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.
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The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (C)
Saturday, January 22
The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (C)
by
RY Deshpande
on Sat 22 Jan 2011 05:51 PM IST
The outward happenings of a well developed soul have their seed within, and within we could take our spirit's stand. When that takes place there could awake in us the prophet and the seer. True, inheritor of the brief animal mind that we are, and we cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom's sun, we wait to weigh the certitude of our thoughts. We are still beginners and are ignorant of the meaning of our life, ignorant of our high and splendid fate. Only the Immortals can see the Idea, the Might that changes Time's course. They come maned with light from undiscovered worlds, they hear of the unforeseen event nearing, and they return to the place where from they had come. The galloping hooves of the event bear the superhuman rider who is going to mark evolutionary triumph of the next very significant stage, evolution moving not in Ignorance but in Knowledge, moving from Knowledge to Knowledge. These Immortals are the world-creators who see the mystic sense in the phenomenon. These great ones are attentive to the unseen Truth and recognize from the sound of the augur wings the coming of the superman, the gnostic race. They watch the Bliss for which earth's heart has cried. There is the certainty of these events unfolding. The small little mind of man may not comprehend these inevitabilities, but the truth-light shall capture Nature by surprise and earth grow unexpectedly divine. The triumph is, our days becoming a happy pilgrim march, and our will a force of the Eternal's power, and our thought the rays of a spiritual sun. This will be such a swift and astounding development that only a few might understand it, while those who are tied to their mental formulations will never believe in it. But this is on the way. Indeed, “belief shall be not till the work is done.”
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The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (B)
Tuesday, January 18
The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (B)
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 18 Jan 2011 07:35 PM IST
Now and then the poet comes out with an inspired artistry that is elaborate in design and, at the same time, sure in its effect, an example of which appears in the Immortals’ vision drawn closer to us in Canto Four, The Secret Knowledge, Book One, The Book of Beginnings of Savitri. Suggestion upon suggestion with the finest sweep of poetry is piled with great skill and artistry in a revelatory statement that can be simply paraphrased thus: the Immortals come maned with light, and hear the nearing of the unforeseen event, and return. The subtlety and many-sidedness of thought running through this 14-line sentence is absolutely marvellous, in the sense that the more we ponder on it the more of the truth of the truth-world it brings out. Realm after luminous realm opens in inner dimensions, as much as in the sublimity of heights that hardly our vision can reach, all in the wideness of spiritual spaces. That is the power of authentic revelatory poetry. In fact it is the power of the Yogi himself, coming through his expression. It is also a fine example of intuitive thought reaching an absolute of the Truth-Substance as much as the Truth-Rhythm. We shall take the second Section of this Canto in three parts in order to study it in some quick details in the context of the Yoga-Tapasya of Aswapati that led him to the discovery of the cosmic working, a necessary step in his integral pursuit of the possibility of a divine manifestation upon earth. He gets the secret knowledge and steps into the world of the vast Spirit, becoming aware of its freedom and knowing its greatnesses. These soon become parts of his core yogic realisations, enabling him to enter into the sunbelts of knowledge and moonbelts of delight, all in widenesses of the belts of truth and consciousness and joy. A voyager launching upon uncharterd routes, fronting the hazards of the unexpected and the unknown, he adventures into the countless realms of the cosmic extension, discovering space after space, in the richness of each domain, and moving in the thousand movements of endless time unfolding the rhythms of realisations. Such is the preparation which makes possible for Aswapati to grasp the essence of this creation, this mortal world, that he may look into the issue haunting it, of mortality which must be an aspect of the immortal spirit.
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The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (A)
Sunday, January 16
The Secret Knowledge—Section Two (A)
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 16 Jan 2011 10:04 PM IST
There is blindness around us, and we move through time caught in transient things. No doubt there is a secret key also available if we look for it, and the magic doors can open for us, that we may approach the unborn divinity within us. But at the moment all is screened, subliminal, beyond the threshold of our awareness, all is mystical; what is needed is an intuitive heart, the inward turn, what is needed is the power of a spiritual gaze. These are the opening lines of Section Two of Canto Four, The Secret Knowledge, Book One, The Book of Beginnings of Savitri. We shall take this Section in three parts and try to study it in some quick details in the context of the Yoga-Tapasya of Aswapati that led him to the discovery of the cosmic working, a necessary step in his integral pursuit of the possibility of a divine manifestation upon earth. He gets the secret knowledge and steps into the world of the vast Spirit, becoming aware of its freedom and knowing its greatnesses. These soon become parts of his core yogic realisations, enabling him to enter into the sunbelts of knowledge and moonbelts of delight, all in widenesses of the belts of truth and consciousness and joy. A voyager launching upon uncharterd routes, fronting the hazards of the unexpected and the unknown, he adventures into the countless realms of the cosmic extension, discovering space after space, in the richness of each domain, and moving in the thousand movements of endless time unfolding the rhythms of realisations. Such is the preparation which makes possible for Aswapati to grasp the essence of this creation, this mortal world, that he may look into the issue haunting it, of mortality which must be an aspect of the immortal spirit.
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The Secret Knowledge—Section One
Thursday, January 13
The Secret Knowledge—Section One
by
RY Deshpande
on Thu 13 Jan 2011 11:19 AM IST
“On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.” This is the opening line of Canto Four, The Secret Knowledge, Book One, The Book of Beginnings of Savitri. We shall take this Canto (pp. 46-73) Section by Section (Eight Sections) and try to study it in some quick details in the context of the Yoga-Tapasya of Aswapati that led him to the discovery of the cosmic working, a necessary step in his integral pursuit of the possibility of a divine manifestation upon earth. He gets the secret knowledge and steps into the world of the vast Spirit, becoming aware of its freedom and knowing its greatnesses. These soon become parts of his core yogic realisations, enabling him to enter into the sunbelts of knowledge and moonbelts of delight, all in widenesses of the belts of truth and consciousness and joy. A voyager launching upon uncharterd routes, fronting the hazards of the unexpected and the unknown, he adventures into the countless realms of the cosmic extension, discovering space after space, in the richness of each domain, and moving in the thousand movements of endless time unfolding the rhythms of realisations. Such is the preparation which makes possible for Aswapati to grasp the essence of this creation, this mortal world, that he may look into the issue haunting it, of mortality which must be an aspect of the immortal spirit.
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The Birth of the Immortal in the Mortal
Sunday, January 9
The Birth of the Immortal in the Mortal
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 09 Jan 2011 07:39 PM IST
The fruitful paradox of this creation is to bring about the birth of the Immortal in the frightful harsh defying circumstance of mortality, of the divine Soul in the greatness of the evolutionary prospects. In the logic of things there seems to be a sufficient reason for the realization of such a possibility—if there has to be some meaning and conent in the reality of mortality, in the very appearance of darkness, ignorance, pain, suffering, misery, unawareness, incapacity, of existence turning into non-existence. The paradox could be that these have arrived on the scene out of absolute light, knowledge, bliss, consciousness, the very being giving rise to non-being. But there is a well-prepared key also to resolve this paradox, the key hid by Inconscience which at the same time is accessible to the discoverer who can go behind and beyond all these formulations. The secret knowledge is what a daring ready yogin-soul can receive. Aswapati is now in possession of it. But he has to set himself out, and he has to understand the thousand operations of the universal Nature supported by the universal Being or Purusha in the multiple play of the universe.
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Sailor on the Flow of Time—his Voyage upon Eternity’s Seas
Tuesday, January 4
Sailor on the Flow of Time—his Voyage upon Eternity’s Seas
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 04 Jan 2011 03:30 AM IST
Aswapati has been given the secret knowledge of the intimate relationship that exists between the divine Soul and the divine Nature-Force, of Purusha and Prakrit, as well as their functioning in the cosmic scheme. He has soon to get down to the details, as how from the material base a whole world climbs to the grandeur of the spirit. If there is an interminable hierarchy of the planes of consciousness fixed in time, there is also the movement in time from one level to the higher. This is a long process of discovery and he has to prepare himself to stand up to the rigour of the voyage, these planes represented as a series of seas standing one above other, and his movement as on the flow of Time. This is a yogic voyage upon the seas of eternity.
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The Absolute—the Perfect—the Alone—and his dynamic executive Force
Saturday, January 1
The Absolute—the Perfect—the Alone—and his dynamic executive Force
by
RY Deshpande
on Sat 01 Jan 2011 01:30 AM IST
We have in a passage from Savitri an extraordinary presentation of the will and action of the Supreme involved in this creation, bringing out also the bright intention that is there behind this amazingly complex and vast manifestation. The revelatory metaphysics put in the language of mystic-spiritual poetry depicts what otherwise cannot be caught in our language, a reality seized in a pregnant expression. Here is something which cannot be grasped by the rationalism of Plato or by the empiricism of Aristotle, or all that has gone down in the long history of philosophy. We shall try to look into it in some details in order to get a general idea about the cosmological doctrines associated with being and knowing, the ontological foundation of existence. However, and more importantly, if we can lend ourselves to the swift and luminous intuition that is there behind it, it should prove immensely gainful to us in several respects.
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The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—Complete Summary
Tuesday, December 21
The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—Complete Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 21 Dec 2010 06:52 PM IST
Here is the complete summary of Book One Canto Five of Savitri, The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness, (pp. 74-91) as we have seen in the last few instalments. This will be taken up again before finalising the presentation.
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10: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Monday, December 20
10: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Mon 20 Dec 2010 09:58 PM IST
It is in this supreme triple world of glory and grenadeur and greatness, of truth and consciousness and bliss in their absolute nature, could Aswapati enter and stay for a while. A voyager upon uncharted routes he, fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown, adventuring across enormous realms, broke into another Space and Time, the subjective and objective dimensions of another quality, of Infinity and Eternity.
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09: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Sunday, December 19
09: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 19 Dec 2010 09:38 PM IST
On the margin of great immaterial planes where Mind is master of life and form, secret Nature with her edge of might meditates upon the mighty words; she also looks on the unseen links that join the parted spheres. To the initiate she brings the light of her hid mysterious domains. At the top of the climbing planes in the lower hierarchy, in worlds of the directing and seeing Mind, in the Overmind where a thousand aspects of one truth come into bright play works the highest occult power, the cosmic Force in her greatness and supremacy, a border sovereign.
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08: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Saturday, December 18
08: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Sat 18 Dec 2010 06:00 PM IST
This Nature is a mediatrix but she acts under the influence of the veiled and nameless gods, the mediating power who but imitates the ways of the World-Magician. All worlds she makes the partners of her deeds, makes them accomplices of her mighty violence, of her daring leaps into the impossible. Nothing is proscribed to her. Thus she liberates the reality that lay suppressed. Now it is this bizarre kingdom of the mediatrix Nature that has come into possession of Aswapati. With his mastering will he commands her and she, resisting more, yields more and more of herself to him. Herself she gave to him for his rapture and for his unrestricted use. Her sealed hieratic wisdom forced from her fragments of the mystery of omnipotence. It is as if this is what Nature desired all along, the conquering Purusha subjecting the executive Prakriti in this cosmic functioning, the divine Soul not only becoming free of Nature, but lording over her.
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07: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Friday, December 17
07: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Fri 17 Dec 2010 08:20 PM IST
The Overmind power can illumine with prophet sight the universal field of Ignorance, it can give to Life the bacchic rapture; in our body it can arouse the demon or the god. It can do something more stupendous than that; it can call in the Omniscient and Omnipotent, awake a forgotten Almightiness within. Even in this rigid realm of Matter it can exercise its kingly sovereignty. The logic of its demigod Idea brings surprises of creation. All is miracle here and can by miracle change. This is already something extraordinary, that it is that which surpasses all known human or even supernatural powers in the wide broad cosmos, powers we cannot imagine. It is an occurrence above man and above nature, the work of a power not governed by the laws of Matter or the volitions of Life. It might have limitations in the absolute sense, of not being able to transform Life and Matter, but that itself is already a tremendous gain. The power to change them is not with the Overmind; it is with the Supermind.
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06: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Thursday, December 16
06: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Thu 16 Dec 2010 09:55 PM IST
For Aswapati the old adamantine vetoes stood no more—because he was no more subject to the rules of the earth and the old Nature with her defunct laws. Abolished were the scripts of destiny. There was no more that death-hunted creature. The soul and cosmos faced as equal powers. A boundless being in a measureless Time invaded Nature with the infinite; he saw unpathed, unwalled his titan scope. All was uncovered to his sealless eye.
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05: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Wednesday, December 15
05: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Wed 15 Dec 2010 08:38 PM IST
Only to a few is given that godlike rare release. One among many thousands is chosen by a secret witness Eye and is driven by a pointing hand of Light. But Aswapati has turned from the voices of the narrow realm and left the little lane of human Time. Following a bodiless Guide he listens to a lonely cry in boundless vacancy. Even as the deep cosmic murmur falls still, he lives in the hush before the world was born, a silence full of potentialities; in it his soul left naked to the timeless One. He has such identity that the ineffable Wideness knows him for its own. His spirit mingles with Eternity's heart and bears the silence of the Infinite.
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04: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Tuesday, December 14
04: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 14 Dec 2010 06:02 PM IST
Aswapati sees the doubtfulness of all things here, the incertitude of man's proud confident thought, the transience of the achievements of his force. Here is a thinking being in an unthinking world, an island in the sea of the Unknown. Here man is a smallness trying to be great, an animal with some instincts of a god, his life a story too common to be told, his deeds a number summing up to nought, his consciousness a torch lit to be quenched, his hope a star above a cradle and grave. Yet a greater destiny might be his—because the eternal Spirit is his truth.
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03: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Monday, December 13
03: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Mon 13 Dec 2010 05:56 PM IST
Aswapati reads the original ukase, the firm order having the force of law, the edict, the decree, the directive in all its absoluteness and authority. It is kept back in the locked archives of the spirit's crypt, in the luminous pits of the Unknown. But on it Aswapati sees the signature and the fiery seal put by the high Wisdom herself, she seeing things with bright eyes, the Eyes of Sophia, prajnā-netra. The stumbling Nature in the dimness of light is busy performing her hooded work, she in Ignorance building the steps of Light. Aswapati notices that God sleeping in the depth of night is waking up and is seeing with deathless eyes the unshaped thought in soulless forms, that Matter is pregnant with spiritual sense, and Mind can indeed dare the study of the Unknowable, Life the gestation of the Golden Child, the birth of the Divine.
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02: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Sunday, December 12
02: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 12 Dec 2010 03:45 PM IST
Even as the golden light is there in his soul, Aswapati reads the secular Book and understands its great vivid contents, its details; he remembers their sense and meaning and purpose in this ignorant world of ours, finds much of value even in the notes that are jotted in the margins. The crabbed ambiguous scroll has something to tell him about what had transpired earlier, that which is described in the early opening cantos of the Book of Beginnings. There is the purposeful Darkness and there is the Agreement the Supreme has made with this Darkness, and the things are going on according to this firm resolute Agreement. The real idea behind it is, it is in this way that the Supreme himself shall get new creative shapes, new figures, new bodies, that there shall be his manifestation in the rich multiplicity of qualities and measures and names and forms, they all expressive of his thousand moods and manners and joys and wonders and re-creative fulfilments. He shall be many, each different and significant in the oneness of his truth and consciousness and delight.
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01: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
Friday, December 10
01: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness—A Thematic Summary
by
RY Deshpande
on Fri 10 Dec 2010 09:59 AM IST
This is the knowledge Aswapati is already in possession when there is the release of his soul from the limitations and imperfections of the mortal birth into which he has entered. The soul is free and the meaning, the process, the purpose of the cosmic working is given to him. The requisites, the provisos, the terms and conditions under which things move here are revealed to him, and he sees that the real-idea behind the whole creative dynamics is with the intention of a manifestation based on the divine principles. His soul is free as an individual, he has the knowledge of the universal operations, he must now see behind these all the greatness of the transcendental spirit that exercises its truth-will in its complete freedom. With it the Yoga of the Individual attains its Perfection, gets the foundational Siddhi. “This knowledge first he had of time-born men,” the knowledge pertaining to the soul’s release, and the vast universal operations under the aegis of the divine Soul and the universal Nature. This is the knowledge he gets at first—and not that he was the first among time-born men to get this exceptional knowledge—before knowing the transcendental Spirit’s freedom and greatness. A tremendous stride is involved in this remarkable progress of Yogi Aswapati towards the fulfilment of his yogic-avataric occupation.
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28: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness: Summary by MP Pandit Z
Thursday, December 9
28: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness: Summary by MP Pandit Z
by
RY Deshpande
on Thu 09 Dec 2010 05:30 AM IST
In our world on the lower planes one truth contests with another truth, but here above there is no more quarrel. An omniscient Scribe—the all-knowing Recorder—presents the never-ending tale of these differences in a different light and the story passes from its stage of difference to the culmination of unity. Our mind’s search for knowledge is always accompanied by a doubt whether it is true; but here every tinge of doubt is lost as the mind’s meandering search is led to its goal by an all-seeing speech. Our human speech labels, limits; but this speech sees everything, it is paşyanti vāk. This all-seeing speech clothes the primal, original thought with the inevitable word, unquestioned in its authority. It is the mantric utterance.
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