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. 103-107

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⁠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. 103-107 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  In the impalpable field of secret self, this little outer
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  being's vast support parted from vision by Earth's solid fence,
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  he came into a magic crystal air and found a life that lived not
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  by the flesh, a light that made visible immaterial things a fine
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  degree in wonders, hierarchy. The Kingdom of subtle matters,
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  fairy craft outlined against a sky of vivid hues, leaping out
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  of a splendor, trance and haze, the wizard revelation of its
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  front. A world of lovelier forms lies
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  near to ours, where, undisguised by Earth's deforming sight, all
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  shapes are beautiful and all things true.
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  In that lucent ambience, mystically clear, the eyes were
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  doors to a celestial sense, hearing was music and the touch
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  a charm, and the heart drew a deeper breath of power.
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  There dwell earth, nature's shining origins, the perfect
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  plans on which she moulds her works, the distant outcomes of
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  her travailing force. Repose in a framework of
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  established fate, attempted vainly now, or one in vain
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  already, were mapped and scheduled there.
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  The time and figure of her future sovereignties in the
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  sumptuous lineaments traced by desire, the golden issue of
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  mind's labyrinth plots, the riches unfound or still uncaught
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  by our lives, unsullied by the attaint of mortal thought, abide
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  in that pellucid atmosphere. Our vague beginnings are
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  overtaken there, our middle term sketched out in prescient lines,
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  our finished ends anticipated live.
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  This brilliant roof of our descending plain, intercepting
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  the free boon of heaven's air, admits small inrushes of a
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  mighty breath, or fragrant circuits through gold lattices.
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  Its Shields our sealing of terrestrial mind from deathless
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  Suns and the streaming of God's reign.
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  It canalizes a stranged Irish glow and bright dews drip from
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  the immortal sky. A passage for the powers that
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  move our days. A cult behind this grocer,
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  nature's walls, a gossamer marriage hall of mind with form
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  is hidden by a tapestry of dreams.
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  Heaven's meaning steel through it as through a veil.
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  Its inner sight sustains this outer scene, a finer
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  consciousness with happier lines it has attacked.
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  Our touch cannot attain a purity of sense we never feel.
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  Its intercession with the Eternal ray inspires our
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  transient earth's brief lived attempts at beauty and the
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  perfect shape of things in rooms of the young divinity of power
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  and early play of the Eternal Child.
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  The embodiments of his out winging thoughts laved in a
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  bright everlasting wondrous tints and lulled by whispers of
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  that lucid air, take dream hued rest like birds on timeless
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  trees before they dive to float on earth times sea.
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  All that here seems has lovelier semblance there.
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  Whatever our hearts conceive, our heads create some high
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  original beauty, forfeiting thence exiled here consents to
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  an earthly tinge. Whatever is here, a visible
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  charm and grace, finds there its faultless and immortal lines.
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  All that is beautiful here is there.
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  Divine figures are there, undreamed by mortal mind.
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  Bodies that have no earthly counterpart traverse the inner
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  eyes illumined trance and ravish the heart with their celestial
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  tread, persuading heaven to inhabit that wonder sphere.
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  The future's marvels wander in its gulfs.
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  Things old and new are fashioned in those depths.
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  A carnival of beauty crowds the heights in that magic Kingdom of
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  ideal sight. In its anti chambers of splendid
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  privacy, matter and soul, in conscious union meet like lovers
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  in a lonely secret place. In the clasp of a passion not
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  yet unfortunate, they join their strength and sweetness and
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  delight and mingling make the high and low worlds one intruder
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  from the formless infinite. Daring to break into the in
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  conscience rain, the spirits leap towards body touches ground
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  as yet unwrapped in earthly lineaments.
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  Already it wears, outlasting death and birth, convincing the
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  abyss by heavenly form, a covering of its immortality,
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  alive to the lustre of the wearer's rank, Fit to endure the
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  rub of change and time. A tissue mixed of the soul's
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  radiant light and matters. Substance of sign, burdened
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  force imagined vainly in our minds, thin air an abstract
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  phantasm, mould of mental make. It feels what earthly bodies
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  cannot feel, and is more real than this grosser frame after
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  the falling of mortality's cloak.
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  Lightened is its weight to heighten its ascent.
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  Refined to the touch of finer environments, it drops old
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  patterned palls of denser stuff, cancels the grip of earth's
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  descending pole, and bears the soul from world to higher world,
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  till in the naked ether of the peaks the spirit simplicity
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  alone is left the eternal Being's first transparent robe.
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  But when it must come back to its mortal load and the hard
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  ensemble of Earth's experience, then its return resumes that
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  heavier dress. For long before Earth's solid
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  vest was forged by the technique of the atomic void, a lucent
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  envelope of self disguise was woven round the secret spirit in
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  things the subtle realms. From those bright sheaths are
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  made this wonder world, with all its radiant boon of vision and
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  inviolate happiness, only for expression, cares, and perfect
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  form. Fair on its peaks it has
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  dangerous nether plains. Its light draws towards the
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  verge of nature's laps. It lends beauty to the terror of
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  the gulfs and fascinating eyes to perilous gods.
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  Invests with grace the demon and the snake.
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  Its trance imposes Earth's in conscience immortal.
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  It weaves for us death's somber robe and authorizes our
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  mortality. This medium serves a greater
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  consciousness, a vessel of its concealed autocracy.
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  It is the subtle ground of matters worlds.
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  It is the immutable in their mutable forms.
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  In the folds of its creative memory it guards the deathless
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  type of perishing things. Its lower potencies found our
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  fallen strengths, its thought invents our reasoned ignorance.
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  Its sense fathers our bodies reflexes, our secret breath of
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  untried mightier force, the lurking sun of an instant's
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  inner sight. Its fine suggestions are a
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  covert fount for our iridescent rich imaginings, touching things
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  common with transfiguring hues, till even earth's mud grows rich
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  and warm with the skies and a glory gleams from the soul's
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  decadence. Its knowledge is our error's
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  starting point. Its beauty Dons our mud mask,
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  ugliness its artist good begins our evil's tale.
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  A heaven of creative truths above a cosmos of harmonious
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  dreams between a chaos of dissolving forms below it
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  plunges, lost in our inconscient base.
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  Out of its fall our denser matter came.