Savitri

 VI

      'THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF

THE GREATER LIFE'

      From the "grey anarchy" of the lower vital' world, Aswapati now approaches the 'higher vital' world, a region ineffectual and purposeless still, where life see-saws between vain denial and dubious hope. It is a world of deceptive illuminations and spasmodic actions, of hopes unrealised and possibilities unfulfilled. Life goes round and round as it were, but goal there seemingly is none. Allurements come from every direction, only to be followed by discomfiture. All is "unsafe, miraculous and half-true".

      As Aswapati travels further on from these outskirts, the sky clears, the earth smiles, and he reaches "the kingdom of the morning star". His eyes are lit up with a surer hope. From within well up the beginnings of a new authentic knowledge. Immortality glimmers in the distance, a beckoning star; love is a releasing force making for the heart's fullness and freedom; Truth flames forth in the Word, thrown up "from a chance tension of the soul". These first faint raptures naturally lead to "vaster hopes":

      A progress leap from sight to greater sight,

      A process march from form to ampler form,

      A caravan of the inexhaustible

      Formations of a boundless Thought and Force.⁷²

Cannot eternity itself be caught in the net of time? Cannot the Spirit be coerced into matter? Prakriti or Nature is "an Energy of perpetual transience" and is endlessly resourceful, finding "new bodies for the Infinite and images of the Unimaginable." Nature dazzles us by her infinite variety and termless restlessness; she is a timeless actor playing her intriguing parts on a temporal stage. Although earth centered, the higher vital world is not altogether beyond the reach of intimations from above. On the contrary, this

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world dares to gaze beyond the "barriers of apparent fact", to trust "dream-mind and the soul", and even to hunt "spiritual verities":

      It feels a saviour touch, a ray divine:

      Beauty and good and truth its godheads are.⁷³

It is a world where divers pulls meet, a meeting ground of demon, man and God, of hell, earth and heaven. It is a world of high exertion and limitless possibility; "its greatness is to seek and to create".

      This genius to create, this Life-Force or creative urge, sleeps in matter, stirs in plant and insect, and manifests itself strongly in bird and animal. The push of evolution is a power that persists and presses on. Death itself is no end, but only a fresh beginning. Inertness is but a nap; the struggle, the striving, starts again and goes on, apparently for ever. There is, no doubt, the seeming grapple between Prakriti and Purusha:

      Although she is ever in him and he in her,

      As if unaware of the eternal tie,

      Her will is to shut God into her works

      And keep him as her cherished prisoner

      That never they may part again in Time.⁷⁴

Prakriti keeps him in her close embrace; he may wrestle, but he may not get away! This is the mystic truth behind an affirmation like Hopkins': "The world is charged with the grandeur of God".⁷⁵ This mystic struggle and embrace is really the law of life and evolutionary advance. There are stumblings and set-backs, there are even naps and swoons, but the work is taken up again, and the assault and ascent are renewed once more.

      The play of consciousness here in the higher vital world is lit by Truth, but does not contain or hold the Truth as a permanent condition; it is like the little room lit by the rays coming through the window, not the Sun, not his total realm. At best this life is "a first immigration into heavenliness", not a final occupation. Nevertheless, there are ardours and hectic strivings that are

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characteristic of this world. The hero is a recurrent emergent here. In him alas! good and evil intermingle, yet is he impressive in mould, whether his careerings end in defeat or success. King, Pope, Tyrant, all have their little hour of dominion, and then fade away. Power corrupts, absolute power often corrupts absolutely—"the harlot power that slays the soul".

      The artist and poet are of an order apart and "catch the All-Beautiful's ray". Behind the scenes, subliminal powers inflate the hero, the seeming Superman, with incalculable energy, and unleash terrific love or hate till forest tires join and rage. But even when things promise most, there comes sudden discomfiture in the end: the paths of beauty, love, glory, lead but to the grave; the final reward of bliss and peace eludes. As Aswapati moves among these shapes and feels racked by riddles all round, he grows a riddle to himself. The mystery refuses to be cleared, except through the fabrication of fresh mysteries; the question, the questioner, and the answer are riddles, riddles all.

      Following the track of the Life-Force's march, Aswapati presently comes to,

      .. .a high release from pettier cares,

      A mightier image of desire and hope,

      A vaster formula, a greater scene.⁷⁶

Higher still and higher, onward and forever onward, Nature circles above, aiming "at a target kept invisible". Here the atmosphere is ethereal rather than dense—more and more ethereal with the flight into the higher regions. Aswapati sees Nature's variegated strivings, the colours have a blinding dazzle, but the white radiance of Truth can nowhere be seen. Is Truth playing hide and seek? There are strange attractions, random recognitions, sudden thrills of glory; every corner, every crevice in Nature has hidden intensities of beauty and joy:

      In her green wildernesses and lurking depths,

      In her thickets of joy where danger clasps delight,

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       He glimpsed the hidden wings of her songster hopes,

       A glimmer of blue and gold and scarlet fire.⁷⁷

Aswapati is fascinated by it all and moves freely amidst the "live symbols" of Nature's occult power; and her manifold—if as yet flawed —magnificence casts a profound spell upon him. Some 'clue' there certainly must be that can guide the seeker through her labyrinthine ways of passion and power; but the clue, the "interpreting word", is lacking still. Nature at this height strikes Aswapati as "a fugitive paradise":

      Brief are her snatches of felicity

      That touch the surface, then escape or die:.. .⁷⁸

Even so, in spite of all these marks of circumscription, life at this level is surely worth all the toil and the pain, the spasm and the ache.

      On the other hand, this medial half-hearted felicity cannot content Prakriti, and she cannot long abide here. Her cardinal aspiration to bring the heavens down and charge the body with the soul's delight cannot accept defeat as a permanent condition; neither is she able to force the pace of rounded fulfilment. "A sense of limit haunts her masteries", but she will not give up her "beat of action" and "cry of search". Is all existence no more than, "a vain necessity's act... A play without denouement or idea,/A hunger march of lives without a goal?" "'' But hope whispers that another play is possible, that a divine comedy shall fill the stage; and faith and doubt wrangle, the yea and the nay glare at each other, and the issue is yet to be concluded. True enough it is that the present error, defeat, pain, the reign of death, the empire of futility, must be exceeded; but for the time being,

      All seems in vain, yet endless is the game.

      Impassive turns the ever-circling Wheel,

      Life has no issue, death brings no release.⁸⁰

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