Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya has reached a point when he has to make a crucial choice. The supreme moment of truth is here and in the freedom of his soul he must decide whether to renounce the claims of the world and live in the magnificence of undying splendours of heaven, to abdicate in Light or die in the blaze of the Truth. Not in bondage but in full freedom which he has already won he has to decide upon the alternatives. The implications of the choice are such that either he must give up all, all including even that for which he aspired and for which he bore the inner wounds so difficult to heal, an option by which he can just disappear into That, Tat, without leaving behind any trace of his being and existence. He must renounce and walk away from everything, or else he must transform them into the self of the unnameable and inexpressible Supreme. (Savitri, p. 307)

All he had been and all towards which he grew

Must now be left behind or else transform

Into a self of That which has no name.

Here Aswapati seems compelled to make a tremendous choice, but he does not quite exercise the choice. Rather his strategy is to force the issue in another manner. He makes a masterly move, a crucial and significant advance compelling the Will to shape itself in the will of his soul and his spirit. That is the finest hour of his yoga-tapasya by which a glowing solidity is given to the indefinable that it may configure the future of this creation. In the language of the legend of Savitri, it is as though Aswapati remembers the day when Satyavan is to die; related with it is also the poignant affliction of Savitri herself who has taken the burden of the world upon her shoulders. This meaningful death and this poignancy are always there somewhere deep in his consciousness; they as if keep on reminding him always about his Avataric mission.

In the person of Aswapati the “world’s desire” climbs to the most forbidding and austere snow-white sublime, the Peak of the Supreme. There it surrenders itself to the Will of the executive Shakti. The magic formula is discovered; Sankhya and Yoga join in Bhakti. The consent of the Witness Purusha and the patronising approbation of the Siddha receive the sanction in the divine Grace. Truly, it is this Power who must descend and act and fill all life, fill it with her sweetness and with her love and beauty and joy. The world can be fulfilled only by her dynamic and sweet and happy loving presence. The entire gain of the yogic pursuit has so far been in just accomplishing the preparatory spiritual powers or siddhis, only of lifting up of the black veil, but the white luminous veil is yet to be removed. (p. 311)

The mystery of God’s birth and acts remains

Leaving unbroken the last chapter’s seal

Unsolved the riddle of the unfinished Play.

The cosmic Player is amused by this strange and curious sequel which is yet to reach completion, reach as if in a long tortuous way. He is looking from behind the mask and laughs, knowing that the drama has not hitherto arrived at the point of dénouement. The issue has still to be resolved. Indeed,

A high and black negation is not all,

A huge extinction is not God’s last word,

Life’s ultimate sense, the close of being’s course,

The meaning of this great mysterious world.

In absolute silence sleeps an absolute Power.

And, when awoken, what is it that this absolute Power will not do? (p. 312)

It can make the world a vessel of Spirit’s force,

It can fashion in the clay God’s perfect shape.

It can perform the God-miracle; it can fulfill “God’s desire” here in this mortal creation. But if it has to happen here in this mortal creation, it will be only through her action. The aspect of manifestation is her concern which she carries out in the Will of the Supreme. For this purpose the silent Force comes missioned down from the Absolute.

But Aswapati is somewhat impatient. He doesn’t want things to shape and happen in the laggard process of Time. There is no doubt that, one day or other, the miracle will take place; but as it is a “slow-paced” miracle, it is not acceptable to the impatient Yogi. He was advised not to awaken too soon the “immeasurable descent”, lest under its swift and fiery tread it should crush the creation itself. Because such a danger does exist in the present context of things, it is only the Grace that can save this creation from such a disaster. Aswapati sees it, recognizes it; and so he attends to it. The question is: Can this deliberate and well-intentioned slow-paced process be activated and quickened without meeting the contrary adverse effects? The thinker and toiler, the treasurer of superhuman dreams that Aswapati is, must be greatly concerned about realities of the transcendental action in the remote field of darkness and ignorance; he should be quite pragmatic with reference to these in their realisation. As regards the eventual fact that in this new Yoga of earth-consciousness, the terrestrial world becoming God’s place of habitation, iśāvāsyam idam sarvam, there need be the least apprehension; there is the inevitability about its happening sooner than later. But the actual differences come up in the efficacy of Time. Nor is it that Aswapati does not understand the danger in rushing through, in forcing the matter. He himself speaks of the divine reasoning behind the working of the evolutionary process: (p. 342)

Infallible are thy mysterious steps,

And, though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,

Hidden in the blind shifts of Fate she keeps

The slow calm logic of Infinity’s pace

And the inviolate sequence of its will.

But behind the works of Time he has already seen the golden possibilities waiting to enter into the terrestrial process. He also recognises the fact that these possibilities can turn into realities only in the bidding, in the ministry of the divine Shakti. He must therefore approach her and plead to her to descend on the earth to accomplish the task. The power that arose from his “slumber’s cell” saw everything from the vision of timelessness; the unfolding sequel showed to him the arrival of the pioneers of the new creation. He is reasonably certain that soon the divine successor will arrive here and take charge of the suffering humanity, of this imperfect world. But all that can happen only if the mighty creatrix herself incarnates in a living form. She alone can “unlock the doors of Fate”, mysterious Fate who all along has kept mortality tied to ignorance and death. That is Aswapati’s plea. It is the plea of the Supreme as a Yogi made to the transcendental Power, Para Shakti, who stands behind the luminous possibility in this manifestation. The Godhead has to invoke the supreme Force. Purushottama has to lean on Adi Prakriti.

The thrust of Aswapati’s pleading to that Goddess is that, although the world is full of misery and suffering, and we live annulled, frustrated, spent, yet there has to come from it (p. 342)

A larger seeking man with nobler heart

A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,

The executor of the divine attempt

Equipped to wear the earthly body of God.

His concern is to see that this happens, that the earthly body of God does become ready for the divine habitation. He must climb to the supreme source of creation and invoke there the transcendental Shakti to help the quest of the evolutionary soul on the upward path. That is the imperative.

Aswapati is standing on the verge of the Unknowable. Nothing of his own person or his individuality is present with him now, and he is free from the bondage of ignorance as well as of knowledge. No will, no thought, no sense now awake or quicken him and all that was there with him until this moment is left behind,—except the single yearning that had taken him to that gleaming edge of creation. In such a total freedom, incontingent of the realities of this world of ignorance and of knowledge, he perhaps yet bears the memory of the dire event that is going to occur in the forest. He has the gleaming intuition of the future about his daughter Savitri’s marriage with Satyavan and his death in the Shalwa woods at the noontime. In it is present the entire problem of mortality for which he had undertaken this long and difficult journey across all these occult and spiritual worlds.