On Savitri
THEME/S
LECTURE III
We are trying to follow the epic Savitri, though we are not making a study of the whole epic. We will now pursue an aspect which is less serious in the sense that it doesn't deal with any problem of life - because Savitri does deal, as we saw before, with questions such as whether the world is a mechanical determination which is irresistible and which must now have its way, the consciousness of man having no say in it. That was one problem as we saw. The epic also concerns itself with the evolution of man from his natural self to his true being or his spirit./Aswapathy gets this realization of the spirit, leading to a widening of his true being, equating him with the cosmos, with the universal consciousness, the universal being. Marching through all the planes which have their counterpart in his nature, he is then led to a divine consciousness where he is able to take the whole of human aspiration and put it before the Divine; he prays to the Divine for help and for an emanation to be sent down to mankind in order to solve the problem of man's ignorance and subjection to death. This boon is granted to the human soul, represented by Aswapathy. He gets self-knowledge from within, world-knowledge from around and God-knowledge from above. These three positions are the positions of one omnipresent Reality. It is one Reality which is present in all the statuses. Aswapathy realizes this and gets a boon for mankind - the supreme Mother sends an emanation of herself in the form of Savitri, the daughter of King Aswapathy, to save mankind from ignorance and death. That is where we were. Now we shall go a little further.
The further problem that arises, which we touched upon yesterday, is the problem of pain. If there is an omnipresent Reality at work, a supreme wisdom and grace managing the
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cosmos, why is there any place for pain and suffering in life? Savitri has chosen Satyavan for her husband, and he is fated to die one year after. So the mother of Savitri is putting this question to Narada, the great divine sage, as to why the arrangement of the world is such that the most innocent person is subject to unmerited suffering. The problem arises as to why there is pain and who created this pain? Now to these questions, many answers have been given already in the world's growth up till now. Somebody said that this world will always remain imperfect and subject to suffering and pain and death; this is the constitution of the world and you cannot change it. That is one answer. Buddhism gives a second answer: there is a mechanism; it is there and you know it is due to Karma, action and reaction - when you subject yourself to desire and impulses, it will always have the reaction of suffering thrown upon you. Therefore, the best thing is to get out of it. That is the escape suggested. The world scheme will always remain like that, so it is best not to bother about it; you get out of it, you try to escape. Leave desires, give up desires, don't be subject to this force of possession and acquisition. Give it up and you will gradually retire into a state in which being itself ceases to exist. At least, pain will not be there. That is the solution given.
Now here in Savitri another solution is being given to us, a more integral and a more satisfying solution in the sense that it explains to us - given an omnipresent reality, given a divine being who works and is the cosmos - where arises the possibility of pain in it? Well, you get an explanation! and that is why I think that it is a more satisfying and integral reply to man's question about the place of pain and its origin. Why is there pain at all? That is the question being asked; and who created pain? The answer in Savitri is that you yourself are the author of your pain. When you read the poem you will
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get the full answer, but here the poet is giving you the answer in a nutshell.
And secondly, is there destiny in the sense of something that must happen - fate? Are things fated which cannot be overcome? There is doom, suffering and death, the consequence of ignorance; but is there any fate or determination by higher powers, powers beyond man's control, who have fixed what must happen in a way that it is not a lower determination but a higher determination that arranges things? Is there such a higher determination at work? And can that higher divine determinism be activated in the human situation? The fifth book, where Savitri meets Satyavan - its title is "The Destined Meeting Place" - explains partly what people call fate or destiny. If an omnipresent Reality is working above, you will say it knows everything, it is aware of all things. Yes, quite right. In the lower sphere, it surcharges what we may call the compelling stuff of things. The Omniscient works in the compelling stuff of things and it works there with knowledge. Here the stuff is subject to a compulsion where it seems to act automatically, but really it obeys the Omniscient and the Omnipotent. The two positions, then, are the position in knowledge where everything is known and the position where nothing is known - yet still things are determined by the presence of the Omniscient and Omnipresent in this compelling stuff of things. A flower or a seed is compelled to become what it has to become. There is no choice given to it.
Is there such a thing as fate? We shall see today whether we can make some headway with this question. Because so far as the problem of pain is concerned, there are various answers as I have told you just now. Who is responsible for pain? Is it Karma? Is escape a solution out of it? If you say that escape is the only solution, you will have to say that mind is the only reality. If you accept the
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solution that Karma is the machinery responsible for suffering and pain to man, then the only answer from the metaphysical position will be that mind is the only reality in the world, that man is a mental being, that the process of the universe is led, if at all it is led, to a mental consciousness and that there is nothing more than mind at work in the cosmos. In that case, only that solution can be satisfying. Whether that is so is another question. Incarnations and philosophers have tackled this problem of pain, its why and wherefore and the remedy for it, because pain exists not only on one level. In the physical body there is pain owing to disease and weakness and fatigue and illness. In the collective life you will find that the problem of pain, the infliction of pain, is in the whole record of human history. If you study history, you will find that there is war and death and pestilence and killing and all kinds of ills: that is pain on the collective side.
The area of pain is rather large. Why did the Eternal do this thing? If you say that there is an omnipresent Reality at work, then why did He create pain? Was He compelled? That is how the question will arise: Is there a Reality behind this whole process? Or is this an illusion, all that we experience, even pleasure and pain and escape? Could we end in agnosticism? Nothing is there: after all you cannot know. There is an Unknowable at work and all its processes are a blind man's bluff. You simply go and hit in the dark and you say that this is the solution.
What was the utility and need of pain in the cosmic scheme of things? This is how Narada looked at the problem and he gives the answer to it as a divine representative of knowledge. He makes, first of all, an impersonal statement about pain because he is not subject to pain and he sees from a higher status the place of pain in the life of man; and then he puts a condition for changing or conquering or removing pain from
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the scheme of life. While talking to Savitri's mother, he says that even world seers have had to admit the necessity of pain because unless and until the working of the cosmic scheme is gone through by the Creator himself, in some form or other, the solution of its problems cannot be given by the Divine to man. His whole discourse ends in saying: "It is you who have selected and chosen this scheme of pain. Pain is in fact the distortion or rather the perversion of an all-pervading delight. An all-pervading delight is there which is felt by man as pain when it is perverted or changed and distorted." Why have mortals chosen this particular hazard? That explanation we will perhaps see when we come to the detail of the problem.
Now before we go into this problem of suffering, which is not very pleasant, we will go through some pleasant problems so that we can have some delight. The poet is describing Savitri going from her house to choose a husband, because her father, Aswapathy, has told her, "Your destiny is there - you must shape your own destiny." Some unknown spirit bore this child, that is how he saw her. You find that Savitri is going and that the seasons are passing as she travels. There is one canto, the first canto of Book Four, which is a description of the seasons. We won't read the whole. I'll read only the description of Spring, so that you may understand why so many poets have described the seasons and appreciate the exuberance of Nature; all that you will read here, it's a study by itself, a study of how, from the height beyond mind, one sees the operation of what appears to be inconscient Nature. I would like you to read it yourself, because it is best you approach it as a whole. I will only read a part of the description of Spring, a few lines from the description of Spring:
Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
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And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;
His advent was a fire of irised hues,
His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.
Impatient for felicity he came,
High-fluting with the coil's happy voice,
His peacock turban trailing on the trees;
His breath was a warm summons to delight,
A godlike packed intensity of sense
Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe;
All sights and voices wove a single charm.
The life of the enchanted globe became
A storm of sweetness and of light and song,
A revel of colour and of ecstacy,
A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:
A strain of choral priestly music sang
And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,
A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.
Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,
Pure like the breath of an unstained desire
White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,
Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice
Of the love-maddened coil, and the brown bee
Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds.
The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.
All Nature was at beauty's festival.
That is Spring. You get some idea of how beauty can be seen from above and brought into poetic expression.
Savitri has to go on her quest. She grows up into a young girl and she finds no companions quite fit to deserve her intimacy. She meets many groups of people, many individuals; some are nice, some look up to her as their guide.
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some come to her for a while, some have such demands that she cannot meet them on the human plane. All different kinds of associations take place around her in her infancy and adolescence, but she finds nobody who is fit to be her companion, one with whom she can be completely intimate. And at the end the poet says:
Whoever is too great must lonely live.
Adored he walks in mighty solitude;
Vain is his labour to create his kind,
His only comrade is the Strength within.
That is perhaps quite true. And then Savitri goes out on her travels, passing through different countries, and there you find a description of the various facets of culture, of life, of man; the quest has begun. She passes through temples, hamlets, cities and the capitols of kings. Then she goes through various Ashrams - the hermitages of people who have realized the truth. She also meets some wise kings:
A few and fit inhabitants she called
To share the glad communion of her peace;
The breadth, the summit were their natural home.
The strong king-sages from their labour done,
Freed from the warrior tension of their task,
Came to her serene sessions in these wilds;
The strife was over, the respite lay in front.
In a fair groves some kings retired. They came and lived there in peace.
Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night.
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Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one.
These people who lived in retirement:
They sojourned with an everliving Bliss;
A Voice profound in the ecstacy and the hush
They heard, beheld an all-revealing Light.
Then there were the ascetics:
Nameless the austere ascetics without home
Abandoning speech and motion and desire,
Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,
Immaculate in tranquil heights of self
On concentration's luminous voiceless peaks,
World-naked hermits with their matted hair,
Immobile as the passionless great hills
Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood
Awaiting the Infinite's behest to end.
Now we will read some passages where the meeting takes place between Satyavan and Savitri, so as to give some idea of the fifth book. Satyavan is telling Savitri how he looks upon their meeting:
I plunged into an inner seeing Mind
And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind's bewildered slave:
The mystery was not solved, but deepened more.
I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,
He says: I pursued Beauty and Art
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But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;
Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.
It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign.
Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:
I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.
I looked upon the world and missed the Self
And when I found the Self, I lost the world,
My other selves I lost and the body of God,
The link of the finite with the Infinite,
The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,
The mystic aim for which the world was made,
The human sense of Immortality.
I could not get what I sought, he says.
But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet
And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
Satyavan says: I did try to get into the depths of the mind, the profound secret of mental being, through Art and Beauty and life; and when the Self was there then the world was lost, and when the world was there the Self was forgotten. But now
His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
And now another realm draws near with thee
And now diviner voices fill my ear,
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;
A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song
Of flaming Gods. I draw a wealthier breath
And in a fierier march of moments move.
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.
A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss
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Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:
All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream
Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee
And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue
Because of a change within me by thy look.
That is an expression of love poetry - if you wish to call it that - but it is something not quite of this world perhaps. We will not take time explaining that which is to be felt more than explainer.
Savitri has selected Satyavan and she approaches her father's house and meets her parents. The problem of pain comes here, in this second canto of the sixth book where Savitri's mother addresses herself to Narada, the great divine sage.
Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven she spoke.
And then she asks him about pain:
By what pitiless adverse Necessity
Or what cold freak of a Creator's will.
By what random accident or governed Chance came
The direr mystery of grief and pain?
Is it thy God who made this cruel law?
Or some disastrous Power has marred his work
And he stands helpless to defend or save?
The mother of Savitri is putting the question. You can't put it more strongly, I think, in any language. The question that comes to human mind - well, I think it fine. Later, she says:
What need had the soul of ignorance and tears?
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What power forced the immortal spirit to birth?
Or who persuaded it to fall from bliss?
Perhaps the soul we feel is only a dream,
Eternal self a fiction sensed in trance.
Savitri's mother is asking Narada, "Why is there this will to live? Is there at all a soul?" And Narada replies to her with a counter question and then explains why pain exists:
Was then the sun a dream because there is night?
Hidden in the mortal's heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,
Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;
Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone
Pain is a hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.
Pain is the signature of the Ignorance
Attesting the secret God denied by life:
Until life finds him pain can never end.
Thou art a vessel of the imprisoned spark.
It seeks relief from Time's envelopment,
And while thou shutst it in, the seal is pain:
You get some idea of the place of pain in the scheme of things. Then Narada goes further and explains that with pain
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and labour all creation comes, and that even God's messengers have to bear the law of pain. When God's messenger comes to help the world:
He too must bear the pang that he would heal:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth's fate, '
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
So even if you don't see any outer pain in God's messenger, it is there; the battle is inside, because the messenger represents mankind by his identity with it. He on himself takes vicariously all the suffering of mankind. He may not have any personal suffering as people speak of it, but the grief is there by his identity with the cosmic self: he receives all the grief of the human being, all the grief of humanity into himself, so vicariously there is always suffering within him, even if there is no personal cause for grief. The battle is inside and not outside. The hostility to the Divine is the origin of this pain - intangible forces are there. When light penetrates into the abyss, the law of pain will change.
Man is in fact the author of his own pain:
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
Because man is essentially an immaterial, immortal self which has chosen to live in this "negative infinity". There was at that time of choice an attraction of the void, the grandeur of the abyss. Sri Aurobindo says of man's soul:
It longed for the adventure of ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown.
There was ruin and glamour, accident and chance, hazard and victory, incertitude and the companionship of souls and
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so many other things adventurous in time. It is that which attracted the soul to take up the plunge into the inconscience and ignorance of the world.
A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees creates a truth
Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,
This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire's tents, grief s headquarters.
A vast disguise conceals the Eternal's bliss.
The Eternal's bliss is concealed here in this vast disguise.
Then Savitri's mother asks a question: "Is it fated that all things will remain like this and man will have only this circle of pain and suffering." The answer is given in this sixth book:
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
And then Narada addresses the human being. He is talking to the Queen, but suddenly he addresses humanity rather than replying to her directly:
Oh man, the events that meet thee in thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief.
Are not thy fate; they touch thee awhile and pass;
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"Thy Goal" is to reach "the indwelling God"
O soul, intruder in Nature's ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit's fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless Self.
The whole of human life has been such a march from inconscience to a growing light. Well, Narada is giving a reply to the questions of Savitri's mother in this context. Later when Savitri has come to face Death and has conquered Him and overcome the argument of the God of Death, she rises to the supernal level of the consciousness of the Truth and the Light. There a divine voice questions her and asks her to seek an individual escape, perfection or delight by merging or constantly dwelling in the Supreme without bothering about the fate of mankind. But Savitri, consistent in her replies on more than six occasions, each time confirms her will to bring the Light to mankind because that is the mission given to her, and she does not want to take advantage of such a boon. She says: My mission is to bring this divine light to mankind and raise mankind to the divine height. That is how she puts it, so I will read some portion of her reply to the Divine:
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is a heroic spirit's battlefield.
The forge where the Archmason shapes his works.
Thy servitude on earth is greater. King,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.
Savitri is replying to the Supreme.
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Imperfect is the joy not shared by all
She is speaking to the Divine, remember.
Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.
Now perhaps it is good that I give you two passages which are very important in the sense that they are the height of inspiration: first, when Aswapathy stands before the supreme Mother and later when he prays to her for a boon. These passages are preceded by a long argument by the supreme Mother persuading Aswapathy not to bother about solving man's problem. When Aswapathy is praying to the supreme Mother; she appears to him and says: "What you have attained is yours, but ask no more, because mankind is not ready; if you bring the Light prematurely it may be too much for mankind to digest; therefore it is better to let the slow movement of evolution work itself out, and not press for an immediate intervention of the Divine in the evolutionary process." That is what it comes to ultimately: you should not ask for a divine intervention in a hurry because humanity will not be able to bear the descent of the higher power before its time. That is why the supreme Mother is asking him to continue to work in the light which he has received for some progress for mankind, for some service to knowledge. Aswapathy replies to her:
How shall I rest content with mortal days
And the dull measure of terrestrial things,
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?
Aswapathy is telling the divine Mother: How long shall we have to bear this yoke of night and death?
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We who are the vessels of a deathless Force.
And then he says: We are trying and struggling - but in the struggle of man where is the sign of divine intervention, where is the ray of thy coming? Or if it is thy work that I do below, why do I not see any sign of thy being with me? Where is the thunder of thy victory's wings? I do not see the victory of the divine approaching.
The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,
The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.
All we have done is ever still to do.
All breaks and all renews and is the same.
Huge revolutions of life's fruitless gyre,
The new-born ages perish like the old,
Man struggles a little, works a little and hopes for future perfection.
Then Aswapathy is given an answer, a vision. "I know that thy creation cannot fail", Aswapathy says, "because I have seen", and then he describes the vision he has seen: "forerunners of the divine multitude" are coming, "architects of immortality" are descending into man, and they will do the work of perfecting mankind.
Then he appeals to the supreme consciousness, praying to her at the end of his argument:
"O truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe.
Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
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As if Time dare not open its heart to God.
O radiant fountain of the world's delight
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue.
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.
One moment filled with thy eternity
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."
Aswapathy's prayer sinks down in the resisting night, oppressed by the thousand forces that deny. And then the divine Mother gives a reply to his entreaty:
"O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend, and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth.
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
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And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword
And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will."
There you find some description of what Aswapathy asked and what boon was given. At the end of the epic, the supreme Godhead says to Savitri:
O Word, cry out the immortal litany.
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.
Even humanity will awaken to the deepest self. There is a long passage in which Savitri affirms the coming down of the supreme Light into her and Satyavan. They are working for the perfection of mankind and creating for humanity the divine life on earth. There you get some concept of Savitri. It is an outline, because in two or three days you can't get the whole of Savitri. But you can get something about what it deals with, you can get an idea, a rough outline.
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Questions and Answers
When you were reading about pain, this world situation, couldn't we think of it as birth pangs?
Yes, of course we can. Certainly the present world situation is the birth pang of a new era, a new age.
May we think of Sri Aurobindo's message as a voice saying something similar to "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven"? Isn't Sri Aurobindo reiterating from the East that same message?
Because the world situation requires the message, because there is a need, therefore it has come. I will give one line that explains this nicely: Aswapathy has reached the transcendent consciousness, and he is looking down, from the plane of Motherhood, the House of the Spirit.
Then suddenly there came a downward look.
Aswapathy looked down
As if a sea exploring its own depths,
Do you follow the image properly? Then what did he see?
A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
When he looked down from the transcendent, he saw that
The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings.
All life a song of many meeting lives;
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Each character in Savitri typifies one line of growth. The King passes through one stage, Savitri passes through another, penetrating into the cosmic constitution. Aswapathy expands his consciousness into the cosmic and transcendent. Knowing the constitution of existence, he tries to fulfil the mission that is given to him of progress towards the Light, and for that progress he requires the help of the Divine so he prays for it; the help is given to him in the form of a boon: that Savitri will be born to help man to solve the problem of ignorance and death. Then Savitri is born and seeing that the constitution of the universe is imperfect, she brings the perfect divine consciousness into the nature of man in order to realize immortality for him. Immortality is another word for divine consciousness.
Then she overcomes death?
Yes, death on earth. This possibility of change of the whole human nature from its present condition into a more perfect divine nature has not been visualized by any seer before. That is the special contribution Sri Aurobindo has given to mankind. If it had been given before, perhaps man would not have understood it. First, the necessity of transformation; second, the process of transformation - how to do it. Its possibility was not known before. This is the way in which it is now given to mankind; human nature as well as human consciousness is capable of liberation and perfection, and that perfection consists in a transformation of nature, not a rejection of nature but a transformation, not a control only, not a type of behaviour according to ethics and morality, but a free expression of the Divine in man with the divine nature. The Divine has the divine nature which man can also acquire by replacing his human nature by the elements of the divine
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nature within him. That is how the Kingdom has to come.
The idea of the Kingdom was there. The process of the Kingdom was not there. It is now given to mankind to fill up that gap and get the total idea of what is the Kingdom of Heaven. Then there will be a perfection of knowledge, a perfection of will, a perfection of aesthetic life, a perfection of the plenty of life and a perfection of material life. There you have got the four aspects in which perfection must be realized: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati, the four aspects of the supreme Mother that are perfect. This conception was never given before - that is why I particularly point it out because people think it is the same message. Yes, it is the same message in a sense, but so much amplified as to become quite a new message, so filled up with content that you would say, "Oh, yes, this is quite new."
Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati -these are the four main aspects of the supreme Mother: wisdom, power, harmony, and perfection in work. Physical and material work that is perfect, harmony and love and cooperation in life, irresistible will, and knowledge without any falsehood or darkness. Knowledge, will, harmony and beauty, perfection in material organization - these four aspects of the Divine have to be brought by the human being into his life. The man who is now full of ordinary knowledge will have to bring the Maheshwari aspect into his consciousness so that she may give him true Knowledge. The man who is dedicated to machinery will have to bring into his life the Mahasaraswati aspect - perfect detail and organization in material life - so as to make matter a fit receptacle of the spirit, to make matter express the spirit perfectly. That is how the four aspects of the divine Nature have to come into the human being and embody humanity's work; then humanity will have perfection.
Read the sixth chapter of the book The Mother and you
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will understand this. It is a very small book; the sixth chapter gives you the four aspects of the supreme Mother: Mahesh-wari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati: knowledge, will-power or force, harmony and love, and perfection of life, meaning fullness of life and perfection in material work. Matter, life, power and knowledge - each aspect of human expression has a divine perfection and that perfection has to be brought into mankind. So the perfection of mankind and the perfectibility of life, individual and collective, is now a filled-in concept because of Sri Aurobindo.
Take the problem of pain, regarded as a problem which has to be solved. Some solve it in one way, another in another way, but now Sri Aurobindo has given us the idea that pain is the intermediate condition chosen by the soul freely for its growth from inconscience to light. Therefore the soul itself has selected to go through ignorance and pain. It is not that somebody has imposed it and said, "Oh, you must suffer indefinitely." There is a solution for it. Pain can be completely eliminated. It will not be necessary to go through the process of pain once the divine Nature has come into life. That is the solution. The solution is not to reject pain and say, "All right, I will run away from life," or, "Oh! Pain is always there, therefore let me retire." That is not the solution because to go through pain is the choice of the soul itself. The fall into inconscience was selected because of the adventure of the unknown. Matter and inconscience were taken up by the soul as an adventure and in the adventure suffering and pain and ignorance have to come in as an intermediate state, that's all; so it is only a temporary state through which each individual has to pass; but he can pass beyond, and you do find expressions of people who have passed beyond. It's not merely the statement of a wish or an ideal. For instance, in the Upanishad you find it said, "Oh, oh, oh! I have become the immortal, I have overcome igno-
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rance and pain." When the poet says that all is delight and delight and delight, he is speaking of his own experience. So there are people who have gone through this formula, through this rung of the difficulty of ignorance and pain and have gone beyond it - pain has been overcome in certain cases.
But now one has to see how far mankind can open itself to this new truth and work out the problem of pain. It is not that it will be done in one day. This elimination of pain is not a question of one day but a question of long trial. Just as in the course of evolution you don't arrive at an immediate solution, just as in science you have to wait for some time before a new discovery is perfected, so with a big problem like pain you have to allow centuries to intervene before a change comes. How many people died before the airplane became a success? From the eighteenth century or so they were flying with hydrogen, remember, and so many people died. They didn't know how to control the coming down, but ultimately their efforts lead to success. In the same way the elimination of pain will take time. It is not that tomorrow you will be free from pain, but at least you can see that that has to be done; then you apply yourself and gradually, one by one, the problems are solved until the final solution is found.
Don't you think, too, Purani, that understanding why pain is here makes it easier to accept and gives one a different attitude towards it?
Yes, your attitude changes towards pain, and therefore its effect wears out. It doesn't become so acute. When it comes, you know that it has come for teaching you something, teaching you an attitude to understand, and immediately the sharpness goes out of it.
This was demonstrated very powerfully in the Middle
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Ages, particularly in spiritual women who had great ability to organize; and in almost every case these women didn't go off into a private ecstacy of their own. They did go into ecstasy, but always they brought it down to a very concrete definition in life. They founded nunneries; they founded hospitals; they got right down to humanity, and they never ceased to work until the day of their death, but they still held their meditations.
Life is a field for expression, so life will be always dealt with by a true spiritual person. Life will be always dealt with, life will not be allowed to remain what it is, to the extent that the person can do something with the divine help. The spiritual person always tries to bring into life a new stream, a new current, to the extent that he is destined to do so by the Divine. No spiritual person ever lives life alone, he always acts upon life and reacts to life's shocks. That is one mission of a spiritual person, to take part in life. He may take part in life by saying, "Give it up", but always he does take part in life.
One way or another he does.
He has to. Sri Aurobindo has at least brought one institution - his Ashram - into existence which shows that spirituality in life can be true. I don't say it fully succeeds, but at least it is a try. You wouldn't dare to think of it if he had not tried. An institution which shows that man can try to bring the spirit into life - it is a big thing, such a big thing. If somebody tries it, it is a very great thing, because it is a rare person who can make even a trial. It isn't easy.
I was going to get your idea on it. Now I have it.
You have Sri Aurobindo's idea, which is better than mine.
What we say is that the growth of man from inconscience to light is destined. The events and occurrences and expe-
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riences that come are of secondary importance. What happens is not important - the direction in which one is going is important, and that is destined. There is a Will at work which will push man towards the realization of the ultimate truth. You cannot escape it. That is the destiny of life on earth.
You may have to go through more than one life?
There may be thousands of lives, but the realisation of the ultimate truth is destined.
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