APPENDIX ASCENT FROM THE

MIND-CONSCIOUSNESS*

“ ‘Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve T im e’s work. C ast o ff thy mind, step back from form and name Annual thyself that only God may be.

Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting voice,

And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and m used Plunging her deep regard into herseif

In her soul's privacy in the silent Night. A lo o fa n d standing back detached and calm, A witness of the dram a of herself,

A student of her own interior scene,

She w atched the passion and the toil of life And heard in the crowded thoroughfares of mind The unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts. Aii she allow ed to rise that chose to stir;

Calling, com pelling nought, forbidding nought, She left all to the process form ed in Time And the free initiative of N ature’s will.

***

Above the birth of body and of thought O ur spirit's truth lives in the naked self

And from that height, unbound, surveys the world. O ut o f the m in d she rose to escape its law That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self O r fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.

Then all grew tranquil in her being's space, O nly som etim es sm all thoughts arose an d fe ll Life quiet waves upon a silent sea

O r ripples passing over a lonely pool

When a stray stone disturb its dream ing rest. Yet the m ind’s factory had ceased to work, There was no sound of the dynam o's throb, There came no call from the still fields of life. There came no call from the still field of life,.

Then even those stirrings rose in he r no more; H er mind now seem ed like a vast empty room O r lie a peaceful landscape w ithout sound. This men call quietude and prize as peace. But to her deeper sight a ll ye t was there, Effervescing like a chaos under a lid;

Feelings and thoughts cried out for word and act But found no response in the silenced brain: All was suppressed but nothing ye t expunged; At every moment might explosion come.

Then this too paused; the body seemed a stone. All now was a wide m ighty vacancy.

But s till excluded from eternity's hursh; For still was fa r the repose of the Absolute And the ocean Silence of Infinity,

Even now some thoughts could cross her solitude: these surged not from the depths or from within Cast up from form lessness to seek a form, Spoke not the body’s need nor voiced m ind’s call. These seem ed not born nor made in human Time,

O ut of some fa r expanse they seems dot com e As if carried on vast wings like large w hite sails, And with easy access reached the inner ear.

As yet th e ir path lay deep concealed in light then looking to know w hence the intruders came

She saw a spiritual im m ensity

Pervading and ecnom passing the world-space As either our transparent tangible air,

And through it sailing tranquilly a thought. As sm oothly glides a shinearing aport, It came to the Silent city o f the brain Towards it accustom ed and expectant quay, But met a barring will, a blow of Force And sank vanishing in the im m ensity After along vacant pause another appeared And others one by one suddenly emerged, Mind's unexpected vistors from the unseen Life far-off sials upon a lonely sea.

But soon that com m erce failed, none reached m ind’s coast Then all grew still, nothing m oved any more:

Immobile, self-rapt, tim eless, solitary A silent spirit pervaded silent Space,

In that absolute stillness bare and form idable There was glim psed an all-negating Void supreme that claimed its mystic Nihil’s sovereign right

To cancel N ature and deny the soul.

Even the nude sense of self grew pale and thin: Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms, A black pure consciousness had replaced the m ind.

Vet still her body saw and moved and spoke; It understood without the aid of thought, It said w hatever needed to be said, It did w hatever needed to be done

No m ind that chose o r passed the fitting word: All w rought like an unerring apt machine. As if continuing old habitual turns, And pushed by an old unexhausted force the engine did the w ork for which it was made: Her consciousness looked on and took no part;

This seeing was identical with the seen:

It knew without knowledge ail that could be known, It saw im partially the world go by,

But in the same suprem e unm oving glance Saw too its abysm al unreality.

It watched the figure of the cosmic game,

But the thought and inner life in form s seemed dead A bolished by her own collapse of thought;

A hollow physical shell p ersisted still.

O nce sepulchred alive in brain and flesh She had risen up from body,mind and life; she was no more a Person in a world, She had escaped into infinity.

O nly some last annulm ent now remained, Annihilation’s vague indefinable step’’

The Inwardization and the