BOOK SEVEN   The Book of Yoga   Canto One   The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain   FATE followed her foreseen immutable road. Man's hopes and longings build the journeying wheels That bear the body of his destiny And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal. His fate within him shapes his acts and rules; Its face and form already are born in him, Its parentage is in his secret soul: Here Matter seems to mould the body's life And the soul follows where its nature drives. Nature and Fate compel his free-will's choice. Bu

  Canto Five   The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness   THIS knowledge first he had of time-born men. Admitted through a curtain of bright mind That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight, He found the occult cave, the mystic door Near to the well of vision in the soul, And entered where the Wings of Glory brood In the silent space where all is for ever known. Indifferent to doubt and to belief, Avid of the naked real's single shock He shore the cord of mind that ties the earth-heart And cast away the yoke of Matter's law. The body's rules bound not the spirit's powers:

  PART THREE   BOOKS IX ­ XII     BOOK NINE   The Book of Eternal Night   Canto One   Towards the Black Void   SO WAS she left alone in the huge wood, Surrounded by a dim unthinking world, Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast. In her vast silent spirit motionless She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts, Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain: She rose not yet to face the dreadful god. Over the body she loved her soul leaned out In a great stillness without stir or voice, As if her mind had died with Satyavan. But still the

  Canto Four   The Quest   THE WORLD-WAYS opened before Savitri. At first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes Peopled her mind and kept her body's gaze. But as she moved across the changing earth A deeper consciousness welled up in her: A citizen of many scenes and climes, Each soil and country it had made its home; It took all clans and peoples for her own, Till the whole destiny of mankind was hers. These unfamiliar spaces on her way Were known and neighbours to a sense within, Landscapes recurred like lost forgotten fields, Cities and rivers and plains her vision claimed Like slow-recurring memories in front,

'Savitri' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 10   VOLUMES 33 and 34 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Savitri a Legend and a Symbol   Publisher's Note   The writing of Savitri extended over much of the later part of Sri Aurobindo's life. The earliest known manuscript is dated 1916. The original narrative

  BOOK TWELVE   Epilogue   Epilogue   The Return to Earth   OUT OF abysmal trance her spirit woke. Lain on the earth-mother's calm inconscient breast She saw the green-clad branches lean above Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life, And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call. Into the magic secrecy of the woods Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves, In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace. She pressed the living body of Satyavan: On her body's word

  Canto Five   The Finding of the Soul   ONWARD she passed seeking the soul's mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night of God. The light was quenched that helps the labouring world, The power that struggles and stumbles in our life; This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts, The striving heart its unavailing hopes. All knowledge failed and the Idea's forms And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech, Formless, ineffable, for ever the same. An innocent and holy Ignorance Adored like one who worships formless God The unseen Light she could not claim nor own. In a simple puri

  Canto Five   The Godheads of the Little Life   A FIXED and narrow power with rigid forms, He saw the empire of the little life, An unhappy corner in eternity. It lived upon the margin of the Idea Protected by Ignorance as in a shell. Then, hoping to learn the secret of this world He peered across its scanty fringe of sight, To disengage from its surface-clear obscurity The Force that moved it and the Idea that made, Imposing smallness on the Infinite, The ruling spirit of its littleness, The divine law that gave it right to be, Its claim on Nature and its need in Time. He plunged his gaze into the siege of mist That

' Savitri ' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 10   Note on the Text     Note on the Text   SAVITRI began as a narrative poem of moderate length based on a legend told in the Mahabharata. Sri Aurobindo considered the story to be originally "one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle". Bringing out its symbolism and charging it progressively with his own spiritual vision, he turned Savitri into the epic it is today. By the time it was published, some passages had gone through dozens of drafts. Sri Aurobindo explained how he wrote the poem: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I

  BOOK TEN   The Book of the Double Twilight   Canto One   The Dream Twilight of the Ideal   ALL STILL was darkness dread and desolate; There was no change nor any hope of change. In this black dream which was a house of Void, A walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought, Ever they drifted without aim or goal; Gloom led to worse gloom, depth to an emptier depth, In some positive Non-being's purposeless Vast Through formless wastes dumb and unknowable. An ineffectual beam of suffering light Through the despairing darkness dogged their steps Like the remembrance of a glory lost; Even while it grew, it seemed un