Goddess Savitri has accepted the
mortal birth. This is in response to the ardent prayer of Aswapati the Yogi, at
his insistence. If there is a divine meaning and content in this terrestrial
scheme, then it is imperative for the divine power to act in it directly and
remove the obstacles that stand in the way. That is his general line of
argument. With his spiritually prepared ground, she sees a certain readiness
and comes down to conquer Death. Her task is thus well cut out,—to deal with him,
the great universal Shadow that has cast over this mortal world its long destroying
spell. Only when it is dissolved can Ignorance disappear and the reign of
Knowledge begin.
But in that whole action of the
incarnate Savitri there is going to be something more than that, something
exceptional, absolutely marvellous. Conquest of Death is only an operational aspect
towards the luminously growing divine manifestation. There has to be the life
divine here on the earth. that is the real work.
So in response to Aswapati’s prayer
the Goddess comes here as his radiant daughter, comes as Savitri the Warrior.
The Yogi-Father willed her birth and she obliged him.
Savitri comes as Aswapati’s
daughter who has prepared the most indispensable occult-spiritual foundation,
the needed support or ādhāra for her
work. Soon she grows into full maidenhood with all the life’s preparation to
march forward, with all the elements matured up for the work. But no life’s
partner dares to approach her to claim her hand in marriage, too imperial and resplendent
as she was. To her father it is a matter of deep concern.
But her father gets directive in
his silent meditative contemplation and advises his daughter to set out in
search of one whom she could espouse in the fulfilment and dignity of her
missioned work. She meets Satyavan in the far distant land, in the Shalwa
forests. They at once recognize each other, their ancient relationship, their
identity now awakened by the power of love, their soul-deep oneness uncut by
the divisive Time, and they decide to be together.
Savitri is on her way back to her
gather’s palace to disclose the happy thing that just happened to her. But even
before she reaches the palace, the heavenly sage Narad is already present there
well in time before her arrival. There is gladness in his heart and therefore
rushes to give to Savitri’s resolve the heavenly brilliance and inevitability.
In fact, apart from delivering the Word of Fate, he has a mission to perform.
He knows that Savitri has discovered love in the forest-land of the world, discovered
in the ways of the world, in all their complexity and uncertainty. But it is
absolutely necessary that she should also discover death, death in the crudity
and rawness, in the primitiveness of life’s circumstance, know stiff death
obstructing the path of immortal love.
Things have to happen in bright
swiftness of the evolutionary context, and therefore Narad hastens to the
palace well before the arrival of Savitri the Bride; he hastens, chanting on
the way from
Savitri has already made up her
firm-willed decision, to marry Satyavan whatever might be the odds, or
arguments against it. She was aware that, here was one who was not immediately
in reckoning of the social standing, his parents equal in any manner with the
status of the kind of a kingly father and a high-born Princess, that she should
go and live in a lonely world-forsaken forest, in a lonesome hermitage, devoid
of royal glory and pomp. But as-yet unknown to her there was something more
than that, much direr in consequence. The reason for the visit of Narad to
Aswapati had a deeper occult connotation. He is to tell him, in the presence of
Savitri, that one year after the marriage Satyavan is doomed to die. He also
maintained that this was destined to be so, that it could be altered neither by
man nor by the high gods.
Savitri remains steadfast in her determination.
She also asserts that if it was fated to be so, she knew how exactly to meet that
grim fate and change it. The seal of the resolve has been put and Fate is
helpless to erase it; so too Death and Time. She goes a step farther, in fact
infinitely farther, and reveals that nothing can affect her love, love that
outlasts the world, even as all the cruel opposing contingencies disappear in
it. She has this dŗşti, this vision
and knowledge of the future, this certitude in its depth because of the newly
awakened love in her; it is the power of love which makes her will yet firmer
and stronger. Love gave her sight and will.
But as to how she is going meet that
eventuality, that moment of Satyavan’s death—of that she has no idea, no
inkling. Nonetheless, Narad has cast the mysterious seed, has initiated her on
the Path of Yoga by which she would get power to face the age-old challenge of
inexorable Death, that in that rendezvous with Death she would win victory on
earth for the Divine. It is the sovereign seated high above and governing
destiny from there, her valiant transcendental Spirit who will thence instruct
her at every step, take her step by a more forceful step to the goal set for
her, the splendid subjugation, nay, the transformation of Death into his divine
reality.
The fated day of Satyavan’s death
has arrived and Savitri gets ready well before the sunrise. In that auspicious
hour or Mahamuhurta she worships Durga, the Protectress of the World. Then,
taking the permission from her parents-in-law, she accompanies her husband to
the forest where he has to go for the daily work. Even as they enjoy each
other’s company in the happiness of nature, Savitri is at the same time haunted
by the foretold doom which will befall on Satyavan when arrives the marked
moment. While Satyavan is attending to his job, of cutting the branch of a
tree, he suddenly feels exhausted, and there is profuse sweating, as well as
intense pain. He comes down from the tree and puts his head in the lap of
Savitri. The noon has become dark with the presence of Yama, the God of Death.
Savitri knows that Satyavan is there no more now with her.
The occult battle begins on the Kurukshetra
of the cosmic Darkness. Weapons are hurled one blunting the other. The Astra of
the Asura is repelled by the Astra of the all-winning God, Brahmastra, the
Weapon of the Eternal; Savitri had come with a “Conqueror’s Sword” and nothing
could cleave it or destroy it, no fire burn it, the water wet it or wind dry
it. The knowledge-glow and the warrior-strength have gone into its making and,
finally, Death stands defeated against its decisive strike.
Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri does not end with this victory
of the divine Goddess who has come here in a human form. And this is something
absolutely marvellous, stunning, awe-inspiring, yogically exceptional. There is
the most authentic and fulfilling sequel to it, to the comprehensive, the far-reaching
epic given to us by him the Uttar-Kanda, the Book of Benediction in the glory
and triumph of the warrior spirit in this world of mortality. Savitri had asked
for the life divine for men and earth, for the soul of this evolutionary
creation, and she is assured that it shall be so, that the earthly life shall
become the life divine.
The uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri comes out in the arrival of
What do they represent,
But first let us read the text.
Transformed Death has spoken the Word and
The measure of that subtle music
ceased.
Down with a hurried swimming
floating lapse
Through unseen worlds and
bottomless spaces forced
Sank like a star the soul of
Savitri.
Amidst a laughter of unearthly
lyres
She heard around her nameless
voices cry
Triumphing, an innumerable sound.
A choir of laughing winds to meet
her came.
She bore the burden of infinity
And felt the stir of all ethereal
space.
Pursuing her in her fall,
implacably sweet,
A face was over her which seemed a
youth's,
Symbol of all the beauty eyes see
not,
Crowned as with peacock plumes of
gorgeous hue
Framing a sapphire, whose
heart-disturbing smile
Insatiably attracted to delight,
Voluptuous to the embraces of her
soul.
Changed in its shape, yet
rapturously the same,
It grew a woman's dark and
beautiful
Like a mooned night with drifting
star-gemmed clouds,
A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
Turbulent in will and terrible in
love.
Eyes in which Nature's blind
ecstatic life
Sprang from some spirit's
passionate content,
Missioned her to the whirling dance
of earth.
Amidst the headlong rapture of her
fall
Held like a bird in a child's
satisfied hands,
In an enamoured grasp her spirit
strove
Admitting no release till Time
should end,
And, as the fruit of the mysterious
joy,
She kept within her strong
embosoming soul
Like a flower hidden in the heart
of spring
The soul of Satyavan drawn down by
her
Inextricably in that mighty lapse.
Invisible heavens in a thronging
flight
Soared past her as she fell. Then
all the blind
And near attraction of the earth
compelled
Fearful rapidities of downward
bliss.
Lost in the giddy proneness of that
speed,
Whirled, sinking, overcome she
disappeared
Like a leaf spinning from the tree
of heaven,
In broad unconsciousness as in a
pool;
A hospitable softness drew her in
Into a wonder of miraculous depths,
Above her closed a darkness of
great wings
And she was buried in a mother's
breast.
Then from a timeless plane that
watches Time,
A Spirit gazed out upon destiny,
In its endless moment saw the ages
pass.
All still was in a silence of the
gods.
The prophet moment covered
limitless Space
And cast into the heart of hurrying
Time
A diamond light of the Eternal's
peace,
A crimson seed of God's felicity;
A glance from the gaze fell of
undying Love.
A wonderful face looked out with
deathless eyes;
A hand was seen drawing the golden
bars
That guard the imperishable
secrecies.
A key turned in a mystic lock of
Time.
But where the silence of the gods
had passed,
A greater harmony from the
stillness born
Surprised with joy and sweetness
yearning hearts,
An ecstasy and a laughter and a
cry.
A power leaned down, a happiness
found its home.
Over wide earth brooded the
infinite bliss.
(Savitri, pp. 711-12)
Sri Aurobindo says: the first word of his Yoga is surrender; the last
word is also surrender. In between these two happy surrenders it is its power
that grows when is kindled the yajna to make our will transcendentally genuine.
While we still live under the sway of the lower Nature, as long as we are in
it, personal effort is indispensable. In that condition spiritual pursuit is
our concern and nobody else is going to do it for us. But as we become
conscious in our surrender, in our tyaga, in samarpana to the divine Shakti, it
is she who herself leads us to freedom and perfection of the higher Nature. In
the degree it becomes wholesome and integral, our progress also gains to that
extent an assuring speed of the power who then governs all our activities. In
the deepening truth of this divine samarpana we find ourselves actually engaged
in Integral Tapasya in the ways of the Divine Shakti. In it the whole being
lives only to know and serve the Divine. Lastly, it becomes “What Thou Willest,
What Thou Willest.” Not what we think and see for ourselves, but what is
thought and seen for us is all that matters. When there is no difference
between our will and the Will of the Divine Shakti, then it is she who takes
full charge of our life. Then indeed we acquire our genuine free will. That certainly
is the object of the Integral Yoga of the Future. In it our masculine tapas-will
joined with the feminine tyaga-shakti approaches the Spirit’s Tapas-will served
in oneness by his inalienable Tyaga-shakti. In it can then be the truest
expression of Krishna-Kali in us. When this is unfalteringly achieved, then the
Being of Delight, the Anandamaya Purusha with his Consciousness-Force or Shakti
working for his joy comes down wearing a crown of peacock plumes to play on his
flute the Song of New Creation.
This song of new creation is born in the death
of Death, in his transformation into the Being of Truth, he becoming the
unveiled Sat-Purusha. Then begins the real re-creation of the Lord and his
Shakti, the play and work of
During the Record-period 1912-20 we see
the Krishna-Kali aspect occurring repeatedly as the most fundamental experience
of Sri Aurobindo in the context of the Spirit’s dynamism in life. In his noting
dated 1 January 1915 he writes: “Kali is now everywhere revealed in the bhāva
of the madhur dāsī dominated by
Pursuing her in her fall implacably sweet
A face was over her which seemed a youth’s
Crowned as with peacock plumes of gorgeous hue
Framing a sapphire, whose heart-disturbing
smile
Insatiably attracted to delight.
Often it changed, though rapturously the same,
And seemed a woman’s dark and beautiful,
Turbulent in will and terrible in love,
A shadowy glory and a stormy depth,
Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed
clouds.
This tapas-siddhi of bringing down
“The supramental change is a thing decreed and
inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in
1928. The supramental change was decreed by him and he and the Mother had set
themselves to work out its inevitability. But to realize it in us, there is
needed the call and we have to be ready to receive what they are constantly
showering on us. Tapahprabhava and Devaprasada, as the ancient Upanishadic
scripture says, together can bring fulfilment to our longings, to our soul’s
aspiration. To be engaged in that spiritual growth, to live and work and enjoy
divinely in the Divine is the Integral Yoga of the Future.
RY Deshpande