The Two Who are One

There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;

In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met

And light and darkness are their eyes’ interchange;

Our pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace,

Our deeds, our hopes are intimate to their tale;

They are married secretly in our thought and life.

The universe is an endless masquerade:

For nothing here is utterly what it seems;

It is a dream-fact vision of a truth

Which but for the dream would not be wholly true,

A phenomenon stands out significant

Against dim backgrounds of eternity;

We accept its face and pass by all it means;

A part is seen, we take it for the whole.

Thus have they made their play with us for roles:

Author and actor with himself as scene,

He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she …

This is the knot that ties together the stars:

The Two who are one are the secret of all power,

The Two who are one are the might and right in things.

His soul, silent, supports the world and her,

His acts are her commandment’s registers.

Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:

His breast he offers for her cosmic dance

Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,

And none could bear but for his strength within,

Yet none would leave because of his delight …

– Sri Aurobindo

(While looking at the Samadhi)

I do not want to be worshipped. I have come to work, not to be worshipped; let them worship Thee to their heart’s content and leave me, silent and hidden, to do my work undisturbed – and of all veils the body is the best.

– The Mother

Without him, I exist not;

without me, he is unmanifest.

– The Mother