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Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Book by Sri Aurobindo · 42 quotes · Divine Method, Yoga, Divine Effect

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Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol Quotes

“A force of spare direct necessity Reduced the heavy framework of man’s days And his overburdening mass of outward needs To a first thin strip of simple animal wants, And the mighty wideness of the primitive earth And the brooding multitude of patient trees And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky And the solemn weight of the slowly passing months Had left in her deep room for thought and God. 01.02_003:024”

“But now the Light supreme is far away: Our conscious life obeys the inconscience’ laws; To ignorant purposes and blind desires Our hearts are moved by an ambiguous force; Even our mind’s conquests wear a battered crown. A slowly changing order binds our will. This is our doom until our souls are free. 02.05_043:025-027”

“One who has shaped this world is ever its lord: Our errors are his steps upon the way; He works through the fierce vicissitudes of our lives, He works through the hard breath of battle and toil, He works through our sins and sorrows and our tears, His knowledge overrules our nescience; Whatever the appearance we must bear, Whatever our strong ills and present fate, When nothing we can see but drift and bale, A mighty Guidance leads us still through all. 01.04_012:028”

“A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will: A prayer, a master act, a king idea Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule, One mighty deed can change the course of things; A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. 01.02_004:038-039”

“A giant order was discovered here Of which the tassel and extended fringe Are the scant stuff of our material lives. This overt universe whose figures hide The secrets merged in superconscient light, Wrote clear the letters of its glowing code: A map of subtle signs surpassing thought Was hung upon a wall of inmost mind. Illumining the world’s concrete images Into significant symbols by its gloss, It offered to the intuitive exegete Its reflex of the eternal Mystery. 01.05_024:001-003”

“All they have touched or seen they make their own, In Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill, Disrupt thought’s links and musing sequences, Break through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry Or they call the inhabitants of the abyss, Invite the instincts to forbidden joys, A laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth And with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor. Impotent to quell his terrible prisoners Appalled the householder helpless sits above, Taken from him his house is his no more. 07.02_117:032-033”

“He dreams sometimes of the revels of the gods And sees the Dionysian gesture pass,— A leonine greatness that would tear his soul If through his failing limbs and fainting heart The sweet and joyful mighty madness swept: Trivial amusements stimulate and waste The energy given to him to grow and be. His little hour is spent in little things. 02.05_046:007-008”

“Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched, And peered into gleaming endless corridors, Silent and listening in the silent heart For the coming of the new and the unknown. He gazed across the empty stillnesses And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea In the far avenues of the Beyond. He heard the secret Voice, the Word that knows, And saw the secret face that is our own. The inner planes uncovered their crystal doors; Strange powers and influences touched his life. A vision came of higher realms than ours, A consciousness of brighter fields and skies, Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men And subtler bodies than these passing frames, Objects too fine for our material grasp, Acts vibrant with a superhuman light And movements pushed by a superconscient force, And joys that never flowed through mortal limbs, And lovelier scenes than earth’s and happier lives. A consciousness of beauty and of bliss, A knowledge which became what it perceived, Replaced the separated sense and heart And drew all Nature into its embrace. 01.03_006:018-023”

“Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close: The waking ear of Nature heard her steps And wideness turned to her its limitless eye, And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds. All grew a consecration and a rite. Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven; The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind Arose and failed upon the altar hills; The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. 01.01_001:033-035”

“His failure is not failure whom God leads; Through all the slow mysterious march goes on: An immutable Power has made this mutable world; A self-fulfilling transcendence treads man’s road; The driver of the soul upon its path, It knows its steps, its way is inevitable And how shall the end be vain when God is guide? 03.04_089:049”