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. Therefore (Savitri, p. 284)
He looked on the world and watched
its motive thoughts
With the burden of luminous
prophecies in their eyes,
Its forces with their feet of wind
and fire
Arisen from the dumbness in his
soul.
However, neither these “motive
thoughts”, nor the “forces with their feet of wind and fire”, these Gods of the
Self of Mind residing in the dumbness of the world, the Gods who walk into the
dumbness of his soul are, in terms of their operational effectiveness and
consequences, competently great for the purposes of his spirit. However, what
Aswapati wins in the process is peace, luminous peace in his soul and he gets
the knowledge of the cosmic Whole.
But because his soul is the soul of
a tireless seeker, in search of that by which the earth will be fulfilled, he
is ever guided in his endeavour. Neither his shortcomings nor his siddhis come
in the way of the onward progress; that is his sempiternal quest in the secret reality
of this mortality-bound world. Suddenly a “luminous finger” falls upon him and
all is changed.
The mission of Aswapati’s soul never
was just to lead him to the high states of wonder and beatitude which he could
have easily done; it was not meant simply to stay there, to vanish into it.
Indeed, he needed not those states for himself, he being their rightful or
natural owner, possessor, their inhabitant. His soul therefore makes a unique
choice, a well-intentioned and deliberate choice in full awareness of the
context of the evolutionary earth. But the significant aspect of this choice of
the soul of his is that there is also the sanction from the Supreme; for the
incarnate soul there is the Grace, bhagavadkŗpā,
to accomplish what is going to be accomplished with it. But the choice is not
just a choice among many options: it is actually a firm Yogic will to which now
there is the answering support from high. The will and the sanction are the
great certainty of his Yoga’s success. The ceaseless willing, though it entails
great suffering for him, gets the answering sanction; that is the uniqueness of
the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati. This willing, this dynamism of samkalpa is the
true Aryanhood which alone can change
the mortality of the earth into growing divinity.
With this kind of divine assurance
Aswapati can climb up to the higher states of Consciousness; he can climb up
and explore their powers and potentialities. He enters into the region of the
World-Soul where the dangers, and all the cherished joys of Nature, are but a
mighty beat of the vast breathing Spirit. Here the silent soul heals the bitter
cruelties of the earth and transforms all experience into experience of
absolute delight: (p. 291)
Intervening in the sorrowful paths
of birth
It rocked the cradle of the cosmic
Child
And stilled all weeping with its
hand of joy;
It led things evil towards their
secret good,
It turned racked falsehood into
happy truth;
Its power was to reveal divinity.
In this bright and rich fertile
soil grows the seed; from it springs up the fruit-bearing tree of the Eternal.
The Eternal himself is now new-born. Here is a flame which “cancels death in
mortal things”. Here is the great happy Siddha-loka, the World of the
Accomplished, of those beings who are ever plunged in the deep spiritual sleep
and who are awaiting the adventure of the new life, the long-promised reward
for which they had taken their births. At the top of the human scale are, as
Empedocles would inform us, the prophets, the minstrels, the physicians and
their next step is upward to the Divine, sharing the hearth and table of the
gods.
Aswapati’s mind is silent, his
heart motionless and calm, body full of peace. It is in that spiritual state in
the World-Soul he meets the deathless Two-in-One. In a mighty union’s poise the
Presence and the Power are seen to be one. There, interlocked in the marvellous
joy of creation, are the seeing Self and the potent Energy, Shiva and Shakti,
Brahma and his creative Word, Ishwara and Ishwari, Purusha and Prakriti, the
Right and the Might, Being and Nature, Existence and Consciousness-Force. And
the truth is that they themselves come from the absolute Unknowable.
Here in the World-Soul have
combined Sankhya and Yoga, and they are waiting for Bhakti to arrive. By the
occult alchemy of the supreme One, the knowledge of the Many will then bear the
fruit of delight when the transcendent Grace shall work out the transforming
miracle.
Not that there were no earlier
attempts to reach and realise this unapproachable wonder. But these had proved
half successful and very partial. The doubtfulness of success of these attempts
was also known to the earlier Yogis; but in the scheme of things these attempts
were necessary and the danger of their half-failure, almost inevitable in their
character, had to be accepted. Presently, the hope is that the supreme Might
will overpower and cancel all that frustrates the endeavour. When the
World-Force had gone abroad and created a thousand
After the advent of the World-Force
came the Spirit of the Worlds. It brought with it countless domains of the
Mind-plane, the Lokas of Manomaya Purusha: (pp. 241-42)
It pitched mind’s tent in the vague
ignorant Vast. ...
Magic of percept joined with
concept’s art
And lent to each object an
interpreting name. ...
Its skill endorsing Matter’s right
to think
Cut sentient passages for the mind
of flesh
And found a means for Nescience to
know.
But Aswapati sees that this endless
hierarchy of planes is weak and helpless and, in a certain sense, is also
issueless. In the totality of the cosmic scheme its powers and potentialities
are limited and it cannot prevail over the cruder and darker agents of the
nether world. It surely gives to potentialities ideas and forms but it cannot
give to them the breathing light by which they can live in intimate reality. Of
such an incomplete kind cannot be the ultimate mystery of this creation. Hence
Aswapati should proceed further in his arduous yoga-tapasya. The question that has
to be answered is this: Why could not the World-Force and the Spirit of the
Worlds dispel the darkness of ignorance and remove from life all evil and sin
and death? Should he not then approach the one who stands behind the two? He
went to the dismal and dim caliginous Abyss and drank all the Poison,—drank
till none was left. He plunged into the bottomless Pit of Gloom and saw the
small curious futility of created things. There the Being is unconsciously
asleep and in that state knows not what once it had thought to do, what it
wished to build. But then to Aswapati that very strange futility made available
a key to the whole secret of this sordid existence. (p. 231)
A light was within him, an
invisible hand
Was laid upon the error and the
pain
Till it became a quivering ecstasy,
The shock of sweetness of an arm’s
embrace.
The clue was that, behind this
Night there exists the Eternal’s Sun, that destruction becomes a hastening pace
in the march of this creation. When this shall be done, the radiant volume or
the magnum opus which is the Book of Bliss shall be written.
Aswapati has now well understood
the problem and his Grand Odyssey takes him to the Supreme Mother, the divine
executive Shakti. There is the mighty inconscient Denial seated at the bottom
of this creation and it has to be replaced by the luminous Assertion. Aswapati
is convinced that this can happen only if the superconscient Force is brought
down here. Therefore, this Bhagiratha of the Future invokes the descent of the
Ganges of Heaven, the swift-pacing Mandakini of luminous currents. He invokes her to come down, come down and flood the
subterranean fields of consciousness. Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya now advances to
hold in his sunbright locks the Inrush of that surging Power.