Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo, Book VII The Book of Yoga, Canto 5 The Finding of the Soul, pp. 522-526

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Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo, Book VII The Book of Yoga, Canto 5 The Finding of the Soul, pp. 522-526 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Onward she passed, seeking the soul's Mystic cave.
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  At first she stepped into a night of God.
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  The light was quenched that helps the labouring world, The
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  power that struggles and stumbles in our life.
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  This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts, the striving
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  heart, its unavailing hopes. All knowledge failed, and the
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  ideas, forms and wisdom screened in awe.
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  Her lowly head feeling a truth too great for thought or speech.
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  Formless, ineffable, forever the same, an innocent and holy
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  ignorance, adored like one who worships formless God.
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  The unseen light she could not claim nor own.
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  In a simple purity of emptiness, her mind knelt down before the
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  unknowable. All was abolished, save her
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  naked self and the prostate yearnings of her surrendered
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  heart. There was no strength in her, no
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  pride of force. The lofty burning of desire had
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  sunk. Ashamed of vanity, of separate
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  self, the hope of spiritual greatness fled.
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  Salvation. She asked not, nor a heavenly
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  crown. Humility seemed now too proud a
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  state. Herself was nothing, God alone
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  was all. Yet God she knew not, but only
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  knew He was. A sacred darkness brooded now
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  within the world was a deep darkness, great and nude.
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  This void held more than all the teeming worlds, this blank felt
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  more than all the time has borne this dark new, dumbly, immensely
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  the unknown. But all was formless, voiceless,
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  infinite, as might a shadow walk in a shadowy scene, a small knot
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  passing through a mightier knot, a knight of person in a bare
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  outline crossing a fathomless, impersonal night.
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  Silent she moved, empty and absolute.
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  In endless time her soul reached a wide end.
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  The spaceless vast became her spirit's place.
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  At last a change approached. The emptiness broke.
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  A wave rippled within. The world had stirred once more.
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  Her inner self became her space. There was felt a blissful
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  nearness to the goal. Heaven leaned low to kiss the
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  sacred hill. The air trembled with passion
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  and delight. A rose of splendor on a tree of
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  dreams. The face of dawn out of moon.
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  Twilight grew. Day came, priest of a sacrifice
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  of joy into the worshipping silence of her world.
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  He carried immortal lustre as his robe trailed heaven like a
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  purple scarf, and wore, as his Vermilion cast mark a red sun as
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  if an old remembered dream come true.
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  She recognized in her prophetic mind the imperishable lustre of
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  that sky, the tremulous sweetness of that happy air, and
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  covered from mine's view and life's approach the Mystic
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  cavern and the sacred hill, and knew the dwelling of her secret
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  soul. As if in some Elysian occult
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  depth, Truth's last retreat from thought's profaning touch, as if
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  in a rock temple solitude hid God's refuge from an ignorant
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  worshipping world. It lay withdrawn even from
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  life's inner sense, receding from the entangled heart's
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  desire. A marvellous brooding twilight
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  met the eyes, and a holy stillness held that voiceless
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  space. An awful dimness wrapped the
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  great rock doors carved in the massive stone of matters Trance
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  2 Golden serpents round the lentil curved, enveloping it
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  with their pure and dreadful strength, looked out with
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  wisdoms deep and luminous eyes. An eagle covered it with wide
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  conquering wings. Flames of self lost immobile
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  reverie. Doves crowded the Gray musing
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  cornices like sculptured postures of white bosom to peace
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  across the threshold Sleep. She entered in and found herself
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  amid great figures of gods, conscious in stone and living
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  without breath, watching with fixed regard the soul of man,
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  executive figures of the cosmic self world, symbols of immutable
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  potency on the walls, covered with significant shapes, looked
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  at her the life scene of man and beast and the high meaning of
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  the life of gods. The power and necessity of these
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  numberless worlds and faces of beings and stretches of world
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  space spoke the succinct and inexhaustible iradic message of
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  the climbing plains. In their immensitude signing
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  Infinity, they were the extension of the Self of God and
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  housed impassively, receiving all His figures and his small
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  and mighty acts and His passion and His birth and life and death
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  and His return. To immortality, to the abiding
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  and eternal is their clime, to the pure existence everywhere
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  the same, To the sheer consciousness and the absolute
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  force and the unimaginable and formless bliss, To the mirth in
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  time and the timeless mystery of the Triune Being who is all and
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  One, and yet is no one but Himself a part.
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  There was no step of breathing men, no sound, only the living
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  nearness of the soul. Yet all the world's and God
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  Himself were there, for every symbol was a reality and brought
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  the presence which had given it life.
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  All this she saw and inly felt and knew, not by some thought of
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  mind, but by the Self. A light not born of sun or moon
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  or fire, a light that dwelt within and saw within, shedding
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  an intimate visibility, made secrecy more revealing than the
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  Word. Our sight and sense are a
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  fallible gaze and touch, and only the Spirit's vision is
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  wholly true. As thus she passed in that
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  mysterious place, through room and room, through door and rock
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  hewn door, she felt herself made one with all she saw, a sealed
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  identity within her. Woke she knew herself the
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  beloved of the Supreme. These gods and goddesses were he
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  and she. The Mother was she of beauty and
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  delight. The word in Brahma's vast
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  creating clasp, the world poescence on almighty Shiva's
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  lap, the Master and the Mother of all lives watching the
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  world's their twin regard had made, And Krishna and Radha
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  forever entwined in bliss. The adorer and adored Self lost
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  and won. In the last chamber, on a golden
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  seat one sat whose shape no vision could define.
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  Only one felt the world's unattainable fount, a power of
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  which she was a straying force, and invisible beauty, goal of
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  the world's desire, a son of which all knowledge is a beam, a
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  greatness without whom no life could be.
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  Thence all departed into silent self, and all became formless
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  and pure and bare. Then through a tunnel dug in the
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  last rock she came out, where there shone a deathless sun, a
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  house was there, all made of flame and light.
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  And crossing a wall of doorless living fire, there suddenly she
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  met her secret soul.