On Savitri
THEME/S
Savitri's House of Meditation
Introduction
In the course of Savitri's encounter with Death we have in Sri Aurobindo's epic the following passage1 which marks a significant stage in her attempt to win back the soul of deceased Satyavan.
Intent upon her silent will she walked
On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,
A floating veil of visions in her front,
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.
But now her spirit's flame of conscient force
Retiring from a sweetness without fruit
Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within
In a deep room in meditation's house.
For only there could dwell the soul's firm truth:
Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high house-lord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit.
Then the squence of events at once takes a sudden change:
The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
And she behind was leader of their march
And they in front were followers of her will.
Along with the witness fire we also witness the efficacy of Sacrifice, of the Vedic Yajna that is going to give measure and strength to Savitri in order to meet the dire eventuality. In it is going to be decided the fate of her mission and with it the uncertain fate itself of the evolutionary travail upon the earth. But who is the house-lord and who his mate, they making offerings to the well-kindled sacrificial fire? What is that fire in which are lit the fires of the cosmic powers that govern the worldly rounds leading them on the spiritual path, that on which they must progress in their expressive splendours of the supreme Truth?
1 Savitri, p. 639.
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We are here in Sri Aurobindo's epic at a crucial point in the development of the legend's narrative and presently a lot is going to hinge upon the way the occult battle will be fought in the frightening and terrible abysses of space; in it will be shaped destiny. It will be therefore worthwhile if we can get some idea about this very significant meditation of Savitri.
In the story of Vyasa, as given in Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, Savitri is described as one who was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānyogaparayaṇā. Just before going to the forest on the fated day she pays her obeisance to the Rishis and receives their benedictions. By entering into that Yoga she confirms and fixes their utterance in the nature of the Truth as a living dynamism in life.2 The essentiality that is there behind this Yoga of Meditation is what is actually revealed to us by Sri Aurobindo in the present passage. Indeed, Savitri's meditation is unique in its quality and we cannot enter into its magnificence, unique as it is in its depth and in its transformative character to fully take care of all our mortality. But we can certainly live in its warmth and greatness to profit from it; in it we can make spiritual progress,—to the extent that we can even transform the physical body into an altar for her sacrificial fire that shall bring auspicious merits of the Yajna to us.
The Deadlock
Yama as the Dark Terrible has snatched the soul of Satyavan and is taking it away to the Abode of the Departed which is located deep in the South. Savitri follows him closely, her mortal pace equalling the god's, and enters into the "perilous silences beyond". But she is weighed down by her mortality and is afraid that the two would soon vanish out of her sight. Then in "a moment of a secret body's sleep"3 in which is not present the dividing sense nor human frailties and faculties, she does something decisive. She forgets herself. In a swift occult action she discards all the heavy sheaths, disburdens herself from what would hold her back to the gross earth. Savitri
2R. Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 31-32.
3Savitri, p. 578.
The Mother tells the following: In sleep you reach a stage when you are on the borders of form. There everything stops, all vibrations subside. There is perfect silence. CWM, Vol. 6, p. 186.
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then moves out and surrounds Satyavan with her nameless infinity to give him love's complete protection. The three march on in a procession, Savitri behind Yama and Satyavan in front of them. They cross the "weird country" and reach dangerous regions of Death's colossal nothingness. The Dark Terrible declares to her:
This is my silent dark immensity,
This is the home of everlasting Night.4
Savitri survives the Dread. Not only that. Like an undaunted warrior unmindful of hazards of the battle yet as if certain of his victory, she steps into the very camp of the harsh Adversary. She is in a place where dwells for ever only endless Night. Yama looks at her with a stem and fearsome gaze and forbids her to accompany them any farther; for, there even Time must die. Savitri tells him that she is not just a creature of mortality, a lump of helpless matter, but is strength matching his own. It is with that strength she wants back
Into earth's flowering spaces Satyavan.5
Death refuses to give the dead back to her. He proclaims himself to be the sole and supreme creator who brought the universe out of this immense dark void. Savitri cannot trespass into his kingdom and violate the ordained laws; instead she must return to the ways of the transient world and cling to the brief joys by which we little creatures spend our days hoping in the long travail of life for nothing else. After all, the love for which she is asking Satyavan back is but a queer passion, a fancy's fleeting fondness,—if not a figure of utter falsity. Later he even grants her two boons: for Satyavan's father Dyumatsena kingdom and power and friends and lost greatness and royal trappings for his peaceful age and, by the second, the sensuous solace of light to eyes which could have found a larger realm, a deeper vision in their fathomless night.6 He asks her to return, go back to the mortal world in the safety that she can have there. But Savitri refuses and asserts that she is his equal and that her birth was a special birth in which several suns were conscient. She further adds that the task in which she is engaged here is actually the "labour of the battling gods" and its fulfilment lies only in Satyavan's return with her to the earth. But Death is not concerned about it. Rather he considers that it is Savitri's hallucination, that things can really be changed here. Through the ages Avatar after Avatar has come but
4 Ibid., p. 586. 5 Ibid., p. 590. 6 Ibid., p. 589.
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then the world has remained ever the same,—an inert, inconscient, ignorant mass of crudeness always afflicted by misery. He tells Savitri that she is a helpless priestess in imagination's temple. He even ridicules her. She is questioned if at all there is anything apart from what she has been calling love. In the same breath she is informed that it is something that has suddenly awoken in her precisely because of Satyavan's death. And what kind of love is this? Again she is told that this is a love which does not last long. It will soon fade and die when she has found the company of other men. Love, according to Death, is nothing but a habit of flesh in the darkness of the material circumstance. Life and love cannot coexist in this physical universe with its law of crude gravitating heaviness; by its dissipative potency and power everything proceeds towards extreme fragmentation, towards dissolution. Finally, of what she calls God's creation of that nothing is left.
This is the kind of spell Death tries to cast over Savitri, but she would not fall into the trap; she breaks that "dangerous music" and in the sweetness and harmony of her words brings a promise and a hope and a certitude. She is a little crescent in the sky of night cutting the gloom with the silver edge of her smile; she is a cradle holding in it the child of godly felicity. She forbids Death to slay her soul and asserts her right of love in the green and happy groves of the earth.
My love is not a hunger of the heart,
My love is not a craving of the flesh;
It came to me from God, to God returns.
Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.
Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man
A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.
There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;
It rings with callings from forgotten heights,
And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls
In their empyrean, its burning breath
Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns
That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,
A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.7
7 Ibid., pp. 612-13.
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Savitri's love and joy, through an intensification in the soul of Satyavan, become wide and universal. There is as if a mission also that bids her to love. By its transforming alchemy it is to save the world from suffering,—and that appears to be its purpose. Not corporeality but a bright spiritual yearning bums in her heart; it, like a flame, leaps to clasp in its folds the roseate body of her eternal lover. Indeed, the Satyavan she is claiming is not an ordinary mortal. He is the immortal in the world of death. Since the beginning of this earthly creation they have been together, man and woman from the first, the twin souls bom from one undying fire. She who came wearing a human form, that love may grow here in a happy felicitous fulfilment, is none other than the force of God; it is she who guards the seal against the rending hand of death, it is she who makes sure that love does not cease to live upon the earth. When Savitri first met Satyavan in the Shalwa woods she, without a moment's pause, recognised him to be none but the God of Love himself standing behind Death; she knew immediately that he was awaiting godly victory that a greater age be ushered in and the world opened up to the infinity of happiness and joy. Death who covered Love had to be encountered and the falsity of that presence dissolved.
But the actualities of the world, according to Death, go to show that it is as though this frail innocent lady is living in a fancy's rainbow-land, in a sky of make-believe gathered from the vaporous musings of her passion-filled heart. It seems that even in that land or sky the clouds, heavy with humidity, intercept the sunlight of what she imagines to be true. The question of questions is: How can one think of building heaven on earth when the elemental characters of the two are sharply opposed to each other, when there is a fundamental incompatibility between the two? Granting for a moment that she can at all dream of it, it shall prove to be a dream bearing the stamp of her physical mind which is nothing but a product of the working of Matter in the inconscient creation. So, finally, all becomes a play in the hands of Death, a universe for his own manifestation. Hidden behind this vast universe the only one single all-pervasive god, holding on its solid shoulders all this, is the creative Void from which Matter itself was bom. "All upon Matter stands as on a rock."8 Remove that rock, knock off that base and the entire superstructure will fall like a house of cards. Without respecting Matter, without knowing its laws, its modes of functioning
8 Ibid., p. 616.
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and the nature of its deep reality, without recognising the foundational aspects which sustain this massive machinery, how can Savitri hope for her love to abide and flower upon earth? Truly, the dichotomy between Matter and Spirit is so extreme and so axiomatic that to think they can coexist will only mean that one is living in an illusory moonshine. It is vain to conceive of a spiritual world emerging from the womb of inconscient Matter. What Savitri is doing, Death tells in a loud assertive voice, is simply sending imagination's birds in the sky, fictitious eagles in a high flight towards the sun; hers are words that have wings dyed in the red splendour of her heart, but it is unfortunate that they lack the essential substantiality of knowledge of things in their reality. Savitri's love cannot abide in the mud-house of Matter. And how was Matter formed after all? Was it not his creation for his own habitation? Was it not Death who himself had pressed the ether of the Void into Space?
A huge expanding and contracting breath
Harboured the fires of the universe:
I struck out the supreme original spark
And spread its sparse ranked armies through the Inane,
Manufactured the stars from the occult radiances,
Marshalled the platoons of the invisible dance;
I formed earth's beauty out of atom and gas,
And built from chemic plasm the living man.9
Savitri better understand the principle of this world and not chase the will-o'-the-wisp. She must lend herself to see and recognise the laws of nature operating here, respect them in the tight earthly framework of things. There is actually no room for God in this brute immensity. It is by the process of Death's Sankhya that the inconscient world arose and it is in that sense that the world is fulfilling itself. That is his position.
But the living soul of Savitri cannot be slayed by the scornful and ironic words of Death. His grim philosophy of crookedness calling Truth to defend Falsehood is itself a smoke-screen that has the effect of hiding behind it the face of the Sun of Reality. She counterargues extensively and tells him in no uncertain words that the All-Creator, making room for himself in his own Nothingness,— in fact by the supreme sacrifice of his royalty,—began to recreate
9 Ibid., p. 617.
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out of the eternal Night his own embodied infinities; he made that Night another starting-point for yet another kind of creative delight. What Death sees at the moment is only a half-finished world, a child yet to attain his full adulthood of divinity that shall be his happy means for endless progress. As yet Death does not realise that he himself is a part of that wonderful creative delight's process by which the miracle of creation arising out of the utter Void is being worked out.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky,
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.10
There is behind all this an invisible Hand working skillfully and infallibly; it is doing quietly all that needs be done and in the process is accomplishing everything that it has set itself to do. That Hand shall remove the mask and the screen and shall reveal the glorious shape of Truth that ever resides here. By it Yama the resplendent shall be shown to us in his proper figure of greatness and glory. To draw from eternal Loss the plenitude of eternal Gain, the gain of abounding Joy, in order to multiply it immeasurably is a supreme act and only some confident supreme omnipotence can conceive of it and dare to do it. God's plunge in the Night was with the unfailing intent of lifting up every bit breathing of him to the gracious worlds of dazzling happiness, worlds over which shines the Sun of Truth. He had the glory of Being; he shall have the glory of adventurous Becoming. Indeed, because of this plunge evolution out of inconscience has become possible. But this inconscience itself is occultly creative; as a contributive aspect of that evolution Death has become a means of growth. Though apparently he is a power of negation denying the prospect of godly manifestation here, he seems
10Ibid., pp. 623-24.
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to serve a hidden purpose in the totality of an unfolding operation. In it all that is unworthy of transformation shall get dissolved into the Void, pragmatically waiting there perhaps for another occasion to bring out yet hidden and finer aspects in the scheme of things. This also implies that, presently, Savitri is not going to conquer Death the Immortal in the usual sense that he will be subdued or dissolved; rather she will transform him by removing the veil of inconscience that he has assumed as a part of the functioning. Consequently, what shall emerge will be in the bright person of love, beauty, power, knowledge, the self of bliss itself. Truly, in this entire sequence Death himself becomes in the Inconscient a frontal aspect of the Supreme; when the veil gets removed we meet him in his positive countenance in this paradoxical unfolding. Death is a mode of manifestation. Plutus, the god of wealth mentioned by Phaedrus, is a divinity who brings forth riches from the soil; Death or Yama as the son of Vivasvan the Sun-God pours radiances to illumine the mysteries of the Night. Savitri knows this mystery of Death's birth; but he doesn't know it because he has chosen himself to go behind Inconscience.
Savitri asserts that it is in the heart of the Ether of Delight that God's creation breathes and lives and grows. She sings the Anthem of Felicity. If this Felicity were not there nothing would come into existence and if it should withdraw all will collapse; it is a honey-sweetness which causes the birth of the gods and it is that which fosters them and gives them growing riches; in the overflooding of that miraculous ecstasy life and mind and body draw their nourishment; in that enjoyment they increase in deathlessness. That is why hymn after cheerful hymn is raised by the Rishis to Soma, the Lord of Delight and Immortality: "O Thou in whom is the food, thou art that divine food, thou art the vast, the divine home; wearing heaven as a robe thou encompassest the march of the sacrifice. King with the sieve of thy purifying for thy chariot thou ascendest to the plenitude; with thy thousand burning brilliances thou conquerest the vast knowledge."11 Or, on another occasion: "Placed in delight he flows to the pleasant Names in which he increases; vast and wise he ascends the chariot of the vast sun, the chariot of a universal movement."12 In the lyrical sweetness of an enchantment Savitri herself tells Death:
11 The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 340.
12 Ibid., p. 540.
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A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.
A mute Delight regards Time's countless works:
To house God's joy in things Space gave wide room,
To house God's joy in self our souls were bom.
This universe an old enchantment guards;
Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight
Whose charmed wine is some deep soul's rapture-drink:
The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams,
He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house;
He spilled his spirit into Matter's signs:
His fires of grandeur bum in the great sun,
He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon;
He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound;
He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind;
He is silence watching in the stars at night;
He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough,
Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.
Even in this labour and dolour of Ignorance,
On the hard perilous ground of difficult earth,
In spite of death and evil circumstance
A will to live persists, a joy to be.13
Death remains unconvinced. He tells Savitri that it is good to imagine things that way but they are not really so. Not only imagining; Savitri is cheating herself by hiring the impudent thought-mind which is clever or bright enough to supply reason to life's passion. The harsh fact is that Truth in this world is "bare like stone and hard like death," which first she must accept. Moving on a more metaphysical level, Death tries to explain to Savitri that the laws of Nature are immutable and that there is no agency which can change them. No one has succeeded and Savitri should not attempt the futile. Restoration of Satyavan's life is against the laws of the established creation and he cannot return now to earth. Instead, Savitri can have, by Death's boon, what once living Satyavan desired for her that she may surround herself with worldly happiness:
Bright noons I give thee and unwounded dawns,
Daughters of thy own shape in heart and mind,
Fair hero sons and sweetness undisturbed
Of union with thy husband dear and true.14
13 Savitri, p. 630. 14 Ibid., p. 637.
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The dire debate continues as if with the ruthlessness of archenemies. But it is not just a debate, a wordy confrontation. Each utterance flings into the occult depths its assertive will. There is the opposition of force against force and the battle becomes fiercer as the core issue is approached. If there is a fundamental antagonism between Spirit and Matter, then it is inconceivable that they should ever be reconciled with each other. That is Death's postulate and he presses his argument forward almost with the thrust of violence:
Where Matter is all, there Spirit is a dream:
If all are the Spirit, Matter is a lie,
And who was the liar who forged the universe?
The Real with the unreal cannot mate.
He who would turn to God, must leave the world;
He who would live in the Spirit, must give up life;
He who has met the Self, renounces self...
Two only are the doors of man's escape,
Death of his body Matter's gate to peace,
Death of his soul his last felicity.15
The horror of passing to felicity through the door of soul's death is for Savitri no less terrifying than that of crossing the gate of peace by killing the body. In fact, logically speaking, this negative aspect cannot make Spirit and Matter self-exclusive; if they cannot be directly reconciled, it does not mean that they can cancel each other. Spirit or Matter is a wrong starting-point. True, in the evolutionary process what is predominantly seen is the latter; but the former is the substratum as well as the crown of the entire unfoldment, the essence of things. Matter evolving in Spirit gives to it substantiality which otherwise it lacks in the earthly manifestation at present. Spirit densified in the form of Matter brings to physicality God-splendour and God-might. The Ether of infinite Ecstasy acquires a luminous fixity that is at once supple and many-forming in its embodiment of the Truth-Consciousness. In the triumph of Love over Death this divine miracle shall be accomplished. Savitri in her revelation reaches a high point to even proclaim that
The great stars bum with my unceasing fire
And life and death are both its fuel made.
Life only was my blind attempt to love:
15 Ibid., p. 635.
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Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory;
All shall be seized, transcended; there shall kiss
Casting their veils before the marriage fire
The eternal bridegroom and eternal bride.
The heavens accept our broken flights at last.
On our life's prow that breaks the waves of
Time No signal light of hope has gleamed in vain.16
In that revelation,—that the suns bum in the fire of the soul of Savitri,—Death shudders helplessly; but even in that shuddering there is a secret ecstasy which seems to be quite acceptable to him. The twilight through which they were moving also trembles, perhaps again in that shuddering: this trembling was as if to break its own magic's haunting spell.
The Vedic Yajna
The debate between the two opposing powers thus pitching up to higher and higher levels could continue interminably. Logic-chopping could be an endless pleasure. And yet it seems that Savitri was not going to win Satyavan back from Death; this would not happen on the strength of extensive arguments she was going to put forward in the long dialogue which appeared almost as a kind of metaphysical disputation. Nor the clash of forces behind these premises was going to win for Savitri the imperative victory. She is also aware that a wordy confrontation or the armoury of dialectic is not sufficient to bring the issue to a decisive conclusion. Exchanges of these kind can hardly produce concrete results; more abstract rather than life-driven, they have no pushing strength in them- to resolve the matters. Such a debate for Savitri can therefore be least availing, least absorbing for the sake of its own pleasure. For her it is an extremely serious issue and she cannot forget the basic cause of her pursuit. If such a contest should fail, if the clash of occult forces should prove to be inadequate and hence in her case negatively decisive, she will have to find some other way to win her way through. For her it is the question of life and death itself and she cannot afford the luxury of this vain or futile exercise. For Death also it is a serious challenge, questioning the very foundations on
16 Ibid., p. 638.
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which the laws of the present world are established; if they are to be disputed or if they are to fail, everything would come down with a crash. Yama as the Ordainer of the World would himself prove to be the Destroyer of the Order. Therefore, while they are adducing reasons in favour of their convictions and contradicting each other, great universal agencies also get simultaneously released with each word they utter. The occult dimension gets enlarged in this fierce battle. As they rise higher and higher in the discourse, there is a corresponding deepening of the basic issue involved in this creation itself. It is a clash, an impingement of force upon force; equally strong opponents are in battle-array and the whole atmosphere is charged with their action-thoughts. A superior power coming from the sky above has to meet a stronger might surging from the abyss below. Bright sword and dark sword hit each other.
In that great struggle Savitri is not yet certain if she would succeed. True, the percussions of her words travel far on the membrane of infinite space, touching the very edge of the dark universe, even making indentation into it. Wave after wave spreads engulfing in its folds the sable realms of Time and Fate and Death and yet its terrible abysses seem to deepen into some bottomless Nothingness. In the twilight zone there is a hope of the Mom, a breaking of the Dawn of the Ideal; but what Savitri notices is the thinning and disappearance of her thoughts and words and visions as though
All utterance, all mood must there become
An unenduring tissue sewn by mind
To make a gossamer robe of beautiful change.17
Something sweet and gladdening has no doubt touched the nether pit of gloom and grief; yet in that early haze and mist all the bright hues of her dream-imagination get faded as if tricked by some melancholy's magic. What remains of that strange uncertain ethereality and ideality is
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.18
How can she then get Satyavan back? A higher power ought to supervene if she is to win. It can now be only that power's concern which always it was. Savitri might have been successful in putting
17 Ibid., p. 639.11 Ibid.
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Death on the defensive. But that was not enough. She was an intruder in his domains and she would not succeed in her attempts to conquer them. She had the gains of her first victory, but hardly would they satisfy her demands. The inadequacy of her present effort can be removed only by invoking a superior might-and-wisdom, her incarnate effort complemented by going to the source of all-existence wherefrom success flows with the surety of a down-flowing stream. Savitri resorts to her "silent will"; she does not speak now; the conscient force retires within. She steps into her Meditation's House. In reality it is there alone that the firm truth of her soul dwells. Not by argument and counter-argument but by silence, by gathering in that House the needed force shall she march towards her victory.
As we have already seen, Savitri's entering into her House of Meditation is reminiscent of a similar situation, though at a somewhat different point of the narrative, in Vyasa's episode of Savitri. The day of Satyavan's death has arrived. Savitri has successfully completed the difficult three-night vow of fasting and standing at one single place throughout, trirātra vrata. On the fated day, well before the sunrise, she gets ready and lights a bright fire and makes sacrificial offerings to the gods. She then goes to her parents-in-law and pays them respect. Afterwards, she goes to the various hermitages and gives her worshipful obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious words dear to a young devout wife. Savitri accomplished as she was in the Yoga of Meditation at once steps within, in her House of Meditation, and wills the blessings of the great Truth-Seers to come true.
Savitri was a Yogini of exceptional merit and had advanced greatly on the occult-spiritual path to draw strength directly from the origin whence the words packed with mantric power come. By repeating in her heart of hearts the benediction-words of the holy sages and saying "Be it just so!" she fixes the force of those utterances in her consciousness.19
Presently in her encounter with Death she, in her silent will, seeks strength to vanquish the enemy. She must first get out of the gleaming haze and see in the clear flame that is ever-burning in her heart the
19 Vyasa's Savitri, p. 32.
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face of the World-Mother who alone will show her the way and lead her and give her the cherished victory. Then, to adapt Yeats's line, "At the stroke of midnight God shall win." It shall happen in the dim forest at the mid-day hour to bring the eternal noon.
And what do we see in the Meditation's House of Savitri? The soul's firm truth:
Where bums for the high house-lord and his mate
From which the altars of the gods are lit.20
Immediately everything reverses. Savitri, following Yama, Satyavan ahead of them, becomes yogically the leader of the march. The procession moves on, but her will now compels from behind the mighty god. Savitri can go to the end of things, to the end of Nothing, and recover from the hollow gulfs the soul of her lover. By the power of Dhyana Yoga, and of the sacrifice performed in the House of Meditation, she recognises the real nature of the problem with an altogether different perspective. The dire immense Subconscient thrown by Time into the Past comes alive in the form of a dark granite rock guarded by Death, the Subconscient that obstructs the path of the high Advent. Her meditation must prepare itself to negotiate with it and dissolve it. She is face to face with an Adversary who carries the burden of all history in his person and who is now standing in her way. Savitri has actually touched the core of the deep ancient Agony that resides in the heart of the Earth in her long and arduous travail of evolution. It is certain that a turning point has arrived and hence a might envisaging a decisive action must now take charge of the forthcoming event. Something that was never attempted must happen. If transformation of this earthly nature is possible and has to happen, then Savitri's Love must triumph by conquering Death. A sign "iridescent with the glory of the Unseen" must blaze in her inner sky to help her and guide her. The occult Horror must disappear. The issue posed by the "ancient disputants"—Earth and Love and Doom—is now in full focus for Savitri to tackle it. The power with which she was until now acting is inadequate to measure up to the demands of the hollow Gulf that devours in its insatiable hunger whatever is yet not truly divine in
20 Savitri, p. 639.
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the fullness of its plenitude. In a certain sense, therefore, the negative role of this antagonistic presence is to assure that nothing but the best and worthy of the Supreme comes into operation in the dynamism of this creation. No wonder the debate availed very little, just in the nature of lesser boons. What Savitri had with her that Death could so far easily counter. Death yet remains secure and has nothing to lose; the soul of Satyavan is still with him. Therefore a mightier power must come into play and deal with the difficulty. Savitri must perform a yogic act. She must do Yoga in the occult Void and hold in her person the strength of the transcendental Yogini.
A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
Empowered to force the door denied and closed21
must conquer the absoluteness with which the clutches of the ever-hollowing Inconscience, personified in Death, have held the world. The bounds of consciousness and time have to be overpassed to reach the infinity of the Eternal and the All-Conscient. The moment for the flaming warrior to receive that power and to force the door open is at hand; Savitri must prepare herself for that. Otherwise she will prove to be a barren woman in spite of the gifts of sons and daughters granted to her by Death; they will still turn out to be the children of Death perpetuating in a more permanent way the Rule of the Dark. But Savitri, by entering into the House of Meditation, by fixing herself there and summoning the higher power, must act in another way; the action of the incarnate Force should get directed towards one single goal—the abolition of all that resists the supreme Law of Love in this creation.
In the heart of Savitri, in the inner chamber of her House, the holy Yajna or the sacrifice that brings the power of God for the fulfilment of works is constantly being performed by the secret deity abiding within. That verily is the truth of Savitri's soul.22 That truth now ought to grow brighter and become stronger by drawing energies from the leaping flames of sacrifice. It is by sacrifice that the Supreme created the universe and it is by such a meritorious sacrifice that the creatures, and the gods too, grow in the rich-golden plenitude of Light and Love and Joy of the most auspicious immortality. Seekers of the riches, the Rishis "meditate the all-achieving laud of
21Ibid., p. 21.
22See The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 40: the giver of sacrifice in the Vedic knowledge is the soul or the personality as the doer of works.
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the divine" and call the triumphing Fire for help and succour in their spiritual endeavour; they invoke the Master of Sacrifice, they invite "to birth the immortal in mortals, the divine who brings in the divinity." Indeed, the all-pervading Brahma, who is the giver of all fruit, is himself established in the great sacrifice. All flows from sacrifice. Savitri, well-versed in the lore of tradition and an expert in the Yoga of Meditation, enters into the deep cavern of her secret soul; kindling her silent will she gets in touch with that divinity who is the source and fount of all action. "A house was there all made of flame and light"23 and what she observes in that house is the house-lord, Yajaman, with his mate, Yajamanin, engaged in sacrifice. That Yajna shall give her the needed strength to deal with Death in the dire yet decisive moment of life.
In that large and luminous House of Meditation the hearth is ablaze with the rich and intense yogic Fire and the determined truth of Savitri's soul is flaming bright, quenchless and imperishable. The fire that is burning there ceaselessly witnesses all actions and gives to the sacrificer the needed protection even in the face of death. Not only protection, which Savitri does not really need, but the winning strength to achieve the final result is what the Yajna is meant for. The Yajaman seated there with the Yajamanin or Grihapatni is offering Hutis to Agni. The Purohits have arranged the Sacrifice in the right order and the Ritwiks are chanting the sacred Riks. The tongues of flame leap high up to kindle even the altars of the gods, the gods who shall come there as guardians for the aspirant's Sacrifice. Presently the invocation is to the fire who is watching everything and who shall stand with Savitri at the moment of her dangerous rendezvous with the dark formidable Adversary. Armed with that might she shall chase him and follow him through the "enchanted dimness".
"Agni is a mighty benefactor of his worshippers. With a thousand eyes he watches over the man who offers him oblations; but consumes his worshippers' enemies like dry bushes, and strikes down the malevolent like a tree destroyed by lightning. All blessings issue from him as branches from a tree."24 That is how A. A. Macdonell describes the action of the "mighty benefactor" who,—when his worshipper is in difficulty, when Dread and Darkness surround him and hurt him,—gives them protection. Rishi after Rishi has hymned
23 Savitri, p. 526.
24 A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
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Agni not only to complete his felicities but also to get this god's protection. Thus, for example, Kanwa Ghaur (1:36:15):
Protect us, O Agni, from the Rakshasa, protect us from the harm of the undelighting, protect us from him who assails and him who would slay us, O Vast of lustres, O mighty and young.25
Or Kata Vaishwamitra (IV: 18:2):
Wholly consume our inner foe, consume the self-expression of the enemy who would war against us, O lord of the riches, consume, conscious in knowledge, the powers of ignorance; let them range wide thy ageless marching fires.26
Or Virupa Angirasa (VIII:43:26):
Smiting away the foes and things that hurt, burning the Rakshasas, on every side, O Fire, shine out with thy keen flame.27
Into the House of Meditation Savitri has entered; there the "homestead's sentinel and witness fire" is constantly burning. There for the welfare of creatures, and of the entire creation, the Vedic Brahminic rites are ever observed. The great Ahavaniya Fire, located in the East and in the form of a square, is receiving the holocaust; to its West, eight paces farther away, cooking for the offerings is in progress in the Grahapatya Fire which is in the shape of a circle; the Anvaharyapachana Fire at its South, and hence also known as
25Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 48.
26Ibid., p. 140. 27 Ibid., p. 346.
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Dakshinagni, in the form of a half moon, is added to the Grahapatya Fire to speed up the cooking of the sacrificial food, the Havis; the Sabhya and Avasathya to the North and North-East of the Ahavaniya Fire, respectively, complete the ceremonial Fire-Altar. The construction of the Fire-Altar itself was an elaborate process extending over a period of one year. Located in a prominent place of the whole sacrificial area, it was built in five strata of bricks, 10,800 bricks in all with the lowest having 1950. The Altar looks like a great Bird, the Golden Hawk, in its flight high up in the upper skies. The Hotri has taken charge of the entire ceremony; the Ritwik is inviting and summoning the gods to attend the Sacrifice; the Potri or the Purohit has assumed responsibility of the right conduct and sequence of the offerings; the Adhvaryu is standing in front of the sacrificer, the Yajaman, the paterfamilias, and is guiding him and helping him in the details of the eternal cosmic Yajna. The Chief Priest assisted by these four, each one of them in turn assisted by three, is the Master of the elaborate mighty Ceremony. The Hotris are chanting the Hymns of the Rig Veda; the Udgatra in his melodious voice is doing the Saman recitation of the Riks; the Adhwaryu is busy with the material arrangements of the Sacrifice; the Brahman takes care of this holy Action by assiduously supervising everything. The Fire is bright-lit, the flames leaping to heaven; indeed, "only with an offering in the well-kindled Fire, Samiddha Homa, can the oblations be successful and fulfilling, Samruddha." The Sacrifice itself becomes the only determining Act. Destiny is created or moulded by it; the decrees of Fate are fixed or altered by it in a decisive way.* Although it is a Vedic rite, it is loaded with occult significance bearing far-reaching consequences to regulate the steps of Time for achieving the desired result.
The birth of Rama, the Avatar himself who had come to change the course of events and reshape the destiny of mankind, was a result of the boon which his father king Dasharatha of the Ikshwaku line had received after performing the Ashwamedha, the Horse Sacrifice; it was conducted by no less a person than the celebrated Rishi Rishyshringa. The bricks of the altar had been prepared by following the strictest measures as prescribed by the holy treatises; the priests well-versed in the sacrificial architecture erected the altar, chanting all the while the appropriate hymns; the sacrificial fire to
* Reference may be made to Chhandogya Upanishada, Section 16, Chapter 4. See also Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, pp. 465-89.
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be worshipped by the Yajaman was placed ceremoniously by the expert Brahmins; the fire in its form and shape looked like Garuda, the divine Eagle himself, with his wings and tail distended; the majestic Bird was with the wings of gold.28
According to the Bhagavata Purana it is Lord Vishnu himself who in his person represents all the sacrifices; he is the Lord of Sacrifice, Yajneshwara. The seven sacrifices—Agnistoma, Atyagnistoma, Uktha, Sodashi, Vajapeya, Atiratra, and Aptoryama—are the seven parts of his body. In him are present all the Mantras, and the Deities worshipped by the devotees reside in him, and the materials used for the sacrifice are found in his being. Indeed, all the activities originate in him and he is the very sacrificial Act itself. When he as the divine Boar traced the lost Earth and brought it out from the depths of the fathomless Ocean, all the Gods and the immortal Rishis sang his lauds and hailed his great sacrifice. In him all sacrifices, by which the creation grows, are founded.
But then in Savitri's House of Meditation who are the officiating priests seated at the high-built altar? And who is engaged in the Yajna and what does he intend to achieve from it? Who is the Yajaman and who the Grihapatni, the executive participator in the holy Action? To whom are the well-prepared oblations being offered? When was this altar completed and who lighted the flame and tended it and kept that flame ever-burning? Are seasons the bricks used in its construction, so that completion may come in the cycles of Time? Wherefrom was the fuel procured? How was it gathered? Was it Agni himself who, as soon as he was bom, measured out the extent and the shape of the sacrifice? Is he not a "god to the gods," the leader who goes in front of the gods? The very first verse of the Veda extols him as the chief priest and one who is the divine Ritwik summoning the gods for the sacrifice (1:1:1):
(I.1.1.)
28The Ramayana, Bala-kanda, Canto 14
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I adore the Flame, the vicar, the divine Ritwik of the Sacrifice,
the summoner who most founds the ecstasy.29
We might therefore say that in this cosmic Yajna Agni is the Grihapati, the Lord of the House, and he is also the Vishapati, the Lord of the Worlds, and he is the Destroyer of every Evil too, all the three at the same time. With seven tongues he consumes the sevenfold food. But then who is the Yajamanin, the Grihapatni, the Spouse of Agni, Agnayi, seated to his left and offering with him the oblations, the Havis? Indeed, she seems to be Aditi herself under the name of Swaha bom as Daksha's daughter in the manifestation, a bright and youthful bride in rich golden-red attire, she who is participating in the Yajna and fulfilling the Act in this creation. They inseparably together, one in two aspects, are engaged in promoting the cosmic march towards divinity; thus all the while are they performing the Good.
In Savitri's House of Mediation Agni is the blazing will and Swaha is the power and fiery force and they together draw energies from the great Tapas of the Supreme himself. He is the "conscious force or Will instinct with knowledge which pervades the world and is behind all its workings."30 Savitri first steps into that House where her "silent will" joins the Will of the Divine in the Universe. Such is the nature of this Vedic Yajna going on in her heart.
Sat-Purusha and Adya-Shakti
A. B. Keith in his long introduction to the Taittiriya Sanhita belonging to the Veda of the Black Yajus School mentions that it, like the Shatapatha Brahmana, identifies Agni with Death which "leads to the suggestion that the sacrificer as Agni, as time, is death and as the sacrificer dies he becomes immortal, for death is his own self."31 But it is doubtful whether this is strictly a Vedic concept. Agni as a Vedic god has his own status and standing in the pantheon of these ancients. As the Transcendent's tapas-energy in evolution carrying it forward, he has almost a fixed role which he plays variously. He is described, and also extolled, as the seer-will, the messenger of the gods, the Bull with four horns, the Male, the great Aryan, the house-lord, the Lord of the Worlds, the knower of the births, the priest of sacrifice, the immortal in mortals leading them
29 Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 39. 30Ibid., p. 477.
31 Taittiriya Sanhita Part I, Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 18; p. cxxviii.
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and protecting them on the path of heaven. As will in the material world it is he who shapes and moulds forms and brings concreteness to things ethereal. Agni is the creative principle or power of immortality in Matter. Identification with him is a certain and effective means of attaining the beatitude of deathlessness, but not presently in the embodied material form; his form has not yet evolved to that stage. "Agni manifests divine potentialities in a death-besieged body; Agni brings them to effective actuality and perfection. He creates in us the luminous forms of the Immortals."32 Agni is indeed the presiding deity here and he is also the divinity that grows in the physical universe making it grow in his own growth. We cannot therefore identify him with Death who is but the power of disintegration. We cannot in the operational scheme conceive the builder and the destroyer being one person. Time as Kala Purusha is again that agent of dissolution; it is he who destroys the order of the worlds, maybe for the purposes of its renewal but not by its own agency. True, Death is known as the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-god, and in him does the Dharma abide and by it does he protect or guard immoertality. "Surya the Lord of Light is bom as the guardian of the divine Law and the Yama-power."33 This is the positive aspect of Yama in the creation; therefore he is also known as the ordainer of the worlds. On the other hand, Death as a dark power in the material creation leads it to its entire dissolution in the Void of the Unmanifest. Sacrificer's death cannot then take him to immortality; it would rather be his complete disappearance into the gloom of a darkness where no ray of light or hope can ever reach. Into the sunless worlds of the Isha would he sink, beyond redemption. There no sacrifice is performed and therefore in doom would he lie for ever, in the negative state of immortality. Decay, disintegration and death of the physical cause total loss of the living consciousness; the cellular death thus leads to complete insenscience and no memory or gain of the past is carried forward in the individual's next birth. For this not to happen the will of divine Agni has to be kindled in the very cells which can eventually open out the possibility of the physical transformation. The sacrificer as Agni identifying himself with the Sun-god shall tread the upward path, thus progressing into knowledge and stepping into a blissful luminous living. The seers follow this path of the gods, the path that has been paved by sacrifice
32The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 268.
33Ibid., p. 232.
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and made safe for treading. On this path of sacrifice Savitri herself sees the supreme Reality as Maha Purusha or the Great Being standing behind this figure of Death, the dark Terrible. He abandoning his fourfold divinity, by making a sacrifice of his supremeness took on that shape in the Void. Only then from that sacrifice did progress become possible. It was that shape in the Void which confronted Savitri as she was claiming back Satyavan's soul. This dual aspect can also be discerned from the Yama as has been given to us by Vyasa in his tale.
The Vedic Hymn of Creation is the sublimest laud of Sacrifice of the Divine Purusha. He at the beginning of existence volunteered to disappear from himself in order to give birth to creation. He wished to know himself through it. Thus the Vedas were born and the four austerities and the great rhythms were set into movement. In the darkness that was engulfed by darkness he moved as the Demiurge and soon the gods found the means to build up the existent. The Divine Purusha by accepting Darkness grew superconscient in many forms. He expressed himself multifoldly in the material and the supramental universe. Soon then he set himself on the path of progress.
In the Brahminic tradition Prajapati is the Lord of Sacrifice. It was in building up the body of this Begetter of Creatures that the creative act of sacrifice was performed long ago. By it shall he propagate.34 That from the Supreme's dismemberment the divine body be built, the fires of the sacrifice were kindled and the chants raised and the oblations poured. The sacrificer by sacrificing himself created innumerable sacrifices. The five Yajnas bom of the Maha-Yajna maintain a fulfilling relationship, a mutually enriching harmony in different parts of this vast creation. If in Brahma-Yajna the supreme deity is invoked by chanting the Riks of the Vedas, by Manushya-Yajna the sacrificers grow by helping each other. The Devas take of the offerings of the sacrifice and to its performer grant boons in full measure. Even departed spirits and the beings of vital worlds get their share in this daily sacrifice. The Law of Sacrifice proves not only to be ubiquitous in the universality of its application* but is also inexorable. That was the way the Grecian gods were subject to the Law of Ananke. All is established in the great Sacrifice and, indeed, all these sacrifices have been extended, as the Gita
34 The Gita deals with this aspect in chapters in and IV.
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says, "in the mouth of the Brahman."35 The five Yajnas of the Gita are: Dravya-Yajna, Tapa-Yajna, Yoga-Yajna, Swadhyaya-Yajna, and Jnana-Yajna. The Teacher imparted this understanding of Yajna to Vivasvan the Sun-god, the father of Yama, long ago in prehistory, in the antiquity of the gods, at the beginning of the transcendent Time, and it is that he reasserted on the battlefield.36 That, then, is really the seed-action in the creation.
Sacrifice is the noblest dharma. The social and spiritual order, even the occult, is founded in it; the universal harmony and concordance grow and flourish in the leaping of those mighty flames. As much as the Seers and the Rishis cherish it as do the heavenly Gods themselves, those who are the guardians of the Truth that is obscured in the night here. When Savitri got the soul of Satyavan back from Yama, the King of Dharma or Dharmaraja, he himself blessed her by granting to Satyavan a life of four-hundred years for performing the holy Yajnas, Fire-Sacrifices in the conduct of the glorious Dharma in which the creatures grow in plenitude.37 Even today every household engaged in sacrifice echoes and re-echoes that famous chant of Rishi Dhirgatamasa for the fulfilment of life in that Worthy Act. In a "deep and mystic style" he proclaims (1:164:50):
By sacrifices the Gods worship the Sacrifice which is the foremost of the Dharma. Such a law of fundamental importance must have had its origin in the person of the Supreme himself, in the all-potentiality of the transcendent to bring forth the secret or hidden possibility of a world-movement in the rhythms of the Truth.
The Gita enjoins us to be engaged in works and make them a sacrificial offering to the Lord of Nature in whom they get purified for growth and progress. The quenchless flame Agni Pavaka as the purifier of action is the leader of the march through the terrestrial ways. Even as it grows it becomes more and more bright and golden:
35Ibid., IV:32.
36 Ibid., Iv:1.
37Ibid.,R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 58-9.
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With sacrifice the Lord of creatures of old created creatures and said, By this shall you bring forth (fruits or offerings), let this be your milker of desires.
Foster by this the gods and let the gods foster you; fostering each other, you shall attain to the supreme good.
Fostered by sacrifice the gods shall give you desired enjoyments; who enjoys their given enjoyments and has not given to them, he is a thief.
The good who eat what is left from the sacrifice, are released from all sin; but evil are they who enjoy sin who cook (the food) for their own sake.
From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is bom of work.
Work know to be bom of Brahman, Brahman is bom of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the sacrifice.38
In its most esoteric sense we have in the Gita (IV: 24) the following grand incantatory verse:
Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.39
While commenting on this verse Sri Aurobindo writes: "The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine."40
38The Gita, 111:10-15. These renderings by Sri Aurobindo given in his Essays on the Gita are compiled by Anilbaran Roy in The Message of the Gita, pp. 51-52.
39Ibid., p. 79.
40Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 113.
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When the Yogagni, the fire of concentrated will is kindled and when it mounts to heaven a new transformation takes place in the person as much in the soul of the aspirant. The darkness of Nature is left behind and thought and feeling and the physical activities become suddenly spirit-charged; occult invisible domains of light and force open out. The deathless Flame aspires to reach "the Being's absolutes."
In a veiled Nature's hallowed secrecies
It burns for ever on the altar of Mind,
Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,
Humanity its house of sacrifice.41
But who is this Yajna-Purusha, the Yajneshwara of the Puranas, the Fire of the Yogins, the Tapas of the doers of austerities, the God of worship of the ritualists, the sacramental divinity of the religious, the bringer of the heavenly riches to the terrestrial creature, the leader of the Aryans, the fulfiller of the purpose of the Supreme in the cosmos, in whom the wheels of Time move like great rhythms of happiness and joy and ever expand into the Future claiming its felicitous abundances? Is he the alchemist in the cave experimenting with the baser materials to transmute them into the luminous self of his own gold? the physicist feeding the atomic faggots to set ablaze the cosmic conflagration in the very womb of Matter? the occultist who by his magic spell shall build the body of God with the nerve-centres of his own person? "Serene as the Antarctic silence," who is it that burns in Hegel on his death-bed? In the non-violent march of the "naked fakir" or the Blitzkrieg of the Titan, is it the same Purusha strident like a fire and roaring in the loudness of a colossus of might? When was this Yajna-Purusha bom and where does he abide? If he is in the night do the stars send their distant signals to guide him on the right path or throw their little energising brightnesses into his flames and, if in the day, do the suns pour their radiances to kindle his leaping greatnesses beyond the domains of the knowledge of the truth? If he is the Breath sublime does he survive in abysses of the inconscient Horror? Is his burning smouldered by the black Demon or is he accosted by Kumbhanda, the goblin, or is he slain by Vritra, the terrible Enemy? Is it not true that the potency of the Yajna is exploited even by the Asuras to battle against the Gods? Did not Indrajit, the son of the demon king Ravan, hide himself in a
41 Savitri, p. 279.
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secret cave and initiate the fearsome sacrifice to obtain weapons and get a swift-wheeled war-chariot to fight against Lakshmana, the younger brother of Rama the Avatar? And, knowing the efficacy of the ghastly Yajna, was it not that in time it was thwarted and victory decisively turned in favour of the Incarnate?
But then of this Yajna-Purusha what is the truth of truth, satyasya satyam? If Yajna on the physical plane is a celebrated fact, a cherished institution, an ever-living and ever-nourishing reality, if it is enduring here in spite of the travails of time, it must have had its origin, had its first birth, in some imperishable world in the sky above. If it is splendid like the Gods, if not more splendid than them, surely then it must be beyond the reach of death. The Yajna-Purusha has to be someone greater than Agni or Prajapati or Brahma performing the cosmic Yajna. His dwelling has to be in infinity of the Transcendent. As a matter of fact he himself is the Transcendent turned towards creation. If Savitri is the incarnation of the most excellent executive power of the Divine and if it is in her House of Meditation that she sees the sacrifice being performed, then it must certainly be some immediate or closest aspect of the Supreme himself who has become the Yajna-Purusha. Indeed, if not he who else can perform this Maha-Yajna in her heart which itself is the House of Flame?42
To restate: the Yajna-Purusha is the transcendent Supreme himself, the Supreme in the poise of a great creative Action. In the language of the Puranas he is the creator Brahma and it was out of his Will or samkalpa that the creation ensued; out of his Tapas-Yajna or the force of concentration were the worlds bom. The metaphysicospiritual sense emerges clearly in Sri Aurobindo's analysis when he discusses the very first verse of the Rig Veda. What is Yajna in Himself?—asks he and sets forth to answer as follows. "Yajna is Being, Awareness and Bliss; He is Sat with Chit and Ananda, because Chit and Ananda are inevitable in Sat. When in his Being, Awareness and Bliss He conceals Guna or quality, He is nirguṇa sat, impersonal being with Awareness and Bliss either gathered up in Himself and passive, they nivṛtta, He also nivrtta or working as a detached activity in His impersonal existence, they pravṛtta, He nivrtta. Then He should not be called Yajna, because He is then aware of himself as the Watcher and not as the Lord of activity. But when in His being, He manifests Guna or quality He is saguṇa sat, personal being.
42 Ibid.
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Even then He may be nivrtta, not related to His active awareness and bliss except as a Watcher of its detached activity; but He may also by His Shakti enter into their activity and possess and inform His universe (praviśya, adhiṣthita), He pravrtta, they pravṛtta. It is then that He knows Himself as the Lord and is properly called Yajna. Not only is He called Yajna, but all action is called Yajna, and Yoga, by which alone the process of any action is possible, is also called Yajna... This Yajna, who is the Saguna Sat, does not do works Himself, (that is by Sat), but He works in Himself, in Sat by His power of Chit,—by His Awareness... When Chit that is Power begins to work, then She manifests Herself as kinetic force, Tapas, and makes it the basis of all activity."43
The Yajna-Purusha is therefore Sachchidananda Himself in His world-creative Action, the Sat-Purusha in His own Person setting forth the World-Force44 in the dynamic movement of the Manifestation. If this Action is the Yajna, then the Sat-Purusha is the Yajaman and the World-Force His Grihapatni, Yajamanin, the Consort participating in the Sacrifice. Yogeshwara and Yogeshwari, the Will of Ishwara, perform the Yajna in the Transcendent; but as World-Creatrix when she rules over the quiescent Being, Prakriti mightier than Purusha, he subject to her action, then the Yajna in the terrestrial process assumes an altogether different character. It is this terrestrial Yajna that has to be lifted up, with the help of the Gods, to its original pristine glory and grandeur. In the wake of the sacrifice of the Purusha, sung by the Vedic Rishis, she as the Adya Shakti has actually made a greater sacrifice by coming down to this creation, that it may grow in pure being, awareness, and joy she gave up her royalty of transcendence and chose to be here—because it is in the folds of inconscience that she must search or discover her lost lover. In that search ".. .she has consented to put upon herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the
43Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, pp. 440-41.
44Savitri, p. 121;-see also p. 301.
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holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother."45 In the Epic's passage
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.46
The incarnation of Adya Shakti in the human body to do the transformative Yoga of the Supreme in the earth-consciousness forelights the certitude of its success.
This Adya Shakti takes birth in our mortality and accepts the name of Savitri. She is "the patroness of magic priestcraft, Brahmanhood" and is, as Heinrich Zimmer rightly says, "the female counterpart and divine energy, Shakti, of Savitra-Brahma, the Creator of the world; she is the all-moving, all-inspiring divine principle of creation."47 Consort of Brahma in the Transcendent if she is known as Gayatri, here as Satyavan's beloved she becomes Savitri. But when the philosopher fails to recognise herself incarnate in the person of Savitri, "the human princess, daughter of King Aswapati, who, according to the legend, rescued her husband, Prince Satyavan, from the domain of King Death," then this Adya Shakti's direct participation in the world-processes gets denied in the reckoning. In actuality, however, without that participation world-transformation would be impossible. She has been here since the beginning of the earth in one form or another. It is she who has moulded all the major events in the history of consciousness, thus taking the evolutionary march towards God-fulfilment in the material creation. The human Savitri, on entering her House of Meditation, witnesses the divine reality of her own self, that reality vaster and mightier than Death whom she is presently confronting as a dark terrible Shadow. Savitri now merges her will with the will of the transcendent Power who is ever burning in the depth of her soul, in the jewel-bright cave of her heart. That Adya Shakti herself is Savitri, luminous, in the Yajna of the Divine.
In the deepest sense, therefore, the occult Fire that bums in the
45The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24-25.
46Savitri, p. 99.
47Philosophies of India, p. 154.
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central hearth in Savitri's House of Meditation is the eternal Yajna itself, the Yajna being performed by the Sat-Purusha as the house-lord with his mate Adya-Shakti seated along with him in the great Action of upholding the Creation that the Transcendent may dwell in it with its full threefold beatitude. Although a small Yajna is constantly being performed in the heart of each one of us, and in the heart of the cosmos, this Yajna of Savitri is unique in its triple dimension of the Supreme. If her Yajna is meant for dissolving ignorance and death, that in the evolutionary manifestation divinity may inhabit itself in this house of Matter, ours is to grow in the sun-bright splendour of that divinity itself. Hers is the transcendental Yajna, ours the individual. In the flaming spirit of her Yajna are kindled all these thousand Yajnas of our souls. Such is the possibility that the Divine as Death has now opened out in this earthly existence. Such is the glory of Savitri's threefold Yajna: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendental. This is the executive Truth we see in Savitri's House of Meditation.
R.Y. DESHPANDE
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