On Savitri
THEME/S
The Finding of the Soul
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After her marriage with Satyavan, Savitri leaves Madra and travels to the hermitage at Shalwa and takes charge of the blind king, Dyumtlsena, and the queen. In the new surroundings, which seemed quite heavenly to her, she commenced a new life in the company of her husband:
At first to her beneath the sapphire heavens
The sylvan solitude was a gorgeous dream-
Two lives were locked within an earthly heaven.1
But soon with the change of seasons, and setting in of the Monsoon, the dark clouds with the sobbing winds and the cruel storm that came crashing in brought fear and grief to her heart. These reminded her of Narad's date and her lover's doom. She knew that the her golden days of sweetest joys were numbered; yet she continued her daily routine of work with peace and grace. Deep within she prayed for Satyavan's life, without letting even Satyavan know of the prophesied end. She alone saw "the desert of her coming days;" but her need of Satyavan was infinite, not quite knowable to the mortal mind.
As she sat vigilant through sleepless nights of grief, she heard a mighty Voice approaching from inaccessible heights and addressing her:
Why earnest thou to this dumb deathbound earth...
O spirit, O immortal energy,
If 'twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart
Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?
Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.2
Savitri felt within that her strength was taken away from her and given to Death. It was futile to raise her hands in supplication to Heaven and that by those
1 Savitri, p. 468. 2 Ibid., p. 474.
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Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light.3
Taking the human stance for a while Savitri replied in a desparate vein:
Is there a God whom any cry can move?
He sits in peace and leaves the mortal's strength
Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law
And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.
What need have I, what need has Satyavan
To avoid the black meshed net, the dismal door,
Or call a mightier Light into life's closed room.
A greater Law into man's little world?
Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws
Or stave off death's inevitable hour ?4
Surely, this was not the purpose for which Savitri had come upon earth, to forget God or to remain deaf to the earth's and eternity's call. She had come here into the world of space and time with a mandate from the timeless and the spaceless Beyond to substitute the old dusty laws with those of light and immortality. She had come to
... lead man to truth's wide and golden road
That runs through finite things to eternity.5
It could not be that this supreme labourer of light would return to her abode beyond, her task undone. Her heart fell mute and power within her answered the still Voice:
I am thy portion here charged with thy work
As thou myself seated for ever above,
Speak to my depths, O great and deathless Voice,
Command, for I am here to do thy will.6
To which the Voice replied:
Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,
In silence seek God's meaning in thy depths.
Then mortal nature change to the divine.7
As she sat listening to the Voice, immersed in herself, like
A statue of the fire of the inner sun,8
3Ibid., p. 475. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 476. 6Ibid. 7Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 477.
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were disclosed to her the cosmic past, the mystic origins and the unfoldment of earth's destiny through the aeons. The appearance of creation from formlessness of the supreme Self, the shaping of Matter, the sprouting of the seeds of Life and the chaos of little sensiblities as well as the emergence of Mind were all seen as giant steps of the great energy of God on the road to Eternity. Human nature holds within itself both the forces of darkness and light. Man
Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.9
He hisses but Savitri, undaunted, forces her way toward her soul. She first enters the chaotic world of the subconscient where everything is confused, "nothing self-found,"
For all was there but nothing in its place.10
From there she proceeds further and enters the sense-world where she finds various forms taking shape. Things here are no longer vague and amorphous; they could be grasped by the senses, and yet the soul was not there. It was the ego around which sounds, senses and feelings centred; these created "a chaos of disordered impulses" void of any light or thought. Fixing her thought on the saviour Name, Savitri walked through this world for long hours before she arrived at the country of the of the physical mind. Here a greater danger awaited her, for she confronted giant head of vast and tumultuous life, uncontrolled by mind or soul. Released by the physical mind, a torrent of the blind life-force denuded the stillness of her silent self.
It cried to her listening spirit as it ran,
Demanding God's submission to chainless Force.11
It brought about surgings of the opposite movements of the Life-force — flame-ascensions and steep sinkings, tenderness and hate, joy and fear, ecstasy and despair. This is the Valley of the False Gleam, the nether realm of Life where all its contraries meet. Savitri is not attracted by this Gleam; she wanted to remain its master and not become its agent. She stands unmoved, and allows the current of Life-force pass by:
Through it all she moved not, plunged not in the vain waves,
9 Ibid., p. 479. 10 Ibid., p. 490. 11 Ibid, p. 492.
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Out of the vastness of the silent self
Life's clamour fled; her spirit was mute and free.12
Then, journeying further through the wide hush, Savitri came to a world where the Life-force was ordered or rather chained to an inviolable law; this is the beginning of a system.
There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;
A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.
Tamed to the modesty of a measured pace,
She kept no more her vehement stride and rush.13
She had lost all the grandeur of her force, the revels of her play and the majesty of her muse. For, Reason had entered her world, coercing her to live "in adamant walls of law." Even the freedom of Thought "was cut into a system" and was
...rivetted to Matter's solid ground14
to keep the soul from getting lost in its own vastnesses.
Life was consigned to a safe level path,
It dared not tempt the great and difficult heights
Or climb to be neighbour to a lonely star...
Or set the world ablaze with the inner Fire.15
This is the world of small ideals, of closed conventional and formal meditation and rational religion — the country of Life-mind.
Savitri advances beyond this too, and comes to the domain of the measured mind, where spirit itself is seen as a form of mind.
Here was a quiet country of fixed mind,
Here life no more was all nor passion's voice;
A cry of sense had sunk into a hush.
Soul was not there nor spirit, but mind alone;
Mind claimed to be the spirit and the soul.16
It was a world of fixity and stability, firmness and finality.
At the entrance Savitri meets a commanding personality. Oraclelike, with authority he speaks:
Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world,
12Ibid, p. 495. 13 Ibid 14 Ibid., p. 496. 15Ibid, pp. 496- 97.
16 Ibid., p. 498.
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Fortunate art thou to reach our brilliant air
Flaming with thoughts supreme finality.
O aspirant to the perfect way of life,
Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.
Ours is home of cosmic certainty.17
He wanted Savitri to permanently station herself in this kingdom of safety, certainty and mental ultimacy. But Savitri could not have stayed in this world of ordered and cold knowledge and fixed beliefs anymore than in those of the physical and vital minds; for, she had set herself forth in search of her soul. It was her psychic being that held the key to the unfoldment of earth's destiny. She replied:
Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.18
In this contented world it was unimaginable for someone to go outside the accustomed round of things and turn to the Beyond. Savitri's reply caused not a little astonishment and amusement to those around her, for they had long written off the soul for a sort of "gland or a secretion's fault." It was more a functional disorder of the brain, or rather an unreal term that made people "cling to living in a sea of death." To others, the soul was merely
A splendid shadow of the name of God,
A formless lustre from the Ideal's realm,
The Spirit is the Holy Ghost of Mind;
But none has touched its limits or seen its face.19
And to yet others,
Each soul is the great Father's crucified Son,
Mind is that soul's one parent, its conscious cause,
The ground on which trembles a brief passing light,
Mind, sole creator of the apparent world.
All that is here is part of our own self;
Our minds have made the world in which we live.20
That someone could still think of the soul was beyond their comprehension. There were the powers of the mighty mind that seemed to strongly attract Savitri. But gaining control of herself she continued her journey to discover her soul, for she knew
Only who save themselves can others save.21
17Ibid. 18lbid., p. 499. 19 Ibid, p. 500. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., p. 501.
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Strange to her was "life's riddling truth," for all those who desired to help suffering humanity turned to the outer world in search of external means whereas she alone looked for the eternal source of alleviation. She was in search of "the birth-place of the occult Fire," the deep mansion of her saviour soul. Only one from amongst the gathered gods answered her call.
Follow the world's winding highway to its source.
There in the silence few have ever reached,
Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone
And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.22
These were the occult powers, the messengers who helped men and brought solace and light into their lives. They knew that Savitri was the incarnation of the Divine Mother.
O human copy and disguise of God
Who seekst the deity thou keepest hid.23
Following their suggestion, Savitri takes the winding road, the narrow path, trod only by rare wounded pilgrim-feet and soon feels the nearness of her soul.
-2-
It is on this listless, narrow and winding path that Savitri finds a woman in "a pale lustrous robe" sitting in the "rugged and ragged soil" with her feet resting on "sharp and wounding" stones. She was filled with divine pity, and appeared touched by the grief of everyone living around. She owned the pangs of earth and identified herself with the toil of starry heaven;
Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.
Her heart was riven with the world's agony...24
She is the Mother of Seven Sorrows the divine participant of the suffering of all living creatures, bearing the first brunt of world-pain, and helping the earth to endure the otherwise unbearable agony of existence. She introduces herself:
O Savitri, I am thy secret soul.
22 Ibid., p. 502. 25 Ibid., pp. 501-02. 24 Ibid., p. 503.
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To share the suffering of the world I came,
I draw my children's pangs into my breast...
I am the soul of all who wailing writhe
Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods...
I am in all that suffers and that cries...
I am the spirit in a world of pain.25
She has been a witness to the suffering of humanity through the ages; also she shared the pain and grief of all existence with the steadfast hope that some day the Divine shall rule the earth and transform sorrow into pure delight.
I carry the fire that never can be quenched
And the compassion that supports the suns.
I am the hope that looks towards my God,
My God who never came to me till now;
His voice I hear that ever says 'I come':
I know that one day he shall come at last.26
As she ceased to speak, picking up the refrain an angry voice spoke — the voice of a tortured Titan crouched within man's depths, of one who seemed to enjoy its suffering even as it complained against it.
I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
To enjoy my agony god built the earth,
My passion he has made his drama's theme.27
It is the voice of a being who toils without success, who ceaselessly labours but is not fated to enjoy the fruit of his toil, who is slated to seek but not find, and forced to fight but not win. It is the wrath of a being who is condemned to live with his evil thoughts and quarrelsome nature against both God and man.
I was made for evil, evil is my lot;
Evil I must be and by evil live...
What Nature made me, that I must remain.28
It is the voice of an angry fatalist, symbolic of the sluggish, tamasic and demoniac nature of humanity in respect of any radical change of consciousness, the voice that grows and protests against the light and is averse to transformation. Savitri sees no reason to
25 Ibid., pp. 503-04. 26 Ibid., p. 505. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 507.
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answer him; instead she addresses the Mother of Seven Sorrows,
Madonna of suffering, Mother of grief divine,
Thou art a portion of my soul put forth
To bear the unbearable sorrow of the world.
Because thou art, men yield not to their doom,
But ask for happiness and strive with fate;
Because thou art, the wretched still can hope.
But thine is the power to solace, not to save.
One day I will return, a bringer of strength,
And make thee drink from the Eternal's cup;
His streams of force shall triumph in thy limbs
And Wisdom's calm control thy passionate heart.29
It is only then that misery could be hoped to be finally abolished from the heart of humanity and peace reign upon earth.
As Savitri continued her soul-ward journey, she came upon "a woman whose body was a mass of courage and heavenly strength." She was the Mother of Might:
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt...
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods.30
She is Durga, goddess of supreme Power; she is Lakshmi, mother of cosmic harmony; she is Kali, destroyer of the demon hordes. She slays the malignant Titan and responds to the cry of the oppressed. But she can save only a few, for
The cosmic evil is too deep to unroot:
The cosmic suffering is too vast to heal.31
But she is confident of the eventual fulfilment of her mission even
When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.32
As she finished, there came a voice — the Asuric antithesis growing ego-like in the mind of the human person that claimed allegiance both of earth and the wide heavens. It was the voice of the dwarf Titan, the cry of
The Ego of this great world of desire.33
It represents that part of man which makes him believe of his mastery over Nature. In truth, he is
29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 508. 31Ibid., p. 510. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., p. 511.
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A tool and slave of his own slave and tool...
Possessor he is possessed and, ruler, ruled.34
Though a "conscious automation" of Nature, he thinks that he is a claimant to the throne of heaven." Although he lives in Time and is "besieged by Death" and, precariously housed "on a little speck amid the stars," he thinks he is the emperor of the universe and that everything was created for his use and enjoyment.
The sun and moon are lights upon my path;
Air was invented for my lungs to breathe...
The sea was made for me to swim and sail...
The earth is my floor, the sky my living's roof.35
Though bom weak and helpless, he thinks he has
...grown greater than Nature, wiser than God.36
His misplaced confidence makes him declare:
There is no miracle I shall not achieve.
What God imperfect left, I will complete...
What he invented not, I shall invent:
He was the first creator, I am the last.37
And thinks
When earth is mastered, I shall conquer heaven.38
Savitri listens to the voice of the mental Ego but does not speak. She turns to the Mother of Might:
To help mankind and help the travail of Time.
Because thou art in him, man hopes and dares...
Thou hast given men strength, wisdom thou couldst not give.
One day I will return, a bringer of light,
Then I will give to thee the mirror of God.39
This, she says would give the Mother of Might the vision to see the self and world as they are seen by the Divine.
Then Savitri moves on in search of her soul and comes across yet another woman. She reached a point from where all could be seen and felt being close to the source of her spirit. The woman's eyes shone with crystal light, her face beamed like the golden sun.
34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., pp. 511-12. 36 Ibid., p. 512. 37 Ibid.
38 Ibid, p. 513. 39 Ibid., pp. 513-4.
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She mused:
OSavitri, I am thy secret soul.
Ihave come down to the wounded desolate earth
To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest...
I am peace that steals into man's war-worn breast...
I give peace to the humble and the great
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.
I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.40
She is the mother-power "that labours towards the best" and builds a world of consciousness out of the Inconscience. She is the mother-light that leads life to immortality out of the darkness of death. She is Knowledge, she is Charity, she is Peace and Silence and yet cannot entirely succeed in her work because humanity clings to its ignorance and is not ready to be saved.
Close upon the woman's self-description comes a voice, the voice of "the sense-shackled human mind," — the cry of an ignorant energy that "cannot see God's mighty whole." Human being has access only to the surface-nature of Reality and cannot commune "with the throbbing heart of things." Though, not infrequently inspired by the Unknown and visited by intuitions from beyond, he finds security only in reason and sense, and thus is baulked in this splendid effort to help himself and humanity. An immeasurable pathos was reflected in his voice:
I am the mind of God's great ignorant world
Ascending to knowledge by the steps he made;
I am the all-discovering Thought of man.
I am a god fettered by Matter and sense...
A smith tied to his anvil and his forge.41
Man has succeeded in mapping the heavens and analysing the stars but is ignorant of the secret purpose of life itself. He seems to explain everything, but of himself knows nothing.
I can foresee the acts of Matter's force,
But not the march of the destiny of man...
Human I am, human let me remain
Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.42
This particular aspect of human mind is incapable of accepting a
40 Ibid., pp. 514-6. 41 Ibid., pp. 518. 42 Ibid., pp. 519-20.
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higher destiny for man. It cannot conceive that man, constituted as he is of clay and inconscience, could ever grow immortal and divine. Savitri heard the voice and turning to the Woman of Light spoke:
Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace,
Thou art a portion of my self put forth
To raise the spirit to its forgotten heights.43
But the intellect is a self-enclosing and self-limiting phenomenon; it allows only "a bright shadow of God" to enter it, — and not God himself. Savitri exhorts the Madonna of Joy and Peace to continue to nurse and nourish the spiritual hunger in man and fill his "yearning heart with heaven's fire." She promises:
One day I shall return, His hands in mine,
And thou shall see the face of the Absolute.
Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,
Then shall the divine family be bom.
There shall be light and peace in all the worlds.44
Savitri moved still onwards and entered the "night of God," a region beyond knowledge and wisdom, outside the pale of any human light and love. Here, she realised that,
Her self was nothing, God alone was all,
Yet God she knew not but only knew he was.
A sacred darkness brooded now within,
The world was a deep darkness great and nude.45
She moved through the "fathomless impersonal Night", the "formless, voiceless, infinite,"
As might a shadow walk in a shadowy scene,
A small nought passing through a mightier Nought.46
At last she approached the end of her journey and felt the stirring of a luminous world within. It was like the birth of Dawn wearing immortal lustre for her robe, and
She recognised in her prophetic mind...
The mystic cavern in the sacred hill
And knew the dwelling of her secret soul.47
43 Ibid., p. 520. 44bid, p. 521. 45 Ibid., p. 522. 46 Ibid, p. 523. 47 Ibid
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then enters the rock-temple, — the mystic cave upon the sacred hill, through the great rock-doors carved as it were
...in the massive stone of Matter's trance.48
There, inside, she
...found herself amid great figures of gods
Conscious in stone and living without breath...
Executive figures of the cosmic self,
World-symbols of immutable potency.49
Deep in her consciousness, through an inner identification,
She felt herself made one with all she saw.50
It was a re-realisation of the truth of her inner existence; she was indeed the energy, the being of all the gods.
She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
The Mother was she of Beauty and Delight,
The Word in Brahma's vast creating clasp.
The World-Puissance on almighty Shiva's lap, —
The Master and the Mother of all lives
Watching the worlds their twin regard had made,
And Krishna and Radha for ever entwined in bliss,
And Adorer and Adored self-lost and one.51
Savitri then moved into the last and inmost chamber of the rock-temple. There, she saw seated on a golden height a figure of supreme Effulgence, a form of indefinable Splendour,—the fount and force of everything,
A Power of which she was a straying Force,
An invisible Beauty, goal of the world's desire,
A Sun of which all knowledge is a beam,
A Greatness without whom no life could be.52
She realises everything receding into nameless silence of the pure formless Self. Then, passing "through a tunnel dug in the last rock," she comes out into radiant domain of the deathless sun.
And crossing a wall of doorless living fire,53
48 Ibid., p. 524. 49Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 525. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., p. 526.
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in a houses of transparent truth and light,
There suddenly she met her secret soul.54
It was the immortal being cast in the flow of transience
In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness...
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes.55
In the Everlasting's universal play Savitri has been
The Spirit's conscious representative,
God's delegate in our humanity,
Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent's ray,
She had come into the mortal body's room
To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.56
Moved by her infinite love for her children, the mother-being of Savitri
puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart
To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds
And labour mid the labour of the stars.57
It is this immortal soul within us that supports the human scene— our mental, vital and physical life; it "takes on itself their anguish and defect." It is this hidden godhead that uplifts us from light to greater light. It is in the inmost "chamber of light and flame" that
The secret deity and its human part,
The calm immortal and the struggling soul58
see each other and, seeing, realise their utter identity.
Then with a magic transformation's speed
They rushed into each other and grew one.59
After finding her soul Savitri returns to her human and earthly environment. The subtle world withdraws behind a luminous veil of inner sight and Savitri experiences within her the harmonising oneness of life, mind and soul. She invokes the Supreme Mother to descend into her earthly body and make of it the temple of her
54 Ibid., p. 526. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57Ibid. 58 Ibid., p. 527. 59 Ibid.
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transforming love. In response to her call there descends into her heart,
A living image of the original Power.60
The very touch of its feet creates a mighty movement that rocks the subtle world and releases from its coiled-up sleep a flaming serpent that rises billowing its coils and stands erect. It touches different chakras in her body "with its flaming mouth." The giant energy thus released "surcharged with light and bliss" joined the thousandfold consciousness above, linking Matter's nether base with the Spirit's summits in the Eternal's space. A stream of nectar flows down the mystic centres bringing about "a high celestial change" in Savitri,
Breaking the black Inconscient's blind mute wall,
Effacing the circles of the Ignorance,
Power and divinities burst flaming forth;
Each part of the being trembling with delight
Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness
And saw her hand in every circumstance
And felt her touch in every limb and cell.61
Thus did Savitri succeed in building the strong fortress of the Divine in a loud ignorant world" and make "the body a capital of bliss."
In the brief stade between a death and birth
A first perfection's stage is reached at last;
Out of the wood and stone of our nature's stuff
A temple is shaped where the high gods could live.
Even if the struggling world is left outside
One man's perfection still can save the world.
There is won a new proximity to the skies,
A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,
A deep concordat between Truth and Life:
A camp of God is pitched in human time.62
Savitri finds her soul, the soul that is both cosmic and supracosmic. She "passes beyond Time into eternity" and living eternally in consciousness of the supreme Mother, Prepares to meet her Fate.
V. MADHUSUDAN REDDY
60Ibid., p. 528. 61Ibid., p. 529. 62Ibid., p. 531.
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