We welcome you to the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles. It was founded in 1953 by Jyotipriya, a direct disciple of Sri Aurobindo and a Sanskrit scholar, with an aim to share and unite the spiritual, cultural and philosophical wisdom of the East and West in the light of the teachings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Spiritual growth leading to the discovery of the soul is the ideal that inspires the activities at the center which include weekly satsangs, collective meditation, Darshan Day programs and hosting of cultural events and visitors from India. We offer a library, a meditation room, sale of books, a gift shop with incense, handicraft and other miscellaneous items for sale.
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The Mother — A Life-sketch
A mediating ray has touched the earth
Bridging the gulf between man's mind and God's;
Translating heaven into a human shape
Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.
Even in her childish movements could be felt
The nearness of a light still kept from earth,
Feelings that only eternity could share,
Thoughts natural and native to the gods.
For even the close partners of her thoughts
Who could have walked the nearest to her ray,
Worshipped the power and light they felt in her
But could not match the measure of her soul. 
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,
Answering with the flower's answer to the sun
They gave themselves to her and asked no more.
A being of wisdom, power and delight,
Even as a mother draws her child to her arms,
Took to her breast Nature and world and soul..
She had come into the mortal body's room
To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.
A joy in the world her master movement here,
The passion of the game lighted her eyes:
To share the suffering of the world I came,
I draw my children's pangs into my breast.
I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;
A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love in her was wider than the universe
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart
Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.
For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world.
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The Central Secret of Sadhana
The secret of spiritual pursuit is to offer all of oneself to the Divine. It is through a sustained consecration that we grow into the image of the Divine. For those drawn to the Integral Yoga it is to the Mother that Sri Aurobindo enjoins us to give ourself. Nirodbaran, in the talk of December 10, 1938 between Sri Aurobindo and his attendants after the accident seventeen days earlier, said to him: "The Mother's coming must have greatly helped you in your work and in your sadhana." Sri Aurobindo answered enthusiastically: "Of course, of course. All my realisations — Nirvana and others — would have remained theoretical, as it were, so far as the outer world was concerned. It is the Mother who showed the way to a practical form. Without her no organised manifestation would have been possible. She has been doing this kind of work from her very childhood." No wonder that at the end of a letter to Basu Sri Aurobindo added: "One of the two great steps in this yoga is to take refuge in the Mother" — the other great step being, as Sri Aurobindo afterwards clarified to Nirodbaran: "Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life."
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The Mother
"Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there."- Mother
The Mother was born in Paris on Thurs Feb 21, 1878 at 10.45 am. At the early age of 5 she used to sit quiet in a tiny upholstered armchair specially made for her, and as she meditated she would experience the descent of a great brilliant Light upon her head producing a turmoil inside her brain. She had the feeling that the Light was continually growing, and she wished it would possess her completely. Her propensity to such sessions of solitariness, her moods of taut intensity and edged concern, were a source of worry and anxiety to her rationalist mother. Once, while Mathilde was scolding her, young Mirra suddenly "felt all the human misery and all this human falsehood" and tears welled out of her eyes. When Mathilde asked the reason, Mirra calmly replied that her tears were because of the world's miseries, for she indeed felt their weight pressing upon her.
On Thought, Self-observation, Reflection
A dispassionate study of oneself is an indispensable step towards self-knowledge. Know thyself the ancients enjoined. Yoga is essentially a psychological practice. We reproduce below a talk by the Mother on the subject of Thought and self-observation.
"Since we want to learn to think better in order to live better, since we want to know how to think in order to recover our place and status in life as feminine counterparts and to become in fact the helpful, inspiring and balancing elements that we are potentially, it seems indispensable to me that we should first of all enquire into what thought is.
Thought...It is a very vast subject, the vastest of all, perhaps...Therefore I do not intend to tell you exactly and completely what it is. But by a process of analysis, we shall try to form as precise an idea of it as it is possible for us to do.
"Since we want to learn to think better in order to live better, since we want to know how to think in order to recover our place and status in life as feminine counterparts and to become in fact the helpful, inspiring and balancing elements that we are potentially, it seems indispensable to me that we should first of all enquire into what thought is.
Thought...It is a very vast subject, the vastest of all, perhaps...Therefore I do not intend to tell you exactly and completely what it is. But by a process of analysis, we shall try to form as precise an idea of it as it is possible for us to do.
It seems to me that we must first of all distinguish two very different kinds, or I might say qualities, of thought: thoughts in us which are the result, the fruit, as it were, of our sensations, and thoughts which, like living beings, come to us – from where?... most often we do not know – thoughts that we perceive mentally before they express themselves in our outer being as sensations.
If you have observed yourselves even a little, you must have noticed that the contact with what is not yourselves is established first of all through the medium of your senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, etc. The impact felt in this way, whether slight or violent, pleasant or unpleasant, arouses a feeling in you – like or dislike, attraction or repulsion – which very quickly turns into an idea, an opinion you form about the object, whatever it may be, that has determined the contact.
An example: you go out and as you step out of your house you see that it is raining and at the same time you feel the damp cold seizing you; the sensation is unpleasant, you feel a dislike for the rain and inwardly, almost mechanically, you say to yourself, “This rain is really a nuisance, especially as I have to go out! Not to mention that I am going to get dreadfully dirty; Paris is very dirty in rainy weather, especially now that all the streets have been dug up” (and so on)...
All these and many other similar thoughts about the simple fact that it is raining come to assail your mind; and if nothing else, outwardly or inwardly, comes to attract your attention, for a long while, almost without your noticing it, your brain may produce minute, trivial thoughts about this small, insignificant sensation...
This is how most human lives are spent; this is what human beings most often call thinking ─ a mental activity that is almost mechanical, unreflecting, out of our control, a reflex. All thoughts concerning material life and its many needs are of the same quality.
Here we face the first difficulty to be overcome; if we want to be able to truly think, that is, to receive, formulate and form valid and viable thoughts, we must first of all empty our brain of all this vague and unruly mental agitation. And this is certainly not the easiest part of our task. We are dominated by this irrational cerebral activity, we do not dominate it.
Only one method is worth recommending: meditation. But as I was telling you last time, there are many ways of meditating; some are very effective, others less so.
Each one should find his own by successive trial and error. However, one thing can be recommended to everyone: reflection, that is to say, concentration, self-observation in solitude and silence, a close and strict analysis of the multitude of insignificant little thoughts which constantly assail us.
During the few moments you devote each day to this preliminary exercise of meditation, avoid, if possible, the complacent contemplation of your sensations, your feelings, your states of mind.
We all have an inexhaustible fund of self-indulgence, and very often we treat all these little inner movements with the greatest respect and give them an importance which they certainly do not have, even relative to our own evolution.
When one has enough self-control to be able to analyse coldly, to dissect these states of mind, to strip them of their brilliant or painful appearance, so as to perceive them as they are in all their childish insignificance, then one can profitably devote oneself to studying them. But this result can only be achieved gradually, after much reflection in a spirit of complete impartiality. I would like to make a short digression here to put you on your guard against a frequent confusion.
I have just said that we always look upon ourselves with great indulgence, and I think in fact that our defects very often appear to us to be full of charm and that we justify all our weaknesses. But to tell the truth, this is because we lack self-confidence. Does this surprise you?.. Yes, I repeat, we lack confidence, not in what we are at the present moment, not in our ephemeral and ever-changing outer being – this being always finds favour in our eyes – but we lack confidence in what we can become through effort, we have no faith in the integral and profound transformation which will be the work of our true self, of the eternal, the divine who is in all beings, if we surrender like children to its supremely luminous and far-seeing guidance. So let us not confuse complacency with confidence – and let us return to our subject.
When you are able by methodical and repeated effort to objectivise and keep at a distance all this flood of incoherent thoughts which assail us, you will notice a new phenomenon.
You will observe within yourself certain thoughts that are stronger and more tenacious than others, thoughts concerning social usages, customs, moral rules and even general laws that govern earth and man. They are your opinions on these subjects or at least those you profess and by which you try to act.
Look at one of these ideas, the one most familiar to you, look at it very carefully, concentrate, reflect in all sincerity, if possible leaving aside all bias, and ask yourself why you have this opinion on that subject rather than any other. The answer will almost invariably be the same, or nearly: Because it is the opinion prevalent in your environment, because it is considered good form to have it and therefore saves you from as many clashes, frictions, criticisms as possible. Or because this was the opinion of your father or mother, the opinion which moulded your childhood.
Or else because this opinion is the normal outcome of the education, religious or otherwise, you received in your youth. This thought is not your own thought.
For, to be your own thought, it would have to form part of a logical synthesis you had elaborated in the course of your existence, either by observation, experience and deduction, or by deep, abstract meditation and contemplation. This, then, is our second discovery.
Since we have goodwill and endeavour to be integrally sincere, that is, to make our actions conform to our thoughts, we are now convinced that we act according to mental laws we receive from outside, not after having maturely considered and analysed them, not by deliberately and consciously receiving them, but because unconsciously we are subjected to them through atavism, by our upbringing and education, and above all because we are dominated by a collective suggestion which is so powerful, so overwhelming, that very few succeed in avoiding it altogether. How far we are from the mental individuality we want to acquire!
We are products determined by all our past history, impelled by the blind and arbitrary will of our contemporaries.
It is a pitiful sight...But let us not be disheartened; the greater the ailment and the more pressing the remedy, the more energetically we must fight back. The method will always be the same: to reflect and reflect and reflect. We must take these ideas one after another and analyse them by appealing to all our common sense, all our reason, our highest sense of equity; we must weigh them in the balance of our acquired knowledge and accumulated experience, and then endeavour to reconcile them with one another, to establish harmony among them. It will often prove very difficult, for we have a regrettable tendency to let the most contradictory ideas dwell side by side in our minds.
We must put all of them in place, bring order into our inner chamber, and we must do this each day just as we tidy the rooms of our house. For I suppose that our mentality deserves at least as much care as our house. But, once again, for this work to be truly effective, we must strive to maintain in ourselves our highest, quietest, most sincere state of mind so as to make it our own.
Let us be transparent so that the light within us may fully illumine the thoughts we want to observe, analyse, classify. Let us be impartial and courageous so as to rise above our own little preferences and petty personal conveniences. Let us look at the thoughts in themselves, for themselves, without bias.
And little by little, if we persevere in our work of classification, we shall see order and light take up their abode in our minds. But we should never forget that this order is but confusion compared with the order that we must realise in the future, that this light is but darkness compared with the light that we shall be able to receive after some time.
Life is in perpetual evolution; if we want to have a living mentality, we must progress unceasingly.
Moreover, this is only a preliminary work. We are still very far from true thought, which brings us into relation with the infinite source of knowledge.
These are only exercises for training ourselves gradually to an individualising control of our thoughts. For control of the mental activity is indispensable to one who wants to meditate.
I cannot speak to you in detail today about meditation; I only say that in order to be genuine, to serve its full purpose, meditation must be disinterested, impersonal in the integral sense of the word. "
[To be continued]
A Brief Sketch of Sri Aurobindo’s Life — RY Deshpande
While commenting upon an early biographer’s attempt to present his life Sri Aurobindo, in the course of a conversation with his attendant-disciples, once remarked as follows: “Nobody except myself can write my life—because it has not been on the surface for man to see.” Yet we should be concerned with a few worldly facts from a certain point of view. And the strange thing is that, for a discerning eye, these facts also bring an intuitive vision which can provide a distant bio-spiritual peep into the secrecies of the person whom we so much adore. No wonder, philosophers have described him as the greatest synthesis between the East and the West; critics have acclaimed him as a poet par excellence; social scientists regard him as the builder of a new society based on enduring values of the life of the spirit; devotees throng in mute veneration offering their heart and their soul in a silent prayer that can secure for them the beatitude of the Supreme; Yogins long to live in the sunlight of his splendour to kindle in it their own suns; in the tranquil benignity of his spiritual presence is the fulfilment of all our hopes and all our keenest and noblest aspirations; gods of light and truth and joy and beauty and sweetness are busy in their tasks to carry out his will in the creation; in him the avataric incarnation becomes man to realize the divine in man. Such is the real birth of the Immortal in the Mortal. He comes here as Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo was the third son of Swarnalata and Dr Krishna Dhan Ghose and was born on 15 August 1872 in the early hours of that Thursday in the aristocratic area of Calcutta. At home he was brought up in a highly Anglicised atmosphere, to the extent that he did not know even his mother tongue, Bengali. His father intended to bring up his children in perfect style and manner of the English society, adopting its ways of life and thinking. Hence the five-year old Auro was put in Loreto Convent School in Darjeeling which was otherwise exclusively meant for the English children. In 1879, at the age of seven he, along with his brothers, was taken to England where he mostly stayed with an English family. In September 1884 Auro was admitted to St. Paul’s School in London and there had his education until July 1890. Later, in October of the same year, he joined King’s College at Cambridge. He also passed the Indian Civil Services examination, but did not take the compulsory horse-riding test.
Never during the entire period did young Sri Aurobindo come in contact with the traditional Indian life or manners or culture. At the same time he “never was taught English as a separate subject but picked it up like a native in daily conversation. Before long he was spending much of his time reading. Almost from the start, he devoted himself to serious literature. As a ten-year-old he read the King James Bible.” Soon the attentive and wakeful student mastered half a dozen European languages, including Greek and Latin in which he scored highest marks ever obtained in a school examination. Not only languages, which as if he seems to have just remembered; he knew thoroughly and intimately the literature and culture that for centuries dominated European life and history. These Western classical themes later found great expression in his poetic writings, for example, in Perseus the Deliverer as a play and Ilion as an epic in Homeric quantitative hexameter based on the naturalness of temperament of the English language. Here it may be mentioned, en passant, that Sri Aurobindo wrote that play, with a Grecian theme, during his most hectic political activities in Bengal. It was published in 1907 in the weekly Bande Mataram.
After his return to India, in 1893, Sri Aurobindo straightaway joined the state services of Baroda, accepting the invitation of Sayajirao Gaekawar. But, and more importantly, he plunged into the mainstream of Indian life and literature, even as he learnt several native languages, including classical Sanskrit. Not only did he study the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, works of Kalidasa and other authors in the original; he also mastered Vedic, Upanishadic and quite a few scriptural writings, to the extent that he wrote extensively on these subjects and on issues concerned with them. In fact, we see on all that he took the indelible mark of an intuitive thinker, luminously disclosing their deeper and truer sense. He offered very independent and penetrating interpretations in the spirit in which these were actually revealed. While we witness in them both the robust pragmatism and subtlety of the modern mind, perhaps we more pertinently recognise the seer who rather visibly stands behind them. Sri Aurobindo by now acquired the foundational basis to give expression to his own creative talents in the wide and incandescent range of universality, very characteristic of an authentic Indian personality. Knowledge flowed with the spontaneity of a crystalline stream, as if it suddenly took birth in some perennial mountain-source of the hoary Wisdom. This wide-ranging and, at the same time, intensive Abhyasa Yoga of Sri Aurobindo prepared a thorough and strong base for his missioned task which he would soon pick up as a part of his commitment.
During this period Sri Aurobindo was drawn more and more into the rushing current of the national life. Nay, he gave to it another direction, even as he gave to his own life by plunging into the thick of the active political life. Presently, he left that secure life of the princely Baroda State and went to Calcutta accepting all the hardships entailed in it. The immediate provocation was the ill-conceived partition of Bengal in 1905. There he initiated a comprehensive programme of building a nation founded on its sounder values, on its ancient wisdom and culture. In it was born Indian nationalism, in the nourishing soil of its rich and gleaming past, firmly established in its worthy tradition, with its own natural disposition and governing character, its innate swabhāva and swadharma. True nationalism for Sri Aurobindo was Sanatana Dharma itself, the eternal religion based on spiritual knowledge and experience. He saw that, in it alone grow the values that acquire merit in every respect, worldly and otherwise. To it he now dedicated himself completely. In a letter written to his wife Mrinalini, in 1905, he states the following:
I have three madnesses. The first is this. I firmly believe that the accomplishment, talent, education and means that God has given me, are all His. Whatever is essential and needed for the maintenance of the family has alone a claim upon me; the rest must be returned to God… The second madness which has recently seized hold of me is: I must somehow see God… If He exists there must be ways to perceive His presence, to meet Him. However arduous the way, I am determined to follow that path. In one month I have felt that the Hindu religion has not told lies—the signs and hints it has given have become a part of my experience… My third madness is that other people look upon the country as an inert piece of matter, a stretch of fields and meadows, forests and rivers. To me She is the Mother. I adore Her, worship Her. What will the son do when he sees a Rakshasa sitting on the breast of his mother and sucking her blood? Will he quietly have his meal or will he rush to deliver his mother from that grasp? I know I have the strength to redeem this fallen race. It is not physical strength, it is the strength of knowledge… This feeling is not new, I was born with it and it is in my marrow. God has sent me to this world to accomplish this great mission.
In this dynamic pursuit and accepting its dangers without a second thought he, as the Mother would say later, attempted all and achieved all. In the words of Nagendrakumar Guharay, Sri Aurobindo was always fearless, abhi, and nothing deterred him from action. He spoke with God-given courage and acted totally unmindful of the consequences that would follow in the sequel of the missioned task. Freedom as birthright was proclaimed when it was considered as a crime and war waged against the rulers of the time. He was charged for seditious activities and incarcerated for one year from 5 May 1908. But during this period a new and glorious transformation came upon him. “That one year in Alipore jail was perhaps the most eventful for his future. The nationalist and political leader was now changed wholly into a mystic and a yogi.” Another world of astounding dimension opened out in front of Sri Aurobindo. A mighty hand was all the while guiding him, perhaps even without his knowledge.
Barrister C. R. Das triumphantly defended Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case and, in his concluding argument, made an inspired appeal in the following words: “My appeal to you therefore is that a man like this who is being charged with the offences imputed to him stands not only before the bar in this Court but stands before the bar of the High Court of History. And my appeal to you is this: That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands.” Prophetic words, indeed! We may say that this marks the completion of Sri Aurobindo’s Jivan Yoga.
After his acquittal on 6 May 1909 Sri Aurobindo addressed a large gathering at Uttarpara: “When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of a million men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence.” He felt a deep concern for the country no doubt, but there was never an element of worry in him; he had the certitude that someone else had definitely taken the reins in his hands to guide the career and speed of events. In the course of the speech he gave a hint of what he had experienced in the jail. He was given the central truth of the Hindu religion and he knew that in it alone is the destiny of the nation, as if marked out for the fulfilment of a higher purpose. Personally, he had the experience of being surrounded by Vasudeva from all the sides. He looked here and there over the place with a new experience. “It was not the Magistrate whom I saw,” he says, “it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled.” All is Vasudeva, vāsudeva sarvam iti, became the basis for everything in life.
A new chapter had opened and soon Sri Aurobindo was to find his cave of Tapasya in the South. There he was to carry out the task given to him as a Divine Command. With it Diksha Yoga stepped into the luminous Jnana Yoga of the Protagonist.
A great work waited for him and for it he spared no effort. In a letter dated 12 July 1911, a little after one year of his coming to Pondicherry, he tells us what he was busy with.
I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane… What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness… It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work severe and painful. It is only now that the edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.
The One who had kept him busy in the severe and painful work also arranged in 1914 for a collaborator in the Mother. In that glorious joint venture first began the announcement of the divine Agenda in the nature of a monthly, the Arya. It ran into some five thousand pages for seventy-eight months and carried the knowledge and power of realisation by which the lower could reach the higher, in as much as the higher manifest in the lower. The Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, Vedic and Upanishadic revelations, the nature of future Poetry, Social, Political and National themes—all these writings which he received in a silent mind brought a new vision and a possible new mode of collective life. Global in their outlook, they encompassed in their fold the worlds of men and gods and higher beings preparing themselves to participate in the terrestrial possibilities in the greatness of the triple Spirit itself. Obviously such an outcome is not conceivable in the analytical or linear method of our thinking. A new source of creativity was discovered, an infallible creativity that has its own power of expression and effectuation. Indeed, what we have in the Arya “was composed in the organ mode of Sri Aurobindo’s English.” There is no doubt that while it endures, it also attains what it attempts. His yogic power is present in the Word.
Not long after his coming to Pondicherry in 1910 Mme Alexandra David-Néel, who acquainted herself deeply with Tibetan occultism, met Sri Aurobindo in 1912. About her meeting with him she reports: “His perfect familiarity with the philosophies of India and the West wasn’t what drew my attention: what was of greater importance to me was the special magnetism that flew out of his presence, and the occult hold he had over those who surrounded him.” A glimpse of that special magnetism, which grew more and more luminous as his Yoga progressed, we may get from his diary records of the period between 1912-1920. Meticulous as a scientist’s were his observations of the various spiritual siddhis or realisations achieved by him. These constitute a unique record in the entire annals of spirituality. About these documents collectively called Record of Yoga, the compiler writes as follows: “This document is noteworthy in at least three respects… It provides a first-hand account of the day-to-day growth of the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogin… The language of Record of Yoga is bare, unliterary, often couched in arcane terminology… What it provides is a down-to-earth account of a multitude of events, great and small, inner and outer… It may be looked on as the laboratory notebook of an extended series of experiments in yoga.” The intent must have been to fix what was experienced, fixed in the occult way in the working of the yogic process.
In the yogic parlance we may say that this was the period when Sri Aurobindo’s attempts were towards supramentalisation of the mental planes that presently govern our limited evolutionary consciousness. There was soon to follow the supramentalisation of the vital. The last significant stage of the great triple transformation was to be preceded in 1926 by what Sri Aurobindo called over-mentalisation of the physical. But ahead of this Siddhi Yoga we also have two remarkable poetic creations of the Master-Poet.
Sri Aurobindo had started writing his epic Ilion while in Alipore jail; he took it up again and worked upon it during the early period at Pondicherry. This was lightly revised by dictation in the late 40s. Then, during 1916-1918, in the midst of his multidimensional Arya-scripting, Sri Aurobindo also made a preliminary draft of his magnum opus Savitri. Eventually it “became a poetic chronicle of his yoga.” We have similarly the record of his later Yogic realisations in his poetic compositions of the 30s. But what stands out as the double autobiography, his and the Mother’s spiritual realisations in the transformative Yoga of the earth-consciousness, is his supreme creation—in the Mother’s phrase, supreme revelation—Savitri. That indeed marks Divya Yoga of the Supreme himself.
Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950, Tuesday at 1.26 a.m. In crimson-gold splendour it lay there for 111 hours before it was put in the Samadhi. The Mother’s prayer expresses the gratitude for all that he had done in triumphantly accomplishing the divine task. “To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.”
About the significance of this event the Mother said later: “He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond” our grasp. As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body the Mind of Light as the leader of the intermediate race, prior to the arrival of the gnostic being, got realised in the Mother. It was only by “consciously experiencing and transforming death” that the divine pace could be hastened in the earth consciousness. It was an occult imperative, an aspect of yogic action itself. The result was the manifestation of Supermind in the earth’s subtle-physical on 29 February 1956. Thus in a bid to get things done in a most definitive way Sri Aurobindo left his body and completed the supreme or Param Yoga.
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Sri Aurobindo was the third son of Swarnalata and Dr Krishna Dhan Ghose and was born on 15 August 1872 in the early hours of that Thursday in the aristocratic area of Calcutta. At home he was brought up in a highly Anglicised atmosphere, to the extent that he did not know even his mother tongue, Bengali. His father intended to bring up his children in perfect style and manner of the English society, adopting its ways of life and thinking. Hence the five-year old Auro was put in Loreto Convent School in Darjeeling which was otherwise exclusively meant for the English children. In 1879, at the age of seven he, along with his brothers, was taken to England where he mostly stayed with an English family. In September 1884 Auro was admitted to St. Paul’s School in London and there had his education until July 1890. Later, in October of the same year, he joined King’s College at Cambridge. He also passed the Indian Civil Services examination, but did not take the compulsory horse-riding test.
Never during the entire period did young Sri Aurobindo come in contact with the traditional Indian life or manners or culture. At the same time he “never was taught English as a separate subject but picked it up like a native in daily conversation. Before long he was spending much of his time reading. Almost from the start, he devoted himself to serious literature. As a ten-year-old he read the King James Bible.” Soon the attentive and wakeful student mastered half a dozen European languages, including Greek and Latin in which he scored highest marks ever obtained in a school examination. Not only languages, which as if he seems to have just remembered; he knew thoroughly and intimately the literature and culture that for centuries dominated European life and history. These Western classical themes later found great expression in his poetic writings, for example, in Perseus the Deliverer as a play and Ilion as an epic in Homeric quantitative hexameter based on the naturalness of temperament of the English language. Here it may be mentioned, en passant, that Sri Aurobindo wrote that play, with a Grecian theme, during his most hectic political activities in Bengal. It was published in 1907 in the weekly Bande Mataram.
After his return to India, in 1893, Sri Aurobindo straightaway joined the state services of Baroda, accepting the invitation of Sayajirao Gaekawar. But, and more importantly, he plunged into the mainstream of Indian life and literature, even as he learnt several native languages, including classical Sanskrit. Not only did he study the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, works of Kalidasa and other authors in the original; he also mastered Vedic, Upanishadic and quite a few scriptural writings, to the extent that he wrote extensively on these subjects and on issues concerned with them. In fact, we see on all that he took the indelible mark of an intuitive thinker, luminously disclosing their deeper and truer sense. He offered very independent and penetrating interpretations in the spirit in which these were actually revealed. While we witness in them both the robust pragmatism and subtlety of the modern mind, perhaps we more pertinently recognise the seer who rather visibly stands behind them. Sri Aurobindo by now acquired the foundational basis to give expression to his own creative talents in the wide and incandescent range of universality, very characteristic of an authentic Indian personality. Knowledge flowed with the spontaneity of a crystalline stream, as if it suddenly took birth in some perennial mountain-source of the hoary Wisdom. This wide-ranging and, at the same time, intensive Abhyasa Yoga of Sri Aurobindo prepared a thorough and strong base for his missioned task which he would soon pick up as a part of his commitment.
During this period Sri Aurobindo was drawn more and more into the rushing current of the national life. Nay, he gave to it another direction, even as he gave to his own life by plunging into the thick of the active political life. Presently, he left that secure life of the princely Baroda State and went to Calcutta accepting all the hardships entailed in it. The immediate provocation was the ill-conceived partition of Bengal in 1905. There he initiated a comprehensive programme of building a nation founded on its sounder values, on its ancient wisdom and culture. In it was born Indian nationalism, in the nourishing soil of its rich and gleaming past, firmly established in its worthy tradition, with its own natural disposition and governing character, its innate swabhāva and swadharma. True nationalism for Sri Aurobindo was Sanatana Dharma itself, the eternal religion based on spiritual knowledge and experience. He saw that, in it alone grow the values that acquire merit in every respect, worldly and otherwise. To it he now dedicated himself completely. In a letter written to his wife Mrinalini, in 1905, he states the following:
I have three madnesses. The first is this. I firmly believe that the accomplishment, talent, education and means that God has given me, are all His. Whatever is essential and needed for the maintenance of the family has alone a claim upon me; the rest must be returned to God… The second madness which has recently seized hold of me is: I must somehow see God… If He exists there must be ways to perceive His presence, to meet Him. However arduous the way, I am determined to follow that path. In one month I have felt that the Hindu religion has not told lies—the signs and hints it has given have become a part of my experience… My third madness is that other people look upon the country as an inert piece of matter, a stretch of fields and meadows, forests and rivers. To me She is the Mother. I adore Her, worship Her. What will the son do when he sees a Rakshasa sitting on the breast of his mother and sucking her blood? Will he quietly have his meal or will he rush to deliver his mother from that grasp? I know I have the strength to redeem this fallen race. It is not physical strength, it is the strength of knowledge… This feeling is not new, I was born with it and it is in my marrow. God has sent me to this world to accomplish this great mission.
In this dynamic pursuit and accepting its dangers without a second thought he, as the Mother would say later, attempted all and achieved all. In the words of Nagendrakumar Guharay, Sri Aurobindo was always fearless, abhi, and nothing deterred him from action. He spoke with God-given courage and acted totally unmindful of the consequences that would follow in the sequel of the missioned task. Freedom as birthright was proclaimed when it was considered as a crime and war waged against the rulers of the time. He was charged for seditious activities and incarcerated for one year from 5 May 1908. But during this period a new and glorious transformation came upon him. “That one year in Alipore jail was perhaps the most eventful for his future. The nationalist and political leader was now changed wholly into a mystic and a yogi.” Another world of astounding dimension opened out in front of Sri Aurobindo. A mighty hand was all the while guiding him, perhaps even without his knowledge.
Barrister C. R. Das triumphantly defended Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case and, in his concluding argument, made an inspired appeal in the following words: “My appeal to you therefore is that a man like this who is being charged with the offences imputed to him stands not only before the bar in this Court but stands before the bar of the High Court of History. And my appeal to you is this: That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands.” Prophetic words, indeed! We may say that this marks the completion of Sri Aurobindo’s Jivan Yoga.
After his acquittal on 6 May 1909 Sri Aurobindo addressed a large gathering at Uttarpara: “When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of a million men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence.” He felt a deep concern for the country no doubt, but there was never an element of worry in him; he had the certitude that someone else had definitely taken the reins in his hands to guide the career and speed of events. In the course of the speech he gave a hint of what he had experienced in the jail. He was given the central truth of the Hindu religion and he knew that in it alone is the destiny of the nation, as if marked out for the fulfilment of a higher purpose. Personally, he had the experience of being surrounded by Vasudeva from all the sides. He looked here and there over the place with a new experience. “It was not the Magistrate whom I saw,” he says, “it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled.” All is Vasudeva, vāsudeva sarvam iti, became the basis for everything in life.
A new chapter had opened and soon Sri Aurobindo was to find his cave of Tapasya in the South. There he was to carry out the task given to him as a Divine Command. With it Diksha Yoga stepped into the luminous Jnana Yoga of the Protagonist.
A great work waited for him and for it he spared no effort. In a letter dated 12 July 1911, a little after one year of his coming to Pondicherry, he tells us what he was busy with.
I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane… What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness… It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work severe and painful. It is only now that the edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.
The One who had kept him busy in the severe and painful work also arranged in 1914 for a collaborator in the Mother. In that glorious joint venture first began the announcement of the divine Agenda in the nature of a monthly, the Arya. It ran into some five thousand pages for seventy-eight months and carried the knowledge and power of realisation by which the lower could reach the higher, in as much as the higher manifest in the lower. The Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, Vedic and Upanishadic revelations, the nature of future Poetry, Social, Political and National themes—all these writings which he received in a silent mind brought a new vision and a possible new mode of collective life. Global in their outlook, they encompassed in their fold the worlds of men and gods and higher beings preparing themselves to participate in the terrestrial possibilities in the greatness of the triple Spirit itself. Obviously such an outcome is not conceivable in the analytical or linear method of our thinking. A new source of creativity was discovered, an infallible creativity that has its own power of expression and effectuation. Indeed, what we have in the Arya “was composed in the organ mode of Sri Aurobindo’s English.” There is no doubt that while it endures, it also attains what it attempts. His yogic power is present in the Word.
Not long after his coming to Pondicherry in 1910 Mme Alexandra David-Néel, who acquainted herself deeply with Tibetan occultism, met Sri Aurobindo in 1912. About her meeting with him she reports: “His perfect familiarity with the philosophies of India and the West wasn’t what drew my attention: what was of greater importance to me was the special magnetism that flew out of his presence, and the occult hold he had over those who surrounded him.” A glimpse of that special magnetism, which grew more and more luminous as his Yoga progressed, we may get from his diary records of the period between 1912-1920. Meticulous as a scientist’s were his observations of the various spiritual siddhis or realisations achieved by him. These constitute a unique record in the entire annals of spirituality. About these documents collectively called Record of Yoga, the compiler writes as follows: “This document is noteworthy in at least three respects… It provides a first-hand account of the day-to-day growth of the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogin… The language of Record of Yoga is bare, unliterary, often couched in arcane terminology… What it provides is a down-to-earth account of a multitude of events, great and small, inner and outer… It may be looked on as the laboratory notebook of an extended series of experiments in yoga.” The intent must have been to fix what was experienced, fixed in the occult way in the working of the yogic process.
In the yogic parlance we may say that this was the period when Sri Aurobindo’s attempts were towards supramentalisation of the mental planes that presently govern our limited evolutionary consciousness. There was soon to follow the supramentalisation of the vital. The last significant stage of the great triple transformation was to be preceded in 1926 by what Sri Aurobindo called over-mentalisation of the physical. But ahead of this Siddhi Yoga we also have two remarkable poetic creations of the Master-Poet.
Sri Aurobindo had started writing his epic Ilion while in Alipore jail; he took it up again and worked upon it during the early period at Pondicherry. This was lightly revised by dictation in the late 40s. Then, during 1916-1918, in the midst of his multidimensional Arya-scripting, Sri Aurobindo also made a preliminary draft of his magnum opus Savitri. Eventually it “became a poetic chronicle of his yoga.” We have similarly the record of his later Yogic realisations in his poetic compositions of the 30s. But what stands out as the double autobiography, his and the Mother’s spiritual realisations in the transformative Yoga of the earth-consciousness, is his supreme creation—in the Mother’s phrase, supreme revelation—Savitri. That indeed marks Divya Yoga of the Supreme himself.
Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950, Tuesday at 1.26 a.m. In crimson-gold splendour it lay there for 111 hours before it was put in the Samadhi. The Mother’s prayer expresses the gratitude for all that he had done in triumphantly accomplishing the divine task. “To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.”
About the significance of this event the Mother said later: “He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond” our grasp. As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body the Mind of Light as the leader of the intermediate race, prior to the arrival of the gnostic being, got realised in the Mother. It was only by “consciously experiencing and transforming death” that the divine pace could be hastened in the earth consciousness. It was an occult imperative, an aspect of yogic action itself. The result was the manifestation of Supermind in the earth’s subtle-physical on 29 February 1956. Thus in a bid to get things done in a most definitive way Sri Aurobindo left his body and completed the supreme or Param Yoga.
Savitri: The Legend and departures made by Sri Aurobindo — RY Deshpande
Introduction
The story of Savitri is an ancient story. Perhaps it belongs to the early Vedic times. Perhaps it may go back even to a yet deeper past. It is both myth and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale the story has several connotations and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite suggestive of the issue involved in this mortal creation, mrityuloka, the creation to which we belong. The issue is of divine manifestation in an evolutionary way, evolution that has its beginning in Inconscience.
Ours is not a typal world. A typal world is a world of fixed forms and possibilities,-- as is, for instance, the world of the gods. The world of the great gods, the Overmind world, is no doubt splendid; but it stays as it is, is tied to its own kind. From it no other aspects of the multifold Transcendent can emerge, no change or progress is possible in it. In fact, if the gods should wish to get out of it and go to higher worlds, make progress, they must be willing and prepared to be born in the mortal world. In that sense this world of ours, this earth, is unique; it is a place where progress is continuous and interminable. The story of Savitri has such an occult basis as its background and therefore it distinctly foresees the prospects of enlarging consciousness in the splendour of love, beauty, joy, knowledge, power, sweetness, harmony, the creative working of the Truth-Idea in the richly effulgent and ever-growing dimensions of the Infinite. Though not expressly stated so, the suggestions in the story are unmistakable. There is a long spiritual tradition which carries in its experience the esoteric sense purported by the story. That it has occult-mystical bearings is pretty obvious from its very tone. Actually this implied meaning is written on its face in bright and bold characters. It is perhaps for this reason that its essential core has endured the long passage of time. But thick coats of unregenerate times have also accumulated over it. The living spirit of the story has got buried under the dense layers of ethical-moralistic ideas and notions. Sri Aurobindo himself says that originally the Mahabharata story was symbolic, but later it became socio-religious. Now the story is narrated to project Savitri as a role-model of an ideal woman, with fidelity in conjugal relations as its chief and foremost concern. The Savitri-tale appears early in the Mahabharata, in the third of the 18 parts of the monumental work. It is placed in the Vana Parva and is called Savitri Upakhyana, a Minor Episode in the Book of the Forest. It has also a subtitle, Pativrata Mahatmya, indicating the nature of the story. The Sanskrit word mähätmya means greatness, grandeur, glory, majesty; it also means a narration of heroic or marvellous deeds, a legend, a romance, an epic. We may quite justifiably say that the Upakhyana is both: it is a noble mini-epic. It describes in great and dignified style the marvellous deeds of a married woman who is faithful and chaste, who observes virtuous rites and rituals, performs diligently the acts of ascetic sacrifices and offerings. Indeed, such a pativratä sees the very presence of divinity in her husband. The story is thus significantly charged with the resplendent and creative dynamism of the Dharma, the path of active and living Righteousness. The word dharma has the sense of the inner law of conduct natural to one’s soul and one’s spiritual build-up, one’s swabhäva. It promotes superior and richer values, gracious merits which the soul cherishes and carries with itself from life to life. That is the true basis of the Upakhyana. When did Vyasa compose his Savitri-story? Sri Aurobindo remarks that it belongs to the poet’s early days, still fresh “with the glow of the youth and grace over it”. It looks as though the later compilers of the Mahabharata neatly incorporated the tale in the main sequel of the Great Epic. It does certainly fit in very well in one of the story-sessions we have in the Book of the Forest when the Pandavas stayed as exiles in the woods. The metre in which the poem is composed is mostly Anusthtubha and there are exactly 300 shlokas or 600 hemistichs covering the entire story. A shloka is an unrhymed Sanskrit couplet, of 32 syllables in 4 equal divisions, and is the most common form used for a narrative. Vyasa’s recitation of Savitri in this metre moves forward with epic grace and swiftness, rushing from event to event with confident ease. Divided in seven sections, the little heroic poem has metrical power to win back the Word of Truth from the inconsiderate and suffocating darkness of Death. Savitri the Princess of Madra is of course the most important character in the story. The other persons present are: Savitri’s parents Aswapati and Malawi; then, there is the heavenly sage Narad who pays a purposeful visit to Aswapati at a most crucial juncture in the life of Savitri. This happens when she is about to disclose to her parents her choice of marrying Satyavan; Satyavan, his mother Shaibya and blind father Dyumatsena, once the ruler of the Shalwa country, are staying as exiles in the forest. In the forest there are sages and learned ascetics engaged in holy spiritual practices, one prominent and well-respected among them being the sage Gautama. Yama or the God of Death is at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious in the benignity of the Upholder of the Order of the Worlds. Princess Savitri’s own birth was in response to Aswapati’s prayer to the goddess Savitri who incarnated herself as his daughter in fulfilment of the exceptional boon granted to him, through her, by the Creator-Father Brahma himself. A cosmic-transcendental dimension is thus already set in the story narrated as a simple human tale belonging to early times. The Pandavas have lost the game of dice and have been ordered to live for twelve years in a forest. This is to be followed by one year of living incognito. It is towards the end of this twelve-year period that Rishi Markandeya visits the Pandavas again and in response to the query of Yudhishthira narrates to him the story of Savitri. Yudhishthira’s puzzlement is simple. He knows that noble Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas, is chaste and virtuous, -- born as she was in the purity of the sacrificial flame. Yet in life she is seen to face most difficult hardships and suffer humiliation at the hand of the evil-minded. Virtue always seems to be helpless against the harshness of life and is ever afflicted, as if it were incompatible with it. But the Rishi assures the desolate that, in the manner of Savitri, the disgraced shall, by her great womanly power, the power of chastity, prove to be a fortune-bringer to them. Savitri had suffered greatly for her husband’s sake and won from Yama, the King-Father Lord himself, noble boons including the exceptional boon of winning back Satyavan’s life. Through the Savitri-example which he prefers to give to Yudhishthira, Markandeya is actually holding out a splendid promise for the Pandavas. With this preliminary background begins the remarkable narration. But does the story speak of the ideal of womanhood only in the context of building up a healthy society? Is such a woman just a desirable and genial archetype, a beau idéal? Has the whole concept been put forward particularly as an ethical self-righteous view to emphasise upon the laity and the common people to adopt and follow a fixed set of rules of conduct, a set of commandments to govern their daily life? In the face of life’s severe contradictions, where often virtue not only goes unrewarded but seems to be punished, does it merely try to din into our ears the efficacy of the dharma in spite of these thousand evils which we have to encounter every day? Is the alleviation of grief and suffering the main intention behind the narration? Are the examples of Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti, proclaimed and upheld by Vivekananda even today, any more relevant, appropriate enough in the modern unavoidable circumstances? Are they secular in character? But if Markandeya is a Rishi with high spiritual attainments and an immortal, chiranjeeva, it is quite inconceivable that he would come down to the level of the ordinary and provide such a superficial consolation to the afflicted who himself is a man of great accomplishments. Nor would the seer-poet indulge in this quick luxury to squander away his poetry on the routine and the common-place. If Savitri and Draupadi were born from the sacrificial flames, we must immediately recognise that in this secular garb we have in fact something deep, something that is luminously mysterious if not profoundly esoteric. The Savitri-tale is not a mere pious holy tale meant for the God-fearing and the credulous, for small minds, for young simple housewives; but it is actually a strong effective symbol charged with the high potency of the supernatural, even that of the transcendental which is pressing forth to establish itself in this world of suffering and grief and death. Savitri herself was a highly proficient and skillful young woman, with the knowledge of both the worldly and the spiritual; she was a tapasvini of exceptional merit. This we ought to remember in understanding the text which is very terse and compact in its presentation. It is a Yogic-spiritual document indeed. It is a revelation. Therefore looking at the Savitri-tale as a revelation will perhaps be the best way to profit from it. This knowledge in the tradition was always there in its background, but it had got lost in the course of time. Sri Aurobindo has renewed it, putting his own Yogic-spiritual power into it: he has put the fire of his own soul in its body and in its spirit. We must bear in mind, and recognise, that the tale is an occult-spiritual tale involving cosmic powers and personalities with a concern for the evolutionary manifestation upon the earth. We should take the story accordingly, in the know of its occult connotation, which is suggestively clear from the intention and mode of its narration. Hence we may say that the characters in the story are much more than even some exceptional human figures, howsoever these human figures in their glorious proportions may appeal to us in their nobility and stature. They are more than that; they are incarnations. If so we can well appreciate why Sri Aurobindo treats the Savitri-story both as a legend and as a symbol. No wonder also that his elaborate presentation of the theme in his epic should essentially focus itself on occult-supernatural actions and eventualities. This may prove to be a great stumbling block to both the modern and the traditional sets of thinking. Modern man very often adjudges it as a narrative in some rarefied abstruse and obscure domain, with one steep rock of abstraction climbing to another; he starts wondering if anything is happening in any definite manner or all is simply a dubious play of words with high-sounding appellatives like Infinity, Eternity, Inconscience, Non-being, Void, Nature, Spirit, Matter and so on. Frequently his charge is that, apart from the names of some Gods and Goddesses, there are only five proper names in the whole epic which runs to about twenty-four thousand lines: Satyavan, Savitri, Aswapati, Dyumatsena and Narad. The required support for thought and imagination, support in the form of characters of flesh and blood, is not available in this epic. The complaint is that the human framework is too thin for the story to remain even as a legend, the entire thrust being theoretic-metaphysical. Quite knowledgeable critics refuse even to call it a poem. But this is patently a limitation of the professionals who ought to come out of their academic preconceptions and allegiances. We have to be in tune at least with the intuitive perception and suggestiveness that the aesthesis of Savitri gives to us in rich and radiant plenty. Take an example. Aswapati the Yogi has explored the eighteen worlds of Consciousness, eighteen universal and transcendental lokas, in eighteen cantos of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, and found the true meaning of this Creation. He has now discovered the nature of the problem and the difficulty that stands in the way of a happy manifestation here in the fulfilment of this great and godly endeavour with which all began in Time. The exeptional Yogi has, after a long and arduous tapasya, gathered in his spirit that strength by which a totally new and effective process can be set into motion. It is then that he becomes the Lord of Life, becomes Aswapati: Ashwa, the Horse, is a Vedic symbol of Life-Energy, the Consciousness-Force in its defeatless dynamism. It is therefore very appropriate that the poet should have identified and named him only after his getting this most remarkable siddhi, the power by which he can shape the course of events. This takes about ten thousand lines of the epic and even then one at times gets an impression as if the poet was hurrying through. In contrast to this the traditionalist has a tendency to see the Savitri-tale as a tale of a faithful and chaste woman without recognising the fact that it is an episode of a very rare and singular spiritual personality who has met and triumphed over the God of Death. Vyasa was fully aware of the profound and mystical contents of the story and what he wrote with the èlan of an inspired Rishi has the luminous power to lend to the legend symbolic and supernatural substance and meaning. To an apparently household event taking place in the Vedic times he has given a measure of the cosmic-transcendent. The Savitri-tale is much more than a dharmic illustration of holy and pious living meant for devout and faithful creatures. When Vyasa says that Aswapati engaged himself in the worship of Goddess Savitri for eighteen years, or that his radiant daughter was of gentle birth and virtuous, or was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, was accomplished in scriptural and secular learning, or that Satyavan was such an ocean of noble qualities that Yama himself had to come to snatch his soul, then he as the narrator of a simple-looking tale has already spoken of many details of the science and philosophy of spiritual practices. His language is compact and pointed, suggestive of every aspect of a deeper life lived in the splendour of the spirit. The traditional religious mind totally misses this aspect. It is with this background that we should read the ancient tale of Savitri as given to us by Vyasa and adapted by Sri Aurobindo for his epic bearing appropriately the name of its heroine. Doing so, we begin to appreciate its sweet transformative power. The Story King Aswapati is an ardent follower of the dharma and is firmly established in the truth. He rules over his kingdom with love and concern for its citizens. He is a performer of Yajnas and keeps the holy company of the learned and the virtuous. But he is issueless. With the passing of time, and with the advancing of his age, this causes him great affliction. Therefore, with the intention of getting a son, he engages himself in arduous tapasya. He retires to a forest and for eighteen years worships goddess Savitri. Observing the strictest rules of conduct and of worship, he offers every day a hundred-thousand oblations to her. Pleased with his sincerity and devotion, the goddess emerges out of the sacrificial flames and grants him the boon of a daughter. She assures him that she had approached Brahma the Creator himself and it is actually he who has bestowed this boon upon him. She adds that a beautiful and effulgent daughter will be soon born to him, kanyä tejasvini. Given as she was by Savitri, who was pleased by the Savitri-oblations, the father and the wise ones named her too Savitri. [Note 1] (shloka 1:24) Fair and beautiful like the goddess Fortune Sri, the adorable princess soon grows into proper maidenhood. She looks like a heavenly damsel, devakanyä, who has taken birth as Aswapati’s daughter. And, indeed, because of the beauty and fiery splendour of her youth, no prince dares to approach her, extending his hand in marriage. Once on an auspicious day, parvani, at the turning of the lunar fortnight, Savitri takes a holy bath, goes to the temple, and offers prayers to the gods, and gives ritual oblations to Agni. The wise ones recite the hymns of benediction, swasti-mantras. Worship done, she takes some flowers and a portion of food-offerings to the deities, prasäd, and goes to give them to her father. She touches his feet in obeisance and, after giving him the flowers and prasäd, stands respectfully with folded hands by his side. Seeing his daughter grown to full youth, and beautiful like a goddess, devarupini, and yet unmarried, Aswapati is very much distressed. He tells her that she should go out in search of a young man of her choice to espouse, one endowed with qualities like her own. It is quite appropriate for her to do so, he explains, as none has come as a suitor asking for her hand. He also mentions to her that a father becomes open to reproach when, according to the dharma, he fails to give his daughter, of the right age, in marriage. [Note 2] Savitri sets out on her search and travels to different kingdoms and lands. On her way she visits palaces and holy places, and offers worship to the deities; also, she gives away great wealth to the learned. In the course of her journey, as she passes through the green wooded regions, she makes respectful obeisances to the sages and Rishis staying in the sacred hermitages. [Note 3] In the meanwhile on a particular day the revered sage Narad and king Aswapati are in council in the royal palace. [Note 4] About the same time, as if by coincidence, Savitri returns to her father’s house. There she sees her father in the company of the heavenly sage. She, bright and graceful like a bride, bows down to them, touches their feet, and offers worshipping respects. Narad looks at her and immediately makes several inquiries about her. He asks Aswapati on what mission his daughter had gone, and why he has not yet given her in marriage. Aswapati explains to the sage that it was precisely with this intention that he sent her abroad, to find a suitable prince to marry, as none had come seeking her hand. He also surmises that she must be now returning after having successfully accomplished her mission. He asks her to recount the details of her journey and to reveal the name of the one whom she must have chosen for a husband. Savitri narrates the sequence of her journey. She tells that she had gone to the far Shalwa country, once ruled by the noble and righteous king Dyumatsena. But, then, as fate would have it, he becomes blind. A neighbouring king, his past enemy, takes advantage of this situation and invades his kingdom. Dyumatsena is defeated and driven out. With his wife and child-son he retires to the forest and engages himself in tapasya. The child, named Satyavan, grows in the hermitage under the tutorship of the sages and Rishis of the forest. Savitri discloses that it is Satyavan whom she has chosen as her life’s partner. But Narad at once rings a note of alarm, even of deep regret. He tells Aswapati about the grave nature of the choice made by his daughter. It is a matter of serious concern that Savitri should have chosen Satyavan for a husband, he forewarns. Alas! Savitri has, O King, done something accursed, that forebodes a great evil; unknowingly she has made the choice of Satyavan, taking him to be one of high merit. (shloka 2:11) True, born as he was of noble parents, he was named Satyavan, the Truthful. As a lad he was fond of painting, and drew figures of horses, and therefore he is also often called the Painter of Horses, Chitrashwa. Narad further says that Satyavan is bright like the sun, has a sharp intellect like that of Brihaspati, is munificent like Rantideva, the son of Sankriti, and like Yayati is exceedingly bounteous; in the manner of Shibi, the son of Ushinar, he is respectful to the learned and always speaks the truth; he is handsome like the moon and people often wonder whether he is one of the Ashwinikumars. He has mastered the senses and subdued passions, is a youth of heroic deeds, and is yet soft-natured and friendly to everybody. The forest sages are endeared to him and speak highly about his qualities. But, at Aswapati’s insistence to know also if Satyavan has any defects, Narad tells him that there is one blemish, that one year after the marriage Satyavan is to die on that very day. Savitri’s choice of Satyavan therefore becomes accursed. Aswapati advises his daughter to proceed again on her quest. He tells her how nullified all his virtues and all his noble qualities stand; she should not, counsels he, accept what is blameworthy, particularly when made known well in time. Savitri is, however, firm in her resolve. She asserts that it is her inner being who has actually made the choice. She further adds that that alone will govern her in every respect. It is the entire judge and authority for her, pramänam me manastatah, as Vyasa puts it. She argues that only once can the family wealth be divided between the brothers and not a second time; only once can a father give his daughter in marriage and not again; and once only does a philanthropist speak the word of charity and abide by it. It matters not for her if Satyavan has a long life or a short one, has virtuous qualities or is without them; because only once will she make her choice and not a second time. She elaborates her point by invoking a greater truth of the higher life. By perception does one first come to a certain conclusion and then one holds it by speech; only afterwards is it put into action. That perception of mine for me is the one single authority here. (shloka 2:28) Savitri reiterates that this is exactly what she has done and firmly adheres to her choice. Narad sees in Savitri’s resolve a wholesome as well as profound and elevating sense of perception. He further recognises that she is determinedly treading the path of dharma from which none can take her away. Considering also that the qualities of Satyavan cannot be matched in anybody else, he recommends their marriage. He blesses them and wishes the marriage to proceed unhindered, without any ill-happening. [Note 5] Then invoking propitious things of life, and good fortune for all, he leaves the Palace for his home in Paradise. (shloka 2:32) Aswapati attends to the details of the marriage and proceeds to the forest-hermitage where presently lives Dyumatsena. Following the tradition of proposing a marriage, he requests Dyumatsena to accept Savitri as a bride for his son Satyavan. Dyumatsena is somewhat hesitant in the beginning and also has apprehension whether the young princess would adjust herself to the cloistral life and bear hardships. But Aswapati assuages his fears. Finally, Dyumatsena accepts the offer and the marriage is duly solemnised. Satyavan is happy that in Savitri he has a beautiful wife with all the exquisite qualities of a high-born virgin; Savitri too is joyous that her heart’s desire has been so well fulfilled. (shloka 3:17) The marriage-party leaves for Madra and Savitri adapts herself to the life of the hermitage. She looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their public life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of her time goes by. But, within, the virtuous woman suffers greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembers Narad’s words and feels the cruel day approaching closer. When she counts that only four days are left, and Satyavan will be living no more afterwards, she resolves to perform the three-night vow, trirätra vrata, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. [Note 6] Dyumatsena dissuades her from carrying out the difficult vow. Savitri, however, tells him that he need not have any apprehension in her fulfilling it. Remaining erect like a stick, without moving from the chosen spot, and without taking any food for three days Savitri, by the power of her strong will and a woman’s strength to suffer, completes the vow. On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, she gets ready well before sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes offerings to the gods. [Note 7] Then she goes to the parents-in-law and to the various hermitages around and makes obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious things dear to a young devout wife. Savitri, accomplished as she is in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyänayogaparäyanä, wills in her heart for their blessings to come true. On returning to the cottage she sees Satyavan, with his axe on his shoulder, leaving for the forest; she halts him and tells him that, on that particular day, she will accompany him to the forest. But he advises her to get the permission from his father. Dyumatsena, recollecting the past one year, notes that ever since her father had left her in his charge never for anything did Savitri make any request to him. But then counselling Savitri not to be inattentive in duty, he permits her to go with Satyavan to the woods. The young couple set out happily, hand in hand. Satyavan shows to Savitri the sacred rivers and trees laden with flowers. In the lovely and delightful forests, with the flocks of peacocks dancing there joyously, they hear all around a soft lyrical note of gladness. In that gladness Satyavan speaks to her in honey-sweet words. And Savitri too, delighted by the beauty of the surroundings, and in the company of her lover, responds with equal sweetness. But she is constantly watching her husband in all his movements and does not allow him to go out of her sight. Remembering Narad’s words, she knows that his life is now in hours and he will die with the arrival of the Time-Person, käla-purusha. Within, she is in great agony all the while. Yet, accomplished in austerities as she is, and reckoning the swift-approaching fatal moment, she remains calm. Satyavan, lustrous in his strength, collects a basketful of fruits with the help of Savitri. Then he starts cutting the firewood. He wants to complete the day’s task quickly and spend the rest of the time with his beloved. But, due to overwork, he suddenly feels exhausted and begins perspiring profusely. He suffers from a severe headache, a pain in the limbs and an intense burning sensation in the heart. He lies down. Savitri immediately goes closer to him and takes his head in her lap. She knows that the foretold moment has arrived and that the käla-purusha will soon appear. Presently, Savitri sees a bright Person standing in front of her. He is luminous, is beautiful in his red attire, and is wearing a splendid crown over his head; it seems to her that the Sun-God himself has come there. His body though dark is lustrous in hue and through his red eyes he is looking steadily at Satyavan. He is carrying a noose in his hand which inspires great dread. On seeing him, Savitri lays aside her husband’s head and stands up with folded hands. Her heart is trembling but she asks that Person who he is and why he has come. That Person introduces himself as Yama and avers that he could converse with Savitri because she is a devout and chaste woman, a practitioner of difficult austerities. Yama praises the soul of Satyavan; but now as his life here is over he has to take it away with him, the soul that is no bigger than a thumb, angushthamätrah purusham. He throws the noose around it, pulls it out and starts moving towards the South. Satyavan’s lifeless corpse appears very dull and frightful. Savitri, afflicted with agony, follows Yama. A little later Yama looks back and notices Savitri following him. He advises her to return, as she has paid the debt to her husband by accompanying him over the permitted distance. He further reminds her that she has to attend to the funeral rites of the deceased. Savitri does not accept Yama’s advice. She has walked with the God seven steps and therefore a friendly relationship is established between the two. She tells him so and argues extensively with him on fundamental issues, he being the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-God, knower and upholder of the Law of Truth obtaining in the mortal creation. You are the mighty son of Vivasvan and that is why the learned call you Vaivasvat; to all creatures you are fair and you uphold the dharma. For that reason you are, O Lord, also known as Dharmaraj. (shloka 5:41) Her speech is perfect, observing the rules of grammar and syntax, complete in knowledge of etymology, prosodically well-structured; also her reasoning is flawless and logically impeccable. She tells him that her own place lies near her husband and she will not go back without him, firmly fixed as she is in the dharma. By the merit of austerity, devotion to the preceptor, love for the husband, observance of the sacred vows, and by the grace of Yama himself there is nothing, she tells him, which cannot be accomplished by a woman. Further, she asserts that holy people always abide in virtuous conduct, and never have they sorrow, nor are they any time afflicted. Greatly rewarding is indeed the company of such pious ones and therefore one should be ever close to them. In the fellowship of the saints and sages, without a doubt, all fear disappears. For this reason, more than himself does a man trust holy persons, and so does he give more of his love and respect to them. Then, in a tremendous moment of mantric utterance, of revelation, she discloses that ... it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun; by askesis the saints uphold the earth; in the saints all the three divisions of Time find their refuge; noble persons in the midst of the saints have never any grief. (shloka 5:48) The illustrious and the excellent help each other in the conduct of the dharma and do not do hurt to others. Therefore they prove to be the protectors of the entire world. Immensely pleased with the sublimity of these utterances Yama grants her boon after boon. Indeed, the more she speaks the well-adorned and well-cherished lofty things of the dharma, acceptable always in the conduct of life in every circumstance, to the same extent his admiration for her grows. By the first two boons she desires eyesight for her blind father-in-law and his lost kingdom; in the third boon she asks for a hundred sons for her father Aswapati, true and heroic brothers to her. By the fourth boon she would have got a hundred sons for herself, but she argues that this boon is of a different kind than the other three. It cannot be fulfilled without proper matrimony. She therefore reiterates her request for the life of Satyavan. Without him, she tells Yama, she herself would be dead; she would abstain from any pleasure, even that of entering heaven. Without Satyavan the boon would thus lie waste. Then, in a kind of dialectics, she points out the strange anomaly in Yama’s words and actions: You have given me the boon of a hundred sons and you yourself are taking my husband away; for that reason I again ask the boon of life for Satyavan, by which your words shall come true. (shloka 5:54) Yama, gladdened by Savitri’s Words of Dharma, says ‘Let it be so,’ and releases the noose from around the soul of the dead. He tells her that Satyavan is now in good health and fit to return with her to the earth. Further, he grants a life of four hundred years for him to live with her and, for the welfare of the world, to perform the holy Yajnas. Then Yama, blessing Savitri and sending her back with the soul of Satyavan, returns to his own Abode deep in the South. [Note 8] Also, Savitri returns to the earth with the soul of Satyavan. After the departure of Yama, getting her husband back, as Vyasa puts it, Savitri comes to the place where his dead body has been lying. She again takes his head in her lap. By now Satyavan regains consciousness and looks affectionately at Savitri; he begins talking to her like one who has returned from a long journey. He feels that he is waking from some deep sleep; but then he also carries a faint recollection of the dark-hued and terrifying figure who has dragged him to some dreadful and unknown world. He asks Savitri whether she knows anything about him. She tells him that it was the great God Yama himself, the Ordainer of the Creatures, who had come there; she, however, quickly adds that it is now all over and that he has left the place. Satyavan wants to know more about the entire episode; but Savitri postpones it by saying that she will narrate it the next day, pointing out that a thick darkness is fast enveloping them in the forest. Satyavan looks around and realises that he has not returned to the hermitage yet. He is quite worried, lest his old and helpless parents get disturbed, not seeing him back in spite of the growing night. But Savitri is somewhat hesitant. She sees that Satyavan is still weak and doubts whether he is in a condition to walk the long distance back to the hermitage. Getting lost in the darkness can also be risky. Besides, she herself is somewhat scared and tells Satyavan to that effect: Those cruel-voiced prowlers of the night are moving freely now; and listen to the sound in the fallen leaves as the wild beasts go about in the forest. This fearsome howling of the she-jackals in the south, and in the west, is causing my mind and my heart to tremble greatly. (shlokas 5:75-76) But Satyavan insists on returning forthwith. He is unable to bear any longer the separation from his loving parents. He tells Savitri that his blind father and the old mother must be frantically looking for them, going from hermitage to hermitage, inquiring about him and about his welfare. He does not wish to delay their going back any further. Realising how true her husband is as a follower of the dharma, Savitri agrees to return at once. She gets up and knots her loose hair; then, holding both the hands of her husband, she helps him to stand. Then encircling his waist with her right arm, his left on her left shoulder, they start walking slowly. Satyavan chides her that she is a timid woman and assures her that he is quite familiar with all the paths in the forest and can tell the correct one simply by looking at the stars. He points out to her that they are actually on the same path they had taken in the morning while coming to the forest. Indicating that at the bifurcation near the group of paläsha-trees she should take the path leading to the north, he prompts her to quicken the pace that they may reach home as early as possible. In the meanwhile Dyumatsena receives his eyesight. But he is very much disturbed, since Satyavan has not yet returned home. His mind begins wandering wildly, thinking of ominous and untoward happenings. A great fear grips him. The worried parents go from cottage to cottage inquiring about their son and daughter-in-law. They are concerned to such an extent that they rave almost in madness. Seeing their distressed plight, tormented as they are by evil suggestions, the sages of the forest gather around them and console them. Suvarchasa, ever the speaker of the truth, assures them that as Savitri is a woman of exceptionally noble and virtuous qualities, and is fixed in dharma, and has made great progress in her tapasya, nothing injurious can happen to Satyavan. Bharadwaja also expresses the same conviction and holds that Satyavan is hale and living. Gautama asserts that he has studied all the six branches of the Vedas, accumulated great might of askesis, observed strict celibacy since his early age, and pleased his preceptors and the Fire-God well; by that power of austerity and by the concentration of his will, he contends, he knows all the movements of others. Stating so, he affirms that Satyavan is alive. Gautama’s disciple vouches that never a word uttered by his Guru has turned out to be untrue or wrong; therefore he feels confident that Satyavan must be living. Dalbhya points out that Dyumatsena’s getting his eyesight back in such an unexpected way augurs auspicious happenings; he also says that the way Savitri observed the very difficult three-night vow, and the fact that she accompanied her husband to the forest without breaking the long fast, means complete safety for Satyavan. Apastambha sees in the tranquil benign surrounding, and in the manner and movement of the dumb animals and birds, a secret presence of harmony, indicating that there is nothing which should really perturb them. He too is sure that Satyavan is alive. Dhaumya proclaims that Satyavan has the marks of a long life and hence he must be living. This way the great Rishis assuage the fears of the worried parents. Then, not too long afterwards, Satyavan and Savitri arrive at the hermitage, immensely happy. There is great jubilation amongst all present. Indeed, in the union of the father and the son, in the blind king’s receiving his sight, in Savitri they see agreeable portents of the future. Kindling a bright fire they all sit around it and throw a volley of questions at Satyavan. They wish to know why Savitri and he are late in returning home when the night has grown dark in the jungles. Quite understandably, they want to know everything in detail to their satisfaction. But Satyavan simply tells them that, while collecting the firewood, he suffered a severe headache and had suddenly become unconscious, without awareness of anything around. For the delay there is no other reason, he informs them. But Gautama is not quite convinced. Moreover, Dyumatsena’s regaining his eyesight so unexpectedly still remains a mystery. He therefore turns towards Savitri and expresses his eagerness to know the entire secret from her. He tells her that she alone can unravel it. O Savitri, I am eager to hear of it from you; you know, O Savitri, all that is far and near, that belongs to the past and to the future; you understand it, one like Goddess Savitri herself as you are, with her effulgence. Surely, you have the knowledge of its cause and its purpose, and therefore speak the truth of it; if there is nothing in it to hide from us, tell us all of it. (shlokas 6: 34-35) Savitri narrates everything in detail, right from the beginning, how Narad foretold the impending doom of Satyavan’s death, and the reason for her undertaking the three-night vow, and of accompanying her husband to the forest on that particular day. She tells them that at the noon hour Yama entered the forest to snatch the soul of Satyavan. As he was carrying it away with him, she too followed him and offered him high eulogies with the utterances of Truth. The mighty God, the Upholder of the Dharma, was immensely pleased, and had become happy with her beyond bound. She then narrates how she received the five boons and how Satyavan regained consciousness. The Rishis bless the young devout woman and in happiness depart to their cottages, hailing her as the Saviour of the House: The House of the King was plunging more and more into darkness, assailed by misfortunes; but you of noble birth and a virtuous wife, sweet and amiable in nature, and an observer of the vows, one given to meritorious conduct, redeemed the family from doom. (shloka 6:43) But the next day they all, rich in austerities, completing the morning fire-rituals, gather once again around Dyumatsena. They speak of the extreme good fortune, mahäbhägyam, of Savitri, and are not contented even though they repeatedly narrate it. While in wonderment they are talking thus, a group of citizens of the Shalwa kingdom unexpectedly arrive at the hermitage. Extending their greetings to Dyumatsena, they inform him that his enemy has been killed by his own minister. They also add that in the capital everyone has resolved that Dyumatsena should occupy the throne again, as he is its worthy and rightful heir. Thus, imploring him to return, they tell him that the army with all its four divisions is ready at his command. They are also happily surprised to see Dyumatsena with his eyesight regained. Dyumatsena worships the Rishis reverentially and, receiving their blessings, departs for the capital. Shaibya along with Savitri rides a richly decorated gold-panelled car and, escorted by the army, leaves the hermitage. At the capital the priests sprinkle the holy water and perform Dyumatsena’s coronation ceremony. Satyavan is also made the Crown-Prince. In the course of time all the boons of Yama given to Savitri get fulfilled. [Note 9] The Tale of Satyavan and Savitri -- Sri Aurobindo The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal plane; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life. Adaptations made by Sri Aurobindo -- Notes Note 1 (p. 5) In Vyasa’s Savitri the description of Aswapati’s entire tapasya and his getting the boon are covered in just about twenty shlokas. The king has no son and in order to get a child he sets himself upon the dharmic path of sacrificial worship, Yajna. The traditional issue is the continuation of the ancestral line for the welfare and maintenance of the order of the worlds, the order which is maintained by making to the gods appropriate offerings accompanied by the hymns of solicitation and praise. The gods grow by these offerings and in return give gifts to the devotees. The help of the gods is always for promoting Righteousness. If the society has a certain foundation based on it, then it is obligatory for the righteous to affirm it in everyday conduct and in every respect. One aspect of it is to see that in all its glory it is perpetuated from generation to generation. The Law of the Right, ritam, was the ancient Vedic ideal that prevailed in the dynamic Age of the Truth, Satya Yuga, and of it Aswapati was one ardent and devout votary. But then Aswapati’s tapasya was not just a part of the fulfilment of this social obligation of his. We must also look into the plausibility that the intention behind the narration was to present a deeper and truer issue through the medium of a story. It appears that, in this human tale, Vyasa quite meant it to be so. In spirituo-metaphysical terms it is the possibility of a divine creation arising out of the inconscience, out of the nonmanifest that has become the unmanifest. If by the Force of Concentration, Tapas-Shakti, the Supreme created the Void and became inconscient, did the Yoga of Self-Sacrifice, triumphantly chanted in the Veda as the Holocaust of the Supreme, then by another Force of Action he has to emerge out of this state, out of utter forgetfulness, and establish the unfailing and inexhaustible delight of existence everywhere. For this to happen, the Supreme has to do Yoga in the earth-consciousness itself. And this has to happen in the face of his own stubbornness; for he himself has become the Inconscient. One visible sign of this stubbornness of the inconscient Supreme is the presence of Death: the manifesting Supreme surprisingly encounters the obstacle of the antagonist Supreme as Death. In that sense the tale of Savitri also becomes the Epic of the Divine Creation. In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Aswapati comes to the world of birth and does the Yoga of the Supreme. This is necessary in order to tackle, through birth, the divine issue present in this world of birth, in the mortal creation, mrityuloka. He realises that the issue can be handled victoriously only if the divine Shakti would condescend to come down upon the earth and deal with the otherwise obstinate and intractable problem of mortality, presented in the Figure of Death. She agrees. Savitri comes down here as an incarnate force and espouses the cause of the evolutionary travail’s death-bound life in the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme himself. But this descending ocean of dynamic consciousness has to be upborne, lest it drown the very Void out of which it is intended to emerge, with the awareness of the multiple splendour, a manifestation with the growing richness of the being of delight. Aswapati’s tapasya is for this purpose, to prepare a safe base for the fiery power’s transforming action. The needed Yogic support for her arrival and for her action is provided by it. Aswapati climbs to the summit of this creation and meets her; he prays to her to take human birth and accomplish the glorious miracle. In response to it she comes down as his own daughter. Thus Aswapati’s eighteen-year tapasya presented in Vyasa’s brief narrative, already full of spiritual glow, becomes in Sri Aurobindo a glorious and laurel-crowned Odyssey of mounting the mighty steep World-Stair that rises from Matter’s inconscient base to the splendours of the superconscient Spirit. He goes yet beyond, crossing the triple Glory. Even as he approaches the Worlds of the Unknowable, the creative-executive power of the Supreme answers him and grants him the exceptional boon that one shall come and change everything. All shall be done for which this mortal world was created --he is told. In the legend of Savitri the issue, albeit briefly and indicatively stated, is yet well focused in the inescapable death of Savitri’s lover and husband Satyavan. This death indeed becomes a glorious occasion for the incarnate Power’s action to deal with the universal Adversary standing in the way of the intended divine manifestation. What was brief and suggestively succinct in Vyasa, given to us in just twenty swift shlokas, Sri Aurobindo elaborated in his epic to the great length of about ten-thousand lines. But it is not wholly a poetic or thematic elaboration or expansion to this disproportionate size, merely for the sake of self-blissful indulgence. The existence of the World-Stair is not entirely new to the Yogic experience. But Aswapati’s exploration of these worlds, his moving through them, putting upon their breast his footsteps is an occult action and has an occult meaning and purpose. It is not just the journey of an indifferent passerby, he leaves behind in them his dynamic and luminous Yogic presence itself. It is the presence of the Avatar left behind in those worlds which is going to prove beneficent to this world of our mortality. It is by this presence that these countless worlds are to participate gloriously in the process of the new creation for which Savitri is about to begin her work. Perhaps it was too early for the tradition to realise this, but it seems that it certainly had a distant intuition of it. Note 2 (p. 6) Sri Aurobindo describes the event in a somewhat different manner, with Aswapati as a Yogi in communion with the spiritual planes and forces that constantly exert their influence upon us, which govern and mould all our movements and actions. He has a sure intuition that a greater nobler destiny lies in wait for us though at present we strive only for little gains, though we are unable to receive the celestial gifts, hold them when they are given to us in God’s plenty. But Aswapati hears a heavenly voice and sees in the person of Savitri a bright promise, “a shining answer from the gods” to all these thousand questions that baffle and torment life and belittle it. He tells her to proceed forthwith and put her “conquering foot on Chance and Time”. He has a feeling that the heavens guard her soul for some mighty work and that her fate and her work are kept somewhere afar which she must discover and attend to. She is bidden to ascend from Nature and meet a greater God, that together they shall tackle the issue of this mortal creation. The great commanding word from her Yogi-father is received by Savitri and she at once awakes to the mission of her spirit and her soul. Deep in her consciousness it sinks and begins to work with the full power and certainty of the mantric utterance itself. Note 3 (p. 6) At this point Sri Aurobindo brings out explicitly, and with sweet lyrical enthusiasm and enchantment, the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri in the Shalwa woods, of which in Vyasa no hint whatsoever is available. They meet, they fall in love with each other, they recognise the purpose of their union and the task they have together to attend to. In the acceptable tradition of the Gandharva marriage, and with Nature and the gods as its witnesses, they get indissolubly united. All this is absent in the upäkhyäna. But then what is absent in the Legend and Symbol is the traditional ritualistic marriage which is solemnised later, in spite of Narad’s frightful prophecy. Not on socio-religious or occult-dharmic aspect but on spiritual content, with its meaning and its value, is the important thrust put in the latter. Perhaps this emphasis, rather than the departure from the established norm and convention, is quite understandable. The marriage itself is an exceptional marriage, marriage of two exceptional incarnate beings. Note 4 (p. 6) Vyasa does not mention if the queen, Savitri’s mother Malawi, was also present during the meeting, although it is presumed that she was there. Even if actually present, she did not participate in the discussion. This seems to be the classical ideal in which the woman left all matters of deliberation and decision to her husband and accepted his word as final in every respect. She always remained in the background with her force of dynamism supporting her husband from behind. On the other hand, in Sri Aurobindo’s presentation the queen, though full of human frailty, plays a crucial role in the discussion and raises subtle points of fate and free will in human transactions. Note 5 (p. 7) In Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri we see Narad asserting the divine will behind this marriage and, though apparently tragic, makes it firm. There is no doubt that it was for this purpose that he had undertaken the long and arduous journey from his home in Paradise to Aswapati’s palace at Madra on the banks of the Alacananda, a difficult process by which the spiritual becomes the earthly substantial. Narad is one of those very few who can move freely in all the worlds and can also take a human form, of flesh and blood. He knows the occult secret by which this can be done and as an aspect of the divine working, and in the imperative of its purpose he participates whenever such crucial events are about to occur. Sri Aurobindo’s Narad has a mission to accomplish, -- to deliver the Word of Fate. It is the Word which is going to determine the entire course of the earthly future. On the other hand the Mahabharata story looks more like a homely narrative. In it Narad is taken as a household figure intimate to the inmates, with their concern in his heart. His present visit to Aswapati is therefore just a part of that extreme goodwill of his for them. Note 6 (p. 8) In general we may say that the mention of trirätra vrata in Vyasa has been fully utilised by Sri Aurobindo in his epic to describe the Shakti Yoga of Savitri, a description which runs to more than three thousand lines. In the entire Occult-Yogic literature this is undoubtedly unique, the most definite disclosure, indeed a revelation and an application accompanying its practice. We have here the true meaning and purport of the Tantrik sadhana, Shakti Upasana, as a means for the effective transformation of Nature from her inconscient mode of working in the dumb inconscient body into a luminous dynamism of her consciousness-force. It is only when this is carried out in the bodily existence that there is a possibility of conquering death and attaining earthly immortality in the light and splendour of the triple Divine. That would be the genuine and actual resolution of the issue of this mortal world, this mrityuloka. It is on that path Savitri has now set herself, so that this difficult missioned task be done. The cause of her husband’s death in the story is the immediate occasion for doing the Yoga of Transformation. Certainly this aspect of earthly immortality is not present in the tradition, nowhere has it been explicitly taken as a part of the spiritual sadhana. From death to immortality, mrityormamratm gamay, has all along been the ancient prayer. It is again in that context that we see in the Upakhyana of the Mahabharata Yama granting wonderful boons to Savitri; but then Yama as immortal Death still remains there, yet to carry on the work of upholding the worlds. We cannot therefore say that the trirätra vrata has the power of the Shakti Yoga to bring about a totally radical change in Nature, particularly in the stubborn inconscient aspect of Nature, to altogether displace death from her. And yet the benign figure of Yama has to find its full meaning and appurtenant significance in this mortal creation. The Vedic-Tantrik sadhana did not explore the possibilities of the Shakti Yoga in this transformative endeavour though it may have had an inkling of it. The fact that it was a three-night vow makes it symbolically weighty and consequential, the three nights of the physical, vital and mental ignorance that constitutes our existence. But the full implication of it, both Yogically and Occult-operationally, perhaps remained unexplored. Perhaps for good reasons too. Note 7 (p. 8) On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, Savitri gets ready well before the sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes ritual offerings to the gods. In Sri Aurobindo Savitri worships goddess Durga on the fated day before setting out to the forest with Satyavan. The image of the goddess was carved by him on a stone. In the Upakhyana Satyavan is presented as a painter of the horses whereas Savitri makes him a sculptor. But, more importantly, Durga is the Protectress of the Worlds and worshipping her is praying and asking for her protection in the most dire moment of life, the moment confronting death itself. Arjuna at the suggestion of Krishna had so worshipped her at the very beginning of the Mahabharata war. That was however for winning a victory over the enemy and not to conquer death. Therefore if Savitri is going to worship Durga, that goddess must be more powerful than Yama in order to prevail over him. She is the transcendental Shakti of Savitri herself and hence there is the inevitability of the result in her favour in the deep battle of life that is soon going to be waged against death. That such a living goddess was present in the rock sculpted by Satyavan adds yet another transcendental dimension to the story in the hands of Sri Aurobindo. Note 8 (p. 10) The parts dealing with the colloquy between Yama and Savitri are the most complex, most profound and occult in Sri Aurobindo’s epic. In it Yama, rather Death, the embodied Nothingness, is standing as a stubborn antagonist against God’s work in this mortal creation and has no mercy to show to anyone or to anything. He is learned, he is powerful, he is relentless and inexorable, and all that he knows is his Law. He sees things and beings as a “pitiful dream” and looks at the delight of Nature with utter disdain. In fact, he is the very incarnation of Inconscience. He derives all his power from the dark Abyss and he cannot accept any trespassing of his edict. Savitri’s following him and challenging him to claim the soul of Satyavan is an affront made by her to his sovereignty and he cannot brook it in the least manner. She must pay a heavy price for this transgression. The figure that finally stands in front of her is a huge terrifying mask, a “grandiose Darkness of the Infinite”. He has embodied in his shadow-self the entire might of God’s Nothing and, in the present process of evolution, defeating him is defeating that Nothing itself. Therefore he is standing there in all his formidable strength. But the great incarnate Goddess in the form of Savitri throws aside the veil and the Deity dwelling in her secret depths readies herself for the decisive assault. A mighty transformation comes upon the extraordinary Yogini and the Kundalini-force descends from above into her entire being. The Tantrik World-Yoga of the Divine, the Shakti Yoga of the Supreme, finds its culmination in this most decisive, and marvellous, action of the great incarnate Goddess. But then Yama in the role of Death yet resists. Finally, however, to her mastering Word he succumbs and gets dispossessed of his paled and defeated will. He takes refuge in the “retreating Night” unable as he is to withstand the lustre of the divine Immortal. But then he reappears as the Tempter of the Worlds and offers easy boons to Savitri. She at once sees the trap and does not fall into it, to live with Satyavan in the heavens of the deathless gods. Her concern is for the soul of man, Satyavan’s soul to do God’s work in the world of the mortals. Earth is the chosen place and it is this earth which in the splendour of the triple divinity must be fulfilled. Savitri is firm-willed and adheres to the choice of her soul and her spirit. It is then that in the benignity of her choice she receives the supreme gift from the Supreme, a gift to celebrate the arrival of the new creation with the soul of Satyavan at its forefront and as its initiator. Even the bright illusion that could have fallen over her sight and distracted her from her single purpose has now been dispelled and there is only the light of the everlasting day. The work of the incarnation has been accomplished and now things will unfold in the process of endless Time. Can we say that both these aspects, the aspect of the embodied Nothingness and the aspect of the bright Tempter, are present in Yama of the tradition, because Yama given to us by the tradition is unmistakably at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious? He inspires fear in us and also he is the giver of happy boons to us. We may therefore clearly see both these figures behind him, though perhaps not in their detailed operational bearing and sense. Even if we are to take it that way, it has never been made explicit and functionally meaningful in the ancient writings. It is very likely that they had the intuition of it, that behind this twofold Yama there is only one single Supreme, or rather it is the Supreme who himself is present in these two poises. But the point is not about the intuition of it. The Rishis of yore might have had that knowledge and that definite perception which had remained unrecorded in the annals of spirituality. We may even give them the benefit of the doubt that it was not to be inopportunely disclosed, very explicitly stated. Or else, perhaps more appropriately, the completeness of the experience was still very much wanting for it to have become in the evolutionary process operationally decisive. But for us what is necessary is to recognise the fact that Savitri’s entry into the very world of dense ignorance and death is an absolutely unique and unprecedented event. It was as if Satyavan’s death became a pretext for it to happen. With her Occult-Yogic might Savitri steps into the inconscient regions and establishes in them the expressive power of the supreme Word, the Word by which things take place and get luminously fixed. If Aswapati’s tapasya led him through the different worlds in which he left his presence behind, Savitri’s Battle in the field of Darkness is to eliminate the elemental forces from which arise the crookedness and the evil in the evolutionary manifestation. Therefore the Yama-Savitri debate is not a mere verbal duel, a logomachy, a metaphysical engagement, a conjuration of one-up-manship. Great powers are released even as they speak, the powers of opposition and negation and the powers of advancement and affirmation. Each utterance lets loose its charge with occult mights clashing against formidable occult mights. It is in their wake that things have to transpire, events founded in the future and not in the obscurity of the past to get organised and configured so that the new order of the world is born. Ultimately the Gnostic Word is established in those very suffocating and terrifying nether depths where lived uncompromising death and suffering and evil. Great is Truth and it does indeed prevail. Savitri has made it greater by making it prevail even in the absolute darkness of Inconscience. What was promised long ago now gets unconditionally fulfilled. Once for all the issue of the mortal creation is resolved and the path of ever-widening and everlasting progress opened out. Note 9 (p. 13) Sri Aurobindo’s epilogue does not have these details. Did he intentionally drop them, considering them as irrelevant to the main Yogic-spiritual message the epic is to give? Or did he sort of hurriedly round off the story keeping in regard the view that, after receiving the supreme Boon, there is really nothing more that need be wished or willed, need be said? After completing the final revision of the Book of Fate, in the middle of November 1950, just three weeks before his passing away, Sri Aurobindo had asked if something else was still remaining to be taken up for revision. When told that the Book of Death and the Epilogue were still to be attended to, he remarked: “Oh, that? We shall see about that later on.” That “later on” was never to be. Would Sri Aurobindo have incorporated in the Epilogue the gathering of the wise and the elders around Satyavan and Savitri when they returned late in the evening from the forest, recreated with his poetic genius the ancient scene of the hermitage and the dwellers gathering at the moment of concern and at the moment of jubilation? Possibly the sages and the Rishis would have told us about the nature of the new creation and about the divine life received as a boon by Savitri from the Supreme, the “life that has opened with divinity”. Similarly, the Book of Death, which presently has only Canto Three, entitled Death in the Forest, might have been taken up by him later, perhaps to indicate the difficulty of the cellular transformation, -- the difficulty of the inconscient will in the body to change and accept the Truth-Will in it. But these are possibilities about which nobody can say anything and it would be quite improper to even hazard a guess. Besides, it is likely that these are futuristic matters and it would be best to leave the future to determine its own course of progress and action when the future is going to be fully governed by the future and not by dead compulsions and constraints of the past. The story of the mortal world, mrityuloka, is an endless saga, and a glorious saga full of happy surprises, and it must be allowed to unfold in its own creatively glorious way, the Way of the Truth. Sri Aurobindo has set it into motion and the auspices of eternity’s Time will take it over to make dynamic divinity its executive in the endless delight of existence.
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The story of Savitri is an ancient story. Perhaps it belongs to the early Vedic times. Perhaps it may go back even to a yet deeper past. It is both myth and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale the story has several connotations and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite suggestive of the issue involved in this mortal creation, mrityuloka, the creation to which we belong. The issue is of divine manifestation in an evolutionary way, evolution that has its beginning in Inconscience.
Ours is not a typal world. A typal world is a world of fixed forms and possibilities,-- as is, for instance, the world of the gods. The world of the great gods, the Overmind world, is no doubt splendid; but it stays as it is, is tied to its own kind. From it no other aspects of the multifold Transcendent can emerge, no change or progress is possible in it. In fact, if the gods should wish to get out of it and go to higher worlds, make progress, they must be willing and prepared to be born in the mortal world. In that sense this world of ours, this earth, is unique; it is a place where progress is continuous and interminable. The story of Savitri has such an occult basis as its background and therefore it distinctly foresees the prospects of enlarging consciousness in the splendour of love, beauty, joy, knowledge, power, sweetness, harmony, the creative working of the Truth-Idea in the richly effulgent and ever-growing dimensions of the Infinite. Though not expressly stated so, the suggestions in the story are unmistakable. There is a long spiritual tradition which carries in its experience the esoteric sense purported by the story. That it has occult-mystical bearings is pretty obvious from its very tone. Actually this implied meaning is written on its face in bright and bold characters. It is perhaps for this reason that its essential core has endured the long passage of time. But thick coats of unregenerate times have also accumulated over it. The living spirit of the story has got buried under the dense layers of ethical-moralistic ideas and notions. Sri Aurobindo himself says that originally the Mahabharata story was symbolic, but later it became socio-religious. Now the story is narrated to project Savitri as a role-model of an ideal woman, with fidelity in conjugal relations as its chief and foremost concern. The Savitri-tale appears early in the Mahabharata, in the third of the 18 parts of the monumental work. It is placed in the Vana Parva and is called Savitri Upakhyana, a Minor Episode in the Book of the Forest. It has also a subtitle, Pativrata Mahatmya, indicating the nature of the story. The Sanskrit word mähätmya means greatness, grandeur, glory, majesty; it also means a narration of heroic or marvellous deeds, a legend, a romance, an epic. We may quite justifiably say that the Upakhyana is both: it is a noble mini-epic. It describes in great and dignified style the marvellous deeds of a married woman who is faithful and chaste, who observes virtuous rites and rituals, performs diligently the acts of ascetic sacrifices and offerings. Indeed, such a pativratä sees the very presence of divinity in her husband. The story is thus significantly charged with the resplendent and creative dynamism of the Dharma, the path of active and living Righteousness. The word dharma has the sense of the inner law of conduct natural to one’s soul and one’s spiritual build-up, one’s swabhäva. It promotes superior and richer values, gracious merits which the soul cherishes and carries with itself from life to life. That is the true basis of the Upakhyana. When did Vyasa compose his Savitri-story? Sri Aurobindo remarks that it belongs to the poet’s early days, still fresh “with the glow of the youth and grace over it”. It looks as though the later compilers of the Mahabharata neatly incorporated the tale in the main sequel of the Great Epic. It does certainly fit in very well in one of the story-sessions we have in the Book of the Forest when the Pandavas stayed as exiles in the woods. The metre in which the poem is composed is mostly Anusthtubha and there are exactly 300 shlokas or 600 hemistichs covering the entire story. A shloka is an unrhymed Sanskrit couplet, of 32 syllables in 4 equal divisions, and is the most common form used for a narrative. Vyasa’s recitation of Savitri in this metre moves forward with epic grace and swiftness, rushing from event to event with confident ease. Divided in seven sections, the little heroic poem has metrical power to win back the Word of Truth from the inconsiderate and suffocating darkness of Death. Savitri the Princess of Madra is of course the most important character in the story. The other persons present are: Savitri’s parents Aswapati and Malawi; then, there is the heavenly sage Narad who pays a purposeful visit to Aswapati at a most crucial juncture in the life of Savitri. This happens when she is about to disclose to her parents her choice of marrying Satyavan; Satyavan, his mother Shaibya and blind father Dyumatsena, once the ruler of the Shalwa country, are staying as exiles in the forest. In the forest there are sages and learned ascetics engaged in holy spiritual practices, one prominent and well-respected among them being the sage Gautama. Yama or the God of Death is at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious in the benignity of the Upholder of the Order of the Worlds. Princess Savitri’s own birth was in response to Aswapati’s prayer to the goddess Savitri who incarnated herself as his daughter in fulfilment of the exceptional boon granted to him, through her, by the Creator-Father Brahma himself. A cosmic-transcendental dimension is thus already set in the story narrated as a simple human tale belonging to early times. The Pandavas have lost the game of dice and have been ordered to live for twelve years in a forest. This is to be followed by one year of living incognito. It is towards the end of this twelve-year period that Rishi Markandeya visits the Pandavas again and in response to the query of Yudhishthira narrates to him the story of Savitri. Yudhishthira’s puzzlement is simple. He knows that noble Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas, is chaste and virtuous, -- born as she was in the purity of the sacrificial flame. Yet in life she is seen to face most difficult hardships and suffer humiliation at the hand of the evil-minded. Virtue always seems to be helpless against the harshness of life and is ever afflicted, as if it were incompatible with it. But the Rishi assures the desolate that, in the manner of Savitri, the disgraced shall, by her great womanly power, the power of chastity, prove to be a fortune-bringer to them. Savitri had suffered greatly for her husband’s sake and won from Yama, the King-Father Lord himself, noble boons including the exceptional boon of winning back Satyavan’s life. Through the Savitri-example which he prefers to give to Yudhishthira, Markandeya is actually holding out a splendid promise for the Pandavas. With this preliminary background begins the remarkable narration. But does the story speak of the ideal of womanhood only in the context of building up a healthy society? Is such a woman just a desirable and genial archetype, a beau idéal? Has the whole concept been put forward particularly as an ethical self-righteous view to emphasise upon the laity and the common people to adopt and follow a fixed set of rules of conduct, a set of commandments to govern their daily life? In the face of life’s severe contradictions, where often virtue not only goes unrewarded but seems to be punished, does it merely try to din into our ears the efficacy of the dharma in spite of these thousand evils which we have to encounter every day? Is the alleviation of grief and suffering the main intention behind the narration? Are the examples of Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti, proclaimed and upheld by Vivekananda even today, any more relevant, appropriate enough in the modern unavoidable circumstances? Are they secular in character? But if Markandeya is a Rishi with high spiritual attainments and an immortal, chiranjeeva, it is quite inconceivable that he would come down to the level of the ordinary and provide such a superficial consolation to the afflicted who himself is a man of great accomplishments. Nor would the seer-poet indulge in this quick luxury to squander away his poetry on the routine and the common-place. If Savitri and Draupadi were born from the sacrificial flames, we must immediately recognise that in this secular garb we have in fact something deep, something that is luminously mysterious if not profoundly esoteric. The Savitri-tale is not a mere pious holy tale meant for the God-fearing and the credulous, for small minds, for young simple housewives; but it is actually a strong effective symbol charged with the high potency of the supernatural, even that of the transcendental which is pressing forth to establish itself in this world of suffering and grief and death. Savitri herself was a highly proficient and skillful young woman, with the knowledge of both the worldly and the spiritual; she was a tapasvini of exceptional merit. This we ought to remember in understanding the text which is very terse and compact in its presentation. It is a Yogic-spiritual document indeed. It is a revelation. Therefore looking at the Savitri-tale as a revelation will perhaps be the best way to profit from it. This knowledge in the tradition was always there in its background, but it had got lost in the course of time. Sri Aurobindo has renewed it, putting his own Yogic-spiritual power into it: he has put the fire of his own soul in its body and in its spirit. We must bear in mind, and recognise, that the tale is an occult-spiritual tale involving cosmic powers and personalities with a concern for the evolutionary manifestation upon the earth. We should take the story accordingly, in the know of its occult connotation, which is suggestively clear from the intention and mode of its narration. Hence we may say that the characters in the story are much more than even some exceptional human figures, howsoever these human figures in their glorious proportions may appeal to us in their nobility and stature. They are more than that; they are incarnations. If so we can well appreciate why Sri Aurobindo treats the Savitri-story both as a legend and as a symbol. No wonder also that his elaborate presentation of the theme in his epic should essentially focus itself on occult-supernatural actions and eventualities. This may prove to be a great stumbling block to both the modern and the traditional sets of thinking. Modern man very often adjudges it as a narrative in some rarefied abstruse and obscure domain, with one steep rock of abstraction climbing to another; he starts wondering if anything is happening in any definite manner or all is simply a dubious play of words with high-sounding appellatives like Infinity, Eternity, Inconscience, Non-being, Void, Nature, Spirit, Matter and so on. Frequently his charge is that, apart from the names of some Gods and Goddesses, there are only five proper names in the whole epic which runs to about twenty-four thousand lines: Satyavan, Savitri, Aswapati, Dyumatsena and Narad. The required support for thought and imagination, support in the form of characters of flesh and blood, is not available in this epic. The complaint is that the human framework is too thin for the story to remain even as a legend, the entire thrust being theoretic-metaphysical. Quite knowledgeable critics refuse even to call it a poem. But this is patently a limitation of the professionals who ought to come out of their academic preconceptions and allegiances. We have to be in tune at least with the intuitive perception and suggestiveness that the aesthesis of Savitri gives to us in rich and radiant plenty. Take an example. Aswapati the Yogi has explored the eighteen worlds of Consciousness, eighteen universal and transcendental lokas, in eighteen cantos of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, and found the true meaning of this Creation. He has now discovered the nature of the problem and the difficulty that stands in the way of a happy manifestation here in the fulfilment of this great and godly endeavour with which all began in Time. The exeptional Yogi has, after a long and arduous tapasya, gathered in his spirit that strength by which a totally new and effective process can be set into motion. It is then that he becomes the Lord of Life, becomes Aswapati: Ashwa, the Horse, is a Vedic symbol of Life-Energy, the Consciousness-Force in its defeatless dynamism. It is therefore very appropriate that the poet should have identified and named him only after his getting this most remarkable siddhi, the power by which he can shape the course of events. This takes about ten thousand lines of the epic and even then one at times gets an impression as if the poet was hurrying through. In contrast to this the traditionalist has a tendency to see the Savitri-tale as a tale of a faithful and chaste woman without recognising the fact that it is an episode of a very rare and singular spiritual personality who has met and triumphed over the God of Death. Vyasa was fully aware of the profound and mystical contents of the story and what he wrote with the èlan of an inspired Rishi has the luminous power to lend to the legend symbolic and supernatural substance and meaning. To an apparently household event taking place in the Vedic times he has given a measure of the cosmic-transcendent. The Savitri-tale is much more than a dharmic illustration of holy and pious living meant for devout and faithful creatures. When Vyasa says that Aswapati engaged himself in the worship of Goddess Savitri for eighteen years, or that his radiant daughter was of gentle birth and virtuous, or was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, was accomplished in scriptural and secular learning, or that Satyavan was such an ocean of noble qualities that Yama himself had to come to snatch his soul, then he as the narrator of a simple-looking tale has already spoken of many details of the science and philosophy of spiritual practices. His language is compact and pointed, suggestive of every aspect of a deeper life lived in the splendour of the spirit. The traditional religious mind totally misses this aspect. It is with this background that we should read the ancient tale of Savitri as given to us by Vyasa and adapted by Sri Aurobindo for his epic bearing appropriately the name of its heroine. Doing so, we begin to appreciate its sweet transformative power. The Story King Aswapati is an ardent follower of the dharma and is firmly established in the truth. He rules over his kingdom with love and concern for its citizens. He is a performer of Yajnas and keeps the holy company of the learned and the virtuous. But he is issueless. With the passing of time, and with the advancing of his age, this causes him great affliction. Therefore, with the intention of getting a son, he engages himself in arduous tapasya. He retires to a forest and for eighteen years worships goddess Savitri. Observing the strictest rules of conduct and of worship, he offers every day a hundred-thousand oblations to her. Pleased with his sincerity and devotion, the goddess emerges out of the sacrificial flames and grants him the boon of a daughter. She assures him that she had approached Brahma the Creator himself and it is actually he who has bestowed this boon upon him. She adds that a beautiful and effulgent daughter will be soon born to him, kanyä tejasvini. Given as she was by Savitri, who was pleased by the Savitri-oblations, the father and the wise ones named her too Savitri. [Note 1] (shloka 1:24) Fair and beautiful like the goddess Fortune Sri, the adorable princess soon grows into proper maidenhood. She looks like a heavenly damsel, devakanyä, who has taken birth as Aswapati’s daughter. And, indeed, because of the beauty and fiery splendour of her youth, no prince dares to approach her, extending his hand in marriage. Once on an auspicious day, parvani, at the turning of the lunar fortnight, Savitri takes a holy bath, goes to the temple, and offers prayers to the gods, and gives ritual oblations to Agni. The wise ones recite the hymns of benediction, swasti-mantras. Worship done, she takes some flowers and a portion of food-offerings to the deities, prasäd, and goes to give them to her father. She touches his feet in obeisance and, after giving him the flowers and prasäd, stands respectfully with folded hands by his side. Seeing his daughter grown to full youth, and beautiful like a goddess, devarupini, and yet unmarried, Aswapati is very much distressed. He tells her that she should go out in search of a young man of her choice to espouse, one endowed with qualities like her own. It is quite appropriate for her to do so, he explains, as none has come as a suitor asking for her hand. He also mentions to her that a father becomes open to reproach when, according to the dharma, he fails to give his daughter, of the right age, in marriage. [Note 2] Savitri sets out on her search and travels to different kingdoms and lands. On her way she visits palaces and holy places, and offers worship to the deities; also, she gives away great wealth to the learned. In the course of her journey, as she passes through the green wooded regions, she makes respectful obeisances to the sages and Rishis staying in the sacred hermitages. [Note 3] In the meanwhile on a particular day the revered sage Narad and king Aswapati are in council in the royal palace. [Note 4] About the same time, as if by coincidence, Savitri returns to her father’s house. There she sees her father in the company of the heavenly sage. She, bright and graceful like a bride, bows down to them, touches their feet, and offers worshipping respects. Narad looks at her and immediately makes several inquiries about her. He asks Aswapati on what mission his daughter had gone, and why he has not yet given her in marriage. Aswapati explains to the sage that it was precisely with this intention that he sent her abroad, to find a suitable prince to marry, as none had come seeking her hand. He also surmises that she must be now returning after having successfully accomplished her mission. He asks her to recount the details of her journey and to reveal the name of the one whom she must have chosen for a husband. Savitri narrates the sequence of her journey. She tells that she had gone to the far Shalwa country, once ruled by the noble and righteous king Dyumatsena. But, then, as fate would have it, he becomes blind. A neighbouring king, his past enemy, takes advantage of this situation and invades his kingdom. Dyumatsena is defeated and driven out. With his wife and child-son he retires to the forest and engages himself in tapasya. The child, named Satyavan, grows in the hermitage under the tutorship of the sages and Rishis of the forest. Savitri discloses that it is Satyavan whom she has chosen as her life’s partner. But Narad at once rings a note of alarm, even of deep regret. He tells Aswapati about the grave nature of the choice made by his daughter. It is a matter of serious concern that Savitri should have chosen Satyavan for a husband, he forewarns. Alas! Savitri has, O King, done something accursed, that forebodes a great evil; unknowingly she has made the choice of Satyavan, taking him to be one of high merit. (shloka 2:11) True, born as he was of noble parents, he was named Satyavan, the Truthful. As a lad he was fond of painting, and drew figures of horses, and therefore he is also often called the Painter of Horses, Chitrashwa. Narad further says that Satyavan is bright like the sun, has a sharp intellect like that of Brihaspati, is munificent like Rantideva, the son of Sankriti, and like Yayati is exceedingly bounteous; in the manner of Shibi, the son of Ushinar, he is respectful to the learned and always speaks the truth; he is handsome like the moon and people often wonder whether he is one of the Ashwinikumars. He has mastered the senses and subdued passions, is a youth of heroic deeds, and is yet soft-natured and friendly to everybody. The forest sages are endeared to him and speak highly about his qualities. But, at Aswapati’s insistence to know also if Satyavan has any defects, Narad tells him that there is one blemish, that one year after the marriage Satyavan is to die on that very day. Savitri’s choice of Satyavan therefore becomes accursed. Aswapati advises his daughter to proceed again on her quest. He tells her how nullified all his virtues and all his noble qualities stand; she should not, counsels he, accept what is blameworthy, particularly when made known well in time. Savitri is, however, firm in her resolve. She asserts that it is her inner being who has actually made the choice. She further adds that that alone will govern her in every respect. It is the entire judge and authority for her, pramänam me manastatah, as Vyasa puts it. She argues that only once can the family wealth be divided between the brothers and not a second time; only once can a father give his daughter in marriage and not again; and once only does a philanthropist speak the word of charity and abide by it. It matters not for her if Satyavan has a long life or a short one, has virtuous qualities or is without them; because only once will she make her choice and not a second time. She elaborates her point by invoking a greater truth of the higher life. By perception does one first come to a certain conclusion and then one holds it by speech; only afterwards is it put into action. That perception of mine for me is the one single authority here. (shloka 2:28) Savitri reiterates that this is exactly what she has done and firmly adheres to her choice. Narad sees in Savitri’s resolve a wholesome as well as profound and elevating sense of perception. He further recognises that she is determinedly treading the path of dharma from which none can take her away. Considering also that the qualities of Satyavan cannot be matched in anybody else, he recommends their marriage. He blesses them and wishes the marriage to proceed unhindered, without any ill-happening. [Note 5] Then invoking propitious things of life, and good fortune for all, he leaves the Palace for his home in Paradise. (shloka 2:32) Aswapati attends to the details of the marriage and proceeds to the forest-hermitage where presently lives Dyumatsena. Following the tradition of proposing a marriage, he requests Dyumatsena to accept Savitri as a bride for his son Satyavan. Dyumatsena is somewhat hesitant in the beginning and also has apprehension whether the young princess would adjust herself to the cloistral life and bear hardships. But Aswapati assuages his fears. Finally, Dyumatsena accepts the offer and the marriage is duly solemnised. Satyavan is happy that in Savitri he has a beautiful wife with all the exquisite qualities of a high-born virgin; Savitri too is joyous that her heart’s desire has been so well fulfilled. (shloka 3:17) The marriage-party leaves for Madra and Savitri adapts herself to the life of the hermitage. She looks after the physical needs of her parents-in-law, speaking always to them with a sense of humility and reverence. She also performs, with noble composure and grace, the various household routines, of attending to the kitchen-fire and using broom and jar. In a like manner, and always remaining calm and contented, employing soft and sweet language, mindful of her husband’s wants and desires, in their public life and in their privacy, she keeps Satyavan happy. This way, and absorbed in tapasya, a lot of her time goes by. But, within, the virtuous woman suffers greatly. With each rising sun, or while sleeping in the night, at every passing moment, she remembers Narad’s words and feels the cruel day approaching closer. When she counts that only four days are left, and Satyavan will be living no more afterwards, she resolves to perform the three-night vow, trirätra vrata, of fasting and standing at one single place through the entire period. [Note 6] Dyumatsena dissuades her from carrying out the difficult vow. Savitri, however, tells him that he need not have any apprehension in her fulfilling it. Remaining erect like a stick, without moving from the chosen spot, and without taking any food for three days Savitri, by the power of her strong will and a woman’s strength to suffer, completes the vow. On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, she gets ready well before sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes offerings to the gods. [Note 7] Then she goes to the parents-in-law and to the various hermitages around and makes obeisances to the Rishis. They all bless her with auspicious things dear to a young devout wife. Savitri, accomplished as she is in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyänayogaparäyanä, wills in her heart for their blessings to come true. On returning to the cottage she sees Satyavan, with his axe on his shoulder, leaving for the forest; she halts him and tells him that, on that particular day, she will accompany him to the forest. But he advises her to get the permission from his father. Dyumatsena, recollecting the past one year, notes that ever since her father had left her in his charge never for anything did Savitri make any request to him. But then counselling Savitri not to be inattentive in duty, he permits her to go with Satyavan to the woods. The young couple set out happily, hand in hand. Satyavan shows to Savitri the sacred rivers and trees laden with flowers. In the lovely and delightful forests, with the flocks of peacocks dancing there joyously, they hear all around a soft lyrical note of gladness. In that gladness Satyavan speaks to her in honey-sweet words. And Savitri too, delighted by the beauty of the surroundings, and in the company of her lover, responds with equal sweetness. But she is constantly watching her husband in all his movements and does not allow him to go out of her sight. Remembering Narad’s words, she knows that his life is now in hours and he will die with the arrival of the Time-Person, käla-purusha. Within, she is in great agony all the while. Yet, accomplished in austerities as she is, and reckoning the swift-approaching fatal moment, she remains calm. Satyavan, lustrous in his strength, collects a basketful of fruits with the help of Savitri. Then he starts cutting the firewood. He wants to complete the day’s task quickly and spend the rest of the time with his beloved. But, due to overwork, he suddenly feels exhausted and begins perspiring profusely. He suffers from a severe headache, a pain in the limbs and an intense burning sensation in the heart. He lies down. Savitri immediately goes closer to him and takes his head in her lap. She knows that the foretold moment has arrived and that the käla-purusha will soon appear. Presently, Savitri sees a bright Person standing in front of her. He is luminous, is beautiful in his red attire, and is wearing a splendid crown over his head; it seems to her that the Sun-God himself has come there. His body though dark is lustrous in hue and through his red eyes he is looking steadily at Satyavan. He is carrying a noose in his hand which inspires great dread. On seeing him, Savitri lays aside her husband’s head and stands up with folded hands. Her heart is trembling but she asks that Person who he is and why he has come. That Person introduces himself as Yama and avers that he could converse with Savitri because she is a devout and chaste woman, a practitioner of difficult austerities. Yama praises the soul of Satyavan; but now as his life here is over he has to take it away with him, the soul that is no bigger than a thumb, angushthamätrah purusham. He throws the noose around it, pulls it out and starts moving towards the South. Satyavan’s lifeless corpse appears very dull and frightful. Savitri, afflicted with agony, follows Yama. A little later Yama looks back and notices Savitri following him. He advises her to return, as she has paid the debt to her husband by accompanying him over the permitted distance. He further reminds her that she has to attend to the funeral rites of the deceased. Savitri does not accept Yama’s advice. She has walked with the God seven steps and therefore a friendly relationship is established between the two. She tells him so and argues extensively with him on fundamental issues, he being the son of Vivasvan, the Sun-God, knower and upholder of the Law of Truth obtaining in the mortal creation. You are the mighty son of Vivasvan and that is why the learned call you Vaivasvat; to all creatures you are fair and you uphold the dharma. For that reason you are, O Lord, also known as Dharmaraj. (shloka 5:41) Her speech is perfect, observing the rules of grammar and syntax, complete in knowledge of etymology, prosodically well-structured; also her reasoning is flawless and logically impeccable. She tells him that her own place lies near her husband and she will not go back without him, firmly fixed as she is in the dharma. By the merit of austerity, devotion to the preceptor, love for the husband, observance of the sacred vows, and by the grace of Yama himself there is nothing, she tells him, which cannot be accomplished by a woman. Further, she asserts that holy people always abide in virtuous conduct, and never have they sorrow, nor are they any time afflicted. Greatly rewarding is indeed the company of such pious ones and therefore one should be ever close to them. In the fellowship of the saints and sages, without a doubt, all fear disappears. For this reason, more than himself does a man trust holy persons, and so does he give more of his love and respect to them. Then, in a tremendous moment of mantric utterance, of revelation, she discloses that ... it is by the Truth that the saints lead the sun; by askesis the saints uphold the earth; in the saints all the three divisions of Time find their refuge; noble persons in the midst of the saints have never any grief. (shloka 5:48) The illustrious and the excellent help each other in the conduct of the dharma and do not do hurt to others. Therefore they prove to be the protectors of the entire world. Immensely pleased with the sublimity of these utterances Yama grants her boon after boon. Indeed, the more she speaks the well-adorned and well-cherished lofty things of the dharma, acceptable always in the conduct of life in every circumstance, to the same extent his admiration for her grows. By the first two boons she desires eyesight for her blind father-in-law and his lost kingdom; in the third boon she asks for a hundred sons for her father Aswapati, true and heroic brothers to her. By the fourth boon she would have got a hundred sons for herself, but she argues that this boon is of a different kind than the other three. It cannot be fulfilled without proper matrimony. She therefore reiterates her request for the life of Satyavan. Without him, she tells Yama, she herself would be dead; she would abstain from any pleasure, even that of entering heaven. Without Satyavan the boon would thus lie waste. Then, in a kind of dialectics, she points out the strange anomaly in Yama’s words and actions: You have given me the boon of a hundred sons and you yourself are taking my husband away; for that reason I again ask the boon of life for Satyavan, by which your words shall come true. (shloka 5:54) Yama, gladdened by Savitri’s Words of Dharma, says ‘Let it be so,’ and releases the noose from around the soul of the dead. He tells her that Satyavan is now in good health and fit to return with her to the earth. Further, he grants a life of four hundred years for him to live with her and, for the welfare of the world, to perform the holy Yajnas. Then Yama, blessing Savitri and sending her back with the soul of Satyavan, returns to his own Abode deep in the South. [Note 8] Also, Savitri returns to the earth with the soul of Satyavan. After the departure of Yama, getting her husband back, as Vyasa puts it, Savitri comes to the place where his dead body has been lying. She again takes his head in her lap. By now Satyavan regains consciousness and looks affectionately at Savitri; he begins talking to her like one who has returned from a long journey. He feels that he is waking from some deep sleep; but then he also carries a faint recollection of the dark-hued and terrifying figure who has dragged him to some dreadful and unknown world. He asks Savitri whether she knows anything about him. She tells him that it was the great God Yama himself, the Ordainer of the Creatures, who had come there; she, however, quickly adds that it is now all over and that he has left the place. Satyavan wants to know more about the entire episode; but Savitri postpones it by saying that she will narrate it the next day, pointing out that a thick darkness is fast enveloping them in the forest. Satyavan looks around and realises that he has not returned to the hermitage yet. He is quite worried, lest his old and helpless parents get disturbed, not seeing him back in spite of the growing night. But Savitri is somewhat hesitant. She sees that Satyavan is still weak and doubts whether he is in a condition to walk the long distance back to the hermitage. Getting lost in the darkness can also be risky. Besides, she herself is somewhat scared and tells Satyavan to that effect: Those cruel-voiced prowlers of the night are moving freely now; and listen to the sound in the fallen leaves as the wild beasts go about in the forest. This fearsome howling of the she-jackals in the south, and in the west, is causing my mind and my heart to tremble greatly. (shlokas 5:75-76) But Satyavan insists on returning forthwith. He is unable to bear any longer the separation from his loving parents. He tells Savitri that his blind father and the old mother must be frantically looking for them, going from hermitage to hermitage, inquiring about him and about his welfare. He does not wish to delay their going back any further. Realising how true her husband is as a follower of the dharma, Savitri agrees to return at once. She gets up and knots her loose hair; then, holding both the hands of her husband, she helps him to stand. Then encircling his waist with her right arm, his left on her left shoulder, they start walking slowly. Satyavan chides her that she is a timid woman and assures her that he is quite familiar with all the paths in the forest and can tell the correct one simply by looking at the stars. He points out to her that they are actually on the same path they had taken in the morning while coming to the forest. Indicating that at the bifurcation near the group of paläsha-trees she should take the path leading to the north, he prompts her to quicken the pace that they may reach home as early as possible. In the meanwhile Dyumatsena receives his eyesight. But he is very much disturbed, since Satyavan has not yet returned home. His mind begins wandering wildly, thinking of ominous and untoward happenings. A great fear grips him. The worried parents go from cottage to cottage inquiring about their son and daughter-in-law. They are concerned to such an extent that they rave almost in madness. Seeing their distressed plight, tormented as they are by evil suggestions, the sages of the forest gather around them and console them. Suvarchasa, ever the speaker of the truth, assures them that as Savitri is a woman of exceptionally noble and virtuous qualities, and is fixed in dharma, and has made great progress in her tapasya, nothing injurious can happen to Satyavan. Bharadwaja also expresses the same conviction and holds that Satyavan is hale and living. Gautama asserts that he has studied all the six branches of the Vedas, accumulated great might of askesis, observed strict celibacy since his early age, and pleased his preceptors and the Fire-God well; by that power of austerity and by the concentration of his will, he contends, he knows all the movements of others. Stating so, he affirms that Satyavan is alive. Gautama’s disciple vouches that never a word uttered by his Guru has turned out to be untrue or wrong; therefore he feels confident that Satyavan must be living. Dalbhya points out that Dyumatsena’s getting his eyesight back in such an unexpected way augurs auspicious happenings; he also says that the way Savitri observed the very difficult three-night vow, and the fact that she accompanied her husband to the forest without breaking the long fast, means complete safety for Satyavan. Apastambha sees in the tranquil benign surrounding, and in the manner and movement of the dumb animals and birds, a secret presence of harmony, indicating that there is nothing which should really perturb them. He too is sure that Satyavan is alive. Dhaumya proclaims that Satyavan has the marks of a long life and hence he must be living. This way the great Rishis assuage the fears of the worried parents. Then, not too long afterwards, Satyavan and Savitri arrive at the hermitage, immensely happy. There is great jubilation amongst all present. Indeed, in the union of the father and the son, in the blind king’s receiving his sight, in Savitri they see agreeable portents of the future. Kindling a bright fire they all sit around it and throw a volley of questions at Satyavan. They wish to know why Savitri and he are late in returning home when the night has grown dark in the jungles. Quite understandably, they want to know everything in detail to their satisfaction. But Satyavan simply tells them that, while collecting the firewood, he suffered a severe headache and had suddenly become unconscious, without awareness of anything around. For the delay there is no other reason, he informs them. But Gautama is not quite convinced. Moreover, Dyumatsena’s regaining his eyesight so unexpectedly still remains a mystery. He therefore turns towards Savitri and expresses his eagerness to know the entire secret from her. He tells her that she alone can unravel it. O Savitri, I am eager to hear of it from you; you know, O Savitri, all that is far and near, that belongs to the past and to the future; you understand it, one like Goddess Savitri herself as you are, with her effulgence. Surely, you have the knowledge of its cause and its purpose, and therefore speak the truth of it; if there is nothing in it to hide from us, tell us all of it. (shlokas 6: 34-35) Savitri narrates everything in detail, right from the beginning, how Narad foretold the impending doom of Satyavan’s death, and the reason for her undertaking the three-night vow, and of accompanying her husband to the forest on that particular day. She tells them that at the noon hour Yama entered the forest to snatch the soul of Satyavan. As he was carrying it away with him, she too followed him and offered him high eulogies with the utterances of Truth. The mighty God, the Upholder of the Dharma, was immensely pleased, and had become happy with her beyond bound. She then narrates how she received the five boons and how Satyavan regained consciousness. The Rishis bless the young devout woman and in happiness depart to their cottages, hailing her as the Saviour of the House: The House of the King was plunging more and more into darkness, assailed by misfortunes; but you of noble birth and a virtuous wife, sweet and amiable in nature, and an observer of the vows, one given to meritorious conduct, redeemed the family from doom. (shloka 6:43) But the next day they all, rich in austerities, completing the morning fire-rituals, gather once again around Dyumatsena. They speak of the extreme good fortune, mahäbhägyam, of Savitri, and are not contented even though they repeatedly narrate it. While in wonderment they are talking thus, a group of citizens of the Shalwa kingdom unexpectedly arrive at the hermitage. Extending their greetings to Dyumatsena, they inform him that his enemy has been killed by his own minister. They also add that in the capital everyone has resolved that Dyumatsena should occupy the throne again, as he is its worthy and rightful heir. Thus, imploring him to return, they tell him that the army with all its four divisions is ready at his command. They are also happily surprised to see Dyumatsena with his eyesight regained. Dyumatsena worships the Rishis reverentially and, receiving their blessings, departs for the capital. Shaibya along with Savitri rides a richly decorated gold-panelled car and, escorted by the army, leaves the hermitage. At the capital the priests sprinkle the holy water and perform Dyumatsena’s coronation ceremony. Satyavan is also made the Crown-Prince. In the course of time all the boons of Yama given to Savitri get fulfilled. [Note 9] The Tale of Satyavan and Savitri -- Sri Aurobindo The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal plane; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life. Adaptations made by Sri Aurobindo -- Notes Note 1 (p. 5) In Vyasa’s Savitri the description of Aswapati’s entire tapasya and his getting the boon are covered in just about twenty shlokas. The king has no son and in order to get a child he sets himself upon the dharmic path of sacrificial worship, Yajna. The traditional issue is the continuation of the ancestral line for the welfare and maintenance of the order of the worlds, the order which is maintained by making to the gods appropriate offerings accompanied by the hymns of solicitation and praise. The gods grow by these offerings and in return give gifts to the devotees. The help of the gods is always for promoting Righteousness. If the society has a certain foundation based on it, then it is obligatory for the righteous to affirm it in everyday conduct and in every respect. One aspect of it is to see that in all its glory it is perpetuated from generation to generation. The Law of the Right, ritam, was the ancient Vedic ideal that prevailed in the dynamic Age of the Truth, Satya Yuga, and of it Aswapati was one ardent and devout votary. But then Aswapati’s tapasya was not just a part of the fulfilment of this social obligation of his. We must also look into the plausibility that the intention behind the narration was to present a deeper and truer issue through the medium of a story. It appears that, in this human tale, Vyasa quite meant it to be so. In spirituo-metaphysical terms it is the possibility of a divine creation arising out of the inconscience, out of the nonmanifest that has become the unmanifest. If by the Force of Concentration, Tapas-Shakti, the Supreme created the Void and became inconscient, did the Yoga of Self-Sacrifice, triumphantly chanted in the Veda as the Holocaust of the Supreme, then by another Force of Action he has to emerge out of this state, out of utter forgetfulness, and establish the unfailing and inexhaustible delight of existence everywhere. For this to happen, the Supreme has to do Yoga in the earth-consciousness itself. And this has to happen in the face of his own stubbornness; for he himself has become the Inconscient. One visible sign of this stubbornness of the inconscient Supreme is the presence of Death: the manifesting Supreme surprisingly encounters the obstacle of the antagonist Supreme as Death. In that sense the tale of Savitri also becomes the Epic of the Divine Creation. In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Aswapati comes to the world of birth and does the Yoga of the Supreme. This is necessary in order to tackle, through birth, the divine issue present in this world of birth, in the mortal creation, mrityuloka. He realises that the issue can be handled victoriously only if the divine Shakti would condescend to come down upon the earth and deal with the otherwise obstinate and intractable problem of mortality, presented in the Figure of Death. She agrees. Savitri comes down here as an incarnate force and espouses the cause of the evolutionary travail’s death-bound life in the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme himself. But this descending ocean of dynamic consciousness has to be upborne, lest it drown the very Void out of which it is intended to emerge, with the awareness of the multiple splendour, a manifestation with the growing richness of the being of delight. Aswapati’s tapasya is for this purpose, to prepare a safe base for the fiery power’s transforming action. The needed Yogic support for her arrival and for her action is provided by it. Aswapati climbs to the summit of this creation and meets her; he prays to her to take human birth and accomplish the glorious miracle. In response to it she comes down as his own daughter. Thus Aswapati’s eighteen-year tapasya presented in Vyasa’s brief narrative, already full of spiritual glow, becomes in Sri Aurobindo a glorious and laurel-crowned Odyssey of mounting the mighty steep World-Stair that rises from Matter’s inconscient base to the splendours of the superconscient Spirit. He goes yet beyond, crossing the triple Glory. Even as he approaches the Worlds of the Unknowable, the creative-executive power of the Supreme answers him and grants him the exceptional boon that one shall come and change everything. All shall be done for which this mortal world was created --he is told. In the legend of Savitri the issue, albeit briefly and indicatively stated, is yet well focused in the inescapable death of Savitri’s lover and husband Satyavan. This death indeed becomes a glorious occasion for the incarnate Power’s action to deal with the universal Adversary standing in the way of the intended divine manifestation. What was brief and suggestively succinct in Vyasa, given to us in just twenty swift shlokas, Sri Aurobindo elaborated in his epic to the great length of about ten-thousand lines. But it is not wholly a poetic or thematic elaboration or expansion to this disproportionate size, merely for the sake of self-blissful indulgence. The existence of the World-Stair is not entirely new to the Yogic experience. But Aswapati’s exploration of these worlds, his moving through them, putting upon their breast his footsteps is an occult action and has an occult meaning and purpose. It is not just the journey of an indifferent passerby, he leaves behind in them his dynamic and luminous Yogic presence itself. It is the presence of the Avatar left behind in those worlds which is going to prove beneficent to this world of our mortality. It is by this presence that these countless worlds are to participate gloriously in the process of the new creation for which Savitri is about to begin her work. Perhaps it was too early for the tradition to realise this, but it seems that it certainly had a distant intuition of it. Note 2 (p. 6) Sri Aurobindo describes the event in a somewhat different manner, with Aswapati as a Yogi in communion with the spiritual planes and forces that constantly exert their influence upon us, which govern and mould all our movements and actions. He has a sure intuition that a greater nobler destiny lies in wait for us though at present we strive only for little gains, though we are unable to receive the celestial gifts, hold them when they are given to us in God’s plenty. But Aswapati hears a heavenly voice and sees in the person of Savitri a bright promise, “a shining answer from the gods” to all these thousand questions that baffle and torment life and belittle it. He tells her to proceed forthwith and put her “conquering foot on Chance and Time”. He has a feeling that the heavens guard her soul for some mighty work and that her fate and her work are kept somewhere afar which she must discover and attend to. She is bidden to ascend from Nature and meet a greater God, that together they shall tackle the issue of this mortal creation. The great commanding word from her Yogi-father is received by Savitri and she at once awakes to the mission of her spirit and her soul. Deep in her consciousness it sinks and begins to work with the full power and certainty of the mantric utterance itself. Note 3 (p. 6) At this point Sri Aurobindo brings out explicitly, and with sweet lyrical enthusiasm and enchantment, the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri in the Shalwa woods, of which in Vyasa no hint whatsoever is available. They meet, they fall in love with each other, they recognise the purpose of their union and the task they have together to attend to. In the acceptable tradition of the Gandharva marriage, and with Nature and the gods as its witnesses, they get indissolubly united. All this is absent in the upäkhyäna. But then what is absent in the Legend and Symbol is the traditional ritualistic marriage which is solemnised later, in spite of Narad’s frightful prophecy. Not on socio-religious or occult-dharmic aspect but on spiritual content, with its meaning and its value, is the important thrust put in the latter. Perhaps this emphasis, rather than the departure from the established norm and convention, is quite understandable. The marriage itself is an exceptional marriage, marriage of two exceptional incarnate beings. Note 4 (p. 6) Vyasa does not mention if the queen, Savitri’s mother Malawi, was also present during the meeting, although it is presumed that she was there. Even if actually present, she did not participate in the discussion. This seems to be the classical ideal in which the woman left all matters of deliberation and decision to her husband and accepted his word as final in every respect. She always remained in the background with her force of dynamism supporting her husband from behind. On the other hand, in Sri Aurobindo’s presentation the queen, though full of human frailty, plays a crucial role in the discussion and raises subtle points of fate and free will in human transactions. Note 5 (p. 7) In Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri we see Narad asserting the divine will behind this marriage and, though apparently tragic, makes it firm. There is no doubt that it was for this purpose that he had undertaken the long and arduous journey from his home in Paradise to Aswapati’s palace at Madra on the banks of the Alacananda, a difficult process by which the spiritual becomes the earthly substantial. Narad is one of those very few who can move freely in all the worlds and can also take a human form, of flesh and blood. He knows the occult secret by which this can be done and as an aspect of the divine working, and in the imperative of its purpose he participates whenever such crucial events are about to occur. Sri Aurobindo’s Narad has a mission to accomplish, -- to deliver the Word of Fate. It is the Word which is going to determine the entire course of the earthly future. On the other hand the Mahabharata story looks more like a homely narrative. In it Narad is taken as a household figure intimate to the inmates, with their concern in his heart. His present visit to Aswapati is therefore just a part of that extreme goodwill of his for them. Note 6 (p. 8) In general we may say that the mention of trirätra vrata in Vyasa has been fully utilised by Sri Aurobindo in his epic to describe the Shakti Yoga of Savitri, a description which runs to more than three thousand lines. In the entire Occult-Yogic literature this is undoubtedly unique, the most definite disclosure, indeed a revelation and an application accompanying its practice. We have here the true meaning and purport of the Tantrik sadhana, Shakti Upasana, as a means for the effective transformation of Nature from her inconscient mode of working in the dumb inconscient body into a luminous dynamism of her consciousness-force. It is only when this is carried out in the bodily existence that there is a possibility of conquering death and attaining earthly immortality in the light and splendour of the triple Divine. That would be the genuine and actual resolution of the issue of this mortal world, this mrityuloka. It is on that path Savitri has now set herself, so that this difficult missioned task be done. The cause of her husband’s death in the story is the immediate occasion for doing the Yoga of Transformation. Certainly this aspect of earthly immortality is not present in the tradition, nowhere has it been explicitly taken as a part of the spiritual sadhana. From death to immortality, mrityormamratm gamay, has all along been the ancient prayer. It is again in that context that we see in the Upakhyana of the Mahabharata Yama granting wonderful boons to Savitri; but then Yama as immortal Death still remains there, yet to carry on the work of upholding the worlds. We cannot therefore say that the trirätra vrata has the power of the Shakti Yoga to bring about a totally radical change in Nature, particularly in the stubborn inconscient aspect of Nature, to altogether displace death from her. And yet the benign figure of Yama has to find its full meaning and appurtenant significance in this mortal creation. The Vedic-Tantrik sadhana did not explore the possibilities of the Shakti Yoga in this transformative endeavour though it may have had an inkling of it. The fact that it was a three-night vow makes it symbolically weighty and consequential, the three nights of the physical, vital and mental ignorance that constitutes our existence. But the full implication of it, both Yogically and Occult-operationally, perhaps remained unexplored. Perhaps for good reasons too. Note 7 (p. 8) On the fourth day, the destined day of Satyavan’s death, Savitri gets ready well before the sunrise, and lights a bright fire, and makes ritual offerings to the gods. In Sri Aurobindo Savitri worships goddess Durga on the fated day before setting out to the forest with Satyavan. The image of the goddess was carved by him on a stone. In the Upakhyana Satyavan is presented as a painter of the horses whereas Savitri makes him a sculptor. But, more importantly, Durga is the Protectress of the Worlds and worshipping her is praying and asking for her protection in the most dire moment of life, the moment confronting death itself. Arjuna at the suggestion of Krishna had so worshipped her at the very beginning of the Mahabharata war. That was however for winning a victory over the enemy and not to conquer death. Therefore if Savitri is going to worship Durga, that goddess must be more powerful than Yama in order to prevail over him. She is the transcendental Shakti of Savitri herself and hence there is the inevitability of the result in her favour in the deep battle of life that is soon going to be waged against death. That such a living goddess was present in the rock sculpted by Satyavan adds yet another transcendental dimension to the story in the hands of Sri Aurobindo. Note 8 (p. 10) The parts dealing with the colloquy between Yama and Savitri are the most complex, most profound and occult in Sri Aurobindo’s epic. In it Yama, rather Death, the embodied Nothingness, is standing as a stubborn antagonist against God’s work in this mortal creation and has no mercy to show to anyone or to anything. He is learned, he is powerful, he is relentless and inexorable, and all that he knows is his Law. He sees things and beings as a “pitiful dream” and looks at the delight of Nature with utter disdain. In fact, he is the very incarnation of Inconscience. He derives all his power from the dark Abyss and he cannot accept any trespassing of his edict. Savitri’s following him and challenging him to claim the soul of Satyavan is an affront made by her to his sovereignty and he cannot brook it in the least manner. She must pay a heavy price for this transgression. The figure that finally stands in front of her is a huge terrifying mask, a “grandiose Darkness of the Infinite”. He has embodied in his shadow-self the entire might of God’s Nothing and, in the present process of evolution, defeating him is defeating that Nothing itself. Therefore he is standing there in all his formidable strength. But the great incarnate Goddess in the form of Savitri throws aside the veil and the Deity dwelling in her secret depths readies herself for the decisive assault. A mighty transformation comes upon the extraordinary Yogini and the Kundalini-force descends from above into her entire being. The Tantrik World-Yoga of the Divine, the Shakti Yoga of the Supreme, finds its culmination in this most decisive, and marvellous, action of the great incarnate Goddess. But then Yama in the role of Death yet resists. Finally, however, to her mastering Word he succumbs and gets dispossessed of his paled and defeated will. He takes refuge in the “retreating Night” unable as he is to withstand the lustre of the divine Immortal. But then he reappears as the Tempter of the Worlds and offers easy boons to Savitri. She at once sees the trap and does not fall into it, to live with Satyavan in the heavens of the deathless gods. Her concern is for the soul of man, Satyavan’s soul to do God’s work in the world of the mortals. Earth is the chosen place and it is this earth which in the splendour of the triple divinity must be fulfilled. Savitri is firm-willed and adheres to the choice of her soul and her spirit. It is then that in the benignity of her choice she receives the supreme gift from the Supreme, a gift to celebrate the arrival of the new creation with the soul of Satyavan at its forefront and as its initiator. Even the bright illusion that could have fallen over her sight and distracted her from her single purpose has now been dispelled and there is only the light of the everlasting day. The work of the incarnation has been accomplished and now things will unfold in the process of endless Time. Can we say that both these aspects, the aspect of the embodied Nothingness and the aspect of the bright Tempter, are present in Yama of the tradition, because Yama given to us by the tradition is unmistakably at once frightful-dark and kind-gracious? He inspires fear in us and also he is the giver of happy boons to us. We may therefore clearly see both these figures behind him, though perhaps not in their detailed operational bearing and sense. Even if we are to take it that way, it has never been made explicit and functionally meaningful in the ancient writings. It is very likely that they had the intuition of it, that behind this twofold Yama there is only one single Supreme, or rather it is the Supreme who himself is present in these two poises. But the point is not about the intuition of it. The Rishis of yore might have had that knowledge and that definite perception which had remained unrecorded in the annals of spirituality. We may even give them the benefit of the doubt that it was not to be inopportunely disclosed, very explicitly stated. Or else, perhaps more appropriately, the completeness of the experience was still very much wanting for it to have become in the evolutionary process operationally decisive. But for us what is necessary is to recognise the fact that Savitri’s entry into the very world of dense ignorance and death is an absolutely unique and unprecedented event. It was as if Satyavan’s death became a pretext for it to happen. With her Occult-Yogic might Savitri steps into the inconscient regions and establishes in them the expressive power of the supreme Word, the Word by which things take place and get luminously fixed. If Aswapati’s tapasya led him through the different worlds in which he left his presence behind, Savitri’s Battle in the field of Darkness is to eliminate the elemental forces from which arise the crookedness and the evil in the evolutionary manifestation. Therefore the Yama-Savitri debate is not a mere verbal duel, a logomachy, a metaphysical engagement, a conjuration of one-up-manship. Great powers are released even as they speak, the powers of opposition and negation and the powers of advancement and affirmation. Each utterance lets loose its charge with occult mights clashing against formidable occult mights. It is in their wake that things have to transpire, events founded in the future and not in the obscurity of the past to get organised and configured so that the new order of the world is born. Ultimately the Gnostic Word is established in those very suffocating and terrifying nether depths where lived uncompromising death and suffering and evil. Great is Truth and it does indeed prevail. Savitri has made it greater by making it prevail even in the absolute darkness of Inconscience. What was promised long ago now gets unconditionally fulfilled. Once for all the issue of the mortal creation is resolved and the path of ever-widening and everlasting progress opened out. Note 9 (p. 13) Sri Aurobindo’s epilogue does not have these details. Did he intentionally drop them, considering them as irrelevant to the main Yogic-spiritual message the epic is to give? Or did he sort of hurriedly round off the story keeping in regard the view that, after receiving the supreme Boon, there is really nothing more that need be wished or willed, need be said? After completing the final revision of the Book of Fate, in the middle of November 1950, just three weeks before his passing away, Sri Aurobindo had asked if something else was still remaining to be taken up for revision. When told that the Book of Death and the Epilogue were still to be attended to, he remarked: “Oh, that? We shall see about that later on.” That “later on” was never to be. Would Sri Aurobindo have incorporated in the Epilogue the gathering of the wise and the elders around Satyavan and Savitri when they returned late in the evening from the forest, recreated with his poetic genius the ancient scene of the hermitage and the dwellers gathering at the moment of concern and at the moment of jubilation? Possibly the sages and the Rishis would have told us about the nature of the new creation and about the divine life received as a boon by Savitri from the Supreme, the “life that has opened with divinity”. Similarly, the Book of Death, which presently has only Canto Three, entitled Death in the Forest, might have been taken up by him later, perhaps to indicate the difficulty of the cellular transformation, -- the difficulty of the inconscient will in the body to change and accept the Truth-Will in it. But these are possibilities about which nobody can say anything and it would be quite improper to even hazard a guess. Besides, it is likely that these are futuristic matters and it would be best to leave the future to determine its own course of progress and action when the future is going to be fully governed by the future and not by dead compulsions and constraints of the past. The story of the mortal world, mrityuloka, is an endless saga, and a glorious saga full of happy surprises, and it must be allowed to unfold in its own creatively glorious way, the Way of the Truth. Sri Aurobindo has set it into motion and the auspices of eternity’s Time will take it over to make dynamic divinity its executive in the endless delight of existence.
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