On Savitri
THEME/S
LECTURES ON
S A V I TRI
Lectures delivered in the United States
by
A. B. PURANI
SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY
PONDICHERRY
First Edition 1967
Second Edition 1989
ISBN 81-7060-036-7
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1989
Published by Sri Aurobindo Society
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry
PRINTED IN INDIA
This book contains three lectures on Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri, delivered in August 1962 by the late A. B. Purani during his visit to the United States. The lectures have been edited to make them more readable, but an effort has been made to retain the lecturer's "voice" - his characteristic directness, drive and enthusiasm. It is hoped that the book will provide a brief but helpful introduction to Sri Aurobindo's poem.
Ambalal Balkrishna Purani was born in Surat, Gujarat, in 1894. Inspired as a young man by Sri Aurobindo, then a leader of the Indian National Movement, Purani helped to launch a youth movement which gained widespread popularity in Gujarat. At the age of twenty-four he visited Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and finally settled there five years later in 1923. From 1938 to 1950 he served as one of Sri Aurobindo's personal attendants. Towards the end of his life Purani toured India, Africa, Europe and the United States, trying to spread the message of his Master. In 1965, at the age of seventy-one, he passed away in Pondicherry.
A. B. Purani was a prolific writer in Gujarati and translated many of Sri Aurobindo's works into that language. His other books in English are: Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo; Sri Aurobindo: Some Aspects of His Vision; Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine (lectures given in the United States); and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach and a Study.
Savitri is an epic of more than 23,000 lines. It won't be easy to do justice to it in three days. What will be attempted is only an outline and some kind of foretaste by which you might be induced to get into the body of the book; that's all we can attempt. I consider the appearance of Savitri as the first ray of the new age that is coming in the realm of culture. It begins with the symbol of dawn, and I think symbolically it is itself a dawn of the new age that is coming to mankind. Poetry very often sums up an age and inaugurates a new age and Savitri seems to be an expression which presages; it shows us the coming of a new age. It may take hundreds of years, it is not that it will come tomorrow, but the fact that Savitri has been written now and has found expression in letters - well, that is the sign of the coming age.
It is a gift of the power of speech, as we say in India. The goddess of speech is called Saraswati; she is the goddess of inspiration, and Savitri is like a gift from the goddess Saraswati to mankind. It is not the intellectual expression of some individual, it is directly an expression of the power of speech itself taking form in words, which the Mother says is like the prophetic history of the earth, embodying in itself the fulfilment of man's life on earth. It is the earth's prophetic history and at the same time it is the reading of man's future fulfilment. It is the whole evolutionary span of mankind and even the whole of the universe.
Savitri begins with the beginning of the universe - even before the beginning of the universe - and it ends at the point where man attains the purpose of his existence on earth; so it is a song of the creation from the beginning to the possible fulfilment which the poet is able to see and give us sight of. We have dealt, while talking of poetry, with the power of Mantra. Mantra is the word that rises from the heart, an act
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of inspiration, the consciousness casting itself in word-value or sound-value, taking body, so to say, and Savitri is in that sense charged with the power of Mantra. Mantric power is the power of re-creating consciousness in a word-group or word-symbol or word-vibration. The word-vibration is not only the vibration of a word, but it is symbolic of a conscious vibration, a vibration of consciousness; the word-vibration has, therefore, the power to awaken a vibration of consciousness in the man who is open to it. It carries a Mantric power, a power which is spiritual, charging the group of words with the capacity or the power to reproduce the condition of consciousness which the word-vibration represents.
This idea of the power of the word is not peculiar to Indian classical attitude. I think the power of the word is not properly understood in modern times, because people think that a word which expresses a truth or a reality, is generally intellectual, practical, turned to some use, so they don't think that it has any other power. But if you study the growth of man's cultural movement, you find that at times the power of the word has brought great revolutions in mankind. For instance, the Indian Freedom Movement was preceded by one such word-group, Bande Mataram (Hail to the Mother, Mother India). Now that cry came in 1872, long before the Indian National Movement was even launched - there was no political life at that time to speak of. In 1872, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the Bengali seer, first saw this Mantra as the cry that must come to the sons of India in order to get their freedom. But it doesn't speak of freedom at all. Bande Mataram is a salutation to the Supreme Mother India, that's all. It only speaks of concentrating the will and the attention of the people on an objective: the collective entity, Mother India, the Bharat Shakti, as they call it. The attention of the people was drawn to that. And it is that for which many people went to jail, surrendered their property, sacrificed
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everything, died. It was the power of this Mantra. It was 1872 when it first came out in the open and it's application took about 60 or 70 years. But that's how it works.
There are other such things. I don't know whether the French National Anthem had the same effect, "Allons lesenfants de la patrie." Perhaps that might have been after the revolution or during the revolution. Then there is the cry of the Socialist: "Workers of the world, unite! Brothers of the world, unite!" That sort of expression carries a power within it which is capable of changing the course of human life. Savitri might in the end prove to be something like that. And it is not only the past where you see it. If you read even a modern poet like C. Day Lewis, you will find "The Word Over AH", a poem in which he says: Why should we write poems when people are destroying each other? It's about the Second World War. He says: What is there to write about? There is nothing much, and "yet words there must be, wept on the cratered present, To gleam beyond it".
Words there must be, yes, to express that cry over the "cratered present", because when bombings take place there is a crater created in the ground. And then the splinters of the bomb are shining over the edge of the crater, so he says, to dream in the future. In another poem Day Lewis speaks of the intuitive height to which the poet rises. "Oh on the Strident Wings" - that is his song on poetry, on the power of the word. I am only illustrating that even modern poets have got a little inkling of this great truth that an intuitive or inspired expression carries in it a tremendous power:
Oh, on this striding edge.
This hare-bell height of calm
Where intuitions swarm
Like nestling gulls and knowledge
Is free as the winds that blow.
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A little while sustain me,
Love, till my answer is heard!
Oblivion roars below,
Death's cordon narrows: but vainly
If I have slipped the carrier word.
I am here on this strident height of intuition to catch the carrier word, because it is a word that is effective. So we see that the word has been given a sufficient significance even by modern people.
There is an idea that in modern times the epic is not possible. The critics will always say so. I have dealt with it in my book. I don't want to go over it again, but there is an argument in the literary world that today is not the age of the epic. The epic's age has past, it is primitive people's business and all that sort of thing. They forget that when the seer comes, he doesn't wait for the critics. He doesn't take orders from the critics. It is like this: "The spirit bloweth where it listeth". So it blows where it likes and suddenly when all the critics say it can't happen, somebody says: "Well it happened here." Their idea was: in primitive times, battles took place between races, or some prehistoric something might have occurred which acquired a mythical value in the imagination of the people and then imaginative things were added on to the historical background and somehow or the other they made up an imaginative picture of society in which elements of culture, perfection, morality, ethics, life, the goal of life, and everything else was put together. That was a time when people were primitive, now we are very much advanced so we need not have that kind of epic - a story. But epic as a story has ceased to be long ago.
Milton's Paradise Lost is not a story in the strict sense of the term, it is what you call a religious myth. Even though it puts forth characters that are human characters, it doesn't
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deal with a human event; nor does the Divine Comedy of Dante deal with any historical episode. It is not history. The Divine Comedy is something that deals with the conditions of the human soul, particularly after death, and the conditions of man. Even now history is not indispensable for the creation of an epic. Now the epic has outgrown the objective attitude, .it has become subjective. From Milton's time onward you can see that greater and greater subjectivity becomes the point of departure for an epic, and Savitri, in that sense, is a far greater epic than all the epics put together, from Homer's time right up to the Divine Comedy. The subjectivity that has found expression in Savitri is tremendous. Savitri is not one world, it is several universes, one, two, three, four, five universes, one after another, so that it is a complex creation of universes for which there is no parallel in the world's history so far as poems are concerned.
There is also a wrong impression that the epic must have a great event to inspire it. It is not the size of the event that gives it greatness. The measure of the greatness of an event is in its significance, in the meaning, in what people read into it. To have 1,500 miles of front in the last world war was unprecedented in human history, so far as the military history of the world is concerned. Such a front there never was and never so many people participated in war. What took place in Greece in Troy - the Trojan War between the Greeks and the Trojans - was in a tiny corner. It was nothing, materially speaking, and externally it took place in a corner of the world. Nobody even knew about it. And yet it could give rise to an epic, because its significance was great. The people participating knew: it was for values that they were fighting: the freedom of man, man's height, his horizon, his promise, his nobility. There was something at stake, not land and money and property, nothing material. It is that which gives it the epic height. The Mahabharata war, for
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instance, was fought for only 18 days and it must have turned out one-tenth of a million persons at the most. But the Mahabharata war has given rise to an epic because the war was fought for, or at least the poet saw it as a fight for, the values of life, for what the human being ultimately means. What is he here for? When that answer is given, and its significance understood, it can give rise to an epic.
When the war is a big war and only utilitarian interests are at stake, it doesn't inspire anyone and you will see the contradiction. I mean it looks like a contradiction if you look at the course of the last world war - it really came to a head spiritually when the Atlantic Charter was declared. It had to rise to a height of idealism before it could concentrate the will-power of humanity for a complete showdown. It began with this exterior, materialistic, utilitarian, practical world as a frontier, with the struggle for commerce and balance of economic distribution of the world and exploitation for getting raw materials and all that. A complex of causes led to that war, but they were all wedded to the vital life of man, which has nothing to do with man as the heighest creature of creation, man as the divine spirit, man as an idealist, man as a noble creature. Those values had been lowered down in collective life. That is why the war doesn't inspire us - it creates a sense of, "Oh, no. What we did was wrong." Everybody thinks like that, not only those who participated; all the human beings who were not even partisans also thought: "No, that was not right; we didn't do the right thing." That's it. And here, even when parties had to fight, as I said, they had to rise to an idealistic plane before they themselves could create in their collective life, their animal mankind, the will to fight, the belief that the war was worth fighting for and winning. Naturally it was a question of the rights of man. freedom of association and freedom of belief-many things which have nothing to do with frontiers. So an
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epic comes into being when values are at stake. The epic has come into being because the poet has seen the world situation and in this world situation something has to emerge out of the values of life that have now been churned.
We say that when you churn milk or cream, butter, which is the very product of it, comes out. Savitri is a result of such churning and without taking notice of the undesirable element, it just says: If you churn, this is what you get. If the world is churned in its present condition, what do you expect as a result of the churning? A fulfilment of man on earth? In what way does life result in a fulfilment of man on earth? Savitri gives the answer to it. As Mother said, "It is prophetic reading of the world's history and the promise of its fulfilment."
Now what is Savitri? Sri Aurobindo calls it a legend and a symbol. The legend is as old as the Mahabharata, the epic of India. He has borrowed the legend from the epic of India. Before I go into the story I will give you the opinion of one of my friends, the respected writer Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, whose opinion counts in the world of letters today. He says that in its final form Savitri is a poem with hardly a parallel in the world's literature:
The Mahabharata story of Savitri and Satyavan is now rendered anew with scaffolding unimaginably vast and undertones of incalculable import, written in blank verse but with a weight of thought and edges of articulation unattempted ever before. The poem with- its 23,000 lines, spans earth and heaven, comprises life, death, and immortality. It is a modem Divina Commedia, in which paradise is lost and won. Man learns to exceed himself and Savitri, the girl-wife, becomes mother-might and vanquisher of death and also the Creatrix of life divine on this terrestrial base. Sri Aurobindo often speculated on contours of future poetry partaking of the power of
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the ancient mantra and achieving the instantaneous communication between souls awakened and awakening. In Savitri he brought out such effects again and again, and criticism is almost dumb before a feat so stupendous and unique.
The Legend
Now what is the original legend? The legend is simple: because King Aswapathy was childless he performed askesis, or, as we say in India, Tapasya. He performed penance in order to get a child, for eighteen years he performed penance, sacrificed and gave charity. The whole original legend is contained in the Mahabharata in four chapters, from chapter 248 onwards, in very simple verse. There the King performs penances and the goddess whom he is trying to propitiate, is pleased and comes out of the sacrificial fire on the last day and asks him to demand a boon, so he demands a boon and she grants him the birth of a son. And then pleased with him, she says: "I give you an extra boon, that you will also have a daughter who will be a portion of myself." Then the goddess goes away and the prince and the princess are born. Thus Savitri is born, and when she grows up she is so brilliant in her character, her power and strength of character, that nobody comes forward to offer her his hand in marriage. Always the bridegroom goes to propose to the bride; the bride does not ever seek the bridegroom: that was the law in those days, in the society at that time. But as nobody dared to come forward to claim her hand, after waiting for two years King Aswapathy said to her: "Go out and see whether you can find somebody who can be your companion." So she set out with a minister and in two and a half years went all over India visiting important places and the capitals of the various states.
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But Savitri didn't find anyone she thought was worth her attention until she came to a forest. In the forest there were some huts, and in one of them was a King who was dispossessed of his kingdom on account of his enemies getting the upper hand. He lost his sight and became blind, and, dispossessed of his kingdom and driven out of his territory, he was living in the forest outside his kingdom. The King and the Queen were, so to say, living in exile and their son was looking after them. Savitri thought this young man was really an ideal young man, so she decided in her mind to select him as her future companion. She came back from her travel to report to her father. And when she came back, Narada, the great divine sage, was sitting with the King and Queen. They were talking when Savitri came. When the King asked her about her choice, she declared her choice and said that Satyavan living in the forest was the person whom she had selected. The King thought it was quite right because it was her choice. But he asked the divine sage Narada: "Cast this horoscope and see the position of the constellations in their future life and see whether this match is happy." So Narada cast the horoscope and said, "Yes, it is all right. But there is one catch: this young man will die after one year. He is going to die after one year."
Then everything was upset in a certain way and the mother and everybody else said to Savitri, "You are not yet married, you have not given your word, so you can go again and try to find someone else." But Savitri refused and insisted that she was going to stick to her decision and take the consequences. The result was that they were married, and after one year the God of Death came and Satyavan died. But Savitri pursued the God of Death to his home in the upper regions or in whichever regions the dead go. And she persuaded him to release the soul of Satyavan. Satyavan was revived and they went back home.
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The Symbol
That is the original story. Now, this is only a simple story told in a legendary way, a certain kind of myth. But there is a significance behind it and Sri Aurobindo took hold of this significance for his work.
Aswapathy in Sri Aurobindo's epic is not a King who is childless; he is a representative of the human race trying to fulfil the inmost aspiration of the human being by bringing down to the earth a kind of perfection in life. Aspiration for perfection is his one flame, and in that he is a representative of the whole human race. He is not a King only and he is not asking for a child. He is, first of all, trying to find out what man is, what a human being is. And he finds that a human being is not merely his mind and life and body, a bundle of desires, of material elements like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, of thoughts and ideas, but that he is a spirit, and that there are powers and capacities in him which he can awaken, and by which he can come to fulfil himself. So Aswapathy follows a triple Yoga. That Yoga we will leave aside for the time being. Now, he is a representative of the human race, and as representative of the human race, he first tries to find out the true self that is in man. And then he finds that man is cosmic. Man is not merely an individual, he is cosmic. Aswapathy finds further that man is not only cosmic but something beyond the cosmos too: he can ascend to a plane of consciousness where he can be identified with the supreme divine.
Aswapathy ascends and goes over to those regions and enters into the "House of the Spirit", as he calls it in the third book - a plane of consciousness where the universe is overpassed and one enters into the "House of the Supreme Spirit". There he meets the creatrix, the Mother of the universe, and he carries to her feet the whole aspiration of
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mankind, which has been working here in the human heart for thousands of years. He lays it at her feet and says: "Unless and until an emanation of yourself is sent down to mankind, man will not be able to fulfil the highest dream of his aspiration, the highest dream of his ideals. It will be only when you send down an emanation of yourself that man will be able to fulfil himself in the Divine." First, the Mother persuades him not to press for such a demand because the earth is not ready - mankind is not ready. And she pleads in a long, long poetic passage in which she shows how man is incapable, not ready and not qualified now to bear the descent of anything so high as the divine consciousness. But Aswapathy persists and by persistent prayer and sincere aspiration he succeeds in persuading her to extend her Grace. And she, at the end of a long discussion, grants him the boon and says, "All right, I will send down an emanation of myself on earth and that will help mankind to conquer ignorance and death." The boon is granted and Aswapathy returns to the earth. Then Savitri is born. That is how the symbol works.
Savitri is born and she grows up - birth, childhood, adolescence and youth. She goes through her educational course; she goes to meet Satyavan, and she chooses him.
Now to the double movement. Here we are in the symbol. So after birth, Savitri goes through education, adolescence and youth and when she develops, she goes out and meets Satyavan. Here, the going out is not on account of marriage. One day Aswapathy sees her coming. He was meditating at that time and when she approached he forgot that it was his child, his daughter. He simply saw her as a spirit that was coming, "an unknown spirit - born his child". And then he felt that she had her own mission and that she has come to fulfil it and he told her, "Why don't you try to fulfil that which is your inmost wish?" So the next day she leaves her
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house and goes out. The country she travels through is very beautifully described in the fourth book.
That is one of the great passages in world literature. She travels all over and passes through various spiritual atmos: pheres, meeting different persons, covering deserts, out-of-the-way sylvan retreats and the capitals of kings, and at the end she comes to the forest where Satyavan is living and they meet. It is the fifth book where their meeting takes place. It is the shortest portion of the whole writing. The whole intensity of the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri occupies hardly fourteen to fifteen pages.
And then she comes back to her home and Narada is sitting there, as in the old legend also. In the symbol they are trying to persuade the King to look at mankind and do something for it. And as Narada sings the song of man's perfection, she walks in. And Narada asks, "Who is this girl who has come?" She is introduced to Narada and Narada feels that this is a great spirit - not only the King's daughter, but somebody with extraordinary power, though he doesn't say so. He only says: "Who is this extraordinary lady who has come?" The description of Savitri, at four places in the epic, is one of the highlights of literature. First, when the poet describes Savitri, in the first canto, one day previous to the death of Satyavan, preparing herself to meet the God of Death - that's one place. Second, when Aswapathy sees her approaching in the palace, the description that the poet gives through Aswapathy.
The third place is when Savitri is described by Narada, the divine sage, who marvels at her human beauty. It is the height of our world's literature, I think. Nowhere is there something that can come near it. It is the description or the appreciation of human beauty by a divine being, and you must read it in order to see. Savitri was approaching; Narada saw her and
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He cried to her, "Who is this that comes, the bride,
The flame-born, and round her illumined head
Pouring their lights her hymeneal pomps
Move flashing about her?"
And then he says:
"The empty roses of thy hands are filled
Only with their own beauty and the thrill
Of a remembered clasp."
Narada was a sage, a Yogi. His words are the throwing back of Yogic knowledge into aesthetics. "The empty roses of thy hands" - the hands are like roses - "The empty roses of thy hands are filled only with their own beauty, and the thrill of a remembered clasp", because Savitri has met Satyavan. And Narada, the divine sage, is able to perceive not only the empty roses and the beauty of her hands, but "the thrill of a remembered clasp". Many people miss it when they read it, it passes over their heads. Cultivate the power to look inside, and go to the thing that is expressed, for then only do you get at it. It is a fine description, it is something that has not happened before in the world's literature. Savitri chooses, and then Narada describes her. That is the third description. And the fourth is when she is facing death, when she is face to face with the God of Death. And in the description which the poet gives of Savitri at that time, with her four aspects, like a human person, you will find that it is not simply some material being that the poet describes, but a being with a charge of divinity in her. And the poet gives you her four aspects in a way which shows that although divine she is also a person in flesh and blood.
I was talking to you about Savitri's selection of Satyavan. Narada predicted that Satyavan was going to die after one
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year, so the mother first questions Narada: "Why should there be pain in the world? Why should there be suffering? And suffering unmerited, because my young daughter and this young Satyavan have done nothing wrong as far as 1 know. My daughter has been brought up by me and I know that she is absolutely innocent. Is this the working of divine wisdom and of a God who is merciful and kind and all knowledge and all goodness? How is it that in such a world created by a merciful God, unmerited suffering comes to a human being?"
It is in the sixth book that the problem of pain is thrashed out in detail as nowhere else in the world's literature. I can tell you from direct study that the problem of pain has not been as well understood anywhere as it has in the two cantos in the sixth book where Narada is confronted by Savitri's mother, the Queen. "Like sorrow... she was like an embodiment of sorrow addressing heaven." Like sorrow appealing to or addressing heaven, she spoke, and she said, "Who is this God who has created this world? Is this God who is impotent in the face of pain some power other than God, or a God who is not merciful but cruel?"
No atheist has put the case of non-acceptance of God more powerfully. Very strongly, the mother of Savitri puts the case of atheism, questioning the origin of suffering and pain in mankind. And the answer that you get has not been given anywhere in philosophy or literature. The answer is radical and it is a new answer. It shows the place of pain in the growth of man's evolution and shows the necessity which has invited pain into this cosmic scheme, and how pain in its ultimate origin is nothing but a perversion or a distortion of the original delight of existence. It is only the original delight of existence which is felt as pain because the receiving apparatus apprehends it in a distorted or perverted way. Therefore, instead of receiving the delight, it reacts to it in
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the form of a vibration which it feels as pain - pain is thus a distortion or perversion of delight.
So, Narada answers the Queen saying: "Oh, was then the sun a dream because there is night?" That is how Narada begins to answer: "Was then the sun a dream because there is night?" Could you reduce the sun to an unreality because now you are passing through darkness? "Was then the sun a dream because there is night?" And Narada answers: "Ultimately leave her to her own fate. She will meet her own destiny in the way she is intended to by the inner spirit. Don't try to interfere with her decision. Don't try to change her decision." That is the advice Narada gives. Savitri sticks to her decision and she performs Tapasya, proceeds along the path of self-knowledge and universal knowledge and enters into the divine knowledge. Here Savitri goes into the constitution of the universe and, entering deep inside, she meets all the universal powers that are at work, and finds that the universal powers themselves are incomplete and imperfect. The universe is not perfect, because the powers working in it are not perfect. Therefore she says, "Wait. I will go back and bring powers from the Divine which will give you what you lack, what is wanting in you."
Three great powers Savitri comes across in her passage: one is the Madonna of Suffering, the psychic fortitude or toleration in the consciousness of humanity, by which in spite of the greatest suffering, the human being puts up with life because subconsciously or consciously there is hope, a hope of fulfilment of whatever is in the human heart. This Madonna of Suffering is a cosmic power which allows man to continue life in spite of all reverses, in spite of all difficulties. Savitri sees that she is the great support, the psychic support to all life, but she has no power to prevent pain and suffering being inflicted. She suffers with faith, but she has no power to prevent suffering. So Savitri says, "I will go and bring the
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power from the Divine so that you will be able to prevent suffering."
The Madonna of Might is the second power whom Savitri meets when she goes into inner life. The Madonna of Might is the will working in the cosmic life, in the whole of human life; it keeps a sort of rough order in the evolutionary movement, keeps the upward trend. The Madonna of Might is the human race gathering all its will-power in order to maintain a sort of rough order in a world in which everything would have become infra-rational if this Mother of Might had not been there to maintain the higher values of life - ethics, idealism, religion, morality; some standard is being kept up by a conception of right, a conception of justice. It is this universal power that maintains some values in life so as to allow life to take an upward turn. The Madonna of Light, the third power, is an intellectual power or mental power working in mankind to enrich life by intellectual gains and intellectual idealism.
These three powers Savitri meets, the three powers that are working in mankind, and she says that all these are imperfect. "I will go to my inmost divinity and bring back to each the element that it lacks." So Savitri goes inside to find her soul, her inmost divinity. When she returns, the death of Satyavan takes place and she is standing face to face with the God of Death. And there is a long debate between the two.
The Tenth Book is very simple, very simple. There can't be a simpler book in poetry than this one, because all the questions which come to man are there. Death is arguing all the time with Savitri that she is unnecessarily trying to revive somebody who is dead because it is no use trying to revive him. "If Satyavan had lived," he says, "love would have died. It is better that Satyavan is dead and love lives in your mind." He gives all the sophistical arguments that you can imagine. He says, "The One alone is true, the Divine is only
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one, the Divine is the transcendent, unique, inexpressible, infinite reality. So why do you want somebody else to love? You are trying to introduce a duality into the Ultimate which is single." All kinds of arguments Death puts forward to Savitri, and Savitri answers every time in the light of her inmost being. She is not answering as an individual, but as a representative of the divine power; thus it is the power that is replying to the God of Death through Savitri. This is very clear in the poem. She says: "I have no need to revive Satyavan at all; if it is fated that he must die, all right, let him die."
Then the spirit in Savitri wakes up and says that there is a mission given to her and she cannot be unfaithful to the mission. She must fulfil the mission. That is how Savitri then says, "Come along and do what you want me to do." Then the spirit in Savitri begins to speak, and throughout the book the spirit of Savitri, the original divine motherhood, is speaking. She answers Death and Death says: "I also want the Divine. I am set to work by the Divine, I am not working on my own." And Savitri replies: "You are the Divine, only you are not the whole of the Divine." He continues, "If you are the Divine, manifest the Divine that you are. Then I will be fulfilled because it is for that death that I am waiting. I am at work because the Divine has given me the command that mortality shall be there for man's evolution. I am working on behalf of the Divine. I am deputed by Him to work and if you are the Divine, reveal your divinity, I will submit." So Savitri reveals her divinity and Death is swallowed up. He is licked up as they say. Electrical power - an ocean of electricity comes out and like a dark hill in the midst of a great ocean, the God of Death is swallowed up in the flames of the electric light of Savitri's consciousness. And then Satyavan and Savitri both rise into the eternal sun of everlasting day, as the poet calls it. And in the everlasting day, they look upon
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mankind and try to bring down the ray of the eternal sun, the knowledge of truth into the world and try to change the world into a divine life. That is roughly the story of the epic.
Now the poem begins with the dawn, but this dawn is not the ordinary morning rise of the sun. It is a symbol dawn. This dawn that is spoken of as a symbol - a symbol of the illuminating dawn of the higher and undivided consciousness; it is always the dawn of the Truth. Usha, the Goddess of the dawn, is that illumined dawn. Sun follows the path of Usha, sun follows the path of the dawn. Night in the Veda is a symbol of our obscure consciousness, full of ignorance and of stumbling in our will and in our acts.
Light is the coming of the illumined higher consciousness which leads to Truth and to Light. Usha is a power of Aditi. Aditi means the power of the Supreme Infinite Consciousness, Mother of the Gods, according to the Veda. In a more general aspect, she is the source of all cosmic forms of consciousness. The dawn is the source of all the cosmic forms of consciousness from the physical upwards. Usha is the Mother of the Cows and she can only be a power of the supreme light, the light of the Supreme Consciousness, Aditi. Non-existence of the truth of things is the first aspect of things that emerges from the inconscient ocean, and its darkness is a Vedic night which holds the worlds and their unrevealed potentialities in her obscure bosom. Night extends her realm over this triple world of ours, physical, vital and mental, and out of her, in heaven, in the mental being, dawn is born.
Dawn delivers the sun out of the darkness in which it was lying concealed and eclipsed and it creates a vision of the supreme day, in the non-existence and in the night. This is the symbol dawn, in the sense that it is the first awakening of man to his divine potentiality, to his divine possibility - that is the dawn. Dawn is the awakening of the human being from
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the limitations of his physical consciousness, his desire-consciousness of animality, even from the limitation of his mind to the perception of a divine essential element in him. That is the dawn. It can come in the midst of life, dawn can come in the midst of the most ordinary experience of life. Dawn does not come only when you are in a pious mood, dawn comes when your inner being is ready, in a flash; it is thrown across the face of life and then you suddenly see that there is something greater than everything that the world can offer, something which is the object of existence. That glimpse is given. That is the dawn. Dawn is the awakening of man to his divine possibility with a flash, with a light that is unmistakable, convincing and capable of evoking in him an aspiration which can lead him to fulfil the first vision of the dawn. Dawn is the first promise of fulfilment of the spiritual life in man.
The epic opens with the beginning of the universe. It gives a picture of the night, really speaking, as a lady who is asleep. I will give you roughly the idea of the picture that is there. Dawn is the awakening of a dark lady who is asleep, with no light at all, lying in the whole cosmos, occupying the world, occupying the universe.
"It was the hour before the Gods awake." That is how the book begins. Savitri begins with this sentence. Even the Gods, the universal powers, were not yet set into functioning. That is the time, it is primordial. It is just before the cosmos was organized, so you have to imagine somebody who is occupying the whole universe, completely dark and resisting any attempt to be awakened. "It was the hour before the Gods awake". The second line is "Across the path of the divine Event". The divine Event is the coming of the dawn:
Across the path of the divine Event
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The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
Night is the lady who is asleep.
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
And she doesn't want to be awakened so there is an effort to awaken her; she thinks it is a nightmare and throws it out. The second time a somnambulist movement is inaugurated. Somnambulism is a condition in which a man is fully asleep and yet goes out and does something very sensible and rational and forgets all about it; the next morning when you ask him, he says he didn't do it at all, it is quite wrong to say that he did it - but he has done it. That's somnambulism. So when the nightmare was over, and she did not awaken and the pressure was being exerted from inside, a somnambulist movement got hold of her and this material universe came into existence. The stars and the constellations began to move, like somnambulists working in sleep, and earth was there, a most insignificant place in the whole cosmic material scheme of interstellar bodies - moving like a somnambulist -and there was no light, no sky, nothing. And some idea, some will began to work and suddenly out of this inconscience ignorance awoke, and a ray began to penetrate and disturb this Night, but Night refused to get up. But this ray penetrated her because a past memory of the creation came back to this lady and she said: "Oh, in the past we have done something, so let me see what happens." And when that ray came, the ray took the form of a child and got hold of the sleeping lady. She would not get up so the child went and put his hand on the cheek of the mother and she thought, "Oh I have moved everything in somnambulism, but here is a child that I have to take care of." And so she set about trying to
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get up and when she fully got up there was the dawn - and then Savitri awoke. The poet has connected this dawn with Satyavan's last day, the day before Savitri is going to confront Death, on the day when the night has allowed the ray to penetrate and allowed the full blaze of morn to come, The description of the morn in the first canto is very fine. The first canto is a little tough, therefore you shouldn't attempt to read it at one time. You must read it twenty-five times before you get somewhere inside. Darkness failed (this dark night lady sleeping) and "slipped like a fallen cloak". Like a cloak that falls, "darkness failed and slipped like a fallen cloak from the reclining body of a God". It was not night, it was the reclining body of a God. The reclining body of a God was revealed when the cloak of night fell down.
Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.
Then life began to penetrate.
The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
The seed of grandeur was buried in the hours. Then the higher power also supports the dawn, and this divine power stands behind the dawn.
Savitri is described in this very first canto, and the poet says that though she was semi-divine, she was full of human
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elements also. The call that comes to the human being and creates a kind of leap of mind, came to Savitri also with its "illusion of desire", but it came to her like a sweet alien note. Desire did not come to Savitri as if it was something known to her.
The call that wakes the leap of human mind,
Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,
Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,
Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.
Sri Aurobindo is not discussing Savitri only as a divine being. And then he says:
A magic leverage suddenly is caught
That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will:
A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.
Savitri was faced with this problem of conquering death and the poet is putting before us an idea as to how one individual can conquer death. Cosmic machinery is grinding its wheels, one heart is standing before it and wants to stop it. That is how the poet puts it.
Now imagine man in the darkness, in a room with thick walls of darkness all around and he is trying to find a way out. He scratches somewhere and makes a little dent. If he constantly makes a dent, naturally the wall will break and the opening will come and perhaps whatever is beyond will reveal itself to him. But if suddenly his hand drops over a lever, an electric switch, so to say, and happens to press it, well!
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then he can get light immediately. "A magic lever suddenly is caught." You think that one man is working, and one man is doing, but he catches a magic lever and that moves a "veiled Ineffable's timeless will". It does not move a human agency, but it moves some divine powers. What could be those levers? A "prayer" - it can be a powerful lever - or a "master act", some action which one does in obedience to one's inmost spiritual entity, or a "king idea", an idea that comes in the mind and seeks expression in life. In such cases the lever sets into movement the mission of the transcendent force, and then what people call a miracle happens; though the lever is moved by a human agency, the power that is at work is not human.
People think that unless we do things the things will not be done. Yes, man has a part to play. He has to touch the lever consciously or unconsciously, set .it into movement. But to set it into movement is enough work for man. To set the higher lever working is not easy for man to do. His whole effort is that - how to move the lever - and when that is done, people think, "Oh, how can such a thing happen. We pray every day. We go to the church. We go to the temple." But they are not praying at all in the church, I can tell you, in the temple nobody is really praying. More things are wrought by prayer in this world than this world dreams of - but then it must be a true prayer.
I was talking to someone in India - a university boy. He asked me about the efficacy of prayer. I said, "Do you want a historical example? I will give you one. Do you know the history of India ?"
He said, "Yes."
"You know the first Moghul King who conquered the north of India ? His name was Babar."
"Yes. yes."
"And his son's name was Humayun."
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"Yes."
"And you know that Humayun was ill, it was a mortal illness and this was Babar's only son. So Babar went seven times around his son's sick bed and prayed that his illness be transferred to him, for he was ready to give his life for his son. He died on the seventh day."
This is his own record. Babar has written his own autobiography. This is a historically authentic fact, it happened in the sixteenth century and Babar has written the record of his daily life. So if you want a historical incident, here is one to show that the efficacy of prayer is borne out by facts in life.
Prayer is not for immediate efficacy according to one's desires, prayer is only to move the higher will to do what is best. Prayer is not for receiving the answer that one desires. It is wrong on the part of human being to say, "What I pray for must be given because I pray for it." Tagore says in his Gitanjali: "My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, and yet did thou save me by hard refusals." He is telling the Divine, "By not fulfilling my desires you have saved me." So prayer doesn't mean that what one asks for must be given - otherwise there is no God. That's what people think, but it's not true. Prayer is only an appeal to set into movement the higher divine consciousness and allow it to do what is best, what it considers best, that's all. That is what can happen.
A "master act". I illustrate it sometimes by giving the example of Gautama Buddha leaving his house at dead of night to relieve the suffering of mankind. It is an action which he did intuitively, instinctively or under an inspiration of his inner being. When he did it, even fifty square miles around they did not know anything about that action. It was an age when transport and communication were very primitive. Gautama Buddha's abandonment of his house and the renunciation of his family in order to find out a remedy for the suffering of man is a "master act", what the Master calls
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here a "master act"; it was the higher will - and how many millions of people afterwards knew about it and tried to understand something of what that act meant? A "king idea", an idea which comes to one human being - liberty, equality, fraternity - immediately catches somewhere and moves and then nations and groups of mankind undergo change. That is how the mission is set into movement.
I think we had better postpone Aswapathy's Yoga until tomorrow, otherwise we will never come to the end. I have read Savitri for one year and nine months, - one hour every day! So don't expect to go to the end of Savitri in one hour.
QUESTION AND ANSWERS
Has Savitri been translated into many other languages, Indian languages?
Not yet. In Bengali and in Hindi some portions have been translated. A poetess is working with me. She is translating it into Hindi.
Is she able to maintain the qualities of the original in the translation?
Very difficult. She has done three versions already, this lady who is working with me. She is herself a great poet, a very good poet. She has done it three times, all the portions and she is going through it a fourth time, a fifth time, like that. But she will come to something, because she is concentrating only on the quality, on the inner stuff and not on success. She is a disciple, so she will get somewhere.
You were speaking about songs of mantric quality. It is
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interesting to know that in our history the last songs written that had any quality were written in the Civil War, before the age of science and. reason. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body" were two of the most stirring anthems written in this country. But in World War One and World War Two, there was absolutely nothing that had any parallel to it.
Yes, that's because the Civil War was about the principle of the equality of man, the freedom of man; the fighting was on the slavery question.
The ideals in World War One and World War Two were equally high. We just weren't translating them into terms of words. We reduced them to economics.
Yes, had to, were compelled to.
/ think the ideals were just as high. There was much more self-interest in the Civil War than in World War One and World War Two. Would you tell us the second superb passage in which Savitri is described. The first one was Savitri preparing to meet the God of Death and the third one was Savitri described by Narada.
The second one is when Aswapathy sees Savitri approaching. It is given in the appendix of my book. If you refer to the appendix, all the four are given there. All the quotations of the relevent passages just to help the student.
(Question inaudible)
Walt Whitman has given expression to it for the first time in
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the last century. A hundred years ago, it was Whitman who said: "Why should we take the idiom of Europe? Why should we idealise the characters of Greek mythology or European history? There is sufficient grandeur all around here in the democratic country where we are living. People are performing deeds which are equally capable of being called heroic." His idea is right, but his own poetry doesn't create such characters as can stand by the side of the characters created by the classical poets. That is a fact. Now a hundred years have passed and time has passed its judgement. It is not a personal opinion. Whitman has -not succeeded in creating one average man and average citizen raised to that height, because the average citizen has not risen to that height. How could he do that? He saw that the potentiality is there and that every citizen could be great and grand, but the performance has not justified it. So that is that.
I also grant that there is no point in repeating what has been done in the past in the poetical world. What has been done need not be repeated. You have to create the future, and in order to create the future you have to have a vision of the future. It is not necessary to go back to the past for seeking form or seeking guidance. Even as far as the technique is concerned, you can create your own technique - it is quite possible. Seen through a period of uncertainty and churning, we are not yet out of the whole thing. We have not come to any ground. Savitri first gives you the inkling that there is a new age and you can create greatly, but Savitri is so great that probably fifty years will not be sufficient for man to realize what Savitri is. I am not surprised, nor disappointed. It's nothing. A hundred years will perhaps be the time when people will think, "Oh, Sri Aurobindo is worth something." That's all, because we are passing through a period of turmoil and uncertainty of values. Everything is now thrown into the boiling pot. There are no values on
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which you can depend today in cultural life and the values that are there are not worth the grandeur of man. So there we are. We have to see how this journey ultimately results in man seeking his ultimate fulfilment in the blossoming of his true essential being.
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LECTURE II
Well, yesterday we tried to cover some rough ground about poetry, the possibility of an epic in this age and the idea of an epic being more and more subjective. It is not the size of the event which gives inspiration for an epic, but the significance of the event which is seen and felt by the poet. We saw Aswapathy's history yesterday, and found that Aswapathy is not the childless king that he is in the legend of the Mahabharata, the Indian epic, but he is here a representative of the human race, engaged in the cultural activity of humanity trying to evolve higher and higher values of life. That is Aswapathy. He is a representative, he is a symbol of the human race, a symbol of humanity, a representative of mankind, and he is making an effort to embody higher and higher values of life so as to find out what is the goal of man -that is what Aswapathy is after. And Savitri is born to him as a gift from the Divine Mother because he pleaded in the House of the Spirit, in the house of the Divine, when he reached by his development the divine consciousness; "he prayed to the Divine for an emanation of the Divine to be sent down on earth so that man's problem would be solved. Man's problem of ignorance and subjection to death was to be solved, that was what he was seeking, and in his own effort he found that man, if left to himself, would not be able to solve his problem. So he appealed to the supreme Mother and asked for the boon that an emanation or a part of her, so to say, would be sent down to earth to help mankind overcome the limits of ignorance and death. That is the solution to the problem, and the story as we recounted it yesterday is that Savitri, the young princess in the legend who becomes the emanation of the supreme Mother sent down on earth, is here to help man to solve the problem of overcoming ignorance and the limitations of death. That is the character of Savitri
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What exactly is the problem that has been worked out, what does the poet want to tell us? First, is the universe a mechanical determinism? Is this universe run by inconscient laws in which no amount of interference from human will or any other consciousness is able to interfere and make a change? Is it a mechanical determinism set at work so as to bring about inevitable results which can be foreseen if you know the forces at work. That is what Narada's prediction comes to. Narada saw the forces that are at work in the life of Satyavan and said that after one year Satyavan, the young man selected by Savitri, the princess, will die; so then the problem is, is the working of the cosmos a blind mechanical determinism of forces in which no subjective element called will is able to interfere, or is it possible to change the determinism of Nature and avoid what appears to be inevitable? Is there at work in the universe a categorical imperative which cannot be set aside by intervention either of a human or a divine will?
That is one problem. And then, is the present determination of the world final? People say that it is human nature, and by saying it is human nature they think that they are explaining everything. It doesn't explain anything. It means that it is a mystery. You say that this is human nature, but why is it so? Is it final? The determinism at present obtaining in Nature, the process, the laws that are at work in the material world, in the vital world, in the human world, are they final? Are they such that you can say, they are for all eternity unchangeable? Savitri's answer to both of these problems is: It is not so. There is not a mechanical determinism at work; rather a conscious intervention is possible because you know that the universe is based upon a consciousness. That is why, the present laws obtaining are not a doom.
That is what Savitri is facing. The death of Satyavan is a doom - doom in the sense of an inevitable calamity, an
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inevitable unpleasant result against which you can do nothing: that is a doom. Can doom be avoided? Yes. That is what we said yesterday. It is not by human force that you can do it. It was very clear:
That is what we quoted yesterday if you remember. There is a mechanism, there is a methodology which can upset this balance, which can change this present equation of forces at work in the universe, and this intervention man is capable of invoking. It is a divine intervention.
This leads to another problem: whether the dynamism of the world is only mechanical. Savitri answers: No, it is a conscious mechanism at work, a conscious dynamism. In this dynamism, it is possible to bring an intervention of a force of consciousness that can be called supreme or divine. This brings ultimately into the picture the function of a supreme consciousness. Is God or divinity or whatever is the ultimate reality only a static condition of consciousness or is it dynamic in its movement? Is a dynamic intervention of this consciousness possible? Savitri answers: Yes, it is possible, it works out the process of the evolution of the cosmic energy and shows that the present equation is only a working equation, a provisional order necessitated by a process of evolution which has to move towards a goal, and when an active movement is made towards the goal then it will be found that the present equation can be changed. It is not necessarily a
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categorical imperative, something that you cannot oppose, something that is so fixed that there is no way out of it.
In physics there is a component of forces, they say; a component of forces is the line of force in which when two forces are working you can predict the line along which the resultant will come, the resultant line of force. If two lines of force are working in physics, they will represent it something like that. One force is acting this way, another force is acting that way, so you know that the resultant most probably will be this way, it won't go this way or that way: the result will be this way. Now that is the resultant of forces. Narada says that now universal forces are working and the result is that Satyavan must die. Is it an equation which you cannot change? Savitri says you can change it. There is no inevitability about this result in life because the world or universe is a conscious movement, and being a conscious movement, consciousness can intervene in all the operations that are there provisional, necessary for the temporary order through which mankind is passing.
Indirectly, Aswapathy, the king, the character who is father of Savitri, shows that man's present constitution is only a constitution which is in movement. Is man only a sum total of mind, life and body? Is man only mind plus life plus vital force plus body, physical being? That is the question, and Aswapathy says, no, these are man's instruments, the ones that the soul uses; so if man realizes, on this side of the equation, his inner entity, then the present equation changes. At present there is ignorance and mortality, mortal consciousness: these are the results of the present equation; when this equation changes by the intervention or realization of the soul, this equation which is the present, what you call doom, is bound to change. If man is always and eternally equal only to mind and life and body, the movements of Nature which he is, then the present equation as a working
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order will go on. But it is not bound to go on. The point is that man can evoke from within himself his true entity, the soul, the divine spark and potentiality now hidden in him but capable of being awakened; if he makes an effort to awaken that hidden entity which he really is, then this equation which is here now and has the appearance of a binding law will change and must change. Otherwise we are in a scheme of mechanical determinism out of which we have no escape; otherwise the universe will be reduced to a mechanical scheme of determination in which there is no escape for the human individual.
Is everything predetermined? - that is what some of the philosophers are trying to bother their heads about just now in some of the symposia. Is there a determinism at work? The Gita said it hundreds of years ago, there is a determination of Nature at work today, but it is not the determinism of the spirit. The determinism at present that is working is the determinism of Nature. The Gita says that there is no freedom in the determinism of Nature. Nature, Prakriti, is the universal force which is working. What is working at present is the determinism of Nature, and this determinism is in bondage to the spirit so far as the human experience is concerned. It is an expression of a cosmic being, but to the human being it appears to be a bondage, and freedom consists in getting out of the determinism of Nature and getting into the determinism of the spirit; when the determinism of the spirit is evoked or brought into movement there is freedom, freedom even in action, not only in consciousness. So man is not only a mental, vital and physical being, but he is a spirit, a divine spark; he has a secret potentiality which can be evoked into a dynamic movement in life. So man has to start with the idea, with the concept that he is a spirit and then he can evoke that spirit into movement in his mental life, in his vital life and in his physical life; then the determinism of
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Nature will eventually change.
This means that the present constitution of man is not final, that man as at present constituted is a transitional being, and because he is transitional he has all the characteristics of an imperfect being, and that is why the galling sense of imperfection or inability is a sign that he is still in process, that he is only a provisional being. That to which man has to rise is what is pointed out by Aswapathy in the first five cantos of the first book. The first five cantos deal with the development of Aswapathy releasing himself from the bondage of mental, vital and physical nature, realizing his true self, and then finding out the nature and function of the true spirit or true self which man is; he finds that he is not confined to the individual formula of his being. You take this size of man that is a particle of the best representative of man. If he realizes his true self with this big mind of Nature inside, then he finds that this self is not only here in the individual, this self is also capable of an expansion in consciousness, it can go on expanding until this self that is here is also all and is behind all. What he does is that he expands when he realizes his true self here, he feels that it is not confined to this body and mind and life here, but that it is capable of an expansion to other levels of consciousness, that the self is in the body but the body is only" a small pedestal over which something very vast is standing and working, it is like a small foothold or support for the higher working.
Now man is ego-bound and therefore feels: "I am only matter, I am only a handful of dust;" that is what man ordinarily feels and it may be justified, because that is the determinism of Nature. So long as you are within the determinism of Nature you always feel that man is the most insignificant thing going in the world; quite right, but that is as far as Nature is concerned; as soon as you go to what man is essentially then you find that he is vast, he is equal to the
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cosmos, there is nothing in the cosmos which is not one with him. He is one with the whole universe and more than the universe, because the whole universe is not manifested.
You take another scheme (the author goes to the blackboard): this is vital world, then mental world and so on - you go on with the expansion of the world in the second book of Savitri, where Aswapathy's voyages are described. You take this as a manifested universe. This is supposed to be the limit of the manifested universe, earth is here - let us put earth somewhere in a very small corner because there would otherwise be too big a representation for earth. We will put earth here. Now man from here is expanding, and he has come here to the limit of manifested universe; this is the limit. Aswapathy has come here in the second book, he goes on discovering the levels one after another. This is the potential universe, the universe which can manifest itself but has not yet manifested in actuality, but it can be manifested here; so Aswapathy is here breaking the limit. Well! we have already broken the limit of space scientifically, is it not so? And we are trying to go to some other planet, material, physical. Well, here Aswapathy breaks the limits psychologically -there is not much difference. We break the sound barrier, here we break the barrier of ether. We can break the barrier of gravitation, nowadays; science is taking up the work, it is not as if it was somewhere in the air. Well, in the same way it is practical for man to take up the adventure of the spirit.
If he takes up the adventure of the spirit, he can break this barrier of the manifested universe, mental consciousness, intellectual consciousness, and go to the potential universe, called the House of the Spirit. This is the third book of Savitri, the House of the Spirit. Aswapathy enters there and meets the Supreme Mother of the universe, the creatrix, or simply the Mother - we shall call her the Mother of the universe - and he prays to her: "We want to solve the
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problem of man here and if you want man to succeed, kindly send down by your grace your own emanation here." So an emanation is asked for, from the potential universe, from the House of the Spirit, to be sent down to earth so that man may be able to solve his problem. Man is now confined to his mind, life and body, he is very much confined here, and if he is to be free, this ray must come down on earth. Savitri is that ray sent down on earth to help man to overcome the limits of the present universe in which he is living. That is the third book where Aswapathy reaches this House of the Spirit, meets the Supreme Mother, carries to her the whole aspiration of mankind for the earth, and asks for a boon - an emanation to be sent down to the earth.
The Supreme Mother grants the boon and Savitri is born. Savitri is not, therefore, only a princess born to a childless king but she is the result of the aspiration of the whole earth. This is why the second canto of the first book begins thus: "A world's desire compelled her mortal birth." Savitri took up birth on earth not as the result of the prayer of the childless king, but in response to the world's desire, which was carried by Aswapathy to the Supreme in a prayer, and the prayer was granted; therefore, "A world's desire compelled a mortal birth."
I am giving the lines so as to refer our minds to the text, for that is the background. Aswapathy tries to find out what man is; he finds that there are capacities lying dormant in man that can be awakened. We know. them, a little of them in hypnotism, telepathy, thought transference, faith cures and certain other phenomena; we know them as tricks of the occult, but in the deep spiritual process they are much more tangible and concrete facts of the inner world. So Aswapathy finds that potential powers, dormant capacities are there in man which can be awakened, capacities by which he can bridge the limit of his present natural constitution and evoke
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in himself other powers which will be adequate to express the divinity that is within him; so he awakens those powers within himself, realizes himself and when he realizes his self he says, "I am only standing on one atom of myself, really speaking. I am as wide as the cosmos." He widens and widens and the great realizations which come to him cannot be described in a small compass. What he finds is that the earth consciousness goes into the vital world and that this vital world has an opening right up to the limit of the absolute. Only the vital world can go up to there, almost to the limit of the absolute or out to the spirit. There is a height of the vital and there is a depth of the vital; the height of the life and the depth of the life. He finds, when he expands his consciousness from the physical human being to an inner being, that he is a vital being as well as the cosmos; this is the life-belt, the life-universe, which is independent of earth-life since all life is not confined to earth.
There is a big belt of life-force and life-universe in which vital forces and vital beings, independent of earth, remain with their own different constitution. They have different kinds of bodies, different kinds of movements, different kinds of laws governing their own plane of consciousness. And then he saw that that vital world expands .only to here (the author points to the blackboard), but if he allows this world to do so, then it can rise like a cone. This vital world is like a solid cone that can rise like that. I am putting a circle here, it is difficult to represent it, but it is like a solid cone, that can rise just like that, until only a thin veil divides it from the Absolute, from the Infinite; so each instrument of human nature is capable of contacting almost directly the supreme consciousness. That is why the mind cannot govern the vital being fully, cannot perfect it; the vital has its own right to approach the Supreme.
The life force in man would not submit permanently to the
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dictate of either ethics or reason because the life force has its own individual, independent fulfilment, and it wants it. It is because of this experience that Aswapathy realized that the vital can directly approach the Divine if it is turned towards the Divine; but the vital doesn't want to turn towards the Divine in ninety-nine per cent of the cases, therefore you find that life is not Divine. It is true, life doesn't want to turn to the Divine, but neither will it submit to mind, it will only submit if it turns to the Divine, because it can directly approach the Divine and have its own fulfilment. Its two great impulses are possession and delight or enjoyment: power and enjoyment; well, it will have them fully only when it reaches the Divine. Mind will always curb the vital, mind will always try to control the vital and the vital will always submit only temporarily, provisionally to the mind, but it will ultimately break away because it finds no fulfilment in it. Aswapathy found that the same thing happened when he went to the mental level.
Now this life has an upward movement and it has also a downward movement, so that there is a depth here which is negative; as there is a positive upward movement, there is also a depth which is a negative movement; there is a hell, so to say, in the# lower movement of life. Life can be anti-divine, not merely ignorant. Make a distinction between ignorant and anti-divine. Life when it is ignorant, well, it is simply ignorant, but when it is anti-divine it opposes any higher movement. When you go to these levels of life you find not only ignorance but anti-divinity, opposition to anything higher. As life has heights, like the Himalayas, it has depths also, into which it falls. Those depths of the vital are depths to which human consciousness is subject because they all have relation with the earth; so any human being opening to those vital forces will meet the operation of those forces on earth, and that is why we find perversity, the unnatural
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movement of life forces, or anti-divinity. There are people so constituted that they will never convert themselves to anything high. Do what you like, they will not, because they are not human. In the true sense of the term they are not human because it is not human ignorance that makes them bad. It is the lower forces that have been allowed to come into life and possess them. These people are not conscious of this possession, that's all. Most of the forces that come into men are not their own. Only the determinism of Nature is at work in the universe.
Nature is deciding everything in ninety cases out of a hundred. Man thinks he is free, but he is not free. Now if he is open to lower forces it is the lower forces that decide his movements, and in the lower forces there is definite anti-divinity. That is really the explanation of the permanence of pain and ignorance in life. Pain and ignorance are not constituted by a direct creation or direct will from above. They are the indirect result of the universe coming out of an inconscience. The inconscience has given rise to this universe and as a by-product of this inconscience, well, anti-divinity, or you can say, forces that are titanic, forces that are asuric, forces that embody the anti-divine element in life have come into existence.
Take for instance the case of a man like Hitler. Why go further? It's not very necessary to go back to mythology. Take an individual like Hitler: do what you like, you cannot convert him. It is impossible because he is not man. He is not man in the true sense of the word - in the sense of an ignorant human being. He has allowed himself to be governed by a vital force, he has allowed a mastery over his own vital nature by a force from below. And that force wants to replace and take the throne of the Divine. The ego is there inflated. It inflates and wants to govern everything by steamrollering all opposition. The Divine is omnipotent and there-
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fore He gives you full liberty to defer, to defy, to deny God. But when the ego is inflated and wants to replace the Divine and take the throne of the Divine, it steam-rollers everybody. That's what it does because it is not omnipotent, you see. It is only a huge power arrived at by organization and by domination over the will of the collectivity so as to carry an impress of something almost like omnipotence. The ego tries to feel omnipotent but it is not. It is enormous, but it is not omnipotent and infinite.
(The author goes to the blackboard.) So here Aswapathy expanded and saw that there were levels of consciousness which he was passing through, and that the universe was himself. World knowledge or universal knowledge he got from around himself and God-knowledge from above. These are the first three books of Savitri, roughly. The first five cantos in the first book deal with Self-knowledge, knowledge of the self, independent of mind, life and body. First, a divine entity that is possible to realize by evoking faculties which are dormant in men now. Second, when the self is realized the self is found to be, not limited to the egoistic unit or egoistic constitution in which it happens to function, but to be as wide as the cosmos. Third, there is a possibility of overcoming or breaking the limit of the manifested universe, or the universe as it is now functioning. There is also a universe that can be invoked into many manifestations - a potential universe that can be brought down here - Truth Consciousness, intuitional consciousness, inspirational consciousness, a revelatory power over mind, a supermind where one can open the human consciousness to the high levels and bring them down. That potential in us is waiting for manifestation here. Aswapathy realized this and carried the aspiration of the human consciousness to the supreme House of the Spirit and brought back Savitri's birth as a boon. That is the end of the third book.
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The supreme Mother grants a boon that a child will be born who will be an emanation of herself to help man conquer the ferment of ignorance and death. How far can the present formula of Nature or the determinism of Nature be changed? How far can it be changed and by what process? Here Aswapathy makes an inward turn. The knowledge that he acquires is gained by partaking in an inward turn of consciousness. By an inward turn Aswapathy is able to go through and acquire this knowledge. It is by an inward turn of consciousness that there awaken the potentialities that are lying dormant. But Savitri's work is much more difficult because she has actually to come down into the present form of that ignorance and change it. By what process does Savitri change it? She goes through a difficult process. (The author goes to the blackboard.) Now you take the manifested universe. Savitri is in the manifested universe on a small part of earth. She is there going into the constitution of this universe, and she finds that there are three powers. If you imagine it like a solid cone, then she is penetrating inside. So she goes into the first depth, then the second depth and then the third. First she meets one power - this is within. Now we may represent it like a half-cut (drawing). This is the limit -this circle is turned halfway. I cut it like a section. The section is cut and Savitri is here; this is the earth and she is moving inward, inward into the constitution of the universe by insight. She is not expanding outward like Aswapathy.
We saw Aswapathy work from here. From the earth he was expanding, expanding until he found he reaches the frontiers of eternity as it is called in the poem. He reaches the frontiers of eternity and enters the House of the Spirit. Savitri is penetrating inside the constitution of the universe. She is not expanding but going inside and here she meets the universal powers that are managing the cosmos today, and she finds that they are all imperfect. The cosmic powers
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which are at work in the universe are imperfect themselves. So she says, "I will bring in the divine power. I will bring the power from the Divine and you will be perfected." That is how she penetrates into the deepest constitution of the cosmos and sees how actually it will work out, and how it will be perfected by bringing from above, from the Divine, a greater power of perfection into the universal scheme itself. Savitri performs that function.
So the two Yogas are a little different. Aswapathy goes on expanding outward, Savitri goes on penetrating inward. She goes inside into the earth consciousness. Hers is not the cosmic movement, because since the earth itself is a "fragment and a residue" it contains everything that is here in the universe; the whole expansion, the mystic whole, is contained there in the fragment. In one of his poems Sri Aurobindo says - "in the fragment the mystic whole," the whole is contained in it. It is not necessary for her to expand out because whatever is there in the cosmos, is here in the earth. The earth is. therefore residue and a fragment of the whole, so if she penetrates into the constitution of the fragment, she also influences the constitution of the cosmos. The fragment and the whole are only symbols of the one Reality: one is connected with the other, there is no lack of relation.
Now the next problem is that of pain. Why pain at all? In the sixth book you find the answer to this problem. Savitri was to become a widow according to the prophecy of Narada, who came at the time when she selected Satyavan as her husband. She said she was going to marry Satyavan. Then the King and the Queen asked Narada, the divine sage, to cast a horoscope, find out the astrological position, and Narada, after casting the horoscope, said that Satyavan is a good man, but he will die after one year. Now this brings in the problem of pain. In the first book, we saw that the problem is whether there is any blind mechanical determi-
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nism at work or not. Now here the same problem is taking the shape of how the human being reacts to such a determinism. There is a determinism in Nature in which a young man who is innocent and has committed no fault of his own, is destined or condemned to die after one year of his marriage. What is this mechanism at work? Is it mechanical determinism? Secondly why is such an unmerited pain or suffering inflicted on an innocent human being? If a supreme consciousness and mercy is at work as the ultimate Reality, why should there even be the existence of pain? Subjectively, this determinism brings about reactions of ignorance and pain on the part of man; man feels the pain. Why should the mechanism be such as to cause pain at all? What is the place of pain in the scheme of things?
To that problem the sixth book gives an answer - the sixth and seventh books, particularly the sixth - and it indirectly answers this question: Is suffering a permanent element of the cosmic constitution? The epic says no, the last answer of the epic is that it is not permanent. Pain happens to be an element in the present working of the universe because it is necessary; there is a place for it in the economy of the universe, there is some utility of pain, therefore pain is there, but it is not as though there would be no universe if pain was not there. Pain could be eliminated from it and yet it would remain a universe. So that problem is answered in the sixth and seventh books. Savitri's yoga gives the answer. She finds that in the present constitution of the universe there is something lacking and the potential universe can supply that lacking element; when that element enters into the cosmic constitution, pain can then be eliminated because it will not be necessary anymore. Now it is necessary because man is living only in his mind, his vital and his physical being, but when he begins to live in his inner spirit, he will not require the pressure, the drive, the goad of pain to make him feel
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what is delight. Pain is indirectly a question put by the inner self: "I must be happy but why am I not happy?" That's all. Pain comes to that ultimately: "Why should I be what I am? And why am I not better than what I am?"
Ignorance and pain are therefore not necessarily the permanent elements of any cosmic scheme; at least of this one they are not permanent: that is the answer which Savitri gives. And then the question as to who created pain is answered there. Pain is the result of the choice of the soul, the choice, really, of the supreme eternity that is at work in us. The choice is that of the soul and self, it is not an imposition. It is not as if somebody came and said: "You will become subject to pain." No, the soul and the self, the essential divinity, selected a condition which the human being feels as pain. It did not say: "This is pain and I like it." But the spirit when it chooses, chooses out of quite a different consideration, a different view, a different way of looking at things; but it is the choice of the spirit, the choice not of pain as pain, but the choice of the process. It becomes pain when you go through it. It ceases to be pain when you look at it from above; from somewhere else, it is not pain at all.
You see, when a doctor operates on a patient, he always sees that this operation is the cure; he knows that in this way the patient will be cured. The patient only knows his pain, but the doctor knows that this operation must be done to get the pain out of him. Similarly the human soul has selected a situation which, because of the human limitations of mind, life and body, has become pain to its experience; but really speaking it was not for the sake of pain that the situation was chosen but as a passage through which it may arrive at something different from pain, something other than pain altogether. "Thou art thyself the author of thy pain", the poem says. The next question is: Can the divine act in life? Can the divine be made to act in situations in life? Savitri
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answers yes, that is the only solution for man's problems, to make the divine a dynamic element in one's life.
Now we take up Aswapathy's Yoga - a little bit of what he has been doing. What did he do? First, he released his own self and soul from the limitation of his mind, life and body, which are his instruments, and he became conscious of some element in him which was independent of his life, independent of his thoughts, independent of his desires, independent of his physical being. The poet puts it this way: "his heart was smitten by a beam of the eternal". When he saw into himself, he didn't see the full glory of the inner being, no, but a beam of the eternal struck his heart, and an inward turn was necessary. He also saw that if he was to remain permanently in the inner self then this inner turn must also become permanent; so he must always be turned inward, whatever he does outwardly must be the result of the dictation or the guidance of the inner being. An inward turn is necessary for this. And Aswapathy came to change the working of his own nature. He found that there was a static oneness and a dynamic power descending into him when he turned inwards, and then the ego limits were broken slowly.
"His island ego joined the continent" - that line of poetry-is inspiration, not mere mental statement. Then he broke into occult worlds and attained a stillness and a peace, but he found that he could not retain any higher state for a long time; it would not remain for very long, it would come and go. What Sri Aurobindo says is very finely put:
Only a while at first these heavenlier states,
These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.
The high and luminous tension breaks too soon.
The body's stone stillness and the life's hushed trance,
The breathless might and calm of silent mind;
Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day.
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The restless nether members tire of peace;
A nostalgia of old little worlds and joys,
A need to call back small familiar selves,
To tread the accustomed and inferior way,
The need to rest in a natural poise of fall,
As a child who learns to walk can walk not long,
Replace the titan will for ever to climb,
On the heart's altar dim the sacred fire.
That is why these experiences are brief and do not last very long in the beginning. Well, that is what Aswapathy found was happening with himself, and then he saw that a movement of ascent and descent was taking place. He goes up and comes down, sometimes he comes down with a gain, sometimes he is dull afterwards. Then he found pure perception growing, intuition coming, inspiration coming, an experience of the self coming, at least glimpses of it. And then he felt the double aspect in him - soul and Nature; what he found was that there was one being that was independent and another being that was bound to Nature. He could take up this position (the author points to his diagram on the blackboard) and he could also take up this position. A double being, soul and Nature, Nature imperfect, soul capable of perfection. He put himself more and more in the witness self, and he found that the more this Purusha, this witness self, went on remembering his true being, the greater was the extent to which Nature also responded to it. When his soul forgot his own true being and identified itself with mind, he was one with Nature and one with thoughts, impulses, movements of desire. When he separated himself from Nature he found that the soul could be impersonal, detached, capable of will, holding his consent. So gradually Aswapathy found that if his soul could go on changing its status from a mere witness to one who gives consent, to one who controls, to one who gives
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direction, then Nature would also feel obstructed in its natural flow of ignorance and would correspondingly undergo a change. What he found was a double aspect, and in this double aspect, when the Purusha knows his true self and remembers his true being, Nature also changes and reveals her powers that are lying dormant in her own constitution. Nature also shows: I am not dull, I am not always bound to be ignorant, I have also treasures of knowledge and power, but the Purusha must give the lead.
Then Aswapathy found the cause and aim of universal evolution. The Purusha is at present bound in Nature, as we saw, because he pursues Nature for the delight, the fulfilment, the will he finds in her, but when he finds that all this running is without any issue, he separates himself from her and puts his own consciousness on its true throne, so to say; then he is the transcendent one who can transcend Nature, because the true aim of evolution is to new-create life. The adventure of consciousness in the universe, the process of universal evolution, is meant to lead to a new creation of life, to create new life in terms of the spirit, not to continue this round of subjection to nature.
Then gradually the Divine began to change Aswapathy's nature so that it should begin to achieve divinity; that is why the Divine began to turn the human mud engine to heaven's use. Aswapathy found that this engine is indeed made of mud, but the Divine was taking it for heavenly use. And then he saw, in the light of this experience, that existence is a divine experiment and cosmos is the soul's opportunity. This is what Aswapathy found: existence is a divine experiment and cosmos is the soul's opportunity. This he realized when he put himself more and more in communication with his inner self; the problem for him was how to bring this higher consciousness and power more and more into life.
This knowledge he got, but how to bring the process into
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life? By maintaining the inward turn. And he found that in order to do that, humanity ought to mould his actions less and less. First, what he had to do was not to allow humanity to dictate to him what he was to do. So humanity moulded his actions less and less, number one. And because his own consciousness was wider than the world's, was it not necessary for him to go out to save mankind? Yes, it was. He did help to save mankind in his own way. Sri Aurobindo says: "His spirit's stillness helped the toiling world," so it was not necessary for him to go out and become philanthropic. It is not always necessary. "His spirit's stillness helped the toiling world." He felt that he was not of this earth but that he was a colonist from immortality. His mind, therefore, became like "a fire assailing heaven", charged with an aspiration for realizing the Divine. His mind was like a fire assailing heaven and he realized that this bodily appearance is not all. I am quoting some lines, from a passage of the first five cantos. This bodily appearance is not all: "A deathbound littleness is not all we are", says Sri Aurobindo, and again, "A spirit that is a flame of God abides... Immortal in our mortal poverty."
These are the words of Aswapathy when he first came into contact with his inner being; from the human realm of ideals he rose to this world of self, awaking higher powers in himself. He went to the frontiers of eternity, as we say, and then he was attracted by that world of the spirit, the Eternal. After realizing the static oneness and dynamic power, he found the power descending in him now and then, beginning to work in him and to change his constitution. Less and less he was moulded by humanity. The powers evoked were beyond form and went to the formless, and then he saw that he had in him the gaze of the Supreme: when he looked out it was not his body or his mind that was looking but the consciousness of the Supreme. He felt his consciousness wider than the world. Then he attained the still consciousness
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which sustains the whole world. Gradually he began to root his being and consciousness in the Infinite and to base his life upon the Eternal. There were ups and downs; a short while the higher conditions lasted and then the gravitational pull of lower life was there, which he had to overcome; but Nature was ever prepared to keep pace with him: if the soul in him demanded a height of Nature, if the soul became free, Nature also attempted to become free; if the soul was pure, Nature also became pure; if the soul was powerful, Nature also became powerful - so Nature followed the lead of the spirit in him.
How did the higher power now and then come down? The poet says it came down sometimes like the rain. That is one experience of Aswapathy and we have so many experiences of his! There is a world of achievement and even the ones in the first five cantos would take us five months to cover.
"A union of the Real with the unique, A gaze of the Alone from every face, The presence of the Eternal in the hours" -this "Made whole the fragment-being we are here." If our being has to be completely integrated, this is a necessary realization. Generally what happens is that the unique tends to become egoistic: every individual wants to be unique, unique in the sense of his egoism; but uniqueness consists in identity with the Real, union of the unique with the Real, the gaze of the Alone from every face. There are no two in the world, and therefore in every gaze one meets the gaze of the Alone, the one being. Multiplicity is not real, multiplicity is only for variation of expression in manifestation, so in fact one meets the gaze of the Alone, one being only, in every face. The realization of the one in all and the presence of the Eternal in the others becomes a reality. Life is not evanescent, it is not merely a passing on, with nothing permanent; the Eternal is constantly present in the hours, and it is thus that the fragmented being which man is be-
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comes integrated and whole.
Aswapathy attained tranquillity, serenity, purity, peace, steadiness and equality, and an occasional intervention of the higher powers to be. After his liberation he lived in the light of his realization and he saw that man is the growing image of God. Man is nothing but the growing image of God, and he can realize this by awakening the powers which are dormant in him now. Aswapathy saw that he was at the end of the manifested universe and a witness. And he saw the goal of this world which appears to be unconscious. He saw what this unconscious earth is moving towards. "The Earth Goddess toils across the sands of time." She is moving across the sands of time to what goal? He saw that goal and saw that it was not merely a movement in the sands of time: He saw the real goal for which she was waiting; she was waiting to grow unexpectedly divine. In the movement she wanted to realize the Divine, to become unexpectedly divine.
What is the nature of Aswapathy's realization when he first began Yoga?
The earth's uplook to a remote unknown
Is a preface only of the epic climb
Of human soul from its flat earthly state
To the discovery of a greater self
And the far gleam of an eternal Light.
This world is a beginning and a base
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must build reality.
This world is a beginning and a base. Well, what is happening? Life and Mind erect their structure of dreams. Life has a dream, Mind has a dream and they are trying to create something here in keeping with their dreams. They want to realize their dreams on earth. This world is a beginning and a
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base from which life is doing something. It is a dream of perfection, power, strength, attainment, success, and it is time to create it here. Mind has some conception of what life must be; it is trying to create it here. But mind and life have merely a structure of dreams. An unborn Power must build reality. If you want to build reality, then a Power which is not yet born has to be brought in here: the power of truth, the power of the divine consciousness, the power of the soul, the power of the spirit in man. The essential divinity in man, an unborn Power, must build reality. If reality is to build something more than just a structure of dreams, then an unborn power must be brought into play.
Now you know that in India there is a tradition in which people give you a small sutra, a small epigrammatic expression in which the whole quintessence of philosophy is contained. They will say: "Satyam, shivam, sundaram": the true, the good, the beautiful. Or they will say: "Satyam, jnanam, anantam brahma": Truth, knowledge, infinite.
Question: Does that belong to the Truth?
"Truth, knowledge, infinite": it is from the Upanishad. That's how it is expressed sometimes. Or "Satyam, Ritam, Brihat." It means "Truth, Right, Vast." This contains sometimes a quintessence of a whole philosophical outlook. A whole philosophy can be brought into a small compass by putting all we want to say into three words: The true, good and beautiful: Satyam, shivam, sundaram - that's the ultimate functioning of some highest reality. If you ask one who has seen it, well, he would like to put it like that. Or Truth, Knowledge and Infinity: Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam Brahma - they say it like that in the Upanishadic language, or they will say: Satyam, Ritam, Brihat. It is a Vedic term - from which the word Brahman also comes.
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Now the poet of Savitri expresses here the quintessence of his philosophy. This is Sri Aurobindo's formula: the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. As soon as you say "the Perfect", the universe is already brought into existence, because perfection cannot exist if there is nothing else around it. Either less perfect or imperfect or at least some paraphernalia of perfection is necessary for perfection to really be perfection. So the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. There is no duality, it is alone - it is absolute, free from manifestation, free from the cosmos, and yet it is perfect.
"The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone" he has fashioned. I am not giving you the full passage in which you will see the whole philosophy contained in a nutshell, but I will give the lines which are important.
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone;
Space is himself and Time is only he.
Now he makes a change in the text, you see. He says:
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret Self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast
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The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune. Note the difference. He has exulted in the universe, He has entered with the silence into space. Yes, He has entered with the silence into space and He has become time. Yes. But has He therefore been touched by elements of ignorance, unconsciousness and materiality and the limitations of mind, life, body and matter? No. He is free. He is hot contaminated - He is immune. Because if He went through a transformation or a change, then there would be no possibility of coming out of it. So He is there, but immune. The Absolute and the Perfect, when He enters the universe, is immune. That explains the universe and its working and the presence of the Divine behind, because the Immune is there. In everyone the Immune is there. Quite immune from whatever is its appearance. In the most wicked there is also the Immune. The Upanishads said it differently. They said: "Not pierced by evil, not pierced by sin." That is a sentence. But here is the rendering in one word: "immune." You understand that the Divine is in everybody, yet immune from whatever is imperfect. And the One who is in us as our secret self is immune. Our mask of imperfection is assumed. He has made this tenement of flesh his own. His image in the human measure is cast. He has cast this image into the measure of Divinity - a small image of Divinity. So the next line is:
That to his divine measure we might rise;
Then in a figure of Divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal's mould
Sri Aurobindo has kept the image of casting throughout and you will see how marvellously it works out in perfect consonance with his highest philosophy. Now his philosophy is there, but it is marvellously poetic.
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Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
That is the second part of the quotation. He has cast his image into the human mould so that we might rise to his divine measure. He has cast his substance into a small human image with the idea that the human must rise to the divine image - that to his divine measure we might rise. When we do that, then in a figure of Divinity the Maker recasts us and imposes a plan of godhead on the mortal's mould, lifting our finite minds to the infinite - to His infinite mind. What will happen then? The poet is giving the picture of the world.
Touching the moment with eternity
(eternity will not be aloof from the moment - the moment will be touched by eternity)
This transfiguration is earth's due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
Now you get some idea of this sentence. That in a moment with eternity our mind links with His infinite mind, our finite mind with his infinite, touching the moment with eternity. This transfiguration from the human to the Divine is the earth's due to heaven; it is the debt which earth owes to heaven. A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme for as He has cast Himself into the human mould, so the human has to rise into the divine mould. "His nature we must put on as He put ours." He has put on the human nature as we are to put on his divine nature.
We are sons of God and must be even as he
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His human portion, we must grow divine.
Our life is a paradox with God for key.
Your life is a paradox with God for key. You get some central idea of Sri Aurobindo's outlook.
Now I'll read one or two passages just to finish with the subject of Aswapathy's Yoga and his attainment.
Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
How does an inspiration come to a human being?
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
Or how did it work sometimes?
A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose;
It rent the gauze opaque of Nescience:
Her lifted finger's keen unthinkable tip
Bared with a stab of flame the closed Beyond.
"Bared" means "opened". That which is closed to the mind will open with a "stab of flame" by the inspiration when it comes.
An eye awake in voiceless heights of trance,
A mind plucking at the unimaginable,
Overleaping with a sole and perilous bound
The high black wall hiding superconscience,
She broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And plundered the Unknowable's vast estate.
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Plundered the estate of the Unknowable. Inspiration when it is mild - look at how Wordsworth has felt it: "That serene and blessed mood in which the affections gently lead us on until the breath of this corporeal frame and even the motion of our human blood are almost suspended - we are laid asleep in body and become a living soul. While with an T made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things." ("Tintern Abbey"). You see this same experience of inspiration in a mild degree in some other poets like that - the superconscious comes into the inspired and intuitive writings of many people. But you don't find it in one place like an electrical belt fixed in the sky of poetic empyrean as in Savitri. Listen to this passage:
The master of existence lurks in us
And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.
The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime's field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal, dallies with mortality.
This gives some idea of what Savitri is. There is a passage in which man is conceived as a sailor in time:
This is the sailor on the flow of Time,
This is World-Matter's slow discoverer,
Who, launched into this small corporeal birth,
Has learnt his craft in tiny bays of self,
But dares at last unplumbed infinitudes,
A voyager upon eternity's seas.
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The sailor begins with time and he is now trying to voyage to eternity.
At first he hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,
Dares not to affront the far-off perilous main.
He travels close to unfamiliar coasts
And finds new haven in storm-troubled isles,
Or, guided by a sure compass in his thought,
He plunges through a bright haze that hides the stars,
Steering on the trade-routes of Ignorance.
A seeker of the islands of the Blest,
He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
Its images veiling infinity.
Earth's borders recede and the terrestrial air
Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
Into Eyes that look upon eternity.
He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself and things.
His is a search of darkness for the light,
Of mortal life for immortality.
A sailor on the Inconscient's fathomless sea,
He voyages, through a starry world of thought
On Matter's deck to a spiritual sun.
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He carries her [the great Mother's] sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes, or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrined the Immortal in his glory's house
And make the finite one with Infinity.
Across the salt waste of the endless years
Her ocean winds impel his errant boat,
The cosmic waters plashing as he goes,
A rumour around him and danger and a call.
And never can the mighty Traveller rest
And never can the mystic voyage cease
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
There is a plan in the Mother's deep world-whim,
A purpose in her vast and random game.
This plan is to be fulfilled in life. This has a similarity to a passage in another poem of Sri Aurobindo called "Ahana".
.. .Something or Someone, a Force or a Spirit
Conscious, creative, wonderful shaped out a world to inherit
Sailing in Time through the straits of today to the sea of
tomorrow.
Worlds and their wonders, suns and their flamings, earth and
her nations,
Voyages endless of Mind through the surge of its fate-tossed
creations,
Star upon star throbbing out in the silence of infinite spaces,
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Species on species, bodies on bodies, faces on faces,
Souls without numbers crossing through Time towards
eternity, aeons
Crowding on aeons, loving and battle, dirges and paeans,
And the human march is going towards the morn of the
Divine.
This "human march" is the working out of the spirit, only let us remember that Nature is the power of the spirit. Nature is not an independent entity that can do what it likes. It does what it likes so long as the spirit wants it to be free. It is permitted ignorance because the spirit permits it and is enjoying the ignorance. That's all right. But as soon as Nature becomes conscious of its Divine origin - the moment the Divine withdraws his permission - then Nature will gradually tend to change. That is the process. And there is also a higher Nature. You see, in Sri Aurobindo's scheme you will always find this double strain. When you .say the Divine, people have no idea that there is a divine Nature also, a Nature which is divine and perfect. And that has a double aspect in this universal working. When it works in the universe it puts on a double aspect, Ignorance and Knowledge. So it is possible from here to transform this Nature.
The divine Nature is working in the universe; the one power that is divine divides into two - Ignorance and Knowledge - and from Ignorance it is possible to transform the Nature, to make it divine. Sri Aurobindo, for the first time, brought this idea definitely to a point, to make it clear, because it was very important for the earth evolution, that if Nature was left alone then spirit was always perfect; spirit has not to attain perfection, spirit is perfect by its very constitution. Essentially it is always perfect. If perfection has a meaning - well, perfection must be manifested in Nature.
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Otherwise spirit is playing at imperfection though perfection is its birthright. But Nature is also claimant to perfection and capable of transformation.
Sri Aurobindo for the first time put this concept into rational terms and also gave a process: you do the transformation of your own nature in three stages. You don't do the transformation in one stage. Human nature is mental nature, vital nature, physical nature. When it first changes, the first stage that it reaches is psychicization. The second stage it reaches is universalization or spiritualization. And the third stage it reaches is supramentalization or divine Nature. You see that from human nature to the divine the stages are one, two and three. The first stage is psychicization, the second is universalization or spiritualization, and the third is supramentalization or total transformation of the consciousness. So the transformation is done in three stages, not all at once. Sri Aurobindo gave the process and also a philosophical rationale of why it is necessary: because otherwise the problem won't be solved.
One's nature must be transformed, slowly or with speed, but it has to be done. And it is done by bringing in the higher power. It is not done by man. This transformation is not brought about by human power but by man opening to the higher consciousness, as Aswapathy opened himself and found that the descent of the higher power was taking place in him, and he was able to ascend and descend. With every descent some element of the divine power enters into human nature - more peace, more control, more detachment, more purity. Every time one goes to the higher consciousness, one comes down with some element of the divine Nature in the human nature, so the divine element goes on increasing. The process is not achieved by human endeavour, it is achieved by the aid of the Divine, the higher Nature of which we spoke. The higher Nature is there and it is to that that this
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human nature opens - the human nature opens to the higher Nature and goes through these three stages. So transformation cannot be attained by human effort alone. Man cannot say, "I will transform myself into the Divine." It is not possible. He must open to the spiritual consciousness, the Divine consciousness and allow it to transform him. The Divine consciousness will be able to transform because perfection is already present in it. It has not to attain perfection. Just as a man cannot put himself On his own shoulders, so he cannot create perfection by himself. Somebody else has to do it. The Divine has to give a man the perfection - but he has to want it and to open to it. Thus the two conditions are: wanting and opening. If he doesn't want and doesn't open, he is quite free to remain ignorant. There is no compulsion to freedom and knowledge.
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LECTURE III
We are trying to follow the epic Savitri, though we are not making a study of the whole epic. We will now pursue an aspect which is less serious in the sense that it doesn't deal with any problem of life - because Savitri does deal, as we saw before, with questions such as whether the world is a mechanical determination which is irresistible and which must now have its way, the consciousness of man having no say in it. That was one problem as we saw. The epic also concerns itself with the evolution of man from his natural self to his true being or his spirit./Aswapathy gets this realization of the spirit, leading to a widening of his true being, equating him with the cosmos, with the universal consciousness, the universal being. Marching through all the planes which have their counterpart in his nature, he is then led to a divine consciousness where he is able to take the whole of human aspiration and put it before the Divine; he prays to the Divine for help and for an emanation to be sent down to mankind in order to solve the problem of man's ignorance and subjection to death. This boon is granted to the human soul, represented by Aswapathy. He gets self-knowledge from within, world-knowledge from around and God-knowledge from above. These three positions are the positions of one omnipresent Reality. It is one Reality which is present in all the statuses. Aswapathy realizes this and gets a boon for mankind - the supreme Mother sends an emanation of herself in the form of Savitri, the daughter of King Aswapathy, to save mankind from ignorance and death. That is where we were. Now we shall go a little further.
The further problem that arises, which we touched upon yesterday, is the problem of pain. If there is an omnipresent Reality at work, a supreme wisdom and grace managing the
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cosmos, why is there any place for pain and suffering in life? Savitri has chosen Satyavan for her husband, and he is fated to die one year after. So the mother of Savitri is putting this question to Narada, the great divine sage, as to why the arrangement of the world is such that the most innocent person is subject to unmerited suffering. The problem arises as to why there is pain and who created this pain? Now to these questions, many answers have been given already in the world's growth up till now. Somebody said that this world will always remain imperfect and subject to suffering and pain and death; this is the constitution of the world and you cannot change it. That is one answer. Buddhism gives a second answer: there is a mechanism; it is there and you know it is due to Karma, action and reaction - when you subject yourself to desire and impulses, it will always have the reaction of suffering thrown upon you. Therefore, the best thing is to get out of it. That is the escape suggested. The world scheme will always remain like that, so it is best not to bother about it; you get out of it, you try to escape. Leave desires, give up desires, don't be subject to this force of possession and acquisition. Give it up and you will gradually retire into a state in which being itself ceases to exist. At least, pain will not be there. That is the solution given.
Now here in Savitri another solution is being given to us, a more integral and a more satisfying solution in the sense that it explains to us - given an omnipresent reality, given a divine being who works and is the cosmos - where arises the possibility of pain in it? Well, you get an explanation! and that is why I think that it is a more satisfying and integral reply to man's question about the place of pain and its origin. Why is there pain at all? That is the question being asked; and who created pain? The answer in Savitri is that you yourself are the author of your pain. When you read the poem you will
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get the full answer, but here the poet is giving you the answer in a nutshell.
And secondly, is there destiny in the sense of something that must happen - fate? Are things fated which cannot be overcome? There is doom, suffering and death, the consequence of ignorance; but is there any fate or determination by higher powers, powers beyond man's control, who have fixed what must happen in a way that it is not a lower determination but a higher determination that arranges things? Is there such a higher determination at work? And can that higher divine determinism be activated in the human situation? The fifth book, where Savitri meets Satyavan - its title is "The Destined Meeting Place" - explains partly what people call fate or destiny. If an omnipresent Reality is working above, you will say it knows everything, it is aware of all things. Yes, quite right. In the lower sphere, it surcharges what we may call the compelling stuff of things. The Omniscient works in the compelling stuff of things and it works there with knowledge. Here the stuff is subject to a compulsion where it seems to act automatically, but really it obeys the Omniscient and the Omnipotent. The two positions, then, are the position in knowledge where everything is known and the position where nothing is known - yet still things are determined by the presence of the Omniscient and Omnipresent in this compelling stuff of things. A flower or a seed is compelled to become what it has to become. There is no choice given to it.
Is there such a thing as fate? We shall see today whether we can make some headway with this question. Because so far as the problem of pain is concerned, there are various answers as I have told you just now. Who is responsible for pain? Is it Karma? Is escape a solution out of it? If you say that escape is the only solution, you will have to say that mind is the only reality. If you accept the
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solution that Karma is the machinery responsible for suffering and pain to man, then the only answer from the metaphysical position will be that mind is the only reality in the world, that man is a mental being, that the process of the universe is led, if at all it is led, to a mental consciousness and that there is nothing more than mind at work in the cosmos. In that case, only that solution can be satisfying. Whether that is so is another question. Incarnations and philosophers have tackled this problem of pain, its why and wherefore and the remedy for it, because pain exists not only on one level. In the physical body there is pain owing to disease and weakness and fatigue and illness. In the collective life you will find that the problem of pain, the infliction of pain, is in the whole record of human history. If you study history, you will find that there is war and death and pestilence and killing and all kinds of ills: that is pain on the collective side.
The area of pain is rather large. Why did the Eternal do this thing? If you say that there is an omnipresent Reality at work, then why did He create pain? Was He compelled? That is how the question will arise: Is there a Reality behind this whole process? Or is this an illusion, all that we experience, even pleasure and pain and escape? Could we end in agnosticism? Nothing is there: after all you cannot know. There is an Unknowable at work and all its processes are a blind man's bluff. You simply go and hit in the dark and you say that this is the solution.
What was the utility and need of pain in the cosmic scheme of things? This is how Narada looked at the problem and he gives the answer to it as a divine representative of knowledge. He makes, first of all, an impersonal statement about pain because he is not subject to pain and he sees from a higher status the place of pain in the life of man; and then he puts a condition for changing or conquering or removing pain from
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the scheme of life. While talking to Savitri's mother, he says that even world seers have had to admit the necessity of pain because unless and until the working of the cosmic scheme is gone through by the Creator himself, in some form or other, the solution of its problems cannot be given by the Divine to man. His whole discourse ends in saying: "It is you who have selected and chosen this scheme of pain. Pain is in fact the distortion or rather the perversion of an all-pervading delight. An all-pervading delight is there which is felt by man as pain when it is perverted or changed and distorted." Why have mortals chosen this particular hazard? That explanation we will perhaps see when we come to the detail of the problem.
Now before we go into this problem of suffering, which is not very pleasant, we will go through some pleasant problems so that we can have some delight. The poet is describing Savitri going from her house to choose a husband, because her father, Aswapathy, has told her, "Your destiny is there - you must shape your own destiny." Some unknown spirit bore this child, that is how he saw her. You find that Savitri is going and that the seasons are passing as she travels. There is one canto, the first canto of Book Four, which is a description of the seasons. We won't read the whole. I'll read only the description of Spring, so that you may understand why so many poets have described the seasons and appreciate the exuberance of Nature; all that you will read here, it's a study by itself, a study of how, from the height beyond mind, one sees the operation of what appears to be inconscient Nature. I would like you to read it yourself, because it is best you approach it as a whole. I will only read a part of the description of Spring, a few lines from the description of Spring:
Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
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And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;
His advent was a fire of irised hues,
His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.
Impatient for felicity he came,
High-fluting with the coil's happy voice,
His peacock turban trailing on the trees;
His breath was a warm summons to delight,
A godlike packed intensity of sense
Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe;
All sights and voices wove a single charm.
The life of the enchanted globe became
A storm of sweetness and of light and song,
A revel of colour and of ecstacy,
A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:
A strain of choral priestly music sang
And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,
A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.
Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,
Pure like the breath of an unstained desire
White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,
Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice
Of the love-maddened coil, and the brown bee
Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds.
The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.
All Nature was at beauty's festival.
That is Spring. You get some idea of how beauty can be seen from above and brought into poetic expression.
Savitri has to go on her quest. She grows up into a young girl and she finds no companions quite fit to deserve her intimacy. She meets many groups of people, many individuals; some are nice, some look up to her as their guide.
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some come to her for a while, some have such demands that she cannot meet them on the human plane. All different kinds of associations take place around her in her infancy and adolescence, but she finds nobody who is fit to be her companion, one with whom she can be completely intimate. And at the end the poet says:
Whoever is too great must lonely live.
Adored he walks in mighty solitude;
Vain is his labour to create his kind,
His only comrade is the Strength within.
That is perhaps quite true. And then Savitri goes out on her travels, passing through different countries, and there you find a description of the various facets of culture, of life, of man; the quest has begun. She passes through temples, hamlets, cities and the capitols of kings. Then she goes through various Ashrams - the hermitages of people who have realized the truth. She also meets some wise kings:
A few and fit inhabitants she called
To share the glad communion of her peace;
The breadth, the summit were their natural home.
The strong king-sages from their labour done,
Freed from the warrior tension of their task,
Came to her serene sessions in these wilds;
The strife was over, the respite lay in front.
In a fair groves some kings retired. They came and lived there in peace.
Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night.
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Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one.
These people who lived in retirement:
They sojourned with an everliving Bliss;
A Voice profound in the ecstacy and the hush
They heard, beheld an all-revealing Light.
Then there were the ascetics:
Nameless the austere ascetics without home
Abandoning speech and motion and desire,
Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,
Immaculate in tranquil heights of self
On concentration's luminous voiceless peaks,
World-naked hermits with their matted hair,
Immobile as the passionless great hills
Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood
Awaiting the Infinite's behest to end.
Now we will read some passages where the meeting takes place between Satyavan and Savitri, so as to give some idea of the fifth book. Satyavan is telling Savitri how he looks upon their meeting:
I plunged into an inner seeing Mind
And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind's bewildered slave:
The mystery was not solved, but deepened more.
I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,
He says: I pursued Beauty and Art
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But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;
Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.
It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign.
Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:
I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.
I looked upon the world and missed the Self
And when I found the Self, I lost the world,
My other selves I lost and the body of God,
The link of the finite with the Infinite,
The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,
The mystic aim for which the world was made,
The human sense of Immortality.
I could not get what I sought, he says.
But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet
And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
Satyavan says: I did try to get into the depths of the mind, the profound secret of mental being, through Art and Beauty and life; and when the Self was there then the world was lost, and when the world was there the Self was forgotten. But now
His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
And now another realm draws near with thee
And now diviner voices fill my ear,
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;
A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song
Of flaming Gods. I draw a wealthier breath
And in a fierier march of moments move.
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.
A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss
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Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:
All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream
Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee
And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue
Because of a change within me by thy look.
That is an expression of love poetry - if you wish to call it that - but it is something not quite of this world perhaps. We will not take time explaining that which is to be felt more than explainer.
Savitri has selected Satyavan and she approaches her father's house and meets her parents. The problem of pain comes here, in this second canto of the sixth book where Savitri's mother addresses herself to Narada, the great divine sage.
Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven she spoke.
And then she asks him about pain:
By what pitiless adverse Necessity
Or what cold freak of a Creator's will.
By what random accident or governed Chance came
The direr mystery of grief and pain?
Is it thy God who made this cruel law?
Or some disastrous Power has marred his work
And he stands helpless to defend or save?
The mother of Savitri is putting the question. You can't put it more strongly, I think, in any language. The question that comes to human mind - well, I think it fine. Later, she says:
What need had the soul of ignorance and tears?
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What power forced the immortal spirit to birth?
Or who persuaded it to fall from bliss?
Perhaps the soul we feel is only a dream,
Eternal self a fiction sensed in trance.
Savitri's mother is asking Narada, "Why is there this will to live? Is there at all a soul?" And Narada replies to her with a counter question and then explains why pain exists:
Was then the sun a dream because there is night?
Hidden in the mortal's heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,
Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;
Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone
Pain is a hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.
Pain is the signature of the Ignorance
Attesting the secret God denied by life:
Until life finds him pain can never end.
Thou art a vessel of the imprisoned spark.
It seeks relief from Time's envelopment,
And while thou shutst it in, the seal is pain:
You get some idea of the place of pain in the scheme of things. Then Narada goes further and explains that with pain
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and labour all creation comes, and that even God's messengers have to bear the law of pain. When God's messenger comes to help the world:
He too must bear the pang that he would heal:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth's fate, '
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
So even if you don't see any outer pain in God's messenger, it is there; the battle is inside, because the messenger represents mankind by his identity with it. He on himself takes vicariously all the suffering of mankind. He may not have any personal suffering as people speak of it, but the grief is there by his identity with the cosmic self: he receives all the grief of the human being, all the grief of humanity into himself, so vicariously there is always suffering within him, even if there is no personal cause for grief. The battle is inside and not outside. The hostility to the Divine is the origin of this pain - intangible forces are there. When light penetrates into the abyss, the law of pain will change.
Man is in fact the author of his own pain:
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
Because man is essentially an immaterial, immortal self which has chosen to live in this "negative infinity". There was at that time of choice an attraction of the void, the grandeur of the abyss. Sri Aurobindo says of man's soul:
It longed for the adventure of ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown.
There was ruin and glamour, accident and chance, hazard and victory, incertitude and the companionship of souls and
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so many other things adventurous in time. It is that which attracted the soul to take up the plunge into the inconscience and ignorance of the world.
A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees creates a truth
Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,
This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire's tents, grief s headquarters.
A vast disguise conceals the Eternal's bliss.
The Eternal's bliss is concealed here in this vast disguise.
Then Savitri's mother asks a question: "Is it fated that all things will remain like this and man will have only this circle of pain and suffering." The answer is given in this sixth book:
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
And then Narada addresses the human being. He is talking to the Queen, but suddenly he addresses humanity rather than replying to her directly:
Oh man, the events that meet thee in thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief.
Are not thy fate; they touch thee awhile and pass;
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"Thy Goal" is to reach "the indwelling God"
O soul, intruder in Nature's ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit's fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless Self.
The whole of human life has been such a march from inconscience to a growing light. Well, Narada is giving a reply to the questions of Savitri's mother in this context. Later when Savitri has come to face Death and has conquered Him and overcome the argument of the God of Death, she rises to the supernal level of the consciousness of the Truth and the Light. There a divine voice questions her and asks her to seek an individual escape, perfection or delight by merging or constantly dwelling in the Supreme without bothering about the fate of mankind. But Savitri, consistent in her replies on more than six occasions, each time confirms her will to bring the Light to mankind because that is the mission given to her, and she does not want to take advantage of such a boon. She says: My mission is to bring this divine light to mankind and raise mankind to the divine height. That is how she puts it, so I will read some portion of her reply to the Divine:
Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;
Earth is a heroic spirit's battlefield.
The forge where the Archmason shapes his works.
Thy servitude on earth is greater. King,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.
Savitri is replying to the Supreme.
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Imperfect is the joy not shared by all
She is speaking to the Divine, remember.
Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.
Now perhaps it is good that I give you two passages which are very important in the sense that they are the height of inspiration: first, when Aswapathy stands before the supreme Mother and later when he prays to her for a boon. These passages are preceded by a long argument by the supreme Mother persuading Aswapathy not to bother about solving man's problem. When Aswapathy is praying to the supreme Mother; she appears to him and says: "What you have attained is yours, but ask no more, because mankind is not ready; if you bring the Light prematurely it may be too much for mankind to digest; therefore it is better to let the slow movement of evolution work itself out, and not press for an immediate intervention of the Divine in the evolutionary process." That is what it comes to ultimately: you should not ask for a divine intervention in a hurry because humanity will not be able to bear the descent of the higher power before its time. That is why the supreme Mother is asking him to continue to work in the light which he has received for some progress for mankind, for some service to knowledge. Aswapathy replies to her:
How shall I rest content with mortal days
And the dull measure of terrestrial things,
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?
Aswapathy is telling the divine Mother: How long shall we have to bear this yoke of night and death?
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We who are the vessels of a deathless Force.
And then he says: We are trying and struggling - but in the struggle of man where is the sign of divine intervention, where is the ray of thy coming? Or if it is thy work that I do below, why do I not see any sign of thy being with me? Where is the thunder of thy victory's wings? I do not see the victory of the divine approaching.
The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,
The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.
All we have done is ever still to do.
All breaks and all renews and is the same.
Huge revolutions of life's fruitless gyre,
The new-born ages perish like the old,
Man struggles a little, works a little and hopes for future perfection.
Then Aswapathy is given an answer, a vision. "I know that thy creation cannot fail", Aswapathy says, "because I have seen", and then he describes the vision he has seen: "forerunners of the divine multitude" are coming, "architects of immortality" are descending into man, and they will do the work of perfecting mankind.
Then he appeals to the supreme consciousness, praying to her at the end of his argument:
"O truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe.
Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
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As if Time dare not open its heart to God.
O radiant fountain of the world's delight
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue.
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.
One moment filled with thy eternity
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."
Aswapathy's prayer sinks down in the resisting night, oppressed by the thousand forces that deny. And then the divine Mother gives a reply to his entreaty:
"O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend, and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth.
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair
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And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword
And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will."
There you find some description of what Aswapathy asked and what boon was given. At the end of the epic, the supreme Godhead says to Savitri:
O Word, cry out the immortal litany.
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.
Even humanity will awaken to the deepest self. There is a long passage in which Savitri affirms the coming down of the supreme Light into her and Satyavan. They are working for the perfection of mankind and creating for humanity the divine life on earth. There you get some concept of Savitri. It is an outline, because in two or three days you can't get the whole of Savitri. But you can get something about what it deals with, you can get an idea, a rough outline.
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Questions and Answers
When you were reading about pain, this world situation, couldn't we think of it as birth pangs?
Yes, of course we can. Certainly the present world situation is the birth pang of a new era, a new age.
May we think of Sri Aurobindo's message as a voice saying something similar to "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven"? Isn't Sri Aurobindo reiterating from the East that same message?
Because the world situation requires the message, because there is a need, therefore it has come. I will give one line that explains this nicely: Aswapathy has reached the transcendent consciousness, and he is looking down, from the plane of Motherhood, the House of the Spirit.
Then suddenly there came a downward look.
Aswapathy looked down
As if a sea exploring its own depths,
Do you follow the image properly? Then what did he see?
A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
When he looked down from the transcendent, he saw that
The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings.
All life a song of many meeting lives;
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Each character in Savitri typifies one line of growth. The King passes through one stage, Savitri passes through another, penetrating into the cosmic constitution. Aswapathy expands his consciousness into the cosmic and transcendent. Knowing the constitution of existence, he tries to fulfil the mission that is given to him of progress towards the Light, and for that progress he requires the help of the Divine so he prays for it; the help is given to him in the form of a boon: that Savitri will be born to help man to solve the problem of ignorance and death. Then Savitri is born and seeing that the constitution of the universe is imperfect, she brings the perfect divine consciousness into the nature of man in order to realize immortality for him. Immortality is another word for divine consciousness.
Then she overcomes death?
Yes, death on earth. This possibility of change of the whole human nature from its present condition into a more perfect divine nature has not been visualized by any seer before. That is the special contribution Sri Aurobindo has given to mankind. If it had been given before, perhaps man would not have understood it. First, the necessity of transformation; second, the process of transformation - how to do it. Its possibility was not known before. This is the way in which it is now given to mankind; human nature as well as human consciousness is capable of liberation and perfection, and that perfection consists in a transformation of nature, not a rejection of nature but a transformation, not a control only, not a type of behaviour according to ethics and morality, but a free expression of the Divine in man with the divine nature. The Divine has the divine nature which man can also acquire by replacing his human nature by the elements of the divine
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nature within him. That is how the Kingdom has to come.
The idea of the Kingdom was there. The process of the Kingdom was not there. It is now given to mankind to fill up that gap and get the total idea of what is the Kingdom of Heaven. Then there will be a perfection of knowledge, a perfection of will, a perfection of aesthetic life, a perfection of the plenty of life and a perfection of material life. There you have got the four aspects in which perfection must be realized: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati, the four aspects of the supreme Mother that are perfect. This conception was never given before - that is why I particularly point it out because people think it is the same message. Yes, it is the same message in a sense, but so much amplified as to become quite a new message, so filled up with content that you would say, "Oh, yes, this is quite new."
Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati -these are the four main aspects of the supreme Mother: wisdom, power, harmony, and perfection in work. Physical and material work that is perfect, harmony and love and cooperation in life, irresistible will, and knowledge without any falsehood or darkness. Knowledge, will, harmony and beauty, perfection in material organization - these four aspects of the Divine have to be brought by the human being into his life. The man who is now full of ordinary knowledge will have to bring the Maheshwari aspect into his consciousness so that she may give him true Knowledge. The man who is dedicated to machinery will have to bring into his life the Mahasaraswati aspect - perfect detail and organization in material life - so as to make matter a fit receptacle of the spirit, to make matter express the spirit perfectly. That is how the four aspects of the divine Nature have to come into the human being and embody humanity's work; then humanity will have perfection.
Read the sixth chapter of the book The Mother and you
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will understand this. It is a very small book; the sixth chapter gives you the four aspects of the supreme Mother: Mahesh-wari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati: knowledge, will-power or force, harmony and love, and perfection of life, meaning fullness of life and perfection in material work. Matter, life, power and knowledge - each aspect of human expression has a divine perfection and that perfection has to be brought into mankind. So the perfection of mankind and the perfectibility of life, individual and collective, is now a filled-in concept because of Sri Aurobindo.
Take the problem of pain, regarded as a problem which has to be solved. Some solve it in one way, another in another way, but now Sri Aurobindo has given us the idea that pain is the intermediate condition chosen by the soul freely for its growth from inconscience to light. Therefore the soul itself has selected to go through ignorance and pain. It is not that somebody has imposed it and said, "Oh, you must suffer indefinitely." There is a solution for it. Pain can be completely eliminated. It will not be necessary to go through the process of pain once the divine Nature has come into life. That is the solution. The solution is not to reject pain and say, "All right, I will run away from life," or, "Oh! Pain is always there, therefore let me retire." That is not the solution because to go through pain is the choice of the soul itself. The fall into inconscience was selected because of the adventure of the unknown. Matter and inconscience were taken up by the soul as an adventure and in the adventure suffering and pain and ignorance have to come in as an intermediate state, that's all; so it is only a temporary state through which each individual has to pass; but he can pass beyond, and you do find expressions of people who have passed beyond. It's not merely the statement of a wish or an ideal. For instance, in the Upanishad you find it said, "Oh, oh, oh! I have become the immortal, I have overcome igno-
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rance and pain." When the poet says that all is delight and delight and delight, he is speaking of his own experience. So there are people who have gone through this formula, through this rung of the difficulty of ignorance and pain and have gone beyond it - pain has been overcome in certain cases.
But now one has to see how far mankind can open itself to this new truth and work out the problem of pain. It is not that it will be done in one day. This elimination of pain is not a question of one day but a question of long trial. Just as in the course of evolution you don't arrive at an immediate solution, just as in science you have to wait for some time before a new discovery is perfected, so with a big problem like pain you have to allow centuries to intervene before a change comes. How many people died before the airplane became a success? From the eighteenth century or so they were flying with hydrogen, remember, and so many people died. They didn't know how to control the coming down, but ultimately their efforts lead to success. In the same way the elimination of pain will take time. It is not that tomorrow you will be free from pain, but at least you can see that that has to be done; then you apply yourself and gradually, one by one, the problems are solved until the final solution is found.
Don't you think, too, Purani, that understanding why pain is here makes it easier to accept and gives one a different attitude towards it?
Yes, your attitude changes towards pain, and therefore its effect wears out. It doesn't become so acute. When it comes, you know that it has come for teaching you something, teaching you an attitude to understand, and immediately the sharpness goes out of it.
This was demonstrated very powerfully in the Middle
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Ages, particularly in spiritual women who had great ability to organize; and in almost every case these women didn't go off into a private ecstacy of their own. They did go into ecstasy, but always they brought it down to a very concrete definition in life. They founded nunneries; they founded hospitals; they got right down to humanity, and they never ceased to work until the day of their death, but they still held their meditations.
Life is a field for expression, so life will be always dealt with by a true spiritual person. Life will be always dealt with, life will not be allowed to remain what it is, to the extent that the person can do something with the divine help. The spiritual person always tries to bring into life a new stream, a new current, to the extent that he is destined to do so by the Divine. No spiritual person ever lives life alone, he always acts upon life and reacts to life's shocks. That is one mission of a spiritual person, to take part in life. He may take part in life by saying, "Give it up", but always he does take part in life.
One way or another he does.
He has to. Sri Aurobindo has at least brought one institution - his Ashram - into existence which shows that spirituality in life can be true. I don't say it fully succeeds, but at least it is a try. You wouldn't dare to think of it if he had not tried. An institution which shows that man can try to bring the spirit into life - it is a big thing, such a big thing. If somebody tries it, it is a very great thing, because it is a rare person who can make even a trial. It isn't easy.
I was going to get your idea on it. Now I have it.
You have Sri Aurobindo's idea, which is better than mine.
What we say is that the growth of man from inconscience to light is destined. The events and occurrences and expe-
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riences that come are of secondary importance. What happens is not important - the direction in which one is going is important, and that is destined. There is a Will at work which will push man towards the realization of the ultimate truth. You cannot escape it. That is the destiny of life on earth.
You may have to go through more than one life?
There may be thousands of lives, but the realisation of the ultimate truth is destined.
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