Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study

'SAVITRI' VOL II - AN OUTLINE

THE Second volume of' Savitri' is divided into two parts, the first consisting of Book IV to Book VIII, and the second consisting of Book IX to Book XII. The longest is Book VII, the Book of Yoga. These two parts take up the thread of the story where we have left it in the first book. It begins with the birth of Savitri, her growth, and her quest for eternal love. She goes out on her quest, and meets Satyavan and they fall in love. Book V ends here. When Savitri returns after her quest, she finds her father and mother in company of the great sage Narada who comes to knew about her choice of Satyavan and gives utterance to a warning—in the words of the author, he gives the word of 'fate',—declaring that Satyavan must die after one year. In spite of his warning Savitri persists in her choice, affirms her will and challenges Fate. The heart of her mother, the queen, being human, is pierced by the hardness of Fate, and its inscrutability. The whole of Book VII is taken up by the one year of Savitri's life in the hermitage of Satyavan. In this book, we have 7 cantos and each one leads us step by step to the transformation that came over Savitri, changing her from a sensitive, noble and strong woman, subject to pain, to a being conscious of the cosmic plan and the divine purpose culminating into a trans- formed being, whose every part of nature gradually ceased to be human and became divine. The graded process of transformation has been very well brought out in each canto till she becomes a divine being working through her human mould. It is when she is armed with self-knowledge and the knowledge of her mission in life that the date of Satyavan's death arrives.

The third part begins after the death of Satyavan and Book IX describes the journey of Savitri, Satyavan and Death through the eternal Night of the Inconscient. In Book X, they come out through the double twilight and in Book XI they enter the everlasting Day after leaving Death behind. In Book XII, they return to earth to fulfil their mission.

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I

This part of the story pertaining to Part II and III of Savitri may be found comparatively easy by the general reader, because the situations and problems dealt with are more or less familiar to all men. Pain, its fundamental cause and real cure, the idea of a governing Fate—Ananke,—and the relation of these with the human soul and with the ultimate Reality—these are questions that have occupied the human mind from the very beginning.

Another reason for their appeal to the reader lies in the nature of the subject matter of Book IV and V, wherein the birth and growth of Savitri and her going out in quest of a partner form a kind of narrative portion. The meeting of Savitri and Satyavan furnishes a scene of unequalled spiritual height and intensity in the treatment of love. Almost immediately after Savitri has declared her choice of Satyavan as her partner the dramatic anticlimax follows in the form of the word of Fate uttered by Narada. The situation leaves no room for a breathing interval of mere human happiness to the couple. They cannot afford to pass through the stage of attachment or the play of emotions and passions. Savitri has to plunge straight from the choice of love into the fierce struggle against Fate. The foreknowledge, of Fate prevents Savitri from any slackening of her will,—or from her being drowned in the ordinary life of vital emotions which play so great a part in human love. The situation takes a grim turn at the very moment of the greatest human joy. The psychological tension gives the sense of concreteness to the whole effort of Savitri, and endows their relation with a sense of spiritual reality. The issues involved are so great and serious —in fact dangerous and of cosmic import, and all the protagonists in it are conscious about them.

The queen, representing the ordinary human nature, questions Narad, "the man divine", about the why and wherefore of pain. This question raises the problem of reconciling a God all-knowing, merciful, and also Omnipotent with the creation, existence and continuance of suffering and pain.

Narad explains to the queen that there are two sides to this problem: one seen from the human and the other from the Divine's point of view. The law of pain is really part of the duality which

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is essential for evolution and even for growth of man. "Pain is the cry of Darkness to the Light". It is pain that goads man to invoke the help of the Divine, to seek his intervention and to create a possibility for the power of the Divine to act in life. As to the origin of pain Narad says that it is the inevitable consequence of Ignorance: "Where Ignorance is, suffering too must come". Pain results from an incapacity to bear outer contacts but there can be a change, in or a development of this capacity. The answer to the question whether pain is a permanent law of this world, is found in this possibility of developing a consciousness and power that can return the reaction of joy instead of pain to all contacts. The very fact that man never feels pain as something normal to him shows that already the Divinity within him is active even from behind the veil. Pain is used by the Divine as a hammer from without to shape the human, being to his purpose.

To the question, how did pain enter the scheme of this universe Narad replies that it is the soul's own choice, a free determination of the Divine. It was the lure of the adventure, the delight of the hazards of the unknown that tempted the Divine to undertake the process of evolution in time. The individual soul, a spark of the Divine, chooses its own field of growth which includes pain as an element. Pain is an indispensable part of the process which will disappear when its utility is over.

From one point of view "Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men to greatness",—from another point of view it is a perversion of the original Delight and a sign that "a secret God" is present in man's heart even though "denied by life".

But at present pain is a stark necessity, so much so that even world-saviours and divine incarnations who come to help mankind have to accept it if they wish to change earth-nature. They don't suffer, like other mortals, ignorantly. They suffer pain voluntarily, with understanding and knowledge. They identify themselves with the world, they carry the suffering world in their heart. Sri Aurobindo says, that the world-saviour "is the victim of his own sacrifice".

To the question: Is Fate then all? Has the Soul no freedom? Narad replies that Fate is nothing else but Truth working out in life. Fate is not merely an event or an operation determined inexorably

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A world-saviour may come even now. There are indications to show that many souls have taken birth now with a special mission to participate in the great work of building a new world. Savitri is one of the master-builders of this new world. She is ready and deter- mined to take up her mission which requires her to oppose Death. Narad exhorts the queen not to interfere in the execution of Savitri's will because human values have no place in its working.

YOGA OF SAVITRI

As Savitri's birth was in response to a "world's desire" for solving the problem of Ignorance and Death she is offered the problem in the most acute form—the fated death of Satyavan. Thus Savitri's yoga from the beginning has a very pressing and practical character. Her problem is to bring down the Divine Power in herself and in nature to conquer Death.

At first Savitri remains sad and resigned, for, she sees that her heart and mind cannot find any solution for her problem. The ordinary powers of Nature in man—the mind, the heart, the will etc.— have no power to solve this problem. So she merely controlled her nature and remained resigned to Fate. The instruments of man's nature are in fact only secondary powers and the senses of man only draw him outwards. The real power in man is his Soul, his inner divine Being, the Antarātman. This Soul, the true Divine Entity, must come to the front in nature and govern it.

In her mood of resignation Savitri suddenly heard a Voice from the heights of her being calling her to rise to her mission and she found a Power within her replying to the Voice. She then obeyed the Power that had awakened within her and knowing that it was her

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Soul She wanted to find it. She withdrew within herself and had to pass first through a plane where unrestrained life-force, the lower vital force, was having a free play of sensations. She remained a witness all through taking care not to identify herself with any movement and saved herself by repeating the divine Name. Then She came to a plane where the life-force was chained and mind was trying to govern life. She found all these powers unsatisfactory, all of them in need of her divine help and transformation. Seeking her soul she passed further through another zone where she met three universal Energies or Powers: The Mother of Sorrows, the Power of unlimited psychic sympathy and love, the Madonna of Might, the power of Right, maintaining the reign of Law in the world, the Mother of Light, —the power of mental or intellecutal—knowledge. Each of these had a deformation of its working reflected in human nature. Each of these powers declared to Savitri that she herself was her secret Soul. Savitri, on her part, accepted the identity but partially. She saw that each of them fulfilled an important function in life. But she also saw that each of them was imperfect and lacked some element. For example, the Mother of Sorrows had infinite power of love but she had not the divine Strength to prevent cruelty and violence. The Mother of Might had power and was helpful in keeping up the upward movement of evolution in life but she lacked knowledge. Savitri promises to bring on her return from her divine Soul that element of perfection which each power lacks so as to establish a harmonious and divine working in Nature.

Then moving through a mysterious passage she found her Soul. She also met the two negations: negation of her personality on the basis that the Absolute was the only Reality and therefore her fulfilment lay in merging in the Absolute, or the negation of her individual living because of the Impersonal, for everything that the person has got is derived from the Universal. In either case. Death refuses to accept any truth in her personality, and tries to persuade her to reject it.

Then a greater Voice spoke from above Savitri, from the Transcendent Self assuring her of the truth of the person. After that Savitri saw "the world as living God". It is at this stage that she became calm and ready to face Death.

After she meets Death Savitri's sadhana and her mission became

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one. As one who has to solve the problem of Death Savitri, the power of Transcendent Divine born on earth, descends into the Abyss of Eternal Night, the abyss of Death. She does not enter it as a human being; no human being can ever enter it. She enters it without fear, without grief, with calm power. She discovered that there was nothing real there. There was negation all round,—from the negation of being to that of all ideals, negation of God, except the God of destruction, or an aloof and indifferent God who leaves the management of the world to Death. For a time, Savitri was lost in it "like a golden lamp in darkness." She went through the immense self-torture of dissolution but ultimately got back the memory of herself. Then she recovered her Self and realised her Self as eternal without birth. Death tries to convince her of the futility and impossibility of all ideals given to man by the gods. It even argues that the only God is the one who devours life,— the God of punishment and destruction. Savitri affirms her inherent right to immortality and Love and her knowledge of God as Will and Love. It is her God who can remake the world of Death. In fact Death admits it has no existence—if it had it would not be Death—apart from Savitri's calling him into being to wrestle with her. Death then argues that even if there was a God—as Savitri affirms there is—then He would be eternally alone and indifferent. And so Savitri should attempt to realise such a God and become the One and not love Satyavan, for, love is not of the nature of Divinity. Savitri affirms that true knowledge includes love and that without love knowledge cannot be complete. It is the Transcendent Divine, the Supreme, who bears the world. Love is an eternal power of the Divine.

Savitri's progress takes her through the darkest Night to the reign of the Double Twilight. She affirms her eternal Being, her immortality and her right to divine Love.

Death finding negation ineffective resorts to refusal and opposition. Savitri sees no real negation; she finds that "the great Negation was the Real's face", and "the Inconscient is the superconscient's sleep". But progress from the Negation to the Real is gradual, it is a movement from the Inconscient to the superconscient. At every step Death denies the higher possibility—this denial with an affirmation of the Inconscient as the only Real constitutes Death.

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When Savitri wakes into the Twilight,—not to the full Day-light of knowledge—She finds everything around her vague and unsettled. Death confronts her there and argues that all high ideals are results of material .reactions, results of the Inconscient. The Inconscient alone is real. There is nothing high or spiritual about her love which is only a result of movement in the inconscient cell, it ends in the dust. Everything including Mind comes out of Matter. All mental ideals are the malady of the Mind. Death is the end of all. It denies as impossible, unreal and even imaginary, any other eternity than that of Death.

Savitri replies to Death that man is dealing with an unfinished world. And yet, an overall long-range view of the world indicates an upward movement of evolution throughout time—with natural ups and downs,—and shows a self-existent Delight originating and supporting the cosmic effort from behind. Earth begins with mud but the end is sky. Man undergoing the process of evolution is a transitional being, he need not remain eternally the worm or the animal that he appears to be.

Death then takes up another strain of denial. It asks Savitri to look at the earth-life wherein nothing endures, nothing is permanent. Even the very best things are temporary, evanescent. Nature and her laws remain constant but man is only a transient being, a slave of, Nature. The world has remained the same through the ages. If there is Self one can only realise it by rejecting Nature.

Savitri refuses to seek an individual escape and declares that the freedom she seeks is for all, that the world is not cut off from God, since it is He who supports it by his infinite Love. Death argues and tries to pursuade Savitri that earth i& too petty for God—even if there is God!

Against that Savitri affirms that earth has been the chosen place for a "wager wonderful", for a divine game. Even if the laws of the world seem fixed and unchanging, the upward movement continues in life, the Godward ascent also. Death is nothing but the shadow of the Inconscient which God drags behind him as He moves upwards from Matter. Man has already been contacting powers beyond Mind, —Intuition, Vision, Overmind. At the end of the debate Savitri reveals her Divinity to Death and his body is eaten up by her Light. Then She and Satyavan break out into everlasting Day.

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Savitri has not merely to overcome the negation, refusal and opposition of Death based upon the Inconscient, She has also to avoid the temptation of partial and exclusive Light promising individual attainment. That is a task more difficult than that of rejecting Darkness. A partial Light holds out a justification which it is difficult to see through. It also means the exercise of a free choice for the soul. Everything was at first transfigured including Death and Night. For such a transfiguration she found "all Nature's struggle was its easy price". Death was transfigured into Love. Virat, Hiranya Garbha, Chaitanya Ghana, Anand—the four aspects of the Reality worked harmoniously in the everlasting Day.

She was offered the choice of abandoning the vexed world and ascending alone to the blissful home of the spirit. She refused to climb the everlasting Day for herself because she aspired to bring the Light to the earth. She therefore prays for the life of Satyavan to fulfil her mission on earth. She is questioned by the Voice: The capacity of the earth and the aspiration of man, would they permit the transformation of man's Nature? Man is in love with his ignorance. She is even told that it might be better to leave the change to the slow evolutionary process. Why not merge into the Eternal? She resists the offer saying she and Satyavan are both pledged to raise the world to God, to bring God down to the world. Since it is the Divine who has made the earth, earth must make in her God. She was asked to rise to her Tuneless Self, then only could she know the Divine Plan.

Then once more a choice was given to Savitri,—to choose Eternity, Silence, withdrawal, solitude of Rapture. But Savitri only asked for Divine peace and calm in the midst of earthly time, she asked for oneness in many hearts, instead of withdrawal, she prayed for divine Energy to hold all creatures in her mother's arms. In place of solitude of rapture she asked for the Divine Sweetness for Earth and man. She receives the Divine's assent and blessing to her choice and the promise of fulfilment of her mission which is equally the Divine's own.

Then from their Seat of Eternity, where only the light of Truth reigns and love Divine is the motive force, Savitri and Satyavan look at the world into which they have descended and plan for the realisation of the Truth on the plane of earth. They work in the field of Time from their seat in Eternity.

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The yoga of Ashwapathy is thus fulfilled by and in the yoga of Savitri: the yoga of liberation, vision and Ascent by the Yoga of Descent and Transformation. Life on earth is crowned by life Divine.

ASHWAPATHY'S YOGA

Ashwapathy's Yoga starts by the release of his soul from the bondage and limitations of the body, life and mind, the apparent being of man. He feels within him a spiritual being, and also experiences new faculties and states of consciousness beyond mind as a result of his upward effort. He ascends from his mere human status, expands out of his ego-personality, grows wider and awakens in him the working of new powers of nature. He leaves not only the ego- limit but the earth consciousness and journeys to other planes, below and above, sees them and their working and their effect on the earth consciousness. All along he remains the witness—the detached observer. He acquires the knowledge of the constitution of man and that of the universe.

Maintaining throughout his status of the witness and therefore of a wide impersonality, Ashwapathy sees the Vision of the Truth in which "Existence is a divine experiment" and "cosmos is soul's opportunity". He saw in the Vision that only by bringing down a higher Power than the Mind can man realise his divine destiny.

He sees the dual aspect of Purusha and Prakriti—Self and Nature —working throughout the universe and he found that behind the duality, which to the outer view, wears the aspect of an opposition and even conflict, a purpose, is working out. He comes to know the cosmos as the result of the working of the Absolute, the Perfect and the Alone,—the three (fundamental aspects of the Supreme. In the actual dynamis it is the working out of the Absolute, the Perfect, and the Immune,—the Immune being the Divine immanent in each being and object untouched by the imperfections of nature. He saw that it is the Divine that has assumed human nature and the purpose of man's life is to put on the Divine Nature.

This work cannot be done by man alone; a higher Power must come, or must be brought down. The effort to bring down such a Power can only be done by "an inward turn" in man. No external method could succeed,

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He also saw that the solution of man's problem does not lie either in an escape from life and nature into the Spirit, or in his merging in the Infinite. The solution lies in a new creation on earth based on the Reality, not on the mind or on any other power. Ashwapathy gathered hope and aspiration in his heart for this great work.

He experienced the ascent of his own being to spiritual heights beyond Mind and also the descent of the higher Power into himself. He remained a witness maintaining complete silence. He saw the resistance of the inconscient Nature and the alternate movement of ascent and descent. The resistance was due to Nature not being ready for a radical change.

He knew by an inner experience that the Self is something greater than the instruments of nature—mind, life and body, that the Self is Eternal and Infinite. Even Nature has many powers hidden behind her outer appearance which can be brought to the surface and developed. In his voyage over the cosmic planes he at last came to the Cosmic Being and from there saw the possibility of transcending the Cosmos.

He realised his oneness with the Transcendent Divine. Then he looked down on the depth of his own being and saw the need and the possibility of a new creation on earth in which "each lived for God in him and God in all". He saw that it was possible to reconcile thought and will, time and Eternity. He felt that the Supreme is not merely a status but a transcendent Person, a Mother-Might, a Heart that attracted all. He tore desire from its bleeding roots and when he was free then instruments of his nature began to acquire cosmic range, his nature tended to become universal. A powerful aspiration rose in his heart to unite with the Supreme. He got the vision of the divine Mother and he pleaded before her for humanity. He prayed for a boon of divine Grace to help humanity to overcome Ignorance and Death. The divine Mother gave him the assurance that a Divine being, her own emanation, would be born on earth. Savitri was that incarnation of the divine Grace.

The yoga of Ashwapathy and that of Savitri need not be thought , of in contrast to each other, though doubtless a difference in the stress of the yogic movement is seen in both. In fact, the two together can be seen as one integral movement. It can be said, for instance, that the yoga of Savitri is the yoga of Transformation. But Ashwapathy also attains a kind—degree—of transformation which Sri Aurobindo

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calls psycho-Spiritual. The Transformation, in case of Savitri, is triple: The Psychic, the Spiritual, the Supramental. Ashwapathy's yoga may be called the yoga of Ascent mainly, and that of the Vision of Reality in its triple States: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendent. He ascends from the mind to planes above and reaches the Transcendent; whereas Savitri awakens the Soul in her and brings down the infinite power of the Divine Consciousness in herself and in her nature. Savitri brings about the change in Nature which is necessary to secure Victory over Death. Ashwapathy maintains throughout the position of the witness, Savitri carries out the Divine dynamis. Ahswapathy sees the Vision of the Supreme, Savitri brings down the Fire. Both pursue the yoga not for an individual but for a universal fulfilment. Both of them strive to change what seems to be the established law of the cosmos by bringing down a Higher Power than mind into the earth consciousness and earth nature.

Savitri's yoga and her life mission become one when she descends into the abyss of Darkness, and Death. Thereafter her work—a very difficult one—consists in rejecting the negations of the Inconscient and in affirming her soul's resolve. It is well known to yogis that very often the yoga is not so much endangered by frontal attacks of the powers of Darkness as by their subterranean undermining influence, false or half true logic, deceiving music or apparent solicitude for the so-called Truth. It is remarkable that the negations of Death take two contrary forms—negation of any true ideal, as all is inert Inconscient or its result and denial of any achievement on earth—on the ground of impermanence of everything earthly. Death seems to leave the human soul in a cruel dilemma. Equally remarkable appears Savitri's choice after attaining the Everlasting Day—the region of Light and Truth. She could have chosen what Sri Aurobindo calls "negative Eternity", or the Non-being aspect of the Reality—whether as Inactive Infinite or Silent Being, or indifferent God or One without a second. It is here that most of the aspirants lose grip of their seeking. They get enamoured of the partial Light, or, baffled by the vastness of the universal problem, fall into the choice of an individual attainment, leaving the human problem unsolved. True solution, if any, must be here on earth and for all men. In maintaining the sincerity

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of her pursuit, the largeness of her aim, constancy of the will, indomitable faith and unfailing energy Savitri is unique. We find at the end that her choice turns out to be the choice of the Supreme in her. Aswapathy creates the possibility for the descent of the higher Power, Savitri incarnates the power and effectuates the transformation.

II. OVERHEAD PLANES AND AESTHESIS

Sanskrit poetics, Rasa Shastra, takes note of literary creations from higher levels of consciousness beyond Mind: Overhead creations like the Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita and the two great epics—Ramayana and Maha Bharata—were put outside the scope of ordinary aesthetics. Aesthetics are limited to the normal range of human consciousness; they deal with the mental and vital consciousness i.e. with ideas, emotions, imagination, sensation, feelings, desires, passions etc. No mental standards or values could be laid down for "revealed" creations: they were considered above all mental judgments. Bhavabhuti, the famous Sanskrit dramatist, describing the nature of overhead or revealed poetry says —"It is utterance at whose heels the meaning runs"—"Vācam arthonudhāvati"—i.e. it is inspired utterance and not intellectually thought out speech. The same poet defines poetry as "the immortal manifestation of the soul" "Amṛtām ātmanah kalām".

Sri Aurobindo pleads that as poetry is bound to evolve beyond mental consciousness our aesthesis also correspondingly should evolve; "an evolutionary ascent of all the activities of mind and life is not impossible" (Letters). The importance of the planes of consciousness beyond Mind for spiritual realisation is well known in India, but their dynamic nature and their importance to the life of man was not known. Now that Humanity is passing through a crucial stage in its evolution the need for clarifying the functions and powers of the Overhead consciousness is all the more urgent. Sri Aurobindo shows that all the Overhead planes are not to be classed together, —there are gradations:

"These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined

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Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis".

—Life Divine.

Some of these gradations act in a way that might suggest a mental operation; Sri Aurobindo warns against the error—

"They are not merely methods, way of knowing, or faculty or power of cognition; they are domains of being, grades of the substance and energy of the Spiritual being, fields of existence which are each a level of the universal Consciousness-Force constituting and organising itself into a higher status."—Life Divine.

"In the descent of these higher grades upon us it is this greater light, force, essence of being and consciousness, energy of delight that enter into mind, life, body, change and repair their diminished and diluted and incapable substance, convert it into its own higher and stronger dynamis of spirit and intrinsic form and force of reality."

—Life Divine.

But because they are higher grades and more forceful it does not mean that they succeed immediately in the human consciousness in which they descend:— "these higher forces are not in their descent immediately all-powerful as they would naturally be in their own plane of action and in their own medium. In the evolution in Matter they have to enter into a foreign and inferior medium and work upon it, meet with unreceptiveness or blind refusal of the Ignorance, experience the negation and obstruction of the Inconscience".

—Life Divine.

So that "there is a ready formed power of resistance which opposes or minimises the effects of the descending Light, a resistance which may amount to a refusal, a rejection of the Light, or take the shape of an attempt to impair, subdue, ingeniously modify or adapt or perversely deform the Light in order to suit it to the preconceived ideas of the Ignorance".

—Life Divine.

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Each of the Overhead powers has well-defined functions and capacities including that of aesthetic creation. These creations already exist on the planes above Mind; the poet's task consists in bringing them down or allowing them to descend into his consciousness. There are active and passive methods of reception. All great poetry may be said to be such a direct reception—sometimes mixed with the stuff of the poet's nature. Sri Aurobindo says that now is the time when the seat of creation may be raised from the receiving mind of the poets to any of the overhead planes. The problem is to open, if possible, consciously, to these higher planes, establish a contact, and receive without mixture of the lower nature the Overhead creation. As he wrote in one of his letters it is a question of establishing the right kind of silence in the mind that can receive the Word coming from above the Mind. In fact, the overhead consciousness makes available to man a higher than mental instrumentation, the highest being Supermind. As Supermind is too high for the human being to attain at one bound efforts have to be made to stabilise the stages, the gradations that lead to it. Poetic creation coming down from these higher planes would give rise to a new Overhead aesthesis.

It may appear as if these levels of consciousness above Mind are "mystical", because they have been so regarded in the past. Sri Aurobindo shows that not only are they not mystical for the modem mind, but that these powers have been acting intermittently in man's consciousness through out the ages. Man has been,—may be unconsciously—familiar with them in his artistic creations. These faculties of the Overhead planes,—Inspiration, Intuition and Revelation,—are known to man; the Greeks knew about them, so did the ancient Indians. "Kavi"—the word that came in classical times to mean "a poet" signified in the Veda "a seer",—one who had the vision of Truth,—"Krānta Darśana".

We will take up these overhead powers one by one and give Sri Aurobindo's description of their working.

I. THE HIGHER MIND.

"The poetic intelligence is quite different; it is the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination akin to the intellect proper but lifted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane, this is not."—Letters, Vol. III

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"In the Higher Mind we are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed".—Life Divine.

"The Higher Mind is the first plane where one becomes aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight—not illumined by any of the intense or upper lights but as in a large strong and clear daylight".—Letters, Vol. III.

To the question; how does the Higher Mind differ from the ordinary Mind, he replies:—"it is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge from a Higher Mind that seems to be in possession of Truth and not (as the ordinary Mind is), in search of hidden and withheld realities".—Life Divine.

Besides, "it has a cosmic character, not the stamp of an individual thinking".—Life Divine.

He makes it further clear: "If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—an image which in this experience becomes a reality,— we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine".—Life Divine.

"This higher consciousness is a knowledge formulating itself on a basis of self-existent all-awareness and manifesting some part of its integrality, a harmony of its significances put into thought-form".-—Life Divine.

The Higher Mind has "clarity of spiritual intelligence and tranquil daylight".

One characteristic of the Higher Mind is "totality of truth-seeing at a single view".—Life Divine.

As an example of poetry that proceeds from the Higher Mind may be cited the following:—

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"Solitary thinkings such as dodge

Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

Then leave the naked brain"

Keats

II. ILLUMINED MIND

"Beyond this Truth-Thought (i.e. Higher Mind) we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of. nature of Truth- Sight with thought formation as a minor and dependent activity."

—Life Divine.

Illumined-Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of Spiritual light. It has "an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power bleaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment... a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action".—Life Divine.

When the Illumined Mind sends down its workings then "There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous 'enthusiasmos' of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation".

— Life Divine.

If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-Stuff"—Life Divine.

The "Illumined-Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is only a subordinate movement expressive of sight"

—Life Divine.

"The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptional power of thought".

—Life Divine.

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"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth- Sight and Truth-Light, and its seeing and seizing power" —Life Divine.

"The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep"—Letters on Savitri.

"The poetry of the Illumined Mind is usually full of play of lights and colours, brilliant and striking in phrase, for illumination makes the Truth vivid,—it acts usually by aluminous rush.... Illumined Mind sometimes gets rid of its trappings, but even then it always keeps a sort of lustrousness of robe which is its characteristic".-—Life, Literature, Yoga.

Examples of poetry from the Illumined Mind:—

1. "Plumbless inaudible waves of Shining Sleep"

2. "I saw Eternity the other night

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm as it was bright,

And around beneath it. Time, in hours, days, years

Driven by the spheres, "

Like a vast shadow moved in which the world

And all her train were hurled.

(Vaughan)

III. INTUITION

"Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition. For though we have applied that word to ...a Supra-intellectual way of knowing, yet what we actually know as Intuition is only a special movement of Self-existent knowledge"—Life Divine.

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Intuition gives dose perception—it "is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself".

—Life Divine.

Intuition is identity, "concealed or slumbering" which remembers or conveys its contents.

"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a' superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us".—Life Divine.

Intuitive mentality "would normally be forced to undergo a mixture with the inferior stuff of consciousness already evolved".

—Life Divine.

Intuitive intelligence "is keen and luminous enough to penetrate and modify, but not large and whole enough to swallow up into itself and abolish the mass of the Ignorance and Inconscience."

—Life Divine,

"But on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical"—its rays are not separated but "massed together in a play of waves of what might be called a sea or mass of stable lightnings."

—Life Divine.

"Intuition has a fourfold power. A power of revelatory truth- seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of Truth- touch or immediate seizing of significance,... a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth".—Life Divine.

"The Intuition is usually a lightning flash showing up a single spot or plot of ground or scene with an entire and miraculous completeness of vision to the surprised ecstasy of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a single stroke".

—Letters on Savitri.

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"The poetry of Intuition may have play of colour and bright lights, but it does not depend upon them—it may be quite bare, it tells by a sort of close, intimacy with the Truth, an inward expression of it."—Life, Literature and Yoga.

Examples of poetry from the Intuitive level:

1. "Withdrawn in a lost attitude of prayer".

2. "The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind"

IV. OVERMIND

"At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth- Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Over- soul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality". It "connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance".

—Life Divine.

"The Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness— that epithet would more accurately apply to the supramental and the Sachchidananda Consciousness—though it looks up to the transcendental and may receive something from it and though it does transcend the ordinary human mind and in its full and native self-power, when it does not lean down and become part of mind, is superconscient to us. It is more properly a cosmic consciousness, even the very base of the cosmic as we perceive, understand and feel it. It stands behind every particular in the cosmos and is the source of all our mental, vital or physical actualities and possibilities which are diminished and degraded derivations and variations from it".—

Letters on Savitri.

"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Super-

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mind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance."—Life Divine.

"If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with others".

—Life Divine.

"Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision".—Life Divine.

"Even to what is discordant it gives a place in the system of cosmic concordances—discords become a part of a vast harmony therefore of beauty. It feels Oneness, sympathy, love for all—sees the face of the Divine everywhere".—Life Divine.

"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit".—Life Divine.

"Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods: what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence".—Life Divine.

Overmind "is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality".—Life Divine.

"In the Overmind we have the first firm foundation of the experience of universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight".

"Overmind, has...greater aesthesis and when it sees objects, it sees in them what the mind cannot see".—Letters Vol III.

"As yet there is no Overmind language created by Overmind, used by Overmind beings"—Letters Vol. III.

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"Overmind has to take mind, life and Matter as its medium and field, work under their dominant condition, accept their fundamental law and method".—-Letters Vol. III.

"Overmind has to use a language which has been made by mind, not by itself". "It can only strain and intensify this medium as much as possible for its own uses, but not change this fundamental or characteristically mental law and method".

—Letters III.

"It has to observe them and do what it can to heighten, deepen and enlarge.

"It is still more difficult to say anything very tangible about Overmind aesthesis. What happens at present is that something comes down and accepts to work under the law of the mind and with a mixture of the mind and it must be judged by the laws and standards of the mind. It brings in new tones, new colours, new elements, but it does not change radically as yet the stuff of the consciousness with which we labour".—Letters on Savitri.

"If we look carefully and subtly at things we may see that the greatest lines or passages in the world's literature have the Overmind touch or power. They bring with them an atmosphere, a profound and extraordinary light, an amplitude of wing which, if the Overmind would not only intervene but descend, seize wholly and transform, would be the first glimpse of a poetry, higher, larger, deeper and more consistently absolute than any which the human past has been able to give us. An evolutionary ascent of all the activities of mind and life is not impossible."

—Letters Vol. III.

Some examples of Overmind poetry,—or poetry carrying the Overmind touch:

I.

"The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep—"

WORDSWORTH

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"In the last line there is something of the Overmind substance expressed not directly but through the highest intuitive consciousness, and because it is not direct the Overmind rhythm is absent"

SRI AUROBINDO

II.

"Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone"

WORDSWORTH

or Milton's

"Those thoughts that wander through eternity"

III. "We can feel perhaps the spirit of the universe feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo

"Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides"

or it may enter again into Vyasa's

"A void and dreadful forest ringing with the cricket's cry"

"Vanam pratibhayam śūnyam jhillikāgaṇanināditam."

or remember its call to the soul of man "Anityam asukham lokam imām prāpya bhajaswa mām."

"Thou who hast come to this transient and unhappy world, love and worship Me"—Letters Vol. III.

We close this section with a longish quotation from Savitri (Book I Canto 2) which describes Savitri in whom the God of Love found "his perfect shrine"—

All in her pointed to a nobler kind.

Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven,

Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit

Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm

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Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.

Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;

Her mind; a sea of white sincerity,

Passionate in flow, bad not a turbid wave.

As in a mystic and dynamic dance

A priestess of immaculate ecstasies

Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault

Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,

A heart of silence in the hands of joy

Inhabited with rich creative beats

A body like a parable of dawn

That seemd a niche for veiled divinity

Or golden temple door to things beyond.

Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps,

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.

A wide self-giving was her native act;

A magnanimity as of sea or sky

Enveloped with its greatness all that came

And gave a sense as of a greatened world:

Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,

Her high passion a blue heaven's equipoise.

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,

Recover the lost habit of happiness,

Feel her bright nature's glorious ambiance,

And preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.

A deep compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe,

The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.

The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:

Vacant of the dwarf self's imprisoned air

Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath

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Spiritual that can make all things divine.

For even her gulfs were secrecies of light.

At once she was the stillness and the word,

A continent of self-diffusing peace,

An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.

In her he found a vastness like his own,

His high warm subtle ether he refound

And moved in her as in his natural home.

In her he met his own eternity".

"This passage is, I believe, what I might call the Overmind Intuition at work expressing itself in something like its own rhythm and language. It is difficult to say about one's own poetry, but I think I have succeeded here and in some other passages later on in catching that very difficult note; in separate lines or briefer passages (i.e. a few lines at a time) I think it comes in not unoften."

Letters on Savitri,

Another example of Overmind poetry may be cited from Sri Aurobindo:—

"Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,

Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,

An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,

Force one with unimaginable rest?."

Life Heavens.

"What is prominent in (this) poem is a certain calm, deep and intense spiritual emotion taken up by the spiritual vision that sees exactly the state or experience and gives it its exact revelatory words. It is an Overmind vision and experience and condition that is given a full power of expression by the word and the rhythm—there is a success in 'emobodying' them or at least the sight and emotion of them which gives the lines their force".

Life, Literature and Yoga.

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