The Soul’s Evolutionary Journey, pp. 530-531

Opening Remarks
Sri Aurobindo summarises now the soul’s evolutionary journey and the culmination of its first fruitful stage.

Secret soul
A secret soul behind supporting all
Is master and witness of our ignorant life,
Admits the Person’s look and Nature’s role.

The secret soul within us is the hidden master and witness of our ignorant life. It is the connecting link between the Immanent Divine within and the ignorant Nature.

Hue and figure of the soul
But once the hidden doors are flung apart
Then the veiled king steps out in Nature’s front;
A Light comes down into the Ignorance,
Its heavy painful knot loosens its grasp:
The mind becomes a mastered instrument
And life a hue and figure of the soul.

Once the hidden inner doors are opened behind which the soul dwells, then the now veiled king steps out in the fields of nature. A Light comes down into the Ignorance loosening its heavy and painful grasp. The mind becomes a mastered instrument and life assumes the heavenlier hue and figure under the increasing influence of the soul.

All happily grows
All happily grows towards knowledge and towards bliss.

Then all in us begins to grow happily towards the divine knowledge and bliss.

Divine Puissance
A divine Puissance then takes Nature’s place
And pushes the movements of our body and mind;
Possessor of our passionate hopes and dreams,
The beloved despot of our thoughts and acts,
She streams into us with her unbound force,
Into mortal limbs the Immortal’s rapture and power.

A divine Power and Wisdom replaces Nature’s ignorance and incapacity and begins to move our body and mind. It takes charge of our passionate hopes and dreams and becomes our beloved despot who ruler of our thoughts and acts. She streams into us with her unbound force into our mortal limbs filling them with the Immortal’s rapture and power.

Law of beauty
An inner law of beauty shapes our lives;
Our words become the natural speech of Truth,
Each thought is a ripple on a sea of Light.

Then an inner law of beauty shapes our lives. Our words and speech become the natural expression of Truth and each thought is a ripple on a vast sea of Light.

God’s simple natural good
Then sin and virtue leave the cosmic lists;
They struggle no more in our delivered hearts:
Our acts chime with God’s simple natural good
Or serve the rule of a supernal Right.

Then the sense of sin and virtue leave the cosmos struggling no more in our hearts delivered from dualities. Our acts begin to align to God’s spontaneity which is always for the Good that is in harmony with the law of Truth.

Subconscient’s dusk
All moods unlovely, evil and untrue
Forsake their stations in fierce disarray
And hide their shame in the subconscient’s dusk.

All unholy, undivine moods and states and powers then sink in the subconscient terrains forsaking their strongholds upon our nature. They lie dormant and hidden in the dark folds of the Night and its shadowy domains.

Cry of victory
Then lifts the mind a cry of victory:
“O soul, my soul, we have created Heaven,
Within we have found the kingdom here of God,
His fortress built in a loud ignorant world.

Then our mind lifts a cry of victory. It exclaims with joy to the soul that together they have created Heaven upon earth. The kingdom of Heaven is found within and fortress built for God in a loud ignorant world.

Two rivers of Light
Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light,
We have turned space into a gulf of peace
And made the body a Capitol of bliss.

The identification with the soul and the awakening of the Kundalini entrenches our life between two rivers as the two subtle nerve columns in the spine are called. These two ascending and descending currents, the left and the right side, are perfectly balanced by the soul that emerges from within. The inner space of our being turns into a gulf of peace and the body into a Capitol of bliss.

What more must still be done
What more, what more, if more must still be done?”

Is there anything more to be done, the mind asks of the soul.

A temple is shaped
In the slow process of the evolving spirit,
In the brief stade between a death and birth
A first perfection’s stage is reached at last;
Out of the wood and stone of our nature’s stuff
A temple is shaped where the high gods could live.

At last a first stage of perfection is reached after a slow and long journey of the soul’s evolution through life and death. A temple is carved out of the various materials of physical nature for the high gods to dwell in a human body.

One man’s perfection
Even if the struggling world is left outside
One man’s perfection still can save the world.

This temple where the high gods can dwell, this perfection of the soul within is hope enough that the world will be saved one day. Even one man’s victory of the soul over his nature can serve to open doors for others and thereby help the human race evolve further towards its divine consummation.

A camp of God
There is won a new proximity to the skies,
A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,
A deep concordat between Truth and Life:
A camp of God is pitched in human time.

With this first high step, the human soul and nature ascends higher and closer to the world of the gods. The union of nature and soul becomes the first joining point between Matter and Spirit. Truth enters the life of man through this bond between the soul and nature. The body turns into a camp of God pitched upon earth in human time.

Closing Remarks
The soul’s complete blossoming in the course of its long evolutionary journey is thus described in these passages above.