Nought is zero, negation. Everything of the previous creation has been dissolved. Only a small core is left. And in that core, something lurks, it is an entity. It doesn’t quite remember the past that has been slain and buried. Only this little entity seems to have survived. The poet doesn’t say exactly an entity, but ‘as though’, as if it is there. This little entity finds itself ‘condemned’, forced against its will, ‘to resume the effort and the pang’, the effort of the last cycle of evolution and the pang of that effort. It had hoped it was all over, but now it is condemned to resume all of it. The previous round was sufficiently frustrating, and this is another ‘frustrate world’ ahead.
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Thursday, March 12
Madhav Pandit Paraphrases The Symbol Dawn—4
by
RY Deshpande
on Thu 12 Mar 2009 03:48 AM IST
Wednesday, March 11
Madhav Pandit Paraphrases The Symbol Dawn—3
by
RY Deshpande
on Wed 11 Mar 2009 05:44 AM IST
When one cycle of creation is over, everything is withdrawn. It is pralaya, dissolution. But all is not extinct. Something that centrally evolves in creation is still alive. A power of the unbounded self of the universe is still lying there half-awake. In that darkness, in that Night, it is awake between two nothingnesses—the Inconscient around, and the Superconscient above. It looks around and sees before it the prospect of once again taking birth, evolving and going through this slow cycle of mortality. It feels, ‘No, I don’t want it, I have had enough’. And it wants to end itself in the vacant Night or Nought around. It is a tired power which does not relish the prospect of another round. It would rather diminish and extinguish itself in the Nescience:
A power of fallen boundless self awake … more » Tuesday, March 10
Madhav Pandit Paraphrases The Symbol Dawn—2
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 10 Mar 2009 04:08 AM IST
It was in August 1947, I believe, that the opening canto of Savitri was first published and my guide and teacher Sri Kapali Sastriar translated it into Sanskrit. As he was working upon it, each day he would send up to Sri Aurobindo with Purani the verses he had done. Sri Aurobindo would go through the translation with interest. He would send word appreciating certain renderings. “He is a poet”—was one of his spontaneous remarks. He would also point out where his intended meaning had not been fully brought out. It was at that time we got an inkling into Sri Aurobindo’s mind here. The verse would be revised or recast, where necessary, in the light of his observations. Thus it went on until Sastriar translated the entire first canto, the most difficult canto of the Book into Sanskrit.
And I, personally, began to understand Savitri only through the Sanskrit version. When I read it in English, I felt it was mystic and beyond me. But when Sastriar was translating it, he would read it out, and when I read it afterwards, it made meaningto me. It is a pity he didn’t continue with the translation. ... more » Monday, March 9
Madhav Pandit Paraphrases The Symbol Dawn—1
by
RY Deshpande
on Mon 09 Mar 2009 05:51 AM IST
Before we commence our study of Savitri, let us be clear to ourselves that we are not reading it as a poem, even as a literary masterpiece, noting the diction, the similes and metaphors and other details. Our purpose in studying it is to enter into the spirit behind it, and in the measure we identify ourselves with that inspiration, we shall grow in our understanding. And this understanding is not an understanding of the mind, though that also is possible, but as the Mother put it, it is more an understanding of the heart.
With these preliminary observations we take up the first canto The Symbol Dawn. In this cant there is a certain parallelism. The Dawn that is spoken of is not only the dawn of that fateful day when Satyavan must die, but it is also the beginning of the present cycle of Creation. In Sanskrit we call it dhvani, very poorly rendered in English by the word ‘suggestion’. In the earlier portions of the canto at any rate, the context of the dawn of creation is more preponderant than the dawn of the physical day. That is why it is entitled “The Symbol Dawn”—the dawn as a symbol: not merely the dawn before sunrise but the symbol of something else. ... more » Sunday, March 8
Amal Kiran Apropos of Savitri—“beautiful” and “powerful”
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 08 Mar 2009 05:37 AM IST
There was a period when the Mother was reciting passages from Savitri in front of a tape-recorder. Her longest recordation was from Book Eleven Canto One, the lines beginning a little before the important turning-point—
Around her some tremendous spirit lived— and ending with: Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born. It was a most exhilarating performance. … more » Saturday, March 7
Amal Kiran Apropos of Savitri—Savitri is Occult Knowledge
by
RY Deshpande
on Sat 07 Mar 2009 05:58 AM IST
The Mother: Savitri is occult knowledge and spiritual experience. Some part of it can be understood mentally—but much of it needs the same knowledge and experience for understanding it. Nobody here except myself can explain Savitri. One day I hope to explain it in its true sense.
... more » Friday, March 6
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—Verses of Terrific Power
by
RY Deshpande
on Fri 06 Mar 2009 05:05 AM IST
We are discussing the following three lines about Night’s mind lying lonely upon the marge of Silence in eternity’s temple:
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone These bring to my mind the three that come much later in the third canto of the same Book: The superconscient realms of motionless peace The lying immobile and silent and lonely recur, though the ultimate mood is different—the all-freeing tranquillity of an unnameable Nirvana instead of the ominous profundity of a hushed emptiness. … more » Thursday, March 5
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—a Literary Aspect
by
RY Deshpande
on Thu 05 Mar 2009 05:44 AM IST
…In the line “In her unlit temple of eternity” there is not a single quantitative long in the eleven syllables—short vowel follows short vowel to create the impression of a sheer lack of substantial reality. The semi-long of the first e in “eternity” hardly avails as a break. In addition to the short-vowelled character of the line, we should observe that there are only three real stresses as against five in the other pair. Further, the line begins with an anapaest, as though a quick movement were easily possible in the utterly unresisting’ atmosphere” of the temple. Lastly, we have no strong close as with “alone” and “marge” but a weak falling away into some endless unknown: “eternity” is without a true accent in its terminal syllable, a sort of half-pressure there merely because the line comes to an end: no actual end occurs and we get the sense of an interminable void with no life in it.
… more » Wednesday, March 4
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—the Divine Event
by
RY Deshpande
on Wed 04 Mar 2009 04:12 AM IST
The second line of Savitri—Across the path of the divine Event—at once recalls with its two concluding words Tennyson’s well-known
And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves. But there is no direct parity between the Aurobindonian “Event” and the Tennysonian. Sri Aurobindo points to a daily occurrence, while Tennyson presumably talks of the end of universal history. And yet, behind the daily working of divine forces to which Sri Aurobindo alludes, we may discern a final “divine Event”, when the Gods, the Lords of Truth and Light, will awake forever and the Avidya, the Ignorance, in which the world’s consciousness lives at present, will be dispelled for good. As we have already observed, the habitual awaking of the Gods on the particular day with which Savitri begins its story is infused with a brief appearance of the ultimate glory: a touch of the “epiphany” is seen for a short while. The “one far-off divine event” is momentarily glimpsed. Yes, a Tennysonian suggestion glimmers in the background. But, of course, the consummation which Tennyson alludes is not quite the same as the world-fulfilment Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga labours towards. Tennyson has a Christian outlook, and strains his eyes in the direction of a world-end leading to a Supreme Hereafter for the elements of the Creation, which Christ, reappearing, will gather up into God. Sri Aurobindo has in view a crowning of the world’s evolutionary effort by an establishment of the Supermind here in rime and space with a divinized mind, vitality and body. Unlike the Christian visionary, he is spiritually this-worldly not only in “organic process” but also in ultimate achievement. … more » Tuesday, March 3
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—Quotations from Sri Aurobindo and some Comments
by
RY Deshpande
on Tue 03 Mar 2009 06:15 AM IST
... do you seriously want me to give an accurate scientific description of the earth half in darkness and half in light so as to spoil my impressionist symbol or else to revert to the conception of earth as a flat and immobile surface? I am not writing a scientific treatise, I am selecting certain ideas and impressions to form a symbol of a partial and temporary darkness of the soul and Nature which seems to a temporary feeling of that which is caught in the Night as if it were universal and eternal. One who is lost in that Night does not think of the other half of the earth as full of light; to him all is Night and the earth a forsaken wanderer in an enduring darkness. If I sacrifice this impressionism and abandon the image of the earth wheeling through dark space I might as well abandon the symbol altogether, for this is a necessary part of it. As a matter of fact in the passage itself earth in its wheeling does come into the dawn and pass from darkness into the light. You must take the idea as a whole and in all its transitions and not press one detail with too literal an insistence.
... more » Monday, March 2
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—Night as the Symbol
by
RY Deshpande
on Mon 02 Mar 2009 04:02 AM IST
... What Sri Aurobindo posits in
It was the hour before the Gods awake is a religio-mythic concept, that has been part of India’s temple-life for millennia: the daily awakening of the Gods. The Gods are the powers that carry on the harmonious functions by which the universe moves on its progressive path. According to an old belief, based on subtle knowledge of the antagonism between the Lords of Falsehood and the Lords of Truth, the period of night interrupts the work of the Truth-Lords by its obscuration of sight and by its pulling down of the consciousness into sleep. Each day, with its onset of darkness the Gods are stopped in their functions by the Demons: the Gods pass into an oblivious slumber. Each day, with the advent of light they emerge into activity and continue their progress-creating career. Traditionally the of their awaking, termed Brahma-muhurta, is 4 am. Every temple in India rings its bells and clang its symbals at 4 am to stir the deities, no less than the devotees, into action. The “hour”, therefore, which Savitri depicts at its start may be taken, if we are to be literal, 3-4 am. The termination of this hour is “the divine Event” mentioned in the second line. ... more » Sunday, March 1
Amal Kiran on the Opening Passage of Savitri—The Initial Clue
by
RY Deshpande
on Sun 01 Mar 2009 03:34 AM IST
The opening passage of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri—the block of the first 78 lines from “It was the hour before the Gods awake” to “All can be done if the God-touch is there”—is often regarded as the most difficult, the most obscure in the whole epic. The obscurity of the passage lies precisely in its description of an obscurity, a darkness, a night which covers the world. What is the nature of the tenebrous phenomenon pictured here? The common impression is that the very beginning of the universal manifestation is spoken of. According to Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual philosophy, the manifestation, of which earth’s history is a part, begins with a stark Inconscience in which all that we understand by the Supreme Divine is submerged and concealed. From the total Involution cosmic Evolution starts: the submerged qualities of the Supreme Divine gradually emerge, the concealed powers of the Superconscience come out of the Inconscience, grade after grade. First, organized Matter takes shape—next, Life with its sensations and desires springs forth—then, Mind perceptive and conceptive appears—and, finally, there will be a disclosure of all that lies beyond mentality. The various phases of the Supreme Divine culminating in the quaternary: Supermind (Vijnana), Bliss (Ananda), Consciousness-Force (Chit-Tapas) Existence (Sat). Now, does the Night, which features in Savitri’s opening passage, stand for this Inconscience at the commencement of things?
The initial clue to the right answer is in the very title of the Canto The Symbol Dawn. … more » |
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