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Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

 

Fragment ID: 20321

The calm immensities of spirit Space.

The golden plateaus of immortal Fire

The moon-flame oceans of unfallen bliss

“Immensities” was the proper word because it helped to give the whole soul-scape of those worlds – the immensities of space, the plateaus of fire, the oceans of bliss. “Infinities” could just replace it, but now something has to be sacrificed. The only thing I can think of now is

The calm immunity of spirit Space...1

“Immunities” in the plural is much feebler and philosophically abstract – one begins to think of things like “quantities” – naturally it suggested itself to me as keeping up the plural sequence but it grated on the sense of spiritual objective reality and I had to reject it at once. The calm immunity was a thing I could at once feel. With immunities the mind has to ask: “Well, what are they?”

1937

 

1 Owing to the close occurrence of the word “immensities” in another line, “immunity” was here used. At present the original word has been restored in a new context (p.47) and the line comes at the end instead of at the beginning of the sequence:

Still regions of imperishable Light,

All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power

And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss

And calm immensities of spirit Space.

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