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

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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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If there has to be the divine manifestation, the supramental Mahashakti must descend and work in the cosmic-terrestrial process. The four powers described by Sri Aurobindo in The Mother belong to this Overmental creation, with the Purusha aspects present only in the background. Unless they work in fullness and harmony the higher cannot come and operate here. These four in us are: understanding, life-dynamism, the sense of love and joy and beauty, and the skill in work, our capacity to attend to minutiae and essentials, they all attaining perfection by which the will in the physical develops, each of the four characterising a certain trait in us, defining our swabhāva. That is how the soul in us grows. In fact it is the soul, the divine element residing in us, who becomes an alchemic agent to bring about the transformation of the complex of this nature. These are the qualities or energies, guņas, śaktis, by which the individual as well as collective evolution advances. Unless these are fully established in their harmony of working the higher powers waiting for manifestation cannot come down. In order to open a way for their coming there is the imperative of the mortal birth of Savitri, a birth founded on the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati.

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By his yoga-tapasya Aswapati compels the mortal birth of the divine Savitri. He carried the “world’s desire” to the supreme Goddess and argued with her that it can be fulfilled only if she comes down to solve the problem of mortality here. She must take the mortal birth and, by doing the Shakti Yoga in the soul of the earth, gather divine Power to vanquish Death who is standing as an obstacle across the path of the divine Event. He has prepared the needed occult-spiritual ground for her work and it is now opportune for her to step in. She condescends, agrees to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death. The divine Incarnation arrives. While this is the esoteric reality behind the wonderful that has happened to this creation, we may look at it from another angle, something that we might be able to grasp.

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The glorious moment has arrived in the tapasya of the ancient Aswapati of the Madra country; his spiritual progress and attainment have ripened to receive their divine merit. A hundred-thousand oblations the illustrious king offered to the Goddess Savitri for eighteen years, and now she has appeared in the bright and flaming Yajna-fire to grant him a boon. He was already a performer of the Yajnas, and he had presided over excellent charities, and was one whose speech was truth, satyasandhah, who had subdued his senses, was an observer of noble as well as difficult and austere practices. Such was Aswapati, the king of the Madra land, now meeting there in the spiritual world the Goddess Savitri. She must grant a boon to him, the boon that has already the sanction of the Creator-Father Brahma himself. This indeed is a glorious moment, and it has arrived.

There is nothing that Aswapati needs for himself and his yoga-tapasya has been for the evolutionary soul of the earth, that it becomes a manifesting instrument in the splendour of God himself. In the complete freedom of his soul and of his spirit, in the transcendental freedom untouched by ignorance and inconscience, Aswapati exercises his freewill which could be different from the Freewill with other possibilities in the rhythms of the manifesting Truth. That is the greatness, the uniqueness of his yoga-tapasya which itself has an identity and freedom with the Supreme.

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It is an occult fact that for success in devout pursuit, human effort and the divine assent have to go together. The gleaming power of tapasya, tapahaprabhāva, and the grace of God, devaprasāda, alone can lead the aspiring soul towards the cherished spiritual realisation. That is how Rishi Shwetashwatara came to know the Eternal. The equivalent of this classical tapahaprabhāva, the arduous personal effort, the “constant expansion and self-perfecting” in Sri Aurobindo’s transformative Yoga is indeed the “call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes.” The acceptance of this concentrated and fiery endeavour of the exceptional tapasvin as an invocation to the Supreme can then in response open out the doors for him to walk in and bequeath his riches upon him. That will be the sanction, the luminous bestowal of benediction, the Upanishadic devaprasāda. Which means that, the intense and ardent call and will, tapahaprabhāva, as well as the heavenly sanction, devaprasāda, in the transformative Yoga of Sri Aurobindo are actually in the context of a most decisive change, the supramental change which is “a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness.”

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The Rig Veda speaks of the divine fire Agni as one who is amuram, one who is not perplexed or bewildered, who is free from ignorance. At the same time, he is wide-seeing and is the knower of the birth, and the bringer of the issue of the Eternal, brahma-prajā. He is therefore a supramental Godhead, and in his will and action there is supramental infallibility. The Word that he brings is the Word, brahma, whose light shines in Heaven. But, then, will that light shine in the cave of darkness also, in the recesses of the inconscience? Perhaps not in its most occult connotation,—if at all, it might shine only occasionally. The Vedic Word is the Word for the Rishi, for an individual aspirant to be reborn in the riches of the Divine. It is not yet the transformative Word, a Word that can usher in divine experience in the terrestrial collectivity. For that to happen the evolutionary depths of inconscience will have to be first filled up with the Light of the Supreme, and it is that which shall illumine us with the Truth. The original creative Power, the supreme Shakti herself will have to do it. This is a new task which needs a certain urgency of attention.

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If we have to write a biography of Aswapati, it is this kind of willing in the World, the Yajna of the Creation, that we must recognize, and present. Such is the most wonderful accomplishment of the great Yogi. In fact he came to earth to hasten its advent and “to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the Supramental.” Aswapati willed it and fixed it in the gleaming greatness of the Spirit. The contingent factor for its dynamic manifestation that remains to be reckoned with in the evolutionary process is its readiness to accept it. But such a 'readiness' is the work to be carried out by the executive Force. He persuades her to undertake it.

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If this mortal creation, in spite of its immediate origin in the operative Inconscience, has to become a divine creation, then the full play of Inconscience must be allowed in its own free and undiluted unhindered delight, perverse although it might look. The great Denial cannot be denied its right of assault, of treachery and deceit. Nor does it wait for consent from a feeble soul. It is as if by that operative Inconscience does the divineness of the Divine shine out in greater splendour with the absoluteness of this sovereignty. In fact that is the way we have to see the All-Divine in the play of a growing manifestation, that it can thus become more rich and opulent and splendid in it—because the Inconscience too is infinite, it is designedly infinite offering its ground for the divine infinities to dwell in this manifold of creation. But that demands a yogic effort. The thick viscous and bitter and biting poison-draught of mortality has to be drunk fully, that not even a single drop be left behind. Aswapati has done that. What Shiva did in the World of the Gods to become Nilakanţha, that Aswapati did in the evolutionary field.

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Aswapati has made such progress in his yoga-tapasya that the Unknowable’s mystery is on the point of revealing itself to him and he is waiting for the sign. But nothing happens. The Strength which he sought would not oblige and there doesn’t seem to be any immediate hope. In answer to his prayer no consenting Voice stoops down, and all that he had done looks to be proving inadequate, fruitless, vain. The Secrecy is uncompromisingly obstinate. That dynamic Truth yet remains behind the veil, and there seems to be something still wanting in his yogic effort. Aswapati has to find it out for himself. If Aswapati has totally identified himself with this inconscient creation, then he has also to be aware of the slippery ground he is treading. There are always its unlit and frightening surprises, and these can thwart the entire undertaking. Aswapati discovers the cause and is now free of all these things. There then comes the answer to his covert seeking.
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Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya has reached a point when he has to make a crucial choice. He must decide whether to renounce the claims of the world and live in the magnificence of undying splendours of heaven. Not in bondage but in full freedom which he has already won he has to decide upon the alternatives. The implications of the choice are such that either he must give up all, all including even that for which he aspired and for which he bore the inner wounds so difficult to heal, an option by which he can just disappear into That, Tat, without leaving behind any trace of his being and existence. He must renounce and walk away from everything, or else he must transform them into the self of the unnameable and inexpressible Supreme. Here Aswapati seems compelled to make a tremendous choice, but he does not quite exercise the choice. Rather his strategy is to force the issue in another manner. He makes a masterly move, a crucial and significant advance compelling the Will to shape itself in the will of his soul and his spirit. That is the finest hour of his yoga-tapasya by which a glowing solidity is given to the indefinable, that it may configure the future of this creation. It is as though Aswapati remembers the day when Satyavan is to die. This meaningful death and this poignancy are always there somewhere deep in his consciousness; they as if keep on reminding him always about his Avataric mission.

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The one whom Aswapati the Siddha-Yogi saw behind the World-Soul must be invoked. She is the tremendous builder of the worlds and her managerial-governing assent is absolutely necessary. Then only can the new consciousness be operative. This is the deep occult truth behind this creation, and Aswapati approaches her. Her coming to pave the way for the descent of Supermind as a new evolutionary principle is the one assuring condition which has to be detailed out and fulfilled. The earth-soul would grow in the luminous possibilities of Sachchidananda only when this would be accomplished. Behind it is the necessity of the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati. The Adya Shakti, the original supreme Might, always stays in the Transcendent. That is her home, and her office is there, and it is from there that she supports all the executive actions, supports in her own way from there even in the lower hemisphere. She does this through her powers and personalities and her thousand emanations which the evolutionary earth would be in a position to bear. But for the decisive change to take place she will have to project herself as the supramental Mahashakti. In that recognition is the compelling prayer of Aswapati offered to her

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Beyond Night and beyond Sleep is the supernal world of the supreme Trinity and that must establish itself in the Yogi-Tapasvin if another failure or frustration is to be avoided. The arduous Raja Yoga of Aswapati has to first become Vishva Yoga of the Universal Being. But then even that Yoga must fulfill itself in the Adya Yoga of the Divine Shakti. Then only can the Colonist from Immortality hope to acquire the threefold mastery, mastery over the lower triple nature, and become the Lord of Life. This is a major step, radical in its character, and it has got to be taken if the attempt is to succeed in this death-bound inconscient world. Aswapati recognises this and sets himself on the unprecedented task.

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In the course of his early yoga-tapasya Aswapati had a problem. The problem was that all those great supernal experiences he was having would stay with him only for a brief while. In him the old pull of unregenerate consciousness was still there and consequently the descending Spirit would withdraw; it would go back to the heights and retire. The dull inertia and obscurity of the body were yet there and they prevented its Godward march. The body was not quite able to receive and hold the shining immortality that was poised to pour itself into it, flooding it with all its inexhaustible contents of love, beauty, joy, power, knowledge. His “human outside” must open to sublimities of the Height and receive the power that can change things.

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The Book of the Divine Mother in Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri is absolutely unique in the entire spiritual literature and revelation. Not only the luminous broadness of vision does it present; it has the unparalleled action of a Siddha-Yogi who suffered and endured so much for us, who attempted all and achieved all for the little soul of this earth. Aswapati is free of humanity, free of the terrestrial smallness, free of ignorance and inconscience in his individual nature, and as the pure selfless self is chasing the Unknowable beyond manifestation to bring from it a new manifestation. He has done it. As the first step, he establishes a new and marvellous creation in the House of the transcendental Spirit, in Sachchidananda. A prototype has been created. But it can have meaning and sense with respect to the evolutionary earth only when it can start projecting into it, when it manifests upon earth. His mighty bit is done. But he has yet to do a mightier bit even as he knows that it is the task of the executive dynamic divine Shakti alone. She must step into the process and accomplish it. He approaches her even as she responds to his prayer. His plea is for her to take mortal birth and do the Yoga-Yajna upon earth for the new creation’s materialization here. He in fact compels her to do that. She obliges and promises him that she shall descend and break the iron Law of the inconscient working, the Law of Death standing in the way of the Law of Truth and Life and Joy. By her Spirit’s power shall be removed the doom of this helpless and toiling Nature. All mights and greatnesses shall join in her. That is the fulfillment of the triple yoga-tapasya of Aswapati, of the Yoga of the Supreme done in the earth-consciousness, in the House of Matter, that the divine Matter be born here, the divine body for the divine life marking the beginning of endless progress in the growing possibilities of the Spirit.

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Here is a synoptic presentation of Book Two—the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds. It forms the universal aspect of the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati the incarnate Supreme. By it he established his avataric presence in the entire cosmic manifestation. It is thus that the occult-spiritual base or ādhāra for the divine incarnate Shakti that is Savitri is luminously founded. It is in that resplendent and joyous dynamism of hers that the truth-possibilities of the Spirit shall enter into the expression of life on earth.

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After having created a new and marvellous creation, the problem is of bringing it down upon earth. For that to happen, Aswapati has to do his last mighty job. He must approach the divine Shakti to incarnate here herself, for it is she alone who can do it, not even he. He offers his prayer to her, in fact persuades her to take a mortal birth. He gets a promise from her that soon she shall descend and change inconscient Nature’s law, and the Law of Death, her unchanging will changing it. That is the fulfilment of the Yoga of the Supreme, the incarnate Divine’s triple yoga-tapasya consisting of the individual, the universal, and the transcendental or parama yoga in its luminous comprehensiveness. So it is the Divine’s creation being managed by the Divine himself, managed in all the poises, individual-universal-transcendental.

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With the release of the soul and the freedom of the spirit, Aswapati is now set on the Yoga of the Universe, Vishwa Yoga. If this is to be taken as an autobiographical description, Sri Aurobindo represented by Aswapati, then we could understand how rapidly, on the wings of an eagle, his yoga-tapasya was moving. At the beginning of the 1900s when Sri Aurobindo was in Baroda he wanted to acquire power to win freedom for his country. He started with long hours of Pranayama. Soon, in 1908, he had two major spiritual experiences, of the silent Brahman and the all-pervasive dynamic Brahman, things which take lives to have them. Similarly, by 1911 the Mother also had the knowledge of the Supermind and the necessity of it operating in the evolutionary process. This was the Yoga of Ascent and it was done, so to say, in no time. The entire effort of their life now lay in doing the Yoga of Descent. We may say that it is the Yoga of Ascent which is presented in the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds. The Yoga of Descent is what we have in the Book of the Divine Mother, it marking its beginning. While the Yoga of Ascent is echoed in the Vedic phrase “the ascending slope of heaven, ārodhanam divah” to reach the place where the riches are, Aswapati’s Ascent is of quite a different kind, and of it he has the intuition right from the beginning. The Yoga of Ascent is a preparation for the Yoga of Descent.

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The triple yoga-tapasya of Aswapati consists of the Individual, the Universal, and the Transcendental. By the first his soul is released from the sway of Ignorance. That brings about the first spiritual change of his life and mind and body. He then acquires the secret knowledge of the working of Nature, the play of Purusha and Prakriti, Purusha remaining quiescent and Prakriti carrying out all the activities, by quiescence he giving consent to her to do the work of preparatory progress in the evolution of higher kind, “to evoke a person in the impersonal Void and with the Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance”. The functionality is towards the veiled divinity throwing off the veil and manifesting itself in the world. With this secret knowledge Aswapati is now poised to read Nature’s correspondence with the soul and the nature of the dark Agreement by which everything is ruled here at the moment. He must grasp its full significance if he has to alter the clauses present in it. He is seized by a tremendous will and raises his eyes to unseen spiritual heights. What does he see there, on those unseen spiritual heights? He sees that his Self is above Nature, the Master who can bend Nature according to his will. He discovers a giant order and the transcendental light shows him the Transcendental’s play in this creation. He walks on the splendid and swift ways of the larger Nature, walks in the ease of Para Prakriti. There is the complete freedom of the spirit and, untouched and unaffected by the forces of Ignorance he sets himself on the path of the Universal and Transcendental Yoga. The Path of Ascent begins and he moves on it with the strength and speed of the eagle-wings. He becomes an adventurer breaking into cosmic Space and Time.

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The issue of this mortal creation is seen in the Transcendent and a decision is taken to resolve it by doing yoga-tapasya in it, yoga-tapasya invoking the transcendental Shakti to incarnate here. Also a ground is prepared for her action in the dynamism of the Truth-Will that has now been set into motion. Aswapati comes here to do the yoga-tapasya which shall have power to compel the transcendental Shakti’s mortal birth. She comes to conquer Death standing across the path of the transcendentally willed divine Event. That is the beginning of the ‘story’ of Savitri, the glorious saga of divine fulfilment. Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri, at once a Legend and a Symbol, has this foundation. It thus becomes an epic of divine manifestation and hence also a “poem of sacred delight”. But what is this yoga-tapasya of Aswapati? It is the Yoga of the Supreme himself done in the earth-consciousness, in the earth-soul.

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There is the Immortal in the mortal, but the Immortal also comes to the mortal to remove the darkness of mortality surrounding his soul and body and mind and life. But more than that is his task to prepare in him the deathless and the undying, that he may house him in him. This is the most occult feature, of the immortal becoming the mortal and yet retaining in him all his immortality. Aswapati sees this supramental change to be inevitable in the course of the earth evolution and comes here to work out that inevitability. In him begins the Yoga of the Supreme, that the inevitability is splendidly realized. This may be a “difficult and painful” work but he accepts all that is there in its long unceasing travail. The Individual, the Cosmic, and the Transcendental aspects constitute this Yoga of the Supreme.

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