Let us look into the first two lines of the above passage:

And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant

Savitri awakes and joins the brilliant Summoner’s chant.

But who is this brilliant Summoner, and what is his chant? With that chant Savitri awakes from her sleep, the sleep of Prajna consciousness, of perfect knowledge. The Summoner calls her and she is here now to do her work in the dynamism of perfect knowledge.

Savitri’s waking is described as the beginning of the day on which Satyavan is to die. Narad has already foretold the exact place and time when this death is going to occur, and Savitri is aware of it. On the fated day she gets up early in the morning, offers her worships to Goddess Durga, the Protectress of the Worlds, and is now ready to face the God of Death. The death will occur by a kingly tree in the Shalwa woods and the Goddess is already present there.

The Sun-God is the brilliant Summoner. He is the divine Aditya beckoning her early in the morning. The second half of the night itself has two parts: between midnight and 3.00 am, tamasobhāga, the dark part, and between 3.00 to 6.00 am jyotirbhāga, the bright part. The divine Ashwinikumars appear in the sky on horseback heralding the advent of Light. Running through the night, they then hand over the charge to Usha, the Dawn, and the sky is aglow with her rosy light, the rosy-fingered dawn of Homer. She is then followed by Savita, the Progenitor of Light. After him comes Bhaga with his aiśwarya, with his majesty and richness. Finally arrives the Sun. The Sun himself attains the full form in Pushan the Nourisher. The highest form of Light reaches its zenith in the highest heavens presided by Vishnu. Sri Krishna in the Gita says that among the Adityas he is Vishnu. He then becomes the Summoner to whose call awakes Savitri.

And what is his chant? Narad is Vishnu’s devotee, bhakta, and he is always immersed in him. From his home in Paradise when he starts journeying towards King Aswapati’s palace in Madra, to deliver the Word of Fate, he sings on the way the Name of Vishnu. He sings in it of (Savitri, pp. 416-17)

… the name of Vishnu and the birth
And joy and passion of the mystic world,
And how the stars were made and life began
And the mute regions stirred with the throb of a Soul.
… the Inconscient and its secret self,
Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does,
All-shaping without will or thought or sense,
Its blind unerring occult mystery,
And darkness yearning towards the eternal Light,
And Love that broods within the dim abyss
And waits the answer of the human heart,
And death that climbs to immortality.
… the Truth that cries from Night's blind deeps,
And the Mother-Wisdom hid in Nature's breast
And the Idea that through her dumbness works
And the miracle of her transforming hands,
Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun
And Mind subliminal in mindless life,
And the Consciousness that wakes in beasts and men.
… the glory and marvel still to be born,
Of Godhead throwing off at last its veil,
Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,
Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,
Heart sensing heart, thought looking straight at thought,
And the delight when every barrier falls,
And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.

The Summoner’s chant waking up Savitri is the Chant of the Transfiguration and the Ecstasy.

RYD

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

At the beginning of the Mahabharata War Arjuna suddenly develops cold feet and throws away his weapon of conquest, Gandiva. This conduct of his can never be acceptable to Krishna and he is harangued in no uncertain way. With the Gita delivered, the hero is now set to fight the gory battle. But, what's equally significant, Krishna tells Arjuna to step down from the chariot and offer prayers to Durga, the Protectress of the Worlds and the Giver of Victory.

The day of Satyavan’s death comes with a golden dawn. Savitri gets ready early in the morning and worships Durga. The image of the Goddess was carved on a forest stone by Satyavan himself. In fact it is her living presence there that had the power to protect the place fully. In Savitri we have the following description of it (p. 561):

Now it was here in this great golden dawn.

By her still sleeping husband lain she gazed
Into her past as one about to die
Looks back upon the sunlit fields of life
Where he too ran and sported with the rest,
Lifting his head above the huge dark stream
Into whose depths he must for ever plunge.

All she had been and done she lived again.

The whole year in a swift and eddying race
Of memories swept through her and fled away
Into the irrecoverable past.

Then silently she rose and, service done,
Bowed down to the great goddess simply carved
By Satyavan upon a forest stone.

What prayer she breathed her soul and Durga knew.

Perhaps she felt in the dim forest huge
The infinite Mother watching over her child,
Perhaps the shrouded Voice spoke some still word.

What prayer Savitri breathed at that crucial moment, of the world’s evolutionary history itself, her soul and Durga only knew. But about the power of the Stone Goddess we have in one of Sri Aurobindo’s sonnets the following:

I

n a town of gods, housed in a little shrine,
From sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me,—
A living Presence deathless and divine,
A Form that harboured all infinity.

The great World-Mother and her mighty will
Inhabited the earth’s abysmal sleep,
Voiceless, omnipotent, inscrutable,
Mute in the desert and the sky and deep.

This is a transcription of an experience the Yogi-Poet had on an earlier occasion: You “…stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother.” Letters on Yoga, p. 199.

Such is the living Goddess we see in the forest where Satyavan is to die on the day ushered in by the golden dawn.

RYD

Sri Aurobindo tells in a conversation: “Savitri awakes on the day of destiny, the day when Satyavan has to die. The birth of Savitri is a boon of the Supreme Goddess given to Aswapati. Aswapati is the Yogi who seeks the means to deliver the world out of Ignorance.”

Satyavan has to die—that is the imperative. Satyavan must die—that is how the opening canto of Savitri ends. Such is also the prophecy the heavenly sage Narad makes in the palace of Aswapati when Savitri discloses her choice of Satyavan as her life’s partner.

A great golden dawn heralds the destined day. The moment of truth has arrived and Savitri has to carry out the work for which she is here as the Goddess incarnate in a human form. It is a day in the life of human Savitri bearing far-reaching implications, superhuman implications, of doom and darkness vs light and joy. But as the day is opening with a great and golden dawn, it must be bringing happy richnesses only. The Yogi-Poet has already seen these.

Savitri opens with the line “It was the hour before the Gods awake.” The arrival of the dawn must mean the full awakening of the Gods. Is this dawn, corresponding to the awakening of the Gods, the same great and golden dawn on which Savitri is getting ready for her incarnate task? The dawn connected with the cosmic Gods and the dawn in the life of human Savitri, an individual,—are they the same? Do they mark one single event? But there is no doubt that these Gods are already awake when Savitri, on the fated day, is about to go to the forest along with Satyavan. They must be,—because they do carry the anguish which is also the anguish, perhaps of a greater measure, of Savitri.

But, actually, the Yogi-Poet is moving simultaneously in different zones of time and is covering with wide luminous ease domains of different worlds—transcendental-universal-individual at the same time. While the story belongs to the terrestrial mode there are present in it, and at every stage of its development, other dimensions too.

It is sometimes said that Savitri begins with a flashback. The central event of the story, of the death of Satyavan, has been brought right at the beginning of the narrative. It could possibly so. The Passion of Christ is a movie which has used this technique. And there are many instances too. In the literary art, ancient as well as modern many a great examples is present. Horace himself in his Ars Poetica speaks of in media res, into the middle of things. The issue, the event, and the characters are introduced by plunging into middle of the story. Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid are such classical epics. Horace also speaks of the story beginning at the beginning, ab initio or ab ovo, from the egg. He says The Trojan War does not begin from the double egg, but hurries to the action into the middle of things.


Here is the beginning of Iliad as translated by Samuel Butler:

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel?

"Sons of Atreus," he cried, "and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety; but free my daughter, and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Jove."

With these words he sat down, and Calchas son of Thestor, wisest of augurs, who knew things past present and to come, rose to speak. He it was who had guided the Achaeans with their fleet to Ilius, through the prophesyings with which Phoebus Apollo had inspired him.

And Virgil’s Aeneid rendered by Dryden:

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!

We may also see a few other beginnings:

Dante’s Divine Comedy, translated by Longfellow:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain
Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?"
I made response to him with bashful forehead.

Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

Firdausi’s Shah Nameh, The Epic of the Kings:

Kaiumers first sat upon the throne of Persia, and was master of the world. He took up his abode in the mountains, and clad himself and his people in tiger-skins, and from him sprang all kindly nurture and the arts of clothing, till then unknown. Men and beasts from all parts of the earth came to do him homage and receive laws at his hands, and his glory was like to the sun. Then Ahriman the Evil, when he saw how the Shah’s honour was increased, waxed envious, and sought to usurp the diadem of the world. So he bade his son, a mighty Deev, gather together an army to go out against Kaiumers and his beloved son Saiamuk and destroy them utterly.

Now the Serosch, the angel who defendeth men from the snares of the Deevs, and who each night flieth seven times around the earth that he may watch over the children of Ormuzd, when he learned this, appeared like unto a Peri and warned Kaiumers. So when Saiamuk set forth at the head of his warriors to meet the army of Ahriman, he knew that he was contending against a Deev, and he put forth all his strength. But the Deev was mightier than he, and overcame him, and crushed him under his hands.

When Kaiumers heard the news of mourning, he was bowed to the ground. For a year did he weep without ceasing, and his army wept with him; yea, even the savage beasts and the birds of the air joined in the wailing. And sorrow reigned in the land, and all the world was darkened until the Serosch bade the Shah lift his head and think on vengeance. And Kaiumers obeyed, and commanded Husheng, the son of Saiamuk, “Take the lead of the army, and march against the Deevs.” And the King, by reason of his great age, went in the rear. Now there were in the host Peris; also tigers, lions, wolves, and other fierce creatures, and when the black Deev heard their roaring he trembled for very fear. Neither could he hold himself against them, and Husheng routed him utterly. Then when Kaiumers saw that his well-beloved son was revenged he laid him down to die, and the world was void of him, and Husheng reigned in his stead.

And here is Savitri:

It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied the world…
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate…
An errant marvel with no place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal…
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours…
Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near…
All grew a consecration and a rite...
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range…
The message ceased and waned the messenger.
The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,
Drew back into some far-off secret world…
There was the common light of earthly day…
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.

And it is in this state of affairs that Savitri awakes, awakes with the great golden dawn:

And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant…

While Savitri’s awaking on the fated day looks like a flashback, plunging into the middle of the story, in media res, the opening of the epic belongs to another category, beginning at the beginning of things. But even Savitri’s awaking is at the beginning of beginnings. “This was the day when Satyavan must die” does not belong to the category of in media res. Nor is it exactly ab initio. We may say that Sri Aurobindo is following the convention of the Indian classical epics and narratives, beginning at the beginnings.

The entire scene actually belongs to the transcendental dimension. The cosmic opening and the great golden dawn of Savitri's waking are seen in the Transcendent. All this is happening up there, in the Transcendent. The decision that Satyavan must die is taken in the Transcendent. The three divisions of Time—past-present-future—and the three divisions of Space—individual-cosmic-transcendent—are viewed from the Truth-awareness in the Transcendent. It is that Truth-reality which is unfolding in the terrestrial action.

RYD

From the Savitri-passage given above, let us see the line

In her there was the anguish of the gods.

What is the anguish the gods carry?

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods has a few interesting as well as motivating anxieties. In the novel he depicts his great Shadow meeting a Modern God named "Media" (implying that we now worship The Media instead of Old Gods). That reminds him of "The Fat Kid" who represents Technology (who turns out to be cold-hearted and ruthless but insecure and neurotic). The Gods live in a town where isn't a single bookstore. And the dreamy scifi-sts speak of a book titled Gravity's Rainbow. That does give scare to the very Ancient Gods as much as to the New Gods, a la mode Gods. And quite understandably so.

But gods, ancient or modern, come in various denominations and one has to be wary of the nether Lords. Gaiman’s older gods award a dark feel and the new ones have no light with them. If the gods of infra-rationality are blood-thirsty, the modern are stiff-necked and arrogantly obstinate with their dubious convictions, proud noses. Very often we persuade ourselves of being right and there needs come no intruder in our affairs, that we are the hewers of our path of progress and prosperity, the forerunners and winners of human race.

We have the Gods of Science and Industry and Commerce and they don’t care about Ecology and the destruction of the Planet; we have a God presiding over the Flat World and Tom Friedman of NYT is his priest; we have the Techno-Capitalists charting out the way of the future for us; we have the Gods of Fundamentalists of various hues and shapes, religious, scientific, rationalistic, political, demagogic, and who and what not. We must therefore hunt out imaginary weapons of mass destruction and destroy them. And who cares for life?

The story of concentration camps and gas chimneys during the Second World War is a gruesome story, putting the clock of civilisation back by several centuries. “Mankind, jewel of God’s creation, succeeded in building an inverted Tower of Babel, reaching not toward heaven but toward an anti-heaven, there to create a parallel society, a new ‘creation’ with its own princes and gods, laws and principles, jailers and prisoners.” The child in hiding with his mother asks softly, very softly: "Can I cry now?" It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God, says a commentator. Was the frightening Auschwitz a consequence or an aberration of "civilisation"? Scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria—all found their ultimate expression in it. And then, says Elie Wiesel: “War leaves no victors, only victims.” About his experience in the concentration camp he writes:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes.
Never shall I forget those things even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.

Auschwitz in Elie Wiesel’s Night is horrifying. “Not far from us,” says he, “flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies, Yes. I did see this, with my own eyes… children thrown into the flames.”

Where is then the anguish of the gods? or are they asleep? deeply asleep, eternally asleep?

Or the anguish is deeper yet, concerned with the powers of darkness, ignorance, falsehood, evil, suffering, error, death? Is the supposition that, if the cause of this deeper anguish is removed the others will disappear by themselves? If human reason can be charitable, it might give the benefit of the doubt to Savitri and hope for the best. Indeed,

…terrible agencies the Spirit allows
And there are subtle and enormous Powers
That shield themselves with the covering Ignorance.
Offspring of the gulfs, agents of the shadowy Force,
Haters of light, intolerant of peace,
Aping to the thought the shining Friend and Guide,
Opposing in the heart the eternal Will,
They veil the occult uplifting Harmonist.
His wisdom's oracles are made our bonds;
The doors of God they have locked with keys of creed
And shut out by the Law his tireless Grace.
(Savitri, p. 225)

This must cause concern to the best of the gods, the bright ones, the Helpers on the Way of the Future, the Shapers to a great extent of the Human Destinies. But Savitri’s concern is at the foundational level itself.

RYD

Let us pick up the following lines from the passage we are studying:

A mighty stranger in the human field,
The embodied Guest within made no response.

If Savitri is the incarnate Shakti, the Consciousness-Force, who has come here with a mission, how is it that the Guest within is making no response, the Guest who is the surest Guide in all human predicaments, He remaining untouched by our small joys and our small afflictions, as if impervious to everything, big or small, transient and fleeting?

The “Guest” is a Vedic-Upanishadic image; in fact he is the true reality sitting in the cave of the heart, hridaya-guhā. He is the Divine Agni, the Immortal in the Mortal of the Vedas, living in house and house, damé-damé; he is the Purusha no bigger than the thumb of a man, angushtha-mātra-purusha of the Upanishads; he is the eternal portion of the Divine, amsha sanātana, of the Gita; he is the witness and the giver of the consent for Prakriti or Nature to do her work. But aloof and apart he lives, that Nature may do her work. Savitri’s joy once had been the Vaster Nature’s, of Para Prakriti; but now she has accepted the conditions of human birth; she has stepped into “the portals of the birth that is a death”. She need not have, but it is the power of love that persuaded her, compelled her to take this birth. Otherwise there is nothing mortal in her. There is a difference between the Guest in her heart’s cave and the guest in our heart’s cave. She belongs to Ishwarkoti, as Ramakrishna would say, and we to Manushyakoti, one to the Divine category, the other to the human. Savitri is the “Transcendent’s ray” sent here.

But silent is the Guest, standing aloof and apart. Why? Human Savitri must throw away the veil that wraps the heavenly Psyche within. Even as Savitri was commanded to do her Yoga, she steps into the dream-experience, swapna, and sees the subconscient-occult regions and the possibilities that exist for the earth and the human soul: (Savitri, pp. 486-87.)

A portion of the mighty Mother came
Into her as into its own human part:
Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods
It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,
Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit
To mould humanity into God's own shape
And lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a new world discover or create.
Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state.
But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man's heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature's crowded rooms
And stand uncovered in that nature's front
And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.

There are two alternatives: earth must transform herself or heaven descend. But in either case the imperative is the emergence of the heavenly Psyche, of the Guest within coming out. Post-human rather trans-human destinies, of whatever kind these be, if they have to bring about a spiritual change, can be truly fulfilled only with this proviso; the rest simply is preparation. For the heavenly Psyche to stand in the nature’s front, Savitri has to do Yoga of Finding the Soul: (Savitri, pp. 526-27.)

A being stood immortal in transience,
Deathless dallying with momentary things…
Observer of the silent steps of the hours,
Eternity upheld the minute's acts
And the passing scenes of the Everlasting's play.
In the mystery of its selecting will,
In the Divine Comedy a participant,
The Spirit's conscious representative,
God's delegate in our humanity,
Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent's ray,
She had come into the mortal body's room
To play at ball with Time and Circumstance…
All she could front with the strong spirit's peace.
But since she knows the toil of mind and life
As a mother feels and shares her children's lives,
She puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart
To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds
And labour mid the labour of the stars.
This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,
Exults in victory, struggles for the crown;
Identified with the mind and body and life,
It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,
Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross,
Yet is the unwounded and immortal self
Supporting the actor in the human scene…
This is in us the godhead small and marred;
In this human portion of divinity
She seats the greatness of the Soul in Time
To uplift from light to light, from power to power,
Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king…
Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
The secret deity and its human part,
The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
Then with a magic transformation's speed
They rushed into each other and grew one.

Her soul and her spirit have merged into one another and become one. The Guest, “God’s delegate” within is now there to step into world action and carry out the divine task for which he accepted “the birth that is a death.”

RYD

RY, I very much appreciate your edifying discussions of the profound depth and beauty of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. — I have a couple of questions re today's passage:

1) You say:

...There is a difference between the Guest in her heart’s cave and the guest in our heart’s cave. She belongs to Ishwarkoti, as Ramakrishna would say, and we to Manushyakoti, one to the Divine category, the other to the human...

Could you say a bit more re this? I thought that the Psyche, the embodied Guest within, was identically the Divine Agni in all; the only difference between individuals being the degree to which it has "come out" in each person. And that in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo has given us a transcendent example of what each of us must do. As you say She (and thus we) "...must throw away the veil that wraps the heavenly Psyche within."

2) You quote from Savitri:

...A portion of the mighty Mother came
Into her as into its own human part:
Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods
It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,
Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit
To mould humanity into God's own shape
And lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a new world discover or create.

I'm curious about the distinction that Sri Aurobindo seems to be making between (either?):

a) ...lead[ing] this great blind struggling world to light

b) Or a new world discover or create.

Sri Aurobindo appears to be proposing two distinct paths toward humanity's transcendence; either transform our existing world, or [failing that?] discover or create a new world.

Do you also see these as two distinct options? If so, what do you think Sri Aurobindo means by the second option, "to discover or create a new world."

~ ron

Hi Ron, Your 2 points:
1: About the Divine Agni: He is the same everywhere but your Agni is different from my Agni and different from the Avatar’s Agni and that is a wonderful thing indeed; “in house and house there is a different fire.” Because there is the Divine Fire that there are different fires. Otherwise manifestation and multiplicity would be meaningless. That is the richness of Agni. Difference in degree will not constitute individuality, I suppose.

Regarding Ishwarkoti and Manushyakoti the Divine category and the human category let me at this point just quote the following letters from Sri Aurobindo:

Letters on Yoga, p. 59
I don't think I have written, but I said once that souls which have passed into Nirvana may (not “must”) return to complete the larger upward curve. I have written somewhere, I think, that for this yoga (it might also be added, in the natural complete order of the manifestation) the experience of Nirvana can only be a stage or passage to the complete realisation. I have said also that there are many doors by which one can pass into the realisation of the Absolute (Parabrahman), and Nirvana is one of them, but by no means the only one. You may remember Ramakrishna's saying that the Jivakoti can ascend the stairs, but not return, while the Ishwarakoti can ascend and descend at will. If that is so, the Jivakoti might be those who describe only the curve from Matter through Mind into the silent Brahman and the Ishwarakoti those who get to the integral Reality and can therefore combine the Ascent with the Descent and contain the “two ends” of existence in their single being.

p. 71
The language of the Gita in many matters seems sometimes contradictory because it admits two apparently opposite truths and tries to reconcile them. It admits the ideal of departure from samsāra into the Brahman as one possibility; also it affirms the possibility of living free in the Divine (in Me, it says) and acting in the world as the Jivanmukta. It is this latter kind of solution on which it lays the greatest emphasis. So Ramakrishna put the “divine souls” (Ishwarakoti) who can descend the ladder as well as ascend it higher than the Jivas (Jivakoti) who, once having ascended, have not the strength to descend again for divine work. The full truth is in the supramental consciousness and the power to work from there on life and Matter.

p. 94
Ramakrishna himself never thought of transformation or tried for it. All he wanted was bhakti for the Mother and along with that he received whatever knowledge she gave him and did whatever she made him do. He was intuitive and psychic from the beginning and only became more and more so as he went on. There was no need in him for the transformation which we seek; for although he spoke of the divine man (Ishwarakoti) coming down the stairs as well as ascending, he had not the idea of a new consciousness and a new race and the divine manifestation in the earth-nature.

pp. 441-42
It is difficult to give a positive answer to these questions, because no general rule can be laid down applicable to all. The mind makes rigid rules or one rigid rule, but the Manifestation is in reality very plastic and various and many-sided. My answers therefore must not be taken as exhaustive of the subject or complete. 1. He [the Jivanmukta] can go wherever his aim was fixed, into a state of Nirvana or one of the divine worlds and stay there or remain, wherever he may go, in contact with the earth-movement and return to it if his will is to help that movement. This [going direct from the world of the soul's present highest achievement to a still higher world] is doubtful. If originally he is not a being of the evolution but of some higher world, he would go back to that world. If he wants to go higher, it is logical that he should return to the field of evolution so long as he has not evolved the consciousness proper to that higher plane. The orthodox idea that even the gods have to come to earth if they want salvation may be applied to this ascension also. If he is originally an evolutionary being (Ramakrishna's distinction of the Jivakoti and Ishwarakoti may be extended to this also), he must proceed by the evolutionary path to either the negative withdrawal through Nirvana or some positive divine fulfilment in the increasing manifestation of Sachchidananda. As to the impossibility of return, that is a knotty question. A divine being can always return—as Ramakrishna said, the Ishwarakoti can at will ascend or descend the stair between Birth and Immortality. For the others, it is probable that they may rest for a relative infinity of time, 'sā'svatīh samāh, if that is the will in them, but a return cannot be barred out unless they have reached their highest possible status. No, that [return to the psychic world before a new birth] is part of the evolutionary line only, not obligatory for divine returns. 2. An advanced psychic being may mean here one who has arrived at the soul's freedom and is immersed in the Divine—immersed does not mean abolished. Such a being does not sleep in the psychic world, but may remain in his state of blissful immersion or come back for some purpose. The word “descend” has various meanings according to the context—I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it; that descent might be at the time of birth or before or it may come down later and occupy the personality it has prepared for itself. I do not quite understand what are these personalities from above—it is the psychic being itself that takes up a body. 3. No, the psychic being cannot take up more than one body. There is only one psychic being for each human being, but the beings of the higher planes, e.g., the Gods of the overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by sending different emanations into different bodies. These would be called Vibhutis of these Devatas. 4. These [the Guardians of the psychic world] are not human souls nor is this an office to which they are appointed nor are they functionaries—these are beings of the psychic plane pursuing their own natural activity in that plane. My word “guardian” was simply a phrase meant to indicate by an image or metaphor the nature of their action.


2: This should need a longer answer, but let me just attempt something here briefly. The relevant Savitri-lines, “to mould humanity into God's own shape”, are:

… lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a new world discover or create.

Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state.

A number of alternatives have been proposed here:

Lead this struggling world to light.
Discover a new world.
Create a new world.

Evolution must move forward and one of these could happen. That is the point at which Savitri arrives when she reviews, in her dream-consciousness, the march of evolution. This is what the cosmic past has disclosed to her and as yet the future is not revealed. Hence the alternatives.

But what is going to close the choice? “Post-human destinies”-wallahs would insist on the first. The second would be like Cortez discovering a new island in the Pacific that, spotting it, we have to just sail to it. The third is, Vishvamitra-like for Trishanku, create a new world.

But in Sri Aurobindo’s yogic-spiritual philosophy what is envisaged is the working of transcendental powers in the earth-consciousness, the earth-existence, the earth-life, in the sky and the air and the fire and the water and in the earth-stuff itself, not only in its countless material forms but also in its precious soul, and in its open and progressive and spacious spirit. Earth is the “significant centre” of the universe from the point of view a divine manifestation, as if created to focus all effort on one point. So, not by abandoning it, which is harshly suicidal, but by living in its creative essence and psyche can the true meaning of life, of the becoming itself be realised. We must fully recognise that there is something wonderful here, very meaningful also, that to go by the following lines (Collected Poems, p. 524)

Earth has beatitudes warmer than heaven’s that are bare and undying,
Marvels of Time on the crest of the moments to infinity flying.

But there is a genuine difficulty vis-à-vis man as the mental being. About his present occupation in the world and the urge that drives him in it and what is expected of it to come out, Sri Aurobindo writes: “He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality… he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is… To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him… Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.” (The Life Divine, pp. 208-09) The imperative is fully put: Man must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman. Notwithstanding man’s limitations, the appearance of the divine humanity, the divine multitude, divyam janam as the Veda says, is the entire thrust present in the evolutionary movement. Behind it is the Will of the Unmanifest to manifest himself in the fine multiplicity of existence, bahusyām prajāyeyeti. There has to be the “universal incarnation”. By whatever means it be, Superman has to arrive in this creation. It is in this context we must view the possibilities of post-human destinies in which perhaps the techno-capitalism of Prof. Luis Suarez-Villa or his protagonists has just a minuscule role.

It appears to me that, and there are sufficient hints in Savitri for such a belief, a creation of a new world was the important task the Yogi was carrying out. Sri Aurobindo first willed, established, created by his Yoga-Tapasya, a new world in the Transcendent and the next move was to bring it down here, which indeed is the Mother’s work, of manifestation. By whatever means or process the new thing is to appear here there has to be a prototype of it in the Transcendent, the supporting creation up there. Then only can the new destinies dawn here. Support from above alone can make something here possible.

RYD

I think it is very important topic, which sheds some light on the nature of evolutionary process.

In 1925-26, when Pavitra was guided into meditation by Sri Aurobindo, practicing the separation of Purusha from Prakriti, aspiring for his personal liberation, Mukti, he got the descent of the Divine Power from above, and all his meditation changed and got centered on it: to become more receptive and open to it. In this process he asked Sri Aurobindo about the completion of what he started to do: the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and his final liberation, and Sri Aurobindo answered that it was surely going to happen, but was not important anymore, for the Shakti was already working in his adhara and she knew better what to do and how to do it.

This Shakti is of the nature of Ishvara-Shakti, where the separation on Purusha and Prakriti is no more an issue. In fact the whole Vedic tradition is based on this Ishvara-koti power, where the realization of the Self was seen in the context of manifestation and not as separation from it. The idea of liberation, Mukti, as we know it now, is a later idea. In my view it can not be sanctioned by the Divine Shakti, therefore we have only few liberated souls, and mainly Avatars and Vibhutis, who had something else to accomplish in the world.

The process of liberation offered by the Vedas and early Upanishads was having a character of transformation: turning our senses within in search of their higher universal domains, devatas, and then making them passive, as it were, or rather attentive to the Presence of the Spirit beyond, which was gradually to take over the whole substance of the sense and thus to come to the surface of consciousness, Manifestation. There was neither separation nor liberation offered but Immortality.

This is absolutely beautiful, Vlad. “This Shakti is of the nature of Ishvara-Shakti, where the separation on Purusha and Prakriti is no more an issue. In fact the whole Vedic tradition is based on this Ishvara-koti power, where the realization of the Self was seen in the context of manifestation and not as separation from it. The idea of liberation, Mukti, as we know it now, is a later idea. In my view it can not be sanctioned by the Divine Shakti, therefore we have only few liberated souls, and mainly Avatars and Vibhutis, who had something else to accomplish in the world.”

If the Ishwara-Shakti is the Vedic aspect of spirituality, then one could almost say that the Vedic practices also had a powerful presence of the Tantrik principle in it. Is it true? We don’t see that Shakti aspect in the Upanishads and not explicitly so in the Gita also, which is what makes it an Upanishad, the Upanishad of the Bhagavatgita.

When and how started the separation of the Ishwara and the Shakti leading to two independent approaches? Was that inevitable in the Vedic system if it saw Ishwara-Shakti as a single biune reality? We will be thankful to have your views about this important theme.

RYD

Let me add here the following from Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

A devotee asked Ramakrishna once if everybody can become one like Krishna. He answered: “Incarnations of God or those born with some of their characteristics are called Ishvarakotis. Ordinary men are called jivas, or jivakotis. The latter can attain God by practising spiritual disciplines, but they don’t return to normal consciousness after attaining samadhi. The Ishvarakoti is like the son of a king. He has the keys to all seven stories of the palace—he can climb to all seven floors and come down at his will. A jivakoti is like a junior official. He can only go to a small area in the seven-storied palace—that is all.”

On another occasion the Paramahamsa explained: “There are the jivakoti and the Ishvarakoti. The bhakti of the jivakoti is ritualistic: It consists of worshipping with a prescribed number of articles, or repeating the name of God so many times, or performing so much purashcharana. Ritualistic worship leads one to knowledge of God, when the self merges in the Universal Soul never to return. The case is different with the Ishvarakotis. For them it is like involution and evolution. Saying, ‘Not this, not this,’ they get to the roof top and find that the staircase is made of the same material – bricks, lime and brick dust – as the roof itself. So they walk up and down the staircase and sometimes rest on the roof.”

Ramakrishna himself gives an example: “Shukadeva was in samadhi—in nirvikalpa samadhi, jada samadhi. Bhagavan sent Narada to Shukadeva since he was to narrate the Bhagavata to Parikshit. Narada observed that Shukadeva was seated like a stone, absolutely dead to the world of the senses. Narada began to play upon the vina, singing and praising the form of Lord Hari in four verses. The first verse caused the hair of Shukadeva’s body to stand on end. The second brought tears to his eyes. Then he saw, realized within himself, the spiritual form of the Lord. After jada samadhi, he again had the vision of the form of the Lord. Shukadeva belonged to the class of Ishvarakotis.”

RYD

Let us take the stock of the situation vis-à-vis the Ishwarkoti and the Jivakoti souls, belonging to the Divine category and the human category. Incarnations of God or those born with some of their characteristics belong to the Ishwarakoti. Ordinary men are called Jivas, or Jivakotis, Manushyakotis. They can attain God by practising spiritual disciplines, but in the best of their achievements they remain absorbed in Samadhi and don’t return to normal consciousness. Once having ascended, they have not the strength to descend again to do the divine work.

The Ishwarakoti is like a prince. He has the keys to all seven stories of the palace—he can climb to all the seven floors and come down at will, the different worlds of the ascending hierarchy. The Jivakoti is like a junior official. He can only go to a small area in the seven-storied palace, restricted in his boundaries, working in limitations, a smallness living in smallness, not free in his actions and feelings and thoughts.

The Ishwarakoti gets to the roof top and finds that the staircase is made of the same material as the roof itself; the dichotomy is dissolved, spirit and matter just two poises of the universal oneness and identity. He walks up and down the staircase and sometimes rests on the roof.

Shukadeva, the author of the Bhagavata Purana was, in his Samadhi, seated like a stone, absolutely dead to the outside world. After initiation by Narad he came out of that condition absorption and had the vision of the form of the Lord, of his manifestation and his play in the vastness of this creation. He could at will move up and down the ladder, as it was the ladder of his Lord, each step of the ladder a mode of his delight. He ascended to the state of the Ishwarkoti.

In the context of the post-human destinies this should amount to the Jivakoti becoming the Ishwarakoti, freedom in existence in the utter delight of existence, with a free unhindered movement upward and downward.

In the language of the Gita: “…there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhāvam āgatah; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve.” (Essays on the Gita, pp. 147-48.)

The birth of man into the Godhead is the real significance of the post-human destiny. But even there he has a choice: to participate in the divine work in the creation or to step out of this creation and remain in the eternal beatitude of the wonderful Elsewhere. But if this creation has to have a divine meaning and sense and purpose, the Jivakoti must turn into the Ishwarkoti, turn in the dynamism of the manifesting Spirit.

For this to happen there is the effort and there is the higher reckoning to ok or endorse the whole operation, sequence, process. In the spiritual sense there are, as the Upanishad says, the elements of tapahprabhāva and devaprasāda. Both are needed for the truer realisation, for the luminous Siddhi, for the fruit of the spiritual endeavour.

Our arts and sciences and philosophies and sports and transactions of wealth and technologies and religions promote the possibilities of the greater spirit’s will to be here multiply and richly. Add to that the call of the aspiring soul of man for the higher powers to descend in it. The answer to it, to the call, cannot be demanded as a matter of right; but when it comes it becomes the sanction of the higher wisdom, that things can shape in it. And yet this is not sufficient if the gleaming dynamism has to be the God’s way of doing things here. There is needed the power and presence of the executive force as the intermediary between the two. There has to be the call from below and there has to be the sanction from above; the presence and power that mediates between the call and the sanction is the presence and power of the Divine Shakti. Indeed, in reality it is she who does everything.

Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state.

The possibility of earth transforming and equalling herself with heaven has the evolutionary richness, of unending progress, from knowledge to knowledge, from delight to delight. The second alternative could be the progress by the higher beings stepping into evolution and carrying it forward. If these involutionary beings come here as an aspect of involution only, then the progress cannot be more than the state to which they belong, from where they come; for the continuous growth they must be prepared to come with the human birth. They must be Shukadevas, with the opening for the Shakti to work in them. It is only the psychic entity as an agent of the evolution that can participate in the endless progress.

RYD

Let us hurriedly see the last few lines of the present passage, Savitri awaking among the human tribes:

Earth's grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears
Rejected the undying rapture's boon:
Offered to the daughter of infinity
Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,
Her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
And in their body's lives acclimatise
That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

The daughter of infinity has taken birth upon earth. She is the Radiant Daughter, kanyā téjasvinī, of Vyasa but what we are offering to her is the flower of pain, anguish, distress, misery. She accepts all this because it might bring to this suffering mortal creature the prospects of immortality in a divine body here. She is the one who is the resident of the worlds of the supramental creation but here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from her source… She descends into this lesser triple universe, has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and greater love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti… when she works here, she works to establish the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Or else she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine, causing miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda to flow. Hers is also the Power of Work and the spirit of perfection and order, presiding over details of organization and execution, relation of parts and effective combination of forces and unfailing exactitude of result and fulfilment. The science and craft and technique of things belong to that province. Carelessness and negligence and indolence she abhors; all scamped and hasty and shuffling work, all clumsiness and à peu près and misfire, all false adaptation and misuse of instruments and faculties and leaving of things undone or half done is offensive and foreign to her temper. When her work is finished, nothing has been forgotten, no part has been misplaced or omitted or left in a faulty condition; all is solid, accurate, complete, admirable. Nothing short of a perfect perfection satisfies her and she is ready to face an eternity of toil if that is needed for the fullness of her creation. Only when these powers have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can the other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible. The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda. (The Mother)

Thus heaven might native grow on mortal soil. That heav’n| might nat|ive grow| on mort|al soil|: What a perfect iambic pentameter this line! Perfection of expression going with the perfection of vision! Implying their realisation!

In that perfection the daughter of infinity accepts suffering, accepts to pass through the portals of a birth that is a death. The theme of crucifixion is the perfect illustration of the mystery of this occult working. Here let me quote Sonia Dyne regarding the Image of the Cross in Savitri:

Images of the crucifixion of Christ are so frequently a part of the architecture of churches around the world that they have lost a great part of their ability to shock or provoke a question in the mind of the viewer, unless he or she is a committed Christian. Sri Aurobindo has much to teach us about the meaning of the cross in human history, for his vision of the Divine was not limited to the doctrine of any one religion but soared above to find the essential truth behind the lives of the great avataric teachers of mankind.

In one of his aphorisms he writes: ‘There are four very great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindavan, and the colloquy with Arjuna on the field of Kurukshetra.’ He goes on to say that ‘Christ from his cross humanised Europe.’ This death had an impact on human consciousness that changed the world we live in today, wherever that may be. In what way did Christ from his cross bring about such a far-reaching effect on the consciousness of the West? According to Sri Aurobindo, each of the great avatars manifested on earth an aspect of the Divine, and Christ himself manifested in human terms the divine love and compassion at a time when man was in danger of losing touch with these qualities of his soul. The divine Love Christ manifested in his life and death brought not only a new hope and strength of purpose to those who had felt powerless and full of despair in a world seemingly given over to oppression and evil, but in a mystical sense it also delivered mankind from subjection to these powers.

The popularity of the film The Passion of Christ has once again focused attention on the meaning of the life of Jesus. The film follows the events leading to the crucifixion and final journey along the Via Dolorosa - the way of suffering. A Christian writer has recently summed up that meaning in these words:

‘As we follow Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, I believe we should not confine him to that original Via Dolorosa. As he is condemned to death we see him with all those condemned to death by the twisted mind of the terrorist, the oppression of the tyrant, or the apathy of the world. As he takes up his cross, he is with all those who take the weight of confronting evil. As he falls, and falls, and falls again, he is with all those overburdened by the sin and suffering of the world. As he meets his mother, he is with all those who share the poignant agony of those who helplessly witness the suffering of a loved one. As Simon helps to carry his cross, he is with all those who help to carry the burden of others. As Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, so his features are to be found amidst the tears, the sweat, and the blood of the torn and degraded. As Jesus consoles the women of Jerusalem, so he is found wherever people care with compassion and cross over to help the wounded traveller. As Jesus is stripped of his clothes, so he is with those stripped of hope, power and dignity and rejected by others. As Jesus is nailed to the cross, so he is joined with all those who suffer the worst people can do to them. As Jesus dies on the cross, asking why God has forsaken him, so he is with those in darkest despair and at the moment of death - the answer to his own question. As he is handed to his mother and laid in the tomb, so he is with the bereft and the bereaved. So as we follow Jesus to Jerusalem we discover he is there in Madrid* also. This is not the absence of God, but the reality of the crucified Christ.’

No one has written more movingly about the passion of Christ than Sri Aurobindo in Savitri (The Book of Fate, 6.2). To him, the cross was a symbol of ‘a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss.’ It is the world-soul which hangs upon the cross, until the time when mankind will cease to embrace and accept the drama of conflict and fratricide. Men are in love with grief and sin, says Sri Aurobindo-.’Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem’. (Thoughts and Aphorisms)


And then apropos of Ishwarakoti and Jivakoti this from the Synthesis of Yoga is very revealing, just marvellous: “It must be remembered that there is always a difference between the supreme Supermind of the omniscient and omnipotent Ishwara and that which can be attained by the Jiva. The human being is climbing out of the ignorance and when he ascends into the supramental nature, he will find in it grades of its ascension, and he must first form the lower grades and limited steps before he rises to higher summits. He will enjoy there the full essential light, power, Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in the Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature.”

RYD

What a delightful comment RY!

A question/comment about your formatting:

It's not clear to me whether the remarkable paragraph "The daughter of infinity ... Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda" is entirely or only in part a quote from SA's book The Mother .

In your future comments, please demarcate quotes by using the blockquote/indent (for long quotes) &/or itallics options available on the post comments page. For example, the last few sentences of the above quote, assuming they're all from The Mother, could be indented as:

"... The supramental change is the thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda." (The Mother)

Thanks,

~ ron

Hi Ron
Your comment on formatting quotations is well taken, and thanks for the guidance. But in the present instance I had a difficulty. What I have done here is to use the text of The Mother, running over some 30 pages of the booklet, rather selectively, not everywhere keeping it as is, as generally is done in such cases. The purpose was to focus attention on Savitri’s rich divinity and her present travail that are under discussion. While giving the reference in the bracket, I should have mentioned specifically that free adaptation of the original has been made in the topical context of the Savitri-passage. Please take it so.

RYD

Thanks for your clarification RY ...

~ ron

Here are a couple of links to the inspiring writings of Sonia Dyne, the (former?) chairperson of AVIUK, whom RY quotes above:

Savitri by Heart

Review of Satprem's book The Tragedy of Earth

Savitri had brought with her power, wide consciousness, bliss, calm delight, the delight that the Upanishads would say weds one soul to all, the delight that is the key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. But the unfortunate fact is the littleness of life that is ours, ignorant and death-bound. It denied all that she had brought with her, did not use the key for the doors of ecstasy. Consequently life must suffer. The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy is to a life that is vaster and brighter than the life that is in heavens. It is also a life that does not remain static in its typal joy, confined to its own form of happiness, forms that are only expressive and not determinative of the world to which they belong.

About his narrative poem The Life Heavens Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter as follows: “Where do you find in The Life Heavens that I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are glorious and suited to the Divine Life? There is not a word to that effect there! The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only. If there is to be a Harmony, it must be of all the powers raised to their highest and harmonised together. All the non-evolutionary worlds are worlds limited to their own harmony like the Life Heavens. The Earth, on the other hand, is an evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious even as a material world (except in certain appearances), but rather most sorrowful, disharmonious, imperfect. Yet in that imperfection is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the supreme Infinite, (it is not satisfied by sense-joys precisely because in the conditions of the earth it is able to see their limitations). God is pent in the mire (mire is not glorious, so there is no claim to glory or beauty here), but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights. And so on. That is ‘a deeper power’, though not a greater actual glory or perfection. All that may be true or not to the mind, but it is the traditional attitude of Indian spiritual experience. Ask any yogin, he will tell you that the Life Heavens are childish things; even the gods, says the Purana, must come down to earth and be embodied there if they want mukti, giving up the pride of their limited perfection; they must enter into the last finite if they want to reach the last infinite. A poem is not a philosophical treatise or a profession of religious faith—it is the expression of a vision or an experience of some kind, mundane or spiritual. Here it is the vision of the Life Heavens, its perfection, its limitation and the counter-claim of the Earth or rather the Spirit or Power behind the earth-consciousness. It has to be taken at that, as an expression of a certain aspect of things, an expression of a certain kind of experience, not of a mental dogma. There is a deep truth behind it, though it may not be the whole truth of the matter. In the poem, also, there is no question of a divine life here, though that is hinted at as the inexpressed possible result of the ascent—because the Earth is not put aside (‘Earth's heart was felt beating below me still’); nevertheless the poem expresses only the ascent towards the Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the Earth-Spirit claims that power and does not speak of any descent of a divine life.” (Letters on Yoga, pp. 387-88)

In the Life Heavens is the music that wanders behind the mortal ear; the notes of rapture heap one over another; forms and senses are a-thrill there; beauty has her enchantment in the voluptuous and affective.

But suddenly there soared a dateless cry,
Deep as Night, imperishable as Time;
It seemed Death’s dire appeal to Eternity,
Earth’s outcry to the limitless Sublime.

(The Life Heavens, Collected Poems pp. 574-75.)

And the result is, Eternity gets broken into fleeting lives and Godhead pents in the mire and the stone. But beyond the flaming doors of ecstasy are forms that are at once expressive and determinative and progressive in their flaming moods and wide-sweeping manners of truth-and-beauty-and delight-and-life-and-spirit. That is the aspect of Savitri’s waking up on the fated day.

To which worlds do the flaming doors of ecstasy open? Surely, they are far beyond the frail or gossamer Life Heavens, beyond the celestial worlds, beyond swargaloka, the Heaven of Indra where Apsaras dance on gleaming crystal floors, with tiny jingling silver bells tied to their anklets, and their rich bosoms heaving in luxurious delight. Savitri’s flaming doors open to the worlds of the transcendent spirit. The Upanishad speaks of passing through the solar gate, sūryasya dwāra, into the world of immortality. Such must be the flaming gates of ecstasy through which Savitri can move in and out in her full freedom, in the joy that is and that shall be.

RYD

Hi RY,

Thank you for your continuing illuminations re SA's profound teachings!

A question arose as I read SA's sentences you quote above:

"...The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only. If there is to be a Harmony, it must be of all the powers raised to their highest and harmonised together. All the non-evolutionary worlds are worlds limited to their own harmony like the Life Heavens. The Earth, on the other hand, is an evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious even as a material world (except in certain appearances), but rather most sorrowful, disharmonious, imperfect. Yet in that imperfection is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the supreme Infinite, (it is not satisfied by sense-joys precisely because in the conditions of the earth it is able to see their limitations). God is pent in the mire (mire is not glorious, so there is no claim to glory or beauty here), but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights. And so on. That is ‘a deeper power’, though not a greater actual glory or perfection. All that may be true or not to the mind, but it is the traditional attitude of Indian spiritual experience."

SA's insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights..." raises for me the question whether the rise of "technocapiltalism" (one of SCIY's favorite whipping boys) could be interpreted as a disguised opportunity that "imposes a necessity to break through that prison..."?

Sorry Ron, this will be a little longish reply.

Can technocapitalism be an opportunity for shaping the future in any decisive way? I wonder. Such a claim by the protagonists of science in moulding society is not all that new; it has been made in its arrogance at every stage after the Industrial Revolution. It was not very long ago, just a century ago, and it happens all along, that the top physicists and savants were saying that they were at the finis line of the last discovery and what would remain to be done would be only tying up the loose ends. Materialism in its strident days was very sure of it. However, it didn’t happen. In fact, can it happen at all? Came quantum mechanics and shattered all the old dreams. But the unforgiving thing is, those very fallacious dreams have reappeared in other garbs. The theory-of-everything today forebodes nothing much different from the earlier cozy feeling of understanding all that has to be understood, man the master of nature and builder of humanity. That itself makes me suspicious of science coming to the aid of ailing we. This is in physics, the prince of science, and the problem of social issues, and deeply more of social transformation, of shaping the destinies is far more complex than it can even be conceptualised.

What happened to Socrates? And to Christ to whom we offered the flower of suffering? To Priscillian of Avilla in 385? To Giordano Bruno in 1600 who became a martyr to the cause of free thought? And so on. When in 313 Constantine hoped to unite the Empire, there also grew heresies in the Church itself. In the process, the king imposed decisions. This went on increasing afterwards. The fallacy was the use of Religion for the consolidation of the State. The false start was already made. Today we won’t be enacting much of a different drama in imposing Reason on the soul of mankind. Propagation of democracy or capitalism more or less belongs to the same mindset. And then Reason itself is sacrificed at the altar of Religion. Just last week a prominent daily carried a letter of a very learned doctor; in the context of the Saddam hanging, according to him, his religion prescribes nothing but death for the killer, and there cannot be any other argument. Science has brought rewards no doubt, but rewards are always there, everywhere. But can the rewards in certain domains justify its methodology and its applications in every human occupation? One might like it to be so, but one’s insistence will amount to another kind of dogmatism. The basic human psychological factors, be they individual or collective, have to be scrutinised and handled by going into their sources rather than probe them by external means such as the much-vaunted scientific methodology which belongs to another province altogether. It will be fatal to make a fetish of technocapitalism as the guide of human destinies.

The problem of mire Savitri speaks of is far deeper than these means can even reach it, come anywhere closer to it; they are not even scratching its surface. Its solution will be far yet beyond them. What are we, when confronted with such a situation? The answer is, we are a strange irrational product of the mire itself, a compromise between the beast and god. (Savitri, 343) What change can we then really bring about?

A mystic deep attempt has to begin. We dream of bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s, hope to translate heaven into a human shape; but someone else has to come and confront Time and Circumstance, and accomplish it. (See Savitri, p. 353) Here are “gods disfigured by pangs of birth”. Not the human soul, the soul that is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight, but the divine Shakti alone can do it. Savitri herself speaks who she is, she who can change things here. She asserts triumphantly: (Savitri, pp. 648-49)

My mind is a torch lit from the eternal sun,
My life a breath drawn by the immortal Guest,
My mortal body is the Eternal's house.
Already the torch becomes the undying ray,
Already the life is the Immortal's force,
The house grows of the householder part and one…
I am not bound by thought or sense or shape;
I live in the glory of the Infinite,
I am near to the Nameless and Unknowable,
The Ineffable is now my household mate.
But standing on Eternity's luminous brink
I have discovered that the world was He;
I have met Spirit with spirit, Self with self,
But I have loved too the body of my God.

Sri Aurobindo's insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights..." You ask: Could this itself be interpreted as a disguised opportunity that "imposes a necessity to break through that prison..."? If it were such an opportunity, Sri Aurobindo would have certainly explored it fully, instead of engaging himself in the “severe and painful” work. And the agony the Mother was experiencing when she was busy with the transformation of the cells of the body. The situation is so daunting that it looks to be totally beyond man’s best effort to succeed in it. Man can be a conscious helper in the process, and that is what is expected of him, but the radical transformation is beyond his capacity and capability. If it were so, it would make the coming of the Avatar superfluous.

RYD