Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate
There is a remarkable coincidence of this line appearing as the 365th line of Savitri: 12 months, one year, 365 days, 365 lines to exactly come to this point.

The last line of the previous canto, Canto One, The Symbol Dawn, is “This was the day when Satyavan must die.” The divine Savitri has awoken to the reality of this prophecy and the human Savitri has now to get ready to meet the eventuality. She will do yoga and prepare herself to achieve what Necessity has imposed upon her to achieve. This last line of the Canto is the 341st line in the Centenary Edition of Savitri. The line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” becomes 365th line in Canto Two, The Issue. That is, the destined day is the 365th day of the year, the last day. Year is the body of Man and hence he having 365 days to live is notable, indicating the completeness of life at present.

Which means that, each line of Savitri is a day. The death is going to occur at the end of 365 days, at 365 lines of Savitri: “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.

This line is 366th line in the Revised Edition, interpretatively suggesting us that the Savitri-episode occurred in a leap year, making a leap in evolution. Possibly so.

But the entire thing happened in a single day,—Savitri woke up, met love, met death, came back with the boons at its end. The ‘day’ is the ‘year’—from Dawn to Dawn.

Numerologists should be interested in this wonderful ‘coincidence’. But the yogi-poet does not count and calculate to put lines in an arranged sequence, with the intention of bringing about such ‘coincidences’ in any deliberate manner. In a yogi’s hand things happen so, kind of naturally, automatically, even as there is the universal relationship between the objects and events in a deep occult way, a living harmony in its universal play.

If each line is a day to complete a year of 365 days, and if each ‘day’ is a ‘year’, then the 24,000 lines in Savitri will mean that the evolutionary process has been going on over a period of 24,000 days in terms of years. Does it entail something?

The creative movement in the Truth-Consciousness, rhythm, the Vedic ŗtam, is described by Gayatri metre, having 24 syllables. So each syllable of the Gayatri Mantra corresponds to 1000 lines of Savitri, 1000, the figure of fullness, completeness.

Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra, invoking the Light of the Supreme, parasya jyotih, is its representation in terms of the “auspicious form, varam rūpam” that must appear.

Can a competent numerologist throw more light, proper light than what I am attempting here? It might be rewarding in its own way. Thanks.

RYD

What an interesting observation RYD! I'm wondering if you've talked to the editors re why they changed the line count in the Revised Edition? Specifically why this critically important line, "Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate", became the 366th rather than the 365th line as in the Centenary Edition? Was this an editorial decision they made on their own, or was it the result of new research regarding SA's actual intention?

~ ron

Hi Ron
But you want me to handle a difficult situation!

In Canto One, The Symbol Dawn of Savitri, we have the following passage on p. 7:

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.
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;
Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:
It fears the pure divine intolerance
Of that assault of ether and of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost with hate repels the light it brings;
It trembles at its naked power of Truth
And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

The 5th line here—“And in their body's lives acclimatise”—is the additional line which occurs in the Revised Edition of Savitri; with it the total number of lines in the first Canto becomes 342, as against 341 in the earlier editions. That would make our line—the line from Canto Two, The Issue we have been discussing, “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate”—as the 366th line of Savitri.

There is a reason to feel somewhat disappointed with it, with this change of count; your question “...why they changed the line count in the Revised Edition?” becomes pertinent. What should be 365, has become 366. Why?

The answer is simple and straightforward: No, their intention was not to change the line count. They have restored what was missed or dropped; they found a line that was missed by the earlier versions, including those which came out before the publication of Part One consisting of the first three Books of Savitri in September 1950, before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away on 5 December of that year; the remaining nine Books came out as Part II and Part III in a single volume in May 1951. This absence—of the relatable line in The Symbol Dawn—continued through the Centenary Edition, 1972, and its subsequent reproductions, until the Revised Edition reinstated it in 1992. So, unfortunately, that upsets our line count. But is that important? But if there is an occult-hermeneutic connection between 365 days of the year and the appearance of the line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” as the 365th line of the poem, if there is acceptable numerology pertaining to the deeper working of things, then our sensibility has reason to feel disappointed.

The second part of your query is more complex, with a complexity which could also include official as well as editorial approaches. You are asking “…why this critically important line, ‘Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate’, became the 366th rather than the 365th line as in the Centenary Edition? Was this an editorial decision they made on their own, or was it the result of new research regarding SA's actual intention?”

A part of the answer is already present in what I have just said. Regarding “Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention”—what can anyone really say, or should say about it? His “intentions” belong to another domain altogether and his instruments of knowledge are of a different order. We have talked elsewhere in considerable detail about our limitations and the small scope of the possibilities vis-à-vis our post-human destinies. I will therefore prefer to observe not dumb but deep and respectful silence as far as this phrase “Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention” is concerned; it is beyond my capacity. But if the line was simply missed by the earlier team, and yet what was printed during Sri Aurobindo’s time as the text was a result of having been read out to him at every stage of its composition and publication, then would that not amount to his tacit approval of things as they were presented to him? What does one really do in such a situation? Does one go by what Sri Aurobindo heard and passed, or go by what he wrote or dictated but got left out by others? Each has its own set of uncertainties, and we become helpless with our mental or so-called objective-rational approaches. the dangers are there...

Well, before I make my position known in this regard, it will be good to have responses from the readers of this sciy forum. And thanks.

RYD

Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate
This is a “story long written but acted now”, in a human frame. The future and the past are held together in the present of the story. Narad has made the death of Satyavan after one year of the marriage known; leaving behind the comforts and attention of the palace, Savitri begins to live with him in the lonely hermitage of the forest; full of youth and passion, they are given to the life of a passionate young couple, full of life’s hope and happiness; in their cohabitation nothing adverse, nothing calamitous enters; though Savitri is in the depth of her soul aware of what is going too happen, and happen pretty soon, she is not too concerned about it at the moment. She is swayed between joy and grief.

In the Book of Yoga, Book Seven Canto One, we have a perfect picture of human Savitri during the year she is living with her husband. We may quickly run through it in the folowing:

All was fulfilled the heart of Savitri
Flower-sweet and adamant, passionate and calm,
Had chosen and on her strength's unbending road
Forced to its issue the long cosmic curve…
The past receded and the future neared:
Far now behind lay Madra's spacious halls,
The white carved pillars, the cool dim alcoves,
The tinged mosaic of the crystal floors,
The towered pavilions, the wind-rippled pools
And gardens humming with the murmur of bees…
The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night…
All put behind her that was once her life,
All welcomed that henceforth was his and hers,
She abode with Satyavan in the wild woods:
Priceless she deemed her joy so close to death;
Apart with love she lived for love alone.

As if self-poised above the march of days,
Her immobile spirit watched the haste of Time,
A statue of passion and invincible force,
An absolutism of sweet imperious will,
A tranquillity and a violence of the gods
Indomitable and immutable.

At first to her beneath the sapphire heavens
The sylvan solitude was a gorgeous dream…
A fusing of the joys of earth and heaven,
A tremulous blaze of nuptial rapture passed,
A rushing of two spirits to be one,
A burning of two bodies in one flame.
Opened were gates of unforgettable bliss:
Two lives were locked within an earthly heaven
And fate and grief fled from that fiery hour.

But soon now failed the summer's ardent breath…
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.

Vainly she fled into abysms of bliss
From her pursuing foresight of the end.

The more she plunged into love that anguish grew;
Her deepest grief from sweetest gulfs arose.
Remembrance was a poignant pang, she felt
Each day a golden leaf torn cruelly out
From her too slender book of love and joy.

Thus swaying in strong gusts of happiness
And swimming in foreboding's sombre waves
And feeding sorrow and terror with her heart,—
For now they sat among her bosom's guests
Or in her inner chamber paced apart,—
Her eyes stared blind into the future's night…
She in her dreadful knowledge was alone…

A glimpse or flashes came, the Presence was hid…
Only her violent heart and passionate will
Were pushed in front to meet the immutable doom;
Defenceless, nude, bound to her human lot
They had no means to act, no way to save…
These she controlled, nothing was shown outside:
In all her acts a strange divinity shone…

But when her grief to the surface pressed too close,
These things, once gracious adjuncts of her joy,
Seemed meaningless to her, a gleaming shell,
Or were a round mechanical and void,
Her body's actions shared not by her will.
Always behind this strange divided life
Her spirit like a sea of living fire
Possessed her lover and to his body clung,
One locked embrace to guard its threatened mate.

At night she woke through the slow silent hours
Brooding on the treasure of his bosom and face,
Hung o'er the sleep-bound beauty of his brow
Or laid her burning cheek upon his feet.
Waking at morn her lips endlessly clung to his,
Unwilling ever to separate again
Or lose that honeyed drain of lingering joy,
Unwilling to loose his body from her breast,
The warm inadequate signs that love must use.
Intolerant of the poverty of Time
Her passion catching at the fugitive hours
Willed the expense of centuries in one day…
After all was given she demanded still;
Even by his strong embrace unsatisfied,
She longed to cry, “O tender Satyavan,
O lover of my soul, give more, give more
Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov'st.
Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep
That thrills to thee the message of my heart…”
All was too little for her bottomless need…
Often it seemed to her the ages' pain
Had pressed their quintessence into her single woe,
Concentrating in her a tortured world.
Yet ever they grew into each other more
Until it seemed no power could rend apart,
Since even the body's walls could not divide.

The year now paused upon the brink of change.
No more the storms sailed with stupendous wings
And thunder strode in wrath across the world…
Only in the privacy of its brooding pain
Her human heart spoke to the body's fate.

Apropos of this psychological condition of Savitri we have a comment from Sri Aurobindo, reported by AB Purani in the Evening Talks: “I think it was Madhususan Dutt who translated Savitri from the Mahabharata and portrayed her as weeping, whereas in the Mahabharata there is no trace of it. Even when her heart was being sawn in two not a single tear appeared in her eyes. By making her weep he took away the very strength of which Savitri is built.”

But the true greatness of twelve passionate months comes out with a kind of yogic ambience in the hands of Sri Aurobindo. Remarkable indeed!

RYD

The whole year in a swift and eddying race
Of memories swept through her and fled away
On the fated day Savitri gets up well before morn and worships Goddess Durga: (Savitri, p.561) She is calm, she is composed, she has deep certitude; she is quite human doing things as usual and yet there is nothing human in her now; the Goddess has taken full control of destiny and the year has come to an end to deliver the gift it was holding in its heart.

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.

“Fate had followed her foreseen immutable road,” the long immutable road, of Fate as well as of Savitri. Things had converged at the destined place and the hour also arrived when what was foreseen had to happen. Anxious Gods and Goddesses were present to witness the victory of Savitri over Death, a victory they were waiting for since the arrival of the Life upon Earth. Death was the dark response to the gifts she had brought to this creation and she was unable to live in her full majesty and glory in the wideness of the Spirit’s possibilities. “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” and now the hour had come when Satyavan must die. That was the only way by which inexorable fate could be changed.

The sky was crowded with a throng of gods
And golden Durga with sword in her hand
Guarded the kingly tree since the early dawn
And Satyavan and Savitri moved in the peace
Of that rich forest, destiny’s rendezvous.
Year is the body and Satyavan must die
And three great times he uttered the mantric name.
The noon was filled with the creator’s shadow
And the still river watched the motionless crane,
As if eternity had come to its end.
In the campanile of death tolled the hour
And no more was there Savitri’s Satyavan.

RYD

An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means
This is true for Avatars and great Vibhutis. Christ had to accept the Cross to complete his work. Nothing could be done when Sita fell under the sway of a phantom deer. The only way to make Arjuna pick up the mighty bow of conquest was by showing him the Spirit of Time the Destroyer.

Sri Aurobindo was an under-trial prisoner in Alipore Jail. In his Uttarpara speech, dated 30 May 1909, he tells us:

When I was arrested and hurried to the Lal Bazar Hazat I was shaken in faith for a while, for I could not look into the heart of His intention. Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried out in my heart to Him, "What is this that has happened to me ? I believed that I had a mission to work for the people of my country and until that work was done, I should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a charge?" A day passed and a second day and a third, when a voice came to me from within, "Wait and see." Then I grew calm and waited, I was taken from Lal Bazar to Alipore and was placed for one month in a solitary cell apart from men. There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, "The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work." Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success and failure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.

Sri Aurobindo continues:

When the case opened in the lower court and we were brought before the Magistrate I was followed by the same insight. He said to me, "When you were cast into jail, did not your heart fail and did you not cry out to me, where is Thy protection? Look now at the Magistrate, look now at the Prosecuting Counsel." I looked and it was not the Magistrate whom I saw, it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled. "Now do you fear?" He said, "I am in all men and I overrule their actions and their words. My protection is still with you and you shall not fear. This case which is brought against you, leave it in my hand. It is not for you. It was not for the trial that I brought you here but for something else. The case itself is only a means for my work and nothing more." Afterwards when the trial opened in the Sessions Court, I began to write many instructions for my Counsel as to what was false in the evidence against me and on what points the witnesses might be cross-examined. Then something happened which I had not expected. The arrangements which had been made for my defence were suddenly changed and another Counsel stood there to defend me. He came unexpectedly, - a friend of mine, but I did not know he was coming. You have all heard the name of the man who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice, who sat up half the night day after day for months and broke his health to save me, - Srijut Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put away from me and I had the message from within, "This is the man who will save you from the snares put around your feet. Put aside those papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will instruct him." From that time I did not of myself speak a word to my Counsel about the case or give a single instruction, and if ever I was asked a question, I always found that my answer did not help the case. I had left it to him and he took it entirely into his hands, with what result you know. I knew all along what He meant for me, for I heard it again and again, always I listened to the voice within; "I am guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your own work for which I have brought you to jail and when you come out, remember never to fear, never to hesitate. Remember that it is I who am doing this, not you nor any other. Therefore whatever clouds may come, whatever dangers and sufferings, whatever difficulties, whatever impossibilities, there is nothing impossible, nothing difficult. I am in the nation and its uprising and I am Vasudeva, I am Narayana, and what I will, shall be, not what others will. What I choose to bring about, no human power can stay."

And here is the Mother in some of her prayers:

April 18, 1914
YESTERDAY morning the last veil was almost rent, the last stronghold of the blind and ignorant personality seemed to be on the point of yielding; for the first time I thought I had understood what true impersonal service was, and the obstacle separating me from the integral realisation seemed very fragile to me, and on the point of disappearing definitively. But the necessity of my outer duties tore me away from this beneficent and happy contemplation, and when I was obliged to return to the outer consciousness the veil closed again and now seems to me darker than ever. Why this fall into the inconscience of night after so great a light? . . . O Lord, Lord, wilt Thou not then let me escape at last from ignorance and become one with Thee? Now that I have known and seen so well what the work upon the earth must be, could I not realise it? Am I then riveted to ignorance and illusion? . . . Why, why this night after so great and pure a light? All my being is tense in a call of anguish!

O Lord, take pity on me!

December 21, 1916
LORD, Thou didst speak to me through the lips of one of those who have known Thee best—most probably to make me understand Thy lesson better (was I then deaf to Thy direct suggestion?). And still I do not understand at the moment what to do. Thou knowest what happiness would be mine if by Thy grace I could be integrally transformed into a hearth of divine love—that love which is the first and highest manifestation of Thy eternal Truth, that love which is at once the completest expression in this world of Thy Truth and the most direct road to lead to it the human consciousness that has gone astray. In the days when I used to aspire, desire and ask, how many times have I asked of Thee the grace of this state as the one most in conformity with my present ideal of action! And at that time it seemed to me that the day I should be purified of all egoistic preference, Thou wouldst choose this individual terrestrial being as an instrument of Thy manifestation of love upon earth. And now that Thou askest it of me, more than ever before do I feel my helplessness. For such a long time I thought I knew what love was, and now that I no longer see anything that cannot be called love, I also no longer see anything that may specially be called love. And how can I be that which I can no longer define, that state which I can no longer distinguish? And yet Thou didst show me yesterday that I was holding enclosed in a dark sheath one of Thy most precious and powerful gifts. . . . Lord, all my being aspires to obey Thy voice, to conform to Thy Law; but it does not know in its outer consciousness, does not understand what Thou expectest of it. It feels indeed that at present its love is a passive state and that Thou wouldst awaken it to an active state; but how to pass from one to the other is what escapes it. It knows that this active state of love should be constant and impersonal, that is, absolutely independent of circumstances and persons, since it cannot and must not be concentrated upon any one thing in particular; and in this it will resemble the present passive state of love which is pure, unchanging and impersonal. But what it still does not know is how, even while retaining its purity, unchangeability and impersonality, qualities now inherent in its being, it can resume its activity. That is why this evening I implored Lord Mitra who so perfectly symbolises Thy truth of love, asking him to come to my help and enlighten my ignorance, dissolve my doubts, vanquish my hesitations, break down the last obstacles and take possession of this physical instrument so that it may become what Thou expectest it to be. But my speech is timid and my voice faltering and I do not know if Lord Mitra heard my prayer.

Tokio: September 24, 1917
THOU hast subjected me to a hard discipline; rung after rung, I have climbed the ladder which leads to Thee and, at the summit of the ascent, Thou hast made me taste the perfect joy of identity with Thee. Then, obedient to Thy command, rung after rung, I have descended to outer activities and external states of consciousness, re-entering into contact with these worlds that I left to discover Thee. And now that I have come back to the bottom of the ladder, all is so dull, so mediocre, so neutral, in me and around me, that I understand no more. . . . What is it then that Thou awaitest from me, and to what use that slow long preparation, if all is to end in a result to which the majority of human beings attain without being subjected to any discipline? How is it possible that having seen all that I have seen, experienced all that I have experienced, after I have been led up even to the most sacred sanctuary of Thy knowledge and communion with Thee, Thou hast made of me so utterly common an instrument in such ordinary circumstances? In truth,OLord, Thy ends are unfathomable and pass my understanding. . . . Why, when Thou hast placed in my heart the pure diamond of Thy perfect Felicity, sufferest Thou its surface to reflect the shadows which come from outside and so leave unsuspected and, it would seem, ineffective the treasure of Peace Thou hast granted me? Truly all this is a mystery and confounds my understanding. Why, when Thou hast given me this great inner silence, sufferest Thou the tongue to be so active and the thought to be occupied with things so futile? Why? . . . I could go on questioning indefinitely and, to all likelihood, always in vain. . . . I have only to bow to Thy decree and accept my condition without uttering a word.
I am now only a spectator who watches the dragon of the world unrolling its coils without end.

LORD, how many times, giving way before Thy decree, I have prayed to Thee: “Spare me this calvary of earthly consciousness; let me merge in Thy supreme unity.” But my prayer is faint-hearted, I know, for it remains unfruitful.

Oiwak´e: September 3, 1919
SINCE the man refused the meal I had prepared with so much love and care, I invoked the God to take it. My God, Thou hast acceptedmy invitation, Thou hast come to sit at my table, and in exchange for my poor and humble offering Thou hast granted to me the last liberation. My heart, even this morning so heavy with anguish and care, my head surcharged with responsibility, are delivered of their burden. Now are they light and joyful as my inner being has been for a long time past.My body smiles to Thee with happiness as before my soul smiled to Thee. And surely hereafter Thou wilt withdraw no more from me this joy, O my God! for this time, I think, the lesson has been sufficient, I have mounted the Calvary of successive disillusionments high enough to attain to the Resurrection. Nothing remains of the past but a potent love which gives me the pure heart of a child and the lightness and freedom of thought of a god.

RYD

An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means
In Savitri we have the following lines with an obvious reference to Christ’s crucifixion:

His crucified voice proclaims, “I, I am God.”
“Yes, all is God,” peals back Heaven’s deathless call.

Could this be connected with the hour that arrives “when fail all Nature’s means”? Possibly. In St Matthew we have “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying E’-li, E’-li, la’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The sun darkened at the death of Jesus. An absolute supernatural darkness falls on man sometimes when he draws near to God. Jesus had offered up himself as the Passover Lamb and there were supernatural signs and wonders were witnessed on that day. And there was darkness over the land, over Jerusalem from noon till 3 pm. There was heavy darkness, skotos, more than the physical, the spiritual darkness could bear. In that darkness the Saviour had to deal with the evil that is present at the root of the cosmos. His “loud voice”, in spite of having been severely scourged, was the cry of agony for man, and therefore Heaven’s response: “Yes, all is God”.

The Lord said to Moses: “Stretch out your hand toward the sky.” And there was the darkness that helped Moses. There was darkness for three days over the land of Egypt.

And Abraham—a good man who owned many sheep and cattle. One day God said to him: “Pack up all your things and go the land where all the families of the earth will be blessed.” He trusted God and everything was settled for him. One night God appeared again, and said to Abraham: “Look up at the stars in the sky, and you will have a son.” The 75-year old man had faith in God, and God led him out of the darkness of the night.

In the Bhakti tradition of India there are any number of instances when the helpless, the desperate Bhakta was helped in one or the other by his God.

The difficult Yoga of Savitri was carried out by her entirely under the instructions she received at every stage from her presiding Goddess, the Divine Mother, the Consciousness-Force herself. For instance, Savitri had discovered her soul and it looked as though nothing more was needed to be done. But (Savitri, p. 534)

An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.
A vast and nameless fear dragged at her nerves
As drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey;
It seemed to have no den from which it sprang:
It was not hers, but hid its unseen cause.
Then rushing came its vast and fearful Fount.
A formless Dread with shapeless endless wings
Filling the universe with its dangerous breath,
A denser darkness than the Night could bear,
Enveloped the heavens and possessed the earth.
A rolling surge of silent death, it came
Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe;
Effacing heaven with its enormous stride
It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air
And end the fable of the joy of life.
It seemed her very being to forbid,
Abolishing all by which her nature lived,
And laboured to blot out her body and soul,
A clutch of some half-seen Invisible,
An ocean of terror and of sovereign might,
A person and a black infinity.
It seemed to cry to her without thought or word
The message of its dark eternity
And the awful meaning of its silences:
Out of some sullen monstrous vast arisen,
Out of an abysmal deep of grief and fear
Imagined by some blind regardless self,
A consciousness of being without its joy,
Empty of thought, incapable of bliss,
That felt life blank and nowhere found a soul,
A voice to the dumb anguish of the heart
Conveyed a stark sense of unspoken words;
In her own depths she heard the unuttered thought
That made unreal the world and all life meant.

The answering Voice instructed Savitri what exactly she was to do in this situation. Her yogic journey moved to yet another realm of transcendence where nothing remained of hers; and all became God’s.

RYD

An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means
An hour comes when fail all Nature's means
There is an editorial problem here, whether it should be “An hour arrives…” or “An hour comes…” As far as the sense is concerned there is really not much to choose between “arrives” and “comes”. From the point of view of poetic technique we have: An hour/ arrives/ when fail/ all Nat/ ure’s means—all five beautiful iambs; An ho/ ur comes/ when fail/ all Nat/ ure’s means—this is also acceptable, with ‘hour’ taken with two syllables, not an uncommon thing in Savitri; with this ho /ur the first line would become iamb-anapaest, etc. which is also perfectly fine. In many places Sri Aurobindo scans ‘inspires’ or ‘desires’ with three syllables, though generally they are disyllabic; so too could be taken ‘hour’ as ‘ho/ ur’. As far as rhythm is concerned, it is a matter of one’s taste and association, one’s predilections also; nor can there be any strict formula everywhere for the same poet; it could depend upon the situation. Then, while in the first line there is a strong ‘r’-alliterative effect, in the second the additional ‘m’-alliteration brings a kind of self-closing poetic result. Nor is this line that kind of a mantra in which nothing can be changed, the exact word in the exact position. There is neither the inevitability of ‘arrives’ nor of ‘comes’.

And yet there is a problem. The whole passage we are discussing was written first by Sri Aurobindo around 1945, written on tiny chit-pad sheets. On it our line in his hand is ‘An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means.” But there were revisions by dictation around it and when the scribe made a fair copy of the text he put—inadvertently I suppose, probably being carried away by the sense of the sentence—‘comes’ instead of ‘arrives’. Obviously, ‘comes’ continued to be there through all the subsequent stages, including a number of times the line with ‘comes’ read out to Sri Aurobindo. Nirodbaran’s fair copy, Nolini’s type-sheets, proofs from the press on three or four occasions—all of them were read out to Sri Aurobindo and he never felt uneasy with his ‘arrives’ having been changed to ‘comes’ by somebody else. It should also be noted that in a few cases there are differences between what was sent to the press and what came out of it, obviously the proofs had on them Sri Aurobindo’s revisions by dictation; but unfortunately those proofs have not survived. Which could make room for one to argue that Sri Aurobindo, at that stage, could have re-dictated the line as follows: “An hour approaches when fail all Nature's means” with the third foot as an anapaest; but this dictated change was not carried out by the press, again, something which is quite conceivable.

One way of looking at the situation, as vehemently suggested by the upholders of the ‘arrives’, is: “…an accident produced a reading that was not noticeably wrong and even found its way into the printed text. This raises the question: when Sri Aurobindo let a variant introduced by someone else remain intact, is it the same as if he had written it himself? If we want an authentic edition of Savitri in which each word is Sri Aurobindo’s own, it would seem that in such a case the word found in his manuscript should be restored in place of the word that was inadvertently substituted for it by another person.” That is a very rational argument no doubt and sounds indisputable. But then there could also be another way of looking at things. If an author has allowed to stand something, can we really object to him in that respect? If Sri Aurobindo keeps something who are we to dismiss it? Can that which Sri Aurobindo retained be said to be not ‘authentic’? Perhaps there should be some other way to resolve the issue. I would wait for comments on it.

RYD

In a last turn heaven raced with hell
The ribbon-posts are fixed, the finishing-line marked, a line which is the beginning of the new movement.

The imperative of The Mother
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 imperative of The Life Divine
At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cultural machinery, an organised collective means for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. This new fullness of the means of life might be, by its power for a release from the incessant unsatisfied stress of his economic and physical needs, an opportunity for the full pursuit of other and greater aims surpassing the material existence, for the discovery of a higher truth and good and beauty, for the discovery of a greater and diviner spirit which would intervene and use life for a higher perfection of the being: but it is being used instead for the multiplication of new wants and an aggressive expansion of the collective ego… The evolution of human mind and life must necessarily lead towards an increasing universality…A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life… The evolutionary nisus is pushing towards a development of the cosmic Force in terrestrial life which needs a larger mental and vital being to support it, a wider Mind, a greater wider more conscious unanimised Life-Soul, Anima, and that again needs an unveiling of the supporting Soul and spiritual Self within to maintain it…

A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature. That might be described, since it surpasses the mental human level, as a life of spiritual and supramental supermanhood. But this must not be confused with past and present ideas of supermanhood; for supermanhood in the mental idea consists of an overtopping of the normal human level, not in kind but in degree of the same kind, by an enlarged personality, a magnified and exaggerated ego, an increased power of mind, an increased power of vital force, a refined or dense and massive exaggeration of the forces of the human Ignorance; it carries also, commonly implied in it, the idea of a forceful domination over humanity by the superman. That would mean a supermanhood of the Nietzschean type; it might be at its worst the reign of the “blonde beast” or the dark beast or of any and every beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength of self-fulfilment would be the type of a Rakshasic supermanhood: but the giant, the ogre or devourer of the world, the Rakshasa, though he still survives, belongs in spirit to the past; a larger emergence of that type would be also a retrograde evolution. A mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, a self-possessed, self-held, even, it may be, an ascetically self-restrained mind-capacity and life-power, strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit. But what has to emerge is something much more difficult and much more simple; it is a self-realised being, a building of the spiritual self, an intensity and urge of the soul and the deliverance and sovereignty of its light and power and beauty,—not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving for birth within it. This is the sole true supermanhood and the one real possibility of a step forward in evolutionary Nature. This new status would indeed be a reversal of the present law of human consciousness and life, for it would reverse the whole principle of the life of the Ignorance… The evolution in the Knowledge would be a more beautiful and glorious manifestation with more vistas ever unfolding themselves and more intensive in all ways than any evolution could be in the Ignorance. The delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty it takes innumerable, its godhead ever young and the taste of delight, rasa, of the Infinite eternal and inexhaustible. The gnostic manifestation of life would be more full and fruitful and its interest more vivid than the creative interest of the Ignorance; it would be a greater and happier constant miracle. If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny. The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter. It would return to itself,—or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also,—not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life. Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature.

The imperative of Savitri

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.

Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God;

Truth made the world, not a blind Nature-Force.
For here are not our large diviner heights;
Our summits in the superconscient's blaze
Are glorious with the very face of God:
There is our aspect of eternity,
There is the figure of the god we are,
His young unaging look on deathless things,
His joy in our escape from death and Time,
His immortality and light and bliss.

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.
Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come
Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;
A sudden bliss shall run through every limb
And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.

The imperative of The Prayers and Meditations
IT is a veritable work of creation we have to do: to create activities, new modes of being so that this Force, unknown to the earth till today, may manifest in its plenitude. To this travail I am consecrated, O Lord, for this is what Thou wantest of me. But since Thou hast appointed me for this work, Thou must give me the means, that is, the knowledge necessary for its realisation. We shall unite our efforts: the entire individual being will concentrate in a constant call for the knowledge of the mode of manifestation of this Force, and Thou, supreme centre of the being, Thou wilt emanate the Force fully so that it may penetrate, transfigure and overcome all obstacles. It is a pact Thou hast signed with the worlds of individual life. Thou hast made a promise, Thou hast sent into these worlds those who can and that which can fulfil this promise. This now demands Thy integral help so that what has been promised may be realised. In us must take place the union of the two wills and two currents, so that from their contact may spring forth the illuminating spark.

And since this must be done, this will be done.

The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:

A new Light shall break upon the earth.
A new world shall be born,
And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.

Our Divine Mother is with us and has promised us identification with the supreme and total consciousness —from the unfathomable depths to the most external world of the senses. And in all these domains Agni assures us of the help of his purifying flame, destroying all obstacles, kindling the energies, stimulating the will, so that the realisation may be hastened. Indra is with us for the perfection of the illumination in our knowledge; and the divine Soma has transformed us in his infinite, sovereign, marvellous love, bringer of the supreme beatitudes... Odivine and sweet Mother, I bow to Thee with a rapt, ineffable tenderness, and with infinite trust. O splendid Agni, Thou who art so living within me, I call Thee, I invoke Thee that Thou mayst be more living still, that Thy brazier may become more immense, Thy flames higher and more powerful, that the entire being may now be only an ardent burning, a purifying pyre.



But there’s the race, and there’s the imponderable: who is going to win the race—heaven or hell?

RYD

You have posted very inspiring words. Man has to decide if he wants to be ever blissful and evolve in knowledge or be satisfied with his old confused self. Evolution in knowledge is blissful with the rain of heaven flowing through ones being.
How can a man leave this bliss ones he has tasted it?

Thanks for the appreciation

RYD

The Last Turn
About the Last Turn let us make a swift digression and read the story of Barbaro the racehorse. Here is an account first from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia:

Barbaro (April 29, 2003–January 29, 2007) was an American thoroughbred that decisively won the 2006 Kentucky Derby but shattered his leg two weeks later, in the 2006 Preakness Stakes, ending his racing career and eventually leading to his death. On May 20, 2006, Barbaro ran in the Preakness Stakes as a heavy favorite, but he fractured three bones in and around the ankle of his right hind leg shortly after the start of the race. The injury ruined any chance of a Triple Crown win and ended his undefeated racing career. The next day, he underwent surgery at the New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania for his injuries. In July he developed laminitis in his left rear leg. He had an additional five surgeries, and his prognosis varied as he remained for an extraordinarily long period of time in the equine Intensive Care Unit. While his right leg eventually healed, a final risky surgery on it proved futile because the colt soon developed further laminitis in both front legs. His veterinarians and owners then concluded that he could not be saved, and Barbaro was euthanized on January 29, 2007. the total earnings were $2,302,200.

Barbaro was cremated shortly after he was euthanized. It is still unclear where his ashes will reside. Some options include the Kentucky Derby Museum located on the grounds of Churchill Downs, the scene of his greatest moment of glory at the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., and the Jacksons' Lael Farm, just a few miles away from the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center.

Barbaro is being memorialized by a Florida race track that is establishing a scholarship for a student planning to study veterinary medicine at the University of Florida, according to NewsMax.com. He also inspired a large anonymous donation to the New Bolton Center establishing the "Barbaro Fund", to aid the treatment and care of large animals.

There are also discussions afoot for a new museum, in the mid-Atlantic region, which will include Barbaro memorabilia.

A following grew up around Barbaro after his breakdown in the Preakness. He became the object of care and affection from the public in a way only a few animals before him have. His stall at New Bolton was decorated with many thousands of "Get Well" cards (including a 7ft by 72ft card from fans at the Belmont Stakes), flowers and presents sent in by fans. Others sent in items meant to help him recover, such as saint medallions and holy water. His condition was followed by news organizations on a daily basis.

Those following Barbaro were refered to as "Barbaromaniacs". They are now known as "Fans of Barbaro" and remain active for horse-related causes.

Here is a post from ChrisV82 at February 15, 2007 04:07 PM:

Last night I had a dream. I saw a horse standing on a hill against the setting sun. A beautiful chestnut colt seemed to beckon me. Clouds started to gather as I started up the hill to where the horse was. I sensed a deep sadness from the horse. I can’t explain it but I’ve always had a special gift of empathy. This majestic creature appeared so strong and powerful and yet I sensed in it pain. I arrived at the fence that separated us and opened the gate. The horse turned and looked straight at me. For a moment we just looked at one another. But it was a look like no other. I looked into his eyes and I understood. I believe that I saw his soul and he mine. In an instant, I knew it was Barbaro. And this magnificent beast, which had looked so healthy, was hurt - a deep, profound wound. Don’t ask me how, I just knew.
I thought, Barbaro, you courageous, valiant steed, Equus, friend of man. How can I help? Barbaro bowed his head; my power of empathy in instant told me Barbaro had made a decision. It was a good decision, a decision that sadden me and would sadden many other people, but the right decision. Just then there was a break in the clouds above and a golden beacon of light shone down, illuminating Barbaro. He looked up and whinnied. Barbaro was going home. The gate I had opened, he now trotted through. Barbaro soon increased his pace to a gallop. He kicked up his heels in joy like when he was a young foal with naught to fret about but laying in the soft grass on a lazy, warm day and nestling at his mother’s teat for sweet milk. He was afire with the joy of freedom of movement and of flying. He was fiercely alive - alive with all that was good and holy between man and beast, beast and God. Run Barbaro, run, mighty being and true friend. I watched as the proud champion ascended into heaven atop a sunray, his hooves aflame, his mane and tail alight and shining. I whispered, “Godspeed, Barbaro, and thank you for your gift to all of us.” I woke in the morning a found out that Barbaro had been put down. This is a true story. There is one more part to the dream that I know sounds crazy but I have to say it because I know that’s what Barbaro wanted me to do. He asked me to tell the world he was happy, at peace and thank everyone for all their prayers.

And another dated 30 January 2007:

But he was the little horse that could...he was a fighter and I admire fighters. I cried when I read that he had taken that last turn for the worse and was now gone. After so many close calls, so many miracles of recovery, his owners had him euthanized when it was evident that he could not win this race. I feel for Barbaro but I really feel for the people who had to make the painful decision to let him go. They have my admiration and gratitude for trying so hard to save their "boy" -- pouring thousands of dollars and no doubt much love into caring for him, even though he would never race again. The fight was hard, both on the heart and on the pocketbook but there are no regrets. As your owner Gretchen Jackson said, "grief is the price we all pay for love" -- and because we loved you, we are now paying that price.

Does it not remind us of Douglas Bader, the legless British pilot shooting down Nazi planes in the Battle of Britain? His squadron's first sortie during the Battle of Britain was on 30th August 1940, which shot down of 12 German aircraft over the Channel in just over an hour. Bader himself was responsible for downing two Messerschmitt 110. His 23 victories made him the fifth highest ace in the RAF. Bader advocated the concentration of fighters into large packs, an experiment that paid off, and his special unit knocked down 152 German planes in a month.

After screening the movie Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, the Mother said: “That is exactly the kind of determination one must have to practise the yoga of integral perfection.” (7 June 1963)

During the early phase of the War, Hitler was marching triumphantly with his panzer divisions destroying Paris. “Having won the Battle of France decisively,” reports Nirodbaran, “Hitler now turned his attention to winning the Battle of Britain. He fixed 15 August 1940 as the day on which he would complete his conquest of Western Europe and broadcast from Buckingham Palace. When Sri Aurobindo heard of this he remarked ‘that is the sign that he is the enemy of our work…’ But 15 August turned out to be a turning point for Britain. On that day 180 German planes were shot down in British skies… A month later, on the same date, 15 September 1940, Sri Aurobindo said smiling: ‘England has destroyed 175 German planes, a very big number. Now invasion will be difficult. Hitler lost his chance after the fall of France. He has really missed the bus!’ ” Another force was set up against him. In the Mother’s War Sri Aurobindo took full charge of the situation. Behind Hitler’s success he saw the working of a powerful Asura in the task of “enslavement of mankind to the tyranny of evil.” This would have been a setback for the course of spiritual evolution for which Sri Aurobindo was working. None knew about it. The Last Turn was well negotiated.

Not only did he apply his yogic force when such catastrophic events were taking place; he and the Mother also made a monetary contribution to the War fund. In their letter to the Governor of Madras dated 19 September 1940 they declared: “We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self-defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and a better and more secure world-order.” Who in this land of ours had the idea of the disaster that was waiting for mankind in the victory of the Nazi way of life, of Hitler’s running over nations and countries? None. It seems that we had lost our heads and our souls. If at all, there was the charismatic appeal to the gullible to side with the devil in his doings. The one who had proclaimed himself as the Lord of the Nations, the Asuric power of Falsehood, had found in Hitler his perfect instrument in the gruesome task of annihilation of the world. Here was Mahatma Gandhi with the ethico-religious mind recommending submission to the Falsehood that was at the basis of this dark creation. His Times letter in July 1940 addressed to the Britishers runs as follows: “I want you to fight Nazism without arms, or, if I am to retain the military terminology, with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.” Putting such an ultra-Christian doctrine on the highest pedestal of ethical excellence, making it an eminent principle of administration in the daily mode of life of the individual as well as of a whole society is not only to dwarf them; in fact, in its cruellest sense it is to turn all towards anti-humanity. And what is the efficacy of such a doctrine in its functioning? It sucks away the life-blood of a nation; it strangles the spirit of freedom and happy enterprise; it kills with a dark knife the very soul of man. A great humane and respectable virtue meant for another kind of pursuit is converted into a deadly weapon of destruction to push everything into the abyss of spiritual oblivion, into the sunless worlds that are enveloped in blind gloom, andhena tamasāvratah, as the Isha Upanishad would declare. Was the Mahatma promoting the Rule of the Asura? It seems so, if not consciously and deliberately but unwittingly. Did not the same thing happen at the time of Cripps’s Mission in 1942? Woe to the nation who turns its blind eye to the Rishi dedicated to the Divine cause.

India’s willing participation in the War effort was necessary and the British Prime Minister of the time, Winston Churchill, had made a proposal through Sir Stafford Cripps to the Indian leaders with the possibility of Dominion Status to the country after the War. But it was turned down.

This Last Turn led to a calamitous result. We are reaping fruits of it even today and we don’t know how long we shall.

RYD

Perhaps when the world sinks into a last sleep
*There is an old tradition which says that the world was created seven times, that is, the first six times it returned into the Creator. This is the idea of pralaya. It is said that this happened six times and that we are now the seventh creation, and that this is the last one. It is the one which will persist, and it is the “creation of Equilibrium”. All these creations I have also noted down somewhere, it is written down. I no longer know their order. There are six creations, one after another, created in accordance with this special mode, found imperfect and withdrawn into the Origin, recreated and withdrawn into the Origin—six times thus. And it is a progressive order. When one knows that order, one understands the principle of each creation. Well, this tradition said that the principle of our latest creation, at present, is the principle of Equilibrium, and that this is the last. That means the world will not go back again into pralaya, and there will be a perpetual progress. And this is the creation of Equilibrium.

*Ah! that, that is the human consciousness. It is the human consciousness. It is the idea of the human consciousness that when all suffering will be over, well, “I shall sleep”. It is indeed of this that Sri Aurobindo speaks. When there is this aspiration for a supreme peace, one feels that if there were a pralaya and the world disappeared, well, at least there would be peace. But the phrase itself is self-contradictory, for if there were a pralaya, there would be no more peace to be felt—there would be nothing at all any longer!

*In fact in the history of our universe there have been six consecutive periods which began by a creation, were prolonged by a force of preservation and ended by a disintegration, a destruction, a return to the Origin, which is called pralaya; and that is why this tradition is there. But it has been said that the seventh creation would be a progressive creation, that is, after the starting-point of the creation, instead of its being simply followed by a preservation, it would be followed by a progressive manifestation which would express the Divine more and more completely, so that no disintegration and return to the Origin would be necessary. And it has been announced that the period we are in is precisely the seventh, that is, it would not end by a pralaya, a return to the Origin, a destruction, a disappearance, but that it would be replaced by a constant progress, because it would be a more and more perfect unfolding of the divine Origin in its creation.

*And this is what Sri Aurobindo says. He speaks of a constant unfolding, that is, the Divine manifests more and more completely; more and more perfectly, in a progressive creation. It is the nature of this progression which makes the return to the Origin, the destruction no longer necessary. All that does not progress disappears, and that is why physical bodies die, it’s because they are not progressive; they are progressive up to a certain moment, then there they stop and most often they remain stable for a certain time, and then they begin to decline, and then disappear. It’s because the physical body, physical matter as it is at present is not plastic enough to be able to progress constantly.

Letters on Yoga, p. 33
There are three powers of the cosmos to which all things are subject—creation, preservation and destruction; whatever is created lasts for a time, then begins to crumble down. The taking away of the Force of destruction implies a creation that will not be destroyed but last and develop always. In the Ignorance destruction is necessary for progress—in the Knowledge, the Truth-creation, the law is that of a constant unfolding without any pralaya.

The Force of destruction implies a creation that will not be destroyed but last and develop always—Shiva is the God of Destruction in the Trinity of Puranic mythology and so also proves to be the Lord of Transformation, as the Mother said.

RYD

Heaven raced with Hell
The last unhappy turn towards the dreadful, the worrisome dangerous brink when all must succeed or collapse, the frightening scenario of pralaya or dissolution—such could be the fate of this terrible creation. Because such a possibility exists, it is also the high concern that it does not happen. Why it is there, that is another matter; but the contingency has to be reckoned and the issue dealt with. The Avatars come, and yet such the ‘prospects’! The Mother speaks of six earlier attempts that had failed and the whole thing had to be started over again. Were there divine incarnations or Avatars present in those six earlier creations, creations that got drowned in the ocean of darkness? Perhaps they were there, if earth did exist during those eras. Did not Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, belong to one of those earlier trial creations, that it sank into the sea because of the occult weight it could not bear? Possibly. Of the previous pralayas, the earth does carry the psychic memory, of that dreadful past, and is kind of scared if she will not be duped again, during the present cycle. The danger is, if what had happened earlier is going to get repeated, Heaven going to lose the race against Hell. Therefore the question: is Savitri going to succeed in her present incarnation? But she must.

Hell and Heaven have once again stepped into the lists of darkness, and the wrestling is no-holds barred. To put it differently: Heaven is running the gauntlet but is not sure of coming through successfully. They are doing the race once more, a race that takes place on earth—the cosmic race on green fields of the earth: the racers, Heaven and Hell, have to come to the Earth and prove their mettle. The racecourse is here, the earth. In their own respective realms Hell and Heaven live as undisputed monarchs, Heaven in Heaven and Hell in Hell, and there is no clash, no possibility of interaction, no conflict, no collision, each a well-defined world, excluded from the other, safe against attacks from the other, each a protected typal existence. And yet their interests are antagonistic to each other, interests, contentions which can be settled one way or the other only on the earth as the combat zone, earth the theatre where the gruesome drama of life and death is being enacted. All the forces gather here, each one rushing to claim for itself the precious soul of the earth. The War of Kurukshetra is fought here, and the Trojan War, and the great World War II. Indeed, “Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,” the chosen place to settle the issue of creation.

In the context of this unceasing race Narad’s visit to the earth, when Savitri discovered love, is extremely significant. He has also the joy of participating in the incarnate Force’s work by sharing his knowledge with her in the mortal world, and the joy of seeing the spirit make death its splendid opportunity in the evolutionary march, though uncertain might seem the outcome. There is even a kind of pragmatism in the visit; for, the danger is so great that the very existence of his own world, his Vaikuntha itself, would be in jeopardy. Should the conscious Will fail in the face of the inconscient antagonism the entire creation, including that Paradise, would be dissolved; there would be Pralaya. Savitri’s love was a play with such a dangerous fire. “What power forced the immortal spirit to birth?”—he was asked. And his response was a grand justification of the ways of God to man; more than that, he stirred up, prompted Savitri to begin her Yoga of the Conquest of Death. Death is the spirit’s opportunity no doubt, but now that role of Death must be terminated. For that Savitri in her soul of sacrifice must gather lonely strength to meet the Adversary. She is indeed standing on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom, and hers. On the last desperate verge she must conquer or fail, her single greatness must rise in that last dire scene. This is what Narad foresees and shares that knowledge with Savitri:

A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers,
Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge…
In that tremendous silence lone and lost
Of a deciding hour in the world’s fate,
In her soul’s climbing beyond mortal time
When she stands sole with Death or sole with God
Apart upon a silent desperate brink,
Alone with her self and death and destiny…
She only can save herself and save the world.
O queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,
Come not between her and her hour of Fate.
Her hour must come and none can intervene:
Think not to turn her from her heaven-sent task,
Strive not to save her from her own high will.
Thou hast no place in that tremendous strife;
Thy love and longing are not arbiters there,
Leave the world’s fate and her to God’s sole guard.

Narad is absolutely certain about Satyavan’s death and he has knowledge of the grim battle Savitri has to fight, but beyond that he has no definite idea of the outcome:

It is decreed and Satyavan must die;
The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.
What else shall be is written in her soul
But till the hour reveals the fateful script,
The writing waits illegible and mute.

However, he knows that

Even though all falters and falls and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are death and night,
God-given her strength can battle against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone seems close
And no human strength can hinder or can help.

That was the occult certitude fixed by Narad even while he gave utterance to the Word of Fate. Though his vision of the three times, his trīkāladŗśtī, cannot see a definite outcome of the battle swaying this way or that, he knows the transcendental aspect involved in it.

In the context of the Mother’s work and the “dangerous brink” on which she would stand while busy with the physical transformation, we may get some idea from Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (Dada): “This time it will be successful; it will not fail, it will not end in a tragedy. A lot of people are waiting for it; the gods are waiting for it too, for the success. She was feeling numbness in the feet. She wanted to walk. We made her walk. Her lips turned blue. She fell down. We put her in the bed again. After a couple of days she again wanted to walk; perhaps she thought that her legs would get paralysed, because of disuse, and that she would not be able to do her work. But we did not allow her, knowing what had happened on the earlier occasion. She said: raise me up from the bed. We used to lift her up now and then. She was getting bedsores. She used to sit or remain inclined in one single posture for long times. It was difficult to do massage. We did not allow her to walk. She was convinced about the supramental transformation in her present body; otherwise she would not have done all this. She was told by her Lord to try it. She did it even in the face of opposition from some cells. She was a fighter. She wanted to fight to the end. But numbness in the feet was a sign of failing of the heart. Blood-circulation was not proper. This was the first sign…” (See also, Supplement to Mother India, 5 December 1973. What is presented here is based on what Dada had told me in 1990)

She was standing alone on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers, tells us Narad who has vision of all the three parts of time, past-present-future, trīkāladŗiśtī. She, carrying the world’s future with her, must conquer or fail. On a last desperate verge, close to extinction’s edge, alone with Death, she must fight. In that fight all is lost or all is won for Man. In that tremendous silence, in that dire ultimate hour in which the entire fate of the world was hanging, alone she must conquer or alone she must suffer defeat. The human Divine is poised for a mighty leap.

Physical transformation is victory and crown of the earthly evolution coming in the wake of a bitter fight against the archetypal Force of Darkness.

In this enormous world standing apart
In the mightiness of her silent spirit’s will,
In the passion of her soul of sacrifice
Her lonely strength facing the universe,
Affronting fate, asks not man’s help nor god’s:
Sometimes one life is charged with earth’s destiny,
It cries not for succour from the time-bound powers.
Alone she is equal to her mighty task.
Intervene not in a strife too great for thee,
A struggle too deep for mortal thought to sound,
Its question to this Nature’s rigid bounds
When the soul fronts nude of garbs the infinite,
Its too vast theme of a lonely mortal will
Pacing the silence of eternity.
As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven…
The great are strongest when they stand alone.
A God-given might of being is their force…
The soul that can live alone with itself meets God;
Its lonely universe is their rendezvous.
A day may come when she must stand unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers…

This is how Narad the heavenly sage sees it. The struggle is too deep; but the conscious Will has taken human shape as Savitri and therefore it is she alone who can save herself and save the world. Her hour must come and no human will or passion can hold it back.

Although vanquishing Death is a divine decision taken in answer to the forceful prayer of Aswapati to the Divine Mother, it has to be implemented by her by incarnating herself here. It has to be done through an instrumental being and she herself becomes one. Now that human Savitri has to gear up for achieving the redoubtable victory. Her work is in the physical and the very cells have to respond to the call. There are some cells who know or have faith that it is the Supreme who is going to transform them; but the others say, “Ah!” Savitri has to suffer for these “Ah”-wallahs.

If we have to pick up three important elements that most concern Savitri after taking birth as Aswapati’s daughter, then these could be: the discovery of Love, initiation and establishing through Shakti Yoga the might of the Divine Mother in her soul, and the decisive encounter with Death as an Antagonist as well as the Giver of supreme Boons. Only when Love is freed from the present stranglehold of Death can she plead to the Supreme for Love as a gift to the Earth. Only then “Nature shall live to manifest secret God,” and “This earthly life become the life divine.”

Surely such a vast spiritual change is not going to be an easy victory. But God-given is Savitri’s might and whatever stands in the way of earthly life becoming the life divine shall be transformed or eliminated.

RYD

…only the unborn spirit's timeless power
Can lift the yoke imposed by birth in Time

Human destinies born in Time can turn into true post-human destinies, in Time, only by the unborn spirit’s timeless power—and there is no other way, nānyah panthāh asti, or as the Upanishad would say: “There is no other path for the great journey.” And yet our willing and conscious participation is expected. Post-human destinies come unto human destinies only by invoking them in various ways, actually in countless ways, by our spiritual, philosophic, scientific, religious, aesthetic, emotional, physical, technological, industrial, commercial pursuits in life and in dream and in reflection and in vision and in idea of the truth and the beautiful and the joyous. Our thought and feeling and will and our soul and spirit can open out to the timeless power waiting to enter into the scheme of things here. When this happens, then there is no more the yoke imposed by birth in Time. Then is thrown off the legacy of the past, dissolved the vanished forms which were accepted blindly by the body and soul, accepted in a kind of pragmatism to progress. This has happened to Savitri, the interminable line erased; to an extent it can, in fact must happen to us also.

RYD

Motionlessly Swift
Yama has snatched the soul of Satyavan but Savitri is still keeping her hold on it. He commands her: (Savitri, p. 575)

Relax thy grasp; this body is earth's and thine,
His spirit now belongs to a greater power.
Woman, thy husband suffers.

And Savitri knowing the occult aspects, draws back her heart's force that clasped his body. But now as if called, she rises and stands gathered in her lonely strength,

Like one who drops his mantle for a race
And waits the signal, motionlessly swift.
She knew not to what course: her spirit above
On the crypt-summit of her secret form
Like one left sentinel on a mountain crest,
A fiery-footed splendour puissant-winged,
Watched flaming-silent, with her voiceless soul
Like a still sail upon a windless sea.
White passionless it rode, an anchored might,
Waiting what far-ridged impulse should arise
Out of the eternal depths and cast its surge.

Yama, with the soul of Satyavan with him, starts moving towards his abode in the deep South. Savitri follows and keeps on demanding back the soul of the deceased. Yama refuses. There is the clash of force against force, the occult battle becoming more and more fierce. In it Savitri doesn’t seem to have any likelihood of winning. For a moment she withdraws into her inner self, summoning the strength that alone can reverse the outcome. (Savitri, pp. 639-40)

Intent upon her silent will she walked
On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,
A floating veil of visions in her front,
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.
But now her spirit's flame of conscient force
Retiring from a sweetness without fruit
Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within
In a deep room in meditation's house.
For only there could dwell the soul's firm truth:
Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high houselord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit.
All still compelled went gliding on unchanged,
Still was the order of these worlds reversed:
The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
And she behind was leader of their march
And they in front were followers of her will.
Onward they journeyed through the drifting ways
Vaguely companioned by the glimmering mists.
But faster now all fled as if perturbed
Escaping from the clearness of her soul.
A heaven-bird upon jewelled wings of wind
Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,
By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,
On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul.
Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,
In the dark front of Death, a failing star.
Above was the unseen balance of his fate.

In that eternal Yajna, being carried out constantly in her House of Meditation, everything changes, and changes in a most decisive way. The prospects of winning the race have become assuredly splendid. Savitri has now become, from behind, the Leader of the March and everything is in her full control. Such indeed is the efficacy of the Vedic Sacrifice. And here is a Sacrifice which is being performed by the Lord and his Spouse themselves, by the Sat-Purusha and the Adya-Shakti, the omniscient Being and the omnipotent Consciousness-Force. No power can now stop Savitri. The race is settled in the glorious Yajna.

RYD