{"id":2463,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2463"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:47","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:47","slug":"06-canto-one-the-world-stair-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/06-canto-one-the-world-stair-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-06_Canto One – The World-Stair.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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


\nof the Worlds<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe World-Stair<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

A<\/font>LONE<\/b> he moved watched by the infinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround him and the Unknowable above.<\/p>\n

All could be seen that shuns the mortal eye,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll could be known the mind has never grasped;<\/p>\n

All could be done no mortal will can dare.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA limitless movement filled a limitless peace.<\/p>\n

In a profound existence beyond earth’s<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tParent or kin to our ideas and dreams<\/p>\n

Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn an immaterial substance linked to ours<\/p>\n

In a deep oneness of all things that are,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe universe of the Unknown arose.<\/p>\n

A self-creation without end or pause<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRevealed the grandeurs of the Infinite:<\/p>\n

It flung into the hazards of its play<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA million moods, a myriad energies,<\/p>\n

The world-shapes that are fancies of its Truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the formulas of the freedom of its Force.<\/p>\n

It poured into the Ever-stable’s flux<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA bacchic rapture and revel of Ideas,<\/p>\n

A passion and motion of everlastingness.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere rose unborn into the Unchanging’s surge<\/p>\n

Thoughts that abide in their deathless consequence,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWords that immortal last though fallen mute,<\/p>\n

Acts that brought out from Silence its dumb sense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLines that convey the inexpressible.<\/p>\n

The Eternal’s stillness saw in unmoved joy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis universal Power at work display<\/p>\n

In plots of pain and dramas of delight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe wonder and beauty of her will to be.<\/p>\n

All, even pain, was the soul’s pleasure here;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>95<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Here all experience was a single plan,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe thousandfold expression of the One.<\/p>\n

All came at once into his single view;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing escaped his vast intuitive sight,<\/p>\n

Nothing drew near he could not feel as kin:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe was one spirit with that immensity.<\/p>\n

Images in a supernal consciousness<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEmbodying the Unborn who never dies,<\/p>\n

The structured visions of the cosmic Self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlive with the touch of being’s eternity<\/p>\n

Looked at him like form-bound spiritual thoughts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFiguring the movements of the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

Aspects of being donned world-outline; forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat open moving doors on things divine,<\/p>\n

Became familiar to his hourly sight;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe symbols of the Spirit’s reality,<\/p>\n

The living bodies of the Bodiless<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGrew near to him, his daily associates.<\/p>\n

The exhaustless seeings of the unsleeping Mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLetterings of its contact with the invisible,<\/p>\n

Surrounded him with countless pointing signs;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe voices of a thousand realms of Life<\/p>\n

Missioned to him her mighty messages.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe heaven-hints that invade our earthly lives,<\/p>\n

The dire imaginations dreamed by Hell,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich if enacted and experienced here<\/p>\n

Our dulled capacity soon would cease to feel<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr our mortal frailty could not long endure,<\/p>\n

Were set in their sublime proportions there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere lived out in their self-born atmosphere,<\/p>\n

They resumed their topless pitch and native power;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir fortifying stress upon the soul<\/p>\n

Bit deep into the ground of consciousness<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe passion and purity of their extremes,<\/p>\n

The absoluteness of their single cry<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the sovereign sweetness or violent poetry<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>96<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Of their beautiful or terrible delight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll thought can know or widest sight perceive<\/p>\n

And all that thought and sight can never know,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll things occult and rare, remote and strange<\/p>\n

Were near to heart’s contact, felt by spirit-sense.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAsking for entry at his nature’s gates<\/p>\n

They crowded the widened spaces of his mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis self-discovery’s flaming witnesses,<\/p>\n

Offering their marvel and their multitude.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese now became new portions of himself,<\/p>\n

The figures of his spirit’s greater life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe moving scenery of his large time-walk<\/p>\n

Or the embroidered tissue of his sense:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese took the place of intimate human things<\/p>\n

And moved as close companions of his thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr were his soul’s natural environment.<\/p>\n

Tireless the heart’s adventure of delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEndless the kingdoms of the Spirit’s bliss,<\/p>\n

Unnumbered tones struck from one harmony’s strings;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach to its wide-winged universal poise,<\/p>\n

Its fathomless feeling of the All in one,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBrought notes of some perfection yet unseen,<\/p>\n

Its single retreat into Truth’s secrecies,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts happy sidelight on the Infinite.<\/p>\n

All was found there the Unique has dreamed and made<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTinging with ceaseless rapture and surprise<\/p>\n

And an opulent beauty of passionate difference<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe recurring beat that moments God in Time.<\/p>\n

Only was missing the sole timeless Word<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat carries eternity in its lonely sound,<\/p>\n

The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe integer of the Spirit’s perfect sum<\/p>\n

That equates the unequal All to the equal One,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe single sign interpreting every sign,<\/p>\n

The absolute index to the Absolute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>97<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tThere walled apart by its own innerness<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a mystical barrage of dynamic light<\/p>\n

He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tErect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods<\/p>\n

Motionless under an inscrutable sky.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs if from Matter’s plinth and viewless base<\/p>\n

To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClimbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme<\/p>\n

Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt hoped to soar into the Ineffable’s reign:<\/p>\n

A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo it towered up to heights intangible<\/p>\n

And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven<\/p>\n

Built by the aspiring soul of man to live<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNear to his dream of the Invisible.<\/p>\n

Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts spire touches the apex of the world;<\/p>\n

Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt marries the earth to screened eternities.<\/p>\n

Amid the many systems of the One<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMade by an interpreting creative joy<\/p>\n

Alone it points us to our journey back<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of our long self-loss in Nature’s deeps;<\/p>\n

Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is a brief compendium of the Vast.<\/p>\n

This was the single stair to being’s goal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA summary of the stages of the spirit,<\/p>\n

Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRefashioned in our secret air of self<\/p>\n

A subtle pattern of the universe.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is within, below, without, above.<\/p>\n

Acting upon this visible Nature’s scheme<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt wakens our earth-matter’s heavy doze<\/p>\n

To think and feel and to react to joy;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt models in us our diviner parts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>98<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tLifts mortal mind into a greater air,<\/p>\n

Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLinks the body’s death with immortality’s call:<\/p>\n

Out of the swoon of the Inconscience<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt labours towards a superconscient Light.<\/p>\n

If earth were all and this were not in her,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThought could not be nor life-delight’s response:<\/p>\n

Only material forms could then be her guests<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDriven by an inanimate world-force.<\/p>\n

Earth by this golden superfluity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBore thinking man and more than man shall bear;<\/p>\n

This higher scheme of being is our cause<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd holds the key to our ascending fate;<\/p>\n

It calls out of our dense mortality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe conscious spirit nursed in Matter’s house.<\/p>\n

The living symbol of these conscious planes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts influences and godheads of the unseen,<\/p>\n

Its unthought logic of Reality’s acts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArisen from the unspoken truth in things,<\/p>\n

Have fixed our inner life’s slow-scaled degrees.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts steps are paces of the soul’s return<\/p>\n

From the deep adventure of material birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA ladder of delivering ascent<\/p>\n

And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnce in the vigil of a deathless gaze<\/p>\n

These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall.<\/p>\n

Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe great World-Mother by her sacrifice<\/p>\n

Has made her soul the body of our state;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAccepting sorrow and unconsciousness<\/p>\n

Divinity’s lapse from its own splendours wove<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe many-patterned ground of all we are.<\/p>\n

An idol of self is our mortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur earth is a fragment and a residue;<\/p>\n

Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>99<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn atavism of higher births is hers,<\/p>\n

Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRecalling the lost spheres from which they fell.<\/p>\n

Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey are partners of her greater growing fate<\/p>\n

And her return to immortality;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey consent to share her doom of birth and death;<\/p>\n

They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer blind laborious spirit to compose<\/p>\n

A meagre image of the mighty Whole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe calm and luminous Intimacy within<\/p>\n

Approves her work and guides the unseeing Power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis vast design accepts a puny start.<\/p>\n

An attempt, a drawing half-done is the world’s life;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts lines doubt their concealed significance,<\/p>\n

Its curves join not their high intended close.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet some first image of greatness trembles there,<\/p>\n

And when the ambiguous crowded parts have met<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe many-toned unity to which they moved,<\/p>\n

The Artist’s joy shall laugh at reason’s rules;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe divine intention suddenly shall be seen,<\/p>\n

The end vindicate intuition’s sure technique.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA graph shall be of many meeting worlds,<\/p>\n

A cube and union-crystal of the gods;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Mind shall think behind Nature’s mindless mask,<\/p>\n

A conscious Vast fill the old dumb brute Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis faint and fluid sketch of soul called man<\/p>\n

Shall stand out on the background of long Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA glowing epitome of eternity,<\/p>\n

A little point reveal the infinitudes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Mystery’s process is the universe.<\/p>\n

At first was laid a strange anomalous base,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA void, a cipher of some secret Whole,<\/p>\n

Where zero held infinity in its sum<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd All and Nothing were a single term,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>100<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

An eternal negative, a matrix Nought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto its forms the Child is ever born<\/p>\n

Who lives for ever in the vasts of God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA slow reversal’s movement then took place:<\/p>\n

A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf its dense rings were formed these million stars;<\/p>\n

Upon earth’s new-born soil God’s tread was heard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the thick smoke of earth’s ignorance<\/p>\n

A Mind began to see and look at forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd groped for knowledge in the nescient Night:<\/p>\n

Caught in a blind stone-grip Force worked its plan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd made in sleep this huge mechanical world,<\/p>\n

That Matter might grow conscious of its soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd like a busy midwife the life-power<\/p>\n

Deliver the zero carrier of the All.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBecause eternal eyes turned on earth’s gulfs<\/p>\n

The lucent clarity of a pure regard<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd saw a shadow of the Unknowable<\/p>\n

Mirrored in the Inconscient’s boundless sleep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreation’s search for self began its stir.<\/p>\n

A spirit dreamed in the crude cosmic whirl,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind flowed unknowing in the sap of life<\/p>\n

And Matter’s breasts suckled the divine Idea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA miracle of the Absolute was born;<\/p>\n

Infinity put on a finite soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll ocean lived within a wandering drop,<\/p>\n

A time-made body housed the Illimitable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo live this Mystery out our souls came here.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Seer within who knows the ordered plan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConcealed behind our momentary steps,<\/p>\n

Inspires our ascent to viewless heights<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs once the abysmal leap to earth and life.<\/p>\n

His call had reached the Traveller in Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tApart in an unfathomed loneliness,<\/p>\n

He travelled in his mute and single strength<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>101<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Bearing the burden of the world’s desire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA formless Stillness called, a nameless Light.<\/p>\n

Above him was the white immobile Ray,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround him the eternal Silences.<\/p>\n

No term was fixed to the high-pitched attempt;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWorld after world disclosed its guarded powers,<\/p>\n

Heaven after heaven its deep beatitudes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut still the invisible Magnet drew his soul.<\/p>\n

A figure sole on Nature’s giant stair,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe mounted towards an indiscernible end<\/p>\n

On the bare summit of created things.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>102<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  BOOK TWO   The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds Canto One   The World-Stair   ALONE he moved watched by the infinity…<\/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-2463","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\/2463","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=2463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}