On Savitri
THEME/S
In the first three Books constituting Part I of Savitri we come closest to an authentic autobiography of Sri Aurobindo, in particular of his yogic life in which he was totally absorbed all the 40 years he spent in Pondicherry. The world has often speculated about this period of his life, but most of these speculations have been wide off the mark. Sri Aurobindo turned to yoga in earnest around 1907-8 when he first met Lele. But his brief contact with Lele lasted only from 30 December 1907 to February 1908. But he continued his spiritual life. He had by then experienced two of the most cardinal spiritual siddhis known to traditional Indian Yoga. Under Lele's direct guidance he had seen with a stupendous intensity "the world as a cinematographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahman." This was the experience of Nirguna Brahman.1 And in 1909 when he was in Alipore jail he had the experience of Saguna Brahman. These experiences changed him completely, as he explains himself:
During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the whole future of humanity.2
The first three Books of Savitri, which describe Aswapati's Yoga, are in fact a vary accurate description of Sri Aurobindo's own Yoga, as I have argued elsewhere.3 This Yoga has three phases as characterised by Sri Aurobindo himself in a letter:
1On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 79.
2Ibid., p. 34. The use of the third person is characteristic of Sri Aurobindo when speaking of himself.
3Ref. My article entitled Aswapati in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in Mother India, February-March 1999.
Aswapati's Yoga falls into three parts. First, he is achieving his own spiritual fulfilment as the individual and this is described in the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but this too is as yet only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. This is described in the Book of the Divine Mother.4
The aim of this paper is to offer the reader an overview of the fifteen cantos of Book II, entitled "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds". These are incidentally also those cantos of the epic which most people find very difficult to comprehend and, often, critics of Sri Aurobindo's poetry have cited extracts from this part of the poem as examples of supposed lack of poetry in Savitri. This is because, more than anywhere else in the poem, the poet is presenting us here over a span of nearly 210 pages kinds of experience which are extraordinary, outside the scope of the experiences of most us.
Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry.5
He tries to capture in these lines a vision caught directly from the heights and depths and breadths of a more than human consciousness. The language too is austere and direct and tries to catch the very essence of the spiritual experience. But like Books I and II of the poem, Book III has the rare distinction of having been written in its entirety in his own hand by Sri Aurobindo himself. Therefore Books constituting Part I probably had more opportunities of receiving a close scrutiny from Sri Aurobindo himself than all the other Books of the poem, large chunks of which were written down by Nirodbaran as Sri Aurobindo dictated them. In my view these cantos contain many
4 Savitri p. 773-74.
5 Ibid., p. 794.
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fine examples of Sri Aurobindo's poetic excellence and are therefore worth reading even for their sheer poetry alone.
1
The general title of Book II is "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds". The traveller here is Aswapati. What worlds does he explore, and where exactly are these worlds located, and why does he undertake this exploration? Sri Aurobindo has explained in The Life Divine6 why it is necessary to assume that there are other planes of existence besides this physical world. This creation is seen by him as the saga of the evolution of consciousness from the Inconscient to the Superconscient. But this evolution is preceded by an involution, by a plunge taken by the Supreme.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.7
He assumes that Sachchidananda must have descended into inconscience not all of a sudden but through various stages through a progressive limitation of itself. These various stages of the downward plunge constitute the various planes of consciousness or worlds. It is these worlds that Aswapati saw as
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned, waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.8
Mankind has from the beginning of existence believed in the existence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their powers and the human race until the rationalistic period of human thought began to sweep this belief aside as an old-fashioned superstition. To Quote Sri Aurobindo:
6 The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 765-91.
7Savitri, p.99. 8Ibid., p. 98.
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This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter. These worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life, they may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret communication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries and instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a subjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the terrestrial world's life and motives and happenings. It is possible to receive help or guidance or harm or misguidance from these brings; it is possible even to become subject to their influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised by them for their good or evil purpose. At times the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical Forces of either character, those that strive to uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or prevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul's self-expression in the material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we think of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful: there are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences, instigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of actions that overpass the normal human measure.9
These worlds are made of substances (for example, Subtle Matter, Vital, Mental and Spiritual) all of which are subtler than gross Matter and are therefore visible only to the supra-physical senses. Aswapati has been depicted as a seeker of integral truth who seeks to colonise this earth with this integral truth and its manifestation. He obviously cannot find this truth and the means of manifesting it in the gross material reality of this world. He therefore looks for it in all the other worlds. Thus comes about Aswapati's odyssey through the various worlds of consciousness which reflects Sri Aurobindo's understanding of man's evolutionary progress.
9 The Life Divine, SABCL Vol. 19, pp. 775-76.
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In this slow ascension he must follow her pace
Even from her faint and dim subconscious start:
So only can earth's last salvation come.
For so only could he know the obscure cause
Of all that holds back and baffles God
In the jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul.10
According to this scheme this reality is divided into four separate and yet overlapping kingdoms: these are the Kingdom of Matter and physical realities, the Kingdom of Life and vital realities, the Kingdom of Mind and mental realities, and the Kingdom of the Spirit and spiritual realities.
This macrocosm of these worlds is mirrored microcosmically in the structure of human consciousness:
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.11
The living symbols of these conscious planes, their influences and godheads have been fixed as slow-scaled degrees in our inner life. So Aswapati's odyssey is in fact a journey of the inner regions of his own consciousness. And this is what is described in the fifteen cantos of Book II. Nor are experiences of the Kingdom of the Spirit dealt with, except a small part of them, in this Book. The experiences of the Kingdom of the Spirit are described primarily in Books I and III and also in cantos devoted to the description of Savitri's Yoga.
Book II is organised as follows:
Canto 1: The World-Stair: we have already reviewed this canto above. It is introductory in nature and describes the varied worlds which Aswapati sees as an immobile worlds pile, a huge column of worlds upon worlds rising from the plinth of Matter and ascending into the unknowable summits of the Spirit, and also it describes how this macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm of our inner being.
Canto 2 describes Aswapati's experience of the Kingdom of Subtle Matter;
l0Ibid, p. 135.
11Ibid, p. 98.
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Cantos 3-9 describe the various regions of the Kingdom of Life;
Cantos 10-13 describe the different regions of the Kingdom of the Mind.
Cantos 14 and 15 describe the Kingdom of the Spirit. As stated already, these are not the only cantos in this epic in which we have a description of Aswapati's experiences in the Kingdom of the Spirit.12
In many ways these cantos recapitulate for us the history of the evolution of consciousness in this world, beginning with Matter to Mind and beyond. Sri Aurobindo has maintained that this creation of ours is best understood not as the story of the evolution of physical forms, however interesting such a chronicle might be, but as a story of the evolution of consciousness. Such a perspective enables us to answer many questions about the why of this creation and of ourselves. The how-perspetive of Darwinian evolution may answer some questions regarding the stages through which evolution had to pass before the unicellular amoeba developed into the complex human being, but it does not answer the more crucial questions like why we are here and where we are supposed to go from here. In other words, Sri Aurobindo's narration of the evolutionary story of mankind tells us a great deal about ourselves, of our past as well as of our future.
As mentioned earlier, Aswapati's experience of the gross material world,13 of its truths and errors, is not dealt with in Book II. This Book begins with his experiences of the Kingdom of Subtle Matter, described in Canto 2. Here, as elsewhere in this Book, the poet is not interested in an abstract characterisation of these worlds; he gives a description of Aswapati's experiences in these worlds. Each of these worlds holds for Aswapati an important truth which he has to absorb within himself before he can understand Truth in its integrality. At the same time the inadequacies of each of these worlds, which push Aswapati to press further afield are also described as concrete and vivid experiences. As Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters, Savitri
12While it is true that in man's evolutionary development, Life proceeds from Matter, and Mind from Life, Spirit does not proceed form Mind, although man becomes aware of his spiritual reality after he has become conscious of his body, life and mind. Spirit in fact is the ground of which all other grades of consciousness stand. So in one sense it is primary.
13Canto Two of Book X deals with the Kingdom of Gross Matter and the monism of Matter: pp. 615-19.
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is first and foremost a record of his spiritual experiences; that it turns out to embody impressive philosophy and vibrant poetry is a sheer bonus. Recall what Sri Aurobindo once said on this point:
I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced.14
The Kingdom of Subtle Matter15
This world is not as easily accessible as the world of gross matter, since it requires a certain purification of consciousness to enter it. It is a world which contains the pure archetypes behind the physical phenomena. Aswapati is able to experience in this world activities and beings which are beyond the scope of the physical senses.
To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To feel the eternal's touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here.
A fragment here is caught of heaven's design;
Else could we never hope for greater life
And ecstasy and glory could not be....
Earth's great dull barrier is removed awhile,
The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes
And we grow vessels of creative might.16
The world of subtle matter is normally beyond the experience of normal life; it touches our lives nonetheless when we have a profound experience of beauty, which often fills us with a sense of mystery.
The enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt.
A joyful anguish trembles in out limbs;
A dream of beauty dances through the heart,
A though from the eternal Mind draws near,
Intimations cast from the Invisible
Awakening from Infinity's sleep come down
Symbols of That which never yet was made.17
14 Savitri, p. 794. 15 Ibid., Canto 2.
17Ibid, pp. 108-09.
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The real purpose of art is to push us beyond the limits of the gross physical and let us have a glimpse of the subtle world and its beauty and mystery.
Another path to the subtle world lies through Hatha Yoga. It takes us to the subtle world as the link between pure matter and pure spirit. The aim of Hatha Yoga and its attraction to many people seems to be this promise of freedom of the soul from the prison of the material embodiment.
Matter and soul in conscious union meet
Like lovers in a lonely secret place:
In the clasp of a passion not yet unfortunate
They join their strength and sweetness and delight
And mingling make the high and low worlds one.18
The HathaYogin, however, in affirming the truth of the Spirit seems to deny the truth and value of the physical body. This does not conform to the spirit of Integral Truth which is what Aswapati is seeking.
Another great pitfall of the kingdom of subtle matter is its beauty and simplicity themselves. There is perfect harmony among forms here. There is no conflict here, no death either; for each form is eternal. There is no struggle here, no frustration.
All is a miracle of symmetric charm,
A fantasy of perfect line and rule.
There all feel satisfied in themselves and whole,
A rich completeness is by limit made,
Marvel in an utter littleness abounds,
An intricate rapture riots in a small space:
Each rhythm is kin to its environment,
Each line is perfect and inevitable,
Each object faultlessly built for charm and use...
Content to be, it has need of nothing more.
Here was not futile effort's broken heart:
Exempt from the ordeal and the test,
Empty of opposition and of pain,
It was a world that could not fear nor grieve.
It had no grace of error or defeat,
It had no room for fault, no power to fail.19
18Ibid, p. 105. 19Ibid, p. 113.
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If Aswapati's aim were an escape from the predicament that life on this earth is, this would have been an ideal world for him. He is not seeking any one-sided perfection, like the perfection of form. He is seeking an integral perfection of form in union with matter. This world looks to him therefore a sterile material paradise and he therefore abandons this world to seek his destiny "beyond in larger Space".
2
The Vital Worlds
Having found the Kingdom of Matter unsatisfactory, Aswapati now enters the vital world, the Kingdom of Life. This is a very complex world and as many as 7 cantos (cantos 3 through 9) are devoted to his experiences of the different regions of this kingdom. Not all of these are easily accessible to our normal consciousness. We are normally conscious of life where it is found in union with or even dominated by matter.
But there is a region where life exists in its own right, autonomously. Aswapati being a Yogin has access to this region as well. Even beyond that is a region of life where it is guided by mental ideals. And there are also regions still higher than that to which even Aswapati has no access.
The Glory and Fall of Life20
The most remarkable thing noticed by Aswapati as he enters the world of life is its power, its inexhaustible creativity and variety. Life seems to expand in all directions and, since there is no control or guidance to this outburst, creation is followed by destruction, since in the absence of any vision, it is difficult to distinguish between the two.
A scene was planned for all her numberless moods
Where each could be the law and way of life,
But none could offer a pure felicity;
Only a flickering zest they left behind
Or the fierce lust that brings a dead fatigue....
20Ibid, Canto 3.
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The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes.151
And a soul's thoughts looked out from earthbom eyes.152
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes.153
Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight.154
Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,
Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown.155
Yet shall they look up as to peaks of God.156
His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves.157
The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes.158
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze.159
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity.160
And all earth look into the eyes of God.161
So the journey ends. And we are infinitely grateful to Maha-Rishi Maha-Kavi Sri Aurobindo for affording us the favour of walking in his luminous footsteps and following the long march of the ascent of sight from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "closed eyes' sight" of the supreme Superconscient—surely not in living experience as in the case of Maha-Yogi Sri Aurobindo himself but as a meditative intellectual-cum-imaginative exercise. And that is surely no mean gain for us the ordinary mortals with our "clipped outlook" on things.
Jayatu Sri Aurobindah—Victory to Sri Aurobindo.
JUGAL KlSHORE MUKHERJEE
151 [bid. , p. 451. 152 lbid., p. 485. 153 Ibid., p. 526.
154 Ibid., p. 370. 155 Ibid., p. 537. 156 Ibid., p. 704.
157 Ibid. , p. 706. 158 lbid., p. 707. 159 Ibid., p. 709
160 Ibid., p. 279. 161Ibid., p. 450.
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Savitri: The Devikāvyam
In the Sadhana Shastra of the Pooma or Integral Yoga posited by Sri Aurobindo, there are very helpful guides for the aspirants. While the tattva (philosophy) of man's transformation is brought to us by works like The Life Divine and The Supramental Manifestation, the hita (way) is outlined in The Synthesis of Yoga. Here 'synthesis' is not to be an "undiscriminating combination" of existing methods of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo says in this volume what the synthesis must be:
It [the synthesis] must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.1
Thus not only do we learn a good deal about the traditionally demarcated paths of Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, Raja, and Hatha, but we also gain a deep insight into the Tantra Yoga. Sri Aurobindo makes a clarifying statement on the bases of these Yogas quite early in the volume:
In all the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline,— mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered.2
Part Four of The Synthesis of Yoga spells out the steps of the Yoga of Self-Perfection. This is no time-bound system but is to be a life-long affair since the plan involves an endless progression:
1The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 46.
2Ibid., p. 47.
desire to increase in meaningful ways. Without the constant prodding of desire, there could have been no progress in life at all. Desire gives us the will to challenge apparently insurmountable odds, and Aswapati finds this aspect of desire valuable even in his spiritual quest.
A working of habit or a sense of law,
A steady repetition in the flux,
Yet its roots of will ever the same;
These passions are the stuff of which we are made.
This was the first cry of the awaking world.
It clings around us still and clamps the god.
Even when reason is bom and soul takes form,
In beast and reptile and thinking man
It lasts and is the fount of all their life.
This too was needed that breath and living might be.27
But the path of desire must be followed with caution. Without proper direction the path of desire may lead us to destruction by making us the unknowing prey of daemonic forces,
Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives
And in a small body self is all that counts,
Wherever love and light and largeness lack,
These crooked fashioners take up their task.
To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.
Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,
Our nature's twilight is their lurking place.
Here too the darkened primitive heart obeys
The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind
That dogs out knowledge with misleading light
And stands between us and the Truth that saves.28
The little life is in fact the dominant perspective on life of a vast majority of humans and this qualifies them to be called what Sri Aurobindo has called "economic barbarians".29 The most dominant characteristic of such a person is his passion for economic success, and his insatiable desire to possess and control everything within his reach. There is for him no meaning to anything beyond its economic
27Ibid.p. 140. 28 Ibid., p. 153.
29The Human Cycle, SABCL, Vol. 15, p. 72.
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value. Those who have this view of life may be able to enjoy life for a time but their attempt to build security by the accumulation of wealth and economic power will inevitably result in failure, frustration and pain. Little life's perspective on life is too narrow to provide a key to the understanding of man.
It knew itself a creature of the mud;
It asked no larger law, no loftier air;
It had no inward look, no upward gaze.
A backward scholar on logic's rickety bench
Indoctrinated by the erring sense,
It took appearance for the face of God,
For casual lights the marching of the suns,
For heaven a starry strip of doubtful blue;
Aspects of being feigned to be the whole.30
Little life has no conception of the possibility of higher development of transcendence. It tends to devote all its energies to perpetuate life in its external state. It has no notion of either transcendence or transformation.
Time has he none to turn his eyes within
And look for his lost self and his dead soul.
His motion on too short an axis wheels;
He cannot soar but creeps on his long road...
Hardly a few can climb to greater life.
All tunes to a low scale and conscious pitch.
His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;
His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,
Rare are his visits of heavenly ecstasy...
He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow's hope and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible;
His being's kinship to infinity
He has shut away from him into inmost self,
Forced off the greatness of hidden God...
He is the crown of all that has been done:
30Savitri, p. 149.
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Thus is creation's labour justified;
This is the world's result, nature's last poise!31
Thus finding the realms of little life also unsatisfactory, Aswapati moves into the kingdoms of greater life.
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life32
This is a realm which is still bound to matter but which does not regard itself forever subject to it. Here life senses that its roots are in the eternal and that it does not have to remain entrapped by death for ever. This vision gives it courage and hope.
Almost she nears what never can be attained;
She shuts eternity into an hour
And fills a little soul with the Infinite;
The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;
She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,
Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms
And feels around her infinity's embrace...
This is her secret and impossible task
To catch the boundless in a net of birth,
To cast the spirit into physical form,
To lend speech and thought to the Ineffable;
She pushed to reveal the ever Unmanifest.33
The greater life feels that it has not come about as a result of an accident and that it has a great future because the Divine within supports and guides its activities. This attitude of hopefulness and insight into its future impels it to transcend the present human condition and aspire for a state which is free from pain, struggle and death.
A strange enthusiasm has moved its heart;
It hungers for heights, it passions for the supreme.
It hunts for the perfect word, the perfect shape,
It leaps to the summit thought, the summit light.34
Her will is to shut God into her works
31Ibid., pp. 165-66. 33Ibid., p. 177.
32Ibid, Canto 6. 34Ibid, p. 179.
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And keep him as her cherished prisoner
That never they may part again in Time.35
This insight into its spiritual destiny turns out to be a mixed blessing, since it has no key to the understanding of the ultimate mystery and of the spiritual reality. The harder it tries to realise its potential, the more does it see its own finiteness.
The greatness she has dreamed her acts have missed,
Her labour is a passion and a pain,
A rapture and pang, her glory and her curse;
And yet she cannot choose but labours on;
Her mighty heart forbids her to desist.
As long as the world lasts her failure lives
Astonishing and foiling Reason's gaze,
A folly and a beauty unspeakable,
A superb madness of the will to live,
A daring, a delirium of delight.36
The greater life reveals more than any other level the meeting of the opposites in life. It is a product of life's into matter, and therefore into ignorance and death. This is the source of agony in life. But it is also permeated with a mind and impregnated with the vision of the greatness of the spirit, and so it has its sublime side as well. Thus life is torn between these two pulls. In Narad's long reply to Savitri's mother (Canto 2 Book VI) we have a similar characterisation of life. For the seeker of the integral truth it becomes necessary to experience and understand the extremes of the world. So Aswapati at this point takes a plunge into the Night and the World of Falsehood.
The Descent into Night; The World of Falsehood...37
These are horrible worlds in which chaos reigns supreme. There is no mercy or compassion in these worlds where all the forces and beings are hostile to life, truth and beauty.
The veil was rent that covers Nature's depths:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
35Ibid. , pp. 181-82. 36 Ibid., p. 178.
37Ibid., Cantos 7-8.
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And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.38
It was the gate of a false Infinite,
An eternity of disastrous absolutes,
An immense negation of spiritual things.39
Gradually Aswapati realises that however contrary to our world, these worlds have their own truth and justification, and unless we understand them and their experiences, they cannot be transformed. In its own world this vital world of darkness is sovereign.
All who would raise the fallen world must come
Under the dangerous arches of their power;
For even the radiant children of the gods
To darken their privilege is and dreadful right.
None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.40
Even in the heart of this darkness, Aswapati finds a place where all conflict is resolved into an infinite emptiness. This is a sort of inverted paradise whose attractions are also very captivating. With great effort, Aswapati extricates himself from being lost in this experience.
All vanished suddenly like a thought expunged;
His spirit became an empty listening gulf
Void of the dead illusion of a world:
Nothing was left, not even an evil face...
A dense and nameless Nothing conscious, mute,
Which seemed alive but without body or mind,
Lusted all beings to annihilate
That it might be for ever nude and sole.41
Aswapati's patience and courage paid off as he reached the very bottom of this world of falsehood. There he suddenly came upon the spring of Divinity.
There in the slumber of the cosmic Will
He saw the secret key of Nature's change.
A light was with him, an invisible hand
38Ibid, p. 202. 39Ibid., p. 221. 40Ibid., p. 227.
41Ibid., p. 217.
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Was laid upon the error and the pain
Till it become a quivering ecstasy,
The shock of sweetness of an arms's embrace.
He saw in Night the Eternal's shadowy veil,
Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,
In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,
Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain
And hell as a shortcut to heaven's gates.42
Aswapati descended into the lowest level of life, and experienced the truth of that hell as well.
The Paradise of the Life-Gods43
Now Aswapati leaves these nether regions of life and climbs into an almost opposite realm filled with life's ecstasies. This is a bright world in which all that life needs is provided for abundantly. Here too there is no struggle.
All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation's native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.
There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highway of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles.44
Like some of the worlds Aswapati has experienced earlier, this world also captivates him and he feels persuaded to give up his struggle and rest here:
A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable
Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became
A fiery ocean of felicity;
He foundered drowned in sweet and burning vasts:
The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.45
42Ibid, p. 231. 43Ibid, Canto 9. 44Ibid, p. 235.
45Ibid, p. 237.
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Aswapati finds this world too unsatisfactory, since it is based also on a partial truth. It is a world of truth and light, but this is a world protected from the reality that opposes it. This world may be an appropriate resting place for someone who seeks an escape from the dualities of life, but it is a pointless world for someone who is seeking an integral fulfilment.
This too must now be overpassed and left,
As all must be until the Highest is gained
In whom the world and self grow true and one:
Till that is reached our journeying cannot cease...
A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire
Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss.
It could not house the wideness of a soul
Which needed all infinity for its home.46
3
The Mental Worlds
Since what distinguishes man in the animal world is a fuller evolution of mind, Aswapati explores next the mental dimensions of man, its strengths and inadequacies. As in the vital world, here too he sees the glory and the fall of mind. In its higher realms, mind is free from subjection to matter and life. It is sovereign at that level and enjoys mental bliss unmixed with any error or ignorance.
He saw, sovereignly free in limitless light,
The unfallen planes, the thought-created worlds
Where Knowledge is the leader of the act
And Matter is of thinking substance made...
A happiness it brings of whispered truth;
There runs in its flow honeying the bosom of Space
A laughter from the immortal heart of Bliss,
And the unfathomed Joy of timelessness.47
But mind has also undergone a fall in order to bring consciousness and mental truth to the lower realms. But in thus descending it has lost its greatness and autonomy. It is this fallen state of mind that is
46Ibid, pp. 238-39. 47 Ibid., pp.263-64
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of great importance to Aswapati. Here he experiences two distinct levels: one, the lower mind which has no awareness of its glorious origin and sees itself as the product and servant of matter and life, and then there is the greater mind of the mid-region where it is aware of its origin and keeps hoping to regain it. He begins with the little mind.
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind47a
Here he sees mind in its three aspects, the physical mind, the vital mind and the rational mind. Each of these has its own truths and also its limitations. The physical mind is very limited in scope but it has been of particular value in the evolution of man. It has tried to bring stability and order to man's physical world. It has given a direction to man's life and is the source of man's need for moral code and religious ritual. But in its passion for security and stability it abhors all innovation and creativity. It abhors change as an audacious sin and is distrustful of each new discovery. Thus it is greatly limited in its scope and capacity for truth.
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form...
A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit's grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,
It blinds itself by what itself creates.
A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
It sees as Law the habits of the world,
It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.48
The poet likens it to a watch-dog who is suspicious of all "intruders from the Invisible", "as at a foe who would break up its home", and forever wants to be found in "its kennel of objective certitude". (Savitri, pp. 246-47)
Next the vital mind. It is a rash intelligence and has a passion for all that is new. It throws caution to the wind. It constantly urges man
41aIbid, Canto 10. 48Ibid, p. 245.
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to dare and go beyond what is already known. But is has no sense of direction, no judgement of its own, and can lead man to the edge of ultimate truth as easily as it can lead him into the regions of total ignorance.
A fiery spirit came, next of the three.
A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass,
A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned
From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds
And with its dire edge eats at being's heart.49
Ardent to find, incapable to retain,
A brilliant instability was its mark,
To err its inborn trend, its native cue...
An uncertain winner of uncertain stakes,
Instinct its dam and the life-mind its sire,
It ran its race and came in first or last.50
Next is the realm of the rational mind. Its primary goal is to create order and structure. It too likes to grapple with the unknown but with a sense of direction. It has the special capacity to stand back and look at things and activities objectively, without getting involved in them. It brings to the scrutiny of things and events a method which it thinks is infallible, namely, that of reason and logic. It admits that there are many things about man's life which it does not understand, but even with regard to those which it does understand, it claims to be man's most reliable mentor.
Out of Nature's body of phenomenon
She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines
Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run,
Her sciences precise and absolute...
She pens in clear demotic characters
The vast encylopaedia of her thoughts;
An algebra of her mathematics' signs,
Her numbers and unerring formulas
She builds to clinch her summary of things.51
Reason by itself is neutral: "it runs on all sides." Its art seems to be its only wisdom and its methodology its only strength. But its leaps do
49Ibid, p. 247. 50Ibid, pp. 248-49. 51Ibid, p. 251.
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not bring any flashes of absolute power or heavenly certitude.
A million faces wears her knowledge here
And every face is turbaned with a doubt.52
Its conclusions are an endless march without a goal, and there is no summit on which it can stand and see in a single glance the Infinite whole.
Thus Reason's toil is an inconclusive exercise. It accepts every brief and pleads its case.
It is at best an eternal advocate but often fancies itself as the judge. Time cancels all its judgements in appeal. Furthermore, it is restricted in its operations to external phenomenon and the relationships within it. When confronted with the inner meaning of the phenomenon it is totally helpless. It is no more than a "bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact" and can at best drag its huge knowledge-bales to utility's immense bazaar.
To its view this creation appears to be no more than an "intricate and meaningless enginery/ Of ordered fateful and unfailing chance." Thus it "builds a rational world without a mind."
It has no mover, no maker, no idea:
Its vast self-action toils without a cause;
A lifeless Energy irresistibly driven,
Death's head on the body of Necessity,
Engenders life and fathers consciousness,
Then wonders why all was and whence it came.53
Reason does realise its own inadequacies and inability to find the absolute truth about this created world. Reason sees itself as no more than "a freak of Matter's law." Thus Aswapati does recognise the great value of reason as well as its capacity to mislead man, particularly when it steps into areas which fall outside its power to analyse and understand. Reason helps best when called upon to separate what is rational from what is irrational. Thus he concludes that "An inconclusive play is Reason's toil."
The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind54
At this point Aswapati crosses the boundaries of normal human mind
52Ibid. 53Ibid, p. 253. 54Ibid, Canto 11.
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which does not exhaust the range of mental consciousness. There is the greater mind which is free from the flaws of the little mind. The greater mind is the unfallen mind and is open to the glories of the ideal mind.
The ideal mind is from where all the great hopes and movements on earth come. Human progress and perfection are prefigured here.
In its vast ambit if ideal Space
Where beauty and mightiness walk hand in hand,
The Spirit's truths take form as living Gods
And each can build a world of its own right.55
Man's normal mind is not totally alien to this world although it is often closed to its intimations since it is bound to the external form of things. However, in rare moments it is enlivened by communications from greater mind.
Our present feels sometimes their regal touch,
Our future strives towards their luminous thrones:
Out of spiritual secrecy they gaze,
Immortal footfalls in mind's corridors sound:
Our souls can climb into the shining planes,
The breadths from which they came can be our home.56
The greater mind is not dependent on the material manifestation; it works through intuition, insight, illumination and inspiration. This mind often receives truth by becoming silent and calm. It receives truth through flashes of illumination.
Aswapati's ascent is now through a triple realm of thought. As he enters this realm, Aswapati meets the guardian angels who await "for the heaven-bound soul" "holding the thousand keys of the Beyond." He also sees there "World-Time's enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss." These great creative powers are the miracle workers of the Creator. They have built this material world, "this wide world-kindergarten of young souls" by lending finite shapes to infinite things.
A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;
The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth
To make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.57
Above this range stood beings of "a subtle archangel race". In their
55Ibid., p. 261. 56 Ibid.,p.263. 57Ibid., p. 268.
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eyes shone a light of liberating knowledge; they knew truth from within. All that escaped the narrow scope of conceptualisation, their vision saw and seized.
The Unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient's scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube.58
This is the world of the Newtons and the Einsteins. They try to capture the free rhythms of the infinite Consciousness into the syllogisms of finite thought.
Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and number a key to all that is:
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.59
Aswapati in his ascent now enters the realm of the kings of thought. Theirs is an "all-containing Consciousness" and the mind serves there as an agent of a higher power, not as a source. It can clearly see that
The cosmos is no accident in Time;
There is a meaning in each play of Chance,
There is a freedom in each face of Fate.
A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world;
A Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events;
A Word self-bom upon creation's heights,
Voice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres,
Prophet of the seeings of the Absolute,
Sows the Idea's significance in Form
And from that seed the growths of Time arise.60
But Aswapati also begins to understand the limitations of the higher mind. Although it receives the higher truth, it is has no power to transmit it to the lower parts of man's being—his little mind, life and gross matter. In fact, these lower members dismiss this truth as mere
58Ibid, p. 269. 59Ibid. 60Ibid, p. 271.
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fancy and flights of imagination. Furthermore, there is an attempt here to capture the highest truth in terms of mental images and conceptions which are insufficient to hold the great Truth. As the poet says, the powers of the greater mind measure the Illimitable with number's rods. They try to squeeze termless truths into transparent systems and to make the Timeless accountable to time.
They seek to hedge and park the ungrasped infinitudes and erect absolute walls of thought and speech and make a vacuum to hold the One.
This was the play of the bright gods of Thought.
Attracting into time the timeless Light,
Imprisoning eternity into the hours,
This they have planned, to snare the feet of Truth
In an aureate net of concept and of phrase
And keep her captive for the thinker's joy
In his little world built of immortal dreams.61
Thus the greater mind too has a tendency to misrepresent the higher realities when it cuts them down to the size of mental concepts. Aswapati realises that
...thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.
In our thinking's close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.62
The Paradise of the Mind63
At either end of this luminous stair of the mental consciousness Aswapati sees the heavens of the ideal mind. In these heavens he could have ended his long pilgrimage as he could have in the Paradise of the Life Gods. He is far away now from the contaminating touch of matter and life and he has full freedom to savour the realms of mental consciousness and its worlds of bliss. On one side there are the worlds of undying bliss, the kingdoms of the deathless Rose. This
61Ibid., p. 274. 62Ibid.,p.276. 63Ibid., Canto 12.
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is the bliss that flows behind all life, although unsuspected by the suffering world. This world of sweetness and bliss is also present in our mortal life in an inchoate form waiting to come to life and to blossom.
Here upon earth are early awakenings,
Moments that tremble in an air divine,
And grown upon the yearning of her soil
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity:
There are the imperishable beatitudes.
A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.64
On the other side of the stair are the great realms of luminous knowledge, "the mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame." This flame rises out of the sorrow and darkness of the world, out of the depths where life and thought are entombed and mounts up to heaven. It exerts a pull on the human soul. This is a fire which once kindled can never cease.
Aswapati participates in the glory of these worlds but realises that each of these embodies only a partial truth. He mounts still higher and at the summits of the mental heavens he reaches the Self of Mind.
The Self of Mind65
This is where "the climbing hierarchy of worlds" paused. At this summit space alone with an enormous Self of Mind (The Mental Purusha) Aswapati now stood. This is a realm of total withdrawal from the world Which has sprung from it:
Omnipotent, immobile and aloof,
In the world which sprang from it, it took no part[:]
It gave no heed to the paeans of victory,
It was indifferent to its own defeats,
It heard the cry of grief and made no sign,
Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good,
It saw destruction come and did not move.
An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer
And Master of its multitude of forms,
64Ibid, p. 279. 65Ibid, Canto 13.
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It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,
The witness Lord of Nature's myriad acts
Consenting to the movements of her Force.66
This is the vast Silence where meet the seeing Self and the potent Energy to bring forth this creation. Aswapati feels this Silence and its Peace.
All now he seemed to understand and know;
Desire came not nor any gust of will,
The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;
Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.
There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.67
But is this the world that Aswapati has been seeking? Aswapati finds that this world is not sure even of its foundations. It cannot answer the question whether the creations of the Mind are real or false. Probably mental knowledge itself is an error hidden even from the mind.
A doubt corroded even the means to think,
Distrust was thrown upon Mind's instruments;
All that it takes for reality's shining coin,
Proved fact, fixed inference, deduction clear,
Firm theory, assured significance,
Appeared as frauds upon Time's credit bank
Or assets valueless in Truth's treasury.
An Ignorance on an uneasy throne
Travestied with a fortuitous sovereignty
A figure of knowledge garbed in dubious words
And tinsel thought-forms brightly inadequate.
A labourer in the dark dazzled by half-light,
What it knew was an image in a broken glass,
What it saw was real but its sight untrue...
Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths,
God's spontaneities tied with formal strings
And packed into drawers of reason's trim bureau,
A grave of great lost opportunities,
Or an office for misuse of soul and life
66Ibid, p. 283. 67 Ibid., p.284
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And all the waste man makes of heaven's gifts
And all his squanderings of Nature's store,
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.68
This certainly was a world in which he could experience sublime mental peace and bliss free from ignorance, pain evil and death. This world merely transcended the inadequacies of the mortal world and declared them irrelevant but these inadequacies were not understood and explained here. Nor has this world any concern about carrying its truth and bliss to the lower worlds; it was totally indifferent to the lower worlds of death, evil, pain and suffering. This world did not contain the Truth of Power which he was seeking which, he now realises, can only be brought down by the Divine Mother.
Even the still spirit that looks upon its works
Was some pale front of the Unknowable;
A shadow seemed the wide and witness Self,
Its liberation and immobile calm
A void recoil of being from Time-made things,
Not the self-vision of Eternity.
Deep peace was there, but not the nameless Force:
Our sweet and mighty Mother was not there
Who gathers to her bosom her children's lives,
Her clasp that takes the world into her arms
In the fathomless rapture of the Infinite,
The Bliss that is creation's splendid grain
Or the white passion of God-ecstasy
That laughs in the blaze of the boundless heart of Love.
A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind
Must answer to the questioning of his soul.69
5
As has been stated in a footnote above, Aswapati's experiences of the spiritual realm do not constitute a major theme of Book II. A description of his spiritual experiences begins on the very second page of Canto 3 of Book I (page 23) and continues throughout that Canto as well as in Canto 5 of Book I. Again it is also the theme of much of Book III. Here in the last two Cantos of Book II Aswapati
68Ibid., pp. 284-86. 69Ibid., pp. 286-87.
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gradually slides into the spiritual realm since there is an overlapping of the kingdoms of the Greater Mind and the Spiritual Kingdom.
The World-Soul70
Aswapati sees a luminous tunnel in the glowing background of the Mind-Space. It promises to lead him from the unsatisfying world of external consciousness into the depths of the silent Self. Aswapati finds himself in the hidden depths of the world's deep soul. He passes through this tunnel led by a mysterious sound. The sound seemed first like the yearning conveyed by a lonely flute, then like the rash and fiery note of a cricket, then like the jingling of the anklet bells, and then like the tinkling sound of a moving caravan. A fragrance floated in the quivering air and mystic happiness trembled in his breast. Aswapati now came to a wonderful and formless world.
The silent soul of all the world was there, a being and a presence. This soul loves spontaneously without expecting to be loved in turn, and transforms all experience into delight, with its hand of joy puts a stop to all weeping. A fire of passion bums in the inner depths, a constant touch of sweetness links all hearts. Here everything is made of soul. In this spiritual world the soul knows directly, not through thought or conceptualisation. This knowledge is derived without division and without separation from the object of knowledge; it comes by being one with the object through identity.
All there was soul or made of sheer soul-stuff;
A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.
All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
Seized on all things by a moved identity,
A sympathy of self with other selves,
The touch of consciousness on consciousness.71
There was no body because bodies were not needed there; the soul itself was its own deathless form and met at once the touch of other souls, close, blissful, concrete and wonderfully true. There was a lovely landscape, lovely lakes and streams and hills all in soul-space; there were gardens which were a colourful reverie of the soul. A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze.
This is the world to which the beings which had taken form on
70Ibid, Canto 14. 71 Ibid., pp.291-292
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earth come to have a meaningful rest after they have passed through the long road of heaven and hell. In this trance they muse over their experience of their bygone days and sketch the map of the destiny and adventure of their new life to lead. Aswapati now understands why the same being persists through several births and lives in many shapes.
A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,
Although the same for ever in many shapes
By the outward mind unrecognisable,
Assuming names unknown in unknown climes
Imprints through Time upon the earth's worn page
A growing figure of its secret self,
And learns by experience what the spirit knew,
Till it can see its truth alive and God.72
Aswapati had now come to the centre of creation where all that is made is unmade once again so that it can be remoulded and recast into new shape and nature. This was the refashioning chamber of the worlds, where things are planned, reconstituted and sent out for manifestation. Beyond this world lie the regions of delight and peace, the silent birthplaces of light, hope and love. His soul now moved on through an absolute stillness to the source of all things human and divine. There he saw in their poise of mighty union the figure of the deathless Two-in-One seated in a trance of creative joy which sustained the world. Behind them in the morning dusk there stood the One who had brought them from the Unknowable.
There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.
Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.73
This is the Divine Mother who is the guide of the traveller of the unseen paths. She stands above all, supporting all, the sole omnipotent Goddess of whom the creation is the mysterious mask. Aswapati's spirit was now made a vessel of her force and he stretched out to her
72 Ibid., p.293. 73 Ibid., p. 295
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his folded hands of prayer. As a gesture one arm of this supreme being was raised and she half-parted the eternal veil. Aswapati saw the mystic outlines of a face. He felt so overwhelmed by the power of her light and bliss and so over-powered by the sweetness and engery of her power, that he fell down at her feet unconscious, prostrate.
The Kingdom of the Greater Knowledge74
Aswapati came out of the timeless depths into which he had sunk, and he heard once more the slow tread of the hours. He now stands in a realm of Silence, alone beyond the witness Self and his universe, waiting to hear the voice that created the worlds. Here he could see all the creative powers in their original plenitude, quiet and fulfilled, even before they create the glorious dream of their universal acts. One could see from here the thousand roads that lead to Eternity and meet the veilless face of God.
Freed from bondage to death and sleep, he travelled beyond the seas of cosmic consciousness and crossed the ocean of the primal sound; he walked carefully along the narrow bridge of nirvana, near the high borders of eternity.
He had now reached the top of all that can be known; he could see creation's head, base and beyond; the triple heavens revealed to him their blazing suns, and the obscure depths of Nescience exposed to him its monstrous rule. All except the ultimate mystery was now within the field of his awareness; almost the unknowable revealed to him its rim.
He communed with the Incommunicable;
Beings of a wider consciousness were his friends,
Forms of a larger subtler make drew near;
The Gods conversed with him behind Life's veil.
Neighbour his being grew to Nature's crests.
The primal Energy took him in its arms;
His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,
An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:
Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,
Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:
He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.75
74 Ibid., Canto 15. 75 Ibid., pp.301-02
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This brings us to the end of Aswapti's journey through the various worlds described in Book II of Savitri.
There are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself and tends towards self-exceeding. Cantos 11 through 15 of Book II describe these lines of contact between the mind and the higher grades of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. Intuition occupies an important place in the action of the higher levels of this mind of Ignorance. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego and see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Then there is the vast field of mystic and spiritual experience and the gates lie wide open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits. Access to the superior gradations of our conscious existence becomes possible when we break the wall between our external and our subliminal self. What we then discover are the secret parts of ourselves—an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life which are more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge than our surface mind, life and body. The inner parts of ourselves are capable of a direct communication with the universal forces and movements. This widening can extend itself so as to bring us in union with the consciousness of the cosmic mind and universal life.
After this, the next step is the discovery of the static and silent Self which we feel to be our real existence. This may even lead to an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. Aswapati is now on the threshold of such an experience.
Aswapati's aim is not only to realise the Divine but to manifest the perfection of the Divine in the world. He was looking for a power that will enable him to do this as he was journeying through the various worlds. Now at the end of his journey, he realises, that such a power, namely the Supramental Consciousness, is not yet manifest in this cosmic formula. From where shall he bring it down? It can only be brought down from the Transcendental world. So after the Yoga of the Individual Divine of Book I and the Yoga of the Universal or Cosmic Divine of Book II, he now gets ready for the Yoga of the Transcendental Divine in Book III.
MANGESH NADKARNI
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Select Bibliography
J. E. Collins(1970)
M. P. Pandit (1971-73)
A. B. Purani (1952)
The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo, Upublished doctoral dissertation.
Readings in Savitri: Vols. IV, V, VI.
Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach and a Study.
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