Savitri

    II

'The Secret Knowledge'

      But before he can dare new spiritual adventures, Aswapati should get to know the bases of the 'Secret Knowledge' that his hoary ancestors— the seers of the Veda, the rishis of the Upanishads—have bequeathed to him. The sacred books point the way. One is encouraged, one is warned. Maps and mariner's compasses have their uses for traveller and voyager. The 'Secret Doctrine' is the spiritual adventurer's map and compass combined. Aswapati therefore turns to the mastery of the 'Secret Doctrine'.

      On a height Aswapati stands, and looks "towards greater heights". The dialectic of advance is a singular meeting of opposing movements: there is the climb of consciousness, from the material, vital and mental, to still higher planes; there is the descent of consciousness from the higher—the highest—to the lower realms; and there is the meeting, the fusion, the transformation. All the time there is the veiled Guide or Presence within, who is the 'eyes and ears' of the awakening, the awakened, soul. However, all this is but an occult, not a visible or demonstrable, reality. Yet the drama is played on no far inaccessible stage but here and now. As B.P Wadia once wrote:

The Occult World is in co-adunition but not in co-substantiality

with the human world...it interpenetrates the market place, the

highways of traffic.. .it is where homes are built and families are

reared...The birth in the Occult World does not imply a death

in this, but rather a higher living on this earth which the Occult

World carries within its bosom.⁸

The stage is set here, in our own hearts, in our own souls, "but all is screened, subliminal, mystical... it needs the power of a spiritual gaze."⁹ No doubt, the visibly real is the world of the dualities, the purblind meanderings of the Earth-Goddess "across the sands of Time". She dreams vaguely of a better world where death has no sting, desire no pang of unfulfilment, and incapacity no roots. What the Earth-Goddess most needs are mind, will, strength, joy—unqualified, unblemished. The real forces determining our advance are the forces within, but we are generally blind to their presence or power. We are alas! out of touch with our "subliminal quiverings"; rather we are slaves, in our daily activities, to our own petty acts, and we are content to be imprisoned in a mental consciousness with its dungeon narrowness and stark obscurity. But what could be, what is to be, is an open book to the immortals, and the power behind them:

Above the world the world-creators stand,

In the phenomenon see its mystic source.¹⁰

 In man's darkest extremity, this power will descend to his help; the

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mind's inner chamber will be charged with a new potency, and all earth will grow "unexpectedly divine".

      The human predicament when man has reached the mental stage of his evolutionary career is "an interregnum in Reality", a mid-region, shall we say, between the dusk that has gone and the flame that is to come. In Alexander Pope's words, man finds himself at the fluid junction between two continents:

      Plac'd on this Isthmus of a middle state,

      A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:

      With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

      With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride...

      In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;

      In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;

      Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err.. .¹¹

If we concentrate on the present alone, we run the danger of missing both the origins and the ultimates. We have, then, to learn to end the prevalent ignorance, and:

      .. .fill the immense lacuna we have made,

      Re-wed the closed finite s lonely consonant

      With the open vowels of Infinity, ....¹²

The gods who inhabit the higher planes enjoy a condition of static perfection, which is in sharp contrast to man's dynamic evolving destiny. In Sri Aurobindo's poem, The Life Heavens, there is a significant affirmation:

      I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;

      My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys....¹³

Earth's inhabitant, man, is provoked by the aloofness of the mere gods to exceed himself and them. It is not for him to wail like the Lotous-Eaters about the gods' indifference to human woes. What if they seem careless:

      .. .of the grief that stings the world's heart,

      Careless of the pain that rends its body and life?¹⁴

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Man has no need to despair; divine guidance and intervention are not wanting, and "an outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives". Not the gods, but the Power transcending them—even them—is our true guide and helper. It is this secret master of all works—the master who is the actor and the play, the potter and the clay—that really governs the universe and runs this "endless masquerade".¹⁵ And this Power, this master, is Purusha-Prakriti, the ineffable Two-in-One:

      ...all is their play:

      This whole wide world is only he and she.¹⁶

Strange is the relationship between purusha and prakriti, like word and meaning:

      Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:

      His breast he offers for her cosmic dance

      Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,....¹⁷

 Purusha consents to veil himself in ignorance for an uncertain term and play the part Prakriti allots to him. Life in matter commences a purblind game, and the first hectic chapters of Evolution come to be scrawled:

      He takes up her powers;

      He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.¹⁸

At last the veiled unconscious Purusha awakes to a "memory of Self... the Godhead breaks through the human mould."¹⁹ Although still consenting to be her vassal, he ensures in their collaborative acts an unfolding purpose, a progression towards the heights. Thus, even thus, "in Nature's instrument loiters secret God". Coercing his divinity, God is labouring here in our midst.²⁰ We are driven to action, shaped, changed and chastened by the Power—the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone—"who is in us as our secret self". He will recast us into his own mould and raise us to Infinity.

      Yet, for the time being, the Dusk is more real than the Dawn. God is veiled and even denied, and the human adventure is timid,

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halting, subject to evasions, setbacks and retreats. This hesitant voyaging should cease, and the spirit of bold adventure should possess high-souled man. He should leave the familiar coastal regions and venture forth to reach "the islands of the Blest". Beyond the seeming termini of this world must the traveller—the veiled Purusha; the insatiable mariner; the indefatigable Odysseus of the occult seas— dare to catch the vision of the blessed Isles, to discover "a new mind and body in the city of God".²¹ No sleep, no rest, till the goal be reached!

      Purusha and Prakriti are entangled here together in a mystic embrace, and they are seemingly lost in this cosmic game of play and clash and new creation.²² He is Being and Becoming both, Becoming in his entanglement or communion with her, and Being as the one transcendent Reality. The descent (or involution) made, the whole ascent (or evolution) is awaiting splendorous accomplishment.

      For this he left his white infinity

      And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,

      That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.²³

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