The Birth of Savitr

The Symbol

Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitr,̣

the Light of the Supreme

which shall illumine us with the Truth.

This is Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra. The meditation is on the auspicious form of the Sun, the Sun of Divine Light. The Mantra affirms that the Light shall illumine us with the Truth. It shall illumine all the parts of our being, even the very physical. In it shall be our true progress. The threefold reality of Sat-Chit-Ananda shall express itself in this creation. The purport is that even the physical shall express the dynamic Truth.

In it we shall be immune from contingencies of Time, from the workings of Fate. We shall be uncircumscribed by Ignorance. We shall be free from death. Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra is different from the traditional Gayatri Mantra given to us by Visvamitra. In this Mantra the emphasis is on the auspicious form—varam rūpam. What is implied in it is the physical transformation.

The Vedic-Upanishadic Rishis certainly had the knowledge of the supreme Reality. They knew that in it is founded the entire creation. But about the manifestation of the dynamic Truth in this mortal world, in mrityuloka, they did not possess the necessary working intuition. They did not know the way towards physical transformation. Perhaps it was too early to realize it collectively here in this death-bound world.

Now Sri Aurobindo by his intense and arduous yoga-tapasya has prepared the required ground, made ready the ādhār for the spirit's wide-ranging activities. He has made it a reality in the evolutionary manifestation. He has invoked the supreme Grace to

Page 81

incarnate herself here. She must come here and take up the work in her own hand.

The coming down of that Grace is the birth of Savitri. She alone can bring about that miracle of physical transformation. Savitri is the incarnate power who shall establish divinity in the terrestrial phenomenon.

That creative power should bring truth and light and force and bliss to the mortal world, to this creation presently governed by death. That will be her work for the fulfilment of the mortal world. Such is the significance of the esoteric birth of Savitri.

This mrityuloka is the great concern of Savitri. She must bring down the Truth in this world, must make that Truth dynamically operative in it. She must espouse the Truth howsoever difficult the circumstances, even in the presence of ubiquitous death.

It is to do this that Savitri comes here. She comes here as the Observer of the Vow of the Lord. She comes as pativratā. In the Mahabharata story of Savitri we see that she is committed to the joyous husbanding of the Truth. Perhaps the suggestion is that in an evolutionary way this mortal creation can eventually become an expression of the multifold divinity. This appears to be the true significance of the legend of Savitri. In it is the revelation of the Sun-God's transformative power.

The significance is proclaimed to us by narrating it as a story. What otherwise proves to be beyond the reach of our understanding, what is metaphysically abstuse or is too occult to grasp, that is made tangible through the medium of a household episode. The Savitri-narrative thus turns out to be a fruitful device; by it the higher truth is made to us somewhat comprehendible.

The story belongs to the early Vedic times. It is not just a social episode designed to declare moral values for the benefit of general masses. It actually enshrines the greatness of a woman's love for her husband even in the circumstance of death. It is yet something more than that,—the Triumph of Love over Death.

It is a story that depicts functionally the merit of the path of righteousness. Although it may seem to have the colouring of an ethical illustration, the story is spiritually charged. Even in the simple narrative of the Mahabharata we see a purpose behind the story, of

Page 82

the foundation of life based on truth. In it we notice the seeds of a brighter world taking birth.

This birth of a bright world may not be in the immediate context, but it is bound to occur in the evolutionary future. It is a new world whose birth is helped and supported by Yama, the true Yama as a possessor of gracious kindness. In it the authentic meaning, the actual significance of mrityuloka, becomes clearer. Yama shall thus prove to be the excellent Upholder of the Worlds. He shall then be pitrarājastām bhagavān, the beneficent King-Father and Lord of Creatures, as Vyasa would say.

Sri Aurobindo utilizes this legend to give mantric form to his yogic experiences and realizations, to his avataric work. His Savitri is therefore not only a legend and a symbol, a symbol describing the conquest of death. It is also a double autobiography.

In it the pregnant Gayatri Mantra of twenty-four syllables gets expanded to fill the earthly spaces by growing itself into twenty-four thousand lines.

It has wide and far-reaching dimensions of the expressive-revelatory Word. It is that Word which shall bring noble plenitudes of divinity to this evolutionary creation. It is on this foundation that we have Sri Aurobindo's epic. Indeed, it is this which makes the poem the Epic of the Supreme.

In this Epic of the Supreme Savitri came to live with grief, to share the mortal's lot, to stay the wheels of doom, to confront death. This was the great divine task she was engaged in. For that she made the sacrifice of her suffering to the presiding Deity, surrendered herself completely to the Will of the Supreme. Indeed in it she attempted all and achieved all. In it she received the most wondrous boon of divine life on earth.

The Divine Savitri had assured Aswapati that she shall take birth as his daughter and accept the burden of the world:

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword

And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.

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.

Page 83

Incarnate Savitri accomplished what was promised. Now the Powers of the Spirit gaze upon destiny and there is its living presence even in the commonest things. Luminous crimson seeds of God's felicity have been sown in the earthly soil. The deep red colour of the Truth-Light is indicative of the physical transformation and it is that which is symbolished here. These crimson seeds shall sprout and "this earthly life become the life divine."

Yet the question remains as to who this Savitri is. Tradition makes her an unusual princess who wins back the soul of her dead husband from the God of Death. This surely is an extraordinary event in spiritual annals of the earth. But if she is one who bears in her womb the secret birth of divinity, if she is jananī, then definitely she cannot accept the sorrowful infliction of the death of her own child. She must become death-victorious, mrityu-vijayinī. Her one concern is to establish immortal birth in this mortality.

Savitri is the daughter of savitr ̣or the Sun-God who is the creator of this entire universe. This implies that we have to understand why the world is beset by the presence of Death. Why has savitr ̣put on himself the operative veil in the pregnant circumstance of this Inconscience? Why has it to be removed by his own executive power? But then Death is also the offspring of savitr ̣himself and therefore it becomes his concern to deal with him. For that to happen his executive power, the Sun-Word, should come as sāvitrī. But this happens only when the ground for her descent is well prepared here, when there is spiritual support for her birth.

When the ground is well prepared, she makes a splendid sacrifice of her transcendental divinity and accepts the evolutionary travail: she leaves her "vaster Nature" behind and works in the limits of our little terrestriality. Thus in the process of manifestation is seen the Supreme's direct involvement in the person of Savitri. Such is the correlative task cut out for her.

It was in a wondrous act of Love that the Supreme had plunged into the darkness of the Inconscience. In that way would appear out of it another creation for a worthwhile progress in the growing possibilities of the Spirit. Savitri's incarnation is for joining herself with this Love, joining in conformity with and accomplishment of the Supreme's Will. That is how the story of Savitri also becomes,

Page 84

through her action, the story of Love triumphing over Death. If it is through the agency of Supermind that the world came into being, it is the Supermind alone who will then bring genuine fulfilment to it in joyous glories of the Truth and Light and Force and Awareness. In it is the work of Surya-Savitri. It is that we celebrate in the Savitri-legend given to us as a great gift.

But the advent of Savitri is to be preceded by preparing well the needed occult-spiritual support; it should be able to bear the weight and majesty of her Grace. A "world's desire" has to rise to bring her birth amongst us. This is done, again, by the Supreme himself, coming here as the Son of Force. He comes here as eternal Aswapati, as the king of Madra in the Land of Tapasya. He does intense Yoga-Sadhana in the Earth-consciousness. He discerns the "wide world-failure's cause" and offers his prayer to the supreme Goddess to mission down a living form of hers. It is here that things have to happen and these can happen only through her. The Yoga-Sadhana of Aswapati is therefore to prepare the necessary base, the needed firm ādhār for the executive action of the omnipotent Goddess.

It is in this great symbolic background that we can also see the excellence of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which is in fact the Word of Revelation adopting the fruitful form of a creative Myth, a myth that transcends the restrictive boundaries of space and time. It is a myth whose truth is being realised at every instance and on every spot. It is the Mantra of Transformation, which also implies that it is the Mantra of Manifestation. That Mantra is built into the very origin of the creation, into the stuff of things by which they acquire their validity, in turn making that myth itself an eternal reality. Be it one single resplendent word Savitri holding the Sun-God's wide infinity, or twenty-four syllables reverberating from some deep-toned womb of the omniscient Hush, or in "sessions of the triple Fire" twenty-four thousand lines spreading into the everlasting day, we have in them all present the Mantra Devata, the Goddess of Metre. We have in them all, and variously, the entrancing sweetness of her Love alone. In her dynamic action is established the supreme Truth on earth.

The birth of Savitri means the birth of a new world. This she brings about by meeting the luminous Presence behind Death and obtaining the boon of a divine life upon earth.

Page 85

There is no doubt that the ancient tale of Savitri is charged with the contents of physical transformation; but then we also see that many details it has given in its swift narrative are only in a suggestive or symbolic language. Let us take an example. This pertains to Savitri's winning the singular boon of Satyavan's life from Yama. Now if we remember that the Vedic Yama is an immortal who drinks ambrosia under the supalāsha tree, then we at once realize as how the tale acquires its significance in the marvellous intent of this world's creation. The common name of the supalāsha tree is the Flame of the Forest which the Mother sees as the Beginning of the Supramental Realisation. It is this true Yama enjoying the ambrosial drink underneath it who gives the boon to Savitri, indicating the beginning of the supramental realization in the terrestrial process. But the story, although it is sufficiently careful to drop the necessary hints, does not go into the multiple aspects that operate in Time's dynamism. Nonetheless, the yogic vision behind it is the Vision of the Future, even if it might not spell out the means and the details to make it a reality upon earth. In fact we have in it both the symbolic and legendary aspects fused together and it is necessary that we enter into its spirit to derive full benefit from it. Add to that the mantric power that is present in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, and we begin to recognise the divinity it proclaims for this mortal world, this mrityuloka. That is Savitri who gives us the Truth and the things of the Truth. Let us live in it.

Page 86