Savitri Digital-friendly First Edition

by Sri Aurobindo

In others than his kind he sensed a foe, An alien unlike force to shun and fear, A stranger and adversary to hate and slay.

Absorbed in the present act, the fleeting days, None thought to look beyond the hour’s gains, Or dreamed to make this earth a fairer world, Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart.

The gladness that the fugitive moment gave, The desire grasped, the bliss, the experience won, Movement and speed and strength were joy enough And bodily longings shared and quarrel and play, And tears and laughter and the need called love.

Then came the pressure of a seeing Power That drew all into a dancing turbid mass Circling around a single luminous point, Centre of reference in a conscious field, Figure of a unitary Light within.

There was a voice of busy interchange, A market-place of trivial thoughts and acts: A life soon spent, a mind the body’s slave Here seemed the brilliant crown of Nature’s works, And tiny egos took the world as means To sate awhile dwarf lusts and brief desires, In a death-closed passage saw life’s start and end As though a blind alley were creation’s sign, As if for this the soul had coveted birth In the wonderland of a self-creating world And the opportunities of cosmic Space.

This creature passionate only to survive, Fettered to puny thoughts with no wide range And to the body’s needs and pangs and joys, This fire growing by its fuel’s death, Increased by what it seized and made its own: It gathered and grew and gave itself to none.

Only it hoped for greatness in its den And pleasure and victory in small fields of power And conquest of life-room for self and kin, An animal limited by its feeding-space.

It knew not the Immortal in its house, It had no greater deeper cause to live.

In limits only it was powerful; Acute to capture truth for outward use, Its knowledge was the body’s instrument; Absorbed in the little works of its prison-house It turned around the same unchanging points In the same circle of interest and desire, But thought itself the master of its jail.

A little light in a great darkness born, Life knew not where it went nor whence it came.

the Idea that made Imposing smallness on the Infinite,

plunged his gaze into the siege of mist That held this ill-lit straitened continent Ringed with the skies and seas of ignorance And kept it safe from Truth and Self and Light.

As when a search-light stabs the Night’s blind breast And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness, All lurking things were torn out of their veils And held up in his vision’s sun-white blaze.

Into a creative chaos they are cast Where all asks order but is driven by Chance; Strangers to earth-nature, they must learn earth’s ways, Aliens or opposites, they must unite: They work and battle and with pain agree: These join, those part, all parts and joins anew, Till all have found their divine harmony.

Ephemeral in a blank eternity, Infinitesimal in a dead Infinite. ||44.19||

An animal creation crept and ran And flew and called between the earth and sky, Hunted by death but hoping still to live And glad to breathe if only for a while.

Our will tunes not with the eternal Will, Our heart’s sight is too blind and passionate.

Ourselves incapable to build our fate Only as actors speak and strut our parts Until the piece is done and we pass off Into a brighter Time and subtler Space.

As long as the human animal is lord And a dense nether nature screens the soul, As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight Serves earthy interest and creature joys, An incurable littleness pursues his days, Ever since consciousness was born on earth, Life is the same in insect, ape and man, Its stuff unchanged, its way the common route.

Time has he none to turn his eyes within And look for his lost self and his dead soul. ||46.15||

He is satisfied with his common average kind; Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought, His old familiar interests and desires He has made a thick and narrowing hedge Defending his small life from the Invisible; His being’s kinship to infinity He has shut away from him into inmost self, Fenced off the greatnesses of hidden God.

The soul must soar sovereign above the form And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep; Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength, Surprise the animal with the occult god.

To a strange uncertain tract his journey came Where consciousness played with unconscious self And birth was an attempt or episode.

Life was a search but finding never came.

There nothing satisfied, but all allured,

Pale dreams grew real to the dreamer’s eyes.

All that we seek for is prefigured there And all we have not known nor even sought Which yet one day must be born in human hearts That the Timeless may fulfil itself in things.

Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms And feels around her infinity’s embrace.

As long as the world lasts her failure lives

A superb madness of the will to live, A daring, a delirium of delight.

There Matter is soul’s result and not its cause.

A delicate weft of sorcery steals the heart Or a fiery magic tints her tones and hues, Yet they but wake a thrill of transient grace; A vagrant march struck by the wanderer Time They call to a brief unsatisfied delight Or wallow in ravishments of mind and sense, But miss the luminous answer of the soul.

A blind heart-throb that reaches joy through tears, A yearning towards peaks for ever unreached, An ecstasy of unfulfilled desire Track the last heavenward climbings of her voice.

But now we strain to reach an unknown goal: There is no end of seeking and of birth, There is no end of dying and return; The life that wins its aim asks greater aims, The life that fails and dies must live again; Till it has found itself it cannot cease.

In a high state where ignorance is no more, Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss, Repose God’s motionless creative force, Action a ripple in the Infinite And birth a gesture of Eternity.

The Fiend was visible, but cloaked in light; He seemed a helping angel from the skies: He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law; He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul And led to perdition by the heavenward path.

A lavish sense he gave of power and joy, And when arose the warning from within, He reassured the ear with dulcet tones, Or took the mind captive in its own net; His rigorous logic made the false seem true.

When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice, An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath; Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence, Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin.

The Anarchs of the formless depths arose, Great titan beings and demoniac powers, World-egos racked with lust and thought and will, Vast minds and lives without a spirit within: Impatient architects of error’s house, Leaders of the cosmic ignorance and unrest And sponsors of sorrow and mortality Embodied the dark Ideas of the Abyss.

She kills her victim with his own delight; Even Good she makes a hook to drag to Hell.

In scorn of the dwindling chances of the Gods They claim creation as their conquered fief And crown themselves the iron Lords of Time.

Adepts of the illusion and the mask, The artificers of Nature’s fall and pain Have built their altars of triumphant Night In the clay temple of terrestrial life. ||63.8||

Assuming names divine they guide and rule.

Opponents of the Highest they have come Out of their world of soulless thought and power To serve by enmity the cosmic scheme.

Against the sword of Flame, the luminous Eye, Bastioned they live in massive forts of gloom, Calm and secure in sunless privacy: No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there.

Armoured, protected by their lethal masks, As in a studio of creative Death The giant sons of Darkness sit and plan The drama of the earth, their tragic stage.

None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell. ||63.16||

A questionless mind was ranked as wise content, A dull heart’s silent apathy as peace: Sleep was not there, torpor was the sole rest, Death came but neither respite gave nor end; Always the soul lived on and suffered more.

There no relenting pity could have place, But ruthless strength and iron moods had sway, A dateless sovereignty of terror and gloom: This took the figure of a darkened God Revered by the racked wretchedness he had made, Who held in thrall a miserable world, And helpless hearts nailed to unceasing woe Adored the feet that trampled them into mire.

This too must now be overpassed and left, As all must be until the Highest is gained In whom the world and self grow true and one: Till that is reached our journeying cannot cease.