Here is the full text of Canto Four, The Secret Knowledge, Book One, The Book of Beginnings, as we have in the Revised Edition of Savitri, 1993, pp. 46-73.
On a height
he stood that looked towards greater heights.
Our early
approaches to the Infinite
Are sunrise
splendours on a marvellous verge
While lingers
yet unseen the glorious sun.
What now we
see is a shadow of what must come.
The earth's
uplook to a remote Unknown
Is a preface
only of the epic climb
Of human soul
from its flat earthly state
To the
discovery of a greater self
And the far
gleam of an eternal Light.
This world is
a beginning and a base
Where Life and
Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn
Power must build reality.
A deathbound
littleness is not all we are:
Immortal our
forgotten vastnesses
Await
discovery in our summit selves;
Unmeasured breadths and depths of being are ours.
Akin to the
ineffable Secrecy,
Mystic,
eternal in unrealised Time,
Neighbours of
Heaven are Nature's altitudes.
To these
high-peaked dominions sealed to our search,
Too far from
surface Nature's postal routes,
Too lofty for
our mortal lives to breathe,
Deep in us a
forgotten kinship points
And a faint
voice of ecstasy and prayer
Calls to
those lucent lost immensities.
Even when we
fail to look into our souls
Or lie
embedded in earthly consciousness,
Still have we
parts that grow towards the light,
Yet are there
luminous tracts and heavens serene
And Eldorados
of splendour and ecstasy
And temples
to the godhead none can see.
A shapeless
memory lingers in us still
And
sometimes, when our sight is turned within,
Earth's
ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;
There is a
short miraculous escape.
This narrow
fringe of clamped experience
We leave
behind meted to us as life,
Our little
walks, our insufficient reach.
Our souls can
visit in great lonely hours
Still regions
of imperishable Light,
All-seeing
eagle-peaks of silent Power
And
moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
And calm
immensities of spirit space.
In the
unfolding process of the Self
Sometimes the
inexpressible Mystery
Elects a
human vessel of descent.
A breath
comes down from a supernal air,
A Presence is
born, a guiding Light awakes,
A stillness
falls upon the instruments:
Fixed,
motionless like a marble monument,
Stone-calm,
the body is a pedestal
Supporting a
figure of eternal Peace.
Or a
revealing Force sweeps blazing in;
Out of some
vast superior continent
Knowledge
breaks through trailing its radiant seas,
And Nature
trembles with the power, the flame.
A greater
Personality sometimes
Possesses us
which yet we know is ours:
Or we adore
the Master of our souls.
Then the
small bodily ego thins and falls;
No more
insisting on its separate self,
Losing the
punctilio of its separate birth,
It leaves us
one with Nature and with God.
In moments
when the inner lamps are lit
And the
life's cherished guests are left outside,
Our spirit
sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.
A wider
consciousness opens then its doors;
Invading from
spiritual silences
A ray of the
timeless Glory stoops awhile
To commune
with our seized illumined clay
And leaves
its huge white stamp upon our lives.
In the
oblivious field of mortal mind,
Revealed to
the closed prophet eyes of trance
Or in some
deep internal solitude
Witnessed by
a strange immaterial sense,
The signals
of eternity appear.
The truth
mind could not know unveils its face,
We hear what
mortal ears have never heard,
We feel what
earthly sense has never felt,
We love what
common hearts repel and dread;
Our minds
hush to a bright Omniscient;
A Voice calls
from the chambers of the soul;
We meet the
ecstasy of the Godhead's touch
In golden
privacies of immortal fire.
These signs
are native to a larger self
That lives
within us by ourselves unseen;
Only
sometimes a holier influence comes,
A tide of
mightier surgings bears our lives
And a diviner
Presence moves the soul;
Or through
the earthly coverings something breaks,
A grace and
beauty of spiritual light,
The murmuring
tongue of a celestial fire.
Ourself and a
high stranger whom we feel,
It is and
acts unseen as if it were not;
It follows
the line of sempiternal birth,
Yet seems to
perish with its mortal frame.
Assured of the
Apocalypse to be,
It reckons
not the moments and the hours;
Great,
patient, calm it sees the centuries pass,
Awaiting the
slow miracle of our change
In the sure
deliberate process of world-force
And the long
march of all-revealing Time.
It is the
origin and the master-clue,
A silence
overhead, an inner voice,
A living
image seated in the heart,
An unwalled
wideness and a fathomless point,
The truth of
all these cryptic shows in Space,
The Real
towards which our strivings move,
The secret
grandiose meaning of our lives.
A treasure of
honey in the combs of God,
A Splendour
burning in a tenebrous cloak,
It is our
glory of the flame of God,
Our golden
fountain of the world's delight,
An
immortality cowled in the cape of death,
The shape of
our unborn divinity.
It guards for
us our fate in depths within
Where sleeps
the eternal seed of transient things.
Always we
bear in us a magic key
Concealed in
life's hermetic envelope.
A burning
Witness in the sanctuary
Regards
through Time and the blind walls of Form;
A timeless
Light is in his hidden eyes;
He sees the
secret things no words can speak
And knows the
goal of the unconscious world
And the heart
of the mystery of the journeying years.
But all is
screened, subliminal, mystical;
It needs the
intuitive heart, the inward turn,
It needs the
power of a spiritual gaze.
Else to our
waking mind's small moment look
A goalless
voyage seems our dubious course
Some Chance
has settled or hazarded some Will,
Or a
Necessity without aim or cause
Unwillingly
compelled to emerge and be.
In this dense
field where nothing is plain or sure,
Our very
being seems to us questionable,
Our life a
vague experiment, the soul
A flickering
light in a strange ignorant world,
The earth a
brute mechanic accident,
A net of death
in which by chance we live.
All we have
learned appears a doubtful guess,
The
achievement done a passage or a phase
Whose farther
end is hidden from our sight,
A chance
happening or a fortuitous fate.
Out of the
unknown we move to the unknown.
Ever surround
our brief existence here
Grey shadows
of unanswered questionings;
The dark
Inconscient's signless mysteries
Stand up
unsolved behind Fate's starting-line.
An aspiration
in the Night's profound,
Seed of a
perishing body and half-lit mind,
Uplifts its
lonely tongue of conscious fire
Towards an
undying Light for ever lost;
Only it
hears, sole echo of its call,
The dim reply
in man's unknowing heart
And meets,
not understanding why it came
Or for what
reason is the suffering here,
God's
sanction to the paradox of life
And the
riddle of the Immortal's birth in Time.
Along a path
of aeons serpentine
In the coiled
blackness of her nescient course
The
Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.
A Being is in
her whom she hopes to know,
A Word speaks
to her heart she cannot hear,
A Fate
compels whose form she cannot see.
In her
unconscious orbit through the Void
Out of her
mindless depths she strives to rise,
A perilous
life her gain, a struggling joy;
A Thought
that can conceive but hardly knows
Arises slowly
in her and creates
The idea, the
speech that labels more than it lights;
A trembling
gladness that is less than bliss
Invades from
all this beauty that must die.
Alarmed by
the sorrow dragging at her feet
And conscious
of the high things not yet won,
Ever she
nurses in her sleepless breast
An inward
urge that takes from her rest and peace.
Ignorant and
weary and invincible,
She seeks
through the soul's war and quivering pain
The pure
perfection her marred nature needs,
A breath of
Godhead on her stone and mire.
A faith she
craves that can survive defeat,
The sweetness
of a love that knows not death,
The radiance
of a truth for ever sure.
A light grows
in her, she assumes a voice,
Her state she
learns to read and the act she has done,
But the one
needed truth eludes her grasp,
Herself and
all of which she is the sign.
An
inarticulate whisper drives her steps
Of which she
feels the force but not the sense;
A few rare
intimations come as guides,
Immense
divining flashes cleave her brain,
And sometimes
in her hours of dream and muse
The truth
that she has missed looks out on her
As if far off
and yet within her soul.
A change
comes near that flees from her surmise
And, ever
postponed, compels attempt and hope,
Yet seems too
great for mortal hope to dare.
A vision
meets her of supernal Powers
That draw her
as if mighty kinsmen lost
Approaching
with estranged great luminous gaze.
Then is she
moved to all that she is not
And stretches
arms to what was never hers.
Outstretching
arms to the unconscious Void,
Passionate
she prays to invisible forms of Gods
Soliciting
from dumb Fate and toiling Time
What most she
needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind
unvisited by illusion's gleams,
A Will
expressive of soul's deity,
A Strength
not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that
drags not sorrow as its shade.
For these she
yearns and feels them destined hers:
Heaven's
privilege she claims as her own right.
Just is her
claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,
Clear in a
greater light than reason owns:
Our intuitions
are its title-deeds;
Our souls
accept what our blind thoughts refuse.
Earth's
winged chimaeras are Truth's steeds in Heaven,
The
impossible God's sign of things to be.
But few can
look beyond the present state
Or overleap
this matted hedge of sense.
All that
transpires on earth and all beyond
Are parts of
an illimitable plan
The One keeps
in his heart and knows alone.
Our outward
happenings have their seed within,
And even this
random Fate that imitates Chance,
This mass of
unintelligible results,
Are the dumb
graph of truths that work unseen:
The laws of
the Unknown create the known.
The events
that shape the appearance of our lives
Are a cipher
of subliminal quiverings
Which rarely
we surprise or vaguely feel,
Are an
outcome of suppressed realities
That hardly
rise into material day:
They are born
from the spirit's sun of hidden powers
Digging a tunnel through emergency.
But who shall
pierce into the cryptic gulf
And learn
what deep necessity of the soul
Determined
casual deed and consequence?
Absorbed in a
routine of daily acts,
Our eyes are
fixed on an external scene;
We hear the
crash of the wheels of Circumstance
And wonder at
the hidden cause of things.
Yet a
foreseeing Knowledge might be ours,
If we could
take our spirit's stand within,
If we could hear the muffled daemon voice.
Too seldom is
the shadow of what must come
Cast in an
instant on the secret sense
Which feels
the shock of the invisible,
And seldom in
the few who answer give
The mighty
process of the cosmic Will
Communicates
its image to our sight,
Identifying
the world's mind with ours.
Our range is
fixed within the crowded arc
Of what we
observe and touch and thought can guess
And rarely
dawns the light of the Unknown
Waking in us
the prophet and the seer.
The outward
and the immediate are our field,
The dead past
is our background and support;
Mind keeps
the soul prisoner, we are slaves to our acts;
We cannot
free our gaze to reach wisdom's sun.
Inheritor of
the brief animal mind,
Man, still a
child in Nature's mighty hands,
In the
succession of the moments lives;
To a changing
present is his narrow right;
His memory
stares back at a phantom past,
The future
flees before him as he moves;
He sees
imagined garments, not a face.
Armed with a
limited precarious strength,
He saves his
fruits of work from adverse chance.
A struggling
ignorance is his wisdom's mate:
He waits to
see the consequence of his acts,
He waits to
weigh the certitude of his thoughts,
He knows not
what he shall achieve or when;
He knows not
whether at last he shall survive,
Or end like
the mastodon and the sloth
And perish
from the earth where he was king.
He is
ignorant of the meaning of his life,
He is
ignorant of his high and splendid fate.
Only the
Immortals on their deathless heights
Dwelling
beyond the walls of Time and Space,
Masters of
living, free from the bonds of Thought,
Who are
overseers of Fate and Chance and Will
And experts
of the theorem of world-need,
Can see the
Idea, the Might that change Time's course,
Come maned
with light from undiscovered worlds,
Hear, while
the world toils on with its deep blind heart,
The galloping
hooves of the unforeseen event,
Bearing the
superhuman Rider, near
And,
impassive to earth's din and startled cry,
Return to the
silence of the hills of God;
As lightning
leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass
And leave
their mark on the trampled breast of Life.
Above the
world the world-creators stand,
In the
phenomenon see its mystic source.
These heed
not the deceiving outward play,
They turn not
to the moment's busy tramp,
But listen
with the still patience of the Unborn
For the slow
footsteps of far Destiny
Approaching
through huge distances of Time,
Unmarked by
the eye that sees effect and cause,
Unheard mid
the clamour of the human plane.
Attentive to
an unseen Truth they seize
A sound as of
invisible augur wings,
Voices of an
unplumbed significance,
Mutterings
that brood in the core of Matter's sleep.
In the
heart's profound audition they can catch
The murmurs
lost by Life's uncaring ear,
A
prophet-speech in Thought's omniscient trance.
Above the
illusion of the hopes that pass,
Behind the
appearance and the overt act,
Behind this
clock-work Chance and vague surmise,
Amid the
wrestle of force, the trampling feet,
Across the
cries of anguish and of joy,
Across the
triumph, fighting and despair,
They watch
the Bliss for which earth's heart has cried
On the long
road which cannot see its end
Winding
undetected through the sceptic days
And to meet
it guide the unheedful moving world.
Thus will the
masked Transcendent mount his throne.
When darkness
deepens strangling the earth's breast
And man's
corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief's
in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who
steps unseen into his house.
A Voice
ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into
mind's inner chamber steal,
A charm and
sweetness open life's closed doors
And beauty
conquer the resisting world,
The
Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of
God compel the heart to bliss
And earth
grow unexpectedly divine.
In Matter
shall be lit the spirit's glow,
In body and
body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall
awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days
become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a
force of the Eternal's power,
And thought
the rays of a spiritual sun.
A few shall
see what none yet understands;
God shall
grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall
not know the coming till its hour
And belief
shall be not till the work is done.
A
Consciousness that knows not its own truth,
A vagrant
hunter of misleading dawns,
Between the
being's dark and luminous ends
Moves here in
a half-light that seems the whole:
An
interregnum in Reality
Cuts off the
integral Thought, the total Power;
It circles or
stands in a vague interspace,
Doubtful of
its beginning and its close,
Or runs upon
a road that has no end;
Far from the
original Dusk, the final Flame
In some huge
void Inconscience it lives,
Like a
thought persisting in a wide emptiness.
As if an
unintelligible phrase
Suggested a
million renderings to the Mind,
It lends a
purport to a random world.
A conjecture
leaning upon doubtful proofs,
A message
misunderstood, a thought confused
Missing its
aim is all that it can speak
Or a fragment
of the universal word.
It leaves two
giant letters void of sense
While without
sanction turns the middle sign
Carrying an
enigmatic universe,
As if a
present without future or past
Repeating the
same revolution's whirl
Turned on its
axis in its own Inane.
Thus is the
meaning of creation veiled;
For without
context reads the cosmic page:
Its signs
stare at us like an unknown script,
As if
appeared screened by a foreign tongue
Or code of
splendour signs without a key
A portion of
a parable sublime.
It wears to
the perishable creature's eyes
The grandeur
of a useless miracle;
Wasting
itself that it may last awhile,
A river that
can never find its sea,
It runs
through life and death on an edge of Time;
A fire in the
Night is its mighty action's blaze.
This is our
deepest need to join once more
What now is
parted, opposite and twain,
Remote in
sovereign spheres that never meet
Or fronting
like far poles of Night and Day.
We must fill
the immense lacuna we have made,
Re-wed the
closed finite's lonely consonant
With the open
vowels of Infinity,
A hyphen must
connect Matter and Mind,
The narrow
isthmus of the ascending soul:
We must renew
the secret bond in things,
Our hearts
recall the lost divine Idea,
Reconstitute
the perfect word, unite
The Alpha and
the Omega in one sound;
Then shall
the Spirit and Nature be at one.
Two are the
ends of the mysterious plan.
In the wide
signless ether of the Self,
In the
unchanging Silence white and nude,
Aloof,
resplendent like gold dazzling suns
Veiled by the
ray no mortal eye can bear,
The Spirit's
bare and absolute potencies
Burn in the
solitude of the thoughts of God.
A rapture and
a radiance and a hush,
Delivered
from the approach of wounded hearts,
Denied to the
Idea that looks at grief,
Remote from
the Force that cries out in its pain,
In his
inalienable bliss they live.
Immaculate in
self-knowledge and self-power,
Calm they
repose on the eternal Will.
Only his law
they count and him obey;
They have no
goal to reach, no aim to serve.
Implacable in
their timeless purity,
All barter or
bribe of worship they refuse;
Unmoved by
cry of revolt and ignorant prayer
They reckon
not our virtue and our sin;
They bend not
to the voices that implore,
They hold no
traffic with error and its reign;
They are
guardians of the silence of the Truth,
They are
keepers of the immutable decree.
A deep
surrender is their source of might,
A still
identity their way to know,
Motionless is
their action like a sleep.
At peace,
regarding the trouble beneath the stars,
Deathless,
watching the works of Death and Chance,
Immobile,
seeing the millenniums pass,
Untouched
while the long map of Fate unrolls,
They look on
our struggle with impartial eyes,
And yet
without them cosmos could not be.
Impervious to
desire and doom and hope,
Their station
of inviolable might
Moveless
upholds the world's enormous task,
Its ignorance
is by their knowledge lit,
Its yearning
lasts by their indifference.
As the height
draws the low ever to climb,
As the
breadths draw the small to adventure vast,
Their
aloofness drives man to surpass himself.
Our passion
heaves to wed the Eternal's calm,
Our
dwarf-search mind to meet the Omniscient's light,
Our helpless
hearts to enshrine the Omnipotent's force.
Acquiescing
in the wisdom that made hell
And the harsh
utility of death and tears,
Acquiescing
in the gradual steps of Time,
Careless they
seem of the grief that stings the world's heart,
Careless of
the pain that rends its body and life;
Above joy and
sorrow is that grandeur's walk:
They have no
portion in the good that dies,
Mute, pure,
they share not in the evil done;
Else might
their strength be marred and could not save.
Alive to the
truth that dwells in God's extremes,
Awake to a
motion of all-seeing Force,
The slow
outcome of the long ambiguous years
And the
unexpected good from woeful deeds,
The immortal
sees not as we vainly see.
He looks on
hidden aspects and screened powers,
He knows the
law and natural line of things.
Undriven by a
brief life's will to act,
Unharassed by
the spur of pity and fear,
He makes no
haste to untie the cosmic knot
Or the
world's torn jarring heart to reconcile.
In Time he
waits for the Eternal's hour.
Yet a
spiritual secret aid is there;
While a tardy
Evolution's coils wind on
And Nature
hews her way through adamant
A divine
intervention thrones above.
Alive in a
dead rotating universe
We whirl not
here upon a casual globe
Abandoned to
a task beyond our force;
Even through
the tangled anarchy called Fate
And through
the bitterness of death and fall
An
outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.
It is near us
in unnumbered bodies and births;
In its
unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe
The one
inevitable supreme result
No will can
take away and no doom change,
The crown of
conscious Immortality,
The godhead
promised to our struggling souls
When first
man's heart dared death and suffered life.
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.
After we have
served this great divided world
God's bliss
and oneness are our inborn right.
A date is
fixed in the calendar of the Unknown,
An
anniversary of the Birth sublime:
Our soul
shall justify its chequered walk,
All will come
near that now is naught or far.
These calm
and distant Mights shall act at last.
Immovably
ready for their destined task,
The ever-wise
compassionate Brilliances
Await the
sound of the Incarnate's voice
To leap and
bridge the chasms of Ignorance
And heal the
hollow yearning gulfs of Life
And fill the
abyss that is the universe.
Here meanwhile
at the Spirit's opposite pole
In the
mystery of the deeps that God has built
For his abode
below the Thinker's sight,
In this
compromise of a stark absolute Truth
With the
Light that dwells near the dark end of things,
In this
tragi-comedy of divine disguise,
This long far
seeking for joy ever near,
In the
grandiose dream of which the world is made,
In this gold
dome on a black dragon base,
The conscious
Force that acts in Nature's breast,
A dark-robed
labourer in the cosmic scheme
Carrying clay
images of unborn gods,
Executrix of
the inevitable Idea
Hampered,
enveloped by the hoops of Fate,
Patient
trustee of slow eternal Time,
Absolves from
hour to hour her secret charge.
All she
foresees in masked imperative depths;
The dumb
intention of the unconscious gulfs
Answers to a
will that sees upon the heights,
And the
evolving Word's first syllable
Ponderous,
brute-sensed, contains its luminous close,
Privy to a
summit victory's vast descent
And the
portent of the soul's immense uprise.
All here
where each thing seems its lonely self
Are figures
of the sole transcendent One:
Only by him
they are, his breath is their life;
An unseen
Presence moulds the oblivious clay.
A playmate in
the mighty Mother's game,
One came upon
the dubious whirling globe
To hide from
her pursuit in force and form.
A secret
spirit in the Inconscient's sleep,
A shapeless
Energy, a voiceless Word,
He was here
before the elements could emerge,
Before there was light of mind or life could breathe.
Accomplice of
her cosmic huge pretence,
His
semblances he turns to real shapes
And makes the
symbol equal with the truth:
He gives to
his timeless thoughts a form in Time.
He is the
substance, he the self of things;
She has
forged from him her works of skill and might:
She wraps him
in the magic of her moods
And makes of
his myriad truths her countless dreams.
The Master of
being has come down to her,
An immortal
child born in the fugitive years.
In objects
wrought, in the persons she conceives,
Dreaming she
chases her idea of him,
And catches
here a look and there a gest:
Ever he
repeats in them his ceaseless births.
He is the
Maker and the world he made,
He is the
vision and he is the Seer;
He is himself
the actor and the act,
He is himself
the knower and the known,
He is himself
the dreamer and the dream.
There are Two
who are One and play in many worlds;
In Knowledge
and Ignorance they have spoken and met
And light and
darkness are their eyes' interchange;
Our pleasure
and pain are their wrestle and embrace,
Our deeds,
our hopes are intimate to their tale;
They are
married secretly in our thought and life.
The universe
is an endless masquerade:
For nothing
here is utterly what it seems;
It is a
dream-fact vision of a truth
Which but for
the dream would not be wholly true,
A phenomenon
stands out significant
Against dim
backgrounds of eternity;
We accept its
face and pass by all it means;
A part is
seen, we take it for the whole.
Thus have
they made their play with us for roles:
Author and
actor with himself as scene,
He moves
there as the Soul, as Nature she.
Here on the
earth where we must fill our parts,
We know not
how shall run the drama's course;
Our uttered
sentences veil in their thought.
Her mighty
plan she holds back from our sight:
She has
concealed her glory and her bliss
And disguised
the Love and Wisdom in her heart;
Of all the
marvel and beauty that are hers,
Only a
darkened little we can feel.
He too wears
a diminished godhead here;
He has
forsaken his omnipotence,
His calm he
has foregone and infinity.
He knows her
only, he has forgotten himself;
To her he
abandons all to make her great.
He hopes in
her to find himself anew,
Incarnate,
wedding his infinity's peace
To her
creative passion's ecstasy.
Although
possessor of the earth and heavens,
He leaves to
her the cosmic management
And watches
all, the Witness of her scene.
A
supernumerary on her stage,
He speaks no
words or hides behind the wings.
He takes
birth in her world, waits on her will,
Divines her
enigmatic gesture's sense,
The
fluctuating chance turns of her mood,
Works out her
meanings she seems not to know
And serves
her secret purpose in long Time.
As one too
great for him he worships her;
He adores her
as his regent of desire,
He yields to
her as the mover of his will,
He burns the
incense of his nights and days
Offering his
life, a splendour of sacrifice.
A rapt
solicitor for her love and grace,
His bliss in
her to him is his whole world:
He grows
through her in all his being's powers;
He reads by
her God's hidden aim in things.
Or, a
courtier in her countless retinue,
Content to be
with her and feel her near
He makes the
most of the little that she gives
And all she
does drapes with his own delight.
A glance can
make his whole day wonderful,
A word from
her lips with happiness wings the hours.
He leans on
her for all he does and is:
He builds on
her largesses his proud fortunate days
And trails
his peacock-plumaged joy of life
And suns in
the glory of her passing smile.
In a thousand
ways he serves her royal needs;
He makes the
hours pivot around her will,
Makes all
reflect her whims; all is their play:
This whole
wide world is only he and she.
This is the
knot that ties together the stars:
The Two who
are one are the secret of all power,
The Two who are one are the might and right in things.
His soul,
silent, supports the world and her,
His acts are
her commandment's registers.
Happy, inert,
he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he
offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our
lives are the quivering theatre,
And none
could bear but for his strength within,
Yet none
would leave because of his delight.
His works,
his thoughts have been devised by her,
His being is
a mirror vast of hers:
Active,
inspired by her he speaks and moves;
His deeds
obey her heart's unspoken demands:
Passive, he
bears the impacts of the world
As if her
touches shaping his soul and life:
His journey
through the days is her sun-march;
He runs upon
her roads; hers is his course.
A witness and
student of her joy and dole,
A partner in
her evil and her good,
He has
consented to her passionate ways,
He is driven
by her sweet and dreadful force.
His
sanctioning name initials all her works;
His silence
is his signature to her deeds;
In the
execution of her drama's scheme,
In her
fancies of the moment and its mood,
In the march
of this obvious ordinary world
Where all is
deep and strange to the eyes that see
And Nature's
common forms are marvel-wefts,
She through
his witness sight and motion of might
Unrolls the
material of her cosmic Act,
Her
happenings that exalt and smite the soul,
Her force
that moves, her powers that save and slay,
Her Word that
in the silence speaks to our hearts,
Her silence
that transcends the summit Word,
Her heights
and depths to which our spirit moves,
Her events
that weave the texture of our lives
And all by
which we find or lose ourselves,
Things sweet
and bitter, magnificent and mean,
Things
terrible and beautiful and divine.
Her empire in
the cosmos she has built,
He is
governed by her subtle and mighty laws.
His
consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
His being a
field of her vast experiment,
Her endless
space is the playground of his thoughts;
She binds to
knowledge of the shapes of Time
And the
creative error of limiting mind
And chance
that wears the rigid face of fate
And her sport
of death and pain and Nescience,
His changed
and struggling immortality.
His soul is a
subtle atom in a mass,
His substance
a material for her works.
His spirit
survives amid the death of things,
He climbs to
eternity through being's gaps,
He is carried
by her from Night to deathless Light.
This grand
surrender is his free-will's gift,
His pure
transcendent force submits to hers.
In the
mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
In the
insoluble riddle of her play,
A creature
made of perishable stuff,
In the
pattern she has set for him he moves,
He thinks
with her thoughts, with her trouble his bosom heaves;
He seems the
thing that she would have him seem,
He is
whatever her artist will can make.
Although she
drives him on her fancy's roads,
At play with
him as with her child or slave,
To freedom
and the Eternal's mastery
And
immortality's stand above the world,
She moves her
seeming puppet of an hour.
Even in his
mortal session in body's house,
An aimless
traveller between birth and death,
Ephemeral
dreaming of immortality,
To reign she
spurs him. He takes up her powers;
He has
harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
His face of
human thought puts on a crown.
Held in her
leash, bound to her veiled caprice,
He studies
her ways if so he may prevail
Even for an
hour and she work out his will;
He makes of
her his moment passion's serf:
To obey she
feigns, she follows her creature's lead:
For him she
was made, lives only for his use.
But
conquering her, then is he most her slave;
He is her
dependent, all his means are hers;
Nothing
without her he can, she rules him still.
At last he
wakes to a memory of Self:
He sees
within the face of deity,
The Godhead
breaks out through the human mould:
Her highest
heights she unmasks and is his mate.
Till then he
is a plaything in her game;
Her seeming
regent, yet her fancy's toy,
A living
robot moved by her energy's springs,
He acts as in
the movements of a dream,
An automaton
stepping in the grooves of Fate,
He stumbles
on driven by her whip of Force:
His thought
labours, a bullock in Time's fields;
His will he
thinks his own, is shaped in her forge.
Obedient to
World-Nature's dumb control,
Driven by his
own formidable Power,
His chosen
partner in a titan game,
Her will he
has made the master of his fate,
Her whim the
dispenser of his pleasure and pain;
He has sold
himself into her regal power
For any blow
or boon that she may choose:
Even in what
is suffering to our sense,
He feels the
sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all
experience meets her blissful hands;
On his heart
he bears the happiness of her tread
And the
surprise of her arrival's joy
In each event
and every moment's chance.
All she can
do is marvellous in his sight:
He revels in
her, a swimmer in her sea,
A tireless
amateur of her world-delight,
He rejoices
in her every thought and act
And gives
consent to all that she can wish;
Whatever she
desires he wills to be:
The Spirit,
the innumerable One,
He has left
behind his lone eternity,
He is an
endless birth in endless Time,
Her finite's
multitude in an infinite Space.
The master of
existence lurks in us
And plays at
hide-and-seek with his own Force;
In Nature's
instrument loiters secret God.
The Immanent
lives in man as in his house;
He has made
the universe his pastime's field,
A vast
gymnasium of his works of might.
All-knowing
he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears
shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he
assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal,
dallies with mortality.
The
All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The
All-Blissful bore to be insensible.
Incarnate in
a world of strife and pain,
He puts on
joy and sorrow like a robe
And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
He whose
transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,
Prescient now
dwells in our subliminal depths,
A luminous
individual Power, alone.
The Absolute,
the Perfect, the Alone
Has called
out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay
in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from
Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable
puissance of his solitude.
The Absolute,
the Perfect, the Alone
Has entered
with his silence into space:
He has
fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He has built
a million figures of his power;
He lives in
all, who lived in his Vast alone;
Space is
himself and Time is only he.
The Absolute,
the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in
us as our secret self,
Our mask of
imperfection has assumed,
He has made
this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in
the human measure cast
That to his
divine measure we might rise;
Then in a
figure of divinity
The Maker
shall recast us and impose
A plan of
godhead on the mortal's mould
Lifting our
finite minds to his infinite,
Touching the
moment with eternity.
This
transfiguration is earth's due to heaven:
A mutual debt
binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we
must put on as he put ours;
We are sons
of God and must be even as he:
His human
portion, we must grow divine.
Our life is a
paradox with God for key.
But meanwhile
all is a shadow cast by a dream
And to the
musing and immobile spirit
Life and
himself don the aspect of a myth,
The burden of
a long unmeaning tale.
For the key
is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
The secret
God beneath the threshold dwells.
In a body
obscuring the immortal Spirit
A nameless
Resident vesting unseen powers
With Matter's
shapes and motives beyond thought
And the
hazard of an unguessed consequence,
An omnipotent
indiscernible Influence,
He sits,
unfelt by the form in which he lives
And veils his
knowledge by the groping mind.
A wanderer in
a world his thoughts have made,
He turns in a
chiaroscuro of error and truth
To find a
wisdom that on high is his.
As one
forgetting he searches for himself;
As if he had
lost an inner light he seeks:
As a
sojourner lingering amid alien scenes
He journeys
to a home he knows no more.
His own
self's truth he seeks who is the Truth;
He is the
Player who became the play,
He is the
Thinker who became the thought;
He is the
many who was the silent One.
In the symbol
figures of the cosmic Force
And in her
living and inanimate signs
And in her
complex tracery of events
He explores
the ceaseless miracle of himself,
Till the
thousandfold enigma has been solved
In the single
light of an all-witnessing Soul.
This was his
compact with his mighty mate,
For love of
her and joined to her for ever
To follow the
course of Time's eternity,
Amid magic
dramas of her sudden moods
And the
surprises of her masked Idea
And the
vicissitudes of her vast caprice.
Two seem his
goals, yet ever are they one
And gaze at
each other over bourneless Time;
Spirit and
Matter are their end and source.
A seeker of
hidden meanings in life's forms,
Of the great
Mother's wide uncharted will
And the rude
enigma of her terrestrial ways
He is the
explorer and the mariner
On a secret
inner ocean without bourne:
He is the
adventurer and cosmologist
Of a magic earth's
obscure geography.
In her
material order's fixed design
Where all
seems sure and, even when changed, the same,
Even though
the end is left for ever unknown
And ever
unstable is life's shifting flow,
His paths are
found for him by silent fate;
As stations
in the ages' weltering flood
Firm lands
appear that tempt and stay awhile,
Then new
horizons lure the mind's advance.
There comes
no close to the finite's boundlessness,
There is no
last certitude in which thought can pause
And no
terminus to the soul's experience.
A limit, a
farness never wholly reached,
An unattained
perfection calls to him
From distant
boundaries in the Unseen:
A long
beginning only has been made.
This is the
sailor on the flow of Time,
This is
World-Matter's slow discoverer,
Who, launched
into this small corporeal birth,
Has learned
his craft in tiny bays of self,
But dares at
last unplumbed infinitudes,
A voyager
upon eternity's seas.
In his
world-adventure's crude initial start
Behold him
ignorant of his godhead's force,
Timid initiate
of its vast design.
An expert
captain of a fragile craft,
A trafficker
in small impermanent wares,
At first he
hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,
Dares not to
affront the far-off perilous main.
He in a petty
coastal traffic plies,
His pay doled
out from port to neighbour port,
Content with
his safe round's unchanging course,
He hazards
not the new and the unseen.
But now he
hears the sound of larger seas.
A widening
world calls him to distant scenes
And
journeyings in a larger vision's arc
And peoples
unknown and still unvisited shores.
On a
commissioned keel his merchant hull
Serves the
world's commerce in the riches of Time
Severing the
foam of a great land-locked sea
To reach
unknown harbour lights in distant climes
And open
markets for life's opulent arts,
Rich bales,
carved statuettes, hued canvases,
And jewelled
toys brought for an infant's play
And
perishable products of hard toil
And transient
splendours won and lost by the days.
Or passing
through a gate of pillar-rocks,
Venturing not
yet to cross oceans unnamed
And journey
into a dream of distances
He travels
close to unfamiliar coasts
And finds new
haven in storm-troubled isles,
Or, guided by
a sure compass in his thought,
He plunges
through a bright haze that hides the stars,
Steering on
the trade-routes of Ignorance.
His prow
pushes towards undiscovered shores,
He chances on
unimagined continents:
A seeker of
the islands of the Blest,
He leaves the
last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He turns to
eternal things his symbol quest;
Life changes
for him its time-constructed scenes,
Its images
veiling infinity.
Earth's
borders recede and the terrestrial air
Hangs round
him no longer its translucent veil.
He has
crossed the limit of mortal thought and hope,
He has
reached the world's end and stares beyond;
The eyes of
mortal body plunge their gaze
Into Eyes
that look upon eternity.
A greater
world Time's traveller must explore.
At last he
hears a chanting on the heights
And the far
speaks and the unknown grows near:
He crosses
the boundaries of the unseen
And passes
over the edge of mortal sight
To a new
vision of himself and things.
He is a
spirit in an unfinished world
That knows
him not and cannot know itself:
The surface
symbol of his goalless quest
Takes deeper
meanings to his inner view;
His is a
search of darkness for the light,
Of mortal
life for immortality.
In the vessel
of an earthly embodiment
Over the
narrow rails of limiting sense
He looks out
on the magic waves of Time
Where mind
like a moon illumines the world's dark.
There is
limned ever retreating from the eyes,
As if in a
tenuous misty dream-light drawn,
The outline
of a dim mysterious shore.
A sailor on
the Inconscient's fathomless sea,
He voyages
through a starry world of thought
On Matter's
deck to a spiritual sun.
Across the
noise and multitudinous cry,
Across the
rapt unknowable silences,
Through a
strange mid-world under supernal skies,
Beyond
earth's longitudes and latitudes,
His goal is
fixed outside all present maps.
But none
learns whither through the unknown he sails
Or what
secret mission the great Mother gave.
In the hidden
strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her
breath across life's tossing deep,
Through the
thunder's roar and through the windless hush,
Through fog
and mist where nothing more is seen,
He carries
her sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he
know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a
blank port in the Unseen
He goes or,
armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind
and body in the city of
And enshrine
the Immortal in his glory's house
And make the
finite one with Infinity.
Across the
salt waste of the endless years
Her ocean
winds impel his errant boat,
The cosmic
waters plashing as he goes,
A rumour
around him and danger and a call.
Always he follows in her force's wake.
He sails
through life and death and other life,
He travels on
through waking and through sleep.
A power is on
him from her occult force
That ties him
to his own creation's fate,
And never can
the mighty Traveller rest
And never can
the mystic voyage cease
Till the
nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
And the morns
of God have overtaken his night.
As long as
Nature lasts, he too is there,
For this is
sure that he and she are one;
Even when he
sleeps, he keeps her on his breast:
Whoever
leaves her, he will not depart
To repose
without her in the Unknowable.
There is a
truth to know, a work to do;
Her play is
real; a Mystery he fulfils:
There is a
plan in the Mother's deep world-whim,
A purpose in
her vast and random game.
This ever she
meant since the first dawn of life,
This constant
will she covered with her sport,
To evoke a
Person in the impersonal Void,
With the
Truth-Light strike earth's massive roots of trance,
Wake a dumb
self in the inconscient depths
And raise a
lost Power from its python sleep
That the eyes
of the Timeless might look out from Time
And the world
manifest the unveiled Divine.
For this he
left his white infinity
And laid on
the spirit the burden of the flesh,
That
Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.