Savitri

PREFACE TO THE

THIRD EDITION

 

      The first edition appeared on 24 November 1962 and the second on 24 November 1985. Apparently the Mother has willed a twenty-three-year gap between editions for Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: A Study of the Cosmic Epic (earlier titled A Study of Savitri)] Her grace has sustained me throughout my life. When my father, Prof K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, communicated to her that a panel of three examiners from England had recommended the award of the degree of Doctor of Letters summa cum laude for my thesis, A Study of Savitri, she gave instructions for its publication immediately. Sri K.D. Sethna read the manuscript and suggested some improvements which were carried out. For me it was all too sudden, dream-like, when I received the hard-bound copy, which was followed by several generous reviews in leading magazines. Writing in Modern Language Review, Prof. Vivian de Sola Pinto observed:

 

      Dr Nandakumur's English style is fluent, always readable and sometimes eloquent. Her book is based on a wide literary culture ... All students of the work of Aurobindo and indeed of the spirit of modern India must be grateful to Dr Nandakumar for this intelligent and sympathetic guide to the masterpiece of a poet whose work is still too little known outside India.

 

      During the last fifty years, Savitri has been increasingly gaining

 

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its rightful space in Indian academia. Several dissertations have been submitted in various universities with signal success. Eminent orators like Ambalal Purani and M.V. Nadkarni have taken the epic poem all over India and abroad to enthusiastic audiences. Innumerable books on Savitri have been published. There are also websites exclusively devoted to studying the poem. And yet I have been repeatedly asked for copies of my book which apparently continues to be of significant help to the student of Sri Aurobindo's epic. This is how Sri M.L. Himatsingka kindly acceded to my request and brought out a paperback edition in 1985.

 

      For the last fifteen years and more, the book has remained out of print, though the demand has continued. I am grateful to Sri S.G. Gautam for initiating the idea of this new edition. I was delighted when Sri Vijay of Sri Aurobindo Society came forward to set off the process for its publication. This I do consider as a direct ray of grace from the Mother as the book is being issued during the golden jubilee of the Society. It has also been a joy to work with the young and enthusiastic helpers in the task of production, Krishna, Gita and Vilasni. Nandita Jaishankar s attention to detail as an editor has been of great help. I am deeply thankful to Shobit Arya and Sapna Rangaswamy for publishing the book under the auspices of Wisdom Tree.

 

      My mother, deeply devoted to Savitri which was her life's companion, was looking forward to this new edition when she merged with the Mother in 2007. Her angelic spirit is sure to be delighted for she was always my first reader and critic and tireless correspondent. My husband Nandakumar, and our children Ahana, Bhuvana and Raja have been the source of light and laughter in my life. It is a special joy to thank them formally.

 

      Though I have published several books after A Study of Savitri, this work remains very close to my heart. The work gave me the honour of being the first student to take up the epic for doctoral study. I owe to my father all that is in it. I can see and hear my father in the book, as he explained to me the poem, helped me plan the work and guided

 

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me to the right books on literature and philosophy in the Andhra University Library. He patiently corrected my manuscript, cheered me up when I felt despondent and curbed my enthusiasm for a flowery style. When the first edition was in the press, he went through the proofs with me which was in itself a lifetime's education.

 

      Indeed I see my entire life in this book ever since father read the complete Savitri at home using the one-volume university edition which had been published in 1954. And the two days in November 1959 when Ambalal Purani kept the 1000-strong student-listeners of Andhra University in the Erskine Square mesmerised by his speeches on Sri Aurobindo and Savitri. The audience with the Mother after my thesis had brought me the doctoral degree, the publication of the book, my post-doctoral work on Sri Aurobindo and Dante Alighieri growing out of one section in this book, my days spent in reading Sri Aurobindo and writing about him guided gently by my father are all entwined in its pages. It is all due to Mother's grace and I bow to her in gratitude.

 

      Merging into the folds of Savitri one can feel spirituality as a tangible experience for the epic never fails us. Every reading opens yet another brave new world! I was a teenager when I used to accompany my father in his daily walks, and listened to him reciting 'The Symbol Dawn'while we watched the sun rise above the Bay of Bengal:

 

      The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

      A glamour from unreached transcendences

      Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,

      A message from the unknown immortal Light

      Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,

      Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues

      And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.

 

More than half a century later, I marvel how Savitri has been a guardian "angel of the way" for me, and I have not lost any of the hope, the wonder and the faith instilled in me by my father in those early days of studying the poem. Towards the Greater Dawn then!

      Prema Nandakumar

      PREFACE TO THE

       SECOND EDITION

 

        Long out of print, A Study of Savitri now comes out again, and I am grateful to Sri M.L. Himatsingka, the indefatigable and dedicated spirit behind All India Books and VAK: The Spiritual Bookshop for it. Doubtless several books on Savitri have appeared during the last two decades, notably by M.P. Pandit, Rohit Mehta, Syed Mehdi Imam, and Rameshwar Gupta; but I have also been receiving all these years repeated queries regarding the reissue of my work. I therefore venture to think that it has, perhaps, a place of its own in the growing critical literature on Savitri, and deserves this new lease of life.

 

      I may add that, following this work and helped by a UGC postdoctoral Senior Fellowship for three years (1967-70) at Andhra University, I completed a comparative study of Dante's The Divine Comedy and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. It appeared first serially in Sri Aurobindo Circle Annual'(1972-78) and later in book form (1981).

 

      But Savitri remains inexhaustible, embodying in its nectarean message "an immortal Sunlight radiating over the future". And our 'critiques'are no more than humble approaches and offerings. In the end one surrenders to the poem itself, and its alchemic power and glory.    

Prema Nandakumar

     PREFACE TO THE

     FIRST EDITION

 

      This book is substantially the same as the thesis for which the Andhra University, on the unanimous recommendations of a Board consisting of Professors Vivian de Sola Pinto, H. O. White and T.J.B. Spencer, awarded the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy on me at the Annual Convocation held in December 1961. The present publication has been kindly sponsored by the Andhra University, with the help of a grant-in-aid from the University Grants Commission (UGC), and I am duly grateful to both ,y Alma Mater and the UGC for thus facilitating the publication of this book so soon after the award of the Degree.

 

      During the last several months I have been asking myself why, having wavered for quite some time between Virginia Woolf and Savitri as my subject for the PhD course, I finally chose the latter. I should perhaps say rather that whereas I chose Virginia Woolf, Savitri chose me. Sir Aurobindo's portraits adorn the walls of my parental home, and I have grown up in silent and reverent admiration of the Master. As a girl I was once privileged to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. And which Hindu girl reacts otherwise than with love and gratitude towards the mythic heroine, Savitri.

 

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   That I should wish to study Sri Aurobindo's Savitri was thus not surprising: what was really surprising was that I took so long to reach a decision which, once made, seemed altogether the right thing. My first postgraduate enthusiasm had been the great Tamil poet, Subramania Bharati, some of whose poems I translated into English and published as Bharati in English Verse. Now Bharati had been Sri Aurobindo's intimate friend at Pondicherry for about ten years, and what could be more appropriate than my turning from Bharati to Sri Aurobindo?

 

      There has been no end to my good fortune. Firstly the subject itself, which I now think is the greatest—the most inspiring—that a woman, at any rate a Hindu woman, could think of or write about. Secondly, I have had constant advice and help from my father, Prof K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, who is not only the author of the standard biographical study of Sri Aurobindo but is also one of the eminent authorities on the subject. Thirdly, the UGC were good enough to award a research scholarship that enabled me to prosecute my studies without saddling myself with teaching duties.

 

      Fourthly, in November 1959, Mr A.B. Purani the author of the only book on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri was our guest for a few days and gave on 25 November an inspiring lecture in the University on Savitri. Having been closely associated with Sri Aurobindo for about thirty years, Mr Purani is one of the very few people who can talk with real authority on the Master's thought and message. I was privileged to discuss the plan of my book with him, clear up several of my difficulties, and even to look into some of his private lecture notes on Savitri. Finally, certain review-assignments by Madame Sophia Wadia for the Aryan Path and the Indian P.E.N, enabled me during the last few years to read and write about Sri Aurobindo's posthumous publications—notably Ilion and the plays—while Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, Secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, gave me no small encouragement by publishing my first essay on Savitri ('The Exordium') in the quarterly journal, The Advent.

 

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      On the other hand, the more I studied, the more I began to feel bewildered. Savitri is a colossal poem of nearly 24,000 lines. The mere attempt to 'understand' it left me often despairing whether I would ever be able to bring my project to some sort of conclusion. I was for a while quite lost in Aswapati's 'Worlds', and the 'Descent into Night' was a terrible experience. But I persevered and my father was always there to help me whenever I floundered. The collateral studies took me to vast new oceans of knowledge. There were Sri Aurobindo's own works, formidable in their bulk and weight and manifoldness of knowledge. I was advised to read Evelyn Underbill's classic treatise on mysticism, and this took me to other books on mysticism and the great mystics. I also took deep draughts from the springs of modern English and American poetry Browsing in the University library, I read whatever seemed to have relevance to my subject in its wider perspective, and took numerous notes and carefully card-indexed them. As the months passed I had the feeling of a person who has foolishly ventured far into the sea and finds, whichever way he turns, nothing but an endless expanse of water. The shore seems to be nowhere.

 

      I could have gone on reading and taking notes for a lifetime,for one subject led to another and to another still, and all seemed relevant enough to the study of a 'Cosmic' epic like Savitri. But I realised at last that I must really put my notes in some order, plan my book and start writing it. First I attempted a verse play on the Savitri theme, more as an exercise in understanding and interpretation than as a serious literary effort. Next I turned to Part II of the present thesis. Mr Purani's 'Summary' was very useful, of course, but since he is a tried sadhak or initiate of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, many things that are perhaps self-explanatory to him seemed at first puzzling in the extreme to me. But repeated re-readings enabled me to complete this Part which is more or less a critical synopsis of the poem. I now turned to the original legend in the Mahabharata and made my own rendering, though I found the prose versions of Pratap Chandra Roy and John

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Brough as also the verse renderings of Sir Edwin Arnold, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Torn Dutt useful for one reason or another.

 

      Parts of the chapter 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri were presented as a paper before the English Faculty Research Seminar on 12 March 1960. The final chapter on Savitri as a 'Cosmic Epic' took me to other epics, ancient and modern, and I had an enchanting time exploring these 'realms of gold'. Dante, among the poets of the past, comes closest to Sri Aurobindo, and I found the essays on Dante by T.S. Eliot and Allen Tate the most illuminating, though Charles Williams is very good too. Of the moderns, Ezra Pound and Nikos Kazantzakis challenge comparison with Sri Aurobindo as epic poets. I have therefore made an attempt to see both the Cantos and The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, in relation to Savitri. Last to be written was the first chapter on Sri Aurobindo's life and work: while writing it I was conscious of what I had already written in the later chapters, and hence some points have been only glanced at since they are anyhow dealt with in fuller detail at the appropriate places later on.

 

      My main difficulty has been narrowing down the subject and at the same time setting it in the right backgrounds. This is no study of Sri Aurobindo or of his philosophy or yoga or politics, not even a study of his poetry as a whole. The single poem, Savitri, is the subject; and Sri Aurobindo's life and thought, his philosophy and yoga and politics and his other poems, are brought in only to make the appreciation of Savitri easy or complete. But Savitri is an epic in the English language, and it cannot be studied in a cultural vacuum. Savitri by itself, Savitri in relation to Sri Aurobindo's life and work, and Savitri in relation to the currents of human thought and experience of all times: such are the three ascending terms in the argument that I have tried to present in the following pages.

 

      Sri Aurobindo's yoga and his philosophy were no 'freaks' but are paralleled by similar (though not identical) realisations and leaps of thought elsewhere. Thus, while claiming outstanding genius and originality for Sri Aurobindo, I have been at some pains to show that,

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far from being a 'crank' or a 'case', he was generally in the line of the great mystics, philosophers and poets of the world. For example, when I had almost completed my thesis, I came across Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, and I was surprised to find striking similarities between his and Sri Aurobindo's speculations, to which 1 have drawn attention in the course of the first chapter.

 

      In The 'Legend' and the 'Symbol', I have tried to show that Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, massive though it is in conception and impressive in execution, is in its main ingredients implied in the old legendary story, even as the colossal Indian banyan tree is essentially implied in its tiny seed. As regards the symbolism, I have striven to show that Sri Aurobindo has drawn freely from the rich storehouse of Vedic symbolism and fused the many derived symbols into a single new blaze of revelation. In 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri, again, I have endeavoured to show that as 'overhead' poetry involves, first 'thematic content', second 'language' or verbal expression, and finally 'rhythm', in Savitri the 'content' is mainly Sri Aurobindo's own yogic experiences (including the journey in consciousness and the spiritual struggles in the mystic's 'Dark Night of the Soul'), the language is symbolic, often drawing upon the Vedic symbolism, and the rhythm' is iambic blank verse, but with an Upanishadic and Kalidasian force and finish.

 

      But 'overhead' poetry is not, after all, a wholly new bag of poetical, tricks, but rather the pushing up of certain possibilities in all great poetry to a further height and consistency of profoundly moving utterance. This point too I have tried to make in the course of the chapter, with illustrations from poets of the ancient and the modern world. Finally, in Savitri: A Cosmic Epic, I have done my best to show that Savitri is an epic of the soul with a range that is truly cosmic, and that, while it recalls for one or another reason many ot the epics of the past and of the present-day world, still the Divina Commedia comes nearest to it in its scope and depth and quality of its poetic utterance. The essence of the celebrated Gayatri (or Savitri) mantra is that by meditating on Savitri the adorable Supreme Creator

 

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of the Universe, the devotee invokes the intercession of that Power to awaken the veiled indwelling Effulgence to guide the mind towards the Truth. The Supreme Creator is also the veiled slumbering Effulgence; as a result of the divine intercession, what is slumbering is awakened, what is veiled is revealed, and man returns to the sovereignty of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo is thus able to make his poem at once the story of Savitri and Satyavan, and the story of Man in the Universe: in short a human and a cosmic epic in one.

 

      I realise now that it was vain on my part to have supposed that what Sri Aurobindo took some decades to compose could be 'studied' and the results of the study presented in easy critical categories. But I derive much encouragement from the concluding remarks in Mr Patrick Cruttwell's recent article on 'Makers and Persons':

 

...two very general caveats for the critic, which are also caveats,

to a slightly lesser degree, for the common reader. The first is

that we ought to make quite sure, before we undertake the

microscopic investigation of a writer, that he is, for ourselves,

worth investigating—which means, that we have enjoyed and

been impressed by his work. And the second caveat is that the

ways in which the person affects and is revealed in his creations a

re enormously varied and subtle; the evidence, however lavish,

is never, in the nature of things, complete; and it behoves us,

therefore, however fearless we may be in our pryings, to be

cautious in our conclusions.¹

 

I can at least say that I have genuinely enjoyed, and have often been overwhelmed by Savitri; I can also say that after all this exploration and scrutiny, I still feel that there is a lot more to know, that all the 'facts of the case' are not ready to hand; and if the poem intrigues me still in many places, if I feel constantly baffled, the reason may very well be that I do not know all the facts, that perhaps I have not even had the patience or perseverance to look for them in the right places. The poetry of Savitri is the reality, my critical study is but an illusion, but I hope, an illusion not wholly unrelated to the Reality!

 

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      Savitri is poetry and philosophy, and is based on Sri Aurobindo's own yogic experiences and realisations. The appreciation of a poem like Savitri must accordingly involve special difficulties. In the 'Preface' to his thoughtful work, Dante the Philosopher, M. Etienne Gilson writes:

 

When a philosopher discusses literature he often reveals a want of

taste, but when a man of letter discusses ideas he sometimes

reveals a want of precision. By helping one another we shall

perhaps draw nearer to that state of grace in which love increases

as understanding becomes clearer, and understanding is all the

clearer as love is the more profound. Great writers expect no

less of us, for their ideas are bound up with their art, and their

very greatness consists in the fact that after they have gone their

thoughts remain inseparable from the manner in which they have

expressed them.²

 

Being neither a philosopher nor a litterateur but only a hesitant student attempting the double approach, it is possible that my argument lacks 'precision and 'taste' both; but at least I have not failed to hanker after 'that state of grace' to which M. Gilson refers. Again and again, amidst others, two names—Dante and Sri Aurobindo — are brought into juxtaposition in my thesis, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by accident, as it were; and re-reading the whole thesis, I ask myself whether the crest of the winding argument is not, in effect, to hail Savitri as a modern Divine Comedy.

 

      If Savitri the epic is poetry and philosophy fused with mystic experience, its central character is the blessed feminine herself, woman pictured not only as beauty and love but also as strength and will. The good wife is verily man's shakti, all the reservoirs of his strength, and not just the 'weaker' sex; not frailty but strength is the mark of woman: such is the inspiring Hindu conception of the role of woman as wife as it finds expression in the Mahabharata story. The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, explaining the whole 'meaning and purpose' of his Malte Laurids Brigge, once asked in the course of a letter:

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.. .how is it possible to live, when the very elements of this life are

unintelligible to us? When we're everlastingly inadequate in love,

uncertain in resolve, and incapable in the presence of death, how

is it possible to exist?³

 

These—the first and last things are the very issues treated in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, and Savitri is the answer to our existential' problem. Yoga leads to right knowledge, and right knowledge makes right action possible. Savitri is an example of a woman who is not 'inadequate in love', who is not 'uncertain in resolve', and who is not 'incapable in the presence of death'. She bravely faces the 'existential' problem and masters it; she is the redeemer of her husband, and she is the redeemer of the world. There is, indeed, no heroine in the world's literature who is quite as adorably human and at the same time as lovably divine as Savitri. It was thus with sure insight that Sri Aurobindo has made this archetypal woman as wife and shakti the theme of his loftiest poetical flight.

 

      There is another circumstance, too, about this poem that deserves emphasis here. Savitri is the work of an Indian poet in the English language, a fact that must have a challenging significance today. Anglo-Indian literary relations are an absorbing subject and call for separate examination. But here one or two points are particularly relevant. The British political connection has ceased, but English has still a place in India. India's elder statesman, Mr C. Rajagopalachari, has acknowledged that English is the gift of the Goddess Saraswati to India. And Mr Sisirkumar Mitra writes:

 

Now a word about English. This remarkable language,

already international, has rendered signal service to the cause

of India's unity, her nationalism and her independence, and

occupies, in her everyday life, a place of importance, perhaps

no whit less great than did Sanskrit or Pali, each in its own

day... If English is the greatest gift of England to India, India's

greatest gift to English, and through it, to the world is Sri

Aurobindo's masterpiece, The Life Divine and his sublime epic,

 

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Savitri, through which he has sent forth his divine message

to humanity.⁴

 

Sri Aurobindo spent his impressionable years in England— Manchester, London, Cambridge—and he was thus ideally equipped to be the builder of the bridge of understanding between the people of the West and the East. Even so accomplished a writer as Sri Aurobindo, to whom English was like a mother tongue, is bound to wield the language with a significant difference. But such differences will only serve to enrich the language, not impoverish it. As a writer declared in the Times Literary Supplement, the 'centre of gravity' had shifted and "while we are busy 'consolidating', a brand new 'English' literature will be appearing in Johannesburg or Sydney or Vancouver or Madras."⁵ He might have added "or Pondicherry".

 

      Another writer, Ronald Nixon (now Sri Krishnaprern), has also expressed the opinion that, "The English language has been given to the world and its usage and limits can now no longer be determined exclusively by the ears of the Islanders whose tongue it originally was. Those who would remain sole rulers of their language must abjure empire."⁶ Indian English at its best—like American English—has a distinctive quality of its own, for it cannot escape being influenced by the climate—physical, intellectual, spiritual—of India. Nothing therefore is of happier augury for the future of human solidarity and harmony than the fact that Sri Aurobindo, an Indian among Indians, a Rishi in the tradition of Vamadeva and Yajnavalkya, nevertheless chose English as the natural medium of expression to communicate his thoughts and visions to the world.

 

      The appearance of Savitri, therefore, is an auspicious omen of incommensurable potency. The recurrent symbol in the poem is Dawn —Dawn now defeating Darkness, Dawn now paving the way for the Noon of the future. And Savitri may very well herald the dawn of a new and a better world, 'a new heaven and a new earth'. Savitri herself is the Dawn: "Dawn of the luminous journey, Dawn queen of truth, large with the Truth, how wide is the gleam from her rosy limbs— Dawn divine who brings with her the heaven of light."⁷

 

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       I have already recorded my debt to my father. His personal library of Aurobindonian literature has been of ready use to me; he has also permitted me to make use of the letters in his possession as also certain private notes and unpublished articles. We have read the more difficult parts of Savitri together and discussed the planning of my book. He has read the first drafts of my chapters as they were written and made suggestions towards their improvement with regard both to the argument and the style. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto (University of Nottingham), Professor H.O. White (Trinity College, Dublin) and Professor TJ.B. Spencer (University of Birmingham), and to three friends at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram—Mr A.B. Purani, Mr M.P. Pandit and Mr K.D. Sethna— for their generous appreciation and helpful criticisms, which have enabled me to revise and make improvements in the 'copy' before sending it finally to the press.

 

      For the rest, my debt to the various authorities is indicated, generally in the 'Select Bibliography', and particularly in the references. I have, almost as a general rule, avoided referring to my authorities with prefixes like Mr, Dr, or Prof, for obvious reasons; this in no way implies want of respect or courtesy to them on my part. I have referred to the dates of publication in the references only if the books are not listed also in the 'Select Bibliography' with all the necessary details. Again, I have given the dates, not necessarily of first publication, but of the publication of the actual edition or impression used by me. With regard to the spelling of proper names and the transliteration of Sanskrit words, I have tried to be consistent, though it is too much to hope that I have been entirely successful. Also, the epigraphs at the head of the three Parts of the thesis are based on Sri Aurobindo's renderings of the respective verses from the Rig Veda, and in fact, I have throughout given extracts only from his versions of the Veda, the Upanishads and the Gita.

 

      I also wish to place on record my gratitude to the Manager and Staff of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press for the care, patience and

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devotion with which they have produced this book with so attractive a get-up. I have indeed received unstinted help and encouragement from so many quarters, and if my A Study of Savitri still falls far short of the ideal, it can only be because of my own limitations of which I am only too conscious. I may, however, take consolation from the words of the Master: "If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee."

 

      Prema Nandakumar

   PART III

 

       SAVITRI:  SIGNIFICANCES

 

      And thou reachest, O Savitri,

to the three shining "worlds of heaven;

and thou art made manifest

      by the rays of the Sun;

 and thou encirclest the Night

upon either side;

and thou becomest the Lord of Love

by the law of thy actions, O God.

                 

                                                                        Rig Veda

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   THE 'LEGEND' AND

      THE 'SYMBOL

 

      The face of Truth

is hidden

by a brilliant golden lid;

that do thou remove,

O fostering Sun,

 for the Law of the Truth,

 for sight.

O sole Seer, O Ordainer,

marshal thy rays,

draw them together;

 let me see the Lustre,

 thy most blessed form of all.

                

                                                                Isha Upanishad

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      I

 

Introduction

 

      It was on 15 August 1946, when Sri Aurobindo was seventy-four, that the opening canto of Savitri was first published.¹ The title-page carried Savitri in bold green lettering, followed by the subtitle, in smaller type, A Legend and A Symbol. For some years previously, there had been references in private talks and even in print² to this poem, this enormous 'work in progress', and the emphasis was on the legend' as well as on the 'symbol'. As further instalments of Savitri appeared more or less regularly once a quarter, the small anxious—almost impatient—public tried to grasp the unfolding dual significance of the poem. The present definitive edition (1954), however, omits the subtitle, not because it is not deemed appropriate any more, but perhaps because the 'symbolic' character of the poem, being obvious, needs no particular emphasis even on the title-page. Savitri remains a 'legend' and a 'symbol', for so Sri Aurobindo wrought it throughout.

 

      For the 'legend', Sri Aurobindo went to the Mahabharata. In the Vana Parva (The Book of the Forest), Rishi Markhandeya tells many stories to Prince Yudhishtira, partly to instruct him and largely to console him. One of the tales so narrated covers the story of Rama, his exile, the abduction of his wife, Sita, by Ravana, the expedition against the demon-king, and the final rescue of Sita—all this is also

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the subject of Valmiki's great epic, the Ramayana. Even as Rama had been able to triumph over his tribulations ultimately, Yudhishtira too should be able, notwithstanding his present plight, to get back to his own.

 

      But Yudhishtira is still scalded by the memory of the outrage on his wife Draupadi, following the disastrous game of dice. He therefore asks Markhandeya whether he has seen or heard of Draupadi's peer, in her chastity and strength. In reply, Markhandeya tells the story of Savitri and her pātivrata māhātmya, which may be explained as the 'glorious efficacy of wifely chastity'.

 

      The efficacy of virgin purity is the theme of many a story, for example Milton's Comus; but a wife's chastity and utter devotion to her husband (even when he doesn't deserve such devotion) are qualities apart and unique, and the Hindu has believed that they can work wonders, even arrest Nature's normal process (as in the story of Nalayani who could prevent the sun from rising), and achieve the impossible. In the Greek story of Admetus and Alcestis (the theme of Euripides' Alcestis), the wife dies so that the husband may live. Although Admetus' father and mother both decline to die in his place, his wife Alcestis agrees to make the sacrifice.

 

      Yet Alcestis is no Savitri, and Admetus no Satyavan. Alcestis is a simple woman who accepts death as a duty, while Admetus is merely petulant and egoistic. It is Heracles who sets upon Thanatos (the messenger from Hades) and rescues Alcestis and restores her to her husband. Alcestis is a passive character, heroic in her own silent way, who is willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the sake of her husband and children.

 

      But Savitri's role is essentially dynamic; she braves Fate and fights Death, she saves her husband and redeems his and her father's families. The Savitri upakhyana or episode in the Mahabharata is the most dearly cherished of such stories; indeed it is more than a mere story, for Savitri to this day is deeply imbedded in the Hindu woman's consciousness as the pure virgin awaiting her future husband or as the pure wife, warding off with the armour of her chastity, all evil and danger from her husband.

 

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   II

 

Life-Sketch

 

      Sri Aurobindo was born on 15 August 1872, an hour before sunrise, in Calcutta. His parents were Krishnadhan Ghose, a physician, and Swarnalata Ghose. Sri Aurobindo's elder brother, Manomohan, became a poet of considerable distinction and a Professor of English. His younger brother, Barindra Kumar, became a revolutionary. Sri Aurobindo's own birth on 15 August 1872 has a double national significance: it was the centenary year of the birth of Raja Rammohan Roy, the Father of Modern India and seventy-five years later, on 15 August 1947, India became a free country. Thus Sri Aurobindo's birthday and India's Independence Day are now being celebrated together.

 

      Sri Aurobindo's father, Krishnadhan, had himself received his higher education in England, and wished his children to have an English education, as far as possible uncontaminated by 'native' ways and 'native' speech. He accordingly sent Sri Aurobindo, along with his elder brothers Benoy Bhushan and Manomohan, to the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling. Thus, from the age of five, Sri Aurobindo moved mainly with English children and learned to speak English as a matter of course. In 1879, Krishnadhan took his sons to England and left them there to continue their studies. For fourteen years, from 1879 to 1893, Sri Aurobindo lived in England, partly at Manchester, partly in London, and finally at Cambridge.

 

      Since even at home, in India, Krishnadhan had employed an English nurse, Miss Pagett, Sri Aurobindo had no—or very little knowledge of—Bengali when he arrived in England. At Manchester, he stayed with friends of his father, the Rev William H. Drewett and Mrs Drewett, and learned from them Latin, French, history, geography and arithmetic. Even in England, the Ghose boys were carefully insulated, under instructions from their father, from the

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influence of Indians and Indian ways. Sri Aurobindo and his two brothers grew up practically as English children.

 

      After five years at Manchester, Sri Aurobindo proceeded to St Paul's School, London, in 1884 and remained there for another six years. He was an apt pupil in every way and secured the Butterworth Prize for Literature and the Bedford Prize for History. Dr Walker took personal interest in Sri Aurobindo, impressed by his character and abilities, taught him Greek, and pushed him rapidly into the higher forms. Did the Head Master of St Paul's already see something of Sri Aurobindo's future destiny? Sri Aurobindo's school record mentions the fact that he went up to Cambridge with a scholarship to enter King's. Before leaving for Cambridge, he seems to have acquired a high degree of proficiency in the Classics, some intimacy with French (and, of course, English), and more than a nodding acquaintance with German, Italian and Spanish. He had also begun to write verse in English.

 

      At King's, too, Sri Aurobindo did very well. He had his £80 scholarship, and, having passed his preliminary test for the I.C.S., he had a probationership stipend as well. However, all three brothers —Benoy Bhushan, Manomohan and Sri Aurobindo—were often in difficulty, owing to irregular or insufficient remittances from their father but Sri Aurobindo seems on the whole to have done somewhat better than his two brothers. One of his tutors, G.M.Prothero, certified that, as a student, Sri Aurobindo displayed, "very unusual industry and capacity...Besides his classical scholarship he possessed a knowledge of English literature far beyond the average of undergraduates and wrote a much better English than most young Englishmen."¹⁰

 

      Oscar Browning remarked that, although he had examined papers at thirteen examinations, he had never during that period seen such excellent papers as Sri Aurobindo's and his 'essay'—a comparative study of William Shakespeare and John Milton—was "wonderful".¹¹ Sri Aurobindo passed the Classical Tripos in the first division, and

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also secured a prize for Greek and Latin iambics. Besides he passed the I.C.S.final examinations with credit. Of extra-curricular activity, too, there was much: for example, nationalist speeches at the Indian Majlis and writing poetry. But, from another point of view, it was a life bereft of the usual consolations of a home.

 

      Sri Aurobindo left Cambridge for London in October 1892. He was expected to join the I.C.S., but as he repeatedly failed to appear for the Riding test, he was ultimately disqualified. It is clear Sri Aurobindo himself, "felt no call for the I.C.S. and was seeking some way to escape from that bondage...he managed to get himself disqualified for riding without himself rejecting the Service."¹² A friend, James S. Cotton, now negotiated with the Maharaja of Baroda and secured for Sri Aurobindo a job at Rs 200 per month. This seemed to settle his future, and so he sailed by S.S.Carthage and arrived in India early in 1893 and took up his duties in Baroda on 8 February. He moved from the Land Settlement Department, where he had his first assignment, to the Stamps Office, then to the Central Revenue Office and the Secretariat, and so at last to Baroda College, first as Lecturer in French, and later as Professor of English and Vice-Principal.

 

      Fourteen years in England, especially at so impressionable a period of his life, should have completely de-nationalised Sri Aurobindo. This was not how things worked, however; he no doubt grew attached to English and European thought and literature, but not to England or the West; he had no personal ties there.¹³ On the contrary, he was happy to be back in India. When he stepped on the soil of India, "a vast calm descended upon him...and surrounded him and remained with him for long months afterwards."¹⁴ He experienced on a later occasion a sense of the vacant Infinite while walking on the bridge of the Takht-i-Suleman in Kashmir, and Mahakali's living presence once filled him with rapture on the banks of the Narmada.¹⁵

 

      Soon after his return to India, Sri Aurobindo employed special tutors and quickly mastered his mother tongue, Bengali and Sanskrit.

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As he was serving in Baroda, it was easy for him to learn Marathi and Gujarati as well. His years at Baroda were years of ceaseless striving and achievement in many fields of activity: teaching, scholarship, political journalism, poetry, Yoga. He dieted on the poets of the West and India, and his library had all the great English poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Algernon Charles Swinburne. His Bengali tutor, speaking of the 1898-9 period, has recorded that among the English poems on which Sri Aurobindo was then engaged there was one on Savitri also. And, referring to a later period (probably 1905), C.R. Reddy has stated that once A.B. Clark, then Principal of the Baroda College, remarked to him: "So you met Aurobindo Ghose. Did you notice his eyes? There is mystic fire and light in them. They penetrate into the beyond....If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices, Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions."¹⁶

 

      Meanwhile certain developments were taking place in the country and Sri Aurobindo could not be a disinterested spectator. India was the Mother, and foreign rule was a curse. The politicians of the old school, who believed in petitioning to the British rulers to vouchsafe doses of self-government, seemed to be out of tune with the temper of the people. The decision of Lord Curzon's Government to partition Bengal was felt as a blow to the unity of the Bengalees and a challenge to awakened India. Sri Aurobindo had been for some time playing an important part in the behind-the-scenes activities of the Indian National Congress. Now he decided to come into the open, leave the Baroda Service, and take the plunge into politics. He became the de facto editor of the 'extremist' Calcutta daily, Bande Mataram. The paper took its name from the opening line of a song in a famous Bengali novel—Ananda Math by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and meant simply, "Mother, 1 bow to Thee"! But now it became a rallying political slogan, a powerful battle-cry, and even a potent mantra. As Sri Aurobindo himself remarked:

 

The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had

been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had

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revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can

be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been

made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great

nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck, in

subjection to the yoke of a conqueror.¹⁷

 

      Sri Aurobindo simultaneously took charge of the new Bengal National College, though later on he gave up the Principalship to devote himself entirely to politics. He was now content with a salary one-fifth of what he had been drawing at Baroda for some years.

 

      Sri Aurobindo's open involvement in politics lasted about three and a half years, from the middle of 1906 to the beginning of 1910. This included a whole year of incarceration in the Alipore Jail in connection with the Muzzaferpore outrage which had caused the death of two innocent European ladies. A few dates may be given as the significant landmarks of Sri Aurobindo's political period:

 

August 1906

Sri Aurobindo was in effective charge of both Bande Mataram and the Bengal National College.

 

 December 1906

 At the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, Sri Aurobindo played a prominent part, along with noted fellow Nationalists like Bal Gangadhar (Lokamanya) Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai.

 

July-September 1907

 Arrested in July but released on bail, Sri Aurobindo stood trial in September with regard to certain articles that had appeared in Bande Mataram, but the prosecution failed, and he was acquitted.

 

December 1907

 Sri Aurobindo attended the Surat Congress and in alliance with Tilak and other Nationalist 'Extremists' broke with the Moderates led by Phirozeshah Mehta and G.K. Gokhale, so the Congress ended in a fiasco.

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January 1908

      Sri Aurobindo was with Yogi Lele for three days in Baroda, and had an ineffable Advaitic-Vedantic experience which enabled him to see, "with a stupendous intensity the world as a cinematographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahman."¹⁸ During the next four months, Sri Aurobindo was simultaneously engaged in yoga and politics; a union of inner calm and hectic outer activity.

 

 May 1908

      On 4 May 1908, Sri Aurobindo was arrested in connection with the Muzzaferpore outrage, and was later moved to Alipore, and placed in solitary confinement.

 

19 May 1908 to 5 May 1909

      The Alipore Bomb Case and the trial of Sri Aurobindo provoked nationwide interest. It was in the course of his solitary confinement in the Alipore Jail that Sri Aurobindo had his great mystic experience —Narayana darshan—which he was later to describe in his Uttarpara speech. The prosecution failed once again, and Sri Aurobindo was acquitted and released on 6 May 1909.

 

30 May 1909

      Sri Aurobindo made his celebrated speech at Uttarpara. His new sense of spiritual direction was revealed, not merely by this speech, but also by the two weekly newspapers that he now launched, the Karmayogin (in English) and Dharma (in Bengali).

 

25 December 1909

      Sri Aurobindo published his 'Open Letter to My Countrymen, which was to be his "last political will and testament", in the Karmayogin in case he was deported by the Government.

 

February 1910

      Sri Aurobindo secretly left British India and reached the French settlement of Chandernagore, near Calcutta.

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April 1910

      Leaving Chandernagore, Sri Aurobindo reached Pondicherry, another French possession but further to the South of India, on 4 April, and remained there—his place of retreat, his cave of tapasya ¹⁹—till he passed away in the early hours of 5 December 1950.

 

      The period of Sri Aurobindo's active participation in politics was short, yet he shot to prominence quickly, and his words moved men's hearts more than the proverbial trumpet. His direction of Bande Mataram was an illustrious page in the history of Indian journalism. Not only did he wield a brilliant pen in political controversy, but his pen also did him yeoman's service in political, philosophical and literary exposition. Some of his poetry and translations were published—the five-act blank verse drama, Perseus the Deliverer, Vidula or "The Mother to her Son' (from the Mahabharata) in Bande Mataram, and Baji Prabhou in Karmayogin. At the time of publication, all these had a pointed political appeal. In the play the stress was on the word 'deliverer'; Vidula exhorts her son to fight while Baji lays down his life in defence of his country. Several of Sri Aurobindo's unpublished writings, including poems, were taken away by the police and filed among the 4,000 exhibits in the Alipore Case. Many are totally lost, but some have been recently recovered and posthumously published.²⁰

 

      The Alipore Trial served in no small measure to make Sri Aurobindo's name a household word in India. Having sensationally demolished the prosecution's case against Sri Aurobindo, his counsel C.R. Das, a great name in Indian politics during the 1920s, ended his moving peroration as follows:

 

...Long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long

after this turmoil, this agitation will have ceased, long after he is

dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism,

as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long

after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-

echoed, not only in India, but across distant seas and lands.

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Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing

before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the High

Court of History.²¹

 

Sri Aurobindo continued to be a controversial figure even when he was in prison and when he came out a year later, he was hailed as a prophet, as a leader of humanity. What Tagore says about the prophet and his true role now applied to Sri Aurobindo:

 

Then comes the great prophet; and in his life and mind the

hidden fire of truth suddenly burns out into flame. The best in

the people works for long obscure ages in hints and whispers till

it finds its voice which can never again be silenced. For that voice

becomes the voice of Man.²²

 

 Arriving at Pondicherry, which was already a sort of political asylum to several Indian revolutionaries, Sri Aurobindo lived in comparative seclusion after all the blaze of publicity in which he had spent the previous three or four years.

 

      "The lives of the saints", writes William James, "are a history of successive renunciations of complication, one form of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to save the purity of the inner tone."²³ Schopenhauer adds that,"the more a man belongs to posterity, in other words to humanity in general, the more of an alien is he to his contemporaries."²'¹ This 'sacrifice' Sri Aurobindo was continually making all his life. Further, to test his power of endurance, he fasted in 1910 for over twenty days. In the Alipore Jail, as a result of fasting for over ten days, Sri Aurobindo lost ten pounds in weight, but otherwise felt stronger at the end of the period. In Pondicherry, his twenty-three-day fast didn't interfere with his full mental and vital vigour and when he broke the fast, he started taking the normal food as before without any problems. Although such austerities didn't really appeal to him, these experiments nevertheless demonstrated that one could, if one wished, draw energy from the vital plane, instead of depending daily on the physical food but of course, this could not go on for ever.

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      Sri Aurobindo lived in Pondicherry for nearly forty-one years. This was the last, greatest and most unique phase of his life. Here too a few landmarks may be indicated:

 

4 April 1910

      Sri Aurobindo arrived in Pondicherry and stayed at Shanker Chetty's house as his guest till October, when he moved into a rented house, a few disciples gathering around him there.

 

1910-1914

      These were the years of 'silent yoga'. Sri Aurobindo dropped all political activities and felt free to concentrate on spiritual work, seeing clearly that Britain would be forced by the inexorable march of events to concede independence to India. He felt that all human activity was a "thing to be included in a complete spiritual life".²⁵ In the course of his yoga he was able to posit the dynamic spiritual principle, which he called the Supermind (after vijnāna in Sanskrit), and he felt that the way was now open for the emergence of the Gnostic Man or the Superman.

 

29 March 1914

      Madame Mirra Richard (the Mother) meets Sri Aurobindo and recognises him as the Krishna of her visions and spiritual experiences, the Guru she had been seeking all her life.

 

15 August 1914

      Arya, a monthly journal devoted to "a systematic study of the highest problems of existence", was launched on Sri Aurobindo's forty-third birthday. Madame Richard and Paul Richard collaborated in the venture till they were obliged, owing to the exigencies of the war, to leave for France. The main burden of running the journal fell upon Sri Aurobindo, who wrote most of it. After regularly appearing for about six and a half years, the journal ceased publication in 1921.

 

 24 April 1920

      Madame Richard came again, after a residence of some years in Japan, and now stayed on. The circle around Sri Aurobindo gradually

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 grew. Arya had spread the Aurobindonian message far and wide, and people with a 'call' to yoga were now drawn to Pondicherry.

 

 1 January 1922

      The Mother took entire charge of the house occupied by Sri Aurobindo and his disciples. This became the nucleus of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, exemplifying the old Hindu ideal of guru-grha-vāsa (living with the teacher). There were 'evening talks', with the disciples gathering round Sri Aurobindo: and the 'talks' covered almost all subjects under the sun.²⁶

 

 24 November 1926

      This was the day of realisation (siddhi), for on that day Sri Aurobindo experienced the descent of a new power of consciousness, the Overmind, which would prepare the ground for the ultimate descent of the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo now completely withdrew into seclusion, leaving the management of the ashram to the Mother. The 'evening talks' and visitors' interviews ceased. The disciples, however, were able to see Sri Aurobindo on certain days in the year—15 August, 24 November, 21 February and 24 April—and receive his blessings.

 

23 November 1938

      There was a relaxation in the rules relating to Sri Aurobindo's complete retirement, "owing to circumstances, inner and outer, that made it possible for him to have direct physical contacts with the world outside."²⁷ For the past twelve years he had maintained contact, even with his ashram inmates, only through letters. Now some of his disciples at least were able to meet him almost daily, so the 'evening talks' were resumed. The ashram was growing, and so were Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's responsibilities. On the 'Darshan Days', however, people from all over India gathered in Pondicherry and received the blessings of the Master and the Mother. All through his Pondicherry period, Sri Aurobindo's literary and spiritual work went hand in hand, his writing appearing first in the Arya, then in book form (usually revised), and

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again, after 1942, in the various journals dedicated to the exposition of his vision of the future.

 

11 December 1948

      The National Prize (for eminent merit in the Humanities) was awarded to Sri Aurobindo in absentia at the Andhra University Convocation. In his citation, the Vice-Chancellor C.R. Reddy said:

 

In all humility of devotion, I hail Sri Aurobindo as the sole

sufficing genius of the age...He is among the Saviours of

Humanity, who belong to all ages and all nations, the Sanatanas,

who leaven our existence with their eternal presence, whether we

are aware of it or not.. .His soul is like a star and dwells apart.²⁸

 

5 December 1950

      After a brief illness, Sri Aurobindo passed away at 1.26 a.m., his body reposing "in a grandeur of victorious quiet". For the next four days the body seemed "charged with such a concentration of supramental light that there was no sign of decomposition."²⁹ On 9 December, the body was buried in the ashram premises at 5 p.m.

 

      The above bare recital of the cardinal events of the Pondicherry period of Sri Aurobindo's life is but the mockery of a biography, for the real life of an 'enlightened one' like him is not lived on the outside for the curious eyes of prying men or for cheap reportage. When the body was consigned to its last resting place, the Mother read the following message, which was both a prayer to Sri Aurobindo and a benediction to the assembled congregation:

 

To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to

Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much

for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so

much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared,

achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that

we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.³⁰

 

 Since his passing away the ashram which grew round him at Pondicherry has grown in strength of numbers and in the variety

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and intensity of its dedicated work. Although the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual collaborator during the last thirty-five years of his life, has also left her physical body, she still guides the ashram's destiny.

 

      A couple of points should be stressed before we pass on to a brief—necessarily very brief—consideration and "assessment" of Sri Aurobindo's work in many fields of activity. His retirement to Pondicherry, and later complete seclusion in his own ashram, did not mean a divorce from the ways and problems of average humanity. On the contrary in fact; for the very principle of his yoga, "was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning." In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action?³¹ During the Second World War, he advised all support to the Allies, and later, during the Cripps Mission, he advised acceptance of the British offer. The purblind Congress leaders— M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, A.K. Azad and the rest, though not Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari)—rejected his advice, with the consequences (one of them being the Partition) that we all deplore.

 

      Although he did not encourage casual visitors, who generally had only a sightseer's interest or a prying journalistic curiosity, on important occasions he relaxed the rule of seclusion. Prominent Nationalist leaders like C.R. Das, the poet Tagore, the educationists James H. Cousins and C.R. Reddy, his former pupil K.M. Munshi, and several others met Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry and had fruitful discussions with him.

 

      After his interview, James H. Cousins noted: "I retain a flavour of gentleness and wisdom, breadth of thought and extent of experience that marked him out as one among millions."³² Tagore's impressions have been cited at the head of this chapter. Of the visitors—poets,

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painters, musicians, politicians, professors, waifs, sadhus, ecstatics, romantics, idealists, capitalists, labourers—who came to see the Master (or the Mother) and remained as permanent sadhaks (practitioners of Yoga) there was no end. President Woodrow Wilson's daughter became a permanent inmate of the ashram.

 

      The community grew month by month, and although variety seemed to be the key-note—variety in colour, creed, community, language, race and occupation—the emotional attachment to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the feeling of 'belonging' to them, the sense of dedication to their cause, made the sadhaks a true community, a family, an ashram and not just a random collection of all sorts of individuals. And the family overflowed the physical limits of the ashram at Pondicherry, for Sri Aurobindo's disciples were—and are —to be found all over India, and the world.

 

      Many were the tributes that were paid to Sri Aurobindo when the news of his passing away was flashed forth on the radio on the morning of 5 December 1950. One English disciple, Norman Dowsett, wrote on The Immaculate Hour of Passing:

 

      THEN STILL THE NIGHT

 

Only the breath of a sigh

Is heard in the leaves,

Only a whispered goodbye

The earth still cleaves;

Only the sound of His flute

Astir on the breeze—

Then still the night—mute As the silent trees.³³

 

      And the Indo-Ceylonese poet, J.VTjayatunga, wrote no less feelingly:

 

      Out of Thy love

      For God Thou lovedst us with all our weakness

      And animality; Thy radiance cut across

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      The grossness of our lives, and touched dark corners,

      Thy wisdom shed drops upon our dry hearts,

      Thy glory, wide as the sea, touched the shores of our darkness.

      Are we sad today? Is the earth dark without light?

      Nay, Master, Thou didst not live in vain

      Thy life sublime and austere was not spent

      For naught.. .Holding to the hem

      Of Thy garment we shall raise ourselves

      To High Heaven, by thy Grace, if not now

      In some distant age, and once again

      We shall behold Thee, O Master,

      Shining with ever greater lustre, shining

      Like the Sun, but unafraid we shall reach Thee

      And touch Thee, and be burnt in the Fire

      Of Thy love.³⁴

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 III

 

Yoga

 

There have been great fighters in modern India like Tilak, philosophers like Vivekananda, poets like Tagore, and 'mahatmas' like Gandhi. But Sri Aurobindo was all these, and a yogi as well. To the question, what is yoga, it is not possible to return an easy or facile answer, and unfortunately the word 'yoga' is being bandied about too often and used too indiscriminately.

 

      "Indian Yoga", writes Sri Aurobindo, "in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity."³⁵

 

      Yoga, then, is the technique of bringing out the fullest possibilities of powers already inherent in Nature. It is really a multiform technique, because one or another of the many powers of Nature

could be isolated and its fullest potentialities brought out. Man has a body, a mind, a heart—he has a physical, mental and emotional life—he can work, he can think, he can love. He can exercise his will, he can channel his passions. Any one of his faculties or functions could be isolated and perfected, and we would then have the Yoga of Works (Karma Yoga), the Yoga of Knowledge (Jnana Yoga) and the Yoga of Love or Devotion (Bhakti Yoga). There are other yogas too like Raja, Hatha, and Tantra, etc. These are really so many 'paths' leading to God or the Life Divine.

 

      Aurobindo took these and other ideas from the older yogas and evolved a dynamic and truly multiform yoga of his own, which he called Integral or Purna Yoga. It was not necessary, he thought, to isolate this or that faculty or instrument; all could be simultaneously used to bring about the desired union with God or the desired transformation of man. He developed his ideas, principally in the 1,000-page treatise, The Synthesis of Yoga, but also in his other works, and especially in the thousands of letters to his disciples in which he discussed their particular problems in the larger context of the yoga. Many of these letters have been lately arranged and published in two massive volumes, On Yoga (Tomes One and Two), which form an indispensable guide to the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. There is also the more succinct The Mother, one of the classics on the subject; and there are the records kept by disciples like Purani, Nirod and Dilip of conversations with the Master; and, finally, there are authoritative expositions by the Mother herself, and disciples like Nolini, Rishabhchand and Pandit. Altogether, it is a vast, and still growing, literature.

 

      Writing on the mystic, Jacob Boehme, J.J. Stoudt says that, "he was a prophet in more than a metaphorical sense because he created a philosophy of history more profound than the dated apocalypses of his contemporaries, he saw a new world emerging from a new man, a new level of religious living begetting a new social order, and, so intense had his sunrise to eternity been for him, he gave himself

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a place in creating this new world."³⁶ Sri Aurobindo is that kind and order of prophet, in a sense even more absolute perhaps than that intended by Stoudt. In one of his letters, Sri Aurobindo has briefly explained the total aim of his yoga:

 

The object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the

Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the

Divine's sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of

the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument

of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a Superman

(although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake

of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for Moksha though

liberation comes by it and all else may come, but these must not

be our object. The Divine alone is our object.³⁷

 

               Seize the million, the thousands, hundreds, and tens will be incidentally included in the catch. Possess the Divine and be possessed by the Divine; all else come as a matter of course, and no seeming hardship will really matter. "It is only divine Love", Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1934, "which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine."³⁸ Such Love could be a Cross, a pain that is also a joy. One who is capable of such Love—a Buddha, a Christ, or a Sri Aurobindo—is honoured as a Messiah by us who are of the earth because we know that only such a superman can hold the key to the future; but, "whether this means that the human race in general will at some future epoch evolve, reach upward, to his level, who can say?"³⁹

 

              In the past there had been great yogis in India. The Bhagavad Gita itself, which is as old as the Mahabharata, is a great manual of yoga; and many would say that the Raja Yoga of Patanjali, which tries to mobilise psycho-vital, psycho-mental and physico-mental processes on the issue of a rise to a higher consciousness, is the yoga. The Jnana, Karma and Bhakti yogas too have masses of adherents. What, then, is the speciality about Sri Aurobindo's yoga? Not a mere adding up or jumbling together of all these older methods. It is an integral yoga.

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The others come in, of course, wherever necessary or possible, but there is some other element also.

 

      Sri Aurobindo's yoga is new because its aims are new and it has to employ means that are new. It aims not at, "a departure out of the world and life into Heaven or Nirvana, but at a change of life and existence." The object sought after, "is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness"; and in order that this transformation of earth-consciousness may take place, "a method has been pre-conised"⁴⁰ which uses the old techniques with a new urgency and motive power. A new principle of instrumentation, namely the Supermind, is to be brought down and made to inhabit and energise the earth consciousness. The physical, vital, mental, all would then come under the supramental influence, just as now the mental consciousness is able—thanks to our arts and sciences— to influence our physical and vital life. Even now the human mind, while it has some influence on our body and passions, is unable to influence the life of the mere animal, except to a very limited extent. The descent of the Supermind, when it takes place, will naturally mean the possibility of a great extension in the power of the human consciousness, far beyond the present power that men have, and the higher mental power a few have. At first only a handful of people will embody this supramental consciousness, but there will be radiating influences which will gradually encompass all earthly life.

 

      While this was the possibility that Sri Aurobindo saw—a possibility that seemed to him an inevitability, while he doubtless experienced in the course of his forty-five years' yoga a power of consciousness denied to average humanity, yet it was not the supramental that he was able to realise but a middle power between the Mind and the Supermind, which he called the Overmind. This was his realisation or siddhi on 24 November 1926. "It is only the supramental Force that works absolutely", he wrote in 1935, "because it creates its own conditions. But the Force I am using is a Force that

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has to work under the present world conditions. It is not the less a Force for that."⁴¹

 

      Twelve years later, he wrote again that his yoga had enabled him to put only an Overmind force on human affairs, with the result that when it acted in the material world it was, "inextricably mixed up in the tangle of the lower world force that its results, however strong or however adequate to the immediate object, must necessarily be partial."⁴² But he had no doubt that, since the Overmind was a realised fact, the Supermind too would be—sooner or later. He refused therefore to be daunted by defeat or by the doom that seemed to hover over man in the atomic age. A few months before he passed away, when conditions were pretty bleak because of the Cold War and the warm Korean War, because of the Indo-Pakistani imbroglio, Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple: "I am not disposed even now, in these dark conditions, to consider my will to help the world as condemned to failure."⁴³ The fact was that, although himself realising the Highest consciousness (including the Supermind), Sri Aurobindo nevertheless found it convenient to bring down only the Overmind into the physical being and consciousness, but even so the Supermind was always behind it. The limitations were apparently self-chosen, the aim being to keep the link with the physical consciousness and use the higher powers from that stand. In this the Overmind helped Sri Aurobindo as a medial force, a bridge, and for the time being he was content to operate from that bridge, to use that force, with the Supermind always poised in the inner being, ready for deployment in an emergency.

 

      It would be clear from the foregoing that Sri Aurobindo's 'retreat' was no running away from the demands of life but rather a different way of confronting life's challenges with a view to mastering them and laying the foundations of a new life here on earth. "My own life and my Yoga", he said once, "have always been, since my coming to India, both this-worldly and other-worldly without any exclusiveness on either side."⁴⁴ He has, again, compared his yoga to a battle; and, "its very attempt raises all sorts of adverse forces and one must be ready to

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face difficulties, sufferings, reverses of all sorts in a calm and unflinching spirit."⁴⁵ When one dares into the occult or hidden regions of Nature, the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes are seen to be active—sometimes to help, sometimes to hinder; and hence the need for faith, calm, patience and fearlessness. Yoga, after all, is the razor's edge. Its first taste could be "bitter like poison" on account of the difficulties to be faced and surpassed, but the end would be "sweet as nectar" because of "the joy of realisation, the peace of liberation or the divine Ananda."⁴⁶

 

      In the first three parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo outlines the dynamics of the three classical paths—the Yoga of Divine Work, the Yoga of Integral Knowledge, and the Yoga of Divine Love, and in the final part describes the Yoga of Self-Perfection which uses all three disciplines in a bold way:

 

To arrive by the shortest way at the largest development of

spiritual power and being and divinise by it a liberated nature in

the whole range of human living is our inspiring motive.

 

The principle in view is a self-surrender, a giving up of the human

being into the being, consciousness, power, delight of the Divine,

a union or communion at all the points of meeting in the soul

of man, the mental being, by which the Divine himself.. .shall by

the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human being

in all the force of the Nature for a divine living.. .The liberated

individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit,

becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the

perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity.⁴⁷

 

The individual should perfect himself first, then seek to perfect the race. The spiritual aspirant who desires self-perfection has to put forth a certain personal effort:

 

...the triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender—an

aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing—the mind's will, the

heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being...rejection of

the movements of the lower nature, rejection of the mind's

 

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ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the

true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, rejection

of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations,

passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy,

envy, hostility to the truth, so that the true power and joy may

pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated

vital being, rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt,

disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to

change, tamas, so that the true stability of light, power, ananda may

establish itself in a body growing always more divine; surrender

of oneself and all one is has and every plane of the consciousness

and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.⁴⁸

 

            To aspire for the Divine and only the Divine, to reject from one's life all that is in any way undivine and so make oneself a plastic instrument in the hands of the Divine—this, in a nutshell, is the way of this yoga. Once self-perfection is achieved, one will be able to strive for the perfection of others and the world. It is therefore very truly a self-transforming and world-transforming yoga.

 

          Besides systematically expounding his own yoga in The Synthesis of Yoga and some of his other writings, Sri Aurobindo has also given us brilliant commentaries on the Isha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita. Elucidating the last (the eighteenth) stanza of the former, Sri Aurobindo says that, "the sign of right action is the increasing and finally the complete submission of the individual to the divine Will", and in a footnote adds: "Here the offering is that of completest submission and the self-surrender of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the Divine Will-force."⁴⁹

 

          The Gita, of course, is a pocket spiritual encyclopaedia, for all spiritual problems are "briefly but deeply dealt with" in it, and in his Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo has "tried to bring out all that fully".⁵⁰ Almost every great philosopher and thinker in India has commented on the Gita, and in our own century Tilak, Gandhi, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalachari and Vinoba Bhave—

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among others—have made the Gita a text (or pretext) to present their own philosophies.

 

      Sri Aurobindo has likewise given an Aurobindonian version of the Gita. His writing often rises to heights of poetry, and the last chapter is magnificent. The key stanza in the whole Gita is, without question, the sixty-sixth in the last chapter: "Cast away all your dharmas and take refuge in Me alone; there is no need to grieve, for I shall liberate you from all sins." Sri Aurobindo says that these words, "express the most complete, intimate and living relation possible between God and man."⁵¹ Rejection of all dharmas and total surrender to the Divine, such should be the decisive action. The rest would follow, for now the Divine would take up the responsibility. Krishna tells Arjuna in effect:

 

This then is the supreme movement, this complete surrender of

your whole self and nature, this abandonment of all dharmas to

the Divine who is your highest Self, this absolute aspiration of

all your members to the supreme spiritual nature...This is the

supreme way because it is the highest secret and mystery and yet

an inner movement progressively realisable by all.⁵²

 

The three movements of the Aurobindonian yoga, as given in The Mother, are Aspiration, Rejection, Surrender. The Isha Upanishad, as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo, lays stress on the right Knowledge of the Lord and total submission (or surrender) to Him. In the Gita, too, the stress is on aspiration, abandonment (or rejection) and complete surrender. Sri Aurobindo thus traces the seeds of his yoga to the Gita, the Isha Upanishad, and the Veda generally. Sri Aurobindo's yoga is new in its practical urgency and dynamism, but its strength is that it has its roots in India's spiritual past.

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  IV

 

Politics

 

Not much need be said about Sri Aurobindo's politics. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, he was not only an active member of the Majlis but he also joined an Indian Secret Society, functioning from London, known as the 'Lotus and the Dagger'. On his return to India, he contributed a series of articles to the Indu Prakash, entitled 'New Lamps for Old', criticising the old leaders for their weak-kneed policy of political mendicancy. His own ideas regarding the emancipation of India were as yet nebulous; there was plenty of idealism and impatience, but little constructive thinking.

 

      It was after his turn to yoga in the early years of the new century that his political ideas began to acquire definiteness and the accents of authority. In fact, he first went to yoga to be able to perfect his instruments so that they might serve the country more efficiently and purposefully. The Curzonian policy of repression and the decision to split Bengal into two halves brought matters to a head. In 1905 Sri Aurobindo wrote the pamphlet, Bhawani Mandir, and this 'packet of political dynamite' circulated privately and rattled the bureaucracy. Recovered but recently, the 'scheme' is reproduced in full in A.B. Purani's Life of Sri Aurbindo, and reading it today we can see both why Sri Aurobindo could not but write that pamphlet and why the bureaucracy tried to suppress it.

 

      Bhawani Mandir is partly a diagnosis of India's ills and partly the prescription of a radical cure. India's ills flowed from her want of strength; what was the remedy, then? "We have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts", he said. "Strength can be created only by drawing it from the internal and inexhaustible reservoirs of the Spirit, from that Adya-Shakti of the Eternal which is the fountain of all new existence." In a stirring oration Sri Aurobindo asked for dedicated men, even as Jesus said,

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"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." "Come then", said Sri Aurobindo,

 

...hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts

waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worshipped—inactive

because the God in us is concealed by tamas...You who feel Her

stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down

the imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel

impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your

speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship

each man according to his capacity. Draw not back...⁵³

 

The practical part of the scheme envisaged the organisation of a band of political sannyasis, dedicated to brahmacharya (single-blessedness or celibacy), who would (like the Jesuits of old), be ready to "do or die" (in Gandhi's famous phrase of 1942) for the country An inaccessible hill-temple dedicated to Bhawani, the Mother as the supreme Shakti, would be the refuge and the training-place of these political knights-errant who would draw their strength, not from the fact of numbers or the possession of arms, but from the home of the Spirit.

 

      The scheme also gave in an appendix, rules for the new order of sannyasis under various heads. Although the scheme may be read today as just an idealistic plan or programme for training a band of selfless, self-perfecting workers dedicated to the service of the country and the community, the Rowlatt Committee Report has recorded that the pamphlet "really contains the germs of the Hindu revolutionary movement in Bengal". Anyhow, soon after writing Bhawani Mandir, Sri Aurobindo was in the 'thick of the fight' and no wonder the bureaucracy interpreted the pamphlet in the worst possible light. There was much reading between the lines, and Bhawani Mandir was freely (though wrongly) thought to be an invitation to political extremism and even the cult of the bomb.

 

      We have seen, in an earlier section, how Sri Aurobindo's brief sojourn in the political arena was nevertheless a sensational one.

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While he was getting deeper into politics, he was at the same time also being drawn more and more towards yoga. The mystic experience at Baroda in January 1908 was a turning point in his life. Henceforth he was in politics, but not quite of it. He was like a man in a trance; he seemed to work and talk as other men but he also seemed to be detached from it all. In 1907 Henry Nevinson had found Sri Aurobindo, "grave with intensity, careless of fate or opinion, and one of the most silent men I have ever known...of the stuff that dreamers are made of..."⁵⁴ In 1908 Sri Aurobindo was, if anything, graver and serener, unattached to the ebb and flow of the political flood.

 

      The second great spiritual experience which came to him in the Alipore Jail completed the transformation; from the 'still centre' of detachment he passed on to the circle of purposeful commitment. So far his surface mind had attended to problems like the formulation of a programme for India's regeneration, self-development through self-help—swadeshi, national education, arbitration, etc.—and passive resistance to evil in any of its forms. He did not, of course, make a fetish of the word 'passive'; as K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar points out. "Sri Aurobindo did hot rule out violence in all circumstances, but it appeared to him that the bureaucracy, not being of the ruthless Russian kind, could be effectively countered by passive resistance."" In many respects-—though not in all— the Gandhian 'Constructive Programme' and Civil Disobedience (or satyagraha) movements of a later day both flower from the Aurobindonian policies and programmes.

 

      When he came out of prison in May 1909, Sri Aurobindo felt that the movement of national redemption would now take its own proper course and achieve ultimate victory, and he could therefore devote himself entirely to the much vaster problem of human perfection and earth-transformation. But even from his retreat in Pondicherry he had a clear view of the Indian and world situation, and was ready to exert the force that was in his hands—a higher mental or intuitive power of consciousness and, after 1926, an overmental consciousness. Mere words could be misleading, yet the point might be made (hazardous though all such generalisations must be) that the two great creative spirits of modern India—Mahatma Gandhi used moral force in politics while Sri Aurobindo used a spiritual force, and both sought, in their different ways, to purge politics of its asuric and egoistic evils.

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 V

 

Philosophy

 

      In 1934 Sri Aurobindo wrote: "I am supposed to be a philosopher, but I never studied philosophy—everything I wrote came from yogic experience, knowledge and inspiration."⁵⁶ Again, declining an invitation to contribute to a volume on 'Contemporary Indian Philosophy', he said that it was "quite impossible for me to write philosophy to order."⁵⁷ On a later occasion also, with regard to a statement in an article that he had derived his philosophical technique from Shankara, Sri Aurobindo said:

 

That is not true. I have not read much of philosophy. It is like

those who say that I am influenced by Hegel. Some even say that I

am influenced by Nietzsche.. .The only two books that have influ-

enced me are the Gita and the Upanishads. What I wrote was

the work of intuition and inspiration working on the basis of my

spiritual experience...Experience and formulation of experience

I consider as the true aim of philosophy. The rest is merely

intellectual work and may be interesting but nothing more.⁵⁸

 

Sri Aurobindo's philosophical magnum opus is the luminous and voluminous treatise, The Life Divine, a jewel of a title, yet wonderfully apt to describe its total content. It grew out of his experience of the higher planes of consciousness which indicated to him the ultimate possibility of the descent of the Supermind. He sought corroborative

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evidence in India's ancient scriptures—the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita—and found it in ample measure. For the rest he had to think out the whole argument and present it in a style that was worthy of the subject. In the first instance it appeared as a sequence of articles in the Arya, but subsequently it received careful revision at his hands and appeared in two volumes, each of twenty-eight chapters:

 

Vol I: 'Omnipresent Reality and the Universe'

Vol II: 'The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual

            Evolution'

Part I: "The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance'

Part II: 'The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution.

 

The argument, reduced to fundamentals, is simplicity itself. In the first volume, Sri Aurobindo describes the nature or constituents of 'omnipresent Reality', which is made up of two quartets:

 

A. Sat (Existence)

B. Chit (Consciousness-Force)

C. Ananda (Bliss)

D. Supermind (Real-Idea: Vijnana)

D'. Mind

C. Psyche

B'. Life

A. Matter

 

      The upper hemisphere or quartet of Satchidananda has, in the course of involution—or the descent of consciousness—the phenomenal lapse from undivided to divided existence—become the lower hemisphere of our terrestrial travail made up of Matter, Life, Psyche and Mind. There is a 'veil' now that separates Mind (D') from Supermind, its opposite number in the upper quartet; the creative principle and power of the upper hemisphere, Truth-Consciousness, self-knowledge that is also self-force (D), is both in possession of the essential unity of things and is able out of it to manifest its multiplicity. If humanity and earth-nature are to

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change decisively, a 'rending' of the 'veil' is necessary, for then the Supermind or the supramental consciousness would operate here, even as Mind of the mental consciousness is already operating. Neither the denial of matter through asceticism nor the denial of the Spirit through materialism or hedonism, neither escaping into the upper hemisphere nor absorption in the lower, can solve the age-long problems of mankind. Matter and spirit should be brought into an intimate and integral partnership. Only the Supermind can bring about such a partnership and transformation.

 

      In the first part of the second volume, Sri Aurobindo explains how the Knowledge of the upper quartet became the Ignorance of the lower quartet. Evil and its manifestations are neither eternal undivine powers nor beginningless maya but a field of force with a limited validity at the middle mental rung in the stair of consciousness. The dualities are also relativities. Evil will cease when the Ignorance is replaced by spiritual Knowledge. In the second part of the second volume, Sri Aurobindo discusses how this could be achieved. The ascent from Ignorance to Knowledge will be long and slow, and there must be many gradations on the way. In order to reach the Supermind, many levels above the Mind—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind—will have to be passed. But it can be done, and will be done, leading, "inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature."⁵⁹

 

      The style of The Life Divine—if it can be dissociated from the thought—is at once the attraction of the book and also the reason why it exasperates so many readers. J.A. Chadwick (who became Sri Aurobindo's disciple and assumed the name 'Arjava') described the language as global', because it tried to express a "global thinking".⁶⁰ But once one can surrender to its rhythms, the book really seems to have the "power of creating round us wide circles of peace".⁶¹ Faced by so formidable a revelation, people have been obliged to

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seek suitable comparisons. D.S. Sarma calls it "a vast philosophical prose epic...on the spiritual evolution of the universe" and describes Sri Aurobindo as "a self-exiled and self-imprisoned Dante" and The Life Divine as, "a philosophical Divina Commedia having its Inferno in the Spirit's descent into the ignorance of mind, life and matter, its Purgatorio in the ascent to the true knowledge of the so-called Supermind and its Paradiso in the ineffable mysteries of Satchidananda. His spiritual guides, his Virgil and Beatrice, are the Rig Veda and the Bhagavad Gita ⁶²

 

      An English critic, G. Wilson Knight, likewise writes: "In reading Sri Aurobindo's colossal work of mystical philosophy, The Life Divine, I was continually struck to find how much of his visionary structure was covered by the lucid couplets and fourfold plan of Pope's Essay."⁶³ Besides the Commedia and the Essay on Man, various other works too, the Summa Theologica, for example, have been pointedly compared with The Life Divine.

 

      It is thus natural that philosophers should try to see points of resemblance between The Life Divine and the thought of other philosophers of the East and of the West. Khalifa A. Hakim finds the great truths of the higher Sufism embodied in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. S.K. Maitra finds in Sri Aurobindo's thought the "meeting of the East and the West", and he also makes interesting comparisons between Sri Aurobindo and Western thinkers like Plato, Plotinus, Hegel, Hartmann, Bergson, Whitehead and others.⁶⁴

 

      Plato, like Sri Aurobindo, was a seer and a poet, but as a philosopher he was rather less consistent than the Indian thinker. Plotinus' double trinity is paralleled by Sri Aurobindo's double quartets—the upper and the lower hemispheres of omnipresent Reality separated by a veil of obscuration. Whereas the Hegelian dialectic creates the impression that we can reach the Absolute more or less automatically, by sheer power of gravity as it were, in the Aurobindonian view the ascent is not altogether inevitable and is really conditioned by the auspicious descent of Divine Grace at every

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step of the evolutionary advance. Hartmann's dualism of value and reality is apparently in sharp contrast to Sri Aurobindo's affirmation that value is also Reality.

 

      As for Bergson, although he was a 'volcanic thinker' like Sri Aurobindo, his theory of 'creative evolution lacks both the comprehensiveness and the logical clarity of the theory of Divine Evolution outlined in The Life Divine. Again, while Whitehead was a great system-maker (like Sri Aurobindo) and took (like him all knowledge for his province), his philosophy of organism is but a bloodless and loveless abstraction compared to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of the Life Divine evolving from the life mundane as we know it. Gathering the threads of his argument, Maitra concludes by saying that Sri Aurobindo has really given us "an outline of future philosophy", touching the whole arc of our being and combining the functions of religion, philosophy, art, poetry, and even dedicated work.

 

      Sri Aurobindo's thought is also likely to provoke comparison with the thought of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Berdyaev. The Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system is a Gnostic system, like Sri Aurobindo's. There is thus a superficial similarity between the two systems which is no doubt striking.⁶⁵ The Ray of Creation and the Aurobindonian stair of Involution-Evolution seem distantly to resemble each other. In the Absolute, according to Gurdjieff, the three basic forces (active, passive, neutralising) are in perfect harmony; but down the scale of creation (or 'involution', as Sri Aurobindo would prefer to call it), the forces separate, mingle, clash, and the divers worlds—the suns, the planets, etc.—come into being.

 

      But even as evolution is possible and is actually proceeding, it is also possible to go up the Ray of Creation and reach the highest state. But the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system is but a tour de force of the speculative intellect, and does not draw (as Sri Aurobindo's system does) from a fount of personal spiritual experience. There is, says D.S. Savage, a deadness, a lack of a living intuition at the root of

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Gurdjieff's Gnosis, whereas Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Supermind is an integral unity of apprehension, "a primary spiritual intuition which is only afterwards elaborated by the reasoning mind."⁶⁶ As for Berdyaev, his postulation of Nature's 'transfiguration' is rather suggestive in the context of the Aurobindonian postulation of a supramental transformation of man and Nature. Dorothy M. Richardson the novelist once wrote after reading about Sri Aurobindo's life and thought:

 

Has there ever existed a more synthetic consciousness than

that of Sri Aurobindo? Unifying he is to the limit of the term.

How I wish that the now so widely read Berdyaev could have

entered it and found therein the answer to his central problem: that

of the seemingly impossible transfiguration of the universe.⁶⁷

 

Similarly, the theory of the 'Mental Ambience' put forward as a speculative possibility by Viscount Samuel in his modern Utopia, An Unknown Island, has a remote resemblance to the Aurobindonian supramental consciousness. But the British philosopher had no personal spiritual experience of anything like the Ambience, though he conceded, in the course of a letter, that while he had no doubt merely put it forward "as a speculation, and not even as a hypothesis, still less as a fact. ..None the less it may be a fact!" ⁶⁸

 

      Again, the recently (and posthumously) published book, The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin provokes comparison with The Life Divine at many points. Father de Chardin, a Jesuit was also a hard-headed biologist and palaeontologist, and he saw in man the spearhead of the evolutionary adventure. But his thesis, although sought to be scientifically sustained, is also basically the expression of an intuition.⁶⁹ He is not unaware of India's contribution to philosophy:

 

India—the region par excellence of high philosophic and religious

pressures: we can never make too much of our indebtedness to

the mystic influences which have come down to each and all of

us in the past from this 'anticyclone'. But however efficacious

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these currents for ventilating and illuminating the atmosphere of

mankind, we have to recognise that, with their excessive passivity

and detachment, they were incapable of building the world. The

primitive soul of India arose in its hour like a great wind but, like

a great wind also, again in its hour, it passed away. How indeed

could it have been otherwise? Phenomena regarded as an illusion

(Maya) and their connections as a chain (Karma), what was left

in these doctrines to animate and direct human evolution?⁷⁰

 

This is, of course, a misreading of ancient Hindu thought and an equating of Indian philosophy with a caricature of Mayavada and Advaita-Vedanta. Besides, de Chardin could not have written like this, and indeed would have greatly benefited, had he been acquainted with The Life Divine. For example, Gerald Bullett is particularly attracted to Sri Aurobindo because he tries to transcend the two 'negations', namely the materialist 'denial' and the ascetic 'refusal'.⁷¹

 

      Nor was Sri Aurobindo a mere mystic or dreamer. "I think I can say", he writes, "that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane."⁷² It is de Chardin's merit as a thinker that he has seen evolution, not as a one-way traffic, but in relation to involution:

 

First let it be noted that, by the very fact of the individualisation

of our planet, a certain mass of elementary consciousness was

originally emprisoned in the matter of earth, ...By its initial

chemical composition, the early earth is itself, and in its totality,

the incredible complex germ we are seeking.⁷³

 

Again, later in the book:

 

...if the universe, regarded sidereally, is in process of spatial

expansion (from the infinitesimal to the immense), in the

same way and still more clearly it presents itself to us, physico-

chemically, as in process of organic involution upon itself (from

the extremely simple to the extremely complex)...⁷⁴

 

 Although Sri Aurobindo and de Chardin do not give an identical

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meaning to 'involution', the resemblance in their systems is striking enough. Further, corresponding to the Aurobindonian concept of the Supermind, de Chardin posits the concept of the Omega point:

 

Only one reality seems to survive and be capable of succeeding

and spanning the infinitesimal and the immense: energy—that

floating, universal entity from which all emerges and into

which all falls back as into an ocean; energy, the new spirit;

the new god. So, as the world's Omega, as at its Alpha, lies the

Impersonal.⁷⁵

 

There is also in de Chardin's thought the same apparent ignoration of the problem of pain and evil that we find in Sri Aurobindo's thought.⁷⁶ "We mankind", writes Julian Huxley in his 'Foreword' to de Chardin's book, "contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them...That, it seems to me, is the distillation of The Phenomenon of Man."⁷⁷ The Life Divine is a more complete and convincing revelation than de Chardin's very thoughtful book, but of both it may be said that they are philosophies of affirmation and philosophies of hope.⁷⁸

 

      These parallels (near or distant, close or vague) between aspects of Sri Aurobindo's thought and the thought of some of the Western thinkers of yesterday or today are interesting mainly because they serve to show that there is nothing purely 'Oriental' or 'escapist' in the Aurobindonian philosophy. Sri Aurobindo felt that "man can never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading, until he has raised himself to a new foundation."⁷⁹ Such a foundation would be the supramental—when it can be realised. Sri Aurobindo thus fused in his philosophy his answer to the existential problem and the problem of value, and both in terms of logic. And Sri Aurobindo lived his thought and made it dynamic through his yoga. As the Protestant theologian, Otto Wolff, says: "it is Aurobindo, representing mankind, who takes that next step into evolution...by realising it in his own person...Sri Aurobindo's yogic accomplishment practically and existentially fulfilled is a magnificent contribution to various sciences

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which, in their way and in the frame of their possibilities, confirm Sri Aurobindo throughout."⁸⁰

 

      Not satisfied with so comprehensive a statement of his philosophy, Sri Aurobindo turned to some of its applications in the fields of social and political organisation, and of art and poetry. The Human Cycle is thus a notable little treatise on the psychology of social development. Man's primary urge should be to open to the higher light of the overhead planes of consciousness: to turn to the Divine, to achieve a progressive divinisation of his nature. As he once wrote to his brother Barin: "No one is God but in each man there is a God and to make him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do."⁸¹

 

      When man so manifests the divine, then his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, and vital pursuits will be, "no longer an exercise of mind and life, carried in a circle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and for the bringing of its power into our human existence."⁸² When small collectivities thus organise themselves, it should not be difficult for the ideal of human unity also to be realised on truly spiritual foundations, instead of being sought to be realised (as they now are) through mechanical or semi-legalistic organisations like the old League of Nations or the present United Nations. "Human society", Sri Aurobindo writes, "progresses really and vitally in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom; it will reach its perfection when, man having learned to know and become spiritually one with his fellow-man, the spontaneous law of his society exists only as the outward mould of his self-governed inner liberty."⁸⁴ Sri Aurobindo therefore concludes his treatise on The Ideal of Human Unity with the affirmation that, while the mechanical means now being adopted to forge world unity will have to be pursued for the time being, a lasting solution can come only when the supramental transformation takes place:

 

A spiritual oneness which would create a psychological oneness

not dependent upon any intellectual or outward uniformity and

compel a oneness of life not bound up with its mechanical means

of unification, but ready always to enrich its secure unity by a

free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression, this

would be the basis for a higher type of human existence.⁸⁴

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VI

 

Poetry

 

      Last of all, let us turn to the poet. There are a few unusual circumstances here: Sri Aurobindo, a Bengali, brought up both in India and England till his twentieth year in ignorance of his mother tongue, became a classical scholar, and wrote verses in Greek and Latin—and also in English—in his Cambridge days. He had besides an intimacy with several European literatures, and after returning to India, he tried to gain an equal intimacy with Sanskrit, Bengali and some other modern Indian literatures. Apart from the undergraduate Greek and Latin exercises in versification, all Sri Aurobindo's poetry is in English.

 

      The earliest pieces were probably written when he was in Cambridge, and some of the additions to Savitri were made a few weeks—almost a few days—before he passed away. This means a career extending over a period of sixty years. He was a poet before he became a teacher, a politician or a yogi and remained a poet all through. His Collected Poems and Plays appeared in two large volumes, making a total of over 600 pages, in 1942. Since then Savitri with its over 800 pages has been given to us. Of posthumous publications, of course, there seems to be no end. If all were collected together, the plays and poems, including the verse translations, should make the formidable bulk of about 3,000 pages. No mean achievement by any standards whatsoever.

 

      One of Sri Aurobindo's most ardent admirers, particularly of his poetry, begins his study thus:

 

How shall we crown Sri Aurobindo? Is he greater as a yogi than

as a philosopher? Does the literary critic in him out-top the

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sociological thinker? Does he shine brighter as a politician or

as a poet? It is difficult to decide. Everywhere Mount Everest

seems to face Mount Everest. But when we study this Himalaya

of various extremes of height, the first eminence that strikes us is

Sri Aurobindo the poet.⁸⁵

 

The first, as also the last eminence; for, if Sri Aurobindo's earliest efforts were the epyllions Urvasie and Love and Death, his latter-day preoccupation was Savitri, the great epic which he left all but complete. The corpus is, even on a first view, rich in variety as it is impressive (and more than impressive) in quantity. There are early lyrics included in Songs to Myrtilla, for the most part written during 1890-2, and summed up thus by the author in the Envoi.

 

      Pale poems, weak and few, who vainly use

      Your wings towards the unattainable spheres,

      Offspring of the divine Hellenic Muse,

      Poor maimed children born of six disastrous years!...

      For in Sicilian olive-groves no more

      Or seldom must my footprints now be seen,...

      Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati

      Has called to regions of eternal snow

      And Ganges pacing to the southern sea...⁸⁶

 

Few certainly, though not perhaps quite pale or weak, these early pieces have a disarming sensibility even when they are derivative, and the memorial pieces—to Goethe, Bankim, Madhusudan, Rajnarain, Parnell—really seem to rise to the occasion. In his later years he wrote numerous lyrics, but more and more these came to be charged with philosophical or spiritual import. There is, on the whole, an unflagging mastery both of language and rhythm. Western and Indian mythology agreeably mingle in a poem like Who in which Jupiter figures in one stanza and Brahma in the next, and the rhythm has an anapaestic swing as in:

 

      We will tell the whole world of His ways and His cunning:

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      He has rapture of torture and passion and pain;

      He delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping,

      Then lures with His joy and His beauty again.⁸⁷

 

This and the other poems in the volume originally published in 1915 have an intellectual and philosophical rather than a purely poetic cast, though there are also pieces like The Sea at Night that are powerfully evocative.

 

      Nine Poems, Six Poems, Poems (1941), Poems Past and Present, Last Poems (1952) and More Poems—not to mention the pieces in quantitative metres—taken together constitute a rich treasure-house of lyric poetry Even of the latest volume, More Poems, a reviewer (usually allergic to Sri Aurobindo) writes: "From imitative exercises which reveal the tutelary inspiration of favourite poets—ancient and modern, Eastern and Western—to the playing of infinite variations on himself as sage and seer, we have here in this small volume gleaming gems scattered by a prodigal hand."⁸⁸

 

      But it is the mystic muse that is most typical of Sri Aurobindo at his best. Mystic experience by its very nature is incommunicable in words, and this is the challenge to the poet; it is-also a compulsive need. When the poet is able to find the right rhythm and sound, the right word and symbol, he succeeds in communicating the concentrated essence of his experience. To the poet it is a recordation of his experience; to the reader, an intimation of immortality. Only a few lines can be given here by way of illustration:

 

In that diamond heart the fires undrape...⁸⁹

 

A breath, a cry, a glimmer from Eternity's face,

in a fragment the mystic Whole.. .⁹⁰

 

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might,

Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night!

Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan,

Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man...⁹¹

 

Time waits, vacant, the Lightning that kindles,

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the Word that transfigures:

Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode...⁹²

 

And a huddle of melancholy hills in the distance...⁹³

 

In several of his letters, and more particularly in his book, The Future Poetry, Sri Aurobindo has referred to the uniqueness of the mantra, the rhythmic vehicle employed by the Vedic seers to communicate to their hearers the language of the Spirit:

 

The poetic vision of life is not a critical or intellectual or

philosophic view of it, but a soul-view, a seizing by the inner

sense; and the mantra is not in its substance or form poetic

enunciation of a philosophic truth, but the rhythmic revelation

or intuition arising out of the soul's sight of God and Nature and

the world and the inner truth...⁹⁴

 

The seer is the soul, the creator is the soul, the hearer too is the soul; the mantra is seeing and articulating at once, and, at the other end, hearing and seeing at once. When yoga gave Sri Aurobindo this power of vision, the rhythmic word often came unbidden as it were from the overhead—the above-mental—planes of consciousness, and all he had to do was to listen and to transcribe. "There are poets", he once said, "who neither experience nor even understand what they have written. They merely transcribe."⁹⁵ Again, on another occasion, "It is the inner hearing. Sometimes one hears a line, a passage, a whole poem, or sometimes they come down. The best poetry is always written in that way."⁹⁶ The lines may be revised later on, to fulfil technical requirements; or one may have to wait, till the right phrase or line comes down again.

 

      All this does not mean that poetry is a wholly unpredictable and illogical thing. It is, however, this intangible soul-quality—not its intellectual or philosophical content—that gives poetry its peculiar power to cause ananda or pure aesthetic bliss. In his later years, it was increasingly Sri Aurobindo's practice to listen to the rhythmic word from above or generally try to write from an overmental level. Poems like Thought the Paraclete and Rose of God and, of course, the greater

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part of Savitri could only have been written from an overhead plane of global consciousness.

 

      Aside from the mystic note (or at least alongside of it, for it is really the Great Bass in Sri Aurobindo's poetry), other notes too are occasionally heard. When Hitler's armies were overrunning all Western Europe in 1940 and the future of civilisation seemed very bleak indeed, Sri Aurobindo indeed the powerful The Children of Wotan, the opening lines of which may be quoted here:

 

Where is the end of your armoured march,

O children of Wotan?

Earth shudders with fear at your tread, the death-flame

laughs in your eyes.

We have seen the sign of Thor and the hammer of new creation,

A seed of blood on the soil, a flower of blood in the skies.

We march to make of earth a hell and call it heaven.

The heart of mankind we have smitten with the whip

of the sorrows seven;

The Mother of God lies bleeding in our black and gold

sunrise."⁹⁷

 

      When most of the other leaders in India—Hindu and Muslim alike— were seized with a paralysis of the will and hence were unable to give the right lead to the country at the time of the war, Sri Aurobindo saw it at its deepest level as the struggle between the devas (the gods) and the asuras (the demons) and would have liked India to throw her weight whole-heartedly on the side of the Allies. Failing in his private attempt to persuade the Congress leaders, he contented himself with exerting his spiritual action on the side of humanity and progress. The Children of Wotan is charged with power as well as prophecy, not the less Aurobindonian for being so openly 'political'. Nor is it outdated for the edge of its criticism is directed, not against the Nazi alone, but against all apologists of Totalitarianism; don't the latter still boast wherever they may be entrenched in power:

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     We mock at God, we have silenced the mutter of priests at

      his altar.

      Our leader is master of Fate, medium of her mysteries.

      We have made the mind a cipher, we have strangled

      Thought with a cord;

      Dead now are pity and honour, strength only is Nature's lord.

      We build a new world-order; our bombs shout Wotan's peace.

 

"That strain...was of a higher mood", but happily there are more enjoyable strains as well. One such is the sonnet, A Dream of Surreal Science:

 

      One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet, drink

      At the Mermaid, capture immortality;

      A committee of hormones on the Aegean's brink

      Composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.

      A thyroid, meditating almost nude

      Under the Bo-tree, saw the eternal Light

      And, rising from its mighty solitude,

      Spoke of the Wheel and eightfold Path all right.

      A brain by a disordered stomach driven

      Thundered through Europe, conquered, ruled and fell.

      From St. Helena went, perhaps, to Heaven.

      Thus wagged on the surreal world, until

      A scientist played with atoms and blew out

      The universe before God had time to shout.⁹⁸

 

Nothing could be lighter in touch, or more serious in import. On the other hand, The Tiger and the Deer ⁹⁹ is a vivid evocation of the Terrible and the Mild, concluding with the prophecy:

 

      The mighty perish in their might;

      The slain survive the slayer.

 

But, perhaps, the most enjoyable of the shorter poems is Despair on the Staircase which seems to have unaccountably strayed from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats:

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Mute stands she, lonely on the topmost stair,

An image of magnificent despair;

The grandeur of a sorrowful surmise

Wakes in the largeness of her glorious eyes...

Her tail is up like an unconquered flag;

Its dignity knows not the right to wag.

An animal creature wonderfully human,

A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman,

Whether she is spirit, woman or a cat,

Is now the problem I am wondering at.¹⁰⁰

 

Sri Aurobindo's translations form another distinctive group. There is so much of it that really merits detailed study, though, of course, this is not the place for such an undertaking. Sri Aurobindo seems to have followed no principle of exclusion, for he has turned into English (generally verse, occasionally rhythmic prose) whatever happened to catch his fancy or struck a responsive note in his heart. One of the earliest is from Meleager:

 

Now lilies blow upon the windy height,

Now flowers the pansy kissed by tender rain,

Narcissus builds his house of self-delight

And love's own fairest flower blooms again;

Vainly your gems, O meadows, you recall;

One simple girl breathes sweeter than you all.¹⁰¹

 

At Baroda naturally his interests first hovered round Sanskrit and Bengali poetry Renderings from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from Chandidas, Vidyapati, Horu Thakur, Nidhu Babu and others, from Bhartrihari, from the Sagar-Sangit of C.R. Das, from the Vedas and the Upanishads, from Bankim Chandra and Dwijendralal Roy— all these make for both variety and volume. Sri Aurobindo was willing to turn his hand to these exercises in translation—more often than not they were "amplified transmutations" rather than mere word-for-word paraphrases—without prejudice to those occasions when the surge of

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inspiration carried him to the high nodal points of his truly creative work. But there is grace and a sufficiency of emotional intensity even in translations like:

 

      I did not dream, O love, that I

      Would ever have thee back again.

      The sunflower drooping hopelessly

      Expects no Sun to end her pain.

 

This is from the early Baroda period, and perhaps not revised for publication (it is from a posthumously published volume), but the touch is light, and the sentiment is sugary. Vidula (1907) from the Udyog-Parva of the Mahabharata has a deeper voice as befits the theme, and Songs of the Sea (which belongs to an even later period) are more satisfying still.There are forty pieces in diverse stanza forms and ranging over a whole world of sentiment. "The poet", says Iyengar, "approaches the sea as a friend, as a lover, as a loyal subject, as a devotee, as a shadow that must ever pursue the object, as a waif that would return to the bosom of the mother",¹⁰² and always is the articulation apt and adequate, as for example in the last 'song' of all:

 

      This shore and that shore—I am tired, they pall.

      Where thou art shoreless, take me from it all.

      Pilot eternal, friend unknown embraced,

      O, take me to thy shoreless self at last.¹⁰³

 

The most ambitious, perhaps, of the verse translations are from Kalidasa. The rendering of Meghadutam in terza rima has so far not been recovered, but one hopes against hope it will be. The Hero and the Nymph, a verse rendering of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie, was first published in 1911, and there is no better version—or one as good— in English. The prose patches are racy, and the blank verse is supple, full of modulations, and proves equal to the demands made upon it by Kalidasa. The scene in which the hero, Pururavas, moves distraught because of separation from Urvasie, is a prolonged improvisation, and there are echoes of Lear in the storm-scene:

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      No, I must permit

      The season unabridged of pomp; the signs

      Of storm are now my only majesty;

      The sky with lightning gilt and laced becomes

      My canopy of splendour, and the trees

      Of rain-time waving wide their lavish bloom

      Fan me...the mountains are my citizens,

      They pour out all their streams to swell my greatness...¹⁰⁴

 

It is natural to pass on from The Hero and the Nymph to Sri Aurobindo's own plays. Of these latter, only one—Perseus the Deliverer—appeared in his own life-time. Four other five act plays— Vasavadutta, Rodogune, The Viziers of Bassora and Eric—and an unfinished play entitled Prince of Edur have been published posthumously. It is not surprising therefore that Perseus is the maturest, but there are fine things in all the plays.

 

      Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster is a classical legend which has inspired poets and dramatists of the ancient as well as modern world. Sri Aurobindo has made the legend, "the nucleus round which there could grow the scenes of a romantic story of human temperament and life-impulses on the Elizabethan model... Time there is more than Einsteinian in its relativity, the creative imagination is its sole disposer and arranger; fantasy reigns sovereign; the names of ancient countries and peoples are brought in only as fringes of a decorative background; anachronisms romp in wherever they can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations from all climes and epochs mingle; myth, romance and realism make up a single whole. For here the stage is the human mind of all times.. ."¹⁰⁵  These prefatory remarks of the author apply more or less to all five plays, whether they seem to have an Indian or an alien origin.

 

       In Perseus the Deliverer, Polydaon the priest of Poseidon is the central figure; his very sanctity makes him wrong-headedly to assume (like Raghupati the priest in Tagore's play, Sacrifice) a cruel and vengeful role, demanding Andromeda's innocent blood.

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The central action of the play is Andromeda's releasing the prisoners in an act of pure compassion. This brings upon her head the wrath of Polydaon and Poseidon. She is chained and exposed to the sea-monster. But at the nick of time Perseus saves her. There are many passages of sustained eloquence, for example Polydaon in his mood of megalomania and Andromeda giving utterance to her despair as she is chained to the rock. Perseus speaks the epitaph over the dead body of Polydaon—an epitaph that would fit other fanatics too, a Hitler for instance! Perseus' also is the closing speech, underlying the evolutionary message of the play:

 

      .. .the ascent is slow and long is Time.

      Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase:

      The day shall come when men feel close and one.

      Meanwhile one forward step is something gained,

      Since little by little earth must open to heaven

      Till her dim soul awakes into the Light.¹⁰⁶

 

Less loaded with 'purpose', Vasavadutta is more disarmingly romantic, and harks back to the legend in Somadeva's Katha-sarit-sagara ("The Ocean of Story') and the famous play by Bhasa. King Udayan is held prisoner by his rival, King Mahasegn, and Princess Vasavadutta is the jailor. The inevitable happens, the jailor becomes Udayan's slave fulfilling her mother's warning:

 

      Thou wilt know, my bliss,

      The fiercest sweet ordeal can seize

      A woman's heart and body O my child,

      Thou wilt house fire, thou wilt see living gods;

      And all thou hadst thought and known will melt away

      Into a flame and be reborn.

 

Like Vasavadutta, Rodogune too is good romance and go-od drama, but unlike it, a tragedy. Rodogune is the darling of romance, in whom beauty and fatality meet; she can dream of happiness, but not attain it. She is a fragrant ineffectual flower crushed to death by the

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insane rivalry of the brothers, Antiochus and Timocles. Their mother, Cleopatra, the Chancellor, Phayllus, Cleone his sister, are a trio of evil-doers. The undemanding Eunice and the honest nurse, Mentho, brighten the picture, the one by her unselfish love, the other by her fearlessness. Antiochus the hero fails by his own excesses as much as through the perfidy of others and Rodogune dies because she will not—she cannot—survive him. There are echoes of Anthony and Cleopatra in lines like:

 

      O wasp soft-settling, poignant, sting,

      Sting me with bliss until I die of it...¹⁰⁷

 

      A god ! Yes, I have godlike stirrings in me...¹⁰⁸

 

 Timocles' song too has a faintly Elizabethan ring:

 

      Will you bring cold gems to crown me,

      Child of light?

      Rather quick from breathing closes

      Bring me sunlight, myrtle, roses,

      Robe me in delight.

      Give me rapture for my dress,

      For its girdle happiness.¹⁰⁹

 

Another play to be rescued from oblivion, The Viziers of Bassora (1959) is not the least rewarding of the group of four plays. Less poetic perhaps than Rodogune, less fierily pointed with purpose than Perseus the Deliverer, and less immediately effective than Vasavadutta, the play is nevertheless very readable with its well-constructed plot, its striking characterisation and its significant evocation of atmosphere.

 

      There is a good Vizier and a junior bad Vizier; the former's son, Nureddene, loves the Persian slave-girl Anice-al-jalice, but the bad Vizier creates difficulties. The lovers are obliged to flee to Baghdad, where the great Caliph, Haroun al Rasheed (the Charlemagne of Persian History), conceives an instant liking for them and sets Nureddene on the throne of Bassora. "Romance" the play is called, and romance it is. There is no need to read between the lines for

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any lurking philosophy. The language has a rich sensuousness that succeeds in vividly evoking the atmosphere of ancient Baghdad and Bassora. Nureddene reminds us of Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV. Almuene the bad Vizier is sinister like Heathcliff, and Fareed is a shadowy Linton. Doonya has maiden-fire, and Anice walks in beauty, literally an "emperor's portion". And Harkoos the Ethiopian eunuch is both long-suffering and witty. As a sample of the quality of the verse, Haroun's speech comes handy:

 

      Meanwhile remember

      That life is grave and earnest under its smiles,

      And we too with a wary gaiety

      Should walk its roads, praying that if we stumble,

      The All-Merciful may bear our footing up

      In His strong hand, showing the Father's face

      And not the stern and dreadful judge.¹¹⁰

 

 The more recently published Eric (1960) projects the struggle for power between Eric the elected King of Norway and Swegn, the Earl of Trondhjem. The latter's sister, Aslaug, and his wife, Hertha, come to Eric's court dressed as dancing girls, seeking an opportunity to kill him. But Eric and Aslaug themselves fall in love, and old hatred and new love fight for mastery in the heart and soul of Aslaug. In the symbolic realms of the gods, there is likewise a struggle between Thor the ruthless and Freya the auspicious. Love triumphs, Thor's reign is ended, and Freya's begins; Swegn is captured and pardoned, Aslaug marries Eric, and the people of Norway are assured of a termless period of peace and prosperity. The kernel of the drama is the transformation of Aslaug. Changed herself, she effects a like revolution in Eric as well, who now realises that wisdom and power are not enough. Love is the ultimate secret, for it transcends both wisdom and power. In the central scene, she debates the issue between hatred and love:

 

      Not hate,

      O Eric, but the hard necessity

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      The gods have sent upon our lives, two flames

      That meet to quench each other.¹¹¹

 

Twice she lifts the dagger to kill sleeping Eric, but she cannot do it; it is the climactic moment in the play. Although the dramatic situation, the vivid characterisation, and the precipitate movement of the action have all an Elizabethan vigour and vivacity, the stress is nevertheless on the poetry, for all—situation, characters, action—are seized poetically, and the "leap of love across the abyss of hate" is presented almost as a lightning flash, a blaze of revelation.¹¹²

 

      The incomplete play, Prince of Edur (1961), is dated 1907, and thus belongs to the early months of Sri Aurobindo's editorship of Bande Mataram. It would be reasonable therefore to read in this unfinished play (only three out of the projected five Acts were actually written) some sort of political parable. The story is redolent of the romance and heroism enshrined in the pages of James Tod's Annals of Rajasthan.

 

      Bappa among the Bheels is really the Gehelote Prince of Edur, and it is his destiny to get the better of all his rivals and enemies —Toraman the Cashmerean, Pratap of Ichalgurh, and Rana Curran the usurper of Edur—and also to marry Comol Cumary, the Rana's daughter. Is Toraman the puffed-up foreigner with a stranglehold on India? Is Rana Curran the local collaborator, ready to compromise with the enemy on terms however ignoble? Is Pratap the symbol of national self-respect and ineffectual courage? And, is Bappa really the preordained redeemer and 'Man of Destiny'? In Act III, Coomood says: "Tomorrow is the May-feast's crowning day"; and Acts IV and V should unfold tomorrow's crowning purpose, but the play breaks oft when Nirmol Cumary makes her affirmation of faith:

 

Coomood, our fragile flowers will weave

A bond that steel cannot divide, nor death dissever.¹¹³

 

It is clear the play was intended to have a happy ending—a purposeful Hamlet achieving his father's crown and marrying a determined Ophelia! The blank verse is colourful and the imagery is rich, and

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although we are reading verse that wasn't finally revised, the Aurobindonian touch is unmistakable:

 

      Dare greatly and thou shalt be great; despise

      Apparent death and from his lifted hand

      Of menace pluck thy royal destinies

      By warlike violence.¹¹⁴

 

A casual by-product of the political period, Prince of Edur has undertones that strike responsive chords within, and albeit the play is unfinished, one can infer the conclusion in terms of poetic causality. Love is the supreme reality—although it may assume different forms like compassion, adoration, love of the woman, love of the mother. Be it Andromeda, Vasavadutta, Rodogune, Anice-al-jalice, Aslaug, Comol Cumary, woman is love, and love has its varied forms and potencies. It is always love that sets the pace of the action; and love is a redeeming power, and poetry is the native language of love.

 

      As for the narrative poems, Urvasie, Love and Death and Baji Prabhou, all belong to the pre-Pondicherry period, at least the first two to the Baroda period. Urvasie is an Aurobindonian narrative version of Kalidasa's play, Vikramorvasie. The Urvasie myth goes back to the Veda, and it has been treated variously by poets and dramatists. Tagore's lyric, Urvashi,¹¹⁵ has been described as "a sheer melodious and poetic cry", a hymn celebrating the Woman Beautiful, the archetypal Helen, glorious Aphrodite whose virtue, whose swabhāva, is "to ravish the soul of Paradise". But Sri Aurobindo's poem is epical in cast, and romantic in its impulsion. Love and Death is more compact but no less charged with romantic fervour. Love is the theme of both poems, love that dares everything, and sacrifices everything (except itself). Kshatriya or Brahmin, love is the great leveller. It is the sweet uncalculating madness, but of incalculable value Pururavas and Urvasie, Ruru and Priyumvada, come together, and they perceive that their union is,

 

      ...magically

      Inevitable as a perfect verse of Veda.¹¹⁶

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Baji Prabhou, on the other hand, is about war and heroism and sterling patriotism; making their stand in "a tiger-throated gorge", Baji and his band of stalwart warriors resist the invaders and make a Thermopylae of Raigarh. It is Baji's "finest hour"; he has upheld Shivaji's trust, and he has changed a possible Mogul victory to a complete rout.

 

      Love and war: the tried old themes of epic and romance; and in Ilion Sri Aurobindo attempted an epic on a much more ambitious scale. Lotika Ghose has recorded that to a query about Sri Aurobindo's poetry Frederic Spiegelberg of the Stanford University answered with the counter-question: "Isn't it entirely Greek?"¹¹⁷ I/ion at least is certainly Greek—though not entirely! While experimenting on classical metres, it was but natural that Sri Aurobindo should feel particularly attracted to the hexameter.

 

      It appears that one of his classmates at Cambridge, Hugh Norman Ferrar, once read out a line from Homer or a line from Arthur Hugh Clough that was typically Homeric which he thought was the most characteristic line, and that gave Sri Aurobindo the swing of the metre.¹¹⁸

 

      Beside developing his own theory of true quantity in English, Sri Aurobindo wrote Ahana in rhymed hexameters and the epic Ilion in  unrhymed hexameters. Ahana is a sustained and nobly articulate philosophic poem of over 500 lines but cast in the form of a long supplication by humanity followed by Ahana, the Goddess of Dawn, responding, giving the categorical promise: "Lo, I come, and behind me Knowledge descends..."¹¹⁹

 

      But Ilion, although left incomplete, is superb in its own way. Homer's Iliad begins with the tenth year of the siege of Troy and concludes with the death and funeral rites of Hector. The subsequent history of the Trojan War may be pieced together from references in other poems of olden times. The Wooden Horse episode is narrated by Aeneas to Dido in the Aeneid. The interval between Hector's death and the burning of Troy was filled with the achievements

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of Memnon and Penthesilea, the treacherous killing of Achilles by Paris, the quarrel between Odysseus and Ajax, the killing of Paris with the bow of Philoctetes, and other episodes since commemorated in tragedy and heroic poetry.

 

      From the nine Books of Ilion now available it is difficult to say how Sri Aurobindo had planned to plot his epic. The editor's prefatory note says that the poem "deals with events on the last day of the siege of Troy". In these nine Books the centre of the action is the issue between Penthesilea and Achilles and the issue is not concluded in Book FX, which is itself extant only as a fragment. In the first Book of the Aeneid, Virgil makes Aeneas recall, among other episodes of the Trojan War:

 

...Penthesilea leading the crescent shields of

The Amazons and storming through the melee like a fire,

Her bare breast thrusting out over the golden girdle,

A warrior queen, a girl who braved heroes in combat.¹²⁰

 

It was thus with a sure sense of epic appropriateness that Sri Aurobindo cast his epic as the clash between Penthesilea and Achilles, even as Homer had concentrated on Hector and Achilles. Probably, Ilion, had it been completed, would have ended with the death of Penthesilea at the hands of Achilles and of Achilles at the hands of Paris.

 

      Ilion begins with Achilles sending word to the Trojans that they might still purchase peace with honour if they surrendered Helen and agreed to his own marriage with Polyxena, Priam's daughter. An assembly of the Trojan senators is called—"this last of Ilion's sessions"—and Antenor the aged statesman counsels a policy of lying low and secret preparation. Laocon and Paris, however, counsel defiance as Moloch does in Paradise Lost, and so the die is cast. There are partings on the eve of the battle—Anchises and Aeneas, Antenor and Halamus, Paris and Helen, Paris and Cassandra. Meanwhile Achilles has learned of the rejection of his offer and decides upon instant battle. There is a parallel assembly of the Greek chieftains, and

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after hearing Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus, they too decide to join the fray at Achilles' side. In a short Book Achilles takes leave of  his mistress, Briseis. There is also a synod of the gods on Olympus, and the future is dimly determined after a long debate: "And in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya."¹²¹ The battle at last begins, and now one side, now another seems to get the upper hand; when the poem abruptly ends, Penthesilea is not dead yet, and Achilles is still alive.

But although incomplete, Ilion is an astonishing work. It has a true epic surge, massiveness of conception and splendour of detail in execution. Homer's heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses, reappear somewhat altered in mien and raiment, yet clearly recognisble. And Penthesilea–who is portrayed as an Eastern, even an Indian, warrior queen– is superb. The debate s are elaborated with extravagance in true epic style, and the similes too are characteristically Homeric, at times indeed out Homering Homer without quite ceasing to be Aurobindonian. Even metrically the poem , especially the earlier portion which had received careful revision at Sri Aurobindo's hands , is strikingly articulate , the steady dactylic flow giving it a volume and power of movement not often found in English poetry. ¹²²

 

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  VII

 

Savitri

 

      There remains Savitri.

 

      Reading Ilion people interject: "Isn't it entirely Greek?" Reading Savitri people might likewise exclaim: "How entirely Indian!" These can only be one's first reactions. Closer study must reveal whole new universes of meaning—and this is particularly true of Savitri. Gilbert Murray says rightly that, "one cardinal fact about great poetry.. .is that its main value lies in a process, not in a result.. .we do not understand a great poem till we have felt it through and as far as possible recreated in ourselves the emotions which it originally carried."¹²³ And A.E. Housman says that it is the peculiar function of poetry, "not to transmit thought, but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer."¹²⁴

 

      The Hindu tradition is to read great poetry—say the Ramayana, the Gita or the Bhagavata—in a mood of reverent attention over a period of years, coming to it again and again, for not in one reading alone can one hope to conquer its heights of significance. Savitri too calls for such continuous and reverent study. If it baffles us at first, it may be that it is a new kind of poem, demanding a new alertness in response.

 

      Savitri was begun in the closing years of the last century and concluded about the mid-point of the present century. It is a great Yogi's ripest and completest poetic testament to our time and all time. It is the story of a heroine enshrined in immemorial Hindu legend, and it carries the name of the holiest of Hindu mantras. It spans the past, the present and the future, man, Nature and God; it has an immediate human urgency, and also an enveloping cosmic background. Its very composition is largely the result (so it is confidently claimed) of a new aesthesis with its source of origin located in the overhead planes. In The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo had written:

 

A time comes when the creator of beauty revolts and declares the

charter of his own freedom, generally in the shape of a new law

or principle of creation, and this freedom once vindicated begins

to widen itself and to carry with it the critical reason out of all its

familiar bounds. A more developed appreciation emerges which

begins to seek for new principles of criticism, to search for the

soul of the work itself and explain the form in relation to the soul

or to study the creator himself or the spirit, nature and ideas of

the age he lived in and so to arrive at a right understanding of his work.¹²⁵

 

      In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo declared his charter of freedom, and it behoves the reader of the poem to, "search for the soul of the work itself and explain the form in relation to the soul." This is no easy task, much less a task that can be hurried through, but one

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can at least approach this task with due humility. "There must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis," says Sri Aurobindo elsewhere, "to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry."¹²⁶ At any rate, patience, receptiveness and humility may be expected to pave the way towards an appreciation of this great epic, this symphonic recordation of a great yogi's mystic apprehension of the aspirations and struggles of mankind for defeating death and achieving immortality.

 

         Let us now turn, in the next part, to the poem itself.

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      PART II

 

      SAVITRI

 

      Meet ye the Dawn

    as she shines wide

    towards you

  and with surrender

     bring forward

    your complete energy.

      Exalted in heaven

is the force

to which she rises

 establishing the sweetness;

she makes the luminous worlds

to shine forth

and is a vision

of Felicity.

 

                                    Rig Veda

 

 

THE EXORDIUM

 

"If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses,

what might not the heart of man become in its long journey

towards the stars?"

                                                                                       G. K. Chesterton

 

      I

 

'The Symbol Dawn'

 

      Sri Aurobindo's chosen aim in life was to show earth-bound : mortals the path that leads to the Life Divine. It was to illustrate this passage to the earthly paradise that he wrote his epic Savitri, a masterpiece of sustained philosophical motivation and steeped in mysticism and yoga sadhana.

 

      The well-known story of the young wife, Savitri, who saved her husband from an untimely death, thus scoring a victory over the seeming inexorability of Fate, is here swathed in the robes of Vedantic metaphysics and given a poetic reincarnation. Savitri thus evokes, not only the heroic girl-wife of immemorial legend, but also our Universal Mother who bears with infinite patience and immaculate strength the trials and tribulations of mortality and succeeds in the end in vouchsafing immortality to the children of the earth.

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       This ambrosial story is unfolded to the sahrdaya through a succession of images and symbols. Sri Aurobindo's poem opens, as a literary epic usually does, on the crucial day that is to witness the central act of the epic. The past is mapped out in a sudden flashback, the future will be summed up later. The present is what matters, and the poem is concerned with it.

 

      Savitri, the princess of Madra and darling daughter of King Aswapati, has married the exiled King Dyumatsena's dear son, Satyavan. She is living in the forest with her husband and his elders, sharing uncomplainingly their austere life. Between Savitri and Satyavan a true marriage of minds has been effected. Satyavan is blissfully happy; Savitri too, but her joy is marred by the uneasiness which has been caused by her knowing the approaching end—the fate of Satyavan—as warned by the celestial bard, Narad. Thus the young wife perforce leads a two-fold existence, outwardly serving her elders and preserving an angelic calm, but inwardly dreading the Day and its ominous consequences. And the Day has now arrived. The poem starts here:

 

      Night is fleeing and Dawn is approaching.

      It was the hour before the Gods awake.¹

 

      It is an arresting opening, instinct with immeasurable significance. This first canto evokes the 'symbol dawn' and dwells on its varied filiations with life and the spiral of Consciousness. The whole canto is so charged with mystic symbolism that, in a manner of speaking, it is dense and not easily penetrable. Such poetry makes its impact on us by sudden illuminations rather than by the dull steady light of a logical sequence of ideas. A vision is presented to us, and it slowly grows and expands its orbit. First there is the Night—it is pitch dark, for generally the hour immediately preceding Dawn is the darkest of the hours of darkness. Yet, through this dense night, peep the rays of twilight. Presently Dawn envelops the world in a maze of hazy light, and darkness withdraws quiveringly, like the demoness Lankini leaving her guardianship of Lanka's gates with the approach of the

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Sun-like resplendent Hanuman. The process is simultaneous—light coming and darkness retreating and vanishing. And Dawn heralds the Day, even as Aruna heralds Surya.

 

      This sublime picture of Dawn is verily infused with the symbolism of growth in consciousness: that is, Woman inconscient waking up from her stupor and becoming slowly transformed into the superconscient goddess. Sri Aurobindo's aim in retelling the familiar story of Savitri is to show how the mind that at first partakes of the inconscience of the lowest depths or rungs of life, passes through successive stages of evolution, and at last attains the highest, the Superconscient. In the first canto itself Sri Aurobindo hints at these vistas of higher consciousness, leading man from the lowest to the topmost rung of the evolutionary ladder.

 

      The key symbol is Dawn. It is preceded by Night which is both silent and grim:

 

Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable

In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse

The abysm of the unbodied Infinite...²

 

There is a shower of diction evoking the deep, impenetrable, lethargic, sombre, incomprehensible night. Inconscient matter lies inert, like a coiled pythoness of a woman:

 

      Its formless stupor without mind or life....³

 

But in this seemingly 'fathomless zero' lie nevertheless the germs of immortal life. The banian tree waxes immense through centuries in its majestic grandeur. But where lay its beginning? In the tiny seed planted in the womb of the nascent earth! Thus, for the life that ultimately attains the Superconscient, the germ still is the inert, unformed, inconscient matter.⁴ This germ stirs to induce the birth of life. The stir is very slight, gentle and almost imperceptible; it is a "nameless movement, an unthought idea." This movement is personified in a "long lone line of hesitating hue" that heralds the coming Dawn; bringing in her wake the promise of the supramental age:

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        Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues....⁵

 

Earth's children have risen, and they spring to their daily tasks. Savitri too has risen. But although she is in it, she is not of it. When people around her are immersed in their daily tasks, she goes about with her heart rendered numb by the coming ordeal. Her face is calm, and outwardly she is merely the stern daughter of Duty. But:

 

      A dark foreknowledge separated her

      From all of whom she was the star and stay.. .⁶

      She has to face an ordeal and save Satyavan and safeguard

      humanity's future, and to accomplish this divine task,

      Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.⁷

 

For Savitri knows that this long-awaited Dawn ushers in "the day when Satyavan must die".

 

      So much for the coming of light and the gathering of consciousness out of night and unformed matter. In this canto Sri Aurobindo uses a carefully balanced structure of symbols to demonstrate the emergence of knowledge from the amorphous matter of ignorance. Three women are introduced in this connection. The swarthy woman, Night; the efflorescent damsel, Dawn; and, mediating between them, Savitri, who is human as well as divine.

 

      Night is like Lankini, the demoness-deity of Ravana's Lanka. It is next to impossible to detect life in any form or cultivate consciousness of any kind in this unintelligible chaos. This woman clad in funereal robes is the denial of all hopes—or so it seems at first. The idea of supramental bliss is incongruous in the context of this impenetrable veil of unfeeling, unintelligible matter. Where, then, is the hope for man—Earth's child—who yearns for the Life Divine, when what he faces is this:

 

      ...shadow spinning through a soulless Void...? ⁸

 

But this dark mud nevertheless contains the sapling for tomorrow's fresh white lotus.

 

      Presently Earth's child sees the gay dawn approaching, and most welcome is her approach. It is the Goddess Usha who symbolises

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the Superconscient. Man naturally wants to cast away the badges of temporal limitation that he has been wearing till now, and gather the life eternal that Usha symbolises. She comes bringing with her the "God-touch" that promises Fulfilment and interprets:

 

      .. .a recondite beauty and bliss

      In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense...

      .. .the lines of a significant myth

      Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns...⁹

 

Goddess Usha has come; the seed in the black earth has become the beautiful rose; a sweet odour pervades the earth; early birds are chirping; the far east is presently glowing russet-hued; the wind is fresh and free. Thus the coming of Usha is very auspicious for the mortal who aspires for immortality.

 

      But all is not right with the world which wants to reach God in his Heaven, as it knows not the way. How will the ordinary mortal reach the dizzy heights of the soul's high mountains? How will the sapling inside the mire blow forth a divine lotus? Man is either depressed and rendered hopeless by the gaping mass of inconscient matter that is symbolised through Night, or he is astonished and left helpless by the dazzle of the Superconscient symbolised by the Goddess Usha. Is there no way for the ordinary mortal to cut through the coils of uncivilised demoniac dominations imposed by formless matter and embrace the Life Divine of civilised angelic Brahma-Knowledge? There is, says Sri Aurobindo, and paints in apt poetic hues the sufferings and successes of our Primordial Mother represented in the light-stepping slender-waisted Savitri.

 

      In the first canto itself a hurried but memorable hint of Savitri's life and trial has been given. After all, we know the story of Savitri's struggle and victory. It is this Savitri of popular legend that is seen to forge the link between the inconscient matter and the Superconscient Life Divine. The life-giving rays of the Sun turn the tiny seed buried in the pond into a bright pearly lotus.

 

      Savitri begins her life as an artless innocent princess born amidst wealth and comfort. Then she assumes the role of the Redeemer whose mission is to transform this meaningless mortal life into the purposeful Life Divine. "Savitri is represented in the poem", says Sri Aurobindo, "as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to 'hew the ways of Immortality' ."¹⁰

 

      As a mortal, Savitri weds Satyavan, who symbolises Truth, pure and unsullied. Truth at first succumbs to Death, to the poison of ignorance. Savitri, now the incarnation, roused by this outrage, and armed with Love and Righteousness, wins back Truth (Satyavan), and the couple reunite to inaugurate the Life Eternal on earth.

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II

 

'The Issue'

 

      In the second canto, entitled 'The Issue', we see Savitri very near to the mighty issue between Death ignominious and Life Eternal. Only a few hours, and the issue will be joined between Yama and Savitri. This is the crucial moment in her life. To draw back and leave Fate to its devastating work is out of the question. For, it is she in whom the Universal Mother has descended to save humanity from the blight of terrestrial bondage. To Savitri only one way is possible; that is, to go forward, to struggle, to dare Destiny, whatever the final outcome.

 

      Sages have pronounced that Fate is inexorable; thus failure seems to be more likely than victory. Yet Savitri must issue forth, and not withdraw the step placed forward. So Savitri, called by the peremptory summons of Duty and filled with bottomless compassion, stands on the threshold of the field of Fate, ready for the struggle. A short while from now, Death will claim Truth from Love; and it is no easy task to defeat Death and grasp Immortality. But Savitri does not give way to despair. Unperturbed, like a block of wood,¹¹ she strengthens herself and awakens her self with indrawn yogic strength from the Divine.

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      With the Mighty Doom just round the corner, Savitri falls into a reverie, when the near past marches through her memory as a crystallised documentary. Dawn has come to the world; Savitri has risen and is following her daily round of duties as a housewife. While she is at these routine exertions,

 

Awhile, withdrawn in secret fields of thought,

Her mind moved in a many-imaged past.¹²

 

Savitri's heart aches to think that such a threatened end should have been designed to such a happy life as hers has been. Her memories have not dimmed with the passage of time; on the other hand, in their complete wholeness they lie "mapped to her sun-clear recording view". She glances at her treasure-trove of memorable experiences where everything can be found as fresh as a morning flower:

 

From the bright country of her childhood's days

And the blue mountains of her soaring youth

And the paradise groves and peacock wings of Love

To joy clutched under the silent shadow of doom

In a last turn where heaven raced with hell.¹³

 

In these five lines are succinctly reviewed the variegated turns of her whole life upto the present. The birth of Savitri; the child-princess; the blushing maiden young; the meeting of Satyavan and the birth of Love; the warning of Narad and the foreknowledge of relentless fate; marriage and the bitter-sweet year that followed it; and now the threatening Doom—everything has been condensed into an incandescent lyrical passage. Savitri's soul is choked as it were at the very thought of possible failure, which must mean Nothingness forever. An intense emotional fever grips her heart and she determines to go on with the struggle. She must win and save Truth; only then can the supramental age be ushered in by means of the union of Love and Truth. Man must ascend the peak of the superconscient, notwithstanding this giant hurdle that is sprawled across the way; and Savitri has come to remove the obstacle, whatever the hazard.¹⁴

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        Savitri is here revealed to us, in this intrinsically dramatic situation, as being poised on the peak of perilous uncertainty. After twelve months of blissful married life she has to confront the advancing Fate, a Fate which in itself also foreshadows the coming of a spiritual Dawn. Her mind is torn between dark forebodings and radiant hopes. The clouds are gathering and look dully malicious. Will they send forth a shower of divine light or will they, after all, envelop the whole world in a thick blanket of Darkness? Seized by the uncertainty of the future, a deep oblivion falls upon her mind, obscuring it in dense dark night. Curiously enough this night actually forebodes good. For it is the dark hour before dawn, it is the poison preceding nectar.¹⁵ And so too the spiritual aspirant must needs experience "the dark night of the soul" before participating in the "bliss of Brahman" (Brahmānanda):

 

An absolute supernatural darkness falls

On man sometimes when he draws near to God.¹⁶

 

It is Savitri's turn now:

 

      That hour had fallen now on Savitri.¹⁷

 

The sweet, the agonised "remembrance of things past" is ended, Savitri is now on the threshold of the future. She is drawing near her eternal home, but she knows not whither lies the path. As for the present, it is a complete void. Neither of the past nor of the future, it is in this present she must face her Task:

 

      On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought.¹⁸

 

 Here she must wrap about her the armour of her yogic strength and

 

...plead her case upon extinction's verge,

In the world's death-cave uphold life's helpless claim

And vindicate her right to be and love.¹⁹

 

 The Supreme Moment has drawn very near; the twelve months of passionate joy have fled like

 

      A mailed battalion marching to its doom,²⁰

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and,

 

      The last long days went by with heavy tramp...²¹

 

The cast and sound of these lines suggest the relentlessness of Time's march, which seems to have both a bulldozer heaviness and irresistibility. It is as though the sergeant time has given orders for a forward march, and the days pass without flinching or haste, regardless of the hour that conceals within its womb the poison of immitigable Death; or, is it rather going to be the Nectar of Eternal Life?

 

      The days have gone by too soon; alas! Evanescent is earthly joy and beauty. Now that fate has begun its chase, Savitri has withdrawn into herself. About her silence reigns; but silence, when witnessed in her presence, is mystically eloquent. And she stands here serene like a jewel of purest ray. Holy, fair, majestic and, above all, womanly:

 

      All in her pointed to a nobler kind.²²

 

Hers was:

 

      A body like a parable of dawn

      That seemed a niche for veiled divinity.²³

 

 Every act of hers—walking, smiling, talking, working—was invested with the liquid purity of Heaven-born Grace.

 

      For this mortal woman has immortality within her; the human child is made of superhuman dimensions. She is of the earth, but not earthy; she is of Heaven, but is no featureless divinity. Rather she is:

 

Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven,

Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit

Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm

Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.²⁴

 

It is in such a girl that the world-creatrix, the world-saviour, is personified. Possessed of immense reserves of power, Savitri is

 

At once.. .the stillness and the word,

A continent of self-diffusing peace,

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An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.²⁵

 

Although she is born human to save humanity, yet is she divine in her origins. The ray of divinity issues forth unfailingly through the framework of the mortal being. To this Divine Mother who walks the earth in a mortal garb is given the challenge to meet and master. The issue thus presented to her is:

 

      Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death

       Or hew the ways of Immortality,

       To win or lose the godlike game for man...²⁶

 

But, then, she is not born to yield the field to Ignorance and Death.

 

       To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.²⁷

 

Hers is the task to unclasp the net that binds this "immense material world" which is really a gaol, and thus release humanity to the freedom of a tremendous spiritual heaven. To break mankind's fetters, "Her single will opposed the Cosmic rule." Savitri is determined to face the issue and strive her uttermost to "stay the wheels of Doom." She is confident in her power, although the issue's result is as yet uncertain. But success is not impossible to achieve. A clicking of the switch can set ablaze a building hung with innumerable bulbs. The first decisive push, the primal force, is what is needed. Once that is accomplished, the force will make instantaneous contacts, and brighten a whole city, thus dispelling darkness and enveloping life with light. So also with this Major Issue.

 

      A prayer, a master act, a king idea

      Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force...

      One mighty deed can change the course of things;

      A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.²⁸

 

Man is mortal no doubt; made of flesh and blood, he has nothing permanent about him; nor anything of superior merit in him— except his soul. The soul is deathless, permanent. It is actually a spark spilt from the Starry Heavens of the Divine Realms. This the

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soul is the godhead that lodges behind the apparent brute machine. But it lies inert until it is stirred to life and sovereignty. The cobra raises its hood only when it is provoked; to glimpse the beauty and majestic grandeur of a King Cobra, we have first to rouse it.²⁹ So also with the human soul. When it is prompted by a spiritual struggle it raises from the Nescient unconscious state and draws itself to its full stature of Divinity. Faced with the mighty crisis of the challenge of Death claiming Satyavan (thereby smothering Truth itself), Savitri is called to action, and:

 

      The great World-Mother now in her arose...³⁰

 

Armed with Righteousness, sustained by Hope, and spurred on by the call of Duty, Savitri like:

 

A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks

Empowered to force the door denied and closed

Smote from Death's visage its dumb absolute

And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.³¹

 

Such is the grand beginning of Sri Aurobindo's epic. The Dawn of the fated day has arrived, but the spiritual dawn for mankind is yet to come. Meanwhile our compassionate Mother has chosen to struggle with the Enemy. Fortifying herself with the nectarean past and the gains of her yoga, she is now ready to face Death and win back Truth, and rear in our midst a new heaven and a new earth.

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     BACKGROUNDS AND ANTECEDENTS

 

      Thoughts odour is so pale that in the air

        Nostrils inhale, it disappears like fire

        Put out by water. Drifting through the coils

   Of the involved and sponge-like brain it frets

    The fine-veined walls of secret mental cells,

   Brushing their fragile fibre as with light

  Nostalgic breezes: And it's then we sense

    Remote presentiment of some intensely bright

    Impending spiritual dawn, of which the pure

Immense illumination seems to pour

 In upon our existence from beyond

The edge of knowing.

 

                                                               David Gascoyne

 

ASWAPATl'S YOGA

 

      SECTION A

 

 'THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS'

 

I

      'THE YOGA OF THE KING:

THE YOGA OF THE SOUL'S RELEASE'

 

      The fateful day in Savitri's life has dawned, and she is ready to face the event.

 

      But Savitri—who is she, why is she here, how has the issue been joined? To answer these questions, Sri Aurobindo has to resort to retrospective narration. Time stands still as it were, while our eyes are turned back to view the vasts of the past.

 

      Savitri was born because of a "world's desire". It was her father, King Aswapati, who articulated the "world's desire"; and Aswapatiwas humanity's advance scout destined to prepare the way for the coming of Savitri.

 

      Aswapati is individual man, he is a king and therefore leader and representative of his race, and he is also the heart of humanity voicing forth its innermost aspiration. Thus his yoga too falls into three stages, and the first stage is the subject-matter of Book I, cantos 3,4 and 5.

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       As individual man, Aswapati's first dim spiritual awakening comes when he realises that the body—the material appearance— is not all. Behind the appearance—behind the many layers of appearance-—is the reality. Man is neither the beginning nor the end; he comprises the whole gamut from the worm that was to the God that is to be. Earth and Heaven meet in man, and man partly is and wholly hopes to be. Beyond night and twilight and starlight beckons the dawn of a spiritual day. The mystery, the miracle, of "married Earth and Heaven", the mating of finite self with Infinity, is the drama that is being played, and is yet to be concluded.

 

      Now Aswapati "grew into his larger self... (and) saw a greater world".¹ He sees beyond reason and mind, and sees the soul—a whole new world in the spaces of the soul. He establishes occult contact with other beings and other planes—-the Many of the phenomenal world— and thus achieves an apparently endless extension of experience, leading upto an almost total comprehension of the material, the measurable, the sensible, and comprising the utmost termini of things, symbols and signs. The soul within grasps the worlds without; the One apprehends and fuses with the Many.

 

      From the individual to the universal; from the universal to the transcendental. Such is the preordained pace of advance. Accordingly Aswapati dares beyond all beyonds, he plunges into the "nameless vast", and is:

 

Caught by a voiceless white epiphany

Into a vision that surpasses forms,

Into a living that surpasses life,...²

 

      This is the formless, immaterial, incommensurable, insensible Nihil, the Void—a pure pralaya or deluge—an absolute dissolution of everything. It is indivisible Space-Time, the pure primal stuff of the Cosmos and what's beyond it.

 

      Aswapati presently returns to the phenomenal world, but only after a baptism in the waters of transcendence. His return is a rebirth,

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or a renewal of life armed with stainless knowledge from the remote ineffable home of Truth. He feels spiritually fresh and strong, even as people feel after a good invigorating bath, a plunge in the waters of the Ganga or a splash under a waterfall. The effects remain, at least for a time. The awakened and purified soul tries to keep in touch with the 'intimations of immortality'. Even the lower reaches of Aswapati's being, having lately experienced a profound sea-change, tingle with a new consciousness of power and joy.

 

      What's the 'use' of this higher knowledge and power? There is a purposeful merging of the higher knowledge and the lower, from which results an integration and an advance. Such advance is also facilitated by lightning streaks of sudden illumination from the 'home-of-all womb-of-all' (in G.M. Hopkins'phrase):

 

An ictus of revealing lustre fell

As if a pointing accent upon Truth,

And like a sky-flare showing all the ground

A swift intuitive discernment shone.³

 

Such thrusts of flame kindle the sluggish mind to life, making it scour the vasts between "summit and abyss" and gather knowledge-pearls of incalculable price. Thus awakened, alerted and active, the mind spreads out, the net is heavy with what has come its way and curious man can piece out the design behind the appearance:

 

The balance of the world's design grew clear,

Its symmetry of self-arranged effects...⁴

 

Now Aswapati has a view of the Tree of Cosmos, spreading "its magic arms through a dream of space". Analogous to, but more elementally all-comprehending than the Aswatha Tree of Indian mythology and the Life Tree Ygdrasil of Scandinavia, this Tree of Cosmos is reared and supported by the Spirit. Aswapati feels intrigued by Creation its cause, its course, its malady, its cure. The game of Creation is God's "spendthrift work", "a splendid extravagance of the waste of God"." Call it divine lila or the wondrous play of chance and change!

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Aswapati realises that the universe is no "senseless whirl borne round inert on an immense machine". The impress of Shakti the Creatrix is everywhere, however veiled to our eyes. Light is hidden somehow in darkness, life in inconscience, knowledge in ignorance. There has been a 'descent', an 'involution', of God into matter; the ascent, the evolution, from matter to God is proceeding, and must conclude. Life is not unreal, life is not futile:

 

      Life now became a sure approach to God,

      Existence a divine experiment

      And cosmos the soul's opportunity.⁶

 

From this first reading of the pages of Omnipresent Reality, from this first inkling into the processes of involution and evolution, Aswapati achieves his "soul's release from ignorance", and his mind and body experience their "first spiritual change".

 

      A wide God-knowledge poured down from above,

      A new world-knowledge broadened from within:... ⁷

 

He is a new man, poised for the achievement of greater things still, of immeasurable import to him and the world.

 

  

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    II

 

'The Secret Knowledge'

 

      But before he can dare new spiritual adventures, Aswapati should get to know the bases of the 'Secret Knowledge' that his hoary ancestors— the seers of the Veda, the rishis of the Upanishads—have bequeathed to him. The sacred books point the way. One is encouraged, one is warned. Maps and mariner's compasses have their uses for traveller and voyager. The 'Secret Doctrine' is the spiritual adventurer's map and compass combined. Aswapati therefore turns to the mastery of the 'Secret Doctrine'.

 

      On a height Aswapati stands, and looks "towards greater heights". The dialectic of advance is a singular meeting of opposing movements: there is the climb of consciousness, from the material, vital and mental, to still higher planes; there is the descent of consciousness from the higher—the highest—to the lower realms; and there is the meeting, the fusion, the transformation. All the time there is the veiled Guide or Presence within, who is the 'eyes and ears' of the awakening, the awakened, soul. However, all this is but an occult, not a visible or demonstrable, reality. Yet the drama is played on no far inaccessible stage but here and now. As B.P Wadia once wrote:

 

The Occult World is in co-adunition but not in co-substantiality

with the human world...it interpenetrates the market place, the

highways of traffic.. .it is where homes are built and families are

reared...The birth in the Occult World does not imply a death

in this, but rather a higher living on this earth which the Occult

World carries within its bosom.⁸

 

The stage is set here, in our own hearts, in our own souls, "but all is screened, subliminal, mystical... it needs the power of a spiritual gaze."⁹ No doubt, the visibly real is the world of the dualities, the purblind meanderings of the Earth-Goddess "across the sands of Time". She dreams vaguely of a better world where death has no sting, desire no pang of unfulfilment, and incapacity no roots. What the Earth-Goddess most needs are mind, will, strength, joy—unqualified, unblemished. The real forces determining our advance are the forces within, but we are generally blind to their presence or power. We are alas! out of touch with our "subliminal quiverings"; rather we are slaves, in our daily activities, to our own petty acts, and we are content to be imprisoned in a mental consciousness with its dungeon narrowness and stark obscurity. But what could be, what is to be, is an open book to the immortals, and the power behind them:

 

Above the world the world-creators stand,

In the phenomenon see its mystic source.¹⁰

 

 In man's darkest extremity, this power will descend to his help; the

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mind's inner chamber will be charged with a new potency, and all earth will grow "unexpectedly divine".

 

      The human predicament when man has reached the mental stage of his evolutionary career is "an interregnum in Reality", a mid-region, shall we say, between the dusk that has gone and the flame that is to come. In Alexander Pope's words, man finds himself at the fluid junction between two continents:

 

      Plac'd on this Isthmus of a middle state,

      A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:

      With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

      With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride...

      In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;

      In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;

      Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err.. .¹¹

 

If we concentrate on the present alone, we run the danger of missing both the origins and the ultimates. We have, then, to learn to end the prevalent ignorance, and:

 

      .. .fill the immense lacuna we have made,

      Re-wed the closed finite s lonely consonant

      With the open vowels of Infinity, ....¹²

 

The gods who inhabit the higher planes enjoy a condition of static perfection, which is in sharp contrast to man's dynamic evolving destiny. In Sri Aurobindo's poem, The Life Heavens, there is a significant affirmation:

 

      I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;

      My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys....¹³

 

Earth's inhabitant, man, is provoked by the aloofness of the mere gods to exceed himself and them. It is not for him to wail like the Lotous-Eaters about the gods' indifference to human woes. What if they seem careless:

 

      .. .of the grief that stings the world's heart,

      Careless of the pain that rends its body and life?¹⁴

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Man has no need to despair; divine guidance and intervention are not wanting, and "an outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives". Not the gods, but the Power transcending them—even them—is our true guide and helper. It is this secret master of all works—the master who is the actor and the play, the potter and the clay—that really governs the universe and runs this "endless masquerade".¹⁵ And this Power, this master, is Purusha-Prakriti, the ineffable Two-in-One:

 

      ...all is their play:

      This whole wide world is only he and she.¹⁶

 

Strange is the relationship between purusha and prakriti, like word and meaning:

 

      Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:

      His breast he offers for her cosmic dance

      Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,....¹⁷

 

 Purusha consents to veil himself in ignorance for an uncertain term and play the part Prakriti allots to him. Life in matter commences a purblind game, and the first hectic chapters of Evolution come to be scrawled:

 

      He takes up her powers;

      He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.¹⁸

 

At last the veiled unconscious Purusha awakes to a "memory of Self... the Godhead breaks through the human mould."¹⁹ Although still consenting to be her vassal, he ensures in their collaborative acts an unfolding purpose, a progression towards the heights. Thus, even thus, "in Nature's instrument loiters secret God". Coercing his divinity, God is labouring here in our midst.²⁰ We are driven to action, shaped, changed and chastened by the Power—the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone—"who is in us as our secret self". He will recast us into his own mould and raise us to Infinity.

 

      Yet, for the time being, the Dusk is more real than the Dawn. God is veiled and even denied, and the human adventure is timid,

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halting, subject to evasions, setbacks and retreats. This hesitant voyaging should cease, and the spirit of bold adventure should possess high-souled man. He should leave the familiar coastal regions and venture forth to reach "the islands of the Blest". Beyond the seeming termini of this world must the traveller—the veiled Purusha; the insatiable mariner; the indefatigable Odysseus of the occult seas— dare to catch the vision of the blessed Isles, to discover "a new mind and body in the city of God".²¹ No sleep, no rest, till the goal be reached!

 

      Purusha and Prakriti are entangled here together in a mystic embrace, and they are seemingly lost in this cosmic game of play and clash and new creation.²² He is Being and Becoming both, Becoming in his entanglement or communion with her, and Being as the one transcendent Reality. The descent (or involution) made, the whole ascent (or evolution) is awaiting splendorous accomplishment.

 

      For this he left his white infinity

      And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,

      That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.²³

 

     

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III

 

      'THE YOGA OF THE KING: THE YOGA OF THE

SPIRIT'S FREEDOM AND GREATNESS'

 

      Such is the 'Secret Knowledge' Aswapati has received from "timeborn men". He can attempt a bolder assay, a greater spiritual transformation, than the earlier movement of mere "soul's release" (Book I, canto 3). He knows now in fuller detail the long way to be traversed, the signposts, the turns, the clue. And so:

 

      He found the occult cave, the mystic door

      Near to the well of vision in the soul,

      And entered where the Wings of Glory brood.. .²⁴

He has cut the cord of limited mind that binds him to the earth-crust, and feels free of the burden of human perplexity and frustration. He can read Nature's laws, the necessity behind the play of appearance,

 

Resolve its oracle and its paradox,

Its riddling phrases and its blindfold terms,

The deep oxymoron of its truth's repliques,...²⁵

 

The riddle of the world unriddles itself to Aswapati, and he grows in puissant understanding. But earth's limitations and failures still cause him intense disquiet and dissatisfaction:

 

Here even the highest rapture Time can give

Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,

A mutilated statue of ecstasy...

Or a simulacrum of enforced delight

In the seraglios of Ignorance.²⁶

 

 Aswapati is, however, cheered by the thought that man can still work out his destiny, "recreate himself and all around/And fashion new the world in which he lives."²⁷

 

      A cleansing retreat is called for, and Aswapati resolutely withdraws into a void, an absolute condition of silence of the mind. Sri Aurobindo is here evidently recalling his own experience at Baroda under Yogi Lele's guidance. It is a unique cathartic or 'beyonding' experience,²⁸ and Aswapati leaves "earth-nature's summits", mounts "burning like a cone of fire", and quests "for God as for a splendid prey". Although his heady flight is sought to be prevented by "the black Inconscient", Aswapati sweeps on,

 

Hearing the echo of his single steps

In the eternal courts of Solitude.²⁹

 

As Aswapati rises thus above the remote horizons of our familiar consciousness:

 

      .. .to meet him bare and pure

      A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,

      A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,

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                 A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,

                 Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs... ³⁰

 

In consequence of this tremendous embrace, he becomes a changed being, breathing "a supernal air", and "the soul and cosmos faced as equal powers".³¹ He sees great vistas of possibility opening before him. To Aswapati it seems as though nothing is impossible. Earth's frustrations shall cease. Enfranchised Mind will prove "a mediator divinity", ending the rule of ignorance on earth. Nature with her tantalising magic-ways, the "Circean wonderland" of caprice and perversity, the garish "bizarre kingdom" of man, all submit to the control of Aswapati's "spiritual will".³²

 

      There is verily an occult world that rules and sustains the phenomenal world of the senses. The movements in the occult world are revealed when we pore within, penetrate into the subliminal consciousness, and establish communication with the innermost truth and power. Nothing then would be beyond our purview or sovereign control.

 

      This occult world stands finally revealed to Aswapati's quickened vision, and:

 

      A giant order was discovered here...

      Ascending and descending twrxt 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,....³³

 

The descending and ascending occult stairs are strangely and tauntingly reminiscent of parallel stairs in the phenomenal world, and invite Aswapati to roam and explore. It is like a vast inverted cone, and there is a steep descent from Spirit's immaculate peaks to the abyss of time, inconscience and ignorance, and there is the complementary ascent

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back to the peaks; and between the two stairs all the worlds meet and .ill abide. Aswapati is intrigued, charmed, transported:

 

      Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight

      Stretched out in an ecstasy of widenesses

      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.³⁴

 

Tire last three cantos of Book I describe the first part of Aswapati's Yoga, and even this falls into two movements, "one a psycho-spiritual transformation and the other a greater spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power."³⁵The canto on 'The Secret Knowledge' comes in between appropriately, for the first yogic movement prepares Aswapati for receiving the knowledge, while the knowledge itself becomes a preparation for the second yogic movement. The first dim awakening to the splendours in the firmament of the Spirit has led to a deep thirst for knowledge, and draughts of this nectarean knowledge have given him the vision to see and the wings to reach the Spirit's peaks of beckoning felicity. His further explorations are not for himself alone, but for the benefit of the race as well; he is Aswapati as well as a king, and he cannot forget in his own achieved felicity the still unredeemed Earth and the 'too too sullied' race of Man."'

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 SECTION B

 

      'THE BOOK OF THE TRAVELLER

OF THE WORLDS'

 

In 1936, Sri Aurobindo wrote to one of his correspondents: "There was no climbing of planes there in the first version... I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme."³⁷ Taking up the poem later, Sri Aurobindo worked into it the Divina Commedia of the occult worlds with an elaborate and vivid particularity. The revisions came one upon another, and at one stage Sri Aurobindo wrote: ".. .the 'Worlds' have fallen into a state of manuscript chaos, corrections upon corrections, additions upon additions, rearrangements on rearrangements out of which perhaps some cosmic beauty will emerge!"³⁸ Eight years later, in 1946, Sri Aurobindo acknowledged that, "Savitri has grown to an enormous length...The small passage about Aswapati and the other worlds has been replaced by a new Book, the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, in fourteen cantos with many thousand lines."³⁹ Actually, however, there are now fifteen cantos, and in these is described with a singular vividness Aswapati's spiritual ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness.

 

      I

 

'The World Stair'

 

 As Aswapati, tearing from his last terrestrial moorings, plunges into the occult unknown universe of moods, energies, world-shapes and freedom-formulas, he experiences the throb of direct contact with the cosmic play of passion and motion and "self-creation without end or pause". Contradictions merge and mix and cease in a harmony,

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"plots of pain and dramas of delight" spin themselves round; all imaginative leaps and fanciful freaks find their realisation there. The ultimate clue of the Word only is missing,

 

      The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum...

      The absolute index to the Absolute.⁴⁰

 

Anon Aswapati catches sight of the immense "high-curved world-pile", reared against the base of matter's plinth, and rising "towards breadths immeasurable". The descending stair from the summits of the Spirit to matter's abysses is balanced by this other,

 

      .. .single stair to being's goal.

      A summary of the stages of the spirit,

      Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies

      Refashioned in our secret air of self

      A subtle pattern of the universe.

      It is within, below, without, above.⁴¹

 

In the occult world, as in the material cosmos, the centre is everywhere, the circumference is nowhere; the fully awakened soul is all the worlds that are, the centre and the circumference as well! The budget of mankind's present discontents and failures is no permanent writ. There is this "ladder of delivering ascent" offering an escape from the abyss into the far plateaus of the Spirit. Man is not abandoned forever to his present fate. The assurance is given that

 

This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man

Shall stand out on the background of long Time

A glowing epitome of eternity,.. .⁴²

 

      A Seer (the inner Guide) "inspires our ascent", as he now responds to the call of Aswapati too, who bears "the burden of the world's desire". And so Aswapati flies past world after world, and still mounts higher and higher,

 

      ...towards an indiscernible end

      On the bare summit of created things.⁴³

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 II

 

'The Kingdom of Subtle Matter'

 

      From the kingdom of gross matter or the material cosmos of order and harmony, though lacking "the sole timeless word", Aswapati crosses to the world of subtle material existence where "dwell earth-nature's shining origins". This is the world of physical mind, or, in other words, the world of matter shot through by the mind:

 

      The golden issue of mind's labyrinth plots,

      The riches unfound or still uncaught by our lives,

      Unsullied by the attaint of mortal thought

      Abide in that pellucid atmosphere.⁴⁴

 

 It is "the brilliant roof of our descending plane", it is an intermediate power-house or reservoir; almost a world of archetypes, its location and function are best described thus:

 

      A heaven of creative truths above,

      A cosmos of harmonious dreams between,

      A chaos of dissolving forms below,

      It plunges lost in our inconscient base.⁴⁵

 

The descent of God from his heights to the depths of gross terrestrial existence implying nescience and inconscience is but one half of the divine play, for this has, as in a rebound, created the possibility -—the necessity—for a corresponding ascent as well. A truly mighty partnership is at work here. The plunge into the depths has obscured, not wholly extinguished, the light from above. At present it is true enough that earth-life is tainted by the shadows of defeat. Passion flames up for a while, but an end comes soon—all too soon—to the "sacred orgy of delight". Love fails us, power fails us, and even knowledge fails us. But there is no cause for despair. Rather should we remember that it is an unfinished tale and the best is yet to be:

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       Here in a difficult half-finished world

       Is a slow toiling of unconscious Powers;...⁴⁶

 

 Genuine effort at self-exceeding must succeed because it will be met by an answering adequate response from above; the call shall not be in vain, and "the Light now distant shall grow native here". Intimations come even now from the remote halls of Immortality, but as yet they are only:

 

      .. .brief magnificent reminiscences

      And high splendid glimpses of interpreting thought,

      But not the utter vision and delight.⁴⁷

 

What we need is "a fourth dimension of aesthetic sense" that will ultimately "re-align" our souls to the cosmic wideness. The full possibility of realisation is rendered difficult now because of a blinding or obscuring veil, but even this will be pierced or broken through in the fullness of time.

 

      The world of subtle matter is compact of delight and beauty and love and sweetness,

 

      .. .a miracle of symmetric charm,

      A fantasy of perfect line and rule.⁴⁸

 

By resolved limitation, it has achieved a limited perfection; there is no looking before and after or a pining for what is not; there is no striving for what is beyond the reach, no hugging of excess and the sad recoil of satiety,⁴⁹ all is order and completeness and contentment:

 

      In their narrow and exclusive absolutes

      The finite's ranked supremacies throned abide;...⁵⁰

 

This is a stage on Aswapati's journey, not the final destination; and so he looks "beyond for greater light" and resolutely leaves behind "that fine material paradise".

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       III

 

'The Glory and Fall of Life'

 

      The passage from the world of subtle matter brings Aswapati to the life-realms, where the 'vital', the principle of life, has full play. The law of life here comprises birth, growth, decay and death. With an endless but blind appetite the life-principle explores all possibilities, regardless of consequences. Change and danger, pain and defeat, are the playfellows and pests of this region. Here people sit and 'hear each other groan'; dolorous their converse, transient their joy; pure felicity forever eludes. But thought-sick though life be and knotted with failure, yet Life too derives from the Timeless and carries the memory of "a lost world rapture".

 

      Strange that, at the heart of pain, joy—or the hope of joy—should have her sovereign shrine. But so it is indeed. It may be that the visible prospect is barren and bleak. The sky lours, the earth yawns, the end seems sure.

 

      But near and real to the longing heart

      And to the body's passionate thought and sense

      Are the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.⁵¹

 

 At first they are dreams, hopes, visions merely; but they signify or embody the shape of things to come.

 

      There is clearly a veil or gulf between earth appearance and the other reality, between 'earth-fact' and 'dream-truth'. This veil once pierced, this gulf once crossed—this must happen sooner or later—the dream would become fact and reality would arrive. The "inscrutable Supermind" would help "the hazardous experimenting Mind" in its endeavours to end the Nescience and reach upto the Truth. All will then be possible. But in the meantime life is tied to the circuit of deception and failure. Life is almost in love with "amorous Death" and sleep imitates "extinction's peace". Man despairs of chastening and harmonising "his cosmos-chaos of personality".

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         Such alas! is the picture of the fallen state of life. But how to describe the 'other' state, the power and the glory? How to paint the colours of paradisal felicity? How to visualise the splendour of the 'dream-truth'? Aswapati, however, can see this glory unfolding before him:

     

      There were summit-glories inconceivable,

      Autonomies of Wisdom's still self-rule...

      There sat the oligarchies of natural Law,

      Proud violent heads served one calm monarch brow:

      All the soul's postures donned divinity.

      There met the ardent mutual intimacies

      Of mastery's joy and the joy of servitude

      Imposed by Love and Love's heart that obeys

      And Love's body held beneath a rapturous yoke...⁵²

 

It is the life we know here, but purged of all its taints and the limitations of "death, desire and incapacity"; it is life without twist or crookedness, without pain or satiety, but instinct with "heavenly variety". So fashioned in freedom and power, life will "explore the measures of the rhythms of God", and weave,

 

.. .her wizard wonder-dance,

A Dionysian goddess of delight,

A Bacchant of creative ecstasy.⁵³

 

Aswapati, even as he sees this world of bliss, knows "no way to enter into its joy". From the sleep of matter's inconscience has emerged the play of life and the attendant strife of the dualities: mind has sprouted, and with it doubt, and the engines of sorrow and joy. Life as it came from Heaven to colonise the earth had suffered a profound change, and all her sweetness has turned into "a maimed desire", and terrestrial existence, exemplifying the 'Fall of Life', has become but "an episode in an eternal death". Such is the 'evil mystery' of the human lot!

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  IV

 

'The Kingdoms of the Little Life'

 

      Life in its heavenly origin is no doubt a principle of pristine purity and power; but as it sinks in the mire of the earth, it cannot help sharing for the nonce somewhat of the dolour and density of the soil. For a while, then, life is inevitably yoked to "an instinct driven Ignorance", and must perforce draw the heavy chariot of pain ; only instinct and sense- perceptions rule the Kingdom of the Little Life. But 'mind' is not long in soliciting and directing life, fitfully and uncertainly at first, but presently with more concerted and ambitious aim. Mind-crowned man has made his appearance on earth , and he is rich in endowments and his life is full of possibilities.

 

      He becomes a mind, he becomes a spirit and self;

      In his fragile tenement he grows Nature's lord.⁵⁴

 

From matter to life, from life to mind, and from mind to-he doesn't know yet. There is a continuous striving, there is a progressive effort but the desire is dogged by incapacity, the aspiration is followed (if at all) by only partial achievement. There are random movements, purblind advances; there is progress surely, but along an exasperating zig-zag path of toil and difficulty. Still must the spirit of evolution press on further and further, toward s newer and newer horizons:

 

 

      Matter dissatisfies, she turns to Mind;

      She conquers earth, her field, then claims the heavens...

      Ascending slowly with unconscious steps,

      A foundling of the Gods she wanders here

      Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell

      Fumbling through fog in search of Paradise.⁵⁵

 

      Aswapati is eager to mark the steps in the arduous evolutionary spiral. This means really a return to the beginnings, and a survey of the whole track. And so,

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Along swift paths of fall through dangerous gates

He chanced into a grey obscurity

Teeming with instincts from the mindless gulfs...⁵⁶

 

At the very bottom life is intimate with death, indifferent alike to beauty and light. In this nether empire of the little life, there are divers petty kingdoms, each with its own badge of limitation and circumscribed sovereignty.

 

      See life first crawling out from her "cabin of mud" where she had lain mute and rigid for ages. It is a "weird and pigmy world", a world of automatic responses; a world of gropings, wrestlings, false starts and futile results; verily "a vain unnecessary world" marked by "meaningless suffering and a grey unease". Yet Aswapati finds a meaning even in these obscure beginnings of life. Even here the world is somehow charged with the beauty of God. The slime and the mire somehow yield a wondrous progeny.

 

The world's senseless beauty mirrors God's delight.

That rapture's smile is secret everywhere;

It flows in the wind's breath, in the tree's sap,

Its hued magnificence blooms in leaves and flowers.⁵⁷

 

Life in cells, in micro-organisms, in worm, in reptile, in insect— even this life is not devoid of meaning.⁵⁸ No doubt about it, Being is involved even in these lower realms and darkened vasts:

 

Even in these formless codings he [Aswapati] could feel

Matter's response to an infant stir of soul.⁵⁹

 

In the adjoining second Kingdom of the Little Lite, Aswapati marks "a fierier breath of waking life". Here "an insect hedonism" flutters and creeps, and there are "dragon raptures, python agonies", and "great puissant creatures with a dwarfish brain, and pigmy tribes". This is the stupendous "animal experiment". Here within a narrow circuit are packed the ages of Geologic time, the giant lizards and mastodons that have perished without a trace, the mammoths, now only preserved as fossils; these are the mighty that have shortsightedly disinherited themselves.

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           There are the mammals, too, and early primitive man; creatures of Nature red in tooth and claw, they have been content to work for the body's wants,—"content to breathe, to feel, to sense, to act", no more. Selfhood and Breed (in the elemental sense in which Robert Bridges uses the terms in his poem, Toe Testament of Beauty) spin the animal plot, and primitive man is engaged in grovelling in the "grooves of animal desire". Even when man leaves the jungle and forms community and society, and raises town and fortress, he must needs maim and mangle himself with slaughter, plunder, rape, fire and deceit and so enact the drama of self-wrought misery. The Heroic Age of epic striving and failure and misery is but another milestone on this ambiguous march:

 

      An animal in the instinctive herd

      Pushed by life impulses, forced by common needs,

      Each in his own kind saw his ego's glass;

      All served the aim and action of the pack.⁶⁰

 

Men and women living in walled-up isolation moan that understanding is difficult; quick to quarrel, they fight among themselves on account of colour, creed, region, or possessions and so, even so, they go round and round 'the prickly pear' and round and round again.

 

      The third of the Kingdoms of the Little Life manifests the emergence of the intellectual man, a 'push' from below facilitated by "a masked intervention from above". The mind and its forces are whole Himalayas of power marked by heady leaps of thought, ballistic missiles of aspiration, and veritable Sputniks of comprehension. This gives a new intensity and edge, a greater depth and wideness, to human life. No limit, really, to man's desire for empire. An insatiable hunger for power possesses the mind of man as it surveys the past and views the future. What if death itself could be overcome?

 

      Its right to be immortal it reserved,

      But built a wall against the siege of death

      And threw a hook to clutch eternity.⁶¹

 

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Yet the mind, a giant helper upto a point, degenerates soon into a serious liability. Logic itself proves often deceptive, and theorems can stifle the human soul. Preoccupied with the glamorous appearance, man tends to lose infinitudes of the soul within. "Dwarf lusts and brief desires" chain him to the earth-crust, and the mind too acquiesces in the fall:

 

      Absorbed in the little works of its prison-house

      It turned around the same unchanging points

      In the same circle of interest and desire,...⁶²

 

Whatever the seeming achievements of the mental being, however impressive the march of civilisation, the crux of the human situation remains unsolved. A total emancipation is yet to arrive. Aswapati can sense in this Kingdom of the Little Life,

 

      .. .no vast perspectives of the spirit,

      No swift invasions of unknown delight,

      No golden distances of wide release.⁶³

 

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  V

 

'The Godheads of the Little Life'

 

      Aswapati has seen clearly enough that all the Kingdoms in the Empire of the Little Life—even the most advanced in appearance —are encased in a giant ignorance. But as he peers closer into this empire, he is able to glimpse the godheads behind it:

 

      As when a search-light stabs the Night's blind breast

      And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear

      As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,

      All lurking things were torn out of their veils

      And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze.⁶⁴

 

These are the forces that urge, however obscurely or unconsciously, the 'little life' to strive for the higher and larger life; these are "the little deities of Time's nether act", "imps with wry limbs", "errant divinities trapped in Time's dust", in sum, "a trepidant and motley multitude". Fallen godheads these, who warp everything on earth:

 

      All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,

      Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull

      And lead the endless cycles of desire

      Through semblances of sad or happy chance

      To an inescapable fatality.⁶⁵

 

All is perversion and defeat now; yet there lie concealed in them the seeds of ultimate purification and triumph. As yet conscious life seems to be at the mercy of these insidious promptings from the depths of the unconscious. This must go on till the wrong suggestions are superseded by right suggestions from the far home of Truth and "Infinity takes up the finite's acts". Only then will end this nightmare nether life that holds us in thrall.

 

      What is this teasing paradox of Creation? The Spirit of its own accord wears the insignia of limitation and becomes inconscient Matter—"a body sleeping without sense or soul". There is at first "only an etheric Space"; then, through the processes of expansion and contraction, come touch and friction, force and energy:

 

      An ocean of electric Energy

      Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles

      Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,

      Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;

      Masses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;

      Light flung the photon's swift revealing spark

      And showed, in the minuteness of its flash

      Imaged, this cosmos of apparent things. ⁶⁶

 

The play of 'blind'chance is controlled by the "fixed and immutable" laws of Nature. From this ordered material universe—the Kingdom of matter and energy—there wakes up at some auspicious moment "a dream of living"; thus life arrives on the cosmic scene. But life by its

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very nature is no static divinity, for it hides in its pulse "a consciousness with mute stifled beats of sense"; and in an agony of excitement and uncertainty it gropes for mind. The brute becomes man, equipped with the "delicate enginery" of mind. When man acts, he relies not on the instinct alone (as does the brute) but also on the play of thought's processes. From the marriage of matter and energy, first life, then mind, have ensued and now there are higher potentialities still:

 

The illumined soul-ray fell on heart and flesh

And touched with semblances of ideal light

The stuff of which our earthly dreams are made.⁶⁷

 

The unseen indwelling Spirit, the mighty Witness, sees all and facilitates further advance "towards the still greatness of a distant hour".

 

      The play of mind on the material universe and life's realms is enterprising and exciting, but it cannot effectively 'control' events, and it cannot pluck the heart of the mystery of existence:

 

      This minute elaborate orchestrated life

      For ever plays its motiveless symphonies.

      The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth;

      It studies surface laws by surface thought,...⁶⁸

 

 The mind sees darkly, and gathers inconsequent crumbs of Truth in a rats-alley hunting-ground! But deep within "a puissance acts", there is a power working "concealed in the subliminal secrecies", and in the result "speech leaps, thought quivers, the heart vibrates, the will/ Answers and tissue and nerve obey the call".⁶⁹

 

      The surface mind is thus only a puppet; mental processes and creations are but shadows and hence hardly affect the essential quality of life or the ultimate destiny of the soul. Insect, ape and man, all share a similar fate. Man—even thinking man—spends his little hour in "little things", in the monotonous circle of love and jealousy and hate, of joy and heart-pain and strife. Convention and routine deaden our lives, or we seek an escape through "lust's hot glare" or

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"passion's crimson stain". All our endeavours—even those of Science the Giantess—leave our life unaltered, the same, the same as ever. Only religion is a sort of cure, though it is really a self-deception rather than a cure; what use religion's "unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond?"

 

      However, Aswapati can also see that this spectacle of Mind-moulded, mind-directed life is no more than "a provisional scheme". There is a "deeper seeing from within", and the promise of a rich response from above. The present tale of error and ambiguity and failure must soon have its ending, and its sequel will speak of "muffled throbs of laughter's undertones" and paint the portrait of "a heart of bliss within a world of pain". There will be no chapters detailing life's little ironies, no inset elegies, no tragedies, no farces; with the greater Self informing the self within,

 

      All shall be captured by delight, transformed:

      In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll

      Our mind and life...

      The body's tissues thrill apotheosised,...

      Like a clay troll kneaded into a god

      New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,

      It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force

      And, flaming with the paradisal touch

      In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,

      In the red passion of its infinite change,

      Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.⁷⁰

 

This splendorous possibility is awaiting to be enacted, and "our hearts must inform with heavenly strength...and cleave the darkness with the mystic fire".⁷¹

 

      Cheered by the promise of this possibility, Aswapati races yet further, from the Kingdoms of the Little Life to the Kingdoms of the Greater Life; the passage is through seas of darkness, and only his own spirit's inextinguishable flame guides him through the abysses and brings him safely to his next destination.

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 VI

 

      'THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF

THE GREATER LIFE'

 

      From the "grey anarchy" of the lower vital' world, Aswapati now approaches the 'higher vital' world, a region ineffectual and purposeless still, where life see-saws between vain denial and dubious hope. It is a world of deceptive illuminations and spasmodic actions, of hopes unrealised and possibilities unfulfilled. Life goes round and round as it were, but goal there seemingly is none. Allurements come from every direction, only to be followed by discomfiture. All is "unsafe, miraculous and half-true".

 

      As Aswapati travels further on from these outskirts, the sky clears, the earth smiles, and he reaches "the kingdom of the morning star". His eyes are lit up with a surer hope. From within well up the beginnings of a new authentic knowledge. Immortality glimmers in the distance, a beckoning star; love is a releasing force making for the heart's fullness and freedom; Truth flames forth in the Word, thrown up "from a chance tension of the soul". These first faint raptures naturally lead to "vaster hopes":

 

      A progress leap from sight to greater sight,

      A process march from form to ampler form,

      A caravan of the inexhaustible

      Formations of a boundless Thought and Force.⁷²

 

Cannot eternity itself be caught in the net of time? Cannot the Spirit be coerced into matter? Prakriti or Nature is "an Energy of perpetual transience" and is endlessly resourceful, finding "new bodies for the Infinite and images of the Unimaginable." Nature dazzles us by her infinite variety and termless restlessness; she is a timeless actor playing her intriguing parts on a temporal stage. Although earth centered, the higher vital world is not altogether beyond the reach of intimations from above. On the contrary, this

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world dares to gaze beyond the "barriers of apparent fact", to trust "dream-mind and the soul", and even to hunt "spiritual verities":

 

      It feels a saviour touch, a ray divine:

      Beauty and good and truth its godheads are.⁷³

 

It is a world where divers pulls meet, a meeting ground of demon, man and God, of hell, earth and heaven. It is a world of high exertion and limitless possibility; "its greatness is to seek and to create".

 

      This genius to create, this Life-Force or creative urge, sleeps in matter, stirs in plant and insect, and manifests itself strongly in bird and animal. The push of evolution is a power that persists and presses on. Death itself is no end, but only a fresh beginning. Inertness is but a nap; the struggle, the striving, starts again and goes on, apparently for ever. There is, no doubt, the seeming grapple between Prakriti and Purusha:

 

      Although she is ever in him and he in her,

      As if unaware of the eternal tie,

      Her will is to shut God into her works

      And keep him as her cherished prisoner

      That never they may part again in Time.⁷⁴

 

Prakriti keeps him in her close embrace; he may wrestle, but he may not get away! This is the mystic truth behind an affirmation like Hopkins': "The world is charged with the grandeur of God".⁷⁵ This mystic struggle and embrace is really the law of life and evolutionary advance. There are stumblings and set-backs, there are even naps and swoons, but the work is taken up again, and the assault and ascent are renewed once more.

 

      The play of consciousness here in the higher vital world is lit by Truth, but does not contain or hold the Truth as a permanent condition; it is like the little room lit by the rays coming through the window, not the Sun, not his total realm. At best this life is "a first immigration into heavenliness", not a final occupation. Nevertheless, there are ardours and hectic strivings that are

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characteristic of this world. The hero is a recurrent emergent here. In him alas! good and evil intermingle, yet is he impressive in mould, whether his careerings end in defeat or success. King, Pope, Tyrant, all have their little hour of dominion, and then fade away. Power corrupts, absolute power often corrupts absolutely—"the harlot power that slays the soul".

 

      The artist and poet are of an order apart and "catch the All-Beautiful's ray". Behind the scenes, subliminal powers inflate the hero, the seeming Superman, with incalculable energy, and unleash terrific love or hate till forest tires join and rage. But even when things promise most, there comes sudden discomfiture in the end: the paths of beauty, love, glory, lead but to the grave; the final reward of bliss and peace eludes. As Aswapati moves among these shapes and feels racked by riddles all round, he grows a riddle to himself. The mystery refuses to be cleared, except through the fabrication of fresh mysteries; the question, the questioner, and the answer are riddles, riddles all.

 

      Following the track of the Life-Force's march, Aswapati presently comes to,

 

      .. .a high release from pettier cares,

      A mightier image of desire and hope,

      A vaster formula, a greater scene.⁷⁶

 

Higher still and higher, onward and forever onward, Nature circles above, aiming "at a target kept invisible". Here the atmosphere is ethereal rather than dense—more and more ethereal with the flight into the higher regions. Aswapati sees Nature's variegated strivings, the colours have a blinding dazzle, but the white radiance of Truth can nowhere be seen. Is Truth playing hide and seek? There are strange attractions, random recognitions, sudden thrills of glory; every corner, every crevice in Nature has hidden intensities of beauty and joy:

 

      In her green wildernesses and lurking depths,

      In her thickets of joy where danger clasps delight,

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       He glimpsed the hidden wings of her songster hopes,

       A glimmer of blue and gold and scarlet fire.⁷⁷

 

Aswapati is fascinated by it all and moves freely amidst the "live symbols" of Nature's occult power; and her manifold—if as yet flawed —magnificence casts a profound spell upon him. Some 'clue' there certainly must be that can guide the seeker through her labyrinthine ways of passion and power; but the clue, the "interpreting word", is lacking still. Nature at this height strikes Aswapati as "a fugitive paradise":

 

      Brief are her snatches of felicity

      That touch the surface, then escape or die:.. .⁷⁸

 

Even so, in spite of all these marks of circumscription, life at this level is surely worth all the toil and the pain, the spasm and the ache.

 

      On the other hand, this medial half-hearted felicity cannot content Prakriti, and she cannot long abide here. Her cardinal aspiration to bring the heavens down and charge the body with the soul's delight cannot accept defeat as a permanent condition; neither is she able to force the pace of rounded fulfilment. "A sense of limit haunts her masteries", but she will not give up her "beat of action" and "cry of search". Is all existence no more than, "a vain necessity's act... A play without denouement or idea,/A hunger march of lives without a goal?" "'' But hope whispers that another play is possible, that a divine comedy shall fill the stage; and faith and doubt wrangle, the yea and the nay glare at each other, and the issue is yet to be concluded. True enough it is that the present error, defeat, pain, the reign of death, the empire of futility, must be exceeded; but for the time being,

 

      All seems in vain, yet endless is the game.

      Impassive turns the ever-circling Wheel,

      Life has no issue, death brings no release.⁸⁰

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  VII

 

'The Descent into Night'

 

      Aswapati, having reached this dead end, this cactus end of final frustration in Life's efforts at self-transcendence, is anxious to locate the cause of it all, and so he dons the mantle of giant courage, peers into the "viewless Vast", and sees,

 

 ...a grey carved mask of Night

Watching the birth of all created things.⁸¹

 

 He has plunged into an immitigable abyss and recognises therein the sources of misrule, which are really perversions of the sources of order above. Power, presence, light, love—all are here, but only in a twisted and perverted shape. The subtle serpent Ignorance can spew out "a perverse sweetness, heaven-born malefice". Life and love are sicklied over with the baleful coating of sin and fatality, and happiness is doomed to play a losing game of cards with pain, and progress becomes "a purveyor of Death" and lust chases away love, the spurious overwhelms the genuine, and unutterably bleak is "the wasteland of life's descent to Night". And behind this evil empire of misrule there is "a dark Unseen... its breath is a subtle poison". This is the author of the whole book of evil, and he has his own army of slaves to carry out his behests. As Aswapati sees the handiwork of evil—the spectacle of men maimed, suffering, men pitifully helpless—he is aghast; and all the more so because he also sees that the wretched victims do not, and indeed cannot, even recognise "the authors of their fall". Moving farther yet, Aswapati arrives at,

 

.. .a no-man's land of evil air,

A crowded neighbourhood without one home,

 A borderland between the world and hell.⁸²

 

 This is the world of the false, the misleading, the self-deceiving, the transient, the slippery, the sardonic, the sinister. The Fiend himself

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wears the sceptre here, but he poses as an angel bright, quotes scripture facilely, and traps his victims in nets woven by their own good intentions. He is armed with sinister powers, and he can turn logic, law, light, letters into instruments of doom. The battle between evil and good is waged here as if it can have no ending; only death is certain, avoid it how we may.

 

      In these cities of ancient ignorance, there is clash perpetual between warring groups. Men are driven by their egos and false propensities, and man proves wolf to man—homo homini lupus! Hypocrisy assumes Himalayan proportions, and people pose the "worst iniquities on equity's base". In the name of religion, too, shoreless are the struggles that are engineered; but while religion of a sort flourishes, true spiritual seeking is discountenanced. Tyrannies a hundred oppress and slay, and a unity is reared upon force and fraud. A perilous route, this, barring Aswapati's way; too fatally easy it is to slip, to be lost. But Aswapati, armed by prayer and the Name, crosses the murky no-man's-land, though only to confront, "a greater darkness...a worse reign,/If worse can be where all is evil's extreme."⁸³

 

      As in the circles in Dante's Inferno, beneath Horror's depths are lower circles of deepening Horror. Now Aswapati is in the land of the unashamedly vicious, the licentious and the lost—the "fell dun suburbs of the cities of dream-life". What orgiastic harlotry, what criminal concupiscence! Lust is traded as "a decorative art":

 

      Impure, sadistic, with grimacing mouths,

      Grey foul inventions gruesome and macabre

      Came televisioned from the gulfs of Night.⁸⁴

 

Here are the night-clubs, opium dens, and miscalled palaces of pleasure; Dionysian riot, left-hand orgies, and other repulsive practices make "a ritual anguish" that consecrates death; and a new false philosophy theorises evil's rights and glories "in the shimmering rot of decadence".

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           Nor men nor rational creatures are these; rather are they "a race possessed". They have trampled the humane in the mud and set up the reign of 'Big Brother' Evil Unlimited. Called variously Nazi, Fascist, Party, these inhuman sadists impose a "grim totalitarian reign":

 

All on one plan was shaped and standardised

Under a dark dictatorship's breathless weight.⁸⁵

 

And the patriot and the demagogue! How they seem to fly skyward borne upon the wings of eloquence, yet how base and inhuman in their motivation and action, ready for even the "lowest reptile's crawl"! A dog is obeyed in office, and the more the dog snarls, the more implicitly is it obeyed! Big Brother, who is demon and goblin and ghoul, yet passes for titan, hero, god, and ordains,

 

The huge laughter of a giant cruelty

And fierce glad deeds of ogre violence...

Armed with the aegis of tyrannic Power,

Signing the edicts of her dreadful rule

And using blood and torture as a seal,

Darkness proclaimed her slogans to the world.⁸⁶

 

There struts Orwellian 'double-think' wedded to 'double-talk'; and where is Truth? And what is still more astonishing is that people actually glory in their swinishness and slavery:

 

Flaunting its cross of servitude like a crown,

It clung to its dismal harsh autonomy.

A bull-throat bellowed with its brazen tongue;

Its hard and shameless clamour filling Space

And threatening all who dared to listen to truth

Claimed the monopoly of the battered ear;

A deafened acquiescence gave its vote,

And braggart dogmas shouted in the night...⁸⁷

 

Aswapati the "lone discoverer" sees it all, and manages to wade through it without actually contaminating himself. For a time he is threatened by the reigning blasphemies and darkness, he feels the invasion of the thickening Night, he scents the claim of the Abyss for his own soul. But he survives the onslaught; peace and safety return; the mighty Godhead in him awakes to face "the pain and danger of the world", and he meets "with his bare spirit naked Hell".

 

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     VIII

 

      'THE WORLD OF FALSEHOOD, THE MOTHER

         OF EVIL, AND THE SONS OF DARKNESS'

 

      The nether-most circle in Hell; the hidden heart of Night. Aswapati has gravitated to the bottom, and sees revealed there "the endless terrible Inane", the zero begetter of the worlds. All is dark, hideous, false, and vile; perverse Thought, priestess-sorceress,

 

      In darkling aisles with evil eyes for lamps

      And fatal voices chanting from the apse,

      In strange infernal dim basilicas

      Intoning the magic of the unholy Word,

      The ominous profound Initiate

      Performed the ritual of her Mysteries.⁸⁸

 

 Like the figure of Satan chewing a human skull in Inferno's ultimate circle, here is a horrid shape too, squatting on Death, and swallowing "all things born". "No worse, there is none".⁸⁹

 

      When in the beginning inconscient Matter was about to be kindled with life and the journey of evolution was about to commence, a shadow fell across, being cast by "the grey python Night". Life's move had thus been countered and criss-crossed ere ever it even got into its stride. This shadow

 

      .. .falsified the primal cosmic Will

      And bound to struggle and dread vicissitudes

      The long slow process of the patient Power.⁹⁰

 

 Working against the Mother of Light, this Mother of Evil "with a grey distorted silhouette in the Night" strove to thwart the steady

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climb of the soul and pull it to the depths if she could. This primal struggle goes on, in changing climes with changing vicissitudes; and still the Mother of Darkness "prowls around each light" and tries to slay in the cradle "the divine Child". She is verily "a cowled fifth-columnist" who converts the climber of the worlds to defeatism and death!

 

      Like the Mother, so her sons: "terrible agencies", they are "offspring of the gulfs" and "haters of light" who "load the dice of Doom with wizard lies". They have usurped all holy places, all cells of life, all nerves of joy:

 

      Armoured, protected by their lethal masks,

      As in a studio of creative Death

      The giant sons of Darkness sit and plan

      The drama of the earth, their tragic stage.⁹¹

 

This is the Hell Aswapati traverses on his way to Heaven. Hoping to gauge the whole malignant forces of Hell, its presiding Mother Evil, her sons, Aswapati takes a close view of them all, "challenging the darkness with his luminous soul". What deserts of joylessness, what infinitudes of pain! No peace, no ease; only pain and tears. The soul, caught in the spider's web of ignorance, worships the pitiless Power. Science and technology fashion iniquitous edifices of woe and engines of summary massacre and liquidation. And blasphemy of blasphemies! the murderers brazenly take the name of God and "make him an accomplice of their crimes".

 

      In Hell's deepest hole, while numbed and awed he stands, Aswapati still seeks the cause-—the clue—"the root and cause of Hell" and the clue to Night's "dreadful heart". Nay more, he is ready to drink the poison to know its taste. By a feat of forged identity he sees through its secret essence, and infers that behind it, behind even quintessential Hell, is a cosmic Will:

 

Torn were the formats of the primal Night

And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.⁹²

 

When this sudden blaze of realisation flashes before him, Aswapati feels a whole load removed; like a house of cards crashes down Hell's "huge abrupt facade"; Night opens, and vanishes "like a gulf of dream". Verily, verily, the reign of Night would be over soon; what Aswapati has seen in a "vision splendid" must come to be. There pours "a wide intimate and blissful Dawn", and Aswapati shakes off the grim memories of the nightmare death-in-life he has left behind.

 

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      IX

 

'The Paradise of the Life-gods'

 

      Like a man returned to life, Aswapati luxuriates in the "great felicitous Day" that now warms him up and intoxicates him with the "wine of God". Here life is in league with light and love; it beats "a jewel-rhythm of the laughter of God" and lies "on the breast of love".⁹³ Aswapati can now move with light dancing steps, on plain or ridge or hillside, or look over "dreaming cities of Gandharva kings". He can visit "shining Edens of the vital gods" and watch Beauty, Peace, Love, Strength, Desire, Pleasure and Dream play their truly appropriate roles. All here is under God's sway; pain changes to joy, the commonplace to the miraculous. Such is this "Paradise of perfect heart and sense".

 

      Aswapati too feels profoundly affected by the blissful climate of the place. His body acquires a new glow; earth-nature changes; he becomes a comrade of Heaven. A bliss overwhelms him, a fiery felicity possesses his soul.

 

   

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  X

 

      THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE LITTLE MIND'

 

      The Life-Gods' paradisal felicity is complete and final; there is no further progress, nor any possible regress. This "breath of hundred hued felicity" renews eternally, and flawless happiness forever prevails. This is the Life-Heavens, whose inhabitants cherish their happiness on the mid-way peaks of ascent, nor wish to mount to the ultimate heights. Not so Aswapati. He still must respond to "a greater adventure's call" and scale the climb to Timelessness. Be the hazard what it may, Aswapati must march on, and stop not till the goal is reached.

 

      First he meets "a silver-grey expanse where Day and Night had wedded and were one". This is the territory where the obscured animal being dimly awakes into its basic sensory perceptions. The insect crawl is no end but the beginning of glorious things to come; the roads of frailty converge to triumphant strength; and the tunnels of infectious obscurity remotely point to sunrise splendours and seas of light. As yet it is but an ambiguous terrain:

 

      A coalition of uncertainties

      There exercised uneasy government

      On a ground reserved for doubt and reasoned guess,

      A rendezvous of Knowledge with Ignorance.⁹⁴

 

Next Aswapati notices a higher slope in this steep ascent "where dawn-sheen gamboled with the native dusk". The region of twilight recedes, and morning beckons the Traveller of the Worlds:

 

      He came into a realm of early Light

      And the regency of a half-risen sun.⁹⁵

 

Here mind in its first hazy manifestations emerges as a principle of consciousness and starts its snail-like operations; then it acquires a certain puissance and self-confidence, studies matter's constitution, and deduces Nature's laws; and in course of time Mind waxes into "a master Magician of measure and device". Man's "prototypal deft intelligence" structures the marvels of theoretical and inventive science and fabricates audacious systems of equivalence and association. The maya of the material and sensory universe yields its secrets one by one:

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      A bodiless energy put on Matter's robe;...

      And the invisible appeared as shape

      And the impalpable was felt as mass:...

      Idea was disguised in a body's artistry,

      And by a strange atomic law's mystique

      A frame was made in which the sense could put

      Its symbol picture of the universe. ⁹⁶

 

Although all this load of knowledge has some value, man is still unable to ford or canter across the stream of the last Ignorance that divides us from integral Truth. The million bits of truth isolated or analysed in the laboratories do not complete the sum; there is an exasperating insufficiency in even the most ambitious of mental operations.

 

      In her tireless strivings to pluck the heart of the mystery, Mind has three divers deputies—three loyal serfs—to advance her cause and promote her work. The first of these is,

 

      A pigmy Thought...

      A technician admirable, a thinker crude,

      A riveter of Life to habit's grooves,

      Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny,...⁹⁷

 

It is the perfect servant, but lacks adventure and initiative; weights and measures it can handle with competence, but it shies away from the subtler engines of the mind. It can foot the well-trodden path, but turns away from trackless jungles and strange seas of thought. Although content thus to feed on "scraps of life and Matter's bones in its kennel of objective certitude", even this pigmy figure plays an allotted role in the cosmic play.

 

      The second of Mind's deputies is "a rash Intelligence" with its thousand shapes and numerous names:

 

      It licked at knowledge with a smoky tongue.

      A whirlpool sucking in an empty air,

      It based on vacancy stupendous claims,

      In Nothingness born to Nothingness returned,

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      Yet all the time unwittingly it drove

      Towards the hidden Something that is All. ⁹⁸

 

It makes sudden, strange, startling guesses, achieves "wild-ass" feats of speculation and generalisation, and makes "flash-images of half-seen verities". Like the pigmy, this hunchback too—albeit he is rash and his findings are tentative—nurses "a portion of infinity's strength".

 

      The last and greatest of Mind's henchmen is Reason, "the squat godhead artisan.. .The strongest, wisest of the troll-like Three."⁹⁹ It is the philosophic schematising power that seeks to "reduce to rules the mystic world"; although not quite knowing yet, she "ferrets out Nature's process, substance cause" and hopes to force "a pattern of eternal fixity". In her characteristic attitudes, in the sum of her achievements, she seems a wonder, and the mother of many civilisations. Abstract thought makes impressive conquests, and Reason, with an insatiable hunger, makes further conquests still:

 

      For the world seen she weaves a world conceived:

      She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines

      Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought,

      Her segment systems of the Infinite,

      Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts

      And myths by which she explains the inexplicable...

      Her sciences precise and absolute...

      The vast encyclopaedia of her thoughts;

      An algebra of her mathematics' signs... ¹⁰⁰

 

Breathtaking though these achievements are, Reason's manifold toil is in the last analysis but "an inconclusive play"; what is gained today is lost or superseded tomorrow. Science, having made absolute claims for a while, now wisely acknowledges her limitations:

 

      But now is lost her ancient sovereign claim

      To rule mind's high realm in her absolute right,

      Bind thought with logic's forged infallible chain

      Or see truth nude in a bright abstract haze.¹⁰¹

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Science or philosophy, politics or ethics, Reason-erected edifices have unsure foundations, and cannot stand the shocks of adverse circumstance. What a stupendous ado for achieving "a million purposes with purpose none!"

 

Ideals, ethics, systems had no base

And soon collapsed or without sanction lived;

All grew a chaos, a heave and clash and strife...

All reeled into a world of Kali's dance.¹⁰²

 

Can mere meaningless chaos be the final meaning of the universe? No; some other power must there surely be that can render Mind's handiwork far from futile:

 

Then science and reason careless of the soul

Could iron out a tranquil uniform world,...

A reasonable animal make of man

And a symmetrical fabric of his life.¹⁰³

 

But this too is no consummation to be wished, for who would care to stifle the promptings of the soul and make the human body a perfect machine? There is no room for despair, however; "many-visaged is the cosmic Soul" and "a greater Mind may see a greater Truth". Either this way is open, or all is a total defeat.

 

      The hazy twilight of Instinct and Sensory Perception; the dawn of Mind, and her minions, Thought, Intelligence and Reason; what next? Aswapati reaches now "the bright kingdoms of the rising Sun" where "all is a birth into a power of light". The mere Mind's laborious constructions are but "interim reports"; the final reports are still a-drafting, they are still to come. Mind's knowledge has to be followed by a "greater Gnosis". Aswapati marks two new powers overshadowing the "dwarfish trinity" and perched in a "high breathless stratosphere". These two "sun-gaze Daemons" are "a huge high-winged Life-Thought" and "a pure Thought-Mind"; these powers hold the key to the higher Gnosis; these are the godheads of the Kingdoms of the Greater Mind.

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         XI

 

      'THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS

OF THE GREATER MIND'

 

      Racing beyond the "circles of mortal mind" Aswapati heads towards "the far spiritual light". It is actually a glorious escape into freedom, for mortal mind, albeit it lords over its petty realms, is after all a prison. It may be that man's book of origins is in blissful Heaven, but his embroilment in Matter has been to his utter discomfiture:

 

Ourselves are citizens of that mother State,

Adventurers, we have colonized Matter's night.

But now our rights are barred, our passports void;

We live self-exiled from our heavenlier home.¹⁰⁴

 

Aswapati is determined to revisit his native place, and so he makes the supreme effort:

 

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.¹⁰⁵

 

Fust to meet Aswapati is "a triple realm of ordered thought", which is reached by "a triple flight", itself but "a small beginning of immense ascent". Even as Dante speaks of the descending circles of Hell and the ascending slopes of Purgatory, here in Savitri Sri Aurobindo views the cosmos symbolically as a descending and an ascending stair of worlds, the descent leading to the Abyss and the ascent to the Heights. A segment of the ascent comprises the passage from the limited human Mind to the all-knowing and all-powerful Supermind. In the chapter entitled "The Ascent towards Supermind' in The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo writes:

 

...the scrutiny of a given line of ascent may be expected to

throw light on the principle of all ascending possibilities; such a

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scrutiny of one line is all that can be attempted. This line is, as all

must be, governed by the natural configuration of the stair of

ascent: there are in it many steps, for it is an incessant gradation

and there is no gap anywhere; but, from the point of view of the

ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising

series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the

gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each

with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations maybe summarily

described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through

Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind

and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the

summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.¹⁰⁶

 

Whereas these gradations are described in vivid psychological terms in The Life Divine, in Savitri the gradations become so many distinct worlds—abstractions give place to imaginative constructions—and nobly articulate philosophical prose becomes the sovereign poetry of the Spirit. It is not the translation of one mode into another, but a veritable transmutation.

 

      Aswapati starts the immense ascent. The first of the triple realms of ordered thought is "close and kin" to the world of man. The deities of this realm are not indifferent to human aspirations and actually "shape our greater thinking's roads". This world may almost be called a "world-kindergarten of young souls", where the alphabet of the higher knowledge is laboriously learnt and the first theorems of the geometry of the cosmic body are mastered. Not Heaven, not quite earth, this is a transitionary rest-place, inhabited by powers and presences who maintain a fruitful commerce with the human world. Thanks to them, the elementary laws of causality are deduced, matter's movements are conned, and knowledge is "built from the cells of inference into a fixed body flasque and perishable". The observance of new facts leads to new formulations of the laws, and so,

 

A cage for the Infinite's great-eyed seraphim Thoughts

Was closed with a criss-cross of world-laws for bars

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      And hedged into a curt horizon's arc

      The irised vision of the Ineffable.¹⁰⁷

 

Second among the thought-realms is the world of "a subtle archangel race", associated powers endowed with a keener, a more integral, vision into the truth of things:

 

      A light of liberating knowledge shone

      Across the gulfs of silence in their eyes;...

      High architects of possibility

      And engineers of the impossible,

      Mathematicians of the infinitudes

      And theoricians of unknowable truths,...¹⁰⁸

 

This gifted race of imaginative thinkers are adepts in hypothesis, speculation and bold generalisation; they can reduce to an algebraic formula or an equation in Tensor Calculus the mysterious and manifold workings in four-dimensional Space-Time; and they can psycho-analyse the Cosmic-self itself! These are the symbol Einsteins, Plancks, Rutherfords and Freuds who draw Necessity's logarithmic tables and derive "the calculus of Destiny". Their massive insight— and their monumental effrontery!

 

      All was coerced by number, name and form;

      Nothing was left untold, incalculable.

      Yet was their wisdom circled with a nought:...¹⁰⁹

 

Third and highest among the thought-realms, to be reached in "a sublimer and more daring soar", is the habitation of the "sovereign Kings of Thought". Whereas in the first of the three realms of ordered thought, consciousness is "close and kin" to the human consciousness, here in the highest of the three realms, consciousness is more close and kin to the divine than to the human consciousness; all creatures here have a clear sense of infallible direction towards Truth; and they even dare to translate the unknown unthinkable into "a stripped imperative of conceptual phrase/Architectonic and inevitable."¹¹⁰ They are the infallible seers, who are also the

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 revealers through inspired utterance of the cosmic truths that they have seen:

 

      A single law simplessed the cosmic theme,

      Compressing Nature into a formula;

      Their titan labour made all knowledge one,

      A mental algebra of the Spirit's ways,

      An abstract of the living Divinity.

      Here the mind's wisdom stopped; it felt complete;...¹¹¹

 

 While these bright gods of Thought are engaged in the pursuit of the ultimate Truth, while they scheme and plan to snare and clasp her, she too—she the Power of Truth or Para Shakti—makes at last the appropriate response. As one knocks with persistent imaginative attention, one finds that the door opens at last; as one seeks without intermission, one finds what one is seeking for; and if one asks, the answer is given unto him. As the seers, the laureates of the Spirit, strain to see and hymn the splendours of what they see, the response comes from Above. The culminating human call is answered, Para Shakti responds, and man the seer and thinker finds wondrous vistas of new possibilities opening before him:

 

      A new beginning flowers in word and laugh,

      A new charm brings back the old extreme delight:.,.

      She has lowered her heights to the stature of our souls

      And dazzled our lids with her celestial gaze...¹¹²

 

Even so but a portion of the Infinite arrives and is recognised in the world of man; tying Truth down in human categories, we really crib and cabin it almost out of recognition:

 

Thus is it even with the seer and sage;

For still the human limits the divine:...¹¹³

 

 The proper thing would be, not to imprison her in our thought, but to leap out of the prison-house, and effect a total surrender to her:

 

Then the Unmanifest reflects his form

In the still mind as in a living glass;

The timeless Ray descends into our hearts

And we are rapt into eternity.¹¹⁴

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      XII

 

'The Heavens of the Ideal'

 

      The tireless traveller of the worlds, Aswapati continues the ascent, looking out for new worlds still:

 

      At each pace of the journey marvellous

      A new degree of wonder and of bliss,

      A new rung formed in Being's mighty stair,

      A great wide step trembling with jewelled fire.¹¹⁵

 

Beyond the triple realm of ordered thought are the "heavens of the ideal Mind.. ./The lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose".¹¹⁶ Such an inspired poem, mantric in its efficacy, as Sri Aurobindo's Rose of God is uncannily appropriate to this region of the deathless Rose, where at the feet of God unfolds the mystic bud, and the spiritual aspirant has his first real taste of bliss, light, power, life and love:.

 

      All the high gods who hid their visages

      From the soiled passionate ritual of our hopes,

      Reveal their names and their undying powers.

      A fiery stillness wakes the slumbering cells,

      A passion of the flesh becoming spirit,...¹¹⁷

 

While one end of the effulgent stair leads to the regions of the deathless Rose, the other end leads to "the mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame". The Rose is the symbol of bliss, while the Flame is the symbol of knowledge. Realisation could come both as the bliss of Brahman and as the knowledge of Brahman. In his poem Moon of the Two Hemispheres, Sri Aurobindo writes, using not the imagery of ascent but the imagery of the boat making for its port:

 

      A gold moon-ship sails or drifts ever

      In our spirit's skies and halts never, blue-keeled,

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      And it throws its white-blue fire on this grey field,

      Night's dragon loop,—speeding,

      The illumined star-thought sloops leading

      To the Dawn, their harbour home, to the Light unsealed,

      To the sun-face Infinite, the Untimed revealed.¹¹⁸

 

The Flame, on the other hand,

 

      .. .rises through the mortal's hemisphere,

      Till borne by runners of the Day and Dusk

      It enters the occult eternal Light

      And clambers whitening to the invisible Throne.¹¹⁹

 

 If the Rose guides the aspirant through world after coloured and ecstatic world towards "some far unseen epiphany", the Flame likewise guides him through "a pale-sapphire ether of God-mind/ Towards some gold Infinite's apocalypse."¹²⁰

 

      Aswapati is rather at home in both the kingdoms of the Ideal— the worlds of the Rose and the Flame.

 

      They offered to the Traveller at their gates

      A quenchless flame or an unfading flower,

      Emblem of a high kingdom's privilege.¹²¹

 

But he realises that even in these deathless kingdoms there is but the reign of partial—though intense—light; he therefore passes onto a "diviner sphere" where the Flame and the Rose are in perfect partnership:

 

There, joined in a common greatness, light and bliss,

All high and beautiful and desirable powers

Forgetting their difference and their separate reign

Become a single multitudinous whole.¹²²

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  XIII

 

'In the Self of Mind'

 

      It is as though Aswapati has passed the last camp and has finally touched Everest:

 

      At last there came a bare indifferent sky

      Where Silence listened to the cosmic Voice,...

      He stood on a wide arc of summit Space

      Alone with an enormous Self of Mind.¹²³

 

There are evidently no more heights to conquer, no more worlds to traverse; Aswapati has reached the centre of Silence, "the mystic birthplace of the soul". Is this the end, the very last lap of his quest?

 

      The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;

      Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.

      There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:

      His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.¹²⁴

 

 This, however, is no more than a temporary swoon in nirvana; "suddenly a luminous finger" falls on the great variety of terrestrial things, the earth-consciousness returns, and doubt infects everything. Aswapati cannot wholly get away from the memory of the limitations of man's life on earth. He remembers with a sting of shame the failure of man's efforts at thought and certainty:

 

      The magic hut of built-up certitudes

      Made out of glittering dust and bright moonshine

      In which it shrines its image of the Real,

      Collapsed into the Nescience whence it rose.¹²⁵

 

The total Silence is no answer to the total burden of human wail and woe. Aswapati therefore feels that,

 

      A greater Spirit than the Self of Mind

      Must answer to the questioning of his soul.¹²⁶

 

Yet where is he to look for the answer? Above, all is "blank and still"; around, an immense vacancy and silence; below, deep down below, only "the ocean surge of Life/Along the coasts of mortal Ignorance".¹²⁷ Is this the final Truth? Is the meaning of the cosmos no more than the balance of the opposing hemispheres of silence above, strife below, or of light above, darkness below?

 

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      XIV

 

'The World-soul'

 

      To the anxiously seeking eyes of Aswapati there now appears, "in a far-shimmering background of Mind-Space a glowing mouth...a luminous shaft...a recluse-gate...a veiled retreat...a tunnel of the depths of God."¹²⁸ This is a way out, this is an escape from the icy stare of immaculate Silence!

 

      As one drawn to his lost spiritual home...

      Into a passage dim and tremulous

      That clasped him in from day and night's pursuit,

      He travelled led by a mysterious sound.¹²⁹

 

He is lured on and on by murmurs, voices and harmonies untranslatable—reminiscent of the "jingling silver laugh of anklet bells" or,

 

      ...a vast forest's hymn,

      The solemn reminder of a temple gong,

      A bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles

      Ardent with ecstasy in a slumbrous noon,

      Or the far anthem of a pilgrim sea.¹³⁰

 

He reaches at last "a wondrous bodiless realm"; it is earth's perfect antidote, with the "intimacy of God" everywhere. It is the utter region of the World-Soul. One treads there on soul-ground, one contacts soul-stuff, one rises in soul-space, one experiences soul-joy. Here "in voiceless internatal trance" club together the souls that have emancipated themselves from the chain of birth and death; or they await "the adventure of new life". It is clear to Aswapati

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that he has penetrated to creation's centre where the wandering spirit finds,

 

...the silence of its starting-point

In the formless force and the still fixity

And brooding passion of the world of Soul.¹³¹

 

 By sure instinct he passes on,

 

Along a road of pure interior light,

Alone between tremendous Presences,

Under the watching eyes of nameless Gods,...

To the source of all things human and divine.¹³²

 

Here he beholds Purusha-Prakriti, the deathless Two-in-One,

 

A single being in two bodies clasped,

A diarchy of two united souls,

Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;...¹³³

 

And behind them stands "the sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled", whose mask is the making of the world and whose footfalls are the rages of the ages. Aswapati folds his hands in prayer, and to him is vouchsafed a sudden half-glimpse of "the ravishing, enigma of her eyes". He is now finally overwhelmed by her "implacable light and bliss", and he is like an atom of her illimitable self, a drop of the ocean of her ecstasy:

 

      Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,

      He cast from the rent stillness of his soul

      A cry of adoration and desire

      And the surrender of his boundless mind

      And the self-giving of his silent heart.

      He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.¹³⁴

Page 117

 XV

 

      'THE KINGDOMS OF THE GREATER

KNOWLEDGE'

 

      Returning to consciousness "after a measureless moment of the soul", Aswapati knows that here once and for all has "closed the finite's crawl to the Infinite". This is an experience without parallel, and Aswapati feels new-made; renewed, purified, strengthened:

 

      Absolved from the ligaments of death and sleep

      He rode the lightning seas of cosmic Mind

      And crossed the ocean of original sound;...¹³⁵

 

He gains new insights into the heavens above and the abyss below, and he grows in the "wisdom of the timeless Child". One more effort at self-transcendence, and all that he has aspired for himself are now finally his; he is heir to primal Energy and overwhelming Light; he reads the book of the Overmind and he tingles with the rapture of the Oversoul:

 

      A borderer of the empire of the Sun,

      Attuned to the supernal harmonies,

      He linked creation to the Eternal's sphere.

      His finite parts approached their absolutes,

      His actions framed the movements of the Gods,

      His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.¹³⁶

 

And that is the end of Aswapati's ascent as a typical representative of the race. He has realised all for himself, and he has seen the Possibility open to the race. He has reached after endless trials and heroic persistence the shining tablelands of the Kingdom of the Greater Knowledge. He has been thrilled by the mighty currents in the "kingdom of the Spirit's power and light", and his inviews of Reality and outviews of Possibility have coalesced into a clear and ardent hope for the future of man and of the earth.

Page 118

 SECTION C

 

      'THE BOOK OF THE DIVINE MOTHER'

 

 I

 

      THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE'

 

      The whole adventure of Evolution, the long weary climb of man himself up the steps of civilisation and culture, the castles of achievement and the inns of tranquillity on the way, all have made Aswapati what he is—the spearhead of the advance of the human race, humanity's worthiest representative and leader. Through yoga he has perfected himself, and it has helped him to gather in himself all the potentialities of the evolutionary adventure and make an ascent to the highest possible heights. He has surveyed the past, present and future—not in space and time alone, but also, and more particularly, beyond space and time. He has journeyed in the occult worlds of Night, Twilight, and Day, and he has traversed the heady stairs of Descent and Ascent. He is greatly enriched by all this experience, and he learns to aspire endlessly, to press on and on, to resist successfully the attacks of Falsehood and Ignorance.

 

      But Aswapati is dissatisfied still. Whatever the fruits of yogic aspiration and striving, they affect the yogin, but not the world as a whole. Terrestrial life remains what it has always been. The badges of human imperfection retain their shape and colour and character. A Presence, a Glory is lacking, "like Love when the Beloved's face is gone". There is indeed a tantalising quality about the Essence, the Cause, the Truth; from a distance it lures the searcher, but when he approaches it, it retreats and flies. Aswapati must seek out again—he will not accept defeat. The dim Possibility alone is not enough; it must be realised here on earth. The Power that alone can bring about this transformation must be sought out, and the way should be opened

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for the descent of the Power and the change of earth nature into supernature.

 

      Aswapati will now make a third yogic climb into the realms above and seek out the ultimate Power and plead for its descent into this world so that the desired transformation may be brought about. For a time the ascent is made "invincibly.. .without pause"; but presently he is confronted by "a tremendous choice". The horizon of known forms ends, the cloud-capped palaces of Nescience collapse without a trace:

 

      In an abysmal lapse of all things built

      Transcending every perishable support

      And joining at last its mighty origin,

      The separate self must melt or be reborn

      Into a Truth beyond the mind's appeal.¹³⁷

 

Aswapati sees extending before him a universe that defies every attempt at comprehension:

 

      Only a formless Form of self was left,

      A tenuous ghost of something that had been,

      The last experience of a lapsing wave

      Before it sinks into a bourneless sea,—...¹³⁸

 

But at last Something responds to Aswapati's passionate call; nor form nor motion nor word, it has nor mind nor heart nor passion; only a Being "formless, featureless and mute...uncreating, uncreated and unborn"...

 

      A silent Cause occult, impenetrable,—

      Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.¹³⁹

 

Aswapati has cantered across the manifested worlds and has reached the threshold of the White Radiance, the throne of the transcendent Divine; he is before the great Unknowable who faces him "with its dumb tremendous calm".

Page 120

   II

 

'The Adoration of the Divine Mother'

 

It is a tremendous moment for Aswapati. Terrestrial trappings fall from him, human vestiges vanish; separative identity is ended, the drop has been swallowed up by the ocean! Is this, then, the end? Not to be—the soul lost in the "boundless silence of the Self". For Aswapati himself, such is no doubt a consummation devoutly to be wished. But he is more than the individual, Aswapati. He is also a king, and he is the spearhead of aspiring and evolving humanity; he is the trustee of the earth's and humanity's future. An individual salvation, a personal leap into "a glad divine abyss" cannot redeem the earth nor hew pathways to humanity's advance. The bliss of nirvana is but the bliss of the Everlasting Nay.

 

But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,

And immortality in the secret heart,

The voice that chants to the creator Fire,

The symbolled OM, the great assenting Word,

The bridge between the rapture and the calm,

The passion and the beauty of the Bride,

The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,

The smile that saves, the golden peak of things? ¹⁴⁰

 

 But Silence is not death; an absolute power sleeps therein, and when it is awakened, the Nay can turn into the Everlasting Yea. Aswapati cannot lose himself in nirvana; he must 'beyond' it, or penetrate it, till the great Yea is awakened to grant him his and the earth's and humanity's innermost heart's and soul's desire.

 

      As he stands poised on the edge of being, desperately resisting and denying the finality of nirvana, his faith is answered and an auspicious Presence draws close to him and, like a mother, clasps him and Nature and the world to her breast. She is the All-Beautiful Mother of all godheads and all strengths, she is the mediatrix between earth

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and Heaven. Aswapati is lifted out of himself, cleansed of all dross, and finds new doors of perception. He sees for the first time, he hears, he feels, he knows with an utter immediacy and completeness. The knowledge invades and possesses him, strength streams into him, joy thrills him. The Divine Mother is the Arts and Sciences all:

 

      The spirit's alchemist energy is hers;

      She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire...

      Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,

      Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.¹⁴¹

 

Aswapati is overpowered as well as renewed; it is the end that makes the real beginning. He will surrender to the Mother in absolute trust, and she will fill him with her own strength and purpose:

 

      Only he longed to draw her presence and power

      Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;

      Only he yearned to call for ever down

      Her healing touch of love and truth and joy

      Into the darkness of the suffering world.¹⁴²

 

  

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III

     

'The House of the Spirit and the New Creation'

 

      Intent on achieving the conditions that will make possible world-transformation and a new creation, Aswapati retreats to the stillness of the soul and sits,

 

      ...like an incarnate hope

      Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.¹⁴³

 

He will not lose his links with the world, not even with the Inconscience; the Inconscient is infinite too and cannot be mocked! Not an escape but a total embrace, not an ignoration but a total comprehension of all matter and all life, is the way to the goal he has set before himself. From self-knowledge radiates world-knowledge, and the infinitesimal becomes the infinite:

 

      In this tremendous universality

      Not only his soul-nature and mind-sense

      Included every soul and mind in his,

      But even the life of flesh and nerve was changed

      And grew one flesh and nerve with all that lives;...

      His universal sympathy upbore,

      Immense like ocean, the creation's load...¹⁴⁴

 

In him are centred the world's strivings and hopes; he incarnates for the nonce the world's pathways to Possibility; he stands "fulfilled on the world's highest line". Beyond sense and feeling, beyond word and thought, comprehending everything but also transcending everything, carrying a world's plea but also implying the inevitable assent, Aswapati is now actor and witness, he is the child of time admitted to "the sessions of Infinity". Aswapati's culminating ascent and patient vigil amidst the desolate solitudes of the heights coerce the descent and the response. It is as though he has received a fresh accession of strength and a new extension of vision. He clearly catches glimpses of the great Possibility of world transformation:

 

      There was no sob of suffering anywhere;

      Experience ran from point to point of joy:

      Bliss was the pure undying truth of things...

      In these new worlds projected he became

      A portion of the universal gaze,

      A station of the all-inhabiting light,

      A ripple on a single sea of peace.¹⁴⁵

 

 He sees too "a hierarchy of lucent planes"—a hierarchy, not an anarchy, of lucent (not opaque) realms. The contours of limitation we see here on earth are not found there:

 

      The Powers that here betray our hearts and err,

      Were there sovereign in truth, perfect in joy,

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      Masters in a creation without flaw,

      Possessors of their own infinitude...

      The will obeyed the thought, the act the will.

      There was a harmony woven twixt soul and soul...

      A mystery drama of divine delight,

      A living poem of world-ecstasy,

      A kakemono of significant forms,... ¹⁴⁶

 

It is the vision of our heart's ultimate desire, it is the glimpse of the 'never-never-never realm' of absolute perfection, it is "Reality's summer-house on the beaches of the sea of Infinity".

 

      There are the "two vast negations", of course—'the Materialist Denial' and 'the Refusal of the Ascetic', as Sri Aurobindo calls them in The Life Divine. It is these negations that hinder the total marriage of matter and spirit and the emergence here of a new creation. But the negations shall be themselves denied:

 

      A new creation from the old shall rise,

      A Knowledge inarticulate find speech,

      Beauty suppressed burst into paradise bloom,

      Pleasure and pain dive into absolute bliss. ¹⁴⁷

 

Himself emancipated, Aswapati is nevertheless the bearer of the burden of the world's desire that climbs up to him "from the striving planes"; he is two beings now, "one wide and free above/One struggling, bound, intense, its portion here".¹⁴" He is the witness to the splendour above, he is also the voice of supplication from below. Defying the denials, he articulates earth's prayer to the Unknown, and listens for the answering footsteps,

 

... for the fiat of the Word

That comes through the still self from the Supreme. ^l49

Page 124

         IV

 

'The Vision and the Boon'

 

      The stage now is his own heart, the auditorium the "listening spaces of the soul". Aswapati looks inward, he thrills at the sacred stir and approach; mind, members, life, are "merged in ecstasy" and partake beatitude. "Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed a mighty Face" appears, the lips quiver, the words come. Aswapati is the elect, the transfigured, but he is asked to leave the Inconscient alone:

 

How shalt thou speak for men whose hearts are dumb,

Make purblind earth the soul's seer-vision's home

Or lighten the burden of the senseless globe?...

Awake not the immeasurable descent,

Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;

Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight.¹⁵⁰

 

Death must be unconquered still on earth, and the dramas played in the theatre of Time must still diet on suffering and pain. It is man's merit that he is awake, that he has memory and desire, that he cannot help aspiring "to change the cosmic dream". But the law of Chance and Death cannot be altered; man is condemned yet to be no more than "a link between the demigod and the beast"; he must veer between the pulls of darkness and light, and play endlessly this inconclusive game. But the wheels of the evolutionary advance, though they grind slowly or by fits and starts, grind also with a complete inevitability, and man is the base on which the citadels of the seeming impossible are to be reared in the future. Aswapati is to hope and persevere, not force the pace:

 

Traveller upon the bare eternal heights,

Tread still the difficult and dateless path

Joining the cycles with its austere curve

Measured for man by the initiate Gods...

Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

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      Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;

      Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire...

      All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.¹⁵¹

 

Having seen what he has seen, having glimpsed the great crests of future Possibility, must Aswapati still return to this bank empty-handed, hugging only the phantom of Hope and donning only the armour of Patience? A cry is wrung from Aswapati:

 

      How shall I rest content with mortal days

      And the dull measure of terrestrial things,

      I who have seen behind the cosmic mask

      The glory and the beauty of thy face? ¹⁵²

 

What use were waiting, when "all we have done is ever still to do", when humanity is apparently doomed to follow the circuit of folly and failure? How long this compromise between the beast and God? As the beast has been exceeded by man, shall not man in turn be superseded by a greater than man, the Superman?

 

      This high divine successor surely shall come

      Behind man's inefficient mortal pace,

      Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:...

      Inheritor of the toil of human time,

      He shall take on him the burden of the gods;...¹⁵³

 

 "He shall"—but when, oh when! The earth has waited long, and man has waited long; the Mother can remain indifferent no longer, and leave things to the slow process of change. The sterile plant of hope must put forth an immediate bud of promise so that the rich fruit may not be long withheld. Aswapati will not miss this golden moment and miss the promise of a hastened Dawn. Aswapati's winged words fly up to the Presence with their load of anguished memory and hope, of urgent prayer and entreaty:

 

      O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,

      Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride,

      Linger not long...

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      Let thy infinity in one body live,

      All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

      All-Love throb single in one human heart...

      Pack with the eternal might one human hour

      And with one gesture change all future time.¹³⁴

 

Aswapati has articulated his and the world's paramount desire and has sought the boon of an imminent divine advent. Let the Mother herself come down as a human being to lead the struggle against the Darkness and establish the reign of Light, Love and Immortality. Let it be no purblind groping after far horizons which, as one approaches them faster and faster, only fly further and further; let it rather be a purposeful forging ahead, a bold storming of the fortress of Nescience, under the leadership of a choice superior spirit. The Divine Mother now gives her wide consenting voice to expectant Aswapati:

 

      O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

      One shall descend and break the iron Law,

      Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power...

      Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,

      Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair

      And in her body as on his homing tree

      Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings...

      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.¹⁵⁵

 

 The words cease, and the splendour fades away; only the echoes of the promise fill the chambers of the soul and make new cadences that are untranslatable. Eternity recedes, and Time's slow tread is heard. Aswapati, having gained his heart's immaculate desire, returns to the

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familiar ways of the world. But it is to be no vain repetition of the old routine; he is sustained now by the vision splendid and the Promise nectarean. It is the lord of a spiritual empire who has imposed his mastery on the occult realms of the World Stair that now returns to where he started from and resumes,

 

 ...his mighty rounds

In the scant field of the ambiguous globe.¹⁵⁶

Page 128

  SAVITRI'S STORY

 

      SECTION A

 

      THE BOOK OF BIRTH AND QUEST'

 

      I

 

      'THE BlRTH AND CHILDHOOD

      OF THE FLAME'

 

      There are two backgrounds to the central drama played in Savitri. There is the cosmic background, sketched already in Books II and III—'The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds' and 'The Book of the Divine Mother', and there is the human background, to be sketched now in Book IV, 'The Book of Savitri's Birth and Quest'. The wider cosmic background includes the smaller human background, for they are both centred in Savitri. Aswapati's Yoga articulates the earth's cry for perfection, and in answer, the Power behind the cosmos promises the advent of Savitri. Aswapati's aspirations on behalf of evolving humanity are to be realised by Savitri, though only after a struggle. The struggle and the victory are the hard core of the drama of Savitri, the rest is epic scaffolding. The outer scaffolding being

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concluded, Sri Aurobindo now turns to the nearer scaffolding, that is, Savitri's earlier story upto the dawn of the fateful day in her and in the world's history. This recital takes four Books, made up of sixteen cantos. It is only when this spell of retrospective narration is over that the drama can be continued from the point where it has been left at the end of Book I, canto 2.

 

      Revolving earth participates in the cycle of the seasons. The sea of inconscience beats against the shores of infinity. Life appears obscurely, appears and disappears and reappears. The seasons pass, the seasons return. What is the far-off event towards which all creation is striving?

 

Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars

She moved towards some undisclosed event

And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time.¹⁵⁷

 

The seasons are turns in the rhythm, and mark "the symbol pageant of the changing year". First summer, with its violent noons and torrid light, "and the blue seal of a great burnished sky", follows the season of rain-tide, the sky is overcast with clouds, the furrowed earth receives the torrents, and heaven's waters trail and dribble through the drowned land. The dry soil is muddied and miry, earth assumes a dull-grey look, till "a last massive deluge" clears up the mess and leaves everything in "lulled repose". It is the creative mating of the sky and the earth, the secret fashioning of the cosmic purpose.

 

      A calmness neared as of the approach of God,

      A light of musing trance lit soil and sky

      And an identity and ecstasy

      Filled meditation's solitary heart.

      A dream loitered in the dumb mind of Space,

      Time opened its chambers of felicity,

      An exaltation entered and a hope:...¹⁵⁸

 

As the days and months pass, as "three thoughtful seasons" scan their pregnant hours, there is the expectancy of a flame, a mighty

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birth to come. Summer has given place to autumn, which in turn is followed by winter: the season of mellow fruitfulness is followed by dew-time conservation, and the "tranquil beauty of the waning year":

 

      Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves

      And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;

      His advent was a fire of irised hues,

      His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.¹⁵⁹

 

Million-hued, joy blossoms forth, and to live is very ecstasy; all sights, all voices, breathe new charm; colours fuse into patterns of delight, while cries coalesce into litanies, and all Nature is at beauty's festival.

 

      Spring always signals the "arrival of joy", but a special and unique joy is Aswapati's when, in answer to his yearning and the earth's, "a mediating ray" touches the human vessel and lights a new lamp. There is verily "a consanguinity of earth and heaven", for ever since the earth-plasm first tingled with life, heaven is invading earth and pressing "perfection on life's stumbling powers". But although relapses are easy and success eludes, the strivings continue without intermission and heaven drives the earth to new attempts at reaching infinitude. At the culmination of many such adventures in transcendence there is this new descent invoked by the pressure of Aswapati's Yoga—Savitri is conceived, Savitri is born. An immaculate event in this symbol spring of humanity's reviving year, the child is "as yet a prophecy only and a hint"; but she is more, much more, when new dawns fill her with beauty and purpose:

 

      Even in her childish movements could be felt

      The nearness of a light still kept from earth,...

      As needing nothing but its own rapt flight

      Her nature dwelt in a strong separate air

      Like a strange bird with large rich-coloured breast

      That sojourns on a secret fruited bough,

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       Lost in the emerald glory of the woods

      Or flies above divine unreachable tops.¹⁶⁰

 

Savitri's childhood and girlhood are a wonder apart, for while she is apparently at home in the world of Nature and man, she is also not of it, she is ruled by an occult godhead, and it is as though,

 

      Invisibly protected from our sense

      The Dryad lives drenched in a deeper ray

      And feels another air of storms and calms

      And quivers inwardly with mystic rain.¹⁶¹

 

The traditional stories of "Krishna Lila" reveal the boy who was also God, the innocence that was also Wisdom, the baby-tenderness that was also sovereign Power. Likewise, in the life of the child and girl Savitri, a tenuous line separates the human from the divine:

 

      As from the soil sprang glory of branch and flower,

      As from the animal's life rose thinking man,

      A new epiphany appeared in her.

      A mind of light, a life of rhythmic force,

      A body instinct with hidden divinity

      Prepared an image of the coming god;...¹⁶²

 

As the years add to her strength of limb and grace of form, as the movements of her heart gather the world into her and endear her to all, even so her 'solitary greatness' only grows and grows, a warrior will paces "in her city of strength/Inviolate, guarding Truth's diamond throne".¹⁶³

 

      Sri Aurobindo's description of the birth and childhood of Savitri is far from conventional. The legend and the symbol intertwine and contribute to their mutual enrichment. The magnificent account of the burst of rain-tide, the rumble of thunder and the dazzle of lightning, the "emissary javelins" and the "surge and hiss and onset of huge rain", the assault of the sky on the recumbent earth, the downpour and drip, the fullness and the exhaustion, the contentment and the lulled repose, all suggestively lead to the promised miraculous

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event of Savitri's conception and her birth, "three thoughtful seasons" later, in the season of spring. The cosmic and terrestrial planes meet in an intimate embrace, and out of the flux and the tension, the passion and the creative will, is born the child Savitri who shall be the redeemer, the saviour. Of the child Lucy, William Wordsworth writes:

 

      Three years she grew in sun and shower,

      Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower

      On earth was never sown;

      This Child I to myself will take....'

 

 The occult powers behind the phenomena of Nature lend Savitri their graces and their strengths, as Nature moulds Lucy; but Savitri draws to herself other powers too, from the home and base of all:

 

      An invisible sunlight ran within her veins

      And flooded her brain with heavenly brilliances

      That woke a wider sight than earth could know.¹⁶⁴

 

She is the dream made real, "an image made of heaven's transparent light", a "perfect whole", harmonious, immense and various; a "golden bridge" spanning earth and heaven.

 

    

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II

 

'The Growth of the Flame'

 

      Vyasa is succinctness itself when he records in the Mahabharata: "And, in course of time, the girl (Savitri) attained maidenhood". Just that. But Sri Aurobindo is nothing if not elaborate, richly yet relevantly elaborate. The child grows into the girl, and the girl becomes a young woman. A common enough occurrence though always compact of wonder and romance; how much more so when the girl is Savitri!

 

      Savitri is a king's daughter. Her father Aswapati rules over the land of Madra, as rich and variegated in its landscape as in its spiritual 'inscape', the home of beauty and grace, of reverie and trance. An ideal background for the fostering of the "incarnate Flame" that is Savitri:

 

      Over her watched millennial influences

      And the deep godheads of a grandiose past

      Looked on her and saw the future's godheads come

      As if this magnet drew their powers unseen.¹⁶⁵

 

      The more immediate influences, however, are the usual educative and human forces that help to foster the growth of a child in a properly adjusted society. Beauty in art and Nature, "the harmony of a rich culture's tones", the discipline of ethics and philosophy, the climb of the mind to eagle heights, the leaps of thought "crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond", all play their part in Savitri's mental and spiritual evolution. Sculpture and painting, music and architecture, dance and poetry, the many arts and crafts, these are pressed into service too, and Savitri masters them, and is moulded by them. Nor are the intellectual disciplines and knowledges ignored—astronomy, mathematics and physics that make a "theorized diagram of mind and life". Yet Savitri thirsts for something vaster still, for the knowledge that exceeds the knowledges, for the "art and wisdom of the Gods". Something of this obscurely stirs within her;

 

      ...waiting as yet for form,

      It asked for objects around which to grow

      And natures strong to bear without recoil

      The splendour of her native royalty,...¹⁶⁶

 

She still needs the cause and field of action, the human media that can both receive and give and thus create "a transcendent action's sphere".

 

      It is but natural that growing Savitri should turn to human companionship and camaraderie—even love, perhaps, the love of universal sisterhood. She sees others as "her soul's reflections, complements, counterparts", which are bound to her own spirit "by ties divine". Cannot she clasp in one immense embrace the whole body of created things? But her friends and companions miss

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the main intent of her life or are put out by the fierce glare of her all consuming love:

 

      Only a few responded to her call:

      Still fewer felt the screened divinity...¹⁶⁷

 

 She is their leader more than a friend, she outpaces them, and when nearest to them she is yet "divine and far". Varied is the stream of humanity that passes her by—some are aloof and admire her, some approach her with desire and recoil in discomfiture, and some others still stand troubled and tantalised in the extreme,

 

      Inapt to meet divinity so close,

      Intolerant of a Force they could not house.¹⁶⁸

 

Although passing her days in this world and among these hearts, Savitri feels unengaged yet in the secret infinities of her heart and soul; none strikes a responsive chord within, and nowhere she finds "her partner of high tasks". Meantime the news of her rare beauty and power runs "murmuring on the lips of men/Exalted and sweet like an inspired verse".¹⁶⁹ But neither homage nor fame lessens her solitariness; like a goddess in a crowded temple, she is worshipped marvelously, but none dares to claim her; she must live amidst them awhile yet until "her hour of fate" projects before her, her God to claim and be claimed.

 

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  III

 

'The Call to the Quest'

 

      In the splendour of her radiant beauty, Savitri strikes her beholders as a being verily divine; and so men are content to worship, and are afraid to ask her hand in marriage. Such is the simple statement in the old legendary narrative. Vyasa adds further that king Aswapati, finding that there are no suitors for Savitri, becomes sad in consequence. He accordingly asks her to look for herself and choose a husband who may be worthy of her. This essential situation is retained by Sri Aurobindo, though he elaborates and embellishes it so as to fill the canvas of the vast symbol drama that is superimposed on the simple legendary one.

 

      While Savitri dwells "apart in herself" though circling humanity with her love and comprehending with, "her spirit's large and free delight...the ardent-hued magnificent lives of animal and bird and flower and tree",¹⁷⁰ a day dawns that is like other dawns, yet burdened with a special destiny; a trembling expectancy fills the air, a lyric coil cries "among the leaves"; and King Aswapati's awakened ear catches the accents of earth's "wordless hymn to the Ineffable" and the answering word that leaps from "some far sky of thought". The word of accusation and exhortation, heard so often before, is heard again. Why would man tread this dolorous way of ignorance and misery when the way of knowledge and happiness is there before him?

 

      O petty adventurers in an infinite world

      And prisoners of a dwarf humanity,

      How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind

      Around your little self and petty things? ¹⁷¹

 

The lesser tasks engage us, the greater remain unattempted, unachieved. Mortal mind obscures these greater tasks and the veils must needs be pierced and broken through. Earth is potentially the kin-soil of heaven, and deserves to be cultivated as such. Invisible immortal visitants flame past our doors, but we do not recognise them, nor align ourselves with them. The trapped divinity seeks release in vain. The race of seers, the sages and the poets, have exhorted us in vain. The great illusion has us still in thrall, and we wriggle helplessly, plan purposelessly, and fail.

 

      As the stern voice of admonition and compassion is stilled at last, there advances towards Aswapati, "like a shining answer from the gods", his darling daughter, Savitri. It is a preordained concatenation:

 

      There came the gift of a revealing hour:...

      A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;

      As in a golden vase's poignant line

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      They seemed to carry the rhythmic sob of bliss

      Of earth's mute adoration towards heaven

      Released in beauty's cry of living form

      Towards the perfection of eternal things.¹⁷²

 

It is his child still, he sees the familiar face and limbs, he meets the eyes lighted up with love, but he now sees them as the vessel of the immortal spirit, as Yasoda sees Krishna when he opens his mouth and reveals all the worlds to her. Savitri is no mere girl, but the "traveller of eternity"; she sojourns amidst ordinary humanity, yet is also "armed for the splendid hazard" of her life; but even she cannot abide alone any longer "missalled in aureate virginity". She shall now go out into the world and choose the Lord of her life:

 

      Depart where love and destiny call your charm.

      Venture through the deep world to find thy mate...

      The lyrist of thy soul's most intimate chords

      Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute...

      Ascend from Nature to divinity's heights;

      Face the high gods, crowned with felicity,

      Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.¹⁷³

 

      As Savitri receives the full impact of these words, it is as though the mantra, slowly sinking in the yogin ear, starts rhythmic strains and induces "an ecstasy and an immortal change"; a "greatness in her life" is sown, the seed of the great ecstasy and change that are to come. Savitri spends the day and night in a hushed fullness of anticipation, and when another day dawns, she has already left her father's roof, and the palace wakes "to its own emptiness".

 

   

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   IV

 

'The Quest'

 

      From the shelter of her parents' home and city, Savitri loses herself in the wide world's unchartered ways, and feels dazzled by the unfolding panorama of "new brilliant scenes" and divers soil and country, clans and peoples. She is a part of all she meets, the very stars and winds are her dear comrades, and she feels sometimes as though she is but tracing "again a journey often made". She sees and remembers, or she remembers and sees, and from her silent heights she can peer through the dim play of appearance. She sees multi-foliate Nature and million-hued humanity, and winds her way through the still untravelled world:

 

Her carven chariot with its fretted wheels

Threaded through clamorous marts and sentinel towers

Past figured gates and high dream-sculptured fronts

And gardens hung in the sapphire of the skies,

Pillared assembly halls with armoured guards,...¹⁷⁴

 

Not populous far-famed cities only but the humbler haunts of common folk also draw Savitri's attention and affectionate gaze. The virgin silences of unfrequented hills and valleys have a deep purpose of their own for it is there the great Creatrix nurses "her symbol mysteries" and guards for "her pure-eyed sacraments":

 

The valley clefts between her breasts of joy,

Her mountain altars for the fires of dawn

 And nuptial beaches where the ocean couched

And the huge chanting of her prophet woods.¹⁷⁵

 

      Deep in the woods' recesses are the hermitages of the wise, and Savitri visits them too and studies the lives of the "strong king-sages" and their "young grave disciples". They are not as other men, but live "immaculate in tranquil heights of self"; and their ministry makes their neophytes "comrades of the cosmic urge/No longer chained to their small separate selves".¹⁷⁶ They are masters of knowledge, and "vessels of the cosmic Force"; they are pacifiers and harmonisers, and they are the healers of the "hard and wounded world". And when they lisp in numbers, they sing "Infinity's names and deathless powers/In metres that reflect the moving worlds".¹⁷⁷ Active or

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passive, in speech or in silence, in creation or in contemplation, these wise children of the forest help the world in its toils and guard and extend the immaculate treasures of the spirit.

 

      As Savitri glides in and out of these hermitages and haunts of the wise, her sensibilities are quickened still further and she feels "the kinship of eternal calm". Yet her quest keeps her moving on and on, for she is yet to find what she has set out to seek. She calls the Powers to her help, and hopes that she may not be "overwhelmed by the immensity" of the world stretching before her. Still Nature lures her on, still she wanders, gazes, communes; the crickets' cry rings in her ears, the serpentine road seems an endless coil; the desert sands are bleak, the jungle voices are eerie; yet she will persevere in her quest, however hard the earth and torridly oppressive the sky:

 

      The months had fed the passion of the sun

      And now his burning breath assailed the soil.

      The tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth;

      All was licked up as by a lolling tongue.

      The spring winds failed; the sky was set like bronze.¹⁷⁸

Page 139

  SECTION B

 

'THE BOOK OF LOVE'

 

  I

 

'The Destined Meeting Place'

 

The "destined spot and hour", however, draw close. Naught happens but has its time and setting in the preordained cosmic play. Savitri now approaches a region,

 

      .. .of soft and delicate air

      That seemed a sanctuary of youth and joy,

      A highland world of free and green delight

      Where spring and summer lay together and strove

      In indolent and amicable debate,

      Inarmed, disputing with laughter who should rule.¹⁷⁹

 

Sri Aurobindo's description of the 'other Eden', this 'demi-Paradise', recalls Milton's description of Paradise before the Fall. Man, bird and beast are at peace with themselves and with circumambient Nature. Sri Aurobindo's fancy takes wings and snaps a scene of almost other-world felicity:

 

      Pale waters ran like glimmering threads of pearl.

      A sigh was straying among happy leaves;

      Cool-perfumed with slow pleasure-burdened feet

      Faint stumbling breezes faltered among flowers.

      The white crane stood, a vivid motionless streak,

      Peacock and parrot jeweled soil and tree,

      The dove's soft moan enriched the enamoured air

      And fire-winged wild-drakes swam in silvery pools.

      Earth couched alone with her great lover Heaven,

      Uncovered to her consort's azure eye...¹⁸⁰

 

A space sanctified, a meeting-place of earth and heaven, a home for the profession of love and beauty, a primeval realm for the reign of peace, a retreat for solitude and fresh creation,

 

      This was the scene which the ambiguous Mother

      Had chosen for her brief felicitous hour;...¹⁸¹

 

Here love will confront Savitri, and her quest—so long pursued and so often renewed—will end in the glory of the recognition and acceptance of love.

 

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  II

 

'Satyavan'

 

      As Savitri's "high carven car" winds its way through the wilderness on this day of predestination, she spies beyond the road deep recesses and groves and even catches the accents of speech:

 

      Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,

      Cry answering to low insistent cry.¹⁸²

 

A "single path, shot thin and arrowlike" seems to lead into the half-hidden bowers of peace, and while following it, suddenly he appears,

 

      .. .against the forest verge

      Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.

      As if a weapon of the living Light,

      Erect and lofty like a spear of God

      His figure led the splendour of the morn.¹⁸³

 

He is like "a wide daybreak of the gods", his body—albeit a youthful rishi's—is "a lover's and a king's". Destiny had sent him here to be the "foster-child of beauty and solitude", and he has grown in strength of limb and transparent lucidity of soul, mastering all knowledge and finding repose in the Spirit.

 

      This day of all days, Satyavan has—as if out to keep an appointment—strayed from his customary paths and gravitated towards the "forest's flowering verge", and there the vision of beauty,

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the divine shock of love, overwhelms him. At first Savitri from her car gazes vaguely about her, drinking in the loveliness of the place, and seeing him too, though not with particular intent; but presently her vision settles on him, the magic recognition takes place, and all is changed. Is he the genius of the spot? He looks "a king of life outlined in delicate air".¹⁸⁴ But the mere thinking faculty soon abdicates its function, waves of sudden ecstasy beat upon her, she is caught in a "mystic tumult from her depths", she is smitten by the arrows of pain and desire, the birth-pangs of a great new emotion throw her into convulsion, and at last she flings open the doors of her soul to this splendorous Sun. Their eyes meet, and the great alchemy works:

 

Then trembling with the mystic shock her heart

Moved in her breast and cried out like a bird

Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring bough.¹⁸⁵

 

The reins of the horses are drawn instantaneously back, the chariot stands "like an arrested wind"; and Satyavan, now alerted into attention,

 

...looked out from his soul's doors

And felt the enchantment of her liquid voice

Fill his youth's purple ambiance and endured

The haunting miracle of a perfect face.¹⁸⁶

 

Is this a new divinity undreamt of before? Satyavan misses his moorings and flounders "as in fire"; he is lost, another has seized him entire; even in the mere "sight's embrace", infinity merges with infinity. As dazed Satyavan dares Savitri's eyes:

 

He met in her regard his future's gaze,

A promise and a presence and a fire,

Saw an embodiment of aeonic dreams,...¹⁸⁷

 

No chance or new meeting is this, though it seems such to be; nor aliens nor strangers are they, but soulmates since the beginning of

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things, and now awakening into a new recognition of each other by the roseate dawn of love.

 

      Love is a spiraling phenomenon, its base is on earth and earthy, its crown is in the highest heavens; its power has a uniform potency, though the effects may differ at different points of the spiral. At the lower reaches, there are not wanting debasing and corrupting influences that cheapen and poison love. But in its essential movement and in its proper field, "Love is a glory from eternity's sphere". None is really dead to love, but each waits "like an unopened flower" for the destined moment of unfolding. Love is the "child-god" who variously accomplishes the blaze of transfigurement in which man and woman run into mutual recognition, and each exclaims:

 

      Behold the one

      For whom my life has waited long unfilled,

      Behold the sudden sovereign of my days.¹⁸⁸

 

There is marvellous communion between heart and heart, limb and limb, and all the world seems to be charged with the beauty of heaven. Such a moment has come to Satyavan and Savitri:

 

      Attracted as in heaven star by star,

      They wondered at each other and rejoiced

      And wove affinity in a silent gaze.

      A moment passed that was eternity's ray,

      An hour began, the matrix of new Time.¹⁸⁹

 

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     III

 

'Satyavan and Savitri'

 

      There is recognition in the depths of their being, joy wells up, yet they strive for understanding speech. There is resistance from "the screen of the external sense", the inner sight is impeded, the right words are slow in coming. Satyavan first comes out of the trance of fascination and apostrophises her as one might a goddess who has swum across one's view:

 

      Whence hast thou dawned filling my spirit's days,

      Brighter than summer, brighter than my flowers,

      Into the lonely borders of my life,

      O Sunlight moulded like a golden maid?¹⁹⁰

 

Not unused to the denizens of the upper air, Satyavan has in the past heard the "centaur's wizard song", glimpsed the apsaras in their abandon, and "beheld the princes of the Sun"; has she come too from "the Thunderer's worlds?" Perhaps she will condescend to abide with mortals:

 

      If our time-vexed affections thou canst feel,

      Earth's ease of simple things can satisfy,

      If thy glance can dwell content on earthly soil,

      And this celestial summary of delight,

      Thy golden body, dally with fatigue

      Oppressing with its grace our terrain, while

      The frail sweet passing taste of earthly food

      Delays thee and the torrent's leaping wine,

      Descend. Let thy journey cease, come down to us.¹⁹¹

 

His father's hermitage is near, where "bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life"; there she can find a "resting chamber" fit for her.

 

      Savitri, shaking herself free from the magic web of his echoing voice, tells her name—"I am Savitri, Princess of Madra"—and asks in turn for his, and why he is content to abide in the forest's inaccessible solitudes. He tells his story too; he is Satyavan, the Shalwa King Dyumatsena's son—but a king no more, for he has lost eyesight and kingdom both:

 

      Outcast from empire of the outer light,

      Lost to the comradeship of seeing men,

      He sojourns in two solitudes, within

      And in the solemn rustle of the woods.¹⁹²

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And so has Satyavan been led to cultivate "the frankness of the primal earth", with the sunlight's companionship in day-time, and "the moonbeam's silver ecstasy" shaping his sleep at night. Nature's ministry has been gentle and unfailing, and has given him intimations vast and profound; kingfisher, swan, pranked butterfly, peacock, spotted deer, these and other "high beauty's visitants" have found ways of reaching to his soul. Above all he says,

 

I carved my vision out of wood and stone;

I caught the echoes of a word supreme

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity

And listened through music for the eternal Voice.¹⁹³

 

He has seen fragments of humanity, the Self obscured beyond recognition, each living "in himself and for himself alone"; and he has "sat with the forest sages in their trance" and pierced the veil of the many to reach the presence of the One. Yet matter's stubborn resistance to change has defeated him, he has failed to convert the Inconscience, and Death and the Void are giant spectres still. If only Savitri would share Satyavan's life, could they not with their joint efforts succeed where singly he had failed?

 

      But Savitri would like Satyavan to continue speaking—it is music to her ears—till her spirit's intimations arm her 'mortal mind' with the power to see and the will to accept. And Satyavan's heart melts in "many-coloured waves of speech" and floods her with the joy of growing recognition. Satyavan describes his ardours and longings, his strivings and realisations; he has roamed in dark caverns with thought for his lantern; he has made a deep study of logic and semantics, ethics and metaphysics; he has seen through matter's atomic universe, its "secret laws and sorceries"; he has explored aesthetics, and sought in beauty and art the clue to the still elusive ultimate Truth; yet one or the other has always failed him, the hither or the thither shore. But Savitri's very appearance is like a cure for all Satyavan's earlier frustrations. From his heart's depths comes the cry:

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       A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze

       Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;

       A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song

      Of flaming gods...

      Come nearer to me from thy car of light

      On this green sward disdaining not our soil...

      O my bright beauty's princess Savitri,

      By my delight and thy own joy compelled

      Enter my life, thy chamber and thy shrine.¹⁹⁴

 

"I know that thou and only thou art he," says Savitri as she steps down from her car "with a soft and faltering haste". Then follows a passage of great sensuous beauty touched also by the accents of the purer poetry of the soul. The woman whose whole response has been awakened offering her love and herself to the man who has kindled this fire of ardour and adoration in her, is the archetype of the world's most thrilling and most moving romantic poetry. There is a traditional ritual about this sacrificial offering which is the basis of life's perennial resurrection. In India from times immemorial it is the girl who advances, bashfully yet bravely, with garland in hand, and so does Savitri here:

 

      A candid garland set with simple forms

      Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,

      The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.

      Profound in perfume and immersed in hue

      They mixed their yearning's coloured signs and made

      The bloom of their purity and passion one.

      A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms

      She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,...

      She bowed and touched his feet with

      worshipping hands;...¹⁹⁵

 

Satyavan humbly bends to receive her and gather her into an embrace, and Savitri feels "her being flow into him as in waves/A river pours into a mighty sea".¹⁹⁶ The river has found the sea, the mortal has

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wakened into Eternity. This is the phoenix hour, the time of their ineffable union. They are married already in the eyes of Heaven, and the symbol rites take their own course:

 

      On the high glowing cupola of the day

      Fate tied a knot with morning's halo threads

      While by the ministry of an auspice-hour

      Heart-bound before the sun, their marriage fire,

      The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse

      Took place again on earth in human forms:...¹⁹⁷

 

The priest-wind chants the mantras, the leaves hymn the "choral whisperings", and "one human moment was eternal made".

 

      Now Satyavan leads Savitri to their future home, and calm and content possess her heart. But before she can rest in this felicity she needs must return to Madra and tell Aswapati the choice she has made. But she will return, nor ever again agree to part from Satyavan. So saying she mounts her car once more, and speeds "swift-reined, swift-hearted" towards her parental home; but in the "still lucidities of sight's inner world" she is with Satyavan still in his hermit thatch behind the nave of forest trees.

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 SECTION C

 

'THE BOOK OF FATE'

 

  I

 

      THE WORD OF FATE'

 

      In the old legendary story, when Savitri returns to her father, she finds the Sage Narad with him. When she says she has chosen Satyavan as her consort, Narad ejaculates that it is a wrong decision: not because Satyavan is not worthy in every way, but because he is fated to die in a year's time. Aswapati asks her to choose again, but Savitri says that she can but choose once. Narad now advises the king to allow the marriage to take place.

 

      This raises a number of questions. What is predestination? If fixed fate is a fact, of what use is free will? What is fate, after all? Is there really no armour against fate? If all is predestination what is left of man's individuality?

 

      Again, in the old story, Savitri not only defies fate but changes its course. Fear of death will not make her give up Satyavan, but there is more in it than the emotional constancy of love. There is stern resolve as well. And there is some secret source of strength that feeds this resolve and makes her victory possible.

 

      In his epic, Sri Aurobindo gives the key place to this act of will on Savitri's part. It is a positive act of commitment to a chosen course, come what may. She will be no thistledown of fate. She will not be deflected from her chosen path by these advancing intimations of predestination.

 

      In this tense psychological drama as it is unfolded in 'The Book of Fate' by Sri Aurobindo, four characters participate: King Aswapati, his queen, Sage Narad and Savitri herself. The queen is just human, and hence sees the problem of love and marriage and fate and death and widowhood in the ordinary way of the world. She would

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take the line of least resistance. Avoid, if possible, the decree of fate; or raise her voice against the rank injustice of it all. Aswapati is the enlightened man, the seer-king, and hence he sees the problem in a wider perspective. Narad the divine-seer can see even further into the future than the king.

 

      But while all three can only talk of what is in their minds, or prevent hasty speech from uttering itself, it is Savitri alone who has to decide: hers is the call to action: she is the protagonist of the play here. Sri Aurobindo accordingly presents these four—the queen, the king, the sage and Savitri—as an ascending order of consciousness, from the mental to the supramental. Savitri needs no advice from Narad nor any encouragement or consolation from her parents. Her decision is made: she knows her way, and she knows that she must go her own way alone. It is the other three who engage in this drama of question and answer, doubt and assurance, and clarify the developing psychological action.

 

      There is one other point, too, to be remembered. In Sri Aurobindo's epic, there is a double significance to every action. If the date of Satyavan's death is pre-determined, so is the common plight of humanity also pre-determined. Man is a prey to desire, incapacity and death. He can whimper, he can wail, but he cannot change his destiny. Fate holds him in complete thrall: It cannot be affected by tears or through prayer. Savitri's decision has thus a special significance in the symbolic action. She is going to redeem, not her husband alone, but humanity also at the same time. Hers, then, is verily a redeemer's role in the action of, the poem. Sri Aurobindo therefore puts into Narad's mouth words that have a special relevance to these two problems: the problem of fate and the role of the redeemer in human affairs.

 

      Before we turn to the poem, it would be instructive to refer to Sri Aurobindo's own views on these subjects as outlined in his more formal writings. In the Indian view, 'fate' and 'karma' are inter-related: "We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate

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created by us binds us...Still, we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilizing fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma..."¹⁹⁸

 

      The cosmos is not a mere machine, all a Law and an unalterable Process; there is a Spirit behind it all, which is the Process as well as the Power that regulates it. "The destiny which binds our physical being", writes Sri Aurobindo, "binds it so long or in so far as a greater law does not intervene. Action belongs to the physical part of us, it is the physical outcome of our being; but behind our surface is a freer life power, a freer mind power which has another energy and can create another destiny and bring it in to modify the primary plan, and when the soul and self emerges, when we become consciously spiritual beings, that change can cancel or wholly remodel the graph of our physical fate."¹⁹⁹ The so-called finality of fate is thus not quite so final, after all. Fixed fate doesn't rule out free will. The perversity of the outer ego is not the source of this will; on the other hand, there is a deeper centre and it is from there the true self wills and achieves:

 

But the Will within, exceeding the moments of Time, knows

all these, and the action of Nature in us is an attempt, we might

say, to work out under the difficult conditions of a natural and

egoistic ignorance what is foreseen in full supramental light by

the inner Will and Knowledge.²⁰⁰

 

When fate seems to bar one's path, there is one recourse possible: appeal to spiritual force. All is possible then. The law itself may be exceeded, and predestination held at bay or even effectively turned back:

 

...as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old 

predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new

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factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other

than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the

present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then

the divine election which ensures the future.²⁰¹

 

Savitri is herself the manifestation of the Divine Grace, and it— becomes her duty—the law of her nature—to defy fate and fight the battle for Satyavan and for mankind. She is the avatar, the world-redeemer, and hers is the responsibility to realise, to establish:

 

...something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial

evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through

successive stages towards the Divine.²⁰²

 

      To return to the poem: in the first canto of 'The Book of Fate' we are back in the Madra kingdom. Savitri hasn't arrived in her father's palace yet, but towards this home of the royal seer, Aswapati, the divine seer, Narad, descends from the clouds:

 

      In silent bounds bordering the mortal's plane

      Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace

      Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise

      Came chanting through the large and lustrous air.²⁰³

 

Narad is Heaven's minstrel and messenger in one, but he can jumble his functions well so that his deeper purposes cannot at once be seen. What brings him from the spaces of heaven to "these rooms of a see-saw game of death and life?" As he wings and sings his way to Aswapati's abode, the seer rapidly reads as from an open book the secrets of life; the cosmic panorama unrolls before him, he passes from mind to the realm of material things; and what he sees, what he reads, he tunes to immortal song. As he gazes at the terrestrial play, his mood changes, his voice quivers with pathos and pity, and he chants the still sad music of humanity. He sings of the beginnings, "how stars were made and life began"; he sings of dumb matter and its veiled self, "its blind unerring occult mystery"; he sings the saga of darkness yearning towards the Light, of death aspiring to

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immortality; of man and the blossoming of his mind and the throb of his soul and the ache of his brooding Love; and also of his future and his destined rise to the godhead:

 

      He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born,

      Of Godhead throwing off at last its veil,

      Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,

      Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,...²⁰⁴

 

As he steps into Aswapati's palace, Narad's face wears "a beautiful mask of antique joy", and the king and queen give him a royal welcome, and for an hour he feasts their ears with his "measured chant" bespeaking the tale of human joys and woes:

 

      He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love

      With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,...

      And one day it shall hear a blissful voice

      And in the garden of the Spouse shall bloom

      When she is seized by her discovered lord.²⁰⁵

 

Even as Narad sings of this transfiguring marvel, the miracle of the bud of the human heart's sudden efflorescence under the warmth of Love, there appears Savitri herself before them as if in quick fulfilment of the sage's prophetic song. Narad himself is taken aback, but as he flings on her "his vast immortal look", knowledge streams into him, and there is nothing that he cannot see. Yet he holds back this shaft of foreknowledge but rather gives vent to his seeming sense of wonder and glorious surmise. Who is this marvel, the flame-born, the beauty-arrayed? Can the halo of love bring about such a wondrous sea-change and cast a miracle-light on a human frame? Narad is so touched with ecstasy that he cries out to her:

 

      From what green glimmer of glades

      Retreating into dewy silences

      Or half-seen verge of waters moon-betrayed

      Bringst thou this glory of enchanted eyes?...

      Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown

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      Hastening bright-hued through the green tangled earth,

      Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird's call.²⁰⁶

 

      Narad has travelled oft in the realms of this earth and the other earths; but this vision is like no other he has seen. Here is spring poised towards summer, here is morning making towards the noon, here girlhood glows into womanhood, and here is earth's hope straining towards fruition. Narad's sudden immortal gaze has seized the truth behind the layers of appearance, he knows Savitri's high destiny on earth, he knows too how her path will be strewn with difficulty and danger. Although he has striven to rein back knowledge, the words escape him all the same:

 

      O thou who hast come to this great perilous world

      Now only seen through the splendour of thy dreams,

      Where hardly love and beauty can live safe,

      Thyself a being dangerously great,...

      As high, as happy might thy waking be!

      If for all time doom could be left to sleep!²⁰⁷

 

The dreaming—and the waking; and the shadow of doom in between, this is what Narad sees, and the word is almost spoken. The dream is vivid, being decked in golden hues. Savitri has been to an enchanted grove, she has drunk a joy from no earthly cup, her soul has "answered to a Word unknown". The "ravishing flutes of heaven" are still echoing in the secret chambers of her heart. The "thrill of a remembered clasp" burns into her still. But can reality rise to the expectation of the splendour of her dreams? Is the world of reality safe enough for love and beauty to live in peace? Isn't doom always round the comer, as it were!

 

      Narad has spoken one word too many; he checks himself too late. Aswapati has "marked the dubious close" and inferred behind the words a sinister hint, but he covers up his anxiety with tact and asks the sage rather to bless his child, who is his treasure and his sole hope and only heir:

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      Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,

      And let thy blessing chant that this fair child

      Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life

      Around her from her lucid heart of love,

      Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth

      And cast like a happy snare felicity.²⁰⁸

 

What can Narad say, knowing as he does that "words are vain and Fate is lord"? Assuming, therefore, a mere human curiosity, he asks about the "mission" from which Savitri has returned with "Paradise made visible in her eyes". Aswapati turns to Savitri, and she gives the answer in a few chosen words sufficient to the occasion:

 

      I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.

      On the borders of a dreaming wilderness

      Mid Shalwa's giant hills and brooding woods

      In his thatched hermitage Dyumatsena dwells,

      Blind, exiled, outcast, once a mighty king.

      The son of Dyumatsena, Satyavan,

      I have met on the wild forest's lonely verge.

      My father, I have chosen. This is done.²⁰⁹

 

 All are astonished, all sit silent "for a space". A "heavy shadow" floats before his inner vision, but Aswapati sees also a pursuing light; all may yet be well. He tells his daughter that she has chosen well:

 

      If this is all, then all is surely well;

      If there is more, then all can still be well.²¹⁰

 

When Narad is about to warn Savitri, Aswapati stays the "dangerous word" and tells him that not to know the future is best:

 

      Impose not on the mortal's tremulous breast

      The dire ordeal that foreknowledge brings;...²¹¹

 

Narad takes the hint and is silent, but the queen's fears are thoroughly roused by the oblique speeches of the sage and the king. The former mentioned "doom"—then quickly withdrew into himself. The king has spoken darkly too—spoken as if some future danger threatened Savitri.

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She therefore roundly questions the sage. On the face of it, Savitri's choice is unexceptionable. But, perhaps, Narad can scent something. What is it? What shadow lies sprawled across their future wedded life? And so she concludes with the entreaty:

 

Or if crouches unseen a panther doom,

If wings of Evil brood above that house,

Then also speak, that we may turn aside

And rescue our lives from hazard of wayside doom

And chance entanglement of an alien fate.²¹²

 

But Narad merely answers, elaborating the king's prudential exhortation:

 

A future knowledge is an added pain,

A torturing burden and a fruitless light

On the enormous scene that Fate has built.²¹³

 

 The sages know that fate is inexorable; why, then, should mortals— frail as they are—burden themselves with this sure foreknowledge and thus agonisingly anticipate the preordained event? Why should the eyes of the mind be clouded by a future foreknown, for that can only destroy even the little flavour there is yet in life! So- potent a power is fate that the very words a man speaks are already numbered in "The Book of Fate'. Narad's words go home, as arrows released by an expert archer unerringly find their target. Although Narad has doled out but vague ominous generalities, this the queen now knows without a doubt: some dark danger lies in wait for her beloved daughter if she marries Satyavan. The dignified queen now yields place to the agitated mother who gives way to uncontrollable grief and begins reviling the law that makes it possible for the fairest lilies to fester or fade away so soon. The Shalwa boy himself, Satyavan, now seems a thing of evil to the queen:

 

Perhaps he came an enemy from her past

Armed with a hidden force of ancient wrongs,

Himself unknowing, and seized her unknown.²¹⁴

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         In her frantic mood, this accusation becomes a certainty:

 

      Old cruelties come back unrecognized,

      The gods make use of our forgotten deeds.²¹⁵

 

Tossed about thus in the play of the gods, our lives, one and all of them, are an endless tragic sequence. But the gods do not know this; they are not human, hence they have no pity. We are not the bloodless, eternally young (or everlastingly mature) gods, who can create passion, play havoc with human lives, themselves remaining unmoved by anything, love or hate:

 

      An ancient tale of woe can move us still,

      We keep the ache of breasts that breathe no more,

      We are shaken by the sight of human pain,

      And share the miseries that others feel.²¹⁶

 

It is the very nature of man to be moved by the miseries of others, and rush forth to the aid of the sufferer; thus has it been always with the compassionate queen of Aswapati. But now on her, on her whose heart had often gone out to her beloved subjects, on herself is this calamity cast:

 

      Even a stranger's anguish rends my heart,

      And this, O Narad, is my well-loved child.²¹⁷

 

 Now that she has come to know of some misfortune to this beloved daughter of hers, it is better to know the worst that is to be; for otherwise she will be dreading it everywhere and all the time; in the very steps of Savitri she may have to read the book of her fear Therefore she wants to know what it is about so that afterwards, if it is indeed an irredeemable fate, she can at least wait for the event with stoic forbearance.

 

      Now Narad realises that she ought to be told the truth, for it would be no use trying to hide this fatal secret from the queen, thereby torturing a mother's heart. He also hopes to steel and strengthen the will of Savitri to face the coming ordeal. He begins by saying that Satyavan is the best of men, in whom,

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      ...soul and Nature, equal Presences,

      Balance and fuse in a wide harmony.²¹⁸

 

He is made on earth, of heaven. In him the godhead resides, but not for long:

 

Heaven's greatness came, but was too great to stay.

Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;

This day returning Satyavan must die.²¹⁹

 

Thus has Narad communicated the terrible word of doom. But the queen, in her disturbed ignorant state, in vain tries to clutch at any straw that may be available and save the joyful spring-time of her dear daughter. She hopes to order fate to change her certain course; rejecting "the grace and the mockery" of the gods, she asks Savitri to go forth into the world again and choose for herself another bridegroom that would live long happily with her, and quite forget Satyavan. But vain is the remedy, Savitri is sure of her steps and her resolution holds:

 

      Once my heart chose and chooses not again...

      Death's grip can break our bodies, not our souls;

      If death take him, I too know how to die.²²⁰

 

Savitri, born by the grace of the divine Mother, full of  "untrembling virgin fire", will she yield the ground to the foe without struggling against the injustice? No, she was not born to die; neither will it be Satyavan's fate. Savitri will not allow blind fate to cut the cords of love that bind her to Satyavan and the ties that bind both to this world. They are born to plan and achieve the raising of the mortal's life to the Life Divine. They will not yield to mortality. Savitri denies death and affirms life:

 

      I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;

      My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me

      Helpless against my immortality.

      Fate's law may change, but not my spirit's will".²²¹

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And now comes a very curious passage. Like Rishi Jabali in the Ramayana, the queen, who has hitherto led a life of devotion and love, now driven by her despair, preaches to her daughter the philosophy of Hedonism. She assures Savitri that all talk of love, pledge, troth and devotion are meaningless. What is most important is a life lived in the full current of joy and pleasure. In this ever-changing world, can we forever cling to a set of unchanging laws and moral codes?

 

      Here on this mutable and ignorant earth

      Who is the lover and who is the friend? ²²²

 

Savitri's talk of love and pledge are meaningless, for essentially she and Satyavan are strangers. Once Savitri loses sight of Satyavan's physical body, she loses him forever. The physical remains of the Shalwa prince will be distributed between the five elements, which will again fashion forth another man who will love and live and die again, having a soul lodged within him for some time. The queen feels that the physical beings are like shirts after all, worn for a time, and then cast away.

 

      Thus our souls come to this earth time and again, take residence in a physical object for some time, and then part forever:

 

      But for our souls, upon the wheel of God

      For ever turning, they arrive and go,

      Married and sundered in the magic round

      Of the great Dancer of the boundless dance.²²¹

 

Will not her dear daughter Savitri realise what it is to set such a high store upon these lofty ideals, when all the time she knows that human life is too short and our cup of joy never even half-full? It is for that reason man has been given the faculty to choose for himself a reasonably happy life within the prescribed limits of this all too short fife. He has been given the power of reason, and with that he must carefully avoid the pitfalls as far as possible, and seek the wine of joy when and where he can find it. Man is between the titan and the animal. The former cares not for his destiny, and with all brute force

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and belief in his own power rushes towards his destiny with eyes open, so that in this mad onrush he would be able to climb upto and above the divine; the animal has no thinking power at all, and with blind eyes it meets its destiny.

 

      But man can hew for himself the middle path; he need not unnecessarily thrust himself before the gaze of wide-eyed fury, nor need he receive his fate unknowingly. He can think, and decide on the best course; with wary eyes he can choose for himself the golden path that will lead him to happiness. The queen warns Savitri not to rely on any platonic or aesthetic love to console her in her trial. Her human love for Satyavan will be no match against the relentlessness of fate: only when Savitri is able to merge with the One completely can she realise the unity of humanity and be happy therein. But for such consciousness she is too young; the gods have been kind enough to warn her of her fate, and it would be better to follow a different course of action and thus avoid the impact of the foretold calamity.

 

      But Savitri has decided; the specious reasoning falls flat and she replies:

 

      My strength is not the Titan's; it is God's.²²⁴

 

Hers is not the love merely of a beautiful face; it is rather a true marriage of minds at the first dawn of spiritual sight. She has found her true lord and lover; she has found true reality,

 

      Beyond my body in another's being. . .²²⁵

 

No, no, Savitri will not bend; she has found her haven. A renewed fill of joy and strength has enriched her since her meeting the Shalwa prince:

 

      If for a year, that year is all my life.

      And yet 1 know this is not all my fate

      Only to live and love awhile and die.

      For I know now why my spirit came on earth

      And who I am and who he is I love.

      I have looked at him from my immortal Self,

 I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;

 I have seen the Eternal in a human face.²²⁶

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 II

 

      'THE WAY OF FATE AND THE

PROBLEM OF PAIN'

 

Sage Narad has unveiled Savitri's future; a future that is death. But Savitri, undaunted, has accepted the challenge, and instead of changing her path, has decided to travel on the same road, although fraught with seeming annihilation. And she has uttered the word of fate that she believes more in her own immortal destiny than in the blind workings of a mechanical God. The king and the rishi sit quiet looking straight into the "eyes of Fate", not willing to disturb the workings of Providence. But Savitri's mother will not so easily be silenced. Although she is the queen, yet is she a human mother also who cannot bear ill luck to befall her child. Aswapati's queen decides to arraign Destiny itself. In this turbulent condition of mind, she loses all balance; her mind that had hitherto won for itself a place on the higher planes of living now descends into the vital plane where ordinary human passions rage and rule. To her now earthly mind, the workings of destiny come as an unnatural shock. In her throat rises the desperate cry of all humanity that groans under the load of a freakish destiny.

 

      Mankind is essentially ignorant of the cause that produces the effect of human pain. Forced into a tragic condition man cries out why there should be all this grief and pain. Savitri's mother too questions the sage:

 

      By what pitiless adverse Necessity

      Or what cold freak of a Creator's will,

      By what random accident or governed Chance

      That shaped a rule out of fortuitous steps,

      Made destiny from an hour's emotion, came

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       Into the unreadable mystery of Time

       The direr mystery of grief and pain?²²⁷

 

Why should there be these perversions, these tumours and cankers in this world which should essentially be a beautiful creation of God? Did God make his handiwork successfully, and did some demon come afterwards to wreck its harmony? Something must have gone wrong with creation even from the beginning:

 

A fatal seed was sown in life's false start

When evil twinned with good on earthly soil.²²⁸

 

With the sowing of this dragon seed, there,

 

.. .first appeared the malady of mind,

Its pang of thought, its quest for the aim of life.²²⁹

 

Man had eaten the forbidden fruit, alas! No more for him the life in blessed ignorance and unfeeling matter; the free and simple ways, the guileless frankness, are lost forever. The birth of 'mind' has ushered in the vicious circle of evil and pain. Heaven has breathed into him reason, mind, intellect and imagination. The rose of man has bloomed in its fullness. But in this very rose of humanity the canker of tragedy finds a place and reduces the human flower to nought.

 

A grisly company of maladies

Come, licensed lodgers, into man's bodily house,

Purveyors of death and torturers of life.²³⁰

 

And the result?

 

      Life is a marvel missed, an art gone wry;.. .²³¹

 

God's gift of this bright and pleasant world to man is itself darkened by a shadow overhanging it. All Nature is ambivalent; there is a good, bright side, and withal, a bad and cloudy side too.

 

Error is the comrade of our mortal thought

And falsehood lurks in the deep bosom of truth,

Sin poisons with its vivid flowers of joy

Or leaves a red scar burnt across the soul;

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Virtue is a grey bondage and a gaol.

At every step is laid for us a snare.²³²

 

 Torn and frustrated at the very beginning of our benevolent thoughts and honest actions, we espy in this world only a wreckage before and a desert after:

 

      A growing register of calamities

      Is the past's account, the future's book of Fate.²³³

 

 Not satisfied with fate's wreckage, man also contrives miseries of his own doing. He commits countless blasphemies and unthinkable follies and brings retribution upon himself. And drunk with Faustus-like success he invades the secret chambers of Nature and commits again sacrilege of various kinds:

 

      His science is an artificer of doom;

      He ransacks earth for means to harm his kind;

      He slays his happiness and others' good.²³⁴

 

 These researches of man will bring him no good, for he has lost the Godhead's seal that alone could make his science holy and fruitful. Instead, his science is pursued for selfish ends and brings him only doom and death. But in spite of the heavy budget of dooms, he has not grown any wiser; still he takes the same path of tragedy and falls headlong into the same pit of Hell. Centuries of bitter lessons have not made him take the path of Dharma. He has remained what he ever was; still does he fight and war for selfish ends, and bedews Mother Earth with innocent blood. Not only does he go in search of the Devil's tools, but he also destroys the good in the world. Some wise men create something beautiful, but there are others to destroy the work:

 

War making nought the sweet smiling calm of life,

Battle and rapine, ruin and massacre

Are still the fierce pastimes of man's warring tribes;

An idiot hour destroys what centuries made,

His wanton rage or frenzied hate lays low

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The beauty and greatness by his genius wrought

And the mighty output of a nation's toil.²³⁵

 

Thus man unmakes God's beautiful and kindly creation and "wallows in his self-made misery". What is this life on earth, made miserable by ruthless fools? Is it not merely "an episode in a meaningless tale?" It has been said that we have come here from a heavenly source, and that in us is lodged the heavenly Life-spark. It has also been said that the ultimate goal of our life is to return to our harbour-home, that golden source of the Life Divine. If that were so, if we are of Heaven and are to return there again, where is the need for this strange savage interlude of the earth? Why should we be made to pass through this aimless futile drama of pain, terror, rapine and death? The queen's mind is indeed a whirl of questions. Why, why this tragedy of a world signifying nothing? Is all the world, is all life, a mere illusion? In the end, the tragedy that threatens Savitri turns her mother almost into a nihilist.

 

Perhaps the soul we feel is only a dream,

Eternal self a fiction sensed in trance.²³⁶

 

The queen is a woman, and being also a mother, she has come to a stage when the higher thinking powers have been numbed by the shadow of a doom. Now it behoves Narad to guide the sorely afflicted queen out of the labyrinth of her ignorance. So the eternal seer begins:

 

Was then the sun a dream because there is night?

Hidden in the mortal's heart the Eternal lives:...²³⁷

 

It is the cloud of unknowing that prompts us to deny the light of the world and the spirit. The sun does not cease to exist during the night. Even so, the presence of tragedy does not exclude the reality of the Eternal spirit that abides in our inmost heart. Our own ignorance veils the light within us, even from ourselves. Because of this ignorance in mankind pain was born, for pain naturally follows ignorance. And it is also true that one cannot attain joy without first undergoing pain. But for the throes of labour, there would be no birth. Even in the beginning of things, "by pain Life

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stirred in the subliminal deep"; so does pain through shock and difficulty push mankind to the heights:

 

      Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

      A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,

      His slow inertia as of living stone.²³⁸

 

The image of the Superman is hewn out of the earthy mortal by inflicting on him the pain of death. Unless we are tested and tempered by failures, we would rest quite Oblomov-like in a trance of success and miss the chance of self-transcendence, for it is when we are struck by tragedy that we wish to transcend to the higher states:

 

      If the heart were not forced to want and weep,

      His soul would have lain down content, at ease,

      And never thought to exceed the human start

      And never learned to climb towards the Sun.²³⁹

 

Hence the Divine Mother cries out for yet bigger and acuter trials for mankind, so that out of the tremendous labour and pain a greater creation may come into being. Vain are the deluded cries of mortals like the queen against the pain inflicted by Providence:

 

      Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men

      To greatness: an inspired labour chisels

      With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.²⁴⁰

 

In every mortal resides the divine spark; it is to be fanned into a divine flame. The greater the pain the mortal undergoes, the sooner will it assume its real glow. Of course it is all very easily said, but actually the cosmic pain and the cosmic evolution implicit in the process are indescribable. It is on those who are selected to undergo this cosmic suffering, it is on those who wish to save this world, that the mantle of thorns unerringly falls. They are the persons who have to undergo this cosmic pain. As examples Narad (or Sri Aurobindo) projects before us the vision of Christ and the vision of Shiva. There is Christ who has "drunk the bitter cup" and who "has signed salvation's testament with his blood":

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       It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,

      Offered by God's martyred body for the world;

      Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,

      He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed;

      His escort is the curses of the crowd;

      Insult and jeer are his right's acknowledgement;

      Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.

      He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour's way.

      He who has found his identity with God

      Pays with the body's death his soul's vast light.

      His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.²⁴¹

 

      It is clear that Narad here wants to prepare Savitri's mind and strengthen her will by describing the tribulations of the world-redeemers. She herself is one; Narad tells her how Christ and Shiva did their tasks unflinchingly, undaunted by death or poison. Mankind has its ills and pains; no human being is exempt from them. But the tortures that a saviour of mankind has to undergo are tremendous and have epic dimensions. The pertinent question would of course be: Why should a saviour be subjected to these mortal tribulations? But even a saviour must know what afflicts mankind before he could prescribe the necessary cure:

 

      Exempt and unafflicted by earth's fate,

      How shall he cure the ills he never felt? ²⁴²

 

      Therefore Christ had to undergo the jeers of the lewd people and had to be nailed on the cross. It is for the same purpose Shiva had to drink the poison from the sea. To save mankind, God dons a mortal garb, undergoes human suffering and ultimately even 'dies' to give birth to a brave new world. The saviour's situation is terrible indeed. The very people whom he has sought to save turn against him, mock at him, and do their best to wreck his hard-wrought handiwork. This is because there is a dark spot in man's own mind that continuously instigates the lower instincts in him, and drags

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him to Hell. Hence, however often the great saviours come to this earth, they in the end succeed in saving only a few. So, first of all, a "larger light" must come and clear man's heart of the dark spots, and hand him over as a clear plate for God to write thereon the Song Celestial of Eternal Life. The ordinary mind of man must give way to a "supramental plane of mind" where everything is pure white, and nothing sullies its white radiance. Till that is done,

 

.. .till the evil is slain in its own home

And Light invades the world's inconscient base

And perished has the adversary Force,

He still must labour on, his work half done.²⁴³

 

The world-redeemer, the divine soul, stands steadfast in this tremendous task, and is neither tired nor daunted by failures and difficulties. His will is of steel, his determination of iron. In spite of the barriers and troubles,

 

In the dreadful passages, the fatal paths,

Invulnerable his soul, his heart unslain,

He lives through the opposition of earth's Powers

And Nature's ambushes and the world's attacks.²⁴⁴

 

This saviour who has understood the way-s of the world and the workings of fate, the gnostic being, undergoes the darkest of earth's terrors, the acutest of the world's pains and the deepest of human sufferings, so that he may bring to the dark world—even to the dark world—the Light Divine:

 

      He must enter the eternity of Night

      And know God's darkness as he knows his Sun.

      For this he must go down into the pit,

      For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.²⁴⁵

 

      Having passed through this dark night of the soul, the gnostic being  would emerge into the Eternal Light.

 

The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes

And the truth-conscious world come down to earth

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Invading Matter with the Spirit's ray,

Awaking its silence to immortal thoughts,

Awaking the dumb heart to the living Word.

This mortal life shall house Eternity's bliss,

Tie body's self taste immortality.

Then shall the world-redeemer's task be done.²⁴⁶

 

After this lucid account of man's spiritual becoming, Narad turns to the immediate problem and warns the queen not to meddle with the decree of Providence. Any attempt to assume a greater cunning, and try to change the course of destiny, would bring the late that befalls the titans. The path of the titans is self-destructive. By denying God's sovereignty the titan brings retribution on his own head. The queen will be well advised not to tempt Providence. But if she will bear her yoke patiently by strengthening her will, all will yet turn out well.

 

Thy spirit's strength shall make thee one with God,

Thy agony shall change to ecstasy,

Indifference deepen into infinity's calm

And joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute.²⁴⁷

 

While trying to explain to the queen the birth of pain in this world, Narad tells her a short parable. The spirit of mankind was originally perfection itself. But the spirit was not content to rest in its perfect state. It wished to see what the world was like. In this adventure it descended into the lower levels and travelled through the vital planes. In this original descent was the fall that brought pain in its wake. As a result the inner splendour was veiled from its casket, man. The forbidden fruit had been plucked and eaten. So the pain of knowledge came and, with it, this half-seen, little understood, undefined world:

 

Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,

This great perplexed and discontented world,

This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:

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There are pitched desire's tents, grief's headquarters.

A vast disguise conceals the Eternal's bliss.²⁴⁸

 

Pain is now quite natural to mankind, and a world-redeemer like Savitri has to carry her own tremendous load of pain and affliction.

 

      The king now questions the sage whether there is any power in man to save himself, or is he merely ruled by an external spirit. He had heard, on her birth, that such an inner power had descended with Savitri. Is not this inner power equal to the task of facing the threatened fate? Can she not save herself from pain through the exercise of this power? In answer, Narad tells the king that the Superior Divine rejects the prayers of unthinking mankind for unbroken joy on the mortal plane. It is true that Savitri is born with an imprisoned splendour:

 

A greatness in thy daughter's soul resides

That can transform herself and all around ²⁴⁹

 

 But even she, the daughter of Aswapati, "must cross on stones of suffering to its goal". Man's mental machine is limited in its scope, and cannot perceive the integral truth and the self that lurks behind the law of the universe. The limited vision of man sees only a lifeless law in the workings of the universe and thus misses the fact that the spirit of man works along with the wisdom and spirit of the Universe. For Savitri's future, the external spirit, God, has pronounced its decree. Now it remains for the internal spark to burst into a flame. But it is not for Narad to say what exactly is going to happen:

 

It is decreed and Satyavan must die;

The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.

What else shall be is written in her soul²⁵⁰

 

Fate's decree is not altogether final; "Man can accept his fate, he can refuse". And if man is thwarted once, he can always rise again and again to fulfil his real destiny. The true seeker after Truth will not be frightened even by the dread alarm of fate. So if Savitri's destiny is to achieve ultimate victory, she will never waver in her quest for

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the Life Divine. Even if trouble and pain lie before her, she will not fail to advance. Hence the king need entertain no doubts regarding her future, and try to change the course of her destiny. And neither Aswapati nor his queen should try to separate the young lovers because of the encircling doom. The present situation is all for the best:

 

In vain thou mournst that Satyavan must die;

His death is a beginning of greater life,

Death is the spirit's opportunity.

A vast intention has brought two souls close

And love and death conspire towards one great end.²⁵¹

 

Narad further tells the queen to leave the course of destiny to its own fulfilment. Nor need she think that Savitri is too trail and weak to be the agent of the world's redemption:

 

Sometimes one life is charged with earth's destiny,

It cries not for succour from the time-bound powers.

Alone she is equal to her mighty task.²⁵²

 

Soon will a day come when, armed by her own will, she will be facing alone a mighty power. But in her loneliness she will find her strength:

 

The great are strongest when they stand alone.

A God-given might of being is their force,

A ray from self's solitude of light the guide;²⁵³

 

thus armed and strengthened, Savitri will have to face the day,

 

.. .when she must stand unhelped

On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,

Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,

Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole

To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge,. . .

Must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time

And reach an apex of world-destiny

Where all is won or all is lost for man.²⁵⁴

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      In that hour neither the queen nor anybody else can help her, "alone she must conquer or alone must fall". The queen would do better to stand back and leave Savitri to work out mankind's destiny:

 

      Think not to intercede with the hidden Will,

      Intrude not twixt her spirit and its force

      But leave her to her mighty self and Fate.²⁵⁵

 

Having done his appointed task of enlightening the queen and strengthening Savitri's will, Narad now vanishes from the human scene. But even after he has gone, even after the holy seer has merged with the skies, the listening souls on earth, the king, the queen and Savitri, hear a golden song of hope from the eternal heavens:

 

      A high and far imperishable voice

      Chanted the anthem of eternal love.²⁵⁶

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 SECTION D

 

      'THE BOOK OF YOGA'

 

I

 

     'THE JOY OF UNION; THE ORDEAL OF THE

FOREKNOWLEDGE OF DEATH AND THE

      HEART'S GRIEF^'

 

      'Fixt fate: Free will' is the seeming paradox at the heart of existence. Man has freedom of choice, but once the choice has been made, he cannot control the consequences. As we sow, so shall we reap. Is even the act of choice no real choice at all but an item of unalterable predestination? Is, then, 'free will' itself a delusion?

 

Man's hopes and longings build the journeying wheels

That bear the body of his destiny

And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal.

His fate within him shapes his acts and rules;

Its face and form already are born in him,

Its parentage is in his secret soul:...

Nature and Fate compel his free-will's choice.²⁵⁷

 

Free will is a misnomer, then; yet this too is not the whole truth about the matter. The wages of sin, we know, is death; but Grace has limitless powers. By definition the Almighty is all-mighty; nothing is impossible for him. From the human end things may seem unalterable; but from the divine end? And where exactly do we draw the line that separates the human from the divine? Man ordinarily is a slave of circumstance, a pitiable victim of fate, a creature subject to the curbs of death, desire and incapacity. But humanity can range from the level of the near-inconscient to the dizzy heights of the superconscient—from the beast to the god. Thus it appears that to the adamantine law of fate there can be exceptions:

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       But greater spirits this balance can reverse

       And make the soul the artist of its fate.²⁵⁸

 

Savitri's resolution to keep faith with Satyavan in defiance of Sage Narad's premonitory forecast of the coming events is no mere exercise in willfulness but rather the measure of her own strength which, if put to the supreme test, may very well bend "the long cosmic curve" itself. But this consciousness of the indwelling power doesn't blot out the human Savitri, the creature of trembling sensibility, who has made a willing and total surrender of herself to Satyavan.

 

      Leaving her parental home a second time, Savitri speeds back to rejoin Satyavan. It is a sharp fundamental passage from the palace with its "tinged mosaic of the crystal floors" to the bare hermitage in the bosom of the forest. But affection and infinite consideration await her here, and so she commences in the wild woods her married life with Satyavan. This solitude strikes her for a time as the sweetest society:

 

      There was a chanting in the casual wind,

      There was a glory in the least sunbeam;

      Night was a chrysoprase on velvet cloth,

      A nestling darkness or a moonlit deep;

      Day was a purple pageant and a hymn,

      A wave of the laughter of light from morn to eve.²⁵⁹

 

Can love with its divine accent and 'sex' with its human base ever fuse into the 'holy' wedded state? Before their 'fall', did Adam and Eve experience what C.S. Lewis has called 'paradisal sexuality'? John Keats could not imagine any mingling of 'goatish winnyish lustful love with the abstract adoration of the deity'. But nothing is impossible to the "greater spirits" who are called into being to enact the higher synthesis. The first realisations of the wedded life of Savitri and Satyavan are of this order:

 

      A fusing of the joys of earth and heaven,

      A tremulous blaze of nuptial rapture passed,

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      A rushing of two spirits to be one,

      A burning of two bodies in one flame...²⁶⁰

 

The woman at no time is less than woman merely because she is also potentially divine.

 

      It is doubtless an intolerable situation for Savitri. She alone has the foreknowledge which Narad has communicated to her; Satyavan, his revered parents, the other inmates of the hermitage, all are spared the knowledge that continually lacerates her. She cannot share her pain, she musn't even give the remotest hint of it. Can she at least try to forget? She tries desperately, she tries to lose herself in love's divine frenzy:

 

Vainly she fled into abysms of bliss

From her pursuing foresight of the end.

The more she plunged into love that anguish grew;

Her deepest grief from sweetest gulfs arose.

Remembrance was a poignant pang, she felt

Each day a golden leaf torn cruelly out

From her too slender book of love and joy.²⁶¹

 

Vain is her attempt—vain are all her attempts—to escape the pain in her heart that is like her own inseparable shadow. Her life with Satyavan, although it is the very image of love's complete fulfilment, is for her now more and more a mask. Nor love's maddening excesses nor the minutiae of an ardent housewife's round of duties are an effective cure for the wound in her heart that she cannot bare to others, not even to her soul's mate, dear Satyavan. She brings more and more concentration into her routine movements, achieving thereby,

 

A oneness with earth's glowing robe of light,

A lifting up of common acts by love.²⁶²

 

From her actions flow peace and joy to others, and to her too, because others are happy; yet the void within remains, the space of the allotted year contracts, the tread of remorseless Time approaches. In a new frenzy of alarm she rushes to Satyavan's arms again:

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      Intolerant of the poverty of Time

      Her passion catching at the fugitive hours

      Willed the expense of centuries in one day

      Of prodigal love and the surf of ecstasy;...²⁶³

 

Has Satyavan no hint of this hell that is hidden in her heart? Doesn't love give him a sixth window of sense to see the spectre she fain would hide? She will not tell him, she cannot tell him, yet he knows, however obscurely, that something, somewhere, somehow is wrong:

 

      Satyavan sometimes half understood,

      Or felt at least with the uncertain answer

      Of our thought-blinded hearts the unuttered need,

      The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.²⁶⁴

 

But the barrier of reticence remains. For his part, he readily, eagerly, gives her as much of his time as he can—still rushing to her from the forest after hewing wood or from attendance on his sightless father.

 

      Retired to the still secrecy of her heart, Savitri ponders whether, when the trial is upon her at last, she must not immolate herself and follow Satyavan "into the sweet or terrible Beyond". What would happen, then, to "those sad parents", Satyavan's mother and blind father? Who will "help the empty remnant of their day"? Nay more: the burden of the whole world's pain presses on Savitri, for in her own pain she recognises the world's as well. She is now like,

 

      .. .a dumb priest with hidden gods

      Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,

      Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,

      Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.²⁶⁵

 

The sole year of permitted bliss now draws to a close. Like a jungle crouching in silence, Savitri waits in sombre expectancy.

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       II

 

      'THE PARABLE OF THE SEARCH FOR

THE SOUL'

 

      Her nights are sleepless, for still she hears and sees "the dumb tread of Time and the approach of ever-nearing Fate". Then one night she is startled by a mighty voice invading her mortal life; she is jerked into a trance and becomes "a stone of God lit by an amethyst soul". What use Savitri—"O spirit, O immortal energy"!—coming to "this dumb deathbound earth" if it was merely to nurse a hopeless grief in a helpless heart? Not passive sufferance but positive action is expected of her:

 

      Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.

 

Still in her tranced state, Savitri replies: How can she strive when she has neither the strength nor the will to fight? Feeble are her chances of success, feeble the chances of the ignorant race of man responding to the "saviour Light" from above. "Is there a God whom any cry can move?" Isn't he careless of mankind, their dolour and their defeat?

 

What need have I, what need has Satyavan

To avoid the black-meshed net, the dismal door,

Or call a mightier Light into life's closed room,

A greater Law into man's little world? ²⁶⁶

 

For her own problem there surely is cure enough; she can follow Satyavan to the far off bourne and there "lie inarmed breast upon breast...forgetting eternity's call, forgetting God". Almost a drowsy and pendant reply, hardly worthy of Savitri; the voice therefore admonishes her: "Is this enough, O spirit?" She has come down with a mightier intent, and it will not do to shrink from the task:

 

Cam'st thou not down to open the doors of Fate,

The iron doors that seemed for ever closed,

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      And lead man to Truth's wide and golden road

      That runs through finite things to eternity? ²⁶⁷

 

The petulant human rebel is silenced, and another power, the creator spirit within her, makes a reply. Savitri is ready for action as a vessel of the immortal Spirit; when she knows what she has to do, she will readily strive to do it. The voice answers:

 

      Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,

      In silence seek God's meaning in thy depths,

      Then mortal nature change to the divine.²⁶⁸

 

Human thought and human sense can be barriers checkmating the passage of the soul to the Soul; casting away everything, everything has to be gained; and by this means Savitri will be able to invoke the force of the Supreme and conquer Death.

 

      The voice is withdrawn, and Savitri finds herself sitting "rigid in her gold motionless pose" by sleeping Satyavan's side. The sky lours, thunder rumbles, rain hisses; but Savitri sits impassive still in self-absorbed concentration. She will look into herself, she will go in quest of her soul (as earlier she had gone in quest of her spouse), and she will not turn back till she sights and claims her hidden self.

 

      Her first series of insights disclose to her, "the cosmic past, the crypt-seed and the mystic origins,/The shadowy beginnings of world fate". It is a vivid and breathless pageantry—from the cosmic whirl of atomic space, the appearance of huddled masses of matter, the emergence of life' in algae, plant and tree, in insect, bird and beast, to the ultimate flowering of 'mind' in man:

 

      Mind nascent laboured out a mutable form,

      It built a mobile house on shifting sands,

      A floating isle upon a bottomless sea.²⁶⁹

 

 Restless and enterprising, Mind has made conquests of all sorts and organised the "thousandfold commerce of the world". Sometimes probing below, sometimes gazing above, Mind has extended its inquiries into the lower as well as the higher regions of consciousness,

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nether Hell as also .high Heaven. Mind has its handmaidens—fancy, imagination—and they annex vast territories of experience for man to lord over. In apprehension like a god, yet man can also solicit the dark and devalue himself:

 

      Man's house of life holds not the gods alone:

      There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,

      Inhabitants of life's ominous nether rooms,

      A shadowy world's stupendous denizens...

      The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn

      Lie bound in the subconscient's cavern pit

      And the Beast grovels in his antre den...²⁷⁰

 

They are best kept caged and cribbed in the chambers of the underground, for once you start negotiating with them, they seize you body and soul, pervert all instruments, press their advantages without mercy, and deluge man's world with blood and terror:

 

      The terrible Angel smites at every door:

      An awful laughter mocks at the world's pain

      And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:...²⁷¹

 

 Man has propensities both towards good and evil; to give evil full and free play is to turn God's purposes upside down, for,

 

      It imitates the Godhead it denies,

      Puts on his figure and assumes his face.

      A Manichean creator and destroyer,

      This can abolish man, annul his world.²⁷²

 

Thus man finds himself at the crossroads where meet opposing paths that show the way either to the world of the blessed or to the condemned wastes of hell. Man has a past and future, and the narrow isthmus of the present is his playground of trial and striving. While his mind is his helper, he cannot wholly depend upon it; mind too can mislead, unawares sometimes, and sometimes deliberately. There are other forces, however, to redress the balance, at times also to tilt it to dangerous consequence:

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A portion of us lives in present Time,

A secret mass in dim inconscience gropes;

Out of the inconscient and subliminal

Arisen, we live in mind's uncertain light

And strive to know and master a dubious world

Whose purpose and meaning are hidden from our sight.²⁷³

 

But this is no more than a first report or preliminary finding; deeper meanings, clearer purposes, emerge on a closer look at the human drama that is being played on the cosmic stage. Not out of a "blind Nature-Force" has life emerged, and then mind; the sea of inconscience carries the potencies of life, mind, and any powers that may be above mind, though all as yet held in suspension as it were. What is 'involved', nascent or held in suspense comes out when the time is ripe, and so the evolutionary march begins and continues.

 

      There is a law that controls, yet transcends, the wide ranges of consciousness, from inert matter to man and the future superman. It may be that man has his "prone obscure beginnings" in the jungle ape; but he has not ceased to grow, he has not ceased to hanker after good and beauty and God, and he has been moving "in a white lucent air of dreams". The setbacks have been many, the frustrations numberless, but pioneering man has moved breast-forward, flirted with the omniscient, and made vague approaches to omnipotence:

 

      Thus man in his little house made of earth's dust

      Grew towards an unseen heaven of thought and dream

      Looking into the vast vistas of his mind

      On a small globe dotting infinity.

      At last climbing a long and narrow stair

      He stood alone on the high roof of things

      And saw the light of a spiritual sun.²⁷⁴

 

As Savitri sees these vistas pass before her, the realisation comes to her that the mighty Mother has made her,

 

      .. .the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,...

      To mould humanity into God's own shape

 And lead this great blind struggling world to light

 Or a new world discover or create.²⁷⁵

 

But for this to be accomplished, the heavenly psyche hidden in Savitri should come out into the open and "liberate the god imprisoned in the visionless mortal man".

 

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     III

 

'The Entry into the Inner Countries'

 

Savitri's problem is to penetrate appearance and reach the reality about herself. This is a spiritual quest leading to a spiritual end. The nature of the quest, the stages in the progress, and the configuration of the goal, all must defy description in everyday language, which is no more than one of the functions or manifestations of the appearance. Hence the poet is obliged to resort to a parable and to the language of symbols. The 'parable' of Savitri's search for her soul spans across several cantos, and symbol regions with their contours, laws and inhabitants are passed in review, and Savitri is shown as making her progress through the 'inner countries', even as, in Book II, Aswapati is shown as careering through the occult worlds in the cosmos.

 

      Right at the commencement of her quest, a voice tells Savitri that her aim should be to "help man to grow into the God", not to achieve her own salvation alone; in other words, the sorrow and darkness threatening her life with Satyavan, being symptomatic of the present human destiny, should be tracked to their source, struggled with and mastered finally.

 

      As Savitri approaches the 'inner countries', she is confronted by an ebony gate barring her passage. From within comes the porter's "formidable voice" of forthright warning to Savitri. Although this serpent-guardian and its attendant hounds, trolls, gnomes and goblins raise hideous rout, Savitri forces the gate open and enters, unconcerned and unaffected, the inner worlds. Who is this

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forbidding portress? Who are her attendants? Always, when one starts on a new adventure, a nameless fear and its progeny of hesitations and vague premonitions seem to bar the way. One needs courage and resolution to withstand these sullen initial impediments that try to prevent the first step being taken. However, they have no effective power to throw back; they can frighten, and if their bluff is called, they are really powerless.

 

      The occult inner continents follow one after another; these are the new fields of Savitri's cognitive experience. There is, first, the world of 'subtle matter', analogous to the world Aswapati (as described in Book II, canto 2) passes through—analogous but not identical, for no two spiritual quests are exactly the same. This dense region "of subtle Matter packed"—a sort of no-man's land between the dusk of subconscience and the first streaks of life—leads presently to,

 

      ...a form of things,

      A start of finiteness, a world of sense:²⁷⁶

 

This sense-driven life is without order, without direction, without meaning; as with ignorant masses clashing in the dark, there is motion without aim, or striving without positive result. Such must be the fate of all endeavours when "the sense's instinct (is) void of soul/Or when the soul sleeps hidden void of power".

 

      Savitri, guided by "the saviour Name", edges round this chaotic world of "disordered impulses", the kingdom of little life, and enters the kingdom of greater life, "a giant head of Life ungoverned by mind or soul". The Life-Force itself rages here in its elemental vastness; it is no tenuous trickle, but verily "a spate, a torrent of the speed of Life" breaking "like a wind-lashed driven mob of waves/Racing on a pale floor of summer sand". Blind but fierce, aimless but irresistible, the heady current of this unleashed force achieves marvellous results through inadvertence:

 

      Out of the nether unseen deeps it tore

      Its lure and magic of disordered bliss,

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Into earth-light poured its maze of tangled charm

And heady draught of Nature's primitive joy

And the fire and mystery of forbidden delight

Drunk from the world-libido's bottomless well,

And the honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death,

But dreamed a vintage of glory of life's gods,

And felt as celestial rapture's golden sting.²⁷⁷

 

This is the world of primitive heroism, compact of great striving and impressive results; fighters, daring explorers, uncalculating hedonists, restless dreamers, magicians, lovers, haters, fill this world. There is the clash of violent opposing furies, there are alternations between fear and joy, ecstasy and despair. But, whatever its particular tinge, life in this region is everywhere intense; and speech has a downrightness, and song "its ictus of infallibility". Yet all this marvel and splendour has no sure base on Truth, but are reared on shifting sands compounded of half-truths and gross-errors. Total perversion is possible and sometimes reigns unabashed:

 

Here in Life's nether realms all contraries meet;

Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes

And Ignorance is Wisdom's patron here:

Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed

Could bear to a dangerous intermediate zone

Where Death walks wearing a robe of deathless Life.²⁷⁸

 

Here too lies "the valley of the wandering Gleam", a self-created self-perpetuating nightmare death-in-life. Savitri withstands the terror and the lure, the passion and the pain, and steadily journeys forward to 'fresh woods and pastures new'.

 

      The next region is "a brilliant ordered Space", fed and fostered by reason. The impetuous Life-Force is held in leash by reason. The passage has thus been from a Dionysian to an Apollonian world. Yet control too can be carried too far. Fleeing from the riot of exuberance, one can canter into the utter formality of death:

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The ages' wisdom, shrivelled to scholiast lines,

Shrank patterned into a copy-book device.²⁷⁹

 

It is, no doubt, a balanced reign, but also a cabinned reign; there is no room or scope for the play of imagination, for daring leaps of thought, for the unrestrained climb of the spirit. It is like the cloistered virtue of "a highbred maiden with chaste eyes/Forbidden to walk unveiled the public ways". There is a mean self-sufficiency, a petty perfection here that effectively rules out "rhythms too high or vast", the play of high ideas, and the sovereign richness and variety of life in the Spirit. In this "quiet country of fixed mind", an authoritative spokesman accosts Savitri and assures her that this is truly "the home of cosmic certainty" where all is "docketed and tied"; thoughts apotheosis has fashioned this realm; here reign order and safety, clarity and peace. But Savitri is ill at ease in this cold small world, "this ordered knowledge of apparent things"; she cannot abide here, she must seek her soul elsewhere. Her decision surprises, and even offends, some of the self satisfied inhabitants of this place, while one, wiser and sadder than the rest, murmurs:

 

      Is there one left who seeks for a Beyond?

      Can still the path be found, opened the gate?²⁸⁰

 

Undaunted, unwearied, Savitri passes on till she arrives at a place thronged by a crowd of, "brilliant, fire-footed, sunlight-eyed... messengers from our subliminal greatnesses/Guests from the cavern of the secret soul". Savitri is attracted by these "strange goddesses with deep-pooled magical eyes", and she would like to live with them and share the light of their life, but first she will pursue her quest for the discovery of her secret innermost soul. Surely, these bright creatures will help her in her quest. How may I, she asks,

 

      .. .find the birthplace of the occult Fire

      And the deep mansion of my secret soul...²⁸¹

 

The amazing answer comes:

 

      O Savitri, from thy hidden soul we come...

      O human copy and disguise of God

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      Who seekst the deity thou keepest hid

      And livest by the Truth thou hast not known,

      Follow the world's winding highway to its source.

      There in the silence few have ever reached,

      Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone

      And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.²⁸²

 

Inaccessible to—not negotiable by—any but "rare wounded pilgrim-feet", the great winding road now bears the tread of Savitri's feet, and "a few bright forms" emerge from unknown depths and look at her "with calm immortal eyes":

 

      There was no sound to break the brooding hush;

      One felt the silent nearness of the soul.²⁸³

 

 

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  IV

 

      'THE TRIPLE SOUL-FORCES'

 

      Savitri's single-minded quest has now brought her almost to the threshold of her inmost, her secret soul. She is met, one by one, by the soul's triple forces, each embodied as a mother spirit, as a Madonna. First the Madonna of suffering, Mother of sorrows and grief divine; next, the Madonna of might, Mother of works and force; and last, the Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace. Each claims to be Savitri's soul, and each is partly right; but Savitri cannot, she will not, accept these partial identifications. She will not stop till the full splendour of self-discovery overwhelms her.

 

      First to meet Savitri during the "passion of the first ascent" is a woman in "a pale lustrous robe", seated on "a rugged and ragged soil", with "a sharp and wounding stone" pressed against her feet. She is as it were the incarnation of the world's pain. From the anxious moment of birth to the "dolorous end of life", it is a tale of striving and failure, sorrow and pain; and the Mother's compassion goes out to man as he thus lies stretched on the cross:

 

      Accepting the universe as her body of woe,

      The Mother of the seven sorrows bore

      The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:

      The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,

      Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.²⁸⁴

 

"I am thy secret soul", she tells Savitri, "I am woman, nurse and slave and beaten beast/.. .I am the spirit in a world of pain".²⁸⁵ In the course of her long sad impassioned speech, she gives an account of her unique preoccupation with human suffering and her round of painstaking works to tend the lowly, the miserable, the nearly lost. However seemingly hopeless the human lot, however apparently unavailing the appeals to Heaven, she has neither denied nor lost hope of deliverance. When she concludes her speech, however, there explodes a cry from below, the voice of the Man of Sorrows, breathing exasperation and despair, a job in his burning passion of defeat:

 

      I am he

      Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;

      To enjoy my agony God built the earth,

      My passion he has made his drama's theme.

      He has sent me naked into his bitter world

      And beaten me with his rods of grief and pain...²⁸⁶

 

And so on, a mixture of defiance and impatience, assertion and negation, Titan and man. Savitri, having heard both the Madonna and the Man of Sorrows, answers with serene understanding; the Madonna is indeed a "portion" that Savitri's soul has put forth "to bear the unbearable sorrow of the world"; because of her, the wretched can somehow bear their wretchedness and hope against hope for a dawn of deliverance. Savitri promises to return to the Madonna with an accession of strength that will enable them to abolish cruelty and misery forever from the earth. But, in the meantime, Savitri must continue her quest.

 

      Next to meet Savitri on her upward route is a woman in "gold and purple sheen, /Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt"; her

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feet on a lion's back, her eyes emitting fire, her head ringed with a halo of lightnings; it is the Mother of Might, and she tells Savitri:

 

I am Durga, goddess of the proud and strong,

And Lakshmi, queen of the fair and fortunate;

I wear the face of Kali when I kill,

I trample the corpses of the demon hordes...

I rend man's narrow and successful life

And force his sorrowful eyes to gaze at the sun

That he may die to earth and live in his soul.²⁸⁷

 

While Durga-Lakshmi claims that she alone is Savitri's secret soul, there comes a "warped echo" from below, from "the dwarf Titan, the deformed chained god"that is man the master of knowledge and power, the asuric man; he is the man that has mastered Nature and would one day supersede God; he would smash the atom, canalise cosmic energy, "expunge a nation or abolish a race". Savitri, having heard them both, admits that while knowledge and power are necessary, without wisdom they cannot achieve much. Savitri promises to return to the Madonna of might with an accession of light that will enable them together to abolish fear and weakness and hatred forever from the heart of man. In the meantime, Savitri will continue her quest.

 

      Savitri meets last the Mother of joy and peace. The Madonna of light stands revealed on a piece of clear and crystalline ground; sun-bright her face, moon-bright her feet, nectarean her smile; she too claims in captivating musical speech to be Savitri's secret soul:

 

I have come down to the wounded desolate earth

To heal her pangs and lull her heart to rest

And lay her head upon the Mother's lap

That she may dream of God and know his peace

And draw the harmony of higher spheres

Into the rhythm of earth's rude troubled days.²⁸⁸

 

She buoys up man with dreams and visions, with ideals and aspirations; freedom, valour, justice, resignation, thought, wisdom, beauty,

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truth, good, all are but godheads of the human soul; against the pressure of the ignorance, man struggles to raise himself to the level of the gods, and the Madonna arms him with the necessary faith and perseverance:

 

      I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;

      I bring back hope to the despairing heart;

      I give peace to the humble and the great,

      And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.

      I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.²⁸⁹

 

Once again, as the Madonna's voice ceases, there comes up another cry, "a warped echo naked and shuddering" from the mental Man, man the apologist and would-be practitioner of pure reason:

 

      The finite he has made his central field,

      Its plan dissects, masters its processes,...

      His knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore

      Of the huge ocean of his ignorance.²⁹⁰

 

Hasn't the sum of the giant endeavours of mere mental man petered out into nothing? No wonder "a cosmic pathos" trembles through the moan of the "all-discovering Thought of man", man the natural scientist and philosopher. He makes a melancholy song about his achievements, for, while all battles are won, the campaign itself is invariably lost:

 

      The tree of evolution I have sketched,

      Each branch and twig and leaf in its own place,

      In the embryo tracked the history of forms,

      And the genealogy framed of all that lives.

      I have detected plasm and cell and gene,

      The protozoa traced, man's ancestors,

      The humble originals from whom he rose;

      I know how he was born and how he dies:

      Only what end he serves I know not yet

      Or if there is aim at all or any end

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Or push of rich creative purposeful joy

In the wide works of the terrestrial power.²⁹¹

 

Matter has been explored, and mind too; the sciences are multiplying, and the techniques of analysis or organisation are getting to be more and more subtle and complicated; yet the central mystery of creation remains, and man doesn't yet know how to pluck the heart of the mystery. Is the phenomenal world but the play of the magic of Maya? Is there a realm of absolutes? But mind-centred man cannot achieve transcendence; he is content- he must be content-to stew in the juice of his own mental concoction:

 

      Human I am, human let me remain

      Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.²⁹²

 

He will not seek escape from his feeling of futility by positing the existence of a God who can care for humanity. For the third time, having heard thesis and antithesis, the Madonna and the Man of Sorrows, Savitri acknowledges her kinship with the Madonna, and promises to return to her with an accession of strength from him, and that will be the time when,

 

      .. .the holy marriage be achieved,

      Then shall the divine family be born.

      There shall be light and peace in all the worlds.²⁹³

 

 Now she must pass on, for her quest is not ended yet.

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  V

 

     'THE FINDING OF THE SOUL'

 

      Leaving the three Madonnas behind, Savitri presses on her quest to the "soul's mystic cave" and first steps into "a night of God" where the familiar powers of the world-knowledge, wisdom, truth—are held in a screened solution in the reigning holy hush and dark:

 

In a simple purity of emptiness

       Her mind knelt down before the unknowable.

      All was abolished save her naked self

      And the prostrate yearning of her surrendered heart:²⁹⁴

 

It is somewhat like the mixing and merging of a drop with the ocean,

 

      A night of person in a bare outline

      Crossing a fathomless impersonal Night,... ²⁹⁵

 

 Presently this general immobility gives place to a new stir of life, the blossoming of "a rose of splendour on a tree of dreams"; the "night of God" changes to day, the air is sweet, the sky is lustrous, and the "mystic cavern... of her secret soul" stands revealed:

 

      And a holy stillness held that voiceless space.

      An awful dimness wrapped the great rock-doors

      Carved in the massive stone of Matter's trance.²⁹⁶

 

Two golden serpents round the lintel, an eagle with massive wings above, doves at the cornices; inside the court, as in a South Indian temple, sculptured gods snapping moments in the cosmic play; on the walls, pictures conveying the "hieratic message of the climbing planes": the whole a parable of the "extension of the self of God/... And his passion and his birth and life and death/And his return to immortality".²⁹⁷ Savitri seizes the meaning of it all, not through ratiocination, but by her soul's identity with each symbol which is also an order of reality:

 

      A sealed identity within her woke;

      She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:... ²⁹⁸

 

She is Mother, Brahma's word, Shiva's spouse, Krishna's Radha; and, indeed, she is the Adorer and Adored self-lost and one". Savitri now comes to the last chamber where she espies the formless fount of her "straying force", and passing beyond it through a tunnel to a house of flame and light, there she meets her secret soul:

 

      Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;

      They looked upon each other, knew themselves,

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      The secret deity and its human part,

      The calm immortal and the struggling soul.

      Then with a magic transformation's speed

      They rushed into each other and grew one.²⁹⁹

 

The long night's journey into day is over; Savitri has explored the inner countries of the spirit, much as a modern visitor to one of the big temples in South India might explore concentric courts, the prākārās, the numerous shrines within, the statues of the minor gods and goddesses and the bhaktas and the god-intoxicated, the paintings on the walls and the sculptured pillars and walls reproducing scenes from epic and purana, the cosmic play and the tāndav dance, and moving from sacred enclosure to another enclosure, always moving within, observing the vāhanās, being enraptured by the ritual, the swaying of the lights and the chanting of hymns, dazzled by the bejewelled gold-shaped outer manifestations of the deity and his consort, and penetrating at long last to the ultimate sanctum, the innermost home of the deity, and receiving the ineffable impact of the 'mystical tremendum', the blaze of the total truth that blinds, the shower of the Grace that cleanses; Savitri has at last seen and grown into her secret Soul. She is now back in the world of man, the same yet different; she is filled with the glory and power of God, and all in her have undergone a "high celestial change"; and henceforth her every act will be "an act of god". Head, brows, throat, heart, navel, all coiled petals of the unfolding bud of this lotus flame have received the impress of new divinity, and in the apparently human mould of Savitri "a first perfection's stage is reached at last":

 

There is won a new proximity to the skies,

A first betrothal of the Earth to Heaven,

A deep concordat between Truth and Life:

A camp of God is pitched in human time. ³⁰⁰

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  VI

 

      'NIRVANA AND THE DISCOVERY OF

       THE ALL-NEGATING ABSOLUTE'

 

      Even the self-finding of her secret soul and the joy, power and peace that well up in her as a result are but the first decisive stage in Savitri's Yoga. Two more trials, two more realisations, await her. She is yet to be shocked into—or seized of—the realisation that her sovereign secret soul has really a cosmic compenetration and comprehension, and also that it is at the same time supracosmic, beyond space and time, beyond all imaginable beyonds. Her secret soul is infinity, it is all infinities; lost in the transcendent, it is lost, and is still functioning here in phenomenal space-time; of the secret soul it can indeed be said, infinity minus infinity is infinity still.

 

      After her first realisation, her life with Satyavan is a round of serene fulfilment:

 

      And Savitri's life was glad, fulfilled like earth's;

      She had found herself, she knew her beings aim.

      Although her kingdom of marvellous change within

      Remained unspoken in her secret breast,

      All that lived round her felt its magic's charm:...

      Even the smallest meanest work became

      A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,

      An offering to the self of the great world

      Or a service to the One in each and all.³⁰¹

 

She sees Satyavan now, not as one condemned, but as the gate of a rich new possibility; they are together always in "love's unseen atmosphere, /Inseparable like earth and sky". It is the sun's hour of meridian glory before the slowly approaching threat of "abysmal Night".

 

      Then one day, at the very moment of sweet fulfilment, she is suddenly invaded by a nameless new force. An utter void seems to seize and swallow her "and end the fable of the joy of life"; it is a black

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infinity stretched across the space of a dark eternity; it is superlative emptiness, it is the zero of all zeros, it is the ultimate Nihil. This all negating featureless spectre taunts Savitri that she is but hugging the illusion of her secret soul's sovereign identity:

 

I have created all, all I devour;

I am Death and the dark terrible Mother of life,

I am Kali black and naked in the world,

I am Maya and the universe is my cheat.³⁰²

 

 For a while Savitri is drained of all her strength, but presently another voice comes from the heights, the squadrons of light decisively vacating the aggression of dark. But the voice also reminds Savitri that the task that lies ahead of her is of cosmic, rather than of a limited, significance; to be effective at that level, she should share the world's multitudinous pain and achieve a cosmic consciousness, know herself,

 

.. .older than the birth of Time,

Creation an incident in its consciousness,

Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire

Circling in a corner of its boundless self,

The world's destruction a small transient storm

In the calm infinity it has become.³⁰³

 

Savitri should for a time "banish all thought...and be God's void"; in the absolute condition of silence of the mind so created she will see the true origins of things and also the shape of the desired transfiguration of earth into heaven, human life into the Life Divine.

 

      Archimedes is said to have remarked that he could lift the earth with a lever if only he could himself be detached from the earth and find a place outside to stand on. Our efforts to observe and understand the operations of the cosmos are frustrated because we are ourselves intimately implicated in it. In the strictly material world, one cannot be both within and without, the observed and the observer; in the realms of the spirit, however, nothing is impossible. Savitri stands back,

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       .. .detached and calm,

      A witness of the drama of herself,

      A student of her own interior scene ³⁰⁴

 

and "watches the passion and the toil of life" and hears "in the crowded thoroughfares of mind/The unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts". It is as though she is looking beneath the polished surface of a delicate instrument, and scrutinising the wires, the springs, the complicated machinery. She sees the processes of sensory and vital activity, the surges of passion, the frenzied agitation of the nerves, the grapple of opposing forces; but more particularly her gaze pursues the "birth of thought". Does thought take shape in the brain? Does it issue from the subtle body? Does it come from outside, from somewhere in the unmapped cosmos? Does it well up from the heart or does it crystallise in the soul? As she views the field of thought and ponders over thought's variety, life grows "marvellous with transfiguring hope":

 

      Thoughts, glistening Angels, stood behind the brain

      In flashing armour, folding hands of prayer,

      And poured heaven's rays into the earthly form.

      Imaginations flamed up from her breast,

      Unearthly beauty, touches of surpassing joy

      And plans of miracle, dreams of delight:...³⁰⁵

 

It is as though each part of her body has thoughts appropriate to it, and carries its yearnings to the point of complete expression. But average humanity cannot achieve such quick or perfect translation of yearning or impulse into thought or idea. What's opaque to others is transparent to Savitri, and thus she sees clearly the happenings in the spirit's house:

 

      Eyes looked through crevices in the invisible wall

      And through the secrecy of the unseen doors

      There came into mind's little frontal room

      Thoughts that enlarged our limited human range,

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       Lifted the ideal's half-quenched or sinking torch

       Or peered through the finite at the infinite.³⁰⁶

 

 With an expansive range of consciousness, Savitri receives thought-intimations from far and near, from the dim inconscient as well as the overhead planes:

 

      Thoughts leaped down from a superconscient field

      Like eagles swooping from a viewless peak,

      Thoughts gleamed up from the screened

      subliminal depths

      Like golden fishes from a hidden sea.³⁰⁷

 

And beholding these varied "births of thought", Savitri realises that the human mind itself is but a small machine that quickly wears out, whereas,

 

The word, the form, the charm, the glory and grace

 Are missioned sparks from a stupendous Fire;...³⁰⁸

 

 The receiving, transmitting mind but defaces or corrupts the purity of the original thought, and thereby often becomes the vehicle of error and ignorance.

 

      Savitri now rises out of her human mind to escape its law of limitation and force of perversion, and from a vantage height dedicates her "sovereign will...to God's timeless calm". Her mind itself is calm, as if a dynamo has ceased to work, and it is this condition that "men call quietude and prize as peace". Presently, mental activity is not only stilled but wholly ceases; the body is like a stone, although still excluding "eternity's hush", for now and then a stray thought, like a leaf floating from afar, falls on the surface of the immense calm and recoils, receiving no response. Soon these too cease, and all is "immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary". In this absolute hush of her mind,

 

      Emotion slept deep down in the still heart

      Or lay buried in a cemetery of peace:...³⁰⁹

 

There is the utter collapse of thought, but her body sees and moves and speaks, always to the right purpose though without a specific mental push; she is no more a particular individual, she is a vessel of the Supreme; there is "no frame of things, no figure of soul", but delivered from the tyranny of the dualities, Savitri now shares the "Superconscient's high retreat". Yet a giant doubt assails her: Has she come to the very end of things, only waiting for annihilation's final act, or can she hope for an affirmation that can annul annihilation itself? Can the all-negating Absolute and the all-Delight of Existence, in other words Nihil and ananda, be themselves reconciled?

 

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      VII

 

      'ROSE OF GOD'³¹⁰

 

      Meantime Savitri lives her routine in the forest, gracious to all, striking them as being no different from what she has always been. She is "the same perfect Savitri", apt in speech and action, although inhabiting a total silence of mind. The power behind her life is "the miraculous Nihil... a cipher of God". It is a trance, a somnambulistic play of life, not the life that we know; yet nothing is wrongly done or said, whether she is with Satyavan or with "the sages of the woods"; sometimes, indeed, her mouth becomes the channel of "ineffable truths", and the sages marvel at her,

 

      ...for she seemed to know

      What they had only glimpsed at times afar.³¹¹

 

She is seemingly a plastic instrument in the hands both of inconscient Nature and the superconscient mystery. Her being's scope seems to spread more and more into widening circles of infinity, "a world without form or feature or circumstance,/.. .no ground, no wall, no roof of thought."³¹²

 

      Sitting thus by sleeping Satyavan, a voice not hers begins to stir, and suddenly the world of unreality ceases to be. No, no, negation is not the ultimate truth; omnipresent Reality is other and more than the Nihil, more than "a cipher of vastness in unreal Thought"; Savitri sees that omnipresent Reality is her own self and the self of all:

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      ... it was Timelessness and Time,

      It was the Bliss of formlessness and form.

      It was all Love and the one Beloved's arms,

      It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind,

      It was joy of Being on the peaks of God.³¹³

 

Savitri sees "the world as living God", and she is herself both a single being and all beings, "their bodies her many bodies kin to her":

 

      Out of the infinitudes all came to her,

      Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,

      Infinity was her own natural home...

      The distant constellations wheeled round her,

      Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,

      The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;...

      She was the single self of all these selves,...

      She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,

      She was the red heart of the passion-flower,

      Tie dream-white of the lotus in its pool....

      She was the godhead hid in the heart of man,

      She was the climbing of his soul to God.³¹⁴

 

 Savitri is the link between man and God, time and Eternity, existence and Transcendence.

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 THE STRUGGLE AND

  THE VICTORY

 

 

      Then came, at a predetermined moment,

a moment in time and of time,

 A moment not out of time, but in time, in what

we call history: transecting, bisecting the world

of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment:

 for without the meaning there is no time,

 and that moment of time gave the meaning.

     

                                                                               T.S.ELIOT

 

 

      SECTION A

 

      'THE BOOK OF DEATH'

 

     I

 

The Two Missing Cantos

 

       In the two opening cantos of Savitri, the action of the epic begins, as in Western epics like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, at a critical point even the most critical; the action plunges in medias res, into the middle of things: it is the dawn of the day when Satyavan is fated to die according to Sage Narad's reading of the future. After the first two cantos that constitute the exordium, there comes a long, long spell of retrospective narration, sketching the personal and cosmic backgrounds to the central action. This has taken thirty-eight cantos in all out of the forty-nine that now make the poem, or a little over 600 pages out of the total 814 in the definitive one-volume edition of the poem.¹

 

      Book VIII, entitled "The Book of Death', is to continue in strict time-sequence the story as begun in the first two cantos of Book I. But ol the three projected cantos of Book VIII, only canto 3 seems actually to have been completed by Sri Aurobindo from an earlier version and rewritten at places.² The reference to the trirāttra (three-night)

---

fast in the original Mahabharata has already been transformed by Sri Aurobindo into the vast dimensions of 'The Book of Yoga', which describes Savitri's realisations of her secret self, of cosmic consciousness, and, finally, of supracosmic or transcendent consciousness.

 

      The events of the fateful day from dawn to evening are compressed into a few pregnant verses in the Mahabharata, and nothing that is material is omitted in canto 3.Thus it is difficult to speculate as to how Sri Aurobindo had planned to fill the spaces of the proposed cantos 1 and 2, for canto 3 itself forms a natural continuation of the story impressively begun in Book I, cantos 1 and 2. Probably Sri Aurobindo had tentatively divided Book VIII into three cantos, hoping to enlarge the scope of the present canto 3 so as to split it meaningfully into three cantos and give Book VIII an ampler base and a richer substance. However, taking the poem as it is, the supposed gap in Book VIII, though it intrigues us a litde and introduces a possible element of incompleteness, doesn't vitally affect our comprehension of the epic action or really impair the striking unity of the whole. Once we concentrate on the foreground action, that is to say, once we shift our gaze from antecedents and backgrounds to the centre of the stage, the drama involving Savitri and Satyavan on the appointed day—the drama proceeds from dawn to evening, from evening to night, from night to twilight, and from twilight to day.

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  II

 

'Death in the Forest'

 

      On the great day when the issue is to be joined, the dawn finds Savitri awake earlier than Satyavan, recapitulating the events of the year just about to end:

 

      The whole year in a swift and eddying race

      Of memories swept through her and fled away

      Into the irrecoverable past.³

 

This is clearly an earlier draft of the poem, not fully brought in tune with the new inspiration. The opening canto itself, after describing 'The Symbol Dawn, refers to Savitri awaking among the forest tribes and hastening "to join the brilliant Summoner's chant", and the second canto states that "twelve passionate months led in a day of fate"; thus Book VIII almost harks back to Book I, mentions the same details though from a rather lesser height of poetic inspiration, before continuing the story. In the present version we have the bare bones of the Mahabharata story transformed into the flesh and blood of a spacious narrative poem like Urvasie and Love and Death of Sri Aurobindo's Baroda period; what is lacking in Book VIII is the epic amplitude, the luminous extravagant richness, the cosmic overtones and the more or less consistent overhead inspiration behind the rest of the poem.

 

      After a moment of silent prayer before the image of the Goddess Durga, Savitri approaches 'the pale queen mother', asks her permission to accompany her son, Satyavan, to the forest. During her year's life with Satyavan, Savitri hasn't once explored the silences of the great forest with him, and might she not this day go with him and satisfy her longing? The queen-mother readily consents, and so "the doomed husband and the woman" go out with linked hands "into that solemn world". Satyavan shows her,

 

      .. .all the forest's riches, flowers

      Innumerable of every odour and hue

      And soft thick clinging creepers red and green

      And strange rich-plumaged birds,...⁴

 

As he points out the things he has loved, his dumb forest play-fellows and companions of many a livelong day, she listens deeply, but inly she has other thoughts, love despairing, anguish attentive at every step, thinking that this might prove to be Satyavan's last spoken word:

 

      Her life was now in seconds, not in hours,

      And every moment she economised

      Like a pale merchant leaned above his store,

      The miser of his poor remaining gold.⁵

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Now Satyavan wields his axe, felling branches, and singing, "high snatches of a sage's chant/That pealed of conquered death and demon slain"; these and his interspersed words of endearment are manna to Savitri who seizes them "like a pantheress.../And carried them into her cavern heart." But this day Satyavan quickly tires, he wields the axe with diminishing force, and soon "the great Woodsman hewed at him and his labour ceased"; Satyavan sways a little and cries out to Savitri:

 

      Such agony rends me as the tree must feel

      When it is sundered and must lose its life.

      Awhile let me lay my head upon thy lap

      And guard me with thy hands from evil fate:

      Perhaps because thou touchest, death may pass.⁶

 

They sit beneath a kingly trunk, and Satyavan stretches himself with his head on her lap:

 

      All grief and fear were dead within her now

      And a great calm had fallen.⁷

 

As she intently observes his face, "his sweet familiar hue" changes into "a tarnished greyness", his eyes grow dim, and after one last poignant clinging cry, his eyes close, his head falls limp in the very act of a despairing final kiss. And already she smells the presence there of something "vast and dire",

 

      ...a silent shade immense

      Chilling the noon with darkness for its back.

      An awful hush had fallen upon the place:

      There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts.

      A terror and an anguish filled the world,

      As if annihilation's mystery

      Had taken a sensible form...

      She knew that visible Death was standing there

      And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.⁸

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  SECTION B

 

 'THE BOOK OF ETERNAL NIGHT'

 

I

 

'Towards the Black Void'

 

Left alone in the "huge wood", with Satyavan's limp head on her bosom, she ignores the dread presence of the dark god and clasps to her the mute lifeless form of her dead lover and husband. She is a woman, and must feel her loss like a woman. But she is also Savitri, and of a sudden she stands revealed to herself, the human veil being torn; A new sight comes,...

 

      Immortal yearnings without name leap down,

      Large quiverings of godhead seeking run

      And weave upon a puissant field of calm

      A high and lonely ecstasy of will.⁹

 

She heaves to great heights of puissance and perceives near her a "slow embodiment of the aeonic will", a cosmic mightiness assuming a symbol form. On the eve of the tremendous struggle that is to commence, this "thousand-petalled home of Power and light", invulnerable to the shafts of time, omnipotent, "enters the mystic lotus" in Savitri's head and becomes the "doer of her works and fountain of her words".¹⁰

 

      Savitri is thus ready for the mighty hour and its momentous fray. The pain, the grief, the fear are gone; her mind is still; "now all her acts sprang from a godhead's calm." She gently lays Satyavan's head on the ground and rises to meet the "dreadful god", but not before one more look at the prone dead lover. Then, "like a tree recovering from a wind", she raises her eyes:

 

      Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand,

      A limitless denial of all being

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That wore the terror and wonder of a shape.

In its appalling eyes the tenebrous Form

Bore the deep pity of destroying gods;

A sorrowful irony curved the dreadful lips

That speak the word of doom...

His shape was nothingness made real, his limbs

Were monuments of transience and beneath

Brows of unwearying calm large godlike lids

Silent beheld the writhing serpent, life.¹¹

 

      As the two, Woman and Death, face each other unflinchingly, the sad formidable voice of worldly wisdom cries to Savitri to let go her invisible grasp of Satyavan, to weep for a while as is proper, and then to forget, as is human nature. She relaxes her hold, but otherwise listens not to the voice, but stands "gathered in lonely strength",

 

      Like one who drops his mantle for a race

      And waits the signal, motionlessly swift.¹²

 

Death too leans down, as if to draw out Satyavan; and "another luminous Satyavan" arises, starting up from the prone corpse and stands between the mortal woman and the God. Who will finally claim him? The issue is undecided:

 

      ...two spirits strove;

      Silence battled with silence, vast with vast.¹³

 

Now Satyavan moves forward, as if irresistibly pushed; behind him, Death; and Savitri last, her mortal pace equal with the God's; intent and wordless thus she follows Satyavan's steps "into the perilous silences beyond".

 

      They move on in single line for a while, still close to earth's familiar smell, "its sweetness and its greenness and delight", till they reach some unfamiliar "boundary's intangible bar", and she feels that they might escape and disappear. Her "violent spirit" therefore soars at Satyavan, leaving her own mortal body on the forest soil; she is no mere Savitri but an ocean surge of will, saving her treasured Satyavan "from the collapse of space". And so they keep step again in these new symbol realms of weird grass, weird treeless plains, weird roads running phantasmal between sombre pillared rocks and brooding gates. Turning round, Death now cries out to shadowing Savitri not to persist in a "vehement trespass" into forbidden worlds. But Savitri answers not:

 

      Her high nude soul,

      Stripped of the girdle of mortality,

      Against fixed destiny and the grooves of law

      Stood up in its sheer will a primal force...

      A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.¹⁴

Page 202

 II

 

      'THE JOURNEY IN ETERNAL NIGHT

         AND THE VOICE OF THE DARKNESS'

 

      Arrived at length at the "chill dreadful edge of night", all three pause in vague expectancy:

 

      Heaven leaned towards them like a cloudy brow

      Of menace through the dim and voiceless hush.¹⁵

 

Now daring all, Savitri first affronts the abyss and foots, "the ruthless eyeless waste" and grapples with the "mystery of terror's boundlessness". A realm of sinister Nought, "clotted cipher", this Death's dark kingdom is a place where:

 

      Mind could not think, breath could not breathe, the soul

      Could not remember or feel itself; it seemed

      A hollow gulf of sterile emptiness,

      A zero oblivious of the sum it closed,

      An abnegation of the Maker's joy... ¹⁶

 

 Into these grim shadows Savitri darts and vanishes, although there is "no course, no path, no end or goal", amidst "a blindness of extinguished souls". Yet at the last extremity of this "corpse of life", a faint

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gleam slowly begins to assert itself, and hope itself palely approaches; and still the gleam grows brighter, the hope stronger; Death suffers a firm repulsion, and Savitri's soul exceeds the grasp of pain and gropes towards joy. And once more, out of the silence and the dark, the tread and form of Satyavan assert themselves to her consciousness.

 

      But Death's iron-hearted voice yet warns her against any further trespass into the eternal Night, though, as earlier, she answers him not, replying on the "undying fountains of her life". Once more the dire god tries speech, this time mingling sternness with sugary appeasement. Why seek to bring Satyavan back to life? Why prolong the earthly tale of "incurable unrest?" What use playing any longer the God's game of laughter and tears? Human life is but thwarted purposing, courage being met by defeat, wisdom being mocked by Death, and knowledge being fenced with ignorance? Yet Death will extend reluctant appreciation to Savitri —the strength of her great love deserves no less—and will grant her gifts to soothe her "wounded life". While not acknowledging Death's sovereignty, while indeed calling him variously "huge mask", "black lie" and "grim jest", while also disclaiming any desire to play the meek applicant, Savitri nevertheless responds to Death's offer thus:

 

      First I demand whatever Satyavan,

      My husband, waking in the forest's charm

      Out of his long pure childhood's lonely dreams,

      Desired and had not for his beautiful life.

      Give, if thou must, or, if thou canst, refuse.¹⁷

 

Death grants the boon, even as she demands it, with little apparent grace; Satyavan's father, Dyumatsena will get his kingdom and eyesight again, for these had long been in Satyavan's thoughts. Now at least must Savitri retire, not violate further the laws of life and death.

 

      As Savitri has made it no bargain, she firmly stands her ground, and declines to be cowed into brazen retreat. She too is immortal,

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though caged in apparent mortality; she can therefore afford to dare the "stone eyes of Law and Fate", and she will retrace her steps onlywhen Satyavan too can measure with her "earth's flowering spaces". Death's irritation rises to fever pitch and he mounts a new dialectical offensive, as ferocious as the rush of the sea's waves towards a swimmer. Death has created all things, created them only to destroy them; he has made the worlds his net, "each joy in a mesh"; he has dealt out sin with one hand and punishment with the other; to flee from him is vain, for his "tireless Wrath/Hell cannot slake nor heaven's mercy assuage". This too fails to frighten Savitri, who bravely meets his negations with her own affirmations. The God of destruction is not the God she knows or acknowledges; hers is rather the God of Will and Love:

 

Love's golden wings have power to fan thy void:

The eyes of love gaze starlike through death's night,

The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds.

He labours in the depths, exults on the heights;

He shall remake thy universe, O Death.¹⁸

 

And so they travel on in sepulchral silence for a while, for Death is speechless for the space of "a deep and perilous pause", now he speaks again, and in a more insinuating tone. Cannot Savitri see that earth-life with Satyavan can be no more than,

 

The brilliant idol of a fugitive hour...

A thin dance of fireflies speeding through the night,

A sparkling ferment in life's sunlit mire? ¹⁹

 

Death only lasts, Death is the vast, Death is alone the only God; Savitri's supposed immortal self itself is but "a shadowy icon" of Deaths infinite; and formless itself, Death has assumed form, face and voice only because Savitri has come out to struggle with him. In the one final home of Death everlasting, there is neither Satyavan nor Savitri, and "no Savitri/Claims from brief life her bribe of joy". If she must, let Savitri play with her own soul's illusive immortality; let

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her leave Satyavan alone. This deceptive speech strikes sudden fire in Savitri who says simply:

 

O Death, who reasonest, I reason not,

Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build

Or builds in vain because she doubts her work.

I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.²⁰

 

      Discomfited, yet Death tries one more dialectical stunt, affirming the need for "knowing", but Savitri replies that there will be time for knowing when she has loved forever; in fact, knowledge best comes through love:

 

      I know that knowledge is a vast embrace:

      I know that every being is myself,

      In every heart is hidden the myriad One.

      I know the calm Transcendent bears the world,

      The veiled Inhabitant, the silent Lord:

      I feel his secret act, his intimate fire;

      I hear the murmur of the cosmic Voice.

      I know my coming was a wave from God.²¹

 

Death is once more silenced, and stands a shadow figure "girt with the terrors of his secret sword". Now they resume their march, and Savitri travels,

 

      ...through the dumb unhoping vasts.

      Around her rolled the shuddering waste of gloom,...

      Through the long fading night by her compelled,

      Gliding half-seen on their unearthly path,

      Phantasmal in the dimness moved the three.²²

Page 206

  SECTION C

 

      'THE BOOK OF THE DOUBLE TWILIGHT'

 

Already, in Book IX, while the dramatic situation derives from the Mahabharata original, the dialectic in which Savitri and Death (Yama) engage begins increasingly to assume a distinctly Aurobindonian hue and cast. In Vyasa's epic, Savitri is the pure wife whose deathless love for her husband moves Yama—who is also Dharma Raja or Lord of Righteousness—to compassion as well as admiration, till at last he readily grants her the final boon of Satyavan's return to life. Essentially, Savitri is the silent and worthy suppliant, while Yama is the gracious and righteous giver

 

      In the Aurobindonian conception, on the other hand, Death (the name 'Yama' is scarcely mentioned) is the static God of ignorance, illusion and destruction, while Savitri is both humanity evolving into divinity and the transcendent divine itself, in other words, a more prepotent power than Death, who has taken a human form, not to destroy or be destroyed, but to fulfil a mission and help the Divine's secret purposes to be fulfilled. From the very beginning almost, Savitri refuses to be cowed down by Death's terrible aspect and imperious attitudes, refuses to be deviated from her set purpose, refuses to be patronised.

 

      This challenge to his assumed, and so long unquestioned, omnipotence is a new experience for Death, and he is unsure of the moves he should make to frighten or cajole Savitri into acquiescence. His seemingly gracious offer of a boon is accepted by her as though he has but irresistibly complied with her demand. His threats have cut no ice with her, his loud affirmations have been met by her own, not a whit less categorical, nor less instinct with self-assurance and consciousness of power, than his own. Savitri has not got her Satyavan back, nor has Death succeeded in making her drop her demand and go back to her home on the earth. It is the perfect stalemate.

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         Savitri, being more than the 'legend' that it is in the Mahabharata and, in Sri Aurobindo's conception, a 'symbol' besides, the human and the symbolic figures, worlds and actions, generally run parallel; but sometimes either the legend or the symbol monopolises the foreground, though the other too is not ignored altogether. The 'action comprises a single day: dawn to another dawn, quickly passing over morning, noon and afternoon (these are rapidly slurred over in the legendary action described in Book VIII), but lingering over evening, dusk, night and twilight, and ushering in the new dawn of everlasting day. Books IX, X, XI speak of 'Eternal Night', 'Double Twilight' and 'Everlasting Day', the juxtaposition of adjective and substantive in each case suggestive of the dual significance of the action, the legendary and the symbolic.

 

      Sri Aurobindo has remarked that "the central conception of the Veda is the conquest of the Truth out of the darkness of Ignorance and by the conquest of the Truth also of Immortality".²³ Savitri too is a symbolic scripture when viewed from one angle, and its characters stand out both as persons and as powers, and the esoteric meaning is not less, but perhaps more important than the surface meaning. Death seizes Truth (Satyavan), Darkness swallows up Light; Ignorance has brought about the collapse of Knowledge. Who is Savitri, that she should resist Ignorance, Darkness and Death, and finally recover Light, which is Truth-being or Satyavan?

 

      Savitri partly harks back to the Sun God who is addressed in a Vedic hymn "as the source of divine knowledge and the creator of the inner worlds",²⁴ and partly to the infinite Mother, Aditi, also with hoary Vedic associations; and above all to the creative inspiration behind Savitri in Sri Aurobindo's own metaphysics as outlined in The Life Divine and his dynamic psychology as set forth in The Synthesis of Yoga. Much of this comes to a head in Book X or 'The Book of the Double Twilight'. In the four cantos of this mass of verse sustained at a consistently high level of poetic inspiration, the dialectical issue between Death and Savitri is joined once again, all arts are tried, thesis is countered by antithesis, the soap-bubble of casuistry is pricked to nothingness, false lures are firmly rejected, challenges are triumphantly accepted; Savitri attempts dialectical persuasion, and fails; when all fails, she assumes her visvarupa or cosmic form, which at long last proves to Death that his game is over, and he retreats into the shadows from which he had come earlier. Savitri has her Satyavan again.

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I

 

'The Dream Twilight of the Ideal'

 

      For a time all three, Savitri, Death and Satyavan's spirit, move in a region that is a 'house of void' making for a Nowhere in this land of Nought. If a beam of light anywhere appears at all, even that seems a ghostly unreal thing. Has she been mistaken, after all? Her present discomfiture seems like expiation for the pride of her assumption that, although made of dust, she can be "a living fire of God". Is she to be chastised for her sense of immortality? Is corruption greater than incorruption? That cannot be. The fact is, the superconscient is in a trance of sleep in the inconscience of matter:

 

      Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride

      The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,

      A grey defeat pregnant with victory,

      A whip to lash us towards our deathless state...

      Night is not our beginning nor our end;

      She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid

      Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain.²⁵

 

Now comes a golden fire to burn out the heart of Night; there is the faintest stir of light and consciousness; and "intolerant darkness" pales and slowly draws apart. Night reluctantly gives place to twilight.

 

      The description of twilight is one of the great passages in Savitri, almost comparable to the evocation of the Symbol Dawn

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in the opening canto. The touches are at once physical and supra-physical, and the lines have—if one may say so—the distinct ring of 'overhead' poetry:

 

      There is a morning Twilight of the gods;

      Miraculous from sleep their forms arise

      And God's long nights are justified by dawn.

      There breaks a passion and splendour of new birth

      And hue-winged visions stray across the lids,

      The dreaming deities look beyond the seen

      And fashion in their thoughts the ideal worlds

      Sprung from a limitless moment of desire

      That once had lodged in some abysmal heart.

      Passed was the heaviness of the eyeless dark

      And all the sorrow of the night was dead:...²⁶

 

Savitri is surprised into joy by this decisive change in the prospect; all is strangely, vaguely, intangibly fascinating. Sri Aurobindo repeats the word 'vague' like a soothing caress, a drowsy incantation:

 

      Vague fields were there, vague pastures gleamed, vague trees,

      Vague scenes dim-hearted in a drifting haze;

      Vague cattle white roamed glimmering through the mist;

      Vague spirits wandered with a bodiless cry,

      Vague melodies touched the soul and fled pursued

      Into harmonious distances unseized;...²⁷

 

Kaleidoscopic, ever-changing like ever-new formations of clouds, forever playing games that never end, forever holding out hopes that gaily defy realisation, this is a brittle bright world:

 

      Here vision fled back from the sight alarmed,

      And sound sought refuge from the ear's surprise,

      And all experience was a hasty joy.²⁸

 

Savitri walks half-enraptured the spaces of this attractive unreal world, "besieged, by the illusion of a mystic space" feasted by the sight "of wonder Satyavan before her". Not Death himself is able quite to darken this lustrous world:

 

The sombre Shadow sullen, implacable

Made beauty and laughter more imperative;...

Pain grew a trembling undertone of bliss

And transience immortality's floating hem,

A moment's robe in which she looked more fair,

Its antithesis sharpening her divinity.²⁹

 

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    II

 

      THE GOSPEL OF DEATH AND THE

VANITY OF THE IDEAL

 

The gossamer evanescence of this twilight world tempts Death to try his wiles once more. See this unsubstantial pageant, he tells Savitri ingratiatingly; this is the source of her idealistic dreams and cravings, mere ethereal stuff as dreams are made on—no more, no more!

 

      The ideal dwells not in heaven, nor on the earth,

      A bright delirium of man's ardour of hope

      Drunk with the wine of its own fantasy.³⁰

 

And love, is there such a thing as love? Flesh calls to flesh no doubt, and lust calls itself love! Death grows subtly rhetorical, as if pitying the human lot and man's capacity for self-deception:

 

      O human mind, vainly thou torturest

      An hour's delight to stretch through infinity's

      Long void and fill its formless, passionless gulfs,

      Persuading the insensible Abyss

      To lend eternity to perishing things,

      And trickst the fragile movements of thy heart

      With thy spirit's feint of immortality.³¹

 

Love has a miry origin and can never rise to the spiritual heights which the resourceful human mind creates in the air. Ideals, however alluring they may be, when they are sought to be translated into actuality,

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become of the earth, earthy. If there be God indeed, he too is not of the earth; why should he care to entangle himself in the stupidities of the earth? There have been avatars, messiahs, founders of great faiths and what have they achieved in the end?

 

      Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;

      In vain is seen the shining upward Way.

      Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;...³²

 

Why must Savitri harp upon love! Is it any more than the flesh hungering, the nerves burning, the mind dreaming, the heart fluttering? With casuistry worthy of Milton's Belial or Comus, Death tries to wear down Savitri's wall of resistance to the invasion of falsehood. Ah yes, love's momentary thrill seems "a golden bridge across the roar of the years"; but, alas! spent soon, all too soon. The honey that turns to bane, the heaven that leaves hell behind! Even had Satyavan not died, would love for him have suffered no change? Love dies a thousand deaths—"a word, a moment's act can slay the god". Worse than the death of love is love's inevitable decay:

 

      A dull indifference replaces fire

      Or an endearing habit imitates love:

      An outward and uneasy union lasts

      Or the routine of a life's compromise:...

      Two strive, constant associates without joy,

      Two egos straining in a single leash,

      Two minds divided by their jarring thoughts,

      Two spirits disjoined, forever separate.

      Thus is the ideal falsified in man's world:

      Trivial or sombre, disillusion comes,...³³

 

Better than such humiliating decay is the total death of love—or of the lover. Death thus has saved Savitri from love's decay and has saved Satyavan, too, from a like fate. Savitri should "chastise" her heart with this knowledge and be reconciled to her lot, forgetting "the joy and the struggle and the pain".

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            Savitri has no difficulty in exposing the hollowness of Death's fabric of specious reasoning. She tells him straight: love has come to her from God, and such love is heavenly, partaking not of the corruptions of the flesh and heart. Besides, all love, even the most flawed, provokes "a whisper of divinity". Nor is ideal love unrealisable on earth. Hasn't there been a Lord of Brindavan:

 

      One who came love and lover and beloved

      Eternal, built himself a wondrous field

      And wove the measures of a marvellous dance....? ³⁴

 

Satyavan and she had loved each other since the beginning of things; their love will never change, for only one heart beats within her breast, "and one god sits there throned".

 

      Although one attempt has misfired, Death accepts no defeat but tries again. Cannot Savitri yet realise that her thoughts are mere hallucination? Vain, all vain is her "longing to build heaven on earth". Matter is the only ultimate reality; soul itself is but "a brief flower by the gardener Mind" created on "Matter's terrain plot". In self-deception lies no safety. What boots it to camouflage the reality of matter with dazzling dream-fabrics of resourceful Mind? Death is the universe's sovereign ruler, and it is, thanks to him, that nothingness has taken 'form':

 

      I formed earth's beauty out of atom and gas,

      And built from chemic plasm the living man.

      Then Thought came in and spoiled the harmonious world:

      Matter began to hope and think and feel,

      Tissue and nerve bore joy and agony.³⁵

 

Death would perhaps like Savitri to believe that Mind is an aberration, the source of much disaffection, the illusory father of lies and dreams and sighs. What presumption! "Born from a gas, a plasm, a sperm, a gene", yet to assume the god, affect his powers, and wish to divinise earth! There is no true wisdom because all human knowledge is error's make; and human love is but "a posturer on earth-stage/Who imitates with verse a faery dance". Children of the dust must return to the dust, leaving not a rack behind; such is the adamantine law. Death concludes with the appeal compounded of derision and seeming solicitude:

 

      How shall the will-o'-the-wisp become a star?

      The Ideal is a malady of thy mind,

      A bright delirium of thy speech and thought,

      A strange wine of beauty lifting thee to false sight...

      O soul misled by the splendour of thy thoughts,

      O earthly creature with thy dream of heaven,

      Obey, resigned and still, the earthly law...³⁶

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  III

 

'The Debate of Love and Death'

 

      Again Death's laboured plea misfires. Sophist, beguiler, perverter of truth, Death has tried to veil the Real with his own dark semblance. He has called Truth to vindicate his lie; his is the truth that slays, not like Savitri's, the truth that saves. Isn't Death aware of the true nature of the evolutionary race? In inert Matter itself lay God in a self-wrought swoon:

 

      The Timeless took its ground in emptiness

      And drew the figure of a universe,

      That the spirit might adventure into Time

      And wrestle with adamant Necessity

      And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage.³⁷

 

It has been a marvellous tale of inner urge and the throwing up of life in matter, and of mind in life; like the plant from the seed, like the flower from the tree, like the fruit from the flower, new powers have emerged, and more are to come. From the windows of the mind can be espied the dim figure of the coming superman, the demi-god.

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Shall we blame man for nurturing these visions, visions that shall certainly prove true:

 

      Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths,

      He stands awake in Supernature's light

      And sees a glory of arisen wings

      And sees the vast descending might of God.³⁸

 

Death alas! is purblindly looking on an "unfinished world" and condemning it entire and denying God. "How shall the child already be the man?" Death seems to ignore "the occult spiritual miracle":

 

      Our imperfection towards perfection toils,

      The body is the chrysalis of a soul:...³⁹

 

Proof of God's existence! There is glory in the glimmering moon, and glory in the purple sky; there is greatness in the wheeling stars, and beauty in tree and flower; and "the blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice/Are murmurs failing from the Eternal's harp".⁴⁰ The world is crammed in every rift and crevice with the glory of God!

 

      Doubtless there are "brutal masks" and "evil acts", but these only contribute to the variety and complexity of God's "passion-play",

 

      A play and yet no play but the deep scheme

      Of a transcendent Wisdom...⁴¹

 

The wrangle of the dualities, the merging and mingling of a thousand aspects in one central unity, the "tangle-dance of passionate contraries /Locking like lovers in a forbidden embrace", all blunder and struggle "towards the one Divine". Perversion of both mind and heart is possible:

 

A crooked maze they made of thinking mind,

They suffered a metamorphosis of the heart,

Admitting bacchant revellers from the Night

Into its sanctuary of delights,

As in a Dionysian masquerade.⁴²

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But the possibility of perversion doesn't destroy the reality of the pure condition. Knowledge does grow from more to more; Philosophy "climbs up Thought's cloud-bank peaks" and "Science tears out Nature's occult power"; Thought is turned skyward, it is turned inward; the visionary projects lightning flashes, the mystic has marvellous insights. Savitri reminds Death that he has only taken advantage of the exigencies of God's "passion-play" to establish his own dark reign on earth. The Light is heavily obscured, the divine Inhabitant is thickly veiled, and the "eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed". Joy is held a sin:

 

      A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit,

      Or red drug in the market-place of Death,

      And sin the child of Nature's ecstasy.⁴³

 

Nevertheless it is folly to believe that, not Ananda or Bliss, but pain is at the root of things. World-Delight is the basically operative field of force in which we live. Nature talks the language of beauty and essays the epic of joy. Nay more:

 

      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.⁴⁴

 

Joy is a universal urge, it explores all being and sounds all experience, it seeks self-expression in art, poetry, action, thought. Still to be unsatisfied, still to race towards the heights, is the malady of man; there arise in due course immortal strivings in him, his soul "cries for the clasp of God,"-

 

      And Love that was once an animal's desire,

      Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart,

      An ardent comradeship in the happy mind,

      Becomes a wide spiritual yearning's space.⁴⁵

 

Savitri concludes by maintaining that love like hers for Satyavan is centred in God, and if she claims from Death "the living Satyavan", it is only "for his work and mine, our sacred charge":

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      For I, the woman, am the force of God,

      He the Eternal's delegate soul in man.⁴⁶

 

But Death by way of answer can only say that Savitri is cheating herself with "splendid Thoughts" that are the progeny of the "glorious charlatan Mind". Her words are no more than "large murmurs in a mystic dream". Man is a two-legged naked worm in which it is futile to "see a face and form divine". But Savitri is unruffled and firmly answers:

 

      Yes, I am human. Yet shall man by me,

      Since in humanity waits his hour the God,

      Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights,

      Transcending grief and pain and fate and death.

      Yes, my humanity is a mask of God:

      He dwells in me, the mover of my acts,

      Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work.

      I am the living body of his light,...

      In me are the Nameless and the secret Name.⁴⁷

 

Once more Death sends out the cry that Spirit and Matter, being eternal foes, cannot be reconciled; either man dies in his body to live in the Spirit or dies in the Spirit to inhabit his body; he, Death, is the only God.

 

      Savitri retorts: My heart's strength can carry the world's burden of grief, nor falter in its task. Death: "Art thou indeed so strong, O heart, O soul, so free?.../show me thy strength..."⁴⁸ He will grant her what she wants on earth, except only Satyavan. But she hedges; Death may give her what it pleases him; her own claim (not 'request' but 'claim') is for Satyavan alone. Death, being not easily put out, tells Savitri that she can return to the earth and become the mother of daughters as beautiful as herself and also of "hero sons", implying that she might marry again. Savitri spurns these gifts with the words: "Earth cannot flower if lonely I return". At last she sternly snubs him for his mocking irony which can never succeed in deflecting her from her chosen path. Hers are no "twilight thoughts" liable to be twisted out of recognition; she knows her mind, she sees her path clearly before her; she will yet be the eternal bride of Satyavan, the eternal bridegroom. Even Death, as he listens to Savitri,

 

      As if by secret ecstasy assailed,

      Shuddered in silence...⁴⁹

 

Thus is the war of words waged between the "great opponents". Nothing decided yet, the stalemate defying resolution, they continue their march through the symbol realms of the "double twilight":

 

      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.⁵⁰

 

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      IV

 

      'THE DREAM TWILIGHT OF

THE EARTHLY REAL'

 

Death has tried, by referring to the dream twilight of the ideal, to convince Savitri that the 'real' on earth, being only derived from the shadowy twilight ideal, is of no consequence. He has been unable to convince her, for she knows in her heart of hearts that all derive from the ultimate fount of the Supreme, not from the mediate ambiguous realms. The poisoned darts of irony, the honeyed phrases of appreciation, the offers of bounty on earth, the barrage of specious logic, all have failed to shake Savitri from her resolve not to return to the earth unless Satyavan goes with her also.

 

      Now Death tries yet another ruse. The twilight of the ideal having failed, he advances the twilight of the earthly real to support his argument. They come to a downward slope where the "dim-heart marvel of the ideal" is lost:

 

      Thought fell towards lower levels; hard and tense

      It passioned for some crude reality...

      A straining taut and dire besieged her heart;

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      Heavy her sense grew with a dangerous load,

      And sadder, greater sounds were in her ears,...⁵¹

 

As in a glass vaguely and dimly, here Savitri sees reflected the rattle and hurry and drive of the actual world of man, the perverse translation of the ideal world she had earlier seen. It is a variable phantasmagoria of baffled human hopes, of false constructions of Titan, of miserable crawlings of the worm, of "scripts of vanishing creeds", of the endless emergence and disappearance of "ideals, systems, sciences, poems, crafts":

 

The rolling cycles passed and came again,

Brought the same toils and the same barren end,

Forms ever new and ever old, the long

Appalling revolutions of the world.⁵²

 

Thinking that he has now the right background to reinforce his argument, Death asks Savitri to mark the "symbol realm" before her, "its motion parable of human life", signifying "man's incurable malady of hope". Presently he waxes eloquent and draws a graphic picture of the futile frenzy of the human lot on the earth:

 

These polities, architectures of man's brain

That, bricked with evil and good, wall in man's spirit

And, fissured houses, palace at once and jail,

Rot while they reign and crumble before they crash;

These revolutions, demon or drunken god,

Convulsing the wounded body of mankind

Only to paint in new colours an old face;

These wars, carnage triumphant, ruin gone mad,

The work of centuries vanishing in an hour,

The blood of the vanquished and the victor's crown

Which men to be born must pay for with their pain,

The hero's face divine on satyr's limbs,

The demon's grandeur mixed with the demigod's,

The glory and the beasthood and the shame;

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Why is it all, the labour and the din,

The transient joys, the timeless sea of tears,...

The aimless journey that can never pause,

The waking toil, the incoherent sleep,...⁵³

 

Mind is no honest broker, he falsifies and renders only "gold coin with bright alloy"; not God, but the empty name of God, is hers; and if God there be, somewhere or other, he is indifferent to, "the animals agony and the fate of man". If Savitri desires to reach the God she believes in, she must first die to herself, and make of Death "the gate of immortality".

 

      Death the "sophist God" is himself the great perverter, making the less seem the greater reason, calling "Light to blind Truth's eyes". Savitri tries sweet reasonableness with a view to making this dark itself suffer the kindling of light. "The world is a spiritual paradox", she tells impervious immitigable Death,

 

A symbol of what can never be symbolised,

A language mispronounced, misspelt, yet true.⁵⁴

 

To limit from present appearances the utmost term of all future possibility is not right. There is a trend, a movement, a direction in the world's affairs that means and suggests a lot. Didn't the elemental Void put forth the first stirrings of creation?

 

If from a bodiless Force Matter was born,

If life could climb in the unconscious tree,

Its green delight break into emerald leaves

And its laughter of beauty blossom in the flower,

If sense could wake in tissue, nerve and cell,

And Thought seize the grey matter of the brain,

And soul peep from its secrecy through the flesh,

How shall the nameless Light not leap on men,

And unknown powers emerge from Nature's sleep? ⁵⁵

 

 The blind atheist body may deny knowledge of God, but why should "the sage deny the Light, the seer his soul?"

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        Death, even Death, begins obscurely to feel the results of this sustained assault on his fortress of dark strength. The edge of his intolerance is blunted a little, and "his form of dread" seems to thaw and to admit "our transient effort at eternity". He adopts a seemingly more deferential tone and cunningly suggests that, although she may be mighty herself and filled with the Goddess Durga, she should not make the "unfit souls" of the earth her field of action, lest they should receive more hurt than gain:

 

      Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,

      Respect the calm of great established things.⁵⁶

 

But Savitri is quick to detect the hidden paw behind the velvet speech and pointedly asks him:

 

      What is the calm thou vauntst, O Law, O Death?

       Is it not the dull-visioned tread inert

      Of monstrous energies chained in a stark round

      Soulless and stone-eyed with mechanic dreams?⁵⁷

 

 Dull fixity is not the eternal law; Savitri will strive to change terrestrial life or perish in the attempt. Death innocently asks why should the "noble and immortal will" bother about petty terrestrial affairs and change the field of his action from the courts of heaven to the deserts of the earth? Savitri has her answer ready:

 

      Easy the heavens were to build for God.

      Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory.. .⁵⁸

 

Between the static perfection of heaven and its gods and the dynamic evolving destiny of earth and its inhabitants, there is a vast difference; and it is earth and man that really engage the creative soul of God and offer a fruitful field for his lila or ecstatic passion-play.

 

      Death now changes his tactics, for flattery too has failed. Assuming the mask of childlike innocence and curiosity he asks Savitri what exactly this Truth is and who can find her form:

 

      Show me the body of the living Truth

      Or draw for me the outline of her face

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      That I too may obey and worship her.

      Then will I give thee back thy Satyavan.⁵⁹

 

Savitri ignores the challenge implied in Death's speech and contents herself with an exposition—a Gita, shall we say—of God's secret purposes. Death is a god too, a power of no mean significance, but still no more than a shadow of the Real. A collapse of mere logic should precede our attempts to apprehend Truth as god himself. He defies reason, and is himself:

 

      Universal, he is all, - transcendent, none.

      To man's righteousness this is his cosmic crime,

      Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell

      Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world

      And evil to reign in this enormous scene.⁶⁰

 

But the human drama is no tale told by an idiot, though such it seems to be to purblind impatient man. "There is a purpose in each stumble and fall;" and the chaos of a million discords only prefigures the dancing stars to come. Man has had a chequered history, but the tale is not ended:

 

      Out of this tangle of intellect and sense,

      Out of the narrow scope of finite thought

      At last he wakes into spiritual mind;...⁶¹

 

There have been already the god-intoxicated climbers of the Himalayas of the Spirit, who have reached radiant altitudes, and glimpsed the far splendours of the "house of Truth". There have been laureates of the Spirit who have uttered the revelatory word,

 

      a mighty and inspiring Voice,

      Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

      And tears away the veil from God and life.⁶²

 

 The image of humanity's future hope is installed in the heart of the seer-spirit who is also striving for the advent:

 

      A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense

      Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form

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      And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light

      Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,

      In the truth of a moment, in the moment's soul

      Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.⁶³

 

But if Death wants to see Truth's glorious face, who can oblige him? Human speech can only present a shadow of the Truth. If, however, Death touches Truth indeed, he would "grow suddenly wise and cease to be!"

 

      For the last time Death speaks to Savitri. Half tauntingly but also half in earnest, Death asks:

 

      Who then art thou hiding in human guise?

      Thy voice carries the sound of infinity,

      Knowledge is with thee, Truth speaks through thy words;

      The light of things beyond shines in thy eyes.

      But where is thy strength to conquer Time and Death?⁶⁴

 

And Death repeats his challenge that she should reveal her power or at least show that the Mighty Mother is with her. As Krishna assumes his viśvarūpa or cosmic form in the Gita in response to Arjuna's imperative request, Savitri too now permits her whole greatness to invade and possess her:

 

      A mighty transformation came on her.

      A halo of the indwelling Deity,

      The Immortal's lustre that had lit her face

      And tented its radiance in her body's house,

      Overflowing made the air a luminous sea.

      In a flaming moment of apocalypse

      The Incarnation thrust aside its veil.⁶⁵

 

She seems a "little figure in infinity", yet seems the "Eternal's very house"; her forehead has the lustre of Omniscience, her eyes blaze like stars; she is the marvel Eternity moulded into shape. The words too stir in the lotus of her heart and a Voice of ineffable sweetness and power breaks the awful silence of the hour:

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      Release the soul of the world called Satyavan

      Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance

      That he may stand master of life and fate,

      Man's representative in the house of God,

      The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light,

      The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride.⁶⁶

 

Death can hardly credit what he sees or comprehend what he hears; this is beyond all imaginings, all reckonings. Silent she stands, but her force invades him; resistance is useless; his darkness pales before her blaze, his limbs feel hypnotised by the power of her spoken word of command. What remains? He makes a despairing appeal to his associates:

 

      He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,

      He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:

      He turned to the Inconscient for support,

      From which he was born, his vast sustaining self;

      It drew him back towards boundless vacancy...

      His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.

      At last he knew defeat inevitable...

      Afar he fled...

      In the dream twilight of that symbol world

      The dire universal Shadow disappeared

      Vanishing into the Void from which it came...

      And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.⁶⁷

 

But neither stirs yet, for between them there rises "a mute invisible and translucent wall". They await "the unknown inscrutable Will".

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SECTION D

 

      'THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING DAY'

 

 I

 

'The Eternal Day'

 

      The great Savitri-Yama dialectic has spanned the ineluctable spaces of Eternal Night and the Double Twilight, and with the withdrawal of the shadow, twilight gives place to day—the symbol realm of Everlasting Day—and Savitri and Satyavan are alone though still with the nameless veil, the translucent wall, between them. Death's thesis and Savitri's antithesis have rung in our ears and echoed through the corridors of the symbol worlds of night and twilight. With Death's retreat, can it be said that Savitri's antithesis has decisively and finally vanquished Death's thesis? This would be too crude an end to the cosmic debate. A synthesis is called for, a harmony that involves both thesis and antithesis, both a changed Yama and a subdued Savitri. The poetic projection of the synthesis is the subject of 'The Book of Everlasting Day.'

 

      When night flees, when twilight lifts, then is the time for day's unfolding. What is this Eternal Day like? Paradisal must be its colour and texture and tone and rhythm. Sri Aurobindo invades this invisible realm and in trying to snap its extravagance of paradisal beauty achieves one of the greatest flights of poetic imagination on record. Light, power, beauty, harmony, truth-consciousness, bliss, are some of the features of paradise as conceived by man, but the picturing ot the realm itself is seldom attempted and hardly ever satisfies. Sri Aurobindo, however, makes us see with Savitri's eyes, share her sense of wonderment and exultation and her own awakened sense of voyaging through beautiful seas of light and felicity. These are "worlds of deathless bliss", a marvellous sun looks down upon them; here is "perfection's home", surrounded by God's "everlasting day".

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Savitri quivers "with eternity's touch" and her soul stands "close to the founts of the infinite". Here she sees 'immortal clarities of form", since twilight and night are no more and all is awake to the splendour of the sun:

 

      Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven

      The seven immortal earths were seen, sublime:

      Homes of the blest released from death and sleep

      Where grief can never come nor any pang...⁶⁸

 

Earth-nature seems changed, the very air seems "an ocean of felicity", the lowliest of earths seems a heaven now. All Nature hymns the glory of the ordainer of order. Rivers taking their origin on hills and flowing to the sea, when translated into their divine archetypes, become a celestial choir:

 

      A chanting crowd from mountain bosoms slipped

      Past branches fragrant with a sigh of flowers

      Hurrying through sweetnesses with revel leaps;

      The murmurous rivers of felicity

      Divinely rippled honey-voiced desires,

      Mingling their sister eddies of delight,

      Then, widening to a pace of calm-lipped muse,

      Down many-glimmered estuaries of dream

      Went whispering into lakes of liquid peace.⁶⁹

 

The inhabitants of this realm enjoy an unending happiness, and neighbouring realms are peopled by "eternity's luminous tribes" Colour, shape, word, rhythm, all fuse into perfection. Variety and harmony, richness and sufficiency, impulse and law, all achieve a splendid co-existence. In this community of spirits, one wanders in the wind, another broods on leaf or stone, and from others rise "unfathomed, inexpressible, chantings":

 

      In those far-lapsing symphonies she could hear,

      Breaking through enhancements of the ravished sense,

      The lyric voyage of a divine soul

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Mid spume and laughter tempting with its prow

The charm of innocent Circean isles,

Adventures without danger beautiful

In lands where siren Wonder sings its lures

From rhythmic rocks in ever-foaming seas.⁷⁰

 

Savitri feels feasted in her senses and her soul, and it is a marvel to her that things limited or imperfect or maimed or causing satiety on earth should, in this other kingdom, be flawless, whole, and of perennial relish. The heart is a "torch lit from infinity", the limbs are "trembling densities of soul". But Savitri realises that there are even nobler worlds, opening beyond the large sapphire gates:

 

      Endless aspired the climbing of those heavens;

      Realm upon realm received her soaring view.⁷¹

 

On the crown of a glorious ascent where the finite mates with the infinite, she beholds great forms of deities, apsara goddesses, heaven's cupbearers, magician builders, wind-haired Gandharvas, and also our great ancestors, high seers and poets. At the last point of vision,

 

      Beyond what tongue can utter or mind dream,

      Worlds of an infinite reach crowned Nature's stir.⁷²

 

Here all is a "potent and lucid joy"; here time dwells with Eternity as one; and here immense felicity joins rapt repose.

 

      When the first dizziness of this impact of paradisal beauty and bliss wears off, Savitri looks about herself and sees a familiar yet strange being who is the "living knot and source" of all the worlds:

 

      One whom her soul had faced as Death and Night

      A sum of all sweetness gathered into his limbs

      And blinded her heart to the beauty of the suns.

      Transfigured was the formidable shape.⁷³

 

The Dark has become exceeding Light, the dread aspect is now sweet, the sombre cowl is replaced by the "godhead's lurking love". He seems a God carrying all godheads "in his grandiose limbs", with the "fourfold being" for his crown. He is first, Virat the architect, Will working through Matter and creating the visible world. He is second, Hiranyagarbha, thinker and dreamer and the creator of the invisible worlds of possibility, "the Angel of mysterious ecstasies". The third spirit, the hidden cause of the other two, is "a mass of superconscience closed in light,/Creator of things in his all-knowing sleep/...the centre of the circle of God. ⁷⁴ Fourth and last is the 'brooding bliss of the Infinite,/Its omniscient and omnipotent repose/Its immobile silence absolute and alone."⁷⁵ Crowned by this "fourfold being", the transfigured God meets Savitri's gaze, and "Soul sees Soul in equality and understanding".⁷⁶

 

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      II

 

'The Soul's Choice'

 

Savitri has successfully withstood the blandishments and temptations of the Dark God. An even subtler trial awaits her now. A voice rises as it were from her heart. The voice of "inviolable Ecstasy", she is the "beauty of the unveiled Ray", and death itself is the "tunnel" she drives through life to reach her "unseen distances of bliss". Heaven and Earth have an intimate kinship:

 

      Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth,

      Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven.⁷⁷

 

Savitri and Satyavan can "serve the dual law" now only distantly glimpsed, and serve the earth and its inhabitants; but if they would rather leave the earth to its fate and achieve their own permanent felicity, now is the time to ascend into the "blissful home". Earth's desire is but an "ambiguous myth"; Savitri and Satyavan might as well rise to their own immortality. Savitri at once rejects this promise to her of personal salvation:

 

      I climb not to thy everlasting Day,

      Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night...

      Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

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      Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,

      The forge where the Archmason shapes his works.

      Thy servitudes on earth are greater, King,

      Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.⁷⁸

 

She cannot solace herself in heaven when earth is full of suffering men. With Satyavan by her side, she will be able to give battle to the world's woe, lift man's soul to God, and bring immortality to the earth.

 

      A fresh doubt is posed before Savitri. Is it ever possible that the basic distinction between earth and heaven can be annulled? With average humanity preoccupied with the routine cares of the earth, a general emancipation is out of question:

 

      Heaven's call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;

      The doors of light are sealed to common mind,

      And earth's needs nail to earth the human mass...⁷⁹

 

Not merely ascent is difficult, relapse and descent are far easier and quicker; no wonder the human mass is content to lay waste their lives merely eating and spending. It is easy to say that existential limitations should be transcended; but how? It is easier said than done. How is man to borrow the Omniscient's eyes? Or the Omnipotent's force? Savitri's compassionate heart does great credit to her, but she is foredoomed to failure if she is going to make the earth the stage of her action:

 

      Leave to its imperfect light the earthly race:

      All shall be done by the long act of Time.⁸⁰

 

Let Savitri consent to breaking into eternity "her mortal mould", receive Satyavan into her boundlessness, and ignore the world and its intolerable budget of woes. But Savitri refuses to be tempted with the promise of solitary bliss for herself and Satyavan. She says simply:

 

      To bring God down to the world on earth we came,

      To change the earthly life to life divine.⁸¹

 

She will not sacrifice earth to "happier worlds". Wasn't it God

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who made the earth and planted in it the seed for perfection? God has made earth, and earth must bring down her God. Savitri has actually "felt a secret spirit stir in things/Carrying the body of the growing God", and hence earth's climb to its own eternity is certain.

 

      Realising at last that Savitri's purpose holds despite the doubts posed and the difficulties prophesied, the god tells her that while he appreciates the strength of her vision and will and voice—because these have had their origin in him—he must warn her about "the tardy process of the pace of Time"; a quick transformation of human and earth-nature is not to be thought of and she should guard against daring "too soon the adventure of the Light". But he will not raise impediments of his own any further:

 

      As I have taken from thee my load of night

      And taken from thee my twilight's doubts and dreams,

      So now I take my light of utter Day.

      These are my symbol kingdoms but not here

      Can the great choice be made that fixes the fate

      Or uttered the sanction of the Voice supreme.

      Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds

      To the infinity where no world can be.⁸²

 

But the double-faced god, one side dark and the other bright, who is the master of the magic that makes the worlds, is himself no more than a mediate power, and his worlds of night, twilight and day too are only mediating links between the Spirit above and Matter below. If Savitri is determined indeed to deliver humanity from its thrall of incapacity, misery and death, she should ascend into her timeless self, "choose destiny's curve and stamp thy will on Time". With these valedictory words, the god withdraws, and with him the "heaven-worlds" too vanish in "spiritual light". And Savitri lives fulfilled in "an ineffable world", experiencing a rapture, a virgin unity,

 

      Housing a multitudinous embrace

      To marry all in God's immense delight,

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      Bearing the eternity of every spirit,

      Bearing the burden of universal love,

      A wonderful mother of unnumbered souls.⁸⁵

 

In her condition of superlative receptiveness, "a crypt and sanctuary of brooding light/...the last recess of things beyond" now opens before her, and she listen again, and catches the accents of another voice. This is the very last test, although it is repeated four times. Savitri is asked to choose between life on earth and,

 

      An immense extinction in eternity,

      A point that disappears in the infinite, -...⁸⁴

 

The woman's heart replies: Thy peace, thy oneness, thy energy, thy joy of the embrace, O Lord:

 

      Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,

      Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.⁸⁵

 

Not for herself, or for Satyavan and herself, but "for earth and men". Four times the choice is given, and four times Savitri elects earth-life and shared sorrow to easy escape into the "negative eternity" of extinction in the infinite. She will need all heaven's powers, but earth will be the area of her action. She cannot forget the cry of a million creatures, nor ignore the "dreadful whirlings of the world"; she must go back to the earth with Satyavan and start building the house divine there.

 

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 III

 

      'THE SUPREME CONSUMMATION"

 

      The Supreme's blissful word comes at last:

 

My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose.

All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.⁸⁶

 

Thesis and antithesis have been clashing through the symbol worlds °f night, twilight and day, and even in the highest realms of the Supreme; the possibility of any true ideals being quarried out of the crude hard rocks of the Inconscience has been questioned, and the possibility of earthly realisations being permanent has been doubted; the advisability of leaving the earth and mankind to their fate and achieving a personal salvation either through the enjoyment of the bliss of heaven or through total extinction in nirvana has also been persuasively and almost peremptorily canvassed. Savitri has stood her ground without flinching in the least. Now the supreme tells her that hers is the right choice, nay his own choice in her! This is the synthesis towards which the dialectic has been moving all along. The tests have led to right self-knowledge, to the awakening of the requisite will, to the organisation of the right means to achieve the right purpose. The word comes again:

 

      Because thou hast chosen to share earth's struggle and fate

      And leaned in pity over earth-bound men

      And turned aside to help and yearned to save,

      I bind by thy heart's passion thy heart to mine

      And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul...

      O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light

      And bring down God into the lives of men;...⁸⁷

      Descend to life with him thy heart desires.

      0 Satyavan, O luminous Savitri,

      1 sent you forth of old beneath the stars,

      A dual power of God in an ignorant world,

      In a hedged creation shut from limitless self,

      Bringing down God to the insentient globe,

      Lifting earth-beings to immortality.⁸⁸

 

It is a speech of about 500 lines, and many of the ideas already elaborated in earlier cantos are here gathered up into a comprehensive and significant whole. The intention from the very beginning had been that Savitri and Sayavan should be God's dual power—Savitri the force and Satyavan the soul—operating on earth to divinise it; between them they are to give the right turn to human life and point

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to "the souls of men the routes to God". When favourable conditions have been created by the dual power,

 

      The superman shall wake in mortal man

      And manifest the hidden demigod

      Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force

      Revealing the secret deity in the cave.⁸⁹

 

All shall then change, a magic order will displace the "mechanic universe", and "the superman shall reign as king of life/Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven."⁹⁰ As a "high crown of all", there will result "the end of Death, the death of Ignorance". Matter's world will itself be transformed, for "Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face". Nature too will be transfigured, "a divine force shall flow through tissue and cell" and every feeling will become a "celestial thrill":

 

      Thus shall the earth open to divinity

      And common natures feel the wide uplift,

      Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray

      And meet the deity in common things.

      Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

      The Spirit shall take up the human play,

      This earthly life become the life divine.⁹¹

 

The subtle music ceases at the conclusion of the great ambrosial revelation, and presently, "through unseen worlds and bottomless spaces forced", Savitri's soul sinks down to the earth, drawing with her, "like a flower hidden in the heart of spring", dear Satyavan's soul as well. As they career towards the earth,

 

      Invisible heavens in a thronging flight

      Soared past.. .Then all the blind

      And near attraction of the earth compelled

      Fearful rapidities of downward bliss.⁹²

 

Their return is earth's moment of destiny; "a crimson seed of God's felicity" is lodged on earth:

 

      A power leaned down, a happiness found its home.

      Over wide earth brooded the infinite bliss.⁹³

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