Mangesh V. Nadkarni

It is true that the consciousness of Sri Aurobindo animates every book that he wrote. But even among Sri Aurobindo's works, Savitri has come to be recognised as a book which brings with it a special grace to the spiritually sensitive reader. This is because Savitri is the verbal embodiment of Sri Aurobindo's yogic consciousness and the mantric power of its magnificent poetry can put the sensitive reader in touch with this consciousness.

It is significant that Sri Aurobindo was working on Savitri almost throughout the first 50 years of this century. Of course, this was not because he found the writing of an epic of these proportions too daunting or demanding for his creative powers; it is well-known that between 1914 and 1921, the period during which he was publishing the Arya, there were quite a few occasions when he was writing half a dozen diverse books simultaneously as though he commanded an inexhaustible fountain of creativity. Savitri took him nearly 50 years to write because, as he has told us in one of his Letters on Savitri:

Even the act of writing of Savitri seems to have been an event of great significance to mankind and to the earth-consciousness. The first half of the twentieth century was the period during which the leaders of thought, particularly in the West, were moving from dogmatic materialism to an absolute, stark nihilism, which saw mankind as a species "swept from darkness to darkness, like a straw on a torrent by a ruthless, mysterious and ignoble force". That was an age of the loss of faith, of spiritual desolation, of intellectual despair and metaphysical sickness, of Auden's 'Age of Anxiety' and of T. S. Eliot's 'Waste Land'. During those years, mankind was passing through a very critical phase of evolution when many thinkers wondered whether humanity, having reached such depths of despair, can even have the will to live. The scientific and philosophical revolutions of the preceding four centuries had succeeded in creating the impression that man is no more than an accidental product of creation and a pawn in the play of vast forces entirely beyond his control.

Sri Aurobindo rejects this nihilistic world-view and its despair and gloom about mankind and its future; his great contribution to human thought is that he makes it possible for us to believe that this creation and man in it are neither a purposeless illusion nor a fortuitous accident, and that they have an important meaning. This world is not an unfortunate accident; it is in fact a miracle that is gradually unfolding itself. Our mind may find this process too baffling, but that is because it is still an imperfect instrument groping after true knowledge. In Savitri, he reveals to us in many places that the present appearance of our terrestrial existence is a veiled and partial figure, and that to limit ourselves to the present formula of an imperfect humanity and to regard that as an abiding truth for all times is to disregard the evolutionary nature of this world. This tone of optimism and hope is central to the grand music of Savitri.

Take, for example, Book II, Canto 4 of Savitri. Here the poet is describing the struggle of consciousness in the early phases of its terrestrial evolution through the lower levels of the vital plane, when "the need to exist, the instinct to survive" is paramount and unseeing desire is the only instrument for growth available to this consciousness. At that point, it looked like "a vain unnecessary world/ Whose will to be poor and sad results/ And meaningless suffering and a grey unease/ Nothing seemed worth the labour to become/" But the poet perceives this wasteful-seeming effort in another perspective and describes even this as a heavenly process which aims "To release the Glory of God in Nature's mud".

A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,
A fallen ignorance in its covert night
Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,
A camouflage of the Inconscient's need
To release the glory of God in Nature's mud. (page 138)

Savitri has many such passages. In fact, by writing passages such as this Sri Aurobindo seems to have virtually inundated the earth atmosphere with vibrations of hope and optimism about man and his terrestrial future. This has a parallel in his writing of The Life Divine. It is not just a fortuitous co-incidence that he wrote it and published it serially in The Arya as the First World War was waging, and he took up its revision as the Second World War erupted. It was as though he was countering the Asuric attacks on mankind by strengthening the forces of the Divine in an occult and spiritual way. The same may be said about the writing of Savitri. By writing this great epic, Sri Aurobindo seems to have countered the dark forces which were seeking to engulf mankind with a feeling of despair and defeatism about its own future.

The passage which I have given below ( from Book I: Canto 4) is one such passage, Here the poet suddenly gives up his impersonal tone and talks to you and me intimately, and assures us that even as the larger evolutionary purpose behind this creation is being worked out, you and I as individuals are not forgotten. The Divine is as much responsive to the individual's needs as he is to that of the evolutionary journey of this world. The precise context in which this passage occurs is the following: the poet is telling us how the great gods live in their splendid isolation; they know the purpose of evolution, and they are not moved by our plight in the human way. They await the Eternal's hour, and only at that hour do they intervene in a divine way. But we tend to get overawed by all that happens on the cosmic stage, and begin to wonder whether you and I matter in this drama at all. Or are we too puny, too insignificant to matter? The poet then suddenly catches hold of our hand, as it were, and speaks to us directly, and what he gives in these few lines is verily an abhaya mantra. In its firm tone, it is as reassuring as the other abhaya mantra where the Lord assures us: "Abandon all Dharmas and take refuge in Me alone, I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve " (Gita: 18-66).

Now that you know the context in which this passage occurs and also the import of this passage, read it aloud to yourself clearly. I have reorganised this passage in my usual way: I have broken it down into verse-paragraphs by leaving a space after each end-punctuation; besides, I have numbered each verse paragraph and also supplied the line numbers.

In the verse paragraph preceding the first verse of this passage the poet tells us that there is a secret spiritual aid here whether we are aware of it or not. As the slow Evolution's coils unwind and Nature keeps hewing her passage through the hard rock of the inconscient, a divine intervention waits above waiting for the right moment.

Para 1: This earth we inhabit, and which scientists see as a globe that rotates around itself as it circles round the sun, is not a mechanical , clock-work universe. It is not dead, nor is it totally inconscient. We are not whirling here on a globe that has no purpose and it is not as though we are left here all by ourselves to accomplish a task that is beyond our capacities. God never gives us a task without giving us at the same time capacities needed to accomplish the task. It is true that the life we live here is often made up of confused and disorderly events and happenings and since we do not see any coherence or purpose in it, we call the power that governs our life "Fate". Life often takes us through the experiences of betrayal of faith and of the bitterness of death, and through all the anguish and agony which are caused by death and failure, betrayal and treachery. The poet does not deny any of this; he does not give us a rosy picture of life. Life is a grim struggle most of the time. But at the same time he assures us in no uncertain terms that in spite of all this we should not forget that there is behind all this, behind fate and its vagaries, a Hand extended to protect us and guide us.

Para 2: This Hand has been close to us and guiding us through all the countless births and lives we have lived through. Suddenly the poet changes the universe of discourse to give us a totally different perspective on life. The events in each life are as it were so many episodes in a long pilgrimage which began several lives ago, and which will go on for several lives yet to come. There is no event or experience in life whose significance can be understood entirely in local terms, in terms of that life alone; the cause as well as the effect of many an experience or event can not always be found in that life itself; these may come from previous lives or extend to lives yet to come.There is nothing entirely exoteric in life; everything has an esoteric significance as well. When we are conscious of this we are less likely to exaggerate the seeming tragedies of our lives as we are to exaggerate the importance of our little victories.

In its firm grasp this outstretched Hand keeps for us safe the one sure and supreme goal of all our efforts, not only of this life but of all our lives, the one result no will can deny us and no disaster can cheat us from --- the ultimate goal of our pilgrimage through several lives, or the siddhi of our evolution. What precisely is this goal, this siddhi? Conscious Immortality. Our inner being, or our true being is immortal, but we are not aware of it, and suffer here in this world because of our ignorance. The aim of this evolutionary journey is to manifest in each human form here the plenitude, the glory of the Supreme or Divine consciousness, which is often described as Sat-Chit-Ananda. We are all destined to realize even in our surface consciousness that we are amritasya putrah, the children of Immortality. That is our destiny, however puny, weak and ignorant we may appear now. And notice also the confidence in the poet's tone. He assures us that no body or nothing on earth or heaven can cheat us of this crown of conscious immortality --- neither any will nor any power, however strong.

What does this crown of conscious immortality bestow on us? Answer: the realisation that we are not the pathetic creatures we now think we are as we helplessly get sucked into the vortex of illness, physical disintegration and death, the awareness that we are not the beggars we now seem to be as we wander from one supermarket to another shopping for a little happiness. However much we shop, however bulging our shopping-bags may get, happiness, a sense of fulfilment still eludes us except for a brief moment or so. This realisation that we are the children of immortality, and that happiness is our very nature, as much as immortality and consciousness and power are --- this is known in popular terms as the realisation of Godhead veiled in us. Sri Aurobindo has defined for us in these terms this goal of our earthly evolution on the very second page of The Life Divine:

The poet then goes on to say that this godhead was promised to our souls before they agreed to undertake the arduous evolutionary journey through life and death in ignorance. He is almost implying that since this compact was made by the Lord, he is bound to rescue us from our bondage to death, ignorance and incapacity. He does not forget his part of the bargain, and that is why he pursues us down the corridors of time like the hound of Heaven. Unfortunately, we have forgotten our origin, our real nature, and have fallen in love with the bondage to body, life and mind which our Ignorance has created.

Para 3: Then in one short line, he removes all our misgivings and fears that God after he created this world might have lost control over his creation. Otherwise why would so many patently outrageous things keep happening here as if this world is spinning out of the control of the creator. When we see the great tragedies that strike man here on earth, the great catastrophes that overtake men and nations, we wonder whether there is anybody in control of this creation. The poet assures us that he who created this world is always its Lord, he is always in control of it.

If we make what appear like errors, it is because he allows us to make them since these often create openings through which he can enter our lives, which otherwise are closed to him. Normally the measuring rod by which we judge our actions in life is the material success these actions bring us; all that brings us material success is considered 'good` and all that brings us material failure is regarded 'bad'. But such success often shuts God out of our lives; it makes us complacent with our finiteness. Often the so-called failures which bring material losses, and often disasters, make us pause in our tracks and take a fresh look at ourselves and where we are headed. These can be moments of great awakening when we feel the breath of God on our backs.

God works through our lives all the time whether we are aware of it or not. Particularly when the circumstances of life are fierce and trying, he is present there and guiding us. When we are engaged in what looks like back-breaking toil or a battle against impossible odds, he is present with us. His ways of working are mighty strange. He may some times lead us through pathways of sin and suffering to wean us away from our arrogance in our virtue and from our ego-based sense of separateness and self-sufficiency. When we shed our lonely tears on our pillows in the middle of the night, defeated and forlorn, he is there sitting beside us. He never forsakes us. He may not always grant our prayers because we often do not ask for the right things. When he rejects our prayers, it is often a greater act of grace than when he grants our prayers.

Even after listening to this account of the way God works in our lives, some of us may still feel that their lot in life has been exceptionally unfortunate and it is difficult to reconcile God with their misfortunes. As if to silence such protests, the poet says, no matter what the surface appearance of any one's life, no matter how strong his present ills and how accursed his lot, ---- and he does not deny that sometimes one feels like a traveller by a ship who has been suddenly thrown out into the open sea in the middle of the night and he cannot swim, nor can he see the shore --- we should never forget that there is still a mighty guidance through all that happens to us in life, and this guidance is preparing us for the crown of conscious immortality. Everything else is a passing circumstance in life.

Para 4: After we have gone through all the circumstances that beset our life here in this great and divided world , God's bliss and oneness are our inborn right. That is the promise God has made to us, and he is bound to fulfil it. Our main problem in life is that we set our own private agenda which is at variance with that of the glorious goal God has set for us. We seek finite pleasures, although we realise that these pleasures are transient and are immediately followed by their shadow, pain, unhappiness, frustration in some form or the other. Our inner being can never be satisfied with the finite. It hungers after the Infinite. To realise this is the great awakening. Until we wake up to this knowledge, our lives are just a preparation for this crowning knowledge, and transient happiness and its opposite both play an important role in our lives.

Para 5: The poet in giving us this assurance leaves us in no uncertainty. He tells us that for the supreme fulfilment of our lives, a date has already been fixed in the calendar of the Divine, and on that day will fall the anniversary of our Birth sublime and then will our soul justify the chequered course it chose to walk through in life, and all those aspirations that seem so distant of fulfillment now will come within our grasp. Look at the supreme assurance contained in this. The date and time of our sublime birth, our spiritual birth, are already set. There is no uncertainty about it. And when reach our goal and then look back on the what looks like the chequered path we had to tread, we see that every fall that we suffered has had a salutory effect on our subsequent journey, and that life is either all good or a preparation for a future good.

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