Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

was thy body’s dumb original base;

      Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:

      A shadow in a shadowy tenebrous womb,

      Till life shall move, it waits to wake and be.

      In one caul with joy came forth the dreadful Power.

      In life’s breast it was born hiding its twin;

      But pain came first, then only joy could be.

      Pain ploughed the first hard ground of the world-drowse.

      By pain a spirit started from the clod,

      By pain Life stirred in the subliminal deep.

      Interned, submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance

      Awoke to itself the dreamer, sleeping Mind;

      It made a visible realm out of its dreams,

      It drew its shapes from the subconscient depths,

      Then turned to look upon the world it had made.

      By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins,

      The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul,

      Else had the Inconscient never suffered change.

      Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

      A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,

      His slow inertia as of living stone.

      If the heart were not forced to want and weep,

      His soul would have lain down content, at ease,

      And never thought to exceed the human start

      And never learned to climb towards the Sun.

      This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;

      Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;

      The centuries end, the ages vainly pass

      And yet the Godhead in her is not born.

      The ancient Mother faces all with joy,

      Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;

      For with pain and labour all creation comes.

      This earth is full of the anguish of the gods;

      Ever they travail driven by Time’s goad,

      And strive to work out the eternal Will

      And shape the life divine in mortal forms.

      His will must be worked out in human breasts

      Against the Evil that rises from the gulfs,

      Against the world’s Ignorance and its obstinate strength,

      Against the stumblings of man’s pervert will,

      Against the deep folly of his human mind,

      Against the blind reluctance of his heart.

      The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free.

      There is a clamour of battle, a tramp, a march:

      A cry arises like a moaning sea,

      A desperate laughter under the blows of death,

      A doom of blood and sweat and toil and tears.

      Men die that man may live and God be born.

      An awful Silence watches tragic Time.

      Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men

      To greatness: an inspired labour chisels

      With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.

      Implacable in the passion of their will,

      Lifting the hammers of titanic toil

      The demiurges of the universe work;

      They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons

      Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.

      Although the shaping god’s tremendous touch

      Is torture unbearable to mortal nerves,

      The fiery spirit grows in strength within

      And feels a joy in every titan pang.

      He who would save himself lives bare and calm;

      He who would save the race must share its pain:

      This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge.

      The Great who came to save this suffering world

      And rescue out of Time’s shadow and the Law,

      Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain;

      They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,

      On their shoulders they must bear man’s load of fate.

      Heaven’s riches they bring, their sufferings count the price

      Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.

      The Son of God born as the Son of man

      Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead’s debt,

      The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind

      His will has bound to death and struggling life

      That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.

      Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.

      The Eternal suffers in a human form,

      He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:

      He has opened the doors of his undying peace.

      The Deity compensates the creature’s claim,

      The Creator bears the law of pain and death;

      A retribution smites the incarnate God.

      His love has paved the mortal’s road to Heaven:

      He has given his life and light to balance here

      The dark account of mortal ignorance.

      It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,

      Offered by God’s martyred body for the world;

      Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,

      He carries the cross on which man’s soul is nailed;

      His escort is the curses of the crowd;

      Insult and jeer are his right’s acknowledgment;

      Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.

      He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour’s way.

      He who has found his identity with God

      Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light.

      His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.

      Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls,

      His crucified voice proclaims, 'I, I am God;'

      'Yes, all is God,' peals back Heaven’s deathless call.

      The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,

      The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:

      All shall discover God in self and things.

      But when God’s messenger comes to help the world

      And lead the soul of earth to higher things,

      He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;

      He too must bear the pang that he would heal:

      Exempt and