Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

Questions And Answers on Savitri

(With acknowledgements to Srinvantu, August 1986)

(A few of us have been trying to read and study

Savitri in a group. We requested Amal Kiran (K. D.

Sethna) to kindly give us a guide-line, so that our u

nderstanding as well as enjoyment of Savitri might

be enhanced and enriched. We put some specific

questions which would show him the trend of our

mind. Given below are the first two of them along

with his answers. — Ed. Srinvantu)

Q. One may approach Savitri (1) with a devotee's attitude as the

spiritual autobiography of the Master, (2) as a book or store-

house of spiritual wisdom comparable to the Vedas, the Upani-

shads or the Gita, and (3) as great poetry. Can these approaches

merge? What should be the basic approach for a full and just

appreciation?

A. To make the right approach we must understand what Sri Aurobindo intended Savitri to be. A few statements of his may be cited. "I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular — if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. 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."

We can gather several points here. First and foremost, Savitri is an adventure in poetry. But the aim is not merely to write good poetry. The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this

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plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore we cannot consider it either as sheer poetry or as sheer spirituality. It must help us at the same time to ascend to Sri Aurobindo's own peak and do so with the full awareness of the poetic way in which that peak has become communicative of its truth, its power, its delight. Savitri has to be taken as Sri Aurobindo's poetically spiritual autobiography which is meant to make us re-live his inner life of both poetic creativity and creative spirituality.

Further, we must attend to some details of these two creativities, keeping in view Sri Aurobindo's disclosure: "there have been made several successive revisions each trying to lift the general level higher and higher towards a possible Overmind poetry. As [Savitri] now stands there is a general Overmind influence, I believe, sometimes coming fully through, sometimes colouring the poetry of the other higher planes fused together, sometimes lifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them." Mention of Overmind aligns Savitri to the top reach of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita, and the enormous mass of it, nearly 24,000 verses, renders it a super-scripture, an unparalleled storehouse of spirtual wisdom. But we must remember that this wisdom comes at its best in the form of what the ancients called the Mantra, which Sri Aurobindo characterises in a line which is itself mantric as

Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.

Here the final emergence of the Overmind's truth-light and truth-vibration is suggested, the surging up of the supreme Word from the secret heart of things which is one with our own inmost heart and which has received that Word for manifestation from the hidden heights. What is pertinent in this connection is that the Mantra is borne to us in "sound-

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waves", not simply the luminous sense but also the harmonious verbal embodiment of it is important. Thus the poetry that is Savitri is inseparable from the spirituality of this master-work of Sri Aurobindo and the latter cannot be appreciated and assimilated in a living manner unless we are responsive to the mode of vision, the cast of word, the mould of rhythm — the Spirit's varied poetic avatar. The heart of Savitri — the mystery from which the poem has sprung — yields its pulsation most intimately when we approach it with sensitiveness to the art of Savitri.

I may add that the wisdom we have to absorb from this poem has an intellectual element too. That is why Sri Aurobindo says that in its final form Savitri is "a sort of poetic philosophy of the Spirit and of Life". But we have to mark the qualifying noun "sort", for the "philosophy" is no more than the mental look the eyes of Yogic vision and experience put on, and we have to note the qualifying adjective "poetic" which brings in the artistry with which that look is worn.

*

Q. If somebody is fond of poetry and would prefer to come to

sadhana via the road of poetry , will the study of Savitri as

poetry help him much? Would you kindly explain to us how

and where poetry becomes yoga and yoga poetry in Savitri?

A. I should think that all poetry, like all of the other arts, tends at its intensest to take us not only into magic but also into mystery. An impact of flawless form is felt: an impression of the ideal, the perfect, is received through the inevitable rhythmic expression. Even a descriptive line like

Sweet water hurrying from reluctant rocks from Sri Aurobindo's early poetry enchants us with its apt surprises — the choice of the contrasting epithets "hurrying" and "reluctant", the easy run of the voice in the first half of the line and the retardation of it in the second half with its

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close consonantal conjuncts "ct", "nt" "cks", and yet the weaving together of the opposing senses by the alliterating "r" in the five words out of six, and finally through all these bespelling effects the disclosure of some hidden life in things which apparently are inanimate but occultly carry on a play of their own. Not only is a surface beauty of natural events delineated: a secret design of interacting and counteracting mobility and stability is also hinted at. We are given simultaneously a satisfying sight and a felicitous insight. This is the function of all inspired poetry. We get an inner experience through an outer stimulus: our perceptions get subtilised. Without even a directly spiritual communication attempted we undergo an exquisite refinement which can prepare us for it. As a critic has intuitively said, "Poetry may not save souls but it makes souls worth saving."

When we come to poetry like Savitri we have this power eminently exercised. Savitri can serve the poetry-lover as a road to sadhana. Here, over and above an account of spiritual states and by means of it a conceptual as well as imaginative sign-post to the mystical goal, we have a vibrant evocation of these states in a language that is born out of them and is no mere reflection of the profundities beyond the mind in mental terms. The process and the product of this special language are thrillingly pictured in the Savitri passage whose concluding line I have already quoted to illustrate the Mantra. Sri Aurobindo is describing the various orders of ascetics whom Savitri comes across in the course of her search for her destined mate. The Rishi-like occupation of one order is conveyed to us:

Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,

Seized, vibrant, kindling with the inspired word,

Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,

Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,

They sang Infinity's names and deathless powers

In metres that reflect the moving worlds,

Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.

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As Savitri exemplifies, by and large, this sort of spiritual composition, the reading of it is bound to induce movements of yoga. But the reader must approach it rightly. He should imagine the twofold birth of the Mantra: high above in an ether of Superconsciousness and deep within where the Rigvedic hrdaya samudra, the heart-ocean, the wondrous in-world into which opens the individual emotional-psychic experience, echoes and images the over-world. Then he should practise a dedicated silence in the mind in order to imitate something of the "hushed intense receptivity turned upwards" which Sri Aurobindo, in a letter to me, stressed as the state for the Rishi to draw the Mantra into his utterance. Such a state is necessary for two reasons. First: the full impression of the Mantric speech would be missed unless the mind were made a blank sheet on which the script of the Eternal could come out absolutely clear. Second: that speech is itself most typically, most fundamentally from a similar state. Sri Aurobindo, in Savitri, writes of

Silence, the nurse of the Almighty's power,

The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word —

and in the same context he recounts how the Goddess of Inspiration

Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts,

And through great shoreless, voiceless, starless breadths

Bore earthward fragments of revealing thought

Hewn from the silence of the Ineffable.

A final requisite for the reader to make Savitri his mode of sadhana is to read it not with the eye alone but also with the ear. The silence with which he approaches this poem which is born from "the omniscient hush" can be most effectively employed for "the immortal Word" to leave its mark upon it if we peruse the verse audibly. We have to hear and not just see the lines. In a slow subdued voice we have to com-

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municate Savitri to our consciousness. All poetry has to be vocalised if its total magic and mystery are to go home to us. Much more is it necessary to vocalise Savitri. It has rhythmic properties more subtle than in any other poem, since it hails from realms of expression rarely tapped and unless we are so adept as to get inwardly the complete shape, as it were, of its "vibrant cry" we need to realise that shape by an audible transmission. Even to understand something, it is advisable to read it aloud — and Savitri too is best understood through the ear. But what I am asking for is meant to bear us beyond understanding. Poetry sets up a stirring within us answering to the life-throb of a vision or emotion or intuition, a life-throb which repeats itself in us and gives us a reality of the poet's substance exceeding the mere idea of it. Understanding poetry amounts to acquiring an idea of the vision, emotion, intuition concerned and reflecting upon the way they are conveyed. Such reflection is part of winning access to the art-element. It cannot be dispensed with, but even more important for the access is to catch the life-throb of those psychological faculties at work. Audible reading most fruitfully carries into us the life-throb and the basic shape of the poetry, transmitting both its aesthetic and its spiritual truth. Of course the value and efficacy of this double aspect of the poetic phenomenon — and particularly of a super-phenomenon like Savitri — will differ from reader to reader, depending on the inner sensitivity and on the intimacy with the English language. But all readers will receive the maximum they can by reciting Savitri instead of simply running the eye over the page.

As for the "how" and "where" of poetry becoming yoga and yoga poetry in Savitri I cannot make absolutely definite observations. I should say that the poetic and the yogic interplay throughout but there are several degrees which we may attempt to mark off in a rough way. Let me take a single theme and distinguish the modes of its recurrence. There is the straightforward statement, fusing the mental and the ultra-mental with a fine ease:

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His mind transfigured to a rapturous seer...

This seems to be what Sri Aurobindo has termed the "adequate style" at an inevitable pitch. Then there is, in my opinion, his "effective style" keyed up to inevitability:

Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight...

Next we may show an example of the inevitable "illumined style":

In the light flooding thought's blank vacancy...

The "illumined" merges in the "inspired" when we read:

Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought...

A mixture of all these styles — with perhaps the "adequate-effective" as an overall tone — may be found in:

His seeking mind ceased in the Truth that knows...

A keener articulation of such a mixture meets us when Sri Aurobindo speaks of sages escaping from the confines of thought

To where Mind motionless sleeps waiting Light's birth...

This verse draws near to the style which, according to. Sri Aurobindo, goes out of all classification, however inevitable a line may be within its own class — the style which is the "sheer inevitable" and whose undeniable example, in my eyes, is:

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient....

Here poetry passes wholly into the mood of yoga and yoga becomes most intensely articulate in poetry.

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An alternative scheme of distinction might take the first two instances as the "Creative Intelligence" in a couple of varying phases: quiet felicity in the one and vivida vis (lively force) in the other. Perhaps the second instance is half-way into the "Higher Mind". The next two seem to be the "Higher Mind" taken up into the "Illumined Mind" and verging on the "Intuition". The first of the pair of pen-ultimate instances looks like the direct penetrative simplicity of the "Intuition" under the guise, as it were, of the "Creative Intelligence" 's clear-cut drive rather than of its colourful play. The second member has a greater sign in it of the "Intuition" 's thrilled power going straight to the heart of a subject, be it a scene, an event, a state or a person. Beyond this power lies the revelation of the "Overmind" which brings us the intensest inmost of the calmest immense, a sovereign seizure of spiritual truth in all its beauty of vision, voice and vibrancy.

In the line I have quoted —

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient —

we have the vision of the thinker in us losing his loud self-assertive limits in a spontaneous super-knowledge which lights up everything. This vision finds voice in a compact pattern, the intransitive verb "hush" acquiring an extra impact, a depth of force, by standing in an inverted foot, a trochee in a virtually iambic verse, and that too as the second unit in the scansion, a surprise suddenly interrupting the expected metrical run. At the line's end comes another surprise, a noun made out of an adjective packed with tremendous significance. I believe that it is the first time in English literature that "Omniscient" is used as a noun with an indefinite article. Apart from that singularity is the question: "Why is 'omniscience' not used?" The habitual noun would indicate a state of all-knowledge and not a being who knows all. The personal identity of the yogi is preserved in some supreme form in a realm where the basic Universal

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wears numerous individual faces and the One Omniscient manifests in a multiplicity of Omniscients. There is also a sound-effect to be appreciated. The sh-sound in "hush" is caught up in "Omniscient" which is pronounced "Omni-shyent", the suggestion of the echoed sound is that the hushing of the mind deepens and widens and heightens by a natural process the mind-possessing finite being that we are into an infinite supernal self who is by contrast a knower of everything and yet mysteriously continuous with our present finitude. Finally, both for sense and for sound the epithet "bright" is the mot juste. "White" could have been put instead, connoting shadowless purity. But the special effect of the conjunct consonants br would have been absent. These consonants carry as if by the very modulation of the lips and tongue the hint of a spreading out as well as a glowing forth. The psychological impression is of a bursting into light. In addition we have to note that "bright" has a long i just as "minds" has. The sound-parity suggests the "minds" themselves turning "bright" through the hushing experience. Besides, "bright" is at the tail-end of a series of five monosyllables, a sort of climaxing of the process they represent. And this fivefold process thus climaxed terminates and culminates in a massive reality of transcendent transformation indicated by the single four-syllabled word "Omniscient".

To feel and recognise the spiritual afflatus of so superb a kind, borne magically home to us in a design of manifold artistry, is indeed a preparatory movement of sadhana. Again and again we get a chance to develop the sadhana-mood. The fundamental attitude necessary for advance in spirituality is hit off to perfection in the middle verse of the three powerful inward-drawing lines which yet turn one's soul outward to master the world's "crass casualty":

A poised serenity of tranquil strength,

A wide unshaken look on time's unrest

Faced all experience with unaltered peace.

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The absolute of this peace, the self-existent infinitude of it meets us in a life-changing passage when Aswapati's as-piring consciousness breaks beyond the barrier of both individual and universal existence:

Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed

Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars

The superconscient realms of motionless Peace

Where judgment ceases and the word is mute

And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.

Everywhere, in some places more directly and in others through a transparent veil, Savitri which is the self-expression of a master yogi can lead us towards yoga. But its most creative function is to kindle in us a flame burning at all times so that we may build up in ourselves the living presence of that master yogi and through the illumining art of this epic of the Spirit quicken at each moment with the invocation:

O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,

Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride....

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