Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study

V

Savitri's Modernism

FROM what we have written about the relationship which —" Sāvitrī bears to Vedic and Upanishadic content and manner, one might perhaps be led to think that Sāvitrī is something very much of the past and may have no bearing to the present age. This will be a "grave mistake because to have similarity of content and manner with the Veda and the Upanisad is not at all to be antiquated or obsolete. These ancient writings deal with perennial problems of life and in that sense they are as modern as the most modernist expression. Besides, Sri Aurobindo in spite of his long retirement from the outside world has not ceased to be constantly in contact with the contemporary living and thinking to which he himself has contributed in no small measure. He has kept himself abreast of all the movements of progress in every line of cultural activity. Sāvitrī dealing with the entire expanse of evolution from the dark Nescience to the supreme levels of the Superconscient covering all problems of fundamental importance touched by the intellect of the man and dealing with every aspect of mystical living, could not naturally be supposed to be shut up in some obsolete and narrow vision, however brilliant it may be, of the past dawns of humanity. As it contains a rich variety of style and subject matter the modem element naturally comes in as a most spontaneous and organic dement. This is as one should expect, because the whole vision of Sāvitrī is not otherworldly; it does not turn away from the life on earth. In the words of Mr. Sethna, Sri Aurobindo "outdoes the ancient scriptures in the aspiration to suffuse and transform earth's life with the golden Immortal the Rishis saw everywhere pressing for manifestation. And in his care to get the acting externals into harmony by some power from within, his concern about the poor unfulfilled trivialities that are divorced from the deep springs of our consciousness, he outdoes also the modernism of Eliot no less than

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Jung". We shall just show from a few quotations how this modem- ism has become an organic part of his creative faculty, so much so that; a reader of Sāvitrī if he wants to enter into the deepest spirit and all the rich overtones and suggestive aura which surrounds the poetical form of expression should have his mind fully alive and '' alert to all die progressive movements of presentday humanity. He will find that the author, at times, not only brings "the sperm and gene" and "plasm and gas" but he also takes images and figures from all over the world and every field of cultural activity to serve his purpose. Even the second world-war-phrase finds a place "behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears" reminding us of the famous Churchilian phrase. The unrolling of the cosmic panorama finds an apt image in the Japanese rolls of painting "a kakemono of significant forms". And how far the latest scientific advances have become assimilated in his poetic genius can be seen from the revealing way in which, under the intense flame of inspiration, he utilises this advance of material science to concretise, to objectify a spiritual reality. While speaking about "the Godheads of Little Life", he speaks of Aswapathy having "plunged his gaze into the siege of mist" of the lower vital and then:

"As when a search-light stabs the Night's blind breast

And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear

As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,

All lurking things were torn out of their veils

And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze."

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 5.

Even relativity of Einstein and De Sitter's researches find an echo in "parent of an expanding universe", (Book II, Canto 5.) and while dealing with the formation of Matter the reader will have to have some familiarity with the latest theory of the electrical constitution of matter. He speaks of:

"An ocean of electrical Energy

Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles

Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,

Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;

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Masses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;

Light flung the photon's swift revealing spark".

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 5.

We gave above the effective use of the simile of searchlight. In the same way, television has found its utility in this grand spiritual vision of the Master. While speaking of "the Glory and Fall of Life" (Book II, Canto 3) he introduces us to the beings of the higher vital plane, living in an independent vital world constituted entirely differently from our gross material earth. Says he:

"As through a magic television's glass

Outlined to some magnifying inner eye

They shone like images thrown from a far scene

Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize"

It almost lays bare the process of occult vision by which a man is able to see the subtle worlds. The process of television gives to it not only a great sense of concreteness but of a convincing reality by bringing to the doubting physical mind a process of scientific invention which seems to render the impossible possible. The suggestion is that if television can make distant objects visible and near, why should not there be an inner faculty of sight capable of a similar function with regard to inner worlds? In another context also, (Book II, Canto 7) he speaks of the Dark Beings that "came televisioned from the gulfs of Night". The great Master in his supreme art can turn even the illegal process of smuggling to a divine advantage in his creation. Dealing with "The Paradise of the Life-Gods" (Book II, Canto 9) he speaks of Aswapathy's thrilling experience as follows:

"His earth, dowered with celestial competence,

Harboured a power that needed now no more

To cross the closed customs-line of mind and flesh

And smuggle godhead into humanity."

The revealing vision at times daringly explains to our mind the creation of the physical world from the supra-physical in lines like the following:

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"Proton and photon served the imager Eye

To change things subtle into a physical world".

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.

There is "quantum" and "robot" and "atomic parcellings of the infinite" and "a thinking body from chemic cells", (p. 145). There is even a reference to the breaking up of the atom when he speaks of "The Kingdoms of Godheads of the Little Mind":

"And Nature's plastic and protean change

And, strong by death to slay or to create,

The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force."

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.

While speaking of the higher planes of consciousness above the mind he takes advantage of the scientific image by the spontaneous alchemy of his vision and gives us the convincing line:

"Above in a high breathless stratosphere"

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.

Even the last war and some of the latest means employed by the air-arm have been marvellously woven into the texture of this grand spiritual vision. While speaking of the first breaking of the spiritual dawn, the awakening to the divine possibilities of life, he says:"-

"Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed

Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares".

Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto I.

It is the dropping of flares by the fighter-planes at night to light up or indicate the path to the target to the bombers that follow in the dark ignorance of humanity which is like the night. Man's thoughts and hopes have no final importance but are useful only as indications of the way towards which the spirit of man has to move. The whole psychological vision of man's life, its relative importance, and a whole world of suggestion connected with it is here packed in a single line. So also when Aswapathy moves in the high "stratosphere" of the superconscient, he again employs the strategy of the last war to serve his poetic vision. And so concrete and effective is the use!:

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"As far as its self-winged airplanes could fly,

"It reconnoitred vistas of dream fate."

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.

Drawing further the same image he works it out into a vision of the spiritual military operation:

"Apt to conceive, unable to attain,

It drew its concept-maps, and vision-plans

Too large for the architecture of mortal Space."

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.

In some places, there is such a blending of old Vedic image and the one based upon modem scientific advance that one hardly notices the transition. In the same breath he speaks of

"The troglodytes of the subconscious Mind,

Ill-trained slow stammering interpreters"

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 5.

and

"Mid an obscure occult machinery,

Captured the mystic Morse whose measured lilt

Transmits the messages of the cosmic Force."

(ibid.)

The first part of this refers to the cave-dwelling Panis of the Veda and the latter deals with the mystic Morse code which transmits the messages of the cosmic Force. As for mathematics, there is— "Necessity's logarithmic table" and "the calculus of destiny" and "the recurrent decimal of events" but most staggering is his use of mathematical technique when he succeeds in conveying a spiritual reality, for instance:

"It made all persons fractions of the Unique,

Yet all were being's secret integers."

Sāvitrī, Book III, Canto 3.

This may be said to be the most mathematical way of saying that each being is a portion of the Divine, and all is the Divine. In his hands "multiplication's sum" becomes "rapturous", and there are "the recurring decimals of eternity".

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There is a film-world or images caught in "imagination's camera". Travelling through "the Kingdom of Little Life" , the awakened eye of the witness consciousness does not see merely the huge waste of material and effort involved in the process '^ of evolution but sees in it "the secret crawl of consciousness to light"...through

Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 4.

"The turbid yeast of nature's passionate change,

Ferment of the soul's creation out of mire".

The awakening of consciousness to Light through the "fertile slime of lust" and sense by the fermentation brought about by the nature's passion to create a soul has been so aptly imaged with the whole world of suggestion of the transformation of one substance into quite another with a set of new undreamt of and intense qualities as a result of chemical process!

He refers to "unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond" signed by man's religion practising fraud upon the credit-bank of Time, and there comes also "cowled fifth-columnist" who comes as "thought's guide'". We come across not only bank and all the multiple activities of modem life in this great epic of the human spirit which deals with the realms of eternal Light as yet unattained by humanity but also with "Inconscient's magic printing-house" where the "formats of the primal Night are torn" and the "stereo- types of ignorance" are "shattered". To the author life is "wide world kindegarten of young souls"!

The quotations we have given are by no means exhaustive but they will serve to show the universal range of the creation which is Sāvitrī. A cosmos of multiple worlds acting and reacting upon the growing consciousness of the earth is seen moving towards planes of consciousness unattained by man and the future destiny of man, the whole life of man with all his multifarious activities is seen in the light of this grand vision. Nothing is left out as unimportant. The most ultramodern elements find their proper place in this complex and integral vision. Sāvitrī, even as a poem, would require its reader, as one can see from the quotations, to have a wide range of acquaintance with the latest advances in almost every branch of human culture.

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