{"id":1013,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:59","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:59","slug":"15-book-7-canto-05-the-finding-of-the-soul-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/29-savitri-volume-29\/15-book-7-canto-05-the-finding-of-the-soul-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-15_Book 7 Canto 05 The Finding of the Soul.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

\nCanto Five<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Finding of
\nthe Soul<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Onward she passed seeking the soul’s mystic cave.<\/p>\n

At first she stepped into a night of God.<\/p>\n

The light was quenched that helps the labouring world,<\/p>\n

The power that struggles and stumbles in our life;<\/p>\n

This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts,<\/p>\n

The striving heart its unavailing hopes.<\/p>\n

All Knowledge failed and the Idea’s forms,<\/p>\n

And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head<\/p>\n

Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech,<\/p>\n

Formless, ineffable, for ever the same.<\/p>\n

An innocent and holy Ignorance<\/p>\n

Adored like one who worships formless God<\/p>\n

The unseen light she could not claim nor own.<\/p>\n

In a simple purity of emptiness<\/p>\n

Her mind knelt down before the unknowable.<\/p>\n

All was abolished save her naked self<\/p>\n

And the prostrate
\nyearning of her surrendered heart.<\/p>\n

There was no strength in her, no pride of force;<\/p>\n

The lofty burning of desire had sunk<\/p>\n

Ashamed, a vanity of separate self,<\/p>\n

The hope of spiritual greatness fled,<\/p>\n

Salvation she asked not nor a heavenly crown:<\/p>\n

Humanity seemed now too proud a state.<\/p>\n

Her self was nothing, God alone was all,<\/p>\n

Yet God she knew not but only knew he was.<\/p>\n

A sacred darkness brooded now within,<\/p>\n

The world was a deep darkness great and nude.<\/p>\n

This Void held more than all the teeming worlds,<\/p>\n

This blank felt more than all that Time has borne,<\/p>\n

This dark knew dumbly, immensely the Unknown.<\/p>\n

But all was formless, voiceless, infinite. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 522<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

As might a shadow walk in a shadowy scene,<\/p>\n

A small nought passing through a mightier Nought,<\/p>\n

A night of person in a bare outline<\/p>\n

Crossing a fathomless impersonal Night,<\/p>\n

Silent she moved, empty and absolute.<\/p>\n

In endless Time her
\nsoul reached a wide end;<\/p>\n

The spaceless vast became her spirit’s place.<\/p>\n

At last a change approached, the emptiness broke;<\/p>\n

A wave rippled within, the world had stirred;<\/p>\n

Once more her inner self became her space.<\/p>\n

There was felt a blissful nearness to the
\nGoal;<\/p>\n

Heaven leaned low to kiss the sacred hill,<\/p>\n

The air trembled with passion and delight.<\/p>\n

A rose of splendour on a tree of dreams,<\/p>\n

The face of Dawn out of mooned twilight grew.<\/p>\n

Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy<\/p>\n

Into the worshipping silence of her world;<\/p>\n

He carried immortal lustre as his robe,<\/p>\n

Trailed Heaven like a purple scarf and wore<\/p>\n

As his vermilion caste-mark a red sun.<\/p>\n

As if an old remembered dream come true,<\/p>\n

She recognised in her prophetic mind<\/p>\n

The imperishable lustre of that sky,<\/p>\n

The tremulous sweetness of that happy air<\/p>\n

And, covered from mind’s view and life’s approach,<\/p>\n

The mystic cavern in the sacred hill<\/p>\n

And knew the dwelling of her secret soul.<\/p>\n

As if in some Elysian occult depth,<\/p>\n

Truth’s last retreat from thought’s profaning touch,<\/p>\n

As if in a rock-temple’s solitude hid,<\/p>\n

God’s refuge from an ignorant worshipping world,<\/p>\n

It lay withdrawn even from life’s inner sense,<\/p>\n

Receding from the entangled heart’s desire.<\/p>\n

A marvellous brooding twilight met the eyes<\/p>\n

And a holy stillness held that voiceless space.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Possible alternative : \u201ca mortal\u201d.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 523<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

An awful dimness wrapped the great rock-doors<\/p>\n

Carved in the massive stone of Matter’s trance.<\/p>\n

Two golden serpents round the lintel curled,<\/p>\n

Enveloping it with their pure and dreadful strength,<\/p>\n

Looked out with wisdom’s deep and luminous eyes.<\/p>\n

An eagle covered it
\nwith wide conquering wings.<\/p>\n

Flames of self-lost immobile reverie,<\/p>\n

Doves crowded the grey musing cornices<\/p>\n

Like sculptured postures of white-bosomed peace.<\/p>\n

Across the threshold’s sleep she entered in<\/p>\n

And found herself amid great figures of gods<\/p>\n

Conscious in stone and living without breath,<\/p>\n

Watching with fixed regard the soul of man,<\/p>\n

Executive figures of the cosmic self,<\/p>\n

World-symbols of immutable potency.<\/p>\n

On the walls covered with significant shapes<\/p>\n

Looked at her the life-scene of man and beast<\/p>\n

And the high meaning of the life of gods,<\/p>\n

The power and
\nnecessity of these numberless worlds<\/p>\n

And faces of beings and stretches of world-space<\/p>\n

Spoke the succinct and inexhaustible<\/p>\n

Hieratic message of the climbing planes.<\/p>\n

In their immensitude signing infinity<\/p>\n

They were the extension of the self of God<\/p>\n

And housed, impassively receiving all,<\/p>\n

His figures and his small and mighty acts<\/p>\n

And his passion and his birth and life and death<\/p>\n

And his return to immortality.<\/p>\n

To the abiding and eternal is their climb,<\/p>\n

To the pure existence everywhere the same,<\/p>\n

To the sheer consciousness and the absolute force<\/p>\n

And the unimaginable and formless bliss,<\/p>\n

To the mirth in Time and the timeless mystery<\/p>\n

Of the triune being who is all and one<\/p>\n

And yet is no one but himself apart.<\/p>\n

There was no step of breathing men, no sound, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 524<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Only the living nearness of the soul.<\/p>\n

Yet all the worlds and God himself were there,<\/p>\n

For every symbol was a reality<\/p>\n

And brought the Presence which had given it life.<\/p>\n

All this she saw and inly felt and knew<\/p>\n

Not by some thought of mind but by the self.<\/p>\n

A light not born of sun or moon
\nnor fire,<\/p>\n

A light that dwelt within and saw within<\/p>\n

Shedding an intimate visibility,<\/p>\n

Made secrecy more revealing than the word:<\/p>\n

Our sight and sense are a fallible gaze and touch<\/p>\n

And only the spirit’s vision is wholly true.<\/p>\n

As thus she passed in that mysterious place<\/p>\n

Through room and room, through door and rock-hewn door,<\/p>\n

She felt herself made one with all she saw.<\/p>\n

A sealed identity within her woke;<\/p>\n

She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:<\/p>\n

These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:<\/p>\n

The Mother was she of Beauty and Delight,<\/p>\n

The Word in Brahma’s vast creating clasp,<\/p>\n

The World-Puissance on almighty Shiva’s lap,\u2014<\/p>\n

The Master and the Mother of all lives<\/p>\n

Watching the worlds their twin regard had made,<\/p>\n

And Krishna and Radha for ever entwined in bliss,<\/p>\n

The Adorer and Adored self-lost and one.<\/p>\n

In the last chamber on a golden seat<\/p>\n

One sat whose shape
\nno vision could define,<\/p>\n

Only one felt the world’s unattainable fount,<\/p>\n

A Power of which she was a straying Force,<\/p>\n

An invisible Beauty, goal of the world’s desire,<\/p>\n

A Sun of which all knowledge is a beam,<\/p>\n

A Greatness without whom no life could be.<\/p>\n

Thence all departed into silent self,<\/p>\n

And all became formless and pure and bare.<\/p>\n

Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock<\/p>\n

She came out where there shone a deathless sun. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 525<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A house was there all made of flame and light<\/p>\n

And crossing a wall of doorless living fire<\/p>\n

There suddenly she met her secret soul.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A being stood immortal in transience,<\/p>\n

Deathless dallying with momentary things,<\/p>\n

In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness<\/p>\n

Which pity and sorrow could not abrogate<\/p>\n

Infinity turned its
\ngaze on finite shapes:<\/p>\n

Observer of the
\nsilent steps of the hours<\/p>\n

And the passing scenes of the Everlasting’s
\nplay,<\/p>\n

In the mystery of its selecting will,<\/p>\n

In the Divine Comedy a participant,<\/p>\n

The Spirit’s conscious representative,<\/p>\n

God’s delegate in our humanity,<\/p>\n

Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray,<\/p>\n

She had come into the mortal body’s room<\/p>\n

To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.<\/p>\n

A joy in the world her master movement here,<\/p>\n

The passion of the game lighted her eyes:<\/p>\n

A smile on her lips welcomed earth’s bliss and grief,<\/p>\n

A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain.<\/p>\n

All things she saw as a masquerade of Truth<\/p>\n

Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Crossing the years to
\nimmortality:<\/p>\n

All she could front with the strong spirit’s peace.<\/p>\n

But since she knows the toil of mind and life<\/p>\n

As a mother feels and shares her children’s lives,<\/p>\n

She puts forth a small portion of herself,<\/p>\n

A being no bigger than the thumb of man<\/p>\n

Into a hidden region of the heart<\/p>\n

To face the pang and to forget the bliss,<\/p>\n

To share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds<\/p>\n

And labour mid the labour of the stars.<\/p>\n

This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,<\/p>\n

Exults in victory,
\nstruggles for the crown, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 526<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Identified with the mind and body and life,<\/p>\n

It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,<\/p>\n

Bleeds with Fate’s whips and hangs upon the cross,<\/p>\n

Yet is the unwounded and immortal self<\/p>\n

Supporting the actor
\non the human scene.<\/p>\n

Through this she sends us her glory and her powers,<\/p>\n

Pushes to wisdom’s heights, through misery’s gulfs;<\/p>\n

She gives us strength to do our daily task<\/p>\n

And sympathy that partakes of others’ grief<\/p>\n

And the little strength we have to help our race,<\/p>\n

We who must fill the role of the universe<\/p>\n

Acting itself out in a slight human shape<\/p>\n

And on our shoulders carry the struggling world.<\/p>\n

This is in us the godhead small and marred;<\/p>\n

In this human portion of divinity<\/p>\n

She seats the greatness of the Soul in Time<\/p>\n

To uplift from light to light, from power to power,<\/p>\n

Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king.<\/p>\n

In body weak, in its heart an invincible might,<\/p>\n

It climbs stumbling, held up by an unseen hand,<\/p>\n

A toiling spirit in a mortal shape.<\/p>\n

Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;<\/p>\n

They looked upon each other, knew themselves,<\/p>\n

The secret deity and its human part,<\/p>\n

The calm immortal and the struggling soul.<\/p>\n

Then with a magic transformation’s speed<\/p>\n

They rushed into each other and grew one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once more she was human upon earthly soil<\/p>\n

In the muttering night amid the rain-swept woods<\/p>\n

And the rude cottage where she sat in trance:<\/p>\n

That subtle world withdrew deeply within<\/p>\n

Behind the sun-veil of the inner sight.<\/p>\n

But now the half-opened lotus bud of her heart<\/p>\n

Had bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray;<\/p>\n

In an image shone revealed her secret soul. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 527<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There was no wall severing the soul and mind,<\/p>\n

No mystic fence guarding from the claims of life.<\/p>\n

In its deep lotus home her being sat<\/p>\n

As if on concentration’s marble seat,<\/p>\n

Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds<\/p>\n

To make this earthly tenement her house.<\/p>\n

As in a flash from a supernal light,<\/p>\n

A living image of the original Power,<\/p>\n

A face, a form came down into her heart<\/p>\n

And made of it its temple and pure abode.<\/p>\n

But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom,<\/p>\n

A mighty movement rocked the inner space<\/p>\n

As if a world were shaken and found its soul:<\/p>\n

Out of the Inconscient’s soulless mindless
\nNight<\/p>\n

A flaming serpent rose released from sleep.<\/p>\n

It rose billowing its coils and stood erect<\/p>\n

And climbing mightily stormily on its way<\/p>\n

It touched her
\ncentres with its flaming mouth:<\/p>\n

As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,<\/p>\n

They bloomed and
\nlaughed surcharged with light and bliss;<\/p>\n

Then at the crown it joined the Eternal’s space.<\/p>\n

In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter’s base,<\/p>\n

In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot<\/p>\n

It held together the mystic stream which joins<\/p>\n

The viewless summits with the unseen depths,<\/p>\n

The string of forts that make the frail defence<\/p>\n

Safeguarding us against the enormous world,<\/p>\n

Our lines of self-expression in its Vast.<\/p>\n

An image sat of the original Power<\/p>\n

Wearing the mighty Mother’s form and face.<\/p>\n

Armed, bearer of the weapon and the sign<\/p>\n

Whose occult might no magic can imitate,<\/p>\n

Manifold yet one she sat, a guardian force:<\/p>\n

A saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm,<\/p>\n

And symbol of some native cosmic strength,<\/p>\n

A sacred beast lay prone below her feet, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 528<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

A silent flame-eyed mass of living force.<\/p>\n

All underwent a high celestial change:<\/p>\n

Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall,<\/p>\n

Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Powers and divinities burst flaming forth;<\/p>\n

Each part of the being trembling with delight<\/p>\n

Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness<\/p>\n

And saw her hand in every circumstance<\/p>\n

And felt her touch in
\nevery limb and cell:<\/p>\n

In the country of the lotus of the head<\/p>\n

Which thinking mind has made its busy space,<\/p>\n

In the castle of the lotus twixt the brows<\/p>\n

Whence it shoots the arrows of its sight and will,<\/p>\n

In the passage of the lotus of the throat<\/p>\n

Where speech must rise and the expressing mind<\/p>\n

And the heart’s impulse run towards word and
\nfact,<\/p>\n

A glad uplift and a new working came.<\/p>\n

The immortal’s thoughts displaced our bounded view,<\/p>\n

The immortal’s thoughts earth’s drab idea and sense;<\/p>\n

All things now bore a deeper heavenlier sense.<\/p>\n

A glad clear harmony marked their truth’s outline,<\/p>\n

Re-set the balance and measures of the world.<\/p>\n

Each shape showed its occult design, unveiled<\/p>\n

God’s meaning in it for which it was made<\/p>\n

And the vivid splendour of his artist thought.<\/p>\n

A channel of the mighty Mother’s choice,<\/p>\n

The immortal’s will took into its calm control<\/p>\n

Our blind or erring government of life;<\/p>\n

A loose republic once of wants and needs,<\/p>\n

Then bowed to the uncertain sovereign mind,<\/p>\n

Life now obeyed to a diviner rule<\/p>\n

And every act became an act of God.<\/p>\n

In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart<\/p>\n

Love chanting its pure hymeneal hymn<\/p>\n

Made life and body mirrors of sacred joy<\/p>\n

And all the emotions gave themselves to God. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 529<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

In the navel lotus’s broad imperial range<\/p>\n

Its proud ambitions and its master lusts<\/p>\n

Were tamed into instruments of a great calm sway<\/p>\n

To do a work of God on earthly soil.<\/p>\n

In the narrow nether centre’s petty parts<\/p>\n

Its childish game of daily dwarf desires<\/p>\n

Was changed into a sweet and boisterous play,<\/p>\n

A romp of little gods with life in Time.<\/p>\n

In the deep place where once the Serpent slept,<\/p>\n

There came a grip on Matter’s giant powers<\/p>\n

For large utilities in life’s little space;<\/p>\n

A firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might.<\/p>\n

Behind all reigned her sovereign deathless soul:<\/p>\n

Casting aside its veil of Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers<\/p>\n

It built the harmony of its human state;<\/p>\n

Surrendered into the great World-Mother’s hands<\/p>\n

Only she obeyed her sole supreme behest<\/p>\n

In the enigma of the Inconscient’s world.<\/p>\n

A secret soul behind supporting all<\/p>\n

Is master and witness of our ignorant life,<\/p>\n

Admits the Person’s look and Nature’s role.<\/p>\n

But once the hidden doors are flung apart<\/p>\n

Then the veiled king steps out in Nature’s front;<\/p>\n

A Light comes down into the Ignorance,<\/p>\n

Its heavy painful knot loosens its grasp:<\/p>\n

The mind becomes a mastered instrument<\/p>\n

And life a hue and figure of the soul.<\/p>\n

All happy grows towards knowledge and towards bliss.<\/p>\n

A divine Puissance then takes Nature’s place<\/p>\n

And pushes the movements of our body and mind;<\/p>\n

Possessor of our passionate hopes and dreams,<\/p>\n

The beloved despot of our thoughts and acts,<\/p>\n

She streams into us with her unbound force,<\/p>\n

Into mortal limbs the Immortal’s rapture and power.<\/p>\n

An inner law of beauty shapes our lives; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 530<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Our words become the natural speech of Truth,<\/p>\n

Each thought is a ripple on a sea of Light.<\/p>\n

Then sin and virtue leave the cosmic lists;<\/p>\n

They struggle no more in our delivered hearts:<\/p>\n

Our acts chime with God’s simple natural good<\/p>\n

Or serve the rule of a supernal Right.<\/p>\n

All moods unlovely, evil and untrue<\/p>\n

Forsake their stations in fierce disarray<\/p>\n

And hide their shame in the subconscient’s
\ndusk;<\/p>\n

Then lifts the mind a cry of victory:<\/p>\n

\u201cO soul, my soul, we have created Heaven,<\/p>\n

Within we have found the kingdom here of God,<\/p>\n

His fortress built in a loud ignorant world.<\/p>\n

Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light,<\/p>\n

We have turned space into a gulf of peace<\/p>\n

And made the body a capitol of bliss.<\/p>\n

What more, what more, if more must still be done?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the slow process of the evolving spirit,<\/p>\n

In the brief stade between a death and birth<\/p>\n

A first perfection’s stage is reached at last;<\/p>\n

Out of the wood and stone of our nature’s stuff<\/p>\n

A temple is shaped where the high gods could live.<\/p>\n

Even if the struggling world is left outside<\/p>\n

One man’s perfection still can save the world.<\/p>\n

There is won a new proximity to the skies,<\/p>\n

A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,<\/p>\n

A deep concordat between Truth and Life:<\/p>\n

A camp of God is pitched in human time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Five <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 531<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Canto Five    The Finding of the Soul    Onward she passed seeking the soul’s mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-29-savitri-volume-29","wpcat-22-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}