Book VII—The Book of Yoga

 

Canto 1

The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart’s Grief

 

The shadow of bliss fell now on Savitri:

In the trance of trepid night when together

Her moon of honey was chased by a poison cloud,

And the owl of fear hooted in the sobbing heart;

There reached to console her voice of no helpful god.

Not scary dream but unspeaking silence

Appeared to make the year harsher than grief.

The flame that had come with her from the calm sky

Trembled in the storm-wind raging in the forest,

And instantly marked destiny drew nearer yet.

In the embrace of Satyavan and Savitri

Laughed death deriding this life’s hollowness.

 

 

The royal party takes Savitri to the Shalwa forest and her heart’s desire is fulfilled. However, in the foreknowledge of Satyavan’s death the utter unknown was gaping into her future, about which the dwellers of the hermitages knew the least. In the meanwhile, for the newly wed each other’s company was an unforgettable bliss. But that happiness made Savitri’s anguish more poignant. The approaching doom brought grief to her joy. No doubt she attended the day's household activities with care, as would a goddess with the worldly tenderness; yet deep in her self she remained sad. She was for a moment even thinking of going as sati with her dead husband. The year was fast coming to a close and she lived resigned to her inescapable fate. Her daily tears only became an offering to the unsatisfied god. Yet, gathered within, Savitri was calm. Soon would Satyavan die and she should be prepared to meet the eventuality, though she knew not how she was going to do it.

 

 

Canto 2

The Parable of the Search for the Soul

 

Savitri lay prone with sorrowing spirit,

But the greatness who watches all her movements

Commanded to awake her to her soul’s truth;

She must gather in it a defeatless power

And, crossing the gate of death, meet the eternal.

First in subconscient plunge the shadowy past

To her sight unfolded the obscure worlds,

The wounding stone, the hungry beast, the ape-mind

Leaping from tree to dangerous tree of thought.

Somewhere lived deep buried the issue of nature

Finding in subterranean dark its food.

This she must consume in her shakti yajna.

 

 

Human Savitri remains helpless in a downcast mood. But she is attentive enough to receive the summons from her summit’s being. Her melancholy itself thus becomes a yogic state; it becomes Vishad Yoga, the Yoga of Dejection with the Siddhi of the Grief’s self becoming calm. She is reminded of the mission she has come to carry out. First she should find out her soul and make in it all her actions the actions of God. She must possess the might that conquers Death. Savitri at once obeys the directive and with that begins her occult inward journey. She witnesses the play of the subconscient forces and also the possibilities that can bring the gods down. If out of Matter and Life emerged Mind, so can a being with diviner faculties arrive here. To mould humanity in God’s shape, or discover a new world, or create a new world—these are present as three alternatives and Savitri becomes the centre for the action. In the last alternative the creation established in the House of the Spirit shall become manifest. But for any of these to happen it is essential that first the heavenly soul should be found.

 

 

Canto 3

The Entry into the Inner Countries

 

From the body’s guarded fort Savitri stepped

Into a bleak room that housed ghastly beings,

Pythonesses and she-wolves ever waiting

To tear the soul of man, kill it with untruth,

Night-ravens crying on the path to perdition.

But she braved the assault and breathed freer air.

Past the dim chapels, past the garden schools.

The viharas of monks, the adwaitins’ maţhas,

She met en route to the cave where dwells the flame

Brilliant gods helping with their light our lives,

Bringing to wakened sense things of the spirit.

But she yearned for the birth of the immortal.

 

 

Savitri should discover her soul,—not for herself but for humanity. She has to step into the inner countries and meet the great dread before she can make progress. All the elemental energies are swarming there around her, and there are the vital godheads, and agents of the physical mind with their tenacity in the ignorance, and leviathan creatures of the fallen life, and the shady questioning beings, and the thinkers fixed in their own inflexible thoughts and notions and beliefs. Savitri cuts her way through the darkness of all these dubious hues. But she also meets the bright gods who bring to her messages of greatness. She mingles happily in their company, longing yet for their spiritual light. But she is also conscious of the fact that nothing worthwhile can be achieved without finding her soul. She asks for the guidance and is told that she should take up the world’s climbing highway and go all the way to its source. There she will see the occult Fire burning on a stone and the deep cavern where resides her soul. She proceeds accordingly, in the confidence of that guidance.

 

 

Canto 4

The Triple Soul-Forces

 

Now the little boroughs of dream were left behind

And she came to a place where toil consorts

Of the triple being, suffer to change

Nature that body and life and mind’s self

Open to the supraliminal powers.

Portions of the secret soul of Savitri,

Unwearied, and conquering, and tranquil-bright,

They bring profounder gods to struggling earth.

But what if the antagonists raise their heads,

Or take up arms against the descending sea!

She must discover in the fullness of night

A flame that can hold deathless might in its blaze.

 

 

First Savitri goes deeper within and meets three Shaktis, Powers of her own soul. There is the Mother of Compassion full of suffering and divine grief, Karunamayi Mata, nursing the little spirit of man. Her task is to change this world of pain by patient work only. Challenging her there stands the small life-force with its inconsolable sorrow. But because of this God’s labourer there is hope. The next in the inner world of Mind is the triumvirate of wisdom-love-bliss, Jnana-Prem-Anandamayi Mata. She battles against all that thwarts progress on the road. But the fallen gods in the earth-nature oppose whatever she is trying to bring to her. She has power, yet she is unable to function here. Savitri proceeds further. If the physical world is to bear the higher descent, there must work the Mother of light-joy-peace, Prakash-Harsha-Shantimayi Mata. However, this goddess meets the opposition of an arrogant will. Savitri has to bring the absolute Wisdom, that in it may be born the divine family.

 

 

Canto 5

The Finding of the Soul

 

Now the way must cut through a strange darkness,

And Savitri meet god in a godless form.

By whatever it may be known or perceived

That ceases in the genuine night, the sacred void,

And only remains the will that cancels

The burden of death present in the mortal’s breast.

Above all stood the wonder of the triple sun,

Bliss and consciousness and absolute truth.

Suddenly the cave opened and she saw

The primal force seated on the topaz rock

And heard seven great notes; flooded her the sound

Occult sohaṃ-oṃ-haṃ-yaṃ-raṃ-vaṃ-laṃ.

 

 

This promise can bear fruit only in the soul of Savitri. While nearing the mystic cave she experiences a strange darkness that knows the Unknown. But silent she moves on, and all is the spirit’s vastness. Now she is standing in front of a rock-temple with the figures of gods and goddesses carved on its walls. She sees in stone images breathing presences, deathless and divine. They are the supreme aspects climbing to Sachchidananda. Savitri crosses the tunnel through the last rock and suddenly Soul and Oversoul rush into each other. They become one. The transcendental Mother’s Power, the divine Mahakundalini, floods her entire being. Lotus after dynamic lotus opens and the lower Nature becomes an instrument of the higher Nature. There is a greatening of spiritual happiness everywhere. Across death and birth the first stage of perfection is reached in life.

 

 

Canto 6

Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute

 

The lamp of her soul burned on the golden path

And quiet void became a means to dissolve

The inherent issue of first mortality

Carrying yet in its backward-moving will

The mystery of this creation’s godlessness.

So her luggage of time she left behind

To bring to it the treasures of the true,

To thought plenitudes of the silent spirit.

All now disappeared in that absolute calm

And in the meaning of nature’s dissolution

She joined back with the origin,—love alone.

Then the form behind the impersonal grew bright.

 

 

But the Siddhis Savitri has attained are not sufficient, sufficient to conquer Death. Her outer nature has yet not undergone any fundamental change and all her relationships are still human. A greater Night must therefore show her a truer Sun. She must recognize that, to give a body to the Unknowable, or to burden with bliss the static Supreme, or to call down God in the human mould is all premature. So she is advised to assent to emptiness, that all in her may reach the corresponding absolute. Presently she stands as a silent witness and observes the birth of thoughts; but in her spiritual immensity she does not allow these thoughts approach her. The result is that Truth and Bliss and Love and Force are there now with her in their pristine glory. She has come to that highest Non-being which has the power to strike out the Void, revealing the One who exists unmanifest behind it. She attains formless liberation with the realization of the divine beyond the impersonal and is least concerned if she is going to disappear altogether in it or new-becomes the All.

 

 

Canto 7

The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness

 

But perhaps she would have vanished into that peace,

Forgetting the world, forgetting her Satyavan.

To the danger awoke the spirit of the earth

And it took awhile for Savitri to be.

Now light in the water and the smooth pebbles

Glistening with the new sense of life breathed joy

And the sages of the forest suddenly felt

A new divinity invading them;

There stood creation’s reality distinct.

A chant of the name filled her body’s cells

And in it joined countless aspiring voices.

In matter’s heart was blown the conch of triumph.

 

 

Beyond the Creation, beyond Sachchidananda, beyond the manifest Reality Savitri has reached the ultimate Supreme, Paratpara, the Absolute or the utter Unmanifest, Greater Darkness of the Upanishad wherefrom no return is possible. Had she merged into it it would have been a total laya, dissolution, and her mission would have been on the whole lost. This is a delicate situation, dangerous, but a necessary experience also in her yogic pursuit, that all that is this Nature’s must disappear. By dissolution she would have crossed the realms of death; but Savitri has to enjoy immortality in birth. Her connection with this world is age-old, ancient, and the little hermitage and the forest and the human life have a meaning in her transcendental realization. The Spirit of the Earth would not allow her to depart, disappear altogether. She is all that which holds death and supports the cycles of existence. The creation is a part of that Reality and the functioning its well-meant movement. Savitri has become the full divine Shakti, the Transcendental’s Force working in Space and Time.