Verily, as the Mother expressed, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is a vast ocean and one may, upon reflection, go in pursuit of the choicest of pearls. The common follower will find inspiration in day-to-day life. Those dedicated to serious spiritual pursuits will find ways to mysticism and union with God. Painters may come out in wonderfully emotional and celestial colours, painting each page of Savitri with immortal love. Musicians may set the poetry of the Master to tunes of meditative music that stirs and raises the spirit from deep within the heart. Architects may take inspiration to their work where brick and mortar, glass and steel may find such expression as the Matri Mandir of Auroville. Sculptors may carve and chisel in wood or stone and bring to life images such that devotees who sitting in front of them may be transported into Savitri's world. Litterateurs may examine carefully the various nuances of the poetry from diction to meter and critically appraise it. Thus everyone in general and all the fine arts in particular, which have formed the civilisation over the thousands of years upon the Planet Earth, have a providential place in the epic work Savitri.

The most appealing aspect in Savitri is basic human life, life that is seen in time that passes into eternity. Once, we are told in the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth narrated the people a parable. He said the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl that is most sought after.² And when one has found it he goes out, sells all that he has and buys the

¹Savitri, p. 258.

²St. Matthew, 13:45.

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pearl. Savitri is such a pearl for which one could give up what one has in order to get it. What one may give up may not necessarily be mere material possessions but one's attachment to the things or views one holds dear in life. The pearl that I seek in Savitri is its wisdom of life. I do not seek the critical appraisal of the terms life and time. I want to draw concrete lessons from life, reflect upon them and share them further. Life, quite simply, consists of the time-span between birth and death of man on earth. The memoirs of great men are known by their times. The history of mankind consists of the events of the past recorded chronologically as and when they happened.

The term lifetime describes much vividly a life that is spent in the span of time. The dimension of time determines the length of a period. The lifetime that one spends on earth is most valuable. For it is only here upon earth that man can work for and earn eternal life.

The timeless Ray descends into our hearts

And we are rapt into eternity.³

Ascending and Descending

Ascending and descending twixt life's poles

The serried kingdoms of the graded Law

Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,

Then glad of a glory of multitudinous mind

And rich with life's adventure and delight

And packed with the beauty of Matter's shapes and hues

Climbed back from Time into undying Self,

Up a golden ladder carrying the Soul,

Tying with diamond threads the Spirit's extremes.⁴

Sri Aurobindo clearly states in this excerpt that life consists of ascending and descending grades, not just between life and death but between two poles such as Self that is mortal and the undying Self that is immortal, not just between time that is transient and limited but eternity that is without end. Life is an event in time of the Self; but the Self is not just bound to time; it is unbound from time and is then assimilated into eternity. Life and eternal life go hand in hand through ascending and descending of the Self. The mortal self through

³ Savitri, p. 276.

⁴ Ibid., PP. 88-89

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an integral striving can ascend to what is beyond time and space and make this unbounded supreme Self descend into time. It is a worldly and heavenly ascending and descending, never separated from each other but at the same time clearly distinguished in the nature of their manifestation.

This may be illustrated with a story from the Bible. Jacob, who was named Israel by the angel of God and whose name today the Jewish State bears, had a wondrous mystical dream.⁵ He saw a ladder that reached from Earth to Heaven, and he saw the angels of God ascending and descending from it. Yahweh, the Lord God, through this sign showed him that from him a great nation would be bom, and all those who acknowledge Him as their God would ascend and descend, and His kingdom will be established amidst the people that he had chosen. Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga expounded in The Life Divine is like Jacob's ladder that envisages ascending and descending of the Spirit. This has been further perfected and deepened in Savitri that exposes his own ascending and descending experience. For, he says that there is a purpose in the creation's play,

That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time

And world manifest the unveiled Divine.⁶

This is the most important mission in Savitri: A quest for the Divine within mortality. The timeless must look with the eyes of time and not vice versa; the Divine must be made incarnate, must be made manifest in the flesh, to experience Him in one's own mortal body. Life must return to Satyavan in order to experience the Divine; the life must be brought with ceaseless striving of Savitri. Eternity must step into Time; Spirit must come down.

Eternity drew close disguised as Love

And laid its hands upon the body of Time.⁷

The Perception of Time and Life

There is a story told about a summer fly whose lifespan is just a single day and a mighty tree whose lifespan spreads over several

⁵Genesis, p. 28. ⁶Savitri., p.72.

⁷ Ibid., p. 237.

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centuries.⁸ The fly flew merrily over top of the tree and felt happy and blissful and sat on one of the fresh leaves.

The tree said, "O such a poor little thing! You live just for a day. O how short' O how sad!"

"Sad? What do you mean?" retorted the fly. "Everything is so wonderful and delightful and I feel so happy," the fly added.

"But it is just for a day, and then everything is over," the tree joined in.

"Everything is over?" the fly was puzzled, "What is over, and you too?"

"O no" said the tree, "I live thousands and thousands of days like the one that you have. It is so long you could not even count or imagine."

"O really," replied the fly, "I do not understand you at all what you say? Well, you have thousands of days of mine, but I have thousands of moments of mine in which I am truly joyful and really happy. And when you die, does the world end with you?" queried the fly.

"O no," retorted the tree, "the world will continue for millions of years."

"Well then," the fly concluded, "we both have equally enough, only that we count differently."

The story finds its fulfilment in Savitri: The tree would say, "Satyavan must die after a year of the marriage; but the fly would say, "Satyavan will live for one year." The lifespan of the tree may spread over centuries and with deep roots into the earth it digs deeper and deeper to make sure that it is not uprooted by the tempestuous seasons it has to face. It grows thick bark on its trunk that no great damage is done to its body. It produces foliage in leaps and bounds so that it can collect as much energy of the sun as possible and store the sap in the insides of its storage spaces. It is afraid of life that harm may come. It lives under the shadow of death all the days of its life. The fly, on the other hand, has a single summer's day to live, and it lives joyfully and merrily each moment of that day and is happy. It is not worried about death because it is happy to live. What counts in its attitude to life is not the length of the lifespan or lifetime, but the consciousness of each moment of life lived worthily.

The story becomes even more specific: Sage Narad is an exceptional being of such great personal powers that he can walk in

⁸ Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grilnewald-Verlag,Mainz, (Germany) 3^rd ed., 1988, ~230, p. 145.

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and out of Heaven as it pleases him. In his utterance of Satyavan's death after one year of marriage with Savitri we find both the meanings fulfilled, fulfilment of eternity in time as much as time opening to eternity. The truth that Satyavan must die after one year is also the truth that Satyavan must live for one year.

Savitri believes that her pure and lofty love for her beloved will win over the morbid death. What if she were to wed in a joyless union for time without end? Would that be any significant life? Would it not be worth then to find true love only if it is for a moment? Her attitude to life is a qualitative one.

This little being of Time, this shadow-soul,

This living dwarf figure-head of darkened spirit

Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.⁹

The little being of time, Savitri, has crossed over her rightful eternity to find fulfilment of love in time. To borrow the famous phrase of Satprem,- she has embarked upon the adventure of consciousness, which would find its fruition in the as small a fraction of time as one year.

Time and Existence

Our being must move eternally through Time;

Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease;

A secret Will compels us to endure.

Our life's repose is in the Infinite;

It cannot end, its end is Life supreme.¹⁰

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, asked the basic question:¹¹ What is it to be? Man the being, as Being, that is the question. The answer will determine man's destiny. Ever since this question surfaced philosophers, theologians, social scientists, economic and political activists, human rights activists, novelists, poets, painters, journalists, et al, have steeped themselves in discussing and solving human existential problems. Thirty years earlier before this question surfaced, he had already written his master-work Sein und Zeit,¹² which is

⁹ Savitri, p. 171.

¹⁰Ibid, p. 197.

¹¹ Cf. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, Pfufflingen, 1957.

¹² Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Halle, 1927.

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translated as Being and Time. He expounded in two volumes the relevance of human existence. Firstly, the aspect of facticity of the existence of the world; secondly, the fact of making this existence a personal reality, which is finally lost in the sea of humanity where one loses one's own identity and becomes a part of the indifferent person they.

Nothingness is a connective concept to his existential theory: Man is in dread (angst) of death, for he faces nothingness in its face. The dread of death consists in the fact of the annihilation of our own being. But the very consciousness of this dread can catapult one to realise one's own being.

We observe today that the world is trapped in a time-warp of its own making where it does face insurmountable existential problems with no solution in sight. With the burgeoning of population in all the continents the identity and individuality are lost in the masses; add to it the authoritarianism of the states which rule and govern the people. People are in dread of poverty, war, destitution, old age, sickness and death. However, the consciousness as to one's existence, one's being and life after death has waned. People have become mere numbers on various charts and lists; the names have disappeared, faces have been blurred and death, annihilation and nothingness appear to be the destiny of mankind.

Amidst such a human existential tragedy there shines a ray of hope which the Master annunciates succinctly as our being must move eternally through Time. With the ascending of the spiritual effort and the descending within of the supramental, man regains his lost identity in the world. He comes to the realisation that his transient existence, his imminent mortality and the passing away of the world are fragments of Eternity. In vain is the anxiety that death ends everything, its end is Life supreme. The teachings of the great religions show that death is not the end but, those who believe, it is the beginning of life everlasting. In the same way the man who pursues spiritual goals has the assurance within that the transitory time would find its end in eternity, the passing life would be realised in the infinite Divinity.

Savitri is not a book of sweet poems and blissful spirituality. It is not like the musings of a poet, of an imaginary spiritual heaven. It comes to grips with the nitty-gritty of life in sharper contrast than existentialists claim. The existentialists narrate the human misery without end and there is no hope in sight (The Iron in the Soul of Jean Paul Satre); in the bargain one loses sight of one's own self; consciousness is a rare commodity. Savitri depicts the human

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predicament true to life. The choices of life before Savitri are extremely difficult. Nothing is put freely on her lap. She must grow with difficulties and share the misfortunes. Death stares in her face. Yet she is able to maintain balance and equanimity, respect to the elders and the spiritual leaders. Living in the woods is a harsh reality. If death were to be the end there would be no hope, no meaning to life. The reality of human existence with all its limitations and afflictions is one side of the coin; the promise, the hope and the ultimate end of life the other. In Savitri we read:

A thinking being in an unthinking world,

An island in the sea of the Unknown,

He is a smallness trying to be great,

An animal with some instincts of a god,

His life a story too common to be told,

His deeds a number summing up to nought...

His hope a star above a cradle and grave.¹³

The essence of man consists of his quality to think; it distinguishes him from the world in which he now lives. Although his life and work are ordinary enough, yet there is the flicker of the flame of divinity dormant in his heart. Indeed this becomes his hope that holds itself out beyond death and destruction. Certainly this world is not a bed of roses. The sufferings of man arise more from ignorance than the will of the gods who want to test the lesser mortals. One who takes birth in this world must abide by the fate of the time. The passing time and the stubborn ignorance, selfishness and jealousy, strife and war, pride and prejudice make matters worse:

Here even the highest rapture time can give

Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,

A mutilated statue of ecstasy,

A wounded happiness that cannot live,

A brief felicity of mind or sense

Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,

Or a simulacrum of enforced delight

In the seraglios of Ignorance.¹⁴

¹³Savitri, p. 78.

¹⁴Ibid

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We are taught again and yet again in all the Indian traditions of spirituality that ignorance is the cause of all suffering and knowledge is the one that liberates the bound self. The Yoga of Aswapati is an allegory in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo sets him up as an example of the practice of the Integral Yoga. Once one has set one's goal right, the aspiration to be the light of God upon the Earth, and is not afraid of the difficult path, the endeavor begins in the earnest. It is like a farmer who once has the hand set on his plough does not look back; it is like the boatman who once has his hands laid on the oars does not rest. There is no looking back; one abandons oneself to the cause, come what may. The faith is strong, hope shines and the life takes a new turn till a time comes for consummation:

Then by a touch, a presence or a voice

The world is turned into a temple ground

And all discloses the unknown Beloved.¹⁵

The Divine Providence is not at a distance in a Yogi or a Sadhak. One feels guided by the voice and led by the hand and the ground that one traverses turns itself into a sacred ground. The worldly opinions and what the society may think do not goad one or influence one's judgement. Savitri makes her choice for Satyavan and nothing can stop her from it—not poverty and hardship, not even the imminent death. For there is a much deeper and higher question that must be answered:

Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death

Or hew the ways of Immortality,

To win or lose the godlike game for man,

Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.¹⁶

It is the question that makes life worth living. The basic question of Heidegger as to what is it to be, that is the question. If we find answer to life's questions, then what would life be? For as long as one is in the world, one can be best described as a traveller who does not always have a beaten path to follow. Sometimes he comes across several paths and consequently is on the crossroads of life—and time flies. He must ask questions which follow reflection, which lead to deeper

¹⁵Ibid, p. 278.

¹⁶Ibid, p. 17.

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questions, which lead to deeper reflection, and so forth. Finding a definitive answer would rob the meaning of lifetime. Thus life is not a mere existence in time, but the time of existence is a period of questions and even deeper reflections about what lies beyond life and time.

Time and Destiny

A purpose mingled with the whims of Time,

A meaning met the stumbling pace of Chance

And Fate revealed a chain of seeing will.¹⁷

Once upon a time there came in the land unprecedented drought.¹⁸The green meadows and pastures turned to dust; the fields and orchards dried and were covered with sand. The desert invaded every river, lake and well. Only a very small flower plant could survive near a tiny spring. The spring had its own doubts: "When everything has dried up why should I try and keep this little flower plant on life?" There bent down a tree that was on the last throes of its death and said to the spring: "Dear little spring, no one expects from you to green the entire desert. Your duty is to look after one little flower plant, and not more."

Times of great doubt in one's existence crop up with the difficulties and problems of life. The doubt is not a speculative one, but an existential reality that questions the very essence of the significance of one's life. Doubts crop up because one is not only uncertain but is in the dark about one's future. The question "What would I be in time to come?" disturbs the very being. The more discerning, however, ask even a deeper question: "If I must some day die, what should I do to live?" Howsoever ultimately he decides to live, and actually so lives, his life is the way he paints upon the canvas of his own lifetime. Time shall not wait for him to paint; it will fleet leaving behind empty and unfilled spaces.

Those who want to live even when their time has passed by, they strive in a special way to realise their goal. The first intuitive discernment that I can outlive my lifespan takes me to a higher stage of spiritual existence. One becomes specifically conscious about one's

¹⁷Ibid,, p. 76.

¹⁸ Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grunewald-Verlag, Mainz, (Germany) 3^rd ed., 1988, #218, p. 140.

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destiny. One may live in the world performing all the duties meticulously as does Savitri, and yet be not of the world just like her.

Time and Meaning

"What is time?" asked St. Augustine, the famous Christian philosopher, and was puzzled. Even today, after the scientific inquiries into time by Newton and Einstein, there is no final word on it. As for Augustine's bewilderment it was a simple well-constructed thought. He knew what time was, he asserted, but if someone were to ask what it is, then he would not know. If he were to measure a wall he would put a measuring rod against it; but if he were to measure time what would he measure it against? "Use the clock," one may advise; but can one measure time all at once? The present lapses into the past and the future in the present. Time fleets.

However, this was demythologised by Newton who proposed an absolute time, true and mathematical; of itself it flows equally without relation to anything external. Out of this H. G. Wells could create a fiction, The Time Machine, so real that one could travel backward and forward in time. The absolute time did not make sense. Einsteinian physics laid down the law that light should have the same properties for all observers in uniform relative motion and its velocity (in vacuo) should therefore be the same for all observers. This coupled with the law of energy made sense, since the subject juxtaposed to space and time came too in the picture, and made the dimensions relative.

Whatever one may do with time, whether one mythologises it or absolutises it or relativises it, it is out of the control of man. We live in it, pass through it and expect more of it to come, yet none of us howsoever powerful can be the Lord of it.¹⁹

However inexplicable the ontological problem of time may be, yet in our mundane life, time has a mundane meaning. The meaning of time consists in how we use it, whether in word or in deed. In word, when we speak about time its meaning lies in what sense we use it in our speech. Time in this sense is the tense in which it is used. Usually we do it to explain ourselves in the past, present or the future. In deed, all our work and activity is time-bound. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is yet to come, and today's work is to be done according to a timetable. Time in this sense is reference, i.e., all that we do is

¹⁹ Cf. Daniel Albuquerque, Truth and Action in Speech Acts, Intercultural Publications, Delhi, 1995, pp.126-130.

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related to a time reference. Time that seemed so mysterious to St. Augustine seems simple and too common for people in their daily lives.

How time is used in Savitri! This is a very vast theme in Sri Aurobindo's other works too. Fundamentally, he grasps time beyond the empirical constraints. He moves from temporal duration to eternity, from finite to infinite with ease, as if it is the most natural thing one could do. He was able to

Bring into life's closed room the Immortal's

air And fill the finite with the Infinite.²⁰

The Ideal of Life and Time

It may be very well to preach and demand faith, but it is not easy to live one's faith it demands the consciousness of what one wants to be. Radhakrishnan in one of his works profoundly exposed human dilemma in the following words: "We do not know what we want and we do not want what we know."²¹ When we think of our life on Earth, its problems and afflictions, we certainly do not want the same to continue in the after-life. The only experience we have is of this world, and this we do not want to carry on if we were to live after our death.

We are not certain what lies for us on the other shore after the death. We are naturally afraid of death, but perhaps we are even more afraid of what awaits us after death. The greater our philosophical speculations on the subject the greater is the fear. For one could be afraid of eternity itself; one could be terribly upset by something that never ends. While we are on earth, no matter what may be our troubles and sufferings, we know with certainty that one day these will find an end. Is it one of the reasons that we find in our mythologies why the gods leave their eternal abodes and take shelter amidst the mortals? For here they can begin and end something that they liked to do but could not accomplish in their eternal world.

Time presents even more difficulties: pre-existence, existence and post-existence. For instance, if we do not believe in our pre-existence, it implies that we were created along with our bodies and we shall perish with the same. In case we believe in our pre-existence and

²⁰Savitri, p. 316.

²¹S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist . View of Life, Un win Paperbacks, 1980,p. 224.

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post-existence then what caprice of the Creator is it that imposed on us the present temporal nature? Our life and time on earth become increasingly meaningless when we question the reason for our temporal existence. For, reason cannot explain what is not ordained to do:

For not by Reason was creation made

And not by Reason can the Truth be seen.²²

Does it imply then that there is no hope to know more about one's self before and after our mortal lives? If we were not to overcome the greatest puzzle of our life, the time that we spend as mortals would have no purpose, no Divine design. However, in Savitri, to overcome this dilemma we are given a shibboleth:

A nomad of the far mysterious Light,

In the wide ways a little spark of God.²³

The message is clear, whether it is Aswapati, Savitri or Satyavan and the rest of the mankind, we are all nomads in this world. It is the Consciousness-Force that makes us aware of our present predicament. The solution to the riddle of life lies within us like a spark. The Divine Spark enkindles and brings forth light only if we are able to use the Consciousness-Force. In the present state of affairs man is plagued by ignorance, division, duality and bondage. Amidst such stark adversity, it is the spark of Divinity that sets man on to the eternal path. It is the Divine Grace within which manifests in those who show clear will to overcome the bondage of temporal existence.

A borrower of Supemature's gold,

He paves his road to Immortality.²⁴

Thus the temporal life has significance only in its reference to the infinity for which man strives. For man time would lose meaning without infinity. The temporal life is meaningful only if one is able to enkindle the Life Divine, which is the true nature of the Self.

²²Savitri, p. 256.

²³Ibid., p. 336.

²⁴Ibid., p. 339

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Consolation of Life

What is life? Is it a tragedy? Is happiness possible? These questions have engaged humanity from the beginning. Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is the story of Savitri's life. It is a metaphor for the life of man on earth. The more one gets steeped in it the more one becomes conscious of one's own life. Consciousness of life consists in the awareness one has of himself and the world, the choices one makes, the kind of desires one harnesses and from them derives the ensuring happiness. Such happiness surely depends not on the things one may have but on the mental state one acquires while having these things. A contented mental state is the ideal state of happiness and renders true meaning to living.

Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,

Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;

Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers

Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;

To its omnipotence leave thy work's result.

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.²⁵

In the above excerpt, among other things, the central message of the sacred Gita is enshrined, when it admonishes us to do our duty and leave the rest to the Will of God to judge the result of it. Once we have done our duty, it is for God to transfigure it and make it holy. Let not our hearts be troubled, let us be patient and know what we ask for. For if our mind is cluttered with the wants, our life will be joyless and barren. Contentment, in one word, is the secret of the consolation of life. The tales of Panchatantra teach us a lesson when we are told, for instance, the entire world is spread with leather to the person who wears merely a pair of shoes.

La Fontaine had a story to tell on contentment and peace of mind.²⁶ There was a cobbler who although poor and had to work for meager money, yet was very happy and he would sing wonderfully. The passers-by enjoyed his singing and, best of all, there gathered a mob

²⁵Ibid., p. 341.

²⁶Cf. Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten Vol. 2, Mathias Griinewald-Verlag, Mainz, (Germany) 3« ed., 1988, # 165, p. 119.

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of children around him and he would sing for them and make them happy and gay. Next to the cobbler there lived a very rich man who always envied the happiness of the cobbler. He was always restless; during the day he was busy doing business and making money and at night he was sleepless since he had to count all that money; also the fear of the robbers kept him awake. To top his weariness, the cheerfulness of the cobbler drove him crazy. He wanted to silence the cobbler of his singing. One day he called for the cobbler who went to him instantly. There the rich man gave him a big purse. The cobbler returned home with it and opened the purse to find money, so much money that he could not even imagine. Suddenly the cobbler was a worried man. Where to keep it, how to guard it? He would think of all sorts of places to hide it, under the bed, in the attic or even in the hen's coup. However, he was not at peace and so he kept it on his body, remaining very watchful all the time. He became tense. The singing stopped. There were no children around. There was no more cheer and gaiety. At nights he was sleepless and at days he was restless. Finally, he decided that he had had enough, and went to the rich man and returned his money. He felt relieved of a great burden and he became his good old self again, contented and with a song on his lips. The customers were again amused and the children cheered as he sang. There was sunshine in his life.

One of the most striking scenes in Savitri is Savitri's undaunted will to embrace the humble life of the wilderness. She who was of such high disposition, even looking at her lifestyle materialistically, was the most beautiful princess brought up delicately in the comforts of a palace. Yet in all the life's situations, royal or rustic, she is at home. She spreads joy and cheer by her mellow and mature behavior with all the sages and saints in the forest.

Bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life;

Yet is it clad with the jewelry of earth.²⁷

The Way of Life

There are two ways to see life: First, life is a test to please the Providence, to prove one's goodness by overcoming evil and as a result winning the Kingdom of God. In the Bible we read several

²⁷ Savitri, p. 402.

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instances where God tests His chosen ones. He tests Abraham, when he is already old and his wife advanced in age and unable to bear children that he would beget a son and that he would become a father of a nation. God tests Jesus Christ, His own son, by allowing him to be tempted by the Satan while he was fasting and praying in the desert. Christ's suffering and death on the cross too were tests.

Second, life is an opportunity to realise one's own self. The entire Indian tradition of spirituality sees life as an opportunity to make good what one may have undone in the past life. The avataras of various gods and goddesses are an opportunity embraced by the immortals to find their selves in different situations and enhance their spirit. The supreme example of Vasudeva, which was so dear to Sri Aurobindo's heart, shows what a great opportunity this mortal life is. His supreme teaching to make the best of it while attending to one's duty but never yearning for results is a pilgrim's light. The exposition in The Life Divine teaches us the central core of the meaning of life — Sachchidananda. Sat, (Truth) Cit (Consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss) are the three jewels of an opportune life. This is the state of a realised self where the Consciousness-Force descends into one's being, a being that is indubitably real (unlike the speculative one of Heidegger). The Consciousness-Force descends and takes shape as though the metaphor of Savitri's incarnation on earth is finalised. Thus

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.²⁸

Karma the Law of Life

Once, a farmer in China owned a small terrace rice field to which he would carry water from a pond at the bottom of the hill. It involved a great deal of long and arduous labour, as he had to climb up and down carrying water. As the Europeans came, they brought along with them their machinery too. They offered him a water pump, saying that it would spare him such a hard task as carrying water with such a great trouble. But the farmer politely refused the offer: "If I do not

²⁸ Ibid., p. 3

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carry water, then I would not have time to reflect." In one of the letters Sri Aurobindo writes:

Self-dedication does not depend on the particular work you do, but on the spirit in which all work, of whatever kind it may be, is done. Any work done well and carefully as a sacrifice to the Divine, without desire or egoism, with equality of mind and calm tranquillity in good or bad fortune, for the sake of the Divine and not for the sake of any personal gain, reward or result, with the consciousness that it is the Divine Power to which all work belongs, is a means of self-dedication through Karma.²⁹

Karma is a scientific principle; an act (karma) that produces effect, the effect in turn an action, becomes the cause of the effect (act) that follows. The world consists of acts of causes and effects. They actualise the energy of the past and effect future. The present is very decisive in any act of karma. The right time is now, the present. Good produces good and evil its like, love begets more love and hate multiplies hate.

Karma also establishes the law of freedom. The doctrine of predetermination is very prevalent in Indian tradition. However, if the Law of Karma is understood as above, there is nothing that can stop a man from determining his own destiny. For it is his action that shall chalk out his destiny, and the control of that action is in his hands. He

Accepts indomitably to execute

The will to know in an inconscient world,

The will to live under a reign of death,

The thirst for rapture in a heart of flesh.³⁰

These lines from Savitri show that we do not live in an ideal world, we live rather in a contradictory situation in the world. We who possess reason live in a world with beings that have no such faculty; we live in a world that is not aware of itself, but we are; we have lofty aspirations of an unending infinite world while we live in this temporal and transitory world. Death is natural in nature, but we seek supernatural life.^vhere there is life after death. We are biological, so

²⁹Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 23, p. 678.

³⁰Savitri, p. 75.

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much in tune with the nature, we take birth, grow, become victims of sickness and death, and yet we seek immortality. If this is not freedom then what else is it?

Radhakrishnan has a fine allegory when he likens life to a card game of bridge.³¹ The cards are shuffled and given to us and therefore to that extent we may be restricted. However, we have the full freedom to play the way we like. We could overcome the odds of bad cards by sheer skill, determination and intelligence.

Savitri's is such a game played with fate. The play itself, as it progresses, may be likened to the development of consciousness. As she becomes skilful, and her will reveals itself in her action of the choice of Satyavan, a card which the rest think as weak, turns out to be a decisive one. The skill of the person depends upon how well one is able to use the Consciousness-Force. To Savitri this energy seems to come quite naturally even as she is guided step by step in her sadhana; on the other hand, for Aswapati it is an insurmountable task and needs lengthy periods of practice.

The Conscious Way of Life

There are regions of wide ecstasy

Beyond our indigent corporeal range.

There he could enter, there awhile abide.

A voyager upon uncharted routes

Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,

Adventuring across enormous realms,

He broke into another Space and Time.³²

The world is a fact and, no matter what man wants to conquer including what lies beyond the world, he must begin at the beginning, with the first step on terra firma. This is the basic awareness or consciousness which the Zen masters teach: Be aware of the world. In contrast many organised religions teach us: "Beware of the world!" Savitri is a delight of the Zen masters. Every act of hers is totally advertent. She is fully aware of the situation of her birth and life, her father, friends and the spouse. Every act of her life is a deliberate act. Thus remaining within her surroundings, her given natural surroundings of which she was

³¹ S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, pp. 221-223.

³² Savitri, p. 91.

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completely aware, she could aspire for the supernatural environs. Sri Aurobindo makes it absolutely clear in very concrete terms in the following lines:

This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man

Shall stand out on the background of long Time

A glowing epitome of eternity,

A little point reveal the infinitudes.³³

Although the above lines are spoken in the context of Aswapati, yet they bring out one of the recurring themes of all the teachings and writings of Sri Aurobindo. Man is a humble finite creature but stands out in Nature as the single extraordinary being, as the one who possesses within himself the Divine spark. Despite all the shortcomings he can hope and strive for something beyond his own nature. He sets his goal beyond death and time; he aspires himself to be Divine. The time that he spends on earth thus may be counted as merely a fraction of eternity.

The conscious way of life consists of being conscious of not only this world but also the one beyond, not only of time in this world but also of the eternity. For reflective conscious mind mere worldly life would be meaningless. It is life beyond or immortality actualising itself that gives meaning to life here on earth, the mortal life. In vain would be all our striving if immortality were a chimera. If time were of mere fleeting of events, vain would be the very concept of eternity that reflects itself in the events and times of the world.

Sri Aurobindo describes various forms of consciousness and its various stages. At first sight we can make a common sense distinction: Natural consciousness and Supernatural consciousness. This distinction makes us understand the difficult subject better. Natural consciousness may be again understood as perceptive and psychological. The perceptive consciousness is that awareness of things and sensations that we share with other animals which have senses. Thus the consciousness of taste, smell, touch, sight, etc. are common to the animal world. The psychological consciousness consists of relationship we have at the level of mind, intellect and reflection. The Supernatural consciousness is the awareness of the Spirit. It is when, for instance, the self becomes aware of itself; it observes itself as though an object of its knowledge. It is able to rise

³³ Ibid., p. 100.

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above the common categories of knowledge and is in immediate knowledge of itself. The conditions of time and space disappear. The self-conscious spirit sees beyond division, it sees unity, reality, limitlessness and timelessness. This in essence is the being that Heidegger sought but could not find; it is found in Savitri:

A thought comes down from the ideal worlds

And moves us to new-model even here

Some image of their greatness and appeal.³⁴

There is a query in these lines, which should take the thinkers by surprise: From whence come our thoughts? In the world of specialised learning consciousness is, at times, considered to be caused by qualia, the immediate perceivable things. The Lockean idea that our minds are tabula rasa, a blank paper to begin with, and then we impress upon it our picture of the world is always contradicted by the old Platonian world of the myth of the cave, where the forms are there from eternity. The question whether the ideas are inborn or whether they are the consequences of empirical experience is always an open question. So also the question on consciousness that goes immediately with it will remain open. Recently Roger Penrose, the well-known mathematician, in his celebrated work³⁵ has tried to give consciousness a new dimension. He has explained it through the parameters of Turing-Church theory of computation. It is certainly very appealing to contemporary minds that are immensely overpowered by the skills of the computer. However, since the computers are not able to simulate human consciousness, although many of the functions such as arithmetic may be cloned more efficiently than the human mind, the machines are not yet a threat to the basic conscious activity of man.

Indeed the machines cannot think, unless we make them think. But man thinks for himself, howsoever imperfect those thoughts may be. As the Master teaches us, new thoughts originate in the ideal world and we receive them and create new models for life and living. These thoughts sharpen our consciousness and we are able to rise above

³⁴Ibid, p. 262.

³⁵ Roger Penrose (Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics), presently the author of the two best selling books, The Emperor's New Mind and its sequel. Shadows of the Mind has developed a theory claiming to solve the problem of the concept of consciousness. Cf. both these titles published by Penguin, 1995.

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mundane matters of the world and raise our thoughts from the material to the eternal, from the finite to the everlasting:

We move by the rapid impulse of a will

That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal Time.³⁶

However tardy may be the progress a conscious being strives, yet one cannot deny the desire in man to yearn for the eternal. In Savitri the striving of Aswapati is the journey of such a soul who with all the difficulties and shortcomings of this world is able to rise above himself by the sheer power of his will. It is his will that wins the day for him when he reaches the end of the earthly limits and realises the total consciousness.

On meditation's mounting edge of trance

Great stairs of thought climbed up to unborn heights

Where Time's last ridges touch eternity's skies

And Nature speaks to the spirit's absolute.³⁷

The question arises whether our consciousness is for its own sake or whether it has any purpose. If we would say that consciousness is for its own sake, then we cannot but end up in a blind alley. We see very clearly in Savitri, in fact in every character that is depicted therein, that each conscious individual has a purpose, and the purpose is invariably a spiritual one. Thus consciousness seems to be a vehicle for in as much as the stuft of the Divine to express itself in this world. Sri Aurobindo's mission in his lifetime was to make this vehicle as perfect as possible so that the Divine, the Supramental Consciousness-Force may descend upon the earth.

A great all-ruling consciousness is there

And Mind unwitting serves a higher Power.³⁸

The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

The unknown Self above who is the goal.³⁹

DANIEL ALBUQUERQUE

³⁶ Savitri, p. 262. ³⁷Ibid., p. 264. ³⁸Ibid, p. 271. ³⁹Ibid., p. 168.

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