LECTURES ON

SA VITRI
Lectures delil•ered in the United Siates

by
A. B. PURANI

SRI AL'ROBINDO SOCIET\

PONDlCHERRY
 LECTURES ON

SAVITRI
Lectures delivered in the United States

by

A. B. PURANI

SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY

PONDICHERRY
 First Edition 1967
Second Edition 1989

ISBN 81-7060-036-7
©Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trusr 1989
Puhlished by Sri Aurobindo Society
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press. Pondicherry

PRINTED IN INOIA
 Publisher's Note

This book contains three lectures on Sri Aurobindo's epic

Savitri, delivered in August 1962 by the late A. B. Purani
during his visit to the United States. The lectures have
been edited to make them more readable, but an effort
has been made to retain the lecturer's "voice" - his
characteristic directness, drive and enthusia&m. It is hoped
that the book will provide a brief but helpful introduction
to Sri Aurobindo's poem.

Ambalal Balkrishna Purani was born in Surat, Gujarat, in

1894. Inspired as a young man by Sri Aurobindo, then a
leader of the Indian National Movement, Purani helped to
launch a youth movement which gained widespread popu­
larity in Gujarat. At the age of twenty-four he visited Sri
Aurobindo in Pondicherry and finally settled there five
years later in 1923. From 1938 to 1950 he served as one of
Sri Aurobindo's personal attendants. Towards the end of
his life Purani toured India, Africa, Europe and the
United States, trying to spread the message of his Master.
In 1965, at the age of seventy-one, he passed away in
Pondicherry.
A. B. Purani was a prolific writer in Gujarati and
translated many of Sri Aurobindo's works into that lang­
uage. His other books in English are: Evening Talks with
Sri Aurobindo; Sri Aurobindo: Some Aspects of His Vi­
sion; Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine (lectures given in the
United States); and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach
and a Study.
 CONTENTS

LECTURE I

LECTURE ll 29

LECTURE III 62
 LECTURE l

Savitri is an epic of more than 23,000 lines. It won't be.easy

to do justice to it in three days. What will be attempted is
only an outline and some kind of foretaste by which you
might be induced to get into the body of the book; that's all
we can attempt. I consider the appearance of Savitri as the
first ray of the new age that is coming in the realm of culture.
It begins with the symbol of dawn, and I think symbolically it
is itself a dawn of the new age that is coming to mankind.
Poetry very often sums up an age and inaugurates a new age
and Savitri seems to be an expression which presages; it
shows us the coming of a new_ age. It may take hundreds of
years, it is not that it will come tomorrow, but the fact that
Savitri has been written now and has found expression in
letters well. that is the sign of the coming age.
-

It is a gift of the power of speech, as we say in India. The

goddess of speech is called Saraswati; she is the goddess of
inspiration, and Savitri is like a gift from the goddess Sara­
swati to mankind. It is not the intellectual expression of some
individual, it is directly an expression of the power of speech
itself taking form in words, which the Mother says is like the
propoetic history of the earth, embodying in itself the fulfil­
ment of man's life on earth. It is the earth's prophetic history
and at the same time it is the reading of man's future fulfil­
ment. It is the whole evolutionary span of mankind and even
the whole of the universe.
Savitri begins with the beginning of the universe - even
before the beginning of the universe - and it ends at the point
where man attains the purpose of his existence on earth; so it
is a song of the creation from the beginning to the possible
fulfilment which the poet is able to see and give us sight of.
We have dealt. while talking of poetry, with the power of
Mantra. Mantra is the word that rises from the heart. a.n act
 of inspiration, the consciousness casting itself in word-value
or sound-value, taking body, so to say, and Savitri is in that
sense charged with the power of Mantra. Mantric power is
the power of re-creating consciousness in a word-group or
word-symbol or word-vibration. The word-vibration is not
only the vibration of a word, but it is symbolic of a conscious
vibration, a vibration of consciousness; the word-vibration
has, therefore, the power to awaken a vibration of conscious­
ness in the man who is open t0 it. It carries a Mantric power,
a power which is spiritual, charging the group of words with
the capacity or the power to reproduce the condition of
consciousness which the word-vibration represents.
This idea of the power of the word is not peculiar to Indian
classical attitude. I think the power of the word is not proper­
l y understood in modern times, because people think that a
'
word which expresses a truth or a reality, is generally intel­
lectual, practical, turned to some use, so they don't think
that it has any other power. But if you study the growth of
man's cultural movement, you find that at times the power of
the word has brought great revolutions in mankind. For
instance, the Indian Freedom Movement was preceded by
one such word-group, Bande Mataram (Hail to the Mother,
Mother India). Now that cry came in 1872, long before the
Indian National Movement was even launched - there was
no political life at that time to speak of. Jn 1872, Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee, the Bengali seer, first saw this Mantra
as the cry that must come to the sons of India in order to get
their freedom. But it doesn't speak of freedom at all. Bande
Mataram is a salutation to the Supreme Mother India, that's
all. It only speaks of concentrating the will and the attention
of the people on an objective: the collective entity, Mother
India, the Bharat Shakti, as they call it. The attention of the
people was drawn to that. And it is that for which many
people went to jail, surrendered their property, sacrificed

2
everything, died. It was the power of this Mantra. It was 1872
when it first came out in the open and it's application took
about 60 or 70 years. But that's how it works.
There are other such things. I don't know whether the
French National Anthem had the same effect, "A/Lons les
en/ants de la patrie." Perhaps that might have been after the
revolution or during the revolution. Then there is the cry of
the Socialist: "Workers of the world, unite! Brothers of the
world, unite!" That sort of expression carries a power within
it which is capable of changing the course of human life.
Savitri might in the end prove to be something like that. Atid
it is not only the past where you see it. If you read even a
modern poet like C. Day Lewis, you will find "The Word
Over All", a poem in which he says: Why should we write
poems when people are destroying each other? It's about the
Second World War. He says: What is there to write about?
There is nothing much, and "yet words there must be, wept
on the cratered present, To gleam beyond it".
Words there must be, yes, to express that cry over the
"cratered present", because when bombings take place there
is a crater created in the ground. And then the splinters of
the bomb are shining over the edge of the crater, so he says.
to dream in the future. In another poem Day Lewis speaks of
the intuitive height to which the poet rises. "Oh on the
Strident Wings" - that is his song on poetry, on the power of
the word. I am only illustrating that even modern poets have
got a little inkling of this great truth that an intuitive or
inspired expression carries in it a tremendous power:

Oh. on this striding edge.

This hare-bell height of calm
Where intuitions swarm
Like nestling gulls and knowledge
Is free as the winds that blow.

3
 A little while sustain me,
Love, till my answer is heard!
Oblivion roars below,
Death's cordon narrows: but vainly
If I have slipped the carrier word.

I am here on this strident height of intuition to catch the

carrier word, because it is a word that is effective. So we see
that the word has been given a sufficient significance even by
modem people.
There is an idea that in modern times the epic is not
possible. The critics will always say so. I have dealt with it in
my book. I don't want to go over it again, but there is an
argument in the literary world that today is not the age of the
epic. The epic's age has past, it is primitive people's business
and all that sort of thing. They forget that when the seer
comes, he doesn't wait for the critics. He doesn't take orders
from the critics. It is like this: "The spirit bloweth where it
listeth". So it blows where it likes and suddenly when all the
critics say it can't happen, somebody says: "Well it happened
here." Their idea was: in primitive times, battles took place
between races. or some prehistoric something might have
occurred which acquired a mythical value in the imagination
of the people and then imaginative things were added on to
the historical background and somehow or the other they
made up an imaginative picture of society in which elements
of culture, perfection, morality, ethics, life. the goal of life,
and everything else was put together. That was a time when
people were primitive. now we are very much advanced so
we need not have that kind of epic - a story. But epic as a
story has ceased to be long ago.
Milton's Paradise Lost is not a story in the strict sense of
the term, it is what you call a religious myth. Even though it
puts forth characters that are human characters, it doesn't

4
deal with a human event; nor does the Divine Comedy of
Dante deal with any historical episode. It is not history. The
Divine Comedy is something that deals with the conditions of
the human soul, particularly after death, and the conditions
of man. Even now history is not indispensable for the crea­
tion of an epic. Now the epic has outgrown the objective
attitude,. it has become subjective. From Milton's time
onward you can see that greater and greater subjectivity
becomes the point of departure for an epic, and Savitri, in
that sense, is a far greater epic than all the epics put together,
from Homer's time right up to the Divine Comedy. The.:
subjectivity that has found expression in Savitri is tremen-·'
dous. Savitri is not one world, it is several universes, one,
two, three, four, five universes, one after another, so that it
is a complex creation of universes for which there is no
parallel in the world's history so far as poems are concerned.
There is also a wrong impression that the epic .must have a
great event to inspire it. It is not the size of the event that
gives it greatness. The measure of the greatness of an event is
in its significance, in the meaning, in what people read into
it. To have 1,500 miles of front in the last world war was
unprecedented in human history, so far as the military his­
tory of the world is concerned. Such a front there never was
and never so many people participated in war. What took
place in Greece in Troy - the Trojan War between the
Greeks and the Trojans - was in a tiny corner. It was no­
thing, materially speaking, and externally it took place in a
corner of the world. Nobody even knew about it. And yet it
could give rise to an epic, because its significance was great.
The people participating knew: it was for values that they
were fighting: the freedom of man, man's height, his hori­
zon, his promise, his nobility. There was something at stake,
not land and money and property, nothing material. It is that
which gives it the epic height. The Mahabharata war, for

5
 instance, was fought for only 18 days and it must have turned
out one-tenth of a million persons at the most. But the
Mahabharata war has given rise to an epic because the war
was fought for, or at least the poet saw it as a fight for, the
values of life, for what the human being ultimately means.
. What is he here for? When that answer is given, and its
significance understood, it can give rise to an epic.
When the war is a big war and only utilitarian interests are
at stake, it doesn't inspire anyone and you will see the con­
tradiction. I mean it looks like a contradiction if you look at
the course of the last world war - it really came to a head
spiritually when the Atlantic Charter was declared. It had to
rise to a height of idealism before it could concentrate the
will-power of humanity for a complete showdown. It began
with this exterior, materialistic, utilitarian, practical world as
a frontier, with the struggle for commerce and balance of
economic distribution of the world and exploitation for get­
ting raw materials and all that. A complex of causes led to
that war, but they were all wedded to the vital life of man,
which has nothing to do with man as the heighest creature of
creation, man as the divine spirit, man as an idealist, man as
a noble creature. Those values had been lowered down in
collective life. That is why the war doesn't inspire us - it
creates a sense of, "Oh, no. What we did was wrong."
Everybody thinks like that, not only those who participated;
all the human beings who were not even partisans also
thought: "No, that was not right; we didn't do the right
thing." That's it. And here, even when parties had to fight,
as I said, they had to rise to an idealistic plane before they
themselves could create in their collective life, their animal
mankind. the will to fight. the belief that the war was worth
fighting for and winning. Naturally it was a question of the
rights of man. freedom of association and freedom of belief­
many things which have nothing to do with frontiers. So an

6
epic comes into being when values are at stake. The epic has
come into being because the poet has seen the world situa­
tion and in this world situation something has to emerge out
of the values of life that have now been churned.
We say that when you churn milk or cream, butter, which
is the very product of it, comes out. Savitri is a result of such
churning and without taking notice of the undesirable ele­
ment, it just says: If you churn, this is what you get. If the
world is churned in its present condition, what do you expect
as a result of the churning? A fulfilment of man on earth? In
what way does life result in a fulfilment of man on earth?
Savitri gives the answer to i t As Mother said, "It is prophetic
.

reading of the world's history and the promise of its fulfil­

ment."
Now what is Savitri? Sri Aurobindo calls it a legend and a
symbol. The legend is as old as the Mahabharata, the epic of
India. He has borrowed the legend from the epic of India.
Before I go into the story I will give you the opinion of one of
my friends, the respected writer Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar,
whose opinion counts in the world of letters today. He says
that in its final form Savitri is a poem with hardly a parallel in
·

the world's literature:

The Mahabharata story of Savitri and Satyavan is now ren­

dered anew with scaffolding unimaginably vast and under­
tones of incalculable import, written in blank verse but with a
weight of thought and edges of articulation unattempted ever
before. The poem with· its 23,000 lines, spans earth and
heaven, comprises life, death, and immortality. It is a modern
Divina Commedia, in which paradise is lost and won. Man
learns to exceed himself and Savitri, the girl-wife, becomes
mother-might and vanquisher of death and also the creatrix of
life divine on this terrestrial base. Sri Aurobindo often specu­
lated on contours of future poetry partaking of the power of

7
 the ancient mantra and achieving the instantaneous commu­
nication between souls awakened and awakening. In Savitri
he brought out such effects again and again . and criticism is
almost dumb before a feat so stupendous and unique.

THE LEGEND

Now what is the original legend? The legend is simple:

because King Aswapathy was childless he performed askesis,
or, as we say in India, Tapasya. He performed penance in
order to get a child, for eighteen years he performed pen­
ance, sacrificed and gave charity. The whole original legend
is contained in the Mahabharata in four chapters, from chap­
ter 248 onwards. in very simple verse. There the King per­
forms penances and the goddess whom he is t�ying to propi­
tiate, is pleased and comes out of the sacrificial fire on the
last day and asks him to demand a boon, so he demands a
boon and she grants him the birth of a son. And then pleased
with him, she says: "I give you an extra boon, that you will
also have a daughter who will be a portion of myself." Then
the goddess goes away and the prince and the princess are
born. Thus Savitri is born, and when she grows up she is so
brilliant in her character, her power and strength of character,
that nobody comes forward to offer her his hand in marriage.
Always the bridegroom goes to propose to the bride; the
bride does not ever seek the bridegroom: that was the law in
those days, in the society at that time. But as nobody dared
to come forward to claim her hand, after waiting for two
years King Aswapathy said to her: "Go out and see whether
you can find somebody who can be your companion." So she
set out with a minister and in two and a half years went all
over India visiting important places and the capitals of the
various states.

8
 But Savitri didn't find anyone she thought was worth her
attention until she came to a forest. ln the forest there were
some huts, and in one of them was a King who was dispos­
sessed of his kingdom on account of his enemies getting the
upper hand. He lost his sight and became blind, and, dispos­
sessed of his kingdom and driven out of his territory, he was
living in the forest outside his kingdom. The King and the
Queen were, so to say, living in exile and their son was
looking after them. Savitri thought this young man was really
an ideal young man, so she decided in her mind to select him
as her future companion. She came back from her travel to
report to her father. And when she came back, Narada, the
great divine sage, was sitting with the King and Queen. They
were talking when Savitri came. When the King asked her
about her choice, she declared her choice and said that
Satyavan living in the forest was the person whom she had
selected. The King thought it was quite right because it was ·

her choice. But he asked the divine sage Narada: "Cast this
horoscope and see the position of the constellations in their
future life and see whether this match is happy." So Narada
cast the horoscope and said, "Yes, it is all right. But there is
one catch: this young man will die after one year. He is going
to die after one year."
Then everything was upset in a certain way and the mother
and everybody else said to Savitri. "You are not yet married.
you have not given your word, so you can go again and try to
find someone else." But Savitri refused and insisted that she
was going to stick to her decision and take the consequences.
The result was that they were. married, and after one year the
God of Death came and Satyavan died. But Savitri pursued
the God of Death to his home in the upper regions or in
whichever regions the dead go. And she persuaded him to
release the soul of Satyavan. Satyavan was revived and they
went back home.

9
 THE SYMBOL

That is the original story. Now, this is only a simple story

told in a legendary way, a certain kind of myth. But there is a
significance behind it and Sri Aurobindo took hold of this
significance for his work.
Aswapathy in Sri Aurobindo s epic is not a King who is
'

childless; he is a representative of the human race trying to

fulfil the inmost aspiration of the human being by bringing
down to the earth a kind of perfection in life. Aspi ration for
perfection is his one flame, and in that he is a representative
of the whole human race. He is not a King only and he is not
asking for a child. He is, first of all, trying to find out what
man is, what a human being is. And he finds that a human
being is not merely his mind and life and body, a bundle of
desires, of material elements like carbon, hydrogen and oxy­
gen, of thoughts and ideas, but that he is a spirit, and that
there are powers and capacities in him which he can awaken,
and by which he can come to fulfil himself. So Aswapathy
follows a triple Yoga. That Yoga we will leave aside for the
time being. Now, he is a representative of the human race,
and as representative of the human race, he first tries to find
out the true self that is in man. And then he finds that man is
cosmic. Man is not merely an individual, he is cosmic. Aswa­
pathy finds further that man is not only cosmic but something
beyond the cosmos too: he can ascend to a plane of con­
sciousness where he can be identified with the supreme
divine. .
Aswapathy ascends and goes. over to those regions and
enters into the "House of the Spirit", as he calls it in the third
book - a pfane of consciousness where the universe is over­
passed and one enters into the " House of the Supreme
Spirit". There he meets the creatrix, the Mother of the
universe. and he carries to her feet the whole aspiration of

10
mankind, which has been working here in the human heart
for thousands of years. He lays it at her feet and says:
"Unless and until an emanation of yourself is sent down to
mankind, man will not be able to fulfil the highest dream of
his aspiration, the highest dream of his ideals. It will be only
when you send down an emanation of yourself that man will
be able to fulfil himself in the Divine." First, the Mother
persuades him not to press for such a demand because the
earth is not ready - mankind is not ready. And she pleads in
a long, Jong poetic passage in which she shows how man is
incapable, not ready and not qualified now to bear the des­
cent of anything so high as the divine consciousness. But
Aswapathy persists and by persistent prayer and sincere aspi­
ration he succeeds in persuading her to extend her Grace.
And she, at the end of a long discussion, grants him the boon
and says, "All right, I will send down an emanation of myself
on earth and that will help mankind to conquer ignorance
and death." The boon is granted and Aswapathy returns to
the earth. Then Savitri is born. That is how the symbol
works.
Savitri is born and she grows up - birth, childhood, adoles­
cence and youth. She goes through her educational course;
she goes to meet Satyavan, and she chooses him.
Now to the double movement. Here we are in the symbol.
So after birth, Savitri goes through education, adolescence
and youth and when she develops, she goes out and meets
Satyavan. Here, the going out is not on account of marriage.
One day Aswapathy sees her coming. He was meditating at
that time and when she approached he forgot that it was his
child, his daughter. He simply saw her as a spirit that was
coming, "an unknown spirit - born his child". And then he
felt that she had her own mission and that she has come to
fulfil it and he told her, "Why don't you try to fulfil that
which is your inmost wish?" So the next day she leaves her

11
 house and goes out. The country she travels through is very
beautifully described in the fourth book.
That is one of the great passages in world literature. She
travels all over and passes through various spiritual atmos:
pheres, meeting different persons, covering deserts, out-of­
the-way sylvan retreats and the capitals of kings, and at the
end she comes to the forest where Satyavan is living and they
meet. Jt is the fifth book where their meeting takes place. It
is the shortest portion of the whole writing. The whole inten­
sity of the meetjng of Satyavan and Savitri occupies hardly
·
fourteen to fifteen pages.
And then sl)e comes back to her home and Narada is
sitting there, as in th� old legend also. In the symbol they are
trying to persuade the Kjng to look at mankind and do
something for it. And as Narada sings the song of man's
perfection, she walks in. And Narada asks, "Who is this gjrl
'· who has come?" She is introduced to Narada and Narada
feels that this is a great spirit - not only the King's daughter,
but somebody with extraordinary power, though he doesn't
say so. He only says: "Who is this extraordinary lady who has
come?" The description of Savitri, at four places in the epic,
is one of the highlights of literature. First, when the poet
describes .Savitri, in the first canto, one day previous to the
death of Satyavan, preparing herself to meet the God of
Death - that's one place. Second, when Aswapathy sees her
approaching in the palace, the description that the poet gives
through Aswapathy.
The third place is when Savitri is described by Narada, the
divine sage, who marvels at her human beauty. It is the
height of our world's literature, I think. Nowhere is there
something that can come near it. It is the description or the
appreciation of human beauty by a divine being, and you
must read it in order to see. Savitri was approaching; Narada
saw her and

12
 He cried to her, "Who is this that comes, the bride,
The flame-born, and round her illumined head
Pouring their lights her hymeneal pomps
Move flashing about her?"

And then he says:

"The empty roses o f thy hands are filled

Only with their own beauty and the thrill
Of a remembered clasp."

Narada was a sage, a Yogi. His words are the throwing back
of Yogic knowledge into aesthetics. "The empty roses of thy
hands" - the hands are like roses - "The empty roses of thy
hands are filled only with their own beauty, and the thrill of a
remembered clasp", because Savitri has met Satyavan. And
Narada,. the divine sage, ·is able to perceive not only the
empty roses and the beauty of her hands, but "the thr11J of a
remembered clasp". Many people miss it when they read it,
it passes over their heads. Cultivate the power to look inside,
and go to the thing that is expressed, for then only do you get
at it. It is a fine description, it is something that has not
happened before in the world's literature. Savitri chooses,
and then Narada describes her. That is the third description.
And the fourth is when she is facing death, when she is face
to face with the God of De�th. And in the description which
the poet gives of Savitri at that time, with her four aspects,
like a human person, you will find that it is not simply some
material being that the poet describes, but a being with a
charge of divinity in her. And the poet gives you her four
aspects in a way which shows that although divine she is also
a person in flesh and blood.
I was talking to you about Savitri's selection of Satyavan.
Narada predicted that Satyavan was going to die after one

13
year. so the mother first questions Narada: "Why should
there be pain in the world? Why should there be suffering?
And suffering unmerited, because my young daughter and
this young Satyavan have done nothing wrong as far as I
know. My daughter has been brought up by me and I know
that she is absolutely innocent. Is this the working of divine
wisdom and of a God who is merciful and kind and all
knowledge and all goodness? How is it that in such a world
created by a merciful God, unmerited suffering comes to a
human being?"
It is in the sixth book that the problem of pain is thrashed
out in detail as nowhere else in the world's literature. I can
tell you from direct study that the problem of pain has not
been as well understood anywhere as it has in the two cantos
in the sixth book where Narada is confronted by Savitri's
mother, the Queen. "Like sorrow ... she was like an embodi­
ment of sorrow addressing heave·n." Like sorrow appealing
to or addressing heaven, she spoke, and she said, "Who is
this God who has created this world? Is this God who is
impotent in the face of pain some power other than God, or a
God who is not merciful but cruel?"
No atheist has put the case of non-acceptance of God more
powerfully. Very strongly. the mother of Savitri puts the case
of atheism. questioning the origin of suffering and pain in
mankind. And the answer that you get has not been given
anywhere in philosophy or literature. The answer is radical
and it is a new answer. It shows the place of pain in the
growth of man's evolution and shows the necessity which has
invited pain into this cosmic scheme, and how pain in its
ultimate origin is nothing but a perversion or a distortion of
the original delight of existence. It is only the original de­
light of existence which is felt as pain because the receiving
apparatus apprehends it in a distorted or perverted way.
Therefore. instead of receiving the delight, it reacts to it in

14
rhe form of a vibration which it feels as pain - pain is thus a
distortion or perversion of delight.
So. Narada answers the Queen saying: "Oh, was then the
sun a dream because there is night?" That is how Narada
begins to answer: "Was then the sun a dream because there
is night?" Could you reduce the sun to an unreality because
now you are passing through darkness? "Was then the sun a
dream because there is night?'' And Narada answers: "Ulti­
mately leave her to her own fate. She will meet her own
destiny in the way she is intended to by the inner spirit. Don't
try to interfere with her decision. Don't try to change her
decision." That is the advice Narada gives. Savitri sticks to
her decisi.on and she performs Tapasya, proceeds along the
path of self-knowledge and universal knowledge and enters
into the divine knowledge. Here Savitri goes into the consti­
tution of the universe and, entering deep inside, she meets all
the universal powers that are at work, and finds that the
universal powers themselves are incomplete and imperfect.
The universe is not perfect, because the powers working in it
are not perfect. Therefore she says, "Wait. I will go back and
bring powers from the Divine which will give you what you
lack, what is wanting in you."
Three great powers Savitri comes across in her passage:
one is the Madonna of Suffering, the psychic fortitude or
toleration in the consciousness of humanity, by which in spite
of the greatest suffering, the human being puts up with life
because subconsciously or consciously there is hope, a hope
of fulfilment of whatever is in the human heart. This Madon­
na of Suffering is a cosmic power which allows man to conti­
nue life in spite of all reverses, in spite of all difficulties.
Savitri sees that she is the great support, the psychic support
to all life. but she has no power to prevent pain and suffering
being inflicted. She suffers with faith, but she has no power
to prevent suffering. So Savitri says, "I will go and bring the .

15
power from the Divine so that yo� will be able to prevent
suffering."
The Madonna of Might is the second power whom Savitri
meets when she goes into inner life. The Madonna of Might
is the will working in the cosmic life, in the whole of human
life; it keeps a sort of rough order in the evolutionary move­
ment, keeps the upward trend. The Madonna of Might is the
human race gathering all its will-power in order to maintain a
sort of rough order in a world in which everything would
have become infra-rational if this Mother of Might had not
been there to maintain the higher values of life - ethics,
idealism, religion, morality; some standard is being kept up
b y a conception of right; a conception of justice. It is this
universal power that maintains some values in lif e so as to
allow life to take an upward turn. The Madonna of Light, the
third power, is an intellectual power or mental power work­
ing in mankind to enrich life by intellectual gains and intel­
lectual idealism.
These three powers Savitri meets, the three powers that
are working in mankind, and she says that all these are
imperfect. "I will go to my inmost divinity and bring back to
each the element that it lacks." So Savitri goes inside to find
her soul, her inmost divinity. When she returns, the death of
Satyavan takes place and she is standing face to face with the
God of Death. And there is a long debate between the two.
The Tenth Book is very simple, very simple. There can't
be a simpler book in poetry than this one, because all the
questions which come to man are there. Death is arguing all
the time with Savitri that she is unnecessarily trying to revive
somebody who is dead because it is no use trying to revive
him. "If Satyavan had lived," he says, "love would have
died. It is better that Satyavan is dead and love lives in your
mind." He gives all the sophistical arguments that you can
imagine. He says, "The One alone is true, the Divine is only

16
one, the Divine is the transcendent, unique, inexpressible,
infinite reality. So why do you want somel:iody else to love?
You are trying to introduce a duality into the Ultimate which
is single." All kinds of arguments Death puts forward to
Savitri, an<� Savitri answers every time in the light of her
inmost being. She is not answering as an individual, but as a
representative of the divine power; thus it is the power that is
replying to the God of Death through Savitri. This is very
clear in the poem. She says: "I have no need to revive
Satyavan at all; if it is fated that he must die, all right, let
him die."
Then the spirit in Savitri wakes up and says that there is a
mission given to her and she cannot be unfaithful to the
mission. She must fulfil the mission. That is how Savitri then
says, "Come along and do what you want me to do." Then
the spirit in Savitri begins to speak, and throughout the book
the spirit of Savitri, the original divine motherhood, is speak­
ing. She answers Death and Death says: "l also want the
Divine. l am set to work by the Divine, I am not working on
my own." And Savitri replies: "You are the Divine, only you
are not the whole of the Divine." He continues, "If you are
the Divine, manifest the Divine that you are. Then I will be
fulfilled because it is for that death that I am waiting. I am at
work because the Divine has given me the command that
mortality shall be there for man's evolution. I am wurking on
behalf of the Divine. I am deputed by Him to work and if you
are the Divine, reveal your divinity, I will submit." So Savitri
reveals her divinity and Death is swallowed up. He is licked
up as they. say. Electrical power - an ocean of electricity
comes out and like a dark hill in the midst of a great ocean,
the God of Death is swallowed up in the flames of the electric
light of Savitri's consciousness. And then Satyavan and
Savitri both rise into the eternal sun of everlasting day. as the
poet calls it. And in the everlasting day, they look upon

17
mankind and try to bring down the ray of the eternal sun, the
knowledge of truth into the world and try to change the
world into a divine life. That is roughly the story of the epic.
Now the poem begins with the dawn, but this dawn is not
the ordinary morning rise of the sun. It is a symbol dawn.
This dawn that is spoken of as a symbol - a symbol of the
illuminating dawn .of the higher and undivided conscious­
ness; it is always the dawn of the Truth. Usha, the Goddess
of the dawn, is that illumined dawn. Sun follows the path of
Usha, sun follows the path of the dawn. Night in the Veda is
a symbol of our obscure consciousness, full of ignorance and
of stumblinj? in our will and in our acts.
Light is the coming of th� illumined higher conscious­
ness which leads to Truth and to Light. Usha is a power of
Aditi. Aditi means the power of the Supreme Infinite Con­
sciousness, Mother of the Gods, according to the Veda. In a
more general aspect , she is the source of all cosmic forms of
consciousness. The dawn is the source of all the cosmic forms
of consciousness froin the physical upwards. Usha is the
Mother of the Cows and she can only be a power of the
supreme light, the light of the Supreme Consciousness,
Aditi. Non-existence of the truth of things is the first aspect
of things that emerges from the inconscient ocean, and its
darkness is a Vedic night which holds the worlds and their
unrevealed potentialities in her obscure bosom. Night ex­
tends her realm over this triple world of ours, physical, vital
and mental, and out of her, in heaven, in the mental being,
dawn is born.
Dawn delivers the sun out of the darkness in which it was
lying concealed and eclipsed and it creates a vision of the
supreme day. in the non-existence and in the night. This is
the symbol dawn, in the sense that it is the first awakening of
man to his divine potentiality. to his divine possibility - that
is the dawn. Dawn is the awakening of the human being from

18
the limitations of his· physical consciousness, his desir�­
consciousness of animality, even from the limitation of his
mind to the perception of a divine essential element in him.
That is the dawn. It can come in the midst of life, dawn c�n
come in the midst of the most ordinary experience of life.
Dawn does not come only when you are in a pious mood,
dawn comes when your inner being is ready, in a flash_; it is
thrown across the f;ice of life and then you suddenly see that
there is something greater than everything that the world can
offer, something which is the object of existence. That
glimpse is given. That is the dawn. Dawn is the awakening of
man to his divine possibility with a flash, with a light that is
unmistakable, convincing and capable of evoking in him an
aspiration which can lead him to fulfil the first vision of the
dawn. Dawn is the first promise of fulfilment of the spiritual
life in man. . .

The epic opens with the beginning of the universe. It gives

a picture of the night, really speaking, as a lady who is
asleep. I will give you roughly the idea of the picture that is
there. Dawn is the awakening of a dark lady who is asleep,
with no light at all, lying in the whole cosmos, occupying the
world, occupying the universe.
"It was the hour before the Gods awake." That is how the
book begins. Savitri begins with this sentence. Even the
Gods, the universal powers, were not yet set into function­
ing. That is the time, it is primordial. It is just before the
cosmos was organized, so you have to imagine somebody
who is occupying the whole universe, completely dark and
resisting any attempt to be awakened. "It was the hour
before the Gods awake". The second line is "Across the path
of the divine Event". The divine Event is the coming of the
dawn:

Across the path of the divine Event

19
 The huge foreboding mind of Ni.ght, alone

Night is the lady who is asleep.

. In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.

And she doesn't want to be awakened so there is an effort to

awaken her; she thinks it is a nightmare and throws it out.
The second time a somnambulist movement is inaugurated.
Somnambulism is a condition in which a man is fully asleep
and yet goes out and does something very sensible and ra­
tional and forgets all about it; the next morning when you ask
him, he says be didn't do it at all, it is quite wrong to say that
he did it - but he has done it. That's somnambulism. So when
the nightmare was over, and she did not awaken and the
pressure was being exerted from inside, a somnambulist
movement got hold of her and this material universe came
into existence. The stars and the constellations began to
move, like somnambulists working in sleep, and earth was
there, a most insignificant place in the whole cosmic material
scheme of interstellar bodies - moving like a somnambulist -
and there was no light, no sky, nothing. Aqd some idea,
some will began to work and suddenly out of this incon­
science ignorance awoke, and a ray began to penetrate and
disturb this Night, but Night refused to get up. But this ray
penetrated her because a past memory of the creation came
back to this lady and she said: "Oh, in the past we have done
something, so let me see what happens." And when that ray
came, the ray took the form of a child and got hold of the
sleeping lady. She would not get up so the child went and put
his hand on the cheek of the mother and she thought, "Oh I
have moved everything in somnambulism, but here is a child
that I have to take care of." And so she set about trying to

20
get up and when she fully got up there was the dawn - and
then Savitri awoke. The poet has connected this dawn with
Satyavan's last day, the day before Savitri is going to con­
front Death, on the day when the night has allowed the ray to
penetrate and allowed the full blaze of morn to come. The
description of the morn in the first canto is very fine. The
first canto is a little tough, therefore you shouldn't attempt to
read it at one time. You must read it twenty-five times before
you get somewhere inside. Darkness failed (this dark night
lady sleeping) and "slipped like a fallen cloak". Like a cloak
that falls, "darkness f�led and slipped like a fallen cloak
from the reclining body of a God". It was not night, it was
the reclining body of a God. The reclining body of a God was
reveale� when the cloak of night fell down.

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.

Then life began to penetrate.

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.

The seed of grandeur was buried in the hours. Then the

higher power also supports the dawn, and this divine power
stands behind the dawn.
Savitri is described in this very first canto, and the poet
says that though she was semi-divine, she was full of human

21
elements also. The call that comes to the human being and
creates a kind of leap of mind, came to Savitri also with its
"illusion of desire", but it came to her like a sweet alien note.
Desire did not come to Savitri as if it was something known
to her.

The call that wakes the leap of human mind,

Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,
Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,
Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.

Sri Aurobindo is not discussing Savitri only as a divine being.

·

And then he says:

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.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

Savitri was faced with this problem of conquering death

and the poet is putting before us an idea as to how one
individual can conquer death. Cosmic machinery is grinding
its wheels, one heart is standing before it and wants to stop it.
That is how the poet puts it.
Now imagine man in the darkness, in a room with thick
walls of darkness all around and he is trying to find a way
out. He scratches somewhere and makes a little dent. If he
constantly makes a dent, naturally the wall will break and the
opening will come and perhaps whatever is beyond will re­
veal itself to him. But if suddenly his hand drops over a lever,
an electric switch, so to say, and happens to press it, well!

22
then he can get light immediately. "A magic lever suddeniy is
caught." You think that one man is working. and one man is
doing, but he catches a magic lever and that moves a "veiled
Ineffable's timeless will". It does not move a human agency,
but it moves some divine powers. What could be those le­
vers? A "prayer" - it can be a powerful lever - or· a "master
act". some action which one does in obedience to one's
inmost ·spiritual entity. or a "king idea", an idea that comes
in the mind and seeks expression in life. In such cases the
lever sets into movement the mission of the transcendent
force, and then what people call a miracle happens; though
the lever is moved by a human agency. the power that is at
work is not human.
People think that unless we do things the things will not be
done. Yes, man has a part to play. He has to touch the lever
consciously or unconsciously, set .it into movement. But to
set it into movement is enough work for man. To set the
higher lever working is not easy for man to do. His whole
effort is that - how to move the lever - and when that is
done, people think. "Oh, how can such a thing happen. We
pray every day. We go to the church. We go to the temple."
But they are not praying at all in the church. I can tell you. in
the temple nobody is really praying. More things are wrought
by prayer in th�s world than this world dreams of - but then it
must be a true prayer.
I was talking to someone in India - a university boy. He
asked me about the efficacy of prayer. I said. "Do you want a
historical example? I will give you one. Do you know the
history of India ?"
He said. "Yes."
"You know the first Moghul King who conquered the
north of india '? His name was Babar."
"Yes. yes."
"And his son's name was Humayun."

23
 ''Yes."
"And you know that Humayun was ill, it was a mortaJ
illness and this was Babar's only son. So Babar went seven
times around his son's sick bed and prayed that his illl!ess be
transferred to him, for he was ready to give his Life for his
son. He died on the seventh day."
This is his own record. Babar has written his own auto­
biography. This is a historically authentic fact, it happened in
the sixteenth century and Babar has written the record of his
daily life. So if you want a historical incident, here is one to
show that the efficacy of prayer is borne out by facts in life.
. Prayer is not for immediate efficacy according to one's
desires, prayer is only to move the higher will to do what is
best. Prayer is not for receiving the answer that one desires.
It is wrong on the part of human being to say, "What I pray
for must be given because I pray for it." Tagore says in his
Gitanjali: "My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, and yet
did thou save me by hard refusals." He is telling the Divine,
"By not fulfilling my desires you have saved me." So prayer
doesn't mean that what one asks for must be given - other­
wise there is no God. That's what people think, but it's not
true. Prayer is only an appeal to set into movement the
higher divine consciousness and allow it to do what is best,
what it considers best, that's all. That is what can happen.
A "master act". I illustrate it sometimes by giving the
example of Gautama Buddha leaving his house at dead of
night to relieve the suffering of mankind. It is an action
which he did intuitively, instinctively or under an inspiration
of his inner being. When he did it, even fifty square miles
around they did not know anything about that action. It was
an age when transport and communication were very primi­
tive. Gautama Buddha's abandonment of his house and the
renunciation of his family in order to find out a remedy for
the suffering of man is a "master act", what the Master calls

24
here a "master act" ; it was the higher will - and how many
millions of people afterwards knew about it and tried to
understand something of what that act meant? A "king
idea", an idea which comes to one human being - liberty,
equality, fraternity - immediately catches somewhere and
moves and then nations and groups of mankind undergo
change. That is how the mission is set into movement.
I think we had better postpone Aswapathy's Yoga until
tomorrow, otherwise we will never come to the end. I have
read Savitri for one year and nine months, - one hour every
day! So don't expect to go to the end of Savitri in one hour.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Has Savitri been translated into many other languages,

Indian languages?

Not yet. I n Bengali and in Hindi some portions have been

translated. A poetess is working with me: She is translating it
into Hindi.

ls she able to maintain the qualities of the original in the

translation?

Very difficult. She has done three versions already, this lady
who is working with me. She is herself a great poet, a very
good poet. She has done it three times, all the portions and
she is going through it a fourth time, a fifth time, like that.
But she will come to something, because she is concentratiQg
only on the quality, on the inner stuff and not on success. She
is a disciple, so she will get somewhere.

You were speaking about songs of mantric quality. it s

i

25
 interesting to know that in our history the last songs
written that had any quality were written in the Civil
War, before the age of 'science and.reason. "The Battle
Hymn ofthe Republic" and "John Brown's Body" were
two of the most stirring anthems written in this country.
But in World War One and World War Two, there was
absolutely nothing that had any parallel to it.

Yes, that's because the Civil War was about the principle of
the equality of man, the freedom of man; the fighting was on
the sl�very question.

The ideals in World War One and World War Two were
equally high. Wejust weren't translating them into terms
of words. We reduced them to economics.

Yes, had to, were compelled to.

I think the ideals were just as high. There was much

more self-interest in the Civil War than in World War
One and World War Two. Would you tell us the second
superb passage in which Savitri is described. The first
one was Savitri preparing to' meet the God of Death and
the third one was Savitri described by Narada.

The second one is when Aswapathy sees Savitri approaching.

It is given in the appendix of my book. If you refer to the
appendix, all the four are given there. All the quotations of
the relevent passage� just to help the student.

(Question inaudible)

Walt Whitman has given expression to it for the first time in

26
the last century. A hundred years ago, it was Whitman who
said: "Why should we take the idiom of .Europe? Why should
we idealise the characters of Greek mythology or European
history? There is sufficient grandeur all around here in the
democratic country where we are living. People are perform­
ing deeds which are equaHy capable of being called heroic."
His idea is right, but his own poetry doesn't create such
characters as can stand by the side of the characters created
by the classical poets. That is a fact. Now a hundred years
have passed and time has passed its judgement. It is not a
personal opinion. Whitman has .oot succeeded in creating
one average man and average citizen raised to that height,
because the average citizen has not risen to that height.- How
could he do that? He saw that the potentiality is there and
that every citizen could be great and grand, but the per­
formance has not justified it. So that is that.
I also grant that there is no point in repeating what has
been done in the past i n the poetical world. What has been
done need not be repeated. You have to create the future,
and in order to create the future you have to have a vision of
the future. It is not necessary to go back to the past for
seeking form or seeking guidance. Even as far as the tech­
nique is concerned, you can create your own technique - it is
quite possible. Seen through a period of uncertainty and
churning, we are not yet out of the whole thing. We have not
come to any ground. Savitri first gives you the inkling that
there is a new age and you can create greatly, but Savitri is so
great that probably fifty years will not be sufficient for man
to realize what Savitri is. I am not surprised, nor disap­
pointed. It's nothing. A hundred years will perhaps be the
time when people will think, "Oh, Sri Aurobindo is worth
something." That's all, because we are passing through a
period of turmoil and uncertainty of values. Everything is
now thrown into the boiling pot. There are no values on

27
which you can depend today in cultural life and the values
that are there are not worth the grandeur of man. So there
we are. We have to see how this journey ultimately results in
man seeking his ultimate fulfilment in the blossoming of his
true essential being.

28
 LECTURE II

Well, yesterday we tried to cover some rough ground

about poetry, the possibility of an epic in this age and the
idea of an epic being more and more subjective. It is not the
size of the event which gives inspiration for an epic, but the
significance of the event which is seen and felt by the poet.
We saw Aswapathy's history yesterday, and found that
Aswapathy is not the childless king that he is in the legend of
the Mahabharata, the Indian epic, but he is here a represen­
tative of the human race, engaged in the cultural activity of
humanity trying to evolve higher and higher values of life.
That is Aswapathy. He is a representative, he is a symbol of
the human race, a symbol of humanity, a representative of
mankind, and he is making an effort to embody higher and
higher values of life so as to find out what is the goal of man -
that is what Aswapathy is after. And Savitri is born to him as
a gift from the Divine Mother because he pleaded in the
House of the Spirit, in the house of the Divine, when he
reached by his development the divine consciousness; be
prayed to the Divine for an emanation of the Divine to be
sent down on earth so that man's problem would be solved.
Man's problem of ignorance and subjection to death was to
be solved, that was what he was seeking, and in his own
effort he found that man, if left to himself, would not be able
to solve his problem. So he appealed to the supreme Mother
and asked for the boon that an emanation or a part of her, so
to say, would be sent down to earth to help mankind over­
come the limits of ignorance and death. That is the solution
to the problem, and the story as we recounted it yesterday .is
that Savitri, the young princess in the legend who becomes the
emanation of the supreme Mother sent down on earth, is here
to help man to solve the problem ofovercoming ignorance and
the limitations of death. That is the character of Savitri

29
 What exactly is the problem that has been worked out,
what does tbe poet want to tell us? First , is the universe a
mechanical determinism? Is this universe run by inconscient
laws in which no amount of interference from human will or
any other consciousness is able to interfere and make a
change? ls it a mechanical determinism set at work so as to
bring about inevitable results which can be foreseen if you
know the forces at work. That is what Narada's prediction
comes to. Narada saw the forces that are at work in the life of
Satyavan and said that after one year Satyavan, the young
man selected by Savitri, the princess, will die; so then the
problem is, is the working of the cosmos a blind mechanical
determinism of forces in which no subjective element called
will is able to interfere, or is it possible to change the deter­
minism of Nature and avoid what appears to be inevitable? Is
there at work in the universe a categorical imperative which
cannot be set aside by intervention either of a human or a
divine will?
That is one problem. And then, is the present determina­
tion of the world final? People say that it is human nature,
and by saying it is human nature they think that they· are
explaining everything. It doesn't explain anything. It means
that it is a mystery. You say that this is human nature, but
why is it so? Is it final? The determinism at present obtaining
in Nature, the process, the laws that are at work in the
material world, in the vital world, in the human world, are
they final? Are they such that you can say, they are for all
eternity unchangeable? Savitri's answer to both of these pro­
blems is: It is not so. There is not a mechanical determinism
at work; rather a conscious intervention is possible because
you know that the universe is based upon a consciousness.
That is why, the present laws obtaining are not a doom.
That is what Savitri is facing. The death of Satyavan is a
doom - doom in the sense of an inevitable calamity, an

30
inevitable unpleasant result against which you can do no­
thing: that is a doom. Can doom be avoided? Yes. That is
what we said yesterday. It is not by human force that you can
do it. It was very clear:

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.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

That is what we quoted yesterday if you remember. There is

a mechanism, there is a methodology which can upset this
balance, which can change this present equation of forces at
work in the universe, and this i11tervention man is capable of
invoking. It is a divine intervention.
This leads to another problem: whether the dynamism of
the world is only mechanical. Savitri answers: No, it is a
conscious mechanism at work, a conscious dynamism. In this
"dynamism, it is possible to bring an intervention of a force of
consciousness that can be called supreme or divine. This
brings ultimately into the picture the function of a supreme
consciousness. Is God or divinity or whatever is the ultimate
reality only a static condition of consciousness or is it dyna­
mic in its movement? Is a dynamic intervention of this con­
sciousness possible? Savitri answers: Yes, it is possible, it
wqrks out the process of the evolution of the cosmic energy
and shows that the present equation is only a working equa­
tion, a provisional order necessitated by a process of evolu­
tion which has to move towards a goal, and when an active
movement is made towards the goal then it will be found that
the present equation can be changed. It is not necessarily a

31
categorical imperative, something that you cannot oppose,
something that is so fixed that there is no way out of it.
In physics there is a component of forces, they say; a
component of forces is the line of force in which when two
. forces are working you can predict the line along which the
resultant will come, the resultant line of force. If two lines of
force are working in physics, they will represent it something
like that. One force is acting this way, another force is acting
that way, so you know that the resultant most probably will
be this way, it won't go this way or that way: the result will be
this way. Now that is the resultant of forces. Narada says that
now universal forces are working and the result is that Satya­
van must die. ls it an equation which you cannot change?
Savitri says you can change it. There is no inevitability about
this result in life because the world or universe is a conscious
movement, and being a conscious movement, consciousness
can intervene in all the oper�tions that are there provisional,
pecessary for the temporary order through which mankind is
passing.
Indirectly, Aswapathy, the king, the character who is fa­
ther of Savitri, shows that man's present constitution is only a
constitution which is in movement. Is man only a sum total of
mind, life and body? Is man only mind plus life plus vital
force plus body, physical being? That is the question, and
Aswapathy says, no, these are man's instruments, the ones
that the soul uses; so if man realizes, on this side of the
equation, his inner entity, then the present equation changes.
At present there is ignorance and mortality, mortal con­
sciousness: these are the results of the present equation;
when this equation changes by the intervention or realization
of the soul, this equation which is the present, what you call
doom, is bound to change. If man is always and eternally
equal only to mind and life and body, the movements of
Nature which he is, then the present equation as a working

32
order will go on. But it is not bound to go on. The point is
that man can evoke from within himself his true entity, the
soul, the divine spark and potentiality now hidden in him but
capable of being awakened; if he makes an effort to awaken
that bidden entity which he really is, then this equation which
is here now and has the appearance of a binding law will
change and must change. Otherwise we are in a scheme of
mechanical determinism out of which we have no escape;
otherwise the universe will be reduced to a mechanical
scheme of determination in which there is no escape for the
human individual.
Is everything predetermined? - that is what some of the
philosophers are trying to bother their heads about just now
in some of the symposia. Is there a determinism at work?
The Gita said it hundreds of years ago, there is a determina.­
tion of Nature at work today, but it is not the determinism of
the spirit. The determinism at present that is working is the
determinism of Nature. The Gita says that there is no free­
dom in the determinism of Nature. Nature, Prakriti, is the
universal force which is working. What is working at present
is the determinism of Nature, and this determinism is in
bondage to the spirit so far as the human experience is
concerned. It is an expression of a cosmic being, but to the
human being it appears to be a bondage, and freedom con­
sists in getting out of the determinism of Nature and getting
into the determinism of the spirit; when the determinism of the
spirit is evoked or brought into movement there is freedom,
freedom even in action, not only in consciousness. So man is
not only a mental, vital and physical being, but he is a spirit,
a divine spark; he has a secret potentiality which can be
evoked into a dynamic movement in life. So man has to start
with the idea, with the concept that he is a spirit and then he
can evoke that spirit into movement in his mental life, in his
vital life and in his physical life; then the determinism of

33
Nature will eventually change.
This means that the present constitution of man is not
final, that man as at present constituted is a transitional
being, and because he is transitiQnal he has all the charac­
teristics of an imperfect being, and that is why the galling
sense of imperfection or inability is a sign that he is still in
process, that he is only a provisional being. That to which
man has to rise is ·what is pointed out by Aswapathy in the
first five cantos of the first book. The first five cantos deal
with the development of Aswapathy releasing himself from
the bondage of mental, vital and physical nature, realizing
his true self, and then finding out the nature and function of
the true spirit or true self which man is; he finds that he is not
confined to the individual formula of his being. You take this
size of man that is a particle of the best representative of
man. I f he realizes his true self with this big mind of Nature
inside, then he finds 'that this self is not only here in the
individual, this self is also capable or an expansion in con­
sciousness, it can go on expanding until this self that is here is
also all and is behind all. What he does is that he expands
when he realizes his true self here, he feels that it is not
confined to this body and mind and life here;but that it is
capable of an expansion to other levels of consciousness, that
the self is in the body but the body is only·a small pedestal
over which something very vast is standing and working. it is
like a small foothold or support for the higher working.
Now man is egO..bound and therefore feels: "I am only
matter. I am only a handful of dust;" that is what man
ordinarily feels and it may be justified, because that is the
determinism of Nature. So long as you are within the deter­
minism of Nature you always feel that man is the most
insignificant thing going in the world; quite right. but that is
as far as Nature is concerned; as soon as you go to what man
is essentially then you find that he is vast. he is equal to the

34
cosmos, there is nothing in the cosmos which is not one with
him. He is one with the whole universe and more than the
universe, because the whole universe is not manifested.
You take another scheme (the author goes to the black­
board): this is vital world, then mental world and so on - you
go on with the expansion of the world in the second book of
Savitri, where Aswapathy's voyages are described. You take
this as a manifested universe. This is supposed to be the limit
of the manifested universe, earth is here - let us put earth
somewhere in a very small corner because ttiere would other­
wise be too big a representation for earth. We wi!J put earth
here. Now man from here is expanding, and he has come
·here to the limjt of manifested universe; this is the limit.
Aswapathy has come here in the second book, he goes on
discovering the levels one after another. This is the potential
universe, the universe which can manifest itself but has not
yet manifested in actuality, but it can be manifested here; so
Aswapathy is here breaking the limit. Well! we have already
broken the limit of space scientifically, is it not so? And we
are trying to go to some other plariet, material, physical.
Well, here Aswapathy breaks the limits psychologically -
there is not much difference. We break the sound barrier,
here we break the barrier of ether. We can break the barrier
of gravitation, nowadays; science is taking up the work, it is
not as if it was somewhere in the air. Well, in the same way it
is practical for man to take up the adventure of the spirit.
lf he takes up the adventure of the spirit. he can break this
barrier of the manifested universe, mental consciousness,
intellectual consciousness, and go to the potential universe,
called the House of the Spirit. This is the third book of
Savitri. the House of the Spirit. Aswapathy enters there and
meets the Supreme Mother of the universe, the creatrix, or
simply the Mother - we shall call her the Mother of the
universe - and he prays to her: ··we want to solve the

35
problem of man here and if you want man to succeed. kindly
send down by your grace your own emanation here." So an
emanation is asked for. from the potential universe. from the
House of the Spirit. to be sent down to earth so that man may
be able to solve his problem. Man is now confined to his
mind, life and body, he is very much confined here . and if he
is to be free, this ray must come down on earth. Savitri is that
ray sent down on earth to help man to overcome the limits of
the present universe in which he is living. That is the third
book where Aswapathy reaches this House of the Spirit .
meets the Supreme Mother, carries to her the whole aspira­
tion of mankind for the earth, and asks for a boon - an
emanation to be sent down to the earth.
The Supreme Mother grants the boon and Savitri is born.
Savitri is not, therefore, only a princess born to a childless
Icing but she is the result of the aspiration of the whole earth.
This is why the second canto of the first book begins thus: "A
world's desire compelled her mortal birth." Savitri took up
birth on earth not as the result of the prayer of the childless
king, but in response to the world's desire, which .was carried
by Aswapathy to the Supreme in a prayer, and the prayer
was granted; therefore. "A world's desire compelled a mor­
tal birth."
I am giving the lines so as to refer our minds to the text, for
that is the background. Aswapathy tries to find out what man
is; he finds that there are capacities lying dormant in man
that can be awakened. We knov. them, a little of them in
hypnotism. telepathy, thought transference. faith cures and
certain other phenomena: we know them as tricks of the
occult. but in the deep spiritual process they are much more
tangible and concrete facts of the inner world. So Aswapathy
finds that potential powers. dormant capacities are there in
man which can be awakened. capacities by which he can
bridge the limit of his present natural constitution and evoke

36
in himself other powers which will be adequate to express the
divinity that is within him: so he awakens those powers
within himself. realizes himself and when he realizes his self
he says, "I am only standing on one atom of myself. really
.
speaking. I am as wide as the cosmos. . He widens and
widens and the great realizations which come to him cannot
be described in a small compass. What he finds is that the
earth consciousness goes into the vital world and that this
vital world has an opening right up to the limit of the abso­
lute. Only the vital world can go up to there, almost to the
limit of the absolute or out to the spirit. There is a height of
the vital and there is a depth of the vital; the height of the life
and the depth of the life. He finds, when he expands his
consciousness from the physical human being to an inner
being, that he is a vital being as well as the cosmos; this is the
life-belt. the life-universe, which is independent of earth-life
since all life is not confined to earth.
There is a big belt of life-force and life-universe in which
vital forces and vital beings, independent of eatth. remain
with their own different constitution. They have different
kinds of bodies, different kinds of movements, different
kinds of laws governing their own plane of consciousness.
And then he saw that that vital work! expandspnly to here
(the aulhor points to the blackboard). but if he allows this
world to do so, then it can rise like a cone. This vital world is
like a solid cone that can rise like that. I am putting a circle
here, it is difficult to represent it, but it is like a solid cone.
that can rise just like that, until only a thin veil divides it
from the Absolute. from the Infinite: so each instrument of
human nature is capable of contacting almost directly the
supreme consciousness. That is why the mind cannot govern
the vital being fully. cannot perfect i t : the vital has its own
right to approach the Supreme.
The life force in man would not submit permanently to the

37
dictate of either ethic;s or reason because the life force has its
own individual. independent fulfilment, and it wants it. It is
because of this experience that Aswapathy realized that the
vital can directly approach the Divine if it is turned towards
the Divine; but the vital doesn't want to turn towards the
Divine in ninety-nine per cent of the cases. therefore you
find that life is not Divine. It is true, life doesn't want to turn
to the Divine, but neither will it submit to mind, it will only
submit if it turns to the Divine, because it can directly ap­
proach the Divine and have its own fulfilment. Its two great
impulses are possession and delight or enjoyment: power and
enjoyment; well, it will have them fully only when it reaches
the Divine. Mind will always curb the vital, mind will always
try to control the vital and the vital will always submit only
temporarily, provisionally to the mind, but it will ultimately
break away because it finds no fulfilment in it. Aswapathy
found that the same thing happened when he went to the
mental level.
Now this life has an upward movement and it has also a
downward movement, so that there is a depth here which is
negative; as there is a positive upward movement, there is
also a depth which is a negative movement; there is a hell, so
to say, in the, lower movement of life. Life can be anti-divine,
not merely ignorant. Make a distinction between ignorant
and anti-divine. Life when it is ignorant, well, it is simply
ignorant, but when it is anti-divine it opposes any higher
movement. When you go to these levels of life you find not
only ignorance but anti-divinity, opposition to anything
higher. As life has heights. like the Himalayas, it has depths
also, into which it falls. Those depths of the vital are depths
to which human consciousness is subject because they all
have relation with the earth; so any human being opening to
those vital forces will meet the operation of those forces on
earth. and that is why we find perversity, the unnatural

38
movement of life forces, or anti-divinity. There are people so
constituted that they will never convert themselves to any­
thing high. Do what you like, they will not, because they are
not human. In the true sense of the term they are not human
because it is not human ignorance that makes them bad. lt is
the lower forces that have been allowed to come into life and
possess them. These people are not conscious of this posses­
sion, that's all. Most of the forces that come into men are not
their own. Only the determinism of Nature is at work in the
universe.
Nature is deciding everything in ninety cases out of a
hundred. Man thinks he is free , but he is not free. Now if he
is open to lower forces it is the lower forces that decide his
movements, and in the lower forces there is definite anti­
divinity. That is really the explanation of the permanence of
pain and ignorance in life. Pain and ignorance are not consti­
tuted by a direct creation or direct will from above. They are
the indirect result of the universe coming· out of an incon­
science. The inconscience has given rise to this universe and
as a by-product of this inconscience , well, anti-divinity, or
you can say, forces that are titanic, forces that are asuric,
forces that embody the anti-divine element in life have come
into existence.
Take for instance the case of a man like Hitler. Why go
further? It's not very necessary to go back · to mythology.
Take an individual like Hitler: do what you like, you cannot
convert him. It is impossible because he is not man. He is not
man in the true sense of the word - in the sense of an
ignorant human being. He has allowed himself to be �o­
verned by a vital force. he has allowed a mastery over his
own vital nature by a force from below. And that force wants
to replace and take the throne of the Divine. The ego is there
inflated. It inflates and wants to govern everything by steam­
rollering all opposition. The Divine is omnipotent and there-

39
fore He gives you full liberty to defer, to defy, to deny God.
But when the ego is inflated and wants to replace the Divine
and take the throne of the Divine, it steam-rollers every­
body: That's what it does because it is not omnipotent, you
see. It is only a huge power arrived at by organization and by
domination over the will of the collectivity so as to carry an
impress of something almost like omnipotence . The ego tries
to feel omnipotent but it is not. It is enormous, but it is not
omnipotent and infinite.
(The author goes to the blackboard.) So here Aswapathy
�xpanded and saw that there were levels of consciousness
which he was passing through, and that the universe was
himself. World knowledge or universal knowledge he got
from around himself and God-knowledge from above. These
are the first three books of Savitri, roughly. The first five
cantos in the first book deal with Self-knowledge, knowledge
of the self, independent of mind, life and body. First, a
divine entity that is possible to realize by evoking faculties
which are dormant in men now. Second, when the self is
realized the.self is found to be, not limited to the egoistic unit
or egoistic constitution in which it happens to function, but to
be as wide as the cosmos. Third, there is a possibility of
overcoming or breaking the limit of the manifested universe,
or the universe as it is now functioning. There is also a
universe that can be invoked into many manifestations - a
potential universe that can be brought down here - Truth
Consciousness, intuitional consciousness, inspirational · con­
sciousness, a revelatory power over mind, a supermind
where one can open the human consciousness to the high
levels and bring them down. That potential in us is waiting
for manifestation here. Aswapathy realized this and .carried
the aspiration of the human consciousness to the supreme
House of the Spirit and brought back Savitri's birth as a
boon. That is the end of the third book.

40
 The supreme Mother grants a boon that a child will be
born who will be an emanation of herself to help man con­
quer the ferment of ignorance and death. How far cal) the
present formula of Nature or the determinism of Nature be
changed? How far can it be changed and by what process?
Here Aswapathy makes an inward turn. The knowledge that
he acquires is gained by partaking in an inward turn of
consciousness. By an inward turn Aswapathy is able to go
through and acquire this knowledge. It is by an inward turn
of consciousness that there awaken the potentialities that are
lying dormant. But Savitri's work is much more difficult
because she has actually to come down into the present form
of that ignorance and change it. By what process does Savitri
change it? She goes through a difficult process. (The author
goes to the blackboard.) Now you take the manifested uni­
verse. Savitri is in the manifested universe on a small part of
earth. She is there going into the constitution of this uni­
verse, and she finds that there are three powers. If you
imagine it like a solid cone, then she is penetrating inside. So
she goes into the first depth, then the second depth and then
the third. First she meets one power - this is within. Now we
may represent it like a half-cut (drawing). This is the limit -
this circle is turned halfway. I cut it like a section. The
section is cut and Savitri is here; this is the earth and she is
moving inward, inward into the constitution of the universe
by insight. She is not expanding outward like Aswapathy.
We saw Aswapathy work from here. From the earth he
was expanding, expanding until he found he reaches the
frontie.rs of eternity as it is called in the poem. He reaches the
frontiers of eternity and enters the House of the Spirit.
Savitri is penetrating inside the constitution of the universe.
She is not expanding but going inside and here she meets the
universal powers that are managing the cosmos today, and
she finds that they are all imperfect . The cosmic powers

41
which are at work in the universe are imperfect themselves.
So she says, " I will bring in the divine power. I will bring the
power from the Divine and you will be perfected." That is
how she penetrates into the deepest constitution of the·cos­
mos and sees how actually it will work out, and how it will be
perfected by bringing from above, from the Divine, a greater
power of perfection into the universal scheme itself. Savitri
perfo1tns that function.
So the two yogas are a little different. Aswapathy goes on
expanding outward, Savitri goes on penetrating inward. She
goes inside into the earth consciousness. Hers is not the
cosmic movement, because since the earth itself is a "frag­
ment and a residue" it contains everything that is here i n
the universe; the whole expansion, the mystic whole, i s
contained there i n the fragment. In one of his poems Sri
Aurobindo says - "in the fragment the mystic whole," the
whole is contained in it. I t is not necessary for her to expand
out because whatever is there in the cosmos, is here in the
earth. The earth is. therefore residue and a fragment of the
whole, so if she penetrates into the constitution of the frag­
ment, she also influences the constitution of the 'co�mos. The
fragment and the whole are only symbols of the one Reality:
one is connected with the other, there is no lack of relation.
Now the next problem is that of pain. Why pain at all? In
the sixth book you find the answer to this problem. Savitri
was to become a widow according to the prophecy of Narada,
who came at the time when she selected · Satyavan as her
husband. She said she was going to marry Satyavan. Then
the King and the Queen asked Narada, the divine sage , to
cast a horoscope, find out the astrological position, and
Narada, after casting the horoscope, said that Satyavan is a
good man, but he will die after one year. Now this brings in
the problem of pain. In the first book, we saw that the
problem is whether there is any blind mechanical determi-

42
nism at work or not. Now here the same problem is taking
the shape of how the human being reacts to such a determi­
nism. There is a determinism in Nature in which a young man
who is innocent and has committed no fault of his own, is
destined or condemned to die after one year of his marriage.
What is this mechanism at work? ls it mechanical determi­
nism? Secondly why is such an unmerited pain or suffering
inflicted on an innocent human being? If a supreme con­
sciousness and mercy is at work as the ultimate Reality, why
should there even be the existence of pain? Subjectively, this
determinism brings about reactions of ignorance and pain on
the part of man; man feels the pain. Why should the mecha­
nism be such as to cause pain at all? What is the place of pain
in the scheme of things?
To that problem the sixth book gives an answer - the sixth
and seventh books, particularly the sixth - and it indirectly
answers this question: l s suffering a permanent element of
the cosmic constitution? The epic says no. the last answer of
the epic is that it is not permanent. Pain happens to be an
element in the present working of the universe because it is
necessary; there is a place for it in the economy of the
universe, there is some utility of pain, therefore pain is there,
but it is not as though there would be no universe if pain was
not there. Pain could be eliminated from it and yet it would
remain a universe. So that problem is answered in the sixth
and seventh books. Savitri's yoga gives the answer. She finds
that in the present constitution of the universe there is some­
thing lacking and the potential universe can supply that
lacking element; when that element enters into the cosmic
constitution. pain can then be eliminated because it will not
be necessary anymore. Now it is necessary because man is
living only in his mind. his vital and his physical being. but
when he begins to live in his inner spirit. he will not require
the pressure. the drive. the goad of pain to make him feel

43
what is delight . Pain is indirectly a question put by the inner
self: "I must be happy but why am J not happy?" Thafs all.
Pain comes to that ultimately: "Why should l be what l am?
And why am I not better than what I am?"
Ignorance and pain are therefore not necessarily the per­
manent elements of any cosmic scheme; at least of this one
they are not permanent: that is the answer which Savitri
gives. And then the question as to who created ·pain is an­
swered there. Pain is the result of the choice of the soul. the
choice, really, of the supreme eternity that is at work in us.
The choice is that of the soul and self, it is not an imposition.
It is not as if somebody came and said: "You will become
subject to pain.·· No, the soul and the self, the essential
divinity, selected a condition which the human being feels as
pain. It did not say: "This is pain and J like it.'' But the spirit
when it chooses. chooses out of quite a different considera­
tion. a different view. a different way of looking at things;
but it is the choice of the spirit, the choice not of pain as pain,
but the choice of the process. It becomes pain when you go
through it. It ceases to be pain when you look at it from
above; from somewhere else, it is not pain at all.
You see, when a doctor operates on a patient. he always
sees that this operation is the· cure; he knows that in this way
the patient will be cured. The patient only knows his pain,
but the doctor knows that this operation must be done to get
the pain out of him. Similarly the human soul has selected a
situation which, because of the human limitations of mind,
life and body. has become pain to its experience ; but really
speaking it was not for the sake of pain that the situation was
chosen but as a passage through which it may arrive at
something different from pain. something other than pain
altogether. "Thou art thyself the author of thy pain", the
poem says. The next question is: Can the divine act in life?
Can the divine be made to act in situations in life? Savitri

44
answers yes, that is the only solution for man's problems, to
make the divine a dynamic element in one's life.
Now we take up Aswapathy's Yoga - a little bit of what he
has been doing. What did he do? First, he released his own
self and soul from .the limitation of his mind, life and body,
which are his instruments, and he became conscious of some
element in him which was independent of his life, indepen­
dent of his thoughts, independent of his desires, independent
of his physical being. The poet puts it this way: "his heart was
smitten by a beam of the eternal". When he saw into himself,
he didn't see the full glory of the inner being, no, but a beam
of the eternal struck his heart, and an inward turn was
necessary. He also saw that if he was to remain permanently
in the inner self then this inner turn must also become per­
manent; so he must always be turned inward, whatever he
does outwardly must be the result of the dictation or the
guidance of the inner being. An inward turn is necessary for
this. And Aswapathy came to change the working of his own
nature. He found that there was a static oneness and a
dynamic power descending into him when he turned inwards,
and then the ego limits were broken slowly.
"His island ego joined the continent" - that line of poetry
is inspiration, not mere mental statement. Then he broke
into occult worlds and attained a stillness and a peace, but he
found that he could not retain any higher state for a long
time; it would not remain for very long, it would come and
go. What Sri Aurobirido says is very finely put: .

Only a while at first these heavenlier states,

These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.
The high and luminous tension breaks too soon ,
The body's stone stillness and the life's hushed trance.
The breathless might and calm of silent mind;
Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day.

45
 The restless nether members tire of peace;
A nostalgia of old little worlds and joys,
A need to call back small familiar selves,
To tread the accustomed and inferior way,
The need to rest in a natural poise of fall,
As a child who learns to walk can walk not long,
Replace the titan will for ever to climb,
On the heart's altar dim the sacred fire.

That is why these experiences are brief and do not last very
long in the beginning. Well, that is what Aswapathy found
was happening with himself, and then he saw that a move­
ment of ascent and descent was taking place. He goes up and
comes down, sometimes he comes down with a gain, some­
times he is dull afterwards. Then he found pure perception
growing, intuition coming, inspiration coming, an experience
of the self coming, at least glimpses of it. And then he felt the
double aspect in him - soul and Nature; what he found was
that there was one being that was independent and another
being that was bound to Nature. He could take up this
position (the author points to his diagram on the blackboard)
and he could also take up this position. A double being, soul
and Nature, Nature imperfect, soul capable of perfection.
He put himself more and more in the witness self, and he
found that the more this Purusha, this witness self, went on
remembering his true being, the greater was the extent to
which Nature also responded to it. When his soul forgot his
own true being and identified itself with mind, be was one
with Nature and one with thoughts, impulses, movements of
desire. When be separated himself from Nature he found
that the soul could be impersonal, detached, capable of will,
holding his consent. So gradually Aswapathy found that if his
soul could go on changing its status from a mere witness to
one who gives consent, to one who controls. to one who gives

46
direction, then Nature would also feel obstructed in its na­
tural flow of ignorance and would correspondingly undergo a
change. What he found was a double aspect, and in this
double aspect, when the Purusha knows his true self and
remembers his true being, Nature also changes .and reveals
her powers that are lying dormant in her own constitution.
Nature also shows: I am not dull, I am not always bound to
be ignorant,.! have also treasures of knowledge and power,
but the Purusha must give the lead.
Then Aswapathy found the cause and aim of universal
evolution. The Purusha is at present bound in Nature, as we
saw, because he pursues Nature for the delight, the fulfil­
ment, the will he finds in her, but when he finds that all this
running is without any issue, he separates himself from her
and puts his own consciousness on its true throne, so to say;
then he is the transcendent one who can transcend Nature,
because the true aim of evolution is to new-create life. The
adventure of consciousness in the universe, the process of
universal evolution, is meant to lead to a new creation of life,
to create new life in terms of the spirit, not to continue this
round of subjection to nature.
Then gradually the Divine began to change Aswapathy's
nature s·o that it should begin to achieve divinity; that is why
the Divine began to turn the human mud engine to heaven's
use. Aswapathy found that this engine is indeed made of
mud, but the Divine was taking it for heavenly use. And then
he saw, in the light of this experience , that existence is a
divine experiment and cosmos is the soul's opportunity. This
is what Aswapathy found: existence is a divine experiment
and cosmos is. the soul's opportunity. This he realized when
he put himself more and more in communication with his
inner self; the problem for him was how to bring this higher
consciousness and power more and more into life.
This knowledge he got, but how to bring the process into

47
life? By maintaining the inward turn. And he found that in
order to do that, humanity ought to mould his actions less
and less. First, what he had to do was not to allow humanity
to dictate to him what he was to do. So humanity moulded
his actions less and less, number one. And because his own
consciousness was wider than the world's, was it not neces­
sary for him to go out to save mankind? Yes, it was. He did
help to save mankind in his own way. Sri Aurobindo says:
"His spirit's stillness helped the toiling world," so it was not
necessary for him to go out and become philanthropic. It is
not always necessary. "His spirit's stillness helped the toiling
world ." He felt that he was not of this earth but that he was a
colonist from immortality. His mind, therefore, became like
"a fire assailing heaven", charged with an aspiration for
realizing the Divine. His mind was like a fire assailing heaven
and he realized that this bodily appearance is not all. I am
quoting some lines, from a passage of the first five cantos.
This bodily appearance is not all: "A deathbound littleness is
not all we are", says Sri Aurobindo, and again, "A spirit that
is a flame of God abides. . . Immortal in our mortal poverty."
These are the words of Aswapathy when he first came into
.
contact with his inner being; from the human realm of ideals
he rose to this world of self, awaking higher powers in him­
self. He went to the frontiers of eternity, as we say, and then
he was attracted by that world of the spirit, the Eternal.
After realizing the static oneness and dynamic power, he
found the power descending in him now and then, beginning
to work in him and to change his constitution. Less and less
he was moulded by humanity. The powers evoked were
beyond form and went to the formless, and then he saw that
he had in him the gaze of the Supreme: when he looked out it
was not his body or his mind that was looking but the con­
sciousness of the Supreme. He felt his consciousness wider
than the world. Then he attained the still consciousness

48
which sustains the whole world. Gradually he began to root
his being and consciousness in the Infinite and to base his Life
upon the Eternal. There were ups and downs; a short while .
the higher conditions lasted and then the gravitational pull of
lower life was there, which he had to overcome; but Nature
was ever prepared to keep pace with him: if the soul in him
demanded a height of Nature, if the soul became free, Na­
ture also attempted to become free; if the soul was pure,
Nature also became pure; if the soul was powerful, Nature
also became powerful - so Nature followed the lead of the
spirit in him.
How did the higher power now and then come down? The
poet says it came down sometimes like the rain. That is one
experience of Aswapathy and we have so many experiences
of his! There is a world of achievement and even the ones i n
the first five cantos would take us five months to cover.
"A union of the Real with the unique, A gaze of the Alone
from every face, The presence of the Eternal in the hours" -
this "Made whole the fragment-being we are here." If our
being has to be completely integrated, this is a necessary
realization. Generally what happens is that the unique tends
to become egoistic: every individual wants to be unique,
unique in the sense of his egoism; but uniqueness consists in
identity with the Real. union of the unique with the Real, the
.
gaze of the Alone from every face. There are no two in the
world, and therefore in every gaze one meets the gaze of the
Alone, the one being. Multiplicity is not real, multiplicity is
only for vilriation of expression in manifestation, so in fact
one meets the gaze of the Alone. one being only, in every
face. The realization of the one in all and the presence
·
of the Eternal in the others becomes a reality. Life is not
evanescent, it is not merely a passing on, with nothing
permanent; the Eternal is constantly present in the hours,
and it is thus that the fragmented being which man is be-

49
comes integrated and whole.
Aswapathy attained tranquillity, serenity, purity, peace ,
steadiness and equality, and an occasional intervention of the
higher powers to be. After his liberation he lived in the light
of his realization and he saw that man is the growing image of
God. Man is nothing but the growing image of God, and be
can realize this by awakening the powers which are dormant
in him now. Aswapathy saw that he was at the end of the
manifested universe and a witness. And he saw the goal of
this world which appears to be unconscious. He saw what this
unconscious earth is moving towards. "The Earth Goddess
toils across the sands of time." She is moving across the sands
of time 'to what goal? He saw that goal and saw that it was not
merely a movement in the sands of time: He saw the real goal
for which she was waiting; she was waiting to grow unex­
pectedly divine. In the movement she wanted to realize the
Divine, to become unexpectedly divine.
What is the nature of Aswapathy's realization when he
first began Yoga?

The earth's uplook to a remote unknown

'Is a preface o nly of the epic climb
Of human soul from its fiat earthly state
To the discovery of a greater self
And the far gleam of an eternal Light.
This world is a beginning and a base
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must bu.ild reality.

This world is a beginning and a base. Well. what is happen­

ing? Life and Mind erect their structure of dreams. Life has a ·

dream, Mind has a dream and they are trying to create

something here in keeping with their dreams. They want to
realize their dreams on earth. This world is a beginning and a

50
base from which life is doing something. It is a dream of
perfection , power, strength, attainment, success, and it is
time to create it here. Mind has some conception·of what life
must be; it is trying to create it here. But mind and life have
merely a structure of dreams. An unborn Power must build
reality. If you want to build reality, then a Power which is not
yet born has to be brought in here: the power of truth, the
power of the divine consciousness, the power of the soul, the
power of the spirit in man. The essential divinity in man, an
unborn Power, must build reality . If reality is to build some­
thing more than just a structure of dreams, then an unborn
power must be brought into play. .
Now you know that in India there is a tradition in which
people give you a small sutra, a small epigrammatic expres­
sion in which the whole quintessence of philosophy is con­
tained. They will say: "Satyam, shivam, sundaram": the
tru·e , the good, the beautiful. Or they will say: "Satyam,
jnanam, anantam brahma": Truth, knowledge, infinite.

Question: Does that belong to the Truth?

"Truth, knowledge, infinite" : it is from the Upanishad.

That's how it is expressed sometimes. Or "Satyaro , Ritam,
Brihat." It means "Truth, Right, Vast." This contains some­
times a quintessence of a whole philosophical outlook. A
whole philosophy can be brought into a small compass by
putting all we want to say into three words: The true, good
and beautiful: Satyam, shivam, sundaram - that's the ulti­
mate functioning of some highest reality. I f you ask one who
has seen it, well . he would like to put it like that. Or Trut� ,
Knowledge and Infinity: Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam Brahma
- they say it like that in the Upanjshadic language, or they
will say: Satyam , Ritam, Brihat. It is a Vedic term - from
which the word Brahman also comes.

51
 Now the poet of Savitri expresses here the quintessence of
his philosophy. This is Sri Aurobindo's formula: the Abso­
lute, the Perfect, the Alone. As soon as you say "the Per­
fect", the universe is already brought into existence, because
perfection cannot exist if there is not hing else around it.
Either less perfect or imperfect or at least some parapher­
nalia of perfection is necessary for perfection to really be
perfection. So the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. There is
no duality, it is alone - it is absolute, free from manifesta­
tion, free from the cosmos, and yet it is perfect.
"The Absolute , the Perfect, the Alone" he has fashioned.
I am not giving you the fu!J passage in which you will see the
whole philosophy contained in a nutshell, but I will give the
lines which are important.

The Absolute , the Perfect. the Alone

Has called out of the Silence his mute force
Where she lay i n the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast a lone;
Space is himself and Time is only he.

Now he makes a change in the text, you see. He says:

The Absolute, the Perfect. the Immune,

One who is in us as our secret Self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed ,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast

52
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune. Note the difference.
He has exulted in the . universe, He has entered with the
silence into space. Yes. He has entered with the silence into
space and He has become time. Yes. But has He therefore
been touched by elements of ignorance, unconsciousness and
materiality and the limitations of mind, life, body and mat­
ter? No. He is free. He is hot contaminated - He is immune.
Because if He went through a transformation or a change,
then there would be no possibility of coming out of it. So He
is there, but immune. The Absolute and the Perfect, when
He enters the universe, is immune. That explains the uni­
verse and its working and the presence of the Divine behind,
because the Immune is there. In everyone the Immune is
there. Quite immune from whatever is its appearance. In the
most wicked there is also the Immune. The. Upanishads said
it differently. They said: "Not pierced by evil, not pierced by
sin." That is a sentence. But here is the rendering in one
word: "immune." You understand that the Divine is in
everybody, yet immune from whatever is imperfect . And the
One who is in us as our secret self is immune. Our mask of
imperfection is assumed. He has made this tenement of flesh
his own. His image in the human measure is cast. He has cast
this image into the measure of Divinity - a small image of
Divinity. So the next line is:

That to his divine measure we might rise;

Then in a figure of Divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal's mould

Sri Aurobindo has kept the image of casting throughout and

you will see how marvellously it works out in perfect conso­
nance with his highest philosophy. Now his philosophy is
there, but it is marvellously poetic.

53
 A plan of godhead on the mortal's mould
Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,

That is the second part of the quotation. He has cast his

image into the human mould so that we might rise to his
divine measure. He has cast his substance into a small human
image with the idea that the hum·an must rise to the divine
image - that to his divine measure we might rise. When we
do that, then in a figure of Divinity the Maker recasts us and
imposes a plan of godhead on the mortal's mould, lifting our
.
finite minds to the infinite - to His infinite mind. What will
· happen then? The poet is giving the picture of the world.

Touching the moment with eternity

(eternity will not be aloof from the moment - the moment

will be touched by eternity)

This transfiguration is earth's due to heaven:

A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;

Now you get some idea of this sentence. That in a moment

with eternity our mind links with His infinite mind, our finite
mind with his infinite, touching the moment with eternity.
This transfiguration from the human to the Divine is the
earth's due to heaven; it is the debt which earth owes to
heaven. A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme for as He
.
has cast Himself into the human mould, so the human has to
rise into the divine mould. "His nature we must put on as He
put ours." He has put o n the human nature as we are to put
on his divine nature.

We are sons of God and must be even as he

54
 His human portion, we must grow clivine.
Our life is a paradox with God for key.

Your life is a paradox with God for key. You get some
central idea of Sri Aurobindo's outlook.
Now I'll read one or two passages just to finish with the
subject of Aswapathy's Yoga and his attainment.

Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,

How does an inspiration come to a human being?

A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,

Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.

Or how did it work sometimes?

A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose;

It rent the gauze opaque of Nescienee:
Her lifted finger's keen unthinkable tip
Bared with a stab of flame the closed Beyond.

''Bared" means "opened". That which is closed to the mind

will open with a "stab of flame" by the inspiration when it
comes.

An eye awake in voiceless heights of trance,

A mind plucking at the unimaginable,
Overleaping with a sole and perilous bound
The high black wall hiding superconscience,
She broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And plundered the Unknowable's vast estate.

55
Plundered the estate of the Unknowab le. Inspiration when it
is mild - look a t how Wordsworth has fel t it: "That ser ene
and blessed moo d in which the affections gently lead u s on
until the breath o f this co rporeal f rame and even the motion
of our human blood are almost suspended - we are laid
asleep in body a n d become a living so ul. While with an 'I'
made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power o f
joy, we see into the life o f things." ("Tintern Abbey"). You
see this same e�perienc e of inspiration i n a mild degr ee in
some ot her poets like that - the superconscio u s comes into
the insp ired and intuitive writin gs of many people. But you
don't fi nd it in one place like a n electr ica l belt fixed in the sky
o f poetic empyrea n a s in Savitri. Listen to this passage:

The master of existence lurks in us

And plays at hide-and-seek with bis own Force;
In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.
The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime's field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal, da lli es with mortality.

This gives some idea o f what Savitri is. There is a passage in

which man is conceived a s a sailor in time:

This is the sailor on the flow of Time,

This is World-Matter's slow discoverer,
Who, launched into this small corporeal birth,
Has learnt his craft in tiny bays of self,
But dares at last unplumbed infinitudes,
A voyager upon eternity's seas.

56
The sailor begins with time and he is now trying to voyage to
eternity.

At first he hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,

Dares not to affront the far-off perilous main.

He travels close to unfamiliar coasts

And finds new haven in storm-troubled isles,
Or, guided by a sure compass in his thought,
He plunges through a bright haze that hides the stars,
Steering on the trade-routes of Ignorance.

A seeker of the islands of the Blest,

He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
its images veiling infinity.
Earth's borders recede and· the terrestrial air
Hangs round him no longer its tran�lucent veil.

'The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze

Into Eyes that look upon eternity.

He crosses the boundaries of the unseen

And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself and things.

His is a search of darkness for the light,

Of mortal life for immortality.

A sailor on the lnconscient"s fathomless sea,

He voyages, through a starry world ohhought
On Matter"s deck to a spiritual sun.

57
 He carries her [the great Mother's] sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes, or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrined the Immortal in his glory's house
And make th� finite one with Infinity.
Across the salt waste of the endless years
Her ocean winds impel his errant boat,
The cosmic waters plashing as he goes,
A rumour around him and danger and a call.

And never can the mighty Traveller rest

And never can the mystic voyage cease
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
And the morns of God have overtaken his night.

There is a plan in the Mother's deep world-whim,

A purpose in her vast and random game.

This plan is to be fulfi!Jed in life. This has a similarity

to a passage in another poem of Sri Aurobindo called
"Ahana" .

. . . Something or Someone, a Force or a Spirit

Conscious, creative, wonderful shaped out a world to inherit

Sailing in Time through the straits of today to the sea of
tomorrow.
Worlds and their wonders, suns and their flamings, earth and
her nations,
Voyages endless of Mind through the surge of its fate-tossed
creations,
Star upon star throbbing out in the silence of infinite spaces,

58
 Species on species, bodies on bodies, faces on faces,
Souls without numbers crossing through Time towards
eternity, aeons
Crowding on aeons, loving and battle, dirges and paeans,

And the human march is going towards the morn of the

Divine.

This "human march" is the working out of the spirit, only

Jet us remember that Nature. is the power of the spirit.
Nature is not an independent entity that can do what it likes.
It does what it likes so long as the spirit wants it to be free. It
is permitted ignorance because the spirit permits it and is
enjoying the ignQrance . That's all right. But as soon as Na­
ture becomes conscious of its Divine origin - the moment the
Divine withdraws his permission - then Nature will gradually
tend to change. That is the process . And there is also a
higher Nature. You see, in Sri Aurobindo's scheme you will
always find this double strain. When you .say the Divine,
people have no idea that there is a divine Nature also, a
Nature which is divine and perfect. And that has a double
aspect in this universal working. When it works in the uni­
verse it puts on a double aspect, Ignorance and Knowledge.
So it is possible from here to transform this Nature.
The divine Nature is working in the universe; the one
power that is divine divides into two - Ignorance and Knowl­
edge - and from Ignorance it is possible to transform the
Nature, to make it divine. Sri Aurobindo, for the first time,
brought this idea definitely to a point, to make it clear,
because it was very important for the earth evolution, that if
Nature was left alone then spirit was always perfect; spirit
has not to attain perfection, spirit is perfect by its very
constitution. Essentially it is always perfect. If perfection has
a meaning - well, perfection must be manifested in Nature.

59
Otherwise spirit is playing at imperfection though perfection
is its birthright . But Nature is also claimant to perfection and
capable of transformation.
Sri Aurobindo for the first time put this concept into
rational terms and also gave a process: you do the transfor­
mation of your own nature in three stages. You don't do the
transformation in one stage. Human nature is mental nature,
vital nature, physical nature. When it first changes, the first
stage that it reaches is psychicization. The second · stage it
.reaches is universaJization or spiritualization. And the third
stage it reaches is supramentalization or divine Nature. You
see that from human nature to the divine the stages are one,
two and three. The first stage is psychicization, the second is
universalization or spiritualization, and the third is supra­
mentaJization or total transformation of the consciousness.
So the transformation is done in three stages, not all at once.
Sri Aurobindo gave the process and also a philosophical
rationale of why it is necessary: because otherwise the pro­
blem won't be solved.
One's nature must be transformed, slowly or with speed,
but it has to be done. And it is done by bringing in the higher
power. I t is not done by man. This transformation is not
brought about by human power but by man opening to the
higher consciousness, as Aswapathy opened himself and
found that the descent of the higher power was taking place
i n him, and he was able to ascend and descend. With every
descent some element of the divine power enters into human
nature - more peace, more control, more detachment, more
purity. Every time one goes to the higher consciousness, one
comes down with some element of the divine Nature in the
human nature, so the divine element goes on increasing. The
process is not achieved by human endeavour, it is achieved
by the aid of the Divine, the higher Nature of which we
spoke. The higher Nature is there and it is to that that this

60
human nature opens - the human nature opens to the higher
Nature and goes through these three stages. So transforma­
tion cannot be attained by human effort alone. Man cannot
say, " l will transform myself into the Divine." It is not
possible. He must open to the spiritual consciousness, the
Divine consciousness and allow it to transform him. The
Divine consciousness will be able to transform because per­
fection is already present in it. It has not to attain perfection.
Just as a man cannot put himself on his own shoulders, so he
cannot create perfection by himself. Somebody else has to do
it. The Divine has to give a man the perfection - but he has to
want it and to open to it. Thus the two conditions are:
wanting and opening. If he doesn't want and doesn't open,
he is quite free to remain ignorant. There is no compulsion to
freedom and knowledge.

61
 LECTURE III

We are trying to follow the epic Savitri, though we are not

making a study of the whole epic. We will now pursue an
aspect which is less serious in the sense that it doesn't deal
1with any problem of life - because Savitri does deal, as we
saw before, with questions such as whether the world is a
mechanical determination which is irresistible and which
must now have its way, the consciousness of man having no
say in it. That was one problem as we saw. The epic also
concerns itself with the evolution of man from his n·atural self
to his true being or his spiriv Aswapathy gets this realization
of the spirit, leading to a widening of his true being, equating
him with the cosmos, with the universal consciousness, the
universal being. Marching through all the planes which have
.
their counterpart in his nature, he is then led to a divine
consciousness where he is able to take the whole of human
aspiration and put it before the Divine; he prays to the
Divine for help and for an emanation to be sent down
to mankind in order to solve the problem of man's ignor­
ance and subjection to death. This boon is granted to the
human soul. represented by Aswapathy. He gets self­
knowledge from within, world-knowledge from around and
God-knowledge from above. These three positions are the
positions of one omnipresent Reality. It is one Reality which
is present in all the statuses. Aswapathy realizes this and
gets a boon for . mankind - the supreme Mother sends an
emanatio� of herself in the form of Savitri, the daughter
of King Aswapathy. to save mankind from ignorance and
death. That is where we were. Now we shall go a little
further.
The further problem that arises, which we touched upon
yesterday. is the problem of pain. If there is an omnipresent
Reality at work. a supreme wisdom and grace managing the

62
cosmos, why is there any place for pain and suffering in life?
Savitri has chosen Satyavan for her husband, and he is fated
to die one year after. So the mother of Savitri is putting this
question to Narada, the great divine sage, as to why the
arrangement of the world is such that the most .innocent
person is subject to unmerited suffering. The _problem arises
as to why there is pain and who created this pain? Now to
these questions, many answers have been given already in
the world's growth up till now. Somebody said that this world
will always remain imperfect and subject to suffering and
pain and death; this is the constitution of the world and you
cannot change it. That is one answer. Buddhism gives a
second answer: there is a mechanism; it is there and you
know it is due to Karma, action and reaction - when you
subject yourself to desire and impulses, it wiU always have
the reaction of suffering thrown upon you. Therefore, the
best thing is to get out of it. That is the escape suggested. The
world scheme will always remain like that, so it is best not to
bother about it; you get out of it, you try to escape. Leave
desires, give up desires, don't be subject to this force of
possession and acquisition. Give it up and you will gra­
dually retire into a state in which being itself ceases to
exist. At least, pain will not be there. That is the solution
given.
Now here in Savitri another solution is being given to us, a
more integral and a more satisfying solution in the sense that
it explains to us - given an omnipresent reality, given a divine
being who works and is the cosmos - where arises the possi­
bility of pain in it? Well, you get an explanation! and that is
why I think that it is a more satisfying and integral reply to
man's question about the place of pain and its origin. Why is
there pain at all? That is the question being asked; and who
created pain? The answer in Savitri is that you yourself are
the author of your pain. When you read the poem you will

63
get the ·full answer, but here the poet is giving you the answer
in a nutshell.
And secondly, is there destiny in the sense of something
that must happen - fate? Are things fated which cannot be
overcome? There is doom, suffering and death, the conse­
quence of ignqrance; but is there any fate or determination
by higher powers, powers beyond man's control , who have
fixed what must happen in a way that it is not a lower
determination but a higher determination that arranges
things? Is there such a higher determination at work? And
can that higher divine determinism be activated in the human
situation? The fifth book, where Savitri meets Satyavan - its
title is "The Destined Meeting Place" - explains partly what
people call fate or destiny. l f an omnipresent Reality is
working above, you will say it knows everything, it is aware
of all things. Yes, quite right. In the lower sphere, it sur­
charges what we may call the compelling stuff of things. The
'
Omniscient works in the compelling stuff of th ings and it
works there with knowledge. Here the stuff is subject to a
compulsion where it seems to act automatically, but really it
obeys the Omniscient and the Omnipotent. The two posi­
'
tions, then, are the position in knowledge where everything
is known and the position where nothing is known - yet still
things are determined by the presence of the Omniscient and
Omnipresent in this compelling stuff of things. A flower or a
seed is compelled to become what it has to become. There is
no choice given to it.
Is there such a thing as fate? We shall see today
whether we can make some headway with this question.
Because so far as the problem of pain is concerned, there are
various answers as I have told you just now. Who is respon­
sible for pain? l s it Karma? Is escape a solution out of it? If
you say that escape is the only solution, you will
have to say that mind is the only reality. If you accept the

64
 solution that Karma is the machinery responsible for suffer­
ing and pain to man, then the only answer from the meta­
physical position will be that mind is the only reality in the
world, that man is a mental being, that the process of the
universe is led, if at all it is led, to a mental consciousness and
that there is nothing more tha·n mind at work in the cosmos.
In that case, only that solution can be satisfying. Whether
that is so is another question. Incarnations and philosophers
have tackled this problem of pain, its why and wherefore and
the remedy for it, because pain exists not only on one level.
In the physical body there is pain owing to disease and
weakness and fatigue and illness. In· the collective
· life you will find that the problem of pain, the infliction of
pain, is in the whole record of human history. If you study
history, you will find that there is war and death and pesti­
lence and killing and all kinds of ills: that is pain on the
collective side.
The area of pain is rather large. Why did the Eternal do
this thing? If you say that there is an omnipresent Reality at
work, then why did He create pain? Was He compelled?
That is how the question will arise: ls there a Reality behind
this whole process? Or is this an illusion, all that we expe­
rience, even pleasure and pain and escape? Could we end in
agnosticism? Nothing is there: after all you cannot know.
There is an Unknowable at work and all its processes are a
blind man's bluff. You simply go and hit in the dark and you
say that this is the solution.
What was the utility and need of pain in the cosmic scheme
of things? This is how Narada looked at the problem and he
gives the answer to it as a divine representative of knowl­
edge. He makes. first of all. an impersonal statement about
pain because he is not subject to pain and he sees from a higher
status the place of pain in the life of man; and then he puts a
condition for changing or conquering or removing pain from

65
the scheme of life. While talking to Savitri's mother, he says
that even world seers have had to admit the necessity of pain
because unless and until the working of the cosmic scheme is
gone through by the Creator himself, in some form or other,
the solution of its problems cannot be given by the Divine to
man. His whole discourse end!> in saying: "It is you who have
selected an� chosen this scheme of pain. Pain is in fact the
distortion or rather the perversion of an all-pervading de­
light. An all-pervading delight is there which is felt by man as
pain when it is perverted or changed and distorted." Why
have mortals chosen this particular hazard? That explanation
we will perhaps see when we come to the detail of the
problem .
Now before we go into this problem of suffering, which is
not very pleasant, we will go through some pleasant pro­
blems so that we can have some delight. The poet is des­
cribing Savitri going from her house to choose a husband,
because her father, Aswapathy, has told her, "Your destiny
is there - you must shape your own destiny." Some unknown
spirit bore this child, that is how he saw her. You find that
Savitri is going and that the seasons are passing as she tra­
vels. There is one canto, the first canto of Book Four. which
is a description of the seasons. We won't read the whole. I'll
read only the description of Spring, so that you may under­
.stand why so many poets have described the seasons and
appreciate the exuberance of Nature; all that you will read
here, it's a study by itself., a study of how, from the height
beyond mind, one sees the operation of what appears to be
inconscient Nature. I would like you to read it yourself,
because it is best you approach it as a whole. I will only read
a part of the description of Spring, a few lines from the
description of Spring:

Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped th rough leaves

66
 And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;
His advent was a fire of irised hues,
His arms were a circle of the arrival of joy.

Impatient for felicity he came,

Hig�-fluting with the coll's happy voice,
His peacock turban trailing on the trees;
His breath was a warm summons to delight,

A godlike packed in�ensity of sense

Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe;
All sights and voices wove a single charm.
The life of the enchanted globe became ·

A storm of sweetness and of light arid song,

A revel of colour and of ecstacy,
A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:

. A strain of choral priestly music sang

And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,
A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.
Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,
Pure like the breath of an unstained desire
White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,
Pale mango-blossoms fed the Liquid voice
Of the love-maddened coll, and the brown bee
Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds.
The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.
All Nature was at bea�ty's festival.

That is Spring. You get some idea of how beauty can be seen
from above and brought into poetic expression.
Savitri has to go on her quest. She grows up into a young
girl and she finds no companions quite fit to deserve her
intimacy. She meets many . groups of people, many indivi­
duals; some are nice, some look up to her as their guide.

67
some come to her for a while, some have such demands that
she cannot meet them on the 11uman plane. All different
'kinds of associations take place around her in her infancy and
adolescence, but she finds nobody who is fit to be her com­
panion, one with whom she can be completely intimate. And
at the end the poet says:

Whoever is too great must lonely live.

Adored he walks in mighty solitude;
Vain is his labour to create his kind,
His only comrade is the Strength within.

That is perhaps quite true. And then Savitri goes out on her
travels, passing through different countries, and there you
find a description of the various facets of culture, of life, of
man; the quest has begun. She passes through temples, ham­
lets, cities and the capitols of .kings. Then she goes through
various Ashrams - the hermitages of people who have rea­
lized the truth.. She also meets some wise kings:

A few and fit inhabitants she called

To share the glad communion of her peace;
The breadth, the summit were their natural home.
The strong king-sages from their labour done,
Freed from the warrior tension of their task,
Came to her serene sessions in these wilds;
The strife was over, the respite lay in front.

In a fair groves some kings retired. They came and lived

there in peace.

Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers

And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
And heard the wild winds wandering in the night.

68
 Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks,
And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents,
And with the glory of the noons were one.

These people who lived in retirement:

They sojourned with an everliving Bliss;

A Voice profound in the ecstacy and the bush
They beard, beheld an all-revealing Light.

Then there were the ascetics:

Nameless the austere ascetics without home

Abandoning speech and motion and desire,
Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,
Immaculate in tranquil heights of self
On concentration's luminous voiceless peaks,
World-naked hermits with their matted hair,
Immobile as the passionless great hills
Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood
Awaiting the Infinite's behest to end.

Now we will read some passages where the meeting takes

place between Satyavan and Savitri, so as to give some idea
of the fifth book. Satyavan is telling Savitri how he looks
upon their meeting:

I plunged into an inner seeing Mind

And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind's bewildered slave:
The mystery was not solved, but deepened more.
I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,

He says: I pursued Beauty and Art

69
 But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;
Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.
[t evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign ·

Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:

I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.
I looked upon the world and missed the Self
And when I found the Self. I lost the world,
My other selves I lost and the body of God,
The link of the finite with the Infinite,
The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,
The mystic aim for which the world was made,
The human sense of Immortality.

I could not get what I sought, he says.

But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet

And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.

Satyavan says: I did try to get into the depths of the mind, the
profound secret of mental being, through Art and Beauty
and life; and when the Self was there then the world was lost,
and when the world was there the Self was forgotten. But
now

His gold Sl.\n has shone on me from thy face.

And now another realm draws near with thee
And now diviner voices fill my ear,
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;
A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song
Of flaming Gods. I draw a wealthier breath
And in a fierier march of moments move.
My inind transfigures to a rapturous seer.

A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss

70
 Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:
All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and .stream
Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee
And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue
Because of a change within me by thy look.

That is an expression of love poetry - if you wish to call it

that - but it is something not quite of this world perhaps. We
will not takt. time explaining that which is to be felt more
than explaineL.
Savitri has selected Satyavan and sh e a pproaches her
father's house and meets her parents. The problem of pain
comes here, in this second canto of the sixth book where
Savitri's mother addresses herself to Narada, the great div ine
sa ge .

Passionate like s9rrow questioning heaven she .spoke.

And then she asks him about pain:

By what pitiless adverse Necessity

Or what cold freak of a Creator's will,
By what random accident or governed Chance came

The direr mystery of grief and pain?

l s it thy God who made this cruel law?
Or some disastrous Power has marred his work
.
And he stands helpless to defend or save?

The mother of Savitri is putting the question. You can't put it

more strongly I think, in any language . The question that
,

comes to human mind - well, I think it fine. Later. she says:

What need had the soul of ignorance and tears?

71
 What power forced the immortal spirit to birth?

Or who persuaded it to fall from bliss?

Perhaps the soul we feel is only a dream,

Eternal self a fiction sensed in trance.

Savitri's mother is asking Narada, "Why is there this will to

live? ls there at all a soul?" And Narada replies to her with a
counter question and then explains why pain exists:

Was then the sun a dream because there is night?

Hidden in the mortal's heart the Eternal lives:
He lives secret in the chamber of thy soul,

Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light;

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break

A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone
Pain is a hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.

Pain is the signature of the Ignorance

Attesting the secret God denied by life:
Until life finds him pain can never end.

Thou art a vessel of the imprisoned spark.

It seeks relief from Time's envelopment,
And while thou shutst it in, the seal is pain:

You get some idea of the place of pain in the scheme of

things. Then Narada goes further and explains that with pain

72
and labour all creation comes, and that even God's messen­
gers have to bear the law of pain. When God's messenger
comes to help the world:

He too must bear the pang that he would heal:

Exempt and unafflicted by earth's fate, ·
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?

So even if you don't see any outer pain in God's messenger,

it is there; the battle is inside, because the messenger repre­
sents mankind by his identity with it. He on himself takes
vicariously all the suffering of mankind. He may not have
any personal suffering as people speak of it, but the grief is
there by his identity with the cosmic self: he receives all the
grief of the human being, all the grief of humanity into
himself, so vicariously there is always suffering within him,
even if there is no personal cause for grief. The battle is
inside and not outside. The hostility to the Divine is the
origin of this pain - intangible forces are there. When light
penetrates into the abyss, the law of pain will change.
Man is in fact the author of his own pain:

Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.

Because man is essentially an immaterial, immortal self

which has chosen to live in this "negative infinity". There
was at that time of choice an attraction of the void, the
grandeur of the abyss. Sri Aurobindo says of man's soul:

It l�mged for the adventure of ignorance

And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown.

There was ruin and glamour. accident and chance. hazard

and victory, incertitude and the companionship of souls and

73
so many other things adventurous in time. It is that which
attracted the soul to take up the plunge into the incon­
science and ignorance of the world.

A huge descent began, a giant fall:

For what the �pirit sees creates a truth

Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,

This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are pitched desire's tents, griefs headquarters.
A vast disgujse conceals the ·Eternal's bliss.

The Eternal's bliss is concealed here in this vast disguise.

Then Savitri's mother asks a question: "ls it fated that all
things will remain like this and man will have only this circle
of pain and suffering." The answer is given in this sixth book:

Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.

Man can accept bis fate, he can refuse.

For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.

The spirit rises mightier by defeat;

Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.

And then Narada addresses the human being. He is talking

to the Queen, but suddenly he addresses humanity rather ·

than replying tO her directly:

Oh man, the events that meet thee in thy road,

Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate: they touch thee awhile and pass;

74
"Thy Goal" is to reach "the indwelling God"

0 soul, intruder in Nature's ignorance,

Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit's fate is a battle and ceaseless march
·Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless Self.

The whole of human life has been such a march from incon­
science to a growing light. Well, Narada is giving a reply to
the questions of Savitri's mother in this context . Later when
Savitri has come to face Death and has conquered Him and
overcome the argument of the God of Death, she rises to the
supernal level of the consciousness of the "Truth and the
Light. There a divine voice questions her and asks her to
seek an individual escape, perfection or delight by merging
or constantly dwelling in the Supreme without bothering
about the fate of mankind. But Savitri, consistent in he r
replies on more than six occasions, each time confirms her
will to bring the Light to mankind because that is the mission
given to her, and she does not want to take advantage" of such
a boon. She says: My mission is to bring this divine light to
mankind and raise mankind to the divine height. That is how
she puts it, so I will read some portion of her reply to the
Divine:

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls:

Earth is a heroic spirit's battlefield.
The forge where the Archmason shapes his works.
Thy servitude on earth is greater. King,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.

Savitri is replying to the Supreme.

75
 Imperfect is the joy not shared by all

She is speaking to the Divine, remember.

Thy sweetness gjve to me for earth and men.

Now perhaps it is good that I give you two passages which are
very important in the sense that they are the height of inspi­
ration: first, when Aswapatby stands before the supreme
Mother and later when he prays to her for a boon. These
passages are preceded by a long argument by the supreme
Mother persuading Aswapathy not to bother about solving
man's problem. When Aswapathy is praying to the supreme
Mother; she appears to him and says: "What you have at­
tained is yours, but ask no more, because mankind is not
ready; if you bring the Light prematurely it may be too much
for mankind to digest; therefore it is better to let the slow
movement of evolution work itself out, and not press for an
immediate intervention of the Divine in the evolutionary
process." That is what it comes to ultimately: you should not
ask for a divine intervention in a hurry because humanity will
not be able to bear the descent of the higher power before its
time. That is why the supreme Mother is asking him to
continue t.o work in the light which he has received for some
progress for mankind, for some service to knowledge. Aswa­
pathy replies to her:

How shall I rest content with mortal days

And the dull measure of terrestrial things. ·
I who have seen behind the cosmic mask
The glory and the beauty of thy face?

Aswapathy is telling the divine Mother: How long shall we

have to bear this yoke of night and death?

76
 We who are the vessels of a deathless Force.

And then he says: We are trying and struggling - but in the

struggle of man where is the sign of divine intervention,
where is the ray of thy coming? Or if it is thy work that I do
below, why do I not see any sign of thy being with me?
Where is the thunder of thy victory's wings? I do not see the
victory of the divine approaching.

The aeons ever repeat their changeless round,

The cycles all rebuild and ever aspire.
All we have done is ever still to do.
All breaks and all renews and is the same.
Huge revolutions of life's fruitless gyre,
The new-born ages perish like the old,

Man struggles a little, works a little and hopes for future

perfection.
Then Aswapathy is given an answer, a vision. "I know that
thy creation cannot fail", Aswapathy says, "because I have
seen", and then he describes the vision he has seen: "fore­
runners of the divine multitude" are coming, "architects of
immortality" are descending into man, and they will do the
work of perfecting mankind.
Then he appeals to the supreme consciousness, praying to
her at the end of his argument:

"O truth defended in thy secret sun,

Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths.
0 Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe.
Creatrix. the Eternal's artist Bride.
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time.

77
 As if Time dare not open its heart to God.
0 radiant fountain of the world's delight
World-free and unattainable above.
0 Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue.
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.
One moment filled with thy et�rnity
Let thy infinity in one body Jive,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
Immortal. treading the earth with mortal feet
ALI heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."

Aswapath y s prayer sinks down in the resisting night, op·

'

pressed by the thousand forces that deny. And then the

divine Mother gives a reply to his entreaty:

"'O strong forerunner. I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend, and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
Alt mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth.
Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair

78
 And in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,
The sti:eams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,
Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.
She shall bear Wisdom !n her voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword
And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will."

There you find some description of what Aswapathy asked

and what boon was given . At the end of the epic, the su­
preme Godhead says to Savitri:

0 Word, cry out the immortal litany.

Built is. the golden tower, the flame-child born.

Eve n h umanity will awaken to the deepest self. There is a

long passage in which Savitri affirms the coming down of the
supreme Light into her and Satyavan. They are working for
the perfection of mankind and creating for humanity the
divine life on e arth . There you get some concept of Savitri. It
is an outline, because in two or three days you can't get the
whole of Savitri. But you can get something about what it
deals with, you can get an idea. a rough outline.

79
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

When you were reading about pain, this world situation,

couldn't we think of it as birth pangs?

Yes, of course we can. Certainly the present world situation

is the birth pang of a new era, a new age.

May we think of Sri Aurobindo's message as a voice

saying something similar to "Thy Will be done on earth
as it is in Heaven"? isn 't Sri Aurobindo reiterating from
the East that same message?

Because the world situation requires the message, because

there is a need, therefore it has come. I will give one line that
explains this nicely: Aswapathy has reached the transcendent
consciousness, and he is looking down, from the plane of
Motherhood, the House of the Spirit.

Then suddenly there came a downward look.

Aswapathy looked down

,

As if a sea exploring its own depths,

Do you follow the image properly? Then what did he see?

A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a ftame-�hite love

Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

When he looked down from the transcendent, he saw that

The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,

To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings,
All life a song of many meeting lives;

80
 For worlds were many, but the Self was one.

Each character in Savitri typifies one line of growth. The

King passes through one stage, Savitri passes through
another, penetrating into the cosmic constitution. Aswa­
pathy expands his consciousness into the cosmic and trans­
cendent. Knowing the constitution of existence, he tries to
fulfil the mission that is given to him of progress towards the
Light, and for that progress he requires the help of the
Divine so he prays for it; the help is given to him in· the form
of a boon: that Savitri will be born to help man to solve the
problem of ignorance and death. Then Savitri is born and
seeing that the constitution of the universe is imperfect, she
brings the perfect divine consciousness into the nature of
man in order to realize immortality for him. Immortality is
another word for divine consciousness.

Then she overcomes death?

Yes, death on earth. This possibility of change of the whole

human nature from its present condition into a more perfect
divine nature has not been visualized by any seer before .
That is the special contribution Sri Aurobindo has given to
mankind. If it had been given before, perhaps man would not
have understood it. �irst, the necessity of transformation;
second, the process of transformation - how to do it. Its
possibility was not known before. This is the way in which it
· is now given to mankind; human nature as well as human
consciousness is capable · of liberation and perfectio n , and
that perfect.ion consists in a transformation of nature, not a
rejection of nature but a transformation, not a control only,
not a type of behaviour according to ethics and morality, but
a free expression of the Divine in man with the divine nature.
The Divine has the divine nature which man can also acquire
by replacing his human nature by the elements of the divine

81
nature within him. That is how the Kingdom has to come.
The idea of the Kingdom was there. The process of the
Kingdom was not there. It is now given to mankind to fill up
that gap and get the total idea of what is the Kingdom of
Heaven. Then there will be a perfection of knowledge , a
perfection of will, a perfection of aesthetic life, a perfection
of the plenty of life and a perfection of material life. There
you have got the four aspects in which perfection must be
realized: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasara­
swati, the four aspects of the supreme Mother that are per­
fect. This conception was never given before - that is why I
particularly point it out because people think. it is the same
message. Yes, it is the same message in a sense, but so much
amplified as to become quite a new message, so filled up with
content that you would say, "Oh. yes, this is quite new."
Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati -
these are the four main aspects of the supreme Mother:
wisdom, power, harmony, and perfection in work. Physical
and material work that is perfect, harmony and love and
cooperation in life, irresistible will, and knowledge without
any falsehood or darkness. Knowledge, will, harmony and
beauty, perfection in material organization - these four as­
pects of the Divine have to be brought by the human being
into his life. The man who is now full of ordinary knowledge
will have to bring the Maheshwari aspect into his conscious­
ness so that she may give him true Knowledge. The man who
is dedicated to machinery will have to bring into his life the
Mahasaraswati aspect - perfect detail and organization in
material life - so as to make matter a fit receptacle of the
spirit, to make matter express the spirit perfectly. That is
how the four aspects of the divine Nature have to come into
the human being and embody humanity's work; then human­
ity will have perfection.
Read the sixth chapter of ·the book The Mother and you

82
will understand this. It is a very small book; the sixth chapter
gjves you the four aspects of the supreme Mother: -Mahesh­
wari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati: knowledge,
will-power or force, harmony and love, and perfection of
life, meaning fullness of life and perfection in material work.
Matter, life, power and knowledge - each aspect of human
expression has a divine perfection and that perfection has to
be brought into mankind. So the perfection of mankind and
the perfectibility of life, individual and collective, is now a
filled-in concept because of Sri Aurobindo.
Take the problem of pain, regarded as a problem which
has to be solved. Some solve it in one way, another in
another way, but now Sri Aurobindo has given us the idea
that pain is the intermediate condition chosen by the soul
freely for its growth from inconscience to light. Therefore the
soul itself has selected to go through ignorance and pain. It is
not that somebody has imposed it and said, "Oh, you must
suffer indefinitely." There is a solution for it. Pain can be
completely eliminated. It will not be necessary to go through
the process of pain once the divine Nature has come into life.
That is the solution. The solution is not to reject pain and
say, "All right, I will run away from life," or, "Oh! Pain is
always there, therefore Jet me retire." That is not the solu­
tion because to go through pain is the choice of the soul
itself. The fall into inconscience was selected because of the
adventure of the unknown. Matter and inconscience were
taken up by the soul as an adventure and in the adventure
suffering and pain and ignorance have to come in as an in­
termediate state, that's all: so it is only a temP<>rary state
through which each individual has to pass; but he can pass
beyond, and you do find expressions of people who hav·e
passed beyond. It's not merely the statement of a wish or an
ideal. For instance. in the Upanishad you find it said, "Oh,
oh. oh! I have become the immortal. 1 have overcome igno-

83
ranee and pain." When the poet says that all is delight and
delight and delight, he is speaking of his own experience . So
there are people who have gone through this formula,
through this rung of the difficulty of ignorance and pain and
have gone beyond it - pain has been overcome in certain
cases.
But now one has to see how far mankind can open itself to
this new truth and work out the problem of pain. It is not that
it will be done in one day. This elimination of pain is not a
question of one day but a question of long trial. Just as in the
course of evolution you don't arrive at an immediate solu­
tion, just as in science you have to wait for some time before
a new discovery is perfected, so with a big problem like pain
you have to allow centuries to intervene before a change
comes. How many people died before the airplane became a
success? From the eighteenth century or so they were flying
with hydrogen, remember, and so many people died. They
didn't know how to control the coming down, but ultimately
their efforts lead to success. In the same way the elimination
of pain will take time. It is not that tomorrow you will be free
from pain, but at least you can see that that has to be done;
then you apply yourself and gradually, one by one, the pro­
blems are solved until the final solution is found.

Don't you think, too, Purani, that understanding why

pain is here makes it easier to accept and gives one a
different attitude towards it?

Yes, your attitude changes towards pain. and therefore its

effect wears out. It doesn't become so acute. When it comes,
you know that it has come for teaching you something,
teaching you an attitude to understand. and immediately the
sharpness goes out of it.

This was demonstrated very powerfully in the Middle

84
 Ages, particularly in spiritual women who had great
ability to organize; and in almost every case these wo­
men didn't go off into a private ecstacy of their own.
They did go into ecstasy, but always they brought it
down to a very concrete definition in life. They founded
nunneries,· they founded hospitals; they got right down
to humanity, and they never ceased to work until the day
of their death, but they still held their meditations.

Life is a field for expression, so life will be always dealt with

by a true spiritual person. Life will be always dealt with, life
will not be allowed to remain what it is, to the extent that the
person can do something with the divine help. The spiritual
person always tries to bring into life a new stream, a new
current, to the extent that he is destined to do so by the Di­
vine. No spiritual person ever lives life alone, he always acts
upon life and reacts to life's shocks. That is one mission of a
spiritual person, to take part in life. He may take part in life
by saying, "Give it up", but always he does take part in life.

One way or another he does.

He has to. Sri Aurobindo has at least brought one institution

- his Ashram - into existence which shows that spirituality in
life can be true. I don't say it fully succeeds, but at least i t is a
try. You wouldn't dare to think of it if he had not tried. An
institution which shows that man can try to bring the spirit
into life - it is a big thing, such a big thing. If somebody tries
it, it is a very great thing, because it is a rare person who can
make even a trial. It isn't easy.

I was going to get your idea on it. Now I have it.

You have Sri Aurobindo's idea, which is better than mine.

What we say is that the growth of man from inconscience
to light is destined. The events and occurrences and expe-

85
riences that come are of secondary importance. What hap­
pens is not important - the direction in which one is going is
important, and that is destined. There is a Will at work which
will push man towards the realization of the ultimate truth.
You cannot escape it. That is the destiny of life on earth.

You may have to go through more than one life?

There may be thousands of lives, but the realisation of the

ultimate truth is destined.

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ISH"-1 l!l-7060-1116. 7