The relevant Mahabharata narrative
With this and the next two entries—#16-17-18 of A Spiritual Biography of Savitri presenting Book III Canto Four, The Vision and the Boon—we are entering into the story aspect of Savitri quite discernibly. In this canto, and in subsequent development of the epic by Sri Aurobindo, the connection with Vyasa’s narrative as we have in the Mahabharata emerges pretty distinctly and prominently. But what was given earlier in that ancient tale in just 15 to 18 ślokas, now got expanded into something more than ten thousand lines in Savitri, to be precise into 11,683 lines spread over the first 24 cantos; this may be compared with the total number of 23,837 lines and 49 cantos of the entire epic in the revised edition or, in terms of the number of pages as we have now, 348 in a total of 724, that is, roughly half the Savitri is dealing with these dozen and a half ślokas as against a total of 300 of Vyasa. This might sound all very disproportionate in terms of the account of the story, but the essential spiritual basis for incorporating the new elements is pregnantly available in it. This means that, while the broad framework of the story is retained by Sri Aurobindo he has recreated it to suit his mighty purposes. And yet the meaningful connection is there. Vladimir, while reviewing my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra, has put it very perceptively. He says: “The fact that Sri Aurobindo put his revelation into the story of Mahabharata and did not invent his own has its deeper implications, for it reaches our historical and evolutionary depth, orienting us to the realisation of the Vedic Knowledge, providing us with new keys, integrating our new discoveries with the ancient knowledge.” Very true, indeed. There is at times a strong tendency to ridicule the Mahabharata tale even on part of knowledgeable commentators and experts, but they easily forget that the seeds present in it are luminous and forcible, that it is also persuasive to convey the great issue of this mortal creation, this mŗtyuloka, the issue of this evolutionary world of ours. The mythological-symbolic tale itself has the Vedic origin and it has all the power to support the vast spirituality of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; Sri Aurobindo would never have taken it if it were not so. And the remarkable thing is, he more or less retained it intact in its broad details.

With the Vision and the Boon we enter into the ancient storyline directly. Until now in Savitri it had been the long and arduous yoga-tapasya of Aswapati, the eighteen-year yajna-offering of the Mahabharata description grown into swift and wide-sweeping triple movement, the individual, the universal, and the transcendental movement. Presently it is here in the last stage that he is going to get a boon, varam, from Goddess Savitri, the boon with the sanction of the Creator-Father Brahma himself. The ślokas describing this aspect in the Vyasa narrative can be rendered as follows:


• 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 Yajnas, presiding over charities, skilful in work, loved by the city-dwellers and by all the people of his kingdom, one who was absorbed in the welfare of everybody, there ruled 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 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 to of such rules of penance; at the end of the eighteen-year period Savitri was much pleased with him.
• Then, 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 regular practices.
• Savitri said: O King sovereign, I am immensely pleased by your purity and chastity, 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 duties of the dharma.
• Aswapati said: It was with the intention of begetting children for performing 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 the 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, O gentle-natured.
• You should not in the least utter anything argue about it; it is as bestowed by the Father-Creator that I tell it so, pleased that I am with you.
• The King, consenting, acknowledged gratefully what Savitri promised him; he further implored her for the gracious favour to be fulfilled soon in the near future.
• Then even as Savitri withdrew from sight, the valiant King returned to his capital and, attending to his duties towards his people, ruled over the kingdom in the conduct of the dharma.


The narrative is in the manner of a swift-running story, a secular story but with all the divine contents in it, an absorbing story, yet as if designed to impart education in the life governed by truth, in dharma that upholds the cosmic order. It has to be read simultaneously on a number of levels, particularly so by entering into the spirit of the time when it was given.

RYD

Aswapati the determined adhyatmayogi
Vyasa’s Aswapati does yajna-offering for eighteen years which indeed marks a great event in the spiritual history of the earth, not chronologically but in terms of evolutionary advance, the yajna that invoked and brought down the divine Shakti upon the mortal earth. Sri Aurobindo treats it differently, as the Protagonist’s adhyatmayoga based on Sapta Chatusthaya, the seven tetrads received directly from the divine Guide and Instructor, the injunction leading towards the great fulfilment. These Chatusthayas were essentially meant for him, as if in an explicit context, but we could perhaps consider them as Yoga Aphorisms for practice towards self-perfection. Yet it is his adhyatmayoga, and there is a kind of specificity about these Chatusthayas with the specificity of the results also, the siddhis ensuing from them. In this adhyatmayoga he set himself to create a new world in the House of the Spirit. In it the Yoga of the Sat Purusha was done and now had the Yoga of the Chit Shakti to begin. Our own adhyatmayoga will be of a different kind; it will be for entering into the new creation, for living in it, for getting ready to accept the Law of Perfection in our life and in our conduct, and not for creating it; it will be to allow the Chit Shakti to work in us, allow her to do her work in us, her work in the perfection of our receptivity. Could we say that the ancient Vedic yaina-offering had in it such a possibility, of creating a new world? Not that new worlds were not created by the Rishis, even as Vishwamitra created a world for Trishanku; the cosmic creation itself has come from an act of cosmic yanja. But the problem of Sri Aurobindo’s Aswapati is somewhat different. Let us see it briefly.

About this Yoga of Aswapati described in Savitri Sri Aurobindo writes, in 1946, in a letter to Amal Kiran as follows:

... First, he is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the individual and this is described as the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but this too is as yet an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. This is described in the Book of the Divine Mother.

This makes it clear that the adhyatmayoga of this Aswapati is concerned with three things: spiritual self-fulfilment as an individual, discovery and possession of all the cosmic realms of consciousness and, finally, manifestation of the new creation. The last term consists of two elements: establishing the new creation in the House of the Spirit; manifestation of the new creation upon earth. If the first has predominantly the Vedic-Adhyatmic aspect in it, the other is essentially Psychic-Tantric in character; we have in them together the Yoga of the incarnate Sat Purusha and the Yoga of the incarnate Chit Shakti. Here, in Part I of Savitri, the first half of the epic, what is presented is basically Aswapati doing the Yoga of the incarnate Sat Purusha, he taking the triple stride. Aswapati’s yoga is the Yoga of the incarnate Sat Purusha. Is this aspect present in Vyasa’s Aswapati, in Vyasa’s Savitri? But it is so brief that we can hardly say anything about it though, arguably, such hints are available in it. There is certainly no explicit mention of a new creation in it established in Brahmaloka, that it will come down with the work of Savitri; Savitri does get a boon from Yama of a hundred sons for herself and a life, with Satyavan, of four hundred years, both symbolic-indicative of a higher manifestation.

We could have a hurried look at the adhyatmayoga of Sri Aurobindo’s Aswapati. But before we do that, we must see the imperative of the birth of the divine Shakti here upon earth, she taking a mortal birth, she incarnating herself here in the mortal creation. What does Aswapati see? and experience? Firstly, this world is full of anguish and melancholy and suffering, is a transient and sorrowful world, anityam and asukham as the Gita says, living under the yoke of Ignorance and Death; such cannot be the divine intention behind it, that is, if there is a divine meaning in it then that must be fulfilled. This entails establishing a world of perfection in the transcendent, a creation that can be projected upon earth with the right conditions assured for it to happen, that its manifestation does take place. None of these can come about without the divine Shakti taking the mortal birth, incarnating herself here. Aswapati as the determined adhyatmayogi must work out all the three interconnected aspects. Precisely in accomplishing all the three interconnected aspects does lie the uniqueness of Savitri’s Aswapati.

RYD

Savitri is quintessentially a book of two Yogas
We could thus say that Savitri is quintessentially a book of two Yogas, rather forming two aspects of one single Yoga, the Yoga of the Evolutionary Manifestation. These two Yogas are the Yoga of the Sat-Purusha, of the Supreme Being, and the Yoga of the Chit-Shakti, of the Consciousness-Force, of the Supreme Mahashakti, For carrying out this evolutionary manifestation, that it directly opens to the Divine, both are necessary, one covering Ascension-Invocation and the other Terrestrial Realisation, the Yoga of the Sat-Purusha, the Adhyatma-Yoga, and the Yoga of the Chit-Shakti, the Shakti-Yoga. But the beautiful thing is, both the Sat-Purusha and the Chit-Shakti themselves take the mortal birth and do this double Yoga, the Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation, both the Sat-Purusha and the Chit-Shakti coming directly from the Eternal. By the first a new creation, in relationship with the mortal world, is first established in the transcendent and the Divine Power of Manifestation, the Executive Mahashakti is persuaded to come down and make it manifest here. By the second all the obstacles, the inconscient oppositions standing on the way of the divine manifestation are removed. The finest boon of the double Yoga is the coming the down of Krishna and Kali upon earth—Krishna a “symbol of all the beauty eyes see not, crowned with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue,” and Kali “dark and beautiful, turbulent in will and terrible in love,” the divine Ananda in the dynamism of the supreme Truth. Part I of Savitri with its 11683 lines is concerned with the Yoga of the Sat-Purusha, the Adhyatma-Yoga of Aswapati; the second half with its 12154 lines gives the Yoga of the Chit-Shakti, the Shakti-Yoga done by Savitri. We also have in them their Siddhis, the accomplishments.

As we have seen, Aswapati’s Yoga is a triple stride covering the individual, the cosmic and the transcendental domains of the infinite Spirit. First he fulfills himself as an individual then, with the soul’s release and the spirit’s freedom he sets to conquer and possess the vast universal kingdoms, thus “his actions framing the movements of the Gods and his will taking up the reins of cosmic Force”; finally he establishes the new creation in the transcendent and makes a bid to bring it down by approaching the divine executive Shakti. The compelling result is the mortal birth of the divine Goddess who shall do the work of bringing down the new creation, make it manifest upon earth, which indeed the work of the executive Power.


The Royal Yoga of the Individual
First Aswapati releases himself from Nature’s hold, even as he finds the source from which his spirit came. Now he knows his larger self and becomes one with all. But there is the ingrained reluctance in the earthly stuff. He must discover its cause and remove it. He does it, that even his body’s parts open to higher things, to greater light. With the soul’s release Aswapati has achieved everything as an individual. There must now come the spirit’s freedom from all contingencies.

But perhaps there is a purpose in the Spirit submitting itself to Nature’s law, Being to the law of Becoming, Purusha obeying Prakriti, Power governing the Presence. It is through her mechanics that this stubborn inconscient stuff can slowly gain awareness. Though not herself divine presently, she is planned divinely. This truth has to be found and the intention yogically worked out. Aswapati is therefore engaged in the Yoga of Knowledge of the Time-Born Man. He now gets a new vision of himself and of the world. He may not be yet aware of the goal fixed for him, not know whether he is going to reach just the featureless unseen or discover a new mind and body in the city of God. But he is tied to the fate of this creation and there cannot be rest for him until the dusk from man’s soul is lifted. He must attend to it.

Aswapati first has the knowledge about the possibilities waiting for the time-born man. He has read the secret Vedic text and deciphered the significance of the great world rhythms. He sees a hidden sun even in the depth of darkness. His will now assumes superhuman dimensions and it can bring down a greater world. But he also discerns the gulf between what is and what is to be. He withdraws from everything and in silent mind hears the call. A Descent leaps down and there is a new change. Nothing now remains sealed to his sight. Where could abide only for a while the heavenlier states, there is no more resistance of the lower members. Nature is mastered and the exploration of her vast provinces begins. His present Raj Yoga, the Yoga of the King, has to be raised to the Cosmic Yoga, Vishva Yoga, and finally to the Yoga of Surrender to the Divine Mother.

The Vishva Yoga
The Vishva Yoga begins. Here is a Universe well-planned and many-tiered. It has limits neither in Space nor in Time. Experience after experience displays the rainbow moods of the Power that brought it into existence. It is as if from one string issued out numberless harmonies, each with its own frozen perfection. They climb one above the other and disappear in the original Hush. It is up on these ascending slopes of Heaven that the aspiring soul of man moves. So too these worlds influence in several ways the working of this earth, her grief and her joy. Our souls were attracted by its mystery and accepted the travail. In the process slowly the meaning of the cosmic scheme itself becomes evident. The Seer is born within and whatever knowledge is necessary is received. In the exploration of this scheme no term has been fixed for Aswapati and his march is towards the indiscernible end. He sees Nature’s climbing hierarchy and sets himself on the way.

The first port of entry is the world of Subtle Matter. Here are present the prototypal forms, the shining origins of things on earth. All here is beautiful, faultless, dream-hued, outlasting death and birth. Though so close to earth they suffer no deformation. Even as the soul is radiant, material substance in this region bears the signature of power and authority. From here occurs the fall into darker and denser reality that is ours. This makes us humble, but also can make us noble to be stars. Here is a possibility of our mortal body becoming glorious if it should hold sufficient truth in it. The divine substance is now present in this proximate world marking a new beginning towards that divinity on earth. But prior to that Aswapati has to discover what lies beyond this material Paradise.

Not symmetric charm and carved dreams, but the spirit of adventure is what gives vibrancy to existence. Life bothers the least about the pros and cons and hazards to assert her in every circumstance. Her high birth disdains her not from entering into the squalid earth. Indeed, whatever can serve her questing delight she gambles, unmindful of the peril. She risks even the extremes. Be they meadows of laughter or fields of toil, for her everything is for creative enjoyment. Because of her alone the dull material substance becomes sensitive to dynamic possibilities of the revealing Spirit. She builds the foundation for greater powers to step into this physical manifestation. However, in the process, Matter’s stiffness or jadatva overpowers her and she is no more her old self here. Life meets Death and they together now drive the cart of precarious immortality, the insecure cart.

The great power has succumbed and earth failed to keep the joy she had brought with her. Not only that. She herself has become an abject being crawling in the lowly mud. Yet in her arrival glimmers a faint hope urging the mortal’s soul on the wakened path. Aswapati sees this pitiful state of fallen Life surviving on Death. Here perpetuity is her immortality. But then there are gains also. There is a climbing of life from below. The first creation is followed by the instinct of a thinking sense. An animal experiment then begins. In it all is done to satisfy the body’s wants and survival of the fittest becomes the law. But with the physical mind opening to higher Light the possibility of transformation becomes distinct. Presently an instrument personality is born and all is dictated by habits. Everything looks species-based and repetitive; around the little glow of life there is the nescient haze.

There is nothing angelic in this empire of little life. Chaos governs the infernal creatures inhabiting it. Life has force and she is driven by idea, but the Idea-Force is absent. Instinct is followed by thought and thought by will. Out of this queer stuff was shaped man and it could be proclaimed that he was well made. Still man lives just for a brief while—only to enjoy and suffer and die. He has essentially remained the same, yet greatly prone to error. His mind is but a doll manipulated by unseen forces and such cannot be the end of Life’s adventure. She has to move forward to receive truer gifts from the hands of Fortune. Not Man nor Nature but the Avatar alone can help her receive these rewards. He pays the price for that. If the body’s cells have to be filled with divine joy he has to eliminate the wrong afflicting them. Sacrificing his triple glory he accepts the mortal state, bears its anguish. Aswapati moves through it with his spirit’s alert flame.

Stepping into the wider Life, Aswapati notices her attempt to seize the boundless in birth. Thus she would claim back her heavenly state she had lost long ago. She made this creation of many hues but missed the True. Yet she moves on towards the far-off Light. Aswapati glimpses a ray of hope in her thousand expressions. He hears the heartbeats of a hidden reality. But he also hears the weeping of her soul within. She has become hostile and has consorted herself with hidden death. She is a riddle unto herself and yet slays the puzzled wayfarer. But Aswapati reads clearly the hieratic script and the Word of Life is not a mystery to him. He discerns the gap between what she came to do and what she now is. Pause she would not in her attempt to bring glory to the material inanity, though her knowledge be incomplete. He must probe in the night itself the cause of this failure.

The problem of Life’s abysmal condition is a central issue and Aswapati cannot rest content without tackling it. What could have been in the service of good has become an instrument of vice. In this world of fallen Life fair is foul and foul fair. If there is creative Darkness engendering pain, wickedness, suffering, corrupting truth, then it could be here. Now Ignorance, Falsehood, Error, Ego walk in its thick shadow and the Satanic votaries proclaim: “Evil, be thou my God.” Life in that gloom with her perilous charm and beauty lies cursed under the Gorgon spell. There Aswapati felt that his body was licked by the hostile Power and he suffered fear. But this had to be borne. He endures and with his bare spirit masters her. The stepping of the Incarnate into the worlds of Night is a wonderful thing that can happen to her and in it is her opportunity to change.

God created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice, but this love has to first conquer the appalling Inane. The existential problem is the denial to all that is God’s. Here are titans and maniac powers and cruel operators; here, allowed by the mighty Spirit, work determinedly terrible agencies. But Aswapati in the strength of his soul takes up the challenge. He probes penetratingly this kingdom of pain, this world of sorrow and hate, of wickedness and malignancy. Not only that. Shiva-like he drinks all the poison, till not a drop is left. The radiant truth in him yet remains intact. In the vastness of Existence he even feels the smallness of this queer material creation. Aswapati observes that the inconscient Being is asleep and knows not what it built. But he puts his finger upon the error and the pain and at once awakens there new knowledge. He has opened the Book of Bliss and Life’s truth is revealed. The dichotomy between Matter and Spirit is resolved.

In the occult abyss was the rendezvous with the Night. Aswapati had gone there to woo her dark and dangerous heart. On the track leading to the meeting place his footprints have become the seals of divinity and thence shall gush radiant fountains. Around him all is felicitous and wonderful and the daylight of conscious suns is within him. After that wounding experience here is something healing and marvellous. The dread is over and an Elysian fragrance fills the air. He is in the company of Gods and Goddesses and is thrilled with beauty, peace, love, might, desire, pleasure, dream, sweetness. Forms are shaped here by the divine light and mind is made immortal by music. Aswapati’s whole being is flooded with bliss and an undying power fills his strength. But he has also the perception that this cannot be the journey’s end and that the Highest must be reached.

Across the land of sensuous beauty are the realms of observation and understanding. Now in the play of Nature has been set into motion another faculty, the faculty of the early mind. First appears the physical mind, marking the beginning of the thinking mind. It is tied to habits and it toils in ignorance. Soon arrives Reason. She has come and made great inventions, built philosophies and rational disciplines, drawn on the map of knowledge a few lines of reality. But there is no goal and the game is inconclusive. In the process she stumbles upon the fissioned atom and in it sees the omnipotent’s force. Yet what is witnessed is the tyranny of Matter’s logic imposed upon the Spirit’s swiftness of thought. There has to be a greater Mind to see a greater truth. Only rarely does intuition bring to us superior knowledge, the higher gnosis. Sometimes Life-Thoughts come like shining Maruts, or else the pure Thought-Mind brings bodiless ideas in our midst.

But these wonderful powers of Mind are not of great avail. There is a truth by which things can be seen in an unerring manner and that is altogether beyond their reach. Aswapati now meets in the Ideal’s world the Thinker or Manishi. Across the first realms of Mind he is in the company of shining archangels and kings of thought. Theirs is an attempt to grasp Truth’s absolute. The creative Word sets into motion these many worlds and the will-to-be is seized in things. The divine power of hearing comes as a natural gift. But Mind is incapable of understanding these works of Truth. Even sages and seers find her to be beyond their grasp. There is no way to know her and it is only by surrendering to the absolute will of hers that a ray of her radiant wonder can enter into our life’s many dimnesses. Or else she would remain forever unknown to us.

But the Ideal is always a bright spur for the explorer. At each step is seen a luminous world rising in honour of the high Truth. On one side are the kingdoms of love, beauty, joy, sweetness all bringing to earth their gracious marvels. What remained dormant until now opens to spiritual greatnesses. Here is felt the Immortal’s touch. On the other side of this climbing pathway burns the deathless flame of will, the force of utter divine consciousness. Even as it climbs the ascending slopes, there is a call to reach the summits of existence. Aswapati moves through these worlds with the household ease. But he finds that here while beauty and greatness, sweetness and might, the Rose and the Flame, come together yet they stand apart. They would not find themselves in the single soul of the world. The spiritual path and the occult-psychic path run parallel but do not yet become one. Aswapati must therefore advance towards the diviner spheres.

On his onward march Aswapati has now entered the passive world of the superior being of Mind who is simultaneously impersonal also. He stands on the summit and is a silent witness, sākshi, of things carried out by Nature, Prakriti. He watches indifferently the good and the bad of life; he is unconcerned about victory or defeat. Yet without his consent the movements of Prakriti would not take place. He is anumantā, giving approval for her actions. Aswapati lived in this still self, and its quiet vastness was in him. But there was no urge to stay in it. That self seemed but a shadow of a vaster and more forceful a reality. Peace is all right, but there has also to be the Truth’s dynamism. It is this dynamic aspect which gives credibility to this world. Aswapati found love and sweetness of the Mother-force absent here. This would not satisfy him and he is prompted to go beyond the realization of this silent self.

In search of the active power who shapes the course of events, Aswapati is led by a mysterious sound and he comes to a wonderful realm. There consciousness, mind, life, body are all made of soul-stuff and spiritual sense is the instrument of knowledge. Those who have by the practices of virtue accumulated great merit in life on earth ascend to this splendid abode. Here wait the liberated souls for a new adventure in the world of opportunities. Beyond it are regions of happiness and peace, of light, hope, love. Aswapati grows aware of them. He sees Shiva and Shakti in a fulfilling union’s poise. Behind them stands the omnipotent Goddess, Chidvilasini or Consciousness-Force by whose act this creation has come out from the Unknowable. Aswapati’s spirit has now become a vessel to hold her luminous might. In her he finds an answer to his long search and surrenders to her. Indeed, this is the offering of the World-Soul to the Higher Power who alone can assure the success of his work. His quest bears fruit in her.

Aswapati, after such a wonderful experience on the border touching the Transcendent, returns to the things that exist in Time. Now wherever he goes he carries along with him the consciousness of the Passive Brahman, the quiescent Sachchidananda as a foundation for all of his activities in the world. He sees the powers that supervise the world and, beyond them, looks for that which can bring about a cosmic change. He makes a total yogic surrender to the Reality which sustains the Earth, the Mid-region, and Heaven,—Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar. In that sacrifice, he is newborn and even his body partakes in its joy. Yet this supernal birth is his alone and cannot be of great avail for the collective on the earth. The individual’s supernal birth has to become a larger supernal birth. Its key is with the Divine Mother and therefore Aswapati must approach her. With this Siddhi attained, and with the cosmic forces now under his control, he becomes the Lord of Life. Hence onward his march is towards that transcendence where her home is.

Universal Realisation and the New Creation
The one whom Aswapati met standing behind the World-Soul is still a mystery to him. So his quest continues and he ascends to the height where only the bare Reality stands. But on that summit of realization he has to make a final choice,—he must either abandon the world and merge into that Reality or else seek that which will transform it. Towards that choice no help was available and the cosmic spirit remained just an aspect of Non-being, the first Asat. But that Asat is ever inaccessible. Perhaps in it if all should vanish then the golden Sphinx might reveal something of her mystery. But it entails a danger, that of going out of the manifestation. That eventuality would mean the failure of the soul’s mission itself. Though to free the self from the contingent Nature is a basic condition for any progress, there is also an obligation of fulfilling oneself here. Aswapati is alert to it and hence he must remove the veil of light.

In that self-discovery Aswapati comes to know about God’s desire that works here even in this mortal world. Here he is rewarded. It is in response to the longing of his soul that a being of wisdom, power, delight,—jnāna, shakti, ānanda,—steps out of eternity. He surrenders to her and his heart is glad. Existence no more seems to be without aim. In her is found the hidden Word, the Mantra of Ascent and Transformation. She stands at the head of this creation and she is the one who helps us cross great distances that yawn between us and the marvels that shine over there. From her Sun we can set alight our suns, suns of knowledge, strength, beauty, sweetness, love, joy, harmony, perfection. It is she who can turn our pain of death into ecstasy of life. How wonderful to be caught in her intolerant flame! Her light and her bliss he asked for men on earth. Nothing else he yearned and gave himself completely to her alone.

Aswapati sits expectantly with a prayer in his silent heart, but nothing happens. He is puzzled and must find if something in him was still resisting the great advent. He is aware that even the least element could spoil the work. He traces its roots and extracts them out completely. He is free and enters into the superconscient state. There Nature’s afflictions disappear and in the deep hush is the anticipation of an answering voice. Aswapati’s solitary concern is the good of the grieving creature. His long tapasya was for that purpose. Indeed, it is out of it that sprang up a new creation in the transcendent. But it ought to become a part of the evolutionary reality. For that to happen the Spirit’s disdainfulness towards Matter should disappear. Behind the present world Aswapati sees a world to be and the question is to make it actual. He knows that it can be done only by the divine Power. He must call her.

There is a sudden flow of energy and Aswapati feels its rush into all parts of his being down to the very physical. Spirit and body identify with each other, even as the radiant Goddess stands in front of him. She counsels him not to force mortality’s issue; he should instead leave all to the course of the evolving Time. He is told that Man is too weak to bear the burden of the Truth and he must graduate himself to receive her gifts. In the meanwhile, Aswapati should help this struggling creature on his heavenward march. She is ready to grant a boon to Aswapati, with the assurance that all things shall happen in God’s transfiguring hour. But the Siddha Yogi makes himself bold and holds out an alternative. He knows that a new creation in the House of the Spirit is waiting to be born and the Goddess should incarnate herself to make it real here. Saying ‘Be it so’, the Goddess withdraws and glad Aswapati returns to attend to his worldly duties.


Such is the Adhyatma-Yoga of Aswapati. Now the divine Goddess is poised to take the mortal birth.

RYD

Samyama on the sun and much more
By his adhyatmayoga, based on the Chatusthayas, Aswapati is to get spiritual self-fulfilment, discover and possess all the cosmic realms of consciousness, and establish a new creation in the House of the Spirit that it, by the Shakti-Yoga, shall manifest upon the earth. These are the siddhis or yogic attainments, spiritual realisations which pertain specifically to this yoga of Aswapati, the adhyatmayoga. None of the ancient practices, be they Vedantic or Tantric or Buddhist, or of any other religion, had this triple aspect in their accomplishment, in their success, triumph, in their pursuit. Not even the Gita’s celebrated triple synthesis of Jnana-Karma-Bhakti, Knowledge-Action-Devotion has in its great purview the possibility, for instance, of a new creation being brought into existence and, following it, its manifestation upon earth; it does not even talk of the knowledge of the universe in its static and dynamic deployment, its space and time extension, or of the vision of the three times, the past-present-future, trikāladŗşţi. But, let us briefly look at the Raja Yoga, its aphorisms dealing with samyama. For details relevant to our immediate purposes reference may be made at
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2006/12/10/2563766.html#811435
Patanjali in his Yoga-Sutra—when was this system given? Could it be before 3000 BC as some estimates claim?—describes the inner conditions to be met for getting the knowledge of the objective world, bhuvanaĵñāna. The three requirements of the objective knowledge stipulated by him are: dhāraņā, dhyāna, and samādhi. These three terms can be understood as follows: dhāraņā is the act of holding, supporting, preserving, keeping the mind collected; dhyāna concerns with meditation, contemplation, reflection; and samādhi is the absorption of thought into the object of meditation, intentness, concentration, bringing together, union with it. The combination of dhāraņā, dhyāna and samādhi constitutes samyama, the three perceiving or holding an object together, they fixed on it. The successful accomplishment of samyama leads to Wisdom or praĵňā. In the siddhi of samyama one enters into a kind of meditation in which the object of meditation can still remain distinct; it is sampraĵňātah. Eventually, there arrives the state of Wisdom which is full of Truth, ŗtambharā praĵňā. In The Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo explains: samyama, “a concentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness, by which one can become aware of all that is in the object.” But he also says that “the necessity of concentration becomes slight or nil when the active oneness grows; the luminous consciousness of the object and its contents becomes more spontaneous, normal, facile.” (p. 858)

Patanjali gives quite a number of examples of the successful samyama, the siddhis attained through samyama. Thus when differentiation of succession is made, it leads to change; samyama on change brings knowledge of the three divisions of time, past-present-future. The sound of a word when uttered, its sense and the object it connotes are taken together by us, but samyama on it gives knowledge of what it is; thus samyama on these three aspects of the word ‘tree’ brings knowledge of the tree. By samyama on the strength of an elephant comes strength to us. Knowledge of the universe comes by samyama on the Sun. This knowledge of the universe includes the knowledge of the seven nether worlds and the seven ascending worlds of Matter-Life-Mind-Supermind-Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. By samyama on the Moon, knowledge of the arrangement of the stars is obtained,—that is the Vedic way of doing astronomy; and then samyama on Polaris gives knowledge about the relative movements of the stars. Such are the great siddhis of the Raja Yoga’s samyama, becoming available by the simultaneous practice of dhāraņā-dhyāna-samādhi.

Along with samyama given by Patanjali, let us also see The Life Divine. Sri Aurobindo writes about the four methods of knowledge as follows: “Our surface cognition, our limited and restricted mental way of looking at our self, at our inner movements and at the world outside us and its objects and happenings, is so constituted that it derives in different degrees from a fourfold order of knowledge. The original and fundamental way of knowing, native to the occult self in things, is a knowledge by identity; the second, derivative, is a knowledge by direct contact associated at its roots with a secret knowledge by identity or starting from it, but actually separated from its source and therefore powerful but incomplete in its cognition; the third is a knowledge by separation from the object of observation, but still with a direct contact as its support or even a partial identity; the fourth is a completely separative knowledge which relies on a machinery of indirect contact, a knowledge by acquisition which is yet, without being conscious of it, a rendering or bringing up of the contents of a pre-existent inner awareness and knowledge. A knowledge by identity, a knowledge by intimate direct contact, a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact are the four cognitive methods of Nature.” (pp. 524-25)

Let us refer specifically to the technique of getting knowledge of the universe as given in the Yoga-Sutra III: 25. It states that the knowledge of the universe comes from the samyama upon the sun, bhuvanaĵňānam sūryé samyamāt. The commentary attributed to Vyasa elaborates it in considerable details. Bangali Baba renders it as follows: The expansion of the universe covers seven regions. There the region beginning from the back of the Meru is the Bhūloka. The aerial region beginning from the back of the Meru up to the Polestar and decorated with planets, asterisms and stars is the Antariksha, Bhuvaloka. Above that, the divine region is fivefold. The region of Mahendra is the third; the fourth is the Maharloka belonging to the Creator. The region of Brahma is threefold. These regions are as follows: The Janaloka, Tapoloka and the Satyaloka. The compiled verse makes it explicit: “The region of Brahma is concerned with three regions, then comes the Maharloka of the Creator; the region of Mahendra is called Swah and in the sky are the stars. On the earth are the creatures.” Then, in the nether worlds there are six great hells one above other. Beneath them are the seven Patalas. The eighth is this earth possessed of seven islands. In the Bhuva live the virtuous men and the gods. The inhabitants of the Mahendraloka are the divine beings of six classes. In the Maharloka, the region of the Creator, live the divine beings of five descriptions. They all have mastery over gross elements and live on meditation. In the Janaloka, the first region of Brahma, live four kinds of divine beings, in the Tapoloka live three kinds, and in the Satyaloka four kinds. The last set of beings live in unbuilt existence and are established themselves. This is the expanse of the universe and must be seen by the Yogi. After performing samyama upon the solar entrance and hence also over the other parts, he should practise thus until all is seen.”

Savitri’s Aswapati has seen all these worlds, but seen by practising the path given to him in the Sapta Chatusthaya. His Vishwa Yoga has already received these ancient siddhis—and much more than that, the siddhis belonging to the unique adhyatmayoga. He has not only discovered these worlds but also possessed them; he has won them. “First, he is achieved his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the individual, described as the Yoga of the King. Next, he made the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness: but this too was as yet an individual victory. Finally, he aspired no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. The Book of the Divine Mother describes it.”

The hallmark of the adhyatmayoga is winning the realms of the universal and possessing them, followed by the new creation and pushing it further for the manifestation on earth. No other yoga offers such prospects. Aswapati has done it, borne pain and suffering for the sake of improving the mortal’s lot, a work “severe and painful” as Sri Aurobindo himself wrote on 12 July 1911; he also wrote two and half month later, on 29 September 1911, about the theory and system of Yoga which he had formed and which was giving great results not only to him but also to the young men who were with him. The reference seems to be to the Sapta Chatusthaya which was giving “great results”.

RYD

O Son of Strength
Although Aswapati was immersed in mystic Sleep, his heart lay somewhere conscious and alone, lay with “excess of passionate will”. It turned towards its far-off fount of light and love. There was yet the expectation of response from there. It accepted bliss, it refused the calm that none can share, “To her it turned for whom it willed to be.” (Savitri, p. 332) It is his passionate will which is going to save the situation. Indeed, everything else was quietude, knowing well that there is a truth beyond and that whatever has to happen will happen in it; in it error had vanished, in it grief had vanished, in it the patient years waited for its own coming. This was the fiery point, the lonely fire that called the great Truth. (pp. 332-33)

Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will;
Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew.
Armed with the intuition of a bliss
To which some moved tranquillity was the key,
It persevered through life's huge emptiness
Amid the blank denials of the world.
It sent its voiceless prayer to the Unknown;
It listened for the footsteps of its hopes
Returning through the void immensities,
It waited for the fiat of the Word
That comes through the still self from the Supreme.

And is heard the fiat of the Word, the Word carrying in it the executive dynamism of the Supreme. (p. 334)

Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.
Amid the lifeless silence of the Void
In a solitude and an immensity
A sound came quivering like a loved footfall
Heard in the listening spaces of the soul;
A touch perturbed his fibres with delight.
An Influence had approached the mortal range,
A boundless Heart was near his longing heart,
A mystic Form enveloped his earthly shape.
All at her contact broke from silence' seal.

The force of her coming was such that his very body answered to her power. She was now within him: (pp. 334-35)

Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed, a mighty Face
Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;
Lids, Wisdom's leaves, drooped over rapture's orbs.
A marble monument of ponderings, shone
A forehead, sight's crypt, and large like ocean's gaze
Towards Heaven, two tranquil eyes of boundless thought
Looked into man's and saw the god to come.
A Shape was seen on threshold Mind, a Voice
Absolute and wise in the heart's chambers spoke.

She addresses him, addresses Aswapati as one who has climbed the creation's tall and difficult peaks, as the “Son of Strength”. Aswapati has done the difficult yoga of self-perfection and spiritual self-fulfilment as an individual; Aswapati has won countless realms, realm after greater and brighter realm widening in this vast cosmic manifestation, he climbing peak above insurmountable peak, splendid peaks; Aswapati has established a new creation in the House of the Spirit. Aswapati is now poised to bring that “new and marvellous creation” down upon the earth. No wonder, the supreme Shakti hails him as the “Son of Strength”.

In the Rig Veda Agni is addressed variously as O forceful Fire, sahasvogne, O strong Will, O Son of the body, tanunapād, O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth, (III:25:1); Vamadeva hails him as O strong worker, on another occasions calls him O Son of Force (IV:2:2) Agni as the fashioner, Twashtri, and the friendly Light, Mitra, as the famous Immortal in the mortal, the Divine Will working in the mortal, is what we recollect in Aswapati being addressed as “O Son of Strength”. He has well qualified himself to be called so, the Son of Strength, the Hero-Winner of the divine Shakti in this mortal creation, he forcing her to accept his will one with the supreme Will.

RYD

What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more
Even as Aswapati meets the divine Shakti, on the threshold Mind, she standing on the verge of the Transcendental turning towards the cosmic, there is the continuous flow of supramental energy in his very physical; it is now able to receive it and bear its light and power. A great change has taken place in him, that this could now become not only an individual experience and realisation but also universal, in the working of the collective’s physical. Its touch, the Supramental's, has perturbed his fibres with delight; a mystic form has enveloped his earthly shape; spirit and body have recognised each other and are thrilled in that identification; his veins are the channels for the rushing streams of divinity; even the cells of the body have awakened to the spirit’s sense, an exceptional opening of consciousness in the matter full of life, the living physical; nerve, tissue, flesh are now participants in sheer beatitude; the wonder of wonders is, body itself is now responding to the action of the divine Shakti, a thing that never happened in the long and multi-winding course of the earthly evolution. The dichotomy of spirit and matter is dissolved and the golden bridge that joins them together is the presence and power of that Shakti herself. Aswapati’s rush is an intoxication towards her, as if a vast sea were jubilantly heaving to the moon, mahāvégah sāgarasyéva parvaņi, as the Ramayana would put it. The dun subconscient caves, the dunnest smoke of hell, of Shakespeare, became golden and bright, the tortuous nether life that never tasted the bliss of the felicitous Shakti got filled with it and rose prayers from those caves to her.

This is what Aswapati has already won and made it a part of the earth-existence. So the divine Shakti, standing on the threshold Mind, tells him in a voice “absolute and wise”: “What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more.” He is advised to remain content with his marvellous accomplishments, and not worry about anything else. All that he should do now is something of the kind of helping the mankind to receive its gains and live, and meritoriously grow, in it, as an aspect of the benefit of the collective life, lokasaňgrahārtha, for the maintenance of the cosmic order, as the Gita would recommend. A cautious note is struck, in the absoluteness of her wisdom. Will Aswapati accept it? No, he has his own proposal to make.

RYD

Only if her superconscient force is brought down
The mission of Aswapati’s soul was never to lead him to the high states of beatitude, that he may simply stay there. Indeed, he needs them not, those states, for himself, he being their rightful or natural inhabitant, their possessor. His soul therefore makes a unique choice, a well-intentioned and deliberate choice in full awareness of the context of the evolutionary earth. But the significant aspect of this choice of the soul of his is that there is also the sanction from the supreme Grace, bhagavadkŗpā, for what is going to be accomplished with it. But the choice is not just a choice among many options: it is actually a firm yogic will to which now there is the answering support from high. The will and the sanction are the great certainty of his Yoga’s success.

The clue was that, behind this Night, there exists the Eternal’s Sun, and that destruction becomes, paradoxically, a hastening pace in the march of this creation. When this shall be done the radiant tome of the magnum opus which is the Book of Bliss will be written.

Aswapati has well understood the problem and his Grand Odyssey takes him to the supreme Shakti herself. If it is a mighty inconscient Denial, then he is certain that it can be supplanted by the luminous Assertion only if her superconscient force is brought down here. Therefore this Bhagiratha of the Future invokes the descent of the Ganges of Heaven, the swift-pacing Mandakini of luminous currents. He invokes her to come down and flood the subterranean fields of consciousness. Aswapati’s calm and powerful yoga-tapasya has advanced to hold in his sun-bright locks the Inrush of that surging Energy, Force, he becoming the first entry point for her descent upon earth.

Aswapati saw this immense world-pile as an expression of the One. Climbing from the depths of blind Darkness, andhahtamisra, to the endless marvels of the triple Splendour, jyotirmaya, this incessant hierarchy of the typal planes linked the extreme opposites in the play of Consciousness-Force. It turns out that this temple-tower, with its innumerable storeys, was established in adventure of the material birth, as a necessity in the process of evolutionary manifestation. So shall it release the powers and potencies packed in Nature, that earth may bear divinity in her rich womb of joy:

World after world disclosed its guarded powers,
Heaven after heaven its deep beatitudes

Indeed, even in the nethermost worlds there is a mystery which lies asleep, a purposeful joyous Presence that is purposefully and joyously quiescent, unawaredly silent. The Puranas speak of it pretty glowingly. For them there is no fright even in these gloom-regions,—because, quite truly, these too are the worlds for the habitation of the Creator himself. Narad found it so in pātāla. He also witnessed that its denizens are beautiful and charming, and that there the sun and the moon spread pleasing light, not only across the day but also across the night. In that pātāla, in the land of streams and mountains and lotus-ponds, and the birds maddened in lyrical songs of love, the sons of Diti, ever enjoying rare drinks, recounts Narad to the inhabitants of the heavenly world, live always in happiness. Indeed, where is it that the divinity is absent? Maybe in our not knowing it, but our not-knowing is not its fault. But, at the same time, it is a fault that can be removed. Beyond Night and beyond Sleep is the supernal world of the supreme Trinity and that must establish itself if another failure or frustration is to be avoided.

Aswapati becomes conscious of his own self that is wide and free and also that is bound and struggling. In the multiple folds of earth’s passionate obscurity

His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone…
To her it turned for whom it willed to be.

With that “offered heart” Aswapati waits for the “fiat of the Word”, the Word coming from the Supreme. The fiat comes in the nature of a caution, prudence, concern.

RYD

A few pertinent suggestions made to Aswapati
Aswapati is standing at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum and there is the Upanishadic Veil of Unrevelation drawn over his vision. Behind that Veil everything seems to collapse, not only the nescient worlds but also the higher teeming worlds,—and the Spirit too. But the siddha-yogi has already made a striking yogic bid. As if withdrawing himself from himself, he steps into the vast of the creative featureless. He dissolves his entire personality and in that experience witnesses only the formless Form of the Self, the true Impersonal. The last bit of individuality, as well as of cosmicity, is lost. He has won luminous Silence, Silence of the Featureless, enveloping him and enveloping everything, the womb of all activity, the richness that rushes in a thousand directions to express itself.

But now Aswapati has to make a crucial choice. The supreme moment of truth is at hand and in the freedom of his soul he must decide whether to renounce the claims of the world and live in the magnificence of undying splendours of heaven, whether to abdicate in Light, or die in the naked blaze of the Truth. Not in bondage but in full freedom, which he has already won, he has to decide upon the alternatives, he has to make a choice in his spirit’s freedom, he has to will what he would opt for. The implications of the choice are such that either he must give up all, including even that for which he aspired and for which he bore the inner wounds so difficult to heal, an option by which he can just disappear into That, Tat, without leaving behind any trace of his being and existence; or else he must transform them all into the self of the unnameable and inexpressible Supreme present in the manifestation.

Aswapati, we could say, does not quite exercise the choice. Rather his strategy is to force the issue in another manner. He makes a masterly move, a crucial and significant advance compelling the high Will to shape itself in the will of his soul and his spirit. That is the finest hour of his yoga by which a glowing concreteness is given to the indefinable, that it may configure the future of this creation, upload man’s new glorious destiny. Aswapati is already practising here the Yoga of the Future, the possibility of the individual’s will operating in the creation, acquiring the true individuality. In the language of the legend of Savitri, it is as though Aswapati remembers the day when Satyavan is to die; related with it is also the poignant affliction of Savitri herself who has taken the burden of the world upon her shoulders. This meaningful death, and this poignancy, are always there somewhere deep in his consciousness, they as if keep on reminding him always about his Avataric mission. That Avataric mission can be fulfilled by establishing this will in the sachchidanandaic consciousness even in the mortal world, on mŗtyuloka.

The divine Shakti is aware of this concern of Aswapati. But she is also fully aware of the dangers of rushing to fulfil it, dangers which can be more harmful to it than he might discern or recognise. It is in that perception and wisdom that she makes to him a few advisory recommendations.

The Son of Strength is told that he has won a great victory of the spirit and that there is none who can companion him in it. Indeed, in that victory he need not ask for himself anything more from her. However, if he cherishes the hope that he can ask something for this suffering creature of the earth, then that hope might prove to be frustrating—because the hearts of men are dumb. They cannot respond to her sweetness and to her joy, to the demands of her felicity, too immense as it is for them to bear.

She herself is a splendid mystery beyond their comprehension, and she is the goal that cannot be reached by them. She is the cause of their life also, but she is too great and all may simply collapse if not ready to receive her.

In such a situation the wise move is, to let the Power herself do things in her own way; what Aswapati can do is, contribute to that work of hers which is also full of sympathy and understanding of the conditions prevailing here. In any case, he need not, should not, merge into her and cease from activity; not withdrawal from existence but full and conscious participation with all his gains is the best for the evolutionarily growing lot. As long as Death is present in this mortal world, on mŗtyuloka, there is work to do; Aswapati is urged to look into it and play his part in it.

His soul was born to fulfil Fate. He has taken the mortal birth and he should carry on the Labour of the Gods by which slowly and steadily progress is made, progress in overcoming the adverse Fate, in conquering stubborn and incorrigible Death. He cannot remain content as long as Death exists here, the Shadow-Figure of the all-negating Void.

Fortunately or happily, also designedly, man is well-fashioned and he aspires to bring about a change in what is there around him. When he was presented to the Gods, they were happy to enter into him and live in him, do their work in him. So there is something positive in him, something encouraging about him. No doubt, there are obstacles, there are hostile powers, there are cruel beings and creatures waiting to pounce upon him; no doubt, uncertain seem to be the prospects of success, at least the immediate success. No doubt, man is a riddle unto himself; but constantly he seeks the genuine, though he may not get anything, or get very little. His mind usurps what his soul brings to him; he has become what he is not to become; mostly he obeys, unconsciously, the promptings of the Inconscience. The patient Earth-Mother nourishes him; he feels, he thinks, he strives to be a conscious god. But too soon his body resigns, resigns to death and pain. The strange thing is, his work still remains unfinished and, impatiently, he claims a high prize, a heavenly prize. This is the person to whom Aswapati must provide help.

More importantly than this, Aswapati must realise that man’s failure cannot be God’s failure. Luckily, God’s work does not get determined by man’s present capability or incapability, by his potentials and by his weaknesses, by his gains and shortcomings. There is a power and, definitely, she is working. Let Aswapati have trust in her and leave her to do all that is to be done, in the best and valid interest of this creation. Will Aswapati accept the advice?

RYD

A sober advice
Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine opens with the following pace-setting paragraph, written in August 1914 while inaugurating his philosophical monthly Arya, at once awe-inspiring and incredible, joining earth and heaven in one luminous sweep:

The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation,—for it survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment,—is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.

This is the legitimate aspiration of the growing soul of humanity, of the Divine in his creation here. In it man is a bridge thrown between beast and god, the link joining earth and heaven; but due to weird peculiar, even creepy, circumstances this bridge is always subject to buckling pressures, is under constant adverse and hostile attacks, as if all is in dreadful ghastly association. Committed agents are there to see that the attempt is thwarted, that the bridge is before long destroyed. Not only that; even man himself, the sophisticated engineer-man, is quite capable of blowing it out before God would get time to shout. One undesirable example of it is, of the progressive civilised nations themselves causing irreparable damage to the eco-system.

Indeed, what would be the use of man if he were not created to throw a bridge between That which is eternally but is unmanifested and that which is manifested, between all the transcendences and splendours of the divine life and all the dark and sorrowful tragedies of ignorance of the material world? Man is the link between what must be and what is; he is the footbridge thrown across the abyss, says the Mother.

But “against his spirit all is in dire league.” That is the pragmatism the divine Wisdom is offering in her advice to the impatient builder of the new world. She is telling Aswapati to obey his nature and fulfill his fate, to accept the difficulty and carry on the godlike toil, to live for the slow-paced omniscient purpose—because there is the deep Enigma’s knot tied in humankind. There are heaven’s powers guarding man from above, leading him in his slow evolutionary march. But against them are also the Titan influences afflicting him: (Savitri, p. 336)

Around him hungers the unpitying Void,
The eternal Darkness seeks him with her hands,
Inscrutable Energies drive him and deceive,
Immense implacable deities oppose.
An inert Soul and a somnambulist Force
Have made a world estranged from life and thought;
The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death;
On his long way through Time and Circumstance
The grey-hued riddling nether shadow-Sphinx,
Her dreadful paws upon the swallowing sands,
Awaits him armed with the soul-slaying word:
Across his path sits the dim camp of Night…

Here are the Four Powers of Negation that are creating havoc and they are such that man will find himself to be utterly helpless to defeat them; not even perhaps the small gods will be able to face them. In such a situation, the best is, let things happen in their slow evolutionary way, of which one advantage is, all the aspects of the issue are seen through and the difficulties removed. Man has need of darkness to feel some light, need of grief to taste bliss, need of death to discover life. So Aswapati, with all his remarkable siddhis, with his spiritual accomplishments, must only try to help man grow, help to make him advance towards his greater destiny. He should not force the issue that could possibly cause disorder and derangement, create more confusion than presently there is. Let man discharge himself in what he is, his potential leading him on; let him be a slow bridge and in it is his safety as well as the safety of the world. A sober advice, indeed. The suggestion is that, Aswapati should go by it, abide in it. But he won't.

RYD

The Dragon and the Sphinx—1
The Dragon
The unpitying Void is the birthplace of two powers who claim for themselves the right to oppose all that comes from the supreme Source of bliss and consciousness and existence, they the guardians of the inconscient Cave. These are the Dragon of the dark foundations who keeps unalterable the law of Chance and Death, and the mighty grey-hued riddling nether Shadow-Sphinx ready to pounce upon the small wayfarer of the spirit, quite geared up to slay his soul—the two frightening cohorts of the Night. If one can be considered as the huge Rakshasic occult of the Night, the dark and blood-red vital, the evil, the monstrous, fierce and intimidating, guardian the treasures, the other will be the Asuric occult, stone-eyed and colossal in its ego, possessive, belonging to the absolute of falsehood, the Titan born before the arrival of the high Gods. Let us just dare to look into the first, the Dragon.

The typical Western dragon, considered to be an evil omen, is a mythical creature, large and scaly, resembling a dinosaur, an outsized lizard. It has powerful fierce wings and it can fly; this dragon often breathes fire. In contrast to this the Chinese-Japanese dragon is associated with auspicious powers. The Wikipedia has the following about it: “Like real world reptiles living in water, Chinese dragon controls water in an agricultural water-driven nation. This is the contrast of the western dragon, which controls fire to show its mythical power. The dragon is also the embodiment of the concept of yang (male) and associated with the weather as the bringer of rain and water in general. Its female counterpart is the Chinese phoenix. The dragon was historically the symbol of the Emperor of China. Starting with the Yuan Dynasty, regular citizens were forbidden to associate themselves with the symbol. The dragon re-emerged during the Qing Dynasty and appeared on national flags and it has aggressive warlike connotations. In Chinese culture today, it is mostly used for decorative purposes. It is a taboo to disfigure a depiction of a dragon; for example, an advertisement campaign commissioned by Nike, which featured the American basketball player LeBron James slaying a dragon (as well as beating up an old Kung Fu master), was immediately censored by the Chinese government after public outcry over disrespect. A number of Chinese proverbs and idioms also feature references to the dragon, for example: ‘Hoping one’s son will become a dragon’ (i.e. be as successful and powerful as a dragon). The origin of the Chinese dragon is not certain. Some scholars have suggested that it comes from a stylized depiction of existing animals, such as snakes, fish, or crocodiles. Archaeologists believe the ‘long fish’ to have evolved into images of the Chinese dragon. The association with fish is reflected in the legend of a carp that saw the top of a mountain and decided he was going to reach it. He swam upstream, climbing rapids and waterfalls letting nothing get in the way of his determination. When he reached the top there was the mythical ‘Dragon Gate’ and when he jumped over he became a dragon. Several waterfalls and cataracts in China are believed to be the location of the Dragon Gate. This legend is used as an allegory for the drive and effort needed to overcome obstacles and achieve success. An alternative view, advocated by He Xin, is that the early dragon depicted a species of crocodile. The crocodile is known to be able to accurately sense changes in air pressure, and be able to sense coming rain. This may have been the origin of the dragon's mythical attributes in controlling the weather, especially the rain. In the Story of Zhou Chu, about the life of a Jin Dynasty warrior, he is said to have killed a ‘dragon’ that infested the waters of his home village, which appears to have been a crocodile. Chinese dragons are physically concise. Of the 117 scales, 81 are of the yang essence (positive) while 36 are of the yin essence (negative). This malevolent influence accounts for their destructive and aggressive side. Just as water destroys, so can the dragons in the form of floods, tidal waves and storms. Some of the worst floods were believed to have been the result of a mortal upsetting a dragon. Many pictures of oriental dragons show a flaming pearl under their chin. The pearl is associated with wealth, good luck, and prosperity. In some Chinese legends, an Emperor might be born with a birthmark in the shape of a dragon. For example, one legend tells the tale of a peasant born with a dragon birthmark who eventually overthrows the existing dynasty and founds a new one. The Chinese dragons have five toes on each foot, Indonesian or Korean dragons have four, and the Japanese dragons three. The dragon is one of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac which is used to designate years in the Chinese calendar. It is thought that each animal is associated with certain personality traits. Dragon years are usually the most popular and more babies are born in Dragon years than in any other animal years of the Zodiac. On auspicious occasions, including Chinese New Year and the opening of shops and residences, festivities often include dancing with dragon puppets. These are ‘life sized’ cloth-and-wood puppets manipulated by a team of people, supporting the dragon with poles. They perform choreographed moves to the accompaniment of drums and music. Tigers have always been an eternal rival to the dragon, thus various artworks depict a dragon and a tiger fighting an epic battle. A well-used Chinese idiom to describe equal rivals (often in sports nowadays) is Dragon versus Tiger. In Chinese martial arts, Tiger style is used to describe styles of fighting based more on understanding movement, while Dragon style is based on brute strength and memorization of techniques.”

Explaining a dream in which were seen the coils of the dragon, Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter that “it is the Chino-Japanese image for the world-force extending itself in the course of the universe and this expresses the attitude of the witness seeing it all and observing in its unfolding the unrolling of the play of the Divine Lila. It is this attitude that gives the greatest calm, peace, samatā in face of the riddle of the cosmic workings. (Letters on Yoga, p. 1078)

There is the mythology which attributes the occurrence of the eclipses to a dragon eating the sun and the moon. But the Vedic dragon is the keeper of the dark foundations and Vamadeva names another as the Dragon of the Deep, ahibudhanya, a divine being who dwells in the depths of the ocean of air. (Rig Veda, IV:155) “This Vedic imagery throws a clear light on the similar symbolic images of the Puranas,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “especially on the famous symbol of Vishnu sleeping after the pralaya on the folds of the snake Ananta upon the ocean of sweet milk… As for the ocean, the Vedic imagery shows us that it must be the ocean of eternal existence and this ocean of eternal existence is an ocean of absolute sweetness, in other words, of pure Bliss. For the sweet milk (itself a Vedic image) has, evidently, a sense not essentially different from the madhu, honey or sweetness, of Vamadeva's hymn. (The Secret of the Veda, p. 107) In another place, we have the following: “All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities,—Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides. The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels,—in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being.” (p. 382) And then: “Who of you is our deliverer? who our defender? O Earth and Heaven, free from division, deliver us; rescue, O Mitra, O Varuna, from the mortality that is too strong for us! Who of you, O gods, confirms for us the supreme good in the march of the sacrifice? They who illumine our high original seats, they who limitless in knowledge dawn out putting away our darkness, it is they, imperishable all-ordainers, who order them for us; thinkers out of the Truth, they shine forth in light, achievers. I seek for my companion by the words illumining the flowing river Aditi, she who is the divine felicity. O Night and Dawn unconquerable, so do ye make it that both the Days shall utterly protect us. Aryaman and Varuna distinguish the Path, and Agni lord of the impulsion, the path of the happy goal. O Indra and Vishnu, affirmed, extend to us perfectly the peace in which are the Powers, the mighty protection. I embrace the increasings of Parvata and of the Maruts and of Bhaga, our divine deliverer. May the master of things protect us from the sin of the world and Mitra keep us far from the sin against Mitra. Now shall one affirm the goddesses Earth and Heaven with the Dragon of the foundation by all the things desired that we must obtain; as if to possess that Ocean by their wide ranging they have uncovered the (hidden) rivers that are voiceful with the burning Light. May goddess Aditi with the gods protect us, may the divine Deliverer deliver us, unremitting; let us not diminish the foundation of Mitra and Varuna and the high level of Agni. Agni is the lord of that vast substance of riches and perfected enjoyment; he lavishes on us those abundances. O Dawn, voice of the Truth, queen of plenitude, bring to us the many desirable boons, thou who hast in thee all their plenty. To that goal may Savitri, Bhaga, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Indra move aright for us with riches of our felicity.” (pp. 499-500)

When in the evolutionary manifestation, explains Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine, the process arrives at Mind then “it uses Life and Matter as means of its expression, a field for its own growth and sovereignty, and it begins to work as if it were the true reality and the creator even as it is the witness of existence. But Mind also is a limited and derivative power; it is an outcome of Overmind or it is here a luminous shadow thrown by the divine Supermind: it can only arrive at its own perfection by admitting the light of a larger knowledge; it must transform its own more ignorant, imperfect and conflicting powers and values into the divinely effective potencies and harmonious values of the supramental Truth-Consciousness. All the powers of the lower hemisphere with their structures of the Ignorance can find their true selves only by a transformation in the light that descends to us from the higher hemisphere of an eternal self-knowledge. All these three lower powers of being [Matter-Life-Mind] build upon the Inconscient and seem to be originated and supported by it: the black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and its back of darkness the whole structure of the material universe; its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure intimations seem to be the starting-point of consciousness itself and the source of all life-impulse. The Inconscient, in consequence of this origination and predominance, is taken now by a certain line of enquiry as the real origin and creator. It has indeed to be accepted that an inconscient force, an inconscient substance are the starting-point of the evolution, but it is a conscious Spirit and not an inconscient Being that is emerging in the evolution. The Inconscient and its primary works are penetrated by a succession of higher and higher powers of being and are made subject to Consciousness so that its obstructions to the evolution, its circles of restriction, are slowly broken, the Python coils of its obscurity shot through by the arrows of the Sun-God; so are the limitations of our material substance diminished until they can be transcended and mind, life and body can be transformed through a possession of them by the greater law of divine Consciousness, Energy and Spirit. The integral knowledge admits the valid truths of all views of existence, valid in their own field, but it seeks to get rid of their limitations and negations and to harmonise and reconcile these partial truths in a larger truth which fulfils all the many sides of our being in the one omnipresent Existence. (pp. 665-66)

The Mother narrates the story of a Persian prince Gushtasp who was much annoyed that his father did not treat him as heir to the throne. So he left his native land and wandered to the West. Alone and hungry, he realised that from then on he would have to work for his living. But whichever way he turned, he proved himself of no use. “At last he met a farmer working in a cornfield, who took pity on him and gave him food and shelter. One day there came the news that the daughter of the king of Rum was of an age to marry and that all young men of princely family were invited to the royal banquet. Gushtasp decided to go there and sat at table among all the others. Princess Kitaban saw him, loved him and gave him a bunch of roses as a token of her favour. The king took a violent dislike for Gushtasp in his poverty. He dared not forbid his daughter to marry him, but as soon as they were married he drove them out of his palace. So they went to live in the heart of the forest and built their hut not far from a river. Gushtasp was a great hunter. Each day he would cross the river by boat, catch an elk or a wild ass, give half to the boatman and take the rest home to his wife. One day the boatman brought a young man named Ahrun to see Gushtasp. Ahrun wished to marry the third daughter of the king, but first he had to kill a dragon. Gushtasp promised that he would accomplish this new feat. He took some knives and made them into a ball bristling with sharp points. Then he set out on his quest and found the dragon with fiery breath. He shot many arrows at the body of the monster, leaping from side to side to avoid its claws. Then he fastened the ball of knives to the end of a pike and thrust it down the dragon’s throat. The dragon closed its jaws and fell. Then the prince dispatched it with his sword. Thus Ahrun married the third daughter of the king. You will not be surprised to hear that in the course of time such a valiant prince became the king of Persia in succession to his father. It was during the reign of Gushtasp that the holy prophet Zerdusht, or Zoroaster, taught the Persians faith in Ormazd, Lord of light and sun and fire and of righteousness and justice.” (Words of Long Ago)

But the occult aspect of the dragon comes in its frightening proportion in the Mother’s prayer:

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

RYD

The Dragon and the Sphinx—2
The Sphinx
The sense of double mystery, of the superconscient and the inconscient working, is conveyed with a powerful symbol, of the Sphinx, the Sphinx-symbol, the origin of which is untraceable. There might be local variations, and variations in the description might have come in the course of time but, in the first place, the very origin of it, of the symbol, is incomprehensible; there is no way of knowing how it might have been created or arrived at. But one thing seems certain that, certainly it is not an abstraction of a metaphysical thought gathered into an equivalent condensation, an algebraic notation summing up all that stands behind it. Rather, the Sphinx does look more to be an occult being, a creature embodying a power which is active in its twofold operation. The Sphinx-symbol is not just a representation of something incomprehensible, but is an entity having a kind of functional role to play in the scheme of things. Its well-calculated movements and operations bear sure consequences, indicating that here is a person who is governed by a deeper law whose sense we are unable to understand. It is the defiance of that law which gives rise to the undesirable, even fatal, results. In Greek the noun Σφιγξ—Sphinx—comes from the verb σφιγγω—sphingo, meaning “to strangle,” which is certainly a psychological summation of an experience not belonging to the immediate. The effect of getting strangled in the incapacity to live up to the demands of the mysterious, inability to answer the riddle of existence, these are very visible in it, in the Sphinx-symbol. Mythology soon gets built around it and, in the rational age, there are interpretations which follow it. Essentially, however, it is a power present in the cosmic functioning. But how did the word ‘sphinx’ itself was born, it having a connection with what it speaks of, as if the two are inseparable? Could such be the origin of the language?

The double sense of the sphinx comes out lucidly in Sri Aurobindo’s description which makes it clear that it is an experience that has been lived and that is being conveyed: <