Savitri

 XII

The Symbolism of the 'Sacrifice'

Since there is this tremendous extension in significance as regards the victory, it has to be matched by a proportionate elaboration and heightening of the antecedents and preparations as well; and this is the reason why the Books covering Aswapati's Yoga, Savitri's Yoga, and Savitri's struggle with Death seem to occupy so much space. The seeds of all these are in the original, but Sri Aurobindo has planted them on rich soil and given them what seems almost like extravagant nurture.

      Aswapati's Yoga is in the main cast in the form of a journey through the Worlds; Savitri's is likewise a penetration into the "Inner Countries"; and even the struggle between Savitri and Death has for its objective reference a movement, a pursuit, a progress, an ultimate destination. The common feature is the movement, the journey, the progression, for without these, and the continual sacrifice they involve, there can be no gain, no conquest, no spiritual victory. One has to sacrifice everything, one has to die almost, if one is to gain new life, the life everlasting; and the journey—be it ascent, exploration or penetration—is also a battle, for the traveller is opposed by the hostile powers of evil and falsehood, and no sooner a victory is gained than another issue is joined, and one has to fight again, and conquer again.

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If Aswapati's Yoga or Savitri's Yoga is described at what appears at first sight unconscionable length, the reason is that each of them is the epic of a soul in its immortal ascent to the peaks or ineffable journey to the centre.

      The Veda often talks of the triple divine worlds, the triple lower worlds, and a link-world, and there are, of course, further gradations, for "each world is divisible into several provinces according to different arrangements and self-orderings of its creative light of consciousness"; and although man but inhabits the material Earth and is apparently cooped up there, he is also a creature of infinite possibility, and "even into the solar worlds of the Truth he can rise, enter the portals of the Superconscient, cross the threshold of the Supreme.. .This human ascension is possible because every being really holds in himself all that his outward vision perceives as if external to him." ⁶⁵ But it is possible only if man thirsts to break the bonds of his limited earth-life. The same gods who have structured the cosmic stair of the ascending worlds are also anxious, "to build up the same series of ordered states and ascending degrees in man's consciousness from the mortal condition to the crowning immortality."⁶⁶ The microcosm is—at least potentially—the macrocosm. But man's continual self-offering is called for if he is to make these ascents and conquests; one must be ready to lose one's soul if one is eager to save it; one must be ready to die if one is anxious to live:

The image of this sacrifice is sometimes that of a journey or

voyage; for it travels, it ascends; it has a goal—the vastness,

the true existence, the light, the felicity...It has to climb, led by the

flaming strength of the divine Will, from plateau to plateau as

of a mountain, it has to cross as in a ship the waters of existence,

traverse its rivers, overcome their deep pits and rapid currents; its

aim is to arrive at the far-off ocean of light and infinity.⁶⁷

The sacrifice, in the visible or physical sense, involves agnihotra, and Agni is, "at once the flame on the altar and the priest of the oblation. When man, awakened from his night, wills to offer his inner and outer

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activities to the gods of a truer and higher existence and so to arise out of mortality into the far-off immortality, his goal and his desire, it is this flame of upward aspiring Force and Will that he must kindle; into this fire he must cast the sacrifice."⁶⁸ Aswapati's austerities extend over a period of eighteen years and in the end the Goddess Savitri arises from the agnihotra oblation; Dyumatsena's name itself signifies a flame-like or Agni-like brightness, and it is to gather twigs for his agnihotra offering that Satyavan goes to the woods on the fateful day. Agni is the fusion of Light and Power, and also the mediator between man and his gods; Agni is a god who is invoked to come with the other gods; and Agni is also the conveyor from earth to the upper regions. In one of the Hymns to Agni, the god is directly invoked as the leader of the journey to guide the evolving soul through its successive births on its ascending planes of existence ("the march of my sacrifices"), to bear it "over every difficult crossing", and to be "the fosterer of our embodyings".⁶⁹

      Dyumatsena as well as Aswapati offer agnihotra oblations, and for much the same reason; they are really awakening the light and force of the indwelling God so as to grow in Truth-consciousness and labour towards the peaks of Realisation. Savitri on the other hand, being a woman, doesn't offer regular agnihotra oblations; her three-nights' vrata or vow ending with an oblation to the fire on the fatal morning has, however, the same essential purpose. She concentrates on a voyage of self-discovery; in self-absorbed meditation she explores the "inner countries" of the mind and soul; and she too grows in Truth-consciousness and reaches at last the plenitudes of its power. The dynamics of the movement are the same, whether it is an ascent as with Aswapati's Yoga or an inner movement as with Savitri's.

      Aswapati literally means Lord of Horses. In the Veda, the horse and the cow are repeatedly referred to; as material possessions they are doubtless of considerable value, especially to a rural community; but they also represent "a concealed and imprisoned wealth which

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has to be uncovered and released by a divine puissance".⁷⁰ As tell-tale symbols, the horse and the cow stand for Force and Light, life-energy and soul-quality Aswapati is accordingly equated in Sri Aurobindo's epic with "the symbol of the aspiring soul of man as manifested in life on earth".⁷¹ But Aswapati the "Traveller of the Worlds", the climber towards the far Himalayas of the Spirit, rather recalls the Vedic Aswins, the twin horse-riders, who are inseparably together, inviolably youthful, irresistibly swift-moving. In one of his hymns, Rishi Vamadeva invokes the Aswins as follows:

Full of honey upward rise the delight; upward horses and cars

in the wide-shinings of the Dawn and they roll aside the veil of

darkness that encompassed on every side and they extend the lower

world into a shining form like that of the luminous heaven.

Drink of the honey with your honey-drinking mouths, for the

honey yoke your car beloved. With the honey you gladden the

movement and its paths; full of honey, O Aswins, is the skin that

you bear.

Full of the honey are the swans that bear you, golden-winged,

waking with the Dawn, and they come not to hurt, they rain forth

the waters, they are full of rapture and touch that which holds the

Rapture...⁷²

      The Aswins, blissful riders to the seas of delight, now ride horses and presently change to swans; they are honey-drenched, honey-hoarding, honey-dripping; their car is undecaying, and they travel over all the worlds towards the goals of enjoyment. Commenting on this wonderful hymn, Sri Aurobindo writes:

The Aswins...are born or manifested from Heaven...their

movement pervades all the worlds, the effect of their action

ranges from the body through the vital being and the thought to

the superconscient Truth...They are therefore Nāsatyā, lords of

the movement, leaders of the journey or voyage...

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'In the wide shinings of the Dawn' they rise...Our conscious

existence is a hill (adri) with many successive levels and elevations,

sānūni; the cave of the subconscient is below; we climb upwards

towards the godhead of the Truth and Bliss where are the seats

of Immortality...

By this upward movement of the chariot of the Aswins with its

burden of uplifted and transformed satisfactions the veil of Night

that encompasses the worlds of being in us is rolled away. All

these worlds, mind, life, body, are opened to the rays of the Sun

of Truth.⁷³

Such is the marvellous effect of the upward movement of the Aswins, who really embody the Vedic dualism of Light and Power, the Cow and the Horse. But Rishi Vamedava, by the force of his aspiration, himself rises also with the ascent of the Aswins: "by the action of the Aswins man's progress towards the beatitude becomes itself beatific; all his travail and struggle and labour grows full of a divine delight."⁷⁴ By now, however, the horses change into the Swans, the animal into the bird, thereby symbolising, "the soul liberated and upsoaring...winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, the Aśva."⁷⁵

      It will thus be seen that Aśva, Aświn, Aswapati form a linked sequence of symbols with very rich Vedic associations, and Sri Aurobindo has poetically exploited them to the full in the light of his own spiritual experiences. Likewise, in writing Book VII (The Book of Yoga), describing Savitri's "entry into the Inner Countries", he has drawn both on his own and on his great collaborator, the Mother's spiritual experiences and realisations. A symbol, after all, is a crystallised equivalent to a unit or pattern of experience, meant to give clarity and simplicity and directness to an otherwise complex, subtle and wide-ranging experience.

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         To Indians, at any rate, Savitri and Satyavan, Aswapati and the Aswins, the Asva and the Hamsa, are immediately suggestive symbols, and Sri Aurobindo has therefore built his epic on these and with these; as we are whirled about, we may grow dizzy and contused at times, but we are firmly seated in the saddle, and we cannot flounder or miss our sense of direction. Granted the validity and the utter appropriateness and adequancy of the main symbol of Light struggling with Darkness and finally overcoming it, the other related symbols fall into their place, for, "as the Symbol is ramified, Symbols within Symbols will arise, many of these secondary Symbols with no direct bearing upon the patterns of experience behind the key Symbol."⁷⁶

      Sometimes even these secondary symbols—for example, the Man of Sorrows, the Madonna of Suffering and the Mother of Might, are easily self-explanatory; but elsewhere—as when Sri Aurobindo refers to the "white-fire dragon bird of endless bliss" or, some ten lines later, to "one"⁷⁷—we are free to draw surmises relevant to the context, the bird, perhaps, is the Bird of Bliss or ananda, or the Bird of Fire described by Sri Aurobindo in the poem of that title,⁷⁸ and "one" is presumably the Master of Evolution.⁷⁹ The central symbol is the main thing; once it has been seized in an act of imaginative identification, the rest—the proliferating subsidiary or supporting symbols—will fall into their right places and serve only to enrich the main symbol, and this is largely our experience when we read Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

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