Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo, Book I The Book of Beginnings, Canto 3 The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul's Release, pp. 34-38

0:02 Only a while at first, these heavenlier states, these large, wide, poised upliftings, could endure. The high and luminous tension breaks too soon the body's stone stillness and the life's hushed trance, the breathless might and calm of silent mind. Or slowly they fail. As sets a golden day, the restless nether members tire of peace, a nostalgia of old little works and joys. A need to call back small familiar selves to tread the accustomed and inferior way. The need to rest in a natural pose of fall as a child who learns to walk can walk not long replace the Titan will forever to climb on the heart's altar, dim the sacred fire, An old pull of subconscious chords renews it, draws the unwilling spirit from the heights or a dull gravitation drags us down to the blind driven inertia of our base. This too the Supreme Diplomat can use. He makes our fall a means for greater rise, for into ignorant nature's gusty field into the half ordered chaos of mortal life.

1:29 The formless power the self of eternal light follow in the shadow of the Spirit's descent the twin duality for everyone chooses its home mid the tumults of the scents. He comes unseen into our darker parts and curtained by the darkness does his work. A subtle and all knowing guest and guide till they too feel the need and will to change. All here must learn to obey a higher law. Our body cells must hold the immortal's flame, else would the spirit reach alone its source, leaving 1/2 saved world to its dubious fate. Nature would ever labor unredeemed. Our earth would ever spin unhelped in space, and this immense creation's purpose fail, till at last the frustrate universe sank, undone, Even his God like strength to rise must fall.

2:36 His greater consciousness withdrew behind, dim and eclipsed. His human outside strove to feel again. The old sublimities bring the high saving touch. The ethereal flame call back to its dire need, the divine force. Always the power poured back like sudden rain, or slowly in his breast a presence grew. It clamoured back to some remembered height, or soared above the peak from which it fell. Each time he rose there was a larger poise, a dwelling on a higher spirit plane. The light remained in him, a longer space in this oscillation between earth and heaven.

3:27 In this ineffable Communion's climb, there grew in him as grows A waxing moon, the glory of the integer of his soul, a union of the real with the unique, a gaze of the alone from every face. The presence of the eternal in the hours widening the mortal mind's half look on things, bridging the gap between man's force and fate, made whole the fragment. Being we are here at last was one a firm spiritual poise, a constant lodging in the eternal's realm, a safety in the silence and the ray, a settlement in the immutable. His heights of being lived in the still self. His mind could rest on a supernal ground and look down on the magic and the play, where the God Child lies on the lap of night and dawn and the everlasting puts on time's disguise.

4:35 To the still heights and to the troubled depths. His equal spirit gave its vast ascent A poised serenity of tranquil strength, a wide, unshaken look on time's unrest. Faced all experience with unaltered peace, indifferent to the sorrow and delight, untempted by the marvel and the call, immobile, it beheld the flux of things calm and apart, supported all that is his spirit. Stillness helped the toiling world. Inspired by silence and the closed eyes sight, his force could work with a new luminous art on the crude material from which all is made, and the refusal of Inertia's mass and the grey front of the world's ignorance and nessient matter, and the huge error of life. As a sculptor Chisels, a deity out of stone. He slowly chipped off the dark envelope line of defense of nature's ignorance, the illusion and mystery of the Inconscient, in whose black Paul the Eternal wraps his head that he may act unknown in cosmic time, a splendor of self, creation from the peaks, a transfiguration in

6:07 the Mystic depths, A happier cosmic working could begin and fashion the world's shape in him anew, God found in nature, nature fulfilled, In God Already in him was seen that task of power. Life made its home on the high tops of self. His soul, mind, heart became a single sun. Only life's lower reaches remained dim. But there too, in the uncertain shadow of life, there was a labor and a fiery breath. The ambiguous cowled celestial puissance worked.

6:49 Watched by the inner witnesses, moveless peace. Even on the struggling nature left below strong periods of illumination came lightnings of glory after glory burned. Experience was a tale of blaze and fire ere rippled round the argosies of the gods. Strange riches sailed to him from the unseen. Splendors of insight filled the blank of thought. Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses. Rivers poured down of bliss and luminous force visits of beauty. Storm sweeps of delight reigned from the all powerful mystery above.

7:38 Thence stooped the Eagles of omniscience. A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard repeated in the privacy of his soul. A wisdom cry from rapt transcendences sang on the mountains of an unseen world. The voices that an inner listening hears conveyed to him their prophet. Utterances and flame wrapped outbursts of the Immortal word, and flashes of an occult revealing light approached him from the unreachable secrecy. An inspired knowledge sat enthroned within, whose seconds illumined more than reason's years.

8:25 An ictus of revealing luster fell as if a pointing accent upon truth, and like a sky flare showing all the ground, a swift intuitive discernment shown. One could separate the true and false, or raise its rapid torch fire in the dark to check the claimants crowding through mines. Gates, covered by the forged signatures of the gods detect the magic bride in her disguise were scanned the apparent face of thought and life.