Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / ⁠Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol⁠ by Sri Aurobindo, Book I The Book of Beginnings, Canto 4 The Secret Knowledge pp. 63-66

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⁠Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol⁠ by Sri Aurobindo, Book I The Book of Beginnings, Canto 4 The Secret Knowledge pp. 63-66 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  This is the knot that ties together the stars.
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  The two who are one are the secret of all power.
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  The two who are one are the might and right in things.
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  His soul silence supports the world, and her His acts are her
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  commandments, registers. Happy, inert.
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  He lies beneath her feet, his breast.
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  He offers for her cosmic dance, of which our lives are the
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  Quivering Theatre, and none could bear but for his strength
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  within. Yet none would leave because of
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  his delight. His works, his thoughts have
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  been devised by her. His being is a mirror, vast of
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  hers, active, Inspired by her, he speaks and moves.
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  His deeds obey her heart's unspoken demands.
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  Passive, he bears the impacts of the world, as if her touch is
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  shaping his soul and life. His journey through the days is
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  her sun March. He runs upon her roads.
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  Hers is his course, a witness and student of her joy and dole,
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  a partner in her evil and her good.
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  He is consented to her passionate ways.
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  He is driven by her sweet and dreadful force, His sanctioning
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  name initials all her works. His silence is his signature to
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  her deeds in the execution of her drama scheme, in her fancies
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  of the moment and its mood in the March of this obvious
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  ordinary world where all is deep and strange to the eyes that see
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  and nature's common forms are marvel wefts.
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  She through his witness sight and motion of might, unrolls the
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  material of her cosmic act, her happenings that exalt and smite
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  the soul, her force that moves, her powers that save and slay
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  her word, that in the silence speaks to our hearts, her
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  silence that transcends the summit.
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  Word her heights and depths to which our spirit moves, Her
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  events that weave the texture of our lives and all by which we
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  find or lose ourselves. Things sweet and bitter,
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  magnificent and mean. Things terrible and beautiful
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  and divine. Her empire in the cosmos she is
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  built. He is governed by her subtle and
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  mighty laws. His consciousness is a babe upon
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  her knees, his being a field of her vast experiment.
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  Her endless space is the playground of his thoughts.
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  She binds to knowledge of the shapes of time and the creative
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  error of limiting mind and chance that wears the rigid face
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  of fate and her sport of death and pain and nessience, his
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  changed and struggling immortality.
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  His soul is a subtle atom in a mass, his substance a material
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  for her works. His spirit survives amid the
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  death of things. He climbs to eternity through
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  beings gaps. He is carried by her from night
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  to deathless light. This grand surrender is his free
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  Will's gift. His pure transcendent force
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  submits to hers in the mystery of her cosmic ignorance in the
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  insoluble Riddle of her play, a creature made of perishable
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  stuff in the pattern she has set for him.
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  He moves, he thinks with her thoughts.
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  With her trouble his bosom heaves.
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  He seems the thing that she would have him seem.
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  He is whatever her artist will can make, although she drives
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  him on her fancies, roads at play with him, as with her child
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  or slave to freedom and the eternal's mastery and
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  immortality stand above the world.
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  She moves her seeming puppet of an hour even in this mortal
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  session in Bodies House, an aimless traveller between birth
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  and death, ephemeral, dreaming of immortality to reign.
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  She spurs him. He takes up her powers.
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  He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
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  His face of human thought puts on a crown held in her leash,
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  bound to her veiled Caprice. He studies her ways.
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  If so, he may prevail even for an hour, and she works out his
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  will. He makes of her his moment.
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  Passions serf to obey. She feigns.
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  She follows her creature's lead for him.
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  She was made lives only for his use.
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  But conquering her then is he most her slave?
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  He is her dependent. All his means are hers.
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  Nothing without her he can. She rules him still.
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  At last he wakes to a memory of self.
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  He sees within the face of deity the godhead breaks out through
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  the human mould, her highest height.
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  She unmasked and is his mate. Till then.
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  He is a plaything in her game, her seeming Regent.
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  Yet her fancies toy, a living robot moved by her energy
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  springs. He acts as in the movements of a
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  dream, an automaton stepping in the grooves of fate.
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  He stumbles on, driven by her whip of force.
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  His thought labours a Bullock in times fields His will, he thinks
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  his own is shaped in her forge, obedient to world nature's dumb
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  control, driven by his own formidable power, his chosen
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  partner in a Titan game. Her will He has made the master
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  of his fate, her whim, the dispenser of his pleasure and
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  pain. He has sold himself into her
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  regal power for any blow or boon that she may choose.
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  Even in what is suffering to our sense, he feels the sweetness of
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  her mastering touch in all experience meets her blissful
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  hands on his heart. He bears the happiness of her
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  tread, and the surprise of her arrival's joy in each event and
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  every moment's chance. All she can do is marvellous in
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  his sight. He revels in her a swimmer in
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  her sea, a tireless amateur of her world delight.
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  He rejoices in her every thought and act, and gives consent to
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  all that she can wish. Whatever she desires, he wills
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  to be the Spirit, the innumerable one.
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  He has left behind his lone eternity.
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  He has an endless birth in endless time, her finite's
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  multitude in an infinite space.