After the exceptional Triple Siddhi
or Realisation,—of the individual, the universal, and the transcendental yoga-tapasya,—is
received the Boon of the
The One whom he worshipped was
within him now:
Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed a
mighty Face
Appeared and lips moved by immortal
words;
Lids, wisdom’s leaves, drooped over
rapture’s orbs.
A marble monument of pondering,
shone
A forehead, sight’s crypt, and
large like ocean’s gaze
Towards Heaven two tranquil eyes of
boundless thought
Looked into man’s and saw the god
to come.
A shape was seen on threshold Mind,
a Voice
Absolute and wise in the heart’s
chambers spoke.
The divine rendezvous is on the
glimmering edge of Mind,—because it is from here down below that things have to
happen, because whatever has to happen has to happen beyond it, beyond the
domains of the mental being, manomaya
puruşa, happen on the earth. She came out of the Unknowable, and stood
there, and saw in man the very god present in full splendour. Undoubtedly, she
also comes there with a purpose, with a response to the prayer from the deep
heart of the world. There is behind it the Will and the Sanction of the
Supreme, and she comes to fulfil it.
She is at once the most adorable
supreme Goddess, bhagavati paramā hi devi,
and the primaeval supreme Creatrix, paramā
prakŗtistwamādya, as the ancient Scripture reveals. She is the manifesting
Power of “the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone.” Her appearance in front of
Aswapati is the second term corresponding to the Divine Will in the supramental
manifestation upon earth, the intermediary between the call and the sanction,
between tapahaprabhāva and devaprasāda.
It is now obligatory that the
Goddess, having appeared on the scene, should offer a Boon to the aspiring
soul. She is bounden to do it.
Boy Dhruva had done long and
intense meditative tapasya, single-pointedly invoking Vishnu. It was accepted,
and the God appeared to bless him, to give him a boon. But Dhruva was happy to
have seen the Lord, and considered that itself to be the best reward for him.
For him, in it was fulfilled his soul’s longing, and there was nothing else
that he really wished to have. But then, having come there, Lord Vishnu must
grant a boon. There is in it a kind of an occult compulsion which the deity
must carry out. The realisation of a tapasvin can never be without its proper
spiritual entitlement; Sakshatkar cannot be without Varadan: (Vishnu Purana I.12.76)
tapastata phala prāptam yad dŗsht aham avaya dhruva |
mad darśanam ti
viphala rājaputra na jāyate ||
That in the appearance of Vishnu
his tapasya had borne fruit is no doubt true. But that cannot be sufficient.
The gods receive offerings from the aspiring souls and in return they have to
give appropriate rewards, or else the tapasya itself would prove fruitless, viphala. That was what Vishnu declared
to Dhruva.
Now such a glorious moment has
arrived in the tapasya of the ancient Aswapati of the Madra country; his
spiritual progress and attainment have ripened to receive their divine merit. A
hundred-thousand oblations the illustrious king offered to the Goddess Savitri
for eighteen years, and now she has appeared in the bright and flaming
Yajna-fire to grant him a boon. He was already a performer of the Yajnas, and
he had presided over excellent charities, and was one whose speech was truth, satyasandhah, who had subdued his
senses, was an observer of noble as well as difficult and austere practices.
Such was Aswapati, the king of the Madra land, now meeting there in the
spiritual world the Goddess Savitri. She must grant a boon to him, the boon
that has already the sanction of the Creator-Father Brahma himself. This indeed
is a glorious moment, and it has arrived.
But the glorious moment is a
crucial moment also. In it rests a choice that is going to decide the entire
future of his soul and of his spirit. It is even much more than that. As
Aswapati has identified himself utterly with the evolutionary earth, and
carried the “world’s desire” to the supreme Goddess, the course of evolutionary
earth’s fate is going to hinge upon what he is going to ask. One man's choice
can mould the destiny of the whole universe. The Goddess tells him: (Vyasa's Savitri, I:12-13)
O King sovereign, I am immensely
pleased by your purity and chastity, by your abstinence and self-restraint, the
observance of the rules of austerity, and all the heart with which you worshipped
me in devotion. O Aswapati, Ruler of Madra, ask what you desire, the boon;
falter not in any way, in performance of the duties of the Dharma.
He should not falter in asking for
the right boon. There is in it a great responsibility on him. Down to the
threshold Mind has she come all the way from her “unattainable home” which is
there far beyond the “inordinate spirit space”. She would advise him as to what
kind of choice he should make, a choice compatible with the present scheme of
things, and with the present capability and capacity of the soul of man and of
earth. Aswapati should not ask for the impossible; he should not ask that which
will prove disastrous to him as well as to the world. His heart should not be
driven by the Titan-force; nor should he ask for “the imperfect fruit, the
partial prize”. (p. 341)
Only one boon, to greaten thy
spirit, demand;
Only one joy, to raise thy kind,
desire.
The rest, he can remain assured, will
be taken care of by the high unchanging Will. The problem, whatever it be, will
be handled by her. The transfiguring hour of God has to come, and it will see
that all is done in its most propitious and helpful manner.
But Aswapati is Aswapati, a rare
protagonist of God’s work in the world. There is nothing that he needs for
himself and his yoga-tapasya has been for the evolutionary soul of the earth,
that it becomes a manifesting instrument in the splendour of God himself. In
the complete freedom of his soul and of his spirit, in the transcendental
freedom untouched by ignorance and inconscience, Aswapati exercises his
freewill which could be different from the Freewill with other possibilities in
the rhythms of the manifesting Truth. That is the greatness, the uniqueness of
his yoga-tapasya which itself has an identity and freedom with the Supreme.
Therefore, does Aswapati satisfy
most remarkably this most difficult condition stipulated by the divine Shakti.
He takes courage in his heart and makes himself bold to tell the supreme
Savitri herself that Man is not the crown of her creation, and that a better
and greater being must follow him and change this transient and sorrowful
mortal existence into a felicitous divinity which indeed is his true nature.
There has to be earthly immortality with its gleaming infinities governing and
unfolding the entire conduct in the life of the Spirit. A new world in the
Supramental is already poised for birth, and it is ready to descend upon earth
if the divine Savitri should wish it to be so. Aswapati has seen in the house
of the Spirit the “forerunners of the divine multitude”, and they are crowding
the stairs of birth to enter into little rooms of the mortal life in order to
change it into their own vastness of the truth-conscient delight. (pp. 343-44)
I saw them cross the twilight of an
age,
The sun-eyed children of a
marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows
of calm...
The architects of immortality.
If these gleaming forerunners,
divine beings, divyam janam of the
new Veda, have to come in order to shape, to new-create the transcendent
immortality here upon the earth then, argues Aswapati with divine Savitri, it
can happen so only if she obliges to come first and pave the way for them to
tread it. His solicitation to her is to incarnate herself and hasten the arrival
of this marvellous creation. In it only he sees the completest fulfilment of
the “world’s desire” which he took along with him to her and which, against
counter-suggestions, he does not forget even while he has to make the most
definitive choice. Aswapati is firm-willed in his intention and in his
commitment to seek, through her, the resolution of the issue in the mortal
world because, he knows, she alone can do it. The Boon is granted: (p.346)
O strong forerunner, I have heard
thy cry.
One shall descend and break the
iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone
Spirit’s power.
A limitless Mind that can contain
the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent
calms
Moved by the passions of the gods
shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall
join in her;
Beauty shall walk celestial on the
earth,
Delight shall sleep in the
cloud-net of her hair
And in her body as on his homing
tree
Immortal Love shall beat his
glorious wings.
A music of griefless things shall
weave her charm;
The harps of the Perfect shall attune
her voice,
The streams of Heaven shall murmur
in her laugh,
Her lips shall be the honeycombs of
God,
Her limbs his golden jars of
ecstasy,
Her breasts the rapture-flowers of
She shall bear Wisdom in her
voiceless bosom,
Strength shall be with her like a
conqueror’s sword
And from her eyes the Eternal’s
bliss shall gaze.
A seed shall be sown in Death’s
tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to
human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal
step;
Fate shall be changed by an
unchanging will.
Who else could have invoked the
supreme Savitri and received such a remarkable world-transforming boon if not
the Supreme himself born upon earth, Aswapati in the earth-consciousness? Does
not that act of prayer also become at once an act of grace?
Earth and Love and Doom have been
the ancient disputants, wrestling in the primeval darkness of the night. Ever
since the beginning of this evolutionary creation the issue of their claims had
remained untackled. It kept its grievous and fearsome seal firm on the Book of
Bliss, and none could break it open. Death has knowledge of it, but has no
means or access to it. Earth is imperfect and subject to the vicissitudes of
time and circumstance. Love is the power incarnate supporting in the depths,
and it awaits the moment of the manifest glory. The path of the divine Event is
blocked by the Mind of Night, the inconscient Will working inconsciently in the
material formulation.
But now the Triple Yoga-Tapasya of
Aswapati has brought that possibility closer to resolution. Indeed, with the
coming of the supreme Savitri it can become here an assured accomplishment. The
issue is remembered in the benediction itself and, because it is a high
remembrance, its resolution presently acquires the absoluteness of a godly certainty.
The Goddess has emerged from the golden deeps of transcendent Silence, and she
is standing on the threshold Mind with the earthly concern as a part of her own
active participation, and the vista is the vast cosmic field in the context of
the evolutionary soul. It is here that the Unmanifest’s Will or Decree will
bear fruit.
Aswapati standing anywhere on any
lower plane of consciousness than this “threshold Mind” could have as well
received the “fiat of the Word”. This could have been just in the manner of a
poet receiving, in his conscious build-up, the inspiration from an unknown and
inaccessible source. But then the quality of his poetry would have been quite a
reflection of that status of his receptivity and suffered in that manner. His
poetry would have been a colourful display of the thousand moods of life, or
the subtleties of mind, or the aesthetic perceptions of the inner being, or
spiritual flights in the sunlit sky of the creative utterance itself. Any one
of these could have given genuine poetry, could have well qualified itself to
belong to the realm of gold. But the most precise and inevitable expression,
the power of the revelatory Word, the force that articulates things would have
yet been wanting. By the time the original inspiration would have come down to
the recipient’s level, it would have got considerably modified if not
attenuated by the play of the intervening agencies. The blame would have rested
not with the original inspiration, but on the one who would be getting it. The
inspired poet's preparedness is equally significant.
Likewise, we may say that
Aswapati’s receiving the boon at the “threshold Mind” has its own intrinsic
spiritual significance, it underlying the operational infallibility and
convincing effectiveness in the toughness of the inconscient Nature’s
opposition to it. “Fate shall be changed” is the most decisive verdict received
by him.
And who is this Fate who is going
to be changed? She is presently the dark and dismal creativity whose one dire
instrument of operation in the mortal world is Death. Her abode is in the deep
gloom of the Abyss, and therefore it is there in the Abyss that she has to be
finally dealt with. It is she who has kept with her the soul of Satyavan
enchained, the soul whose deliverance from her iron clasp would mean ushering
in of divine life upon the earth. She shall hence be an instrument of the
supreme Goddess herself. In order that that happens, the divine Savitri has to
descend.
After granting the loveliest and
the mightiest boon to Aswapati the Goddess takes her leave and returns to her
abode, back to the Unknowable. As a bright star becomes invisible in white
brilliance of the day, or (p. 346)
As a flame disappears in endless
Light
Immortally extinguished in its
source,
Vanished the splendour and was
stilled the word.
An echo of delight that once was
close,
The harmony journeyed towards some
distant hush.
But her withdrawal or disappearance
from the earthly sight, her getting immortally extinguished in the source from
where she had come, antardhāna, is
also accompanied by the earthward surge of the power that has been set into
motion through her utterance. The Word that has been released moves abroad in
the authority and authenticity of its mantric effectivity. As a prelude to the
divinely promised birth, and without any delay in its response, there is a
movement towards the material world: (p. 347)
The warm-lipped sentient soft
terrestrial wave,
A quick and many-murmured moan and
laugh,
Came gliding in upon white feet of
sound.
Unlocked was the deep glory of the
Silence’ heart;
The absolute unmoving stillnesses
Surrendered to the breath of mortal
air,
Dissolving boundlessly the heavens
of trance
Collapsed to waking mind. Eternity
Cast down its incommunicable lids
Over its solitudes remote from ken
Behind the voiceless mystery of
sleep.
Soon this Goddess’s flaming might,
with the sword of conquest in her warrior hand, is to step from Eternity into
the earthly seasons with their varied colours of happiness,—and also of
affliction. She is soon to enter into the course of earthly events and earthly
tribulations and fortunes. She will be born as Aswapati’s effulgent daughter, kanyā tejasvīni, lotus-eyed, rājīvalochanam, fair and beautiful like
the Goddess Fortune, śri, and she
shall be radiant like a damsel of heaven, devakanyā,
such that no earthly nobility, no valiant prince will be able to match her
fiery splendour, claim her as his life’s partner. Soon she will do intense yoga-tapasya
and prove herself to be an expert in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānayogaparāyaņā, and will be a tapasvīni of remarkable achievements. (Vyasa's Savitri, 4.13)
Aswapati bears in his person the
reward of this golden influx and returns to his “human house”. He had
undertaken the long triumphant journey across these countless worlds climbing
one above another as a “thousandfold expression of the One”. (p. 96) He had
carried with him the “world’s desire” as a desirable burden, and delivered it
to the one whose concern for the world is supreme. By that concern of his all
shall be changed at the opportune moment. The concern materialises itself in
the form of a boon, and with it Aswapati returns to the field of his earthly
activity and occupation. And, as in a joyous expectant gesture, (p. 347)
The mortal stir received him in its
midst.
Once more he moved amid material
scenes,
Lifted by intimations from the
heights
And twixt the pauses of the
building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim
the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden
shores.
Now not with an early seeker's
mind, but with the Mind of Light in possession, the great Yogi plunges into
hectic activities of this mortal creation, mŗtyuloka.
It is in the luminous empire of his soul, the empire built on the foundations
of solid Matter, Matter luminous in its dynamic potency, that he shall welcome
the divine Goddess as his child, the Boon of Boons. Her task shall be to do
Shakti Yoga in this creation and bring fruition to the flowering Tree of Time.
She shall meet the ancient disputants and, in the Will of the Supreme, tackle
the evolutionary issue. To bring down the divine Shakti upon earth that in her
dynamism the earth be fulfilled in the Divine is the entire yoga-tapasya of
Aswapati,—and it is that has accomplished. Part One of Savitri is concerned with this yoga-tapasya, and it is that we
celebrate in the Vision and the Boon.