Savitri

II

'The Issue'

      In the second canto, entitled 'The Issue', we see Savitri very near to the mighty issue between Death ignominious and Life Eternal. Only a few hours, and the issue will be joined between Yama and Savitri. This is the crucial moment in her life. To draw back and leave Fate to its devastating work is out of the question. For, it is she in whom the Universal Mother has descended to save humanity from the blight of terrestrial bondage. To Savitri only one way is possible; that is, to go forward, to struggle, to dare Destiny, whatever the final outcome.

      Sages have pronounced that Fate is inexorable; thus failure seems to be more likely than victory. Yet Savitri must issue forth, and not withdraw the step placed forward. So Savitri, called by the peremptory summons of Duty and filled with bottomless compassion, stands on the threshold of the field of Fate, ready for the struggle. A short while from now, Death will claim Truth from Love; and it is no easy task to defeat Death and grasp Immortality. But Savitri does not give way to despair. Unperturbed, like a block of wood,¹¹ she strengthens herself and awakens her self with indrawn yogic strength from the Divine.

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      With the Mighty Doom just round the corner, Savitri falls into a reverie, when the near past marches through her memory as a crystallised documentary. Dawn has come to the world; Savitri has risen and is following her daily round of duties as a housewife. While she is at these routine exertions,

Awhile, withdrawn in secret fields of thought,

Her mind moved in a many-imaged past.¹²

Savitri's heart aches to think that such a threatened end should have been designed to such a happy life as hers has been. Her memories have not dimmed with the passage of time; on the other hand, in their complete wholeness they lie "mapped to her sun-clear recording view". She glances at her treasure-trove of memorable experiences where everything can be found as fresh as a morning flower:

From the bright country of her childhood's days

And the blue mountains of her soaring youth

And the paradise groves and peacock wings of Love

To joy clutched under the silent shadow of doom

In a last turn where heaven raced with hell.¹³

In these five lines are succinctly reviewed the variegated turns of her whole life upto the present. The birth of Savitri; the child-princess; the blushing maiden young; the meeting of Satyavan and the birth of Love; the warning of Narad and the foreknowledge of relentless fate; marriage and the bitter-sweet year that followed it; and now the threatening Doom—everything has been condensed into an incandescent lyrical passage. Savitri's soul is choked as it were at the very thought of possible failure, which must mean Nothingness forever. An intense emotional fever grips her heart and she determines to go on with the struggle. She must win and save Truth; only then can the supramental age be ushered in by means of the union of Love and Truth. Man must ascend the peak of the superconscient, notwithstanding this giant hurdle that is sprawled across the way; and Savitri has come to remove the obstacle, whatever the hazard.¹⁴

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        Savitri is here revealed to us, in this intrinsically dramatic situation, as being poised on the peak of perilous uncertainty. After twelve months of blissful married life she has to confront the advancing Fate, a Fate which in itself also foreshadows the coming of a spiritual Dawn. Her mind is torn between dark forebodings and radiant hopes. The clouds are gathering and look dully malicious. Will they send forth a shower of divine light or will they, after all, envelop the whole world in a thick blanket of Darkness? Seized by the uncertainty of the future, a deep oblivion falls upon her mind, obscuring it in dense dark night. Curiously enough this night actually forebodes good. For it is the dark hour before dawn, it is the poison preceding nectar.¹⁵ And so too the spiritual aspirant must needs experience "the dark night of the soul" before participating in the "bliss of Brahman" (Brahmānanda):

An absolute supernatural darkness falls

On man sometimes when he draws near to God.¹⁶

It is Savitri's turn now:

      That hour had fallen now on Savitri.¹⁷

The sweet, the agonised "remembrance of things past" is ended, Savitri is now on the threshold of the future. She is drawing near her eternal home, but she knows not whither lies the path. As for the present, it is a complete void. Neither of the past nor of the future, it is in this present she must face her Task:

      On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought.¹⁸

 Here she must wrap about her the armour of her yogic strength and

...plead her case upon extinction's verge,

In the world's death-cave uphold life's helpless claim

And vindicate her right to be and love.¹⁹

 The Supreme Moment has drawn very near; the twelve months of passionate joy have fled like

      A mailed battalion marching to its doom,²⁰

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and,

      The last long days went by with heavy tramp...²¹

The cast and sound of these lines suggest the relentlessness of Time's march, which seems to have both a bulldozer heaviness and irresistibility. It is as though the sergeant time has given orders for a forward march, and the days pass without flinching or haste, regardless of the hour that conceals within its womb the poison of immitigable Death; or, is it rather going to be the Nectar of Eternal Life?

      The days have gone by too soon; alas! Evanescent is earthly joy and beauty. Now that fate has begun its chase, Savitri has withdrawn into herself. About her silence reigns; but silence, when witnessed in her presence, is mystically eloquent. And she stands here serene like a jewel of purest ray. Holy, fair, majestic and, above all, womanly:

      All in her pointed to a nobler kind.²²

Hers was:

      A body like a parable of dawn

      That seemed a niche for veiled divinity.²³

 Every act of hers—walking, smiling, talking, working—was invested with the liquid purity of Heaven-born Grace.

      For this mortal woman has immortality within her; the human child is made of superhuman dimensions. She is of the earth, but not earthy; she is of Heaven, but is no featureless divinity. Rather she is:

Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven,

Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit

Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm

Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.²⁴

It is in such a girl that the world-creatrix, the world-saviour, is personified. Possessed of immense reserves of power, Savitri is

At once.. .the stillness and the word,

A continent of self-diffusing peace,

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An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.²⁵

Although she is born human to save humanity, yet is she divine in her origins. The ray of divinity issues forth unfailingly through the framework of the mortal being. To this Divine Mother who walks the earth in a mortal garb is given the challenge to meet and master. The issue thus presented to her is:

      Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death

       Or hew the ways of Immortality,

       To win or lose the godlike game for man...²⁶

But, then, she is not born to yield the field to Ignorance and Death.

       To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.²⁷

Hers is the task to unclasp the net that binds this "immense material world" which is really a gaol, and thus release humanity to the freedom of a tremendous spiritual heaven. To break mankind's fetters, "Her single will opposed the Cosmic rule." Savitri is determined to face the issue and strive her uttermost to "stay the wheels of Doom." She is confident in her power, although the issue's result is as yet uncertain. But success is not impossible to achieve. A clicking of the switch can set ablaze a building hung with innumerable bulbs. The first decisive push, the primal force, is what is needed. Once that is accomplished, the force will make instantaneous contacts, and brighten a whole city, thus dispelling darkness and enveloping life with light. So also with this Major Issue.

      A prayer, a master act, a king idea

      Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force...

      One mighty deed can change the course of things;

      A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.²⁸

Man is mortal no doubt; made of flesh and blood, he has nothing permanent about him; nor anything of superior merit in him— except his soul. The soul is deathless, permanent. It is actually a spark spilt from the Starry Heavens of the Divine Realms. This the

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soul is the godhead that lodges behind the apparent brute machine. But it lies inert until it is stirred to life and sovereignty. The cobra raises its hood only when it is provoked; to glimpse the beauty and majestic grandeur of a King Cobra, we have first to rouse it.²⁹ So also with the human soul. When it is prompted by a spiritual struggle it raises from the Nescient unconscious state and draws itself to its full stature of Divinity. Faced with the mighty crisis of the challenge of Death claiming Satyavan (thereby smothering Truth itself), Savitri is called to action, and:

      The great World-Mother now in her arose...³⁰

Armed with Righteousness, sustained by Hope, and spurred on by the call of Duty, Savitri like:

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.³¹

Such is the grand beginning of Sri Aurobindo's epic. The Dawn of the fated day has arrived, but the spiritual dawn for mankind is yet to come. Meanwhile our compassionate Mother has chosen to struggle with the Enemy. Fortifying herself with the nectarean past and the gains of her yoga, she is now ready to face Death and win back Truth, and rear in our midst a new heaven and a new earth.

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