The Book of Beginnings of Savitri begins with a description of the
transcendental decision that has been taken in the context of the mortal
creation as one of ways of becoming, of giving rise to an ever-growing divine
manifestation. He wanted to be many, bahusyām
prajāyeyeti, says the Upanishad, and the process is set into motion. The
first two cantos, the Symbol Dawn and the Issue, form a luminous prolegomena of
what is and how it is going to be achieved. If Death has been so far a helper
and sustainer of Life in some way, a Power lending itself towards the modus
operandi in the domain of Ignorance, now it is that which must change, step
into the domain of Knowledge. By the Ignorance one crosses beyond death, avidyayā mŗtyum tīrtvā, and by Knowledge
brings to evolution the splendid possibilities of the vast spirit into this
creation. If this has to now happen, it is essential that the divine Shakti
herself steps into it and opens the two-way opal gates for the working. But if
the divine Shakti has to step into it, there has to be an aspiration from
below, there has to be a desire for her coming, there has to be a call from
Ignorance. It is also necessary that there is preparation to bear the burden of
her Greatness. There has to be a proper ādhāra,
base, support, a spiritual readiness in its fourfold way to lend itself to her.
The physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic with the corresponding modes
of perfection in work, nobility of heroism in its dynamic movement, the
widening of the worlds of knowledge, the constant flaming of the psychic for
the Divine manifestation, the golden Agni burning like a diamond in the delight
of existence,—all these have to be set, prepared, organized. It is to
accomplish this that the Supreme himself comes as an Avatar. He comes and does
the fourfold Yoga, leading it to the Yoga of Perfection. This fourfold yoga has
to be done as the Yoga of the Individual, as the Yoga of the Universe, and the
Yoga of the Transcendent, these in the splendour of the Yoga of Perfection. The
Supreme comes here as Aswapati to accomplish it.
His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres
Into our province of ephemeral sight,
A colonist from immortality. …
His birth held up a symbol and a sign…
Although consenting to mortal ignorance,
His knowledge shared the Light ineffable.
A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable. …
He bore the stamp of mighty memories
And shed their grandiose ray on human life.
His days were a long growth to the Supreme. …
His soul lived as eternity's delegate,
His mind was like a fire assailing heaven,
His will a hunter in the trails of light.
An ocean impulse lifted every breath;
Each action left the footprints of a God,
Each moment was a beat of puissant wings. …
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.