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 has vanquished Death who,
transformed, has offered four times exceptional boons to her, boons for herself
and for her lover Satyavan. But she has her own great preferences to make and
excercise, specific choices for men and for the soul of the earth, it waiting
this long for the moment. Savitri is quite clear about her stipulations. She
wants our beings to be made in God’s image, she yearns for this earthly life to
become the life divine. In a humble but determined way, she sets aside what she
was offered in the freedom of the individual in oneness with the transcendental,
in the will of his countless possibilities of a life over there. But she declines.
The point is well seen and she is acclaimed by the Supreme as his Force at work
to uplift earth’s fate, that she is the revealing voice of his immortal Word. Therefore
to do that work, she shall be born in man’s dubious hours in forms that hide
the soul’s divinity. In the sequel of time there shall glow, like a horned
moon, the spirit’s crescent splendour on mind. Not only that. One day God’s
Beyond shall reveal its hidden face. But now mind is all and there has to be
the growth beyond it, it being not the summit of things. It is actually the
Divine’s soul of adventure who is climbing from utter Inconscience to the vasts
of Supernature. That is the human potential which must develop for the higher
powers to enter into it. That is the meaning of evolution. The first state of
this superior evolution, the preparatory step, is the arrival of the human
élite with perceptions that go beyond the formulations of a rigid rationality, with
a mind swift and supple enough to receive striking intuitions from the greater
brighter worlds. When this shall be done, there will appear the Intermediate
Race linking the human to the superman.]
He is my soul that climbs from
nescient Night
Through life and mind and
supernature's Vast
To the supernal light of
Timelessness
And my eternity hid in moving Time
And my boundlessness cut by the
curve of Space.
It climbs to the greatness it has
left behind
And to the beauty and joy from
which it fell,
To the closeness and sweetness of
all things divine,
To light without bounds and life
illimitable,
Taste of the depths of the
Ineffable's bliss,
Touch of the immortal and the
infinite.
He is my soul that gropes out of
the beast
To reach humanity's heights of
lucent thought,
And the vicinity of Truth's
sublime.
He is the godhead growing in human
lives
And in the body of earth-being's
forms,
He is the soul of man climbing to
God
In Nature's surge out of earth's
ignorance.
O Savitri, thou art my spirit's
Power,
The revealing voice of my immortal
Word,
The face of Truth upon the roads of
Time
Pointing to the souls of men the
routes to God.
While the dim light from the veiled
Spirit's peak
Falls upon Matter's stark
inconscient sleep
As if a pale moonbeam on a dense
glade,
And Mind in a half-light moves amid
half-truths
And the human heart knows only
human love
And life is a stumbling and
imperfect force
And the body counts out its
precarious days,
You shall be born into man's
dubious hours
In forms that hide the soul's
divinity
And show through veils of the
earth's doubting air
My glory breaking as through clouds
a sun,
Or burning like a rare and inward
fire,
And with my nameless influence fill
men's lives.
Yet shall they look up as to peaks
of God
And feel God like a circumambient
air
And rest on God as on a motionless
base.
Yet shall there glow on mind like a
horned moon
The spirit's crescent splendour in
pale skies
And light man's life upon his
Godward road.
But more there is concealed in
God's Beyond
That shall one day reveal its
hidden face.
Now mind is all and its uncertain
ray,
Mind is the leader of the body and
life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of
the soul
Carrying the luminous wanderer in
the night
To vistas of a far uncertain dawn,
To the end of the Spirit's
fathomless desire,
To its dream of absolute truth and
utter bliss.
There are greater destinies mind
cannot surmise,
Fixed on the summit of the evolving
Path
The Traveller now treads in the
Ignorance,
Unaware of his next step, not
knowing his goal.
Mind is not all his tireless climb
can reach,
There is a fire on the apex of the
worlds,
There is a house of the Eternal's Light,
There is an infinite truth, an
absolute power.
The spirit's mightiness shall cast
off its mask;
Its greatness shall be felt shaping
the world's course.
It shall be seen in its own
veilless beams,
A star rising from the Inconscient's
night,
A sun climbing to Supernature's
peak.
Abandoning the dubious
A few shall glimpse the miraculous
Origin
And some shall feel in you the
secret Force
And they shall turn to meet a
nameless tread,
Adventurers into a mightier Day.
Ascending out of the limiting
breadths of mind,
They shall discover the world's
huge design
And step into the Truth, the Right,
the Vast.
You shall reveal to them the hidden
eternities,
The breath of infinitudes not yet
revealed,
Some rapture of the bliss that made
the world,
Some rush of the force of God's
omnipotence,
Some beam of the omniscient
Mystery.
But when the hour of the Divine
draws near,
The Mighty Mother shall take birth
in Time
And God be born into the human clay
In forms made ready by your human
lives.
Then shall the Truth supreme be
given to men.
There is a being beyond the being
of mind,
An Immeasurable cast into many
forms,
A miracle of the multitudinous One.
There is a consciousness mind
cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its
thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre
in man,
Yet is the source of all things
thought and done,
The fount of the creation and its
works.
It is the originer of all truth
here,
The sun-orb of mind's fragmentary
rays,
Infinity's heaven that spills the
rain of God,
The Immense that calls to man to
expand the Spirit,
The wide Aim that justifies his
narrow attempts,
A channel for the little he tastes
of bliss.
Some shall be made the glory's
receptacles
And vehicles of the Eternal's
luminous power.
These are the high forerunners, the
heads of Time,
The great deliverers of earth-bound
mind,
The high transfigurers of human
clay,
The first-born of a new supernal
race.
(Savitri,
pp. 703-05)