It was the hour before the Gods awake.

There is an ancient tradition which describes the creation as done by some first emanations of the Supreme Mother, who were four emanations. In the sense and feeling of their supreme Power, they cut connection with their Origin and became independent. And then, these emanations, being separated from their Origin, entered into darkness.

The first was Consciousness, Consciousness in Light, and by cutting Himself from His Origin He went down and down towards Unconsciousness.

The second was Bliss and turned into Suffering.

The third was Truth and turned into Falsehood.

The fourth one was Life and turned into Death.

This happened after they came into the vital level. When this was seen, it was decided that the second emanations would be made to repair the mistake of the first; and the second emanations were the Gods.

This first line refers to the condition of the world before the Gods were born.

Sri Aurobindo says, “It was the hour before the Gods awake.”

But there was a problem, that across the path of the intended divine manifestation there stood the opposing spirit of the Night.

As a result of this separation between the first emanations and the Origin, the creation by these first emanations had become obscure, inconscient. And that is what Sri Aurobindo describes here. He says, “the divine Event”, that is the creation,—creation that will go on and on for eternity. It started with what He called the Night—the Night of a foreboding mind. It is unconscious, immobile, lifeless, blind. All these things—the obscurity and the unconsciousness, the immobility, lifelessness, the unbodied Infinite, and a fathomless zero—all these words are meant to express the Nothingness of the world.

Yet this fallen boundless self yearned not to be.

Even in the darkest Unconscious there was something like the remembrance of the Divine Origin, and it had an urge to wake up to existence.

But all the habit of the Inconscient was so strong that it had a natural tendency to go back to Nothingness. It is just what preceded the beginning of a conscious creation in the world.

We saw that this emanation of Light and Consciousness had separated from its Origin and had naturally fallen into Inconscience. The result was that the world created was the world of Unconsciousness—a world of Nothingness, of obscure Nothingness.

But in spite of everything the Divine Origin was inside this and had an urge to bring up again a world of Consciousness. And this is like the first attempt of waking up in the Nothingness by something that was the faint expression of the consciousness—but “Recalling,” as Sri Aurobindo says, “the tenebrous womb from which it came”. This had a tendency of going back to Unconsciousness. It is like the origin of Death.

The result was earth went in cyclic rounds, heedless of her spirit and her fate.

For the sake of evolution and the ascension towards Consciousness, earth was formed. But it was formed naturally in the Unconscious, and so Sri Aurobindo says:

Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,

Its formless stupor without mind or life,

A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,

Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,

Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

That is when the earth was created in the Unconscious and the Nothingness, in order to concentrate the effort and the working of evolution—that is the description of the beginning.

Earth began—almost totally unconscious—as He says:

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

That is the beginning.

But then something happened and a nameless movement began.

This is a description—a very wonderful description—of the beginning of Aspiration: how in the Nothingness, in the Inconscient, stirred the first movement of Aspiration.

There was no mind, so it did not think. Even the vital was not organised, so it did not know how to be.

But, It stirred slowly to wake up the Inconscient towards something—without knowing what it was.

This is the first vibration which preceded even form, the first beginning of Aspiration towards the possibility of knowing.

An old tired want appeared and looked into the deep past if there could be a way out, but it remained unfulfilled.

This is still the description of the world created by division and becoming conscious. Its Origin being the perfect Truth-Consciousness, in spite of its division, in spite of its obscurity, it still contains the seed of its Consciousness and something like “the want” to return to It.

The hope was there that, in spite of this long frustration, things could be revived.

The Origin of Light and Consciousness which it carried in itself could not die—because it is the seed, the very essence of Immortality. And that began waking up.

There was the desire and there was the prescience too.

It is the very beginning of aspiration waking up in the Inconscient to return to its conscious Origin.

It is the starting-point, the first movement of evolution,—the evolution that is the turning back of the Inconscient to return to the full Consciousness.

An infant longing clutched the sombre vast and insensibly somewhere a breach began.

This is the waking up of consciousness that Sri Aurobindo compares to a “smile”. He says “hesitating hue”—that is the first beginning of consciousness. It is like a very pale light and He compares to “a vague smile tempting a desert heart”.

It is like a very faint light at the border of the obscure sleep of life.

The result was something arrived from the other side of boundlessness, an eye of deity piercing through the dumb deeps.

The first vision of Consciousness He compares to “An eye of deity” piercing “through the dumb deeps”. This look is like “A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun” —that is the symbol of Consciousness, in the heavy cosmic rest: “The torpor of a sick and weary world”. “Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss”—that is, too unconscious to remember the Consciousness from which it came.

The adventure of consciousness and joy began and the message crept through to the hush, the hush that was not too a willing to respond.

That is just coming out from the complete unconsciousness of the stone and mineral towards the beginning of life, and this “Compelled renewed consent to see and feel”.

And then He says, “its message crept”: this is the first sending of thought into the world.

In its wake thought was sown in the unplumbed Nothingness, and sense was born, and memory quivered—they prompting to renew the attempt that didn’t succeed earlier. And there’s hope.

And then,

A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,

A sense was born within the darkness' depths,

A memory quivered in the heart of Time

As if a soul long dead were moved to live.

That is the memory of the Origin.

Then He describes the resistance:

But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,

Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,

And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt

And old experience laboured out once more.

In front all seems to have been destroyed—it is only a seeming because it is latent behind the Unconsciousness.

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

And then the comforting assurance:

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

So, in short, Sri Aurobindo is giving all the process of rebuilding the Consciousness in the Unconscious.

He calls the separation “the fall”: that is truly a fall of the Consciousness into the Unconscious.

And now he describes how the message sent from the Supreme to repair the harm done wakens up again the Consciousness—as by a kind of imperative influence—to begin to climb up, back to the Supreme Consciousness.

This ascent is the evolution that will take so many thousands and thousands of years. But for a very long time it was not measured. It is only when Mind took the form in man, that time began to be measured. And, before that, who can know how long It took to wake up from the complete Unconsciousness?

He is speaking of the starting-point of this evolution.

And then He says:

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

Beautiful!

With this hope, and the miraculous appeal, even the black quietude got pleased, and beauty and wonder swayed over the fields.

We may remember that Sri Aurobindo puts together Quietude, Beauty and Wonder—they seem to be at the beginning of the manifestation of the Divine in the Inconscient.

It started like that: Quietude, Beauty and Wonder.

It forced the world's blind immensity to sight and the darkness failed, and from the suns outpoured the revelation and the flame.

It is the most poetic way of describing the waking up of the Consciousness to invisible things. But why this waking up, what has created or given birth to this waking up?

Sri Aurobindo says:

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.

A god has come down upon earth to wake it up to the inner Consciousness. We could say that this was the first Avatar.

It is the coming down of the first Avatar to wake up the earth to Consciousness—that is, to bring an intensity of Consciousness and Realisation into this inconscient world.

That is obviously the description of the appearance of the first Avatar. It starts from that—because He puts:

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,

Outpoured the revelation and the flame.

The revelation and the flame.

And…

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

That is the sign of the Avatar coming down upon the earth.

There came a message from the unknown immortal Light and Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues. A new Day would begin with it.

This is the description of the first contact of the Light from above bringing an unknown message:

An instant's visitor the godhead shone:

On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood

And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.

It is the answer of the Divine to the condition into which had fallen the creation and the first contact of the Gods with Matter.

Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss

In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,

It wrote the lines of a significant myth

Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,

A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.

It gives the idea that the story of the world, of the creation, was told while it was going on and it was inscribed, to be kept for ever.

It means that whatever happens is noted and kept in the memory of the earth.

He says:

It wrote the lines of a significant myth…

That is the story of Savitri.

It is at the time of first contact with the Emanation from the Divine with the atmosphere of the earth that the story of Savitri was decided.

Indeed, the omniscient Goddess obliged even as she saw that things were ready for her activity to begin here.

It is the coming down of the Mother.

A lonely splendour from the invisible goal

Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.

It was Savitri coming down.

There is nothing to say—nothing comes. It is all complete as it is. There is nothing to explain and nothing to add.

Nature that was awake felt her arrival. And the marvel! Her luminous smile kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.

That is to express how Nature was conscious of Her descent—because this descent was changing the attitude and nature of tings.  She came down to kindle the fire of aspiration.

Nature was conscious of her arrival. All that is considered as inanimate Nature—that is, the wind, the water and the trees and the flowers—everything received Her joyously.

It is only man who did not know…

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray, and the vision and prophetic gleam lit into miracles common meaningless shapes. But that proved short-lived.

Sri Aurobindo seems to say that a Ray of Knowledge, of Light, of Truth came down upon earth and was so badly received, transformed into such a commonplace thing that It simply withdrew.

This Ray from above changed into a prophetic gleam, changed into miracles even the most common meaningless shapes. But then, finding no response, It withdrew, unwanted, fading.

Many times it happened before It could come and stay. At least something like a response was needed to keep It. And It came many times, waking up the smallest thing, and then not having sufficient response It withdrew. Then, long periods of preparation, slow dull preparation; then, many times, an attempt to descend—a Ray—and things are lit up and suddenly they seem marvellous.  But, so many times they fell back into their usual, normal, meaningless ways.

But now, this time, there is a response—something seems ready and we shall witness the beginning of the change.

So we have only to be attentive, to be awake, to look, and we shall see the beginning of things.

Something is beginning to change in the world and, as Sri Aurobindo says, when it is like that, even the smallest thing becomes a living miracle.

There was only the prescience of a marvellous birth to come, because—only a little the God-light can stay.

That is the explanation why the experience does not last. The atmosphere of the earth is too contrary to the magnificence of the Supreme Consciousness and veils it almost constantly. From time to time It can show and express Itself, but then again, this Inconscient atmosphere veils It.

It was like that when in 1956 the Supramental Power came down upon earth. It was coming down in torrents of Light, wonderful Light and Force and Power, and from the earth b-i-g w-a-v-e-s of deep blue Inconscience came and swallowed It up. All the Force that was coming down was swallowed up and it is again from inside the Inconscient that It had to work Itself through. That is why things take so much time here. It is too much unconsciousness in the response that veils what earth has absorbed. Otherwise, it is long since the Light has poured down and things ought to have changed.

The excess of beauty natural to God-kind could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes,—she was too mystic-real for space-tenancy.

He is saying that the earth, the world, is not yet ready to manifest the Divine in its purity. And spontaneously, naturally, the Divine gets veiled, hidden by the ordinary form, and even the difference of vibration is scarcely felt.

Until now, in the creation, it is only man who looks at the future. All the rest of the creation is concerned only with the present; man looks at the future and is anxious about it, but the future is veiled—“The future’s covered face”. The next step in evolution will see the future.

It is in these circumstances that Savitri was born. The hymn that was offered to the Sun-God also became her hymn, invoking that luminous creative Presence to change things here.

Here then nothing to say. It is a description of Savitri’s nature. She came from above and did not share in the smallness of humanity. That is all.

She accepted the conditions of mortality, its anguish and transience, its thousand imperfections.

She came to transform the world and make it fit to receive the Higher Light and Power. But in order to transform this world, one must come upon earth, accept it, and then accept at the same time its insincerity, its weakness, its incapacity to live this Higher Consciousness.

That gives me the impression, a strong impression, of what has been for ages and centuries, but it is not the final destiny of the earth. Life is expected to transform itself in order to be able to express the divine things—the Divine Consciousness. And that is why She has come upon earth to prepare it.

She did all this, that heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

This is the exact description of the condition upon the earth in general. Only, little by little, the number of people who are accepting this Truth increases; that is why the Divine knows that with patience, repeating the effort, one day it will bring its result. In fact, it is by many repeated attempts and apparent failures that the work is done. And, it is the symbolic representation of this effort that is given in Savitri. It is a symbolic work, not the telling of a story of something that happened; it is the illustration in a condensed and imaged form of this effort of the Divine to divinise the material creation. Actions that in appearance may seem failures are steps—and definite steps—towards Realisation. This is one of the things that have been expressed and represented in Savitri.

She came—but how was she received? The Law of Darkness was imposed on her. She had to bear death and pain. Or else, how would they change, get transformed?

That is the history of human life upon earth: each time that help has been sent to hasten the evolution, it has been received in that way. But each time the effort and the help are bigger, higher, truer; and each time a little work, some result, is achieved; and step by step, the world grows towards its Realisation.

The whole story has been shown under a symbolic form, in a symbolic story, and it is that that Sri Aurobindo gives in Savitri.

She came,—but only a few recognised her. It is as though in that fall she would rise to yet greater heights, as though this mortality would make her immortally yet greater.

This is to make humanity understand that a greater Purity, a greater Force, a greater Knowledge and a greater Ananda can be acquired through struggle and pain, suffering and difficulty more than through an easy and smooth life.

It is not the cause of difficulties, but it is the result. That is to say, it would be a mistake to believe that these difficulties have been created in order to bring this marvelous result. It is not so. But, according to the action of the Grace, the difficulties having occurred, the Grace can change them into means of greater progress. That is the attitude to be taken towards life as it is, and it will allow the Grace to give Its maximum of help with the maximum result.

That is why we can always say, “From the worst the best will arise”. Not that we must purposely bring or attract the worst. But, when we are faced by it, we must keep this fact and go on without hesitation, without fear, never losing an absolute quiet and a sure faith.

She knew the forthcoming grief but she kept it entirely to herself, without sharing it even with them whom she loved most.

In the story this is because Savitri knows one year in advance what will be the fate of Her companion; but, like the rest of the story it is a symbol.

To know in advance what will be the circumstances of life one ought to have the strength of a God. It is a Supreme Grace for man that the future is not revealed to him; because most men would not have the courage to live their life, if they knew what it would be. The all-embracing Divine Consciousness is needed to have the knowledge and live in the present condition of the world and, at the same time, do what one is expected to do and act according to the Divine’s Will. When the consciousness of man becomes wide, strong and pure enough to know, or rather, to share the knowledge of the Divine, then this knowledge comes along with the consciousness.

A Supreme Wisdom governs all the world and each and every detail of this world. It is only through identification with the Supreme Consciousness that man acquires at once the power to know and the power to bear and the power to do.

Indeed, even her humanity was half divine. She remained calm and composed in the presence of this fast-approaching doom. Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights.

This is the correct and exact description of the condition of those who are united with the Divine. Once this is realised fully, the reactions of the human being exist no more. It is the same Nature working in all, it is the same Divine conscious in all. There is no more the sense of ego, and the suffering—if there is any—is not personal suffering, but some universal feeling, some universal contradiction of the Divine Consciousness.

All that happens happens in the Divine Consciousness and no selfish or egoistic movement can exist.

There are all the movements that belong to the past and have to go, and it is because they have to go that they belong to the past. All the Divine movements that are luminous and progressive and creative of unity and beauty, belong to the future; and they have to live because they belong to the future. There is, in the world, a constant fading of all that belongs to the past and the constant growth of that which belongs to the future.

When we are conscious with the Divine Consciousness, there is no attachment for what belongs to the past and there is full collaboration with what belongs to the future.

Personal motives exist no more.

However, she became more and more aware of the deeper ache whose cause or origin she did not seem to know.

This is the effect of the Consciousness when it descends into the material world. There is so much of inertia in this world that the Consciousness gets faint, remote, uncertain. It is a general happening. All the beings from above that take birth in this world have the same experience. It takes a l-o-n-g time to remember what they are, from where they came, and to get back their conscious movement and conscious knowing.

And even when they remember, there is a kind of dulling of the knowledge. It is no more so clear, so vivid, so intense. Everything gets dulled. But it is just by bringing more and more often something of the Higher Realms of Consciousness so as to wake up a response in Matter that little by little its very nature will change, and instead of being dull and unconscious, it will wake up to a conscious response.

This is just the work that is going on and will go on until this Matter is transformed and capable of manifesting the Supreme Consciousness from which it comes.

This acute pain of the very physical took her back, back to the labour and stress of mortal days, as if it showing her the way to overcome it.

This is the description of how the Consciousness works its way back, binging back remembrance, waking the faculties—more conscious by night than by day, because the inner being is more active.  As the body goes to sleep, the inner being wakes up and, with it, comes back the memory of the past.

For those who are more developed in the inner being than in the body, those who come down upon earth fully conscious and had their consciousness veiled and dulled by the contact with Matter, sleep is often a revelation. Because the body is asleep, inactive, the inner consciousness is more free, and in contact with what it knows more directly.

So all those who have come down upon earth fully developed and fully conscious, at night when the body rests, remember what they were and what they can do. In fact, they actually continue to do their work at night when their body is immobile. They continue their activity and they do what they came to do upon earth, even before the body knows and can help in the work.

In that state came back to her the three ancient disputants: Earth and Love and Doom,—and associated with all that the pang divine itself. She felt the presence of godlike Pain and offered to him the oblations of her deep tears, to the harsh and implacable God.

All earth is under the governing shadow of the vital beings. Even the Highest Divinity, when coming upon earth, cannot escape the consequence of this shadow governing all the events of the earth.

For life upon earth to become entirely divine, harmonious, happy, painless, these forces and beings of the vital world must be conquered or destroyed, transformed, or they must disappear—that is, return to the Nirvana of the Origin.

But on the fated day her soul arose confronting Time and Fate. This was the day when Satyavan must die.

It is this terrible story of the creation of earth and man as the means to save the world from suffering and destruction.

The death of Satyavan becomes the symbol of the misery of the earth’s creation, of its fate and, through Savitri, of its liberation. She faces the doom in order to give the solution.

The creation is plunged in misery, suffering and death. But it can and will be saved through Her intervention.

Attention may also be drawn to the following:

http://www.savitrithelightofthesupreme.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/14/4019780.html