The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Book 2. The Book Of The Traveller Of The Worlds
Canto 10. The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind.
But first he met a silver-grey expanse
Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
. . .
Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
He came into a realm of early Light
And the regency of a half-risen sun.
Out of its rays our mind’s full orb was born.
[pp. 239; 241]
* * *
Thus streamed down from the realm of early Light,
Ethereal thinkings into Matter’s world;
Its gold-horned herds trooped into earth’s cave-heart.
Its morning rays illume our twilight’s eyes,
Its young formations move the mind of earth
To labour and to dream and new-create,
To feel beauty’s touch and know the world and self:
The Golden Child began to think and see.
[p. 243]
* * *
A small keen instrument the great Puissance chose,
. . .
A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.
Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.
[pp. 243; 245]
* * *
A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
And with its dire edge eats at being’s heart.
Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire.
[p. 247]
* * *
Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.
. . .
Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.
. . .
Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe,
She looked upon an object universe
[p. 249]
* * *
Above in a high breathless stratosphere,
Overshadowing the dwarfish trinity,
Lived, aspirants to a limitless Beyond,
. . .
Two sun-gaze Daemons witnessing all that is.
A power to uplift the laggard World,
Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought
. . .
Beyond in wideness where no footing is,
. . .
A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act.
Archangel of a white transcending realm,
It saw the world from solitary heights
[pp. 258-259]End of Book 2 Canto 10
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