Readings in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, Book I, Canto 1 The Symbol Dawn

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Namaste. Today
we'd like to do a reading

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in Shri Aurobindo's epic
poem, Savitri, A Legend and

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a Symbol. We're
going to start with Book

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One, The Symbol Dawn, Book
One, Canter One, the book

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of beginnings, The Symbol
Dawn. It

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was the hour before the
gods awake, across the path

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of the divine event, the
huge, foreboding mind of

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night alone. In
her unlit temple of

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eternity, they stretched
immobile upon silence march.

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Almost
one felt opaque,

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impenetrable. In
the somber symbol of her

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eyeless muse, the abyssum
of the unbodied infinite. A

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fathomless zero occupied the
world. A

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power of fallen, boundless
self -awake between the

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first and the last
nothingness. Recalling

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the tenor -verse womb from
which it came, turned from

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the insoluble mystery of
birth, and the tardy

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process of mortality, and
longed to reach its end in

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vacant knot. As
in a dark beginning of all

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things, a mute, featureless
semblance of the unknown,

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repeating forever the
unconscious act, prolonging

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forever the unseeing will,
cradled the cosmic drows of

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ignorant force, whose moved,
creative slumber kindles the

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sun's, and carries our
lives in its some nambulist

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whirl. A
thwart, the vain, enormous

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trance of space, its
formless stupor without mind

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or life, a shadow spinning
through a soulless void,

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thrown back once more into
unthinking dreams, earth

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-wheeled abandoned in the
hollow gulfs, forgetful of

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her spirit and her fate.
The

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impassive skies were
neutral, empty, still. Then

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something in the inscrutable
darkness stirred, a nameless

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movement, an unthought idea,
insistent, dissatisfied,

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without a name. Something
that wished, but knew not

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how to be, teased the
inconscient to wake

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ignorance. A
throw that came and left a

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quivering trace gave room
for an old tired want,

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unfilled, at peace in its
subconscient, moonless cave,

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to raise its head and look
for absent light, straining

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closed eyes to vanished
memory, like one who

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searches for a by -god
self, and only meets the

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corpse of his desire. It
was as though, even in

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this knot's profound, even
in this ultimate

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dissolution's core, there
lurked an unremembering

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entity, survivor of a slain
and buried past, condemned

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to resume the effort and
the pang, reviving in

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another, frustrate world. An
unshaped consciousness

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desired light, and a blank
prescience yearned towards

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distant change, as if a
childlike finger laid on a

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cheek, reminded of the
endless need in things, the

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heedless mother of the
universe, an infant longing

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clutched the somber vast.
Insensibly

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somewhere a breach began, a
long, lone line of

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hesitating hue, like a
vague smile tempting a

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desert heart, troubled the
far rim of life's obscure

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sleep, arrived from the
other side of boundlessness,

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and eye of deity peered
through the dumb deeps, a

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scout in the reconnaissance
from the sun, it seemed

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amid a heavy cosmic rest
the torpor of a sick and

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weary world to seek for a
spirit, soul and desolate,

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to fallen to recollect
forgotten bliffs, intervening

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in a mindless universe, its
message crept through the

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reluctant hush, calling the
adventure of consciousness

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and joy, and conquering
nature's disillusioned breast

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compelled renewed consent to
see and feel. A

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thought was sown in the
unsounded void, a sense was

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born within the darkness
depths, a memory quivered

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in the heart of time, as
if a soul long dead were

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moved to live. But
the oblivion that succeeds

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the fall had blotted the
crowded tablets of the

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past, and all that was
destroyed must be rebuilt,

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and old experience labored
out once more. All

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can be done if the God
touches there, a hope stole

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in that hardly dared to be
amid the nights forlorn

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indifference, as if
solicited in an alien

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world, with timid and
hazardous instinctive grace,

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orphaned and driven out to
seek a home, an errant

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marvel with no place to
live, into a far off nook

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of heaven there came a
slow miraculous gestures dim

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appeal, the persistent
thrill of a transfiguring

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touch persuaded the inert
black quietude, and beauty

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and wonder disturbed the
fields of God.