On Savitri
THEME/S
1. A Legend and a Symbol
The great epic, the epic of epics, one of the four pillars of the stupendous structure of supramental work, may from a point of view be regarded and studied as an epitome of the unimaginable labour of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This they undertook for hewing out the path of supramental realisation, for divinising man and heavenising the earth. In particular it epitomises the holocaust of the Mother in her gigantic work of breaking the rocks of the inconscient world, for laying the foundation of physical immortality.
The day will come when poets, philosophers, and neo-scientists yet to be bom, the psycho-scientists, if it is permissible to use the expression, will discover immense interest in this marvel of versification which combines in it all the aspects of the absolute Truth.
Sri Aurobindo has characterised his poem as a legend and a symbol. It is also an epic by being a poem recounting in an elevated style a great event. Some scholars with a literary bent of mind happen to have a hazy idea about the purpose and subject-matter of this great piece. They feel it to be a great piece. They feel it to be a great epic inspired only by the poetic-aesthetic imagination and admire it mostly for the purposes of literary enjoyment. For this reason Sri Aurobindo himself warned one of his disciples, in letters in 1933, when a manuscript of a portion of the book was being discussed; he wrote: "...it is only an attempt to render into poetry a symbol of things occult and spiritual" in a narrative which... "is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened so as to 'hew the ways of immortality'." Again his own words are: "What I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced... Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences."
Savitri is divided into three parts. The first part contains three books with as many as twenty-four cantos. This book has been entitled by the author The Book of Beginnings. One who has read
the Mahabharata in its entirely is apt to compare it with its Adi Parva. As in the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata, the subsequent elaboration has been put in a nutshell in this Book of Beginnings.
The background of Savitri is a legend, an ancient story, narrated (in the Mahabharat) by the sage Markandeya to Yudhishthira, when the Pandavas remained in exile in the forest. The story runs thus:
In days of yore there was a virtuous king in Madra, named Aswapati; he had no issue to inherit his throne and kingdom. With the purpose of getting sons bom to him, he propitiated goddess Savitri — the wedded partner of Brahma — and performed tapasya observing brahmacharya, regulated his dietary and took the curtailed food at regular intervals — once in the sixth period of
Sometime after, a daughter was indeed born to Aswapati's Malavya queen, the eldest of the queens, and the daughter was named Savitri after the name of the Goddess.
The daughter Savitri grew in age — her attainments and prowess were so extraordinary that no king or prince dared to accept her as his spouse. The father, King Aswapati, became anxious for the marriage of the daughter, who had already passed marriageable age and, finding no other way, told Savitri to go out herself throughout the length and breadth of the country in search of a husband worthy of her. Savitri, in her journey for the search, was provided with suitable cars and a party conducted by the aged ministers of the court. After touring through important places of the country they came at last on a verge of forest where, by chance, Savitri met Satyavan. The two glanced at each other and at once they were united in love as if such union was preordained. Satyavan was living in the forest as a hermit along with his parents. His father was the king of Shalwa who lost his eyesight and with that his kingdom also; he was presently living in the forest as an exile with his queen and son Satyavan. Both Satyavan and Savitri agreed to the marriage inspite of Satyavan's desolate living in the hermitage.
When Savitri with her retinue returned to her father to report about the matter of her choice, it so happened that Narad, the Sage
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of Paradise, was present there along with the king and queen. Savitri related her choice on being asked. Aswapati then enquired of Narad, who was expected to know everything in heaven and on earth, the antecedents and particulars about the chosen groom. Narad described the virtues and qualities of Satyavan in highly eulogistic terms but with certain reservation; when he was pressed further he gave out from his foreknowledge that Satyavan was to die just on the completion of a full year counting from that day. The father and mother were naturally reluctant to sec the marriage happen and the mother tried to persuade Savitri to abandon the idea of this marriage and to choose a husband elsewhere. Savitri could not, however, be persuaded and the marriage was performed with due rites and ceremonies in the forest. After the marriage, Savitri lived there in the forest with her husband Satyavan along with the blind king and the queen, the father and mother of Satyavan, counting the day of the foretold dire incident known to her only in that company.
On the dawn of that fateful day Savitri, with permission from her in-laws, went along with her husband to the forest in search of fruits and fuel. At about noon, when Satyavan was cutting wood for fuel, he fell ill and immediately succumbed in the lap of Savitri. Yama, the King of Death, came to take Satyavan's life and there was verbal duel between Yama and Savitri. In the end, with the boons granted by Yama, Satyavan's life revived and his father got back his lost eyesight and the lost kingdom too. Savitri did not forget her own father's side and, through a boon from the Lord of Death, there had to be bom a hundred sons to him.
The first Canto of Book I is the Symbol Dawn. Dawn has come every day since creation, but the particular dawn of the day when Savitri conquered Death has been depicted, together with the preceding Night, in this Canto. The last line of the Canto is: "This was the day when Satyavan must die."
Why "must die" is explained by Narad in Book VI.
In the second Canto two issues were raised in the mind of Savitri as she woke and lay reviewing her life. One was to yield to the Cosmic Laws, to bear with Ignorance and Death, the other was to hew the ways of Immortality by conquering Death and Ignorance. Savitri chose the latter.
As noted above, Savitri has been stated by Sri Aurobindo to be a Legend and a Symbol. Legend one can understand, but what is Symbol? " A Symbol is a form in one plane that represents a truth
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to another.'This is Sri Aurobindo's own definition. Several characters of this epic are symbolic. The main purpose of writing this epic is to show us the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on this earth.
His birth held up a symbol and a sign.1
A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.2
A soul made ready through a thousand years
Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.3
2. The Sadhana of the Traveller
The details of Sadhana have been given in the 22 cantos from the third Canto of Book I to the end of Book IV. The Sadhana of the Traveller (Aswapati) is over with the boon obtained by him from the supreme Divine Mother.
This Sadhana has been briefly described by Sri Aurobindo himself in a letter; thus:
First, he is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the Individual in the Yoga of the King (Cantos 3,4 and 5 of Book I).
Next, he makes an ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. This is described in the second Book (consisting of 15 cantos).
Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for universal realisation and new Creation. This is described in the Book of the Divine Mother (Book III, comprising 4 cantos).
As an Individual, as he was passing through all the stages in his Sadhana, "a many-miracled consciousness unrolled in him."
Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight
Stretched out in an ecstasy of widenesses
Beyond our indigent corporeal range.
There he could enter, there awhile abide.
A voyager upon uncharted routes
Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,
Adventuring across enormous realms,
He broke in to another Space and Time.4
1Savitri, p. 22. 2Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 398. 4Ibid.,p. 91.
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Thus as an individual he achieved his own spiritual self-fulfilment.
Now, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race. He broke into another Space and Time adventuring across enormous realms, alone he moved watched by the Infinity around him and the Unknowable above. He found a lone immense high-curved world-pile erect like a mountain chariot of the gods motionless under an inscrutable sky. This world-pile connects the earth with the screened eternities. In this region the universe of the Unknown arises, where self-creation reveals the grandeurs of the Infinite in a deep oneness. Here,
All could be seen that shuns the mortal eye,
All could be known the mind has never grasped;
All could be done no mortal will can dare...
Here all experience was a single plan,
The thousandfold expression of the One.5
In his ascent to this region, being in deep oneness with the Infinite, he could see all that the mortal eye cannot see and mind cannot grasp. From the Kingdom of Subtle Matter he could see the earth-nature's shining origins; the source of life; the descent of life on earth; human life on earth working through the double-faced contraries and contradictories in the Inconscience; this life fallen from the higher region on earth; how it acted with its attendants of little mind and little self — the ego which is a finite movement of the Infinite, an instrument personality. Aswapati could however see the potentiality in man appearing with the prospect of our life being transformed into divine life. This he could find as if in the glimmerings of a dying torch in the darkness — in the Kingdom of the Little Life working in the grey anarchy.
The Traveller, challenging the darkness with his luminous soul, then came into a fierce and dolorous realm peopled by them who never tasted bliss. On his journey onward he arrived at the Paradise of the Life-Gods where "giant drops of the Bliss unknowable overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became a fiery ocean of felicity." (p. 237) This Paradise of the Life-Gods he is to overpass and leave until the Highest is gained.
Now, the Sadhana of the Traveller in the vital and mental plane ceases and the Soul's seeing commences. In this spirit's realm the
5Ibid., pp. 95-96.
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soul finds its source. Here one can feel himself as a citizen of the Mother-state and not as a colonist in the darkness (Night) where one's rights are barred, one's passport becomes void and one lives self-exiled from the heavenlier home. This unfallen plane of the spirit has a triple realm. His soul, a single conscious power, alone between tremendous presences passed on to the source of all things human and divine.
There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.
Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable...
She guards the austere approach to the Alone...
He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.
Then in a sovereign answer to this heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away...
A light appeared still and imperishable...
He saw the mystic outline of a face...
He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.6
He now reached the highest state — the Parabrahman state.
On the break of his trance he knocked at the doors of the Unknowable. He moved through regions of transcendent Truth above Space and Time.
He had reached the top of all that can be known.7
He was a vast that soon became a Sun.8
All these things are depicted in detail in the Cantos of Book II. Now for Book III, The Book of the Divine Mother:
The Traveller won the full victory of his ascent as a typical representative of humanity and discovered and possessed all the planes of consciousness and powers, but this too was an individual victory.
The power and knowledge he possessed did not fill his spirit's sacred thirst. His spirit now faced the adventure of the Inane and pursued the Unknowable.
6Ibid., pp. 295-96. 7Ibid, p. 300. 8Ibid., p. 301.
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A stark companionless Reality, a being intimate and unnameable, answered at last to his soul's passionate search; and it faced him with its tremendous calm.
The Traveller's spirit in the utmost ascent of the journey met face to face the Absolute, a being formless, featureless and mute, one and unique, unutterably sole — "the One by whom all live, who lives by none." (p. 309).
Sri Aurobindo has described elsewhere the five stages of Brahman in his philosophy of the Upanishads:
1.Virât
2.Hiranyagarbha
3.Prajnā or Avyakta
4.Parabrahma — the Highest
5.Higher than the Highest — the Unknowable.
The fourth and the fifth stages can hardly be described by words and can hardly be understood in the human consciousness but with Sri Aurobindo it is different.
The Traveller had to pass through all these stages, and finally reach the culmination of this phase.
His soul now reached the boundless silence of the Self and has leaped into a glad divine abyss. It is yet too early for it to rejoice. An absolute Power sleeps in absolute silence that, waking, can make this world a vessel of Spirit's Force and can fashion in the clay (in Matter) God's perfect Shape.
When the Traveller was thus standing on Being's naked edge and all the passion and seeking of his soul faced their extinction in the featureless Vast, the Presence he yearned for suddenly drew close. The Being of Wisdom, Power and Delight took to her breast Nature and world and soul, as a mother draws her child into her arms.
Now the Traveller's aspiration grew wide and immense. He was no longer satisfied with knowledge and bliss for his own self. He wanted to enjoy this with earth and humanity.
He now sought for a Power too great for mortal will and sat motionless on a pedestal of prayer, intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone. Here also he felt something of kinship with the Inconscient, lurking to give resistance. He now stripped himself fully of mind's desire and offered to the Gods the vacant place so that he could bear the immaculate touch. Now a last and mightiest transformation came to him.
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From the Spirit's house he could feel the prospect of New Creation in the material field where exactly the parallel, or rather the opposite, was of what he could feel reigning in the pure Spirit's region.
In this absolute trance-condition the Traveller's heart, alone, was conscious and could know that there was some deliberate Power which tolerated the world's error and grief and* who was waiting to come down. This conscious heart, seeing no relief in merging into the unknowable Mystery, sent a voiceless prayer to that absolute Power.
Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.
Amid the lifeless silence of the Void...
A sound came quivering like a loved footfall...
A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape...
The One he worshipped was within him now...
...a Voice
Absolute and wise in the heart's chambers spoke.9
This voice, the Mother of Might, now tells him to desist from further aspiration of raising humanity to the God-state by immediately calling down the immeasurable descent; for time was not yet ripe. It wanted him to leave the all-seeing Power to hew its way. Time has not yet reached its fullness to change the cosmic dream of man and will be hostile to the untimely descent of Truth.
The Lord of Life, the Traveller, Aswapati, was equal to the occasion and replied in a prayer in a high strain. In that high-pitched prayer the following lines appear:
In anguish we labour that from us may rise
A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
The executor of the divine attempt
Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,
Communicant and prophet and lover and king.10
(Is it a hint of the advent of Satyavan from Aswapati?)
The Yogin who is unified with the Divine, when he finds within him the face of the supreme Divine Mother responsing to him, whatever he wills that gets fulfilled. He now raised his voice in prayer, praying that the supreme Divine Mother might incarnate
9 Ibid., pp. 334-35. 10lbid., p. 342.
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the white passion of her Force and Bliss in one body to unlock the doors of Fate. Even this last effort of his soul's will met with so much resistance from the thousand forces of the Inconscience that it had hardly the strength to climb to the Supreme; but the supreme Mother responded and offered him the boon he was yearning for. He now achieved the victory of his toil.
He raised his brow of conquest to the heavens
Establishing the empire of his soul
On Matter...11
3. The Descent of the Supreme Mother
We come to the second part of the epic, describing the birth of Savitri in the spring of the year. (It is on the 21st February?) Sri Aurobindo, the author, has depicted with grandeur and in the most beautiful language the six seasons of the year—Summer, Raintide, Autumn, Winter, Dewtime and Spring. Compare this with Kali-dasa's discription of the seasons of the year in Ritu Samhar. I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few lines here of Sri Aurobindo's description of Spring when Savitri was bom.
Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp...
The life of the enchanted globe became
A storm of sweetness and of light and song...
The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.
All Nature was at beauty's festival.
In this high signal moment of the gods
Answering earth's yearning and her cry for bliss
A greatness from our other countries came...
A spirit of its celestial source aware
Descended into earth's imperfect mould.12
In this Part (Part II) of Savitri, the Master has dealt with (i) the birth and growth of Savitri, (ii) the quest for her divine collaborator to fulfil her mission, (iii) Narad's intervention foretelling the future but encouraging the destined union of betrothal and explaining also the cause of Pain and Death and Fate, (iv) the development of Divine Love in both Satyavan and Savitri during the one year of
11Ibid., p. 348. 12Ibid., p. 351-53.
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their close companionship in the forest Ashram, (v) Savitri getting in trance-condition a Divine Command to fight and conquer Death and to find her soul for strengthening this fight, (vi) how in the search for her soul (in that trance-condition) the triple Soul-Forces (not the real soul) from her inner consciousness appeared one by one, each claiming to be her soul and how along with these Soul-Forces the darker forces in action also appeared to resist her. She however solaced them all, saying that she would come back after finding her soul for giving a fight to Death which the goddesses appearing as her Soul-Forces were not yet capable of doing. Then,
Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;
The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast,
From the cruelty of the Titan and his pain.
There shall be peace and joy for evermore.13
The cry of the ego shall be hushed within.14
One day I shall return, His hands in mine...
Then shall the divine family be bom.
There shall be light and peace in all the worlds.15
The Cantos not yet written and the death of Satyavan in the forest in the presence of Savitri follow: I mean Cantos 1 and 2 of the Book of Death just preceding Satyavan's death in the forest.
4. The Great Encounter with the Lord of Inconscience and Death
Here we have Savitri's encounter with Death in its own den or sphere, long discourse of Savitri with Yama — the mighty incarnate Power of Darkness and Ignorance and the Keeper of Cosmic Law. In the last encounter Death Incarnate, Yama, addressed Savitri:
Who then art thou hiding in human guise?
Thy voice carries the sound of infinity,
Knowledge is with thee, Truth speaks through thy words...
O human claimant to immortality,
Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force,
Then will I give back to thee Satyavan...
And Savitri looked on Death and answered not...
A mighty transformation came on her...
13Ibid., pp. 507-08. 14Ibid., p. 514. 15Ibid., p. 521. 16Ibid., pp. 663-64.
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The Incarnation thrust aside its veil.16
Then the Power and Presence came down and held the centre of her brow opening the third mysterious eye and the eternal Will stirred in the lotus centre of her throat and in her speech throbbed the immortal Word.
Eternity looked into the eyes of Death,
And Darkness saw God's living Reality.17
Then a voice was heard from the throat of Savitri, addressed to Death:
I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,
Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite...
Thou art my shadow and my instrument...
But now, O timeless Mightiness, stand aside...
Release the soul of the world called Satyavan...
That he may stand master of life and fate,
Man's representative in the house of God...
Her mastering Word commanded every limb
And left no room for his enormous will...
He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,
He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:
He turned to the Inconscient for support...
It drew him back towards boundless vacancy
As if by himself to swallow up himself:
He called to his strength, but it refused his call.
His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.
At last he knew defeat inevitable
And left crumbling the shape that he had worn...
The dire universal Shadow disappeared
Vanishing into the Void from which it came...
And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.18
In Book XI, there is only one canto consisting of about 1500 lines "dictated by Sri Aurobindo three months before his passing. And not a single word or punctuation mark was changed after the first draft was dictated." This we learn from The Liberator (Sisir Kumar Mitra, based on Nirodbaran's evidence).
When Death — Yama — the dire universal shadow vanished in the Void and Satyavan and Savitri were left alone, the whole atmos-
17Ibid., p. 665. 18Ibid., pp. 666-68.
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phere around completely changed. A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy's skies on worlds of deathless Bliss. Magical unfoldings of the Eternal's smile captured Satyavan's secret heartbeats of delight. God's everlasting day surrounded Savitri. Domains of sempiternal light invaded all Nature with the Absolute's Joy. Transfigured was the formidable shape of the Lord of Death.
His darkness and his sad destroying might
Abolishing for ever and disclosing
The mystery of his high and violent deeds,
A secret splendour rose revealed to sight
Where once the vast embodied Void had stood...
Death's sombre cowl was cast from Nature's brow.19
The transfiguration reveals Yama in his true divinity:
There lightened on her the godhead's lurking love.
All grace and glory and all divinity
Were here collected in a single form...
He bore all godheads in his grandiose limbs.20
In him the fourfold Being bore its crown. And he was identified with the four aspects of the Brahman — Virât, Hiranyagarbha, Avyakta, and Parabrahman.
Then like an anthem from the heart's lucent cave
A voice soared up...21
and addressed Savitri:
Ascend, O soul, into thy blissful home.
Here in the playground of the eternal Child
Or in domains the wise Immortals tread
Roam with thy comrade splendour under skies
Spiritual lit by an unsetting sun.22
Savitri refusing, the Voice again spoke:
Receive him into boundless Savitri,
Lose thyself into infinite Satyavan,
O miracle where thou beganst there cease!23
19bid., pp. 679-80. 29Ibid., p. 680. 21Ibid., p. 683. 22lbid., p. 685.
23Ibid., p. 692.
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But Savitri replied to the radiant God:
In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss
Two spirits saved out of a suffering world;
My soul and his indissoiubly linked
In the one task for which our lives were bom,
To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine.24
tussle continuing, Savitri implored:
Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,
Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,
Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,
Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.25
With a still blissful cry all that Savitri yearned for was granted, beginning with these words:
Descend to life with him thy heart desires,
O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri,26
and ending with:
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.27
And all the manifold changes that would happen on the earth after this Descent were also communicated.
5. The Fulfilment
The Epilogue is the return to earth and the joining with the father and the mother. The blind king Dyumatsena, the father of Satyavan, had in the meantime got back his eyesight and his lost kingdom with the boons from Yama.
An indication of what the transformed Earth shall be, is only hinted here in The Epilogue. The eye of divine vision shall be restored to man. His lost kingdom with the riches of spiritual realms shall be re-established. The suffering humanity shall gain heavenly
24Ibid. 25Ibid., p. 697. 26 Ibid., p. 702. 27 Ibid., p. 711.
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delight and taste the joys of immortal bliss, But before all this transformation can arise, Savitri, prefiguring the Mother,
...must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,
Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge.
Alone with death and close to extinction's edge,
Her single greatness in that last dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man...
For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world...28
RAKHALDAS BOSU
28Ibid., p. 461.
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