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.

[Death is unyielding and adamant—he is not going to give back the soul of Satyavan to Savitri. One by one he is dismissing the arguments of Savitri, that the eternal Law is all-abiding and it cannot be violated by anyone howsoever powerful he or she might be. According to him Truth is all right, but here it is only a high starry name, a splendid name and nothing more; indeed, he ridicules and maintains that no magic Truth can bring the dead to life. Therefore what Savitri is asking, or thinking, is all contrary to the nature of things operating in the world, in this mortal world, mŗtyuloka; she is cherishing a futile, an infructuous hope. She better therefore leave the dead and resign herself to live without him. But this assertion of Death, though perfectly valid at the moment, is striking at the foundation of this creation itself. But Savitri is not going to buy his argument, of the ineffectuality of her attempt, of things remaining unchanged. She was cognizing that Death was misjudging an important aspect, of a higher Power giving a new course to the whole process. He wanted Savitri to tell him, to reveal to him, if eternal Truth could at all dwell in her mortal heart; if she could draw the outline of her face, he would worship her. He wanted her to show him the body of the living Truth. He thought that it was impossible for her to do it, and therefore was safe in his position. But little did he realize who she was. No sooner than he made that proposal, Savitri stood in front of him, visible, in her almighty Goddess self. She explains to him in detail the logic of this creation, how the Truth supreme, vast and impersonal, is faultlessly shapes things here. The purpose and the process of the entire working is indicated by her, the Infinite’s intention behind the whole undertaking, its raison d’être. But it is not that Death and Savitri are engaged in a dry winding metaphysical debate; nor is it mere logomachy, word-quarrel for the sake of its own pleasure. Actually, each time they utter something, a corresponding force is released into the cosmic functioning, and it is a clash of force against a force. Savitri’s last act, the winning act, is the release of the all-conquering force that knocks off the occult base of the dark Inconscience that embodied itself in the form of fearsome Death. In it the world’s sorrowing darkness consented to Heaven-light. That is the victory Savitri has won, making Death yield to her demand of clearing the way for the march of the evolutionary soul of the earth.]

All contraries are aspects of God's face.

 

The Many are the innumerable One,

The One carries the multitude in his breast;

He is the Impersonal, inscrutable, sole,

He is the one infinite Person seeing his world;

The Silence bears the Eternal's great dumb seal,

His light inspires the eternal Word;

He is the Immobile's deep and deathless hush,

Its white and signless blank negating calm,

Yet stands the creator Self, the almighty Lord

And watches his will done by the forms of gods

And the desire that goads half-conscious man

And the reluctant and unseeing Night.

 

These wide divine extremes, these inverse powers

Are the right and left side of the body of God;

Existence balanced twixt two mighty arms

Confronts the mind with unsolved abysms of Thought.

 

Darkness below, a fathomless Light above,

In Light are joined, but sundered by severing Mind

Stand face to face, opposite, inseparable,

Two contraries needed for his great World-task,

Two poles whose currents wake the immense World-Force.

 

In the stupendous secrecy of his Self,

Above the world brooding with equal wings,

He is both in one beginningless, without end:

Transcending both, he enters the Absolute.

 

His being is a mystery beyond mind,

His ways bewilder mortal ignorance;

The finite in its little sections parked,

Amazed, credits not God's audacity

Who dares to be the unimagined All

And see and act as might one Infinite.

 

Against human reason this is his offence;

Being known to be for ever unknowable,

To be all and yet transcend the mystic whole,

Absolute, to lodge in a relative world of Time,

Eternal and all-knowing, to suffer birth,

Omnipotent, to sport with Chance and Fate,

Spirit, yet to be Matter and the Void,

Illimitable, beyond form or name,

To dwell within a body, one and supreme

To be animal and human and divine:

A still deep sea, he laughs in rolling waves:

Universal, he is all,—transcendent, none.

 

To man's righteousness this is his cosmic crime,

Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell

Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world

And evil to reign in this enormous scene.

 

An aimless labour with but scanty sense,

All opposition seems and strife and chance

To eyes that see a part and miss the whole;

The surface men scan, the depths refuse their search:

A hybrid mystery challenges the view,

Or a discouraging sordid miracle.

 

Yet in the exact Inconscient's stark conceit,

In the casual error of the world's ignorance

A plan, a hidden Intelligence is glimpsed.

There is a purpose in each stumble and fall;

Nature's most careless lolling is a pose

Preparing some forward step, some deep result.

 

Ingenious notes plugged into a motived score,

These million discords dot the harmonious theme

Of the evolution's huge orchestral dance.

 

A Truth supreme has forced the world to be;

It has wrapped itself in Matter as in a shroud,

A shroud of Death, a shroud of Ignorance.

 

It compelled the suns to burn through silent Space,

Flame-signs of its uncomprehended Thought

In a wide brooding ether's formless muse:

It made of Knowledge a veiled and struggling light,

Of Being a substance nescient, dense and dumb,

Of Bliss the beauty of an insentient world.

 

In finite things the conscious Infinite dwells:

Involved it sleeps in Matter's helpless trance,

It rules the world from its sleeping senseless Void;

Dreaming it throws out mind and heart and soul

To labour crippled, bound, on the hard earth;

A broken whole it works through scattered points;

Its gleaming shards are Wisdom's diamond thoughts,

Its shadowy reflex our ignorance.

 

It starts from the mute mass in countless jets,

It fashions a being out of brain and nerve,

A sentient creature from its pleasures and pangs.

 

A pack of feelings obscure, a dot of sense

Survives awhile answering the shocks of life,

Then crushed or, its force spent, leaves the dead form,

Leaves the huge universe in which it lived

An insignificant unconsidered guest.

 

But the soul grows concealed within its house;

It gives to the body its strength and magnificence;

It follows aims in an ignorant aimless world,

It lends significance to earth's meaningless life.

 

A demi-god animal, came thinking man.

 

He wallows in mud, yet heavenward soars in thought;

He plays and ponders, laughs and weeps and dreams,

Satisfies his little longings like the beast;

He pores upon life's book with student eyes.

 

Out of this tangle of intellect and sense,

Out of the narrow scope of finite thought

At last he wakes into spiritual mind;

A high liberty begins and luminous room:

He glimpses eternity, touches the infinite,

He meets the gods in great and sudden hours,

He feels the universe as his larger self,

Makes Space and Time his opportunity

To join the heights and depths of being in light,

In the heart's cave speaks secretly with God.

 

But these are touches and high moments lived;

Fragments of Truth supreme have lit his soul,

Reflections of the sun in waters still.

 

A few have dared the last supreme ascent

And break through borders of blinding light above,

And feel a breath around of mightier air,

Receive a vaster being's messages

And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray.

 

On summit Mind are radiant altitudes

Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,

Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,

Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.

 

There man can visit but there he cannot live.

A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;

Its smallest parts are here philosophies

Challenging with their detailed immensity,

Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things.

 

But higher still can climb the ascending light;

There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,

Oceans of an immortal luminousness,

Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,

There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;

A burning head of vision leads the mind,

Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;

The heart glows, an illuminate and seer,

And sense is kindled into identity.

 

A highest flight climbs to a deepest view:

In a wide opening of its native sky

Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack

Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,

Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,

Rummages the sky-recesses of the brain,

Lights up the occult chambers of the heart;

Its spear-point ictus of discovery

Pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form,

Strips bare the secret soul of all that is.

 

Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes;

The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,

Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

And tears away the veil from God and life.

 

Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse,

The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

In its house of infinite possibility;

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single book:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing Eternity from the toil of Time.

 

In her glorious kingdom of eternal light

All-ruler, ruled by none, the Truth supreme,

Omnipotent, omniscient and alone,

In a golden country keeps her measureless house;

In its corridor she hears the tread that comes

Out of the Unmanifest never to return

Till the Unknown is known and seen by men.

 

Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight,

Above the silence of the wordless Thought,

Formless creator of immortal forms,

Nameless, investitured with the name divine,

Transcending Time's hours, transcending Timelessness,

The Mighty Mother sits in lucent calm

And holds the eternal Child upon her knees,

Attending the day when he shall speak to Fate.

 

There is the image of our future's hope;

There is the sun for which all darkness waits,

There is the imperishable harmony;

The world's contradictions climb to her and are one:

There is the Truth of which the world's truths are shreds,

The Light of which the world's ignorance is the shade

Till Truth draws back the shade that it has cast,

The Love our hearts call down to heal all strife,

The Bliss for which the world's derelict sorrows yearn:

Thence comes the glory sometimes seen on earth,

The visits of Godhead to the human soul,

The Beauty and the dream on Nature's face.

 

There the perfection born from Eternity

Calls to it the perfection born in Time,

The truth of God surprising human life,

The image of God overtaking finite shapes.

 

There is a world of everlasting Light,

In the realms of the immortal Supermind

Truth who hides here her head in mystery,

Her riddle deemed by reason impossible

In the stark structure of material form,

Unenigmaed lives, unmasked her face and there

Is Nature and the common law of things.

 

There in a body made of spirit stuff,

The hearth-stone of the everlasting Fire,

Action translates the movements of the soul,

Thought steps infallible and absolute

And life is a continual worship's rite,

A sacrifice of rapture to the One.

 

A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense

Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form

And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light

Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,

In the truth of a moment, in the moment's soul

Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.

 

A Spirit who is no one and innumerable,

The one mystic infinite Person of his world

Multiplies his myriad personality,

On all his bodies seals his divinity's stamp

And sits in each immortal and unique.

 

The Immobile stands behind each daily act,

A background of the movement and the scene,

Upholding creation on its might and calm

And change on the Immutable's deathless poise.

 

The Timeless looks out from the travelling hours;

The Ineffable puts on a robe of speech

Where all its words are woven like magic threads

Moving with beauty, inspiring with their gleam,

And every thought takes up its destined place

Recorded in the memory of the world.

 

The Truth supreme, vast and impersonal

Fits faultlessly the hour and circumstance,

Its substance a pure gold ever the same

But shaped into vessels for the spirit's use,

Its gold becomes the wine jar and the vase.

 

All there is a supreme epiphany:

The All-Wonderful makes a marvel of each event,

The All-Beautiful is a miracle in each shape;

The All-Blissful smites with rapture the heart's throbs,

A pure celestial joy is the use of sense.

 

Each being there is a member of the Self,

A portion of the million-thoughted All,

A claimant to the timeless Unity,

The many's sweetness, the joy of difference

Edged with the intimacy of the One.

 

 

(Savitri, pp. 656-63)