Sri Aurobindo says: the first word of his Yoga is surrender; the last word is also surrender. In between these two happy surrenders it is its power that grows when is kindled the yajna to make our will transcendentally genuine. While we still live under the sway of the lower Nature, as long as we are in it, personal effort is indispensable. In that condition spiritual pursuit is our concern and nobody else is going to do it for us. But as we become conscious in our surrender, in our tyaga, in samarpana to the divine Shakti, it is she who herself leads us to freedom and perfection of the higher Nature. In the degree it becomes wholesome and integral, our progress also gains to that extent an assuring speed of the power who then governs all our activities. In the deepening truth of this divine samarpana we find ourselves actually engaged in Integral Tapasya in the ways of the Divine Shakti. In it the whole being lives only to know and serve the Divine. Lastly, it becomes “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.” Not what we think and see for ourselves, but what is thought and seen for us is all that matters. When there is no difference between our will and the Will of the Divine Shakti, then it is she who takes full charge of our life. Then indeed we acquire our genuine free will. That certainly is the object of the Integral Yoga of the Future. In it our masculine tapas-will joined with the feminine tyaga-shakti approaches the Spirit’s Tapas-will served in oneness by his inalienable Tyaga-shakti. In it can then be the truest expression of Krishna-Kali in us. When this is unfalteringly achieved, then the Being of Delight, the Anandamaya Purusha with his Consciousness-Force or Shakti working for his joy comes down wearing a crown of peacock plumes to play on his flute the Song of New Creation.

This song of new creation is born in the death of Death, in his transformation into the Being of Truth, he becoming the unveiled Sat-Purusha. Then begins the real re-creation of the Lord and his Shakti, the play and work of Krishna and Kali. When we participate in that manifestive activity of theirs, we recognize them as our Ishwara and Ishwari, she at his service, as his Dasi, governing a thousand wills of ours in the possibilities of the dynamic Divine. That is the truth of manifestation. “When the Unity has been well founded,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1916, “the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power,—Krishna and Kali.” Sri Aurobindo was at that time waiting for the final arrival of the Mother to join him to accomplish the active half of the work.

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The Yogini has transgressed the law and she must pay the price for that indiscretion of hers. She must bear its terrible consequences, the infliction of the terror; she must understand that here operates only the law of negation of life, denial of life as an incontrovertible fact, its non-existence. Yet in the land of Death her soul persists to be. Savitri survives; but she cannot have her Satyavan back. Instead, her exceptional daring can claim gifts from the Lord of Darkness. Whatever her dear Satyavan had wished while he was living, all those pleasures could easily be hers. Or else if he cherished the wish of eyesight for his blind father, or desired that he should have his lost kingdom back,—these could be restored to him. But those gifts and rewards did not mean much to Savitri, nothing, and she rejects them forthwith. Offended Death speaks in threatening terms to her. She is told that her venturesome act would awake the Furies who would put her in danger; she should on the other hand go by the wisdom shown to her by him, she should accept Death’s advice. But Savitri remains undeterred, worshipper of eternal Love only as she is; whatever she has to do she will do only that which is told by him alone, by Love. Indeed, in her birth all his suns were conscient and, replies she, Death should be fully cognizant of it. Death, however, carries in his imperial majesty the sword of ruthless will, the will of destruction, and Savitri, once more a Wanderer in the unending Night, travels through the unyielding vasts. She would not come back without the soul of Satyavan.

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