Bearing on the theme developed by
David Johnston in several instalments under the title Jung’s Psychology of the Living God and Transformation of Individual
and Community, I am posting here a chapter which appears in my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra published in
2006 by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Pondicherry. The
book essentially deals with the opening passage of 83 lines of the Book of Fate
of Savitri, pp. 415-17. The
background briefly stated is as follows. Savitri the radiant daughter of
Aswapati, the king of Madra land, has grown into full maidenhood and is advised
to find for herself her life’s partner. In a distant forest she meets Satyavan,
the son of exiled king Dyumatsena, and they decide to be together. Even as she
returns to the palace, Savitri sees her parents in the company of the heavenly
sage Narad who had hastened to be there in time just before her arrival. The
intention behind his visit was to deliver the Word of Fate, that exactly one
year after the marriage of Savitri with Satyavan he will die. Narad foresees
this supernaturally charged possibility in the greater design and leaves his
home in
He sang the name of Vishnu and the
birth
And joy and passion of the mystic
world,
And how the stars were made and
life began
And the mute regions stirred with
the throb of a soul.
He sang the Inconscient and its
secret self,
Its power omnipotent knowing not
what it does,
All shaping without will or thought
or sense,
Its blind unerring occult mystery,
And darkness yearning towards the
eternal Light,
And Love that broods within the dim
abyss
And waits the answer of the human
heart,
And death that climbs to
immortality.
He sang of the Truth that cries
from Night’s blind deeps,
And the Mother Wisdom hid in
Nature's breast
And the Idea that through her
dumbness works
And the miracle of her transforming
hands,
Of life that slumbers in the stone
and sun
And mind subliminal in mindless
life,
And the consciousness that wakes in
beasts and men.
He sang of the glory and marvel
still to be born,
Of the Godhead throwing off at last
its veil,
Of bodies made divine and life made
bliss,
Immortal sweetness clasping
immortal might,
Heart sensing heart, thought
looking straight at thought,
And the delight when every barrier
falls,
And the transfiguration and the
ecstasy.
And as he sang the demons wept with
joy
Foreseeing the end of their long
dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped
in vain,
And glad release from their
self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom
they came.
The evolution marches on. The dreadful
abysms of Ignorance are left behind. The broad vistas of Truth-Knowledge
stretch invisibly on. The veil is getting thinner and thinner. The splendid
possibility of divine glory living in Matter’s house has been unequivocally
asserted. The life divine shall be real in the divine’s birth on earth. There
is harmony and sweetness and joy; the involved Spirit has triumphed over the
obduracy of the physical Nature. In the divine multitude’s oneness is the
victory of the Spirit. Out of that rises a new and marvellous creation. Sad
thoughts have become sweet songs. The long-suffering existence is now changing
into a thing of beauty which is a joy for ever.
By the process of a wonderful
poetic logic, with the swift-running force of a narrative, revelatory with the
power to realise what is revealed, the poet has accomplished the miracle of
tracing the entire course of this vast evolution just with a few tens of lines.
Out of the Inconscience and the obscurity of matter came first life and then
mind; what is now expected is the glory and marvel of the divine birth, the
establishment of the name of Vishnu here. Such is the delightful song of Narad
in the rasa of felicitous devotion.
This song has the entirety of sweetness to bring joy to the hostiles who have
stood too long in the way of this growth of consciousness. They are happy that
they will soon be vanquished in the greatness of the Spirit and that in its
victory their horrendous task will get terminated; the product of the dark
Inconscience shall be dissolved for good.
And as he sang the demons wept with
joy
Foreseeing the end of their long
dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped
in vain,
And glad release from their
self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom
they came.
Evolution need not have been a
tortuous, painful process, explains Sri Aurobindo in one of his letters. But
then a dark possibility could have been there and it had to be exhausted. In
this many-dimensional unfoldment of the divine delight, the infinity of
Inconscience had to be met in its full scope and operative might. In response
to every descent that had occurred until now, it always threw answer
antagonistically to distort it, if not to destroy it. Therefore triumphing over
it means establishing a greater delight in mode of the very
existence-consciousness itself. The demons now return into the supreme Origin
from which they had come, the bright Womb of the Creation. Thus is prepared the
hazardless way for evolution to grow from knowledge to greater knowledge. The
miracle is of reaching, via Ignorance, the divine multitude through such a
strange possibility.
The relationship of the primordial
Creative Shadow and the weeping of the Demons to return to their Origin has deeper occult connotations which no other shadow can throw light on. Thus Evil
Persona turns out to be simply an operative mechanism in the greater scheme of
things and its unexaggerated importance just lies in it. The present article
discusses some of these details in the limit of a chapter of a book.
“O singer of the ultimate
ecstasy,”—this is how Aswapati addresses Narad and bids him to sing of happy
things even if the world is full of sorrow and suffering and anguish, even if
it is idi samsāram bahu duhkham, even
if the paths here are precipitous and slippery, even if doom might be waiting
for Savitri in her life. His hope and conviction is that the song can alter
them all. “Too hard the gods are with man’s fragile race” and the law of Fate
is inexorable. But Narad is an exceptional being and the wonderful compliment
paid to him as a singer of the ultimate ecstasy is with connotations also; it
is a high tribute which is functional, in the sense that if there is doom
waiting for Savitri let it be dispelled by the song. There is power in it to
bring joy to us all because it is the song of Vishnu’s name, the name filling
this manifestation with its vastness and calm felicity. The apparent
contradictions of our common life and care and turmoil do not perturb him, live
as he does always in excellence of that divine consciousness. Thus in his
melodious lucidity he sings to Aswapati and the Queen just as he arrives at the
palace: (Savitri, pp. 417-18)
There for an hour untouched by the
earth’s siege
They ceased from common life and
care and sat
Inclining to the high and rhythmic
voice,
While in his measured chant the
heavenly seer
Spoke of the toils of men and what
the gods
Strive for on earth, and joy that
throbs behind
The marvel and the mystery of pain.
He sang to them of the lotus-heart
of love
With all its thousand luminous buds
of truth,
Which quivering sleeps veiled by
apparent things.
It trembles at each touch, it
strives to wake
And one day it shall hear a
blissful voice
And in the garden of the Spouse
shall bloom
When she is seized by her
discovered lord.
A mighty shuddering coil of ecstasy
Crept through the deep heart of the
universe.
Out of her Matter’s stupor, her
mind’s dreams,
She woke, she looked upon God’s
unveiled face.
The enchantment of the song is such
that not simply the royal hosts in the palace hall, but the whole creation
quivers with rapture. It has a cosmic dimension, even as the beings from far
and near anticipate a new world of joyous harmony soon taking birth here: its
ecstasy creeps through the heart of the universe. Such is the potential of the
Truth-song, that even the demons feel reassured to see the end of their long
dreadful enterprise. Full of caprice and asuric Maya, strong and resolute in
their terrible purposes, diabolic, masters of the devious ways, these “invaders
from a dangerous world of power” ever oppose the truth and the light that are
trying to enter into our lives. They are the ominous prophets of the
Inconscience, coming from the “ancient womb of huge calamitous dreams”; they
have arisen in the dimming light as an answer to Life when Life entered into
Matter. Things would have been different, but it looks as though something
happened somewhere and everything became unexpected, awry. Sri Aurobindo in his
beautiful poetic exposé describes the sequence of the events as follows: (Savitri, pp. 222-23)
When nothing was save Matter
without soul
And a spiritless hollow was the
heart of Time,
Then Life first touched the
insensible Abyss;
Awaking the stark Void to hope and
grief
Her pallid beam smote the
unfathomed Night…
In all things she sought their
slumbering mystic truth…
But from the Night another answer
came…
A monstrous birth prepared its
cosmic form
In Nature’s titan embryo,
Ignorance.
Then in a fatal and stupendous hour
Something that sprang from the
stark Inconscient’s sleep
Unwillingly begotten by the mute
Void,
Lifted its ominous head against the
stars;
Overshadowing earth with its huge
body of Doom
It chilled the heavens with the
menace of a face.
A nameless Power, a shadowy Will
arose
Immense and alien to our universe.
In the inconceivable Purpose none
can gauge
A vast Non-Being robed itself with
shape,
The boundless Nescience of the
unconscious depths
Covered eternity with Nothingness.
A seeking Mind replaced the seeing
Soul:
Life grew into a huge and hungry
death,
The Spirit’s bliss was changed to
cosmic pain…
A sovereign ruling falsehood, death
and grief,
It pressed its fierce hegemony on
earth...
Implanting error in the stuff of
things
It made an Ignorance of the
all-wise Law…
Obscured was the Truth-light in the
cavern heart
Thus was the dire antagonist Energy
born.
With the birth of this “dire
antagonist Energy” always “the dark Adventurers seem to win.” They have
overpowered Life; they have spoilt her, they disfigured her, made her hostile;
her charm became a lure and a fatal nightmare; she is turned into la belle dame
sans merci. Death has become a necessary part of Life. But now the heavenly
song brings another note, of truth and light and joy, so powerful that it
cannot be misused; instead, the dark Adventurers see in it their own existence
coming to a glad end, a cherished end. They are happy about it. (Savitri, p. 417)
And as he sang the demons wept with
joy
Foreseeing the end of their long
dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped
in vain,
And glad release from their
self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom
they came.
Narad’s song is a song of victory,
the victory of transfiguration-and-ecstasy. The return of the demons to their
origin is one aspect of that strange angelic minstrelsy which indeed is an
overflow of the original joy itself. The entire terrestrial scheme is laid out
in it. It is a Truth-song, with the soul of delight in a body of beauty. It is
the Song of Transformation bringing to the world of mortality assurance of the
immortal Word.
What spell and wizardry! Not only
the tears of joy but also the expectations of release from the self-chosen
doom! Such a compelling song can be sung only by the purest in heaven, by a
sage who is in true love with this creation. There is, as the Veda would say, a
truth of existence submerged in the deep and dark ocean of consciousness, salilam aprakétam, where no heavenly
light enters, in the sombre mystery of the Inconscience, and it is there that
the demons live. Their job seems to be to play a hostile part in this creation:
they serve by enmity the strange cosmic scheme. But the song has the power to
bring out the right truth of their existence and to make them realise their
true role in the slow evolutionary manifestation in which nothing is missed, in
which all the details are attended to. Their horrendous task of opposing and
battling against the Guardians of Light appears to them now nearing its
finale; something for which they had been waiting for too long is going to
happen soon. They would return, in fulfilled happiness, to the one from whom
they came. In the magic of the song they have become different beings, as if
some psychic element suddenly got kindled in their heart.
The song of the sage has its birth
in the name of God. The joy in which Narad is absorbed is expressive-creative
joy of the Truth, the Truth in all its million signifying poises and functions,
even of deathfulness in the abysses of Ignorance and Inconscience. True, the
Truth there has become obscure and dark and has no eyes to see but,
intrinsically being the Truth itself, it is full of potency and power to compel
the demons to play their hostile part in glorious evolution of the
possibilities it possesses. What the song has brought out is the greatness of
the wisdom that is hid behind this all. In fact that is how we might get some
idea about the expressive-creative element that is there everywhere, creativity
which is a visible sign of the universal delight of existence, expression which
means unfoldment of the countless prospects that present themselves here in
their dynamism. When the demons live under the thick obscure shroud of
Ignorance they act as spooky dubious agents of the uncompromising Night. But
the moment they come under the spell of the song they forget their hostility.
Nay, they even feel contented to have been the happy participants in the
mysterious process being worked out by the faultless Force in the field of this
immense Inconscience. They now concede that their task, which is at once
dreadful and is a dread, must be abandoned. But by themselves they are unable
to do it and hence they wait for their own defeat at the hand of that mighty
Force. Through Narad’s song they become aware of the power that is working
behind the Inconscience itself and that it is that power which alone can defeat
them. Then would come their release—because such defeat itself is liberation.
Liberation by becoming an enemy of God is one of the ways and it seems they had
opted for it. Thus they will be liberating themselves from the dire Law of
Hell. The compulsion and tyranny of the dark Truth would be removed, the dark
determination abolished. They would thus go into another Nothingness, their
abode. When they live in Ignorance they oppose the Truth; but with the spell of
the song cast over Ignorance itself, the demons begin to recognise their place
and their operations as a part of a vaster mystery’s process. Being the song of
the name of Vishnu, the Destroyer of the demon Madhu who got absorbed in Vishnu
himself, it can achieve the miracle of casting a spell over a thousand broods
engendered in Ignorance, by Ignorance. The bright Spiritual triumphs over the
dark Occult.
But who are these demons? And where
are they returning? All mythologies are full of them; giants and titans and
demons abound in classical epics; Durga kills an Asura every year; hydra-headed
monsters play havoc in this creation. But let us look into the Biblical
tradition. It tells us that the demons are the fallen angels, the evil spirits,
the servants and messengers of Satan. And what do they do? They bring disease
and cause inanity, tilt the scale of St Michael at the last judgement, and
carry the soul of the sinner to hell. The children of Job met their fate in
their hands. The grotesqueries depict them in repulsive forms. Satan was the
first to rebel against God and engaged himself in promoting evil. Hell is his
kingdom. Caedmon’s Creation: The Fall of
the Rebel Angels (c AD 670) has the following verses:
The fiend with all his comrades
Fell from heaven above,
Through as long as three nights and
days,
The angels from heaven into hell;
And them all the Lord transformed
to devils,
Because they his deed and word
Would not revere.
Let us look at Satan, the archenemy
of God, the Antagonist. The Bearer of Light in Heaven, Lucifer as he was known,
was a beautiful angel and was very close to God. But that also caused him
to be proud of himself. He was the model of perfection, full of wisdom and was
perfect in beauty. He was in
Satan was “the model of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty”, yet he was not given the charge of the
Earth when it was created; it was Adam who was put there. Satan felt insulted
and decided to spoil God’s work. He became a murderer, “a murderer from the
beginning.” (
But what does the Scripture say
about the ultimate fate of Satan? He and his angels will be put “into the
everlasting fire.” (St Matthew, 25:41) He will be captured and imprisoned for a
thousand years. (Revelation, 20:2) So too shall be the fate of his demons.
Could these be the demons weeping
with joy after hearing Narad’s song? And returning into the One from whom they
came, the Lord himself? Did the Lord transform the angels directly into the
demons, made them devils, put them in hell? The Biblical account of the fall
may look strange to the modern mind but it has a suggestive occult element in
it and it may be worthwhile to explore it to the extent possible for us. But
the connection of the fall with the appearance of man on earth is significant,
man created in the image of God.
“Satan tempted Christ for the same
reason he had enticed Eve in the Garden. He knew that Christ was in the process
of regaining rulership over the world and replacing him. He also knew that if
he could get Christ to sin, as he had with Adam and Eve, then he could thwart
God’s plan and remain the ruler of the world.” After hearing Narad’s song, of
the transfiguration and ecstasy, is it this Satan, and the countless demons as
his hordes, who are weeping with joy to see the end of their task and returning
into the One from whom they came, the Lord himself, God the Creator?
Self-chosen doom and return into
the One—but then who is this One? And there is also the question, whether the Savitri-phrase “the demons wept with
joy” has an allusion at all to the Biblical or other mythological beings. If
the Lord cast them into Hell, there is no clue that they would repent and that
of their own go back to him. There is also the passionate question posed by
Savitri’s mother
But let us take another example,
from the Indian Puranas. In the mythological age the demon king Hiranykashyapu,
the enemy of God, forbid everyone in his kingdom to worship Vishnu. He
considered none to be above him. But, then, he was also blessed, that neither
man nor animal would be able to kill him. That made him more tyrannical and
arrogant. But his son Prahlad was a devotee of Vishnu and worshipped him,
despite his father’s orders. Hiranyakashyapu tried to kill him in many ways and
each time he took Vishnu’s name and survived. At last he ordered for a big iron
pillar to be heated red-hot and asked him whether his Vishnu was present in it.
“Yes, he is present everywhere,” replied Prahlad. If so he was told to embrace
the pillar, and he did it. The pillar burst, and came out Vishnu in the form of
Man-Lion, Narasimha. Hiranyakashyapu was killed and the earth relieved of the
demon’s loathsome burden. But where did he go, returned where? The cosmic
formation was simply dissolved. So did it happen in the case of Ravana, the
ten-headed monster when Rama killed him in the great occult battle. But the
dissolution or laya simply means
going out of manifestation and the phrase “returning into the One from whom
they came” has another sense, of yet being present in the One.
Let us read the Savitri-passage again:
And as he sang the demons wept with
joy
Foreseeing the end of their long
dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped
in vain,
And glad release from their
self-chosen doom
And return into the One from whom
they came.
There are two key revelations which
we have to see here: weeping of the demons with joy, and returning into the One
from whom they came. If we consider the demons as the mythological creatures
whom we have just seen, then a problem arises, of their weeping with joy and
their surviving in the One. In metaphysical terms that One has to be the
supreme Unmanifest, as in the ultimate analysis everything comes from It. But
the high Asat, the one beyond Being and Non-being, cannot be the direct cause
of this devilish outcome, this uncouth upsurge; even if it is made an indirect
cause, it being the primal Source of all existence, that It does not become the
reality of that fact. It is in manifestation that we have the reality of that
fact. It is in manifestation we have the phenomenality and therefore we must
discover the origin of their hostile and evil functioning in it alone. These
dark powers cannot arise directly in the process of involution, at least in its
early stages, because it is Sachchidananda himself who is really entering into
the process. There is nothing hostile or perverse in him. But reemergence from
the state of last nothingness or the dark Asat, the nether Non-being, the total
Inconscience is a double process. In fact presently several elements enter into
it. There is the pressure from above and there is the pressure from below, in
the case of an individual from within and from without. It is under these
pressures that the cosmic and the individual evolution is progressing; this
doubly aided urge to emerge is the Becoming. Thus it is with a
creative-manifestive joy of self-finding that the mystery is working itself out
in the evolutionary endeavour. The pressure from above evokes or even compels
an answer from below. But in response to this pressure arise all the unexpected
possibilities, both dark and bright, as though the Inconscience has its own
independent determinates. It is in this way we could see, as a product of a
particular evolutionary circumstance, the appearance of hostile beings carrying
with them falsehood and error and evil. They are Energies of a cosmic character
and their interventions obstruct or harm free progress of the evolving soul.
There is battle and struggle, yet there is an upward movement. While describing
the origin of these dark universal powers, Sri Aurobindo enlightens us that
these are not present in the Inconscience proper, nor in Matter’s depth; their
appearance is at a much later stage and they extend their sway to the domains
of Life and Mind.
These forces create in an
individual their formations and may “influence his impulses or his acts or
possess his whole nature. If that possession happens, he may himself be pushed
to an excess of the normal humanity of good or evil; especially the evil takes
forms which shock the sense of human measure, exceed the bounds of human
personality, approach the gigantic, the inordinate, the immeasurable.” But in
no sense are they absolute; they are only derivative or relational though
immense or superhuman in character or nature. “If pain becomes immeasurable, it
ends itself or ends that in which it manifests, or collapses into insensibility
or, in rare circumstances, it may turn into an ecstasy of Ananda. If evil
became sole and immeasurable, it would destroy the world or destroy that which
bore and supported it; it would bring things and itself back by disintegration
into non-existence. …they depend for existence on the perversion or
contradiction of their opposites and are not like truth and good self-existent
absolutes, inherent aspects of the supreme Self-existent.” (The Life Divine, pp. 605-06)
But what is the origin of these
immense dark powers, where’s their dwelling? “They may be after all original
cosmic principles. But it is to be noted that their appearance does not extend
higher than the lower supraphysical life-planes; they are ‘powers of the Prince
of Air’,—air being in the ancient symbolism the principle of life and therefore
of the mid-worlds where the vital principle is predominant and essential. The
adverse opposites are not, then, primal powers of the cosmos, but creations of
Life or of Mind in life.” (The Life
Divine, p. 606)
About the appearance of these
powers as an aspect of the secondary evolutionary-involutionary movement, Sri
Aurobindo writes as follows. “Their supraphysical aspects and influences on
earth-nature can be explained by the co-existence of worlds of a descending
involution with parallel worlds of an ascending evolution, not precisely
created by earth-existence, but created as an annexe to the descending
world-order and a prepared support for the evolutionary terrestrial formations;
here evil may appear, not as inherent in all life, but as a possibility and a
pre-formation that makes inevitable its formation in the evolutionary emergence
of consciousness out of the Inconscient. However this may be, it is as an
outcome of the Inconscience that we can best watch and understand the origin of
falsehood, error, wrong and evil, for it is in the return of Inconscience towards
Consciousness that they can be seen taking their formation and it is there that
they seem to be normal and even inevitable. The first emergence from the
Inconscient is Matter, and in Matter it would seem that falsehood and evil
cannot exist, because both are created by a divided and ignorant surface
consciousness and its reactions. There is no such active surface organisation
of consciousness, no such reactions in material forces or objects: whatever
indwelling secret consciousness there may be in them seems to be one,
undifferentiated, mute; inertly inherent and intrinsic in the Energy that
constitutes the object, it effectualises and maintains the form by the silent
occult Idea in it, but is otherwise self-rapt in the form of energy it has
created, uncommunicating and inexpressive. Even if it differentiates itself
according to the form of Matter in a corresponding form of self-being, rūpam rūpam pratirūpo babhūva, there is
no psychological organisation, no system of conscious actions or reactions. It
is only by contact with conscious beings that material objects exercise powers
or influences which can be called good or evil: but that good or evil is
determined by the contacted being’s sense of help or harm, of benefit or injury
from them; these values do not belong to the material object but to some Force
that uses it or they are created by the consciousness that contacts it… . The
world of pure Matter is neutral, irresponsible; these values insisted on by the
human being do not exist in material Nature: as a superior Nature transcends the
duality of good and evil, so this inferior Nature falls below it… . The duality begins with conscious life and
emerges fully with the development of mind in life; the vital mind, the mind of
desire and sensation, is the creator of the sense of evil and of the fact of
evil.” (The Life Divine, pp. 604-08)
Thus we see the first appearance of
all these evil entities, these evil hordes not in Matter but popping up
somewhere at the stage of Life and Mind-in-Life. Satan became Satanic when Adam
appeared in
Nevertheless, first, why did the
demons choose the path of the doom? what compulsion drove them to do so? But
actually it is the song which makes them realise that, what they had chosen was
doom. Until then they perhaps did not consider it to be a doom at all; they did
not even know that it was so, that such was their lot in life. It could not
have been possible for them to have this knowledge, if in Ignorance they were
born. A darkish existence and a darkish power were their parents and the raison
d’être of their evil birth was to oppose the bright truth and the bright force.
If in the creation’s glory the children of bright powers have to emerge
successfully, then that can happen only by defeating the children of dark
powers. They have to be mightier than the agents of the Adversary, stronger
than the inconscient brood. It is as though through this unfeeling and grim
cruel opposition that the adamantine powers present themselves for a greater
victory of the World-Force, Jagat-Shakti, leading to a richer stronger
manifestation of the Supreme. Under the spell of the song the demons suddenly
see that such a moment for the manifestation has now arrived in the unrolling
history of Time. It is as if to celebrate such a moment, of their exit and
self-doom that they weep with joy. The purpose of their birth in the cosmic
process is seen to be accomplished. That is the satisfaction they must be
getting in this song of self-chosen defeat. Indeed, the effect of the song even
on the negative planes of consciousness is of joy, the joy of self-dissolution
here, as though extreme opposition turns into a kind of triumph, even as
extreme pain turns into an “ecstasy of Ananda”. (The Life Divine, p. 605) But in actuality not by waving a magic
wand can this happen; it is not going to happen in such a simplistic manner. A
hard battle has to be fought even for this release. The self-chosen doom does
not disappear of its own. Perhaps these are not the creatures spoken of in the
phrase “and the demons wept with joy”.
Equally significant is the phrase
“return into the One from whom they came”. Well, this could have been their
last opportunity. But that “One” is too far away from the “annexe” where they
had their birth: the “annexe” is not the “One”. It means that, if the demons
have come from the field of cosmic Ignorance, they are going to go back to the
same field of cosmic Ignorance: there is no transformation for the demons. They
are unable to conceive of the possibility of changing into beings of light and
love and bliss, all that is contrary to their nature. We may recall here the
stone-throwing incidence in the Guest House, something which took place in
December 1921. The Mother contacted the little creatures—“three little entities
of the vital”—who were involved in the action of stone throwing and offered
them to carry flowers. They expressed their inability to do so, saying that
they were not meant for that kind of job. In the larger context, as the demons
are always living under the aegis of the great Adversary, it is quite
consistent that they should refuse to do things which are contrary to their
dark occult nature. The character of absolute Negation is what stands out in
their action and methodology of operation in these sombre realms. Had a
faintest or feeblest ray entered into those realms, perhaps they would have
seen the other possibility. But then absolute Negation would not have remained
absolute. “But upon all these formations, all these entities,” says the Mother,
“it is enough to put simply one drop of the true, pure light, the pure white
light—the true, pure light which is the supreme light of construction—you put
one drop upon them: they dissolve as though there had been nothing at all
there.” (Questions and Answers, CWM,
Vol. 6, pp. 57-62) They dissolve. In the same context the Mother tells: “When a
formation of this kind acts, it goes with a definite purpose. It has been made
with a definite purpose. It acts and when its action is over, it disappears; it
has no longer any raison d’être. It was a formation for a particular action.
When the action is accomplished, the formation dissolves. There are many other
kinds of formations with more or less durable lives… . Its action is
accomplished and comes to an end.” (Questions
and Answers, CWM, Vol. 6, p. 43)
Let us look into the matter in more
detail. “It is as an outcome of the Inconscience that we can best watch and
understand the origin of falsehood, error, wrong and evil, for it is in the
return of Inconscience towards Consciousness that they can be seen taking their
formation and it is there that they seem to be normal and even inevitable.” (The Life Divine, p. 606) That these
demons have come from the “sombre womb” is
clear enough; in fact it is important to note that they are not just fallen
gods, pūrvé devas, of the
Mahabharata, or the legions of Satan in Hell, or a third part of the angels who
fell from Heaven, but beings whose birth is in darkness of the Night. The home of
these children of Diti is reku padam
alakam, (The Secret of the Veda,
p. 224) the world of falsehood beyond the bound of things. Here is Savitri: (pp. 225-27)
Wherever the Gods act, they
intervene.
A yoke is laid upon the world’s dim
heart;
Masked are its beats from the
supernal Bliss,
And the closed peripheries of
brilliant Mind
Block the fine entries of celestial
Fire.
Always the dark Adventurers seem to
win;
Nature they fill with evil’s
institutes,
Turn into defeats the victories of
Truth,
Proclaim as falsehoods the eternal
laws,
And load the dice of Doom with
wizard lies;
The world's shrines they have
occupied, usurped its thrones.
In scorn of the dwindling chances
of the Gods
They claim creation as their
conquered fief
And crown themselves the iron Lords
of Time.
Adepts of the illusion and the
masque,
The artificers of Nature’s fall and
pain
Have built their altars of
triumphant Night
In the clay temple of terrestrial
life.
In the vacant precincts of the
sacred Fire,
In front of the reredos in the mystic
rite
Facing the dim velamen none can
pierce,
Intones his solemn hymn the mitred
priest
Invoking their dreadful presence in
his breast:
Attributing to them the awful Name
He chants the syllables of the
magic text
And summons the unseen communion’s
act,
While twixt the incense and the
muttered prayer
All the fierce bale with which the
world is racked
Is mixed in the foaming chalice of
man’s heart
And poured to them like sacramental
wine.
Assuming names divine they guide
and rule.
Opponents of the Highest they have
come
Out of their world of soulless
thought and power
To serve by enmity the cosmic
scheme.
Night is their refuge and strategic
base.
Against the sword of Flame, the
luminous Eye,
Bastioned they live in massive
forts of gloom,
Calm and secure in sunless privacy:
No wandering ray of Heaven can
enter there.
Armoured, protected by their lethal
masks,
As in a studio of creative Death
The giant sons of Darkness sit and
plan
The drama of the earth, their
tragic stage.
Such is the havoc these evil powers
can play in God’s sweet and round fair world. They are far more powerful than
those who were involved in the Guest House incidence, than the “three little
entities of the vital”. With a little drop of pure light those little entities
could get dissolved. This may not happen in all the cases. When fierce Durga
wins a victory over an Asura another kind of action is involved. The mighty
gods of heaven invoke her and lend her their lustrous and conquering weapons to
vanquish the titanic force rushing on her, on them all. She becomes the wielder
of ten weapons, tvam hi Durgā
daśapraharaņdhāriņī as Rishi Bankim sees her. The Chandi celebration is her
victory over Mahishasura who was causing havoc in the world. The asuric being
has been killed; he gets dissolved in her essence. The occult battle is a great
decisive event no doubt but then it is no more than a specific event, in the
sense that only the present calamity, sāmprata
sankata, has been overcome; indeed, Durga continues to destroy Asura after
Asura every year, year after year, a tireless task of removing the obstacles
from the path. But her killing, for instance, of Mahishasura does not have the
connotation of “transfiguration-and-ecstasy” which Narad’s song carries. There
are invisible enemies, “innumerable emanations, which have again put forth
others, which have made formations. And so there are millions and millions and
millions of them, and it is these who have formed between themselves a certain
habit... .” (Questions and Answers,
CWM, Vol. 5, p. 375) Being formations, they stay on even if the beings whose
formations they are, those who brought them forth, disappear. But the Daitya
armies or the Satanic legions—millions and millions and millions of
them—perhaps form a relatively smaller aspect in the context of the
“transfiguration-and-ecstasy” Narad is suggesting. The implications are of an
altogether different kind, where not just the cosmic but also the
transcendental dimensions pertaining to creation come into play.
In fact now time has come for the
return—which is not just a departure—of those who had gone very far away from
the divine Source. They are going back to the One from whom they had come and
not the one from whom we all come in a secondary way. Such was the freedom
enjoyed by them that, they could separate themselves from the Supreme: Indeed,
the “Divine wanted his creation to be a free creation,” says the Mother. (Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 5, p.
374) By returning to the One from whom they had come, it is the true freedom
which they are going to get, and therefore the tears of joy; it will be the
termination of the self-chosen doom. Perhaps it is in that sense of happy
fulfilment that they are returning to their home of happiness and felicity. Had
it been the case of just the fallen gods returning, the story would have been
quite different; it would not have been so decisive. These fallen gods would
have simply gone back to their world of Light, the Overmind world; but then
that would have left the other powers of falsehood still active in the
evolutionary process, the powers that arose as “creations of Life or of Mind in
life”; (The Life Divine, p. 606) these
little demons would have still obstructed the birth of Vishnu’s name on the
earth. If Narad is singing the Song of Transformation and Ecstasy, then they
all “must disappear and the Truth behind them delivered.”
We may pertinently recall here what
Sri Aurobindo wrote while discussing as a piece of poetic appreciation Milton’s
Paradise Lost: “… there is nowhere any more magnificently successful opening
than the conception and execution of his Satan and Hell, the living spirit of
egoistic revolt fallen to its natural element of darkness and pain, yet
preserving still the greatness of the divine principle from which he was born.”
(The Future Poetry, p. 84) That is
wonderful indeed, Satan yet preserving the divine principle from which he was
born; it is in that he is returning to the One from whom he came. Not
dissolution, laya, but transformation
is what is present in “transfiguration and ecstasy”, not only for Satan alone,
but for all the four Asuras who had gone very far away from the Source.
The greatest denial of the Darkness
is seen in the figure of Death, the incoercible power that opposes any effort
towards the transformation of life upon earth, the mind of Night standing
across the path of the divine Event. Savitri persuaded Death, as we later see
in the poem, but he, blindly and insensitively obeying obstinately the law of
his nature, the law derived from the Inconscience, remained unconvinced and
rigid, continued to oppose the mighty Truth she was presenting to him, (Savitri, pp. 666-68)
Although he knew refusing still to
know,
Although he saw refusing still to
see.
Unshakable he stood claiming his
right.
His spirit bowed; his will obeyed
the law
Of its own nature binding even on
Gods.
The Two opposed each other face to
face.
His being like a huge fort of
darkness towered;
Around it her light grew, an
ocean’s siege.
Awhile the Shade survived defying
heaven:
Assailing in front, oppressing from
above,
A concrete mass of conscious power,
he bore
The tyranny of her divine desire.
Ultimately
A pressure of intolerable force
Weighed on his unbowed head and
stubborn breast;
Light like a burning tongue licked
up his thoughts,
Light was a luminous torture in his
heart,
Light coursed, a splendid agony,
through his nerves;
His darkness muttered perishing in
her blaze.
The strength which Death had drawn
from the Inconscience failed him at the moment of his truth. The towering
figure became a shadow in the sunlight of her Power, soon to become a light
that casts no shadow. She wielded the conqueror’s sword but still Death yielded
not, did not surrender. He ran away, vanquished by the immortal Might.
Her mastering Word commanded every
limb
And left no room for his enormous
will
That seemed pushed out into some
helpless space
And could no more re-enter but left
him void.
He called to Night but she fell
shuddering back,
He called to Hell but sullenly it
retired:
He turned to the Inconscient for
support,
From which he was born, his vast
sustaining self;
It drew him back towards boundless
vacancy
As if by himself to swallow up
himself:
He called to his strength, but it
refused his call.
His body was eaten by light, his
spirit devoured.
At last he knew defeat inevitable
And left crumbling the shape that
he had worn,
Abandoning hope to make man’s soul
his prey
And force to be mortal the immortal
spirit.
Afar he fled shunning her dreaded
touch
And refuge took in the retreating
Night.
In the dream twilight of that
symbol world
The dire universal Shadow
disappeared
Vanishing into the Void from which
it came.
Instead of consenting to work for
the transformation Savitri had offered to him, Death the embodied Nothingness
went back to the Nothingness from which he had arisen:
He turned to the Inconscient for
support,
From which he was born, his vast
sustaining self…
Afar he fled shunning her dreaded
touch
And refuge took in the retreating
Night…
The dire universal Shadow
disappeared
Vanishing into the Void from which
it came.
This cannot be a moment of joy for
him to take refuge in the bosom of Night. Death the universal Shadow was born
from the Inconscient and what we see here is that it took him back, as if
vacancy swallowed vacancy. He had come from the Void and into the Void he
disappeared: the embodied Void as a figure of Death got disembodied. This
surely does not amount to “return to the One from whom he came”, unless we
equate this “One” with the Void, the Inconscience. But as he crumbled, as his
strength failed him at his moment of truth, as he was eaten by Light, as he
shuddered and fell, it was not a happy sequel which is connoted by the phrase
“the demons wept with joy”. It was a shadow that sprang up from the Void and it
is simply that shadow which disappeared into it. At this stage Death would
prefer rather to get dissolved than be born in the Divine Person: which means,
as until now he has not actually returned to the One. Perhaps in the present
phenomenality of existence he serves, by that action, the purpose of a higher
supramental harmonisation in this earthly mortal world. Yet the true
supramental harmonisation in this earthly world can occur only with his
participation in a positive manner—he must get transformed. Disappearing into
the Void out of which he had arisen is the first part of the lap and the second
begins with his transformation, his returning to the One from whom he had
really come at the beginning of the process. Savitri has won a great victory, a
necessary victory, but as yet it is not a sufficient victory for his return to
the One, for the glory and marvel of the new birth. She has yet to win another
occult-spiritual battle. The transfigured Death is still present as an enticer
and allurer and his return to the One can become entire only when this aspect
also disappears. (Savitri, pp. 678-79)
One whom her soul had faced as
Death and Night
A sum of all sweetness gathered
into his limbs
And blinded her heart to the beauty
of the suns.
Transfigured was the formidable
shape.
His darkness and his sad destroying
might
Abolishing for ever and disclosing
The mystery of his high and violent
deeds,
A secret splendour rose revealed to
sight
Where once the vast embodied Void
had stood.
Night the dim mask had grown a
wonderful face.
The vague infinity was slain whose
gloom
Had outlined from the terrible
Unknown
The obscure disastrous figure of a
god,
Fled was the error that arms the
hands of grief,
And lighted the ignorant gulf whose
hollow deeps
Had given to nothingness a dreadful
voice.
Death is still a tempter and
Savitri has some more work to do; when it shall be done, then only will her
victory be comprehensive. She does this by identifying her will with the
Divine’s Will; complete surrender to the supreme Lord is her way to do it. In
it indeed lives the real greatness of Savitri. In that utter surrender, the
return of Death to the One from whom he truly came gets accomplished. This she
did. The new transfiguration of Death was so absolute that “he bore all
godheads in his grandiose limbs”. (Savitri,
p. 680) He had come here to do “high and violent deeds” and its mystery is what
now gets fully revealed.
But, in general, as far as the
demons or the agents of darkness are concerned, the question of their opting
for transformation does not always arise. If they are Daityas or Asuras,
Rakshasas, Pishaschas belonging to the cosmic forces, dashing up from the
“annexe”, appearing unexpectedly somewhere at the intermediate stage of Life
and Mind-in-Life, their dissolution and not return to that “annexe” is
imperative. The World-Force, Jagat Shakti, has to conquer and subdue if not
dissolve them. Had they consented for transformation, the earthly evolution
would have taken another course. But then perhaps this finest joy of victory
would have been missed. The World-Force would not have emerged in her full
winning glory, in her full shining strength. The details of the Inconscience
would have remained unattended and these could have sprung up again as
obstacles on the evolutionary march. Not that it was planned that way. This
vast cosmic working is full of possibilities in the infinity of freedom, even
possibilities clashing against each other, a force against a force, and each
one of them has to be worked out independently. In the victory of the World-Force
what we have essentially is, subjugation of the negative and promotion of the
positive aspects of the possibilities. The Daityas do not weep or go to the
One, but they get destroyed or dissolved. They belong to the cosmos and are
energies of a cosmic character; their interventions obstruct or harm free
progress of the evolving soul. “Ravana chose to disappear into the Supreme,
and… was completely dissolved in Him, that is, he lost his individuality, he
was no longer a separate being, he returned to the Origin, he was dissolved in
the Supreme.” (Questions and Answers,
CWM, Vol. 5, p. 379) This means, he opted to go out of manifestation. But to
remain in manifestation as a luminous being and participate in its
truth-dynamics is another glory, another magical delight in consonance with the
Urge that has brought out this creation. In the context of the Daityas, we can
however say that in no sense they are absolute; they are only derivative or
relational powers, though immense or superhuman in character or nature. It is
the darkmost powers who should get dissolved into the One or come back as
luminous beings and partake in the endless evolutionary progress.
In fact a distinction has to be
made between the tough antagonist powers, like Death and Falsehood, and the
demon hordes we meet in the Puranas or the Scriptures, the evil spirits. If we
call the first as the dark primal entities, the fallen powers, the latter are
but a by-product of a certain evolutionary-involutionary situation. With this
distinction made, let us again look into the lines we have been considering in
our present discussion:
And as he sang the demons wept with
joy
Foreseeing the end of their long
dreadful task
And the defeat for which they hoped
in vain,
And glad release from their self-chosen
doom
And return into the One from whom
they came.
In this “wept with joy” and “return
into the One from whom they came” we will have to understand that these are not
the 133,306,668 fallen angels or the demons, those “millions and millions and millions”
of emanations of the “four persons” who got separated from the Source. These
millions are not in direct contact with the Divine and as formations will
persist to be there, even if those from whom they emanated should disappear.
About “those four persons” the Mother speaks on a number of occasions. Thus:
“There were four great Asuras. Out of the four, two are converted. They are
taking part in the divine work. The other two are holding out well... they have
a choice between being converted, that is, taking their place, poised, in the
whole totality or else being dissolved, that is, being re-absorbed by their
origin. There is one of them who has almost attempted conversion and not
succeeded. When it had to be done, it seemed to him quite unpleasant. So he has
put it off till another time. As for the other, he refuses to try.” (Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 6, p.
172) And what is the origin of these four Asuras? “Light or Consciousness
became Darkness and Inconscience. Love and Ananda became Hatred and Suffering,
and Truth became Falsehood, and Life became Death. Well, it is the first two…
but not exactly in the same conditions. The first is converted and works, but
he has refused to take a human body, he says it is a limitation in his work…
The second is converted and of his own will been dissolved. He has dissolved
into his origin. And the last two are holding out well.” (Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 6, p. 173) There are those who
want to be transformed; there are also others who opt to be dissolved. But then
“even in the Asuras, even in the Adversaries, even in the monsters, there is
something.” (Questions and Answers,
CWM, Vol. 7, p. 424) That they should weep with joy at the approach of the
moment of their return to the One from whom they came is indicative of that
“something”. Gods also have a choice, to remain what they are or get
transformed.
In this connection let us read
again the story of creation as narrated by the Mother, a story in which the
four powers got separated from the Source and became hostile. Here it is: “I am
going to tell you [a story] very succinctly. Don’t take it as a gospel! Take it
rather… as a story. When the Supreme decided to exteriorise Himself in order to
be able to see Himself, the first thing in Himself which he exteriorised was
the Knowledge of the world and the Power to create it. This
Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work; and in the supreme Will there
was a plan, and the first principle of this plan was expression of both the
essential Joy and the essential Freedom, which seemed to be the most
interesting feature of this creation. So intermediaries were needed to express
this Joy and Freedom in forms. And at first four Beings were emanated to start
this universal development which was to be the progressive objectivisation of
all that it potentially contained in the Supreme. These Beings were, in the
principle of their existence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love,
and Truth. You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great power, great
strength, of something tremendous, for they were essentially the very principle
of these things. Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for this creation
was to be Freedom itself… . As soon as they set to work—they had their own
conception of how it had to be done—being totally free, they chose to do it
independently… they naturally took the attitude of the master, and this
mistake—as I may call it—was the first cause, the essential cause of all the
disorder in the universe. As soon as there was separation—for that is the
essential cause, separation—as soon as there was separation between the Supreme
and what had been emanated, Consciousness changed into inconscience, Light into
darkness, Love into hatred, Bliss into suffering, Life into death and Truth into
falsehood. And they proceeded with their creation independently, in separation
and disorder. The result is the world as we see it… . The creative Force which
had emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of the world,
witnessed what was happening, and turning to the Supreme she prayed for the
remedy and the cure of the evil that had been done. Then she was given the
command to precipitate her Consciousness into the inconscience, her Love into
this suffering, and her Truth into the falsehood. And a greater consciousness,
a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had been emanated at first,
lunged, so to say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it
consciousness, love and truth, and begin the movement of Redemption which was
to bring the material universe back to its supreme origin.” (Questions and Answers, CWM, Vol. 9, pp.
205-07)
On an earlier occasion the Mother
explained: “The universe is created in Delight and for Delight. But this
Delight can exist only in the perfect oneness of the creation with its creator…
that is… the Possessor being possessed by his creation, a sort of reciprocal
possession which is the very essence of the Oneness and the source of delight.
And it is because of division—because the Possessor no longer possesses and
because the possessed no longer possesses the Possessor, division is created
and the essential Delight is changed into ignorance, and ignorance is the cause
of suffering.” (Questions and Answers,
CWM, Vol. 9, p. 7) In the beginning the Supreme was alone, and he wanted to see
himself, and so he objectivised himself, causing the first separation. If
separation is functional then to separate more distinctly is to grow more
mature, is to manifest more in richness. “The Divine… objectivises himself in
order to become aware of all that he is; instead of being in an inner static
state of concentration in which all is unmanifested, he projects that outside
himself ‘in order to see’, as though he wanted to see all that is within him,
that is, all the infinity of possibilities. So, all was possible. It happened
like that—it could have happened otherwise. Besides, nothing tells you that
alongside our universe such as it is, there do not exist others which are so
different that there cannot be any relation between one universe and another.
It can very well be that our universe is not the only exteriorisation of the
Divine. Ours is such as we know it; there may be others which are in much less
sorry a state than this one! Beside, it is lamentable only in its appearance.
If you go behind the appearance, you become aware that it is not lamentable at
all. It is only one way of seeing.” (Questions
and Answers, CWM, Vol. 5, pp. 374-75)
In Savitri also we have a vivid and elaborate description of this
separation as follows, a powerful description. Let us read it again: (Savitri, pp. 140-41)
In the enigma of the darkened
Vasts,
In the passion and self-loss of the
Infinite
When all was plunged in the
negating Void,
Non-Being's night could never have
been saved
If Being had not plunged into the
dark
Carrying with it its triple mystic
cross.
Invoking in world-time the timeless
truth,
Bliss changed to sorrow, knowledge
made ignorant,
God’s force turned into a child’s
helplessness
Can bring down heaven by their sacrifice.
A contradiction founds the base of
life:
The eternal, the divine Reality
Has faced itself with its own
contraries;
Being became the Void and
Conscious-Force
Nescience and walk of a blind
Energy
And Ecstasy took the figure of
world-pain.
In a mysterious dispensation’s law
A Wisdom that prepares its far-off
ends
Planned so to start her slow aeonic
game.
This is also the Sacrifice of the
Purusha celebrated in the Veda, Purusha-Yajna carried for the purposes of
bringing out a creation.
Sri Aurobindo explains in revealing
details the entire sequence of the original separation as follows: “The
complete separation can take place only when the stage of Inconscience has been
reached and our world of manifold Ignorance arises out of that tenebrous
matrix. These other still conscient stages of the involution are indeed
organisations of Conscious Force in which each lives from his own centre,
follows out his own possibilities, and the predominant principle itself,
whether Mind, Life or Matter, works out things on its own independent basis;
but what is worked out are truths of itself, not illusions or a tangle of truth
and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance. But when by an exclusive concentration
on Force and Form Consciousness-Force seems phenomenally to separate
Consciousness from Force, or when it absorbs Consciousness in a blind sleep
lost in Form and Force, then Consciousness has to struggle back to itself by a
fragmentary evolution which necessitates error and makes falsehood inevitable.
Nevertheless, these things too are not illusions that have sprung out of an
original Non-Existence; they are, we might say, the unavoidable truths of a
world born out of Inconscience. For the Ignorance is still in reality a
knowledge seeking for itself behind the original mask of Inconscience; it
misses and finds; its results, natural and even inevitable on their own line,
are the true consequence of the lapse,—in a way, even, the right working of the
recovery from the lapse. Existence plunging into an apparent Non-Existence,
Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience, Delight of existence into a vast
cosmic insensibility are the first result of the fall and, in the return from
it by a struggling fragmentary experience, the rendering of Consciousness into
the dual terms of truth and falsehood, knowledge and error, of Existence into
the dual terms of life and death, of Delight of existence into the dual terms
of pain and pleasure are the necessary process of the labour of self-discovery.
A pure experience of Truth, Knowledge, Delight, imperishable existence would
here be itself a contradiction of the truth of things. It could only be
otherwise if all beings in the evolution were quiescently responsive to the
psychic elements within them and to the Supermind underlying Nature’s operations;
but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own
possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original
Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be
the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which
they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an
ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to
enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore
the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of
our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed
Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a
masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden
Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently
opposite organization from a dark Infinite.” (The Life Divine, pp. 287-88)
In the marriage of Savitri with
Satyavan, of the Lord and the Spouse on this earth, Narad sees even in this
material Nature the triumph of the very name of Vishnu, the All-Pervasive. In
this song the entire creation flows from a violet-blue rapture to a goldenly deep
rapture, from a nameable felicity to a sweeter felicity of the divine Name. The
melody of the high-rising and down-gushing chant sweeps off the demons. The
dissolution of the dark forces is now a happy joyous end; the beginning of the
New Birth is a certainty. It is the very quality of the rasa of the song, of the creative essence of delight, the
nectar-flow of immortality that sets into motion the powerful undulations in
the inner and outer seas of our mortal existence. The song seems to come from a
very high fount, from some far-off distant-most regions of space, even from far
beyond the dwelling of the heavenly sage. It is indeed the highest and the
truest inspiration that flows in it, carrying in it the charm and sweetness of
the daylike superconscient delight. In that signal moment of the apocalypse,
kindled in the purple blaze of the marriage-fire, is the deathless birth of the
heavenly song; the glory and the wonder take on a beautiful body of adoration
and love. Narad has become their instrument, a subtle and swift vibrating chord
for the as-yet unheard Music of the Miraculous. Through him the silent hymn of
the sky begins to descend in splendid hues and colours. This music has already
become rich and powerful in him, the music wherein the song and the string are
one, one in the name of Vishnu. Narad has completely identified himself with
Matter, in the manner of the Spirit. But while the “dumb Spirit” waits for that
large and luminous music in Matter, Narad’s song has already brought its unborn
echo; its throb is pulsating in the heart of things. The most evident
manifestation of it, as he continues to sing the name of Vishnu, is seen in the
weeping of the demons and their returning into the One from whom they came.
Narad has the knowledge of the things
to come; he knows the purpose and the process of this creation; he has also a
certain swift suggestiveness of an exceptionally fine quality, luminous in
substance, and contents, in which he sings of the highest material song, the
song that foretells of bodies made divine and life made bliss. Not only that;
he has mastery of an occult kind by which the spiritual could be turned into
the material; in fact, that is how he himself stepped through the etheric space
into the solidity of Matter. So too would now his song. Precisely, therefore,
such a heavenly to earthly transition becomes materially very meaningful.
If this has to be decisive then
surely Narad must sing such a song here on the earth. If an “adversary Force
was born of old” (Savitri, p. 447) then
the Man divine must come to Madra and proclaim that it is now time for the
adversary Force either to get dissolved or transformed. The demons would not
have wept with joy if the song had not been sung on the earth. A song in Heaven
is of no earthly consequence. For the same reason, again, it has to be the song
of the Name divine, the song of things in manifestation in the evolutionary
world. Therefore Narad’s coming to the earth is not only imperative, it is also
charged with a far-reaching evolutionary consequence. “A titan’s heart is a sea
of fire and force”, (Savitri, p. 452)
but the power of Narad’s song is such that it brings to that heart the tears of
joy. How marvellous!