Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

an important brow and held a rod;

      Command was incarnate in his gesture and tone;

      Tradition’s petrified wisdom carved his speech,

      His sentences savoured the oracle.

      “Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world,

      Fortunate art thou to reach our brilliant air

      Flaming with thought’s supreme finality.

      O aspirant to the perfect way of life,

      Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.

      Ours is the home of cosmic certainty.

      Here is the truth, God’s harmony is here.

      Register thy name in the book of the elite,

      Admitted by the sanction of the few,

      Adopt thy station of knowledge, thy post in mind,

      Thy ticket of order draw in Life’s bureau

      And praise thy fate that made thee one of ours.

      All here, docketed and tied, the mind can know,

      All schemed by law that God permits to life.

      This is the end and there is no beyond.

      Here is the safety of the ultimate wall,

      Here is the clarity of the sword of Light,

      Here is the victory of a single Truth,

      Here burns the diamond of flawless bliss.

      A favourite of Heaven and Nature live.”

      But to the too satisfied and confident sage

      Savitri replied casting into his world

      Sight’s deep release, the heart’s questioning inner voice:

      For here the heart spoke not, only clear daylight

      Of intellect reigned here, limiting, cold, precise.

      “Happy are they who in this chaos of things,

      This coming and going of the feet of Time,

      Can find the single Truth, the eternal Law:

      Untouched they live by hope and doubt and fear.

      Happy are men anchored on fixed belief

      In this uncertain and ambiguous world,

      Or who have planted in the heart’s rich soil

      One small grain of spiritual certitude.

      Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock.

      But I must pass leaving the ended search,

      Truth’s rounded outcome firm, immutable

      And this harmonic building of world-fact,

      This ordered knowledge of apparent things.

      Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.”

      None answered in that bright contented world,

      Or only turned on their accustomed way

      Astonished to hear questioning in that air

      Or thoughts that could still turn to the Beyond.

      But some murmured, passers-by from kindred spheres:

      Each by his credo judged the thought she spoke.

      “Who then is this who knows not that the soul

      Is a least gland or a secretion’s fault

      Disquieting the sane government of the mind,

      Disordering the function of the brain,

      Or a yearning lodged in Nature’s mortal house

      Or dream whispered in man’s cave of hollow thought

      Who would prolong his brief unhappy term

      Or cling to living in a sea of death?”

      But others, “Nay, it is her spirit she seeks.

      A splendid shadow of the name of God,

      A formless lustre from the Ideal’s realm,

      The Spirit is the Holy Ghost of Mind;

      But none has touched its limbs or seen its face.

      Each soul is the great Father’s crucified Son,

      Mind is that soul’s one parent, its conscious cause,

      The ground on which trembles a brief passing light,

      Mind, sole creator of the apparent world.

      All that is here is part of our own self;

      Our minds have made the world in which we live.”

      Another with mystic and unsatisfied eyes

      Who loved his slain belief and mourned its death,

      “Is there one left who seeks for a Beyond?

      Can still the path be found, opened the gate?”

      So she fared on across her silent self.

      To a road she came thronged with an ardent crowd

      Who sped brilliant, fire-footed, sunlight-eyed,

      Pressing to reach the world’s mysterious wall,

      And pass through masked doorways into outer mind

      Where the Light comes not nor the mystic voice,

      Messengers from our subliminal greatnesses,

      Guests from the cavern of the secret soul.

      Into dim spiritual somnolence they break

      Or shed wide wonder on our waking self,

      Ideas that haunt us with their radiant tread,

      Dreams that are hints of unborn Reality,

      Strange goddesses with deep-pooled magical eyes,

      Strong wind-haired gods carrying the harps of hope,

      Great moon-hued visions gliding through gold air,

      Aspiration’s sun-dream head and star-carved limbs,

      Emotions making common hearts sublime.

      And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd,

      Yearning to the spiritual light they bore,

      Longed once to hasten like them to save God’s world;

      But she reined back the high passion in her heart;

      She knew that first she must discover her soul.

      Only who save themselves can others save.

      In contrary sense she faced life’s riddling truth:

      They carrying the light to suffering men

      Hurried with eager feet to the outer world;

      Her eyes were turned towards the eternal source.

      Outstretching her hands to stay the throng she cried:

      “O happy company of luminous gods,

      Reveal, who know, the road that I must tread, –

      For surely that bright quarter is your home, –

      To find the birthplace of the occult Fire

      And the deep mansion of my secret soul.”

      One answered pointing to a silence dim

      On a remote extremity of sleep

      In some far background of the inner world.

      “O