{"id":2465,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2465"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:48","slug":"16-canto-eleven-the-kingdoms-and-godheads-of-the-greater-mind-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/16-canto-eleven-the-kingdoms-and-godheads-of-the-greater-mind-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-16_Canto Eleven – The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\nCanto Eleven <\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind<\/font><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font>HERE<\/b> ceased the limits of the labouring Power.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut being and creation cease not there.<\/p>\n

For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is greater than its earthly instrument:<\/p>\n

The godhead crammed into mind’s narrow space<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEscapes on every side into some vast<\/p>\n

That is a passage to infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt moves eternal in the spirit’s field,<\/p>\n

A runner towards the far spiritual light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA child and servant of the spirit’s force.<\/p>\n

But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.<\/p>\n

For the spirit is eternal and unmade<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd not by thinking was its greatness born,<\/p>\n

And not by thinking can its knowledge come.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt knows itself and in itself it lives,<\/p>\n

It moves where no thought is nor any form.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts feet are steadied upon finite things,<\/p>\n

Its wings can dare to cross the Infinite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArriving into his ken a wonder space<\/p>\n

Of great and marvellous meetings called his steps,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere Thought leaned on a Vision beyond thought<\/p>\n

And shaped a world from the Unthinkable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn peaks imagination cannot tread,<\/p>\n

In the horizons of a tireless sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnder a blue veil of eternity<\/p>\n

The splendours of ideal Mind were seen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOutstretched across the boundaries of things known.<\/p>\n

Origin of the little that we are,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInstinct with the endless more that we must be,<\/p>\n

A prop of all that human strength enacts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>60<\/font><\/p>\n

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Creator of hopes by earth unrealised,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt spreads beyond the expanding universe;<\/p>\n

It wings beyond the boundaries of Dream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt overtops the ceiling of life’s soar.<\/p>\n

Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tExposed to omniscient immensities,<\/p>\n

It casts on our world its great crowned influences,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,<\/p>\n

Its force that strides invincibly through Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,<\/p>\n

Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn its vast ambit of ideal Space<\/p>\n

Where beauty and mightiness walk hand in hand,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Spirit’s truths take form as living Gods<\/p>\n

And each can build a world in its own right.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn an air which doubt and error cannot mark<\/p>\n

With the stigmata of their deformity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn communion with the musing privacy<\/p>\n

Of a truth that sees in an unerring light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere the sight falters not nor wanders thought,<\/p>\n

Exempt from our world’s exorbitant tax of tears,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDreaming its luminous creations gaze<\/p>\n

On the Ideas that people eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a sun-blaze of joy and absolute power<\/p>\n

Above the Masters of the Ideal throne<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn sessions of secure felicity,<\/p>\n

In regions of illumined certitude.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFar are those realms from our labour and yearning and call,<\/p>\n

Perfection’s reign and hallowed sanctuary<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClosed to the uncertain thoughts of human mind,<\/p>\n

Remote from the turbid tread of mortal life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut since our secret selves are next of kin,<\/p>\n

A breath of unattained divinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVisits the imperfect earth on which we toil;<\/p>\n

Across a gleaming ether’s golden laugh<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA light falls on our vexed unsatisfied lives,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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A thought comes down from the ideal worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd moves us to new-model even here<\/p>\n

Some image of their greatness and appeal<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd wonder beyond the ken of mortal hope.<\/p>\n

Amid the heavy sameness of the days<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd contradicted by the human law,<\/p>\n

A faith in things that are not and must be<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLives comrade of this world’s delight and pain,<\/p>\n

The child of the secret soul’s forbidden desire<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBorn of its amour with eternity.<\/p>\n

Our spirits break free from their environment;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe future brings its face of miracle near,<\/p>\n

Its godhead looks at us with present eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tActs deemed impossible grow natural;<\/p>\n

We feel the hero’s immortality;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe courage and the strength death cannot touch<\/p>\n

Awake in limbs that are mortal, hearts that fail;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe move by the rapid impulse of a will<\/p>\n

That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese promptings come not from an alien sphere:<\/p>\n

Ourselves are citizens of that mother State,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdventurers, we have colonised Matter’s night.<\/p>\n

But now our rights are barred, our passports void;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe live self-exiled from our heavenlier home.<\/p>\n

An errant ray from the immortal Mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAccepted the earth’s blindness and became<\/p>\n

Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn exile, labourer on this unsure globe<\/p>\n

Captured and driven in Life’s nescient grasp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,<\/p>\n

It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe natural privilege of unfallen gods,<\/p>\n

Recalling still its old lost sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAmidst earth’s mist and fog and mud and stone<\/p>\n

It still remembers its exalted sphere<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the high city of its splendid birth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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A memory steals in from lost heavens of Truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA wide release comes near, a Glory calls,<\/p>\n

A might looks out, an estranged felicity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn glamorous passages of half-veiled light<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tThis quick uncertain leader of blind gods,<\/p>\n

This tender of small lamps, this minister serf<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHired by a mind and body for earth-use<\/p>\n

Forgets its work mid crude realities;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt recovers its renounced imperial right,<\/p>\n

It wears once more a purple robe of thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd knows itself the Ideal’s seer and king,<\/p>\n

Communicant and prophet of the Unborn,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHeir to delight and immortality.<\/p>\n

All things are real that here are only dreams,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn our unknown depths sleeps their reserve of truth,<\/p>\n

On our unreached heights they reign and come to us<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn thought and muse trailing their robes of light.<\/p>\n

But our dwarf will and cold pragmatic sense<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdmit not the celestial visitants:<\/p>\n

Awaiting us on the Ideal’s peaks<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr guarded in our secret self unseen<\/p>\n

Yet flashed sometimes across the awakened soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHide from our lives their greatness, beauty, power.<\/p>\n

Our present feels sometimes their regal touch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur future strives towards their luminous thrones:<\/p>\n

Out of spiritual secrecy they gaze,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmortal footfalls in mind’s corridors sound:<\/p>\n

Our souls can climb into the shining planes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe breadths from which they came can be our home.<\/p>\n

His privilege regained of shadowless sight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Thinker entered the immortals’ air<\/p>\n

And drank again his pure and mighty source.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmutable in rhythmic calm and joy<\/p>\n

He saw, sovereignly free in limitless light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Where Knowledge is the leader of the act<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Matter is of thinking substance made,<\/p>\n

Feeling, a heaven-bird poised on dreaming wings,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnswers Truth’s call as to a parent’s voice,<\/p>\n

Form luminous leaps from the all-shaping beam<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,<\/p>\n

And Life, a splendour stream of musing Force,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCarries the voices of the mystic Suns.<\/p>\n

A happiness it brings of whispered truth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere runs in its flow honeying the bosom of Space<\/p>\n

A laughter from the immortal heart of Bliss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the unfathomed Joy of timelessness,<\/p>\n

The sound of Wisdom’s murmur in the Unknown<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the breath of an unseen Infinity.<\/p>\n

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind<\/p>\n

Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA gold supernal sun of timeless Truth<\/p>\n

Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough a silence quivering with the word of Light<\/p>\n

On an endless ocean of discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFar-off he saw the joining hemispheres.<\/p>\n

On meditation’s mounting edge of trance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGreat stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights<\/p>\n

Where Time’s last ridges touch eternity’s skies<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Nature speaks to the spirit’s absolute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA triple realm of ordered thought came first,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA small beginning of immense ascent:<\/p>\n

Above were bright ethereal skies of mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA packed and endless soar as if sky pressed sky<\/p>\n

Buttressed against the Void on bastioned light;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe highest strove to neighbour eternity,<\/p>\n

The largest widened into the infinite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut though immortal, mighty and divine,<\/p>\n

The first realms were close and kin to human mind;<\/p>\n

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Their deities shape our greater thinking’s roads,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA fragment of their puissance can be ours:<\/p>\n

These breadths were not too broad for our souls to range,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese heights were not too high for human hope.<\/p>\n

A triple flight led to this triple world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough abrupt for common strengths to tread,<\/p>\n

Its upward slope looks down on our earth-poise:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn a slant not too precipitously steep<\/p>\n

One could turn back travelling deep descending lines<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo commune with the mortal’s universe.<\/p>\n

The mighty wardens of the ascending stair<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWho intercede with the all-creating Word,<\/p>\n

There waited for the pilgrim heaven-bound soul;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHolding the thousand keys of the Beyond<\/p>\n

They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd filled the life with Thought’s immensities.<\/p>\n

The prophet hierophants of the occult Law,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe flame-bright hierarchs of the divine Truth,<\/p>\n

Interpreters between man’s mind and God’s,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey bring the immortal fire to mortal men.<\/p>\n

Iridescent, bodying the invisible,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe guardians of the Eternal’s bright degrees<\/p>\n

Fronted the Sun in radiant phalanxes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAfar they seemed a symbol imagery,<\/p>\n

Illumined originals of the shadowy script<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn which our sight transcribes the ideal Ray,<\/p>\n

Or icons figuring a mystic Truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut, nearer, Gods and living Presences.<\/p>\n

A march of friezes marked the lowest steps;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFantastically ornate and richly small,<\/p>\n

They had room for the whole meaning of a world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSymbols minute of its perfection’s joy,<\/p>\n

Strange beasts that were Nature’s forces made alive<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd, wakened to the wonder of his role,<\/p>\n

Man grown an image undefaced of God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd objects the fine coin of Beauty’s reign;<\/p>\n

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But wide the terrains were those levels serve.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn front of the ascending epiphany<\/p>\n

World-Time’s enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Masters of things actual, lords of the hours,<\/p>\n

Playmates of youthful Nature and child God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreators of Matter by hid stress of Mind<\/p>\n

Whose subtle thoughts support unconscious Life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd guide the fantasy of brute events,<\/p>\n

Stood there, a race of young keen-visioned gods,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKing-children born on Wisdom’s early plane,<\/p>\n

Taught in her school world-making’s mystic play.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArchmasons of the eternal Thaumaturge,<\/p>\n

Moulders and measurers of fragmented Space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey have made their plan of the concealed and known<\/p>\n

A dwelling-house for the invisible king.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tObeying the Eternal’s deep command<\/p>\n

They have built in the material front of things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis wide world-kindergarten of young souls<\/p>\n

Where the infant spirit learns through mind and sense<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo read the letters of the cosmic script<\/p>\n

And study the body of the cosmic self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd search for the secret meaning of the whole.<\/p>\n

To all that Spirit conceives they give a mould;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPersuading Nature into visible moods<\/p>\n

They lend a finite shape to infinite things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach power that leaps from the Unmanifest<\/p>\n

Leaving the largeness of the Eternal’s peace<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey seized and held by their precisian eye<\/p>\n

And made a figurante in the cosmic dance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts free caprice they bound by rhythmic laws<\/p>\n

And compelled to accept its posture and its line<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the wizardry of an ordered universe.<\/p>\n

The All-containing was contained in form,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOneness was carved into units measurable,<\/p>\n

The limitless built into a cosmic sum:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnending Space was beaten into a curve,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Indivisible Time into small minutes cut,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe infinitesimal massed to keep secure<\/p>\n

The mystery of the Formless cast into form.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvincibly their craft devised for use<\/p>\n

The magic of sequent number and sign’s spell,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDesign’s miraculous potency was caught<\/p>\n

Laden with beauty and significance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd by the determining mandate of their gaze<\/p>\n

Figure and quality equating joined<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn an inextricable identity.<\/p>\n

On each event they stamped its curves of law<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd its trust and charge of burdened circumstance;<\/p>\n

A free and divine incident no more<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt each moment willed or adventure of the soul,<\/p>\n

It lengthened a fate-bound mysterious chain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA line foreseen of an immutable plan,<\/p>\n

One step more in Necessity’s long march.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA term was set for every eager Power<\/p>\n

Restraining its will to monopolise the world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA groove of bronze prescribed for force and act<\/p>\n

And shown to each moment its appointed place<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForewilled inalterably in the spiral<\/p>\n

Huge Time-loop fugitive from eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInevitable their thoughts like links of Fate<\/p>\n

Imposed on the leap and lightning race of mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd on the frail fortuitous flux of life<\/p>\n

And on the liberty of atomic things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmutable cause and adamant consequence.<\/p>\n

Idea gave up the plastic infinity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo which it was born and now traced out instead<\/p>\n

Small separate steps of chain-work in a plot:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmortal once, now tied to birth and end,<\/p>\n

Torn from its immediacy of errorless sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKnowledge was rebuilt from cells of inference<\/p>\n

Into a fixed body flasque and perishable;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus bound it grew, but could not last and broke<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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And to a new thinking’s body left its place.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA cage for the Infinite’s great-eyed seraphim Thoughts<\/p>\n

Was closed with a criss-cross of world-laws for bars<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd hedged into a curt horizon’s arc<\/p>\n

The irised vision of the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;<\/p>\n

The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.<\/p>\n

On an earth which looked towards a thousand suns,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat the created might grow Nature’s lord<\/p>\n

And Matter’s depths be illumined with a soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey tied to date and norm and finite scope<\/p>\n

The million-mysteried movement of the One.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbove stood ranked a subtle archangel race<\/p>\n

With larger lids and looks that searched the unseen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA light of liberating knowledge shone<\/p>\n

Across the gulfs of silence in their eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey lived in the mind and knew truth from within;<\/p>\n

A sight withdrawn in the concentrated heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCould pierce behind the screen of Time’s results<\/p>\n

And the rigid cast and shape of visible things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll that escaped conception’s narrow noose<\/p>\n

Vision descried and gripped; their seeing thoughts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFilled in the blanks left by the seeking sense.<\/p>\n

High architects of possibility<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd engineers of the impossible,<\/p>\n

Mathematicians of the infinitudes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd theoricians of unknowable truths,<\/p>\n

They formulate enigma’s postulates<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd join the unknown to the apparent worlds.<\/p>\n

Acolytes they wait upon the timeless Power,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe cycle of her works investigate;<\/p>\n

Passing her fence of wordless privacy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir mind could penetrate her occult mind<\/p>\n

And draw the diagram of her secret thoughts;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey read the codes and ciphers she had sealed,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tCopies they made of all her guarded plans,<\/p>\n

For every turn of her mysterious course<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAssigned a reason and unchanging rule.<\/p>\n

The unseen grew visible to student eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tExplained was the immense Inconscient’s scheme,<\/p>\n

Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Infinite was reduced to square and cube.<\/p>\n

Arranging symbol and significance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTracing the curve of a transcendent Power,<\/p>\n

They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe balancing line discovered of Life’s technique<\/p>\n

And structured her magic and her mystery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast<\/p>\n

They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe free logic of an infinite Consciousness,<\/p>\n

Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature’s dance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCritiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,<\/p>\n

Made figure and number a key to all that is:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe psycho-analysis of cosmic Self<\/p>\n

Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unknown pathology of the Unique.<\/p>\n

Assessed was the system of the probable,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe hazard of fleeing possibilities,<\/p>\n

To account for the Actual’s unaccountable sum,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNecessity’s logarithmic tables drawn,<\/p>\n

Cast into a scheme the triple act of the One.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnveiled, the abrupt invisible multitude<\/p>\n

Of forces whirling from the hands of Chance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSeemed to obey some vast imperative:<\/p>\n

Their tangled motives worked out unity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA wisdom read their mind to themselves unknown,<\/p>\n

Their anarchy rammed into a formula<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd from their giant randomness of Force,<\/p>\n

Following the habit of their million paths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDistinguishing each faintest line and stroke<\/p>\n

Of a concealed unalterable design,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Out of the chaos of the Invisible’s moods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDerived the calculus of Destiny.<\/p>\n

In its bright pride of universal lore<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind’s knowledge overtopped the Omniscient’s power:<\/p>\n

The Eternal’s winging eagle puissances<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurprised in their untracked empyrean<\/p>\n

Stooped from their gyres to obey the beck of Thought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach mysteried God forced to revealing form,<\/p>\n

Assigned his settled moves in Nature’s game,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tZigzagged at the gesture of a chess-player Will<\/p>\n

Across the chequerboard of cosmic Fate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the wide sequence of Necessity’s steps<\/p>\n

Predicted, every act and thought of God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts values weighed by the accountant Mind,<\/p>\n

Checked in his mathematised omnipotence,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLost its divine aspect of miracle<\/p>\n

And was a figure in a cosmic sum.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mighty Mother’s whims and lightning moods<\/p>\n

Arisen from her all-wise unruled delight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the freedom of her sweet and passionate breast,<\/p>\n

Robbed of their wonder were chained to a cause and aim;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn idol of bronze replaced her mystic shape<\/p>\n

That captures the movements of the cosmic vasts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the sketch precise of an ideal face<\/p>\n

Forgotten was her eyelashes’ dream-print<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCarrying on their curve infinity’s dreams,<\/p>\n

Lost the alluring marvel of her eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe surging wave-throbs of her vast sea-heart<\/p>\n

They bound to a theorem of ordered beats:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer deep designs which from herself she had veiled<\/p>\n

Bowed self-revealed in their confessional.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the birth and death of the worlds they fixed a date,<\/p>\n

The diameter of infinity was drawn,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMeasured the distant arc of the unseen heights<\/p>\n

And visualised the plumbless viewless depths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTill all seemed known that in all time could be.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

All was coerced by number, name and form;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing was left untold, incalculable.<\/p>\n

Yet was their wisdom circled with a nought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTruths they could find and hold but not the one Truth:<\/p>\n

The Highest was to them unknowable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy knowing too much they missed the whole to be known:<\/p>\n

The fathomless heart of the world was left unguessed<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the Transcendent kept its secrecy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a sublimer and more daring soar<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo the wide summit of the triple stairs<\/p>\n

Bare steps climbed up like flaming rocks of gold<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBurning their way to a pure absolute sky.<\/p>\n

August and few the sovereign Kings of Thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHave made of Space their wide all-seeing gaze<\/p>\n

Surveying the enormous work of Time:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA breadth of all-containing Consciousness<\/p>\n

Supported Being in a still embrace.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIntercessors with a luminous Unseen,<\/p>\n

They capt in the long passage to the world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe imperatives of the creator Self<\/p>\n

Obeyed by unknowing earth, by conscious heaven;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir thoughts are partners in its vast control.<\/p>\n

A great all-ruling Consciousness is there<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Mind unwitting serves a higher Power;<\/p>\n

It is a channel, not the source of all.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe cosmos is no accident in Time;<\/p>\n

There is a meaning in each play of Chance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a freedom in each face of Fate.<\/p>\n

A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events;<\/p>\n

A Word self-born upon creation’s heights,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVoice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres,<\/p>\n

Prophet of the seeings of the Absolute,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSows the Idea’s significance in Form<\/p>\n

And from that seed the growths of Time arise.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn peaks beyond our ken the All-Wisdom sits:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>71<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

A single and infallible look comes down,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA silent touch from the supernal’s air<\/p>\n

Awakes to ignorant knowledge in its acts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe secret power in the inconscient depths,<\/p>\n

Compelling the blinded Godhead to emerge,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDetermining Necessity’s nude dance<\/p>\n

As she passes through the circuit of the hours<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd vanishes from the chase of finite eyes<\/p>\n

Down circling vistas of aeonic Time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unseizable forces of the cosmic whirl<\/p>\n

Bear in their bacchant limbs the fixity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf an original foresight that is Fate.<\/p>\n

Even Nature’s ignorance is Truth’s instrument;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur struggling ego cannot change her course:<\/p>\n

Yet is it a conscious power that moves in us,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA seed-idea is parent of our acts<\/p>\n

And destiny the unrecognised child of Will.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfallibly by Truth’s directing gaze<\/p>\n

All creatures here their secret self disclose,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForced to become what in themselves they hide.<\/p>\n

For He who Is grows manifest in the years<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the slow Godhead shut within the cell<\/p>\n

Climbs from the plasm to immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut hidden, but denied to mortal grasp,<\/p>\n

Mystic, ineffable is the spirit’s truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnspoken, caught only by the spirit’s eye.<\/p>\n

When naked of ego and mind it hears the Voice;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt looks through light to ever greater light<\/p>\n

And sees Eternity ensphering Life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis greater Truth is foreign to our thoughts;<\/p>\n

Where a free Wisdom works, they seek for a rule;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr we only see a tripping game of Chance<\/p>\n

Or a labour in chains forced by bound Nature’s law,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn absolutism of dumb unthinking Power.<\/p>\n

Audacious in their sense of God-born strength<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese dared to grasp with their thought Truth’s absolute;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>72<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

By an abstract purity of godless sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy a percept nude, intolerant of forms,<\/p>\n

They brought to Mind what Mind could never reach<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd hoped to conquer Truth’s supernal base.<\/p>\n

A stripped imperative of conceptual phrase<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArchitectonic and inevitable<\/p>\n

Translated the unthinkable into thought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA silver-winged fire of naked subtle sense,<\/p>\n

An ear of mind withdrawn from the outward’s rhymes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDiscovered the seed-sounds of the eternal Word,<\/p>\n

The rhythm and music heard that built the worlds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd seized in things the bodiless Will to be.<\/p>\n

The Illimitable they measured with number’s rods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd traced the last formula of limited things,<\/p>\n

In transparent systems bodied termless truths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Timeless made accountable to Time<\/p>\n

And valued the incommensurable Supreme.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo park and hedge the ungrasped infinitudes<\/p>\n

They erected absolute walls of thought and speech<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd made a vacuum to hold the One.<\/p>\n

In their sight they drove towards an empty peak,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mighty space of cold and sunlit air.<\/p>\n

To unify their task, excluding life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich cannot bear the nakedness of the Vast,<\/p>\n

They made a cipher of a multitude,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn negation found the meaning of the All<\/p>\n

And in nothingness the absolute positive.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA single law simplessed the cosmic theme,<\/p>\n

Compressing Nature into a formula;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir titan labour made all knowledge one,<\/p>\n

A mental algebra of the Spirit’s ways,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn abstract of the living Divinity.<\/p>\n

Here the mind’s wisdom stopped; it felt complete;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor nothing more was left to think or know:<\/p>\n

In a spiritual zero it sat throned<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd took its vast silence for the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>73<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tThis was the play of the bright gods of Thought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAttracting into time the timeless Light,<\/p>\n

Imprisoning eternity in the hours,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis they have planned, to snare the feet of Truth<\/p>\n

In an aureate net of concept and of phrase<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd keep her captive for the thinker’s joy<\/p>\n

In his little world built of immortal dreams:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere must she dwell mured in the human mind,<\/p>\n

An empress prisoner in her subject’s house,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdored and pure and still on his heart’s throne,<\/p>\n

His splendid property cherished and apart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the wall of silence of his secret muse,<\/p>\n

Immaculate in white virginity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe same for ever and for ever one,<\/p>\n

His worshipped changeless Goddess through all time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr else, a faithful consort of his mind<\/p>\n

Assenting to his nature and his will,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe sanctions and inspires his words and acts<\/p>\n

Prolonging their resonance through the listening years,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCompanion and recorder of his march<\/p>\n

Crossing a brilliant tract of thought and life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCarved out of the eternity of Time.<\/p>\n

A witness to his high triumphant star,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer godhead servitor to a crowned Idea,<\/p>\n

He shall dominate by her a prostrate world;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA warrant for his deeds and his beliefs,<\/p>\n

She attests his right divine to lead and rule.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr as a lover clasps his one beloved,<\/p>\n

Godhead of his life’s worship and desire,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIcon of his heart’s sole idolatry,<\/p>\n

She now is his and must live for him alone:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe has invaded him with her sudden bliss,<\/p>\n

An exhaustless marvel in his happy grasp,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn allurement, a caught ravishing miracle.<\/p>\n

Her now he claims after long rapt pursuit,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe one joy of his body and his soul:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>74<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Inescapable is her divine appeal,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer immense possession an undying thrill,<\/p>\n

An intoxication and an ecstasy:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe passion of her self-revealing moods,<\/p>\n

A heavenly glory and variety,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMakes ever new her body to his eyes,<\/p>\n

Or else repeats the first enchantment’s touch,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe luminous rapture of her mystic breasts<\/p>\n

And beautiful vibrant limbs a living field<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf throbbing new discovery without end.<\/p>\n

A new beginning flowers in word and laugh,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA new charm brings back the old extreme delight:<\/p>\n

He is lost in her, she is his heaven here.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTruth smiled upon the gracious golden game.<\/p>\n

Out of her hushed eternal spaces leaned<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe great and boundless Goddess feigned to yield<\/p>\n

The sunlit sweetness of her secrecies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIncarnating her beauty in his clasp<\/p>\n

She gave for a brief kiss her immortal lips<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd drew to her bosom one glorified mortal head:<\/p>\n

She made earth her home, for whom heaven was too small.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a human breast her occult presence lived;<\/p>\n

He carved from his own self his figure of her:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe shaped her body to a mind’s embrace.<\/p>\n

Into thought’s narrow limits she has come;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer greatness she has suffered to be pressed<\/p>\n

Into the little cabin of the Idea,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe closed room of a lonely thinker’s grasp:<\/p>\n

She has lowered her heights to the stature of our souls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd dazzled our lids with her celestial gaze.<\/p>\n

Thus each is satisfied with his high gain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd thinks himself beyond mortality blest,<\/p>\n

A king of truth upon his separate throne.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo her possessor in the field of Time<\/p>\n

A single splendour caught from her glory seems<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe one true light, her beauty’s glowing whole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>75<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.<\/p>\n

In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe vanity of our shut mortal mind<\/p>\n

Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut only we play with our own brilliant bonds;<\/p>\n

Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn our hypnosis by one luminous point<\/p>\n

We see not what small figure of her we hold;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe feel not her inspiring boundlessness,<\/p>\n

We share not her immortal liberty.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus is it even with the seer and sage;<\/p>\n

For still the human limits the divine:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of our thoughts we must leap up to sight,<\/p>\n

Breathe her divine illimitable air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer simple vast supremacy confess,<\/p>\n

Dare to surrender to her absolute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen the Unmanifest reflects his form<\/p>\n

In the still mind as in a living glass;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe timeless Ray descends into our hearts<\/p>\n

And we are rapt into eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor Truth is wider, greater than her forms.<\/p>\n

A thousand icons they have made of her<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd find her in the idols they adore;<\/p>\n

But she remains herself and infinite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/font>76<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Eleven   The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind   THERE ceased the limits of the labouring Power. But being and creation…<\/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-2465","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\/2465","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=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}