Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change. Harder is it also to impose change on the working of the nature of the earth. The issue is constitutional. The habits are pathological, related to body and health, of various kinds. The last habit is the habit of death. But before that there are the habits of suffering, error, falsehood, ignorance, gloom, pain, inertia or tamas, depression, fear; there are suggestions of sadness, despair and suicide, suggestions from what the Mother calls “the thieves of the vital world”. All these are parts of, or consequences of our physical and sometimes psychological makeup and hard they are to eliminate. That is what we are presently composed of. Savitri’s task is connected with it, and she has to pay a heavy price, by accepting this world’s ignominy and its stubbornness, stubbornness of the mortal life. Its entire past stands against all progress.

Rishi Agastya was engaged in a long and arduous tapasya. But then he felt that he was not making progress. He was told to get up from the thick grass seat on which he was sitting and meditating. The moment he got up, flames rose up from it. He realised that, all along, his past samskaras, the old habits were getting consumed in the fire of his tapasya. Agni Pavaka, Fire the Purifier has to be kindled if such a change is to come. Only such tapasya can perhaps persuade earth-nature’s change. The Avatars do it for us, for the entire earth.

There are a thousand things that happen in the subconscient, or in the occult, or else in half-dark half-bright subtle domains. And there are yet swallowing abysses below them. Here we are, we who laugh and weep, a la Binyon’s pilgrim; we suffer the stroke, exult in victory, struggle for the crown, bleed with the Fate’s whips. But change we do not strive for. Our nature remains crooked, like the famous dog’s tail Vivekananda spoke of.

In a letter Sri Aurobindo writes: “The interpenetration of the planes is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which yoga as I practise it and its aim could not exist. For that aim is to manifest, reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away from earth into a higher world or some supreme Absolute. The old yogas (not quite all of them) tended the other way—but that was, I think, because they found the earth as it is a rather impossible place for any spiritual being and the resistance to change too obstinate to be borne; earth-nature looked to them in Vivekananda's simile like the dog's tail which, every time you straighten it, goes back to its original curl. But the fundamental proposition in this matter was proclaimed very definitely in the Upanishads which went so far as to say that Earth is the foundation and all the worlds are on the earth and to imagine a clean-cut or irreconcilable difference between them is ignorance: here and not elsewhere, not by going to some other world, the divine realisation must come. This statement was used to justify a purely individual realisation, but it can equally be the basis of a wider endeavour.” (Letters on Yoga, pp. 177-78)

Earth was an impossible place for some of the old yogas. Sri Aurobindo was concerned with it, and this is what he states in Savitri. As far as the collective life was concerned it was infinitely more difficult to bring about the change. Easy it was for the creator to make heaven than the earth.

But the redeeming feature comes as follows: “But what we are on the surface is being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of the general Nature coming in on us either directly or else indirectly through others, through circumstances, through various agencies or channels. Some of this flows straight into the conscious parts and acts there, but our mind ignores its source, appropriates it and regards all that as its own; a part comes secretly into the subconscient or sinks into it and waits for an opportunity of rising up into the conscious surface; a good deal goes into the subliminal and may at any time come out—or may not, may rather rest there as unused matter. Part passes through and is rejected, thrown back or thrown out or spilt into the universal sea. Our nature is a constant activity of forces supplied to us out of which (or rather out of a small amount of it) we make what we will or can. What we make seems fixed and formed for good, but in reality it is all a play of forces, a flux, nothing fixed or stable; the appearance of stability is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations. That is why our nature can be changed in spite of Vivekananda's saying and Horace's adage and in spite of the conservative resistance of the subconscient, but it is a difficult job because the master mode of Nature is this obstinate repetition and recurrence.” (Letters on Yoga, pp. 358-59)

We have no idea what the Avatars strive for to change the earth-nature. On one occasion the Mother tells: “There is no disease from which I have not suffered. I have taken all the diseases upon my body to see their course and to have their knowledge by experience in the physical, so that I may be able to work upon them. But as my physical has no fear and it responds to the higher pressure, it is easier for me to get rid of them.”

In the face of this, just imagine what too confident a blooger says: “The problem is, anyone can claim experiences that are not found in second hand sources, but just because they aren’t, there is no way of validating the experiences. I have had many experiences that I am quite sure are authentic, but I don’t ask anyone to believe me just because I say so. One difference between mine and Aurobindo’s is that I can give very specific descriptions of experiences that occur on the way to realization. I don’t see a lot of this in Aurobindo’s writings. Most of his writings seem to be couched in very broad and abstract generalizations. As I have said before, the devil is in the details. Show me someone who can provide details of experiences, no matter how much limited by language, and I will listen. But even then, most such descriptions have been recorded by individuals in extreme isolation, who didn’t seem to understand that awakening is an external as well as internal process. Your very use of ‘intermediate zone gurus’ suggests to me that you are a priori buying into Aurobindo’s scheme, and then using it to invalidate anyone whom, according to that scheme, is not enlightened. I could always claim that I have found a scheme in which the highest state described by Aurobindo is just another intermediate way station.”

To refute such assertions doesn’t take much time, but perhaps it is not worth one’s while doing so. Instead, let me quote the Mother in another beautiful context.

In a letter to her ‘little smile’, the Mother writes about the ‘little smile’s’ experience: “The rocks represent the material nature, hard and inflexible yet concealing in itself the stream of life. Because of the resistance of matter, this stream of life is freed only with difficulty and can hardly emerge into the light. But with a little concentration and insistence, the resistance of matter lessens and the life-forces are freed.” (11 July 1934) Do we strive to do that? Only such an effort can cause a new stream to flow in spite of the obstinacy of the earth-nature.

RYD

To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.

If the gods wish to rise to higher worlds they must come down and take a human birth. Progress is here and this beautiful birth, though downhearted and full of misfortune and affliction, is god’s wonderful boon given to heighten the soul in the glory of possibilities of the manifestation. This is what the Vishnu Purana says: come here to make progress. This is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said a number of times. But most of the gods are happy with their lot. Perhaps they can afford to be so, but not we; in fact we will not be allowed to remain where we are.

“The gods,” says the Mother, “do not have within them the divine spark which is the core of the psychic, because only on earth—I am not even speaking of the material universe—only on earth did this descent of divine Love took place, which was the origin of the divine Presence in the core of Matter. And naturally, since they have no psychic being, they do not know the psychic being. Some of these beings have even wanted to take a physical body so as to have experience of the psychic being—but not many of them. As a rule, they did it not only partially, through an ‘emanation’, not a total descent. For example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation—a Vibhuti—of Shiva; but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life, he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest—they are waiting for that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity… None of these gods has a psychic being. It is only by coming down and uniting with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they have none themselves.” (12 January 1965)

Is Shiva going to miss something by opting to come down on earth only with the supramental world and not in the present process? Possibly so, for the simple reason that the Mother had at all made such a suggestion to him.

And then, in contrast to this, the Mother says something interesting about her experience with Durga: “…I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and… (how to put it?) I made her participate in the concept of surrender. What an experience she had! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, ‘From now on I am bhakta of the Lord.’ It was beautiful. Truly… truly, it was beautiful. I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There’s a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit—Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them—the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didn’t have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concept—each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship, and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had the sense of only their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation. Except for Krishna…” (2 August 1961)

And for Savitri, who accepted to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death. She came here to do the Lord’s work. When the Mother was asked (on 19 February 1969) if the gods can help the work of transformation, she replied: “It is too soon to put such a question.” What chance then for technocapitalism and our ideas of post-human destinies?

Savitri came to live with grief; she came to confront death; she bore the mortal’s lot. Gods and Goddesses don’t do that; they wish also not to do that; they “do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity”. It is only Savitri who can do it and she does it—because such is the command of the Lord to her. She has with her the unfailing Mantra of Surrender to the Lord and it is that alone which can accomplish the great miracle of transformation. She has found it. Gods and Goddesses perhaps do not even have the knowledge of it. In the process, to redeem the creation, Savitri is willing to undergo all the misery and suffering. She has faith and she has utter confidence that things here will change.

The Mother’s prayer is such a happy splendid assurance: “What are these powerful gods whose hour of manifestation upon earth has come, if not the varied and perfected modes of Thy infinite activity, O Thou Master of all things, Being and Non-Being and What is beyond, Marvellous Unknowable One, our sovereign Lord?... What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities, these countless sunbeams illumining, conceiving and fashioning all forms, if not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will, one of the means of Thy manifestation, O Thou Master of our destinies, sole unthinkable Reality, sovereign Lord of all that is and all that is not yet… And all these mental powers, all these vital energies, and all these material elements, what are they if not Thyself in Thy outermost form, Thy ultimate modes of expression, of realisation, O Thou whom we adore devotedly and who escapest us on every side even while penetrating, animating and guiding us, Thou whom we cannot understand or define or name, Thou whom we cannot seize or embrace or conceive, and who art yet realised in our smallest acts… And all this enormous universe is only an atom of Thy eternal Will. In the immensity of Thy effective Presence all things blossom!” (August 2, 1914)

What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities… if not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will? In it is the place for our thought, for our philosophy, for our sciences and arts, for all the thousand human occupations that make a wider and brighter and nobler place for the Lord’s habitation. If human endeavour has a justification in shaping the destinies, it is here. The mortal’s lot then becomes the Immortal’s glad acceptable share. That is the joy of participation which is, indeed, such a marvellous gift given to us. Should we not be thankful for it?

RYD

Mothers teachings of yoga of surrender are marvellous.
they are so full of love.

The Assault of Ether and of Fire

Earth-nature fears the assault of ether and of fire; it trembles at the naked power of Truth; it cannot bear the might and sweetness of the absolute Voice. When the Divine Mother stood in front of Aswapati, to give him a boon, she spoke in a voice “absolute and wise”, addressing him as “the Son of Strength”. Aswapati’s was no longer the frail earth-nature to give way to her Presence; he could stand there firmly and resolutely, even insisting on what he wanted from her. But for us it will be an assault of fire and of ether; under it we will easily crumble or get crushed. Too great her presence for mortality to bear,—“too immense my danger and my joy,” as she tells Aswapati. Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight and truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth. Such is the danger she herself indicates.

But there is something wonderful about the phrase “the assault of Ether and of Fire”. Very often in Savitri the Unseen becomes mantrically visible and the Unspoken rapturously audible, in a mystically charged manner. The Word, dynamic in its power of expression, is seen and heard with the sight carrying the creative sound and the sound the large and luminous form presenting itself in its rhythmic movements.

In the Rig Veda we have a Rik which says: “By the Truth they uphold the Truth that holds all, in the power of the Sacrifice, in the supreme ether, even they who by the godheads born in them travel to the godheads unborn, to the Powers who are seated for ever in the Law that upholds the heavens.” (The Secret of the Veda) It speaks of the supreme ether, parama vyoma; in another place we have the supreme ocean of light and expanse of the highest superconscient ether; and then, Vishnu takes the supreme step in the highest ether, the Transcendent. There awaits us the Truth that is hidden here by the lesser truth. Mitra and Varuna are possessed of the law of Truth in the supreme ether and it is the bliss of Mitra and Varuna that has to increase in us. The Gods who are the Guardians of the Truth ascend to the supreme ether which is the infinity of the superconscient being.

Another Rik says: “With blows that slay cast from our path, O thou Flame, the powers that stammer in the speech and stumble in the thought, the devourers of our power and our knowledge who leap at us from near and shoot at us from afar. Make the path of the sacrifice a clear and happy journeying.” And: “Burn away from us the sin, flame out on us the bliss. Burn away from us the sin! apa naĥ śośucadaghamagne śuśugdhyā rayim, apa naĥ śośucadagham.”

Only when the Will in man becomes divine and possessed of the Truth, amŗto ŗtāvā, can the perfection towards which we move be realised in humanity. When this happens no more earthnature will shudder to the divine assault, the assault of the Majestic and the Imperious.

“Agni is, preeminently, the Immortal in mortals. He is the divine Will which in all things is always present, is always destroying and constructing, always building and perfecting, supporting always the complex progression of the universe. It is this which persists through all death and change. It is eternally and inalienably possessed of the Truth. In the last obscuration of Nature, in the lowest unintelligence of Matter, it is this Will that is a concealed knowledge and compels all these darkened movements to obey, as if mechanically, the divine Law and adhere to the truth of their Nature. It is this which makes the tree grow according to its seed and each action bear its appropriate fruit. In the obscurity of man's ignorance,—less than material Nature's, yet greater,—it is this divine Will that governs and guides, knows the sense of his blindness and the goal of his aberration and out of the crooked workings of the cosmic Falsehood in him evolves the progressive manifestation of the cosmic Truth.” (See The Secret of the Veda)

The Divine Dynamism, Kali’s Work in the Cosmos begins in the wake of the assault of the Ether and of the Fire. When she is thus active can in the creation rush the Divine Ananda, can the Flute-Player’s Joy prevail here.

Far beyond Coleridge’s “happy valiancy”, the phrase “assault of Ether and of Fire” reaches the wonder that is the spirit of the sheer Overhead Poetry. We are seized entirely by it, as if nothing else should now count.

RYD

The cross their payment for the crown they gave
The image of cross appears in several places in Savitri. But Savitri’s cross is also the sign of her complete surrender to the Supreme, she going by the Will of the Lord whatever be the difficulty.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” (The Synthesis of Yoga p. 157)

One may acquire a kind of divine equality in all circumstances of life, including even the extreme of deathful anguish; but there must yet come a degree of perfection surpassing everything. The key for this perfection could be in accepting in all gladness the circumstances as they are, as a god-given opportunity to remain untouched by them. But the truer way is the way of surrender, surrender to both the divine Will and the divine Wisdom. That is the perfect way to bear the weight of the cross, recognising in it the way of the divine Love.

That is the way Savitri follows, the way of perfect surrender to the Supreme. She carries the cross of suffering and pain, not just submitting but surrendering herself to the Will and Wisdom of the Divine.

RYD

The cross their payment
Cross means progress for those who suffer for it, and not who fight for it. But here is
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The Mother about the Cross
(Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 4)

“Even higher beings have their cross to bear. It is a question of a difference of consciousness. In some it is the external states of consciousness which are most developed; others, on the contrary, have taken care to develop the higher states of consciousness. So, to say ‘each one bears his cross’ is true of the external consciousness (of material happenings, happenings which touch the vital being, the emotional being and the mental being); for such people there will always be a considerable number of catastrophes, all the more because catastrophes seem to be proportionate to the capacity of the individual, they seem to be dealt out according to his capacity to bear things. It may just be that those who have greater capacities have an over-plus of suffering and misfortune.”

“But there are people who are above all misfortune and yet misfortunes exist for them. Why? Because the inner consciousness in them is stronger, more developed than the other consciousness (I do not speak here of ‘transformed’ beings, for in them one can conceive of a state of things in which even the physical being is above suffering; we are speaking of men as they are at present). If your consciousness is seated in a place where these external things do not exist, then it may be said that you do not bear your cross because you are above it. Yet there are exceptions, there are human beings who are above afflictions, yet carry their cross.”

“There is a state of human consciousness (it is not yet superhuman, it is truly human) in which the two things may coexist. One may have sufferings and not feel them, be as if they did not exist. That is, a misfortune, a ‘cross’ touches only the outer consciousness, the physical, the mental, the vital, but the psychic —in truth, the psychic is above all suffering. Let us take a very simple example: an illness. A physical disorder brings suffering, at times much suffering, but there are people who are in such a state of consciousness that their physical sufferings do not exist, they are not real for them. It is the same thing with separation; if you love someone and are separated from that person, you suffer—this is one of the most common of sufferings, it is the ties which are broken—well, in a certain state of consciousness the real link between two beings cannot be broken, for it does not belong to the domain where things break. Therefore one is above what may happen.”

“Throughout human history it has been thus. Those who have come with special abilities, a special grace, and have tried to make men come out of their ordinary rut, have been more or less persecuted, martyred, burnt alive, put on the cross.... The situation now is apparently a little better because now slightly more plausible reasons than those of old are needed to burn men —the habit of doing so is no longer there—but the feelings are not very different. The human race, generally, has a sort of rancour against what surpasses it; it feels humiliated, and men do not like to be humiliated.”

“Don’t you know that there are three principles: the transcendent, the universal and the individual or personal? No?—the transcendent which is above creation, at the origin of creation; the universal which is the creation, and the individual which is self-explanatory. There is a transcendent Divine, a universal Divine and an individual Divine. That is, one may put oneself in contact with the divine Consciousness within oneself, in the universe and, beyond all forms, in the transcendent. So these three aspects are also the three aspects of the divine Mother: transcendent, universal and individual.... Do you know the flower I have called Transformation? You know it has four petals. Well, these four petals are arranged like a cross: one at the top which represents the transcendent; two on each side, the universal; and one at the bottom, the individual. The petal at the top is divided into two. Exactly, the transcendent is one and two (or dual) at the same time. This flower is almost perfect in its form. This was the original meaning of the cross also, but that was not as perfect as the flower, for it was one, two, and three. It was not so good —the flower is perfect.”
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On p. 638 of Savitri we have the following line:

Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.

This is what Savitri tells Yama, the God of Death from whom she is claiming back the soul of her deceased husband Satyavan. Yama had all along remained unconvinced by Savitri’s powerful arguments and was not ready to release the soul he was carrying with him. And one of the arguments Savitri puts forward is, about her struggle and her victory. Her argument is preceded by a statement that, it is in her unceasing fire that the great stars burn, the fire whose faggots are life and death.

“Savitri could not win the victory in life,” says Devan Nair, “because she lacked death, and she had to conquer death in order to conquer life.” That is true, indeed. The stars in the night get their supernatural fuel from both life and death. That is the mystery of the stars as against the mystery of the suns whose fuel comes only from the transcendent Fire, the divine Agni who knows no night.

But, at the moment, Savitri is stuck, even as Yama remains unyielding. The debate between Yama and Savitri, we must recognise, is not just a set of arguments, a profound metaphysical dialogue, a verbal engagement, a conjuration of one-upmanship, not even sharp and cutting logomachy. With each utterance of theirs, vast occult forces are released, forces clashing one against the other in the cosmic functioning. But Savitri has no other choice but to win. She must conquer death to conquer life. With the power of her total surrender she must carry the cross on her shoulder.
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Here is an account of crucifixion Jesus faced:

Crucifixion typically began with a scourging or flogging of the victim’s back. The Romans used a whip called a flagrum, which consisted of small pieces of bone and metal attached to a number of leather strands. The number of blows given to Jesus is not recorded; however, the number of blows in Jewish law was 39 (one less than the 40 called for in the Torah, to prevent a counting error). During the scourging, the skin was ripped from the back, exposing a bloody mass of tissue and bone. Extreme blood loss occurred, often causing death, or at least unconsciousness. In addition to the flogging, Jesus faced severe beating and torment by the Roman soldiers, including the plucking of His beard and the piercing of His scalp with a crown of thorns.

After the flogging, the victim was often forced to carry his own crossbar, or patibulum, to the execution site. The patibulum could easily weigh 100 pounds. In the case of Jesus, the record shows that He may have carried His patibulum the distance of over two football fields. In a weak and tormented state, it’s no wonder the record establishes that Jesus needed a great deal of assistance. Once the victim arrived at the execution site, the patibulum was put on the ground and the victim was forced to lie upon it. Spikes about 7 inches long and 3/8 of an inch in diameter were driven into the wrists. The spikes would hit the area of the median nerve, causing shocks of pain up the arms to the shoulders and neck. Already standing at the crucifixion site would be the 7-foot-tall post, called a stipes. In the center of the stipes was a crude seat to “support” for the victim. The patibulum was then lifted on to the stipes, and the victim’s body was awkwardly turned on the seat so that the feet could be nailed to the stipes. At this point, there was tremendous strain put on the wrists, arms and shoulders, resulting in a dislocation of the shoulder and elbow joints. The position of the nailed body held the victim’s rib cage in a fixed position, which made it extremely difficult to exhale, and impossible to take a full breath. Having suffered from the scourging, the beatings and the walk with the patibulum, Jesus was described as extremely weak and dehydrated. He was probably losing significant amounts of blood. As time passed, the loss of blood and lack of oxygen would cause severe cramps, spasmodic contractions and probably unconsciousness.

Ultimately, the mechanism of death in crucifixion was suffocation. To breathe, the victim was forced to push up on his feet to allow for inflation of the lungs. As the body weakened and pain in the feet and legs became unbearable, the victim was forced to trade breathing for pain and exhaustion. Eventually, the victim would succumb in this way, becoming utterly exhausted or lapsing into unconsciousness so that he could no longer lift his body off the stipes and inflate his lungs. Due to the shallow breathing, the victim’s lungs would begin to collapse in areas, probably causing hypoxia. Due to the loss of blood from the scourging, the victim probably formed a respiratory acidosis, resulting in an increased strain on the heart, which beats faster to compensate. Fluid would also build up in the lungs. Under the stress of hypoxia and acidosis, the heart would eventually fail. There are several different theories on the actual cause of death for Jesus. One theory is that there was a filling of the pericardium with fluid, which put a fatal strain on the ability of His heart to pump blood. Another theory states that Jesus died of cardiac rupture. Another theory is that Jesus' death was “multifactorial and related primarily to hypovolemic shock, exhaustion asphyxia and perhaps acute heart failure.” Regardless of the actual medical cause of final death, the historical record is very clear -- Jesus suffered numerous hours of horrible and sustained torture on the cross of Calvary.
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RYD

A fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone;
A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.

Fated day in the life of Savitri has arrived and the poet is describing the sequence of events in detail. It is a narration portraying, in pointed and minute details, the psychological state of Savitri. But, then, in the course of narration, he is also making a departure, with a purpose, in making a reflective observation. He has inserted these lines about the supernal fire’s coming and returning, lines which do not really form a part of the running narrative; but the occasion is most appropriate to offer a significant commentary on the state of affairs in man’s progress towards his higher spiritual destiny. God’s delegate soul comes here, but hardly there is anyone to receive the precious boons he brings for us.

St John said: "…ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." Is there anyone who is asking anything to make his joy full, anything worthwhile? Hardly anyone. We pray and ask for petty things.

Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who lived in South India as a Sannyasin till a few years ago, spoke of "the wisdom of the dark night". For him it was a kind of worldwide crucifixion that could bring happiness to humanity, by working for the cross. But is there really anyone who suffers for the cross? takes it to make progress?

"God strolled in the Garden with Man," says the Hebrew Scripture. Jacob saw heaven opened. God spoke to Joseph through dreams. Moses communed with God on Sinai. David lost himself in dancing for the Lord.

Jesus declared "I and the Father are one." Thus he revealed in himself the possibility of God and humankind becoming one. Man was not ready and, alas, the opportunity was missed. Is Man ready now? Not really, though he fervently reasons out for himself the prospects of post-human destinies.

“A mystic heart is seen in the letters of the apostles: Paul reached the divinised state of losing his ‘self’, saying: ‘I no longer live, but Christ lives in me!’ James wrote that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. Peter proclaimed that Christ even descended to hell to liberate imprisoned souls, and John understood the most sublime truth of God's essence: God is Love!” So are the experiences of the Sufis, and of the Bhaktas lost in the divine beatitude. But then where does the rest of the mankind stand?

Jesus was crucified but only after a long period of time man sort of awoke to the message of love he had brought. He did awake, but does he live in it? Perchance once in a while. Has not the message ceased and the messenger waned? What has happened to the reassuring Word that came on the wings of glory? In every religion some or the other gigantic vital being arose and appropriated for itself the light and the power that had come with it. Humanity as a whole continues to remain unregenerate. An empire was built, a Church was founded, the aspiring soul of man wrote the praise of God in books and on walls of the cathedrals, and in paintings, and in music, all celebrating the spirit of a new birth. And yet were invented the racks and wrenches of maltreatment, betraying how much man can get perverted. Hardly is there any difference between the crucifixion Christ faced and the burning of Bruno or Jeanne d’Arc at the stake. In her last letter dated 28 March 1430 Jeanne writes: “I beg and request, very dear friends, that you defend the city for the king and that you keep good watch. You will soon hear my good news in greater detail.” But where was the good news? Soon her trial began and on 30 May 1431 she was executed at Rouen. Earthly gins and instruments of torture symbolised perversion of human nature; the practitioners of noble teachings stooped to shameful infra-rational mediocrity; worst example is of the holocaust which exposed the cruelty that lies in the gaping and mirky depths of the human belly. Can that night in his belly be illumined, the gloom removed? Is Savitri’s birth connected with it?

Great souls had come, and a few had caught the flame; but what had happened to the rest?

In Savitri (pp. 609-10) the God of Death tells Savitri:

The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;
In vain is seen the shining upward Way.
Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;
She loves her fall and no omnipotence
Her mortal imperfections can erase,
Force on man's crooked ignorance Heaven's straight line
Or colonise a world of death with gods.

A few have caught the flame, cleansed their souls in the Hour of God. But even they are not ready enough to live and move in the wide Eternity of God, live here upon earth in its brightness, bright in the flame of immortality. When the moment comes, it is the Grace that comes to lift us up; the moment comes, and it is not we who cause that moment; what is expected of us is to be always ready to receive it. But hardly there is anyone who perceives its coming and, if at all he perceives, does he receive it. “I want twelve disciples to change the world.” But where are they? And one will betray him before the cock crows in the morning: "It is he to whom I shall give a piece of bread when I have dipped it."

RYD

Godhead greater by a Human Fate

It must have been pretty cruel of the godhead to await Savitri’s hour of ordeal. That would almost look rather nasty-spiteful of him. In any case, there is no escape for Savitri from the painful tribulation. She must meet Yama, the God of Death. He is the formidable Spirit of Antagonism born from Inconscience in response to the arrival of Life upon Earth, one who in his dark and terrible, hostile-repulsive form nullifies all the wonderful gains that come in the soul’s progress. As long as Death is present, things will always go wrong,—says the Mother.

Sri Aurobindo’s aphorism puts it as follows: “Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound forever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.”

Death is therefore, negatively, the helper on the way, a remover of imperfection. That is the utility of Death. But, now, a moment has come when it is no longer necessary for him to be there, as progress should commence from perfection to perfection. Death the Adversary has to disappear. But Death is not going to walk away simply like that, of his own free choice, his volonté. In fact, he will confront fiercely if he is going to be challenged at all. Death’s challenge,—that is the frightening Portal of Death Savitri has to pass through. Unless she passes through it, through distress and suffering and hardship of mortality’s last portal, Death cannot be left behind. It is for that moment that the godhead is waiting. But who is this godhead waiting for such a harsh severe ordeal of hers? But it is this godhead himself who has taken a human form and is present as Savitri. By such a human fate he will rise to yet another greatness; in it there will be the Law of Immortality guiding the Soul of Evolution in the terrestrial scheme of things.

Well, but what the removal of Death should actually imply? If, as the Mother tells in a talk, “death is the phenomenon of decentralisation and dispersion of the cells which make up the physical body,” then it is that decentralisation and dispersion which will stop when Death is removed; decay disintegration and inevitable death will cease. In another talks she says: “…the whole of humanity believes firmly in death; it is, one might say, a general human suggestion based on a long unchanging experience. If this belief could be cast out first from the conscious mind, then from the vital nature and the subconscious physical layers, death would no longer be inevitable.” The physical itself will then be a wonderful expression of harmony and beauty of the spirit in an ever-growing fullness of manifestation. There is the fear of death in the present body and that will disappear; it will open itself to the adventure of new consciousness full of light and sweetness and joy, of love and beauty, within and without.

Aswapati the Yogi is standing in front of the Divine Mother and is arguing for her to incarnate herself here and conquer Death. He even tells her that god does make progress by coming down, by the fall, by stepping into birth. Human fate makes the godhead greater and therefore the godhead awaits the ordeal’s hour. Shiva did not opt to take human birth and therefore he is perhaps going to miss something remarkable in that respect. Gods do get disfigured by the pangs of birth (Savitri, p. 677), but there is also the marvel of the new birth. Savitri, although standing beneath the eyes of Fate, has the confidence that nothing, nor Fate nor Death nor Time, has the power to dissolve the diamond-scripted signature of her soul. She is willing to pass through the ordeal, and that is her splendid sacrifice in the Will of the Supreme.

RYD

The Dark Foreknowledge

After the discovery of love Savitri must discover death. She has met Satyavan in the distant Shalwa Woods one fine summer morning and, at once, they have decided to be together. It was love at first sight and all was settled in that significant moment. It was in fact a multiply significant moment, not only for Satyavan and Savitri, but for the entire evolutionary creation. They did not fall in love, rather they rose in love; they rose to another splendour, godheads greater by the fall; it is we who in love fall, in love we fall. Their united life began again in human forms, their coming together marking the arrival of “a greater age”.

Young and beautiful and reddened with a bride’s joy, dreamy Savitri returns to the palace to disclose to her eager parents the discovery she has made in the far-away secluded land. But she already finds in the palace-hall Narad the heavenly sage in their company, he singing the song of creation to them. (Savitri, p. 417)

He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love
With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,
Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.
It trembles at each touch, it strives to wake
And one day it shall hear a blissful voice
And in the garden of the Spouse shall bloom
When she is seized by her discovered lord.

But soon Narad is going to announce something apparently ominous, the foreboding deep-rooted evil indeed. However, he announces it perhaps with a grave serious concern. Savitri has come to know love; it is necessary that she must also know death. Eventually Narad discloses that Satyavan, whom Savitri has chosen for a husband, is doomed to die exactly one year after the marriage, samvatsaréņa kşīņāyurdéhanyāsam karişyati, or as we have in Savitri:

Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and to her;
This day returning Satyavan must die.

Savitri yet remains firm in her resolve and starts living in her new home. She adapts herself to the life of the hermitage and looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their community life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of time goes by. But about the prophecy of Satyavan’s death no one knows, neither Satyavan, nor his parents, nor the ministers in the court of her father’s kingdom, not even the rishis in the hermitages though they might have felt something of the sort; it remains a secret of the palace, known only to her and her parents. “A dark foreknowledge separated her from all of whom she was the star and stay; too great to impart the peril and the pain, in her torn depths she kept the grief to come.” The secret was meant to remain the palace secret only. Just imagine if Satyavan had come to know about it! But, then, it also reveals the tremendous power of the woman who in her heart could keep such a calamitous possibility secret from her intimate ones, including her husband. That itself is the yogic preparation of Savitri and a great deal of her success rests on it. The human instrument did not fail in the hour of reckoning.

But, within, the virtuous woman suffered greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembered Narad’s words and felt the cruel day approaching closer. When she counted that only four days were left, and Satyavan would be living no more afterwards, she resolved to perform the three-night vow, trīrātra vŗta, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. Another Shakti living beyond the domains of the three nights,—of the physical, the vital, and the mental,—entered into her soul and she was now ready to confront the firm and uncompromising God of Death, Yama. The mystic truth is that the balance between Fate and Freewill can be reversed by the greater spirits. By doing yoga Savitri must rise to the greatness of her own spirit. That certainly is the merit, the purpose, of Narad’s disclosing the death of Satyavan.

RYD

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare

Savitri was living in love’s union, as would a young and newly married couple would. But even as the summer of this union was coming to a close, (Savitri, pp. 468-69)

…listening to the thunder's fatal crash
And the fugitive pattering footsteps of the showers
And the long unsatisfied panting of the wind
And sorrow muttering in the sound-vexed night,
The grief of all the world came near to her.

Night's darkness seemed her future's ominous face.

The shadow of her lover's doom arose
And fear laid hands upon her mortal heart.

The moments swift and ruthless raced; alarmed
Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad's date.

A trembling moved accountant of her riches,
She reckoned the insufficient days between:
A dire expectancy knocked at her breast;
Dreadful to her were the footsteps of the hours:
Grief came, a passionate stranger to her gate…

None was there to help her and, not knowing what could be the way out of this dire predicament, silently, helplessly she awaited the fast-approaching doom. No help came to her from any quarter. True, she did not disclose her psychological plight to anyone, not even to the great accomplished rishis and tapasvins of the forest; true, also that she did not speak of Narad’s prophecy to anybody; but, then, she was absolutely sure that none would be able to provide her the needed conquering strength. For her, with the kind of stuff she was made of, there was no other alternative but to win the battle against the inveterate and hardened death, the irreparable habit born of Inconscience. Who would wage a battle against him? and win it? Spiritual history of the earth tells us that all, everybody had accepted death as a fact of life here and had found other ways to escape from it. Savitri would not go by it.

And yet the question will continue to trouble us: Why did Savitri keep the prophecy only to herself, instead of sharing it with others, with the dearest ones, with the wise ones? They would have at least spoken to her soft comforting words of sympathy, given her consolation, provided some kind of moral support, assuaged her sad deep feelings. Caving in of the vital causes depression which can be dangerous, suicidal, and it is wise to speak out heartrending and sorrowful things. But Savitri was Savitri; and there was always, and everywhere, something luminous about her. She knew perfectly well that her strength would come from God only, and from none else, and that it is that strength alone which would give her true help in her dire hour. She had that inner conviction, and inherent inborn wisdom, and she knew that she could fully depend upon it. Indeed, that dire hour itself brought that strength out most wisely and most convincingly. In answer to her mother’s pleading to choose another youth as life’s partner, Savitri tells: (Savitri, p. 435)

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…
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.

This awakening to her own spiritual reality came to her with the newly awakened power of love. She has not yet done any conscious yoga but the kindled soul at once saw what was hidden behind the prophecy and she held on to her decision firmly. With the disclosure of Narad, of Satyavan’s death, Savitri at once awoke to the purpose of her birth itself. With it her missioned work must begin; Narad had cast the seed for that to happen and she received it rightly.

Equally significant, in the context, is Savitri’s capacity to hold only to herself the foreboding as well as mysterious prophecy, without divulging anything to anyone around. It indeed needs enormous strength of character, almost amounting to the superhuman. The mystery is, Satyavan’s death had to take place in total isolation, without the knowledge of anybody; it had to take place not in the hermitage, but in the forest where none else, apart from Satyavan and Savitri, were present. This aspect of the episode is luminously charged with the occult. By holding the prophecy to herself only, she kind of strengthened her will-power to face the event; everything got firmly quintessenced in it, without the possibility of any dispersion. Like spiritual experiences taking wings when made public, getting lost, this would have lost its effectiveness had she divulged it to others.

When Savitri discovered her soul and when the Consciousness-Force descended, centre below centre, in her body, she was told not to bare her kingdom to the foe, she was told to hide her royalty of bliss (Savitri, p. 536)

Lest Time and Fate find out its avenues
And beat the thunderous knock upon thy gates.

Hide whilst thou canst thy treasure of separate self
Behind the luminous rampart of thy depths
Till of a vaster empire it grows part.

Savitri’s dhāraņā śakti, the power to hold what was given, is absolutely marvellous, absolutely yogic in the superlative, and it is that which became the basis of her success. So also is the power to hold the secret prophecy in the deeps of her soul where no assault is possible. Because Savitri has that dhāraņā sāmarthya, capacity to hold it, that Narad made his eventful prophecy. Narad knew who Savitri was, and he knew that human Savitri had to be set on the path of yoga; no wonder, in the joy of his Vishnu whose glory he ever sings, he rushed to earth. His visit is an epochal visit. In it are the elements of the new unfolding destiny of the evolutionary earth. Savitri’s keeping the word of fate is an aspect of that momentous possibility.

Savitri has found her soul and she is told to keep its kingdom hidden from the foe. Savitri has come to know the death of her husband after the marriage and she understands well that she must keep its knowledge as a secret even from him. Savitri is indeed a Yogini par excellence.

RYD

Marvelous RYD! I've just read through again all of your comments on this article, 'Hard is it to Persuade Earth-Nature's Change,' and am appreciating even more the depth of your commentaries. They build upon one another as steps to a greater understanding. — Thank you ...