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. 52-55

Transcript

Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo, Book I The Book of Beginnings, Canto 4 The Secret Knowledge pp. 52-55 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  But few can look beyond the present state or overleap this
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  matted hedge of sense. All that transpires on Earth and
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  all beyond are parts of an illimitable plan the one keeps
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  in his heart and knows alone. Our outward happenings have
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  their seed within, and even this random fate that imitates
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  chance. This mass of unintelligible
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  results are the dumb graph of truths that work unseen.
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  The laws of the unknown create the known.
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  The events that shape the appearance of our lives are a
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  cipher of subliminal quiverings, which, rarely we surprise or
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  vaguely feel, are an outcome of suppressed realities that hardly
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  rise into material day. They are born from the spirit
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  sun of hidden powers, digging a tunnel through emergency.
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  But who shall Pierce into the cryptic gulf and learn what deep
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  necessity of the soul determined casual deed and consequence
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  absorbed in a routine of daily acts, our eyes are fixed on an
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  external scene. We hear the crash of the wheels
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  of circumstance and wonder at the hidden cause of things.
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  Yet a foreseeing knowledge might be ours if we could take our
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  spirits stand within, if we could hear the muffled demon
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  voice. Too seldom is the shadow of what
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  must come cast in an instant on the secret sense which feels the
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  shock of the invisible, and seldom in the few who answer
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  give the mighty process of the cosmic will communicates its
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  image to our sight, identifying the world's mind with ours.
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  Our range is fixed within the crowded arc of what we observe
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  and touch and thought can guess, and rarely dawns the light of
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  the unknown Waking in us the prophet and the seer.
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  The outward and the immediate are our field.
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  The dead past is our background and support.
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  Mine keeps the soul prisoner. We are slaves to our acts.
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  We cannot free our gaze to reach Wisdom's son, inheritor of the
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  brief animal mind. Man, still a child in nature's
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  mighty hands in the succession of the moments, lives to a
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  changing present is his narrow right.
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  His memory stares back at a phantom past.
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  The future flees before him. As he moves, he sees imagined
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  garments, not a face. Armed with a limited, precarious
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  strength, he saves his fruits of work from adverse chance.
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  A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate.
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  He waits to see the consequence of his acts.
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  He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts.
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  He knows not what he shall achieve, or when.
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  He knows not whether at last he shall survive or end like the
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  Mastodon and the sloth, and perish from the earth where he
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  was king. He is ignorant of the meaning of
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  his life. He is ignorant of his high and
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  splendid fate. Only the immortals on their
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  deathless heights, dwelling beyond the walls of time and
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  space, masters of living free from the bonds of thought, who
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  are overseers of fate and chance and will.
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  And experts of the theorem of world need can see the idea.
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  The might that change time's course come maimed with the
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  light from undiscovered worlds. Here, while the world toils on
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  with its deep blind heart. The galloping hooves of the
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  unforeseen event, bearing the superhuman rider near and
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  impassive to earth's din and startled cry, return to the
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  silence of the hills of God. As lightning leaps, as Thunder
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  sweeps, they pass and leave their mark on the trampled
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  breast of life above the world. The world creators stand in the
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  phenomenon. See its Mystic source.
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  These heed not the deceiving outward play.
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  They turn not to the moment's busy tramp, but Lizen with the
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  still patience of the unborn, for the slow footsteps of far
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  destiny, approaching through huge distances of time, unmarked
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  by the eye that sees effect and cause unheard mid the clamour of
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  the human plane. Attentive to an unseen truth,
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  they seize as sound as of invisible auger wings, voices of
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  an unplumbed significance, mutterings that brewed in the
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  core of matter's sleep. In the heart's profound audition
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  they can catch the murmurs lost by life's uncaring ear.
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  A prophet's speech in thoughts, omniscient trance above the
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  illusion of the hopes that pass behind the appearance and the
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  overt act behind this clockwork chance and vague surmise amid
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  the wrestle of force, the trampling feet across the cries
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  of anguish and of joy across the triumph, fighting and despair.
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  They watched the bliss for which earth's heart has cried on the
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  long road which cannot see its end winding undetected through
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  the skeptic days, and to meet it guide the unheedful moving
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  world. Thus will the mass transcendent
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  mount his throne When darkness deepens.
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  Strangling the earth's breast. And man's corporeal mind is the
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  only lamp. As a thief's in the night shall
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  be the covert tread of one who steps unseen into his house.
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  A voice I'll heard shall speak the soul obey a power into
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  mind's inner chamber steel a charm and sweetness open life's
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  closed doors, and beauty conquer the resisting world.
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  The truth. Light captured nature by
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  surprise. A stealth of God compel the
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  heart to bliss and earth grow unexpectedly.
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  Divine In matter shall be lit. The spirits glow in body and
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  body kindled. The sacred birth night shall
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  awake to the anthem of the stars.
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  The days become a happy Pilgrim March.
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  Our will a force of the eternal's power and thought the
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  rays of a spiritual sun. A few shall see what nun yet
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  understands. God shall grow up while the wise
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  men talk and sleep, For man shall not know the coming till
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  its hour, and belief shall be not till the work is done.