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.

[Savitri met Satyavan in the Shalwa forests and they have decided to be together. Even while she is now on her way back to the palace of her father, Narad the heavenly sage is already there on a significant visit to him. He leaves his home in Paradise and rushes earthward to make known, well in time, an important factor related to the marriage of the two young eager souls. He is carrying the Word of Fate which he must deliver to Savitri, convey in order to steel her will to be the life-partner of Satyavan, whatever might be the contingencies. He is to announce in the palace that, one year after their marriage, Satyavan has to die, he is bound, is destined to die. There is a profound content in its inevitability, it carrying the seeds of a new manifestation that is about to begin. In Satyavan’s death is Savitri’s grand opportunity to do her heaven-missioned task, of the Conquest of Death. Death has been standing all along across the path of the divine Event, of the new manifestation, the supramental manifestation, and he must be removed from it, he must be transformed, so that he becomes the giver of all auspicious boons to the soul of man. Narad is aware of it, the mission, and so hastens to make the resolve of human Savitri firm, in the process initiating her on the Path of Yoga. It is in that awareness he sings the Song of Evolution while he is travelling from Paradise to Earth. Not only will there be a new creation, the transfiguration and the ecstasy; there will also be a wonderful sequel to it. The Four Asuras who had separated themselves from the divine Origin will be now returning to that divine Origin, returning in the gladness of having completed the task for which they had cut themselves off from It. The entire description of the process in Savitri is just exceptional, poetry coming on blue-bright and mystic-lyrical wings of inspiration, a high watermark of what the Word of the Spirit can give to us, to mortality the gifts of truth and joy and awareness in the immensity of its will and thought and feeling and love and beauty and strength; Narad-like, it rushes in the swiftness of the coming age, rushes in the growing adorability of the divine Name itself.]

He beheld the cosmic Being at his task,

His eyes measured the spaces, gauged the depths,

His inner gaze the movements of the soul,

He saw the eternal labour of the Gods,

And looked upon the life of beasts and men.

 

A change now fell upon the singer's mood,

A rapture and a pathos moved his voice;

He sang no more of light that never wanes,

And oneness and pure everlasting bliss,

He sang no more the deathless heart of love,

His chant was a hymn of Ignorance and Fate.

 

He sang the name of Vishnu and the birth

And joy and passion of the mystic world,

And how the stars were made and life began

And the mute regions stirred with the throb of a soul.

 

He sang the Inconscient and its secret self,

Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does,

All shaping without will or thought or sense,

Its blind unerring occult mystery,

And darkness yearning towards the eternal Light,

And Love that broods within the dim abyss

And waits the answer of the human heart,

And death that climbs to immortality.

 

He sang of the Truth that cries from Night's blind deeps,

And the Mother Wisdom hid in Nature's breast

And the Idea that through her dumbness works

And the miracle of her transforming hands,

Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun

And mind subliminal in mindless life,

And the consciousness that wakes in beasts and men.

 

He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born,

Of the Godhead throwing off at last its veil,

Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,

Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,

Heart sensing heart, thought looking straight at thought,

And the delight when every barrier falls,

And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.

 

And as he sang the demons wept with joy

Foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task

And the defeat for which they hoped in vain,

And glad release from their self-chosen doom

And return into the One from whom they came.

 

 

[5] Savitri, pp. 416-17