Savitri—the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision
The Mother

---

---

Savitri: the Light of the Supreme
In Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra we have a phrase “Savitŗ, the Light of the Supreme, or in Sanskrit jyotih parasya”. This we have taken for the name of our site which is specifically devoted to Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri. It will be our endeavour to present its various aspects in the course of time. Texts of Savitri, the compositional details, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s writings about it will form one major section for reference purposes. Work on it by others in several other sections will follow in the sequel. It is also hoped that there will be audio-visual presentations in the creative spirit for us to grow more and more in it. Indeed, to live in Savitri who shall give us the truth and the things of the truth shall be the driving motivation behind this effort.

---

---

   more »

The gnostic evolution will lift that to its highest and fullest expression, but it will not act for the power, satisfaction, enjoyment of the mental or vital ego, for its narrow possession of itself and its eager ambitious grasp on others and on things or for its greater self-affirmation and magnified embodiment; for in that way no spiritual fullness and perfection can come. The gnostic life will exist and act for the Divine in itself and in the world, for the Divine in all; the increasing possession of the individual being and the world by the Divine Presence, Light, Power, Love, Delight, Beauty will be the sense of life to the gnostic being.

...   more »

If in the Perfection’s House, mind is a sun of vision’s rays and if it can shape substance by the sheer brilliance of its thoughts, then we can imagine that imagination has the power to cast its spell on the unknown and make it dwell in it. Under its gainful charm truth would wear rich and bright colours; or else it would sing dream-notes and bring closer to us all that is far, make all that is inaccessible proximate, known, make the Real familiar. The power of imagination can make even the Unknowable tangible, true, graspable, knowable. Through it ountless aspects of manifestation are brought into play. That indeed is something remarkable, something noteworthy of imagination’s power that it can make the potent the actual. Its speech voices the ineffable, its ray reveals the hidden presence, its form discloses the formless, its idea holds the Idea of the Infinite, divine in the house of the divine, it as the Word which has the mantric supremacy to usher the divine experience, to set things in its rhythm and movement, set all that is ready en rapport with the Law of the Truth in the strength of its Time, in the Dynamics of Ritam.

...   more »

The perfection of the new creation is brought home to us by the poet-essayist with the help of a few recognizable examples. These give us some idea about its nature and its excellence. Very methodically and in a step by step lucid manner the revelatory thesis develops the theme with these few illustrations. The first example is regarding the mind that can open itself to the thoughts and visions of the spirit, the operation of the superior divine mind. The action of this mind may not be fully successful on the mind of the physical to bring about this transformation, but in the ranges of mind proper it will prepare the necessary mental faculties to effect this process. It is only the direct action of the supermind on the physical mind that can make happen the decisive change. The Mother’s Yoga of the Cells was chiefly concerned with this, and it had progressed to the extent that the cells themselves had started opening to the supramental light and force, experiencing the harmonious self-perfection in the Will of the Divine.

...   more »

If there is a faultless world with dazzling and colourful inhabitants, then one would like to know whether it is an archetypal world, or it is the evolutionary perfection poised for manifestation. Here are Masters of creation, perfect in joy because they are sovereign in truth, sovereign in truth because they are perfect in joy. The possibility is that of the bursting of a greater secret Consciousness. “A first formation of a gnostic consciousness and nature will be the consequence.”

...   more »

The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house
Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:
To him the universe was her bosom of love,
His toys were the immortal verities.
All here self-lost had there its divine place.
The Powers that here betray our hearts and err,
Were there sovereign in truth, perfect in joy,
Masters in a creation without flaw,
Possessors of their own infinitude.

...   more »

Moses—Pythagoras—Michael Angelo—Victor Hugo—Amrita and in between Brihaspati and Hermes and Rudra entering into the birth doing the Yoga of Self-Perfection—that is the wonderful march in the Adhyatmayoga! That is the soul preparing itself to get into the new creation. That is the stream of crystalline births readying itsef to receive the rush of the oceanic flood, the flood of light and life and love, the sachchidanandaic possibilities of manifestation. This human potential is of another kind and needs centuries of preparation under the day-bright Abundance of the Divine Benevolence.

...   more »

The transition from mind to supermind entails two features: in it is the scope and reach of acquiring a superior instrument of thought and knowledge; but, and more importantly, it effects the conversion of the whole consciousness, opening it more and more to the supramental. In it is also born the supramental thought, will, sense, feeling. The working of these faculties begins with the mind, mind proceeding to the formation of the luminous mind, it eventually becoming wholly intuitivised. The final stage of the change comes “when the supermind occupies and supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinct with its powers. Man then becomes wholly the superman.” Obviously, the last cannot happen unless there is the ‘archetypal’ support available for it to come into existence in the evolutionary unfolding. There is the necessity of the new creation being present in the transcendent, the bright mother to bring out issues in this play of manifestation. It must precede the appearance of the superman on the earth. Sri Aurobindo’s whole work, although it has several subsidiary objectives as aspects of its overall dynamics, of its pragmatism, is concerned chiefly with it, with the gnostic race, and it is to that he was throughout committed.

...   more »

The creation of the new world is connected with the integral perfection. That perfection is possible only when, first, the mind of the physical opens to the higher light, light beyond intuitive mind, beyond overmind, when it opens to the supramental light and force. The physical mind’s opening to the supramental light and force is the necessary condition for the new creation to manifest upon earth. It has happened in the luminous subtle-physical; it must happen in the gross. But then it is more an aspect of manifestation than of creation which has already happened, happened in the transcendent. Our own part is, to open ourselves to it, in every respect, open the physical, the vital, the mental, the spiritual, the psychic to it, every dimension of the human potential lending itself to the process of manifestation. Perfection will not impose itself upon us, we have to open ourselves to it, allow it to work in us in the fulfilment of the human potential, in the expression of our true individuality, the swabhāva of our soul.

...   more »

To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action.

...   more »

The Yoga of Self-Perfection associated with the creation of the new world in the Divine Will has its early foundation in the Sapta Chatusthaya, the seven elements or seven tetrads. Sri Aurobindo had received it when he was in the Alipore Jail as an under-trial prisoner for his alleged act of sedition against the British government in India. A note says: “These mantras along with the notes which accompany them were written down by Sri Aurobindo, probably after his release from prison in May, 1909, and certainly before his departure from Chandernagore on March 31, 1910.” Sri Aurobindo was acquitted and released from the jail; however, the British were still after him. Soon he had to go in hiding. This he did after receiving an inner command, ādeśa; first he was in Chandernagore for two and a half months, and then he left for Pondicherry. Both the towns were French settlements at those days. Sri Aurobindo remained in Pondicherry ever since then, the place having become his Cave of Tapasya. It is here that the Mother was soon to join in the great work they had come to do together. The early seeds of the great work, from the point of view of Adhyatmayoga, were in these Chatusthayas, precise in their formulation, almost like Yoga Aphorisms.

...   more »

In the creation of the supramental world in us by the Divine Will, both are needed: constant expansion and self-perfection. Aswapati’s Yoga of Self-Perfection has to take care of the second term. He had become vast by his largeness; he must achieve self-perfection required for it. The aspect of self-perfection is the aspect of not only rising above all the workings of the blind lower inconscient Nature or Andhaha Prakriti in us, but also to make her receptive to the divine working in her, she lending herself to the action of the Consciousness-Force who alone can make such a creation possible. In fact it is she who, in the Divine Will, can establish a new world, the supramental world. The Mother’s stipulation of “expansion of consciousness”, of becoming vast by our largeness has now to accompany the “constant personal progress”, of opening ourselves to the greater possibilities of our soul and our spirit.

...   more »

In order to form a supramental world, there must be the expansion of consciousness and constant personal progress, there must be the constant idea of the being, the constant will of the being, the constant preoccupation of the being. There must be great widening to make room for the movements of the Supermind, Supermind by its very excellence being vast, infinite. Thus Aswapati became vast by his largeness, in the largeness of his yoga-tapasya. Incarnating the supramental consciousness in a human body, he was here as Eternity’s delegate, his action a decisive action direct from the Supreme. Aswapati’s birth in the mortal world, mŗtyuloka, is in order to do the Yoga of the Supreme, the Yoga of Evolutionary Transformation. He does it, and in it he creates a new world in the House of the Spirit. Not only that; he gathers within himself the needed power to support the action of the Divine Executrix, that this new world, the supramental world be brought down by her, made manifest here upon earth. In this yoga-tapasya is the mortal birth of the divine Savitri. Such great is presently the the boon, the fruit of the Yoga of Evolutionary Transformation. Even after this siddhi or accomplishment she will continue to come here again and again, but those births will not be the kind of the mortal birth. Those new births of hers, and Aswapati’s, will be the divine births in Evolution. They will be for realisation of the divine possibilities through the divine birth, divya janma.

...   more »

In one of the footnotes to the Agni-hymns, Sri Aurobindo makes the following comment: “The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting.” Both the terms are fixed in it, expansion and self-perfecting. Could this not have been the method of Aswapati in creating the new world in the supramental? He had become vast by his largeness, extending all the way up to the Unknowable and enveloping every bit of this immense manifestation, including those of the dark abysses; he had achieved self-perfection in such completeness that no trace of the Inconscient and the Subconscient was present in it; it was a oneness that could embrace all the positives and the negatives, rejecting nothing, that it is all God’s creation, that there is nothing but the Divine who exists in each and every aspect of this freedom and extensiveness.

...   more »

What Aswapati has transcendentally experienced, what he has willed and achieved in the infinity of the Spirit, all that must become the earthly real. What is operative here at the moment is the errant Power, one who by division attempts to find the indivisible One, an impossible proposition. This Error must be obliterated, totally liquidated. Such is the task that Aswapati recognises, a task which must be done if this creation has to have any sense in it, any meaning to it; and he attends to it right earnestly. This is the deconstruction needed to be done before any new scheme can be considered for implementation. Our response to the positive, the constructive and the creative, and the progressive, had been all along corrupt and frustrating and, therefore, deconstruction is necessary; it should take place at the origin of this corrupting and frustrating crookedness. In any case, it cannot be the popular metaphysical mind-prompted deconstruction; it is not merely analyzing the text simply because language is inherently unstable and shifting. It has to be the spiritual-occult deconstruction. It has to be an act of Shiva the Destroyer.

...   more »

The work of Aswapati as the Divine Incarnate is to will a new creation and establish it in the House of the Spirit. The next task of making it manifest upon earth is the task of Savitri as the Shakti Incarnate. Will and Action, samkalpa and krīyā, the first followed by the second, both are necessary for bringing about the birth of the new world here upon earth. The universal principle is: he wills and she executes. The second cannot happen without the first. It is as though a transcendental archetype, a dynamic and breathing design or model charged with the possibilities of expression, is the sine qua non for the new world to at all take birth here. When it is created up there, in the Real-Idea, in its luminous potencies, then only can it materialise here, brought into the evolutionary process; then only can the heavenly ideal become terrestrially real.

...   more »

In this vast outbreak of perfection's law
Imposing its fixity on the flux of things
He saw a hierarchy of lucent planes
Enfeoffed to this highest kingdom of God-state.
Attuning to one Truth their own right rule...
Each gave its powers to help its neighbours' parts,
But suffered no diminution by the gift;
Profiteers of a mystic interchange,
They grew by what they took and what they gave,
All others they felt as their own complements,
One in the might and joy of multitude.

...   more »

The mornings come but we make ourselves not the light, and the Buddha returns not. In fact, why should he? Should he return, he will definitely have to make a trip first to Kyoto and then to Copenhagen. Instead, what we have now is “the inconvenient truth” of our sad making, and we keep our eyes shut to the pressing reality. We look into the faces of “frightened crowd”, not only of this age but of times to come in sorrowful movement. This is the result of clipped and grouchy human potential and if “something of inexplicable value” has to emerge we will have yet to know what the Buddha meant when he said “Make of yourself a light”.

...   more »

The Puraņas tell us that Brahma created the worlds by the Tapas-Will, by the power of concentrated gathering in of consciousness. In the present instance, Aswapati created the new world by the power of his yogic samkalpa, as an act of supreme will in the identification and union with the Divine. He had the knowledge, of the Eternal and the Eternal in Time, and he was carrying with him the desire of the world for its fulfilment. There was the problem of the two negations pulling the soul of man in two opposite directions, the rejection of the world by the exclusive God-seeker and the denial of the materialist dismissing the things of the spirit. More fundamentally, there is the entrenched antagonism to all that is high and noble and spiritually elevating, all that is fulfilling, hostility pitched against life, the extreme ill-will and nastiness of death and its stark malevolence. Contradictions have somehow entered into this creation and they have to be met and dealt with, removed, contradictions between falsehood and truth, evil and good, suffering and happiness, darkness and light. The world left behind continues to be governed by naked falsehood and ignorance and death. Aswapati accepts it not. Not only does he not accept it; he sets himself to resolve it.

...   more »

Keats’s sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer is a high mark in Romantic poetry. In the octave, the poet has travelled in the realms of gold, and one of them is the great property of Homer, a vast tract of living and vibrant land, the seer-poet holding the lordship in the company of the heroic gods and goddesses. Here is the gold of many and many-sided splendours, born from the womb of the celestial Muse herself. The sonnet describes the new wonder the poet has discovered. The awe experienced by him comes out most powerfully in the last line, “Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” But Aswapati’s new and marvellous creation is something different. It is a creation breathing in topaz radiance and has many worlds, the worlds of beauty, of love, joy, thought, will, knowledge, power, light, form, reality’s substance, all with the growing God-kind perfection everywhere. But their materialisation upon the earth must await the “veiled Transcendent’s ultimate decree”. In the House of the Spirit this new creation is ready but waiting for the veiled Transcendent’s decree. It comes in the form of a boon. That boon is the incarnation of the divine Savitri upon earth: “One shall descend and break the iron Law.” That shall be the precursor of the new creation manifesting in its deepening and widening glory.

...   more »