In more than one sense, Sāvitrī can be said to be a poem which "justifies the ways of God to man." It would take us long—because the whole poem is full of them—to try to give a detailed enumeration of this justification. We will only give one or two illustrations. In Book II, Canto 10 dealing with "The Kingdoms of Godheads of the Little Mind" he enumerates various mental faculties and not only their limitations but their possibilities and the service they render to the growing soul of humanity. "Logic" and "inventiveness" have their place; then he brings only "imagination" and gives us a picture of its service to man's mental growth. Among the products of imagination is included myth. Now see how myth which has been generally regarded by modern positivist reason as something not only childish and superstitious but even harmful to the growth of man finds its justification on the Master's vision:

A bright Error fringed the mystery-altar's frieze;
Darkness grew nurse to wisdom's occult sun,
Myth suckled knowledge with her lustrous milk;
The infant passed from dim to radiant breasts.

The reader will see here how myth, if at all an error, is a bright Error; its very darkness nurses the growth of spiritual wisdom in man. And the vision brings before us the infant human being—a symbol of infant humanity,—who is being suckled by this dark nurse so that when it grows it will pass—to the radiant realms,—radiant breasts of true spiritual knowledge. And also see how in the lines that follow, we find a true value given to the myths by the divine power that works for the growth of man.…   more »

Sāvitrī as a poem has many cantos of sustained height of inspiration and the reader should prepare himself to breathe in the rare and high atmosphere on which Sāvitrī moves. There are even in those inspired long passages portions that rise to the heights of the Overmind where the vision and the word fuse. The reader has to make some effort to allow the expression to sink into him instead of trying to understand it with too much mental effort. Take for instance the description of Savitri in the very first canto where we see that "even her humanity was half divine" and to her "her own calamity" was "the private sign" of the evil that is at the root of life. After this, when we come to the second canto, the author again gives us a more detailed description of her personality. The first canto reminds us of her transcendent origin and her contact with the life-situation, but here in the second we have a more detailed and intimate description...   more »

Sāvitrī can be called "the song of life divine" in which humanity will find its fulfilment. It sees the spirit, the divine, the supreme who is Absolute, that by a graded, self-regulated descent from its realms of highest infinities of knowledge, consciousness and bliss descends creating at each step of its descent a universe that manifests its glory. When it reaches the kingdom of the subtle matter in its descent, it takes, or seems to our mind to take, a leap into the Unknown abyss of the Nescience which is the opposite end of the Supreme, the Infinite and the Eternal. It is an eternity of Darkness, of Night, of not only the absence of Light but seems to deny the very possibility of any light, consciousness or feeling. From this unfathomable dark Night,—this negative eternity, there arises to our view the gross material world, but this world seems to bring out into her gross forms the beauty and delight of the subtle material world. The spirit that gradually approached the creation of form in the subtle material kingdom is able to overcome the resistance of gross matter and bring out into expression some of its beauty in this gross material world. Above this subtle material plane comes the manifestation of Life on earth, and this life connects itself with the kingdom of the lower and the higher vital worlds of the Spirit. Similarly the mental world when it manifests here on earth gets connected with the worlds of higher Mind and its powers and beings. The Master takes us from these mental realms to the centre of this creation and from there to the realms of the Eternal from where a Truth-world governs the whole movement of the cosmos, waiting for the fulfilment of its purpose here in Time. Man, the mental being, holds within himself the capacity of releasing true divinity of himself, of the cosmos and of that which is beyond the cosmos. He releases in himself the divine spark and retaining all the instrumentation of his nature widens out into a vast cosmocity of being and of nature. He can even rise to the supracosmic, the Transcendent and by an act of supreme surrender bring down into his apparently individual self, the Transcendent being and his Divine Power. This would be possible when his nature rejects the attraction of the lower life of darkness and ignorance, rejects the false puppet self,—the ego, and surrenders its being and nature to the Supreme and his Higher nature. It would then be possible to manifest the Divine in life, to establish the victory of the Spirit here in Matter, that is, to create a new humanity which is the intention of the Divine.   more »

The origin of poetry according to modern ideas lies in the primitive peoples' faith in the power of words, or more properly, in their faith in the mystic power of incantation. The primitive people believed that they were surrounded by forces which were not physical and that it was possible to connect themselves with those supra physical forces in order to fulfil some of their desires. Thus it was accepted even by the uncivilised man that life was surrounded and influenced by super-life and that it was possible for him by incantation to influence those beings of the super-life so as to secure their helpful intervention. Hence the earliest form of poetry—incantation —was mystic in a certain sense. There is a striking agreement between the primitive man's belief and that of the Greeks who recognised inspiration as a source of highest creation. They described the psychic state of the poet as that of an exaltation or "enthousiasmos", the state of being in God. [1] In India, the idea that poetry and all artistic creation of the highest order comes from a suprarational source was well established even in the earliest dawn of its culture—the Vedic Age. There is plenty of poetry written dominantly from the imaginative intelligence or from the rich field of experience of life, there is classical and romantic poetry but the Indian aesthete never forgot the distinction between poetry coming from the suprarational source and that coming from the ordinary levels of being. In fact, the levels of speech or expression were classified under four heads. Vāk, the power of speech, including poetry, comes from four levels...   more »

“Here to fulfil himself was God’s desire.” Aswapati realizes this great truth and sets himself to do arduous yoga-tapsya for long years. He now knows that this fulfilment can come about only if the divine Power incarnates herself here upon earth. He approaches her and offers his prayer to her and invokes her, rather compels her to take the mortal birth by which alone the desire can be carried out.   more »

The Yogi-Poet has heightened the Indian myth by turning it into a rich episode full of significance for the human soul and its destiny. He has turned a local legend into a tremendous psychological fact full of significance for the human evolution. It is this transforming power which is the alchemy of the great Master. The originality of the poet scintillates when he deals with the life of Savitri and Satyavan after the conquest, of Death. In the legend, they return to the earth and Satyavan regains his father's kingdom and rules it for many years and is happy ever after. But, in the poet's symbol both Savitri and Satyavan rise from the kingdom of Death to the region of Eternal Day where the Sun of Troth never sets, where Ignorance is unknown and Death has no place. After staying in this region of Truth for some time, they look upon the earth and return to it in order to accomplish their Divine Work—the creation of a new humanity. Thus the legend is completely transformed by the creative vision of the great Master into a cosmic symbol.   more »

The poem opens with the Symbol-Dawn that simultaneously ushers in the outbreak of the Spirit in Matter as that of the Sun from the dark Night. We see here Savitri face to face with the crucial problem of her life, the death of Satyavan. We see her face to face with Earth, Love and Doom, with universal pain in her heart gathering her calm and supreme strength to meet the forces of Nescience concentrated in the God of Death. The second Canto gives us a picture of Savitri 's own inner workings before she faces the supreme test of her human life…   more »

Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri is at once a legend and a symbol. In this article AB Purani expounds on its symbol-aspect, basically from the ancient Vedic point of view.   more »

The word "Savitri" is derived from the word "Savitru" which in its turn is derived from the root "su"="to give birth to". Savitru means the Divine Creator, One who gives birth to, or brings forth from himself into existence, the creation. Savitri would mean etymologically "some one descended from the Sun", "one belonging to the Sun", "an energy derived from the Sun, the Divine Creator".

In the Veda, Aswa, the horse, is the symbol of life-energy or vital power. Aswa+ pati, Lord, would mean the "Lord of Life".   more »

Aswapati's spiritual development consisted of two yogic movements; one a psycho-spiritual transformation and the other, a greater spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power.

Aswapati's yoga falls into three parts: He is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as an individual; next, he makes an ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness (Yoga of the King); finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation ...   more »

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