Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

nearness thrilled of the spirit to its source

      And deepest things seemed obvious, close and true.

      Here, living centre of that vision of peace,

      A Woman sat in clear and crystal light:

      Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,

      Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,

      Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart

      To live again and feel the hands of calm.

      A low music heard became her floating voice:

      “O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.

      I have come down to the wounded desolate earth

      To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest

      And lay her head upon the Mother’s lap

      That she may dream of God and know his peace

      And draw the harmony of higher spheres

      Into the rhythm of earth’s rude troubled days.

      I show to her the figures of bright gods

      And bring strength and solace to her struggling life;

      High things that now are only words and forms

      I reveal to her in the body of their power.

      I am peace that steals into man’s war-worn breast,

      Amid the reign of Hell his acts create

      A hostel where Heaven’s messengers can lodge;

      I am charity with the kindly hands that bless,

      I am silence mid the noisy tramp of life;

      I am Knowledge poring on her cosmic map.

      In the anomalies of the human heart

      Where Good and Evil are close bedfellows

      And Light is by Darkness dogged at every step,

      Where his largest knowledge is an ignorance,

      I am the Power that labours towards the best

      And works for God and looks up towards the heights.

      I make even sin and error stepping-stones

      And all experience a long march towards Light.

      Out of the Inconscient I build consciousness,

      And lead through death to reach immortal Life.

      Many are God’s forms by which he grows in man;

      They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,

      Uplift the stature of the human clay

      Or slowly transmute it into heaven’s gold.

      He is the Good for which men fight and die,

      He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;

      He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;

      He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass

      Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade

      Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.

      He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame

      And the glad resignation of the saint

      And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time

      And the hero’s might wrestling with death and fate.

      He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne

      And the calm autocracy of the sage’s rule.

      He is the high and solitary Thought

      Aloof above the ignorant multitude:

      He is the prophet’s voice, the sight of the seer.

      He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,

      He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.

      He is the riches of the spiritual Vast

      Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;

      He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,

      He is infinity in a little space:

      He is immortality in the arms of death.

      These powers I am and at my call they come.

      Thus slowly I lift man’s soul nearer the Light.

      But human mind clings to its ignorance

      And to its littleness the human heart

      And to its right to grief the earthly life.

      Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,

      Only when infinity weds the finite’s thought,

      Can man be free from himself and live with God.

      I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;

      I bring back hope to the despairing heart;

      I give peace to the humble and the great,

      And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.

      I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.

      Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth’s soil;

      Man’s mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth

      And body bear the immense descent of God.”

      She spoke and from the ignorant nether plane

      A cry, a warped echo naked and shuddering came.

      A voice of the sense-shackled human mind

      Carried its proud complaint of godlike power

      Hedged by the limits of a mortal’s thoughts,

      Bound in the chains of earthly ignorance.

      Imprisoned in his body and his brain

      The mortal cannot see God’s mighty whole,

      Or share in his vast and deep identity

      Who stands unguessed within our ignorant hearts

      And knows all things because he is one with all.

      Man only sees the cosmic surfaces.

      Then wondering what may lie hid from the sense

      A little way he delves to depths below:

      But soon he stops, he cannot reach life’s core

      Or commune with the throbbing heart of things.

      He sees the naked body of the Truth

      Though often baffled by her endless garbs,

      But cannot look upon her soul within.

      Then, furious for a knowledge absolute,

      He tears all details out and stabs and digs:

      Only the shape’s contents he holds for use;

      The spirit escapes or dies beneath his knife.

      He sees as a blank stretch, a giant waste

      The crowding riches of infinity.

      The finite he has made his central field,

      Its plan dissects, masters its processes,

      That which moves all is hidden from his gaze,

      His poring eyes miss the unseen behind.

      He has the blind man’s subtle unerring touch

      Or the slow traveller’s sight of distant scenes;

      The