{"id":1023,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:05","slug":"14-book-7-canto-04-the-triple-soul-forces-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\/14-book-7-canto-04-the-triple-soul-forces-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-14_Book 7 Canto 04 The Triple Soul-Forces.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n
\n

\nCanto Four<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Triple
\nSoul-Forces<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here from a low and prone and listless ground<\/p>\n

The passion of the first ascent began;<\/p>\n

A moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair,<\/p>\n

A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe.<\/p>\n

A rugged and ragged soil was her bare seat,<\/p>\n

Beneath her feet a sharp and wounding stone.<\/p>\n

A divine pity on the peaks of the world,<\/p>\n

A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives,<\/p>\n

She looked out far and saw from inner mind<\/p>\n

This questionable world of outward things,<\/p>\n

Of false appearances and plausible shapes,<\/p>\n

This dubious cosmos stretched in the ignorant Void,<\/p>\n

The pangs of earth, the toil and speed of the stars<\/p>\n

And the difficult birth and dolorous end of life.<\/p>\n

Accepting the universe as her body of woe,<\/p>\n

The Mother of the seven sorrows bore<\/p>\n

The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:<\/p>\n

The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,<\/p>\n

Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.<\/p>\n

Her heart was riven with the world’s agony<\/p>\n

And burdened with the sorrow and struggle in Time,<\/p>\n

An anguished music trailed in her rapt voice.<\/p>\n

Absorbed in a deep compassion’s ecstasy,<\/p>\n

Lifting the mild ray of her patient gaze,<\/p>\n

In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Savitri, I am thy secret soul.<\/p>\n

To share the suffering of the world I came,<\/p>\n

I draw my children’s pangs into my breast.<\/p>\n

I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;<\/p>\n

I am the soul of all who wailing writhe<\/p>\n

Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 503<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

I am woman, nurse and slave and beaten beast;<\/p>\n

I tend the hands that
\ngave me cruel blows;<\/p>\n

The hearts that spurned my love and zeal I serve;<\/p>\n

I am the courted queen, the pampered doll,<\/p>\n

I am the giver of the bowl of rice,<\/p>\n

I am the worshipped Angel of the House.<\/p>\n

I am in all that suffers and that cries.<\/p>\n

Mine is the prayer that climbs in vain from earth,<\/p>\n

I am traversed by my creatures’ agonies,<\/p>\n

I am the spirit in a world of pain.<\/p>\n

The scream of tortured flesh and tortured hearts<\/p>\n

Fallen back on heart and flesh unheard by Heaven<\/p>\n

Has rent with helpless grief and wrath my soul.<\/p>\n

I have seen the peasant burning in his hut,<\/p>\n

I have seen the slashed corpse of the slaughtered child,<\/p>\n

Heard woman’s cry ravished and stripped and haled<\/p>\n

Amid the bayings of the hell-hound mob,<\/p>\n

I have looked on, I had no power to save.<\/p>\n

I have brought no arm of strength to aid or slay;<\/p>\n

God gave me love, he gave me not his force.<\/p>\n

I have shared the toil of the yoked animal drudge<\/p>\n

Pushed by the goad, encouraged by the whip;<\/p>\n

I have shared the fear-filled life of bird and beast,<\/p>\n

Its long hunt for the day’s precarious food,<\/p>\n

Its covert slink and crouch and hungry prowl,<\/p>\n

Its pain and terror seized by beak and claw.<\/p>\n

I have shared the daily life of common men,<\/p>\n

Its petty pleasures and its petty cares,<\/p>\n

Its press of troubles
\nand haggard horde of ills<\/p>\n

Earth’s trail of sorrow hopeless of relief,<\/p>\n

The unwanted tedious labour without joy,<\/p>\n

And the burden of misery and the strokes of fate.<\/p>\n

I have been pity, leaning over pain<\/p>\n

And the tender smile that heals the wounded heart<\/p>\n

And sympathy making life less hard to bear.<\/p>\n

Man has felt near my unseen face and hands; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 504<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

I have become the sufferer and his moan,<\/p>\n

I have lain down with the mangled and the slain,<\/p>\n

I have lived with the
\nprisoner in his dungeon cell,<\/p>\n

Heavy on my shoulders weighs the yoke of Time:<\/p>\n

Nothing refusing of creation’s load,<\/p>\n

I have borne all and know I still must bear:<\/p>\n

Perhaps when the world sinks into a last sleep,<\/p>\n

I too may sleep in dumb eternal peace.<\/p>\n

I have borne the calm indifference of Heaven,<\/p>\n

Watched Nature’s cruelty to suffering things<\/p>\n

While God passed silent by nor turned to help.<\/p>\n

Yet have I cried not out against his will,<\/p>\n

Yet have I not accused his cosmic Law.<\/p>\n

Only to change this great hard world of pain<\/p>\n

A patient prayer has risen from my breast;<\/p>\n

A pallid resignation lights my brow,<\/p>\n

Within me a blind faith and mercy dwell;<\/p>\n

I carry the fire that never can be quenched<\/p>\n

And the compassion that supports the suns.<\/p>\n

I am the hope that looks towards my God,<\/p>\n

My God who never came to me till now;<\/p>\n

His voice I hear that ever says `I come’:<\/p>\n

I know that one day he shall come at last.\u201d<\/p>\n

She ceased, and like an echo from below<\/p>\n

Answering her pathos of divine complaint<\/p>\n

A voice of wrath took up the dire refrain,<\/p>\n

A growl of thunder or roar of angry beast,<\/p>\n

The beast that crouching growls within man’s depths,\u2014<\/p>\n

Voice of a tortured Titan once a God.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the Man of Sorrows, I am he<\/p>\n

Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;<\/p>\n

To enjoy my agony God built the earth,<\/p>\n

My passion he has made his drama’s theme.<\/p>\n

He has sent me naked into his bitter world<\/p>\n

And beaten me with his rods of grief and pain<\/p>\n

That I might cry and grovel at his feet <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 505<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And offer him worship with my blood and tears.<\/p>\n

I am, Prometheus under the vulture’s beak,<\/p>\n

Man, the discoverer of the undying
\nFire,<\/p>\n

In the flame he kindled burning like a moth;<\/p>\n

I am the seeker who can never find,<\/p>\n

I am the fighter who can never win,<\/p>\n

I am the runner who
\nnever touched his goal;<\/p>\n

Hell tortures me with the edges of my thought,<\/p>\n

Heaven tortures me
\nwith the splendour of my dreams.<\/p>\n

What profit have I of my
\nhuman soul?<\/p>\n

What profit have I of my human soul?<\/p>\n

I toil like the animal, like the animal die.<\/p>\n

I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf;<\/p>\n

Fate and my fellows cheat me of my wage.<\/p>\n

I loosen with my blood my servitude’s seal<\/p>\n

And shake from my aching neck the oppressor’s knees<\/p>\n

Only to seat new tyrants on my back:<\/p>\n

My teachers lesson me in slavery,<\/p>\n

I am shown God’s stamp and my own
\ntrue signature<\/p>\n

Upon the sorry contract of my fate.<\/p>\n

I have loved, but none has loved me since my birth;<\/p>\n

My fruit of works is
\ngiven to other hands:<\/p>\n

All that is left me is my evil thoughts,<\/p>\n

My sordid quarrel against God and man,<\/p>\n

Envy of the riches that I cannot share,<\/p>\n

Hate of a happiness that is not mine.<\/p>\n

I know my fate will ever be the same,<\/p>\n

It is my Nature’s work that cannot change:<\/p>\n

I have loved for mine, not for the beloved’s sake,<\/p>\n

I have lived for myself and not for others’ lives.<\/p>\n

Each in himself is
\nsole by Nature’s law,<\/p>\n

So God has made his harsh and dreadful world,<\/p>\n

So has he built the
\npetty heart of man;<\/p>\n

Only by force and ruse can man survive:<\/p>\n

For pity is a weakness in his breast,<\/p>\n

His goodness is a laxity in the nerves,<\/p>\n

His kindness an investment for return, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 506<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

His altruism is ego’s other face:<\/p>\n

He serves the world that him the world may serve.<\/p>\n

If once the Titan’s strength could wake in me,<\/p>\n

If Enceladus from Etna could arise,<\/p>\n

I then would reign the master of the world<\/p>\n

And like a god enjoy man’s bliss and pain.<\/p>\n

But God has taken from me the ancient Force.<\/p>\n

There is a dull consent in my sluggish heart,<\/p>\n

A fierce satisfaction with my special pangs<\/p>\n

As if they made me taller than my kind;<\/p>\n

Only by suffering can I excel.<\/p>\n

I am the victim of titanic ills,<\/p>\n

I am the doer of demoniac deeds;<\/p>\n

I was made for evil, evil is my lot;<\/p>\n

Evil I must be and by evil live;<\/p>\n

Nought other can I do but be myself;<\/p>\n

What Nature made me, that I must remain.<\/p>\n

I suffer and toil and weep; I moan and hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Savitri heard the
\nVoice, the echo heard<\/p>\n

And turning to her being of pity spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cMadonna of suffering, Mother of grief divine,<\/p>\n

Thou art a portion of my soul put forth<\/p>\n

To bear the unbearable sorrow of the world.<\/p>\n

Because thou art, men yield not to their doom,<\/p>\n

But ask for happiness and strive with fate;<\/p>\n

Because thou art, the wretched still can hope.<\/p>\n

But thine is the power to solace, not to save.<\/p>\n

One day I will return, a bringer of strength,<\/p>\n

And make thee drink from the Eternal’s cup;<\/p>\n

His streams of force shall triumph in thy limbs<\/p>\n

And Wisdom’s calm control thy passionate heart.<\/p>\n

Thy love shall be the bond of human kind,<\/p>\n

Compassion the bright king of Nature’s acts:<\/p>\n

Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;<\/p>\n

The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast,<\/p>\n

From the cruelty of the Titan and his pain. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 507<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

There shall be peace and joy for ever more.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On passed she in her spirit’s upward route.<\/p>\n

An ardent grandeur climbed mid ferns and rocks,<\/p>\n

A quiet wind flattered the heart to warmth,<\/p>\n

A finer perfume breathed from slender trees.<\/p>\n

All beautiful grew, subtle and high and strange.<\/p>\n

Here on a boulder carved like a huge throne<\/p>\n

A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,<\/p>\n

Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,<\/p>\n

Her feet upon a couchant lion’s back.<\/p>\n

A formidable smile curved round her lips,<\/p>\n

Heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes;<\/p>\n

Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,<\/p>\n

She menaced the triumph of the nether gods.<\/p>\n

A halo of lightnings flamed around her head<\/p>\n

And sovereignty a great cestus, zoned her robe<\/p>\n

And majesty and victory sat with her<\/p>\n

Guarding in the wide cosmic battle-field<\/p>\n

Against the flat equality of Death<\/p>\n

And the all-levelling insurgent Night<\/p>\n

The hierarchy of the ordered Powers,<\/p>\n

The high changeless values, the peaked eminences,<\/p>\n

The privileged aristocracy of Truth,<\/p>\n

And in the governing Ideal’s sun<\/p>\n

The triumvirate of wisdom, love and bliss<\/p>\n

And the sole autocracy of the absolute Light.<\/p>\n

August on her seat in the inner world of Mind,<\/p>\n

The Mother of Might looked down on passing things,<\/p>\n

Listened to the advancing tread of Time,<\/p>\n

Saw the irresistible wheeling of the suns<\/p>\n

And heard the thunder of the march of God.<\/p>\n

Amid the swaying forces in their strife<\/p>\n

Sovereign was her word of luminous command,<\/p>\n

Her speech like a war-cry rang or a pilgrim chant.<\/p>\n

A charm restoring hope in failing hearts, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 508<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Aspired the harmony of her puissant voice:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Savitri, I am thy secret soul.<\/p>\n

I have come down into the human world<\/p>\n

And the movement watched by an unsleeping Eye<\/p>\n

And the dark contrariety of earth’s fate<\/p>\n

And the battle of the bright and sombre Powers.<\/p>\n

I stand upon earth’s paths of danger and grief<\/p>\n

And help the unfortunate and save the doomed.<\/p>\n

To the strong I bring the guerdon of their strength,<\/p>\n

To the weak I bring the armour of my force;<\/p>\n

To men who long I carry their coveted joy:<\/p>\n

I am fortune justifying the great and wise<\/p>\n

By the sanction of the plaudits of the crowd,<\/p>\n

Then trampling them with the armed heel of
\nFate.<\/p>\n

My ear is leaned to the cry of the oppressed,<\/p>\n

I topple down the thrones of tyrant kings:<\/p>\n

A cry comes from proscribed and hunted lives<\/p>\n

Appealing to me against a pitiless world,<\/p>\n

A voice of the forsaken and desolate<\/p>\n

And the lone prisoner in his dungeon cell.<\/p>\n

Men hail in my coming the Almighty’s force<\/p>\n

Or praise with thankful tears his saviour Grace.<\/p>\n

I smite the Titan who bestrides the world<\/p>\n

And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.<\/p>\n

I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,<\/p>\n

And Laksmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;<\/p>\n

I wear the face of Kali when I kill,<\/p>\n

I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.<\/p>\n

I am charged by God to do his mighty work,<\/p>\n

Uncaring I serve his will who sent me forth,<\/p>\n

Reckless of peril and earthly consequence.<\/p>\n

I reason not of virtue and of sin<\/p>\n

But do the deed he has put into my heart.<\/p>\n

I fear not for the angry frown of Heaven,<\/p>\n

I flinch not from the red assault of Hell;<\/p>\n

I crush the opposition of the gods, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 509<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Tread down a million goblin obstacles.<\/p>\n

I guide man to the path of the Divine<\/p>\n

And guard him from the red Wolf and the Snake.<\/p>\n

I set in his mortal hand my heavenly sword<\/p>\n

And put on him the breastplate of the gods.<\/p>\n

I break the ignorant pride of human mind<\/p>\n

And lead the thought to the wideness of the Truth;<\/p>\n

I rend man’s narrow and successful life<\/p>\n

And force his sorrowful eyes to gaze at the sun<\/p>\n

That he may die to earth and live in his soul.<\/p>\n

I know the goal, I
\nknow the secret route:<\/p>\n

I have studied the map of the invisible worlds;<\/p>\n

I am the battle’s head, the journey’s star.<\/p>\n

But the great obstinate world resists my
\nword,<\/p>\n

And the crookedness and evil in man’s heart<\/p>\n

Is stronger than Reason, profounder than the Pit,<\/p>\n

And the malignancy of hostile Powers<\/p>\n

Puts craftily back the clock of destiny<\/p>\n

And mightier seems than the eternal Will.<\/p>\n

The cosmic evil is too deep to unroot:<\/p>\n

The cosmic suffering is too vast to heal.<\/p>\n

A few I guide who pass me towards the Light;<\/p>\n

A few I save, the mass falls back unsaved;<\/p>\n

A few I help, the
\nmany strive and fail:<\/p>\n

But my heart I have hardened and I do my work:<\/p>\n

Slowly the Light grows greater in the East,<\/p>\n

Slowly the world progresses on God’s road.<\/p>\n

His seal is on my
\ntask, it cannot fail;<\/p>\n

I shall hear the silver swing of heaven’s gates<\/p>\n

When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke and from the lower human world<\/p>\n

An answer, a warped echo met her speech;<\/p>\n

The voice came through the spaces of the mind<\/p>\n

Of the dwarf-Titan, the deformed chained god<\/p>\n

Who strives to master his nature’s rebel stuff<\/p>\n

And make the universe his instrument.<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 510<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The Ego of this great world of desire<\/p>\n

Claimed earth and the wide heavens for the use<\/p>\n

Of man, head of the life it shapes on earth,<\/p>\n

Its representative and conscious soul,<\/p>\n

And symbol of evolving light and force<\/p>\n

And vessel of the godhead that must be.<\/p>\n

A thinking animal,
\nNature’s struggling lord<\/p>\n

Has made of her his nurse and tool and slave<\/p>\n

And pays to her as wage and emolument<\/p>\n

Inescapably by a deep law in things<\/p>\n

His heart’s grief and
\nhis body’s death and pain;<\/p>\n

His pains are her means to grow, to see and feel;<\/p>\n

His death assists her immortality.<\/p>\n

A tool and slave of his own slave and tool,<\/p>\n

He praises his free will and his master mind<\/p>\n

And is pushed by her upon her chosen paths;<\/p>\n

Possessor he is possessed and, ruler, ruled,<\/p>\n

Her conscious automaton, her desire’s dupe.<\/p>\n

His soul is her guest, a sovereign mute, inert,<\/p>\n

His body her robot, his life her way to live,<\/p>\n

His conscious mind her strong revolted serf.<\/p>\n

The voice rose up and
\nsmote some inner sun:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the heir of the forces of the earth,<\/p>\n

Slowly I make good my right to my estate;<\/p>\n

A growing godhead in her divinised mud,<\/p>\n

I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven.<\/p>\n

The last born of the earth I stand the first;<\/p>\n

Her slow millenniums waited for my birth.<\/p>\n

Although I live in Time besieged by Death,<\/p>\n

Precarious owner of my body and soul<\/p>\n

Housed on a little speck amid the stars,<\/p>\n

For me and my use the universe was made.<\/p>\n

Immortal spirit in the perishing clay,<\/p>\n

I am God still unevolved in human form;<\/p>\n

Even if he is not, he becomes in me.<\/p>\n

The sun and moon are lights upon my path; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 511<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Air was invented for my lungs to breathe,<\/p>\n

Conditioned as a wide and wall-less space<\/p>\n

For my winged chariot’s wheels to cleave a road,<\/p>\n

The sea was made for me to swim and sail<\/p>\n

And bear my golden commerce on its back:<\/p>\n

It laughs cloven by my pleasure’s gliding keel,<\/p>\n

I laugh at its black stare of fate and death.<\/p>\n

The earth is my floor, the sky my living’s roof.<\/p>\n

All was prepared
\nthrough many a silent age.<\/p>\n

God made experiments with animal shapes,<\/p>\n

Then only when all was ready I was born.<\/p>\n

I was born weak and small and ignorant,<\/p>\n

A helpless creature in a difficult world,<\/p>\n

Travelling through my
\nbrief years with death at my side:<\/p>\n

I have grown greater than Nature, wiser than God.<\/p>\n

I have made real what she never dreamed,<\/p>\n

I have seized her powers and harnessed for my work,<\/p>\n

I have shaped her metals and new metals made;<\/p>\n

I will make glass and raiment out of milk,<\/p>\n

Make iron velvet, water unbreakable stone,<\/p>\n

Like God in his astuce of artist skill,<\/p>\n

Mould from one primal plasm protean forms,<\/p>\n

In single Nature multitudinous lives,<\/p>\n

All that imagination can conceive<\/p>\n

In mind intangible, remould anew<\/p>\n

In Matter’s plastic
\nsolid and concrete;<\/p>\n

No magic can surpass my magic’s skill.<\/p>\n

There is no miracle I shall not achieve.<\/p>\n

What God imperfect left, I will complete,<\/p>\n

Out of a tangled mind and half-made soul<\/p>\n

His sin and error I will eliminate;<\/p>\n

What he invented not, I shall invent:<\/p>\n

He was the first creator, I am the last.<\/p>\n

I have found the atoms from which he built the worlds:<\/p>\n

The first tremendous cosmic energy<\/p>\n

Missioned shall leap to slay my enemy kin, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 512<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Expunge a nation or abolish a race,<\/p>\n

Death’s silence leave where there was laughter and joy.<\/p>\n

Or the fissured invisible shall spend God’s force<\/p>\n

To extend my comforts and expand my wealth,<\/p>\n

To speed my car which now the lightnings drive<\/p>\n

And turn the engines of my miracles.<\/p>\n

I will take his means of sorcery from his hands<\/p>\n

And do with them greater wonders than his best.<\/p>\n

Yet through it all I have kept my balanced thought;<\/p>\n

I have studied my being, I have examined the world,<\/p>\n

I have grown a master of the arts of life.<\/p>\n

I have tamed the wild beast trained to be my friend;<\/p>\n

He guards my house, looks up waiting my will.<\/p>\n

I have taught my kind to serve and to obey.<\/p>\n

I have used the mystery of the cosmic waves<\/p>\n

To see far distance
\nand to hear far words:<\/p>\n

I have conquered
\nSpace and knitted close all earth:<\/p>\n

Soon I shall know the
\nsecrets of the Mind:<\/p>\n

I play with knowledge and with ignorance<\/p>\n

And sin and virtue my inventions are,<\/p>\n

I can transcend or sovereignly use.<\/p>\n

I shall know mystic truths, seize occult powers.<\/p>\n

I shall slay my enemies with a look or thought,<\/p>\n

I shall sense the unspoken feelings of all hearts<\/p>\n

And see and hear the hidden thoughts of men.<\/p>\n

When earth is mastered, I shall conquer heaven;<\/p>\n

The gods shall be my aids or menial folk,<\/p>\n

No wish I harbour unfulfilled shall die:<\/p>\n

Omnipotence and omniscience shall be mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Savitri heard the voice, the warped echo heard<\/p>\n

And turning to her being of power she spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cMadonna of might, Mother of works and force,<\/p>\n

Thou art a portion of my soul put forth<\/p>\n

To help mankind and help the travail of Time.<\/p>\n

Because thou art in him, man hopes and dares;<\/p>\n

Because thou art, men’s souls can climb the heavens <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 513<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

And walk like Gods in the presence of the Supreme.<\/p>\n

But without wisdom power is like a wind,<\/p>\n

It can breathe upon the heights and kiss the sky,<\/p>\n

It cannot build the extreme eternal things.<\/p>\n

Thou hast given men strength, wisdom thou couldst not give.<\/p>\n

One day I will
\nreturn, a bringer of light,<\/p>\n

Then I will give to thee the mirror of God;<\/p>\n

Thou shalt see self and world as by him they are seen<\/p>\n

Reflected in the bright pool of thy soul.<\/p>\n

Thy wisdom shall be vast as vast thy power.<\/p>\n

Then hate shall dwell no more in human hearts,<\/p>\n

And fear and weakness shall desert men’s lives,<\/p>\n

The cry of the ego shall be hushed within,<\/p>\n

Its lion roar that claims the world as food,<\/p>\n

All shall be might and bliss and happy force.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ascending still her spirit’s upward route<\/p>\n

She came into a high and happy space,<\/p>\n

A wide tower of vision whence all could be seen<\/p>\n

And all was centred in a single view<\/p>\n

As when by distance separate scenes grow one<\/p>\n

And a harmony is made of hues at war.<\/p>\n

The wind was still and fragrance packed the air.<\/p>\n

There was a carol of birds and murmur of bees,<\/p>\n

And all that is common and natural and sweet,<\/p>\n

Yet intimately divine to heart and soul.<\/p>\n

A nearness thrilled of the spirit to its source<\/p>\n

And deepest things seemed obvious, close and true.<\/p>\n

Here, living centre of that vision of peace,<\/p>\n

A Woman sat in clear and crystal light:<\/p>\n

Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,<\/p>\n

Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,<\/p>\n

Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart<\/p>\n

To live again and feel the hands of calm.<\/p>\n

A low music heard became her floating voice:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Savitri, I am thy secret soul. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 514<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

I have come down to the wounded desolate earth<\/p>\n

To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest<\/p>\n

And lay her head upon the Mother’s lap<\/p>\n

That she may dream of God and know his peace<\/p>\n

And draw the harmony of higher spheres<\/p>\n

Into the rhythm of earth’s rude troubled days.<\/p>\n

I show to her the figures of bright
\nGods<\/p>\n

And bring strength and solace to her struggling life;<\/p>\n

High things that now are only words and forms<\/p>\n

I reveal to her in the body of their power.<\/p>\n

I am peace that steals into man’s war-worn breast,<\/p>\n

Amid the reign of Hell his acts create<\/p>\n

A hostel where Heaven’s messengers can lodge;<\/p>\n

I am charity with the
\nkindly hands that bless;<\/p>\n

I am silence mid the noisy tramp of life;<\/p>\n

I am Knowledge poring on her cosmic map.<\/p>\n

In the anomalies of the human heart<\/p>\n

Where Good and Evil are close bed-fellows<\/p>\n

And Light is by Darkness dogged at every step,<\/p>\n

Where his largest knowledge is an ignorance,<\/p>\n

I am the Power that labours towards the best<\/p>\n

And works for God and looks up towards the heights.<\/p>\n

I make even sin and error stepping stones<\/p>\n

And all experience a long march towards Light.<\/p>\n

Out of the
\nInconscient I build consciousness<\/p>\n

And lead through death to reach immortal
\nlife.<\/p>\n

Many are God’s forms by which he grows in man;<\/p>\n

They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,<\/p>\n

Uplift the stature of the human clay<\/p>\n

Or slowly transmute it into heaven’s gold.<\/p>\n

He is the Good for which men fight and die,<\/p>\n

He is the War of Right with Titan
\nWrong;<\/p>\n

He is Freedom rising
\ndeathless from her pyre,<\/p>\n

He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass<\/p>\n

Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade<\/p>\n

Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 515<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame<\/p>\n

And the glad resignation of the saint<\/p>\n

And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time<\/p>\n

And the hero’s might wrestling with death and
\nFate.<\/p>\n

He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne<\/p>\n

And the calm autocracy of the sage’s rule.<\/p>\n

He is the high and solitary Thought<\/p>\n

Aloof above the ignorant multitude:<\/p>\n

He is the prophet’s voice, the sight of the seer.<\/p>\n

He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,<\/p>\n

He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.<\/p>\n

He is the riches of the spiritual Vast<\/p>\n

Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;<\/p>\n

He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,<\/p>\n

He is Infinity in a little space:<\/p>\n

He is Immortality in the arms of
\nDeath.<\/p>\n

These powers I am and at my call they come.<\/p>\n

Thus slowly I lift man’s soul nearer the Light.<\/p>\n

But human mind clings to its ignorance,<\/p>\n

And to its littleness the human heart,<\/p>\n

And to its right to grief the earthly life.<\/p>\n

Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,<\/p>\n

Only when infinity weds the finite’s thought,<\/p>\n

Can man be free from himself and live with God.<\/p>\n

I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;<\/p>\n

I bring back hope to the despairing heart;<\/p>\n

I give peace to the
\nhumble and the great<\/p>\n

And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.<\/p>\n

I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.<\/p>\n

Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth’s soil;<\/p>\n

Man’s mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth<\/p>\n

And body bear the immense descent of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke and from the ignorant nether plane<\/p>\n

A cry, a warped echo naked and shuddering came.<\/p>\n

A voice of the sense-shackled human mind<\/p>\n

Carried its proud complaint of
\nGodlike power <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 516<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Hedged by the limits of a mortal’s thoughts,<\/p>\n

Bound in the chains of earthly ignorance.<\/p>\n

Imprisoned in his body and his brain<\/p>\n

The mortal cannot see
\nGod’s mighty whole<\/p>\n

Or share in his vast and deep identity<\/p>\n

Who stands unguessed within our ignorant hearts<\/p>\n

And knows all things because he is one with all.<\/p>\n

Man only sees the cosmic surfaces.<\/p>\n

Then wondering what may lie hid from the sense<\/p>\n

A little way he delves to depths below:<\/p>\n

But soon he stops, he cannot reach life’s core<\/p>\n

Or commune with the throbbing heart of things.<\/p>\n

He sees the naked body of the Truth<\/p>\n

Though often baffled by her endless garbs,<\/p>\n

But cannot look upon her soul within.<\/p>\n

Then, furious for a knowledge absolute,<\/p>\n

He tears all details out and stabs and digs:<\/p>\n

Only the shape’s contents he holds for use;<\/p>\n

The spirit escapes or dies beneath his knife.<\/p>\n

He sees as a blank stretch, a giant waste<\/p>\n

The crowding riches of infinity.<\/p>\n

The finite he has made his central field,<\/p>\n

Its plan dissects, masters its processes,<\/p>\n

That which moves all is hidden from his gaze,<\/p>\n

His poring eyes miss the unseen behind.<\/p>\n

He has the blind man’s subtle unerring touch<\/p>\n

Or the slow traveller’s sight of distant scenes;<\/p>\n

The soul’s revealing contacts are not his.<\/p>\n

Yet is he visited by intuitive light<\/p>\n

And inspiration comes from the Unknown;<\/p>\n

But only reason and sense he feels as sure,<\/p>\n

They only are his trusted witnesses.<\/p>\n

Thus is he baulked, his splendid effort vain;<\/p>\n

His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore<\/p>\n

Of the huge ocean of his ignorance.<\/p>\n

Yet grandiose were the accents of that cry, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 517<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

A cosmic pathos trembled in its tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the mind of God’s great ignorant world<\/p>\n

Ascending to knowledge by the steps he made;<\/p>\n

I am the all-discovering Thought of man.<\/p>\n

I am a god fettered by Matter and sense,<\/p>\n

An animal prisoned in a fence of thorns,<\/p>\n

A beast of labour asking for his food,<\/p>\n

A smith tied to his anvil and his forge.<\/p>\n

Yet have I loosened the cord, enlarged my room.<\/p>\n

I have mapped the heavens and analysed the stars,<\/p>\n

Described the orbits through the grooves of Space,<\/p>\n

Measured the miles that separate the suns,<\/p>\n

Computed their longevity in Time.<\/p>\n

I have delved into earth’s bowels and torn out<\/p>\n

The riches guarded by her dull brown soil.<\/p>\n

I have classed the changes of her stony crust<\/p>\n

And of her biography discovered the dates,<\/p>\n

Rescued the pages of all Nature’s plan.<\/p>\n

The tree of evolution I have sketched,<\/p>\n

Each branch and twig and leaf in its own place,<\/p>\n

In the embryo tracked the history of forms,<\/p>\n

And the genealogy framed of all that lives.<\/p>\n

I have detected plasm and cell and gene,<\/p>\n

The protozoa traced, man’s ancestors,<\/p>\n

The humble originals from whom he rose;<\/p>\n

I know how he was
\nborn and how he dies;<\/p>\n

Only what end he serves I know not yet,
\nOr if there is aim at all or any end<\/p>\n

Or push of rich creative purposeful joy<\/p>\n

In the wide works of the terrestrial power.<\/p>\n

I have caught her intricate processes, none is left:<\/p>\n

Her huge machinery is in my hands;<\/p>\n

I have seized the cosmic energies for my use.<\/p>\n

I have pored on her infinitesimal elements<\/p>\n

And her invisible atoms have unmasked:<\/p>\n

All Matter is a book I have perused; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 518<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Only some pages now are left to read.<\/p>\n

I have seen the ways of life, the paths of mind;<\/p>\n

I have studied the methods of the ant and ape<\/p>\n

And the behaviour learnt of man and worm.<\/p>\n

If God is at work his secrets I have found.<\/p>\n

But still the Cause of things is left in doubt,<\/p>\n

Their truth flees from pursuit into a void;<\/p>\n

When all has been explained nothing is known.<\/p>\n

What chose the process, whence the Power sprung<\/p>\n

I know not and perhaps shall never know.<\/p>\n

A mystery is this mighty Nature’s birth;<\/p>\n

A mystery is the elusive stream of mind,<\/p>\n

A mystery the protean freak of life.<\/p>\n

What I have learnt, Chance leaps to contradict;<\/p>\n

What I have built is seized and torn by Fate.<\/p>\n

I can foresee the acts of Matter’s force,<\/p>\n

But not the march of the destiny of man:<\/p>\n

He is driven upon paths he did not choose,<\/p>\n

He falls trampled underneath the rolling wheels.<\/p>\n

My great philosophies are a reasoned guess;<\/p>\n

The mystic heavens that claim the human soul<\/p>\n

Are a charlatanism of the imagining brain:<\/p>\n

All is a speculation
\nor a dream:<\/p>\n

In the end the world itself becomes a doubt:<\/p>\n

The infinitesimal’s jest mocks mass and shape,<\/p>\n

A laugh peals from the infinite’s finite mask.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the world is an error of our sight,<\/p>\n

A trick repeated in each flash of sense,<\/p>\n

An unreal mind hallucinates the soul<\/p>\n

With a stress-vision of false reality,<\/p>\n

Or a dance of Maya veils the
\nVoid unborn.<\/p>\n

Even if a greater
\nconsciousness I could reach.<\/p>\n

What profit is it then for Thought to win<\/p>\n

A Real which is for ever ineffable<\/p>\n

Or hunt to its lair the bodiless Self or make<\/p>\n

The Unknowable the target of the soul?<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 519<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Nay, let me work within my mortal bounds,<\/p>\n

Not live beyond life nor think beyond the mind;<\/p>\n

Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.<\/p>\n

In a frozen grandeur lone and desolate<\/p>\n

Call me not to die the great eternal
\nDeath,<\/p>\n

Left naked of my own humanity<\/p>\n

In the chill vast of the spirit’s boundlessness.<\/p>\n

Each creature by its nature’s limits lives,<\/p>\n

And how can one evade his native fate?<\/p>\n

Human I am, human let me remain<\/p>\n

Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.<\/p>\n

A high insanity, a chimera is this,<\/p>\n

To think that God lives hidden in the clay<\/p>\n

And that eternal Truth can dwell in Time,<\/p>\n

And call to her to save our self and world.<\/p>\n

How can man grow immortal and divine<\/p>\n

Transmuting the very stuff of which he is made?<\/p>\n

This wizard Gods may dream, not thinking men.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Savitri heard the voice, the warped answer heard<\/p>\n

And turning to her being of light she spoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cMadonna of light, Mother of joy and peace,<\/p>\n

Thou art a portion of my self put forth<\/p>\n

To raise the spirit to its forgotten heights<\/p>\n

And wake the soul by touches of the heavens.<\/p>\n

Because thou art, the soul draws near to God;<\/p>\n

Because thou art, love grows in spite of hate<\/p>\n

And knowledge walks unslain in the pit of Night.<\/p>\n

But not by showering heaven’s golden rain<\/p>\n

Upon the intellect’s hard and rocky soil<\/p>\n

Can the tree of Paradise flower on earthly ground<\/p>\n

And the Bird of Paradise sit upon life’s boughs<\/p>\n

And the winds of Paradise visit mortal air.<\/p>\n

Even if thou rain down intuition’s rays,<\/p>\n

The mind of man will think it earth’s own gleam,<\/p>\n

His spirit by spiritual ego sink,<\/p>\n

Or his soul dream shut in sainthood’s brilliant cell <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 520<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Where only a bright
\nshadow of God can come:<\/p>\n

His hunger for the eternal thou must nurse<\/p>\n

And fill his yearning heart with heaven’s fire<\/p>\n

And bring God down into his body and life.<\/p>\n

One day I shall return, His hands in mine,<\/p>\n

And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.<\/p>\n

Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,<\/p>\n

Then shall the divine family be born.<\/p>\n

There shall be light and peace in all the worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Four <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 521<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

\n

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

  Canto Four   The Triple Soul-Forces    Here from a low and prone and listless ground The passion of the first ascent began; A…<\/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-1023","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\/1023","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=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}