{"id":2470,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2470"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:50","slug":"35-canto-two-the-parable-of-the-search-for-the-soul-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/35-canto-two-the-parable-of-the-search-for-the-soul-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-35_Canto Two – The Parable of the Search for the Soul.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCanto Two <\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Parable of the Search for the Soul<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA<\/font>S IN<\/b> the vigilance of the sleepless night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThrough the slow heavy-footed silent hours,<\/p>\n

Repressing in her bosom its load of grief,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe sat staring at the dumb tread of Time<\/p>\n

And the approach of ever-nearing Fate,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA summons from her being’s summit came,<\/p>\n

A sound, a call that broke the seals of Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbove her brows where will and knowledge meet<\/p>\n

A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt seemed to come from inaccessible heights<\/p>\n

And yet was intimate with all the world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd knew the meaning of the steps of Time<\/p>\n

And saw eternal destiny’s changeless scene<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFilling the far prospect of the cosmic gaze.<\/p>\n

As the Voice touched, her body became a stark<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd rigid golden statue of motionless trance,<\/p>\n

A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround her body’s stillness all grew still:<\/p>\n

Her heart listened to its slow measured beats,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer mind renouncing thought heard and was mute:<\/p>\n

“Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis ignorant life beneath indifferent skies<\/p>\n

Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO spirit, O immortal energy,<\/p>\n

If ’twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?<\/p>\n

Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night:<\/p>\n

“My strength is taken from me and given to Death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhy should I lift my hands to the shut heavens<\/p>\n

Or struggle with mute inevitable Fate<\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tOr hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race<\/p>\n

Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd see in Mind wisdom’s sole tabernacle,<\/p>\n

In its harsh peak and its inconscient base<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA rock of safety and an anchor of sleep?<\/p>\n

Is there a God whom any cry can move?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength<\/p>\n

Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.<\/p>\n

What need have I, what need has Satyavan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo avoid the black-meshed net, the dismal door,<\/p>\n

Or call a mightier Light into life’s closed room,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA greater Law into man’s little world?<\/p>\n

Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr stave off death’s inevitable hour?<\/p>\n

This surely is best to pactise with my fate<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd follow close behind my lover’s steps<\/p>\n

And pass through night from twilight to the sun<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the tenebrous river that divides<\/p>\n

The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen could we lie inarmed breast upon breast,<\/p>\n

Untroubled by thought, untroubled by our hearts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForgetting man and life and time and its hours,<\/p>\n

Forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit?<\/p>\n

And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe work was left undone for which it came?<\/p>\n

Or is this all for thy being born on earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCharged with a mandate from eternity,<\/p>\n

A listener to the voices of the years,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA follower of the footprints of the gods,<\/p>\n

To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShall there be no new tables, no new Word,<\/p>\n

No greater light come down upon the earth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDelivering her from her unconsciousness,<\/p>\n

Man’s spirit from unalterable Fate?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Cam’st thou not down to open the doors of Fate,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe iron doors that seemed for ever closed,<\/p>\n

And lead man to Truth’s wide and golden road<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat runs through finite things to eternity?<\/p>\n

Is this then the report that I must make,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMy head bowed with shame before the Eternal's
\n\t\t\tseat, \u2014<\/p>\n

His power he kindled in thy body has failed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis labourer returns, her task undone?”<\/p>\n

Then Savitri’s heart fell mute, it spoke no word.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut holding back her troubled rebel heart,<\/p>\n

Abrupt, erect and strong, calm like a hill,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSurmounting the seas of mortal ignorance,<\/p>\n

Its peak immutable above mind’s air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Power within her answered the still Voice:<\/p>\n

“I am thy portion here charged with thy work,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs thou myself seated for ever above,<\/p>\n

Speak to my depths, O great and deathless Voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCommand, for I am here to do thy will.”<\/p>\n

The Voice replied: “Remember why thou cam’st:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFind out thy soul, recover thy hid self,<\/p>\n

In silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen mortal nature change to the divine.<\/p>\n

Open God’s door, enter into his trance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCast Thought from thee, that nimble ape of Light:<\/p>\n

In his tremendous hush stilling thy brain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis vast Truth wake within and know and see.<\/p>\n

Cast from thee sense that veils thy spirit’s sight:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the enormous emptiness of thy mind<\/p>\n

Thou shalt see the Eternal’s body in the world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKnow him in every voice heard by thy soul,<\/p>\n

In the world’s contacts meet his single touch;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll things shall fold thee into his embrace.<\/p>\n

Conquer thy heart’s throbs, let thy heart beat in God:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy nature shall be the engine of his works,<\/p>\n

Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.”<\/p>\n

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\n

Then Savitri by her doomed husband sat,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill rigid in her golden motionless pose,<\/p>\n

A statue of the fire of the inner sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the black night the wrath of storm swept by,<\/p>\n

The thunder crashed above her, the rain hissed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts million footsteps pattered on the roof.<\/p>\n

Impassive mid the movement and the cry,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWitness of the thoughts of mind, the moods of life,<\/p>\n

She looked into herself and sought for her soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA dream disclosed to her the cosmic past,<\/p>\n

The crypt-seed and the mystic origins,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe shadowy beginnings of world-fate:<\/p>\n

A lamp of symbol lighting hidden truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImaged to her the world’s significance.<\/p>\n

In the indeterminate formlessness of Self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreation took its first mysterious steps,<\/p>\n

It made the body’s shape a house of soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Matter learned to think and person grew;<\/p>\n

She saw Space peopled with the seeds of life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd saw the human creature born in Time.<\/p>\n

At first appeared a dim half-neutral tide<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf being emerging out of infinite Nought:<\/p>\n

A consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void.<\/p>\n

All was the deed of a blind World-Energy:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnconscious of her own exploits she worked,<\/p>\n

Shaping a universe out of the Inane.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn fragmentary beings she grew aware:<\/p>\n

A chaos of little sensibilities<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGathered round a small ego’s pin-point head;<\/p>\n

In it a sentient creature found its poise,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt moved and lived a breathing, thinking whole.<\/p>\n

On a dim ocean of subconscient life<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA formless surface consciousness awoke:<\/p>\n

A stream of thoughts and feelings came and went,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>477<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

A foam of memories hardened and became<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA bright crust of habitual sense and thought,<\/p>\n

A seat of living personality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd recurrent habits mimicked permanence.<\/p>\n

Mind nascent laboured out a mutable form,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt built a mobile house on shifting sands,<\/p>\n

A floating isle upon a bottomless sea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA conscious being was by this labour made;<\/p>\n

It looked around it on its difficult field<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the green wonderful and perilous earth;<\/p>\n

It hoped in a brief body to survive,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRelying on Matter’s false eternity.<\/p>\n

It felt a godhead in its fragile house;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt saw blue heavens, dreamed immortality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,<\/p>\n

An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLeaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.<\/p>\n

In his floating house upon the sea of Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe regent sits at work and never rests:<\/p>\n

He is a puppet of the dance of Time;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is driven by the hours, the moment’s call<\/p>\n

Compels him with the thronging of life’s need<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the babel of the voices of the world.<\/p>\n

This mind no silence knows nor dreamless sleep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the incessant circling of its steps<\/p>\n

Thoughts tread for ever through the listening brain;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt toils like a machine and cannot stop.<\/p>\n

Into the body’s many-storeyed rooms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEndless crowd down the dream-god’s messages.<\/p>\n

All is a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a tireless running to and fro,<\/p>\n

A haste of movement and a ceaseless cry.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe hurried servant senses answer apace<\/p>\n

To every knock upon the outer doors,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBring in time’s visitors, report each call,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Admit the thousand queries and the calls<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the messages of communicating minds<\/p>\n

And the heavy business of unnumbered lives<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd all the thousandfold commerce of the world.<\/p>\n

Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams,<\/p>\n

He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis night with thin-air visions and dim forms<\/p>\n

He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd only a moment spends in silent Self.<\/p>\n

Adventuring into infinite mind-space<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe unfolds his wings of thought in inner air,<\/p>\n

Or travelling in imagination’s car<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCrosses the globe, journeys beneath the stars,<\/p>\n

To subtle worlds takes his ethereal course,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVisits the Gods on Life’s miraculous peaks,<\/p>\n

Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the little surface of man’s life.<\/p>\n

He is this and he is all the universe;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;<\/p>\n

A whole mysterious world is locked within.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnknown to himself he lives a hidden king<\/p>\n

Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,<\/p>\n

He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA nameless god in an unapproachable fane,<\/p>\n

In the secret adytum of his inmost soul<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe guards the being’s covered mysteries<\/p>\n

Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.<\/p>\n

The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCasts into the argent purity of his soul<\/p>\n

His splendour and his greatness and the light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf self-creation in Time’s infinity<\/p>\n

As into a sublimely mirroring glass.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMan in the world’s life works out the dreams of God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

But all is there, even God’s opposites;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is a little front of Nature’s works,<\/p>\n

A thinking outline of a cryptic Force.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll she reveals in him that is in her,<\/p>\n

Her glories walk in him and her darknesses.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMan’s house of life holds not the gods alone:<\/p>\n

There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInhabitants of life’s ominous nether rooms,<\/p>\n

A shadowy world’s stupendous denizens.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA careless guardian of his nature’s powers,<\/p>\n

Man harbours dangerous forces in his house.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Titan and the Fury and the Djinn<\/p>\n

Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the Beast grovels in his antre den:<\/p>\n

Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInsurgent sometimes raises its huge head<\/p>\n

A monstrous mystery lurking in life’s deeps,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mystery of dark and fallen worlds,<\/p>\n

The dread visages of the adversary Kings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe dreadful powers held down within his depths<\/p>\n

Become his masters or his ministers;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEnormous they invade his bodily house,<\/p>\n

Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInferno surges into the human air<\/p>\n

And touches all with a perverting breath.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGrey forces like a thin miasma creep,<\/p>\n

Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDiscolouring the walls of upper mind<\/p>\n

In which he lives his fair and specious life,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd leave behind a stench of sin and death:<\/p>\n

Not only rise in him perverse drifts of thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd formidable formless influences,<\/p>\n

But there come presences and awful shapes:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTremendous forms and faces mount dim steps<\/p>\n

And stare at times into his living-rooms,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr called up for a moment’s passionate work<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Lay a dire custom’s claim upon his heart:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAroused from sleep, they can be bound no more.<\/p>\n

Afflicting the daylight and alarming night,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvading at will his outer tenement,<\/p>\n

The stark gloom’s grisly dire inhabitants<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMounting into God’s light all light perturb.<\/p>\n

All they have touched or seen they make their own,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill,<\/p>\n

Disrupt thought’s links and musing sequences,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBreak through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry<\/p>\n

Or they call the inhabitants of the abyss,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvite the instincts to forbidden joys,<\/p>\n

A laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor.<\/p>\n

Impotent to quell his terrible prisoners,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAppalled the householder helpless sits above,<\/p>\n

Taken from him his house is his no more.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe is bound and forced, a victim of the play,<\/p>\n

Or, allured, joys in the mad and mighty din.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis nature’s dangerous forces have arisen<\/p>\n

And hold at will a rebel’s holiday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAroused from the darkness where they crouched in the depths,<\/p>\n

Prisoned from the sight, they can be held no more;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis nature’s impulses are now his lords.<\/p>\n

Once quelled or wearing specious names and vests<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfernal elements, demon powers are there.<\/p>\n

Man’s lower nature hides these awful guests.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.<\/p>\n

An awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn house and house the huge uprising grows:<\/p>\n

Hell’s companies are loosed to do their work,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto the earth-ways they break out from all doors,<\/p>\n

Invade with blood-lust and the will to slay<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world.<\/p>\n

Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe terrible Angel smites at every door:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd massacre and torture grin at Heaven:<\/p>\n

All is the prey of the destroying force;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCreation rocks and tremble top and base.<\/p>\n

This evil Nature housed in human hearts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:<\/p>\n

The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tExpel the householder, possess the house.<\/p>\n

An opposite potency contradicting God,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA momentary Evil’s almightiness<\/p>\n

Has straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt imitates the Godhead it denies,<\/p>\n

Puts on his figure and assumes his face.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA Manichean creator and destroyer,<\/p>\n

This can abolish man, annul his world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,<\/p>\n

Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll the world’s possibilities in man<\/p>\n

Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis past lives in him; it drives his future’s pace;<\/p>\n

His present’s acts fashion his coming fate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unborn gods hide in his house of Life.<\/p>\n

The daemons of the unknown overshadow his mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCasting their dreams into live moulds of thought,<\/p>\n

The moulds in which his mind builds out its world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis mind creates around him its universe.<\/p>\n

All that has been renews in him its birth;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll that can be is figured in his soul.<\/p>\n

Issuing in deeds it scores on the roads of the world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tObscure to the interpreting reason’s guess,<\/p>\n

Lines of the secret purpose of the gods.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn strange directions runs the intricate plan;<\/p>\n

Held back from human foresight is their end<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the far intention of some ordering Will<\/p>\n

Or the order of life’s arbitrary Chance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Finds out its settled poise and fated hour.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur surface watched in vain by reason’s gaze,<\/p>\n

Invaded by the impromptus of the unseen,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHelpless records the accidents of Time,<\/p>\n

The involuntary turns and leaps of life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly a little of us foresees its steps,<\/p>\n

Only a little has will and purposed pace.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vast subliminal is man’s measureless part.<\/p>\n

The dim subconscient is his cavern base.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbolished vainly in the walks of Time<\/p>\n

Our past lives still in our unconscious selves<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd by the weight of its hidden influences<\/p>\n

Is shaped our future’s self-discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus all is an inevitable chain<\/p>\n

And yet a series seems of accidents.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unremembering hours repeat the old acts,<\/p>\n

Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,<\/p>\n

Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOld thoughts, old longings, dead passions live again,<\/p>\n

Recur in sleep or move the waking man<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo words that force the barrier of the lips,<\/p>\n

To deeds that suddenly start and o’erleap<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis head of reason and his guardian will.<\/p>\n

An old self lurks in the new self we are;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHardly we escape from what we once had been:<\/p>\n

In the dim gleam of habit’s passages,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the subconscient’s darkling corridors<\/p>\n

All things are carried by the porter nerves<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd nothing checked by subterranean mind,<\/p>\n

Unstudied by the guardians of the doors<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd passed by a blind instinctive memory,<\/p>\n

The old gang dismissed, old cancelled passports serve.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing is wholly dead that once had lived;<\/p>\n

In dim tunnels of the world’s being and in ours<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe old rejected nature still survives;<\/p>\n

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The corpses of its slain thoughts raise their heads<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd visit mind’s nocturnal walks in sleep,<\/p>\n

Its stifled impulses breathe and move and rise;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll keeps a phantom immortality.<\/p>\n

Irresistible are Nature’s sequences:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe seeds of sins renounced sprout from hid soil;<\/p>\n

The evil cast from our hearts once more we face;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur dead selves come to slay our living soul.<\/p>\n

A portion of us lives in present Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA secret mass in dim inconscience gropes;<\/p>\n

Out of the inconscient and subliminal<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArisen, we live in mind’s uncertain light<\/p>\n

And strive to know and master a dubious world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhose purpose and meaning are hidden from our sight.<\/p>\n

Above us dwells a superconscient God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHidden in the mystery of his own light:<\/p>\n

Around us is a vast of ignorance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLit by the uncertain ray of human mind,<\/p>\n

Below us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut this is only Matter’s first self-view,<\/p>\n

A scale and series in the Ignorance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is not all we are or all our world.<\/p>\n

Our greater self of knowledge waits for us,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast:<\/p>\n

It sees from summits beyond thinking mind,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt moves in a splendid air transcending life.<\/p>\n

It shall descend and make earth’s life divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTruth made the world, not a blind Nature-Force.<\/p>\n

For here are not our large diviner heights;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur summits in the superconscient’s blaze<\/p>\n

Are glorious with the very face of God:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is our aspect of eternity,<\/p>\n

There is the figure of the god we are,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis young unaging look on deathless things,<\/p>\n

His joy in our escape from death and Time,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHis immortality and light and bliss.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tOur larger being sits behind cryptic walls:<\/p>\n

There are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat wait their hour to step into life’s front:<\/p>\n

We feel an aid from deep indwelling Gods;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOne speaks within, Light comes to us from above.<\/p>\n

Our soul from its mysterious chamber acts;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts influence pressing on our heart and mind<\/p>\n

Pushes them to exceed their mortal selves.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt seeks for Good and Beauty and for God;<\/p>\n

We see beyond self’s walls our limitless self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe gaze through our world’s glass at half-seen vasts,<\/p>\n

We hunt for the Truth behind apparent things.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur inner Mind dwells in a larger light,<\/p>\n

Its brightness looks at us through hidden doors;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur members luminous grow and Wisdom’s face<\/p>\n

Appears in the doorway of the mystic ward:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen she enters into our house of outward sense,<\/p>\n

Then we look up and see, above, her sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA mighty life-self with its inner powers<\/p>\n

Supports the dwarfish modicum we call life;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt can graft upon our crawl two puissant wings.<\/p>\n

Our body’s subtle self is throned within<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn its viewless palace of veridical dreams<\/p>\n

That are bright shadows of the thoughts of God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the prone obscure beginnings of the race<\/p>\n

The human grew in the bowed apelike man.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe stood erect, a godlike form and force,<\/p>\n

And a soul’s thoughts looked out from earth-born eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMan stood erect, he wore the thinker’s brow:<\/p>\n

He looked at heaven and saw his comrade stars;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vision came of beauty and greater birth<\/p>\n

Slowly emerging from the heart’s chapel of light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd moved in a white lucent air of dreams.<\/p>\n

He saw his being’s unrealised vastnesses,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe aspired and housed the nascent demigod.<\/p>\n

Out of the dim recesses of the self<\/p>\n

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The occult seeker into the open came:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe heard the far and touched the intangible,<\/p>\n

He gazed into the future and the unseen;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe used the powers earth-instruments cannot use,<\/p>\n

A pastime made of the impossible;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe caught up fragments of the Omniscient’s thought,<\/p>\n

He scattered formulas of omnipotence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus man in his little house made of earth’s dust<\/p>\n

Grew towards an unseen heaven of thought and dream<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLooking into the vast vistas of his mind<\/p>\n

On a small globe dotting infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt last climbing a long and narrow stair<\/p>\n

He stood alone on the high roof of things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd saw the light of a spiritual sun.<\/p>\n

Aspiring he transcends his earthly self;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe stands in the largeness of his soul new-born,<\/p>\n

Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd moves in a pure free spiritual realm<\/p>\n

As in the rare breath of a stratosphere;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA last end of far lines of divinity,<\/p>\n

He mounts by a frail thread to his high source;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe reaches his fount of immortality,<\/p>\n

He calls the Godhead into his mortal life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll this the spirit concealed had done in her:<\/p>\n

A portion of the mighty Mother came<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInto her as into its own human part:<\/p>\n

Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,<\/p>\n

Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo mould humanity into God’s own shape<\/p>\n

And lead this great blind struggling world to light<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr a new world discover or create.<\/p>\n

Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.<\/p>\n

But for such vast spiritual change to be,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the mystic cavern in man’s heart<\/p>\n

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The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd step into common nature’s crowded rooms<\/p>\n

And stand uncovered in that nature’s front<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.<\/p>\n

Obedient to a high command she sat:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTime, life and death were passing incidents<\/p>\n

Obstructing with their transient view her sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer sight that must break through and liberate the god<\/p>\n

Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe inferior nature born into ignorance<\/p>\n

Still took too large a place, it veiled her self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd must be pushed aside to find her soul.<\/p>\n

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

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

  Canto Two   The Parable of the Search for the Soul   AS IN the vigilance of the sleepless night Through the slow heavy-footed…<\/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-2470","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\/2470","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=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}