{"id":1015,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:00","slug":"16-book-7-canto-06-nirvana-and-the-discovery-of-the-all-negatinng-absolute-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\/16-book-7-canto-06-nirvana-and-the-discovery-of-the-all-negatinng-absolute-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-16_Book 7 Canto 06 Nirvana and the Discovery of the All Negatinng Absolute.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

\nCanto Six<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNirvana and the
\nDiscovery of the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll-Negating
\nAbsolute<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

A calm slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens.<\/p>\n

A routed sullen rearguard of retreat,<\/p>\n

The last rains had fled murmuring across the woods<\/p>\n

Or failed, a sibilant whisper mid the leaves,<\/p>\n

And the great blue enchantment of the sky<\/p>\n

Recovered the deep rapture of its smile.<\/p>\n

Its mellow splendour unstressed by storm-licked heats<\/p>\n

Found room for a luxury of warm mild days,<\/p>\n

The night’s gold treasure of autumnal moons<\/p>\n

Came floating shipped through ripples of fairy air.<\/p>\n

And Savitri’s life was glad, fulfilled like earth’s;<\/p>\n

She had found herself, she knew her being’s aim.<\/p>\n

Although her kingdom of marvellous change within<\/p>\n

Remained unspoken in her secret breast,<\/p>\n

All that lived round her felt its magic’s charm:<\/p>\n

The trees’ rustling voices told it to the winds,<\/p>\n

Flowers spoke in ardent hues and unknown joy,<\/p>\n

The birds’ carolling became a canticle,<\/p>\n

The beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease.<\/p>\n

Absorbed in wide communion with the Unseen<\/p>\n

The mild ascetics of the wood received<\/p>\n

A sudden greatening of their lonely muse.<\/p>\n

This bright perfection of her inner state<\/p>\n

Poured overflowing into her outward scene,<\/p>\n

Made beautiful dull common natural things<\/p>\n

And action wonderful and time divine.<\/p>\n

Even the smallest meanest work became<\/p>\n

A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,<\/p>\n

An offering to the self of the great world<\/p>\n

Or a service to the One in each and all. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 532<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

A light invaded all from her being’s light;<\/p>\n

Her heart-beats’ dance communicated bliss:<\/p>\n

Happiness grew happier, shared with her, by her touch<\/p>\n

And grief some solace found when she drew near.<\/p>\n

Above the cherished head of Satyavan<\/p>\n

She saw not now Fate’s dark and lethal orb;<\/p>\n

A golden circle round a mystic sun<\/p>\n

Disclosed to her new-born predicting sight<\/p>\n

The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life.<\/p>\n

In her visions and deep-etched veridical dreams,<\/p>\n

In brief shiftings of the future’s heavy screen,<\/p>\n

He lay not by a dolorous decree<\/p>\n

A victim in the dismal antre of death<\/p>\n

Or borne to blissful regions far from her<\/p>\n

Forgetting the sweetness of earth’s warm delight,<\/p>\n

Forgetting the passionate oneness of love’s clasp,<\/p>\n

Absolved in the self-rapt immortal’s bliss.<\/p>\n

Always he was with her, a living soul<\/p>\n

That met her eyes with close enamoured eyes,<\/p>\n

A living body near to her body’s joy.<\/p>\n

But now no longer in these great wild woods<\/p>\n

In kinship with the days of bird and beast<\/p>\n

And levelled to the bareness of earth’s brown breast,<\/p>\n

But mid the thinking high-built lives of men<\/p>\n

In tapestried chambers and on crystal floors,<\/p>\n

In armoured town or gardened pleasure-walks,<\/p>\n

Even in distance closer than her thoughts,<\/p>\n

Body to body near, soul near to soul,<\/p>\n

Moving as if by a common breath and will,<\/p>\n

They were tied in the single circling of their days<\/p>\n

Together by love’s unseen atmosphere,<\/p>\n

Inseparable like the earth and sky.<\/p>\n

Thus for a while she trod the Golden Path;<\/p>\n

This was the sun before abysmal Night.<\/p>\n

Once as she sat in deep felicitous muse,<\/p>\n

Still quivering from her lover’s strong embrace, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 533<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And made her joy a bridge twixt earth and heaven,<\/p>\n

An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.<\/p>\n

A vast and nameless fear dragged at her nerves<\/p>\n

As drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey;<\/p>\n

It seemed to have no den from which it sprang:<\/p>\n

It was not hers, but hid its unseen cause.<\/p>\n

Then rushing came its vast and fearful Fount.<\/p>\n

A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings<\/p>\n

Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,<\/p>\n

A denser darkness than the Night could bear,<\/p>\n

Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.<\/p>\n

A rolling surge of silent death, it came<\/p>\n

Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe;<\/p>\n

Effacing heaven with its enormous stride<\/p>\n

It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air<\/p>\n

And end the fable of the joy of life.<\/p>\n

It seemed her very being to forbid,<\/p>\n

Abolishing all by which her nature lived,<\/p>\n

And laboured to blot out her body and soul,<\/p>\n

A clutch of some half-seen Invisible,<\/p>\n

An ocean of terror and of sovereign might,<\/p>\n

A person and a black infinity.<\/p>\n

It seemed to cry to her without thought or word<\/p>\n

The message of its dark eternity<\/p>\n

And the awful meaning of its silences:<\/p>\n

Out of some sullen monstrous vast arisen,<\/p>\n

Out of an abysmal deep of grief and fear<\/p>\n

Imagined by some blind regardless self,<\/p>\n

A consciousness of being without its joy,<\/p>\n

Empty of thought, incapable of bliss,<\/p>\n

That felt life blank and nowhere found a soul,<\/p>\n

A voice to the dumb anguish of the heart<\/p>\n

Conveyed a stark sense of unspoken words;<\/p>\n

In her own depths she heard the unuttered thought<\/p>\n

That made unreal the world and all life meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho art thou who claim’st thy crown of separate birth, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 534<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The illusion of thy soul’s reality<\/p>\n

And personal godhead on an ignorant globe<\/p>\n

In the animal body of imperfect man?<\/p>\n

Hope not to be happy in a world of pain<\/p>\n

And dream not, listening to the unspoken Word<\/p>\n

And dazzled by the inexpressible Ray,<\/p>\n

Transcending the mute Superconscient’s
\nrealm<\/p>\n

To give a body to the Unknowable,<\/p>\n

Or for a sanction to thy heart’s delight<\/p>\n

To burden with bliss the silent still Supreme,<\/p>\n

Profaning its bare and formless sanctity,<\/p>\n

Or call into thy chamber the Divine<\/p>\n

And sit with God tasting a human joy.<\/p>\n

I have created all, all I devour;<\/p>\n

I am Death and the dark terrible Mother of life,<\/p>\n

I am Kali black and naked in the world,<\/p>\n

I am Maya and the universe is my cheat.<\/p>\n

I lay waste human happiness with my breath<\/p>\n

And slay the will to live, the joy to be<\/p>\n

That all may pass back into nothingness<\/p>\n

And only abide the eternal and absolute.<\/p>\n

For only the blank Eternal can be true.<\/p>\n

All else is shadow and flash in Mind’s bright glass,<\/p>\n

Mind, hollow mirror in which Ignorance sees<\/p>\n

A splendid figure of its own false
\nSelf<\/p>\n

And dreams it sees a glorious solid world.<\/p>\n

O soul, inventor of man’s thoughts and hopes,<\/p>\n

Thyself the invention of the moments’ stream,<\/p>\n

Illusion’s centre or subtle apex point,<\/p>\n

At last know thyself, from vain existence cease.\u201d<\/p>\n

A shadow of the negating Absolute,<\/p>\n

The intolerant Darkness travelled surging past<\/p>\n

And ebbed in her the formidable Voice.<\/p>\n

It left behind her inner world laid waste:<\/p>\n

A barren silence weighed upon her heart,<\/p>\n

Her kingdom of delight was there no more; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 535<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Only her soul remained, its emptied stage,<\/p>\n

Awaiting the unknown eternal Will.<\/p>\n

Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,<\/p>\n

The Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,<\/p>\n

The voice of Light after the voice of Night:<\/p>\n

The cry of the Abyss drew Heaven’s reply,<\/p>\n

A might of storm
\nchased by the might of the Sun:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;<\/p>\n

Consent to hide thy royalty of bliss<\/p>\n

Lest Time and Fate find out its avenues<\/p>\n

And beat with thunderous knock upon thy gates.<\/p>\n

Hide whilst thou canst thy treasure of separate self<\/p>\n

Behind the luminous rampart of thy depths<\/p>\n

Till of a vaster empire it grows part.<\/p>\n

But not for self alone the
\nself is won:<\/p>\n

Content abide not with one conquered realm;<\/p>\n

Adventure all to make the whole world thine,<\/p>\n

To break into greater kingdoms turn thy force.<\/p>\n

Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all;<\/p>\n

Assent to the emptiness of the Supreme<\/p>\n

That all in thee may reach its absolute.<\/p>\n

Accept to be small and human on the earth,<\/p>\n

Interrupting thy new-born divinity,<\/p>\n

That man may find his utter self in God.<\/p>\n

If for thy own sake only thou hast come,<\/p>\n

An immortal spirit into the mortal’s world,<\/p>\n

To found thy luminous kingdom in God’s dark,<\/p>\n

In the Inconscient’s realm one shining star,<\/p>\n

One door in the Ignorance opened upon light,<\/p>\n

Why hadst thou any need to come at all?<\/p>\n

Thou hast come down into a struggling world<\/p>\n

To aid a blind and suffering mortal race,<\/p>\n

To open to Light the eyes that could not see,<\/p>\n

To bring down bliss into the heart of grief,<\/p>\n

To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven;<\/p>\n

If thou wouldst save the toiling universe, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 536<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The vast universal suffering feel as thine:<\/p>\n

Thou must bear the sorrow that thou claim’st to heal;<\/p>\n

The day-bringer must walk in darkest night.<\/p>\n

He who would save the world must share its pain.<\/p>\n

If he knows not grief, how shall he find grief’s cure?<\/p>\n

If far he walks above mortality’s head,<\/p>\n

How shall the mortal reach that too high path?<\/p>\n

If one of theirs they see scale heaven’s peaks,<\/p>\n

Men then can hope to learn that titan climb.<\/p>\n

God must be born on earth and be as man<\/p>\n

That man being human may grow even as God.<\/p>\n

He who would save the world must be one with the world,<\/p>\n

All suffering things contain in his heart’s space<\/p>\n

And bear the grief and joy of all that lives.<\/p>\n

His soul must be wider than the universe<\/p>\n

And feel eternity as its very stuff,<\/p>\n

Rejecting the moment’s personality,<\/p>\n

Know itself older than the birth of Time,<\/p>\n

Creation an incident in its consciousness,<\/p>\n

Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire<\/p>\n

Circling in a corner of its boundless self,<\/p>\n

The world’s destruction a small transient storm<\/p>\n

In the calm infinity it has become.<\/p>\n

If thou wouldst a little loosen the vast chain,<\/p>\n

Draw back from the world that the Idea has made,<\/p>\n

Thy mind’s selection from the Infinite,<\/p>\n

Thy senses’ gloss on the Infinitesimal’s dance,<\/p>\n

Then shalt thou know how the great bondage came.<\/p>\n

Banish all thought from thee and be God’s void.<\/p>\n

Then shalt thou uncover the Unknowable<\/p>\n

And the Superconscient conscious grow on thy tops;<\/p>\n

Infinity’s vision
\nthrough thy gaze shall pierce,<\/p>\n

Thou shalt look into
\nthe eyes of the Unknown;<\/p>\n

Find the hid Truth in things seen null and false,<\/p>\n

Behind things known discover Mystery’s rear.<\/p>\n

Thou shalt be one with God’s bare reality <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 537<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And the miraculous world he has become<\/p>\n

And the diviner miracle still to be<\/p>\n

When Nature who is now unconscious God<\/p>\n

Translucent grows to the Eternal’s light,<\/p>\n

Her seeing his sight, her walk his steps of power<\/p>\n

And life is filled with a spiritual joy<\/p>\n

And Matter is the Spirit’s willing bride.<\/p>\n

Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time’s work,<\/p>\n

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.<\/p>\n

Annul thyself that only God may be.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,<\/p>\n

And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused<\/p>\n

Plunging her deep regard into herself<\/p>\n

In her soul’s privacy in the silent Night.<\/p>\n

Aloof and standing back detached and calm,<\/p>\n

A witness of the drama of herself,<\/p>\n

A student of her own interior scene,<\/p>\n

She watched the passion and the toil of life<\/p>\n

And heard in the crowded thoroughfares of mind<\/p>\n

The unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts.<\/p>\n

All she allowed to rise that chose to stir;<\/p>\n

Calling, compelling nought, forbidding nought,<\/p>\n

She left all to the process formed in Time<\/p>\n

And the free initiative of Nature’s will.<\/p>\n

Thus following the complex human play<\/p>\n

She heard the prompter’s voice behind the scenes,<\/p>\n

Perceived the original libretto set<\/p>\n

And the organ theme of the composer Force.<\/p>\n

All she beheld that surges from man’s depths,<\/p>\n

The animal instincts prowling mid life’s trees,<\/p>\n

The impulses that whisper to the heart<\/p>\n

And passion’s thunder-chase sweeping the nerves;<\/p>\n

She saw the Powers that stare from the Abyss<\/p>\n

And the wordless Light that liberates the soul.<\/p>\n

But most her gaze pursued the birth of thought. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 538<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Affranchised from the look of surface mind<\/p>\n

She paused not to survey the official case,<\/p>\n

The issue of forms from the office of the brain,<\/p>\n

Its factory of thought-sounds and soundless words<\/p>\n

And voices stored within unheard by men,<\/p>\n

Its mint and treasury of shining coin.<\/p>\n

These were but counters in mind’s symbol game,<\/p>\n

A gramophone’s discs, a reproduction’s film,<\/p>\n

A list of signs, a cipher and a code.<\/p>\n

In our unseen subtle body thought is born<\/p>\n

Or there it enters from the cosmic field.<\/p>\n

Oft from her soul stepped out a naked thought<\/p>\n

Luminous with mysteried lips and wonderful eyes;<\/p>\n

Or from her heart emerged some burning face<\/p>\n

And looked for life and love and passionate truth,<\/p>\n

Aspired to heaven or embraced the world<\/p>\n

Or led the fancy like a fleeting moon<\/p>\n

Across the dull sky of man’s common days,<\/p>\n

Amidst the doubtful certitudes of earth’s lore,<\/p>\n

To the celestial
\nbeauty of faith gave form<\/p>\n

As if at flower-prints in a dingy room<\/p>\n

Laughed in a golden vase one living rose.<\/p>\n

A thaumaturgist sat in her heart’s deep,<\/p>\n

Compelled the forward stride, the upward look,<\/p>\n

Till wonder leapt into the illumined breast<\/p>\n

And life grew marvellous with transfiguring hope.<\/p>\n

A seeing will pondered between the brows;<\/p>\n

Thoughts, glistening Angels, stood behind the brain<\/p>\n

In flashing armour, folding hands of prayer,<\/p>\n

And poured heaven’s rays into the earthly form.<\/p>\n

Imaginations flamed up from her breast,<\/p>\n

Unearthly beauty, touches of surpassing joy<\/p>\n

And plans of miracle, dreams of delight:<\/p>\n

Around her navel lotus clustering close<\/p>\n

Her large sensations of the teeming worlds<\/p>\n

Streamed their dumb movements of the unformed Idea; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 539<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Invading the small sensitive flower of the throat<\/p>\n

They brought their mute, unuttered resonances<\/p>\n

To kindle the figures of a heavenly speech.<\/p>\n

Below, desires formed their wordless wish,<\/p>\n

And longings of physical sweetness and ecstasy<\/p>\n

Translated into the accents of a cry<\/p>\n

Their grasp on objects and their clasp on souls.<\/p>\n

Her body’s thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs<\/p>\n

And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown<\/p>\n

Where Nature’s murmurs meet the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

But for the mortal prisoned in outward mind<\/p>\n

All must present their passports at its door;<\/p>\n

Disguised they must don the official cap and mask<\/p>\n

Or pass as manufactures of the brain,<\/p>\n

Unknown their secret truth and hidden source.<\/p>\n

Only to the inner mind they speak direct,<\/p>\n

Put on a body and assume a voice,<\/p>\n

Their passage seen, their message heard and known,<\/p>\n

Their birthplace and their natal mark revealed,<\/p>\n

And stand confessed to an immortal’s sight,<\/p>\n

Our nature’s messengers to the witness soul.<\/p>\n

Impenetrable, withheld from mortal sense,<\/p>\n

The inner chambers of the spirit’s house<\/p>\n

Disclosed to her their happenings and their guests;<\/p>\n

Eyes looked through crevices in the invisible wall<\/p>\n

And through the secrecy of
\nthe unseen doors<\/p>\n

There came into mind’s little frontal room<\/p>\n

Thoughts that enlarged our limited human range,<\/p>\n

Lifted the ideal’s half-quenched or sinking torch<\/p>\n

Or peered through the finite at the infinite.<\/p>\n

A sight opened upon the invisible<\/p>\n

And sensed the shapes that mortal eyes see not,<\/p>\n

The sounds that mortal listening cannot hear,<\/p>\n

The blissful
\nsweetness of the intangible’s touch,<\/p>\n

The objects that to
\nus are empty air<\/p>\n

Are there the stuff of daily experience <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 540<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And the common pabulum of sense and thought.<\/p>\n

The beings of the subtle realms appeared<\/p>\n

And scenes concealed behind our earthly scene;<\/p>\n

She saw the life of remote continents<\/p>\n

And distance deafened not to voices far;<\/p>\n

She felt the movements crossing unknown minds;<\/p>\n

The past’s events occurred before her eyes.<\/p>\n

The great world’s
\nthoughts were part of her own thought,<\/p>\n

The feelings dumb for ever and unshared,<\/p>\n

The ideas that never found an utterance,<\/p>\n

The dim subconscient’s incoherent hints<\/p>\n

Laid bare a meaning twisted deep and strange,<\/p>\n

The bizarre secret of their
\ngrumbling speech,<\/p>\n

Their links with underlying reality.<\/p>\n

The unseen grew visible and audible:<\/p>\n

Thoughts leaped down from a superconscient field<\/p>\n

Like eagles swooping from a viewless peak,<\/p>\n

Thoughts gleamed up from the screened subliminal depths<\/p>\n

Like golden fishes from a hidden sea.<\/p>\n

This world is a vast unbroken totality,<\/p>\n

A deep solidarity
\njoins its contrary powers.<\/p>\n

God’s summits look back on the mute Abyss.<\/p>\n

So man evolving to divinest heights<\/p>\n

Colloques still with the animal and the Djinn;<\/p>\n

The human godhead with star-gazer eyes<\/p>\n

Lives still in one house with the primal beast.<\/p>\n

The high meets the low, all is a single plan.<\/p>\n

So she beheld the many births of thought,<\/p>\n

If births can be of what eternal is;<\/p>\n

For the Eternal’s powers are like himself,<\/p>\n

Timeless in the Timeless, in Time ever born.<\/p>\n

This too she saw that all in outer mind<\/p>\n

Is made, not born, a product perishable,<\/p>\n

Forged in the body’s factory by earth-force.<\/p>\n

This mind is a dynamic small machine<\/p>\n

Producing ceaselessly till it wears out, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 541<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

With raw material drawn from the outside world,<\/p>\n

The patterns sketched out by an artist God.<\/p>\n

Often our thoughts are finished cosmic wares<\/p>\n

Admitted by a silent office gate<\/p>\n

And passed through the
\nsubconscient galleries,<\/p>\n

Then issued in Time’s mart as private make.<\/p>\n

For now they bear the living person’s stamp;<\/p>\n

A trick, a special hue claims them his own.<\/p>\n

All else is Nature’s craft and this too hers.<\/p>\n

Our tasks are given, we are but instruments;<\/p>\n

Nothing is all our
\nown that we create;<\/p>\n

The Power that acts
\nin us is not our force:<\/p>\n

The genius too receives from some high fount<\/p>\n

Concealed in a supernal secrecy<\/p>\n

The work that gives him an immortal name.<\/p>\n

The word, the form, the charm, the glory and grace<\/p>\n

Are missioned sparks from a stupendous Fire;<\/p>\n

A sample from the laboratory of God<\/p>\n

Of which he holds the patent upon earth,<\/p>\n

Comes to him wrapt in golden coverings;<\/p>\n

He listens for Inspiration’s postman knock<\/p>\n

And takes delivery of the priceless gift<\/p>\n

A little spoilt by the receiver mind<\/p>\n

Or mixed with the manufacture of his brain;<\/p>\n

When least defaced, then is it most divine.<\/p>\n

Although his ego claims the world for its use,<\/p>\n

Man is a dynamo for the cosmic work;<\/p>\n

Nature does most in him, God the high rest:<\/p>\n

Only his soul’s acceptance is his own.<\/p>\n

This independent, once a power supreme,<\/p>\n

Self-born before the universe was made,<\/p>\n

Accepting cosmos, binds himself Nature’s serf<\/p>\n

Till he becomes her freed man\u2014or God’s slave.<\/p>\n

This is the appearance in our mortal front;<\/p>\n

Our greater truth of being lies behind:<\/p>\n

Our consciousness is cosmic and immense, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 542<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

But only when we break through Matter’s wall<\/p>\n

In that spiritual vastness can we stand<\/p>\n

Where we can live the masters of our world,<\/p>\n

And mind is only a means and body a tool.<\/p>\n

For above the birth of body and of thought<\/p>\n

Our spirit’s truth lives in the naked self<\/p>\n

And from that height, unbound, surveys the world.<\/p>\n

Out of the mind she rose to escape its law<\/p>\n

That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self<\/p>\n

Or fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.<\/p>\n

High she attained and stood from Nature free<\/p>\n

And saw creation’s life from far above,<\/p>\n

Thence upon all she laid her sovereign will<\/p>\n

To dedicate it to God’s timeless calm:<\/p>\n

Then all grew tranquil in her being’s space,<\/p>\n

Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell<\/p>\n

Like quiet waves upon a silent sea<\/p>\n

Or ripples passing over a lonely pool<\/p>\n

When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.<\/p>\n

Yet the mind’s factory had ceased to work,<\/p>\n

There was no sound of the dynamo’s throb,<\/p>\n

There came no call from the still fields of life.<\/p>\n

Then even those stirrings rose in her no more;<\/p>\n

Her mind now seemed like a vast empty room<\/p>\n

Or like a peaceful landscape without sound.<\/p>\n

This men call quietude and prize as peace.<\/p>\n

But to her deeper sight all yet was there,<\/p>\n

Effervescing like a chaos under a lid;<\/p>\n

Feelings and thoughts cried out for word and act<\/p>\n

But found no response in the silenced brain:<\/p>\n

All was suppressed but nothing yet expunged;<\/p>\n

At every moment might explosion come.<\/p>\n

Then this too paused; the body seemed a stone.<\/p>\n

All now was a wide mighty vacancy,<\/p>\n

But still excluded from eternity’s hush;<\/p>\n

For still was far the repose of the Absolute <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 543<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And the ocean silence of Infinity.<\/p>\n

Even now some
\nthoughts could cross her solitude:<\/p>\n

These surged not from the depths or from within<\/p>\n

Cast up from formlessness to seek a form,<\/p>\n

Spoke not the body’s need nor voiced
\nmind’s call.<\/p>\n

These seemed not born
\nnor made in human Time,<\/p>\n

Children of cosmic nature from a far world,<\/p>\n

Idea’s shapes in complete armour of words<\/p>\n

Posted like travellers in an alien space.<\/p>\n

Out of some far expanse they seemed to come<\/p>\n

As if carried on vast wings like large white sails,<\/p>\n

And with easy access reached the inner ear<\/p>\n

As though they used a natural privileged right<\/p>\n

To the high royal entries of the soul.<\/p>\n

As yet their path lay deep concealed in light.<\/p>\n

Then looking to know whence the intruders came<\/p>\n

She saw a spiritual immensity<\/p>\n

Pervading and encompassing the world-space<\/p>\n

As ether our transparent tangible air,<\/p>\n

And through it sailing tranquilly a thought.<\/p>\n

As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port,<\/p>\n

Ignorant of embargo and blockade,<\/p>\n

Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,<\/p>\n

It came to the silent city of the brain<\/p>\n

Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,<\/p>\n

But met a barring will, a blow of Force<\/p>\n

And sank vanishing in the immensity.<\/p>\n

After a long vacant pause another appeared<\/p>\n

And others one by one suddenly emerged,<\/p>\n

Mind’s unexpected visitors from the
\nunseen<\/p>\n

Like far-off sails upon a lonely sea.<\/p>\n

But soon that commerce failed, none reached mind’s coast.<\/p>\n

Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:<\/p>\n

Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary<\/p>\n

A silent spirit pervaded silent Space. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 544<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

In that absolute stillness bare and formidable<\/p>\n

There was glimpsed an all-negating Void
\nsupreme<\/p>\n

That claimed its mystic Nihil’s sovereign right<\/p>\n

To cancel Nature and deny the soul.<\/p>\n

Even the nude sense of self grew pale and thin:<\/p>\n

Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms<\/p>\n

A blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind.<\/p>\n

Her spirit seemed the substance of a name,<\/p>\n

The world a pictured symbol drawn on self,<\/p>\n

A dream of images, a dream of sounds<\/p>\n

Built up the semblance of a universe<\/p>\n

Or lent to spirit the appearance of a world.<\/p>\n

This was self-seeing; in that intolerant hush<\/p>\n

No notion and no concept could take shape,<\/p>\n

There was no sense to frame the figure of things,<\/p>\n

A sheer self-sight was there, no thought arose.<\/p>\n

Emotion slept deep down in the still heart<\/p>\n

Or lay buried in a cemetery of peace:<\/p>\n

All feelings seemed quiescent, calm or dead,<\/p>\n

As if the heart-strings rent could work no more<\/p>\n

And joy and grief could never rise again.<\/p>\n

The heart beat on with an unconscious rhythm<\/p>\n

But no response came from it and no cry.<\/p>\n

Vain was the provocation of events;<\/p>\n

Nothing within answered an outside touch,<\/p>\n

No nerve was stirred and no reaction rose.<\/p>\n

Yet still her body saw and moved and spoke;<\/p>\n

It understood without the aid of thought,<\/p>\n

It said whatever needed to be said,<\/p>\n

It did whatever needed to be done.<\/p>\n

There was no person there behind the act,<\/p>\n

No mind that chose or passed the fitting word:<\/p>\n

All wrought like an unerring apt machine.<\/p>\n

As if continuing old habitual turns,<\/p>\n

And pushed by an old unexhausted force<\/p>\n

The engine did the work for which it was made: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 545<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Her consciousness looked on and took no part;<\/p>\n

All it upheld, in nothing had a share.<\/p>\n

There was no strong initiator will;<\/p>\n

An incoherence crossing a firm void<\/p>\n

Slipped into an order of related chance.<\/p>\n

A pure perception was the only power<\/p>\n

That stood behind her action and her sight.<\/p>\n

If that retired, all objects would be extinct,<\/p>\n

Her private universe would cease to be,<\/p>\n

The house she had built with bricks of thought and sense<\/p>\n

In the beginning after the birth of Space.<\/p>\n

This seeing was identical with the seen;<\/p>\n

It knew without knowledge all that could be known,<\/p>\n

It saw impartially the world go by,<\/p>\n

But in the same supreme unmoving glance<\/p>\n

Saw too its abysmal unreality.<\/p>\n

It watched the figure of the cosmic game,<\/p>\n

But the thought and
\ninner life in forms seemed dead<\/p>\n

Abolished by her own collapse of thought:<\/p>\n

A hollow physical shell persisted still.<\/p>\n

All seemed a brilliant shadow of itself,<\/p>\n

A cosmic film of scenes and images:<\/p>\n

The enduring mass and outline of the hills<\/p>\n

Was a design sketched on a silent mind<\/p>\n

And held to a tremulous false solidity<\/p>\n

By constant beats of
\nvisionary sight;<\/p>\n

The forest with its emerald multitudes<\/p>\n

Clothed with its show of hues vague empty Space,<\/p>\n

A painting’s colours hiding a surface void<\/p>\n

That flickered upon dissolution’s edge;<\/p>\n

The blue heavens, an illusion of the eyes,<\/p>\n

Roofed in the mind’s illusion of a world.<\/p>\n

The men who walked beneath an unreal sky<\/p>\n

Seemed mobile puppets out of cardboard cut<\/p>\n

And pushed by unseen hands across the soil<\/p>\n

Or moving pictures upon Fancy’s film: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 546<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

There was no soul within, no power of life.<\/p>\n

The brain’s vibrations that appear like thought,<\/p>\n

The nerve’s brief answer to each contact’s knock,<\/p>\n

The heart’s quiverings felt as joy and grief and love<\/p>\n

Were twitchings of the body, their seeming self,<\/p>\n

That body forged from atoms and formed gas<\/p>\n

A manufactured lie of Maya’s make,<\/p>\n

Its life a dream seen by the sleeping Void.<\/p>\n

The animals lone or trooping through the glades<\/p>\n

Fled like a passing vision of beauty and grace<\/p>\n

Imagined by some all-creating Eye.<\/p>\n

Yet something was there behind the fading scene;<\/p>\n

Wherever she turned, at whatsoever she looked,<\/p>\n

It was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.<\/p>\n

The One only real shut itself from Space<\/p>\n

And stood aloof from the idea of Time.<\/p>\n

Its truth escaped from shape and line and hue.<\/p>\n

All else grew unsubstantial, self-annulled,<\/p>\n

This only everlasting seemed and true,<\/p>\n

Yet nowhere dwelt, it was outside the hours.<\/p>\n

This only could justify the labour of sight,<\/p>\n

But sight could not define for it a form;<\/p>\n

This only could appease the unsatisfied ear<\/p>\n

But hearing listened in vain for a missing sound;<\/p>\n

This answered not the sense, called not to Mind.<\/p>\n

It met her as the uncaught inaudible Voice<\/p>\n

That speaks for ever from the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

It met her like an omnipresent point<\/p>\n

Pure of dimensions, unfixed, invisible,<\/p>\n

The single oneness of its multiplied beat<\/p>\n

Accentuating its sole eternity.<\/p>\n

It faced her as some vast Nought’s immensity,<\/p>\n

An endless No to all that seems to be,<\/p>\n

An endless Yes to things ever unconceived<\/p>\n

And all that is unimagined and unthought,<\/p>\n

An eternal zero or untotalled Aught, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 547<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

A spaceless and a placeless Infinite.<\/p>\n

Yet eternity and infinity seemed but words<\/p>\n

Vainly affixed by mind’s incompetence<\/p>\n

To its stupendous lone reality.<\/p>\n

The world is but a spark-burst from its light,<\/p>\n

All moments flashes from its Timelessness,<\/p>\n

All objects glimmerings of the Bodiless<\/p>\n

That disappear from Mind when That is seen.<\/p>\n

It held, as if a shield before its face,<\/p>\n

A consciousness that saw without a seer,<\/p>\n

The Truth where knowledge is not nor knower nor known,<\/p>\n

The Love enamoured of its own delight<\/p>\n

In which the Lover is not nor the Beloved<\/p>\n

Bringing their personal passion into the Vast,<\/p>\n

The Force omnipotent in quietude,<\/p>\n

The Bliss that none can ever hope to taste.<\/p>\n

It cancelled the convincing cheat of self;<\/p>\n

A truth in nothingness was its mighty clue.<\/p>\n

If all existence could renounce to be<\/p>\n

And Being take refuge in Non-being’s arms<\/p>\n

And Non-being could strike out its ciphered round,<\/p>\n

Some lustre of that Reality might appear.<\/p>\n

A formless liberation came on her.<\/p>\n

Once sepulchred alive in brain and flesh<\/p>\n

She had risen up from body, mind and life;<\/p>\n

She was no more a Person in a world,<\/p>\n

She had escaped into infinity.<\/p>\n

What once had been herself had disappeared;<\/p>\n

There was no frame of things, no figure of soul.<\/p>\n

A refugee from the domain of sense,<\/p>\n

Evading the necessity of thought,<\/p>\n

Delivered from Knowledge and from Ignorance<\/p>\n

And rescued from the true and the untrue,<\/p>\n

She shared the Superconscient’s high retreat<\/p>\n

Beyond the self-born Word, the nude Idea,<\/p>\n

The first bare solid ground of consciousness; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 548<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Beings were not there, existence had no place,<\/p>\n

There was no temptation of the joy to be.<\/p>\n

Unutterably effaced, no one and null,<\/p>\n

A vanishing vestige like a violet trace,<\/p>\n

A faint record merely of a self now past,<\/p>\n

She was a point in the unknowable.<\/p>\n

Only some last annulment now remained,<\/p>\n

Annihilation’s vague indefinable step:<\/p>\n

A memory of being still was there<\/p>\n

And kept her separate from nothingness:<\/p>\n

She was in That but still became not That.<\/p>\n

This shadow of herself so close to nought<\/p>\n

Could be again self’s point d’appui to live,<\/p>\n

Return out of the Inconceivable<\/p>\n

And be what some mysterious vast might choose.<\/p>\n

Even as the Unknowable decreed,<\/p>\n

She might be nought or new-become the All,<\/p>\n

Or if the omnipotent Nihil took a shape<\/p>\n

Emerge as someone and redeem the world.<\/p>\n

Even, she might learn what the mystic cipher held,<\/p>\n

This seeming exit or closed end of all<\/p>\n

Could be a blind tenebrous passage screened from sight,<\/p>\n

Her state the eclipsing shell of a darkened sun<\/p>\n

On its secret way to the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

Even now her splendid being might flame back<\/p>\n

Out of the silence and the nullity,<\/p>\n

A gleaming portion of the All-Wonderful,<\/p>\n

A power of some all-affirming Absolute,<\/p>\n

A shining mirror of the eternal Truth<\/p>\n

To show to the One-in-all its manifest face,<\/p>\n

To the souls of men their deep identity.<\/p>\n

Or she might wake into God’s quietude<\/p>\n

Beyond the cosmic day and cosmic night<\/p>\n

And rest appeased in his white eternity.<\/p>\n

But this was now unreal or remote<\/p>\n

Or covered in the mystic fathomless blank. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 549<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

In infinite Nothingness was the ultimate sign<\/p>\n

Or else the Real was the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

A lonely Absolute negated all:<\/p>\n

It effaced the ignorant world from its solitude<\/p>\n

And drowned the soul in its everlasting peace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Six <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 550<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Six    Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute    A calm slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens. A routed sullen…<\/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-1015","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\/1015","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=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}