Here to fulfil himself
Aswapati comes to the mortal world as eternity’s delegate. He is aware that in man’s hid deep soul can reside celestial powers. But, presently, what rule over it are the grim and gruesome forces of darkness, of doom. The existential fact is: Death is the Lord of Life, and he remains unconquered. Terrible agencies are abroad and they are busy thwarting God’s great design. Has some adverse agent or authority, some antagonist, some dreadful Foe marred his beautiful work, brought imperfection to its perfection? Certainly, that was not the way the world was intended to be, flawed and full of misery and suffering. Something has slipped somewhere, something has gone wrong somewhere and there is the distortion and the crookedness. But in Aswapati was born the Seer and things opened into the Invisible. He accepted the apprenticeship of Ignorance—only to make his march the soar of an “eagle’s flight”. He has also the strong perception, a luminous intuition that this world will change into God’s world, that surely one day God (Savitri, p. 200)

…shall come to our cry,
One day he shall create our life anew
And utter the magic formula of peace
And bring perfection to the scheme of things.
One day he shall descend to life and earth,
Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors,
Into a world that cries to him for help,
And bring the truth that sets the spirit free,
The joy that is the baptism of the soul,
The strength that is the outstretched arm of Love.
One day he shall lift his beauty's dreadful veil,
Impose delight on the world's beating heart
And bare his secret body of light and bliss.

But, in the meanwhile, there is the struggle and there is the pang, there is the darksome uncertainty. Could it be that an “error of the gods has made the world”? Or indifferent is the Eternal, watching futile Time? And yet the hard work and the labour and the effort must go on, the thinker and the toiler think and toil, that the imbroglio is changed into a joyful miracle. When this shall happen will then life, free from death, reveal her true immortal face. Then shall “Night bare its core of mystic light”.

Aswapati must set himself on the discovery of that mystic light, bring the sun here by which all can get true illumination, remove the error if it was made by the erring gods, correct the goof that has fouled up the system, make the eternal alert to the reality of this inconscient creation to give to it divine sense and divine contents. As eternity’s delegate Aswapati must fulfil himself here.


RYD

That world-failure's cause
In one of his letters Sri Aurobindo says that there are two movements in the spiritual development of Aswapati: psycho-spiritual transformation and spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power. He further explains: “Aswapati's Yoga falls into three parts. First, he is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the individual and this is described as the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but this too is as yet only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires 'no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. That is described in the Book of the Divine Mother.” (Letters on Savitri, 1946)

Aswapati’s mission is fixed—to bring down the Divine Mother’s radiant power here. Some of its elements are as follows. We will see these in more details as we shall proceed. (Savitri, p. 202)

A mind absolved from life, made calm to know,
A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,
The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,
He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause.
Away he looked from Nature's visible face
And sent his gaze into the viewless Vast,
The formidable unknown Infinity,
Asleep behind the endless coil of things,
That carries the universe in its timeless breadths
And the ripples of its being are our lives.
The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath
And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,
Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams.
The veil was rent that covers Nature's depths:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.

One of the objectives of this pursuit is to find the cause of failure of this world. That should push him to look for the solution, to remove that cause.

RYD

The triple yoga
Aswapati carries the world’s desire to the Divine Shakti. But, before that, he engages himself in the triple Yoga, the Individual, the Universal, and the Transcendental Yoga. This triple Yoga of the Supreme is done by him in the earth-consciousness, done in order to prepare the needed base for the birth and action of the Divine Shakti. Aswapati comes here, first releases himself from Nature’s hold, finds the source from which his spirit was delegated, knows his larger self, and becomes one with all. He does psycho-spiritual and spiritual-transcendental yoga-tapasya. He makes such progress that, his body’s parts also open to the higher light. Soon he must get the spirit’s utter freedom.

With this achievement, Aswapati is in possession of the Knowledge of the Time-Born Man; he gets a new vision of himself and of the world. He may not be yet aware of the goal fixed for him, but there cannot be rest for him until the dusk from man’s soul is lifted. He reads the Vedic text and deciphers the significance of the great world rhythms. He sees a hidden sun even in the depths of darkness. His will now assumes superhuman dimensions, a will that can bring down a greater world. But he also discerns the gulf between what is and what is to be. His cosmic exploration begins.

Aswapati witnesses this vast universe, a universe which has limits neither in Space nor in Time. Experience after experience displays the rainbow moods of the Power that brought it into existence. It is upon these ascending slopes of Heaven that. the aspiring soul of man moves. The Seer is born within, and he sees Nature’s climbing hierarchy reaching the top of this creation.

For the explorer of the spirit’s worlds, the first port of entry is the world of Subtle Matter. Here are present the prototypal forms, the shining origins of things on earth. All here is beautiful, faultless, dream-hued, outlasting death and birth. Here is a possibility of our mortal body becoming glorious, if it should hold sufficient truth in it. But, prior to that, Aswapati has to discover what lies beyond this material Paradise.

It seems, this material world of forms is only a world of symmetric charm and carved dreams, and there has to be the adventure and vibrancy of Life. Life's nature is, whatever can serve her questing delight she gambles, unmindful of the peril. It is because of her that, matter becomes sensitive to the dynamic possibilities here. She builds the foundation for greater powers to step into this physical manifestation. Still, Matter’s stiffness or jadatva overpowers her and she is no more her incalculable self. Life meets Death and they together now drive the cart of dubious immortality.

The great power has succumbed and earth failed to keep the joy she had brought with her. Not only that. She herself has become an abject being, crawling in the lowly mud. Yet in her arrival glimmers a faint hope urging the mortal’s soul on the wakened path. Aswapati sees this contemptible state of fallen Life surviving on Death. But, then, there are gains also. There is a climbing of life from below. The first creation is followed by the instinct of a thinking sense. In the desert world an animal experiment begins. The evolutionary march makes in this empire of little life a heartening thrust.

However, what is witnessed is, Life has force and she is driven by Idea; but the Idea-Force, with the inevitability of its action, is absent. Instinct is followed by thought, and thought by will. Out of this queer stuff was shaped man, man lives just for a brief while—only to enjoy and suffer and die.

Stepping into the domains of wider Life, Aswapati notices her attempt to seize the Boundless in birth. She advances towards the far-off Light and, in her thousand expressions, Aswapati glimpses a ray of hope. He hears the heartbeats of a hidden reality. But he also hears the weeping of her soul within. She has become hostile and has consorted herself with Death. Aswapati discerns the gap between what she came to do and what she now is. He must probe, in the night itself, the cause of this failure.

The problem of Life’s abysmal condition is the central issue, and Aswapati cannot rest content without tackling it. In this world of fallen Life, fair is foul, and foul fair. If there is creative Darkness engendering pain, wickedness, suffering, corrupting truth, then it could be here. Now Ignorance, Falsehood, Error, Ego walk in its thick shadow and the Satanic votaries proclaim: “Evil, be thou my God.” Life in that gloom, with her perilous charm and beauty, lies cursed under the Gorgon spell. There Aswapati felt that his body was being licked by the hostile Power, and he suffered fear.

God created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice, but this love has to first conquer the appalling Inane. The existential problem is the denial to all that is God’s. Here are titans and maniac powers and cruel operators; here, allowed by the mighty Spirit, work determinedly terrible agencies. But Aswapati, in the strength of his soul, takes up the challenge. He probes this kingdom of pain, this world of sorrow and hate, of wickedness and malignancy. Not only that. Shiva-like, he drinks all the poison till not a drop is left. He puts his finger upon the error and the pain, and at once awakens there new knowledge, the sense of this mysterious creation.

In the occult abyss was fixed Aswapati’s rendezvous with the Night. He had gone there to woo her dark and dangerous heart. His footprints on the track have become the seals of divinity, and thence shall gush radiant fountains. Around him all is felicitous, and wonderful, and the daylight of conscious suns is within him. The dread is over, and Aswapati is in the company of the great Gods and Goddesses. His whole being is filled with bliss and an undying power becomes his strength. But he has also the perception that this is not the journey’s end, and that the Highest must be reached.

Across the land of sensuous beauty are the realms of observation and understanding. Now another faculty, that of the early mind, has been set into action. In the process Reason stumbles upon the fissioned atom and in it sees the omnipotent’s force. Yet what is witnessed is the tyranny of Matter’s logic imposed upon the Spirit’s swiftness of thought. There has to be a greater Mind to see a greater truth. Yet of little avail are these wonderful powers of Mind. Aswapati now meets in the Ideal’s world the Thinker or Manishi. He is in the company of shining archangels and kings of thought. Theirs is an attempt to grasp Truth’s absolute. The divine powers of seeing and hearing come as natural gifts. But Mind is incapable of understanding these works of Truth.

But the Ideal is always a bright spur for the explorer. At each step is seen a luminous world, rising in honour of the high Truth. On one side are the kingdoms of love, beauty, joy, sweetness, all bringing to earth their gracious marvels. What remained dormant until now, opens to spiritual greatnesses. Here is felt the Immortal’s touch. On the other side of this climbing pathway burns the deathless flame of will, the force of utter divine consciousness. Even as it climbs the ascending slopes, there is a call to reach the summits of existence. Aswapati must advance towards the diviner spheres.

On his onward march Aswapati stands on the summit and is a silent witness, sākşi, of things carried out by Nature, Prakriti. He lived in this still self, and its quiet vastness was in him. But there was in him no urge to stay in it. That self seemed but a shadow of a vaster and more forceful a reality. Peace is all right, but there has also to be the Truth’s dynamism.

In search of the dynamic power Aswapati is led by mysterious sounds and he comes to a wonderful realm. There consciousness, mind, life, body are all made of soul-stuff and spiritual sense is the instrument of knowledge. He sees Shiva and Shakti in a fulfilling union’s poise. Behind them stands the omnipotent Goddess, Chidvilasini or Consciousness-Force by whose act this creation has come out from the Unknowable. Aswapati’s spirit has now become a vessel to hold her luminous Power. In her he finds an answer to his long search and he surrenders to her. His quest bears fruit in her.

Aswapati, after such a breathtaking experience on the border touching the Transcendent, returns to the things of Time. He sees the powers that supervise the world and, beyond them, looks for that which can bring about a cosmic change. He makes a total yogic surrender to the Reality which sustains the Earth, the Mid-region, and Heaven,—Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar. In that sacrifice he is newborn and even his body partakes in its joy. Yet this supernal birth is his alone and it cannot be of great avail in the context of the collective life on the earth. The key to that life is with the Divine Mother and, therefore, Aswapati must approach her.

The one whom Aswapati met standing behind the World-Soul is still a mystery to him. So his quest continues; he ascends to the height where stands only the bare Reality. But on that summit of realization he has to make a final choice,—he must either abandon the world and merge into that Reality, or else he must seek that which will transform it. Towards that choice no help was available to him. Perhaps in it all should vanish, but that could entail a danger, that of going out of the manifestation. That eventuality would mean the failure of the soul’s mission itself. Aswapati is alert to it and he must remove that veil of negative light.

Aswapati decides not to slip behind that veil of negative light, of abandoning this world. In fact, in that self-discovery Aswapati comes to know about God’s desire that works here even in this mortal world. Here he is rewarded. It is in response to the longing of his soul that a being of wisdom, power, delight,—jnāna, śakti, ānanda,—steps out of eternity. He surrenders to her, and his heart is glad. Existence no more seems to be without aim. In her is found the hidden Word, the Mantra of Ascent and Transformation. She stands at the head of this creation, and she is the one who helps us cross great distances that yawn between us and the marvels that shine over there. From her Sun we can set alight our suns, suns of knowledge, strength, beauty, sweetness, love, joy, harmony, perfection. It is she who can turn our pain of death into ecstasy of life. How wonderful to be caught in her intolerant flame!

Her light and her bliss Aswapati asked for men on earth. Nothing else he yearned and, to attain what he yearned for the creation, he gave himself completely to her alone.


RYD

The night’s dark and dangerous heart
Aswapati had the experience of the golden Light invading his brain and throat and heart, it invading even his feet, a thing which never happened in the spiritual history; it happened first, in an overwhelming way, on 8 August 1938. But there were difficulties and there were assaults, a “darkness grim and cold oppressed his flesh”; his body was lapped by a “tenebrous tongue”. There were slaying attacks from the enemy souls born of evil and falsehood. Aswapati was witnessing “the pride of abysmal absolute”; he had to bear the pain of wounding inflictions. Not too long before that, before the golden Light invaded even his physical, just two weeks earlier, on 26 July in 1938, he had an assignation with the Night, a night with an “evil face of perilous beauty and charm”. He reports:

I made an assignation with the Night;
In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:
In my breast carrying God's deathless light
I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo.

I left the glory of the illumined Mind
And the calm rapture of the divinised soul
And travelled through a vastness dim and blind
To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll.

I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no voice of the celestial Friend,

And yet I know my footprints' track shall be
A pathway towards Immortality.

How lonely he must have felt, how abandoned! No voice of the celestial Friend was there to console him, give him cheering relief and comfort. In a slow suffering time and tortured space, he was in a state of anguished nothingness, “immortal still but with its godhead lost.” Nevertheless, he endured; he bore the “smothering coils of agony and affright.” And yet what did he witness around?

The darkness was the Omnipotent's abode,
Hood of omniscience, a blind mask of God.

The blind mask of God had to be removed. Darkness ought to become the dwelling house for divine deity. Aswapati’s concern was this and he was looking for the means by which this could be done. But, long before that, the meaning and contents of this darkness must be probed, its purpose in the scheme of things found. Why, rather how, has this happened? And is there a remedy? But the “thinker and the toiler” must also become the labourer of God:

Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.

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.

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.

A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."

I 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.

Aswapati went where none had gone. He went to woo the dark and dangerous heart of the ancient terrifying Night. The poet of Savitri is sufficiently expressive to reveal to us what had transpired when he entered into this primordial darkness that prevails in the Non-being’s Void. Much more might have happened than what is just indicated; but even that little which has been disclosed goes only to show the enormity of the “terrible Inane” denying the Spirit’s interminable Truth. We have in The Descent into Night a few action steps as follows:

He turned to find that wide world-failure’s cause.

He sent his gaze into the formidable Infinity asleep.

He saw the fount of the world’s lasting pain.

He saw the body and visage of the dark Unseen.

He followed the dim steps returning to the night.

He passed the no-man’s-land without debate.

He came into an armoured fierce domain.

He witnessed the shadow depths of Life.

His vision discovered Hell’s trade-mark.

He wrestled with powers that snatched from mind its light.

He entered a gaunt spiritual blank.

He strove to shield his spirit from despair.

His spirit became an empty listening gulf.

His being from its own vision disappeared.

His body was lapped by a tenebrous tongue.

He must bear all this with hope of heaven estranged.

He endured all, stilled the vain terror.

He mastered the tides of Nature with a look.

He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.

Such is the power of the dark reality and unless that is transformed, unless the truth of the spirit is established there, there cannot be God’s delight in God’s own world. Aswapati is in search of the power who can accomplish this. Presently, by his intense yogic tapasya of eighteen years he has arrived at the point when he can get answer to his questing pursuit. Behind the cosmic mask he sees the presence of the divine Shakti, the unborn Savitri. Yes, it is she, Savitri, who must take the mortal birth and vanquish the eternal Antagonist.


RYD

The Yogin’s stifling Assignation with the Night
The fallen Life’s predicament cannot but set Aswapati on the quest to find a solution to it. He descends into the Night and witnesses there her pitiful plight. She in that gloom, with her perilous charm and beauty, lies cursed under the Gorgon spell. But Aswapati’s stepping into the Night is an act of grace, of supreme Grace. Wherever the Avatar moves, there, at every place, he leaves his presence behind. It is this presence that becomes the support and ground, ādhāra-sthāna, for the incarnate Force’s work. It is the guarantor of the Truth that shall prevail. There is a Greek proverb: “Great is Truth and it shall prevail.” But it prevails step by step with each appearance of the Avatar. It does not seek to prevail of its own. In fact, the harsh reality is that it cannot prevail in the Abyss of the Night unless the Avatar enters into it. For the Truth to prevail, the Avatar has to come down and do the yoga-tapasya in the Inconscient fields. Its inevitability, of the Avatar’s coming, is an occult necessity and an occult fact, something of supreme significance, which the linear Newtonian-Darwinian evolution cannot grasp. The force of Matter is intrinsically inadequate to bring out of itself the higher expressions of the Truth. Aswapati’s descent into the Night is charged with all these connotations. Such indeed is the significance of the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds in Savitri, in which Aswapati the Avatar is putting his foot in every nook and corner of this vast cosmic manifestation. It is that universal Presence, calm and luminous and powerful, which gives to Savitri’s task the needed meaning and success.

When the Avatar puts his foot on the soil of the Night, it indeed marks the beginning of the Everlasting Day. In Sri Aurobindo’s yoga-tapasya it means, the first decisive step towards integral transformation. In its sequel great things will happen,—including the upsurge of terrible forces. That this business with the jeopardous Night should have coincided with the Second World War, when the Regiments of Darkness had heavily precipitated upon earth, does not therefore come as a surprise. The fate of the evolutionary creation was hanging in the balance. But Aswapati came out victorious. Savitri informs us about that aspect of the occult history. Here the aspect of Savitri as a symbol has certainly gone far ahead of the traditional aspect of it being a legend.

It was in this Night that the secret Mantra of Life was kept in a sealed box. During the days, about a hundred years ago, when the Mother was doing occultism under Théon, once she discovered this Mantra, with her name written on the seal. Théon got interested in it and wanted the Mother to break the seal for him. She refused. We can possibly understand Théon’s interest in it, if we know that he was actually incarnation of the God of Death. He as Death ought to be interested in having a full hold on Life. Life in the possession of Death makes sense even to us. Later the Mother gave this Mantra of Life to Sri Aurobindo. How marvellous!

What did Sri Aurobindo do with the Mantra? Who can say anything about it? It will be presumptuous to speak anything about it. Yet in our rash foolishness we can hazard a conjecture. He removed the hold Death had on Life and gave it back to the Mother, to her whose task it was to make the divinity of Life manifest here.

It is that Shakti Aswapati was seeking in his cosmic and transcendental sojourns. He must meet her and he must persuade her to take the mortal birth because, thus alone, could the Mantra of Life work its dynamism in this creation.

RYD

Dynamic immortality in the physical is the work of the executive Force
In one of the Vedic Riks we have the description of Rishi Agastya digging—remember ‘digging’ in Sri Aurobindo’s A God’s Labour written in 1935—into the darkness of the Night, khananam as it says; in the Aurobindonian terminology this would correspond to bottom-most Subconsceint, even entering into the Inconscient. But the Rishi found it difficult to deal with the physical nature. He could not bring light to it. His body was afflicted with a triple poison and it could not bear the sunlight. It was like an unbaked clay-pot, atapta tanu. Similarly, Vamadeva could live here in a divine body, divya tanu, only for sixteen years. These ancient Rishis certainly knew what could bring about the physical transformation, the Mahar or Supermind, but they did not know its full modus operandi. The attainment of immortality in the luminous worlds, or divya loka, is one thing and its knowledge in mŗtyuloka is another. Not enough or qualifying tapasya had been done in the physical; Sri Aurobindo had to “consciously enter into death” before a glimmer of hope would be seen. The aspect of dynamic immortality in the physical is the work of the executive Force and unless her incarnation takes place it cannot be accomplished. Though the intuition of her descent to bring about materially the transformation was there,—and that is what the significant legend of Savitri narrates,—the field, the necessary resplendent spiritual support, ādhāra, for its universal action was not yet ready during those early days. The eighteen-year arduous yoga-tapasya of Aswapati was exactly for preparing the ground for her transformative action. In that respect, we see the importance of the radical step that was taken by Aswapati, representing Sri Aurobindo. In fact, what he achieved, he achieved precisely because of Savitri, that is, the Mother in her full executive splendour, she accompanying him. This was not so earlier in the Vedic era, where the Vedic-Vedantic aspect was more prominent than the Shakti or Tantric aspect. Cycles of evolution had to be silently worked out to arrive at this point of time. The psychic being of the earth was being prepared for her dynamism.

Yet if we go into the deep past, we have certain clues about the attempts which were made earlier, the Vedic attempts. In this respect we have a very perceptive comment from David Frawley alias Vamadeva Shastri: “It seems that the urge to transform the Earth consciousness was stronger in the earlier ages of light. It fell away during the worst of Kali Yuga, when it was enough for a few individuals to gain liberation and the collectivity was too caught in tamas. As we move back towards the ages of light it is arising again. The Rig Vedic Rishis were at the dawn of this cycle of civilisation and were mainly concerned with setting forth the seeds of the upcoming culture, particularly on a spiritual level, but also as the social order. It is hard to say whether physical transformation as Sri Aurobindo envisioned it was part of their yoga but we do have the tradition that many Rishis lived for long periods of time (which could have been done by various methods occult, tantric, yogic, ayurvedic). They seem to have included the idea of transforming physical matter as part of their long-term aspiration for humanity, but they were also aware of Asuric forces in the material world that are very difficult to overcome.” But one wonders if the Vedic without the Tantric is adequate for the physical transformation. In fact, there has to be psychic also, giving its immortality to the material; the Mother's work was primarily concerned with it.

Vamadeva further adds: “The Rishis’ pursuit of physical and spiritual rejuvenation is reflected in the Vedic knowledge of Soma. There were many types of Somas both external (prepared with herbs) and internal (produced through yogic practices like prāņāyāma) for rejuvenating body and mind and for gaining immorality on various levels. The Bhrigus were particularly known for their knowledge of rejuvenation. Even Brihaspati of the Angirasas sent his son Kacha to gain this knowledge from Shukra of the Bhrigus. Yet it is hard to tell whether the Rishis ever tried to, or were in a position to, create a naturally Divine body such as Sri Aurobindo envisioned. This would require the most powerful form of Soma. It would be, as it were, a body naturally made of pure Soma, matter with the capacity of perpetually rejuvenating itself. Yet there is no reason to think that they were not aware of the possibility, given their pursuit of Soma on all levels. We could also describe this as bringing the Soma of Mahar Loka into the genetic matrix of physical matter. Of course the Asuras would try to prevent this as much as possible as this would mean the end of them.” But now with the descent of Mahar itself in the earth-consciousness this cannot happen. Asuras are helpless against it. That was the truth seen by Sri Aurobindo and he worked towards it and firmly established it in the earth’s subtle-physical. Things now will happen in the dynamism of the Truth-consciousness itself. Can Vladimir please throw more light on this?

In this context we may also recall the great Vedic revelation in which we see Yama and our illustrious forefathers having together an ambrosial drink under Supalash Vriksha. The mention of supalāśa in the Rik is extraordinarily striking, particularly in association with Yama whom we take as the God of Death. The reference to a cluster of palāśa trees, palāśa-khaņda, by Vyasa in his Savitri-narrative lifts up that narrative itself to another level of symbolism embodying in its richness a whole world of bright future possibilities. The botanical name of this tree is Butea Frondosa, which is popularly known as the Flame of the Forest. But the spiritual significance of it is far deeper than we can discern even from its poetic nomenclature. The Mother sees palāśa as the Beginning of the Supramental Realisation. That Yama should be linked up with it, enjoying the drink of immortality under its branches in the happy company of our forefathers and other gods, only indicates the centrality of his role in the entire process of supramentalisation of the physical. Here is the kind and gracious God who bestows on this creation the desirable boons of a glorious life in the splendours of the spirit. Yama shall thus fulfil himself.

That lends another meaning to the Savitri-legend itself. Savitri’s winning back the soul of Satyavan from Yama therefore acquires another sense that points towards this marvellous realisation. But in order that this happens the dark sombre veil which has been worn by Yama must be removed. Radiant Savitri, the daughter of the Sun-God, alone can do that. In fact Yama has put on a double veil, the veil of the incorrigible Antagonist and the veil of the luminous Inveigler. Behind him is indeed present the loving Supreme himself. It was the removal of this double veil, this double transformation which was accomplished by Savitri. Thus, behind the darkness of this creation, she meets her bright father to receive authentic boons of divine life upon earth. The yoga-tapasya of Aswapati has, in consequence, borne the rich fruits of godly felicity.

RYD

The Presence he yearned for
Aswapati has climbed this huge world-pile, “erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods,” rising from Matter’s plinth and vanishing, beyond sight, into the viewless Supreme. He has seen the nether worlds, of darkness below direr darkness; he has also experienced the joys of the true and the beautiful. He has understood the cause of this world’s failure. When Life had entered into the material scene, at the call of the gods of the material objects, she was at once stunned by the ambiguous Presence that sprang up from the depths of the Inconscience; Life was overpowered by Death. Unless this stranglehold of Death is removed, Aswapati knows, Life cannot make proper and genuine progress in the possibilities of the Spirit. The problem is defined and it gives a distinct focus to his quest.

Presently, Aswapati is standing on the being's naked edge where even the seeking of his soul faces extinction. The issue is Cosmic-Transcendental, beyond the Individual. Nothing of this world he carries as a burden, all that belongs to this dumb and fallen Nature, all that has connection with the inconscience of this world obscures no more his perception. He knows at once that, here is one who can redeem the lot of this mortal creature, bring meaning and fulfilment to his authentic existence, make the phenomenal the real. The Presence he yearned for has suddenly drawn closer. From across the ultimate Calm, Aswapati saw someone coming, infinite and absolute. Yes, it was the being of wisdom, power and delight, jňāna-śakti-ānanda, the triple Mother, who takes to her breast everything, Nature and world and soul.

The Power, the Light, the Bliss no word can speak
Imaged itself in a surprising beam…
For one was there supreme behind the God…
He felt a rapturous and unstumbling Force.

The moment he saw her, met her, all got settled:

The Enigma ceased that rules our nature's night,
The covering Nescience was unmasked and slain;
Its mind of error was stripped off from things
And the dull moods of its perverting will.

But how does Aswapati know that she is indeed the one who can remove the enigma of this world, how does he make sure that here is the Power who can really change the Fate of this world, this dark and sorrowful and transient death-bound death-governed creation? Will she be able to vanquish the Foe, conquer this Mortal World, this mŗtyuloka? What kind of tests does he apply to secure that she will, notwithstanding the odds of the path, work out the miracle even in the face of the most formidable Adversary, the test Sugriva had given to Rama that he would be able to vanquish Vali? Nothing can be left to comfortable thought only, to happy acquiescence, when the battle is a grim do-or-die battle, a rendezvous of the fiercest enemies. Is, therefore, the quality of that “unstumbling Force” convincing enough that it will not stumble while encountering Death, will not get darkened by the “dire universal Shadow? Aswapati’s search should not prove futile or unavailing or frustrating. This is particularly so, when on six occasions earlier the creation had to be dissolved. This is particularly so, when Death himself is one of the Four Powers who had separated themselves from the Supreme, the Four Asuras who stand as eternal Antagonists. Is she the one who will conquer this Asura of Death?

RYD

The test Sugriva gave to Rama
When Rama and Sugriva met for the first time on the Malaya Peak of Rishyamooka Mountain, they lit a bright fire with two dry twigs, araņis, and worshipped it together, forging thus the bond of friendship between each other. Vali the elder brother of Sugriva had forced him out of the kingdom and kept his wife with him; Ravana had abducted Rama’s wife Sita and carried her to his far away city of Lanka. Rama and Sugriva thus had a common cause to help each other. But Sugriva knew how strong his brother Vali was and he wanted to be sure if Rama would be in a position to vanquish him. He knew that Vali could pierce the seven impressive Sāla trees (Shorea Robusta) with seven arrows, the trees standing in a row a little beyond them. What the Sun is among the bright objects in the sky, what the Himalaya is among the imposing mountains, what the bright-maned lion is among the animals, says Sugriva, is no doubt Rama among the heroic men; yet he wants to make certain that he will be able to overpower Vali. He tells Rama to put his arrow to the bow, pull it full, and release it for it to pierce through one of the tall and stately Sāla trees. And lo and behold! Rama’s one single arrow, with a blazing gold-studded point, swarņaparişkŗtah, pierces through all the seven Sāla trees, one after the other. Not only that; it cuts through all the seven earths, saptabhūmih, and enters the deep subterranean regions. It took it an hour to accomplish all that, and come back to Rama’s quiver.

So Rama passes Sugriva’s test, with the strong and firm arrow piercing the seven trees and the seven earths. It was nice of Valmiki, the seer-poet, to have introduced the episode in his poem, making the presentation absolutely plausible to our minds. But there seems to be something more to it than what might just appear as an epic description. It is charged with deep symbolism, seven trees and seven earths standing for seven creations. Is that not a wonderful way of telling us the Avatarhood of Rama? Valmiki was a mahāprajňa, one who was in possession of the divine Knowledge. With what mastery and consummate skill has he told us about the exceptional nature of Rama, his divinity!

Talking about Rama’s Avatarhood, Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter to Dilip Roy that the human personality of Rama “has to be taken as a whole in the setting that Valmiki gave it… As for the Avatarhood, I accept it for Rama because he fills a place in the scheme—and seems to me to fill it rightly—and because when I read the Ramayana I feel a great afflatus which I recognise and which makes of its story—mere faery-tale though it seems—a parable of a great critical transitional event that happened in the terrestrial evolution... The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is—any of these or all—a significance and an effective power that are part of something essential to be done in the history of the earth and its races. All the same, if anybody does not see as I do and wants to eject Rama from his place, I have no objection—I have no particular partiality for Rama—provided somebody is put in who can worthily fill up the gap his absence leaves. There was somebody there, Valmiki's Rama or another Rama or somebody not Rama.”

Continuing the discussion he elaborates that Rama's business was “to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being who governs his life by the reason, the finer emotions, morality, or at least moral ideals, such as truth, obedience, co-operation and harmony, the sense of domestic and public order,—to establish this in a world still occupied by anarchic forces, the Animal mind and the powers of the vital Ego making its own satisfaction the rule of life… it was Rama's business to make the world safe for the ideal of the sattwic human being by destroying the sovereignty of Ravana, the Rakshasa menace. All this he did with such a divine afflatus in his personality and action that his figure has been stamped for more than two millenniums on the mind of Indian culture, and what he stood for has dominated the reason and idealising mind of man in all countries, and in spite of the constant revolt of the human vital, is likely to continue to do so until a greater ideal arises… When I spoke of the gap that would be left by his [Rama’s] absence, I did not mean a gap among the prophets and intellectuals, but a gap in the scheme of Avatarhood—there was somebody who was the Avatar of the sattwic Human as Krishna was the Avatar of the overmental Superman—I can see no one but Rama who can fill the place… I wanted to say this much more about Rama—which is still only a hint and is not the thing I was going to write about the general principle of Avatarhood. Nor, may I add, is it a complete or supreme defence of Rama. For that I would have to write about what the story of the Ramayana meant, appreciate Valmiki's presentation of his chief characters (they are none of them copy-book examples, but great men and women with the defects and merits of human nature, as all men even the greatest are), and show also how the Godhead, which was behind the frontal and instrumental personality we call Rama, worked out every incident of his life as a necessary step in what had to be done.”

Well, the test Sugriva had given to Rama to demonstrate his capability to conquer the enemy was an objective test. In contrast to this, Aswapati’s test, about the supreme Power to change the course of the evolutionary destiny, is a subjective test. How does he arrive at the perception that she is indeed the one who must be invoked to take the mortal birth and conquer Death? Maybe, we could get some idea about it from the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati.

RYD

His Prajna-Consciousness
There are powers and powers, belonging to different planes of consciousness and with different efficacies. There are transcendental powers, there are cosmic powers, and there are dubious powers also, calamitous powers. Each one carries its own dynamism in the working of the Time’s processes, and each one offers its own gifts to the seeker of the reward. If so, how does one recognise that one is really invoking the right one and that the right one is responding to the invocation? Aswapati was carrying the world’s desire with him and he was keen to get the right answer for it, but he must be certain that he was praying to the right power and that the right power was going to respond to him.

In the complexities in the workings of this world, there are far too many factors which enter into the play. The dangers are multifold, of selling the soul to the Lord of the Nation, or to Mephistopheles, of being misled by the ‘small voices’, of getting lost for ever in the valley of the wandering gleam. Or else, how does the pilgrim know that he has reached the sacred river on the bank of which is standing the temple of his god whom he had never seen earlier? Even when he stands face to face with the deity, how does he make sure that it is the god of his seeking and not some impersonation, that he is not being taken for a ride, that he is not being misled?

How does the philosopher know that he has the hold of the universal truth from which all truths ensue, the scientist assert he has the theory of everything, something which one has been hearing at least for a hundred years now? How does a nation know that it is pursuing the right ideals, that it is not imposing them on others howsoever noble those might be? That capitalism or democracy of one country or society might be beneficial or injurious to other? That in one’s faith there is no fanaticism?

On the genuine spiritual path also one can stop with the realisation of the Passive Brahman, Brahman as the sole Reality and the rest an illusion, stop at Time-infinity or else Timeless-infinity, at the dynamic Brahman without the supporting quiescence, at pure Being or the ceaseless Becoming, stop looking at the multiple faces of the Void, of numerous Purushas being governed by one single Prakriti, at the experience of Nirvana, of one kind or the other, and so on, and so forth.

Where in them all is the finality of the quest, the conclusiveness, the certainty, the assurance of the search? What criteria does one apply that one is on the right path? But perhaps the answer is determined by the quality of the quest itself. But what is it that which will determine the quality of the quest? Yes, in the ultimate reckoning, the quality of the quest is entirely determined by the quality of the soul pursuing it. The test is within oneself only. The fundamental sincerity and perseverance should guarantee the correctness of a decision. As one grows more and more in that fundamental sincerity, as it becomes more and more psychic-spiritual, it also does increasingly take charge of the quest, making it yet purer and purer. The more the outer nature falls quiet, the more assured becomes the progress. In the absolute dependence, like the Mother’s, it is “what thou willest, what thou willest.” It is the supreme Bhakti, the total surrender that ultimately triumphs.

But none of these questions arise in the case of Aswapati. He has already the secret knowledge about this triple manifestation—Individual-Universal-Transcendental. His perception is full of truth, it is Ritambhara Prajna. He moves in it and sees things in it, acts in it. It is that awareness, the supramental knowledge and awareness, by which Sachchidananda becomes aware of himself, knows himself. In fact, it goes even beyond it. It goes into the utter Unknowable. It knows whatever is, is from it. It is the first Nothingness from which everything comes, the Void supreme, beyond form and person and being, beyond soul and oversoul and psychic being; it is the utter Unmanifest. Its first manifestation in the Transcendent is Sachchidananda, the manifest Spirit or Brahman brought about by the mute Force of the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. There is “the Mighty Spirit, and higher than the Mighty One is the Unmanifested,” says Katha Upanishad, mahānātmā mahato vyaktamuttamam. Its culmination for another creative process is in the last Nothingness, the Non-Manifest, bearing the triple mystic Cross. Aswapati’s present rendezvous is with the one who was summoned into action at the beginning of creative Eternity by the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. His prayer is to her.

Aswapati is presently on the verge of such a total surrender. In fact, it is by the Prajna Consciousness that he is guided everywhere and he has at once the knowledge of the truth of the things. He knows by it everything, at once. Yet his full identity has to be in the purity of that interior light. As one carrying the world’s desire with him, this is what he achieves: (Savitri, pp. 294-96)

His being saw itself without its veils,
Life's line fell from the spirit's infinity.
Along a road of pure interior light,
Alone between tremendous Presences,
Under the watching eye of nameless Gods,
His soul passed on, a single conscious power,
Towards the end which ever begins again,
Approaching through a stillness dumb and calm
To the source of all things human and divine.
There he beheld in their mighty union's poise
The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,
A single being in two bodies clasped,
A diarchy of two united souls,
Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;
Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.
Behind them in a morning dusk One stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.
Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit;
Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks,
Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,
She guards the austere approach to the Alone.
At the beginning of each far-spread plane
Pervading with her power the cosmic suns
She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works
And thinker of the symbol of its scene.
Above them all she stands supporting all,
The sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled
Of whom the world is the inscrutable mask;
The ages are the footfalls of her tread,
Their happenings the figure of her thoughts,
And all creation is her endless act.
His spirit was made a vessel of her force;
Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.
Then in a sovereign answer to his heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,
And from her raiment's lustrous mystery raised
One arm half-parted the eternal veil.
A light appeared still and imperishable.
Attracted to the large and luminous depths
Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,
He saw the mystic outline of a face.
Overwhelmed by her implacable light and bliss,
An atom of her illimitable self
Mastered by the honey and lightning of her power,
Tossed towards the shores of her ocean 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.

Aswapati has become in the evolutionary march the vessel of the divine Shakti’s dynamism in it. An atom of her self is enough to kindle a thousand suns in the sky. In that surrender Aswapati is absolved of all that is retrograde, all that is antagonistic, all that is dark inconscient in him: (pp. 308-09)

A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,
An Everlastingness cut off from Time;
A strange sublime unalterable Peace
Silent rejected from it world and soul…
There was no act, no movement in its Vast:
Life's question met by its silence died on her lips,
The world's effort ceased convicted of ignorance
Finding no sanction of supernal Light…
A pure existence safe from thought and mood,
A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss,
It dwelt aloof in its bare infinite,
One and unique, unutterably sole.
A Being formless, featureless and mute
That knew itself by its own timeless self,
Aware for ever in its motionless depths,
Uncreating, uncreated and unborn,
The One by whom all live, who lives by none,
An immeasurable luminous secrecy
Guarded by the veils of the Unmanifest,
Above the changing cosmic interlude
Abode supreme, immutably the same,
A silent Cause occult, impenetrable,—
Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.

Aswapati penetrates the Upanishadic Veil of Unmanifestation. There he meets the silent Cause of everything and approaches her to incarnate herself and conquer Death.

RYD

She who binds earth to the Supreme
The moment Aswapati meets the one who stands supreme behind the God, at once gets dissolved the Enigma of this creation. But who is she standing supreme behind the God? Even while Aswapati retreated from mortal thought, and his being towered into pathless heights, Ganges-like a strong Descent leaped down on him, a Might, a Flame, a Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes, a violent Ecstasy, a dire Sweetness and, with that Descent, (Savitri, p. 81)

In a moment shorter than Death, longer than Time,
By a power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven

he was taken sovereignly into eternal arms, her arms of power. His spirit housed the Omniscient who knows things without sight or thought, the Omnipotent who is indecipherable, the mystic Form that could contain the worlds. Aswapati knew who she was, the one ensuing from the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone, from the primordial, the utter Non-Manifest, the positive Void supreme. He makes a total yogic surrender to her, the executive She whose concern is not only the transcendental manifestation, but also the Earth, the Mid-region, and Heaven,—Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar. In that sacrifice he is newborn and his spirit and his soul, even his body, take part in its joy. She is the original transcendent Shakti of the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone, Paratpara, the Unknowable, the Non-Manifest, Avyakta, and it is to her that Aswapati carries the world’s desire. One could know her by entering “into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe.” Indeed, let us read The Mother:

Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme.—Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces.—Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between human personality and the divine Nature.

The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds, as the one dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; all is her manifestation of the mysteries of the Eternal, the miracles of the Infinite. All is she, for all are parcel and portion of the divine Conscious-Force. Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting into seed in her creating Ananda.

Nearer to us are the worlds of the supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process.

“Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions.” Aswapati’s surrender is to her and he knows that she will do whatever has got to be done; for him, it is her concern to get the sanction from the Supreme. This is exactly what we have in Vyasa’s Savitri.

Aswapati has done the eighteen-year tapasya and the Goddess Savitri is immensely pleased with his sacrifice and his complete surrender to her. While granting him a boon, she tells him: “Fully aware of this intention of yours, O King, to have a son, did I speak long before to the great Father, God the Creator himself, to grant a child to you. And as ordained by the self-born Brahma, indeed by his gracious favour, soon you will have on earth an effulgent daughter, kanyā tejasvinī, O gentle-natured. You should not in the least utter anything against it; it is as bestowed by the Father-Creator that I tell it so, pleased that I am with you.” The boon comes with the sanction of the Supreme.

There is no explicit mention of the Sanction of the Supreme in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri.

RYD

What she decides and the Supreme sanctions
Did the divine executive Shakti get the consent from the Supreme before she granted the boon to Aswapati? This aspect is very clear in the Savitri-tale narrated by Vyasa in the Mahabharata, when she told him that she is giving him the boon of a radiant daughter in the authorization of the great Father-Creator Brahma himself, bhagavān pitāmaha. But it seems to be absent in Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri. If, as we have in his The Mother, “nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions,” then this difference between the two narratives assumes importance of a fundamental character; in a certain sense, it becomes crucial also, absolutely central. Vyasa’s Aswapati approaches Goddess Savitri with the intention of getting a son, that by the righteous conduct the order of the worlds be maintained in its functioning, that the dharma of the eternal truth which upholds the creation, which holds it together and which makes it move forward is maintained. It is in that context that the Goddess obtains the sanction from the Supreme, from the Father-Creator Brahma, bhagavān pitāmaha. Did in a similar way, or in some other manner the divine Shakti in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri receive such a sanction from the Supreme? Did she already have it with her before her meeting with the Son of Strength, one who had climbed the creation’s peaks? Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri does not speak of it in any specific way. Perhaps extremely significant occult-spiritual factors, aspects of the yogic will are present in the profound issue and they need to be looked into with attention. Perhaps bringing the theme of “sanction” into the presentation could be incongruous in more than one respect.

Possibly, as one immediate answer, it could be for the reason that Sri Aurobindo’s Aswapati meets someone who is “infinite and absolute”, who came from beyond the limitless Unknowable, came “breaking the vacancy and voiceless hush”, the most positive Void poised for dynamic Action, the Void supreme with his face turned towards creation-manifestation, one who came from the utter Non-Manifest, Parātpara. In that eventuality, to speak of her getting a “sanction” could be inapt or inappropriate. Perhaps we could explore this aspect in more detail when we should reach Book Three Canto Four describing the Vision and the Boon.

It is in this regard, however, we might briefly look into what Rod Hemsell says apropos of the Adoration of the Divine Mother in his Savitri, Surrender and the Void: “One can easily imagine that this second canto of Book 3 is the expression of the central theme of the yoga of Sri Aurobindo, and therefore it is particularly important. I think this is so. It is perhaps an ultimate, or at least a penultimate, statement of the absolute necessity and profound significance of the idea of Surrender. Sri Aurobindo makes it extremely clear and explicit in this canto what the word or idea of Surrender means, and yet it is still, inherently, a very difficult movement to grasp integrally, and to practise.” Certainly, this canto could easily be “the expression of the central theme of the yoga of Sri Aurobindo.”
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2007/5/2/2920595.html

But the aspect of yogic surrender has many facets. When Barin, Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother asked him as to what he felt when the Mother met him for the first time on 29 March 1914 and bowed down in front of him, the reply in effect was: “I knew at once that it is possible to make complete surrender even to the last bit of the physical.” When Savitri’s Mantra of Surrender, in Book Eleven, becomes essentially “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest”, it cannot be considered as the Mantra of Surrender of Aswapati. Our own mantra of surrender will be yet of another kind, bearing another quality, perhaps differing from individual to individual.

RYD

The Mother of all Godheads
While Aswapati approaches the supreme Creatrix with the issue of this mortal creation, he appeals to her to incarnate, essentially, in the “white passion of her force”, that she, the Omnipotent, should pack with eternal might one human hour, girdle movements and moments of the mortal’s will with the power of God. In response to the prayer she shall come with the “conqueror’s sword”. That is the aspect of conquest. But in that conquest, in the “Death’s tremendous hour”, she shall, more importantly, sow the seed of immortality in the mortal soil. Perhaps the greater part of the “world’s desire” Aswapati was carrying to her lies in this second aspect, of ushering in the new creation sans death on earth, this mŗtyuloka.

Aswapati has already established the new creation in the House of the Spirit and it is that which must be brought down on earth. But who is going to do it if it is not the Mother of all Godheads? It is to her, to Aditi, the Mother of the Gods, the Infinite Mother, Supreme Prakriti, that he must offer his prayers.

About Aditi Sri Aurobindo writes: “In the ancient Indian system of thought being and consciousness were aspects of each other, and Aditi, infinite existence from whom the gods are born, described as the Mother with her seven names and seven seats (dhāmāni), is also conceived as the infinite consciousness, the Cow, the primal Light manifest in seven Radiances, sapta gāvah.” (The Secret of the Veda, p. 123)

In another context, the Rishi crying for “the wealth of the Truth”: “Bhaga, the Enjoyer is to be called on by men because he has many riches and ordains perfectly all delights,—the thrice seven delights upheld by him in the being of his mother Aditi. It is by creating in us ‘the wide and vast force’, it is when the Divine as Bhaga, Pushan, Aditi, the infinite, the undivided puts on the radiances of the infinite consciousness like a robe and distributes without division all desirable boons that divine felicity comes to us in its fullness.” (p. 517)

The Rishi offers his prayers to Aditi during the day: “In the dawn I call to the divine Mother Infinite, in the mid-day when the sun is risen high, prātar devīm aditim johavīmi madhyadina uditā sūryasya.” (Rig Veda, 5.69.3)

Goutam Rahugaņa hymns Aditi as follows: “Aditi is heaven, Aditi is mid-region, Aditi is the Mother (Earth), Father and Son; she is all the gods, she is the five people; Aditi is all that is born and what is to be.” (1.89.10)

We have a glowing picture of the son of Aditi in The Secret of the Veda, pp. 475-78: “This supramental vastness is also the fundamental truth of being, satyam, out of which its active truth wells out naturally and without strife of effort into a perfect and faultless movement because there is upon those heights no division, no gulf between consciousness and force, no divorce of knowledge and will, no disharmonising of our being and its action; everything there is the ‘straight’ and there is no least possibility of crookedness. Therefore this supramental plane of vastness and true being is also Ritam, the true activity of things; it is a supreme truth of movement, action, manifestation, an infallible truth of will and heart and knowledge, a perfect truth of thought and word and emotion; it is the spontaneous Right, the free Law, the original divine order of things untouched by the falsehoods of the divided and separative consciousness. It is the vast divine and self-luminous synthesis born of a fundamental unity, of which our petty existence is only the poor, partial, broken and perverted cutting up and analysis. Such was the Sun of the Vedic worship, the paradise of light to which the Fathers aspired, the world, the body of Surya son of Aditi…

Aditi is the infinite Light of which the divine world is a formation and the gods, children of the infinite Light, born of her in the Ritam, manifested in that active truth of her movement guard it against Chaos and Ignorance. It is they who maintain the invincible workings of the Truth in the universe, they who build its worlds into an image of the Truth. They, bounteous givers, loose out upon man its floods variously imaged by the mystic poets as the sevenfold solar waters, the rain of heaven, the streams of the Truth, the seven mighty Ones of heaven, the waters that have knowledge, the floods that breaking through the control of Vritra the Coverer ascend and overflow the mind. They, seers and revealers, make the light of the Truth to arise on the darkened sky of his mentality, fill with its luminous and honey-sweet satisfactions the atmosphere of his vital existence, transform into its vastness and plenitude by the power of the Sun the earth of his physical being, create everywhere the divine Dawn…

Surya is the light of the Truth rising on the human consciousness in the wake of the divine Dawn whom he pursues as a lover follows after his beloved and he treads the paths she has traced for him. For Dawn the daughter of Heaven, the face or power of Aditi, is the constant opening out of the divine light upon the human being; she is the coming of the spiritual riches, a light, a power, a new birth, the pouring out of the golden treasure of heaven into his earthly existence. Surya means the illumined or the luminous, as also the illumined thinker is called sūri; but the root means, besides, to create or, more literally, to loose, release, speed forth,—for in the Indian idea creation is a loosing forth of what is held back, a manifestation of what is hidden in the infinite Existence. Luminous vision and luminous creation are the two functions of Surya. He is Surya the creator and he is Surya the revealing vision, the all-seer.

What does he create? First the worlds; for everything is created out of the burning light and truth of the infinite Being, loosed out of the body of Surya who is the light of His infinite self-vision, formed by Agni, the seer-will, the omniscient creative force and flaming omnipotence of that self-vision. Secondly, into the night of man's darkened consciousness this Father of things, this Seer of the truth manifests out of himself in place of the inauspicious and inferior creation, which he then looses away from us, the illimitable harmony of the divine worlds governed by the self-conscious supramental Truth and the living law of the manifested godhead. Still, the name Surya is seldom used when there is question of this creation; it is reserved for his passive aspects as the body of the infinite Light and the revelation. In his active power he is addressed by other names; then he is Savitri, from the same root as Surya, the Creator; or he is Twashtri the Fashioner of things; or he is Pushan, the Increaser,—appellations that are sometimes used as if identical with Surya, sometimes as if expressing other forms and even other personalities of this universal godhead. Savitri, again, manifests himself, especially in the formation of the Truth in man, through four great and active deities Mitra, Varuna, Bhaga and Aryaman, the Lords of pure Wideness, luminous Harmony, divine Enjoyment, exalted Power…

Whence then comes this falsehood, sin, death, suffering of our mortal existence? We are told that there are eight sons of the cosmic Aditi who are born from her body; by seven she moves to the gods, but the eighth son is Martanda, of the mortal creation, whom she casts away from her; with the seven she moves to the supreme life, the original age of the gods, but Martanda is brought back out of the Inconscient into which he had been cast to preside over mortal birth and death.

This Martanda or eighth Surya is the black or dark, the lost, the hidden sun. The Titans have taken and concealed him in their cavern of darkness and thence he must be released into splendour and freedom by the gods and seers through the power of the sacrifice. In less figurative language the mortal life is governed by an oppressed, a hidden, a disguised Truth…”

The Vedic tradition speaks of twelve Adityas, twelve Suns; their names are: Dhata, Mitra, Aryama, Rudra, Varuna, Surya, Bhaga, Vivasvana, Pusha, Savita, Twashta, and Vishnu. In the Gita Sri Krishna says that among the Adityas he is Vishnu. Each one of these Suns or Adityas represents a certain quality and cosmic function. Thus Love and Light are represented by the Sun as Mitra. In the form of Bhaga he is the Lord of Enjoyment, as the Increaser, he becomes Pushan.

If the new creation founded by Aswapati in the House of the Spirit is to manifest upon earth, then these suns must be set ablaze in the material sky. The Mother of the Godheads holds the key in the dynamism of the twelve suns and it is that which can set into operation the process of the physical transformation.

RYD