Narad’s Arrival at Madra by RY Deshpande is a book based on the opening passage of 81 lines of the Book of Fate of Savitri. It has, inter alia, aspects of this evolutionary creation of ours advancing towards what Sri Aurobindo envisaged as the supramental manifestation in plenitudes of the transcendental reality. Chapters XII-XVI of the book see the related issues from various angles. These are as follows:

 

·          The Story of Creation

·          Evolution—Scientific and Occult-Yogic Aspects

·          Evolution—A Metaphysical Discussion

·          Evolution—The Spiritual-Gnostic Possibilities

·          Towards the Intermediate Race—the Supramental Change is a Thing Decreed

 

The expectation is that these themes will be of considerable interest to the readers of the Mirror of Tomorrow and therefore it is thought quite pertinent to post them on it. The book was published in April 2006 under the auspices of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and it is heartening to see that it has been received enthusiastically in the Aurobindonian circles. It is now hoped that it will, through the Internet, become accessible to a much wider readership which can see the process and objective of the terrestrial evolution in terms of spiritual verities. Such an interest in it could be particularly rewarding because of the deep and fundamental positions that are available to the discernible and the perceptive; these will make them aware of the thousandfold possibilities of the spirit entering into this creation, the growing possibilities that can, in fact which must come into the operative dynamics of the earthly scheme. Going beyond the immediate intellectual-intuitive grasp of the issues involved in it are the profounder things of the occult-yogic kind and to be aware of them and to participate in them as far as possible to us is to prepare ourselves in the greatness of what they hold for us. It is with this view in mind that I am posting these five chapters as a set of articles one after another.

As an extension of the discussion we had in Narad’s Arrival at Madra, we shall now look into the passages dealing with the theme of Evolution in Savitri. These appear in the epic at different places in different contexts, which to a reader in hurry may give the impression that the author is constantly repeating himself. But this is true in the least. On the other hand, each time Sri Aurobindo is writing about this theme, he is actually bringing out the varied, the newer shades and nuances that are present in it, they indicating the richness of the subject matter that is of good concern to us in diverse respects. This kind of presentation by the author has the advantage of wide globality which cannot be otherwise embraced or conveyed by the standard inflexible professional or constrained metaphysico-philosophical mode of discussion. It also illustrates the expositive art of Sri Aurobindo, he as a master-essayist in poetry and yet supremely truthful to the intuitive-revelatory sublimity of knowledge that is behind it in both occult and spiritual details and dimensions. It must be well appreciated that Sri Aurobindo is not writing a PhD thesis on Evolution but is describing a Mystery’s Process being worked out in the mode and logic of the Consciousness-Force operating infallibly in her own way. The infallibility of the process not from a mental but spiritual point of view has built into it the divine manifestation in an evolutionary scheme and purpose. A stage has now arrived when the transition between the mental being and the superman is a distinct prospect, a realizable eventuality. But this is a prospect, a vision of the not-too-distant a future that has emerged principally because of the unceasing yoga-tapasya done by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, long and arduous yoga-tapasya done by them in the unyielding depth of the earth-consciousness. Savitri gives hints of that secret work that has gone in its realization.

[Aswapati’s was a dauntless spirit that came here to this ephemeral world of ours from the larger spheres, the sempiternal spheres of light and joy and truth, he ungrudgingly accepting the lot of the dark and difficult mortality. But soon he has unique spiritual experiences and realisations that would first make his soul free from these thousand lower bondages. Static Oneness and dynamic Power descend in him and his yogic journey begins. Even as he grows into his greater larger self, humanity frames his movements less and less. In fact the Supreme’s gaze looks out through his human eyes and he sees all things and creatures as itself. He knows that this huge material universe is but a small result of a stupendous force. Going farther beyond it, he glimpses the superconscient realms of motionless peace, the uniqueness of the utter and the alone. What he sees are only the Silence and the Absolute. He is now aware that his spirit had its source over there. But the contrast between that state and things as they are here on the earth is sharp, and it is necessary that the cause of it be discovered. Aswapati sets himself to find it, unearth it. In the face of the cosmic past weighing heavily on the soul of man, the remarkable story of evolution has to unfold in the Yogi-Tapasvin’s untiring pursuit. Savitri’s passages reveal some of these aspects.]

 

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.

 

The restless nether members tire of peace;

A nostalgia of old little works 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.

 

An old pull of subconscious cords renews;

It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,

Or a dull gravitation drags us down

To the blind driven inertia of our base.

 

This too the supreme Diplomat can use,

He makes our fall a means for greater rise.

 

For into the ignorant nature's gusty field,

Into the half-ordered chaos of mortal life

The formless Power, the Self of eternal light

Follow in the shadow of the spirit's descent;

The twin duality for ever one

Chooses its home mid the tumults of the sense.

 

He comes unseen into our darker parts

And, curtained by the darkness, does his work,

A subtle and all-knowing guest and guide,

Till they too feel the need and will to change.

 

All here must learn to obey a higher law,

Our body's cells must hold the Immortal's flame.

 

Else would the spirit reach alone its source

Leaving a half-saved world to its dubious fate.

 

Nature would ever labour unredeemed;

Our earth would ever spin unhelped in space,

And this immense creation's purpose fail

Till at last the frustrate universe sank undone.

 

Even his godlike strength to rise must fall:

His greater consciousness withdrew behind;

Dim and eclipsed, his human outside strove

To feel again the old sublimities,

Bring the high saving touch, the ethereal flame,

Call back to its dire need the divine Force.

 

Always the power poured back like sudden rain,

Or slowly in his breast a presence grew;

It clambered back to some remembered height

Or soared above the peak from which it fell.

 

Each time he rose there was a larger poise,

A dwelling on a higher spirit plane;

The Light remained in him a longer space.

 

In this oscillation between earth and heaven,

In this ineffable communion's climb

There grew in him as grows a waxing moon

The glory of the integer of his soul.

 

A union of the Real with the unique,

A gaze of the Alone from every face,

The Presence of the Eternal in the hours

Widening the mortal mind's half-look on things,

Bridging the gap between man's force and Fate        

Made whole the fragment-being we are here.

 

At last was won a firm spiritual poise,

A constant lodging in the Eternal's realm,

A safety in the Silence and the Ray,

A settlement in the Immutable.

 

His heights of being lived in the still Self;

His mind could rest on a supernal ground

And look down on the magic and the play

Where the God-child lies on the lap of Night and Dawn

And the Everlasting puts on Time's disguise.

 

To the still heights and to the troubled depths

His equal spirit gave its vast assent:

A poised serenity of tranquil strength,

A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest

Faced all experience with unaltered peace.

 

Indifferent to the sorrow and delight,

Untempted by the marvel and the call,

Immobile it beheld the flux of things,

Calm and apart supported all that is:

His spirit's stillness helped the toiling world.

 

Inspired by silence and the closed eyes' sight

His force could work with a new luminous art

On the crude material from which all is made

And the refusal of Inertia's mass

And the grey front of the world's Ignorance

And nescient Matter and the huge error of life.

 

As a sculptor chisels a deity out of stone

He slowly chipped off the dark envelope,

Line of defence of Nature's ignorance,

The illusion and mystery of the Inconscient

In whose black pall the Eternal wraps his head

That he may act unknown in cosmic Time.

 

A splendour of self-creation from the peaks,

A transfiguration in the mystic depths,

A happier cosmic working could begin

And fashion the world-shape in him anew,

God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God.

 

Already in him was seen that task of Power:

Life made its home on the high tops of self;

His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;

Only life's lower reaches remained dim.

 

But there too, in the uncertain shadow of life,

There was a labour and a fiery breath;

The ambiguous cowled celestial puissance worked

Watched by the inner Witness's moveless peace.

 

Even on the struggling Nature left below

Strong periods of illumination came:

Lightnings of glory after glory burned,

Experience was a tale of blaze and fire,

Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,

Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen;

Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought,

Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses,

Rivers poured down of bliss and luminous force,

Visits of beauty, storm-sweeps of delight

Rained from the all-powerful Mystery above.

 

Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience.

 

A dense veil was rent, a mighty whisper heard;

Repeated in the privacy of his soul,

A wisdom-cry from rapt transcendences

Sang on the mountains of an unseen world;

The voices that an inner listening hears

Conveyed to him their prophet utterances,

And flame-wrapt outbursts of the immortal Word

And flashes of an occult revealing Light

Approached him from the unreachable secrecy.

 

An inspired Knowledge sat enthroned within

Whose seconds illumined more than reason’s years:

An ictus of revealing lustre fell

As if a pointing accent upon Truth,

And like a sky-flare showing all the ground

A swift intuitive discernment shone.

 

One glance could separate the true and the false,

Or raise its rapid torch-fire in the dark

To check the claimants crowding through mind’s gates

Covered by the forge signature of the gods,

Detect the magic bride in her disguise

Or scan the apparent face of thought and life.

 

[1] Savitri, pp. 34-38