The Human Condition according to Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

[Guest guest]

Book II: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

Canto V: The Godheads of the Little Life

Page 160-161

 

I encourage all of you not to just read this excerpt, although long

as it may seem, but to read the full Canto on:

 

http://savitribysriaurobindo.com/completeText.htm

 

Meditate on these words and share them. May it not only alleviate the

mind but also resonate in your spirit. If one shall read Savitri,

that is, according to Aurobindo, an act of yoga itself. When you

reach the site, choose any of the cantos you wish to read from,

unless you wish to read the whole thing. You may order it on Amazon

or etc. $16-24.95.

 

Any explanations are welcome.

 

 

"This huge world unintelligibly turns

 

In the shadow of a mused Inconscience;

 

It hides a key to inner meanings missed,

 

It locks in our hearts a voice we cannot hear.

 

An enigmatic labour of the spirit,

 

An exact machine of which none knows the use,

 

An art and ingenuity without sense,

 

This minute elaborate orchestrated life

 

For ever plays its motiveless symphonies.

 

 

The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth;

 

It studies surface laws by surface thought,

 

Life's steps surveys and Nature's process sees,

 

Not seeing for what she acts or why we live;

 

It marks her tireless care of just device,

 

Her patient intricacy of fine detail,

 

The ingenious spirit's brave inventive plan

 

In her great futile mass of endless works,

 

Adds purposeful figures to her purposeless sum,

 

Its gabled storeys piles, its climbing roofs

 

On the close-carved foundations she has laid,

 

Imagined citadels reared in mythic air

 

Or mounts a stair of dream to a mystic moon:

 

 

Transient creations point and hit the sky:

 

A world-conjecture's scheme is laboured out

 

On the dim floor of mind's incertitude,

 

Or painfully built a fragmentary whole.

 

Impenetrable, a mystery recondite

 

Is the vast plan of which we are a part;

 

Its harmonies are discords to our view

 

Because we know not the great theme they serve.

 

Inscrutable work the cosmic agencies.

 

Only the fringe of a wide surge we see;

 

Our instruments have not that greater light,

 

Our will tunes not with the eternal Will,

 

Our heart's sight is too blind and passionate.

 

Impotent to share in Nature's mystic tact,

 

Inapt to feel the pulse and core of things,

 

Our reason cannot sound life's mighty sea

 

And only counts its waves and scans its foam;

 

It knows not whence these motions touch and pass,

 

It sees not whither sweeps the hurrying flood:

 

Only it strives to canalise its powers

 

And hopes to turn its course to human ends:

 

But all its means come from the Inconscient's store.

 

Unseen here act dim huge world-energies

 

And only trickles and currents are our share.

 

Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light

 

Catching at little fragments of the Truth

 

In a small corner of infinity,

 

Our lives are inlets of an ocean's force.

 

Our conscious movements have sealed origins

 

But with those shadowy seats no converse hold;

 

No understanding binds our comrade parts;

 

Our acts emerge from a crypt our minds ignore."

[Guest guest]

"This huge world unintelligibly turns

 

In the shadow of a mused Inconscience;

 

It hides a key to inner meanings missed,

 

It locks in our hearts a voice we cannot hear.

 

An enigmatic labour of the spirit,

 

An exact machine of which none knows the use,

 

An art and ingenuity without sense,

 

This minute elaborate orchestrated life

 

For ever plays its motiveless symphonies.

 

In this excerpt, the great Sage speaks of the odious cycles of

existence, appearing to have no such purpose. By saying it hides a

key and locks in our hearts a voice we cannot hear: that would be

considered the atman. Without attuning ourselves to the divine, we

will never understand or even begin our self-realization. Without

fulfilling the Self, all has no purpose.