Apropos of Two Vast Negations — 10
The Body of the Growing God
Savitri Book Eleven
Savitri’s feeling of the spirit’s stir in things is the assertion of great validity of theirs in this creation which Death not still admit. That perception is of the body, of the very physical, it carrying the growing God in it. Nobody had told Death any time about such a wonder held by it. Nor had Death the least idea of such an existence. But here is Savitri dismissing all the refusals and all the denials.
If thou and I are true, the world is true;
Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God; … ||153.9||
I claim thee for the world that thou hast made. ||153.10||
If man lives bound by his humanity,
If he is tied for ever to his pain,
Let a greater being then arise from man,
The superhuman with the Eternal mate
And the Immortal shine through earthly forms. ||153.11||
Else were creation vain and this great world
A nothing that in Time’s moments seems to be. ||153.12||
But I have seen through the insentient mask;
I have felt a secret spirit stir in things
Carrying the body of the growing God …||153.13||
The Arguer does not see the validity of what Savitri is maintaining. The soul and the spirit of the Earth do not mean anything to him. If what she is telling him has any veracity, he tells her the best course for her would be to return to the place wherefrom she had come:
Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds
To the infinity where no world can be. ||153.20||
But not in the wide air where a greater Life
Uplifts its mystery and its miracle,
And not on the luminous peaks of summit Mind,
Or in the hold where subtle Matter’s spirit
Hides in its light of shimmering secrecies,
Can there be heard the Eternal’s firm command
That joins the head of destiny to its base. ||153.21||
Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self;
Choose destiny’s curve and stamp thy will on Time.||153.26||
But around Savitri lived a tremendous spirit, always. She makes a most excellent avowal:
“Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep
Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time
For the magnificent soul of man on earth. ||153.41||
Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy.” ||153.42||
“Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,
My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls.” ||153.46||
“Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,
To take all things and creatures in their grief
And gather them into a mother’s arms.” ||153.49||
“Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,
Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,
Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,
Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.” ||153.51||
In response to this the radiant God confers the Boon of boons to Savitri:
Now will I do in thee my marvellous works. ||154.7||
O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine. ||154.10||
Thou shalt discover the one and quivering note
And cry, the harp of all my melodies,
And roll, my foaming wave in seas of love. ||154.29||
I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought. ||154.37||
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! ||154.41||
O lasso of my rapture’s widening noose,
Become my cord of universal love. ||154.42||
O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born. ||154.44||
But when the hour of the Divine draws near,
The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time
And God be born into the human clay
In forms made ready by your human lives. ||155.22||
The supermind shall be his nature’s fount,
The Eternal’s truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal’s truth shall be his light and guide. ||155.36||
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe. ||155.37||
A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world. ||155.38||
The supermind shall claim the world for Light
And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart
And place Light’s crown on Nature’s lifted head
And found Light’s reign on her unshaking base. ||155.42||
The truth above shall wake a nether truth;
Even the dumb earth become a sentient force. ||155.58||
The Spirit’s tops and Nature’s base shall draw
Near to the secret of their separate truth
And know each other as one deity. ||155.59||
The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face. ||155.60||
A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill. ||155.68||
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine. ||155.71||
Here is the Mother’s prayer addressed to her sweet Master:
For three days I waited in an ardent prayer, hoping to see the new things… and all the obstacles surged up to veil, retard, deform Thy manifestation. And now we do not seem any nearer the goal than before.
O my sweet Master, why hast Thou told me to leave the blessed place in Thy heart and return to earth to attempt a realisation which everything seems to prove impossible?… What dost Thou expect of me that Thou hast torn me away from my divine and wonderful contemplation and plunged me again into this dark, struggling universe? When Thy force descends towards the earth in order to manifest, each one of the great Asuric beings who have resolved to be Thy servitors but preserved their nature’s characteristic of domination and self-will, wants to pull it down for itself alone and distribute it to others afterwards; it always thinks it should be the sole or at least the supreme intermediary, and that the contact of all others with Thy Power cannot and should not be made except through its mediation. This unfortunate meanness is more or less conscious, but it is always there, delaying things indefinitely. If even for the greatest it is impossible in the integral manifestation to escape these lamentable limitations, why, O Lord, impose upon me the calvary of this constraint?… If Thou willest that it be thus, Thou shouldst rend the last veil and Thy splendour come in all its purity and transfigure the world!
Accomplish this miracle or else let me withdraw into Thee.
The Winds of Wonder 
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