Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga
Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga
BOOK II: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds 248 A lifted head with many-tinged flickering crests, It licked at knowledge with a smoky tongue. A whirlpool sucking in an empty air, It based on vacancy stupendous claims, In Nothingness born to Nothingness returned, Yet all the time unwittingly it drove Towards the hidden Something that is All. Ardent to find, incapable to retain, A brilliant instability was its mark, To err its inborn trend, its native cue. At once to an unreflecting credence prone, It thought all true that flattered its own hopes; It cherished golden nothings born of wish, It snatched at the unreal for provender. In darkness it discovered luminous shapes; Peering into a shadow-hung half-light It saw hued images scrawled on Fancy’s cave; Or it swept in circles through conjecture’s night And caught in imagination’s camera Bright scenes of promise held by transient flares, Fixed in life’s air the feet of hurrying dreams, Kept prints of passing Forms and hooded Powers And flash-images of half-seen verities. An eager spring to seize and to possess Unguided by reason or the seeing soul Was its first natural motion and its last, It squandered life’s force to achieve the impossible: It scorned the straight road and ran on wandering curves And left what it had won for untried things; It saw unrealised aims as instant fate And chose the precipice for its leap to heaven. Adventure its system in the gamble of life, It took fortuitous gains as safe results; Error discouraged not its confident view Ignorant of the deep law of being’s ways And failure could not slow its fiery clutch;
CANTO X: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind 249 One chance made true warranted all the rest. Attempt, not victory, was the charm of life. An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes, Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire, It ran its race and came in first or last. Yet were its works nor small and vain nor null; It nursed a portion of infinity’s strength And could create the high things its fancy willed; Its passion caught what calm intelligence missed. Insight of impulse laid its leaping grasp On heavens high Thought had hidden in dazzling mist, Caught glimmers that revealed a lurking sun: It probed the void and found a treasure there. A half-intuition purpled in its sense; It threw the lightning’s fork and hit the unseen. It saw in the dark and vaguely blinked in the light, Ignorance was its field, the unknown its prize. Of all these Powers the greatest was the last. Arriving late from a far plane of thought Into a packed irrational world of Chance Where all was grossly felt and blindly done, Yet the haphazard seemed the inevitable, Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan, To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time. Adept of clear contrivance and design, A pensive face and close and peering eyes, She took her firm and irremovable seat, The strongest, wisest of the troll-like Three. Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe, She looked upon an object universe And the multitudes that in it live and die And the body of Space and the fleeing soul of Time, And took the earth and stars into her hands To try what she could make of these strange things. In her strong purposeful laborious mind, Inventing her scheme-lines of reality
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CANTO X: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind 249<br />
One chance made true warranted all the rest.<br />
Attempt, not victory, was the charm of life.<br />
An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes,<br />
Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire,<br />
It ran its race and came in first or last.<br />
Yet were its works nor small and vain nor null;<br />
It nursed a portion of infinity’s strength<br />
And could create the high things its fancy willed;<br />
Its passion caught what calm intelligence missed.<br />
Insight of impulse laid its leaping grasp<br />
On heavens high Thought had hidden in dazzling mist,<br />
Caught glimmers that revealed a lurking sun:<br />
It probed the void and found a treasure there.<br />
A half-intuition purpled in its sense;<br />
It threw the lightning’s fork and hit the unseen.<br />
It saw in the dark and vaguely blinked in the light,<br />
Ignorance was its field, the unknown its prize.<br />
Of all these Powers the greatest was the last.<br />
Arriving late from a far plane of thought<br />
Into a packed irrational world of Chance<br />
Where all was grossly felt and blindly done,<br />
Yet the haphazard seemed the inevitable,<br />
Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,<br />
To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.<br />
Adept of clear contrivance and design,<br />
A pensive face and close and peering eyes,<br />
She took her firm and irremovable seat,<br />
The strongest, wisest of the troll-like Three.<br />
Armed with her lens and measuring-rod and probe,<br />
She looked upon an object universe<br />
And the multitudes that in it live and die<br />
And the body of Space and the fleeing soul of Time,<br />
And took the earth and stars into her hands<br />
To try what she could make of these strange things.<br />
In her strong purposeful laborious mind,<br />
Inventing her scheme-lines of reality