Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

to be still unknown

      And all that labours vainly to be born

      And all the sweetness none will ever taste

      And all the beauty that will never be.

      Inaudible to our deaf mortal ears

      The wide world-rhythms wove their stupendous chant

      To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here,

      Melting our limits in the illimitable,

      Tuning the finite to infinity.

      A low muttering rose from the subconscient caves,

      The stammer of the primal ignorance;

      Answer to that inarticulate questioning,

      There stooped with lightning neck and thunder’s wings

      A radiant hymn to the Inexpressible

      And the anthem of the superconscient light.

      All was revealed there none can here express;

      Vision and dream were fables spoken by truth

      Or symbols more veridical than fact,

      Or were truths enforced by supernatural seals.

      Immortal eyes approached and looked in his,

      And beings of many kingdoms neared and spoke:

      The ever-living whom we name as dead

      Could leave their glory beyond death and birth

      To utter the wisdom which exceeds all phrase:

      The kings of evil and the kings of good,

      Appellants at the reason’s judgment seat,

      Proclaimed the gospel of their opposites,

      And all believed themselves spokesmen of God:

      The gods of light and titans of the dark

      Battled for his soul as for a costly prize.

      In every hour loosed from the quiver of Time

      There rose a song of new discovery,

      A bow-twang’s hum of young experiment.

      Each day was a spiritual romance,

      As if he was born into a bright new world;

      Adventure leaped an unexpected friend,

      And danger brought a keen sweet tang of joy;

      Each happening was a deep experience.

      There were high encounters, epic colloquies,

      And counsels came couched in celestial speech,

      And honeyed pleadings breathed from occult lips

      To help the heart to yield to rapture’s call,

      And sweet temptations stole from beauty’s realms

      And sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss.

      It was a region of wonder and delight.

      All now his bright clairaudience could receive;

      A contact thrilled of mighty unknown things.

      Awakened to new unearthly closenesses,

      The touch replied to subtle infinities,

      And with a silver cry of opening gates

      Sight’s lightnings leaped into the invisible.

      Ever his consciousness and vision grew;

      They took an ampler sweep, a loftier flight;

      He passed the border marked for Matter’s rule

      And passed the zone where thought replaces life.

      Out of this world of signs suddenly he came

      Into a silent self where world was not

      And looked beyond into a nameless vast.

      These symbol figures lost their right to live,

      All tokens dropped our sense can recognise;

      There the heart beat no more at body’s touch,

      There the eyes gazed no more on beauty’s shape.

      In rare and lucent intervals of hush

      Into a signless region he could soar

      Packed with the deep contents of formlessness

      Where world was into a single being rapt

      And all was known by the light of identity

      And Spirit was its own self-evidence.

      The Supreme’s gaze looked out through human eyes

      And saw all things and creatures as itself

      And knew all thought and word as its own voice.

      There unity is too close for search and clasp

      And love is a yearning of the One for the One,

      And beauty is a sweet difference of the Same

      And oneness is the soul of multitude.

      There all the truths unite in a single Truth,

      And all ideas rejoin Reality.

      There knowing herself by her own termless self,

      Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute

      Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,

      All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.

      There knowledge needs not words to embody Idea;

      Idea, seeking a house in boundlessness,

      Weary of its homeless immortality,

      Asks not in thought’s carved brilliant cell to rest

      Whose single window’s clipped outlook on things

      Sees only a little arc of God’s vast sky.

      The boundless with the boundless there consorts;

      While there, one can be wider than the world;

      While there, one is one’s own infinity.

      His centre was no more in earthly mind;

      A power of seeing silence filled his limbs:

      Caught by a voiceless white epiphany

      Into a vision that surpasses forms,

      Into a living that surpasses life,

      He neared the still consciousness sustaining all.

      The voice that only by speech can move the mind

      Became a silent knowledge in the soul;

      The strength that only in action feels its truth

      Was lodged now in a mute omnipotent peace.

      A leisure in the labour of the worlds,

      A pause in the joy and anguish of the search

      Restored the stress of Nature to God’s calm.

      A vast unanimity ended life’s debate.

      The war of thoughts that fathers the universe,

      The clash of forces struggling to prevail

      In the tremendous shock that lights a star

      As in the building of a grain of dust,

      The grooves that turn their dumb ellipse in space

      Ploughed by the seeking of the world’s desire,

      The long regurgitations of Time’s flood,

      The