Savitri

      XIV

'The World-soul'

      To the anxiously seeking eyes of Aswapati there now appears, "in a far-shimmering background of Mind-Space a glowing mouth...a luminous shaft...a recluse-gate...a veiled retreat...a tunnel of the depths of God."¹²⁸ This is a way out, this is an escape from the icy stare of immaculate Silence!

      As one drawn to his lost spiritual home...

      Into a passage dim and tremulous

      That clasped him in from day and night's pursuit,

      He travelled led by a mysterious sound.¹²⁹

He is lured on and on by murmurs, voices and harmonies untranslatable—reminiscent of the "jingling silver laugh of anklet bells" or,

      ...a vast forest's hymn,

      The solemn reminder of a temple gong,

      A bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles

      Ardent with ecstasy in a slumbrous noon,

      Or the far anthem of a pilgrim sea.¹³⁰

He reaches at last "a wondrous bodiless realm"; it is earth's perfect antidote, with the "intimacy of God" everywhere. It is the utter region of the World-Soul. One treads there on soul-ground, one contacts soul-stuff, one rises in soul-space, one experiences soul-joy. Here "in voiceless internatal trance" club together the souls that have emancipated themselves from the chain of birth and death; or they await "the adventure of new life". It is clear to Aswapati

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that he has penetrated to creation's centre where the wandering spirit finds,

...the silence of its starting-point

In the formless force and the still fixity

And brooding passion of the world of Soul.¹³¹

 By sure instinct he passes on,

Along a road of pure interior light,

Alone between tremendous Presences,

Under the watching eyes of nameless Gods,...

To the source of all things human and divine.¹³²

Here he beholds Purusha-Prakriti, the deathless Two-in-One,

A single being in two bodies clasped,

A diarchy of two united souls,

Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;...¹³³

And behind them stands "the sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled", whose mask is the making of the world and whose footfalls are the rages of the ages. Aswapati folds his hands in prayer, and to him is vouchsafed a sudden half-glimpse of "the ravishing, enigma of her eyes". He is now finally overwhelmed by her "implacable light and bliss", and he is like an atom of her illimitable self, a drop of the ocean of her ecstasy:

      Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,

      He cast from the rent stillness of his soul

      A cry of adoration and desire

      And the surrender of his boundless mind

      And the self-giving of his silent heart.

      He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.¹³⁴

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