory by earth-force.

This mind is a dynamic small machine
Producing ceaselessly, till it wears out,
With raw material drawn from the outside world,
The patterns sketched out by an artist God.

Often our thoughts are finished cosmic wares
Admitted by a silent office gate
And passed through the subconscient’s galleries,
Then issued in Time’s mart as private make.

For now they bear the living person’s stamp;
A trick, a special hue claims them his own.

All else is Nature’s craft and this too hers.

Our tasks are given, we are but instruments;
Nothing is all our own that we create:
The Power that acts in us is not our force.

The genius too receives from some high fount
Concealed in a supernal secrecy
The work that gives him an immortal name.
The word, the form, the charm, the glory and grace
Are missioned sparks from a stupendous Fire;
A sample from the laboratory of God
Of which he holds the patent upon earth,
Comes to him wrapped in golden coverings;
He listens for Inspiration’s postman knock
And takes delivery of the priceless gift
A little spoilt by the receiver mind
Or mixed with the manufacture of his brain;
When least defaced, then is it most divine.

Although his ego claims the world for its use,
Man is a dynamo for the cosmic work;
Nature does most in him, God the high rest:
Only his soul’s acceptance is his own.
This independent, once a power supreme,
Self-born before the universe was made,
Accepting cosmos, binds himself Nature’s serf
Till he becomes her freedman—or God’s slave.

[Savitri: 541 – 542]

(line breaks added to emphasize separate movements)