I can’t forget the time I outbid Sotheby’s for a collection of Cosway bindings signed by CB Currie, and the day I acquired a magnificent jewelled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe of Wordsworth poems, adorned with l40 precious stones. What I’ve enjoyed most is putting whole libraries together. It’s been a privilege to be surrounded by such fine books, and to commune with them on a daily basis. I’ve been lucky, but also feel a sense of destiny that I was meant to do this.

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Here is an example from Savitri about the efficacy of Yajna. It pertains to the life-and-death dialogue between incarnate Savitri and the immortal Death. Death has snatched the soul of Satyavan and is on the way to his abode in dark and deep South. Savitri is following him and demanding back the soul to do the divine work upon the earth, something which she cannot do without it. But Death is unyielding and the occult clash of force against force goes on interminably. Savitri is at the last turn which can be negotiated only when the might of the Divine becomes operative in her.

She was standing alone on a dangerous brink of the world’s doom and hers, tells us Narad who has vision of all the three parts of time, past-present-future, trīkāladŗiśtī. She, carrying the world’s future with her, must conquer or fail. On a last desperate verge, close to extinction’s edge, alone with Death, she must fight. In that fight all is lost or all is won for Man. In that tremendous silence, in that dire ultimate hour in which the entire fate of the world was hanging, alone she must conquer or alone she must suffer defeat. The human Divine is poised for a mighty Divine leap.

Physical transformation is victory and crown of the earthly evolution coming in the wake of a bitter fight against the archetypal Force of Darkness. Savitri has to prepare herself for it.

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