Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga
Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga
BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twilight 652 The speeding aeons justifying God. What were earth’s ages if the grey restraint Were never broken and glories sprang not forth Bursting their obscure seed, while man’s slow life Leaped hurried into sudden splendid paths By divine words and human gods revealed? Impose not upon sentient minds and hearts The dull fixity that binds inanimate things. Well is the unconscious rule for the animal breeds Content to live beneath the immutable yoke; Man turns to a nobler walk, a master path. I trample on thy law with living feet; For to arise in freedom I was born. If I am mighty let my force be unveiled Equal companion of the dateless powers, Or else let my frustrated soul sink down Unworthy of Godhead in the original sleep. I claim from Time my will’s eternity, God from his moments.” Death replied to her, “Why should the noble and immortal will Stoop to the petty works of transient earth, Freedom forgotten and the Eternal’s path? Or is this the high use of strength and thought, To struggle with the bonds of death and time And spend the labour that might earn the gods And battle and bear agony of wounds To grasp the trivial joys that earth can guard In her small treasure-chest of passing things? Child, hast thou trodden the gods beneath thy feet Only to win poor shreds of earthly life For him thou lov’st cancelling the grand release, Keeping from early rapture of the heavens His soul the lenient deities have called? Are thy arms sweeter than the courts of God?” She answered, “Straight I trample on the road The strong hand hewed for me which planned our paths.
CANTO IV: The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real 653 I run where his sweet dreadful voice commands And I am driven by the reins of God. Why drew he wide his scheme of mighty worlds Or filled infinity with his passionate breath? Or wherefore did he build my mortal form And sow in me his bright and proud desires, If not to achieve, to flower in me, to love, Carving his human image richly shaped In thoughts and largenesses and golden powers? Far Heaven can wait our coming in its calm. Easy the heavens were to build for God. Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory Gave of the problem and the race and strife. There are the ominous masks, the terrible powers; There it is greatness to create the gods. Is not the spirit immortal and absolved Always, delivered from the grasp of Time? Why came it down into the mortal’s Space? A charge he gave to his high spirit in man And wrote a hidden decree on Nature’s tops. Freedom is this with ever seated soul, Large in life’s limits, strong in Matter’s knots, Building great stuff of action from the worlds To make fine wisdom from coarse, scattered strands And love and beauty out of war and night, The wager wonderful, the game divine. What liberty has the soul which feels not free Unless stripped bare and cannot kiss the bonds The Lover winds around his playmate’s limbs, Choosing his tyranny, crushed in his embrace? To seize him better with her boundless heart She accepts the limiting circle of his arms, Bows full of bliss beneath his mastering hands And laughs in his rich constraints, most bound, most free. This is my answer to thy lures, O Death.”
- Page 628 and 629: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 630 and 631: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 632 and 633: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 634 and 635: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 636 and 637: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 638 and 639: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 640 and 641: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 642 and 643: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 644 and 645: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 646 and 647: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 648 and 649: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 650 and 651: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 652 and 653: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 654 and 655: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 656 and 657: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 658 and 659: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 660 and 661: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 662 and 663: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 664 and 665: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 666 and 667: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 668 and 669: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 670 and 671: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 672 and 673: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 674 and 675: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 676 and 677: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 680 and 681: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 682 and 683: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 684 and 685: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 686 and 687: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 688 and 689: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 690 and 691: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 692 and 693: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 694 and 695: BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twil
- Page 697 and 698: Canto One The Eternal Day: The Soul
- Page 699 and 700: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 701 and 702: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 703 and 704: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 705 and 706: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 707 and 708: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 709 and 710: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 711 and 712: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 713 and 714: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 715 and 716: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 717 and 718: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 719 and 720: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 721 and 722: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 723 and 724: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 725 and 726: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
- Page 727 and 728: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme
CANTO IV: The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real 653<br />
I run where his sweet dreadful voice commands<br />
And I am driven by the reins of God.<br />
Why drew he wide his scheme of mighty worlds<br />
Or filled infinity with his passionate breath?<br />
Or wherefore did he build my mortal form<br />
And sow in me his bright and proud desires,<br />
If not to achieve, to flower in me, to love,<br />
Carving his human image richly shaped<br />
In thoughts and largenesses and golden powers?<br />
Far Heaven can wait our coming in its calm.<br />
Easy the heavens were to build for God.<br />
Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory<br />
Gave of the problem and the race and strife.<br />
There are the ominous masks, the terrible powers;<br />
There it is greatness to create the gods.<br />
Is not the spirit immortal and absolved<br />
Always, delivered from the grasp of Time?<br />
Why came it down into the mortal’s Space?<br />
A charge he gave to his high spirit in man<br />
And wrote a hidden decree on Nature’s tops.<br />
Freedom is this with ever seated soul,<br />
Large in life’s limits, strong in Matter’s knots,<br />
Building great stuff of action from the worlds<br />
To make fine wisdom from coarse, scattered strands<br />
And love and beauty out of war and night,<br />
The wager wonderful, the game divine.<br />
What liberty has the soul which feels not free<br />
Unless stripped bare and cannot kiss the bonds<br />
The Lover winds around his playmate’s limbs,<br />
Choosing his tyranny, crushed in his embrace?<br />
To seize him better with her boundless heart<br />
She accepts the limiting circle of his arms,<br />
Bows full of bliss beneath his mastering hands<br />
And laughs in his rich constraints, most bound, most free.<br />
This is my answer to thy lures, O Death.”