On Savitri

Notes on "Savitri"

Narad's Visit to King Aswapathy¹

Devarshi Narad, as usual, was sailing through the spaces, with his Vina, singing songs of innocence and joy. He was in the higher luminous heavens, the world of happiness, of light and delight, his heart full of divine felicity and his music echoing the music of his heart. Now he thought of coming down, into the lower spaces, regions nearer to the earth. And as he entered the earth atmosphere a change came over the tone and temper of his music. With the thickening of earthly shade, a darkness stole into the clear range of his music and consciousness. Instead of peace and love and joy his music turned to themes of sadness and struggle and battle and doom - of great heroism and conquest and of the supreme fulfilment of human destiny. In and through this dark passage, there emerged slowly a new radiance, the advent of a new conquest for the human consciousness - the possibility of man rising from the animal to divinity.

Narad himself represents a divine consummation of the human being. He is a devarshi, that is to say, he has by his tapasya and spiritual growth surpassed his humanity and developed into a divine immortal being. Now his special work is to be a wandering angel - surveying the world, help it in its onward march, bring to mankind the aid for its forward march, so that it may battle successfully with the hostiles, overpower the hostiles and win the glory of divine immortality.

Lines From Savitri: (1)

A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time.

For him mind's limiting firmament ceased above,

1. Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, sabcl, Vol. 29. p. 415.

Page 26

In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day

A gap was rent in the ail-concealing vault;

The conscious ends of being went rolling back:

The landmarks of the little person fell,

The island ego joined its continent:

Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:

Life's barriers opened into the Unknown.²

Notes:

Griffin = Golden Hawk

+

Winged Lion

The piercing eye of soaring aspiration

+

Upsurging energy of the pure vital

Remember Vishnu's Garuda

+

Durga's lion

With these twin powers you cross safely the borderland between the lower and the upper hemisphere - the twilight world (Night and Day) - Griffin is the guardian God of this passage -Dvārapālaka.

(2)

Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse, T

he cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

In its house of infinite possibility;

2. Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 28, p. 25.

Page 27

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single book:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing Eternity from the toil of Time.³

Notes:

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard...

The image is that of the composition of an army or that of a mathematical series (e.g., arithmetical or geometrical progression). It is composed of regularised units of different values (group of sums), but all measured and definite and precise - e.g., in the case of an army - company, brigade, battalion, army - an ascending scale, the whole also forming one big unit, taken in at a glance - that is the nature of overmind vision.

Note, a unit is a summation of sub-units - even the ultimate units are composites (masses, in case of bigger units) - e.g., molecule, atom, particle (nucleon), point.

(3)

I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;

Forerunners of a divine multitude

Out of the paths of the morning star they came

Into the little room of mortal life.⁴

3.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri. SABCL, Vol. 29, pp. 660-61.

4.Ibid.. Vol. 28, p. 343.

Page 28

Notes:

The whole thing refers to the New Creation coming down from above - now down into the psycho-vital or physico-vital or even the subtle physical plane. This New Creation is the creation of the Divine Love - the Mother's Love.

Morning Star - Venus, Goddess of Love - embodying New Creation.

Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow+red+a touch of brown - physico-vital or even subtle physical plane - the New Creation come down on that plane.

Page 29