The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Book 6. The Book of Fate
Canto 2. The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain
Then after a silence Narad made reply:
Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,
. . .
Implacable in the passion of their will,
Lifting the hammers of titanic toil
The demiurges of the universe work;
They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons
Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.
[pp. 442; 444]
* * *
The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
. . .
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
. . .
He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
[pp. 445; 446]
* * *
“Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;
. . .
He must enter the eternity of Night
And know God’s darkness as he knows his Sun.
For this he must go down into the pit,
For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.
Imperishable and wise and infinite,
He still must travel Hell the world to save.
[pp. 448; 450]
* * *
Haste not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,
Open not thy doorways to a nameless Power,
Climb not to Godhead by the Titan’s road.
Against the Law he pits his single will,
Across its way he throws his pride of might.
Heavenward he clambers on a stair of storms
Aspiring to live near the deathless Sun.
[p. 451]
* * *
Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.
Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives,
. . .
Indifference, pain and joy, a triple disguise,
Attire of the rapturous Dancer in the ways,
Withhold from thee the body of God’s bliss.
[pp. 453; 454]
* * *
“O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
. . .
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
The soul looked out from its felicity.
. . .
Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
. . .
As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
[pp. 454; 455]
* * *
A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
And what the soul imagines is made a world.
[p. 456]
* * *
Then Aswapathy answered to the seer:
. . .
I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;
Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate?”
But Narad answered covering truth with truth:
. . .
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers.
Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge.
[pp. 456; 461]
* * *
He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.
Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,
He turned towards his far-off blissful home.
A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,
The luminous body of the eternal seer
Assailed the purple glory of the noon
And disappeared like a receding star
Vanishing into the light of the Unseen;
[p. 462]End of Book 6 Canto 2
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