Aurobindo 58 Savitri Book 3 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri-
Book 3-The Book of the Divine Mother
Canto One: The Pursuit of the Unknowable
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'All is too little that the world can give:
Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time
And cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst.'
A silence settled on his striving heart;
Absolved from the voices of the world's desire,
He turned to the Ineffable's timeless call.'
'But who that mightiness was he knew not yet.'
'A giant doubt overshadowed his advance.'

'Always a signless vague Immensity
Brooded, without approach, beyond response,
Condemning finite things to nothingness,
Fronting him with the incommensurable.'
'On a dizzy verge where all disguises fail'
'He stood compelled to a tremendous choice.'
'Alone and fronting an intangible Force'
His spirit faced the adventure of the Inane.'

'Abandoned by the worlds of Form he strove.'
'The universe removed its coloured veil,
And at the unimaginable end
Of the huge riddle of created things
Appeared the far-seen Godhead of the whole,
His feet firm-based on Life's stupendous wings,
Omnipotent, a lonely seer of Time,
Inward, inscrutable, with diamond gaze.

'A pure existence safe from thought and mood,
A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss,
It dwelt aloof in its bare infinite,
One and unique, unutterably sole.'
'A silent Cause occult, impenetrable,
Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.....

............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 3 Canto 1

Page 305

The world lived on made empty of its Cause,
Like love when the beloved's face is gone.

Near, it retreated; far, it called him still.
Nothing could satisfy but its delight:

Its absence left the greatest actions dull,
Its presence made the smallest seem divine.

Page 306

It wore the guise of an indiscernible Vast,
Or was a subtle kernel in the soul:
A distant greatness left it huge and dim,
A mystic closeness shut it sweetly in:
It seemed sometimes a figment or a robe
And seemed sometimes his own colossal shade.

On a dizzy verge where all disguises fail
And human mind must abdicate in Light
Or die like a moth in the naked blaze of Truth,
He stood compelled to a tremendous choice.

Page 307

All glory of outline, sweetness of harmony,
Rejected like a grace of trivial notes,
Expunged from Being's silence nude, austere,
Died into a fine and blissful Nothingness.

Page 308

But what That was, no thought nor sight could tell.

Life's question met by its silence died on her lips,
The world's effort ceased convicted of ignorance
Finding no sanction of supernal Light:

There was no mind there with its need to know,
There was no heart there with its need to love.

The One by whom all live, who lives by none,
An immeasurable luminous secrecy
Guarded by the veils of the Unmanifest

End of Book 3 Canto 1