[Based on a talk
given at Savitri Bhavan on 5 October 2006, Part I. A good deal of
material presented here has been drawn from my book Narad’s Arrival at
Madra.]
What are the five songs
Narad is singing on his way from
Let us read
the description in the text, as we have at the beginning of the Book of Fate.
He beheld the cosmic
Being at his task,
His eyes measured the
spaces, gauged the depths,
His inner gaze the
movements of the soul,
He saw the eternal
labour of the Gods,
And looked upon the
life of beasts and men.
Here are all the actions of sight—beholding
the cosmic Being’s task, eyes measuring the spaces, gazing the movements of the
soul, seeing the labour of the Gods, and looking upon beasts and men. Narad
sees great things with which the cosmic Being or Virat Purusha is at the task
of upholding and promoting the order of the worlds. Given in swift and
suggestive manner, we already have here the picture of the travail of the evolution.
But as Narad is approaching the earth, there occurs readjustment in his disposition:
A change now fell upon
the singer's mood,
A rapture and a pathos
moved his voice;
He sang no more of
light that never wanes,
And oneness and pure
everlasting bliss,
He sang no more the
deathless heart of love,
His chant was a hymn of
Ignorance and Fate.
The travail begins. Narad is entering into this
transient and sorrowful world, grim and death-afflicted. Not the joys of bright
heaven, but the grey sadness of life has entered into his song, its gloom and ephemerality
and its smallness. That sadness seems to reside for ever in the future of this
mortal creation. Yet what Narad is chanting is a hymn; it is the praise of
Ignorance and Fate. It is a powerful hymn revealing the Truth that is present behind
the vastness of this Ignorance, behind primordial Ignorance and Fate, revealing
the truth-real of Ignorance and Fate, their presence at the origin of things.
He sang the name of
Vishnu and the birth
And joy and passion of
the mystic world,
And how the stars were
made and life began
And the mute regions
stirred with the throb of a soul.
There are a thousand dubious forces working in
this world, of Ignorance and Fate, and there occurs the birth of Vishnu. He the
all-pervasive not only comes from time to time, but his is also the permanent
birth, the birth of the eternal in time which now must be as the name of Vishnu.
There is a mystic joy in it, a mystic passion. The first sound of the coming of
the cheerful soul of life is heard, the green rustle of a happy movement. In
Narad’s song, of the name of Vishnu, is the bright vigour that can give a form
to the divinity that through the aeonic movement is slowly shaping this
creation. The long travail is on the verge of bearing rich and golden fruit in
the greatness of the name of that Godhead himself.
He sang the Inconscient
and its secret self,
Its power omnipotent
knowing not what it does,
All shaping without
will or thought or sense,
Its blind unerring
occult mystery,
And darkness yearning
towards the eternal Light,
And Love that broods
within the dim abyss
And waits the answer of
the human heart,
And death that climbs
to immortality.
Narad sings of the inconscient Self and the
somnambulist Force, they presently shaping our will and thought and the senses.
In that shaping is an in-built infallibility, though it is of the blind Occult’s,
and there is the sufficient thrust behind it, propelling it on this adventure
of the unknown consciousness; this is possible because of the Wisdom present behind
all the unseeing and unknowing acts. From darkness to light, tamaso mā
jyotir gamaya, from death
to immortality, mŗtyor mā amŗtam gamaya,—that is the celebration of ascent
as a result of those acts. This ascending movement has become possible because
of the sacrifice Love made long ago, at the zero hour marking the beginning of
the evolutionary process. The cosmic Being’s task, the hymn of Ignorance and
Fate, the throb of the soul would then mean the assurance of a marvellous
creation coming out of the Womb of Darkness.
He sang of the Truth
that cries from Night’s blind deeps,
And the Mother Wisdom
hid in Nature’s breast
And the Idea that
through her dumbness works
And the miracle of her
transforming hands,
Of life that slumbers
in the stone and sun
And mind subliminal in
mindless life,
And the consciousness
that wakes in beasts and men.
The cry of the Truth is the cry of the
involved Being’s, the Being, the Purusha, locked up in bottomless pit of the
Involution; it is that cry which is trying to emerge out of the Night. The wise
dynamic Force with her feeling and concern for this Truth, and the working of
the Idea though alienated from the Real,—they both are present in the mute breast
of Nature. The result of these high involvements, the involvement of the
Truth-Idea-Force, is the growth of consciousness that has presently arrived at
the human stage. All this progress has taken place in Ignorance; but being the
cry of the Truth itself, it shall proceed beyond it and step into the vasts of
Knowledge. This in the very nature of things is inevitable, willed as it is in
the eminence of the manifesting Real-Idea.
He sang of the glory
and marvel still to be born,
Of Godhead throwing off
at last its veil,
Of bodies made divine
and life made bliss,
Immortal sweetness
clasping immortal might,
Heart sensing heart,
thought looking straight at thought,
And the delight when
every barrier falls,
And the transfiguration
and the ecstasy.
This is the fifth song Narad is singing when
he is about to alight upon Earth. The theme is of the glory and marvel entering
into the unfolding evolution. By this evolving soul are left behind the
dreadful abysms of Ignorance and it is now ready to step into Knowledge; the
broad vistas of Truth-Idea stretch invisibly on; the veil is getting thinner
and thinner; the splendid possibility of divine Wonder living in Matter’s house
has been unequivocally asserted. The life divine shall be real in the divine’s
birth on earth. There is harmony and sweetness and joy; the involved Spirit has
triumphed over the obduracy of the physical Nature. In the divine multitude’s
oneness is the victory of the Spirit. Out of that shall arise a new and
marvellous creation. Sad thoughts have become sweet songs. The long-suffering
existence is now changing into a thing of beauty which is a joy for ever.
By the process of an amazing poetic logic,
with the swift-running force of a narrative, revelatory with the power to
realise what is revealed, the poet has accomplished the miracle of tracing the
entire course of this measureless evolution, accomplished just with a few tens
of lines the stupendous. Out of the Inconscience and the obscurity of Matter
came first Life and then Mind; what is now expected is the glory and marvel of
the divine birth, the gold-green organic birth of the name of Vishnu here. Such
is the delightful song of Narad in the rasa of felicitous devotion,
imbued with its bliss. This song has the entirety of sweetness to bring joy to
the hostiles who have stood too long in the way of this growth of consciousness.
They are happy that they will soon be vanquished in the greatness of the Spirit
and that, in its victory, their horrendous task will get terminated; the
product of the dark Inconscience shall be metamorphosed into its divine element.
And as he sang the
demons wept with joy
Foreseeing the end of
their long dreadful task
And the defeat for
which they hoped in vain,
And glad release from
their self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom they came.
Evolution need not have been a painful process,
explains Sri Aurobindo in one of his letters. But then a dark possibility could
have been there, left unattended, remaining untapped, and it had to be worked
out and exhausted, its potential turned into a divine opportunity. In this
many-dimensional unfoldment of the divine delight the infinity of Inconscience
had to be met in its full scope and operative might. In response to every
descent that had occurred until now, it always threw answers antagonistically
to distort it, if not destroy it. Therefore, triumphing over it means
establishing a greater delight in mode of the very existence-consciousness
itself. The demons now return into the supreme Origin from where they had come,
back to the bright Womb of Creation. Thus is cleared the hazardless way for the
evolution to grow from lesser knowledge to greater knowledge, to the widening
infinity of knowledge. The miracle is of reaching, via the gainful Ignorance,
the divine multitude by the mechanism offered by such an extraordinary
possibility.
After a long journey from
This theory of evolution traced in Narad’s
five songs, appears in different forms in different places in the epic’s
narrative. We have a long description of it, a lucid and gorgeous essay in verse,
when Savitri launches herself on the yogic journey exploring the inner depths
of her being. (pp. 477-87) The first thing she notices is the cosmic past,
moving through it as in a dream. She notices the shadowy beginnings of the
world-fate, how from the indeterminate state creation took its first mysterious
steps and how the
human creature was born in Time. By the labour of the blind World-Energy a
conscious being was made. “This is the little surface of man's life”, man who
lives unknown to himself. And yet there is the ancient aspiration for
God-Light-Freedom-Immortality:
Man in the world’s life works out
the dreams of God.
But all is there, even God’s
opposites;
He is a little front of Nature's
works,
A thinking outline of a cryptic
Force.
But there “are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous
Powers”, the Titan and the Fury and the Djinn are constantly at work, and
Tremendous forms and faces mount
dim steps
And stare at times into his
living-rooms.
But it is only the soul housing the divine Might who can
dislodge them. There is a guardian power, there are Hands that save, and the calm
heavenly eyes regard the human scene:
Our greater self of knowledge waits
for us,
A supreme light in the
truth-conscious Vast:
It sees from summits beyond
thinking mind,
It moves in a splendid air
transcending life.
It shall descend and make earth’s
life divine.
Truth made the world, not a blind
Nature-Force.
And how did man arrive on the evolutionary scene? He
arrived with the descent of the Mental Being, Manomaya Purusha, when the
life-form had evolved with sufficient scope for him to step in. This man the mental
being forms the needed bridge between Animal and God leading to the possibilities
that lie ahead for him, as much as they stepping into him:
In the prone obscure beginnings of
the race
The human grew in the bowed apelike
man.
He stood erect, a godlike form and
force,
And a soul’s thoughts looked out
from earth-born eyes;
Man stood erect, he wore the
thinker’s brow:
He looked at heaven and saw his
comrade stars;
A vision came of beauty and greater
birth
Slowly emerging from the heart’s
chapel of light
And moved in a white lucent air of
dreams.
He saw his being’s unrealised
vastnesses,
He aspired and housed the nascent
demi-god.
And where is he going to go?
At last climbing a long and narrow
stair
He stood alone on the high roof of
things
And saw the light of a spiritual
sun.
Aspiring he transcends his earthly
self;
He stands in the largeness of his
soul new-born…
He reaches his fount of
immortality,
He calls the Godhead into his
mortal life.
In her yogic consciousness Savitri re-lived the entire
evolutionary experience and even as a portion of the mighty power descended in
her, she saw three possibilities of the future that can open out with the
discovery of the soul:
It marked her the centre of a
wide-drawn scheme,
Dreamed in the passion of her
far-seeing spirit
To mould humanity into God’s own
shape
And lead this great blind struggling
world to light
Or a new world discover or create.
Earth must transform herself and
equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth’s
mortal state.
That is the best the past can disclose, leaving the
alternatives open:
·
mould
humanity in God’s shape;
·
discover
a new world;
·
create
a new world.
But whatever be the future course the stipulation is,
Earth must transform herself into Heaven or else Heaven descend into earth’s
mortal state. By what method, through which agency the transformation is going
to take place might seem to be not so important; what is important is, it must
happen. Which one is going to happen is left open at this stage—the past
doesn’t know the future. Indeed, it is the divine Will and the divine executive
Force together who are going to work out the desirable but cherished
alternative.
But here comes Narad singing the song of the
transfiguration and the ecstasy. There is power in the rendering of his song,
and whatever he is going to sing is going to happen. Even as he sings of the
glory and marvel to be born, the demons weep with joy, they foreseeing their
dreadful work soon coming to an end, the long-expected moment approaching in
the earthly time. In it will come to a close their self-chosen doom they,
having finished their terrible and dreadful task, returning to the One from whom
they had come. Narad’s arrival, rather his singing on the way the great name of
Vishnu, defines that moment. Such is the certainty of
the song, the power of the words and of the recital.
Therefore, in the context of the evolutionay prospects,
Narad’s action is going to be extremely crucial, decisive in its fundamentals. If
any one of these three alternatives is to materialise then the imperative is, the
true inner soul should be first found. As Savitri has been marked to be the “centre
of this wide-drawn scheme” in the unfoldment of the future, it is necessary
that, after the survey of the cosmic past, she must set herself on that path,
of the soul’s discovery. Narad’s singing of the song of the approaching transfiguration
and the ecstasy, and in its anticipation the weeping of the demons with joy,
are indicative of the possibility of Savitri doing all her work in the essential
discovery of her soul. Narad in that subtle way, by the logic of the luminous occult-mysterious,
becomes instrumental for her to begin the Yoga, the difficult and unique Yoga
of the Conquest of Death. He proves himself to be the benign preceptor of the
ready human soul and helper in promoting God’s will and God’s work in the
creation, he the “slave of God”.
Narad has arrived in the palace hall, and
there Aswapati and his wife
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.
A mighty shuddering
coil of ecstasy
Crept through the deep
heart of the universe.
Out of her Matter’s
stupor, her mind’s dreams,
She woke, she looked
upon God’s unveiled face.
There is yet another song connected with
Narad’s present visit to Aswapati. He has delivered the message, of the death
of Satyavan whom Savitri has chosen as her life’s partner, her mate and equal;
the death is to occur exactly one year after their marriage, a death that
cannot be prevented by any means, earthly or heavenly, occult or spiritual. But
there is something yet wonderful which Narad has done: he has not only
“steel”ed the will of Savitri, to remain firm in her resolve of marriage with
Satyavan; he has initiated Savitri on the Path of the Yoga, Yoga of the
Conquest of Death. He has done it and is now ready to take his leave from the
royal family.
On his way back to his abode in Heaven Narad continues
to sing, and the echo is heard in the listening hush of the Earth’s soul. This is
his seventh song: (p. 462)
He spoke and ceased and
left the earthly scene.
Away from the strife
and suffering on our globe,
He turned towards his
far-off blissful home.
A brilliant arrow
pointing straight to heaven,
The luminous body of
the eternal seer
Assailed the purple
glory of the noon
And disappeared like a
receding star
Vanishing into the
light of the Unseen;
But still a cry was
heard in the infinite,
And still to the
listening soul on mortal earth
A high and far
imperishable voice
Chanted the anthem of
eternal love.
It is the Anthem of Eternal Love, Love whose
concern is the mortal Earth, Love who moves the sun and every star in the sky
of the night, Love that brings all genuine happinesses to us. In that sense
what Narad has done is something absolutely wonderful. He came and spoke of the
death of Satyavan, indicated the dangerous brink on which one day Savitri would
be standing, standing face to face with Death whose opposition stands in the
way of the divine Love’s manifestation on mortal Earth. This manifestation of
Love has to be the culmination, and the true beginning, of the glory and
triumph of the evolutionary soul’s progress on the Earth. So, Narad begins his
journey with the Song of Evolution and concludes it, on his way back home, with
the Anthem of Eternal Love.