Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study

SUMMARY OF BOOK THREE

THE BOOK OF THE DIVINE MOTHER

CANTO I

THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE

THE whole experience of life in the world as it is today can give — something. But, it is too little and "cannot fill the spirit's sacred thirst." Something seems to be missing which is badly wanted to make life perfect. In the absence of that something all other things acquired by man lose their significance. To Aswapathy came that experience—

"The labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind,

All knowledge ended in the Unknowable:

The effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will".

Thus, finding the pursuits of life insipid, he found that there was a peace and silence which settled in him, occasionally calling him to reach to something impalpable, something beyond, which yet filled his whole being.

"Near, it retreated; far, it called him still.

When that was absent it left

"...the greatest actions dull,

Its presence made the smallest seem divine."

Its absence made existence lose its aim and it turned existence into an impermanent scene. But he did not know the nature of this impalpable Reality. His attitude towards it varied according to his experience and culminated, at times, in doubt in his physical mind.

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At times it was an indescribable Vast "Or was a subtle kernel in the soul:" at other times, it was a distant greatness or a mystic closeness, while at other times, it appeared an unreal thing like the shadow. At times, he was subjected to corroding doubts. But, in spite of all doubts, he went on ascending higher and higher towards this vague Immensity condemning the finite things of the world to nothingness. Then, all of a sudden, he came to a height where nothing could live that belonged to this world. He seemed to approach a sheer Reality where

"All he had been and all towards which he grew

Must now be left behind or else transform

Into a self of That which has no name."

He had to lay all his humanness behind and identify himself with that Nameless. It was something which thought could not grasp, and will could not touch. All the instruments of his nature Which "Nescience builds collapsing failed." Even the cosmic Self fainted in this vastness and it was such that

"The separate self must melt or be reborn

Into a Truth beyond the mind's appeal."

All names and forms completely disappeared and all the systems of the world disappeared one by one. The whole universe appeared like a veil and behind that was seen the transcendent Divine with "his feet firm-based on Life's stupendous wings." The movement of eternal Time returned to His timeless eternity and nothing of the cosmic mind's conception remained. Everything seemed to be "A hue and imposition on the Void".

There

"A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,

And Everlastingness cut off from Time".

The peace and silence of this vastness rejected the world and the soul from itself. Some stark Reality alone remained

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"Facing him with its dumb tremendous calm.

It had no kinship with the universe".

There was no act, no movement in it,

"There was no second, it had no partner or peer".

It was, in fact, itself

"A pure existence safe from thought and mood".

It was—

"Uncreating, uncreated and unborn,

The One by whom all live, who lives by none,

"Guarded by the veils of the Unmanifest".

It was

"A silent Cause occult, impenetrable,—

Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone."

CANTO II

THE ADORATION OF THE DIVINE MOTHER

"A stillness absolute, incommunicable,

Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul,"

And this stillness "makes unreal all that mind has known". But it does not mean that everything made is unreal.

"A high and black negation is not all,

A huge extinction is not God's last word".

In this state when only the Inconceivable is left

"Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;

The ego is dead; we are free from being and care,

We have done with birth and death and work and fate."

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This would indicate that the state of consciousness now reached leaves no function for the self. Should then the self cease from existence, i.e., merge into the Ineffable? The poet asks the question "But where hast thou thrown self's mission and self's power?" Because, according to the Poet,

"Escape brings not the victory and the crown!

Something thou cam'st to do from the Unknown,"

And that work is not done. Not only that but the world goes on and

"Only the everlasting No has neared

"But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes?"

It is the fulfilment of life on earth where a reconciliation between delight and silence, passion and beauty, between life's opposites has to be effected. The possibility of such a fulfilment is a truth "at the mystic fount of Life." Even when the shadow of ignorance is removed the mystery of God's manifestation in the cosmos remains. The riddle of this world which is like an unfinished play is not solved. People have taken this state of white eternity of the Being as the last secret of the cosmos. But it was, really speaking, the first entrance into the realm of timelessness which would be a beginning of his discovery .of :God.

"There is a zero sign of the Supreme;

Nature left nude and still uncovers God."

This zero is not a void without content nor is the Nature an illusive manifestation without a mystery behind it.

This silence of the Divine is not without power. For "in absolute silence sleeps an absolute Power." And, if that can be awakened, it can also awaken the human soul, "and in the ray reveal the parent sun." Even as Aswapathy stood on the verge of this absolute silence, he found that

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"Across the silence of the ultimate Calm,"

The Presence he yearned for suddenly drew close.

and

"Out of a marvellous Transcendence' core,

"Someone came infinite and absolute."

It was the presence of the divine Mother and she "Took to her breast Nature and world and soul."

The vacancy and the silence disappeared and the brilliant lustre showed a golden passage that led to his heart,

"Touching through him all longing sentient things;

A moment's sweetness of the All-Beautiful

Cancelled the vanity of the cosmic whirl."

and

"A Nature throbbing with a Heart divine

Was felt in the unconscious universe".

It was this Beauty and this Presence that "justified the labour of the suns." He found that "A Mother Might brooded upon the world." She was

"The Mother of all godheads and all strengths

Who, mediatrix, binds earth to the Supreme."

Then, the riddle of the world was solved for him and Nescience was killed. There was hidden, but all the same present, a wisdom, a word, a love and "a Life from beyond grew conqueror here of Death." Error, falsehood and wrong were no longer found to be necessary for the world. A divine fulfilment on earth was seen as possible because of the help of this divine power of Grace. She was "the magnet of our difficult ascent." She was the light of all lights, the origin of all power and delight. "All Nature dumbly calls to her alone" and "All here shall be one day her sweetness's home." The effort of man for knowledge, the strivings of his

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passion—all human effort in fact,—are directed towards this divine Power. It is through her that man will realise his unity with all beings and the fulfilment of divine life on earth. Aswapathy knew this "in a thunder-flash of God" and all his limbs were filled with joy of eternity. For "once seen, his heart acknowledged only her." Now, "Only a hunger of infinite bliss was left" in him.

Just as after long preparation a seed breaks out "so flashing out of the Timeless leaped the worlds". The delight that he thus received into himself was too vast for him. Even his widened heart could not contain it. His single freedom could not satisfy him. And so "Her light, her bliss he asked for earth and men." But this work cannot be done by human effort alone. It is too high an adventure for human effort. "A vast surrender was his only strength." Aswapathy resorted to this act of surrender in order to

"Bring into life's closed room the Immortal's air

And fill the finite with the Infinite."

Henceforth all other aims ceased to appeal to him. He only longed to bring down her presence and power into his heart and mind and body.

"Only he yearned to call for ever down

Her healing touch of love and truth and joy

Into darkness of the suffering world;

His soul was freed and given to her alone."

CANTO III

THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW CREATION

Aswapathy had yet to perform a greater deed.

"A Strength he sought that was not yet on earth,

Help from a Power too great for mortal will,

The Light of a Truth now only seen afar".

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Looking to the constitution of human nature he felt a great resistance from the inconscience and

"The stubborn mute rejection in Life's depths,

The ignorant No in the origin of things."

There was silence above which appeared to be neutral and on the other side there was this rejection and contradiction of all that was high in the very nature of the world. Even in his own being there were earthly elements which kept their kinship with the ignorance and the inconscience and

"A shadowy unity with a vanished past

Treasured in an old world-frame was lurking there".

Over and above this pull from the past there were other difficulties also which he had to encounter.

"...old ideal voices wandering moaned

And pleaded for a heavenly leniency

To the gracious imperfections of our earth".

There were also instincts taking refuge in the subconscious and revolts in his nature that had not yet taken shape.

Aswapathy resolved to detect and exile from his nature all these imperfections. Yet, as he went on working he found that

"...the Inconscient too is infinite;

The more its abysses we insist to sound,

The more it stretches, stretches endlessly".

In order to make himself fit for the reception of this great Power, Aswapathy "tore desire up from its bleeding roots" so that the divine Power may take its place. The aspiration in him was to bring a divine harmony into the whole of life and to make this earth "an empire of the immanent Divine." Not merely his self but even his nature parts became universalised and in their tremendous universality they "Included every soul and mind in his." The joys

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and sorrows of others became his and a universal sympathy arose in his nature. He became oceanic or like the earth in his wide universal sympathy.

"There was no cleavage between soul and soul,

There was no barrier between world and God".

He experienced the One consciousness which has made the world and his. separate existence as an individuality could not last any longer. But this did not mean that he either ceased to exist or ceased to act. Because

"His nature grew a movement of the All,

itself to find that all was He,

His soul was a delegation of the All

That turned from itself to join the one Supreme".

After thus transcending the human formula, he widened out into a universal nature

"Awaiting the ascent beyond the world,

Awaiting the Descent the world to save".

During this interval of waiting all his personal efforts ceased and he passed into an omnipotent peace, and realised the immortality of life. He then felt that he was in the grasp of an unseen Transcendent power that dominated not only his being but his nature also.

After that he was driven by a divine breath into still higher regions of being

".. .past not-self and self and selflessness".

In that region there is no duality of love and hate, good and evil, fate and chance and true and false. These things there "Find no access, no cause, no right to live." It being the realm of perfect harmony there could be no conflict between thought and thought, truth and truth, and right and right. The vast cosmic labour goes

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on in perfect calm of the cosmic nature and the all-sustaining and all-causing Witness looks at it from its eternal altitudes and shoreless self. In reality, this power has a mind too vast to be bound by thought and "A Life too boundless for the play in space." Aswapathy by identification became the unborn Self that never dies. He waited in silence in this state of infinity for the ultimate voice of the Transcendent.

Then, suddenly, a downward look came to him "as if a sea exploring its own depths". The infinity which he was became "A living Oneness" and it went on widening till Aswapathy found that he had become one with innumerable multitudes. In that living Oneness, a love, a bliss, a light, a power clasped all into its embrace "for worlds were many, but the Self was one". It was from this central knowledge that Aswapathy now acted. This knowledge

"...was now made a cosmos' seed:

This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,

It needed not a sheath of Ignorance."

Thus, the cosmos that was to arise from the seed of this self- knowledge was a world of Light, safe in its knowledge, not requiring the covering sheath of Ignorance as this ignorant creation of ours. In the very midst of this world, Aswapathy saw that "A new and marvellous creation rose." In that world of truth and knowledge all were joined indissolubly to the Supreme. Each individual remained unique but experienced all life as his own. In fact, each one "Recognised in himself the universe". The individual was in fact

"A splendid centre of infinity's whirl

Pushed to its zenith's height, its last expanse,

Felt the divinity of its own self-bliss

Repeated in its numberless other selves."

There in that true world

"None was apart, none lived for himself alone,

Each lived for God in him and God in all".

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Therefore it was not a world where everything was reduced to sameness. For "There Oneness was not tied to monotone". There struggle was not necessary for the growth of the individual, for, he was moved to manifest the Divine spontaneously by the Light.

"There was no sob of suffering anywhere,

Experience ran from point to point of joy:

Bliss was the pure undying truth of things.

All Nature was a conscious front of God".

In this vision of the new universe he found "A grand orchestra of spiritual powers" producing a deep harmonised oneness which was immeasurable and he saw himself as one point of that vast ocean "a ripple on a single sea of peace". He experienced in himself "The bliss of a myriad myriads who are one".

This state was not a state of chaotic unity or indistinguishable vagueness. There was a lucent hierarchy. Each one was attuned to the right law and in the spiritual interchange of life he "suffered no diminution by the gift;

"Profiteers of a mystic interchange

They grew by what they took and what they gave".

There was a perfect reconciliation between the uniqueness of the individual and the oneness of the universal. For

"The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All

And the Many turned to look back at the One."

Great spiritual powers of the Timeless came pouring through time in works of ageless might. In this world "the eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house

"Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:

To him the universe was her bosom of love,

His toys were the immortal verities."

It was a new world in which there was no opposition between thought and will, between eternity and time. Life was an unwearied sport. The supreme Divine Mother

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Untired of sameness and untired of change,

Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,

A mystery drama of divine delight".

In this play even Matter became an expression of the Spirit capable of harbouring knowledge, consciousness and delight. The material body could be "made a bright pedestal for felicity." Thus, matter would be so transformed that it would be plastic to the Light of the spirit and time would be

"...Eternity's transparent robe."

Aswapathy saw two negations. One, "a world that feels not its inhabiting Self", i.e., he found matter which constitutes this cosmic manifestation rejecting the spirit. Second, he found "A spirit ignorant of the world it made". The world is searching to know its why and wherefore and the Self is struggling to emerge, to know and to rule. But the whole course of this cosmic manifestation which seems irrational appeared to be governed by three powers

"In the beginning an unknowing Force,

In the middle an embodied striving soul,

In its end a silent spirit denying life."

This dark world of Matter is unwilling to let go its hold on spirit because it is afraid lest escaping from the prison-house of matter it should merge into the Unknowable, leaving "unfulfilled the world's miraculous fate." For, the world has a fate, a better future than the present condition of ignorance and suffering. For, one day will

"The Superconscient conscious grow on earth,

The Eternal's wonders join the dance of Time."

Aswapathy also participated in the vision of the world's fulfilment and "he saw a world that is from a world to be." He looked at the actual from the potential and the inevitable. Even his body from that consciousness appeared like some foreign shape.

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Now, to Aswapathy, the Self and Eternity alone became real and everything else receded into the background and became dim. But "then memory climbed to him from the striving planes" and he remembered the cry of the subconscient world, its aspiration reaching up to him. For, after all, even in the inconscient world there is a unity, so that Aswapathy saw the process of his conscious descent into the ignorance and inconscience and its purpose. It was

"To share the labour of an errant Power

Which by division hopes to find the One."

Such a self-finding would bring about a transformation in human nature so that all the elements of its imperfection would attain their corresponding divine elements of perfection. So, Aswapathy became conscious of two states of his own—

"Two beings he was, one wide and free above,

One struggling, bound, intense, its portion here."

The second self of his lay

"Far down below him like a lamp in night;

Abandoned it lay, alone, imperishable".

And this being though living in the midst of the world

"It looked up to the heights it could not see;

It yearned from the longing depths it could not leave."

His being refused to attain "the calm that lives for calm alone" and he also refused "the austere joy which none can share." His soul from its depths "to her, it turned for whom it willed to be." All his other parts of nature felt a kind of satisfaction in the calm in which he found himself; but, this spark of divinity that was in him refused f6 be satisfied with anything less than the divine transformation.

"Consenting to the slow deliberate Power

Which tolerates the world's error and its grief,"

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this being had patience enough to wait for eternity for its fulfilment. An appeal to the divine Mother was now made by this fiery being that was embedded in ignorance. It had refused to give up its aspiration and refused to accept failure in spite of all opposite appearances.

"It persevered through life's huge emptiness

Amid the blank denials of the world."

It made an appeal to the Divine Mother and

"...waited for the fiat of the Word

That comes through the still self from the Supreme."

CANTO IV

THE VISION AND THE BOON

In response to his cry Aswapathy felt a great presence "a boundless Heart was near his longing heart," and he felt a great exaltation and delight overpowering his members. Even the physical being was thrilled by the influence of the Presence. He saw in that state a face, flame-pure, with a large forehead and eyelids that indicated wisdom, and lips that spoke immortal words. It spoke to Aswapathy

"What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more.

"My fire and sweetness are the cause of life."

but

"Awake not the immeasurable descent,

Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;

Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight."

It asked Aswapathy to leave the divine Power to work in its own way towards the fulfilment of man and his destiny. And it told him

"I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame

In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss"

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It commanded him not to be "lost in the Alone." It asked him—

"How shall thy mighty spirit brook repose

While Death is still unconquered on the earth

And Time a field of suffering and pain?"

It asked him to live for "the slow-paced omniscient purpose." It urged him to "accept the difficulty and godlike toil." For, the solution of the riddle lies in the human being. Though man is a product of the higher consciousness descended on earth still he has not yet adequate power to change the whole cosmos and nature. Being subject to darkness, he is

"A nomad of the far mysterious Life,

In the wide ways a little spark of God."

In his present state in the world man is subjected to darkness and opposed by hostile forces. He is subject to the law of division and duality on which he depends for his working and progress. He cannot at present attain to knowledge, he can only fabricate "signs of the Real in Ignorance." He asks for freedom but needs to live in bondage, "he has need of darkness to perceive some light." In his life, he actually obeys the Inconscient which he has come to rule. His mind, his life and all his other natural instruments are not capable of attaining the highest spiritual knowledge and perfection because of their inherent defects. And, yet, in man's imperfect state there is a godhead struggling. And the real leader of the course of human evolution is God himself behind the apparent veil of ignorance. Therefore, we need not despair of man.

"His failure is not failure whom God leads;

"And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?"

In spite of the resistance of the flesh, the vital and the mind, the Light ultimately leads man and he is able to look up to, or have a vision of superhuman peaks.

"A borrower of Supernature's gold,

He paves his road to Immortality."

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This way to the supreme is to be attained through man's worship of high ideals in his life, which prepares him for the Highest. There is the ideal of love, of beauty, of goodness., of intellectual knowledge. There is also the promising fact of inspiration and intuition coming down into his consciousness. The higher divine Power told Aswapathy

"Leave not the light to die the ages bore,

Help still humanity's blind and suffering life.:

"Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,

Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;

Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers

Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;

To its omnipotence leave thy work's result.

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour."

Aswapathy replied

"How shall I rest content with mortal days

"I who have seen behind the cosmic mask

The glory and the beauty of thy face?"

How long, he said, was the human spirit to suffer the pangs of ignorance and death,

"We who are vessels of a deathless Force

And builders of the godhead of the race?"

How long are we to suffer the pangs of human ignorance? And if I am to do thy work in the world, if I am to work in these conditions of immensity of darkness, how is it that I do not see thy gleam in the midst of the darkness? Time passes, changes take place, man thinks he progresses but still nothing really gets done.

"Where in the greyness is thy coming's ray?

Where is the thunder of thy victory's wings?"

For, as yet,

"All we have done is ever still to do.

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'The new-born ages perish like the old".

Thus in the midst of darkness our human struggle goes on and

"Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive.

In anguish we labour that from us may rise

A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,

A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth."

The pace and the movement of the Infinite is slow. And

"All life is fixed in an ascending scale

And adamantine is the evolving Law".

Therefore Aswapathy's heart became impatient because he was also feeling that man as he is today, "this compromise between the beast and God,—is not the crown of thy miraculous world." In this movement of intense aspiration he saw from the Timeless the works of Time, even those that were to come in future. He saw a giant destructive dance of Shiva and great cataclysm overtaking the world. And the whole earth was full of fire and death. The battle cry raged over the whole earth and there was alarm and fear everywhere. And in that great state of destruction, Aswapathy said,

"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 the Divine multitude

"The architects of immortality."

Having seen those divine beings come to the fallen human spheres he felt that they were quite a different race of men from those that lived before them. In spite of this help that came down in the form of higher beings that incarnate themselves upon earth, still, the burden is too heavy

"Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;

"Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul".

Therefore, in the highest intensity of his aspiration, he appealed to the divine Mother Savitri thus:

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"O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within

While men seek thee outside and never find,

"Incarnate the white passion of thy force,

Mission to earth some living form of thee.

.

"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!"

He appealed to her to unlock the doors of Fato by one great act

And he heard in reply

One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power."

She promised the descent of a limitless mind, "a sweet and violent heart of ardent calms" moved by the passion of the gods, embodying all mights and greatnesses She said

"Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,

"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."

Slowly, the splendour vanished. Only the echo of the message in the form of delight in his heart remained. The music was slowly hushed and the spirit of Aswapathy heard the moan and laugh of the earth which "Came gliding in upon white feet of sound." Then the Abso- lute's stillness into which he had risen surrendered itself to the mortal air and he slowly collapsed into his waking state of human mind. Slowly he regained his familiarity with the material world and resumed his labours towards the spiritual perfection of man which he knew was his destiny.

"The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds

In the scant field of the ambiguous globe,"

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