With this instalment we complete Part One of Savitri. It is interesting that this should be the eighteenth article in the series covering the spiritual biography of Savitri. In Vyasa’s narrative of Savitri, as we have in the Mahabharata, Aswapati does yajna-tapasya for eighteen years at the end of which the Goddess Savitri appears from the Fire-Altar and gives him a boon, of a radiant daughter, kanyā téjasvinī, as sanctioned by the Creator-Father Brahma himself. There are eighteen parts of the monumental Mahabharata itself, with hundreds of cantos and some two hundred-thousand shlokas in it. There are eighteen chapters of the Gita. Coincidentally, there are eighteen steps in Savitri Bhavan’s building that has come up in the first phase of its construction. We may also say with some justification that, Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri has eighteen cantos covering the individual, the universal and the transcendental attainments, leading finally to the boon from the Divine Mother. Eighteen is supposed to be a wholesome number in several respects, particularly when we see that it is made up of Sri Aurobindo’s twelve and the Mother’s six.

RYD

The power that mediates between the sanction and the call
It is an occult fact that both human endeavour and the divine assent have to go together if the individual’s higher spiritual pursuit has to achieve any genuine degree of success. The blazing-glowing power of ascetic discipline, tapahaprabhāva, and the benedictory favour of God, devaprasāda, are the only two things that can lead the aspiring soul towards its cherished heavenly realisation. That is how Rishi Shwetashwatara came to know the Eternal.

The equivalent of this classical tapahaprabhāva, the ascetic discipline, the arduous personal effort, the “constant expansion and self-perfecting” in Sri Aurobindo’s transformative Yoga is the “call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes.” The acceptance of this concentrated and fiery enterprise of the exceptional practitioner, this invocation of his, the plea of this tapasvin, can then, in an endorsing response, open out for the celestial Gods the doors to walk towards him and bequeath their riches upon him. That will be the sanction, the bestowal of the blessings, the Upanishadic devaprasāda. Which means that, in the luminous transformative Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, tapahaprabhāva corresponds to the intense and ardent call, the will to progress; similarly devaprasāda is equivalent to the sanction of the Supreme. In the context of a most decisive change, the supramental change “a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness”, we have to see these together.

But, then in the same context, there is also the most significant third term between the two, between the human effort and the divine assent,—the “power that mediates between the sanction and the call.” It is the presence and power of the supreme Mediatrix that alone can remove all obscurity which is the bane of mortality; in its place it must bring down the splendours of the dynamic divine existence, delight and immortality. It is she who alone can do it and no human effort, howsoever outstanding or exceptional it be, can really accomplish this miraculous transformation. She has to be invoked to do it and she has to condescend.

Aswapati has done his mighty bit, that of tapahaprabhāva; now the complementary move has to be made by the divine Wisdom. She is already standing there on the near edge of the Transcendent. She has come out from the depths of that inscrutable and unknowable Silence and is poised to grant the fulfilling boon, devaprasāda, to the Divine Soul who has taken upon itself the travail of the evolutionary mortal world.

Even as he progressed in his yogic pursuit there “suddenly rose a sacred stir.” Aswapati’s very physical was flooded by her Presence:

An influence had approached the mortal range,
A boundless Heart was near his longing heart
A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.
All at her contact broke from silence’ seal;
Spirit and body thrilled identified,
Linked in the grasp of an unspoken joy;
Mind, members, life were merged in ecstasy.
Intoxicated as with nectarous rain
His nature’s passioning stretches flowed to her
Flashing with lightnings, mad with luminous wine.
All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon.

There is a great surge of the ocean as on a full moon, the Moon of heavenly Joy, the mystic Soma of marvellous happiness. It would be the mahāvegah sāgarasya parvaņi, if we have to use Valmiki’s phrase. Aswapati has the most decisive experience, that even his body’s cells awake to the supramental presence and power. There is the goldenmost influx rushing into his very physical being. We may say that it marks the completion of the Yoga of the Purusha, the Yoga carried here through the ages by the incarnate Supreme himself. With that can now safely begin the more arduous, and hence the most joyous, Yoga of Prakriti, she who makes manifest what is willed. In order to vanquish Death under whose sway all has been happening until the present moment, the divine Executrix herself has to do it in the earth-consciousness. Only then will the immortal Love be born, only then will come the divine family, the new world, the new race, the promised supramental race, the Kingdom of Heaven upon the Earth.

It is towards that fulfilment that the divine Wisdom is ready to grant the desired boon to Aswapati. After the rarest Triple Siddhi,—of the individual, the universal and the transcendental Yoga-Sadhana,—is received the Boon of the Benign. Like some ungraspable Vision and with her hand of grace, varadahasta, held above his head the divine Wisdom is standing in front of Aswapati; she tells him to receive from her the beatitude of good fortune and blessings in fulfilment of his heart’s desire. In his spirit’s luminosity the One whom he worshipped was there to bless him. The divine rendezvous is on the verge of its full fruition. She is ready to pass through “the portals of a birth that is a death… [accept] the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation since… thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life”.

RYD

The transcendental Savitri to Aswapati
The call of the aspiring soul has climbed the creation’s peak, and the supreme Will has set itself to work in the well-readied terrestrial conditions; now there should be initiated the executive action. This is possible only through the agency of the divine Consciousness-Force who alone can remove the obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering of this mortal creation. She the most adorable supreme Goddess, the presence and power of the Supreme, she bhagavatī paramā hi devī and the primaeval supreme Creatrix, paramā prakŗtistwamādyā, as the ancient Scripture reveals, the gracious divine Wisdom, she the manifesting Power of “the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone”, appearing presently in front of Aswapati to grant him a boon must condescend to his request, grant what he beseeched, in fact demanded her to do, compelled her. Her appearance will signify in the Divine Will a beginning of supramental manifestation upon earth. Aswapati, who was advised not to ask for “the imperfect fruit, the partial prize, but only one boon to greaten his spirit, one joy to raise his kind”, insists on the mortal incarnation of that divine Wisdom herself. Was she taken by surprise? So it seems. She addresses Aswapati as a “strong forerunner” and tells him that she has heard his ardent cry and that what he wishes her to do that shall be complied with.

She has also taken note of his vision of the flame-pioneers crowding the amber stairs of birth and waiting for the signal to rush to the earth, the builders of the gnostic race. Keen as much she has been, it is as if she was waiting for the aspiring soul’s plea for her own mortal birth, such transformative change being the secret Will of the Supreme himself. Was that not the compulsion which made her stand in front of him to grant a boon? Having thought that way, it was now obligatory for her to act in accordance with his imploration, to consent to whatever he insisted to have.

Here is the Boon granted by the divine Wisdom and Power, the transcendental Savitri, to Aswapati, the Son of Strength:

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

Who else could have invoked the supreme Savitri and received such an extraordinary world-transforming Boon if not the Supreme himself, born as Aswapati in the earth-consciousness? Does not that act of his prayer to her also become at once an act of his grace? Unquestionably so; there cannot be any doubt about it.

Earth and Love and Doom have been the ancient disputants, wrestling in the hoary darkness of the night. Ever since the beginning of this evolutionary creation, the issue of their claims had remained untackled. It kept its grievous and fearsome seal firm on the Book of Bliss and none could break it open. Death has knowledge of it but has no means or access to it. Earth is imperfect and subject to the vicissitudes of time and circumstance. Love is the power incarnate supporting in the depths all this, it awaiting the moment of the manifest glory. The path of the divine Event is blocked by the inconscient Will. But there is the supreme Involvement in it and the Supreme himself is going to sort it out.

The Triple Yoga of Aswapati has brought that possibility closer of being sorted out, of resolving it; in fact, it is going to be right here, and right now. Indeed, with the coming of the supreme Savitri it can become an assured accomplishment, an absolute certainty. The issue is pertinently remembered in the benediction itself and, because it is a high remembrance, its resolution presently acquires the luminosity of a godly decisiveness. The Goddess has emerged from the golden deeps of transcendent Silence, and she is standing on the threshold Mind with the earthly concern as a part of her own active participation, and the vista is the vast cosmic field in the context of the evolutionary soul. It is here that the Unmanifest’s Will or Decree will bear fruit.

RYD

The check-list
Let us see the check-list containing Aswapati’s stipulations and what the most excellent boon grants. He hails the divine Wisdom as the radiant fountain of the world’s delight, world-free and unattainable, mystery and muse speaking with a hieratic tongue and lays down how she should come as the incarnate:

• she in the white passion of her force should incarnate herself here
• mission upon earth a living form of hers
• her eternity should step into the movement of the earthly time that it becomes a speeding part of her eternity
• her infinity live in one body
• her knowledge, in seas of light, surge through the mind
• her love beat in one human heart
• take a beautiful form and walk, the immortal, with mortal feet, into the paces of the death-bound creature
• her omnipotence should take possession of the mortal’s will
• her eternal might load the tick-tack of the helpless and feeble human hour
• by accepting such a mortal birth she should change the course events
• she should mould the new future, reshape destiny that it becomes good and great and godly

Aswapati has offered his prayer in the golden fire of his aspiration in the context of the destiny of the creation; he presently entreats her to speak a great word and unlock the doors of Fate. Whatever he wanted that he has described in precise details, as to what kind of person she should be as the incarnate, her spirit, and her mind and heart and soul and her body, every feature of hers, and what exactly she should accomplish in this mortal birth of hers. The whole of his yogic force is there in it, in its winning brightness.


Now here is the new-age ushering Boon, the Boon-giver addressing Aswapati as a strong forerunner:

• One shall descend and break the iron Law
• Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power
• A limitless Mind shall can contain the world
• A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come
• All mights and greatnesses shall join in her
• Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth
• Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings
• A music of griefless things shall weave her charm
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise
• She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,\
• Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
• And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze
• A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil

In her coming Nature shall overleap her mortal step and Fate herself shall undergo a radical transformative change, changed by an unchanging will. Even as the well-etched features of her spirit and mind and heart and body and soul are descried in conformity with what was asked, her mission too stands out in a well-defined manner. The tally is exact—and wonderful, exceptionally wonderful. Not only is the mission well-defined; there is also the necessary force to accomplish it. “Let the word be spoken from the heights,” Aswapati had mentioned and the word was spoken—the Word that brings realisation to what is spoken, the creative-formative Word charged with the Truth’s executive dynamism.

RYD

One shall descend
The proposed modus operandi of the divine Wisdom was to let things happen in the stream of forward moving time. Aswapati was advised to accept it in the safety of the existing parameters and work for it in the appropriateness of things. But it looks as though he had not much confidence in what she was suggesting, not much conviction in it, thinking that if things were left to time they might not actually see God, or God step into time’s process. Vain had been the effort all along, and time itself doesn’t have enough potential to come out of its own limitations; there is no bootstrap to pull it up. So, it seemed to Aswapati, that the divine Wisdom’s keeping pressed her finger on one golden bar of time would be an unavailing proposition, a sort of dubious strategy, terribly weak in its design. When she heard the argument and the forceful plea, a further consideration was given by her to what Aswapati was driving at, as if she understood or appreciated another possibility suggested by him. No wonder, he was hailed by her as a “strong forerunner”, forerunner that is agragaņi, agrésara, he who is vigorous and dynamic, assertive, the forward-thrusting āryaņa. In fact she had already hailed him as the Son of Strength. In the Rig Veda (VIII:13:33) Indra is often addressed as such a one, the Strong, vŗşā, vŗşabha the male, the bull, and it is he who is invoked with his thousand aids, even as he has won the ŗşī’s hymn of praise. The forerunner, agragaņi, has sent his cry and he awaits the divine Word. Behind that cry is his entire yoga-tapasya, waiting to bear full fruit.

And now here is the celebrated Boon: “One shall descend and break the iron Law.”

But who is this unnamed unspecified One? She will of course do a great job—break the iron Law—but who is she? But, and obviously, it is she herself, the divine Wisdom, the Boon-giver; Aswapati wanted her to incarnate herself in a “living form” that, in a mighty act, she shall unlock the doors of Fate, doors that have remained closed for too long, from the beginning itself. The unspecified One is the Nameless, one who really cannot be named, is beyond name and form, nāma and rūpa, but she will come with a name when she shall step into the process of the evolving time. The transcendent Consciousness-Force shall come here bearing a name, Savitri. The Sun-God, Savitŗ, the supramental Sun as the divine Creator of the Worlds shall, get done whatever has got to be done through her, his executive Power, his Radiant Daughter, Savitri. Being the daughter of Savitŗ she shall have a name as Savitri, one who comes from Savitŗ. The Sanskrit word savitŗ means the Sun-God, who is also the creator of the worlds. The descendent of savitŗ is therefore sāvitŗ, or as feminine, sāvitrī. She comes for the welfare of the three worlds, trailokasya hitārthāya; she is the dynamism of the Sustainer of the Worlds, vaiśņavī śaktiranantavīryā, as the ancient Scripture says. But in the worldly birth she takes the name as Savitri.

The Nameless steps into the seasons of the earthly time and plays several roles, takes several functional names. When she was born, Vyasa in the Mahabharata called her a radiant daughter, kanyā téjasvinī. In different contexts she was addressed differently: a heavenly damsel, dévakanyā, given to strict ascetic practices, she was a tapasvinī, and one alike the Goddess Fortune, śrirūpiņī, an adept in the yoga of meditation, dhyānayogaparāyaņā, the auspicious, śubha, the timid, bhirū, the gracious, śri, an observer of the wifely vows, pativratā, full of wealth and beauty and charm, lakşmi, with eyes as if they were full-blown lotuses and in loveliness flaming with splendour, padmapalāśākşīm jwalantīmiyatéjasā, moving in the elegance of the gait of an elephant she was a gajagāminī, and she was a virtuous woman, bhāvinī, and of course she was the beloved of Satyavan, his priyā.

In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri, we have her as: the great assenting Word, the Force that is the inevitable Word, a living power of the incarnate Word, the daughter of infinity, and a beautiful slave of God, and a breathing scripture of the Eternal’s joy, and an immortal treading the earth with mortal feet, a greatness working towards the hidden end, an arrow shot from the bow of God, the human claimant to immortality, the incarnate Force, the spirit’s Power, and the Madran princess Savitri. If this is she, as the sages say, of whom the world has heard, then indeed we should not wonder any more of any happy change, for she is the cause of all this. Yes, she will bring about that most desirable happy change, the divine felicity.

RYD

She shall break the iron Law
It is the law of the dark Inconscience maintained by Death that has got to go, the Law against divine Love. But how? Its roots are sinister and evil and false and deep. Death is the one who prevents immortality of sweetness and joy in the shining possibilities of the truthful superior manifestation upon earth, Love that shall grow endlessly, limitlessly. But for all that to happen, the conquest of Death is a necessary, and sufficient, condition, that then only will the evolutionary Soul take such a large and luminous leap. The three disputants are there in the lists and they are there since the ancient day, and the fearsome question has remained unresolved throughout the long and difficult history. It is in that context that Savitri has to meet Death the dark incorrigible Law, meet Yama the keeper of this cosmic order negatively. The imperative is, she must win victory over him, a decisive victory. The Boon being granted to Aswapati is an assertion of that outcome in the divine decision in response to his prayer. This is the Victory of the divine Word that was spoken of by the sages and seers but was never achieved. Aswapati's yoga-tapasya sees such prospects now.

In gracious answer to the invocation from Aswapati is the incarnation of Savitri, the Vedic sāvitrī who is the daughter of the Sun-God, savitŗ. She is the one who brings with her the dynamism of the Truth and knowledge of the Light which no darkness can dim. There is thus the infallibility of success in her action, an action in the high Will itself. That shows how charged with spiritual connotations the word savitŗ is.

If the Sun-God or savitŗ is the creator of this entire universe, then we have to first understand why this world is beset by the presence of Death. Why?—cries the soul of the weeping creature. Could it be that Death is a fortuitous presence, an unintended product of a certain circumstance that has no real reality behind it? Which would then imply that the operative veil savitŗ has put on himself, in the pregnant condition of this Inconscience, must be removed by his own power of illumination. Indeed, it cannot be but so. After all, Death also is the descendent of savitŗ himself and, therefore, it becomes his concern to deal with him. For that to happen, his executive-expressive power who is the Sun-Word should come as sāvitŗī. But this comes to pass only when the ground for her descent is well prepared here.

Such is therefore the task cut out for Savitri. She makes a splendid sacrifice of the eminence of her heavenly abundances and accepts the travail of evolutionary growth; she leaves her “vaster Nature” behind to work in the limits of our little terrestriality. This is an aspect of the process of manifestation itself, assuring in it the Supreme’s direct involvement in the person of Savitri. Thus shall the iron Law be broken.

RYD

Here is the incarnate Savitri
Let us see just a few aspects of the incarnate Savitri vis-à-vis the boon granted to Aswapati by the divine Wisdom.
• Savitri has grown into full maidenhood and her father must arrange for her marriage. But as no suitor came forward to claim her hand, Aswapati advises her to find herself a suitable life-mate. Even as Savitri appears to him as a gift of a revealing hour, he sees through depths that reinterpret all, the knowledge of human nature and every nature in the multiple play of things and events: (Savitri, pp. 372-73)

This intimation of the world’s delight,
This wonder of the divine Artist's make
Carved like a nectar-cup for thirsty gods,
This breathing Scripture of the Eternal’s joy,
This net of sweetness woven of aureate fire…
Her brow, a copy of clear unstained heavens,
Was meditation’s pedestal and defence,
The very room and smile of musing Space,
Its brooding line infinity’s symbol curve.
Amid her tresses’ cloudy multitude
Her long eyes shadowed as by wings of Night
Under that moon-gold forehead’s dreaming breadth
Were seas of love and thought that held the world;
Marvelling at life and earth they saw truths far.
A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;
As in a golden vase’s poignant line
They seemed to carry the rhythmic sob of bliss
Of earth’s mute adoration towards heaven
Released in beauty’s cry of living form
Towards the perfection of eternal things.

• Aswapati continues to describe his daughter in several respects: Her lips are rubies of silence from which steals low laughter, which itself is a music of tranquillity, she the great and unknown spirit born his child: (p. 374)

Thy spirit came not down a star alone.
O living inscription of the beauty of love
Missalled in aureate virginity,
What message of heavenly strength and bliss in thee
Is written with the Eternal’s sun-white script,
One shall discover and greaten with it his life
To whom thou loosenest thy heart’s jewelled strings.
O rubies of silence, lips from which there stole
Low laughter, music of tranquillity,
Star-lustrous eyes awake in sweet large night
And limbs like fine-linked poems made of gold
Stanzaed to glimmering curves by artist gods,
Depart where love and destiny call your charm.

• And how does love-bitten Satyavan see the youthful Savitri? He tells her: (pp. 401-02)

Although to heaven thy beauty seems allied,
Much rather would my thoughts rejoice to know
That mortal sweetness smiles between thy lips
And thy heart can beat beneath a human gaze
And thy aureate bosom quiver with a look
And its tumult answer to an earth-born voice.
If our time-vexed affections thou canst feel,
Earth’s ease of simple things can satisfy,
If thy glance can dwell content on earthly soil,
And this celestial summary of delight,
Thy golden body, dally with fatigue
Oppressing with its grace our terrain, while
The frail sweet passing taste of earthly food
Delays thee and the torrent's leaping wine,
Descend. Let thy journey cease, come down to us.

• Narad has made known the death of Satyavan one year after the marriage and yet Savitri, though persuaded vehemently by her mother, remains firm in her resolve to be with the doomed youth. Here is she describing herself. (pp. 435-36)

My will is part of the eternal will,
My fate is what my spirit’s strength can make,
My fate is what my spirit’s strength can bear;
My strength is not the titan’s; it is God’s.
I have discovered my glad reality
Beyond my body in another’s being:
I have found the deep unchanging soul of love.
Then how shall I desire a lonely good,
Or slay, aspiring to white vacant peace,
The endless hope that made my soul spring forth
Out of its infinite solitude and sleep?...
Only now for my soul in Satyavan
I treasure the rich occasion of my birth:
In sunlight and a dream of emerald ways
I shall walk with him like gods in Paradise.
If for a year, that year is all my life.
And yet I know this is not all my fate
Only to live and love awhile and die.
For I know now why my spirit came on earth
And who I am and who he is I love.
I have looked at him from my immortal Self,
I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;
I have seen the Eternal in a human face.

• Savitri is living with Satyavan, but she is in extreme anguish. While on the one hand there is joy of life in her relationship with the husband, on the other she is in inconsolable distress about the foretold death. She even revolts and questions fate and destiny and god. She asks: (p. 475)

Is there a God whom any cry can move?
He sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength
Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law
And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.
What need have I, what need has Satyavan
To avoid the black meshed net, the dismal door,
Or call a mightier Light into life’s closed room,
A greater Law into man’s little world?
Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws
Or stave off death’s inevitable hour?
This surely is best to pactise with my fate
And follow close behind my lover’s steps
And pass through night from twilight to the sun
Across the tenebrous river that divides
The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.
Then could we lie inarmed breast upon breast,
Untroubled by thought, untroubled by our hearts,
Forgetting man and life and time and its hours,
Forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.

• Even while Savitri receives in the eternal Day boons from the Supreme, her one desire is o have the soul of Satyavan back to do the divine Work upon earth: (p. 701)

All that thou hast, shall be for others’ bliss,
All th thou art, shall to my hands belong.
I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.
And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy,
And when thou liv'st one spirit with all things,
Then will I spare thee not my living fires,
But make thee a channel for my timeless force.

Precisely those features detailed out in the Boon have come to be true, in the divine Savitri who has taken the mortal birth, in the person of human Savitri.

RYD

The impersonal becomes an incarnate person
The Boon-giver has characterised all the features of the One who shall descend, spelt out details in full conformity with the Siddha-Yogi’s ardent prayer and will, covering all that he had pleaded for. She has taken note of every element and every degree that was laid down by the son of strength and the strong forerunner. This again means that, occult-spiritually, the onus lies more on the supplicant and perhaps not so much on the bestower of the boon, as to what exactly he should wish to have, a difficult job to pray, a difficult proposition for the weak soul of man. This is a matter of serious concern,—for the simple reason that it is the quality of our prayer which is going to determine the strength and the merit of the reward that will be given. In it also is perhaps the wisdom of the divine Grace, to give just that the seeker-soul can bear.

The One who shall descend, take the mortal birth, will have her individualised uniquenesses. What are these uniquenesses? Her spirit shall remove Nature’s doom, her mind shall contain in its sweep the whole world, her heart in its sweetness and dynamism shall beat in the passions of the gods. While these features are mentioned briefly and succinctly, in just four lines, we have lyrically powerful poetry about her beauty and loveliness and charm, in fourteen lines, a sonnet in the epic. It looks as though the predominant consideration is that of the physical, the emphasis is on the physical rather than mental-vital-spiritual aspects:

All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.

Here is the gripping-transfixing form of the beautiful, beautifully portrayed, in fact, significantly revealed. These eighteen compelling lines thus represent the personality of the incarnate Savitri. The remaining five lines of the Boon describe the mission and accomplishments of the divine Wisdom in her mortal incarnation. With the opening line addressing Aswapati, we have in the Boon a total of twenty-four mantric lines, a significant number indeed.

RYD

The twenty-four lines of the boon
The speech of the divine Wisdom granting a boon to Aswapati consists of twenty-four lines, a Mantra by itself, with the transforming power to dynamise the mortal world in the truth-movement, dynamise it in every respect, to render to it the truth-rhythm, to make transcendental satyam and ŗtam its operative basis. “Savitri is a Mantra of the transformation of the world,” says the Mother; that Mantra, the revelatory Word with the force to realise what it pronounces, is quintessenced in this divine Utterance. There are about twenty-four thousand lines in Savitri, which could actually mean that each line of the Boon represents one thousand lines of this “sacred poem of delight”.

Twenty-four thousand lines of Savitri, twenty-four lines of the Boon, twenty-four syllables of the Sanskrit Gayatri Metre, the Gayatri Chhanda—each syllable expanded to one line of the Boon, and each line of the Boon to one thousand lines of Savitri, all these seem to be loaded with deep connotations, luminously occult in their character, and in their power of realisation. And just imagine! The Boon appears in the twenty-fourth canto of Savitri, Book Three Canto Four.

Here is the celebrated Gayatri Mantra given by the Vedic Rishi Vishwamitra, chanted through the long aeons of time: (Rig Veda III:62:10)

tat savitur varéņyam bhargo dévasya dhīmahi |
dhiyo yo nah prachodayāt ||

Let us meditate on the Creator-Sun, full of excellent god-radiance, that he may inspire and urge our right intelligence.

And here is Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra, given sometime during the early 1930s:

tat savitur varam rūpam jyotih parasya dhīmahi |
yannah satyéna dīpayét ||

Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitŗ, on the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth.

But it should be noted that Vishwamitra’s Gayatri has, not twenty-four as is the tradition, but only twenty-three syllables, at times permitted by the metrical rules. In contrast to that, the Gayatri of Sri Aurobindo has exactly twenty-four syllables. It is interesting to note that both the Gayatris were given by the Kshatriya Seer-Rishis.

RYD

The most auspicious form of Savitŗ, the Light of the Supreme

tat savitur varam rūpam jyotih parasya dhīmahi |
yannah satyéna dīpayét ||

Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitŗ, on the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth.

This is Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra. The meditation is on the auspicious form Savitŗ, of the Sun-God, on varam rūpam, on the Sun of divine Light, the Light of the Supreme, parasya jyotih. The Mantra affirms that the Light shall illumine us with the Truth. It shall illumine all the parts of our being, even the very physical. In it shall be our true progress, our authentic progress. The threefold reality of Sat-Chit-Ananda shall express itself in this creation. Even the physical shall reveal the dynamic reality on which it is founded; it shall participate in its gleaming modalities, in its modes and means and methods, lend itself to the manifesting Truth and the Right and the Vast, satyam-ŗtam-bŗhat.

The operative phrases in the Mantra are the auspicious form, varam rūpam, and the supreme Light, parasya jyotih, the best, excellent, beautiful, precious, choicest, finest, royal, princely form, full of nobility and elegance and charm, full of benevolence and graciousness, varam rūpam, and the supreme Light that never dims, that never casts shadow, the transcendental Light, parasya jyotih, the Light from which all lights come, the Sun in which, from which are born all the million suns. The implication of the Mantra is that of physical transformation achieved by the agency of the supreme Light.

The Vedic-Upanishadic Rishis had the knowledge of this supreme Light, Vijnan. They knew that it is the source and the support of the entire creation. But about the manifestation of the dynamic Truth in this mortal world, in mŗtyuloka, they did not have the sure definite working intuition. They did not know the way towards physical transformation. Perhaps at that time it was too early to realise it collectively, here in this death-bound world. Now Sri Aurobindo, by his unique yoga-tapasya, has prepared the required ground. He has made it a reality in the evolutionary manifestation. He has invoked the supreme Grace to incarnate here. She must come here and take up the difficult work in her own hand, take charge of things and events. She alone can bring about that transformative miracle. That creative power should bring truth and light and force and bliss to the mortal world, to this creation presently governed by death. That will be her work, its fulfilment. Savitri is the incarnate power who shall establish divinity in the terrestrial phenomenon. The coming down of that Grace is the birth of Savitri. This is what Aswapati prayed for and this is what the Boon grants.

But let us look at the auspicious form, varam rūpam, of the revelatory Gayatri Mantra significantly incorporated in the Boon, the divine Wisdom, sonnet-wise, describing it as follows, those fourteen lines:

All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.

Whereas the ancient Vedic Mantra was an invocation addressed to the Sun-God, full of excellent heavenly radiance, that he may inspire and urge our right intelligence, we have here in Sri Aurobindo a prayer for the physical opening to the supramental Light and Force. But the physical’s is the task which the incarnate Wisdom must carry out in this world of dark and anguished mortal world.

In the power and intensity of that Mantra, of varam rūpam, even as the Mother’s yoga-tapasya progressed in the physical, after the supramental manifestation on 29 February 1956, the body’s cells opened to the Presence and started chanting spontaneously the divine Name, with the prayer

O Supreme Lord of the universe, we implore Thee, give us the strength and the beauty, the harmonious perfection needed to be Thy divine instruments upon earth.

The Mother saw that the physical is not only capable of receiving the higher Light, but has the certitude that it can manifest the true Consciousness. How marvellous—the Boon coming from the divine Wisdom!

Sri Aurobindo explains the significance of the Mantra as follows:

Brahman in the Vedas signifies ordinarily the Vedic Word or Mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word…. And the word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul is also brahman. The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras; they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisations for others…. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body.

The Word, or Brahman the Creator of the Worlds, can thus express itself in us, embody the auspicious strength, varam balam, of the spirit to make progress in its widening manifestation. Savitri which itself is a divine Boon achieves it through the divine Boon given to Aswapati. But in terms of its reality-content, of the mantric Savitri, we might as well say that the Mother had already written it in 1911 itself, when she addressed her prayer to the Sun of Truth. In a talk given to a women’s association, dated 15 December 1911, the Mother expresses a very remarkable wish of hers. She proposes to the members of the association to make a resolution to raise themselves

… each day, in all sincerity and goodwill, in an ardent aspiration towards the Sun of Truth, towards the Supreme Light, the source and intellectual life of the universe, so that it may pervade us entirely and illumine with its great brilliance our minds and hearts, all our thoughts and our actions.

The Mantra is striking in several respects when we also realise that the Mother received it, indeed, even before she met Sri Aurobindo in 1914. This was in Paris when she was just 33,—showing us that “the Mother had been spiritually conscious from her youth.” The ardent invocation to the Supreme Light to “pervade us entirely and illumine us with its great brilliance” is certainly the imploration, as well as the defining assertion, with which both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother started their work even before they came together in Pondicherry, the destined meeting place. Years later, thanks to Doraiswami, we see it embodied in the “auspicious form” of the Gayatri Mantra itself. Doraiswami was an Iyer Brahmin from Chennai and was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo. He insisted that he would perform the thread-ceremony of his son Mithran only if he received a Mantra from the Master. It was in response to this most ardent and fruitful imploration that Sri Aurobindo gave the Gayatri Mantra. Again, the lesson is, we should know what to ask from such a Boon-Giver! In the Record, Sri Aurobindo makes a noting that Doraiswami was King Janak in one of his births long long ago; also Sri Krishna lists him in the Gita as one of his Vibhutis. [N.B.: Doraiswami was a nationalist and a leading advocate by profession. Sri Aurobindo had sent him as his emissary with a message to the Congress Working Committee when, in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps’s proposal to create a new Indian Union with a Dominion Status was being discussed in New Delhi. Unfortunately Sri Aurobindo’s recommendation to accept the proposal was rejected. We witness the tragedy that befell the country. Woe to a nation that does not listen to the voice of its divine Yogi-Rishi.]

What Doraiswami received was the transformative disclosure in the nature of a metrical formula in Sanskrit, made perhaps in the early 1930s. It is the coming of the revealing Word of Manifestation. Such is the greatness of the mantric varam rūpam.

RYD

Her Mortal Birth
The one who shall come in an auspicious form, varam rūpam, who shall incarnate herself here, will not suffer diminution by taking such a mortal birth; in fact, she should not suffer it, rather she should work in it to enhance its divine potential, establish it in it. True, the Gita speaks of death to be certain for one who is born, jātasya hi dhruvo mŗtyuh; true also that the Gita is pragmatic in saying that, the way we discard or throw away our old used garments, in the same manner too we do cast off our worn-out bodies, bodies that bind the souls to the physical-material, yathā vāsānsi jīrņāni vihāya tathā śarīrāņi vihāya jīrņāni. The question that could then arise is: is similar going to be the fate of the auspicious form as well, of varam rūpam, the form in which the divine Wisdom will take birth? If so, then the divine boon given by her will not prove effective enough, will not measure up to the kind of mission the incarnate will have to carry out here; in that eventuality the boon might not really mean much. Is the auspicious form going to experience the same fortune and the same uncertainty, the same insecurity, the same mortality’s lot, more or less in an identical manner? Of what avail will it be then, this varam rūpam, particularly so in the context of the ardent plea with which Aswapati had requested her to incarnate the white passion of her force? The gain will be dubious—which certainly it is not what is put into the Boon. What is it then that the auspicious form is going to achieve? What is the power of the Gayatri Mantra, that it will achieve what it utters?

The Gita speaks of the Divine lodging himself in a human body, taking a human form, mānuşīm tanum āsritam. In the case of the Avatar this form is prepared by the Manu of the Age. Although the Avatar’s is the soul-birth, it is also attended by the physical birth. How is his body created? Sri Aurobindo raises this query in the Essays on the Gita and answers it as follows: “If we suppose that the body is always created by the hereditary evolution, by inconscient Nature and its immanent Life-spirit without the intervention of the individual soul, the matter becomes simple. A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarnation by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it. But the Gita in this very passage applies the doctrine of reincarnation, boldly enough, to the Avatar himself, and in the usual theory of reincarnation the reincarnating soul by its past spiritual and psychological evolution itself determines and in a way prepares its own mental and physical body. The soul prepares its own body, the body is not prepared for it without any reference to the soul. Are we then to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving, we might say, his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yugé yugé? In some such spirit some would interpret the ten incarnations of Vishnu, first in animal forms, then in the animal man, then in the dwarf man-soul, Vamana, the violent Asuric man, Rama of the axe, the divinely-natured man, a greater Rama, the awakened spiritual man, Buddha, and, preceding him in time, but final in place, the complete divine manhood, Krishna,—for the last Avatar, Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krishna began,—he fulfils in power the great struggle which the previous Avatars prepared in all its potentialities. It is a difficult assumption to our modern mentality, but the language of the Gita seems to demand it. Or, since the Gita does not expressly solve the problem, we may solve it in some other way of our own, as that the body is prepared by the Jiva but assumed from birth by the Godhead or that it is prepared by one of the four Manus, catvāro manavah, of the Gita, the spiritual Fathers of every human mind and body. This is going far into the mystic field from which the modern reason is still averse; but once we admit Avatarhood, we have already entered into it and, once entered, may as well tread in it with firm footsteps.”

Indeed, “…mortal mind is bewildered by its ignorant reliance upon veils and appearances; it sees only the outward human body, human mind, human way of living and catches no liberating glimpse of the Divinity who is lodged in the creature. It ignores the divinity within itself and cannot see it in other men, and even though the Divine manifest himself in humanity as Avatar and Vibhuti, it is still blind and ignores or despises the veiled Godhead, avajānanti mām mūdhā mānuşīm tanum āsritam. And if it ignores him in the living creature, still less can it see him in the objective world on which it looks out from its prison of separative ego through the barred windows of the finite mind. It does not see God in the universe; it knows nothing of the supreme Divinity who is master of these planes full of various existences and dwells within them; it is blind to the vision by which all in the world grows divine and the soul itself awakens to its own inherent divinity and becomes of the Godhead, godlike. What it does see readily, and to that it attaches itself with passion, is only the life of the ego hunting after finite things for their own sake and for the satisfaction of the earthly hunger of the intellect, body, senses. Those who have given themselves up too entirely to this outward drive of the mentality, fall into the hands of the lower nature, cling to it and make it their foundation. That is why each Incarnation holds before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate; he declares too the oneness of his humanity with the divine being, declares that the Son of Man and the Father above from whom he has descended are one, that Krishna in the human body, mānuşīm tanum āsritam, and the supreme Lord and Friend of all creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama, revealed there in his own being, revealed here in the type of humanity.”

But the auspicious form, varam rūpam, goes far beyond these formulations. The divine Wisdom will incarnate herself in the auspicious form, varam rūpam, which will prepare its form of immortality, its body of immortality, will prepare a New Body that shall be the luminous centre of the New Creation. This varam rūpam is the foundation for the transformed physical, the body that knows no death. The Savitri-incarnation is for that purpose, to prepare the New Body on which is to be established the gnostic manifestation. Such is the reach of this Boon received by Aswapati.

In the sequel, Savitri in her varam rūpam has taken the mortal birth, rather she has taken birth in mortality to deal with mortality. By entering into its depth, the depths of darkness where resides Death, she has touched the very source from which it springs up, springs up antagonistically. Through the death of Satyavan, Savitri has stepped into the occult void to meet him who guards it with a firm iron hand. In that victory over Death the auspicious form, varam rūpam, becomes the basis of the New Creation. This is so because, Savitri’s form, her auspicious form, varam rūpam, is determined not by the Manu of the Age but by the Supreme himself. How marvellous!

RYD

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
As an aspect of the auspicious form, varam rūpam, of the one who shall descend, the Boon gives details about some of the inborn qualities she shall possess:

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.

In the deeps of her soul shall dwell Wisdom, and there shall be the luminous Strength in her arms, the invincible Super-Durga whose sword knows no defeat, and her eyes of Bliss shall see everything as Bliss—she shall be the embodiment of Jnana-Shakti-Ananda. These are some of the exceptional qualities she shall show, for example, in her encounter with the almighty Death. The Gita speaks of the soul that cannot be cleaved by the weapon nor burnt by the fire, nainam chhindanti śastrāņi nainam dahati pāvakah; so is her sword, her soul itself that weapon. She shall defeat what she shall strike, and there is no doubt about it.

There is the absoluteness in the Incarnate’s work and her accomplishment, the divine Boon leaving no ambiguity in what she shall achieve. Contrast this with Narad’s prophecy made in the palace of Aswapati, following his announcement about the certain death of Satyavan one year after the marriage with Savitri. Savitri’s mother was in great distress and, instead of assuaging her feelings, the heavenly sage goes ahead in justifying emphatically, in fact most forcefully, the meaning and the purport of that death. It looks as though that was one of the keen and deep-seated intentions of his visit to the royal family. He tells the queen, Savitri’s mother Malawi, that (Savitri, pp. 461-62)

A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers,
Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge.
Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge,
Her single greatness in that last dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.
In that tremendous silence lone and lost
Of a deciding hour in the world’s fate,
In her soul’s climbing beyond mortal time
When she stands sole with Death or sole with God
Apart upon a silent desperate brink,
Alone with her self and death and destiny
As on some verge between Time and Timelessness
When being must end or life rebuild its base,
Alone she must conquer or alone must fall.
No human aid can reach her in that hour,
No armoured God stand shining at her side.
Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.
For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world.
O queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,
Come not between her and her hour of Fate.
Her hour must come and none can intervene:
Think not to turn her from her heaven-sent task,
Strive not to save her from her own high will.
Thou hast no place in that tremendous strife;
Thy love and longing are not arbiters there,
Leave the world’s fate and her to God’s sole guard.
Even if he seems to leave her to her lone strength,
Even though all falters and falls and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are death and night,
God-given her strength can battle against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone seems close
And no human strength can hinder or can help.
Think not to intercede with the hidden Will,
Intrude not twixt her spirit and its force
But leave her to her mighty self and Fate.

What the outcome will be when Savitri’s mighty self shall meet Fate, about that Narad is unable to spell out. He is certain that her God-given strength can battle against doom, but is she going to destroy it? When the deciding hour shall come she is going to stand upon a silent desperate brink, sole with Death or sole with God, alone with her self and death and destiny, there alone she must conquer or alone must fall. The grim battle is loaded with hazardous possibilities. Narad can’t say anything more than that—though the drift is towards her winning it.

When the divine Boon is so definite, well-defined, so precise, why is then Narad equivocal, ambiguous, imprecise, almost elusive in his statement? Does he come from his home in Paradise to Aswapati’s palace with that imprecision? That will be more a disservice than help to the Fate-driven. In that respect Narad’s trikāladŗşti, his knowledge of the three divisions of Time is restricted. But his knowledge of things belongs to the quality of the paradisal home from where he comes, the Home of the cosmic Vishnu, the Virat Purusha, and it does not belong to absoluteness of the knowledge of the transcendental God, the supreme Being; Narad is essentially a denizen of the Overmental world though he is capable of receiving the higher intuition, work with the supramental intuition. Naturally, all the possibilities are present in it and they can work themselves out in their respective truths. But what is given in the Boon is the supramental definiteness, that which cannot be challenged. Such is the absoluteness of Savitri’s own will when she tells her parents and sage that her will is a part of the eternal will: (pp. 435-36)

My will is part of the eternal will,
My fate is what my spirit’s strength can make,
My fate is what my spirit’s strength can bear;
My strength is not the titan’s; it is God’s.
I have discovered my glad reality
Beyond my body in another’s being:
I have found the deep unchanging soul of love.
Then how shall I desire a lonely good,
Or slay, aspiring to white vacant peace,
The endless hope that made my soul spring forth
Out of its infinite solitude and sleep?...
Only now for my soul in Satyavan
I treasure the rich occasion of my birth:
In sunlight and a dream of emerald ways
I shall walk with him like gods in Paradise.
If for a year, that year is all my life.
And yet I know this is not all my fate
Only to live and love awhile and die.
For I know now why my spirit came on earth
And who I am and who he is I love.
I have looked at him from my immortal Self,
I have seen God smile at me in Satyavan;
I have seen the Eternal in a human face.

This knowledge came to her from the deep source of love, love she has suddenly discovered in the happy and gleaming Shalwa forest, a knowledge that cannot fail. Such is indeed the power of true love. It is a part of the divine Boon which Aswapati had received from the supreme Shakti herself, a knowledge which also must have been passed on by him to his daughter Savitri in a luminous occult way.

RYD

Who is Savitri?
The divine Incarnate will come in her auspicious form, varam rūpam, bearing the name Savitri, the Daughter of the supramental Sun. And yet we must ask the question: who is this Savitri? What is her role, what is her business? Tradition makes her an unusual princess who wins back the soul of her dead husband from the God of Death. We already have in her story a supernatural element describing the most extraordinary event in the spiritual history of the earth. It therefore becomes obvious that, the narrative related to her is itself a significant myth reciting the prophetic achievement of a woman in this death-dominated creation. If she is one who carries in her womb the secret soul, the birth of divinity, if she is jananī, then, surely, she cannot accept sorrowful infliction of the death of her own child. She must become death-victorious, mŗtyu-vijayinī. Her one concern is indeed to establish immortal birth in this mortality. The root sense of the name Savitri itself makes it clear to us so.

It was in a wondrous act of Love that the Supreme had plunged into the darkness of the Inconscience. In that way would appear, out of it, a creation for incessant progression in the growing possibilities of the Spirit. Savitri’s incarnation is for her inseparable union with this Love, union in conformity with and accomplishment of the Supreme’s Will. That is how the Story of Savitri also becomes the Story of Love triumphing over Death, triumphing through her action for Love’s increase and expansion in the divine splendours, its splendid multiplication. If it is through the agency of Supermind that the world came into being, it is Supermind alone who will then bring authentic fulfilment to it in joyous glories of the Truth and Beauty and Light and Force and Awareness, in its Delight. In it is the work of the transcendental Surya-Savitri, God the Creator-Increaser. It is that glory and triumph which we celebrate in the Savitri-legend, the ancient given to us as a great gift. That is what the Savitri Mantra proclaims, and achieves, even in the circumstance of this deathful mortality.

Savitri takes birth as a radiant daughter,—kanyā téjasvinī as Vyasa puts it. She keeps on coming as the Princess of Madra, the Daughter of the timeless king Aswapati. Hers is an eternal birth which is also the birth in eternal Time. Thus, the fascinating Story of Savitri is actually a Story of the unfolding Eternal himself, being simultaneously told and retold on multiple levels. It is an exalted story of the evolutionary manifestation, a story which cannot be set into the domains of what we see as the past, present, and future. The splendid seal of the Boon is fixed on it, and that is why it is so precious.

We may also narrate the story differently, with a metaphysical suggestiveness: The Adya Shakti, the original Primaeval Might, always stays in the transcendent. That is her viewless home. Her office is there, up there, and it is from there that she supports all these thousand actions, actions even in the lower anguishful hemisphere. But for the decisive change to take place, she has to project herself as the supramental Force. Indeed, it is in that form that she will come down to do the supramental work by which the Supermind will enter into it, into the evolutionary process. Thus, while the supreme Adya Shakti will always remain in the Transcendent, it is Savitri with the transformative power who will come down and take charge of the evolving soul. In fact that has been her responsibility all along, a responsibility in the mortal world to work out what the Supreme wills. Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya is an aspect of that process. It is thus that the Supermind will belong to the evolutionary line. However, its descent will mean the descent of its powers and not the descent of the Transcendent itself.

To describe the entire sequence in a somewhat plain language we can put it as follows. The unmanifest Divine plunges as Love into the depths of the Inconscience, into the Horror of Inconscience. That is the first Avatar, “the permanent Avatar”, as the Mother says, whose presence alone will make the Inconscience luminous, make it a means for his own gleaming widening manifestation. But, in the meanwhile, silently he suffers the great Affliction, suffers in a divine manner. To redeem that suffering of Love, the Divine incarnates himself here, in mortality, in an evolutionary way and does intense yoga-tapasya. This firm and radiant ground of yoga-tapasya then becomes the foundation or ādhāra for his executive Power’s action to assert his Will in this mortal creation. She prevails over the almighty Death, the dire Antagonist, and wins a unique victory. Thus is established the unfolding sovereignty of Love in which transformed Death participates with his noble benignities. Indeed that is how, in a mysterious creative act of delight, all is done by the Divine himself.

In the Mahabharata narrative Savitri discloses, in a tremendous moment of revelation, that it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun, by spiritual discipline and practices the saints uphold the earth, that in the saints all the three divisions of time find their refuge. Yama that is Death is immensely gladdened by these utterances of hers and releases the soul of her deceased husband. Savitri wins a unique victory over the God of Death who is also the helper on the path towards immortality in this mortal world. These two aspects of Yama come out in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri with an unbelievable-incredible power that can change the mortality’s lot completely. Yes, this mŗtyuloka is the great concern of Savitri. She must bring down the manifesting Truth in this world, must make that Truth dynamically operative in it. She must espouse the Truth howsoever difficult the circumstances, even in the presence of ubiquitous death. Her birth is that assurance and that achievement, that glorious accomplishment.

In one of the Vedic Riks we have the description of Agastya digging into the darkness of the Night, khanan as it says. But the Rishi found it difficult to deal with the physical nature. He could not bring light to it. His body was afflicted with the triple poison and 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 divyaloka is one kind of a thing and its knowledge in mŗtyuloka is another kind. The aspect of dynamic immortality in the physical is the work of the executive Force alone and, unless her incarnation takes place, it cannot be accomplished. Though the clear 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 ancient spiritual days. Cycles of evolution had to be silently worked out to arrive at this point, and they had to be worked out differently. In response to Aswapti’s prayer, she came to usher in the new cycle, of supramental manifestation, the cycle that grows and grows. That is the birth of Savitri: (pp. 353-55)

Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss
A greatness from our other countries came...
A mediating ray has touched the earth
Bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s...
One had returned from the transcendental planes
And bore anew the load of mortal breath,
Who had striven of old with our darkness and our pain;
She took again her divine unfinished task:
Survivor of death and the aeonic years,
Once more with her fathomless heart she fronted Time.
Again there was renewed, again revealed
The ancient closeness by earth-vision veiled...
Again the mystic deep attempt began,
The daring wager of the cosmic game...
At once she seemed to found a mightier race.

The Boon from the divine Wisdom is for founding this mightier race, the gnostic race.

RYD

beautiful description of savitri!!

thanks, Rakesh.

RYD

He individualises the divine transcendence
The divine Wisdom incarnates herself here in order to establish the gnostic race, the new world created by Aswapati in the House of the Spirit; he did it by his yoga-tapasya and now it must manifest by the work of the incarnate Consciousness-Force. She must come “to found a mightier race”, to make it a reality upon earth. Apropos of this gnostic race, Sri Aurobindo writes in The Life Divine as follows: (pp. 971-73)

A supramental or gnostic race of beings would not be a race made according to a single type, moulded in a single fixed pattern; for the law of the Supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity, and therefore there would be an infinite diversity in the manifestation of the gnostic consciousness although that consciousness would still be one in its basis, in its constitution, in its all-revealing and all-uniting order. It is evident that the triple status of the Supermind would reproduce itself as a principle in this new manifestation: there would be below it and yet belonging to it the degrees of the overmind and intuitive gnosis with the souls that had realised these degrees of the ascending consciousness; there would be also at the summit, as the evolution in Knowledge proceeded, individual beings who would ascend beyond a supermind formulation and reach from the highest height of Supermind to the summits of unitarian self-realisation in the body which must be the last and supreme state of the epiphany of the Creation. But in the supramental race itself, in the variation of its degrees, the individuals would not be cast according to a single type of individuality; each would be different from the other, a unique formation of the Being, although one with all the rest in foundation of self and sense of oneness and in the principle of his being… In this consciousness he would live and act in an entire transcendent freedom, a complete joy of the Spirit, an entire identity with the cosmic Self and a spontaneous sympathy with all in the universe. All beings would be to him his own selves, all ways and powers of consciousness would be felt as the ways and powers of his own universality… The gnostic individual would be in the world and of the world, but would also exceed it in his consciousness and live in his Self of transcendence above it; he would be universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a separative individuality. The true Person is not an isolated entity, his individuality is universal; for he individualises the universe: it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of transcendental infinity, like a high cloud-surpassing summit; for he individualises the divine Transcendence.

This is the work of the divine Executrix and that is what is assured in the Boon. In order that the manifestation takes place, she will raise the degrees of the overmind and intuitive gnosis with the souls that had realised these degrees of the ascending consciousness. This will happen even as she will lead evolution in Knowledge, in it individual beings ascending beyond a supermind formulation in which there will be unitarian self-realisation in the body, the last and supreme state of the epiphany of the Creation. But her main concern will be the supramental race itself. However, there are entangled knots also, knots which will have to be loosened. Long before this stage of the supramental race is reached, she will have to work in the field of darkness and eliminate the obstacles that spring up from it. She will have to first conquer Death. She will have to seek the collaboration of the material Nature and she will have to change Fate. Eventually, she herself will have to win a boon from the Supreme by which Krishna and Kali shall descend in the earth-play, when the Divine Action in the Ananda of the Divine shall be possible. The boon received by Aswapati from the divine Wisdom does not speak of these prospects, as it is a boon related to executive action. But it is this boon which opens out these transcendental scenarios, opens out these wonderful realisable prospects flowing into the earth-creation. To put it differently: the boon received by Aswapati from the divine Wisdom is a foundational boon in the bright and dynamic wake of which other things will happen; there is in it that specificity.

RYD

Death’s tremendous hour
If all this has to happen,—and happen it must—the materialisation of the divine Boon in the mortal world,—there must first arrive Death’s tremendous hour. There is the divine promise that, Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will; that when shall arrive the Death’s tremendous hour, a green branch of heaven shall be put in the human soil, even as transience of the poor and painful human life shall no more restrain the spirit of the evolutionary earth:

A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

But who is this Fate? and how is she going to be changed? It was fated that Satyavan must die, in fact he has to die, and the bell tolls throughout the entire length and breadth of the epic, ringing “Satyavan must die, Satyavan must die”, die on the foreordained day, even as the heavenly sage Narad made the prophecy in no ambiguous terms. There was divine inspiration behind it, behind Narad’s announcement made in the royal palace, and he had seized that inspiration in its purity and in its entirety, seized it in the glory and marvel of the Name of his Vishnu. But Fate is presently the dark and despairing creative Force whose one dismal instrument of operation in the mortal world is Death. Her abode is in the deep gloom of the Abyss and from there originates all her retrograde actions; therefore it is there in the Abyss that she has to be finally dealt with. It is she who has kept with her the soul of Satyavan, enchained through the long frustrating ages, the soul whose deliverance from her iron grip would mean ushering in of divine life upon the earth. With the boon she shall turn into an instrument of the supreme Goddess herself. In order that this happens, the divine Savitri has to descend, has to take mortal birth.

The mortal birth of Savitri means the birth of the new world, the world created by Aswapati in the House of the Spirit. This occurs when she, the incarnate, meets the luminous Presence behind Death, the transformed Death himself; she obtains from him the boon of the divine life upon earth. She always works here, operates, toils in us, acts towards that change, awaking us to the sense of our true innate spiritual entitlement. This is what the Savitri-legend brings out forcefully. But sometimes it is feared that, by laying too exclusive a stress on the aspect of the legend alone, we might somewhat overshadow this mantric power of hers that is present in the epic from Sri Aurobindo. If true, this will have the deleterious effect of distancing us away from the truth of the forward-moving time, from what he the yogi-tapasvin intended it to be. If such really is the danger, then we should, with the least delay, disassociate ourselves from the apprehensive outcome, from that which the notion of the legend might carry in it. Our conjoining with its trenchant historicity could thus shut us off from the future, the future it can unfold for us. But we should appreciate the fact that, the ancient tale of Savitri, in its charged symbolic contents, is assuredly the auroral fore-history of the new age that is dawning on us. The legend is enduring in purpose and poignant in relevance; its purport is cosmic-eternal. Vladimir has put it perceptively and convincingly. “The fact that Sri Aurobindo put his revelation into the story of Mahabharata and did not invent his own has its deeper implications, for it reaches our historical and evolutionary depth, orienting us to the realisation of the Vedic Knowledge, providing us with new keys, integrating our new discoveries with the ancient knowledge.” The connection of Savitri with the ancient tale as we have in the Mahabharata, as well as the connection with the Veda, is intimate and pregnantly significant; yet it will be inappropriate to say that Savitri is the fifth Veda. This can be said so, that Savitri is not exactly the fifth Veda, because Savitri is not just the Veda of Immortality in the Heavens of Great Light, but is the Veda of the New Creation. We should recall what Sri Aurobindo himself had written in 1936, in response to a letter from Amal Kiran; he revealed: “Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past time when the whole thing had to be opened out, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality.’ ”

In order that the ways of Immortality are hewn in the rocky terrains of the earth, there has to come the Death’s tremendous hour. When did this hour come?

Long ago, on 13 November 1913, Sri Aurobindo made a noting in his Record of Yoga, which in a way is very puzzling; he writes: “A clear distinction must be made between the vidya-avidya-siddhi [Siddhi or Perfection of Knowledge-Ignorance] which is constituted by the seven chatusthayas [seven tetrads of yogic discipline received by Sri Aurobindo] and the higher Amrita [Immortality] in which all its limitation is removed and Death etc entirely cease. Only the first will in this life be entirely accomplished.” Does it then imply that, for the Siddhi of the higher Amrita, for the transcendental Immortality, it was necessary for the Death’s tremendous hour to appear on the scene, enter into the secret and supernatural yogic working? It seems to be so. Let us quickly see some of the statements Sri Aurobindo made in different contexts, statements loaded with deep and luminous occult connotations.

Here is what Sri Aurobindo once said to Amrita: Once Sri Aurobindo was washing his hands and Amrita was pouring the water for him. He was stunned when Sri Aurobindo said: “I entered the Supermind from the back door, but the Mother entered from the front door!” Later, in another place, he also said that he turned towards spirituality at a relatively late stage, whereas the Mother was conscious of her divinity right from her childhood; she herself had spoken of it on a number of occasions.

In 1935 Sri Aurobindo wrote to Nirodbaran that the Supramental Light was coming down, but there was also the upsurge of the dark and dismal crudeness making things difficult. The Mother later told Amal Kiran, in 1954, that she used to see the Supermind descending in Sri Aurobindo in 1938