Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey
Book Ten: The Book of the Double Twilight, Canto Three: The Debate of Love and Death
Even though darkness and shadows have occupied the fields of God here, yet there is Light that grows within earth’s breast. It declares itself in various ways leading man’s ascension towards the Eternal.
Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;
It has no gaze on the deep heart of things.
Our knowledge walks leaning on Error’s staff,
A worshipper of false dogmas and false gods,
Or fanatic of a fierce intolerant creed
Or a seeker doubting every truth he finds,
A sceptic facing Light with adamant No
Or chilling the heart with dry ironic smile,
A cynic stamping out the god in man;
A darkness wallows in the paths of Time
Or lifts its giant head to blot the stars;
It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind
And intercepts the oracles of the Sun.Yet Light is there; it stands at Nature’s doors:
It holds a torch to lead the traveller in.
It waits to be kindled in our secret cells;
It is a star lighting an ignorant sea,
A lamp upon our poop piercing the night.As knowledge grows Light flames up from within:
It is a shining warrior in the mind,
An eagle of dreams in the divining heart,
An armour in the fight, a bow of God.Then larger dawns arrive and Wisdom’s pomps
Cross through the being’s dim half-lighted fields;
Philosophy climbs up Thought’s cloud-bank peaks
And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers,
Enormous djinns who serve a dwarf’s small needs,
Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art
And conquers her by her own captive force.On heights unreached by mind’s most daring soar,
Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time
The soul draws back into its deathless Self;
Man’s knowledge becomes God’s supernal Ray.There is the mystic realm whence leaps the power
Whose fire burns in the eyes of seer and sage;
A lightning flash of visionary sight,
It plays upon an inward verge of mind:
Thought silenced gazes into a brilliant Void.A voice comes down from mystic unseen peaks:
A cry of splendour from a mouth of storm,
It is the voice that speaks to night’s profound,
It is the thunder and the flaming call.Above the planes that climb from nescient earth,
A hand is lifted towards the Invisible’s realm,
Beyond the superconscient’s blinding line
And plucks away the screens of the Unknown;
A spirit within looks into the Eternal’s eyes.It hears the Word to which our hearts were deaf,
It sees through the blaze in which our thoughts grew blind;
It drinks from the naked breasts of glorious Truth,
It learns the secrets of eternity.[Savitri 626 – 627]
(line breaks added to emphasize separate movements)
