On Savitri

The Human Divine

(l)

The Passing of Satyavan

This was the day when Satyavan must die.

The day is come, the fateful day, the last day of the twelve happy months that they have passed together. She knew it, it was foretold, it was foreseen. And she was preparing herself for it all the while, harbouring a pain deep-seated within the heart, revealed to none, not even to her mother, not even to Satyavan. Satyavan was innocent like a child, oblivious of the fate that was coming upon him. The two went out of the hermitage into the forest; for she wished to move about in the company of Satyavan in the midst of the happy greeneries where Satyavan had passed his boyhood, his youth. She was watching Satyavan at every step, she did not want to be caught unawares:

Love in her bosom hurt with jagged edges

Of anguish moaned at every step with pain

Crying, "Now, now perhaps his voice will cease For ever."...¹

She was on tip-toe as it were, almost breathless, the end must be coming on fast.

Her life was now in seconds, not in hours,

And every moment she economised...²

Satyavan in playfulness was cutting the branch of a tree with a joyous axe and on his lips:

...high snatches of a sage's chant

That pealed of conquered death and demons slain,³

1.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 563.

2.Ibid.

3. Ibid.

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All of a sudden the doom came upon him, he felt a biting pain through his body and an invading suffocation besieged him. He threw away the axe and cried out to Savitri:

"Savitri, a pang Cleaves through my head and breast...

Such agony rends me...

Awhile let me lay my head upon thy lap..."⁴

Savitri saw the end coming and she was ready:

All grief and fear were dead within her now

And a great calm had fallen.⁵

His life was ebbing away and

He cried out in a clinging last despair,

"Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,

Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die."...

His cheek pressed down her golden arm.

She sought His mouth still with her living mouth, as if

She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;

Then grew aware they were no more alone.

Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.

Near her she felt a silent shade immense...⁶

Death is come claiming his prey, Satyavan must go and leave Savitri.

(2)

The Inter-Zone

Death is carrying away Satyavan, the luminous soul of

4.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 564.

5.Ibid.

6.Ibid, p. 565.

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Satyavan. The Great Shadow is leading the way, Satyavan following and Savitri clinging to his steps. Death saw Savitri pursuing, he turned and tried to dissuade her from the pursuit. Savitri refused to turn back. Death warned her, it was already a wrong and anomalous act that she has done to have crossed over to his sphere in her earthly personal being. It is time now to go back. Savitri answered that she would go back only with Satyavan in his earthly body. Death became impatient and answered: "You ask for the impossible. You want to go back to earth for earthly happiness. You can have that in plenty without Satyavan. Satyavan has passed beyond and there is no return for him." But Savitri was firm in her resolution:

"I claim back Satyavan as he was, my happiness is with him alone."

As they proceeded, they mounted higher and higher regions of being. And a change was coming on visibly on Savitri. Death was explaining to her that happiness on earth or in earthly life is not the supremely desirable thing. The supreme desirable thing is to discard the maya of earthly life, that vale of tears and rise into the very source, the origin of creation, the infinite peace and silence. As Death was receding towards that ultimate Nothingness, the Divinity that Savitri was, the mighty Godhead that took a human shape, manifested itself more and more shedding all around her a great effulgence, a mighty power. She had entered into Death's own lair and identified herself with Death's self which is the Divine Himself. In that great burning Light Death was consumed and dissolved.

The dire universal Shadow disappeared

Vanishing into the Void from which it came....

And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.⁷

They stand face to face with the supreme Divine alone. There is yet a last choice to make. Death has been annihilated and immortality attained. One can rest there and enjoy immortality

7. Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 668.

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eternally beyond the mortal creation. But there is a greater destiny for the human soul. Ignorance is darkness indeed but to enter into Light alone is to enter into a greater darkness. And Savitri has attained the immortality as a human being, as human personality. She is to bring down that immortality into the human creature upon earth. She refuses the everlasting day and turns to come down again into the twilight mortality with all her immortal stature so that human beings may be rebuilt in that mould.

So they come down, Satyavan and Savitri, from the Supreme heavens, rushing down as heaven's blessing as it were, through ethereal atmospheres, gradually re-assuming the texture of earthly form till they found their material body again upon this concrete earth.

A power leaned down, a happiness found its home.

Over wide earth brooded the infinite bliss.⁸.

(3)

The Return

Satyavan lay on the green sward, over him and around green branches spread their peaceful felicity. His head reposed upon the lap of Savitri - exactly as he lay at the last fateful hour confronting the mighty shadow - as if there were no gap or hiatus in between, the great intervening experience was just a momentary vision and not the ageless Calvary that it seemed to be in the other sphere. But now

The waking gladness of her members felt

The weight of heaven in his limbs...

And all her life was conscious of his life...

Human she was once more, earth's Savitri,

Yet felt in her illimitable change.⁹

8.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 712.

9.Ibid., p. 715.

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Satyavan's being was there:

Pure, passionate with the passion of the gods.

Desire stirred not its wings; for all was made

An overarching of celestial rays

Like the absorbed control of sky on plain,

Heaven's leaning down to embrace from all sides earth...¹⁰

Satyavan now turned to Savitri, vague recollections rose in him and he cried out in wonder:

"Whence hast thou brought me captive back,

love-chained, To thee and sunlight's walls, O golden beam

And casket of all sweetness, Savitri,

Godhead and woman, moonlight of my soul?"¹¹

As he gazed upon her, his wonder grew more and more with a new flame of worship in his eyes and he exclaimed once more:

"What high change is in thee, O Savitri?

Bright Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure,

Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts

Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine."¹²

The embodied Divine does not discard or even minimise the human; on the contrary greatens and heightens this earthly being. It is a sea-change that is wrought in the content and in a certain modality of the form, but the essential form and content remain -somewhat like the process of fossilisation - mortality is squeezed out and all is moulded in immortality; the Divinity is there in all its fullness but there is added to it the exquisiteness that earth brings to the human.

10.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29. p. 716.

11.Ibid., p. 717.

12.Ibid., p. 718.

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And so Savitri says:

"We have borne identity with the Supreme

And known his meaning in our mortal lives... Yet nothing is lost of mortal love's delight. Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth... Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge; I am the Madran, I am Savitri."¹³

This is human as human can be, the quintessence of humanity; for it is human divinely.

13. Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 719.

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