The Divine Sacrifice (LP22)

This talk is touching upon Sri Aurobindo’s sacrifice to redeem matter.

IN THE BATTLE

Often, in the slow ages’ wide retreat
On Life’s long bridge through Time’s enormous sea,
I have accepted death and borne defeat
If by my fall some gain were clutched for Thee.

To this world’s inconscient Power Thou hast given the right
To oppose the shining passage of my soul:
She levies on each step the tax of Night.
Doom, her unjust accountant, keeps the roll.

Around my way the Titan forces press;
This earth is theirs, they hold the days in fee,
I am full of wounds and the fight merciless:
Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?

Even as Thou wilt! What still to Fate Thou owest,
O Ancient of the worlds, Thou knowest, Thou knowest.

TORN ARE THE WALLS

Torn are the walls and the borders carved by a miserly Nature,
I now have burst into limitless kingdoms of sweetness and wonder.
Breaking the fences of Matter’s gods and their form and their feature,
Fall’n are the barriers schemed and the vetoes are shattered asunder.

I WALKED BESIDE THE WATERS

I walked beside the waters of a world of light
On a gold ridge guarding two seas of high-rayed night.
One was divinely topped with a pale bluish moon
And swam as in a happy deep spiritual swoon
More conscious than earth’s waking; the other’s wide delight
Billowed towards an ardent orb of diamond white.
But where I stood, there joined in a bright marvellous haze
The miracled moons with the long ridge’s golden blaze.
I knew not if two wakings or two mighty sleeps
Mixed the great diamond fires and the pale pregnant deeps,
But all my glad expanding soul flowed satisfied
Around me and became the mystery of their tide.
As one who finds his own eternal self, content,
Needing naught else beneath the spirit’s firmament,
It knew not Space, it heard no more Time’s running feet,
Termless, fulfilled, lost richly in itself, complete.
And so it might have lain for ever. But there came
A dire intrusion wrapped in married cloud and flame,
Across the blue-white moon-hush of my magic seas
A sudden sweeping of immense peripheries
Of darkness ringing lambent lustres; shadowy-vast
A nameless dread, a Power incalculable passed
Whose feet were death, whose wings were immortality;
Its changing mind was time, its heart eternity.
All opposites were there, unreconciled, uneased,
Struggling for victory, by victory unappeased.
All things it bore, even that which brings undying peace,
But secret, veiled, waiting for some supreme release.
I saw the spirit of the cosmic Ignorance;
I felt its power besiege my gloried fields of trance.

But now its huge Enigma had a voice, a cry
That echoed through my oceans of felicity.

A Voice arose that was so sweet and terrible
It thrilled the heart with love and pain, as if all hell
Tuned with all heaven in one inextricable note.
Born from abysmal depths on highest heights to float,
It carried all sorrow that the souls of creatures share,
Yet hinted every rapture that the gods can bear.
“O Son of God who cam’st into my blackest Night
To sound and know its gulfs and bring the immortal light
Into the passion of its darkness, castst thou man’s fate
For thy soul’s freedom and its magic are forfeit,
Renouncing the high pain that gave thee mortal birth
And made thy soul a seeker on the common earth?
When first the Eternal cast Himself abroad to be
His own unimaginable multiplicity,
Expressing in Time and shape what timelessly was there,
The mighty Mother stood alone in diamond air
And took into her that Godhead streaming from above
And worlds of her endless beauty and delight and love
Leaped from her fathomless heart.

A STRONG SON OF LIGHTNING

A strong son of lightning came down to the earth with fire-feet of swiftness splendid;
Light was born in a womb and thunder’s force filled a human frame.
The calm speed of heaven, the sweet greatness, pure passion, winged power had descended;
All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name.

A wide wave of movement stirred all the dim globe in each glad and dreaming fold.
Life was cast into grandeur, ocean hands took the wheels of Time.
Man’s soul was again a bright charioteer of days hired by gods impetuous, bold,
Hurled by One on His storm-winged ways, a shaft aimed at heights sublime.

The old tablets clanging fell, ancient slow Nature’s dead wall was rent asunder,
God renewed himself in a world of young beauty, thought and flame:
Divine voices spoke on men’s lips, the heart woke to white dawns of gleaming wonder,
Air a robe of splendour, breath a joy, life a godlike game.

THE INCONSCIENT

Out of a seeming void and dark-winged sleep
Of dim inconscient infinity
A Power arose from the insentient deep,
A flame-whirl of magician Energy.

Some huge somnambulist Intelligence
Devising without thought process and plan
Arrayed the burning stars’ magnificence,
The living bodies of beasts and the brain of man.

What stark Necessity or ordered Chance
Became alive to know the cosmic whole?
What magic of numbers, what mechanic dance
Developed consciousness, assumed a soul?

The darkness was the Omnipotent’s abode,
Hood of omniscience, a blind mask of God.

THE DEATH OF A GOD [1]

Arise now, tread out the fire!
Scatter the ashes of a God through the stars.
Forget to hope and aspire.
Let us paint our prison, let us strengthen its bars.

Lo, now he is dead and the greatness that cumbered the world and Time’s ways
Has vanished like a golden shadow thrust out from the anguish of the ages;
The glory and burden, the sunlight and the passion have left our days;
Once more we can wear the grey livery of Death and gather in his wages.

All that drew back from his splendour fleeing as ashamed from the light and the beauty and invincible sweetness
Now returns vaunting their darkness and littleness, this fret of life’s fever, its cruel and sad incompleteness.