Aurobindo 55 Savitri Book 2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book Two: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto Thirteen: In the Self of Mind
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'At last there came a bare indifferent sky
Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice,
But answered nothing to a million calls;
The soul's endless question met with no response.'
'There paused the climbing hierarchy of worlds.
He stood on a wide arc of summit Space
Alone with an enormous Self of Mind
Which held all life in a corner of its vasts'

'In God's supreme withdrawn and timeless hush
A seeing Self and potent Energy met; '
The Silence knew itself and thought took form:
Self-made from the dual power creation rose.'
'In the still self he lived and it in him; '
Its vastness and its stillness were his own;
One being with it he grew wide, powerful, free.
'Apart, unbound, he looked on all things done.'

'Then suddenly a luminous finger fell
On all things seen or touched or heard or felt
And showed his mind that nothing could be known;
'The world seemed a long aeonic failure's scene: '
'Existence' self was shadowed by a doubt; '
'This great spectator and creator Mind
Was only some half-seeing's delegate,
An idol, not the living body of God.'

'Deep peace was there, but not the nameless Force: '
'A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind
Must answer to the questioning of his soul.
For here was no firm clue and no sure road; '
'He looked above, but all was blank and still: '
'He looked below, but all was dark and mute.'

............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
===============================================

Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and
informative lines from Book 2 Canto 13

Page 283

This witness hush is the Thinker's secret base:
Hidden in silent depths the word is formed,
From hidden silences the act is born
Into the voiceful mind, the labouring world;
In secrecy wraps the seed the Eternal sows
Silence, the mystic birthplace of the soul.

Page 284&285

All that it takes for reality's shining coin,
Proved fact, fixed inference, deduction clear,
Firm theory, assured significance,
Appeared as frauds upon Time's credit bank
Or assets valueless in Truth's treasury.

Page 285

A frail house hanging in uncertain air,
The thin ingenious web round which it moves,
Put out awhile on the tree of the universe,
And gathered up into itself again,
Was only a trap to catch life's insect food,
Winged thoughts that flutter fragile in brief light
But dead, once captured in fixed forms of mind,
Aims puny but looming large in man's small scale,
Flickers of imagination's brilliant gauze
And cobweb-wrapped beliefs alive no more.

Page 285&286

Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths,
God's spontaneities tied with formal strings
And packed into drawers of reason's trim bureau,
A grave of great lost opportunities,
Or an office for misuse of soul and life
And all the waste man makes of heaven's gifts
And all his squanderings of Nature's store,
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.

Page 286

Existence' self was shadowed by a doubt;
Almost it seemed a lotus-leaf afloat
On a nude pool of cosmic Nothingness.

Page 287

A sapphire firmament of abstract Thought
Escaped into a formless Vacancy.


A rumour and a movement and a call,
A foaming mass, a cry innumerable
Rolled ever upon the ocean surge of Life
Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance.


Beings and forces, forms, ideas like waves
Jostled for figure and supremacy,
And rose and sank and rose again in Time;

Page287&288

Two firmaments of darkness and of light
Opposed their limits to the spirit's walk;
It moved veiled in from Self's infinity
In a world of beings and momentary events
Where all must die to live and live to die.

End of Book 2-Canto 13