Aurobindo 48 Savitri Book 2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto Ten: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's


'This too must now be overpassed and left,
As all must be until the Highest is gained
In whom the world and self grow true and one:
'Always a nameless goal beckons beyond,
Always ascends the zigzag of the gods
And upward points the spirit's climbing Fire.
''This breath of hundred-hued felicity'
'A little output of God's vast delight.'

'A musing spirit looked out on the worlds
And like a brilliant clambering of skies
Passing through clarity to an unseen Light
Large lucent realms of Mind from stillness shone.'
'But first he met a silver-grey expanse'..
'A coalition of uncertainties
There exercised uneasy government'..
'A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.'

'At its low extremity held difficult sway
A mind that hardly saw and slowly found; '
'This was the first means of our slow ascent'
'In a realm it cannot understand nor change; '
'The slow process of a material mind
Which serves the body it should rule and use
And needs to lean upon an erring sense,
Was born in that luminous obscurity.'

'It reasons from the half-known to the unknown, '
'Ever undoing the web that it has spun.'
'At the glow-worm top of these pale glimmer-realms'
'Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
He came into a realm of early Light
'And the regency of a half-risen sun.'...

............My consciousness this moment,
O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights
Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation
My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine
May there so, let Savitri in my self arise
Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune

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Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and
informative lines from Book 2 Canto 10

Page 238

This breath of hundred-hued felicity
And its pure heightened figure of Time's joy,
Tossed upon waves of flawless happiness,
Hammered into single beats of ecstasy,

A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire
Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss.

Page 239

A memory soft as grass and faint as sleep,
The beauty and call receding sank behind
Like a sweet song heard fading far away
Upon the long high road to Timelessness.

But first he met a silver-grey expanse
Where Day and Night had wedded and were one:
It was a tract of dim and shifting rays
Parting Life's sentient flow from Thought's self-poise.

Page 240

A twilight sage whose shadow seems to him self,
Moving from minute to brief minute lives;

Out of earth's heavy smallness we must break,
We must search our nature with spiritual fire:
An insect crawl preludes our glorious flight;

Page 240&241

At the glow-worm top of these pale glimmer-realms
Where dawn-sheen gambolled with the native dusk
And helped the Day to grow and Night to fail,
Escaping over a wide and shimmering bridge,
He came into a realm of early Light
And the regency of a half-risen sun.