Myths
Seen from Sri Aurobindo’s master craft
- The sea seen by the seer-poet Sri Aurobindo, falls and rises with god-like power.
- Poseidon is the churlish old man of the sea - waving his watery stick at the pert goddess of reason Athene. He rages against the inevitable twilight of the primitive gods: Dylan meets Wagner in full Celtic operatic mode.
Shall I permit the grand anarchic seas
To be a road and the imperious Ocean
A means of merchandise?’*
- The means of merchandise that irks Poseidon are the very means by which men trade one thing with other- sometimes losing instinct to reason or reason to instinct - but ultimately becoming master and commander.
Of thy ephemeral mortals score its back
With servile furrows and petty souls of men
Triumphing tame the illimitable sea?
I am not of the mild and later gods,
But of that elder world; Lemuria’ *
- This is the demonic clash of the Titans within the human - the vital animal instincts, the mental manly reason and the godly intuition of the psyche.
- Compare now the tragic tantrum of the Greek god with the vast virility of Varuna of the Veda. He is like a fountain of life:
‘in hearts he put will, the fire in the waters, the sun in heaven and the Soma-plant on the mountain.’
And
‘Vast is this wisdom of the divine and the greatest of seers and there is none who can do violence against it; therefore the Ocean is one, yet all these rushing rivers pour themselves into it and cannot fill it.’ *
- And so we see, from the stern -Varuna steers us in friendship - helping us adventure safely in consciousness
Perseus the Deliverer and Hymns to Varuna by Sri Aurobindo
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| from creativecommons |
KalpanaS
