On Savitri
THEME/S
Before we commence our study of Savitri, let us be clear to ourselves that we are not reading it as a poem, even as a literary masterpiece, noting the diction, the similies and metaphors and other details. Our purpose in studying it is to enter into the spirit behind it, and in the measure in which we identify ourselves with that inspiration, we shall grow in our understanding. And this understanding is not an understanding of the mind, though that also is possible, but as the Mother puts it, it is more an understanding of the heart.
With these preliminary observations, we take the first canto, The Symbol Dawn. In this canto there is a certain parallelism. The Dawn that is spoken of is not only the dawn of that fateful day when Satyavan must die, but it is also the beginning of the present cycle of Creation. In Sanskrit we call hdhvani, very poorly rendered in English by the word 'suggestion'. In the earlier portions of the canto at any rate, the context of the dawn of creation is more preponderant than the dawn of the physical day. That is why it is entitled the symbol dawn — the dawn as a symbol: not merely the dawn before sunrise but the symbol of something else.
Symbol of what? Symbol of a new creation. This is not a thing that is created one day and another day absorbed, but it is a matter of cycles of creation. Each cycle of creation has its beginning, duration and end, the end leading to another beginning. The dawn of which the poet speaks is the dawn before this universe starts, before the present cycle of creation is initiated.
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
The Gods: there is God and there are gods. God is the supreme Reality turned towards manifestation, making Itself accessible as a Person, as a Being while the Impersonal aspect is always behind. The gods are the emanations, formations put out from the Being of God for a special purpose, — to fulfil his intention in this creation. Each emanation from the Being of God is charged with a particular function. Each god is both a power and a personality. These gods, known by different names in different climes, are the cosmic functionaries, making possible the growth of this creation in the mould of the original intention of the Creator.
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Before the Gods awake: it is not that they are awaking from sleep. Gods do not sleep; asvapnāh devāh, says the Veda; the gods go about without ever sleeping. The gods do not even blink, their eyes are always open. Just as they do not cast a shadow, the gods do not sleep. Then from what state do they awake? From their state of self-absorption, trance. When the creation is withdrawn, their operations are suspended and they are self-absorbed. When the hour approaches, they come out of it to discharge their functions. Now that pregnant moment has arrived.
Note that it is blank verse in pentametre, five feet to a line.
It was / the hour / before / the Gods / awake./
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
The creation is to come: the divine Event — note the capital E. The Event to be is the manifestation to come. But before that event takes place there lies across its path the huge foreboding mind of Night. Night is in capitals to indicate that it is not our physical night, but the inconscient Darkness. The mind of that Night is huge, all-occupying; it forebodes, prognosticates; it has some indication of what is going to be in the future, and that is not very welcome to it. Foreboding always hints at something ominous. It is immobile, without movement. Where? "In her unlit temple of eternity." It is a state of eternity: unlit; there is no light, it is obscure and dark. Temple, he uses this word on purpose to indicate something spiritual, something sacred, about that eternity. The mind of Night lies upon Silence' marge. Marge is not margin, marge is edge, the edge of Silence. Capital S shows that it is a spiritual Silence, and not just the absence of sound. Spiritual silence is different from physical silence. Physical silence can be oppressive, but spiritual silence is invigorating, life-giving. So, there is immobility, there is eternity, there is silence. All these prevail before the hour of the Event.
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
One feels something opaque, not transparent, not allowing light to
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pass through; impenetrable, one cannot get through; impenetrable, one cannot get through it. Here her means Night; muse is meditative thinking, contemplation by the mind of Night; eyeless, it is blind, shut in itself. This muse is a symbol, as it were; it is sombre, gloomy. In that symbol of her muse, one feels the bottomless chasm of the Infinite without form, the Infinite which has not yet taken a body. This abysm is opaque, impenetrable. And then the poet sums up:
A fathomless zero occupied the world.
It is always Sri Aurobindo's style in epic: he describes something, narrates an event, and then he sums up in one line the entire purport. Also, at times, he states something in one line, something profound, and there follows a long passage developing that point.
The world has not yet come. Where the world is to be, there is a zero, śūnya. But it is not an empty zero, it is a fathomless zero, one can't fathom what it is; if it were empty, there would be nothing to be fathomed. It is a pregnant zero, full of content. This contentful zero is a perception, special to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. The Shunya or the Nihil of which the Illusionist philosophies or the Buddha speaks is an empty zero. This zero is different: out of this zero come the million universes, they are all there in its bosom potentially. The zero indicates that it can't be defined, can't be determined. It exceeds all mental formulations. Such a fathomless zero is occupying everything.
It was in August 1947, I believe, that this Canto was first published and my guide and teacher Sri Kapali Sastriar, translated it into Sanskrit. As he was working upon it, each day he would send up to Sri Aurobindo, through Purani, the verses he had done. Sri Aurobindo would go through the translation with interest.' He would send word appreciating certain renderings. He is a poet, — was one of his spontaneous remarks. He would also point out where his intended meaning had not been fully brought out. It was at that time that we got an inkling into Sri Aurobindo's mind here. The verse would be revised or recast, where necessary, in the light of his observations. Thus it went on until Sastriar translated the entire first Canto, the most difficult Canto of the Book, into Sanskrit.2 (See pages 507-521.)
1Perhaps these were read out to Sri Aurobindo.
2See Collected Works of Kapali Sastry, Vol. 9, pp. 523-69.
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And I, personally, began to understand Savitri only through the Sanskrit version. When I read it in English, I felt it was mystic and beyond me. But when Sastriar was translating it, he would read it out, and when I read it afterwards, it made meaning to me. It is a pity that he didn't continue with the translation.
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To recapitulate first: the gods have not yet moved into activity. The divine Event, a new creation is about to commerce, that is, the present cycle of creation is about to open. And as if to prevent it, the large mind of Night, of Darkness, lies stretched immobile in its way. It is musing, one feels as if here is the formless infinite. What this earth is today was then occupied by the fathomless zero, a pregnant Shunya.
Now, you will need a background to read and understand the next sentence. When one cycle of creation is over, everything is withdrawn. It is pralaya, dissolution. But all is not extinct. Something that centrally evolves in creation is still alive. A power of the unbounded self of the universe is still lying there half-awake. In that darkness, in that Night, it is awake between two nothingnesses — the Inconscient around and the Superconscient above. It looks around and sees before it the prospect of once again taking birth, evolving and going through this slow cycle of mortality. It feels: No, I don't want it. I have had enough. And it wants to end itself in the vacant Night or Nought around. It is a tired power which does not relish the prospect of another round. It would rather diminish and extinguish itself in the Nescience:
A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
And the tardy process of mortality
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.
It remembers; it recalls that dark inconscience, that tenebrous womb, that source from which it came. It faces another birth, in itself a mystery. There is a mystery of birth and a mystery of death. But before the mystery of death, one has to face the mystery of birth. And that is insoluble; one can't really clear this mystery of
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birth. This power turns away from that mystery of birth and the subsequent process of slow evolution. It intensely desires to end itself in the vacancy around. This is the imagery. There is the Night, there is the Zero, and in that this soul-power awakes, remembers the dark inconscient from which it has come; it sees that it is shut up between two nothingnesses; it looks at the prospect of the mysterious birth and the inevitable lengthy tortuous process of evolution through births and deaths. And in its tired mood it says: "Let me end myself in this vacant Nought." So that there is no toil of coming into manifestation again and again.
As in a dark beginning of all things,
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
Some movement is going on. Something is there which we cannot describe, cannot define, it is featureless. It looks mute: it cannot express itself; in appearance it is like the Unknown. And what is it doing? Before things emerge, before they begin, there is a movement. An unconscious act goes on repeating itself. There is a mechanical activity with apparently no meaning, it is not conscious. The act goes on, because there is some will wanting it to go on. But it is not a wakeful conscious will. It is an unseeing will — it is not a blind will; only it does not choose to see, it has closed its eyes. This unconscious activity goes on and on, prolonging the unseeing will. This movement cradles, there is a swinging action as of a cradle, it cradles a force which is ignorant; it does not know what it is. doing and why. It is not individual, it is cosmic. It is an universal force that is moving, acting, in sleep, as it were. Drowse 1s a state between waking and sleep; it is not complete sleep. But the drowse of that ignorant force is creative. It is not a sinking sleep, but a creative sleep. And this slumber is moved by something else. This action m drowse of that ignorant force kindles the suns. There is not one sun alone; in the universe there are many suns. All those suns are first lighted by this mechanical movement in drowse. Even after the kindling of the suns, all is carried in this ' whirl, the circling movement. That is, this material Force, to which we deny intelligence and which physical science describes as the
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father of all things, creates mechanically in a somnambulist manner. It is moved by a creative slumber. The movement and the activity of this force have a meaning.
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
There is vast space. But it is in trance. There is no life in it; there is no mind either. It is in an enormous but vain trance. A trance is productive, but here it does not seem to bear any fruit. All is in a stupor, a kind of suspension. Space is there but there is no form. In that soulless void, like a shadow, spinning round and round, our earth is wheeling. The earth is thrown back into unthinking dreams because there is no mind activity, it is half-asleep; once more, as it must have happened at the commencement of every earlier cycle.
In the hollow gulfs of space, the earth is wheeling as if abandoned to herself. She has completely forgotten what is moving her and where she is to go, her destiny and her goal.
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We have come upto the stage of earth's wheeling in the hollow gulfs, forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
The skies are absolutely impassive; they are not reacting to anything. They are neutral, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither giving rise to joyous sensations nor to unhappy ones. They are empty, there are no clouds, there are no patterns. And all is still, there are no winds, nothing is moving.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
In such a state something moves, there is a stir. In that inscrutable
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darkness, a darkness which cannot be analysed, fathomed, something moves. And what is it? A nameless movement: it is a movement, but it cannot be called by any name. It is an unthought Idea; it is a self-existent Idea, not a product of thinking. Insistent, repeating itself, demanding. Dissatisfied, it is obvious that there is some dissatisfaction of seeking; and yet it is without an aim, it wants, but what it wants is not clear. This something wishes to come into being but it does not know how to do so. And it goes on exerting pressure on the Inconscient. There is no consciousness yet. That Inconscient is teased, urged by this insistent movement to wake Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo explains that this is not to be taken merely as a metaphor; for him the Inconscient is very real, as concrete as anything else. This Inconscient has to be disturbed, goaded, prodded into action, into some awareness. There has to emerge some consciousness before there can be Ignorance, maybe a partial consciousness, a semi-consciousness, some kind of awareness, before Ignorance can appear.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
As soon as the nameless movement stirs there is a throe, a moving wave in the atmosphere, and that leaves a vibrating trace. And in leaving that trace, it gives room for an old tired want unfilled. There is some want somewhere which is not satisfied and it is an old want. When the throb appears, this hidden unsatisfied want gets room to emerge. Where was it till now?
The hidden want was lying in the subconscient levels in a dark moonless cave. From that cavern, its hiding place, this want raises its head. Since it is coming from a dark cave, naturally it is looking and straining for light which is not there in that cave. This want has had a past and some memory of it. It has seen light at one time, but that memory has faded; yet something of it remains and that is why it is straining its closed eyes, trying to remember. The poet brings in a striking simile from life.
It is an experience, I suppose, of most of us that often we look for something which had moved us before. At times an old memory revives
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and we want to have that fulfilment again. We want to be what once we were, maybe for a while. It may be to indulge an old desire. But when the situation is recreated, we find that it no more yields the same satisfaction and we are disappointed. The old thrill is missing. We meet only a dead corpse of our old desire that has departed.
I suppose these lines apply to everyone at some time or other in life. We think that our desires which are intense today will be so always. A year hence, when the object fulfilling that same desire turns up, we find we have no more the old liking for it. Our desire is dead. Desires are fleeting, transient, and they die quickly, leaving only phantoms behind.
Now, from where has this old tired want come up?
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the page,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
Nought is zero, negation. Everything of the previous creation has been dissolved. Only a small core is left. And in that core something lurks; it is an entity. It doesn't quite remember the past that has been slain and buried. Only this little entity seems to have survived. The poet doesn't say exactly an entity, but 'as though,' as if it is there. This little entity finds itself condemned forced against its will, to resume the effort, and the pang, the effort of the last cycle of evolution and the pang of that effort. It had hoped it was all over, but now it is condemned to resume all of it. The previous round was sufficiently frustrating, and this is another frustrate world ahead.
An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
The unshaped, unformulated consciousness that is spread everywhere desires and seeks for light. In that vast expanse there is a prescience, a feeling of something to come, though nothing definite is known. It is a blank prescience, a kind of vague presentiment. There is some foreknowledge of a distant change that is to come
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and replace the present state of negation. And there is a yearning for that change.
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As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre
Vast. Insensibly somewhere a breach began.
Earlier we read that a vague unformulated consciousness desired light. Also, there was a kind of foreseeing and a yearning towards some change to come. This desire for light, this yearning for change, produces an effect. The effect is an infant longing, a child-longing that is not very strong, nevertheless articulate. This longing clutches the sombre Vast, the gloomy Vast around.
Here the poet gives the simile of the mother and the child. The mother is not very attentive to the child; and to remind the mother, the child places its finger on her cheek, calling attention to its need. The mother of the universe is heedless, not attentive, and needs to be reminded of the endless need in things.
The desire and yearning act as a kind of clutch on this sombre Vast. There is a suggestion here that behind this Vast of nature is the Face of the Mother of the Universe. The clutch on nature is like the finger of a child laid on the cheek of that Mother. Immediately something takes place and what is that?
Insensibly somewhere a breach began.
Something begins to open insensibly, not outwardly but imperceptibly; a breach begins somewhere. And what happens thereafter?
A long lone line of hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart
Troubled the far rim of life's obscure sleep.
Hue: a ray of light of a particular hue. It is long; it is hesitating, it is not sure that it will not be extinguished, because the whole environment is hostile to light; it is all darkness. Suppose someone's heart is like a desert where everything is dried up — no emotions,
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no sentiments. Now to bring that person to life you smile, hoping that he would respond. Your smile is a bit vague because you are not sure of its effect. The hesitating hue is like this tentative smile troubling the sleeping life. It is not welcome to the obscure sleep of life. Its far rim, the farthest edge is bothered by the arrival of this line of light. He describes further:
Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
An eye of deity pierced through the dumb deeps;
A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
The torpor of a sick and weary world.
There is this whole Vast around. From the other side of boundlessness arrives the ray.
An eye of deity pierces through the dumb deeps; that ray of light is really the eye of a deity, devatā. This glance pierces through the dumb deeps of darkness and inconscience. These layers are mute; they do not react, do not respond. They are now pierced by the single glance of the deity from above. It is a scout in reconnaissance from the sun, a messenger on duty, to look round, find out and report. 'Reconnaissance' is a word that came very much into currency during the Second World War. A poet of an epic of this type always incorporates expressions and phrases which reflect the temper, the culture of his times. Each side sends it planes or agents on reconnaissance, to look at the terrain, observe what is going on and report. That is the implication of the word 'reconnaissance' from the sun. Here is a heavy night, all dark. The sun, the source of light, is elsewhere; an advance scout comes to see what is the state of affairs, what is required in the situation. There is not only a heavy rest, but a torpor, sluggishness, dullness, disinclination to move of a sick and weary world. It is a tired world, tired from its earlier rounds, sick of change, sick of trouble, sick of movement. So there is a torpor, a reluctance to move. In such an environment the scout has come
To seek for a spirit sole and desolate.
Those who have sent the scout know that there is a spirit somewhere here, sole and desolate, orphaned, without support, without cheer, forlorn. And that spirit is
Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
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In this dull and heavy setting, this spirit which is lying, fallen, has completely forgotten its past bliss. The scout from the sun has arrived seeking and searching for this spirit.
Intervening in a mindless universe,
Its message crept through the reluctant hush
Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy
And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
There is no mind, there is no light. The ray of light intervenes, its message breaks through that condition. There is a hush, silence, everywhere; it is a reluctant hush, it does not want to admit anything of that light. In spite of it, the message of the scout, the message of light creeps through, calling everything to wake up and have the adventure of joy and consciousness; it prods and calls all that is around to the adventure ahead. The message is the coming adventure of consciousness and joy. It spreads and it conquers all reluctance.
Nature is not in a very co-operative mood, because earlier it had been disillusioned. Its earlier expectation of Glory, Immortality and Light had been shattered. But this message conquers even that Nature's disillusioned breast. It compels consent once again, consent to see and feel. Seeing is connected with consciousness, feeling with joy. A consent has been forced and extracted from Nature.
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The call of adventure of consciousness and joy has gone all around, compelling the renewed consent to see and feel:
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
A sense was born within the darkness' depths,
A memory quivered in the heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were moved to live.
As a result, so many things take place. First, in that void which was unfathomed, unplumbed, a thought is sown. It will bear fruit later on. In what was insensible, a sense is bom. All had been forgotten; now a memory quivers, stirs, in the heart of time. It is in relation to time that one forgets. Now there is a thought, there is a sense, there is a memory. It is as if a soul that had been dead for long has again come to life.
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But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more.
The previous cycle has been blotted out. In that oblivion the crowded records of the past have been completely lost. All that old experience has to be gained once again. The sense may have awakened, the thought may have arisen, but all of that old achievement has been wiped out. To revive it is a formidable task, but not impossible, For,
All can be done if the God-touch is there.
However impossible, however challenging a task may appear, it is so only to the human eye, only to human effort. If the will of God is there, Grace is there, all can be achieved.
This line is what we would call an epigram. There are hundreds of epigrams in Savitri, single-line epigrams. An epigram is a pithy saying in a sentence or a line summing up a profound message, a deep wisdom.
A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.
In such a situation a hope slowly enters the scene for the first time. But that hope hardly dares to be. The environment is so indifferent and negative that it is not sure that it can survive.
As if solicited in an alien world
With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,
Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,
An errant marvel with no place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal.
Here is an important sentence which at a first glance baffles the reader by its construction. Sri Aurobindo explains it at length.3 Something from above comes searching, with a look of appeal, hoping of live in what is to it an alien world. The appeal is from elsewhere; it is an appeal for life, for hope, for change. It comes into that alien world, soliciting, wanting an acceptance. There is a
3 Savitri, p. 748.
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feeling of timidity, it is aware of the risk of its embassy. But there is an instinctive grace about it. It does not cringe, it comes with a natural grace. It comes as if it is orphaned, driven out to seek a home on this earth. It is a marvel on the move. It slowly appears in some distant comer of the sky. It is a miraculous gesture, not something natural to this Night. It is miraculous that there can be some hope at all. As a result of all this
The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietude
And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.
There is a constant play of that ray of light, ray of consciousness. Its very touch is thrilling and transfiguring. This touch persuades the black inert quietude, the inconscient, to respond. Sri Aurobindo explains that he uses the word 'quietude' deliberately to indicate something spiritual about this black inertness. The fields of God are stirred with beauty and wonder. Till now there was no beauty, there was nothing to wonder at. But as a result of this transfiguring touch, there is once again beauty, once again wonder. At that moment in the sky
A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
That glowed along a fading moment's brink,
Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.
There is a moving hand, shining with an enchanted: wonder, pale, not very bright, light on the edge of that passing moment. And what does it do? It opens a door, a window on the verge of that mystery, and fixes it with its gold panel, a gold bright frame whose hinge is opalescent, translucent. The hand moves and fixes a door opening on the dreams and visions of the Mystery.
One lucent corner windowing hidden things
Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.
When light breaks through that window which opens the hidden things to sight, the immense darkness that is around is seen in its mass. The ray of light shows up the vast extent of the world's blind darkness.
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The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a god.
Imagine that there is a god with a cloak loosely thrown over his body. When he is reclining, naturally that cloak slips. Similarly, here the darkness slips like a cloak from the body of that god. Where there was darkness, where there was the night, there is the outbreak of light. So the night fails, revealing the body of god. There is a suggestion that the body of god is there behind the darkness.
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The darkness has failed, like the falling cloak of a god. And through that tiny opening, which is made by a luminous hand, light rushes towards the earth.
Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.
That rift looks hardly enough for a trickle. But through it passes a revelation, a flame.
The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
This is a summing up of what has happened. The outpouring of the light is the break of dawn. Dawn is a perpetual sign. It presages a fresh creation, at the commencement of a cycle or at the beginning of the day. It is the perpetual promise of God that is affirmed again and again. It now recurs; it had taken place earlier as well. The poet then describes the action of the dawn:
A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
Transcendences are the regions that are beyond our reach. From those unreached regions comes a glamour, something attractively
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brilliant, shining with the glory of that which is unseen; it is a message not only from the Unseen, but also from the Unknown. There is somewhere a Light that never fades, that is not known to the mortal eye. From that immortal Light, a message arrives in the form of the dawn. This dawn is ablaze, afire, on the border of the quivering edge of the earth. Thus she builds her aura of magnificent colours that outpour from her. They create an aura, a kind of a hazy belt. The dawn is a promise, she comes to assure that the light is coming. Dawn herself is not the grandeur; dawn plants the seed of grandeur in the hours, in time. For us, time unrolls itself in the succession of moment, hours, days. And though the dawn recedes, the day takes over; as the day progresses the grandeur manifests, — the fruit of the seed.
An instant's visitor the godhead shone.
Dawn is described as the godhead; it is an instant's visitor, does not stay for long.
On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.
When the Vision stands there on the border of the earth, it is as it were bending over the curve of the forehead of the earth. That forehead is pondering, wondering at what is to come. In the process, it does many things:
Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.
It interprets here to earth some mysterious beauty and bliss that are somewhere else. The interpretation is in hieroglyphs, in undecipherable letters, in figures which have certain significances. These figures are drawn in colour. The meaning of those hieroglyphs is something mystic. Myth is a legend, a story in which there is a supernatural element. The greatness is of spiritual dawns, not of the physical dawns. Their grandeur is written upon the page of the sky in a brilliant code, splendid language.
Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed
Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;
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A lonely splendour from the invisible goal
Atmost was flung on the opaque Inane.
Epiphany is a manifestation of God; originally the word signified the day when the Magi saw Christ; it is, I believe, January 6th. Now at the moment when the first dawn breaks, the manifestation to come is also disclosed, glimpsed. This is the herald of manifestation of which our human hopes and thoughts are signals, flares testifying to the fact of the epiphany. We think high thoughts, entertain high hopes, because of this certainty of manifestation. Our thoughts and hopes are the witnesses, advance signals of an epiphany that is preparing.
Our earth was without life, without sensation, without mind, an Inane. Now a solitary splendour, from a destination which is yet invisible, in flung upon this vast emptiness through which light could hardly pass.
Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.
Once again the stir and the longing for a change became articulate, there was a tread. Now, with the arrival of the light, the dawn, there is a tread that vibrates. After the phenomenon of dawn, the Face of a Deity appears. She is the mother of light, Usha as she is called in the Veda. When her eyelids open, they open the heavens; her face is the centre of Infinity. Infinity has no circumference, no form, but it has a centre. It is a Face of rapturous calm. It is very difficult to conceive of a 'rapturous calm'. Normally, if there is rapture, there is no calm; and where there is calm, there is no rapture. But with the Divine both go together. Sri Aurobindo describes later on4
A heart of silence in the hands of joy.
The Deity opens her eyes. It is a form that seems to be approaching from far regions of bliss.
Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
4 Savitri, p. ] 5.
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And saw the spaces ready for her feet.
She is the ambassador between eternity that is changeless and the field of change that is here. The stars are not journeying on their own, they are part of a system; there is a law that governs their course. The breadths of the sky wrap these courses of the stars. The Deity looks across those breadths and sees that earth-spaces below are ready to receive her.
So first, there is the impersonal Dawn, then there is a tread of something coming; then appears this Face of rapturous calm, Infinity's centre, that parts the lids that open the heavens to sight. This is the Form that has come to earth from far beatitudes. Omniscient Goddess, Usha, the Dawn leans across the breadths of the skies and sees that the spaces below are ready for her footsteps.
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We came to the point where the Divine Dawn looks down and sees that the spaces are ready for her feet. And what the poet describes is so human.
Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun,
Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work.
She is the ambassadress going to manifest the light of the Sun of Truth. Before doing so, she half-looks behind, at the Sun who is still under a veil. Then, pensive, thoughtful, she goes ahead for the work that she has come to do, the immortal work of manifesting the Divine Consciousness. As she came
Earth felt the Imperishable's passage close.
Even as she approaches, the earth feels the passage of the Imperishable, the Impersonal, the Undecaying, coming forward. The earth feels it close by
The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.
Till now, Nature was asleep. Waking as a result of this movement,
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its ear hears her footsteps. The wideness, the vastness, turns its large gaze to her who is coming. As she looks, as she steps forward, her smile which is luminous is scattered, thrown around liberally, on the depths of creation, which are not yet open; they are still sealed. The moment her smile falls upon those depths, the silence of the worlds is set ablaze, aflame with aspiration. The aspiration is lit up. Where there was silence, there is articulation.
All grew a consecration and a rite.
Consecration: something sacred, something holy. As a result of the smile and the lighting up of the flame by the smile, everything becomes a consecration, a rite, a movement of worship. Every moment becomes holy.
Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;
The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.
Air is not just an extension but a living vibrant link joining earth and heaven; air comes to life. The wind in blowing; it is likened to a priest who utters a mantra, a prayer. When a great wind blows, it is as if a wide-winged hymn is intoned. That hymn rises and falls upon the hills. The hills themselves become the altar. Altar is what is called in Sanskrit vedi, the platform on which the sacred fire is lit and the rites of worship are conducted. So the wind turns into a priest, the hills turn into an altar. And the high boughs, the branches of the trees pointing upwards, are as if praying. The clusters of branches are praying in a sky that is showing something. The sky reveals the Beyond. Sri Aurobindo explains that all these describe different parts of Nature flowing in adoration towards the Creator.
The picture is that of a conscious adoration offered by Nature and in that each element in conscious in its own way, the wind and its hymn, the hills, the trees. The wind is a great priest of this sacrifice of worship, his voice rises in a conscious hymn of aspiration, the hills offer themselves with the feeling of being an altar of the worship, the trees lift their high boughs towards heaven as the worshippers, silent figures of prayer, and the light of the sky into which their boughs rise reveals the Beyond towards which all aspires.5
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And Nature moves in this manner.
Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
On the dumb bosom of the amibiguous earth,
Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and precarious field of toil,
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness to our joy and bale,
Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
The gulfs below the depths are skirted, surrounded by a half-lit ignorance. It is only half-lighted, that is why it is ignorance. If it were fully lit there would not be ignorance, there would be only knowledge. Ignorance is incomplete knowledge; ignorance is not to be confused as something opposed or contrary to knowledge. What is contrary to knowledge is falsehood. Ignorance is knowledge in the making. This is by the way.
Here on earth where we live, it is all ambiguous; we can never be sure what is leading and where. On this mute surface of the earth, man does not know what the next step is going to be; he puts his step alright but he does not know where it will lead and how it is going to be. Man's knowledge and vision are so limited that he does not really know the next step. He puts the step mechanically.
Whatever we believe to be true, whatever is accepted as truth, there is always a doubt around it. Truth is seated on the shadowy back of doubt; further on he speaks of the face of knowledge turbaned with doubt. As long as it is a mental knowledge, there is always the possibility of its not being true and some part of the mind questions it. At times it may be a wrong doubt, but it can also prove to be a legitimate doubt, making possible a revision of the truth. This is the characteristic of life on earth.
This earth is a field of toil, kuruksetra; precarious, because we can never be sure whether it will be completed or whether the work will yield its results. It is anguished, because there is always some kind of anxiety; there is no certainty and security. This field of toil that is earth is outspread beneath, below. Some Eye of Heaven, some gaze, say of a god, is looking at it. That gaze is not overconcemed with the moment-to-moment changes and movements on earth. The gaze of supernature is an impartial witness; it
5 Savitri, p. 790.
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does not interfere, it only watches all our joys and our miseries, happiness and unhappiness; it is a sāksi. The ray of light, the ray of dawn is received here on such a field, on a prostrate soil. Till now the soil was lifeless, asleep, not active. The action of the ray awakens this arid, helpless soil. Not only that,
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range.
The vision that stands on the pondering forehead curve of the earth and the gleam that promises something of the future, light up what were common and meaningless shapes; all are lit into miracles and spring to life. Then, 'afflatus' is the divine Inspiration, Revelation; it is spent and withdraws, it does not stay a moment longer. And why does it withdraw? The mortal's range, his range of feeling, sight and experience is limited. So it withdraws from this small range, feeling unwanted. There is not enough aspiration, not enough want for the light to stay. So the afflatus withdraws after its all-too-brief appearance.
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,
The worship of a Presence and a Power
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts.
The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
It withdraws but in its trace something is left, a yearning, a poignant desire. Not desire of an ordinary vital type, but a sacred seeking. A Presence has come, a Power has visited and Nature continues her worship. In the air there is worship of that Power and Presence.
That Presence cannot be held by our imperfect, mortal hearts, because it is too perfect. Human beings are death-bound and so imperfect that they cannot hold very well this too perfect presence and power. Also continues the prescience, that advance feeling and presentiment of a marvellous birth to come. Even though the ray withdraws the yearning continues, the worship goes on, and so too the premonition, the sure feeling of something marvellous that is to come — all these linger.
The earth, the mortal range is too imperfect, too impure to hold and sustain the light of God, except for a little while. This is the second epigram that we have come across. It is only by repeated visitations, self-affirmations of the God-light that a habit is created
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in the earth-being to hold it naturally. Till then these can be only brief experiences. And a series of experiences ultimately build themselves into a realisation.
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Only a little the God-light can stay.
The conditions in our world are such that the light of God cannot say unadulterated, undeflected for more than a little while. It is obliged to withdraw. But the little that it stays, makes all the difference to our life.
Spiritual beauty illumining human sight
Lines with its passion and mystery Matter's mask
And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
Beauty is of many kinds: physical beauty of form, vital beauty of life, aesthetic beauty. Here the poet speaks of spiritual beauty. Matter is a mask that has an outside and an inside. This mask of Matter is lined inside with spiritual beauty. The mystery element in Matter which our reasoning cannot explain and the intensity of movement that articulates dead inert Matter into life and activity are due to this spiritual element. This supernatural beauty squanders, throws out eternity on a beat of time. A single beat of time, a moment, a second, contains in itself the whole eternity. To us it looks like a passing moment, but it is a throb of eternity in a moment of time.
As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,
Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness,
A spark of deity lost in Matter's crypt
Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes,
That transitory glow of magic fire
So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.
There is a threshold, standing between this world and the other world, eternity on one side and this domain of time on the other. When a soul crosses this sill to take birth in this world, the divine spark that it is, it is lost in the crypt, the vault of Matter; it loses its awareness. The lustre of that spark vanishes in these inconscient planes. Similarly the momentary glow of the fiery ray of Dawn
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dissolves in the earth's accustomed air which is getting brighter. That means, with the spread of common daylight beauty and glow of the dawn recede.
The message ceased and waned the messenger.
The thrilling message of the advent of light, the birth of consciousness is no more articulate. It fades away.
The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,
Drew back into some far-off secret world
The hue and marvel of the supernal beam.
The divine call to light and life, the lone power of consciousness that had come down, draws back its colorful and wondrous spiritual beam of light from this hackneyed atmosphere into its own far away secret home.
She looked no more on our mortality.
The Goddess, the Deity, looks no more on our world of mortality. Mortality is a state of being bound by death. The earth-life is death-bound. That is why it is called mortal.
The excess of beauty natural to God-kind
Could not uphold its claim on time-bom eyes;
Too mystic-real for space-tenancy
Her body of glory was expunged from heaven.
There is an attenuated beauty that is natural to earth-life. Very different is the luxuriant beauty which is natural to God-kind and cannot be held by mortal eyes. It is too dazzling for the human time-born sight to behold. The Mother used to say that the supramental sun looks black to human sight. It so bright, so dazzling that it is beyond the range of our physical sight. Thus the body of glory of Goddess Dawn gets expunged, expelled, cleared from heaven, from the sky. It was too mystic, at the same time real. Mystic is visionary, not substantial, and yet it is real — too unusual to be a tenant of this earth-space.
The rarity and wonder lived no more.
And
There was the common light of earthly day.
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In that common light,
Affranchised from the respite of fatigue
Once more the rumour of the speed of Life
Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.
Till this outbreak of light, of the Dawn, the movement of life had a spell of rest. The journey of life had been suspended. But now that respite is over. Affranchised, freed from that respite of fatigue, the report of the speed of life gathers momentum; it goes on in its usual blind way. Life is in quest of something but it pursues it blindly, cycle after cycle. Now once more that quest is resumed.
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.
Now everyone resumes mechanically the unchanging routine. The countless creatures of land and air, animals, birds, start once again following blindly the impulse of the moment, — the moment that is hardly aware of the next step. And man, too, who is the leader of all creatures on this evolving earth, despite his unsure mental direction, who alone among all the living beings on earth looks up and gazes at the veiled face of the future, lifts up the burden of his destiny which has been temporarily laid down during the respite of fatigue. Man is unique inasmuch as he is not content to live in the present, as do other creatures; he dares to look ahead and peer into the future which is in the womb of time. Though he lives mostly in the present, there is something in man which looks beyond. The face, the eyes of all the animals are turned earthward. Man is the only one whose eyes are turned upward. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks elsewhere of man "who looks at his companion stars."
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And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant
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And, lured by the beauty of the apparent ways,
Acclaimed their portion of ephemeral joy.
With the onset of day everything springs into activity; all wake up — the creatures of land, the creatures of air, and man also takes up again the load of his destiny. And among all these groups of different kinds, Savitri too wakes up. This is where her narrative starts.
All resume their labour, each one hurries to respond to the call of life. The brilliant Summoner is the sun who is rising and calling everyone to move into activity. The surface appearances of life have their own attraction and all creatures are lured by the seeming beauty of the ways of life; they seek to participate in it. Each welcomes with pleasure his portion of life's joy, though it is ephemeral. Each one snatches his pleasure however fleeting it may prove to be. But among them all there is one who does not mingle in the mad rush. It is Savitri. And why does she not?
Akin to the eternity whence she came,
No part she took in this small happiness;
A mighty stranger in the human field,
The embodied Guest within made no response.
Following the nature of eternity from where she came, she does not feel drawn to this petty happiness and joy. The divine Inhabitant who is housed in her body is a stranger, and is too great for this little field of human beings, and makes no response to the excitations here. So she is naturally indifferent. The Guest within is an ancient Vedic figure. The Rig Veda speaks of "the Guest in house and house, the Immortal in the mortals." This Guest is there in all of us. Only most are not conscious of this Presence. Savitri is.
The call that wakes the leap of human mind,
Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,
Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,
Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.
The call of life, with its excitement and joy, always evokes a response in the human mind which leaps up at every attraction and pursues it eagerly, howsoever it may get checkmated in the process. It is driven by the force of desire which creates a colourful illusion, howsoever unsteady. This impulse never strikes a chord
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in Savitri. Despite its sweetness it is felt as an alien note, a foreign vibration.
Time's message of brief light was not for her.
Not for Savitri is the appeal of fleeting time, its passing brightness. She is made differently. Her consciousness is altogether different.
In her there was the anguish of the gods
Imprisoned in our transient human mould,
The deathless conquered by the death of things.
In Savitri there is an anguish, an inner pain such as of the gods kept in prison of the human body. It is anguish of the immortal subjected to the rule of mortality, death. Moreover,
A vaster Nature's joy had once been hers,
But long could keep not its gold heavenly hue
Or stand upon this brittle earthly base.
Once in her early days, before she grew up, she fully shared the joy of the vaster Nature. She was in tune with the universal Nature and was full of felicities. But that joy could not maintain its bright heavenly tinge of excellence. Gold, in the ancient symbolism, denotes Truth. After all, the human body made of earth is brittle, whoever may occupy it. Hence the vaster joy could not hold itself in her fragile physical frame. She had brought with her a great power, imperious wideness and bliss. But
A narrow movement on Time's deep abysm,
Life's fragile littleness denied the power,
The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
She had brought with her into the human form,
The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.
The littleness, the scantiness of life precariously poised on the deep gulfs of Time questioned and refused to accept what Savitri had brought with her in human form, viz. power, vastness, bliss, calm delight that unifies soul with soul, the calm-based delight that is the key to the fiery doors of divine ecstasy. Note that this delight is described as calm: it is not an effervescent joy, but is a self-sufficient, self-contented poised delight that is the beginning and foundation of the burning ecstasy that is the culmination to be.
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Earth's grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears
Rejected the undying rapture's boon.
Every bit of earth that springs into life needs the sap, the life-giving essence of pleasure and tears. This duality is the way of earth-life. Life maintains itself on this mixture. Only joy would be boring, only sorrow would be smothering. When both are there earth gets enough excitement. Such an earth refuses what Savitri had brought with her, the boon of undying rapture. This rapture is not pleasure. It is an intense delight. It may or may not be caused by outer circumstances. On the other hand, pleasure is always the result of excitation. This rejection of the higher boon by the earth-grain is not all.
Offered to the daughter of infinity
Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.
Savitri is verily the Daughter of Infinity. In exchange for her boon of power and delight, earth gives to her the passion-flower of love and doom. Passion-flower is the flower resembling the crown of thorns placed on the head of Christ. As you know, his love for God expressed in pain and tears is called the passion-play. The love on earth, the human love is a veritable passion-flower. It has always thorns around it. Earth gives this love, and in its sequel doom, death.
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The central idea here is of the divine sacrifice. The earliest mention of sacrifice in our tradition occurs in the Veda which speaks of the cosmic Person, the thousand-headed Purusha, sacrificing himself so that this creation might come into existence. The Bhagavad-Gita also speaks of sacrifice: after creating the gods, creating the peoples, the Supreme God created Yajna as a means for their interchange. He charged the gods and the peoples to promote each other by means of sacrifice, Yajna. We do not need to say that this understanding has not been honoured from our side. The sacrifice continues from above, but from below we are not doing our part of the sacrifice; we appropriate everything to ourselves, what properly belongs to the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo speaks in a memorable passage in the book The
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Mother of the supreme holocaust of the divine Mother. She sacrifices herself, comes down into this world of suffering and darkness in order that it may be uplifted.6 In several other passages of his writings, particularly in this epic, he refers to the sacrifice of God as an Avatar; he speaks of all the hardship and struggle that are implied in the birth of an Avatar, and the reluctance of the world to receive the message that the Avatar brings.
With this background we can now proceed to study what he says regarding Savitri who is the Divine Grace incarnate; she came to battle with Death and win immortality for humanity.
In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.
She left her celestial home, left her glory, eternity and infinity, and chose to don the human robe, — a great sacrifice. But now it seems to have been done in vain.
A prodigal of her rich divinity,
Her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.
She is very generous, almost prodigal, spendthrift, in the giving of her divinity. She gives, and gives largely. She gives herself and all she has, her power, light, wisdom — everything that she carries with her. She has lent these to men, the world of men, in order to plant her greater Being here on earth. Her larger being comes down to the human level hoping that thereby heaven, the habitation of the immortals, may grow here naturally. In other words, she does this sacrifice in order to establish heaven on earth. Here Sri Aurobindo makes an observation. That is his style: as he narrates the story, he pauses at certain points and gives a higher insight. Here he states the reason why her sacrifice failed:
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;
Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch.
To persuade the earth-nature to change is very difficult, hard. Our normal state of existence, mortality, does not welcome it, but reacts badly to the touch of the eternal, the immortal. Why does it do so?
6SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 25. See also Savitri, p. 99.
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It fears the pure divine intolerance
Of that assault of ether and of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost with hate repels the light it brings;
It trembles at its naked power of Truth
And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.
The divine purity insists on everything being equally pure, it does not tolerate any impurity. The earth-nature fears its rarefied air and the flame of intensity. This nature complains that the higher happiness is absolutely sorrowless and it is bored with it; if you are continuously happy, you forget that you are happy and at some stage you begin to get bored: there is no excitement of adventure, no prospect of change. The light that the Eternal brings from above is repelled, rejected, thrown back almost with hate, not just an indifference, but an active antipathy. The divine truth has a power which is irresistible in its unveiled form; and when it nears does the earth-nature tremble. Apart from the power of truth, the voice of truth too is feared: it is absolute, it does not admit any denial. And yet, it is sweet and warm. These negative reactions are not all: the earth-nature does not stop with trembling and fearing; it indeed does something positive by way of repulsion.
Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,
It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers.
The gulf, the pit below has its own law — the law of limitation, ignorance, death. This law is inflicted on the heights from where the truth tries to descend. The messengers of heaven come down, but the earth-nature soils them with its mud.
Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.
Against the hands of Grace that come to save, mortality turns its thorns of fallen nature in its own defence. This is how the messengers of Heaven, Sons of God, have been repelled with pain and death thrown in their face. All that remains of their mission is but little.
A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,
Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
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Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for the crown they gave,
Only they leave behind a splendid Name.
The earth-scene is traversed by a blaze of glory during the ministry of these saviours. Each thought of theirs is like a sun, bright, luminous; but these thoughts begin to fade, — because they are darkened by ignorant minds. All the great work that they have done is found to be betrayed. The good they have done is turned to evil by this ignorant humanity. The messengers bring the crown for man, but in return they are given the cross — an allusion to Christ, his crucifixion. Their great name is all that lasts. Men succeed in pulling down everything else. What then is the net result?
A fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone;
A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.
A great fire has descended, touched the hearts of men, and retired. A few have indeed benefitted; they have caught that flame of aspiration for God, for the higher nature, for immortality. The texture of their life has changed; from their common lower life they have risen to a greater life. But such are few. The narrative is resumed after this observation:
Too unlike the world she came to help and save,
Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast,
And from its deep chasms welled a dire return,
A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.
Savitri came to help and save this world, but she is too much unlike this world. Her weight has been too much upon the ignorant breast of earth. A cruel return shoots up from its deep chasm, part of its lot of sorrow, struggle, and fall.
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To live with grief, to confront death on her road, —
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.
We have seen how, despite all the greatness that Savitri has brought to the earth, she is rewarded with sorrow, struggle, fall. As a result, though she has come from the land of the Immortals, she has to
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share what is normally the lot of the mortal: to live with grief. Grief is inseparable from our human life. She has also to encounter death.
Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode,
Outcast from her inborn felicity,
Accepting life's obscure terrestrial robe,
Hiding herself even from those she loved,
The godhead greater by a human fate.
Abode is the past tense of abide. Thus lived Savitri, caught in the net of earthly destinies. In the circumstances prevailing, the natural happiness and joy which she brought with her could not be very active. She is outcast from the felicity which is inborn with her. She consents to wear the dark earthly robe. Her real self is not revealed even to those whom she loves. Normally we do not hide things, we reveal ourselves to those whom we love, those who are near. But Savitri does not. Thus does she wait for the moment of supreme trial. Nobody else is let into her secret. Though she is of the Gods, she has accepted a human fate. Normally we would think that she has diminished her stature by taking on human nature. But she is greater for that very reason. This is an important concept of Sri Aurobindo. Elsewhere also he speaks of how a god descended on earth, taking on himself the load of human Karma, is greater than his compeer who is content to stay in his paradise. He has all the consciousness of heaven, plus something special to the earth-experience. So when the god returns to his home, he is richer than the gods who have never left it. That is also Sri Aurobindo's explanation as to why God should have bothered at all to put forth this manifestation when he could very well have rested content in his glory. Why all this toil, suffering and danger? He points out that in creating this world, going through the round, taking the challenge of opposites, God's consciousness itself grows richer. The labour and effort of the adventure increase the stature of God. He is richer for having come down and participated in the labour of the earth's evolution. Earth is the field of progress. There is no progress of our kind on the higher planes. Sri Aurobindo cites the passage from Vishnu Purana where it is said that even the gods, if they want to rise higher, have to come down to the earth and take a human birth. That is the purport of "the godhead greater by a human fate."
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A dark foreknowledge separated her
From all of whom she was the star and stay;
Too great to impart the peril and the pain,
In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.
Savitri has been the hope and support of a large number of people. Even from them she is separated by the dark foreknowledge of the coming down which she alone has. It is always a characteristic of great persons that they do not speak of their grief or pain to others. They don't share, they keep the pain to themselves; they loftily endure it by themselves. It is common people who rush to speak of their miseries and difficulties to others; they feel somewhat lightened when they do that. But the great ones don't impose their burden on others. Savitri keeps the grief in her own depths which are indeed torn because she suffers inside. It is gnawing at her vitals. In spite of it, she is composed and aloof.
As one who watching over men left blind
Takes up the load of an unwitting race,
Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,
Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,
Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.
Savitri takes up the load of humanity which is not conscious of that fact. She is compared to one who is charged with looking after blind people. She has to attend to everything concerning them, but they are not aware of it. They are blissfully unaware of all the worry and trouble that the person is undergoing on their account. She has to hold in herself an enemy whom she must feed with her best. None knows of this, her heroism, of the doom of death that she is facing. And none is there to come forward and help. She has to do all single-handed — to foresee, watch in dread and dare to oppose.
The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here
Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.
This day when she wakes up, she knows that twelve months have passed and death is about to take place. Outwardly it is a day like any other day, it is a morning that is being followed by a noon like any other noon. Here Sri Aurobindo makes an observation:
For Nature walks upon her mighty way
Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;
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Leaving her slain behind she travels on;
Man only marks and God's all-seeing eyes.
Nature has large mighty movements and when she unrolls herself, maybe one person is dead here, one life stamped out elsewhere; but she does not pause to see what has happened; she goes on. There is a storm, there is an earthquake; countless creatures die. Nature goes on unconcernedly. Only man who is involved takes note. Also, it does not escape the all-seeing eyes of God.
Even in this moment of her soul's despair,
In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,
No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;
She told the secret of her woe to none.
The hour of confrontation with death has arrived. Yet, despite all the fear and despair of the moment, she does not cry out; she does not call for any help. She does not share her woe with anyone.
Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.
Her appearance is calm. She is silent. Only the courageous can be silent. Those who are afraid need to speak, to articulate their fear and thereby seek support.
Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;
Even her humanity was half divine:
Even in this crisis her suffering is confined only to her external self which is struggling from moment to moment. Within, she is divine; even her apparent humanity is half divine.
Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,
Her nature felt all Nature as its own.
Both at the level of the Self and at the level of Nature, she is one with all. It is more difficult to be united in nature than in the soul. But Savitri is one with all in both the states.
Apart, living within, all lives she bore;
Aloof, she carried in herself the world.
She lives within herself; but she is not self-centered, lost in her ownself. From that vantage ground she bears all that lives, carries all the world. That is, Savitri identifies herself, supportively, with all, though living within. Truth to tell, it is only by living within
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that we can feel one with all. By living on the surface we live in division. In her solitude Savitri carries the whole world in her being.
Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,
Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;
The universal Mother's love was hers.
There is an uncertainty, there is a fear in the cosmos, the dread of disintegration, decay, death. Savitri's dread reflects this pervading dread in the universe. Similarly, her strength bases itself on the cosmic strength. Her force is one with the cosmic force. All this is possible, because she embodies love which is the sure basis of identity and oneness. This love is the all-embracing love of the universal Mother.
Against the evil at life's afflicted roots,
Her own calamity its private sign,
Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.
She is not overcome by the evil that is staring at her in a personal way. She faces it as an individual sign of the Evil that has struck generally at the roots of life. With this awareness she converts her own crisis, her own pain into a sharp mystic sword to cut the knot.
A solitary mind, a world-wide heart,
To the lone Immortal's unshared work she rose.
In the mind she may be aloof, but in the heart she is wide, world-embracing. This is a key to every spiritual seeker: one must be detached in the mind, but the heart must spread itself, become universal.
Thus does she arise to do that work of God, all alone. The task is unique and she who takes it up is also unique.
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The poet now describes the various stages of her waking up on the fateful morning.
At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:
On the lap of earth's original somnolence
Inert, released into forgetfulness
Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind's verge,
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Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.
At first Savitri is still restful in the sleepy hours of the earth; life in her is still inert, forgetful, stretched out in full repose. Life has not yet come into the mental awareness. It is dull of sensation like the stone and serene like the star. Grief is not yet felt on the surface, though her breast carries the load of the impending doom.
In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms
She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,
Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.
She is still in the deep belt of silence between the two states, of sleep and wakefulness, lying untouched by grief, unscratched by care, unaware of all the sorrow in the world.
Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,
And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom
And recognised the close and lingering ache,
Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,
But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.
Then a vague memory, an indistinct remembrance appears and flits across, like a shadow; there is some slight recollection and with a sigh her hand moves to her bosom where she feels some movement. She recognises there an ache, intimate and prolonging itself. It is not superficial, it is deep; it is not a passing ache, it persists; it is not loud, it is quiet; she recognises that it is not anything new, that has come all of a sudden; it has been there for so long that it has become natural to where she feels it. Only, till that moment, she was not aware of it. Still she does not know why it is there or from where it has come.
The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:
Heavy, unwilling were life's servitors
Like workers with no wages of delight;
Sullen, the torch of sense refused to bum;
The unassisted brain found not its past.
Even though she has started feeling the ache, she is not able to explain what it is, because her mind is not yet active. Nature has still withheld that power which activises the mind and enables it to analyse and understand. Moreover, sense-faculties which are the servants of life are still dull, reluctant to move into activity.
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Like workers to whom wages of joy are not paid, her senses are unwilling to exert themselves. They have not yet reached the state where they can draw the pleasure of life; so they are indifferent. The sense-torch is not burning. Her brain, which is not yet fully awake, is not helped by nature to remember its past.
Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.
Her bodily frame is held together by an indistinct earth-nature. The full force of that nature is not yet.7
But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.
By now she wakes up fully. Her life-spirit moves into action to participate in the cosmic purpose.
At the summons of her body's voiceless call Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back, Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate, Back to the labour and stress of mortal days, Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
As she wakes up, the body calls up other faculties. Her spirit which had travelled far elsewhere during the sleep of the night returns and takes up the burden of life, its ignorance and its fate, ready for the labour and stress of this mortal world. Her spirit comes back through the dreamland — full of symbols — lighting its pathway across the receding waters of sleep.
Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,
Illumined swiftly were life's darkened rooms.
And memory's casements opened on the hours
And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.
She feels a new pulsation from an unseen source; all the nooks and comers of her life that were obscure are quickly lighted up and the windows of her memory get fully opened. Even the thought-activity that had slowed down comes back gradually into its own.
7 For another interpretation, see Readings in Savitri by M.P. Pandit.
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Savitri is slowly waking up on this fatal morning. At first she is not actively aware of the life around and then at her body's call her spirit comes winging back and sensations, thoughts, become active.
All came back to her: Earth\in the night.
As she becomes more and more awake, she becomes conscious of the three antagonists around her: the Earth signifying Matter, the rule of Matter; Doom, death is the other — material existence is irresistibly dominated by death as things stand. In between there is Love which is divine at its source and which alone can resolve this conflict between Earth and Death. These are the ancient disputants. They have been at conflict between Earth and Death. These are the ancient disputants. They have been at conflict from the beginning of time to possess this creation. All of them now v encircle her like giant figures wrestling in the night. She is in the midst of their fight for supremacy.
The godheads from the dim Inconscient bom
Awoke to struggle and the pang divine,
And in the shadow of her flaming heart,
At the sombre centre of the dire debate,
A guardian of the unconsoled abyss
Inheriting the long agony of the globe,
A stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain
Stared into space with fixed regardless eyes
That saw griefs timeless depths but not life's goal.
Arisen from the dim inconscient, these disputants awake to their age-old struggle and pang — a pang that is divine because it is the pang of the immanent Divine. The terrible contest goes on in the shadow of the flaming heart of Savitri. At this centre of gloom is seated Pain, the figure of pain personified. He is the guardian of the unreconciled bottomless deeps. The universe has a long history of agony and the God of Pain is the inheritor of this agony. He is stone-like, stoic, calmly and loftily bearing the pain. He stares into space, looking at nothing in particular with a fixed gaze which sees the eternal depths of grief, but is unable to see the goal of life.
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Afflicted by his harsh divinity,
Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased
The daily oblation of her unwept tears.
Pain is divine in its aspect of hardness, for by sheer endurance it is leading the issue to a resolution in the Divine. Further, this deity of pain is fixed to his seat, though it is a royal seat befitting his divine status. He receives daily the oblation of Savitri's unshed tears, yet he is not satisfied; he waits for more. Tears that are wept are common enough, they spend out the grief; but tears that are unwept, that are controlled, suppressed, are more painful. Savitri is not given to lamenting and weeping; hence her pain is all the greater.
All the fierce question of man's hours relived.
Savitri becomes acutely aware of the very question of man's life — its purpose, its goal, if any.
The sacrifice of suffering and desire
Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy
Began again beneath the eternal Hand.
A perpetual sacrifice is going on in which the earth offers its desire and suffering to God, to the immortal Ecstasy. Now once again, through the agency of Savitri, under the auspices of the Divine, that sacrifice commences.
Awake she endured the moments' serried march
And looked on this green smiling dangerous world.
And heard the ignorant cry of living things.
Savitri does not start up all of a sudden. As she awakes, she becomes aware of all the movements around. She bears the march of time, moment by moment; the moments pass in their battalions. She looks on this world which is green, fresh of life, attractive but at the same time dangerous. The smile, the attraction, of this world proves to be dangerous. She not only watches but hears the ignorant cries of the living creatures on earth.
Amid the trivial sounds, the unchanging scene
Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.
All these sounds are indeed trivial in the long run. Everyday it is the same scene, people rushing to participate in this dangerous
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enticing world, full of cries of joy and pain. In this background Savitri's soul arises challenging Time and Destiny. Everyone has to face the compulsions of Time and Fate, without escape. But Savitri stands up to them defiantly.
Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
This was the day when Satyavan must die.
Her nature, her external being is immobile, though her soul is active. The soul has arisen, but the rest of her is immobile, not restless, not agitated, but silent, collected. It is only when one is silent and poised that one can really gather oneself, master one's force. She summons her in-built force to meet the immediate crisis. For
This is the hour when she has to conquer Time and Fate. For this is the day when Satyavan, her husband, is destined to die. In a humorous context Sri Aurobindo cites this line '
This was the day when Satyavan must die
as an example of poetic excellence and says that he would not change it even if offered the crown and income of a kavi-samrāt, the emperor of poets!8
M.P. PANDIT
8 Savitri, p. 772.
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