Page 49 - NAMAH-Jul-2017
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Man, the Thinking Animal
A trifling unit in a boundless plan
Amidst the enormous insignificance
Of the unpeopled cosmos’ fire-whirl dance,
Earth, as by accident, engendered man :
A creature of his own grey ignorance,
A mind half-shadow and half-gleam, a breath
That wrestles, captive in a world of death,
To live some lame brief years. Yet his advance,
Attempt of a divinity within,
A consciousness in the inconscient Night,
To realise its own supernal Light
Confronts the ruthless forces of the Unseen.
Aspiring to godhead from insensible clay
He travels slow-footed towards the eternal day.
— Sri Aurobindo*
* Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Volume 5. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust,
1971, p. 163.
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