There is a double aspect of biography in Savitri, of the legendary Aswapati and
Savitri, of the spiritual-occult, of Purusha and Shakti, Presence and Power,
Omniscience and Omnipotence, supreme Being and Consciousness-Force, divine Will
and divine Action, of human incarnates as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Why two?
this double aspect? of the divine Will and the divine Action, samkalpa and kārya? It is in intimate as well as functional relationship that it
is present, present to work out a possibility in this mortal world, mŗtyuloka. In it is the aspect of the
Divine’s will-to-be and the Divine’s will-to-become. It is a manifesto for the
Divine’s manifestation.
There is therefore a good justification to divide Savitri in two equal parts, one dealing
with Aswapati, will, samkalpa, and
the other with Savitri, action, kārya.
Thus
· Part I: Aswapati,
24 Cantos, 11 683 lines, 330 pages
· Part II and Part III: Savitri,
25 Cantos, 12 154 lines, 370 pages
The total number of lines in Savitri by the latest count is 23 837.
The first half of Savitri
is essentially presenting the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati, and the second the
shakti-yoga of Savitri. For an epic entitled Savitri, this may look somewhat disproportionate in division, as if
the poet got driven away by that which is not directly in the story-line. But is
it so? Savitri is at once a legend
and a symbol, both together, the legend capitalising on the myth, and the
symbol unfolding the manifesto in the language that holds in it the future. The
legend essentially comes from the narrative as is given in the Mahabharata, it
having the splendid Vedic roots in it. The Vedic roots themselves are symbolic;
it is a revelatory myth belonging to the Vedic cycle. Savitri’s biographical is carrying in it this double aspect, the
legendary and the symbolic.
In the Mahabharata legend we have the yoga-tapasya of
Aswapati described in just 20 ślokas—in
a total of 300. But here in Sri Aurobindo we have almost 12 000 lines. The
focus in the legend is on receiving a boon for conduct of the dhārmic life, based on the law of truth,
satya-dharma. But in Savitri the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati is
to compel the mortal birth of the divine Goddess Savitri, she taking birth in
the context of the New Creation willed by him in the Transcendent. But before
he approaches her and prays for this birth of hers, he has to prepare the
ground to support her birth. He travels through all the fourteen worlds, all
the lokas, through the vast creation,
and leaves his presence there behind him. This Presence of his in the fourteen
worlds, the Avatar’s Presence, becomes her supporting ground, ādhāra-bhūmī, for her work.
The yogic-occult foundation for the action of the
divine Shakti is provided by Aswapati. Without it she cannot work, without it
her work is impossible. This also means that only when this ground, this ādhāra-bhūmī is ready can she be invoked
to take the mortal birth. Seeing it so, she condescends to pass through the
portals of the birth that is a death. Hers is a sacrifice for the divine Cause,
in the divine Will. She takes mortal birth and meets Death, the present Lord of
this mortal creation, this mŗtyuloka.
Projected by the inconscient Void stands Death in
opposition to the divine Will now in action here. That is how Savitri meets
Death. But in the process, after conquering him, she cuts a door through the
Void to enter into the Transcendent. Not the traditional passage through the
door of the sun, sūryasya dwārāh, but
through the door of the nothing, śūnyasya
dwārāh has Savitri opened the new
path. When one passes through this door, no darkness is left behind—because
that itself has now passed into the luminous Void, the Void ready to give rise
to a new manifestation. That is the greatness of Savitri’s victory, a
manifestation where no darkness is present.
After cutting a door through the Void and passing
through it, Savitri meets the Fourfold Being—Virat-Hiranyagarbha-Prajnanaghana-Anandamaya
who is also the Being of Love, Premamaya. He is one who upholds seven earths, sapta-bhūmī. But what is bhūmī? It is ground for growth, it is
that which grows, expands, becomes rich, all in the spiritual sense, in terms
of growth of consciousness and its possibilities. The Master, the Lord of this bhūmī is bhūmā celebrated by the Chhandogya Upanishad. Savitri meets him,
appropriately enough, after entering into the Transcendent via the Void. He
stands there behind all, endowing the riches of immortality. From him she
receives the Boon of Immortality for the Earth. In it is the fulfilment of the
mortal creation. It is a fulfilment which marks the beginning of a new
creation, nava samsāra.
Savitri’s birth was in response to Aswapati’s prayer.
What about Aswapati’s own birth? But that is the birth of the Avatar. He comes
here from age to age, yugé-yugé.
Long ago the Rishis and the Gods and the Sadhyas
performed Purusha-Yajna, the Sacrifice of the Purusha, and in it established
the Fourfold Order of the cosmic working. In response to this Sacrifice, in this
Purusha-Yajna, things got established, the enduring Order in which the great
beings participate. In it is prepared by the Manu of the Age the body of the
Avatar. Here is the beginning of a Manvantara, a New Age which will unfold
itself in the growing dynamism of timeless Eternity.
In Savitri we
have the following description: (p. 398)
Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine,
As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth;
A soul made ready through a thousand years
Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.
Savitri is born. She does Shakti Yoga, establishes in
her soul the Divine Power to conquer Death. The conquest of Death is the
central issue of Savitri. In it is
locked the mystery of this mortal creation, a creation begun in possibilities
of the Inconscience.
There is darkness all around, and the Gods are not
awake yet. They are the ones who carry forward the evolutionary march. The Mind
of Night, the physical’s mind receiving the darkness of the Night, is standing
across the path of that divine Event. This Mind of Night at one stage was
necessary. It came to give form and stability to things that would otherwise
get dissolved in the all-swallowing original Void. But now that Mind of Night
itself is becoming an obstacle. Savitri’s task is to remove it and clear the
way, at the same time assuring that things will not get swallowed by the Void.
Savitri is aware of her divine origin right from the
beginning. She is a greatness that came from our other countries, a spirit of
its celestial source aware. (p. 353) The Mother recounts in her talks what her
own mother had told her, that she had come here to do great work. In another
place she details one of her childhood experiences:
February 22, 1914: When I was a child of about
thirteen, for nearly a year every night as soon as I had gone to bed it seemed
to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then
above the city, very high above. Then I used to see myself clad in a
magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the
robe would stretch, spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of
immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the
sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread
robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their suffering, their
hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one
of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted
or healed, and went back into their bodies happier and stronger than they had
come out of them. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me, nothing could make me
happier; and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless and
without any real life, beside this activity of the night which was the true
life for me. Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left
an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and
encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple
robe, was the personification—as I came to know later—of him who is called the
Man of Sorrows.
Indeed, a power seated deep within her shaped every
aspect of her personality, moulded her senses, her faculties, even as she was
one with her greater Nature. “An invisible sunlight ran within her veins.” (p.
357)
A mind of light, a life of rhythmic force,
A body instinct with hidden divinity
Prepared an image of the coming god.
Many high gods lived here in one beautiful home. She
could already engage herself in doing great heavenly experiments. As a student
she acquired knowledge and skill in all the secular arts and sciences, in thought,
philosophies, logic, grammar, ethics, music, painting, sculpture, crafts,
architecture, number’s laws, the movement of the stars, the theories that
explain the physical world, all the sixty-four branches as did Narad before he
approached Rishi Sanatkumar for the higher knowledge, parā vidyā, the knowledge of the Eternal, Brahma-jnāna. Later Savitri
will be initiated by the divine Shakti herself; she will get instructions
directly from her, she as her willing human portion here to do the divine work,
of removing the obstacle that stands in the way of a divine manifestation upon
earth. That work of hers will mark in this creation the arrival of
Young Savitri is the traveller of eternity who came
here from the immortal spaces to set her conquering feet on Chance and Time.
But in order that that happens she must meet Satyavan and, to be sure, “Love in
the wilderness met Savitri.” But who met whom? Love—met Savitri? or Love
met—Savitri? If her birth is to conquer the enemy, the enemy of Love, it is she
who must meet Love, although in his own fulfilment it is he who should go about
and meet her. Love who is none other than Satyavan is the involutionary
incarnation of the Divine, and it is he who awaits the arrival of the divine
Power to redeem his lot, the lot of ignominy, of the mortal existence.
If we have to count the three poises of the Supreme,
then these are: Satyavan-Death-Aswapati. Savitri has connection with all the
three. As human Savitri she comes as the daughter of Aswapati who has laid the
psycho-spiritual foundation for her occult work; she grows into rich and ripe
maidenhood and meets in the lonely forest her life’s timeless partner,
Satyavan. That sets the high stage for the arrival of the Antagonist, stiff and
dark, born of the fathomless inconscient Void but now embodying itself in the
person of Death, embodying to wrestle with Savitri.
The meeting of Satyavan and Savitri itself is a unique
meeting in which the God of Love as the God of Destiny touched things in time; in
it, without a moment’s delay, all got settled. Savitri was going from place to
place in her long and unknown quest for a life’s partner; similarly Satyavan
chanced to take an unaccustomed road to do his daily work in the remote forest
away from civilisation, the work of collecting fruits, flowers and firewood for
the elderly dwellers in the hermitages. In that fine summer morning Satyavan
and Savitri glanced at each other and at once recognized their timeless
identity. In it at once was ushered in a new epoch, an epoch in the fulfilment
of the avataric work of theirs. The moment Savitri cast her look on Satyavan
her inner vision promptly remembered a forehead that “wore the crown of all her
past”.
Even as the God touched in time in bringing about this
meeting of the ageless lovers, later at every stage Savitri’s Yoga also
received guidance from the supreme Power, from the Mahashakti herself presiding
over her work as the human instrument. The very first instruction she received
was to remember why she had come here: (p. 476)
Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,
In silence seek God's meaning in thy depths,
Then mortal nature change to the divine.
Open God's door, enter into his trance.
Cast Thought from thee, that nimble ape of Light:
In his tremendous hush stilling thy brain
His vast Truth wake within and know and see.
Cast from thee sense that veils thy spirit's sight:
In the enormous emptiness of thy mind
Thou shalt see the Eternal's body in the world,
Know him in every voice heard by thy soul:
In the world's contacts meet his single touch;
All things shall fold thee into his embrace.
Conquer thy heart's throbs, let thy heart beat in God:
Thy nature shall be the engine of his works,
Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:
Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.
Savitri prepares herself occult-yogically to meet
Death, to meet him and win victory over him, to win victory over him and
accomplish the mission of her incarnation.
Human Savitri’s Yoga is entirely guided by the divine
Shakti, her celestial source and foundation, she overseeing her occult-yogic
progress, that she should be able to meet the challenge of the fierce and
formidable Enemy. She enters into the inner countries, she meets her
soul-forces working in the dynamics of the inner nature, she discovers her
soul, she grows one with her divine Soul when there is the rush of the Shakti’s
powers in different centres of her subtle body, she attains formless liberation
in which all that is inconscient is dissolved; her will has now become one with
the will of the Supreme, an identity even in her very physical.
Savitri is now ready to encounter Death, meet him face
to face in the battle of life and death. In the planned or willed death of
Satyavan is fought the occult battle by the two terrible mighty powers, one in
the strength of Falsehood and the other in assertive dynamism of the Truth-Divine.
In the deep forest, in the summer month, at the noon hour Satyavan breathes his
last, collapses in the lap of Savitri. Soon Death appears to pick up his soul.
Savitri follows him, claiming it back from him. He refuses. An occult battle is
fought, and Death is vanquished. Savitri looks on Death even as in his symbol
shape the world’s darkness had consented to Heaven-light. A mighty
transformation comes on Savitri just as the Immortal’s luster lits her face.
She the Incarnate thrusts aside the veil and stands a radiant figure of
Infinity to establish the Divine’s will in the darkness of the world. The
life-force of the Mahashakti enters into her; it fills with her presence and her
power all the centres of her subtle body. Savitri hails victorious Death, the
grandiose Darkness of the Infinite. It is he who made the room in the Void for
all to be. But as a Shade he refuses to admit defeat. But (pp. 667-68)
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.
Her mastering Word commanded every limb…
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…
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…
Afar he fled shunning her dreaded touch
And refuge took in the retreating Night.
Savitri has cut a door into the Void, a door of entry
through the creative Void into the all-sanctioning Transcendental. Not through
the door of the sun, sūryasya dwārāh,
but through the door of the Void, śūnyasya
dwārāh, she enters into the Everlasting Day. Here she meets transformed
Death—the Supreme himself, the boon-giver, poised for a new evolutionary
manifestation. Savitri receives the boon of the life divine upon earth. The
positive confirmation of it is as Satyavan and Savitri return to the earth,
behind them follow
This is the glorious work the Mother was engaged in
after Sri Aurobindo’s purposeful yogic withdrawal on 5 December 1950, the
“Death’s tremendous hour” when the seed for it was triumphantly sown. The
Mother even said that that was what Sri Aurobindo had told her to do. That was the
work he had given to her and it was completed on 29 February 1956 when the
supramental light and force descended in the earth’s subtle-physical. But that
also opened out the divine possibilities which she would attempt in the wake of
this aeonic event. In it began her yoga-tapasya of cellular transformation
first making the body’s cells conscious of the divine Presence in them, it now doing
whatever is to be done in their luminous receptivity. Because of it they
arrived at the wonderful realization: Lord, whatever you shall will in us, and
for us, let that be, only that, and nothing else. Such was the victory that had
been won.
With this brief reflection on the aspect of Savitri in Savitri let us get back to Savitri’s first part describing the
yoga-tapasya of Aswapati. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote to Amal Kiran the
following, in 1946: “Aswapati's Yoga falls into three parts. First, he is
achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the individual and this is
described as the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical
representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession
of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the Second Book:
but this too is as yet only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no
longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation.
That is described in the Book of the Divine Mother.”
This threefold yoga-tapasya of Aswapati can be
summarized as follows: Aswapati is achieving his own spiritual fulfilment as an
individual, Book I Cantos 3-5; 2 416 lines; Aswapati makes the ascent as a
representative of the race in winning all the worlds, Book II Cantos 1-15; 7
101 lines; Aswapati aspires for a universal realization and the establishment
of the New Creation, Book III Cantos 1-4; 1 457 lines. This makes in all 22
cantos and 10 974 lines. The opening two cantos pose the issue, giving focus to
his yoga-tapasya: Canto-1; 341 lines, Canto-2; 367 lines, with a total of 709.
In all thus we have 24 cantos and 11 683 lines in Part I of Savitri.
The three cantos of the first Book deal with the Yoga
of the King:
Canto Three: Psycho-spiritual transformation;
Canto Four: Getting the Secret Knowledge of the
universal Nature;
Canto Five: Greater spiritual transformation.
The soul is released; Aswapati has knowledge of the
working of Purusha and Prakriti, and his spirit is free. Now he is ready to
launch himself on the cosmic exploration, the discovery of the cause of the
world-failure. The way he finds to remove the dark cause is to first establish
a New Creation in the House of the Spirit and then invoke that Power, Shakti,
who will make it manifest in the sequel of the evolutionary process.
The very opening canto describing the Yoga of the King
makes it clear that it is the incarnate Divine who is engaged in the
yoga-tapasya. Nothing can be achieved without it, without yoga-tapasya, be he
man or God or the Avatar, because things have got to be done in the
earth-filed, in the field of Ignorance and Death cut off from the Divine in the
mode of working. The opening passage of the canto in a swiftness of the divine
knowledge straightaway declares that Aswapati’s was a spirit that had come down
upon earth, as the Incarnate, as an Avatar, come down from larger spheres, of
truth-beauty-delight-life-power. He came to do yoga-tapasya in the
earth-consciousness.
His birth held up a symbol and a sign;
He came here to pay God’s debt to earth and man;
His knowledge was a part of the ineffable Light;
He bore the stamp of mighty memories;
His soul lived as eternity’s delegate;
His mind was like a fire assailing heaven;
His will had in the trails of light a hunter’s pursuit.
Such was the Divine’s arrival in human form. He came to
do yoga-tapasya in order to bring down the radiant Power, that she may deal
with the problem of stiff mortality at present governing the soul of the earth;
she alone can remove its affliction, bring the smile of the Divine to it.
Savitri’s mortal birth was compelled by Aswapati, he carrying the world’s
desire to the supreme Goddess. Aswapati’s birth was an aspect of the divine
Incarnation, he coming age after age, yugé-yugé,
to take the evolution to the next higher stage, at present making it open to the
supramental prospects.
In the Puranas Prithvi goes to Mt Sumeru and offers respects to Brahma and other Gods; then she speaks of her plight, overpowered as she was by the Daityas, the Enemies of the Gods. The Gods approach Vishnu, requesting him to incarnate himself and redeem the suffering of the world, of the earth, Prithvi. In response to it Vishnu comes as an Avatar. Sri Aurobindo explains the process of Avatarhood, that the body of the Avatar is prepared by one of the four Manus, catvāro manavah, the spiritual Fathers of every human mind and body.
The Mother reveals about Sri Aurobindo’s coming as
follows:
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the history of the
earth’s spiritual progress is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a mighty
action straight from the Supreme. (15 August 1964)
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the
manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation
but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one
must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to
study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves
for the new manifestation. (30 January 1972)
Right at the beginning of Book I Canto 3 presenting the Yoga of the King and the Soul’s Release, we are told about who Aswapati is, the Incarnate himself who took the mortal birth for the divine work to be carried out in the mortal world, mŗtyuloka, “a thinker and toiler” working here as the Avatar. He is like the divine Agni soaring towards heaven, “a spirit that is a flame of God”, he is like him the Son of Force, sahas sputro agnih. The Veda speaks of the Son of Force as one who has attained massive strength on earth, free from Ignorance one who is supramental in his completeness. When Aswapati meets the divine Shakti on the threshold Mind, she addresses him as the Son of Strength standing at the Eternal’s doors. He comes here, and soon he has the double realization:
A static Oneness and dynamic Power
Descend in him, the integral Godhead's seals;
His soul and body take that splendid stamp…
His soul breaks out to join the Oversoul.
All this happened in the case of Sri Aurobindo much before
his coming to
A pure perception has brought to Aswapati the gifts of the inner senses, behind which is the primary sense, manas. The five elemental states of ether-air-fire-water-earth, Akash-Vayu-Agni-Apas-Prithvi, have also brought the corresponding subtle organs of perception, ear-touch-eye-tongue-nose or shabda-sparsha-rupa-rasa-gandha. From the causal into the subtle physical have now these instruments of cognition entered becoming the part of his physical. And all this happened before the pre-Pondicherry period. The realization had already reached a high Upanishadic peak.
In the wake of the inspired knowledge came also inspiration with her lightning feet, and the inexpressible Truth revealed to him its silent soul. The primordial Nescience is rent even as the closed Beyond bared. Inspiration arrives as a sudden visitor and plunders for man the Unknowable's vast estate. There in her speed rush immortal words to mortal man. In that arrival Aswapati’s voyaging soul meets luminous beings. It was during this period that Sri Aurobindo received knowledge of the Vedic Goddesses, Ila, Mahi, and Saraswati, they “associated together in a constant formula in those hymns of invocation in which the gods are called by Agni to the sacrifice.” To him came the powers of Discernment, Intuition, Inspiration, and Revelation.
In this context let us recall what the Mother has said about those who come fully conscious about their Origin.
For those who have come upon earth fully conscious of their entire being and conscious of their Origin, there is at first a period when this consciousness gets veiled by the physical life and the body-consciousness. It withdraws deep within and waits for the hour when the outer circumstances will make it necessary for that inner self to manifest and to become fully active in the body. And generally, as life is organised, it is some more or less dramatic event that makes this change not only possible but needed.
In the case of an Avatar, because he is compelled to
take birth in a body, there is a veil drawn over his consciousness, a veil
which soon has to disappear. We relate the reclaiming of this consciousness, of
this awareness with the outer circumstances of the Avatar’s life and get
interested in them as his biography. Obviously such cannot be the true picture
of an avataric being. The true picture can be revealed only by him. This is
what Sri Aurobindo has done through Savitri
and it is that which we must study, in which we must live and grow, in it
breathe the spirit of truth and beauty and joy and life’s power. Here in this
small article it will not be possible for us to go into all those details, the
details as we have in Savitri; but
the opening passage we have taken is quite illustrative of this fact. Perhaps
we could add two more specific examples to it.
First let us see the following. In response to his ardent
and strong solicitation Aswapati is receiving an exceptional boon from the
divine Shakti, that she shall take mortal birth to tackle the issue of
mortality in this mortal creation, in this mŗtyuloka.
She shall come here in all her preparedness, she shall bear Wisdom in her
voiceless bosom, and possess the strength as that of a conqueror's sword, its
well-forged lustrous steel destroying all opposition, giving herself entirely
to the divinely inspired will and action. While she shall be such an embodiment
or incarnation of Wisdom and Strength, Jnana and Shakti, with Brāhmateja and
Kshātrateja as her celebrated divine attributes, she as Maheshwari and
Mahakali, the Eternal's bliss shall gaze from her eyes, she lustrous as one who
is full of divine Ananda and Love.
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.
The fructification of the boon is fixed in the tremendous hour already marked
for Death. In the Mahabharata legend it is the hour of Satyavan’s death, the
summer noon, in the ancient Shalwa Woods. But in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri there is a distinct autobiographical
element, death yogically predetermined as a decisive strategic act and event. In
it that tremendous hour is 1.25 am 5 December 1950, much long before the hour
when the cosmic Gods awake. In that tremendous hour what Sri Aurobindo called the
Mind of Light got established in the Mother, the Mind of Light in its operative
dynamism, the physical’s mind receiving directly the supramental Light and
Force. In less than six years following this, on 29 February 1956, the
supramental manifestation took place in the earth’s subtle physical.
In this context let us see another occultly significant
passage in Savitri, which belongs to
the absolutely last three additions Sri Aurobindo had introduced in the second
canto of the Book of Fate, these made around 15 November 1950, just three weeks
before his withdrawal. The relevant text with three added lines is as follows:
He who would save the race must share its pain…
The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt…
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score…
His love has paved the mortal's road to Heaven:
He has given his life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance.
It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed;
His escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right's acknowledgment;
Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour's way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body's death his soul's vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.
The last three lines in this passage were added in one
of the last three dictations. That it was a later addition to the “It is
finished”-description of Christ’s crucifixion can never be made out if we read
the passage without this background, that it is so seamlessly introduced in it.
But when we also see it in the context of the 5 December 1950 event, it at once
assumes a tremendously different connotation. The decision to withdraw was
already taken and that is what we have here: “body’s death” and “triumphs by
his death”. That it refers to Sri Aurobindo and not to Christ is pretty
obvious—in the case of Christ it would have been “His love immortal triumphs by
his death” as against what we have here, “His knowledge immortal triumphs by
his death”. So, it is knowledge that is going to win victory over death. The
victory was won by making the Mind of Light a part of the physical, the
beginning of supramental transformation. In its greatness Sri Aurobindo
“attempted all, achieved all”.
What we have attempted here, but not achieved much, is
possibly just an examination to see in what way we could approach Savitri from a biographical point of
view.