Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo, Book VII The Book of Yoga, Canto 5 The Finding of the Soul, pp. 522-526

0:02 Onward she passed, seeking the soul's Mystic cave. At first she stepped into a night of God. The light was quenched that helps the labouring world, The power that struggles and stumbles in our life. This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts, the striving heart, its unavailing hopes. All knowledge failed, and the ideas, forms and wisdom screened in awe. Her lowly head feeling a truth too great for thought or speech. Formless, ineffable, forever the same, an innocent and holy ignorance, adored like one who worships formless God.

0:49 The unseen light she could not claim nor own. In a simple purity of emptiness, her mind knelt down before the unknowable. All was abolished, save her naked self and the prostate yearnings of her surrendered heart. There was no strength in her, no pride of force. The lofty burning of desire had sunk. Ashamed of vanity, of separate self, the hope of spiritual greatness fled. Salvation. She asked not, nor a heavenly crown. Humility seemed now too proud a state. Herself was nothing, God alone was all. Yet God she knew not, but only knew He was. A sacred darkness brooded now within the world was a deep darkness, great and nude.

1:49 This void held more than all the teeming worlds, this blank felt more than all the time has borne this dark new, dumbly, immensely the unknown. But all was formless, voiceless, infinite, as might a shadow walk in a shadowy scene, a small knot passing through a mightier knot, a knight of person in a bare outline crossing a fathomless, impersonal night. Silent she moved, empty and absolute. In endless time her soul reached a wide end.

2:30 The spaceless vast became her spirit's place. At last a change approached. The emptiness broke. A wave rippled within. The world had stirred once more. Her inner self became her space. There was felt a blissful nearness to the goal. Heaven leaned low to kiss the sacred hill. The air trembled with passion and delight. A rose of splendor on a tree of dreams. The face of dawn out of moon. Twilight grew. Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy into the worshipping silence of her world.

3:14 He carried immortal lustre as his robe trailed heaven like a purple scarf, and wore, as his Vermilion cast mark a red sun as if an old remembered dream come true. She recognized in her prophetic mind the imperishable lustre of that sky, the tremulous sweetness of that happy air, and covered from mine's view and life's approach the Mystic cavern and the sacred hill, and knew the dwelling of her secret soul. As if in some Elysian occult depth, Truth's last retreat from thought's profaning touch, as if in a rock temple solitude hid God's refuge from an ignorant worshipping world. It lay withdrawn even from life's inner sense, receding from the entangled heart's desire. A marvellous brooding twilight met the eyes, and a holy stillness held that voiceless space. An awful dimness wrapped the great rock doors carved in the massive stone of matters Trance 2 Golden serpents round the lentil curved, enveloping it with their pure and dreadful strength, looked out with wisdoms deep and luminous eyes. An eagle covered it with wide

4:46 conquering wings. Flames of self lost immobile reverie. Doves crowded the Gray musing cornices like sculptured postures of white bosom to peace across the threshold Sleep. She entered in and found herself amid great figures of gods, conscious in stone and living without breath, watching with fixed regard the soul of man, executive figures of the cosmic self world, symbols of immutable potency on the walls, covered with significant shapes, looked at her the life scene of man and beast and the high meaning of the life of gods. The power and necessity of these numberless worlds and faces of beings and stretches of world space spoke the succinct and inexhaustible iradic message of the climbing plains. In their immensitude signing Infinity, they were the extension of the Self of God and housed impassively, receiving all His figures and his small and mighty acts and His passion and His birth and life and death and His return. To immortality, to the abiding and eternal is their clime, to the pure existence everywhere

6:18 the same, To the sheer consciousness and the absolute force and the unimaginable and formless bliss, To the mirth in time and the timeless mystery of the Triune Being who is all and One, and yet is no one but Himself a part. There was no step of breathing men, no sound, only the living nearness of the soul. Yet all the world's and God Himself were there, for every symbol was a reality and brought the presence which had given it life. All this she saw and inly felt and knew, not by some thought of mind, but by the Self. A light not born of sun or moon or fire, a light that dwelt within and saw within, shedding an intimate visibility, made secrecy more revealing than the Word. Our sight and sense are a fallible gaze and touch, and only the Spirit's vision is wholly true. As thus she passed in that mysterious place, through room and room, through door and rock hewn door, she felt herself made one with all she saw, a sealed identity within her. Woke she knew herself the beloved of the Supreme. These gods and goddesses were he

7:50 and she. The Mother was she of beauty and delight. The word in Brahma's vast creating clasp, the world poescence on almighty Shiva's lap, the Master and the Mother of all lives watching the world's their twin regard had made, And Krishna and Radha forever entwined in bliss. The adorer and adored Self lost and won. In the last chamber, on a golden seat one sat whose shape no vision could define. Only one felt the world's unattainable fount, a power of which she was a straying force, and invisible beauty, goal of the world's desire, a son of which all knowledge is a beam, a greatness without whom no life could be.

8:45 Thence all departed into silent self, and all became formless and pure and bare. Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock she came out, where there shone a deathless sun, a house was there, all made of flame and light. And crossing a wall of doorless living fire, there suddenly she met her secret soul.