Aswapati’s Savitri-Yajna
The poetic narrative of Savitri written by Vyasa, just at the flowering of his creative youth, in the “morning of his genius”, later got incorporated in the Great Epic, the Mahabharata. It is a minor episode in it, upākhyāna, an illustrative episode which appears in Vana Parva, the Book of the Forest, and consists of only 300 shlokas, or 600 hemistichs. In it Savitri’s incarnation is in response to King Aswapati’s invocation to the Goddess Savitri.

The story is narrated by Markaņdeya to Yudhişthira when the five Pāņdavas, with their common wife Draupadi, were staying as twelve-year exiles in the forest. Yudhişthira asked the Rishi to tell him if, in the history of the world, there was any woman who had suffered the way Draupadi was presently suffering. He was puzzled that, in spite of her being born from the fire-altar, yajňa-kuņda, being a woman of splendid birth, and extremely virtuous, she should bear such anguish and hardship in this world. The story begins as follows:

Long ago in Madra there ruled a noble king. An ardent follower of the Dharma, the righteous conduct in life, he was of devout in nature and was firmly established in the truth. He was respectful to the seers and sages, and to the elders, and was kind to the citizens of his country. His name was Aswapati. Performer of Yajnas, presiding over charities, skilful in work, one who had conquered the senses, he was loved by the people of his kingdom and himself loved them well. Aswapati’s one concern was the welfare of everybody, and towards that end he spared no effort. But he was issueless.

With the passing of time, and with the advancing of age, this caused him great affliction. Therefore, with the intention of getting a child, he undertook very hard and arduous tapasya, extending over eighteen long years. Everyday he offered a hundred-thousand oblations to the Goddess Savitri. He observed rules of the strictest continence, and held all the senses fully under control, and took just a little food, and that too only in the sixth part of the day.

At last, pleased with his devotion and worship, the Goddess herself appeared out of the sacrificial flames in front of him, and blessed him. She granted him a boon, of fulfilling an appropriate wish of his. She even told him that she, understanding the purpose of his great austerities, had already spoken to Brahma about his desire to have a son. She further told him that he would soon get a daughter, beautiful and effulgent, kanyā tejasvinī, and he should not have any hesitation or reservation in accepting this boon. It had been bestowed, she reassured him, by the great Father-Creator himself and he should be happy about it.

In proper time Aswapati, who ever abided by the righteous Law, established his seed in the womb of his eldest queen, the companion of his Dharma, Mālawi. In due time, she gave birth to a baby-daughter. Given as she was by the Goddess Savitri, who was pleased by the Savitri-oblations, the father and the wise ones named her Savitri.

Here is the rendering of the relevant Sanskrit text regarding the birth of Savitri:

Markaņdeya tells: Listen, O King Yudhişthira. The most precious fortune, which the women of noble upbringing desire and cherish, that is what Princess Savitri won for them all.

Long ago in Madra there reigned a saintly king, devout and a follower of the dharma, he lived in the pious company of the Brahmins, and of the great virtuous, and he was united with the truth, and had conquered the senses.

Performer of Yajňas, presiding over charities, skilful in work, loved by the city-dwellers and by all the people pf his kingdom, one who was absorbed in the welfare of everybody, there ruled the Sovereign of the Earth, named Aswapati.

Of a forgiving nature, one whose speech was truth, and who had subdued the senses, though he was so he had no issue; with the advancing of age this increased his affliction greatly.

Therefore, he resorted, with the concern of getting a child, to holy austere practices; only at fixed times he ate a little, and he observed continence, and restrained the senses fully.

Daily a hundred-thousand oblations he, the most excellent among the kings, offered to Savitri; and it was only in the sixth part of the day that he took a small quantity of food.

Eighteen years passed this way, he being given to observances of such rules of penance; at the end of the eighteen-year period, Savitri was much pleased with him.

Then, O Yudhişthira, rising from the sacrificial flames in her splendid form she appeared in front of the King, exceedingly glad as she was; and she, the giver of the boons, spoke this way the word of benediction to the Sovereign of the Earth, Savitri to King Aswapati established in the regular practices.

Savitri said: O King sovereign, I am immensely pleased by your purity and charity, by your abstinence and self-restraint, the observance of the rules of austerity, and all the heart with which you worshipped me in devotion. O Aswapati, Ruler of Madra, ask what you desire, the boon; falter not in any way, in performance of the dharma.

Aswapati said: O Goddess, it was with the intention of begetting children for performance of religious rites that I had initiated this holy sacrifice; grant several sons that the line of my ancestors may grow. If so pleased Thou art, O Goddess, I ask for this one boon that I entreat of Thee; the twice-born, the wise of the world, tell me that proper begetting of progeny is a great dharma.

Savitri said: Fully aware of this intention of yours, O King, did I speak long before to the Great Father, God the Creator himself, to grant a child to you. And as ordained by the self-born Brahma, indeed by his gracious favour, soon you will have on earth an effulgent daughter, kanyā tejasvinī, O gentle-natured. You should not, in the least, utter anything or argue against it; it is bestowed by the Creator-Father that I tell it so, pleased that I am with you.

Aswapati gratefully acknowledges the promise given to him by the Goddess. In fullness of time, a lovely girl, lotus-eyed, and beautiful, was born. Given as she was by the Goddess Savitri, she was named Savitri.

RYD

A strange comparison
Oftentimes a comparison is made between the original Savitri-tale in the Mahabharata and Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri. It is even asserted, rather too enthusiastically, that Sri Aurobindo’s work has nothing to do with the tale of conjugal love given to us by Vyasa. And yet the story-line runs more or less in the same sequence, with profound spiritual connotations and nuances, dhārmic and yogic. We should also keep in mind that Sri Aurobindo calls his Savitri both a legend and a symbol. Its deep symbolic connection with the legend is traced to one of the myths belonging to the Vedic cycle. Indeed, the story of Savitri is both parable and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale, the story has several suggestions and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite evocative of the issues involved in this mortal creation, mŗtyuloka, the creation to which we belong. Therefore, before we pass any scholarly or academic comments on the ancient tale, we must acknowledge first the authentic truth-substance and truth-values it is in possession of. In fact, had it not been so, it would have hardly served for Sri Aurobindo the purpose of describing his spirituality, his philosophy of the life divine, his yogic attainments, and their possibilities. If it is such a wonderful support, ādhāra, it has to be outstanding in its spirit and in its matter. Not only the framework, but there is also something housed in the frame which is genuinely valuable.

The characters described in the story are “incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.” This aspect of the ancient description, of incarnation of conscious Forces, is something absolutely wonderful which only goes to show the greatness of the revelation made by it. In our hurry to elevate Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri we tend to pooh-pooh the past creations or presentations, least realising that, in the process, we are actually bringing down his Savitri from the spiritual majesty and loftiness it has in their midst.

A few things are at once revealed to us to grasp the truer significance of the Savitri-tale that has come down to us as a tradition. Savitri is an incarnation which took place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened out. The work is to open out the ways of Immortality; but what is that “whole thing” that had to be opened out, for which she had come here? And how is she going to do that? These are important questions which arise in our mind vis-à-vis the gripping story of Savitri. That is its merit, its luminous plus point. There was that awareness of the “whole thing”, forming the quintessential truth of this entire evolutionary creation, a splendid awareness indeed.

It is in this background that we must dismiss some of the comments made while talking about the epic Savitri and the ancient story as is narrated in the Mahabharata: “The first mistake people can make regarding Savitri is to assume that it deals with the story as is told in the Mahabharata, Vana Parva. This is a fundamental mistake. It is true that the particular sage, the particular person who recites to Yudhişthira the story about the power of conjugal felicity, had the intuition of the Savitri story.” But the intention of Mārkaņdeya’s narration of the story is not regarding “the power of conjugal felicity”. It is about the power of dhārmic conduct in winning victory over the stubborn-most antagonist. The legend itself has already in it a powerful symbol.

Then, there are others who make puerile comparisons with Vyasa’s Savitri and the Savitri as given by Sri Aurobindo. It is said that the whole episode connected with Aswapati’s getting a boon from Goddess Savitri is sort of disposed of by Vyasa in just a few shlokas, whereas Sri Aurobindo gives it to us in about ten thousand lines. Is that really the greatness of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri? What about the basic contents? The ancient realisation was that, it is by the power of Yajna that the righteous Dharma can be established to promote the conduct of life and it is that which must be followed in the greatness of its worth and value. We should not underrate this aspect in any way.

Sometimes it is also said that Savitri “resuscitated” Satyavan when he collapsed in her lap. That would totally knock off the occult basis of Savitri conquering Death.

The fundamental truth is that the birth of Savitri is related to the Yajna Aswapati performed over a long period of time, as if showing the “difficult and painful task” he was engaged in. The Gods don’t oblige so very easily, and particularly so if the boon is going to be of an exceptional kind.

RYD

The call and the sanction
Goddess Savitri takes human birth in the tapasya of Aswapati. He prays to her to incarnate herself and redeem the lot of this suffering mortality. She agrees. In the story by Vyasa as we have in the Mahabharata, she tells Aswapati that it is by the sanction of the Creator-Father Brahma himself that a radiant daughter will soon be born to him. In it is avowed, in a decisive way, the Will of the Supreme coming into play in this evolutionary world. The executive Shakti working in the authority of the Supreme Being is a great occult-spiritual truth and the Savitri-story upholds it in a convincing manner—the Purusha as the giver of consent without which the Prakriti as the doer of works will not do anything; he wills, and she executes. That is the operative mechanism, the Consciousness-Force carrying out the Will or samkalpa of the Truth-Being, the Power and the Presence in their inalienable operation together in this way. This is the fundamental aspect and everywhere that kind of spiritual connotation, that mighty charge is present in the original story. Which means, it is inappropriate to belittle it employing our small faculties. Told in the manner of a story, we can say that in the evolutionary process: the role of Savitri is to implement; the role of Aswapati is to invoke her grace, with the ground having been prepared by him for her active dynamism; the role of Brahma as the Creator is to establish, through Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya, the new world in this mortal creation. It is not Aswapati’s concern to get the sanction from the Supreme; it is Savitri’s concern. It is she who gets it.

In this context let us read the last paragraph of Sri Aurobindo’s 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.

There has to be the call, and there has to be the sanction; only then can the divine Grace descend and carry out the supramental change. This is so both in the individual and the cosmic workings. But Aswapati’s tapasya and Savitri’s response are more in the universal context than they as individuals. The symbolic aspect of the legend is, Aswapati doing yoga-tapasya for eighteen years and imploring Goddess Savitri to grant him the boon of a son; the Goddess herself obtaining the sanction from Brahma who in his wisdom decides to give him not a son but a daughter; the birth of a radiant girl as Savitri is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to this world. Indeed, “a world’s desire compelled her mortal birth.”

In the Veda, Agni plays the role of a mediator between the gods and the offerer of sacrifices to them. He takes the havis to the gods and brings gifts for him from them. Among several types of Yajnas, putrakāmeşţhi is a special one performed for begetting progeny. It is kāmya karma, an action carried out with a definite intention or with a specific desire, here for the sake of having a child. Valmiki’s Ramayana describes such a Yajna, performed by Dasharatha under the guidance of Rishi Rishyasringa. All these Vedic connotations are present in the Vyasa-tale of Savitri, and Sri Aurobindo does not disregard them in his epic, Savitri. Without a doubt, they have reassuring significances, made absolutely splendid in his yogic fire.

RYD

The divine birth from the fire of sacrifice
The birth of Rama in the Ramayana, far back in the Vedic Age, is related to the Yajna his father had carried out according to the custom of the day. King Dasharatha of the Ikshwaku line was issueless and that had caused him worry. The illustrious line was threatened to get terminated and that would have set off havoc everywhere; the maintenance of a respectable and conscientious social order was an aspect of the righteous ruling and the king had a certain responsibility, an obligation towards it. In the efficacy of the Vedic Yajna he could, he knew, discharge it and accordingly he decided to resort to it. Dasharatha consulted the great rishis of the land and under their guidance performed the difficult aśwamedha yajna, the Horse Sacrifice. Rishyashringa was the Rishi-in-Charge for the conduct of the sacrifice. On a spacious tract on the northern bank of the River Sharayu was constructed the eagle-shaped fire-altar, the bird with bright and beautiful wings, suparņā, of lovely plumage in the gracefulness of whose flight arrives success. All the details of the Yajna were fully organised.

In the meanwhile the Gods of Heaven approached Brahma, complaining how they were subdued by Ravana the Asura who had received from him the boon of immunity from their hands. In his extreme arrogance, the Asura menaced all the worlds and there was the breakdown of the Law of the Truth. Brahma assured the Gods that soon Vishnu himself would take birth as an Avatar and deal with the Asura. It was also mentioned that he would take birth as an Avatar when the king would perform the putrakāmeşţhi yajňa, the Yajna by which the desire to have a son is fulfilled.

The Yajna was coming to its triumphant conclusion, when the fire seemed to burn with an extraordinary glow. A being of transcendental majesty and splendour arose out of it, ready to bestow a boon on the worshipper who had instituted the wonderful sacrifice. In the course of time was born the Avatar. The desire of the world and the desire of the Gods compelled the mortal birth of Vishnu.

RYD

The birth of the Avatar
Dasharatha has successfully completed the horse sacrifice and the six seasons have rolled out. It is now the ninth day of the Chaitra month (April-May), the presiding deity of the day is Aditi and the ruling star Punarvasu. The asterism is in the ascendant, and five of the nine planets are at their highest position. When it is noon, Kausalya, the eldest queen of Dasharatha, gives birth to a son, named Rama who has all the divine attributes. He has lotus-red eyes, long arms, and has roseate lips, and the voice is that of a drumbeat; he is the delight of the Ikshwaku line, and is adored not only by the people of the kingdom but also by the great beings of all the worlds. Indeed, Rama is the very embodiment of Vishnu himself. The birth of the Avatar has taken place.

We have in St Matthew:

On the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a holy man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary the wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins… Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us… Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east of Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him… When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh… And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt…

It seems that there was an intense aspiration invoking the divine birth; possibly, the three wise men must have invoked it. It was so in the case of Rama, and so too must have been in the case of Jesus. Ramakrishna, it is said, saw the coming of Vivekananda. Great supernatural events occurred prior to the arrival. Was there something of the kind in the case of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Who knows? But there must have been, and there is no doubt about it. Great forces gather up when the Divine is poised to take such a birth.

As one aspect of the coming of the Avatar, there is the question as to how the Avatar prepares his physical body. Sri Aurobindo writes in the Essays on the Gita that, the evolving Avatar imself “prepares his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yugé-yugé.” It is the birth of the conscious Godhead in our humanity, a soul-birth.

In the Purusha Sukta there is the celebration of a great sacrifice by which the order of the worlds is established. All is founded in the Sacrifice and therefore Sacrifice is the best means of achieving whatever has to be achieved, says the ancient scripture. Thus it is in the Sacrifice of the Purusha, the Holocaust of the primal Being, the Yajna of the Great Person that the incomparable deed was carried out. In it the Gods, the Rishis and the Sadhyas, the accomplished celestial beings, offered the Cosmic Being himself as an oblation to the Mystic Fire. This was the Sarvahuta Yajna, Offering of the All, made by them. Its jubilation in the Rig Veda is a forceful triumph-song of the Creator poised for Cosmic Action,—“a profound composition.”

About Yajna or Sacrifice, Sri Aurobindo writes: “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. ‘For with sacrifice as their companion,’ says the Gita, ‘the All-Father created these peoples.’ ” In the Gita we have: “Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.”

By the Yajna did the Gods perform the Yajna, Sacrifice in the sacrifice as a sacrifice, and in it were established the first associated Ordinances of the Truth; thus in their excellence and in their glory did in them the Gods ascend to heaven, there where they were the earlier Gods and the Achievers, the Claimers of the Truth everywhere. For details, check the following link:

http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2006/12/6/2554374.html

How did the mortal birth of Savitri come about? What kind of Yajna it was and who carried it out? Who was the presiding Rishi to conduct such a sacrifice? Is in “A world's desire compelled her mortal birth” the whole mystery of this birth of Savitri?


RYD

RYD:

It seems that there was an intense aspiration invoking the divine birth; possibly, the three wise men must have invoked it. It was so in the case of Rama, and so too must have been in the case of Jesus. Ramakrishna, it is said, saw the coming of Vivekananda. Great supernatural events occurred prior to the arrival. Was there something of the kind in the case of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Who knows? But there must have been, and there is no doubt about it. Great forces gather up when the Divine is poised to take such a birth.


RC:
As I have expressed here before I personally have reservations about declaring anyone including Sri Aurobindo an Avatar. Although this maybe quite proper to argue this
within the Indic or Vedantic tradition, it presents numerous obstacles for comprehension in a forum which does not automatically accept these particular metaphysical validity
claims, and so limits the dialog to the circle of believers.

In addition I find it rather contradictory when speaking of
the possibilities of human evolution to assert that further
human evolution is only possible due to direct Divine intervention! This line of thinking would need to posit
not only Avatars that take the form of Homo Sapiens, but also prior forms of Cro Magnon, Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis, or for that matter to avataric RNA, enzymes and proteins and while this maybe an attractive venture for some, I simply dont see the need to posit metaphysical claims to explain human evolution (at least up to this point).

The fact that Sri Aurobindo does not mention the term Avatar in the Life Divine which is arguably his most complete treatise of his ideas on matter, spirit and evolution
is quite telling. In fact, in the following passage from
On Himself makes it quite clear that he regarded the question of Avatarhood as meaningless. (although it seems his followers were more concerned with this then was he)
In response to a letter from a follower he writes:

"Let me make it clear that in all I wrote I was not writing to prove I am an Avatar! You are busy in your reasonings with the personal question, I am busy more with the general one. I am seeking to manifest the Divine that I am conscious of and feel - I care a damn whether that constitutes me an Avatar or something else. That is not the question which concerns me. By manifestation of course
I mean bringing out and spreading of that consciousness so that others may feel and enter into it and live in it."
(p150)

Rich,

I'm not sure your quote proves that Sri Aurobindo regarded the question of avatarhood as meaningless in general or even meaningless to human or any evolution. What it does prove is that he considered the question of whether he himself was an avatar as meaningless to himself. On the general meaning if any of avatarhood both he and the Mother have written much elsewhere. And on its relation to evolution, avatarhood in the Aurobindonian view represents a symbolic break in the structures of avidya and the open-endedness of the infinite and conscious universe. Of course, it may not be "necessary" to introduce avatarhood to explain biological evolution (natural selection and survival are enough) just as it is not "necessary" to introduce spirit to explain consciousness or reincarnation to explain the afterlife but then it is not even "necessary" to posit the reality of matter to explain consciousness. All these belong to the domain of possibilities within the mind so long as one has not awoken to the reality of other faculties of knowledge based in spiritual experience and the self-knowing of consciousness. One of the premises of the Life Divine is that Truth does not follow any necessity in its manifestations but gives birth to temporal forms of necessity (structure) as expressions of its self-delight through what one might call real-symbols. Regarding the danger of avatarhood as a concept breeding religious fanaticism, I agree but that needs not dismissal but hermeneutics, other ways of dealing with the interpretation of truth to the ignorance.

DB

Unfortunately the religious fanatic does not normally avail themselves of any hermeneutic method, but stone cold literalism.

The second part of the matter is that once you start positing a founder of a movement as an Avatar any claims you make that your teaching or yoga is not a "Religion" become mute.

Sri Aurobindo actually considered the role of Avatar quite significant and this certainly comes through in his commentaries on text within the tradition of Hinduism such as the Essays on the Gita (one of my all time favorites). However, that he did not see it fit to introduce the notion of avatarhood into The Life Divine is significant in itself especially regards the hermeneutic method one would apply to it

rc

Rich, I agree with you here that the issue is not so much whether Sri Aurobindo considered the role of the avatar significant in the cosmic evolution - which he did - but the hermeneutuc method proper to a readership or reception space. The absence of "avatar" in the LD is explainable in this light which simultaneously casts its illumination on its targeted audience - the public space of modern philosophy brought into engagement with a Vedantic discourse with its own history and established methods, conventions (doxa) and aims (nomos). Every address is constrained by temporal and cultural discursive limits - not fixed but fuzzy and continuously negotiable and negotiated. Since the writing of the Life Divine have these discursive limits changed for the same public space? The simplistic assumption of an exclusive human agency in post-human evolution is a too easy submission to the prevailing doxa of this space just as the acceptance of the post-Vedantic doxa of the avatar is such a submission to an alternate but equally self-referential canon. Can we extend Sri Aurobindo's views on evolution into a post-modern cosmic explanation (not necessity) for the avatar?

As for the question of whether Sri Aurobindo was an avatar, I agree that one may try to prove or disprove the point, but all this is of interest mainly to the establishment of a religious figurehead. If instead it is a matter of integral knowledge, that will arise by its own means through the development of internal means of knowledge and neither need the persuasive rhetoric of apologetics for its conviction nor the need to publicize the knowledge in public discourse. It may however share this knowledge or intuition in a discursive space not so much of believers as one marked by principles of internal validation and trans-personal development.

DB

Deb:
Can we extend Sri Aurobindo's views on evolution into a post-modern cosmic explanation (not necessity) for the avatar?

Rich:

Well in the current epoch it would seem to make sense if one is to posit a rupture with human agency to explain the advent of the post-human, to remain vigilant in keeping the avataric trace under erasure.

This would seem to me necessary whether engaging with the public sphere of philosophy of with individual internal validation during trans-personal development

I agree though for the benefit of our readers it may be good to point out that keeping the avataric trace under erasure is not the same as erasing the avataric trace (which, in any case, as trace, refuses erasure). In the Juadaic version (Derrida/Levinas) it is the messiah who is ever awaited, never comes; in the Catholic version (Teilhard) it is the messiah who came and went and will return; in the post-Vedantic version (Sri Aurobindo) it is the messiah who came at the beginning and ever returns. The paradox of the recurrent birth of cosmic time within static eternity (triakaldristi) is premised on a perpetual incarnation. Within the temporality of any relative time-structure of experience this premise is symboled as the recurring avatar, the transcendent rupture materialized. Perhaps the closest world literature has come to describing the process and experience of the avataric recognition is the Viswarupa Darshan of the Gita. Krishna by divine Grace opens in Arjuna the supramental eye, that faculty outside the reach of the time-structure of humanity to show him the indescribable integrality. Arjuna then does not emerge from this experience as a born-again Krishna-consciousness proselytizer. It would seem that this spectacular display of superhumanity was all just for the benefit of urging Arjuna to battle. But perhaps there is another utility to this revelation - at the apocalyptic and eschatological cusp of the dwapara yuga, this is the gift of the impossible rupture and the next status of being, of self-embodied godhood to a sample of humanity whose consciousness is thus prepared for the sowing of the seed for the coming age.

DB

If trace is the essence of Being that haunts language, the problematique is with Speech not Being. Specifically the disclose of Being in "das einzige Wort", (Messiah, Other, Avatar) - e.g. the alliance of speech and being in one word - is that which requires vigilance and "austerity of erasure" . Erasure precedes rupture and clears a horizon for the disclosure of the Other /Avatar, and the re-inscription of Trace. But the possibility of this play of absence and presence closes itself off when in literalizing presence (the one word) our hermeneutic agility fails and we attempt constrain the unnameable to a single name.

Derrida on Heidegger:
Therefore, in order to name the essential nature of Being (das wesende Seins), language would have to find a single word, the unique word (ein einziges, das einzige Wort). From this we can gather how daring every thoughtful word (denkende Wort) addressed to Being is (das dem Sein zugesprochen wird). Nevertheless such daring is not impossible, since Being speaks always and everywhere throughout language" (p. 52).
Such is the question: the alliance of speech and Being in the unique word, in the finally proper name. And such is the question inscribed in the simulated affirmation of différance. It bears (on) each member of this sentence: "Being / speaks / always and everywhere / throughout / language." (Derrida)

In partial response to the interesting comments by Rich and Debashish, let me reproduce here what I wrote on my last posting on the theme. This is in case they have missed it. Here is the comment:

We may, en passant, briefly look into the discussion about the necessity of an Avatar in furthering human evolution. There are strong reservations, and they are quite understandable, in accepting anyone as an Avatar; in fact, it will be disingenuous to impose such a belief or notion or concept or hypothesis on anybody who has no necessity for it. But can neither the argument in this context be in terms of Avatarhood representing “a symbolic break in the structures of avidya”. These are all points of view which can be argued, and argued without an end, in the manner of mediaeval theologies, with one or the other exclusive type of metaphysical consideration; their acceptance or rejection could then simply be a matter of one’s preferences and predilections, one’s fondness for things, and perhaps nothing more than that.

But the truth of the matter lies elsewhere. Avatarhood is not just a concept or a view or an opinion; it is not just an attitude or a belief. It belongs to another domain of empiricism. It is a fact in the occult-spiritual world, a fact as solid as belonging to the Newtonian physics; it is an irrefutable empirical truth, if one would like to say that way, but that empiricism belonging to the spiritual. It will be a different matter if that empiricism is not accessible to a certain type of thinking, but that thinking, if it is true to itself, cannot dismiss such a possibility of its existence. Its veracity has to be seen in some other manner. Our dilemma is: we might, in the most favourable situations, concede the factuality of such empiricism and its conclusions, accept its statements; but we do not have means to put it to test. But our lack of means cannot discredit its existence. What we have therefore to examine is, the process, the technique of verification, and if that can be acquired, mastered. Avatarhood belongs to the realm of the occult-spiritual, which implies that we ought to employ methods of investigation that fall in the domain of operation of the occult-spiritual. The tools and techniques of cognition of the occult-spiritual will therefore have to be first acquired before one can opine anything on its conclusion.

In the meanwhile, however, we might go by the savants—the spiritual savants as we go by the savants of science in the rational empiricism—who have explored those domains and brought their knowledge to us. If we are unable to verify that knowledge, it will be our fault; it will be a reflection on us and not on their findings. The question “whether engaging with the public sphere of philosophy with individual internal validation during trans-personal development” one should share this knowledge with others is another matter. Nevertheless, with it if there is a possibility of a ray of intuition slipping into our darkness, of whatever sort that darkness be, it could then be gainfully promoted—of course without any imposition of any kind on anybody. It is that ray of intuition which perhaps can bring to us the real direction in promoting our “human potentials”, in shaping post-human destinies. In fact, how can such a possibility be ruled out if there is no contrary theory opposing it, a theory based on acceptable empiricism? That could be the merit of putting forward such a point of view in the public sphere, particularly if the public is alert and receptive. That is the hope.

It seems that things fall better in their places with the concept of Avatarhood than without it. After all, evolution is not simply the playing back of the process of involution. There are in it new challenges at every stage and there are new surprises—surprises for which we should be really thankful. Imagine how dull the whole process would have been otherwise.

RYD

Yes, truths of a spiritual-occult empiricism (as you put it) can certainly (and should) be put forward as experiences/sightings in a language as accurate as possible to the phenomenology of the experience and left thus for the universal validation of a science of the (objective) subjective. If one human being sights a white crow the universal theory of all crows being black stands in danger of being overthrown and invites the inquiry of all inquiring consciousnesses - particularly if the one doing the sighting expresses it with a rigor and internal coherence which cannot be dismissed as being the ranting of a madman. But such a sighting becomes only a matter of universal validation within internal discourse, not of a cult of believers in white crows. Once a sufficient ground of human experience is prepared where a subjective state can be recognized such experience automatically finds the language to enter public discourse.

The subjective life of mankind is in an extremely unprepared state as present and there is a cultural inequality to it, which itself is a matter of hermeneutic negotiation. For example, the preoccupation of western discourse with whether god exists or not (theism/atheism) was not a cultural reality in any substantial sense in pre-modern Indic discourse because the experience and realization of the divine was sufficiently established as a reality and realizable objective in the public discourse. So for the notion of the avatar. These notions in a culture may only be assumed beliefs (doxa) or ontological realities/universal truths of experience. The avatar, like the divine, is not a matter of belief as of experience. So long as the field of experience and its validation is not sufficiently developed or established in any cultural discourse, it runs the danger of being turned into a religious orthodoxy, a matter of belief. It is the co-existence of domains of belief and experience in a public discourse, with the latter prioritized, which mitigates the danger of a war of words. That Krishna is an avatar is not so important as the fact that there exists a common objective (nomos) in a discursive field to realize this truth in experience based on the establishment of such an objective through the repeated internal validation and phenomenological verification within the discourse.

Now, part of the thesis of a post-human future is the necessity and desirability of a public and global (transcultural) field of subjective transpersonal validation. But we are still in the process of establishing the foundations of such a field, it has hardly been laid out. I believe to introduce an openness to avatarhood in such a field must go hand in hand with the establishment of the discursive limits and boundaries of this field - that of the objective of experience and its phenomenological validation and an awareness and rejection of its slippage into the discourse of religious orthodoxy.

DB

An avatar is one who brings into earth’s atmosphere a greater nature for the evolution of man. While reading the Gospel of Ramakrishna I stumbled into a discussion between Sri Ramakrishna and his disciples about Ramayana. He says that only 7 rishis knew that Rama was an avatar. Other ascetic yogi’s that Rama met in the forest could not understand that he was an avatar. They were after the realization of Nirguna Brahman.
So even for yogi’s who had considerable experience in spiritual knowledge it was difficult to understand the Dynamic divine on earth.

But in India where disciple believes that Guru is the divine it is not all difficult for him to believe his Guru’s words. When the disciple realizes God’s presence in himself like the descent of peace, psychic being and the preliminary teachings of his Guru through experience than his faith in Gurus words becomes a realization. Until one does not have the experience one believes in Guru’s words. If the basic realizations can be true why not believe in Guru’s other higher experiences and follow his teachings?

Another way of arguing I think would be like this. If there exists God’s presence in us as psychic being why cannot God come onto earth in his fuller divine nature if he needs to?

Sri Aurobindo says somewhere that even if an Avatar is born on earth He may not be known to anybody. He may just come to do the desired purpose of his birth and leave.

RYD writes:
In fact, how can such a possibility be ruled out if there is no contrary theory opposing it, a theory based on acceptable empiricism? That could be the merit of putting forward such a point of view in the public sphere, particularly if the public is alert and receptive. That is the hope. It seems that things fall better in their places with the concept of Avatarhood than without it. After all, evolution is not simply the playing back of the process of involution. There are in it new challenges at every stage and there are new surprises—surprises for which we should be really thankful. Imagine how dull the whole process would have been otherwise.

RC:
And I would add we are poetically so much richer with an Avatar than without. But again, I will raise my initial assertion, which is if we choose to place our faith in these metaphysical ideals, then we should accept that we are in fact practicing religion. Of course there is nothing wrong with this and since integral yoga is dependent on a metaphysical premise (the descent of the Divine) there is no other way to speak about the yoga except as a religious practice. This in turn means that the to say Integral Yoga is not a religion is no more true than to say Protestantism is not a religion.

Of course we could then argue definitions of religion but the real issue for the followers of such religious practices would be to affirm the difference between true religion and what Sri Aurobindo calls religiosity.

rc

Yes, the problematic is one of Speech and of those who wield and are prefigured by Speech. Language is the House of Being in Heidegger, which means Being discloses itself in and as Language. As humans, we are prefigured by Language. But to say this is also to recognize that Language is an act of Being, an ontology of concealment/disclosure. It is chit-tapas in its specific concentration that creates the ontology which we find ourselves prefigured in as the house of Being and it is chit-tapas which in other concentrations discloses Being in other Houses. Human speech at any time and in any culture is not absolute and even in its boundedness by the regime of objectification, houses and conceals/discloses Being as per collective experience, habitus. It is culture that inscribes paradox or literalness to the name of Being, not language in or by itself, which is a product of consciousness.

Of course, that said, the clearance of horizon for the disclosure of the Other is undoubtedly necessary but the dawning of the Other is also subject to rejection unless allowed as a possibility and objective of impossible expectation within the clearing of Being.

In Derrida's "simulated affirmation of differance," the name of Being is equally absent/present in every element of the House of Being and this "equal extension" is the field of ontic practice rather than the prioritization of a single name for Being. There is of course a profound truth but a truth that co-exists with the inequal distribution of Being in Supermind. The recasting of Language or the House of Being is preceded by a new experience of Being through the rupture.

DB

Deb,

I largely agree with what you write here, but with one caveat in the following passage:

"It is culture that inscribes paradox or literalness to the name of Being, not language in or by itself, which is a product of consciousness."

Rich:
I think this is the very point Derrida contests. That it is in fact language (and the thought process which language explicates) which is by its nature paradoxical. Because by its nature language arises in the play of binary opposites.

This is not a fact of culture but rather of phenomenology
and how the world co-dependently arises in consciousness.
For example, boy/girl, heaven/earth, in/out are not factors of culture per say but of perception. Although true culture ascribes names and even how the phenomena are conceived, the inherent duality which discloses these differences is articulated in the speech act.

Although the House of Being maybe equally extended in the ontic field of practice, there is I believe one important exception which can be given which does prioritize Being in a single word or name

I will explore this further in my next article posting, which actually posits special cases in which the word in fact precedes differance

Rich

Rich

Rich, of course human language (a product of mental consciousness and one other than which we know not any at present) is "paradoxical" in essence and implies its dualisms in each of its assertions and of course this is a fact of phenomenology or of human perception, but the specific ontology of perception is governed largely and in most cases completely by social consciousness. For example, to use a word "white" implies its opposite "black" but different social formations will cause the co-existence of these two terms to arise with different priorities of awareness. "White" may imply a property of which the property "black" is a derivative, or it may imply a property which is a derivative of "black" or it may imply a property which co-exists with equal priority as "black." And then there is the question of degree. These priorities are functions of social consciousness or habitus. No individual can claim direct access to language except through their "thrownness" into a phenomenology of habitus which configures linguistic paradoxicality into literalnesses of various kinds or into possible transcendence as the state of social consciousness.

DB

DB

RC: Although the House of Being maybe equally extended in the ontic field of practice, there is I believe one important exception which can be given which does prioritize Being in a single word or name. I will explore this further in my next article posting, which actually posits special cases in which the word in fact precedes differance.

DB: I look forward to this exploration.

I will concede however, that as you mention, Sri Aurobindo did not find it necessary to invoke the avatar in his descriptions of evolution and its process in the Life Divine - and maybe for the reason that you find the idea allergic - ie. it transfers evolutionary agency too easily to an icon, a religious substitute for conscious transformation. But his descriptions of the evolutionary process in the LD at the same time could be read in terms that include the avatar as the exemplar of a transition to a new species, one who undergoes the process of hybrid-formation: "It is quite conceivable that such an evolution from below and such a descent from above co-operated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down the mental being, the mind Purusha, into the realm of living Matter in order to take up the vital-mental energy already at work and lift it into a higher mentality." (LD, "Man and the Evolution")

DB

RC: As I have expressed here before I personally have reservations about declaring anyone including Sri Aurobindo an Avatar. Although this maybe quite proper to argue this
within the Indic or Vedantic tradition, it presents numerous obstacles for comprehension in a forum which does not automatically accept these particular metaphysical validity
claims, and so limits the dialog to the circle of believers.

Since we all know the definition of an Avatar I do not see how it is difficult to understand Sri Aurobindo as an avatar. Who else could talk about the overmind and supermind or the descent of the supermind.
Even if we have problems understanding this concept why should we stop someone express his feelings in a forum that supports freedom to express one's views. What should be done? Should we stop writing what we feel is real to convince the forum readers.

Avatar and Grace
On my previous comment-posting there have come a few thought-provoking observations from Rich, Debashish and Rakesh. In the following I am trying to make my response to them in a more generalised manner. It so turns out that this discussion will also prove helpful in looking at the passage we have in this article, Her Mortal Birth.

The word ‘Avatar’ appears only twice in The Life Divine. In either case the context is different—it is not vis-à-vis Avatar as an Incarnation of the Divine. This absence of the concept of Divine Incarnation in Sri Aurobindo's very major work cannot be taken as he not recognising the necessity of Avatarhood in the evolutionary process. We have also another interesting situation: the word ‘Grace’ does not appear even once in The Life Divine. But the fruit of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga without the Divine Grace is inconceivable. In this connection, let us first read a couple of passages from his little masterpiece, The Mother:

There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavor,—a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and - a supreme Grace from above that answers.
***
For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
***
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.

What this situation, of the absence of 'Grace' and 'Avatar' in its deeper occult connotation, means is that, Sri Aurobindo is more than his works, prose or poetry, including perhaps Savitri. And didn’t he say, apropos of his Arya-writing, that had he continued it, not for seven but seventy years, still his knowledge would not have been exhausted? In The Life Divine he has taken a certain stand to present a certain point of view for a certain type of the soul-need, which does not make it sole or absolute or exclusive in every sense. This is true in other works also. The question is, of one’s perception, perceptions which can be different for different individuals. When this is recognised, there should not be any necessity of thrusting one viewpoint on the other, which will be fallacious, fundamentalist, un-Aurobindoniuan. Eschewing it is broadening, even globalising, one’s consciousness for a greater spiritual progress.

Let me just quote here quickly a few passages from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s writings.
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Sri Aurobindo on Himself
There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forth the instrumental personality in Nature under the conditions of Nature and it uses it according to the rules of the game—though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipotent Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it.
***
Let me make it clear that in all I wrote I was not writing to prove that I am an Avatar! You are busy with your reasonings with the personal question, I am busy with more with the general one. I am seeking to manifest something of the Divine that I am conscious of and feel—I care a damn whether that constitutes me an Avatar or something else. That is not a question which concerns me. By manifestation, of course, I mean the bringing out and spreading of that Consciousness so that others also may feel and enter into it and live in it. (8 March 1935)
***
I have a strong faith that you are the Divine Incarnation. Am I right?
Follow your faith—it is not unlikely to mislead you.

[This is the closest he can be said to have admitted he being an Avatar. There are a couple of other corroborative suggestions.]

The Mother on Sri Aurobindo
(From a meditation written on the day after the Mother first saw Sri Aurobindo)
It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth. O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds. My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent. (30 March 1914)
***
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme. (14 February 1961)
***
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the history of the earth’s spiritual progress is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a mighty action straight from the Supreme. (15 August 1964)
***
He has come to bid the earth to prepare for its luminous future. (15 August 1964)
***
Sri Aurobindo has brought to the world the assurance of a divine future.
***
Sri Aurobindo has come on earth not to bring a teaching or a creed in competition with previous creeds or teachings, but to show the way to overpass the past and to open concretely the route towards an imminent and inevitable future. (22 February 1967)
***
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.
Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.
Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy
advance, in order not to become laggards on the way.
(2 April 1967)
***
Sri Aurobindo came to tell the world of the beauty of the future that must be realised.He came to give not a hope but a certitude of the splendour towards which the world moves. The world is not an unfortunate accident, it is a marvel which moves towards its expression. The world needs the certitude of the beauty of the future. And Sri Aurobindo has given that assurance. (27 November 1971)
***
The red lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo, but specially for his centenary we shall choose the blue lotus, which is the colour of his physical aura, to symbolise the centenary of the manifestation of the Supreme upon earth. (21 December 1971)
***
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles. Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive. (30 January 1972)
***
Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the Supramental. Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness. (20 June 1972)
***
Sri Aurobindo came on earth from the Supreme to announce the manifestation of a new race and the new world, the Supramental. Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness. (15 August 1972)
***
Man is the creation of yesterday. Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the supramental being. (15 August 1972)
***
Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us with the proof that the thing can be done and the time is now to do it.
***
In the eternity of becoming, each Avatar is only the announcer, the forerunner of a more perfect realisation. And yet men have always the tendency to deify the Avatar of the past in opposition to the Avatar of the future. Now again Sri Aurobindo has come announcing to the world the realisation of tomorrow; and again his message meets with the same opposition as of all those who preceded him. But tomorrow will prove the truth of what he revealed and his work will be done. (21 February 1957)
***
You must understand that what Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history, is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme. And I am just trying to fulfil that action. (1961)
***
What is the Divine?
The Divine is what you adore in Sri Aurobindo.
(28 March 1932)
***
(Mother designated the red lotus as the flower of Sri Aurobindo and the white lotus as her own. 2 February 1930)
Red lotus—symbol of the manifestation of the Supreme upon earth.
White lotus—symbol of the Divine Consciousness.
***
Under the painting of a red lotus by Champaklal, Sri Aurobindo wrote: Avatar. Knowing that Red Lotus represents Sri Aurobindo—White Lotus represents Aditi, the Mother—we have here a private disclosure made by Sri Aurobindo.
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Perception of Avatarhood is an individual matter, and it may be governed by the cultural, historical, philosophical, religious, even temporal, spiritual factors. But there is also a hope that these factors can be set aside when one comes in contact with the inner or higher reality which, and nothing else, should indeed count for an individual. If this is done then we keep all danger away from us, rather all danger is kept away from us.

In this context, let me make another observation here. In the April 2007 issue of Auroville Today we have the following statement, a statement which rather stunned me greatly: “…there's a danger that an over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine, as it is practised… can devolve into passivity.” I must say that there can never be over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine. Wasn’t that the Mantra of the Mother, particularly “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest” when she was busy with the cellular transformation? If somewhere, and sometimes,—and it is immaterial where that somewhere could be and when that sometimes was or will be,—it is not practised ‘properly’ it cannot be the fault of the principle, of the occult and spiritual truth that is there behind it.

RYD

Your right Deshpande choosing to believe in the perception of the Avatar is largely an individual and cultural matter.

I am also not trying to argue my perception of the matter
is the absolute correct one. My view is also very nuanced and may even be conceived as contradictory because while I can very much appreciate the role of the Avatar in the Essays on the Gita I find it unnecessary to posit it into message of the Life Divine

Since I often hear from Devotees that Sri Aurobindo yoga is not a religion (and both he and Mother have also declared this) what I am saying is if one chooses to call Sri Aurobindo an Avatar and elects to believe that he and Mother were direct incarnations of the Divine and advance this argument
in discourse, then there is absolutely no basis to claim his integral yoga is not a Religion with a capital R.



rc

ps

(the statement you refer to in Auroville Today I find just plain silly)

A World’s Desire
Savitri’s birth is in response to Aswapati’s prayer to the supreme Mother. He brought down her radiant power in this world of mortality, that in her dynamism it be transformed into the divinity that really it is. As we have already seen, Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter: “Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past time when the whole thing had to be opened out, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality.’ ” Which means that, the Story of Savitri is not just a social episode designed to declare moral values. It declares the Triumph of Love over Death. “To wrestle with the Shadow she had come”, and it is for that purpose that she accepted the mournful line. For that purpose she did the Shakti Yoga in this earthly creation. For that purpose she identified herself with the Divine Love. It is for that purpose she prayed to the Lord to be consumed in it, consumed “in all the worlds of being.”

Aswapati has discerned what the God’s desire is, and it is in that discernment that he carried the world’s desire to the supreme Mother, she being the executive power to get done whatever is wished to be got done in its authentic truth. Aswapati’s focused tapasya has reveals to him the purpose of this creation, its present predicament, and the only solution that can successfully tackle the difficulties. But what is God’s desire? It is to fulfil himself in this creation: (Savitri, pp. 311-12)

The mystery of God's birth and acts remains
Leaving unbroken the last chapter's seal,
Unsolved the riddle of the unfinished Play;
The cosmic Player laughs within his mask,
And still the last inviolate secret hides
Behind the human glory of a Form,
Behind the gold eidolon of a Name.
A large white line has figured as a goal,
But far beyond the ineffable suntracks blaze.
What seemed the source and end was a wide gate,
A last bare step into eternity.
An eye has opened upon timelessness,
Infinity takes back the forms it gave,
And through God's darkness or his naked light
His million rays return into the Sun.
There is a zero sign of the Supreme;
Nature left nude and still uncovers God.
But in her grandiose nothingness all is there:
When her strong garbs are torn away from us,
The soul's ignorance is slain but not the soul.
The zero covers an immortal face.
A high and black negation is not all,
A huge extinction is not God's last word,
Life's ultimate sense, the close of being's course,
The meaning of this great mysterious world.
In absolute silence sleeps an absolute Power.
Awaking, it can wake the trance-bound soul
And in the ray reveal the parent sun:
It can make the world a vessel of Spirit's force,
It can fashion in the clay God's perfect shape.
To free the self is but one radiant pace;
Here to fulfil himself was God's desire.

The Yogi-Poet has already seen the transcendental Savitri poised to take birth in the world, but it can happen only when there is the call from below, when there is the world’s prayer for her incarnation. But that incarnation can take place only when the prayer becomes compelling, when there is someone to carry it to the supreme Mother. It is for this that Aswapati comes here and does the Yoga-Tapasya: (p. 22)

A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.
One in the front of the immemorial quest,
Protagonist of the mysterious play
In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms
And limits his eternity by the hours
And the blind Void struggles to live and see,
A thinker and toiler in the ideal's air,
Brought down to earth's dumb need her radiant power.

Aswapati takes the human birth, finds his soul, makes it free from the bondage of Nature, Prakriti, and explores the cosmic dimensions in the freedom and greatness of his spirit, locates where the real problem lies, pursues his spiritual quest to find the solution to the problem: (pp. 101-02)

A Seer within who knows the ordered plan
Concealed behind our momentary steps,
Inspires our ascent to viewless heights
As once the abysmal leap to birth and life.
His call had reached the Traveller in Time.
Apart in an unfathomed loneliness,
He travelled in his mute and single strength
Bearing the burden of the world's desire.
A formless Stillness called, a nameless Light.
Above him was the white immobile Ray,
Around him the eternal Silences.

With all his great spiritual attainments, however, Aswapati has yet to move into the utter Unknowable, into the Non-Manifest, the Avyakta, from where all creation arises. It is there can he be really free of the burden of the world’s desire he is carrying. It is someone else who is going to fulfil it. (p. 305)

The effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will;
A trivial achievement scorned by Time,
All power retired into the Omnipotent.
A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light.
A silence settled on his striving heart;
Absolved from the voices of the world's desire,
He turned to the Ineffable's timeless call.
A Being intimate and unnameable,
A wide compelling ecstasy and peace
Felt in himself and all and yet ungrasped,
Approached and faded from his soul's pursuit
As if for ever luring him beyond.

It is in that absolute freedom the true contents of the world’s desire acquire the fire and the glow of the divinity that it seeks. In it is the fulfilment of the world’s desire.

RYD

A few of world’s ‘world’s desires’Here are some of the world’s desires we come across in the literature.
***
Extracts from Swinburne’s Hymn to Proserpine in the following have “a fire and passion and vehemence of song” with a rich appeal that has “perfect workmanship”, as Sri Aurobindo says about him. That makes Proserpine, the Roman Goddess of Springtime, a perfect ideal of the world’s desire, the life-death-rebirth deity:

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep…
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love…
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides…
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things…
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?...
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

There is a discernible mystical element in the piece, but the line “Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart” is extraordinary in several respects; it has very powerful rhythm, it is charged with deep mystical thought, it has a kind of a vision that one sees with a spiritual eye—the line is kind of mantric.
***
Oscar Wilde’s New Helen as world’s desire is perfectly acceptable to the modern mind:

Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's chivalry and might
Into the clamorous crimson waves of war!...
O Helen! Helen! Helen! yet a while,
Yet for a little while, O, tarry here,
Till the dawn cometh and the shadows flee!
For in the gladsome sunlight of thy smile
Of heaven or hell I have no thought or fear,
Seeing I know no other god but thee:
No other god save him, before whose feet
In nets of gold the tired planets move,
The incarnate spirit of spiritual love
Who in thy body holds his joyous seat…
Lily of love, pure and inviolate!
Tower of ivory! red rose of fire!
Thou hast come down our darkness to illume:
For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate,
Wearied with waiting for the World's Desire,
Aimlessly wandered in the House of gloom,
Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne
For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness,
Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine,
And the white glory of thy loveliness.

***
Here is Cyril Emra’s Love-Song of Tristram and Iseult:

Ah joy beyond the world’s desire!
What burning dream was this?
Their breathless souls drew in like fire
All heaven in a kiss!
Through deeps of space, it seemed to him,
Her voice thrilled low: - ‘Dear love,’ she said,
’My spirit faints; the world grows dim
With joy that makes my soul afraid.’
And from her arms’ dear bondage he
Loosed him, and said low-voiced, ‘On me
Fear also comes. And now from thee
Must I begone till day shall be.’
Nor made they other speech,
But parted there as dreamers might
Whom some wild vision of the night
Fulfils with anguish and delight,
An-hungered each for each.

***
But G. K. Chesterton’s Christmas carol has the following in which the baby Christ is the cherished child of the devout world, he the fulfiller of the world’s desire:

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire
O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire,
But here the world's desire.

***
But imagine Constantinople as the City of the World's Desire. The long decline of the Ottoman Empire had already begun in the 18th century. With that the City of the World's Desire started losing its pride it had in the history. When Sultan Mehmet II saw himself in the image of Alexander the Great and conquered it in 1453, he also had ideas about it as his capital. However, in that City of the World’s Desire there were “riots, revolts, fires and famines, and in the 19th century the old traditions of tolerance began to break down under the pressure of military defeats and Balkan nationalist movements. In 1821, when he learned of a Greek revolt and the seditious activities of a secret society in his capital, Sultan Mehmet II turned on the Greeks of Istanbul. Many were slaughtered in the streets, churches were looted, and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church was taken out and hanged from the gates of the Patriarchate.” That is the fate of our cherished ideas and ideals and hopes and expectations. It seems the Byzantine world had to disappear, with its bronze birds singing on bronze trees. Let us read Yeats:

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

RYD

The Desire of the Void and the World's Desire
The mystic-spiritual dimensions of the “world’s desire” in Savitri are in the realm of light and fire and joy that lie far beyond the reach of secular longings of the small worldly heart. Let us move in the luminosities of some of these oceanic or else ethereal widenesses.

The line “A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth” seems to be a kind of matter-of-fact line written in a perfect pentametric form with a quiet but insistent iambic beat: in it there are no images, no symbols crowding in a great succession of subjective feelings, there are no honey-laden flowers in its garden, no passionate intensities of emotions, no heaving or surging of the deep occult seas, no winging of birds in the blue of its skies. And yet there is nothing dry and dreary in it. Its power of epigrammatic condensation has such tremendous charge, such thrust that, with it, the entire epic at once swings into some exceptional and futuristic cosmic action. The directness of the line may be taken to justify the truth that, each matter has its own manner and each substance its sense. The grave and ponderous matter of this world of mortality is presented with a compelling sense that it must resolve the issues it sees.

The same “world’s desire” acquires another force which has the power to bring a thousand gods in its wide all-embracing sweep. Savitri is on her way to discover her soul beyond the mystic cave, across the night of God. She shall see the Fire burning on the bare stone and the seep cavern of her secret soul. She shall meet her own soul-forces engaged in promoting perfection-ward the lot of this little helpless struggling man. She shall identify herself with every creature-kind, that perfection may come to it, that love, beauty, happiness, knowledge, every kind of greatness may be the possession of its soul. Thus are the cosmic gods and goddesses the residents of the shrine of her gold-and-blue soul. (Savitri, p. 525)

Through room and room, through door and rock-hewn door,
She felt herself made one with all she saw.
A sealed identity within her woke;
She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme:
These Gods and Goddesses were he and she:
The Mother was she of Beauty and Delight,
The Word in Brahma's vast creating clasp,
The World-Puissance on almighty Shiva's lap,—
The Master and the Mother of all lives
Watching the worlds their twin regard had made,
And Krishna and Radha for ever entwined in bliss,
The Adorer and Adored self-lost and one.
In the last chamber on a golden seat
One sat whose shape no vision could define;
Only one felt the world's unattainable fount,
A Power of which she was a straying Force,
An invisible Beauty, goal of the world's desire,
A Sun of which all knowledge is a beam,
A Greatness without whom no life could be.

Conflict seems to be the driving force leading this dumb and blind creation on the path of harmony. There are clashes of every kind, emotional, mental, egoistic, physical, idea asserting itself against idea, objects colliding on objects. But it is the hammer and the anvil that also produces a spark, the flint and the stone leaping into a sudden flame. Thus are also born the stars, through gravitational collapse and intense activity. By a strange process of oppositional relationship it looks as though the world is making progress on the path of the uncertain and the unknown. At the base of things is the need, the craving, the aspiration; there is the primordial Urge stationed in the Void, it shaping into forms the possibilities that must come into worthwhile existence. So shall the “original Desire” shall give rise to hope that shall never sleep. (pp. 32-33)

The war of thoughts that fathers the universe,
The clash of forces struggling to prevail
In the tremendous shock that lights a star
As in the building of a grain of dust,
The grooves that turn their dumb ellipse in space
Ploughed by the seeking of the world's desire,
The long regurgitations of Time's flood,
The torment edging the dire force of lust
That wakes kinetic in earth's dullard slime
And carves a personality out of mud,
The sorrow by which Nature's hunger is fed,
The oestrus which creates with fire of pain,
The fate that punishes virtue with defeat,
The tragedy that destroys long happiness,
The weeping of Love, the quarrel of the Gods,
Ceased in a truth which lives in its own light.
His soul stood free, a witness and a king.

Aswapati sees in this frenzied nothingness the Desire, the Will to emerge and to assert itself. Not only that; he sees that in the guzzling tide of the Void it does not get swallowed up, get lost. The world’s desire arisen out of it is strengthened by his will-to-manifest and he makes it sure that it reaches the transcendental power who shall take charge of it in every respect. The world’s desire has germinated from the Desire of the Void, the Will of the Supreme in it, daivy samkalpa, and it is that which has to be, evolutionarily, carried to the supreme Executrix. Aswapati does it.

RYD

A mysterious play
Divine Savitri has consented to take mortal birth. This birth is in response to the invocation of Aswapati the Yogi who has prepared the ground for such an incarnation of hers. The birth of Aswapati itself is a feature of the “mysterious play” in which the Eternal limits his transcendental characteristics in the process of time. Aswapati comes as Avatar. But what does that mean, what is incarnation, what is Avatarhood? The Mother answers: Avatar is “the Supreme manifested on earth in a body.” And what is the work the Avatar comes to do? “To go up and down and join the top to the bottom, the whole secret of realisation.” He comes here to establish the Divine Power who will execute the Divine Will in the Creation. There is a twofold division of work, pertaining to Will and to Action. The formula is: he wills; she executes. Such indeed is the double aspect of Avatarhood. Not by self-propelled human effort, howsoever mighty it might be, but by a direct action of the transcendental Divine can the miracle of divine manifestation be possible here. Aswapati's birth must precede Savitri's birth.

The reason for invoking Savitri’s birth is, she alone can remove the obstacle that is standing across the path of the divine Event, Death obstructing the march of evolution towards love and beauty and joy and truth and harmony and perfection and immortality in the widening growth of knowledge. True, the Divine Shakti can do everything from above; but it is not the same thing as her accepting human birth, her coming down here and working in the lesser triple world of ignorance and falsehood and death. Not only impersonally, but personally too “she must stoop to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda.”

We may discern the following from the Mother’s story of creation: there is first the Supreme’s