{"id":2450,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2450"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:42","slug":"21-canto-one-the-pursuit-of-the-unknowable-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/21-canto-one-the-pursuit-of-the-unknowable-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-21_Canto One – The Pursuit of the Unknowable.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBOOK THREE<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Book of the Divine Mother<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCanto One <\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Pursuit of the Unknowable<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA<\/font>LL IS<\/b> too little that the world can give:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts power and knowledge are the gifts of Time<\/p>\n

And cannot fill the spirit’s sacred thirst.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough of One these forms of greatness are<\/p>\n

And by its breath of grace our lives abide,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough more near to us than nearness’ self,<\/p>\n

It is some utter truth of what we are;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHidden by its own works, it seemed far-off,<\/p>\n

Impenetrable, occult, voiceless, obscure.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Presence was lost by which all things have charm,<\/p>\n

The Glory lacked of which they are dim signs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe world lived on made empty of its Cause,<\/p>\n

Like love when the beloved’s face is gone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind;<\/p>\n

All knowledge ended in the Unknowable:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will;<\/p>\n

A trivial achievement scorned by Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll power retired into the Omnipotent.<\/p>\n

A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA silence settled on his striving heart;<\/p>\n

Absolved from the voices of the world’s desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe turned to the Ineffable’s timeless call.<\/p>\n

A Being intimate and unnameable,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA wide compelling ecstasy and peace<\/p>\n

Felt in himself and all and yet ungrasped,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tApproached and faded from his soul’s pursuit<\/p>\n

As if for ever luring him beyond.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNear, it retreated; far, it called him still.<\/p>\n

Nothing could satisfy but its delight:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts absence left the greatest actions dull,<\/p>\n

Its presence made the smallest seem divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>305<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

When it was there, the heart’s abyss was filled;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut when the uplifting Deity withdrew,<\/p>\n

Existence lost its aim in the Inane.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe order of the immemorial planes,<\/p>\n

The godlike fullness of the instruments<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWere turned to props for an impermanent scene.<\/p>\n

But who that mightiness was he knew not yet.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImpalpable, yet filling all that is,<\/p>\n

It made and blotted out a million worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd took and lost a thousand shapes and names.<\/p>\n

It wore the guise of an indiscernible Vast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr was a subtle kernel in the soul:<\/p>\n

A distant greatness left it huge and dim,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mystic closeness shut it sweetly in:<\/p>\n

It seemed sometimes a figment or a robe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd seemed sometimes his own colossal shade.<\/p>\n

A giant doubt overshadowed his advance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross a neutral all-supporting Void<\/p>\n

Whose blankness nursed his lone immortal spirit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAllured towards some recondite Supreme,<\/p>\n

Aided, coerced by enigmatic Powers,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAspiring and half-sinking and upborne,<\/p>\n

Invincibly he ascended without pause.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlways a signless vague Immensity<\/p>\n

Brooded, without approach, beyond response,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCondemning finite things to nothingness,<\/p>\n

Fronting him with the incommensurable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen to the ascent there came a mighty term.<\/p>\n

A height was reached where nothing made could live,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA line where every hope and search must cease<\/p>\n

Neared some intolerant bare Reality,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA zero formed pregnant with boundless change.<\/p>\n

On a dizzy verge where all disguises fail<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd human mind must abdicate in Light<\/p>\n

Or die like a moth in the naked blaze of Truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe stood compelled to a tremendous choice.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>306<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

All he had been and all towards which he grew<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMust now be left behind or else transform<\/p>\n

Into a self of That which has no name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlone and fronting an intangible Force<\/p>\n

Which offered nothing to the grasp of Thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis spirit faced the adventure of the Inane.<\/p>\n

Abandoned by the worlds of Form he strove.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA fruitful world-wide Ignorance foundered here;<\/p>\n

Thought’s long far-circling journey touched its close<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd ineffective paused the actor Will.<\/p>\n

The symbol modes of being helped no more,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe structures Nescience builds collapsing failed,<\/p>\n

And even the spirit that holds the universe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFainted in luminous insufficiency.<\/p>\n

In an abysmal lapse of all things built<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTranscending every perishable support<\/p>\n

And joining at last its mighty origin,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe separate self must melt or be reborn<\/p>\n

Into a Truth beyond the mind’s appeal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll glory of outline, sweetness of harmony,<\/p>\n

Rejected like a grace of trivial notes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tExpunged from Being’s silence nude, austere,<\/p>\n

Died into a fine and blissful Nothingness.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Demiurges lost their names and forms,<\/p>\n

The great schemed worlds that they had planned and wrought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPassed, taken and abolished one by one.<\/p>\n

The universe removed its coloured veil,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd at the unimaginable end<\/p>\n

Of the huge riddle of created things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAppeared the far-seen Godhead of the whole,<\/p>\n

His feet firm-based on Life’s stupendous wings,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOmnipotent, a lonely seer of Time,<\/p>\n

Inward, inscrutable, with diamond gaze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAttracted by the unfathomable regard<\/p>\n

The unsolved slow cycles to their fount returned<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo rise again from that invisible sea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>307<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

All from his puissance born was now undone;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing remained the cosmic Mind conceives.<\/p>\n

Eternity prepared to fade and seemed<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA hue and imposition on the Void,<\/p>\n

Space was the fluttering of a dream that sank<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBefore its ending into Nothing’s deeps.<\/p>\n

The spirit that dies not and the Godhead’s self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSeemed myths projected from the Unknowable;<\/p>\n

From It all sprang, in It is called to cease.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut what That was, no thought nor sight could tell.<\/p>\n

Only a formless Form of self was left,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA tenuous ghost of something that had been,<\/p>\n

The last experience of a lapsing wave<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBefore it sinks into a bourneless sea, \u2014<\/p>\n

As if it kept even on the brink of Nought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts bare feeling of the ocean whence it came.<\/p>\n

A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn Everlastingness cut off from Time;<\/p>\n

A strange sublime inalterable Peace<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSilent rejected from it world and soul.<\/p>\n

A stark companionless Reality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnswered at last to his soul’s passionate search:<\/p>\n

Passionless, wordless, absorbed in its fathomless hush,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKeeping the mystery none would ever pierce,<\/p>\n

It brooded inscrutable and intangible<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFacing him with its dumb tremendous calm.<\/p>\n

It had no kinship with the universe:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no act, no movement in its Vast:<\/p>\n

Life’s question met by its silence died on her lips,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe world’s effort ceased convicted of ignorance<\/p>\n

Finding no sanction of supernal Light:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no mind there with its need to know,<\/p>\n

There was no heart there with its need to love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll person perished in its namelessness.<\/p>\n

There was no second, it had no partner or peer;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly itself was real to itself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>308<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n\t\t\tA pure existence safe from thought and mood,<\/p>\n

A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt dwelt aloof in its bare infinite,<\/p>\n

One and unique, unutterably sole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Being formless, featureless and mute<\/p>\n

That knew itself by its own timeless self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAware for ever in its motionless depths,<\/p>\n

Uncreating, uncreated and unborn,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe One by whom all live, who lives by none,<\/p>\n

An immeasurable luminous secrecy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGuarded by the veils of the Unmanifest,<\/p>\n

Above the changing cosmic interlude<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbode supreme, immutably the same,<\/p>\n

A silent Cause occult, impenetrable, \u2014<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEND OF<\/font>
\n\t\t\tCANTO<\/font> ONE<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>309<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  BOOK THREE   The Book of the Divine Mother   Canto One   The Pursuit of the Unknowable   ALL IS too little that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-33-34-savitri","wpcat-50-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450","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=2450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}