Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, by Sri Aurobindo, Book VI The Book of Fate, Canto 2 The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, pp. 456-460

0:01 Then Ashwapati answered to the seer. Is then the Spirit ruled by an outward world? O seer, is there no remedy within? But what is fate if not the Spirit's will? After a long time fulfilled by cosmic force, I deemed a mighty power had come with her. Is not that power the high compeer of fate? But Narod answered, covering truth with truth. O Ashwapati, random seem the ways along whose banks your footsteps stray, or run in casual hours or moments of the gods, Yet your least stumblings are foreseen above infallibly the curves of life are drawn, following the stream of time through the unknown.

0:52 They are led by a clue. The calm immortals keep this blazoned hieroglyph of prophet Morns, a meaning more sublime in symbol's rites than sealed thought wakes to. But of this high script, how shall my voice convince the mind of earth? Heaven's wiser love rejects the mortal prayer. Unblinded by the breath of his desire, unclouded by the mists of fear and hope, it bends above the strife of love with death. It keeps for her her privilege of pain. A greatness in thy daughter's soul resides that can transform herself and all around, but must cross on stones of suffering to its goal.

1:41 Although designed like a nectar cup of heaven, of heavenly ether maid, she sought this air. She too must share the human need of grief, and all her cause of joy transmute to pain. The mind of mortal man is led by words. His sight retires behind the walls of thought and looks out only through half open doors. He cuts the boundless truth into sky strips and every strip he takes for all the heavens. He stares at infinite possibility and gives to the plastic vast the name of chance. He sees the long results of an all wise force planning a sequence of steps in endless time, but in its links imagines a senseless chain or the dead hand of cold necessity. He answers not to the Mystic mother's heart, misses the ardent heavings of her breast, and feels cold, rigid limbs of lifeless law, the will of the timeless working out in time in the free absolute steps of cosmic truth, He thinks a dead machine or unconscious fate.

3:00 A magician's formulas have made matters laws, and while they last, all things by them are bound. But the spirit's consent is needed for each act, and freedom walks in the same pace with law. All here can change if the magician choose. If human will could be made one with God's, If human thought could echo the thoughts of God. Man might be all knowing and omnipotent. But now he walks in nature's doubtful ray. Yet can the mind of man receive God's light? The force of man can be driven by God's force.

3:43 Then is he a miracle doing miracles, for only so can he be nature's king. It is decreed, and such Yvonne must die. The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke. What else shall be is written in her soul. But till the hour reveals the fateful script, the writing waits. Illegible and mute. Fate is truth working out in ignorance, O King. Thy fate is a transaction done at every hour between nature and thy soul, with God for its foreseeing arbiter. Fate is a balance drawn in destiny's book. Man can accept his fate.

4:29 He can refuse, even if the one maintains the unseen decree. He writes thy refusal in thy credit page, For doom is not a close, A Mystic seal Arisen from the tragic crash of life, arisen from the bodies torture and death, The spirit rises mightier by defeat, Its God like wings grow wider with each fall, Its splendid failures some to victory. O man, the events that meet thee on thy Rd., though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief, are not thy fate.

5:11 They touch thee a while and pass. Even death can cut not short. Thy spirits walk thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate on the altar, throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works. Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods, till they have opened to thee thy secret self and made thee one with the indwelling God. O soul, intruder in nature's ignorance, armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights. Thy spirit's fate is a battle and ceaseless March against invisible opponent powers.

5:53 A passage from matter into timeless self. Adventurer through blind, unforeseen time, a forced advance through a long line of lives. It pushes its spearhead through the centuries across the dust and mire of the earthly plain, on many guarded lines and dangerous fronts. In dire assaults, In wounded, slow retreats holding the ideals ringed and battered Fort, or fighting against odds. In lonely posts. Or camped in night around the bivouac's fires, awaiting the tardy trumpets of the dawn. In hunger and in plenty and in pain, Through peril and through triumph and through fall.

6:44 Through life's green lanes and over her desert sands, Up the bald Moor, along the sunlit Ridge in serried columns with a straggling rear Led by its nomad vanguard's signal fires, marches the army of the way. Lost God. Then late the joy ineffable is felt. Then he remembers his forgotten self. He has refound the skies from which he fell. At length his fronts indomitable line forces the last passes of the ignorance, advancing beyond nature's last known bounds, reconnoitring the formidable unknown beyond the landmarks of things visible. It mounts through a miraculous upper air till, climbing the mute summit of the world, he stands upon the splendor peaks of God.

7:42 In vain thou mournest that Satyavan must die. His death is a beginning of greater life. Death is the Spirit's opportunity. A vast intention has brought two souls close, and love and death conspired towards 1 great end. For out of danger and pain heaven bliss shall come times unforeseen event. God's secret plan. This world was not built with random bricks of chance. A blind God is not destiny's architect. A conscious power has drawn the plan of life. There is a meaning in each curve and line. Is it?

8:25 It is an architecture high and grand by many named and nameless Masons, built in which unseeing hands obey the unseen. And of its master builders, she is one.