December 22, 2005

The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

Sri Aurobindo
Savitri A Legend and a Symbol
PART ONE BOOK TWO The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto Eleven The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind
  • There ceased the limits of the labouring Power.
  • But being and creation cease not there.
  • For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
  • It is greater than its earthly instrument:
  • The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
  • Escapes on every side into some vast
  • That is a passage to infinity.
  • It moves eternal in the spirit's field,
  • A runner towards the far spiritual light,
  • A child and servant of the spirit's force.
  • But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.
  • His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.
  • For the spirit is eternal and unmade
  • And not by thinking was its greatness born,
  • And not by thinking can its knowledge come.
  • It knows itself and in itself it lives,
  • It moves where no thought is nor any form.
  • Its feet are steadied upon finite things,
  • Its wings can dare to cross the Infinite.
  • Arriving into his ken a wonder space
  • Of great and marvellous meetings called his steps,
  • Where Thought leaned on a Vision beyond thought
  • And shaped a world from the Unthinkable.
  • On peaks imagination cannot tread,
  • In the horizons of a tireless sight,
  • Under a blue veil of eternity
  • The splendours of ideal Mind were seen
  • Outstretched across the boundaries of things known.
  • Origin of the little that we are,
  • Instinct with the endless more that we must be,
  • A prop of all that human strength enacts,
  • Creator of hopes by earth unrealised,
  • It spreads beyond the expanding universe;
  • It wings beyond the boundaries of Dream,
  • It overtops the ceiling of life's soar.
  • Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
  • Exposed to omniscient immensities,
  • It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
  • Its speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,
  • Its force that strides invincibly through Time,
  • Its mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,
  • Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death.

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