It is interesting to note how Sri Aurobindo looks at caturvarņa from the point of view of the Vaishnava experience. It is as follows: Vishnu as the Sustainer of the Creation has four forms: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha. Mahavira is the Brahmin possessing Knowledge and Light and Awareness; Balarama embodies Kshatriya quality of Force and Dynamism; Pradyumna the Vaishya is one who expresses the quality of Love and Beauty; Aniruddha is Shudra with competent service, and with the quality of organisation and execution in details; it was he who had prompted Brahma to do the Sarvahuta Yajna when Brahma had remained inactive. If this is a spirituality reality and not a mythology, if such is the origin of the four qualities, then how can these be disputed anywhere or at any time? In fact, their truth is present in all the four, in varying degrees in all the individuals and in all societies or functioning groups, including the corporate organisations.

 
Vivekananda brings out the yogic aspect of the caturvarņa in another beautiful manner, in a forceful manner indeed. When he speaks of Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Karma Yoga he is also suggesting the methods available for the Divine’s realisation for the corresponding type or quality or cast of the soul present in this manifestation. That is the marvellous truth of caturvarņa, founded in the Sacrifice of the Purusha. These four are the Yogas for the four types of the soul, the fourfold soul-qualities, swabhava, Jnana for the Brahmin, Raja for the Kshatriya, Bhakti for the Vaishya, and Karma for the Shudra. Each one of them being process a for the realization of the self, there is nothing inferior or superior of one over the other.

The Vedic Purusha Sukta thus becomes very meaningful because of the fundamentals it provides to us in its suggestive-intuitive but spiritually loaded language in the context of the collective working. The appearance of the four aspects is only the beginning in the process of cosmic manifestation, and only when these four have founded their harmony and freedom can other aspects, the higher powers descend into it. At a deeper level, it is the impregnation of the material existence that is spoken of by it. God seems to become greater by the sacrifice, by relinquishment without ceding anything, by the fall to initiate from timelessness the works of Time. 

The Mother explains the aspect of Sacrifice of the Purusha as follows: “The Divine has sacrificed Himself in Matter to awaken consciousness in Matter, which had become inconscient. And it is this sacrifice, this giving of the Divine in Matter, that is to say, His dispersion in Matter, which justifies the sacrifice of Matter to the Divine and makes it obligatory; for it is one and the same reciprocal movement. It is because the Divine has given Himself in Matter and scattered Himself everywhere in Matter to awaken it to the divine consciousness, that Matter is automatically under the obligation to give itself to the Divine. It is a mutual and reciprocal sacrifice. And this is the great secret of the Gita: the affirmation of the divine Presence in the very heart of Matter. And that is why, Matter must sacrifice itself to the Divine, automatically, even unconsciously—whether one wants it or not, this is what happens.”  

The Sacrifice of the Purusha is a Vedic image. It is the Being who is projecting himself in the Cosmic and Individual play of manifestation. What is understood in it is that he is doing it by the power of his own Purushahood, Consciousness-Force inherently present in the Truth-Existence, in the uncleavable oneness of the Presence-and-Power the Presence acting because of his self-potency, of the full executive Power resting in him, by resort to his own nature, prakŗti.m svām, as the Gita would say. 

Sri Aurobindo views this Holocaust of the Divine Soul not in terms of the Being but in terms of the Consciousness-Force, the creation of the worlds and beings being the task of the Divine Shakti, the responsible executrix She, the Mother of all that is here and that shall be here, in this universe and other universes. 

Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice

Has made her soul the body of our state;

Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness

Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove

The many-patterned ground of all we are. 

He says, “…this is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” She has left her royalty, her aishwarya, her vaibhava, her glory, majesty, and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. The higher or transcendental Nature, Para Prakriti operating in the field of unyielding Ignorance, Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force in the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force. 

About the “holocaust of Prakriti”, Sri Aurobindo mentions both the impersonal and personal aspects of the Sacrifice: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda.” 

The three poises of the Consciousness-Force, of Creatrix, the Divine Mother are: the Transcendental as the original supreme Shakti standing above the worlds and linking the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme; the Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti creating all these beings and these worlds, containing and entering, supporting and conducting all these million processes and forces; the Individual, she embodying the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, making them living and near to us and mediating between human personality and the divine Nature. It is all her work, extension and expansion of her dynamism. The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted to her by the Supreme. Each of the worlds is one play of the Mahashakti, her cid-vilāsa. At the summit of this manifestation there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. Nearer to us are the worlds of the supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. But here are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from her source, of which the earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too is upheld by the Universal Mother, guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti. This is what we have in Sri Aurobindo’s little Masterpiece The Mother. 

The Mother’s powers and personalities here are for a cosmic work. Sri Aurobindo described four of them in his letter to Kapali Shastri which was included afterwards in that little Masterpiece. These four powers in the cosmic working are: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati, they respectively having the qualities of Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, and Perfection. These four powers of the Mother are the fourfold Soul’s forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things. It is because of them that the present cosmic order is functioning. 

The equivalence of the terms Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection of The Mother and Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra of the Purusha Sukta is striking. In fact, both are the same: the Vedic phraseology based on the Purusha-principle as the Creator and the other viewing it as cid-vilāsa, the presentation of Consciousness-Force as the Executive She—both are one and the same. If the work of the highest Consciousness-Force, the Divine Mother, the supreme Shakti is the work of manifestation, then that manifestation in the universe is through her four great timeless powers as four aspects of the Shakti or the Mother, Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati. The Shakti formulation given to us by Sri Aurobindo is practically absent in the Veda; but that does not mean that it does not recognise the aspect of manifestation through the creative power of the Being or Purusha. Essentially, both are describing the same reality. At a deeper level, the Will of the Purusha is put into action by the Prakriti: he wills; she executes, his is samkalpa and hers the kārya—that is the formula describing the entire design or system of operation. “His soul, silent, supports the world and her,” and “She through his witness sight and motion of might unrolls the material of her cosmic act.” Thus Omnipotence and Omnipresence go together in this manifestation.

We may therefore with some justification use both the Purusha and Prakriti formulations interchangeably. Out of the Holocaust of Prakriti got established the Four Powers: Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati. Out of the Sacrifice of the Purusha arose the Four Qualities: Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra. In the Sarvahuta Yajna the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas willed their appearance, brought about from the body of the sacrificed Purusha this cosmic creation. If the Holocaust of the Prakriti is also the result of a similarly willed action, then the extent and the scope of work of the Four Powers are then necessarily governed by that will. No doubt, they are great Presences, and that the “human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to support their mighty action.” But there are also “other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down.” Sarvahuta Yajna is not adequate to bring them down in the cosmic functioning. The will of the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas falls short of it.  

What does that mean? Let us put it in the manner of the following question: Is the Sacrifice of the Purusha a Divine Will that is constantly streaming into the Avidya and driving the evolutionary process? Or is the sacrifice the “beginning”, an Involution and the expectation of a “Return”, or an entry by miracle but not a continuing entry? Firstly, the Sacrifice of the Purusha is not happening directly as a result of the Divine Will; it was willed by the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas. Therefore the aspect of constant streaming of the Divine Will must be seen in the context of the evolutionary progress that has so far been made and is not always automatic, it cannot be taken for granted; there has to be the invocation from below and there has to be the needed spiritual support, ādhāra, for the action to take place here. It is quite important to recognise the fact that invocation for the divine descent or the sacrifice is not just a one-time affair, that things will keep on happening afterwards. Evolution or Divine Manifestation upon Earth is not a linear process, a Newtonian-Cartesian formulation, a mechanical chain of events; there are strands cutting into strands or woven into strands, and there are wheels within wheels making it a multi-parametric business, with known and unknown factors interlocked into it. The basic line, its fundamental raison d’étre is understandable and recognisable; it is also enviable and attractive, but the details remain complex and uncertain. Call it Yoga, call it Tapasya, call it Yajna, there has to be a call from below, an ardent aspiration, invocation, and then only can the answering Grace descend. The Four Powers appeared in response to a call. 

“There are,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth spirit.” But these Four Powers—Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection or Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati— were brought down, if we go by the Purusha Sukta description, by the Gods, the Rishis, and the Sadhyas, they performing the Sarvahuta Yajna and making their appearance here possible. But this Yajna, as we have seen, seems to prove inadequate to bring down other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, Personalities whose presence is indispensable if evolution has to step from Ignorance into Knowledge. In Sri Aurobindo we have the following: “There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation,—most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe...” But then he adds, importantly: “Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible.”  

If there are “Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation,” the question is: What is that Yajna that can bring down those indispensable Presences, particularly that Personality of Ecstasy and Ananda? and who is going to do that Yajna? That leads to another subsidiary issue: Are we ready to receive her? Indeed, only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom can she come down. Our collective life here at the moment does not meet that demand and therefore the work which we have to do is to establish the life which is based on Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection. They are there in the cosmic field, and they are working also constantly; but they have to become a part of our being, individual and collective, they have to enter in our body and life and mind and soul and the spirit. This is the aspect that must be addressed to by an enlightened social scientist, one who has to be a seer himself. The fact of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings, is greatly dependent upon it. 

But long before that Personality of Ecstasy and Ananda can come, someone else has to come here first. The ground for her coming has to be prepared. The dark foreboding mind of Night standing across the path of the divine Event has to be transformed, made receptive to the descending Light and Power, the obstacle on the evolutionary course removed, the massive golden door shutting this earth from the Divine smashed with a golden hammer. The divine Shakti must incarnate herself here. Will she come of her own? As a matter of concern for this creation will she come of her own.

An answer to this question is available to us in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo’s epic based on the ancient tale of Savitri given in the Mahabharata. In the story, Aswapati performs the Savitri-Yajna for long and difficult eighteen years and, in response to it, receives a boon from the Goddess Savitri. She tells him that soon a radiant daughter, kanyā tejasvinī, will be born to him, she who will bring fulfilment by winning a victory over Yama, the stiff God of Death. Aswapati was assured that one shall descend, descend bearing Wisdom in her voiceless bosom, and that she shall possess strength of a conqueror’s sword; she shall come with Jnana and Shakti. She was born and, in honour of the Boon-giver Goddess, was named Savitri. 

Connected with “one shall descend”, we have in Savitri the following: “A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth” and

 
Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss,

A greatness from our other countries came.

 
Aswapati carried the “world’s desire” to the Divine Mother and, in answer to that earth’s yearning, Savitri came from our other countries. But when did she come? “Savitri is represented in the poem,” writes Sri Aurobindo in a letter, “as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality’.” It was the Yoga-Yajna of Aswapati that brought her down as an incarnation. She accepted mortal birth. She accepted “to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death.”  That was the New Yajna performed by him.

If the Sarvahuta Yajna of the Purusha Sukta, performed by the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas, established the Four Powers of the Divine Mother here in the Cosmos, the Savitri-Yajna, performed by Aswapati, compelled the Goddess’ mortal birth on Earth. But there is a difference between the two, a difference of capital importance. The Four Powers are basically typal; Savitri’s is an incarnation, a mortal birth, she passing through the portals of the birth that is a death. She is present here in the evolutionary process all the while, she executing the Will of the Supreme in Evolution. Indeed she does the Yoga of Surrender to the Supreme and in his Will identifies her will to shape the destiny of the world. Only the incarnation that took place in the far past times can do it and not other powers and personalities or embodiments of the Divine Mother, the Consciousness-Force of the Divine, who have another role to play in the Cosmos. Savitri’s surrender to the Supreme is the surety of the success in reaching the set goal. That is the perfection, of total Surrender to the Supreme, which she alone can possess, which the other powers and personalities or embodiments are incapable of possessing. That is the “greatness” Savitri, she who was “sent forth of old beneath the stars” of the dark Night. 

The phrase “portals of the birth that is a death” is a beautiful description of this world of ours, of our mortal lot, our mortal state, of the conditions in which we make progress through them both together; in just a few words we have here an accurate picture of this mortal world, mŗtyuloka. Its poetic enchantment is such that the fright, the obscurity and darkness and falsehood in which we live become their opposites. What we have in this mortal world is “the birth that is a death”. From the prayers of the Mother, we might get some idea as how that “greatness” suffered while accepting such a birth. They are revelations indeed of her travail. Thus: 

My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: “Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world; life without Thee is a death, a perpetual hell; doubt has usurped the place of Hope and revolt has pushed out Submission; Faith is spent, Gratitude is not born; blind passions and murderous instincts and a guilty weakness have covered and stifled Thy sweet law of love. Lord, wilt Thou permit Thy enemies to prevail, falsehood and ugliness and suffering to triumph? Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.” Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee; and, from the depths of the abyss, I beheld Thee in Thy radiant splendour; Thou didst appear and Thou saidst to me: “Lose not courage, be firm, be confident,—I COME.”

Such intensity of anguish! Such totality of commitment to do the work the Lord gave her to do! She is prepared to bear the assaults of the adversary force, the extreme of pain and suffering. Hers is the work connected with the evolutionary soul of the earth into which she has entered, and no hardship she discounts in making it progress towards the Divine. It is for that purpose she passes through the portals of the life that is a death. Other powers of the Divine Mother don’t do that; nor perhaps do they experience the same distress and agony. They have, no doubt, left their luminous realms of Truth and Light and Joy and Power and accepted their stations in the field of Ignorance; but they do not pass through the portals of the life that is a death, they are essentially non-evolutionary in character. There are goddesses and goddesses, but Savitri is someone else, with a psychic soul.  

What were the gifts received as a result of doing the Sarvahuta Yajna, the Offering of the All, the Yajna of the Purusha Sukta? Out of the sacrifice emerged, among many splendid things, Indra and Vayu and Agni. But who are they, these Gods? These are the Gods connected with Mind and Life and Matter, the mental, the vital, and the physical worlds, the Divine Mind, the Lord of Life, and the Seer-Will in Matter. In The Secret of the Veda Sri Aurobindo writes: “The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are born above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the divine Law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic and human powers of the Divine.” They are here in the cosmos, and they are here amidst us, helping us on the journey towards Truth-Light and Strength and Beauty and Excellence in work, founded in the Four Powers brought down by the Yajna of the Purusha Sukta. Their birth is the necessary foundation of the greater life; but the greater birth that is yet to come, the birth of the life divine, is in Aswapati’s Yoga-Yajna invoking the descent of the divine Savitri. She has incarnated and it is she who is executing in this creation the Will of the Supreme, executing it to give birth to that new world.