Savitri, boek 1, The Book of Beginnings
voorgelezen door de Moeder met corresponderende tekst en achtergrondmuziek van Sunil (klik hier om Savitri met uitgebreide muziek te beluisteren)
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SAVITRI, INHOUD (klik op de link om direct naar het betreffende boek te gaan)
2. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
3. The Book of the Divine Mother
4. The Book of Birth and Quest
10. The Book of the Double Twilight
11. The Book of Everlasting Day
Book One. The Book of Beginnings
1.1 The Symbol Dawn
|
1.1.1 |
001 It was the hour before the Gods awake.
002 Across the path of the divine Event
003 The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
004 In her unlit temple of eternity,
005 Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge.
006 Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
007 In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
008 The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
009 A fathomless zero occupied the world.
|
1.1.2 |
023 Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
024 Its formless stupor without mind or life,
025 A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
026 Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
027 Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
028 Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
|
1.1.3 |
030 Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
031 A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
032 Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
033 Something that wished but knew not how to be,
034 Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
|
1.1.4 |
048 An unshaped consciousness desired light
049 And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
050 As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
051 Reminded of the endless need in things
052 The heedless Mother of the universe,
053 An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
|
1.1.5 |
058 Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
059 An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
060 A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
061 It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
062 The torpor of a sick and weary world,
063 To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
064 Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
|
1.1.6 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
078. All can be done if the god-touch is there.
079. A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
080. Amid the Night’s forlorn indifference.
…
085. Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
086. A slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal.
…
090. A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
091. That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,
092. Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
093. A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.
094. One lucent corner windowing hidden things
095. Forced the world’s blind immensity to sight.
|
1.1.7 |
096 The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
097 From the reclining body of a god.
|
1.1.8 |
102 A glamour from unreached transcendences
103 Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
104 A message from the unknown immortal Light
105 Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,
106 Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
107 And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
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1.1.9 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
109. On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood
110. And bent over earth’s pondering forehead curve.
…
120. Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
121. Infinity’s centre, a Face of rapturous calm
122. Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
123. A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.
124. Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
125. The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
126. That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
127. And saw the spaces ready for her feet.
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1.1.10 |
130 Earth felt the Imperishable’s passage close:
131 The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
132 And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
133 And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
134 Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.
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1.1.11 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
135. All grew a consecration and a rite.
136. Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;
137. The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
138. Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
139. The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.
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1.1.12 |
140 Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
141 On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
142 Here where one knows not even the step in front
143 And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
144 On this anguished and precarious field of toil
145 Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
146 Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
147 Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
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1.1.13 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
171. The excess of beauty natural to god-kind
172. Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes;
173. Too mystic-real for space-tenancy
174. Her body of glory was expunged from heaven:
175. The rarity and wonder lived no more.
176. There was the common light of earthly day.
…
180. All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
181. The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
182. Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge,
183. And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
184. Alone who stares at the future’s covered face,
185. Man lifted up the burden of his fate.
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1.1.14 |
186 And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
187 That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner’s chant
. . .
205 A narrow movement on Time’s deep abysm,
206 Life’s fragile littleness denied the power,
207 The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
208 She had brought with her into the human form,
209 The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
210 The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.
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1.1.15 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
211. Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears
212. Rejected the undying rapture’s boon:
213. Offered to the daughter of infinity
214. Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.
…
222. Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:
…
229. Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,
230. It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:
231. Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
232. It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
233. It meets the sons of God with death and pain.
|
1.1.16 |
247 Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
248 Awaiting her ordeal’s hour abode,
249 Outcast from her inborn felicity,
250 Accepting life’s obscure terrestrial robe,
251 Hiding herself even from those she loved,
252 The godhead greater by a human fate.
|
1.1.17 |
282 Against the evil at life’s afflicted roots,
283 Her own calamity its private sign,
284 Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.
|
1.1.18 |
307 At the summons of her body’s voiceless call
308 Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
309 Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
310 Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
311 Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
312 Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
|
1.1.19 |
341 Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
342 This was the day when Satyavan must die.
1.2. The Issue
|
1.2.1 |
025 An absolute supernatural darkness falls
026 On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
027 An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means;
028 Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
029 And flung back on his naked primal need,
030 He at length must cast from him his surface soul
031 And be the ungarbed entity within:
032 That hour had fallen now on Savitri.
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1.2.2 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
094. Around her were the austere sky-pointing hills,
095. And the green murmurous broad deep-thoughted woods
096. Muttered incessantly their muffled spell.
097. A dense magnificent coloured self-wrapped life
098. Draped in the leaves’ vivid emerald monotone
099. And set with chequered sunbeams and blithe flowers
100. Immured her destiny’s secluded scene.
101. There had she grown to the stature of her spirit:
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1.2.3 |
112 And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
113 And the brooding multitude of patient trees
114 And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky
115 And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months
116 Had left in her deep room for thought and God.
117 There was her drama’s radiant prologue lived.
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1.2.4 |
124 Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
125 Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
126 Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
127 Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
128 Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
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1.2.5 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
134. All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
135. Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven,
136. Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
137. Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
138. Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
139. Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
140. Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
141. Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.
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1.2.6 |
142 As in a mystic and dynamic dance
143 A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
144 Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault
145 Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
146 A heart of silence in the hands of joy
147 Inhabited with rich creative beats
148 A body like a parable of dawn
149 That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
150 Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
|
1.2.7 |
161 As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
162 Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
163 And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
164 In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
165 One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
166 Recover the lost habit of happiness,
167 Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
168 And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.
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1.2.8 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
200. Almost they saw who lived within her light
201. Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres
202. Descended from its unattainable realms
203. In her attracting advent’s luminous wake,
204. The white-fire dragon-bird of endless bliss
205. Drifting with burning wings above her days:
206. Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.
…
233. Whether to bear with Ignorance and death
234. Or hew the ways of Immortality,
235. To win or lose the godlike game for man,
236. Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice.
237. But not to submit and suffer was she born;
238. To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.
…
241. An image fluttering on the screen of Fate,
242. Half-animated for a passing show,
243. Or a castaway on the ocean of Desire
244. Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport
245. And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,
|
1.2.9 |
246 A creature born to bend beneath the yoke,
247 A chattel and a plaything of Time’s lords,
248 Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed
249 One slow move forward on a measureless board
250 In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,—
251 Such is the human figure drawn by Time.
|
1.2.10 |
252 A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.
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1.2.11 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
263. Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law,
264. At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace.
|
1.2.12 |
265 A grey tribunal of the Ignorance,
266 An Inquisition of the priests of Night
267 In judgment sit on the adventurer soul,
268 And the dual tables and the Karmic norm
269 Restrain the Titan in us and the God:
269 Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe
270 Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility.
|
1.2.13 |
274 Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.
|
1.2.14 |
327 A magic leverage suddenly is caught
328 That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will:
329 A prayer, a master act, a king idea
330 Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.
|
1.2.15 |
364 A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
365 Empowered to force the door denied and closed
366 Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute
367 And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.
1.3. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release
|
1.3.1 |
001 A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth.
002 One in the front of the immemorial quest,
. . .
007 A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air,
008 Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power.
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1.3.2 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
104. A Presence wrought behind the ambiguous screen:
…
112. Then came the abrupt transcendent miracle:
113. The masked immaculate Grandeur could outline,
114. At travail in the occult womb of life,
115. His dreamed magnificence of things to be.
116. A crown of the architecture of the worlds,
117. A mystery of married Earth and Heaven
…
119. A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time.
120. For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above.
…
124. The landmarks of the little person fell,
125. The island ego joined its continent.
126. Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:
127. Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown.
…
204. He sat in secret chambers looking out
205. Into the luminous countries of the unborn
206. Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true
…
212. He lived in the mystic space where thought is born
213. And will is nursed by an ethereal Power
214. And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths
215. Till it grows into the likeness of a god.
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1.3.3 |
220 Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh
221 He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,
222 And peered into gleaming endless corridors,
223 Silent and listening in the silent heart
224 For the coming of the new and the unknown.
225 He gazed across the empty stillnesses
226 And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea
227 In the far avenues of the Beyond.
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1.3.4 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
306. The kings of evil and the kings of good,
307. Appellants at the reason’s judgment seat,
308. Proclaimed the gospel of their opposites,
309. And all believed themselves spokesmen of God:
310. The gods of light and titans of the dark
311. Battled for his soul as for a costly prize.
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1.3.5 |
359 There knowing herself by her own termless self,
360 Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute
361 Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,
362 All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.
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1.3.6 |
451 An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
452 It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
453 Or a dull gravitation drags us down
454 To the blind driven inertia of our base.
455 This too the supreme Diplomat can use,
456 He makes our fall a means for greater rise.
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1.3.7 |
481 Always the power poured back like sudden rain,
482 Or slowly in his breast a presence grew;
483 It clambered back to some remembered height
484 Or soared above the peak from which it fell.
485 Each time he rose there was a larger poise,
486 A dwelling on a higher spirit plane;
487 The Light remained in him a longer space.
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1.3.8 |
534 Already in him was seen that task of Power:
535 Life made its home on the high tops of self;
536 His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;
537 Only life’s lower reaches remained dim.
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1.3.9 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
544. Lightnings of glory after glory burned,
545. Experience was a tale of blaze and fire,
546. Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,
547. Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen;
548. Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought,
549. Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses,
550. Rivers poured down of bliss and luminous force,
551. Visits of beauty, storm-sweeps of delight
552. Rained from the all-powerful Mystery above.
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1.3.10 |
553 Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience.
554 A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;
. . .
558 The voices that an inner listening hears
559 Conveyed to him their prophet utterances,
560 And flame-wrapped outbursts of the immortal Word
561 And flashes of an occult revealing Light
562 Approached him from the unreachable Secrecy.
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1.3.11 |
575 Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
576 A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
577 Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
578 Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
. . .
596 All-vision gathered into a single ray,
597 As when the eyes stare at an invisible point
598 Till through the intensity of one luminous spot
599 An apocalypse of a world of images
600 Enters into the kingdom of the seer.
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1.3.12 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
601. A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose;
602. It rent the gauze opaque of Nescience:
603. Her lifted finger’s keen unthinkable tip
604. Bared with a stab of flame the closed Beyond.
|
1.3.13 |
615 Or she gathered the lost secrets dropped by Time
616 In the dust and crannies of his mounting route
617 Mid old forsaken dreams of hastening Mind
618 And buried remnants of forgotten space.
|
1.3.14 |
619 A traveller between summit and abyss,
620 She joined the distant ends, the viewless deeps
|
1.3.15 |
696 The inspiring goddess entered a mortal’s breast,
697 Made there her study of divining thought
698 And sanctuary of prophetic speech
699 And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:
700 All was made wide above, all lit below.
701 In darkness’ core she dug out wells of light,
702 On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,
703 Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts
|
1.3.16 |
809 A genius heightened in his body’s cells
810 That knew the meaning of his fate-hedged works
811 Akin to the march of unaccomplished Powers
812 Beyond life’s arc in spirit’s immensities.
813 Apart he lived in his mind’s solitude,
814 A demigod shaping the lives of men:
815 One soul’s ambition lifted up the race;
. . .
819 He drew the energies that transmute an age.
1.4. The Secret Knowledge
|
1.4.1 |
001 On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.
002 Our early approaches to the Infinite
003 Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge
004 While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.
005 What now we see is a shadow of what must come.
|
1.4.2 |
033 A shapeless memory lingers in us still
034 And sometimes, when our sight is turned within,
035 Earth’s ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;
036 There is a short miraculous escape.
|
1.4.3 |
040 Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
041 Still regions of imperishable Light,
042 All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
043 And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
044 And calm immensities of spirit space.
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1.4.3 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
065. In moments when the inner lamps are lit
066. And the life’s cherished guests are left outside,
067. Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.
|
1.4.5 |
111 A treasure of honey in the combs of God,
112 A Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,
113 It is our glory of the flame of God,
114 Our golden fountain of the world’s delight,
115 An immortality cowled in the cape of death,
116 The shape of our unborn divinity.
|
1.4.6 |
160 Along a path of aeons serpentine
161 In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
162 The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.
|
1.4.7 |
163 A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
164 A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
165 A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
166 In her unconscious orbit through the Void
167 Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
168 A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;
|
1.4.8 |
178 Ignorant and weary and invincible,
179 She seeks through the soul’s war and quivering pain
180 The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
181 A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
|
1.4.9 |
185 A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,
186 Her state she learns to read and the act she has done,
187 But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,
188 Herself and all of which she is the sign.
|
1.4.10 |
199 A vision meets her of supernal Powers
200 That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
201 Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.
202 Then is she moved to all that she is not
203 And stretches arms to what was never hers.
|
1.4.11 |
204 Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
205 Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods
206 Soliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time
207 What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
208 A Mind unvisited by illusion’s gleams,
209 A Will expressive of soul’s deity,
210 A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
211 A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.
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1.4.12 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
280. Only the Immortals on their deathless heights
…
285. Can see the Idea, the Might that change Time’s course,
286. Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds,
287. Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,
288. The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,
289. Bearing the superhuman Rider, near
290. And, impassive to earth’s din and startled cry,
291. Return to the silence of the hills of God;
292. As lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass
293. And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life.
294. Above the world the world-creators stand,
295. In the phenomenon see its mystic source.
296. These heed not the deceiving outward play,
297. They turn not to the moment’s busy tramp,
298. But listen with the still patience of the Unborn
299. For the slow footsteps of far Destiny
…
320. Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.
321. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
322. And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
323. As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
324. Of one who steps unseen into his house.
|
1.4.13 |
332 In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
. . .
338 A few shall see what none yet understands;
339 God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
340 For man shall not know the coming till its hour
341 And belief shall be not till the work is done.
|
1.4.14 |
394 In the wide signless ether of the Self,
395 In the unchanging Silence white and nude,
396 Aloof, resplendent like gold dazzling suns
397 Veiled by the ray no mortal eye can bear,
398 The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies
399 Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.
|
1.4.15 |
467 An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.
468 It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;
469 In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe
470 The one inevitable supreme result
471 No will can take away and no doom change,
472 The crown of conscious Immortality,
473 The godhead promised to our struggling souls
474 When first man’s heart dared death and suffered life.
|
1.4.16 |
499 In the mystery of the deeps that God has built
500 For his abode below the Thinker’s sight,
. . .
506 In this gold dome on a black dragon base,
507 The conscious Force that acts in Nature’s breast,
508 A dark-robed labourer in the cosmic scheme
509 Carrying clay images of unborn gods,
. . .
513 Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge.
|
1.4.17 |
551 There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
552 In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
553 And light and darkness are their eyes’ interchange;
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1.4.18 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
568. Here on the earth where we must fill our parts,
569. We know not how shall run the drama’s course;
570. Our uttered sentences veil in their thought.
571. Her mighty plan she holds back from our sight:
572. She has concealed her glory and her bliss
573. And disguised the Love and Wisdom in her heart;
…
594. As one too great for him he worships her;
595. He adores her as his regent of desire,
596. He yields to her as the mover of his will,
597. He burns the incense of his nights and days
598. Offering his life, a splendour of sacrifice.
…
609. He leans on her for all he does and is:
610. He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
611. And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
612. And suns in the glory of her passing smile.
613. In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;
…
622. Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
623. His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
624. Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,
625. And none could bear but for his strength within,
626. Yet none would leave because of his delight.
|
1.4.19 |
627 His works, his thoughts have been devised by her,
628 His being is a mirror vast of hers:
629 Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
630 His deeds obey her heart’s unspoken demands:
|
1.4.20 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
659. His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
…
661. Her endless space is the playground of his thoughts;
…
689. To reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers;
690. He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
691. His face of human thought puts on a crown.
…
696. To obey she feigns, she follows her creature’s lead:
697. For him she was made, lives only for his use.
698. But conquering her, then is he most her slave;
699. He is her dependent, all his means are hers;
700. Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.
701. At last he wakes to a memory of Self:
702. He sees within the face of deity,
703. The Godhead breaks out through the human mould:
704. Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.
…
713. Obedient to World-Nature’s dumb control,
714. Driven by his own formidable Power,
715. His chosen partner in a titan game,
716. Her will he has made the master of his fate,
…
727. He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,
728. A tireless amateur of her world-delight,
729. He rejoices in her every thought and act
730. And gives consent to all that she can wish;
|
1.4.21 |
736 The master of existence lurks in us
737 And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
738 In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.
739 The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
740 He has made the universe his pastime’s field,
741 A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
|
1.4.22 |
771 Then in a figure of divinity
772 The Maker shall recast us and impose
773 A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
774 Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
775 Touching the moment with eternity.
|
1.4.23 |
776 This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
777 A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
778 His nature we must put on as he put ours;
779 We are sons of God and must be even as he:
780 His human portion, we must grow divine.
781 Our life is a paradox with God for key.
|
1.4.24 |
786 For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
787 The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.
|
1.4.25 |
824 He is the explorer and the mariner
825 On a secret inner ocean without bourne:
826 He is the adventurer and cosmologist
827 Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.
|
1.4.26 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
843. This is the sailor on the flow of Time,
…
856. He in a petty coastal traffic plies,
857. His pay doled out from port to neighbour port,
858. Content with his safe round’s unchanging course,
859. He hazards not the new and the unseen.
…
864. On a commissioned keel his merchant hull
865. Serves the world’s commerce in the riches of Time
866. Severing the foam of a great land-locked sea
867. To reach unknown harbour lights in distant climes
868. And open markets for life’s opulent arts,
869. Rich bales, carved statuettes, hued canvases,
870. And jewelled toys brought for an infant’s play
|
1.4.27 |
873 Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks,
. . .
884 He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
885 He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
886 Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
887 Its images veiling infinity.
|
1.4.28 |
888 Earth’s borders recede and the terrestrial air
889 Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
. . .
892 The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
893 Into Eyes that look upon eternity.
|
1.4.29 |
894 A greater world Time’s traveller must explore.
895 At last he hears a chanting on the heights
896 And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
897 He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
898 And passes over the edge of mortal sight
899 To a new vision of himself and things.
|
1.4.30 |
(zonder achtergrondmuziek) |
900. He is a spirit in an unfinished world
901. That knows him not and cannot know itself:
902. The surface symbol of his goalless quest
903. Takes deeper meanings to his inner view;
904. His is a search of darkness for the light,
905. Of mortal life for immortality.
906. In the vessel of an earthly embodiment
907. Over the narrow rails of limiting sense
908. He looks out on the magic waves of Time
909. Where mind like a moon illumines the world’s dark.
910. There is limned ever retreating from the eyes,
911. As if in a tenuous misty dream-light drawn,
912. The outline of a dim mysterious shore.
913. A sailor on the Inconscient’s fathomless sea,
914. He voyages through a starry world of thought
915. On Matter’s deck to a spiritual sun.
916. Across the noise and multitudinous cry,
917. Across the rapt unknowable silences,
918. Through a strange mid-world under supernal skies,
919. Beyond earth’s longitudes and latitudes,
920. His goal is fixed outside all present maps.
|
1.4.31 |
921 But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
922 Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
923 In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
924 Driven by her breath across life’s tossing deep,
925 Through the thunder’s roar and through the windless hush,
926 Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
927 He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
|
1.4.32 |
928 Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
929 Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
930 He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
931 A new mind and body in the city of God
931 And enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house
932 And make the finite one with Infinity.
|
1.4.33 |
941 A power is on him from her occult force
942 That ties him to his own creation’s fate,
943 And never can the mighty Traveller rest
944 And never can the mystic voyage cease
945 Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul
946 And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
|
1.4.34 |
947 As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
948 For this is sure that he and she are one;
|
1.4.35 |
957 This constant will she covered with her sport,
958 To evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,
959 With the Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,
960 Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
961 And raise a lost Power from its python sleep
962 That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
963 And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.
|
1.4.36 |
964 For this he left his white infinity
965 And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,
966 That Godhead’s seed might flower in mindless Space.
1.5. The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness
|
1.5.1 |
001 This knowledge first he had of time-born men.
002 Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
003 That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight,
004 He found the occult cave, the mystic door
005 Near to the well of vision in the soul,
006 And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
007 In the silent space where all is for ever known.
|
1.5.2 |
020 There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
021 Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
022 And there the tables of the sacred Law,
. . .
027 The symbol powers of number and of form,
028 And the secret code of the history of the world
029 And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
030 Are written in the mystic heart of Life.
|
1.5.3 |
031 In the glow of the spirit’s room of memories
032 He could recover the luminous marginal notes
033 Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll,
|
1.5.4 |
071 He saw the unshaped thought in soulless forms,
072 Knew Matter pregnant with spiritual sense,
073 Mind dare the study of the Unknowable,
074 Life its gestation of the Golden Child.
|
1.5.5 |
079 A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
080 A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
081 A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
082 And Fate revealed a chain of seeing Will;
083 A conscious wideness filled the old dumb Space.
084 In the Void he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.
|
1.5.6 |
085 A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
086 And to discern the superhuman’s form
087 He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
088 Aspiring to bring down a greater world.
|
1.5.7 |
129 A packed assemblage of crude tentative lives
130 Are pieced into a tessellated whole.
|
1.5.6 |
158 An animal with some instincts of a god,
159 His life a story too common to be told,
160 His deeds a number summing up to nought,
161 His consciousness a torch lit to be quenched,
162 His hope a star above a cradle and grave.
|
1.5.7 |
174 Impassive he lived immune from earthly hopes,
175 A figure in the ineffable Witness’ shrine
176 Pacing the vast cathedral of his thoughts
177 Under its arches dim with infinity
178 And heavenward brooding of invisible wings.
|
1.5.8 |
184 A universal light was in his eyes,
185 A golden influx flowed through heart and brain;
186 A Force came down into his mortal limbs,
187 A current from eternal seas of Bliss;
188 He felt the invasion and the nameless joy.
|
1.5.9 |
207 One-pointed to the immaculate Delight,
208 Questing for God as for a splendid prey,
209 He mounted burning like a cone of fire.
|
1.5.10 |
238 His spirit mingles with eternity’s heart
239 And bears the silence of the Infinite.
|
1.5.11 |
251 His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp.
. . .
256 In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
257 Hurried into unimaginable depths,
258 Upborne into immeasurable heights,
259 It was torn out from its mortality
260 And underwent a new and bourneless change.
|
1.5.12 |
267 As when a timeless Eye annuls the hours
268 Abolishing the agent and the act,
269 So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure:
270 His wakened mind became an empty slate
271 On which the Universal and Sole could write.
|
1.5.13 |
290 The little ego’s ring could join no more;
291 In the enormous spaces of the self
292 The body now seemed only a wandering shell,
293 His mind the many-frescoed outer court
294 Of an imperishable Inhabitant:
295 His spirit breathed a superhuman air.
|
1.5.14 |
319 There was no small death-hunted creature more,
320 No fragile form of being to preserve
321 From an all-swallowing Immensity.
|
1.5.15 |
330 A secret Nature stripped of her defence,
. . .
333 Lay bare to the burning splendour of his will.
. . .
345 Her diagrams of geometric force,
346 Her potencies of marvel-fraught design
347 Courted employment by an earth-nursed might.
|
1.5.16 |
476 A border sovereign is the occult Force.
. . .
494 A magic porch of entry glimmering
495 Quivered in a penumbra of screened Light,
496 A court of the mystical traffic of the worlds,
497 A balcony and miraculous fa‡ade.
|
1.5.17 |
524 Ascending and descending twixt life’s poles
525 The seried kingdoms of the graded Law
526 Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,
. . .
530 Climbed back from Time into undying Self,
531 Up a golden ladder carrying the soul,
532 Tying with diamond threads the Spirit’s extremes.
|
1.5.18 |
619 Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight
620 Stretched out in an ecstasy of widenesses
621 Beyond our indigent corporeal range.