Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

rude cottage where she sat in trance:

      That subtle world withdrew deeply within

      Behind the sun-veil of the inner sight.

      But now the half-opened lotus bud of her heart

      Had bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray;

      In an image shone revealed her secret soul.

      There was no wall severing the soul and mind,

      No mystic fence guarding from the claims of life.

      In its deep lotus home her being sat

      As if on concentration’s marble seat,

      Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds

      To make this earthly tenement her house.

      As in a flash from a supernal light,

      A living image of the original Power,

      A face, a form came down into her heart

      And made of it its temple and pure abode.

      But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom,

      A mighty movement rocked the inner space

      As if a world were shaken and found its soul:

      Out of the Inconscient’s soulless mindless night

      A flaming Serpent rose released from sleep.

      It rose billowing its coils and stood erect

      And climbing mightily, stormily on its way

      It touched her centres with its flaming mouth;

      As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,

      They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss.

      Then at the crown it joined the Eternal’s space.

      In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter’s base,

      In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot

      It held together the mystic stream which joins

      The viewless summits with the unseen depths,

      The string of forts that make the frail defence

      Safeguarding us against the enormous world,

      Our lines of self-expression in its Vast.

      An image sat of the original Power

      Wearing the mighty Mother’s form and face.

      Armed, bearer of the weapon and the sign

      Whose occult might no magic can imitate,

      Manifold yet one she sat, a guardian force:

      A saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm,

      And symbol of some native cosmic strength,

      A sacred beast lay prone below her feet,

      A silent flame-eyed mass of living force.

      All underwent a high celestial change:

      Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall,

      Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,

      Powers and divinities burst flaming forth;

      Each part of the being trembling with delight

      Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness

      And saw her hand in every circumstance

      And felt her touch in every limb and cell.

      In the country of the lotus of the head

      Which thinking mind has made its busy space,

      In the castle of the lotus twixt the brows

      Whence it shoots the arrows of its sight and will,

      In the passage of the lotus of the throat

      Where speech must rise and the expressing mind

      And the heart’s impulse run towards word and act,

      A glad uplift and a new working came.

      The immortal’s thoughts displaced our bounded view,

      The immortal’s thoughts earth’s drab idea and sense;

      All things now bore a deeper heavenlier sense.

      A glad clear harmony marked their truth’s outline,

      Reset the balance and measures of the world.

      Each shape showed its occult design, unveiled

      God’s meaning in it for which it was made

      And the vivid splendour of his artist thought.

      A channel of the mighty Mother’s choice,

      The immortal’s will took into its calm control

      Our blind or erring government of life;

      A loose republic once of wants and needs,

      Then bowed to the uncertain sovereign mind,

      Life now obeyed to a diviner rule

      And every act became an act of God.

      In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart

      Love chanting its pure hymeneal hymn

      Made life and body mirrors of sacred joy

      And all the emotions gave themselves to God.

      In the navel lotus’ broad imperial range

      Its proud ambitions and its master lusts

      Were tamed into instruments of a great calm sway

      To do a work of God on earthly soil.

      In the narrow nether centre’s petty parts

      Its childish game of daily dwarf desires

      Was changed into a sweet and boisterous play,

      A romp of little gods with life in Time.

      In the deep place where once the Serpent slept,

      There came a grip on Matter’s giant powers

      For large utilities in life’s little space;

      A firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might.

      Behind all reigned her sovereign deathless soul:

      Casting aside its veil of Ignorance,

      Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers

      It built the harmony of its human state;

      Surrendered into the great World-Mother’s hands

      Only she obeyed her sole supreme behest

      In the enigma of the Inconscient’s world.

      A secret soul behind supporting all

      Is master and witness of our ignorant life,

      Admits the Person’s look and Nature’s role.

      But once the hidden doors are flung apart

      Then the veiled king steps out in Nature’s front;

      A Light comes down into the Ignorance,

      Its heavy painful knot loosens its grasp:

      The mind becomes a mastered instrument

      And life a hue and figure of the soul.

      All happily grows towards knowledge and towards bliss.

      A divine Puissance then takes Nature’s place

      And pushes the movements of our body and mind;

      Possessor of