{"id":2475,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:52","slug":"39-canto-six-nirvana-and-the-discovery-of-the-all-negating-absolute-vol-33-34-savitri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/33-34-savitri\/39-canto-six-nirvana-and-the-discovery-of-the-all-negating-absolute-vol-33-34-savitri","title":{"rendered":"-39_Canto Six – Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNirvana and the Discovery of the<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\nAll-Negating Absolute<\/font><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA<\/font> CALM<\/b> slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens.<\/p>\n

A routed sullen rearguard of retreat,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe last rains had fled murmuring across the woods<\/p>\n

Or failed, a sibilant whisper mid the leaves,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the great blue enchantment of the sky<\/p>\n

Recovered the deep rapture of its smile.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts mellow splendour unstressed by storm-licked heats<\/p>\n

Found room for a luxury of warm mild days,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe night’s gold treasure of autumnal moons<\/p>\n

Came floating shipped through ripples of faery air.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Savitri’s life was glad, fulfilled like earth’s;<\/p>\n

She had found herself, she knew her being’s aim.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough her kingdom of marvellous change within<\/p>\n

Remained unspoken in her secret breast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll that lived round her felt its magic’s charm:<\/p>\n

The trees’ rustling voices told it to the winds,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFlowers spoke in ardent hues an unknown joy,<\/p>\n

The birds’ carolling became a canticle,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease.<\/p>\n

Absorbed in wide communion with the Unseen<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe mild ascetics of the wood received<\/p>\n

A sudden greatening of their lonely muse.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis bright perfection of her inner state<\/p>\n

Poured overflowing into her outward scene,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMade beautiful dull common natural things<\/p>\n

And action wonderful and time divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven the smallest meanest work became<\/p>\n

A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn offering to the self of the great world<\/p>\n

Or a service to the One in each and all.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

A light invaded all from her being’s light;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer heart-beats’ dance communicated bliss:<\/p>\n

Happiness grew happier, shared with her, by her touch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd grief some solace found when she drew near.<\/p>\n

Above the cherished head of Satyavan<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe saw not now Fate’s dark and lethal orb;<\/p>\n

A golden circle round a mystic sun<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDisclosed to her new-born predicting sight<\/p>\n

The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her visions and deep-etched veridical dreams,<\/p>\n

In brief shiftings of the future’s heavy screen,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe lay not by a dolorous decree<\/p>\n

A victim in the dismal antre of death<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr borne to blissful regions far from her<\/p>\n

Forgetting the sweetness of earth’s warm delight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForgetting the passionate oneness of love’s clasp,<\/p>\n

Absolved in the self-rapt immortal’s bliss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlways he was with her, a living soul<\/p>\n

That met her eyes with close enamoured eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA living body near to her body’s joy.<\/p>\n

But now no longer in these great wild woods<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn kinship with the days of bird and beast<\/p>\n

And levelled to the bareness of earth’s brown breast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut mid the thinking high-built lives of men<\/p>\n

In tapestried chambers and on crystal floors,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn armoured town or gardened pleasure-walks,<\/p>\n

Even in distance closer than her thoughts,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBody to body near, soul near to soul,<\/p>\n

Moving as if by a common breath and will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey were tied in the single circling of their days<\/p>\n

Together by love’s unseen atmosphere,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInseparable like the earth and sky.<\/p>\n

Thus for a while she trod the Golden Path;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis was the sun before abysmal Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnce as she sat in deep felicitous muse,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStill quivering from her lover’s strong embrace,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

And made her joy a bridge twixt earth and heaven,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.<\/p>\n

A vast and nameless fear dragged at her nerves<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey;<\/p>\n

It seemed to have no den from which it sprang:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was not hers, but hid its unseen cause.<\/p>\n

Then rushing came its vast and fearful Fount.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA formless Dread with shapeless endless wings<\/p>\n

Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA denser darkness than the Night could bear,<\/p>\n

Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA rolling surge of silent death, it came<\/p>\n

Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEffacing heaven with its enormous stride<\/p>\n

It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd end the fable of the joy of life.<\/p>\n

It seemed her very being to forbid,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbolishing all by which her nature lived,<\/p>\n

And laboured to blot out her body and soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA clutch of some half-seen Invisible,<\/p>\n

An ocean of terror and of sovereign might,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA person and a black infinity.<\/p>\n

It seemed to cry to her without thought or word<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe message of its dark eternity<\/p>\n

And the awful meaning of its silences:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of some sullen monstrous vast arisen,<\/p>\n

Out of an abysmal deep of grief and fear<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImagined by some blind regardless self,<\/p>\n

A consciousness of being without its joy,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEmpty of thought, incapable of bliss,<\/p>\n

That felt life blank and nowhere found a soul,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA voice to the dumb anguish of the heart<\/p>\n

Conveyed a stark sense of unspoken words;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her own depths she heard the unuttered thought<\/p>\n

That made unreal the world and all life meant.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t“Who art thou who claimst thy crown of separate birth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe illusion of thy soul’s reality<\/p>\n

And personal godhead on an ignorant globe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the animal body of imperfect man?<\/p>\n

Hope not to be happy in a world of pain<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd dream not, listening to the unspoken Word<\/p>\n

And dazzled by the inexpressible Ray,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTranscending the mute Superconscient’s realm,<\/p>\n

To give a body to the Unknowable,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr for a sanction to thy heart’s delight<\/p>\n

To burden with bliss the silent still Supreme<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tProfaning its bare and formless sanctity,<\/p>\n

Or call into thy chamber the Divine<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd sit with God tasting a human joy.<\/p>\n

I have created all, all I devour;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI am Death and the dark terrible Mother of life,<\/p>\n

I am Kali black and naked in the world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI am Maya and the universe is my cheat.<\/p>\n

I lay waste human happiness with my breath<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd slay the will to live, the joy to be<\/p>\n

That all may pass back into nothingness<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd only abide the eternal and absolute.<\/p>\n

For only the blank Eternal can be true.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll else is shadow and flash in Mind’s bright glass,<\/p>\n

Mind, hollow mirror in which Ignorance sees<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA splendid figure of its own false self<\/p>\n

And dreams it sees a glorious solid world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO soul, inventor of man’s thoughts and hopes,<\/p>\n

Thyself the invention of the moments’ stream,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIllusion’s centre or subtle apex point,<\/p>\n

At last know thyself, from vain existence cease.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA shadow of the negating Absolute,<\/p>\n

The intolerant Darkness travelled surging past<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd ebbed in her the formidable Voice.<\/p>\n

It left behind her inner world laid waste:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA barren silence weighed upon her heart,<\/p>\n

Her kingdom of delight was there no more;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Only her soul remained, its emptied stage,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAwaiting the unknown eternal Will.<\/p>\n

Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,<\/p>\n

The voice of Light after the voice of Night:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe cry of the Abyss drew Heaven’s reply,<\/p>\n

A might of storm chased by the might of the Sun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t“O soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;<\/p>\n

Consent to hide thy royalty of bliss<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLest Time and Fate find out its avenues<\/p>\n

And beat with thunderous knock upon thy gates.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHide whilst thou canst thy treasure of separate self<\/p>\n

Behind the luminous rampart of thy depths<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTill of a vaster empire it grows part.<\/p>\n

But not for self alone the Self is won:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tContent abide not with one conquered realm;<\/p>\n

Adventure all to make the whole world thine,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo break into greater kingdoms turn thy force.<\/p>\n

Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAssent to the emptiness of the Supreme<\/p>\n

That all in thee may reach its absolute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAccept to be small and human on the earth,<\/p>\n

Interrupting thy new-born divinity,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat man may find his utter self in God.<\/p>\n

If for thy own sake only thou hast come,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn immortal spirit into the mortal’s world,<\/p>\n

To found thy luminous kingdom in God’s dark,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the Inconscient’s realm one shining star,<\/p>\n

One door in the Ignorance opened upon light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhy hadst thou any need to come at all?<\/p>\n

Thou hast come down into a struggling world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo aid a blind and suffering mortal race,<\/p>\n

To open to Light the eyes that could not see,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo bring down bliss into the heart of grief,<\/p>\n

To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf thou wouldst save the toiling universe,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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The vast universal suffering feel as thine:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThou must bear the sorrow that thou claimst to heal;<\/p>\n

The day-bringer must walk in darkest night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe who would save the world must share its pain.<\/p>\n

If he knows not grief, how shall he find grief’s cure?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf far he walks above mortality’s head,<\/p>\n

How shall the mortal reach that too high path?<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf one of theirs they see scale heaven’s peaks,<\/p>\n

Men then can hope to learn that titan climb.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGod must be born on earth and be as man<\/p>\n

That man being human may grow even as God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe who would save the world must be one with the world,<\/p>\n

All suffering things contain in his heart’s space<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd bear the grief and joy of all that lives.<\/p>\n

His soul must be wider than the universe<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd feel eternity as its very stuff,<\/p>\n

Rejecting the moment’s personality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKnow itself older than the birth of Time,<\/p>\n

Creation an incident in its consciousness,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tArcturus and Belphegor grains of fire<\/p>\n

Circling in a corner of its boundless self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe world’s destruction a small transient storm<\/p>\n

In the calm infinity it has become.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf thou wouldst a little loosen the vast chain,<\/p>\n

Draw back from the world that the Idea has made,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThy mind’s selection from the Infinite,<\/p>\n

Thy senses’ gloss on the Infinitesimal’s dance,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen shalt thou know how the great bondage came.<\/p>\n

Banish all thought from thee and be God’s void.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen shalt thou uncover the Unknowable<\/p>\n

And the Superconscient conscious grow on thy tops;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInfinity’s vision through thy gaze shall pierce;<\/p>\n

Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFind the hid Truth in things seen null and false,<\/p>\n

Behind things known discover Mystery’s rear.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThou shalt be one with God’s bare reality<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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And the miraculous world he has become<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the diviner miracle still to be<\/p>\n

When Nature who is now unconscious God<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTranslucent grows to the Eternal’s light,<\/p>\n

Her seeing his sight, her walk his steps of power<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd life is filled with a spiritual joy<\/p>\n

And Matter is the Spirit’s willing bride.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConsent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time’s work,<\/p>\n

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnnul thyself that only God may be.”<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused<\/p>\n

Plunging her deep regard into herself<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn her soul’s privacy in the silent Night.<\/p>\n

Aloof and standing back detached and calm,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA witness of the drama of herself,<\/p>\n

A student of her own interior scene,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe watched the passion and the toil of life<\/p>\n

And heard in the crowded thoroughfares of mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts.<\/p>\n

All she allowed to rise that chose to stir;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCalling, compelling nought, forbidding nought,<\/p>\n

She left all to the process formed in Time<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the free initiative of Nature’s will.<\/p>\n

Thus following the complex human play<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe heard the prompter’s voice behind the scenes,<\/p>\n

Perceived the original libretto’s set<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the organ theme of the composer Force.<\/p>\n

All she beheld that surges from man’s depths,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe animal instincts prowling mid life’s trees,<\/p>\n

The impulses that whisper to the heart<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd passion’s thunder-chase sweeping the nerves;<\/p>\n

She saw the Powers that stare from the Abyss<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the wordless Light that liberates the soul.<\/p>\n

But most her gaze pursued the birth of thought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Affranchised from the look of surface mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe paused not to survey the official case,<\/p>\n

The issue of forms from the office of the brain,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts factory of thought-sounds and soundless words<\/p>\n

And voices stored within unheard by men,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts mint and treasury of shining coin.<\/p>\n

These were but counters in mind’s symbol game,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA gramophone’s discs, a reproduction’s film,<\/p>\n

A list of signs, a cipher and a code.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn our unseen subtle body thought is born<\/p>\n

Or there it enters from the cosmic field.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOft from her soul stepped out a naked thought<\/p>\n

Luminous with mysteried lips and wonderful eyes;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr from her heart emerged some burning face<\/p>\n

And looked for life and love and passionate truth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAspired to heaven or embraced the world<\/p>\n

Or led the fancy like a fleeting moon<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the dull sky of man’s common days,<\/p>\n

Amidst the doubtful certitudes of earth’s lore,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo the celestial beauty of faith gave form,<\/p>\n

As if at flower-prints in a dingy room<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLaughed in a golden vase one living rose.<\/p>\n

A thaumaturgist sat in her heart’s deep,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCompelled the forward stride, the upward look,<\/p>\n

Till wonder leaped into the illumined breast<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd life grew marvellous with transfiguring hope.<\/p>\n

A seeing will pondered between the brows;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts, glistening Angels, stood behind the brain<\/p>\n

In flashing armour, folding hands of prayer,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd poured heaven’s rays into the earthly form.<\/p>\n

Imaginations flamed up from her breast,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUnearthly beauty, touches of surpassing joy<\/p>\n

And plans of miracle, dreams of delight:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAround her navel lotus clustering close<\/p>\n

Her large sensations of the teeming worlds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tStreamed their dumb movements of the unformed Idea;<\/p>\n

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Invading the small sensitive flower of the throat<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThey brought their mute unuttered resonances<\/p>\n

To kindle the figures of a heavenly speech.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBelow, desires formed their wordless wish,<\/p>\n

And longings of physical sweetness and ecstasy<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTranslated into the accents of a cry<\/p>\n

Their grasp on objects and their clasp on souls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer body’s thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs<\/p>\n

And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere Nature’s murmurs meet the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

But for the mortal prisoned in outward mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll must present their passports at its door;<\/p>\n

Disguised they must don the official cap and mask<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr pass as manufactures of the brain,<\/p>\n

Unknown their secret truth and hidden source.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly to the inner mind they speak direct,<\/p>\n

Put on a body and assume a voice,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir passage seen, their message heard and known,<\/p>\n

Their birthplace and their natal mark revealed,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd stand confessed to an immortal’s sight,<\/p>\n

Our nature’s messengers to the witness soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImpenetrable, withheld from mortal sense,<\/p>\n

The inner chambers of the spirit’s house<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDisclosed to her their happenings and their guests;<\/p>\n

Eyes looked through crevices in the invisible wall<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd through the secrecy of unseen doors<\/p>\n

There came into mind’s little frontal room<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts that enlarged our limited human range,<\/p>\n

Lifted the ideal’s half-quenched or sinking torch<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr peered through the finite at the infinite.<\/p>\n

A sight opened upon the invisible<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd sensed the shapes that mortal eyes see not,<\/p>\n

The sounds that mortal listening cannot hear,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe blissful sweetness of the intangible’s touch;<\/p>\n

The objects that to us are empty air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAre there the stuff of daily experience<\/p>\n

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And the common pabulum of sense and thought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe beings of the subtle realms appeared<\/p>\n

And scenes concealed behind our earthly scene;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe saw the life of remote continents<\/p>\n

And distance deafened not to voices far;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe felt the movements crossing unknown minds;<\/p>\n

The past’s events occurred before her eyes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe great world’s thoughts were part of her own thought,<\/p>\n

The feelings dumb for ever and unshared,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ideas that never found an utterance.<\/p>\n

The dim subconscient’s incoherent hints<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLaid bare a meaning twisted, deep and strange,<\/p>\n

The bizarre secret of their fumbling speech,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTheir links with underlying reality.<\/p>\n

The unseen grew visible and audible:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts leaped down from a superconscient field<\/p>\n

Like eagles swooping from a viewless peak,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThoughts gleamed up from the screened subliminal depths<\/p>\n

Like golden fishes from a hidden sea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis world is a vast unbroken totality,<\/p>\n

A deep solidarity joins its contrary powers;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGod’s summits look back on the mute Abyss.<\/p>\n

So man evolving to divinest heights<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tColloques still with the animal and the Djinn;<\/p>\n

The human godhead with star-gazer eyes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLives still in one house with the primal beast.<\/p>\n

The high meets the low, all is a single plan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo she beheld the many births of thought,<\/p>\n

If births can be of what eternal is;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the Eternal’s powers are like himself,<\/p>\n

Timeless in the Timeless, in Time ever born.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis too she saw that all in outer mind<\/p>\n

Is made, not born, a product perishable,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForged in the body’s factory by earth-force.<\/p>\n

This mind is a dynamic small machine<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tProducing ceaselessly, till it wears out,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>541<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

With raw material drawn from the outside world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe patterns sketched out by an artist God.<\/p>\n

Often our thoughts are finished cosmic wares<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdmitted by a silent office gate<\/p>\n

And passed through the subconscient’s galleries,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen issued in Time’s mart as private make.<\/p>\n

For now they bear the living person’s stamp;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA trick, a special hue claims them his own.<\/p>\n

All else is Nature’s craft and this too hers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur tasks are given, we are but instruments;<\/p>\n

Nothing is all our own that we create:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Power that acts in us is not our force.<\/p>\n

The genius too receives from some high fount<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConcealed in a supernal secrecy<\/p>\n

The work that gives him an immortal name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe word, the form, the charm, the glory and grace<\/p>\n

Are missioned sparks from a stupendous Fire;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA sample from the laboratory of God<\/p>\n

Of which he holds the patent upon earth,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tComes to him wrapped in golden coverings;<\/p>\n

He listens for Inspiration’s postman knock<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd takes delivery of the priceless gift<\/p>\n

A little spoilt by the receiver mind<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr mixed with the manufacture of his brain;<\/p>\n

When least defaced, then is it most divine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough his ego claims the world for its use,<\/p>\n

Man is a dynamo for the cosmic work;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNature does most in him, God the high rest:<\/p>\n

Only his soul’s acceptance is his own.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis independent, once a power supreme,<\/p>\n

Self-born before the universe was made,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAccepting cosmos, binds himself Nature’s serf<\/p>\n

Till he becomes her freedman \u2014 or God’s slave.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the appearance in our mortal front;<\/p>\n

Our greater truth of being lies behind:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur consciousness is cosmic and immense,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>542<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

But only when we break through Matter’s wall<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn that spiritual vastness can we stand<\/p>\n

Where we can live the masters of our world<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd mind is only a means and body a tool.<\/p>\n

For above the birth of body and of thought<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur spirit’s truth lives in the naked self<\/p>\n

And from that height, unbound, surveys the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the mind she rose to escape its law<\/p>\n

That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.<\/p>\n

High she attained and stood from Nature free<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd saw creation’s life from far above,<\/p>\n

Thence upon all she laid her sovereign will<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo dedicate it to God’s timeless calm:<\/p>\n

Then all grew tranquil in her being’s space,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnly sometimes small thoughts arose and fell<\/p>\n

Like quiet waves upon a silent sea<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr ripples passing over a lonely pool<\/p>\n

When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet the mind’s factory had ceased to work,<\/p>\n

There was no sound of the dynamo’s throb,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere came no call from the still fields of life.<\/p>\n

Then even those stirrings rose in her no more;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHer mind now seemed like a vast empty room<\/p>\n

Or like a peaceful landscape without sound.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis men call quietude and prize as peace.<\/p>\n

But to her deeper sight all yet was there,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEffervescing like a chaos under a lid;<\/p>\n

Feelings and thoughts cried out for word and act<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut found no response in the silenced brain:<\/p>\n

All was suppressed but nothing yet expunged;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt every moment might explosion come.<\/p>\n

Then this too paused; the body seemed a stone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll now was a wide mighty vacancy,<\/p>\n

But still excluded from eternity’s hush;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor still was far the repose of the Absolute<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>543<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And the ocean silence of Infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven now some thoughts could cross her solitude;<\/p>\n

These surged not from the depths or from within<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCast up from formlessness to seek a form,<\/p>\n

Spoke not the body’s need nor voiced life’s call.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese seemed not born nor made in human Time:<\/p>\n

Children of cosmic Nature from a far world,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIdea’s shapes in complete armour of words<\/p>\n

Posted like travellers in an alien space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of some far expanse they seemed to come<\/p>\n

As if carried on vast wings like large white sails,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd with easy access reached the inner ear<\/p>\n

As though they used a natural privileged right<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo the high royal entries of the soul.<\/p>\n

As yet their path lay deep-concealed in light.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen looking to know whence the intruders came<\/p>\n

She saw a spiritual immensity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPervading and encompassing the world-space<\/p>\n

As ether our transparent tangible air,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd through it sailing tranquilly a thought.<\/p>\n

As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIgnorant of embargo and blockade,<\/p>\n

Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt came to the silent city of the brain<\/p>\n

Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut met a barring will, a blow of Force<\/p>\n

And sank vanishing in the immensity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAfter a long vacant pause another appeared<\/p>\n

And others one by one suddenly emerged,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMind’s unexpected visitors from the Unseen<\/p>\n

Like far-off sails upon a lonely sea.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut soon that commerce failed, none reached mind’s coast.<\/p>\n

Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tImmobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary<\/p>\n

A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tIn that absolute stillness bare and formidable<\/p>\n

There was glimpsed an all-negating Void Supreme<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat claimed its mystic Nihil’s sovereign right<\/p>\n

To cancel Nature and deny the soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven the nude sense of self grew pale and thin:<\/p>\n

Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind.<\/p>\n

Her spirit seemed the substance of a name,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe world a pictured symbol drawn on self,<\/p>\n

A dream of images, a dream of sounds<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBuilt up the semblance of a universe<\/p>\n

Or lent to spirit the appearance of a world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis was self-seeing; in that intolerant hush<\/p>\n

No notion and no concept could take shape,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no sense to frame the figure of things,<\/p>\n

A sheer self-sight was there, no thought arose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEmotion slept deep down in the still heart<\/p>\n

Or lay buried in a cemetery of peace:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll feelings seemed quiescent, calm or dead,<\/p>\n

As if the heart-strings rent could work no more<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd joy and grief could never rise again.<\/p>\n

The heart beat on with an unconscious rhythm<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut no response came from it and no cry.<\/p>\n

Vain was the provocation of events;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNothing within answered an outside touch,<\/p>\n

No nerve was stirred and no reaction rose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet still her body saw and moved and spoke;<\/p>\n

It understood without the aid of thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt said whatever needed to be said,<\/p>\n

It did whatever needed to be done.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no person there behind the act,<\/p>\n

No mind that chose or passed the fitting word:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll wrought like an unerring apt machine.<\/p>\n

As if continuing old habitual turns,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd pushed by an old unexhausted force<\/p>\n

The engine did the work for which it was made:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>545<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Her consciousness looked on and took no part;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll it upheld, in nothing had a share.<\/p>\n

There was no strong initiator will;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn incoherence crossing a firm void<\/p>\n

Slipped into an order of related chance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA pure perception was the only power<\/p>\n

That stood behind her action and her sight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf that retired, all objects would be extinct,<\/p>\n

Her private universe would cease to be,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe house she had built with bricks of thought and sense<\/p>\n

In the beginning after the birth of Space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis seeing was identical with the seen;<\/p>\n

It knew without knowledge all that could be known,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt saw impartially the world go by,<\/p>\n

But in the same supine unmoving glance<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSaw too its abysmal unreality.<\/p>\n

It watched the figure of the cosmic game,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the thought and inner life in forms seemed dead,<\/p>\n

Abolished by her own collapse of thought:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA hollow physical shell persisted still.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tA cosmic film of scenes and images:<\/p>\n

The enduring mass and outline of the hills<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWas a design sketched on a silent mind<\/p>\n

And held to a tremulous false solidity<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy constant beats of visionary sight.<\/p>\n

The forest with its emerald multitudes<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tClothed with its show of hues vague empty Space,<\/p>\n

A painting’s colours hiding a surface void<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat flickered upon dissolution’s edge;<\/p>\n

The blue heavens, an illusion of the eyes,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRoofed in the mind’s illusion of a world.<\/p>\n

The men who walked beneath an unreal sky<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSeemed mobile puppets out of cardboard cut<\/p>\n

And pushed by unseen hands across the soil<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr moving pictures upon Fancy’s film:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>546<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

There was no soul within, no power of life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe brain’s vibrations that appear like thought,<\/p>\n

The nerve’s brief answer to each contact’s knock,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe heart’s quiverings felt as joy and grief and love<\/p>\n

Were twitchings of the body, their seeming self,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat body forged from atoms and from gas<\/p>\n

A manufactured lie of Maya’s make,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIts life a dream seen by the sleeping Void.<\/p>\n

The animals lone or trooping through the glades<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFled like a passing vision of beauty and grace<\/p>\n

Imagined by some all-creating Eye.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet something was there behind the fading scene;<\/p>\n

Wherever she turned, at whatsoever she looked,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.<\/p>\n

The One only real shut itself from Space<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd stood aloof from the idea of Time.<\/p>\n

Its truth escaped from shape and line and hue.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll else grew unsubstantial, self-annulled,<\/p>\n

This only everlasting seemed and true,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet nowhere dwelt, it was outside the hours.<\/p>\n

This only could justify the labour of sight,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut sight could not define for it a form;<\/p>\n

This only could appease the unsatisfied ear<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut hearing listened in vain for a missing sound;<\/p>\n

This answered not the sense, called not to Mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt met her as the uncaught inaudible Voice<\/p>\n

That speaks for ever from the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt met her like an omnipresent point<\/p>\n

Pure of dimensions, unfixed, invisible,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe single oneness of its multiplied beat<\/p>\n

Accentuating its sole eternity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt faced her as some vast Nought’s immensity,<\/p>\n

An endless No to all that seems to be,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn endless Yes to things ever unconceived<\/p>\n

And all that is unimagined and unthought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn eternal zero or untotalled Aught,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

A spaceless and a placeless Infinite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet eternity and infinity seemed but words<\/p>\n

Vainly affixed by mind’s incompetence<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo its stupendous lone reality.<\/p>\n

The world is but a spark-burst from its light,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll moments flashes from its Timelessness,<\/p>\n

All objects glimmerings of the Bodiless<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat disappear from Mind when That is seen.<\/p>\n

It held, as if a shield before its face,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA consciousness that saw without a seer,<\/p>\n

The Truth where knowledge is not nor knower nor known,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Love enamoured of its own delight<\/p>\n

In which the Lover is not nor the Beloved<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBringing their personal passion into the Vast,<\/p>\n

The Force omnipotent in quietude,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Bliss that none can ever hope to taste.<\/p>\n

It cancelled the convincing cheat of self;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA truth in nothingness was its mighty clue.<\/p>\n

If all existence could renounce to be<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd Being take refuge in Non-being’s arms<\/p>\n

And Non-being could strike out its ciphered round,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome lustre of that Reality might appear.<\/p>\n

A formless liberation came on her.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnce sepulchred alive in brain and flesh<\/p>\n

She had risen up from body, mind and life;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe was no more a Person in a world,<\/p>\n

She had escaped into infinity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat once had been herself had disappeared;<\/p>\n

There was no frame of things, no figure of soul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA refugee from the domain of sense,<\/p>\n

Evading the necessity of thought,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDelivered from Knowledge and from Ignorance<\/p>\n

And rescued from the true and the untrue,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe shared the Superconscient’s high retreat<\/p>\n

Beyond the self-born Word, the nude Idea,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first bare solid ground of consciousness;<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Beings were not there, existence had no place,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was no temptation of the joy to be.<\/p>\n

Unutterably effaced, no one and null,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA vanishing vestige like a violet trace,<\/p>\n

A faint record merely of a self now past,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tShe was a point in the unknowable.<\/p>\n

Only some last annulment now remained,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnnihilation’s vague indefinable step:<\/p>\n

A memory of being still was there<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd kept her separate from nothingness:<\/p>\n

She was in That but still became not That.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis shadow of herself so close to nought<\/p>\n

Could be again self’s point d’appui to live,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tReturn out of the Inconceivable<\/p>\n

And be what some mysterious vast might choose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven as the Unknowable decreed,<\/p>\n

She might be nought or new-become the All,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr if the omnipotent Nihil took a shape<\/p>\n

Emerge as someone and redeem the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven, she might learn what the mystic cipher held,<\/p>\n

This seeming exit or closed end of all<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCould be a blind tenebrous passage screened from sight,<\/p>\n

Her state the eclipsing shell of a darkened sun<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn its secret way to the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

Even now her splendid being might flame back<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the silence and the nullity,<\/p>\n

A gleaming portion of the All-Wonderful,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA power of some all-affirming Absolute,<\/p>\n

A shining mirror of the eternal Truth<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo show to the One-in-all its manifest face,<\/p>\n

To the souls of men their deep identity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr she might wake into God’s quietude<\/p>\n

Beyond the cosmic day and cosmic night<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd rest appeased in his white eternity.<\/p>\n

But this was now unreal or remote<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr covered in the mystic fathomless blank.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>549<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

In infinite Nothingness was the ultimate sign<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr else the Real was the Unknowable.<\/p>\n

A lonely Absolute negated all:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt effaced the ignorant world from its solitude<\/p>\n

And drowned the soul in its everlasting peace.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>550<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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

  Canto Six   Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute   A CALM slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens. A routed sullen…<\/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-2475","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\/2475","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=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}