Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

all forms to serve their outward needs,

      Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

      But learn not what they are or why they came;

      These polities, architectures of man’s brain,

      That, bricked with evil and good, wall in man’s spirit

      And, fissured houses, palace at once and jail,

      Rot while they reign and crumble before they crash;

      These revolutions, demon or drunken god,

      Convulsing the wounded body of mankind

      Only to paint in new colours an old face;

      These wars, carnage triumphant, ruin gone mad,

      The work of centuries vanishing in an hour,

      The blood of the vanquished and the victor’s crown

      Which men to be born must pay for with their pain,

      The hero’s face divine on satyr’s limbs,

      The demon’s grandeur mixed with the demigod’s,

      The glory and the beasthood and the shame;

      Why is it all, the labour and the din,

      The transient joys, the timeless sea of tears,

      The longing and the hoping and the cry,

      The battle and the victory and the fall,

      The aimless journey that can never pause,

      The waking toil, the incoherent sleep,

      Song, shouts and weeping, wisdom and idle words,

      The laughter of men, the irony of the gods?

      Where leads the march, whither the pilgrimage?

      Who keeps the map of the route or planned each stage?

      Or else self-moved the world walks its own way,

      Or nothing is there but only a Mind that dreams:

      The world is a myth that happened to come true,

      A legend told to itself by conscious Mind,

      Imaged and played on a feigned Matter’s ground

      On which it stands in an unsubstantial Vast.

      Mind is the author, spectator, actor, stage:

      Mind only is and what it thinks is seen.

      If Mind is all, renounce the hope of bliss;

      If Mind is all, renounce the hope of Truth.

      For Mind can never touch the body of Truth

      And Mind can never see the soul of God;

      Only his shadow it grasps nor hears his laugh

      As it turns from him to the vain seeming of things.

      Mind is a tissue woven of light and shade

      Where right and wrong have sewn their mingled parts;

      Or Mind is Nature’s marriage of convenance

      Between truth and falsehood, between joy and pain:

      This struggling pair no court can separate.

      Each thought is a gold coin with bright alloy

      And error and truth are its obverse and reverse:

      This is the imperial mintage of the brain

      And of this kind is all its currency.

      Think not to plant on earth the living Truth

      Or make of Matter’s world the home of God;

      Truth comes not there but only the thought of Truth,

      God is not there but only the name of God.

      If Self there is it is bodiless and unborn;

      It is no one and it is possessed by none.

      On what shalt thou then build thy happy world?

      Cast off thy life and mind, then art thou Self,

      An all-seeing omnipresence stark, alone.

      If God there is he cares not for the world;

      All things he sees with calm indifferent gaze,

      He has doomed all hearts to sorrow and desire,

      He has bound all life with his implacable laws;

      He answers not the ignorant voice of prayer.

      Eternal while the ages toil beneath,

      Unmoved, untouched by aught that he has made,

      He sees as minute details mid the stars

      The animal’s agony and the fate of man:

      Immeasurably wise, he exceeds thy thought;

      His solitary joy needs not thy love.

      His truth in human thinking cannot dwell:

      If thou desirest Truth, then still thy mind

      For ever, slain by the dumb unseen Light.

      Immortal bliss lives not in human air:

      How shall the mighty Mother her calm delight

      Keep fragrant in this narrow fragile vase,

      Or lodge her sweet unbroken ecstasy

      In hearts which earthly sorrow can assail

      And bodies careless Death can slay at will?

      Dream not to change the world that God has planned,

      Strive not to alter his eternal law.

      If heavens there are whose gates are shut to grief,

      There seek the joy thou couldst not find on earth;

      Or in the imperishable hemisphere

      Where Light is native and Delight is king

      And Spirit is the deathless ground of things,

      Choose thy high station, child of Eternity.

      If thou art Spirit and Nature is thy robe,

      Cast off thy garb and be thy naked self

      Immutable in its undying truth,

      Alone for ever in the mute Alone.

      Turn then to God, for him leave all behind;

      Forgetting love, forgetting Satyavan,

      Annul thyself in his immobile peace.

      O soul, drown in his still beatitude.

      For thou must die to thyself to reach God’s height:

      I, Death, am the gate of immortality.”

      But Savitri answered to the sophist God:

      “Once more wilt thou call Light to blind Truth’s eyes,

      Make Knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance

      And the Word a dart to slay my living soul?

      Offer, O King, thy boons to tired spirits

      And hearts that could not bear the wounds of Time,

      Let those who were tied to body and to mind,

      Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm

      Crying for a refuge from the play of God.

      Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!

      But how shall I seek rest in endless peace

      Who house the mighty Mother’s violent force,