The Mother Reads Selections from Savitri by Sri Aurobindo
Book 7. The Book of Yoga
Canto 6. Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute
Above the cherished head of Satyavan
She saw not now Fate’s dark and lethal orb;
A golden circle round a mystic sun
Disclosed to her new-born predicting sight
The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life.
[p. 533]
* * *Once as she sat in deep felicitous muse,
. . .
An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.
. . .
A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings
Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,
A denser darkness than the Night could bear,
Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.
[pp. 533; 534]
* * *Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,
The Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,
The voice of Light after the voice of Night:
. . .
“O Soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;
. . .
That all in thee may reach its absolute.
. . .
God must be born on earth and be as man
That man being human may grow even as God.
. . .
Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.
Annul thyself that only God may be.”
[pp. 536; 537; 538]
* * *Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,
And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused
Plunging her deep regard into herself
In her soul’s privacy in the silent Night.
[p. 538]
* * *Her body’s thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs
And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown
Where Nature’s murmurs meet the Ineffable.
[p. 540]
* * *Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell
Like quiet waves upon a silent sea
Or ripples passing over a lonely pool
When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.
[p. 543]
* * *Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:
Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary
A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.
[p. 544]
* * *Unutterably effaced, no one and null,
A vanishing vestige like a violet trace,
A faint record merely of a self now past,
She was a point in the unknowable.
[p. 549]End of Book 7 Canto 6
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