The Birth of Savitr

  On Savitri


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Canto One


At the river's bend hope took a northward turn—

As if stumbling on a strange post of the night

Stars found a sudden way through emptiness;

Something glimmered to awaken a newer urge,

The spirit of things timeless and alone.

Gods were yet to be and the enormous hush

Held in its still incumbent mood of trance

Another surprise getting shaped by death.

Colours of wonder flew on rhythmic wings,—

And also came repeated pain in the heart.

But in rich green silence of the wood at noon

Stood Savitri to meet the blemished might.

9 April 2002

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Canto Two

Music streamed down from blue of the upper sky

And the hills and the lush fields and the choir birds

Bore its eager delight in earthly moments.

In emerald peace of that wilderness

Love came seeking her through hesitant ages:

A phoenix of flame-hued wings descending

Into death awaited her fiery greatness.

A joy of beauty bejewelled all her being

And her soul was a deep celebration

Of divinity in the strides of time;

Even her body recalled its godly longing.

This mortal world claimed its truth in her birth.

12 April 2002

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Canto Three

A king-yogi willed her rush in the earthly fields,

Bright waters of her divinising force.

From a homeland of the truth, the right, the vast

Down the gold-white rays descended the sun;

It quickened a splendid fire on the altar

Of fate, the elemental ignorance.

An ancient sacrifice released his soul

And in a swift lunge tearing nature's bond

Sped abroad horses of spirit's energies.

A vision grew wider than the universe

And the unknowable's script became distinct.

Aloof he climbed heaven's ascending slopes.

14 April 2002

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Canto Four

Concealed the spirit's immensities lie

And nature is all, nursing the age-old grief.

On life's tree time has built her nest of pain

And as the eternal's guard there stands death.

But her vision and work aim at heaven-fire

A-kindled in this half-lit terrestrial day.

An invisible presence prompts her movements

Even as in the mute trance of matter

Through dimness of her eyes looks out the sun.

Slowly the discoverer voyages on seas

Reaching calm waters across the cosmic shores

Where under the horned moon is adrift his barge.

19 April 2002

Nest of Pain: Keats

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Canto Five

In the murky cave awoke the god of sleep

Who builds in trance the starry worlds of dream,

And Aswapati understood their meaning

And the spiritual sense in material things,

Grasped the will that works behind halting fate.

A Ganges of knowledge poured down from above

Flooding his mortality with supernal light.

In the listening depth of his heart he heard

Sounds that lead movements of the heavenly spheres,

Voices that disclose the cosmic secrecies.

He entered into wide excellent realms

And lived in the day of the undying spirit.

21 April 2002

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Canto Six


Fourteen sounds came from Shiva's rattle-drum,

Fourteen waves surged on the ocean of calm;

Fourteen desires gathered in the world's desire.

From materials of these many worlds

Was formed this earth, darling of the dancer.

Angels, demons, gods of the great spirit

Took their stations up the viewless ladder

And poured their bounties on this little soul.

But haunted was she by a grisly shade

And Aswapati to redeem her woe

Sought a power beyond the afflicter's reach.

The seer within set him on the upward route.

23 April 2002

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Canto Seven

First he entered the world of exquisite matter

That could beauty house and all its sweetness

And bring unflawed wonder to time-made things.

A quiet flame burned in the gold lamp of joy

And filled room and room with the light of its truth.

But then came mind and fragmented the dream;

A wave dashed on the hoary rock of night

And in its spume and spray dimly glistened

A million planktons of the vague early form,

And only lingered a fading memory.

Of yore there lived the atomic being alone,

Preparing the body of a deathless god.

25 April 2002

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Canto Eight

Heavenly queen wore flowing purple dresses

In the sky and drove her car of adventure

On roads of swift brightsome mood. Sun nor moon

Nor countless stars of the unbounded world

Drew limits to life's zestful vineyard song.

Eagle-winged flying over the viewless Everest

Or a worm crawling on the Pacific's floor,

Is her spirit hazardously valiant.

No wonder, in her amaranthine craze

She hailed death and took him for her husband.

Out of that wedlock were born grim children,

But Aswapati discerned there another will.

28 April 2002

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Canto Nine

Earth's thick shadow swallowed the bold angel

And in that occult mystery began

The quizzical march; the eclipsed moon of joy

Explored the emptiness with its blind regard,

Compelling yet the desert of the universe

To feel and flower in the laughter of god.

Soon out of dull matter's crevices hissed

Someone and from its terrifying fangs

Poured quick poison on the Cleopatran breast.

Yet she adventured into the Jurassic

And gave early thought to the Neanderthal.

A sense that suffered triple gloom was now here.

28 April 2002

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Canto Ten

Crossing the destinies of sorrows and of joys

Child of jagat-shakti, the maimed goddess

Bore children in whom burned no gracious flame.

Soulless creatures lived feeding on slush

Or relished frog-liver cooked in cruelty

And, croaking throughout the night, hungered for more.

At times 'neath the life-mind squirmed a trepid ray

And looked at things with squinting scarlet eyes;

At times some ghost of thought rushed quickly by

Or the animal leaped to seize on wisdom's word.

Yet from elsewhere awareness must come

And bring gain to the godheads of little life.

30 April 2002

Jagat-Shakti: World-Force

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Canto Eleven

Led by his spirit's promptings Aswapati

Reached the rainbow land where in colourful haste

The celestial artist created wonders.

Life sang golden reality's nether song

And a miracle was wrought in matter's womb.

Thus alone would it suffer the pregnant change,

The rock-image of Shiva beget offspring.

But presently all saw just a faint gleam

In the brute stuff wherein lies imprisoned

The idea that gives meaning to our lives,

As if failed the intention which bore truth.

A power that denied grace held her in sway.

2 May 2002

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Canto Twelve

Another reality the spirit met.

A dark river flowed 'neath the currents of time

And swam gargantuan fish swallowing

Gargantuan fish, god's shadow only god.

On its grimy bank a citadel was built

And a fierce scarecrow shouted through the night.

In it stayed the fatal woman wearing

As a forehead mark destiny's black sun.

From the dreadfulness of her nixie past

Peered eyes that deepened the mystery of hell

Even as she proclaimed the Tao of evil.

But in that cave too Aswapati saw Vishnu.

4 May 2002

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Canto Thirteen

In dismal river was born the tadpole ego

Who claimed forthwith the universe for its use

And brought falsehood to run the enterprise,

And hired a serpent to guard the sleeping treasure.

Soon in countless numbers burned these dark stars

Working out in the ways of night the fate

Ruinous of this creation, soul's quick downfall.

The terrible adventuress grew hostile

And gave to the interminable nothing

A chance to win divinity,—through death.

Then in the rocky insensate trance was heard

Wing-flap of birds and chime of distant bells.

5 May 2002

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Canto Fourteen

If darkness gave to her a grimacing face,

Under the flowering acacia life was sweet,

A bloom of happiness in god's smiling grove.

Music trailed in the cadence of the stream

And the note of love gave wings to the singing bird,

King and queen strolled in the moonlit garden,

As if by a magic wand came a new world

Into birth to heal the wounds of the past.

A warm air urged the traveller on his way,

The chariot wheels setting into motion

Swift rhythms that trace the orbits for the suns.

In its rush a fiery wonder filled his soul.

5 May 2002

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Canto Fifteen

Could it be that a great thought made the world,

Light plunged in the night and became fortunate stars

And life awoke feelings in the dumb mass

And the blue-tinged brain found its reason to be?

A thinking ape was not an accident

And the braying mind was not without design

And never was the atom elemental.

Yet was implanted denial in the dna

And a swift-footed pride in the forest raged

And a serene mistress read nature's tomes.

Still from the invisible fount of wisdom

Poured sudden truths that bring vision to our sight.

7 May 2002

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Canto Sixteen

Ascending the slopes of mind Aswapati

Now stepped into a world of sapphire thought

That looks at unborn luminous ideas

Knowing themselves which live in spirit alone.

Needless here were reason's heavy glasses

And broadened the vista unto the unseen.

Magic word was a key for truth's locked cave

And numbers and forms became visible links

And doors of awareness led to Platonic gold.

So could he walk in eminence of these realms

And bright immortalities freely breathe.

Yet truth like sun is vaster than all its flames.

8 May 2002

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Canto Seventeen


Mountains of time climbed towards timeless peaks

And god's felicities flamed high in god.

It was a silent chant, a pilgrim march

Of the petite who saw marvellous worlds

And soared in the calm of creation's joy.

The aspiring soul of earth breathed wonders

And the truth that answers made it beauteous.

In splendid will of the spirit was lit

A fire that gives to mortals seerhood

And raises the sacrifice to heaven.

A leader has arrived, friendly knower,

And he shall escort us on the shining path.

9 May 2002

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Canto Eighteen

What of victory drums, what of the grieving heart?

Armies of Hitler set the world on fire,

Maniacs of time destroy the towers of pride,

And what of the river-song through luxuriant fields,

Of Sistine Chapel and the caves of Ajanta?

Aloof and untouched watches the witness eye,

Else consents to the whims in nature's play.

Passive has become the thinker, listless the thought,

And the Vedantist himself an illusion,

Gods, creatures, imperious death but shadows.

The will to be disappeared in that calm

And remained the mute alone and self-absorbed.

10 May 2002

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Canto Nineteen

Shadows of night turned into splendours of god

And a delicate fragrance filled the air

And in the etheric hush surged forth sounds

That speak of the truer infinity's urgings;

The calm pace of the yogin-traveller

Took him to the temple-palace of Sophia,

Self-luminous and divine, creation's heart.

His will burned in the will of the bright goddess,

The builder of the worlds to build a new world.

Her almighty power he must house in his soul's deep —

Not for himself but to change the lot of man,

Bring immortal happiness to this deathful life.

11 May 2002

The World-Soul:

Gnostic Sophia

Goddess of Wisdom

Apocalyptic Virgin

Theotakos—Mother of God

The Divine Feminine

Swayamprabhā of the Ramayana

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Canto Twenty

Then Brahma engaged himself in gold-bright tapas

And the directions were born and the word

And out of the truth-idea, the splendid womb

Sprang readily seven rhythms of creation

And the great rishis took radiant daughters

For their spouses and in their rich company

Held sessions of the undying triple fire,

Made offerings of the earth, the mid-region

And, when had set the sun, the blazing heaven.

And Aswapati partook in the hearth

And the table of the gods. His body-mind

Opened to things that are to come to time.

12 May 2002

Tapas: Intense spiritual concentration; the Yoga of the Will.

Triple Fire:

Householder's Fire, grāhapatya, morning offering, earth;

Ancestor's Fire, dakṣhina, midday offering, mid-world or antariksha;

Fire of the Gods, āhavanīya, evening offering, heaven.

Sun-Lightning-Agni.

Hearth and Table of the Gods:

At the top of the human scale are the prophets, the minstrels and the physicians; their next step upward is to the divine, sharing the hearth and the table of the gods.—Empedocles.

Body-Mind: tanū-manas.

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Canto Twenty-One

Into luminous emptiness he entered

And even the world's yearning which he carried

In his high-intended Odyssey disappeared.

A potent universe without galaxies,

Without streams, mountains, beasts or birds or men

Withheld in its formlessness the epiphanic.

Behind sachchidaananda was the quiescent

And what remained was nirvana of the absolute,

The austere apocalyptic alone.

Yet must be known that power whose enigma

Gives meaning and content to things of the world.

His spirit's will pursued the unknowable.

13 May 2002

Sachchidānanda: Truth-Consciousness-Bliss

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Canto Twenty-Two

Then was abolished the eternal nay

And only the forceful positive stood there,

The fire that gives fire to a million fires.

Immortal death worked with the heart of love

And ignorance was a bright page in the book

Om Chidrūpinī Paramā, her name.

Sons of divinity hymned her glories

And offered to her onyxes and diamonds

And epic conquests of nobility

And real-ideas of distinction,

Found in her the secret of the Veda.

14 May 2002

Om Chidrūpiṇī Paramā:

Om, she whose form is consciousness, supreme.

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Canto Twenty-Three

But the heavy past weighing on the soul of the earth

He must offer to the flames of sacrifice,

Of nature and gods, kindled in the new divine.

Here was the beginningless beginning

And the endless end, here the unmoved mover.

Here flamed his will in trance of luminous sleep

And was formed the world celebrating truth

Immortal even in things material.

Thus broke out the yoga's paean supreme.

The stork of paradise brought the news of a birth

Waiting for voiceless omniscience to speak.

Opened were freeways for haste of the daughter.

15 May 2002

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Canto Twenty-Four

Even as Aswapati invoked Savitri

With many-leaping flames in the radiant sky

Rained over his tapas resplendent waters.

The dreams of earth excelled in their rapid flow

And the auspicious hour validated the world.

True, the gods enter not this den of night

And the dark-hued sphinx slays the soul of man

And time is haunted by the ghost of death;

But if life is to discover love's immensity

And sunbright children are to be born in these bounds,

She must take our mortal birth and alter fate.

The word was spoken and the new era began.

16 May 2002

Savitri:

In the story by Vyasa as we have in the Mahabharata, the issueless king Aswapati offers daily a hundred-thousand oblations to Goddess Savitri. He performs the Yajna for eighteen years.

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Canto Twenty-Five


Year is the body and Savitri was born.

Gods and goddesses gave her heavenly gifts,

The moon of delight, the sword of triumph,

The golden heart of love, the mind of light,

The physical plastic to the touch of truth,

The spirit making the moulds of time immortal.

Even as a child she would visit the stars

Or dream of a city waking to wide days.

Already the earth's longings took bright wings,

Already the ancient promises became good,

Already the faultless charm drew closer the worlds.

Her presence attracted great divinities.

17 May 2002

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Canto Twenty-Six

The young princess grew phase by phase, the moon,

And the roundsome digit gladdened beauty's sky.

In her dreamful slumber and in her bright waking

The wheels of time speeded on a jewelled path

And life became a journey led by love.

She could hold in her happy embrace the whole world

And pour the wine of rapture in human heart;

But the frail vessel shudders with its joy.

High the eagle of her flaming youth ever flew,

Above wind and cloud unmatched and alone.

No earth-soul could reach her splendour's winging,

No Aryan prince claim her hand in marriage.

17 May 2002

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Canto Twenty-Seven

In the royalty of hush sometimes descends

The word that can forever change destiny

And bring good even to death's circumstance:

Eternity's moment arrives on white wings

And a cry is stirred in quiet of the soul;

Something surges from the creation's silence

And to flute-call awakes the beloved's heart.

From the world of immortality she had come

Not to fly a lonely flight in heavens

Of joy but into life's rough countries to dare.

Far in the forest on an emerald bough

Awaits the gold-bright orange-hued doomed bird.

18 May 2002

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Canto Twenty-Eight

Her future's course ran through the karmic past

And the chariot-wheels recalled the dim tracks

Of memory as if to claim godheads

Who drive the speeds of nature across birth

And birth when silent watches the alert eye.

No human escort led the events of time,

But love seated in the heart of Savitri

Spurred the toiling energies towards their goal.

She heard the sounds of the Veda chanted

In the ear and sight opened the soul's doors

And infinity's calm reposed in her bosom.

Golden solitude stood waiting for the hour.

19 May 2002

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Canto Twenty-Nine

Mango-blossoms burst in the yellow's richness

And the air was filled with delicate fragrance

And the distant coil sang a welcome song.

Far were left behind the kings' palaces

And the rivers threading proud cities of time

And the gods dwelling in luminous shrines

And meditation's groves awake to the spirit.

She now reached a place where absent was life's buzz

And mind needed not the tracks of thought to run.

There close to Shiva's fane came seeking her

The flame of love in a body of death

And blazed in a sudden moment the idol.

19 May 2002

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Canto Thirty

Through the Shalwa tapovanas as she moved

In the lotus of her heart opened a pink sun,

Splendid in the summer of eternity.

Though born in transient world his tranquil gaze

Was a look of the spirit winning nature's joys

And his dawns were the gifts of her wisdom.

The one whom she met in the sudden forest

Gave bright deservance to the dreams of her life—

Even as he discovered the charmed moon

Of beauty in the chariot of his delight.

Gods and goddesses gathered in the sky

And calm was heard the chiming of happy bells.

20 May 2002

tapovanas: the forests where the ancient rishis were engaged in tapas, the spiritual austerities and sacrifices.

Chariot of Delight: chandraratha of the Rig Veda.

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Canto Thirty-One

God's Savitri and goddess's Satyavan

Courted the green fields of life together.

If love urged her divinity to step out

And spread beauty's spell over his mortal soul,

The beloved brought a skyful of sweetness

And healed his wounds, of cleaved matter and spirit.

Beings of glad worlds thronged the forest grove

And flocks of birds came from the hilltops

And dimpling waters ran with murmuring notes

And wild flowers scattered their joy in the air

And doe and buck pranced in blithesome grass

And priests of nature chanted the marriage hymn.

21 May 2002

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Canto Thirty-Two

But a black tiger stood on the stealthy way

And Narad saw him from his home in Vaikunttha

And hastened that be known to Savitri

Year is the body and Satyavan,

When fly away twelve birds of time, shall die.

In the earthly soil was cast the occult seed,

An imponderable wonderful, bright.

No human mind would comprehend its working,

No heart's passion halt the advancing doom,

And truer yet became Savitri's resolve.

If love came from the old creation to die

The new shall take birth in the glory of death.

21 May 2002

Vaikunttha: The Heaven of Vishnu

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Canto Thirty-Three

Falsehood is the sorrow of the supreme

And not for nothing was this creation made

And not for failure the sacrifice performed.

Not this world but pain is deep illusion

And when the price is paid it turns into joy.

But only the great in soul can bear its stroke

And walk through death as through door of the sun.

Savitri must wage the battle for god

And meet the stark force in the flame of her will.

Her way to the high runs through the bosom of night

And when is kindled the fire in trance of sleep

She can house victory's power and the challenge face.

22 May 2002

It is as though the battle of the world was being fought within my consciousness. (The Mother, Notes on the Way, 25 October 1972, CWM, Vol. 11, p. 323)

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Canto Thirty-Four

The shadow of bliss now fell on Savitri.

In the trance of awesome night when together

Her moon of honey was chased by a poison cloud

And the owl of fear hooted in the sobbing heart

And reached to console her voice of no helpful god.

Not forbidding dream but unspeaking silence

Appeared to make the year harsher than grief.

The flame that had come with her from the calm sky

Trembled in the storm-wind raging in the forest

And instantly marked destiny drew nearer yet.

In the embrace of Satyavan and Savitri

Laughed death deriding this life's hollowness.

23 May 2002

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Canto Thirty-Five

Savitri lay prone with sorrowing spirit,

But the greatness who watches all her movements

Commanded her to awake to her soul's truth

And gather in it the defeatless power

And, crossing the gate of death, meet the eternal.

First in subconscient plunge the shadowy past

Unfolded to her sight the obscure worlds,

The wounding stone, the hungry beast, the ape-mind

Leaping from tree to dangerous tree of thought.

Somewhere lived deep buried the issue of nature

Finding in subterranean dark its food.

This she must consume in her shakti yajna.

24 May 2002

Shakti Yajna: The sacrifice performed to get power.

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Canto Thirty-Six

From the body's guarded fort Savitri stepped

Into a bleak room that housed ghastly beings,

Pythonesses and she-wolves ever waiting

To tear the soul of man, kill it with untruth,

Night-ravens crying on the path to perdition.

But she braved the assault and breathed freer air.

Past the dim chapels, past the garden schools,

The viharas of monks, the adwaitins' mathas,

She met en route to the cave where dwells the flame

Brilliant gods helping with their light our lives,

Bringing to wakened sense things of the spirit.

But she yearned for the birth of the child divine.

25 May 2002

vihāras and maṭhas are lonely cloisters of the respective ascetics.

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Canto Thirty-Seven

Now the little boroughs of dream were left behind

And she came to a place where toil consorts

Nature that body and life and mind's self

Open to the supraliminal powers.

Portions of the secret soul of Savitri,

Unwearied, and conquering, and tranquil-bright,

They bring profounder gods to struggling earth.

But what if the antagonists raise their heads,

Or take up arms against the descending sea!

She must discover in the fullness of night

A flame that can hold deathless might in its blaze.

26 May 2002

Triple Purusha: instinctive, impulsive and emotional-intellectual being presiding over the actions of the three nature-powers: compassionate toiler and warrior on the battlefield and luminous in wisdom, full of Karuna, Jnana-Prem-Ananda, Prakash-Harsha-Shanti.

Page 39


Canto Thirty-Eight

Now the way must cut through brahmāndhāra

And Savitri meet god in a godless form.

By whatever it may be known or perceived

That ceases in the genuine night, the sacred void,

And only remains the will that cancels

The burden of death present in the mortal's breast.

Above all stood the wonder of the triple sun,

Bliss and consciousness and absolute truth.

Suddenly the cave opened and she saw

The primal force seated on the topaz rock

And heard seven great notes; flooded her the sound

Occult soham ̣- om ̣- ham ̣- yam ̣- ram ̣- vam ̣- lam.̣

26 May 2002

Brahmāndhāra: Darkness of Brahma or the Great Night, the Night of God; Dryden's is genuine night full of idiocy and ignorance.

soham,̣ om,̣ ham,̣ yam,̣ ram,̣ vam,̣ lam ̣are the seven sounds that come from the seven Chakras, from above below, in the subtle-physical. The seven musical notes sā, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, nī or do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, have their origin in these centres rising from below above.

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Canto Thirty-Nine

The lamp of her soul burned in a fruitful darkness

Where quiet void became a means to dissolve

The inherent issue of first mortality

Carrying yet in its backward-moving will

The mystery of this creation's godlessness.

So her luggage of time she left behind

To bring to it the treasures of the true,

To thought plenitudes of the silent spirit.

And in the siddhi of nature's dissolution

She joined back with the origin, love alone.

Then the form behind the impersonal grew bright.

27 May 2002

siddhi: a settled spiritual realisation

She joined back with the Origin:

The Mother's experience of 1 October 1958

Agenda, Vol. 1, pp. 198, 202-03.

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Canto Forty

But perhaps she would have slipped into that peace,

Forgetting the world, forgetting her Satyavan.

To the danger awoke the spirit of the earth earth

And it took awhile for Savitri to be.

Now light in the water and the smooth pebbles

Glistening with the sense of fairer life breathed joy

And the rishis of the forest suddenly felt

A new divinity invading them,

And stood creation's reality distinct.

A chant of the name filled her body's cells

And in it joined countless aspiring voices.

In matter's heart was blown the conch of triumph.

28 May 2002

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Canto Forty-One

The sky was crowded with a throng of gods

And golden Durga with sword in her hand

Guarded the kingly tree since the early dawn

And Satyavan and Savitri moved in the peace

Of that rich forest, destiny's rendezvous.

Year is the body and Satyavan must die

And three great times he uttered the mantric name.

The noon was filled with the creator's shadow

And the still river watched the motionless crane,

As if eternity had come to its end.

In the campanile of death tolled the hour

And no more was there Savitri's Satyavan.

30 May 2002

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Canto Forty-Two

The luminous flame left the clay-lamp behind

And, impelled by the path, walked into the night.

Now the old man with his chill pitiless look

Determined the movement of the captive poor,

Helpless mortality yielding to the fear

Terrible, the keeper of the souls of the dead.

But someone assumed charge of human Savitri

And she gathered within the strength that puts out death

And took courage to follow the god to the end.

In the oceanic surge of her silent will

Rested the exultant power that can save

The world from the fate of collapsing time.

31 May 2002

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Canto Forty-Three

Enraged by her firm intruding tread the person

Of the abyss swung back, as though agonised

The night grew more dreadful in her terror.

Nothing seemed meaningless and a graver aim

Sustained its might against the spirit's assault.

Imperious the voice bade her to return—

With boons in his bosom the deceased held dear.

But Savitri steadfast in the truth of her soul

Was alert to the reality of the world.

What boons these if earth remains ever death-bound!

From flames of the pyre must rise the birds of joy

And awakened dawns bring to life their love.

1 June 2002

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Canto Forty-Four

If death were not there life would disappear,

Even as would sweetness when absent is spite.

The abiding ender of the worlds must work

And uphold the marvellous claim of the soul,

Or else our superficial mortality

Never would suffer change and the dream-ideal

Find not a place to live in god's vastnesses.

Hence Satyavan through countless martyrdoms

Must advance and do well on the occult way.

But like a volcano burning upside down

A will lived in the mystery of the night

And saw the charming that can be true on earth.

2 June 2002

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Canto Forty-Five

Things of beauty were there in death's dream world

And all around prince Satyavan cast a spell

Of joy and honeyed life breathed fragrant truths.

But hope flounders on the rock of darkness

And a helpless phantom screams in the cloud

And incarnate gods depart in agony

And vain is the yearning to change this doleful earth,

An illusion to see love in the mortal's breast.

What mind if the horses of passion it reins not,

And what soul if it blooms not on the tree of time?

But Savitri let stream from her heart music,

Not dream but a roaring fire of happiness.

2 June 2002

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Canto Forty-Six

Is it not ananda that flows in a stream?

And ananda that surges in the calm ocean,

A wave of ananda on the waters of ananda,

And the boat of ananda and the winds of ananda,

The nest of ananda on the tree of ananda,

Ananda of death and ananda in death,

At the base, in the middle, on the summit

Ananda, ananda, all ananda!

O death to fill great life with ananda!

But victory in life wins not great death

And a nobler sacrifice must be kindled

And the supreme with his flaming spouse preside.

3 June 2002

Ananda: The highest creative Bliss founded on Reality.

The Mother speaks of life only without death as a blind attempt:

Agenda, Vol. 6, pp. 235-37.

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Canto Forty-Seven

But existential death armed with law

Respects not cloying lyricism of delight

And scoffs at wisdom that is not held by strength.

Golden paradise on earth is a dream

Paradisal and Savitri is naïve

That nature and spirit would consort here,

As if the truth-gods harboured an illusion

That the great sun would burn in body's house.

Adamant the dreadful will of darkness stood,

Dismissing hope of the mortal's return to life.

But the flaming woman on battleground

Took charge of god's work and fled the denial.

4 June 2002

Page 49


Canto Forty-Eight

The embodied nihil fled—only to appear

As the tempter divine behind the void,

The new gate through which Savitri forced the way

To claim Satyavan in the world of her choice,

The world of men and matter and joyous things.

Far behind were left the original creations

And in the tremendous hour of reality

She made her will one with the supreme's will

And in the luminous hush of her heart

Exultant rose truth-word of the topaz sky.

Then hurried the glad hymn of sweetness and love

And resplendent awoke the soul of earth to the sun.

5 June 2002

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Canto Forty-Nine

Happy life rushed in bird and beast and tree

And through dreaming quietude ran swift joys of men

And the rishis in the forest felt a change,

As though the past had vanished into fire

Of the yajna kindled to make wide the world.

Satyavan and Savitri tended the flames,

Flames whose tongues can bear expression of the true,

Hold in their leaping zest newborn greatnesses.

Moon-lotuses bloomed for the crimson bright

And Soma and Indra and Agni and Vayu

Came in their auspicious forms to celebrate

The birth of Savitr ̣in this creation.

5 June 2002

savitr ̣: The Sun-God.

Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri:

tat savitur varam rūpam jyotih ̣ parasya dhīmahi

yannah ̣satyena dīpayet.

Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitri,

the Light of the Supreme

which shall illumine us with the Truth.

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