Book-1-Study-Canto-2

Book One: Canto 2

The Issue

Summary
For a while Savitri is withdrawn into thought; her whole life flashes past in her mind, her childhood, youth, her fateful meeting with Satyavan, the last twelve months of love lived in the shadow of death.

In this hour of crisis her exterior personality is displaced by her inner spirit which steps forth and takes hold of the situation. For only so can the determinism of Nature be erased. The destiny of the body can be changed only by the will of the soul. With her it is not a question of her personal submission: the whole challenge of Death to Life, of Doom to Love is involved and she is preparing for the moment of trial in this context. She does not seek any external help, nor does anyone know of the part in the cosmic struggle she is preparing for. The solitudes of Nature in which she has passed the last twelve months have helped in the deepening of her inner life.

It was here in the deeps of green Nature that Love had at last found in Savitri a home which he had not secured anywhere so far in the human world. Her wideness and height of consciousness, her purity and sublimity of being, her unbreakable strength were a match to his, she was worthy of this godhead of Love.

Till this encounter with Love (who has brought Death in his shadow) Savitri has known of no earthly sorrow. She has carried undimmed memories of the felicities of the higher worlds from which she has come. But this state of joy cannot continue for long in this world of Ignorance. The problem of life is presented to her in its acutest form and she is called upon to face it. Savitri is no ordinary mortal to shirk the challenge and stay content with her lot. She does not accept the clamps of the Inconscient and the bounds of Ignorance on the embodied consciousness. She means to change the order that has prevailed so far, assert the supremacy of Light over Darkness, of Life and Love over Death. She summons all her inner resources, links herself with the transcendent Will and Force and stands up ready for the momentous encounter. The Divine Puissance surges up in her being, she stops the wheels of Doom and breaks through the finite into the Infinite.

Past

Dying, it lived imperishably in her;

The past is quickly replaced by the present and recedes from the eye. But on that account it does not entirely cease to be. All the movements that are past, thoughts, feelings, activities, leave a mark, a concrete sediment in the sub-conscious layers of the being and constitute themselves into a factor to be reckoned with not only in the present that succeeds the past but also in the future to come. They form predispositions, samskaras, in the nature and influence the growth of the being, its reactions and impulsions. Every bit of the past lives in its essence in the memory and goes on exerting its pull.

Inner Dawn

… in a many-hued flaming inner dawn,

Normally man is awake only in his surface nature which is a very small segment of his being. His knowledge, vision and capacity are consequently very limited and even his reason which is an instrument of ignorance is only a half-light. He is aware of just the immediate present and fumbles in his search for the much that is out of his sight. When, however, as a result of the divine Grace or in response to his aspiration, the Divine light manifests itself in his being, all is lighted up; he begins to see his own life in a new light. He becomes conscious on all the levels of his being—mental, emotional, vital, physical—and is seized with their several upward movements, of which he has a clear and fuller comprehension than ever before.

Supernatural Darkness

An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:

Man is a being in ferment. A restless energy of life courses through the body and keeps it in a state of excitement. Passions, desires, emotions are born every moment and the nervous being is in tension. The mind is full of uncontrolled thought-activity without a moment’s respite. The mystic path demands a quieting of this multiple movement and a steady gathering of all the faculties around the chosen Ideal. As this discipline progresses and the aspiring being gets into the needed poise of receptivity, there comes—in some cases—a state of blankness, a void in the mind which benumbs. Everything falls silent and all looks and feels dark. But this ‘darkness’ is not heavy like the nether darkness of inconscience or inertia and obscurity. It is of a different kind and it is not oppressive. It blinds the mental eye, stuns the mental activity into immobility. This condition is usually a precursor of the advent or revelation of God. It prepares the human to receive the Divine.

Crisis

An hour comes when fail all Nature’s means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity within:

It is in the supreme moments of crises that man often rises to undreamt of heights and shows capacities totally unexpected. That is because shaken by the failure of his normal means to grapple with the situation, he is thrown back from the surface personality which proves unequal to the challenge and he instinctively seizes upon the latent supports deeper within himself of which he was not hitherto conscious, lost as he was in the superficies of his nature and things. The inner and larger being [1] comes to the front with a breakdown of the exterior construction centralised in the ego and sustained by Ignorance. In certain crises of a decisive character, it is the inmost soul itself that comes forward in response to the desperate call and takes command.

[1] The true vital being of courage and heroism, the true mental being of light, the true subtle-physical being of plasticity and endurance, are governed by the soul or psychic being.

Will and Body

Her will must cancel her body’s destiny.

Man is not just the physical body. He is a multiple being—in fact several beings organised around one central being, the Soul. Each of these has its own power and nature though they are all in medley in the life of the man in ignorance. By observation, discrimination and other inner effort it is possible to separate their respective workings and direct them in the desired manner. One part can be utilised to correct or change the functionings of another less developed than itself. Thus the knowledge in the mind can be helpfully utilised to restrain the unregulated vehemences of the life-force. The will power can be focussed to change the direction of the physical energies. Even the destiny that awaits the body can be averted by a superior action of the will infused with the soul-power from within. For the destiny of the lower level of physical matter can always be influenced and changed by the destiny or agents of destiny operating on a higher level.

Destiny

For only the unborn spirit’€™s timeless power
Can lift the yoke imposed by birth in time.

Birth in life on earth entails Karma. For birth is undertaken for experience and growth in evolution and this experience proceeds through action, voluntary and involuntary. Each action has its consequence and this consequence leads to further action, all together thus building up a destiny which insists on being worked out. This yoke of destiny, however, is not entirely ineluctable. Each level of existence has its own destiny; the subtler the level on which it is forged, the less rigid it is. And as the different planes of existence are not separated from each other into watertight compartments but interpenetrate and have a constant interaction among themselves, it is possible to modify the destiny of a lower level by means of a higher destiny. The centre of consciousness is to be shifted to a higher level and in living from there, the corresponding destiny is moved into action influencing the lower one. A complete change of destiny however—for instance the physical destiny that is the most rigid of all—can only come from the operation of the highest power open to man, the Power of the Spirit which stands above all the destinies of the embodied being. It is the Divine Will in action, the Grace that alone can cancel human destiny.

Fate

Our present fate, child of past energies.

What man is today is a result of what he was yesterday and the day before. At every moment, during each life, the being puts forth certain energies, receives energies from elsewhere, participates in the general movement in the universe and comes to form tendencies and ways of action and reaction which enter into the formation of its subtler body. These give their characteristic turns to the nature of the being which goes on affirming itself in the mould so formed. Apart from this building up of nature that has gone on in the endless past, there is also the general Karmic legacy of the previous incarnation that man inherits and his present life is shaped in its conditions and direction by that part of the Karma which is pressing for effectuation.

Present Nature

Altered must be Nature’s harsh economy;

Life, as it stands organised at present, is a field of contraries. Light is always followed by shade: every step of knowledge is menaced by the hosts of Ignorance; pleasure is followed quick on its heels by pain; progress is dragged down by inertia; exertion is pursued by fatigue; life is constantly threatened by death.

This feature, however, is not a permanent Law of Creation. It is the characteristic of the present state of Nature in evolution which is developing from the Darkness of Ignorance towards the Light of divine Knowledge. Nature is in transition and the conditions can and are bound to change as it advances in its evolving movement Godward. The workings of the forces of Nature can be set on a different basis by inducting into the situation new powers of consciousness with greater effectivity. Growth need not always be followed by arrest; under certain conditions it is a movement from growth to further growth, from light to greater light. A greater Power and Will of the Divine Consciousness than hitherto active is to be invoked and established in Earth-Nature to that end.

Unknown Saviour

The world unknowing, for the world she stood:

When Savitri took up the challenge of Death, she was not fighting for the life of Satyavan alone. She assumed the championship of all life in creation and asserted its claim against the onslaught of death. The world, indeed, did not know Savitri was struggling to affirm and establish the right of Life to Immortality in this world and for this world; all the same she prepared herself, summoned her inmost powers to aid and stood up to contest the claim of Death to rule the world for ever.

This is the case with almost all the avatars who come to help the Earth in its difficult periods of evolution. Humanity is hardly aware of the advent of the Saviour and the purpose for which he comes. But whether it is awake or not, he works for its upliftment and undergoes all the travail involved in the process.

Solitude

Its solitude greatened her human hours
With a background of the eternal and unique.

Savitri had spent twelve months in the hermitage in the deep forests far from the life of busy humanity in her father’s kingdom. She had lived a life of a few wants and fewer calls amidst hills, high trees and the open skies and had grown in a unique way. For the very solitude in which she found herself opened out her being in communion with the Infinite. Everything in this unpolluted Nature linked her with the mightier life pulsating underneath and above. She had absorbed all and grown in stature.

There are occasions when physical solitude is indispensable, especially when there is a need for gathering of one’s inner resources. Properly utilised solitude builds up a great reserve.

Stillness

Where stillness listening felt the unspoken word
And the hours forgot to pass towards grief and change.

When the restless activity of the vital energy is brought under control and quieted, when the surge of thoughts is arrested and the mind falls into silence, there is a profound stillness in the being.This inner stillness puts one in tune with the greater Presence of God. When it is re-inforced by outer stillness as well, there comes a rare fecund condition in which one receives in one’s consciousness the communication from God. Time comes to a stand-still as it were and life appears held in immobility. These are the pregnant hours of the Spirit.

Divine Advents

Here with the suddenness divine advents have,

The movements of the Divine Consciousness have their own rhythms, their own seasons, rtutha of the Veda. They cannot be determined by calculations proper to the human intelligence and activity. That is why it often happens that when the seeker confidently expects some results from the higher end, he is disappointed. He is aware only of the workings of his own little self, and that too of a small part of it; he does not know of the much that is yet to be ready at his end. Still less does he know of the pace and the rationale of the Higher Consciousness on its move. Equally, at other times when he least expects it and is not even prepared fully in his waking consciousness, the Divine takes him by surprise. Something takes place suddenly in his being and he is face to face with the Divine, often too in a form that is unexpected. The suddenness, however, is only on the surface. Behind the veil, the movement has been long preparing and it bursts into appearance at its scheduled hour though to the unprepared and inattentive human mind it strikes as sudden.

First Descent

Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her …

In coming to Savitri in the person of Satyavan and lifting up her life-movements to a pinnacle of high rapture, Love repeated what had taken place in the beginnings of this creation. For, when the divine spirit that has undertaken this adventure of manifestation was, at one stage, lost in the total Nescience of the involution, it cried forth to the Supreme Divine to save it. And in response to the call, the Divine Grace sent forth a Ray of its Love to reclaim and redeem the spirit. It is this divine emanation of Love that awakened consciousness in the Inconscience and initiated the return movement of evolution under the compulsive pressure of the attraction of the soul to its parent-Divine. All acquired a meaning and a joyful purpose.

Love

… his shaft,
That burning test of the godhead in our parts,

Love is a test and an opportunity. None can conceive and contain pure love unless he has attained a sufficient measure of unselfishness and capacity to deny himself for the object of love. He must outgrow his narrowness and self-centred claims of the ego before he can hope to participate in the expression of love. He needs to be large in his vision, wide in consciousness in order to bear and manifest the true movement of love that flows from and leads to the Divine. How far one has progressed in this direction of self-abnegation, self-consecration and purity of purpose—all qualities of the soul—is put to test when love presents itself for acceptance. Rightly utilised, even what is called human love is a preparatory ground for growing into the divine love. It is an opportunity to train oneself in the ways of expansion and identification, first with another and then with the Divine in the other. From division and separativity in consciousness one learns to move to closeness and oneness.

Silence And Joy

A heart of silence in the hands of joy

This is the true balance at which man has to arrive: he must build up within himself a deep calm, a strength of silence which alone can bear without disturbance or breakdown the play of delight, the pressure of intense joy that comes in the fullness of the soul’s growth. Otherwise he spills the bliss, his system gets deranged or disintegrated. The more the silence within, the more the activity that the being sustains, and the more the joy of life it holds.

Inward Help

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Help from the Divine or from those who embody the Divine Consciousness—as in the case of Savitri—is invariably inward though its results are seen outwardly too in proper time. But before the results are so perceived, there is an inner sequence to the decision to help. The will that moves to help exerts an automatic pull in that region of Consciousness where things are determined before they precipitate themselves into appearance on earth. And this action effects a change in the play of possibilities to the advantage of the person so helped.

Love (I)

Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.

Though Savitri had taken a human body, her being was not limited to that physical frame. Nor was it confined within the play of the human emotions and loves that normally serve and centre round the ego. Her consciousness was wide, large and deep enough to embrace the whole universe and that is why the Divine Love could find habitation in her. This Love cannot stay in a heart that is tainted with selfishness, cribbed by narrowness. It needs a receptacle that is as pure and as wide as itself. And Savitri’s was such a heart; it could shelter all creation in the Love that it housed, for that Love is infinite.

It is only Divine Love that can help and uplift the world from its state of suffering and pain. It isdisinterested and therefore unlimited, pure and therefore potent with innate divine power. To embody and manifest this Love, the human being needs to have a consciousness that is free from the limitations of ego and capable of cosmic self-extension.

Love (II)

The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:
Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air
Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath
Spiritual that can make all things divine.

Savitri had the breadth of outlook and the expansiveness in nature that alone can provide a suitable millieu for Love which rarely finds dwelling place in mortals whose hearts are constricted within the narrow bounds of ego and blindness of ignorance. She had the purity in consciousness and nobility of disposition that could well match the sublimity of Love that greatens whatever it touches into its highest term. She was as wide and as high in her consciousness as Love is and needs for its secure abidance.

Stillness and the Word

At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire:
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.

Savitri had taken an earthly form but she had not, on that account, lost connection with her origin in the Transcendent. She embodied the stillness, the peace; the solidity, the silence of her transcendent nature in her living consciousness and all that she did and expressed was based upon this inner foundation. That is why she was effective in the manner of the gods. She contained a natural rock-like peace and silence that bore and supported all the intensities of power and action that proceeded from her. Her reserves were unlimited and therefore unfailing her movements of effectuation.

Fragile World

…this world of fragile forms
Carried on canvas-strips of shimmering Time,

There is a state of consciousness in which one stands apart and aloof from the world, taking poise in the silent Self or held in the contemplation of a supernal Beauty or Joy on the heights of the being. When sight is turned on life in the world from this position, all strikes as a procession of forms which break every now and then, lifeless figures flowing past in the current of time, images flitting across a screen as it were. The picture is one of unsubstantiality, of transitoriness. But that is, of course, only a view and that too a temporary view.

Heaven’s Shield

Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.

All her life there was a special Presence hovering around Savitri, nourishing her growth with heavenly strength and bliss. She had been put to birth on earth with a special purpose of the Divine and due care was lavished on her to ensure her progress, to guard her from all evil attentions that are ever on the look out for openings to strike at the instruments or children of God.

All who are born entrusted with a high mission are so guarded and guided by the Power or Powers that preside over the effectuation of that Divine Will. They have miraculous escapes, inexplicable inspirations and unexpected re-inforcements—all self-evident in the context of this background.

Joy Cannot Endure

But joy cannot endure until the end:
There is a darkness in terrestrial things
That will not suffer long too glad a note.

Happiness in this world is not allowed to last long: it is interrupted by contraries and is ever under the threat of destruction. That is so, because in this world of Matter the hold of Inconscience and Ignorance is still strong, dominating, and all influx of Consciousness, Light and its inalienable Joy, is diluted, swallowed up by these nether elements. It is difficult for a body or base steeped in the darkness of unconsciousness and density of impurities to support and hold the charge of Bliss for long. That is not natural to it. Either it breaks under the continued pressure of the Bliss or it engulfs what is foreign to it with its mass of obscurities.

Assigner of the Ordeal

One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.

Assigner of the ordeal and the path

Those who come to birth charged with a mission from God do not have it easy. At some stage or the other the Master of Evolution enters the scene and throws challenges, creating situations which bring out the best in the chosen persons, subject them to pressures which forge the needed strength and capacities wherewith they are enabled to fulfil their appointed tasks.

So it came to be with Savitri. Her life of felicity was suddenly interrupted by the prognostication of the death of Satyavan and she was obliged to prepare herself to take up the challenge, summoning and marshalling all her latent powers into action.

Spirit’s Goads

Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit’€™s goads,

Man does not move unless there is some incentive, some impulsion to do so. This is specially true in the sphere of inner growth. That is why Nature uses pain, sorrow and the like as agents to awaken man from his sleep and lethargy and set him thinking on the ways and means to get over these elements that plague him. He is forced to take steps to displace them by their opposites, the positives of Knowledge, Joy, Life, and in the process he registers a growth in his evolution Godward. Every blow in life throws him off his habitual track, sets into motion new factors and opens a way for change and progress.

Torch of Pain

… with his torch of pain
Lit up the chasm of the unfinished world

Pain stings man into awareness. He is startled out of his tamasic lassitude and looks around for the cause of the pain. And in this scrutiny he becomes conscious of much that had escaped his notice and calls for attention.

Savitri was confronted with such a situation. The threatened calamity of the death of Satyavan and the pain caused at the approach of the fateful hour threw her into a state of contemplative consciousness in which the problem of Death and the abyss created by it in the scheme of Life was forcefully presented to her. She came to perceive what had still to be done to close up the wide gaps in the creation in order to lead it to the intended perfection.

Difficulty and Might

He measured the difficulty with the might

It is a truth of life that when one is presented with a difficulty, he is also given the means where-with to meet it. Providence sees to it that man is always given the strength that is necessary to surmount every obstruction that comes his way. In the cosmic scheme of evolution each circumstance, each event, has a significance—to further the growth of the individual. None is given a problem beyond his measure. Only one must have the faith and know how to draw upon the potential with which one is endowed.

In setting the problem of death before Savitri for solution, the Master of Evolution laid at her disposal the strength equal to the situation.

Kin to the Human

He made her heart kin to the striving human heart

Savitri had many divine elements in her, but she was not allowed to fight the battle from that super-human basis. The problem of death confronts mortal man and not the gods. It has to be met on the human plane, through the human body with the human resources—albeit with the aid of higher powers which are embodied and made natural to the human instrumentation. Then alone is the fruit of the labour assured to all humanity that seeks for it.

Savitri’s being was made to identify itself with the being of man in strife with the forces of Ignorance and Death; she underwent all his struggle and embodied his highest aspiration for freedom and immortality. She had come to win for humanity its title to immortality.

Issue

Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death
Or hew the ways of Immortality,

The issue before Savitri was whether to accept life as it was—characterised by Ignorance and its sequel Death—or to fight to change its nature by eliminating the disfiguring agents. The only way to do it was to strike at the root of Death by refusing to accept his claims and affirming the Truth of Immortality instead. There was no ready-made way to this end and she was faced with the prospect of having to build it step by step across the slippery marshes of the dark god. She decided in favour of the more difficult but momentously decisive choice.

Terrestrial Fabric

… fabric of terrestrial make
Fit for a day’s use by busy careless Powers.

The man who is content to remain in his material consciousness, earthy in his outlook and occupation, shares the fate of all earthly beings: he is condemned to perpetual transitoriness. His term depends not upon himself, his own will, but upon the Powers in Nature which are ever engaged in their task of the advancement of the creation in the scale of consciousness. The workings of these Powers are so impersonal and relentless that they may appear to be careless. They are not over-concerned with individual forms or instruments, especially with those who have not yet arrived at the stage of functioning as their collaborators or directors. They make such indifferent use of these undeveloped creatures as they can—and that is very little—and they pass on in search of more useful instruments.

Human Figure (I)

An image fluttering on the screen of fate
Half-animated for a passing show,

Life in this world presents a picture in which all seems to be determined by Fate. Fate appears to be not only the master but in its ramifications the very stuff of existence. All is there as a consequence of a previous determinant. Man looks no more than an image projected on this background, with no will of his own. If he seems to have something like a life of his own, it is also due to a partial energising of his body by Nature for purposes of the play of rise and fall, birth and death, that goes on changing its scenes from moment to moment.

Human Figure (II)

… a castaway on the ocean of Desire
Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport
And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,

Looked at from another view-point, all life appears to be but a heaving of a giant Desire on the bosom of which man is tossed like a cork. Every sweep of desire—and the waves of desires are legion—pushes him hither and thither in his attempt to satisfy it; his life is a restless pursuit of an unending stream of desires. He is helpless and lives as a creature of circumstance without control, without direction.

Human Figure (III)

A creature born to bend beneath the yoke,
A chattel and a plaything of Time’s lords,

Man appears to have no will of his own, no strength to stand up against the current of the mechanical flow of life in the universe. It looks as if he has to submit to every demand made upon him by the circumstances of life; to function as nothing more than an obedient slave, an object of amusement for the gods that preside over this whirlgig of Time.

Pawn

Or one more pawn who comes destined to be pushed
One slow move forward on a measureless board
In the chess-play of the earth-soul with Doom,

Earth is the field of a colossal game of wits. The opponents who test the mettle against each other are the Soul that seeks to affirm the immortality of the Spirit on Earth and Death that threatens to engulf the Soul with his negation. The board for this chess play is the Cosmic life and the pawns to be moved from place to place are the human beings who have not developed a will of their own. They are automatons that can be moved hither and thither by the forces (or the beings at their head) at play. As long as man remains a creature, for the most part unconscious and inert, he is nothing more than a plaything for the Cosmic forces; he is a pawn. In the measure in which he is awake and develops this consciousness well enough to direct his own movements, he becomes a participant in the game, throwing his weight on any side he chooses.

Self-Born Force

A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.

Savitri was not a creature helplessly subjected to the operations of Time and Fate, at the mercy of every circumstance and impulsion that came by. She embodied a Consciousness and a Force that were not products of terrestrial workings but wholly independent of them. Her exterior was only a frame, a vibrant and wakeful frame, for the puissance that ensouled it.

Enigma (I)

… this enigma of the dusk of God,
This slow and strange uneasy compromise
Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul,

Life is a riddle. In this universe where the dawn of God-light is not yet and the skies are still dark, everything poses a problem. For each form, each event is woven round a contradiction. There is everywhere the Soul of things which is a portion of God and hence without limits on its being; but always it is saddled with a Nature which has its severe limits and which imposes those limits on that to which it relates. This Nature is the instrument of the Soul; the limitless has to work and express itself through a limiting agent. It has to accept and compromise with the demands of Nature. There is, consequently, a hiatus between the intention and the fruition. This juxtaposition of the boundless Soul and the bounded (and bounding) Nature is the crux of every problem. It can be resolved only by freeing Nature from its limitations and harmonising it with the Soul—a development that awaits the coming of the Dawn of the fulfilling Truth of God.

Enigma (II)

Where all must move between an ordered Chance
And an uncaring blind Necessity,

When one observes the life-phenomena in the world, it strikes as if all were chance, all events were happenings by chance. There is a gigantic Chance at work and everything takes place in its movement. Anything can happen anywhere depending upon the mood of that Chance. A closer look, however, reveals that there is a kind of order even in the workings of this Chance. It has its own rhythm, though its direction is always unpredictable.

Side by side one also perceives there is a Necessity in Nature which compels things to move in the particular way they do. Its demands are imperious and apparently they are not influenced by individual or local considerations. At whatever cost, the Necessity obliges life to meet it.

All seems to move on these two processes—Chance and Necessity. Indeed, both of them are truths, only they operate on different levels.

Spiritual Fire

Too high the fire spiritual dare not blaze.

If once it met the intense original Flame,
An answering touch might shatter all measures made
And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite.

The earth in evolution constantly aspires for a higher and a still higher Truth of the Divine. But it can sustain only that intensity of the Spirit for which it is ready. And this readiness is determined largely by the extent to which it has moved away from its original moorings in Nescience, Inconscience and Ignorance. Its aspiration for the Truth of the Divine has to take account of these prevailing conditions and aim only at that which it can assimilate at the moment. Otherwise, if in the zeal of its seeking it were to reach, evoke response and bring down a Truth, a Consciousness or a Force of the Divine too great to bear, the results would be disastrous. Each Descent of the Spirit in the earth-consciousness takes place only when the earth has developed adequate receptacles to contain and support the new influx. Any premature pull is bound to result in the break-up of the existing forms and movements which being not ready would be unable to hold the greater charge.

World-Gaol (I)

A gaol is this immense material world.

Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed law,
At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace.

The physical world in which we live is so vast that it seems almost endless. And yet to the soul which seeks to enlarge its range, to the consciousness which tries to extend itself beyond the limits set by the physical frame in which it it housed, this world presents itself as an enclosing barrier. On every side it imposes limits which cannot be exceeded with impunity. There are laws of Matter, operations of the rule of Inconscience, opacity, Death, which stare in the face in whichever direction one moves. The laws are long established, as old as Matter itself and they over-shadow the domain of the physical world with their rigidities and impersonal uniformities.

World-Gaol (II)

A grey tribunal of the Ignorance,
An Inquisition of the priests of Night
In judgment sit on the adventurer soul,

At every turn of life in this world based upon Matter, the soul that seeks to overpass the rule of Physical Nature is confronted with the scrutinising looks of empirical reason and allied agents of the pervading Ignorance. It is subjected to questionings from the black powers of Nescience and Unconsciousness that are loth to see anyone escape from this hold. All of these take it upon themselves to detain anyone who has the boldness to look beyond their domains. They expose him to their attractions and if possible, put a brake on his movements.

World-Gaol (III)

… the dual tables and the Karmic norm
Restrain the Titan in us and the God:

Neither the reachings towards Light nor the impulses towards Darkness get a free scope in man living in this world. At every moment the organised dualities of Nature, e.g. good and bad, pain and pleasure, light and shadow, lay siege to his being and counter whatever he does with its inevitable contrary. There is also the spectre of Karma. Each action produces a result and the action of today is often plagued by the reaction of yesterday. No movement, no activity—upward or downward—is allowed to have its own way and produce its entire results. There is a continual modification and arrestation.

World-Gaol (IV)

Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe
Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility,

Though the stamp of Nescience and the pulls of inertia and obscurity resist all movement forward, the motion of life is kept going within the narrow bounds of the material formula. Like a wheel it is constantly revolving, though it does not advance. Man is compelled to participate in this life-movement; he has to act. Nature uses a double weapon to whip him into activity: there is first the pressure of pain which forces man to sit up and work in order to reduce if not remove the causes of pain. And complementary to this negative factor is the positive inducement of pleasure, the joy that life yields to the man who exerts himself. That this joy does not last long, that this pleasure is only an interregnum between periods of pain does not discourage him from accepting the bait and running after whatever yields happiness in however small a measure, for however short a time.

World-Gaol (V)

A bond is put on the high climbing mind,
A seal on the too large wide-open heart;
Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.

The mind of man in this world is tied firmly to the tether of its physical bases. It can take flight in the skies of thought but always it has to return to the earth. The shadow of the primeval Ignorance pursues it wherever it goes into action and mars its perfection and effectivity. The mind carries its constitutional handicap of being an instrument of error. Similarly, the range of the heart too is limited. The emotions and the impulses that proceed from it can only go as far as the ego-circle can be extended. It cannot expand beyond without running the risk of self-destruction, as long as it is governed by matter-based life. And life itself, organised in matter and enclosed in its formation, cannot proceed farther than the limits set to its career. Within that span life may spread itself, unearth secrets from the womb of Time, but once the fixed boundary is reached, life is devoured by Death. On all fronts the material world is a closed system.

The Animal and the Hawk

… the Animal browses in the sacred fence
And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more.

The rule of the Inconscience ensures its stability by every available means. Its clamps of ignorance, inertia and immobility hold the movements of the life, the heart and the mind of man in stern check on pain of destruction and death. As a result, the being of man which is designed by the manifesting Divine to be a sacred ground for the high edifice to be erected lies unused for the purpose. It is turned into a secure enclosure for the trespassing lower nature to luxuriate in and hold all forward movements at bay. The aspiring soul, the luminous inhabitant is held prisoner and is unable to soar into the higher regions of the Mind and the Spirit.

Dark Power

… the dark Power that hates all bliss

Happiness, joy, delight are states that belong to the truer being of man. They are reflections or currents deriving from an innate Bliss which is the nature of the deepest soul. The Divine is blissful in its being and all that comes from it has that character. But the play of this Ananda is arrested, diluted and even given a perverse form by the interference of the non-divine (or anti-divine) elements like the Ego or Ignorance. The nature of these limiting agents is to shut out all movements of liberating knowledge and expansive bliss, for they draw the being godward to their source away from the hold of the nether powers. These powers of darkness wallow in degrading pleasures which bring quick in their wake pain and misery that thrust man still deeper into their dominion.

Life And Joy

… where life must pay for joy,

Here on earth where Ignorance is the rule and Ego the king of individual existence, all expression and movement of life is constricted, narrow, uncertain. On every side, there is danger of friction, clash and hurt because everyone is pitted against everyone else. Consequently, fear, anxiety, pain are normal experiences in life. If any one, in these conditions, goes contrary to the common current and attempts to draw happiness and joy from the world, he has perforce to suffer the reaction. Joy is still foreign to life-nature and it cannot support that movement for long. Parts of the nature either refuse to accept it or they get so much excited in its vibrations that there is an inevitable exhaustion and when the joy departs, man is in a state lower than before, more miserable, since he has had some taste of that joy.

Man’s Hopes

… the afflicting penalty of man’s hopes,

Nature gives to man a frame of life in which he lives and moves. He is given a limited mind involved in a life which is imprisoned within the walls of a physical body. If he accepts this formula in which he comes into being here and is content to be confined to it all his life, there is no problem. There is a certain mechanical smooth going. But if he thinks of exceeding the habitual limits, entertains hopes to acquire what is not natural to the existing organisation of life, and exerts himself to that end, all the established forces in Nature strike at him furiously, resist his effort and force him either to abandon his attempt or to pay in terms of struggle, suffering and disappointments before he finally succeeds in realising his hopes.

Old Statutes

So bows and must the mind-born will in man
Obedient to the statutes fixed of old,
Admitting without appeal the nether gods.

The rigid laws of the mechanism of material nature insist on conformity from all the creatures that live in this world. The whole weight of the past habit is on their side, and anyone who seeks to bypass or defy their workings on his own is foredoomed to failure. The guardians of these laws have eagle eyes and their action is swift. Only a will, a power greater than the force of this Nature of material existence can impose itself on the operation of these laws. The will of man is a will in ignorance, removed from its true source in Knowledge and therefore severely limited in power; it cannot assert itself successfully against these long established laws. A will from a consciousness that is above this triple world of Ignorance, a will that directly draws from the Divine Will can alone break this hold.

Wings of Dream

Inapt to fold its mighty wings of dream
Her spirit refused to hug the common soil,

Man is given faculties like thinking, planning, imagining, dreaming, in order to enable him to look upwards and ahead, and to prepare to free himself from the clamps of earthly nature for flight into the larger heavens of life, mind and spirit. But most are content to live tied to the posts of physical life and they do not exercise the powers given to develop a freer range; the powers lie unused.

But Savitri was not of this category. She was not given to confine her energies of life and mind to the narrow limits of earth-bound human life. She let her consciousness expand and never arrested its formative action.

Compound with Earth

… finding all life’€™s golden meanings robbed,
Compound with earth, struck from the starry list,

There is a strong tendency in human nature to accept a lesser substitute when it is denied the high object of its striving. Man starts with a great fervour and a lofty aim to realise great ideals in life. But when he is confronted with difficulties, apparently insuperable, his vital enthusiasm flags and after a time he comes to regard his chosen ideals as unrealisable, abandons them and compromises with the more readily workable claims of commoner interests. He forfeits the heavens and clings to the earth.Savitri refused this course.

Despair And Light

… quench with black despair the God-given light.

Each one carries a point of Light within himself. He is born with this light at the core of his being: it is a special concentration of the Divine Consciousness serving as a nucleus for his evolutionary development. This point of light grows under proper conditions, and acquires shape as an entity. It works from behind the veil, now as instinct, now as intelligence, now as an imperative, till it is in a position to step forward and assume a direct rule over the being. If there are here conditions like aspiration, purity, sincerity, cheerfulness that promote the growth of this light of the soul, there are equally elements like lethargy, impurity, falsehood and gloom that retard and even cover up this little flame. Of these, gloom, depression, despair have a specially dampening effect and the flame burns feebly; if the darker spells are too long and too thick, the light gets smothered.

Brute Balance

…set a signature of weak assent
To the brute balance of the world’€™s exchange.

The workings of Nature in this material world are mechanical in character. The give and take that goes on between the individual formations and the universal forces proceeds automatically without consideration of any special factors that may attend each situation. Creatures subject to the rule of this Nature have perforce to submit themselves to this insentient action of its forces. Only those with a stronger Will acting in them can hope to overpass this mechanism of the physical world.

Toiling Force

A force in her that toiled since earth was made,
Accomplishing in life the great world-plan,
Pursuing after death immortal aims,

There is a Divine Power that has been working from the inception of this creation for its growth and efflorescence into a Divine Manifestation. It is the Consciousness-Force of the Supreme presiding over the cosmic movement, guiding it, intervening at crucial junctures to give the necessary turns and fix the directions, leading it to its high destination. It manifests itself in human embodiments called Avatars at special periods of transition in the evolutionary progression and works out definite results in a concrete manner on earth; even after the termination of the particular physical manifestation, it proceeds with its task of preparing and organising on the subtler planes of existence for the next step to be taken in a subsequent embodiment.

This Force was now in action in the person of Savitri and naturally it refused to forsake its great purpose and accept the very conditions which it had come to change.

Frustration

… frustration’s barren role,

Whenever man is disappointed in the struggle of life by defeat or by insurmountable obstruction, he gets frustrated. He feels broken and, for the moment, feels all strength ebbing away from him. He lacks even the will to make a fresh attempt because, wherever he turns he sees only failure, only difficulties to which he feels unequal. This sense of frustration renders him ineffective for any purpose, barren, unable to put forth any productive effort. The part that this agent of Negation plays in life is one of dessicating denial.

High Recourse

In her own self she found her high recourse;
She matched with the iron law her sovereign right:
Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.

Man is a creature of circumstances and subject to the hard laws of Nature only as long as he lives in his surface consciousness which is entirely formed by and under the operations of that Nature. Deeper down in him there is a part that is independent of Nature: it is the self which derives from the Spirit that is not bound by Nature. To the extent man moves towards this self, takes his poise in it and organises his consciousness around it, he moves away from the rule of Nature; he imbibes the freedom and the will of the self in his conscious being and, if he chooses, asserts it against the mechanical compulsions of outer Nature.

This is what Savitri did, and indeed what all men of destiny do, when confronted with the challenge of established Nature.

Strength Awoke

At the Unseen’s knock upon the hidden gates
Her strength made greater by the lightning’s touch
Awoke from slumber in her heart’s recess.

One’s strength or weakness that is apparent in normal conditions is no true index of one’s capacities. For in each person there is always in the depths of his being a reserve of power which lies usually untapped. It is in times of stress, of crisis, that nature calls forth this latent strength into action and the situation is met with rare heroism.

As the hour of Doom approached, the inner strength of Savitri hitherto lying unused in the deeper reaches of her heart gathered itself at the advance intimations which are always first received in the subtler regions of the being, and leapt into action.

Death-Stroke

… stroke of That which kills and saves.

The stroke of Death is always fearful to life which seeks to continue, to multiply, to perpetuate itself. Death puts an end to its struggling effort and would appear to be wholly evil. In fact, however, in the present stage of Nature’s evolution in Ignorance, death is a necessary agent to cut short careers of ignorance the moment they cease to progress towards the liberating Light. Otherwise, life in ignorance would endlessly prolong itself and there would be no hope of release. As it is, death acts as a constant brake on movements in ignorance, provides opportunities for fresh renewals of effort and possible departures from settled rounds of habit.

She Stood in the Way

A heart stood in the way of the driving wheels:
Its giant workings paused in front of a mind,
Its stark conventions met the flame of a soul.

In opposing the Determinism of material Nature the whole of Savitri’s being rose in resistance. Her heart of Love would not allow the wheels of Doom to roll, the power of divine Love being stronger than any force of terrestrial nature. The intricate workings of the huge mechanism could not pass the scrutiny of her luminous mind. Its established mechanical habits were exposed to the dissolving incandescence of a living, conscious soul.

Magic Leverage

A magic leverage suddenly is caught
That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will:
A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

In the complex movement of forces that is life man often finds himself helpless. His vision is limited and even when he is able to see ahead, he is unable to assert himself and turn the tide of things in his favour. His personal strength is found totally inadequate to arrest the flow of events or modify their course. His will is puny compared to the massive character of the forces in action. But man is not left totally at the mercy of circumstances. He is a conscious being and it is within his means to move the Divine Will which is ultimately at the head of all movements in creation. He can appeal to it for help, for sanction for the desired turn. That supreme Will is not an automaton but a concious Power of the Divine, the self-same Being that is the Source and the Master of the being in evolution. His Will can be reached by some intense movement on the part of the supplicant, a concentrated prayer with all the heart’s sincerity and trust thrown into it or a supreme action which lifts him out of the common round of humanity—though for the moment—and places him in the higher reaches of the Spirit nearer that Will or the embodiment of a capital Truth-idea which assuredly possesses his being with its innate charge of higher consciousness; any of these can put him in contact with the Power or Will above, connect the human with the super-human. All such effort, conscious or unconscious, in man or nature, is aimed to produce or to find this balance. It is when this junction takes place in the subtle domains of existence that impossibles are turned into possibles.

Miracle

Then miracle is made the common rule,

What takes place habitually in a set of governing conditions in Nature is accepted by the human mind, as a rule, as natural. If anything happens out of this settled run of things, it is regarded as a miracle. And such a happening outside the regular order is always the result of a new factor entering the situation, a factor that does not form a constituent of the normal conditions here. The result in question is perfectly natural to the element that produces it; only the element and its working were not used to operating here—as indeed they do elsewhere in other realms of existence. Till the new element or factor is naturalised here, its workings strike as miracles; these ‘miracles’ become part of the accepted scheme of things—the common rule—as their originating truth gets assimilated in the general Nature.

When a transcendent Force is called or released into action in the universe, the results of its operations first appear as miracles but as they continue they become a common feature.

Change of Course

One mighty deed can change the course of things;

There is a set rhythm, an established course of life in this world. Each one plays his part, each force acts as usual, there is a due reaction and all proceeds according to the plan in Nature. The circumstances are fixed, the participating agents have their respective roles and events turn out according to pattern. This course, however, continues only as long as the conditions developed by the evolving Spirit are the same. The moment new factors are brought into play, fresh forces released into action, the scene changes. The old order is disturbed. and a new direction takes its place. Such a change is brought about when a great effort involving a break-through in the existing limitations is successfully made. Such an effort, on whatever plane it is made, physical, mental or spiritual, throws the old set-up of forces into disequilibrium and all the planes of existence being interconnected, the effects travel all over. New elements come into operation and a new course of things is initiated.

Lonely Thought

A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

There are thoughts and thoughts. Most of them are really no thoughts at all, but passing movements of wish, desire, fancy taking the form of thoughts to make themselves palpable in the mind; they are not there the very next moment. Such formations are like bubbles on the sea of thought-waves in the world. But there are certain truths in the earth-atmosphere that seek to effectuate themselves. They take form in ideas and hover round in the mental world seeking for receptive minds in which to lodge themselves. They await their instrument and the hour and once they find a receptacle they dig themselves in. Such an idea gradually develops into a strong thought and this thought organises itself into a premier position subordinating all other mental movements to its service. It becomes the one thought that possesses the man, first in the mind and then throughout his being. His whole consciousness is centred around that one solitary thought and if the truth behind that Idea-thought answers to some need in evolving Nature, then the Thought manifests itself in the irresistible power that it has acquired in the process of being brooded over by a living consciousness. That has been the history of all great Ideas that have changed the course of history.

Nature’s Machinery

All now seems Nature’s massed machinery;

Wherever one turns in this field of material Nature, one is confronted by operations that are strikingly mechanical in character; they reveal themselves as the Workings of Laws in Nature which are unchangeable. The most imperious of these Laws is the rule of Karma whose chain of determination is endless. Subserving the processes of these hard laws are the habits in Nature—individual and collective—that create their own grooves of movement from which it is difficult to come out. Added to these is the constant pull from the denser parts of our nature to conform to the established norms of Matter, to react always within the terms of the law.

But all this is only an appearance, a deceptive front of an incalculable Intelligence at work behind.

Man the Machine

He too is a machine amid machines;
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes;
An insentient energy fabricates a soul.

To a certain point of view, to the eye of the materialist, which sees all in life as a working of the huge mechanism of physical Nature, man too is a machine like all other entities, animate and inanimate. He also is a product of the mechanical action of physical energies and he moves and functions according to the regulations of the forces to which he is subject. His mind, in this view, is a product of the physical brain: the thoughts in the mind are the results of the activity of cells in the organ. So also the emotions and impulsions flowing from the heart are nothing but the issues of the throbbing of the heart-organ. Even his soul—for which an origin independent of the body is claimed—is a figment, an appearance, produced by the workings of the physical energy which has no consciousness of its own. All is a mechanical result of the motion of a brute material energy.

Chance and Binding Posts

…the figure of the world reveals the signs
Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter’s binding-posts.

Looking at the course of life in the world, one is struck by the part played by that unpredictable factor called Chance. Things happen so often contrary to expectations and calculations that Chance appears to be the rule. A deeper scrutiny, however, reveals that the element of Chance is only a part of a bigger movement of life: it has its allotted role in the play of possibilities. The larger movement is seen to revolve around certain demands of basal Matter, repeating its rounds within fixed radii. It appears as a mechanical whirl of energies in which the free element of chance has little scope beyond a few repetitive steps.

Here

A random series of inept events
To which reason lends illusive sense, is here,
Or the empiric Life’s instinctive search,
Or a vast ignorant mind’s colossal work.

What is the meaning of this world-existence? It looks as if there is nothing else but a haphazard movement in which things happen confusedly. There is no order, no sequence anywhere within the things themselves. It is man’s little reason from the outside that gives them a show of meaning; the mind’s reason reads a purpose where there is none. Again it may look as if all is an experimentation by the Life-Force to arrive at some great affirmation of itself. It takes up one form or set of forms now, casts them away after a while, then turns to another set to determine which will best serve its purpose. From another point of view, this multitudinous creation with its lights and shadows appears to be the working of a huge mind that is ignorant. The mind is evidently some near boundless Agent to be able to create this enormous world-structure. And it must be ignorant, for otherwise how to account for the many vitiating features that characterise its creation!

Man the King

But wisdom comes, and vision grows within;
Then Nature’s instrument crowns himself her king;

Up to a certain stage in the evolution of Nature, things have a grossly mechanical character in their working. All are creatures of a giant Force, instruments of its activity. But as the element of consciousness develops in the beings involved in the evolutionary movement, the appearance changes. The movement is no more mechanical. Especially with the arrival of man the mental being, consciousness acquires a certain individuality and its will begins to exert itself on the operations of Nature. The evolutionary movement no more contains man along with other creatures in its own rhythm. The growth of consciousness brings with it growth of knowledge and enlargement of perspective. The will of man comes into its own. This conscious will determines its own direction, its own pace, not only for the individual but also for the generality. It imposes itself on the course of evolution in Nature and assumes increasing control and rule. Man becomes the master.

Step Back

He feels his witnessing self and conscious power;
His soul steps back and sees the Light supreme.

As long as he is completely involved in the workings of Nature, man is not really aware of himself, his own distinct individuality. But with the growth of consciousness, there comes an awareness of something in himself that is not involved in the outer movement. As he looks within and concentrates his attention on it, he begins to experience a kind of division in his being: a part that is active in Nature and another part that does not participate in the movement but stands aloof, a witness that takes cognisance of the activity but does not step into it. Further observation reveals that even the nature-part that acts is really an end—a living physical end—of a larger Power that is conscious, a Shakti which acts behind the facade of material Nature. And, when aware of this dynamism in action and a self that is aloof in himself, man takes a step further inwards into his being, he is bathed in the Light of the Self—the Self that is supporting both the static soul and the dynamic power in their interacting career.

Godhead and Machine

A Godhead stands behind the brute machine.

The human being is apt to appear as one more mechanical creature run by a mechanical Energy in this world of material Nature. His body functions with the automatism and precision of a machine; all the other members of his system appear to derive from the workings of the physical body and its energies and governed by them. But that is only an appearance. If man steps back a little from the movement of Nature in which he is normally engrossed and looks into himself, he begins to get aware of something in himself that is not involved in this material mechanism and does not depend upon it for its existence. Pursued further, this search reveals to him in the end a Godhead that is behind his surface being. It is this Godhead that really supports the whole edifice of man, even as it does, in another context, the entire structure of the universe.

The mechanical operations of Nature in each unit and in all together are only the outer form of a deeper process of the workings of this God-head of manifestation.

Victory

This truth broke in in a triumph of fire;
A victory was won for God in man,

That there is a Godhead of Consciousness, Light, Freedom, behind this apparent structure of material mechanism, waiting for its hour to manifest in all its glory, was realised in one swift moment by Savitri as the crisis was gathering round her. Revealed to her in a flash were the possibility and the way of breaking through the hard and long established determinism of material Nature. Her will rose to action on the wings of this perception. It marked a definite stage in the evolution of God in humanity for at that moment the possibility of conquest over death was seized in the human consciousness and the first step taken towards its realisation.

Reversal

A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn,
Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance,
Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel
And stopped the mute march of Necessity.

The wheel of determinism in material Nature turns mechanically without any saving sensation, it moves under the pressure of a gathered momentum without questioning; it is immaterial in its operations without the slightest breath of the warmth of life. All circumstances are cogs in this wheel of Fate that revolves relentlessly. It is only a force of will from an existence beyond the domain of this mechanism that can hold the movement, change its direction and displace the instrumental condition. This is precisely what Savitri did: she made her choice in the living depths of her soul, linked it with the Divine Will and brought it to bear upon the developing situation.