The sun before abysmal Night

He who would save the world must be one with the world…
His soul must be wider than the universe
And feel eternity as its very stuff,
Rejecting the moment's personality,
Know itself older than the birth of Time,
Creation an incident in its consciousness,
Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire
Circling in a corner of its boundless self,
The world's destruction a small transient storm
In the calm infinity it has become…
Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time's work,
Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.
Annul thyself that only God may be

60: The sun before abysmal Night

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri



A calm slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens…

The night's gold treasure of autumnal moons

Came floating shipped through ripples of fairy air.



And Savitri's life was glad, fulfilled like earth's;

She had found herself, she knew her being's aim.



Although her kingdom of marvellous change within

Remained unspoken in her secret breast,

All that lived round her felt its magic's charm…

Absorbed in wide communion with the Unseen

The mild ascetics of the wood received

A sudden greatening of their lonely muse.



This bright perfection of her inner state

Poured overflowing into her outward scene,

Made beautiful dull common natural things

And action wonderful and time divine…



A light invaded all from her being's light;

Her heart-beats' dance communicated bliss:

Happiness grew happier, shared with her, by her touch

And grief some solace found when she drew near.



Above the cherished head of Satyavan

She saw not now Fate's dark and lethal orb;

A golden circle round a mystic sun

Disclosed to her new-born predicting sight

The cyclic rondure of a sovereign life…

He lay not by a dolorous decree

A victim in the dismal antre of death…

Always he was with her, a living soul

That met her eyes with close enamoured eyes,

A living body near to her body's joy.



But now no longer in these great wild woods…

But mid the thinking high-built lives of men…

Body to body near, soul near to soul,

Moving as if by a common breath and will,

They were tied in the single circling of their days

Together by love's unseen atmosphere,

Inseparable like the earth and sky.



Thus for a while she trod the Golden Path;

This was the sun before abysmal Night.



Once as she sat in deep felicitous muse,

Still quivering from her lover's strong embrace,

And made her joy a bridge twixt earth and heaven,

An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.



A vast and nameless fear dragged at her nerves

As drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey;

It seemed to have no den from which it sprang:

It was not hers, but hid its unseen cause.



Then rushing came its vast and fearful Fount.



A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings

Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,

A denser darkness than the Night could bear,

Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.



A rolling surge of silent death, it came

Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe;

Effacing heaven with its enormous stride

It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air

And end the fable of the joy of life.



It seemed her very being to forbid,

Abolishing all by which her nature lived,

And laboured to blot out her body and soul,

A clutch of some half-seen Invisible,

An ocean of terror and of sovereign might,

A person and a black Infinity.



It seemed to cry to her without thought or word

The message of its dark eternity

And the awful meaning of its silences…



A voice to the dumb anguish of the heart

Conveyed a stark sense of unspoken words;

In her own depths she heard the unuttered thought

That made unreal the world and all life meant.



“Who art thou who claim’st thy crown of separate birth,

The illusion of thy soul's reality

And personal godhead on an ignorant globe

In the animal body of imperfect man?

Hope not to be happy in a world of pain

And dream not, listening to the unspoken Word

And dazzled by the inexpressible Ray,

Transcending the mute Superconscient's realm

To give a body to the Unknowable…

Or call into thy chamber the Divine

And sit with God tasting a human joy.



I have created all, all I devour;

I am Death and the dark terrible Mother of life,

I am Kali black and naked in the world,

I am Maya and the universe is my cheat.



I lay waste human happiness with my breath

And slay the will to live, the joy to be

That all may pass back into nothingness

And only abide the eternal and absolute…

For only the blank Eternal can be true…



O soul, inventor of man's thoughts and hopes…

At last know thyself, from vain existence cease.”



A shadow of the negating Absolute,

The intolerant Darkness travelled surging past

And ebbed in her the formidable Voice…



Then from the heights a greater Voice came down…

The cry of the Abyss drew Heaven's reply,

A might of storm chased by the might of the Sun:

“O Soul, bare not thy kingdom to the foe;

Consent to hide thy royalty of bliss

Lest Time and Fate find out its avenues

And beat with thunderous knock upon thy gates.



Hide whilst thou canst thy treasure of separate self

Behind the luminous rampart of thy depths

Till of a vaster empire it grows part.



But not for self alone the self is won:

Content abide not with one conquered realm;

Adventure all to make the whole world thine,

To break into greater kingdoms turn thy force.



Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all;

Assent to the emptiness of the Supreme

That all in thee may reach its absolute…



If for thy own sake only thou hast come,

An immortal spirit into the mortal's world…

Why hadst thou any need to come at all?



Thou hast come down into a struggling world…

To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven…

God must be born on earth and be as man

That man being human may grow even as God.



He who would save the world must be one with the world…

His soul must be wider than the universe

And feel eternity as its very stuff,

Rejecting the moment's personality,

Know itself older than the birth of Time,

Creation an incident in its consciousness,

Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire

Circling in a corner of its boundless self,

The world's destruction a small transient storm

In the calm infinity it has become.



If thou wouldst a little loosen the vast chain,

Draw back from the world that the Idea has made…

Then shalt thou know how the great bondage came.



Banish all thought from thee and be God's void.



Then shalt thou uncover the Unknowable

And the Superconscient conscious grow on thy tops;

Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,

Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown;

Find the hid Truth in things seen null and false,

Behind things known discover Mystery's rear.



Thou shalt be one with God's bare reality

And the miraculous world he has become

And the diviner miracle still to be

When Nature who is now unconscious God

Translucent grows to the Eternal's light,

Her seeing his sight, her walk his steps of power

And life is filled with a spiritual joy

And Matter is the Spirit's willing bride.



Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time's work,

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.

Annul thyself that only God may be.”



Article Source : http://www.sciy.org/blog/INTEGRALYOGA/SRIAUROBINDO/_archives/2008/2/2/3502180.html