Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo, Book VI The Book of Fate, Canto 2 The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, pp. 456-460

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Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo, Book VI The Book of Fate, Canto 2 The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, pp. 456-460 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Then Ashwapati answered to the seer.
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  Is then the Spirit ruled by an outward world?
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  O seer, is there no remedy within?
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  But what is fate if not the Spirit's will?
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  After a long time fulfilled by cosmic force, I deemed a mighty
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  power had come with her. Is not that power the high
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  compeer of fate? But Narod answered, covering
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  truth with truth. O Ashwapati, random seem the
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  ways along whose banks your footsteps stray, or run in
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  casual hours or moments of the gods, Yet your least stumblings
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  are foreseen above infallibly the curves of life are drawn,
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  following the stream of time through the unknown.
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  They are led by a clue. The calm immortals keep this
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  blazoned hieroglyph of prophet Morns, a meaning more sublime in
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  symbol's rites than sealed thought wakes to.
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  But of this high script, how shall my voice convince the mind
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  of earth? Heaven's wiser love rejects the
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  mortal prayer. Unblinded by the breath of his
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  desire, unclouded by the mists of fear and hope, it bends above
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  the strife of love with death. It keeps for her her privilege
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  of pain. A greatness in thy daughter's
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  soul resides that can transform herself and all around, but must
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  cross on stones of suffering to its goal.
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  Although designed like a nectar cup of heaven, of heavenly ether
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  maid, she sought this air. She too must share the human
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  need of grief, and all her cause of joy transmute to pain.
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  The mind of mortal man is led by words.
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  His sight retires behind the walls of thought and looks out
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  only through half open doors. He cuts the boundless truth into
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  sky strips and every strip he takes for all the heavens.
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  He stares at infinite possibility and gives to the
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  plastic vast the name of chance. He sees the long results of an
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  all wise force planning a sequence of steps in endless
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  time, but in its links imagines a senseless chain or the dead
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  hand of cold necessity. He answers not to the Mystic
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  mother's heart, misses the ardent heavings of her breast,
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  and feels cold, rigid limbs of lifeless law, the will of the
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  timeless working out in time in the free absolute steps of
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  cosmic truth, He thinks a dead machine or unconscious fate.
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  A magician's formulas have made matters laws, and while they
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  last, all things by them are bound.
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  But the spirit's consent is needed for each act, and freedom
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  walks in the same pace with law. All here can change if the
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  magician choose. If human will could be made one
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  with God's, If human thought could echo the thoughts of God.
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  Man might be all knowing and omnipotent.
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  But now he walks in nature's doubtful ray.
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  Yet can the mind of man receive God's light?
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  The force of man can be driven by God's force.
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  Then is he a miracle doing miracles, for only so can he be
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  nature's king. It is decreed, and such Yvonne
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  must die. The hour is fixed, chosen the
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  fatal stroke. What else shall be is written in
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  her soul. But till the hour reveals the
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  fateful script, the writing waits.
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  Illegible and mute. Fate is truth working out in
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  ignorance, O King. Thy fate is a transaction done
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  at every hour between nature and thy soul, with God for its
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  foreseeing arbiter. Fate is a balance drawn in
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  destiny's book. Man can accept his fate.
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  He can refuse, even if the one maintains the unseen decree.
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  He writes thy refusal in thy credit page, For doom is not a
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  close, A Mystic seal Arisen from the tragic crash of life, arisen
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  from the bodies torture and death, The spirit rises mightier
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  by defeat, Its God like wings grow wider with each fall, Its
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  splendid failures some to victory.
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  O man, the events that meet thee on thy Rd., though they smite
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  thy body and soul with joy and grief, are not thy fate.
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  They touch thee a while and pass.
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  Even death can cut not short. Thy spirits walk thy goal, the
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  road thou choosest are thy fate on the altar, throwing thy
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  thoughts, thy heart, thy works. Thy fate is a long sacrifice to
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  the gods, till they have opened to thee thy secret self and made
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  thee one with the indwelling God.
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  O soul, intruder in nature's ignorance, armed traveller to
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  the unseen supernal heights. Thy spirit's fate is a battle
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  and ceaseless March against invisible opponent powers.
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  A passage from matter into timeless self.
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  Adventurer through blind, unforeseen time, a forced
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  advance through a long line of lives.
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  It pushes its spearhead through the centuries across the dust
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  and mire of the earthly plain, on many guarded lines and
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  dangerous fronts. In dire assaults, In wounded,
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  slow retreats holding the ideals ringed and battered Fort, or
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  fighting against odds. In lonely posts.
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  Or camped in night around the bivouac's fires, awaiting the
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  tardy trumpets of the dawn. In hunger and in plenty and in
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  pain, Through peril and through triumph and through fall.
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  Through life's green lanes and over her desert sands, Up the
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  bald Moor, along the sunlit Ridge in serried columns with a
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  straggling rear Led by its nomad vanguard's signal fires, marches
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  the army of the way. Lost God.
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  Then late the joy ineffable is felt.
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  Then he remembers his forgotten self.
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  He has refound the skies from which he fell.
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  At length his fronts indomitable line forces the last passes of
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  the ignorance, advancing beyond nature's last known bounds,
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  reconnoitring the formidable unknown beyond the landmarks of
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  things visible. It mounts through a miraculous
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  upper air till, climbing the mute summit of the world, he
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  stands upon the splendor peaks of God.
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  In vain thou mournest that Satyavan must die.
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  His death is a beginning of greater life.
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  Death is the Spirit's opportunity.
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  A vast intention has brought two souls close, and love and death
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  conspired towards 1 great end. For out of danger and pain
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  heaven bliss shall come times unforeseen event.
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  God's secret plan. This world was not built with
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  random bricks of chance. A blind God is not destiny's
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  architect. A conscious power has drawn the
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  plan of life. There is a meaning in each curve
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  and line. Is it?
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  It is an architecture high and grand by many named and nameless
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  Masons, built in which unseeing hands obey the unseen.
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  And of its master builders, she is one.