{"id":1022,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:04","slug":"13-book-7-canto-03-the-entry-into-the-inner-countries-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\/13-book-7-canto-03-the-entry-into-the-inner-countries-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-13_Book 7 Canto 03 The Entry into the Inner Countries.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n
\n

\nCanto Three<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Entry into
\nthe Inner Countries<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At first out of the busy hum of mind<\/p>\n

As if from a loud thronged market into a cave<\/p>\n

By an inward moment’s
\nmagic she had come,<\/p>\n

A stark hushed emptiness became her self:<\/p>\n

Her mind unvisited by the voice of thought<\/p>\n

Stared at a void deep’s dumb infinity.<\/p>\n

Her heights receded, her depths behind her closed;<\/p>\n

All fled away from her and left her blank.<\/p>\n

But when she came back to her self of thought,<\/p>\n

Once more she was a human thing on earth,<\/p>\n

A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight,<\/p>\n

A mind compelled to think out ignorance,<\/p>\n

A life-force pressed into a camp of works<\/p>\n

And the material world her limiting field.<\/p>\n

Amazed like one unknowing she sought her way<\/p>\n

Out of the tangle of man’s ignorant past<\/p>\n

That took the surface person for the soul.<\/p>\n

Then a Voice spoke that dwelt on secret heights:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor man thou seekst, not for thyself alone.<\/p>\n

Only if God assumes the human mind<\/p>\n

And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak<\/p>\n

And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,<\/p>\n

Can he help man to grow into the God.<\/p>\n

As man disguised the cosmic Greatness works<\/p>\n

And finds the mystic inaccessible gate<\/p>\n

And opens the
\nImmortal’s golden door,<\/p>\n

Man human follows in God’s human steps.<\/p>\n

Accepting his darkness thou must bring to him light,<\/p>\n

Accepting his sorrow thou must bring to him bliss.<\/p>\n

In Matter’s body find thy heaven-born soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Savitri surged out of her body’s wall <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 488<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And stood a little span outside herself<\/p>\n

And looked into her subtle being’s depths<\/p>\n

And in its heart as in a lotus-bud<\/p>\n

Divined her secret and mysterious soul.<\/p>\n

At the dim portal of the inner life<\/p>\n

That bars out from our depths the body’s mind<\/p>\n

And all that lives but by the body’s breath,<\/p>\n

She knocked and pressed against the ebony gate.<\/p>\n

The living portal groaned with sullen hinge:<\/p>\n

Heavily reluctant it complained inert<\/p>\n

Against the tyranny of the spirit’s touch.<\/p>\n

A formidable voice cried from within:<\/p>\n

\u201cBack, creature of earth, lest tortured and torn thou die.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dreadful murmur rose like a dim sea;<\/p>\n

The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,<\/p>\n

A fatal guardian hood with monstrous coils,<\/p>\n

The hounds of darkness growled with jaws agape,<\/p>\n

And trolls and gnomes and goblins scowled and stared<\/p>\n

And wild beast roarings thrilled the blood with fear<\/p>\n

And menace muttered in a dangerous tongue.<\/p>\n

Unshaken her will pressed on the rigid bars:<\/p>\n

The gate swung wide with a protesting jar,<\/p>\n

The opponent Powers withdrew their dreadful guard;<\/p>\n

Her being entered into the inner worlds.<\/p>\n

In a narrow passage, the subconscient’s gate,<\/p>\n

She breathed with difficulty and pain and strove<\/p>\n

To find the inner self concealed in sense.<\/p>\n

Into a dense of subtle Matter packed,<\/p>\n

A cavity filled with a blind mass of power,<\/p>\n

An opposition of misleading gleams,<\/p>\n

A heavy barrier of unseeing sight,<\/p>\n

She forced her way through body to the soul.<\/p>\n

Across a perilous border line she passed<\/p>\n

Where life dips into the subconscient dusk<\/p>\n

Or struggles from Matter into chaos of mind,<\/p>\n

Aswarm with elemental entities <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 489<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And fluttering shapes of vague half-bodied thought<\/p>\n

And crude beginnings of incontinent force.<\/p>\n

At first a difficult narrowness was there,<\/p>\n

A press of uncertain powers and drifting wills;<\/p>\n

For all was there but nothing in its place.<\/p>\n

At times an opening came, a door was forced;<\/p>\n

She crossed through spaces of a secret self<\/p>\n

And trod in passages of inner Time.<\/p>\n

At last she broke into a form of things,<\/p>\n

A start of finiteness, a world of sense:<\/p>\n

But all was still confused, nothing self-found.<\/p>\n

Soul was not there but only cries of life.<\/p>\n

A thronged and clamorous air environed her.<\/p>\n

A horde of sounds defied significance,<\/p>\n

A dissonant clash of cries and contrary calls;<\/p>\n

A mob of visions broke across the sight,<\/p>\n

A jostled sequence lacking sense and suite,<\/p>\n

Feelings pushed through a packed and burdened heart,<\/p>\n

Each forced its separate inconsequent way<\/p>\n

But cared for nothing but its ego’s drive.<\/p>\n

A rally without key of common will,<\/p>\n

Thought stared at thought and pulled at the taut brain<\/p>\n

As if to pluck the reason from its seat<\/p>\n

And cast its corpse into life’s wayside drain;<\/p>\n

So might forgotten lie in Nature’s mud<\/p>\n

Abandoned the slain sentinel of the soul.<\/p>\n

So could life’s power shake from it mind’s rule,<\/p>\n

Nature renounce the spirit’s government<\/p>\n

And the bare elemental energies<\/p>\n

Make of the sense a glory of boundless joy,<\/p>\n

A splendour of ecstatic anarchy,<\/p>\n

A revel mighty and mad of utter bliss.<\/p>\n

This was the sense’s instinct void of soul<\/p>\n

Or when the soul sleeps hidden void of power,<\/p>\n

But now the vital godhead wakes within<\/p>\n

And lifts the life with the
\nsupernal’s touch. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 490<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

But how shall come the glory and the flame<\/p>\n

If mind is cast away into the abyss?<\/p>\n

For body without mind has not the light,<\/p>\n

The rapture of spirit sense, the joy of life;<\/p>\n

All then becomes subconscient, tenebrous,<\/p>\n

Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page<\/p>\n

Or else a mad disorder whirls the brain<\/p>\n

Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads,<\/p>\n

A chaos of disordered impulses<\/p>\n

In which no light can come, no joy, no peace.<\/p>\n

This state now threatened, this she pushed from her.<\/p>\n

As if in a long endless tossing street<\/p>\n

One driven mid a trampling hurrying crowd<\/p>\n

Hour after hour she trod without release,<\/p>\n

Holding by her will the senseless meute at bay;<\/p>\n

Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will<\/p>\n

And fixed her thought upon the saviour Name;<\/p>\n

Then all grew still and empty; she was free.<\/p>\n

A large deliverance came, a vast calm space.<\/p>\n

Awhile she moved through a blank tranquillity<\/p>\n

Of naked Light from an invisible sun,<\/p>\n

A void that was a bodiless happiness,<\/p>\n

A blissful vacuum of nameless peace.<\/p>\n

But now a mightier danger’s front drew near:<\/p>\n

The press of bodily mind, the Inconscient’s brood<\/p>\n

Of aimless thought and will had fallen from her.<\/p>\n

Approaching loomed a giant head of Life<\/p>\n

Ungoverned by mind or soul, subconscient, vast.<\/p>\n

It tossed all power into a single drive,<\/p>\n

It made its power a might of dangerous seas.<\/p>\n

Into the stillness of her silent self,<\/p>\n

Into the whiteness of its muse of Space<\/p>\n

A spate, a torrent of the speed of Life<\/p>\n

Broke like a wind-lashed driven mob of waves<\/p>\n

Racing on a pale floor of summer sand;<\/p>\n

It drowned its banks, a mountain of climbing waves. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 491<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Enormous was its vast and passionate voice.<\/p>\n

It cried to her listening spirit as it ran,<\/p>\n

Demanding God’s submission to chainless Force.<\/p>\n

A deaf force calling to a status dumb,<\/p>\n

A thousand voices in a muted Vast,<\/p>\n

It claimed the heart’s support for its clutch at joy,<\/p>\n

For its need to act the witness
\nsoul’s consent,<\/p>\n

For its lust of power her neutral being’s seal.<\/p>\n

Into the wideness of her watching self<\/p>\n

It brought a grandiose gust of the Breath of Life;<\/p>\n

Its torrent carried the world’s hopes and fears,<\/p>\n

All life’s, all Nature’s dissatisfied hungry cry,<\/p>\n

And the longing all
\neternity cannot fill:<\/p>\n

It called to the mountain secrecies of the soul<\/p>\n

And the miracle of the never-dying fire,<\/p>\n

It spoke to some first inexpressible ecstasy<\/p>\n

Hidden in the creative beat of Life;<\/p>\n

Out of the nether unseen deeps it tore<\/p>\n

Its lure and magic of disordered bliss,<\/p>\n

Into earth-light poured its maze of tangled charm<\/p>\n

And heady draught of Nature’s primitive joy<\/p>\n

And the fire and mystery of forbidden delight<\/p>\n

Drunk from the world-libido’s bottomless well,<\/p>\n

And the honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death,<\/p>\n

But dreamed a vintage of glory of life’s gods,<\/p>\n

And felt as celestial rapture’s golden sting.<\/p>\n

The cycles of the infinity of desire<\/p>\n

And the mystique that made an unrealised world<\/p>\n

Wider than the known and closer than the unknown<\/p>\n

In which hunt for ever the hounds of mind and life,<\/p>\n

Tempted a deep dissatisfied urge within<\/p>\n

To long for the unfulfilled and ever far<\/p>\n

And make this life upon a limiting earth<\/p>\n

A climb towards summits vanishing in the void,<\/p>\n

A search for the glory of the impossible.<\/p>\n

It dreamed of that which never has been known, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 492<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

It grasped at that which never has been won,<\/p>\n

It chased into an Elysian memory<\/p>\n

The charms that flee from the heart’s soon lost delight;<\/p>\n

It dared the force that slays, the joys that hurt,<\/p>\n

The imaged shape of unaccomplished things<\/p>\n

And the summons to a Circean transmuting dance<\/p>\n

And passion’s tenancy of the courts of love<\/p>\n

And the wild Beast’s ramp and romp with Beauty and Life.<\/p>\n

It brought its cry and surge of opposite powers,<\/p>\n

Its moments of the touch of luminous planes,<\/p>\n

Its flame-ascensions and sky-pitched vast attempts,<\/p>\n

Its fiery towers of dream built on the winds,<\/p>\n

Its sinkings towards the darkness and the abyss,<\/p>\n

Its honey of tenderness, its sharp wine of hate,<\/p>\n

Its changes of sun and cloud, of laughter and tears,<\/p>\n

Its bottomless danger pits and swallowing gulfs,<\/p>\n

Its fear and joy and ecstasy and despair,<\/p>\n

Its occult wizardries, its simple lines<\/p>\n

And great communions and uplifting moves,<\/p>\n

Its faith in heaven, its intercourse with hell.<\/p>\n

These powers were not blunt with the dead weight of earth,<\/p>\n

They gave ambrosia’s taste and poison’s sting.<\/p>\n

There was an ardour in the gaze of Life<\/p>\n

That saw heaven blue in the grey air of Night:<\/p>\n

The impulses godward soared on passion’s wings.<\/p>\n

Mind’s quick-paced
\nthoughts floated from their high necks<\/p>\n

A glowing splendour as of an irised mane,<\/p>\n

A parure of pure intuition’s light;<\/p>\n

Its flame-foot gallop they could imitate:<\/p>\n

Mind’s voices mimicked inspiration’s stress,<\/p>\n

Its ictus of infallibility,<\/p>\n

Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods.<\/p>\n

A trenchant blade that shore the nets of doubt,<\/p>\n

Its sword of discernment seemed almost divine.<\/p>\n

Yet all that knowledge was a borrowed sun’s;<\/p>\n

The forms that came were not heaven’s native births: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 493<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Its puissance dangerous and absolute<\/p>\n

Could mingle poison with the wine of God.<\/p>\n

On these high shining backs falsehood could ride;<\/p>\n

Truth lay with delight in error’s passionate arms<\/p>\n

Gliding downstream in a blithe gilded barge:<\/p>\n

She edged her ray with a magnificent lie.<\/p>\n

Here in Life’s nether realms all contraries meet;<\/p>\n

Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes,<\/p>\n

And Ignorance is
\nWisdom’s patron here.<\/p>\n

Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed<\/p>\n

Could bear to a dangerous intermediate zone<\/p>\n

Where Death walks wearing a robe of deathless Life.<\/p>\n

Or they enter the valley of the wandering Gleam<\/p>\n

Whence, captives or victims of the specious Ray,<\/p>\n

Souls trapped in that region never can escape.<\/p>\n

Agents, not masters, they serve Life’s desires<\/p>\n

Toiling for ever in the snare of Time.<\/p>\n

Their bodies born out of some Nihil’s womb<\/p>\n

Ensnare the spirit in the moment’s dreams,<\/p>\n

Then perish vomiting the immortal soul<\/p>\n

Out of Matter’s belly into the sink of Nought.<\/p>\n

Yet some uncaught, unslain can warily pass<\/p>\n

Carrying Truth’s image in their sheltered heart,<\/p>\n

Pluck Knowledge out of error’s screening grip,<\/p>\n

Break paths through the blind walls of little self,<\/p>\n

Then travel on to reach a greater life.<\/p>\n

All this streamed past her and seemed to her vision’s sight<\/p>\n

As if around a high and voiceless isle<\/p>\n

A clamour of waters from far unknown hills<\/p>\n

Swallowed its narrow banks in crowding waves<\/p>\n

And made a hungry world of white wild foam:<\/p>\n

Hastening, a dragon with a million feet,<\/p>\n

Its foam and cry a drunken giant’s din,<\/p>\n

Tossing a mane of Darkness into God’s sky,<\/p>\n

It ebbed receding into a distant roar.<\/p>\n

Then smiled again a
\nlarge and tranquil air: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 494<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Blue heaven, green earth, partners of Beauty’s reign,<\/p>\n

Lived as of old, companions in happiness;<\/p>\n

And in the world’s heart laughed the joy of life.<\/p>\n

All now was still, the soil shone dry and pure.<\/p>\n

Through it all she
\nmoved not, plunged not in the vain waves<\/p>\n

Out of the vastness of the silent self<\/p>\n

Life’s clamour fled; her spirit was mute and free.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then journeying forward through the self’s wide hush<\/p>\n

She came into a brilliant ordered Space.<\/p>\n

There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;<\/p>\n

A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.<\/p>\n

Tamed to the modesty of a measured pace,<\/p>\n

She kept no more her vehement stride and rush;<\/p>\n

She had lost the careless majesty of her muse<\/p>\n

And the ample grandeur of her regal force;<\/p>\n

Curbed were her mighty pomps, her splendid waste,<\/p>\n

Sobered the revels of her bacchant play,<\/p>\n

Cut down were her squanderings in desire’s bazaar,<\/p>\n

Coerced her despot will, her fancy’s dance,<\/p>\n

A cold stolidity bound the riot of sense.<\/p>\n

Her spirit’s bounds they cast in rigid lines.<\/p>\n

A royalty without freedom was her lot;<\/p>\n

The sovereign throned obeyed her ministers:<\/p>\n

Her servants mind and sense governed her house:<\/p>\n

And guarding with a phalanx of armoured rules<\/p>\n

The reason’s balanced reign, kept order and peace.<\/p>\n

Her will lived closed in adamant walls of law,<\/p>\n

Coerced was her force by chains that feigned to adorn,<\/p>\n

Imagination was prisoned in a fort,<\/p>\n

Her wanton and licentious favourite;<\/p>\n

Reality’s poise and reason’s symmetry<\/p>\n

Were set in its place sentinelled by marshalled facts,<\/p>\n

They gave to the soul for throne a bench of Law,<\/p>\n

For kingdom a small world of rule and line:<\/p>\n

The ages’ wisdom, shrivelled to scholiast lines, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 495<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Shrank patterned into a copy-book device.<\/p>\n

The Spirit’s almighty freedom was not here:<\/p>\n

A schoolman mind had captured life’s large space,<\/p>\n

But chose to live in bare and paltry rooms<\/p>\n

Parked off from the too vast dangerous universe,<\/p>\n

Fearing to lose its soul in the infinite.<\/p>\n

Even the Idea’s ample sweep was cut<\/p>\n

Into a system, chained to fixed pillars of thought<\/p>\n

Or rivetted to Matter’s solid ground:<\/p>\n

Or else the soul was lost in its own heights:<\/p>\n

Obeying the Ideal’s high-browed law<\/p>\n

Thought based a throne on unsubstantial air<\/p>\n

Disdaining earth’s flat triviality:<\/p>\n

It barred reality out to live in its dreams.<\/p>\n

Or all stepped into a systemed universe:<\/p>\n

Life’s empire was a managed continent,<\/p>\n

Its thoughts an army ranked and disciplined;<\/p>\n

Uniformed they kept the logic of their fixed place<\/p>\n

At the bidding of the trained centurion mind.<\/p>\n

Or each stepped into its station like a star<\/p>\n

Or marched through fixed and constellated heavens<\/p>\n

Or kept its feudal rank among its peers<\/p>\n

In the sky’s unchanging cosmic hierarchy.<\/p>\n

Or like a highbred maiden with chaste eyes<\/p>\n

Forbidden to walk unveiled the public ways,<\/p>\n

She must in close secluded chambers move,<\/p>\n

Her feeling in cloisters live or gardened paths.<\/p>\n

Life was consigned to a safe level path,<\/p>\n

It dared not tempt the great and difficult heights<\/p>\n

Or climb to be neighbour to a lonely star<\/p>\n

Or skirt the danger of the precipice<\/p>\n

Or tempt the foam-curled breakers’ perilous laugh,<\/p>\n

Adventure’s lyrist, danger’s amateur,<\/p>\n

Or into her chamber call some flaming god,<\/p>\n

Or leave the world’s bounds and, where no limits are,<\/p>\n

Meet with the heart’s passion the Adorable <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 496<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Or set the world ablaze with the inner Fire.<\/p>\n

A chastened epithet in the prose of life,<\/p>\n

She must fill with colour just her sanctioned space,<\/p>\n

Not break out of the cabin of the idea<\/p>\n

Nor trespass into rhythms too high or vast.<\/p>\n

Even when it soared into ideal air,<\/p>\n

Thought’s flight lost not itself in heaven’s blue:<\/p>\n

It drew upon the skies a patterned flower<\/p>\n

Of disciplined beauty and harmonic light.<\/p>\n

A temperate vigilant spirit governed life:<\/p>\n

Its acts were tools of the considering thought,<\/p>\n

Too cold to take fire and set the world ablaze,<\/p>\n

Or the careful reason’s diplomatic moves<\/p>\n

Testing the means to a prefigured end,<\/p>\n

Or at the highest pitch some calm Will’s plan<\/p>\n

Or a strategy of some High Command within<\/p>\n

To conquer the secret treasures of the gods<\/p>\n

Or win for a masked king some glorious world,<\/p>\n

Not a reflex of the spontaneous self,<\/p>\n

An index of the being and its moods,<\/p>\n

A winging of conscious spirit, a sacrament<\/p>\n

Of life’s communion with the still Supreme<\/p>\n

Or its pure movement on the Eternal’s road.<\/p>\n

Or else for the body of some high Idea<\/p>\n

A house was built with too close-fitting bricks;<\/p>\n

Action and thought cemented made a wall<\/p>\n

Of small ideals limiting the soul.<\/p>\n

Even meditation mused on a narrow seat;<\/p>\n

And worship turned to an exclusive God,<\/p>\n

To the Universal in a chapel prayed<\/p>\n

Whose doors were shut
\nagainst the universe:<\/p>\n

Or kneeled to the bodiless Impersonal<\/p>\n

A mind shut to the cry and fire of love:<\/p>\n

A rational religion dried the heart.<\/p>\n

It planned a smooth life’s acts with ethics’ rule<\/p>\n

Or offered a cold and flameless sacrifice. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 497<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The sacred Book lay on its sanctified desk<\/p>\n

Wrapped in interpretation’s silken strings:<\/p>\n

A credo sealed up its spiritual sense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here was a quiet country of fixed mind,<\/p>\n

Here life no more was all nor passion’s voice;<\/p>\n

A cry of sense had sunk into a hush.<\/p>\n

Soul was not there nor spirit, but mind alone;<\/p>\n

Mind claimed to be the spirit and the soul.<\/p>\n

The spirit saw itself as form of mind,<\/p>\n

Lost itself in the glory of the thought,<\/p>\n

A light that made invisible the sun.<\/p>\n

Into a firm and settled space she came<\/p>\n

Where all was still and all things kept their place.<\/p>\n

Each found what it had sought and knew its aim.<\/p>\n

All had a final last stability.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

There one stood forth who bore authority<\/p>\n

On an important brow and held a rod;<\/p>\n

Command was incarnate in his gesture and tone;<\/p>\n

Tradition’s petrified wisdom carved his speech,<\/p>\n

His sentences savoured the oracle.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraveller or pilgrim of the inner world,<\/p>\n

Fortunate art thou to reach our brilliant air<\/p>\n

Flaming with thought’s supreme finality.<\/p>\n

O aspirant to the perfect way of life,<\/p>\n

Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.<\/p>\n

Ours is the home of cosmic certainty.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> Another version of this paragraph-beginning of twelve lines:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  <\/span>This narrowed life\u2019s pedestrian thought and
\nwill<\/span><\/p>\n

Debouched
\ninto a little continent space<\/span><\/p>\n

Where
\nsoul was not nor spirit, and thinking mind<\/span><\/p>\n

Laboured
\ncontent with small finalities.<\/span><\/p>\n

It
\nseemed to it the top of being\u2019s arc<\/span><\/p>\n

And
\nthe last circle of the quest of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

It
\nwas a paradise for thought\u2019s crowned ease<\/span><\/p>\n

Where
\nnothing more was left to find or know,<\/span><\/p>\n

A
\ntabernacle of wise contented life.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 498<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Here is the truth, God’s harmony is here.<\/p>\n

Register thy name in the book of the elite,<\/p>\n

Admitted by the sanction of the few,<\/p>\n

Adopt thy station of knowledge, thy post in mind,<\/p>\n

Thy ticket of order draw in Life’s bureau<\/p>\n

And praise thy fate that made thee one of ours.<\/p>\n

All here, docketed and tied, the mind can know,<\/p>\n

All schemed by law that God permits to life.<\/p>\n

This is the end and there is no beyond.<\/p>\n

Here is the safety of the ultimate wall,<\/p>\n

Here is the clarity of the sword of Light,<\/p>\n

Here is the victory of a single Truth,<\/p>\n

Here burns the diamond of flawless bliss.<\/p>\n

A favourite of Heaven and Nature live.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to the too satisfied and confident sage<\/p>\n

Savitri replied casting into his world<\/p>\n

Sight’s deep release,
\nthe heart’s questioning inner voice.<\/p>\n

For here the heart spoke not, only clear daylight<\/p>\n

Of intellect reigned here, limiting, cold, precise.<\/p>\n

\u201cHappy are they who in this chaos of things,<\/p>\n

This coming and going of the feet of Time,<\/p>\n

Can find the single Truth, the eternal Law:<\/p>\n

Untouched they live by hope and doubt and fear.<\/p>\n

Happy are men anchored on fixed belief<\/p>\n

In this uncertain and ambiguous world,<\/p>\n

Or who have planted in the heart’s rich soil<\/p>\n

One small grain of spiritual certitude.<\/p>\n

Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock.<\/p>\n

But I must pass leaving the ended search,<\/p>\n

Truth’s rounded outcome firm, immutable<\/p>\n

And this harmonic building of world-fact,<\/p>\n

This ordered knowledge of apparent things.<\/p>\n

Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

None answered in that bright contented world,<\/p>\n

Or only turned on their accustomed way<\/p>\n

Astonished to hear questioning in that air <\/p>\n

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\n

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Or thoughts that could still turn to the Beyond.<\/p>\n

But some murmured, passers-by from kindred spheres:<\/p>\n

Each by his credo judged the thought she spoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho then is this who knows not that the soul<\/p>\n

Is a least gland or a secretion’s fault<\/p>\n

Disquieting the sane government of the mind,<\/p>\n

Disordering the function of the brain,<\/p>\n

Or a yearning lodged in Nature’s mortal house<\/p>\n

Or dream whispered in man’s cave of hollow thought<\/p>\n

Who would prolong his brief unhappy term<\/p>\n

Or cling to living in a sea of death?\u201d<\/p>\n

But others, \u201cNay, it is her spirit she seeks.<\/p>\n

A splendid shadow of the name of God,<\/p>\n

A formless lustre from the Ideal’s realm,<\/p>\n

The Spirit is the Holy Ghost of Mind;<\/p>\n

But none has touched its limits or seen its face.<\/p>\n

Each soul is the great Father’s crucified Son,<\/p>\n

Mind is that soul’s one parent, its conscious cause,<\/p>\n

The ground on which trembles a brief passing light,<\/p>\n

Mind, sole creator of the apparent world.<\/p>\n

All that is here is part of our own self;<\/p>\n

Our minds have made the world in which we live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another with mystic and unsatisfied eyes<\/p>\n

Who loved his slain
\nbelief and mourned its death:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there one left who seeks for a Beyond?<\/p>\n

Can still the path be found, opened the gate?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So she fared on across her silent self.<\/p>\n

To a road she came thronged with an ardent crowd<\/p>\n

Who sped brilliant, fire-footed, sunlight-eyed,<\/p>\n

Pressing to reach the world’s mysterious wall,<\/p>\n

And pass through masked doorways into outer mind<\/p>\n

Where the Light comes not nor the mystic voice,<\/p>\n

Messengers from our subliminal greatnesses,<\/p>\n

Guests from the cavern of the secret soul.<\/p>\n

Into dim spiritual somnolence they break <\/p>\n

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\n

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Or shed wide wonder on our waking self,<\/p>\n

Ideas that haunt us with their radiant tread,<\/p>\n

Dreams that are hints of unborn Reality,<\/p>\n

Strange goddesses with deep-pooled magical eyes,<\/p>\n

Strong wind-haired gods carrying harps of hope,<\/p>\n

Great moon-hued visions gliding through gold air,<\/p>\n

Aspiration’s sun-dream head and star-carved limbs,<\/p>\n

Emotions making common hearts sublime.<\/p>\n

And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd,<\/p>\n

Yearning to the spiritual light they bore,<\/p>\n

Longed once to hasten like them to save God’s world;<\/p>\n

But she reined back
\nthe high passion in her heart:<\/p>\n

She knew that first she must discover her soul.<\/p>\n

Only who save themselves can others save.<\/p>\n

In contrary sense she
\nfaced life’s riddling truth:<\/p>\n

They carrying the light to suffering men<\/p>\n

Hurried with eager feet to the outer world;<\/p>\n

Her eyes were turned towards the eternal source.<\/p>\n

Outstretching her hands to stay the throng she cried:<\/p>\n

\u201cO happy company of luminous gods,<\/p>\n

Reveal, who know, the road that I must tread,\u2014<\/p>\n

For surely that bright quarter is your home,\u2014<\/p>\n

To find the birthplace of the occult Fire<\/p>\n

And the deep mansion of my secret soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

One answered pointing to a silence dim<\/p>\n

On a remote extremity of sleep<\/p>\n

In some far background of the inner world.<\/p>\n

\u201cO Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come.<\/p>\n

We are the messengers, the occult gods<\/p>\n

Who help men’s drab and heavy ignorant lives<\/p>\n

To wake to beauty and the wonder of things<\/p>\n

Touching them with glory and divinity;<\/p>\n

In evil we light the deathless flame of good<\/p>\n

And hold the torch of knowledge on ignorant roads;<\/p>\n

We are thy will and all men’s will towards Light.<\/p>\n

O human copy and disguise of God <\/p>\n

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\n

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Who seekst the deity thou keepest hid<\/p>\n

And livest by the Truth thou hast not known,<\/p>\n

Follow the world’s winding highway to its source.<\/p>\n

There in the silence few have ever reached,<\/p>\n

Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone<\/p>\n

And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Savitri following the great winding road<\/p>\n

Came where it dwindled into a narrow path<\/p>\n

Trod only by rare wounded pilgrim-feet.<\/p>\n

A few bright forms emerged from unknown depths<\/p>\n

And looked at her with calm immortal eyes.<\/p>\n

There was no sound to break the brooding hush;<\/p>\n

One felt the silent nearness of the soul.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Three <\/p>\n

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\n

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

  Canto Three    The Entry into the Inner Countries    At first out of the busy hum of mind As if from a loud…<\/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-1022","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\/1022","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=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}