Book One. The Book of Beginnings
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V
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Book One: Canto 1 The Symbol Dawn
Barring the path of the Divine Manifestation, there lies immobile upon the bosom of Silence the mind of Night. Alone in the stretch of timelessness the mind of Night is huge and portending. In that blind musing of the Night one senses, as it were, the profounds of the Infinite without form; it is an impenetrable obscurity. All is occupied by a fathomless zero. This mind, a power of the self that was once boundless but had subsequently fallen, is awake between two Nothingnesses—the Void above and the Void below. It remembers the dark womb of Nescience from which it had arisen and it wishes to end itself in that void, turning away from the call of the adventure of birth and the prospect of the meandering journey following it. A dumb unformed figure of the Unknown, the Inconscient is in some stir; it goes on repeating endlessly that unconscious act, prolonging the mechanical will behind it and acts as a cradle to the cosmic drowse of an ignorant Force whose very rhythms of slumber go on to light up the suns in the universe and carry the lives of creatures in this unconscious swing. In this immensitude of the still space where there is neither mind nor life nor soul, in this Void the Earth is spinning helplessly, lost once again in her mechanical dreams, wholly forgetful of her spirit and her goal. In this enigmatic darkness something stirs. It is some movement, an insistent urge which wants to be but does not know how, that awakes Ignorance in the Inconscient. There is a pang and a quiver; an old unfulfilled want, inert so far in the subconscience, raises its head searching for light with old memories. It looks as if there had survived in the depths of this Nought an entity from a buried past which is obliged to raise itself and its effort and struggle in another bleak round. An unformed consciousness wishes for light and a vague foreknowing sense seeks for a far away change. A longing arises and Night, the Mother of all, who has been heedless so far is reminded of a Need to be fulfilled. Imperceptibly there is a break in that dark, a ray of light, of life, starts appearing; it is as though a messenger from beyond has come searching for a sole, disconsolate spirit that has forgotten its past of bliss. With the entry of this light of life in this hushed universe there creeps throughout a call for the adventure of consciousness and joy and it compels the reluctant Night-Nature to resume life, to see and to feel. That is the beginning: a thought is sown, a sense is born, a memory stirs; it is as if a soul dead long ago is moved to live again, but the aftermath of the previous cycle has obliterated all the remnants of the past. All that has to be rebuilt and all the old experience gone through once again. But surely all can be done with the Grace of God. Thus there arises a hope in that world of forlorn indifference. There comes a miraculous gesture in a of heaven. A repetitive movement of light proceeds from there downwards. All this persistent of light transfigures the scene. It prevails upon the darkness to yield to light and the dormant world is touched by the beauty and wonder of life. The opening widens and light pours down with the darkness receding before it. There is an outburst of magnificent hues and Dawn stands in her glory on the edge of the creation with her message and promise of the Immortal Light to come. The Dawn shines for a brief while on the slender border of life recording as it were in earthly terms the Beauty and the Bliss and the greatness of the Divine Spirit on the verge of manifestation. She casts the seed of Splendour on the dense vasts. Then appears the Form of the Goddess of eternal Light opening the heavens. Seeing that the spaces are ready for her feet, she steps forth with all her omniscience and revelation. The Earth feels her coming; her ear hears the steps of the Goddess, her eye turns on her Form. The luminous smile of the Deity sets aflame all life that was still. All Nature rises in worship of the Divinity, the trees, the hills, the wind, the skies, the air—all participate in the adoration. The Earth is awakened to the Light of Life. The divine afflatus, however, cannot last long as conditions on mortal earth are not ready for its stay. It withdraws leaving behind a living memory of its Presence, a spiritual Beauty and an aspiration for its certain birth in future. What remains is the common day. All wake up as usual and as usual spring to their daily tasks. Among those who so wake up is Savitri. Though she lives among men who take to life with the customary zest for its pleasures and rewards, Savitri does not participate in these little joys of life. She is conscious of her different origin and mission and all that evokes eager response in the common human is felt as alien by her. The godly powers embodied in her are restless at their confinement in the human mould. The littleness of earthly life cannot support, and wellnigh rejects, the wideness, the bliss and the power that she has brought with her. The earth which needs the sap of pleasure and tears refuses the boon of her rapture, it offers her instead a love that leads to doom. Savitri freely radiates what she carries, hoping that the greater consciousness will flower on earth. But as is the way of this world of ignorance with the sons of God who bring the saving light with them, the earth nature repels her light—with hate and anger. Thus she lives in the world far from her natural felicity of the heights and equally away from the sorrows of mortal life which she has come to redeem. Unknown, unhelped, she nurses the grief of human life preparing to confront death at its hour. She is too great to communicate her peril and pain to those around. She keeps it to herself. With all this aloofness her heart is open to all. Inwardly she identifies herself with all Nature. Hers is the love of the universal Mother. She sees in the ordeal that awaits her a projection of the evil that afflicts life at its roots and, in preparing to meet her fate, she is really getting ready to face the Determinism that rules material Nature. In her early life the being of Savitri is ever at repose sharing the forgetfulness and somnolence of the earth. She knows neither grief nor care. As she grows up there comes a faint remembrance; she feels an intimate, dragging ache in her bosom, She tries to trace its cause but cannot do so because the mind is still not conscious enough. The faculties of life and the senses are reluctant to work zestfully in the absence of their due enjoyment. In time, however, she wakes up fully; her real spirit comes back, memory surges up and she finds herself at the centre of the cosmic combat among the three disputants: Earth, Love and Doom. Looking into herself she comes face to face with the spirit of pain enthroned in her nature claiming the oblation of sorrow and grief constantly. The whole problem of the earth-life becomes alive in her. She accepts the challenge and her soul arises to confront Time and Fate. For, this is the day when Satyavan must die.
A fathomless zero occupied the world. Before existence, non-existence; before being, non-being. Before this manifestation of names and forms came to be, it was all a state of indefiniteness, a featureless Blank, as it were. There was simply the Unmanifest; it was an infinite Zero. But this was not an empty zero. It was contentful, holding in itself potentialities without end, immeasurable. And it was because this Nothing contained all in seed in its bosom that things could at all manifest from it. The Zero is not a negative Void. It exceeds the farthest conception of the mind and strikes it as a blank though it is full in a way that is beyond human comprehension. Out of this Zero issue the Numbers stretching into infinity.
… the insoluble mystery of birth Why do things come into existence? They are born, they live a while and they die. This process goes on endlessly from the beginnings of time. What is the purpose? Who is so born? If it is the soul that takes birth, what is this soul? If the soul is a portion of the Divine, what need has the Divine to undergo this painful experience of earthly life? For, by all accounts, the Divine is all Consciousness, all Bliss. Why should he forfeit his immortal state and venture into this world of mortality? The mystery is insoluble for the creature involved in the process.
And the tardy process of mortality Mortality is not a permanent truth of one’s existence. It is a condition through which the soul in embodiment progresses towards its eternal status of immortality. The process of this growth is evolution, development of consciousness with a corresponding development of forms to house it at each stage. This movement is conducted primarily by Nature in her own large and inevitably slow pace; it proceeds in an apparently wasteful and zigzag manner till, with the arrival of man, the conscious being, the direction is assumed by him and the progress speeded up.
…
the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force The whole universe is thrown up and formed by a gigantic Force whose appearance is that of an energy without intelligence and whose working is of a mechanical character propelled by its own movement. It is vast in its range and operates without any self-awareness or conscious direction; but its results are splendidly productive; it sets ablaze the suns and other luminaries in the cosmic system, and man himself—with all his moorings in inertia, tamas, and obscurity—is carried forward in its sweep till he wakes up and takes charge of his own destiny. This it is able to do because its nature of materiality, of insentience, is only its outermost process. Behind is the working of a Power divine in its source and fully conscious of its working and its goal.
Something
that wished but knew not how to be, All evolutionary movement is possible because involved in the densest Matter is an element of consciousness that presses for unfoldment. This element is not a formed entity with an effective awareness, and yet it is instinct with a will. Without its pressure from within, all would remain literally dead matter. It is this oestrus of the Spirit that sets up a stir in the Inconscient which develops into a slow awakening to self-awareness. The first forms taken by the imprisoned consciousness are necessarily imperfect, incomplete, but they hold the promise of a fuller development. Ignorance is the first stage of this emergence from the sleep of Nescience.
Like
one who searches for a bygone self Man is continuously on the move. What he is today is not what he was yesterday and what he will be a day hence is not what he is at this moment. His personality which is developing from moment to moment in the incessant movement of evolution goes on changing, putting away old forms as soon as their utility for gaining particular experiences is over and taking on new ones for acquiring newer experiences. This change of person is not always evident because it goes on on the subtler levels of his existence; it is only when there is change on the gross physical level in casting off the material body that it is marked. If during this succession of personalities, of selves, one were to look back for a particular personality that was active at one time, it is most likely that he would see only a dead remnant of the desire that was the motive-force for that formation. For, usually, it is some egoistic movement of desire that shapes a formation to fulfil it and the moment it is satisfied or effectively defeated, that form yields place to another. When one looks for that self, it is not there, there is only a trace of that desire that had actuated it into existence, desire fulfilled and past or frustrated and dead.
Arrived
from the other side of boundlessness In the beginnings of this material creation all is inert, immobile; it is a vast dormant extension. Though there is an urge somewhere in the depths of this existence for movement, for life, that alone is not enough to animate the inconscient Matter. That has to be effected by a descent of a Ray of the Life-Spirit from beyond the material plane. It is when the Divine Consciousness comes down in the form of this Life-Force, piercing through all the structural denseness of this universe, that the urge for life from below is taken up by the power of Life from its own home and all earth awakes to life.
…all
that was destroyed must be rebuilt Just as man taking birth for a new life has to undergo again all the preliminary labour of preparation through infancy and childhood before he is in a position to launch upon the new career of experience or, ending his life for any reason, has got to re-build all that he has wantonly destroyed and work out that experience completely before he is allowed to proceed further, so, in Nature too, each cycle of evolution has to labour to reconstruct what had been achieved in the previous cycle, to restate and relive the past gains before it can go on to develop on its own curves of growth.
All can be done if the god-touch is there. Life presents to man task after task calling for effort and yet greater effort. And in the manner in which he meets this challenge man grows in his stature. His will and strength increase with each such exertion. There are, however, occasions when the task is clearly impossible. All the power and skill that man can summon are found unequal to the situation. But it will not do to give up. There is a power greater than his—the Power of the Divine. In fact, what man calls his power is not his own, but a pale reflection, a deflected, thin current of a mightier Puissance that is Divine. If he can consciously open himself to this Divine Power, link himself with it in some part of his being and let it act in him, then there is nothing too difficult, nothing impossible. For the Power that acts is the Conscious-Force of the Supreme that builds the worlds; it is irresistible. This Force is inherent in the Divine Consciousness (sakti in cit) and wherever this Consciousness is actively present, there the Force is at work effecting all that is called for.
The
persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch The Nescience which covered all at the beginning of things in this universe was characterised by a complete absence of the light of consciousness, movement and activity. It was only when the ray of Light from above—an active and supernal Consciousness—played again and again on the surface of this In-conscience that an awakening was effected: a stir was set up which under continuous pressure from above developed into a life-movement and all became vivified with a new element of Life and Light.
The brief perpetual sign recurred above. There was the outbreak of Dawn. Whether it is the physical dawn or the spiritual, the dawn of light is always brief, for it soon grows into the Day. It is perpetual, for it comes in cycles without fail; each dawn is followed by another, albeit with an appropriate interval for its assimilation and the preparation for the next. The dawn is a sign, a promise of the Glory that awaits its hour for manifestation. The dawns recur, more and more acclimatise the Nature with their characteristic Light and Life and a succession of dawns builds up the new world.
A
glamour from the unreached transcendences The appearance of dawn always carries with it an enchanting beauty that is not of this world but of one beyond; it is bright with hues that bespeak a splendour on which mortal eyes have not rested; it brings the tidings of assurance from a Divine Effulgence, an eternal Light that is for ever; though not in evidence today in this world of obscurity and death, it looms above and sends intimations of its existence and advent through the flares of its glow on the horizons of its skies.
Dawn
built her aura of magnificent hues The dawn brings with it fresh concentrations of Light—physical and spiritual—and organises their lines of manifestation, sets the design, as it were, for the efflorescence of the rich lustres it bears. But it does not wait till its timeless contents manifest. It pours them into the womb of Time and withdraws leaving their greatness to reveal itself in the fullness of time.
Interpreting
a recondite beauty and bliss The bright pattern of hues that broke into the skies at the appearance of the Dawn was not just a crisscross occurrence of chance. It was a living message communicating a Beauty and a Delight that are supernal. The various colours that held the eye were the distant glows of the Greater Light that was approaching. Each colour, each line in the sky carried its own significance in the developing design, clothed the truth proper to its nature. The entire phenomenon of the physical dawn was, as it were, a brilliant synopsis, in earthly language, of the saga of the Spirit that was getting ready to be unfolded.
Almost
that day the epiphany was disclosed There was revealed, at the moment of dawn, an advance picture, a pre-vision of the Manifestation that was gathering and this rapid revelation—however brief—established in the earth-atmosphere a loaded consciousness of the Truth to be formed. It is the presence of this Power that inspires, directly and indirectly, all the upward effort of man, his aspirations and his strivings to embody the higher Light and participate in its manifestation.
A
lonely splendour from the invisible goal The empty spaces of the Earth were dense with obscurity and resistance, inhospitable to all Rays of Light. And yet a Radiance from the Beyond—from the original station of the manifesting movement which is also its eventual destination—was released on the Earth, for only so could it be saved and uplifted. The Light of Consciousness so reached from above was, however, not left to itself, alone, in that hostile environment. The Transcendent Source maintained its connection and direction.
Infinity’s
centre, a Face of rapturous calm The Infinite in itself has neither a centre nor a circumference. But when it chooses to manifest, it collects itself for the purpose and formulates what is to be expressed. The Goddess of Eternal Light is such a self-formulation of the Infinite Divine, centering in herself the potentialities to be put out, shaping and holding in herself the blissful calm of the Ineffable. It is when she opens out her Consciousness that the Light of creation streams forth.
Ambassadress
twixt eternity and change, The Goddess of Eternal Light forms the link between Timeless Existence and this creation in Time; she renders the truths of the former into terms proper to the latter. She is able to do it for she holds the knowledge of what is to be worked out and in what precise manner. She knows the steps, the course and the goal.
…
scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile The smile of the Goddess is aglow with the Light of Life, and when she casts it on the existence below which lies dumb and still, under the spell of Inconscience, all there leaps to life; aspiration for her Light and Presence springs up everywhere and all creation is caught into a movement upwards.
Here
where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs The earth we inhabit gives no clear clue to the purpose of its existence. Obscure in its organisation, characterised by insentience in the mass, it is not even articulate enough. The best light that is found wherewith to guide our life-movement is that of an ignorance which is only a half-light, a state of awareness that is not in possession of the truth but seeking for it, partially turned towards the knowledge. All life on earth is shot through and through with this disabling ignorance.
Here
where one knows not even the step in front This earth on which we live is a field of growth, growth by struggle. For here meet and battle Light and Darkness, Knowledge and Ignorance, Joy and Pain. There is a constant conflict of possibilities projected from either side and there can be no certainty of the issue at the next moment. The clash is not only of forces of this world; there is ever an intrusion of elements from other worlds adding to the unpredictability of things. Already veiled in its constitutional ignorance, the human mind cannot be sure of the next step in these shifting sands of Time. Even the truth of its conception is shadowed by a host of doubts, any one of which might dislodge tomorrow the truth of today. The road of the thinking mind lies across the woods of errors, half-truths and doubts and whatever conclusions it comes to always prove tentative, as fresh perceptions break upon it and demand modifications or radical changes in the existing thought-structures.
…
this anguished and precarious field of toil Life on earth is a field for the effort of man to build and speed up his evolution. He participates in the general movement of progression in Nature, fights his way against the elements that oppose or arrest his advance—both within himself and without—, now rises, now falls but is always on the move. This whole sequence of his march onwards through all its ups and downs, struggles and anxieties, joys and griefs, goes on under the watchful eye of the presiding Spirit which is more concerned with the broad lines of development rather than with happenings of local and temporary significance. These circumstances are left to themselves to work out their bearings in the overall situation.
Here
too the vision and prophetic gleam Every form, every object in creation has a meaning and purpose. When we lack the necessary consciousness to put ourselves in rapport with any form or forms, they appear to us as either worthless or much below their true significance. We are thus apt to treat many things as insignificant or useless. But they are not so experienced in realms of existence where a higher Light of Consciousness is active. There each form is revealed in its innate truth; nothing is without meaning, and all is a splendid efflorescence of the Divine in manifestation. The radiance of the Goddess of Eternal splendour lighted up all on earth, all that appear ordinary and common, into their revealing features even as it lights up all for ever in its own domain above. For the moment things stood revealed in their glory on earth as well.
… a
Presence and a Power The limited and imperfect being of man is always uncomfortable in the presence of a Force or Consciousness that is perfect and unlimited. For its very presence is a danger to the security and continuance of the limited formation; the larger consciousness is self-acting and exerts an automatic pressure on whatever comes in its range to expand, to grow out of its limited nature, to change. The normal reaction of mortal imperfection, therefore, is one of hostility, rejection of the Presence. Unless it modifies itself, dilutes its own nature to suit the temper of ignorant humanity, the higher Power is obliged to withdraw.
Only a little the God-light can stay: Each state or formulation of consciousness needs conditions appropriate to its vibrations in order that it may act and live. The Divine Consciousness, for instance, whether in the form of Light or Power or Bliss, demands a certain readiness to receive and support it wherever it manifests. If conditions favourable to its continuance are not ready or produced, it withdraws. This is what has been happening all along in the history of human evolution on earth. Man refuses to break from his moorings in Ignorance and Inconscience and change himself sufficiently by way of aspiration, purification, enlargement, etc., to hold the Higher Light which comes down repeatedly to uplift him. Even when he responds in the heat of the moment of the revelation, his past and his habitual inertia drag him down after a time and he sinks down unable to keep pace with the steps of the manifest Power. It has perforce to withdraw and wait for a more propitious hour.
Spiritual
beauty illumining human sight Matter and Time, the field and circumstance of our creation, have a compelling power because they en-soul a Truth of the Spirit. Matter may be obscure, dense; Time, fleeting, putting a stamp of transcience on everything. But that is only an appearance. Matter is a mask: behind its deceptive exterior there is a beauty and an intensity of the Spirit which attracts and at the same time baffles the eye. The brevity of the hours hides the Eternity of the Supreme which is pouring itself into the succession of moments of time. Time is a flow of the Timeless.
As
when a soul draws near the sill of birth, The soul is a portion, a spark of the Divine and partakes of its Lustre. When it descends from the planes of eternal existence whence it is projected by the manifesting Divine and prepares to embody itself in physical birth, it enters into the zone of human time. Its states of luminous consciousness are left behind and as it plunges into the density of material substance, it is overtaken by the nescience proper to that organisation of Matter. The spark gets veiled in the nether darkness.
The
excess of beauty natural to God-kind Just as there are degrees ()flight that cannot be seized by human sight, states of sound that are beyond the normal hearing of man, there are manifestations of divine Bliss, Beauty, Power that cannot be held and supported by earthly receptacles. They are natural enough in their own realms of unimpeded truth consciousness and force, but the mortal body and its limited consciousness are unable to bear their vibrations unless they are specially prepared and developed to be able to contain the charge. They are dazed, they break under the impact. That is why such higher manifestations do not stay long, they appear and recede in a flash.
… unforeseeing instant’s urge, The urge of the moment plays a considerable part in the common life of creatures on earth, human and other. It is some impulse in nature that stirs one into movement—physical or vital or mental—and one hardly pauses to think at that time what will be the likely consequences of the act. The deliberation may follow afterwards, but the usual tendency is to obey the urge instantly it arises. The urge may be habitual or sudden, but it always evokes a response.
And,
leader here with his uncertain mind, With all his limitations of body, life-energy, sense-instrumentation and groping reason, man is at the head of the evolutionary movement of Nature. He sums up in himself all the past effort of the evolution and represents a departure from the mode of unconscious development followed so long by Nature in her creations. For in him there is the birth of an overt consciousness and he can follow, direct and speed up the course of his evolution, unlike other creatures who are led by Nature in her own tardy process. Of all the creatures on earth, man alone stands erect, lifts up his head from the groundward position and looks straight upward. He alone has the capacity to think, to see ahead, to plan, to control the course of life. He is the rightful leader of the evolutionary progression in Nature.
The
call that wakes the leap of human mind, The human mind springs into action the moment the senses which are its couriers of perception report an object of interest to it. It begins to run after that object in all ways that are open to it and continues its pursuit in spite of all interruptions and stumblings in its career due to distractions or oppositions. Its motivation is desire, which itself goes on changing its character in the course of its movement for satisfaction and, more often than not, proves itself to be illusory in the hour of its fulfilment. This call of the senses, so common in the life of men, struck no chord in the heart of Savitri; she was human enough to sense its attraction but her being always felt it foreign to her.
…
the anguish of the gods The divinity that is embodied in man is not the free, illimitable, blissful eternal that it is in its own supreme state of existence. Here in man it is effectively enclosed in a limited and limiting frame of materiality which lasts for a period at the end of which it is always overtaken by decay and dissolution. The immortal’s career is broken in by the constant invasions of death and it has to undergo all the pangs of limitation, incapacity, transitoriness and destruction in the course of its journey till it overcomes them.
A
narrow movement on Time’s deep abysm, As a manifestation of the Divine Consciousness, Savitri came with all the power, luminous wideness and joy characteristic of that Consciousness but these powers could not function in their effectivity on the human soil. For in this rushing movement of Time, with no sure foothold, life stands precariously organised in brittle, small and divided forms and being unable to assimilate the workings of powers beyond its accustomed range, contrary to its habitual nature, it rejects them.
The
calm delight that weds one soul to all, The reactions of pain and pleasure to which man is normally subject are the result of his self-limitation in the walls of his ego and consequent separation from the rest in the world. He feels all contacts as coming from outside himself and responds with pleasure or pain in the manner in which they affect his consciousness, helpfully or otherwise. And these reactions fortify his sense of separativity from others. If, however, he draws back from this surface action-reaction activity and learns to receive all contacts with some equality—and that is possible from a deeper base in the consciousness—then there settles a calm in the being which is not disturbed by outside impacts. As this calm deepens he awakens to a coursing of sweet happiness, of quiet joy behind all movements. In this calm delight he feels a closeness to others which develops in time into a natural oneness with all. This quiet joy, as it establishes itself in the being, accustoms it to constant vibrations of delight and the system gets ready to receive the divine ecstasy in the fullness of time and keep it without spilling it. An unprepared body can only break, unable to hold the intensities of the divine Ananda.
Earth’s grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears Earth is the appointed field for growth and evolution. But this growth has to be made in the face of the opposition of all the elements and forces of Inconscience and Ignorance that are ranged against it. Every step of advance calls for incessant effort which is attended by success and failure, pleasure and pain, in its course of effectuation. This uneven passage is inevitable as long as Earth-Nature is ruled by Ignorance. It is only as that Ignorance is displaced by the manifesting Truth that the course can change and progress be possible from light to greater light, joy to greater joy without the inevitability of the alternations of happiness and grief, of light and darkness.
A
prodigal of her rich divinity, It is so that humanity grows. Divine embodiments bring with them greater and greater concentrations of Consciousness, Knowledge, Power, Joy in order to establish them on earth and raise her being from obscurity to Light, from ignorance to Knowledge, from mortality towards Immortality. They ceaselessly emanate their consciousness with all that it carries; a few that are open absorb it in themselves and advance, the generality benefit indirectly by the greatening of the life-movement. Repeated manifestations of this kind across the ages help the earth of Matter to grow into the image of the of the Spirit.
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change; Matter and all that is born of matter resist change. There is in it a strong element of inconscience—a blind insensibility,—inertia, unwillingness to move from its position. It opposes every demand for a shift. It sticks to its habit and acts as a dull dead weight on the life and mind that embody themselves in it. This handicap is felt most when one tries to quicken the path of evolutionary progress which insists upon a constant change of the old into the new. Physical nature acts as a drag, an obstinate obstacle to further movement. It needs an incessant pressure from above before it will consent to a change.
Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch: Death-bound nature hugs the very things that bring about death, e.g. ignorance, limitation and incapacity. It resists any influence that disturbs its habit of life and threatens its tenure. Any power coming from the Divine, any touch of the Divine Being that brings with it its characteristics of Knowledge, Vastness, Strength, Immortality, raises its deepest hostility… it is the revolt of darkness against the Light that engulfs it, of division against the Oneness that absorbs it, of death against the Immortality that dissolves its causes. The opposition and the battle given by the old and established order of mortality can completely cease only when the forces and beings that support it are destroyed and it is replaced by a new order of the divine verities of Light, Freedom and Immortality.
It
fears the pure divine intolerance Everything that the impact of the Divine carries with it is alien to the mortal nature on earth as it stands organised at present. Its impurities of ignorance and its obscurities feel threatened by the purity of the higher Consciousness and the consuming power of its Force. Its habit of indulgence in the backwaters of pain and sorrow looks askance at a happiness without interruption, its darkness of inconscience furiously lashes at intrusions of light that are sure to end it if allowed full unobstructed entry. The falsehood that reigns here in innumerable forms and subterfuges quails at the prospect of the advent of the Truth that is bound to dissolve it by its natural power; all feels insecure before the Divine Will that is irresistible with its force and compelling in its communion with the soul.
Inflicting
on the heights the abysm’s law, Fearful of its loss of hold on man, ignorant human nature tries to fight and throw back the divine elements that seek to help and uplift him. Its only weapons are those of obscurity, inconscience and falsehood which are part and parcel of its texture and with them it assaults the great who come to deliver it out of its dark state, forces them to suffer its rule of egoism, division and violence, tars them with its own impurities and makes them undergo pain and even destruction. The hands of Grace outstretched to save are struck to bleed by a nature that refuses to be saved.
A
glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene, This is the common history of those sent by God to the Earth with His tidings of Light and Joy, His assurance of deliverance. They light up life on earth wherever they move for the brief periods they are allowed to last; they cannot have a secure tenure. Their luminous gifts of knowledge are diluted and shorn of their native brilliance by the recipients steeped in ignorance no sooner they are given; the power for upliftment brought by them is misused and harnessed to opposite ends; their trust and mission are betrayed. They bring with them glorious riches of fulfilment for humanity but they are made to pay with their lives—in suffering or death—by a world that cherishes its own chains of Ignorance and Inertia. And when they pass, their work undone, it is only their Name that remains to inspire those that follow with their splendid example.
A
fire has come and touched men’s hearts and gone; Not all, however, has been in vain. Each time a god man appears with a message, a special Truth-seed to cast, he makes an impact on the general consciousness, though it may not last long enough or go deep enough. But always there are some, a few, who are ready to receive it. They open their hearts and minds and respond to the call, they flock to the Saviour, work and suffer with him for the cause, and in the process greaten their own lives in terms of the new Truth. Through them the mighty work continues.
To
live with grief, to confront death on her road,— The Divine is all Bliss, immortal in its being. But when it comes down in this mortal world to establish some truth of its existence and takes on the human embodiment for that purpose, necessarily it participates in the scheme of life as it obtains, accepting all the limitations of its nature. For only so can it work out the organisation of the truth it holds, clearing the way, resolving the difficulties by meeting them squarely from within. The blissful undergoes the load of grief, the immortal passes under the shadow of death.
The godhead greater by a human fate. The gods have their splendours but also their limitations. For they are typal beings, fixed in their nature beyond which they cannot move. If they want to change, progress into a state that is greater than theirs, e.g. to become one with the Divine, they are obliged to come to this Earth, the field of evolution and progress. They have to take a human birth or draw upon human help in order to progress. It is given to man to change, to progress, to evolve because he has within him a psychic being—a soul whose nature it is to progress towards the Divine. Other orders of beings are not possessed of this privilege. Thus it is that a god assuming human birth, human life-load, is richer in potentialities than his compeer in his own world.
Too
great to impart the peril and the pain, The great of spirit freely give out their joys and their hero-strengths, their treasures of Knowledge, their unending streams of sympathy and help. But their sufferings and their pains, their apprehensions and their foreknowings, they keep to themselves; they do not add to the unhappiness of others. In their inborn nobility they contain in themselves not only their own pains but also the pains of others if the burden of the less favoured be lightened thereby. They suffer alone though they do not joy alone.
Harbouring
a foe whom with her heart she must feed, There is always a central challenge from established Nature which has to be met by those who come to open a new way, to give a new turn to the course of the earth in evolution. This problem and the attendant struggle in solving it is a constant occupation of these harbingers within their being; their consciousness is always centred on this crux of opposition and all energies are poured on its resolution. They do not turn to others for asistance because, living in ignorance, these have not the means to help even if they would. The common men do not even have a glimpse into the nature of the task undertaken by these Saviours from the Spirit nor into the peril that faces them in their mission; they lack that awareness. The chosen of God toil alone in their venture.
Nature
walks upon her mighty way The human mind seeks to measure everything in life in its own terms. It is apt to apply its petty standards to the workings of Nature and judge her to be brute, blind, wasteful. But Nature has her own great objectives, her own large lines of advance; she has within her an infallible Wisdom which knows precisely what it wants and how it is to be effected. In the vaster movement that is hers, what appears to be a waste to the little human intellect is not really so. Each bit in its creation is utilised to the best advantage though the purpose may not be evident to a surface scrutiny at the moment. Even her experiments—tentative in appearance—add to her resources in the long run. Failures, accidents, breakages, are all incidentals in this great pulsation and cosmic movement, and in that larger context they have little more than local significance. Things right themselves in the general process sooner or later.
Apart,
living within, all lives she bore; Savitri was so unlike the others around her that there was a natural physical gulf between her and the rest; she lived perforce aloof. But she did not, on that account, live alone; by herself she lived, but not for herself. For she normally dwelt in her soul-consciousness where all is one; there her life was in union with all lives and in carrying her own burden she carried the burden of the entire world. Whatever the distance that obtained externally between her natural height of stature and the common folk in the world amidst whom she lived, within her being she had kept the doors of her consciousness open and there was a real free communion and union.
Her
dread was one with the great cosmic dread, Savitri was not born to lead an individual life, to live for herself as a person. She had identified herself with the cosmic life and set herself to face and solve the cosmic problem. Her dread of Death was so intense and consuming because it was really a concentrated projection of the agelong terror exercised by Death on the whole universe. She could face this gigantic challenge alone because the strength that was coursing in her being was derived from the divine Might manifest in the cosmos.
Against
the evil at life’s afflicted roots, Savitri was aware that the pain and the dread that were gnawing at her were only her individual share of the evil of pain and suffering that is the malady affecting all life in this world at its very roots. She decided to strike at this affliction at its fundamental base and for that purpose sharpened her resolution with the intensities of the suffering she was put to. Each pang added an edge.
A
solitary mind, a world-wide heart, To uplift the earth, to deliver life from its thraldom to death, to transmute all division, pain and suffering into oneness and delight, is the work undertaken by the Divine in its plunge into this mass of Inconscience. The Divine toils for man unaided. Savitri prepared herself to participate in this work of the Divine. And this she could do because she had the necessary equipment to shoulder the burden. Though she lived among men given to ordinary pursuits of life, she was not lost in them; in her thoughts she was alone and conscious of her purpose. In her heart, however, she was one with all; her consciousness embraced all life and had the urgent sense of the problem that the world was beset with. Her firm standing ground and large consciousness fitted her for the chosen task.
At
first life grieved not in her burdened breast: Like the evolving soul in the process of growth, the life of Savitri did not experience any sense of pain or grief as long as it lay at repose in the folds of material consciousness not yet awakened to self-awareness. It was lost in itself and remained immobile and unresponsive; there was no active awareness of the purpose for which it had embodied itself.
In a
deep cleft of silence twixt two realms The being of Savitri was still living in the state of unresponding silence that obtains between the Inconscience below and the awakened consciousness above. Stationed there, she was not troubled by any anxiety or apprehension or grief which are the characteristic features of life awakened to consciousness. She was not yet aware of the problem of sorrow in life calling for a solution, to work out which she had taken birth.
Then
a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved, And when there arose in her some self-awareness in incipience, she became conscious too of an intimate dull pain. It was sensed deep in her being and recognised to have been there for long, almost natural. She looked for its cause but was unable to trace it, she tried to find out whence it came but could not do it either.
The
Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn: The consciousness had still not developed the awareness that sets the mind into motion. Neither the insensate life-energies nor the mute senses flowed into active movement in the absence of the enjoyment that comes into play with the formulation of the self-involved consciousness into a self-aware entity. The brain apparatus lay unharnessed, as the force of consciousness that activates it had not yet come into operation. The origin of the pain could not be recollected.
…
Earth and Love and Doom, When Savitri’s consciousness was stirred into an acute awareness of the Problem in the Cosmos awaiting solution, the constituents of the situation revealed themselves to her in their pressing urgency. There was the Earth rooted in Inconscience waiting to be delivered into full consciousness and then into superconscience; there was Love—divine in its origin—struggling to keep its hold and extend its sway, through whatever forms it could find—imperfect and less imperfect—in order to manifest the Harmony and Oneness of the Spirit; there was, towering over both, the Determinism of Nature which contested the will of man at every step, Death, which threatened every form of life at every moment, challenged Love in its career with the threat of termination.
A
guardian of the unconsoled abyss Pain has come to be as a result of division in consciousness and the resultant limitation and incapacity. Having appeared as a part of the process of evolution, it has established itself as a strong habit in nature and it resists all attempts to eliminate it. It has constituted itself into an almost permanent factor, an individualised formation which thrives on pain and suffering. It exults in this experience and zealously safeguards its right to sorrow. It never goes under but almost invites and bears all pain with a stoic poise. Its gaze is ever on pain and on all that feeds the pain; it will not see that pain can have an end in the progression of life towards freedom. Savitri became conscious in her being of this Pain personified.
Afflicted
by his harsh divinity, This being of Pain, nurtured on sorrow and grief, hardened by suffering, demands insistently that its due be paid. Imperious in its hold on human nature, this pervert malformation looks for its satisfaction in the disappointments, struggles and griefs of everyday life. Savitri perceived the presence of this Pain-spirit which remained unsatisfied in spite of all the unexpressed grief she contained in her breast.
The
sacrifice of suffering and desire The Earth advances in the great steps of her spiritual evolution mainly through the efforts of a fewindividuals who appear at significant junctures, embody her aspiration and self-giving to the Divine, work out the transition in their own lives and establish it in the Earth-Consciousness. Such an effort of invocation of the Immortal Blissful Divine in this field of grief and death through the sacrifice of the cherished desires of life and the acceptance of all suffering inevitable in the process of dispossessing the old and opening to the new, now commenced in the person of Savitri under the direct auspices of the Supreme Will.
… this green smiling dangerous world, Appearances are deceptive. In the luxuriance of Nature, the variegated panorama of life in all its ranges of lush vegetation, rising hills, flowing rivers, magnificent beasts and birds beautiful of wing, men, women and children, gay of spirit, bright with the glow of adventure, the world, presents an enchanting front. But behind that fascinating exterior lurk the dangers of captivity, pain and suffering, and death.
Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate. Fully awakened to the need of the hour, the soul of Savitri came into action. For it is only the Divine Spirit—and the soul which is a portion, a special concentration of it—that can oppose and rise above the determinisms of Cosmic Nature. The soul is not a creation of this Nature, like other parts of the being, mind, life-energy etc. but potentially it is its master. It has got the strength to prevail against the laws and circumstances of Nature, transcend them and even—if that be the Will—to change them.
Immobile in herself, she gathered force. That is the condition for all effective evocation of power. It is on a calm base that strength can build itself and acquire unfailing power. Poised in the silence of the soul, holding her nature from all movement, Savitri summoned the force of the Spirit within to collect itself for action. |