Running through Savitri Running through Savitri RY Deshpande First Edition 2 June 2014 ISBN: 978-93-82547-65-5 Published by Savitri Foundation 10, Jorbagh, New Delhi – 110 003 Ph: 011-43001448 E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.savitri.in Preface Sri Aurobindo considered Savitri as his “main work” and out of his precious time allotted every day two and half hours for its composition. This was during the late 1940s when the tempo of work had speeded up considerably, as if it had to be speeded up in that way. In fact he was otherwise engaged with it almost for fifty years though with some long gaps in between. Today we have a poem written in pentametric blank verse form running almost into twenty-four thousand lines. Divided into twelve Books,—as is the Western tradition for an epic,—it has forty-eight Cantos and an Epilogue. Part I consisting of the first twenty-four Cantos was published in September 1950 about twelve weeks before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away; Part II and Part III as a single volume appeared in May 1951. “I used Savitri,” writes Sri Aurobindo in a letter, “as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one’s own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative.” In another letter he writes: “Savitri is the record of a seeing.” Indeed, birth and growth of Savitri the poem as a “flame-child” is a Yogi’s spiritual record of realisations. Its birth is in the Tapas-Shakti of one who is committed to discover the Word that can transform the lot of our mortality, and its growth is in the action that can bring diamond-bright prosperity to it. Therefore Savitri is also named the Sun-Word or the Daughter of Infinity. Running through Savitri vi The Mother sees Savitri as a supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision. She also says that the importance of Savitri is immense; its subject is universal; its revelation is prophetic. But perhaps here is something more than that: “These are experiences lived by him, realities, supracosmic truth. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened, he is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. Savitri is his whole Yoga of Transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.” Savitri is the Yoga of Transformation—that is the entire significance and content, the strength of yogic Savitri. Savitri is the veritable Yoga of Transformation even as it embodies in it experiences of the Master Yogi. Intensely also these are the experiences of the Mother. Not only these are experiences; there are the prophetic possibilities that open out for the very Soul of the Divine, possibilities in this creation in the context of the soul of the earth, of the soul of the mortal. The Mother says: “Savitri is an exact description—not literature, not poetry (although the form is very poetical)—an exact description, step by step, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. ... The realism of it is astounding.” And again: “In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo went through all the worlds, and it so happens that I am following that without knowing it ... I was in that Muddle of Falsehood, it was really painful, and I was tracking it down to the most tenuous vibrations, those that Preface vii go back to the origin, to the moment when Truth could turn into Falsehood—how it all happened—it’s a marvel, but... it’s so sad, so miserable, oh, I could have cried (I don’t easily cry).” Such indeed is she we see in the incarnate Savitri, the “poem of sacred delight”. The true self of Savitri who has taken the mortal birth is the eternal Consciousness and, naturally, it is free, always free. But she has condescended to pass through the portals of the birth that is a constant death, the recurrent death, death in life. Naturally, “when accepting to take a body upon Earth, this true self is covered by so many different layers of consciousness that, unless it takes a very complete resolution to manifest and to overcome all the obstacles, it cannot act freely. Now she was put in front of the expected catastrophe in her life, which externally would put an end to the joy of her existence, and there was only one way to overcome this fatality.” That is the story of Savitri in Savitri. Savitri’s narrative is a mode of presentation of things occult-divine in the human medium. Savitri was put in front of the expected catastrophe in her life and she had to rise to meet the expected catastrophe. She did it. Yes, “All can be done if the god-touch is there.” This is what happens when the god-touch is there. But in the case of Savitri there is something more than the god-touch. Here is God-Force herself who is in full action. For the god-touch to work, to be operative there is the condition, there is the imperative in regard to we small mortals. Sri Aurobindo stipulates it: “There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing,—a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers. But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the Light and the Truth; it will not act in conditions of Falsehood and Ignorance. There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and Running through Savitri viii integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.” That is the kind of yoga-tapasyā human Savitri has to do first. In fact there is the double tapasyā. If the “call from below” is Aswapati carrying the world’s desire to the transcendental Mahāshakti, she ready to grant a boon to him, the supreme answering Grace comes here, she herself to receive the Supreme’s grace for the soul of the earth. She vanquishes Death who all along was standing in the way of the divine manifestation. She does it and cuts a door through the eternal Void to meet that very transfigured Death, the Supreme himself. She cuts the impossible rock-door of the eternal Void to bring here on earth the reign of Krishna-and-Kali in their splendid happy dynamism for this mortal world. In the case of Savitri it is not just the question of god-touch; it is the very God-Force who has to be the vibrant unconquerable executor of the divine Will, a will and work to set things into motion against the antagonistic powers. If she has to hew the pathways of immortality she must first establish that God-Force in her deep soul, she has to first do the qualifying yoga-tapasyā. That is the only way to make the Highest Spirit and its Power intervene directly in order to counteract the laws of Destiny. Hewing the pathways of immortality means for Savitri cutting a door in the intractable eternal Void, to cut and pass through it. Savitri does it by vanquishing Death. The mask of Death the Supreme had put on is now gone and she meets him as the Fourfold Being—Virāt-Hiranyagarbha-Prajnanaghana-Anandamaya; behind this Fourfold Being is indeed the Being of Love, Premamaya Purusha with all sweetness gathered in him. He is one who upholds the seven earths, Sapta-Bhūmī, Bhūmī the ground for endless growth; bhūmī is that which grows, is that which expands, is that which becomes rich and multi-yielding, all in dynamic luminous spiritual sense, in terms of growth of consciousness, in terms of the spirit’s potentials and possibilities. The Master, the Lord of this Bhūmī is Bhūmā, and it is he whom Savitri meets, appropriately Preface ix enough, after entering into the Transcendent via the eternal Void. He stands there behind all, endowing the riches of immortality. From him she receives the Boon for the Soul of the Earth. In it is fulfilment of the mortal creation. It is an accomplishment which marks the beginning of a new creation, of nava samsāra. This Fourfold Being is all grace and glory, is all divinity, he who bears all godheads in his grandiose limbs. He wears the mystery of a nameless Name:—he is Virāt who lights his camp-fires in the suns;—he is Hiranyagarbha, author of thoughts and dreams, he who sees the invisible, and hears the sounds, and builds the secret uncreated worlds;—he is the third spirit, Prajnanaghana, a mass of superconscience closed in light, Creator of things in his all-knowing sleep, and because he is there the Inconscient does its work;—above the three is the brooding bliss of the Infinite, Anandamaya, absolute and alone.