Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / ⁠Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol ⁠by Sri Aurobindo, Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, Canto 2 The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, pp. 113-115

Transcript

⁠Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol ⁠by Sri Aurobindo, Book II The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, Canto 2 The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, pp. 113-115 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:02
  In that fair, subtle realm behind our own, the form is all,
• 0:06
  and physical gods are kings. The inspiring light plays in
• 0:11
  fine boundaries. A faultless beauty comes by
• 0:15
  nature's grace. Their liberty is perfection's
• 0:19
  guarantee. Although the absolute image
• 0:23
  lacks the Word Incarnate, the sheer spiritual ecstasy all is a
• 0:29
  miracle of symmetric charm, a fantasy of perfect line and
• 0:34
  rule. There all feel satisfied in
• 0:37
  themselves and whole. A rich completeness is by limit
• 0:42
  made marvel. In an utter littleness abounds
• 0:46
  an intricate rapture, riots in a small space.
• 0:50
  Each rhythm is kin to its environment.
• 0:53
  Each line is perfect and inevitable, each object
• 0:57
  faultlessly built for charm and use.
• 1:01
  All is enamoured of its own delight.
• 1:04
  In tact. It lives of its perfection, sure
• 1:08
  in a heaven pleased self glad immunity content to be, it has
• 1:15
  need of nothing more. Here was not futile efforts,
• 1:20
  broken heart exempt from the ordeal and the test, empty of
• 1:24
  opposition and of pain. It was a world that could not
• 1:28
  fear nor grieve. It had no grace of error or
• 1:32
  defeat. It had no room for fault, no
• 1:35
  power to fail out of some packed self bliss.
• 1:39
  It drew at once its formed discoveries of the mute idea and
• 1:44
  the miracle of its rhythmic thoughts and acts, its clear
• 1:48
  technique of firm and rounded lives, its gracious people of
• 1:54
  inanimate shapes and glory, of breathing bodies like our own.
• 2:00
  Amazed, his senses ravished with delight, he moved in a divine
• 2:06
  yet kindred world, admiring marvellous forms so near to
• 2:11
  ours, yet perfect like the playthings of a God, deathless
• 2:17
  in the aspect of mortality, in their narrow and exclusive
• 2:21
  absolutes, the finite's ranked supremacies thrown to abide it,
• 2:27
  dreams not ever of what might have been.
• 2:31
  Only in boundaries can this absolute live in a supremeness,
• 2:36
  bound to its own plan, where all was finished and no withs were
• 2:41
  left. No space for shadows of the
• 2:44
  immeasurable, no room for the incalculable surprise, a captive
• 2:51
  of its own beauty and ecstasy in a magic circle wrought the
• 2:55
  enchanted mite. The spirit stood back, effaced
• 3:00
  behind its frame, admired for the bright finality of its
• 3:04
  lines. A blue horizon limited the soul
• 3:09
  thought moved in luminous facilities.
• 3:12
  The outer ideals shallows its swim range.
• 3:17
  Life in its boundaries lingered, satisfied with the small
• 3:21
  happiness of the body's acts assigned as force to a bound
• 3:27
  corner mind attached to the safe paucity of her room, she did her
• 3:33
  little works and played and slept, and thought not of a
• 3:38
  greater work undone. Forgetful of her violent, vast
• 3:43
  desires, forgetful of the heights to which she rose.
• 3:48
  Her walk was fixed within a radiant groove, the beautiful
• 3:53
  body of a soul at ease like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit
• 3:58
  Groves. Childlike, she swung in her gold
• 4:01
  cradle of joy. The space's call reached not her
• 4:06
  charmed abode. She had no wings for wide and
• 4:09
  dangerous flight. She faced no peril of sky or of
• 4:14
  abyss. She knew no vistas and no mighty
• 4:17
  dreams, no yearning for her. Lost in finitudes, a perfect
• 4:24
  picture and a perfect frame. This fairy artistry could not
• 4:29
  keep his will. Only a moment's fine release it
• 4:33
  gave. A careless hour was spent in a
• 4:37
  slight bliss. Our spirit tires of being's
• 4:41
  surfaces, transcended in the splendor of the form.
• 4:45
  It turns to hidden powers and deeper states.
• 4:49
  So now he looked beyond for greater light.
• 4:53
  His soul's peak climb, abandoning in its rear this
• 4:58
  brilliant courtyard of the House of Days.
• 5:02
  He left that fine material paradise.
• 5:07
  His destiny lay beyond in larger space.