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.

The Yoga of the Supreme is a twofold Yoga of divine creation in the mortal world. If the first is called the Yoga of Sacrifice or Yoga Yajna, the second is the Yoga of Realisation or Yoga-Tapasya. It is as though the Supreme steps out of his state of Non-manifestation and plunges into the gainful occult Void to ‘real’-ise in it the rich magnificence of manifestation for his own habitation. To be many,—that was the desire cherished by him and he set himself in right earnest to accomplish the happy splendid task, task in the joy of creation. This is the Yoga Yajna, the Holocaust of the Supreme. But after this, after treading the path of the swift divine Declivity, facilis descensus in the Divine sense, the path or the movement has to turn around and become the slow and long arduous path of luminous Acclivity, that through it may materialise in timeless awareness the intended fulfilment of the delight-of-existence in several and in every detail. The second of these two glorious laps in the entire process of creation is dealt with, in a symbolic way, in the Legend of Savitri.

In this symbolic legend as adapted by Sri Aurobindo, Savitri’s human father Aswapati is quite aware of the death of his exceptional daughter’s lover and husband, Satyavan. He even seems to be aware that, through it, could be established immortality in the mortal world. In fact, the imperative seems to be such that it alone would make Savitri step into the nether world whence issues forth the terrible dreadful Power of Annihilation. Which means that the death of Satyavan is a shining Gauntlet thrown at Death that, in his picking it up, the matter be settled once and for all. Satyavan’s death therefore becomes a supreme necessity, a very desirable exigency, a kind of pretext to deal with all that stands as opposition to the divine Will, divya samkalpa. It provides a point of entry for Savitri to walk into the region of darkness where dwells the inconscient Divine. By doing so, she shall win, in that very world, the victory of light. Such is her singular victory and it is a victory which no mortal, howsoever great he might be, would have ever been able to gain. But even for this to happen, the Supreme himself has to first come here in the mortal world, mŗtyuloka, and gather within himself the needed power to support the action of the Divine Executive who is going to wage the battle with the Adversary; he has to come in full effective dynamism of the eternal Being of Knowledge, Jnyānamaya Purusha.

That is the birth of Aswapati, the Lord of Life, the Master-Yogi commanding a thousand active energies or forces that work in the Universe. He comes in order to do Yoga-Tapasya and to invoke divine Savitri's incarnation that she may attend to the issue herself. In fact, it is more than invocation; he compels her mortal birth.

Thus the five primal elements, the glowing irreducibles, the atomic constituents that go to make up this material creation, can be viewed to be: Aswapati calling down the radiant power of Savitri who would choose the death-bound Satyavan as her life’s partner that she may summon the Annihilator of the Worlds for a decisive win in the drama of this evolutionary Earth: Aswapati-Savitri-Satyavan-Death-Earth.

Death is thus the divine issue that prompts Aswapati to take up the Yoga of Realisation in the multiply-charged atmosphere of the Earth. True, his sonship belongs to a “larger sphere”, to spaceless-timeless infinity; but his affiliation is always towards cosmic space and time. He accepts this smaller sonship to pay “God’s debt to earth and men”. He makes a most noble sacrifice and leaves behind all those glorious transcendences of his. But, then, in that strange and yet operative forgetfulness he also bears “mighty memories” of the mission he is to fulfil upon the earth. He has to carry the “world’s desire” to the supreme Mother and prepare the occult-spiritual ground for her immortality-ushering action here.

Aswapati’s Yoga of Realisation is the Supreme Being’s Yoga, Yoga of the Jnyānamaya Purusha towards this mighty transformative action. It is the Purushottama Yoga done in the earth-consciousness. In it is the triple labour of Ascent which takes care of the Individual, the Universal, and the Transcendental dimensions. By the first, Aswapati’s soul becomes free and, with that siddhi, he moves at will throughout the universe. In that soul’s freedom of his, free now from the workings of the lower Nature, and in the greatness of his spirit, Aswapati scans the secrets of the worlds that pile one above the other in an endless hierarchy. Not only that; he begins forthwith chasing the Unknowable from where alone can the true and lasting answer to his pursuit come. Which only means that from the Unmanifest, a Power has to come who alone can unto this present world of mortality bring a new and marvellous creation, a creation in the triple Glory of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda.

In the process, as his sadhana progresses rapidly on the upward route, Aswapati gets corresponding siddhis, spiritual powers and perfections, a mastery over occult forces. A Seer is born within him who connects the mortal scheme to divinity; he is under the gaze of a spiritual dawn; he has acquired “mighty ease” to carry out superhuman tasks. Cosmic consciousness and identity with all that is around, the waking up of the subtler sheaths of his body, listening in his silent mind to the footsteps of the Word that knows, strange powers touching his life,—these are already the rewards in his possession. In this world of travail and suffering that arise because of mortality’s limitations in its ego-consciousness, he has acquired great spiritual perfections. Then in the broad and bright expanses of his Prajna awareness there is the descent of Gayatri, the rhythmic and glowing Assertion that sets into motion what it promises and pledges. In the dumb and dark subconscient caves it invokes the Inexpressible to take contour and form and, with its light, transform it into happy breathing divinity upon the earth. The transformative action is so complete that, awake in exultation, even his body's cells open themselves to the splendour of the invading Marvel.

Aswapati’s consciousness has reached the summits of spiritual realisation. In his eyes there is now the look of the Supreme. He has the vision of things in their details and in their full magnificence; it is the vision of divinity itself that he gets, the vision working transcendentally in everything. He experiences an identity, unity, oneness with all that is. No more are his roots in the inconscient soil of darkness, but now are they in the gleaming widenesses of Infinity. The life energies that sway him and put him into action are the oceanic energies that flow from the living dynamism of Eternity. His are limitless movements in limitless peace. He has opened himself to the worlds of endless wonders. Human birth he has taken, but humanity governs his movements less and less. There is in him the glory of deathlessness. He has broken into another space and time, and his soul has become an adventurer ready to explore the cosmic vastnesses.