SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE SIXTH NUMBER 1950 BOMBAY PUBLISHERS : SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE 32, RAMPART Row, FORT, BOMBAY i All Rights Reserved 1950 SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS, PONDICHERRY PRINTED IN INDIA 150/5/50/500 Sri Aurobindo Circle - Sixth Number CONTENTS POEMS: Page Sri Aurobindo^ SAVITRI BOOK v CANTOS 1-3 . ! / 1-24 Arjava (J. A. ChadwicK) SEARCH TOTALITARIAN AN IMAGE OF THE PSYCHE HIERATIC FLOWING . 25-27 K. D. Sethna DRAGON NIGHT OF TRANCE TRYST INEFFABLE 28-29 Romen MAHESHWARI MAHAKALI . 30-31 Dilip Kumar Roy A REVERIE ... ... .. 32 Tehmi SWEET ENTRANCER A FRAGMENT . 33 Norman Doswett KUNDALINI . 34 Eleanor Montgomery ALONE WITH THE MOON . 35 Joyce Chadwick INMOST ALL SHAPE HAS A SUN AND A MOON IN IT FULL MOON FOR HARVEST . 36 CONTENTS Page WORDS OF THE MOTHER 37 LETTERS OF SRI AUROBINDO 40 THE DIVINE PERSONALITY Sri Aurobindo 55 VEDIC STUDY: NEED FOR A NEW APPROACH M . P. Pandit 64 SIDELIGHTS ON TANTRA T. V. Kapali Sastry 86 PECULIARS Gerald Heard 105 THE MARCH OF CIVILISATION Nolini Kanta Gupta 107 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF C. G. JUNG IN THE LIGHT OF INTEGRAL YOGA Morwenna Donnelly 121 THE PRACTICAL MAN AND THE ETERNAL A.L. Crampton Chalk 146 FREEING A STAR Joyce Chadwick 158 MAN IN HIS FREEDOM Rev. E. F. F. Hill 175 THE PLACE OF DEMOCRACY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION C. C. Dutt 189 SPIRITUALITY AND INDIAN FREEDOM Jibendra 202 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDIAN NATIONALISM A. V. Sastri 208 MYSTICISM AND EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY PHYSICS K. D. Sethna 241 RASA: ITS MEANING AND SCOPE V. K. Gokak 296 The five poems on pp. 25-27 are taken from Poems by Arjava (]. A. Chadwick) J The in The SaVitri BOOK V THE BOOK OF LOVE CANTO I THE DESTINED MEETING-PLACE T>UT now the destined spot and hour were close; *-* Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal. For though a dress of blind and devious chance Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate, Our acts interpret an omniscient Force That dwells in the compelling stuff of things. And nothing happens in the cosmic play But at its time and in its foreseen place. To a space she came of soft and delicate air That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy, A highland world of free and green delight Where spring and summer lay together and strove In indolent and amicable debate, Inarmed, disputing with laughter who should rule. There expectation beat wide sudden wings, As if a soul had looked out from earth's face And all that was in her felt a coming change And forgetting obvious joys and common dreams, Obedient to Time's call and the spirit's fate, Were lifted to a beauty calm and pure That Kved under the eyes of Eternity. A crowd of mountainous heads assailed the sky Pushing towards rival shoulders nearer heaven, The armoured leaders of an iron line; SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE SIXTH NUMBER Earth prostrate lay beneath their feet of stone. Below there crouched a dream of emerald woods And gleaming borders solitary as sleep: Pale waters ran like glimmering threads of pearl. A sigh was straying among happy leaves; Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers. The white crane stood, a vivid motionless streak. Peacock and parrot jewelled soil and tree. The dove's soft moan enriched the enamoured air And fire-winged wild-drakes swam in silvery pools. Earth couched alone with her great lover Heaven, Uncovered to her consort's purple eye. In her luxurious ecstasy of joy She squandered the love-music of her notes, Wasted the passionate pattern of her blooms And festival riot of her scents and hues. A cry and leap and hurry were around, The stealthy footfalls of her chasing things, The shaggy emerald of her centaur mane, The gold and sapphire of her warmth and blaze. Magician of her rapt felicities, Blithe, sensuous-hearted, careless and divine, Life ran or hid in her delightful rooms; Behind all brooded Nature's grandiose calm. Primeval peace was there and in its bosom Held undisturbed the strife of bird and beast. Man, the deep-browed artificer, had not come To lay his hand on happy inconscient things, Thought was not there nor the measurer, strong-eyed toil, Life had not learned its discord with its aim. The mighty Mother lay outstretched at ease. All was in line with her first satisfied plan; Moved by a universal will of joy The trees bloomed in their green felicity And the wild children brooded not on pain. At the end reclined a stern and giant tract SAVITRI Of tangled depths and solemn questioning hills And peaks like a bare austerity of the soul. Armoured, remote and desolately grand Like the thought-screened infinities that lie Behind the rapt smile of the Almighty's dance. A matted forest-head invaded heaven As if a blue-throated ascetic peered From the stone fastness of his mountain cell Regarding the brief gladness of the days; His vast extended spirit couched behind. A mighty murmur of immense retreat Besieged the ear, a sad and limitless call As of a soul retiring from the world. This was the scene which the ambiguous Mother Had chosen for her brief felicitous hour; Here in this solitude far from the world Her part she began in the world's joy and strife. Here were disclosed to her the mystic courts. The lurking doors of beauty and surprise, The wings that murmur in the golden house, The temple of sweetness and the fiery aisle. A stranger on the sorrowful roads of Time, Immortal under the yoke of death and fate, A sacrificant of the bliss and pain of the spheres, Love in the wilderness met Savitri. END OF CANTO ONE CANTO II SATYAVAN A LL this ^ she remembered on day of Fate, The road that hazarded not the solemn depths But turned away to flee to human homes. The wilderness with its mighty monotone, The morning like a lustrous seer above, The passion of the summits lost in heaven, The titan murmur of the endless woods. As if a wicket gate to joy were there Ringed in with voiceless hint and magic sign, Upon the margin of an unknown world Reclined the curve of a sun-held recess; Groves with strange flowers like eyes of gazing nymphs Peered from their secrecy into open space, Boughs whispering to a constancy of light Sheltered a dim and screened felicity, And slowly a supine inconstant breeze Ran like a fleeting sigh of happiness Over slumberous grasses pranked with green and gold. Hidden in the forest's bosom of loneliness Amid the leaves the inmate voices called. Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen, Cry answering to low insistent cry. Behind slept emeiald dumb remotenesses, Haunt of a Nature passionate, veiled, denied To all but her own vision lost and wild. Earth in this beautiful refuge free from cares Murmured to the soul a song of strength and peace. Only one sign was there of a human tread: A single path, shot thin and arrowlike Into this bosom of vast and secret life, SAVITRI Pierced its enormous dream of solitude. Here first she met on the uncertain earth The one for whom her heart had come so far. As might a soul on Nature's background limned Stand out for a moment in a house of dream Created by the ardent breath of life, So he appealed against the forest verge Inset twixt green relief and golden ray. As if a weapon of the living Light, Erect and lofty like a spear of God His figure led the splendour of the morn. Noble and clear as the broad peaceful heavens A tablet of young wisdom was his brow. Freedom's imperious beauty curved his limbs. The joy of life was on his open face. His look was a wide daybreak of the gods, His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light, His body was a lover's and a king's. In the magnificent dawning of his force Built like a moving statue of delight He illumined the border of the forest page. Out of the ignorant eager toil of the years Abandoning man's loud drama he had come Led by the wisdom of an adverse Fate To meet the ancient Mother in her groves. In her divine communion he had grown A foster-child of beauty and solitude, Heir to the centuries of the lonely wise, A brother of the sunshine and the sky, A wanderer communing with depth and marge. A Veda-knower of the unwritten book Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms He had caught her hierophant significances, Her sphered immense imaginations learned, Taught by sublimities of stream and wood And voices of the sun and star and flame And chant of the magic singers on the boughs SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE SIXTH NUMBER And the dumb leaching of four-footed things. Helping with confident steps her slow great hands He leaned to her influence like a flower to rain And, like the flower and tree a natural growth. Widened with the touches of her shaping hours. The mastery free natures have was his And their assent to joy and spacious calm; One with the single Spirit inhabiting all. He laid experience at the Godhead's feet; His mind was open to her infinite mind, His acts were rhythmic with her primal force; He had subdued his mortal thought to hers. That day he had turned from his accustomed paths; For One who, knowing every moment's load, Can move in all our studied or careless steps, Had laid the spell of destiny on his feet And drawn him to the forest's flowering verge.