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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Savitri has come to complete the story of her soul she had undertaken to write long ago. It is not that she was coming here now for the first time. In fact wherever and whenever there was a possibility of manifestation of the divine Ray, she had been always there. She has been carrying on the executive part of the evolutionary course, carrying it out in the Will of the Lord, the Will that has gone into it. The book is being written and written, and no page can be closed until the entire story unfolds. Savitri is not going to terminate the work she had undertaken to do.

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Man is driven by the forces of Nature, and very rarely does he get intimations from the higher worlds of knowledge and beauty and joy; even if he might be getting them, the chances are that he will ignore them, if not dismiss them—because he has not established a living contact with those wonderful worlds. But Savitri, though she has taken the human birth with all its limitations, is fully conscious of who she is and for what purpose she has come. The veil of Nature is certainly there, a thick and dark veil, but it does not obscure her innate divine spirit: she belongs to Ishwarkoti.

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The greatness of Savitri is the greatness of Love itself, Love divine, pure and bright and gorgeous, without the trace of ugliness that comes with the vital’s degrading passions and wants and desires. It is all-embracing, and nor gods nor the hostiles nor men of whatever denominations they may be get left out. If this were not there, this Love Divine, the creation would simply collapse. It is this Love that moves the sun and all the other stars, and things that are visible and invisible. All is founded on it; all lives by it; all that one cherishes and hopes, and all that grows—it is because of it. It is this Love that has found a perfect place in the soul of Savitri. Therefore, the whole world could take a glad refuge in her single heart. Nothing she dismisses, disdains; on the other hand, by the power of her spirit it gets transformed; things become divine. That is the golden touch she brings to us. She is both the silence, the support for divine action, and the executive word by which things get materialised here, silence the supporting spiritual base, theādhāra, and word bearing in it the truth-rhythm, the mantra that brings into existence what it proclaims. She is in possession of the dynamic and the supportive powers by which if things have to happen will happen. When the divine Will is there, the high samkalpa, she accomplishes what is willed for the creation. No wonder Love met in her his own eternity.

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The issue that Savitri has to address is getting sharpened, the issue between Existence and Non-existence, between Being and Non-being, between the original Gods colloguing with each other, they debating the fate of this evolutionary earth. If Being is the cosmic determinate, then Non-being would be the indeterminate, that which cannot be defined, and therefore it would make matters intractable. If Savitri has to confront this great occult and stiff indeterminate, then that can become possible only when it shall assume a perceptible tangible shape, a form, when it becomes a sort of seizeable determinate. This is precisely what happens in the figure of Death, the cosmic Nothingness assuming a shape, the Shadow-figure thrown by the original Void rising to meet the challenge of the invading divinity. The event of Satyavan’s death is the occasion which marks this appearance.

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When Life had heard a call from the inanimate objects, she adventured into the material scene; this was in order give ‘life’ to it. The “gracious great-winged Angel” had come with her gifts of love and sweetness and joy, but that was too early to be. Instead, she was stunned by Death and got totally deformed and corrupted. Here Aswapati sees the beginning of evil at the root of things and, if this has got to be remedied, this dark afflicted root must be destroyed or transformed. That is the fundamental discovery he has made, tracing the cause of Life’s failure, her incapacity to change in any radical sense the material world. Not Life, nor Mind, but Supermind alone can accomplish it.

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The fated day of Satyavan’s death has arrived and, even as Savitri gets well ready early in the morning, she prepares herself to confront universal Time and Fate, to challenge the destined moment and destiny. If the required price has to be paid to the God of Pain, and she is going to do it by bearing upon herself the entire affliction associated with it. In this great undertaking of hers she is helped by the eternal Hand, and she makes her small daily acts a sacrifice to the presiding divinity. She recollects the past and knows that it does carry the unknown future in its breast, full of hopes, and therefore it is worthwhile putting in the needed effort. In a swift movement of consciousness she reviews the whole sequence of events culminating into a year, as if it was hurrying and gathering up to reach this point of decisive change.

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The earth has been chosen for the big work of bringing back the manifested to its Origin. The world has become the symbol of the whole universe and upon the earth the Sovereign Mother has incarnated from the beginning, to hasten the waking up of the world to the consciousness of the Origin.

It is to this Consciousness of the Mother that legend gave the name of Savitri and then the whole story was built.

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This is a magnificent description of what will happen when the true Power will manifest upon earth. She came to prepare earth with the New Consciousness, the Consciousness that will transform the life on earth to make it ready for a New Creation.

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This is the description of Love in its essence, not the Love that is known upon earth and is so mixed up with many egoistic movements that it has gone beyond all recognition and become only the expression of selfish desires. It is the Love that is as vast as the Universe, equal to all and to everything and asking nothing in exchange for what it gives.

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It is a very vivid description showing that a stupendous power and energy is needed to face the circumstances when you know them in advance. Man is always complaining that he has not been given the power to know what will happen to him. But there is not one man in a million who would have the strength, the quiet calm to face the circumstances if he knew them in advance. This is just to give the description of that condition. Because Savitri is conscious of the Divine in Herself that She knows what will happen and yet has the quiet strength to face it.

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Once Huta asked the Mother to explain Savitri. After a brief meditation for a moment or two, she said enthusiastically: “If I have to explain these passages, I would rather prefer to start from the very beginning and give a full explanation of the whole of Savitri.” She did it for the opening Book, The Book of Beginnings, and this has been brought out in five volumes, titled About Savitri. The Mother’s explanations along with the paintings by Huta, inspired and approved by her, are a wonderful gift to us and we can never be adequately thankful to the Mother for it. The only way of expressing our thanks could be to grow more and more in Savitri who shall give us the truth and the things of the truth.

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Here is the text of The Issue, Book I Canto II, of Savitri according to the Revised Edition (1993).

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After an extensive survey of the Symbol Dawn carried out over the past six months or so, we now begin to look into the second canto of The Book of Beginnings of Savitri. First we reproduce the text as we have in the Centenary Edition published in 1972.

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A little known fact: In Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Works in Bengali, there is a poem titled Savitri. This poem seems to be a rough draft of the first canto of the original Savitri. It was probably composed either in 1916 or 1917. The reader, if he compares the earliest draft of Savitri with the draft in Bengali, would certainly note some strong similarities. A translation of this poem is given by the author.

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We have been looking into the opening canto of Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, almost for the last six months and yet it seems to elude us all the while. Indeed, it does elude us all the while because at least an element of perception is needed to have access in its realms of gold. There are in it depths below shining depths, and heights above splendid heights, and far-extending luminous occult ranges that are the parts of the transcendent itself, and one has to have contact with them to make further progress in the limitlessness of its infinity. That we don’t have—but that is precisely what Savitri gives us; its Word has the power to usher in divine experience in us. And the Word has thought-knowledge in it, and it has the capacity to open our sight to the visions of the beyond, those that are ardently waiting into us, and the sense of its sound carries the rhythms of the dynamic Truth that sets the worlds into motion. But that Word can be ours only when we allow it to settle in our consciousness of deep hush, in the soul of aspiring will, in the spirit of widening knowledge.

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In the wake of many wide-shining Dawns of the Veda the result is, the rarity and wonder preferred to go back to the place where from she had come. “She looked no more on our mortality.” Can there be anything more painful than that? But we were not ready, and blame we must ourselves. The groundwork had to be prepared. More than that, he imperative was to provide a support for her presence here, the spiritual ādhāra. Aswapati had to come and do the qualifying yoga-tapasya that the shining Dawn of the everlasting Day comes to stay, comes to remove the indignity of the mortal fate.

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This pair—the Presence and the Power—occurs on several occasions in Savitri, for instance when Aswapati the Yogi stood on being’s naked edge. “A presence he yearned for suddenly drew close.” He surrenders entirely to her, the being of wisdom, power and delight. He has the conviction that it is she who alone can remove the indignity of our mortal life, indignity of death; his spirit gets caught in her intolerant flame and he knows that the Power that lives upon the heights must act. In order that that happens, he identifies his will with her will in the oneness of her strength: A vast surrender becomes his only strength to accomplish whatever has to be accomplished.

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The heavenly Goddess had brought with her heavenly gifts. She came, she wanted to stay, but she withdrew—because there was here only the light of common day. The Mother revealed to us the descent of supramental Power in 1956, but she also said that big waves of deep blue Inconscience came and swallowed it. It has to work itself out from within the Inconscience.

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The persistent touch of the transfiguring power does manage to stir up the stubborn black quietude. The result is beauty and wonder arrive on the scene to brighten up life. A gate of dreams with gold panel and opalescent hinge is fixed, and it opens a passage for the beyond to enter into this world of ours. There is a positive gain; in fact

Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed
Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;
A lonely splendour from the invisible goal
Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.

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