Savitri and the Yoga of the cells

 Savitri and The Yoga of the Cells

 

Introduction

 

Physical Transformation — The Early Beginnings

 

It is perhaps not very wrong to say that the process of the last decisive physical transformation in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga-tapasya began sometime in the mid-1930s. The siddhi or realisation of the Overmind consciousness working in the physical was already obtained by him in 1926; it set off a certain globality of operation for its functioning at the material level. Since then his entire yogic effort was organised towards getting the higher, the supramental siddhi in the substance of the body itself. This was a totally new situation in the context of the evolutionary earth; but it was also a situation fraught with dangers, it yet holding in it vast possibilities, these opening themselves in the direction towards which a secret hand had already started guiding the process. The will had to become the Will in the physical.

 

This transformation of the death-afflicted physical was certainly a most difficult endeavour whose parallel could perhaps be seen only in a remote way in ancient times, more specifically in the Vedic tapasya of Rishi Agastya. But his body could not withstand the effect of "the triple poison" and he had to finally give up the demanding attempt. The body was not ready to hold the charge of luminous immortality in it. It did not possess the necessary spiritual merit for this purpose: it was still an unbaked vessel, atapta tanu, a pot fashioned from brittle clay; another kind of tapasya was needed to overcome the difficulty. The cells of the body had not awakened yet to the reality that is seated deep within them. The definitive groundwork of the Overmind consciousness in the sequel of evolution, working in the collective, had also not yet been prepared and kept ready. This happened much later, only after the coming of its Avatar, towards the end of Dwapar Yuga, at the time of the Mahabharata War.

 

After these long and tentative centuries of preparation, the pioneering task of Rishi Agastya was taken up again by Sri Aurobindo who brought to it a luminous and decisive completeness. Granting that such a moment in the evolutionary history of the earth had arrived, and that there was the necessary endorsement of the Supreme for it to happen, the problem of the inconscient nature had yet long remained untackled. Sri Aurobindo’s concern was chiefly this. It was a twofold effort, of invoking and bringing down the dynamism of the supreme Truth on the earthly plane, and preparing the unregenerate inconscient material nature to receive it for its unhampered action. The spiritual and occult-yogic tapasya carried out together by him and the Mother saw that this was done. That opened up new doors, bright doors of the physical, for the entry of the Infinite's dimensions in the earth-play. Presently it has made its manifestation an accomplished fact, here in the physical’s subtle.

 

It will be perhaps quite instructive to know the broad stages through which this yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had proceeded. We do get a certain glimpse of it in some of their writings of the period, particularly Sri Aurobindo’s poetic compositions which have at times unmistakable autobiographical suggestions in them. Thus in a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, written in 1933, he speaks of the functioning of the Truth-dynamism as follows:

 

What the Supramental will do, the mind cannot foresee or lay down. The mind is Ignorance seeking for the Truth, the Supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness: Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a Supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make earth a Supramental world but to bring down the Supramental as a Power and established consciousness in the midst of the rest—to let it work there and fulfil itself as Mind descended into life and matter has worked as a Power there to fulfil itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it is a thing that ought not to be said now—when the Light is there, the Light itself will do its work—when the Supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide.

 

But prior to that he had his work to do; he had to do “dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious”. Of this dredging—of what he wrote elsewhere not “soaring and soaring” but “digging and digging”—we might get some idea from a stanza of the then unpublished poem of his, A God’s Labour; this was before 1935. Here is the stanza he had sent to Dilip Roy:

 

He who would bring the heavens here
    Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
    And tread the dolorous way.

 

So this is what Sri Aurobindo was busy with at that time: he wanted to build a rainbow bridge between earth and heaven, and in that process he coerced the godhead to accept the travail of birth and death, the misery and suffering of the dark and sordid conditions prevailing here. Which God would willingly come down and accept this challenge, consent to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death? Only the Divine himself—the Avatar. He comes and accepts the mortal’s lot.

But we have to also remember that, perhaps, this wearisome digging and dredging might not have been absolutely necessary, that there could have been a smoother sailing towards the goal; there was in fact a very reasonable likelihood of the victory coming into closer sight. In 1935 Sri Aurobindo had written something to this effect to Nirodbaran. the supramental Light “was coming down before November 1934, but afterwards all the damned mud arose and it stopped. But there are red crimson lights. One is supramental Divine Love. The other is the supramental physical Force.”

 

Naturally, therefore, his preoccupation shifted towards the problems of this “damned mud”. The concern was not with the beatitude of heaven but with the circumstance that is present in this ignorant world, down below in this mud. He became more busy with this Hellish Opposition than persuading the Empyrean, that its red-crimson seeds might sprout and flower in this grim damned mud. But then, consequently, with the pressure from above the revolt of the subconscient from below also became more fierce. And there was the real danger that if the Godhead should awake too soon, that awakening might lead to total destruction, the support, ādhāra, not being there ready. The action of the “supramental physical Force” stirred the dark reaction in the depths of the inconscient matter. Surely, this had to be met with, and conquered. The reality of the falsehood in its operational aspects and in its harsh darkish details had to be admitted, had to be fully cognized in pragmatism of the entire spiritual endeavour. The yoga-tapasya therefore took another turn.

 

Sri Aurobindo gives in July 1935 a hint of this deep-rooted struggle with the darkness of the terrestrial creation in his short poem entitled A God’s Labour, as we have just noted. Without a doubt, pretty clearly, this is an autobiographical account, indicating what at that time he was trying to achieve. Not that we should not look at this poem as an excellent composition, a fine piece of creative activity; but quite often the yogic-spiritual bearings get left out. If to Dilip Roy this piece is “beautiful if somewhat sad”, to Amal Kiran it is a “most moving mystical” poem with the psychic authenticity describing an overhead vision, and to Srinivasa Iyengar a poem that has written itself out in terms of “ordained inevitability”, it expressing Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga done for man’s and earth’s transformation. These are entirely valid statements coming from the critics, of poetic appreciation, but primarily what is most important is to realise that the poem deals with an occult action in the context of the “dredging”-operation. We should not think even for a moment that in the midst of this “severe and painful” task Sri Aurobindo, who was always a poet first, was simply lending himself to the enchanting lyricism of the Muse; nor was he just presenting a self-account or making a diary-note in the language of poetry, recording his spiritual experiences of the period. That will be to dismiss him as a Yogi.

 

But what is more likely is that Sri Aurobindo, in a certain sense, felt it necessary to give a definite form, of concreteness, to the entire difficulty, a definiteness in order to deal with it as a tangible objectified opposition to his desirable godly work. The revolt of the subconscient had to be seen to, seen as an aspect of the yoga-tapasya for “man’s and earth’s transformation”. Throughout the dull and fruitless toiling centuries of the known or unknown history man has always remained man, and the sorrowful earth remained ever burdened with crueller and direr sorrows. There were many higher descents in the long course of time, and prophets had appeared who to some extent did redeem the lot, and there were the Avatars who had come one after the other in the declining ages of righteousness. Fresher lights had filled the skies, and their presence had brought succour to the ailing race. But nothing much had changed, nothing in a radical manner. In the thickness of the inconscient night’s opacity these lights proved inadequate. This had to be looked into.

 

In order to probe this opaque night, Sri Aurobindo the Yogi went where none had gone earlier; fearless there he wooed her, her dark and dangerous heart. He started digging deeper yet, khanan Rishi Agastya speaks of, and knocked at the keyless gate, and reached the grim and frightening house where she lived. There he

 

... saw that a falsehood was planted deep
    At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
    On the Dragon's outspread wings.

 

He looked into the eyes of the naked night, looked straight with his spirit’s fire, and spoke to her with the tongue of a swift orange-and-gold flame. Of course, during this entire Journey into the terrifying Darkness his one constant and unfailing companion was the Light of the Supreme with whom he had become integrally united. All the veils were torn; even as with him, the extraordinary explorer, the transcendental Gleam increasingly remained, it gave him the conviction of the final victory:

I have been digging deep and long
    Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
    A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
    To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
    Are my meed since the world began.

....

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
    And the Titan kings assail,
But I cannot rest till my task is done
    And wrought the eternal will.

....

On a desperate stair my feet have trod
    Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
    Into the human abyss.

....

Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
    And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
    The incarnate spirits yearn

Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
    Down a gold-red stair-way wend
The radiant children of Paradise
    Clarioning darkness's end.

A little more and the new life's doors
    Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
    In a great world bare and bright.

 

Thus a great step was taken and the prospects of the living truth enshrining itself on the earth brought closer. In the filth and mire was kindled a fire, a new fire which has no smoky flames but which turns itself into an ever-growing blaze, into undying glory of the heavenly sun. The gain may not be immediately visible, but its occult print is already there for the eye of the finer vision to see.

 

This definite gain is consolidated by giving to it a subtle-luminous body of the expressive Word; this is something wonderful, because the body of the Word is not only indestructible; it is a radiant centre from which spread dynamic contents it holds. It becomes an ever-permanent force of action, writing the future history of the spirit in terms of the truths of the spirit. The compelling lyricism of the poem, in fact an impeccable and flawless paean-song, of triumph, asserts this unprecedented victory; it paves the path towards the ultimate objective. Here a unique thing has happened in the annals of spiritual time. It is now expected that, one day, this shall bring the “divine whole” to the transformed earth. The gift that was promised shall be granted:

 

Hill after hill was climbed and now,
Behold, the last tremendous brow
And the great rock that none has trod:
A step, and all is sky and God.

One Day

 

This was in 1938-39. But during the intervening period, of a couple of years, a lot of yoga-tapasya had already been done. In this entire endeavour, Sri Aurobindo’s concern was specifically in the terrestrial context, the soul of the earth. Indeed, he was attempting to establish the supermind in his physical body not at all for his personal, for the individual's benefit; it was for sake of the earth, for the collective’s progress. He needed it not for himself, and the focus was on the universal nature.

 

In a letter dated 25 November 1935 to Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo writes:

 

The tail of the supermind is descending, descending, descending. It is only the tail at present, but where the tail can pass, the rest will follow... The attempt to bring a great general descent having only produced a great ascent of subconscient mud, I had given up that as I already told you. At present I am only busy with transformation of overmind (down to the subconscient) into supermind; when that is over, I shall see if I can beat everyone with the tail of the supermind or not. At present I am only trying to prevent people from making hysterical, subconscient asses of themselves, so that I may not be too much disturbed in my operation—not yet with too much success.

 

Not too long before this, during “the brightest period in the history of the Ashram”, the Mother was continuously bringing down great powers into her physical being; but she was doing this through the Overmind which was already established in it. But then she had to stop even that,—because the human vital and physical were not ready. Understandably, therefore, the bringing down of the supramental powers in their splendour was just out of the question. Understandably also the attention was focused on the difficulties of the path, the antagonism of the unregenerate agencies standing in the way and obstructing if not opposing the manifestation.

 

But as their yoga-tapasya got intensified towards this objective, a greater descent also became possible. This can be confidently inferred from a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote on 14 September 1934:

 

The supramental Force is descending, but it has not yet taken possession of the body or of matter—there is still much resistance to that. It is the supramentalised Overmind Force that has already touched, and this may at any time change into or give place to the supramental in its own native power.

 

We can perhaps witness such a thing happening after the God’s Labour put in by him in July 1935, as the events certainly took an upward turn about this time. The physical came directly under the spotlight of the spirit’s gaze, and it seemed that only one more step had to be taken towards the “divine whole”. By August 1935 Sri Aurobindo had in fact started mentioning that he was “very near” to take “complete possession of the supramental.”

 

This definitely marked a landmark stage in his yoga-tapasya, though on his part it was an admission in a “human” way,—if we are to put it so. Sri Aurobindo’s invocation to the Bride of Fire, dated 11 November 1935, shows his confident readiness to measure up to the demands of her clasp. This fiery power could now enter into his being and fill his heart with her ecstatic radiances. The sun-bright Ganges in her hurried sparkling impetuosity could course through his entire being:

 

Bride of the Fire, clasp me now close,—
    Bride of the Fire!
I have shed the bloom of the earthly rose,
    I have slain desire.

Beauty of the Light, surround my life,—
    Beauty of the Light!
I have sacrificed longing and parted from grief,
    I can bear thy delight.

Image of ecstasy, thrill and enlace,—
    Image of bliss!
I would see only thy marvellous face,
    Feel only thy kiss.

Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart,—
    Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
    O living Sun.

 

And by October 1939 we get the following picture, his sailing the vast golden ocean:

 

The Light was still around me
    When I came back to earth
Bringing the Immortal's knowledge
    Into man's cave of birth.

The Island Sun

 

Did anyone ever bring back to this transient and sorrowful life, to “man’s cave of birth”, to the thick waters of this murky existence, anything after having sailed to the heavenward-ascending sea of golden effulgences? To the Buddhist all life is pain and suffering and distress, primarily because of man’s ignorant cravings and a thousand wants in the pursuit of the futile. For him the only way out of this duhkha-filled mortality is to follow the Eightfold Path because, pragmatically, there is no way by which all that is here can be redeemed. The Large Boat can ferry to the shore of the Void or the indefinable Shunya, but what it brings back is just its calm iconic image. This is a solution no doubt, to escape from harshness of the day or from grim suffocation of the night. However, it has only a one-way validity and hence cannot be integrally satisfying or fulfilling. In it the life-urges remain unattended; perhaps neither can anyone rest peacefully in the blank of the Self. In contrast to this, for the Adwaitin of the Illusionist brand there is no question of bringing back anything when, with the appearance of knowledge, this illusory world itself,—which is after all a product of the ignorance of the Self,—disappears. For the ecstatic Vaishnava this whole creation is nothing but God’s unceasing Play or līlā and indeed there is no issue to bother him. In the case of the Shakta, all is the will and working of the supreme Shakti herself and the aim of his practices is to live in identification of that will and working of hers. By himself becoming that divinity does he worship the divinity of his adoration. The ancient Upanishadic seer yearned to cross the Gates of the Sun, sūryasya dwārah, and attain immortality in its triple splendour, or else he desired to merge in the supreme Being. The entire I-ness is dissolved, the name and the form,—as does a river flowing into the vastness of the ocean loses its distinctness. Even if we are to go to the World of pure Idea, whose bright projections we could here be, there is no mechanism by which its warm breathing realities in their pristine truthfulness and glory could be brought down upon the earth. The Vedic Rishi invoked the Immortal in the mortal, and asked for children and cattle and horses, and spiritual abundances, and by his tapasya won them also; for the performance of his truth-bearing sacrifices he longed to live for a hundred autumns, jīvém śaradah śatam, and we may even say that demandingly he longed to live in its joyous culmination, in fruitful felicity, prajāvata saubhagam, as his rightful reward. But

 

O soul, it is too early to rejoice!

Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,

Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;

But where hast thou thrown self’s mission and self’s power?

On what dead bank on the Eternal’s road?

One was within thee who was self and world,

What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?

Escape brings not the victory and the crown!

Something thou cam’st to do from the Unknown,

But nothing is finished and the world goes on,

Because only half God’s cosmic work is done.

Only the everlasting No has neared.

 

In the entire chronicle of the spiritual achievements and spiritual triumphs what is accomplished is only the “half God’s cosmic work”. Sri Aurobindo wrote these lines in around 1942 and saw that “man’s cave of birth” had, all through, remained unlit. At the best, what was occasionally seen projected on its wall were only bright shadows of the far-glimpsed Beyond. But when the Master-Yogi comes back carrying with him the Light of that Beyond, bringing it to the very physical, then it is for the first time that we witness the possibility of this cave becoming a place of habitation for that Light itself. We begin to see a new beginning. He has brought for the first time to this cave the “Immortal’s knowledge” which alone can usher in the divinity in its splendour, unattenuated even by the thick material darkness. The Vedic Immortal in the mortal has transformed that mortality into its own kind, not in the far-glimpsed Beyond, but here in the depths of the earthly night. His yoga-pursuit of twenty-five years in this “cave of tapasya” has borne “fruitful felicity”.

 

We may then say that, Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga of Physical Transformation proper got on to its first start in 1935 with the God, who He is on earth, labouring ceaselessly, day and night, day after day. The Mother in her talk dated 10 October 1956 speaks of the élite of humanity and tells about the descent of Supermind in Sri Aurobindo, the descent that took place “long ago". It is as follows:

 

What Sri Aurobindo promised and what naturally interests us… is that the time has come when some beings among the élite of humanity, who fulfil the conditions necessary for spirtualisation, will be able to transform their bodies with the help of the supramental Force, Consciousness and Light, so as no longer to be animal-men but become supermen. This promise Sri Aurobindo had made and he based it on the knowledge he had that the supramental Force was on the point of manifesting on the earth. In fact it had descended in him long ago, he knew it and knew what its effects were.

 

When a pointed question was put to the Mother in 1954 about that “long ago”, her reply was immediate, immediate with the least hesitation in it, leaving no room for diverse interpretations:

 

Even in 1938 I used to see the Supermind descending into Sri Aurobindo. What he could not do at that time was to fix it here.

 

Fixing it here would have meant a totally different course of yoga-tapasya, it moving swiftly, unhampered by the slothful contingencies of the terrestrial nature. Indeed, that would have meant neither the accident to the thigh of his right leg at the early hour on 24 November 1938, nor his passing away on 5 December 1950. But these did happen. Which only means, the problem of a decisive transformation of the body had yet to be fully weighed up, had to be examined in terms of the working details. More specifically speaking, the descending supermind had yet to be fixed in him, in his physical. "The Supermind was established in Sri Aurobindo, but it had not transformed his body. … The supramental Force was there up to the subtle-physical…" As regards the descent of Supermind in the physical, the Mother tells the following: "The supermind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light." This was on 29 June 1953. Interestingly, in this revelation the Mother also gives the definition of the Mind of Light, the physical’s mind receiving the supramental.

 

About the coming of the supermind and its entering into the terrestrial scheme of operations, in 1938, before the accident, there is a corroboration from Sri Aurobindo himself. It was believed at that time that the supermind would soon descend and take charge of things here. Amal Kiran who had moved to Bombay had written to that effect to Sri Aurobindo, towards the end of July, and had received from him a reply, dated 1 August 1938. Apropos of Amal Kiran’s specific query regarding a universal descent, Sri Aurobindo clarified the position as follows: "A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view at the moment.” There has to be, continues Sri Aurobindo, the “right openness” in us to receive it when it should come. From this important stipulation we can safely infer that the early descent that was taking place in him was not actually for himself, but was meant for a fuller manifestation on earth. It was certainly meant to be, eventually, of the nature of a “general descent”. The condition of the “right openness” in us was mentioned again in the context of the “dredging”-operation, in the fierce context of the opposition to its descent from the subconscient. The problem lay in the non-receptivity, in the unpreparedness of the unregenerate collectivity, it lay rather deep in the slumbering physical substance, unconscious of its possibilities. The roots of this difficulty had to be traced.

 

The sine qua non for a complete transformation to take place is that, at first, the supermind must manifest itself in the body-mind. This body-mind or the mind of the living matter, the very cells of the body must receive the supermind in them, in the body, and fix it in it. In fact, after the intended passing away of Sri Aurobindo this was exactly what was going on in the physical of the Mother. But the prior condition for the supermind’s descent to become permanent in the physical is that, the physical’s mental must get fully psychisised. It is actually the psychic quality, the psychic stuff, which gives immortality to things in the evolutionary world and therefore the psychic transformation of the physical has to precede any further progress towards the completer transformation. Going one step farther, unless physicalisation of the psychic occurs, unless this groundwork is kept fully ready, there is no question of the higher supramental transformation occurring. That would be metaphysically as well as occult-spiritually wrong. Sri Aurobindo, rather the Mother, had called the physical’s mind receiving the supermind as the Mind of Light. Establishing the Mind of Light is therefore the prerequisite for the work of transformation proper to commence. Without this prerequisite the attempt would be a failure.

 

Did Sri Aurobindo fulfil this condition, of establishing the Mind of Light first in him? This may sound a strange question, but we can definitely assert that in the late nineteen-thirties, in the wake of the God’s Labour, it started getting fulfilled.

 

On 30 January 1972 the Mother spoke the following: "Sri Aurobindo… embodied… in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it." But let us see how it had proceeded.

 

In July 1938 the Yogi-Poet had an assignation with the primordial Night, the Night of Creation. He went to meet her, carrying “God’s deathless light” in his breast. He was aware that this was going to be a very bold and dangerous rendezvous; it was going to be an exceptional and most decisive affair, fraught with possibilities, possibilities of varying shades. His fate and hence the fate of the world remained locked in them, in the possibility leading towards earthly deathlessness. So, he the pilgrim-soul made an assignation with the Night. But what was the outcome of that bold and dangerous rendezvous? What had actually transpired in the course of the meeting? But apart from dropping some broad hints, no communiqué was issued. If at all, it seemed that the way was lost and that there was no end to the “weary journeying”. Yet there was hope, there was conviction and certitude that the outcome was going to be a path leading towards immortality. There was the inalienable freedom, and the Yogi-Poet lived in the Spirit’s luminous and all-pervasive calm, and was in possession of the vast immobile bliss of the Being. Soon his rooms would get lit up with an endless Light, and rapture would be coursing through his nerves, and through every cell of his body. In a mute blaze of ecstasy, and preserving the “living sense of the Imperishable”, even in the bodily existence, he would proceed towards his goal. That was great indeed, that was absolutely marvellous. If the bodily existence was set ablaze in this way, it meant that there was the breathtaking realisation or the siddhi of the Mind of Light in him, that the physical had started receiving the supramental. Sri Aurobindo had definitely moved towards it, a remarkable event, a landmark event in the evolutionary sequence. It is said that Pythagoras had a thigh of gold, and that Rishi Vamadeva, after crossing the hundredth year, lived in a golden body for sixteen full years. Surely something golden had happened in that far past, though on an individual level, but now the Mind of Light has made the body its permanent base, permanent home.

 

In his sonnet The Golden Light we have a very unambiguous statement of this most extraordinary siddhi of the Mind of Light achieved by Sri Aurobindo. It is in that that he worked for the last dozen years or so, pursuing the immortal lines of Infinity, compelling it to take earthward turn.

 

The sonnet was first written on 8 August 1938,—just one week after his explicatory letter to Amal Kiran mentioned above, regarding the “general descent” which was not in view at that instant of time. The sonnet was later revised on 3 March 1944. The revisions are of a few minor verbal type but for our purpose, as far as the essential substance is concerned, it has remained intact.

 

A collection of forty-eight poems mainly consisting of sonnets, among the very last ones written by Sri Aurobindo, was brought out in 1952 under the title Last Poems. The happy cherished and beautiful merit of this collection is that we have also on parallel pages the facsimile-reproductions of the originals. The Golden Light has both the dates on it and is therefore the revised version in this collection; there is unfortunately a misreading in the second line of the printed transcription,—“rooms” was read as “worms”! But this collection is most valuable, in the sense that it makes an excellent Record of Yoga for the period 1937-1944. About his spiritual realisations of the time the hints Sri Aurobindo the Yogi has given, this is the only documented source available to us and is therefore exceptionally precious. As far as his autobiographical work with all the luminous light of the sun in it is concerned, we have his magnum opus Savitri,—the epic which embraces all the siddhis achieved by him, achieved up to 15 November 1950 when around that time he had formally stopped working on it: Savitri is the most complete Record of Yoga of his yoga-tapasya—and also of the Mother's up to that point—done by him here for the physical transformation of the world; but it is a pity that a recent biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo stupidly calls it a “fictional creation”, something spiritually naive and frivolous. However, the explicit affirmative-revelatory statement in The Golden Light has another convincing and genuine expressiveness in the depths of its direct disclosure made by him:

Thy golden Light came down into my brain
    And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
    A calm illumination and a flame.

Thy golden Light came down into my throat,
    And all my speech is now a tune divine,
A paean song of Thee my single note;
    My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.

Thy golden Light came down into my heart
    Smiting my life with Thy eternity;
Now has it grown a temple where Thou art
    And all its passions point towards only Thee.

Thy golden Light came down into my feet;
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat.

 

The last line of the earlier draft was

 

The earth is now thy playfield, O my sweet

 

in which the significant change from “The earth” of 1938 to “My earth” of 1944 bears the specificity of achievement in his physical body. If the golden Light of the one whom he had earlier apotheosised as “O my sweet” in the first draft has come down into his brain and throat and heart and feet, illustratively representing “my earth”, then we can surely recognise the body-mind opening to the supramental: here is the most definite statement of the experience of the Mind of Light Sri Aurobindo had, about which the Mother spoke later that the supramental had descended in him “long ago”. A little later, around 1942, we have a line in Savitri about this realisation:

 

The primal Energy took him in its arms;

His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,

An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:

Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,

Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:

He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,

He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.

 

This “Golden Light” must be considered as the first definitive beginning of the process of physical transformation which Sri Aurobindo had received as a birthday gift a week in advance, before 15 August in 1938. He has now offered his entire physical being to the invading deity and made it a temple for her permanent residence. Supramental Light and Consciousness and Force of that deity, breathing and living and luminous, have appeared dynamically and giftedly and splendidly upon the earth’s playfield.

 

We have a detailed account of these developments in Savitri. Its Protagonist has based his life upon Eternity. He knows the source from which his spirit came, but he has accepted the body of the earth. The cosmic past weighs heavily in it, and there is sloth and tamas of the physical, there is the reaction and revolt of the vital, and there is the mind’s incapacity to soar with thoughts into the blue empyrean. It is in this mould that the powers and possibilities of the spirit have to enter in and work. There is a degree of receptivity but the members feel tired soon. There is the constant pull of the subconscient cords, there is the earthly gravitation dragging down the sense of joy, the free and deep-ranging perception of intuition, the perfection of the careful and skilled worker. But the supreme Diplomat can take advantage of even this situation. He comes into darkened rooms, veils himself, and silently does his work till these unregenerate entities feel the need to change, the will to change. The imperative is all here must learn to obey the higher law, must move in the happy swift rhythms of the expressive Truth. The body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame. This has happened.

 

The Mother reveals: “As for the body, it is being trained to live only through the Divine, on the Divine, for everything—everything, everything, everything without exception. It is only when the consciousness is linked as much as it can be with the Divine Consciousness that there comes the sense of existence. It has now an extraordinary intensity. When the physical will get converted, it will be a solid thing, you know, which does not move—and complete. And so concrete... . The difference between being in the Divine, existing only through Him and in Him, and then being in the consciousness (not the ordinary, naturally, but the human consciousness) is so great that the one seems to be death beside the other, so much is it... That is to say, the physical realisation is truly a concrete realisation. … For the first time, early in the morning, I saw myself, my body—I do not know whether it is the supramental body or ... (how to say it?) a body in transition, but I had a body altogether new. ... It was very white. It was very slim (slender)—it was pretty. Truly a harmonious form. So it was the first time. I did not know at all, I had no idea of what it would be like, none at all, and I saw—I was like that, I had become like that. ... The supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. When I am on ‘this’ side—that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness—and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.”

 

Yet did the Mother succeed in her work? If we have to be clumsy that is the sort of question we would ask. But she has done it. In Savitri we are told that a seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour. Was that sown? When did Death’s tremendous hour arrive? Does it mark the beginning of the Everlasting Day? And when did it begin? In the spiritual history of the earth it began in that wonderful death, when the gold-crimson seed was cast in Death’s tremendous hour at 1:26 am on 5 December 1950 when, attempting all, Sri Aurobindo gloriously achieved all. In that moment of triumph he fixed the supramental in his physical, kind of secured it in it, anchored it firmly, immovably, splendidly. In its progression and on a luminous universal dimension it has started operating in the earth’s subtle physical. It is the dawning of the Everlasting Day as described by him in Savitri. He narrates it in the nature of a spiritual story, the story of a marvellous evolutionary triumph. It is also autobiographical in character. The Mother’s Yoga of Cellular Transformation begins in it.

 

RY Deshpande

 

12 January 2013