On Savitri
English
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THEME/S
Poetry On Savitri
- Apropos of Savitri
- My Savitri Work with the Mother
- Some Reflections on Savitri
- Savitri, the Mother
- Savitr's House of Meditation
- The Book of Beginnings- Savitri as a Path of Initiation
- Savitri- Its Inner Significance
- The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
- Savitri-The Devikavyam
- Savitri and the Bible
- Shilpa-Yoga and the Kingdom of Subtle Matter
- Sri Aurobindo and Aswapati in Savitri
- Aswapati's Travels through the Worlds — An Overview
- Life and Time in Savitri
- Savitri- Assault of Ether and of Fire
- From Death to Deathlessness-Lucretius
- The Genesis of Savitri
- Real Symbols of Inner Reality
- Imagery and Structure in the First Canto of Savitri
- An Early Appreciation of Savitri
- Symbolism in Savitri
- The Call of Saraswati- Savitri Relation to Sanskrit Poetry
- Savitri-Some Aspects of its Style
- Sri Aurobindo the Poet-Jeweller
- The Legend of Savitri According to the Mahabharata
- The Ballad of Savitri
- Some Perspectives of the Savitri Upakhyana
- Representative Facsimiles of Savitri From Different Periods of its Composition
- Perspectives of Savitri I (A Review)
Find in Book Comment
Perspectives of Savitri
Perspectives of Savitri
Volume Two
Editor
R Y Deshpande
Aurobharati Trust
Pondicherry
R Y Deshpande
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry — 605 002
India.
First Published 21 February 2002
Published by:
AUROBHARATI TRUST
SVP Sallai
5 Kumaran Street
Pondicherry — 605 012, India.
Typesetting in Times Roman
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tat savitur varam rūpam jyotiḥ parasya dhìmahi,
yannaḥ satyena dlpayet.
N.B. The invocation in the Mantra is to the Sun-God savitr ( सवितृ) Accordingly in its, English rendering the word Savitri should beread in that context.
Table of Contents
Part I
My Savitri Work with the Mother by Huta D. Hindocha
Some Reflections on Savitri by Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala
Savitri, the Mother by M. V. Sitaraman
Savitr's House of Meditation by R. V. Deshpande
Part II
The Book of Beginnings- Savitri as a Path of Initiation by S. M. Dyne
Savitri- Its Inner Significance by V. Ananda Reddy
The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri by Jugal Kishore Mukherjee
Savitri-The Devikavyam by Prema Nandakumar
Savitri and the Bible by K. B. Sitaramayya
Shilpa-Yoga and the Kingdom of Subtle Matter by Debashish Banerji
Part III
Sri Aurobindo and Aswapati in Savitri by Georges Van Vrekhem
Aswapati's Travels through the Worlds — An Overview by Mangesh Nadkarni
Life and Time in Savitri by Daniel Albuquerque
Savitri- Assault of Ether and of Fire by C. V. Devan Nair
Part IV
From Death to Deathlessness-Lucretius by P. Marudanayagam
The Genesis of Savitri by Richard Hartz
Real Symbols of Inner Reality by Shraddhavan
Imagery and Structure in the First Canto of Savitri by William C. Flick
Part V
An Early Appreciation of Savitri by Lotika Ghose
Symbolism in Savitri by Asoka K. Ganguli
The Call of Saraswati- Savitri Relation to Sanskrit Poetry by Ranajit Sarkar
Savitri-Some Aspects of its Style by Goutam Ghoshal
Sri Aurobindo the Poet-Jeweller by Rita Nath Keshari
Part VI
The Legend of Savitri According to the Mahabharata by Usha Desai
The Ballad of Savitri by Toru Dutt
Some Perspectives of the Savitri Upakhyana by R. Y. Deshpande
Part VII
Representative Facsimiles of Savitri From Different Periods of its Composition by Richard Hartz
Apropos of Savitri
Part One
Introducing Savitri
tat savitur varam rūpam jyotiḥ parasya dhìmahi !
yannah satyena dipayet !
Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitṛ, the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth.1
This is Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra. The meditation is on the auspicious form of the Sun, the Sun of Divine Light. The Mantra affirms that the Light shall illumine us with the Truth. It shall illumine all the parts of our being, even the very physical. In it shall be our true progress. The threefold reality of Sat-Chit-Ananda shall express itself in this creation. Even the physical shall express the dynamic Truth.
In it we shall be immune from contingencies of Time, from the workings of fate. We shall be uncircumscribed by ignorance. We shall be free from death.
Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra is different from the traditional Gayatri Mantra, the Mantra given by Vishwamitra. In Vishwamitra
'The original translation of the Gayatn Mantra in English as given by Sri Aurobindo is presently not available in his own handwriting. We do not know how he wrote in English the Sanskrit word savitṛ
the invocation to the Sun-God savitṛ is for the illumination of our intuition, of our perception, of our perfect understanding of the things. In that perfect understanding shall be our great spiritual achievements. In Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra the emphasis is on the auspicious form—varam rupam. The implication is that of physical transformation.
The Vedic-Upanishadic Rishis had knowledge of the supreme Reality. They knew that it is the support of the entire creation. But about the manifestation of the dynamic Truth in this mortal world, in mrityuloka, they did not have the working intuition. They did not know the way towards physical transformation. Perhaps it was too early to realise it collectively here in this death-bound world.
Now Sri Aurobindo by his yoga-tapasya has prepared the required ground. He has made it a reality in the evolutionary manifestation. He has invoked the supreme Grace to incarnate here. She must come here and take up the work in her own hand.
The coming down of that Grace is the birth of Savitri. She alone can bring about that transformative miracle. Savitri is the incarnate power who shall establish divinity in the terrestrial phenomenon.
That creative power should bring truth and light and force and bliss to the mortal world, to this creation presently governed by death. That will be her work for the fulfilment of the mortal world. Such is the significance of the esoteric birth of Savitri.
This mrityuloka is the great concern of Savitri. She must bring down the Truth in this world, must make that Truth dynamically operative in it. She must espouse the Truth howsoever difficult the circumstances, even in the presence of ubiquitous death.
It is to do this that Savitri comes here. She comes here as the Observer of the Vow of the Lord. She comes as pativratā. In the story of the Mahabharata Savitri is committed to the joyous husbanding of the Truth, that in the evolutionary way this mortal creation be an expression of multifold divinity. This is the significance of the legend of Savitri. In it is the revelation of the Sun-God's transformative power.
The significance is proclaimed to us by narrating it as a story. What otherwise proves to be beyond the reach of our understanding, what is too occult to grasp, that is made tangible through the medium of a household episode. The story thus turns out to be a fruitful device; by it the higher truth is made to us somewhat comprehendible.
The story belongs to the early Vedic times.
Aswapati, the king of Madra land, is issuless. He desires to have a son to perpetuate his ancestral line. In that way would the continuity of the Vedic Yajna be assured. Therefore it becomes an aspect of dharmic duty and Aswapati wishes not to fail in it. It is in the dharma alone that the order of the society can be maintained. And he is keen to uphold it.
Thereupon Aswapati retires to a forest and engages himself in the worship of Goddess Savitri. He is devout in nature and is firmly established in the truth. Everyday he offers one hundred-thousand oblations to the Goddess. Living a strict life and observing all the vows of the sacrifice, he does arduous tapasya for eighteen long years.
Goddess Savitri is pleased with Aswapati's great devotion, by his single-pointed dedication to the Truth. She grants him a boon. She tells him that soon a radiant daughter will be bom to him. The Goddess also tells him that the boon has the sanction of Creator-Father Brahma himself. The birth of the radiant daughter is therefore already marked by a high intention. It carries in it the Will of the Supreme himself.
Soon the princess grows into full maidenhood. But no hero-prince dares to approach her. None comes forward seeking her hand in marriage. She is an exceptional princess of fiery splendour and therefore none takes courage to court her.
But, according to the custom of the time, her father advises her to go out in search of a partner in life,—one who is endowed with qualities like her own.
She meets Satyavan in the Shalwa forest and they at once pledge to be together.
Savitri returns to the palace and tells to her parents about her meeting with Satyavan. But at that time sage Narad happens to be present in the palace. It seems that at this particular juncture he was making a purposeful visit to them. It seems that he was prompted to do so by some divine intention. The sage makes an announcement, of a foreboding prophecy. He makes known to them that destined death awaits Satyavan one year after the marriage.
But Savitri remains undeterred in her resolve.
The marriage is duly solemnised and the princess goes to the forest to live in her new home. She joyously accepts the rigour of harsh life.
But inwardly Savitri is actively engaged in yogic practices. She is getting fully prepared to meet the dire eventuality, that of Satyavan's death as foretold by Narad. Savitri has acquired inner strength to meet the God of Death.
Now it won't be too long for the fated day to arrive. On this day Satyavan must die.
Satyavan's death occurs in the forest. Yama himself comes to carry Satyavan's soul, he being an ocean of noble qualities.
Savitri follows Yama and discusses matters of Satya Dharma with him. Her understanding of the principles of righteous living pleases Yama. She maintains that the commerce of the world is actually borne by the spiritual practices of the saints and seers.
In a tremendous moment of revelation she discloses that it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun, by askesis the saints uphold the earth, that in the saints all the three divisions of time find their refuge.2
Yama is immensely gladdened by her utterances and releases the soul of her husband.
Savitri wins a unique victory over death.
This is the tale of Savitri, a very familiar tale in India. It is the story of a beautiful young princess marrying a doomed youth. She was made aware of the short life of Satyavan, but she stayed steadfast in her decision. She even asserted that the choice of Satyavan was the choice of her soul and that there was no question of her reconsidering the decision. She had the conviction that she was driven from within.
That is the true Dharma, Satya Dharma, of being driven from within.
This spiritually eventful story shows Savitri not only firm-minded. She is shown as one having exceptional qualities, qualities which put her apart from everybody around.
In the narrative we have in the Mahabharata Savitri is presented as a radiant daughter, kanyd tejasvini; she is beautiful like a damsel of heaven, devarupini; she is dhyānayogaparāyaṇā, an adept in the Yoga of Meditation; she is one who is learned in the lore of the tradition, is fully conversant with the shastras, is an observer of difficult vows.
It is obvious that the Story of Savitri is not just a social episode designed to declare moral values. It actually enshrines the greatness of a woman's love for her husband even in the circumstance of death. It is even more than that,—the Triumph of Love over Death.
It is a story that depicts functionally the merit of the path of righteousness. Although it may seem to have the colouring of an ethical illustration, the story is spiritually charged. Even in the simple
2 R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, p. 55.
narrative of the Mahabharata we see a purpose behind the story. In it we notice the seeds of a brighter world taking birth.
This birth of a bright world may not be in the immediate context, but it is bound to occur in the evolutionary future. It is a new world whose birth is helped and supported by Yama, true Yama as the possessor of gracious kindness. In it the authentic meaning, the high purport of mrityuloka, becomes clear. Yama shall thus prove to be the true Upholder of the Worlds. He shall then be pitrarājastām bhagavān, the beneficent King-Father and Lord of Creatures, as Vyasa says.
Sri Aurobindo utilises this legend to give mantric form to his yogic experiences and realisations, to his avataric work. His Savitri is therefore not only a legend and a symbol, a symbol describing the conquest of death. It is also a double autobiography.
In it the pregnant Gayatri Mantra of twenty-four syllables gets expanded to fill the earthly spaces by growing itself into twenty-four thousand lines.
It has wide and far-reaching dimensions of the expressive-revelatory Word. It is that Word which shall bring noble plenitudes of divinity to this evolutionary creation. It is on this foundation that we have Sri Aurobindo's epic.
In the epic Savitri came to live with grief, to share the mortal's lot, to stay the wheels of doom, to confront death. This was the great divine task she was engaged in. For that she made the sacrifice of her suffering to the presiding Deity, surrendered herself completely to the Will of the Supreme. Indeed in it she attempted all and achieved all. In it she received the most wondrous boon of divine life on earth.
The Divine Savitri had assured Aswapati that she shall take birth as his daughter and accept the burden of the world:
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword
And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.3
Incarnate Savitri accomplished what was promised. Now the Powers of the Spirit gaze upon destiny and there is its living presence
3 Savitri, p. 346.
even in the commonest things. Luminous crimson seeds of God's felicity have been sown in the earthly soil. These shall-sprout and
This earthly life become the life divine.4
Who is Savitri?
Who is this Savitri? What is her role, what is her business? Tradition makes her an unusual princess who wins back the soul of her dead husband from the God of Death. We already have in her story a supernatural element describing the most extraordinary event in the spiritual history of the earth. It therefore becomes obvious that it is a significant myth reciting the prophetic achievement of a woman in this death-dominated creation. If she is one who bears in her womb the secret birth of divinity, if she is janani, then surely she can't accept sorrowful infliction of the death of her own child. She must become death-victorious, mrityu-vijayini. Her one concern is indeed to establish immortal birth in this mortality. The root sense of the name Savitri itself makes it clear to us so.
The Sanskrit word savitr means the Sun-God, who is also the creator of the world. The descendent of savitṛ is therefore sāvitṛ, or as feminine savitri. The invocation to savitṛ in the Gayatri Mantra of Sri Aurobindo taken in the context of his magnum opus Savitri then assumes a revealing meaningfulness. In gracious answer to the invocation is the incarnation of savitri. She brings with her the dynamism of Truth and Light which no darkness can dim. There is thus the infallibility of success in her action, an action in the high Will itself. That shows how charged with spiritual connotations the word savitṛ is.
If the Sun-God or savitṛ is the creator of this entire universe, we have then to understand why this world is beset by the presence of Death. Which implies that the operative veil savitṛ has put on himself in the pregnant circumstance of this Inconscience has to be removed by his own power of illumination. After all, Death is also the descendent of savitṛ himself and therefore it becomes his concern to deal with him. For that to happen his expressive power who is the Sun-Word should come as savitri. But this happens only when the ground for her descent is well prepared here.
Such is the task cut out for Savitri. She makes a splendid sacrifice of the eminence of her heavenly abundances and accepts the travail
4Ibid., p. 711.
of evolutionary growth; she leaves her "vaster Nature" behind to work in the limits of our little terrestriality. This is an aspect of the process of manifestation itself, assuring in it the Supreme's direct involvement in the person of Savitri.
It was in a wondrous act of Love that the Supreme had plunged into the darkness of the Inconscience. In that way would appear out of it another creation for incessant progress in the growing possibilities of the Spirit. Savitri's incarnation is for joining this Love in conformity with and accomplishment of the Supreme's Will. That is how the story of Savitri also becomes the story of Love triumphing over Death through her action. If it is through the agency of Supermind that the world came into being, it is Supermind alone who will then bring authentic fulfilment to it in joyous glories of the Truth and Light and Force and Awareness. In it is the work of Surya-Savitri. It is that we celebrate in the Savitri-legend given to us as a great gift.
Such is the Savitri Mantra although we call it Gayatri Mantra. There is a certain difference between the two. One is the Mantra of Manifestation, the other of Transformation. In the Transcendent the executive Power of the Supreme is Gayatri; but bom here upon earth she takes the name of Savitri, the daughter of the supramental Sun. When we are invoking her on the earth, we are actually invoking that Supreme's creative executrix herself, asking her to make this a place for her habitation, for her to live in, a place where divinity in luminous magnificence of its aristocracy can find itself at home. The Creator can't be very happy with the conditions as they prevail now and, if there is an issue, it becomes his concern to deal with it. Therefore in response to a call from the praying soul of the earth he sends to this world his power as Savitri. "A world's desire [compels] her mortal birth." By condescending to be bom here Savitri accomplishes the heavenly task. She removes the dark Obstacle that lies across the path of the divine Event and makes the manifestation of a new world a reality.
If we choose the Pauranic language we can say that Brahma's conceptive-expressive power as the supreme Creatrix is present in two aspects,—in the modes of transcendental and terrestrial creation. That Creatrix in the nature of the Word is held by Brahma in his clasp5 and, when she comes out, she comes out as Gayatri in the Transcendent and Savitri in this world of ours. While as Gayatri she is the creative force in the Transcendent, in the mortal world she
5 Savitri, p. 525.
takes birth as Savitri for the transformative action. If from that Word world after splendid world wheels out in interminable glory and grandeur, "in metres that reflect the moving worlds,"6 there is also the evolutionary delight in a mysterious unfoldment of the eternal Time. We can meet the underlying identity of these two goddesses in the dynamism of the Truth-Being, in Brahma himself. In him Satyam and Ritam are one and inseparable. In fact their oneness belongs to the manifestive Truth in its twofold operation. If Savitri as the Truth-Word gives form and definiteness to the Truth-Idea in this world, Gayatri as the Truth-Rhythm sets that Truth-Idea into its spacious expanding movement,—one always supporting the other. If substantiality of form in its Truth-contents is bestowed on it by one, the other breathes majesties of a widening life into it.
In the context of the metres that move the worlds, Gayatri as chhanda-devatā appears in her triple measure. It consists of three parts each with eight syllables, indicating the triple occult formation with its enduring transcendental realities vis-à-vis this vast creation. These give rise to the triple world of Sat-Chit-Ananda. The Veda speaks of the three strides of Vishnu in the transcendent and we may as well conceive these to be the eight-syllabled three parts of this devatā. The virgin goddess of this supernal world is the one who, over there, luminously up-bears the lower triple world. "Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces."7 Such is Gayatri in the language of what we may call the Tantra in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo.
The lower world, more specifically this mrityuloka, is the great concern of Savitri. She is the power of the ever-expanding divine creation in an evolutionary way in this death-dominated world, mrityuloka. She deals with death to give to it a deathblow, that by it the Supreme may emerge in another way. It also means that she has been here throughout the evolutionary history of the earth. Hers is an eternal birth. Since the beginning of the evolution whenever and wherever there was a possibility of the divine manifestation, she was present there. In fact it is she who works out that possibility. She
6 Ibid., p. 383. 7 The Mother, SABCL, Vol.25,p.23.
takes birth as a radiant daughter,—kanyd tejasvini as Vyasa puts it. She keeps on coming as the princess of Madra, the daughter of the timeless king Aswapati. For, hers is an eternal birth which is also the birth in eternal Time. Thus the fascinating Story of Savitri is actually an unfolding Story of the Eternal himself, being simultaneously told and retold on multiple levels. It is an exalted story of the evolutionary manifestation, which cannot be set into the domains of what we see as the past, present, and future.
Whereas Savitri comes as a radiant daughter, Gayatri always remains a virgin goddess. Gayatri who stands far above the mortal world, above this pain-fraught mrityuloka thus provides the needed transcendental foundation for the evolutionary Savitri. The essential oneness of the two assures the success even in the circumstance of mortality. We may as well say that it is this golden oneness which makes Savitri's coming here possible as well as meaningful. Because of their identity in the vastness of the Truth that is Brahman in every respect, it is Brahman himself who richly and rightfully greatens himself in another vast evolutionary dimension. This is an inalienable aspect of the supreme creative Will itself, of the divine samkalpa in the delight of existence.
But the advent of Savitri is to be preceded by preparing the needed occult-spiritual support to bear the weight and majesty of her Grace. A "world's desire" has to rise to bring her birth amongst us. This is done, again, by the Supreme himself, coming here as the Son of Force. He comes here as eternal Aswapati, as the king of Madra in the Land of Tapasya. He does intense Yoga-Sadhana in the Earth-consciousness. He discerns the "wide world-failure's cause" and offers his prayer to the supreme Goddess to mission down a living form of her. It is here that things have to happen and these can happen only through her. The purpose of the Yoga-Sadhana of Aswapati is therefore to prepare the necessary base, to provide a resplendent support, the firm needed ādhār for executive action of the omnipotent Goddess. He "keeping the traditions of those times goes," in the Savitri-story, "to the forest and performs penance for eighteen years, at the end of which the Divine Mother Gayatri appears to him and gives him a boon that she would be bom to him... He names her Savitri... Savitri and Gayatri are the same Deity."8
8Collected Works of M.P. Pandit, edited by Rand Hicks, Vol. 1, p. 337.
They are the same, yet they are different in their roles. Of course there is no exact algebraic equivalence between Gayatri and Savitri; but we can meet their underlying selfsameness in Brahma himself. The virgin goddess of this world, the World of Sachchidananda, is the one who, from that source, makes things in the lower triple world possible. The radiant daughter, accepting the conditions of the inconscient Ignominy, sets herself to work those things out in the rhythms of the Truth-conscient.
We may also state it differently: The Adya Shakti, the original Primaeval Might, always stays in the transcendent. That is her viewless home. Her office is there, up there, and it i$ from there that she supports all these thousand actions, actions even in the lower difficult hemisphere. But for the decisive change to take place she has to project herself as the supramental Force. Indeed, it is in that form that she will come down to doing the work. Thus while the supreme Adya Shakti will always remain in the Transcendent, it is Savitri with the transformative power who will come down and take charge of the evolutionary process upon earth. In fact that has been her responsibility all along.
It is in this way that the Supermind will belong to the evolutionary line. However, its descent will mean the descent of its powers and not the descent of the Transcendent itself. Gayatri will always remain there. More and more of her aspects will stream into this growing process, but that will not imply her own stepping into it. The Transcendent upholds evolution in its splendid evolutionary play, but it itself does not become a part of the evolution. But perhaps it is through this play that the Transcendent will grow further to make that growth richer in the terrestrial happiness.
To describe the entire sequence in a somewhat plain language we can put it as follows. The unmanifest Divine plunges as Love into the depths of Inconscience, into the Horror of Inconscience. That is the first Avatar, "the permanent Avatar" whose presence alone will make the Inconscience luminous, make it a means for his own widening manifestation. But in the meanwhile silently he suffers the great Affliction in a divine manner. To redeem that Love, the Divine incarnates here in mortality in an evolutionary way and does intense Tapas. This radiant ground of Tapas then becomes the foundation or adhar for his executive Power's action to assert his Will in this mortal creation. She prevails over almighty Death, the dire Antagonist, and wins a unique victory. Thus is established the unfolding sovereignty of Love in which transformed Death participates with his noble
benignities. Indeed that is how in a mysterious creative act of delight all is done by the Divine himself.
Such is the significance, the excellence of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which is in fact the Word of Revelation adopting the fruitful form of a creative Myth, the myth that transcends the restrictive boundaries of space and time. It is a myth whose truth is being realised at every instance and at every place. It is the Mantra of Transformation which also implies Manifestation. It is built into the very origin of the creation, into the stuff of things by which they acquire their validity, in turn making that myth itself an eternal reality. Be it one single resplendent word Savitri holding the Sun-God's wide infinity, or twenty-four syllables reverberating from some deep-toned womb of the omniscient Hush, or, in "sessions of the triple Fire," twenty-four thousand lines spreading into the everlasting day, we have in them all present the Mantra Devata in her dynamic action to establish the supreme Truth on earth. We have in them all, and variously, the entrancing sweetness of her Love alone.
Autobiographical
It is well known that Savitri is the poetic record of spiritual experiences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In this connection we may recall what the Mother told Mona Sarkar:
All this is his own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which he has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book... earlier when he was writing he used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear him read Savitri. During the night he would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences he read out to me in the morning were those I had the previous night, word by word... Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which he read out to me the following morning.9
9 Mona Sarkar, Sweet Mother—Harmony of Light, pp. 26-27. See also Perspectives of Savitri /, 46-47.
We also have a few letters of Sri Aurobindo indicating the aspect of his yogic realisations forming a part of Savitri. In this sense the poem is a double autobiography, but an autobiography in a different sense. Certainly, it is not a chronological presentation of events as are narrated in works of the kind. Nor is the approach Newtonianly linear in the successive manner of a cause-and-effect series. In fact it transcends the dimensions of Time and at once becomes intuitively supple to extend into psycho-spiritual relationships. We may say that when Sri Aurobindo is describing the upward journey of Aswapati climbing the ascending hierarchy of these innumerable worlds,
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky,10
it is not a curve of Time that he is tracing in sequence. Nor can we generally get from Savitri the dates of their various spiritual achievements, their Siddhis. More important is perhaps the fact that it is a work which graphically characterises the entire evolutionary march of the Soul of the Earth. That is why the autobiography is a legend, an intense and powerful Legend of the Future, a future that is being enacted all along. Yet there is also specificity pertaining to the present avataric enterprise.
During the most unremitting phase of his unique effort to bring down the Supermind in the physical and make it a part of the earth nature, Sri Aurobindo considered nothing insignificant or small, spared no labour to achieve the objective. Every minute detail had to be attended to, every nook and corner of the darkness searched with the light of the spirit. If the "supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness... [if the change has to] arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below... and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above."" To prepare earth nature to send this call and to obtain the sanction of the Supreme is the task of Sri Aurobindo. Towards this he absorbed into himself all the glories and all the travesties of the earth nature, that thus alone could he make it freely receptive, luminously pliable to shape it in the possibilities of the higher powers. The "aspiring Secrecy"12 has to reach the transcendental greatnesses that thus alone would pour into it flaming oceans of felicity. For that he attempted all and in the process achieved all.
10 Savitri, p. 98. 11 The Mother, SABCL, Vol.25,p.40.
12 Savitri,p.421.
But the power that graciously intercedes between the call and the sanction is the executive Power who can "alone rend the lid and tear the covering... and bring down into this world of... falsehood and death Truth... and the Immortal's Ananda."13 To accomplish this she has to "adventure through blind unforeseeing Time"14 and stand on a dangerous brink... alone with death and close to extinction's edge.15 The failure of her work would mean sure collapse of the creation itself; but the success would entail divine prosperity in the sunlit widenesses of the earth. Such are the happy or else grave dreadful consequences which we have to recognise in the avataric endeavour of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Savitri is the only yogic record through which we might glean the enormity of the difficulty and come to know what they did for us little mortals. But it is also the bright flame with which we can kindle our souls to grow more and more into its wonders.
If in Savitri we see such an extraordinary marvel we have to understand that it became particularly so, in the time-sequence, only during the last fifteen years of its composition. In one of his early letters in 1931, addressed to Amal Kiran, Sri Aurobindo writes as follows: 'There is a previous draft, the result of the many retouchings... but in that form it would not have been a magnum opus at all. Besides, it would have been a legend and not a symbol. I therefore started recasting the whole thing..."16 This makes it abundantly clear that the symbolic aspect of the magnum opus became more manifest than the legendary as an expressive necessity. In fact the entire thrust was to give a definite and dynamic shape to spiritual verities, in the process making them forever a part of the divinity in the earth. We see a quantum leap in the work of the incarnate God turning his gain into an enduring luminous evolutionary gain. The symbol thus becomes the Sun-Word itself. This is further corroborated by his letter to Amal Kiran in 1947: "Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind..."17
How does it become the Sun-Word? "Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past time when the whole thing had to be opened out, so as to 'hew the ways of Immortality.' "18
13 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 41. 14 Savitri, p. 459.
15 Ibid., p. 461. 16 Ibid., p. 727.
17 Ibid., p. 794. 18Ibid ., p. 729.
About hewing "the ways of Immortality" we have what Amal Kiran calls,19 the Gayatri Mantra of the Mother. In a talk given to a women's association, dated 15 December 1911, the Mother expresses a very remarkable wish of hers. She proposes to the members of the association to make a resolution to raise themselves
... each day, in all sincerity and goodwill, in an ardent aspiration towards the Sun of Truth, towards the Supreme Light, the source and intellectual life of the universe, so that it may pervade us entirely and illumine with its great brilliance our minds and hearts, all our thoughts and our actions.20
The Mantra is striking in several respects when we also realise that the Mother received it indeed even before she met Sri Aurobindo in 1914. This was in Paris when she was just 33,—showing us that "the Mother had been spiritually conscious from her youth."21 The ardent invocation to the Supreme Light to "pervade us entirely and illumine us with its great brilliance" is certainly the imploration, as well as the defining assertion, with which both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother started their work even before they came together. Years later, thanks to Doraiswami,22 we see it embodied in the "auspicious form" of the Gayatri Mantra itself. The result is the transformative disclosure in the nature of a metrical formula in Sanskrit, made perhaps in the early '30s. In this case the coming of the Avatar—the twin Avatar—therefore also means the coming of the revealing Word of Manifestation. We should not be therefore surprised that it should have been formulated, though independently but in an identical manner, by both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
In 1914 itself the Mother had a very definite intuition of the "sublime mandate," of the "New Manifestation" which shall be an
19The Sun and the Rainbow, p. 123.
20Words of Long Ago, CWM, Vol. 2, p. 28.
21Prayers and Meditations, CWM, Vol. 1, p. 380.
22An Aiyar Brahmin from Chennai, Doraiswami was Sri Aurobindo's devotee. He maintained that he would perform the thread-ceremony of his son Mithran only if he received a Mantra from the Master. A nationalist and a leading advocate by profession, he was Sri Aurobindo's emissary who carried his message to the Congress Working Committee when, in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps's proposal to create a new Indian Union with a Dominion Status was being discussed in New Delhi. Unfortunately Sri Aurobindo's recommendation to accept the proposal was rejected.
"integral manifestation." She was sure that
A new Light shall break upon the earth.
A new world shall be bom.23
If this is the nature of the work she envisaged for which she got the mantric knowledge, there is also the certainty of her joining the Master to carry it out and to give to it a dynamic form in his bright eminent Will. In her prayer dated 11 January 1914 addressed to the "sovereign Lord" she speaks of a new life dedicated entirely to the Divine:
I know that a day will come when Thou wilt transform all those who come to us; Thou wilt transform them so radically that, liberated completely from the bonds of the past, they will begin to live in Thee an entirely new life, a life made solely of Thee, with Thee as its sovereign Lord.24
This was in Paris about two and a half months before she actually met Sri Aurobindo. But even at that time she was speaking of the aspirant souls approaching them seeking transformation to lead a new life. We should pertinently mark the phrase "those who come to us" in her prayer to the sovereign Lord. She already 'knew' the one who would make them free from the dismal bonds of the past, by his yogic tapasya remove their dark encumbrances so that they may live a life dedicated to the Supreme to progress in the possibilities of the Spirit. The phrase "those who come to us" is already a wonderful prevision of what was to take place on the most eventful afternoon of 29 March 1914 in Pondicherry.
That by saying "us" in her prayer the Mother definitely meant herself and Sri Aurobindo becomes obvious from another prayer of hers addressed to the "marvellous Unknown One", dated 11 August 1914. They are the ones by going to whom a new life will begin:
O Thou marvellous Unknown One, Thou who hast not yet manifested Thyself, Thou who awaitest the propitious hour and hast sent us upon earth to prepare Thy ways, all the elements of this being cry to Thee, "May Thy will be done" and give
23Prayers and Meditations, CWM, Vol. 1, p. 249 (25 September 1914.)
24Ibid., p. 54.
themselves to Thee in a supreme, unconquerable urge...
The coming together of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo was thus divinely foreordained; they were sent—"Thou... who... hast sent us upon earth"—to prepare the ways to do things in the Will of the Marvellous, in His samkalpa. But for that to happen "the propitious hour" had to arrive. Because they were sent by Him it is no wonder that they, even without coming in contact with each other on the physical plane, should have given the same Mantra for the Transformation of Life. Indeed there cannot be any contingent spatiotemporal separation in the Mantra. The Mantra existed in the very samkalpa itself. That is why it is a part of that endless propitious hour awaited by the Unknown One. However, terrestrially that propitious hour, that providential moment, has also got to be fixed in the timeless birth of the Avatar himself. This hour in the yogic tapasya of the Avatar has also to acquire its Siddhis, become an accomplished realisation. Surely, then, that propitious hour in its executive potency itself becomes the Mantra. That is Savitri.
Sri Aurobindo explains the significance of the Mantra as follows:
Brahman in the Vedas signifies ordinarily the Vedic Word or Mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word.... And the word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul is also brahman.26 The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras; they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisations for others.... Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body.27
The Word or Brahman the Creator of the Worlds can thus express itself in us, embody the auspicious powers of the spirit to make progress in its widening manifestation. Savitri achieves it. In terms of its reality-content we may as well say that the Mother had already
25Ibid., p. 218.
26The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, pp. 303-13.
27The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, pp. 510-11.
written Savitri in 1911 itself, when she addressed her prayer to the Sun of Truth.
But we have to also see the entire sequence in terms of its modus operandi. The aspect of terrestrial chronology has certain pertinence in consolidating the mantric powers in it. If we connect the birth of Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra in the '30s with the work of physical transformation he was engaged in, we perhaps get some idea about the intensity with which it was being pursued during that period. In 1935 Sri Aurobindo had written to Nirodbaran that the Supramental Light was coming down but there was also the upsurge of the dark and dismal crudeness making things difficult. The Mother later told Amal Kiran, in 1954, that she used to see the Supermind descending in Sri Aurobindo in 1938; but at that time what he could not do was to fix it in the physical.28 That his yogic tapasya along with the revelation of the Gayatri Mantra in the '30s and the composition of Savitri during the period are interconnected is therefore extremely significant. In fact we might assert that the period between 1935 and 1950 is greatly consequential from the point of view of actualising the work of physical transformation.
That Savitri is a double autobiography is indisputable in its spiritual sense. The happy device used by the poet is to write or asseverate it in the form of a legend. But, though (he legend is an ancient legend, it is a time-transcending legend. Actually right from its creation it has been the Legend of the Future. It has the Vedic vision that sees the mortal world sans death. In it immortality shall be the basis as well as the means for endless progress in the aspects of the transcendental realities. It proclaims a divine Manifestation. Thus in the legend we have Aswapati as the Protagonist and Savitri as the resplendent incarnate Word in her occupation with the Soul of the Earth called Satyavan,—they timelessly engaged in the world-transforming action. They are, in the legend carrying the ancient symbolism, "emanations or incarnations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life."29 We have therefore powers and incarnations which have been eternally here; they are not simply the time-honoured characters belonging to Vyasa's
28For a fuller discussion of the theme, see R. Y. Deshpande, Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium, pp. 235-61, (1999).
29On Himself, SABCL,Vol.26,p.265.
illustrative Upakhyana in the Mahabharata, where also they stand for eternal or sanātana values in life that must be cherished. That may be taken as the reason why we don't need an identification mark to recognise Sri Aurobindo as Aswapati and the Mother as Savitri of the story. It is the same Aswapati who evolutionarily marching through the ages comes to us as Sri Aurobindo. Aswapati is the eternal incarnation of the Supreme. In fact without identifying himself with this ageless Aswapati Sri Aurobindo would not have been able to bring himself out in Savitri.
Now he comes here, because the propitious hour has arrived. Presently this propitious hour has an intended connection with Death's tremendous hour.30 It is in this tremendous hour that the evolutionary march shall overleap its mortal step. This is the most felicitous blessing received by Aswapati from the supreme Goddess herself. In fact there is an unmistakable corroboration between the Gayatri Mantra of Sri Aurobindo and the Boon described by him in Savitri. In the Mantra the invocation is to the Sun-God to illumine all the parts of our being. However, before the benignities of the Sun-God are freely admitted into our lives, the physical presently prone to death must receive the solar illumination. Therefore Savitri must meet Death, Death as the incarnation of the Inconscience stubbornly standing across the path of the divine Event. She must encounter him and remove him from the scene. She must become mrityu-vijayini. Sri Aurobindo's epic of victory asserts that she shall do it with a victor's might and in the tremendous hour sow the seeds of grandeur. For this to happen of course Death's tremendous hour has to arrive. That also implies the occult necessity of Sri Aurobindo's 'death'. Thus the luminous affirmation of the Gayatri Mantra foreholds in its operative aspect the necessity for Death's transfiguring hour. It is this which assures the opening of the earthly life to its Light and Force. Then the Sun of Truth shall illumine with its splendour even the unregenerate physical to do things of its splendour.
The Descent into Night
If we wish to see the autobiographical—rather more appropriately the aurobiographical—account in the ancient tale of Savitri, then there should not be any difficulty in associating the Mother with Savitri
30 Savitri, p. 346.
and Sri Aurobindo with Aswapati himself. This is true not only in the sense of its legendary bearings but also in terms of its symbolic contents. The one-to-one correspondence that is likely to come in the first is enlarged in its spiritual context by the other aspect. It is the great visionary power of the legend that luminously supports the revealing possibilities of the symbol. In a certain sense they actually enrich each other.
This simply means that Savitri's is not a story of something which happened in the deep past. Indeed, we never ask a question as to who Savitri was; instead we always yearn to know as to who Savitri is. Vyasa's kanyā tejasvini Sri Aurobindo's Sun-Word is "the living goddess, the Word, and the Fire, that still works in us when we read the Mantra... It is effective word, which re-enacts her birth and tapasya in the hearer and the reader." That mantric force and vigour bring about an on-going rebirth in us. Such is precisely the purpose for which the goddess takes the "mortal birth", that thus alone she might take ever-recurring birth in our consciousness. As is the identity of Savitri and the Mother, so too is the oneness of Aswapati of the timeless past and ageless Sri Aurobindo. The two have all along been carrying the same soul of divinity in them. The external circumstances of life bring in them the least difference. This is particularly so when we also become aware of the fact that Aswapati that is Sri Aurobindo is not a frozen figure belonging to a given epoch. He is kālātit, beyond the circumscribing boundaries of time, yet growing in time to take time along with him.
The birth of Savitri means the birth of a new world. This she brings about by meeting the luminous Presence behind Death and obtaining the boon of a divine life upon earth. She always works in us towards that change, awaking us to the sense of our true innate spiritual entitlement. Sometimes it is feared that by laying too exclusive a stress on the aspect of the legend alone, we might somewhat overshadow this mantric power of hers. This will have the deleterious effect of distancing us away from what Sri Aurobindo intended it to be. If such is the danger then we should at once disassociate ourselves from the apprehensive outcome which the notion of a legend may carry in it. Our conjoining with its trenchant historicity could thus shut us off from the future it can unfold for us. But we should appreciate the fact that the ancient tale of Savitri in its charged symbolic contents is assuredly the auroral fore-history of the new age that is dawning on us. It is timeless in purpose and poignant in relevance.
The symbolic legend of Savitri describes a twofold journey. If one is a journey that climbs greater and greater spiritual heights into the Transcendent, the other journey is a deepening journey which plunges into the occult depths of this material existence. One is the Journey of the Lord of Life and the other the Journey of the Sun-bright Executrix. They have undertaken the journeys by assuming human forms in full acceptance of all the thousand limitations of ours, by embracing all the ordeals of our mortality. The exalted purpose is to open out ways of infinity for this creation to progress in its unbounded possibilities. Behind this purpose is of course the blazing happy samkalpa of the Supreme himself, his Will. But, in order to accomplish it, contingencies of the inconscient workings have to be also taken care of. Across the path of this arduous journey there stands presently an incorrigible power, the colossal shadow-figure of Death.
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo's age-old concern has been to decisively deal with this Death. Their incarnation—a double incarnation—is the sine qua non for the success. This aspect is well focused in the traditional story. To win back the evolving soul of Satyavan from Yama, the uncompromising Immortal, it is necessary that, from the fire-altar of Aswapati's tapasya emerge Savitri as a radiant daughter. The Vedic Rishis had this intuition when they presented to us the Myth of Savitri in the context of the issue involved in this Mrityuloka. That is the enduring truth behind it.
But the issue gets fully matured only in our own time, waiting as it were for the arrival of the twin Avatar; fate seems to have conspired towards this. The splendid imperative is now to resolve it. Therefore Sri Aurobindo has to go to the domain of darkness, which is the birthplace of the antagonist Death. Thus we see the Yogin of Savitri entering the ashen abysses of creation to discover this wide world-failure's cause. This also means that presently his yogic tapasya in terms of its consequences approaches certain finality to get things done. In terms of specific autobiographical details we may say that this started happening around 1935. If we have an early suggestive glimpse of it in Sri Aurobindo's experiential A God's Labour31 its fuller account in the nature of the journey of the Traveller of the Worlds is given in Cantos Seven and Eight of Book Two.
The poet of Savitri is sufficiently expressive to reveal to us what had transpired when he entered into this primordial darkness that prevails in the Non-being's Void. Much more might have happened
31Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 99-102.
than is indicated, but even that little only goes to show the enormity of the "terrible Inane" denying the Spirit's interminable Truth. We have in The Descent into Night a few action steps as follows:
He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause.
He sent his gaze into the formidable Infinity asleep.
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain.
He saw the body and visage of the dark Unseen.
He followed the dim steps returning to the night.
He passed the no-man's-land without debate.
He came into an armoured fierce domain.
He witnessed the shadow depths of Life.
His vision discovered Hell's trade-mark.
He wrestled with powers that snatched from mind its light.
He entered a gaunt spiritual blank.
He strove to shield his spirit from despair.
His spirit became an empty listening gulf.
His being from its own vision disappeared.
His body was lapped by a tenebrous tongue.
He must bear all this with hope of heaven estranged.
He endured all, stilled the vain terror.
He mastered the tides of Nature with a look.
He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.32
It will be rewarding to know the chronology as to how exactly the corresponding passages through the various drafts of Savitri developed. But as these are spiritual experiences in the nature of a poetic record we will have to observe some caution also; their sequence cannot be taken strictly as that of an event-by-event account. Yet an archival approach in dating these can shed interesting light vis-à-vis the yogic accomplishments. It seems that the prime seeds of these consequential developments had just started appearing during the late '20s and early '30s. We may briefly trace these as follows.
32 Savitri, pp. 202-19.
The present version of The Descent into Night consisting of 609 lines essentially belongs to the 1942 draft which was revised and enlarged in the double column copy-text of 1944. But of the total number of lines of Canto Seven and Canto Eight put together there were hardly 60-70 lines present in the earlier draft of 1935-3633 and of these scarcely a couple of lines existed prior to this. But then around this time the symbolic as against the legendary character of the epic had just started emerging more and more prominently. It became more experiential and pinpointed towards the transformative objective during the '40s. Previous to this 'first draft' there was practically nothing in Savitri to indicate the grimness of the Night's sway over the creation. This first draft—and A God's Labour— therefore forms the first recorded statement of the Yogin's stifling Assignation with the Night. In 1938 he had a rendezvous with her and, carrying God's deathless light in his breast, he had gone there to woo her dark and dangerous heart; but he had no definite idea of how he would win her over. He, however, had the conviction that his celestial Friend is there always with him to help him and that his determined engagement with the Night would pave the path towards Immortality.34
When the Avatar puts his foot on the soil of the Night it indeed marks the beginning of the Everlasting Day. In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-tapasya it means the first decisive step towards integral transformation. In its sequel great things happen,—including the upsurge of terrible forces. That this business with the jeopardous Night should have coincided with the Second World War when the Regiments of Darkness had heavily precipitated therefore does not come as a surprise. The fate of the evolutionary creation was hanging in the balance. But he came out victorious. Savitri informs us about that aspect of occult history. Here the symbol has certainly gone far ahead of the traditional legend.
Yet if we go into the deep past we have certain clues about the attempts which were made earlier. In this respect we have a very perceptive comment from David Frawley alias Vamadeva Shastri: "It seems that the urge to transform the Earth consciousness was stronger in the earlier ages of light. It fell away during the worst of Kali Yuga, when it was enough for a few individuals to gain liberation and the collectivity was too caught in tamas. As we move back towards
33This early version has been published in Mother India, 1983.
34Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 132.
the ages of light it is arising again. The Rig Vedic Rishis were at the dawn of this cycle of civilisation and were mainly concerned with setting forth the seeds of the upcoming culture, particularly on a spiritual level, but also as the social order. It is hard to say whether physical transformation as Sri Aurobindo envisioned it was part of their yoga but we do have the tradition that many Rishis lived for long periods of time (which could have been done by various methods occult, tantric, yogic, ayurvedic). They seem to have included the idea of transforming physical matter as part of their long-term aspiration for humanity, but they were also aware of Asuric forces in the material world that are very difficult to overcome."
Vamadeva further adds: "The Rishis' pursuit of physical and spiritual rejuvenation is reflected in the Vedic knowledge of Soma. There were many types of Somas both external (prepared with herbs) and internal (produced through yogic practices like pranayama) for rejuvenating body and mind and for gaining immorality on various levels. The Bhrigus were particularly known for their knowledge of rejuvenation. Even Brihaspati of the Angirasas sent his son Kacha to gain this knowledge from Shukra of the Bhrigus. Yet it is hard to tell whether the Rishis ever tried to, or were in a position to, create a naturally divine body such as Sri Aurobindo envisioned. This would require the most powerful form of Soma. It would be, as it were, a body naturally made of pure Soma, matter with the capacity of perpetually rejuvenating itself. Yet there is no reason to think that they were not aware of the possibility, given their pursuit of Soma on all levels. We could also describe this as bringing the Soma of Mahar Loka into the genetic matrix of physical matter. Of course the Asuras would try to prevent this as much as possible as this would mean the end of them."35 But with the descent of Mahar itself in the earth-consciousness this cannot happen. Asuras are helpless against it. That was the truth seen by Sri Aurobindo and he worked towards it and firmly established it in the earth's subtle-physical. Things now will happen in the dynamism of the Truth-consciousness itself.
In one of the Vedic Riks we have the description of Agastya digging into the darkness of the Night, khanan as it says. But the Rishi found it difficult to deal with the physical nature. He could not bring light to it. His body was afflicted with a triple poison and could not bear the sunlight. It was like an unbaked clay-pot, atapta tanu. Similarly, Vamadeva could live here in a divine body, divya tanu, only for sixteen
35 Private communication.
years.36 These ancient Rishis certainly knew what could bring about the physical transformation, the Mahar or Supermind, but they did not know its full modus operandi. The attainment of immortality in the luminous worlds or divyaloka is one thing and its knowledge in mrityuloka is another. The aspect of dynamic immortality in the physical is the work of the executive Force and unless her incarnation takes place it cannot be accomplished. Though the intuition of her descent to bring about materially the transformation was there,—and that is what the significant legend of Savitri narrates,—the field, the necessary resplendent spiritual support, ādhār, for its universal action was not yet ready then. The eighteen-year arduous tapasya of Aswapati, that is to stay Sri Aurobindo, was exactly for preparing the ground for her transformative action. In that respect we see the importance of the radical step that was taken by him. In fact what he achieved he achieved precisely because Savitri that is the Mother in her full energetic splendour also accompanied him. This was not so earlier. Cycles of evolution had to be silently worked out to arrive at this point.
In this context we may also recall the great Vedic revelation in which we see Yama and our illustrious forefathers having together an ambrosial drink under Supalash Vriksha.37 The mention of supalāsha in the Rik is extraordinarily striking, particularly in association with Yama whom we take as the God of Death. The reference to a cluster of palāsha trees by Vyasa in his Savitri-narrative lifts up that narrative itself to another level of symbolism embodying in its richness a whole world of bright future possibilities. The botanical name of this tree is Butea Frondosa, which is popularly known as the Flame of the Forest. But the spiritual significance of it is far deeper than we can discern even from its poetic nomenclature. The Mother sees palāsha as the Beginning of the Supramental Realisation. That Yama should be linked up with it, enjoying the drink of immortality under its rich branches in the happy company of our forefathers and other gods, only indicates the centrality of his role in the entire process of supramentalisation of the physical. Here is the kind and gracious God who bestows on this creation the desirable boons of a glorious life in the splendours of the spirit. Yama shall thus fulfil himself terrestrially also.
36 For a detailed discussion of some of these aspects, see R.Y. Deshpande, Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium, pp.201-27.
37 Rig Veda, X.135.1.
That lends another meaning to the Savitri-legend itself. Savitri's winning back the soul of Satyavan from Yama therefore acquires another sense that points towards this marvellous realisation. But in order that this should happen the dark sombre veil which has been worn by Yama must be removed. Radiant Savitri, the daughter of the Sun-God, alone can do that. In fact Yama has put on a double veil, the veil of the incorrigible Antagonist and the veil of the luminous Inveigler. Behind him is indeed present the loving Supreme himself. It was the removal of this double veil, this double transformation which was accomplished by Savitri. Thus behind the darkness of this creation she meets her bright father to receive authentic boons of divine life upon earth. The Yoga-tapasya of Aswapati has thus borne the fruits of godly felicity.
Some Imponderables
There is no doubt that the ancient tale of Savitri is charged with the contents of physical transformation; but then we also see that in its swift narrative it has left many details unsaid. Thus Savitri's winning of the very unusual boon of Satyavan's life from Yama,—the Vedic immortal drinking ambrosia under the Supalāsh tree,—undoubtedly acquires its significance in the marvellous intent of this world's creation. But the story, although it is sufficiently careful to drop the necessary hints, does not go into the multiple processes that operate in time's dynamism. The yogic vision behind it is the Vision of the Future though it may not spell out the means and the details to make it a reality upon earth.
Many questions in the story will therefore trouble the modem mind, but suggestive answers are also to be found in it. Take as an example the tapasya of Aswapati. He retires to the forest and worships goddess Savitri with the intention of getting a boon from her to have a son. For upholding and perpetuating the truth-values in the society, in the collective life, he considers this to be necessary. The continuance of the race of the meritorious engaged in sacrifices is an aspect of Satya Yuga, the Age of the Right, and the responsible should not fail in it. Instead Brahma sanctions him, through Savitri, a daughter. The immediate cause of it is not made known to us and we remain greatly puzzled. This evidently goes to show that the reason behind Aswapati's tapasya lay far beyond the present social concerns; his was more a concern in the direction of the future of the race itself. If
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so, naturally then, Aswapati would invoke that executive Shakti who alone could grant him the propitious boon which would lead him towards the fulfilment of his singular desire. Therefore we can well understand why he worships Savitri and not, say, Shiva or Vishnu,— or the Sun-God himself if the tale belongs to the Vedic times.
The deeper imponderable of the story is perhaps the premature death of Satyavan. Why was he preordained to die in his "beauty's bloom,"—as Torn Dutt says? If it is generally taken for granted that people in the Vedic age lived for a full span of a hundred years then this death took place too early. This is particularly disturbing when we are also told that he was a noble prince, a lustrous youth of exceptional spiritual attainments. He was, as Vyasa says, an ocean of virtuous qualities and therefore it was Yama himself who had come to carry away his soul. But why in the prime of his youth? Was not the Ordainer of the Worlds upsetting the Order of the Worlds by this action of his? In the story we have no clue anywhere as to why Yama should have come so soon, why Satyavan's death was premature. Was it providence, was it fate, was it divine dispensation that worked here? What stands as reality behind this death?
The Vedic life is divided in four stages or ashramas. But the noble prince had hardly completed the first stage. He therefore remained Vedically unfulfilled in the integrality of life that was his native right. This in many respects seems to be incongruous. All that we can say is that in the story Satyavan had to die, that thus alone would Savitri meet Yama and fulfill the purpose of her incarnate birth. But that will not make any sense if she is going to get back the same Satyavan from the God of Death. Yet in the legend there are also sufficient indications of a symbolic nature to tie all these aspects together. It does not go into the rapturous lyricism of love between the two, but Savitri's firm determination to remain fixed in her resolve even in the worst circumstance of life has tacit connotations that go beyond all verbal descriptions. Hers is love that triumphs.
Why should Satyavan die one year after meeting Savitri? But this cannot but happen. That is the power of her love. Its alchemy has to transmute him into absolute gold, lustrous in the tight of the sun. "A curse [was] laid on the pure joy of life"38 and that curse had to be removed. She was there to do that. Their togetherness through a cycle of earthly seasons moved inexorably towards the miracle to set themselves into seasons of the spirit. The moment she chose him as
38 Savitri, p. 629.
her life's partner, all that he had in him as the buried past had to disappear. His deep buried past included the presence of the dark almighty Death himself and it had to get consumed in the fire of her victorious will. That is why the story of Savitri is the story of love conquering death. The moment she saw him and recognised who he was the wondrous deed was done. Savitri's love hastened Satyavan's death. How dangerous! Yet how desirable! If only we die like him in the love of the eternal Savitri who is ever seated within our heart! But his was a ready soul to woo the fiery beloved:
Noble and clear as the broad peaceful heavens
A tablet of young wisdom was his brow,
Freedom's imperious beauty curved his limbs,
The joy of life was on his open face.
His look was a wide daybreak of the gods,
His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light,
His body was a lover's and a king's.39
The moment Savitri met Satyavan her inner vision knew who he was.
A marvel of the meeting earth and heavens
Is he whom Savitri has chosen mid men,
His figure is the front of Nature's march,
His single being excels the works of Time.
A sapphire cutting from the sleep of heaven,
Delightful is the soul of Satyavan,
A ray out of the rapturous infinite,
A silence waking to a hymn of joy.
A divinity and kingliness gird his brow;
His eyes keep a memory from a world of bliss.40
But what was the intention behind the love of Satyavan and Savitri,— if we have, so to say, to ascribe an intention to the spontaneity of love? The higher imperative was
To mould humanity into God's own shape
And lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a new world discover or create.
39Ibid., p. 393. 40Ibid., pp429-30
Ultimately if this creation is to make progress in the ways of the spirit
Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state.41
To be Savitri's life partner in the magnificence of her divinity Satyavan had to shed the unregenerate burden of the evolutionary antiquity. He was in his deeper nature now ready to do it. Therefore Narad proclaims loudly that Satyavan, his life here expended, will one year from that day abandon his body, samvatsarena kshinayurdehanyasam karishyati. He is going to abandon his body and not die helplessly. Such was the power of love that moulded his inner will, perhaps he being unaware of it. "Twelve swift-winged months [were] given to him and her,"42 but that was enough for Savitri to do whatever was to be done. Her one-year association with him in love's oneness was occultly essential when whatever had to be worked out was worked out in the enduring greatness of efficacious love. Time prepared the destiny that goes beyond time's cycles. The sanction of one-year period was a necessary and sufficient condition for the intense yogic preparation.
If we have to understand this love's alchemic work in the Dantesque language, we may say that it was the Power of Love that really conquered Death, Love that moves the sun and all the stars. Thus "Love in the wilderness met Savitri"43 to fulfill himself. She enshrined him in her inner soul to make him dynamically triumphant. Now perhaps we know why "Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death,"—that
Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.44
But here is a shrine which is not a frozen lifeless structure, but is the House of Truth itself which imparts its own rhythm of joyous movement to what it enshrines. Fulfilment happens when the lovers pass together through one cycle of divinely operative time. In this way grace, consciousness, truth, redemption and bliss can all be seen on one single thread, the diamond thread of the wonderful Savitri-legend.
41Ibid., p. 486. 42 Ibid., p. 431. 43Ibid., p. 391. 44 lbid., p. 14.
When Narad sees that Savitri has chosen Satyavan for a husband, he at once bursts into an optimistic rapturous song. He sings of the glory of the name of Vishnu and makes sudden haste to reach king Aswapati's palace in Madra. He is extremely happy that the things that were promised long ago shall now be fulfilled. He is gladdened that in the fire of Savitri's love Satyavan will die, die to his afflicted deathful life. He therefore, as if to precipitate the issue further, designedly makes known to Savitri the impending death of Satyavan. His death was inevitable in the very nature of things and it could not have been avoided. Nay, it was already fixed in the glorious moment of the eternal lovers' meeting. But then why had it to be made known? Why had Narad to carry the Word of Fate? What imperative compelled him to utter in Aswapati's palace the calamitous sentence? This is an imponderable which again moves in an altogether different dimension that should also take care of love's unfailing triumph over death.
But love can conquer death only when it acquires power in the measure that can weigh up to the demands of the task. Narad clearly foresees the magnitude of the problem and, divinely inspired, rushes in righteous urgency to do something marvellous. He must, in the ironfisted circumstance of life prevailing here presently, "steel the will of Savitri."45 She must do Yoga and in her soul harbour the might of the supreme Goddess whose incarnation she was. In that context Narad shows a certain sense of responsibility towards it and actively participates in Savitri's task of moulding the future. He thus proves to be the heavenly preceptor who initiated Savitri on the path of Shakti Yoga. Savitri would not have succeeded in her mission had this not happened.
The fulfilment of Savitri's Shakti Yoga is complete, its Siddhi being the life divine upon earth. She did it entirely in the Will of the Supreme as a sun-bright truth of existence. It is at times said that "the supreme epic of Savitri presents one great conquest of Death and not the last." If it is so then we will have to say that Savitri left her task half-done. This is such a major commentary on the avataric work that it sounds almost suspect and hence unacceptable. But, though Savitri has already vanquished Death, she also tells him to be still there, to be the instrument of her will and her work: functionally she still needs Death,—as if nothing is superfluous in this creation. Should this continued presence of Death be then interpreted in the sense that further conquests are yet to be achieved? But this is not true,—because
45 Ibid., p. 429.
hence onward in whatever form he might continue to exist at the bidding of Savitri, he is always going to be her instrument in universal affairs, in the universal commerce. What greater conquest or greater mastery over Death is then needed than making use of him for her own purposes in the scheme and details of the evolutionary process? The meaning of the mortal world, mrityuloka, indeed becomes clearer to us only when we see the positive dynamism of veilless Death in it. In fact the moment the double covering that Yama had put on himself was removed Savitri's task was done.
Another puzzling feature of the Savitri-epic is the passive role of Satyavan in the great events that were happening in it. If we do get some idea about the role of Aswapati, Savitri and Narad from what is described in it, we should also understand from it the kind of part that was being played by him in the drama of the earth. If Satyavan and Savitri are a dual power of God, then how does he complement her in the work of God? How does he support the play through his wise passivity, through his calm and tranquil submission? Sri Aurobindo has broadly hinted about it especially in the eleventh Book of Savitri.
If the climbing of the earth's soul, the soul that is now ready to receive Supernature's transformative gifts with her powers and potentialities poised to emerge in their great crystalline manifestive glory, then we can understand how through silent ages he had taken upon himself this mortality-bound birth. The question that rather needs to be answered is why at all did Satyavan take this mortality-bound human birth. Why did he come here, to all immediate appearances without any power, as "the Eternal's delegate soul in man"?46 And what is it that took him closer to the fiery Princess of Madra, Savitri, to whom none would dare approach claiming her hand in marriage? Or was the silent helpless preparation under the yoke of fate and circumstance the contributive factor towards this? Is to suffer, so unredeemably, accepting the dicta of the evolutionary nature, also a means to acquire transcendental awareness? Or is there some smouldering fire by which the fuel itself gets somehow kindled in its quiescent transformative blaze?
The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.47
46Ibid, p. 633.
47Ibid., p. 705
This is what the passage says. What so far was a revelation has now materialised and taken actual shape. Supermind has touched the earthly time, has entered into the terrestrial process. "Touched"—yes, that was set as the present goal. Sri Aurobindo's task got fulfilled in achieving it. Because the supermind has entered into time, time itself shall unfold the dynamism of its growing ages.
We therefore recognise the 'dual power' as the double divinity incarnate in the context of the terrestrial work. Yet the question remains: Who is Satyavan with all his passive wisdom as the collaborator of his Savitri? Perhaps we may attribute the nature of this power as belonging to a different category. The Mother speaks of Satyavan as an Avatar48 evolutionarily climbing from mortality to divine felicity in life, a permanent incarnation of the Supreme in the inconscient creation. And in it lies his passive wisdom waiting upon the establisher of the truth to manifest himself in the earthly play. He comes here and puts himself in the hands of Nature, Purusha shaped by Prakriti. Satyavan of his own accord cannot climb to divinity without the arrival of Savitri whose birth needs the occult-yogic support, the tapasya, the Divya Yoga of her father Aswapati. To this dual term we have therefore to add the most important aspect of the divine Will now directly entering the matured evolution. In it we can understand the story of Satyavan and Savitri:
Two fires that bum towards that parent Sun
Two rays that travel to the original Light.49
The quiet flame and the roaring flame merge into a superfire, that it be kindled in the heart of the earth. Has this not happened? If Savitri has been doing the Shakti Yoga, Satyavan has all along been engaged / in the Yoga of the Earth, the Prithvi Yoga. The dual power of God has been set on the march by God. Therefore in saluting that power we indeed salute God himself.
48 Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 5, p. 391. For discussion of several related aspects, see also R.Y. Deshpande, Satyavan Must Die.1996.
49 Savitri , p. 720.
Part Two
A Brief Resume
In this section we shall quickly run through the several articles that have been included in the present volume. The one single common thread, the diamond thread that ties them together is the spirit of Savitri itself. There are spiritual aspects, occult and mystical aspects, religious aspects, philosophical, literary, aesthetic aspects and each one can be a lifetime engrossment for us to grow into the multi-dimensionality of the creative Word. When the Mother says that Savitri is the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo, we see at once that its power can take us to the splendours of the future. It is inexhaustible and no amount of treatises or metaphysical discussions or interpretative rationalisations can come anywhere closer to its resplendent form. Vyasa speaks of Aswapati's daughter Savitri as kanyā tejasvini, a radiant daughter. Such indeed is also the poem Savitri. She has the form of such beauty that she looks like a damsel of heaven, devarūpini. No wonder none takes courage to court her, exceptional as she is in her fiery brilliance. Our approaches to her are too human. Yet it is only through them that we can enter into her realms of gold. She makes our mortality bear the touch of the immortal. Each study here may be a first-rate study, but when put together everything seems too insignificant, too little that our eyes can see in her. But hers is also the role of uplifting us to her own grandeur in the delight of endless spiritual progress. To our intimacy with her she shall bring luminous richnesses of the manifesting divinity. We should therefore see the studies entirely from that point of view.
1: Sri Aurobindo spoke of future poetry as the voice of the spirit. It does not automatically follow that there shall be future painting or future music or future science expressing one aspect or another of that creative truth. These have to happen, but not as corollaries. The aesthetic urge has to find the needed means, appropriate instruments and manners of elegant and beautiful expression. One example of the opening of this possibility is the Mother's work in bringing out the Savitri-paintings through Huta. The Mother had told her that she wanted to do something new. This has been done. If we can enter into the true meaning of these paintings then the gain is entirely ours. It becomes a sadhana for our growth, showing the way of spiritual progress. "The Mother," tells Huta, "took my consciousness to other spheres and let me see many extraordinary things in detail, she also
made me feel their vibrations and meet numerous strange beings of different types. Without her direct instructions, guidance and constant help nothing could have been achieved." No wonder there is the atmosphere of light, golden yellow or golden red, or else that of a lake filled with diamond-like lotuses having emerald leaves. There shines the Sun in its tranquil majesty, tranquil glory. It is that glory which shall be present in future painting.
Such is also the wondrous harmony we find in Sunil Bhattacharya's music, music that moves in the rhythms of Savitri.
2: When in the context of the line "All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour" from Savitri the Mother was asked if man can delay or hasten this hour, she replied:
Neither one nor the other in their apparent contradiction created by the separate consciousness, but something else which our words cannot express. In the present state of human consciousness, it is good for it to think that aspiration and human effort can hasten the advent of the divine transformation, because aspiration and effort are needed for the transformation to occur.
Can Matrimandir at Auroville, for instance, mean that transformative aspiration and effort of which the Mother spoke? Yes, it is so; it is a symbol and a possibility. About the body's cells holding the Immortal's flame she says that it is a poetic way of expressing the transformation which will take place. To make that poetic way real, to effect it in the physical, she spared no effort. In that effort in the Will of the Lord she brought the proclaimed future at our doorsteps.
3: After the siddhis of the Individual Yoga and the Universal Yoga Aswapati has to move forward. He has yet to discover the solution to the problem of imperfection of this suffering world. In the Transcendental Yoga of Aswapati a moment comes when he has to make a choice: he must either leave behind all that he had achieved or else he must transform all that into powers of the spirit. But that is possible only by living in pure existence. Then only could he approach the Divine Mother and invoke her to step into the mortal creation in order to transform it. In the Yoga of Savitri,—through which she embodies higher and higher powers of the Divine Shakti in herself,— there arrives also a somewhat similar stage, that she must discover the cosmic spirit and cosmic consciousness. This is in the context that Savitri has a task to do and she cannot disappear into the
Unmanifest. The gulf between that Ultimate Reality and this Manifestation has to be filled. Only after that the Divine Shakti would work in her in order to deal with Death.
Savitri has attained the supreme Nirvan of divine emptiness. "She is passing through the great experience of the Buddha, Sakyamuni, and the Seer of the Taittiriya Upanishad who spoke of the Asat, the Non-Existent." She has offered her gnostic individuality to the Supreme by passing through the experience of Nirvan. She would have vanished into it and gone out of existence. This immergence or laya into her origin would have marked eternal failure of her role in this creation. But the ancient guardian Shakti clutches her and holds her back. Savitri cannot disappear so. On the other hand, the imperative is the integral readiness to embody and manifest the whole in her person. Such is the only decisive or essential factor. Savitri must presently open herself out to hold in her the Divine Shakti for the work of the Divine. Towards this "all finitising movement of the instrumental members of the personality" must be overcome.
Savitri has done this. Now tranquil or receptive identification with all manifested forms is an accomplished fact with her, an inevitable consequence of surrender to the pure Truth that sustains everything. That puts the seal of success on the Yoga of Savitri.
4: Savitri's occult disputation with Death is becoming ineffectual. She therefore decides to resort to a yogic action by entering into her meditation's house. In it her "silent will" joins the Will of the Divine. In that house she witnesses the Vedic Yajna going on with the house-lord and his mate offering oblations. But who are they performing the eternal sacrifice? We may say that on the individual level they are the soul of Satyavan and the soul of Savitri. But the great sacrifice has to also grow on other levels. On the cosmic dimension in her house of meditation Agni is the Lord of the House with Aditi as Swaha seated to his left offering oblations. In its transcendental aspect the Supreme himself is the house-lord with the executrix Shakti as his mate engaged in this sacrifice for the sake of the creation. Out of this Tapas-Yajna or the force of concentration were the worlds bom and in that sacrifice shall they ever grow. The human Savitri on entering her house of meditation sees the divine reality of her own self and makes her will one with the transcendent Will. It is in that divine reality of her self that she gets the power which is vaster and mightier than the power of Death the Terrible. Now she becomes the indisputable leader of the evolutionary march and is sure of her victory. Although a small Yajna is constantly being performed in the heart of
each one of us, this Yajna of Savitri is unique in its triple dimension of the Supreme. If her Yajna is to dissolve ignorance and death, that in the ever-progressive manifestation divinity may inhabit this house of Matter, ours is to grow in that sun-bright splendour of divinity itself. That is the House of Meditation.
5: Our journey starts in the morning, the hour of the symbol dawn. Around us the star-field stretches to infinity, but now let us look down far below where a dark planet is moving ponderously in its orbit around the sun. We are about to begin our journey, the fascinating journey towards new life in a new world. Sri Aurobindo himself, as Aswapati, is our guide. Savitri, with its luminous images and powerful music that speak directly to our innermost being, is the supreme travel-guide. Everywhere in that pilgrim-chant are invoked by the magnificence and majesty of Sri Aurobindo's language and vision luminous powers who, unseen companions, accompany us at every step of journey: "Varuna active within is a remover of limits, Saraswati a bringer of revelation, Sarama the power of intuitive mind to search out Truth. In the mind's silence they interpret for us the images that rise and change before our eyes, as if by some magical process, conjures them line by line. These are images charged with a profound truth and significance beyond the capacity of language to express." Eventually the journey arrives at the yoga of integral surrender to the Divine. When we are conscious in every part of our being, then perfect offering becomes possible. The path then becomes a path of action and will.
6: Savitri has to meet Death. Therefore Death comes to her in the form of the death of her husband Satyavan. It is through the death of Satyavan that she has to work out the victory for which she had incarnated herself in this mortal world. In that sense Satyavan's body becomes her alter-body. If we actually see this episode in the deep biographical context of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother we recognise that the identity of their consciousness has a decisive role in the work of transformation. When in 1949 it became occult-yogically necessary for one of them to leave the body for the fulfilment of their work, it was Sri Aurobindo who took the strategic decision to 'die'. It was a kind of prophetic destiny, just as Satyavan's destined death. It was dying to Death itself. In the sequel, in 1961 the Mother had to battle with the Lord of Death and she came out victorious.
In the epic Savitri represents the Mother in totality, and there are no two views about it. But regarding Satyavan or Aswapati there are opinions. "Sri Aurobindo has always been the Earth's Jiva, Satyavan, the Original Avatar and in this incarnation a combination of Aswapati
and Satyavan." In any case the coming together of Satyavan and Savitri is absolutely necessary if there has to be the birth of the New Race. They are the bright parents of the sons and daughters who will be bom to live a divine life upon the earth. For the purposes of the manifestation their mystic union is essential. The answering Grace from above that is Savitri and the aspiring Soul from below who is Satyavan meet only because of Aswapati's intense Yoga-Tapasya.
7: It is well known and also well recognised that the mind of man is a not an adequate instrument for the discovery of the gnostic Truth from which all the faculties originate. But when mind fails what can come to our help is sight. It is by acquiring the sight of the Spirit that we may get some idea of the vast reality that is there behind this creation which otherwise looks to be a dim and shadowy world of ignorance. In fact ascending through the grades of spiritual consciousness, our sight also climbs to higher and higher worlds and in the process it acquires a certain universality; it can leap even into the transcendent. What was so far incomprehensible now comes into its all-encompassing view. In that sight an identity between the subject and the object is at once experienced. Then the "spirit is no more hid from its own view." The gaze of eternity itself spreads across this cosmic manifestation. In it sight can penetrate into the form to see the formless, as much as it can be the other way around also. When one has this sight one sees that the form itself is inherent even in the formless, that it already exists in its mystic latency everywhere. It is only the divine sight which is truly capable of seizing the supreme form. This mystic latency finally progresses into a recognised full-grown potency in the play of manifestation. Indeed, there is no end to sight when it becomes one with the Eternal' s gaze. A vision thatis omniscient sees and sustains all that is.
8: If we put Savitri in the class of religious texts, such as Saptashati and Devi Bhagavata, then it has to be recited aloud daily. It has the power of profound vibrations that can create in us states that have sound forms of reality. Although such an approach of looking at it as a scripture may not be the right one to live in the world of Savitri, it has yet the merit of exploring the occult aspects that are present in the depths of our nature, our inner existence that should open to higher working. It tells a story, it makes us think, meditate, struggle; "it takes us to the spaces of a divine calm where all is one seamless Ananda." Aswapati's invocation to the Divine Shakti and her response, that she shall descend carrying all mights and greatnesses in her, are sufficiently indicative of the role of the Tantra in the efficacy of the
Integral Yoga. To effect transformation in all the details, including even our obdurate physical constitution, she incarnates herself here. She is bom as a daughter to the Tapasvin. "Again and again we are drawn to the Mother idea in Savitri, for Sri Aurobindo found this to be the most potent instrument to lead man to the life divine." A fixed and unfailing aspiration is answered by the supreme Grace from above. This boon which Aswapati received has therefore behind it the sanction of the supreme Creator himself. However, it must be immediately noted that the Tantrik elements in Savitri are not ritualistic, as are generally associated with this discipline.
It is interesting to see the growth of Aswapati's daughter Savitri with the scriptural ideas. The Tantra texts deal extensively with the different ages of the Mother. "Sri Aurobindo follows this idea and we have a whole canto that had been inspired by a single term in Vyasa: kanya tejasvini." From this point of view we may see that Savitri is actually set as a devt kāvyam. "Hence we have also to grow along with the idea of the Devi; and so we are granted a double vision through the magic of poetry to watch the human and the divine as an indivisible whole. We see Savitri as one among her kind and yet, somehow, different." Can it then be said that the epic's "Book of Yoga draws a major portion of its material from the Tantra"? But this may be considered more as a part of integral Tantrism entering into operation of the occult-spiritual. Just as we recognise the deities of the Tantra to embody their powers in us, to experience their living presence in us, to grow in them, the world of Savitri also needs to be seen as an experiential truth. If physical nature, with the character of ignorance housing death, has to be tackled then surely the powers of this New Tantra Shastra are available to the desirous soul.
9: If Savitri abounds in the ancient Indian spiritual lore, there is also a good deal of Bible in it. We have references such as God's covenant with the Night, the Son of God, the Father, the Holy Ghost, God's martyred body, Gethsemane and Calvary, or Christian Madonna's or images of cathedral and tabernacle. About the Great who come to save this suffering world we have in Narad's speech a picture of Christ. If Savitri was bom in the greatness of the Saviour then she must accept the lot of mortality in order to change it. The elaborate biblical picture of Christ is taken as an illustration. The Son of God comes as the Son of Man to drink the bitter cup. This is a direct echo of Christ's words in the Bible with the symbolism that is at once obvious. Jesus undergoes intense agony not long before the great sacrifice. The cause of this agony is Man's callousness, denial,
betrayal. The phrase "It is finished" is famous and Sri Aurobindo has used it in the most appropriate manner in the context.
Christians do not think in terms of God the Mother. But if there is an identity between Jesus and Lady Wisdom as the Word of God, then there seems to be a close link between the Lady Wisdom and the Supreme Mother and her incarnation as Savitri. It is she who is "the Incarnate Word of God" in the poem. She is the Saviour. While speaking of her Narad brings before us the magnificent vignette of the Crucifixion. "There are hints of the association of Savitri with Christ from the very beginning of the poem. Though association does not imply identification, it nevertheless does imply a close link between the two." Regarding Savitri's suffering we have the symbolism of passion-flower which "suggests the instruments of Christ's passion or his suffering on the Cross. The corona of the creeper suggests the crown of thorns." The Christ-figure is seen in Savitri in relation to the world's evolution and as a step in the direction.
A study of Savitri seems to make the Old Testament's Book of Job most spiritual. Pain as the hand of nature sculpturing Man is the Aurobindonian interpretation of Job's suffering. "In Job it is the Lord himself who causes pain and suffering on the protagonist in order to raise him from the Sattwic state of perfection to the state of a Gunatita who can have the direct vision of the Lord." Finally, the Lord reveals his Infinity to Job. "Once Job sees the Lord with his own eyes, there is neither pain nor grief. It is possible that a study of Savitri could throw at least some light on other portions of the Bible as it can on other Scriptures." This is so because Savitri is a Scripture that includes, and transcends, the essence of all other Scriptures.
10: The epic Savitri is a wonderful piece of architectural engineering. It is also vibrant in the sculpted forms that can embody the breathing souls of formless Infinity. The rock-hewn temple in the mystic cave of Savitri's heart is a beautiful example of this Art. She enters into the deep recess and finds herself amidst great figures of the gods conscious in stone and living without breath. In fact, this Art itself can then become a great yogic Art. We may therefore say that in it is the world of "true matter" where the supramental physicality will first manifest. Accordingly, it can be viewed as the sculptor's stone or clay through which is expressed the divine idea behind the form. It is an idea that is inaccessible to the ordinary human mind. Here then a creative artist becomes a Shilpa Yogin, with his art as heaven's art. He passes beyond sensible Nature and as an artist enters the Age of Subjectivism. He develops a highly specialised
technique of vision. The form is held in view in "an act of non-differentiation" to execute in stone, pigment or other material that which is invisibly seen.
Yet this inner visualisation could become a constraint as a subjection to external reality. There has to be an art with eyes wide open. The modern Shilpa Yogin's has to be sajāg-sādhanā. Such contemplation and representation is the invitation for the future art. "The Gods must be shaped within to live in us and an inspired dynamic union with the Transcendent's sphere lead us into a Divine Life on earth." That shall be the future Art.
11: Is the Yoga of Aswapati a series of negations? There may be a certain atmosphere of grief and gloom spread over Savitri, but nowhere do we have pessimistic or negative feeling about things to come. What is displayed is the pragmatism in handling the issue of pain and suffering in the mortal world. It is the deep-rooted problem of death that is being tackled by the three protagonists, affirming the evolutionary future in the splendour of divinity. Aswapati invoking the divine grace, Savitri carrying out successfully the occult battle, and the soul of the earth called Satyavan stepping into the world of knowledge mark the unfoldment of the epic's theme. It may also be considered as a multiple biography extending over space and time far beyond the parameters of the legend.
But from the point of view of a biography there are a number of questions that demand proper elucidation. Why does, for instance, Sri Aurobindo write the name Aswapati for the first time on page 341 in the epic? This may be partly seen in terms of the legend on which the epic is built. Although this part of the poem is directly experiential-autobiographical in nature, the poet has retained the pregnant elements of the legend to serve his purpose of narrating those yogic realisations. The author resorts to the plain comprehensible technique of story telling. The legendary figure of Aswapati thus turns out to be the most apt. It would have been therefore unaesthetic and incongruous to keep on harping all the while the name of Aswapati the protagonist as the Avatar. The problem of identifying Aswapati of the legendary past with Sri Aurobindo of the divine future thus reduces to the understanding of the nature of the device of a story used by Sri Aurobindo. It is in this way that he gives expression to his avataric work. There is the least doubt that half of Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's occult-spiritual biography. It is therefore well said that if "one reads the first half of Savitri without Sri Aurobindo himself in mind (and in the heart),
one not only misses its true significance: one also erects a screen between the spiritual vibration conducive to his Yoga and one's own receptivity."
12: The traveller Aswapati is moving through several worlds in the pursuit of that which shall unravel the enigma of this creation and give a clue to the solution of its difficulties. As long as death is present in this world there cannot be true progress and happiness. Aswapati climbs these hierarchies, these worlds rising one above another in an endless series; he experiences their limitations and their possibilities, finds their meaning and purpose in the scheme of things, their realities. Even in the heart of the Night, Aswapati finds a place where all conflict is resolved. In that hostile emptiness he suddenly comes across the spring of divinity. It is that divinity which must emerge from the darkness and step into the light of the everlasting day. Soon Aswapati enters the domain of the World-Soul. Here are lovely landscapes and lakes and streams. A fragrance fills the ambience. Here is the meaningful rest for souls to assimilate the bygone experiences in order to sketch the map of a new life. It is in this world that Aswapati meets the twofold being in one who is seated in a trance of creative joy. The Divine Mother, sole and omnipotent, stands there supporting all. Aswapati falls prostrate at her feet. Then, in the Kingdom of the Greater Knowledge, he could see all the creative powers in their plenitude, powers quiet and fulfilled, powers that can take care of our mortality.
Aswapati is now free from the bondage of death and ignorance. But his aim is not only to realise the Divine; it is to manifest the perfection of the Divine in the world. He was looking for the one who would enable him to accomplish this unique task. That was the purpose of his long extraordinary odyssey described in 210 pages of the epic. These are the incredible experiences of Aswapati which become the foundation for the Divine to descend, to come as the power of grace to transform mortality. Aswapati realises that such a power, the supramental consciousness, is not yet manifest in the cosmic formula and unless that comes here, there cannot be the genuine fulfilment of this creation. He is now ready for the Yoga of the Transcendental to establish the supramental upon earth.
13: "Once Jesus of Nazareth, we are told in the New Testament, narrated to the people a parable. He said the kingdom of God is like a pearl that is most sought after. And when one has found it, one goes out and sells that entire one has and buys the pearl. Savitri is such a pearl for which one could give up what one has in order to get it."
What is that so pearl-like in Savitri? It depends upon one's approach towards it: there is philosophy in it, there is rich metaphysics, mysticism, occult knowledge, religion, science, literature, cosmogony, history of civilisation, history of evolution, everything that one wishes to have. But indeed it is the supreme revelation which brings divinity to our mortality in order to transform it into its own nature that draws us closer to it. What is it that which one will not or should not sacrifice for its sake?
One of the most appealing aspects of Savitri is of life that passes from time into eternity, as much as the other way around. It is a quest for the Divine even in this mortality-bound world. Jacob's ladder was built long ago, the ladder on which the angels of God move up and down. It is available to us also,—if we wish to use it. But today we are trapped in a time warp. Our helplessness is the inability to get out of the constraints of time.
The problem ultimately gets quintessenced in the death of Satyavan. Sage Narad says that Satyavan must die after a year of the marriage; but that also means that Satyavan will live for one year. This is the year during which we can get ready to meet death. We are in the angst of death, of facing nothingness. In it is the annihilation of our own being. But the very consciousness of this dread can catapult us to realise our own being to go beyond whatever death entails in its negatively creative aspect.
That is what we get from Savitri, which is "not a book of sweet poems and blissful spirituality. It is not like the musings of a poet, of an imaginary spiritual heaven. It comes to grips with the nitty-gritty of life in sharper contrast than the existentialists claim." Zen-like Savitri tells us to be aware of the world. But that is awareness in the truth of existence. In it we have to grow as conscious individuals. It is this awareness that has to be a means for the Divine to express itself in this world. We move in time to make progress in awareness. Time is given to us precisely for that purpose. The cycle of time, symbolised by one year after which Satyavan is to die, thus becomes triumphantly meaningful. In it indeed is the significance of Savitri's great victory over Death. Our search for the pearl is to always live in that glory.
14: When we talk of true poetry that goes beyond the mental level or else our quick ordinary vitalistic satisfaction, we await the revelatory word that can make the sublime a part of our humdrum life. That is what Savitri does to us. It is the noblest experiential poetry, the veritable Veda of the Modern Age. It communicates mantric
vibrations that defy analysis. "Savitri may remain on hands, lap or desk, but we find ourselves soaring, in repeated flashes of extraordinary illumination, intonormally inaccessible heights; or plunging into hitherto unsuspected and otherwise mortally dangerous depths." In the process when life only becomes an attempt to love, without integrating it with death, what we get is just a far glimmer of victory over death. Both life and death have to be offered as fuel to make the stars bum in the sky in their true and all-comprehensive brightness. Savitri had God-given strength and, for the creation of the new world, she put that God-given strength entirely at the disposal of that God himself. Thus she became entirely, including even her physical body, a luminous instrument that could express the Will of the Lord in the freest possible way. In that supreme identification her task was accomplished and now whatever has to happen that will happen in the certainty of that wonderful achievement of hers. Is that not devotional or Bhakti poetry par excellence? That is Savitri.
15: It is at times said that a poet should be a philosopher, a prophet and a seer. His vision should stretch to the stars. His philosophy should unravel the mystery of the creation. As a prophet he should bring nobility of the spirit to our life. Can we say all that about Lucretius, the Latin poet? He promises to reveal the ultimate realities of heaven and of the gods. But the promise is a materialist's promise. In contrast to that Sri Aurobindo's Savitri has "the twin task of knowing the causes of things and laying all fears of Fate and roar of Death under his feet."
Lucretius waxes lyrically about the universe when he lays Aristotelian geocentricity aside. There is no outside to the universe and hence is not bound. Space is infinite and so matter too should be infinite. For him there is no necessity of a god to arrange the universe. On the contrary, he argues that the notion or supposition of the presence of divine nature in cosmic order will be full of flaw. There is neither past nor future to life and therefore we should remain unconcerned to life. Indeed all our dreams are made by Matter's mind. Here is Death himself, the dark and terrible entrepreneur, upholding the nihilist ideal of existence that has no issue to enter into any enterprise, whom we meet in Savitri speaking eloquently. The poet's extraordinarily bleak attitude to love makes him suggest promiscuity as a natural condition. This is Epicureanism at its extremest.
Contrast this with Savitri: In her love is not a hunger of the heart but that which has its origin in god's delight. Savitri asserts that Love is the Transcendental's angel here, man's lien on the Absolute. No
wonder, Lucretuis's epic should end with a gruesome account of the great plague in Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. This is so, argues he, because man must be courageous to face even death. In Savitri, on the other hand, we have the promise of immortality upon earth, bringing multifold divinity into life. In it is the well-bom and virtuous fructification of our deepest aspiration and that is why it becomes to our excellent sense admirable and acceptable. The theory of negativism can be put pretty forcefully but, ultimately, it fails to satisfy the warm intimate urges of our inner soul and our spirit. Savitri is at once that promise and that fulfilment.
16: It is well known that the composition of Savitri went through several stages. There are bafflingly a large number of manuscript and typescript sheets of the drafts that preceded the final emergence of the text as we have presently with us. "The opening pages of the earliest known manuscript of Savitri are dated August 8th-9th 1916. In November 1950, the month before his passing, Sri Aurobindo dictated the last passages to be added to the work. Between 1916 and 1950, Savitri grew from a medium-length narrative poem, consisting of about eight hundred lines in the first draft, to an epic of thirty times that length, all-embracing in its scope and inexhaustible in its significance." Before the 'final' printed version of Savitri came out it went through some eight thousand pages of drafting with revisions and additions taking place at every stage. There are some parts that evolved through as many as fifty versions.
Thus the story of the composition of Savitri itself turns out to be an absorbing story. It may very well run into several fat volumes which, we hope, will one day be available to the researchers of the epic. In the entire process of composition the Savitri-legend itself acquired new dimensions and new significances. What began as a simple narrative became a symbol characterising the predicament of the evolutionary world. Through the untiring work over long years Sri Aurobindo approached the problems of death, fate and pain in the context of his spiritual engagement. The revolutionary of yesteryears rose in him to battle and conquer the dark forces that beset this unfortunate ignorant creation. To win authentic freedom for the unhampered growth of the spirit was now his single concern. If for this purpose the stubborn, rather anachronistic, Law of decay-disintegration-death had to be trampled over, there were no compunctions about it. In fact in order to achieve it there was nothing left undone and full price was paid towards it. We thus understand Sri Aurobindo's Aswapati as an autobiographical symbol of "the
concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes." In it is the success of Savitri's divine mission which also forms an inalienable part of that double autobiography. In it Savitri accomplished that for which at his invocation she had taken the mortal birth.
17: There are very respectable critics who do not see Sri Aurobindo as a poet at all. There are even advices recommending that yogis as a matter of rule should be debarred from expressing themselves in verse since, it is maintained, they do it so badly. If we should accept such a criticism to be well meant, then we may see that the problem actually lies in the inability to go beyond the immediate ideas of aesthetic enjoyment. It is unfortunate that the modem mind, though we quite appreciate its caution against emptiness and imprecision, due to its ineptitude fails to go to the worlds of deeper rhythm or image or thought. That undoubtedly would make the poetry of the spirit abhorrent or anathematical to its psychology.
But what is needed is a special intuitive faculty if we are to enter into the poetry of Savitri which is a revelatory Word that can make that revelation itself a reality here. Its poetic achievement must be seen in terms of the divine riches it brings to us in their happy abundance. "And nowhere in Savitri is his use of language more powerful, complex and original than in the first half of the first canto of Book One. Here Sri Aurobindo achieves something that... has never been attempted elsewhere in world-literature... certainly nowhere else in the history of the English language. The only parallel might be found in the composition of the Rig Veda where an inner psychological sense is, as Sri Aurobindo has shown, carried by an outer one that is physical and ritual. For in this overture to the mighty symphony of his epic, Sri Aurobindo fuses multiple layers of meaning—literal, psychological, occult and spiritual—in a single flow of incomparable music." Here we have inspired 'ambiguity' in poetic language which allows several meanings to be present simultaneously. If we are alert to their simultaneous significances, world after wondrous world opens out to our perception in luminous spontaneity. We live in their glad and gracious benignances to grow more and more in the aspect of the manifesting divinity. That is the power of mantric speech brought to us by Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri. That indeed is the nature of the Mantra of the Real, Satya Mantra.
18: The fascination that the Symbol Dawn of Savitri holds for us is indubitably beyond any description. It is a unique creation in the entire world literature. It is not only spiritually profound; even on the
literary-aesthetic level we are "touched by its splendid imagery, its subtle rhythms, and its majestic movement." From the point of view of its architect what we most admire is its internal structure and its integral relationship with the imagery. "It has been observed that Savitri is written in lines of iambic pentameter with approximately four to six lines per sentence (indicated by a full stop). It has also been observed that within a four- to six-line sentence, a main clause in the first line or a main clause or phrase in the final line summarises the idea presented in that sentence. In addition to the sentence, there are structural divisions within the cantos which the poet indicates with visual devices such as blank lines and paragraph indentation. A close reading of the first canto, however, reveals that between the sentence and these larger sectional divisions, there is another level of logico-thematic structure... and that these thematic units are marked by single-line sentences (or, in some cases, independent clauses). These units are integral to our understanding of the first canto."
Looking at it in an essayistic manner it is noticed that the development of a particular theme is generally preceded and followed by single-line sentences. Not only has this technique a structural relevance; it also makes poetry evocative. Time vs. Timelessness, World and Nature vs. Spirit and God, Darkness and Sleep vs. Light and Awakening are the three lines of imagery that are used to work out the idea-substance in several degrees of significance of the coming Dawn. This aspect of supreme artistry in Savitri as a poem perhaps reinforces its mantric quality in a mutually advantageous way. "The three lines of imagery which run throughout this canto reverberate in our minds and hearts like a repeated mantra," carrying us to the richer worlds of the Spirit. The builder and deviser of form scales calm blue heights in the yogic sky of wonder and beauty. To appreciate its sublimity and grandeur we too should have that faculty which alone can reveal the poetry.
19: Lotika Ghose's brief but perceptive study of her uncle Sri Aurobindo's poetry was one of the earliest works that has the mark of an enduring literary evaluation. She was the daughter of Sri Aurobindo's poet-brother Manmohan. Once she was taken aback when Spiegelberg, the admirer of The Life Divine, told her that the poetry of the author of the philosophical opus was "entirely Greek". This was before 1949, when only two volumes of Sri Aurobindo's earlier poetry and dramas had come out as Collected Poems and Plays in 1942. Undoubtedly, one sees in them the chiselled perfection of images drawing inspiration from the master sculptors of Greece, giving
ample justification to what Spieglberg had observed. "The formal purity, the restraint even in richness, the freedom from rhetorical device and verbal excess mark his poetry away from Sanskrit poetry."
Even when it comes to the spiritual themes Sri Aurobindo does not veil his mystic realisations. His insights in allegory, his use of myth or symbol, all have the language of living experience in poetry. No wonder that in his hand the legend of Savitri should win for us its deepest symbolic truth. "Through āropa or superposition he has made the legend the purveyor of his spiritual realisations." That is precisely what makes Savitri as the great fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo's poetic genius. Indeed, that should immediately dispel the doubt that a Yogi's experiences can at all form the subject-matter of poetry. Had not Dante taken the Christian mystical experience and made an attempt to grasp the inner unity through a traditional myth? The result is a wondrous pictorial beauty. Much more than that is Savitri. In Sri Aurobindo the myth is made to yield up its truth-element and to embody his accomplishments in which we can, and should, live gainfully. One of the powers of great poetry lies in the illumination it renders to the subject. Obviously, and paradoxically, it needs a fine eye to see such a brilliance. He would be a bold critic indeed who would deny to Savitri the high estimate of such poetry. But if there are such brave critics their's would be the voices of the past, the past that is trying to survive in the inevitable death. In this tachyonic age of information technology, one may rightfully ask if there are books of poetry at all that get sold in thousands? The professional critic has remained rather unfortunately shut to its marvels; but a large perceptive readership, though perhaps less adept at its multifold wonder, has also grown around it. The wizardry, the enchantment of Savitri is felt only by a receptive soul and therefore what is necessary for us is to open ourselves to it.
20: Sri Aurobindo is categorical in his statement that he never wrote anything in Savitri merely for the sake of "picutresqueness or rhetorical turn". But that does not mean that there are no images or other poetic features that we commonly take as attributes of good poetry. If we yet want to go by these canons of judgement, we do at times see in Savitri what may be called "detachable ornaments". But even these detachable ornaments always organically form an integral part of its composition. Sri Aurobindo accepts them and uses them to create great poetry. The magic of inspiration has the power to make all these as its breathing reality. Symbolism in Savitri can be
understood and appreciated only by going into the nature of the poem and the power of its evocative Word.
Usage of symbols forms the most important element of Savitri's poetic technique. Indeed, it brings nearer to us the presence of the Divine. Through symbolic language the poet gives rapturous expression to things inaccessible to our immediate experience. Symbols in Savitri come with their truth-revealing power. There are several categories of images in the epic: groups of words as images, single line expressions, paintings in words, idioms carving figures of truth and beauty, long and sustained metaphors as we have in the symbol dawn or the world-stair or the sailor of the cosmic sea; then we also have an entire canto as a symbol of the poet's yogic vision. But nowhere is to be seen a deliberate indulgence in image making. Spiritual truth and its expression are the main concerns in Savitri. Symbolism in Sri Aurobindo's poetry thus becomes not a pale decorative ornament to satisfy merely certain aesthetic tastes; what is intended is to bring out through them the soul of a radiant creation in the felicity of the spirit. It adds another quality to the overall expression inspired by the Goddess of Poetry.
21: We must recognise that historical-literary influences, howsoever great or appealing these be, can hardly form the basis for appreciating Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. Yet it does not mean that in noble and lofty poetry we look for originality in the sense of "chemical purity". Contact with literature of the past has its own alchemic role to play,—even in what is called the Overmind aesthesis. The deeper sources of inspiration that have been explored by the past can be the part of a larger experience of the future when explored and assimilated in its creative enterprise. In that sense "influences do not discredit a great poet; on the contrary, they reveal the wideness, complexity and power of his poetic mind." Savitri has all these in rich abundance. Take the use of the old legend itself. It belongs to those legends which are "very simple and beautiful" and have "infinite possibilities of sweetness and feeling, and in the hand of great artists have blossomed into dramas and epics of the most delicate tenderness or the most noble sublimity." This is justification enough to take for themes these legends and myths. But there are other aspects of 'influence' also. From the Indian tradition Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are present in Savitri as far as possible in the genius of the English language. Both inspiration and vision of the early Vedic poets have left their mark on Savitri; but it is the Upanishads that have directly contributed to the formulation of the new poetics.
If an essential relation between the linguistic form and the content goes to make a great creation, then it can be gainfully asserted that "the blank verse of Savitri has evolved from Kalidasian influence and culminated to what it is through that of the metrical Upanishads." Perhaps some of these elements have themselves recreated the Vedic experience of the Mantra of the Real in Savitri. But it goes beyond even these glorious achievements. It is, as Sri Aurobindo says, "a new poetry with a new law of expression and technique." It is the poetry of the future built on the great poetic realisations of the past. In it the human and secular legend of Savitri becomes the Legend of the Future. Surely, that opens out another window to view the many-hued perspectives of its aesthetic possibilities.
22: If for a moment we go only by the stylistic considerations, we at once see that Savitri makes a marked departure from the traditional invocation having the story's beginning with the end-stopped line. In Milton's Paradise Lost we have just 26 lines to get going; but in Savitri Sri Aurobindo takes time to state the gist of the theme. The theme itself looks into the fundamental issue as to why Paradise should have been lost at all. Paradise needs no Death who, after all, is an inevitable spoiler; but, then, neither is there freedom from the frozen happiness of that typal world howsoever grand it be. To justify the larger ways of God wisdom seems to see the desirability of an antagonist foe in the efficacy of the initial working. Then shall come the flaming warrior and redeem the creation. That is how through Aswapati's eyes the poet of Savitri presents his visions.
Let us take some examples. Wisdom, beauty, gladness of life all contribute to the image of Satyavan, with joy on his open face. Hisv look a wide daybreak of the gods, his head a youthful Rishi's touched by light, his body a lover's and a king's,—that is Satyavan. But then this splendid youth had to be short-lived, he doomed to die too prematurely. When Savitri met him in the forest she wanted him to speak until the light would enter her heart. In her words there was a "passionate urgency", in her imploration the wish to feel through his words the significance of her own deathless inner being. Yet Savitri had to meet the existential crisis, epitomised in the death of her husband. The waging of last battle thus becomes inevitable. In it Death's recourse is, to put it from the point of view of a literary critic, to "anaphoral devices to mesmirise the flaming lady." But she uses prophetic idiom to meet the challenge. "The debate is a curious interplay of pessimistic irony and inspired optimism." While this may be taken as a literary mode of expression, the opposing figures hurl
occult powers against each other. Finally, the deeper and undisclosed issue in the clashing of forces is resolved in the expressive Word itself. In it a new Paradise on this mortal Earth is bom to grow in the Ways of the Infinite.
23: Fine jewellers and gem-setters often remain themselves unrecognised and what is generally adored is their artistic creation. In their hand even the commonest metal can acquire a godly quality of amazement which we may profitably worship. In India where a roadside stone can be turned into an idol, it is little wonder that precious metals and gemstones as repositories of occult powers should find place in mystic-spiritual poetry. Precious stones are structurally more perfect than ordinary stones. These can be charged with consciousness. Such can also be their use in literary creations. This use can go far beyond the ideas of ornamentation or embellishment to create certain effects in writing. In fact they become embodiments of secret deities to breathe majesties in our life.
Keats travelled much in the realms of gold and was led to the discovery of oneness of truth and beauty. Savitri abounds in the unity of many other powers of conscious existence. Its sunlight can be golden red or gold and green or simply golden yellow. Each one carries an unerring psychological shade bringing out one aspect or another of our association with the spirit. As an example, take the "moon-gold feet" of Savitri when we see her meeting Satyavan for the first time. She is still in her chariot and looks at him with wondering eyes. Already a sea-change has taken place in her. But her coming down would imply the descending Spirit touching and transforming Matter. She combines in herself both divinity and feminine earthly grace and the description is poetically as well as romantically very apt. Indeed, throughout we are made conscious of the fact that "she is the Sun-Word, the ultimate perfection that poetry aspires to achieve, the magnificent Mantra that puts us in contact with the worlds of Truth and Beauty and Joy."
Similarly, on several occasions we witness that, "what is exquisite about Sri Aurobindo's imagination is the gentle yoking of usually irreconcilable elements like sky and forest into one metaphor: emerald." He transfers the fabulous quality of centaurs to Nature with the colour of emerald mane. Or else when Satyavan is described as a "sapphire cutting" from heaven, it is suggested that he is also the possessor of that immensity of luminous heaven in his soul. Towards the end of the epic we see Savitri bearing the burden of Infinity and coming back to earth with the soul of Satyavan. Yet someone with
peacock plumes of gorgeous hue, framing a sapphire, pursues her with a heart-disturbing smile. "In this context 'sapphire' at the metronymic level is a gem worn by the youth; at the metaphoric level sapphire is the insignia of his royalty. Savitri is assured the fulfilment of her mission." There are other precious stones also in Savitri and where they occur they have significant roles in the development of specific themes of the poem. Thus diamond threads signify the invincible strength that binds the lovers together. Time and Eternity, which remained apart in Satyavan's earlier life, have now got joined with each other. Similarly, what seemed to be abstract about the higher planes of consciousness at once becomes concrete in the image of the crystal. The crystal mood of air conveys a sense of mystery that condenses and expands into purity of air.
The effective use of jewels and gold with poetic and spiritual connotations provides insights into the depths of Savitri. Jewels become a medium for depicting abstruse and subtle shades of the spiritual experience. This medium not only conveys the power of the word, its concretising mantric effect; it also gives to it a gleaming solidity. Objects are matched together and metamorphosed through strikingly new images. That makes Savitri the poem a jewelled hilt in the hands of a daring Warrior to win new kingdoms of aesthetic joy and wonder. But the Poet as a Master-creator uses all these devices with absolute precision to bring those marvellous worlds of joy and wonder into our being. A new sense of beauty is seized to seize truth and delight in this life of ours. That is the creative power of spiritual poetry which comes here in measures of rich felicities.
24: The Mahabharata legend of Savitri given as Pativrata Mahatmya is rarely narrated in simple Sanskrit prose. In fact the very contents of the original text have unfortunately undergone several unacceptable changes in the course of time as it got transmitted through different vernaculars. These narratives not unoften present a naive picture of the radiant princess who fought the battle with Yama to win immortality for man's soul in the earthly existence. The dilution of the Mahabharata story has also led to the unhappy loss of the real significance of a spiritual possibility depicted in the form of a household occurrence. It is necessary that we should adhere to the text that has an exceptional nobility which can convey the true spiritual purport that is there behind it. Precisely because the ancient tale of Savitri is so powerful that, Sri Aurobindo made it a basis for giving us his magnum opus which is capable of rising to the stature of an autobiography.
25: Ancient Ballads of Hindustan is a remarkable work of young Tom Dutt (8 March 1856-30 August 1877) falling in the genre of early creative Indian writings in English. This "daughter of Bengal, so admirably and strangely gifted, Hindu by race and tradition, an English woman by education, a French woman at heart, [she] blended in herself three souls and three traditions." The character of Savitri fighting with Death himself, fighting with the power of love and getting "better of him", becomes more appealing in her when she also recognises that he, as Yama, is both the Destroyer and the Upholder of the Worlds. The Ballads was published posthumously in 1882. Speaking about Toru Dutt, Sri Aurobindo tells us as follows: "Toru Dutt was an accomplished verse-builder with a delicate talent and some outbreak of genius and she wrote things that were attractive and sometimes something that had strong energy of language and a rhythmic force."so While commenting on the 19th century literary contributions of Bengal, he mentions that Toru Dutt "could write English with perfect grace and correctness and French with energy and power."51
It was a remarkable insight of Toru Dutt to have seen in the Savitri-ballad the sublime character of Yama. In the discourse with Yama we can discern what Savitri felt in the depth of her soul. Toru Dutt reveals that the God behind the traditional Yama is Love indeed. That imparts to the legend a genuine quality charged with high spiritual contents. Transformed Death in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is this noble Yama bestowing the boon of divine life on earth. Toru Dutt's poetry is not only enchantingly lyrical; it is also luminous. Let us take an example. When Savitri upholds the Law of Righteousness even in the face of Death, in Vyasa we have:
By the Truth the saints lead the sun;
by askesis the saints uphold the earth;
the past, present and future find their refuge in the saints.
Noble persons in the midst of the saints have never any grief.
Toru Dutt re-creates it as follows:
50The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9,p.453
51Harmony of Virtue, SABCL, Vol. 3,p.79.
Of all the pleasure given on earth
The company of the good is best,
For weariness has never birth
In such a commerce sweet and blest;
The sun runs in its wonted course,
The earth its plenteous treasure yields,
All for their sake, and by the force
Their prayer united ever wields.
Oh let me, let me ever dwell
Amidst the good, where'er it be.
Whether in lowly hermit-cell
Or in some spot beyond the sea.
We may not have Vyasian austerity in it, but surely it has the substantiality that is trans-traditional. Another soul of mystical secularism breathes happily in it
.
26: The Legend of Savitri actually belongs to the Vedic cycle, but the form in which it is familiar to us appears in the Book of the Forest of the Mahabharata. It has been narrated in 300 shlokas in praise of the greatness of a woman who is unswerving in her conviction even in the face of the worst possibility that life can extend to her. She remains firm in her resolve, even in the knowledge of the death of her chosen lover who is prophesied to die one year after the marriage.
But the story is built in the values that simultaneously operate at several levels in the pursuit of life's aims. It has a religio-ethical purport for the maintenance of the social order, it has literary-artistic bearings, it has the truth-driven dharmic connotations to uphold the sublimity of righteous conduct, it has far-reaching spiritual implications as if it foresees the sound resonant prospects that are awaiting human race in the evolutionary future. The most important aspect in the Aurobindonian context is the mythic-symbolic substance it carries in the dignity of a language that expresses the verities of the Spirit. Were it not so, the poet of the great epic would not have made it a basis for the revelation of the Idea-Truth realities that can manifest in the terrestrial scheme.
If presently we are living in a world where the Law of Life is as proclaimed by Death, then the assertion is that there shall be the Freedom of Life in the joyous dynamism of the Truth. Indeed, eventually, the real meaning and purpose behind even this creation, that is at the moment full of strangling mortality, shall turn out to be none other than the expression of the Will of the gracious Supreme.
The one who stood as frightful Death, demanding submission of the incarnate Shakti, shall stand through her triumphant accomplishment as the Creator spreading his everlasting Day for the growth of the Soul of the Earth. That is the epic magnificence, mahātmya, of the Savitri-tale.
27: Out of thousands of sheets of Savitri drafts in Sri Aurobindo's own hand even a few should help us to get some faint idea about the enormous effort that has gone behind its literary composition over several years. But the yogic aspects of it will always remain beyond our immediate ken. Yet by living in the worlds of Savitri we shall progressively have the Truth and the things of the Truth. The Revelation carries in it that power of Realisation.
Part Three
Concluding Note
In the previous section we have given a kind of quick précis of the various articles that are present in this volume. The numbers indicate the serial order in which they occur in it. It may be mentioned here that, except for a few, most of these writings are appearing in print for the first time. When the authors were approached for the contributions it was suggested that these should be generally around ten thousand words in length. This was a hard stipulation but then there were restrictions of space also. In addition to this there was a time constraint, if the book had to come out by the end of this year. We are glad that, in spite of these boundary conditions, the response from the writers was very positive for which we extend our sincere thanks to them. In this connection we may mention here another point. According to the modem practices of bringing out edited anthologies, we should have provided a brief introductory bio-data of the authors present in it. But we desisted from this, simply for the reason that the focus should remain not on contextual but, essentially, on the thematic aspect. But then each one of them stands out distinctly in his article and that itself can become the best introduction of him.
While inviting the authors to contribute articles for the anthology an attempt was made to define certain areas in order to cover, as far as possible, the infinity that Savitri is. These could be the spiritual aspects, occult, yogic, scriptural aspects, mystical, religious, philosophical, literary, poetic, social, historical, comparative or lexico-
graphic aspects; there could also be a biographical angle shedding light on the avataric work of the divine incarnate. But we do not know if this has been achieved with any degree of success, particularly when we recognise that here is God's own account of his evolutionary engagement in the manifestation of a divine life upon earth. Furthermore, it is to be well understood that, not only in terms of its extraordinary esoteric but also exoteric-secular contents, Savitri's knowledge is oceanic and of that ocean what we can hold in our palms is insignificantly human. To adapt a simile of Jnaneshwar, we are like a bird that can hardly hold in its beak any quantity of the water of a vast sunlit lake by which side it builds its tiny nest. Yet whatever is there in that little bird's bill is that lake's own wonderment. Such only could be the glad merit of a collection of works being presented in two volumes with some fifty and odd articles in it.
It is always true that the study of Savitri has to be for the improvement of our faculties, our spiritual faculties, for the growth and enrichment of our soul and our spirit. It is a book of revelation, as the Mother says, and what we have to do is to live in it, allowing it to work in us whatever has to be worked out for our true betterment. Which means that our approach should be supple-intuitive rather than mental-discursive. Therefore we have to guard ourselves against a possible danger as well, the danger of excessive rational thinking. Thought had to be there, but thought that has its birth in the silence of the mind. The purpose of this anthology in two volumes is hence specifically to provide a certain mental support leaping into intuition while approaching Savitri.
Take the example of orchids that are so dear to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty. They have mythical associations also; the Chinese name for these flowers is pretty significant, which means perfume and gracefulness. Any number of stories have grown around the orchids and it is said that they are special plants if for no other reason than the mystique that surrounds them. But as the Renaissance in Europe began to fade and the Age of Reason started making its appearance things took another turn. Nature became an object of investigation instead of an object of joyous amazement and admiration. The unfortunate result was that the "strange beauty of orchid flowers worked their magic on those who would one day be called scientists." Instead of living in the happy glorious ambience of Nature, we took up scalpels in our hand and started dissecting to learn. Let that not happen to Savitri.
But that cannot happen to Savitri, and no crudity of instruments can despoil its beauty and charm. If we are to use the language of the Gita, we may say that "weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire bum, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry." Such is the soul as much as the shining body of Savitri. Therefore when we look at Savitri as a means to grow, then every help is available and we need not have any complex that we are mentalising it. In fact the power of its unfissionable Word is such that it can lift up all our understanding to the integrity of the spirit in its moods of rapturous self-expression.
It is believed that these two volumes of Perspectives of Savitri will form a foundation to launch on specialised themes in future. There have been too many repetitive discussions and the hope is that a sense of direction may now come to the Savitri-studies. We are perhaps moving from general to specific and distinguishing aspects in our approach towards the Masterwork that Savitri is. Such deeper studies will conceivably give some access to the inner realities and in that respect the gain will be entirely ours. Possibly that will be one way of entering into its sublimities and profundities that also spread outward to establish Sachchidanadaic realities in the world.
We may well remember here Shankaracharya's prayer to the Ineffable who is beyond all description. The Acharya is genuinely conscious of his inability to find speech that would be acceptable for singing his glories. But then he also pleads to him that whatever he would utter let that become a stotra or a chant of praise to him. It is in that spirit that our studies can become a hymn to Savitri. Let us live in Savitri who shall give us the Truth and the things of the Truth.
R.Y. DESHPANDE
PART I
My Savitri Work with the Mother
tat savitur varam rūpam jyotiḥ parasya dhìmahi,
yannaḥ satyena dipayet
Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's mantric epic. He says in one of his letters:
Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and it is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences.
The work of illustrating the whole of Savitri through paintings was given to me by the Divine Mother on 6th October 1961. It was so great, so beyond the capacity of little instrument she had summoned, that only her Grace working in Sri Aurobindo's Light could have seen me through.
The Mother wrote to me on 12 .7.1956:
Bonjour
To my dear little child
To my sweet Huta
Indeed I shall show you how to paint and I shall be glad if you
learn well.
1Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 513.
One day I shall call you and do a painting in front of you.
With my love and blessings always
The Mother
On 14.12.1956, in the morning, I went to the Meditation Hall upstairs, as previously arranged by the Mother. There she taught me painting right from the very beginning, because I did not know how to draw even a straight line, or how to hold a brush—nor did I have any colour sense.
After a few days the Mother sent me a card showing a vase with beautiful carnations of various colours. Her encouraging words were:
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24.12.56
Bonjour
To my dear little child
To my sweet Huta
Here is a nice vase of "Collaboration", for indeed we shall collaborate to do nice things and express in painting a higher world and consciousness.
Truly the Divine Grace is over you to lead you to an exceptional realisation.
Along with it my love and blessings never leave you.
The Mother
The Mother has given this significance to the Carnation:
Collaboration, ever ready to help and knowing how to do it.
After that the Mother started sending me for painting numerous objects from her rare collections. Also many varieties of exquisite flowers, along with her own sketches, in order to show me their right composition and perspective.
I received a letter from the Mother, dated 7.2.57:
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Bonjour
To my dear little child
To my sweet Huta
I have received your nice letter. Yes, we are going towards a painting that will be able to express the supramental truth of things.
My love and blessings and the Presence of the Divine Grace are always with you
The Mother
That same evening she explained to me:
I want you to do something new. You must try to do the Future Painting in the New Light.
There is a reason why I always ask you to paint mostly on a white background. It is an attempt to express the Divine Light without shadow in the Future Painting. But everything will cone in its own time.
In the Future Painting, you must not copy blindly the outer appearance without the inner Vision. Never let people's ideas influence your mind and impose their advice about the Future Painting. Do not try to adopt the technique either of modem art or of old classical art. But always try to express the true inner vision of your soul and its deep impression behind everything to bring out the Eternal Truth and to express the glory of the Higher Worlds.
Truth is behind everything. For the Divine dwells in flowers, trees, animals, birds, and rivers as well as human beings—in fact, in every creation of Nature.
You must have the psychic touch to see and feel the vibrations, the sensations and the essence of the Truth in everything and that Truth is to be expressed in the Future Painting.
To paint perfectly is not an easy thing. It certainly takes time. But by the growth of consciousness you can have inspiration, intense vision, delicacy of colours, harmony and subtlety of true beauty. Then you can surely express wonderful things in painting. Otherwise painting will be a lifeless confusion.
The growth of consciousness is essential for doing marvellous paintings. I shall help you, I shall put my Force into you so that there will be a link between our two consciousnesses.
I asked the Mother: "Without seeing the Divine Light, how can I paint?"
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She laughed softly and said:
Child, it will come.
Now it was apparent that I had to learn numerous things from various angles in painting in order to step into the unknown domain of the secret and higher worlds where I could release lavishly, freely my imaginations, reveries and inspirations to express exactly what the Mother wished me to do.
The play of colour—balanced distribution of light and shadow to bring out the perfect harmony of colour—the subtle infusion of light, the transcendent spontaneity, the magical changes of Nature—the supreme Colourist's realism and visions—all these I had to put on canvases with vibrant, various strokes of brushes.
I was perfectly aware that it was not going to be easy, but life now beckoned me along strange paths which I must tread. There was no turning back since I had committed myself to the spiritual life and the higher artistic sphere.
The Mother has stated:
If you want art to be true and highest art, it must be the expression of a Divine World brought down into this material world.
She valued true feeling and right consciousness more than only precise and decorative work without vibrations and vividness. She put stress on "White Light without shadow." It is the vibration of Light which alone can give life and colour to every scene painted.
The Mother gave a proper training to my hands. In 1956 she asked me to clean the inside of her two carved cupboards which are in the Meditation Hall upstairs, so that I might learn to hold the most precious, delicate and fragile objects with steadiness, great care and concentration. She made my hands conscious, receptive and sensitive by putting her Force, Light and Consciousness into them.
She also sent me thousands of the most exquisite picture-cards, so that I might perceive and grasp their beauties and obtain inspiration from Nature: trees, flowers, mountains, rivers, animals and so on. These cards were prepared by Champaklal. He used to paste the pictures on folders, on which the Mother wrote to me.
Surely the Mother did not take up the Savitri work abruptly. She educated me both outwardly and inwardly, knowing that these types of paintings were not of the common kind. This training went on for years with patience and perseverance. Nobody knew of it!
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On 21.1.57 the Mother revealed to me about her way with paintings:
I enter into their consciousness and find out their meanings, the truth and beauty behind each painting.
Some paintings are indeed very nice to look at—they have pretty and gorgeous colours, but when there are no living vibrations and deep harmony, then obviously the paintings are lifeless and without value. But where there is a combination of the two—outward charm and inner vision—then they are real and can be considered as true art.
In your paintings I have felt the living vibrations and that is very good.
The Mother added:
A true artist never speaks of what he has done: "Oh! I have done a nice painting!" Instead he thinks and says, "Oh, no. I could not do it nicely, it is not what I wanted to do."
In fact, he is never satisfied with his work and he continues his effort until he paints masterpieces. An artist puts the full power of his aspiration in his work to reach perfection.
Not only was the Mother teaching me painting, but also giving me lessons of life: how to be modest and persistent in my endeavour to reach perfection and develop into a true artist.
None can beat the Mother's vision, conception and knowledge. A pointer to her being and her ways may be found in Savitri, Book Four, Canto 1:
And from her eyes she cast another look
On all around her than man's ignorant view.
All objects were to her shapes of living selves
And she perceived a message from her kin
In each awakening touch of outward things.2
The Mother never failed to encourage me. On 19.2.57 she sent me a beautiful card depicting her coloured photograph. Her words were:
Bonjour
To my dear little child To my sweet Huta
This is to say to my sweet child, on the occasion of my birthday,
2Savitri, p. 357.
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how glad I am of the progress she is making both spiritually and in her painting—and to assure her of my constant and affectionate help so that this progress will increase without stop. My love and blessings and the presence of the Divine Grace never leave you.
The Mother
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Towards the end of 19581 went to London according to the Mother's wish. I came back in August 1960.
This was the New Year message of 1961 from the Mother to all:
This wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates for our call to come down upon earth.
As always, she gave me diaries in which to write my journal.
On 1st September 1961, my physical birthday, the Mother called me to the Meditation Hall upstairs and gave me a folder. When I opened it, I found my own paintings on either side. One was "Soul of Beauty," and the other was a vision the Mother had seen in my heart and asked me to paint in 1957. Underneath the picture these lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri (p. 397) were inscribed:
This golden figure...
Hid in its breast the key of all his aims,
A spell to bring the Immortal's bliss on earth.
The Mother looked at me for a few seconds. Then her eyes closed gradually. She slid into a profound trance which lasted more than ten minutes. On opening her eyes she said:
I achieved in my tender age the highest occult troths. I have realised and seen all the visions set forth in Savitri.
Actually I experienced the poem's supramental revelations before I arrived in Pondicherry, and before Sri Aurobindo read out Savitri to me early in the morning day after day at a certain period of the Ashram. I never told Sri Aurobindo all that I had seen in my visions beforehand...
She laughed softly, sweetly, and resumed:
I have seen the beauties and wonders of the higher worlds. Now I think of expressing them in painting by various colours—blues, golds, pinks and whites—with certain vibrations of Light—all in harmony forming the New World.
I wish to bring down upon earth this New World. Since I have no time physically, I will paint through you.
The world of Supreme Beauty exists. I shall take you there, you will see the things, remember them and then express them in paintings.
Yes, yes, my will shall be done—the Supreme Beauties exist. I will certainly take you there.
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I see the butterfly ready in its cocoon. I do not wish it to come out soon, but gradually. Then after emerging from the chrysalis you will have enough knowledge to reach your goal.
Once again the Mother closed her eyes—a slight smile hovering on her lips. When she awoke, she said:
I realised the Divine in my early twenties, your age!
You see, the Inner Divinity is Omnipotence, Omniscience,
Omnipresence. This Divinity is constantly with me—guiding and inspiring me.
I held her hands and said eagerly: "Oh, I haven't yet realised the Divine."
She smiled and assured me:
You will.
Further she added:
For occultism one needs a Guru. But spirituality can be transferred (she made a gesture moving her index finger from the middle of her chest towards my heart), like this.
On another occasion, the Mother said:
Child, our work is a work of the Future—a work of tomorrow for younger generations who will be the builders of the New . World.
She also revealed:
Savitri is the prophetic vision of Sri Aurobindo. It will surpass the Gita and the Bible.
Without reading Savitri intellectually I could not go any further. So in 1961 the Mother arranged for me to read it with Ambalal Purani. We finished reading Book One. Then in 1963 he went to the U.K. and the United States. After he had returned from abroad he fell ill. In 1965 he passed away. So the Mother arranged for me to read Savitri with Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna).
Sri Aurobindo first introduced Savitri to Amal in private drafts, and wrote toiiim most of the letters that are now published along with the epic.
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Amal and I met for the first time in 1961, upstairs in the passage which connects the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's rooms. I casually asked him about a chess board, because just then the Mother and I were doing something on that theme. He drew one and made me understand it.
When we started our reading of Savitri some people warned Amal against me and asked him to discontinue. Amal cut them short, saying: "The Mother has arranged our reading. Besides, I have seen and felt Huta's soul. I cannot back out."
Amal made me understand Savitri intellectually and aesthetically. As soon as he would leave my apartment after out study sessions, I used to write down what he had explained to me in detail. I have numerous cherished notebooks which are of great value to me.
It was 7th August 1965 when I finished reading the whole of Savitri with Amal. I could not check my tears of joy. He too was moved. We shook hands over the long harmonious collaboration and absorbing discussions.
That day in the afternoon I went to the Mother to inform her about it. She smiled, heaved a sigh of happiness, and said:
Ah, one big work is done.
Here are Amal's own words, published in the Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, in May 1979, page 276:
An appreciative treatment of Savitri in its poetic quality—an elucidation of its thought-content, its imagery-inspiration, its word-craft and its rhythm-impact: this [the Mother] did not consider as beyond another interpreter than herself. I can conclude thus because she fully approved Huta's proposal to her that I should go through the whole of the epic with Huta during the period when the Mother and she were doing the illustrations of the poem, the Mother making outline sketches or suggesting the general disposition of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand and producing the final finished painting.
It was a long-drawn-out pleasure—my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions, with my expository enthusiasm serving as a spur, she would come out with ideas that taught a thing or two to the teacher.
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I never knew he would write such a thing about me. I always marvelled at his modesty, selflessness and goodwill.
Meanwhile the month of October 1961 had arrived—slowly, like a benediction, hope and peace diffused in my whole being.
The Mother called me to the Meditation Room upstairs on 6 October 1961 in the morning, to take up the work of Savitri painting.
She and I exchanged flowers and smiles. Then I looked at her eagerly to show me how to do the first painting. I felt as if the doors of hidden worlds were going to open before me. From the Mother's expression I gathered that now I would always be submerged in this wonderful consciousness from where I would never come out. Ah, it is true so far!
The date 6 is auspicious—according to the Mother the number 6 signifies "New Creation".
She was absolutely indrawn in sheer silence. After her deep meditation she looked at me unblinking. Then there was the sudden flicker of a smile in her eyes when she spoke:
Child, have you thought of painting the jacket of the book which will be published after we have finished some paintings of Savitri ?
Once more she lapsed into a profound trance. She awoke, took a piece of paper and a pencil and drew a cover picture. She explained:
Show the descent of the Supreme Mother. A flash of white Light forming the feet which rest on the globe of the earth. Don't forget to paint the outline of a lotus, which must be mingled with the white Light.
She also made me understand the colour-scheme.
Then she held my hands, and pressed them in order to fill them with her Consciousness. She kissed my forehead.
With a blank mind I reacher my apartment, sat on a chair in my studio where the Mother herself had sat when she declared open my apartment on 10th February 1958.
There was the jumble of colour-tubes, brushes, palette knives, distilled turpentine, Unseed oil, rags.
I put the canvas board on the easel and squeezed liberal quantities of pigments on a palette. The Mother had shown me how to arrange colours on the palette when she started teaching me painting on 11th December 1956.
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I finished the painting and sent it to the Mother that very morning. She returned it through Ambu who broughtprasad from her at midday along with this note:
There is no need of changing anything. It is excellent.
This was the beginning of our work.
The following name was given by the Mother to this work:
It is impossible for me to give the full description of all the Savitri paintings here. But I shall try to convey glimpses of some of them.
The Mother explained to me the sixth picture of Book One Canto One:
All can be done it the God-touch is there.
A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference...
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal...
A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
That glowed along a fading moments brink....3
Child, you must show in your painting the rays of White Light streaming out from all the fingers of "a wandering hand".
In reality, from the occult point of view the White Light flowed from the Mother's own fingers.
On 4th November 1961 she made me understand the eighth picture of the same book, the same canto:
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak From the reclining body of a god.3a
She went into a deep meditation for quite a long time. When she opened her eyes. I felt as if she were still dreaming. The Mother said:
3Ibid., p. 3. 38Ibid.
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I saw in 1904 the vision of a Spirit when I went into the Inconscient. The form of this Spirit was neither of man nor of woman. Nor was it Vishnu or Shiva or Krishna.
Once again she closed her eyes to recall what she had seen in the fathomless darkness. When she awoke she instructed me:
Child, you must paint a pale gold reclining figure of a God. His right cheek is resting on his right palm. His head with long golden hair is on a white cushion. And in the background you must show a myriad rainbow hues of opals. Also the black colour of the darkness sliding off Him.
It was difficult to paint rainbow colour. I could not finish the painting. That very night I had a vision:
The shimmering waves of the divine White Light enveloped me as they turned into brilliant multi-colours. They were in gradations— from pale blue to night sky, from shell-pink to deepest crimson, from pale green to Nile green, and the same with the rest of the hues.
Then suddenly they assumed the faces of beautiful beings—but their lower bodies were like trails of different colours. These beings mingled with one another, yet retained their individualities. Their dancing movements were like music, the tinkle, the chime of numerous bells echoing and re-echoing through the sweet silence of eternity. My eyes drank in the melody of the vivid, various colours with as much joy as I would have had hearing an ethereal symphony in perfect harmony in the Divine Light.
This was an ecstasy, an indescribable thrill. I was floating upward into a realm of glory beyond anything I had ever beheld or ever known.
This vision of mine reminds or me of Sri Aurobindo's poem The Life Heavens:
Sounds, colours, joy-flamings—Life lies here
Dreaming, bound to the heavens of its goal,
In the clasp of a Power that enthrals to sheer
Bliss and beauty body and rapt soul.4
Indeed the Savitri paintings were expressed in multi-colours to accord with the twelve dimensions known to occultism.
The next morning I finished the picture, and showed it to the Mother
4Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 574,
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in the afternoon. She clasped my hands, looked into my eyes for a moment or two and gave me a kiss on my forehead. Her gesture conveyed to me everything.
My memory winged back to the year 1958. On 8th February in the evening the Mother and I had met. She looked at me for a few seconds and plunged into deep meditation. I could not have cared less, did not respond, did not concentrate; my vagrant thoughts rambled on. She was serenely peaceful, unruffled, untouched. Then the Mother opened her eyes and said with great regret:
Just now I saw in my vision beautiful luminous beings from above bringing precious gifts for you. They wished to enter your whole being with these boons. But unhappily, you were completely shut up and denied them. So they went back to where they had come from.
There were no tears in my eyes—only solid unutterable despair.
The Mother looked at me and smiled—a sad smile I had failed to collaborate, to receive, to assimilate. I felt sick, very sick, in my heart, mind and body.
She leaned from her couch, patted my cheeks and affirmed:
The luminous beings will return one day and enter your whole being.
So they came back to me by the Divine's Grace.
The Savitri paintings left me day after day in wonder.
The Mother took me with her to the world of true art, the world of Beauty from which all the inspiration came, a world of ecstatic joy, unbounded happiness, a world of magnificence.
Sri Aurobindo has written:
The Mother believes in beauty as a part of spiritual and divine living.
On 6th November 1961 the Mother met me in the morning in the Meditation Hall upstairs and explained to me the ninth picture:
A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
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Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.5
She drew a faint line here and there on a piece of paper. I could hardly make out anything. The Mother wished me to use various colours for the painting. She asked me:
Have you seen the dawn?
I said: "No, Mother. Because I work late at night I cannot get up early to see the dawn. I am sorry."
She laughed softly and left me in an ambiguous state.
I was terribly nervous when I reached my apartment. Tears welled up in my eyes and I thought again and again, "why, oh why did I take up this difficult work?" My anger rose to match the situation.
Then at last I dragged myself towards the easel in my studio. I sat on a chair, squeezed out several colours at random on the palette and started blindly giving strokes here and there on a board with a single brush, without thinking, caring, or even trying to sketch the Dawn.
In the afternoon I went to the Mother. She looked at the picture, a meditative gleam in her eyes, and said:
Oh, it is excellent!
I frowned with perplexity. She laughed and said:
You see, while I was taking my lunch I was thinking, "I did not quite make the girl understand how to paint the Dawn. How is she getting on with it?" Meanwhile, I saw Sri Aurobindo in a vision. He informed me that I should not worry about the girl. She is getting on well with the painting. And now I can see what he meant!
At that very moment I was made to understand that not only did the Mother's Consciousness help me in this work, but that Sri Aurobindo's Consciousness too played its role admirably.
According to Sri Aurobindo:
Dawn always means an opening of some kind—the coming of something that is not yet fully there.
On the morning of 8th November the Mother instructed me about the tenth picture:
5Savitri, pp. 3-4.
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On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.6
The Mother saw my picture in the afternoon and liked it. I drew her attention to the arms of the Vision, saying, "Mother, aren't they too long?" She assured me:
Never mind. They are impressive and symbolic.
Then she got up from her high-backed carved chair, came very close to me, looked at my face with her luminous gaze for a few minutes, cupped it in her hands and said firmly:
Now, just now, I saw a beautiful brilliant face of an angel. One day it will come out.
She kissed me on my forehead and bade me "Au revoir."
In the domain of our souls there are numerous beautiful beings or angels. When the Mother spoke she always meant the spiritual and occult truths, which are beyond our comprehension.
The Mother interpreted the sixteenth picture:
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.7
She remarked:
In this painting there is a purpose behind. One likes to see it over and over again. Man is an ignorant being, and yet he is an exception in Nature.
On 17th November 1961 the Mother explained to me the seventeenth picture:
And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant...
6Ibid., p. 4.
7Ibid.,p.6.
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A narrow movement on Time's deep abysm,
Life's fragile littleness denied the power,
The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
She had brought with her into the human form,
The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.8
She did the sketch in front of me, and told me about the colour-scheme. She said:
Child, when you paint Savitri's portrait, you must see that throughout you have to paint the same face but with various expressions. Different features will look odd.
I asked her about Savitri's complexion. The Mother said,
Why, the fair Indian complexion, ivory—a sunny ivory complexion.
I inquired: "Mother what is 'sunny ivory'?" She leaned a little forward from her chair, patted my arm and said with a smile:
Like your complexion.
I blushed. Yes, at that time I had a very fair complexion. I remember the Mother always admired it. As the years passed, gradually the awful weather, constant psychological struggle, perpetual assaults of the invisible entities, setbacks, sufferings and difficulties spoiled my skin considerably. However the essential thing in life, I believe, is the charm and beauty of the soul.
On 19th November the Mother made me understand the nineteenth picture of Book One, Canto One:
Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,
It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers:
Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.9
8 Ibid.
9Ibid.,p. 7.
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She did the sketch and asked me to show blood oozing from Savitri's hands and right foot.
When the Mother saw the painting she said:
The expression of Savitri is very good indeed.
On 24th December the Mother greeted me with three white roses and a charming smile. She read the passage:
As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired...to things beyond.10
Instead of explaining to me through a drawing, the Mother gave me a dancing pose—the right foot was lifted—the right hand came down— the left hand went up. She showed me how the priestess should dance.
This reminds me that in one of her births she was also a priestess in Egypt.
Now it was 24th November—the Darshan day. The Mother distributed to people this message, which appealed to me very much:
It is by a constant inner growth that one can find constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other satisfying way.
Sri Aurobindo
For several months the Mother and I worked continuously. We were working on Book One, Canto Four, when in May 1962 the Mother was taken seriously ill. She convalesced for quite a long time in her second-floor apartment. She never came down again. After that I went to her for our work on Savitri—in the music-cum-interview room.
There she explained to me the sixth picture of Book One Canto Four:
Along a path of aeons serpentine
In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.11
This expressed the Mother's own struggle, I felt.
Time flew on rapid wings. Our work progressed considerably well. The Mother took my consciousness to other spheres and let me see many extraordinary things in detail. She also made me feel their
10 lbid.. p. 15.
11Ibid., p.50.
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vibrations and meet numerous strange beings of different types. Without her direct instructions, guidance and constant help nothing could have been achieved.
Some people thought that the paintings of Savitri were mere pictures; some even mocked and criticised. Some passed remarks out of sheer jealousy and disdain. They believed the paintings to be my personal possessions and affair, because I had done them and because the Mother had graciously granted me the copyright of them—which much later I passed on to the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. But really speaking, the paintings of the whole of Savitri are the Mother's own creation, based not only on her series of visions but also on her own guiding sketches: they are a reflection of her own Yoga.
On the morning of 18th December 1964 the Mother explained to me one of the paintings of Book five, The Book of Love.
For Satyavan she drew trousers and said:
He should wear tight trousers.
I raised my eyebrows and inquired, "Mother, tight trousers? They are modem—what about a dhoti?" She said:
Why, but the trousers are all right. I do not like a dhoti here, because it is modem.
When I showed the painting to the Mother I thought it was awful. Once again I broached the subject of the dhoti. She said firmly:
Ah no, I prefer trousers here. It is better if you change the colour of the trousers to pale greyish-blue instead of brown. Then they will look nice.
Here too some people criticised when they saw the exhibition of the Savitri paintings. The Mother once remarked that people do not see beyond their noses. She always reiterated:
All these paintings are paintings of tomorrow—future paintings.
When Book Six, The Book of Fate, was in progress, I did the painting of Savitri's mother. I did not cover her head with the sari, so she lacked the appearance of royalty. The Mother asked me to cover her
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head. I said: "As I have painted the first picture of her without any covering, how will it look in other pictures if I cover her head?" The Mother smiled and said:
Why, but she can always cover her head when the sari slips. In the first picture the sari had slipped and in another picture she has pulled it up!
I savoured her sense of humour.
The Mother was very particular about covering. I remember that one day while I was working my sari got disarranged. She arranged it and advised me:
Child, you should always cover yourself properly.
I painted the Mother's eyes from the photograph depicting her eyes. She liked the painting very much and asked me to include it in Savitri's Book Ten, The Book of Double Twilight, picture thirteen:
And Savitri looked on Death and answered not...
A mighty transformation came on her...
A curve of the calm hauteur of far heaven
Descending into earth's humility,
Her forehead's span vaulted the Omniscient's gaze,
Her eyes were two stars that watched the universe.12
As days, months and years passed, our work approached a close. Each day was a new revelation for me. Each painting had its own story, told and written by the Mother.
I am sorry that I cannot give a full account of my work with the Mother. What I am writing here is just a glimpse, an outline. All the details will be given when my spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is published in book-form in several volumes.
The Mother saw the last paintings of Book Twelve, Epilogue, on 1st September 1965. The lines for the last picture run:
Numberless the stars swam on their shadowy field
Describing in the gloom the ways of light.
12Ibid., pp. 664-65.
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Then while they skirted yet the southward verge,
Lost in the halo of her musing brows
Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
In silver peace, possessed her luminous region.
She brooded through her stillness on a thought
Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,
And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.11
When the Mother saw the painting she told me in moving words:
It is beautiful, excellent—full of feeling.
I actually saw her eyes moist with tears of happiness—because indeed she was anxiously waiting for the auspicious day to come: the great Dawn of the Supramental World.
Then with a smile she put a garland of jasmines around my neck— this was a reward to me. In my birthday card she wrote:
With my blessings for your whole being to become conscious of your soul and to manifest it constantly in your thoughts, feelings and actions.
In Eternal Love.
I told the Mother: "When I have finished re-touching and re-doing the Savitri paintings according to your guidance, I shall have no work." She smiled and affirmed:
You see, you will have so many things to do. Only idle people can say they have no work!
The Mother had the paintings of Meditations on Savitri, Book One, Cantos One to Five, published in book form in four volumes from 1962 to 1965. She did not allow me to retouch or repaint the Savitri paintings for these books, because, she said:
These volumes are only an experiment. I want to show to the world how the consciousness is developed.
For each volumes the Mother gave a wonderful message, respectively:
13Ibid., p. 724.
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While teaching me occultism during out Savitri work, the Mother disclosed to me the mysteries of the higher luminous worlds, as well as the horrible nether worlds.In fact she took my consciousness to those worlds in order to give me experiences and make me understand the hidden truth of things.
The Mother did hundreds of Savitri sketches along with her explanations. Also she wrote a number of letters in this regard.
I recall one of her letters:
7.4.65
Dear little child Huta,
The sketches are very good. Especially the 3 heads of Savitri are excellent. I have made a little change to the man of power. His hands must be chained separately each one to a machine on both sides of his body, because he does not see the chains and believes he is free.
LOVE
The Mother
Here the man represented Ego—the lines are from Book Seven, Canto Four:
She spoke and from the lower human world
An answer, a warped echo met her speech...
The voice rose up and smote some inner sun:
"I am the heir of the forces of the earth,
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Slowly I make good my right to my estate...
When earth is mastered, I shall conquer heaven;
The gods shall be my aids or menial folk,
No wish I harbour unfulfilled shall die:
Omnipotence and omniscience shall be mine."14
The Mother also taught me how to read Savitri:
14Ibid., pp. 510-13.
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7.7.65
Dear little child of mine
You like to read Savitri to me and to say your feelings about it—this is quite all right—and I like your understanding of Savitri, which is also all right. So everything is all right and you can be sure of my friendship.
LOVE
The Mother
*
The Savitri paintings, and other visionary paintings of that time, were done in the midst of hideous difficulties and sufferings. Many a time the Mother was taken suddenly ill: she ran a temperature along with a cold and cough. Despite all this, she never stopped explaining to me about the Savitri paintings.
On my side too there were spells of indisposition. But the stress of inspiration was so intense that I could not stop.
The Mother gave certain days in the week for our work. The rest of the days I was so preoccupied with painting that sometimes I found no time even to comb my hair. When my maid-servant was absent, I had no time to go to the Dining Room, and had to make do with bits of bred and water.
Often the electricity failed. The inspiration was so intense that I had to hold a flashlight in one hand and keep on paiting with the other—I simply could not halt. During the rains, water would leak in from all sides of the ceiling. I suffered from a severe cold and cough.
I had to clean the rooms before I retired late at night. The Mother had instructed me that I should clean the brushes and the palette as soon as my work was over. Several times I got electric shocks in the water while cleaning the brushes—they were terrifying.
Later this was rectified by Bula-da, for whom I had a great regard. Once he told me: "Huta, let other people go by the Frontier Mail, we will go in the Goods Train. That too will reach the goal—slowly but surely." I liked his advice.
The Mother's Force was working ceaseless in my whole being to fulfil my soul's aspiration. She believed in killing several birds with one stone. Only the Divine Diplomat can do this.
When I was completely absorbed in painting, I forgot to use my handkerchief on my face; instead I would wipe my face with the rags
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I used for cleaning the paintbrushes—and wiped the brushes with my handkerchief! After finishing work I went to clean my brushes and glanced at the mirror. I was horrified to see my face. My hair was dishevelled, and several patches of different colours added a rainbow glory to my visage!
Sometimes while painting I started feeling suffocated, owing to some heaviness in my heart. The inner churning was constant. Tears rolled down my cheeks. With one hand I was painting and with the other wiping my eyes.
The Mother's strides were getting longer and quicker. At times it was difficult to keep pace with her. I got exhausted. There were days when nothing existed for me except the mission of finishing the task I carried in my heart.
Throughout the whole year of 1966 the Mother asked me to retouch and repaint many of the Savitri paintings according to her instructions.
She had arranged to display 468 Savitri paintings in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Exhibition Hall in February 1967. But before that the Mother expressed her wish to see all the paintings once again in order to fill them with her Force, Light and Consciousness. For she once commented that the Savitri paintings were not mere paintings but living beings full of vibrations. So I took the paintings to the Mother a few at a time. She touched each of them and concentrated on them. Above all, she Was extremely happy to see them, and remarked:
People see these types of paintings from the material point of view, while I always see them from the spiritual point of view. They are visions—they are symbolic.
On 16.1.1967 the Mother wrote to me:
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My dear little child Huta
You have worked wonderfully!
With all my love
I was touched by her letter, and wrote to express my aspiration to reach the Divine Goal. Then she replied to me:
As the paintings were done, so the Goal will be reached.
With all my love
For the exhibition the Mother gave the following message:
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Here is
Savitri
The importance of Savitri is immense.
Its subject is universal.
Its revelation is prophetic.
The time spent in its atmosphere is not wasted.
Take all the time necessary to see the exhibition.
It will be a happy compensation for the feverish haste men put
now in all they do.
10.2.1967
I had seen the final arrangements of the paintings. Krishnalal, Jayantilal, Vasudev-bhai and others were there to arrange everything. The Mother asked me not to go to the Exhibition Hall once the exhibition of the Savitri paintings was declared open by Amrita. Nolini-da, Dyuman and Udar accompanied him. I obeyed her. A dear old lady said to me with good will:
Huta, I saw the exhibition of Savitri paintings. You have done the work of 100 births in this one life. You are liberated.
I replied that it was all the Grace of the Divine.
Here I recall Michelangelo's words:
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
It is well known that the Mother was a fine artist who excelled in drawing and sketching as well as oil-painting. When she started teaching me how to draw objects I realised how engrossed she would be when doing sketches.
While explaining Savitri to me and showing me the way to paint it, the Mother simply poured her heart out in expressing through a few strokes the whole vision of each selected passage.
On 18th July 19661 went to the Mother for the Savitri work. After the work I told her: "Mother some people have said that you are preparing to go..."
She laughed softly and answered:
Yes, people think like that. It is a falsehood. And a falsehood has no influence on the Truth. But the Truth has an influence
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on falsehood. Let them think as they like...
I said: "Mother, somebody also asked me, 'How can the Mother do sketches when her hands are shaky?' Some other think you are suffering from paralysis. Everything is awful. These people are really ridiculous!"
The Mother replied with surprise:
Oh, but my hands are not shaky, and I am quite all right. You see, my child, ever since I retired people have started imagining all sorts of things. But it is a mistake. I do my work all the same.
In this context, I later asked the Mother: "If you kindly permit, I greatly wish to exhibit your sketches along with the paintings of Savitri. If you trust me, I shall have them best displayed." She smiled sweetly and said:
Yes, I leave this matter to you. Do whatever you like.
I said joyously: "Mother I am honoured and happy. I am eager to show people these sketches, because some have thought that one of your hands was too shaky to draw anything. After seeing hundreds of your sketches they will realise that there is no shakiness in your hands."
The Mother was extremely happy and caressed my cheeks.
So along with the Savitri paintings, many of the Mother's sketches were also exhibited.
Later, after the exhibition was over, the Mother was requested by Jayantilal and others to select some of her sketches and allow them to be printed. She laughed merrily and said to all of us:
Ah, you see, when good food is served we must not tell everybody how it was cooked. Similarly we must not print the sketches and disclose the secret of how the paintings were done. People must find that out by themselves.
Once the Mother told me:
The Supreme has the supreme humility, because He is everything.
After the exhibition, on 8.3.1967, the paintings were taken to two rooms in Golconde, according to the Mother's wish.
Then, on the morning of Friday 8.1.99 I brought the Savitri paintings and two huge cupboards to my place, because I was asked
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to do so by Mona L. Pinto. The paintings remained in Golconde for 31 years or so.
In the near future these paintings will go to Savitri Bhavan at Auroville.*
During that time too, the Mother's recitations were going on. For the paintings, the Mother had asked me to choose the passages from Savitri which could be pictured. I wrote them out with a felt-pen on big sheets of handmade paper, so that she could easily read the selected passages which corresponded to the paintings. As she read, I tape-recorded her recitations.
The Mother completed the recitations from the whole of Savitri towards the end of 1967.
Gradually I gave to Sunil-da copies of all the recordings of the Mother's recitations, so that he could compose the Savitri music, according to the Mother's wish.
Sunil-da told me:
Huta, now I will have to read the whole of Savitri in order to understand the epic and then compose the music. According to the Divine's inspiration, you know, it was my aspiration to compose Savitri music. If you would not have recorded the Mother's recitations and given me the tapes I could not have composed the music. And your tape-recording is very nice—like a professional one.
I replied: "Sunil-da, I am honoured! You are very kind and appreciative. You see, everything is decided and arranged by the Supreme Lord. We are his instruments. I am fortunate and very happy to be one."
The Mother wished slides to be made of the Savitri paintings, so that they could be shown at the Ashram theatre as part of the celebrations during Sri Aurobindo's Birth Centenary Year, 1972. With the Mother's blessings Richard Eggenberger took up the work of preparing the slides from early 1971 onwards. He and his assistants finished taking slides of all of the Savitri paintings on 27.9.1971.
* These are now at Savitri Bhavan.—Editor.
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On 26.2.71 the Mother heard her own organ music along with her recitations. She liked it very much and fully approved of it to be used as an accompaniment throughout the slide shows. The Mother had given these names to her music:
Mystic Solitude, Quiet Power, Joy, Compassion of the Divine, Life in Eternity, Construction of the Future.
As for Sunil-da's Savitri music, the Mother arranged for it to be played in the Playground during the meditations on Thursdays and Sundays. In this connection she gave me a special blessings packet for Sunil-da. He was very pleased.
The Mother wished to know the exact date and time for showing in the Ashram theater the slides of the Meditations on Savitri paintings along with her own organ music and her recitations, recorded by me, of Savitri passages which corresponded with the paintings, so that she would put her special Force and Light during the programme. The first show was on Friday, 25.2.72 at 8.30 pm. On 21.7.72 was the last one. People enjoyed the shows. The Mother did not want me to attend the shows. I obeyed her.
In 1967, after the display of Savitri paintings in the Ashram Exhibition Hall, when I asked the Mother about making a movie of the Savitri paintings, she held my right hand, shook it with a broad smile and said with a face full of enthusiasm:
Yes, my child, we shall collaborate!
Years passed. I was wondering about the movie. On 6.7.72 M. Andre" had written to me:
Dear Huta
It is the Mother who told me, when I read your letter to her, to inquire from Kireet what his idea exactly was.
Now I have again spoken to her and she said it is very doubtful if Tarachand would take up this job, and besides the pictures would not come out well.
With kind regards
Yours,
André
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Now at last it seemed that the time had cone to get the movie of the Savitri paintings made. On 6.2.1973 it was decided by the Mother that the movie would be made by Michel Klostermann of Germany. When he was in charge of film production in Auroville, the Mother gave the name "Filmaur" for his project. The Mother gave Michel and me beautiful leather-bound folders with Sri Aurobindo's and her own photographs.
She wanted her own organ-music to be played as a background during her recitations of the Savitri passages corresponding to the paintings. She also wished that the movie should be full of liveliness, vibrations and vividness.
On 19.5.73 I wrote a letter to the Mother.
My dearest Mother
Michel has already started to make the movie of the Savitri paintings with your blessings. According to your instructions he will surely give to the paintings vividness, vibrations and liveliness while filming.
Your own organ-music and your recitations of Savitri passages will have stereophonic sound which will give a superb effect to the movie:
Meditations on Savitri
I pray you to make everything possible and done by your Force and Grace. Victory to the Supreme!
With love and kisses
Yours ever
Huta
She sent blessings packets through M. André.
Now Michel has fulfilled the Mother's wish by making the movie of all the Savitri paintings from Book One to Book Twelve. He has sent video cassettes of the movie to me, and to Shraddhavan for Savitri Bhavan, Auroville.
Meanwhile, a new work had started.
On the morning of 20th December 1967, the Mother saw me in her music-cum-interview room. She asked me:
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Have you brought anything to show me?
I said: "Yes, Mother. Here is the file of four hundred and sixty-five passages from Savitri which you recited and which were put below the Savitri paintings when they were exhibited in February 1967.
Mother, will you please explain these passages to me, and allow me to take down your explanations of them on my tape-recorder as I have done with your recitations of the passages? Then surely people will understand the Savitri paintings more easily."
She concentrated for a moment or two and then said enthusiastically:
If I have to explain these passages, I would prefer to start from the very beginning and give a full explanation of the whole of Savitri.
In fact, this had already been planned in the Mother's Vision long ago before I came to stay near her on 10th February 1955.
Once she revealed to a small group of sadhaks, soon after the first one-volume edition of Savitri was published in 1954 by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education:
Savitri is occult knowledge and spiritual experience. Some part of it can be understood mentally—but much of it needs the same knowledge and experience for understanding it. Nobody here except myself can explain Savitri. One day I hope to explain it in its true sense.
On 18th January 1968 in the morning the Mother and I commenced our new work on Savitri.
On 28th January the Mother gave it the name:
I may indicate how we proceeded. The Mother read out the passages from Savitri, and then, after a deep contemplation, gave her comments which I tape-recorded and later transcribed. Afterwards she saw and corrected my transcriptions.
All the comments by the Mother are wonderful. Here I would like to present one of them, from Book One Canto Three, which appeals to me very much. She recited this passage:
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Only a while at first these heavenlier states,
These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.
The high and luminous tension breaks too soon,
The body's stone stillness and the life's hushed trance,
The breathless might and calm of silent mind;
Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day.
The restless nether members tire of peace;
A nostalgia of old little works and joys,
A need to call back small familiar selves,
To tread the accustomed and inferior way,
The need to rest in a natural poise of fall,
As a child who learns to walk can walk not long,
Replace the titan will for ever to climb,
On the heart's altar dim the sacred fire.
An old pull of subconscious cords renews;
It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,
Or a dull gravitation drags us down
To the blind driven inertia of our base.
This too the supreme Diplomat can use,
He makes our fall a means for greater rise.15
Her comment runs:
This is the great difficulty in the physical life. It is the strength of the old habit that pulls down the body to its old way. Then comes the struggle, and if the faith is sufficient, if the ardour for progress is there, then out of this fall we can rise to a higher receptivity and a better achievement.
In fact, there is nothing in this experimental life that is not meant to push the whole creation towards the luminous marvellous Divine End that is promised to our effort and to our faith.
Never despair. Never lose courage. Never, never lose faith. The Grace is there and marvellously uses everything to reach, as quickly as possible, the Goal that is promised to our effort.
If we can enlarge our consciousness sufficiently, we see that even the apparent defeats are marvellous steps towards the final Victory.
As we went on, the Mother uncovered Sri Aurobindo's vision and hers of the New World, expressing the Supramental Light, Consciousness, Force and Delight. She disclosed their effect on the
15Ibid., p. 34.
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cells of the body. She took the theme of Savitri only as starting-point and, when the right time came, spoke about the action of the New Consciousness which had been manifesting since the beginning of the year 1969.
On 21st March 1969, after our Savitri work, the Mother said:
Child, do you know, from the beginning of this year the New Consciousness has been coming down upon earth, which tells everything—what to do and what not to do—to people who are conscious and want to change.
This Consciousness is gradually and gently organising everything.
When you can withdrawn quietly and silently, and listen to it, it will tell you what you should do and what you should not.
This Consciousness does not do anything violently and forcibly but gently and gradually. It does not work only in the mind and the vital being but also in the body. It takes great care of the body and everything else.
I am putting this Consciousness around you. You will see it and feel it. It will tell you everything.
It is always smiling—it never gets angry, it never scolds, but is very gentle and very sweet, you'll see!
The Mother always kept her promise. I became more and more aware of the New Consciousness and its action.
The Mother's message of 1st April 1969 to all, in connection with the talk she gave me, runs:
Since the beginning of this year a New Consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare men for a New Creation, the Superman. For this creation to be possible the substance that constitutes man's body must undergo a big change, it must become more receptive to the Consciousness and more plastic under its working.
These are just the qualities that one can acquire through physical education.
So, if we follow this discipline with such a result in view, we are sure to obtain the most interesting result.
My blessings to all for progress and achievement.
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On 26th December 1969 I went to the Mother to hear the New Year music. There was also a message given by her:
The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?
That day happened to be one of my days with the Mother. She recited from Savitri only one passage, for it was very long. After the work she read my prayer, and on the same sheet of paper she wrote:
It will be realised by the Supreme Power and Love.
That night I had a wonderful vision.
I went out of my body. My subtle body was now soaring up and up in an enormous space. There were the moon and stars. The atmosphere was very light, cool and soothing. I felt free like a bird. I did not realise how far I went up but now I could not see the moon and stars. I was beyond the heavenly bodies. There was endless space before me. Suddenly I saw something shining from the far horizon. I headed towards the glow. Now I was not soaring up vertically but my movement was as if I were swimming into a vast space. I was coming closer and closer to my destination. My first glance fell on two huge Suns. The one on the right was golden yellow and the other on the left was golden red. Their edges were touching and mingling with each other. I came still closer by crossing an immense lake which was packed with diamond-like lotuses and emerald leaves. The reflection of the two Suns added glory to the breathtaking beauty of the marvellous scene which was spread out like a panorama before my eyes.
I was now floating a little above the lake. Its coolness enveloped my subtle body.
Here the Divine had strewn lavishly her exquisite Beauty and Wonder and Quietude. The divine vibrations were overwhelming. I was engulfed by the new consciousness.
I reached the Suns. Their Force and Power were absolutely still and calm. Then I saw a narrow passage between the two Suns. I entered it, and on the other side I saw a golden world. There was nothing there except golden Light. I landed slowly on the divine soil, but to my surprise I was a little above the ground. I could not set my feet there. I was not walking but floating in this enchanting atmosphere. I came across a few luminous beings who were active, but their activities were without any sound. Everything was heavenly. There I felt the perfect Consciousness, Harmony, Peace, Beauty and Silence. I was simply bathed in the golden Light, in the soothing vibrations of a quiet joy and happiness.
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I roamed here and there freely, and silently communicated with the beings. Nothing was new to me because I identified myself completely with this magnificent World of Golden Light.
I was reluctant to come back to the dark world of falsehood. But alas, the next morning I saw myself lying in my bed. I felt extremely sorry and lost, and shed a few silent tears.
At once I remembered the whole passage from Savitri which the Mother had recited the previous morning and on which she had given her comment. The passage recounts an experience of Aswapati, the Yogi-King, father of Savitri.
A glimpse was caught of things forever unknown;
The letters stood out of the unmoving Word.
In the immutable nameless Origin
Was seen emerging as from fathomless seas
The trail of the Ideas that made the world,
And, sown in the black earth of Nature's trance,
The seed of the Spirit's blind and huge desire
From which the tree of cosmos was conceived
And spread its magic arms through a dream of space.
Immense realities took on a shape:
There looked out from the shadow of the Unknown
The bodiless Namelessness that saw God bom
And tries to gain from the mortal's mind and soul
A deathless body and a divine name.
The immobile hps, the great surreal wings,
The visage masked by superconscient Sleep,
The eyes with their closed lids that see all things,
Appeared of the Architect who builds in trance.
The original Desire bom in the Void
Peered out; he saw the hope that never sleeps,
The feet that run behind a fleeting fate,
The ineffable meaning of the endless dream.
As if a torch held by a power of God,
The radiant world of the everlasting Truth
Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night
Above the golden Overmind's shimmering ridge.
Even were caught as through a cunning veil
The smile of love that sanctions the; long game,
The calm indulgence and maternal breasts
Of Wisdom suckling the child-laughter of Chance,
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Silence the nurse of the Almighty's power,
The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word,
And of the Timeless the still brooding face,
And the creative eye of Eternity.16
The Mother's comment ran as follows:
All these images are meant to break the ordinary receptivity of mind and to open it to the conception—vaster, truer, creative— of the Supramental.
It is only in a receptive silence—when the whole inquisitive mind stops moving—that one can feel and understand the images described in these verses.
Also my memory flew back to one of the Mother's letters of the preceding year, when I had expressed to her my wish to go back to my own world of Beauty and Peace. She wrote:
I am leading you to a place much more beautiful than the one from which you came—a place of full and harmonious Consciousness...
I felt strongly that my vision of the Golden World was a glimpse which the Mother had given me, and that actually she had taken my consciousness there. But according to our human nature, I thought that the vision might be some kind of mental formation by myself; it could be simply a dream. I wrote to the Mother in order to make sure, because what I had seen had the look of a living thing, which I can never forget. She answered:
16 Ibid., pp. 40-41.
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Happily, the true worlds, and the true Consciousness are not a dream, but the only real Reality for those who are sincere and conscious.
Bonne Annee
for 1970
with all my love and blessings
Then I did the painting of my vision and showed it to the Mother. She said:
It is very impressive.
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This painting will appear, along with the verses and the Mother's comments, in the book About Savitri, Part Three.
Days passed. One day the Mother confirmed:
Now I have caught the exact thing regarding the work—now I know what Sri Aurobindo wants me to do.
On another occasion she said:
You see, Savitri is very good for me also, because while I read and recite, I do not think at all. I am only inspired. I need this experience.
I said:
Ah, Mother, you don't need anything, because you are the Divine, aren't you?
She laughed softly and stated:
Yes, that I am, but this is physical (pointing to her body). And there is the physical world and it must be perfected. In fact, nothing is enough for me.
Then, on the following session of our Savitri work, she revealed:
The work is really very good. I like it. When I concentrate and go back to the Origin of the Creation, I see things as a whole in their reality and then I speak.
You see, each time when I speak, Sri Aurobindo comes here. And I speak exactly what he wants me to speak. It is the inner hidden truth of Savitri that he wants me to reveal.
Each time he comes, a wonderful atmosphere is created. I have read Savitri before but it was nothing compared to this reading.
*
On 29th March 1972 I offered to the Mother twelve copies ofAbout Savitri, Part One, consisting of Book One, Canto One.
The Mother's message for the book was:
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She gave me a copy and wrote on it:
To Huta,
With love and appreciation
and blessings
There are four parts of About Savitri. Two are already printed. The rest will be published in the course of time.
I have brought together the Mother's explanations along with my paintings, inspired and approved by her. She wrote:
All can be done if the God-touch is there.
This is what Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri, and how true it has proved! I am really happy to share this splendid gift with everybody, in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's Light. My profound gratitude to Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother for their Grace and Love.
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HUTA
(Copyright: Huta D. Hindocha)
Page 43
Some Reflections on Savitri
1: Guidance from the Mother on Savitri
In February 1967 an exhibition of Huta's paintings of Savitri was held at the Ashram. After seeing it I wrote to the Mother: "The Savitri exhibition is full of images of Savitri, the ascent of the being, the descent of divinity and the divine play, from which radiates a light, as beautiful as powerful, similar to that which I see near You. Is this my imagination or is it true?"
The Mother answered: "It is quite true and I am glad that you saw it."
Later, in 1968 and 1969, on occasions, I referred some lines from Savitri to her and got her comments.
Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri
Yes, there are happy ways near to God's sun;
But few are they who tread the sunlit path
Only the pure in soul can walk in light.1
What a joy it would be to possess the required purity!
The Mother: When one is living among men with all their miseries, it is only the Grace that can bestow this state—even in those who have abolished their ego by tapasya. It is beyond all personal effort.
Sri Aurobindo speaks of Savitri's firmness of purpose in the following line:
Immutable like a fixed eternal star.2
Can one say that such determination is demanded of the sadhak of transformation?
The Mother: This is the great mystery of creation: Immutable and yet eternally renewed.
1Savitri, p. 448.
2Ibid., p. 606.
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SavitriSays:
Not only is there hope for godheads pure;
The violent and darkened deities
Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find
What the white gods had missed: they too are safe;
A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.3
What had the white gods missed?
The Mother: The conversion of the Asuras.
Looking at the push being given to me by the Mother towards transformation and at my banality and mediocrity, I am reminded of this line of Savitri:
All can be done if the God-touch is there.4
The Mother: As soon as one has a contact with the divine Consciousness, this mediocrity of the outer being becomes obvious, but the promise of Savitri is true and will be fulfilled.
Aswapati was very fortunate. For him,
Each day was a spiritual romance...
Each happening was a deep experience.5
The Mother: This possibility is open to all those whose aspiration is fervent.
A knowledge which became what is perceived,
Replaced the separated sense and heart,
And drew all Nature into its embrace.6
Is Sri Aurobindo referring here to knowledge by identity?
The Mother: Yes, it is a very exact description.
A greater force than the earthly held his limbs...
Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed
The heavenly wideness of a Godhead's gaze.7
3Ibid., p.613. 6Ibid.,p.28.
4Ibid.,p.3. 7Ibid., p. 82.
5Ibid., pp. 30-31.
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What does "the triple cord of mind" mean?
The Mother: The cords stand for the limitations of the mind, and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind.
The days were travellers on a destined road,
the nights companions of his musing spirit.8
I see the need of continuous sadhana day and night.
The Mother Yes, there comes a time when nothing, absolutely nothing is outside the Yoga and the Divine's Presence is felt and found in all things and all circumstances.
A last high world was seen where all worlds meet;
In its summit gleam where Night is not nor Sleep,
The light began of the Trinity supreme.9
Is the "Trinity Supreme" Sachchidananda?
The Mother: Yes.
Our body's cells must hold the Immortal's flame.10
Is this the secret of the luminous body?
The Mother: It is a poetic way of expressing the transformation which will take place and which is more complicated than that.
None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.11
But still, Mother, doesn't the soul chosen by the Divine go through hell in a different way than others?
The Mother: This quotation means that in order to reach the divine regions one must, while on earth, go through the vital, which in some of its parts is a veritable hell. But those who have surrendered to the Divine and have been adopted by Him are surrounded by the Divine protection and for them the passage is not difficult.
His failure is not failure whom God leads.12
Because it is part of the play?
8Ibid., p. 43. 10Ibid., p. 35. 12Ibid.,p.28.
9Ibid., p. 89.11Ibid,, p. 227.
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The Mother: It is the human mind that has the conception of success and failure. It is the human mind that wants one thing and does not want another. In the divine plan each thing has its place and importance. So it is not success that matters. What matters is to be a docile and if possible a conscious instrument of the Divine Will. To be and to do what the Divine wants, this is the truly important thing.
All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.13
Can man delay or hasten the coming of this hour?
The Mother: Neither one nor the other in their apparent contradiction created by the separate consciousness, but something else which our words cannot express. In the present state of human consciousness, it is good for it to think that aspiration and human effort can hasten the advent of the divine transformation, because aspiration and effort are needed for the transformation to occur.
All that transpires on earth and all beyond
Are parts of an illimitable plan
The One keeps in his heart and knows alone.14
Does the man who is united with the One know the "plan"?
The Mother: To the extent it is necessary for the execution, yes, and to the extent of the need, but not in its integrality all at once.
In the context of happening on the first of January15 the following lines of Savitri become more significant:
The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demi-god
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave.16
The Mother: Yes, undoubtedly that is what is going to happen.
When
The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
Into Eyes that look upon eternity.17
13 Ibid., p. 341. 16Ibid.,p. 705-06
14Ibid., p. 52. 17 Ibid., p. 71.
15The Descent of Supermen Consciousness on 1 January 1969; see Notes on the Way, CWM, Vol. 11, p. 148.
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One finds there his native land!
The Mother: That is to say the Divine origin. It is true. You are becoming a poet in your expression.
[The author's correspondence with the Mother as given above was originally in French. The quotations from Savitri were sent in English except the last one where the French version was given. Facsimiles of the original correspondence appear as an annexure at the end of the article. — Editor]
2: Durga in Savitri
In Sri Aurobindo's Epic Savitri, passing onwards in her spirit's upward route after meeting the Mother of Sorrows, meets the Mother of Might:
A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt.
Her feet upon a couchant lion's back.
A formidable smile curved round her lips,
Heaven-fire laughed in the comers of her eyes;
Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods.18
Obviously it is the Durga-aspect of the Divine Mother.
A halo of lightnings flamed around her head
And sovereignty a great cestus zoned her robe
And majesty and victory sat with her
Guarding in the wide cosmic battlefield
Against the flat equality of Death
And the all-levelling insurgent Night
The hierarchy of the ordered Powers,
The high changeless values, the peaked eminences...19
So that is Durga, the Slayer of the Asuras. She is there on the cosmic battlefield, engaged in the continuous fight between the Gods and the Asuras, between the armies of Light and the armies of Darkness. Revealing herself, she speaks in a voice "like a war-cry" or "a pilgrim chant":
18Ibid., p. 508. 19Ibid.
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I smite the Titan who bestrides the world
And slay the ogre in his blood-stained den.
I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,
And Lakshmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;
I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.
I am charged by God to do his mighty work...20
In God's mighty work Durga tolerates the opposition of none, not even of the Gods. Says she:
Uncaring I serve his will who sent me forth,
Reckless of peril and earthly consequence.
I reason not of virtue and of sin
But do the deed he has put into my heart.
I fear not for the angry frown of Heaven,
I flinch not from the red assault of Hell;
I crush the opposition of the gods,
Tread down a million goblin obstacles.
I guide man to the path of the Divine
And guard him from the red Wolf and the Snake.21
Durga is also the Saviour in the physical world. She delivers us from tyrants: that is the aspect in which She was called by Sri Aurobindo in the days of India's struggle for independence early twentieth century. In his Hymn to Durga written in that period, he invoked Durga who tramples tyrant and oppressors with "the armed heel of Fate."22
Here are her words of assurance in Savitri:
My ear is leaned to the cry of the oppressed,
I topple down the thrones of tyrant kings:
A cry comes from proscribed and hunted lives
Appealing to me against a pitiless world,
A voice of the forsaken and desolate
And the lone prisoner in his dungeon cell.
Men hail in my coming the Almighty's force
Or praise with thankful tears his saviour Grace.23
20Ibid.,p. 509. 21Ibid., pp. 509-10.22 Ibid., p. 509. 23 Ibid.
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In the dawn of the destined date when Satyavan had to die, Savitri gazed into her past, and
Then silently she rose and, service done,
Bowed down to the great goddess simply carved
By Satyavan upon a forest stone.
What prayer she breathed her soul and Durga knew.24
The prayer and the answer we can guess from what Durga had already revealed earner:
I know the goal, I know the secret route:
I have studied the map of the invisible worlds;
I am the battle's head, the journey's star....
A few I guide who pass me towards the Light;
A few I save...25
Savitri does not accept the decision of the Lord of Death to snatch Satyavan away from the life on earth and, finally, Satyavan is given back to her and to the world. Savitri descends from the higher regions with the soul of Satyavan.
In the return journey, although the names of Krishna and Kali are not mentioned, they are the godheads looking after her. Krishna, the ever delightful, and Kali, "the dark terrible Mother of life", the "World-Puissance on almighty Shiva's lap," and the one whose enormous dance steps on Shiva's breast:
Pursuing her in her fall, implacably sweet,
A face was over her which seemed a youth's,
Symbol of all the beauty eyes see not,
Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue
Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing smile
Insatiably attracted to delight, Voluptuous to the embraces of her soul.
Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same,
It grew a woman's dark and beautiful
24Ibid., p. 561.25Ibid.,p. 510.
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Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds,
A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
Turbulent in will and terrible in love.
Eyes in which Nature's blind ecstatic life
Sprang from some spirit's passionate content,
Missioned her to the whirling dance of earth.26
3:Fate in Savitri
In the opening canto of Savitri, speaking of the earth and man, Sri Aurobindo says:
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.27
It is amidst such a humanity that Savitri is bom. Savitri,
A mighty stranger in the human field28
is
Too unlike the world she came to help and save29
and,
Accepting life's obscure terrestrial robe,
Hiding herself even from those she loved,
The godhead greater by a human fate,30
came
To live with grief, to confront death on her road,31
and
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.32
But with a difference which is hinted at soon:
Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.
Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;
Even her humanity was half divine.33
26ibid.,p.711. 29Ibid.,p.7 32 Ibid.
27 Ibid., p. 6. 30Ibid., p. 8. 33Ibid.,p.8.
28Ibid 31 Ibid., p.8.
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Because she is
Too great to impart the peril and the pain,
In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.34
She has the "dark foreknowledge" of the "fatal morn" that has arrived. She knows and none else, except three who are not there:
This was the day when Satyavan must die.35
It is the hour "when fail all Nature's means."36 The dolorous moment is close; soon Savitri will
Look into the lonely eyes of immortal Death
And with her nude spirit measure the Infinite's night.37
Alone comes to battle this "combatant in dreadful lists".
No helper had she save the Strength within;
There was no witness of terrestrial eyes;
The Gods above and Nature sole below
Were the spectators of that mighty strife.38
A year ago when Savitri had returned to her father's palace after her quest of Satyavan, the sage Narad had announced that
Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;
This day returning Satyavan must die.39
At that time, when the irrevocable fate was prophesied to her by the foreseeing sage, Savitri could have renounced; indeed she was advised by her human mother, the queen, to renounce Satyavan. But Savitri would not.
Once my heart chose and chooses not again.40
Mark the irrevocability of Fate, one would be tempted to say, for , Savitri does not attempt to avoid the course of Fate.
My heart has sealed its troth to Satyavan:
Its signature adverse Fate cannot efface,
Its seal not Fate nor Death not Time dissolve.
Those who shall part who have grown one being within?
34Ibid. 36Ibid., p. 38Ibid. 40Ibid., p.432.
35Ibid., p. 10.37Ibid ., p.13 39Ibid.,p.431
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Death's grip can break our bodies, not our souls:
If death take him, I too know how to die.41
It is an age-old sentiment of the immortality of love, the wish to dissolve oneself once the beloved is snatched away by Death, the Fate. But for Savitri this is not enough. Before she closes her short reply to her mother's pleadings to choose another course, she adds;
Let Fate do with me what she will or can;
I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;42
and then the final sentence,
Fate's law may change, but not my spirit's will.43
Here is a first challenge to the inexorability, the inflexibility, the unchangeability of Fate.
In Savitri the conscious Will has taken human shape and she has come to earth for a certain purpose.
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.44
And this, as the poet told us earlier, is in the face of the fact that
The world unknowing, for the world she stood.45
She is doing it so. Later we are told:
A day may come when she must stand unhelped...
Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast.46
The lonely breast is of Savitri who, in the Kalidasian simile, is as delicate as a flower and as hard as a thunderbolt, "flower-sweet and adamant."47
The story of Savitri tells us that Satyavan did die on the fated day; also Savitri put her spirit's might against Yama, the Death-god, and got Satyavan back to live on the earth.
'Not that in it the authority of Fate, established from time immemorial, has been ignored or underestimated in any way. When Savitri returns to Madra after meeting Satyavan, "carrying the sanction of the gods/To her love and its luminous eternity,"48 she hears Narad speaking of doom "Who hunts unseen the unconscious lives of men":
41Ibid. 43Ibid. 45Ibid., p. 13. 47Ibid., p. 465.
42Ibid. 44Ibid.,?. 461. 46Ibid.,p.46148 Ibidp. 418.
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If thy heart could live locked in the ideal's gold,
As high, as happy might thy waking be!
If for all time doom could be left to sleep!49
Our days are links of a disastrous chain,
Necessity avenges casual steps.50
The certainty of Fate, niyati, is expressed in a few simple words:
It is decreed and Satyavan must die;
The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.51
Next, Fate is adṛṣṭa, the unknown, the unseen. For man
The future's road is hid from mortal sight:
He moves towards a veiled and secret face.
To light one step in front is all his hope
And only for a little strength he asks
To meet the riddle of his shrouded fate...
He feels not when the dreadful fingers close
Around him with the grasp none can elude.52
But if Fate can be foreseen, will it help man? The queen voices this hope when she argues with Narad:
If wings of Evil brood above that house,
Then also speak, that we may turn aside
And rescue our lives from hazard of wayside doom
And chance entanglement of an alien fate.53
On the other hand, if Fate is unchangeable, one cannot "turn aside". Fate should have, and instances are abundant, its way in spite of the foreknowledge, in spite of all the mighty precautions taken to ward off its lash. Narad makes the point:
What help is in prevision to the driven?
Safe doors cry opening near, the doomed pass on.54
He, further adds that
A future knowledge is an added pain,
A torturing burden and fruitless light
On the enormous scene that Fate has built.55
49Ibid., p. 420.51Ibid., p. 458. 53Ibid., p. 426.55Ibid.
50Ibid., p. 428.52Ibid., p. 425. 54Ibid.
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Therefore was the king's suggestion to Narad:
Lend not a dangerous vision to the blind,
The dire ordeal that foreknowledge brings.
One doubts
Perhaps the blindness of our will is Fate.56
And what is free-will, if "man lives like some secret player's mask?"57
He knows not even what his lips shall speak.
For a mysterious Power compels his steps
And life is stronger than his trembling soul.
None can refuse what the stark Force demands.58
and,
Nature and Fate compel his free-will's choice.59
Yet we are told,
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.60
The clue is in the line:
But greater spirits this balance can reverse
And make the soul the artist of its fate.61
This is one of the mystic truths revealed by Savitri. If the fundamental truth of our being is spiritual, it is our self, our soul that must determine our evolution. Our spirit must be greater than Fate or Destiny or Law.
In fact the question of Fate and Free-Will has been one of the knottiest problems of metaphysics, especially due to the love of the human mind for trenchant solutions. In this case the mind likes to have either Fate or Free-Will, one of the two as the supreme Force, thus refusing to see the complex play of forces that the universe is and treating a partial truth as the whole truth.
The force of Fate or Destiny is undeniable. But even where destiny has been foreknown or announced in advance, whether through oracles or through the hieroglyph of stars by astrology, man has tried to have his own way by his individual energy; he has endeavoured to change
56Ibid., p. 425. 58Ibid. 60Ibid., p. 458.
57Ibid., p. 427. 59Ibid., p. 465. 61Ibid., p. 465.
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the daiva by his puruṣakāra. The inevitability of Doom or blind Necessity has not deterred man from his seeking after a different consummation. If we do not reject a priori the proposition that the creator of destiny is not bound by the destiny created at some point of time, it becomes easier to appreciate other aspects of the world-life. An indication of this possibility of altering destiny can be had from the fact that even the readers of destiny predict different alternative possibilities, some of which depend entirely on the individual concerned and not on exterior circumstances or others. Then, in the Theory of Karma which has been so popular in India, man is said to be bound by his own acts, what he has sown he must reap, and the chain continues; but here too the logical conclusion is accepted that if a person does something now to counteract what was done before, the result of the earlier act can be cancelled, neutralised or modified. Of course it has been said that there are certain acts, utkata karma, which cannot be thus modified. That again is a matter of the trial of strength between the two forces; the principle stands. The question will be that of discovering a force superior to the one present in utkata karma.
Naturally, this force has to be the force of the Spirit. For, amidst the planes of being it is the Spirit that stands at the top, and in the play of forces, although each force appears as supreme on its own plane, ultimately it is modifiable here by the higher or highest force. This can also be seen from the instances where the astrological predictions have proved to be correct up to a certain stage and the character and events took a different course when the subject turned to the spiritual life.
Spiritual realisation means union with the Spirit; union with the Spirit implies union with the Will of the Spirit,—and for the spiritually realised being it is the Will of the Spirit that prevails.
The same truth stated in philosophical terms finds expression in The Life Divine:
Fate, whether purely mechanical or created by ourselves, a chain of our own manufacture, is only one factor of existence; Being and its consciousness and its will are a still more important factor. In Indian astrology which considers all life circumstances to be Karma, mostly predetermined or indicated in the graph of the stars, there is still provision made for the energy and force of the being which can change or cancel part or much of what is so written or even all but the most imperative and powerful
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bindings of Karma. This is a reasonable account of the balance: but there is also to be added to the computation the fact that destiny is not simple but complex; the destiny which binds our physical being, binds it so long or in so far as a greater law does not intervene... behind our surface is a freer Life-power, a freer Mind-power which has another energy and can create another destiny and bring it in to modify the primary plan, and when the soul and self emerges, when we become consciously spiritual beings, that change can cancel or wholly remodel the graph of our physical fate.62
If Spirit is liberty, fate cannot be inflexible for those great souls who have completed the transition from the present mental consciousness into the higher and superior consciousness, the spiritual, the Divine. Indeed nothing less than that enables man to transcend his fate.
4: Sun-Ray in Savitri
In the twelve pillared inner chamber of Matrimandir at Auroville we have the Mother's symbol at the centre of the marble floor. Four golden symbols of Sri Aurobindo stand on it forming a square upon which sits a crystal globe. The sun enters the Chamber as a ray that, turning with the hours, always falls on the globe. That was the Mother's vision.
A beautiful work of art indeed, says the artistic sense coming to the fore. But a piece of art with a deep significance,—says some inner chord of our being. For the Sun is a symbol of the Supramental Truth, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have told us; and the sun-ray will be the symbol of the ray of that Truth.
In the Vedas the Sun has been called the Lord of Truth, "...the rays of Surya are the herds of the Sun, the kine of Helios slain by the companions of Odysseus in the Odyssey, stolen by Hermes from his brother Apollo in the Homeric hymn to Hermes. They are the cows concealed by the enemy Vala, by the Panis ...',63 In modem imagery we would speak of the rays of Truth covered by the coat of falsehood, the rays of Light shrouded by the dense mantle of Darkness, coming out of their covering. This uncovering is indicated in the Vedas when it is said our "fathers found out the hidden light, by the truth in their
62The Life Divine, SABCL., Vol. 19, p. 809.
63The Secret of the Veda. SABCL, Vol. 10, pp. 119-20.
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thoughts they brought to birth the Dawn,"64 or we "have crossed over to the other shore of this darkness!"65
The supramental world is the foundation of the Truth, and it is the foundation of the Dawns:
Dawn bom in heaven opens out things by the Troth, she comes manifesting the greatness.
Dawn comes divine repelling by the Light all darkness and evils.66
And to the Troth-Sun-Light-Ray of the Mother's vision in the hall of the Matrimandir will mount the Vedic prayer:
O Ray, mayst thou be with us and pray with us, unifying the knowledge with the shining of the breath of life...67
This Ray can very well be
... the Ray no mortal eye can bear,68
... a saviour touch, a ray divine,69
... a ray of the original Bliss,70
from which some passion of the inviolate purity breaks through;
... the supernal Ray71
with which we have to acquaint our depths;
The ray revealing unseen Presences;72
a ray that
... replied from the occult Supreme;73
a vaster being's
... immense intuitive Ray74
and
... the unfading Ray.75
When the Deva-Purushas will
64Ibid., p. 123. 65Ibid.
66Ibid.,p. 127, p. 129. 67Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 232. 68Savitri,p.57. 69Ibid., p. 179. 70lbid., p. 123. 71Ibid., p. 172. 72Ibid., p. 327. 73Ibid., p. 331. 74Ibid., p. 659. 75Ibid., p. 676.
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... channel to earth-mind the wizard ray,76
then
Awakened from the mortars ignorance
Men shall be lit with the Eternal's ray,77
and receive from above
... the effulgence of a Ray.78
When
The timeless Ray descends into our hearts
And we are rapt into eternity.79
Mind pauses thrilled with the supernal Ray,80
for, indeed,
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.81
The vision is described:
A gold supernal sun of timeless Truth
Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray
Through a silence quivering with the word of Light
On an endless ocean of discovery,82
and one sees Matrimandir as a place that
... lay like a closed soundless oratory
Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor
Lit by a single and untrembling ray
And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer.83
There
The soul lit the conscious body with its ray,
Matter and Spirit mingled and were one.84
Behold
76Ibid., p. 689. 77Ibid., p. 699.
78Ibid., p. 241. 81Ibid., p. 276.84Ibid., p. 232.
79Ibid., p. 276. 82Ibid., p. 264.
80Ibid., p. 278. 83Ibid., p. 332.
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A magic porch of entry glimmering
Quivered in a penumbra of screened Light,
A court of the mystical traffic of the worlds...85
Invading from spiritual silences
A ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile
To commune with our seized illumined clay
And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.86
The pilgrim
... seeks through a penumbra shot with flame
A veiled reality half-known, ever missed,
A search for something or someone never found,
Cult of an ideal never made real here,
An endless spiral of ascent and fall
Until at last is reached the giant point
Through which his Glory shines for whom we were made
And we break into the infinity of God.87
5: Three Lines of Savitri
There are these three lines of Savitri in the Symbol Dawn:88
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
All can be done if the God-touch is there.
This was the day when Satyavan must die.
All the three are well known, placed among the most quoted ones.
The first is the opening line. The second comes after a short gap, as line 78 to be precise. And the third marks the end of the opening canto.
For me it is a case of love at first sight with these three, that continues to live even after more than five decades.
There is no need of any particular situation for it to manifest; these lines, one or two or all of them just come in a flash.
A little while before, I lay stretching myself on the floor in the house when I saw beyond the open door the Auroville sky with white afternoon clouds above the rising trees of different states of life and
85Ibid., p. 88. 86Ibid., p. 48. 87Ibid., p. 24. 88Ibid., pp. 1-10.
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greenery. And the three lines flashed...
I moved to the writing desk and opened the canto again and chanced upon the following lines:
One lucent comer windowing hidden things
Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a god.
and then, finally:
Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.
Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
Now I read all the lines in their serial order:
It was the hour before the gods awake...
All can be done if the God-touch is there...
One lucent comer windowing hidden things
Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a god...
Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.
Immobile in herself she gathered force.
This was the day when Satyavan must die.
Is it not a glimpse of legend and the symbol that is to unfold?
And I got up with a surge of my love for the three lines with which we started.
SHYAM SUNDER JHUNJHUNWALA
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Annexure: Facsimiles of Correspondence on
Savitri With the Mother
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Savitri, the Mother
1
THE cup has to be emptied again and again if it is to be filled with ever-new riches. The vessel of the human consciousness has to be kept free and ready for the advent of the felicities of the higher altitudes of being. For what prevents the inflow of the Higher Consciousness into the Lower is precisely the spirit of holding, grabbing and egoistic appropriation. Such a spirit not only insulates the gifts of Grace and therefore shuts the personality from the Source but goes on distorting and corrupting them and therefore degrading itself in the process. This may lead to the denial and betrayal of the Grace, which becomes the iron curtain separating the being from That. The solution recommended in all spiritual disciplines to avoid this perilous rejection of Grace, brahma nirākaraṇa, is to offer the gifts of the Divine Mother to Herself for Her use and work. This keeps the being always in contact with the Divine, before, during and after the act of receiving. And the consciousness of the sadhaka begins to realise that the Divine is greater than all Her gifts and Her gifts are valuable because they embody Her Consciousness. So the true delight of the being is in communing with the Divine Consciousness in the gifts and not in the powers which accompany them. In fact, a gift from the Divine is a partial manifestation of the Divine Consciousness sent to the sadhaka to prepare him for receiving more and more complete manifestations till the whole and integral Divine Plenitude is established in him. This process is prevented or stopped only by the play of the separative individual consciousness with its ambitions in its ignorant and perverted state, and with its pride of knowledge and self-righteousness in its comparatively enlightened but none-fhe-less unregenerate state. The true fulfilment for the individual is in being a focal centre, one of the multitudinous centres for the manifestation of the Divine Consciousness. It is to be at the centre of the Cross for the manifestation of the Higher Part of the Transcendent both sideways and downwards in the universal consciousness around and below. This is possible only when the separate formation of the individual personality is dissolved and the separate limited functioning of the
instruments is made silent. The organs in man—his senses, vital being, heart, mind and the inner being—are so many concentrations and therefore limitations of consciousness meant and developed to cognise, express and execute very finite movements of the finite and finitising lower consciousness. These concentrations have to be released and the consciousnesses pent up in them soaked in the Divine substratum and its infinity if they are to manifest the Eternal. This twofold preparation of the individuality and the instrumental personality is achieved by the great discipline and experience of Nirvana. For, Nirvana ensures an eternal emptiness in the being and the becoming and therefore a permanent foundation for the manifestation of the Highest Superconscient. The Divine Consciousness is a paradoxical blending of Mastery and Servitude, Transcendence and Immanence, Lordship and Humility, Fullness and Emptiness. The sadhana of Nirvana establishes in Savitri, the Mother, this divine emptiness, the prelude to the Suprarnental Manifestation.
2
The profound inner revolutions and heightenings of consciousness in the Yoga of Savitri when she began the search for the soul, entered into the inner countries, contacted the Triple Soul-Forces, found the Soul, entered into Nirvana and discovered the All-Negating Absolute, are essentially experiences within and they have not yet begun to change her corporeal substance enough to make all the human beings recognise the mighty transformation in her. They are "accustomed only to read outward signs" and so "none saw aught new in her, none divined her state." They are engaged in their normal daily routine of sparing activities and plodding, small unchanging works in the atmosphere of the happy quiet of ascetic peace, and the characteristic smiling old beauty of the landscape. Nature, the Ancient Mother, continued to be passionately attached to Savitri and responded in a thousand different ways revealing her possessive love and ignorance of the changes within or the possible and inevitable mutations without.
She too was her old gracious self to men....
To all she was the same perfect Savitri:
A greatness and a sweetness and a light
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Poured out from her upon her little world.
Life showed to all the same familiar face,
Her acts followed the old unaltered round,
She spoke the words that she was wont to speak
And did the things she had always done.*
The glow and warmth of her psychicised personality manifesting the wideness of the higher consciousness have been the experience of all before and they feel the same even now. They are not aware of the inner transformation in her consciousness.
They saw a person where was only God's vast,
A still being or a mighty nothingness.
Savitri's experience of Nirvana "does not lose hold of Existence and the universe. This Nivarana, this self-extinction, while it gives an absolute peace and freedom to the soul within, is yet consistent in practice with a desireless but effective action without." She has realised "the possibility of an entire motionless impersonality and void Calm within doing outwardly the works of the eternal verities, Love, Truth and Righteousness." She is passing through the great experience of the Buddha, Sakyamuni, and the Seer of the Taittiriya Upanishad who spoke of the Asat, the Non-Existent, which "alone was in the beginning and out of which the existent was bom." The mind, heart, will and the senses register no movement, for there are no formations in them at all. And everything is done in and by the Void—all word, speech and act. An unknown unfelt energy kept the body intact or it was impelled by the momentum gathered in the past, by Nature.
Perhaps she bore made conscious in her breast
The miraculous Nihil, origin of our souls
And source and sum of the vast world's events,
The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,
A zero circle of being's totality.
It used her speech and acted in her acts,
It was beauty in her limbs, life in her breath;
The original Mystery wrote her human face.
*N.B. All Savitri quotations in this article are from The Book of Yoga, Canto Seven, pp. 551-57.
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The Absolute Non-Existence is "an absolute eternally unrealised Potentiality, an enigmatic zero of the Infinite out of which relative potentialities may at any time emerge, but only some actually succeed in emerging into phenomenal appearance." All the movements of the instrumental personality are now taking place without their instrumentation. This is an experience more profound than the one in which all the instruments make their movements because of the very presence and presiding influence, sannidhimātra, of a deeper consciousness. The Nihil contains all and so it does all including waking, speaking, breathing, maintenance of the cell-shape and cell-harmony. Savitri is passing through the great experience of the Tao.
3
Steeped in the womb of Nirvana, Savitri could well see the other possibility taken advantage of by the souls with the push to Nirvana as their elected and chosen destiny. It is the absolute withdrawal of the consciousness from all manifestation and the possibility of it at all and dissolution or laya in the Asat. Now the mortal ego perishes in God's night:
Only a body was left, the ego's shell
Afloat mid drift and foam of the world-sea,
A sea of dream watched by a motionless sense
In a figure of unreal reality.
The progressive dissolution of the separative consciousness seems to lead inevitably by the very momentum gathered by the annihilating power of Nirvana to the absolving of all individuality as well. One could foresee in one's impersonal consciousness with its peculiar non-mental mode the threatening abrogation of all individuality and even cosmic consciousness.
The individual die, the cosmos pass;
These gone, the transcendental grew a myth,
The Holy Ghost without the Father and Son,
Or, a substratum of what once had been,
Being that never willed to bear a world
Restored to its original loneliness,
Impassive, sole, silent, intangible.
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This is a state beyond all gradations of consciousness where hierarchy has no meaning and all fixation of boundaries and planes of being has become fluid and non-existent. Thus the Transcendent Divine Father and the Individual Immanent Divine Son have merged in their basic substratum of the enveloping and brooding consciousness of all so-called planes of being and becoming, the Holy Ghost. Each world is only a kind of concentration or crystallisation of the Original Consciousness delimiting itself and measuring itself in a special way and keeping to the particular rhythm or Dharma which holds all things, beings, forces and personalities in that plane. This power of finitising the Infinite, the Great Maya, is passed by and penetrated and the basic Asat is experienced. Or rather, the sole Original loneliness has withdrawn the Maya into itself and so Infinity remains Itself without any other. A complete plunge into this Original Immense Nude Consciousness is well-nigh possible and it is certainly the most powerful way of exit from the cosmos, Moksha. And there are souls with the definite push to Moksha as the deepest aspiration of their being and the path of exclusive Nirvana is the one quite valid and proper to them. Nirvana for them is an end in itself. The supreme and sublime Silence, Shanti, defying, denying, withdrawing and transcending all dynamism is all for them.
4
The Avyakta, Akshara or Shunya to which the experience of Nirvana leads is only an aspect of the Supreme Truth-Consciousness, which somehow includes it along with all mutable consciousness. The supreme Brahman, in the words of the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads, is at the same time the Quality-less and the All-Qualitied, nirguṇo guṇi The Great Purushottama, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, transcends and includes the Immutable and the Mutable, Akshara and Kshara. The blending, and integration, of the two apparent opposites of Silence and Activity is made possible in the Infinite by a Higher effectuating Power, Para Prakriti, the Supramental Ishwari Shakti. And the road to the realisation of the Supramental is in and through the Silence. The poise in the Kshara and the lower Prakriti denies the static substratum and so becomes the field of contraries and dualities and therefore Ignorance—a Darkness. The stationing in the mere Akshara where Prakriti is held back denies all movement and so becomes the field of the One without any field. It is no doubt
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the realm of knowledge of the One but this knowledge, Vidya, excluded the Many and because of its apparent finality is, in the words of the Isha Upanishad, a greater Darkness —tato bhūya iva tamaḥ. If the Silence of the Nirvana is sought neither for its own sake nor as an end in itself and if one's aspiration is not limited by it, Nirvana points beyond itself to a Higher Superconscience, the plane of Integral Knowledge—vidyāṁ ca avidyāṁ ca ubhayaṁ veda. This makes the working on Prakriti by the Para Prakriti directly and with all its native dynamism and power for transformation a certainty and even inevitability. For this complex and complicated interconnectedness of the higher and the lower, the Divine and the Antidivine and Undivine, the Silence and the Activity, itself ensures and warrants the interplay of the Higher on the Lower and the consequent transformation when the highest is brought into touch with the lowest. The divine emptiness of the consciousness of Savitri has made the working of the Supramental on the lower triple world of Ignorance, where she has come, possible. So with Savitri the Silence of the Nirvana becomes the base, the necessary base, for the Transcendent Supermind to manifest in the world of Ignorance.
Yet all was not extinct in this deep loss;
The being travelled not towards nothingness.
There was some high surpassing Secrecy...
In the hush of the profound and intimate night
She turned to the face of a veiled voiceless Truth
Hid in the dumb recesses of the heart
Or waiting beyond the last peak climbed by Thought,—
Unseen itself it sees the struggling world
And prompts our quest, but cares not to be found,—
Out of that distant Vast came a reply.
This Supermind is contacted in two ways: by the method of vertical ascent of consciousness crossing the Overmental Cosmic or global awareness—the last peak climbed by Thoughts—or by the lateral inward penetration of consciousness leading to the identification with the Divine behind the Psychic Being who lifts the blazing lamp of Supramental Knowledge from within to the completely consecrated devotee; teṣamahaṁ samuddhartā jnānadipena bhāswatā. And this miracle happens in the depths and the heights of the being far removed from the daylight wakeful awareness, in the night of the surface consciousness, yā niśā sarvabhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī. The
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immobile silence of Nirvana in which all the instruments have been steeped has stopped their finitising, delimiting and even at their very best only translating power. Mind, heart and body have become ready to manifest the Transcendent directly.
These thoughts were formed not in her listening brain,
Her vacant heart was like a stringless harp:
Impassive the body claimed not its own voice,
But let the luminous greatness through it pass.
Her consciousness has become the playground of the Infinite with its White Lightning Light, the All-Puissant Agni, the Omniscient Vidyashakti. What the sages had realised as far distant glimpses in a trance of the highest tapasya, she reveals naturally and spontaneously to their joy and surprise.
Something unknown, unreached, inscrutable
Sent down the messages of its bodiless Light,
Cast lightning flashes of a thought not ours,
Crossing the immobile silence of her mind:
In its might of irresponsible sovereignty
It seized on speech to give those flamings shape,
Made beat the heart of wisdom in a word
And spoke immoral things through mortal lips.
Or, listening to the sages of the woods,
In question and in answer broke from her
High strange revealings impossible to men,
Something or someone secret and remote
Took hold of her body for his mystic use,
Her mouth was seized to channel ineffable truths,
Knowledge unthinkable found an utterance.
Astonished by a new enlightenment,
Invaded by a streak of the Absolute,
They marvelled at her, for she seemed to know
What they had only glimpsed at times afar.
5
The sadhana of Savitri differs basically from the sadhana of most yogis and tapaswins. They start by forming a strong individual
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personality, an enlightened Purusha in some level of their being— Vital, Mental or Overmental or very rarely indeed Supramental. But the Purusha so formed however great and unique and full of Light and Plenitude of the Higher and sometimes even the Highest Truth-Consciousness remains an isolated miracle of creation, a Siddha or Perfect Man in a world of imperfect beings. For, even the formation of one Gnostic Individual does not solve the problem of earth-consciousness. But Savitri has offered even this very Gnostic individuality of hers to the Supreme Lord by passing through the experience of Nirvana, the extinction of all separative individuality and delimiting finitising movement of the instrumental members of the personality. She has "annulled herself so that God might be. So her divine emptiness has become now an instrument of the dual power at being's occult poles"—the supreme Superconscient above and the nethermost Inconscient below.
Inconscient Nature dealt with the world it had made,
And using still the body's instruments
Slipped through the conscious void she had become;
The superconscient Mystery through that Void
Missioned its word to touch the thoughts of men.
All the movements of this world with its Inconscient foundation are accepted and have their impact on her consciousness. But her consciousness on any level no longer gives the usual response of the finite members in ignorance. For there is now no witnessing mind in her, not the hushed receiving heart, nor the individualised separate person reacting with whatever great or small poise of her being.
A thought came through draped as an outer voice.
It called not for the witness of the mind,
It spoke not to the hushed receiving heart;
It came direct to the pure perception's seat,
An only centre now of consciousness,
If centre could be where all seemed only space;
No more shut in by body's walls and gates,
Her being a circle without circumference
Already now surpassed all cosmic bounds
And more and more spread into infinity.
This is the state of being the universalised individual, a conscious "nit not separative intermediary between the Inconscient and the
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Superconscient, the Lord and His universe.
This being was its own unbounded world,
A world without form or feature or circumstance,
It had no ground, no wall, no roof of thought,
Yet saw itself and looked on all around
In a silence motionless and illimitable.
There was no person there, no centred mind,
No seat of feeling on which beat events
Or objects wrought and shaped reactions's stress.
Her identification with the Lord is so complete that she no longer reacts in any sense of the word. All outer and inner response bom of a separate individual formation in personality or instrumentality has given place to an absolute stillness and immobility and therefore absolute readiness and passivity for the Supramental Shakti and the Divine's hour of manifestation. This integral readiness to embody and manifest is the whole and the only question now. And the readiness is all.
There was no motion in this inner world,
All was a still and even infinity.
In her the Unseen, the Unknown waited his hour.
6
All spiritual sadhana or cultivation of inner life involves the cleansing, enlarging, deepening and heightening of the instruments of perception in man's personality. Every instrument—the senses, the vital, the mental or the subliminal—is just a finite concentration of consciousness in one plane of Being, and that is the reason why its vision of the world outside is so partial and limited. The most intensive and extensive cultivation of any one of these instruments could give the vision of the corresponding element in its field of functioning— the outer forms of things for the senses, the dynamic feelings motivating things for the vital the Idea-Forces working behind for the mind and the occult Forces permeating these for the subliminal. But even the sadhana which does not neglect any one of these instruments but includes them all misses the basic substratum of the Spiritual Ether where all worlds have their being. Hence the need felt in the
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great spiritual adventure of negating all these in order to get at the Fundamental Spiritual Essence. The instrument which perceives this Essence is often the spiritualised mind which sees It as a Vast Impersonal Infinite Consciousness negating all worlds and when it is completely steeped in That sees only That and declares all worlds as non-existent and That as the sole Existent. The next step is to deny the Existence of the Existent and lose all consciousness or awareness in the All-negating Void, the Non-Being behind even the Being. Sometimes the Essence is approached through the spritualised heart and its vision of That is of a Supreme Person to whom all must raise their being, leaving aside all the worlds. Anyway, the gulf between the Ultimate Reality and the Manifestation remains unbridged and is pronounced unbridgeable. In fact, all such talk of bridging the gulf is looked upon as an indication of ignorant attachment to the Darkness and a lack of readiness for the plunge into the Great Light of the Supreme. But the yogic sadhana of Savitri, the Mother, shows a different road to the Essence which sees no gulf, because there is no gulf, between the Ultimate and the Manifestation. The gulf is the creation of the spiritualised mind or the spiritualised heart because of their inability to hold together what appear to be sharp opposites. For, in the language of the Isha Upanishad: "It is He that has gone abroad—That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal." The problem arises because the Reality and the Manifestation are seen not as the Reality sees but as the faculties or the instruments in man's personality, however spiritualised, perceive. One has to pass beyond the spiritualised consciousness to the Spirit and partake of Its creative integral vision. The natural poise of the Supreme Spirit is the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, Rita-Chit, where all contraries are reconciled and realised as complementaries so necessary for the fulfilment of the complex destinies of the many-sided manifestation. To raise oneself to the Supramental is to realise immediately that Its Consciousness is a complete fulfilment of all that the faculties or instruments of perception in man have been aspiring for. In fact, there is a Divine Sense, a Divine Vital, a Divine Mind and a Divine Subliminal in the Supramental whose distortions or imperfect manifestations are these so-called instruments of perception. It is possible by opening all the instruments to the corresponding divine counterparts in the Supramental to divinise and transform these, and
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every individual who does this in himself free from any egoistic motive becomes himself the bridge between Eternity and Time.
7
The sadhana of Savitri hitherto has been precisely one of passing beyond all faculties or instruments of perception and her entry into Nirvana has served the purpose of liberating her simultaneously from the imprisonment in the separative ego or individuality and the finite faculties. She now waits on the threshold of the Transcendent Supramental in an integral readiness to receive and transmit to the world around whatever That chooses to reveal or manifest. In this trance in waiting and luminous tranquillity she hears the Word of the Silence, the supreme Anahata Nada. This trance is not indeed a hypnotic one of blissful non-awareness of the world around but one which combines with the complete wakeful awareness of the external world—with its sleeping Satyavan and the enormous Night—the awareness of all the ranges of consciousness between the surface and the superconscient, with the Unknowable's Vast.
A voice began to speak from her own heart
That was not hers, yet mastered thought and sense.
Now she listens to "a great Word bom from the mute unseen omniscient Ray. The Voice that only Silence' ear has heard leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day." This voice is beyond all thought and feeling, the two major powers or instruments of man's personality—the reflecting, brooding or seeing part and the contacting, experiencing or emotive part. But the voice is the voice of the all-fulfilling Supramental and therefore it masters thought and sense. Human thought and human sense are now completely taken and transformed into the nature of Divine Thought and Divine Sense. The result is an instantaneous transvaluation of all values in the light of the Supramental Truth-Consciousness.
As it spoke all changed within her and without;
All was, all lived; she felt all being one.
It is the vision of the One omnipresent Reality affirming all, denying nothing, no, not even the nothing or non-being or the all-negating
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Absolute. All was. But everything not only exists but has a movement characteristically its own, a growth of consciousness according to its nature, Swabhava, and rhythm of self-development, Swadharma. All lived. The Ultimate Reality is not only the supporting consciousness of all but That is the moving dynamic consciousness of all. But all the multitudinous organisations of consciousness are still the One Supreme Being. She felt all being one. The vision of Oneness everywhere and always in all planes of being and rhythms of movement is the keynote of the Music of the Supramental. The deluded impression of the unreality of the world which is the product of looking at things from the standpoint of the spiritualised mind is no longer there. There is now no need for erecting a mental model of an external universe which is only a structure in the mind and at best an indicative symbol or sign. For now the Spirit sees all with its own characteristic supramental mode of Truth-Vision.
A spirit, a being saw created things
And cast itself into unnumbered forms
And was what it saw and made; all now became
An evidence of one stupendous truth,
A Truth in which negation had no place,
A being and a living consciousness,
A stark and absolute Reality.
All are seen as the Brahman, sarvam khalwidaṁ brahma, vāsudeavḥ sarvaṁ. The Reality is not only all being but also all becoming, purusha evedaṁ sarvaṁ.
There the unreal could not find a place,
The sense of unreality was slain:
There all was conscious, made of the Infinite,
All had a substance of Eternity.
The Finite is not the opposite of the Infinite but one mode of being of the very Infinite. Time is not the opposite of Eternity but one organisation in the Eternal's bosom. Space and Time are only the frontal manifestations of the Infinite and the Eternal.
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8
Reality is One whatever be the plane of manifestation and the same Sachchidananda is in the end as the Unmanifest Beyond. Even the Non-Being glimpsed and entered into in the experience of Nirvana is the same Reality:
Yet this was the same Indecipherable.
In fact, there is even a resemblance between the experience of the universe in the state of Nirvana and the present experience of the world in the Supramental Vision—the perception of the universe as a dream. Only, in Nirvana the dream is an unsubstantial pageant emerging from nowhere, existing in a void and dissolving into Nothing, leaving not a rack behind. The seer and the seen in Nirvana are negated and dissolved in the original Void. But in the Supramental Vision, the soul is recovered and made one with the world it sees in a tremendously real spiritual consciousness. The universe and the manifestation are the dynamic dreams of the Truth-Consciousness with a reality as concrete and more concrete than the wakeful reality. The solidity and substance of the dream get their strength from embodying the being or consciousness of the Eternal. The clasp of the world by the soul is a living experience of ecstatic oneness.
It was her self, it was the self of all,
It was the reality of existing things,
It was the consciousness of all that lived
And felt and saw; it was Timelessness and Time,
It was the Bliss of formlessness and form.
It was all Love and the one Beloved's arms,
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind,
It was joy of being on the peaks of God.
The Supreme Lord is Sat, eternal Existence in all the levels of consciousness and organisations of consciousness in each level Chit, the consciousness which comprehends and feels in all, and the principle of Ananda which holds all together and in existence. Eternity and Time, Impersonality and Personality are one Divine Consciousness. The subject, the object and the contacting or enveloping or uniting medium of all experience of knowing and loving are the Lord's Being. The Supermind is the creator of all and organiser
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of all and once in tune with it one gets absolutely free from the cramping limitations of movement of the instruments of perception. One moves and ranges freely in all the planes of consciousness in the manifest and the unmanifest levels. One explores the infinites of the Infinite in the Superconscient above with as much freedom as one sounds the depths of the Inconscient below. Or one widens oneself to embrace the whole universe laterally or reduces one's consciousness to a point. All kinds of concentration of consciousness, inclusive, exclusive, transcendent, enveloping and encompassing are normal and natural and simultaneous to the Supramental Awareness.
She was all vastness and one measureless point,
She was a height beyond heights, a depth beyond depths,
She lived in the everlasting and was all
That harbours death and bears the wheeling hours.
It is precisely because of the limitations of the powers of awareness of the instruments of perception that the contraries appear as contraries. But in the Supramental Awareness
All contraries were true in one huge spirit
Surpassing measure, change and circumstance.
Thus the three poises of the Individual, Universal and the Transcendent usually perceived by even the spiritualised mind or heart as exclusive of each other and therefore capable of being experienced only separately are perceived simultaneously.
An individual, one with cosmic self
In the heart of the Transcendent's miracle
And the secret of World-personality
Was the creator and the lord of all.
Mind, Life and Body are not opposites of the Spirit but fields for the manifestation of endless powers of the higher consciousness.
Mind was a single innumerable look
Upon himself and all that he became,
Life was his drama and the Vast a stage,
The universe was his body, God its soul.
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All phenomenon are the self-deployings of the one Noumenon.
All was one single immense reality,
All its innumerable phenomenon.
9
The Supramental Vision "not only recognises eternal Spirit as the inhabitant of this bodily mansion, the wearer of this mutable robe, but accepts Matter of which it is made, as a fit and noble material out of which He weaves constantly His garbs, builds recurrently the unending series of His mansions. Perceiving behind their appearances the identity in essence of these two extreme terms of existence, it is able to say in the very language of the ancient Upanishads 'Matter also is Brahman,' and to give its full value to the vigorous figure by which the physical universe is described as the external body of the divine Being."
Her spirit saw the world as living God;
It saw the One and knew that all was He.
The ground of all manifestation, the space where all the creation is laid and the movements happen is the Absolute Consciousness. Ignorance and Knowledge, Light and Darkness are organised in the same Sachchidananda. Even all the movements in time are only the movements of the Divine Consciousness. Nature and the Self, Prakriti and Purusha are no longer separate but the whole of Nature is felt in the self.
All Nature's happenings were events in her,
The heart-beats of the cosmos were her own,
All beings, thought and felt and moved in her.
This identity with the universal consciousness and beings is not limited to the mental or the vital but extends and includes all the physical consciousness as well.
Her mind became familiar with its mind,
Its body was her body's larger frame
In which she lived and knew herself in it
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One, multitudinous in its multitudes.
She was a single being, yet all things.
"She is the world and of the world, but also exceeds it in her consciousness and lives in her self of transcendence above it; she is universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a separative individuality. Her true Person is not an isolated entity, her individuality is universal; for she individualised the universe: it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of transcendent infinity, like a cloud-surpassing summit; for she individualises the divine Transcendence. All beings are to her her own selves, all ways and powers of consciousness are felt as the ways and powers of her own universality."
She was no more herself but all the world.
Out of the infinitudes all came to her,
Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
Infinity was her own natural home.
Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
The distant constellations wheeled round her,
Earth saw her bom, all worlds were her colonies,
The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
Its movements were large copies of her own.
She was the single self of all these selves,
She was in them and they were all in her.
10
The first experience of this complete identification with the cosmic consciousness in one of losing one's separate identity in the universal subconscient, material, vital, emotional and mental consciousness.
What seemed herself was an image of the Whole.
She was the subconscient life of tree the flower,
The outbreak of the honied buds of spring;
She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,
She was the red heart of the passion-flower,
The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.
Out of subconscient life she climbed to mind,
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She was thought and the passion of the world's heart,
She was the godhead hid in the heart of man,
She was the climbing of his soul to God.
The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed.
She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;
She was Space and the wideness of his days.
A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and, as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence:
"Thus hast Thou made thyself one with the soul of cherry-trees and so Thou canst take not that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven."
When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry-tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of a tree? In truth, there is none, the consciousness which animates them is identically the same.
Then the cherry-tree whispered in my ear:
"It is in the cherry-blossom that lies the remedy for the disorders of the spring..."*
Having thus the whole of the cosmos in her consciousness she rises into the Transcendental and so becomes the conscious bridge between the Eternal and the Temporal, the Infinite and the Finite, the Superconscient and the Inconscient.
From this she rose where Time and Space were not;
The superconscient was her native air,
Infinity was her movement's natural space;
Eternity looked out from her on Time.
Within a few days the new conquest was established, affirmed. And what Thou expectest from the centre of consciousness represented at present upon earth by my whole being, grew clear before it: To be the life in all material forms, the thought organising and using this life in all forms, the love widening, enlightening,
* Prayers and Meditations. CWM, Vol. 1, p. 359.
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intensifying, uniting all the varied elements of this thought, and thus, through a total identification with the manifested world, to be able to intervene with full power in its transformations.
On the other hand, by a perfect surrender to the Supreme Principle, to become aware of the Truth and the eternal Will that manifests it. Through this identification having become the faithful servant and sure intermediary of the divine Will, and uniting this conscious identification with the Principle to the conscious identification with its becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming in accordance with the Law of Truth of the Principle.
This is how the individual being can be the conscious mediator between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow, uncertain march of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swiftness, intensity and sureness of the divine Yoga.
This is how in certain periods the entire terrestrial life seems to cross miraculously over stages which at other times would require thousands of years to traverse.
At present, O Lord, the state of perfect and conscious surrender to Thy eternal will is, as far as I can tell, constant, invariable behind every act, every movement of the mind, the vital or the body. This imperturbable calm, this deep, peaceful, unchanging bliss, which never leave me—are they not a proof of this?
Passive or receptive identification with life, thought and love in all manifested forms is an accomplished fact, apparently inevitable consequence of surrender to pure Truth.
But the moments when consciousness becomes effectively the life animating and moulding all material forms, the intelligence organising life, and the love illuminating the intelligence, in an active and fully conscious way, at once in the totality and the least detail, with a sense of infinite plenitude and precise powers— these moments are still intermittent though growing more and more frequent and lasting.
It is in these movements that the two consciousnesses are simultaneous and fuse into a single, almost indescribable, ineffable consciousness in which are united Immutable Eternity and Eternal Movement. It is in these moments that the present work begins to be accomplished.*
M.V. SlTARAMAN
* Ibid .,pp. 300-01.
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Savitri's House of Meditation
Introduction
In the course of Savitri's encounter with Death we have in Sri Aurobindo's epic the following passage1 which marks a significant stage in her attempt to win back the soul of deceased Satyavan.
Intent upon her silent will she walked
On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,
A floating veil of visions in her front,
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.
But now her spirit's flame of conscient force
Retiring from a sweetness without fruit
Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within
In a deep room in meditation's house.
For only there could dwell the soul's firm truth:
Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high house-lord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit.
Then the squence of events at once takes a sudden change:
The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
And she behind was leader of their march
And they in front were followers of her will.
Along with the witness fire we also witness the efficacy of Sacrifice, of the Vedic Yajna that is going to give measure and strength to Savitri in order to meet the dire eventuality. In it is going to be decided the fate of her mission and with it the uncertain fate itself of the evolutionary travail upon the earth. But who is the house-lord and who his mate, they making offerings to the well-kindled sacrificial fire? What is that fire in which are lit the fires of the cosmic powers that govern the worldly rounds leading them on the spiritual path, that on which they must progress in their expressive splendours of the supreme Truth?
1 Savitri, p. 639.
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We are here in Sri Aurobindo's epic at a crucial point in the development of the legend's narrative and presently a lot is going to hinge upon the way the occult battle will be fought in the frightening and terrible abysses of space; in it will be shaped destiny. It will be therefore worthwhile if we can get some idea about this very significant meditation of Savitri.
In the story of Vyasa, as given in Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, Savitri is described as one who was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānyogaparayaṇā. Just before going to the forest on the fated day she pays her obeisance to the Rishis and receives their benedictions. By entering into that Yoga she confirms and fixes their utterance in the nature of the Truth as a living dynamism in life.2 The essentiality that is there behind this Yoga of Meditation is what is actually revealed to us by Sri Aurobindo in the present passage. Indeed, Savitri's meditation is unique in its quality and we cannot enter into its magnificence, unique as it is in its depth and in its transformative character to fully take care of all our mortality. But we can certainly live in its warmth and greatness to profit from it; in it we can make spiritual progress,—to the extent that we can even transform the physical body into an altar for her sacrificial fire that shall bring auspicious merits of the Yajna to us.
The Deadlock
Yama as the Dark Terrible has snatched the soul of Satyavan and is taking it away to the Abode of the Departed which is located deep in the South. Savitri follows him closely, her mortal pace equalling the god's, and enters into the "perilous silences beyond". But she is weighed down by her mortality and is afraid that the two would soon vanish out of her sight. Then in "a moment of a secret body's sleep"3 in which is not present the dividing sense nor human frailties and faculties, she does something decisive. She forgets herself. In a swift occult action she discards all the heavy sheaths, disburdens herself from what would hold her back to the gross earth. Savitri
2R. Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 31-32.
3Savitri, p. 578.
The Mother tells the following: In sleep you reach a stage when you are on the borders of form. There everything stops, all vibrations subside. There is perfect silence. CWM, Vol. 6, p. 186.
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then moves out and surrounds Satyavan with her nameless infinity to give him love's complete protection. The three march on in a procession, Savitri behind Yama and Satyavan in front of them. They cross the "weird country" and reach dangerous regions of Death's colossal nothingness. The Dark Terrible declares to her:
This is my silent dark immensity,
This is the home of everlasting Night.4
Savitri survives the Dread. Not only that. Like an undaunted warrior unmindful of hazards of the battle yet as if certain of his victory, she steps into the very camp of the harsh Adversary. She is in a place where dwells for ever only endless Night. Yama looks at her with a stem and fearsome gaze and forbids her to accompany them any farther; for, there even Time must die. Savitri tells him that she is not just a creature of mortality, a lump of helpless matter, but is strength matching his own. It is with that strength she wants back
Into earth's flowering spaces Satyavan.5
Death refuses to give the dead back to her. He proclaims himself to be the sole and supreme creator who brought the universe out of this immense dark void. Savitri cannot trespass into his kingdom and violate the ordained laws; instead she must return to the ways of the transient world and cling to the brief joys by which we little creatures spend our days hoping in the long travail of life for nothing else. After all, the love for which she is asking Satyavan back is but a queer passion, a fancy's fleeting fondness,—if not a figure of utter falsity. Later he even grants her two boons: for Satyavan's father Dyumatsena kingdom and power and friends and lost greatness and royal trappings for his peaceful age and, by the second, the sensuous solace of light to eyes which could have found a larger realm, a deeper vision in their fathomless night.6 He asks her to return, go back to the mortal world in the safety that she can have there. But Savitri refuses and asserts that she is his equal and that her birth was a special birth in which several suns were conscient. She further adds that the task in which she is engaged here is actually the "labour of the battling gods" and its fulfilment lies only in Satyavan's return with her to the earth. But Death is not concerned about it. Rather he considers that it is Savitri's hallucination, that things can really be changed here. Through the ages Avatar after Avatar has come but
4 Ibid., p. 586. 5 Ibid., p. 590. 6 Ibid., p. 589.
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then the world has remained ever the same,—an inert, inconscient, ignorant mass of crudeness always afflicted by misery. He tells Savitri that she is a helpless priestess in imagination's temple. He even ridicules her. She is questioned if at all there is anything apart from what she has been calling love. In the same breath she is informed that it is something that has suddenly awoken in her precisely because of Satyavan's death. And what kind of love is this? Again she is told that this is a love which does not last long. It will soon fade and die when she has found the company of other men. Love, according to Death, is nothing but a habit of flesh in the darkness of the material circumstance. Life and love cannot coexist in this physical universe with its law of crude gravitating heaviness; by its dissipative potency and power everything proceeds towards extreme fragmentation, towards dissolution. Finally, of what she calls God's creation of that nothing is left.
This is the kind of spell Death tries to cast over Savitri, but she would not fall into the trap; she breaks that "dangerous music" and in the sweetness and harmony of her words brings a promise and a hope and a certitude. She is a little crescent in the sky of night cutting the gloom with the silver edge of her smile; she is a cradle holding in it the child of godly felicity. She forbids Death to slay her soul and asserts her right of love in the green and happy groves of the earth.
My love is not a hunger of the heart,
My love is not a craving of the flesh;
It came to me from God, to God returns.
Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.
Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man
A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.
There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;
It rings with callings from forgotten heights,
And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls
In their empyrean, its burning breath
Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns
That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,
A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.7
7 Ibid., pp. 612-13.
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Savitri's love and joy, through an intensification in the soul of Satyavan, become wide and universal. There is as if a mission also that bids her to love. By its transforming alchemy it is to save the world from suffering,—and that appears to be its purpose. Not corporeality but a bright spiritual yearning bums in her heart; it, like a flame, leaps to clasp in its folds the roseate body of her eternal lover. Indeed, the Satyavan she is claiming is not an ordinary mortal. He is the immortal in the world of death. Since the beginning of this earthly creation they have been together, man and woman from the first, the twin souls bom from one undying fire. She who came wearing a human form, that love may grow here in a happy felicitous fulfilment, is none other than the force of God; it is she who guards the seal against the rending hand of death, it is she who makes sure that love does not cease to live upon the earth. When Savitri first met Satyavan in the Shalwa woods she, without a moment's pause, recognised him to be none but the God of Love himself standing behind Death; she knew immediately that he was awaiting godly victory that a greater age be ushered in and the world opened up to the infinity of happiness and joy. Death who covered Love had to be encountered and the falsity of that presence dissolved.
But the actualities of the world, according to Death, go to show that it is as though this frail innocent lady is living in a fancy's rainbow-land, in a sky of make-believe gathered from the vaporous musings of her passion-filled heart. It seems that even in that land or sky the clouds, heavy with humidity, intercept the sunlight of what she imagines to be true. The question of questions is: How can one think of building heaven on earth when the elemental characters of the two are sharply opposed to each other, when there is a fundamental incompatibility between the two? Granting for a moment that she can at all dream of it, it shall prove to be a dream bearing the stamp of her physical mind which is nothing but a product of the working of Matter in the inconscient creation. So, finally, all becomes a play in the hands of Death, a universe for his own manifestation. Hidden behind this vast universe the only one single all-pervasive god, holding on its solid shoulders all this, is the creative Void from which Matter itself was bom. "All upon Matter stands as on a rock."8 Remove that rock, knock off that base and the entire superstructure will fall like a house of cards. Without respecting Matter, without knowing its laws, its modes of functioning
8 Ibid., p. 616.
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and the nature of its deep reality, without recognising the foundational aspects which sustain this massive machinery, how can Savitri hope for her love to abide and flower upon earth? Truly, the dichotomy between Matter and Spirit is so extreme and so axiomatic that to think they can coexist will only mean that one is living in an illusory moonshine. It is vain to conceive of a spiritual world emerging from the womb of inconscient Matter. What Savitri is doing, Death tells in a loud assertive voice, is simply sending imagination's birds in the sky, fictitious eagles in a high flight towards the sun; hers are words that have wings dyed in the red splendour of her heart, but it is unfortunate that they lack the essential substantiality of knowledge of things in their reality. Savitri's love cannot abide in the mud-house of Matter. And how was Matter formed after all? Was it not his creation for his own habitation? Was it not Death who himself had pressed the ether of the Void into Space?
A huge expanding and contracting breath
Harboured the fires of the universe:
I struck out the supreme original spark
And spread its sparse ranked armies through the Inane,
Manufactured the stars from the occult radiances,
Marshalled the platoons of the invisible dance;
I formed earth's beauty out of atom and gas,
And built from chemic plasm the living man.9
Savitri better understand the principle of this world and not chase the will-o'-the-wisp. She must lend herself to see and recognise the laws of nature operating here, respect them in the tight earthly framework of things. There is actually no room for God in this brute immensity. It is by the process of Death's Sankhya that the inconscient world arose and it is in that sense that the world is fulfilling itself. That is his position.
But the living soul of Savitri cannot be slayed by the scornful and ironic words of Death. His grim philosophy of crookedness calling Truth to defend Falsehood is itself a smoke-screen that has the effect of hiding behind it the face of the Sun of Reality. She counterargues extensively and tells him in no uncertain words that the All-Creator, making room for himself in his own Nothingness,— in fact by the supreme sacrifice of his royalty,—began to recreate
9 Ibid., p. 617.
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out of the eternal Night his own embodied infinities; he made that Night another starting-point for yet another kind of creative delight. What Death sees at the moment is only a half-finished world, a child yet to attain his full adulthood of divinity that shall be his happy means for endless progress. As yet Death does not realise that he himself is a part of that wonderful creative delight's process by which the miracle of creation arising out of the utter Void is being worked out.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky,
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.10
There is behind all this an invisible Hand working skillfully and infallibly; it is doing quietly all that needs be done and in the process is accomplishing everything that it has set itself to do. That Hand shall remove the mask and the screen and shall reveal the glorious shape of Truth that ever resides here. By it Yama the resplendent shall be shown to us in his proper figure of greatness and glory. To draw from eternal Loss the plenitude of eternal Gain, the gain of abounding Joy, in order to multiply it immeasurably is a supreme act and only some confident supreme omnipotence can conceive of it and dare to do it. God's plunge in the Night was with the unfailing intent of lifting up every bit breathing of him to the gracious worlds of dazzling happiness, worlds over which shines the Sun of Truth. He had the glory of Being; he shall have the glory of adventurous Becoming. Indeed, because of this plunge evolution out of inconscience has become possible. But this inconscience itself is occultly creative; as a contributive aspect of that evolution Death has become a means of growth. Though apparently he is a power of negation denying the prospect of godly manifestation here, he seems
10Ibid., pp. 623-24.
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to serve a hidden purpose in the totality of an unfolding operation. In it all that is unworthy of transformation shall get dissolved into the Void, pragmatically waiting there perhaps for another occasion to bring out yet hidden and finer aspects in the scheme of things. This also implies that, presently, Savitri is not going to conquer Death the Immortal in the usual sense that he will be subdued or dissolved; rather she will transform him by removing the veil of inconscience that he has assumed as a part of the functioning. Consequently, what shall emerge will be in the bright person of love, beauty, power, knowledge, the self of bliss itself. Truly, in this entire sequence Death himself becomes in the Inconscient a frontal aspect of the Supreme; when the veil gets removed we meet him in his positive countenance in this paradoxical unfolding. Death is a mode of manifestation. Plutus, the god of wealth mentioned by Phaedrus, is a divinity who brings forth riches from the soil; Death or Yama as the son of Vivasvan the Sun-God pours radiances to illumine the mysteries of the Night. Savitri knows this mystery of Death's birth; but he doesn't know it because he has chosen himself to go behind Inconscience.
Savitri asserts that it is in the heart of the Ether of Delight that God's creation breathes and lives and grows. She sings the Anthem of Felicity. If this Felicity were not there nothing would come into existence and if it should withdraw all will collapse; it is a honey-sweetness which causes the birth of the gods and it is that which fosters them and gives them growing riches; in the overflooding of that miraculous ecstasy life and mind and body draw their nourishment; in that enjoyment they increase in deathlessness. That is why hymn after cheerful hymn is raised by the Rishis to Soma, the Lord of Delight and Immortality: "O Thou in whom is the food, thou art that divine food, thou art the vast, the divine home; wearing heaven as a robe thou encompassest the march of the sacrifice. King with the sieve of thy purifying for thy chariot thou ascendest to the plenitude; with thy thousand burning brilliances thou conquerest the vast knowledge."11 Or, on another occasion: "Placed in delight he flows to the pleasant Names in which he increases; vast and wise he ascends the chariot of the vast sun, the chariot of a universal movement."12 In the lyrical sweetness of an enchantment Savitri herself tells Death:
11 The Secret of the Veda,SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 340.
12 Ibid., p. 540.
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A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.
A mute Delight regards Time's countless works:
To house God's joy in things Space gave wide room,
To house God's joy in self our souls were bom.
This universe an old enchantment guards;
Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight
Whose charmed wine is some deep soul's rapture-drink:
The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams,
He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house;
He spilled his spirit into Matter's signs:
His fires of grandeur bum in the great sun,
He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon;
He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound;
He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind;
He is silence watching in the stars at night;
He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough,
Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.
Even in this labour and dolour of Ignorance,
On the hard perilous ground of difficult earth,
In spite of death and evil circumstance
A will to live persists, a joy to be.13
Death remains unconvinced. He tells Savitri that it is good to imagine things that way but they are not really so. Not only imagining; Savitri is cheating herself by hiring the impudent thought-mind which is clever or bright enough to supply reason to life's passion. The harsh fact is that Truth in this world is "bare like stone and hard like death," which first she must accept. Moving on a more metaphysical level, Death tries to explain to Savitri that the laws of Nature are immutable and that there is no agency which can change them. No one has succeeded and Savitri should not attempt the futile. Restoration of Satyavan's life is against the laws of the established creation and he cannot return now to earth. Instead, Savitri can have, by Death's boon, what once living Satyavan desired for her that she may surround herself with worldly happiness:
Bright noons I give thee and unwounded dawns,
Daughters of thy own shape in heart and mind,
Fair hero sons and sweetness undisturbed
Of union with thy husband dear and true.14
13 Savitri, p. 630. 14 Ibid., p. 637.
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The dire debate continues as if with the ruthlessness of archenemies. But it is not just a debate, a wordy confrontation. Each utterance flings into the occult depths its assertive will. There is the opposition of force against force and the battle becomes fiercer as the core issue is approached. If there is a fundamental antagonism between Spirit and Matter, then it is inconceivable that they should ever be reconciled with each other. That is Death's postulate and he presses his argument forward almost with the thrust of violence:
Where Matter is all, there Spirit is a dream:
If all are the Spirit, Matter is a lie,
And who was the liar who forged the universe?
The Real with the unreal cannot mate.
He who would turn to God, must leave the world;
He who would live in the Spirit, must give up life;
He who has met the Self, renounces self...
Two only are the doors of man's escape,
Death of his body Matter's gate to peace,
Death of his soul his last felicity.15
The horror of passing to felicity through the door of soul's death is for Savitri no less terrifying than that of crossing the gate of peace by killing the body. In fact, logically speaking, this negative aspect cannot make Spirit and Matter self-exclusive; if they cannot be directly reconciled, it does not mean that they can cancel each other. Spirit or Matter is a wrong starting-point. True, in the evolutionary process what is predominantly seen is the latter; but the former is the substratum as well as the crown of the entire unfoldment, the essence of things. Matter evolving in Spirit gives to it substantiality which otherwise it lacks in the earthly manifestation at present. Spirit densified in the form of Matter brings to physicality God-splendour and God-might. The Ether of infinite Ecstasy acquires a luminous fixity that is at once supple and many-forming in its embodiment of the Truth-Consciousness. In the triumph of Love over Death this divine miracle shall be accomplished. Savitri in her revelation reaches a high point to even proclaim that
The great stars bum with my unceasing fire
And life and death are both its fuel made.
Life only was my blind attempt to love:
15 Ibid., p. 635.
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Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory;
All shall be seized, transcended; there shall kiss
Casting their veils before the marriage fire
The eternal bridegroom and eternal bride.
The heavens accept our broken flights at last.
On our life's prow that breaks the waves of
Time No signal light of hope has gleamed in vain.16
In that revelation,—that the suns bum in the fire of the soul of Savitri,—Death shudders helplessly; but even in that shuddering there is a secret ecstasy which seems to be quite acceptable to him. The twilight through which they were moving also trembles, perhaps again in that shuddering: this trembling was as if to break its own magic's haunting spell.
The Vedic Yajna
The debate between the two opposing powers thus pitching up to higher and higher levels could continue interminably. Logic-chopping could be an endless pleasure. And yet it seems that Savitri was not going to win Satyavan back from Death; this would not happen on the strength of extensive arguments she was going to put forward in the long dialogue which appeared almost as a kind of metaphysical disputation. Nor the clash of forces behind these premises was going to win for Savitri the imperative victory. She is also aware that a wordy confrontation or the armoury of dialectic is not sufficient to bring the issue to a decisive conclusion. Exchanges of these kind can hardly produce concrete results; more abstract rather than life-driven, they have no pushing strength in them- to resolve the matters. Such a debate for Savitri can therefore be least availing, least absorbing for the sake of its own pleasure. For her it is an extremely serious issue and she cannot forget the basic cause of her pursuit. If such a contest should fail, if the clash of occult forces should prove to be inadequate and hence in her case negatively decisive, she will have to find some other way to win her way through. For her it is the question of life and death itself and she cannot afford the luxury of this vain or futile exercise. For Death also it is a serious challenge, questioning the very foundations on
16 Ibid., p. 638.
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which the laws of the present world are established; if they are to be disputed or if they are to fail, everything would come down with a crash. Yama as the Ordainer of the World would himself prove to be the Destroyer of the Order. Therefore, while they are adducing reasons in favour of their convictions and contradicting each other, great universal agencies also get simultaneously released with each word they utter. The occult dimension gets enlarged in this fierce battle. As they rise higher and higher in the discourse, there is a corresponding deepening of the basic issue involved in this creation itself. It is a clash, an impingement of force upon force; equally strong opponents are in battle-array and the whole atmosphere is charged with their action-thoughts. A superior power coming from the sky above has to meet a stronger might surging from the abyss below. Bright sword and dark sword hit each other.
In that great struggle Savitri is not yet certain if she would succeed. True, the percussions of her words travel far on the membrane of infinite space, touching the very edge of the dark universe, even making indentation into it. Wave after wave spreads engulfing in its folds the sable realms of Time and Fate and Death and yet its terrible abysses seem to deepen into some bottomless Nothingness. In the twilight zone there is a hope of the Mom, a breaking of the Dawn of the Ideal; but what Savitri notices is the thinning and disappearance of her thoughts and words and visions as though
All utterance, all mood must there become
An unenduring tissue sewn by mind
To make a gossamer robe of beautiful change.17
Something sweet and gladdening has no doubt touched the nether pit of gloom and grief; yet in that early haze and mist all the bright hues of her dream-imagination get faded as if tricked by some melancholy's magic. What remains of that strange uncertain ethereality and ideality is
A floating veil of visions in her front,
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.18
How can she then get Satyavan back? A higher power ought to supervene if she is to win. It can now be only that power's concern which always it was. Savitri might have been successful in putting
17 Ibid., p. 639.11 Ibid.
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Death on the defensive. But that was not enough. She was an intruder in his domains and she would not succeed in her attempts to conquer them. She had the gains of her first victory, but hardly would they satisfy her demands. The inadequacy of her present effort can be removed only by invoking a superior might-and-wisdom, her incarnate effort complemented by going to the source of all-existence wherefrom success flows with the surety of a down-flowing stream. Savitri resorts to her "silent will"; she does not speak now; the conscient force retires within. She steps into her Meditation's House. In reality it is there alone that the firm truth of her soul dwells. Not by argument and counter-argument but by silence, by gathering in that House the needed force shall she march towards her victory.
As we have already seen, Savitri's entering into her House of Meditation is reminiscent of a similar situation, though at a somewhat different point of the narrative, in Vyasa's episode of Savitri. The day of Satyavan's death has arrived. Savitri has successfully completed the difficult three-night vow of fasting and standing at one single place throughout, trirātra vrata. On the fated day, well before the sunrise, she gets ready and lights a bright fire and makes sacrificial offerings to the gods. She then goes to her parents-in-law and pays them respect. Afterwards, she goes to the various hermitages and gives her worshipful obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious words dear to a young devout wife. Savitri accomplished as she was in the Yoga of Meditation at once steps within, in her House of Meditation, and wills the blessings of the great Truth-Seers to come true.
Savitri was a Yogini of exceptional merit and had advanced greatly on the occult-spiritual path to draw strength directly from the origin whence the words packed with mantric power come. By repeating in her heart of hearts the benediction-words of the holy sages and saying "Be it just so!" she fixes the force of those utterances in her consciousness.19
Presently in her encounter with Death she, in her silent will, seeks strength to vanquish the enemy. She must first get out of the gleaming haze and see in the clear flame that is ever-burning in her heart the
19 Vyasa's Savitri, p. 32.
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face of the World-Mother who alone will show her the way and lead her and give her the cherished victory. Then, to adapt Yeats's line, "At the stroke of midnight God shall win." It shall happen in the dim forest at the mid-day hour to bring the eternal noon.
And what do we see in the Meditation's House of Savitri? The soul's firm truth:
Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where bums for the high house-lord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit.20
Immediately everything reverses. Savitri, following Yama, Satyavan ahead of them, becomes yogically the leader of the march. The procession moves on, but her will now compels from behind the mighty god. Savitri can go to the end of things, to the end of Nothing, and recover from the hollow gulfs the soul of her lover. By the power of Dhyana Yoga, and of the sacrifice performed in the House of Meditation, she recognises the real nature of the problem with an altogether different perspective. The dire immense Subconscient thrown by Time into the Past comes alive in the form of a dark granite rock guarded by Death, the Subconscient that obstructs the path of the high Advent. Her meditation must prepare itself to negotiate with it and dissolve it. She is face to face with an Adversary who carries the burden of all history in his person and who is now standing in her way. Savitri has actually touched the core of the deep ancient Agony that resides in the heart of the Earth in her long and arduous travail of evolution. It is certain that a turning point has arrived and hence a might envisaging a decisive action must now take charge of the forthcoming event. Something that was never attempted must happen. If transformation of this earthly nature is possible and has to happen, then Savitri's Love must triumph by conquering Death. A sign "iridescent with the glory of the Unseen" must blaze in her inner sky to help her and guide her. The occult Horror must disappear. The issue posed by the "ancient disputants"—Earth and Love and Doom—is now in full focus for Savitri to tackle it. The power with which she was until now acting is inadequate to measure up to the demands of the hollow Gulf that devours in its insatiable hunger whatever is yet not truly divine in
20 Savitri, p. 639.
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the fullness of its plenitude. In a certain sense, therefore, the negative role of this antagonistic presence is to assure that nothing but the best and worthy of the Supreme comes into operation in the dynamism of this creation. No wonder the debate availed very little, just in the nature of lesser boons. What Savitri had with her that Death could so far easily counter. Death yet remains secure and has nothing to lose; the soul of Satyavan is still with him. Therefore a mightier power must come into play and deal with the difficulty. Savitri must perform a yogic act. She must do Yoga in the occult Void and hold in her person the strength of the transcendental Yogini.
A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
Empowered to force the door denied and closed21
must conquer the absoluteness with which the clutches of the ever-hollowing Inconscience, personified in Death, have held the world. The bounds of consciousness and time have to be overpassed to reach the infinity of the Eternal and the All-Conscient. The moment for the flaming warrior to receive that power and to force the door open is at hand; Savitri must prepare herself for that. Otherwise she will prove to be a barren woman in spite of the gifts of sons and daughters granted to her by Death; they will still turn out to be the children of Death perpetuating in a more permanent way the Rule of the Dark. But Savitri, by entering into the House of Meditation, by fixing herself there and summoning the higher power, must act in another way; the action of the incarnate Force should get directed towards one single goal—the abolition of all that resists the supreme Law of Love in this creation.
In the heart of Savitri, in the inner chamber of her House, the holy Yajna or the sacrifice that brings the power of God for the fulfilment of works is constantly being performed by the secret deity abiding within. That verily is the truth of Savitri's soul.22 That truth now ought to grow brighter and become stronger by drawing energies from the leaping flames of sacrifice. It is by sacrifice that the Supreme created the universe and it is by such a meritorious sacrifice that the creatures, and the gods too, grow in the rich-golden plenitude of Light and Love and Joy of the most auspicious immortality. Seekers of the riches, the Rishis "meditate the all-achieving laud of
21Ibid., p. 21.
22See The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 40: the giver of sacrifice in the Vedic knowledge is the soul or the personality as the doer of works.
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the divine" and call the triumphing Fire for help and succour in their spiritual endeavour; they invoke the Master of Sacrifice, they invite "to birth the immortal in mortals, the divine who brings in the divinity." Indeed, the all-pervading Brahma, who is the giver of all fruit, is himself established in the great sacrifice. All flows from sacrifice. Savitri, well-versed in the lore of tradition and an expert in the Yoga of Meditation, enters into the deep cavern of her secret soul; kindling her silent will she gets in touch with that divinity who is the source and fount of all action. "A house was there all made of flame and light"23 and what she observes in that house is the house-lord, Yajaman, with his mate, Yajamanin, engaged in sacrifice. That Yajna shall give her the needed strength to deal with Death in the dire yet decisive moment of life.
In that large and luminous House of Meditation the hearth is ablaze with the rich and intense yogic Fire and the determined truth of Savitri's soul is flaming bright, quenchless and imperishable. The fire that is burning there ceaselessly witnesses all actions and gives to the sacrificer the needed protection even in the face of death. Not only protection, which Savitri does not really need, but the winning strength to achieve the final result is what the Yajna is meant for. The Yajaman seated there with the Yajamanin or Grihapatni is offering Hutis to Agni. The Purohits have arranged the Sacrifice in the right order and the Ritwiks are chanting the sacred Riks. The tongues of flame leap high up to kindle even the altars of the gods, the gods who shall come there as guardians for the aspirant's Sacrifice. Presently the invocation is to the fire who is watching everything and who shall stand with Savitri at the moment of her dangerous rendezvous with the dark formidable Adversary. Armed with that might she shall chase him and follow him through the "enchanted dimness".
"Agni is a mighty benefactor of his worshippers. With a thousand eyes he watches over the man who offers him oblations; but consumes his worshippers' enemies like dry bushes, and strikes down the malevolent like a tree destroyed by lightning. All blessings issue from him as branches from a tree."24 That is how A. A. Macdonell describes the action of the "mighty benefactor" who,—when his worshipper is in difficulty, when Dread and Darkness surround him and hurt him,—gives them protection. Rishi after Rishi has hymned
23 Savitri, p. 526.
24 A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
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Agni not only to complete his felicities but also to get this god's protection. Thus, for example, Kanwa Ghaur (1:36:15):
Protect us, O Agni, from the Rakshasa, protect us from the harm of the undelighting, protect us from him who assails and him who would slay us, O Vast of lustres, O mighty and young.25
Or Kata Vaishwamitra (IV: 18:2):
Wholly consume our inner foe, consume the self-expression of the enemy who would war against us, O lord of the riches, consume, conscious in knowledge, the powers of ignorance; let them range wide thy ageless marching fires.26
Or Virupa Angirasa (VIII:43:26):
Smiting away the foes and things that hurt, burning the Rakshasas, on every side, O Fire, shine out with thy keen flame.27
Into the House of Meditation Savitri has entered; there the "homestead's sentinel and witness fire" is constantly burning. There for the welfare of creatures, and of the entire creation, the Vedic Brahminic rites are ever observed. The great Ahavaniya Fire, located in the East and in the form of a square, is receiving the holocaust; to its West, eight paces farther away, cooking for the offerings is in progress in the Grahapatya Fire which is in the shape of a circle; the Anvaharyapachana Fire at its South, and hence also known as
25Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 48.
26Ibid., p. 140. 27 Ibid., p. 346.
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Dakshinagni, in the form of a half moon, is added to the Grahapatya Fire to speed up the cooking of the sacrificial food, the Havis; the Sabhya and Avasathya to the North and North-East of the Ahavaniya Fire, respectively, complete the ceremonial Fire-Altar. The construction of the Fire-Altar itself was an elaborate process extending over a period of one year. Located in a prominent place of the whole sacrificial area, it was built in five strata of bricks, 10,800 bricks in all with the lowest having 1950. The Altar looks like a great Bird, the Golden Hawk, in its flight high up in the upper skies. The Hotri has taken charge of the entire ceremony; the Ritwik is inviting and summoning the gods to attend the Sacrifice; the Potri or the Purohit has assumed responsibility of the right conduct and sequence of the offerings; the Adhvaryu is standing in front of the sacrificer, the Yajaman, the paterfamilias, and is guiding him and helping him in the details of the eternal cosmic Yajna. The Chief Priest assisted by these four, each one of them in turn assisted by three, is the Master of the elaborate mighty Ceremony. The Hotris are chanting the Hymns of the Rig Veda; the Udgatra in his melodious voice is doing the Saman recitation of the Riks; the Adhwaryu is busy with the material arrangements of the Sacrifice; the Brahman takes care of this holy Action by assiduously supervising everything. The Fire is bright-lit, the flames leaping to heaven; indeed, "only with an offering in the well-kindled Fire, Samiddha Homa, can the oblations be successful and fulfilling, Samruddha." The Sacrifice itself becomes the only determining Act. Destiny is created or moulded by it; the decrees of Fate are fixed or altered by it in a decisive way.* Although it is a Vedic rite, it is loaded with occult significance bearing far-reaching consequences to regulate the steps of Time for achieving the desired result.
The birth of Rama, the Avatar himself who had come to change the course of events and reshape the destiny of mankind, was a result of the boon which his father king Dasharatha of the Ikshwaku line had received after performing the Ashwamedha, the Horse Sacrifice; it was conducted by no less a person than the celebrated Rishi Rishyshringa. The bricks of the altar had been prepared by following the strictest measures as prescribed by the holy treatises; the priests well-versed in the sacrificial architecture erected the altar, chanting all the while the appropriate hymns; the sacrificial fire to
* Reference may be made to Chhandogya Upanishada, Section 16, Chapter 4. See also Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, pp. 465-89.
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be worshipped by the Yajaman was placed ceremoniously by the expert Brahmins; the fire in its form and shape looked like Garuda, the divine Eagle himself, with his wings and tail distended; the majestic Bird was with the wings of gold.28
According to the Bhagavata Purana it is Lord Vishnu himself who in his person represents all the sacrifices; he is the Lord of Sacrifice, Yajneshwara. The seven sacrifices—Agnistoma, Atyagnistoma, Uktha, Sodashi, Vajapeya, Atiratra, and Aptoryama—are the seven parts of his body. In him are present all the Mantras, and the Deities worshipped by the devotees reside in him, and the materials used for the sacrifice are found in his being. Indeed, all the activities originate in him and he is the very sacrificial Act itself. When he as the divine Boar traced the lost Earth and brought it out from the depths of the fathomless Ocean, all the Gods and the immortal Rishis sang his lauds and hailed his great sacrifice. In him all sacrifices, by which the creation grows, are founded.
But then in Savitri's House of Meditation who are the officiating priests seated at the high-built altar? And who is engaged in the Yajna and what does he intend to achieve from it? Who is the Yajaman and who the Grihapatni, the executive participator in the holy Action? To whom are the well-prepared oblations being offered? When was this altar completed and who lighted the flame and tended it and kept that flame ever-burning? Are seasons the bricks used in its construction, so that completion may come in the cycles of Time? Wherefrom was the fuel procured? How was it gathered? Was it Agni himself who, as soon as he was bom, measured out the extent and the shape of the sacrifice? Is he not a "god to the gods," the leader who goes in front of the gods? The very first verse of the Veda extols him as the chief priest and one who is the divine Ritwik summoning the gods for the sacrifice (1:1:1):
(I.1.1.)
28The Ramayana, Bala-kanda, Canto 14
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I adore the Flame, the vicar, the divine Ritwik of the Sacrifice,
the summoner who most founds the ecstasy.29
We might therefore say that in this cosmic Yajna Agni is the Grihapati, the Lord of the House, and he is also the Vishapati, the Lord of the Worlds, and he is the Destroyer of every Evil too, all the three at the same time. With seven tongues he consumes the sevenfold food. But then who is the Yajamanin, the Grihapatni, the Spouse of Agni, Agnayi, seated to his left and offering with him the oblations, the Havis? Indeed, she seems to be Aditi herself under the name of Swaha bom as Daksha's daughter in the manifestation, a bright and youthful bride in rich golden-red attire, she who is participating in the Yajna and fulfilling the Act in this creation. They inseparably together, one in two aspects, are engaged in promoting the cosmic march towards divinity; thus all the while are they performing the Good.
In Savitri's House of Mediation Agni is the blazing will and Swaha is the power and fiery force and they together draw energies from the great Tapas of the Supreme himself. He is the "conscious force or Will instinct with knowledge which pervades the world and is behind all its workings."30 Savitri first steps into that House where her "silent will" joins the Will of the Divine in the Universe. Such is the nature of this Vedic Yajna going on in her heart.
Sat-Purusha and Adya-Shakti
A. B. Keith in his long introduction to the Taittiriya Sanhita belonging to the Veda of the Black Yajus School mentions that it, like the Shatapatha Brahmana, identifies Agni with Death which "leads to the suggestion that the sacrificer as Agni, as time, is death and as the sacrificer dies he becomes immortal, for death is his own self."31 But it is doubtful whether this is strictly a Vedic concept. Agni as a Vedic god has his own status and standing in the pantheon of these ancients. As the Transcendent's tapas-energy in evolution carrying it forward, he has almost a fixed role which he plays variously. He is described, and also extolled, as the seer-will, the messenger of the gods, the Bull with four horns, the Male, the great Aryan, the house-lord, the Lord of the Worlds, the knower of the births, the priest of sacrifice, the immortal in mortals leading them
29 Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 39.30Ibid., p. 477.
31 Taittiriya Sanhita Part I, Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 18; p. cxxviii.
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and protecting them on the path of heaven. As will in the material world it is he who shapes and moulds forms and brings concreteness to things ethereal. Agni is the creative principle or power of immortality in Matter. Identification with him is a certain and effective means of attaining the beatitude of deathlessness, but not presently in the embodied material form; his form has not yet evolved to that stage. "Agni manifests divine potentialities in a death-besieged body; Agni brings them to effective actuality and perfection. He creates in us the luminous forms of the Immortals."32 Agni is indeed the presiding deity here and he is also the divinity that grows in the physical universe making it grow in his own growth. We cannot therefore identify him with Death who is but the power of disintegration. We cannot in the operational scheme conceive the builder and the destroyer being one person. Time as Kala Purusha is again that agent of dissolution; it is he who destroys the order of the worlds, maybe for the purposes of its renewal but not by its own agency. True, Death is known as the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-god, and in him does the Dharma abide and by it does he protect or guard immoertality. "Surya the Lord of Light is bom as the guardian of the divine Law and the Yama-power."33 This is the positive aspect of Yama in the creation; therefore he is also known as the ordainer of the worlds. On the other hand, Death as a dark power in the material creation leads it to its entire dissolution in the Void of the Unmanifest. Sacrificer's death cannot then take him to immortality; it would rather be his complete disappearance into the gloom of a darkness where no ray of light or hope can ever reach. Into the sunless worlds of the Isha would he sink, beyond redemption. There no sacrifice is performed and therefore in doom would he lie for ever, in the negative state of immortality. Decay, disintegration and death of the physical cause total loss of the living consciousness; the cellular death thus leads to complete insenscience and no memory or gain of the past is carried forward in the individual's next birth. For this not to happen the will of divine Agni has to be kindled in the very cells which can eventually open out the possibility of the physical transformation. The sacrificer as Agni identifying himself with the Sun-god shall tread the upward path, thus progressing into knowledge and stepping into a blissful luminous living. The seers follow this path of the gods, the path that has been paved by sacrifice
32The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 268.
33Ibid.,p. 232.
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and made safe for treading. On this path of sacrifice Savitri herself sees the supreme Reality as Maha Purusha or the Great Being standing behind this figure of Death, the dark Terrible. He abandoning his fourfold divinity, by making a sacrifice of his supremeness took on that shape in the Void. Only then from that sacrifice did progress become possible. It was that shape in the Void which confronted Savitri as she was claiming back Satyavan's soul. This dual aspect can also be discerned from the Yama as has been given to us by Vyasa in his tale.
The Vedic Hymn of Creation is the sublimest laud of Sacrifice of the Divine Purusha. He at the beginning of existence volunteered to disappear from himself in order to give birth to creation. He wished to know himself through it. Thus the Vedas were born and the four austerities and the great rhythms were set into movement. In the darkness that was engulfed by darkness he moved as the Demiurge and soon the gods found the means to build up the existent. The Divine Purusha by accepting Darkness grew superconscient in many forms. He expressed himself multifoldly in the material and the supramental universe. Soon then he set himself on the path of progress.
In the Brahminic tradition Prajapati is the Lord of Sacrifice. It was in building up the body of this Begetter of Creatures that the creative act of sacrifice was performed long ago. By it shall he propagate.34 That from the Supreme's dismemberment the divine body be built, the fires of the sacrifice were kindled and the chants raised and the oblations poured. The sacrificer by sacrificing himself created innumerable sacrifices. The five Yajnas bom of the Maha-Yajna maintain a fulfilling relationship, a mutually enriching harmony in different parts of this vast creation. If in Brahma-Yajna the supreme deity is invoked by chanting the Riks of the Vedas, by Manushya-Yajna the sacrificers grow by helping each other. The Devas take of the offerings of the sacrifice and to its performer grant boons in full measure. Even departed spirits and the beings of vital worlds get their share in this daily sacrifice. The Law of Sacrifice proves not only to be ubiquitous in the universality of its application* but is also inexorable. That was the way the Grecian gods were subject to the Law of Ananke. All is established in the great Sacrifice and, indeed, all these sacrifices have been extended, as the Gita
34 The Gita deals with this aspect in chapters in and IV.
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says, "in the mouth of the Brahman."35 The five Yajnas of the Gita are: Dravya-Yajna, Tapa-Yajna, Yoga-Yajna, Swadhyaya-Yajna, and Jnana-Yajna. The Teacher imparted this understanding of Yajna to Vivasvan the Sun-god, the father of Yama, long ago in prehistory, in the antiquity of the gods, at the beginning of the transcendent Time, and it is that he reasserted on the battlefield.36 That, then, is really the seed-action in the creation.
Sacrifice is the noblest dharma. The social and spiritual order, even the occult, is founded in it; the universal harmony and concordance grow and flourish in the leaping of those mighty flames. As much as the Seers and the Rishis cherish it as do the heavenly Gods themselves, those who are the guardians of the Truth that is obscured in the night here. When Savitri got the soul of Satyavan back from Yama, the King of Dharma or Dharmaraja, he himself blessed her by granting to Satyavan a life of four-hundred years for performing the holy Yajnas, Fire-Sacrifices in the conduct of the glorious Dharma in which the creatures grow in plenitude.37 Even today every household engaged in sacrifice echoes and re-echoes that famous chant of Rishi Dhirgatamasa for the fulfilment of life in that Worthy Act. In a "deep and mystic style" he proclaims (1:164:50):
By sacrifices the Gods worship the Sacrifice which is the foremost of the Dharma. Such a law of fundamental importance must have had its origin in the person of the Supreme himself, in the all-potentiality of the transcendent to bring forth the secret or hidden possibility of a world-movement in the rhythms of the Truth.
The Gita enjoins us to be engaged in works and make them a sacrificial offering to the Lord of Nature in whom they get purified for growth and progress. The quenchless flame Agni Pavaka as the purifier of action is the leader of the march through the terrestrial ways. Even as it grows it becomes more and more bright and golden:
35Ibid., IV:32.
36 Ibid., Iv:1.
37Ibid.,R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 58-9.
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With sacrifice the Lord of creatures of old created creatures and said, By this shall you bring forth (fruits or offerings), let this be your milker of desires.
Foster by this the gods and let the gods foster you; fostering each other, you shall attain to the supreme good.
Fostered by sacrifice the gods shall give you desired enjoyments; who enjoys their given enjoyments and has not given to them, he is a thief.
The good who eat what is left from the sacrifice, are released from all sin; but evil are they who enjoy sin who cook (the food) for their own sake.
From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is bom of work.
Work know to be bom of Brahman, Brahman is bom of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the sacrifice.38
In its most esoteric sense we have in the Gita (IV: 24) the following grand incantatory verse:
Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.39
While commenting on this verse Sri Aurobindo writes: "The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine."40
38The Gita, 111:10-15. These renderings by Sri Aurobindo given in his Essays on the Gita are compiled by Anilbaran Roy inThe Message of the Gita, pp. 51-52.
39Ibid., p. 79.
40Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 113.
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When the Yogagni, the fire of concentrated will is kindled and when it mounts to heaven a new transformation takes place in the person as much in the soul of the aspirant. The darkness of Nature is left behind and thought and feeling and the physical activities become suddenly spirit-charged; occult invisible domains of light and force open out. The deathless Flame aspires to reach "the Being's absolutes."
In a veiled Nature's hallowed secrecies
It burns for ever on the altar of Mind,
Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,
Humanity its house of sacrifice.41
But who is this Yajna-Purusha, the Yajneshwara of the Puranas, the Fire of the Yogins, the Tapas of the doers of austerities, the God of worship of the ritualists, the sacramental divinity of the religious, the bringer of the heavenly riches to the terrestrial creature, the leader of the Aryans, the fulfiller of the purpose of the Supreme in the cosmos, in whom the wheels of Time move like great rhythms of happiness and joy and ever expand into the Future claiming its felicitous abundances? Is he the alchemist in the cave experimenting with the baser materials to transmute them into the luminous self of his own gold? the physicist feeding the atomic faggots to set ablaze the cosmic conflagration in the very womb of Matter? the occultist who by his magic spell shall build the body of God with the nerve-centres of his own person? "Serene as the Antarctic silence," who is it that burns in Hegel on his death-bed? In the non-violent march of the "naked fakir" or the Blitzkrieg of the Titan, is it the same Purusha strident like a fire and roaring in the loudness of a colossus of might? When was this Yajna-Purusha bom and where does he abide? If he is in the night do the stars send their distant signals to guide him on the right path or throw their little energising brightnesses into his flames and, if in the day, do the suns pour their radiances to kindle his leaping greatnesses beyond the domains of the knowledge of the truth? If he is the Breath sublime does he survive in abysses of the inconscient Horror? Is his burning smouldered by the black Demon or is he accosted by Kumbhanda, the goblin, or is he slain by Vritra, the terrible Enemy? Is it not true that the potency of the Yajna is exploited even by the Asuras to battle against the Gods? Did not Indrajit, the son of the demon king Ravan, hide himself in a
41 Savitri, p. 279.
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secret cave and initiate the fearsome sacrifice to obtain weapons and get a swift-wheeled war-chariot to fight against Lakshmana, the younger brother of Rama the Avatar? And, knowing the efficacy of the ghastly Yajna, was it not that in time it was thwarted and victory decisively turned in favour of the Incarnate?
But then of this Yajna-Purusha what is the truth of truth, satyasya satyam? If Yajna on the physical plane is a celebrated fact, a cherished institution, an ever-living and ever-nourishing reality, if it is enduring here in spite of the travails of time, it must have had its origin, had its first birth, in some imperishable world in the sky above. If it is splendid like the Gods, if not more splendid than them, surely then it must be beyond the reach of death. The Yajna-Purusha has to be someone greater than Agni or Prajapati or Brahma performing the cosmic Yajna. His dwelling has to be in infinity of the Transcendent. As a matter of fact he himself is the Transcendent turned towards creation. If Savitri is the incarnation of the most excellent executive power of the Divine and if it is in her House of Meditation that she sees the sacrifice being performed, then it must certainly be some immediate or closest aspect of the Supreme himself who has become the Yajna-Purusha. Indeed, if not he who else can perform this Maha-Yajna in her heart which itself is the House of Flame?42
To restate: the Yajna-Purusha is the transcendent Supreme himself, the Supreme in the poise of a great creative Action. In the language of the Puranas he is the creator Brahma and it was out of his Will or samkalpa that the creation ensued; out of his Tapas-Yajna or the force of concentration were the worlds bom. The metaphysicospiritual sense emerges clearly in Sri Aurobindo's analysis when he discusses the very first verse of the Rig Veda. What is Yajna in Himself?—asks he and sets forth to answer as follows. "Yajna is Being, Awareness and Bliss; He is Sat with Chit and Ananda, because Chit and Ananda are inevitable in Sat. When in his Being, Awareness and Bliss He conceals Guna or quality, He is nirguṇa sat, impersonal being with Awareness and Bliss either gathered up in Himself and passive, they nivṛtta, He also nivrtta or working as a detached activity in His impersonal existence, they pravṛtta, He nivrtta. Then He should not be called Yajna, because He is then aware of himself as the Watcher and not as the Lord of activity. But when in His being, He manifests Guna or quality He is saguṇa sat, personal being.
42 Ibid.
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Even then He may be nivrtta, not related to His active awareness and bliss except as a Watcher of its detached activity; but He may also by His Shakti enter into their activity and possess and inform His universe (praviśya, adhiṣthita), He pravrtta, they pravṛtta. It is then that He knows Himself as the Lord and is properly called Yajna. Not only is He called Yajna, but all action is called Yajna, and Yoga, by which alone the process of any action is possible, is also called Yajna... This Yajna, who is the Saguna Sat, does not do works Himself, (that is by Sat), but He works in Himself, in Sat by His power of Chit,—by His Awareness... When Chit that is Power begins to work, then She manifests Herself as kinetic force, Tapas, and makes it the basis of all activity."43
The Yajna-Purusha is therefore Sachchidananda Himself in His world-creative Action, the Sat-Purusha in His own Person setting forth the World-Force44 in the dynamic movement of the Manifestation. If this Action is the Yajna, then the Sat-Purusha is the Yajaman and the World-Force His Grihapatni, Yajamanin, the Consort participating in the Sacrifice. Yogeshwara and Yogeshwari, the Will of Ishwara, perform the Yajna in the Transcendent; but as World-Creatrix when she rules over the quiescent Being, Prakriti mightier than Purusha, he subject to her action, then the Yajna in the terrestrial process assumes an altogether different character. It is this terrestrial Yajna that has to be lifted up, with the help of the Gods, to its original pristine glory and grandeur. In the wake of the sacrifice of the Purusha, sung by the Vedic Rishis, she as the Adya Shakti has actually made a greater sacrifice by coming down to this creation, that it may grow in pure being, awareness, and joy she gave up her royalty of transcendence and chose to be here—because it is in the folds of inconscience that she must search or discover her lost lover. In that search ".. .she has consented to put upon herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the
43Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, pp. 440-41.
44Savitri, p. 121;-see also p. 301.
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holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother."45 In the Epic's passage
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.46
The incarnation of Adya Shakti in the human body to do the transformative Yoga of the Supreme in the earth-consciousness forelights the certitude of its success.
This Adya Shakti takes birth in our mortality and accepts the name of Savitri. She is "the patroness of magic priestcraft, Brahmanhood" and is, as Heinrich Zimmer rightly says, "the female counterpart and divine energy, Shakti, of Savitra-Brahma, the Creator of the world; she is the all-moving, all-inspiring divine principle of creation."47 Consort of Brahma in the Transcendent if she is known as Gayatri, here as Satyavan's beloved she becomes Savitri. But when the philosopher fails to recognise herself incarnate in the person of Savitri, "the human princess, daughter of King Aswapati, who, according to the legend, rescued her husband, Prince Satyavan, from the domain of King Death," then this Adya Shakti's direct participation in the world-processes gets denied in the reckoning. In actuality, however, without that participation world-transformation would be impossible. She has been here since the beginning of the earth in one form or another. It is she who has moulded all the major events in the history of consciousness, thus taking the evolutionary march towards God-fulfilment in the material creation. The human Savitri, on entering her House of Meditation, witnesses the divine reality of her own self, that reality vaster and mightier than Death whom she is presently confronting as a dark terrible Shadow. Savitri now merges her will with the will of the transcendent Power who is ever burning in the depth of her soul, in the jewel-bright cave of her heart. That Adya Shakti herself is Savitri, luminous, in the Yajna of the Divine.
In the deepest sense, therefore, the occult Fire that bums in the
45The Mother,SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24-25.
46Savitri, p. 99.
47Philosophies of India, p. 154.
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central hearth in Savitri's House of Meditation is the eternal Yajna itself, the Yajna being performed by the Sat-Purusha as the house-lord with his mate Adya-Shakti seated along with him in the great Action of upholding the Creation that the Transcendent may dwell in it with its full threefold beatitude. Although a small Yajna is constantly being performed in the heart of each one of us, and in the heart of the cosmos, this Yajna of Savitri is unique in its triple dimension of the Supreme. If her Yajna is meant for dissolving ignorance and death, that in the evolutionary manifestation divinity may inhabit itself in this house of Matter, ours is to grow in the sun-bright splendour of that divinity itself. Hers is the transcendental Yajna, ours the individual. In the flaming spirit of her Yajna are kindled all these thousand Yajnas of our souls. Such is the possibility that the Divine as Death has now opened out in this earthly existence. Such is the glory of Savitri's threefold Yajna: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendental. This is the executive Truth we see in Savitri's House of Meditation.
R.Y. DESHPANDE
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PART II
The Book of Beginnings:
Our journey starts in the morning, the hour of the "symbol dawn". Turn the first page of Savitri and a door opens within. On this threshold pause, while Sri Aurobindo's vision unfolds to the inner eye. Around us the star-field stretches to infinity, but now look down to where, far below, a dark planet moves ponderously in its orbit around the sun. Sri Aurobindo is showing us our earth "abandoned in the hollow gulfs". He calls upon all the resources of the English language as if to counterbalance with the weight of his words the sullen inertia of the circling globe. It is heavy, dull, opaque, impassive, soulless—with more than a score of adjectives Sri Aurobindo underlines the impression of matter impervious to light. If we do not immediately recognise in this powerful symbol the image of our mortal state, our "ignorance", the physical mind's perpetual revolution in the same worn groove of thought, it is because we are accustomed to look outward and upward, away from the inner darkness. The contemplation of this darkness however, is the point at which our journey begins. For it is the hour before the gods awake.
Who are these gods? Where and when will they awake? These questions are crucial to our understanding of Savitri as a way of initiation. Sri Aurobindo describes the gods as "universal powers descended from the Truth-Consciousness which build up the harmony of the worlds and in man his progressive perfection." 1 These powers are psychological. The first light of dawn touching the earth is Sri Aurobindo's symbol of their awakening within the individual seeker, just as, in the poem, it heralds the awakening of the evolutionary urge in nature. The Vedic Agni, coming first, rises in us as a fire of aspiration, for it is he who "speaks for us the true thought of Earth and Heaven" and "makes perfect the Rite of the Path."2 These powers are delegates of the divine Mother presiding over all manifestation who "has made her soul the body of our state."
In the darkness that precedes the awakening of the gods, a child's hand reaches out blindly towards something, "someone", without a name. That child is man the seeker. In such a work as Savitri we may
1The Secret of the Veda.
2Hymns to the Mystic Fire.
expect the outer scene as described by Sri Aurobindo to have its exact counterpart in an inner state. This is one of the secrets of Savitri and the reason why it speaks to us so intimately. The vision his words evoke for us—the new-bom infant searching the darkness—is a symbol of the divine consciousness "asleep" in a material universe and waiting "as the tree waits in the seed"; but it is no less, for the individual, an expression of the yearning in the deepest part of his being that calls the seeker to this path:
An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned toward distant change.
As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe
An infant longing clutched the sombre vast.3
We are about to begin our journey: Sri Aurobindo himself, as Aswapati, will be our guide. Savitri, with its luminous images and powerful music that speak directly to our innermost being, is the supreme travel-guide to what we may encounter on the way. We have only to consent to listen—and see—in the mind's silence. Everything we need will be provided, so we will travel more swiftly if we bring nothing of our own but an ardent longing for this Truth we cannot yet name.
Our journey has many stages, each one culminating in an initiation, a change of consciousness or illumination making further progress possible. It is a journey of twenty-four steps lasting one lifetime or several (time and distance have no relevance here) through Part One of Savitri. The last step brings us home with one bound. But for now, let us experience the darkness of our own physical consciousness. We are about to leave behind the sightless spinning globe and when Sri Aurobindo shows it to us again, much later, we will see it with different eyes.
Becoming conscious of our ignorance, we have taken the first step. Now Sri Aurobindo begins to unveil for us the cosmic plan. Matter and Spirit are one substance: the Mother of the Universe has fallen asleep in matter and it is She herself who is bom of earth as the divine soul in us. Hers is "the infant longing" reaching out in us towards her Cosmic Self. Sri Aurobindo now sets before us a dazzling vision of divine love incarnate. In all Savitri there is no more perfect poetry
3 Savitri, p. 2.
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than the description of the radiant goddess in Book 1, Canto 2. Later she will appear in celestial splendour, but here, at the beginning, she is fully human. We recognise her as the one who from ancient times has exerted the most lasting hold on the imagination of mankind, and most powerfully drawn all peoples to her worship. Yet, as Savitri, she is more beautiful than the imagination of antiquity could conceive, more beautiful than the vision described by Apuleius4 which so captivated the Romans, or "the woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" of the Book of Revelation. If Sri Aurobindo has thus unveiled her face to us so early in our quest, it is because without some glimpse of this divine potential in human nature, without some intimation of the love that only She inspires, we might lack the courage and motivating force to face the "darkness in terrestrial things," and the unknown beyond them.
Savitri, "bom among these tribes," is the Divine Word—a creative power, a saving grace. A conscious surrender to her Light is the indispensable condition of progress, for the individual as for the human race, for she alone "can link man's strength to a transcendent Force."5 Meditating on this light, extending its influence in our lives so that we act always from the summit of our consciousness, we prepare to take the next step: the yoga of the soul's release.
Our companion on the way is Aswapati the father of Savitri in this earthly life. It is not by chance that Sri Aurobindo portrays him as a "traveller of the worlds" and "a shining guest of time" whose mind is "like a fire assailing heaven". The same litany of titles was used by the seer-poets of the Veda to invoke the presence of Agni: "Crown must thou the guest shining with light... who makes perfect the rite of the path. Crown with your acts of purification the Seer whose speech has its home in the Light, the Carrier of offerings, the Traveller, the
4Apuleius describes his vision of a woman rising from the sea "with so lovely a face that the gods themselves would have fallen down in adoration of it" The vision speaks to him: "I am nature, universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, Queen of the dead, Queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My rod governs the shining heights of heaven, the wholesome sea breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated by all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me." (Metamorphosis XI translated by Robert Graves)
5Savitri, p. 20.
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Godhead of Fire.6 His light in the mind enables "the strong discoverer, tireless thought" to force a passage through the lid of mind and tear open the veil behind the heart:
Thus came his soul's release from Ignorance,
His mind and body's first spiritual change.7
For the traveller on this path, Agni signifies the fire in the heart impelling him towards this first realisation. Everywhere in Savitri the psychological powers identified and named by the Seers are invoked by the power of Sri Aurobindo's language and vision. They, unseen companions, accompany us at every step of Aswapati's journey: Varuna active within is a remover of limits, Saraswati a bringer of revelation, Sarama the power of intuitive mind to search out Truth. In the mind's silence they interpret for us the images that rise and change before our eyes as Sri Aurobindo, as if by some magical process, conjures them line by line. These are images charged with a profound truth and significance beyond the capacity of language to express. Often we feel the nearness of
All-Knowledge packed into great wordless thoughts.8
and we begin to understand why the Mother declared "it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed."
To the extent that we succeed in awakening these powers of perception lying dormant in our nature, we will be able to follow the initial stages of Aswapati's Yoga. Everything is revealed that the mind can know of Nature, and Man, and God. The Mother pointed out long ago: "He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb right up to the superconscience: each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and reach immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man."9 How is this knowledge imparted to the seeker who turns to Savitri?
Through Sri Aurobindo's supreme mastery of the resources of language—yes, but even more so by living pictures that continue to unfold their infinity of meaning long after the book has been laid down. We may forget theories of evolution but who could forget the
6 Hymns to the MysticFire. 7 Savitri, p. 44.
8 Ibid., p. 38. 9 Extract from a conversation with the Mother on Savitri.
See also Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. I, p. 46
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image of the Earth-Goddess as "with sorrow dragging at her feet" she toils across the sands of time?
A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
In her unconscious orbit through the Void
Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy-
Ignorant and weary and invincible
She seeks through the soul's war and quivering pain
The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.10
We think we understand the human condition well enough, and have speculated about the existence of a Divine Creator, yet how narrow, insufficient and unsatisfactory all our speculations now appear when we experience Sri Aurobindo's magnificent sustained metaphor of the divine soul in man as "the sailor on the flow of Time", voyaging from the obscure ports of our origin to a destination in Eternity:
He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He rums to eternal things his symbol quest;
Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
Its images veiling infinity.
Earth's borders recede and the terrestrial air
Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
He has crossed the limit of human thought and hope,
He has reached the world's end and stares beyond;
The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
Into Eyes that look upon eternity.
A greater world Time's traveller must explore.
At last he hears a chanting on the heights
And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself and things.11
But is it really possible to follow in the steps of Aswapati? We know, after all, that Sri Aurobindo is describing his own yogic
10 Savitri, pp. 50-51. 11Ibid, pp. 70-71.
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experience and that of the Mother. Can we really expect that their experience will be renewed in us? The obvious answer must be "No", followed after a certain amount of soul-searching by a qualified "Yes". The openers of the path have gone in front, and their labour is vain if there are none to follow. The experience may be renewed in us to the extent that past preparation has been made—in this life or other lives— and to the extent that we are open to what the Mother has called "the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness." There is no doubt that we are brought into direct contact with these true vibations through the medium of Savitri: "Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents."12
The Mother's words give away part of that secret. As Aswapati climbs the World Stair, he experiences successively all the planes of consciousness that influence or impinge upon our own inner and outer being. These influences, for the most part undetected by our waking mental consciousness, are explored by Aswapati through the power of his Yoga. Their essence or their vibration as the Mother puts it, is captured and held by Sri Aurobindo before it has passed through the distorting filter of the analytic mind. It comes to us clothed in "Truth's form-robes by the Seers woven from spirit-threads"13 and charged with the initiatory power of a Mantra. The intellect retreats in silence from its vain attempt to analyse this miracle. So it is, that the experience may indeed be renewed for us, not only by the action in us of Sri Aurobindo's wonderful commentaries which satisfy the mind, but even more perfectly by his amazing defining insights instantly recognised as Truth.
Thus we may think we know what instinct is, but when Sri Aurobindo calls instinct the "chrysalis of Truth"14 the image opens a window in the mind onto vistas of meaning beyond the power of three common words to express. We may think we can distinguish faith from belief, until he reveals to us in a picture what faith really is:
To the celestial beauty of faith gave form
As if at flower-prints in a dingy room
Laughed in a golden vase one living rose.15
12 Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. 1, p. 49.
13Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 599.
14 Savitri, p. 134.15Ibid, p. 539.
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This is indeed "truth in its plenitude". Words we have used carelessly all our lives suddenly appear haloed with light in which the eye of meditation perceives an infinity of meaning. Images arise, beckoning the mind to follow them back to the plane of consciousness where they were bom. A phrase that seems quite ordinary is suddenly transported by the rhythm of a line or the momentum of a thought and carries the reader to a new level of understanding. This is part of the "extraordinary power" of which the Mother speaks. We do not then need to be clairvoyant or gifted with supernatural powers or fall into a trance to ascend the World-Stair with Aswapati. Each step corresponds to something deep within ourselves.
The fifteen steps of the World-Stair begin with the Kingdom of Subtle Matter and end with Aswapati's attainment of the Greater Knowledge. On the way he discovers the splendour of Life on its own plane and the "fall" of Life into material existence. To find out the cause of the fall he descends to the realm of Falsehood and Evil, then seeks in the Paradise of the Life Gods a remedy for the suffering of Earth under the rule of Night. He enters the vastness of the Mind planes and rises from them into the Heavens of the Ideal. Beyond the highest peaks of Illumined Mind, where "the Thinker sleeps in too much light"16 he discovers the World Soul. At last, surrendering his separate self at the feet of the Divine Mother, he reaches the end of his journey and the light of the Greater Knowledge.
The path of initiation also ends here. The consummation of Aswapati's Yoga is his integral surrender to the Divine. It is integral because he has become conscious in every part of his being, "has taken possession" of every part, and thus is able to make a perfect offering. Uniting his will with the Divine Will he makes an impassioned plea for an end to Earth's suffering, knowing that only the Divine Love incarnate in the world can end the reign of Falsehood and Death. His prayer is granted: Savitri will be bom on earth and thereafter she will take up the Yoga. All that can be done by Man's strength and courage and the divine soul in him is accomplished by Aswapati: What more needs to be done for earth and men is the work of the Divine Shakti. The remaining twenty-four steps of the Yoga belong to Savitri alone. This story is told in Parts Two and Three.
We who are at the beginning of the path have far to go. The world-plane of Subtle Matter lies closest te our own. Its perfect forms are the original template for our marred and contorted pirate copies.
16Ibid., p. 343.
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Leaving this plane with the memory of a lovely garden where a happy child sits laughing on a golden swing, Aswapati moves onward to explore the lavish extravagance of the Life plane, source of the heart's passions and all Man's vital longings.
He seeks the answer to a question: What power intervened to cause the fall of Life from its own perfection when it entered the world of Matter? The answer provides a key to the nature of the mission Savitri will later undertake out of love for Satyavan, who in the poem at the level of symbol represents "the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance":17
The secret Will that robes itself with Night
And offers to spirit the ordeal of the flesh,
Imposed a mystic mask of death and pain.18
As we know, Savitri will one day tear away that mask. Life, free on its own plane to follow every imaginable line of development, on earth becomes a prey to Death. The constraints suffered by Life in the course of a painful evolution with its culmination in Man unroll before the witness eye of Aswapati. In the Kingdom of Little Life, Man is a "conscious doll pushed a hundred ways" by outer necessity and elemental forces that arise from the subconscious self disguised as his own impulse and desire. Mind, on its own plane "archangel of a white transcending realm" emerges in man as a "dwarf three-bodied trinity"—and who but Sri Aurobindo could flesh out such abstract concepts as physical mind, desire mind and reasoning mind, giving each a body, an appearance and human characteristics that are immediately recognisable? We know these manifestations of mind; they are people we have met and spoken to. They are also a part of our own being to be recognised and transcended.
The "Little Kingdoms" of life and mind reveal to us our lowly place on the World Stair. All our pretensions to knowledge are held up to the mirror of Truth. In a brilliant display of his mastery of language Sri Aurobindo translates the complex formulae of modem physics effortlessly into words and adds the wry comment:
Or so it seems to man's audacious mind
Who seats his thought as the arbiter of truth,
His personal vision as impersonal fact.19
17 Sri Aurobindo, Letters.
18Savitri, p. 130. 19Ibid., p. 155.
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There will be time to hold up the mirror and see ourselves reflected in it before taking the next step.
The planes of consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo are worlds, and not dependent on our own world for their existence. "That we are not conscious of them is no proof that they are not conscious. It is too late in the day to question the correctness and veracity of the utterances of the seers who have experienced these truths."20 In so far as these intangible realms impinge upon our world we can sometimes discern their influence, but for the most part they exist unrecognised above or below or behind the life we know. Those who undertake to use Savitri as a guide in their own sadhana will become more and more alert to the role they play in our lives and free to accept or reject it.
A "reversal of consciousness" takes place so that where once it was difficult to believe in the existence of such parallel worlds, it soon becomes impossible to conceive of reality in any other way. By the power of the consciousness that created them, the pictures Sri Aurobindo paints for us and the wisdom they contain become part of our own interior landscape. This phenomenon, repeated at every stage of the journey, justifies the claim that Savitri can indeed be considered as a path of initiation—though the use of this word here is not intended provoke comparison with initiation rites in other cultures or contexts.
The path is not without danger. Aswapati's right of passage is often challenged by the guardian spirits of the threshold and he must pass the test of their scrutiny before he is allowed to proceed. There is always an indication of the strengths or the knowledge required:
A mind absolved from life, made calm to know,
A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,
The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,
He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause.21
These are the conditions of entry into the Darkness: A perfect equality of mind first, and then immunity from all the influences arising out of the vital world. The lesson of the Descent into Night seems to be this—sooner or later all those who seek the truth of the spirit will be compelled by the necessities of the path to confront the powers of Darkness face to face. This confrontation is the "dark right" of forces opposed to human evolution, whose presence and influence is confirmed by Sri Aurobindo in numerous letters and poems as well
20 T.V. Kapali Shastri, Lights on the Tantra. 21Savitri, p. 202.
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as here. Sri Aurobindo did not have to search history or mythology for images of hell. Our own time has provided them in abundance. The gas chambers, the concentration camps, the killing fields, the "crowded grey and squalid huts /Neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power"22 conceived in that Darkness are a terrible reminder of how easily our frail defences against the World of Falsehood can be breached, and how easily the Mother of Evil can take possession of human nature.
Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:
Courage their armour, faith their sword...
The hostile powers are terrible when their attack takes an outward form and tragedy strikes on a personal or collective level. They are even more dangerous when they strike unseen from within. Fear, doubt and depression or despair are their chosen weapons; the seeker is
Captured and trailed in Falsehood's lethal net
And often strangled in the noose of grief,
Or cast on the grim morass of swallowing doubt,
Or shut into pits of error and despair.24
When the conscious mind sleeps, he faces something far worse than a bodily death, for the demonic powers attack with the speed of striking snake, and if in a doomed attempt to escape from the horror of that encounter, he is tempted to complicity with them, the loss of his own soul may result:
This is the tragedy of the inner death
When forfeited is the divine element
And only a mind and body live to die.25
Aswapati is deprived of the protection of the body's material envelope, the native strength of the human vital and the light of the human mind: "Thought ceased, sense failed, his soul still saw and knew."26 The Darkness has enveloped all that to our superficial regard makes up the human person. The indestructible divine soul that the ground of all the rest cannot be conquered; but the seeker must know how to take refuge there. Aswapati passes this test. Divinity wakes in him, and hell stands revealed a lie: "Night opened and vanished like
22 Ibid., p. 211. 25Ibid., p. 225.
23Ibid 26Ibid, p. 230.
24Ibid, p. 230.
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a gulf of dream."27 From now on the darkness has no power over him. He steps out of the shadow into Paradise.
Does the seeker now repose in bliss? Not yet. His human nature must be reborn to sustain a delight that is more than the body can bear. This Paradise of the Life Gods is familiar in appearance to our world, but wondrously changed; transposed to a higher key. Even pain is not abolished but "transformed to potent joy."28 Aswapati, however, turns his steps away from the wonders of this glorious creation of the gods, just as Sri Aurobindo did when he told the Mother: "This is not what we want." Between him and his goal lie the immense plains and towering peaks of Mind.
We are approaching the end of our journey with Aswapati. Once again, and for the last time, we may invoke the Vedic powers to guide us on the ascent to a summit so high we cannot see it. They now appear in the guise of helpful presences radiantly fronting the sun of knowledge:
Holding the thousand keys of the Beyond
They proffered their knowledge to the climbing mind
And filled the life with Thought's immensities.
The prophet hierophants of the occult Law
The flame-bright hierarchs of the divine Truth,
Interpreters between man's mind and God's,
They bring the immortal fire to mortal men.29
In the final cantos of Book II, Sri Aurobindo's poetry becomes like a shining barrier erected on the extreme boundaries of human understanding. From this point on, "out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight"30 and sight itself become the seer-vision "a flame-throw from identity."31
We are close to the consciousness in which the knower and the known are one.
Aswapati has brought us to the limits of Mind. In the Heavens of the Ideal the stairs are newly created beneath his feet as he climbs. He meditates upon the beauty of the Deathless Rose, symbol of an unattainable perfection—unattainable because even here the illusion of separate identity is preserved as each idea strives to possess its own absolute. From the Heavens of the Ideal, and from the Self of
27Ibid, p. 232. 30Ibid, p. 276.
28Ibid, p. 235 31Ibid, p. 301.
29Ibid, p. 265.
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Mind, he turns away because:
Our sweet and mighty Mother was not there.12
At last the World-Soul opens to him. In line after line of magical poetry Sri Aurobindo evokes the images of our deepest yearning, the beauty that ever calls us home. In answer to his wordless prayer the veil is partly drawn and once again the face of Divine Love is revealed, not cast in a human mould as it was in the beginning of the path, but now an overwhelming splendour of implacable light and bliss. Aswapati surrenders his human nature at the feet of the Divine Mother and becomes a vessel of her force, passing into the "inexpressible light" of the Greater Knowledge.
Aspiring not for himself but for the world, he wins for mankind the boon of Love incarnate in a human body. This Love, as Savitri, will guide us now. The path is no longer a path of knowledge; it is a path of action and will. In the individual as in the world, the divine work is done behind a veil. The story of Savitri's Yoga and her ultimate conquest of death, fulfilling the promise of a divine life on earth, is told in the form of a legend, but its essential meaning is to be found by opening ourselves to the consciousness that transformed the legend into a symbol:
This Light comes not by struggle or by thought;
In the mind's silence the Transcendent acts
And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word.
A vast surrender was his only strength.
A Power that lives upon the heights must act,
Bring into life's closed room the Immortal's air
And fill the finite with the Infinite.
All that denies must be torn out and slain
And crushed the many longings for whose sake
We lose the One for whom our lives were made.
Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:
Only he longed to draw her presence and power
Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;
Only he yearned to call forever down
Her healing touch of love and truth and joy
Into the darkness of the suffering world.
His soul was freed and given to her alone.33
32lbid., p. 286. 33Ibid, pp. 315-16.
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The path of initiation ends when the human soul accepts union with its divine origin. The path is long, because the mind's assent or even the heart's assent is not enough. So the first necessity is the discovery of the soul. The path we have to trace in the steps of Aswapati goes far beyond an individual fulfilment. Its consummation is reached at the end of The Book of the Divine Mother when Aswapati's prayer for Earth's release from the grip of Death rises to heights where the Divine Consciousness unites will and creative power to bring about infallibly what is seen. The prayer turns into a prophetic vision of the future: a new creation and a new humanity.
Now obeying the ādesh once heard by Sri Aurobindo, "Act in the world with thy being beyond it,"34 the seeker returns to take up the work the Mother gave:
The eternal seeker in the aeonic field
Besieged by the intolerant press of hours
Again was strong for great swift-footed deeds.35
S. M. DYNE
34Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 568. 35Savitri, p. 347.
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Savitri: Its Inner Significance
Savitri is, at its highest, a revelation and a flame: a revelation of the Supramental Truth and a flame of man's immemorial aspiration for immortality. This epic of inner voyage is in its essence symbolic of the answering Grace from above and the call from below embodied in the two protagonists—Satyavan-Savitri and Aswapati. While Savitri can be called an epic of the soul's "mystic voyage" upon "uncharted routes", represented by Aswapati, it is more "a significant myth" telling of the great "wrestle with the shadow" and the conquest over Ignorance and Death, represeented by Savitri.
It reveals "from the highest pinnacle and with the largest field of vision the destiny of the human spirit and the presence and ways and purpose of the Divinity in man and the universe."1 This revelation, this "inspired body of the mystic Truth"2 is poured out in mantric verses which express, with a great transforming power and an uplifting vibration "a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the planes of being and their action upon each other."3
Aswapati is "the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour" who, carrying within his bosom Man's eternal aspiration, dares "the unplumbed infinitudes" and brings to earth-consciousness the Divine Shakti who will redeem her once for all. His adventure of consciousness and joy represents on the human level the struggle and endeavour of every aspirant and thus embodies the typal spiritual efforts to reach the eternal Silence. At the same time, Aswapati is "the colonist" from the other side, whose ascent is unique, for not only does he penetrate "world after world" and "heaven after heaven" realising their "guarded powers" and cherishing "their beatitudes"—planes of consciousness quite unknown to even man's highest spiritual endeavour—but his soar reaches the "last high world" "where all worlds meet":
In its summits gleam where Night is not nor Sleep,
The light began of the Trinity supreme.4
Aswapati is the representative of the aspiring humanity which seeks the whither and the what and the why of human existence. He
1The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 267.
2Savitri, p. 39. 3 Ibid., p. 738. 4 Ibid., p. 89.
attempts to bring closer the Future to the Present, the Beyond to the Earth. In his quest to realise the truth of man, Aswapati comes to know that man is not just a sum total of body, life and mind, just a knot of ego but that he is a soul, a self which though it supports the human individual can expand itself to contain the all and all that is beyond the universal. This is the first of his two "yogic movements"— the psycho-spiritual transformation. Then he ascends into the other one—"a greater spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power."5 In the first movement there is "his own spiritual fulfilment," but in the second movement he is more or a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. The culmination or the fulfilment of this second movement is not his arriving at the House of the Spirit, the Supramental-Consciousness, but to aspire and to bring down that Truth-Consciousness to earth, so that there is a new creation and the earthly life gets transformed into a divine life. He is a protagonist of not only the Ascent but also of the Descent: he achieves not only "an individual victory" over the "structured visions of the cosmic Self'6 but also an universal realisation so that a new path is laid for all who aspire to ascend into the Supramental Consciousness.
In his ascent of consciousness he observes that the universe is built in a hierarchical fashion with mounting levels of consciousness. He moves from the dark and dense consciousness of the body to the beginnings of worlds of life-force, the vital-consciousness. Meeting different creatures and beings appropriate to these levels, Aswapati moves to the higher vital worlds and then to the mental worlds.
Aswapati discovers that just as there is an upward movement leading to more and more bright levels of consciousness, there is also a downward movement leading to great sinister worlds full of perversion, crookedness and falsehood and pretensions which throw all their influence upon man. Wanting to find the source of this evil, this anti-divine existence, Aswapati dives deeper only to come face to face with the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness:
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.
5Ibid., p. 773. 6 Ibid., p. 96.
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I left the surface gods of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.7
"He who would bring the heavens" upon earth has to "tread the dolorous way"—so did Aswapati and only then could he move on to the worlds beyond mind, and reach the Vastness which "brooded free from sense of Space." Arrested for a while by "the uncaring bliss", Aswapati apotheosises
O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou has't leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where has't thou thrown selfs mission and self s power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?8
Aswapati's eyes open, as it were, to a new vision and understanding of creation. All existence has a meaning and a purpose and it is through a process of evolution that all things are moving towards their fulfilment. All earth shall one day be transformed into a luminous consciousness and substance; it would be similar to the existence on the Supramental plane:
None was apart, none lived for himself alone,
Each lived for God in him and God in all,
Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.9
And a divine impatience grips him, for he wants to see that glorious future upon earth. He cries out to the Divine Mother.
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time...
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.10
The Divine Mother responds to the call of mankind:
7Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 101.
8 Savitri, p. 310. 9 Ibid., p. 324. 10 Ibid., p. 345.
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O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry,
One shall descend and break the iron Law...
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.11
And the Divine Mother herself descends, as the daughter of Aswapati, as Savitri!
Savitri is the Divine Response to human aspiration, the Divine Love incarnate in a human body. This divine holocaust is perhaps the quickest method to awaken the dark obstinate consciousness of man to his higher self. But humanity resists the Divine incarnation:
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change,
Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:
It fears the pure divine intolerance
Of that assault of ether and of fire.12
So, Savitri's task is not easy. And yet she cannot abdicate; she has to fulfil her mission. For that she prepares herself by a Yoga which is quite different from that of Aswapati's. She goes within, into the depths of the being, into the earth-consciousness, into her own body's self, as it were. As the earth represents the cosmos, and her body represents earth, she delves into the alleys of her own self. And there she comes across the falsehood of pain, suffering and death which she was commissioned to vanquish and conquer.
Death comes to her in the form of the death of Satyavan, Satyavan who is her human counter-part in the work of Transformation. As Savitri has to work out the victory over death and fate and pain on the level of human consciousness, she works it out in Satyavan, her alter-body. Satyavan is the visible sign of her invisible work upon herself: to conquer death in Satyavan is to conquer it in herself, and to conquer it in herself is to gain a victory over death itself, for her body is the representation of all earth-bound bodies.
However, in the period of her inner preparation, Savitri comes across moments of despair too:
What need have I, what need has Satyavan
To avoid the black meshed net, the dismal door,
11Ibid., p. 346. 12 Ibid., p. 7.
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Or call a mightier Light into life's closed room,
A greater Law into man's little world?13
Then the Divine Voice chastises her:
Or is this all for thy being bom on earth
Charged with a mandate from eternity,
A listner to the voices of the years...
To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?
Shall there be no new tables, no new Word,
No greater light come down upon the earth
Delivering her from her unconsciousness,
Man's spirit from unalterable fate?14
And Savitri, awakened to her inner mission, asks the Divine Mother to give a command. She is told:
Conquer thy heart's throbs, let thy heart beat in God:
Thy nature shall be the engine of his works,
Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:
Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.15
So, Savitri takes on Death and begins her work, her mission, for which she had incarnated. Death is at the outset a Nothingness, a Non-existence, a universal Negation and Destruction, and not the mere destruction of the body. This everlasting "No" is deeply embedded at the atomic level of Matter itself, arresting energy at the physical level, bringing denial and doubt in the vital life, and perversity and narrowness on the mental level. And yet, at the deeper level, Death is a purificatory agent of life; it goads life to evolve, to progress, to perfect itself.
Death at its deepest level is after all the dark form of the Divine:
I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,
Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite.16
The dark form is dissolved, devoured by the radiant splendour of Savitri:
His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured...
A secret splendour rose revealed to sight
13 Ibid., p. 475. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 476.16 Ibid., p. 666.
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Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.
Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.17
In the involutionary process when Consciousness turned into Inconscience, it seemed that no contact was possible between the Origin and what was created. A direct Descent of the Divine Consciousness became imminent and so was there a descent of the Divine Consciousness in the form of Love. And it is this first descent of Divine Love who is "the first universal Avatar who, gradually, has assumed more and more conscious bodies and finally manifested in a kind of recognised line of Beings who have descended directly from the Supreme to perfect this work of preparing the universe so that, through a continuous progression, it may become ready to receive and manifest the supramental Light in its entirety."18
What has this story got to do with the legend of Savitri?—one may ask. We can easily connect the story and the symbol. This Love or the Original and the Eternal Avatar is represented by Satyavan. The Mother explained that Satyavan is the earth's Jiva. Once we understand the meaning of the Jiva, we will grasp the significance of Satyavan as the Jiva.
In us too we have the psychic being or the Atman. What is its need and necessity within us? It is for the evolutionary purpose that it is present in us. Our body is temporal, it lives for some time and perishes. But it is the Atman that continues the journey from birth to birth in evolution. So Satyavan being the Jiva of the Earth evolves through the millienia, through billions of years of earth's existence. He has been there all through the creation of our universe. Sri Aurobindo clarifies: "Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance."
This single line gives the whole symbolism of Satyavan. Sat is the Truth and Satyavan is the carrier of the Divine Truth who descended into this world of ignorance and darkness for carrying this evolution further on towards the superconscient. Therefore he is the eternal Avatar who prepared the Inconscient Matter for the manifestation of Life.
According to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of evolution we see how out of Matter Life emerged and how out of both Matter and Life,
17Ibid., pp. 667, 679.
18Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 9, p. 333.
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Mind came upon this creation. How could all these emerge? Not out of a chaos or disorder! In a mother's womb when a child is prepared, it is not bom just at any time—there is a particular time of its birth. Likewise, there has been a period of maturity in the womb of Matter for the manifestation of the next phase of Life. It was Satyavan within the womb of Earth who accomplished it in evolution as he is the eternal Jiva. Then Life burst forth out of Matter—in the form of grass and the flowers, plants and butterflies, fish and the amphibians, the dinosaurs and other animals and the whole dynamic kingdom of nature. So, this is how the divine consciousness, in Matter called Satyavan, brought forth Life from Matter. And when Life element in Nature was mature—it may take billions of years and it has taken truly a long long time—it is only then that he brought forth the element of Mind and that Mind is Man.
We also know from Sri Aurobindo's philosophy that evolution can take place only when the higher and lower forces meet at a point. That is the meeting of the ascent and the descent. It is not a unilateral progress from below. There has to be the descent of the higher force too. It is the combination of both that brings in a higher rung in evolution. All the previous Avatars, like Matsya or Varaha or Buddha or Sri Krishna came at a point of time when the evolution was ready for assimilating their Truth. So, in a way we can also say that there is an evolution of Avatar from the earth itself, in the sense of evolution of Matter to Life and Mind, etc. This simultaneous movement from below and above is essential.
In this manner Satyavan now represents the mental consciousness of man. He is the son of Dyumatsena and "Dyumatsena is Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan. He is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision." He is a blind king symbolising our present blind world. It has come to a dead end. It cannot anymore have the vision of the Supreme. So, at this stage, Dyumatsena's own son, Satyavan, is labouring to go beyond Mind. And, when Satyavan wants to break the present barriers of Mind and go to the higher reaches of Mind, there has to be the descent of another higher power to effectuate his effort at this evolutionary point so that this ascent and descent could establish the higher principle beyond mind.
This descent is represented by Savitri. Satyavan and Savitri have to unite in order to create the new world because it is only in their union that the New World will be created. Therefore, Savitri has to descend this time as Satyavan's wife. In Book Twelve, when Savitri
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returns after her battle with the Lord of Death, Sri Aurobindo says that she carries in her arms the new world like a baby. The Mother explained that this baby in Savitri's arms, or Satyavan, is the New World that she is bringing down. So the symbolism is that Savitri is bom as the wife of Satyavan and this union of Spirit and Matter is necessary for the New Creation.
Savitri is the daughter of the supreme God; she is the Divine Word, meaning the Creative Power. And, specifically here in Savitri, she is the Word of the Supramental Consciousness, as the baby that is to be bom is the Supramental World. So, Savitri in union with Satyavan brings forth the New World. She has chosen this earth for transformation, not any other planet. Even though Satyavan had to die within a year, Savitri had no other choice but to choose him because she has to transform this earth and Satyavan represents this earth.
Savitri is that fullness of incarnation of Divine Love in the form of Divine Grace and Shakti who came to manifest the Supramental Light in its entirety. A full manifestation of Divine Love alone can bring to creation its final consummation, when "the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme."19 And the prerequisite for this final consummation of the earth, when
All shall be might and bliss and happy force,20
is the conquest of Death. Of all falsehoods, Death is the greatest—it is the God of Denial, the Asat trying to annihilate the Sat. It is added to the very cellular structure of Matter and therefore all ignorance, sorrow, pain and misfortune of the earth is embedded in Matter itself. The incarnate Saviour, Savitri, has therefore to track down Death to its primal origin and dissolve it there not by any destruction, but by a transfusion of Divine Love. Finally he says:
... if the Mighty Mother is with thee,
Show me her face that I may worship her;
Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death.21
So was the last cry of Death, the final challenge to Savitri:
And Savitri looked on Death and answered not...
In a flaming moment of apocalypse
The Incarnation thrust aside its veil...
19 Ibid., p. 334. 20 Savitri, p. 514. 21 Ibid., p. 664.
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Eternity looked into the eyes of Death
And Darkness saw God's living Reality...
Light like burning tongue licked up his thoughts,
Light was a luminous torture in his heart,
Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves;
His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze...
The dire universal Shadow disappeared
Vanishing into the Void from which it came.22
Once Death is vanquished, all the resistance, denial and refusal are also broken down. The man of sorrows who represents the physical being and all its resistance, rejection and denial is given the assurance by Savitri:
One day I will return, a bringer of strength...
Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;
The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast,
From the cruelty of the Titan and his pain.
There shall be peace and joy for ever more.23
The Asuric and Rakshasic vital forces of man do not recognise the Mother of Might:
God imperfect left, I will complete,
Out of a tangled mind and half-made soul
His sin and error I will eliminate;
What he invented not, I shall invent:
He was the first creator, I am the last.24
But it is she to whom was given the assurance by Savitri:
The cry of the ego shall be hushed within,
Its lion-roar that claims the world as food,
All shall be might and bliss and happy force.25
The Mother of Light, who represents Man's aspiration in the Mind, cannot be seized or understood by the narrow mind of man:
Nay, let me work within my mortal bounds,
Not love beyond life nor think beyond the mind;
Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.26
22 Ibid., pp. 664-68. 23 Ibid., pp. 507-08. 24 Ibid., p. 512.
25 Ibid., p. 514. 26 Ibid., p. 520.
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So, Savitri, once again, consoles the Mother of Light:
One day I shall return, His hands in mine,
And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.
Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,
Then shall the divine family be bom.
There shall be light and peace in all the worlds.27
After conquering Death, Savitri enters the region of Everlasting Day where she is welcomed:
Leaving thy borrowed body on the sod,
Ascend, O soul, into thy blissful home.28
But Savitri replies:
I climb not to thy everlasting Day,
Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night...
In me the spirit of immortal love
Stretches its arms out to embrace mankind.
Too far thy heavens for me from suffering men.
Imperfect is the joy not shared by all.29
Savitri then returns to earth with Satyavan; she returns to earth bringing with her a new world and thus fulfils her mission:
In the one task for which our lives were bom,
To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine.30
Aswapati and Savitri are the Divine Delegates—the former ascends into the Supreme Consciousness and makes the descent of Savitri a possibility; the latter descends into the Inconscient and makes the ascent of Man into the Superman an assured probability and a promise left in the womb of evolutionary Nature:
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue...
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.31
27 Ibid., p. 521. 28 Ibid., p. 685. 29 Ibid., pp. 686-87.
30 Ibid., p. 692.
31Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 99-102.
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Satyavan, "the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance" is not only the link in the workings of Aswapati and Savitri, but also the medium and kshetra of Savitri's transformative work for mankind and earth.
That was very much in brief two levels of Savitri at the legend and its symbolism. There is a third level to it—the factual reality. It starts with a story written by the Mother way back in 1906, the story called A Sapphire Tale?32
The story speaks about a small kingdom somewhere in the East, where people are all happy and harmonious. Each one was doing the work chosen for him by them, the best way they could. It was all based on a wonderful harmony where there were no problems, no competition, no quarrels or disharmony. Scientists there were not creating material comforts but looking after the general good of the collectivity. Artists were creating something of subliminal beauty. Philosophers were there, four in number, who were wisely guiding the people. That little kingdom was ruled by on old king. He was intelligent and wise.
One day, as it happened in the Mahabharata's story of Savitri, the king called his son, Meotha, and asked him if he had by then found a partner or a companion for himself because, soon, he was to take the reigns of the kingdom. And the law of this kingdom was such that the ruler had to be biune for ruling his country.
Meotha replied that he had seen most of the suitable maidens in his kingdom but he couldn't yet choose one for himself. He would like to go out of the kingdom, get hiniself acquainted with other cultures, laws of administration, ways of living and thus enrich himself and in the process find his biune partner.
Meotha's father permitted him to go on his journey. After a long voyage, somewhere on a western island, a thickly wooded island, he met a young damsel called Liane. She was beautiful and charming, and she was bright in mind, and in her skills nobody on the island could match her talents. Liane had a dream in which she saw a young man who was not only fair and handsome but he wore an alien robe by which she knew that he belonged to some other kingdom. And she was sure that one day she would meet this person of her dream. So on that day when she was looking at the ocean and thinking of
32Words of Long Ago, CWM, Vol. 2, pp. 7-11.
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this person of her dream, she felt a sudden stir in the breeze, birds flying hither and thither, the atmosphere turning mysterious. What had happened? Lo and behold! she came across Meotha, standing right in front of her. They did not exchange words, just as in Savitri, but they recognised each other through their looks and they knew they belonged to each other. Silently Liane put her hand in Meotha's hand and they boarded the ship to sail back home.
On the ship Liane asked Meotha as to where he was taking her? She said that she knew one day Meotha was to come for her but she was also in deep love with her little island. Meotha said that he had looked for her in the whole world and he found her here. And now he was taking her to that only country in the world that is full of harmony and peace. She would be the queen of that land!
It is a simple story, written in 1906. Around this period, in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo wrote the first draft of Savitri. What is interesting here is that, similar to the story of Liane, the Mother landed in Pondicherry in 1914. She came to an alien land and the first time she saw Sri Aurobindo she remembered her dream of seeing an Asiatic person, clad in a white piece of cloth around his body. She saw Sri Aurobindo exactly as she had seen him in her vision.
Before Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry he did Tapasya and, while he was in the Alipore jail, he had the first instruction from Swami Vivekananda as to the direction for the later Tapasya. Eighteen years later, in 1926, he got the Siddhi of his Tapasya when Sri Krishna entered in his subtle physical body. That was the merging of the Overmental consciousness of Sri Krishna in the body of Sri Aurobindo. It was the eighteen years of his Tapasya that had brought down the Truth, like the eighteen years of Tapasya of Aswapati that had brought down Savitri.
After 1926, the Mother established Sri Aurobindo as a spiritual Master to his disciples. Before this, his close disciples used to call him AG or Sir. He was looked upon as a great leader, a poet, a visionary, a writer but hardly anyone thought of him as an Avatar. That means within these many years people came to take Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar. Until then even to his closest disciples he was like Sri Krishna to Arjuna, a very close and dear friend.
After 1926 and till 1938, their roles reversed. Now it was Sri Aurobindo who established the Mother as the Divine Mother. In 1926 the Ashram began. In 1927 he wrote the book The Mother through which he established the Mother in her Transcendental, Universal
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and Individual poises alongwith her eternal four aspects that are presently at work in the Universe.
After this the next twelve years were crucial. This was the time when he resumed Savitri writing. He started around 1936 and continued till 1950. At this point of time, both having been established as the Avatars, they were acting in one identified consciousness. Savitri was written in such Biune Consciousness. Therefore, the Mother said: "Whatever I experienced, Sri Aurobindo wrote simultaneously." It was not that they told each other beforehand, whatever Sri Aurobindo read out in the morning, was the experience the Mother had the night before. That was the identification of their consciousness and perhaps in 1949, when there was a conversation between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as to who should leave the body, Sri Aurobindo said that it was he who would leave his body for the sake of the work and that the Mother was to stay back to accomplish their work of Transformation. He said that the Mother's body was better suited and fitted for the work. So, it was a kind of a prophetic destiny, just as "Satyavan must die." There was almost a necessity of Sri Aurobindo having to leave his body.
Couldn't Sri Aurobindo continue to live on after 1950 and continue to do the work of Transformation? His was, exactly as written in Savitri, a destined death. Our death is also destined but His passing away is not like the death of our physical body. It is dying to Death itself. In 1961 the Mother had to battle with the Lord of Death or with Death itself. Like the debate between Death and Savitri in Savitri, the Mother too had to battle Death in 1961. She came out of the battle victorious, like Savitri in the epic. It was about 22 years from this experience of conquest over death that the Mother left her body. It was after this intense experience in 1961, that the Mother declared that hereafter children will be born with an altogether new consciousness, reminding us how Savitri had brought down the new consciousness through her own conquest over Death.
Savitri represents the Mother in totality. In a way, like Savitri, She too has been brought down after eighteen years of Sri Aurobindo's Tapasya. Aswapati is Sri Aurobindo the Yogi, the Rishi. Satyavan, the Mother said, is the Avatar. When Sri Aurobindo was asked about his work in his previous lives, he said that he was carrying on the evolution. So he has been continuing this work of evolution in all his previous lives. Thus, Sri Aurobindo has always been the Earth's Jiva, Satyavan, the Original Avatar and in this incarnation a combination
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of Aswapati and Satyavan, and at the same time the last Avatar in human form.
Thus, it is the coming together of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo that has given birth to the New Race. Had the Mother remained in Paris and Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, Supermind would have perhaps been realised but not manifested. Manifestation requires the womb of the Mother. This is seen in the Mother's own revelation:
Sri Aurobindo is the Soul of Matter, the aspiration of the whole humanity. He is the Light in Matter or the Spirit incarnated in Matter. Sri Aurobindo has separated himself from the Supreme and has plunged in this matter, in a body, with this load of inconscience and ignorance upon himself—to awaken them to the divine life. For this He has invoked the Supreme, the Grace, to descend here below on this earth to help in His work. That is why, having heard His call, I have come down here into matter in a physical body, into this world of pain, suffering and death. And it is in the union of both of us that the world will witness gradually this miracle of a divine life. It is because of Him that I have descended. It is this intense aspiration of matter from below that has sent up and the Grace has responded by a descent. What a blessed hour for the earth. It is an occasion for a tremendous progress so that the whole universe may blossom in a great élan towards the goal of its existence. With Our help which will be at its disposal and a will to pursue, what could be there that would be impossible to realise! This is the moment.33
This is the mystic union for manifestation of the higher truths that human history has never known—such a legend, such a symbol and such a Reality. Few know about this reality. Knowing this dimension of Savitri is of great importance in order to understand Savitri in its profound and magnificent significance.
V. ANANDA REDDY
33 The Supreme, p. 68 (as reported by Mona Sarkar.)
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The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
Sight in the Superconscient
Introduction
We should recognise the insufficiency of normal mind of man to be an instrument for the discovery of the Truth:
Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light
Catching at little fragments of the Truth.1
But if mind fails, what else remains? Again, it has been affirmed that "thought nor word can seize eternal Truth."2 But, then, if thought proves impotent what else is there that can take its place? The answer is: What else? It must be a sight:
Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight.3
Yes, it has to be a sight but surely not the sight of mind; it must be a far greater sight:
His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.4
So we have to advance farther into the domains of the Spirit, acquire the Spirit's sight and become a Kavi, Rishi, or Seer:
The veil is torn, the thinker is no more:
Only the spirit sees and all is known.5
Now this Spirit's vision can be had only in the Superconscient. But what is this Superconscient? Well, as regards the total constitution of our being, viz., the Inconscient, the Subconscient, the subliminal Intraconscient, the subliminal Circumconscient, and the Waking State, they do not suffice to give a full account of what we really are. For there is a range of being and consciousness that greatly transcends all these elements of our constitution, something which is super-conscient to all the other provinces of our existence:
1Savitri, p. 161. 2Jbia\, p. 276. 3Ibid. 4Ibid, p. 260.
5Ibid, p. 571.
Out of the inconscient and subliminal
Arisen, we live in mind's uncertain light-
Above us dwells a superconscient god
Hidden in the mystery of his own light.6
So we should see the nature of sight in those superconscient regions of our being.
If and when we pierce the veil of our limiting mind-consciousness and enter into the superconscient region, we find there various worlds of cosmic existence: there are too, be it noted, various corresponding planes of our subjective consciousness. Here is a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga which throws light on the point we have been discussing:
... they are as if a ladder plunging down into Matter and perhaps below it, rising up into the heights of the Spirit, even perhaps to the point at which existence escapes out of cosmic being into ranges of a supracosmic Absolute.7
It is worth quoting in this connection a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine which makes clear to us the constitution of the superconscient realm:
... from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it cam sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.8
Now the ascending sight of the sadhaka undergoes a progressive transformation as it mounts the ladder of the four-rung 'Spiritual Mind' series. We describe in a brief outline the nature of sight in each of the four levels represented by (i) the Higher Mind, (ii) the Illumined Mind, (iii) the Intuitive Mind, and (iv) the Overmind. But before that let us enjoy the rasa of a significant passage from Savitri:
A vision came of higher realms than ours,
6Ibid., p. 484. 7The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 438.
8The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 938.
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A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,
Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men
And subtler bodies than these passing frames,
Objects too fine for our material grasp,
Acts vibrant with a superhuman light.9
Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes
To recapitulate: Once we cross the confines of the normal mind of man, we meet on our ascending climb a series of hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in their ascending order:
(i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparardha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes:
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights.10
A vision lightened on the viewless heights.11
On summit Mind are radiant altitudes
Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,
Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,
Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.12
Sight in the Higher Mind
The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness to which the first ascent out of four normal mentality takes us. This is a mind of automatic and spontaneous knowledge, knowledge assuming the nature of Truth-Thought. Its most characteristic movement is a mass-ideation, a totality of truth-seeing in a single view. The relation of idea with idea, of truth with truth is not established by logic but emerges already self-seen in the integral whole. Thought in the Higher Mind is not an acquired knowledge but a self-revelation of eternal
9Savitri, p. 28. l0Ibid, p. 76. 11Ibid, p. 42.
12Ibid, p. 659.
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Wisdom. For, we must not forget, "thought in itself in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception,... a powerful but ... secondary result of spiritual vision..."13 Now a few verses form Savitri depicting the sight in the Higher Mind:
There Mind, a splendid sun of vision's rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts.14
Idea rotated symphonies of sight.15
The immortal's thoughts displaced our bounded view.16
Illumined by a vision in the thought.17
A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes.18
Sight in the Illumined Mind
Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight.
Now some illustrative verses from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:
An empyrean vision saw and knew.19
Whence it shoots the arrows of its sight and will.20
Whose fire bums in the eyes of seer and sage;
A lightning flash of visionary sight.21
There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;
A burning head of vision leads the mind,
Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;
The heart glows an illuminate and seer.22
Sight in the Intuitive Mind
Next in the order of ascension is the Intuitive Mind whose characteristic power is an intimate and exact Truth-perception which arises out of a revealing encounter between the subject and the object,
13The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 945.
14Savitri, p. 327. 15Ibid, p. 301. 16Ibid, p. 529.
17Ibid, p. 176. 18Ibid, p. 659. 19Ibid, p. 25
20Ibid., p. 529. 21Ibid., p. 627. 22Ibid, p. 660.
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carrying in it as its natural consequence a Truth-sight and Truth-conception. Thought in the Intuitive Mind is revelatory in character.
Here are some verses from Savitri indicating how sight functions in this Intuitive Mind plane:
Sight's lightnings leaped into the invisible.23
Nothing escaped his vast intuitive sight.24
Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack
Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs.25
Its fiery edge of seeing absolute
Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self...
Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes.26
Sight in the Overmind
Beyond the plane of the Intuitive Mind is a superconscient cosmic Mind which possesses a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge. In the wide cosmic perception of the Overmind,
Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;
Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;
All Time is one body, Space a single book:
There is the Godhead's universal gaze
And there the boundaries of immortal Mind.27
In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge."28
Here are some verses from Savitri characterising the sight in the Overmind:
His boundless thought was neighbour to cosmic sight: A universal light was in his eyes.29
... eyes of boundless thought.30
23lbid., p. 31. 24Ibid., p. 96. 25Ibid., p. 660. 26Ibid.
27Ibid., 28The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 950.
29Savitri, p. 79. 30Ibid,, p. 335.
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AH came at once into his single view.31
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance.32
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind.33
Mind was a single innumerable look.34
... the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight.35
A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form.36
Sight of the Overmental Gods
Immobile, seeing the milleniums pass.37
They look on our struggle with impartial eyes.38
The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes.39
Unmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze.40
And look impassive on a suffering world,
Calm they gaze down on the little human scene.41
Spiritual Sight
We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called 'Spiritual Sights'. Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers. Why are we taking care to term the cognitions in the superconscient planes as 'sights' and not purely and simply as 'knowledge' ? The question needs some clarifying answer at this point. Sri Aurobindo himself has discussed this specific point at many places in The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Letters on Yoga. We give below a summary of his observations.
A mental figure or conception is not what is called a 'realisation' or a 'seeing'. It is no better than an indirect knowledge, paroksa. What is needed is a direct vision of the truth without the need of
31Ibid, p. 96. 32Ibid, p. 26. 33Ibid, p. 555. 34Ibid, p. 556.
35Ibid, p. 661. 36Ibid, p. 662. 37Ibid, p. 57. 38Ibid.
39Ibid,. p.587. 40lbid, p. 574. 41Ibid, p. 428.
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observation of the object, reasoning, evidence, imagination, memory or any other of the usual faculties of intellect. Now the spiritual vision, drsti, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it as do things physically seen to the physical eye. "It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality... and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen."42
This sight or drsti is to the Spirit what the eyes are to the physical mind and, Sri Aurobindo emphasises, "one has the sense of having passed through a subtly analogous process."43
The ancient sages of India highly valued this power of internal spiritual vision; for, only this can make man a Rishi, a Kavi, or a Seer, and no longer a mere thinker.
We now quote here certain verses from Savitri which bring out in clear outline the nature of (i) the "seer's sight", (ii) the "spiritual sight", and (iii) the "spirit's sight".
Seer's Sight
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.44
A Seer was bom, a shining guest of Time.4S
It looked into the very self of things;
Deceived no more by form he saw the soul.46
Transmitting gave to prophet and to seer
The inspired body of the mystic Truth.47
Through vision looks at the invisible.48
A seer, he has entered the forbidden reakms...
Armed with the golden speech, the diamond eye.49
42The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 291.
43Ibid, p. 803. 44Savitri, p. 408. 45Ibid, p. 25.
46Ibid, p. 26. 47Ibid, p. 39. 48Ibid, p. 398.
49Ibid. p. 681.
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Spiritual Sight
It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.50
The carved thought-shrouded doors to swing apart,
Unlocked the avenues of spiritual sight.51
Unsealed was Nature's great spiritual eye.52
His sight, spiritual in embodying orbs,
Could pierce through the grey phosphorescent haze
And scan the secrets of the shifting flux.53
... immediacy of errorless sight.54
... its vision of one same stupendous All.55
A gaze of the Alone from every face.56
Her eyes were turned towards the eternal source.57
Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees
Things barred from human thinking's earthly lids.58
Thence gazing with an immeasurable outlook
One with self s inlook... 59
His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,
An outview by no brief horizons out.60
Spirit's Sight
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen.61
Hardly the spirit's vision can descry
Dimmed by the imperfection of its means.62
Mystic, ineffable is the Spirit's truth,
Unspoken, caught only by the spirit's eye.63
Who sees life's drama pass with unmoved eyes.64
50Ibid, p. 49. 51Ibid, p. 267. 52Ibid, p. 572. 53Ibid, p. 256-57.
54Ibid, p. 683. 55Ibid., p. 298. 56Ibid, p. 298. 57Ibid, p. 272.
58Ibid, p. 382. 59Ibid, p. 35. 60Ibid, p. 301. 61Ibid, p. 470.
62Ibid, p. 138. 63Ibid, p. 501. 64Ibid, p. 665.
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Vision in the Higher Hemisphere
Beyond the Reach of Sight
The central theme of our essay is the study of the itinerary of the ascent of sight. Following this course we travel from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "cosmic gaze" of the Overmind. But all these belong to what was called by the ancient Indian mystics the "Lower Hemisphere" of our existence. But the reach of the Reality far transcends the borders of this Overmind zone of consciousness.
Now there are unified principles of the Divine, viz., the Existence principle (Sat), the Consciousness-Force principle (Chit-Shakti) and the Bliss principle (Ananda), and finally a fourth principle Supermind (Mahas or Vijnana). These four supernal principles constitute the "Higher Hemisphere" of our being. Now the question is: Can sight travel to this Higher Hemisphere, or it has to stop at the upper border of the Overmind? Already the Rishi of the Isha Upanishad complained that the golden Overmind was blocking his vision from advancing farther upward. In fact, this Overmind links the lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance with the supramental Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness, but at the same time veils from our sight the greater Truth of the Supermind. The Cosmic Vision of this overmental plane of consciousness, proceeding luminously from the truth, constituted the "golden lid covering the face of the truth" (hiraṇmayeṇa pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṃ mukhaṃ) (Isha Upanishad, Verse 15). In order to seize the Truth in its unalloyed and unmitigated glory, we have to make a last supreme ascent in the climb of our spiritual consciousness and break through the shining shield or Overmind into the realm of the supramental Gnosis. But will our power of sight be able to follow the climb of our consciousness into the four-rung zone of the higher hemisphere? Apparently not. Our "mortal" sight which has functioned in different ways on all the levels up to the Overmind abruptly avows its impotence and bows out. Conclusion: All that is above and beyond may be an object of knowledge but surely not of vision. This is apparently supported by the following verses of Savitri:
Veiled by the Ray no mortal eye can bear.65
65Ibid, p. 57.
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...thought and sight can never know.66
But what That was, no thought or sight could tell.57
Beyond the sight, the last support of form.68
An Omniscient knowing without sight or thought.69
But for sight the situation may not be so hopeless as that. For already the Vedic seers indicated that in the Supermind of the higher hemisphere one does not see the truth "by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye."70
So, can it be that sight itself will undergo a supreme transformation and appear in another essence in the divine world? The following passage from one of Sri Aurobindo's letters leads us to believe that the answer may indeed be a "yes":
The supermind is an entirely different consciousness not only from the spiritualised Mind, but from the planes above spiritualised Mind intervene between it and the supramental plane. Once one passes beyond overmind to supermind, one enters into a consciousness to which the norms of the other planes do not at all apply and in which the same Truth, e.g. Sachchidananda and truth of this universe, is seen in quite a different way and has a different dynamic consequence.71
So there can possibly be a "supramental sight" in the higher hemisphere far beyond the overmental zone which represents the last rung of the lower hemisphere and closes the series in the Ignorance. But before we come to the charactrisation of this supramental sight, it would be better for our appreciation if we dwell a little longer on what the two hemispheres of existence actually signify.
Hemispheres of Existence
Our total being has a higher and a lower hemisphere of functioning, the parārdha and the aparardha of the ancient mystic Wisdom. There is a separation between these two hemispheres, very much acute in practice although unreal in essence.
66Ibid, p. 91. 67 Ibid, p. 308.68Ibid, p. 320. 69Ibid, p. 81.
70Tke Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 462.
71Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, pp. 240-41.
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In reality, the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate truth of all that is easily anywhere in the universe is the triune principle of Sachchidananda: it is a transcendent and infinite and absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss which is the very nature of the divine Being.
Thus Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect of functioning differently in three statuses.
In the Supreme the three are not three but one. Existence, Consciousness and Bliss are there not only inseparable but so much each other that they are not distinct at all.
In the superior planes of manifestation in the higher hemisphere they become triune; that is to say, although they remain inseparable, one aspect can make itself more prominent and base or lead the others.
In the lower planes below in the lower hemisphere, they become separable and even separate in appearance, though not in their secret reality.
Sachchidanand can be experienced in either of its two aspects, static and dynamic. But the "full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness than the supermind."72
Sachchidananda contains all in a passive transcendent consciousness but becomes, sustains and governs everything by an active constituting consciousness.
The higher hemisphere is the realm of the Spirit's perfect and eternal reign. There it manifests its infinities, the unconcealed glories of its illimitable existence (Sat), its illimitable consciousness and knowledge (Chit), its illimitable force and power (Shakti) and its illimitable beatitude (Ananda).
The creative action of Sachchidananda, of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute, has its centre in a fourth principle called Supermind (Mahas or Vijnana). Thus Supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. It alone contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness and is necessary for a Truth-creation.
Supermind is Sachchidananda's "... power of self-awareness and world-awareness, the world being known as within itself and not outside.... [It is] the Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also. Its fundamental character is
72Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 241.
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knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known, because this too is That.73
Thus the Supermind is the divine Gnosis which creates, governs and upholds the worlds. And it is the supramental power that transforms our mind, life and body—not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports impartially everything.
Mind, Life and Matter which constitute the lower hemisphere of existence are a triple aspect of the higher principles of the upper hemisphere but working here in subjection to the principle of Ignorance, and in apparent self-forgetfulness of the divine One in his play of division and multiplicity.
The lower being begins where a veil falls between Spirit in Supermind and Spirit in Mind, Life and Body. (Note: This whole section" Hemispheres of Existence" is a free adaptation of various passages from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Letters on Yoga.)
Here are just a few verses from Savitri referring to this divine Gnosis, the Supermind:
Now mind is all and its uncertain ray,
Mind is the leader of the body and life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul-
Mind is not all his tireless climb can reach,
There is a fire on the apex of the worlds,
There is a house of the Eternal's Light,
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power...
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre in man,
Yet is the source of all things thought and done,
The fount of the creation and its works.
It is the originer of all truth here.74
There is a world of everlasting Light,
In the realms of the immortal Supermind
Truth who hides here her head in mystery,
Her riddle deemed by reason impossible
In the stark structure of material form,
73Ibid, pp. 242-43.
14Savitri, pp.704-05.
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Unenigmaed lives, unmasked her face and there Is Nature and the common law of things.75
Supramental Sight
Knowledge by identity between the subject and the object, between the seer and the seen is the basic attribute of the supramental gnosis but this supramental knowledge or experience by identity carries in it as a secondary part of itself a supramental vision. This vision can come even before there is any identity, as a sort of emanation of light from this secret underlying unity. This vision may at times be detached from the identity as a separate power. The truth or the thing known is then felt as an object subjectively seen in the self.
The supramental eye can see a hundred converging and diverging motions in one glance.
It can envelope in its harmonising vision all that seems to our fragmenting mind nothing but clash and opposition and the collision and strife of numberless contending truths and forces.
Truth to the supramental sight is at the same time single and infinite and the complexities of its play in time and space bring out with an abundant facility the rich significances of the Eternal's many-sided oneness.
The supramental gnosis starts from the truth and shows the appearances in the light of the truth. It sees the thing in itself first, penetrates to its original and eternal essence and nature, and places its processes and properties only as a self-expression of this fundamental nature. Thus the supramental vision would see not merely the thing but all its truths, forces and powers and all the eternities within it.
The supramental gnosis has the direct contact, the immediate vision and the undiluted possession of the truth and has no need of seeking any kind of procedure. The conclusion, if any, would be seen at once in its own right, by its own self-sufficient witness. All the so-called evidence would be seen too at once, along with it, in the same comprehensive figure, not at all as its 'evidence' but as its inseparable 'wings of circumstance.'
The supramental gnosis dwells in the unity and knows by it all the very various diversities. These diversities are to it not diversities making up a constructed unity but a unity constituting its own multitudes.
75Ibid., pp. 661-62.
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The supramental gnosis lives in the infinite and views finite things only in their relation to the infinite and in the sense of the infinite and never as something divorced and different from the infinite.
Finally the supramental gnosis dominates time in one view and links past, present and future in a single continuous map of knowledge, and in an unpartitioned time-vision. (Note. This introductory section on "Supramental Sight" is adapted from various passages of Sri Aurobindo's writings.)
Now, as usual, we quote below some illustrative verses from Savitri showing the character of supramental sight,
Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight.76
A universal vision that unites.77
All was uncovered to his sealless eye.78
Spirit no more is hid from its own view.79
A single and infallible look comes down.80
A wide tower of vision whence all could be seen
And all was centred in a single view.81
He is the vision and he is the seer.82
A kindling rapture joins the seer and seen.83
Sight was a flame-throw from identity.84
This seeing was identical with the seen.85
A plan in the occult eternal Mind
Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight.86
The long flow of its manifesting course
Was held in spirit's single wide regard.87
Bare in that Light Time toiled, his unseen works
Detected, the broad-flung far-seeing schemes
Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls
Were mapped already in that world-wide look.88
76Ibid, p. 661. 77Ibid, p. 325. 78Ibid, p.83. 79Ibid, p. 442.
80Ibid, p. 325. 81Ibid, p. 514. 82Ibid, p. 546. 83Ibid, p. 83.
84Ibid, p. 61. 85Ibid, p. 342.86Ibid, p. 342 . 87Ibid, p. 299.
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Divine's Self-Vision
The ascending march of sight continues even beyond the supramental gnosis and arrives at the point where the cosmic manifestation has not yet begun and the static Sachchidananda is still absorbed in himself. What is the nature of sight there?
By adapting what Sri Aurobindo has said in his commentary on the Isha Upanishad we may venture to say that we arrive, in the status of non-manifestation, at the light of the supreme superconscient in which even the intuitive knowledge of the truth of things based upon the total and integral vision—so characteristic of the supramental sight—passes into self-luminous self-vision of the one Existent. This status of sight is referred to in the following verses from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:
Inspired by silence and the closed eyes' sight.89
Watched by closed eyes, mute faces of the Unborn.90
All light is but a flash from his closed eyes.91
The eyes with their closed lids that see all things.92
We remember here the significant utterance of the Katha Upanishad: "For all that is bright is but the shadow of His brightness and by His shining all this shines."
(Sri Aurobindo's translation of the Upanishadic verse: tameva bhāntaṃ anubhāti sarvaṃ tasya bhāsā sarvam idam vibhāti.)
Then Sachchidananda 'decides' to initiate manifestation and opens his eyes. How does his gaze look like? Let these verses from Savitri speak:
His gaze was the regard of eternity.93
A diamond purity of eternal sight.94
... the Omniscienet's eyes.95
Sachchidananda becomes the 'sole Seer' (ekarshi, Isha Upanishad); he is the only dṛshtā, "He alone who sees." To cite a telling aphorism of Patanjali: tada drastur svarupe avasthanam, "The Seer dwells then m His own status." His unblinking Eye shines extended in the heavens:
89Ibid, p. 36. 90Ibid, p. 80. 91Ibid, p. 681. 92Ibid, p. 41.
93 Ibid., p.682. 94Ibid, p. 297. 95Ibid, p. 691.
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divivā cakṣur atatam. (Rig Veda,). Here are some relevant Savitri verses:
... a still all-seeing Eye above.96
And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye.97
... the movement watched by an unsleeping Eye.98
... in the vigil of a deathless gaze.99
And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze.100
An Eye immense regarding all things done.101
The Divine's Cosmic Vision
The Manifestation begins; the worlds are created. The passive Sachchidanda is now in his role of all-watching, all-governing Cosmic Purusha. To quote Sri Aurobindo: "The Brahman consciousness... is not the Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that Absolute in its outlook on the relative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the governing Transcendent and AH."102 He is the samam brahma, "the Brahman with unbounded equal vision" of the Gita: Here are some Savitri verses which strikingly bring out this impartial all-governing vision of the Divine in his dealing with the cosmos:
Heaven's fixed regard beholds him from above.103
Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good.104
All things he sees with calm indifferent gaze.105
He is the one infinite Person seeing his world.106
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.107
A wide unshaken look at Time's unrest.108
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness to our joy and bale.109
96Ibid, p. 378. 97Ibid, p. 343. 98Ibid, p. 509. 99Ibid, p. 99.
100Ibid, p. 317. 101Ibid, p. 322. 102The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol.
12, p. 198. 103Savitri, p. 336. 104Ibid, p. 283. 105Ibid, p. 646.
106Ibid, p. 656. 107Ibid, p. 482. 108Ibid, p. 36. 109Ibid, p. 5.
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The Vision of the One in the Many
This is a vision every sadhaka on the Integral Path aspires for and seeks to acquire as the sure and secure point d'appui in the ups and downs of his long tortuous journey of Yoga. Indeed, the progressive elevation and enlargement of the divided and limited egoistic sight will lead the sadhaka to a harmonising vision of the One in All and of All in the One. The sadhaka is then able to see that all becoming without exception, irrespective of the plane in which it manifests, is born in the Being of Sachchidananda who himself, of course, transcends all becomings and is always their Lord, Prajāpati. Here is a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the capital importance of this momentous vision of the One in All:
The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life's hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal.110
Here is a passge from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which pin-points in sublime verse the essential character of this vision:
A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form
And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light
Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,
In the truth of a moment, in the moment's soul
Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.
A Spirit who is no one and innumerable,
The one mystic infinite Person of his world
Multiplies his myriad personality,
On all his bodies seals his divinity's stamp
And sits in each immortal and unique.
The Immobile stands behind each daily act,
A background of the movement and the scene,
Upholding creation on its might and calm
And change on the Immutable's deathless poise.
110The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 106-07.
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The Timeless looks out from the travelling hours;
The Ineffable puts on a robe of speech.111
The Vision of the Universal Spirit
This vision does not limit itself to that of the One in the All; it extends itself to cover the integral perception of the All as the One. This universe in its entirety is the very Supreme Self figured in cosmic existence. The vision of the universal Purusha offers the sadhaka a concrete living sight, in vivid images, of the visible greatness of the invisible Divine. The sadhaka can then see the whole world related and unified in the very Body of the Divine. The Soul admitted to this awe-inspiring vision beholds all things in one view, not with a divided, partial, and therefore bewildered seeing of the mental consciousness, but with the all-embracing and therefore all-reconciling courageous vision of the heroic spirit. For the happy consequence of this vision of the Universal Spirit we may read with interest the following passage from Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita:
It is this vision that... liberates, justifies, explains all that is and was and shall be. Once seen and held, it lays the shining axe of God at the root of all doubts and perplexities and annihilates all denials and oppositions. It is the vision that reconciles and unifies. If the soul can arrive at unity with the Godhead in this vision... all even that is terrible in the world loses its terror.112
Now let us take a joyous dip into some verses of Savitri wherein Sri Aurobindo is describing how the Divine intimately manifests himself through all that is in the cosmos,
The universe writing its tremendous sense
In the inexhaustible meaning of a word.
In him the architect of the visible world,
At once the art and artist of his works,
Spirit and seer and thinker of things seen,
Virât, who lights his camp-fires in the suns
And the star-entangled ether is his hold,
111Savitri,p. 662.
112 Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 364.
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Expressed himself with Matter for his speech:
Objects are his letters, forces are his words,
Events are the crowded history of his life,
And sea and land are the pages of his tale,
Matter is his means and his spiritual sign...
His is the dumb will of atom and of clod;
A Will that without sense or motive acts,
An Intelligence needing not to think or plan,
The world creates itself invincibly;
For its body is the body of the
Lord And in its heart stands Virât, King of kings."3
We now propose to enter the forbidden land, for we are daring to speak about the vision of the Supreme Form of the supreme Divine. But does the Divine have any form? Is he not arupa or "formless" as the monistic Vedantin would affirm?
But before attempting to discuss these tricky questions it will be better if we first clearly bring out the nature of the evolving relationship between "form" and "sight"; for, that will incidentally throw some light on the question of whether the Supreme possesses a Supreme Form of his own and, if yes, whether this Form can at all be the object of any sight whatsoever.
On Form and Sight
The very first point we have to carefully note is that "not only are the properties of form, the most obvious such as colour, light, etc., merely operations of Force, but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force again proves to be self-power of conscious-being in a state of energy and activity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with presentation of its own workings."114
Thus the form is the last derivative of an action of the consciousness. A momentous implication follows from this basic fact. Supposing there is an object with its fundamental essential reality unknown and hidden. Now a subject, a viewer, looking at the object will clothe this with a form which will vary depending on the level of consciousness the seer employs while seeing the object. We cannot
113Savitri, pp. 680-81.
114The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 195.
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but recall here a very interesting passage of Sri Aurobindo so beautifully formulated:
Of all that we know we know only the outside; even when we imagine that we have intimately seized the innermost thing, we have touched only an inner external. It is still a sheath of the covering, only it is a second or third or even a seventh sheath [and] not the most outward and visible.115
Thus the forms seen by a particular seer may not be the ordinary vision of man:
Forms he descried our mortal eyes see not.116
Aware of forms to which our eyes are closed.117
A sight opened upon the invisible
And sensed the shapes that mortal eyes see not.118
But forms of whatever subtlety and elevation they be need not always remain an inseparable accompaniment of vision; shapes need not bind the sight always:
Into a vision that surpasses forms."9
My vision saw unblinded by her forms.120
Shape the convention bound no more her sight.121
But sight has the inherent tendency to clothe itself with images, images not surely gross and physical in all cases; but however subtle and sublime and elevated these images may be, they stand as a bar to the ungarbed vision of the truth. Hence a point is reached when the vision in its aspiration after the bare body of the truth seeks to distance itself from the pursuit of the imaged sight:
Here vision fled back from the sight alarmed.122
But even if it is not an "imaged form", some form there must be in every act of vision and sight. Indeed, there are, as we have hinted before, forms and forms of an ever ascending order reaching up to the extreme border of manifestation. For forms are manifestations in
115Essays Divine and Human, C WS A, Vol. 12, p. 188. 116Savitri, p. 44.
117Ibid, p. 356. 118Ibid, p. 540. 119lbid, p. 32.
120Ibid, p. 401. 121Ibid, p. 695. 122Ibid, p. 604.
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Time and Space of something real, not arbitrary inventions out of nothing. Therefore the essentials of form carry always in them secret values and significances of an unseen reality made visible and sensible. In Sri Aurobindo's words: "Form may be said to be the innate body, the inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not only of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life which we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which only the subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware."123 But still there has to be a limiting finis to this ascending march of vision and therefore of shapes and forms. When one reaches the horizons of manifestation, standing on the dividing line of separation between manifestation and non-manifestation, one seems to discover that sight and form cannot cross the line and one is left with a pure perception alone and if this ends the whole nāmarūpatmakaṃjagat, the world of names and forms, vanishes into nothingness.
Let us pause for a moment at this critical juncture of the ascension and savour instead the beauty of the description given by Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri:
His soul abandoned the blind star-field, Space.
Afar from all that makes the measured world,
Plunging to hidden eternities it withdrew
Back from mind's foaming surface to the Vasts
Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.
Above the imperfect reach of word and thought,
Beyond the sight, the last support of form,
Lost in deep tracts of superconscient Light.124
A pure perception was the only power
That stood behind her action and her sight.
If that retired, all objects would be extinct,
Her private universe would cease to be.125
Yet something was there behind the fading scene;
Wherever she turned, at whasoever she looked,
It was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.
The One only real shut itself from Space
123The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol.18, pp. 337-38.
124Savitri, p. 320. 125Ibid, p. 546,
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And stood aloof from the idea of Time.
Its truth escaped from shape and line and hue.
All else grew unsubstantial, self-annulled,
This only everlasting seemed and true,
Yet nowhere dwelt, it was outside the hours.
This only could justify the labour of sight,
But sight could not define for it a form.126
Have we them at last reached the end of the ascent of sight which has been the running theme of our essay? Is there indeed no form, no sight in the Transcendent Absolute? Yet it is a fact that Sri Aurobindo speaks at times of "deatless forms", of "forms in the Eternal's gaze," and of "self-bom shapes":
Vision reposed on a safety of deathless forms.127
Formless creator of immortal forms.128
That live for ever in the Eternal's gaze.129
He met the forms that divinise the sight.130
So in puzzlement we ask ourselves the question: Is the Absolute Reality absolutely formless? Can there not be a supreme Form of the supreme Divine? A human eye, it is well understod, cannot ever hope to vision this Form but is there not a divine Eye, divya caksu, to which this supreme Form may reveal itself? Our next section will be devoted to the discusssion of this point.
Vision of the Supreme Form
A very difficult question confronts us: Whether the Divine has an original supraphysical Form and power of form from which all other forms proceed, or is eternally formless.
The normal conception of the Infinite Being is formlessness but can he not be at once Form and the Formless? For the apparent contrdiction does not correspond to a real opposition and incompatibility. For, the Formless is not an utter negation of the power of formation but the condition for the Infinite's free play of formation.
l26Ibid, p. 547. 127Ibid., p. 329. 128Ibid, p. 661.
l29Ibid, p. 109. 130Ibid, p. 235.
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The Divine is formless but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible shapes of being.131
As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it in his Essays Divine and Human: "Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, nothingness, is a creation of our mind; where it cannot see or conveive, where its object is something beyond its grasp, too much beyond to give even the sense of a vague intangible, then it cries out 'Here there is nothing.' Out of its own incapacity it has created the conception of a Zero. But what in turth is this zero? It is an incalculable Infinite."132
But the doubting reader may still raise a valid question here: Granted that the Formless has given rise to all these myraid forms, but does it follow from that that the Formless itself has a form of its own? In answer to the misgivings on this score expreseed by one of his disciples Sri Aurobindo once remarked that even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless itself Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency; also it would be equally logical to assume that there is an eternal Form of Krishna, a spirit body. Sri Aurobindo further worte:
As for the highest Reality it is no doubt Absolute Existence, but is it only that? Abslute Existence as an abstraction may exclude everything else from itself and amount to a sort of very positive zero; but Absolute Existence as a reality who shall define and say what is or is not in its inconceivable depths, its illimitable Mystery?133
However, leaving aside all metaphysical debate and any misplaced zeal to score a point, which is not after all the purpose of the present essay, let us proceed to the attentive reading of a very sublime passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which describes the austere and heroic attempt of the Mahayogi Aswapati to have a vision of the Ultimate Form and its spiritual afterfmath.
Aswapati's soul was passing on "towards the end which ever begins again."134 It was approaching "the source of all things human and divine." Far beyond the zone of "nameless Gods", even beyond the Abode of Ishwara-Ishwari, "the deathless Two-in-One", "a single
131 Adaptation from The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, p. 337.
132Essays Divine and Human, CWSA, Vol. 12, p. 188.
133Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 83.
134Savitri, p. 295.
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being in two bodies clasped", who "seated absorbed in deep creative joy" sustained "the mobile world", at the fount of all stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.
Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit;
Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks,
Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,
She guards the austee approach to the Alone....
Above them all she stands supporting all,
The sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled
Of whom the world is the inscrutable mask;
The ages are the footfalls of her tread,
Their happenings the figure of her thoughts,
And all creation is her endless act.135
What did Aswapati do then and what followed?
Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
He outstrtched to her his folded hands of prayer.
Then in a sovereign answer to his heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,
And from her raimment's lustrous mystery raised
One arm half-parted the eternal veil.
A light appeared still and imperishable.
Attracted to the large and luminous depths
Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,
He saw the mustic outline of a face.136
And what was the effect of this vision on Aswapti?
Overwhelmed by her implacable light and bliss,
An atom of her illimitable self
Mastered by the honey and lightning of her power,
Tossed towards the shores of her ocean ecstasy,
Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,
He cast from the rent stillness of his soul
A cry of adoration and desire
And the surrender of his boundless mind
And the self-giving of his silent heart.
He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.137
135Ibid, p. 295. l36lbid,pp. 295-96. 137Ibid, p. 296.
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"He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone." We may recall in this conection the stem warning uttered by the supreme Lord to Moses, so that the latter might not try to go near Him and 'see' Him in his original Form. For no consciousness lodged in any material embodiment can ever succeed in doing so. So Moses 'heard' the Lord from beyond the burning bush. {Exodus, 3)
But this inability, although universal now, need not remain a permanent trait of all terrestial being. For "all life is fixrd in an ascending scale"138 and as "adamantine is the evolving Law"139 in the march of the progressive evolution of consciousness, the instrumental transformation also is bound to follow ushering in its wake the development of a New Sight, the divine sight which will be capable of seizing the supreme Form. And this thought and high hope on our part leads us to our next and final Section.
Sight: Its Future Apotheosis
We have at last come to the end of our essay. Although the survey has been rather brief given the scope and importance of the subject, we have been, we hope, able to cover the entire ground, albeit in bare outline. But the question is: Does the 'sight' too end its itineary here? Or, who knows, has it any further evolutionary prospect?
As Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is a Yoga of Integral Transformation, it is understood that it is not merely the inner consciousness which has to undergo divine transformation; even the outer physical system of man, including all its forms and functions, has to submit itself to the unrelenting process of supramental transformation. Sri Aurobindo affirms in one of his last prose writings, The Divine Body, published in 1949 as follows:
These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to what we can now imagine as possible. There could be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the utmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders of supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure Existence, consciousness bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression
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and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.140
Of course, it is the consciousness within that has first to change; for, our means and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily be according to the nature of our consciousness and "it is the consciousness that must radically change if we are to command and not only be occasionally visited by that higher power of knowledge."141
Be that as it may, we can very well visualise that in the overall transformation of the physical system the sense of sight will not be faulted and excepted: this too will have the privilege of undergoing a supremely divine transfiguration.
Now what will be the results of this supramentalisation of sight? Sri Aurobindo has dealt with this question quite in detail in the chapter . entitled The Supramental Sense in his book The Synthesis of Yoga. What follows below is an abridged adapatation of his observations.
The lifting of the level of consciousness from the mind to the supermind and the consequent transformation of the being from the state of the mental to that of the supramental Purusha must bring with it a transformation of all the parts of the nature and all its activities. "There is accordingly a change, a profound transformation in the physical sense, a supramentalising of the physical sight, hearing, touch, etc." that will reveal to us "a quite different view, not merely of life and its meaning, but even of the material world and all its forms and aspects."
The supramental eye will get a new and transfigured vision: its sight will acquire "an extraordinary totality and an immediate and embracing precision in which the whole and every detail [will] stand out at once in the complete harmony and vividness of the significance meant by Nature in the object."
In the supramental seeing one will feel as if "it were the sight of the supreme divine Poet and Artist in which we were participating and there were given to us the full seeig of his truth and intention in his design of the universe and of each thing in the universe."
There will be an unlimited intensity which will make all that is seen "a revelation of the glory of quality and idea and form and colour." The very physical eye will seem them "to carry in itself a spirit and a
140The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol.16, p. 40.
141The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 473.
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consciousness which sees not only the physical aspect of object but the soul of quality in it, the vibration of energy, the light and force and spiritual substance of which it is made."
In this vision of the supramental eye there will always be the revelation of "the soul of the thing seen and of the universal Spirit that is expressing itself in this objective form of its own conscious being."
There will be at the same time a subtle change which will make the sight see in a sort of fourth dimension. The material object will become to this sight something different from what we see, "not a separate object on the background or in the environment of the rest of Nature, but an indivisible part... an expression of the unity of all that we see."
To the supramentalised seeing the material world and material object will cease to be material: they will be seen as spirit itself in a form of itself and a conscious extension. "The whole is a unity—the oneness unaffected by any multitudinousness of objects and details— held in and by the consciousness in a spiritual space and all substance there is conscious substance."142
Such will be the apotheosis of sight when it gets supramentalised in course of its future evolution. Now hireare some verse from Savitri embodying the vision of the future glory of our Eye.
... the secret sight man's blindness missed.
Has opened its view past Time...143
See with the large eye of infinity.144
... a vision which had scanned immortal things.145
The Supreme's gaze looked out through human eyes.146
... the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time.147
The immense regard of Immortality.148
Earth's seeing widen into the infinite.149
And form her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.150
142The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 21, pp. 836-38.
143Savitri, p. 683. 144bid, p. 696. l45Ibid, p. 723.
146Ibid, p. 31. l47Ibid, p. 72. 148Ibid, p. 320.
149Ibid, p. 344. 150Ibid, p. 346.
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The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes.151
And a soul's thoughts looked out from earthbom eyes.152
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes.153
Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight.154
Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,
Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown.155
Yet shall they look up as to peaks of God.156
His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves.157
The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes.158
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze.159
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity.160
And all earth look into the eyes of God.161
So the journey ends. And we are infinitely grateful to Maha-Rishi Maha-Kavi Sri Aurobindo for affording us the favour of walking in his luminous footsteps and following the long march of the ascent of sight from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "closed eyes' sight" of the supreme Superconscient—surely not in living experience as in the case of Maha-Yogi Sri Aurobindo himself but as a meditative intellectual-cum-imaginative exercise. And that is surely no mean gain for us the ordinary mortals with our "clipped outlook" on things.
Jayatu Sri Aurobindah—Victory to Sri Aurobindo.
JUGAL KlSHORE MUKHERJEE
151Ibid, p. 451. 152 Ibid, p. 485. 153 Ibid, p. 526.
154Ibid, p. 370. 155Ibid, p. 537. 156Ibid, p.704.
l60Ibid, p. 279. l58Ibid, p. 450.
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Savitri: The Devikāvyam
In the Sadhana Shastra of the Pooma or Integral Yoga posited by Sri Aurobindo, there are very helpful guides for the aspirants. While the tattva (philosophy) of man's transformation is brought to us by works like The Life Divine and The Supramental Manifestation, the hita (way) is outlined in The Synthesis of Yoga. Here 'synthesis' is not to be an "undiscriminating combination" of existing methods of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo says in this volume what the synthesis must be:
It [the synthesis] must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.1
Thus not only do we learn a good deal about the traditionally demarcated paths of Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, Raja, and Hatha, but we also gain a deep insight into the Tantra Yoga. Sri Aurobindo makes a clarifying statement on the bases of these Yogas quite early in the volume:
In all the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline,— mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered.2
Part Four of The Synthesis of Yoga spells out the steps of the Yoga of Self-Perfection. This is no time-bound system but is to be a life-long affair since the plan involves an endless progression:
1The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 46.
2Ibid., p. 47.
All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the discovery and fulfilment of the divine principle hidden in her which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-conscient and luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world.3
And it so happens that the universal energy is always flowing around us and into us. We have "to connect" with this divine Shakti to get the transformation going. But how can we connect unless we know what it is and how it acts? The massive recordation of Tantra gives the answers with its innumerable ranges of experience which together form "an infinite ocean of all the power and energy of illimitable consciousness, an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight of existence."4 The method of Tantra teaches us to draw the divine Shakti to us so she can transform us. The Integral Yoga brings the two poles of reality—Brahman and Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti—together. It does not countenance the mere formulaic mechanics of Tantra nor does it favour the Vedantic rejection of Shakti as a power of illusion that one must overcome. Here Purusha or the Conscious Soul is the Lord while Prakriti the Nature Soul is the executrix:
Purusha is of the nature of Sat, conscious self-existence pure and infinite: Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit,—it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when the Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming.5
This remarkable integral dynamics of transformation was an experienced fact for Sri Aurobindo who pursued the Yoga. He gained valuable inputs for his Yoga from his spiritual collaborator, the Mother. When Sri Aurobindo turned from ratiocinative arguments in The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga to the seemingly perilous paths of mystic poetry in Savitri, he was not giving in to fanciful conjectures. Even as epics of action record a racial experience, Savitri records a
3Ibid., p. 704.
4The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 21, p. 759.
5Ibid., p. 48.
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spiritual experience which has an equally ancient history, though he also knew that the seeming illogical ratiocination of poetic recordation might not be appreciated easily by the general public:
Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry.6
Though Sri Aurobindo said that Savitri is "only an attempt to render into poetry a symbol of things occult and spiritual," he was not going to give us broken images, constructs that need to be deconstructed and set in place again. That was never the Indian way. Indian aesthesis calls for a fullness in presentation that would not tax the reader unnecessarily, since, as it is, the reader would be struggling with difficult concepts. The epic as we have it is a full kāvya, a scripture that is ideal for pārāyaṇa, for being recited aloud daily. It tells a story. It makes us think, meditate, struggle and then reach to the spaces of a divine calm where all is one seamless Ananda. It comes in the line of the Sapthashati, the Devi Bhagavatam.
Quite early in the epic, we are introduced to the duo of Purusha and Prakriti as the concept is used in Integral Yoga. Even as Aswapati begins his travels in the occult stair which is an image of his Yoga, he gains the "secret knowledge" which explains to him the truth about creation and how he is to go about his task. In the absence of an ability to see Reality as a whole, one is helped by the twofold explanation of Reality which is a constant balance of the static and the dynamic. In this drama of the Supreme, the Supreme as Purusha is seen as the Soul; the same Supreme as Prakriti is seen as Nature and together they are "this whole wide world":
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
6 Savitri, p. 794.
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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.7
It is the Ekam Sat that has caused this twyfold form to make it easier for man to comprehend the Absolute:
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.8
In the original Upakhyana of Vyasa the power of the Supreme as Action (Prakriti) comes to Aswapati with the promise of a daughter described by Goddess Savitri as kanya tejasvini, though the king had prayed for sons at first (putra me bahavo devi bhaveyu kulapāvanāh). At the same time, the Goddess makes it clear that the boon she was granting had its origin in Brahma. It was the Creator who had ordained that the child be a girl. While we should not be carried away by the gender-differentiation in its minutiae, the fact that the incarnation is cast as a female figure is no doubt to draw our minds to the efficacy of drawing close to Tantra in the Integral Yoga.
Sri Aurobindo was thus enabled to lay his track on the lines of Vedanta and Tantra with felicity. He prepares us for the leaning towards Tantra by the Yoga of Aswapati. The traveller of the worlds has an astonishing range of experiences after gaining the secret knowledge regarding the Purusha-Prakriti combine. All these experiences are reflections of the varied facets of the Nature-Soul within us which are revealed to Aswapati by his Conscious-Soul. He becomes "conscious" and lo! he is able to see and understand the workings of Nature in her entirety. A beginning is made with the mastery of occult powers by the "conscious" (as against persons driven by blind desire to control Nature) Aswapati:
Incalculable in their wizard modes,
Immediate and invincible in the act,
Her secret strengths native to greater worlds
Lifted above our needy limited scope,
The occult privilege of demigods
And the sure power-pattern of her cryptic signs,
7bid., p. 63. 8Ibid., p. 67.
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Her diagrams of geometric force,
Her potencies of marvel-fraught design
Courted employment by an earth-nursed might.9
The vast literature of Tantra, the very best in this path, is distilled and presented in evocative poetry by Sri Aurobindo. The occult siddhis are not brushed aside as fraudulent but accepted by him as part of Sat, the Existence. He also points out that whenever the Tantra Yogin seemed to get out of control because of the nature of the siddhis, the Supreme as the Conscious-Soul steps in and applies the needed correctives:
Her dangerous moods and arbitrary force
She surrendered to the service of the soul
And the control of a spiritual will.
A greater despot tamed her despotism.10
All the travels of Aswapati on the world-stair draw a good deal from Tannic lore which in turn has its beginning in the hymns of the Vedas. For, the Tantra speaks of such stairs of gods and goddesses too:
It teaches that in this creation, apart from this world in which we live, there exist other worlds and universes in serried sequence spreading over a rising tier of Consciousness and planes. There is one Supreme Deity presiding over every thing. He does so with a gradation of his powers, personalities and emenations, vibhutis, with a hierarchy of gods and goddesses who perform the functions delegated to them, deriving their authority from the Supreme Godhead. These are posited in the various planes on the rising tier of Consciousness. These are distinct and can be distinguished by their particular forms, ornaments, weapons and retinue. The numerous devatas help man in his spiritual progress, aid him in his uphill task of reaching the summit, the Supreme Deity.11
Something close to such a step-by-step progression does take place in Aswapati's travels that culminate with a vision of the Divine Mother. Of course the elaborate rituals of Tantric worship are not found in Savitri. The rituals of Tantra descended from the Vedic Yajna and
9Ibid, p. 83. 10 Ibid., p. 87.
11 S. Shankaranarayanan, Sri Chakra (1979), p. 2.
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continue to be a part of temple worship. T.V. Kapali Sastri says that though there is a parallel between the Tantric synthesis of jnānapāda (knowledge-part), yoga-pāda, kriyā-pāda (external ceremonies) and caryā-pāda(code of conduct), and the New Synthesis of Sri Aurobindo, there is an altogether different turn in the approach to sadhana:
Not that this system [the Aurobindonian synthesis] has been modelled after the Tantric, though it is true that the Tantric truths have gone into the making of it even as the vedantic conceptions have. But they do not, by any means, form the prototypes; they are important elements... for the realisation of the fundamental truths in one's being, for the development of social psychology in consonance with the principles enunciated and finally for the actual working out of the Unity of man.12
Sri Aurobindo has also given much thought to perfecting the instrument of his message, the blank verse in Savitri. The Vedic Rishis gave particular attention to the sound-patterns of their hymns, for the Goddess Vak was the mediatrix between the human and the divine:
When the Rishi makes an invocation by a Rik he contacts, with the power of consciousness packed in the Rik, the supernal ether and in the Ether, the particular god who vibrates in resonance to the particular frequency of the sound symbol. The Vak itself is the vehicle on which the gods come in response to the prayer of the Rishi.
Adopting this Vedic theory of Vak into its system, the Tantra has developed this line with an eye on practical utility so much that the Tantra is popularly known as mantra shāstra and acclaimed as a great sadhanā shāstra, practical science."13
Apart from researches in linguistics, Sri Aurobindo has written extensively on the hymns to Saraswati (Vak, Ila, Mahi) in the Vedas, and on classical prosody. He sought to draw the mantra-power into English and Savitri turned out to be his vast field for experiments:
Savitri... is blank verse without enjambment (except rarely)— each line a thing by itself and arranged in paragraphs of one,
12 Collected Works of T. V. Kapali Sastri, Vol. I (1977), p. 294.
13SriChakra, p. 3.
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two, three, four, five lines (rarely a longer series), in an attempt to catch somethings of the Upanishadic and Kalidasian movement, so far as that is a possibility in English....
In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative.14
Any approach to the epic has to keep in mind this fact that it is Sri Aurobindo's yogic consciousness that is transmitting mystic experiences that have been seen and felt. His attempts to set them in mantric poetry have often succeeded very well, the beat of the rhythm, the seal of certitude in this message, for instance in the following:
Death is a passage, not the goal of our walk:
Some ancient deep impulsion labours on:
Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash,
Carried from birth to birth, from world to world.
Our acts prolong after the body's fall
The old perpetual journey without pause.15
In the Book of the Divine Mother, language and thought coalesce into perfect poetry full of revelatory vibrations. There are four cantos which take in the final segment of Aswapati's Yoga. There is great poetry in these cantos but then, it is not for mere aesthetic enjoyment. Many of the passages are transformatory in character. This Book makes one understand the Mother's statement: "Reading Savitri is itself Yoga."
When we come to this Book, Aswapati has already had an experience of Paradisal felicity in the plane of Greater Knowledge. This is the realm of vijnāna far above the realm of Mind. He had achieved the "freedom from the known" that was the aim of J. Krishnamurti's philosophy, an escape from all kinds of conditioning which come in the way of self-awareness. But this is not all. How about the next step? There is no wooliness in the Aurobindonian vision, While freedom from the known is a vital step, one must also know how to enter the unknown lest one fall between the two and be lost for ever. Actually this Unknown is a realm of splendour that becomes the base of Tantra. We invoke the splendours of this Unknown through our worship of cosmic godheads. While it is
14 Savitri, pp. 727-28. 15 Savitri, p. 197.
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difficult enough to comprehend the whole of earth, it is impossible to envision the Beyond in its entirety:
The known released him from its limiting chain,
He knocked at the doors of the Unknowable.
Thence gazing with an immesurable outlook
One with self s inlook into its own pure vasts,
He saw the splendour of the spirit's realms,
The greatness and wonder of its boundless works,
The power and passion leaping from its calm,
The rapture of its movement and its rest.16
Reading this canto is like watching the Sri Chakra used for worship in Sri Vidya Upasana. Tier upon tier the alert Immortals, the sun-eyed Guardians, the immutable Lords were seen by Aswapati:
His self s infinities began to emerge,
The hidden universes cried to him;
Eternities called to eternities
Sending their speechless message still remote.
Arisen from the marvel of the depths
And burning from the superconscious heights
And sweeping in great horizontal gyres
A million energies joined and were the One.17
Aswapati was now strengthened by the primal Energy, the Adya Shakti. The traditional Sri Chakra which deals with colourful images and names helps us to understand the mystic diction of Sri Aurobindo, as Aswapati prepares to enter the realms of the Unknowable, the summit where the Divine Mother resides as an Empress, Sri Mata Sri Maharajni:
The Sri Chakra which is the abode of the Supreme Goddess, the Divine Mother, is the residence as well of all her emanations, powers and personalities. Each one of them is distinct, has a definite function to perform and has a definite and distinct place in the hierarchy. Posited in different planes in the rising tier of consciousness, in the pyramidal structure of the Meru, each one has its functioning in the particular sphere of cosmic existence, is important in its own way and fulfils a purpose in the scheme of things. They all derive their strength, their very existence
16 Ibid., p. 298. 17 Ibid., p. 300.
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from the Divine Mother, carry out her behest and accomplish her work in the various spheres allotted to them. Radiating from her, they also converge to her. When the aspirant comes within their province of influence and action, their help is there for him to enlarge his existence progressively so that he may finally perceive the source from which they all have emanated.18
To the source, then. But by its very nature this is Unknowable! Aswapati has now come here to knock "at the doors of the Unknowable" and the Book of the Divine Mother begins at this point of timeless time in Aswapati's Yoga. This is a vital moment in the sadhana because it is here that we learn not to sit back in self-satisfaction but to press forward, fully knowing that greater hurdles would block the way. This is the Yoga of an endless progression, for what is there in creation that can really satisfy man's spirit? The canto opens with deceptive simplicity:
All is too little that the world can give:
Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time
And cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst.19
There is also another dimension to this achievement of the Yogin at self-transcendence. He has striven and he has gained. But how about the human race? Must it go on suffering as one blindfolded unto eternity? Not unoften do we use the term 'Collective Yoga' when speaking of Sri Aurobindo's vision. The collectivity of humans should not be left behind by the fortunate few who have climbed the stair that leads to the sun of knowledge. Probably it is to instill in man the truism that "no man is an island", the Divine has imbedded chip of compassion in his heart. To the high-minded Yogin, none of his personal achievements brings unalloyed Ananda. As a true Vedantin, he thinks of "the other" all the time. When "the other" remains in the slush of ignorance, how can he enjoy the fruits of his strenuous Yoga? Such a Vedantic all-embracing emotion and compassion strike Aswapati even as he stands on the cutting edge of the Known:
All he had been and all towards which he grew
Must now be left behind or else transform
Into a self of That which has no name.
Alone and fronting an intangible Force
18 Sri Chakra, p. 47. 19Savitri, p. 305.
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Which offered nothing to the grasp of Thought,
His spirit faced the adventure of the Inane.
Abandoned by the worlds of form he strove.20
At the same time, the Tantric mode that helps one "to connect" with the Unknowable helps Aswapati not to be lost in the "Everlastingness cut off from Time." There has been a single-minded meditative quest relying on the "Saviour Name" and Aswapati retains his closeness with Prakriti. Else, he would not have thought of "the other". The Mind has ceased to be, but not the spirit and it is the spirit which unites creation while Mind but divides it. In that deep of meditative silence when all else has ceased to be, the spirit of Aswapati calls out in silence. There is at once an answer. This creation has come to be because of the mātrutva in Existence, and so a child's call is always answered. This Motherhood is eternal, close, a never-failing help; the reason is that it has sprung from the glance of the Purusha as the multifoliate Prakriti.
In Tantra, this Motherhood is given a clear-cut gender-image of Lalita Tripurasundari. Though the Lalita Sahasranama lists a thousand names for her, actually her names cannot be exhausted. Seen seated on the lap of Shiva-Kameshwara, the Supreme has taken the form of a woman out of compassion. Hence she is called Lalita-Ambika: the beautiful Mother. The Lalita Sahasranama opens with the word Sri Mata and concludes with Ambika to underline this compassionate motherhood of the Supreme. Ambika is a word that connotes the mother coming to the child on her own out of loving anxiety.
Such a scene is enacted before us in the second canto of the Book of the Divine Mother. Aswapati finds himself in a tremendous stillness. No more joy or sorrow for him in this "boundless silence of the Self," but he understands that a personal release is not his aim. A world's desire to escape from the ills with which it is entangled is pressing him to become articulate. An escape into Nirvana is not in the agenda of Aswapati who represents the human family. Hence he is attentive to the voice within, the conscience that keeps track of all human movements here and in the beyond:
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,
And immortality in the secret heart,
20 bid., p. 307.
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The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm,
The passion and the beauty of the Bride,
The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,
The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?
This too is Truth at the mystic fount of Life.21
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Ananda: How to realise the Ananda, "the mystic fount of Life" then? Sri Aurobindo's The Mother speaks of this Ananda repeatedly. Identifying oneself completely with the Divine Mother brings us this gift:
You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, Ananda of her Ananda.22
This is the language of Tantra without its external ritualism. T.V. Kapali Sastri has also indicated the triple form of the Divine Mother described by Sri Aurobindo in The Mother as the Matustrayividya with Tantrik elements:
The Transcendent Shakti: Mulashakti
The Universal Power: Vishveshvari
The Individual Mother: Jivabhutā
Again and again we are drawn to the Mother idea in Savitri for Sri Aurobindo found this to be the most potent instrument to lead man to the life divine. Aswapati, the forerunner, has nothing to help him as he stands poised on the edge of being, except the sterling faith in the Mother. Such "a fixed and unfailing aspiration" is answered by "a supreme Grace from above":
The Presence he yearned for suddenly drew close.
Across the silence of the ultimate Calm,
Out of a marvellous Transcendence' core,
A body of wonder and translucency
As if a sweet mystic summary of her self
Escaping into the original Bliss
Had come enlarged out of eternity,
Someone came infinite and absolute.
21 Ibid., pp. 310-311. 22 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 18.
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A being of wisdom, power and delight,
Even as a mother draws her child to her arms,
Took to her breast Nature and world and soul.23
The Vishvesvari, Universal Mother had manifested in answer to the aspirant-Rishi's mantric meditation. As in days of old when the various gods and goddesses descended to the earth to answer the call of the Vedic seers, Mother Savitri appeared now before Aswapati. In Vyasa's description of the goddess no details are given except that she was a rūpini:
Then, O Yudhistira, rising from the sacrificial flames in her splendid form she appeared in front of the King, exceedingly glad as she was...24
It is the joy of a mother who finds her son to be a perfect, noble person. Sri Aurobindo uses almost the same description for rūpini: "a beautiful and felicitous lustre". This is the Mother of all godheads and all strengths / Who, mediatrix, binds earth to the Supreme."25 The Presence brings him the understanding of the all-embracing Nature-Soul while burning away all falsities, ignorance, self-doubts, depressions and frustrations. At this moment when Aswapati recognises the Mulashakti as Vishveshwari, Sri Aurobindo brings together with electrical ease the Vedantic and Tantric elements in our spiritual heritage. In fact, we would not be far off the mark if we consider this canto, the Adoration of the Divine Mother, to be a handbook of Integral Yoga. As Sri Aurobindo says:
Veda and Vedanta are one side of the One Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another; in this yoga all sides of the truth are taken up, not in the systematic forms given them formerly but in their essence, and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya. Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organised powers—all these could not be taken as they were, for the integral yoga needs to develop its own forms and processes; but the ascent of the consciousness through the
23 Savitri,p. 312. 24 R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, p. 4.
25 Savitri, p. 313.
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centres and other Tantric knowledge are there behind the process of transformation to which as much importance is given by me— also the truth that nothing can be done except through the force of the Mother.26
Indeed, Aswapati's coming face to face with the Divine Mother in this canto cannot have been just an episode in the vast epic of Savitri. The Presence in Savitri is no fiction. It is an experienced reality for Sri Aurobindo; for there is verily a shower of overhead poetry that reveals the essence of Tantra, the Yoga that unites the aspirant with the Supreme. The noble accents of Sanskrit hymnology to Lalita Tripurasundari can be heard in this sublime passage:
At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base.
Here is the mystery the Night conceals;
The spirit's alchemist energy is hers;
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The magnet of our difficult ascent,
The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
The joy that beckons from the impossible,
The Might of all that never yet came down.
All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
And break the seals on the dim soul of man
And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.27
As Aswapati gazes at this Presence, he is invaded by a rare spiritual strength while his very nature is filled with bliss. Indeed, he does not seem to possess anything now except "a hunger of infinite bliss." How does one explain this infinite bliss, Brahmananda?
As we read this mantric passage, we realise that here is a block that stands by itself outside the epic too, an incandescent prayer of the Rishi placed within the framework of epic action. There are such wonderfully articulated prayers in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata
26Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 73.
27Ibid.,p. 314.
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and the Bhagavata. Stotras like Aditya Hridayam, Vishnu Sahasranamam and Gajendra's Prayer have been priceless gifts for the sadhaka down the centuries. Such prayers stop us on our tracks and we gain a rare Ananda by reciting them while reading the epic or whenever we feel drawn to the prayers themselves and are closeted with them.
The prayer in the Adoration of the Divine Mother stops the epic action for a moment. The passage itself takes us to Sri Lalita Sahasranama. This important scripture for Sri Vidya Upasana (Tantra) begins with the words Sri Mata: the Divine Mother. The opening in the prayer "At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate" draws us straight to a passage in the Sahasranama:
Vimarśarupini Vidya Vijadadhijgatprasuh;
Sarvavyaadhiprasamani Sarvamruthyunivarini;
Agraganya Achinthyarupa Kalikalmashanasini;
Katyayani Kalahantri Kamalakshnanishevita.
Here is a series of affirmations that envision the cosmic powers of the Divine Mother as Lalita, the Beautiful Mother. She is vimarśarūpini, an explanation of the inexplicable brilliance of the Supreme. She is the Word that explains, since Vak is vimarśa. The Divine Mother is Vak. She is the true knowledge which explains the Supreme in the right way. That is why Kalidasa compared Parvati to the Word that explains the Meaning which is Parameshwara: vāgarthāviva sampriktau vāgarthapratipathtaye: jagatah pitarau vande pārvati parameśwarau.
The Divine Mother is viyat-adi-jagat-prasuh, the Mother of space and all else. The Taittiriya Upanishad deals at length with creation which began with space: Air, fire, water, earth, crops and food followed one after another leading finally to the creation of man.28
The Divine Mother cures all illnesses, both physical and mental: sarva vyādhi prasamani. She guards us from all kinds of unnatural deaths (apamrityu, akālamrityu, kālamrityu, etc.) and by giving us knowledge, she leads us to deathlessness (Realisation) thus saving us from death for all time.
She is agragaṇyā, the first to appear before our thoughts when we are in trouble. When we find ourselves helpless, she is very much
28I have received much illumination from S.V. Radhakrishna Sastri's Tamil commentary on Sri Lalita Sahasranama for comparing the lines from Savitri with the phrases in the Sahsaranama.
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near us, close to us, part of us, guarding us as a mother guards the naked, newborn babe. She is achintyarūpā, one whose presence chases away all worries, one who is beyond our knowing.
The Divine Mother is also kālikalmasha-nāshini, for she destroys all the effects of Kali Age like pride, jealousy and hate. When we compartmentalise ourselves into the prisons of our dimunitive ego, meditation upon the Mother breaks down these shells of separativity, increases friendship and goodness so that we do not gather bad Karmas. She is Katyayani who never fails to answer our prayers. It was by praying to the Mother as Katyayani that the Gopis received Krishna, the Delight of Existence. So Katyayani is one who gives us joy, an unending Ananda.
She is kālahantri, the Destroyer of Yama. As Shivashakti she had destroyed Yama and saved Markandeya. Death approaches us only wehen we cease to meditate upon her. But when we invoke her, Time that brings Death closer to us keeps away.
The Divine Mother is worshipped by the sustainer Vishnu, Kamalaksha Nishevita. Hence she sustains us all without a moment's respite.
These cosmic powers of the Divine Mother (Vishveshwari) get engaged in the Adoration of the Divine Mother.
viyadhādhi jagatprasuh:
At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call.
kālahantri:
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base.
achintyarūpā:
Hers is the mystery the Night conceals.
kāli-kalmasha-nāsini:
The spirit's alchemist energy is hers.
vimarsha-rūpini:
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she
A power of silence in the depths of God.
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vidyā:
She is the Force, the inevitable Word.
agraganyā:
The magnet of our difficult ascent
The sun from which we kindle all our suns.
kātyāyani:
The Light that leans from the Unrealised Vasts
The joy that beckons from the impossible.
kamalāksha nishevitā:
The Might of all that never yet came down.
sarva vyādhi prasamaṇi
sarva mrityu nivārani:
All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
And break the seals on the dim soul of man
And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.
Coming face to face with the Divine Mother, Aswapati is quite overpowered and at the same time rejuvenated in spirit, the aim promised by Tantra Yoga:
:
Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,
Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.
This known as in a thunder-flash of God,
The rapture of things eternal filled his limbs;
Amazement fell upon his ravished sense;
His spirit was caught in her intolerant flame.29
The Yoga of the king has come to a triumphant conclusion with the manifestation of the Divine Mother. How shall he make use of the Presence now? In the original epic we find Aswapati asking for a boon of children to perpetuate his race. But the Mother's presence changes the equations. It has always been so. We know of Swami Vivekananda as the youngster Naren being advised by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to go and pray to Mother Kali for alleviating his (Naren's) poverty as the family was in dire straights:
29 Savitri, p. 315.
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At nine o'clock in the evening, Narendranath went to the Kali temple. Passing through the courtyard, he felt within himself a surge of emotion and his heart leapt with joy in anticipation of the vision of the Divine Mother. Entering the temple, he cast his eyes upon the image and found the stone figure to be nothing else but the living Goddess, the Divine Mother Herself, ready to give him any boon he wanted—either a happy worldly life or the joy of spiritual freedom. He was in ecstasy. He prayed for the boon of wisdom, discrimination, renunciation and Her uninterrupted vision, but forgot to ask the Deity for money. He felt great peace within as he returned to the Master's room and, when asked if he had prayed for money, was startled.30
In our epic also we find that Aswapati ha$ ceased to think of his own dynasty, his Madra kingdom, his personal hegemony over a portion of the earth. After the yogic experiences he has been through, his vision has embraced all creation. He now addresses himself to the task of saving the entire human race and transforming it, and avoid the mistake of Pururavas who had been satisfied by the fulfilment of his personal need for Urvashi, while the earth was abandoned to Death and Fate. At this point of time in the epic we watch a new Aswapati who has been shaped by the transformatory adoration of the divine powers of the Mother:
But now his being was too wide for self;
His heart's demand had grown immeasurable:
His single freedom could not satisfy,
Her light, her bliss, he asked for earth and men.31
The Divine Mother: Sri Mata Maharajni Srimat Simhasaneshwari. Lalitambika: Sweet, Beautiful Mother. He must not lose this Presence by remaining dumb; for, here was the golden doorway opening into the Next Future. Nor can he afford to lose his connection with the world below in this comforting experience of being a baby on the lap of its mother. In fact, Aswapati does not even reject Inconscience as he sits in meditation, the vital base of Tantra. When we open the follow-up canto, the House of the Spirit and the New Creation, we see him seated in poised tranquillity,
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In the unapproachable stillness of his soul,
Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone,
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.32
No more will he desire for any personal gain! As he makes this firm resolve, a mighty transformation comes upon him and he automatically falls in rhythm with the steps of the entire creation:
He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.
Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.
A last and mighty transformation came.
His soul was all in front like a great sea
Flooding the mind and body with its waves;
His being, spread to embrace the universe,
United the within and the without
To make of life a cosmic harmony,
An empire of the immanent Divine-
One grew the Spirit's secret unity,
All nature felt again the single bliss.33
A certainty floods into him. All shall be yet well with this creation. When Death, Ignorance, Nescience, Inconscience and the rest are slayed by a master-act of the divine force, the world gets transformed into a divine spaceship. Ananda will be the reigning Law. Aswapati's vision recaptures the Tantric mode of understanding Existence as the Meru. No more compartmentalisations or limitations though there is a seeming hierarchy: "For worlds were many, but the Self was one." It is the Ananda that courses through one's veins which have been freed of the knots of ignorance, when one's power rises from the base of the spine to the crown on the head and pours it forth into the cleared channels of one's being, an image of the effect at the conclusion of the Kundalini's adventure:
He felt the footsteps of a million wills
Moving in unison to a single goal.
A stream ever new-bom that never dies,
Caught in its thousandfold current's ravishing flow,
With eddies of immortal sweetness thrilled,
32 Ibid., p. 317. 35 Ibid., pp. 318-19.
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He bore coiling through his members as they passed
Calm movements of interminable delight,
The bliss of a myriad myriads who are one.34
The Integral Yoga calls upon the seed idea of Tantra to help the aspirant move in his path with ease. Hence, Sri Aurobindo does not ask for the complete cessation of thought and action. Instead, he wants the aspirant to open his vision inward so that the sights he meets can help him achieve transformation. Aswapati acting out this approach now sees an externalised image of this thoughts that resemble the different āvaranas or coverings in Sri Chakra where the one Divine is also seen as the many in gradations of divinity:
He saw a hierarchy of lucent planes
Enfeoffed to this highest kingdom of God-state.
Attuning to one Truth their own right rule
Each housed the gladness of a bright degree,
Alone in beauty, perfect in self-kind,
An image cast by one deep truth's absolute,
Married to all in happy difference.
Each gave its powers to help its neighbours' parts,
But suffered no diminution by the gift;
Profiteers of a mystic interchange,
They grew by what they took and what they gave,
All others they felt as their own complements,
One in the might and joy of multitude.35
All the facets that make up the human beings—life, mind, spirit— work in harmony in the transformed person. But Aswapati is Aswapati still. While one part of him is electrically free in the spaces of Ananda, another part of him remains conscious of the world below. Even as he bears witness to the splendours above, his soul articulates the earth's prayer set as a poetic image of incalculable charm by Sri Aurobindo:
In the centre of his vast and fateful trance
Half-way between his free and fallen selves,
Interceding twixt God's day and the mortal's night,
Accepting worship as its single law,
Accepting bliss as the sole cause of things,
54 Ibid., p. 325. 35 Ibid., p. 326.
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Refusing the austere joy which none can share,
Refusing the calm that lives for calm alone,
To her it turned for whom it willed to be.
In the passion of its solitary dream
It lay like a closed soundless oratory
Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor
Lit by a single and untrembling ray
And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer.36
For the moment we brush aside all the tomes of philosophical exegesis, the complications of metaphysical calculations and the whirring chaos of Nature's activities. The Nature-soul in man itself is now withdrawn into a single-pointed prayer from the depths of the heart. It is the anxious call of the lost child searching for its mother in a crowded bazaar, interiorised as the prayer of Aswapati. This is the ultimate point of any Yoga, the calling out to the Mother, the Mediatrix, the puruṣakāra bhūtā, the one who holds our hand in darkness and light, speaks to us of what is good for us, and sustains us in such a way that we grow into the divine as a child grows into strong youth and from thence to the wisdom of maturity.
It cannot be stressed too often that Sri Aurobindo has used Tantric elements in Savitri but has scrupulously avoided the ritualism associated with the Tantra Yoga as it has been practised since the Puranic times. Thus his description of the Divine Mother remains universal and does not use symbols like the various weapons, auspicious things like flowers and the sugarcane symbolising plenty. The Divine Mother is brought to us by Sri Aurobindo in the chariot of his magnificent blank verse; it is for us to recognise her, welcome her to the temple of our heart and consecrate her on the lotus within:
The One he worshipped was within him now:
Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed, a mighty Face
Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;
Lids, wisdom's leaves, drooped over rapture's orbs.
A marble monumet of ponderings, shone
A forehead, sight's crypt, and large like ocean's gaze
Towards Heaven two tranquil eyes of boundless thought
Looked into man's and saw the god to come.37
When Sri Aurobindo says that Aswapati thrills to the core with
36 Ibid., p. 332. 37 Ibid., pp. 334-35.
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happiness all at once is said. The Divine Mother's descent into the aspirant at this moment transforming him entirely into a being of Ananda can be understood in the light of what Sri Aurobindo says about the seven Suns of the Supermind making a steady and inexorable descent into man's material body in terms of Tantrik diction:
1.The Sun of Supramental Truth (Descent into the Sahasradala)
2.The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power (Descent into the Ajna Chakra, the centre between the eyes)
3.The Sun of Supramental Word (Descent into Throat)
4.The Sun of Supramenetal Love, Beauty, Bliss (Descent into the Heart-Lotus)
5.The Sun of Supramental Force (Descent into the Navel)
6.The Sun of Life-Radiances (Descent into the Penultimate Centre)
7.The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy (Descent into the Muladhara)38
One is naturally reminded of the opening stanza of the mantric poem, Rose of God:
Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,
Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!
Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,
Passion-flower of the nameless, bud of the mystical Name.39
The Mother-Son confrontation in the Vision and the Boon takes place within Aswapati, in the "listening spaces of the soul." The Divine Mother advises him not to be hasty in asking for a transformation of the life on earth into a life divine. Let evolution take its own course so that the decree of Fate need not be questioned or overruled for the general mankind. Of course she will not deny him anything since his Yoga cannot have been in vain. So she takes him back to the original intention when he had begun the tapasya. That was for the gift of a child to continue the racial line in Madra:
My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force.
Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.
38See The Hour of God, SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 27.
39 Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 584.
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Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;
Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.40
But it is this same Divine Mother who has now given Aswapati the strength to persevere and stop not till the goal is reached. How can the Mother still remain indifferent to the sufferings of her creation? Again, how can he have peace of mind with the comforts and joys of his palace further enriched by the gift of a progeny, when the rest of creation continues to suffer in the grip of Death and Nescience? For Aswapati this earth is not merely a material universe. It is verily Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Mother herself! The passage in Savitri is not unlike the cry wrung from the agonised soul of Sri Aurobindo when he wrote to Mrinalini on his three "frenzies":
... whereas others regard the country as an inert piece of matter and know it as the plains, the fields, the forests, the mountains and the rivers, I know my country as the Mother, I worship her and adore her accordingly. What would a son do when a demon sitting on his mother's breast prepared to drink her blood? Would he sit down content to take his meals or go on enjoying himself in the company of his wife and children, or would he rather run to the rescue of his mother? I know I have the strength to uplift this fallen race; not a physical strength, I am not going to fight with a sword or a gun, but with the power of knowledge...41
Sri Aurobindo had used his brahmatej in the national arena but had withdrawn to the cave of tapasya at Pondicherry, because now he had to think of rescuing not merely a single nation but the entire human family from the grip of Ignorance and Death. He had striven with single-minded application and had marked some signal triumphs. Aswapati is a projection of Sri Aurobindo's own aspirations for uplifting this fallen race of humanity that had become a prey to several ills due to involution. Must this repetitive death-birth-death cycle go on for ever? When can mankind step upwards leaving behind the darknesses of the mental plane? Aswapati had seen all the future possibilities for this marvellous tiny dot in eternity called Man. Already in the far distant was he not watching the Hunters of Joy, the
40Ibid., p 341.
41K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo: a bibliography and a history, p. 200.
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Seekers after Knowledge, the Climbers in the quest of Power?42
I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
Into the fallen human sphere they came.43
Aswapati prays for a manifestation to help humanity proceed forward quickly towards the promised future. The times call for a leader who can use all the powers of the mind and heart to draw humanity onto the right path and make them march to the life-sustaining goal:
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.44
The Divine Mother can be indifferent no more. The Yoga of Savitri is tuned only to success in one's endeavours and so we hear the voice of the Divine Mother, Vishweshwari, promising an individual power to incarnate on the earth, the jivabhutā who will wage the war on humanity's behalf and save the future of man. This incarnation will be an image of love, wisdom, strength and also something more. It will be an image of Ananda, a positive Power; for, "from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze."
One of the important ways used by our ancients to help the aspirant get settled in the concept of the Supreme's motherhood is to see the
42Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 523.
43Savitri, pp. 343-44. 44Ibid., p. 345.
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Divine Mother in different stages of age which is an easily assimilable experience for man who is controlled by the concept of Time. The Upakhyana of Vyasa briefly touches upon this aspect in just two verses:
The Princess grew like the goddess Fortune herself incarnate, fair and beautiful; then, in course of time she entered into youthful maidenhood.
With large hips and a slender waist graceful as she was, like a golden statue, people beholding her believed that some heavenly damsel had descended amidst them.45
But the Tantra texts deal extensively with the different ages of the Mother. A one-year old girl is called Sandhya, a two-year old is Saraswati, when she is seven years old she is called Chandika, a sixteen-year old is Shodasi. Shodasi's Mantra is made of sixteen syllables. The Tamil culture has perfected a type of poetic genre called Pillai-t-tamizh. Here the deity is seen as passing through different stages of childhood, boyhood/girlhood and youth. Thus, when we read a Pillai-t-tamizh on Meenakshi or Andal we go through the stages of the Divine Mother as a babe waving one hand (the Chenkeerai-stage), the babe in the cradle, the child clapping its hands, blowing a kiss, the toddler moving forward like a tiny elephant, calling out to the moon to come and play with the baby, building sand castles as a little girl, playing 'house' with tiny utensils and winging to-and-fro in a golden swing. The sacred and the secular, the familiar baby at home and the Supreme Mother are thus brought together into an incandescent whole making us very, very close to divinity.
Sri Aurobindo follows this idea and we have the canto the Birth and Childhood of the Flame, a whole canto that had been inspired by a single term in Vyasa: kanya tejasvini. This and the following the Growth of the Flame are the Aurobindonian Pillai-t-tamizh for us. Besides, unlike the Upakhyana of Vyasa, Savitri's poem is cast in the epic scale, a Devi Kavyam, a Golden Poem. Hence we have also to grow along with the idea of the Devi; and so we are granted a double vision through the magic of his poetry to watch the human and the divine as an indivisible whole. We see Savitri as one among her kind and yet, somehow, different. Her companions sense this 'difference' too, albeit dimly:
45 R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, p. 8.
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A key to a Light still kept in being's core,
The sun-word of an ancient mystery's sense,
Her name ran murmuring on the lips of men
Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse...
Admired, unsought, intangible to the grasp
Her beauty and flaming strength were seen afar
Like lightning playing with the fallen day,
A glory unapproachably divine.46
It then does not come as a surprise to us when Aswapati,—who has been musing one day on the way humanity has not heeded the call of ever so many seers, sages and poets,—finds Savitri advancing towards him "like a shining answer from the gods." Because she has come to this earth, "a gold-leaf palimpsest of sacred births," all will yet be well. Aswapati asks her to go and find her soul-mate. His words are like the Mantra that a Yogin absorbs in his very cells, and Savitri starts on her quest.
In this ancient culture of varied religious and spiritual quests, the Puranas have played an important part in getting the aspirant accustomed to certain ideas. For instance, the universal deities take an individual form and not only walk on this earth but go through all the motions of life as lived by ordinary man. A goddess as a Princess going in search of a consort is familiar to the Indian psyche. The wonderful Puranic tale of the Divine Mother as Princess Tadatakai (Meenakshi) finding her consort in Chokkesa (Sundaresha) has been a favourite with the worshippers of the Mother Goddess in South India. Then the marriage, an auspicious moment is renacted annually even today in several temples as Meenakshi Kalyanam, Sita Kalyanam, or Andal Kalyanam. Significantly it is only the name of the goddess which is used to indicate the divine marriage. Even the lay man will speak of Rukmini Kalyanam or Radha Kalyanam but never a Krishna Kalyanam!
Sri Aurobindo draws in for his Yoga this wonderful concept of a divine marriage, again without any of the rituals. Savitri and Satyavan have met in a forest glade, there is an instant recognition and a marvellous wedding takes place under the canopy of Mother Nature in the Book of Love:
On the high glowing cupola of the day
46Savitri, p. 367.
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Fate tied a knot with morning's halo threads
While by the ministry of an auspice-hour
Heart-bound before the sun, their marriage fire,
The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse
Took place again on earth in human forms:
In a new act of the drama of the world
The united Two began a greater age.47
The Book of Yoga draws a major portion of its material from Tantra. If in Aswapati's Yoga we found him ascending and descending the several planes of the Meru, in Savitri's Yoga we find her journeying through several enclosures (āvaranās) as in the Sri Chakra. Tantra Yoga has gone into the minutest detail possible of all concepts and experiences and given them highly evocative names. Each enclosure (like Trailokyamohana Chakra and Sarvarogahara Chakra) has its own set of compartments with guardians and in-dwellers, but everything is directly connected to the Divine Mother as well. Sri Aurobindo has scmpulously avoided the use of such colourful representations. The canto, the Entry into the Inner Countries, just gives a brief indication as when in one of the corridors she finds a "glorious crowd" of gods and goddesses. As in the Tantra, these deities belonging to higher planes are helpers of man in his Yoga. They give a helpful direction to Savitri too:
O Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come.
We are the messengers, the occult gods
Who help man's drab and heavy ignorant lives
To wake to beauty and the wonder of things
Touching them with glory and divinity;
In evil we light the deathless flame of good
And hold the torch of knowledge on ignorant roads;
We are thy will and all men's will towards Light.48
The deities direct her to the Fire burning on the bare stone / And the deep cavern of [her] secret soul." The following canto, the Triple Soul-Forces, gives us a view of the major facets of Savitri's inmost soul that is a spark of the Divine Mother as we have known her at work on earth. Each of the forces is given a recognisable image. Each of them claims to be Savitri's soul and each is partly right; but
47Ibid.,p.411. 48Ibid., p. 501.
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Savitri will not be satisfied with partial identifications. All this has to be part of our soul's make-up but there has to be something else as well!
During Savitri's journey in the inscapes of her soul, she is first met by the Mother of Sorrows, one to whom the gods pray in Saptashati: yā devi sarvabhuteshu dayā rūpeṇa samsthithā. There are no external indications in the epic except that she is clothed in "a pale lustrous robe". The rest is a series of intuitive flashes on a major aspect of human experience on earth symbolised as a woman with "a moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair."
The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,
Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.
Her heart was riven with the world's agony
And burdened with the sorrow and struggle in Time,
An anguished music trailed in her rapt voice.
Absorbed in a deep compassion's ecstasy,
Lifting the mild ray of her patient gaze,
In soft sweet training words slowly she spoke.49
Sri Aurobindo could be limning a portrait of Mother Sarada Devi here, so accurate is the vision that comes through the poetry. Philosophy and metaphysics are challenges to the mind but how can they help the heart that is buffeted around by reality? The approach of Shakta Tantra, of the Divine Mother taking universal forms to destroy evil becomes absolutely necessary for Pooma Yoga. Hence the stress on Prakriti, the Nature-Soul. Prakriti is able to understand the pain of man and also convey to him that his needs are very much in her agenda. Not so the Purusha, who is an inexorable but inactive witness to the happenings around.
The Mother of Sorrows is full of karuna. But what is the use of compassion if it is not backed by the power to alleviate the misery of humanity? Savitri tells the Madonna of Suffering that she is dear to humanity as she helps man "bear the unbearable sorrow of the world." It is the image of a mother who listens to her sad children and infuses in them the hope for a future dawn. Savitri would now journey further and get the needed strength to back compassion. She now meets the Mother of Might ( yā devi sarvabhuteshu shakti rūpeṇa samsthithā),
49 Ibid, p. 503.
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and Sri Aurobindo brings in the image of Mahakali as found in the Tantra literature:
A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
Her feet upon a couchant lion's back.
A formidable smile curved round her lips,
Heaven-fire laughed in the comers of her eyes;
Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods.50
The passage naturally takes us to the creation of Mahalakshmi in Saptashati by the gods:
As all the gods gave arms and ornaments
Mahalakshmi roared with delight.
And the reverberation of her roar
rumbled in the firmament.
The oceans heaved, the worlds trembled, the earth
and its mountains shook unfirm.
Greeting her mounted on her lion, the gods
and sages cried 'Victory!'51
Indeed the very essence of Tantra's force is brought to us soon after by Sri Aurobindo, and possibly he had Sister Nivedita in his consciousness when he wrote the lines:
I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,
And Lakshmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;
I wear the face of Kali when I kill,
I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.
I am charged by God to do his mighty work.52
Savitri moves on further saying that strength without wisdom cannot build eternal things. It can only give momentary succour. Last to meet Savitri is the Mother of Joy and Peace. The description of the Madonna of Light reminds one of Mrinalini Devi:
50Ibid., p. 508. 51Translated by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar.
52Savitri,p. 509.
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Here, living centre of that vision of peace,
A Woman sat in clear and crystal light:
Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,
Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,
Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
To live again and feel the hands of calm.53
This is verily the Maheshwari described by Sri Aurobindo in The Mother.
Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever.54
Though the figure of Maheshwari has not had a particular image in the Saptashati, T.V. Kapali Sastri finds Sri Aurobindo's vision to have descended from a verse in the poem beginning, medhāsi devi vidhitākhila shastrasārā:
You are Saraswati, scripture's essence;
Sri, who abides with Vishnu;
Gauri, with the moon-crested Shiva, and
Durga, boat to the Beyond.55
Savitri finds that this too is inadequate. Pooma Shakti needs to be incarnated on earth to help mankind. As she seeks her secret soul, it is suddenly revealed to her as a mystic cavern with two golden serpents round the lintel, an eagle with massive wings above and doves at the cornices. Within the cavern are deities innumerable each of whom has an identity with Savitri. She passes them all as she had earlier the three soul-forces. It is in the last chamber of this seemingly endless cavern that she finds her secret soul, "no bigger than the thumb of man." Yet, this is the power that keeps all our actions and thoughts going, itself remaining as an immoveable Witness. The two become one again now:
53Ibid., p. 514. 54 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 26.
55 Translated by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar.
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Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
The secret deity and its human part,
The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
Then with a magic transformation's speed
They rushed into each other and grew one.56
An in-depth reading and recitation of Savitri's journey is itself the discipline of Tantra and the discipline (the meditation, the sincerity, the surrender) pays dividends. For we would be re-enacting the spiritual experience of Savitri when the latent power that had lain coiled at her base (the Muladhara) begins to climb upwards, undoing the knots (also centres imaged as lotuses), of Vishnu-granthi, Brahma-granthi and Rudra-granthi, and meets at the thousand-petalled Sahasrara at the crown, receive the nectarian powers there only to pour through the cleared channels of the body all these powers readied for the strike order. This movement of the Kundalini Yoga is brilliantly described in Sri Aurobindo's inimitable English style:
A flaming serpent rose released from sleep.
It rose billowing its coils and stood erect
And climbing mightily stormily on its way
It touched her centres with its flaming mouth:
As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,
They bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss;
Then at the crown it joined the Eternal's space.
In the flower of the head, in the flower of Matter's base,
In each divine stronghold and Nature-knot
It held together the mystic stream which joins
The viewless summits with the unseen depths,
The string of forts that make the frail defence
Safeguarding us against the enormous world,
Our lines of self-expression in its Vast.
An image sat of the original Power
Wearing the mighty Mother's form and face.57
Thus we are introduced to an important image of Tantra where the Divine Mother as Kameshwari joins Kameshwara Shiva in the thousand-petalled lotus flowing with nectar. The rays of the Divine Mother's feet direct the nectar downwards as a flood (sudhāsāra),
56 Ibid., p. 527. 57 Savitri, p. 528.
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joining "the viewless summits with the unseen depths." The individual aspirant is now totally transformed and is not restrained by the innumerable knots of our own making since
She streams into us with her unbound force,
Into mortal limbs the Immortal's rapture and power.58
This background makes it easier to understand Savitri's cosmic consciousness described in the following cantos as also the images of Eternal Night, Double Twilight, Everlasting Day and the figure of Savitri when she takes her cosmic form to vanquish Death. There is, for instance, the tradition that one must recite the Ratri Sukta at the commencement of reciting Saptashati. The Eternal Night in Savitri is not something to be frightened of, since that is a part of the greater reality as the Vedic hymn testifies to us. As S. Sankaranarayanan says:
If the day is an image of divine light, it is night that retains the light in its breast and reveals it at the right time. Night is the primordial mother who keeps the entire creation, all light and consciousness within her womb, sustains them and reveals them at the proper moment... Sleep that precedes creation, mental confusion that kindles, darkness that illumes light, Yoganidra, Yogamaya, Kalaratri are all different names given to the Primordial Mother. She is the eldest, Jyeshtā of the Dasha Maha Vidyas. She is seen as a cloud who has light in her womb, Dhumavati.59
The elements of Tantra continue to glimmer in the concluding Books also, but they do not have visual specificity since they are immerged in the total vision. Mahakali is very much a presence as Savitri answers Death point by point during their struggle in the Eternal Night and Double Twilight. It is not the Savitri of the earlier parts of the epic. The Princess had become the Devi after she had recognised her secret soul and Death realises that the ordinary rules that apply for death-bound mortal man will not apply to her:
Who then art thou hiding in human guise?
Thy voice carries the sound of infinity,
Knowledge is with thee, truth speaks through thy words;
The light of things beyond shines in thy eyes.
58Ibid., p. 530.
59Translated by Prema Nandakumar, Sri Devi Mahātmyam, p. 62.
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But where is thy strength to conquer Time and Death?
Hast thou God's force to build heaven's values here?60
Without wasting any words, Savitri meets Death's challenge swiftly, thereby indicating that man, if he perfects himself by the self-discipline of Pooma Yoga can conquer Time, annihilate Death and build on earth the life divine.
There are none of the descriptions that one finds in the battles of Saptashati where the Mother destroys evil forces like Shumbha, Nishumbha, Raktabija and Mahishasura. And yet the battle is brought to us in the diction of Tantra. The uprising energy, the Power of Kundalini reaching the thousand-petalled lotus in the crown and encircling the Purusha (Shiva) there and holding its hood above him as an umbrella, is recorded exactly as it is in Aurobindonian style to delineate the cosmic image of the Divine Mother:
Her forehead's span vaulted the Omniscient's gaze,
Her eyes were two stars that watched the universe.
The Power that from her being's summit reigned,
The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,
Came down and held the centre in her brow
Where the mind's Lord in his control-room sits.61
The Mother has thus entered the twin-petalled Anjna Chakra, in the Sushumna, between the brows. Thrusting through the Rudra-granthi to reach to the Sahasrara, the energy spreads all over the cosmic figure, indicating the triumphal movement of the Kundalini:
It poured into a navel's lotus depth,
Lodged in the little life-nature's narrow home,
On the body's longings grew heaven-rapture's flower
And made desire a pure celestial flame,
Broke into the cave where coiled World-Energy sleeps
And smote the thousand-hooded serpent Force
That blazing towered and clasped the World-Self above,
Joined Matter's dumbness to the Spirit's hush
And filled earth's acts with the Spirit's silent power.
Thus changed she waited for the Word to speak.62
Of the innumerable names of the Devi, one is tadi-latā-samaruchih, she who is brilliant like a creeper of lightning. As she stands confronting Death like "a little figure in infinity," the Word comes
60 Savitri, p. 663-64. 61Ibid., p. 665. 62Ibid.
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from her, asking Death to release "the soul of the world called Satyavan." But he will not. To action, then! Savitri had stood exhibiting only a fraction of the Power of Mulashakti even as a lightning is but a fraction of the shoreless brilliance in the endless space. The tadi-latā-samaruchih now becomes a total blaze:
Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts,
Light was a luminous torture in his heart,
Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves;
His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze.63
After Savitri makes her choice to go back to the world as she cannot forget the cry of a million creatures nor ignore the "dreadful whirlings of the world," the Supreme assures her all support and blessings. We are reminded by Sri Aurobindo about the bases of the Yoga, through the images of the Shalwa Prince and the Madran Princess, a recurring image in the evolution of earth, the togetherness of the Conscious-Soul and the Nature-Soul, Purusha and Prakriti:
O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri,
Isent you forth of old beneath the stars,
A dual power of God in an ignorant world,
In a hedged creation shut from limitless self,
Bringing down God to the insentient globe,
Lifting earth-beings to immortality...
He is the soul of man climbing to God
In Nature's surge out of earth's ignorance.
O Savitri, thou art my spirit's Power,
The revealing voice of my immortal Word-
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.64
Even as the entire Tantra Shastra has descended from the Vedic Devi Suktas, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is also a direct child of the Vedas. Though the subtitle says the epic is a "legend and a symbol," Savitri is more than that. It is a living experience. Just as we recognise the deities of the Tantra as a living experience for us to grow in, the world of Savitri needs also to be seen as an experiential truth. Sri Aurobindo himself has indicated this by saying that the epic is a living force, that Savitri
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...is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.
Salutations to Sri Aurobindo for this gift of Savitri, the Devi Kavyam that leads us from untruth to Truth, from darkness to Light, from death to Immortality:
Though abiding in the high pinnacles, it is capable of coming down; though lying on the terrestrial plane below, it is daring and persistent in its climb up—this Yoga bom of the gracious side-long glances of Bhagavan Sri Aurobindo reigns victorious as the vastness charged with the Play of the Force Immortal.65
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
65T.V.Kapali Sastri
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Savitri and the Bible
A supreme epic always has a limitless vastitude for its canvas and an unreachable loftiness of its expression. Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is also the latest and the greatest of the Scriptures; it includes and transcends the essence and significance of all other Scriptures. The theme and vision, fact and experience, and word and phrase used from other Scriptures gain here a meaning and a suggestion beyond what they have in the original, sometimes even beyond recognition.
The term "God's covenant", a frequent expression in the Old Testament of the Bible, for example, undergoes a sea-change when Sri Aurobindo employs it in Savitri. In the Bible the term is used with reference to God's compact with the Israelites who were considered as God's chosen people. Sri Aurobindo speaks of" God's covenant with the Night" in the context of presentation of the evolution of the Inconscient into the Superconscient. Early in Savitri Aswapati, the "colonist from immortality" and the human father to be of the Avatar Savitri, after acquiring the secret knowledge that the Supreme (Lord) left his "white infinity"
And laid on the Spirit the burden of the flesh,
That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space,'
arrived at a state in which he could enter a hidden chamber where all the secrets are revealed.
In the glow of the Spirit's room of memories...
He could re-read now and interpret new
Its strange symbol letters, scatered abstruse signs...
And recognise as a just necessity
Its hard conditions for the mighty work,
Nature's impossible Herculean toil....
The dumb great Mother in her cosmic trance....
Accepts indomitably to execute
The will to know in an inconscient world,
A will to live in a reign of death,
The thirst for rapture in a heart of flesh,
And works out through the appearance of a soul
By a miraculous birth in plasm and gas
The mystery of God's covenant with the Night.2
1Savitri, p. 73. 2Ibid., p. 75.
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Before we continue with the study of Sri Aurobindo's widening, heightening and deepening the meaning of the Biblical word and phrase for his own purposes it is necessary to consider a key expression he adopts from the Bible in Savitri.
All must have noted that Sri Aurobindo uses more than once the term Word with reference to Savitri, the Avatar of the Mother. We see the Lord addressing her,
O human image of the deathless word...
O living power of the incarnate Word!3
One remembers immediately the well-known Biblical words,
In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.4
The Word spoken of here is Christ, the Son of God, the second Person of the three-Personed God, the first Person of whom is God, the Father, and the third, God, the Holy Ghost; Christians do not think in terms of God, the Mother.
It may be pointed out that Vak, corresponding to Logos, the Word, is not strange to Indian tradition. Actually in Lalitā Sahsranāma, the Supreme Mother is addressed as Vak in her four planes of operation, Parā, the Transcendent, Pashyanti, the Seeing One, Madhyama, the Middle or the subtle One, and Vaikhari, the Gross.5
But Sri Aurobindo took the expression from the Bible. We will see that there is much of the Christ-figure in Savitri. But Sri Aurobindo knew long before the Biblical scholarship discovered it that the Evangelists remembered the Old Testament all the time and were making their work correspond, if not conform, to what was said or presented in the earlier Scripture. Recent scholars have shown that the Christ-figure in the Gospels represents the Lady Wisdom or the Wisdom Woman of the books of the Old Testament, including those which are called Apocryphal.
The first critic to demonstrate their identity was Father Raymond Brown. He writes:
We suggest that in drawing this portrait (of Jesus as the incarnate revelation descended on high to offer man light and truth) the evangelist (St. John) has capitalised on an identification of Jesus
3Ibid, pp. 683, 693. 4St. John, I.i.l. 5Lalitā Sahasranama, Verse 81.
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with the personified divine Wisdom as described in the Old Testament.6
Father Brown like other Western scholars speaks of "the personified divine Wisdom". The Hebrews were Oriental like the Indians and saw Wisdom as a Person, not Personification a Presence, a Power, a Shakti, as we would call her. The original Hebrew word Hokma, like the Sanskrit word Medha and the Greek word Sophia, was feminine. On the contrary the word Logos in Greek for the Word was masculine. The word wisdom also indicated the quality as the Word indicated Utterance, like Vak.
But the ancient Hebrews themselves were bound by their monolithic idea of Monotheism. Otherwise they would have seen the power they called the Lady Wisdom or the Wisdom Woman what would correspond to Parashakti.* We may note en passant that in the New Testament we have something of the vision of God the Mother in the conception of Virgin Mary.
Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) says,7
I consider this doctrine (of Virgin Mary) the most beautiful
* Mrs. Sonia Dyne in a personal letter writes to me that Wisdom was more a person than personification. She says that according to Jewish writers like Raphel Patal the idea of god the Mother was not far from the Jewish mind. Patal's work to which she refers is titled The Hebrew Goddess. According to him, in spite of the lone father figure of the Jewish God in the popular imagination there dwelt a world peopled with and haunted by feminine numina The popular term Shekina, not found in the Bible but is used in the Talmud reminds Mrs.Dyne of the Indian term Shakti. Hokma or Wisdom described in the Proverbs, as we saw, was God's earliest creation and daily delight. According to Patal the word used in the text is playmate in the place of delight. The word playmate reminds Mrs.Dyne of the line in Savitri (p. 61 ):
There are Two who are One and play in many worlds.
Patal tells us that Greshom Holem interprets the love between God and Wisdom as the love of husband and wife. According to him Philo unequivocally says that God is the husband of Wisdom. Mrs. Dyne refers to the line in Savitri.
Creatrix, the Eternal artist's Bride!
It need not be said that when we speak of God and his Shakti as husband and wife it is only a way of speaking to describe the indescribable relationship of the divine powers.
6The Gospel According to St. John.
1A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo, p. 39.
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component of the ensemble, (of the different traditions brought together by the Churches), bringing into the new religion (Christianity) the vision of God, the Mother, in a deeper fashion finer and closer approach to the Indian insight of the Adya Shakti, the Para Prakriti, whom Sri Aurobindo addresses in Savitri,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride!8
To return to the identification of the Wisdom Women with Christ, Brown shows the almost identical language with which they are described in the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament and St. John's Gospel respectively:
Lady Wisdom existed with God from the beginning even before there was an earth (Proverbs,viii, 22-23; Sirach, xxiv, Wisdom, vi, 22; so also the Johannine Jesus who is the Word who was in the beginning(I.i.l) and was with the Father before the world existed (xiii, 5). Wisdom is said to be a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty (Wisdom, vii, 25 so also has Jesus the Father's glory which he makes manifest to man (i, 14; viii 50 ; xi, 4 xvii, 5 , 22 , 24). Wisdom is said to be the reflection of everlasting light of God, (Wisdom, vii, 26 and in lighting up the Path of men (Sirach 1, 29) she is preferred to any natural light (Wisdom vii, 10, 29); in Johannine thought God is light (Epistle of John 1,1,5) and Jesus who comes forth from God is the light of the world and of men (St. John's Gospel, 1,4-5, viii, 12; ix, 5) ultimately destined to replace the natural light (Revelations, xxi, 25).
Brown quotes many more examples from the Wisdom Books and St. John's Gospel to show the identity between Lady Wisdom and Jesus. He also points out that even the Synoptic Gospels are not without passages which recall from the Wisdom Books. As has been noted before the evangelists had always an eye on the Old Testament and were keen on relating Jesus to the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is interesting to note that what Luke attributes to "the Wisdom of God" (xi, 49) Matthew attributes to Jesus himself, (xxiii, 34). In Matthew xi, 25-27 and Luke x, 21 we have almost an identical passage that shows that Jesus is the source of all wisdom. Brown also refers to the appeals of Wisdom in Sirach and Jesus in Matthew inviting men to
8Savitri, p. 345.
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come to her/him for rest.
Fr. A. R. Ceresco, a Canadian Hebraist who taught at St. Peter's Seminary, Bangalore and is currently in Philippines, quotes the two parallel passages. We read in Sirach,
Come to her (Wisdom) with all your soul
And keep her ways with all your might....
Bear her yoke, it is golden ornament
Her bonds are a purple cord.9
In the Gospel of Matthew we read how Jesus tells his disciples,
Come to me, all who are labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and
You will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.10
If there is an identity between Jesus and the Lady Wisdom as the Word of God, there seems to be a close link between the Lady Wisdom and the Supreme Mother and her Avatar in Savitri. The passage quoted by Amal Kiran to show the symbolic significance of Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the words addressed by Aswapati to the Divine Mother when she is ready to offer him her boon reveals the link. The expression Wisdom-Splendour brings out the experience of Wisdom as light, as is seen in the Biblical passages referred to by Raymond Brown. More than once Sri Aurobindo brings together the terms Wisdom and the Word with reference to the Mother. When Aswapati, as the Traveller of the Worlds (planes or states of Consciousness), is in the empire of the Little Mind he sees a whole crowd of tiny entities who rule human life and are responsible for the little actions of human beings. All move through friction and struggle to eternal harmony. Describing the various stages of the movement, Sri Aurobindo comments,
A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,
A Witness sanctioning her will and works.11
The use of an indefinite article before Word, Wisdom, Witness is meant to refer to an aspect of the Supreme Power or even to indicate that the Power is far beyond us and beyond our intellectual comprehension.
9Sirach, xxiv, p. 19. 10St. Matthew, xi. 28-39. 11Savitri, p. 168.
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When Aswapati is in the Kingdom of Greater Mind, we are told
A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world;
A Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events;
A Word self-bom upon creation's heights,
Voice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres.12
The terms "a Witness" in the first passage and "a Truth-gaze" in the second add a new dimension to the Wisdom and the Word, indicating a kind of passivity (not inertness) that watches and guides and shapes quietly. The Lord as a Witness (Sakshi) is not new to the Indian experience. Sri Aurobindo presents the Mother as the Witness. The quality of passivity is brought out in another passage. When Aswapati moves from the very home of the World-Soul, the heart of Time and Space, to the Kingdom of Greater Knowledge
He moved through regions of transcendent Truth
Inward, immense, innumerably one13
and sees
A wisdom waiting on Omniscience14
who
Sat voiceless in a vast passivity.15
Incidentally Wisdom waiting on Omniscience echoes the Biblical idea of Wisdom in the Old Testament and Word in the New "being with God".
In an earlier situation when Aswapati was in the Empire of the Little Life he saw that
Unknown, unfelt, the mighty Witness lives
And nothing shows the Glory that is here.
A Wisdom governing the mystic world, 16
observes the stream of movements.
While in the Empire of the Little Life, Aswapati saw (as we are told in the canto preceding the one from which we have quoted above)
A Wisdom that prepares its far-off ends
Planned so to start her slow aeonic game.17
The Wisdom in Savitri has a great etza, to use a Biblical Hebrew
12Ibid, p. 271. 13Ibid, p. 299. 14Ibid, p. 300.
15Ibid 16Ibid, p. 159. 17Ibid, p. 141.
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word, which means a great plan of action, a greater and larger etza than any known before, which is no less than the evolution and a total transformation of the world.
We have been identifying Wisdom with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo himself links the Mother and Wisdom in a well-known passage. While describing the birth of the Flame that is Savitri, the Seer-Poet says:
Again the mystic deep attempt began,
The daring wager of the cosmic game.
For since upon this blind and whirling globe
Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind...
A Mother wisdom works in Nature's breast
To pour delight on the heart of toil and want.18
Wisdom, the Mother or "the Mother wisdom" who "works in Nature's covert breast" does all that is necessary to make the cosmic evolution possible. Yet there are realms in which she is not present. There, whatever beauty or perfection is seen, we see a lack of her power. In Book II Canto 6 we see Aswapati entering the Kingdoms of Greater Life. He notes how Life
... would bring the glory here of the Absolute's force,
Change poise into creation's rhythmic swing,
Marry with a sky of calm with a sea of bliss.19
Yet,
For all the depth and beauty of her work
A wisdom lacks that sets the spirit free.20
The phrase "that sets the spirit free" is a direct echo of the words of Jesus. Jesus actually speaks of
The truth that sets the spirit free.21
In the same book and the canto where the above passage appears, Sri Aurobindo repeats the words verbatim:
The advent for which all creation waits,
The beautiful visage of Eternity
That shall appear upon the roads of Time.
Yet to ourselves we say rekindling faith,
"Oh, surely one day he shall come to our cry,
18Ibid, p. 353. l9Ibid, pp. 195-96. 20Ibid, pp. 196.
21St. John, viii, 32.
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One day he shall create our life anew
And utter the magic formula of peace
And bring perfection to the scheme of things.
One day he shall descend to life and earth,
Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors,
Into a world that cries to him for help,
And bring the truth that sets the spirit free."22
The words of Jesus at the end of the passage and the Christian expression advent at the start lead us on to another aspect of our subject. Till now we have been stressing the identity of Word of the New Testament with the Wisdom of the Old Testament and both with the Supreme Mother and her Avatar in Savitri. It was pointed out even at the start that Savitri is also associated with the Christ-figure. She is the Word and the Saviour as we notice from the very beginning of the epic, or the Scripture as we have called it.
The passage just quoted, beginning and ending with the Biblical terms, speaks of the advent for which all creation waits and the person concerned, we hope, will surely come one day. In the poem, it is Savitri who comes to the world that calls for help. It is she that is "the Incarnate Word of God." She is the Saviour while speaking of whom Narad brings before us the magnificent vignette of the Crucifixion. There are hints of the association of Savitri with Christ from the very beginning of the poem. Association does not imply identification but it does imply a close link between the two.
In the opening canto of the epic we are told how Savitri awoke with the rest of the tribe at the dawn and, because of her being akin to Eternity from which she came, she took no interest in any small happiness. She was a mighty stranger in the human field. Life
Offered to the daughter of infinity
Her passion-flower of love and doom...23
The term passion-flower (passiflora in Latin), rather the creeper bearing the flower, suggests the instruments of Christ's passion or his suffering on the Cross. The corona of the creeper suggests the crown of thorns. Later in the Epic, when Savitri is one with the cosmic Spirit as she sits by the sleeping Satyavan, she is described as being
... the red heart of the passion-flower.24
22Savitri, p. 200. 23Ibid, p. 7. 24Ibid., p. 557.
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The association of the Christ-figure with Savitri is continued after the earlier passage in a different form.
Mortality bear's ill the eternal's touch...
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.
A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,
Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for the crown they gave.25
The passage, like the whole section early in the epic, anticipates what we are to see in detail later. A whole book is yet to be written on the architectural quality of Savitri in which each portion of the poem is bound to the other portion by a splendid artistic unity. When Narad tells Savitri's parents in her presence that Satyavan whom she has chosen for her Lord is due to die exactly in a year from the day he is speaking to them, her mother asks her to mount her chariot once again, go forth and choose another partner. Savitri refuses to do so and Narad tells the queen that Savitri has a mission to fulfil. He explains the function of pain in life and the pain that has to be undergone by the world-redeemers. His words echo the passage just quoted.
Hard is the world-redeemer's heavy task;
The world itself becomes his adversary,
His enemies are the beings he came to save.
Those he came to save are his antagonists:
This world is in love with its own ignorance,
Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,
It gives the cross in payment for the crown.26
The Mother's comment on the earlier passage is equally applicable to the second since it has a similarity to the earlier in theme and tone.
That is the history of human life upon earth: each time that help has been sent to hasten the evolution, it has been received in that way. But each time the effort and the help are bigger, higher, truer; and each time a little work, some result, is achieved; and step, by step the world grows towards its Realisation.27
The Mother's comment makes it clear that the Christ-figure is seen in Savitri in relation to the world's evolution and as a step in the
25Ibid, p. 7. 26Ibid, p. 448. 27The Mother, About Savitri, plate 25.
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direction. It is needless to say that Sri Aurobindo does not see the Christ-figure as a Christian would see. That is obvious even in the famous vignette of crucifixion in Narad's speech in spite of some precise details and words repeated from the Bible.
The Son of God bom as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind
His will has bound to death and struggling life
That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.
The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed the salvation's testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
The Deity compensates the creature's claim,
The Creator bears the law of pain and death;
A retribution smites the incarnate God.
His love has paved the mortal's road to Heaven:
He has given life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance.
It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world,
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed;
His escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right's acknowledgement;
Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour's way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with his body's death his soul's vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.
Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls
His crucified voice proclaims, "I, I am God;"
"Yes, all is God," peals back Heaven's deathless call.28
The richness and complexity of the tweny-nine lines make any comment sound shallow. All that one can venture to say is that the vividness of the picture and the precision of some details should not blind us to the truth and reality beyond all creed and belief. When we also bear in mind that it is Narad, the Indian seer with the total
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knowledge of all that has been, is and to be, who is speaking, we see that the whole picture is of a universal, of a symbolic significance.
The opening line of the passage sounds completely Christian in presenting the Christian experience of the Incarnation. It is the Son of God bom as the Son of Man. We have referred already to the vision of the three-personed God of whom God the Son is the second person. We will have occasion to consider the idea of the three persons in some detail.
In the present passage the first part ending with the words "God's martyred body" focuses on the "Son of God" who is not really different from God who is also called the Creator and the Eternal. The second part beginning with "Gethsemane and Calvary" focuses on the Son of Man, who identifies himself with God and declares himself at the end, "I am God." We shall later discuss the question of the identification, "I and my father are one." Here it suffices to note the shift of focus from the first part to the second part of the passage. Then, "has drunk the bitter cup" is a direct echo of Christ's in the Bible in the symbolism that is obvious in his words. When Judas Iscariot helps the men of the Jewish Chief Priest to capture Jesus, his disciple Peter attacks the slave who nears his Master and cuts off his ear. Jesus tells Peter to put his sword in his sheath and asks
Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?29
The word "bitter" is Sri Aurobindo's addition not without a suggestion from the Bible. When Christ is on the cross the wine he is offered is mixed with gall. The idea of retribution is typically Biblical. According to the traditional wisdom of the Jews everyone has to suffer punishment for the sins he has committed. In this context the incarnate God suffers punishment not for his sins. Is he not above all sin and virtue, being the very Lord? Sri Aurobindo does not see sin in the Christian way but in the sense of ignorance (avidyā) as he makes it obvious in the passage. The line
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed
suggests a meaning that is not necessarily Christian. It is man's soul that is nailed when the Son of God bears the Cross—because, as we shall see—according, to Sri Aurobindo the Son of God stands for the individual Self.30
The words "It is finished" are very famous and are echoed and reechoed in Renaissance Literature, especially in the Latin version in
295f. John, xviii, 11. 30Ibid, xix. 30.
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the Vulgate consummatum est, since it was the Vulgate which was used at the time. The original Greek form—since the New Testament was written in Greek tetalestai was not well known. What "It" stands for is explained by Sri Aurobindo:
The dread mysterious sacrifice.
The "sacrifice" is "mysterious" because the nature and the significance of it are not comprehensible to the human intellect. It is no less than the Holocaust of the Divine—what Sri Aurobindo calls the primal sacrifice—the Divine who falls into the state of Ignorance and Night.
Gethsemane is the Garden across the Olive Hills in which Jesus undergoes intense agony not long before the great sacrifice. The agony is a spiritual experience with no resemblance whatsoever to human agony which is essentially egoistic. It is there that his disciples deny him and Judas betrays. Gethsemane stands for inexplicable agony, denial and betrayal. Calvary is the Latin form of the Hebrew word Golgotha meaning "the place of the skull," a place on the hill near Jerusalem, where criminals were crucified. As is mentioned in the passage under discussion two thieves are crucified along with Jesus. We also see that he is insulted and jeered by the crowd. Calvary, therefore stands for human callousness in the treatment of the Saviours.
As we noted at the start of the discussion of the passage in the section commencing with the mention of Gethsemane and Calvary we are not told something about the Lord himself but Lord in human form who has accepted the limits and limitations of the human being, yet not forgetting his identity with God. It is the human incarnation which has to declare his identity with God. He has to say, after his triumph in the Tragedy, making his immortal knowledge triumph in death, paying with his body's death his soul's vast light,
I, I am God.
It is possible that Sri Aurobindo, in the manner of Shakespeare and others of his Age, is punning upon the first "I" and the word "aye"(pronounced like I) meaning "Yes". That such a pun is intended is indicated by the answering "Yes" in the next line,
Yes, all is God.
Sri Aurobindo did not hesitate to use any device when it helped him to present his own vision of things.
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But, strictly speaking, Jesus's last words on the cross are not the words Sri Aurobindo makes the Saviour speak. The phrase from St. John's Gospel "It is finished" was used by Sri Aurobindo earlier. In St. Mark and St. Matthew Jesus died with a loud cry. But sometimes before the death he cries out:
My God, my God why do you forsake me?31
In St. Luke three hours before Jesus "gave up his ghost"(=died), one of the two thieves crucified along with him turned to Jesus and said:
Jesus, remember me when you come to your Kingdom.32
Jesus responds
Truly, I say to you, you will be with me in Paradise.33
Though Sri Aurobindo's attribution to Jesus of his last words does not correspond to his actual words, it is not against the spirit of any Gospel. Earlier Jesus had declared his identity with God though not in the sense in which the evangelists understood the words. The line that follows is typically Aurobindonian:
"Yes, all is God," peals back Heaven's deathless call.34
The passage as a whole is a superb picture of the Divine becoming human and undergoing not only death but ignominy. It certainly brings out the poignancy as well as the sublimity of the Divine sacrifice but it is by no means "Christian " in a limited sense. The words "cross" and "crucify" appear quite a few times in the course of the poem but, as in the above picture, they assume more than, sometimes other than, "Christian" meaning. It may be of interest to note what the "cross" stands for in the Yoga according to Sri Aurobindo:
The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul and nature in their strong and perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.35
He also explains differently, rather with different focus:
The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendental, universal and Individual.36
31Sr. Matthew, xxvii, 50, 46. 32St. Lake, xxiii, 42. 33Ibid., xxiii, 43.
34Savitri, p. 446. 35The Hour of God, SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 99.
36Letter on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 23, p. 983.
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In Savitri Sri Aurobindo generally uses the terms "cross" and "crucify" with reference to infliction of pain and suffering, not necessarily Christ's as noted above.
Aswapati on his upward march of self-discovery first feels the fall of thought, release from joy and grief, and an escape from ego. After the negative experience he feels the Supreme Presence he is yearning to near.
A moment's sweetness of the All-Beautiful
Cancelled the vanity of the cosmic whirl.
A Nature throbbing with a Heart divine
Was felt in the unconscious universe;
It made the breath a happy mystery
And brought a love sustaining pain with joy;
A love that bore the cross of pain with joy
Eudaemonised the sorrow of the world.37
"Eudaemonised" may be taken to mean to transform the sorrow of the world into delight. (According to the dictionary, "Eudaemonism" is a system of ethics bearing moral obligation on tendency of action to produce happiness. There is nothing ethical here in Savitri, all spiritual compassion.) The love presented here, though not Christ's, is not unlike his.
In the context of Savitri finding her soul there is a description of the Psyche in an Upanishadic language:
A being no bigger than the thumb of man...
Identified with the mind and body and life,
It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,
Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross.38
Our true being is the Psyche that takes a new mind and life and body every time it takes birth. The anguish and defeat undergone by body, mind and life are suffered by Christ-like Psyche, bleeding with Fate's whips, bleeding on the Cross. As indicated already, and as we will see again, Sri Aurobindo considers the Christian concept of the Son of God as standing for the individual Self.
The Primal descent of the Superconscient Divine into this world of Void, Nescience and Pain, mentioned already while discussing the vignette of Christ's crucifixion, is described in the following lines:
37Savitri, p. 312. 38Ibid, pp. 526-27.
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In the enigma of the darkened Vasts,
In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite
When all was plunged in the negating Void,
Non-Being's night could never have been saved
If Being had not plunged into the dark
Carrying with it its triple mystic cross.39
The mystic cross is the cross of the counterpart of the Cross of the triune Powers of Sat, Chit and Ananda. Here the term has no connection with the term as used till now.
There are uses of the term which have little to do with the cross that Christ bore or even with its symbolic significance, but it gains its meaning because of the usual sense of the term. In the World of Falsehood,
Being collapsed into a pointless void
That yet was a zero parent of the worlds;
Inconscience swallowing up the cosmic Mind
Produced a universe from its lethal sleep;
Bliss into black coma fallen, insensible,
Coiled back to itself and God's eternal joy
Through a false poignant figure of grief and pain
Still dolorously nailed upon a cross
Fixed in the soil of a dumb insensient world
Where birth was a pang and death an agony,
Lest all too soon should change again to bliss.40
Sri Aurobindo comments on the lines as follows:
This has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace eternal bliss. It is not Christ but the world-soul which hangs here.41
On one occasion Sri Aurobindo brings out the irony of the self-aggrandising human ego's claim to bear the cross when it is frustrated in its ambition. As a contrast to the divine pathos of the Madonna of Sorrows we hear the voice of the Titanic Ego who says
I am the Man or Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
To enjoy my agony God built the earth.42
39Ibid, pp. 140-41. 40Ibid, p. 221. 41Ibid, p. 777. 42Ibid, p. 505.
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The word "crucify" is also used in a context not meant to give the usual meaning though it is close to the right one.
Savitri seeks her soul and comes to the country of the fixed Mind; there
Mind claimed to be the spirit and the soul.43
When dissatisfied with the world in spite of her being lured to stay there, the creatures wonder why she was leaving a perfect world; some say:
... Nay, it is her spirit she seeks.
A splendid shadow of the name of God,
A formless luster from the Ideal's realm,
The Spirit is the Holy Ghost of Mind;
But none has touched its limits or seen its face.
Each soul is the great Father's crucified Son.44
What makes all go wrong is the mistaking of the Mind for the Supreme Father.
From the very beginning we have been referring to Sri Aurobindo's idea of Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. In the above passage the Mind is mistaken for the Father and that makes it impossible to get the true conception. There is another passage that brings us very close to the conception. Before she faces Death in the Forest, Savitri undergoes great spiritual experiences. First there is the experience of the great Nihil and Void. This is followed by the experience of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness. It is when she experiences the All-Negating Absolute that she saw the individual Self in her die, the cosmic disappear; she was not able to feel the presence of the transcendental Power. Sri Aurobindo described her state in the following words:
The Holy Ghost without the Father and Son.45
The Father is the transcendental Power, the Son is the individual Self, the Holy Ghost
... a substratum of what once had been,
Being that never willed to bear a world
Restored to its original loneliness,
Impassive, sole, silent, intangible.46
43ibid, p. 498. 44Ibid., p. 500. 45Ibid., p. 552. 46Ibid.
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experience and that of the Mother. Can we really expect that their experience will be renewed in us? The obvious answer must be "No", followed after a certain amount of soul-searching by a qualified "Yes". The openers of the path have gone in front, and their labour is vain if there are none to follow. The experience may be renewed in us to the extent that past preparation has been made—in this life or other lives— and to the extent that we are open to what the Mother has called "the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness." There is no doubt that we are brought into direct contact with these true vibations through the medium of Savitri: "Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents."12
The Mother's words give away part of that secret. As Aswapati climbs the World Stair, he experiences successively all the planes of consciousness that influence or impinge upon our own inner and outer being. These influences, for the most part undetected by our waking mental consciousness, are explored by Aswapati through the power of his Yoga. Their essence or their vibration as the Mother puts it, is captured and held by Sri Aurobindo before it has passed through the distorting filter of the analytic mind. It comes to us clothed in 'Truth's form-robes by the Seers woven from spirit-threads"13 and charged with the initiatory power of a Mantra. The intellect retreats in silence from its vain attempt to analyse this miracle. So it is, that the experience may indeed be renewed for us, not only by the action in us of Sri Aurobindo's wonderful commentaries which satisfy the mind, but even more perfectly by his amazing defining insights instantly recognised as Truth.
Thus we may think we know what instinct is, but when Sri Aurobindo calls instinct the "chrysalis of Truth"14 the image opens a window in the mind onto vistas of meaning beyond the power of three common words to express. We may think we can distinguish faith from belief, until he reveals to us in a picture what faith really is:
To the celestial beauty of faith gave form
As if at flower-prints in a dingy room
Laughed in a golden vase one living rose.15
12 Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. 1, p. 49.
13Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 599.
14 Savitri, p. 134. 15Ibid, p. 539.
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The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
The body of earth a tabernacle of God.48
Later he says,
A soul shall wake in the Inconscient's house;
The mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle,
The body intuition's instrument.49
Much earlier when Savitri is sitting by the side of sleeping Satyavan and counting hours of his approaching end, a Voice asks her to arise and vanquish Time and Death. Savitri questions why she should do it at all. She asks why she should lift her hands to shut heavens,
Or straggle with mute inevitable Fate
Or hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race
Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light
And see in Mind Wisdom's sole tabernacle.50
The contrast between the last two passages is instructive.
In the lines just quoted the ignorant human race mocks the saviour Light—the words take us back to the theme discussed already—and see in Mind (foolishly) the Wisdom's sole tabernacle. In the other passage, the Mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle. The Mind at its best has a mental Vision of God. It is only the ignorant people who think that Mind is the sole tabernacle of Wisdom. The true tabernacle or sanctuary of Wisdom is far above the Mind. We saw how Savitri could not abide in the country of the fixed Mind.
Another notable Biblical word used by Sri Aurobindo for his own purposes is from the New Testament, "epiphany". Though like "advent" and other words, "epiphany" has acquired a general meaning of manifestation; it refers to Christ before the Magi, the Wise Men from the East. The manifestation is an equivalent of Sakshatkara. There are quite a few occasions when Sri Aurobindo employs the word. We may cite one or two significant ones. A magnificent example occurs when Savitri, towards the end of her debate with Death, is transfigured into the Goddess she is and tells the mighty Power how all contraries are aspects of God's face and the Many are the innumerable One. In what may be called the climax of the divine vision she brings before Death, she says:
48Savitri, p. 699. 49Ibid., p. 707. 50Ibid, pp. 474-75.
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All there is a supreme epiphany:
The All-Wonderful makes a marvel of each event,
The All-Beautiful is a miracle in each shape.151
The lines make us not merely understand what epiphany means but make us see it. Also Death himself has a vision of Savitri as the Divine Mother.
Describing the Childhood of the Flame (Savitri) Sri Aurobindo says:
... with a greater Nature she was one.
As from the soil sprang glory of branch and flower,
As from the animal's life rose thinking man,
A new epiphany appeared in her.52
The four lines present an epitome of the evolution described in the supreme scripture: from soil to plant and tree, from animal to human the thinking being, from the human to the Divine. Each stage of the evolution is a manifestation or "epiphany" of a greater Power. It may not be irrelevant to mention at this stage a few words that are not necessarily Biblical but are Christian and therefore related to our subject. It need not be said that Sri Aurobindo uses the words as he does other terms for his own purposes. Chapel, for example, is a place of worship attached to a private residence or an institution, even as a cathedral is a public place of worship, especially the principal church of diocese. We may take an example or two of both the words. Cathedral or chapel presented by Sri Aurobindo is not material building but a state of consciousness in which one turns to a power good or evil in a great limited way
When, for example, Aswapati has acquired secret knowledge and cut off his moorings with material nature, he lives as a figure
Pacing the vast cathedral of his thoughts
Under its arches dim with infinity.53
On the other hand, when the great Traveller comes to the Kingdoms of the Little Life, he sees Life's
... anguished claim to her lost sovereign right...
Adorer of a joy without a name,
In her obscure cathedral of delight
To dim dwarf gods she offers secret rites.54
51lbid, p. 663. 52Ibid, p. 357. 53Ibid, p. 79.
54Ibid, p. 134.
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In the Debate of Love and Death we hear Savitri telling the Dark Force the purpose of the Creation:
For this the Spirit came into the Abyss
And charged with its power Matter's unknowing Force,
In Night's bare session to cathedral light,
In Death's realm repatriate immortality.55
The word chapel is also used in a similar way. When Savitri begins the search for her soul she first has a fearful picture of the subconscient. When, however, she turns from the scale of ignorance to that of knowledge she perceives man's evolution. From apelike state,
Man stood erect, he wore the thinker's brow...
A vision came of beauty and greater birth
Slowly emerging from the heart's chapel of light.56
In the World of Falsehood we see a horrible religion:
In a fell chapel of iniquity...
...from each window peered an omnous priest
Chanting Te Deums for slaughter's crowning grace.57
In the last line of the passage we have another expression which means praise, hymn. The phrase Te Deum is from the beginning of the famous hymn Te Deum laudanum = Thee, O Lord, we praise.
We may now ask ourselves if there is any thematic link, in however small way, between the Bible and Savitri. As has been mentioned more than once, Savitri is concerned with the evolution from the Inconscient to the Superconscient, transformation of the very physical to the Spiritual, the final transformation made possible by the descent of the Supermind. As the Lord tells Savitri in his last speech, at present
Mind is the leader of the body and life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul.58
He adds that
Mind is not all his tireless climb can reach...
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power...
55Ibid, p. 632. 56bicL, p. 485. 57Ibid, p. 228.
58Ibid., p. 704.
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A star rising out of the Inconscient's night,
A sun climbing to Supemature's peak.59
A time shall come when
The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demi-god
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force...
Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme-
Then shall the embodied being live as one
Who is a thought, a will of the Divine...
An instrument and the partner of his Force...
All then shall change, magic order come
Overtopping the mechanical universe.
A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal's world...
And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart...
And found Light's reign on her unshaking base...
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance...
When superman is bom as Nature's king,
His presence shall transfigure Matter's world...
This earthly life become the life divine.60
This vision, of course, has not been presented by any Scripture including the Veda and the Gita. What the Bible does is to anticipate, however distantly, something of the experience. In his Problems of Early Christianity, Amal Kiran quotes from St. Paul and shows how there is such an anticipation. To the extent there is, it becomes relevant to our brief study of the relationship between the Bible and Savitri. After quoting from the Epistles of St. Paul about the Last Day of Judgement, Amal Kiran remarks:
...the consummation for Paul is not a new earth-life, it is a departure from it into another world of glory and blessedness. In the concept of transfiguration of the living into spiritual bodies of a future time there is genuine prefiguration of the Aurobindonian vision.61
We may conclude the essay with a very different type of relationship between the Bible and Savitri. Till now we have been concerned
59Ibid. 60Ibid., pp. 705-11.
6177ie Problems of Early Christianity, p. 249.
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with Sri Aurobindo's use of word and phrase and idea and situation from the Bible in his poem though little to do with their original usage. Now we may consider if Savitri itself can help us understand the Bible better. All are aware that Sri Aurobindo has re-interpreted the Veda, the Upanishad and the Gita and brings out their inner significance fully and comprehensively than ever before. One wishes he had re-interpreted at least portions of the Bible. But a study of Savitri does seem to make at least one great Book of the Bible, perhaps the most spiritual of all the Books of the Old Testament, mean much more than what it does according to the classical interpretations, both Christian and Jewish.
Neither the Jewish nor the Christian commentators of Job see Job's suffering as purposive and meant to evolve the character of Job. Job is no saviour the kind of whose suffering we have seen above. There are commentators, though, who see Job as a pre-figuration of Christ. The lines in Savitri which have a bearing on the experience of Job may be quoted before we briefly indicate the way in which Job evolves:
Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.
Implacable in the passion of their will,
Lifting the hammers of titanic toil
The deimurges of the universe work.62
Perhaps more significant are the words of the Mother of Might,
I rend man's narrow and successful life
And force his sorrowful eyes to gaze at the sun
That he may die to earth and live in his soul.63
In Job it is the Lord himself who causes pain and suffering on the protagonist in order to raise him from the Sattwic state of perfection to the state beyond quality, of a Gunatita who can have the direct vision of the Lord.
At the start of the book we see Job as being "perfect" and "upright", "fearing God and eschewing evil." He is rich and prosperous. He is also blessed with seven sons and three daughters and each of the seven sons lives in a house of his own. If Job, in spite of this prosperous state is pious and moral, the sons indulge in perpetual feasting, each
62Savitri, p. 444. 63Ibid., p. 510.
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throwing a banquet to all his brothers and sisters everyday, the first son throwing a banquet on the first day of the week, the second son on the second day of the week and so on. Job actually offers burnt-offerings to the Lord and sanctifies them, thinking that they may take God lightly in their lives. God, seeing Job's moral and religious perfection, wants him to rise to a spiritual state when he could not only know about God and lead a good life but know him directly from the depths of being in which state alone such a knowledge and experience are possible. It is to underscore this point that Job is made to say at the end,
I have heard about thee with the hearing of my ear but now I see thee with mine own eye.64
To make the evolution of Job from a religious and moral man to a spiritual being possible the Lord enacts a drama, draws the attention of the cynical figure called the Satan—the definite article is used along with his name, hassatan in Hebrew; he is different from the Arch-enemy of God and Man of the later days—to Job and praises him at being perfect and upright and as fearing God and avoiding evil. As the Lord expects, the Satan questions if Job fears God for nothing. The Satan believes that one can be good only when everything is all right with him. Job's cannot be desireless devotion or ahaituki bhakti if we can attribute such a high philosophical concept to him, as commentators normally do. The Satan thinks that if only Job loses his all he will curse him to his fate. God takes the opportunity to make Job suffer intensely since it is only through suffering Job's evolution is possible. God asks the Satan to take away all Job has,— his property and even his ten children. The fellow does it readily, delighting as he does in others' suffering. But Job's Sattwic nature does not change. He tells himself that God gave and God has taken away all he had. He only blesses God, contrary to the Satan's prediction that he would curse him. God again points to the Satan "his servant" Job, who continues to be perfect and upright. The cynic says that what Job has lost is only the outer cover of his belongings, his skin remains sound. The Lord permits him to inflict intense physical suffering on Job, without touching his life. The Satan brings down on him a dreadful skin-disease cap-a-pie. Job's wife almost echoing the Satan's words, though because it is too unbearable to see Job's suffering, asks her husband to curse God and die. The good
64The Book of Job, XLII. 5, p. 500.
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man asks her not to talk like a foolish woman. One must accept whatever God gives with an equal spirit, good or evil. The worst suffering does not change his Sattwic nature. Job moves away outside town, scrapes himself with broken piece of pot and sits on an ash heap.
Hearing about his misfortune, three of his friends from distant places gather together and call on Job. They sit silently with him for a week. With the passing of days the pain intensifying, Job's Sattwic nature wears away and at last Job sinks away into despondency or Tamasic Vishada and curses the hour he was bom and conceived and wishes he had died at his birth and regrets why he is still alive.
The friends who have come to console him are horrified that Job who used to comfort others in distress when he was alright now falls into a state of dejection forgetting his piety (fear of God). They think he must have sinned; else he could not have suffered. We have mentioned the traditional Jewish belief in retributive justice. But Job is sure he has done nothing to deserve suffering. Job defends himself each time. The argument and counter-argument take place in three cycles. What happens in the discussion is Job's rising from Tamas to Rajas and even to Sattwa though he falls to the lower state and rises again till at last he passes beyond the Gunas.
He has the Lord's universed vision, Viswarupa Darshan—the Lord reveals his Infinity—and when Job has evolved as He intended restores to him all that was taken away. It is needless to say that once Job sees the Lord with his own eyes, there is neither pain nor grief. It is possible that a study of Savitri could throw at least some light on other portions of the Bible as it can on other Scriptures. It is possible because, as we said at the start, Savitri is a Scripture that includes and transcends the essence of all other Scriptures.
K. B. SlTARAMAYYA
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Shilpa-Yoga and the Kingdom of Subtle Matter
After his personal liberation, Aswapati seeks for the key to the realisation of Truth for all humankind. This leads him to search for the parting of the ways, the place where Error creeps into eternal Perfection, and the secret Origin where resides the Power by which the universal condition of Ignorance and Falsehood may be abolished. Withdrawing from the reality of the gross physical realm (sthula jagat) he becomes the Traveller of the Worlds, ascending the serried planes of consciousness that link our dense material base of manifestation with the Unmanifest Infinite Unknowable (avyakta parātpara). He identifies himself with the Reality of each of these planes, becoming their Witness (sākshi) and learning their intrinsic law of being (swabhava) and expression (swadharma). The Second Book of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri deals with this journey, eventually leading to the emergence of the Supreme Mother out of the heart of the Unknowable and the offering of Her boon of transformative Incarnation to Aswapati. As Aswapati traverses the World-Stair, Sri Aurobindo explores the aspect of consciousness native to each level, bringing out its special mode of manifestation and the difficulties and opportunities it presents relative to the Truth. Thus, just as each chapter of the Bhagavad Gita unlocks the secrets of a specific Yoga, each canto of Book II (and in fact, every canto of Savitri) opens a new approach to spiritual union, a Yoga. Leaving the gross material world, the first new realm that Aswapati enters is the world of Subtle Matter. The Mother has called this "true matter", since a supramental physicality will finally manifest through this substance. Matter holds the secret to the realisation of the Divine as embodied Beauty. It is the chosen medium for the representation of Transcendental Reality in concrete form. Thus, it can be seen analogically as the sculptor's stone or clay, subject to a Divine Creative process. How appropriate then, that the way of union offered to the spiritual contemplation of Aswapati that is Sri Aurobindo by this kingdom should be that of the creative artist, the shilpa-yogin.
Sri Aurobindo introduces the theme of creative expression and beauty early in the canto, upon Aswapati's entry into the "kingdom of subtle Matter's faery craft":1
1 Savitri, p. 103.
A world of lovelier forms lies near to ours,
Where, undisguised by earth's deforming sight,
All shapes are beautiful and all things true. ..2
Its intercession with the eternal Ray
Inspires our transient earth's brief-lived attempts
At beauty and the perfect shape of things.3
Soon, the tentative character of "transient earth's brief-lived attempts" assumes the urgency of an imperative. The creative process on earth hides a profounder intentional mystery which Sri Aurobindo introduces but leaves mystically enigmatic.
This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
From her blind unwilling substance must emerge
A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.
This is the destiny bequeathed to her,
As if a slain god left a golden trust
To a blind force and an imprisoned soul.
An immortal godhead's perishable parts
She must reconstitute from fragments lost.4
These lines remind us of "the dread mysterious sacrifice"5 that Sri Aurobindo speaks of elsewhere in the epic, the holocaust of the Supreme Purusha, the original "plunge into the Night"6 that initiates an evolutionary manifestation and is renewed in the unconditional sacrifice of each Avatar. It also carries with it the echo of its consequence—
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours.7
This "reconstitution" or "putting on" of the Divine nature by earthly substance is a mediated creative process that reproduces here the perennial dynamics of representation that is the play (Lila) of Shakti and Shakta, the Tapas of Chit calling into Becoming the numberless names and forms of pure infinite Being, Sat, and giving these reality in Space and Time through the agency of Supermind. Sri Aurobindo launches into an exploration of these creative dynamics and in the process awakens cultural echoes of existing theories concerning the
2 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 445.
3Ibid., p.104. 6Ibid,.p.107.
4Ibid., p.107. 7Ibid., p.67.
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human creative act that have appeared in different spatial and temporal contexts, relating these in his all-embracing vision.
However, it will be wrong to look for a logical or philosophical sequence of ideas in the canto. In one of his letters on Savitri, Sri Aurobindo identifies his inspiration as a Dionysian one8 and means by this that the visionary idea-sequences of Savitri are carried on the surge of a strategic development subservient to a dynamic play of spiritual emotion, bhāva. Ideas are introduced and their existential implications outlined in relation to other ideas, before being revisited and elaborated upon. New ideas are inserted into the flow of the unfolding present, unexpectedly modifying our expectations or pointing an indicative finger to the canto's or epic's or humanity's own past or future. Out of this complex weft, we need to disentangle the line of development suited to our intention.
Ancient thought, both in Greece and in India, placed the roots of our creation, like the Gita's Ashwattha tree, above, in the Transcendent. There, distant from our mire-obscured appearances, bums the Logos, the vast solar Truth (satyam bṛhai) that projects the "unfolding Image" birthing the Infinite in Time and Space:
All we attempt in this imperfect world,
Looks forward or looks back beyond Time's gloss
To its pure idea and firm inviolate type
In an absolute creation's flawless skill.
To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To feel the eternal's touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here.9
But a profound difference enters around the 5th c. B.C. between Indian and Greek epistemological views on human access to this realm of the Ideal. This difference is closely related to the birth of Metaphysics in Greece. Metaphysics initiates a systematisation of the human location in Space and Time relative to God, Nature and Society. As a consequence it runs the danger of subjecting the Infinite to a scheme of the mind, reducing it to a concept. This mental perspectivism on the Infinite is an epistemological shift which disorients mind from its ground in Spirit, progressively rendering It inaccessible. The lightning-intuitions of Pre-Socratic "thinking", close
8 Ibid.,p. 733:"The mystic Muse is more of an inspired Bacchante of theDionysian wine than an orderly housewife."
9 Ibid., p. 108
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neighbour to Upanishadic utterance, are now replaced by ponderous mental classifications. Though it is Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) who is commonly known as the founder of Western Metaphysics, one of the most articulate thinkers of the modem West, Heidegger (1889-1976) who spent his considerable philosophical powers exposing the civilisational hubris of Metaphysics and the historical consequences of its mental totalitarianism, points to Aristotle's teacher, Plato (427-347 B.C.) as more properly its initiator. Though Plato was not unfamiliar with the Spirit, and in spite of Plotinus's 3n1 c. mystical reinterpretations of his ideas, the beginnings of a problematical relationship, symptomatic of mind's disorientation from Spirit, manifests itself in his works. Plato banishes the poet from his ideal Republic, equating the state of creative inspiration with mental instability, dangerous to the rational lucidities of social organisation. In his view of the process of creative representation, a fixed hierarchy reveals itself extending from the world of Divine Ideas to its secondary and tertiary projections respectively in the world of Nature and in Nature's product, Man. Thus, to Plato, human creation, which is based on sensory reception and response to the world of Nature is "twiceremoved" from the world of Divine Ideas. Nature's expressions are copies from the world of Ideas, while human expression copies from the world of Nature-making the human creation a sorry copy of a copy.10
In the canto under our consideration, Sri Aurobindo invokes this Platonic theory to underline the practical insufficiency of the ignorant human state to have access to the Divine Idea:
Here in a difficult half-finished world
Is a slow toiling of unconscious Powers;
Here is man's ignorant divining mind,
His genius bom from an inconscient soil.
To copy on earth's copies is his art.
For when he strives for things surpassing earth,
Too rude the workman's tools, too crude his stuff,
And hardly with his heart's blood he achieves
His transient house of the divine Idea,
His figure of a Time-inn for the Unborn."
This passage is preceded by one which introduces the idea of human
10Plato, The Republic,X
11Savitri, p.109.
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creation being a copy of "heaven's art." The passage evokes the metallic brilliance of Byzantine sculpture, presenting, in W. B. Yeats's description, an "artifice of eternity."12 There is something lacking here, a mimesis of form and an iconic idea, which attempts a transcendence of the sensible world, but stops short at a mental construct. This is the paucity of the religious art of medieval Europe, where the breath of the Spirit fails to invest the image with concrete life. The divorce of Spirit and Mind formalised in the Metaphysics of the pre-Christian West continues to blight the attempt at a successful ideational art:
Earth's eyes half see, her forces half create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven's art.
A radiance of a golden artifice,
A masterpiece of inspired device and rule.
Her forms hide what they house and only mime
The unseized miracle of self-bom shapes
That live for ever in the Eternal's gaze.13
A similar, though opposite insufficiency haunts the art of the Renaissance. Verisimilitude, the truth of Nature observed and experienced, now predominates over the spiritual idea in an attempt to return life to art. Though religious themes are often depicted and
12 Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats, Collected Poems
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, peme in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of entemity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing.
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
13Savitri,P.109.
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are sometimes given bold embodiment in form and, though undoubtedly, supreme geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Raphael from this period have left some of the most outstanding specimens of art in human history, a scrupulous naturalistic illusionism based on one-point perspective and the play of external light and shade and a principled subjection to the limits of observed human anatomy and emotion perpetuates the separation of Mind and Spirit, Plato's copy of a copy
.
Western philosophers of this period continued to grapple with the problematic relationship between Spirit and Mind, shifting the needle even more emphatically towards the independence of the human Reason and giving rise to the Enlightenment of the IS* century. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), easily the best known of the philosophers of this period, did not fail to address the problem introduced by Metaphysics, identifying its crux and seeking a breakthrough which would free human knowledge from its apologetic relationship with the Spirit. Among Kant's principal contributions to Philosophy are his astute observation of the inability of Reason to apprehend Infinite Being {The Critique of Pure Reason) and his formalisation of Aesthetics as a branch of Philosophy alternate to Metaphysics (The Critique of Judgement).
In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant saw and expressed more clearly than his predecessors that Metaphysics' attempt to objectify the realm of Divine Ideas, of God or pure infinite Spirit, was an incongruity beyond the reach of finite mind and that what resulted from the effort was the subjection of the Reason to a concept, and not a thing-in-itself According to Kant, neither sensible objects nor unconditioned realities such as God, were knowable in themselves to the human mind, since human experience was only capable of knowing sensible objects through a priori cognitive categories. As for Spirit, being by definition unconditioned, no such forms of cognitive understanding would find any foothold, leaving It entirely outside the realm of knowledge. Thus, the legitimate field of Philosophy, for Kant, was the study of the a priori forms of mental understanding as the only accessible grounds of human knowledge. Since these categories of knowing were supposed by Kant to be inherent to mentality, he used the term "transcendental" for them, and called his own Philosophy "Critical Transcendentalism."14 Kantian subjectivism has important
14 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr.Norman Kemp Smith, London,1929, "Preface"(both editions),pp.7-32.
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consequences for art since, though Kant stationed himself firmly on the irreducible finitude of human cognition, the assumption of universality in the conditions of knowing pointed to an "objective" subjectivism and opened up a variety of German Transcendentalist variants, one of which—Schelling's Transcendental Absolutism— succeeded in establishing once more a Romantic bridge between Mind and the Divine Idea through the theory of the Imagination.
Moreover, if Kant's Critique of Pure Reason abolished Spirit from the legitimate domain of knowledge, his Critique of Judgement could be said to surreptitiously return Spirit into human experience through beauty and sublimity. If the unconditioned infinite Transcendent was irrevocably divorced from the mind, its Immanence in Nature now re-surfaced as the aesthetic experience. A mysterious property inherent in the object of Beauty awoke a pure disinterested delight in the observer, while the experience of the sublime went further to flash a glimpse of unearthly Perfection, an intimation of the Ideal or archetypal world in earthly things.15 Though not immediately manifest in Western Art, the implications of Kant's thinking on the aesthetic experience was to fire the passion of 19* c. Romanticism in Germany and England. Sri Aurobindo dwells on this experience of Beauty and Sublimity in Nature and the ideal worlds with which it brings humanity into contact, relating the experience with psychic awakening through refinement of the senses.
Worlds are there nearer to those absolute realms,
Where the response to Truth is swift and sure
And spirit is not hampered by its frame
And hearts by sharp division seized and rent
And delight and beauty are inhabitants
And love and sweetness are the law of life.
A finer substance in a subtler mould
Embodies the divinity earth but dreams;
Its strength can overtake joy's running feet;
Overleaping the fixed hurdles set by Time,
The rapid net of an intuitive clasp
Captures the fugitive happiness we desire.
A Nature lifted by a larger breath,
15s1mmanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, tr. James Creed Meredith, Oxford, 1952. especially Part I, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, sections 1-22, "Analytic of the Beautiful", pp.203-244.(Page numbers refer to the original German pagination. given in the margins of Meredith's text.)
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Plastic and passive to the all-shaping Fire,
Answers the flaming Godhead's casual touch:
Immune from our inertia of response
It hears the word to which our hearts are deaf,
Adopts the seeing of immortal eyes
And, traveller on the roads of line and hue,
Pursues the spirit of Beauty to its home.
Thus we draw near to the All-Wonderful
Following his rapture in things as sign and guide;
Beauty is his footprint showing us where he has passed,
Love is his heartbeat's rhythm in mortal breasts,
Happiness the smile on his adorable face.16
Kant's aesthetics, in spite of admitting a mysterious element in the experience of beauty, remains grounded in sensible Nature. Nevertheless his ideas, though situated in the Enlightenment, may be seen as precursors to 19th c. Romantic thought, thereby inaugurating the transition into our Modem Age of Subjectivism. Particularly, the transformation of his cognitive transcendentalism, in the hands of Romantic thinkers such as Schelling, returns to the creative artist his ancient kinship with the world of Divine Ideas and frees him from the tyranny of the natural world. No longer is the artist an imitator of heaven's imitations; he has discovered now the right to receive directly from the Inner or Higher worlds creations not yet bom on earth or hidden from sight in its occult folds, a prerogative exercised in its fullness only since the late 19th c. However, lacking a tradition in the disciplined invocation of a higher consciousness, the art of modem subjectivism is yet to live up to its promise:
Even in the littleness of our mortal state,
Even in this prison-house of outer form,
A brilliant passage for the infallible Flame
Is driven through gross walls of nerve and brain,
A Splendour passes or a Power breaks through,
Earth's great dull barrier is removed awhile,
The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes
And we grow vessels of creative might.
The enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt,
16 Ibid., pp. 111-12.
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A joyful anguish trembles in our limbs;
A dream of beauty dances through the heart,
A thought from the eternal Mind draws near,
Intimations cast from the Invisible
Awaking from Infinity's sleep come down,
Symbols of That which never yet was made.
But soon the inert flesh responds no more,
Then sinks the sacred orgy of delight,
The blaze of passion and the tide of power
Are taken from us and, though a glowing form
Abides astonishing earth, imagined supreme,
Too little of what was meant has left a trace.17
In Indian aesthetic thought of the c, such a sinking of the Inspiration would be attributed to a failure of yogic concentration (shithila samādhi)18. Though the six Darshanas were well established and systematic Buddhist philosophy of a high sophistication had made its appearance in India of the pre-Christian era, the Western division between Mind and Spirit remained foreign to the tradition of Indian thinking. Undoubtedly, this was because Philosophy in India was always seen as Darshana, an epistemological framework resting on and facilitating states of yogic realisation. This subordination of thinking to a discipline of practice (abhyāsa) leading to ontological changes which permitted direct knowledge by identity (pratyaksha) of Spirit, is what marks the fundamental difference between Indian and Western Philosophy. The primacy of Spirit and the yoking of human effort to it with an aim to union enters too, into accounts of the human creative process and spawns a tradition of artistic practice known as shilpa-yoga (the Yoga of Art or Art as Yoga).
Thinking of the creative process in these terms can be seen from the earliest Indian texts. In the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, for example, That which transcends Being and Non-Being makes Itself manifest as Being through its own mysterious Power, later known as Tapas or Shakti.19 A graphic description of the process is presented in the Aitereya Upanishad:
Yea, the Spirit brooded over Him and of Him thus brooded over the mouth broke forth, as when an egg is hatched and breaks;
17 Ibid., pp. 108-09.
18 Kalidasa, Malavikagnimitra (ed. paranjape), pune, 1918.
19 Rig Veda Samhita,. X129.
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from the mouth broke Speech and of Speech fire was bom. The nostrils broke forth and from the nostrils Breath and of Breath air was bom. The eyes broke forth and from the eyes Sight and of Sight the Sun was bom. The ears broke forth and from the ears Hearing and of Hearing the regions were bom. The skin broke forth and from skin hairs and from the hairs herbs of healing and all trees and plants were bom. The heart broke forth and from the heart Mind and of Mind the moon was bom. The navel broke forth and from the navel apāna and of apāna Death was bom. The organ of pleasure broke forth and from the organ seed and of seed the waters were bom.20
Here the process of Divine creation is outlined in terms of the primary emergence of the organs of experience of the Divine Person (Purusha) through the self-concentration (brooding) of Spirit. From these transcendental subjective determinants the constituents of objective experience are projected. Continuing, the description proceeds to reverse the scheme by speaking of the creation of the human being in the image of the Purusha and of the entry of objective and subjective constituents into the human being.21 A profound experiential equivalence between man and God is established in this way, pointing to the possibility of knowledge by identity in Being and creative capacity. In the canto under our consideration a similar description of the self-representation of Spirit is provided along with a statement of the perpetuation of its creative urge at all levels of its manifestation:
There are realms where Being broods in its own depths;
It feels in its immense dynamic core
Its nameless, unformed, unborn potencies
Cry for expression in the unshaped Vast:
Ineffable beyond Ignorance and death,
The images of its ever-living Truth
Look out from a chamber of its self-rapt soul:
As if to its own inner witness gaze
The Spirit holds up its mirrored self and works,
The power and passion of its timeless heart,
The figures of its formless ecstasy,
The grandeurs of its multitudinous might.
20 The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 356.
21 Ibid., p. 357.
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Thence comes the mystic substance of our souls
Into the prodigy of our nature's birth,
There is the unfallen height of all we are
And dateless fount of all we hope to be.
On every plane the hieratic Power,
Initiate of the unspoken verities,
Dreams to transcribe and make a part of life
In its own native style and living tongue
Some trait of the perfection of the Unborn,
Some vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some far tune of the immortal rhapsodist Voice,
Some rapture of the all-creating Bliss,
Some form and plan of the Beauty unutterable.22
The Golden Age of Indian Art is considered to be the period from the late 4th to the 6th c, though astonishing embodiments of Beauty continue to be seen in Indian sculpture and architecture right up to the 16th c. and in Painting at least upto the 18th c. By the 5th c, sophisticated treatises on art and aesthetics, like the Vishnu-dharmottaram, have made their appearance, containing canonical injunctions on standards of form and methods of artistic practice. It is clear from these texts that no use of external models were prescribed for representation, this being replaced by a process of inward concentration {dhyāna) bringing the object of representation clearly and in detail into one's visualisation and uniting oneself in consciousness with it. Coomaraswamy describes this process:
... [It] will appear natural enough that that India should have developed a highly specialised technique of vision. The maker of an icon, having by various means proper to the practice of Yoga eliminated the distracting influences of fugitive emotions and creature images, self-willing and self-thinking, proceeds to visualise the form of the devata, or aspect of God, described in a given canonical prescription, sādhanā, mantram, dhyāna. The mind "produces" or "draws" (ākarshati) this form to itself, as though from a great distance, ultimately, that is, from heaven where the types of art exist in formal operation, immediately, from "the immanent space in the heart" (antar-hridaya-ākāsha), the common focus (samstāva, "concord") of seer and seen, at which place the only possible experience of reality takes place.
22 Savitri, p. 111.
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The true knowledge-purity aspect (jnānasattvarupa) thus conceived and inwardly known (antarjneya) reveals itself against the ideal space (ākāsna) like a reflection (pratibimbavat), or as if seen in a dream (svapnavat). The imager must realise a complete self-identification with it (ātmānam.... dhyāyāt bhāvayei), whether its peculiarities (nānālakshāndlamkṛtam), even in the case of opposite sex or when the divinity is provided with terrible supernatural characteristics; the form thus known in an act of non-differentiation, being held in view as long as may be necessary (evam rupam yāvad icchati tāvad vibhāvayet), is the model from which he proceeds to execution in stone, pigment or other material.23
This is the stringent discipline (abhyāsa) of the ancient Indian shilpa-yogin and the conditions of inner identity practised and experienced by him are presented thus by Sri Aurobindo in our canto:
A communion of spiritual entities,
A genius of creative Immanence,
Makes all creation deeply intimate:
A fourth dimension of aesthetic sense
Where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all,
To the cosmic wideness re-aligns our souls.
A kindling rapture joins the seer and seen;
The craftsman and the craft grown inly one
Achieve perfection by the magic throb
And passion of their close identity.24
And yet, from our modem point of view, which revels in the divine right of its freedom of conception, this inner visualisation on prescribed forms, attributes, postures and proportions seems as constraining as the Western subjection to external reality. It may be pointed out that these prescriptions are only guidelines, evidentiary formulae {pramānāni) seen and shaped by master-yogis to train the consciousness to recognise perfect principles by example—that once these guidelines are mastered in experience, alternate formulations may be produced. This of course is true, but still the temper of our age finds it hard not to refuse the discipline of creating from established canons. At the turn of the last century, the Indian master-artist
23 Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art (2nd ed.), New York pp. 5-6.
24 Savitri, p. 112.
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Abanindranath Tagore affirmed this spirit by advising the modem Indian artist to assimilate the essence of the past but have the courage to tread new ground. The modem shilpa-yogin 's sādhanā, he said, is sajāg-sādhānd, meditation with eyes wide open. In his words: "Every artist must first weave to his own design his dream-catcher's net, then wait—laying one's seat beside the universal traffic—not with one's senses shut—but wide awake. At the initiation of this sajāg-sādhanā, the rigour of this discipline must be welcomed and owned."25 One is reminded here of the Mother's views on the Yoga of the Artist: "The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which in itself is almost a Yoga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is not other than the consciousness given by Yoga."26 The Mother has more to say about the discipline of the artist's training, Abanindranath's weaving of his "dream-catcher's net": "...there is a considerable difference between the vision of ordinary people and that of artists. Their way of seeing things is much more complete and conscious than that of ordinary people. When one has not trained one's vision, one sees vaguely, imprecisely, and has impressions rather than an exact vision. An artist, when he sees something and has learnt to use his eyes,—for instance, when he sees a figure, instead of seeing just a form, like that, you know,... he sees the exact structure of the figure, the proportions of the different parts, whether the figure is harmonious or not, and why ... all sorts of things at one glance, you understand, in a single vision, as one sees the relations between different forms."27
Sri Aurobindo expresses his sympathy with this sense of modem independence. There is no need for us to repeat what a past age has done. Not limiting ourselves to prescribed images of the Gods, a vast adventurous embrace of all life as the field of Yoga, and hence as providing fit subjects for the shilpa-yogin's contemplation and
25 Abanindranath Tagore, Bageshwari Shilpa Prabandhābali, Calcutta, Allahabad, Bombay, 1969, p.1. (Author's translation).
26Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 3, p. 105.
27Ibid., Vol. 6, p. 83.
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representation in the new spiritual Age that is seeking for manifestation, is Sri Aurobindo's invitation.28 Moreover, the conditions of yogic representation, in Sri Aurobindo's view, need now be extended beyond wall or canvas to the lived everyday reality of the artist—the Gods must be shaped within to live in us and an inspired dynamic union with the Transcendent's sphere lead us into a Divine Life on earth:
Only when we have climbed above ourselves,
A line of the Transcendent meets our road
And joins us to the timeless and the true;
It brings to us the inevitable word,
The godlike act, the thoughts that never die.
A ripple of light and glory wraps the brain,
And travelling down the moment's vanishing route
The figures of eternity arrive.
As the mind's visitors or the heart's guests
They espouse our mortal brevity awhile,
Or seldom in some rare delivering glimpse
Are caught by our vision's delicate surmise.
Although beginnings only and first attempts,
These glimmerings point to the secret of our birth
And the hidden miracle of our destiny.
What we are there and here on earth shall be
Is imaged in a contact and a call.
As yet earth's imperfection is our sphere,
Our nature's glass shows not our real self;
That greatness still abides held back within.
Earth's doubting future hides our heritage:
The Light now distant shall grow native here,
The Strength that visits us our comrade power;
The Ineffable shall find a secret voice,
The Imperishable bum through Matter's screen
Making this mortal body godhead's robe.
The Spirit's greatness is our timeless source
And it shall be our crown in endless Time.29
DEBASHISH BANERJI
28The Future Poetry, pp. SABCL, Vol. 9, pp. 189-98.
29 Savitri ,p. 110
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PART III
Sri Aurobindo and Aswapati in Savitri
Who are the protagonists, the principal characters in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri ? This is, apparently, one of the simplest questions that may be asked about the epic: the chief protagonist is Savitri, after whom the epic is named and who dominates its second half; then there is Satyavan, her counterpart and husband, who represents the soul of humanity; and thirdly there is Aswapati, the king who is Savitri's father and who is the main character in the first half of the epic.
The authorities, experts and exegetes who have written on Savitri are unanimously of the same opinion. The following is a small selection from the learned assessment of some of them concerning the first, second and third Book, i.e. almost half of the epic's text. In The Book of the Divine Mother M. P. Pandit writes: "In the first part, [Sri Aurobindo] speaks of Aswapati's Yoga, the Yoga of the King ... Aswapati in the epic is the representative of the aspiring humanity who prepares and lays the path to the Divine Glory ... Aswapati stands face to face with the Creatrix of the universe, the supreme Divine Mother, and prays to her fervently to manifest her glories on Earth ... The Divine Grace takes birth as Savitri, daughter of King Aswapati, and with the birth of this Flame, things get moving ... Aswapati has arrived at the overmental levels of existence and he embodies the consciousness of the One, which includes the many ... After describing the overwhelming experience of Aswapati with the absolute stillness at 'the gates of the transcendent, the poet observes that that is not the Ultimate."1
In Savitri: An Approach and a Study A. B. Purani writes: "Aswapati acquired this secret knowledge [see Book I Canto IV] that had come down by tradition and attained to the freedom of the spirit by cutting the cord of the mind which ties it to the earth... The entire second Book is, in fact, Aswapati's travel over worlds heaped upon worlds in a complex cosmogony mounting from the plinth of the plane of Matter right up to levels of higher Mind and the plane of the Cosmic Being leading to worlds of greater Knowledge. Aswapati represents the aspiring human soul down the millenniums of evolution in his search for the truth of himself, of the world and of God. He acquires
1 M. P. Pandit, The Book of the Divine Mother, pp.17, 40, 42,46and78.
by his tapasya immense knowledge of the possibilities of the human consciousness, its deeper depths and its higher and the highest heights. In his heart bums the flame of aspiration to create here on earth an image of the perfection which his soul feels is possible for man and earth to attain. The third Book describes Aswapati's entry into and experience of Supracosmic planes of consciousness and his meeting face to face with the Supreme Creatrix, the power of the omnipotent Divine."2
And in Rohit Mehta's The Dialogue with Death we read: "In the epic of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo deals exhaustively with the Yoga of Aswapati, which indeed is the Yoga of Ascent. And Aswapati's Yoga is a series of negations [?]. It is only when all is negated that the Voice of the Divine is heard, promising the descent of one of its most brilliant rays for dispelling the darkness of the earth. And so the Birth of Savitri cannot be understood unless one understands the Yoga of Aswapati in which the latter ascends higher and higher by a never-ending process of negations... Instead of showing Aswapati performing austerities and offering oblations in various sacrifices, [Sri Aurobindo] has introduced the journey of the King in quest of a divine blessing so that he may have a child for which he was longing. And so Aswapati's long journey is for obtaining the blessing of a child."3
One could quote many more assertions to the same end; in their unanimity they should be utterly convincing for the student of Sri Aurobindo's cosmic poem. But then: why does Sri Aurobindo write the name Aswapati for the very first time on page 341?* Forgetting to mention the name of a character whose actions are described in no less than 315 successive pages of his poem would indeed be a gross, not to say a staggering oversight by a poet as painstaking as Sri Aurobindo, of whose poetic labour Nirodbaran, his amanuensis, writes: "Revision after revision, addition of lines, even punctuations
2A B. Purani, Savitri: An Approach and A Study, pp. 163- 65.
3Rohit Mehta, The Dialogue with Death, pp. 33-34.
*It is true that Sri Aurobindo mentions the name "Aswapati" a few times in his correspondence with K. D. Sethna, but the letters in which this happens date from the second half of the thirties—a time when Sri Aurobindo's correspondent had no other means of placing the protagonist of the first Books, and a tactful Sri Aurobindo (as we shall see further on) did not want to write otherwise.
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A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,
Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men
And subtler bodies than these passing frames,
Objects too fine for our material grasp,
Acts vibrant with a superhuman light.9
Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes
To recapitulate: Once we cross the confines of the normal mind of man, we meet on our ascending climb a series of hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of pure spiritual being. These planes are in their ascending order:
(i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparārdha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes:
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights.10
A vision lightened on the viewless heights."
On summit Mind are radiant altitudes
Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,
Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,
Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.12
Sight in the Higher Mind
The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness to which the first ascent out of four normal mentality takes us. This is a mind of automatic and spontaneous knowledge, knowledge assuming the nature of Truth-Thought. Its most characteristic movement is a mass-ideation, a totality of truth-seeing in a single view. The relation of idea with idea, of truth with truth is not established by logic but emerges already self-seen in the integral whole. Thought in the Higher Mind is not an acquired knowledge but a self-revelation of eternal
9Savitri, p. 28. 10lbid, p. 76. 11Ibid., p. 42.
12Vbid., p. 659.
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Wisdom. For, we must not forget, "thought in itself in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception,... a powerful but ... secondary result of spiritual vision..."13 Now a few verses form Savitri depicting the sight in the Higher Mind:
There Mind, a splendid sun of vision's rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts.14
Idea rotated symphonies of sight.15
The immortal's thoughts displaced our bounded view.16
Illumined by a vision in the thought.17
A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes.18
Sight in the Illumined Mind
Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight.
Now some illustrative verses from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:
An empyrean vision saw and knew."
Whence it shoots the arrows of its sight and will.20
Whose fire bums in the eyes of seer and sage; A lightning flash of visionary sight.21
There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;
A burning head of vision leads the mind,
Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;
The heart glows an illuminate and seer.22
Sight in the Intuitive Mind
Next in the order of ascension is the Intuitive Mind whose characteristic power is an intimate and exact Truth-perception which arises out of a revealing encounter between the subject and the object,
13The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 945.
14Savitri, p. 327. 15Ibid, p. 301.16Ibid, p. 529.
17Ibid, p. 176. 18Ibid, p. 659. 19Ibid, p. 25
20Ibid, p. 529. 21Ibid, p. 627. 22Ibid, p. 660.
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carrying in it as its natural consequence a Truth-sight and Truth-conception. Thought in the Intuitive Mind is revelatory in character.
Here are some verses from Savitri indicating how sight functions in this Intuitive Mind plane:
Sight's lightnings leaped into the invisible.23
Nothing escaped his vast intuitive sight.24
Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack
Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs.25
Its fiery edge of seeing absolute
Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self...
Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes.26
Sight in the Overmind
Beyond the plane of the Intuitive Mind is a superconscient cosmic Mind which possesses a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge. In the wide cosmic perception of the Overmind,
Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;
Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;
All Time is one body, Space a single book:
There is the Godhead's universal gaze
And there the boundaries of immortal Mind.27
In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge."28
Here are some verses from Savitri characterising the sight in the Overmind:
His boundless thought was neighbour to cosmic sight:
A universal light was in his eyes.29
... eyes of boundless thought.30
23Ibid., p. 31. 24 Ibid.,p.96. 25Ibid., p.660. 26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 28The Life Divine, SABCL,Vol.19, p. 950.
Savitri, p. 79.30 Ibid.,p.335
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All came at once into his single view.31
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance.32
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind.33
Mind was a single innumerable look.34
... the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight.35
A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form.36
Sight of the Overmental Gods
Immobile, seeing the milleniums pass.37
They look on our struggle with impartial eyes.38
The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes.39
Unmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze.40
And look impassive on a suffering world,
Calm they gaze down on the little human scene.41
Spiritual Sight
We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called 'Spiritual Sights'. Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers. Why are we taking care to term the cognitions in the superconscient planes as 'sights' and not purely and simply as 'knowledge' ? The question needs some clarifying answer at this point. Sri Aurobindo himself has discussed this specific point at many places in The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Letters on Yoga. We give below a summary of his observations.
A mental figure or conception is not what is called a 'realisation' or a 'seeing'. It is no better than an indirect knowledge, paroksa. What is needed is a direct vision of the truth without the need of
31Ibid, p. 96. 32Ibid, p. 661. 33Ibid. p. 587. 34Ibid, p.556
35 Ibid., p.661.36Ibid, p. 662. 37Ibid, p. 57.38Ibid.
39Ibid, p. 587. 40Ibid, p. 574. 41Ibid, p. 428.
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emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before. He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is his whole Yoga of Transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness."16 The young disciple to whom this was said noted down everything from memory, but the gist is unmistakable. (It was in the same conversation that the Mother gave away that Sri Aurobindo also described in detail many of her own experiences without her having spoken about them, and ascribed them to Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo himself wrote in a letter to K. D. Sethna: "I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the wealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience."17 He wrote also: "Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences."18 It would be possible to cull from his letters half a dozen more quotations to the same effect.
In 1936, the three first Books of Savitri were still "a small passage about Aswapati and the other worlds."19 In 1946, that small passage had developed into the stupendous grandeur of the bases of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga*; the expounding of the new knowledge gained by him and which would support his work of bringing down the
16 Mona Sarkar, Sweet Mother I, pp. 26 -27. See also Perspectives of Savitri, Vol, I pp. 46-47.
17Savitri, p. 794. 18Ibid 19Ibid, p. 731.
* The tide "The Yoga of the King" of Book I Cantos D3 and V, is generally understood to mean 'The Yoga of King Aswapati". Yet it might be a translation of the term rāja yoga, and it surely is a (condensed) telling of the first phases of Sri Aurobindo's own integral, Royal Yoga.
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Supramental upon earth and lay the basis of its material transformation; the report of his exploration of the worlds, their connections with our Earth and the work he performed in them; his quest for the supreme goal: the presence of the Divine Mother and her promise to incarnate among mankind in order to assure the foundation of the divine life upon earth. "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds was just a small passage," writes Nirodbaran. "Here now we find the fully lengthened and developed Book running into 15 cantos. The third Book, The Book of the Divine Mother, was also written probably for the first time, for he wrote to Amal in 1946: '... There is also a third sufficiently long Book, The Book of the Divine Mother.'"20 And we may repeat here part of an already used quotation: "Undoubtedly the first three Books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest."
Is the present writer the first to draw attention to the role and presence of Sri Aurobindo in the first half of Savitri? Not at all. For most of the authors who have written about Savitri the poem occupies an important place in their life; they have studied it thoroughly; they treat Sri Aurobindo's mantric poetry with reverence, even with love. The many insightful and enlightening pages K. D. Sethna has devoted to Savitri, for instance, are widely appreciated. From the writings of the other Savitri admirers, a passage from Mangesh Nadkarni's Savitri: A Brief Introduction must suffice. It says: "Sri Aurobindo's Aswapati is not the sorrow-stricken King of the Mahabharata story, who performs austerities for the sake of having a child. Sri Aurobindo's Aswapati is a seer-king, a representative and a leader of enlightened humanity... His quest is for that creative principle which has the power to put an end to all human frustrations, discontents and ills; this is something which has so far evaded all thinkers, reformers, revolutionaries, even avatars. Aswapati has acquired all that human knowledge and wisdom have to offer in the East as well as in the West; and he is painfully aware of the fact that nothing, neither science and technology, nor religion and art, have so far been able to free man from the clutches of death, ignorance and suffering. Down the ages, man has always aspired for God, Light, Freedom and Immortality... It may be noted here that this was also Sri Aurobindo's own quest as a Yogi. In a very real sense these 22 cantos devoted to Aswapati's Yoga also describe
20 Nirodbaran, op. cit., p. 179.
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Sri Aurobindo's own tapasya. Like Sri Aurobindo, Aswapati too seeks to win for mankind the secret of transforming the very structure of human consciousness so that life on earth can blossom into fulfilment."21
Nonetheless, however profound their insight, all authors keep referring, as in the above passage, to Aswapati in a text and context where Sri Aurobindo never mentions the legendary king and sage, and where he is without any doubt writing down his own revolutionary, superhuman experiences. (And when he mentions for the very first time the name Aswapati, on page 341, it is only because he is reaching the end of those personal, all-important experiences and intends to take up again the thread of the legend which he has left on page 21, at the end of Book I Canto II, the beginning of the epic.)
I indeed deem for the following reasons the discernment between Sri Aurobindo and Aswapati in the first three Books of Savitri of the utmost importance:
1.The constant repetition of the name Aswapati in the first three Books of Savitri has grown into a sort of tradition from the earliest commentaries onwards—a tradition that persists fifty years after Sri Aurobindo's passing. Such traditions tend to become regarded as established fact. It this case, this would be disastrous, especially among the reading public who usually do not dare or do not have the means to call a seemingly authoritative opinion into question.
2.In the publications on Savitri the systematic repetition of the name "Aswapati"—where one should read "Sri Aurobindo", or "the protagonist", or "the One in front", or "the thinker and toiler", or whatever name or epithet suitable for the purpose—automatically, not to say subconsciously, pulls the reader back to bygone times in ancient India. In the first half of Savitri Sri Aurobindo, on the contrary, takes us ahead with him in his avataric enterprise to establish the foundations of the future. Aswapati belongs to the world of the legend and the past, Sri Aurobindo to the world of the symbol and the future. No Aurobindonian will show a lack of respect towards the world of the Rishis, of the Mahabharata and of Veda Vyasa but, however great, they belong to the "lower hemisphere" just like all the rest of the bygone history of humanity. In the first three Books of Savitri Sri Aurobindo, "in the front of the immemorial quest," has laid for the very first time and for all time to come the bases of the "upper hemisphere" of a divine Consciousness and Life upon earth. The
21 Mangesh Nadkami, Savitri: A Brief Introduction,pp.-22-23
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repetition of Aswapati's name and the associations in accordance with it may act as a kind of film dimming our perception of Sri Aurobindo's world-transforming action.
3. As shown previously, it is beyond doubt that the first three Books of Savitri are a record of Sri Aurobindo's experiences; in other words, they are autobiographical. This, by itself, makes them of incomparable value—a value which would be diminished and distorted by ascribing them to the legendary Aswapati. The following statement of Sri Aurobindo's in a letter to a disciple is well-known: "Neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all about my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see." By now, a great many facts about his life have been gathered and the writing of a responsible, well-founded biography has become possible. The immense value of the first three Books of Savitri, however, is that they present us with an extensive account and narrative of what "has not been on the surface for men to see." Who Sri Aurobindo was and what he did for the world cannot be known without this account, and this goes far beyond anything Aswapati was or could stand for.
These three points of importance to any reader of Savitri deserve some concrete illustration. Be it nevertheless stated that the following illustrations, as well as this short essay as a whole, are nothing more than pointers towards the fundamental thesis. A few examples must suffice; for the rest one can only refer the reader to Sri Aurobindo's grand epic itself.
Sri Aurobindo's Occult Biography
Sri Aurobindo has told us about many of his spiritual experiences. They are strewn, mostly under the cloak of impersonality, everywhere in his letters as in all his other works. In the three Books of Savitri under consideration we read for example:
A fit companion of the timeless Kings,
Equalled with the godheads of the living Suns,
He mixed in the radiant pastimes of the Unborn.22
In the still self he lived and it in him;
Autobiographical, and therefore of immense value too, are the sonnets and shorter poems Sri Aurobindo wrote after his 'retirement'. It is, besides, remarkable that many of this poems contain or prefigure experiences rendered in a broader scope in Savitri.
22 Savitri, p. 236.
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Its mute immemorable listening depths,
Its vastness and its stillness were his own;
One being with it he grew wide, powerful, free.23
Himself was to himself his only scene.
Above the Witness and his universe
He stood in a realm of boundless silences
Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds.
A light was round him wide and absolute,
A diamond purity of eternal sight.24
He had reached the top al all that can be known:
His sight surpassed creation's head and base;
Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns,
The obscure Abyss exposed its monstrous rule...
In the kingdom of the Spirit's power and light,
As if one who arrived out of infinity's womb
He came new-bom, infant and limitless
And grew in the wisdom of the timeless Child;
He was a vast that soon became a Sun...
He linked creation to the Eternal's sphere,
His finite parts approached their absolutes,
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.25
As the Mother said: "Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself [she always called Sri Aurobindo 'Lord'] were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer there, every difficulty finds its solution therein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga."26 This is doing Yoga in the footsteps of Sri Aurobindo.
23 Ibid, p. 284. 24 Ibid, p. 297. 25 Ibid, pp. 300-02.
26 Mona Sarkar, op. cit., p. 22.
* In the same conversation the Mother said: "It was his way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never asserted himself." (p. 23) The Books here under consideration contain two striking examples of this delicay, tact and humility, the hallmarks of the truly Great Book I Canto III (The Yoga of the King I) should start with the lines: "One in front of the immemorial quest / Protagonist of the mysterious play..." In order to soften
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Sri Aurobindo the Warrior
In the writings about Sri Aurobindo by his followers, he is seldom considered to be or represented as a warrior, a dauntless combatant. One mostly reads about him as the ever helpful, infinitely patient, knowledgeable, humorous, compassionate Master or Guru—which he of course also was to a degree out of the ordinary. Yet leaving out his warrior side lessens and therefore deforms his total image. He was after all the Avatar of the Supramental, which is none other than the last Avatar in the Hindu tradition: Kalki, expected to come on a white winged horse brandishing the sword of the spiritual power (and whom nobody perceived when he did come). If it is true that because of his effort the Supramental has descended into the Earth's atmosphere, and if because of this descent the earthly evolution is entering the "upper hemisphere" of the Truth-Consciousness, then Sri Aurobindo cannot but have been Kalki. It is then unthinkable that he could have accomplished his mission without the-severest and continuous battles against the hostile forces in possession of the world. One reads about this in the deeply moving poem A God's Labour, as one reads about it in the first cantos of Savitri:
Here must the traveller of the upward way—
For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route—
Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,
A prayer upon his lips and the great Name.27
He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.28
these strongly accented personal lines, Sri Aurobindo has them preceded with "A world's desire compelled her [Savitri's] mortal birth"—a verse that puts the whole grandiose narration of his personal accomplishments against the background of the world's evolution and the role not of his own but of the Mother's action on it. Another example is the beginning of Canto V in Book I. Again before starting to relate his experiences, Sri Aurobindo begins this canto with the line: "This knowledge first he had of time-bom men." A very personal statement indeed—but it refers to the previous canto The Secret Knowledge, and thus softens its impact. Be it said in passing that this secret knowledge must no doubt be very important for all seekers of Truth, Aurobindonian or not. Yet, strangely, up to now I have nowhere read a thorough comment on this canto. Even its importance is rarely referred to.
For the argument's sake we leave out the Mother's role in all this and the fact that the Kalki Avatar proved to be a complete, double-poled Avatar— something the ancient Hindu tradition could not foresee.
27Savitri, p. 210. 28Ibid., p. 219.
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A warrior in the dateless duel's strife,
He entered into dumb despairing Night
Challenging the darkness with his luminous soul.29
Facing the enormous Night he
Fought shadowy combats in mute eyeless depths,
Assaults of Hell endured and Titan strokes
And bore the fierce inner wounds that are slow to heal.30
Invincibly he ascended without pause.31
The Divine Mother addresses him as "Son of Strength" and "strong forerunner". Sometimes one gets a glimpse of his battles in his correspondence with Nirodbaran. But if he had never written his autobiographical poems and these cantos in Savitri, who would have guessed the superhuman difficulties and perils he was involved in— while sitting there for hours in that big chair, almost without moving, staring with open eyes in front of him, as described by the Mother and by the same Nirodbaran? Much of what he had gone through, and hidden from her, the Mother would later suffer in her turn; these experiences of hers are there for all to read in some private conversations held after her withdrawal.
For:
The great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time's shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain...
Heaven's riches they bring, their sufferings count the price...
The Son of God bom as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt...
The Eternal suffers in a human form.32
Sri Aurobindo and Science
Having all the knowledge of the universe at his disposal, according to his own saying, Sri Aurobindo knew what he wanted to know, also about modem science. This is one of the many barely touched upon subjects concerning Sri Aurobindo and the Mother awaiting to be studied in depth. (One really has the impression that this kind of
29 Ibid, p. 227. 30 Ibid, p. 230. 31 Ibid, p. 306.
32Ibid, p. 445.
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study has hardly been taken up and that whole dimensions of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother remain to be discovered— which, in a very real sense, is the discovery of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves.) For instance, when writing the Arya, i.e. years before the formulation of the theory of quantum mechanics, Sri Aurobindo predicted that the deeper science would penetrate into Matter the more Matter would seem to evaporate till none would be left. In Savitri, an explanation of the origin and evolution of the cosmos in addition to so much more, we find numerous revealing examples of this kind of knowledge. To quote a few:
A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,
Of its dense rings were formed these million stars.33
Sri Aurobindo gives here the spiritual explanation of the origin of the cosmos, in science called the "singularity" named the Big Bang. The invisible—but very real—Fire is none other than Agni.
The following quotation belongs to what Sri Aurobindo once called "the science of the future":
At first was only an etheric Space:
Its huge vibrations circled round and round
Housing some unconceived initiative:
Upheld by a supreme original Breath
Expansion and contraction's mystic act
Created touch and friction in the void,
Into abstract emptiness brought clash and clasp:
Parent of an expanding universe
In a matrix of disintegrating force,
By spending it conserved an endless sum.
On the hearth of Space it kindled a viewless Fire
That, scattering worlds as one might scatter seeds,
Whirled out the luminous order of the stars.
An ocean of electric Energy
Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles
Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,
Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;
A book published by Paul Davies and John Gribbin in 1991 has the title The Matter Myth.
33Ibid, p. 101.
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Masses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;
Light flung the photon's swift revealing spark
And showed, in the minuteness of its flash
Imaged, this cosmos of apparent things.
Thus has been made this real impossible world,
An obvious miracle or convincing show.34
One of the unsolved problems is the question whether mathematics exists as such somewhere in an ideal, Platonic space or world, or whether it is a product of the human mind. In the following lines Sri Aurobindo provides the answer from his spiritual experience:
The Unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient's scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube.
Arranging symbol and significance,
Tracing the curve of a transcendent power,
They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law,
The balancing line discovered of Life's technique
And structured her magic and her mystery.
Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and number a key to all that is:
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.35
"They" are the world-creators, here called by Sri Aurobindo "a subtle archangel race", and called by the Mother in her Entretiens "demiurges" or "intermediary creators" who shape and concretise the manifestation on the levels between "the Unique" and the Inconscient foundation.
A last example is the role of the "void" in the manifestation of the cosmos. In Savitri we read:
34 Ibid, p. 155. 35 Ibid, p. 269.
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A Mystery's process is the universe.
At first was laid a strange anomalous base,
A void, a cipher of some secret Whole,
Where zero held infinity in its sum
And All and Nothing were a single term,
An eternal negative, a matrix Nought.36
The role of the "void" is repeated in several places of the poem, such as
For long before earth's solid vest was forged
By the technique of the atomic Void,
A lucent envelope of self-disguise
Was woven round the secret spirit in things.37
Out of the Void's unseeing energies
Inventing the scene of a concrete universe...38
When earth was built in the unconscious Void
And nothing was save a material scene...39
Understanding of these passages may be helped by the reflection that the One, the All, the Unique, the Absolute is absolute Existence which is absolute density. The cosmic manifestation was (and is) therefore only possible by way of creating space for it within the absolute divine density; it is this initial space of creation that Sri Aurobindo calls the "Void", so essential in the creative process that he writes the word with a capital letter. The Absolute in its pure density can not be approached by an "impure" being (like man): Its density would annihilate him. We find this density reflected in the power— the fire and light—contained in each and every atom. If the means would be found to liberate the entire pure power of one single atom, the whole universe would explode with it. We owe it to the limitation of the scientific process that the atomic power can be liberated only within limits. To a high degree atomic physics has become occultism, as predicted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, though without the scientists realising it.
The Reprogramming of Earth's Foundations
In Beyond Man: The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother,
36Ibid, p. 100. 37Ibid, p. 106. 38Ibid, p. 121.
39 Ibid, p. 129.
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I have already drawn attention to the fundamental importance of the end of Canto VIII in Book II as to the transformation of Matter in our material world which is now taking place.
Into the abysmal secrecy he came
Where darkness peers from her mattress, grey and nude,
And stood on the last locked subconscient's floor
Where Being slept unconscious of its thoughts
And built the world not knowing what it built.
There waiting its hour the future lay unknown,
There is the record of the vanished stars.
There in the slumber of the cosmic Will
He saw the secret key of Nature's change ...
He saw in Night the Eternal's shadowy veil,
Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,
In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,
Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain
And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates.
Then in Illusion's occult factory
And in the Inconscient's magic printing house
Tom were the formats of the primal Night
And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.
Alive, breathing a deep spiritual breath,
Nature expunged her stiff mechanical code
And the articles of the bound soul's contract,
Falsehood gave back to Truth her tortured shape.
Annulled were the tables of the law of pain,
And in their place grew luminous characters...
He imposed upon dark atom and dumb mass
The diamond script of the Imperishable,
Inscribed on the dim heart of fallen things
A paean-song of the free Infinite
And the Name, foundation of eternity,
And traced on the awake exultant cells
In the ideographs of the Ineffable
The lyric of the love that waits through Time
And the mystic volume of the Book of Bliss
And the message of the superconscient Fire.
Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame;
The infernal Gleam died and could slay no more.
Hell split across its huge abrupt facade
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As if a magic building were undone,
Night opened and vanished like a gulf of dream...
Healed were all things that Time's torn heart had made
And sorrow could live no more in Nature's breast:
Division ceased to be, for God was there.
The soul lit the conscient body with its ray,
Matter and Spirit mingled and were one.40
This was done by Sri Aurobindo and happened in him. For remember what he wrote to K. D. Sethna: "I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced ..."41 It is this that is being worked out now.
I wonder, scanning those few illustrations—and the wealth of facts and events in Savitri not even touched upon hens—if it is possible to interpret all that as experienced, discovered and effected not by Sri Aurobindo, the Avatar, but by a legendary Aswapati. If one reads the first half of Savitri without Sri Aurobindo himself in mind (and in the heart), one not only misses its true significance; one also erects a screen between the spiritual vibration conducive to his Yoga and one's own receptivity.
All beings existing at present are participating in the ongoing process of terrestrial change, whether they want it or not. Being part of evolution one cannot escape evolving, especially at a moment like this when the evolutionary process is accelerated to a dizzying pace in which time hardly matters anymore. But those who are turned towards Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and tuned to their presence can, by whetting their understanding, sharpen their spiritual sight and adapt their inner eye to the worldwide transformation, unique not only in history but in the existence of our Mother the Earth.
GEORGES VAN VREKHEM
40Ibid., pp. 231-32. 41 Ibid., p. 794. See references 17 and 18 above ,also Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. I pp. 12-13.
This short essay is based on a talk the author gave on 10 January 1999 in Savitri Bhavan, Auroville.
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Aswapati's Travels through the Worlds — An Overview
In the first three Books constituting Part I of Savitri we come closest to an authentic autobiography of Sri Aurobindo, in particular of his yogic life in which he was totally absorbed all the 40 years he spent in Pondicherry. The world has often speculated about this period of his life, but most of these speculations have been wide off the mark. Sri Aurobindo turned to yoga in earnest around 1907-8 when he first met Lele. But his brief contact with Lele lasted only from 30 December 1907 to February 1908. But he continued his spiritual life. He had by then experienced two of the most cardinal spiritual siddhis known to traditional Indian Yoga. Under Lele's direct guidance he had seen with a stupendous intensity "the world as a cinematographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahman." This was the experience of Nirguna Brahman.1 And in 1909 when he was in Alipore jail he had the experience of Saguna Brahman. These experiences changed him completely, as he explains himself:
During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the whole future of humanity.2
The first three Books of Savitri, which describe Aswapati's Yoga, are in fact a vary accurate description of Sri Aurobindo's own Yoga, as I have argued elsewhere.3 This Yoga has three phases as characterised by Sri Aurobindo himself in a letter:
1On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 79.
2Ibid., p. 34. The use of the third person is characteristic of Sri Aurobindo when speaking of himself.
3Ref. My article entitled Aswapati in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in Mother India, February-March 1999.
Aswapati's Yoga falls into three parts. First, he is achieving his own spiritual fulfilment as the individual and this is described in the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but this too is as yet only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. This is described in the Book of the Divine Mother.4
The aim of this paper is to offer the reader an overview of the fifteen cantos of Book II, entitled "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds". These are incidentally also those cantos of the epic which most people find very difficult to comprehend and, often, critics of Sri Aurobindo's poetry have cited extracts from this part of the poem as examples of supposed lack of poetry in Savitri. This is because, more than anywhere else in the poem, the poet is presenting us here over a span of nearly 210 pages kinds of experience which are extraordinary, outside the scope of the experiences of most us.
Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry.5
He tries to capture in these lines a vision caught directly from the heights and depths and breadths of a more than human consciousness. The language too is austere and direct and tries to catch the very essence of the spiritual experience. But like Books I and II of the poem, Book III has the rare distinction of having been written in its entirety in his own hand by Sri Aurobindo himself. Therefore Books constituting Part I probably had more opportunities of receiving a close scrutiny from Sri Aurobindo himself than all the other Books of the poem, large chunks of which were written down by Nirodbaran as Sri Aurobindo dictated them. In my view these cantos contain many
4 Savitri p. 773-74.
5 Ibid., p. 794.
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fine examples of Sri Aurobindo's poetic excellence and are therefore worth reading even for their sheer poetry alone.
1
The general title of Book II is "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds". The traveller here is Aswapati. What worlds does he explore, and where exactly are these worlds located, and why does he undertake this exploration? Sri Aurobindo has explained in The Life Divine6 why it is necessary to assume that there are other planes of existence besides this physical world. This creation is seen by him as the saga of the evolution of consciousness from the Inconscient to the Superconscient. But this evolution is preceded by an involution, by a plunge taken by the Supreme.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.7
He assumes that Sachchidananda must have descended into inconscience not all of a sudden but through various stages through a progressive limitation of itself. These various stages of the downward plunge constitute the various planes of consciousness or worlds. It is these worlds that Aswapati saw as
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned, waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.8
Mankind has from the beginning of existence believed in the existence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their powers and the human race until the rationalistic period of human thought began to sweep this belief aside as an old-fashioned superstition. To Quote Sri Aurobindo:
6 The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 765-91.
7Savitri, p.99. 8Ibid., p. 98.
Page 273
This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world's life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these brings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul's self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we think of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful: there are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences, instigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of actions that overpass the normal human measure.9
These worlds are made of substances (for example, Subtle Matter, Vital, Mental and Spiritual) all of which are subtler than gross Matter and are therefore visible only to the supra-physical senses. Aswapati has been depicted as a seeker of integral truth who seeks to colonise this earth with this integral truth and its manifestation. He obviously cannot find this truth and the means of manifesting it in the gross material reality of this world. He therefore looks for it in all the other worlds. Thus comes about Aswapati's odyssey through the various worlds of consciousness which reflects Sri Aurobindo's understanding of man's evolutionary progress.
9 The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, pp. 775-76.
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In this slow ascension he must follow her pace
Even from her faint and dim subconscious start:
So only can earth's last salvation come.
For so only could he know the obscure cause
Of all that holds back and baffles God
In the jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul.10
According to this scheme this reality is divided into four separate and yet overlapping kingdoms: these are the Kingdom of Matter and physical realities, the Kingdom of Life and vital realities, the Kingdom of Mind and mental realities, and the Kingdom of the Spirit and spiritual realities.
This macrocosm of these worlds is mirrored microcosmically in the structure of human consciousness:
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.11
The living symbols of these conscious planes, their influences and godheads have been fixed as slow-scaled degrees in our inner life. So Aswapati's odyssey is in fact a journey of the inner regions of his own consciousness. And this is what is described in the fifteen cantos of Book II. Nor are experiences of the Kingdom of the Spirit dealt with, except a small part of them, in this Book. The experiences of the Kingdom of the Spirit are described primarily in Books I and III and also in cantos devoted to the description of Savitri's Yoga.
Book II is organised as follows:
Canto 1: The World-Stair: we have already reviewed this canto above. It is introductory in nature and describes the varied worlds which Aswapati sees as an immobile worlds pile, a huge column of worlds upon worlds rising from the plinth of Matter and ascending into the unknowable summits of the Spirit, and also it describes how this macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm of our inner being.
Canto 2 describes Aswapati's experience of the Kingdom of Subtle Matter;
l0Ibid, p. 135.
11Ibid, p. 98.
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Cantos 3-9 describe the various regions of the Kingdom of Life;
Cantos 10-13 describe the different regions of the Kingdom of the Mind.
Cantos 14 and 15 describe the Kingdom of the Spirit. As stated already, these are not the only cantos in this epic in which we have a description of Aswapati's experiences in the Kingdom of the Spirit.12
In many ways these cantos recapitulate for us the history of the evolution of consciousness in this world, beginning with Matter to Mind and beyond. Sri Aurobindo has maintained that this creation of ours is best understood not as the story of the evolution of physical forms, however interesting such a chronicle might be, but as a story of the evolution of consciousness. Such a perspective enables us to answer many questions about the why of this creation and of ourselves. The how-perspetive of Darwinian evolution may answer some questions regarding the stages through which evolution had to pass before the unicellular amoeba developed into the complex human being, but it does not answer the more crucial questions like why we are here and where we are supposed to go from here. In other words, Sri Aurobindo's narration of the evolutionary story of mankind tells us a great deal about ourselves, of our past as well as of our future.
As mentioned earlier, Aswapati's experience of the gross material world,13 of its truths and errors, is not dealt with in Book II. This Book begins with his experiences of the Kingdom of Subtle Matter, described in Canto 2. Here, as elsewhere in this Book, the poet is not interested in an abstract characterisation of these worlds; he gives a description of Aswapati's experiences in these worlds. Each of these worlds holds for Aswapati an important truth which he has to absorb within himself before he can understand Truth in its integrality. At the same time the inadequacies of each of these worlds, which push Aswapati to press further afield are also described as concrete and vivid experiences. As Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters, Savitri
12While it is true that in man's evolutionary development, Life proceeds from Matter, and Mind from Life, Spirit does not proceed form Mind, although man becomes aware of his spiritual reality after he has become conscious of his body, life and mind. Spirit in fact is the ground of which all other grades of consciousness stand. So in one sense it is primary.
13Canto Two of Book X deals with the Kingdom of Gross Matter and the monism of Matter: pp. 615-19.
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is first and foremost a record of his spiritual experiences; that it turns out to embody impressive philosophy and vibrant poetry is a sheer bonus. Recall what Sri Aurobindo once said on this point:
I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced.14
The Kingdom of Subtle Matter15
This world is not as easily accessible as the world of gross matter, since it requires a certain purification of consciousness to enter it. It is a world which contains the pure archetypes behind the physical phenomena. Aswapati is able to experience in this world activities and beings which are beyond the scope of the physical senses.
To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To feel the eternal's touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here.
A fragment here is caught of heaven's design;
Else could we never hope for greater life
And ecstasy and glory could not be....
Earth's great dull barrier is removed awhile,
The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes
And we grow vessels of creative might.16
The world of subtle matter is normally beyond the experience of normal life; it touches our lives nonetheless when we have a profound experience of beauty, which often fills us with a sense of mystery.
The enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt.
A joyful anguish trembles in out limbs;
A dream of beauty dances through the heart,
A though from the eternal Mind draws near,
Intimations cast from the Invisible
Awakening from Infinity's sleep come down
Symbols of That which never yet was made.17
14Savitri, p. 794. 15 Ibid., Canto 2.
17Ibid, pp. 108-09.
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The real purpose of art is to push us beyond the limits of the gross physical and let us have a glimpse of the subtle world and its beauty and mystery.
Another path to the subtle world lies through Hatha Yoga. It takes us to the subtle world as the link between pure matter and pure spirit. The aim of Hatha Yoga and its attraction to many people seems to be this promise of freedom of the soul from the prison of the material embodiment.
Matter and soul in conscious union meet
Like lovers in a lonely secret place:
In the clasp of a passion not yet unfortunate
They join their strength and sweetness and delight
And mingling make the high and low worlds one.18
The HathaYogin, however, in affirming the truth of the Spirit seems to deny the truth and value of the physical body. This does not conform to the spirit of Integral Truth which is what Aswapati is seeking.
Another great pitfall of the kingdom of subtle matter is its beauty and simplicity themselves. There is perfect harmony among forms here. There is no conflict here, no death either; for each form is eternal. There is no struggle here, no frustration.
All is a miracle of symmetric charm,
A fantasy of perfect line and rule.
There all feel satisfied in themselves and whole,
A rich completeness is by limit made,
Marvel in an utter littleness abounds,
An intricate rapture riots in a small space:
Each rhythm is kin to its environment,
Each line is perfect and inevitable,
Each object faultlessly built for charm and use...
Content to be, it has need of nothing more.
Here was not futile effort's broken heart:
Exempt from the ordeal and the test,
Empty of opposition and of pain,
It was a world that could not fear nor grieve.
It had no grace of error or defeat,
It had no room for fault, no power to fail.19
18Ibid, p. 105. 19Ibid, p. 113.
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If Aswapati's aim were an escape from the predicament that life on this earth is, this would have been an ideal world for him. He is not seeking any one-sided perfection, like the perfection of form. He is seeking an integral perfection of form in union with matter. This world looks to him therefore a sterile material paradise and he therefore abandons this world to seek his destiny "beyond in larger Space".
2
The Vital Worlds
Having found the Kingdom of Matter unsatisfactory, Aswapati now enters the vital world, the Kingdom of Life. This is a very complex world and as many as 7 cantos (cantos 3 through 9) are devoted to his experiences of the different regions of this kingdom. Not all of these are easily accessible to our normal consciousness. We are normally conscious of life where it is found in union with or even dominated by matter.
But there is a region where life exists in its own right, autonomously. Aswapati being a Yogin has access to this region as well. Even beyond that is a region of life where it is guided by mental ideals. And there are also regions still higher than that to which even Aswapati has no access.
The Glory and Fall of Life20
The most remarkable thing noticed by Aswapati as he enters the world of life is its power, its inexhaustible creativity and variety. Life seems to expand in all directions and, since there is no control or guidance to this outburst, creation is followed by destruction, since in the absence of any vision, it is difficult to distinguish between the two.
A scene was planned for all her numberless moods
Where each could be the law and way of life,
But none could offer a pure felicity;
Only a flickering zest they left behind
Or the fierce lust that brings a dead fatigue....
20Ibid, Canto 3.
Page 279
The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes.151
And a soul's thoughts looked out from earthbom eyes.152
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes.153
Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight.154
Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,
Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown.155
Yet shall they look up as to peaks of God.156
His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves.157
The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes.158
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze.159
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity.160
And all earth look into the eyes of God.161
So the journey ends. And we are infinitely grateful to Maha-Rishi Maha-Kavi Sri Aurobindo for affording us the favour of walking in his luminous footsteps and following the long march of the ascent of sight from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "closed eyes' sight" of the supreme Superconscient—surely not in living experience as in the case of Maha-Yogi Sri Aurobindo himself but as a meditative intellectual-cum-imaginative exercise. And that is surely no mean gain for us the ordinary mortals with our "clipped outlook" on things.
Jayatu Sri Aurobindah—Victory to Sri Aurobindo.
JUGALKlSHORE MUKHERJEE
151 [bid., p. 451.152 lbid., p. 485. 153 Ibid.,p. 526.
154 Ibid., p. 370.155 Ibid., p. 537. 156 Ibid., p. 704.
157 Ibid. , p. 706. 158 lbid., p. 707. 159 Ibid., p. 709
160 Ibid., p.279.161Ibid., p.450.
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Savitri: The Devikāvyam
In the Sadhana Shastra of the Pooma or Integral Yoga posited by Sri Aurobindo, there are very helpful guides for the aspirants. While the tattva (philosophy) of man's transformation is brought to us by works like The Life Divine and The Supramental Manifestation, the hita (way) is outlined in The Synthesis of Yoga. Here 'synthesis' is not to be an "undiscriminating combination" of existing methods of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo says in this volume what the synthesis must be:
It [the synthesis] must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.1
Thus not only do we learn a good deal about the traditionally demarcated paths of Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, Raja, and Hatha, but we also gain a deep insight into the Tantra Yoga. Sri Aurobindo makes a clarifying statement on the bases of these Yogas quite early in the volume:
In all the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline,— mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered.2
Part Four of The Synthesis of Yoga spells out the steps of the Yoga of Self-Perfection. This is no time-bound system but is to be a life-long affair since the plan involves an endless progression:
1The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 46.
2Ibid., p. 47.
desire to increase in meaningful ways. Without the constant prodding of desire, there could have been no progress in life at all. Desire gives us the will to challenge apparently insurmountable odds, and Aswapati finds this aspect of desire valuable even in his spiritual quest.
A working of habit or a sense of law,
A steady repetition in the flux,
Yet its roots of will ever the same;
These passions are the stuff of which we are made.
This was the first cry of the awaking world.
It clings around us still and clamps the god.
Even when reason is bom and soul takes form,
In beast and reptile and thinking man
It lasts and is the fount of all their life.
This too was needed that breath and living might be.27
But the path of desire must be followed with caution. Without proper direction the path of desire may lead us to destruction by making us the unknowing prey of daemonic forces,
Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives
And in a small body self is all that counts,
Wherever love and light and largeness lack,
These crooked fashioners take up their task.
To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.
Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,
Our nature's twilight is their lurking place.
Here too the darkened primitive heart obeys
The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind
That dogs out knowledge with misleading light
And stands between us and the Truth that saves.28
The little life is in fact the dominant perspective on life of a vast majority of humans and this qualifies them to be called what Sri Aurobindo has called "economic barbarians".29 The most dominant characteristic of such a person is his passion for economic success, and his insatiable desire to possess and control everything within his reach. There is for him no meaning to anything beyond its economic
27Ibid.p. 140. 28 Ibid., p. 153.
29The Human Cycle, SABCL, Vol. 15, p. 72.
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value. Those who have this view of life may be able to enjoy life for a time but their attempt to build security by the accumulation of wealth and economic power will inevitably result in failure, frustration and pain. Little life's perspective on life is too narrow to provide a key to the understanding of man.
It knew itself a creature of the mud;
It asked no larger law, no loftier air;
It had no inward look, no upward gaze.
A backward scholar on logic's rickety bench
Indoctrinated by the erring sense,
It took appearance for the face of God,
For casual lights the marching of the suns,
For heaven a starry strip of doubtful blue;
Aspects of being feigned to be the whole.30
Little life has no conception of the possibility of higher development of transcendence. It tends to devote all its energies to perpetuate life in its external state. It has no notion of either transcendence or transformation.
Time has he none to turn his eyes within
And look for his lost self and his dead soul.
His motion on too short an axis wheels;
He cannot soar but creeps on his long road...
Hardly a few can climb to greater life.
All tunes to a low scale and conscious pitch.
His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;
His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,
Rare are his visits of heavenly ecstasy...
He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow's hope and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible;
His being's kinship to infinity
He has shut away from him into inmost self,
Forced off the greatness of hidden God...
He is the crown of all that has been done:
30Savitri, p. 149.
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Thus is creation's labour justified;
This is the world's result, nature's last poise!31
Thus finding the realms of little life also unsatisfactory, Aswapati moves into the kingdoms of greater life.
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life32
This is a realm which is still bound to matter but which does not regard itself forever subject to it. Here life senses that its roots are in the eternal and that it does not have to remain entrapped by death for ever. This vision gives it courage and hope.
Almost she nears what never can be attained;
She shuts eternity into an hour
And fills a little soul with the Infinite;
The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;
She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,
Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms
And feels around her infinity's embrace...
This is her secret and impossible task
To catch the boundless in a net of birth,
To cast the spirit into physical form,
To lend speech and thought to the Ineffable;
She pushed to reveal the ever Unmanifest.33
The greater life feels that it has not come about as a result of an accident and that it has a great future because the Divine within supports and guides its activities. This attitude of hopefulness and insight into its future impels it to transcend the present human condition and aspire for a state which is free from pain, struggle and death.
A strange enthusiasm has moved its heart;
It hungers for heights, it passions for the supreme.
It hunts for the perfect word, the perfect shape,
It leaps to the summit thought, the summit light.34
Her will is to shut God into her works
31Ibid., pp. 165-66. 33Ibid., p. 177.
32Ibid, Canto 6. 34Ibid, p. 179.
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And keep him as her cherished prisoner
That never they may part again in Time.35
This insight into its spiritual destiny turns out to be a mixed blessing, since it has no key to the understanding of the ultimate mystery and of the spiritual reality. The harder it tries to realise its potential, the more does it see its own finiteness.
The greatness she has dreamed her acts have missed,
Her labour is a passion and a pain,
A rapture and pang, her glory and her curse;
And yet she cannot choose but labours on;
Her mighty heart forbids her to desist.
As long as the world lasts her failure lives
Astonishing and foiling Reason's gaze,
A folly and a beauty unspeakable,
A superb madness of the will to live,
A daring, a delirium of delight.36
The greater life reveals more than any other level the meeting of the opposites in life. It is a product of life's into matter, and therefore into ignorance and death. This is the source of agony in life. But it is also permeated with a mind and impregnated with the vision of the greatness of the spirit, and so it has its sublime side as well. Thus life is torn between these two pulls. In Narad's long reply to Savitri's mother (Canto 2 Book VI) we have a similar characterisation of life. For the seeker of the integral truth it becomes necessary to experience and understand the extremes of the world. So Aswapati at this point takes a plunge into the Night and the World of Falsehood.
The Descent into Night; The World of Falsehood...37
These are horrible worlds in which chaos reigns supreme. There is no mercy or compassion in these worlds where all the forces and beings are hostile to life, truth and beauty.
The veil was rent that covers Nature's depths:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
35Ibid. , pp.181-82.36 Ibid., p. 178.
37Ibid.,Cantos 7-8.
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And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.38
It was the gate of a false Infinite,
An eternity of disastrous absolutes,
An immense negation of spiritual things.39
Gradually Aswapati realises that however contrary to our world, these worlds have their own truth and justification, and unless we understand them and their experiences, they cannot be transformed. In its own world this vital world of darkness is sovereign.
All who would raise the fallen world must come
Under the dangerous arches of their power;
For even the radiant children of the gods
To darken their privilege is and dreadful right.
None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.40
Even in the heart of this darkness, Aswapati finds a place where all conflict is resolved into an infinite emptiness. This is a sort of inverted paradise whose attractions are also very captivating. With great effort, Aswapati extricates himself from being lost in this experience.
All vanished suddenly like a thought expunged;
His spirit became an empty listening gulf
Void of the dead illusion of a world:
Nothing was left, not even an evil face...
A dense and nameless Nothing conscious, mute,
Which seemed alive but without body or mind,
Lusted all beings to annihilate
That it might be for ever nude and sole.41
Aswapati's patience and courage paid off as he reached the very bottom of this world of falsehood. There he suddenly came upon the spring of Divinity.
There in the slumber of the cosmic Will
He saw the secret key of Nature's change.
A light was with him, an invisible hand
38Ibid, p. 202. 39Ibid., p. 221. 40Ibid., p. 227.
41Ibid., p. 217.
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Was laid upon the error and the pain
Till it become a quivering ecstasy,
The shock of sweetness of an arms's embrace.
He saw in Night the Eternal's shadowy veil,
Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,
In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,
Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain
And hell as a shortcut to heaven's gates.42
Aswapati descended into the lowest level of life, and experienced the truth of that hell as well.
The Paradise of the Life-Gods43
Now Aswapati leaves these nether regions of life and climbs into an almost opposite realm filled with life's ecstasies. This is a bright world in which all that life needs is provided for abundantly. Here too there is no struggle.
All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation's native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.
There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highway of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles.44
Like some of the worlds Aswapati has experienced earlier, this world also captivates him and he feels persuaded to give up his struggle and rest here:
A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable
Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became
A fiery ocean of felicity;
He foundered drowned in sweet and burning vasts:
The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.45
42Ibid, p. 231. 43Ibid, Canto 9. 44Ibid, p. 235.
45Ibid, p. 237.
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Aswapati finds this world too unsatisfactory, since it is based also on a partial truth. It is a world of truth and light, but this is a world protected from the reality that opposes it. This world may be an appropriate resting place for someone who seeks an escape from the dualities of life, but it is a pointless world for someone who is seeking an integral fulfilment.
This too must now be overpassed and left,
As all must be until the Highest is gained
In whom the world and self grow true and one:
Till that is reached our journeying cannot cease...
A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire
Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss.
It could not house the wideness of a soul
Which needed all infinity for its home.46
3
The Mental Worlds
Since what distinguishes man in the animal world is a fuller evolution of mind, Aswapati explores next the mental dimensions of man, its strengths and inadequacies. As in the vital world, here too he sees the glory and the fall of mind. In its higher realms, mind is free from subjection to matter and life. It is sovereign at that level and enjoys mental bliss unmixed with any error or ignorance.
He saw, sovereignly free in limitless light,
The unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds
Where Knowledge is the leader of the act
And Matter is of thinking substance made...
A happiness it brings of whispered truth;
There runs in its flow honeying the bosom of Space
A laughter from the immortal heart of Bliss,
And the unfathomed Joy of timelessness.47
But mind has also undergone a fall in order to bring consciousness and mental truth to the lower realms. But in thus descending it has lost its greatness and autonomy. It is this fallen state of mind that is
46Ibid, pp. 238-39. 47 Ibid., pp.263-64
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of great importance to Aswapati. Here he experiences two distinct levels: one, the lower mind which has no awareness of its glorious origin and sees itself as the product and servant of matter and life, and then there is the greater mind of the mid-region where it is aware of its origin and keeps hoping to regain it. He begins with the little mind.
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind47a
Here he sees mind in its three aspects, the physical mind, the vital mind and the rational mind. Each of these has its own truths and also its limitations. The physical mind is very limited in scope but it has been of particular value in the evolution of man. It has tried to bring stability and order to man's physical world. It has given a direction to man's life and is the source of man's need for moral code and religious ritual. But in its passion for security and stability it abhors all innovation and creativity. It abhors change as an audacious sin and is distrustful of each new discovery. Thus it is greatly limited in its scope and capacity for truth.
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form...
A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit's grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,
It blinds itself by what itself creates.
A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
It sees as Law the habits of the world,
It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.48
The poet likens it to a watch-dog who is suspicious of all "intruders from the Invisible", "as at a foe who would break up its home", and forever wants to be found in "its kennel of objective certitude". (Savitri, pp. 246-47)
Next the vital mind. It is a rash intelligence and has a passion for all that is new. It throws caution to the wind. It constantly urges man
41aIbid, Canto 10. 48Ibid, p. 245.
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to dare and go beyond what is already known. But is has no sense of direction, no judgement of its own, and can lead man to the edge of ultimate truth as easily as it can lead him into the regions of total ignorance.
A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
And with its dire edge eats at being's heart.49
Ardent to find, incapable to retain,
A brilliant instability was its mark,
To err its inborn trend, its native cue...
An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes,
Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire,
It ran its race and came in first or last.50
Next is the realm of the rational mind. Its primary goal is to create order and structure. It too likes to grapple with the unknown but with a sense of direction. It has the special capacity to stand back and look at things and activities objectively, without getting involved in them. It brings to the scrutiny of things and events a method which it thinks is infallible, namely, that of reason and logic. It admits that there are many things about man's life which it does not understand, but even with regard to those which it does understand, it claims to be man's most reliable mentor.
Out of Nature's body of phenomenon
She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines
Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run,
Her sciences precise and absolute...
She pens in clear demotic characters
The vast encylopaedia of her thoughts;
An algebra of her mathematics' signs,
Her numbers and unerring formulas
She builds to clinch her summary of things.51
Reason by itself is neutral: "it runs on all sides." Its art seems to be its only wisdom and its methodology its only strength. But its leaps do
49Ibid, p. 247. 50Ibid, pp. 248-49. 51Ibid, p. 251.
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not bring any flashes of absolute power or heavenly certitude.
A million faces wears her knowledge here
And every face is turbaned with a doubt.52
Its conclusions are an endless march without a goal, and there is no summit on which it can stand and see in a single glance the Infinite whole.
Thus Reason's toil is an inconclusive exercise. It accepts every brief and pleads its case.
It is at best an eternal advocate but often fancies itself as the judge. Time cancels all its judgements in appeal. Furthermore, it is restricted in its operations to external phenomenon and the relationships within it. When confronted with the inner meaning of the phenomenon it is totally helpless. It is no more than a "bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact" and can at best drag its huge knowledge-bales to utility's immense bazaar.
To its view this creation appears to be no more than an "intricate and meaningless enginery/ Of ordered fateful and unfailing chance." Thus it "builds a rational world without a mind."
It has no mover, no maker, no idea:
Its vast self-action toils without a cause;
A lifeless Energy irresistibly driven,
Death's head on the body of Necessity,
Engenders life and fathers consciousness,
Then wonders why all was and whence it came.53
Reason does realise its own inadequacies and inability to find the absolute truth about this created world. Reason sees itself as no more than "a freak of Matter's law." Thus Aswapati does recognise the great value of reason as well as its capacity to mislead man, particularly when it steps into areas which fall outside its power to analyse and understand. Reason helps best when called upon to separate what is rational from what is irrational. Thus he concludes that "An inconclusive play is Reason's toil."
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind54
At this point Aswapati crosses the boundaries of normal human mind
52Ibid. 53Ibid, p. 253. 54Ibid, Canto 11.
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which does not exhaust the range of mental consciousness. There is the greater mind which is free from the flaws of the little mind. The greater mind is the unfallen mind and is open to the glories of the ideal mind.
The ideal mind is from where all the great hopes and movements on earth come. Human progress and perfection are prefigured here.
In its vast ambit if ideal Space
Where beauty and mightiness walk hand in hand,
The Spirit's truths take form as living Gods
And each can build a world of its own right.55
Man's normal mind is not totally alien to this world although it is often closed to its intimations since it is bound to the external form of things. However, in rare moments it is enlivened by communications from greater mind.
Our present feels sometimes their regal touch,
Our future strives towards their luminous thrones:
Out of spiritual secrecy they gaze,
Immortal footfalls in mind's corridors sound:
Our souls can climb into the shining planes,
The breadths from which they came can be our home.56
The greater mind is not dependent on the material manifestation; it works through intuition, insight, illumination and inspiration. This mind often receives truth by becoming silent and calm. It receives truth through flashes of illumination.
Aswapati's ascent is now through a triple realm of thought. As he enters this realm, Aswapati meets the guardian angels who await "for the heaven-bound soul" "holding the thousand keys of the Beyond." He also sees there "World-Time's enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss." These great creative powers are the miracle workers of the Creator. They have built this material world, "this wide world-kindergarten of young souls" by lending finite shapes to infinite things.
A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;
The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth
To make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.57
Above this range stood beings of "a subtle archangel race". In their
55Ibid., p. 261. 56 Ibid.,p.263.57Ibid., p. 268.
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eyes shone a light of liberating knowledge; they knew truth from within. All that escaped the narrow scope of conceptualisation, their vision saw and seized.
The Unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient's scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube.58
This is the world of the Newtons and the Einsteins. They try to capture the free rhythms of the infinite Consciousness into the syllogisms of finite thought.
Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and number a key to all that is:
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.59
Aswapati in his ascent now enters the realm of the kings of thought. Theirs is an "all-containing Consciousness" and the mind serves there as an agent of a higher power, not as a source. It can clearly see that
The cosmos is no accident in Time;
There is a meaning in each play of Chance,
There is a freedom in each face of Fate.
A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world;
A Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events;
A Word self-bom upon creation's heights,
Voice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres,
Prophet of the seeings of the Absolute,
Sows the Idea's significance in Form
And from that seed the growths of Time arise.60
But Aswapati also begins to understand the limitations of the higher mind. Although it receives the higher truth, it is has no power to transmit it to the lower parts of man's being—his little mind, life and gross matter. In fact, these lower members dismiss this truth as mere
58Ibid, p. 269. 59Ibid. 60Ibid, p. 271.
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fancy and flights of imagination. Furthermore, there is an attempt here to capture the highest truth in terms of mental images and conceptions which are insufficient to hold the great Truth. As the poet says, the powers of the greater mind measure the Illimitable with number's rods. They try to squeeze termless truths into transparent systems and to make the Timeless accountable to time.
They seek to hedge and park the ungrasped infinitudes and erect absolute walls of thought and speech and make a vacuum to hold the One.
This was the play of the bright gods of Thought.
Attracting into time the timeless Light,
Imprisoning eternity into the hours,
This they have planned, to snare the feet of Truth
In an aureate net of concept and of phrase
And keep her captive for the thinker's joy
In his little world built of immortal dreams.61
Thus the greater mind too has a tendency to misrepresent the higher realities when it cuts them down to the size of mental concepts. Aswapati realises that
...thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.
In our thinking's close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.62
The Paradise of the Mind63
At either end of this luminous stair of the mental consciousness Aswapati sees the heavens of the ideal mind. In these heavens he could have ended his long pilgrimage as he could have in the Paradise of the Life Gods. He is far away now from the contaminating touch of matter and life and he has full freedom to savour the realms of mental consciousness and its worlds of bliss. On one side there are the worlds of undying bliss, the kingdoms of the deathless Rose. This
61Ibid., p. 274.62Ibid.,p.276. 63Ibid., Canto 12.
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is the bliss that flows behind all life, although unsuspected by the suffering world. This world of sweetness and bliss is also present in our mortal life in an inchoate form waiting to come to life and to blossom.
Here upon earth are early awakenings,
Moments that tremble in an air divine,
And grown upon the yearning of her soil
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity:
There are the imperishable beatitudes.
A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.64
On the other side of the stair are the great realms of luminous knowledge, "the mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame." This flame rises out of the sorrow and darkness of the world, out of the depths where life and thought are entombed and mounts up to heaven. It exerts a pull on the human soul. This is a fire which once kindled can never cease.
Aswapati participates in the glory of these worlds but realises that each of these embodies only a partial truth. He mounts still higher and at the summits of the mental heavens he reaches the Self of Mind.
The Self of Mind65
This is where "the climbing hierarchy of worlds" paused. At this summit space alone with an enormous Self of Mind (The Mental Purusha) Aswapati now stood. This is a realm of total withdrawal from the world Which has sprung from it:
Omnipotent, immobile and aloof,
In the world which sprang from it, it took no part[:]
It gave no heed to the paeans of victory,
It was indifferent to its own defeats,
It heard the cry of grief and made no sign,
Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good,
It saw destruction come and did not move.
An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer
And Master of its multitude of forms,
64Ibid, p. 279. 65Ibid, Canto 13.
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It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,
The witness Lord of Nature's myriad acts
Consenting to the movements of her Force.66
This is the vast Silence where meet the seeing Self and the potent Energy to bring forth this creation. Aswapati feels this Silence and its Peace.
All now he seemed to understand and know;
Desire came not nor any gust of will,
The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;
Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.
There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.67
But is this the world that Aswapati has been seeking? Aswapati finds that this world is not sure even of its foundations. It cannot answer the question whether the creations of the Mind are real or false. Probably mental knowledge itself is an error hidden even from the mind.
A doubt corroded even the means to think,
Distrust was thrown upon Mind's instruments;
All that it takes for reality's shining coin,
Proved fact, fixed inference, deduction clear,
Firm theory, assured significance,
Appeared as frauds upon Time's credit bank
Or assets valueless in Truth's treasury.
An Ignorance on an uneasy throne
Travestied with a fortuitous sovereignty
A figure of knowledge garbed in dubious words
And tinsel thought-forms brightly inadequate.
A labourer in the dark dazzled by half-light,
What it knew was an image in a broken glass,
What it saw was real but its sight untrue...
Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths,
God's spontaneities tied with formal strings
And packed into drawers of reason's trim bureau,
A grave of great lost opportunities,
Or an office for misuse of soul and life
66Ibid, p. 283. 67 Ibid., p.284
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And all the waste man makes of heaven's gifts
And all his squanderings of Nature's store,
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.68
This certainly was a world in which he could experience sublime mental peace and bliss free from ignorance, pain evil and death. This world merely transcended the inadequacies of the mortal world and declared them irrelevant but these inadequacies were not understood and explained here. Nor has this world any concern about carrying its truth and bliss to the lower worlds; it was totally indifferent to the lower worlds of death, evil, pain and suffering. This world did not contain the Truth of Power which he was seeking which, he now realises, can only be brought down by the Divine Mother.
Even the still spirit that looks upon its works
Was some pale front of the Unknowable;
A shadow seemed the wide and witness Self,
Its liberation and immobile calm
A void recoil of being from Time-made things,
Not the self-vision of Eternity.
Deep peace was there, but not the nameless Force:
Our sweet and mighty Mother was not there
Who gathers to her bosom her children's lives,
Her clasp that takes the world into her arms
In the fathomless rapture of the Infinite,
The Bliss that is creation's splendid grain
Or the white passion of God-ecstasy
That laughs in the blaze of the boundless heart of Love.
A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind
Must answer to the questioning of his soul.69
5
As has been stated in a footnote above, Aswapati's experiences of the spiritual realm do not constitute a major theme of Book II. A description of his spiritual experiences begins on the very second page of Canto 3 of Book I (page 23) and continues throughout that Canto as well as in Canto 5 of Book I. Again it is also the theme of much of Book III. Here in the last two Cantos of Book II Aswapati
68Ibid.,pp. 284-86. 69Ibid., pp.286-87.
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gradually slides into the spiritual realm since there is an overlapping of the kingdoms of the Greater Mind and the Spiritual Kingdom.
The World-Soul70
Aswapati sees a luminous tunnel in the glowing background of the Mind-Space. It promises to lead him from the unsatisfying world of external consciousness into the depths of the silent Self. Aswapati finds himself in the hidden depths of the world's deep soul. He passes through this tunnel led by a mysterious sound. The sound seemed first like the yearning conveyed by a lonely flute, then like the rash and fiery note of a cricket, then like the jingling of the anklet bells, and then like the tinkling sound of a moving caravan. A fragrance floated in the quivering air and mystic happiness trembled in his breast. Aswapati now came to a wonderful and formless world.
The silent soul of all the world was there, a being and a presence. This soul loves spontaneously without expecting to be loved in turn, and transforms all experience into delight, with its hand of joy puts a stop to all weeping. A fire of passion bums in the inner depths, a constant touch of sweetness links all hearts. Here everything is made of soul. In this spiritual world the soul knows directly, not through thought or conceptualisation. This knowledge is derived without division and without separation from the object of knowledge; it comes by being one with the object through identity.
All there was soul or made of sheer soul-stuff;
A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.
All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
Seized on all things by a moved identity,
A sympathy of self with other selves,
The touch of consciousness on consciousness.71
There was no body because bodies were not needed there; the soul itself was its own deathless form and met at once the touch of other souls, close, blissful, concrete and wonderfully true. There was a lovely landscape, lovely lakes and streams and hills all in soul-space; there were gardens which were a colourful reverie of the soul. A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze.
This is the world to which the beings which had taken form on
70Ibid, Canto 14. 71 Ibid., pp.291-292
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earth come to have a meaningful rest after they have passed through the long road of heaven and hell. In this trance they muse over their experience of their bygone days and sketch the map of the destiny and adventure of their new life to lead. Aswapati now understands why the same being persists through several births and lives in many shapes.
A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,
Although the same for ever in many shapes
By the outward mind unrecognisable,
Assuming names unknown in unknown climes
Imprints through Time upon the earth's worn page
A growing figure of its secret self,
And learns by experience what the spirit knew,
Till it can see its truth alive and God.72
Aswapati had now come to the centre of creation where all that is made is unmade once again so that it can be remoulded and recast into new shape and nature. This was the refashioning chamber of the worlds, where things are planned, reconstituted and sent out for manifestation. Beyond this world lie the regions of delight and peace, the silent birthplaces of light, hope and love. His soul now moved on through an absolute stillness to the source of all things human and divine. There he saw in their poise of mighty union the figure of the deathless Two-in-One seated in a trance of creative joy which sustained the world. Behind them in the morning dusk there stood the One who had brought them from the Unknowable.
There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.
Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.73
This is the Divine Mother who is the guide of the traveller of the unseen paths. She stands above all, supporting all, the sole omnipotent Goddess of whom the creation is the mysterious mask. Aswapati's spirit was now made a vessel of her force and he stretched out to her
72 Ibid., p.293. 73 Ibid., p. 295
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his folded hands of prayer. As a gesture one arm of this supreme being was raised and she half-parted the eternal veil. Aswapati saw the mystic outlines of a face. He felt so overwhelmed by the power of her light and bliss and so over-powered by the sweetness and engery of her power, that he fell down at her feet unconscious, prostrate.
The Kingdom of the Greater Knowledge74
Aswapati came out of the timeless depths into which he had sunk, and he heard once more the slow tread of the hours. He now stands in a realm of Silence, alone beyond the witness Self and his universe, waiting to hear the voice that created the worlds. Here he could see all the creative powers in their original plenitude, quiet and fulfilled, even before they create the glorious dream of their universal acts. One could see from here the thousand roads that lead to Eternity and meet the veilless face of God.
Freed from bondage to death and sleep, he travelled beyond the seas of cosmic consciousness and crossed the ocean of the primal sound; he walked carefully along the narrow bridge of nirvana, near the high borders of eternity.
He had now reached the top of all that can be known; he could see creation's head, base and beyond; the triple heavens revealed to him their blazing suns, and the obscure depths of Nescience exposed to him its monstrous rule. All except the ultimate mystery was now within the field of his awareness; almost the unknowable revealed to him its rim.
He communed with the Incommunicable;
Beings of a wider consciousness were his friends,
Forms of a larger subtler make drew near;
The Gods conversed with him behind Life's veil.
Neighbour his being grew to Nature's crests.
The primal Energy took him in its arms;
His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,
An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:
Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,
Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:
He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.75
74 Ibid., Canto 15. 75 Ibid., pp.301-02
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This brings us to the end of Aswapti's journey through the various worlds described in Book II of Savitri.
There are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself and tends towards self-exceeding. Cantos 11 through 15 of Book II describe these lines of contact between the mind and the higher grades of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. Intuition occupies an important place in the action of the higher levels of this mind of Ignorance. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego and see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Then there is the vast field of mystic and spiritual experience and the gates lie wide open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits. Access to the superior gradations of our conscious existence becomes possible when we break the wall between our external and our subliminal self. What we then discover are the secret parts of ourselves—an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life which are more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge than our surface mind, life and body. The inner parts of ourselves are capable of a direct communication with the universal forces and movements. This widening can extend itself so as to bring us in union with the consciousness of the cosmic mind and universal life.
After this, the next step is the discovery of the static and silent Self which we feel to be our real existence. This may even lead to an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. Aswapati is now on the threshold of such an experience.
Aswapati's aim is not only to realise the Divine but to manifest the perfection of the Divine in the world. He was looking for a power that will enable him to do this as he was journeying through the various worlds. Now at the end of his journey, he realises, that such a power, namely the Supramental Consciousness, is not yet manifest in this cosmic formula. From where shall he bring it down? It can only be brought down from the Transcendental world. So after the Yoga of the Individual Divine of Book I and the Yoga of the Universal or Cosmic Divine of Book II, he now gets ready for the Yoga of the Transcendental Divine in Book III.
MANGESH NADKARNI
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Select Bibliography
J. E. Collins(1970) M. P. Pandit (1971-73) A. B. Purani (1952) | The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo, Upublished doctoral dissertation. Readings in Savitri: Vols. IV, V, VI. Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach and a Study. |
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Life and Time in Savitri
A fire shall come out of the infinitudes,
A greater Gnosis shall regard the world
Crossing out of some far omniscience
On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone
To illumine the deep heart of self and things.
A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind,
Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close.1
Introduction: Lifetime
Verily, as the Mother expressed, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is a vast ocean and one may, upon reflection, go in pursuit of the choicest of pearls. The common follower will find inspiration in day-to-day life. Those dedicated to serious spiritual pursuits will find ways to mysticism and union with God. Painters may come out in wonderfully emotional and celestial colours, painting each page of Savitri with immortal love. Musicians may set the poetry of the Master to tunes of meditative music that stirs and raises the spirit from deep within the heart. Architects may take inspiration to their work where brick and mortar, glass and steel may find such expression as the Matri Mandir of Auroville. Sculptors may carve and chisel in wood or stone and bring to life images such that devotees who sitting in front of them may be transported into Savitri's world. Litterateurs may examine carefully the various nuances of the poetry from diction to meter and critically appraise it. Thus everyone in general and all the fine arts in particular, which have formed the civilisation over the thousands of years upon the Planet Earth, have a providential place in the epic work Savitri.
The most appealing aspect in Savitri is basic human life, life that is seen in time that passes into eternity. Once, we are told in the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth narrated the people a parable. He said the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl that is most sought after.2 And when one has found it he goes out, sells all that he has and buys the
1Savitri, p. 258.
2St. Matthew, 13:45.
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pearl. Savitri is such a pearl for which one could give up what one has in order to get it. What one may give up may not necessarily be mere material possessions but one's attachment to the things or views one holds dear in life. The pearl that I seek in Savitri is its wisdom of life. I do not seek the critical appraisal of the terms life and time. I want to draw concrete lessons from life, reflect upon them and share them further. Life, quite simply, consists of the time-span between birth and death of man on earth. The memoirs of great men are known by their times. The history of mankind consists of the events of the past recorded chronologically as and when they happened.
The term lifetime describes much vividly a life that is spent in the span of time. The dimension of time determines the length of a period. The lifetime that one spends on earth is most valuable. For it is only here upon earth that man can work for and earn eternal life.
The timeless Ray descends into our hearts
And we are rapt into eternity.3
Ascending and Descending
Ascending and descending twixt life's poles
The serried kingdoms of the graded Law
Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,
Then glad of a glory of multitudinous mind
And rich with life's adventure and delight
And packed with the beauty of Matter's shapes and hues
Climbed back from Time into undying Self,
Up a golden ladder carrying the Soul,
Tying with diamond threads the Spirit's extremes.4
Sri Aurobindo clearly states in this excerpt that life consists of ascending and descending grades, not just between life and death but between two poles such as Self that is mortal and the undying Self that is immortal, not just between time that is transient and limited but eternity that is without end. Life is an event in time of the Self; but the Self is not just bound to time; it is unbound from time and is then assimilated into eternity. Life and eternal life go hand in hand through ascending and descending of the Self. The mortal self through
3 Savitri, p. 276.
4 Ibid., PP. 88-89
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an integral striving can ascend to what is beyond time and space and make this unbounded supreme Self descend into time. It is a worldly and heavenly ascending and descending, never separated from each other but at the same time clearly distinguished in the nature of their manifestation.
This may be illustrated with a story from the Bible. Jacob, who was named Israel by the angel of God and whose name today the Jewish State bears, had a wondrous mystical dream.5 He saw a ladder that reached from Earth to Heaven, and he saw the angels of God ascending and descending from it. Yahweh, the Lord God, through this sign showed him that from him a great nation would be bom, and all those who acknowledge Him as their God would ascend and descend, and His kingdom will be established amidst the people that he had chosen. Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga expounded in The Life Divine is like Jacob's ladder that envisages ascending and descending of the Spirit. This has been further perfected and deepened in Savitri that exposes his own ascending and descending experience. For, he says that there is a purpose in the creation's play,
That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
And world manifest the unveiled Divine.6
This is the most important mission in Savitri: A quest for the Divine within mortality. The timeless must look with the eyes of time and not vice versa; the Divine must be made incarnate, must be made manifest in the flesh, to experience Him in one's own mortal body. Life must return to Satyavan in order to experience the Divine; the life must be brought with ceaseless striving of Savitri. Eternity must step into Time; Spirit must come down.
Eternity drew close disguised as Love
And laid its hands upon the body of Time.7
The Perception of Time and Life
There is a story told about a summer fly whose lifespan is just a single day and a mighty tree whose lifespan spreads over several
5 Genesis, p. 28.6Savitri., p.72.
7 Ibid., p. 237.
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centuries.8 The fly flew merrily over top of the tree and felt happy and blissful and sat on one of the fresh leaves.
The tree said, "O such a poor little thing! You live just for a day. O how short' O how sad!"
"Sad? What do you mean?" retorted the fly. "Everything is so wonderful and delightful and I feel so happy," the fly added.
"But it is just for a day, and then everything is over," the tree joinedin.
"Everything is over?" the fly was puzzled, "What is over, and youtoo?"
"O no" said the tree, "I live thousands and thousands of days like the one that you have. It is so long you could not even count or imagine."
"O really," replied the fly, "I do not understand you at all what you say? Well, you have thousands of days of mine, but I have thousands of moments of mine in which I am truly joyful and really happy. And when you die, does the world end with you?" queried the fly.
"O no," retorted the tree, "the world will continue for millions of years."
"Well then," the fly concluded, "we both have equally enough, only that we count differently."
The story finds its fulfilment in Savitri: The tree would say, "Satyavan must die after a year of the marriage; but the fly would say, "Satyavan will live for one year." The lifespan of the tree may spread over centuries and with deep roots into the earth it digs deeper and deeper to make sure that it is not uprooted by the tempestuous seasons it has to face. It grows thick bark on its trunk that no great damage is done to its body. It produces foliage in leaps and bounds so that it can collect as much energy of the sun as possible and store the sap in the insides of its storage spaces. It is afraid of life that harm may come. It lives under the shadow of death all the days of its life. The fly, on the other hand, has a single summer's day to live, and it lives joyfully and merrily each moment of that day and is happy. It is not worried about death because it is happy to live. What counts in its attitude to life is not the length of the lifespan or lifetime, but the consciousness of each moment of life lived worthily.
The story becomes even more specific: Sage Narad is an exceptional being of such great personal powers that he can walk in
8 Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grilnewald-Verlag,Mainz, (Germany) 3rd ed., 1988, ~230, p. 145.
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and out of Heaven as it pleases him. In his utterance of Satyavan's death after one year of marriage with Savitri we find both the meanings fulfilled, fulfilment of eternity in time as much as time opening to eternity. The truth that Satyavan must die after one year is also the truth that Satyavan must live for one year.
Savitri believes that her pure and lofty love for her beloved will win over the morbid death. What if she were to wed in a joyless union for time without end? Would that be any significant life? Would it not be worth then to find true love only if it is for a moment? Her attitude to life is a qualitative one.
This little being of Time, this shadow-soul,
This living dwarf figure-head of darkened spirit
Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.9
The little being of time, Savitri, has crossed over her rightful eternity to find fulfilment of love in time. To borrow the famous phrase of Satprem,- she has embarked upon the adventure of consciousness, which would find its fruition in the as small a fraction of time as one year.
Time and Existence
Our being must move eternally through Time;
Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease;
A secret Will compels us to endure.
Our life's repose is in the Infinite;
It cannot end, its end is Life supreme.10
Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, asked the basic question:11 What is it to be? Man the being, as Being, that is the question. The answer will determine man's destiny. Ever since this question surfaced philosophers, theologians, social scientists, economic and political activists, human rights activists, novelists, poets, painters, journalists, et al, have steeped themselves in discussing and solving human existential problems. Thirty years earlier before this question surfaced, he had already written his master-work Sein und Zeit,12which is
9 Savitri, p. 171.
10Ibid, p. 197.
11 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, Pfufflingen, 1957.
12 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Halle, 1927.
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translated as Being and Time. He expounded in two volumes the relevance of human existence. Firstly, the aspect of facticity of the existence of the world; secondly, the fact of making this existence a personal reality, which is finally lost in the sea of humanity where one loses one's own identity and becomes a part of the indifferent person they.
Nothingness is a connective concept to his existential theory: Man is in dread (angst) of death, for he faces nothingness in its face. The dread of death consists in the fact of the annihilation of our own being. But the very consciousness of this dread can catapult one to realise one's own being.
We observe today that the world is trapped in a time-warp of its own making where it does face insurmountable existential problems with no solution in sight. With the burgeoning of population in all the continents the identity and individuality are lost in the masses; add to it the authoritarianism of the states which rule and govern the people. People are in dread of poverty, war, destitution, old age, sickness and death. However, the consciousness as to one's existence, one's being and life after death has waned. People have become mere numbers on various charts and lists; the names have disappeared, faces have been blurred and death, annihilation and nothingness appear to be the destiny of mankind.
Amidst such a human existential tragedy there shines a ray of hope which the Master annunciates succinctly as our being must move eternally through Time. With the ascending of the spiritual effort and the descending within of the supramental, man regains his lost identity in the world. He comes to the realisation that his transient existence, his imminent mortality and the passing away of the world are fragments of Eternity. In vain is the anxiety that death ends everything, its end is Life supreme. The teachings of the great religions show that death is not the end but, those who believe, it is the beginning of life everlasting. In the same way the man who pursues spiritual goals has the assurance within that the transitory time would find its end in eternity, the passing life would be realised in the infinite Divinity.
Savitri is not a book of sweet poems and blissful spirituality. It is not like the musings of a poet, of an imaginary spiritual heaven. It comes to grips with the nitty-gritty of life in sharper contrast than existentialists claim. The existentialists narrate the human misery without end and there is no hope in sight (The Iron in the Soul of Jean Paul Satre); in the bargain one loses sight of one's own self; consciousness is a rare commodity. Savitri depicts the human
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predicament true to life. The choices of life before Savitri are extremely difficult. Nothing is put freely on her lap. She must grow with difficulties and share the misfortunes. Death stares in her face. Yet she is able to maintain balance and equanimity, respect to the elders and the spiritual leaders. Living in the woods is a harsh reality. If death were to be the end there would be no hope, no meaning to life. The reality of human existence with all its limitations and afflictions is one side of the coin; the promise, the hope and the ultimate end of life the other. In Savitri we read:
A thinking being in an unthinking world,
An island in the sea of the Unknown,
He is a smallness trying to be great,
An animal with some instincts of a god,
His life a story too common to be told,
His deeds a number summing up to nought...
His hope a star above a cradle and grave.13
The essence of man consists of his quality to think; it distinguishes him from the world in which he now lives. Although his life and work are ordinary enough, yet there is the flicker of the flame of divinity dormant in his heart. Indeed this becomes his hope that holds itself out beyond death and destruction. Certainly this world is not a bed of roses. The sufferings of man arise more from ignorance than the will of the gods who want to test the lesser mortals. One who takes birth in this world must abide by the fate of the time. The passing time and the stubborn ignorance, selfishness and jealousy, strife and war, pride and prejudice make matters worse:
Here even the highest rapture time can give
Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,
A mutilated statue of ecstasy,
A wounded happiness that cannot live,
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacrum of enforced delight
In the seraglios of Ignorance.14
13Savitri, p. 78.
14Ibid
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We are taught again and yet again in all the Indian traditions of spirituality that ignorance is the cause of all suffering and knowledge is the one that liberates the bound self. The Yoga of Aswapati is an allegory in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo sets him up as an example of the practice of the Integral Yoga. Once one has set one's goal right, the aspiration to be the light of God upon the Earth, and is not afraid of the difficult path, the endeavor begins in the earnest. It is like a farmer who once has the hand set on his plough does not look back; it is like the boatman who once has his hands laid on the oars does not rest. There is no looking back; one abandons oneself to the cause, come what may. The faith is strong, hope shines and the life takes a new turn till a time comes for consummation:
Then by a touch, a presence or a voice
The world is turned into a temple ground
And all discloses the unknown Beloved.15
The Divine Providence is not at a distance in a Yogi or a Sadhak. One feels guided by the voice and led by the hand and the ground that one traverses turns itself into a sacred ground. The worldly opinions and what the society may think do not goad one or influence one's judgement. Savitri makes her choice for Satyavan and nothing can stop her from it—not poverty and hardship, not even the imminent death. For there is a much deeper and higher question that must be answered:
Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death
Or hew the ways of Immortality,
To win or lose the godlike game for man,
Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.16
It is the question that makes life worth living. The basic question of Heidegger as to what is it to be, that is the question. If we find answer to life's questions, then what would life be? For as long as one is in the world, one can be best described as a traveller who does not always have a beaten path to follow. Sometimes he comes across several paths and consequently is on the crossroads of life—and time flies. He must ask questions which follow reflection, which lead to deeper
15Ibid, p. 278.
16Ibid, p. 17.
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questions, which lead to deeper reflection, and so forth. Finding a definitive answer would rob the meaning of lifetime. Thus life is not a mere existence in time, but the time of existence is a period of questions and even deeper reflections about what lies beyond life and time.
Time and Destiny
A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,
A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance
And Fate revealed a chain of seeing will.17
Once upon a time there came in the land unprecedented drought.18 The green meadows and pastures turned to dust; the fields and orchards dried and were covered with sand. The desert invaded every river, lake and well. Only a very small flower plant could survive near a tiny spring. The spring had its own doubts: "When everything has dried up why should I try and keep this little flower plant on life?" There bent down a tree that was on the last throes of its death and said to the spring: "Dear little spring, no one expects from you to green the entire desert. Your duty is to look after one little flower plant, and not more."
Times of great doubt in one's existence crop up with the difficulties and problems of life. The doubt is not a speculative one, but an existential reality that questions the very essence of the significance of one's life. Doubts crop up because one is not only uncertain but is in the dark about one's future. The question "What would I be in time to come?" disturbs the very being. The more discerning, however, ask even a deeper question: "If I must some day die, what should I do to live?" Howsoever ultimately he decides to live, and actually so lives, his life is the way he paints upon the canvas of his own lifetime. Time shall not wait for him to paint; it will fleet leaving behind empty and unfilled spaces.
Those who want to live even when their time has passed by, they strive in a special way to realise their goal. The first intuitive discernment that I can outlive my lifespan takes me to a higher stage of spiritual existence. One becomes specifically conscious about one's
17Ibid,, p. 76.
18 Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grunewald-Verlag, Mainz, (Germany) 3rd ed., 1988, #218, p. 140.
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destiny. One may live in the world performing all the duties meticulously as does Savitri, and yet be not of the world just like her.
Time and Meaning
"What is time?" asked St. Augustine, the famous Christian philosopher, and was puzzled. Even today, after the scientific inquiries into time by Newton and Einstein, there is no final word on it. As for Augustine's bewilderment it was a simple well-constructed thought. He knew what time was, he asserted, but if someone were to ask what it is, then he would not know. If he were to measure a wall he would put a measuring rod against it; but if he were to measure time what would he measure it against? "Use the clock," one may advise; but can one measure time all at once? The present lapses into the past and the future in the present. Time fleets.
However, this was demythologised by Newton who proposed an absolute time, true and mathematical; of itself it flows equally without relation to anything external. Out of this H. G. Wells could create a fiction, The Time Machine, so real that one could travel backward and forward in time. The absolute time did not make sense. Einsteinian physics laid down the law that light should have the same properties for all observers in uniform relative motion and its velocity (in vacuo) should therefore be the same for all observers.This coupled with the law of energy made sense, since the subject juxtaposed to space and time came too in the picture, and made the dimensions relative.
Whatever one may do with time, whether one mythologises it or absolutises it or relativises it, it is out of the control of man. We live in it, pass through it and expect more of it to come, yet none of us howsoever powerful can be the Lord of it.19
However inexplicable the ontological problem of time may be, yet in our mundane life, time has a mundane meaning. The meaning of time consists in how we use it, whether in word or in deed. In word, when we speak about time its meaning lies in what sense we use it in our speech. Time in this sense is the tense in which it is used. Usually we do it to explain ourselves in the past, present or the future. In deed, all our work and activity is time-bound. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is yet to come, and today's work is to be done according to a timetable. Time in this sense is reference, i.e., all that we do is
19 Cf. Daniel Albuquerque, Truth and Action in Speech Acts, Intercultural Publications, Delhi, 1995, pp.126-130.
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related to a time reference. Time that seemed so mysterious to St. Augustine seems simple and too common for people in their daily lives.
How time is used in Savitri! This is a very vast theme in Sri Aurobindo's other works too. Fundamentally, he grasps time beyond the empirical constraints. He moves from temporal duration to eternity, from finite to infinite with ease, as if it is the most natural thing one could do. He was able to
Bring into life's closed room the Immortal's
air And fill the finite with the Infinite.20
The Ideal of Life and Time
It may be very well to preach and demand faith, but it is not easy to live one's faith it demands the consciousness of what one wants to be. Radhakrishnan in one of his works profoundly exposed human dilemma in the following words: "We do not know what we want and we do not want what we know."21 When we think of our life on Earth, its problems and afflictions, we certainly do not want the same to continue in the after-life. The only experience we have is of this world, and this we do not want to carry on if we were to live after our death.
We are not certain what lies for us on the other shore after the death. We are naturally afraid of death, but perhaps we are even more afraid of what awaits us after death. The greater our philosophical speculations on the subject the greater is the fear. For one could be afraid of eternity itself; one could be terribly upset by something that never ends. While we are on earth, no matter what may be our troubles and sufferings, we know with certainty that one day these will find an end. Is it one of the reasons that we find in our mythologies why the gods leave their eternal abodes and take shelter amidst the mortals? For here they can begin and end something that they liked to do but could not accomplish in their eternal world.
Time presents even more difficulties: pre-existence, existence and post-existence. For instance, if we do not believe in our pre-existence, it implies that we were created along with our bodies and we shall perish with the same. In case we believe in our pre-existence and
20Savitri, p. 316.
21S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist . View of Life, Un win Paperbacks,1980,p. 224.
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post-existence then what caprice of the Creator is it that imposed on us the present temporal nature? Our life and time on earth become increasingly meaningless when we question the reason for our temporal existence. For, reason cannot explain what is not ordained to do:
For not by Reason was creation made
And not by Reason can the Truth be seen.22
Does it imply then that there is no hope to know more about one's self before and after our mortal lives? If we were not to overcome the greatest puzzle of our life, the time that we spend as mortals would have no purpose, no Divine design. However, in Savitri, to overcome this dilemma we are given a shibboleth:
A nomad of the far mysterious Light,
In the wide ways a little spark of God.23
The message is clear, whether it is Aswapati, Savitri or Satyavan and the rest of the mankind, we are all nomads in this world. It is the Consciousness-Force that makes us aware of our present predicament. The solution to the riddle of life lies within us like a spark. The Divine Spark enkindles and brings forth light only if we are able to use the Consciousness-Force. In the present state of affairs man is plagued by ignorance, division, duality and bondage. Amidst such stark adversity, it is the spark of Divinity that sets man on to the eternal path. It is the Divine Grace within which manifests in those who show clear will to overcome the bondage of temporal existence.
A borrower of Supemature's gold,
He paves his road to Immortality.24
Thus the temporal life has significance only in its reference to the infinity for which man strives. For man time would lose meaning without infinity. The temporal life is meaningful only if one is able to enkindle the Life Divine, which is the true nature of the Self.
22Savitri, p. 256.
23Ibid., p. 336.
24Ibid., p. 339
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Consolation of Life
What is life? Is it a tragedy? Is happiness possible? These questions have engaged humanity from the beginning. Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is the story of Savitri's life. It is a metaphor for the life of man on earth. The more one gets steeped in it the more one becomes conscious of one's own life. Consciousness of life consists in the awareness one has of himself and the world, the choices one makes, the kind of desires one harnesses and from them derives the ensuring happiness. Such happiness surely depends not on the things one may have but on the mental state one acquires while having these things. A contented mental state is the ideal state of happiness and renders true meaning to living.
Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.
Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;
Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.
Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;
To its omnipotence leave thy work's result.
All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.25
In the above excerpt, among other things, the central message of the sacred Gita is enshrined, when it admonishes us to do our duty and leave the rest to the Will of God to judge the result of it. Once we have done our duty, it is for God to transfigure it and make it holy. Let not our hearts be troubled, let us be patient and know what we ask for. For if our mind is cluttered with the wants, our life will be joyless and barren. Contentment, in one word, is the secret of the consolation of life. The tales of Panchatantra teach us a lesson when we are told, for instance, the entire world is spread with leather to the person who wears merely a pair of shoes.
La Fontaine had a story to tell on contentment and peace of mind.26 There was a cobbler who although poor and had to work for meager money, yet was very happy and he would sing wonderfully. The passers-by enjoyed his singing and, best of all, there gathered a mob
25Ibid., p. 341.
26Cf. Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten Vol. 2, Mathias Griinewald-Verlag, Mainz, (Germany) 3« ed., 1988, # 165, p. 119.
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of children around him and he would sing for them and make them happy and gay. Next to the cobbler there lived a very rich man who always envied the happiness of the cobbler. He was always restless; during the day he was busy doing business and making money and at night he was sleepless since he had to count all that money; also the fear of the robbers kept him awake. To top his weariness, the cheerfulness of the cobbler drove him crazy. He wanted to silence the cobbler of his singing. One day he called for the cobbler who went to him instantly. There the rich man gave him a big purse. The cobbler returned home with it and opened the purse to find money, so much money that he could not even imagine. Suddenly the cobbler was a worried man. Where to keep it, how to guard it? He would think of all sorts of places to hide it, under the bed, in the attic or even in the hen's coup. However, he was not at peace and so he kept it on his body, remaining very watchful all the time. He became tense. The singing stopped. There were no children around. There was no more cheer and gaiety. At nights he was sleepless and at days he was restless. Finally, he decided that he had had enough, and went to the rich man and returned his money. He felt relieved of a great burden and he became his good old self again, contented and with a song on his lips. The customers were again amused and the children cheered as he sang. There was sunshine in his life.
One of the most striking scenes in Savitri is Savitri's undaunted will to embrace the humble life of the wilderness. She who was of such high disposition, even looking at her lifestyle materialistically, was the most beautiful princess brought up delicately in the comforts of a palace. Yet in all the life's situations, royal or rustic, she is at home. She spreads joy and cheer by her mellow and mature behavior with all the sages and saints in the forest.
Bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life;
Yet is it clad with the jewelry of earth.27
The Way of Life
There are two ways to see life: First, life is a test to please the Providence, to prove one's goodness by overcoming evil and as a result winning the Kingdom of God. In the Bible we read several
27 Savitri, p. 402.
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instances where God tests His chosen ones. He tests Abraham, when he is already old and his wife advanced in age and unable to bear children that he would beget a son and that he would become a father of a nation. God tests Jesus Christ, His own son, by allowing him to be tempted by the Satan while he was fasting and praying in the desert. Christ's suffering and death on the cross too were tests.
Second, life is an opportunity to realise one's own self. The entire Indian tradition of spirituality sees life as an opportunity to make good what one may have undone in the past life. The avataras of various gods and goddesses are an opportunity embraced by the immortals to find their selves in different situations and enhance their spirit. The supreme example of Vasudeva, which was so dear to Sri Aurobindo's heart, shows what a great opportunity this mortal life is. His supreme teaching to make the best of it while attending to one's duty but never yearning for results is a pilgrim's light. The exposition in The Life Divine teaches us the central core of the meaning of life — Sachchidananda. Sat, (Truth) Cit (Consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss) are the three jewels of an opportune life. This is the state of a realised self where the Consciousness-Force descends into one's being, a being that is indubitably real (unlike the speculative one of Heidegger). The Consciousness-Force descends and takes shape as though the metaphor of Savitri's incarnation on earth is finalised. Thus
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.28
Karma the Law of Life
Once, a farmer in China owned a small terrace rice field to which he would carry water from a pond at the bottom of the hill. It involved a great deal of long and arduous labour, as he had to climb up and down carrying water. As the Europeans came, they brought along with them their machinery too. They offered him a water pump, saying that it would spare him such a hard task as carrying water with such a great trouble. But the farmer politely refused the offer: "If I do not
28 Ibid., p. 3
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carry water, then I would not have time to reflect." In one of the letters Sri Aurobindo writes:
Self-dedication does not depend on the particular work you do, but on the spirit in which all work, of whatever kind it may be, is done. Any work done well and carefully as a sacrifice to the Divine, without desire or egoism, with equality of mind and calm tranquillity in good or bad fortune, for the sake of the Divine and not for the sake of any personal gain, reward or result, with the consciousness that it is the Divine Power to which all work belongs, is a means of self-dedication through Karma.29
Karma is a scientific principle; an act (karma) that produces effect, the effect in turn an action, becomes the cause of the effect (act) that follows. The world consists of acts of causes and effects. They actualise the energy of the past and effect future. The present is very decisive in any act of karma. The right time is now, the present. Good produces good and evil its like, love begets more love and hate multiplies hate.
Karma also establishes the law of freedom. The doctrine of predetermination is very prevalent in Indian tradition. However, if the Law of Karma is understood as above, there is nothing that can stop a man from determining his own destiny. For it is his action that shall chalk out his destiny, and the control of that action is in his hands. He
Accepts indomitably to execute
The will to know in an inconscient world,
The will to live under a reign of death,
The thirst for rapture in a heart of flesh.30
These lines from Savitri show that we do not live in an ideal world, we live rather in a contradictory situation in the world. We who possess reason live in a world with beings that have no such faculty; we live in a world that is not aware of itself, but we are; we have lofty aspirations of an unending infinite world while we live in this temporal and transitory world. Death is natural in nature, but we seek supernatural life.^vhere there is life after death. We are biological, so
29Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 23, p. 678.
30Savitri, p. 75.
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much in tune with the nature, we take birth, grow, become victims of sickness and death, and yet we seek immortality. If this is not freedom then what else is it?
Radhakrishnan has a fine allegory when he likens life to a card game of bridge.31 The cards are shuffled and given to us and therefore to that extent we may be restricted. However, we have the full freedom to play the way we like. We could overcome the odds of bad cards by sheer skill, determination and intelligence.
Savitri's is such a game played with fate. The play itself, as it progresses, may be likened to the development of consciousness. As she becomes skilful, and her will reveals itself in her action of the choice of Satyavan, a card which the rest think as weak, turns out to be a decisive one. The skill of the person depends upon how well one is able to use the Consciousness-Force. To Savitri this energy seems to come quite naturally even as she is guided step by step in her sadhana; on the other hand, for Aswapati it is an insurmountable task and needs lengthy periods of practice.
The Conscious Way of Life
There are regions of wide ecstasy
Beyond our indigent corporeal range.
There he could enter, there awhile abide.
A voyager upon uncharted routes
Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,
Adventuring across enormous realms,
He broke into another Space and Time.32
The world is a fact and, no matter what man wants to conquer including what lies beyond the world, he must begin at the beginning, with the first step on terra firma. This is the basic awareness or consciousness which the Zen masters teach: Be aware of the world. In contrast many organised religions teach us: "Beware of the world!" Savitri is a delight of the Zen masters. Every act of hers is totally advertent. She is fully aware of the situation of her birth and life, her father, friends and the spouse. Every act of her life is a deliberate act. Thus remaining within her surroundings, her given natural surroundings of which she was
31 S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, pp. 221-223.
32 Savitri, p. 91.
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completely aware, she could aspire for the supernatural environs. Sri Aurobindo makes it absolutely clear in very concrete terms in the following lines:
This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man
Shall stand out on the background of long Time
A glowing epitome of eternity,
A little point reveal the infinitudes.33
Although the above lines are spoken in the context of Aswapati, yet they bring out one of the recurring themes of all the teachings and writings of Sri Aurobindo. Man is a humble finite creature but stands out in Nature as the single extraordinary being, as the one who possesses within himself the Divine spark. Despite all the shortcomings he can hope and strive for something beyond his own nature. He sets his goal beyond death and time; he aspires himself to be Divine. The time that he spends on earth thus may be counted as merely a fraction of eternity.
The conscious way of life consists of being conscious of not only this world but also the one beyond, not only of time in this world but also of the eternity. For reflective conscious mind mere worldly life would be meaningless. It is life beyond or immortality actualising itself that gives meaning to life here on earth, the mortal life. In vain would be all our striving if immortality were a chimera. If time were of mere fleeting of events, vain would be the very concept of eternity that reflects itself in the events and times of the world.
Sri Aurobindo describes various forms of consciousness and its various stages. At first sight we can make a common sense distinction: Natural consciousness and Supernatural consciousness. This distinction makes us understand the difficult subject better. Natural consciousness may be again understood as perceptive and psychological. The perceptive consciousness is that awareness of things and sensations that we share with other animals which have senses. Thus the consciousness of taste, smell, touch, sight, etc. are common to the animal world. The psychological consciousness consists of relationship we have at the level of mind, intellect and reflection. The Supernatural consciousness is the awareness of the Spirit. It is when, for instance, the self becomes aware of itself; it observes itself as though an object of its knowledge. It is able to rise
33 Ibid., p. 100.
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above the common categories of knowledge and is in immediate knowledge of itself. The conditions of time and space disappear. The self-conscious spirit sees beyond division, it sees unity, reality, limitlessness and timelessness. This in essence is the being that Heidegger sought but could not find; it is found in Savitri:
A thought comes down from the ideal worlds
And moves us to new-model even here
Some image of their greatness and appeal.34
There is a query in these lines, which should take the thinkers by surprise: From whence come our thoughts? In the world of specialised learning consciousness is, at times, considered to be caused by qualia, the immediate perceivable things. The Lockean idea that our minds are tabula rasa, a blank paper to begin with, and then we impress upon it our picture of the world is always contradicted by the old Platonian world of the myth of the cave, where the forms are there from eternity. The question whether the ideas are inborn or whether they are the consequences of empirical experience is always an open question. So also the question on consciousness that goes immediately with it will remain open. Recently Roger Penrose, the well-known mathematician, in his celebrated work35 has tried to give consciousness a new dimension. He has explained it through the parameters of Turing-Church theory of computation. It is certainly very appealing to contemporary minds that are immensely overpowered by the skills of the computer. However, since the computers are not able to simulate human consciousness, although many of the functions such as arithmetic may be cloned more efficiently than the human mind, the machines are not yet a threat to the basic conscious activity of man.
Indeed the machines cannot think, unless we make them think. But man thinks for himself, howsoever imperfect those thoughts may be. As the Master teaches us, new thoughts originate in the ideal world and we receive them and create new models for life and living. These thoughts sharpen our consciousness and we are able to rise above
34Ibid, p. 262.
35 Roger Penrose (Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics), presently the author of the two best selling books, The Emperor's New Mind and its sequel. Shadows of the Mind has developed a theory claiming to solve the problem of the concept of consciousness. Cf. both these titles published by Penguin, 1995.
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mundane matters of the world and raise our thoughts from the material to the eternal, from the finite to the everlasting:
We move by the rapid impulse of a will
That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal Time.36
However tardy may be the progress a conscious being strives, yet one cannot deny the desire in man to yearn for the eternal. In Savitri the striving of Aswapati is the journey of such a soul who with all the difficulties and shortcomings of this world is able to rise above himself by the sheer power of his will. It is his will that wins the day for him when he reaches the end of the earthly limits and realises the total consciousness.
On meditation's mounting edge of trance
Great stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights
Where Time's last ridges touch eternity's skies
And Nature speaks to the spirit's absolute.37
The question arises whether our consciousness is for its own sake or whether it has any purpose. If we would say that consciousness is for its own sake, then we cannot but end up in a blind alley. We see very clearly in Savitri, in fact in every character that is depicted therein, that each conscious individual has a purpose, and the purpose is invariably a spiritual one. Thus consciousness seems to be a vehicle for in as much as the stuft of the Divine to express itself in this world. Sri Aurobindo's mission in his lifetime was to make this vehicle as perfect as possible so that the Divine, the Supramental Consciousness-Force may descend upon the earth.
A great all-ruling consciousness is there
And Mind unwitting serves a higher Power.38
The unfelt Self within who is the guide,
The unknown Self above who is the goal.39
DANIEL ALBUQUERQUE
36 Savitri, p. 262. 37Ibid., p. 264. 38Ibid, p. 271. 39Ibid., p. 168.
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Savitri: Assault of Ether and of Fire
A Divine cornucopia, Savitri is inexhaustible, and lends itself to as many approaches as there were seekers yesterday, are today and will be, in ever growing numbers, in times to come. This writer claims only the approach of a single seeker, at one vanishing point of time.
Two definitions of poetry come to mind. First, Louis Untermeyer's: "Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable." That may be a more or less acceptable definition for mental and vital poetry in the world's languages. But not for mantric poetry, and certainly not for Savitri. Sri Aurobindo never did attempt to define the indefinable. One would have thought that is best left undefined. Otherwise you risk one of those laboured and unreadable metaphysical treatises written by those who seek doctorates in Divinity— even if Christ himself did not boast any such qualification.
Sri Aurobindo took the direct route. He did not care to define Truth. He preferred to experience it at all its multiple levels. What he does do in Savitri is to evoke deep within us quite inexpressible responses to powerful vibrations of mantric verse. In short, for those who have receptive ears and inner beings primed for revelatory mantric rhythms and sound values, it is transformational poetry of the highest order. One more word. Someone once wrote to the Mother and asked:
In the end, what is the Divine?
The Divine can be lived, but not defined.1
Next, a redoubtable response from Emily Dickinson, one of the great foursome of classical American-English literature (the other three being Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman.) Asked how she would define poetry, Miss Dickinson replied: "If I read a book, and it makes my body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"
There is no other way—at least for devotees! For them Supreme Love is at once the origin and consummation of knowledge, works, and life on earth. And Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, the Epic of the Triumph of Love over Death, constitutes the summum bonum of the Integral Yoga
1 Mother's Agenda, Vol. 8, p. 151.
Scholars of Poetics delve into the art and craft, the rhythms and metres employed to achieve unique poetic effects. Many would agree, however, that several passages in Savitri do blow the tops of their heads off. For Savitri is experiential poetry, the veritable Veda of the modem Age. Like the Veda, it communicates formidable mantric vibrations that defy analysis. Savitri may remain on hands, lap or desk, but we find ourselves soaring, in repeated flashes of extraordinary illumination, to normally inaccessible heights, or plunging into hitherto unsuspected and otherwise mortally dangerous depths.
The Bhakta's heart comprehends what the Jnani may find abstruse. In a conversation of 10 April 1965, the Mother said:
I have been asked a question:
How can I love the Lord? I have never seen Him and never He speaks to me.
This is my answer:
It is not what one sees or hears that one loves, it is love that one loves through the forms and sounds, and of all love the most perfect love, the most loving love is the Lord's love.
When I wrote it, it was an extraordinarily intense experience: one cannot love anything but love, and it is love that one loves behind all things—it is love that one loves.2
It is Love that loves itself everywhere.
And form and sound are excuses.3
It is significant that in canto 2 of the very first book of Savitri we encounter an exceptional flash-forward (rather than the usual flashbacks employed in modem novels and films) to the triumph of incarnate Supreme Love over Death. A few pregnant lines may be cited
But one stood up and lit the limitless flame.
Arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss
In the dire court where life must pay for joy ...
Her head she bowed not to the stark decree
Baring her helpless heart to destiny's stroke...
2 Ibid, Vol. 6, p. 70. 3 Ibid., pp. 70-71.
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In her own self she found her high recourse;
She matched with the iron law her sovereign right:
Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.
To stay the wheels of Doom this greatness rose....
This truth broke in in a triumph of fire;
A victory was won for God in man,
The deity revealed its hidden face.
The great World-Mother now in her arose...
A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
Empowered to force the door denied and closed
Smote from Death's visage its dumb absolute
And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.4
The Mother's own foreknowledge is worth mentioning here. In her categorical way, the Mother had written: "Love is at the origin of the world and Love is its Goal." We also read in the same book: "Love is the Supreme Victor."5 And one morning the Mother read out to a disciple four stunningly revelatory lines Savitri uttered in her debate with Death, as if they were a confirmation of the Mother's own experience of unification with the Supreme Love. I quote:
The great stars bum with my unceasing fire
And life and death are both its fuel made.
Life only was my blind attempt to love:
Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.6
She says that life and death are the fuel; then, in her blind attempt life only was her attempt to love. She later stressed again that it was not "life was only", but "life only" was the attempt. Because her attempt to love was blind, she limited it to life—but she won the victory in death.
It is very interesting.
Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.
Yes, but Savitri couldn't win the victory on earth because she lacked 'heaven'—she couldn't win the victory in life because she lacked death, and she had to conquer death in order to conquer life. That is the idea. Unless you conquer Death the victory cannot be won. Death must be overcome; there should be no more death. It is very clear.
4 Savitri, pp. 18-21. 5 White Roses. 6 Savitri, p. 638.
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Then the Mother added: According to what Sri Aurobindo says here, it is the principle of Love that changes into flame, and then into light. It isn't the principle of Light that changes into flame by materialising itself; it is the flame that changes into light. The great Stars give off light because they bum; they bum because they are the result of love... it is my experience of the 'pulsations'.7 The last thing one comes into contact with is love (emphasis mine). According to the experience, it is the last thing to manifest, now, in its full purity, and it is what has the power to transform. That's what Sri Aurobindo appears to say here: The victory of Love would seem to be the final victory. He said that Savitri was 'a legend and a symbol.' He is the one who made it into a symbol. It is the story of the meeting between Savitri, the principle of Love, and Death. And it is over Death that she won the victory, not in life. She couldn't win the victory in life if she hadn't won the victory over Death. ...
How many times, how many times I have seen that he had written down my experiences (emphasis mine).... Because for years and years I didn't read Sri Aurobindo's books; it was only after coming here that I had read The Life Divine, The Syntheis of Yoga, and another one, too. For instance, Essays on the Gita I had never read, Savitri I had never read. I read it very recently (that is to say, some ten years ago, in 1954 or 1955). The book Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother I had never read, and when I read it, I realised what he wrote to people about me—I had no idea, he had never told me anything about it!... You see, there are lots of things that I had said while speaking to people—that I had said just like that, because they came (gesture from above) and I would say them—and I realised he had written them. So, naturally, I appeared to be simply repeating what he had written—but I had never read it! And now, it's the same thing: I had read this passage from Savitri, but I hadn't noticed it— because I hadn't had the experience. But now that I have had the experience, I see that he tells it.8
We have Savitri's debate with Death. But to attempt debate with the Power of Supreme Love would be infinitely more presumptuous than to debate a hurricane in full force. The passage that follows could only have ensued from Sri Aurobindo's own tremendous experience of the Supreme Mother—not a secondhand account of someone else's.
7Refer Mother's Agenda, Vol. 3: the Mother's experience of the "great pulsations" of Divine Love (13 April 1962).
8Mother's Agenda, Vol. 6, pp. 235-37.
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An awesome authenticity vibrates in every line, leaving one all a-tremble.
Leaving behind the World-Soul, Aswapati (i.e Sri Aurobindo) journeys on:
Alone between tremendous Presences,
Under the watching eye of nameless Gods...
There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.
Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.
Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit;
Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks,
Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,
She guards the austere approach to the Alone.
At the beginning of each far-spread plane
Pervading with her power the cosmic suns
She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works
And thinker of the symbol of its scene-
Then in a sovereign answer to his heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,
And from her raiment's lustrous mystery raised
One arm half-parted the eternal veil.
A light appeared still and imperishable.
Attracted to the large and luminous depths
Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,
He saw the mystic outline of a face.
Overwhelmed by her implacable tight and bliss...
He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.9
Those tremendous lines of supernal Light and Might contain more than all we can possibly conceive or imagine.
At our human vital level, we fall in love with the perversities of anger, hate, lust, greed, genocide and what have you! Or with another human being—a generalised phenomenon often dismissed as a purely
9 Savitri, pp. 294-96.
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biological device employed by evolutionary Nature to ensure the self-renewal of the race. But, like the purest white bloom that I once saw emerging from a dung-heap in an Indian village, a rarer love can also emerge from that 'evolutionary device'. The Taj Mahal stands as the monumental testimony of one such love.
Willy-nilly, all of us are driven—divinely or diabolically, as the case may be—by Love in diminished or grotesque forms of its primeval manifestations on earth. The worm would not wriggle, nor reptilian ecstasies thrash the slime, were it not for the Love that sustains them and all life under the wheeling stars. We recall the incredible depth of what the Mother wrote to Huta on 18 January 1965: "Love to all in you that loves and to all in you that does not know that it loves."10
Divine Love in its infinite purity and power cannot be mentioned in the same breath as mental and vital love. Caring nothing for their appointment diaries, it chooses to invade some mortals at the most unexpected of moments. Generally speaking, scientists and doctors know nothing of it, since they cannot either measure, quantify or scan it. As the renowned English physicist Eddington admitted: "Any attempt to scientifically measure a subjective experience is like trying to find the square root of a sonnet."
The deepest mystery known to mankind is that of all-inclusive, all-overpowering and inexpressible Divine Love. An all-shattering and uncompromising Love that leaves no room for bargaining, for it dissolves everything in its path, and irresistibly carries forward universes, worlds and life to their divine Fulfilment. That has nothing to do with love as commonly spoken of in human parlance. We might recall here the Mother's trenchant observation: "When people speak of sexual desire, instead of giving it the noble name of 'love', they should simply call it 'vital cannibalism.' "11
Vivekananda, speaking of Divine Love, told a sublime story: "A great saint said, using the language of a girl, describing love: 'Four eyes met. There were changes in two souls. And now I cannot tell whether he is a man and I a woman, or he a woman and I a man. This only I remember, two souls were. Love came, and there was one.' "12
Among powerful suggestions of Supreme Love so lavishly strewn about in the pages of Savitri, I may cite one:
10White Roses.
11Mother's Agenda; Vol. 7, p 258.
12Sister Nivedita, The Master as I saw Him, Appendix A.
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Then suddenly there came a downward look
As if a sea exploring its own depths;
A living Oneness widened at its core
And joined him to unnumbered multitudes.
A Bliss, A Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
Existence found its truth on Oneness' breast
And each became the self and space of all.13
If Supreme Love be the invincible power that alone can transform human dross into divine gold, it is clear that crude, half-baked human vessels cannot bear even a drop of that stupendous power without being shattered, for it brooks no impurity, no imperfection anywhere in the being. Yoga is essentially a purifying process to prepare pure, perfectly baked human vessels that can contain and bear the influx of the first transforming drops of almighty Love without shattering into smithereens. We recall Sri Aurobindo's admonition: "You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence."14
Well did the Supreme Mother warn Aswapati:
I am the Mystery beyond reach of mind,
I am the goal of the travail of the suns;
My fire and sweetness are the cause of life.
But too immense my danger and my joy.
Awake not the immeasurable descent,
Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;
Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight.
Truth bom too soon might break the imperfect earth.15
Which explains why an infinite compassion doles out the power of Love in tiny homeopathic doses to our as yet poorly baked humanity. The all-inclusive cosmic love of a spiritual athlete like Sri Ramakrishna explains the well- known story of his crying out in pain when he saw a cart-driver beating his bullock, and found himself with bleeding lash marks on his own back.
After Savitri united with the Supreme Love she was told:
Thou shalt bear all things that all things may change.16
13 Savitri, pp. 322-23. 14 The Mother,SABCL,Vol.25,p.3.
15 Savitri, p. 335. 16 Ibid., p. 700.
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We know that the Mother, like Sri Aurobindo before her, bore all things that all things may change.
Such is the Divine challenge to seekers everywhere who decide to tread the road of the Integral Yoga opened up by the "One Consciousness in two bodies"—Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. A formidable challenge, one that can be accepted only by those prepared to be among the forerunners of the tomorrow of the earth—a tomorrow, we might add, that we are all willy-nilly rushing towards—whether we like it or not, know it or not—like a multitude of needles towards an omnipotent magnet. For it is a "tomorrow" that contains in itself past, present and future in an everlasting Now.
Savitri is the epic of the triumph of Love over Death. The human embodiment of the Supreme Mother, Savitri pursues that dread God, who has taken possession of the soul of Satyavan into ever deeper, darker layers of the Great Inconscient. That pursuit and its outcome make for the incredible mantric power of imperishable verse in the cantos of Books 9 to 11. The earlier Books of the epic covered the inspired and inspiring preparation of—to use the vocabulary of modem space exploration—the launching pad for the human take-off into the superhuman. We have here a reversal, as it were, of the original plunge of Divine Love into its seeming opposite—the Infinite Inconscient. This time, it was not the covert but overt Divine, emerging from its transformed human embodiment, that dared the Inconscient realms to recover the Soul of Earth.
It is crucial for the devotee to appreciate that it is only the Divine in us who can possibly undertake the Yoga of Transformation—not the mental or vital ego with its silly pride of being the cat's whiskers— and flaunting itself with the aid of pretentious adornments and titles. And the first hurdles the seeker has to leap over include the romantic reveries of "vital cannibalism" that masquerade in the human animal as "love". Sri Aurobindo makes all this abundantly clear:
Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she
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may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may mm it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children (emphasis mine) she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.17
The devotee-begins with the ardent aspiration that the return journey to his or her true home in the bosom of the Supreme Mother begins with the release of the Divine spark in us from the coils of Ignorance— the psychic being or soul. In truth, nowhere—not even in Hell—can we escape the Divine. A rishi of the Rig Veda knew this stupendous secret:
He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there for man, he is there in the middle of his house,— he is as one universal in creatures; he is the Immortal, the perfect thinker.18
Depending on the initial impetus to the Yoga, one may or may not begin with Bhakti. Yoga has multiple beginnings, indeed as many as there may or will be seekers. A fanatic of the Integral Yoga is hence, by definition, inconceivable. Sri Aurobindo attests to this vast catholicity of the Integral Yoga in unambiguous terms: '
By this Yoga we not only seek the Infinite, but we call upon the Infinite to unfold himself in human life. Therefore the Shastra of our Yoga must provide for an infinite liberty in the receptive human soul. A free adaptability in the manner and type of the individual's acceptance of the Universal and Transcendent into himself is the right condition for the full spiritual life in man.
17 The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24-25.
18 Rig Veda: Mandala One, Sukta 70.2
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Vivekananda, pointing out that the unity of all religions must necessarily express itself by an increasing richness of variety in its forms, said once that the perfect state of that essential unity would come when each man had his own religion, when not bound by sect or traditional form he followed the free self-adaptation of his nature in its relations with the Supreme. So also one may say that the perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation.
Meanwhile certain general lines have to be formed which may help to guide the thought and practice of the Sadhaka. But these must take, as much as possible, forms of general truths, general statements of principle, the most powerful broad directions of effort and development rather than a fixed system which has to be followed as a routine. All Shastra is the outcome of past experience and a help to future experience. It is an aid and a partial guide. It puts up signposts, gives the names of the main roads and the already explored directions, so that the traveller may know whither and by what paths he is proceeding.
The rest depends on personal effort and experience and upon the power of the Guide.19
The same vast catholicity of spirit is enjoined on one who proceeds by Bhakti—the Path of Love. There is no hard and fast rule to bind down any Bhakta to one rigid code or another. Divine Love, we need to constantly remind ourselves, is all-inclusive, excluding no code, no seeker. This too is revealed in Savitri's own sequential responses, first to the heavenly sage Narad's prediction relating to Satyavan's death, then to her actual confrontation with the God of Death and, finally, with special force, in the ever-memorable mantric verse of The Book of Everlasting Day (Book Eleven). Only a few indications may be given here.
Sage Narad himself said in his last utterance to Aswapati and his distraught Queen:
In vain thou moumst that Satyavan must die;
His death is a beginning of greater life,
Death is the spirit's opportunity.
19 The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 51.
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A vast intention has brought two souls close
And love and death conspire towards one great end.20
Narad did not say what that "great end" might be.
The first response to Narad's prediction came from the human mother of Savitri, followed immediately by her own.
Mounting thy car go forth, O Savitri,
And travel once more through the peopled lands...
A choice less rare may call a happier fate.
But Savitri answered from her violent heart,—her voice was calm, her face was fixed like steel:
Once my heart chose and chooses not again.
The word I have spoken can never be erased,
It is written in the record book of God...
My heart has sealed its troth to Satyavan:
Its signature adverse Fate cannot efface,
Its seal not Fate nor Death nor Time dissolve...
Let Fate do with me what she will or can;
I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;
My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me
Helpless against my immortality.
Fate's law may change, but not my spirit's will.21
An even deeper certitude emerges in Savitri' s reply to her mother's second plea.
My will is part of the eternal will,
My fate is what my spirit's strength can make,
My fate is what my spirit's strength can bear;
My strength is not the Titan's, it is God's.
I have discovered my glad reality
Beyond my body in another's being:
I have found the deep unchanging soul of love...
If for a year, that year is all my life
And yet I know this is not all my fate
20Savitri, p. 459.
21Ibid., pp. 431-32.
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Only to live and love awhile and die.
For I know now why my spirit came on earth
And who I am and who he is I love.
I have looked at him from my immortal Self,
I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;
I have seen the Eternal in a human face.22
The Divine Drama gathers momentum in Canto Two Book Six. Narad's words are prophetic regarding Savitri's choice.23
A greatness in thy daughter's soul resides
That can transform herself and all around,
But must cross on stones of suffering to its goal.
Although designed like a nectar cup of heaven,
Of heavenly ether made she sought this air,
She too must share the human need of grief
And all her cause of joy transmute to pain...
In this enormous world standing apart
In the mightiness of her silent spirit's will,
In the passion of her soul of sacrifice
Her lonely strength facing the universe,
Affronting fate, asks not man's help nor god's:
Sometimes one life is charged with earth's destiny,
It cries not for succour from the time-bound powers.
Alone she is equal to her mighty task...
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,
Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge,
Alone with death and close to extinction's edge...
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world...
Her hour must come and none can intervene...
Even though all falters and falls and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are death and night,
God-given her strength can battle against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone seems close
22Ibid, pp. 435-36.
23Ibid, pp. 456-62.
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And no human strength can hinder or can help.24
Don't these lines provide some inkling of what happened on 17 November 1973? We will underestimate Sri Aurobindo's attainment of trikāla drishti if we believe that the Mother failed on that fateful day. He at least had the same foreknowledge that he put in Narad's mouth. None ever knew what really did happen in her inner being that day. Sri Aurobindo was not physically present either to suggest in mantric words what did happen. But, at least, we do have the Mother's own voice on an Agenda-tape saying that she had seen and been her new sexless body. So?
To get back to some of Savitri's statements on love in her debate with Death, that repeatedly clarify the significance of the word 'love' as used by Sri Aurobindo in his epic. Savitri is unambiguous when she tells Death:
My love is not a hunger of the heart,
My love is not a craving of the flesh;
It came to me from God, to God returns.
Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.
Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man
A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.
There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;
It rings with callings from forgotten heights,
And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls
In their empyrean, its burning breath
Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns
That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,
A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.25
The Love that survives beyond as "the rapturous core of suns" is radically different from the purely vital vibes that pass between the sexes as Hollywood or Hollywood would have them.
Next, Death hears:
For I the Woman am the force of God,
He the Eternal's delegate soul in man.
24Ibid, pp.457-62.
25Ibid, pp. 612-13.
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My will is greater than thy law, O Death;
My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate:
Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme.
I guard that seal against thy rending hands.
Love must not cease to live upon the earth...
Love is man's lien on the Absolute.26
Briefly about The Eternal Day: The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation. Here, to say the least, we confront the most magnificently powerful mantric poetry ever written, and in such an incomparable "royalty of mighty ease27—so potently evocative of the Supreme Himself and his infinite realms of incredible beauty and wonder. Indeed, in the Master-Poet's own words: "The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face."28 An indescribable vibratory response within recognises an affinity to the true Truth at supreme levels of existence and being, as does a single string of the Veena vibrate in resonance with all others. And this time we recall:
There is a being beyond the being of mind,
An Immeasurable cast into many forms,
A miracle of the multitudinous One.29
One also comes across a reference in the Canto to the "forefathers" often mentioned in the Vedas.
Our great forefathers in those splendours moved;
Termless in power and satisfied of light,
They enjoyed the sense of all for which we strive.
High seers, moved poets saw the eternal thoughts
That, travellers on high, arrive to us
Deformed by our search, tricked by costuming mind,
Like gods disfigured by the pangs of birth,
Seized the great words which now are frail sounds caught
By difficult rapture on a mortal tongue.
The strong who stumble and sin were calm proud gods.30
The God of Death himself is here altogether transfigured
26 Ibid, p. 633. 27 Ibid., p.26. 28Ibid., p. 677. 29 Ibid., p. 705.
30Ibid., p. 677.
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One whom her soul had faced as Death and Night
A sum of all sweetness gathered into his limbs
And blinded her heart to the beauty of the suns.
Transfigured was the formidable shape...
A marvellous form responded to her gaze
Whose sweetness justified life's blindest pain;
All Nature's struggle was its easy price,
The universe and its agony seemed worth-while.31
Several times Savitri gave voice to the highest terrestrial aspirations in her responses to the supreme allurements that tested her. Her love passes every such grandiose test with flying colours.32 First:
Obesetter of man's soul with life and death...
Iclimb not to thy everlasting Day,
Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night.
To me who turn not from thy terrestrial Way,
Give back the other self my nature asks,
Thy spaces need him not to help their joy;
Earth needs his beautiful spirit made by thee
To fling delight down like a net of gold...
O thunderer with the lightnings of the soul,
Give not to darkness and to death thy sun,
Achieve thy wisdom's hidden firm decree
And the mandate of thy secret world-wide love.33
Her second divinely inspired response:
In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss
Two spirits saved out of a suffering world;
My soul and his indissolubly linked
In the one task for which our lives were bom,
To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine...
Let a greater being then arise from man,
The superhuman with the Eternal mate
And the Immortal shine through earthly forms.34
31 Ibid, pp. 678-79. 32 Ibid, pp. 685-87. 33 Ibid.
34Ibid, pp. 692-93.
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Finally follows the deathless charge to the "incarnate Word" that was Savitri:
Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will
I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,
I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,
I yoke thee to my power of work in Time...
O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine.35
My hidden presence led thee unknowing on
From thy beginning in earth's voiceless bosom
Through life and pain and time and will and death,
Through outer shocks and inner silences
Along the mystic roads of Space and Time
To the experience which all Nature hides.
Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows:
This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
O lasso of my rapture's widening noose.
Become my cord of universal love.
The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight
Of creation's oneness sweet and fathomless,
Compelled to embrace my myriad unities
And all my endless forms and divine souls.
O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;
O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child bom.36
Nothing else needs to be said. Those who know how to recite Savitri —and there are several—might communicate its mantric force and power to others. And, perhaps, make their listeners' entire being throb with the Supreme Certitude in the very last line in the above. Clearly, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not walk the earth in vain.
Finally, it is important to stress, in the strongest possible terms: no essay can do even a modicum of justice to the unparalleled wonder and majesty of Savitri in its entirety. The best one can do is to read, or better still, recite the entire epic to oneself—and find
35 Ibid, pp. 698-99. 36 Ibid., p. 702.
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oneself on the thresholds of a multitude of doors, each opening out, one after another, to the greatest of all possible adventures in human Time. And perhaps the best is to walk out of one or other door— impelled by an irrepressible—consciously accepting the invitation to Love, by Love!
C.V. DEVAN NAIR
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PART IV
From Death to Deathlessness:
Lucretius and Sri Aurobindo
George Santayana expects every great poet to be a philopher, a prophet and a seer: "The distinction of a poet—the dignity and humanity of his thought—can be measured by nothing, perhaps so well as by the diameter of the world in which he lives; if he is supreme, his vision, like Dante's, always stretches to the stars."1
Two other poets whose vision, literally and metaphorically, stretches to the stars are Lucretius and Sri Aurobindo. In Book I of De Rerum Natura Lucretius promises to reveal the ultimate realities of heaven and the gods. Applauding this attempt of his Virgil, in his Georgics, identifies him as the poet "who hath availed to know the causes of things and hath laid all fears and immitigable Fate and the roar of hungry Acheron under his feet."2 Sri Aurobindo also attempts, in his Savitri, the twin tasks of knowing the causes of things and laying all fears and immitigable Fate and the roar of Death under his feet, though in a very different way. Commenting on the plan of his magnum opus, the Indian poet points out that it expresses "a total and many-sided vision" and "aims not at the minimum but at an exhaustive exposition of its world-vision or world-interpretation."3 This is true of the Roman epic also. Raymond Frank Piper, an American professor of philosophy, considers Savitri a cosmic poem that "illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance."4 This tribute is richly deserved by De Rerum Natura also.
Though no two poems can be as widely different from each other as those of Lucretius and Sri Aurobindo with regard to the time, clime, race and milieu that gave birth to them, very surprisingly, they deal with many common themes, their major preoccupation being with man's confrontation with death. The Roman epic written
1Quoted in Prema Nandakumar, A Study of Savitri, Ashram, 1962, p. 436.
2Quoted in Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange, ed. Victorian Poetry and Poetics, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968, p. 422.
3Quoted in A.B. Purani, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach and a Study, Ashram, 3rd edition, 1970, p. 35.
4Quoted in Perspectives of Savitri, Vol. 1, ed. R. Y. Deshpande, p. xlvii.
during the first century B.C. gives poetic expression to "the first principles of the Epicurean philosophy of life summed up in the formula: God unterrifying; death unworrying; the good accessible; the bad endurable."5 The vision of Savitri echoes the aspiration of the ancient Indian Rishis:
Lead me from darkness to light
From death to immortality.
Attempting to discourse on the nature of things, Lucretius promises to open up the first beginnings of things, out of which nature gives birth to all things and increase and gives them nourishment and into which nature dissolves them back after their destruction. If the fear of the unknown is to be dispelled, we must grasp the principle by which the courses of the sun and the moon go on, the force by which everything on earth proceeds, and find out by keen reason what the soul and the nature of the mind consist of. We have to admit that nothing can come from nothing since things require the seed before they can be bom and brought into the fields of air. All the objects around us have an origin and an end, a birth and a death but they do not originate from or pass away into nothing. Matter exists in the form of particles that are totally solid and so hard that it is impossible to split one.
After stressing the indivisibility of the elements and their eternal immutability Lucretius demolishes the other theories of matter. Those who hold fire to be the matter of things and the sun to be formed out of fire alone have strayed most widely from reason. To claim like Heraclitus that no real thing except fire exists appears to be sheer dotage. The pluralistic theories of Empedocles and others are also equally wrong. The four elements—earth, water, air and fire without void—cannot account for motion and do not provide a satisfactory explanation of the vast variety of objects in the world.
Raising some objections to the geocentric closed world of the Aristotelians, Lucretius waxes lyrical about the infinity of the universe. The existing universe is bounded in none of its dimensions; for then it must have an outside. There can be an outside of nothing,
5 Quoted in T. James Luce, ed. Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, Vol. II, Lucretius to Ammianus Marcellinus, New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982, pp. 603-AO.
All the citations from De Rerum Natura are from the text found in this volume.
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unless there were something beyond to bound it. Since space is infinite, matter must also be infinite.
The innumerable tiny particles that constitute matter are always falling through space in a sort of rain. As they fall they occasionally swerve aside from a straight line and come into collision with other atoms. Nothing that falls naturally is ever seen to swerve because all swerves are too small to be perceived. Swerves must be so rare that they do not upset the general predictability of the behaviour of matter. If we examine our own actions, it is clear that they cannot be explained simply as the predetermined outcome of the fall and collision of atoms.
Whence comes this will, I ask, wrested from Fate,
By which we go wherever pleasure leads?6
Lucretius claims that in addition to downward fall due to weight and collisions, a minute swerve of atoms causes this. Concerning the shape of atoms and its effects on the perceptible qualities of compounds, the poet contends that there must be a vast amount of variation at the perceptible level and that variation in the shapes of atoms can account for all the perceptible varieties of things, for different tastes, sounds, smells, colours, temperatures and textures and also the different species of plants and animals. Even life is a derivative property, a function of the shapes and numbers of the atoms that constitute the living creature. Since the universe is infinite and contains an infinite supply of matter, there are worlds besides ours. Just as worlds come into being by the natural processes brought about by commissions of atoms, they all perish too.
Rejecting the theory of the divine nature of cosmic order, Lucretius ventures to affirm and maintain that to believe that for the sake of men the glorious nature of the world has been set in order and that it will be eternal and immortal is sheer folly.
In no way is the universe arranged
For us by gods—it has so many flaws!7
Why does nature give food and increase the frightful race of wild beasts dangerous to mankind? Why do the seasons of the year bring
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diseases in their train? Why does untimely death stalk abroad? For both heaven and earth, there has been a time of beginning and there will be a time of destruction. Even the holy divinity cannot prolong the bounds of fate or struggle against the fixed laws of nature. How were the earth, the sky and the sea created?
It's sure that atoms did not take up posts,
Each at its purposed station, wittingly,
Or skilfully coordinate their moves.
But multitudinous atoms in uncounted
Ways, from infinite time moved on by blows
And by their own weight influenced, have come
To try out every mode of union,
To element all things they can create.8
The growth of the world is a slow process, the first step being the formation of seeds, i.e., groups of atoms that have the power to adhere together and to retain others as they collide. Lucretius, following in the footsteps of his master, asserts that the regularity of the motions of the heavenly bodies can be attributed not to the gods but to nature. He also ventures to give an exquisite imaginative account of the growth of living forms from the earth and the advancement of human life from primitive men who lived in the woods and caves to civilised beings who could create agriculture, cities, music and war. Every step in the progression was made possible by necessity coupled with human ingenuity and there were, of course, numerous false steps causing fear and frustration.
Aristotle's dictum that "Nature does nothing in vain" is rejected by Lucretius on the ground that a million atomic collisions produce no result whereas only a few make the seeds of mighty things. The earth produced numerous creatures but only the fittest survived.
All such that could not act nor move at all
To flee from harm or seek for sustenance
And many other prodigies earth made—
In vain, since nature stopped them from increase.9
In Book I of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo gives his account of the evolution of the universe from the Night of Nescience to the awakening of the Dawn of the Spirit. "It was the hour before the
8 Ibid,. V:419-26.
9 Ibid., V: 843-46.
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gods awake." The gods that preside over the various functions of the cosmos had not awakened and begun their work. There was only the all-pervading figure of Night, a dark woman asleep in her unlit temple of Eternity, who "lay stretched immobile upon Silence's marge." She had a nightmare and shrank from the thought of embarking upon the adventure of the mystery of birth and the tardy process of mortality. It is when the mind of this Night gives its consent that the cosmos can come into being. Something undefinable stirred in the depth of her nescience. Consequently, repeating for ever the unconscious act, she brought into existence this vast material universe. When the Night consented to the birth of the dawn, she was almost forced to fulfil her role of the mother by being reminded of endless need in things.
A ray of life-consciousness emerged first and this outbreak of the light of life was the coming of "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun" to seek for a spirit. While seeking for the fallen spirit, the ray of light called upon the Night to take up the adventure of consciousness and joy and it compelled renewed consent to see and feel. The stir in the heart of the Night succeeded in contacting the light of life. The birth of this aspiration converted the sleeping Night from a careless to a careful mother of the universe. It is by no means an easy task to make the body, create the needs of life and of the soul. For this the Night requires the help of the superconscient Transcendent Divine. Finally, it is the double action of the constant inflow of light from above and the inner urge from below that forced the worlds' blind immensity to sight. Then the darkness fell from the body of the unknown entity like a robe and revealed "the reclining body of God."
Now Dawn makes her appearance, bringing the hope of fulfilment, the promise of realisation to the aspiration that has been bom on earth.
Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed
Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;
A lonely splendour from the invisible goal
Almost was flung on the opaque Inane...
Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated joumeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for her feet.10
10 Savitri, p. 4.
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She is "a message from the unknown immortal light," the message being that the Light will fulfil its work and establish on earth the life divine.
In this poetic account employing "the technique of the overmind interpretation of life," Earth representing the masked Infinite contains within it the upward drive and the downward drag of the evolutionary movement that has created the cosmos. Love representing the Divine grace that sacrifices its perfection in order to save creation from the prison of Inconscience is the immortal element in mortals. Dawn symbolises the "perpetual awakening of the light of consciosness from the Night of Nescience which gives rise to the cosmos."11
In Sri Aurobindo's view man is not a mere material phenomenon, as there are hidden powers in him which can be awakened by following a path of inner discipline. Evolution is a gradual growth towards supreme knowledge, leading man towards self-transcendence. The world is an unfinished work and its fulfilment lies in her manifesting higher planes of consciousness upon her surface by realising perfect Knowledge, unerring Will and unflagging Delight. There is, therefore, a divine presence in and behind the world-process.
The mind as well as the body, Lucretius asserts, is material and its atoms are dispersed at death. There is no immortality and our life is limited to this world. It is while we are here that we must win our happiness. Just as the body is liable to violent diseases and severe pain, so is mind to sharp cares, grief and fear; it follows that it is its partner in death as well. Since vital sense is in the whole body, if on a sudden any force with swift blow cuts it in twain, the power of the soul will, without doubt, at the same time be cleft and cut and dashed in twain together with the body. The soul is neither without a birthday nor exempt from death. Souls do not make for themselves bodies and limbs; nor can they by any method find their way into bodies after they are fully formed; for they will neither be able to unite themselves with a nice precision nor will any connection of mutual sensation be formed between them.
Lucretius is certain that, whereas each thing can grow and abide, it is fixed and ordained. A tree cannot exist in the ether, nor clouds in the deep sea nor can fishes live in the fields nor blood exist in woods nor sap in stones. Thus the nature of the mind cannot come
11 A.B. Purani,Op. cit, pp. 126-27.
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into being alone without the body nor exist far away from the sinews and blood. (Ill: 784-89) Death, therefore, is nothing to us. We felt nothing before we came into being. We must, similarly, be unconcerned about our disappearance in the future. If we have enjoyed life we should be ready to depart like a guest leaving after a good dinner. If life has been a grievance, why should we seek to make any addition to be wasted perversely in its turn and lost utterly without avail?
Having the courage of his convictions, Lucretius claims that the Epicurean theory can account for phenomena like perception, illusions, dreams, memory, imagination and even love. He brings in the Epicurean concept of simulacra of "images" to explain these. The human mind is made up of very fine atoms, whose motion is altered by the impact of films which arise from external objects; they strike the sense organs, and transmit their motion to the atoms of the mind. When we have seen an object several times we form, as it were, a permanent image or a concept in our mind; these concepts, by their combination, constitute our thought. Imagination and other activities of the mind are explained by the same theory. Some simulacra are of such fine texture that they escape the coarser filters of the sense organs and impinge directly upon the atoms of the soul.
The ruthless materialism of philosophers like Lucretius is subjected to close scrutiny in Savitri. In the dialogue between Savitri and Death, the latter champions the cause of Materialism:
All thy high dreams were made by Matter's mind
To solace its dull work in Matter's jail,
Its only house where it alone seems true.
A solid image of reality
Carved out being to prop the works of Time;
Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.
It is the first-born of created things,
It stands the last when mind and life are slain,
And if it ended all would cease to be.
All else is only its outcome or its phase:
Thy soul is a brief flower by the gardener Mind
Created on thy Matter's terrain plot;
It perishes with the plant on which it grows,
For from earth's sap it draws its heavenly hue:
Thy thoughts are gleams that pass on Matter's verge,
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Thy life a lapsing wave on Matter's sea.12
Death contends that everything stands upon Matter as on a rock and that if Matter fails all, crumbling, cracks and falls. He also claims that he formed earth's beauty out of atom and gas and built the living man from chemic plasm.
But where is room for soul or place for God
In the brute immensity of a machine?
A transient Breath thou takest for thy soul,
Bom from a gas, a plasm, a sperm, a gene,
A magnified image of man's mind for God,
A shadow of thyself thrown upon Space...
Immortality thou claimest for thy spirit,
But immortality for imperfect man,
A god who hurts himself at every step,
Would be a cycle of eternal pain.13
Savitri is, therefore, advised to accept her lot as an earthly creature and to obey the earthly law. She has to submit to the ordeal of Fate's scourge and suffer what she must of toil and grief and care.
Savitri is not cowed down by the almighty Death; nor does she feel frustrated by his sophistry. She tells him that he speaks truth, but a truth that slays. He is told the truth that saves. The Divine, a traveller, made Matter's world his starting point. God covered his face in Matter, infinity wore a boundless zero's form, eternity became a blank spiritual vast. The Timeless took its ground in emptiness, so that the spirit might adventure into Time. The spirit built a thought in nothingness; Matter was made the body of the Bodiless and slumbering life breathed in Matter. Mind lay asleep in subconscient life and became active in conscious life. Man became a reasoning animal, measured the universe, opposed his fate, conqured the laws, became master of his environment and now hopes to become a demigod. Savitri tells the dire God:
Yes, I am human. Yet shall man by me,
Since in humanity waits his hour the God,
Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights,
Transcending grief and pain and fate and death.
12 Savitri, p. 615. 13Ibid., p. 618.
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Yes, my humanity is a mask of God:
He dwells in me, the mover of my acts,
Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work.
I am the living body of his light,
I am the thinking instrument of his power,
I incarnate Wisdom in an earthly breast,
I am his conquering and unslayable Will.14
It is foolish, in Lucretius's view, to seek refuge in the gods and to suppose all things to be guided by them. Nothing is more ridiculous than to charge them with wrathful deeds against man. No act, therefore, is more pathetic to him than to be seen with veiled head to turn to a stone and approach every altar and fall prostrate on the ground and spread out the palms before the statues of the gods and sprinkle the altars with the blood of beasts. It is time which brings forth everything before man's eye and reason develops it to the highest point. But unfortunately mankind, without being satisfied with anything, always toils vainly and to no purpose and wastes life in groundless cares as it has not learnt the true end of getting and the extent to which genuine pleasure can go.
Claiming to have willed to mount the illustrious chariot of the muses and ascending to heaven to explain the true law of winds and storms and all the other things which happen on earth and in heaven, Lucretius describes what the Greeks called meteorologica, the wide range of phenomena including thunder and lightning, clouds, rain and rainbows, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the flooding of the Nile and even magnetism.
The blue sky is shaken with thunder because the ethereal clouds clash together when the winds combat from opposite directions. We hear the thunder with our ears after our eyes see the flash of lightning, because things always travel more slowly to the ears than those which excite vision travel to the eyes. Thunderbolts are born of dense clouds piled up high; for they are never caused when the sky is clear or when the clouds are of a slight density. The earth, filled in all parts with windy caverns, lakes and rivers, chasms, cliffs and craggy rocks, quakes above from the shock of great falling masses, just as buildings besides a road tremble throughout when shaken by a wagon. In order to understand all these natural happenings, one should remember that "the sum of things is
14Ibid., p. 634.
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unfathomable and to perceive how very small, how inconceivably minute a fraction of the whole sum one heaven is, not so large a fraction of it as one man is of the whole earth."13 All things with heaven, earth and sea included are nothing to the whole sum of the vast universe. Also on earth there are elements of things of every kind—many which are helpful to life, many which cause diseases and hasten death. Numerous things that are noxious and dangerous may pass through the ears, make their way through the nostrils. Not a few are to be shunned by the touch or avoided by the sight.
Lucretius, like his master Epicurus, places gods in a region remote from this world, in the "interworld" spaces, living a life of happiness and being totally indifferent to the affairs of men:
The Gods' majesty I see, and their quiet home,
Which no winds shake, no clouds soak with their showers,
No snow compacted hard with sharp frost spoils
With its white fall: a cloudless sky forever
Mantles it, joyful, with a radiant light
Nature supplies their needs: through all of time
No single thing lessens their peace of mind.16
In the parable of the search for the soul in Savitri this view of gods is dismissed as the attitude of ignorant human beings when faced with Fate. A mighty voice invading mortal space urges Savitri to arise and vanquish Time and Death. But her heart replies:
My strength is taken from me and given to Death,
Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens
Or struggle with mute inevitable Fate
Or hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race
Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light
And see in Mind Wisdom's sole tabernacle,
In its harsh peak and its inconscient base
A rock of safety and an anchor of sleep?
Is there a God whom any cry can move?
He sits in peace and leaves the mortal's strength
Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law
And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.17
15De Re rum Natura,VI: 649-65. 16Ibid., III: 14-24.
17Savitri, pp. 474-75.
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But the Voice exhorts her to seek God's meaning in her depths:
In the enormous emptiness of thy mind
Thou shalt see the Eternal's body in the world,
Know him in every voice heard by thy soul:
In the world's contacts meet his single touch;
All things shall fold thee into his embrace.
Conquer thy heart's throbs, let thy heart beat in God:
Thy nature shall be the engine of his works,
Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:
Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.18
Man is not simply what he appears to be. All the world's possibilities in man are waiting as the tree waits in its seed. The unborn gods hide in his house of Life. Man is not a free being he imagines himself to be.
Above us dwells a superconscient god
Hidden in the mystery of his own light:
Around us is a vast of ignorance
Lit by the uncertain ray of human mind.19
This is only the first self-view of Matter. There is a greater Self of Knowledge waiting for man. "It shall descend and make earth's life divine." There are summits of man's being which are divine. Eternity and Divinity are his birthright. Light comes to man from above. "He calls the Godhead into his mortal life."
Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state.
But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man's heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature's crowded rooms.20
And this according to Sri Aurobindo is the destiny of man on earth.
While explaining the reproduction process, Lucretius reveals his utter contempt for love itself. How does a man fall in love with a
18Ibid, p. 476 19Ibid., p. 484. 20Ibid, pp. 486-87.
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lady? He who gets a hurt from the weapons of Venus, whatever be the object that hits him, inclines to the quarter whence he is wounded, and yearns to unite with it and join body with body. It is wise not to fall in love because the sore gathers strength and becomes inveterate by feeding, and everyday the madness grows in violence, and the misery becomes aggravated. The healthy-minded would avoid passionate involvement with a lover; for any passion leads to agonies of mind.
One is shocked by the crude view of love-making presented by the Roman poet. The burning desire of lovers, at the very moment of enjoying, wavers and wanders undecided and they cannot tell what first to enjoy with eyes and hands. What they have sought, they tightly squeeze and cause pain of body and often imprint their teeth on the lips and clash mouth to mouth in kissing, because the pleasure is not pure and there are hidden strings which stimulate to hurt even that from which spring those germs of frenzy.21 The passion of love is the one thing of all in which, when we have most of it, then all the more the breast burns with fell desire. The poet's extraordinarily bleak moral attitude to love is evident when he says that to be in love with a single sexual partner is to risk the pangs of jealousy and the torture of rejection and that it is better to take sexual pleasure where one finds it.
This kind of denigration of love is categorically rejected in Savitri, which, in fact, is the greatest celebration of human love. Death, of course, argues like Lucretius himself in Savitri:
What is this love thy thought has deified,
This sacred legend and immortal myth?
It is a conscious yearning of thy flesh,
It is a glorious burning of thy nerves,
A rose of dream-splendour petalling thy mind,
A great red rapture and torture of thy heart.
A sudden transfiguration of thy days,
It passes and the world is as before.
A ravishing edge of sweetness and of pain,
A thrill in its yearning makes it seem divine,
A golden bridge across the roar of the years,
A cord tying thee to eternity...
Love cannot live by heavenly food alone,
21 De Rerum Natura, IV: 1078-88.
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Only on sap of earth can it survive.
For thy passion was a sensual want refined;
A hunger of the body and the heart.22
But Savitri's reply to the dark Power is a paean to love:
My love is not a hunger of the heart,
My love is not a craving of the flesh;
It came to me from God, to God returns.
Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.
Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man
A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.
There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;
It rings with callings from forgotten heights,
And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls
In their empyrean, its burning breath
Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns
That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,
A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.23
Stressing the divine nature of love, Savitri later tells Death that she has triumphed over him within:
...Love must soar beyond the very heavens
And find its secret sense ineffable;
It must change its human ways to ways divine,
Yet keep its sovereignty of earthly bliss...
Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,
Love is the far Transcendent's angel here;
Love is man's lien on the Absolute.24
Lucretius dwells at length on the folly of those who are scared of death. Many of the fears and anxieties in man's life many be traced back to the origin in fear of death, which is often unacknowledged and hidden. It is this fear which urges men to every sin, prompts some to put all shame to rout, others to burst as under the bonds of friendship. In seeking to shun death, men have betrayed their country and dear parents. Just as children dread every thing in the thick
22Savitri, pp. 610-11. 23Ibid, pp. 612-13. 24Ibid., p. 633.
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darkness, grown-up men fear in the broad daylight things not a whit to be dreaded. We can free ourselves from this irrational fear if we realise that soul and mind are evolved with the body, grow with its growth, ail with its ailments, and die with its death. Nothing exists but atoms and void. The overriding law is that of evolution and dissolution everywhere.
Globed from the atoms, falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and their suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.
Thou too, O Earth—thine empires, lands and seas—
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too
Shall go. Thou art going hour by hour, like these.
Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.25
All the myths about Hades, according to Lucretius, are but allegories of the torments of needless anxieties in life. Tantalus is the man who lives in fear of the gods; Tityos is the frustrated lover; Sisyphus is the ambitious politician wooing the people for support. Fools create a hell for themselves on earth. One should tell oneself that even the best of men are dead and gone. Among the celebrated poets of the past Homer bore the sceptre without a peer but now he sleeps the same sleep as others. By his own spontaneous act, the great philosopher Democritus offered up his head to death. Even Epicurus passed away when his light of life had run its course. Each man, while he is alive, tries to fly away from himself, though self clings to him in his despite. A sure term of life is fixed for mortals and death cannot be shunned. Why should one hesitate and think it a hardship to die?
The epic of Lucretius ends with a gruesome account of the great plague in Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. This is understandable if we bear in mind that the ultimate aim of the poet
25 Quoted in Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, New York: Pocket Books, 1961,p.l00.
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is to exhort mankind to have the courage, strength and wisdom to face death—even death by plague—with equanimity. The poet begins with a graphic sketch of the misery caused by the deadly disease.
First of all they would have the head seized
With burning heat and both eyes blood-shot
With a glare diffused over; the livid throat
Within would exude blood and the passage
Of the voice be clogged and chocked with
Ulcers, and the mind's interpreter
The tongue drip with gore, quite enfeebled
With sufferings, heavy in movement,
Rough to touch.26
This is followed by a frightening catalogue of the symptoms of death, certain to be noticed:
The clouded brow, the fierce delirious expression,
The ears too troubled and filled with ringings,
The breathing quick or else strangely loud
And slow-recurring, and the sweat
Glistening wet over the neck, the spittle in
Thin small flakes, tinged with a saffron—
Colour, salt, scarce forced up the rough
Throat by coughing. The tendons of the hands
Ceased not to contract, the limbs to shiver,
A coldness to mount with slow sure pace
From the feet upwards.27
The havoc wrought by the disease is not less alarming than the consternation caused by it:
And though bodies lay in heaps above
Bodies unburied on the ground, yet would
The race of birds and beasts either scour
Far away, to escape the acrid stench, or
Where anyone had tasted, it drooped in
26 De Rerum Natura, VI: 1147-55.
27Ibid., VI: 1183-94.
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Near-following death...
Funerals lonely, unattended, would be hurried
On with emulous haste...
Then too every shepherd and herdsman, ay
And sturdy guider of the bent plough
Sickened; and their bodies would be
Huddled together in the comers of a hut,
Delivered over to death by poverty and
Disease. Sometimes you might see lifeless
Bodies of parents above their lifeless children,
And then the reverse of this, children giving
Up life above their mothers and fathers...
All the holy sancturaries of the gods too
Death had filled with lifeless bodies,
And all the temples of the heavenly powers
In all parts stood burdened with carcases;
All which places the wardens had thronged With guests.28
The ostensible purpose of the Roman epic is to allay the fear of death. But towards the end of it Lucretius is seen to revel in the description of the destruction caused by death.
Savitri celebrated a human being's conquest over death. Savitri's encounter with death is presented as a fierce fight between Love and Death. The God of Death is viewed almost as a philosopher of the type of Lucretius, advocating all that is negative and wrong:
O dark-browed sophist of the universe
Who veilst the Real with its own Idea,
Hiding with brute objects Nature's living face,
Masking eternity with thy dance of death,
Thou hast woven the ignorant Mind into a screen
And made of Thought error's purveyor and scribe,
And a false witness of mind's servant sense.
An aesthete of the sorrow of the world,
Champion of a harsh and sad philosophy
Thou hast used words to shutter out the Light
And called in Truth to vindicate a lie.
A lying reality is falsehood's crown
28lbid., VI: 1215-88.
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When Satyavan dies in the forest, Savitri feels the presence of death, "the Shadow of a remote uncaring god." He appears to be "a limitless denial of all being that wore the terror and wonder of a shape" and the "refuge of creatures from their anguish and world-pain." While cycles of history had passed, stars had dissolved, he yet looked on with unchanging gaze and watched life, the writhing serpent. Asking Savitri to go back to her transient kind he tells her: "O sleeper dreaming of divinity, sorrowful foam of Time, your transient loves bind not the eternal gods." Man is but a fragile miracle of thinking clay, the child of Time. It is the mind of man that creates all these unreal images and the incurable unrest. But Savitri asserts her greatness: "I was thy equal spirit bom. I am immortal in My mortality. My soul can meet the stone eyes of Law and Fate with its living fire. Give me back Satyavan to do with him my spirit's burning will." Death declares his superemacy: "I have created all things; I destroy them. I have stamped life with my impress, the life that devours. I compel man to sin that I may punish him, I goad him to desire and then I scourge him with grief and despair."
Treating him with contempt Savitri answers: "My God is Will and he will triumph. My God is Love and sweetly suffers all. Love's golden wings have power to fan thy void. I shall remake thy universe, O Death."
Death proudly declares to the human soul: "What are you? A dream of brief emotions, glittering thoughts, a sparkling ferment in life's sunlit mire. Against the eternal witnesses would you claim immortality? Death only is eternal. I, Death, am He; there is no other God. Everything is bom from me, lives by me and returns to me. The world is created by me with the inconscient Force. I am the refuge of your soul. Gods are only my imaginations and my moods reflected in man. Your soul is also myself."
But Savitri boldly chides him: "O Death, who reasonest, I reason not. Reason that scans and breaks but cannot build or builds in vain because she doubts her word. I am, I Love, I see. I act, I will."30
Finally, Death realises that he has been waging a losing battle against Savitri and asks her: "You have Knowledge and Light but have you the power and the strength to conquer Time and Death? If you are the supreme Mother show me her face. Let deathless eyes
29Savitri, p. 621. 30Ibid, see pp. 589-94.
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look into the eyes of Death." Savitri looks at Death and a mighty transformation comes on her. In a flaming moment of apocalypse the Incarnation thrusts aside its Veil. The Power descends into the centres of the body. She commands Death to release the soul of the world, called Satyavan. Death is still unwilling to obey her order and stands against her. He calls to his strength but it refuses his call; his body is eaten by light. The Shadow soon disappears vanishing into the Void.
Then God's everlasting day surrounds Savitri. A voice rising from the heart speaks to her: "I am Ecstasy. You and Satyavan can ascend into the blissful home and live there as the gods who care not for the world."
Savitri knows what she wants and therefore resists this temptation also:
I climb not to thy everlasting Day,
Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night...
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield...
Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.31
Savitri pleads with the Voice to weld them to one in its strong smithy of life:
I know that I can lift man's soul to God,
I know that he can bring the Immortal down.32
At the end of a long dialogue, the Voice acknowledges Savitri's identity: "O Savitri, thou art my spirit's Power. There are great things concealed in God's Beyond. Now mind appears to be the leader of the human race. There are greater destinies and mind is not the last summit of human destiny. A day will come when man will realise divine life. All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home. The hour must come of the Transceadant's will. The end of Death, the death of Ignorance will also come. For that Truth must descend on earth and man must aspire to the Eternal's light. But this is also bound to happen."33
Envisioning the ultimate victory of man over death, Savitri ends on a note of hope. It becomes evident at the end that the Indian epic is a complete rebuttal of Lucuetius's world-view. With regard to all
31Ibid., p. 686. 32Ibid,p.687. 33Ibid, see pp. 703-08.
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the major issues relating to Matter and Spirit, Love and Death, man's evolution and his future, Savitri rejects the Roman philosopher's contentions. But there is no doubt that De Rerum Natura would have been constantly one of the issues in the mind of the Indian Seer-Poet as an inspiring model urging him to bring forth the true truth about the nature of things.
P. MARUDANAYAGAM
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The Genesis of Savitri
The opening pages of the earliest known manuscript of Savitri are dated August 8-9th 1916. In November 1950, the month before his passing, Sri Aurobindo dictated the last passages to be added to the work. Between 1916 and 1950 Savitri grew from a medium-length narrative poem, consisting of about eight hundred lines in the first draft, to an epic of thirty times that length, all-embracing in its scope and inexhaustible in its significance.
The process through which such a work took shape has a unique interest. The manuscripts and typescripts of Savitri—amounting to eight thousand pages or so, with some passages evolving through as many as fifty versions—tell the story of a labour without parallel in the history of literary creation. But an adequate presentation of the details of this process would require several volumes. Even a brief account, with examples from each of the twelve books illustrating the various phases of the poem's development, would need more space than is available here.1
Therefore this essay will be confined to some reflections on the origin of Savitri and the background of its composition. The version dated August to October 1916 has a strong claim to be considered the starting-point of the materialisation, in the form in which we know it, of the vision Sri Aurobindo was moved to express in Savitri. Once he had taken up this theme, he found himself compelled, as it were, by the creative impetus with which he began, by his constantly enlarging experience and by the inner life of the ancient myth itself, to go on expanding, heightening and deepening his treatment of it.
What Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1916 was a minor poem compared to the final epic. Yet this uneven but powerful sketch should not be underestimated. Its inspiration may be exempli Tied by some lines from a passage found near the end of the notebook that contains the first known draft. Spoken to Savitri by the godhead into whom Death has been transformed, these lines are similar, despite some later additions
1 See "The Composition of Savitri in Mother India, beginning in the issue of October 1999. A shorter synopsis, published as the "Note on the Text" at the end of volume 34 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (1997), has been reprinted in the tenth impression (2000) of the fourth edition of Savitri.
* Representative facsimiles of Savitri belonging to different periods of drafting are presented in Richard Hartz's article at the end of this volume.
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and reordering, to lines that now come in Book Eleven at the climax of the epic. In 1916, Sri Aurobindo had written them as follows:
I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
And whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
And use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
And play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.
And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasies
And when thou liv'st one spirit with all things,
Men seeing thee shall feel my siege of joy,
And nearer draw to me because thou art
Enamoured of thy spirit's loveliness
They shall embrace my body in thy soul,
Hear in thy life the beauty of my laugh,
Know the thrilled bliss with which I made the world.
This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heartbeats
That conquering me thou art my captive made,
And who possess me are by me possessed.
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God.2
The last line differs in the final text only by being punctuated with an exclamation mark. With regard to this line, the Mother once said that it was the "line from Savitri that gave me the most tremendousexperience of the entire book . I was as if suddenly swept up and engulfed in... eternal Truth. Everything was abolished except this:
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
That alone existed."3
The Mahabharata and Savitri
Although the manuscripts go back only to 1916, Sri Aurobindo's interest in the theme of Savitri can be traced to the turn of the century, when he was in Baroda and was reading the Mahabharata in Sanskrit In his essay "Notes on the Mahabharata", written around 1901, he explained why, on stylistic grounds, be considered this episode to be an early but authentic composition by Vyasa, the author of the original Mahabharata into whose vast structure so much other matter was later
2 A transcript of these lines has been published in the "Concluding Passage" to "Sri Aurobindo's First Fair Copy of Ins Earliest Version of Savitri", Mother India, February 1982, pp. 82-83. Cf. the final version in Savitri (1993), pp. 701-2.
3Mother'sAgenda, Vol. 2, pp. 27-28 (1961).
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interpolated. He expressed his appreciation of Vyasa's manner of telling the story:
Vyasa... had one object, to paint the power of a woman's silent love and he rejected everything which went beyond this or which would have been merely decorative. We cannot regret his choice. There have been plenty of poets who could have given us imaginative and passionate pictures of Love struggling with Death, but there has been only one who could give us a Savitri.4
The Mahabharata, besides being the source of the legend of Savitri and Satyavan as it has come down to us, influenced the style of Sri Aurobindo's epic and his characterisation of the heroine. The strength and directness of the language Vyasa uses to depict Savitri are matched by Sri Aurobindo's portrayal of her sweet but indomitable personality.
In the Mahabharata, for instance, after Narad discloses the fate of Satyavan, Savitri affirms the finality of her choice with these words:
Once I have chosen a husband, I choose not a second.
Sri Aurobindo has translated this into English in an even more compactly forceful line:
Once my heart chose and chooses not again.6
But it is only in rare lines that he followed the Mahabharata soclosely. For some parts of the narrative, he took the tale told in the Sanskrit epic as a starting-point Elsewhere, and especially in Savitri'sconfrontation with Death, he diverged widely from Vyasa even in the earliest versions of Savitri. The nature of these divergences is significant, for Sri Aurobindo' s innovations in retelling the story reveal his creative purpose.
In the Mahabharata when Yama sees Savitri following him, he addresses her with words such as might be expected from one who is not only the God of Death, but also the Lord of Dharma:
Savitri, turn back and attend to the funeral rites of the dead; you have now paid the debt to your husband and are free of it; as far as you could go with him, you have come.7
4 The Harmony of Virtue, SABCL, Vol. 3, p. 155.
5 Mahabharata (Gita Press, Gorakhpur), Vana Parva, 294.27.
6Savitri, p. 432.
7Translation by R. Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri: A Verse-by-Verse Rendering and Some Perspectives (1996), p. 44.
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Savitri replies by asserting her right to follow her husband wherever he goes. Yama repeatedly asks her to turn back. But she is undaunted and responds with a series of aphorisms on Dharma. Pleased by her intelligence, virtue and constancy, and yielding to her tenacity, Yama grants boon after boon. As the final boon, he restores Satyavan to life.
At no point in Vyasa's dialogue does Savitri openly defy the authority of Yama or challenge the established order of things. Her success in winning boons from the God of Death is a tribute to her qualities as an ideal Kshatriya woman. But her personal victory seems only an isolated exception to the universal law of life's subjection to the arbitrary intervention of death. It offers little hope that the law will be abrogated.
Sri Aurobindo, the Revolutionary
Sri Aurobindo approached the problems of death, fate and pain from a different angle, causing him to give a new turn to the legend. The revolutionary in him had not disappeared, but had only been sublimated when he left the political field for the spiritual. So long as the spirit is a slave of ignorant forces, the maintenance of the settled order was not a part of his aim.
At an early age, he "had already received strongly the impression that a period of general upheaval and great revolutionary changes was coming in the world and he himself was destined to play apart in it."* Eventually, he realised that a radical change of consciousness was the one revolution that could solve all problems. He wrote Savitri with the idea that the power of the word—especially the inspired and revelatory poetic word that comes from the heights or the depths and speaks to the inner being, not only to the surface mind—could help to bring about this change.
The 1916 version of Savitri already shows the profoundly revolutionary spirit of Sri Aurobindo's approach to the subject of the poem. In a world governed by ignorance and death, Savitri is engaged in an inner freedom-struggle much more difficult to win than any political conflict. Her opponent has the entire machinery of the material universe on his side. Yet, in lines found even in the first surviving draft, Savitri dares to say to Death:
8 On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 4.
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I trample on thy Law with living feet,
For to arise in freedom I was born.9
One with such aspirations could not be content with boons that are meant to placate discontent and do not alter the human condition. It may be relevant to observe that in Sri Aurobindo's political writings, "boons" from the colonial rulers were invariably mentioned ironically. For instance, take his comment in Bande Mataram on a new set of reforms that would leave the conditions of political life in India "precisely the same as before":
Let us take them one by one, these precious and inestimable boons. They are three in number, a trinity of marvels....10
Savitri would seem to have little in common with a political newspaper. Yet its heroine taunts Death with words that, if deeper in their import, are not dissimilar in their tone to the Bande Mataram quotation:
Offer, O King, thy boons to tired spirits...
Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!11
These last lines were written in 1947. But even in the earliest manuscript of the poem, in apassage dated 18 October 1916, Savitri's first reply to Death shows how far Sri Aurobindo had departed from the traditional content of the dialogue:
Then Death again sent forth his mighty voice.
"O Savitri, who first in human limbs
Hast traversed without death the living night,
Turn back. Whatever boon thy heart desires
Save this that shakes the order of the world,
Ask." And she spoke, she answered now, "I choose
No boon; desire lives not within my heart.
What is to me the order of thy world,
O Death, who am immortal and beyond?"
Most of the boons that figure so prominently in the well-known
9These lines are worded the same in the final text of Savitri, p. 652.
10Bande Mataram, SABCL, Vol. 1, p. 414.
11Savitri, p. 647.
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Savitri-story have been retained in some form in Sri Aurobindo's final version, but only incidentally. Savitri, if she asks for boons at all, demands them defiantly and knows that Death cannot refuse. Death grants them with disdain for the illusions he will soon dissolve. But a fundamental difference from the traditional account is that Death does not restore Satyavan's life as a boon.
In the Mahabharata, Yama grants this boon in the end, keeping his absolute authority intact. In Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, on the other hand, Death suffers a real defeat. Stated in the terms of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and Yoga, there is a victory of spiritual force over the laws of a world that has emerged from the Inconscient. The world is not transformed at a single stroke, but a decisive precedent is set that clears the way for a freer outflowering of the soul in Matter. This is the central idea of Savitri. Much of the power with which it is presented in the final version is due to Sri Aurobindo's later revision. But in its essence, it was already formulated clearly enough in 1916 in what appears to be the first draft of the poem.
Savitri and Love and Death
We can only guess when Sri Aurobindo's reinterpretation of the tale he had read in the Mahabharata began to take shape in his mind. His passing comments in "Notes on the Mahabharata" are concerned with style rather than with substance. They only suggest that for him the essence of the story lay not in the intellectual and ethical content of Savitri's dialogue with Yama, but in "the power of a woman's silent love". This is the principal element in common between Vyasa's version and Sri Aurobindo's. The latter's originality lies in the answer to a simple question: "But what kind of love can be stronger than death?"
To the modem mind it may seem that the answer given in the Mahabharata, based on a belief in the rewards of virtue, does not correspond to the facts of life closely enough to be more than a pleasing fiction. To overcome this objection and to make the victory of love over death both artistically convincing and spiritually inevitable was perhaps the greatest challenge Sri Aurobindo faced in writing Savitri. For the whole of human experience seems to point to the opposite conclusion, that death is more powerful.
The expansion of Savitri to the epic it is today was ultimately necessary to justify Sri Aurobindo's solution of this problem, as well
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as to bring out the symbolism of the ancient myth and incorporate the experiences of his own Yoga. Aswapati had to ascend to hitherto undreamed-of spiritual heights and invoke a consciousness and force greater than any yet manifested in the terrestrial evolution, since only the intervention of such a force, embodied in Savitri, could make Satyavan's return to life believable and meaningful. The momentous theme could only be handled on a monumental scale.
As early as 1899, Sri Aurobindo had grappled with the problem in another form, when he took the related Mahabharata episode of Rum and Pramadvara as the subject of Love and Death. This story is told briefly in the Mahabharata, but not in the high style Sri Aurobindo identified as Vyasa's. Presumably it forms part of the mass of accretions, often not without their own value, that swelled the original epic to gigantic proportions. The idea of the husband giving half of his own life to bring his wife back from the dead was reconceived and elaborated by Sri Aurobindo's youthful romantic imagination in vivid and sensuous language of exceptional beauty in its own kind.
No doubt, the intense feeling expressed in this poem was drawn from a general empathy with the human condition more than from any experience in Sri Aurobindo's personal life. But this does not diminish the authenticity of Rum's words:
He spoke, with sorrow pale: "O grim cold Death!...
O secrecy terrific, darkness vast,
At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where,
Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront
Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands
And prove what thou art and what man."12
We should not imagine Sri Aurobindo himself pale with sorrow as he wrote these lines. Yet they are in a sense prophetically autobiographical. The struggle with the "darkness vast" was to preoccupy him in one way or another for the rest of his earthly existence. It would be the central theme of the epic Savitri, which he left behind as the witness to a life that had "not been on the surface for men to see."13 Some decades after writing Rum's words, already full of a vague sense that the human spirit is mightier than all that limits and oppresses it, Sri Aurobindo would arrive at the triumphant tone of
12Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 236-37.
13On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 378.
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Savitri's assertion to the "sombre Shadow":
Yes, I am human. Yet shall man by me,
Since in humanity waits his hour the God,
Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights,
Transcending grief and pain and fate and death.14
In 1899 Sri Aurobindo could describe only an inconclusive Pyrrhic victory of love over death. For the outcome of Love and Death illustrates the potency of sacrifice, not the unconditional power of love. The divinity of love appears there in the form of Kama, but Kama himself is realistically diffident about what he can do against death:
So much I can, as even the great Gods learn.
Only with death I wrestle in vain, until
My passionate godhead all becomes a doubt.
Mortal, I am the light in stars, of flowers
The bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervades
Creation: but behind me, older than me,
He comes with night and cold tremendous shade.15
True, the god of love gives the flower that enables Ruru to pass unharmed through the underworld. But only many years after creating this image could Sri Aurobindo, in Savitri, speak of love as not only an all-pervading and all-suffering, but an all-transforming power:
The eyes of love gaze starlike through death's night,
The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds.
He labours in the depths, exults on the heights;
He shall remake thy universe, O Death.16
Such affirmations have a force that springs from direct spiritual vision, the characteristic that gives Savitri a unique place among the world's epics. This element in the poem increased greatly over the years. But the form in which Savitri first emerges to view in manuscripts of 1916 bears already the stamp of yogic knowledge and experience in many passages and in its conception as a whole. This is evidently why most of the original narrative and symbolic structure
14Savitri, p. 634.
15Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 242.
16Savitri, p. 592.
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could remain intact through the repeated rewriting from higher and higher levels of consciousness to which Sri Aurobindo alluded in his letters.
A Baroda Savitri?
We are often told that the composition of Savitri began with a version Sri Aurobindo is supposed to have written in Baroda around 1900, even before he took up Yoga. There is evidence for and against the hypothesis that such a version existed. Its basis is a passing remark by one Dinendra Kumar Roy, who stayed with Sri Aurobindo for some time in Baroda and later wrote that he had seen him writing an English poem on the tale of Savitri and Satyavan. But it has been plausibly suggested that the poem Sri Aurobindo was seen working on may have been Love and Death, which he was then writing and whose story, also taken from the Mahabharata, resembles the much better-known Savitri episode enough that it could have been confused with it.
The fact that no manuscript of a Baroda Savitri survives does not, by itself, prove that there was no such version. But thousands of pages of manuscripts of Savitri, extending in a virtually unbroken series from 1916 to the 1940s, have been preserved. A number of notebooks which Sri Aurobindo used in Baroda for various writings, and later brought with him to Pondicherry, also exist. If he was starting from a version of Savitri written in Baroda when he began to work on the poem in Pondicherry in 1916, it should have been kept along with the other manuscripts. Since it has not been found, it is likely that any poem he might have written on this subject in Baroda did not come with him to Pondicherry.
Sri Aurobindo's own references to the beginnings of Savitri do not seem to support the theory of a Baroda version. He wrote in 1936: "Savitri was originally written many years ago before the Mother came...."17 This surely refers to Pondicherry. For if Sri Aurobindo had written Savitri originally in Baroda, he would have had no reason to speak of its origin in relation to the Mother's coming to Pondicherry.
In the same letter, Sri Aurobindo says more about what he had written "before the Mother came". He mentions that there were two parts of four books each. Several manuscripts in this form exist.
17 Ibid, p. 729.
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Though not dated by Sri Aurobindo, they belong to a more advanced stage in the development of Savitri than the much shorter version without parts, books or cantos on which he wrote dates in August and October 1916. It follows that the phrase "before the Mother came" must refer to her return to India in 1920, not to her first arrival in 1914.
Between 1916 and 1920, Savitri grew from its first simple plan, with no formal divisions, through a version in two books, then a few drafts in six cantos, into a poem in two parts with eight books: "Quest", "Love", Fate" and "Death" in the first part and "Night", 'Twilight", "Day" and an epilogue in the second. These various versions account for Sri Aurobindo's allusions in the 1930s to "many retouchings" that produced the "previous draft", and to "eight or ten recasts" which he had made "originally under the old insufficient inspiration".18
Some manuscripts in the form of eight books are subtitled "A Tale and a Vision". By the early 1930s, the subtitle had become "A Legend and a Symbol". This reflects how the poem was then being transformed, bringing the inner significance of the legend into greater prominence. Sri Aurobindo's mention in 1931 of a previous draft of Savitri that "would have been a legend and not a symbol"19 has been taken to support a Baroda version. But his words need not be understood to imply that the legend itself or his earlier treatment of it were mere story-telling and devoid of deeper meaning. We may take his statement to mean simply that what was symbolised had not been brought out sufficiently in versions written before 1920, where the narrative element was predominant.
Especially the role of Aswapati, the symbol of "the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes,"20 was not developed at length until the period extending from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, when Sri Aurobindo set aside most of the rest of the poem in order to concentrate on what became Part One. Aswapati's part in the epic represents the ascent into a higher consciousness which is one of two principal movements in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, the other being the descent of that consciousness and its forces into human nature, represented by Savitri. It was only after his siddhi in 1926 that Sri Aurobindo began to make Savitri
18Ibid., pp. 727-28.
19Aid, p. 727.
20 On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 265. (The letter is used as "Author's Note" for Savitri)
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an epic symbol of the truth he announced in the first paragraph of The Mother.
There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.21
Simplifying this complex history, Sri Aurobindo telescoped all the early stages into one when he described the plan of "A Tale and a Vision" as that of "the first version"22 of Savitri, written "before the Mother came". That this last phrase refers to the Mother's return to India in 1920 was pointed out by K. D. Sethna, to whom the letter was written, in his introduction to a transcript of one of the 1916 manuscripts.23 It may be added that it was not at all unusual for Sri Aurobindo to speak of 1920 as the year when "the Mother came". For example, he wrote in 1935, that "between 1915 and 1920... the Sadhana and the work were waiting for the Mother's coming."24 Another letter commenting on the conditions of the Sadhana during the same period begins: "Before the Mother came..."25
All this would seem to leave little room for the theory that Savitri was begun in Baroda. However, perhaps we cannot rule out the possibility that Sri Aurobindo while he was in Baroda had written at least part of a poem on this subject, or else a translation of the Mahabharata episode, which may have been lost, so that it had no direct relation to what he began to write in 1916. This would agree with Dinendra Kumar Roy's report without contradicting Sri Aurobindo's own words. For there would be no need for him to mention such a version in referring to the beginnings of the poem he was working on in the 1930s.
The poem presumed to have been lost could then be regarded as a precursor of the poem written in Pondicherry, an exercise belonging to the period of the germination of the idea of the epic, early in Sri Aurobindo's almost lifelong engagement with the theme of his eventual magnum opus. What form it might have taken is a matter of speculation. But it is doubtful whether Sri Aurobindo at that time could have handled the Savitri-story as successfully as the tale of Rum. He was not yet fully equipped for the demands of the subject
21The Mother with Letters on the Mother, SABCL, VoL . 25, p. 1.
22Savitri, p. 729.
23Mother India, August 1981, p. 423.
24On Himself,SABCL, VoL 26, p. 459. 25 Ibid, p. 460.
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Even about Love and Death, he wrote around 1920:
For full success, however, it should have had a more faithfully Hindu colouring, but it was written a score of years ago* when I had not penetrated to the heart of the Indian idea and its traditions, and the shadow of the Greek underworld and Tartarus with the sentiment of life and love and death which hangs about them has got into the legendary framework of the Indian Patala and hells.26
Vedic Symbolism and The Human Cycle
A fundamental difference between the Savitri that began to take shape in 1916 and any version Sri Aurobindo might have written in Baroda would have been due to his study of the Veda after coming to Pondicherry. For even if he had been able to give a Baroda version of Savitri "a more faithfully Hindu colouring" than Love and Death, he could hardly have imbued it with the symbolism that is built into the plan of the poem as we know it. From the earliest manuscripts an essentially Vedic symbolism is implied in the later part where, as Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1936 about "the first version", Savitri moves "through the worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day—all of course in a spiritual sense."27
The Mahabharata was the source of many of the narrative elements in Savitri. But it was Sri Aurobindo's exploration of the meaning of the Veda that led him to find in this legend clues to a symbolic dimension much older than Vyasa. In August 1916, the month when he drafted the first passages for Savitri, he wrote in the Arya that the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.28
The Veda was for Sri Aurobindo the richest mine of such secrets, formulas of knowledge that had long been obscured by a screen of ill-understood symbols, but which "illuminated with a clear and exact light"29 experiences of his own for which he could find no other explanation.
24 Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 258. *In 1899.
27Savitri, p. 729.
28Essays on the Gita (1997), p. 10; first published in the Arya, 15 August 1916, p. 48.
29The Secret of the Veda (1998), p. 39; first published in the Arya, 15 December 1914, p. 279.
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Though the myth of Savitri and Satyavan does not occur in the hymns that have actually been preserved from that far-off age, the distinctly Vedic names of the characters and several features of the tale gave Sri Aurobindo reason to believe that what was retold in the Mahabharata had been originally "one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle."30 So reinterpreted, it represents a victory of light over darkness, of the principle of immortality over the disabilities of our mortal state, such as Sri Aurobindo had come to envisage as the object of his own Yoga.
The August 1916 issue of the Arya also contained the first instalment of a series called The Psychology of Social Development. In this book, later revised and published as The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo put forward ideas that shed light on the evolution of the Savitri-tale from its Vedic origins to the poem he was then beginning to write. From this point Of view, the legend can be seen passing through a number of forms and interpretations according to the mentality of the times.
After the waning of the symbolic age that created it, the myth was humanised in the "typal" period of the Mahabharata. As retold by Vyasa, it became a force for the formation of character and the inculcation of a social and ethical ideal. Transmitted, next, to the conventional age of Indian society, it underwent a paradoxical conversion. Vyasa's Savitri, whose beauty and "flaming strength" (tejas) no prince dared to claim, who went out into the world to choose her own husband and whom the God of Death himself could not intimidate, became a stereotype of the model wife in a society that discouraged women from exercising initiative or independence.
When Western individualism and rationalism had made inroads into India, the legend attracted the attention of Sri Aurobindo at a point where the transition to a deeper subjective age of the cycle was being attempted. His initial reading of it, focusing on "the power of a woman's silent love," belongs to this stage.
Finally, taking up the theme in earnest when his Yoga was well advanced, Sri Aurobindo gave it an interpretation that overleaps, perhaps by centuries, the stage of development achieved by the collective mind. At the same time, his synthesis includes elements from most of the previous periods: the Vedic symbolism, the strength of character of Vyasa's heroine, the individualistic spirit of revolt, and an intimately subjective handling of the human aspect of the story.
30 Savitri, "Author's Note", Op. cit.
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The original sense of the ancient legend was recovered on a higher plane of spiritual vision. Through Sri Aurobindo's genius and untiring labour, Savitri grew into the prophetic poem, not only of a future India, but of a future humanity.
RICHARD HARTZ
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Real Symbols of Inner Reality
A look at Sri Aurobindo
A well-known British writer and critic has stated recently: "I don't see Sri Aurobindo as a poet at all..." and added,".. .if you press the claim that Sri Aurobindo was a great poet...you will only be detracting from his undoubted importance as a thinker and perhaps a saint. You will never persuade any Western poet or critic."1 And this view is confirmed by other literati, among them William Irwin Thomson, who suggests that Yogis should on principle be debarred from expressing themselves in verse, since they do it so badly, and cites Sri Aurobindo as an example.
That Sri Aurobindo's poetry runs absolutely counter to the mode that is currently admired in the West is clear—as a brief quotation from a poem by the late British poet laureate Ted Hughes will exemplify:
The stars are no company.
They huddle at the bottom of their aeons, only just existing,
Jostled by every gust,
Pinned precariously to their flutters of light,
Tense and weightless, ready to be snatched away into some
other infinity.
And the broken tree-dwarves in their hollow, near him,
Have no energy for friendship, no words to spare,
Just hanging on, not daring to think of the sucking and
bottomless emptiness of the blast
That grasps at their nape and pounds their shoulders.
[The Musk-Ox, 1981)
Both language and sentiments are about as far away from Sri Aurobindo's utterance as possible.
But does this mean that the lilterati are right? That Sri Aurobindo's characterisation of himself as first and basically a poet, later a Yogi, and only incidentally a philosopher, is hopelessly mistaken? And that the response of all those (including many cultured Britishers)
1Indian Poets and English Poetry: Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K.D. Sethna,1994, p. 30.
who find bottomless wells of inspiration in his poetic works is pure illusion? Surely not. It will be more instructive to inquire what it is in Sri Aurobindo's poetry that prevents him from being recognised, by those who might be supposed best qualified to do so, as a supreme master of English poetic expression, and the greatest innovator in this language since Shakespeare.
A first reason is undoubtedly connected with literary fashions. Sri Aurobindo himself has pointed out how difficult it is to make any sure judgements about contemporary artistic achievement, since the 'close-up' view which our contemporaneity enforces on us almost inevitably distorts our perspective. And there are innumerable historical examples to demonstrate that it is just the greatest geniuses and originators who are most likely to be misjudged in this way. Writers and critics of the last half-century have had their tastes shaped by a critical training which was in reaction against all that the previous hundred years had considered 'poetic' in thought and expression: all luxurious richness of imagery and sentiment, all melodiousness of utterance, have been found suspect. The scientific world-view and the horrific realities that have been forced on our notice in this century have led serious writers to insist on an austerer use of language and to choose themes and images rooted firmly in the physical world—and often in its grayer and grimmer aspects. Anything else has seemed insincere or escapist. Sri Aurobindo's vision and language are so remote from everything that has gained recognition as poetry since the First World War, that for those who breathe that air he is simply unassimilable.
Another, less excusable, reason is connected with a peculiarly British sense of exclusive superiority. How can someone who does not belong to the club—an Indian, and a mystic at that—be admitted to excel in the terrain of the elite? The thing is a priori inconceivable!
It is true that, as Mallarme mischievously pointed out to Degas, poetry is made not with ideas, but with words—just as painting is done not with visions but with paints.
This does not mean, however, that the aim of poetry is purely linguistic, any more than that the goal of art is purely formal. The words and the paints are means, but the end is the revelation—or at least the suggestion—of what lies beyond either sound or colour. Sri Aurobindo puts it: "It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires and the treasures of the princes." This is the fascination
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of poetry: the hints and glimpses it gives us of something richer and truer, more convincing and satisfying that lies behind the dull facade of our everyday reality. We recognise a writer as a poet purely to the extent that, by means of word-music, image and suggestion, he can bring us into touch with some vividness and colour and truth our normal unpoetic perceptions miss.
That is the reason why, for many in the last century who turned away from the emptiness and hypocrisy of conventional religion, the worship of Art and Beauty could fill their yearning for significance and deeper truth.
In India there is a tradition that the Kavi sees—and not just a little behind the veil, but into the very heart of things; and that embodying what he sees in inspired, truth-revealing speech, he brings closer to material manifestation the hidden verities that lie potential and preparing there—the true creativity. In Britain, on the contrary, there is no such tradition, no such intuition even. There, poets have always had to struggle with the sense that their creations were mere 'fictions', perhaps even falsehoods; and to counterbalance this doubt, they have tended to anchor their images and their creations firmly to the 'realistic'. We are delighted with the infinite inventiveness of Shakespeare because he gives us 'real flesh-and-blood characters', whom we can imagine actually meeting and conversing with.
So Sri Aurobindo, by fulfilling the Indian archetype of Kavi and Rishi, has done something quite outside the mainstream of English literature. In this sense it is true to say that what he has done is foreign to the English spirit. But in doing this he has not done violence to the English language. On the contrary: he has fulfilled something that was being striven for by its very greatest 'makers'. Something that they have strained for and touched momentarily at instants of peak-attainment, he has sustained and worked out and carried further.
Sri Aurobindo's ultimate poetic achievement is of course Savitri. And nowhere in Savitri is his use of language more powerful, complex and original than in the first half of the first canto of Book One. Here Sri Aurobindo achieves something that I believe has never been attempted elsewhere in world-literature, certainly nowhere else in the history of the English language. The only parallel might be found in the composition of the Rig Veda where, as Sri Aurobindo has shown, an inner psychological sense is carried by an outer one that is physical and ritual. For in this overture to the mighty symphony of his epic,
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Sri Aurobindo fuses multiple layers of meaning—literal, psychological, occult and spiritual—in a single flow of incomparable music.
First we could examine the outermost layer of meaning, which here, as throughout the rest of the poem, rarely predominates, but is always discemable—a kind of fine skin of physical fact, within or beneath which all the other multi-layered levels of meaning open up. On this level, Savitri is an epic in the classical Western sense: its vast length and complexity is held together by all three of the classical unities prescribed by Aristotle: the Unities of Place, Time and Theme. That is to say, the 'action' of the poem takes place within a single 24 hour period, beginning with dawn on the day that Satyavan is destined to die, and ending just before dawn on the following day. It takes place too in one small area: the hermitage of Satyavan's father and the forest around it. And there is only one 'plot' or story-line: that of Savitri and Satyavan and the debate with Yama, and there are no sub-plots involving minor characters. From this sparest and simplest of frameworks, by ' flashbacks' and inner explorations, the poem ranges over its vast extent of time and inner and outer spaces, and touches upon all the high themes that most concern the significance of human life in the Universe.
The poem also fulfills the classical convention of starting 'in the middle of the story': not at the chronological beginning, but just before the climax of the action. The earlier parts of the story are then recapitulated, as Savitri sits beside her still-sleeping husband in the first light of that day which she alone knows to be so fateful, and remembers all that has led up to this moment.
So, as has been shown by K. D. Sethna in a detailed discussion of this passage, the 'symbol dawn' with which the poem begins, is, on this primary level of meaning, simply the dawning of that day on which Satyavan must die; and similarly the night preceding it is, in the first place, the actual physical darkness occupying the world. To overlook this important fact is to miss an essential element of Sri Aurobindo's poetic technique—a technique which precisely mirrors the unique quality of his vision.
In English literature, metaphor and simile have normally been used to illuminate the writer's theme, sometimes merely to ornament or embellish it, but in any case to make something more graspable, living and vivid to our awareness in its explicit, outer aspect. But here, in this prelude to his epic, Sri Aurobindo is not using all these deeply reverberating and evocative epithets and images to make us see more clearly the physical, particular night and dawn: on the contrary,
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these almost disappear under the weight of his images. If we concentrate on them, we can always trace their presence, as a background, or an undercurrent, or, as I prefer to see it, as an almost transparent skin, within and beyond which the real movement of the many-layered meaning takes place. Instead of using inner suggestion and suggestive image to enrich and vivify for us the physical reality, he is using the physical reality with which we are familiar, to make close and vivid for us its many other levels of inner significance. The exoteric, realistic, particular, even factual aspect, though present throughout, does not constitute the main 'burden' or meaning of the poem. And it is precisely this that gives Sri Aurobindo's use of language here its originality, and makes it appear baffling, complex, over-abstract and unnecessarily prolix to critics familiar with a different mode, and unable to enter into the deeper significances with which Sri Aurobindo's symbol is animated.
The hour at which the gods awake is, according to Indian tradition, four o'clock in the morning. In the essay referred to above, K. D. Sethna puts it like this:
What... Sri Aurobindo posits in 'It was the hour before the Gods awake' is a religio-mythical concept that has been part of India's temple-life for millennia: the daily awakening of the Gods.
The Gods are the powers that carry on the harmonious functions by which the universe moves on its progressive path. According to an old belief, based on a subtle knowledge of the antagonism between the Lords of Falsehood and the Lords of Truth, the period of night interrupts the work of the Truth Lords by its obscuration of sight and by its pulling down of the consciousness into sleep. Each day, with the onset of darkness, the Gods are stopped in their functions by the Demons: the Gods pass into an oblivious slumber. Each day, with the advent of light, they emerge into activity and continue their progress-creating career. Traditionally the moment of their awaking, termed Brahmma-muhurta, is 4 am. Every temple in India rings its bells and clangs its cymbals at 4 am to stir the deities, no less than the devotees, into action. The 'hour' therefore, which Savitri depicts at its start may be taken, if we are to be literal, as 3 to 4 am. The termination of this hour is 'the divine Event' mentioned in the second line.2
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But at the same time, this particular dawn, at a particular hour of a particular day—the day of Satyavan's destined death— carries within it all the possible significances that are inherent in that potent ancient symbol. It is the coming of Light into darkness at every possible level of meaning. As Sri Aurobindo puts it in one of his letters to K. D. Sethna, quoted in the essay mentioned above:
... here the physical night and physical dawn are, as the title of the canto clearly suggests, a symbol, although what may be called a real symbol of an inner reality, and the main purpose is to describe by suggestion the thing symbolised; here it is a relapse into Inconscience broken by a slow and difficult return of consciousness followed by a brief but splendid and prophetic outbreak of spiritual light leaving behind the "day" of ordinary human consciousness in which the prophecy has to be worked out.2
This 'relapse into Inconscience' is, as K. D. Sethna points out, in some way figured each night by the earth's passage through darkness, and our—and the Gods'—lapse into the oblivion of sleep. But in the heart even of this unconsciousness some seed of consciousness remains, stunned, oblivious; despite its reluctance, its tamasic longing for total forgetfulness, there is an inescapable stir of aspiration, a longing for light, to which comes the responsive pressure of a searching light from above that compels "renewed consent to see and feel;" and with the response comes the apocalyptic dawn of consciousness: a seed is buried in the hours, which the ages of the earth must labour to evolve to its fulfilment.
But this 'thing symbolised' is also multi-layered. The Mother has elucidated one deepest level of significance in her explanations given to Huta, entitled About Savitri. But the symbol reverberates with other meanings too and can be experienced in other ways.
I myself have sometimes experienced this momentous dawn as the re-awakening to inner consciousness within myself and found its stages described with detailed accuracy by Sri Aurobindo's words. On another level, we can understand this passage as describing the condition of the earth before the coming of the Avatar—the embodied Dawn who can illumine mankind for a brief 'Hour of God' during which is almost disclosed "the epiphany of which our thoughts and
2K.D. Sethna, 'Some Comments on Savitri' in The Sun and The Rainbow, pp. 143-154.
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hopes are signal flares;" but "only a little the God-light can stay." After the divine messenger has passed, we are left to face "the common light of earthly day." Or the whole incident of Savitri's incarnation and her debate with and triumph over Death can be seen as just such a "splendid and prophetic outbreak of spiritual light" at a very early point in human development, leaving a seed to be worked out in the "day of ordinary human development"; the whole course of the poem is resumed and epitomised in these first hundred-odd lines.
And these are not different 'readings' or 'interpretations' or 'possible senses'. Part of the profound possibility of 'ambiguity' in poetic language, as William Empson pointed out, is that it allows several meanings to be present simultaneously in the consciousness of the reader. And here these simultaneous significances are neither accidental nor forced. All are inherent in the poet's vision of the symbol; and he has found the way to evoke them simultaneously in the reader's awareness. At times one level may predominate, at others another, depending on the poet's intention of emphasis or on the receptivity and need of the reader, or a combination of both. Writing from the very highest summits of vision and inspiration, from which Spirit and Matter and all the intermediate planes of manifestation can be seen in a single gaze, Sri Aurobindo has found the mantric speech which enables all to be co-present on the page. To separate the various levels of meaning can only be an exercise of exploration.
As I suggested earlier, this method is just the reverse of the normal one, as Sri Aurobindo's yogic vision is the reverse of our normal human way of seeing. Poets may be—are supposed to be— more awake to subtler realities than the rest of us; but still, for almost all of them, it is the material and physical which is the dominant reality. Through and from the physical they receive hints and intuitions of deeper realities behind. But for Sri Aurobindo, we live in a
...world of fragile forms
Carried on canvas-strips of shimmering Time.
Material phenomena have a reality, but they are most real because informed and animated by deeper levels of significance, as "real symbols of inner reality"—an inner reality which to him is not fleetingly glimpsed and intuited, but solidly, concretely present, filling the "outer skin of mortal fact" with deep meaning.
In Savitri—in contrast to the wide-ranging story-lines of other epics—we have a simple legend which takes place entirely on earth,
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made into the vehicle for a comprehensive exploration of the inner worlds and all the levels of consciousness. And this is the theme, not the story, which is merely its vehicle, or we could say perhaps its embodiment. The tale is given significance by what it symbolises, and not the other way round.
This is what places it out of the experience of most scholarly critics, first because they are not used to seeing language used in this way and, secondly, because their perception of what is being done, poetically, is hampered by the fact that the real theme, the real subject matter, is something they are quite unfamiliar with. The first half of the first canto of Savitri is the overture to a magnificently complex symphony, in which the themes which are to be worked out fully later are touched upon and hinted at and foreshadowed as a preparation for the coming whole. And at the very beginning of his poem, in a particularly compressed and concentrated form, Sri Aurobindo gives us too a foretaste of his poetic method. In these few pages of supreme poetry, now one aspect of symbolic meaning predominates, and now another, as if the total significance of these magic words were a circling sphere of innumerable illuminated facets: a gleam is thrown now from here and now from there, yet none is allowed to stand distinct from all the others: these are aspects of one Truth, the many meanings of one symbol, inseparably fused. It is only natural that such a language should seem 'vague' and unseizable, even incomprehensible, to those who are used to straightforward narrative, clear symbol, transparent allegory, and who lack any key in their own experience or intuition—or even mental conception—to the profounder reverberations which these images evoke.
Nevertheless it is important for us to recognise that what has created in modem writers and critics an instinctive aversion to all rich resonant use of language, all suggestion of possible worlds and planes beyond the scope of earthly vision, is a certain valuable scrupulousness, a salutary caution against empty pomposity, a distrust of high-coloured language which may veil emptiness of thought or imprecision of conception, coupled with a sense that in this disillusioned century it is unsafe to soar too far from earth's well-known if tawdry "realities".
This aversion must make it almost impossible to absorb the rhythms, imagery and word-magic of Sri Aurobindo's poetry with the receptivity that is needed to thrill to its deeper resonances. We may pity this lack of receptivity, but should not take its critical
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strictures too seriously—as far as Sri Aurobindo is concerned: his vision justified his use of language. In the case of our own writings, we may well benefit from a dose of the restraint, the avoidance of over-colouring and fancifulness, that is urged upon us by these sober-minded critics. If we seek to echo Sri Aurobindo's poetic voice without having shared the inspiration from which it flowed, we shall certainly be justifying their severest charges.
SHRADDHAVAN
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Imagery and Structure in the First Canto of Savitri
Introduction
The first canto of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is perhaps the most well-known and oft-quoted portion of this epic poem. Many readers have been touched by its splendid imagery, its subtle rhythms, and its majestic movement as the dawn slowly displays its divine splendour and buries "its seed of grandeur in the hours." Perhaps one aspect of the poem which has not been fully described or appreciated is the internal structure of this first canto and the integral relationship of its structure to the imagery.
The reader of Savitri may well ask: "Why study the form of the poem? Why not just open oneself to the poet's spiritual vision and allow the divine inspiration to infuse one's being?" Savitri is, after all, mantric poetry and, as such, carries the force of divine consciousness within it. But as Sri Aurobindo has explained in The Future Poetry, there are three aspects of mantric poetry—rhythm, verbal form, and the vision of truth conveyed—and each of these elements carries the reader (or hearer) beyond itself to some aspect of spiritual truth. The outer metrical form is a vehicle which echoes the true rhythm—a movement of the spirit, a harmony of the soul. Likewise, in the poem's verbal form the poet employs the images of nature (which to the ordinary consciousness conceal the spiritual realities they figure) as symbols which awaken the reader's inner vision and reveal and illuminate the divine truth hidden in the form. Finally, the poetic vision expressed by the poet leads beyond itself to a truth of the soul. The greatest poetry has the power to awaken that inner vision in us and to reveal some truth of the spirit itself. In the greatest poetry, poetic vision leads to spiritual revelation.
Therefore it is important, and helpful, to understand and appreciate the form and structure of a poem such as Savitri, precisely because the form is the vehicle which carries the divine message. The form is the body of the poem and carries within it the inspired vision, the force of divine consciousness, the living god. It is through the outer form that the poem delivers its spiritual force. It is the sounds, images, and ideas employed by the poet that enable us to enter into the poem's consciousness, as into a holy temple, and carry us beyond the outer
edifice to a supreme spiritual truth and experience. It is in this vein that the current study is offered.
Now, to what does the term "internal structure" refer? It has been observed that Savitri is written in lines of iambic pentameter with approximately four to six lines per sentence (indicated by a full stop). It has also been observed that within a four- to six-line sentence, a main clause in the first line or a main clause or phrase in the final line summarises the idea presented in that sentence. In addition to the sentence, there are structural divisions within the cantos which the poet indicates with visual devices such as blank lines and paragraph indentation. A close reading of the first canto, however, reveals that between the sentence and these larger sectional divisions, there is another level of logico-thematic structure, which I will refer to as the "thematic unit", and that these thematic units are marked by single-line sentences (or, in some cases, independent clauses). These units are integral to our understanding of the first canto and merit further examination.
Since the average sentence length in Savitri is four to six lines, the occurrence of a single-line sentence or clause, usually with a simple sentence structure in the form
subject—verb—object/complement,
is perceptually salient and serves to focus the reader's attention on the content of the line. This effect is enhanced by the full stop, which forces the reader to pause before continuing to the next line. Thus, three components—the brevity of the line, the simple sentence structure, and the full stop at the end of the line—combine to momentarily fix the reader's attention on the line's content.
The perceptual significance of these single-line sentences corresponds to their structural significance—they occur at transitional points in the poem and are used to
1.introduce a new topic, subtopic, or change of theme,
2.conclude and summarise a topic or theme,
3.make a transition from one topic or theme to another.
Thus, these single-line sentences are used to introduce and conclude thematic units or to make a transition from one thematic unit to the next and are key elements in the poem's architecture and dynamic development. In addition to their poetic and structural value, these
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lines carry a particular dynamic power and mantric force.
If this observation,—that the first canto of Savitri is built upon structural and thematic divisions larger than the sentence is true,— then it should be confirmed by the sense of the poem. In other words, it should be possible to demonstrate that there is a significant change in theme, imagery and language in each unit, hi the following sections of this paper, I attempt to demonstrate that such evidence exists and that a close reading of the canto reveals twelve thematic divisions within it, each approximately twenty-eight lines in length. Each of these units is clearly marked by a single-line sentence (or clause) at its beginning and end, and each unit contains a significant shift in meaning, imagery and language.
The table on the next two pages identifies these twelve thematic units by indicating the first and last line of each unit along with a brief description in italics of its thematic content. Line numbers are placed in square brackets to the left; the letter in brackets to the right of each line indicates whether the line introduces a new unit {I}, concludes a unit {C}, or makes a transition to a new unit {T} (i.e., concludes one thematic unit and begins a new one).
Imagery
There are three contrasting lines of imagery which run throughout the first canto of Savitri—those pertaining to
1.Time vs. Timelessness,
2.World and Nature vs. Spirit and God,
3.Darkness and Sleep vs. Light and Awakening.
Sri Aurobindo clusters together images related to these three themes, with various levels of density at various places in the poem, to produce different effects, such as reinforcing meaning, creating mood, and advancing the narrative. In order to see exactly how he does this, it is helpful to use an imagery diagram in which words and phrases related to these three contrasting themes are located on either side of a dividing line. In this way, we can visually observe the poem's imagery patterns line by line and better understand how the author varies imagery for specific effects. The imagery diagram for the first thematic unit is printed below. (Boldface and italicised words are not the poet's, but are used to highlight our thematic tracing of the first canto. Blank lines have been inserted after each full stop.)
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As the diagram indicates, the three broad lines of imagery which run throughout the first canto are established in the very first line of the poem:
It was the hour before the Gods awake. {I}
1 2 3
I. | [1] | It was the hour before the Gods awake. Gods, cosmic forces, in a dormant state; world in a state of inconscience, darkness, sleep. | {I} |
[29] | The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still. | {C} | |
II. | [30] | Then something in the inscrutable darkness | |
stirred; Something stirs; the first sign of awakening; a desire for light and consciousness. | {I} | ||
[53] | An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast | {C} | |
III | [54] | Insensibly somewhere a breach began: A breach—the spirit intervenes in the world; the beginning of thought, sense, memory. | {I} |
[78] | All can be done if the God-touch is there. | {T} | |
IV. | [78] | All can be done if the God-touch is there. God's touch transfigure's the world; the outpouring of the revelation and the flame. | {T} |
[101] | The brief perpetual sign recurred above. | {T} | |
V. | [101] | The brief perpetual sign recurred above. A sign of spiritual dawns; a message from the immortal; the approaching divinity. | {T} |
[135] | All grew a consecration and a rite. | {T} | |
VI. | [135] | All grew a consecration and a rite. Earth responds to the awakening ray with consecration and worship. | |
[156] | Only a little the God-light can stay: | {T} | |
VII. | [156] | Only a little the God-light can stay: The God-light withdraws and gives way to the common light of earthly day. | {T} |
[185] | Man lifted up the burden of his fate. | {C} | |
VIII. | [186] | And Savitri too awoke among these tribes Savitri awakes; the embodied Guest; hers is a vaster Nature's joy. | {1} |
[215] | In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice. | {T} | |
IX. | [215] | In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice. Savitri's sacrifice; the Divine implanted in the human soil; earth-nature's resistance. | {T} |
[246] | The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share. | {T} | |
X | [246] | The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share. | {T} |
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Savitri's ordeal; to confront human fate—pain, death, and suffering. | |||
[281] | The universal Mother's love was hers. | {I} | |
XI | [281] | The universal Mother's love was hers. The universal Mother; her embodiment in earth nature and gradual awakening. | {T} |
[305] | Only a vague earth-nature held the frame. | {C} | |
XII. | [306] | But now she stirred, her life shared the | |
cosmic load. She awakens to her divinity and her cosmic goal—to confront pain, death, and darkness. | {I} | ||
[342] | This was the day when Satyavan must die. | {C} |
The Twelve Thematic Units in the First Canto of Savitri
as Indicated by Introductory {I}, Concluding {C} , and
Transitional {T} Sentences
Time Timeless World Spirit Darkness Light
1 | It was the hour before the Gods awake. | {I} | hour before | Gods | awake | ||
Across the path of the divine Event The huge Foreboding mind of Night, Stone | divine | Night | |||||
In her unstill temple of eternity, | entemity | temple | Unit | ||||
5 | Lay stashed immobile upon Silence marge | lay. Immobility claque | |||||
Almost one fort, opaque, Impenetr | Impenetrable | ||||||
In the sombre symbol of her sin The abysm of the unbodied Infinite; | infinite | abysm | |||||
A fathomless zero occupied the world. | {c} | World | fathomless Zero | ||||
10 | A power of fallen boundless self awake | First | boundless | awake | |||
Between the first and the last | last | Nothingness | |||||
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which It came, | tenebrous womb | ||||||
Turned from the Insoluble mystery of birth | birth | ||||||
And the tardy process of mordantly | mortality | ||||||
15 | And longed to reach Its end invacant Nought | end | vacant Nought | ||||
As in a dark beginning of all thing | beginning | all things | dark | ||||
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown | unknown | mute | |||||
Repeating for ever the uncortectoue act, | for ever | unconscious | |||||
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will, | for ever | unseeing | |||||
20 | Cradled the cosmic drowse of Ignorant Force | cosmic | drowse/ignorant | ||||
Whose moved creative slumber rdnctes the suns | sums | slumber | |||||
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl | our lives | somnambulist | |||||
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space, | vain. space | trance | |||||
Its formless stupor without mind or life, | mind/life | stupor | |||||
25 | A shadow spinning through a souseas void, | soulless | shadow/void | ||||
Thrown back once more into unthinking dream, | unthinking dreams | ||||||
Earth whailsd abandoned in the hollow gluts | Earth | ||||||
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. | spirit | forgetful | |||||
29 | The Impassive skies were natural,empty, still | {c} | Impassive |
Imagery Diagram for the First Thematic Unit
This line opens the poem and introduces the first thematic unit, which concludes with another single-line sentence in line 29:
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The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still. {C}
The thematic content of this unit describes a state of inconscience, a period when the Gods (the cosmic forces) are dormant, and the earth dwells in a state of spiritual darkness and sleep. Imagery pertaining to darkness and sleep occurs repeatedly throughout the unit, as can be easily seen in the imagery diagram: Almost every line in this unit contains images of darkness and sleep, and this is indicated by the density of similar imagery on the left of the Darkness/Light line. The mood created is one of darkness, inactivity, and unconsciousness.
Within this larger thematic unit, there is a minor unit, or subunit, beginning with the first line and concluding {C} with line 9:
A fathomless zero occupied the world, {C}
the concluding main clause of a four-line sentence. The imagery diagram reinforces this analysis and demonstrates how the imagery shifts as the focus of the poem changes. The first nine lines establish the theme of the Gods asleep, in a dormant state. In the diagram, most of the World/Spirit imagery appears on the right side of its line since the description concerns the state of the Gods, and most of the Darkness/Light imagery appears on the left, creating a sense of darkness, inactivity, and dormancy. At the conclusion of line 9, however, the focus changes to the "world" and its state of inconscience, and both the World/Spirit and the Time/Timelessness imagery shift to the left of their lines (while the Darkness/Light imagery remains on the left) as the poet depicts a transient world in a soulless state.
The imagery diagram also demonstrates a strongly effective juxtaposition of words throughout this and the next unit (lines 30-53). The word "awake", which appears in the first line (and is perceptually highlighted by being placed at the end of the line) is juxtaposed against several references to darkness and sleep ("Night", "opaque," "eyeless," "fathomless zero"). This word is repeated in line 10, also at the end of the line, and is juxtaposed against more references to darkness and sleep ("Nothingness," "unconscious," "trance," "stupor," "unthinking dreams"). This pattern is continued into the next thematic unit, in which the word "wake" (line 34) is posed against still more images of darkness, inconscience, and ignorance. The subtle but powerful effect is that of a persistent call from the Supreme—in the midst of this dense darkness, death, and
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inconscience in which we live, the Divine repeatedly calls us to awake—awake to the Light, awake to the Truth, awake to that which is Eternal.
Interestingly, it is after the second occurrence of "awake" in line 10 that the Time/Timelessness imagery shifts to the left of its line ("first," "last," "birth," "mortality") while the World/Spirit imagery shifts to images of nature and earth. It is as though after repeated calls from the Eternal, the earth slowly begins to respond, and the reader's attention is directed to the world and time and "the dark beginning of all things." (Note that in a similar manner, throughout the first two major units, the one word "eternity" is effectively juxtaposed against several references to time, mortality, and change.)
Sri Aurobindo continues to vary the clustering and density of these three lines of imagery throughout the first canto to produce striking effects. For example, we have noted that as the focus of the poem changes at the end of the first thematic unit to a description of the earth and its state of soulless inconscience, most of the imagery appears on the left side of each line (Time, World and Nature, Darkness and Sleep). Then, as the earth gradually begins to awaken to the Divine's call in the second thematic unit [Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred], images of light and God begin to appear ("light," "Mother," "Vast").
Time Timeless World Spirit darkness Light
30 | Then Something in the Inscrutable darkness stirred:(1) | Inscrutable/darkness | ||||
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea | nameless/unthought | |||||
Insistent, dissuaded, without an aim. | ||||||
Something that wished but knew not how to be, | inconscient | Wake | ||||
Teased the Inconactent to wake Ignorance. | Ignorance | |||||
35 | A throe that came and left a quivering trace. | tired | ||||
Gave room tor an old bred want untied. At peace in its subconscient moonless cave | old | subconscient/moonless | ||||
To raise Its head and look tor absent light, | absent light | |||||
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory, | closed eyes. memory | |||||
40 | Like one who searches for a bygone self | bygone | ||||
And only meets the corpse of his desire. | corpse | |||||
It was as though even In this Nought's profound, | Nought's profound | |||||
Even In this ultimate dissolution's core | dissolution's core | |||||
There harked an unremembering entity, | unremembering | |||||
45 | Survivor of a slain and buried pastpast | past | slainpurified | |||
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang, | effort/pang | |||||
Reviving in another frustrate world. | frustrate world | |||||
unshaped | ||||||
An unshaped consciousness desired light | consciousness' | light | ||||
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change. | blank | |||||
change | ||||||
50 | As if a chitdske finger laid on a cheek | |||||
Reminded of the endless need in things | endless | |||||
The heedless mother of the universe. | universe | Mother | ||||
53 | An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast | {c} | infant | Vast |
Imagery Diagram for the Second Thematic Unit
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Then, in the next unit [Insensibly somewhere a breach began], this faint nameless movement becomes a breach as the Divine intervenes in a reluctant, oblivious universe. Accordingly, several images of God and Spirit ("deity," "spirit," "soul") are positioned against those of World and Nature ("life," "weary world," "universe") while images of Light and Awakening increase ("hue," "sun," "see," "feel," "live"). This clustering of images reinforces the sense of a mindless universe as it slowly begins to feel the divine influence.
This pattern continues into the fourth thematic unit [All can be done if the God-touch is there] as the Immortal's transfiguring touch causes the darkness to dissipate:
The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietitude
And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.
As we can see in the imagery diagram, images of Spirit and God now predominate, and there is a corresponding increase in images of Light and Awakening, culminating in the "revelation and the flame" in line 100. By the fifth thematic unit [The brief perpetual sign recurred above], in which the Goddess leans over the "earth's pondering forehead curve" revealing her divine splendor and the earth hears the approaching footsteps of the Divine, images of Spirit and God as well as those of Light and Awakening proliferate.
Time Timeless World Spirit darkness Light
54 | Insensibly somewhere abreach began: | {1} | Insanity | ||||
A long lone line of headlining hue | hue | ||||||
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart | |||||||
Troubled the tar rim of He's obscure steep. | life's | boundlessness | |||||
Arrived from the other side of boundlessness An eye of deity planasd through the dumb deeps; | deity | heavy. rest | sun | ||||
60 | A scout In a recorwajesancs from the sun. | cowries | |||||
it seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest, | weary world | torpor | |||||
The torpor of a sick and weary world, | Spirit | ||||||
To seek for a spirit sole and desolate | bliss | ||||||
Too fallen to recollect forgotten belles. | mindless | ||||||
65 | Intervening to a mindless universe, | universe | |||||
It's message crept through the recusant hush | hush | ||||||
Casing the adventure of consciousness and joy | ooneclousaness | ||||||
And, conquering Nature's dteilustoned breast | Nature's/ | joy | |||||
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel, | breast | see/feel | |||||
70 | A though was sown In the unsounded Void, | void | |||||
A sense was bom within the darkness' depths, | darkness' depths | ||||||
A memory quivered in the heart of Time | Time | ||||||
As if a soul long dead were moved to live | long | soul | deed | live | |||
But me oblivion that succeeds the fall, | succeeds | oblivion | |||||
75 | Had blotted the crowded tablets of the pest, | past | blotted | ||||
And al that was destroyed must be rebuilt | all. destroyed | ||||||
And old experience laboured out once more. | once more | old experience | |||||
All can be done it the god touch is there. | {T} | God-touch |
Imagery Diagram for the Third Thematic Unit
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Time Timeless World Spirit Darkness Light
Imagery Diagrams for the Fourth and Fifth Thematic Units
In the sixth thematic unit [All grew a consecration and a rite], as the earth bears the awakening ray and responds to the divine touch with consecration and ritual, there is a temporary balance in which
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images of World and Nature ("ambiguous earth," "prostrate soil") occur along with those of God and Spirit ("heaven," "divine afflatus," "Presence and a Power"), while images of Darkness and Sleep ("half-lit ignorance," "shadowy," "death") are juxtaposed with those of Light and Awakening ("revealing," "awakening ray," "God-light"). The atmosphere created is one of spiritual union and sanctity as the Divine Goddess blesses the earth and the earth embraces the spiritual messenger with worship, prayer, and devotion.
Time Travels world spirit Darkness Light
135 | Al grew a consecration and a rite | {T} | |||||
Air was a vibrate link between earth and heaven, | earth | heaven | |||||
The wide-winged hymen of a great priestly wind | |||||||
Arose and failed upon theafter hillier, | revealing | ||||||
The high boughs prayed In a revolingsky. | |||||||
140 | Hera where our half-it ignorance slides the gift | Half-lit ignorance | |||||
On the darn become of the ambiguous earth, | ambiguous earth | dump bosom | |||||
Here where one knows not even the stop In front | doubt | Truth | shadowy | ||||
And Truth has her throne on toe ahadrjwy backof doubt, On this anguished and packrats field of toll | field of toll | ||||||
145 | Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze, | ||||||
Imprfilewhere to our joy and hate, | witness | ||||||
Our prostrate sol ray bore the awakening ray, | prostrate sol | awakening | |||||
ray vision | |||||||
Hers too the vision and prophetic gleam | gleam | ||||||
Lift into miracles common meaningless shaper, | common/ | miracles | list | ||||
150 | Then the the divine, actual, spent, withdraw, | mortal | fading | ||||
Unrented, fading from the mortars range. | divine alphas | ||||||
A stored yearning Iingersd in its trace, | shapes | sacred | |||||
The worship of a Presence and a Power | presences/power | ||||||
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts, | perfect | death | |||||
155 | The prescience of a marvelous birth to come. | marvellous birth | bound | ||||
156 | Only a little the god-light can stay:} | {T} | little | god | good-fight |
Imagery Diagram for the Sixth Thematic Unit
This pattern continues into the next thematic unit [Only a little the God-light can stay] as the divine luster becomes submerged in the earth consciousness and its illumination starts to recede. Then, in a subunit beginning in line 176, as the God-light begins to withdraw, leaving the "common light of earthly day," the focus changes and all three lines of imagery shift entirely to the left of their lines with images of transient Time ("cycles," "daily," "instant's") earthly Nature ("earthly day," "burden") and Darkness ("common light," "barded," "unforeseeing").
These variations in the pattern and density of images throughout the poem help to explain some of the marvellous poetic effects achieved by the poet. Sri Aurobindo varies the imagery from one thematic unit to the next (and within thematic units) to create mood and atmosphere and to reinforce the meaning. The result is poetry of the highest artistic merit and profound spiritual force. Of course, we feel this effective power when we read the poem, but a study of the
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poet's method serves to further our understanding and appreciation of the vast architecture beneath the poem's surface. The imagery diagram serves as a visual aid, enabling us to identify imagery patterns and vari