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.

[The following is a description of entry of Life in material objects, of the Upanishadic prāņamaya puruşa, or prāņaśariranetā. Evolution is a double process, first of things progressing from below upward, for example, Matter preparing itself to receive Life to start with, and then Life-in-Matter moving forward and awaiting the arrival of Mind in it; in that appropriate readiness are the descents of the higher powers, they lifting up the evolution to the superior grades. In the crude beginnings of Matter there was no manifestation of Life, and of course no manifestation of Mind, or yet higher powers. In that dumbness the souls locked in Matter yearned for Life to release them from its hold. They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould and in brute form awake divinity. Life obliged. She the great-winged Angel poured her splendour and her sweetness and her bliss—hoping to fill the world with joy. In Matter’s womb she cast the Immortal’s fire. But alas! While she was on her way, and before her gifts could reach the imprisoned souls, a dark ambiguous Presence questioned all. Life faced Death. She was forced to obey the Inconscient’s Law. Her power was not sufficiently strong to meet such a situation, an unexpected challenge. Life’s immortality got so much veiled that she seemed to be simply an episode, a small occurrence in the land of eternal death, a myth that must for ever cease. To a large extent the same was repeated when arrived Mind, the lower creation appropriating it for itself. It is only the descent of Supermind that can victoriously handle the thousand contingencies that can arise from below, the working of the Inconscience at the base of this evolutionary movement. What is necessary is to appreciate that evolution is not a single-stranded process running from one end to the other, is not mono-logical, but is a complex web made of the dark and the luminous occult running into each other, something which a materialist scientist cannot grasp.]

 

In the crude beginnings of this mortal world

Life was not nor mind's play nor heart's desire.

 

When earth was built in the unconscious Void

And nothing was save a material scene,

Identified with sea and sky and stone

Her young gods yearned for the release of souls

Asleep in objects, vague, inanimate.

 

In that desolate grandeur, in that beauty bare,

In the deaf stillness, mid the unheeded sounds,

Heavy was the uncommunicated load

Of Godhead in a world that had no needs;

For none was there to feel or to receive.

 

This solid mass which brooked no throb of sense

Could not contain their vast creative urge:

Immersed no more in Matter's harmony,

The Spirit lost its statuesque repose.

 

In the uncaring trance it groped for sight,

Passioned for the movements of a conscious heart,

Famishing for speech and thought and joy and love,

In the dumb insensitive wheeling day and night

Hungered for the beat of yearning and response.

 

The poised inconscience shaken with a touch,

The intuitive silence trembling with a name,

They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould

And in brute forms awake divinity.

A voice was heard on the mute rolling globe,

A murmur moaned in the unlistening Void.

 

A being seemed to breathe where once was none:

Something pent up in dead insentient depths,

Denied conscious existence, lost to joy,

Turned as if one asleep since dateless time.

 

Aware of its own buried reality,

Remembering its forgotten self and right,

It yearned to know, to aspire, to enjoy, to live.

 

Life heard the call and left her native light.

Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane

On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal space,

Here too the gracious great-winged Angel poured

Her splendour and her sweetness and her bliss,

Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy.

 

As comes a goddess to a mortal's breast

And fills his days with her celestial clasp,

She stooped to make her home in transient shapes;

In Matter's womb she cast the Immortal's fire,

In the unfeeling Vast woke thought and hope,

Smote with her charm and beauty flesh and nerve

And forced delight on earth's insensible frame.

 

Alive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers

Earth's great brown body smiled towards the skies,

Azure replied to azure in the sea's laugh;

New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths,

Life's glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts,

Man dared and thought and met with his soul the world.

 

But while the magic breath was on its way,

Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,

A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.

 

The secret Will that robes itself with Night

And offers to spirit the ordeal of the flesh,

Imposed a mystic mask of death and pain.

 

Interned now in the slow and suffering years

Sojourns the winged and wonderful wayfarer

And can no more recall her happier state,

But must obey the inert Inconscient's law,

Insensible foundation of a world

In which blind limits are on beauty laid

And sorrow and joy as struggling comrades live.

 

A dim and dreadful muteness fell on her:

Abolished was her subtle mighty spirit

And slain her boon of child-god happiness,

And all her glory into littleness turned

And all her sweetness into a maimed desire.

 

To feed death with her works is here life's doom.

 

So veiled was her immortality that she seemed,

Inflicting consciousness on unconscious things,

An episode in an eternal death,

A myth of being that must for ever cease.

Such was the evil mystery of her change.

 

 

[3] Savitri, pp. 129-31