Loretta reads Savitri:Three.III "The House of the Spirit and the New Creation" part 2

Transcript of:

Savitri: Book Three, Canto III (part 2 of 3)

by Loretta, 2017 (30:24)

Listen on Auroville Radio →

Loretta reads Savitri Book Three: The Book of the Divine Mother Canto III: The House of the Spirit and the New Creation Part 2 of 3, pages 322-329

   

We've been very smart to stick with the king, the world-traveller ‒ because now, we can have the experience of the Topic::supramental consciousness. We're about thirty pages short of being half-way through the book: the book is 724 pages long. And we're coming to the end of Book Two, in the whole book. Half the book we can see has been given to the yoga of the king: this is Sri Aurobindo's yoga, and the yoga of the king. And we will now be in Sri Aurobindo's own experience of the Supermind, as he describes it, and as he describes Aswapati having the experience.

In this part of the canto, which is just the Supermind, he describes Sat-Chit-Ananda. That's an ancient Sanskrit term which means ‘the one indivisible, supreme Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss’. And he describes this for us in practical terms and images which we know and we use; and we're going to see everything is light and love and oneness, and unity ‒ no pain, no sorrow, no darkness. It is the all-containing one consciousness ‒ the consciousness that is endless unity of oneness: Existence, Consciousness and Bliss.

And this is not a realization that we can get by mental or intellectual analysis. We can receive in here, through Sri Aurobindo's consciousness, in the book ‒ it's mystic poetry. And in its mysterious way, it solves for us the mystery of what the Supermind is. And in its mysterious way, we feel something.

There's quite a bit of it, and actually really too much to actually stay conscious to follow. Mother has said that what happens is that we have places in our consciousness that are not at the same level, and we kind of go into unconsciousness. But that's normal. So if you have the book at home, it's a good idea to read even just one sentence at a time. Because it's all this unity ‒ this endless, wonderful unity of oneness; Existence, Consciousness and Bliss; light and love.

But it is good to know more about what Sri Aurobindo is talking about. He's certainly put it in his books; we have lots of names for everything. And next time, we'll have a clear overview which will give some explanation of what the king has done, what we've learned.

This part of the canto, giving us the supramental consciousness, is quite long. The third and last part of the canto, which is on a completely different subject, done in a completely different way, isn't so long. So next time, we will look back on the spiritual pathway we have climbed ‒ just as we climb a high mountain and we can look back on the road that we have climbed.

And then, in the next part of the canto, we'll have the experience of the king's final yogic movements, the last things that he does, to get to the Divine Mother. And it is interesting that Sri Aurobindo does not write about the Mother here, in this part of the canto, which is just the Supermind, from every angle (or at least a lot of angles) ‒ what it is, what it does, how it works.

But for next week we're really lucky, 'cause we have the research done by Richard Hartz of the Ashram Archives. He spent years looking at Sri Aurobindo's writings, and he has a book where he's compared them. So he's done this research for us ‒ years of research. And we'll see it next time.

Now we're going to return to the traveller of the worlds, where we left him last; at the end of the very first part of this canto, he had again become the unborn self that never dies. The universal force is waiting, mute and silent, waiting for the “Transcendent’s ultimate decree” (p.322). And now, the living oneness of the supramental consciousness suddenly opens in the king, and around the king. And widens, widens, to join him to unnumbered multitudes. “A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love” (p.322) embraces the king and all. And he becomes the self and space of all. The king experiences a new and marvelous creation in the single heart of the spirit that is the all. Each is joined to each; each is joined to the all by spiritual links, and all recognize the whole universe within themself.

Bliss was the pure undying truth of things. (p.324)

In these new worlds, this king, this traveler, finally here becomes:

A portion of the universal gaze,

A station of the all-inhabiting light,

A ripple on a single sea of peace. (p.325)

He sees the planes of consciousness that are connected with the new world; each one is joined to each of the others, yet all are completely different from each other. All cooperating, giving to each other, exchanging freely. There is a harmony woven between soul and soul; matter ‒ physical matter ‒ is only a density of the pure, conscious spirit. Substance is “a resonant harp of self” (p.328). Its solidity is “a mass of heavenly make” (p.329). Bodies are woven by a divine sense which “prolong[s] the nearness of soul's clasp with soul” (p.329).

Finally, life's rapture ‒ which was lost and deformed at the very beginning, when Life heard the call of the spirit, and plunged into inconscient Matter; all of her joy, all of her creativity deformed, lost, darkened ‒ all of that can now keep its flame and cry. Life freely creates here, as she never could in the lower planes of consciousness. All that is only passing here, in our lives, lives immortal there, “In the proud beauty and fine harmony / Of Matter plastic to spiritual light” (p.329).

So, Canto III (middle part): “The House of the Spirit and the New Creation”.

...
Then suddenly there came a downward look.
As if a sea exploring its own depths,
A living Oneness widened at its core
And joined him to unnumbered multitudes.
A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;	p.323
Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast
And each became the self and space of all.
The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings,
All life a song of many meeting lives;
For worlds were many, but the Self was one.
This knowledge now was made a cosmos’ seed:
This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,
It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.
Then from the trance of that tremendous clasp
And from the throbbings of that single Heart
And from the naked Spirit’s victory
A new and marvellous creation rose.
Incalculable outflowing infinitudes
Laughing out an unmeasured happiness
Lived their innumerable unity;
Worlds where the being is unbound and wide
Bodied unthinkably the egoless Self;
Rapture of beatific energies
Joined Time to the Timeless, poles of a single joy;
White vasts were seen where all is wrapped in all.
There were no contraries, no sundered parts,
All by spiritual links were joined to all
And bound indissolubly to the One:
Each was unique, but took all lives as his own,
And, following out these tones of the Infinite,
Recognised in himself the universe.
A splendid centre of infinity’s whirl
Pushed to its zenith’s height, its last expanse,
Felt the divinity of its own self-bliss
Repeated in its numberless other selves:
It took up tirelessly into its scope
Persons and figures of the Impersonal,
As if prolonging in a ceaseless count,
In a rapturous multiplication’s sum,	p.324
The recurring decimals of eternity.
None was apart, none lived for himself alone,
Each lived for God in him and God in all,
Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.
There Oneness was not tied to monotone;
It showed a thousand aspects of itself,
Its calm immutable stability
Upbore on a changeless ground for ever safe,
Compelled to a spontaneous servitude,
The ever-changing incalculable steps,
The seeming-reckless dance’s subtle plan
Of immense world-forces in their perfect play.
Appearance looked back to its hidden truth
And made of difference oneness’ smiling play;
It made all persons fractions of the Unique,
Yet all were being’s secret integers.
All struggle was turned to a sweet strife of love
In the harmonised circle of a sure embrace.
Identity’s reconciling happiness gave
A rich security to difference.
On a meeting line of hazardous extremes
The game of games was played to its breaking-point,
Where through self-finding by divine self-loss
There leaps out unity’s supreme delight
Whose blissful undivided sweetness feels
A communality of the Absolute.
There was no sob of suffering anywhere;
Experience ran from point to point of joy:
Bliss was the pure undying truth of things.
All Nature was a conscious front of God:
A wisdom worked in all, self-moved, self-sure,
A plenitude of illimitable Light,
An authenticity of intuitive Truth,
A glory and passion of creative Force.
Infallible, leaping from eternity,
The moment’s thought inspired the passing act.	p.325
A word, a laughter, sprang from Silence’ breast,
A rhythm of Beauty in the calm of Space,
A knowledge in the fathomless heart of Time.
All turned to all without reserve’s recoil:
A single ecstasy without a break,
Love was a close and thrilled identity
In the throbbing heart of all that luminous life.
A universal vision that unites,
A sympathy of nerve replying to nerve,
Hearing that listens to thought’s inner sound
And follows the rhythmic meanings of the heart,
A touch that needs not hands to feel, to clasp,
Were there the native means of consciousness
And heightened the intimacy of soul with soul.
A grand orchestra of spiritual powers,
A diapason of soul-interchange
Harmonised a Oneness deep, immeasurable.
In these new worlds projected he became
A portion of the universal gaze,
A station of the all-inhabiting light,
A ripple on a single sea of peace.
His mind answered to countless communing minds,
His words were syllables of the cosmos’ speech,
His life a field of the vast cosmic stir.
He felt the footsteps of a million wills
Moving in unison to a single goal.
A stream ever new-born that never dies,
Caught in its thousandfold current’s ravishing flow,
With eddies of immortal sweetness thrilled,
He bore coiling through his members as they passed
Calm movements of interminable delight,
The bliss of a myriad myriads who are one.
In this vast outbreak of perfection’s law
Imposing its fixity on the flux of things
He saw a hierarchy of lucent planes	p.326
Enfeoffed to this highest kingdom of God-state.
Attuning to one Truth their own right rule
Each housed the gladness of a bright degree,
Alone in beauty, perfect in self-kind,
An image cast by one deep truth’s absolute,
Married to all in happy difference.
Each gave its powers to help its neighbours’ parts,
But suffered no diminution by the gift;
Profiteers of a mystic interchange,
They grew by what they took and what they gave,
All others they felt as their own complements,
One in the might and joy of multitude.
Even in the poise where Oneness draws apart
To feel the rapture of its separate selves,
The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All
And the Many turned to look back at the One.
An all-revealing all-creating Bliss,
Seeking for forms to manifest truths divine,
Aligned in their significant mystery
The gleams of the symbols of the Ineffable
Blazoned like hues upon a colourless air
On the white purity of the Witness Soul.
These hues were the very prism of the Supreme,
His beauty, power, delight creation’s cause.
A vast Truth-Consciousness took up these signs
To pass them on to some divine child Heart
That looked on them with laughter and delight
And joyed in these transcendent images
Living and real as the truths they house.
The Spirit’s white neutrality became
A playground of miracles, a rendezvous
For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness:
It made of Space a marvel house of God,
It poured through Time its works of ageless might,
Unveiled seen as a luring rapturous face
The wonder and beauty of its Love and Force.	p.327
The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house
Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:
To him the universe was her bosom of love,
His toys were the immortal verities.
All here self-lost had there its divine place.
The Powers that here betray our hearts and err,
Were there sovereign in truth, perfect in joy,
Masters in a creation without flaw,
Possessors of their own infinitude.
There Mind, a splendid sun of vision’s rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts
And moved amidst the grandeur of its dreams.
Imagination’s great ensorcelling rod
Summoned the unknown and gave to it a home,
Outspread luxuriantly in golden air
Truth’s iris-coloured wings of fantasy,
Or sang to the intuitive heart of joy
Wonder’s dream-notes that bring the Real close.
Its power that makes the unknowable near and true,
In the temple of the ideal shrined the One:
It peopled thought and mind and happy sense
Filled with bright aspects of the might of God
And living persons of the one Supreme,
The speech that voices the ineffable,
The ray revealing unseen Presences,
The virgin forms through which the Formless shines,
The Word that ushers divine experience
And the Ideas that crowd the Infinite.
There was no gulf between the thought and fact,
Ever they replied like bird to calling bird;
The will obeyed the thought, the act the will.
There was a harmony woven twixt soul and soul.
A marriage with eternity divinised Time.
There Life pursued, unwearied of her sport,
Joy in her heart and laughter on her lips,
The bright adventure of God’s game of chance.	p.328
In her ingenious ardour of caprice,
In her transfiguring mirth she mapped on Time
A fascinating puzzle of events,
Lured at each turn by new vicissitudes
To self-discovery that could never cease.
Ever she framed stark bonds for the will to break,
Brought new creations for the thought’s surprise
And passionate ventures for the heart to dare,
Where Truth recurred with an unexpected face
Or else repeated old familiar joy
Like the return of a delightful rhyme.
At hide-and-seek on a Mother-Wisdom’s breast,
An artist teeming with her world-idea,
She never could exhaust its numberless thoughts
And vast adventure into thinking shapes
And trial and lure of a new living’s dreams.
Untired of sameness and untired of change,
Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,
A mystery drama of divine delight,
A living poem of world-ecstasy,
A kakemono of significant forms,
A coiled perspective of developing scenes,
A brilliant chase of self-revealing shapes,
An ardent hunt of soul looking for soul,
A seeking and a finding as of gods.
There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density,
An artistry of glad outwardness of self,
A treasure-house of lasting images
Where sense can build a world of pure delight:
The home of a perpetual happiness,
It lodged the hours as in a pleasant inn.
The senses there were outlets of the soul;
Even the youngest child-thought of the mind
Incarnated some touch of highest things.
There substance was a resonant harp of self,
A net for the constant lightnings of the spirit,	p.329
A magnet power of love’s intensity
Whose yearning throb and adoration’s cry
Drew God’s approaches close, sweet, wonderful.
Its solidity was a mass of heavenly make;
Its fixity and sweet permanence of charm
Made a bright pedestal for felicity.
Its bodies woven by a divine sense
Prolonged the nearness of soul’s clasp with soul;
Its warm play of external sight and touch
Reflected the glow and thrill of the heart’s joy,
Mind’s climbing brilliant thoughts, the spirit’s bliss;
Life’s rapture kept for ever its flame and cry.
All that now passes lived immortal there
In the proud beauty and fine harmony
Of Matter plastic to spiritual light.
Its ordered hours proclaimed the eternal Law;
Vision reposed on a safety of deathless forms;
Time was Eternity’s transparent robe.
An architect hewing out self’s living rock,
Phenomenon built Reality’s summer-house
On the beaches of the sea of Infinity.
...