It is in play of the transcendental speech or parā vāņī that we have the full expressive power of the supreme Logos. Like the sweet and fertilisng waters of luminous music, the soul of pure delight grows in it from richness to greater and agreeable richness, bringing to our worlds the supernal harmonies. But always there has to be the all-pervasive silence to carry these rivers of sound, of infinite distances, in their rushing speeds to lands and countries of peace and quietude. World after world is built in the Rhythm of the Word, and in the Rhythm of the Word move the sun and all the other stars. Its creative force creates and sustains everything. The Unspoken with its power of countless possibilities upholds that which it lets itself lose in bright inundations of the spoken. Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is at once such “a power of silence in the depths of God” and “the Force, the inevitable Word” by whose splendid magical strength the supremely potential becomes the excellently actual. It is the flawless fusion of sense and sound and sight, of thought and rhythm and vision ever ushering in the divine experience. It is the Mantra, the Word embodying the Truth in its substance and in its movements. In the listening quiet a miracle is wrought by its up-streaming and down-streaming incantations, its self-willed and self-assured cadences swaying and stirring the fields of sleep to divine action in the celebration of its moods of wonder. In it, to use Amal Kiran’s phrase from his Savitri, “tongues of fire break from a voiceless deep”. But to put it in Sri Aurobindo's defining words, the mantra is
…a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite.
This is precisely what we have in Savitri, this “poem of sacred
delight”. Of this parā vāņī, rhythm and sight and the reality of things
are the great revelatory attributes. If sometimes all the three come as a
trinity from the sheer plenary Truth-world, from the Vedic Home of Truth, ŗtasya
sadanam, very often it is one aspect or the other that stands out in a more
perceptibly significant manner.
Thus we have the pure mantra, majestic and holding all, lucid and undiminished
anywhere in its undisturbed sea-like tranquility and grandeur, lit by the
blazing sun from within and mooned from above by the sweet and enchanting
goddess of beauty in the wide serene sky: (Savitri, p. 314)
A burning Love from white spiritual founts
Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths;
Suffering was lost in her immortal smile.
A Life from beyond grew conqueror here of Death;
To err no more was natural to mind;
Wrong could not come where all was light and love.
The Formless and the Formed were joined in her.
Immensity was exceeded by a look,
A Face revealed the crowded Infinite.
Incarnating inexpressibly in her limbs
The boundless joy the blind world-forces seek,
Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss.
At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base.
Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;
The spirit's alchemist energy is hers;
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The magnet of our difficult ascent,
The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
The joy that beckons from the impossible,
The Might of all that never yet came down.
All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
And break the seals on the dim soul of man
And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.
All here shall be one day her sweetness's home.
All the elements of poetry are aglow in it, aglow like several suns in their gold-and-bright spiritual intensity and force, yet sweet and felicitous in their psychic ardour and association, aglow in a neo-Vedic soul-body of the mantra. At times gentle and soft overtones pushing a suggestive sense to culmination of the reality’s substance, or else a marvellous iconopoeia carrying with it both logopoeia and melopoeia, as in the line “Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss”, or often enough revealing the occultly packed mystery of the Night in a lustrous creative play, we have here a ruby-and-topaz fire pouring the raptures of luminous gods on the expectant heart of terrestrial creatures and things. To bring happiness and perfection to this transient and sorrowful material world does, by the power of that invocation, a Presence come out of the utter Unknowable. The prayer—like Agni himself sweet of joy and one who has with him the Truth—is a persuasive adoration of that benign All-Beautiful to bestow on the suffering human the boons of God-light and God-felicity. It is an absolute and compelling adoration in every respect. With it only can the divine multitude, or as the Veda says, the Divine People, divyam janam, appear on the earth; it only can make Time step into Eternity’s marvels. Only then shall the “indignity of mortal life” be cancelled, and pain turned into ecstasy.
If mantra is always charged with power, if mantra is a Word that creates happy
majesties, if mantra speaks of desirable excellences, if mantra brings
realisation of what it utters, then we have it here, in Sri Aurobindo’s
Adoration of the Divine Mother, the inevitable Word, the supreme Word
established in the earth-consciousness to transform it into the divine
substance of Truth, Beauty, Delight, into God-Life, all held by the Spirit’s
vast calm.
Reverence to the Devī, to the Devī of the Great,
To Her who is auspicious, for ever reverence.
Reverence to Prakŗti who maintains.
Setting our minds wholly upon Her, we make obeisance to Her.
Reverence to Her who is eternal, Raudrā,
To Gaurī, and Dhātrī, reverence and again reverence,
To Her who is moonlight and in the form of the moon,
To Her who is supreme bliss, reverence for ever.
Bending low, we make obeisance to the auspicious One
Who is prosperity in the form of wealth,
To Siddhi, Nairiti, and to the good fortune of Kings.
To Şarvānī reverence, and again reverence.
To Durgā, to Her who enables men to cross the ocean of the world,
Who is the life and strength and cause of all.
Knower of the distinction between Puruşa and Prakŗti,
And who is both black and grey, reverence for ever.
We prostrate ourselves before
Thee, who art at once most gentle and formidable,
Reverence to Her, and again reverence;
Reverence to Her who is the material cause of the world,
To the Devī, who is in the form of action, reverence, and again reverence.
To the Devī who in all things is called Vişņumāyā,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who is known as intelligence in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who dwells in the form of Buddhi in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in the form of sleep abides in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in all beings in the form of hunger,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in all beings in the form of Chāyā,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists as energy in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence,
To the Devī who exists in the form of thirst in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in the form of forgiveness exists in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in the form of race and species in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī in the form of modesty in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī existing in the form of peace in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in all beings in the form of faith,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī existing in the form of beauty in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in all beings in the form of prosperity,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in all beings exists in the form of their respective callings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in the form of memory exists in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in all beings exists in the form of mercy,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in the form of contentment exists in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who exists in all beings as (their) Mother,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
To the Devī who in the form of error exists in all beings,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
Reverence to the Devī
Who is the Presiding Deity over the senses of all beings,
Who is ever in all beings,
And who pervades all things.
To the Devī who in the form of consciousness,
Having pervaded all the world, exists therein,
Reverence to Her, reverence to Her,
Reverence to Her, reverence, reverence.
Praised aforetime by the Devas,
By reason of their obtaining that which they desired;
Worshipped by Surendra on days of victory.
May the Īśvarī, who is the cause of all good,
Do good and auspicious things for us,
And may She ward off all calamities.
And may She who is now saluted by us as our Queen,
As also by the Suras, tormented by arrogant Asuras,
Whom we call to mind
As we bow our bodies in devotion to Her,
Destroy at this very moment all our calamities.
We might get an idea about the contents of the praise offered to Goddess Chandi from this elegant rendering which is pretty faithful to the original Sanskrit hymn but, unfortunately, the force that is there in it is not getting conveyed. Thus the opening śloka that speaks of her as “Mahādevī” has in it “the Devī of the Great”; this is more a description of hers than a direct appellation or personification that has the life-breathing presence in it. She as Mahādevī at once stands in front of us in her full splendour and force, as if in flesh and blood, in contrast to the Devī of the Great which looks just a concept, a representation. Let us take three ślokas of the original, addressing the Goddess in her forms of Strength-Peace-Motherhood, śaktirūpa-śāntirūpa-mātŗrūpa and chant them repeatedly, a number of times at least for an hour. At once we feel a presence surrounding us, working its miracle in us. That is also the power of the poetic metre, anuşţubha here, with sixteen syllables in each line.
yā dévī sarvabhūtéşu śaktirūpéņa samsthitā |
namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah ||
yā dévī sarvabhūtéşu śāntirūpéņa samsthitā |
namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah ||
yā dévī sarvabhūtéşu mātŗrūpéņa samsthitā |
namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah ||
O thou Goddess, embodied Strength, present in all beings and things,
three times my reverences to thee, my reverence.
O thou Goddess, embodied Peace, present in all beings and things,
three times my reverences to thee, my reverence.
O thou Goddess, embodied Motherhood, present in all beings and things,
three times my reverences to thee, my reverence.